Maya suffered with a severe form of eczema since she was a young baby. At the age of one, red, flaky skin broke out all over Maya’s body forcing her mother to resort to the conventional doctor-recommended treatment for eczema, steroid cream.

As supplemental advice, Maya’s pediatrician also recommended removing cow’s milk from her diet and replacing it with goat’s milk (about 15% of infants experience a dairy protein allergy, with common allergic symptoms manifesting on the skin). After doing so, Maya’s mother noticed that it had worked, but this only lasted for a short while.

It wasn’t long before Maya began to experience constant colds, a side effect Maya’s mother figured was due to the steroid cream. Steroid creams have a remarkable skin-penetrating ability which can flood the bloodstream and kill the cells which provide immunity against pathogens. Maya’s mother worried that the cream was only covering up the problem, rather than solving the root of the issue.

At the age of 4, Maya’s eczema returned with a vengeance. Her mother had already decided not to use the steroid cream, and resorted to a naturopathic approach.  She cleaned up Maya’s diet by cutting out milk, gluten and refined sugars all together, a tactic which proved beneficial as she watched her daughters eczema disappear yet again.

When Maya turned 7, her eczema flared up again worse than ever before. This time however, Maya was also found to have candida and parasites. In desperation, Maya’s mother went to her diet once again, this time cutting out meat and eggs as well as sugar. But her efforts were to no avail, as symptoms seemed to be getting worse.

After months of playing with Maya’s diet, her mother could see that she was ill from all of their efforts to rid Maya of her candida. She was losing weight rapidly, which her mother attributed to Maya’s gut’s inability to absorb nutrients. It was at this point that she was considering putting Maya back on drugs in fear of losing her daughter.

Maya’s mother had tried everything she thought she could, and her daughter’s condition wasn’t getting any better. Right before she decided to put Maya back on drugs, she came across a vegan community on Instagram which posted about how a high-carb, raw vegan diet was showing success in treating candida.

Although this sounded ‘wacky’ to Maya’s mother, she had no other option at that point. She tested out a 10-day banana diet before giving it to Maya, and she noticed she felt fantastic during the program. She immediately started her family on a diet that consisted mainly of fruit, leafy green and healthy fats from things such as avocados, nuts and seeds.

For the past six months, Maya’s skin has completely cleared up since going raw vegan, with only a few tiny dry spots left on her skin. Maya is finally at ease, and her family is feeling the benefits as well.

Today Maya and her family are happy and healthy, traveling the world and documenting their experiences on their YouTube channel, deHappy.