Hey everyone,
I hope you’re all having a wonderful week so far. As promised in my last post, I am here with an update for you. It’s been a while since I’ve been active on this blog and I feel it’s time to fill you in on what’s been going on in my life, particularly in regards to my health.
Things haven’t been easy. As a matter of fact, things have been really challenging in many ways. It’s a bit of a long story so I want to speak about the main points instead of going into endless detail. If you would like me to elaborate on anything in a future blog post, please let me know by sending me an email via the ‘contact me’ page.
Over the past year, I’ve noticed a flare up in symptoms and some new symptoms appear. The main symptoms I’ve experienced are:
Reoccurring urinary tract infections (UTI’s)
Yeast infections
Bacterial vaginosis
Skin rashes
Hair loss
Fatigue
Malaise
The urinary and reproductive symptoms started about a year ago. Up until this point, I had not experienced a UTI for about 10 years. This time last year, I moved to London to live with my partner in the hope that love would solve everything. The energy of the city appealed to me and I thought I would find some work and enjoy being with him. Like many things in life, this didn’t go to plan. London was stressful because our landlord decided to start renovations shortly after I arrived and the place pretty much resembled a building site. Builders were in daily from about 8am and the house was extremely dusty no matter how hard we cleaned. Obviously this environment was not conducive to health. This combined with the fact I started a job in sales only to be let go of eight days later, meant that I ended up sitting outside The National Gallery crying my eyes out. Here I was, in a new city with no money and no job. It was safe to say that I felt totally overwhelmed! After five weeks I made the decision to return to Cornwall.
On returning, I booked an appointment with my GP. Lab results confirmed that I had a UTI and I took antibiotics because I didn’t want to risk damage to my kidneys and I was so exhausted and sore. Unfortunately the relief was short lived and two weeks after finishing the antibiotics, the symptoms returned. I was having abnormal gynaecological symptoms too and booked myself in for a routine checkup at the clinic. The examination was painful, I began to bleed quite heavily and it showed that my cervix was inflamed. This upset and worried me a lot. Fortunately, the test results came back clear but they couldn’t explain the cause of the cervical inflammation and was also told that I had bacterial vaginosis, which means the natural bacterial balance in the vagina is disrupted. This is relatively common and can happen for a variety of reasons. I was given medication but I didn’t take it and instead took some antimicrobial herbal teas to rebalance naturally.
In short, the UTI symptoms continued to return and I ended up taking four courses of antibiotics which is ridiculous and really threw my whole body out of balance balance each time. They provided nothing more than temporary relief. Throughout this intense period, I desperately searched for information that may help. One day when I was cleaning my room I pulled a book off the bookshelf that became a game changer. The author is called Anthony William and he is known as ‘The Medical Medium’ hence the title of the book.
Synopsis: Anthony has a God given gift that allows him to receive information about mystery and chronic illness from a being he simply refers to as ‘Spirit.’ I realise that this sounds really ‘out there’ and pretty wild. However, having nothing to lose I finally read the book from cover to cover and learnt so much. He basically explains that the Epstein Barr virus is behind every unexplained/ chronic health issue such as; Chronic Fatigue (M.E.), Lupus, Hasimotos thyroiditis, Lyme disease, Fibromyalgia, Multiple Sclerosis, Acne etc. He explains that there are many strains of the virus that science has yet to discover and these cause the differing symptoms. Combined with strep bacteria, these pathogens create havoc in the body. Lots of these illnesses are considered ‘auto-immune’ because they are unexplained by the medical community who believe the body is attacking itself, whereas Anthony insists this is simply not true and states that the body is always trying to protect us and heal. He explains that there are foods that feed the virus and bacteria which are eggs, pork, dairy, corn, soy and canola oil. These need to be avoided at all costs. He then speaks about the benefits of fruit and adding in specific anti-viral and supportive supplements to help the body heal. One of the biggest things he advocates is consuming at least 16oz of celery juice on an empty stomach daily each morning. The celery helps to eradicate the virus, increases stomach acid which aids digestion and provides a range of mineral salts to help heal the body on a systemic level. I’ve just outlined some of the basic information as I’m going to keep it concise for today and instead, expand on this further in an upcoming post.
Last July, I began to put most of Anthony’s principles into place. At this stage, I felt as though I had nothing to lose so remained open minded. I looked at testimonials from people who have tried this lifestyle on his Instagram page and found great success. This encouraged me through moments of doubt. To my utter delight, I noticed positive changes extremely quickly. Within one month, my friends were asking me what I was doing differently and commenting on how well I looked. Not only was I feeling better but I looked way better and more vital. I was actually glowing!
(Photo from 22nd July 2018)
For about 12.5 weeks I consistently did my best. In fact, I did really well and felt way better but you see, this is where I hit a massive wall.
Sometimes all we see is the mountain and feel it cannot be moved so we quit taking steps forward.
We freeze.
I froze.
Things in my personal life became really stressful, particularly regarding financial security and I let fear get the better of me. I slowly began to fall off the wagon. One damaging food here, one damaging food there. This cascaded and I began to emotionally eat. Maybe I self sabotaged because I am scared of success? Maybe I just became lazy and gave up? Maybe I failed because I’m only human?
Either way, without realising the full extent of my bad choices at this stage, I kept going. The weeks passed by and before I knew it Christmas was approaching. My sister and her partner came down and I indulged in festive treats. Cheese, wine, roast chicken, coffee with Irish cream to name a few. I partied hard for New Year’s and woke up with a terrible hangover. This statement may sound extreme but I was self harming. I knew better but I was making myself ill. Let’s just say, that things got bad. Things got real bad. This marked the start of an extreme flare up in symptoms and the onset of new ones.
I began to downward spiral and things were looking the darkest they had in a few years. It was time to get a grip of myself but I almost didn’t know how. It was like my spirit felt broken. Even with all the loving support and care from my wonderful partner and family members, I was genuinely struggling to live. I was a shell of myself and barely getting by. It’s been a long journey so far (7 years) and I think I fell back into the toxic mindset that I was walking a road without an end point. Healing felt miles away. Recovery felt out of reach and I was tired, fed up and found myself in ‘victim mode’ complaining and feeling sorry for myself.
Something had to give..
(To be continued)
To find out more please stay tuned for Part 2 which will be posted this Sunday. In the meantime, feel free to message me using the ‘contact me’ form. I have set up a corresponding Instagram page- I’d be very grateful if you could follow me @knowledgetonourish where I will be posting regularly and keeping you up to date with my healing journey. If my story resonates with you, please hit ‘follow’ to be notified of updates and feel free share my blog with family and friends via your social media accounts. I’d absolutely love my story to reach more people in the hope that it can help others.
As always, thank you for stopping by, thank you for being here and thank you for taking some time out of your day to read my words. I sincerely appreciate you all.
See you on Sunday!
With love and blessings,
Rebecca
knowledgetonourish 