I still vividly remember how it all started. My dad took us to the pool. It was my first time at an actual pool, and I really couldn't wait to experience it. 

I remember the beautiful hotel where it was, the fun we had in the water and also this weird strong smell, which I later in life realized was chlorine. 

After a few days or perhaps weeks (that was almost 30 years ago so my memory is a bit blurry), I started to notice some skin irritation. All of a sudden, I was seeing some dry spots on my skin. I didn't think much of it, neither did my parents. But as the time went on, my skin never returned to normal. 

My parents took me to see a dermatologist and I was diagnosed with psoriasis (which is a rare disease to have in childhood).

At only 8 years old, my body couldn't take the toxic load around me, and thanks to my genetic predisposition to this, I developed inflammation which turned into an autoimmune disease. 

That was the beginning of a very long health journey, which took me from a regular careless child, to a very subconscious and anxious teenager and later adult.  

Even though the diagnosis felt like a life time sentence, which I was reassured about by countless conventional medicine doctors, later in life I realized that is not the case at all.