The road to Optimum Health

They say the course of true love does not run smoothly and so it seems neither does the course of true recovery. After 18 months with the Optimum Health Clinic, spending £2500 and not feeling any better, I can confidently say I did not reach my destination of ‘life back please'! In reality, my road to optimum health turned into a nightmare journey.

After establishing the Lightning Process was not 'the one' (see my earlier post on the Lightning Process), I did a lot of research on what next and decided on The Optimum Health Clinic. They have a holistic approach to treating M.E., which is specifically tailored to the individual and treat from both a physical and psychological side. It was the first time since I have had M.E. that I felt that someone really understood my individual case and also had a solid understanding of M.E. This was definitely going to be the one, definitely. Lightning Process who?!

At the beginning of my treatment loads of information was collected about my symptoms and medical history. I also had a series of tests including: blood, saliva, temperature, allergy and stool. I just kept hoping they would find something wrong, if there was something wrong it could be fixed then I would be better. I was going to entertain you with my experience of poo testing but maybe that is just too much information. Well, maybe just a snippet. For £187 I had the privilege of collecting my own poo, keeping it in the fridge, before posting it to an American lab. When the cashier at the post office asked me if there was anything valuable in the package I just smiled. (I know, I am far too fabulous to be collecting my own poo but desperate times and all that...) After the tests were completed, I was prescribed an extensive supplement programme. They also advocate some obvious diet choices like avoiding wheat, dairy and sugar, eating protein with every meal and vegetable juicing.

So for 18 months I had a daily supplement schedule, made myself a vegetable juice most mornings and followed the eating plan. It was A LOT of energy. Has anyone ever done vegetable juicing? There's a lot of chopping! This is a major event when you don't have any energy. But I desperately wanted to be better and totally buy into the school of thought that it is possible to recover from M.E. I know other people who have recovered and if they can, I can. I always got good grades, did well in my job, so surely I can do well at getting well...(Type A strikes again.) But what really pushed me over the edge was the fact that nearly every time I started a new supplement it made me even more ill than I already was. I would start with the tiniest amount possible, to allow my body to get used to it but still invariably I would react. I would then sit it out (well, lie it out actually) for a few days in the hope that my body would work through the reaction and start to tolerate the supplement. Most of the time it didn't and I had to stop taking them. I'm not sure how many times I went through this cycle but I was trying something new at least once a fortnight. So over an 18 month period it's no surprise that I started to HATE supplements.

On the psychology side they believe that putting the body in a healing state is an essential part of the recovery process. They absolutely believe that M.E. is a physical illness but propose that some times our thought and behaviour patterns about being ill can be unhelpful to recovery. Being so ill is really stressful and you are constantly thinking about whether you’re going to be okay, if you can manage what you’ve planned to do, are you doing too much and therefore will pay for it and so on. These are not the thoughts of a calm, well person. This just leads to a vicious cycle of stress which exacerbates the M.E. symptoms. They advocate techniques such as EFT*, relaxation, meditation, yoga, NLP and self coaching. (And with the added stress of trying those supplements I needed as much of this stuff as possible!)

After 18 months of a strict diet and supplement regime, countless tests, using all the psychological tools I could get my hands on and NO IMPROVEMENT, not even a little sign towards improved health let alone optimum health, I decided to stop working with the clinic. The effort/reward ratio in recovering from this illness can be heart breaking. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so desperate I would have stopped earlier but to be honest it wasn’t just about stopping with the clinic it was also about what I would do instead to move towards wellness. And of course, there was always the hope that the next thing they suggested was 'the one' that would make me better.

I had invested so much time, energy and money it was really hard to walk away. I now know I did the right thing. I took the good things I had learned about diet, yoga, relaxation, meditation, NLP, EFT and stopped the things that weren’t helping, namely all the supplements. I gave myself a couple of weeks to come to terms with my decision and the disappointment that this was not the answer, then I picked myself up, packed my bags with extra determination and continued on my journey. Since the Optimum Health Clinic I have tried a few other things and you know what, I think in the distance I can see the sign 'life back please'. Now I just need to work out exactly how to get there!

More information
Despite the fact that I didn’t have a successful outcome with the Optimum Health Clinic, I don't regret my decision to work with them (my bank balance however…think of all those shoes and handbags I could have had.) They have a very good reputation in the treatment of M.E., are very thorough in their approach and I learned a great deal from them. For those interested in finding out more about the clinic, see: freedomfromme.co.uk

*EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique. In essence, EFT is an emotional version of acupuncture where certain meridian points are stimulated by tapping on them with your fingertips. For details about EFT see emofree.com