About

Hi there! My name is Eve Colantoni. I live a rather unique and incredible life. I get to do what I love, which is to travel around and teach people how they can feel incredible too. (See the theme here!) But it wasn’t always this way for me. In fact, for most of my life, it was the exact opposite: I lived in almost complete misery.

When you look through the laundry list of conditions I’ve overcome, it really does look like a nightmare. So, if it gets to be too much, just skip to the bottom to see how goodness prevails! I now get to live my “happy ending” every day of my incredible life and hope my experience can help you feel incredible now and live happily ever after too.

This was my life. These are all the illnesses I’ve faced and overcome:

Weight Problems: At my heaviest I was a size 14; my face resembled Miss Piggy from the Muppets. I had been yo-yo dieting since I was a teenager. Sure, I’d lose some here and there, but I’d always gain it back and have my self-esteem crushed because I felt like I just didn’t have the willpower to “be good”. I loved to eat. And I only wanted what tasted good to me, or comfort foods and was pretty turned off by the “healthy stuff” … (a.k.a. rabbit food). Dieting and being good, then binging and going on a crash diet became how I lived. I wasn’t interested in getting “healthy”…. I just wanted to be skinny and sexy! I had no idea that one day, I’d be able to find all sorts of amazing foods that I loved to eat and would support my body in losing the extra weight and making me feel incredible.

Bi-Polar Disorder: Looking back on it, I’d say I started suffering from symptoms of manic depression (as they used to called it) as early as junior high school. That description fit the bill too. One minute I’d be bouncing off the walls (having a manic episode) and then CRASH! I was irritable, lethargic, and would get angry for no apparent reason. By the time I was a teenager, my parents realized the situation was pretty severe and did the best thing that they knew how to do at the time. They took me to a psychiatrist. This began my path down the road of anti-depressant medications. I think we tried everything from Lithium to Depakote to Wellbutrin. They would always seem to help at first, but soon I’d be right back where I started. Of course the drug companies don’t advertise this, but most of the medications they prescribe for mental health disorders are only effective temporarily. After a few weeks, they’re no more effective than a sugar pill. Besides, no one ever suggested that my episodes of running around like a maniac followed by a sharp decline could have anything to do with what I was eating. I know understand the direct link to the food I was eating and the symptoms I was having.

Depression: My “condition” worsened over time and was marked by less episodes of mania, and more periods of desperation. I was told I had a severe chemical imbalance which REQUIRED medication. Soon, my breakfast cereal was served with a side of SSRI’s. They tried so many different medications to get me out of my “funk”. The most memorable was Paxil. It brought me out of my funk alright. It incited in me a level of mania I’d never experienced before. I’d show up at my job and it was like I had been taking “speed” or something. I’d do the work of 3 people and never bat an eye. It was like being on a crazy high all the time. The really big downfall was that it completely effected my sex life. My libido was stronger than ever, but became impossible, I repeat IMPOSSIBLE for me to climax. I couldn’t see living life this way. Besides, I knew that it was only a matter of time before my co-workers would start asking questions about all my extra “energy”. Eventual I was prescribed a drug called Seroquel which is used as an anti-psychotic. Yippee! Another blow to my self-esteem believing I was psychotic! I know now that my depression WAS the result of a chemical imbalance, but that using medication does not CURE the problem. The medication, ironically, can complicate and worsen the real cause of the imbalance by increasing the amount of toxicity the brain must handle. I’m so grateful I learned how to rebalance the biochemistry of my brain, so it functions normally now. It’s freedom at it’s greatest!

ADHD: When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin. Thankfully, the medication made me feel so bad that my doctor recommended that I discontinue it. Instead, I was placed in an academic support class. It was strange because two years prior I was in the Talented and Gifted Class. No one really questioned why I suddenly developed this condition. It was just par for the course. Some kids have ADHD and some kids don’t. Some will be able to focus and behave and some are just plagued by this “mysterious” condition. They act like it’s just luck of the draw. I’m very lucky that I was spared from the toxic effecs that drugs like Ritalin have on the brain, and lucky that I learned that ADHD is not just “something that just happens”. I’m so blessed that I got to learn the steps needed to correct it.

