Humans of Paleo: Natalie White

These Humans of Paleo posts were inspired by the Humans of....Facebook pages. This is our attempt to share very personal stories of Paleo with you, hopefully inspiring you to make changes with your diet and lifestyle.  ENJOY!

We'd love to hear your story, please reach out here if you'd like to share!

Meet Natalie White:

We all have one and can recite it at a moments notice....our story. Our lives are made up of images, snapshots and moments we freeze in time, storing them in our brains that make up our story.

Some of those moments and images outshine others, some simply slip away never to be remembered. The day I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis is now part of my story, and without a doubt defines a big portion of who I am today. This is My Multiple Sclerosis story.

July 2, 2014

Lying in the ER unable to walk or talk after being severely sick for a month I got the news: Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

I had heard of MS but had no clue what it actually was. So, I did what any normal human being of this day and age did: I Googled non-stop for days. What I discovered horrified me and made me dig even deeper.

First, what is Multiple Sclerosis?  The Google definition (I'll save you the trouble) is as good as any to start: 

"A chronic, typically progressive disease involving damage to the sheaths of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, whose symptoms may include numbness, impairment of speech and of muscular coordination, blurred vision, and severe fatigue."

How does conventional medicine treat this disease that attacks your nervous and immune system?  With immune suppressing drugs, of course.

How could an incurable disease that attacks your immune system be treated with immune suppressing drugs? Not only that, but the drugs all have terrible side effects! I have never been one to take medicine and now I was being told I was going to have to inject myself daily and take multiple pills? No thank you.

I was bound and determined to fight this brain eating disease with every ounce of life I had in me. From the best I can tell, I have been sharing the real estate in my head with MS since the year 1999, right after the birth of my second child. That is the earliest memory I can pinpoint of my symptoms. I was in and out of doctor's offices over the next several years trying to figure out what was going on.

I had been given antidepressants, anxiety drugs, told to exercise, told I had IBS, sent to the eye doctor, sent to the dentist, CT scans....blah blah blah. If you've been diagnosed with MS, you know the story.

So, I stopped going to doctors.

I felt like I was getting nowhere and fast. As my former life began to crumble and enormous amounts of pressure and stress built within my body, I began to have more and more trouble that started to affect my daily living. I was too stubborn and tainted from my last experiences with doctors and began to excuse every episode away.

I focused on rebuilding my life and doing things my way with no excuses, no regrets. I am a fighter by nature.

2014 was shaping up to be a defining year in my life.

I never quit. I am strong, relentless, loving and not at all the same person I was years ago. I have since married the man that I believe was tailor made just for me, at just the right time. Yes, after the birth of my children and the gift of this man in my life, I will never question if there is a God. Ever.

My Beautiful MS Story

So these moments in time, these snapshots are what make up my story. They are deep and wide. Unfortunately, they were slowly being stolen from my brain piece by piece by MS.

In my search of what to do to care for myself and how to treat my MS I discovered Dr. Terry Wahls and her Protocol book, a paleo based lifestyle that made 100% sense to me. This paleo lifestyle became my lifeline in a world that could easily have swallowed me up if I allowed it.

I have never thought, “why me” or even cried for myself, that would be a waste of good energy. And if you want to know anything about MS, we must conserve our energy (check out The Spoon Theory ) for the things that matter most, and so my story continues as I hang on to the memories of days past and feel blessed for each new one.

I read Dr. Wahls book in two days flat and began immediately adopting the belief that real whole food was going to be my MS medicine.

No messing around here, I started implementing the 3rd level of her lifestyle called Wahls Paleo Plus. I also began drinking lots more fresh clean water to not only hydrate myself but to help cleanse my body of the toxins that were living in my cells and making me sick.

Within days my symptoms started to dissipate.

I had energy return to my once lackluster body. I began to walk straight. My slurred speech began to improve. Yeah, it was working.

Weeks into it I had some unexpected side effects from my "food medicine". My hair got thicker, my nails were stronger, my skin looked more youthful and the extra weight that had piled on over the last two years started melting off. My brain fog was lifting, I had fewer headaches and I was eating the best food ever. Sold.

To this day I am constantly refining my paleo diet and will forever remain a student of real whole food and clean living. I will never go back to my old processed toxic lifestyle. MS truly saved my life.

From Diagnosis to Inspiration

I took what could have been a terrible day in my life and let it inspire me and propel me into a new world. A new world of hope, education and creation. Since my diagnosis of MS in 2014 I have become the co - Founder/CEO to the company Healthy Human.

In my quest for the perfect toxic free water bottle that was quickly becoming my new best friend, I could not find one that checked off everything I wanted, so my business partner and I designed one, patented and trademarked what is known today as the Healthy Human Stein.

We released it in Oct 2015 to the public and sold out within 3 months. We have since become the only certified Paleo Friendly product outside of food and beauty by The Paleo Foundation!  How cool is that?

We also have been honored to be nominated The Best New Paleo Product by Paleo Magazine in 2015. This was a natural fit to me, clean eating goes hand in hand with clean drinking and the vessel we use.

The world is changing, we are waking up to the fact our food chain and products are poisoned and the real answer to preventing and reversing disease lies within what we put in our bodies and surround ourselves with.

I will forever and always eat the paleo lifestyle as it has reversed my MS and opened up a whole new world where I can help inspire others everyday, this is why I am here. I also chose to share my personal journey through my website mssavedmylife.com as well as on FB where you can see my grocery hauls and daily eats.

Because of MS I have reversed my MS symptoms with a paleo lifestyle, co-founded an amazing company, inspired not only my family but thousands of people to eat clean real food. So these moments in time, these snapshots are what make up my story, they are deep and wide and shall continue to unfold like a present each day.

Cheers to all our stories!

Love, Natalie

We'd love to hear your story, please reach out here if you'd like to share!

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