How I got here (part 1).
I will turn 40 next year. Only recently have I felt like I am truly awake.
Disclaimer: the products, creators, authors and books mentioned are sincere consumer opinions, from my point of view as a plant based enthusiast seeking to improve life... my way. None of them are paid advertisements.
I am a 5´3” Peruvian with Japanese genes that is very comfortable living and working in Germany. At work, I jokingly introduce myself as: “made in Japan, assembled in Latin America and deployed to Germany”, which is very accurate!
I studied food technology and by chance became a packaging engineer. I have worked developing “boxes, bottles and bags” for companies like Nestle, Henkel-Schwarzkopf and Ecolab (currently). You can find me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-higa-0ba37837/
Important: this account of events comes from a very personal place, it is what happened to me and how I started to heal myself. I had wonderful professional support and I recommend you do the same before embarking into anything.
It all started in 2017: tough career decision leaving a high-end job. A standard health check uncovered an unusually high blood pressure for a “healthy” woman my age. I looked for a GP (General Practitioner) as a first step. I got lucky after googling “doctors near me”, she turned out to be a wonderful doctor who was sharp, stern yet a very warm human.
Weeks later I got diagnosed with Graves-Basedow (hyperthyroidism), which means that your immune system makes your thyroid overwork, resulting in extremely high BP (blood pressure), chronic insomnia and a myriad of other hidden symptoms.
But why?
I was not overweight, I exercised sparingly but was not sedentary at all. I ate “healthy”. I changed towards a seemingly slower-paced job. Never a smoker. But I did have insomnia and lived in constant anxiety, but this is normal… right?
I got prescribed heavy doses of thyroid blockers and beta blockers (to get the BP under control), together with the explanation: “it could be a genetic condition, anything could´ve triggered it.”
There is very little info out there regarding Graves-Basedow. You will find much more about its counterpart: Hashimoto´s thyroiditis (when the thyroid is not working fast enough). But they both seem to stem from the same thing: autoimmune disease.
I will not delve into autoimmunity as I am not a doctor. What I will say is that I was not happy about the avalanche of side effects that come with thyroid inhibitors and beta blockers. I somehow managed to perform in my new Monday-Friday 9-to-5 job in a perpetual brain fog and by the weekend I was sleeping 16hrs straight, just to wake up groggy, go grocery shopping, meal prep for the week and then fall back to sleep.
Months passed by like this. I don’t remember much of that time, just thinking: “this can´t be right… is this how I am going to live from now on? I am not even 40!”.
End 2017: a “White Christmas” road trip with two of my best friends in the world, one of them even flew over from South America wanting to see snow. Which we did, lots of it. I caught a horrible coughing-cold during that trip. We drank alcohol every single day for 14 days and ate basically animal products. I even remember a photo of the three of us with huge platters of grilled chicken+beef+pork and a tiny plate of iceberg lettuce salad to share between the three. I don’t remember one single piece of fresh fruit making it to the trip…
Beginning 2018: got the coughing-cold again that turned into a three-week severe bronchitis. Blood pressure was under control (I must admit beta blockers were very effective), but I touched rock bottom as far as health is concerned. I was feeling like crap ALL the time. My doctor ordered blood tests to see how my thyroid was behaving after 6 months of high doses of thyroid inhibitors. Results came in: not only the hormones were not fully in control but also the thyroid antibodies were still high.
Link to this Instagram post.
The plan was not working.
In Germany, this is what happens: your GP (ie. Family doctor) is the one who has to refer you to a specialist, but only after proving that nothing else can be done. One appointment with a specialist, namely: a cardiologist or an endocrinologist, can have a waiting time for up to 6-9 months! Having tried everything she could, my doctor recommended to make the appointment with an endocrinologist surgeon warning me that the likely outcome would be to have my thyroid gland removed. What?!
Apparently for hyperthyroidism it is much preferable to remove the gland than dealing with the potential risks of an overworked thyroid that could lead to a much worse condition (maybe cancer?).
I did not accept.
For the little I have read up until that point, the thyroid is one of the master glands of the body and not having it, means a lifetime of medication and living with the horrible side effects… forever… No. There MUST be something else I can do.
My doctor could only accept my decision, write me another prescription so I don’t run out of medicine and asked me to come for a check up in a few months.
For days non-stop I google-d, Wikipedia-ed, and read almost every online article I could get my hands on.
Side note: a big chunk of information lead to stress management (something about cortisol levels and adrenal fatigue). Which made clear to me that I had no stress management strategy for my overly anxious normal self. Going running twice a month was not enough to curb my stress levels, insomnia and growing unhappiness in the corporate rat race. This stress management thing, deserves a post by itself.
The Gamechanger: “The C Word” documentary that features Dr. David Servan-Schreiber and his book “Anticancer”. Hearing Morgan Freeman´s oracle-sounding voice narrating concepts that made complete sense… Something clicked inside me, I immediately ordered the book on Amazon. Then on the section “recommended for you” (bless you Netflix algorithm) over the following weeks I watched all the rest of documentaries that tipped me over the edge: What the Health, Cowspiracy, Before the Flood, Forks over Knives, Sustainable…
Next on Youtube: Madeleine Olivia´s short videos featuring recipes so simple, affordable, delicious, comforting… The snowball effect kept on rolling: I binged watched Lauren Toyota´s hilarious down-to-earth rants on veganism, found the soothing Pickuplimes videos contrasting with the slightly annoying energy of the Happy Pear´s 5 minute recipes, I marveled at the awkward handsomeness of Gaz Oakley, and watched almost all of Nutritionfacts.org clips… I was hooked.
My Instagram feed: added every single hashtag on veganism and scrolled relentlessly.
Books that changed my life (in order of appearance): “Gut” by Giulia Enders. “Anticancer” by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber. “The China Study” and “Whole” by Dr. Colin Campbell. “The Promise of Sleep” by Dr. William Dement. “How Not to Die” by Dr. Michael Greger.
I started consuming MASSIVE amounts of information and all came together so easily and beautifully, that I could not resist it…
This was March 2018: my unlearning process had started.