Migraine Headaches: I began having migraine headaches when I was seven years old. I want you to close your eyes for a minute and imagine what a seven year old little girl looks like. They’re usually in the second grade and are just little bitty people. I want to tell you that what I went through I would not wish on my worst enemy, much less a precious little child. The pain that I would experience was so intense that it would, without fail, lead to periods of intense vomiting. I would be completely incapacitated. Totally unable to move or be exposed to light or sound. My most memorable experience of having a migarine headache, was when I sensed on coming on while I was at a birthday party. I remember looking down at the cheap birthday cake I was eating (you know those store bought ones made from TONS of sugar, white flour, partially hydrogenated oil, glow-in-the-dark food dyes, artificial colors and flavors, additives, preservatives, and chemicals, chemicals, chemicals, ahhhh!) I had no way of knowing that the cake I was eating had likely triggered what would be another episode of intense suffering. I just knew I needed my painkillers– immediately. So I calmly walked over to the mother in charge and said with a level of maturity well beyond my years, “Mrs. Jones, I need you to call my mommy immediately. I’m getting a migraine headache and if I don’t take my medicine I’ll be vomiting in 20 minutes.” Children should never have to endure such suffering. Ever. Period. I’m so blessed to have had this as part of my life because I as a result, I’ve developed an extraordinary amount of empathy for those who are in pain. I also understand how NEEDLESS it is to suffer this way.

Anxiety: It’s not unusual to experience a certain amount of anxiety on some level. For example, if your car starts making funny noises, but you neglect to have a mechanic look at it, and it starts to get worse, yet you continue to ignore it, and the noises grow even LOUDER, then BOOM! The reality of the situation hits you. You could be putting yourself or your passengers in danger, or slowly destroying your vehicle. You might start to feel a bit anxious about this! I’m talking about a different type of anxiety though. I’m talking about being twelve years old and waking up first thing in the morning and feeling panicky. This is not normal. If you are waking up feeling anxious, this is likely another biochemical imbalance which can be easily corrected. Also, I have a number of people who will tell me things like, “You don’t understand…. I just lost my job and I can’t pay my rent.” or, “My wife is threatening to get a divorce and take the kids.” I do understand. I understand what this can feel like. I also understand that people are faced with challenges everyday. Sometimes serious challenges. Some become overwhelmed by their anxiety while others, being the exact opposite THRIVE under such conditions, or at least manage without falling apart. What make them so different? If you’re not healthy, your brain will not be able to produce the natural “feel calm” chemicals it needs to help you face your challenges. I was so unhealthy I had very little of these natural “relaxing agents”. Hence, waking up feeling anxious. I’m so glad I’ve got my body working in my favor now!

Panic Attacks: Without warning, I would suddenly find myself in a state of panic. My palms would start sweating and begin to feel really “clammy”. I would start to break into a cold sweat all over, but especially down my spine. My jaw would either clench or if I tried to relax it my teeth would start to chatter. But the height of these attacks would seem like my whole being was consumed by a cloud of fear and despair. Sadly, this had become my routine and not the anomaly it should have been. The year was 1988 and I was fourteen years old. I was a freshman in high school. I should have been thinking about the school play I wanted to be in, or clubs I wanted to join, or (heaven forbid!) BOYS! But instead, there were days were I would have to ask the teacher for a pass to see the school nurse. I spent a lot of time on the hard cots in our infirmary. I felt so ashamed, like a hypochondriac. I mean nothing “bad” was happening, so there was no reason for me to be “freaking out” like this. I thought I was being ridiculous, but couldn’t escape the fact that I sometimes thought I might have a heart attack. I was careful never to tell my friends about this. I just imagined they’d think I was even weirder than I already though I was. So I lived with my little secret in check.

