Our individual beliefs, lifestyle and upbringing will of course lead to varying results. The choices we make regarding our lifestyle and environment can change the outcome of the genes we are born with. These circumstances are our epigenetics. While our genes are our road map our epigenetics determine where this takes us depending on the choices we make. Altering our personal environment makes it possible for our genes to respond in a more appropriate manner. Some genes support us by being switched on, others by being switched off. Genes will be stimulated to switch on or off depending largely on our epigenetics and affected by when and what we eat, do and think. In other words they are largely affected by our choice of lifestyle and personal environment.
My life’s journey was heavily affected by my epigenetics. I wish we had had access to this knowledge earlier. To learn that what I ate could have a dramatic effect on my life would have been such a help to know. My downhill health curve probably started when I was tiny but I first noticed it as itchy skin when I was a teen and living in the US. It was when I turned 20 and was living in India that it became more serious. It was common to eat a vegetarian diet there and I got more and more exhausted. A doctor friend suggested a “nutritious” diet for me which included eating 4 tablespoons of raw yeast daily. I had always followed any medical advice and so I bought a hunk of fresh yeast in the little store in town. A few weeks later I began to get really bad stomach cramps, so bad that I often had to lie down for an hour or two. After a few months I moved to Bangalore and as this doctor wasn’t there, I went to a clinic where it was suggested that I take an antibiotic amoeba cure. The doctor I saw told me that parasitic infections are hard to cure and warned me that it would probably affect me all my life. Not fun for a 20-year old girl to hear. And in fact one cure followed another without even having a single test done! In the end I was so sick that I had to leave India and go home to Britain. The stomach pains continued for about 20 years and the cramps took me to the ER a number of times. I realised that this was something I would have to learn to live with and learnt to rest till the pain had passed.
The next time something dramatic happened was when I was pregnant. I became really sensitive to starchy carbohydrate foods. At the time we thought that this was a typical sign of pregnancy and that may have been part of the truth but the problem continued. Soon after our daughter was born she developed a rash all over her body. I got millions of suggestions about how my diet was causing her rash! I followed some of them and she actually did get better when I avoided eating strawberries, nuts, chocolate and oranges. But my itchiness just got worse. I went to Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm but was told that I should wear cotton clothing, use cortisone cream, and hope that it would get better!
By now I had come to the conclusion that following other people’s suggestions would not always lead to a positive solution, even if the suggestion came from a doctor. I began studying books about natural healing and homeopathic remedies. I read somewhere that cold pressed olive oil could reduce skin inflammation and it certainly helped. But a solution was a long time in coming.
We had a wonderful baby daughter and we were so thrilled! Like any other parents we had some sleepless nights and were tired a lot of the time and I slept for two hours every afternoon in order to cope with a normal day. Two years later our happy little son was born and we felt so blessed on the one hand while the exhaustion increased on the other! The itching and stomach pains continued but by now I had come to consider them as a normal part of life. Despite all my infections and tiredness we were longing to start doing the work that we felt we were called to do. We had no doubt that this involved our whole family and we decided to investigate the possibility of working with MRA in Zimbabwe.
In preparation for what I thought would be a life far from dentists and health care I decided to exchange a couple of amalgam fillings with gold crowns. This turned out to be a challenge and caused a lot of shooting pains in my teeth. The dentist redid the root canals until he was satisfied with the result. Those shooting pains stayed with me for at least 6 months even though the nerves were no longer there. About 15 years later we discovered that the gold crowns had been place on the tooth without completely cleaning away the amalgam filling causing an electromagnetic hot spot that had not been heard of in 1980.
As we were getting ready to leave Sweden for Zimbabwe we all came down with severe throat infections and resorted to taking antibiotics. By the time we got to the end of the cure we were in Africa. My stomach problems had flared up and this time we decided to have tests done thinking that I had already managed to pick up some parasite or bug! But nothing was found. After a couple of months I discovered an internal specialist in Gweru where we lived. The specialist came to the conclusion that the cause of my problems was a food allergy. Food allergies are common today and alternatives to dairy and gluten can be found nearly everywhere, but not at that time. It was also hard to figure out which food was the culprit. Most people find it hard to deal with allergies or sensitivities – it certainly felt impossible to me as it soon became obvious that it wasn’t just caused by one food or food group.
