Where did my health-nerdism* originate?
*noun; the distinctive practice of being a health nerd
Great question. Pull up a chair.
At 14 years-old I was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis. This means that my immune system was destroying my liver cells. By the time I was diagnosed, I’d lost about of my liver 98% and was headed for a transplant. This was just before Christmas in 2010.
I know, right? ‘Merry Christmas ya filthy animal (if ya know, ya know, Home Alone fans)!
My jaundice body (hello Lisa Simpson 2.0) was given immunosuppressive therapy and although this served a purpose, it depleted my fragile system further and I only got sicker. In the mind as well as the body.
After almost a year of treatment, I still faced a liver transplantation.
I was prescribed a more potent immunosuppressive drug that could potentially cause kidney failure.
Good times.
An instinctive voice somewhere inside of me (could’ve been my heart, could’ve been my bottom – honestly, I don’t know) told me that I should try playing around with my diet and lifestyle to initiate healing. I figured I didn’t have anything to lose, except perhaps a kidney (or two) and the 2% liver function that remained.
I believe the term we use here is YOLO?
Well fork-me-dead and bury me pregnant (not literally, it’s an expression)! As it happens, my body was craving nutritional medicine. The more I improved my diet, the faster I healed. After a few years I was medication-free and in remission. In August 2019 I received the clean bill of health – a fully regenerated liver! Boom Shakalaka!
Changing my diet genuinely saved my life. I know this sounds cliched. I also appreciate that some folks bork at the idea of food being medicine, but come on, it literally is! If we expect tiny pills to make us better, how can we NOT believe that the stuff we put in our mouths daily – in MUCH LARGER doses – isn’t going to make a (MUCH LARGER) difference?
I’d always loved health and cooking, but I now saw the dramatic impact it could have on my quality of life. My favourite pastime became talking to my hallway mirror about the value of cacao for boosting mood, green tea for liver detoxification, and probiotics and slow cooked curries for bowel lubrication. I yearned to educate by example – with a comedic flare – so that my community could discover the power of food and habit change.
Don’t discount sunshine strolls, laughter-filled catch-ups, and the odd yoga class. They can be equally as important as what we choose to masticate. (That’s not a typo for a suggestive word that seldom needs explaining btw . . . masticate literally means ‘chew’).
That lead me to earn my BHSc Nutritional and Dietetic Medicine after graduating high school and though it wasn’t the initial plan, I ended up writing my first book ‘Periods, Poo & A Glorious You’ whilst completing my final year of university.
My message is simple. We can enjoy food and benefit from it at the same time. Food can sustain or deplete us, delight or depress us.
We all deserve to know this.
Real food is where it’s at y’all. More produce and less packets. An awareness of chemical exposure and the merits of choosing natural personal care products. Although I did fall for restrictive protocols at certain points, the most powerful factor in my healing was simply choosing whole foods. I don’t credit any one ‘diet’ to my results, but rather an ever-evolving selection of Mamma Nature’s treasure chest.
As the blog archives reveal, I have tried different eating patterns over my lifetime for various medicinal purposes. At times, I was gung-ho and naïve, jumping in before understanding the magnitude of what I was in for. At other times I let my intuition guide me.
These gastronomical adventures taught me to individualise my diet and keep it enjoyable. We needn’t suffer deprivation on our quest to optimal health, and we have the right to evolve our diets and lifestyles as our needs and interests change. No human is a static equation.
I marry health with humour and science with soul.
I bring a candid lightness to serious topics and make intricacies easy to understand. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that we can find our own ways of making health fun and sustainable. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. The joy of this freedom puts us in the driver’s seat of our lives.