Our Origin
Life Source was not created in a boardroom. It was created out of desperation, by someone who had tried everything and found nothing that worked. This is that story.
Stellenbosch. The life on the other side.
My father spent my entire childhood in the supplement industry. His company, Radiant Technologies, was responsible for bringing Wheat Grass, Barley Grass, Cat's Claw, Green Lipped Mussel, Sutherlandia and dozens of other natural supplements to the South African commercial market for the first time. He was a pioneer in that space long before it was fashionable.
My grandfather was a deeply beloved GP. And conventional medicine and natural medicine had a battle at our dinner table most nights. Different schools of thought, different philosophies, passionate disagreement. I grew up surrounded by that debate, understanding both sides, respecting both sides.
I believed from childhood that what you put into your body matters. That nature has answers conventional medicine sometimes overlooks. That the right combination of the right things can change how a person feels entirely.
I just never imagined I would one day need to find that out for myself.
And yet, looking back, the signs were already there.
From my teenage years, I knew I was not like my friends. My period was never regular. I had persistent acne and a slightly receding hairline with the masculine V-shaped pattern at my temples. I did not know what it meant then. I just knew something was quietly off.
This was the 1990s. Hormonal conditions in young women were not a conversation anyone was having. PCOS had technically been identified since 1935, but the general understanding, even in medical circles, was that teenage girls were simply hormonal. That fluctuations were normal. That we just needed to ride it out and we would grow out of it. Nobody was looking for a pattern. Nobody connected the dots. And so neither did I.
Through my young adult life I battled ongoing acne and fatigue. But it was manageable. I was living. I was working. I kept moving.
Teenage Lalla. Happy on the outside. Already something was quietly different on the inside.
Then, in a period of significant personal loss, everything changed at once.
After my grandmother passed and several other major life changes arrived at once, my body fell apart in ways I could not explain. The symptoms came fast and hard.
With my mother and my grandmother Hazel, at Sun City. I did not know then how much her loss would change everything.
PCOS can flare. Stress, grief, environmental changes, medication: all of it can trigger a sudden and severe worsening of symptoms in a body that was previously managing. It can also go into remission. This is not spoken about enough. What I was experiencing had a name: a PCOS flare. I just did not know it yet.
During this flare, I lost my period completely. The stress and hormonal disruption had shut it down entirely. My body had essentially gone into crisis. The pill eventually brought it back, but not naturally. It was a synthetic override, and it came with consequences. The weight gain I experienced on Glucophage was compounded by the pill, and those extra kilograms arrived within weeks.
I went to dermatologists. Dieticians. Nutritionists. A gynaecologist. Nobody could tell me what was happening. Every single one of them had the same answer: go on the pill. That was it. That was the extent of the solution being offered to me.
An endocrinologist ran my bloods and diagnosed me with PCOS. I was also pre-diabetic. She was clinical and cold, and she delivered the news in a way that left me in tears in the parking lot.
"This is now your life. You need to completely change your diet or you will become diabetic. Cancer, heart disease and diabetes will be a serious risk for you if you do not stop eating sugar and carbs."
I left that appointment scared. I had been hungry all day and had tried to keep it at bay with a dozen rice cakes that did nothing. Now she was telling me I could not eat the very things my body was craving: rice, potatoes, bread, anything sweet. Without them I felt nauseous. With them, apparently, I was heading toward a lifetime of illness. I walked out not knowing how to feed myself, let alone how to live.
She immediately put me on the pill and Glucophage. Within weeks I had gained 10 kilograms. I was nauseous every morning. Some days I could not walk up the stairs to my bedroom. The fatigue was so severe that it affected my work. I took it for three months before I realised I simply could not continue.
I found an integrative medical doctor who tried me on I3C and DIM. Nothing changed. I stayed bloated, exhausted, craving sugar and carbs, gaining weight, and feeling profoundly anxious.
I tried the handful of products available on the market in South Africa. Some contained artificial colouring. Some had aspartame or sweeteners with questionable long-term effects. Some had an aftertaste I could not tolerate. And the ones I could stomach did absolutely nothing. They did not touch the symptoms at all.
After watching me struggle for years, my father suggested I reach out to his brother. My uncle, Dr. Russell Cooper, is a physician based abroad. I had not thought to call him. He was family, not my doctor. But I am so glad I did.
Dr. Russell Cooper and I. The man who changed everything.
His protocol worked. But it came with a significant challenge: many of the ingredients were not available in South Africa at the time. For two years I was hosting Lalla Land on MNet Movies, a DStv travel and entertainment show that took me overseas every month. Red carpets, press junkets, movie premieres. I used every trip to source the ingredients my body needed. Between interviews I was tracking down supplements. Between red carpets I was quietly unwell. Nobody knew.
Lalla Land, Silwerskerm Festival
90th Academy Awards, Hollywood
The Rock and Kevin Hart, Central Intelligence junket, New York
Matt Damon, The Great Wall junket. My birthday. We were both sick.
Cara Delevingne, Suicide Squad junket
Eddie Redmayne, Fantastic Beasts junket
Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, Neighbors 2 junket
Woody Harrelson, Now You See Me junket
Lalla Land on MNet Movies, DStv. Two years of red carpets, press junkets and movie premieres across the world. Between every interview, quietly sourcing the ingredients that were keeping her well.
Following the protocol that finally worked cost me close to ten thousand rand every single month. I could only access it because I was travelling internationally for work. Most women never could. That had to change.
But when I started seeing the results, I knew with absolute clarity what I had to do. I had to get other women access to this.
Life Source is not a product created in a lab by people who have never experienced PCOS. It is not a business built to fill a market gap. It was created by someone who was absolutely distraught by this condition, who had tried everything available and found nothing, and who finally found a solution she could not in good conscience keep to herself.
Every capsule in every Life Source product is there because it was part of the protocol that gave me my life back. Dr. Cooper's clinical expertise ensures that every ingredient is correctly dosed, correctly combined, and clinically justified. Nothing is in here for marketing. Everything is in here because it works.
Stellenbosch. The other side.
If you are reading this and you recognise yourself in what I have described: the unexplained symptoms, the doctors who offered no real answers, the products that did nothing, the quiet desperation of not knowing what is wrong with your own body. If that is you, then this was made for you.
Exactly you.
You deserve answers
Every woman's PCOS has a different root. Take the 3-minute quiz and we will identify yours. Then you will know exactly what your body needs.
Stellenbosch. At peace with the animals I love.