HEART ARRHYTHMIA

Like almost everyone on my dads side of the family, I figured out I have a heart arrhythmia. It didn’t happen all that often, but when it did I would feel nauseous and dizzy while my heart hammered to an irregular pattern. It would happen randomly but I also noticed a big increase with alcohol. So naturally, the frequency of my arrhythmia increased in college and would occur when I would go on regular drinking binges, aka years one and two. In my third year, I calmed down a lot and so did the recurrence of my arrhythmia, although it would still creep into those summer weekends at the cottage. I was never able to catch it on the monitor to have the type of arrhythmia confirmed, but seeing as multiple family members had surgeries for it, the doctors told me that’s what it was, it was fine, and not to worry about it. Sometimes it would last for hours and I’d wonder if I was gonna die or not, but sure, don’t worry about it, it’s only your heart…

CONSTIPATION

Colon cancer is one of the top killers in North America, yet we find it improper to discuss the functions of our colons? Not here! I honestly don’t know why this topic is so tabooed in our society, it’s really just another body part we’re talking about. The health of your colon is extremely important and I wish I knew this sooner! Poor elimination is something I’ve had for my entire life, as a kid I remember my mom forcing me to eat dried apricots and take shots of prune juice to try to get things moving. Gross. The feeling of constant unease in my lower abdomen, the way my stomach would extend after days of poor elimination, the very small dark stools; I just figured this is how it is it’s no big deal. Eat a pizza and watch my stomach balloon out for days? Yeah that’s normal…I still can’t believe how shitty I used to feel all the time, how normal I thought it was for my stomach to feel heavy and bloated everyday. Looking back on it now I feel extremely stupid for not realizing the correlation between diet and proper elimination because when I went vegan I felt so much better. When I went raw vegan, the difference felt like night and day.

FISSURE

At the end of 2011 I developed an anal fissure, which is basically a tear in your asshole. The hole in my hole, as I called it, wouldn’t heal and was extremely painful. In 2012 I had surgery (sphincterotomy) to fix it. It did help, but not too long after the surgery did the problem persist. This has been an ongoing issue for years, sometimes it barely bothers me and sometimes it’s persistent as hell. Again, feeling really dumb for not correlating this to diet as it changed drastically when my diet did.

HEMORRHOIDS:

In 2016 I developed two raging hemorrhoids. Honestly, it’s surprising this didn’t happen sooner given my constipation and ass problems. They itched like a mofo.

SEVERE PMS (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder)

Most chicks dread that awful week out of the month where they’re bleeding and cramping, but for me, it was the week leading up to it that was absolute hell. I was on birth control for twelve years (I cringed writing that) and in the last year of being on it my PMS got out of control. Like clockwork, when I got to that last row of pills my mood changed drastically. And it wasn’t your typical irritated I-need-chocolate kind of mood swings; it was more of a crawl into bed and stare at the wall kind of depression. At four pills left it was like there was a dark fog hanging over me that didn’t lift until I actually got my period, in which it was instant relief. While most girls dread the bleeding part I couldn’t wait for it to start so I could stop feeling dead inside. I’ll take the cramps over depression any day. Looking back at it now after having actually gone through depression, there is no doubt in my mind that I had PMDD because what I was going through monthly was by no means normal. This started happening late 2016.

ENDOMETRIOSIS

This one ruined my sex life. Once again, I would see one row left on my pills and dread it, knowing that I can’t have sex until my period was over, 2-2.5 weeks later. Why? Because after/during sex I would experience a pain like no other. I would have this severe pain in my lower abdomen that would consume me for at least half an hour. It felt like someone was using my insides as a stress ball. It would leave me on the toilet where I felt like my organs were about to drop out. Then I’d be in the fetal position on the bathroom floor crying and praying for it to be over. One time, the last time, the pain was so bad I nearly passed out—sweating profusely, dizzy, ringing in my ears, fading in and out of consciousness—I could barely move. After that, I never deviated from my schedule again. In all the pain I’ve been through in life with my extensive list of health problems, broken bones, and an older brother with a vehemence for fighting, nothing has ever topped that moment. My period would end and during the first two weeks of my birth control pills, I was able to have sex again without pain. Safe to say only having sex two out of four weeks in a month put a strain on my sex life and relationship. I would also bleed during sex randomly at any given point in my cycle. I did have this all checked out –my gyno said that my cervix bleeds upon touch and that I most likely have endometriosis. I was to follow up for another test to confirm, but I didn’t go because at this point I had found Dr. Morse and had learned why this was happening. I stopped going to all doctors because I was more interested in treating the cause of the symptoms, rather than using a prescription pad as a Band-Aid.

