Like most people, I believed I was eating a fairly healthy diet. For years, I followed what the food industry sold as “healthy”. In 2005 I had developed scar tissue below my trachea, narrowing my airway, and making it extremely difficult to breath. Eight throat surgeries later, and still no real answers as to why the scar tissue so stubbornly grew back each year. I'd become what the medical professionals termed an "interesting case". After each surgery, I'd think to myself "this is my last surgery". Then a year later I'd be right back in that operating room. Throughout this time I was pumped up with many medications, which didn't keep me out of the operating room and were damaging my body in the process.
My health was slowly deteriorating, and eventually my body just started shutting down, with new symptoms arising. Simple daily tasks had become excruciatingly painful and nearly impossible. In 2014 I was diagnosed with an Autoimmune disease known as Mixed Connective Tissue Disease (which later developed into full on Sjogren's disease). At the time, I had no clue what this meant, so I began searching rigorously online to understand what was happening to my body.
Ultimately everything I found online was useless advice, information detailing how my organs would eventually fail or the need to remain on prescription drugs for the remainder of my life. It felt like a dead end. After starting the medications prescribed by my doctor at the time, my symptoms worsened and I was in pain 24 hours a day. I found myself invariably uncomfortable, anxious and acutely fatigued. My hands were remarkably swollen and felt as though they were on fire while at the same time, numb and tingly. I could not ignore the aches in my hands any longer because, well, we use our hands for everything! The mornings and afternoons were challenging, but the worst was at night. I was waking up every hour on the hour feeling as if my hands were burning.
I went months at a time with little or no sleep. I was in excruciating pain and unable to be myself around people socially. I went to work each day and pushed through, only to be in pain and stressed all day long. I began to isolate myself in efforts to hide my moodiness from the people I loved. I was primarily losing myself, and the ability to live a healthy, optimal life. Through this ordeal, I spent an incredible amount of time and money seeing countless doctors, only to be prescribed with medications, while developing worsened symptoms. No one focused on the foods I was consuming or investigated the causes of my illness. They were treating the symptom and not the root cause of the disease in the first place.
I refused to accept this as my life, and continued to search for answers and dive deeper into understanding the autoimmune world. Along the way, I was lucky enough to come across several Alternative Medicine practitioners who enlightened me with unconventional, yet truly beneficial methods of starting the healing journey. With time, a major dietary shift, and re-educating myself, my symptoms began to decrease, and my body was starting to heal.
Because of this diagnosis, my relationship with food and lifestyle has forever changed. Through this healing journey, I found my passion for relieving the body of pain and disease, with real foods and alternative treatment modalities.
