Ideal Health

I've been interested in my health for a long time. I think it started with being the 'chubbier' of two sister's growing up and wanting to be thinner...now though, it has gone to a whole new level. In 1999 I was 18 years old, and I had a stroke. Having had a stroke I started taking a drug called coumadin. Coumadin is a drug that thins your blood, and since I had a clot (though at the time they had NO idea why) it just seemed to make sense as a precautionary measure to give me a drug to thin my blood so it didn't clot. Interesting things that involve coumadin, are vitamin K, alcohol, and many more things that can 'affect' coumadin, honestly I don't remember them all. I do remember I had to be very careful not to eat too much garlic, broccoli or anything with a lot of vitamin K though, as it could throw off my protimes. Ah...protimes, I was 18, in my first semester at Parsons School of Design and I was in my first year (called the foundation year, known for being a difficult year to put it nicely) and going to the hospital 2-3 times a week to get my blood drawn for a protime test, which measures how fast my blood was clotting.

This lasted for about a year, eventually they figured out some other variables, mainly a PFO that I had in my heart (Patent Foramen Ovale I think is how it is spelled) which is basically a tiny tiny hole between the two chambers of my heart. TEE is the name of the test they used to find this little hole...it was the most disturbing test I'd gotten at this point (until eventually getting a spinal tap a year later that led to a spinal headache, but that comes later). This combined with the fact I was taking birth control at the time of the stroke were my main 'risks' and loosely determined cause of my stroke. To remedy this we scheduled a surgery to put a 'CardioSeal' in my heart to patch the hole (PFO) I believe the day was September 20th 2001...it's hard to forget those things.

Long story short, I had the surgery at Lenox Hill in NYC about a week after 9/11/2001 the doctor happily told me afterward that my risk of having another stroke was back to any other 20 year old girl now. Sometime in the next week, I'm thinking the next day or next month but I'm not sure so I'll say week, I became weak on my right side, and went to NYU ER trying to explain that I thought I was having a stroke. My 'stroke' in 1999 had been my left side, this was on my right, there was freaking out, lots of tests, more coumadin, and eventually a spinal tap (the one I mentioned before) after which I had to get a 'blood patch' procedure to treat the spinal headache caused by my spinal cord leaking and pulling on my brain (terrible terrible terrible, I wouldn't wish it on anyone). Then I was diagnosed with MS on 11/21/2001.

At this point I started doing a LOT of research and found out about the SWANK diet, cut way back on milk, beef, and continued working out (as I'd been doing before) to do all that I could to keep the feeling in BOTH sides of my body from here on out. I learned a lot about the impact of what we eat, the excercise we do, and the way we think about things affects our physica self, and I'm still learning more to this day.

I was first exposed to Arbonne sometime in the late 90's when I saw what my mom was using, then again in 2005 when I went to a party of someone who had come right into the store I was managing offering a facial for free. Skip ahead to 2009 when I was looking for additional streams of income...at first I just figured my mom would like it so she could be my first customer, then I learned about the product. More importantly than that, I learned about what WASN'T in the product, namely cancer causing ingredients found in most other products as well as things like petroleum jelly being a leading cause of aging coming second only to sun damage. My mission for more money turned into a mission to keep people away from parabens and petro-products they put on their skin as well as their families (especially babies!), and of course to provide an alternative with Arbonne. Then of course I lost my job, and so the mission became a dual mission, to protect people AND to make money...

I also found out about something called Trump Network, which is actually in pre-launch, I won't post too many details here but contact me if you want details through the site I have registered with them HERE or you can listen to/read information from Dr. Mac HERE. Basically it is providing custom nutritional sup0plements to people meeting their personal needs as determined through simple metabolic testing and prices WAY below what your doctor would charge for the same service. Again it attracted me because of the high standards for quality of product and the attention to the different needs of different people. Different tests are there to measure variables related to eeverything from allergy testing (which is the next test I'll be getting), how your body deals with stress , absorbs calcium, hormones are processed and so much more.

SO...yeah. It's been a long but short journey and if you have any questions or are interested in any of the above, shoot me an email and we can chat about it.

Cheers!!!