 Hey everyone, I am here with Holly, who's had some nice results after reading and going through the plan and healthy gut, healthy you, and I always love sharing these stories because everyone's a little bit different, has a different backstory and background, and I try to share these not only for hope, but so that people can kind of find connecting points. So you know, Holly, I really appreciate you taking a moment today to share your story. Thank you. I'm really glad to be here. So tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how you found your way to a healthy gut, healthy you, and what the road up before you kind of got plugged into that looked like. Well, honestly, I was always pretty healthy. I was athletic growing up. I don't eat garbage usually, you know, we have our occasions, but I noticed my health continually got worse and worse as I got close to 30, and you know, a lot of my friends jokingly said, it's because you're getting older. I had a remodeling company, so I had some physical injuries, like back and shoulder problems from lifting too much, lifting improperly, but other than that, I was pretty healthy. And then I just started kind of going downhill. On my 30th birthday, I felt pretty crappy, and I thought, well, maybe I was just really healthy younger, and now this is what happens, but I kind of started having depression and anxiety coming on as I went into my 30s, and it just kept getting worse and worse until I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was willing to accept that, but I didn't really feel like that was the right diagnosis. And so I actually, I went ahead and took the meds, and I did what the doctors told me to, but it never really sat right with me. And as I got older, you know, I was getting closer to 40, I started having seizures, and I ended up having a swollen throat, and my skin started breaking out, and my primary said it might be thyroid. It ended up being hyperthyroidism. And I think I was 34, 35 when I first got diagnosed, and of course, I treated that for a few years, and it seemed to get kind of better. And he said I'd only need to treat it maybe, you know, three years, and I could go off the medicine. So sorry, just for some context, you're still in the bipolar meds, but now you're going to be put on methamazole or some kind of, you know. It was methamazole. Okay. And after that, I started getting more achy and a lot more pains, and I did not want to take opioids, but my doctor did put me on naproxen. So to help with inflammation, mostly my back and a lot of my joints and muscles. So I'm on all these drugs now daily. And I don't, it's kind of stressful because I'm a remodeler and the market crashed. And so I was under a lot of pressure too, just for that reason, you know, the housing bubble kind of really hurt me. So I don't even think I was eating that good or sleeping that well because I was trying to work a lot more. So I mean, just add all that tsunami of stress. And next thing I know, I'm having seizures. All the, they started getting more and more frequent, grand mal seizures. And the doctors wouldn't, you know, they prescribed me a few things to try, but none of them really sat well with me. And they wouldn't really diagnose me as epileptic. And I kind of understand why now, but it seemed like a lot of times they just rather not do anything than try to explore what was happening. And they kept getting worse and worse until I fell in a parking lot during a seizure and fractured the back of my skull on a concrete barrier. Yeah. So that was September of 2015. And of course you wake up from your coma and you get home and it takes a while for your brain to heal, of course. And so I slept 20 hours a day. And when I kind of came out of all that foggy time, I started to realize that like I didn't, I couldn't taste or smell. It was winter, so I just kind of hunkered down. I lost my ability to handle extreme sunlight or UV light, which kept getting worse and worse. I couldn't really feel hunger and I didn't want to eat that, which was very weird. And I always kind of felt like sensations were missing. I always joked that like two thirds of my senses were gone and the sight and sound were way amplified. So it of course made me very irritable with a brain injury. So as I struggled to get better, I actually got my medical marijuana card. And that I used to help me with a lot of the brain problems and things. And we, I ended up joining a group to learn how to use it more effectively because I was not a cannabis user prior to that. And I found a group that kind of taught me a bunch of things about some other autoimmune conditions because the members are all on some kind of disability to have a card here in my state. And it was very odd how I started seeing thyroid and then digestive and Crohn's. And I also had a, I could not absorb a standard or even a super high dose of edibles and I started making me wonder. So a few friends of mine that are really well read in gut health and things, you know, we