Not knowing my challenges, my mother, who was having challenges of her own, sent me a book about allergy testing. The book was by Dr Arthur Coca. I was amazed to discover that allergies raise your pulse! Coca laid out a system for testing food allergies that helped me to test myself at home. I discovered 9 foods that raised my pulse. I tested my pulse before and after eating and kept a chart of the foods I ate at every meal along with my pulse before, after 30, 60 and 90 minutes. This was followed by a day when I ate a tablespoon of each of the ‘culprit’ foods. The ones that were part of a meal that raised my pulse. Not the easiest three days. I tested my pulse at the hour, ate one of the test foods I had prepared and retested 30 minutes later. As long as my pulse didn’t go up more than 16 beats per minute, I could retest and eat a new food next hour. It turned out that the foods that raised my pulse included all milk products and gluten containing grains. It was several years before I learnt that it takes 4 days for a histamine reaction to leave the body and so rotating foods that I ate over a 4-day period then made it possible for me to eat so much more. 40 years later I learnt through genetic testing that I was in fact lactose, casein and gluten intolerant!
Fungus thrives everywhere in a warm damp climate and a friend suggested that I should visit an expert gynaecologist who lived a couple of hours away. That was the first and last time I saw a doctor actually use a microscope in his clinic to look at the samples that he took. He showed me the beautiful grapelike white bunch of a fungi growing inside. At the time I had never heard of Candida albicans. It was beautiful but turned out to be a source of a lot of my problems.
It was amazing to discover that we had 3 specialists working close by. A medical doctor, a gynecologist and an eye specialist who were all visited by people from all over Africa. There was also a nursing school and access to many dentists, even one from Sweden. When we left the all-encompassing healthcare of Sweden for Zimbabwe, I had been concerned that any needs we might have wouldn’t be met. I was wrong. There was a tropical diseases clinic and testing lab which far outpassed the one we had in Sweden. Before we left to return to Sweden we were all tested for common tropical diseases and it was found that we all had bilharzia a parasite that you pick up from being in infested water. We took the cure and were told to retest once we got back to Sweden to make sure that the bilharzia had been cured.
After two wonderful years in Zimbabwe we headed home to Sweden, rich in experiences and friends. Tests in Sweden showed that we had supposedly never had bilharzia but we all had gut issues that we had to deal with and I was far from well despite the pills, creams and pharmaceutical cures. I didn’t give up and firmly believed that I would now be able to get help in Sweden to overcome all the strange symptoms. But when I met a doctor at a Stockholm hospital I was told that the symptoms are common and you just need to learn to live with them.
At this point one of my amalgam fillings broke and a plastic filling replaced most of it. This was when things started to go downhill fast. One evening I was out shovelling snow outside our house in Arvika. Jan was away in Stockholm. We had had heavy snow and I was working hard to clear it when I experienced a big bang or crashing sound inside my head. It scared me. I dropped the shovel and went inside and called Jan. Crying I asked Jan to come home on the next train. I didn’t know what had happened but although I wasn’t in pain and was functioning, it felt as though all my limbs were weak and I had no energy. In fact, from that moment on and for the next 7 years I simply lost my energy and my symptoms increased.
I ended up at hospital for a week of tests. My doctor ‘generously’ said he could help me as I got worse, but I wasn’t interested in getting worse. I longed to get my energy back and live life fully with Jan and our children. But all my attempts to do so led to serious set-backs. They did x-rays, lots of blood- and stool tests and a lactose intolerance test. None of the tests gave further information but the lactose intolerance test led to a new series of symptoms that were hard to get rid of. After that I had major pain every time I ate any milk product. And still I was told by the hospital that I was not allergic to milk products. A specialist was finally prepared to recommend me to the Gothenburg hospital but first he asked me if there was anything worrying me that could be the real cause of my problem? When I said that what was worrying was that the medical service was unable to pinpoint the cause of my increasing food sensitivity, he didn’t reply.
I decided to leave no stone unturned in my search to discover the cause of my problems. One person wondered if there was a connection with amalgam poisoning due to all the dental work done on my teeth during these years. I contacted our Swedish dentist who we visited in Zimbabwe and who knew me well. He suggested investigating the yeast fungus candida. A friend of mine was going to visit a very popular homeopath who used iris diagnostics. He worked in the south of Sweden and I joined her for the visit. I didn’t tell the homeopath anything about myself before he looked at my eyes. Then I asked him if he could see that I had a fungal infection. He said, “Have you noticed that you have a urine infection? And you have a fungal infection in your whole body.” I hadn’t noticed a urine infection but I certainly noticed that it disappeared after taking his remedies for a couple of weeks.
I started reacting to everything synthetic and an old jacket that I had had for 8 years started to affect me, making me dizzy when I wore it. I felt like I was a bit drunk for a week. The saddest thing of all was that I struggled to be able to spend time with our children who were now 10 and 8. I felt totally wiped out. I couldn’t even manage to walk down our street and if we went for a walk Jan sometimes had to carry me home or pick me up in a car. I couldn’t concentrate. My memory was a disaster and I couldn’t read because I forgot what I was reading by the time I got to the end of a page! When I cooked, I couldn’t remember what was in the pot once I put on the lid! My husband had to take over most of my daily tasks and my bank account. I was happy if I managed to get out of bed.
