Chapter One

                                      CURING THE INCURABLE

                              A personal Odyssey in Search of a Return to Health

Following a 7-year period of chronic and at that time unexplainable illness, my great suffering became a powerful motive to find answers, and get to the root causes of my debilitating symptoms. I developed a burning desire to feel perfectly healthy again: to completely heal myself; and took matters into my own hands, engaging in a lifelong mission to pursue learning in the health sciences, which has now been ongoing for the last 25 years, and still continues to this day. I travelled to various parts of the world and obtained degrees and diplomas in a wide range of natural therapies and have studied and trained in numerous diagnostic and therapeutic techniques

After these long and intriguing years of training and application of these new therapeutic techniques I have fulfilled my dream and passion: to feel healthy and be able to remain healthy. Much of this process took place in parallel with my professional work in Cyprus.

I have also devoted myself to using this Holistic Medical Model in clinical practice, having tried and tested it with many hundreds of patients of all types – from migraines to metastatic cancers, and seeing its effectiveness again and again. Treating chronic diseases has now become the mainstay of my clinical practice as there is a great need for this type of work in today’s sick and degenerating society.   I now wish to share this knowledge base with chronically ill people everywhere, which is one reason why I am writing this book.

My Life Story

When I arrived in Cyprus back in 1983 after completing undergraduate and postgraduate studies in the UK, I started my career as a teacher of biology, having completed an initial combined honours degree in biology/psychology. Upon completion of my postgraduate studies in clinical psychology I began seeing my first patients. It struck me that many of my patients were facing deep sexual issues that were proving intractable with my psychological training. That was the impetus for me to study human sexuality in depth, and completed a Doctorate degree in Clinical Sexology in the USA and became the first professional sexologist in the history of Cyprus.

Health Deteriorates

Despite all my knowledge in biology and the workings of the human body, at the age of 30 my health was a shambles. I could just about manage to crawl out of bed with excruciating pain in my body and band-type headaches that would last most of the day. I would have a painful breakfast, drag myself to my office, see patients for a couple of hours then back to bed for 2-3 hours before seeing a few more patients in the afternoon. Painkillers and anti-inflammatories were my main support to get through the day.

By evening I was too tired to do anything and it required a concerted effort just to hold a conversation. I tended to avoid company for this reason and became a recluse – living life close to my devoted family and trying to enjoy the small moments of watching my children develop.  I absolutely hated the way I was, as by nature I am a “Type A” personality who loves to be on the go, researching new things – I generally have a very inquisitive mind and like people.

Upon deeper reflection, my health saga began a few years earlier at the age of 27, while I was serving in the National Guard of Cyprus after arriving from the UK, where I used to live. After a few months in quite adverse, stressful conditions I developed a very bad fever and viral infection that had me bedbound for a full 15 days. In fact, no one knew I was ill in bed, without being able to get up and walk, for three days until friends who were constantly calling, broke down the door to my apartment.

There was absolutely no way I could move from my bed – I had a constant fever of 40 degrees and was having cold sweats; was dehydrated and pretty much having delusions with such a heavy feeling in my head that the only thing I wanted to do was sleep. The pains in my body also prevented me from moving. The fever remained at 40 degrees or more for the full 15 days and no amount of antibiotics of other drugs seemed to help. After 15 days of taking a combination of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and antipyretics, I eventually recovered but did not feel my “usual” self after this. My energy levels never seemed to return to normal and there was certainly something that was triggering my sinuses, which were getting inflamed constantly.

A couple of months after recovering from this ordeal I developed intractable headaches and migraines that again had me holding my head and taking pain killers as if they were going out of fashion – every day. I needed to work as I was a busy clinical psychologist and clinical sexologist at the time and felt an obligation towards my patients, as well as my students; I was teaching biology at a local private school in Larnaca as well as teaching undergraduate courses in psychology at Intercollege, a local private college in Nicosia.

After many months of these persistent headaches, accompanied by an unexplainable fatigue, I eventually went to the local G.P. who took some X-rays and found that my frontal sinuses were loaded with fluid – he immediately prescribed antibiotics. Less than two months later I was back there again for more antibiotics as my sinuses were again blocked and causing headaches and pain, not to mention the tiredness, apathy – and on occasions depression. I was quite incapacitated and this was certainly enough to cause an active person to fall into a depression – otherwise I loved my work. There is nothing more frustrating than waking every morning with band-type headaches that prevented me from concentrating on my work.

