My Wellness Journey

By Tarik Koivisto, Founder & Creative Director, Luxe Provence

Founder & Creative Director, Tarik Koivisto. Photo by Laura Saur.

BITTEN

It was 2017 and I received a bite on my arm at my home here in Provence while in my veranda. I didn’t see a tick, it just seemed like a strange bite, maybe a spider but it started to swell and was becoming warm. After two days, a red line started up my vein towards my chest. The next day, I began having horrendous neck pain hitting in waves, like an ice pick tapping through my neck and head and my nerves felt on fire. The pain became very intense. We headed to the emergency room nearby and I was tested for Lyme disease and immediately given antibiotics for a suspected lymphatic system infection that was headed towards my heart, which could develop into sepsis, which is deadly quite quickly. The doctor said thank god you came in when you did and was given an IV for the severe neck pain and antibiotics. I left with a prescription a few hours later and we waited for the test results for Lyme, which came back negative.

I went on taking the antibiotics, but I didn’t feel better. I was rarely sick and this was unusual. The fever persisted and found myself in Paris at Maison & Objet walking around like a sweaty, confused zombie. I returned early and asked for more antibiotics from my doctor, as this infection was still lingering with night sweats becoming very intense. So they gave me 5 days more and hoped this would do the trick. Everyone told me, Lyme does not exist here in Provence.

SYMPTOMS

Fast-forward 18 months later and I was beginning to fall apart. My stomach was hurting really bad, my body was hurting everywhere. I was feeling numbness and nerve tingling in my feet and legs, fingers. I was beginning to trip and even fall often. I felt I needed to physically tell my legs how to walk suddenly; my autonomic nervous system wasn’t working correctly. I used to have an incredible memory and was forgetting basic things and felt so frustrated. I couldn’t speak French sometimes with my friends suddenly in the middle of conversations. I was just so foggy and confused at times. On my birthday that year, I tripped and fell down a few steps at a beautiful 5-star restaurant and just started crying. Right then, I knew something was seriously wrong… it was terrifying.

THE SEARCH

I started desperately searching for answers and am a chronic researcher by nature (I have a BS in Psychology…and always was interested in how the body/mind function). I have a very active mind, am a highly self-motivated person and suddenly my body couldn’t keep up at all. It was so frustrating. I loved hosting dinner parties with friends at home, I just couldn’t do it. I was a very social person but I couldn’t make it out past 8pm. I was exhausted and wanted to sleep for 12 hours at a time, and even when I did I still woke up sore, heavy and stiff. I started seeing numerous doctors, the count grew to 12 at the end, including specialists whom I waited to see for up to 6 month, even taking a train and booking a hotel to Paris to see an autoimmune specialist who in the first seconds of my appointment told me it was all in my head, or stomach, go see a gastro, why are you here? I saw gastroentrologists who told me I just needed to take a bunch of pharmaceuticals, but didn’t address the core issues and were not into the idea that gluten could be a culprit in the country of baguettes. The cruelness in the interactions was unbearable. It seems if doctors don’t know what is wrong with you, it’s simply your problem or in your head as I was told over and over again. This was beginning to mess with my mind, I was feeling depressed and hopeless.

By this time, I was losing weight and I didn’t really even realize it until people started to notice and make comments. Sometimes I would be a model for my clothing line and I started to get some negative anorexia comments on one of my photos on Instagram, which shocked me. Behind the scenes of running my beautiful brand, I was just surviving and desperate for answers. I remember my kids saying one day “oh mom, you’re always so tired”. Like it was again an excuse to not be with them or do something, it was so devastating to hear and I knew I needed help to get well soon. That my life was slipping away somehow but I was so tired and depleted from trying to find help that didn’t exist. I was often in my bedroom resting for hours, I just couldn’t do normal activities anymore and even the smallest task of packaging a box, felt like climbing a mountain. What had happened to me?

