Your Ultimate Guide for Healthy Living

Anusha meets Sophie and Selah. Both have EDS, but their experiences were vastly different. So why are some women with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome told their pain is psychological? Is it medical misogyny? https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/all-in-her-head/all-in-her-head

A doctor in Germany says he can treat complex vascular compressions. Health officials say it’s experimental and dangerous. Jemima’s family say he saved her life, but we meet another woman who wishes she never went under the knife. https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/all-in-her-head/cuts-both-ways

"In this RNZ investigation, Ruby's mother tells the heartbreaking story of her daughter's fight to be believed, and why she says too many New Zealanders with complex illnesses are still facing the same battle today." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDwJDQUBWDg

Another young woman fights for her life in hospital while doctors' debate what they see on her scans. So how is it that different doctors can look at the same image and come to completely different conclusions? https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/all-in-her-head/double-vision

Health officials make a shock move that sends a ripple of fear through the EDS community. Anusha meets the family of Ruby Hill, who starved to death after a long battle with EDS. And we hear from the experts who say the evidence doesn’t stack up. https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/all-in-her-head/do-no-harm

Anusha meets the doctors facing scrutiny for treating Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Meanwhile, Rachel takes a leap of faith, heading overseas to meet a surgeon who could save her life. https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/all-in-her-head/the-zebra-dilemma

Rachel is starving to death, but doctors can't agree what’s wrong with her. In desperation her family fundraises for life-saving surgery she can only get overseas. Rachel has Ehlers-Danlos, a syndrome dividing the medical community. https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/all-in-her-head/the-girl-who-could-not-eat

As her daughter got sicker and sicker, Maddy Turner’s quest for answers dragged on. Now she has them. For almost six months as she camped next to her daughter’s hospital bed listening to her moaning in pain, her left leg twisted and immobile, Maddy Turner kept one image firmly in her mind. It was of 14-year-old Amelia walking on a beach, scuffing her feet in the sand. Amelia loves the beach and spent many summers at her grandfather’s house in Whitianga. But as she lay in bed

Dr Tim Angeli-Gordon has won the Royal Society's 2024 Cooper Award for his innovative work on diagnosing and treating chronic stomach issues with a gut sensor that measures electrical activity. Tim Angeli-Gordon says chronic gut research will benefit from high-profile recognition in awards like those from the Royal Society In honour of his groundbreaking research to resolve gut problems using bioengineering techniques, Dr Tim Angeli-Gordon has been awarded the Cooper Award by

Jo Hill set up a foundation after her beloved daughter died from a terrible gastrointestinal disease. Now Ruby's Voice is contributing to groundbreaking research. Gastroparesis meant Ruby Hill (left, with mum Jo) couldn't digest food. She basically starved to death. In early 2019, Ruby Hill gave her final media interview. The 23-year-old had gastroparesis, a disease where the electrical contractions that cause food to go through the digestive system don’t work properly. Four

A Whangārei mother whose daughter starved to death hopes a new device being developed could prevent others from the same “unimaginable” death. Jo Hill’s 23-year-old daughter Ruby died from gastroparesis in 2019. According to the Mayo Clinic, gastroparesis occurs when the muscles used to move food through the stomach become paralysed, preventing digestion. Patients with the condition, which has no cure, struggle to maintain weight due to their body being unable to absorb nutri

Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora is reviewing how a rare connective tissue disorder is diagnosed and treated because “the current evidence is of low quality”. It comes as a succession of Kiwis with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), several of whom are young women, have resorted to fundraising more than $100,000 each for surgery that’s unavailable in New Zealand in the hope they can eat and drink normally again. Some patients have also raised concerns about their struggle to be dia

A Wellington teenager who cannot eat or drink and hasn’t been to school in 16 months has a chance of getting her life back. About $95,000 has been raised through Givealittle in five weeks for Julia Choquette to have specialist surgery in Germany that’s unavailable in New Zealand. In addition, $31,500 was recently raised by Julia’s school, Queen Margaret College, allowing her family to book the surgery for October. The 15-year-old has multiple abdominal vascular compression sy

Her active lifestyle a few years’ ago feels like a lifetime ago for Melissa King. The former Auckland-based retail manager and fitness instructor now can’t shower without feeling exhausted. “It has been a wee bit of a rough couple of years.” The 28-year-old’s weight is now 39kg, her skin is dry, her hair is falling out and she is unable to get a feeding tube to assist her malnourished body. It was two years ago when her health started to deteriorate, including two kidney ston

A Wellington teenager who loved competitive cheerleading, violin and debating is no longer able to eat or drink and urgently needs surgery that’s not available in New Zealand. “It’s absolutely heartbreaking,” Babette Puetz said of her daughter’s condition. “There’s nothing worse than seeing your child suffer like this and if only I could, I would take all her problems upon myself and just have her happy again.” Julia, 15, has multiple abdominal vascular compression syndromes

Teenager Jemima Thompson was given three years to live due to an abdominal condition – until she went to Germany and had a life-saving operation. Her younger sister Matilda died 11 years ago from what their mother Rachel Mckenna suspects was the same condition. Now, Mckenna fears for her youngest daughter, Clementine. A Hamilton mother who has lost one daughter and saved another from what she believes was the same rare and debilitating condition now fears her third daughter m

She searches her phone for the list of favourite foods she can’t wait to enjoy again. Maia de Wit is 17, so naturally pizza rates highly. Talking about toppings is one of the few times she tries for a smile. She’s not quite sure what her favourites are any more. There are many flavours her taste buds have simply forgotten. The Ashhurst teenager has not eaten a meal since 2022. She is sustained by a feeding tube. The occasional spoonful of jelly is purely functional. It puts h

After being told she had an eating disorder for years, this Dunedin woman finally has a correct diagnosis. Millie Hardiman struggles to talk about the time she was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and taken to an eating disorder ward, where she contracted norovirus and was woken every half hour to check she was breathing. Despite entering the mental health hospital with severe stomach pain and nausea, made worse by consuming food or even a sip of water, she was forced to eat a

A radio host who went public with his daughter’s journey with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome has spoken of how traumatic the experience was, and his disappointment at having to use his privilege to “rage” at the health system. Reverend Frank Ritchie, an ordained minister with the Wesleyan Methodist Church, is the co-host of Newstalk ZB’s Sunday at Six and lead chaplin of Media Chaplaincy NZ. In recent months, though, he has gone public about his daughter Selah’s health journey after

In less than a year, Pip Lewis went from being fit and healthy to “in so much pain that I couldn’t literally hold a cup of tea”. The Rotorua mother says she fought for five years to get a diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) – a “rare” genetic connective tissue disorder that leaves her in pain “every day”. The 55-year-old has described her “battle” with the health system after presenting with symptoms about 50 times and twice being misdiagnosed. “Pretty much everyone sai