McDonald's shamrock shakes sold in western Massachusetts to benefit local charity
Locally owned McDonald's in our region will send 25 cents for every shake sold to Ronald McDonald House Charities. It's part of the 50th-anniversary partnership.
McDonald's Shamrock Shake season is back, featuring an iconic character
The promotion starts Monday and all of the money will be sent to help support families with children who are sick or injured. Over the past three years, $270,000 was donated from McDonald's across New England.
'The western Massachusetts McDonald's restaurants are excited to see the community come out and help us reach this year's fundraising goal.' Western Massachusetts McDonald's Owner Operator George Gomez said. 'The more Shamrock Shakes sold, the more money delivered to our local RMHC to provide comfort, care and support for families with children receiving critical care in our local hospitals.'
'We are incredibly grateful for our longstanding partnership with McDonald's and the privilege of collaborating on the Shamrock Shake promotion. The funds raised through this initiative make a meaningful difference in the lives of the families Ronald McDonald House Charities of Connecticut & western Massachusetts serve, ensuring they have a place of comfort and support while their children receive critical medical care,' said Michelle D'Amore, Chief Executive Officer of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. 'This partnership is a testament to the power of community and the generosity of McDonald's customers who help us provide hope and healing to families in need.'
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on WWLP.com.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Buzz Feed
3 days ago
- Buzz Feed
102 Weird Facts That Are Wild, Random, And Fun
I don't know about anyone else, but I love learning interesting, bizarre, and straight-up weird facts about anything and everything. (In fact, it's quite a conversation starter.) That said, here are some wacky, intriguing, strange, and somewhat funny facts that sound somewhat fake but are entirely true: Germany has more castles than there are McDonald's in the United States. Yep, you heard that right. Germany is estimated to have 25,000 castles, and there are around 13,000 McDonald's locations in America. In Washington state, there's a real-life law stating it's illegal to kill Bigfoot and other sasquatch-like creatures. And you know what? Good for them. Dogs are one of the three deadliest animals in the UK. The other two are bees and cows. Sloths are slow in everything they do — including digestion. Because they digest foods so slowly, they basically have to breathe out their farts because they can't *actually* fart. If a bunch of gas builds up in a sloth's intestines, it could get sick and potentially even burst. Rather than farting, the gases are reabsorbed into the bloodstream and are then respired out of the about morning breath. There are caves in Missouri that store 1.4 billion pounds of government-owned cheese. Located deep in the Ozark Mountains in limestone-converted mines, the caves are kept at a perfect 36°F. As someone who's lactose intolerant, my stomach is in knots just thinking about it. This one actually made me do a double-take: Cornflakes were invented to suppress sexual impulses and desires. John Harvey Kellogg invented cornflakes in 1894, but it was later used as part of an extreme diet promoted by his church to basically suppress horniness. Kellog thought sex and masturbation were abnormal and unhealthy, so he believed cornflakes — and their lack of flavor — would help fight off any desire. Cockroach dust plays a part in why so many inner-city children have asthma. A single cloud can weigh about 550 tons or more. Believe it or not, Canadians eat more Kraft macaroni and cheese than Americans. Like, 55% more. Giraffes in the wild only sleep for around five minutes at a time. Because of the dangers they face in the wild, not only do they sleep while standing, but they also sleep intermittently so that they're prepared to run at any given moment. If keeping watch for a giraffe as they slept was a job, I'd apply in a heartbeat. Snoop Dogg's government name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. Despite being four inches long, the mantis shrimp throws the fastest punch in the world. The definition of small but mighty, mantis shrimps can throw punches up to 50mph — enough to break through their glass tanks. In Switzerland, owning only one guinea pig or parrot is illegal. If you're drunk or violent in Japan, police will take a plastic sheet and roll you up like a burrito. Police in Japan rarely ever resort to violence, as they choose to de-escalate the situation at hand first. After the wrapping, police will take the drunk or violent person to the station to let them calm down. If they wanted to, Clownfish could change their sex, including reproductive organs, through an irreversible process. No one commits to the bit better than Toni Collete. When she was a teen, she faked having appendicitis to get out of going to school so well that she actually got her appendix taken out. There's a rare neurological disorder called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, which is a condition related to how you perceive your body, the world around you, or both. A grizzly bear's bite is strong enough to crush a bowling ball, but that won't stop my first instinct from being, "Aww, look how cute!" Twice a month, the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport