Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your ears…

Welcome… I’m writing in the hope that you may find interest, advice or hope from my discoveries found along the road to health and wellness. There are a few weighty finds: some worth their weight in gold, in fact.

I have managed, through years of research and networking, to turn round my health. This blog exists for those having similar experiences, to stand as testament that it is possible to recover. It is a work in progress. With dedication and commitment, you can also return to a wonderful state of wellness. We all need support in reaching our optimal health but many people lack the belief that we can take our health into our own hands. Yes, we can take responsibility for the wonderful vehicle for the soul with which we have been blessed – our very own, magnificent body.

First I want to go back in time and tell you a little about my health story…

MOULD

From an early age, I was quite ‘sickly’ and was frequently affected by mouldy environments. If there was mould in the house, I would quickly have a chest infection. Of course, back then, everything was considered as bacterial and I was given many courses of antibiotics for this apparent chest infection. I would visit my dad at weekends. His trade was renting holiday flats to tourists in our seaside town of Bournemouth on the south coast of England I was always put in the room that had the mould – i.e. that could not be rented for that reason. He bought and sold these houses over the years and, as a consequence, I was regularly exposed to mould.

EPSTON BARR VIRUS

I was diagnosed with Epston Barr Virus (EBV) at the age of 14. There is some remarkable information about EBV and the immune system here After this point, I suffered from intense fatigue. I could easily sleep for 17 hours at a time. The fact that I left home at this age and had to work nights to pay my rent, as well as go to school, made life hard for me. My schooling suffered and I didn’t receive a decent education.

After being sick for many years, I began to unravel the complex tapestry of my life in an attempt to understand why my body was inclined to be this way. The medical establishment had offered no clues or support. I had an impressive list of mysterious diseases that the doctors did not seem to explain or treat. Dr Do-little was my practitioner and he lived up to his name.

EDS and FIBROMYALGIA

In the following years, I suffered strange aches and pains in my joints. Numerous visits to doctors elicited comments that it was “growing pains” or “double jointed-ness”. By the age of about 30, I was diagnosed with Elhers Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and fibromyalgia. I was confused: how could I have both? There was no blood test for either, rather a clinical diagnosis, and no explanation re causes of these ‘syndromes’. I suspected that more was occurring than what I wa being told. However, I was treated like a difficult patient when I asked questions. Later on, after years of stomach pains, I eventually was granted an appointment with a nutritional therapist through the NHS. At this point, I was diagnosed me with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), apparently caused by stress. I was advised to eat fewer vegetables.

TICK BITE

This sequence of health events seemed to lay the foundations for a gradual decline in general health and wellbeing. To top it off, I put the nail in the coffin by travelling extensively around India for many years. I never pondered the possibility of being vulnerable to bugs and infections in a country like India.

On my travels, I was bitten by a tick, and suffered a terrible fever. After a week, the tick was discovered and removed. I didn’t know about Lyme Disease back then. I also had many horrific bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. I had not yet grasped the seriousness of these pathogens inside my body and, sadly, I would only learn 20 years later. My health continued to deteriorate and, meanwhile, I was being told that nothing could be done re my vague diagnoses.
One day, I decided I absolutely must find out what was making me so sick. I had the internet now! There were no excuses anymore. Everything I needed to know was there for me to discover. I embarked upon the journey of a lifetime, the journey of self-healing.

GENETIC CONNECTION

More recently, I have discovered, through DNA testing, that I have many genetic mutations. Some of these are common in chronically sick people who have illnesses such as Lyme disease, Morgellons disease and biotoxin illness (also known as mould illness). They include several mutations of the MTHFR enzyme, and the ‘dreaded mould gene’, HLA (human leukocyte antigen).
The Human Genome Project (HGP), the international collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all genes of human beings, discovered that our environment plays a much bigger role in our disposition towards illness than what our genetic code may predict.
In other words, our exposure to toxins, pollution, diet and stress can dictate our health. This, in turn, means that we can control of our health, to a degree, by making the right choices. This is known as epigenetics.
The issue is:
What came first, the genetic mutation or the illness? Could these illnesses be causing the mutations, rather than the other way round? The jury is out. But watch this space.