Having grown up with asthma and varied other respiratory distress, chronic fatigue and severe allergies, I ran the full gamut of Western Medicine’s tests and treatments without much success. I had also watched my father struggling with heart disease as far back as I could remember. After a major heart attack resulted in a quadruple bypass at age 50, he had to take 24 pills a day from then on, as well as nitroglycerin tablets he would occasionally have to pull over to the side of the road, grimacing in pain and let melt under his tongue. The doctors then gave him 2 years to live. He ended up ignoring them to go on and have another heart attack followed by a double bypass at age 60. At that point the doctors were at a loss for an estimate. He went on to have a balloon inserted into his thigh every other year until his third heart attack at age 66 ended in his death 3 days later, just a year after his retirement.
Luckily my father’s stubbornness reassured in me a wariness in accepting doctors prognoses as inevitable. Which served me often in life and led me on the path to natural (orthomolecular) medicine and eventually to nutrition based holistic health coaching.
It was only in 2005, when I discovered the work of vitamin C pioneers Dr. Fred Klenner and his 1st successor, Dr. Robert Cathcart that I was able to finally function normally. I was so amazed at how proper dosage of vitamin C led me immediately to feeling healthy for the first time in my life, that I sold my apartment in Paris and traveled through 3 countries interviewing Dr. Cathcart, fellow pioneers of Orthomolecular Medicine Dr. Abram Hoffer, Dr. Richard Kunin, Dr. James Privitera, professor Steve Hickey, Chief Editor of the Orthomolecular News Journal and star of Food Matters Andrew Saul PhD, and many others.
You can browse many of these doctors papers as well as our interviews on my other site OMArchives.org as well as the OMArchives.org YouTube Channel.
A few of the 2005 OMArchives.org Interviewees:
(Despite the content being complimentary and overlapping. My original intent for the OMArchives.org site was a repository of the work of those pioneers, so I decided to make this separate site to focus my Health Coaching efforts and combine the Orthomolecular focus of supplements with the cutting edge, science backed nutrition learned from HMI (Health Mastery Institute). )
After years of mega-dosing Vitamin C to bowel tolerance (with 20 grams per day), and living a fairly healthy and active life, in 2012, I happened across a critical sentence I had somehow overlooked from Dr. Hoffer’s transcripts. He recommended to anyone suffering from sinus congestion, allergies or asthma, to cut out all lactose for a 2 week trial.
On day 3 of my lactose exclusion trial, I breathed through my nose for the first time. (Doctors had previously had my skull X-rayed, at a loss as to why I was unable to draw air from my nose. Never was nutrition discussed as a potential cause). I also had to reduce my vitamin C intake by half before reaching bowel tolerance (from 20g to 10g/day). As Dr. Cathcart explains, the amount of vitamin C you can take without gurgling in the gut or soft stools, indicates how sick you are! Clearly the consumption of lactose caused damages to my body that required 10g of vitamin C per day to repair, and even that much C didn’t allow me to breathe properly.
My energy increased to a new level and that’s where I realized that although vitamin C helps dramatically, finding the root cause of abnormally high levels of vitamin C tolerance are even more important. Added bonus, my metabolism sped back up and in 6 months I lost the 30lbs I had put on since an accident two years earlier in 2010. (With zero exercise beyond occasionally hobbling around briefly on crutches).
I then knew I needed to complete more formal studies in nutrition but was put off comparing curriculums and noticing conflicting information between courses of study. This was also when I discovered that all supplements get to claim “Made In” wherever they are simply packaged, and that the “German” vitamin C I had been importing was nothing more than Chinese powder put in a jar there.
Further investigation led to finding one remaining company that did in fact produce their own vitamin C in Scotland, from non-GMO Corn grown exclusively in the UK. The only retailer at the time making it available to the public was too expensive for me to be able to afford my maintenance dosage to bowel tolerance, so I decided to open GMO Free Vitamins in April of 2013, and managed to make DSM’s highest grade Ultra Fine ascorbic acid powder available at half their retail price, which I have managed to continue to do for 10 years now.
Just under 2 years ago I noticed an uptick of health coaches buying my vitamin C, all saying it was the only vitamin C the founder of their nutrition school, Lianna Shanti, used and recommended. So I started following her school, HMI, on social media and discovered that the admission director, Cahira, had been having great success helping her clients recover from type 2 diabetes.
My mother had been suffering from adult onset type 2 diabetes for 25 years by then. She had even spent a few months with me when I was living in Brazil where we tried our best with supplements and 3 miles a day of walking to set her straight. Although her numbers were better, it was by no means a radical improvement and it was so many supplements to take that she eventually dropped most of them off. As her ability to walk lessened, she eventually had to start taking insulin and over the years, her dosage kept climbing.
Chatting with Cahira, originally intent on having her coach my mother for her diabetes, I decided to sign up for HMI’s nutrition school. With Cahira’s pointers and the relevant course modules already absorbed, I had my mother come stay with me again for 3 months, this time surrounded by the beautiful turquoise waters of the Bahamas, and the results were better than we could have hoped for.
Within 10 days, under the supervision of her doctor, we had her insulin down by 1/4 of her initial doses, she was also down to 1/3 less of her prescription medications, including stopping all of her blood pressure medications and slowly regaining her mobility.
Over the 3 months she had reduced her insulin by 3/4, stayed off the blood pressure medications and also lost 30 lbs, bringing her below her initial weight pre-insulin. Just eating the same diet as her and taking some of the green juices, I was also down 22 lbs to my high school weight! She was able to obtain these results despite having the occasional drink in the evening and eating more rice and bread than advised. Those that really stick to the rules are able to get off their medication completely. However, she was happy to reach this state while maintaining what she felt to be a reasonable compromise, allowing her to continue enjoying some of her less healthy food choices.
Having already witnessed so many amazing transformations and recoveries with proper Orthomolecular supplementation alone, I am very excited for the future, integrating it with the cutting edge, science backed nutrition taught at HMI.
IMPORTANT: Information provided is intended for educational purposes and is not intended to be medical advice nor offered as a prescription, diagnosis or treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or physical condition. Always consult your own medical provider about your health and medical questions before making any health related decision. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration.