My name is Christopher Walker.

When I was 19 years old, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. 

I had begun my freshman year of pre-med at Duke University to get my degree in neuroscience, but I was having some seriously strange issues. I rapidly lost so much weight that I looked like a skeleton, yet I had no appetite. I was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, let alone focusing in class, my brain completely numb, like I was floating in a constant haze, severely depressed for no discernable reason whatsoever. 

My joints were also aching so badly that I started taking an over-the-counter NSAID daily called Aleve to reduce the pain, a terrible decision that landed me in the Duke Hospital ICU for two weeks after the student health center figured out that I had developed severe acute internal bleeding from 3 gaping ulcers in my duodenum, losing enough blood through my stool to nearly go into hemorrhagic shock. 

Things got so hopeless that I had to take a medical leave of absence for my entire sophomore year. 

During that year, my doctors gave me antidepressants and put me into behavioral therapy at Mary Washington Hospital in northern Virginia. I felt like I was going insane because I truly had no clue what was going on in my head, but for the previous couple years I’d been experiencing these crippling symptoms and could barely function in my daily life.

It wasn’t until more than 6 months of therapy and drug treatments that I finally went into the doctor's office and begged him for a blood test. 

No tests had been run prior to that day, but I knew something was horribly wrong with my body. 

My “tip-off” was the fact that I hadn’t had a sex drive in nearly 2 years. Zip. Nada. Zilch. 

No libido whatsoever. 

As a 17-19 year old guy… that’s not normal. 

The doctor relented, and finally (albeit reluctantly) gave me the blood test I asked for. 

One glance at the results, and his eyes were as big as apples. 

“I’m going to have to send you to a specialist.”

I was sent to a hematologist/oncologist in Potomac, Virginia, where the specialist ran a comprehensive blood and hormone panel. 

Within 30 seconds of looking at the results, he turned to me and said, 

“I think you have a brain tumor. I need to order an MRI.”

The MRI confirmed it, a tumor in my pituitary, sitting at the base of my brain, blocking critical hormone production and signaling to the body. 

I remember thinking, “What a relief! I’m not insane!” 

A light switch turned on in my mind when I saw that MRI result… There is a biological basis for my entire experience in life: my behavior, all of my health issues, my worldview. It’s ALL rooted in my biology and can be influenced by biological function, and dysfunction.

My battle with the medical establishment had begun.

My entire experience leading up to the tumor discovery and diagnosis was infuriating! Instead of giving me a simple blood test, my doctor was quick to prescribe me antidepressant pharmaceuticals and check me into a hospital therapy program for 6 months! 

How backwards is that? I had to get the blood test by eventually demanding it myself. Only then, with real biological data, did the doctor see that this was a much more serious issue than he thought, and I needed real help. 

After the diagnosis, I was given two options. First, was surgery. Due to the positioning of the tumor behind the optic nerve, and the risk associated with a surgical blunder (ie. blindness), I did not want to surgically remove the tumor unless it was an absolute necessity for survival. 

I opted for his second option, to monitor its growth every 6 months with MRIs, and to use hormone replacement therapies and antidepressants for the rest of my life, and to see a psychiatrist monthly to renew my prescriptions. 

After just a few weeks on the drug cocktail, I was feeling just as terrible as before. To my doctors’ dismay (and probably my parents’ as well at the time) I refused to continue taking the pharmaceuticals, and threw them in the trash. 

It didn’t make any sense to me that I would have to use these drugs for the rest of my life. Why didn’t anybody even think about natural ways to help my body heal itself? The body is a self-healing organism when it has the resources it needs to do so. This was never even considered as an option by any of the doctors I talked to. 

I’d realized that nobody cared about my health as much as I did. A truth I think everyone should accept for themselves.

I returned to Duke in the fall for my junior year, with a tenacious obsession to finish my neuroscience degree in 3 years instead of 4 (I became the first person to ever complete the program that quickly) and to use all of the world-class resources at my disposal for that final 2 years to solve my health problems naturally.

Within 18 months I’d completely, naturally, fixed all of the hormonal issues the tumor had been causing for years. I even brought my testosterone levels up from 11 ng/dL to 1192 ng/dL with just food, supplements, and specific exercise habits - a feat all conventional medical “wisdom” would deem impossible.

The tumor was still in my brain, the same size, but I was able to completely override its negative effects through just smart nutrition and lifestyle optimization. 

I remember “knowing” I could do this, when I learned about the concept of feedback-loops in the human endocrine system. These self-reinforcing hormone signaling loops can amplify your results when positive input is continually fed into them, making hormone optimization easier and easier, which in my case, eventually overpowered the signaling block the tumor was causing in my pituitary. 

Hormones are the most powerful chemical compounds inside our bodies, and when optimized can rapidly turn your health around and bring you into a state of vibrant energy and balance, a state I now refer to as Thermo.    

My original plan to be a neurosurgeon never came to fruition - I was too disgusted with the medical system to allow myself to participate in it. The institutional dogma is too deeply entrenched, with most of Western medicine practices completely centered around pharmaceutical distribution. My fascination with, and love of, the human body grew to such a profound level of respect that I could not willingly indenture myself to a system that is set up only to medicate patients, not to actually help them solve the root causes of their health problems safely and naturally, which empowers the patient to prevent further issues in the future. I graduated with my degree in 2011 and left academia forever. 

I started writing about my story online back in 2012 and never really intended for my blogging to be much more than an outlet for me to share my knowledge with people, and help them avoid a similar fate. 

However, destiny has had other plans.

I never thought this would snowball into such a cool, important thing! But not everybody’s heard the good word yet, so I’ve got a lot of work still left to do.

In 2015 I decided to start my company UMZU, to formulate and make the highest quality natural supplements possible, all backed with scientific research & ingredients with human clinical trials, and dosed correctly for people to use to help give their bodies the nutrients - the raw materials - it needs in order to start its self-healing process. 

I’m proud to say that we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of customers so far, allowing for many of them to get off their dangerous pharmaceuticals by using natural, well-formulated supplements. We serve people all over the world, shipping our products out from our U.S.-based Boulder, CO facilities.

And this is just the beginning. With my amazing team and business partners, I plan to build UMZU into the #1 natural products company in the world.

My journey so far has been so fun and rewarding; by taking the reins in my own health challenges with a positive mindset, I now have the chance to channel my experiences and my love of learning into helping so many people with their health. 

We all need to be healthy in order to perform our best. The current conventional health paradigm isn’t cutting it for anybody. Don’t think you’re unique in your struggles; we’re all in this boat together. And it’s time to start rowing ourselves.

Cheers to your health, 

Christopher Walker