Summary

Gilles experienced decades of chronic illness, including Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, electrical sensitivities, and food reactions, which progressively limited his ability to function and participate in life. Despite exploring a wide range of conventional and alternative treatments, his condition persisted for years. After discovering DNRS, he experienced a complete recovery and has remained symptom-free for over two years. His story reflects how a shift in understanding and consistent brain retraining can lead to lasting recovery, even after long-term illness.

How It All Began

Gilles’ symptoms began in 1986 following what he describes as a “perfect storm” of stress and medical events.

At first, his sensitivities to smells, foods, and electrical fields were manageable, and he was able to continue working and living a relatively normal life. But over time, his condition intensified.

Between 2000 and 2005, his health reached its peak severity. He was forced to stop working, became homebound, and was no longer able to travel.

“I could not work… I could not travel anymore.”

For years, he remained highly sensitive, with little improvement.

Searching Everywhere for Answers

Determined to recover, Gilles pursued nearly every form of treatment available.

He worked with medical doctors, specialists, and a wide range of alternative practitioners—neurologists, allergists, naturopaths, psychologists, chiropractors, energy healers, and more.

“I was desperately looking for help.”

Despite the breadth of approaches, nothing led to meaningful or lasting change.

The search stretched on for decades.

A Shift in Understanding

Gilles discovered DNRS through an online forum—but what stood out to him wasn’t just the program itself.

It was a shift in how he began to understand his condition.

Through his own observations, he noticed that his thoughts and beliefs seemed to influence how he felt. Moments of hope or recalling times when he felt well would bring temporary relief, pointing to a deeper connection between mind and body.

“I was able to directly influence my health with my mind.”

This realization opened him to a new perspective—one where the brain, and specifically the limbic system, played a central role in his symptoms.

With that shift, he began the DNRS program with a level of openness and clarity he hadn’t had before.

Returning to Life

After beginning DNRS in 2017, Gilles experienced steady and lasting change.

Within a short time, he found himself able to re-engage with life in ways that had been impossible for years. Just one month after attending a seminar, he traveled to a multi-day meeting—something he hadn’t been able to do since the late 1980s.

Over time, his participation in life continued to expand. He returned to community involvement, began organizing events, and resumed activities he had long given up.

“I haven’t had any issues at all… a complete victory.”

Two years later, he remained symptom-free.

He describes feeling active, engaged, and fully present in his life again—with continued improvements over time.

A New Way of Looking at Healing

Beyond his personal recovery, Gilles reflects on a broader shift in how he understands illness and healing.

For years, the focus had been on avoiding environmental triggers and trying to detoxify the body. While those approaches can be helpful, he came to see that they did not fully address the root of the issue.

Instead, he describes DNRS as a fundamental shift in perspective—placing the brain and limbic system at the center of recovery.

He compares this change to a moment where everything suddenly makes sense, where a new way of looking at the problem brings clarity and simplicity.

For Gilles, this perspective was transformative.

It allowed him not only to recover, but to maintain that recovery—by recognizing patterns early and responding in a way that supports long-term health.

“Life is good.”
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For many, typical forms of treatment for these conditions have focused on detoxification, nutritional supplements, and avoidance. Gilles writes about the shift in perspective he took while embracing the DNRS program:

Nicolaus Copernicus did not invent anything. Planets had been moving around the sun for a long time before he was born. He simply reorganized our perspective and created a heliocentric paradigm to explain what had been observed for centuries. Before Copernicus, the earth was considered to be stationary and at the center of the universe. All celestial movements had to be explained around that geocentric view. As we progressed in identifying planetary movements in the sky, it was becoming increasingly complex to keep the earth centered model, but it was not really reconsidered until Copernicus introduced his revolutionary idea to explain all observed celestial movements. He pulled out the Earth from its central position and instead replaced it with the sun. All celestial movements fell into place with ease. There was much resistance at first, but eventually it became widely accepted, and today the earth-centered paradigm is seen as a strange belief from the middle ages.

People suffering from environmental illness have been observed for a long period of time. An expanding number of people are suffering from chemical sensitivity, electrical sensitivity, food sensitivities and many other related illnesses such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME or Fibromyalgia. In the alternative and functional medicine community, the view has been that we live in a toxic world and the solution to these problems is to detoxify the organism and to avoid further intoxication. This usually translates into one or several detoxification protocols plus a strict behavior of avoidance (staying away from chemical smells, various foods, electrical equipment, cell phones and computers, etc.) often leading to a life of loneliness, away from social life and even from family.

Some success in treating EI (Environmental Illness) has propelled this type of approach to the center of the therapeutic model for people suffering from EI. Additional modalities also include exercise, meditation, cognitive-behavioral therapy, acupuncture, etc. All of those are certainly useful but it does not address directly brain damage associated with EI. Specifically Limbic System Impairment is simply seen as an unfortunate consequence of EI, but not a causing or a facilitating factor. Dealing with related symptoms is perceived as a peripheral issue with solutions offered just as a coping strategy to make life less arduous, but not as an essential core issue. Annie Hopper has changed all of that. She is putting limbic system impairment at the center of EI recovery. Within her DNRS (Dynamic Neural Retraining System) revolutionary paradigm it is not so much the environment that keeps people sick but rather the exaggerated response of our limbic system to minute amounts of toxic elements that should not normally cause any significant symptoms. Retraining and normalizing the impaired limbic system through self-directed exercises in neuroplasticity puts everything back in place and health comes back naturally.

This is not to say that a healthy lifestyle is useless, nor that toxicity does not exist in our environment. It does matter and there is no denying that our environment provides plenty of toxic material. It is often what made the EI sufferers sick to begin with. But at some point something went awry with their limbic system and the brain reaction itself becomes an even bigger problem. Recovering completely without correcting this amplified excessive response to the environment is difficult, if not impossible for many. This new paradigm offers not only hope for desperate people for whom nothing seems to work, but it clearly offers solid long-lasting results, sometimes spectacular and seen as almost miraculous. Best of all, the DNRS practice is totally self-directed and simple to do on a daily basis. I call it a revolution because it offers a completely different perspective on EI and therefore brings different solutions to these issues. This is why I like to say that Annie Hopper is the Copernicus of Environmental Illness.