Founder Story — Synch
I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and as a kid, my dream was to become a professional soccer player. As an athlete, all throughout my youth I ate healthy, homemade food and barely had any soda.
During summer times in my teenage years, I had an opportunity to visit my aunt and uncle in Santa Cruz, CA and one summer I got a hold of a drug called Accutane for my facial breakouts. Little did I know that I was taking antibiotics every day for 6 months to make sure my skin looked decent. Why that long? Well, I needed to look good to impress the girls, right? We’ll get back to Accutane…
Chasing the American Dream
When I moved to the States for my college education I started eating fast food during the school years, stopped exercising and focused on my academic career so that I can get a good job and continue living my life in America.
Right after graduating from UCLA, I became a financial analyst and started working in San Francisco, my favorite city. In order to reach my American dream and climb those steps, I had to go to the mecca of the financial world — Wall Street.
I worked hard to seize an opportunity to transfer within my company, Citibank and moved to NYC in the summer of 2007. Started living a life that I couldn’t even have dreamt about. Working hard during the day and going out every single night — including Sunday nights — partying like there was no tomorrow, eating at 1am on a regular basis and “enjoying” every moment of life.
Should have listened to my gut
I started to feel minor stomach aches here and there and I didn’t think anything of it at first. During the winter of 2008, my abdominal pain level has significantly gone up and I had to see a GI doctor. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, which is an autoimmune disease that creates inflammation in the gut. Yes my own body was telling me to change my lifestyle. After a long research, I found the culprit. Remember that antibiotic drug for acne, Accutane… It wiped out all the good bacteria in my gut and my immune system couldn’t fight back anymore.
My mild symptoms started to worsen as I took steroids and other autoimmune suppressants. I hit yet a new low when the financial crisis hit Wall Street and the rest of the world’s economy started to collapse. Citibank was on the verge of bankruptcy due to subprime mortgage exposure. Seeing people’s sad faces on subways still remains a vivid memory reminding me of the turbulent times in Wall Street.
With my not-so-safe H1B work visa, I started to worry more about my job, my future in the U.S. and of course stress worsen my Crohn’s symptoms. After an incident in the office elevator where I collapsed due to dehydration through the side effects of the drugs, I was immediately hospitalized. In the hospital bed, I decided to end the NYC chapter of my life and move back to California to stay close with my family until I recovered.
Curse or a blessing?
For the next six years, my symptoms became more and more severe and my body was creating antibodies against all the recommended drugs. It became so bad that I had to go through a surgery to alleviate the inflamed areas.
When I had to live with a colostomy bag after the surgery I really thought I was cursed. This was the lowest point in my life and I needed to fight back. I decided to make a drastic change and stopped taking all the medications and decided to manage my condition through lifestyle interventions. I started to drink bone broth every single day before bone broth became a popular biohack, remembering my grandma, making me drink bone broth when I was sick. I cooked my own batch of broth every week and cleaned out my diet as well.
At that time I also decided to see a naturopathic doctor in San Francisco who helped me understand the holistic approach to care and made me believe that I can heal my body with the right regimen. After working closely with Dr. Kelly on dietary and lifestyle changes, my inflammation markers hit the normal ranges within just six months!
I will never forget my GI doctor’s facial expression when I told him that I have no inflammation and asked him to start a reversal ostomy surgery to get me back to my factory settings. He couldn’t believe how I healed a severely inflamed gut, without using any medication!
It is a blessing
After getting rid of the colostomy bag and fully recovered, I felt the urge to share my experience with people that had similar chronic conditions. I hoped that I can be a glimpse of inspiration for them to turn the tide around. That’s when I realized that the decade-long suffering was actually a blessing.
I started blogging first and sharing my experience with people in my close circle. I really wanted to open their eyes to the world of integrative and holistic medicine and more importantly start a behavior change from eating a clean diet to implement stress-reducing activities such as sleep hygiene, meditation, exercise, journaling and more. No one had told me about these when I was sick, so I wanted to let people know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
A few short months after that when I was traveling to Europe with my wife I had a moment where an idea sparked in my head after listening to a How I Built This podcast. I wanted to create a company that connects chronically ill people with vetted holistic-minded practitioners. I called my good friend, Levent, to see if he would join me in this mission. We have co-founded syncH and built a strong community of disease survivors, yogis, naturopaths, chiropractors and others. They all believed in the power of community.
We strived to make a positive change in the world by creating awareness about functional and integrative medicine and make people believe that they can reach their optimal health and reverse their illness. We put our hearts into this endeavor and I couldn’t have imagined building a holistic health community if I didn’t go through the decade-long health challenges in the first place.