kind of tried to, I said, I'm going to figure out why some of us don't absorb edibles at any kind of dose at all. So I set out to do that, not thinking I had a stomach issue or a gut health problem and ended up uncovering so many things. And right about then I had a thyroid storm, saw my primary care provider and I asked him, if we had a, you know, what if I did like a gluten free diet and really tried to clean up and he said, well, if you can, it's really hard. I'm like, I would eat cardboard for the rest of my life if I didn't have to feel like this. And it kind of just felt put off by them because this, it ends up going gluten free and really started to help. And I really realized there was a big issue. And then I found her friend of mine said, you have to check this guy out. She sent me the link to your Amazon page. So instantly Kendall start reading. And the things that I really appreciated were there's so much misconstrued information or even blatant advertising and lies about your diet on the internet. I didn't know where to start. I knew I could do gluten free. I knew I could read labels. I didn't know anything else about how to even figure out. And I didn't feel like I had any help from my medical team. It just seemed like, oh, you don't need to worry about that. So that's where I am today. I feel sharper. The things that I thought were my brain injury, the, you know, the mental fog, the forgetting things, the not the kind of some of the anxiety when you're in unfamiliar situations. That was completely not related to my brain injury. That healed the way wild back. It was definitely diet related. And it scared me how much I improved. So the, the dietary changes obviously felt like they were huge and so many important things that are, I think, to touch on, you know, sadly, the, the connection between the gut and the brain hasn't really permeated that much into conventional medicine. And it's really just for those who have neurological symptoms, whether it be me, like having my brain fog that I had way back when or those things like depression, even bipolar. And this is going back. Gosh, maybe five years ago, we had published a video case study with someone who had bipolar and was able to come out of their medications after mainly improving their diet and using some gut supports, I believe probiotics in this case. But amazing how you wouldn't need or one would not need to go on a medication that also tends to have some pretty appreciable side effects and they could be completely devoid of their symptoms. And usually there's other side benefits, sleeping better, better skin. So, yeah. So, so tell us about what were the big dietary triggers for you? Well, I think everything had just become a total mess. I mentioned that I didn't feel a lot of hunger and eating, you know, early on when I was very confused coming out of the brain injury, I was losing a lot of weight because I just, I couldn't taste or smell. And I did, I wasn't awake very long in the day. And I think I lost like 60 pounds. And I started drinking like really sugary tea just to get calories because I hated eating. And I think the biggest changes maybe were to kind of give myself a reset. And I did that without your elemental heal. I tried to do it on my own. It took longer that way, but I figured it out. In paleo, changing to a paleo, going more natural. I try to balance, I don't worry about how many calories I consume, but I do worry about how much protein versus fat and carbs. And also probably low FODMAP was the big kicker in my elimination diet. And that's definitely what's helped my husband when he wanted to try it this year. We did a low FODMAP type of elimination diet. And his allergies are better. I mean, he's less depressed. He's kind of lost that middle-aged beer get punch that wasn't for beer. Yeah. So he did it at the beginning of this year because he saw what a difference doing it last year made for me. And once I got your book, I was not struggling. So I'm like, okay, gluten free and what supplements and what probiotics. But I think first starting out with just getting my gut rested, get the whole digestive system. I mean, it was a mess. I don't think I was even absorbing most of my meds because after my seizure that caused my skull fracture, they wanted to take me off the antidepressant and I didn't even go through withdrawal when I stopped taking it. So I really honestly don't think I was absorbing the meds. They were giving me. And now are you still on the methamysalm or what's the status with? I, it's actually really well under control. He started me out on, I think 50 milligrams. I'm down to 10 and I really want to step away from it. But at 42, both sides of my family, I go through early menopause. So I was kind of going to wait till that sorted itself out. But it has been, it's no longer an issue for me. And none of the symptoms, I'm pretty sure I could get off of it. But until I probably talk to him again for my checkup, I'm going to get a just hold, and that's literally