Julie’s Story

Hi, I’m Julie Quasarano, and I’m honored to share my story with you.

As the youngest of three children and the only female child in my family, I grew up seeking out every opportunity to be outside and play sports, proving to my parents that I was far more adventurous than my two older brothers. Admittedly, I was often jealous of the things they were allowed to do that I was not but that never stopped me from trying.  My parents acknowledged my natural inclinations and signed me up for a number of recreational sports. I excelled almost immediately and looked forward to nothing more than my soccer league games. By the time I reached the end of elementary school, I was so confident and passionate when it came to sports that you could say that my athleticism was the thing that most defined me.

At about 12 years of age I had what would become my first of numerous joint injuries. I also started showing signs of chronic illness even at this young age, although it took many years to fully understand it in this way. By the time I turned 14, the injuries began to overtake me. There was a gradual increase both in quantity and severity and they never seemed to heal adequately, no matter how well I adhered to the prescribed rehabilitation protocols. Ultimately, I was forced to give up competitive sports before I even graduated from high school. This was quite devastating for me but ultimately sparked my passion to figure out the underlying reasons for my challenges.

Initially, I focused a great deal on the external and physical issues but as conditions started to become more complex, I eventually realized I would need to dig deeper. It was when I embarked on this life long journey of discovery that I was able to see some things that were not always apparent to me. For example, in hindsight, I always struggled a bit with energy compared to my peers. I also had, what I thought at the time, was just “run of the mill” allergies and eczema, but I would come to find these were manifestations of deeper issues.

In my early twenties the allergies, eczema and energy issues became more severe and additional problems arose in just about every organ system. At the height of my health challenges, I became too ill to work. I had severe digestive distress with everything I ate, my body was covered with eczema including open sores, and I was sleeping almost 20 hours/day because I simply didn’t have the energy to stay awake for longer periods. I remember thinking my twenties were supposed to be the best years of my life and wondering if this chronic illness and lack of life was to be my new normal.

Fearful and looking for answers, I started a typical Western medicine protocol to address health decline and saw a number of doctors over the course of the next several years.

During that time I accumulated many diagnoses including Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Chronic Allergies, Hypothyroidism, Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, and Joint Hypermobility Syndrome (also known as Ehlers Danlos Syndrome – Hypermobile type) just to name a few. With a focus on all of this dis-ease I struggled to live a life of wellness in the face of what felt like extra-ordinary circumstances. As the years went by my emotional state changed from terrified to hopeless. Although I didn’t quite know how, I realized that I needed to take control of my own destiny, regardless of the unlucky hand I had been dealt.

While the widely accepted protocols and treatments provided to me by Western medicine were well intended, they simply did not yield the results I so desired. I was searching for the why and the root causes of my body’s dysfunction. I needed more than a list of diagnoses and a cabinet full of creams, pills and sprays. I needed to find the heart and soul of all of these challenges and decided to look beyond what Western medicine had to offer. I began to read, research and consult with functional medicine practitioners. I began to explore the environment, the mind and the spirit, looking to move beyond just the physical.

Through a lot of trial and error, certainly more error than I would’ve liked, this mindset was critical in finding strategies that gave me the inspiration, courage and tools to forge my own wellness.

Today, I am once again a competitive athlete, able to work full days and help take care of my two wonderful children. Once I learned to forge my own wellness, I started seeing improvements in nearly every single symptom that had debilitated me in my late teens and twenties.  While these results in and of themselves are more than worth the effort, this process has revealed my passion to share my knowledge and experiences with others so that they too can achieve the results they are seeking. My mission as a Wellness Strategist is to inspire individuals to forge an adventurous path full of continuous improvement towards vibrant health.