My Story

I started this website, in part, because I wanted to put to paper my experiences over the last 5-6 years of trying to jumpstart my health. Sure, I probably should have kept a journal of some sort but that has never really been my thing. I guess this my attempt at doing that years later.

My story starts as a young child. My mother started noticing some behavioral issues when I was a toddler and started trying to find any food allergies that I may have that would be a trigger. After I started to get a lot of mucus, we found out that I was sensitive to milk. I spent some time on alternative and lactose free milk but I guess we didn’t think too much of it, and I loved cereal too much that I went back to the white gold that we all know and love.

Some time after, I began to develop a skin condition on my scalp. I never did get a correct diagnosis as dermatologists can be clueless to the actually cause. We will say it was psoriasis, eczema, or dermatitis. This began around the time I was 8-9. It was years later that I actually found a good solution to keep it at bay. My digestion was also pretty bad for most of my life (constipation).

Around the time I was 12, I went through some difficult life circumstances that I won’t address here, but I started to eat a lot of very unhealthy food and put on weight. I got very insecure about the way I looked and never took my shirt off when I swam. I probably lacked a lot of vitamin D because of that.

As I got older, I grew taller and wider; so by the time I was 16 I was 6′ and 200 lbs. That’s really not that much weight, but I had very little muscle and was probably 50-60 lbs overweight. I was sluggish, I struggled with school, I was depressed and really hated my life. Throughout school I was very quiet and didn’t talk that much in class, maybe just a little to my friends. Not that I was all that shy, I was just slow with words, even in writing.

That summer, I went on a missions trip with my church and ended up losing 20 lbs by the end of the summer. Not that I went on a diet or anything, we were just so busy and I drank so much water that the weight started to naturally come off. The same thing happened again the following summer. I started my senior year of high school around 165 lbs and was actually starting to feel pretty good about myself. I still had terrible food choices though and wrestled with the same health issues.

During college and up into my mid-twenties, I got down to about 150 lbs. Definitely lower than I should be but despite still having bad food habits, I lost more weight. Around the age of 26, I started to research health out of desperation. I had very little energy, I couldn’t focus very well, I still had digestive issues, my depression wasn’t so bad but I still had a difficult time communicating. Most people thought I was a good bit younger than I was because of my size and demeanor.

I started taking quality vitamins and probiotics. I learned that my skin issues might be from a gluten intolerance so I gave that up. The probiotics helped with my digestion for a while. I tried eating better over all and started going to the gym. I put on a little bit of muscle with creatine and protein powders but seemed to plateau after a couple of months. I eventually just lost interest in working out.

I was on the supplement road for a number of years. I found some supplements that worked well for me, but most of them started to lose their efficacy as my body got used to them. The thing that helped the most were probiotics and magnesium for digestion but even those started to lose their power.

After going through the same experiences over and over again, I finally decided to go see a doctor of functional medicine. At my initial visit, he proposed that I had leaky gut and a thyroid disorder of some sort. His main advice was to get my stomach acid levels up and to take some test to further pinpoint what may be going on. After a number of different tests, it turns out I did indeed have leaky gut, thyroid/adrenal insufficiency and a lot of low vitamin and mineral levels. He is a neurologist as well and diagnosed me with ADD/anxiety. My whole life up to that point started to make sense. I could look at every diagnosis and see how it affected me throughout my life.

I’ve spent the last few years trying to reverse these conditions. I have learned a lot along the way and have had many frustrations at the lack of progress I have made. I’m still not where I want to be health wise but I feel like I am in the best place I have been thus far. Healing is a journey and the most important part of that journey is to keep on going. Even when it gets hard, even when you seen no progress, you owe it to yourself not to give up. Because at some point, you will get your breakthrough, you will find that one piece that you needed for change, you will lose that weight, you will beat that condition, you will get more energy. And you will look back on your life and see just how much you have conquered and it will all be worth it.

Because of His grace,

Adam Zink

I know this wasn’t an extremely detailed article but I didn’t want it to be too long. I go into more detail on some of my other blogs so go and check them out!