Erratic Performance and Behaviour

It was around the same time that I was also invited to teach part-time at a local flight school – they wanted me to teach the human-factor elements of their local Private Pilots course. These topics combine both psychology and biology, so I was duly suited, having degrees in both. I had no qualms about accepting this job offer as one of my deepest passions while still at school was to become an RAF jet pilot but as fate would have it, there were other plans for me. It was not long before the school invited me to take my own private pilots license (PPL). They felt that this would facilitate my teaching, as it would give me the experience of being in the cockpit.

I needed no further persuading – I began ground school immediately and within a short while I was sitting in the left-hand seat flying a Cessna 152 or a Piper Cherokee.  But the problem that my instructors could never understand was why my flying was so erratic. On my “good” days when I would get up feeling generally clear-headed and alert I would fly the plane to perfection with perfect takeoffs and landings as we practiced our touch-and-goes. On the “bad” days when I would get up with a headache, sore muscles, lack of sleep and generally feeling like a truck had run over me, I would sit in the cockpit ready for takeoff and upon applying full power, I could hardly steer straight on the runway – much to my instructors horror! Eventually I got my license but it was a tough uphill climb (literally!), with the instructor’s blood pressure seeing better times!

To cut a long story short, in the 7 years of frequenting various medics, allergy specialists and an ENT surgeon (who eventually persuaded me to have a septum operation for a supposedly defective septum in my nose), I was in a much worse state than when I first began getting symptoms. In these 7 years I had taken 18 courses of antibiotics and was in a real mess.

My symptoms had now worsened and became more frequent including headaches and migraines, fibromyalgia (pains and aches in all my body), chronic fatigue (or Myalgic Encephalitis as it was diagnosed by one homeopathic doctor), bowel distension, more or less constant stomach pains with dreadful distension, Leaky Gut Syndrome, Systemic Candidiasis with skin itching, rashes, chronic tiredness and more. I sought diagnosis and treatment abroad in the US and the UK. I was getting weaker and weaker and was now becoming ill with whatever I ate. I was getting desperate as my workload and obligations grew – I now had a family with two young children and was building a house, as well as conducting many additional professional duties. Despite ill health, I was invited to do a radio programme and I accepted; I was also asked to write a column in a national tabloid with a large circulation, and I accepted that too. I could barely manage to keep going.

Seeking Help from Natural Medicine

In desperation, I began reading Natural Medicine books. I was fumbling in the dark as even though my initial degree was in biology and psychology, I had not really delved into the fascinating science of Natural Medicine. One of the first books that I read was written by Dr. Richard Mackarness entitled “Not All In the Mind”[1] – that alerted me to the idea that food allergies can have a detrimental impact on both mental health and physical health. He suggests that in evolutionary terms our bodies are not adjusted to high cereal diets and dairy products, which have only been around for the last few hundred years (it takes thousands of years for our bodies to adjust to evolutionary changes).

He also suggests that up to 80% of the population are probably experiencing some type of food or chemical allergy due to eating highly processed food that our bodies are not yet adjusted to. After reading this book I attempted a detoxification and elimination diet by basically cutting out everything apart from fruit and vegetables.

The first couple of days I felt like my head was going to blow off like a grenade – the pain was unbearable and I spent the weekend in bed sleeping, going to the toilet and more sleeping. I had mostly vegetable soups, light salads, plenty of fruit and lots of water. On the third day I woke feeling so refreshed and alert that I could not believe it! I was hopping around like a little child in a candy store after being imprisoned for so long. The feeling of being alive, pain free and with plenty of energy was amazing!

This renewed energy lasted until the end of the detoxification and elimination diet when I then relapsed back into my old state in a matter of days. What was happening? Why did I feel so good on the detoxification diet only to find myself back in the prison of pain and misery again after it? Was it related to the food I was eating? Maybe - I was left with more questions than answers.

Unfortunately, I was not as knowledgeable then as I am now. In hindsight, I knew instinctively that something miraculous had happened in my body during the detox, but ignorance could not explain the mechanisms. One of the main reasons I felt so well was because I had simply cut out the foods that I was intolerant to – wheat and dairy – I used to eat cheese sandwiches washed down with coffee most days, as I was too busy to prepare anything else. “Were these food allergies making me feel so bad?” I wondered.

