I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis in my mid-20s and it is a chronic inflammation of the of the large bowel and it results in chronic diarrhea, pain, inability to properly digest food, and some issues with like fluid balance and electrolyte balance and those kinds of things. The first time in 2014 that I got this massive chronic migraine attack, it started in October and that single migraine didn’t lift until after Christmas. So it was day in, day out chronic pain in my head but also with migraine. One of the doctors that I once saw was so happy because I was the first person that they ever met that had all migraine symptoms possible that I’ve ever been listed, which is pain in the head but also pain in the body, pain in the gut, chronic muscle tension… so, it kind of feels like a harness, like armor because all of my back muscles would get so tight that constant nausea, light sensitivity… I would say that I was sensitive to light, both in and out of migraine. So light sensitivity was something that sort of just built over time in my life but during migraine attacks, it was it was really bad. Also I was very limited with what I could eat– I wasn’t able to eat any food that I hadn’t prepared myself. I never tested for any food allergies, yet when I had chronic migraines and chronic gut inflammation, I realized that if I start to restrict my diet, it made me feel better momentarily. And then I would get sensitive to something else and that would have to drop that off as well… so it was this downward spiral and I think that really reflects how how it was it is linked to limbic system impairment. It is linked to that threat recognition mechanism in our body, and so even though dropping one food would make my gut feel better for a moment, it didn’t last because then my body would find some other threat to react to,
I tried a lot of different things. I was trying, even through my darkest days, I tried to maintain a curious mind. And my family and my friends were always on the lookout for something to try. I think I started with, well just regular Western medicine, and had to keep on, you know taking medications and whatnot through my illness. And I think there’s a lot to to say about, you know, Western medicine can be very helpful but I think when we get to these chronic states of illnesses that just sort of spiral, that spiral downwards over years, it often starts to lose its teeth on the internal side. I tried several different natural paths: acupuncture; Osteopathy; chiropractic treatments for people who have concussions, which I’ve never had but apparently I had all the markers for having very, very bad concussions. I tried different alternative therapies and some of them… and I would say that all of these were were somewhat helpful in some ways. I also tried functional medicine, orthomolecular medicine; both of these are really based on taking a lot of supplements and doing a lot of detox and as my condition worsened, I was less and less able to take any supplements.
At the end, I was I was having to resort to taking IVs every week, which cost me a lot of money but just try to get some nutrition into my body. I first heard about DNRS when I was visiting my family in Finland, and there was a big article in the local newspaper about Annie Harper’s work and how it had helped a mother and the daughter who had been suffering from different types of sensitivities. Everywhere I went during my trip home, everybody had cut out the article and they handed me and said you should read this, and you should look into this. And I wasn’t really… I didn’t really recognize myself in that article. I didn’t really think that it was applicable to me and I think it is because with my scientist mind, I had sort of put all my different things that I was suffering from into different silos or buckets, and I didn’t really see the the full picture like with a lot of the sensitivities that I had to chemicals, to foods, to light, noise, to everything. I thought that those words were simply a symptom of the migraine. I didn’t really see how how they were related to how my brain was functioning, but then as a result of reading the article and having, you know, all my helpful family and friends push this on to me, I read a nice book, “Wired for Healing”.
I still wasn’t entirely convinced that it would help me because my illnesses were mine. They were separate from what other people were going through… but then I decided to take the leap and and I ordered the DVDs. I went through about I think about half of the program on the DVDs and that’s when I became completely convinced that this is exactly what is going on with me– it is a brain impairment that is causing all of these symptoms in my body. I also realized that I needed a little bit more support. I didn’t really have the energy, I didn’t really have the the ability to fully implement the DVD. I’d like to watch the DVD programs, first of all, the full program on my own and to actually both put the practice. So then I signed up for for an in-person seminar and really I think I started seeing some changes. Already when I read a nice book, so the little hope started to glimmer but it’s so hard to feel hope when you’re in that place because you’ve gone through so many different things and you’ve had so much hope and nothing worked… and then there’s this amazing piece of hope. And so I think I kind of ignored the initial changes that I was seeing, just thinking a while it’s the placebo effect, which it’s an amazing effect and we should all celebrate it. I was thinking I’m just imagining these changes but then when I did the the DVDs, even half of them on my own I started to have some major realizations and started to see some improvements. And after I did the in-person program, I mean then the recovery from was glorious and amazing and very fast. It was incredible. And then seeing other people starting to eat a banana… you know, this girl hadn’t eaten banana in so many years (hi Rachel) and she ate a banana and just joy in that! Being able to see the joy and others and the hope blooming in people who I didn’t think that there were others like me, but then I realized when I got to the in-person seminar there are so many people who are suffering just like me and sort of eerily similar things, too.
We all started to to improve, that was really incredible. Most of all, for me, I start to see the changes in myself as I realized that this is my chance! I can actually get healthy. I started to eat some more foods; I tried five different foods that I hadn’t been eating in five years during that in-person seminar. After I got home, I was able to go out with a family and actually have a meal and sit and be part of this great celebration, and it was just amazing being really, fully part of the family again. Being able to be in the world and that was only five days after I have never in my life felt healthy for a single day. I can see that I can get there. I put absolutely everything that I had into implementing the program and then it took me about three months and I was 95% there. There were just a couple of food sensitivities that I was still working on and it took me another about three months to to fully recover even from those little things that were kind of straggling behind. I was back to eating regular food, going out and enjoying food, going out for an ice-cream and doing all these things. My ulcerative colitis cleared pretty much within a month after the program and I stopped taking anti-inflammatories kind of one at a time and I didn’t have any issues with that. Migraine is lifted… very quickly. I don’t actually even really remember because it just was not something that was part of my life anymore. I’m searching a lot of physical activity sports. I started running and I’m one of those people who I always thought that I just am bad at sports, and now after I’ve recovered from limbic system impairment I actually realized that it was my limbic system that was reacting to an increased heart rate and causing pain in my body, so once that lifted, about a month after I finished the in-person seminar I ran my very first running race. It was 5 kilometers; not a lot for, you know, somebody who’s running marathons but it was an amazing accomplishment for myself. I started going to a gym and then I was spending a lot more time riding horses and going out swimming and it was just this. I would call it my daily triathlon because I would wake up and I would go for a swim and then I would go riding and then I would go out to the gym in the evening and just enjoying this amazing ability that my body has to move without pain and comfortable. So that was one of the completely unexpected side things that came out of my recovery. I never thought that I had limbic system impairment that affected my ability to do physical activity. I certainly didn’t.
This is such a paradigm shift it’s not an easy thing for somebody like me who was trained in sort of biology in the early 2000’s and in university…you know, human physiology and Anatomy that I have studied. It wasn’t an easy thing for me to kind of see that there was such a key control that the brain plays in the overall physiology and health and wellness and especially the role of the limbic system. It’s amazing. My life is amazing. I would have never been really able to even imagine what what life looks like when you’re completely healthy but now I can see it and it’s glorious.