Topical Acne: So for years I suffered from horribly disfiguring acne. The only relief that I was able to get was when I was prescribed antibiotics. Of course, what we’re not told about antibiotics is that they don’t discriminate. Sure, they’ll go through your system and kill off the “harmful” bacteria, but no one ever tells you they’ll also kill off all your “friendly” bacteria. Our body has a very delicate inner ecosystem. Having the proper balance of good and bad bacteria is mandatory. Taking antibiotics is like clearing the playing field. Sure, you wipe out all the bad guys, but in return you have none of the good guys there working for you either. The good bacteria helps to digest and break down the food that we’re eating to make sure we’re getting the proper nutrients our systems need to thrive and be well. Beyond that, they keep the bad guys in check. However, when you don’t have any good bacteria in place, the harmful bacteria can proliferate and reek havoc on your system. The biggest difficulties I suffered from this situation was an overgrowth of Candida Albicans, Intestinal Permiability, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Cystic Acne: While my health was declining from the use of antibiotics, my skin stopped reacting favorably to the oral drugs, so the next protocol was to use injectible steroids. Imagine if you will for a moment what it’s like to get a shot in your face. I can’t even believe this was part of my reality at one point in my life. When this became too much to endure, the next option was a round of a medication called Acutane. For those of you who know it, you’re likely cringing right now. Acutane is a drug that has very severe side effects. It’s taken with the idea of shutting down all your oil ducts with the hope that when you finish the course of this medication, your body will have adapted and your oil ducts will become less active. We’re taught to think, “Pesky oil ducts! It’s all your fault! Let’s just blame it all on the body. The body CLEARLY has no idea what it’s doing. Of course it couldn’t be a “user error”! Well, truth be told, it’s pretty simple. Garbage in, garbage out. Our skin is just another channel for detoxification. If your kidney or your liver for example get to backed up trying to remove all the unnatural and toxic materials from your system, your body will try to redirect the overflow to another exit. Beyond that, as with all conditions, there can be multiple causes. Now, I’m sure the birth control pills I had been taking, which disrupted my hormonal system had much to do with marble sized cysts. But at that point, I did not understand any of this. I just knew I wanted them gone. So Accutane it was. The side effects were intense. My lips and nose would crack open and bleed, I constantly had to apply saline eye drops, my skin became so dry that just touching my arm for example would leave a pile of “dandruff” wherever I’d been sitting, having sex was unbearable, and I was scared to move my bowels. Bascially, any part of your body that you would expect to be “moist” was being forced to dry up. Oh, did I mention that you have to have routine liver analysis test done to make sure the drug isn’t cause irreprible damage? And that you MUST, be on birth control while you take it because of the SEVERE birth defects it causes? I hope someday, society will look back on the barbaric practices of “modern medicine” and liken it to a hundred years ago when barber still preformed the act of “blood letting”. We sure have evolved! — Yeah, right…

Chronic Vaginal Yeast Infections: I used to think, “Oh the joys of being a woman! I just love having to deal with this repeatedly!” And of course, with all the ads for over-the-counter creams likeMonistat, or Gyne-Lotrimin we’re made to believe this is all normal. We as women can just expect to get this from time to time and it’s just a part of life. I was never aware that the antibiotics I had been taking, or the birth control I had been on wascasuing this problem. Moreover, I never had a clue that all the annoying yeast infections I was getting were indicative of a much bigger problem. This was not just an “insolated incident”. The symptom I was experiencing really just the tip of the iceberg. I had an overgrowth of Candida Albicans which had spread throughout my entire system.

Candida Albicans Overgrowth: As I mentioned in the section above on Topical Acne, antibiotics will kill off ALL bacteria in your system, not just the bad stuff. Without the friendly flora in place, other not-so-good yeasts, molds and fungi are free to colonize in your body. Now, normally we all have a certain amount of Candida in our system. It’s just when it gets out of control that we need to be concerned. It’s mostly seen in the gut, but allowed to continue unchecked, your whole system can become infected. Vaginal yeast infections became a minor concern when I began to recognize that I was displaying symptoms of having this yeast/fungus wrapped around my brain stem. The protocol for cleansing the body of these invaders initially felt like something beyond my abilities. I really wanted to just throw in the towel and concede defeat. I knew I had no choice though. I learned that the problem was not the Candida, in and of itself, but it was the Candida “waste products”. Yes, here it is: Candida poop is the real issue. Basically, these guys were leaving toxic waste elements in my system which overtime built up. I was like a walking toxic waste dump. I’m now convinced this was a huge part of the Chronic Fatigue I had been suffering from. Even worse is these guys are not just little poop machines, they like to dig too. The develop little “legs” and burrow into the walls of your intestines so they can take root. Problem is, the lining of our intestines is not supposed to have gapping holes in it. This guys helped contribute to my developing Leaky Gut Syndrome and Food Allergies.

