Is It Possible to Thrive With Addison’s Disease? This Daily Practice Says Yes

What if the biggest challenge of your life became your greatest teacher? On today's episode, we're joined by Martin Stark, who faced a near-fatal battle with Addison's disease, and instead of being broken by it, his experience forged a powerful, unique understanding of courage and how we can all integrate resilience into our lives, no matter what we face. Welcome, Martin. So good to have you here.

Hi, good morning, and thanks for inviting me to join you today.

Oh, look, it's an absolute pleasure, and you have such a fascinating story, Martin. One of that I hope many of our listeners and the people watching this will take away is the importance of even if you do have a prognosis that you're not happy with, or you're given a diagnosis and you're absolutely shocked and don't know How you might get through it. You're a living example of going beyond that, not letting it define you. You endured 70— unbelievable— 70 hospital admissions, 4 major surgeries from your Addison's disease, to now be known as the Courage Champion. Tell us, Martin, from the beginning, your diagnosis, and how did you become the courage champion?

Oh, before that, I'm going to share something I learned about almost 30 years ago.

Lovely.

And it was an acronym called SARA, which was Shock, Anger, Resistance, Acceptance. I was on a training course about how to give people feedback from the annual performance review, and the instructor used the acronym because— and they used the analogy of Princess Diana, who passed away, and there was all the fear of her death Was there going to be so much anger from the crowd? What would happen before her funeral? And there was that shock, anger, the resistance of what, and then the acceptance. So I knew early on about acceptance before I became ill. So my backstory was 2006, become an Australian permanent resident, originally from the UK, and then went to the UK for what I thought was a 2-week trip to take my husband to visit the family. What transpired was I was admitted to hospital because gallstones were blocking my liver.

Wow.

And I had to— I was jaundiced, very unwell. And I had a procedure which involved dye being inserted through my throat so the doctor could look around the pancreas and insert a stent into my bile duct, which was packed full of gallstones. What happened was dye seeped into my pancreas And then I developed severe acute pancreatitis, had a collapsed lung, and I also developed sepsis. So I was in 2 induced comas. I had a tracheotomy, and the tracheotomy— there's my scar here.

Oh.

This is my voice because of the damage to my vocal cords. So all of that happened in a period of around about a month, and I was undiagnosed with Addison's disease, which I'll explain. All of this experience being a healthy, vibrant 30-year-old, then in hospital fighting for my life. 4 or 5 times my parents were told I wouldn't survive the night. Went down to 60 kilos. In hospital for 2 months, discharged. A month after being discharged, I was back doing spin classes at the gym, preparing for this major surgery I needed. So I had this surgery to remove the bile, my gallbladder, recut up the bile duct. Then what happened was the wound site was infected, and I was in and out of hospital 4 or 5 times. I wasn't recovering as expected. And then I was diagnosed with Addison's disease. So Addison's disease is my body doesn't produce cortisol. Cortisol is your body's stress-producing hormone. In the event of a major kind of Illness, your cortisol levels increase, mind blown. I describe it as, imagine a Qantas jet departing Sydney, flying all the way to New York, only having enough fuel to make it to Brisbane. It's not going to get all the way. So Addison's disease is like that Qantas jet with only enough fuel to make it to Brisbane. And I take replacement hydrocortisone every day for life, what my body doesn't produce.

Your body doesn't produce the cortisol, so now you're on medication for life for that. Is that right?

Yeah.

And there's, there's no reversing that condition at all?

No, for me it was an autoimmune condition, and there are stats like 1 in every 20,000, 1 in every 100,000. It's a rare condition that there is treatment for with the replacement steroids, but it's not one of those conditions where Millions of dollars are spent on research trying to cure. So it's one of those, like with many autoimmune conditions, they're relatively rare, but there are specialists and there's treatment for you to have a normal life with bumps in the road from time to time.

