How Amie Valpone Overcame a Toxic Situationand Emerged Healthy and Whole
Empowered ! by Terri Trespicio
Gut Instinct
How Amie Valpone Overcame a Toxic Situationand Emerged Healthy and Whole
Empowered ! by Terri Trespicio
Amie Valpone doesn ’ t saunter through Central Park ; she moves . A petite sparkplug of a woman , she walks fast , talks fast , is quick with a joke — and just as quick to laugh at yours . You can learn a lot from her in a short period of time : How to whip up a grain-free butternut squash pizza crust ; how to bake delectable brownies without flour , dairy , eggs , or even sugar for that matter ; how to make a DIY surface cleaner that ’ s so safe you can drink it .
She ’ s the picture of a healthy American woman ( blonde hair , glowing skin )— and a career success story , having left the corporate world to launch her own popular food blog , TheHealthyApple . com , and start her own business as a recipe developer , food stylist and photographer .
In addition to contributing to major publications and serving as a brand ambassador for brands you know well , Amie ’ s also a newly minted author : Her forthcoming cookbook is Eating Clean : Detox , Fight Inflammation , Reset Your Body , and Get to the Root Cause of Illness ( Houghton Mifflin 2016 ), which gives readers the tools and inspiration for detoxing their lives from top to bottom , and eating more healthfully and happily than ever before ( and features a foreword from functional medicine celeb Mark Hyman , M . D .).
Inside you learn something about Amie you ’ d never know by looking at her : That for the past 10 years she has struggled with severe chronic illness , and been diagnosed with everything from Lyme to PCOS to chronic candida , and more than once lay on the floor of her Manhattan studio , in pain , crying , unable to eat a thing or even move .
6 • INSIDE HEALTH
What started one day in her early 20s as unexplained swelling in her legs ( 40 pounds of water weight that left her unable to wear anything but spandex ) and was misdiagnosed as leukemia , spiralled out of control . At one point , during countless visits to hospitals and clinics , she picked up Clostridium difficile ( known as C . diff ), a harmful bacteria , and was given 24 hours to live . Her belly , beset by an overgrowth of bad bacteria , swelled to the point where people started asking her if she was pregnant . She went on disability for a year , schlepped in and out of medical facilities all over the country , including the famed Mayo Clinic , racking up nearly half a million dollars in uncovered medical expenses , and giving the equivalent of her body weight in blood every few weeks for years . And after five years of western medicine ( including numerous bone marrow biopsies , CT scans , MRIs , colonoscopies , and more ) that yielded no real answers , she discovered integrative and functional medicine and embarked on years of self-study into detox , as well as every holistic modality you can think of — plus earned a degree in integrative nutrition . She also created a team of integrative M . D . s ( more than 20 ) who helped her identify the root cause and supported her efforts to get well .