Intestinal Permeability (Leaky Gut Syndrome): Our bodies are like big doughnuts or inner tubes. Food goes in on one end and out the other. If you imagine an elongated doughnut, you can get a picture of this concept. One of the functions of the lining of our digestive tract is to make sure nothing passes into our system that’s not supposed to. However, a number of different factors can contribute to the breakdown of this barrier, poor diet and the burrowing of Candida I mentioned above are just a few. When this barrier is breached, all sorts of mayhem can set in. Regular old, everyday, average foods you might eat, like an apple or some cucumbers, can pass undigested into your body. This is not how the system is supposed to work. The body views these foods now as a foreign invader. It will oftentimes initiate an allergic reaction reacting as if it is “under attack” from these invaders. This is when you might see Food Allergies setting in or even worse, an autoimmune disorder. My gut was completely destroyed. Learning to heal my gut, my body, from the inside out was truly a remarkable experience.

Chronic Fatigue: When I began to delve into all the reasons I had become unable to drag myself out of bed for any extensive periods of time, I learned that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is just as the name implies– a syndrome, meaning a collection of symptoms. For me, it was strange. One day I’d be up and about doing my thing, but by 10AM I’d have to lay down to take a nap. Some days, it felt like by the time I was finished showering and getting ready to go to work, I was ready to go right back to sleep again. Other times, out of nowhere, I would suddenly start to nod off, like someone had drugged me. The body is going to do what it needs to make itself feel better, so it wasn’t long before I was unconsciously reaching for cup after cup of coffee to compensate for all my low energy problems. I don’t think I even realized how bad my situation had become until I tried to stop drinking coffee. I had a very rude awakening. I didn’t realize how dependent I had become on it. As I delved further into my issues, I recognized a pattern between certain foods I was eating, and that sudden “drug-like” state I would find myself in. In particular I realized wheat and sugar were huge culprits, which were not coincidentally among my favorites. This is when I started realizing that in addition to the Candida Overgrowth I was contending with, my Food Allergies were playing a significant role in my lack of energy.

Food Allergies: There’s an interesting correlation between food allergies and food cravings. Oftentimes, it’s the foods that we’re most allergic to, that we crave the most. Consider this for a moment, when we awake in the morning, we’ve been without food for many hours while we’ve been asleep. In essence, we’ve been fasting. Hence the name, breakfast (as in to break the fast). As I mentioned before, more often than not, we tend to crave the foods that we’re most allergic to. So it should come as no surprise that all our favorite breakfast foods tend to be the ones most people have hidden allergies to. These include foods like eggs, dairy (like milk, yogurt and cheese) and wheat (as in our breakfast cereals, toasts, muffins and bagels). I found that wheat and sugar were the too biggest culprits for the sudden “nodding off” I would experience which I explained above in my section on Chronic Fatigue. Now if you’ve ever checked the labels of all your favorite foods in a traditional supermarket, you’ll be shocked to learn that wheat and sugar are in just about EVERYTHING! It became apparent to me very quickly that I would need to stop eating all processed foods immediately. I actually went through a period of morning I think. I felt like I would never be up to the challenge of having to go without a box of this or jar of that. I had grown up using a microwave, and while I liked to cook here and there, I wasn’t sure I could handle having to make everything from scratch. I’m so glad I was FORCED to make this change in my life. There’s been nothing more gratifying than discovering how incredible you feel when you begin eating REAL food again. I just never had a benchmark for it. I hope to be able to share this incredible way to live with all who seek to feel incredible too.