brings in miniature horses to help calm the nerves of people with flying anxiety. Male ducks have corkscrew-shaped penises. Miss Piggy's original name was going to be Piggy Lee. Fabulous either way. If you say you're not afraid of anything, I have some news for you: Humans are innately born with the fear of falling and loud noises. Whatever other fears one may have are shaped or learned with experience. Considering gelatin is made up of animal skin and bones, gummy worms technically have more bones than actual worms (since worms don't have any). Lady Gaga, bless her heart, once spent $50K on a ghost detector. To protect themselves from their super-strong pecks, woodpeckers wrap their tongues around their brains. What a cool party trick. For her role in Winter's Bone, Jennifer Lawrence learned how to skin a squirrel. Pound cake is called that because the original recipe used one pound of each ingredient. In the Great Barrier Reef, there's a coral reef that's taller than the Empire State Building. Male giraffes will taste a female giraffe's urine to see if she is ready to mate. Even in the animal kingdom, men cannot mind their business. On average, lightning strikes Earth 100 times per second. It saddens me to report that Winnie the Pooh was banned from a Polish playground because the honey-obsessed bear doesn't wear pants. As if it's his fault! Attempting to get kids to eat more vegetables, McDonald's engineer bubblegum-flavored broccoli. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't a hit. Blue whales are the baddies of the ocean (sorry, orcas), and if I were a sea creature, I would never, ever tussle with one, especially considering a blue whale's tongue alone can weigh more than an elephant. Due to their genes, redheads may need about 20% more anesthesia than non-redheads. I literally never thought about Barbie being called anything other than Barbie, but her full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts. There are more possible chess game variations than atoms in the universe. The warty comb jellyfish doesn't have an anus, so when it needs to poop, its gut fuses with an outer layer of its "skin" to create a hole in its body. After the deed is done, the hole closes right back up. In Thailand, there's an annual Monkey Buffet Festival where residents of Lopburi leave 4.5 tons of fruit, veggies, and other treats to honor the approximately 3,000 monkeys that live near the Phra Prang Sam Yot temple. Way better than Coachella, IMO. I was pleased to find out that a buttload is an actual unit of measurement! One buttload is equivalent to 126 gallons of wine. Back in the day, Victorians ate arsenic to get a paler complexion. There's a church decorated with the bones of 40,000 people in Czechia. Sharks were roaming the planet before Saturn's rings formed. With this information, this is a shark's world, and we're all just living in it. There are more fake flamingos in the world than real ones. Humans typically produce 0.5 to 1.5 liters of saliva every day. Crocodiles can gallop like horses do. If you're afraid to go into the ocean because of sharks, you might want to avoid hotel hallways and break rooms, because vending machines are twice as likely to kill you. Though dead bones are dry and brittle, living bones are wet and a bit soft. In order to absorb pressure, bones are also slightly flexible. Up to one-third of a living bone's weight is water. "Gnurr" is the term used to describe the lint that collects at the bottom of your pockets. Scotland's national animal is a unicorn. The closest US state to Africa is Maine. If you sneeze uncontrollably after being suddenly exposed to bright light or intense sunlight, you might have inherited a genetic trait called Achoo Syndrome. Armadillos almost always give birth to identical quadruplets. As long as you legally obtain human flesh or limbs, cannibalism is allowed in the Netherlands. The short-horned lizard squirts blood out of its eyes — at a distance of up to three feet — to confuse predators. However, the blood contains a chemical that makes dogs, wolves, and coyotes noxious. Love that. A rainbow on Venus is called a "glory." Frogs use their eyes to help them swallow their meals. When a frog swallows food, its eyes pull down to the roof of their mouth to help push the food down its throat. Human brains are constantly eating themselves. To "cleanse" the system, cells will smother and consume smaller cells or molecules in a process called phagocytosis. The fear of long words is called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. After seeing that, I'm scared, too. Ants don't have lungs. Instead, they breathe through tiny holes on the sides of their bodies called spiracles. When lightning strikes, the air it passes through can reach up to 50,000°F — five times hotter than the sun's surface. Due to thermal expansion, the Eiffel Tower can "grow" up to six inches in the summer. Tigers don't just have striped fur but skin, too! If you were to shave a tiger, you'd find identical striped markings as if they were tattoos. If you go to the sky deck of the Willis Tower in Chicago on a clear day, you can see four other US states: Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. A blue whale's heartbeat can be heard from two miles away. Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins. Dolphins must come to the surface almost every 10 minutes, but sloths can hold their breath for 20 minutes or more by slowing down their heart rates. Before toiler paper, corn cobs were used as a method of wiping. This one might unsettle you, but snails have teeth. Snails can have up to 1,000 to 12,000 teeth. I don't know what they need those for, but good for them! I hope they have snail dentists, then. While she was a teenager during World War II, Queen Elizabeth II became a junior officer in the Auxiliary Territorial Service and became a trained mechanic. The real name of a hashtag is actually octothorpe. Due to the anatomy of their neck muscles and spine, pigs cannot look up to the sky. Imagine being a pig and never knowing that there is a whole world above you. BRB, gonna cry for a sec. For most people, it's impossible to lick their elbows. (Go ahead, try it.) A French general gave John Quincy Adams an alligator as a gift. The gator was kept in one of the White House's bathtubs. Ostriches have bigger eyes than they do brains. In fact, among all land animals, ostriches have the biggest eyes. A dentist invented the electric chair as a method for execution. Simply put, I'm glad I wasn't his patient. Like fingerprints, human tongues also have unique tongueprints. If you've ever wondered what to call that blob of toothpaste you squeeze onto your toothbrush, it's called a nurdle. Animals process time differently depending on their size. Research suggests that smaller animals like mice and lizards process time faster than larger animals like elephants and giraffes. This is also true about animals that fly and marine predators. Due to fast-paced lifestyles, these animals have visual systems that take in changes at higher and faster rates. Competitive art was considered a sport for the first four decades of the modern Olympics. Artists could earn medals for painting, architecture, sculpting, and music. America would win in the music category every time so long as Beyoncé is willing to compete. From 1924–1954, stop signs used to be yellow. At the time, red dyes faded after a while, so the American Association of State Highway Officials went with yellow dye, which didn't fade. It wasn't until the 1950s that sign makers began using fade-resistant enamel. If you thought Abraham Lincoln wasn't fascinating enough, the dude is honored in the Wrestling Hall of Fame. He often competed in wrestling matches when he was younger and rarely lost. In 1992, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame formally inducted the former president as an "Outstanding American." There's even a mural of Lincoln inside the Hall of Fame museum in Stillwater, Oklahoma. If you've ever used a reindeer and a caribou in the same sentence, thinking you were referencing different animals (I'm definitely guilty), I'm sorry to announce that they're the same species. Among the world's five ocean basins, the Atlantic Ocean takes the cake as the saltiest. The inside of a Kit Kat is made up of a small amount of other Kit Kats, usually ones that cannot be sold. Unfortunately, George Washington died not knowing dinosaurs existed. The first and former president died in 1799, while the first official description of dinosaurs happened in 1842. Sad. Humans don't always see their noses because our brains filter out "useless" things to better grasp our surroundings. A polar bear's fur isn't actually white; it's translucent. It only appears white because it reflects visible light. It's certainly possible to use sign language with an accent. Australia is wider than the moon. The moon's diameter is around 2,112 miles, while Australia's is 2,485 miles. The fastest-moving muscle in the human body is the eyes. It's called the orbicularis oculi, and we have one in each eye. The Olympic rings were first produced in 1913, and they were designed to include all participating nations. The rings' colors, along with the white background, reflect the colors found on all of the countries' flags. How wholesome! There was once a French king who believed he was made of glass. King Charles IV had a psychiatric disorder called "Glass Delusion" and thought that he would shatter if anyone touched him. Beer was banned in Iceland until 1989. Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Steet was originally orange instead of green. In the show's first season, Oscar was orange partly due to some limitations of colorized TV at the time. It wasn't until season 2 that he turned green. If you ever wondered where the term "honeymoon" came from, it originated in the Middle Ages. When there was a newly married couple, they'd be supplied enough honey wine to last the first month of their marriage. Due to increased blood flow to the fingertips, human fingernails grow faster during summertime. Illinois is known as the pumpkin capital of the United States. A housefly's feet are 10 million times more sensitive than a human tongue. California experiences over 100,000 earthquakes a year. Thankfully, though, many of them are minor or are barely felt at all! Every year, Norway gifts London a huge Christmas tree, which is then decorated and displayed in Trafalgar Square. The tree serves as a thank-you gift for all the help the UK gave Norway during WWII. Owls sometimes swallow their food whole. The average Swiss person consumes about 48 pounds of cheese per year. Lastly: Walt Disney made it a rule for Disneyland not to sell chewing gum to keep the park clean. Wow, my brain is sweating from absorbing all that info. Instead of sending a "good morning" text, I'm just going to send one of these facts every day without any context. Do you know any interesting and fascinating facts? Let me know in the comments!
