I was born weighing 10 pounds “the biggest baby in the nursery” and I pretty much stayed consistent with this ‘story’ for the first 28 years of my life.
My childhood was filled with lollies, cakes, biscuits and Kraft cheese singles, pies, soft drinks and chips (the stuff of happiness according to most people), and zero exercise.
This way of eating continued through my adolescence and into my early twenties.
In January of 2004 I was clinically obese, depressed, in chronic and debilitating pain from Fibromyalgia, constipated, living with regular Urinary Tract Infections along with chronic Candida. Life was pretty shit. I was tired all the time and so I spent most of my late teens and early twenties either studying, working or sleeping (Oh, I forgot smoking, I was also smoking). Not the greatest introduction to the adult world.
On January 22nd 2004, I woke up for my morning shift numb down the right-hand side of my face. By mid morning my entire right arm was numb.
Initially, I thought I’d had a stroke and the doctors did too. Eventually, an MRI scan showed multiple lesions on my brain and I was given the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) a couple of weeks later.
I was given a list of treatments I could choose from, mostly interferon injections to be self administered daily with a long list of side effects and sent on my way.
So there I was, at 24 obese, depressed, exhausted, in chronic pain and now, to top it all off, I had an incurable, auto immune disease.
Initially, I was terrified.
I felt completely alone and overwhelmed at what this might mean for my future. MS is thought to be a disease where your immune system attacks the Myelin that protects the nerves within your brain and spinal cord causing increasing levels of disability over time in the majority of people, with no known cure.
No one can predict the frequency or severity of a persons MS relapses, so it’s kind of like living in a body that is playing a continual game of Russian Roullette and going to sleep terrified each night wondering what MS might take from you during your sleep.
Will I be able to walk when I wake up?
Will I be able to see?
Will I be have the strength to pick up my kids for a cuddle?
Will I be able to work?’
And the list of thoughts goes on…
I discovered the potential benefits of a low-fat, whole-food, plant-based, diet early on, and after my first scan I tested it out for myself. Six months later, I returned for a follow up MRI and found my lesions had reduced, it did appear that the diet was working…
But, I didn’t want to live like that, missing out on the foods that I loved, like cake, chocolate and cheese and so when my Neurologist told me at our visits that there was ‘no science to diet improving MS’ I went back to my old favourites.
And then I had another relapse, and then I would go back on the diet, and the lesions would reduce, and again I would be told that there was simply ‘no science to the benefits of diet’ and so I would again return to the comfort of cake, cheese, etc…
I continued on this path for four years until August 2008 when I woke up numb from the waist down…
My legs felt like they were frozen in ice and I could barely walk, and couldn’t even feel myself pee (Yep. Same for number two’s…)
I underwent a course of intravenous steroids and again I spoke to my Neurologist about the possibility of diet helping with my MS and his response was: “If you don’t start taking the interferons, you will get sicker and sicker until you die”
And now I don’t recommend this, but at that moment, I honestly felt like my Neurologist was the thing that was ‘making me sicker and sicker’ and so I stopped going for my check ups and made a commitment to the low-fat, whole-foods, plant-based lifestyle.
Fairly rapidly my health began to transform before my eyes. My mental fog lifted, my energy went from zero to abundant, weight started to shift, I stopped getting UTI’s and Candida, my pain went away, and I was having healthy, regular bowel movements!
I would’ve been convinced if I’d seen only one or two of these benefits, but ALL of them?!
There was no looking back!
So I kept going and checking in on my MS and where I had been experiencing regular, almost six monthly relapses, from August 2008 until the time of writing, I haven’t had a single further relapse.
Nothing.
Not a single relapse in over 12 years now.
And in that time I discovered so many people thriving on a whole-foods, plant-based diet who had previously been living with a host of lifestyle diseases from Heart Disease, Type 2 Diabetes, several forms of Cancers, Lupus, and many more and yet still, this wasn’t front page news??
Why weren’t more people talking about this?
I offered my services as a volunteer mentor to the MS Foundation and they said ‘I’m sorry, but we don’t want people who follow this diet as mentors in our program as they may give hope to people and set them up to fail.’
WTF??
Since 2008, my entire family have adopted this was of living and are thriving, my husband lost weight, his chronic allergies radically improved, he went from taking daily antihistamines to maybe 1 – 2 doses a year. Our children are thriving at age six and two and are rarely sick and full of energy and rather than being stunted due to a lack animal protein, they are among the tallest within their peer groups.
So what do you do when you discover something so simple that seems to be the miracle that everyone is searching for?
You spread the word!
So here I am.
Spreading the word – ‘Eat Whole Plants, With Very Little Fat & Thrive’
Wishing you all the best on your journey
Corinne x
