MY STORY
I thought I had a pretty good idea how to eat.
As a ten-year vegetarian, I relied heavily on pasta and other grains to feel satiated. When I married into a traditional Greek family, who viewed meat avoidance as highly suspect, I even resisted their attempts towards carnivore conversion. That is, until my first child died at birth.
Such emotional loss caused me to question everything, including the effect of protein deficiency on my baby's hydrocephalus. In order to ensure adequate intake of essential amino acids (naturally present in meat), vegetarians need to combine certain food categories. I decided, instead, that while we tried for our next child, I would add some meat back into my diet. Within 4 years, I was blessed with two healthy babies.
I retained my discomfort around meat, but I noticed that my oldest daughter, in particular, craved meat with the same intensity as my husband. This should have been my first lesson in bio-individuality.
At age 13, my daughter was diagnosed with food allergies to gluten and dairy and was told to remove these from her diet. I did my best to eliminate these foods at home, but it is difficult to restrict a willful teenager from eating culturally dominate foods, especially when spending time with her peers. We did not understand then how her food allergies would morph beyond physical discomfort into mental imbalances - ADD, anxiety, mood swings and eventually addiction.
As a high school teacher, I noticed that too many students were struggling with anxiety, ADHD, ADD, depression and substance abuse. I researched and wrote my master's thesis on the need to incorporate social / emotional learning––such as mindfulness training, self-awareness and self-regulation techniques––into secondary curriculum to provide what seemed to be missing for young people in our culture.
After 4 years of ill health and dead-end pharmaceutical interventions, my daughter was ready to remove from her diet, completely, foods containing gluten, dairy, sugar and GMOs––the initial suggestion by the doctor who had first diagnosed her at 13. Within days, her physical, mental and emotional symptoms simply disappeared. The transformation was astounding.
I enrolled in a holistic nutrition program at Bauman College, in Berkeley, California, and for the next 18 months, studied the complex dance between food quality, nutrients, genetics, digestion, absorption, lifestyle, stress and the accumulation of toxins in our bodies. It awoke in me a passion to understand root cause resolution and to help others navigate through their own health complexities and challenges. I am grateful for this journey; it has led me to the work that I love.