About Deb Tokarz
Deb Tokarz is a former human resource professional who worked the majority of her long career at a healthcare company. Studying industrial psychology, she has always been interested in learning and understanding human behavior. She transitioned from her corporate life to working on a personal quest to find answers to her unhappiness.
In her heart, she knew something was causing her symptoms of depression, high anxiety, and fatigue. With great determination (and a lot of trial and error), she didn’t stop searching until she finally discovered that one culprit was copper toxicity.
As her mind and body come into balance from treating the copper toxicity, her symptoms fade, and she becomes acutely aware that her environment may have triggered the copper disregulation that affected her cognitive disruption. Not wanting to return to the darkness, she courageously makes life-changing decisions for her health.
Overcoming her painful past and getting her life back, Deb’s driving force in sharing her vulnerable story is to create awareness and inspire others to find balance and healing. She is an advocate for self-trust and root cause treatment. However, she does not promote specific doctors or one-size-fits-all treatments. She is acutely aware that we are all biochemically unique and have individual tolerances.
Biography
I grew up in Chicago on the second floor of a two-story brownstone. I had what I believe to be a normal childhood. Most memorable was when I started my menstrual cycle in my early teens. It became increasingly challenging as the pain became severe enough to immobilize me at times. I learned to have a high pain tolerance and didn’t let it affect my school days or employment as I entered the workforce. Always attempting to maintain a happy-go-lucky appearance, my boss nicknamed me “Smiley.” In my early 20s, I chose to take the birth control pill to minimize the pain. That is when I suddenly found myself turned upside down in despair, barely coping with mental fatigue, and confused by the change in me.
As hormone changes like pregnancy and menopause arose, I became more unhinged, living in a fog. For fifteen years, I struggled and sought medical help for high anxiety, depression, and fatigue. I felt like a failure as doctors kept treating my symptoms, and therapy didn’t help. I thought I was going crazy when antidepressants and a healthy diet made me worse. Unbeknownst to me and my doctors, I had a dysregulation and could not detox copper properly from my body.
As copper created a path of destruction, my survival method was journaling my feelings. I have always found solace in expressing my feelings in writing. When I finally found doctors who discovered that I had copper toxicity, they told me I was lucky to be alive. Tearfully, I knew they were right. Hearing other women confide that they, too, have had unexplained emotional experiences and fatigue is why I share my experience in my book, I Cu Copper, and provide hope that healing is possible.
It’s been a long journey to healing my copper imbalance, but it was not the only root cause of my symptoms. Once my body chemistry became balanced and I regained clarity, I identified environmental hindrances contributing to my unhappiness.
A preview of my environmental awareness is in my chapter of the book, Aligned Leaders. I will soon share more about the second stage of my healing journey.