By ROBERT GIBSON

Last updated 15:42, Thursday, 07 August 2008

FOR more than a decade, Sandy Burlison (pictured right) was housebound with severe arthritis, relying on a wheelchair to get out and about and requiring round-the-clock assistance.

But thanks to a special diet and exercise plan, her condition has improved so much she’s been able to start up her own business, taking on the role of a personal trainer.

Years of sedentary living had meant she had gained a lot of weight, but “without counting a calorie” she managed to shift seven and a half stones.

Through Precipice Training, she now offers her services as a trainer, a sport massage therapist, a TRX instructor, a Nordic walking instructor and a life coach.

“It’s great fun,” said the 47-year-old, who lives at Cockshaw Dene. “Everything in life can be fun.

“I just everyone to feel how I felt when the pain decreased and the weight dropped off.”

Sandy had been serving in the Women’s Royal Naval Services when she injured her left leg.

Unable to run, she found the pain increased while her flexibility decreased. Finally, in 1995 osteoarthritis set in.

“It was really bad,” she recalled. “I was housebound for 11 and a half years, and it was really, really painful.

“I had to get out and about in a wheelchair. It took me a couple of hours to walk across the room and then I’d have to sit down.”

She was prescribed painkillers for the condition and had several operations, but as things continued to get worse, she took matters into her own hands.

“My husband was having to cut up my food and I thought: I really, really have to find a way out,” she said.

“I did research on the internet and through books and magazines, collecting everything I could get my hands on about food and what it does. I came up with something and it works. I eat a lot of oily fish, chicken, and nuts and seeds, which help build up the immune system. It’s really just healthy eating.”

In August 2005, she took the first tentative steps to improving her flexibility. It took her four months of determined effort to move her head from side to side. It wasn’t until the start of last year that she was able to abandon the wheelchair for crutches, which she no longer needed after several months. After progressing as far as she could on her own, she hired a personal trainer, and soon went on to take a gym instructor course herself.

Courses in TRX, sports massage, and Nordic walking followed, as did correspondence courses on nutrition and life coaching.

Looking back, Sandy says the transformation has been astonishing – even medically unheard of – but she’s more inclined to talk of positive mental attitude than ‘miracle cures’.

“I still have osteoarthritis, and I’m still restricted in some ways,” she said. “I know my limitations, but I don’t see it like that.

Sandy takes clients aged over 18 from Newcastle and throughout the Tyne Valley. training.co.uk or email infosandy@precipicetraining.co.uk