After the traumatic loss of both parents to chronic cardiovascular related diseases; dad first in 2019 and then mum in 2022, I came to the realisation that perhaps I wasn't immune to risk of injury and illness and wondered whether, and how, I could mitigate my risk of suffering with chronic disease.
Supporting my parents, suffering with severe and enduring chronic pain and inflammation from the other side of the world in australia, was Incredibly stressful. I did what I could emotionally and practically, but orchestrating and advocating from so far away and in a totally different time zone was challenging and frustrating.
In 2022 I ventured to the local library on my lunch break from teaching hypnotherapy & NLP. I wasn't sure what I was looking for but I came across a book, sat down, and started to read.
The book was called Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease; The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cureby Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., MD. Wow! I had never read or come across anything like it!
After taking it home and spending a few days reading it, I felt compelled to have my own copy. So Paul, my partner, bought it for me along with a Kindle cookbook by Dr Esselstyn's wife and daughter which was full of recipes based on a no/low fat whole food plant based diet.
I was blown away by the work and science that had gone into this and wondered why I didn't know about this stuff before!
From there it opened up a pandoras box. I was all over the research journals and bought more recommended books based on the same theme of preventing and reversing all manner of diseases including diabetes, obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disase hypertention, Alzheimer's, autoimmune diseases, depression...the list went on. This 'new' wave of science got me so excited at the endless possibilities of how we can mitigate our risk of suffering so many serious, life threatening and prematurely life ending, conditions including mental ones.
This was just what I needed. I already knew a lot about promoting health and preventing disease from my health psychology post-grad training, but reversing it too?! This was never something I had come across before.
I was brought up in the 1970's in a working class family on a run down and pretty rough council estate in Sheffield in the north of England. Family life was fraught at times especially being the youngest of 5 in a 3 bed terraced house with a lot of emotional dysregulation. I remember being very shy which my teachers described as 'quietly confident', and being on edge and anxious a lot of the time amongst all the family dramas that would happen on a regular basis.
My family had 2 ways of deaiing with things; avoidance or violence, which for me was very difficult to be around! I hated conflict of anykind and both seemed disturbing in their own ways. Mum's hoarding behaviours and severe allergy to dust, meant the house was often shared with other non-human, moving creatures such as mice, spiders and insects which everyone was terrfied of! Since we couldn't avoid something we'd seen, they would be violently killed just for being there!
I remember going into town on the bus with my mum every Saturday morning for the weekly groceries. We would go to the 'fish' market for our Sunday roast, the cheese stall for our block of cheese and slices of ham, and have a treat at the seafood stall of a little plate of cockles and mum had muscles. Along side was the stall where mum would buy her tripe and cowheel. I quite honestly felt grossed out by the smell and look of all the raw meat and fish and was always glad when this part of the shop was over and we could spend time getting the fruit and veggies!
Whilst our diet was pretty varied, and for the most part full of veggies, fruit, meat, fish, and dairy, it consisted of a lot of salt, animal oils and sugar (SOS) and we ate too much!
Both parents were brought up during the War where food was scarce and wasting food was frowned upon. This meant we were very strongly discouraged from wasting anything. We would have out of date foods in the fridge, freezer and cupboards! Mum was a great environmental ambassador for her recycling, reusing and repurposing; she would never throw anything away!
We didn't have a table and rarely had deserts, but we did have to eat everything on our plate before we could finish with it. On the rare occasions we had takeout or ate out at restaurants my mum's adage was "we've paid for it so we'll eat it". Back then there was no such thing as 'left-overs-to go' or 'doggie bags' so we spent a long while over our meals to ensure we didn't 'lose' any of it!
In the early noughties Paul and I became vegetarian since we hated the smell, look and feel of meat and fish, but we were still reliant on eating dairy products. For some time we had been trying to reduce our reliance on dairy, especially avoiding products containing animal rennet and gelatine, and any wearables or furnishings made from animals.
