Andrea Behe is a Certified Natural Health Professional. She is the former owner of Bread of Life Gourmet, a business she started based on her desire to help those with food restrictions. Through her and her children’s different food sensitivities, she knew all too well about the struggle and time involved with cooking for a restrictive diet.  She saw the need and often desperation in others who also struggled with this and had a strong desire to help. That desire led her to open Bread of Life Gourmet, where she cooked and delivered organic, gluten, and dairy free meals to her customers, and also offered freezer meal parties. She later transitioned into Living The Clean Life, an idea that was geared more towards giving people the tools they need to learn how to maintain a clean-eating lifestyle.

My Story

Hello! I’m Andrea – a wife and mother of four incredible boys. I am passionate about sharing the message of true health, and helping people transform their lives by using food as medicine to promote health and help prevent and treat illness.

Food has a new meaning for me. Over the years and throughout my journey with health and nutrition I have come to realize that what we put into our bodies directly effects how we feel and how we function. I have learned to stay away from the foods that impact me negatively and instead gravitate towards life-giving foods that not only benefit how I feel but also promote healing and an overall better life. My heart goes out to those that are suffering with negative health symptoms but that just don’t know where to begin. You see, I wasn’t always healthy, but one day I decided I wanted to get to the bottom of why that was the case. As a baby, I had colic. As a young girl and as far back as I can remember, I always had really horrible stomach aches. I remember there were so many times I would just lay on the ground in pain. It continued as an adult. Bloating, indigestion, belching, pain, it was something I just learned to live with. A little later I developed chronic bronchitis and other respiratory issues that we later discovered was asthma. I was finally diagnosed with Cough Variant Asthma and was put on medication and inhalers to help with the symptoms. Not too much later, I began to get red, itchy patches all over my body. I had about 5 different areas on my body that were horribly inflamed. I would have a constant urge to itch them and it would get so bad that the itching would create open wounds that would bleed and ooze. I saw dermatologists for the problem, and was given creams but nothing seemed to help. No matter the treatment, the rashes continued to be present causing a lot of frustration. The next health issue started as a teenager. I started to notice hormonal issues, including irregular menstrual cycles. I was sent to an Endocrinologist who ran some tests to determine I had a disease called, Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, PCOS. Again, I was put on medications and sent on my way. It didn’t feel right to be diagnosed with something I knew nothing about without an explaination as to why I continued to develop these issues. I started to get frustrated. I wanted to know why I wasn’t functioning the way I should’ve been. Then, in 2013 I began to experience new symptoms. It seemed as if my immune system was failing. I also began to gain weight out of no where. I gained about 20 lbs in a very short time. I felt exhausted most of the time, really not having any energy to do even basic tasks, which I attributed to starting a business and raising little boys. I was always freezing and my hair began to fall out in clumps. I also started to experience anxiety which I had never experienced before. I knew something was wrong. I went to my doctors office that year due to a bad cough that I just couldn’t kick and while I was there I asked her to run a blood test to find out what was going on with me. During that visit I was diagnosed with pneumonia, which also led into pleurisy, inflammation in the chest cavity that causes extreme pain when breathing. While I was there my doctor noticed a goiter protruding on my neck. This is an indication of thyroid problems. She told me that she would call me with the blood test results. A few days later I received a call confirming that my thyroid levels were almost off the charts. She immediately prescribed medication and told me to follow up with my Endocrinologist, who would take a more in depth blood panel. While at my follow up appointment with my endocrinologist, it was confirmed that I did indeed have a thyroid disease. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. Autoimmune disease is a disorder in which the immune system turns against the body’s own tissues. In my case, my immune system was attacking my thyroid, a gland which makes hormones that control metabolism, heart rate, digestive function, muscle control, brain development, and bone maintenance. I had already began to eliminate foods like gluten, dairy, and soy but I wasn’t fully committed to that lifestyle. It was at this point in my life that I decided I needed to take my health more seriously. I began doing a lot of research trying to understand the cause of autoimmune disease and how to heal. I also started seeing a nutritionist who revealed to me that disease starts in the gut. This made sense to me based on my heath history. I also learned about the correlation between stress and disease. Through my research and the guidance of my nutritionist, I had come to realize that if I was able to heal my gut along with other factors, I would be able to heal from the disease. I was hopeful. I began removing inflammatory foods while also using supplements to start the healing process. I slowly started to see improvements. One at a time each symptom that I had lived with for many years began to improve. In fact, most of them completely disappeared.  I no longer have asthma or any chronic upper respiratory issues. I no longer have hormonal imbalances and I no longer have any symptoms of my autoimmune disease. Through my own personal healing journey I have grown to have a love and passion for natural health. It is my deepest desire to help others get their life back through nutrition and lifestyle factors.