My Journey with PCOS: From Diagnosis to Family
I was diagnosed with PCOS at the age of 27 and the diagnosis hit me hard as I always wanted to become a mother. To hear from a gynecologist that it will be very difficult for me to get pregnant was heartbreaking, scary and it made me feel lonely and worried for years and years to come.
Unconsciously, I was trying to understand why and how I ended up with this health condition. After extensive research on health conditions connected to hormonal imbalance I started to make small changes to improve my lifestyle - that included balanced nutrition, regular movement, a reasonable work-life balance, quality sleep, regular meditation/journaling - and I started to remove endocrine disruptive chemicals (EDCs) from my daily life.
Changing my lifestyle took many years and adjusting my diet took even longer, as I had no one to guide me. It took a serious gut condition and operation to realise how nutrition and lifestyle have an enormous impact on our wellbeing and overall health. Nutrition impacts how our cells and mitochondria work, not to mention how big of an impact it has on our daily mental and emotional state.
Once I finally recovered, I applied to study at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition to become a Registered Nutritional Therapist.
I have spent the next 4 years studying not only the ins and outs of how nutrition impacts our body and mind but I have learnt about how our lifestyle and environment impact our body, given what effects it has on our hormones. And as hormones work together, like an orchestra, if one is out of balance (i.e. too high or too low oestrogen/ progesterone/ thyroid/ cortisol) it will have an impact on all other hormones that will impact all our body functions directly or indirectly. I have found the curriculum fascinating and I apply everything I learnt in my clinic.
Now as a wife and mother of two beautiful children, I am even more invested in our family’s optimal health and I try to implement as much practical tools in our everyday life to raise our kids happy and healthy. I have experienced first hand again, how the healthcare system is failing them and us, as parents.
My son had a type-1 diabetes scare, which turned out to be parasites in his gut, causing similar symptoms, that we worked on to get rid of and built up his microbiome at the same time. My daughter has cognitive and speech delay and based on various laboratory tests and research we changed her diet and given her suitable supplements that along with various therapies seem to improve her day by day to the surprise of her therapists.
While I do not question, the healthcare system is essential to diagnose and treat patients, I do believe, we can all improve our health, by small, sustainable changes in our daily life. Being proactive and understanding the importance of preventative steps along with optimising our health can make a huge difference in our lives and in our children’s lives.
Knowledge is power. However our current society is only bombarded with mostly false statements from fad diets to detox teas and pills and all that gain anything from these are the businesses selling them. The foods we eat should nurture our body and cells and it should support our body reaching optimal wellbeing. And guess what! There are no quick fixes. But there is a lot that can be learnt and with the practical tools and simple explanation you will understand how it is possible to nourish your and your children’s body and mind.
I envisage raising a next generation that is super-healthy and has all the information as well as the healthy habits already implemented in their daily lives being taught by their parents and educators. And for that, I am here to support you all to understand what nutrition your and your children’s bodies need and how we can get from sub-optimal/ or from disease to optimal health. When necessary, I use functional/ diagnostics testing and nutrigenomics DNA testing to find the root-causes of my clients’ health concerns based on health history, current and past symptoms, family history, mental/ emotional wellbeing and environmental factors.
I truly believe that I have unnecessary spent more than a decade struggling with gut and hormonal health issues, with the scare of infertility and feeling generally low on energy. I wish I would have known about nutritional therapy when I was a teenager or in my early twenties to save me those years and the fear of not being able to conceive at one point when I would like to. We feel very lucky to have two beautiful and healthy kids after two uncomplicated pregnancies. But the fear of uncertainty and not being able to get pregnant stayed with me. I also have been seeing some of my friends struggle to conceive, with or without ART and some others having to go through miscarriages. I also wish parents would know more about nutritional therapy and see how this personalised approach is the suitable and logical way forward to support their children’s health and wellbeing on a daily basis.
Given my health journey and the excruciating, constant fear for many years whether I would be able to get pregnant or how long it will take me to conceive and carry a healthy baby to full term and now seeing how much nutrition and lifestyle plus the extra laboratory tests helped my kids gave me the push to specialise in fertility nutrition and children’s health, with the desire to raise a super-healthy next generation.
I hear you. I see you. Let me support you. Book your free 20-minute discovery call to find out more.
