About

My name is Mikhaila Fuller. I am a 34-year-old wife, mother, and CEO. I am the founder of Peterson Academy and the non-profit Fuller Research Foundation, I have developed a few products, and I work to raise awareness about health issues that have profoundly impacted my life. I also host a podcast. I am extremely busy, and I love it. What I do not love is having my health constantly under attack. It reduces my productivity, makes me neurotic, and impairs my ability to think clearly, which is incredibly frustrating. I absolutely despise it. I do not like having days where I feel even 10% worse.

I was chronically ill as a child and lived with the mindset that “these are the cards I was dealt” and “there’s nothing I can do about it, but at least I won’t complain.” Every single doctor I saw told me I was one of the sickest patients they had ever treated, if not the sickest, and that there was nothing that could be done. I heard this message from grade 2 onward, after being diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in 37 joints at age 7. I had symptoms since age 2, but no one could determine what was wrong. I suffered from chronic strep infections, fatigue, weepiness, depression, a chronically plugged nose, shortness of breath, and arthritis. I spent most of my childhood reading in my room — partly because I loved learning, but also to escape from my life. 

By age 21, I had been formally diagnosed with major depressive disorder (at age 12), bipolar disorder (around the same time), asthma (at age 14), and idiopathic hypersomnia (at age 21). I was put on Celexa and later Lexapro and Wellbutrin, and I had also undergone hip and ankle replacements at age 17 due to arthritis that was not adequately controlled by the immunosuppressants I was taking. I had been told I was so allergic to trees that I should wear goggles and a mask outdoors. I nearly had an anaphylactic reaction from a spider bite, was hospitalized for seizures (Wellbutrin side effect) and pneumonia, and had undergone multiple surgeries.

I had always been interested in science. At age 19, I began reading scientific papers on the medications I was prescribed to try to understand what was happening in my body. When I developed rashes on my face, I focused intensely on skin issues and read everything I could find.

At age 21, I dropped out of Concordia University, where I had been pursuing a Classics degree, because I couldn’t get out of bed to attend my exams. I had no energy and could barely move. At the time, I wondered if I was lazy — a common thought among chronically ill people. That was not the case.

I was also drinking heavily at the time, as it was the only thing that dulled the desire to die. I was miserable. Shortly after, I moved back home. For a short time, I attended makeup school, thinking that if I could at least look good and help others look good, perhaps I, and they, would feel better. It didn’t last.

Right before turning 22, I realized that if I didn’t figure out what was wrong with me, it was going to kill me. One day while trying to do someone’s makeup, my wrist stopped functioning properly. I asked my rheumatologist if I was headed for a wrist replacement (at the time I couldn’t use it properly and needed painkillers to sleep). He replied, “Don’t worry, that’s very rare.” I responded with “I’ve already had two joints replaced — it doesn’t seem very rare for me.” I was not getting better. 

I had been through the medical system my entire life and was on a long list of prescription drugs: Lexapro, Enbrel, Methotrexate, Adderall, T3s at night for arthritic pain, daily prescription-strength Cetirizine, and antibiotics (dapsone) for my rashes. I had quit Wellbutrin previously after a seizure. I also took Lorazepam for panic attacks, though fortunately not often, as it didn’t really work. It was miserable, and I was not improving. The medications were not working as the doctors had promised, and new problems continued to appear.

That cocktail of drugs, however, gave me just enough clarity to realize I needed to try to get better myself instead of waiting for others to fix me. I completed my missing grade 12 high school sciences (I had missed grades 11 and 12 due to my hip and ankle replacement) through night school at Ryerson so I could enter their Biomedical Science program.

Around the same time I was accepted into Biomedical Science at Ryerson, I put myself into remission. 

Eight months after deciding “I am going to get better or die trying,” I achieved remission by cutting out most of the foods I had been eating. 

This was something I had never seriously considered, as I didn’t appear to have food allergies. In September 2015, at age 23, after one month of eating only meat and very few fruits and vegetables (and eliminating processed foods), my arthritic pain went away, and I started to be able to think. My skin rashes healed shortly after, and two months later my depression and chronic fatigue disappeared. One day I woke up and it was just gone.

I stopped all my medications quite suddenly at that point. “Fuck the medical system” was basically my mindset. How many of these drugs were lies too? That was a huge mistake. A two week taper of SSRI’s induced what I later realized was a neurological injury/protracted withdrawal.

That lasted two and a half years. That period of time led me to further restrict my diet, and since 2017 I have eaten only meat. All the details about the diet that put me into remission are available here, and I highly recommend reading it for anyone suffering from chronic illness. My parents adopted the same diet for their own health reasons. For some reason, the only food all of us can tolerate without digestive or neurological symptoms is meat. There’s more evidence now linking ketogenic diets to treatment for mitochondrial dysfunction and mental illness, but in 2017 I was an outcast.

For years, I believed I was cured. The Lion Diet (the name I gave to the all-beef/lamb diet I followed) also appeared to help many other people. I assumed the issue had been gut damage from a standard American diet, antibiotics, and medications, and that I would eventually heal my gut and slowly reintroduce other foods. That did not happen.

It was not for lack of trying to reintroduce foods, and certainly not because I dislike salad. Why were we allergic to everything? Why were there unrelated people experiencing the same pattern? What was wrong with our immune systems? Was there a common factor — perhaps a bacterial gut issue or viral exposure? Why did the Lion Diet work so well for so many?

After seven years of remission (as long as I strictly avoided trigger foods, chemicals, fragrances, etc.), I moved from Canada to the United States in 2022. I started to get sick again in Tennessee — bronchitis, skin breakouts, mood volatility, difficulty thinking, and returning arthritis. My digestion was also affected even though my diet had not changed. I blamed tree allergies and moved to Miami. I was still podcasting and managing, but I felt chronic fatigue creeping back in. Then, rather suddenly in 2023, I deteriorated further: bronchitis, skin rashes, arthritic pain, nerve pain, and severe fatigue. By the end of January 2023, it became clear I was not just catching colds from my daughter — something was seriously wrong. My daughter was sick as well, and so was my husband. It took losing the energy to walk upstairs for me to fully realize how bad it had become.

At first I assumed it must be my diet. Perhaps after six years of eating only meat, my vitamin levels were off. My father’s levels had been checked and were normal, but when I had mine tested, I showed multiple deficiencies despite being on the same diet for nearly the same length of time.

In February 2023, I discovered there was mold in our house. We had the property thoroughly tested by WeInspect and found mold throughout the home. The new house had improperly sealed windows and roof, with mold behind the drywall and in all four HVAC systems — black mold, other molds, endotoxins, bacteria, and every marker of water damage. It was making me very ill, as well as my daughter and husband who had different symptoms but similar. My daughter was bed wetting, had nightmares, and constant bronchitis. My husband was anhedonic and irritable and incredibly foggy. I had severe insomnia, chronic fatigue, pain all over my body and muscle weakness. 

We left that house immediately. I then read everything I could find about biotoxins and their impact on health — and it is far worse and more serious than I had thought possible. I created this website to simplify the information so others could access what I had to research on my own.

It now appears that my extreme sensitivities to trees, grass, animals, dust, foods, medications, and chemicals are the result of a chronically activated immune system caused by long-term exposure to biotoxins that are rarely recognized as highly harmful. Combined with a neurological injury from long term SSRI use – most definitely used to treat undiagnosed mental illness from CIRS. I believe this is affecting millions of undiagnosed people. I hope this website helps you, and that you can follow along with my treatment journey as well.