A-TYPICAL CELLS

A-typical cells found on my cervix! Shocking right!? This wasn’t the first pap test to tell me that either. I had it biopsied and luckily it wasn’t cancerous but a-typical cells are often referred to as “precancerous cells”. And they’ve been appearing since my first pap at 15.

ASTHMA

I’ve had asthma all my life. It wasn’t so bad until the last couple of years where I’d need daily puffers. Being the naïve idiot that I was, I would hit that blue puffer (emergency inhaler) at least once a day instead of taking preventative puffers daily like I was supposed to. The blue one (ventolin) is a heftier steroid. Various things would set me off; exercise, cats, dusty places, perfumes, humidity, smoke, etc. to the point where I wouldn’t want to go places because of it. This greatly interfered with my life because I couldn’t be around places that burned candles, scents, perfume, or smoke. Just wrap me in a bubble. It got progressively worse starting in 2016, which I think I can accredit it to living in a gross basement apartment and the increase in my allergies. A day did not go by where I wasn’t struggling to breathe at some point and I was completely dependent on my puffers.

ALLERGIES

I’ve also had bad allergies all of my life. The typical outdoors stuff like grass, ragweed, mould, trees, etc used to affect me a lot growing up but improved later on. I’m the reason you’re not allowed to wear perfume to work. I hide your air freshener in the glove box. I run through the makeup isle in department stores so I don’t have to inhale. People used to roll joints for me because touching weed gives me hives. I’m that girl who gets an allergy test whose entire forearm blows up like I left it in a tank of mosquitoes. At one point I was even anaphylactic to eating certain fruits (luckily that only lasted a year). It’s not seasonal allergies either it was all year round. I stopped buying boxes of tissues in exchange for toilet paper rolls because it was cheaper to have one in every room like I needed. I was constantly blowing my nose and sneezing. My ex used to call me “The Mucous Queen”, and for good reason. I’ve gone to work with swollen eyes more times than I can count and have been sent home because of it. I hold a record of 32 sneezes in a row without a breath in between. Spending a few hours at a friends house with cats would make me blow my nose relentlessly, give me itchy watery eyes that would swell shut if I itched them like I so desperately wanted to, and as an added bonus, my allergies triggered my asthma too. When I’d go over to my cat loving friends houses, there’d be a roll of toilet paper ready for me because my allergies were relentless.

Finding Dr. Morse

I found Dr. Morse in December 2016, a few months before the shit really hit the fan. I was immediately taken by his kind nature and his explanation of the lymphatic system, it all made so much sense. I quickly learned that everything I thought I knew about health and diet was wrong. At 25, I never had a dinner without meat. Seriously, unless it was a pb+j sandwich or grabbing a banana for breakfast, my plate always boasted animal products. They’re freakin’ delicious. I ate what you would call a “healthy” standard American diet (SAD): lots of meat, eggs, veggies, minimal processed food, whole grains, limited sugar, and only eating out and drinking on the weekends. I liked to cook and was very into health and fitness. I didn’t eat a ton of fruit because “it’s so high in sugar”, and between stuffing my face with protein and vegetables, I just didn’t have enough time in the day. Upon finding Morse and having my world flipped upside down, I decided to give it a go. For one week I ditched everything and only ate fruit, and what do you know, I felt amazing. My skin cleared, I was pooping a couple times a day, and I had a ton of energy. My stomach felt the best it ever had, it was truly like night and day for me. That unease in my gut was gone and I felt lighter and happier. I mean, the whole week I thought about the nacho’s I was gonna demolish when the week was up, but other then the food cravings, it was great. For the sake of my long list of health issues, I decided in the new-year I was going to change my diet.

Jan 17, 2017

Thanks to winter and some idiocy on my part, I spun out on the highway and crashed my car. My back really hurt and I stayed home from work the rest of the week because sitting in a chair was not a thing.

Jan 29, 2017

Less than two weeks later I got rear-ended hard on the highway and my back was really thrown out this time. I had to take a week off work that I spent recovering in bed. Physio place confirms a joint was out of place in my back and I got regular treatment. I mention these because I think it has a part to play in what happened next because your spine is your neurological highway.

Feb 2017

This was the first week of February and the first dog walk since the car accidents. I was wearing my new winter boots that were cuter than they were supportive. All of a sudden there was this intensely sharp pain in my right ankle that caused me to scream out. Ever since that moment I had this horrible ankle pain that would be sharp as hell while walking on it, and throb long after being off it. My nerves would shoot pain up my calf and leave me with a burning throb that would last hours. My leg and foot felt like they were on fire. As it was my right foot, driving was torture. Not only was there pain in my arch, ankle, and calf, but also my right hip became so sensitive I could barely wear my pants done up when I sat down. The pain only continued to get worse as the months wore on and I started becoming depressed.

