Chapter 1: My path to improved well-being

More than two years ago, I passed out one night. I had gone to bed shortly before midnight, but I couldn't fall asleep due to a persistent pain in my side.

Following around two hours of lying in bed without success, I decided to give up and leave the bed. Feeling unwell, I made my way to the bathroom. Luckily, I had informed my boyfriend earlier, and the next thing I knew was him calling my name, as he discovered me unconscious on the bathroom floor. He was visibly shocked and quickly called for an ambulance.

Although I was feeling improved when the paramedics reached our home, I chose to accompany them to the emergency room. It was quite ironic that this incident occurred on my birthday, as I ended up spending the morning in a hospital bed before being discharged due to the pain subsiding and the test results being inconclusive. A week later, I visited the family doctor, but he didn't provide any additional insights.

After this incident, I became more attentive to my health and started addressing issues that were troubling me. The pain I experienced was due to the onset of digestive problems. Initially, I didn't pay much attention to it, assuming it was caused by something I couldn't digest well. However, I found it challenging to identify the exact cause and only made the simple change of avoiding liquorice. The discomfort persisted, prompting me to seek medical help a year later, leading to a referral to a gastroenterologist.

The gastroenterologist verified that there was an excess of air in my digestive system, beyond the usual amount, but only recommended cutting out bread as a solution. This was disappointing news for me, given my fondness for bread. Recently, a friend remarked, "You've always been someone who enjoys bread and pasta."

For a while, I believed that nothing could beat pasta with cream sauce. Nevertheless, I must confess that over the past few years, I have begun to feel uneasy consuming such dishes. I often feel heavy and almost nauseous or get a headache that I attribute to the cream, whether I'm having pasta or cream-based soups. It seems that I may have been ignoring the effects of my diet for quite some time.

Although I initially struggled to accept the recommendation to eliminate bread from my diet and was hesitant to adopt a bread-free way of living, it became clear that I had developed some food intolerances. I often felt unwell after consuming chocolate or having a cocoa or latte at work, and eventually, I reached a breaking point. Therefore, I enrolled in a three-week cleansing program before Christmas, which commenced in January 2020.

From the course, I gained valuable insights into the impact of diet on the body, leading to an immediate improvement in how I felt after adjusting my eating habits. Despite not enrolling in the course with the intention of changing my diet entirely, I did adopt some beneficial practices initially. However, over time, I reverted to my old eating habits. This shift resulted in feeling even worse than before due to consuming foods that my digestive system struggled to process, undoing the progress made during the clean diet phase.

After realizing that my digestion reacts negatively to dairy products and gluten-containing foods, I have accepted this new reality. Since then, I have been on a journey to modify my lifestyle and have gained knowledge about healthier eating habits, which I will discuss in more detail later.