the phone and dialed his number. The phone rang. “Hello. Is Steve Fugua there, please?”
After a few seconds, a gentle voice answered, “Yes. This is Steve Fugua. What can I do for you?”
I introduced myself as a friend of Deb Crombie’s and outlined my dilemma.
“I tell you what,” Steve responded. “You come see me tomorrow morning at nine. I think I can help you.”
Elated, I called Deb and asked if she’d watch the boys for me.
“Of course I will,” she said. “Are you going to another doctor?”
“Nope,” I answered with enthusiasm. “I hope I’m going to see someone who will help me once and for all.” I didn’t tell her it was the very person she’d recommended just in case it didn’t work out.
But the minute I met Dr. Fugua I knew he was someone very special. He was tall with gray hair, a gray goatee, black horn-rimmed glasses, and a smile that immediately made me feel comfortable.
Steve Fugua was raised in his family’s health food business, but his Ph.D. is in geology. Because of my master’s degree in environmental science, we shared much. He taught me his unique knowledge of nutrition based on the influences of natural and synthetic chemicals. He drew his knowledge from over sixty years in the nutrition field. My knowledge of nutrition began with him.
After that first appointment, I saw Steve regularly. Sometimes the kids were with me, sometimes not. Every time I visited his shop, he seemed to be counseling someone. “Jan!” he often said as I walked through the door. “Come over here and tell these people about your Graves’ disease. Jan is my best student,” he would say to the people. Already feeling much better, I always smiled with warmth and admiration.
I had been avoiding anything containing aspartame since the day I’d returned home from the hospital. Under Steve’s counseling, I decided to stay away from as many processed foods as possible, too, selecting instead whole foods at the grocery store for both snacks and meals. I replaced drinking all sodas with over fifteen glasses of bottled water a day. I became a food detective. I studied all food and drink labels. I learned what preservatives really are and how they are made. I became very protective of everything I put into my or my family’s bodies, and modified their diets along with mine.
Sometimes when Chuck was home to watch the boys, I worked with Steve in the evenings. And I came to feel that other than my dad, there is no other male I admire as much as Steve Fugua. His ability to help people heal nutritionally is remarkable. I was fortunate that Steve took me under his wing and taught me the importance of nutrition.
Steve taught me more than any textbook could have about vitamin supplements, food additives, whole foods, and modern-day malnutrition. I asked question after question.
I began to understand how people pollute their bodies in the same way they pollute the environment. Chemicals aren’t meant to be eaten and can accumulate in the body like toxic waste accumulates in a river. Hidden chemical food additives dominate the food supply, and fat-free, sugar-free food substitutes tempt us to forget basic eating rules. Instinctively, our bodies require real food—not food substitutes. I learned that I had been saturating myself with unhealthy chemicals.
Steve spent hours not only with me but with each of his clients. He taught us about nutrition and shared his knowledge openly. Coincidentally, he had two other clients diagnosed with Graves’ disease, both of whom he followed to complete recovery. I was number three. As our working relationship and my knowledge expanded, I supplied Steve with enough details to document patterned similarities among the three of us: two females and one male.
Every day I grew more conscious of what foods my body needed to maintain perfect health and which disguised artificial foods to avoid. I realized that my eating habits should be more like my grandparents’ diet one hundred years ago. Eat real food: that’s what the body demands. I realized how far from common sense I had wandered.
Steve kept a journal of all his nutritional case histories. He had documented over sixty years of cases he still referred to. One day as I arrived at his shop, Steve grabbed my arm and whisked me out the door. “What are you doing?” I asked with a smile. “Steve, where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” he said with a sheepish grin. We got into his car and drove a short distance to the print shop. Unaware of what he was up to, I jumped out of the car and followed him inside. His stride reminded me of a teenager’s. We walked over to the counter. Steve presented the clerk with a box filled with papers neatly stacked, though each page was slightly dog-eared and worn. He requested his entire journal be photocopied for me. I was speechless. He was giving me his life’s work, the greatest gift he could ever impart. My throat quivered as I held back tears of gratitude.
“Steve,” I said with a hug, “I am overwhelmed. Thank you so much.”
He smiled.
For decades, Steve had helped clients rid themselves of all kinds of ailments. Now he added my story to the list. As we stood there, he handed me my own case study. I began reading:
“But Graves’ Disease Can’t Be Cured”
Jan is a very active thirty-four-year-old mother of three young boys. She has been perfectly healthy all her life, doing what she feels is right by eating little saturated fat, no butter, no eggs, few sweets, and consuming little alcohol. She teaches aerobics six to ten times a week, instructs environmental science classes at the local university, and maintains her household after working hours. She has fallen into the typical “fitness mode” of working out too much and eating too little in order to maintain a lean, strong body. She consumes a lot of diet products sweetened with the artificial sweetener NutraSweet. Due to her busy schedule, she eats sporadic meals at irregular hours, eating too many “low calorie” hydrogenized foods.”
It was very strange seeing it all in print but I wanted to know all Steve had concluded and read on, intrigued.
“For almost a year, Jan’s weight has slowly increased pound by pound. She keeps working out and eating less as her weight continues to climb. Her heart has begun to race, she sweats a lot, and her menstrual cycles are irregular. Her vision is worsening, she has retinal tearing in both eyes, and her skin and hair are drying out. As her body changes, she eats more diet and processed foods. She blames her mood swings (PMS all month long) on stress.
“Finally Jan ends up in the hospital with a racing heart rate of 180 beats per minute. She is stricken with a serious upper respiratory infection and hyperthyroidism. Her doctor diagnoses her with Graves’ disease.
“Jan is told that she will die if she does not get her thyroid under control, and it is recommended to her to drink radioactive iodine (the radioactive cocktail) to destroy her thyroid gland. She then will be put on artificial thyroid medication for the rest of her life to keep her alive.
“Jan refuses to let her doctor permanently destroy such an important part of her body. She wants to fight to keep her thyroid. She checks herself out of the hospital after three days on an IV and goes home.
“Upon hearing from a friend about the successes of nutritional counseling, Jan comes to me with her prognosis of Graves’ disease. She has a hair analysis performed. All of Jan’s mineral and nutrient levels are very low, most likely due to the chemicals saturating her body, and she shows a lack of stomach acid available to dissolve them. Her chromium, zinc, selenium, manganese, magnesium, B-6, and vitamin C levels test dangerously low. Two other clients have been previously diagnosed by their doctors as having Graves’
