Women-Owned Business Series: Alex from Canary House

Welcome back to our Women-Owned Business Series! Today we’re featuring Alex, the founder of Canary House — an integrative clinical practice helping high-functioning individuals uncover the root causes behind symptoms that are often overlooked in conventional care.
The inspiration behind Canary House comes from the founder’s own experience navigating unexplained brain hemorrhages and advanced-stage endometriosis after years of being told everything looked “normal.” That journey revealed a larger pattern of neuroimmune and metabolic dysregulation and ultimately led her to build a practice designed to bridge the gap for others seeking a more precise, systems-level approach to care. Read more about her story below!

First, tell us about your business and anything special we should know about it or you.

Canary House is an integrative clinical practice focused on neuroimmune and metabolic regulation for high-functioning individuals who are told their labs are normal but do not feel well. The work centers on identifying patterns of physiologic strain that are often missed in conventional models, using integrative systems analysis to interpret signaling, regulation, and system behavior rather than relying solely on static lab results. From there, care is structured through precision-based regulatory strategies, which may include foundational support, bioadaptive interventions, and, when appropriate, the use of peptides and other modern therapeutics to support system stabilization and reorganization.

I started Canary House following my own experience with unexplained brain hemorrhages in my mid-twenties while working as a professional horse trainer. Despite significant symptoms, I was repeatedly told that everything looked normal. That disconnect led to years of investigation, multiple surgeries for advanced-stage endometriosis, and a deeper recognition that my symptoms were part of a broader pattern of neuroimmune and metabolic dysregulation that had not been properly contextualized.

Now, many years later as an integrative clinician myself, Canary House was built to address that gap. It is designed for individuals whose systems are functioning at a high cost behind the scenes, and who need a more precise, systems-level approach to understanding and supporting their physiology.

Website: https://www.canaryhousehealing.com
(We work remotely, and many of our clients are on the east coast!)

Why do you feel a connection to your work?

I believe that there are so many incredible, amazing women that are quietly pushing through incredible discomfort, physically, emotionally and mentally. By telling us “everything looks good” and convincing us to stay quiet, our society loses so much potential. Imagine if every high functioning woman was ALSO healthy, rested, fed and feeling good?! The world would change instantly.

As a business owner, community is everything. In what ways do you serve your community and how has your community served you?

I live in a rural Montana town that did not have much access to health and education. Through my success as an entrepreneur, I have been able to use my profits to purchase an old gun shop on Main Street, retrofit in into a local market, where we bring in the freshest food every seen in our town (primarily regionally grown!), low toxin house hold supplies, clinical grade supplements and locally created products. I provide no cost supplement consults and the town is changing how they eat AND how they treat each other, as this has been a very contentious area. I believe in redirecting the flow of capital from those doing harm with it to those healing with it, and this small store is a manifestation of me putting my mouth where my money is and making sure that my community has access to health.

What advice would you give to others who want to start a small business?

The key to business isn’t flashy social media or branding, it is distress tolerance. You must be able to manage your emotional experience, because you WILL fail regularly on the way to success. Also, take care of your body.

What women inspire you and why?

I have an incredible, all women (minus one trans man) team (or actually, teams, as my businesses are separate but overlapping!). These people have all put their neck on the line to join me in my mission to, for lack of a better way to put it, heal everyone! These are all incredibly talented, focused people who could absolutely be doing so many things with their lives, and have chosen to support this mission of healing the world. Many have been with me for years and years, weathering storms, economies and more, with full conviction that we are supposed to be doing this. It is honestly mind blowing and the honor of my life that these people choose to work in my world, and they inspire me daily with their fearlessness and commitment to mission.

What do you think are the most significant challenges for small business owners or women in leadership positions?

Years ago, I would have answered this differently, but today the answer is clear: the biggest challenge for women in leadership positions is not self-sacrificing, over functioning and hurting themselves in service of serving everyone else. Our society supports this sort of self-sacrifice in so many ways, from teaching women to care more about others than themselves, to making it easier to eat toxic food and absorb inflammatory load (or not eat at all) than access health. Then, when we don’t feel well, we are seen as so high-functioning that we couldn’t possibly actually be sick, and the gaslighting continues. Staying true to ourselves, that we know our experience, deserve a body that feels safe, and are allowed to put our oxygen mask on first is, to me, the greatest challenge faced by women working towards success and leadership today. But, I do know from experience, success amplifies when we choose to take care of ourselves first!

Please plug any promotions, events, or recent milestones you have!

I have recently started a Substack! It’s very new to me but I’m excited to share this clinical work in a new space. Listed above.