My story

After growing up in the UK in the 80s, eating a highly processed diet, I have suffered from severe diarrhoea and digestive issues all my life. I also suffered from crippling anxiety and OCD which led to me planning my life around inconvenient toilet trips. From my late teens to late twenties I partied hard, binge drank and overate. I have always trained at the gym since I was 15, played multiple sports and ate what I thought was a reasonably healthy diet. When I reached 30 I emigrated to Australia and started to pay a bit more attention to what I was eating.

After returning from a holiday to South America 12 years ago, I was diagnosed with Glandular Fever (Epstein Virus). This is where my health issues took a downward spiral.

After suffering the symptoms of Glandula Fever, I continued to feel generally unwell. I struggled with low energy, fatigue, brain fog and felt sick after drinking water. This continued for a couple of years and led to depression.

I knew deep down that I had everything I wanted - I was living in a beautiful country, a well paying job, and a beautiful partner - but I continually felt and questioned “is this it?”.

Around the same time I developed a severe rash on my groin area, so I went back to my GP about 6 times for multiple treatments - creams, medication, washes - but nothing would shift the irritable rash. This led to me spending my Saturday night searching the internet on reasons why my rash wouldn’t go away and why I felt like shit all the time. I stumbled across two guys in the United States explaining the connection between persistent rashes and gut health. At first I thought “what a load of bullshit, how can that be connected to gut health?” But I was desperate so explored this connection further and thankfully it gave me some hope. From there, I went back to see the GP who did a stool and blood analysis. The stool analysis came back negative and the bloods came back all WITHIN MEDICAL (NORMAL) RANGE. After 4 repeat visits and multiple visits to naturopaths, I was left believing my symptoms were all in my head.

Through more of my own research I eventually discovered that I would need a comprehensive stool analysis and someone other than a GP to read my bloods. As my GP refused to give me a referral for a comprehensive stool analysis I found a functional medicine doctor who ordered me a GI map test (comprehensive stool analysis).

And what do you know, it came back that I had seven gut parasites as well as dysbiosis (lack of good gut bacteria)!
I was then put on a 3 month low FOD map Zero carb detox and gut rebuild protocol. I went from having diarrhoea to having solid bowel movements for the first time in my life, and I felt incredible! Brain fog, fatigue, depression and rash were all gone!

Everything was going great, until one day I experienced severe diarrhoea and I couldn’t understand why as my food hadn’t changed at all. On reflection I had experienced a very stressful encounter that led to the severe diarrhoea.

Then came the lightbulb moment - the connection between the brain and gut aka the Autonomic nervous system.

It was only then I realised the effect stress has on digestion. The mistake I had made was only addressing my nutrition and not the chronic stress and anxiety in my life.

All the good work was literally undone again and back came the Dysbiosis and pathogens. This time the symptoms I was experiencing were worse than ever - severe depression and suicidal tendencies set in and of course the digestive issues. After suffering this for another two years I decided something had to be done about it. I couldn’t keep living like this, for myself and for my family.

I was fortunate to find a Functional Nutritional Therapist who requested my second GI Map (stool test) which came back with dysbiosis and parasites again and my bloods were showing up with severe fatty acid deficiency. Using these results, we were then able to address the root cause of my health issues, incorporating stress relief techniques as well as a gut rebuild protocol.

One and a half years on it has completely changed my life. I feel incredible and I have the perfect stools to prove it!

Throughout this journey and seeing the amazing results this process had on my mind and body, I thought I couldn’t be the only one struggling with chronic health issues. I knew this was something that I had to share! I had finally found my purpose!

Now I have completed the Nutritional Therapy Associations' Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner program (FNTP) as well as my Neuro Linguistic Programming and Time Line Therapy qualification. I am here to provide a solution for people struggling with chronic health issues where the current medical system has failed them.

If, like me, you’ve explored all other medical avenues and still don’t have the answers and want to regain and optimize your health but not sure where to start, then please reach out. I can help you!