Unravel Illnesses:
Rewire To Recover
With Dan Neuffer
A true wellness warrior, Dan Neuffer, shares with us how he overcomes the biggest battle of his life for 7 years, suffering from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. A former physicist, a young family man, Dan was once bed bounded to the idea of never getting his life back up again. A smile he couldn’t fake for his kids at one Christmas dinner, gifted him the determination to find a way to recover.
This episode digs deep into Dan’s personal journey dealing with his sickness. He shares insights on the nature of this group of diseases, its conditions, and how he tackled them back to wellness again. Since his full recovery in 2010, he has proven to himself that it is possible to achieve what he once thought was impossible.
Through many years of sharing his story, Dan has created ANS REWIRE a comprehensive online program to support more people with their recovery journey from this syndrome. The program is now being used in over 60 countries around the world to help people recover from these illnesses.
Dan also wrote two books to help others with the disease; CFS Unravelled, and Discover Hope – 7 steps to help you rediscover hope and cope better with Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, POTS, PVFS & MCS.
Check out his program and other resources here: cfsunravelled.com.
Shownotes:
01:29 – Start out as a physicist, what drove you into that area of professional space originally?
His love for numbers and his amusement in lasers from a very young age led him to study lasers and optoelectronics.
02:43 – So you were struck down literally with a whole plethora of a disease profile that included, Myalgic and Stefano, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, et cetera, this whole group of diseases. What are some of the contributing factors that can lead to this group of conditions that you were dealing with?
Dan explains the various triggers that can lead to the illness and that’s different for each individual.
04:58 – Can you talk me through why there’s so much uncertainty regarding the diagnosis in the first place?
Dan calls it an invisible illness, a disease that its symptoms cannot be easily verified through medical tests. With a variety of symptoms, it is confused into being differentiated into many different illnesses. But from his experience, Dan classifies them under one umbrella when he looks at their causes rather than focusing on the symptoms.
08:30 – So you went on a journey of six and a half to seven years of dealing with being critically unwell. How did you actually cope to survive those?
With honesty, Dan shares the extremely difficult journey he’s gone through with his illness. The severity of his state he discussed here, as he looked back at that time, got him into accepting that he was not going to recover. One Christmas where I couldn’t fake a smile for his kids, got him crawled out of that state to make a conscious decision to seek a way to recovery.
14:50 – So what did you find and how did you actually get to that point in time where you felt that you were well again and obviously functioning as you hoped to?
Through his research, Dan dived deep into the root causes of what he’d experienced. Instead of looking to treat the symptoms, he started to ask why they were happening. That’s when he began to see the solutions, one of those being him learning about the autonomic nervous system.
17:51 – Where do we get our magnesium from in our normal day-to-day dietary intake?
Magnesium can be found in a range of food, however, Dan expresses that to return to wellness, we need to address the root cause.
21:12 – So what were some of the other avenues, pathways and mechanisms for recovery? What did you find?
Dan explains the connection he made through his discoveries in treating his illness. He looked into the cellular metabolism, autonomic nervous system and more importantly through his own observation of his own behaviours. Brain training was a big process he had to learn to manage through difficult times.
30:03 – How are you training people to get through the illness conditions through your program?
Dan shares that his comprehensive program is all about getting people to utilise the strategies provided they can do at home daily. While not having the answer to this complicated illness, having realistic expectations and complimenting his strategies have proven to improve the health of many.
35:49 – What is your daily practice look like to self-manage now so that you potentially never have a relapse again in the future? What does a normal day look like to you?
With the strategies he had learned and shared with others in his program, Dan is now able to live his life normally without being cautious of his health at all.
38:22 – Dan, what does wellness mean to you?
To me, wellness means not knowing about it. Not thinking about it.
That’s what wellness means to me. Right. Because I think when you can just engage in life without any awareness of wellness, you’ve probably got it.
