Thank you for passing by. I truly hope this click will be your first step in your journey towards optimal health, wrinkle profe and wellness.
My story
I am a British- Iraqi who left Iraq to London in 1990 with my anguish, despair and one little suitcase, after what my family had endured. The emotional weight and the sense of loss was already very heavy on me, but I had to adapt to a new every thing. After a year of struggle and being home sick, I started to crawl my way to into my new life, ignoring all signs of my weak health hazards.
I worked as a journalist in Arab women media soon after I came to London. My favourite media
project and the one closest to my heart was managing Al- Jamila magazine, the first dedicated health and beauty magazine in the Middle East. My passion for managing this magazine was supported by my knowledge of beauty therapy.
Journalism, work pressure, and meeting deadlines was extremely burdensome on my frail health. Years of accumulated stress, unresolved emotional pain ,and trauma for being de-rooted finally caught up with my health. My emotional baggage was only getting heavier, and little did I know that emotions were intertwined with health.
My thirst for career success was not satisfied, so I left London to Dubai in 2005 and headed for another challenge and bigger responsibilities. I became a group editor for several magazines, which naturally meant more stress!
My health was deteriorating. So, I did what I believed was best, and visited the best and most renowned doctors around the world, I travelled to the best hospitals, and did all the requisite check ups and blood tests on my list. As a result, my list of diagnoses was getting longer and longer. The list started since I was 8, when I was diagnosed with Juveniles Rheumatoid and type two diabetes. Not a single Doctor from the ones I visited had ever asked about my diet.
Why? Because most medical schools around the world fail to provide the bare minimum of nutritional teaching.
Very few of the many doctors I’ve visited emphasised the power of sleeping, and when they knew I suffered from insomnia they prescribed me sleeping pills. To be fair a few of them have advised me to find time to exercise.
This photo was taken in March this year 2016. No photoshop #nofilter. I can see a progress on wrinkles only by nutricosmetics, skin creams and exercise
Me then when I was a magazine editor
Breast cancer was the best thing that happened to me!
I have been diagnosed with Chronic fatigue syndrome, Rhumatoid fever, undifferentiated connective tissue diseases, pernicious anemia, fibromyalgia, border line adrenal fatigue, Ehlers danlos syndrome level III, irritable bowl syndrome, Chronic urinary tract infections, migraine, depression, and many more other nitty gritty things like Vitamin D deficiency. Ironically, none of the doctors found that I had growing breast cancer! Isn’t that funny!? At that time I was living with crippling pain, so I mainly lived on sugary foods to keep myself going. I was totally burned out!
Being overwhelmed with traumas from a young age until my late thirties made me think that the continuous physical pain I was going through during every moment of my life; when awake, ‘relaxed’, active, and even when I was asleep, was normal. I thought all people felt as I did, I thought it was just part of being human.
I eventually had to choose my life over my job. I made the choice to resign, and go in search for answers to my health. That was before I found out about cancer by a complete coincidence. When I let go of the spark of having a successful career and social status, I found out how many fair weather friends I had. It hurt me a lot then! But it was even harder to comprehend, when I saw the rest of them falling through by the sideways when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Just there and then, the thought of me being seriously sick started to sink in.
I am grateful I resigned and let go of the search for the outer journey. I started the search for the inner journey finding my health and myself. Thinking about it now, saying breast cancer was the best thing to have happened to me only shows which kind of dark bottom I hit. But cancer was my wake up call. My reality check.
Confessions
- The first and foremost reason am doing this page is because I don’t wish for anyone to reach where I reached in order to start appreciating and respecting their health and wellbeing.
- Whilst I was too busy advising my readers for years and years and tried every trick of the trade to convince them to practicing all the right things for optimum health, I forgot about myself.
- I am very eager to share with you my awakening to food as a medicine. I developed a keen interest and even more passion for it than that which I had for my work as a health and beauty editor. A role I spent over 25 years in, researching health, nutrition, and anti ageing science, all of which I would love to share with you.
