Me in 2004 | age 54
If you listen to your body when it whispers, you won’t have to feel it when it screams.
I DIDN’T LISTEN TO THE WHISPERS AND I REALLY FELT THE SCREAM
Now in 2018 | age 68
Older and healthier, on the summit of the 33km Routeburn Track.
GIVE THE BODY WHAT IT NEEDS AND IT WILL HEAL ITSELF
“You have premature aging”, I was told by a naturopath
“Your problems are just because you are getting older, they are not going to kill you”, I was told by a doctor, when I was only in my late forties.
Today at nearly 70 yeas of age, I was recently told “You are so fit!”. This was from a colleague who was with me, when I had just chosen to walk up four flights of stairs instead of taking the lift. I had to stop and take a moment to appreciate this new version of myself, a fit and healthy person.
In my late forties I never would have believed this was possible for me!
My Earlier Years
One of the problems I had in my 40’s, is that I didn’t realise that I had a weak immune system. It’s an easy thing to ignore. I would get sick with colds a few times a year but soldier on. When I was 48 I got two colds in a row, and this time I felt it when my body screamed…all because I had ignored the whispers. I got an incredibly painful bacterial infection in my right hip which put me in the hospital overnight, and over the next 12 days it caused me to lose all the cartilage in that hip. Because I was under fifty, I tried to put off getting a hip replacement for as long as I could. In 2001, having just turned 51, I reluctantly proceeded to get the hip replaced; unfortunately the surgery was never right and I walked with a very painful limp for the next three years.
By the time I found something that made a substantial shift in my health I had a long list of issues that included: a condition that made my fingers go numb with a greenish pale white colour once a day, memory so poor that I would tell people, “If you don’t see me write it down then it doesn’t exist”, really poor sleep, being chronically tired, being unable to hear people talk in a crowded noisy room, and things would just drop out of my hands. I was literally losing my grip, I experienced severe muscle spasms in my hands, and I would often wake up with vertigo with the room spinning. I was walking with a painful and severe limp and had extreme pain whenever I stood up after sitting for very long.
I was still working fulltime but was needing to find less and less demanding situations as time went on.
Turning My Health Around
When I was 55 I found and started using four glycan based products. (These Mannatech products were Ambrotose, Catalyst, Plus, and Ambrotose AO). After two weeks I got this sense of wellbeing, within a month my sleep had improved and the weird numbing in my fingers began to go away. After two months I started to get my memory back. And I never thought that any of this could happen.
Something about the idea of helping your cells to communicate so your body could heal itself really made sense to me. And learning about the healing power of aloe vera being from a glycan or sugar called mannose intrigued me. I have always chosen natural and plant based products if possible. At the time there were no double blind placebo studies like there are now. Now glycobiology is a booming field of academic research, and cellular communication is understood to be occuring on the surface of our cells where the glycan or sugar molecules are. Now we know you can eat stabilised glycans and they increase the cellular communication along with improving your gut and brain health.
Taking Back the Life I Wanted
I’ve now been taking glycan based products for thirteen years. I no longer have pale green numb fingers, poor memory, chronic tiredness, vertigo in the morning, things dropping out of my hands, or not being able to hear people talk in a crowded room. In 2004 I was healthy enough to have a second hip replacement and I recovered completely. So now I can walk, go to the gym and exercise without pain.
I feel very lucky to have found something so amazing and was willing enough to just give it a go.
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Serious Health Now, Catherine Caldwell
A Mannatech Independent Associate and supplier of Mannatech products