In March, I started my detox with an all fruit diet and some of Dr. Morse’s herbal tinctures. I had this big trip planned (and partly booked) to travel Europe for two months in the summer and I was determined to have my foot sorted out by then. By the end of May, the pain in my hip/leg/foot progressed and I had to take a leave of absence from work as I could no longer drive to it. I had to stop my detox due to some personal issues as I needed to sort out my mental state before I could really commit to it…aka my relationship ended and I had to drink about it. A lot.

I began my detox in September, and as detox sometimes goes, things got intensely worse before they got better. Without getting technical, I’ll explain it to you as it was explained to me; your body is your house and if you’re suffering from disease or pain (inflammation), your house is on fire. Disease is merely acids trapped in the body, eating away at your tissues and glands until they don’t function properly and set off a chain of unpleasant reactions (disease symptoms). First you have to put out the fire. Then you have to strip away all the damage because you can’t start to rebuild your house on a burnt frame. The same thing happens with your body with detoxification, clear out the old so you can start with the new. Stirring up all those acids in order to move them out can cause some gnarly reactions, and getting worse before better is the norm. For me, cleaning out the old was not pretty.

September 2017

Working with the Dr. Morse clinic in Florida via Skype, I began my protocol of a 100% fruit diet with a custom herbal plan. My hip got worse and my ability to crutch around lessened to only getting up to go to the bathroom.

October 2017

For months I knew this was coming. I could feel it happening but I didn’t dare tell a soul as I was in denial about it. The throbbing ankle pain that kept me off of my right foot for so long had gotten to my left ankle as well. Luckily the nerve pain was still just in my right foot, but the agonizing throbbing ankle pain was now in both ankles and kept me off of them indefinitely. I had to swap my crutches for a wheelchair and was bedridden as getting around had become very hard and very painful. I couldn’t even stand to do something as simple as brush my teeth, or get off my bed. My wonderful dad found me this mechanics knee board, a board on wheels with two knee cushions. I used this to go back and forth to the bathroom and pretty much stayed on the top floor of my house for months. I lived in my bed and didn’t move for anything that wasn’t a bodily need. I felt like one of those dogs who lost their hind legs and have little wheelchairs attached to their back ends because essentially that’s what I was. I used my arms and this knee board to get around, which helped me live but caused me a lot of other pains in my body. Getting around this way would throw my hip out and would take days to recover. For the few friends and family I did let visit me, I could see the heartbreak in their eyes as they’d watch me struggle to move. At this point I was bedridden, in a lot of pain, very depressed, and my face got hit SO hard with acne. I even started getting it on my back and chest, where I normally would not have this problem.

*Horrifying pictures to come–still waiting for the “after”, but I’m almost there!

December 2017

Let me preface by saying that before my foot happened I worked out often and was 5’4, 125lbs of mostly muscle, with a low fat percentage. By the time December rolled around I was at my absolute worst. I weighed 89lbs and had serious muscular atrophy in my lower body. It was like my back connected to my legs, completely skipping my ass altogether. I’m not exaggerating, there are pictures. My legs were so skinny it terrified me to look at them. My calves were flaccid. I would sit in the sauna and slap at the skin that hung loose from my tibia and it reminded me of old lady arm fat, the limp way it moved because it’s devoid of muscle. My ankle pain in both legs was still very intense and my right foot nerve pain was as active as usual. Even something as simple as resting my feet on the ground in a chair sent aggravating nerve shocks up my leg. I couldn’t use my legs for anything, below the knee was completely useless. My hip was very sore and moving too much would set it off and take many days for it to settle again.

It truly hurt to exist.

Prior to my detox, I was losing a lot more hair than was considered normal. At this point, I began pulling out clumps of my hair and I lost nearly half of it. I had thin hair to begin with and not a lot of it, so this was drastic to my appearance. Without cutting my hair, it had dramatically shortened and completely thinned at the bottom. I would only ever wear it up. My lungs had never been worse—I had to cut out vaping weed for a while, which is pretty much a first in my life after age 14. I often struggled to sleep at night because I couldn’t breathe and I relied on my oil diffuser, many pillows, 3 Lung Tea, and Dr. Morse lung tinctures to get me through it. I spent many nights sleeping upright because I couldn’t breathe lying down. I had to change my laundry detergent because I could not tolerate a whiff of scent or it would set me off into a fight for breath. Swearing to never use a puffer again, this was extremely hard to deal with.