So you would have been autoimmune, so you would have had symptoms or undiagnosed for quite a while before it got Yeah, classic symptoms—

darkening skin. I used to feel quite lightheaded and dizzy standing up. I've always loved salt, so like salt cravings. I had pigmentation on my skin, so I had all the classic symptoms. And I think because of what I've been going through, it was easily masked because I was getting the fluids when I was in hospital. They were probably giving me steroids to help me go through those periods when I was in ICU and having the surgery. So it was kind of hidden in plain sight, but very easily masked.

Oh, so you actually had Addison's disease for all this time, but it was only discovered once you had these other complications.

Yeah.

And it has had obviously a huge effect on your life. But what I love about your story is you didn't stop there. You didn't say, oh well, now I've just got Addison's disease and I have to live with it. Apparently you've got a great relationship with your medical team.

Yeah.

And that is great. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I think that's what people need to hear, that they can have a great relationship with their medical team or their alternative care people and actually advocate for themselves and understand that they do know their body the best.

So when I said acceptance, that acronym, Sarah, acceptance, that's the first thing I did. And it was early days of the internet, 2006. We didn't yet have the internet on our phones, very basic on our phone. So consultant came to meet me and there was a leaflet explaining everything about Addison's disease, which I read inside out. I learned JFK had Addison's disease. It's often a presidential disease, but I instantly built a rapport with my consultant.

Hmm.

And I'd see him every 3 months. Encouraged me to be back at the gym, just doing daily things. He said that you'd have to make adaptations. Didn't mean stopping enjoyment of life. So that's, that's how that, that friendship and that relationship worked. And over the years I've had all the major surgeries and my consultant has always been advising the surgeons and what's been going on, or I'd be in hospital, he would come in if If I was in emergency and I would say to the team, look, I think I need to be admitted, my consultant would know Martin's sick enough that he feels he needs to come in. So there's a real understanding of my body, my condition, but there's also the relationship that I have with the medical team, with my understanding. And this comes into play, for example, I've been admitted and I feel I can go home the next day. as long as my blood pressure is back in the normal range, my blood results are okay, they'll know that Martin can go home maybe a day early. So there's that real trust in there. And the other thing I've done is I've donated my time. I volunteer with the local health district. I've been a member of 2 different committees. I've also helped with doctors' training. I've been the test patient for their practice exams, for both emergency doctors and endocrinologists. So I've wanted to give back to the medical system and help train the next generation of doctors. And you know, you're getting older when somebody who was a junior doctor when I was first diagnosed, you know, is now a senior consultant on the ward. So you, you notice your relationship with doctors is not just that first stage. It's, it's people who treat you as a consultant when they were a junior doctor when you were first diagnosed.

That's hilarious. But it is, and I find that that actually obviously speaks to your mindset, Martin, that you've gone full into this and taken a really positive stance from it. You're not actually sitting back feeling, you know, you know, sorry for yourself or overwhelmed. You know, you, you've gone out there, you've done your best, you've, you know— And I don't think many people realize you can have a consultant who, in a hospital, a consultant who works with you and you ever— and understands that you're advocating for yourself and understands your needs. Tell us, how important was having this positive mindset in your recovery and to get you to where you are now? Because I do believe also— I'm just jumping ahead a little bit here— that you did, you know, you did have PTSD from this, you know, traumatic medical episode that you've had. Which for— which kind of created— back in 2020, you created the World Gay Boxing Championships to help disrupt homophobia in the sport. And you started doing this boxing to deal with the PTSD. So you're obviously very active in your recovery.

Trauma from being in ICU and the dreams I had in my comas, that has been a cause of PTSD. So being diagnosed with Addison's disease, I didn't have the mental space for more I didn't have the mental space for being a victim, all these different things. I just had space for getting on with it.

Mm.

I've battled with depression most of my adult life, severe depression. I'm kind of still coming out of that bout that started 3 or 4 years ago. So I didn't have space for more being a victim, for more, this is happening to me. That was tough enough. Now, at the end of 2017, I almost died from Addison's disease. I'd gone to work, normal day, started to feel a bit unwell, took some more hydrocortisone as a precaution, came home, collapsed on the floor, called triple O, gave myself an emergency intramuscular injection of hydrocortisone. First paramedic arrived, gave me IV fluids. Second paramedic arrived, Straight to Royal North Shore, triage nurse, straight into the resus section, pulse below 40, doctors working hard to try and stabilize me. That experience brought back the experience of being in ICU. What was next? If I don't stabilize, back in the comas. So that brought back the memories.

Hmm.

And to then help combat the PTSD, had a few self-defense classes, discovered boxing, which I fell in love with. Then wanted to compete in boxing at gay games. Wasn't offered at that particular gay game, so I created a not-for-profit to disrupt homophobia in boxing. Created something called the World Gay Boxing Championships. I've been interviewed by CNN, SBS, ABC News. I've thrown the first pitch for the Chicago Cubs at their Pride game in Chicago. All of these things the world gave while having Addison's disease, like the PTSD. was there from the ICUs, from the— so I had to grapple with all of this. I didn't have space for more trauma. Often we hear people talking about trauma, trauma on social media. I personally have sympathy, but I, I don't want that trauma imprinted on me. I have enough to deal with. So the acceptance is the crucial part of the courage, which I define as taking ownership of fear, venturing forward with confidence and resilience.

I just love that attitude, Martin, that you don't have the space or the headspace for more trauma. I think that's what people don't understand. You can actually make a decision. You're not necessarily— you, you accept that you have a condition. You've accepted that you've got Addison's disease, but how that expresses in your life, how that affects your life or how you let it rule your life is a decision that you're making by not allowing more trauma in your life. By starting the gay boxing championships, by being active, it's a completely different take from— and I'm not trying to dismiss anybody's experience— but from saying, I've got this condition now, you know, my life's over.

I think I get a lot of this from my nan, you know, my paternal grandmother. She was a typical northern British woman, very strong, born in 1909. If you ever watched Downton Abbey, you know, Mrs. Patmore.

I love Downton Abbey.

Well, her, her assistant, is it Daisy? My nan was a pastry chef in a big posh house, but she's got that Mrs. Patmore attitude.

You don't want to mess with her.

But I get a lot of it from her. She was a very early influence in my life, and I just tend to get on with things. Other things that I, I've been through, you know, victim of sex crime, all we've had to deal with, and I just don't have the headspace for it. You could probably tell in the sound and the tone of my voice. I almost died twice before Christmas. I was in hospital with Addison's disease, and my blood pressure dropped below 80 twice. Now there's a point for your blood pressure where your organs will start shutting down, and the nurses were amazing, and the medical team were amazing because the nurses, they called the ICU rapid response team down. It's not the crash team, cardiac arrest, but the rapid response team is that early intervention before somebody is heading that way. And I had to deal with that. And the second time it happened, I was given a magnesium and potassium drip And I don't like to swear, but it was bleeping painful. If you can imagine a scorpion stinging your hand for an hour, that's how it felt. And I was supposed to have 4 of those, but thankfully the consultant said no, one was enough. But I'll take the pain every single time. Because what's pain over what, going into ICU or that blood pressure dropping again? And I think, do you want— do you want to experience the pain? Because pain's comfortable. Pain is you've been in that victim state where you don't have to move. Even though it's tougher for you, it's, it's the easier place to be than actually having the guts to pursue it. And I find people who have a condition, who go through health issues, have got this immense innate courage within them. But often it's the patient is more courageous than those around who, they're being supportive.

Where did, when you were in that state though, And I know you, you referenced your grandmother being a strong English woman. A lot of people go— a lot of people think, I just don't know where to find it, you know. It's almost like they're moving their hands around their body going, I just don't know where to find that ability to have that more positive mindset or that courage to get up or even to just take a walk outside. Where did you kind of feel it? Did you feel it in your body somewhere? Like, it must have Risen up.

So when you go through enough, like when you've faced your worst fear of a tracheotomy, you've felt the pressure on the neck, there's only so much you kind of go through. There's a lot of resilience just built up. COVID, all the resilience that we had that we didn't know that we had.

Yes.