Were those unpleasant symptoms I’d experienced in the first couple of days of the detox related to the fact that the stored toxins were being released from my organs and tissues in a big gush? Again, in retrospect, it is clear that this is exactly what was happening – during any detoxification regime toxins are released by the bucketful in the first few days, then things slow down somewhat and the symptoms abate. You begin feeling really well as the body clears itself of accumulated toxins – some of these can be deeply buried in tissues and joints and can cause pain in these areas.

After reading many books on detoxification and experimenting over time, I eventually flew over to England where I saw one of the authors of a nutrition book, from the Institute of Optimum Nutrition, Patrick Holford, where I became his student. During the three years of intensive study I managed to learn a lot that helped my healing process, but not enough to completely heal myself.

My pursuit for learning was intrinsically motivated by my burning desire to completely heal myself, so spanning a 23 year period I studied and obtained degrees and diplomas in Clinical Psychology, Clinical Sexology, Clinical Nutrition, Naturopathy, Herbal Medicine, Homeopathy, Iridology and Su Jok Acupuncture. I have also studied and trained in numerous diagnostic and therapuetic techniques such as VEGA testing, Bioresonance Therapy, Rife technology, Bach Flower remedies, Thermography, Darkfield Microscopy and Live Blood Analysis, Low Intensity Laser Therapy, Autonomic Response Testing, Field Control Therapy, Biological Terrain Analysis, heavy metal analysis using atomic fluorescence and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometers as well as many varied detoxification techniques.

Regaining My Health!

After these long, interesting years of study I eventually managed to regain my health and optimise it. This year, 2009, I am 52 years old and have plenty of energy and the well-being to do all the things that I like doing including flying a small private plane, horse riding, maintaining antique cars and motorbikes, water skiing, writing books, researching and running the busy DaVinci Natural Health Centre,[2] of which I am the Founder Director, based in Larnaca, Cyprus. I am also the Academic Director of the DaVinci College of Holistic Medicine,[3] as well as being involved with many other projects and activities too numerous to mention.

My Diverse and Evolving Clinical Practice

My psychology and sexology practice has expanded and diversified and over the years I have been offering a wide range of health services to my patients. While my passion for maintaining my own health has not abated, I have developed a new passion: to help my patients recover their health, just like I did. I felt disappointed when a patient did not respond well to my treatments.

When some of my patients failed to see any health benefits, I asked myself, “what could I have done better or different.” I kept researching and reflecting on the why and the how - I strove to improve and optimise the therapeutic programmes I was offering that could resolve the multitude of problems facing my patients. I began analysing old and new cases. I researched the literature, tested many new and different therapeutic protocols, refined them or discarded them on the basis of clinical outcomes. When I could not find suitable therapeutic protocols available, I formulated new ones. Those that tested positive were retained; the failed ones were discarded.

My continuous training and research, combined with the feedback from my patients, enabled me to optimise and customise the treatment methodology to the needs of individual patients: bespoke medicine. I began observing many of my patients recovering from serious ill-health and eventually experiencing the health transformation that I did. At the beginning I was not so sure: perhaps it was a fluke? Perhaps it was coincidental? Perhaps it was luck?

I was getting some amazing results but I thought to myself: “Let us not get carried away. This could be based on some patients coincidentally recovering and not based on my methodology.” But the results were replicable with more and more patients, and with different and varied conditions, even though the treatments differed for each patient having the same disease.

The word spread and I began getting referrals for more serious cases: chronic degenerative diseases such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, diabetes and cancer – even from abroad. These cases were tough and needed special attention – cancer in particular was a real challenge. How do you approach patients that were literally given a few months to live? I had to stretch my knowledge and experience to new limits. I had to change the whole framework in which I worked. Serious cases required private attention for nearly a whole day. I had to get appropriate equipment, invest in a bigger library. I had no space to put it all so I built a larger Centre, fully equipped, with in-house laboratory facilities.

While I was active in clinical practice, I also engaged in academic and empirical research – especially, on heavy metal toxicity. After three years of arduous research in laboratories and in the field, I developed a unique product called HMD^®[4] of which I am now the worldwide patent-pending holder of. I have published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and I am regularly invited to conferences to talk about my research, clinical methodology, as well as my unique therapeutic protocols.

I have had a rewarding and successful career, blessed with the satisfaction of helping people regain their health and their lives back. There is nothing more spiritually rewarding than having a patient who has been given a zero prognosis from the medical fraternity, regain complete health – this in itself is enough to motivate me to work until the day that I die.

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