BEGINS WITH THE GUT

At random, I used the French “Doctolib” application to find myself another new doctor. I opened up my search to Marseille, where there are excellent university hospitals and was on the hunt for a general functional medicine doctor who had achieved a lot via their profile and actually seemed curious… and must be a woman. I stumbled a female doctor, who seemed to be everything, a microbiote specialist, a pyschologist, a gynecologist and had a certificate in aromatherapy, essential oil/plant-backed treatments, so I made an appointment. I spent 8 months with her and immediately discovered I had an enormous amount of food intolerances, gluten, dairy, eggs, potatoes, peas… She diagnosed me as having non-celiac gluten disorder. The first phase was to remove all of these items from my diet for three months. My intestines were in very bad shape and not absorbing nutrients for quite some time, which was why I was so tired. I was essentially malnourished in all capacities, despite eating a very healthy Mediterranean-style diet. My bloodwork showed very bad anemia, low iodine, B12 deficiency, D deficiency, many minerals lacking… essentially my doctor said it was as if I was anorexic. My villi in the intestines were so damaged nothing I ate was being absorbed properly. So the healing began for my gut and micobiome. I was so grateful to have some answers at last. It was a very slow process of rebuilding that took several years but step-by-step, we removed all of the foods that inflamed my body and tried to restore and rebuild my intestines through functional medicine, no harsh pharmaceuticals but only plants, nutrition and high-quality supplements to heal the gut and then put back all of the nutrients I lacked. This by the way, is also very expensive.

BRAIN BODY CONNECTION

It had been about 4 months on my new diet and I was starting to realize that the pain was getting so much better! I really had had no idea, that I had food intolerances prior to these tests I had done with my doctor. One day, I was out for a work lunch during a photoshoot and I tried to order something that fit into my complicated regime, which I can honestly tell you, is not an easy task. In particular, French chefs and restaurants are really not patient with these types of restrictions or any special demands, really. So as per usual, I ordered a simple salad, no eggs. I took one bite and literally within seconds suddenly had the intense stabbing neck pain return. Wow, there’s something in this salad! I asked the waiter again, are you sure there’s no eggs? He double-checked and found out that yes, there were indeed raw eggs in the dressing. Free horrible lunch, yes, but it was this moment that I understood, listened deeply and felt my body. Imagine I was eating these things for so long that caused such a disconnection from my senses to my body? How does this happen? And I cannot believe that I was so out of touch with my body to not know this before. It was practical proof to me that I truly had some serious intolerance issues and helped me keep my willpower to this day of avoiding all of these foods in my diet.

THE DIET

I made progress with my diet and my pain was significantly reduced. Progress! However, I was still experiencing a lot of strange symptoms. I started to feel like a hypochondriac when I would see my doctor, so I would just mention one or two of the symptoms each visit to minimize. But we weren’t progressing anymore like we did with the food intolerances phase. So the night before my next monthly visit, I sat down and wrote a comprehensive list of all of the symptoms I was experiencing still: night sweats, joint pain, difficulty walking with extreme pain on the bottom of my feet in the morning, occipital nerve pain, vision changes, brain fog, extreme fatigue, tinnitus, burning nerve sensations. I brought in my list and she read it over carefully… then she asked “did you have an insect bite prior”… I said yes. She said “you have Lyme Disease”. I told her I didn’t bring up the bite because my test was negative and she responded, “they are nearly always false negative, the tests don’t work”. Okay, wow. I have finally figured out my diagnosis! I was actually thrilled. If I know what I have I can fix it!

We ran more tests and we confirmed by doing other vector-born tests that showed I also had several Lyme co-infections at play which can make this disease very crippling: bartonella, babesia, anaplasmosis, and others. Together they work as teams of parasites and bacteria to hide in your body, destroy red blood cells and exhaust you. The Lyme still didn’t show up on the blood test, but these other positives proved I was bitten by a tick and together with my symptoms, the diagnosis was made.

The next part was more challenging than I realized. Nobody knows how to deal with Lyme disesase. Did you want an arrêt maladie, which is a certificate that you cannot work for your employer, I was often asked? No, I was not looking for a certificate to not work, I am happily self-employed, was not easily stressed out and was running my Luxe Provence company just fine thank you. I wanted answers, I wanted a treatment, I wanted to be well again. I brought in studies from the top worldwide hospitals with research about possible treatments for Lyme to look into and was laughed at. The neurologists were particularly cruel. I started to give up… and then found a new path.

