Sarah, UK: Sarah was my first wonderful client,  who had a duodenum ulcer and fibromyalgia. She came to see me about her ulcer in the hope of avoiding surgery and was having a procedure every 6 weeks to widen the gap at the top of her small intestines (duodenum) to allow food to pass through from the stomach. In the process her fibromyalgia (which everyone said you can’t do anything about) resided to the point she no longer required medication.

I thank you so much Sheryl for all the encouragement, support, research and most of all becoming my friend. I know I could have done it without you but it would have taken me a lot longer and probably would have been more painful in more ways than one. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me achieve something that I thought was impossible.

Nine years ago I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia after a pretty stressful Ceasarean with my fourth child. I was teaching my children at home and found that very difficult to manage. I couldn't sleep at night as the pain was unbearable, so in turn, I was completely useless to my children in the daytime. They got used to it and we seemed to manage, I set work up for them while I slept on the sofa, not really a good relationship with them but that was all I could manage.

The doctors gave me some anti-depressants to help me sleep and codeine for the pain, very soon I was on the highest dose. It was so frustrating because before this I was very active, lots of bike riding, walking and basically having fun with the family.

In the meantime, I was also looking after my elderly Mum who lived next door but quite often she ended up looking after me, cooking meals etc.

After about 3 years I weaned myself off the anti-depressants as I didn't feel I was having any benefit from them. The pain and exhaustion was still there. I felt absolutely useless as a mother, wife, friend. I started putting on weight as I was becoming so languid. I was beginning not to like myself, so I was comfort eating. I was now a size 14, I had never been that size other than when I was pregnant, then got back to a reasonable size quite quickly.

Last October (2014), I became quite ill and couldn't eat as it was very painful and last Christmas was just awful, I was in so much pain, in and out of the Dr's. They rushed me in to Hospital just after Christmas and discovered that I had a large ulcer on my Duodenum which was preventing the food from going down properly. They did an Endoscopy to discover this and decided to use a balloon like thing to enlarge the tube so that the food could go down. They said that I would have to have this every 6 weeks for a year and then reassess. After a year if it hadn't cleared up or became worse they were talking about doing an operation that would turn my stomach upside down. I looked into it and realised that that was quite an invasive, long (4 hours) procedure, something I wasn't really looking forward to.

That's when you helped me Sheryl, you did lots of research for me and we came up with a plan to try and eradicate the ulcer. I went on a very strict Paleo diet and ate lots of cabbage. I thought I would struggle, particularly no carbs but really embraced it. I tried a couple of different supplements that you suggested as well.

I had about 5 Endoscopies and on that 5th one the Dr said that I didn't need anymore as the ulcer was no longer big enough to give me anymore problems. I was flabbergasted, I couldn't believe that eating only raw fruit, veg, fish and meat could have such a profound effect in such a short period of time.

Another wonderful thing happened along the way too, my Fibro was becoming less tense and I was taking less pain relief. I am now off all my pain relief and living the life that I once had, only I feel even better now than I did in my 20's. I get up at 7 and go for a brisk walk before the family get up, I can play football with my children again, I don't sleep in the day, we go out for long walks together( last week we were out for 5 hours walking) and I have just joined a Tennis club. I do lots of activities with my children on a daily basis and I haven't had any pain relief for 1 month now.

My life has been transformed, Sarah

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