I like to say, or joke really, that I was a healthy child but have been a sickly adult. You see I didn’t really get sick as a child. I had the usual colds, a bout with chickenpox and even german measles but the reality is I was a healthy kid. No chronic issues or anything that really impacted my quality of life. I did have some injuries and I would say I had weak ankles and wrists always straining them and wrapping them. As an adult, however, I have been anything but healthy.

In search of answers

I’ve spent my whole adult life searching for answers to why I haven’t woken up refreshed since I was 17-18, some would say chronically fatigued. I’ve seen doctors, nutritionists, naturopaths, iridologists, kinesiologists really anyone who I thought would give me answers. Doctors would run blood tests, all my levels would usually come back normal with a little vitamin d or iron deficiency here and there. They would then tell me I needed to exercise more, get a better sleep routine and eat better…ironic telling a chronically fatigued person to exercise. The nutritionist helped me discover I have intolerances to lactose and gluten but cutting these things out didn’t change my energy. I also went through attempts to get my diet on track by giving up sugar, really hard for someone who likes sweet things like I do. Again no change to my energy so I gave that up…also a trip to Cuba.

You can read about my journey of giving up sugar here.

Now moving on to my dabbling into non-traditional methods for finding answers for my chronic fatigue. My mum being a mum, and concerned about my health, got me an appointment with a naturopath. It was interesting, she went into the alkalinity of the body and how I should be eating for my blood type. Now, this is all well and good but I don’t do well with structured diets and never grew out of hating vegetables. Suffice to say her advice although well-meaning didn’t help mostly cause I also didn’t adhere to the guidelines strictly. I probably have the documents she gave me still if I wanted to try it again.

Mum also set up an appointment with an iridologist, I guess she figured the more options the better. Iridology is an alternative medicine technique whose proponents claim that patterns, colours, and other characteristics of the iris can be examined to determine information about a patient’s systemic health. Now iridology is considered a pseudoscience and is not backed by any scientific study.

Now I was less eye-rolly at the advice given by the iridologist, she picked up some stuff that really hit home. One thing I always remember from that appointment was the iridologist talking about the strength I saw in my mother and how it shaped how I felt I needed to act and behave. (There’s a longer story here about my parent’s relationship and my childhood.) The iridologist gave me a disgusting, gag-inducing concoction I had to take every morning like medicine. The good news is I did see some improvement! YAY! so I continued to get more of the medicine and despite the gag-inducing taste took it each day. Unfortunately, whether due to my body changing or getting used to the ingredients or some other reason, the effects wore off. After months and months of taking a shot of this concoction every morning and seeing some changes at the start, my energy again was in the toilet. So I stopped, which also made sense as I had to get the concoction posted from my hometown to Sydney.

Giving up

I gave up for a while and just learned to live with less energy than most others. I was still able to function, my chronic fatigue wasn’t debilitating to the point I couldn’t get out of bed. I mean I moved from my bed to the couch and then didn’t move some days but at least I got up. I may have visited a few other doctors and gone through the motions of getting the blood tests and getting no answers again.

After finding some success with a doctor on another issue and deciding I had finally found a new GP I decided to begin my quest for answers again. I went through the whole song and dance again with the blood tests and no real answers. I was also going through a breakup and on some medication for cystic acne that pushed me into some depression so any lack of energy was put down as part of that.

Starting the search again and finding some answers

In my renewed search I decided to give a kinesiologist a try. Kinesiology is a form of therapy that uses muscle monitoring (biofeedback) to look at imbalances that may be causing disease in the body. Now there is some science to back the benefits of kinesiology but there are also people who don’t believe it is worth anything. I personally found many benefits both in how my body felt and in the decisions I made thanks to the sessions. The kinesiologist is actually the one who triggered me to give up sugar and although I didn’t see a long term impact on my energy from the kinesiology or from giving up sugar, there were benefits.

For many years I had intermittent tremors in my hands that would appear randomly and increase with anxiety. My mum was worried it indicated I was becoming diabetic because my Pa, mum’s dad, had the same tremors but constantly and he also had diabetes. Thankfully all the doctor’s blood tests would always say I didn’t have diabetes but the tremors were still around. But after going to the kinesiologist and giving up sugar the tremors disappeared. I still may get shaky now and then, especially when stressed but overall they were gone. The kinesiologist also helped me process some childhood grief during the sessions as well. I will never regret going to the kinesiologist and really the only reason I stopped is that my kinesiologist moved out of the city.

The supplements I was taking to try and “fix” my body and energy.

After another break from my search, life circumstances pushed me into a renewed search for answers and I tried a new naturopath! This one seemed to find some answers, there were more but different blood tests to what the doctors would do. It turned out that my body was overproducing adrenalin. I was constantly in the flight or fight response, my nervous system and body were under constant stress whether I felt it or not. This was fascinating to me! I had answers that may actually help…FINALLY! So I got my medicines and supplements and there were physiological changes in my blood tests when we checked them but I didn’t notice the changes in my energy. The effort became too much and in the end, I gave up again.

I was in my early thirties and couldn’t remember a time when I woke up in the morning refreshed. Now I had been through times of depression and bad health decisions that would have no doubt impacted my energy, I own that. But when I’d see my friends getting up and going out to brunch or the beach on the weekend I would be laying on my couch with my dog barely with enough energy to take Wally for a walk. I could push through if I needed to, anyone with any form of chronic illness or chronic health condition knows how to push through. The world is after all built for the healthy and able-bodied, if you don’t fit into that you have to adapt the world won’t adapt to you.

Answers were coming but it would take something big, to read my journey to find answers for my chronic illness click here.