In 2012 we left the UK for a 9 month world travel adventure on our way to start a new life in Australia. Having sold or given away all our prized posessions, and with just a couple of packs on our backs and a few plastic cards in our wallets, we threw ourselves into the unknown! We realised very early on that being vegetarian wasn't going to be easy in many of the places we visited, but we managed to make it work, somehow.
While we were travelling we were constantly reminded of why we should be vegan, but frustrated that if we wanted to continue our adventure without struggling more than we already were, we had little choice. The lack of respect and exploitation of animals was rife, appalling and anger fuelling, and we felt very conflicted that we weren't doing enough.
What we didn't do was support the animal trade and were very committed to not venturing into tourist attractions or places where animals were being used or abused in captivity. But we were exposed to a lot of it anyway just by being there. For example, on the streets of Marrakech we witnessed donkeys being abused and being unnecessarily whipped, snake charmers keeping snakes in small cases until a tourist passes and not charming them out but rather just lifting the lid and delighting them by seeing daylight, and rising on cue. Alongside the snake charmers were a group of monkeys on chains, and tourists having photos taken with them ‘because they’re cute’. We just couldn't believe how self-centred and unempathic humans can be. But hey, on the bright side, they got their precious photos.
In Petra, a UNESCO World Heritage site, every few minutes on the way down and back we were asked if we wanted to ride a horse or camel. Neither of us agreed with the idea of using animals for these purposes, especially in a modern society where it’s for leisure and not necessity. Whether we said “No” or ignored them, they continued to pester. The riders were being cruel using whips (even when the animal was clearly moving along nicely) and enjoying wielding their power.
One man was kicking his camel on its behind, not hard but definitely not necessary or respectful to an animal that has worked hard all day for him, earning him a living. As we left the site we witnessed a different man kicking his horse – not a tap on the arse this time – but leathering it like it was a football. We were appalled and shouted across to him telling him to stop. He said “It’s none of your f’ing business; it’s my f’ing horse”. It was good to see the horse retaliate and turn on him though, nearly pushing him over a wall into a ravine!
We heard about a ban on tourists visiting wild tigers in many of India’s national parks, possibly including Ranthambore, where we had previously visited. That probably means more people flocking to see animals sat rocking back and forth in cages and rubbing against walls to stimulate themselves because they are so bored.
A couple of years after finishing our travels and settling in Australia, the time was right to make the committment and transition to veganism and eliminate our reliance on animals altogether. Although no longer eating dairy and feeling good about our commitment to that, we became aware that our diet was far from healthy. We became hooked on a diet full of ultra processed foods high in salt, fats and sugar and although we were probably in better shape than we were before, we weren't doing ourselves any favours health wise by eating the foods we were eating.
Not long after starting our new life down under in Australia, my parents' health started to decline and I was feeling more and more stressed and started to have my own health worries. I saw an eye specialist after 4 years of dealing with severe dry eye and trichiasis, and instead of getting prescribed a procedure to epilate my lashes as I expected and had planned for, I came away numbed and confused with a diagnosis of a rare, chronic, inflammatory, and permanently life changing autoimmune blistering disease called mucous membrane pemphigoid.
My eye specialist spent quite some time with me sensitively trying to explain a very complex condition to a total neophyte. I had an out of body experience (dissociated) at one point as I switched off with information and shock overload, it felt so surreal that someone like me from where I came from, to be diagnosed with a 1 in a million incurable disease. None of it made sense to me, I simply wanted the eyelashes out to stop them irritating my eyes and so I could get some quality sleep!
I left his clinic with sore eyes from the biopsies he'd taken, a referral to see an immunologist at my local hospital and an appointment to see him again in a few weeks' time.
On meeting my partner afterwards, barely able to see, I simply said, "I could go blind" and broke down in tears. The emotion of it all had finally got to me and I couldn't really explain what had just happened. What do you say to your long-term partner when you've just been given a life sentence of living with an incurable and potentially refractory life threatening or debilitating disease that you've never heard of?
