How I Reversed My Severe Chronic Disease And Recovered My Health: Part 3
My Healing Journey
As soon as I discovered the gravity of the situation I was facing and the certainty of developing a major neurodegenerative disease within a few years I once again went to conventional medicine for answers. I went to every top neurologist, sleep doctor, and brain expert I possibly could and did nearly every test imaginable including multiple MRIs, EEGs, EMGs, CT Scans, and of course sleep studies where they hook you up to what seems like a million electrodes and wires and observe you sleeping all night. To break the suspense, just like every time before, all the doctors and specialists I went to offered NOTHING with regard to healing my condition. They were as stumped as I was and simply wanted to throw medications at me with the blind hope it could help ease some symptoms at best. No one knew any path to reversing my condition or healing my brain and I was once again left to fend for myself.
I suffered for a very, very long time. My health was crashing and all the while I kept trying to find a solution. Especially when it came to my sleep. I knew if I could sleep even a few hours a night I could think more clearly and at least give myself a fighting chance to discover some type of hidden remedy. That plus the fact I’d been in the health space for so long I knew how critical sleep was for your overall health. In fact, of all the foundations of good health, sleep is the most essential. And by lacking quality sleep I was severely impairing my wellbeing.
Keeping My Faith
But despite being at the lowest point in my life both physically and mentally I still held out hope. I don’t know if I was just delusionally optimistic or perhaps it was my faith in God, but I just kept trying to hang in there and find something that would turn things around. I’d done it before and I was determined to do it again. Although in all honesty this time it felt different. There were many nights where I’d just cry for hours when I thought about the unbelievably horrible odds I was up against.
But I continued to research and test endlessly. I tried using the same methodologies I’d used before to help heal from my post-concussion-syndrome, but they proved futile. Some of them are definitely effective for helping the brain out, but it just simply wasn’t enough for what I was facing. I needed a lot more.
Desperately Trying Everything
I tried all sorts of diets including vegan, paleo, and even keto. The latter of which I did to the tee for about 3 months until I started getting so nauseous I could barely eat. I was taking in so much fat at that point my body just started rejecting food altogether. Every time I ate I nearly threw up and felt sick for hours afterwards. This was admittedly one of the lowest points in my life because I’d really been hopeful that keto would help. I’d listened to so many cutting-edge experts and was sold on the high-fat, ketone theory of brain optimization and healing. But for me, it did nothing. And in fact, it hurt me more than helped.
I’d also been testing out everything from new foods and supplements, to meditations, breathing exercises, neurofeedback, cranial sacral therapy, chiropractic work, infrared sauna therapy, detoxing, cleansing, fasting, cold-water therapy, sound therapy, prayers, psychic consults, and just about every possible biohacking idea you could imagine. I was open to anything that would help no matter how radical or crazy it may have sounded. I had to heal and would’ve done anything to do so.
Some of the therapies I tried were useless, some of them helped a little, and some helped a lot.
Upgrading My Diet
When it came to my diet I found that juicing fresh fruits and veggies was a game-changer for me. I did this every day religiously and loved doing celery juice first thing in the morning followed by juicing oranges, bananas, cilantro, spirulina, wild blueberries and more superfoods in a giant fruit shake (known as the heavy metal detox smoothie pioneered by my friend Anthony William), as well as having lemon water throughout the day. I also added a hefty amount of dark leafy greens daily, cut back on the fats and ate a lot less meat than before, and chose brain-supporting foods at every meal. Overtime this did wonders for my headaches, my tremors, and my brain.
When it came to sleep, it took a long, long time to get a semblance of normalcy in that department. A lot of long, stress-filled sleepless nights or nights of maybe an hour or two of shut-eye were endured before I slowly started sleeping more than four or five hours again.
Searching For Sleep
I tested out so many things, especially when it came to natural sleep aids – different sleep-promoting foods, teas, tonics, vitamins, and herbs were constantly being added in or taken out depending on if they helped. And although it was frustrating when most of these tests offered no sleep support, I felt like Edison when he said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
I knew the more I kept testing things the closer I was getting to a solution. Again, call me delusional, as I probably was, but something inside me kept giving me the motivation to persist. And slowly, very slowly in fact, I was starting to sleep better. It was a gradual improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.
And then one day, many, many moons later and totally out of the blue, I woke up and realized I’d slept a full 8 hours for the first time in years.
I felt amazing. In fact, I cried. But this time they were tears of joy not agony.
Sleeping Normal Again
As I mentioned before, sleep is the pillar of health. As my sleep slowly improved over a period of many months, my health improved right along with it. There wasn’t just a bit of correlation, but an overwhelmingly blatant connection between the two. As I began to sleep three, four, five, and then six hours a night, I started to feel like myself again. Not quite myself, but very close.
By the time I was sleeping in the seven to eight hour range, all of my symptoms were gone. That’s how powerful sleep was. It wasn’t just a major part of healing from this crazy chronic disease I’d been battling, it was THE KEY.
Once I could sleep normal, I felt great. But like I said, there were a lot of failures before I finally found the amazing recipe for success. The perfect combination of things that actually work together to help you sleep like a baby again.
The Perfect Recipe For Sleep
That ideal combo of ingredients ended up being: Ashwagandha, Valerian Root, Lemon Balm, Humulus Lupulus, Melatonin, Magnesium, Calcium, and Black Pepper Extract. After studying so many sleep ingredients and literally testing everything under the sun out, these are the ingredients that held up in the scientific literature, but more importantly, in my own real life application.
You see it’s one thing to test something in a lab and come up with a theory behind why it should work in the real world. But it’s a totally different ballgame to actually see it working in real life. As it turns out many things that were supposed to work, based on scientific theory and testing did nothing in reality. I had many months of insomnia to prove this. But thankfully, I found the ingredients that not only held up in clinical research, but actual at-home use. You know, when you’re desperate for sleep and need something that can actually help. Yeah, that type of thing.