Hi, my name is Justin and I’d like to share with you exactly why I’ve built and will continue building HealthGetters.com
We all have our own personal reasons why we are moving towards better health.
You may have the same condition of Pancreatitis that I have, you may have other challenges you would like to resolve or you may just want to get and stay healthy so that you feel great now and age gracefully in the future.
Whatever your reason, welcome!
My Story
The reason I’m sharing my story with you is so that you can see where my heart is. So that, you will understand my ‘why’.
I’d like to share a quote with you that you may also wish to use to define your why in life. When things look bleak, when not everything’s going your way, you can remember this and center yourself back on YOUR why.
“He who has a why, can bear almost any how”. ~ Neitzsche
I hope that it strengthens you as much as it does me.
Because along any journey there are bumps in the road. But, if we just remember this one following thought it can literally be our guiding light, and that is: You Can’t Fail, If You Don’t Quit!
Yes, there have been bumps in my journey, just as you may have had in yours as well.
So, together, let’s stay on the true road to health because as you may know success is a journey, not a destination.
How It All Started
I was quite shy growing up even though I had an older sister and younger brother. Looking back on it, I’m not sure if it was completely normal or not, but we didn’t really hang out that much.
It’s likely because with our 3 different ages, we each had different sets of friends.
Or it could also be that I kept myself busy by pouring myself into as much work as I could find.
Yes, I played baseball for a few years and little basketball and football.
But where I tended to spend my time was working.
I always had several paper routs at one time. Plus, I would get as much work as I could mowing grass, shoveling snow, delivering flyers for my local pizza shop and every other odd thing I could find.
At 15 I worked at a local fruit market, from 16 to 19 I worked cooking in restaurants, at 19 I worked as the conductor on a railroad for 1 year.
Then from 20 to 22 I worked in a freezer warehouse. I left that and became a vendor until I was 24 when I started a landscaping and lawn service with my girlfriend who I’m still with today.
From age 24 to present my girlfriend and I started a party rental service, I opened a martial arts studio for 2 years which is when I began to get sick and then over 10 years ago to present we entered the medical marijuana business as growers and are going strong in this business to this day.
One of the main reasons I gave you such a detailed work history is that people always wonder if there was something in my life that caused it.
As far as my work history, I don’t think so, but you can be your own judge on that.
Now I’d like to share with you what I think the real driving causes were and I think that once you see them, you’ll agree.
It’s my hope that by sharing this, you may see similarities in your life that you can then pinpoint as drivers so that you too can work on changing and eliminating them.
Then One Day, BOOM, It Just Hit Me Like A Hammer!
It was Christmas Day 2013, just 2 short months after the opening of our martial arts studio.
I was having a pleasant Christmas with my girlfriend and family. I had only had just a couple of drinks, pretty much normal Christmas cheer type celebrating.
Definitely not any kind of partying, it was a traditional family gathering.
I started feeling a pain radiating from my intestines into my back that was truly uncomfortable.
So, I immediately stopped drinking for the day and ended up having to go home because I was not feeling too well.
The next day it was over 100 times worse.
Anyone who knows about Pancreatitis understands that once the pain starts the progression just doesn’t stop.
It’s crazy how painful it is.
If you’ve never experienced it, here is the closest thing I can tell you so that you’ll truly understand it. I would describe an acute attack as someone taking a 6-foot serrated edge sword and sticking it through the center of your abdomen.
Then they pull it out as slow as possible. This could be anywhere from 5-30 minutes. As soon as it is pulled out and you think you can’t take another ounce of pain, it starts all over again.
Along with the pain comes the nausea. Imagine feeling like you want to throw up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and you can’t because you have no food in your system.
When you have Pancreatitis virtually everything you eat causes insane levels of pain. And since in the early stages you really can’t figure out what foods do and don’t cause pain you just don’t eat.
You have the constant pain, but then you also have attacks with a level of pain I would not even wish on an enemy.
Every time an attack would occur, I couldn’t eat anything for 3-4 days.
When the big attacks subsided a little and it was just back to normal pain, I would be able to tolerate small amounts of organic vegetable juice that I would make myself.
Any type of fat source was out of the question as it is a trigger for a diseased or damaged pancreas to become inflamed.
If you’re like most people, it would seriously surprise you just how many foods have fat in them. Lots of people see palm oil, hydrogenated and other oils and don’t really associate that with being a fat source.
But they are. And your pancreas will let you know about them too.
When I could eat, and sometimes that would not be for days on end, I ate like a bird.
It was super difficult to find ANYTHING that didn’t cause a reaction.
Not eating was the only way where I felt like I had a tiny measure of control.
However, the worst of it was really from not being able to sleep.
Imagine just getting a few minutes sleep each night for a week. Can you imagine how that would feel?
Between not eating and not sleeping it was really starting to wreak havoc on my body, I was beginning to deteriorate.
Then Came The Doctors
On January 3rd I was admitted into the hospital for 5 days.
The crazy part was, they had no idea what was going on with me.
First, they told me that my liver was failing, then my kidney’s and then something else. I’m not joking; they were coming back to me literally each day telling me that some other body organ was failing or that something else was wrong.
I had no food or water by mouth for 4 days, just an IV that had fluids and morphine in it to kill the pain.
Then on the 5th day the nurse told me that I could eat and asked me what I wanted. My reply was of course, well, what can I have?
She said that I could have anything that I wanted so I ordered a hot roast beef sandwich with mash potatoes & gravy and a chocolate shake.
With what I know now, it’s no surprise what happened next.
2 hours later I was having another massive attack.
When the Doctor came back in, he said; “what did I tell you?”
I told you to be careful, didn’t I?
However, the real problem is that they don’t tell you what foods to avoid, because in truth, I don’t think they really know much about this disease at all.
They don’t understand that food is really the enemy of the pancreatitis patient.
To curb the pain as much as possible I did what anyone would do, I started experimenting with food to find out what caused the most pain and what caused the least.
You see, what pancreatitis is in simple terms is; eating food causes the pancreas to become inflamed and swell. This blocks the outlet valve so that the pancreatic enzymes can’t escape.
They then start to digest the pancreas itself, leak and spill out onto the other organs and begin digesting them too.
Well, as one might figure; your body doesn’t like being digested from the inside out. It’s incredibly painful.
To combat this, I started fasting and adding in one simple food at a time to see what it did to me. Did it cause another attack, or was I able to tolerate it to some degree?
As I mentioned, the first thing I found that was somewhat well tolerated was vegetable juice that I juiced myself at home. Then I started adding in a potato with no butter or salt or a tomato to see what would happen.
It was just a big game of trial and error, and then…
Finally, Something That Worked
By June 2018 things were not looking very good. My weight had dropped to 115 pounds and I knew that if I didn’t do something, I was likely not going to make it.
I had come across and tried countless remedies online, in health blogs, videos, by reading books and by getting advice from everything from friends to forums.
I spent untold amounts of time and money researching and trying every single thing, hoping that one of them would help even just a little bit.
However, I’m sad to say, none did.
Then one day while researching online I stumbled across a very odd site from India.
Sure, I had seen countless other sites all spewing basically the same message.
However, once you check into them you find that it’s either not what you’d hoped, they really don’t actually do any treatments and just talk about pie in the sky possibilities or that they just plain have it all wrong.
Over time you start to determine what’s real, what’s not, what are lies and what the truth is.
On the India site I found that this man was talking about all the things that I had through trial and error determined to be true myself.
It was a real breath of fresh air, because I needed to do something and do it fast or I was pretty sure I would run out of time.
October 29th, 2018, I Left for India
It was uncharted territory because I was the first and only person from the USA to go there for treatment. But I was bound and determined not to die without having explored every possible option and tried every available remedy.
By the time I arrived I was feeling as if I was near dead.
I stayed for six weeks going through multiple protocols. Some of which included; taking a mineral formula every day, learning how and what to eat, walking for 20 minutes after each meal to stimulate digestion and much more.
The bulk of my diet was fruit and the things that most people consider vegetable, but that are actually fruits as well such as tomato, cucumber, avocado, eggplant and more. The remainder of my foods were all classic vegetables.
I can tell you that I ate so many bananas that when I looked up into the trees and saw the monkeys, I started to identify with them in a pretty big way.
One of the challenges was that I felt a huge amount of anxiety every day. I didn’t know if this would work at all, if this was my last stop, or could there still be something else out there for me if this didn’t work?
It was just as mentally exhausting as it was physical.
By the time I left this place I was 110 pounds and still not doing well at all. It felt like I had just been through 6 weeks of hell and had nothing to show for it.
Then it happened.
I was on my way to the airport and I started feeling better.
I had two distinct feelings.
One that I was going home to see my family and so that lifted me mentally.
However, I also truly felt that something in my body had changed, I started to feel as if I had actually gotten better while I was there.
Once I got home, I continued on their protocol and was allowed to incorporate other foods into my diet. Over the next 3 months I put on over 30 pounds.
I wasn’t feeling amazing yet, but I was feeling pretty darn good by comparison.
By continually adding foods back one at a time I’ve finally gotten back to the place where I can eat virtually anything I want with the exception of red meat, that still causes flare ups.
Yes, that even includes fats. I was leery of them at first because of the immense pain they had brought before, but now, I can eat most any of them without instance.
For me, it’s simply amazing. I have not had any relapses since and I have a pretty much normal life now. Incredible!
However, as I mentioned, I do avoid red meat like the plague because having another episode is not one of the things on my bucket list.
What Caused This Disease In The First Place?
There were two main culprits that I can attribute as to why I contracted Pancreatitis; A). I was a very non-confrontational person as a kid. I was the counselor that everyone could come to with their problems.
If someone disrespected me, made fun of me or put me down I just held it all inward instead of letting it out by confronting them and getting it over with right then and there.
B). This is by far the biggest reason. I ate a very poor version of the SAD (Standard American Diet).
I lived on pizza, burgers and soda. Then for dessert I would go for any of the cakes or pies that were available. I ate so many cookies they literally could have called me the cookie monster.
My diet was a mess and it just got worse as time went on.
This Is the Problem Most Americans Face Today
The vast majority of us eat a SAD (Standard American Diet).
We dine on fast food, eat way too much sugar and nearly everything we eat these days has oil as a cooking agent or as an additive.
The Reason ‘Why’ I Created This Site
It’s my dream to help everyone move towards better health, so that they can live normal happy lives filled with joy and prosperity.
I want people who are suffering with this disease to understand that there is hope and that one day you too can live a normal pain free life again.
I want people to understand that all of these digestive disorders can be fixed.
People need a place where they can go to find the truth and discover that; a healthy diet, reducing stress, and getting their proper rest is far more important than they may have ever known.
I want to spread the word of health and I thank you for coming here and reading my story.
I’d like you to help spread this message too. Please share any article or video on this site that you’ve enjoyed with your friends and social media networks.
Together we can truly help make a difference. Thank you, Justin