Just weeks later, on seeing my immunologist for the first appointment I was started on 'the big guns' aka a powerhouse dosage of steroids and immuno-suppressant treatment to remove my B cells and eliminate the inflammation that was causing scarring and damage to my eye. Paul informed my immunologist about us being vegan already and what diet or nutrition could she recommend to complement the treatment. Her response was less than positive, suggesting we perhaps shouldn't worry about that to manage such a disease!
Over the next year and half things were pretty bleak with my health. I was unable to get anything satisfactory done for my eyes until the disease was better managed as it could cause more trauma and scarring. I developed a couple of skin cancers on my scalp and temple which had to be removed. Apparently having treatment for one autoimmune condition can bring out other conditions including cancer.
Regardless of what the medics thought, we were doing 3 day fasts to achieve autophagy, a bodily process that removes damaged and unnecessary parts of cells to try and reduce my inflammatory symptoms and high blood pressure which had developed. We were literally fed up with overeating on animal free 'junk' aka calorie dense highly processed and addictive food containing significant amounts of salt, oil and sugar (SOS) that wasn't healthy or doing me or my partner any good!
After the revelation at the library in 2022, and spending all our spare time with our heads in the research trying to find some resolve for my condition, with nothing to lose, and desperate to get my health back in check, we decided we had to do something about it. We agreed to make the commitment to transition to a whole food plant based lifestyle which I had read so much about.
However what we didn't agree on was how quick it should happen. I wanted to take my time over the transition, whereas Paul pointed out quite rightly, that our procrastination had gone on for long enough, and if we wanted it to happen, we had to commit right there and then.
We'd talked about our discontent at eating so much frozen and ultra-processed foods some weeks/months earlier. I was worried about my salt intake with my blood pressure being as high as it was and my doctors were also concerned and put me on some light medication to regulate it.
This commitment came at the right time. We weren’t sure what the reason was that we couldn’t commit to it before. It needed something to instigate it and my health was it. It provided a clear scientific rational as to why we should be changing our lifestyle and there were recipes to help us out and get us started. So, the day before my 51st birthday we did it, and the next chapter of our plant based lifestyle journey had begun!
The first thing we did was to buy a very powerful and expensive blender! We ralised that if we were going to be changing what we eat, we needed to make it easy on ourselves, and have the tools to do it!
The next step was to eliminate oil. Over the previous couple of years we had only heard good things about olive oil and started adding more and more to our cooking. We clearly had not been reading the unbiased research on how all oil is damaging no matter how plant based it is. Processed is processed and free oils are harmful to the endothelium, the innermost lining of the arteries, and that injury is the gateway to vascular disease. It doesn’t matter whether it’s olive oil, corn oil, coconut oil, canola oil, or any other kind. Avoid all oil was Dr Esselstyn's advice and so many others' advice too.
So, knowing that no oil is the healthiest option for eliminating damage and disease to our body and significantly contributing to inflammation, it was an important step for change.
The next goal was to eliminate crisps and hummus which were high in SOS! We were gorging on them at supper time and had an ever growing collection in our cupboard. We had been reducing already by checking for healthier options, but of course we again realised that no crisps or commercially made hummus was the only healthy option for us!
The more we could get out of some of these unhealthy and harmful eating habits, the more mindful we became about other things we were doing that were harming us, such as stress and alcohol. The healthier we started to notice ourselves feeling and looking, the more we wanted to do, aka 'The Spill Over effect'!
Without trying, and simply by cutting out oil and junky snacks, I started to lose weight. I became leaner, dropped 5 kg's in weight, had more energy, reversed my hypertension, felt more emotionally regulated, eliminated mind fog, became more resilient, and saw significant improvements in the libido, memory and motivation departments!
It's still very early days, and whilst I can't cure my disease or reverse the scarring that' already occurred, I am on the right track to eliminating inflammation, and contributing to reducing our effect on planetary health. The disease will always be work in progress towards remission and hopefully we will get there one day. We're so looking forward to the potential rewards the next few years will bring by us changing our lifestyle for good!
To journey with us on our next life chapters, and to learn more about what we can help you to do to improve yours, please check out our blog & Podcast
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