My Story
Hi! I’m Elissa-Rae Cooper, I’m a Naturopath, Nutritionist, Remedial Massage Therapist and Gut Health Warrior.
I am also a wife and mum to a toddler, two dogs & four chickens.
I’ve been working in the natural health industry for approximately 13 years helping my clients achieve greatness in all area’s of their live. My natural health journey started when I was very young. I was always a “sick” kid going to doctor after doctor, before ending up at a naturopath’s door with my mum. In a nutshell, it started when I was diagnosed with whooping cough at 7yrs, then Epstein-Barr Virus at 10yrs, Tracheomalacia at 13yrs, Chronic Tropical Ear infections and Middle Ear infections at 15yrs, Constant headaches at 15-23yrs, Chronic chest infections from 17yrs – 25yrs and finally Chronic gut issues and anxiety at 25yrs old! During this time I also became antibiotic resistant twice and completely abused anti-inflammatory medications for 18 months after I had hip surgery.
The gut issues and anxiety was my turning point. I was living a life where I could not digest food. Simple food and meals that we just take for granted I wasn’t able to eat and if I did eat them they would go through me within 20mins. My biggest demon was diarrhoea. I remember driving to work every day and taking the route that had the most toilet stops, if I had to stop at a red light and the toilet stop was on the other side, I would start having a panic attack. People were commenting on how “amazing” and “skinny” I looked, because I had lost over 10kg in 2 months, I didn’t feel amazing or look amazing, I looked and felt sick! I had dark rings around my eyes, my ribs were starting to show, I had started to develop a bobble head, I was anxious all of the time and physically and mentally weak. I was exhausted, I wasn’t sleeping well both from withdrawal of the anti-inflammatories, pain in my hip and a terrible imbalance in my neurotransmitters.
Beyond this other things also started to change in my life, for example, my period actually stopped for over 18 months and I was getting nerve pain in my breast, just my arms brushing up against them would give me a burning nerve pain like they were on fire. My body literally was shutting down and I needed to change.
I was seeing a GP and a gastroenterologist who carried out over $10k of testing on me to find nothing! I was told to take anti-depressants and gastrostop and that there was nothing else they could do. This moment, is when I decided to take control, I needed to do something or I literally was not going to have a life. I contacted a colleague, my natural therapist in Townsville, Sam Spina (who is my biggest inspiration and one of my biggest supporters) and I enrolled in my studies to become a Naturopath. I also quit my job as a massage therapist as a lot of my anxiety with my gut was related to work and I worked in an office where a toilet was easily accessible. These changes literally changed my life! I changed the way I was eating, I still couldn’t eat much but slowly I was able to retain it in my body. Every success we celebrated. Every new food I could introduce we celebrated. Every poo that wasn’t diarrhoea we celebrated and every period once they came back we celebrate (and I still celebrate!) because it means I am now the healthiest version of myself I can be.
The journey was by far not an easy process and it still isn’t. Even after my gut was back to normal I have had and still have ongoing malabsorption issues with nutrients. There are still a lot of foods I can’t eat or won’t touch, but this is my way of life and I don’t feel like I miss out on anything when it comes to food.
My passion and my goal in life now is to help as many of you as I can who have gut issues, diarrhoea, constipation, food intolerances/allergies and anxiety associated with these gut disturbances. It does not have to be your new normal, there is a way to overcome it and live a normal life again.