SandraEric

My Health Story, and My New Journey in Life

My Health Story doterra lyme disease essential oils

I want to share a very personal story with you….a story only a few people really know about.

It’s my health story.

I am a firm believer in taking care of our bodies. I believe in eating organic & clean, little to no processed food, and lots of whole and raw foods. Exercise is a must for physical and mental well-being. I also believe in supplementation, because our food sources are not the same as they used to be. I believe in drinking lots of purified water day. And so on.

Basically, I believe that we need to educate and take care of ourselves.

So, you would think I would feel amazing, right?

What may come as a surprise is that for the last few years, I have been struggling with my health.

Where do I start? It’s hard for me to even put this in words. It started slowly… several years ago. At first, I was very tired! Tired doesn’t even explain it. It was more like extreme fatigue. I felt like I was always dragging. I would wake up each morning, feeling like I didn’t sleep at all. I kept making excuses for myself like… I have 4 kids, we just moved, I don’t get enough sleep, my husband is always working, I’m getting older, etc. Those “excuses” are all real but that shouldn’t make me feel like I was 80 years old. I wasn’t even 30 yet. I remember being so fatigued that I could hardly walk my kids to the library that was only a mile away from our house. I wanted to cry because I knew something was wrong with me but I just drank more caffeine and pushed through it. I was so embarrassed about this. How could I feel this bad? I felt like a horrible mom.

I remember another time when I literally couldn’t get out of bed for days! DAYS people!!! I needed my sister-in-law to come over to help with the kids. I went to the doctor because I thought I had mono or something. They did all my blood work and said I was normal. The doctor even commented on how I “looked” so healthy and that being tired was just part of being a mom.

I also started going in and out of depression because I couldn’t understand what was going on. I started getting crying spells and extreme PMS (I’ve always had horrible PMS cramps but now I was getting way more emotional on top of all the physical symptoms.)

Then I started to slowly gain weight. That was a hard for me because I’ve never had a problem with weight. So, I started working out more and watching what I was eating. Usually, if I cut my carbs, I can easily lose 5 pounds and this time, no matter what I was doing, the scale only went up. Not to mention, to get a workout in, I had to load up on the caffeine because any movement was hard. I slowly gained 20 pounds. That’s a lot for me, especially because I’m only 5’3″.

I went to a natural doctor and she told me that I had Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome. I did research on chronic/adrenal fatigue and it made sense to me because I had all the symptoms. I read books about this syndrome spent hours and hours reading on the internet. I was making all the right changes but I wasn’t getting the results I was looking for.

I will also add that I had a major sleep problem. Like I was so tried all day but then when it was time to go to bed, I was wired. This is pretty normal for this condition.

My symptoms only seemed to be getting worse and new ones kept popping up. Now, I had an extremely stiff neck and shoulders…it was hard to turn my head to the side and my upper back hurt all the time. Nothing could make me feel better.

Then, when I think it couldn’t get worse, I started getting cold and flu symptoms. At first, I thought I was getting sick a lot. But that didn’t make sense because I am usually the last person to get sick and no one else in my family was getting sick. I started to get “sick” more and more frequent. I started keeping track and noticed my cold and flu symptoms were synced with my period and ovulation cycles. So, basically, I was bedridden every 2 weeks. These symptoms would wipe me out. I had a fever, the chills, joint pain especially in my fingers, my neck would be stiffer than usual, brain fog, exhaustion, a sore throat, a cough, swollen glands, and muscle pain. Oh, another weird symptom I would get was swollen eyes. Crazy but true. I would wake up with inflamed eyelids. I didn’t even know that was a thing.

I also forgot that constantly felt bloated. I thought something was wrong with my ovaries because I was alway inflamed but my OBGYN said I was normal. I started to feel like I was losing my mind. I was beginning to think that I might even have cancer because that kept coming up in my research. Of course, when you look things up online, everything can lead to cancer or death but I was feeling like maybe I did have it because it kept coming up in the articles that I was reading and nothing else was making sense to me.

This also caused depression because I couldn’t understand why I was feeling like this. It effected my family too because here I am, trying to take care of my four kids, and could hardly get off the couch sometimes. It effected my marriage because I felt horrible about myself and didn’t have the same motivation that I used to have. I think my husband thought I was making my symptoms up because how could one “healthy” looking person with “normal” results have this many problems.

I felt like I couldn’t share this part of me because, at the same time, I was growing a huge, successful health business. I was embarrassed to admit that I was struggling deep down. I knew the products that I was sharing were awesome and I kept thinking I would get better soon. I also knew they were helping me too because if I didn’t take my supplements, I felt worse.

I don’t know how to explain how I felt but I knew something was off with me. I literally read half the internet trying to figure me out. I think I “self-diagnosed” myself with everything under the sun! True story. It seriously drove my husband nuts.

After years of suffering, last December (2015), I made an appointment with a friend, who is a neuropathic Doctor, to have my hormones tested. When I got to her office she recommended that I take a BioSCAN test. I thank God for her because that day changed my life. I found out I had Lyme Disease. At first, I was happy because we finally figured me out!! I knew there was something wrong and with all my research, I never thought to test for Lyme Disease. Please note: the BioSCAN can’t “diagnose” so I had several blood tests done to confirm. One test showed that I had double the range that was considered positive and another test showed that I had Lyme Disease for a very long time. The crazy thing is that I don’t remember getting bit by a tick and I never had the ring that you get from getting bit.

The first thing I did, was more research!! I found out the Lyme Disease is an epidemic now. More than 300,000 people get diagnosed each year. I also learned that many people with Lyme Disease get a false negative, get misdiagnosed, and even worse, most doctors don’t understand it, they don’t consider it to be a real disease, and they don’t test for it. I was angered and upset by this. I read that almost every symptom out there can also be a symptom of Lyme Disease. This could possibly be the main cause of so many issues but our doctors don’t get for this. It’s a tricky disease that can come and go. It was stay dormant in your joints and muscles. It can come out when your body is weak – that’s why I was getting full-blown symptoms when I had my period and when I ovulated. This disease is basically made of screw-like bacteria that can screw into your muscles, joints, and any other part of your whole body. It can mess up your body and life.

lyme disease facts

I put myself on an extreme paleo diet because bacteria grows on gluten and the casein in dairy and that’s not good for this disease. I also removed all sugar (minus fruit and stevia) from my diet. I didn’t change that much because I was already eating pretty clean. Removing dairy was probably the hardest because I like cheese, yogurt, and sour cream. For the gluten, the only thing I was eating was Ezekiel bread, so I cut that out. I also went on a boatload of supplements, 3 homeopathic remedies, and one Chinese medicine. I wanted to go the natural route before getting hooked up to an IV every week for the rest of my life. I took immune building supplements and lots of them. I was taking garlic, vitamin C, multivitamin/mineral, iron, GLA, probiotic, etc. I was taking between 30-50 supplements a day.