My
name is Howard and I’m a Certified Health Coach.
I've
had many health challenges over the past fifty years,
from allergies to asthma to a weak immune system to a
life-threatening digestive condition. For each of those
challenges, I had followed all the recommendations that
I was given by traditionally trained medical doctors,
but I wasn't getting any healthier and I was actually
aging faster.
By
researching natural medicine and finding science-based
solutions that I could put into practice, I was able to
resolve numerous health challenges. Doing that research
over the past thirty years has given me a foundation of
knowledge that I continue building on as I continuously
get healthier. As any new health challenges arise, I
feel confident that I will find solutions to them. That
knowledge has given me a passion for helping others as I’ve
helped myself. Being your personal health coach is how I’ll
work with you so you can get to Optimal
Wellness, too!
Years of Poor Health
Ever
since the age of four when I learned to read, I've
always tried to keep learning. After my first thirty
years of suboptimal health, I started reading about and
researching natural health. From the beginning of that
process, I put what I learned into practice and my
health kept improving.
After
my early years as an overweight, weak kid with allergies
and bronchial asthma, I made a radical change in my
attitude toward the unhealthy food that I had loved and
lost 40 lbs. in three months. A few years later, I
started working out at home with weights to build the
strength that I never had.
In
my early thirties, I started seeing an asthma and
allergy doctor, who tested my allergies, then put me on
five prescription drugs to manage both the allergies and
asthma. While those two conditions were
"managed" by the prescription drugs, I still
wasn’t very healthy and regularly got whatever illness
"was going around," (a cold or flu) at least
once a month and sometimes, getting it a second time
before it was finished “going around.”
Fortunately,
a friend told me that I probably just needed more
vitamin C than I was getting from my diet. So I bought
some vitamin tablets to try. After three months without
a single cold or flu, I decided to read all that I could
about vitamin C. From what I had read, it was safe to
slowly start taking much higher dosages, which allowed
me to slowly discontinue all of the prescription drugs
with assistance from my doctor.
Fifteen
years later, an old intestinal problem became much
worse, so I started researching what could help me. I
tried many different natural treatments that were known
then, but nothing was helping. Along the way, I had lost
40 pounds and my appetite was mostly gone. I ended up in the
hospital, diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.
The
gastrointestinal (G.I.) specialist at the hospital told me that there is no
cure for this condition, it's unknown what causes it,
and diet has no effect on it. On my third and final day
at the hospital, the doctor sent a licensed Nutritionist
into my room to give me recommendations on how to put
the weight back on that I had lost. She recommended
eating large quantities of pasta, rice, potatoes, and
bread. After about one week of eating more of those
foods, my condition worsened and I lost another 10
pounds. I called the G.I. specialist's office, but all
the doctor could recommend was that I take a
multivitamin.
Time
for More Research...
After
two weeks out of work and no improvement in sight, I
regained enough energy to sit upright at the computer
and get on the internet to try to find information on
ways to help my condition. I found a Usenet Group for
Crohn's disease and colitis. Quite a few users in the
group were recommending a book with a diet that helped
them tremendously. So I bought the book and it explained
the root cause of my health condition. I
learned that many of the carbohydrates that I was eating
(mainly the sugars and complex carbohydrates) do not get broken down
properly by people with this condition. With help from
two doctors, the book’s author developed a Specific
Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) that recommended avoiding all
the carbohydrates that aren't digested properly for two
years. This
includes everything from table sugar to complex carbs,
especially pasta, rice, potatoes, and bread--the exact
foods that the licensed, degreed Nutritionist at the
hospital recommended to me that made my condition worse.
Within
three days of being on this strict SCD diet, I had
significant improvement in my intestinal condition. The
book stated that most people experience improvement
after three days and a bigger leap in progress at the
3-week point. On the 22nd day of the diet, I made a
significant leap in progress with my condition. The
following day, I went for a scheduled colonoscopy.
Afterward, the doctor reported that my colon (large
intestine) was "too far gone" and needed to be
removed surgically. Since that "solution"
seemed too Draconian for me and I had already started
seeing major improvements in my condition just from diet
changes, I told the doctor that I'd have to think about
that surgery for a while. He then tried to put some fear
in me by stating that, if I don't have the surgery, I’ll
be at high risk of colon cancer. But I had no plan to
have that surgery by a specialist who 1) didn't know
what causes the condition or its damage to the
intestinal lining, 2) didn't know how to heal the
condition or its damage, and 3) thought that diet had
nothing to do with the damage. Since the diet was
already helping, I was going to have to do my own
research to find more information and solutions.
Due
to the lack of energy I had during my recovery, I was
out of work for three months. During that time, I
started listening to a nationally syndicated daily
call-in radio show called Duke and the Doctor,
with Jan McBarron, who's both and MD and a Naturopathic
Doctor (ND). She knew many natural options to offer
callers for their health conditions, so I started taking
notes from her show for future reference. Between
listening to her
show and reading a newsletter that I had been getting from
Julian Whitaker, MD, I learned a lot of safe natural
methods for treating a variety of health conditions.
Armed with that knowledge, I began putting some of their
recommendations into practice for my own health and also
started sharing what I learned with family and friends
for their health conditions. My intestinal condition
continued improving as I kept making changes that I learned about.
Since
that time, I will typically spend a minimum of ten hours each week
reading natural health newsletters, magazines,
documents, and research papers. In addition to that, I
also spend a minimum of five hours each week listening
to audio health expert interviews, natural health radio
shows, and watching video interviews & health
documentaries. I’m going to keep learning in order to
help my health and yours.
Getting
Healthier Every Decade!
After
accumulating thirty years of information on natural
health, at age 60 I realized that I was healthier than I
was at 50...which was after being healthier at 50 than I
was at 40, and being healthier at 40 than I was at
30.
With more than 30 years of researching natural health
and experimenting on myself, that has made me realize
that natural health strategies and tools are the best
methods for helping the body do what it's intended to
do--heal itself.
This
is how the journey to Optimal Wellness worked for
me. With my knowledge and help, your journey to Optimal
Health should be a quicker one. All you'll need is the
desire, some self-discipline, and openness to taking the
new health information that you learn and applying it
daily!
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Howard Northrup, CHC
Serving the Melbourne and Cocoa, Florida areas.
Call Howard
E-mail him
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Note: Howard is not a dietitian, nutritionist, or a licensed or registered dietitian or
nutritionist, nor does he provide nutrition-related services to
a person under the direct care of a medical doctor for a medical condition requiring nutritional intervention.
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