It was August 2015, and I couldn’t stand it anymore! I decided that was it. I had to do something to help myself.
I was hastening back to the B&B, driving through the night while crying in pain and discomfort, after running away from a cozy restaurant on the northern coast of France, where I had just hurriedly finished a tasteful meal: I was having yet another bout of heavy cramps, diarrhea and nausea.
It only seemed natural to me that what I was eating and what my body was doing with it was at the root of my problems, despite the fact that many physicians had told me that I had IBS and this was due to me being anxious. I had also received some help in the past from alternative care practitioners and they had also given me some useful advice related to nutrition: I had already removed yeasts and sugar from my diet, and “mostly” (meaning with quite some cheating) removed dairy. But it was clear this was not enough.
I turned to Dr. Google for advice and after a few days of researching online, I found out about a healing diet, formulated by a research university, which looked promising. I was ready to try anything. I decided to jump in. I bought a number of ingredients I had never heard of, dived in blogs with plenty of recipes, and went for it. After 3 days, my bloating after each meal was gone and all my other digestive symptoms seemed to improve as well within a short time…
My chronic health problems had started in my infancy and then had progressed with many ups (thanks to the help of alternative health providers) and downs until I was 30: food sensitivities, allergies, continuous digestive discomfort, joint pain, recurrent eye infections, skin related problems, energy crashes right after eating, excruciating menstrual cramps and more…
But right when I was 30, while finishing my PhD, starting a new demanding job, commuting between 2 foreign countries and getting married, all the stress triggered a more profound crisis and more debilitating symptoms added up, the most worrying ones being brain fog and a terrible insomnia.
I was so depleted of energy and unable to cope with the demands of both my professional and private life that I had to quit my demanding job. I ended up spending one entire year swinging between my bed and my sofa, with my husband taking care of absolutely everything at home.
I found support but not resolution from both the conventional and alternative health care world and felt that now it was really up to me to find my own way…. So here I was trying out a completely new diet after the decision made one night on the way to a B&B in France.
The healing diet was only the beginning of my exploration of the relationship between nutrition, lifestyle and my body and mind. At the time, I did not know exactly what I was doing, and I had no guidance. That diet helped but did not heal me, nor was it sustainable in the long term, and it was only helping with the most distressing digestive symptoms. It was obviously not enough and I kept looking, studying and experimenting a lot to find what worked for me at that time. I spent months reading and listening about nutrition, trying things out and closely monitoring the reactions of my body.
When I finally hit the right spots, and I simultaneously worked on balancing my blood sugars, removing problematic food while bringing in some healing nutrients and started addressing my stress, my digestive symptoms further improved and within a few months I was able to reintroduce many of the food I had eliminated from my diet. Not only that, but also all other aspects of my health slowly improved and became easier to manage, from allergies to sleep, energy and mental health!
I was so excited about the power of nutrition and lifestyle modifications, I started to share what I learned with my family, and saw improvements in their wellbeing too. I was in particular blown away by the concept of epigenetics and how, with our food, drinks, environmental exposures, lifestyle and mindset we influence our own health and wellbeing.
Being trained as an engineer and scientist, and used to thinking in terms of complex interrelated systems, when I first heard about functional nutrition and its system-thinking approach, I immediately felt a connection. I therefore decided to get further training and finally got the understanding of how and why the modifications I had introduced in my diet and lifestyle worked for me!
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