Women’s stories

“I can’t begin to tell you how good I’m feeling.”

Brooke is 48 and a member of our Personal Program for the past three months. She previously thought she had her health and hormonal balance well under control, but a few stressful events turned her moderate symptoms into severe ones. Now she is back on top and looking forward to climbing even greater heights. She wrote to tell us…

“I am writing to you out of tremendous appreciation for the information, approach, and positive results I have experienced since I ‘met’ all of you almost three months ago, and committed, at that time, to my own full well-being. I say ‘full’ well-being because after I took your free profile and the results described me as ‘someone who takes moderately good care of herself,’ I knew that ‘moderate’ indicated why I wasn’t feeling good ALL of the time.

“I knew and felt deeply for the very first time my full intention to take exceptional care of myself, and to feel great every day of my life. That’s when I decided to join your program.

“I’m 48 years old and very active. I play golf, I walk, and I garden. I grew up in a very athletic household, so exercise and staying fit and flexible have always been integral to my lifestyle. Being sedentary has never been an option. When it came to my hormones, on the other hand, I had come to accept my up-and-down history as just the cards I’d been dealt.

“Though my periods have been regular since my early 20’s, I’ve always had moderate (there’s that word again) to severe PMS. In fact, it was in my early 20’s that I developed adult acne, and I’ve been on various skin treatment programs since then to control those outbreaks. But when I read your Nutritional Guidelines, the light bulb went on! I thought about the ongoing imbalance in my life, long before the acne showed up. And certainly about the line of thinking that had contributed to the imbalance in the first place.

“I realized that over time, I had simply come to accept that for two weeks out of every month I would have to put up with the break-outs, the bloating, swollen and sore breasts, depression, and myriad other symptoms that would come and go, shift and change, depending on my stress levels and other triggers.

“Over the years I’ve remained vigilant about exercise, a decent diet, taking vitamins, and most importantly, developing my inner spiritual core. All of these efforts have sustained me fairly well, in that I’ve enjoyed overall good health. I’m really not one to rush off to see the doctor; I always look for an alternative approach to health, rather than simply accepting the opinions of Western medicine — though I mean no disrespect to those who differ. To that end, I’ve created relationships with medical advisors in my life who approach wellness from the inside out — rather than outside in.

“In other words, I feel that putting mere test results first is backwards. It’s been astonishing for me to read other women’s stories about physicians who’d left them by the wayside because they couldn’t prove anything through standard testing. Thankfully, I never had to go through the frustration of physicians trying to figure out what was going on with me while my symptoms continued to worsen. I found the Personal Program, and knew, as soon as I did, that I had landed on something big and exciting.

“The sudden death of my mother two years ago turned out to be a demanding and depleting emotional event and trigger. The PMS/perimenopause symptoms were really starting to beat me up.

“I couldn’t exercise enough, I couldn’t sleep enough. Like a creeping vine, ‘moderate’ became more severe and everything worsened, to include digestive problems, a serious drop in energy, and tremendous mood swings. My two good weeks out of the month had decreased to one at most. I really hit bottom this past February, and it was at that time that my husband went online for me, and found Women to Women.

“Now I was ready. For myself. For him. For all that I still wanted to accomplish in my life. As soon as I received my first Personal Program supplies I dove right in. My thinking was this: if I wanted to feel better immediately, half-measures wouldn’t work, so I adhered closely to the dietary suggestions: no processed sugar, no caffeine, and empty carbohydrates were off the list, too.

“Taking in more protein and good fats was another powerful adjustment for me. I compared the vitamins I had been taking to the Essential Nutrients and was knocked out by the EXTRA factor. In a nutshell, food wise and supplement wise, my body just hadn’t been getting enough of what it needed to restore balance. Sugars, caffeine and other processed foods had also been stripping away my reserves. Within two weeks of making the dietary adjustments and taking the Essential Nutrients, I started to feel so much better.

“The best way I can describe it is to say that my whole body, including my mind, started feeling calmer. I appreciated being able to talk with your advisors in those early days of my Program, just to check in and make sure that what I was feeling and experiencing was on-track. I’m going through my third cycle now since being on the Personal Program and I can’t begin to tell you how good I’m feeling. Virtually — dare I say — symptom-free.

“I’ve even stopped taking antibiotics for my skin, and so far, so good. You’re right — I’m really starting to see how great life can be when you feel good all the time. If I’m feeling this good with three months under my belt, I have to believe it’s only going to soar upward from here. I promise to keep you posted, but in the meantime, from the bottom of my heart, I cannot thank you enough.”

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Last Modified: 02/16/2010