My Journey
My own journey to understanding the complexity of our amazing bodies, and how we can heal ourselves, began at a very early age.
As a baby I was ‘failing to thrive’.
I was lucky that my grandparents were doctors and suspected that I had been born with Celiac disease, an autoimmune condition that meant I was allergic to the gluten in my food. This was confirmed by the doctors who instructed my parents to remove gluten from my diet.
Simply cutting out all gluten from my diet, changed my life and I became a healthy and happy child with no symptoms. Sadly, I was told when I was 8 that all the villi in my gut had been restored and I could resume a ‘normal’ diet.
What is ‘normal’ for many people was not a healthy option for me. I spent the next 35 years dealing with symptoms like bloating, constipation, and dysbiosis, an “imbalance” in the gut microbial community and developed another autoimmune disease, Hashimoto’s, which affects the thyroid gland.
Looking back, I now see how all this in turn affected my mood and overall sense of well-being in ways I just didn’t connect at the time.
Yet, the real catalyst for change came when my son was 6 years old and was struggling with learning at school. He had sensory overload, was unable to connect with other children and was diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia and suspected autism.
At this point, I knew that I couldn’t just stand by and accept that this was the only prognosis for him. I needed to understand what was causing these symptoms and what I could do as a mother to support him.
That was the beginning of my path to Functional Medicine
Watching my son gradually step out from under the toxic shadow of inflammatory food groups, that were silently shackling him into a bubble of isolation, and into the light of a fuller life was one of the proudest moments of my life.
I now believe there will be a moment for you too, where everything clicks for you in understanding the real path to your own long-term personal wellness.
For my son, it was when we eradicated a candida overgrowth in his gut. We had to remove all sugar and processed foods for 6 weeks and slowly introduced starchy foods over a period of 3 months. We also had to do a parasite cleanse and treat him for SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) in order to heal his gut and help clear the toxicity out of his body.
He blossomed from an insular erratic child stuck inside an invisible bubble, in to an emotionally connected, happy child. It was worth all the effort! He is now a confident 14 year old who loves to work out, draw art and hang out with his friends.
For me, it was the moment when I finally felt in control of my life, after years of suffering IBS, Hashimoto’s disease, and hypothyroidism, and trying to escape the fuzziness of a stressful life by reaching for unhealthy food, alcohol, and other unhelpful behaviours.
Eventually regaining my clarity of thought and purpose was genuinely transformative.
For my clients, it’s often a moment when they finally understand how the many dominoes in their lives all interconnect. This enables enlightened, empowered discussions about how to manage their health, circumstances and behaviours in order to achieve overall wellness. And ultimately, to be happy.
If you have been suffering for far too long from symptoms that range from low mood, mood swings, anxiety, lethargy, stomach pain/bloating, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, aching joints/muscles, heavy, erratic periods, insomnia and/or trouble with waking at night, let’s work together to find your formula for wellness.