Environmental Allergies: I remember like it was yesterday the day they administered my first “allergy test”. If you think some of the other treatments I’ve had seemed barbaric, then this one will really take the cake. With my shirt off, I was placed faced down on my stomach. Next, came the shock I was totally unprepared for. What they do is take something that looks like a bed of nails. Each “nail” is then exposed to some form of the suspected allergen, like grass, leaves, mold, dust, cat hair, etc. But here comes the fun part: they took this “bed of nails” and with a quick “whack” I wound up with a dozen or so punctures in my flesh. The fun doesn’t just end there. They used several of these “bed of nails” until there wasn’t a square inch of untouched space left on my back. So they moved to my arms. I believe I was 10 years old the first time I had to go through this. With results in hand, they prepare serums that will be administered through injection with the intent to build up your immunity to the guilty parties. We diligently went to the doctor as often as three times a week for many years. I have no doubt now why I believed all this was all normal. I had been raised in a doctor’s office and simply believed that doctors know everything. Sadly, my allergies would change and grow worse over the years. This meant more testing and more shots. I finally gave up the shots because the routine was taking over my life and opted for more oral medications. After trying just about everything I was prescribed Zyrtec. When that started to become less effective another drug called Zantac was added to the mix. The combination of the two seemed to have some sort of synergistic effect that quieted my symptoms. If, however, I missed a single day of taking them, I would have a fit of uncontrollable itching which would, more often than not, lead to me scratching my body until I would bleed. Once, I found myself on travel and realized I had forgotten my shopping bag of drugs. I actually went into a panic imagining what state I would be in 24 hours from that point if I didn’t get my “allergy fix”. I was truly a slave to my medications, unable to function without them. I can not tell you how liberating it is to finally have broken free vicious cycle.

Asthma: Luckily I was not one of those kids who had to tote around an asthma inhaler or sit out during gym class due to my respiratory problems. I didn’t develop asthma until my mid twenties. TO BE CONTINUED!

Sinusitis: TO BE CONTINUED!

Brain Fog: TO BE CONTINUED!

Eczema: TO BE CONTINUED!

Night Sweats: TO BE CONTINUED!

Alcoholism: TO BE CONTINUED!

Cigarette Addict: TO BE CONTINUED!

Caffeine Junkie: TO BE CONTINUED!

Sugar Addict: TO BE CONTINUED!

Heartburn and Chronic Indigestion: TO BE CONTINUED!

Digestive Distress: TO BE CONTINUED!

Sciatica: TO BE CONTINUED!

Adrenal Fatigue: TO BE CONTINUED!

Mercury Toxicity: TO BE CONTINUED!

Insomnia: TO BE CONTINUED!

Hormonal Imbalance: TO BE CONTINUED!

The Miracle That Happened…

I can’t tell you how many people have looked at me and said, “You poor thing! It’s a miracle you made it through all this!” My take on this is completely different though. I believe it was a miracle that I was given the gift of getting to experience all this.

You see, I view all that I’ve been through as my “boot camp”. My dis-ease filled life was my training ground. Many health care professionals go to school and study big text books that describe a particular condition one of their patients might be having. I got to live it. And I got to learn, first hand, what works and what doesn’t. The education I received, could not been “bought” or have been learned in an academic setting.

I have the hands on experience of curing all sorts of illnesses that most healthcare providers only know about in theory. I have been truly blessed and I know that my experience will allow me to continue helping people. Because we do have a choice. We do not need to live in a state of illness. It is our birthright to live in a state of vibrancy and incredible health. It is my mission to guide my clients to a level of well being they’ve never dreamed possible. My greatest hope for you, is that you too will be able to experience what it’s like to live in a state of vibrancy and feel incredible now.

With my most sincere and loving gratitude,

Eve N. Colantoni, CHC

I received my training and certification to practice Health Counseling at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which is the only nutrition school integrating all the different dietary theories—combining the knowledge of traditional philosophies with modern concepts like the USDA food pyramid, the glycemic index, the Zone and raw foods.

I am certified by Columbia University and the American Association of Drugless Practitioners.