A lot of times when we think about people’s health, you see people focus on overweight issues. There’s a part of the population that’s underweight. I’ve always been a really small framed and I never ate well my entire life.
I probably should have been very heavy because I could live on McDonalds, honey buns, and doughnuts. And I never could figure out why I was having some of the issues that I was having.
I was watching channel eight one night and Neile Jones was doing her special with Dr. Mark on DNA. That episode made me pick up the phone and call Mark. I’ve known Mark for many, many, many years, and he remembered my name when I called him, and told him that I wanted to come in and talk to him about my health.
I knew just enough about DNA and genetics to know that I wasn’t hitting a home run in the genetic field. I went in and did the testing, had the blood work done, and then the initial assessment. When it came back, the results are what I had expected, that most of it was around my diet.
I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis probably 25 years ago. I’ve always had digestive issues, going three and four days without going to the bathroom. I mean, that was normal for me. I was hospitalized ’cause it was so severe.
Years later when I talked to my gastroenterologist, I was less than 24 hours away from losing my colon. He said in the last ditch effort, he just x5 my medications in the hospital, and that’s what drove it into remission.
People just don’t understand the pain and misery that comes from your colon and guts shutting down. I wanted to die in the hospital. I wanted to just give up because when it’s the colon, you’re a cancer risk.
They want me to take colonoscopies every year, which I’ve done. And every year, they would find fissures, polyps, pseudo polyps… If you don’t know what those mean, God bless you. They were things I dealt with on a daily basis though.
I had a colonoscopy a year after I started seeing Mark, and it was perfect. The doctor said, “My God, what have you done? The inside of your intestinal walls are just like new, no polyps, no bleeding. Everything has turned around. ”
Living with that for 25 years, it just never clicked how important it is, what you eat. I just tell people “if you’re ready, I can tell you something. I could tell you how it changed my life, and it’ll change yours, if you just give it a shot.”