- I dyed my hair pink for two reasons. First was for the breast cancer campaign, and second because I am too ashamed to be human, hence i would rather escape from the human reality to my fictional world as a survivel mechanisim and my favorait personality is Neytiri in my favourate film Avatar, for a lot similarities in our lookes and stories.
- I am not too ‘raw’ when it comes to fashion and style. I am very versatile in my style, I could be a simple desert girl or I could be the snobby couture grass fed cow. I do believe that what we wear will not make us who we are, if that makes sense.
- My love for my family and animals is immeasurable. If am given the choice on who I want to be in this life, I would choose to be a stylish giraffe without a doubt!
- My last confession is: I ain’t ready for wrinkles yet. Not now, not in 10 years! I only stopped doing Botox in 2013. I loved the magical effect it had on relaxing my forehead muscles and the crows feet around my eyes. In short am very sensible now and never undergo any treatment without thorough research, and it must be with an extremely knowledgeable specialist.
The real power is not medicine; the real power is nutritional medicine and exercise
Please don’t get me wrong, I am not condemning conventional medicine in any way. I think it’s great in so many ways i.e their diagnostic power, the power of surgery and dealing with ER. But in my opinion, the power of whole food should come first.
It took me one year after my cancer diagnoses, to be convinced to go under surgery and I wouldn’t have done it if it were not for my loved ones. Nevertheless. Before taking that step, I managed my health with a very strict diet. (I don’t advice or encourage any one to do that). I took a huge risk in order to experiment on myself to see whether or not I could stop my cancer from progressing and I did. After one year my cancer was shrank to a few millimeters smaller, and I felt much stronger and healthier than before the diet.
After I eradicated my breast cancer I refused to go under radiotherapy or tamoxifen hormone treatment. I decided to take my health matters into my own hands to not to get sick again. Diet and exercise are the tools and the secret to good health and longevity.
Training with master Rio Altaie
This is how I look when it comes to my food… No kidding!
My Diet
I honestly never felt younger or stronger, or pain free, or more balanced and clear minded. I have tried out every whole- food diet in the book! From raw food diet, to vegetarian, vegan, alkaline, anti candida, paleo, and liquid diet. The only diet I didn’t try is the blood group and the Chinese yin and yan. Trying all those diets was very frustrating at times.
I discovered that each and every one of those diets did, indeed, have good value to offer. Hence, not one program made me feel on top of my health and satisfied. Until Steven Acuff and Kris Kaiser made me realise that there is no such one diet fits all. This encouraged me to intuitively teach myself a healthier way to navigate through all the artificial food temptations around me. Knowing that sugar is cancer’s favourite made me avoid the sugar flood in everything, which was particularly hard for my ridiculous sweet tooth.
Food should satisfy us and nourish our entire being. I go through the gut healing and cleansing plan twice a year. My main diet is built on fresh fewer fruits and more vegetables, nuts, preferably raw unsalted , grain free, seeds, clean sustainable meats (grass fed, no hormones or antibiotics) and I am easy on dairy. I drink camel milk when I am in Dubai. I very occasionally to have some goat yogurt and use cottage cheese for my Budwig meal (I will explain that in a separate article). I eat cream in my cheat days AS LONG AS IT IS ALL ORGANIC AND GRASS FED. I use very little natural sweeteners, NO refined sugars.. I go easy on pulses and legumes unless its sprouted. Cold pressed oils, eggs.
My diet, simply, balanced, unprocessed food in its natural state. I rarely allow myself to go for cheat days and compensate for other dates. It is all about balance!. In essence sensible flexibility is the key to health and wellbeing.
Slogan
My slogan is: “Beauty is Health & Health is Beauty”
I declared my resistance to wrinkles, and found the best way to beat them is to be healthy first. We nourish our being with mind and soul cleansing, and it only make sense, that we nourish our bodies with pure and clean food. It is all relative! To have a clean mind and soul, you’ve got to have a clean body and clean guts first. You cannot have one without the other.
Working together
I am happy to collaborate with products and/or services, which are a good fit with Balance by Sana philosophy. I will only recommend what will benefit my readers and I truly believe in.