my story

My story

Here’s a relatively short recap of what got me to where I am right now.

2009

I suppose we’ll start here.  In my final year of high school I started to get interested in health and fitness.  I started lifting weights, doing bodyweight exercises and learning to cook a bit more for myself.  It was mainly for vanity reasons.

2010

After finishing year 12 I had a lot more time up my sleeve and started going to the gym with a few of my friends.  I managed to put on about 10kg this year, with a significant chunk of it being muscle. This was a big part of my life, I really enjoyed looking up training splits as well as nutrition and supplementation to maximise my progress.

Early 2011

Early on in the year I got what I thought was a cold, I tended to get them quite frequently.   During this ‘cold’ I also was struggling to digest foods, I would cough/vomit them back up completely undigested.  I was also experiencing extreme lethargy, worse than I ever had, staying in bed for up to 16 hours per day, physically not feeling capable enough to move.

During this period I lost around 10kg very quickly (see ya later gainz ☹ )

Unfortunately, my doctor at the time wasn’t very helpful, insisting that all the symptoms I was experiencing were completely unrelated and wanting to treat them as such .  After a lot of back and forth for about 2 months, and no progress I I changed doctors. One of the first things this new Dr did was test me for Eppstein Barr virus (EBV), which gave a positive reading.  It was helpful to know, but where was I to go from here? I’d moved into the post-viral stage, yet my symptoms were still there.

During this time, my academic performance was really affected.  I went from being one of the top performers in my high school to feeling like I couldn’t comprehend anything.  I would constantly have to re-read things to make sense of them. Part of me thought I was just being lazy while the other part knew something more sinister was going on.

Over the next year and a half I would have appointments with many specialists.  The labels thrown around were Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, while others would say there was nothing wrong with me or that it was all in my head, that I should have recovered from the EBV by now.  Some said that because they couldn’t find anything wrong with me that this was just my new baseline, as good as my life would get. For a 19-20 year old who was very recently in his physical prime this was very hard to hear and I didn’t always accept it.

On top of that, I had lost almost all of my sex drive (I couldn’t find it, where did it go?).  I was depressed for quite some time and contemplated suicide frequently.

When I think back to this time I remember everything as being really dark and cloudy. A dark night of the soul if you will.

Towards the end of this year I remembered cutting out gluten just to give it a go.  I saw some improvements from it so decided to stick with it.

2012

My partner at the time was very helpful, being a fantastic cook and very interested in healthy living.  She taught me a lot about eating healthy and I started to see some slow improvements, even managing to begin exercising a bit.

I was still quite exhausted and had well and truly become identified with the label ‘Chronic Fatigue.’  I didn’t want people to think I was lazy, or wasn’t trying hard to be healthy, so I let them know that this wasn’t my fault, I was a victim of my circumstances.  I don’t say this to take away from the experience, because it was an incredibly difficult time in my life, but being the victim didn’t help me improve at all, it was me giving away my power and responsibility.

Mid 2012 I decided to begin a personal training course to learn about the body.  It was around this time that I started to experience right shoulder pain that steadily intensified.  I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it back then but it was chronically inflamed. This was another set back.  

2013

The shoulder pain I’d experienced was getting worse and worse, I’d seen a few therapists from different modalities with no relief.  I was scared to move, to exert myself in any way and was obsessed with trying to figure out the cause of this pain.

This progressed to pain in the rest of my body.  I had a slight injury that caused pain in my right Plantar Fascia, which progressed up to my calf, then knee, medial hamstring and hip.  The chronic inflammation continued, only this time it was walking that also hurt. Nothing seemed to help here. I saw a number of other practitioners for the body that gave some help, but ultimately I was now living with chronic pain.  I was not happy, constantly fidgeting, complaining a lot and feeling FRUSTRATED. Moving hurt and not moving hurt just as much.

By 2013 I had finished with all the specialists.  With a potential diagnosis of Fibromyalgia and/or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and no actionable steps to improve my situation my doctor told me that she had done all she could, that she had reached the end of her knowledge.  She recommend I look for other modalities. I remembered after this session feeling more optimistic, a happier, sunnier time.

My mum had been seeing a Naturopath so I decided to see her too.  This was quite a transformative time for me. My Naturopath was talking a lot about GUT health and how that influenced the health of the rest of the body.  At this time I weighed under 60kg (a BMI of around 18) and had really low energy still. I can’t remember the exact test used but she deduced I had parasites and dysbiosis and started me on a protocol.  The parasite protocol was very intense for me, I remember feeling really toxic doing it, having foul smelling stools and even vomiting a few times. Perhaps this was my first Herxheimer. Knowing what I know about my body now, I wouldn’t have started with this, but instead would have focused on supporting drainage (link to article on drainage).