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE & HEALING

Back in the States, years earlier when I faced other unexplained mystery health issues (being in the 1 out 100,000 check box seemed to be my special category of rare illness), the only direction that allowed me to find answers to healing was Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). I spent 10 minutes in a consultation with a TCM and they instantly knew what the issues were because they looked at the body as a whole, not individual specialized pieces of me. They studied the holistic connection the whole body and the mind. And I found solutions nearly instantly through acupuncture, herbs and diet change. I didn’t have the same network here in France that I had in California, but kept on trying to build it.

Over time here, I found qualified Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctors, along with an incredible mora therapist whom I worked with for over 6 years to get back on track and over some very difficult periods of my health journey. We removed everything that was causing harm inside my body and blocking it’s innate ability to heal itself. We used only plant-based and high quality neutraceuticals, that she tested individually to make sure they were a good fit for my body and of the highest quality. It was a very very long, expensive, slow and complicated route and I have developed Fibromyalgia as well, due to the Lyme, but I now know and understand how to slow down, listen to my body, rest when I need to and the power of plant-based medicines and mind to repair. I regularly work with TCM, therapists and the bioresonance/moratherapist to maintain my health. It’s not perfect, and I have flare ups but then I need to rest and I know I cannot take on as much as I used to but I can still thrive.

I can hike and take one hour walks everyday again. I do yoga and pilates. I listen to my body. I eat very well, despite being restricted I have learned to live with this over the pain I was in prior. I have learned so much about the impact of: heavy metals, toxins, parasites, bacteria and viruses such as Epstein-Barr, and how they serve as blockages to our bodies to heal, or to cause disease, cancer… and more. I am not a doctor, but I have done years of research, met many alternative health specialists, can tell the good ones from the less good, and I understand now how to heal the body.

MY SECOND CHAPTER

I nearly sold my business this past year in 2025, after the loss of my mother from a very cruel battle with ALS in December, I was completely exhausted again. The silver lining of this period of extreme back and forth from France to the States was that I got to spend rare alone time with my sister. She has dedicated her life to academic pursuits and expertise in holistic and herbal wellness and has an enormous wealth of experience. She’s a clinical herbalist, has a masters in psychology specializing in nature and somatic therapy and incredible knowledge in plant-based healing from her years working in apothecaries and healing centers. I had an idea and I think my mom would’ve like it, too. Instead of selling, I shifted Luxe Provence towards a new mission to embody our strengths and journeys to create a platform and connection for healing and creating joy together.

I have used my “behind-the-scenes” knowledge and personal healing experience to assemble the most talented team of holistic wellness practitioners I could find here in Provence, not just yoga instructors but mind-body specialists. It is the most frightening and frustrating thing to feel alone in your body when you are ill, stressed and you don’t know what to do. We all need to listen to ourselves more and slow down. I hope I can share some of my knowledge with these retreats with you and make something wonderful out of what I have endured that supports the wellness and joy in others. Right now more than ever in this world, we need to support one another and feel joy again.

I hope you’ll join me in Provence.

To learn more about Lyme Disease or to support someone you know struggling for answers, I highly recommend the following resources and films.

The Quiet Epidemic (film) - must watch

Richard Horowitz, specialized doctor treating Lyme patients for over 28 years, 12,000 patients and his books: Why Can’t I Get Better? Solving the Mystery of Lyme and Chronic Disease” How Can I Get Better? An Action Plan for Treating Resistant Lyme and Chronic Disease” and use his MSIDS Diagnotic Map for diagnostics when most standard blood tests do not work.

Stephen Harrod Buhner was an American herbalist and writer. The Buhner protocol is a herbal supportive therapy please read his book and follow the herbal program.

Hulda Clark, Dr Clark Store for treatment protocals, cleanses, removing heavy metals, toxins, parasites. Several books on healing, cancers and overall wellbeing.

Bay Area Lyme Foundation for latest news, research and treatments.

Lyme Literate Doctors are not easy to find, if in the USA please try to located one near you.