If you’ve ever been on a healing journey, chances are what led you there was because something felt off or just didn’t seem right. This is especially true when you’re somebody who is very intuitive and in touch with your body.
In the same vein, if on this healing journey you ever worked with an “alternative practitioner” to help with your healing, chances are that practitioner had a healing story of his or her own.
I am no different.
My story used to be what brought me into naturopathic medicine: chronic sinus infections. It was a story of rinse, wash, repeat, until I was over the “repeat” part and found a way to truly heal that didn’t include invasive measures like a balloon sinuplasty, but rather some diet and lifestyle modifications.
For me personally, that story has since evolved.
It’s very hard to be vulnerable when I’m meant to sit in a position of some authority, knowledge, and acumen. But vulnerability is oftentimes the position people can relate to the most. Therefore, instead of feeling a sense of shame, I sit here in gratitude and humility, especially as I think of the many patients I have been gifted the honor of helping on their own healing journey.
It’s so easy to chalk up newfound health concerns – especially for women and weight gain – to ‘age.’ While age very much plays into a variety of things, I think it’s important that we change the narrative surrounding it and become very clear on what it is we’re talking about when we say, “it’s because of age.”
You see, there is no denying that chronology is not on our side, and is what we mean when we say, “age,” but when we’re placing the blame of our health concerns, what we really mean is “aging,” as in the process. When we sort out those differences, I can now confidently tell you that aging as a process is very much individual and largely dependent on lifestyle, dietary and environmental factors. It’s why two women can both be 50-years-old and yet look decades apart.
Society is also not very helpful in telling us that “we’re old” when we’re in our 30’s. I’m not sure what juice people are drinking when they say that, because confidently, at 35-years-old, I can say I whole-heartedly disagree; I am not old in any way, shape, or form. I can also confidently say that my dietary choices are definitely a large improvement from when I was in my 20’s; a decade many might consider a woman to be in her “prime.” So, after a life of possessing an athletic physique, when weight started to settle comfortably around my midsection, to say I was horrified was an understatement.
This of course led me down a rabbit hole to get to the root of the problem. I did stool tests and blood work; nothing was super out of the ordinary, but had I gone to a conventional practitioner, they would have ended it at that and told me it was my age and that I was “fine.” But I’m a naturopathic doctor and “fine” is not my love language, “optimal” is more my speed.
I increased my workouts to 5 times per week and varied up my diet, but nothing seemed to really work until something curious happened.
I moved.
I changed up my workouts again and made some additional alterations to my eating, but this time it seemed to make a difference – especially when it came to the bloating I had been experiencing.
It wasn’t until I attended a symposium one weekend and there were several talks about mold and mycotoxins. The most glaring symptom noted? Unexplained weight gain in an otherwise healthy individual doing “all of the right things.”
That was it. That’s all I needed to hear, until… “96% of sinus infections are due to a fungal etiology…”
What?!
Full-circle moment seeing as sinus infections brought me to this realm in the first place.
The intrigue captivated me enough that I decided to explore the possibilities further via urine OAT and mycotoxin testing. A couple weeks after collecting my sample, the results were ready and revealed an obvious fungal overgrowth along with the presence of two types of mycotoxins.
Stay tuned to find out how this ends…