And I, I talk about this strategy called the courage bank, which all of those memories, times you've been courageous, that you tap into. You learn to ride the bike, Training wheels are taken off, you fall off your bike 3 times, 2 weeks later you're going on a bike ride with your mates, right? What's the difference between you taking the training wheels off, 2 weeks later you're on a bike ride? You know, there's just that experience that you've had. If you can tap into that experience, that's where I, I feel that most people's courage is found. You're choosing courage over fear.

Yeah.

You can still be scared, and I think And it's to do with medical things and scared of dying, all those things. It's owning that makes it a lot easier to deal with what comes next.

But you also might have this unique perspective on courage, and I believe you break it down into 6 fundamental pillars. You know, you have what I've read here: you have emotional, physical, moral, empathetic, and steadfast, and cerebral.

Cerebral. Yeah.

Yeah. Can you tell us about those and how you came to think of and name these 6 pillars?

Well, see, it is kind of like 2 of the heart, 2 of the body, 2 of the mind. So 2 of the mind, emotional courage, tapping into those emotions, the unknown, empathetic courage, setting aside bias, you know, deeply listening. Knowing yourself, knowing others. Then let's go of the heart, moral courage. It's taking a firm stand for what we believe in. People say about speaking up in the office, but standing behind your product, standing behind your belief. And cerebral courage, which is that disruptive thinking, innovation, that passion, that creativity. Then 2 of the body, so physical courage, which is acting bravely when facing fear or pain. And steadfast courage, which is being resolute, focused, and purposeful. See, I just, from what I've observed, life experiences, leading global change in sport, 20-year-plus corporate career, I kind of broke these down and they're in my book, Courage: Your Right Book. And I talk about unlocking those 6 pillars. People tend to think of courage as, as moral courage and physical courage. But that's only like one-third of, of the full range of courage.

Would you say courage is around a positive mindset, or is it another area?

So I talk about making courage a habit, and there are 5 steps which I'll explain later. But I see it as a practice, as a choice. Humans are hardwired for fear. We're mammals, we're looking around what's going on, or the condition that we have. And speaking up isn't something that's encouraged. Being disruptive is not encouraged from school, be quiet, James, you know, all of these things. So all those things within us, that spirit that we have as a child. So it's there within us. Now, when I say taking ownership of fear, it's how I work with people, like understand what their fears are, start with a courage survey. And then tapping into the ownership, when have you been courageous? And then that starts to build the confidence and resilience and then working through looking at things slightly differently. One of my clients a few months ago, he thought moral courage was his weakest. It's actually his biggest strength, running a big IT department and having the moral courage to deal with major IT issues while still placating the consumer division and the team. I said, what's this about serving the customer, fixing problems? So helping people through their own journey. Now, the 5 steps of making courage a habit. I'm going to use the analogy of you're standing at the edge of a 10-meter diving board. You know, the Olympics of divers, 10 meters down. The first is starting from a place of courage, having the courage to climb the ladder. The second is leaning into fear. Why are you scared that you look down from the 10-meter platform, you look down, do you see, oh my God, that's a long drop? Or do you see the excitement and the energy of jumping and what you see in the Olympics?

Mm-hmm.

Now, the third is committing to your values, you know, doing the right thing. So the Olympic divers, they jump time after time, they commit to their values, and there's the point value that they get on the score. Now, the fourth step Is making courage the norm. And this is accepting where people are. So you might encourage one of your friends, do this with me, we're going to jump together, we're going to have fun with this. And the 5th is just simply being consistent, or, you know, just, just getting on with it. It's much easier to be courageous when you just start doing it at your own pace rather than what others say you can or you can't do.

Sometimes when we need to tap into our— when we're unwell, it's good to question what are our values. When you're unwell, it can be all-consuming. What I love about what you just said is most people could interpret that as, oh yeah, well, that's what they do for team building or whatever in corporate. But flip it, flip that, and see how you can do that for your own health or for the condition that you are dealing with. You know, look at the emotional aspect of it. Look at the fear of it. Why am I fearing this so much? You know, like challenge yourself. I think it's incredible if people could start learning to, to embrace that for their own health, they would have a, a completely different outcome. Well, definitely, uh, not such a, a heavy, maybe negative mindset around what they're experiencing. And I believe you also empower people, you know, around— you have this PACE framework, which is something else. Now tell us about PACE, and does that— how does that fit in with these 6 pillars that you just talked about?

I talk about courage at your own pace, and what I mean by that is I believe we're courageous. That is those daily things, listening to this podcast, watching that podcast rather than what's on Netflix is an act of courage. Going to work when it's raining, you know, running for the bus, all of those little steps are of courage. Not your own pace, because somebody like me, I might want to go and jump off that board. Others might be, I want to watch you first, and that's absolutely fine. But P stands for Purpose. What is your purpose? You know, that inner fire. Next step is action. You know, taking those steps. You know, these are the steps of courage. And that builds confidence. You know, that's your actions create the confidence. You're refining things along the way. You're experimenting. And the final step is excellence. Now, this is about keeping perfectionism at bay. This is a good standard. This is about your resist, so your grit, determination, resilience. So literally it's like start, what is your purpose? Because your purpose then can lead to your actions. And once you start doing things over a period of time, you become confident. When you become confident, you grow and you have this standard which I call as excellence because it's this, you can keep achieving, you can go even higher, but you're maintaining a good standard. That's why I go for excellence. Because it's, it's just a standard that you're comfortable with, and you can still achieve better things.

Like yourself, you had such a health scare. You've got Addison's disease, but out of that, you've also found this purpose. You found this purpose, you know, talking about the, the gay boxing, having, you know, removing homophobia from boxing. You are now an established speaker. You've written your book. It hasn't stopped you. You found your purpose. You found what is it that I can actually help people with from my experience. And what I love is you've actually taken the action. It's something I've had to learn. You know, I've had years and years of knowledge. I've had, you know, years and years of telling people, other people, you know, about health and everything else. And then one day I woke up and I said, oh, I see I'm not achieving everything I want, or I'm not even achieving some of the basic things I want. It's because I'm not doing the action. Without the action, it's not going to happen.

It's, it's crucial. You think what we had to do during COVID how we had to support each other, you know, going for a walk in the park was so vital for going for a walk in the park. more than anything else because it kept your mind active. It was that, that vital connection. I don't want to get it. I've had it. It was painful. It was tough. And I don't want to have to be challenged with COVID and Addison's disease and everything else. So I always make sure I get the vaccines and I'm up to date and booster done. The other people have a different view and I, I respect that, but for me, the choice is As soon as I'm able to get it, I'm going to get it. And I've only had COVID once.

The excellence— keeping yourself to a standard. I think keeping yourself— and it's keeping— would you agree that it's like keeping yourself to your standard?

I agree, yeah.

Not trying to compare yourself to someone else's. Like, you may have known someone else with the exact same condition as yourself, and it's not comparing yourself to what they can do And you can't. It's keeping yourself to your own high standard of what you're able to do at that point in time.

It helps keep imposter syndrome away. I'm gonna say this might sound conceited— it protects you from average. And what I mean by that, from the corporate world, there's often performance reviews and leveling and lots of game playing. And when you're achieving, you know, achieving your excellence We're in this world where people want to undermine what you do, that tall poppy syndrome that we have in Australia. It does protect you from that, that behavior of not fulfilling what you want to fulfill, limiting because of what others may say, or limiting because of fearing what others may think or say. And it keeps you away from that average.

And you can see how that can relate to, you know, like We're discussing about a health condition here. I mean, you've got many, um, talks. I know you talk to corporate, um, companies and all sorts of people. But in this particular case, what we're talking about today is you can hear how just being average in your health may not see you or get you to where you want to be. And having that courage to step up and actually do something more for your health. Like, push yourself that extra 10 minutes of a walk. It doesn't have to be anything major. Even in a walk, just going that little bit extra. Continue to strive for better health even when you have a condition. I, I say that carefully, especially for people with chronic pain.