Buzz Feed
02-08-2025
- Buzz Feed
31 Bizarre Body Quirks Women Have Learned To Accept
Reddit user Conscious_Can3226 recently asked the r/AskWomenOver30 community, "What's a weird thing your body does that you've never heard of anyone else experiencing?" Some of the responses were super shocking! But body does them too! Wild. Check it out: "I always know my period is coming because my right upper leg feels extremely nauseous. That makes zero sense, but I can't find a better way to describe the feeling than severe nausea in my leg." "I hear music when I'm falling asleep every single night. Sometimes it's rock, sometimes country, sometimes classical. No, there aren't any radios playing anywhere in our home or our neighbors' homes. It happens literally wherever I am and am falling asleep." "My cheeks sweat when I eat apples." "I cry when I pee. It's completely involuntary/not emotion-driven. Tears just start streaming down my face as soon as I start. Mainly, if I hold my bladder too long." "Every time I was pregnant, my nipples would behave like they had Raynaud's disease. They would turn black and then start turning white at the tip. I would have to take all my clothes off and just have them in warm water. I would be walking around and feel a chill, and my nipples would get hard and start this reaction that felt like someone was holding a hot iron to the tips. Went away immediately at birth. It was once the first symptom I felt. I knew I was pregnant because my nipples burned." "I get incredibly nauseous right before I sneeze. Like I think I'm gonna puke, and right when I get to the point where I'm heading to the bathroom, I sneeze and it's like I'm fine. I didn't develop this until after I gave birth." "My right elbow hurts if I eat McDonald's. Never my left elbow or any other fast food." "Instead of brain freeze, I get spine freeze. The location is about two inches down from the top of my sternum, only on the inner side of my spine." "I get nauseous if the inside of my belly button is touched. People interpret that to mean I'm ticklish, but I get a full-body reaction!" "My eyes squeak when I rub them." "I have to crap every time I go shopping." "Some people have a gene that makes cilantro taste like soap. I have a gene that makes cucumbers taste rancid, like bad fish." "Since having COVID, I can taste metal when I hold some in my hand, like a fork or a metal cup. I hate it!" "If you tickle my left elbow, I can feel it in my inner ear." "My throat always gets sore for a couple of days before my period, like clockwork." "The base of my skull makes fizzy popping noises when I'm super hungry. I've looked it up and apparently it's a thing, but it doesn't happen to anybody I've ever mentioned it to." "If I have a moment of genuine connection with another person, I get tingly over the entirety of my scalp. It's pretty cool. This can also happen when I see a particularly poignant video or hear a song that evokes a lot of emotion." "My teeth hurt when I hear sounds I don't like. One of my biggest triggers is someone running their finger along paper." "Sometimes when I pinch my skin in one place, I can feel it in a different place too. For example, I pinched my skin above my right knee, and I've felt it above my right elbow. It's more prominent before my period." "When my throat is itchy, I get an itch in my lower abdomen too, with the exact same sensation and intensity of the itch." "My eyes start watering whenever anyone describes something supernatural (ghosts, alien encounters, or unexplained goings on). It's like I'm crying, but without the emotion or the lump in the throat. I just start tearing up." "I have one tooth that randomly 'itches.' There's nothing wrong with the tooth or gum there. Itching is the best way I can describe it. It's super weird and annoying. I don't know what causes it. I brush, floss, and use mouthwash. Just got good remarks from my dentist last month, so I don't get it. When I tell my husband or friends about it, they have no idea what I mean or what I'm describing." "When I go to other people's houses, if I'm not 100% comfortable with them, I get really gassy after being there for longer than an hour or two. It used to happen a lot when I visited my in-laws, and once it happened when I drove to Arizona to visit a friend I hadn't seen in a few years. It's funny because when I told my friend I was gassy, her husband laughed and said it happens to her too." "My left thumbnail grows at twice the rate of the rest of my fingernails. I get manicures every three weeks like clockwork, and my nail tech noticed." "The left side of my body sucks. I get kidney stones, migraines, shoulder pain, itching, toothaches, ovarian cysts, all on my left side." "The inside of my ears hurts in the cold weather, wind, or when I have to run. It stings, and no one else ever seems to have