Even despite the Herx this was still an important time for me.  Gut health was not something that any doctor had ever mentioned to me.  

I started to look into foods and supplements in a different way.  I became aware of a lot of the health trends of the time. I was into smoothies and juicing, loved quinoa, experimented with sprouting and fermenting my own foods (I didn’t eat my own ferments for a while, I was too scared I would die haha).  I started seeing some progress and became quite obsessed with this.

Early-Mid 2013 I went on a health retreat with my then partner and her father.  It was a weekend of juice fasting with about 20 or so other people. Again, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have done this at this stage in my health journey, it was too much for me.  I became extremely lethargic and nauseous midway through the first day, ended up throwing up for most of the evening and woke up about 8 times to pee throughout the night. My stools were absolutely foul smelling and sludgy.  Another healing crisis perhaps and a lesson learned, don’t go too hard too soon.

Midway through this year I finished my undergraduate degree and began tutoring at the university.  This was something I had wanted to do for a few months and was so glad I got this job. Not much changed with my health throughout this period.

2014

After having a think about what I would like to do career-wise I thought about becoming a university lecturer, to do this I would need a PHD, so I went back to school for my Honours in Economics.  This was by far the hardest year of my uni degree and my health suffered quite a lot from it at the beginning of the year. A combination of the stress, long hours required and commiting to too much (I tend to do this).

Something interesting happened this year, my dad moved out of his house which meant I wasn’t there either.  The bathroom next to my bedroom had a wall full of mould, something I never thought twice about but which I learned a few years later was a key reason I was struggling health wise.  Later on in 2014 I found out about another key reason I was struggling.

In August I decided to change my dentist. My current one wasn’t really satisfying my newfound requirements for healthy dental care.  I ended up at 2nRich, the dental clinic across from my personal training course. This was another transformational experience.

During my first consult Dr Lisa asked me about my health up to that point and told me I was the poster boy for mercury poisoning symptoms.  She recommended I get tested straight away via a hair mineral analysis.

Sure enough, I had mercury.  And a lot of it. I can’t even begin to describe how happy I was.  I KNEW this would help. I felt I had a clear direction in what to do with my health.  I started with supporting phase II detoxification and elimination. My pain started decreasing significantly and my energy was coming back.  I began exercising a little more, being able to jog a little bit on my walks.

I ended up going too hard too soon towards the end of this year with my mercury protocol, coming up in a horrible rash all over my body that lasted a couple of weeks. I was incredibly itchy and very embarrassed, I looked horrible.  During this time I learned (quite painfully) that I couldn’t sweat. After going to the sauna for a few days in a row I finally began to sweat and my rash started going away.

Progress was slow but gradual until early 2016.

2016

In 2016, my long term partner at the time and I had broken up and I was beginning to lose my passion for working full time as a university tutor. I knew something needed to change.  I was unsure of what to do and I felt stagnant in my life. Without direct or purpose.

At the end of 2016 I began working with a coach/healer and started to get my zest for life back.  After our first session I looked at where my life was going. I didn’t resonate with that plan anymore.  I had wanted to learn and practise natural health for such a long time but I was waiting for myself to ‘get better’ (whatever that meant).  

I decided to go for it.  I planned to spend 2017 reading Leah Hechtman’s Clinical Naturopathic Medicine and Giovanni Maciocia’s TCM textbooks to decide if I’d go down the TCM or Naturopathic path.

I got 8 pages into Leah’s book (I double checked the page number) and came across the Principles of Naturopathy (link to article).  I had this feeling in my body. This was it. This was what all my life experiences, beautiful, joyous and challenging had led me to.  I knew I wanted to study Naturopathy. I was so excited. I submitted an application the next day and began studying in 2017.

2017 – Now

There have been a lot of learnings along the way.  I’m so incredibly thankful for my life experiences up to this point, because they have brought me to this life.  I have made some fantastic friends in this degree, love what I’m studying and am full of optimism (and a bit of fear) for what my future holds in this field.

You can see where I’m at on my health journey, I update it weekly over here (link to My Week in health).

My biggest reminder from writing this is how far I’ve come and that life’s biggest challenges and hardships can sometimes be the best thing that ever happens.  It could be just the catalyst one needs to live the life they love.

Much love and thank you for reading,

Stef