FORCED to give up professional snooker due to debilitating health problems over a decade ago, British Cypriot entrepreneur Cary Kikis is now not only in perfect health, but also the managing director of one of the leading distributors of natural health products in the UK.
Speaking to the Sunday Mail from his home in Norwich, the 33-year-old described how he overcame ME [myalgic encephalomyelitis], also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, and Kiki Limited was born.
“I was playing snooker since I was 13 and at 17 I turned professional,” he said.
However, his dreams of becoming a world class champion were abruptly cut short, when he was struck down with glandular fever at 19, which then progressed to ME, a debilitating condition with symptoms of extreme fatigue, muscle pain and mental fogginess.
At 20, Kikis was forced to give up the professional circuit and for the next three years he visited doctors, professors and specialists all over the country.
“They didn’t know what to do or how to help.”
He said ME had left him feeling like “death warmed up” and that he had had no energy, and suffered from muscle and joint pain, depression and digestive problems.
That was when he started reading up on natural health. Over the next couple of years, as he learned more and more about the benefits of healthy eating, Kikis radically changed his diet and also discovered two products: Nature’s Living Superfood and a soil based probiotic product called Nature’s Biotics.
“Within three months of taking them I saw improvements and in six months I was cured completely [of ME],” he said.
Kikis said although he tried to go back to professional snooker, he had been out of the game too long and so instead turned to his new passion: health, and enrolled at the College of Naturopathic Medicine in London to do a course in naturopathy.
“While I was on the course I started talking to the Americans about importing the two products, which I started selling to the practitioners on the course,” he said.
The 33-year-old said his teachers soon saw the benefits of the products, as did his relatives to whom he’d started giving them to as well, which included among others increased energy levels, improved digestion, and huge relief from arthritic pain.
As the import business kicked off, Kikis decided to set up Kiki Ltd. The company suddenly took on a life of its own and grew very rapidly through word of mouth.
“I never had time to complete the course and worked at the business full time as the MD,” he said.
In the last seven years the company has expanded from importing just two products to importing over 50 from five different suppliers in the US and Europe and can be found in most health food shops in the UK, with over 1,000 health practitioners recommending them. Despite the growth, Nature’s Biotics and Nature’s Living Superfoods are still the company’s bestsellers, he said.
Kikis said all Kiki products were either organic or wild crafted and grown without the use of pesticides or fertilisers.
He said: “The products we have are very high quality and generally superfoods, not vitamin pills. They are all made from whole food, not synthetically made in a laboratory.
They’re like grasses and greens, seaweeds and algaes and probiotics all put together.”
The 33-year-old said the products were recommended for children as young as two years old as they were made from “food” and were “very safe”.
“If you take a dose per day it gives you, nutritionally, all the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and amino aids you need,” he said.
However, that’s not to say you can go without food, because you still “need the calories”.
Some of the products come in capsule form and others are a powder that can be mixed into water or juice.
Kikis said although he “very much” misses playing professional snooker, “I enjoy it [his new job] because I help people and get hundreds of testimonials from customers with all sorts of illnesses that have improved”.
He said he personally took his products every day for maintenance and to increase his general energy levels, because he felt better when he did. He also said food nowadays was lacking in nutrition due to added chemicals not to mention the long shelf life of fruit and vegetables; so by taking the products he was “safeguarding that my body is receiving everything I need”.
And although he might try to forget what having ME was like, he can’t deny that his success is undeniable testimony of those difficult years in his early twenties. As he said:
“ME basically helped me to get to where I am now.”
Kiki products can be ordered online at www.kiki-health.com or directly by telephone and
shipped to Cyprus. The company is also currently talking to a local company about distributing the range in Cyprus.
What is ME?
“Myalgic encephalomyelitis [ME], also known as chronic fatigue syndrome [CFS], post-viral fatigue syndrome [PVFS], and various other names, is a syndrome (or group of syndromes) of unknown and possibly multiple etiologies, affecting the central nervous system, immune, and many other systems and organs.
“There is no simple diagnostic test; CFS is a diagnosis of exclusion, although recent research indicates biological hallmarks of the syndrome, and a diagnostic test is predicted soon. Most definitions (other than the 1991 UK Oxford criteria) require a number of features, the most common being severe mental and physical exhaustion or depletion which is ‘unrelieved by rest” (according to the 1994 Fukuda definition), and is often worsened by even trivial exertion (controversially, the Oxford and Fukuda criteria require this to be optional only).
“CFS occurs more often, but not exclusively, in women, possibly due to immunological factors (women are overall more susceptible to similar disorders). CFS is most easily diagnosed when formerly active adults become ill, but it has been reported in persons of all ages, including young children and particularly teenagers.
“Patients with this diagnosis commonly report many other symptoms which are far more onerous than these research diagnostic criteria; including pain, muscle weakness, loss of brain function, hypersensitivity, orthostatic intolerance, digestive disturbances, depression, immune system weakness, and cardiac and respiratory problems.
“These symptoms, like the syndrome’s hallmark ‘fatigue’, range from mild to life-threateningly severe. Some cases resolve or improve over time, and where available, treatments bring a degree of improvement to many others. Most diagnostic criteria insist that these symptoms must be present for at least six months, and all insist on there being no other cause for the fatigue: i.e. the fatigue must be idiopathic, not caused by conditions such as radiation treatment for cancer, or diabetes.
“CFS remains a controversial diagnosis, and even its terminology and classification are controversial.”
Definition taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia
