CARE YOUR HEALTH

Why this brave girl can only eat tic tacs?

By Chris Hunter

THEY are normally the thing people eat at that point in a restaurant when you've ploughed through a pile of garlic bread, spaghetti and cheesecake and are too full-up to face anything else.

But for 17-year-old Natalie Cooper, the mints alone are the meal.

For as long as she can remember Natalie, from Oxford Road, Shepway, Maidstone, has been afflicted with a mystery illness that makes her sick every time she eats anything.

Anything that is, except that smallest of mints: the tic tac.

For reasons that doctors are unable to explain, tic tacs are the only thing she can stomach, meaning she has to get the rest of her sustenance from a specially formulated feed through a tube.

~ Follow up: Diet of tic tacs story sparks world media frenzy >>>

But as she explained, she certainly doesn’t have an aversion to food.

"I like eating everything you’d expect," says Natalie. "I enjoy eating, it just comes back up. It happens pretty much immediately and it's no effort.

"I really like chocolate cake; I just can't leave it alone."

Only through experimentation did the teenager finally discover the unique qualities that set tic tacs apart from other foods.

"I can’t remember exactly when I found out. I used to be able to eat mints after food; when they started to come back up I started reducing the size of the mints.

"I went from Trebor Extra Strong Mints to Polos and ended up with tic tacs. They give me a bit of energy but I eat them mostly to get rid of hunger; it’s a psychological effect."

Natalie’s matter-of-fact approach belies the impact of the illness on her life. At one point her weight dropped to five stone, but she has since battled back to more than seven stone.

Recently Natalie was rewarded for triumph over adversity at the Kent Try Angle Awards, which recognise the achievements of young people, at Margate Winter Gardens.

She added: "There are days I really hate it but most of the time I’m just like, 'whatever'. I can’t last as long as everyone else. I did have a job but at a shop, but the six-hour shift was too much."

She hopes visits to other specialists in the near future might lead to a breakthrough and cure before she leaves home to go to university.

Her mother, Sharon Cooper, said: "She’s going to have a gap year and we’re hoping a second opinion will find something different. It was quite upsetting at first; they thought it was going to be bulimia, but I knew it wasn’t."

It's a bitterly cold winter day and students on the University of Minnesota campus are bundled up, hurrying to their next class. Wim Hof, dressed in shorts, sandals and nothing else, appeared from the doorway of a school building.

He's known as 'The Ice Man."

Scientists can't really explain it, but the 48-year-old Dutchman is able to withstand, and even thrive, in temperatures that could be fatal to the average person.

From the Arctic Circle to Mount Everest

It's an ability he discovered in himself as a young man 20 years ago.

"I had a stroll like this in the park with somebody and I saw the ice and I thought, what would happen if I go in there. I was really attracted to it. I went in, got rid of my clothes. Thirty seconds I was in," Hof said. "Tremendous good feeling when I came out and since then, I repeated it every day." It was the moment that Hof knew that his body was different somehow: He was able to withstand fatally freezing temperatures.

Hof began a lifelong quest to see just how far his abilities would take him. In January of 1999 he traveled 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle to run a half-marathon in his bare feet. Three years later, dressed only in a swimsuit, he dove under the ice at the North Pole and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest amount of time swimming under the ice: 80 meters, almost twice the length of an Olympic-sized pool.

When he didn't experience frostbite or hypothermia, the body's usual reactions to extreme cold, his extraordinary ability started to get the attention of doctors who specialize in extreme medicine.

Dr. Ken Kamler, author of "Surviving the Extremes," has treated dozens of people who tried to climb Mount Everest, and instead nearly died from the frigid temperatures. He couldn't believe it when he got word of a Dutchman making the ascent with no protection other than a pair of shorts.

"People are always looking for new firsts on Everest. It's been climbed so many times now, people climb it without oxygen, they … they climb it with all different kinds of handicaps. But no one has come close to climbing Everest in those kinds of conditions," Dr. Kamler said. "It's … it's almost inconceivable."

1. Sleeping too late and waking up too late are main cause.
2. Not urinating in the morning.
3. Too much eating.
4. Skipping breakfast.
5. Consuming too much medication.
6. Consuming too much preservatives, additives, food coloring, and artificial sweetener.
7. Consuming unhealthy cooking oil. As much as possible reduce cooking oil use when frying, which includes even the best cooking oils like olive oil. Do not consume fried foods when you are tired, except if the body is very fit.
8. Consuming raw (overly done) foods also add to the burden of liver.
Veggies should be eaten raw or cooked 3-5 parts. Fried veggies should be finished in one sitting, do not store.