It is mid-January when I visit Ella Woodward in her flat in south London, and while most of us look grey and bloated from Christmas excess, Woodward, 22, is clear skinned, bright eyed and full of energy. This is all the more remarkable given that two years ago she was sleeping 16 hours a day, struck down by an illness that doctors were unable to diagnose for months. ‘When I stood up my vision would blur and I felt faint,’ she says. ‘It was a really miserable time.’
After four months of gastroenterology tests (her stomach was ‘so swollen I looked nine months pregnant’), a nurse noticed a dramatic change in Woodward’s blood pressure and heart rate between when she was sitting down and standing up. ‘As soon as I stood up my heart rate would race up from a normalish rate to about 190, and my blood pressure would disappear.’ In September 2011 Woodward saw a neurologist who diagnosed postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which affects the autonomic nervous system. But the diagnosis was not the end of it. ‘I was put on steroids, which weren’t making me feel great, and I was taking 28 pills a day, which made me feel a bit hopeless,’ she says. She was still exhausted all day, rarely leaving her room at the University of St Andrews, where she was studying history of art.
After a severe attack in January 2012 Woodward had had enough. ‘I came across a book by Kris Carr, who had stage four cancer that doctors could do nothing about,’ she says. ‘She became vegan, cut out sugar and processed foods, and she is now well and healthy. I thought if her diet could help her with cancer, surely it can help me.’