“You can’t diet or exercise this away”

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What “feeling healthy” misses

Catherine joined Function around her 59th birthday—not because something felt wrong, but because she wanted to go into her next decade with clarity. A working mother to a 19-year-old son, she stays active with tennis and swimming, limits sugar, wears a continuous glucose monitor, and keeps up with the latest in women’s health through podcasts and research.

She felt strong—“going in gangbusters,” as she put it.

But ever since menopause, she’d faced subtle but persistent issues: an uptick in her hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), tightness in her rings, shoes fitting more snug. Nothing dramatic—just a sense that her body wasn’t functioning quite like it used to. Her doctors chalked up the changes to menopause and offered prescriptions—like metformin for her high blood sugar—but no real answers. But she wanted to know why.

Then, one add-on hormone test she’d completed through Function—insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1)—came back at nearly double the normal range.

The power of curiosity

Catherine decided to test her IGF-1 not because she suspected something wrong, but to be validated that her exercise efforts were making a difference. She’d heard on health podcasts that IGF-1 plays a key role in muscle and bone growth, especially post-menopause. She added the test with confidence, expecting a gold star to confirm that her efforts were working.

Instead, it was a warning light she couldn’t ignore.

Her IGF-1 came back high—580 ng/mL, well above the reference range of 50–317 ng/mL for her age group.

She didn’t know what this meant. But she knew she needed to look further to get answers. 

Pushing for answers

She flagged the results to her primary care doctor. The response? “I wouldn’t worry about it. We don’t test that.” The response from the endocrinologist to her doctor was even more dismissive—“Why did you let her take that test?”

“I wanted self-agency, but I felt like I was being asked to roll over and play dead.”

She didn’t want permission. She wanted answers. 

The discovery

Eventually, she found an endocrinologist who listened. He asked about her hands and feet. Were they getting bigger? She thought about her tight rings, the shoe size increase, the subtle shifts she’d dismissed.

Then, an MRI revealed a 6mm pituitary tumor. The diagnosis: acromegaly—a rare condition caused by excessive growth hormone production. It leads to a gradual overgrowth of certain tissues, with telltale signs like enlarging hands and feet—but affects systems throughout the body, including cardiovascular and neurologic. Left untreated, it significantly raises the risk of early death from cancer and heart disease.

She recounts the experience of receiving the news, saying it wasn’t just physical—it was emotional. 

She joined Function and completed the IGF-1 test in August. And by February, she was getting surgery at a top institution to get her tumor removed. On February 5th, they removed the tumor through a minimally invasive transnasal approach. Her IGF-1 levels dropped by more than half.

“Had I not gotten IGF-1 tested, I would’ve never known. It wouldn’t have been caught.”

Catching it early allowed Catherine to seek care before the tumor had time to do lasting damage.

Post-surgery hope

She’s two months post-surgery. 

The surgery didn’t just shrink the tumor—it helped reset a handful of other markers, too. The excess growth hormone had been quietly destabilizing her blood sugar control. Her HbA1c dropped from 6% to 5.4%—its lowest level in nearly a decade. 

And while she’ll be monitoring her IGF-1 levels moving forward, she’s empowered knowing her health status and hopeful about the life ahead of her.

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A new chapter

Change didn’t stop at her biomarkers—the experience shifted her relationship with her body, and her approach to health. She reflects on how society teaches women to resist aging rather than understand it:

“We are told to fight death, fight aging, but there are going to be some things that you need to deal with.”

For Catherine, there have been highs and lows throughout this journey. At the time of our conversation, she had a post-surgery MRI scheduled for the coming weekend. Two weeks earlier, she’d celebrated her 60th birthday.

Today, she says, she feels pretty good. “It may change tomorrow,” she adds, “but I have a lot of hope.”

The courage to find out

She’s still processing this chapter. But if there’s one thing she wants others to hear, it’s this:

“You have to be willing to have agency over yourself and walk into the forest of the unknown. Take the test. Don’t be afraid. Don’t wait for others to help you. The test is just the beginning... a light might go off, and you have to have the courage to do more than Dr. Google...Nobody’s going to love you more than yourself.”

For her, it’s not just about early detection. It’s about self-agency. About choosing to seek clarity before something becomes a crisis. About leaning into her health with curiosity and being brave enough to find out what’s going on inside her body.

“No one has taken me by the hand to lead the way. You have to do that for yourself,” she says. And it’s that mindset that drives her to share Function with others. 

For Catherine, this journey has been humbling—but also empowering. She didn’t set out to find a pituitary tumor. She set out to understand her body better. What she found not only changed her life—it made it clear that owning your health starts with trusting yourself enough to keep going, even when the answers aren’t easy.