I still took part in my calisthenics group twice a week. It was important to stay active, or so I thought. Then something new started to happen. Each time I did a little extra my muscles ached as if I had run several kilometers! I often woke up with cramps in my muscles, had problems sleeping and got more and more stomach aches. I had dots in my field of vision and didn’t tolerate bright light. I eventually lost my eyesight for a few hours and was totally exhausted. Yes, the list of strange symptoms was endless and those who didn’t know me well could imagine that I was simply hyperchondric.
Around this time I went to Britain to visit a specialist. This in itself was a major undertaking and was possible thanks to the help of many wonderful friends who paid for it and enabled me to get there. The specialist took a cytotoxic test that disclosed hypersensitivity. He administered a sweat test that showed a massive lack of vital minerals. I was recommended nutritional supplements and a natural supplement to deal with the fungal infection. I left for home and everything went fine for 14 days. I began to be hopeful. But then I had a painful cramp attack of my whole alimentary canal that left me lying on the floor like a dishrag. It took a week before I was able to eat and take the supplements again. Two weeks after the first attack I had another one and these attacks continued every other week for 6 months. All this time I followed the doctor’s request that I keep a diary of what I ate; how I was feeling at the time; and which supplements or medicines I was taking. I finally figured out what was causing these attacks with the help of my diary. I was intensely allergic to the supplement I was taking to deal with the fungal infection. Once I stopped taking this I was able to start eating again but by now I had lost 20 kilos.
When I got back from Britain I had wanted to investigate if there was anyone providing treatment in Sweden for the ‘ailment’ that I had. People in England were calling it Yuppie Flu or ME, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Several of my friends sent me articles about practitioners who seemed to be working in a similar way to the doctor in Britain and I contacted 3 of those that were active in the media and health news regarding ME and fungal infections. I was really surprised when one of them responded! He offered to test my food tolerance and give me a nutritional treatment program. His plan was to help me get rid of my health issues and restore my health. At the time I turned him down as I thought I had the doctor I needed in Britain with whom I had telephone contact. I assumed that I would soon be well. The reason I had contacted the Swedish practitioners was to see if there were treatments available in Sweden for others I knew who also seemed to having similar problems.
In the end I decided to accept the offer as I was not getting better. This naturopathic doctor used kinesiology which meant that he tested my muscle strength to different stressors. I figured that even if I didn’t know what it meant, testing my muscles couldn’t harm and I could at least be able to judge if he knew what he was talking about! I already knew that all that I was sensitive to turned my insides inside out! I visited this practitioner who at the time worked at Strandgårdens Health Center in Vika, Dalarna. He tested me and it correlated almost completely with my own experience of my 9 hypersensitivities. In fact it was more accurate than the cytotoxic test in England had proven to be and added in two foods, carrots and salt. Once I stopped eating them my gut stopped turning itself inside out. I decided to stop the treatment program from England that I had now carried out for 6 months. There were probably many causes to this hypersensitivity which also stemmed from my genetic deck of cards. It isn’t easy to stay at a vegan health center when you basically only eat meat. I survived a week at Strandgårdens Health Center with the help of new found friends and began to feel that life could be worth living again. I realized that in order to get well I couldn’t give up hope. I had to put every ounce of energy into making changes and would probably need to take food supplements as I was sadly lacking in nutrients.
My family gave me their full support and were longing for me to get well. Now I had a practitioner who was prepared to give his full support, and seemed to understand what the underlying problem was. After reading many books and researching many articles, I had begun to hope that there was a cure, but I felt an immense relief in being able to hand over the main responsibility to a qualified practitioner. I started to take food supplements like they were dinner. And I tolerated them thanks to the testing done. I also began to have a deep longing to help others so they could avoid getting as sick as I had. During the years working in the clinic in Zimbabwe and my own years of struggle I had learnt the hard way how important our diet, lifestyle factors coupled with our inner and outer environment can affect our health. By now I had learnt that there is such a thing as ecological illness caused by everything from environmental exhaust, amalgam in teeth, psychological stress, toxins in water, food coupled to the pharmaceuticals like antibiotics, cortisone, contraceptives and the chemical “soup” in our environment that has increased year by year since World War II.
It isn’t strange that the numbers of allergic children increase yearly considering the additional allergic overload handed down through parents crosses the placenta causing an environmental effect on their genetic deck of cards. During the seven years that I was sick I struggled to make sense of the cause of it all. I decided to write down some of the things that I had learnt regaining health. When I started to write I thought I would simply write about myself. I had thought I would contrast my personal disaster by also writing about someone else who had regained their health with natural methods in order to balance my story. I didn’t really think that that could be me. But already 9 months later my health had turned a corner. I was no longer losing weight. I could walk, read, concentrate and eat food that had been impossible to eat previously. In fact I was now able to manage my own bank account again and take a job.
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