Reversing Sickness with Certified, Plant-based Health Coach, Corinne Nijjer

"I started to feel results in many of my symptoms almost immediately. After 2 months I could feel my legs again..."

- Corinne Nijjer

GREEN EYE: How long have you had MS/fibromyalgia?

CORINNE: I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2002 and Multiple Sclerosis in 2004 so over 17 years with Fibromyalgia and 15 years with MS.

GREEN EYE: What convinced you to go plant-based?

CORINNE: I was initially following the plant-based diet recommended by Dr George Jelinek and his book Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis however, that diet included sea food and egg whites, which I started back in 2008. I made the switch to whole food, plant-based (wfpb) and vegan in 2012.

GREEN EYE: How did the plant-based lifestyle help with your health/symptoms?

CORINNE: I was living in chronic pain from Fibromyalgia, constipated, experiencing ongoing candida, brain fog, debilitating fatigue, depression and regular MS relapses including one which left me numb from the waist down until I made the switch to a wfpb diet and since then I have overcome all of these symptoms and celebrated 10 years symptom and relapse free in August of 2018.

GREEN EYE: Have you been able to stop/reduce your use of allopathic medication because of the plant-based lifestyle?

CORINNE: I do not take any allopathic medication.

GREEN EYE: How long were you plant-based before you began to see positive results?

CORINNE: I started to feel results in many of my symptoms almost immediately. After 2 months I could feel my legs again, had more energy, felt like exercising for the first time in my life, my constipation vanished, along with the candida and my chronic pain went along with it.

GREEN EYE: Apart from alleviating your MS/fibro symptoms, how else did the plant-based diet change your life?

CORRINE: As I’ve already touched upon I spent much of my life living with chronic pain, constipation, fatigue, candida and depression, as well as symptoms of Irritable Bowel Disease such as terrible bloating and discomfort - these days all of those things are no longer an issue for me. I used to consider life something that was to be ‘endured’ but now I love my life, I look forward to every day and I have an abundance of energy, so much so that I run up to 70km most weeks!

GREEN EYE: Who would you recommend the plant-based lifestyle to?

CORINNE: Every single person on the planet! It’s the optimal diet for humans, for the planet and for the animals.

GREEN EYE: Did you become aware of the environmental impacts of ‘non plant-based diets’ verses the plant-based one?

CORINNE: Yes. I became aware of the devastating impact of animal agriculture on the planet after reading articles, watching documentaries such as Cowspiracy on Netflix, speaking to people who were plant-based environmentalists.

GREEN EYE: Tell us about yourself - your journey, story, and recovery. Anything else you wish to add about how the plantbased/vegan diet

CORINNE: I was born weighing 10 pounds, for me weight was always an issue, I was bullied relentlessly by my family and peers for my weight, by the time I was 13 I was overweight and I’d begun struggling with very low energy but we all thought it was simply a part of adolescence. At 16 I was diagnosed with Glandular Fever and my fatigue worsened to where I required a nap every day to make it through high school and then work and it honestly felt like I would never recover.

By 2002 I was not only exhausted and depressed, now I was chronically constipated, I was even hospitalised for my severe constipation at one point – humiliating. Then the pain started and I was taking days off work, sore everywhere, it hurt to be touched, my scalp was in constant agony, I was living on pain killers and sleeping my life away. At the age of 22 I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and told there was nothing that could be done for it. My life continued like this for another 2 years until I woke up numb down the right side of my face and this numbness had moved into my right arm a few hours later. Initially, after a CAT scan, my doctor thought I’d had a stroke however he sent me off for an MRI and it was this scan that resulted in my MS diagnosis at the age of 24. I was obese at this point in time, a smoker, miserable, sleeping all day so that I could make it through work and pay the bills - life felt hopeless…

I spent the following 4 years learning bits and pieces about diet, and finding small amounts of hope only to have that hope ripped away from me at every 6 month visit to my Neurologists office. In those visits I would mention that I had been trying a plant-based diet and was feeling some improvements and my doctor would advise me there was ‘no science to diet having any benefit for those living with MS’ and because I loved junk food, I would go back to eating the foods that had been making sick over and over again until 2008 when I woke up unable to feel my legs. I was sent to get intravenous steroids during that relapse and the Neurologist on call advised me that if I didn’t start taking the MS medications, “I would get sicker and sicker until I died”. I don’t really know what inspired my next course of action, but I left that day and never went back. From that day onward I changed my diet, I quit smoking and my entire life changed for the better.​​

Today I am over 10 years symptom and relapse free and doing my best to share the connection between a whole food, plant-based diet and healing chronic disease with anyone who might listen!

GREEN EYE: Tell us about your job as a nutritional coach - have you seen others adapt their diet and receive results?

CORINNE: I was a social worker and secondary teacher until 2015 but after I started my little blog and Facebook page, people started asking me for coaching and I felt completely unprepared to coach people on making changes to their diets so I went and re trained as a Health Coach through the Institute or Integrative Nutrition online and then further went on to study the Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition through eCornell that was developed by T. Colin Campbell the author of The China Study. I love my work and have helped my clients lose weight sustainably, regain energy, overcome symptoms of IBS, increase their Iron levels, alleviate their depression, improve cholesterol and feel better in general – these days my podcast The Corinne Nijjer Podcast is where I reach the most people to help provide hope that a plant-based diet can help people to heal from chronic disease with over 84 episodes now available online as I share people’s incredible stories of recovery every single week.

GREEN EYE: Why do you think it is people choose not to go plant-based for health reasons/other reasons?

CORINNE: I think as a society we have been conditioned to believe we need meat, eggs and dairy to survive. Basically, I think a lot is to do with humanities desperate desire to hold onto old habits and avoid change at all costs, then of course there is apathy and combined with this a vested interest by animal agricultural industries to keep the public confused by funding research papers spouting the benefits of eggs, meat and dairy and ignoring the growing body of evidence that these ‘foods’ are in fact harmful to human health and the main contributing factor in almost all chronic disease.

Green Eye would personally like to thank Corinne for sharing her incredible story. Have a similar story? Get in touch with Green Eye by clicking HERE and sending us a message!

Share Corinne's story on social media, so people can prevent disease and save resources, using the plant-based lifestyle.