Meet Kat, the founder of Inspire FN

Hi I’m Kat, a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and this is my story. I’m a wife and mum of 3 beautiful children and 2 grown-up step kids, both a recovering perfectionist and chocolate addict (not sure if I should have included that!) and have been on my health journey since 2003 when I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and I’m thriving!

The symptoms of MS are often invisible to everyone else around and if your type of MS is relapsing/remitting (RRMS) like me, then it’s a rollercoaster ride of relatively good spells mixed with any number and type of symptoms covering a wide variety of sensory, vision, motor and cognitive disturbances – no two people are affected the same. 

As a very quick 101 summary, MS is a neurological autoimmune (AI) disease. This means my immune system is attacking me and damaging the myelin coating around my nerves - any nerve it feels like! This is why the symptoms are so varied and different for each person. With RRMS after a nerve is damaged, the body will repair the damage and voila you’re back to business as usual. The current medical view is that as the disease progresses, the damage no longer gets repaired and you are left with permanent disability and you have progressed to a new label which can be Progressive Relapsing Remitting (PRRMS) Secondary Progressive (SPMS) or Primary Progressive (PPMS).

Back in my early 20s things were looking pretty good. I was moving up the corporate ladder role by role, I built my first house and married my first husband. I loved and regularly did weight training and went running socially with a group of colleagues.

I thought I was relatively savvy about how to be healthy and what to eat – hey I knew about carbs, fats and protein! At that time the rhetoric around the gym scene was to eat a bucket tonne of protein, minimal fat and low carb.

I was 24 and I vividly remember coming back from Auckland on a business trip and spending most of the flight quite sure that somehow, water had got in my shoe. It was a cold wet sensation that just wasn’t going away. Over the following days it progressed to a loss of sensation and numbness from my feet up to the bottom of my ribs.

A visit to the doctors, a neurologist, and then being a human pin cushion as a battery of neurological tests were conducted and finally a MRI scan later, the incredibly old neurologist (in a creepy old house) informed me that it was MS, but not to worry, just go and live my life and if I was lucky, I might never get symptoms again.

This might seem like an odd thing to say, but reflecting on this I can see how after years of experience in diagnosing people, delivering this kind of news in a very matter of fact but ‘you’ll be right’ kiwi way, set my expectations firmly in place. So I went with, yes, I would be alright.

After a few neurologist visits later I was informed that I didn’t qualify for any of the disease modifying treatments available – I had to be more disabled (as per their scale) in order to receive the medication that was supposed to stop me from getting disabled! I believe this model of determining who needs medication has since changed.

At that time there was also no lifestyle nor dietary advice other than ‘reducing stress can help’. They couldn’t tell me why it had happened to me when no one else in my family had it. There was no way to advise what the prognosis would be. Even examining the MRI scans didn’t seem to provide much insight when I inquired what a particular lesion in a particular area of my brain meant.

Then, in the following year symptoms did come back. Loss of feeling and use of my hands, extreme fatigue, brain fog, an intense type of nerve itching, and optic neuritis (blurry and double vision) were the new kids on my block. 

More testing was done, additional MRI scans as well as a lumbar puncture test when various other Neurologists weighed in on my case.

And again – there was nothing any of the medical professionals could or would do. My very lovely doctor of many years tried her best to support me, but in the end knowing that there was nothing that could medically be done, I decided there wasn’t much point in reporting every symptom and change.

So early on in my journey I decided that I’d just have to work with what was within my control. This mindset put me on a journey of trial and error with many MANY different foods, diets, supplements, practitioners and weird supposed remedies. Friends and family were always cutting out articles about remedies that had helped other people (bee venom anyone?), so there was no shortage of things to try.

Now this next part might sound pretty obvious, but sometimes you just can’t see what’s in front of you! I had lived my whole life eating a certain way (standard kiwi diet where rice risotto was considered a spicy dish) and up until the diagnosis, I thought I was in pretty good shape. Only I wasn’t. I was so nutrient deficient (had always been a picky eater), and inflammation was running rife inside me, but I couldn’t see it or even feel it until the MS symptoms burst onto the scene. My body had had enough and decided to communicate this to me, in a very drama queen kind of way.

Roll forward some years, my first marriage ended, I got married for the second time, work changes/promotions and having my 3 beautiful children (through which MS was very stable), I was staying very physically active when I could and I was slowly but surely narrowing in on what kept symptoms at bay, and what behaviours and choices meant I was more likely to have a relapse.

Balancing what I ate, getting enough sleep, managing stress and doing the right kind of exercise (that didn’t add more stress to my body) all mattered. If any one of these factors got significantly off the scale, then I would notice symptoms coming back.

I discovered inspirational people of my own such as Dr Terry Wahls and Sarah Ballantyne (creator of the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet) who offered so much hope that nutrition and a holistic approach to MS did in fact work. It wasn’t just luck, what I was doing WAS working. It was slowing and changing the course of the disease and the dysfunction of my immune system.

Nobody knows exactly what causes MS or many of the other 200+ flavours of AI. There are several known factors at play:

• a genetic setup (tick – AI is in my family)

• epigenetic exposures (these trigger the expression of the autoimmune disease process – many ticks here) 

• cross reactivity of foods (tick) or other environmental exposures 

• molecular mimicry through an infectious agent like bacteria or a virus (tick – thank you Epstein Barr!)

I’ve been down dark roads and in gloomy places wondering if I could ever feel great again and asking “Why me?”. MS is neurological so cognition and mental health are part of the picture. My journey definitely hasn’t looked like walking on sunshine all the time, but I’ve learnt how to nourish my body, mind and soul to feel my best and be able to live my life the way I want – all immune suppressing medication free!

Even though my immune system has attacked parts of me, knowing now everything that it also still does to protect me from bacteria, viruses and even cancer cells, the last thing I want to do is to artificially suppress it.

Right from the beginning I have had the belief in my body’s ability to heal itself and that I would be ok. My belief is that given the right nutrients and in the absence of particular stressors, my body is very resilient and will support me to try to restore health.

Before starting my FNTP career I was privileged to spend just over 20 years working across different organisations (private and public) in Finance, IT, Education and Primary Industries where I was surrounded by wonderful colleagues (friends!) who always supported me no matter what was happening in my life. 

However, I never had a sense of making a direct difference in people’s lives, I just couldn’t get really passionate about working on software or delivering projects. 

In order to keep working I also had to do a 2-hour daily commute and manage the busyness of 3 kids. Although the money was great, I knew that this kind of stress with a lack of purpose and passion for what I was doing, was a recipe to undo all the other good work I was doing around food, sleep and movement to keep my MS at bay.

When I finally came across Functional Nutritional Therapy, it was like someone had wrapped up all the pieces of the puzzle I had been trying to work out over 16 years on my own. This was what I wanted to do – for myself, for my family and to help make a difference in other people’s lives! I had also found my tribe of people.

So here I am having arrived at this place of running my own business, working closer to my family (where my heart is), prioritising self-care and continuing to positively impact my own health journey – all of which just a few years ago I didn’t think was possible to have and do.

I am very grateful that I am in a place where I can now use my drive and passion, as well as my own life journey and experience to connect with others and help them to also thrive.

I have been enabled to get to this place by my amazing husband and other family and friends who have supported me on this journey – you know who you are. 

It takes a village and I have also found a wonderful new tribe.