At 46, I was told I needed open heart surgery.

My mitral valve had a severe leakage, my heart was enlarged, and my surgeon gave me six months to prepare. I was terrified. I hated hospitals. The thought of open heart surgery kept me up at night.

Looking back, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, Coca-Cola all afternoon, a packet of cigarettes a day. I thought I was healthy because I never gained weight. I had no idea how wrong that measure was.

So I started researching. The internet had just arrived in homes, and I threw myself into it. Some of what I found was wrong. I fell for the low-fat food trap for a while, not realising those products were loaded with sugar, which turned out to be far more harmful. But gradually, the picture got clearer. A woman (Christine Cronau) on television talked about cholesterol and how we’d been misled about saturated fat changed everything for me. I realised that what gets promoted isn’t always what’s true.

I gave up smoking. I gave up Coca-Cola. I worked on reducing processed food , not all at once, gradually, in a way that was actually sustainable.

When I went in for my pre-surgery tests, they told me the surgery was no longer necessary. My leakage had returned to mild. My enlarged heart had reduced.

That was seventeen years ago. My heart condition is ongoing — it’s non-ischemic, linked to genetics, inflammation, and infection, not lifestyle alone — and it has returned twice since. But what I learned in those years completely changed how I understand food, health, and the information we’re given.

I’m Susa. I’m 63, a mum of two boys I had at 37 and 40, and I live in Australia. I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist. What I am is someone who has spent seventeen years researching, learning, and quietly cutting through the noise.

We live in a confusing world, bombarded with contradicting health information. My goal with Lovefoodhealth is simple — to share what I’ve found, point you toward resources worth investigating, and help you make sense of it all. If I can help even a few people find a path that makes them healthier, that’s everything.

Love & health, 

Susa