Lifestyle Medicine🥦🏃

August 2007, I was informed by my neurologist I would be taking drugs for the rest of my life to manage my neurological condition.

I was 29 yrs old at the time and had spent most of my life up until that point, playing sport and living a very active, and very rewarding life.

I started to look into this a little more, and that raised some further questions I had of myself, around the situation I now found myself in.

I was able to find out through my research at that time that the average lifespan for males in Ireland was c. 79 yrs old, so in effect if I were to start taking this medication, that would be a defacto 50 year contract I was entering into with a drug company. So depressing for so many reasons.

Given my business background and the fact I am an investment manager and teach financial literacy for a living, I recognised pretty quickly, this was a seriously lucrative business model. Who in their right mind would sign up to a 50 year contract? I had a 2 year mobile phone contract at the time which I was reluctant to enter into, but 50?

In the USA they state that MS drugs cost c.$62,000 per annum per patient. Times fifty that’s c.$3.1M per patient, assuming most patients have a similar 50 year contract. We do know that most people seem to get struck down with MS between the ages of 20-40, so I am happy enough with my financial assumptions around my figures, for the purposes of this exercise.

If you could make a drug, get people to take it….. forever effectively, then you can create an incredible business model / company. This is why most drug companies are PLC’s, trade on the stock markets, and return above average returns to their investors on an annual basis.

However I was pretty ill in 2007, so I found myself totally conflicted and incredibly vulnerable at that time, to think much of this, so I decided to go with it. Plus my entire medical team suggested there was NO alternative approach to manage my illness. Interesting on reflection !

The next few years were horrendous.

I had over twenty different neurological symptoms ongoing throughout most weeks, and honestly this permanent FEAR of simply dropping dead at any point in time.

My weeks went from bad to really bad, to feeling awful. Between 2006 and 2010, the what I describe as “good days” were few and very far between. Most days were crap days, awful!

CHANGE

Around 2011, I started to find people and even some medical doctors around the world, who were promoting lifestyle medicine.

In effect, they were encouraging people to change their environment, and by doing this, the healing process within your own body would be facilitated. I was curious, but hesitant.

Then I came across Dr Terry Wahls, who was on all kinds of medication, but still in decline with her MS. She decided to stop the medication and started to treat her condition with a more nutrition based approach to healing.

Her entire ethos was based on cell health, firing up the mitochondria, and walking away from more conventional approach to managing disease. Within 18 months she was back cycling to work, and had been able to reverse the damage caused by her MS. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Here was a neurologist, actually doing what I was hoping I might be able to do and achieve.

Almost immediately I started to change my philosophy on the best way forward FOR ME, to manage my condition.

April 2016

5.5 years ago I injected for the last time. I had had enough of the needles, terrible side effects, and feeling like crap most days. I started my new life, where i would change my own behaviour, to see if I could improve my health.

The rest is history, and it is well documented across my website and social media channels, but I will say this. 💪

I went plant based on a Monday morning in Mid April 2016, and within the first 28 days, I started to notice the, what I call Brain Fog experience, starting to lift and disappear. I started to actually feel a lot better, stronger, and my clarity of thought was becoming much more profound.

Reflections

There are a number of things I would recommend to people to consider if they want to improve their long term health outcomes

1. Plant based diet - all illnesses are fuelled by inflammation, so doesn’t it make sense to eat an anti inflammatory diet. If you don’t go all in on the PBD, I would encourage you at a minimum to reduce your meat & dairy intake.

2. Movement - the science tells us exercise improves net health outcomes. Physical, mental, spiritually. It simply creates more happiness if you introduce daily exercise into your life.

3. Sleep - Dr Matthew Walkers book, “ Why we Sleep” is a must read. If you want to be healthy, you need to understand and respect the role Sleep plays. Study it, understand it, and improve it.

4. Stress - this is a killer. Life is one huge stress ball. Work, relationships, finance, family, all stress zones. My experience has taught me to end or reverse out of stressful situations. For example if it’s work related, leave your work and go do something else, stop talking about it, it could end up killing you.

5. Personal development - this is a major part of a healthy life. Being curious, reading books, listening to podcasts etc, all play a huge role in developing one’s philosophy in life. I only started reading at 28, it transformed my life.

I think it’s important people start to genuinely invest and prioritise their own health. Your local politician, government, even your family, they cannot protect you, they cannot fix you, they cannot heal you and make you feel better. This can only be achieved by YOU!

Personal responsibility is the way forward.

I think society now is under a huge sustained attack from many different angles.

Corruption and conflicts of interests, is at the heart of much of the messaging in the world today.

We are living through a daily onslaught of propaganda, fuelled by commercial interests from big Pharma, big business, big tech, and government.

There is no nuance, no open discussion, no open transparent discourse on the real issues now effecting our daily lives.

I have become more frustrated in recent months, as FEAR and big pharma in particular, are now driving public policy. It is simply wrong, unscientific and totally immoral, what is now going on.

For anyone who wants to further their understanding of how the pharmaceutical industry has been working over the last 100 years, I would encourage you to read the wonderful American Investigative journalist, Gerald Posner’s incredible book - PHARMA, greed lies and the poisoning of America.

If you do read this, then you will be able to make a lot more sense of some of what is going on right now.

It has never been a more important time for people to take back control of their own thoughts, behaviour and most definitely their own health.

This weekend I have been out in the mountains, running trails in the wind and the rain. I can’t explain how good that has been.

• In 2007, I was conditioned to believe that my life was, in all likelihood, going to get worse.

• I was told I might be in a wheelchair within 10 years.

• I was told I would be on medication for the rest of my life.

I am just thankful that somewhere within my soul, I had the strength, power and conviction to “never give up on that thought, that idea, that one day I might just improve, I could get my health back, and that I could live a good positive rewarding life”

The best investment you will ever make is in yourself 🤳

You deserve it, I highly recommend it, and remember, “everything is possible”.

I wish you well ✊

CD ☘