There are certain conversations that stay with you long after they’re over, not because of any single fact that was shared, but because of the feeling you’re left with, the quiet recognition that you’ve just spoken with someone who didn’t arrive at their perspective through theory, but through fire.
That is how I felt sitting with my dear friend Lindsay O’Neill, who many people know as “LOO,” a woman who has become a powerful voice in the health and longevity space, not because she set out to become one, but because life placed her in a position where she had no choice but to take ownership of her health and the health of her family in a way most people never truly do.
When you first meet Lindsay, you see someone who is vibrant, thoughtful, and deeply present, but behind that presence is a story that began in a very different world, one defined by the fast pace and constant forward momentum of a successful career in the tech industry, where achievement is measured in output, growth, and performance, and where the body is often treated as something that simply needs to keep up.
All of that changed in a single moment when she was seven months pregnant with her third daughter and was hit by a car while standing outside her vehicle, an event that at first didn’t appear catastrophic, but like so many things in life, revealed its true impact slowly, as the days passed and her body began to seize with pain in ways she had never experienced before.
Pregnancy had already softened her connective tissues, as nature intends, but the trauma of that sudden movement rippled through her entire system, and within days she found herself not only dealing with severe physical pain, but with the terrifying reality of going into labor repeatedly while confined to bed rest, facing a level of uncertainty that strips away every illusion of control you thought you had.
What stayed with me most deeply, though, was not the injury itself, but what came after, because the medication used to prevent those contractions may have contributed to her daughter being born with low muscle tone, and suddenly Lindsay wasn’t just navigating her own recovery, she was navigating the fragile beginning of her child’s life and the responsibility that comes with trying to help someone you love find strength in their own body.
It was during that time, lying still in a way she never had before, that she began asking questions that most people never stop long enough to ask, questions that didn’t begin with how to suppress symptoms, but with how the body actually heals, and what it truly needs in order to restore itself.
She told me something that I believe is one of the most important truths anyone can realize, and that is that health is wealth, and it is not something you can outsource, delegate, or expect someone else to manage for you, because at the end of the day, no one lives inside your body except you.
That realization led her down a path of research that began with food, not as a trend or a philosophy, but as a fundamental biological reality, because what you consume literally becomes the material your body uses to rebuild itself, and that understanding eventually took her into the study of culinary medicine, where she learned formally what she had already begun to intuitively understand — that nutrition is not a side note to health, it is its foundation.
What struck her, and frankly has struck me as well, is how little emphasis is placed on this in conventional training, even though it is one of the most powerful tools we have, and from there her exploration expanded naturally into other areas, including light therapy, breathwork, bioenergetics, and the deeper connection between the nervous system and the body’s capacity to heal.
But perhaps the most profound moment in her story was not something she discovered, but something her daughter realized for herself, because after years of living with the identity of being “the sick kid,” her daughter made a conscious decision that she no longer wanted to live that way, and as simple as that may sound, it represented a shift at the deepest level of the nervous system, where identity itself begins to reorganize biology.
Children often reveal truths adults overlook, and her daughter admitted honestly that being sick had brought her attention, comfort, and closeness, but she reached a point where she wanted something different, and once that internal shift occurred, her healing began to accelerate in ways that cannot be fully explained by any single intervention, but instead reflect the profound influence of the mind and spirit on the physical body.
When we spoke about food, Lindsay didn’t approach it from a place of dogma or restriction, but from a place of relationship, explaining that real food is not defined by trends or labels, but by how your body responds to it, because the body is constantly communicating with you, and the symptoms people experience are not random failures, but signals that something is either supporting you or working against you.
She emphasized that removing heavily processed, artificial foods is less about discipline and more about clarity, because once you remove what harms you, the body often guides you toward what nourishes you.
We also spoke about advanced glycation end products, a topic that has become increasingly important to me personally, and which relates to the way certain cooking methods create compounds that stiffen tissues and accelerate aging over time, not in a dramatic or obvious way, but gradually, through accumulation, which is why awareness becomes so important, not as a source of fear, but as a source of empowerment.
What became clear throughout our conversation is that the most powerful factor influencing health may not be food or exercise alone, but stress, because stress alters the nervous system in ways that affect every other function, from sleep and digestion to hormone balance and cellular repair, and in today’s world, where people are constantly bombarded with information, stimulation, and uncertainty, this has become one of the greatest challenges we face.
Lindsay spoke openly about the role faith has played in her life, not as an abstract belief, but as a stabilizing force that allows her to navigate uncertainty without being consumed by it, and I have seen this same principle repeatedly, because when people feel grounded in something larger than themselves, their nervous system responds differently to adversity.
We also reflected on expectations, and how much suffering is created not by circumstances themselves, but by the gap between reality and what people believe should be happening, and she shared a lesson her mother taught her, which was that you cannot complain about something if you are unwilling to take action to change it, a principle that applies directly to health, because awareness without action cannot produce transformation.
Her book, Biohacking Breakfast, reflects this integration of science, spirituality, and daily practice, because she understands that nourishment is not purely physical, but emotional and spiritual as well, and that true health emerges when all of these dimensions are addressed together.
What I appreciate most about Lindsay is that she does not present herself as a guru or someone who has all the answers, but as someone who has walked through pain, asked difficult questions, and remained open to learning, and that openness is what allows her to continue growing.
If there is one thing I hope people take from her story, it is the realization that health is not something that happens to you, but something that emerges from the choices you make every day, and that while you cannot control everything that happens in your life, you can take responsibility for how you respond to it.
Because in the end, health is not a possession and it is not a prize, and it is certainly not something you acquire once and then keep forever. It is the living expression of your relationship with yourself, revealed moment by moment through the decisions you make, the awareness you cultivate, and the level of responsibility you are willing to accept for the life you’ve been given.
For Lindsay, her health did not become wealth in the material sense, nor did it become some external badge of achievement that she could display to the world. It became something far more intimate than that. It became her autonomy. It became the quiet but unshakable knowing that she was no longer a passive participant in her own biology, no longer someone waiting for answers from outside authorities who, no matter how well-intentioned, could never fully inhabit the experience of her body the way she could.
It became her ability to stand inside her own life again without fear, and to recognize that survival itself is not guaranteed by knowledge alone, but by the willingness to act on that knowledge, consistently, imperfectly, and with humility.
What I see in her today is not someone who escaped hardship, but someone who allowed hardship to refine her, someone who allowed pain to strip away the illusion that someone else was coming to save her, and who discovered instead that the body, when listened to and respected, carries within it an extraordinary capacity to heal, adapt, and guide.
And perhaps that is the deeper message underneath everything we discussed, the one that doesn’t belong to Lindsay or to me, but to anyone who is willing to hear it, which is that your body is not your enemy, and it is not a machine that has betrayed you. It is a living system that has been responding faithfully to the inputs it has been given, and when you begin to change those inputs, patiently and honestly, it will begin to change with you.
Not all at once, and not always in ways you expect, but in ways that remind you that you are not separate from the process of your own healing.
You are the process.
And when you understand that, truly understand it, something shifts quietly inside you, and you stop looking for someone else to take responsibility for your life, and you begin, often for the first time, to live it as if it were actually yours.
The Breath Is the Master Key