it when my ears are killing me." "When I feel deep emotional pain or anguish, I get this aching sensation in my right wrist and hand. I've found very little online about it. It's so odd, but I lowkey love it when it happens while reading a novel or watching a movie. It shows me I'm really connecting with the plot!" "My left thumbnail has a defect that causes it to split in the same spot, so I always have a notch in my nail that gets caught on everything. My mother and my grandmother had the same thing on the same finger, and all three of us developed it at around 35. It must be a genetic quirk. I haven't heard of other people/families that have this." "Sometimes, my feet get warm when I pee. I remember telling my dad about it years ago, and in typical dad fashion, he told me to quit pissing on my feet. Still no answers." "When I get scared, my legs itch and tingle, and it's purely psychological. Never noticed until I started riding a motorcycle." And: "I get shoulder pain when I have to poop really badly. It's only in my right shoulder." Women, do you have any body quirks you literally can't explain? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form. Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Yahoo
25-07-2025
- Yahoo
Living on junk food gave me acne, a leaky gut and MS – here's how I got well again
Twenty years ago, fruit and vegetables simply weren't on my radar, and nor was healthy eating. Aged 32, single and in love with my job – a sales role I fuelled with Starbucks coffee, junk food and takeaways – I never once stopped to think about the way it could impact my body. I'd climbed the corporate ladder over the past 12 years, from telesales girl to being head of sales and marketing. I was competitive and thrived off the buzz of the chase. But now I was at the top of my game, I was under huge pressure to hit ambitious targets and keep demanding clients happy. My clients were based all over the country, which meant long drives in my car. I was either out on the road, sometimes for seven to eight hours a day, or socialising, so of course my diet always took a back seat. When I dragged myself out of bed at 7am, normally after a late night in the office, breakfast wasn't even a consideration, but coffee kept me going until lunchtime. I relied heavily on service stations for my lunch, which of course only meant one thing: junk food. I can't count how many McDonald's meal deals or carb-heavy sandwiches I ate. If I wasn't eating a takeaway, such as pizza or a curry, at home in the evening I'd be at a client's dinner, but late nights with lots of booze meant I was in a constant cycle of exhaustion. When I did make it into the office I'd often look around at my tired colleagues and wonder what the strain of stressful jobs were putting on their health too. If I wasn't working on weekends I would be keeping up appearances, socialising with a smile and acting as though I wasn't near to burnout. My mum could see the cracks appearing, though. She'd comment on how moody or tetchy I was when I was around her. I'd go on holiday a lot to de-stress and make up for the intense weeks and months of work. But I never had a good balance – after one holiday I flew into the airport at 4am on a Monday morning and went straight to the office. I also half-heartedly joined a gym, but every month when the gym membership went out of my account, I'd feel guilty that I'd barely made it inside. Slowly though, my lifestyle really took its toll on my physical and mental health. I could feel my clothes start to become tighter and my dress size started to go up. At 5ft 9, my healthy weight is just over nine stone, but back then I was always carrying at least a stone of extra weight. I was always exhausted too and started to get brain fog. At one point I was looking after 250 accounts, and I was in a constant state of anxiety that I would miss a meeting or get something wrong. It was at this time, coupled with extreme fatigue, that I noticed the first symptoms of multiple sclerosis – though I didn't know then that's what they were. MS is a chronic autoimmune disease where your immune system mistakenly attacks the protective covering of nerve fibers, impacting brain and spinal function. One day my little finger felt numb, with a pins-and-needles sensation. It went away quickly but it kept coming back, and sometimes my whole hand would go numb. I was worried enough to mention it to a chiropractor friend, who said it could be a symptom of MS. But I was too busy even to entertain the idea and I quickly dismissed it. Then, a couple of months later I had my first wobble. I didn't fall over but felt really unstable on my feet, something which happened a few times over six months. About half a year later a black dot appeared in my vision line through my left eye and wouldn't go away. I went to the hospital