Medical Doctors missed nutrient deficiencies and poor diet: Jessie’s story from sickness to health by eating real food.

A little while back Jessie from Australia sent me an email asking to sign a petition to stop the Heart Foundation from promoting margarine and processed food, food that had contributed to her own ill-health:

“Hi Julianne, I love your site, eating this way has absolutely changed my life.

I was very very unwell and hospitalised so many times and took the advice of Doctors and politically correct nutritionists before I decided to take things into my own hands and sort out my health. I have recently started a petition to stop the Heart Foundation promoting margarine and processed foods and get saturated fats back into our diet. I know this is something you are passionate about and I want to ask for your help in getting the message out, maybe you could write a blog, share with your followers. Let’s do whatever it takes to stop the lies and the money-making bullshit. Enough is enough, they have gotten away with poisoning people far too long! Hope you can help. Here is the link http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/the-heart-foundation-stop-promoting-margarine-and-processed-food”

Intrigued – I asked Jessie to elaborate as I wanted to share her story with a wider audience. She wrote back with the following. What astounded me was that not one medical Doctor or specialist stopped to look at her diet or test her for deficiencies. This to me is a huge indictment on the state of our training for medical doctors, and frankly I’m appalled. I know Jessie’s story is not unique, I hope in future we will have doctors that look at the food that makes the person first.
“I used to eat loads of junk food, I was seriously addicted to sugar and at school they served basically processed food (sausage rolls, lasagna, hot chips etc) bags of chips, lollies and soft drink. I would have weet bix for breakfast, eat all that crap during the day, go to the 7 eleven after school for more coke/chocolate/chips and eat McDonalds a few times a week as well. I thought because I was skinny and a dancer I could eat whatever I wanted and get away with it, I thought after all if food could harm us they wouldn’t serve it in the school and the government would control what was ok! Haha – naive as anything.

In school we were taught the food pyramid (proudly sponsored by Kellogg’s and the meat and dairy industry) I thought that I was relatively healthy because I ate plenty of bread, pasta and cereal, drank loads of milk and loved my cheese, had some meat in my Bolognese and burgers and had some mashed vegetables now and then with my sausages. I drank loads of apple juice and had mango weis bars by the truckload for my fruit intake haha.. my sugar addiction was out of control. I did however thankfully still consume butter, however it was butter soft (butter mixed with canola oil and less fat)

All around me everyone was obsessed with fat, they refused to have anything with fat in it but consumed all the sugar in the world! Crazy stuff. I began to develop skin problems and intestinal problems, I also had high levels of anxiety, felt very low and would often have panic attacks. I was diagnosed years later with leaky gut- this means that the lining of the digestive system becomes more permeable then it should be, like tiny holes, allowing particles of food and other toxins to enter the blood stream and wreak havoc all through the body.

In the mean time I became more and more unwell, my immune system was not functioning correctly.  Once I turned 18 I was going out drinking vodka double blacks on the weekends (loaded with sugar) and eating McDonald’s, triple choc muffins, hot chocolates and all the sugar I could get my hands on. I had a very severe case of tonsilitis which took three rounds of antibiotics to fix (further adding to the leaky gut), I became thinner and thinner and felt exhausted constantly.

In 2011 I was hospitalised again and again, I kept getting vomiting bugs and I got adeno virus (the killer cold) and Epstein barr virus. At my lowest weight I was 38kg, I couldn’t get out of bed and I felt like I was dying.  I had migraines and started having severe reactions to food, at one stage I could only eat about 10 things, literally. Every Dr I went to told me I was depressed and prescribed Zoloft, I was also taking sleeping pills for some time. The hospital didn’t say anything about food and the Drs said the food I ate had nothing to do with it. Even specialists couldn’t help me.

Finally I saw a Naturopath who did a full blood analysis. I was EXTREMELY zinc deficient, manganese and potassium deficient, had several viruses and the beginnings of an autoimmune disorder, leaky gut, malabsorption issues and a whole host of other abnormalities.

I was told to completely cut sugar from my diet which I found extremely difficult, as well as bread, pasta and cereal, I was to have a wholesome diet consisting of real food, vegetables, small amounts of fruit, some soaked seeds and nuts, organic grass fed meat and REAL healthy fats, mostly coconut oil for it’s immune boosting function and it’s antiviral and antimicrobial properties. It has taken a long time to heal as I have done years of damage but each day I get better, I only drink pure filtered water and no longer have any processed food in my diet. I cook with healthy saturated fats as well as some organic, virgin cold pressed olive oil, coconut oil and eat good quality meat and chicken.

This is a photo of me in 2011 at 38kgs, scary shit huh? This is why I want to help everyone understand the importance of real food, not having loads of processed crap filled with sugar and including real, healthy, natural fats.

So please – get online and support this petition! Heart Foundation: Stop endorsing margarine and review the ‘tick of approval’ program

Please share, facebook and tweet to get this message out there Thanks!

Jessie kindly supplied a recent picture, she is back up to 44 kg and working on gaining more weight:

 You can learn more about Jessie from her blog www.thehealthyjessie.wordpress.com and my page is www.facebook.com/getafreshstart

2023: My current perspective – I am hesitant to recommend saturated fat, instead minimally processed whole food, monounsaturated fat should be the fats of choice.