Clients and friends often ask me why am I so passionate about health? What got me started? While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly, I believe my passion stems from a very rich child hood growing up on our family farm. On the farm and from my parents and my environment, I learned to:
After high school, I cruised through my twenties and thirties, going to University, travelling overseas, then did further studies before entering the Corporate World for almost twenty years. I worked hard, partied, and had a fantastic time, I was happy, but not a deep down, contented happiness. It was a hedonistic time, and with also a sense of loss of responsibility and reality. It wasn’t until I met my husband, settled down and had children that I began to feel a greater sense of fulfilment and happiness. I also started to question more what I was being encouraged to feed my children (from all kinds of sources) and was quite simply… horrified. My journey took more focus and I took charge. I questioned, became curious, understood my choices better and learned to take responsibility again.
Chloes story: footprints in the sand
This was a great experience and learning for the time when we realised our daughters left foot, at the age of 5 was no longer developing normally. The growth of her left foot had begun to slow down, started to curl inwards and she had developed a very high arch. I first noticed it on our Summer holiday when she was running along the beach. Her footprints in the sand were uneven and she ran awkwardly. Up until this point I had always thought of Chloe as a very healthy child. There are now so many tell-tale signs that we just hadn’t picked up on, and we had dismissed as being ‘normal’.
So began our journey with Chlo… who deserves a medal for everything she has put up with over the past, nearly 3 years. We have seen and carried out treatments with Podiatrists, Physiotherapists, Specialist Paediatricians, Orthopaedic Surgeons, Chiropractors and Neurologists. Then, we have done all the ‘hippie’ stuff, muscle realignment, herbal wraps and electrical currents in special baths… all with very little success. We were told by all the experts that that’s the way it is, that it’s most likely a mild form of Cerebal Palsy, and that there is no particular reason why, just keep going with a bit of physio!! ‘It may get worse, but it won’t get better’. As a Mother, my instinct told me otherwise. There had to be a reason, a cause for Chloes foot going a bit ‘wonky’.
We now know there’s a very good reason, and that yes, it could be referred to as Cerebal Palsy, ie a brain injury, which knowing what I know now, I strongly believe occurred when she was born – although that’s another story.
That aside, through all our appointments and discussions, I began to feel confident the cause lay in Chloe’s brain. I read ‘The brain that changes itself’ by Norman Doidge, and that was our turning point, although I had to find someone who practiced neuroplasticity? Neuro what? what the…?
I had been to a conference a few years earlier and had heard Dr Randy Beck speak, a functional neuroscientist with an insatiable passion for helping others, and somebody who also won’t take ‘No’ for an answer. I wasn’t sure he could help, but knew I had to talk to him. Through a mutual contact I tracked him down at the Institute for Functional Neuroscience and …
… after extensive and very passive treatment which involved retraining Chlos’ ‘wiring’ of her neurons, 6 months later, our Chloe is a different girl. Her foot has come alive and is much healthier and she has a vitality that can only be referred to as a new life force.
It turns out that Chloes’ brain was not functioning well at all. It was overactive in some areas and underactive in others, with areas that weren’t performing that directly related to her foot – simply put, her brain wasn’t firing normally. Once the brain was functioning better, the foot (and her body generally) began to receive the correct messages and function as it was designed to.At the same time as working with Dr Beck at the Institute of Functional Neuroscience, we worked with a very talented and informed Naturopath, Chevonne Clasen at Remede to identify any toxin exposure, bacterial or parasitic infections and nutrient malabsorption, (which would all affect her ability to heal). We found all of it. Chlo had heavy metals, mainly Mercury, along with some Arsenic. She had a bacterial infection, along with leaky gut, so wasn’t absorbing all that wonderful nutrient rich foods I was feeding her! (any expense on good food was money down the you know what)… We worked on detoxifying her body, healing her leaky gut and clearing up the bacterial infection. All of which I believe has helped accelerate the wonderful results Chloe has achieved.
When I look back, I feel quite overwhelmed with the road we’ve taken and how fortunate we’ve been to find Dr Beck and his wonderful team. But, on reflection is it really luck? Or is it a will to do better, to ask questions and find answers and to take our health (or our daughters’ health in this case) into our own hands.
Listening to our inner knowing and being confident enough to act on that, while not listening to the experts was such a difficult thing to do, but in my experience, without a doubt one of the most important things we’ve ever done.
So the other symptoms we had dismissed as being ‘normal – as ‘that’s just Chloe’ included:
Chloe now enjoys sport, she looks people in the eye and talks to them directly (most of the time), she laughs and giggles and she gives THE best hugs, which we never used to get and her skin is now soft, dare I say… like a babys’ bottom! So many little things that all added up. My burning motivation is to ensure Chloe as a teenager or an older person is emotionally steady to handle any self esteem issues that may pop up in relation to her ‘lucky’ foot. But we have gained so much more and on so many levels having gone through this process.
Why did this happen? We don’t know for sure, we certainly have our thoughts, the most obvious being that Chloe’s birth was not natural, and there are probably a host of other reasons as well, which I won’t go into here. Babies and children are supposed to be pristine, unspoilt specimens. Unfortunately with the intervention at birth and the toxic environment we all live in, this is very difficult to achieve. One thing is for sure, it has been our blessing in that we now have so much more respect for the Brain and just how much its capable of, which we still have only had a ‘sneak peak’ at.
We still have a long way to go as Parents and as a family, but through this experience, I am even more motivated to encourage my clients, friends, anyone who reads this, to trust our instinct, ask our own questions, to be responsible for our own health and that of our families. It’s worth it in so many ways. How can any one of us know all there is to know about the human body? People are experts in their fields and let’s remind ourselves that an expert is:
‘A person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.’
A particular area is often one area, the skin, the limbs, a form of disease, a stage of growth etc,.. this may not be the area where we ultimately need assistance, or perhaps it’s multiple areas (or experts) where we need assistance. The human body and spirit is incredibly complex. Noone knows ‘our-cell-ves’ better than we do, so be curious, ask questions and find answers. Noone else will or cares more than we do.
Unfortunately at the end of the day a majority of people or messages will have a financial interest tied to it, and not necessarily our long term health in mind. If we take time to explore all the options we have available to us, we will find out what works best for us and / or our families. It can be extremely challenging, hard work at times and finally – an amazingly rewarding and empowering journey.
Our bodies are remarkable, intelligent and incredibly complex if only, we allow ourselves to stop and ‘listen’ to what they’re telling us a little more often.
We are still on our journeys, and without a doubt for us, it just gets better and better.
‘Nothing is impossible. With so many people saying it couldn’t be done, all it takes is imagination’ – Michael Phelps 16 times Olympic Medallist – Swimming.