If you’ve been following me for a while you would know some of my personal health journey. In any case, I felt it was time to share a bit more with you, so here goes…

I’ve spent 15 years, thousands and thousands of dollars and many many hours, trying to work it all out. Not to mention a lot of blood (I can’t stand blood tests), sweat and tears.

Even after completing an exercise science degree at university, I wasn’t much closer.

The challenge for me was that I had been highly stressed for most of my life.

Physically, from playing so much competitive sport and dancing exams.
Emotionally, from growing up with an older sister who had a mental illness.
Mentally, from the normal challenges of growing up, leaving home, supporting yourself and working out what I’ve been put on this earth to do.

All of this took its toll on my body and left me with some pretty severe symptoms.

Chronic stomach pains which would end me up in hospital on morphine, chronic fatigue, food sensitivities, skin sensitivities, irritability, anxiousness, hair loss, painful periods, then ultimately an autoimmune thyroid condition.

But when it comes to things that are important to me, like my health, I’m like a dog with a bone – I was determined.

Whilst I was trying to manage my health, I was studying, travelling (my last year of uni was on exchange to upstate New York), then running my own personal training business on the Sunshine Coast. After four years in business I felt I wanted to help people in a much broader health sense, but wasn’t sure how.

Whilst I was marinating on that, I moved to Brisbane, started teaching dance classes and managing a dance studio. It was then I met Steve. We connected instantly with shared passions for health, good food, surfing, old school hip hop music and personal growth. This started a great friendship for three years before our heads connected with our hearts and we were a couple. Nine months later we were engaged and life was grand.

Whilst getting to know my new bestie, I got a ‘real job’ in mining recruitment as an Executive Assistant. I learnt so much about myself in this two years but also didn’t realise how stressed I was until I resigned and had a full blown meltdown from the instant relief of pressure.

After many different avenues within the health space, eventually my husband (yay!) and I discovered the field of personalised health and epigenetics. I had learnt about epigenetics at uni but it had never been explained in the context of personalised health before AND smart health technology has advanced massively since then!

I still remember the feeling when I first saw the online platform we now use with our clients… My eyes started leaking salty water, haha!

I thought – if only I had had this information it would have saved me an incredible amount of time, heartache and money!!!

But I’m a true believer in everything containing a blessing.

Then, like a high-speed white pages, all the people I knew in my life who were struggling with their health, flashed across the screen of mind.

This was it! THIS was how I was going to help myself, my family, my friends and my clients!!!

We became certified with the technology and started using it on ourselves and our clients.

After about a month of following my personal health profile, I had more energy, I was sleeping better, and I had started to lose weight. After five more months my thyroid blood levels came back into normal range for the first time since being diagnosed (four years earlier) and my symptoms started to disappear one by one.

The last month I’ve started back with high intensity training, running and lifting weights, which I was so used to my whole life but wasn’t able to have the energy, strength and ability to recover from for the past four years! Knowing that this type of movement is what my body is made for makes it even more enjoyable and motivating!

It’s not just me seeing cool changes, Steve has gone down a pants size after being the same size his whole adult life, and our clients are getting great results too!

This personalised approach to health has completely opened our eyes to how truly unique we all are.

It’s no wonder why people are so confused about health and are on this constant wheel of experimentation, from one thing to the next, in an attempt to find what works for them.

Even when you do strike some gold, after a while it stops working and you’re onto the next best thing.

I’ve found two main issues with the current generic approach:

• Health is NOT one-size-fits-all. There’s not one thing that works for everyone.
  You show me any health strategy you like and I’ll show you someone it DOESN’T work for. That’s because we are all DIFFERENT, in more ways than you can imagine. How can we possibly all need the same thing?!
• Variables. Too many to count.
  There are so many moving parts that make up the whole health and wellbeing picture. So when something goes wrong and you don’t feel so good, it’s so hard to tell what was the cause. Was it what I ate, drank, my sleep, the weather, my relationships, travelling to different places, my mindset or that I didn’t feel on purpose that month… All of these things and many more, affect how our genes are expressing and therefore our current state of health.

Before the internet, we had no way of emailing. Before personalised health, we had no way of knowing the specific health and lifestyle needs of each individual.

Now we do. That is the comparison of epic significance here. Welcome to the future of healthcare.

Now before you run off and have a gene test that’s being advertised more and more frequently, where you spit in a test tube and send it off to a lab – that is only going to tell you about 5% of the overall picture.

Why? Because it’s looking at your genes in isolation, rather than how they are expressing with your current lifestyle. Remember all those variables I just mentioned? These countless variables of environmental and lifestyle factors are what cause your genes to switch on and off. This is why, for example, you can have one or both of the breast cancer genes but never actually develop breast cancer.

This is called epigenetics. Where your environment and lifestyle account for around 95% of your current state of health.

So in my case, it was the combination of my environment and lifestyle factors that all contributed to certain genes switching on and certain genes switching off, which caused my body and mind to be in that state of dis-ease.

Even despite my best efforts of ‘eating healthy’ and looking after myself, I didn’t understand how my unique body and mind was designed to function, and specifically what it needed to live aligned to that design.

I’m talking about the best foods to eat and at what time, the foods to avoid, the best type of movement at what time, the best time and ways to rest my body and mind, my most productive work schedule, the best types of social interaction, the places that cause the least stress and give me the most support, even my natural skills and talents that help me feel on purpose.

… all specific for ME and MY body.

Before knowing this, I couldn’t understand why I had health problems when I was ‘doing all the right things’.

In addition to removing all this guesswork, I also got a Coach – because health is a team sport. Having that external feedback along the way has been super helpful rather than trying to do it on my own.

Another priceless member of my health team, has been and still is, my wonderful husband Steve. Whenever it got tough and I was feeling like crap, he was always quick to give me a big hug and say “it’s ok, we’ve just got to keep doing the process, we will get there”. When I got my blood tests back each time and the numbers had improved, “Woohoo!! That’s such awesome news babe! I’m so proud of you!!!” he would yell down the phone.

Now that Steve and I have a much clearer understanding of our individual bodies, how they operate and what they need, our lifestyle reflects that. Even our relationship has evolved as we learn more about how the other person views the world and what naturally drives them to do what they do. There is a much deeper understanding and patience.

So it’s not just my physical health that has improved but my relationships and how I view others has as well.

Have I worked it all out? No, but it sure does answer a heck of a lot of questions.

Now I have an equal feeling of peace of mind and excitement for the future!

If you are ready to start this game-changing journey of personalised health, I would love to work with you and support you along the way. Feel free to email me or read more about working with me.