and a specialist diagnosed me with optic neuritis – inflammation of the cranial nerve. Thankfully, they said the symptoms, with some rest, would go away fairly quickly, but I wasn't expecting them to tell me what the condition meant for my long-term health. They told me that optic neuritis is the precursor to a diagnosis of MS. As they started to explain all the other symptoms I could expect – numbness in my hands and feet, fatigue and unsteadiness on my feet – a hot flush came over me, and I realised all the symptoms were linked: it was my body's way of telling me something was wrong. After a scan, they also found lesions on the brain, which is another sign of MS, and coupled with my other symptoms, they diagnosed me with the disease. The reality of my diagnosis hit me hard. I completely lost my appetite for a few days as I was so scared about my symptoms getting worse. But the shock of my diagnosis manifested into denial, and for a couple of months, I pushed it to the back of my mind, pretending it wasn't my reality. However, a Google search, when I was at my lowest, saved me. I was interested to know how my diet and stress affected my diagnosis, and sure enough, nutritionists were just starting to look at the connection between gut health, inflammation and chronic illness. I found early studies and nutritionists showing that a high-stress lifestyle and poor diet could lead to a leaky gut and, for some, trigger an autoimmune response. A leaky gut happens when a poor diet, stress or lack of sleep enables cracks or holes to form in the gut lining. This means toxins and bacteria can penetrate the tissues below, causing inflammation and, in some cases, leading to chronic illnesses including MS. A 'leaky gut', or increased intestinal permeability, is still not recognised by mainstream medicine – but my diagnosis coupled with other symptoms such as fatigue and acne suggested that I had the condition. The websites I looked at said I should concentrate on cutting out anything that could cause inflammation, such as foods high in sugar, saturated fats and processed meats. I started looking at food labels and slowly educating myself on what foods were good for my body. I didn't make any drastic diet changes to start with, I just tried to add as much fruit and vegetables as possible – such as leafy greens, berries and bananas. Then gradually, over a few months, I made other changes – instead of just coffee for breakfast I started to have eggs or oats, then for lunch and dinner I realised protein made me feel fuller, while fresh vegetables and salad, as well as healthy fats such as avocado and nuts, were easier on my gut. If I wanted a snack, instead of crisps and chocolate, I would have crudités and hummus or some yogurt. At 37, I even went plant-based for six years. A couple of years later, when I started feeling healthier and my diet was on track, I met my husband. Luckily, he's into eating healthily too, and even went on a plant-based diet with me. We married in 2017, and still encourage each other to eat healthily – eating colourful salads or dishes full of vegetables. I found that running really helped with my stress levels, and I even went on to run the London marathon the year I turned 50. The changes in my diet and stress levels showed up in my body – I lost weight, my skin improved, and my MS symptoms, including the eye inflammation, disappeared. When it comes to my diet, I live by the 90/10 rule – if I have 10 per cent of unhealthy foods, I know I need to have 90 per cent of gut-friendly healthy foods. I still have the odd alcoholic drink, but I pick ones which are low in sugar, such as champagne. When it comes to eating out at restaurants, I choose the healthiest thing on the menu, such as a salad with protein. I also avoid over-processed foods and anything with too much sugar in it. Luckily, I didn't need any medication. Instead, I found that cutting out inflammatory foods, healing my gut and lowering my stress levels were the most important things my body needed. I'm now 53 and have never felt more healthy. In my 40s, my eye flicker returned but when I went to the GP, they suggested I rest and keep up my healthy lifestyle. Since then, I haven't had another symptom in 10 years and my MS is classed as inactive. I'm also working as a registered health coach, helping others take control of their health in the same way as I did. I can't believe I used to think junk food would fuel me, and never connected my health problems to my diet. I now live by the saying 'food is either fighting disease or feeding it' – for years, I was feeding it. I'm just so glad that I took action with my diet when I did, and fixed my leaky gut with food which nourishes my body. As told to Sarah Finley Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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