My Story...

I got sick about 8 years ago and everything I ate made me sick in some way. I was diagnosed with Fructose Malabsorption and given a referral to see a dietitian and to eat fodmaps. My reactions were IBS symptoms or a weird foggy headed'ness that could last for days! I had no idea where to turn or what to do to navigate this life of being so restricted. 

I've had a few life events that added to my gut exploding. The ones that I feel added to becoming unwell are:

· I suffered from migraines and was medicated for a little while as a child. At 23yrs I decided I needed to drink at least 2ltr of water a day, surprisingly my headaches/migraines reduced to 1 or 2 a year instead of weekly!

· I had an eating disorder at 14yrs.

· I was always on birth control due to horrific period pain of later discovered endometriosis.

· At 21yrs I would get long bouts of tonsillitis which required penicillin shots and months of antibiotics for it to finally end.

· For a number of years I didn't really drink water, just coke and coffee, I ate so much takeaway, mostly ate 2min noodles, I cannot really remember eating nutritious meals unless someone else cooked for me, like Mum or Grandma! Everything I ate was processed.

· I’ve had 10 surgeries, most of them I would have been pumped full of antibiotics as part of the unknown process, and pain killers after.

· I had a major motor bike accident at 23yrs, I was hospitalised for a number of weeks including

being put into a drug induced coma. While this saved my life the medications given would have added to my terrible gut health. I was also in huge amounts of pain for two years after where some days I could easily take up to 16 pain killers a day.

· I went through divorce at 31yrs, which was the most stressful 12 months of my life!

· I had an undetected parathyroid tumor for quite possibly a number of years that added to my    mental health stress among other things. 

I have read that one course of antibiotics can mess up your gut health for up to 12 months, imagine what my gut would have been like after all of this!

I spent around 6 years trying anything and everything to heal, in the end it was a number of things but in Feb 21 I undertook a 23 day fast then ate a wholefoods diet. I went from having leaky gut, candida and a bad bacteria overgrowth to none of that when I got my gut microbiome tested a year later.