Our Coaches: Paige

Paige’s Story

Paige Snyder is one of Gut Geek’s nutrition coaches. She always goes the extra mile to help clients find long-lasting wellness through healing their gut and microbiome.

Her story is a journey from a place of deeply damaged health to vibrant, mindful and energised living. 

By the way, Paige is also a super geek as she graduated with flying colours from the University of Bridgeport, one of the most highly accredited nutrition programs in the USA, so she knows her stuff!

Antibiotics & Convenience Food

I was a flatulent child! Not the way I thought a professional bio would start but here we are facing the truth.

Looking back, my gut symptoms started in childhood, in the 80’s. At the time, no one was talking about gut health, probiotics or anything of the sort, at least not in my standard American home.

What I did receive however was a ton of antibiotics, aspirin and Advil (ibuprofen), soda and sugar. A typical childhood but a recipe for disaster.

Chronic strep throat started before I was 7 years old and I was given round after round of antibiotics.  There was never any discussion of balancing the damaging effect of antibiotics by taking probiotics. 

We always had food on the table and for that I am very grateful. However my parents were working hard to provide for my two sisters and me so that we had everything we wanted including great educations. This meant that they often had little time to prepare anything other than convenience food.

Meal after meal consisted of fast food or packaged, processed food. I now know that this kind of food comes loaded with stuff that’s terrible for our gut such as sugar, trans fats, colors and preservatives. 

You could say I’m a product of the Fast Food Nation that is the USA. Given the physical and mental health issues I faced from that time onwards, it is perhaps ironic that one of my parents worked in health care!

Childhood Stress

On top of a poor diet I grew up in a fairly constant state of fear of violence disguised as discipline. The specific details of this portion of my life are not important. The point is that chronic childhood stress, whether physical, mental and/or emotional, can have a huge impact on health, disrupting your adrenal axis for decades.

It puts you in a near constant state of fight or flight, making you far more susceptible to pain and more unstable emotionally. It can even lead to our genes mutating. So if people call you sensitive, soft and a snowflake it may be because of this! To learn more about this follow me on Instagram at @plantbasedpaige. 

My first panic attack happened in my teens, although at the time I had no idea what it was. I was taken to the hospital and tested with a spinal tap for meningitis. Diet, lifestyle and stress levels were never asked about. Since I came from a “nice family” and the blood tests didn’t show anything I was sent on my way. It wasn’t until 10 years later that I realized it had been a panic attack.  

Rock’n’Roll Lifestyle

Fast forward to my 20’s: I was suffering from stress from college exams so a doctor prescribed me several rounds of Xanax, a common tranquilizer used to control anxiety.

I then took a job as a tour manager, working with bands and living on the road. Amazingly I managed to keep this up for nearly 10 years. For most of this time I was living in a van, sleeping maybe 4 hours a night and eating a steady diet of processed food. It was a blast but it took a heavy toll on my health. It was only a matter of time before my symptoms started really screaming at me.

One day acne set in suddenly and nothing I tried would clear it up. Next was depression, menstrual cramps, itchy skin, thinning eyebrows,  oral thrush and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

Controlling my bodyweight became a nightmare. At first I gained too much weight. Then I lost too much and couldn’t gain it back.

On the emotional side I was sensitive and unstable, reacting angrily and aggressively to people instead of responding calmly. All these issues became chronic and lasted for years.

I managed to do two things in an effort to turn around my health: I became vegan and stopped drinking soda, but I was far from healthy! I was still eating processed food with all its nightmarish ingredients. My only criteria was whether it was vegan or not. On top of that I was still going to  plenty of parties and drinking a lot of alcohol.

The Green Shoots of Recovery

When I started to spend less time on the road I was able to cook and read more, and I started learning about nutrition. It began with macrobiotics then raw food, food combining, elimination diets, I tried them all! I discovered that each had some wonderful healing properties that I could carry with me, giving me some relief from the chronic issues that plagued me.

Natural skin care and gut health gradually became very near and dear to me.

After I started healing myself, friends and family noticed the change and wanted to know what I was doing differently. I started making suggestions to others and seeing improvements in them as well. This lit me up! I loved the feeling of giving others the tools and support they needed to be their best selves.

Back to School

This motivated me to seek a formal education so I could learn more about nutrition and biochemistry. By now my vision was clear: I knew that with more credentials I would be able to help people on a much larger scale.

As part of my new education I learned about lab tests that could be done in order to understand better what’s going wrong inside our body. However these tests are considered part of the world of nutrition and medical doctors in the US (and other countries) are NOT REQUIRED TO STUDY NUTRITION as part of their training, so they tend to consider it unimportant.

(Keep this in mind the next time a doctor tries to talk you out of your preferred choice or makes a suggestion that does not fit with your mindset or ethics.)

Lab Testing

I began ordering lab tests for myself that the doctors wouldn’t. Here’s what I found:

A lab test known as CBC (Complete Blood Count) is commonly used to evaluate overall health and mine came back perfect. My physician said he only saw lab work that good in 1 out of 500 people. This was great news, but then why was I still so fatigued, still battling acne, IBS, memory issues, painful menstruation, anxiety and a deep dark depression that was over taking my life?

Then we carried out an OAT (Organic Acid Test), and a stool test (which looks at what’s going on our gut). The results?  Just wow! Now I could see the real problems!

My neurotransmitters were off, stemming from years of anxiety and a disrupted adrenal axis. My gut was loaded with SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth), I had a lot of inflammation, a number of nutrient deficiencies and a touch of candida.

Side note: at this point I had been vegetarian/vegan for nearly 25 years and my B12 and calcium levels were totally fine, two nutrients that are often said to be low in plant-based people.

However my vitamin C level and a several other nutrients were extremely low because my gut was not absorbing it. Malabsorption of nutrients is common in people with gut problems. My plant-based diet saved me from some of the common issues like high cholesterol, triglycerides, sodium etc, but my life of chronic stress, lack of sleep, high cortisol, and weakened immune system had wreaked havoc on my gut.

So even though I was eating the cleanest diet you’ve ever seen, my gut was just not absorbing it. 

Towards Outstanding Health

For me, getting healthy wasn’t just about diet and the right supplements but also self-love, meditation, mindfulness, and doing what truly makes me happy. I had no control over what happened to me as a child or many of the things that made me sick but I am in control of what I put in my body today.

Now that my diet was cleaned up, the next stage for me was to focus on the very best foods and supplements to get me to the next level.