Toréa Rodriguez: All About Dark Chocolate and Natural Healing

Toréa Rodriguez is a certified Functional Diagnostic Medicine practitioner in the Santa Cruz, CA area who is a big-time dark chocolate connoisseur. I booked her on the show to learn all about the details of dark chocolate, but we go much deeper into important health matters first. Toréa relates her story of illness, healing and transformation—an interesting journey of going from hard working Silicon Valley scientist to commercial airline pilot to a basketcase who trashed her thyroid, was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, and was left unable to work. Faced with a doctor’s recommendation to radiate her dysfunctional thyroid, Toréa instead went looking for alternative healing strategies and discovered that she actually had an autoimmune disease! Such a common story as we know from Elle Russ’s book, Paleo Thyroid Solution, and her many shows about thyroid with Dr. Gary Forsman and others.  

Toréa talks about how she healed with Dr. Chris Kresser’s help (ditching grains, healing co-infections in the gut, and rebalancing thyroid and adrenal function). Duly inspired, shetransitioned out of flying and into a practitioner role helping others with FDN and also Transformational Coaching Method. Toréa talks about how she had to adjust her mindset from a Type-A overworker/overexerciser, and implement cool strategies like taking a “personal offsite” day once per quarter devoted to unplugging and reflection.   

Regarding cravings that potentially throw you off track, Toréa reminds us that we are always seeking: “love, safety, and belonging,” and that cravings and binges could be related to filling an emotional void. We learn about her Detox program, where we want to prioritize cleaning up our cosmetics and body care products and our drinking water.  

With those important matters out of the way, we finish up with a discourse on the health benefits of dark chocolate, and how to choose the healthiest, purest bars. Toréa details the importance of the “bean to bar” and “fair trade” designation on your dark chocolate bars.