I mean, you mentioned chronic pain. Last week I had a procedure, so When my wound site was reopened, that caused nerve ending damage, and that was causing chronic pain that was impacting the quality of my life. I was in and out of hospital with chronic pain. Every year I have a procedure where they pulse radio frequency through my abdomen and it switches the pain off. So again, but also learning how to manage pain and own the pain. And work with different pain management techniques, improve the quality of life. There was still a choice there. Another thing you can do is nutrition. And basically you can turn into your parents as you enter a supermarket. You know, as parents, you're not supposed to go to, oh, where you have all the sweets, the lollies, the crisps. More time in the fruit and veg section. What you buy, you don't have to buy the unhealthy stuff. You can buy healthy food. Because nutrition is such a key part of optimizing your health. You know, you going for a marathon, running a marathon, is it going to undo eating 4 pizzas? You know, it was, but eating healthy food will help you run that marathon better. So I think there's a key point there. of nutrition. And yes, the junk food that we've had in our diets, all the sugar that's been added over decades. I think just getting back to basics and maybe how our grandparents ate, even like 100 years ago, some of those things we can get back to. I think if it's affordable within your budget, that would be a great boost for your health.

It's a choice of the mindset that we cultivate. And that's, I think, what your program all the way through, you know, Cultivating courage, you know, all your 6 pillars, you know, the emotional, physical, the moral, empathetic, steadfast, cerebral. They're all— that is just like closing the loop. And we have a choice whether we move forward in a positive way and we make better choices for ourselves. Like you were saying, don't eat junk food, eat good healthy food. You do boxing. Because that helps it. Obviously you didn't want to have PTSD, you didn't have the bandwidth to entertain that as well. So you, you did boxing, you know, um, so you take up the physical. You're not just sitting around doing, you know, feeling sorry for yourself. So you obviously made a choice to have a positive mindset around what you're experiencing.

A year ago during the Olympics Poor Imani Khalif being bullied by J.K. Rowling, Jake Paul, Piers Morgan. I mean, whatever you're— there's so much that we didn't know, and it's none of our business really, the poor woman. Yes. And then she's been pilloried, bullied in the media by people jumping to conclusions. So I spoke out. I condemned J.K. Rowling and I condemned Jake Paul, who have this huge influence, this huge following. for jumping to conclusions, making somebody's life a misery, or adding to the pileup. That was me putting my neck out on the line, but that was my moral courage. I'm not saying you need to be doing these things, but what are the things that you can do differently tomorrow that you're doing today? What can you do differently next week that you're doing last week? Next month, last month? Next year, last year? Those are the incremental things that make you live a more courageous life. And have courage in your thinking rather than fear-based thinking.

What can, what can you leave our listeners with that can move the needle for them today? With, they may be thinking, look, this is great, but I just can't find it in me. I just don't know where to find it in me.

I'm going to come back to my definition of courage, which is taking ownership of fear, moving forward with confidence and resilience. What have you been scared of in the past that you're no longer scared of? And what are you now doing because you're no longer scared of that? Then what is this scaring you? How can you own that and then start doing things differently?

It just takes the first step, doesn't it, Martin?

Yeah.

Without taking that first step, it's never going to change.

No.

And if you keep doing it the same way, it's never going to change.

Never going to change.

So it's, yeah, it's just simple. It could be something as simple as, I, you know, I have this condition, I keep— I'm very tired during the day, etc. I never feel like exercising or even going just for a simple walk. So maybe it's the first step not to actually feel that they have to be, like you said, running a marathon or something like that.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, just get outside, just like move, walk to the, to the nearest park or Walk to the shop or walk to go get yourself a cup of coffee if that's what you want instead of driving. If everybody has appreciated Martin's advice, which I do think is amazing, you can find everything in his new book called Courage Your Right Hook. And you have everything we've talked about today in that book, don't you, Martin?

Oh, I've— that and every more. And each pillar is actually with a chapter of my book story that you've heard today. So there's real life and real world experiences to go on with the learning of that particular pillar of courage.

Fantastic. And all of Martin's details will be in the show notes, including the link to be able to purchase his book. And I really do encourage people to buy his book because there's nothing better than hearing it from someone with a lived experience. You're, you're an inspiration. Thank you.

No, thank you so much.

Thank you.