My face was at its worst—small whiteheads everywhere, and I mean well over a hundred on my face…don’t ask me how I know that… I’d get big giant cysts that would last around a month before they’d almost-flatten into a bright red dot on my face. They liked to hang out all over my cheeks while the little ones erupted all around my mouth and chin, making it hard to even open my mouth to eat or talk. What wasn’t covered in active explosions of acne was covered by hyper pigmentation from previous acne. You couldn’t find a centimeter of healthy skin. It was very painful—I could only sleep on my back, I couldn’t bite into apples and the likes as it involved opening my mouth too wide, it hurt to talk, and sometimes I’d have to ice my face. Even if I could have gone anywhere, I wouldn’t have.

Emotionally, I had been on a roller coaster. I was no longer in depression but it would come and go sometimes, which I assumed was normal for my situation. What was weird were the highs, I would have these moments of pure bliss where I was so happy and grateful to have found the answer to health, I knew it was coming even if it didn’t show it yet. It was a feeling I’d never felt before—pure gratitude and hope and love. It was my first awakening to spirituality and the connection of mind and body. I uncovered a suppressed memory of an assault that I had never given a second thought to after it happened. I remembered other events of that same weekend but what happened to me never came up again in my brain. That’s fucked up. Emotional detox is a thing I was not prepared for but it definitely happened. I experienced extreme highs and lows, usually right after each other, and I feel like I’ve really let a lot go. I’ve come to learn that the connection between health and mind is a very real and powerful thing.

Writing this now on the other side of all of that pain makes me ache for that poor crippled girl that I used to be. The mental anguish I felt during the first 5-6 months of detox was intense. I was so wrapped up in fear. I knew that this was the way to health; I had studied Dr. Morse religiously and had seen so much proof, yet I still held on to this fear that I would be the exception. Going into this I knew I would get worse before I got better, but I still held onto this fear that it would take years to cure me and I’d be stuck like this for the rest of my twenties. I didn’t have a diagnosis so it wasn’t like I could look up success stories for my disease, or even research what it is that I had. I knew this would work in the end but what I feared was time. How much more was I going to lose? I kept looking and feeling worse and my loved ones were all very scared for me, but I knew I had to keep going and that my turn-around was coming.

Eventually, it did.

February 2018

My nerve pain becomes less painful and I’m breathing better!

March 2018

The main takeaway from Dr. Morse’s teachings is to get your kidneys filtering, as they are one of the main outlets for lymphatic waste. On this protocol, some people start filtering in their first two weeks and some people take a year. It really depends on the state of your kidneys, adrenals glands, and GI tract. For me, it took six months to start getting regular filtration and I had to do a lot of dry fasting to get there. This brings me to March where the real magic started happening.

Literally two weeks after I started getting regular filtration, I had a major breakthrough in nearly all aspects. The biggest being the pain in my ankles had dramatically let up and I walked without assistance for the first time in a very long time. I felt like Bambi taking his first steps; my legs were all wobbly, my muscles were confused, and it felt so weird to take steps that didn’t result in pain. I wasn’t even wearing orthotics and my normally inflamed arch-around-ankle wasn’t bothering me at all. The normally sharp throb in my ankles was dulled immensely. To get my muscles used to walking again, I started slow and worked my way up.

My acne finally started to slow down. My face was still a horror show, but it became less horrific and the little white heads stopped popping up everywhere. My back and chest totally cleared up.

At this point I figured I should add in some vegetables to get in some amino acids for building me my new legs. I started having a salad for dinner but stuck to only fruits and vegetables (meaning no oil/vinegar/nuts/seeds or anything cooked). I did build me some muscle and I started to fill out again, but the ankle pain started to come back and my right foot arch tendon became inflamed again. I was back on my knee-board.

April 2018

My left ankle had completely healed and I was able to use my crutches again. Nerve pain is GONE.

May 2018

The pain in my ankles that kept me immobile for so long had finally left the building! Completely gone in both ankles! However, I was still using crutches as the arch tendon that wraps around my ankle and up my calf was still very inflamed. I also stepped on something hard and tore something on the bottom heel of my foot.

July through to mid-August 2018

I quit the salads and went back on 100% fruit. I started taking my herbs again.

Mid-August 2018

MAJOR IMPROVEMENT! The arch pain had become so much less that I DITCHED MY CRUTCHES! I had to wear special sandals/inserts to walk in at all times but they could be pretty much any flat shoe they’d fit into. I couldn’t go on long walks or do too much but I got my first real taste of freedom and spent my days happily up north. I was still getting acne but it wasn’t as bad and it came and went a lot quicker.

