Mindy Kidder spent more than 30 years working as a registered nurse. After COVID, she started looking for something outside the system she’d worked in her whole career. She found FDN, worked through the course alongside a full-time nursing job, and graduated with a new direction: a virtual functional health practice she runs from her RV while traveling the country.
Why did a nurse of 30 years look outside the medical system?
Mindy had spent decades inside conventional medicine. “Being a nurse, I’ve been in the medical system for a long time, and COVID turned me against the current medical system” she said. She was also looking into her own health, including autoimmune issues that run in her family, and wanted answers the system she worked in wasn’t built to give her.
Why FDN instead of nurse practitioner school?
Before finding FDN, Mindy had considered going back to school to become a nurse practitioner. She decided against it. “As a nurse practitioner, you’re stuck in that current medical model, and I really didn’t wanna do that,” she said. FDN’s underlying-causes approach, built around lab testing and root-level investigation rather than symptom management, was the direction she wanted instead.
Is the FDN course harder than expected for someone with a medical background?
Even with three decades of nursing experience, Mindy found the course substantial. “A lot of what was taught was very interesting because it was not stuff that I was typically taught in all of my years of nursing,” she said. Working full-time while completing the coursework took commitment: “I don’t know how people without any medical background would be able to get through this even in a year,” she added, noting she has real respect for students without a clinical background who complete it.
What surprised her most about the labs?
Mindy ran the foundational labs on herself as part of the course, and the MRT food sensitivity test caught her off guard. Both coffee and tea came back as reactive foods for her. As a self-described “24/7 coffee drinker,” she gave up caffeine entirely, replacing it with water, electrolytes, and caffeine-free roasted cacao, and has stayed off it for several months. She plans to retest down the road to see how her results have changed.
What did she wish the course covered more?
Mindy had two pieces of constructive feedback. First, she felt the gap between running the foundational labs on herself early in the course and getting results feedback later on felt long. Second, she suggested the course add a general overview of peptides and GLP-1 medications, not in depth, but enough that graduates have a working understanding, since clients ask about them often. FDN has an advanced peptide course in development.
Did the course deliver on what she needed to actually understand the material?
Yes. When asked whether she felt comfortable explaining metabolic chaos, one of FDN’s core teaching concepts, to clients, she didn’t hesitate: “I think they put it together very well. I really do think it makes a lot of sense,” she said, adding she wished nursing school had taught the concept the same way.
What is she building now?
Mindy is opening an LLC and building a virtual FDN practice. She lives and travels full-time in an RV, so a traditional office was never an option. “I can’t really have a brick-and-mortar,” she said. “So I plan on doing a virtual practice and hopefully can get that off the ground and be able to help people that way.” For now, she’s building it alongside her nursing job, with an eye toward keeping it going well past retirement. As she put it, her husband is convinced she’ll never actually stop working, just switch what she’s working on.
FDN has trained 5,000+ practitioners across 50+ countries over 15+ years, using 70+ functional labs, including the MRT food sensitivity test Mindy used to identify her own reactive foods.
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