'I ate 30 bananas a day to try to heal myself.'

At 18 years old, Jacqueline Alnes was at the cusp of what should have been some of the best years of her life. She was new to college, away from home for the first time. To describe Jacqueline as a 'runner' would be an understatement. Track running was her life. 

But then she got a cough. It wasn’t anything major, at least she didn’t think it was. 

"You don't really think much of those things when you're 18," Jacqueline told Mamamia's No Filter. 

Still, she had it checked out and was prescribed some medication. Then things got worse. 

"I fainted in my dorm room after I took the pills," says Jacqueline. 

Listen to Jaqueline Alnes on No Filter.

"I hit my head on a desk chair, which wasn't that bad. But I was out for a minute and when I came back, I remember waking up and everything was just spinning around me."

Jacqueline was told she had an allergic reaction to the pills. Both her doctor and coach agreed.

"And I trusted them, obviously, because why wouldn't I? And I hoped for that too. But the days that followed, I kept feeling like I was like living in a cloud or something, like the world was just a little bit foggy, just a little bit out of reach in my body."

She told her coach, who told her to "run through it". The doctor had said she was fine, after all. The trainer took her blood pressure and also said she was fine. 

So Jacqueline ran, just as she was told. At least she tried to, but she collapsed again. 

"I think that's when they started to realise I wasn't faking it. I wasn't just 'not tough enough' to run, I actually had something going on."

Jacqueline turned to fruitarianism after being dismissed by medical professionals. Image: Supplied.

As time went on, Jacqueline’s health continued to decline. She began to forget things, lose her memories. She’d often repeat words and phrases that were spoken to her. 

"I would wake up and not know what had happened to me, which was really disorienting and difficult, especially when you're trying to navigate, you know, life as an 18-year-old."

She continued to visit the doctor, and each time, they would say: "You’re fine. You’re normal."

"I got a bunch of blood tests, a bunch of scans, everything came back normal. And so that's when I went to a neurologist."

He also said everything was normal. That it was an allergic reaction working its way out of her system. 

"And so all of these people—a coach, a medical doctor, a neurologist, a trainer—they're all telling me I'm fine. It was hard to believe in myself when I was like, but I don't feel fine. I feel like something’s wrong with me."

Among the sporting community, particularly in the USA, a strong "no pain, no gain" mentality prevails. Not running was considered weak, regardless of what you were going through. 

"I almost viewed myself as being better than other people because I could push through the pain, not realising at that age that actually, this wasn't something to be proud of."

Eventually, Jacqueline needed a wheelchair, unable to do basic tasks without difficulty. She was more than 1000 miles from home, and continued to tell her parents everything was fine. 

"I think if I thought if I didn't tell other people, if I didn't acknowledge how much pain I was in and how poorly I was doing, it would mean it wasn't actually happening to me."

Years passed, and still Jacqueline had no answers. And things kept getting worse. Her so-called friends began to turn on her, taking videos of her while she was in a disoriented state, repeating her words and making little sense. 

A couple of times, they set her up, telling her there were spiders on her back and filming her ripping off her shirt. On another occasion they said her dog has died, handing her a foam sports roller they said was her dog. They filmed her crying and holding the roller. 

Watching the videos back, Jacqueline knew she had to do something. She looked to her friends, two roommates that had supported her throughout her experience. They were what Jacqueline describes as "mainstream" vegans. They followed a vegan diet, but without obsession. They weren’t preachy, they ate vegan pizza, they embraced life. 

Their choices influenced Jacqueline’s search, and she eventually came across another type of diet: fruitarianism. On the surface, it seemed silly, Jacqueline says, almost over the top. 

Then there was Leanne Ratcliffe, an Australian influencer known as Freelee the Banana Girl, who claims to have been living on a fruit based, raw diet for the past 15 years.

Most of Freelee's videos involved critiquing "bulls**t diet programs" and giving advice to her followers about how to lead this fruit-based lifestyle - and enlightening them on becoming fruitarian.

For Freelee, her diet involves a her 'raw til 4' diet plan, and sticking to low-processed, low-fat, and high-carbohydrate foods. One of her videos showcases her eating 50 bananas in one day, another describes exactly what happened when she went on a 14-day mango-only detox.

She had testimonials from others too. 

"There were former athletes who had regained their strength and their endurance. They had been like me, just feeling like there were no answers. And then they said this was the answer. They felt better. They looked better. They could get back to their sports."

While Jacqueline says she never felt for the "whole shtick of just eating bananas", she did believe she could purify her body from the "evil toxins that were inside of it".

Having grown up in a culture of food being either "good" or "bad", Jacqueline says it wasn't a far stretch to believe that she’d caused her condition. 

"And that I had the power or could have the power to get it back."

While Jacqueline never ingrained herself into the community by taking part in the forum boards, she was an active consumer. 

"I followed all the Instagrams, I followed all the Snapchats. I watched all the YouTube videos, but I never gave back in any way. I just kind of took it all in. 

Jacqueline was a promising track runner when she started experiencing mysterious symptoms. Image: Supplied. 

"I think, in some ways, it was like, a fake way of having a community because I kind of longed for what they had, at the time, it looked really fun. They were just like going on trips to Thailand and sitting by waterfalls and eating mango and making videos as their job. And I was like, that sounds so much more fun than sitting in an apartment in North Carolina."

Over the next few months, Jacqueline became engulfed in a complex world of raw foods and fruit. She thought of little else. Did little else. 

"Isolation and desperation are a dangerous combination," says Jacqueline. 

"Because I think it means you really start to believe things, that when you say them out loud, especially to another real person who loves you, it's reflected back in a way that then starts to sound really absurd.

"Like if I were to have said, half the things I believed at that time – oil is a toxin – to someone who loves me, they would have been able to talk some sense into me. But I didn't and that was the point… you sort of are in your own universe."

She did start to feel better though. In hindsight, Jacqueline says it’s likely due to the rest rather than the diet. 

"I think that my real healing came from just resting for a whole semester, I only took one class that semester. So I really had zero commitments and the rest of the time I was napping or on my computer. I think anybody might respond well to just taking a break and resting up and feeling better."

Once she started to feel better, she headed home for the summer. It was there, spending time with her family, that she really turned a corner. 

"My family took care of me and I could ease back into life. But I think that on the whole looking back, food was just another fake form of control that I turned to instead of actually finding healing in any real meaningful way."

She was also thrust back into reality, into the real world. 

"I couldn't stare at a screen for six hours a day and… I lived a life the same way anyone else would.

"(I recognised) that not everything is a glossy, curated smoothie. Paradise, it's real life which can be beautiful but also it's more beautiful because it has the nuance of having the boring parts of life or the sad parts of life or acknowledging the pain and the beauty all at once, which I think makes things richer than just looking through a screen."

Fast forward to now, and Jacqueline has written a book about her experience, called The Fruit Cure: The Story of Extreme Wellness Turned Sour, and says her health is on track. 

"I found a treatment that works for me, and I have remained episode free for years, I have a great doctor who very much listens to me and validates my treatment plan and all that kind of stuff. 

"I feel like most important to me out of all of this has just been feeling like I have someone on the other side who's actually listening to what's going on. And giving me the research that shows me what's happening instead of just dismissing or questioning what's going on with me, taking your real curiosity in it."

Feature image: Supplied.