September 2018

I still couldn’t go for long walks or to a mall yet without my foot hurting, but it was a different kind of pain. The arch would get irritated if I did too much walking that day, but it seemed to reset when I’d get off of it. I was no longer paying for the movement I did a few days ago, or even yesterday. It’s as if I had a bad case of plantar fascistic; I could handle moderate day-to-day walking but no trips to Costco for me just yet. It felt similar to how it did in 2015 when I got my orthotics, but improved. If what Dr. Morse says is true about detox working backwards, then I must be close to done, right? Anyway, after over a year of fully depending on people to care for me, I could finally take care of myself on my own. I ran errands, grocery shopped, drove, biked, and started going out again. I slowly integrated myself back into society and returned to work in October.

October 2018 to May 2019

I still had a pain on the bottom of my heel when I’d walk barefoot on hard surfaces, a typical case of plantar fasciitis. This kind of pain wasn’t even in the same spot as before and I can accredit it to stepping very hard on a cord-end when I was learning to walk again. I could walk on carpet without shoes for a while but normally I’d wear slippers around my house with a basic $14 gel insert. I could wear any flat shoes I wanted (again, gel inserts). No more ankle, nerve, or tendon pain and I could go on long walks in the forest again. While my hip had greatly improved, it still gave me trouble and I believe it played a huge part in my foot problems as it is all connected. I couldn’t do any physically demanding exercises like running/jumping, but I’m good to go on long walks and short hikes again.

And Now…

This disease was the best thing to ever happen to me.

Learning about the lymphatic system and its relationship to proper kidney function really was a paradigm shift for me. It flipped my world upside down—health is really so simple when you go back to the way nature intended you to be. As hard as it was to push through the months where I only got worse, nothing will ever have been more worth it.

I’m in this for life. Although I am not a 100% raw vegan purist, I plan on eating a high fruit diet for the rest of my life and aim to stay around 80% raw. I go through periods where I undergo intense detox modes with fruit/mono fruit fasting, but most of the time it’s fruit until a big salad for dinner. Nuts and seeds have made a reappearance in my life in the last few months and I’m enjoying making raw gourmet foods, as well as some whole food ingredient cooked vegan food.

Dr. Morse saved my life. He taught me how to save myself, and I will spend the rest of my life informing others that they too can do the same.

Your health is in your hands; don’t let some doctor dictate your future and tell you what you can and can’t do. We put such blind faith in these people because they went to school for a long ass time, and we never questioned what they were being taught because it’s science, right? We ignore the obvious fact that the pharmaceutical industry is one of the highest grossing industries in the world, which plainly translates to the rich making money off of our illnesses. Our health system isn’t designed to cure you, it’s designed to rope you into being dependent on various medications to cover up your symptoms, while simultaneously giving you new ones without you realizing.

Your doctor isn’t a monster, but the system is.

You’re not made to process chemicals—you’re made to process nature. I realize to some my story sounds crazy because it goes against everything you’ve ever heard about food…where’s your protein, what about B12, aren’t you hungry? This is a different world now, where information is abundantly available and you have the option to question the norm. Will you follow in societies footsteps because “that’s what my parents and their parents and their parents (and so on) did”? Look around at where that’s gotten us, humanity has never been sicker!

True detoxification is no easy fix—it takes hard work, dedication, and patience, but it addresses the cause of your disease so you can get rid of it for good. Reading this from a Standard-American-Diet point of view, detoxing looks daunting and you may have doubts in your willpower, I know I sure did. The key to having the drive it takes to do something like this is really understanding how detox works and understand the truth about the human body. Once you understand the why’s & how’s, you’ll want to do it. I am currently working on designing detox programs and herbal protocols so that I can heed this passion into a career of helping people. I am the proof that health is a choice.

I mean, who would have thought that what we put in our bodies, affected our health?

*Shout out to my all-star dad; my biggest fan, supporter, and best friend. You never doubted me and even though you didn’t understand the process exactly, your trust and support in my knowing made the world of difference. Thank you for lugging 20lb+ watermelons to my room all summer. The weekly Costco trips because you insisted I had to have the best giant red grapefruits all winter. All the grocery store trips, bags on bags of grapes, the special random fruits I’d never tried that you’d surprise me with. For doing anything and everything to make me smile, when a lot of the times, I couldn’t. I couldn’t have done it without you and you’ll never know how much I truly appreciate you.

Blog Posts