in two months. Wow. So 50 to 10 and two months. Wow. No, two years, but in two months, my doctor's appointment. I would check with him, see my levels. That's pretty, pretty remarkable. Yeah. But, you know, you make a point that's interesting to kind of parallel with what we see in some of the research with hypothyroidism and those who have malabsorption and how improving one's gut health can actually reduce the medication dose needed and improve symptoms at the same time. The best data here looks that hypothyroid patients who also have an H. pylori infection, not to say H. pylori is the only thing where that people have to go crazy with testing for H. pylori if they have hypothyroid. But that's a well studied model that establishes the finding that if something's leading to malabsorption and then we treat that as in this litany of studies, one may actually see a reduction of the dose of their thyroid hormone medication and an improvement of their symptoms at the same time, which we want to win that. It's amazing that I could do most of this with how I ate and actually enjoy it. And I listen to your podcast now to you because, of course, I'm obsessed with figuring out every little thing I can. I mean, you really put it in perspective for me as to here's where you start. So it wasn't so overwhelming and scary because I really didn't feel like I had professionals to guide me through it, not without, like you say, extreme over testing. And, you know, they were doing a lot with my thyroid. Once they had me on the medication initially, they tested me every month. And I had to go in and see my endocrinologist every month for him to read me the paper. Like, dude, we cannot do this so much. I'm pretty stable here, you know, but it, it was so frustrating to find out later that I could have probably avoided a lot of this if I just got my gut and checked earlier. So maybe it's over lining here. Hopefully is that your story now will hopefully permeate the internet and help other people realize that you got to check it out. Yeah. Yeah. If you have a mood problem, even something that may seem as kind of nuanced as an esoteric soma is bipolar, that these same principles of the gut brain connection still apply. And so a few different things going on here that all could have partially been an outcropping of what's going on in the gut. Grave disease, not to say it was fully caused by the gut, but we know there's connection there and potentially malabsorption of your hyper thyroid medication got brain for bipolar. And it also sounds like your skin got better. And I'm not sure if there was problems with fatigue and sleep. You may have said that, but it sounds like pretty much all the symptoms now are better and your medications have been reduced. No, yes, yes. By far, I actually don't play it. I've been on a thyroid medicine longer either. I just want to work with my doctor to do this properly. And off of that, but it's been amazing. I don't ever need Tylenol anymore. All my inflammation, like all my joints were massively swollen. It constantly, my hair and nails wouldn't grow. I hadn't got my hair cut in three years. I hadn't had to cut my fingernails in a couple. So now everything's just keeps getting better, keeps healing. There's always some new thing that like, wow, it's I used to be able to do this when I was 25 and now I'm 42 and I can do it again. So I'm gradually knocking off all the things, but it's it's been amazing. Thank you so much for getting that out there. That's the exact reason why I wrote the book and spent the three years of diligent time at my desk writing that, which was, you know, not the funnest thing to do at some times. But I knew that it would really give people kind of a compendium of what to do to heal one's gut. And that's what I needed at the time was straight facts of this is the plan. Look at this, observe these things. And oh, it just I just really never looked anywhere else for any more info other than recipes to cook that night because it helped me get it prioritized. Great. Yeah. And I mean, it's really well said, which is, you know, there's all this information on the internet and how do you kind of prioritize and execute? And that's what seems to for most people. And unfortunately, kind of tying in one of these earlier, all this expensive testing is where a lot of people just jump to unbeknownst to them. A lot of that testing is not really scientifically validated, not very helpful. And a real travesty is a lot of the testing ends up directing someone back to the same algorithm of care. And many providers haven't seem to fully be together in the fact that irrespective of the testing, we end up doing mostly the same stuff anyway. You know, well, all the doctors, yeah, all the doctors that they had me see all the specialists. I never saw a dietitian or a gastroenterologist. I saw every other field, but they never sent me to where it might actually help me. Right. So I feel a lot better knowing that I'm in charge of it now and I took care of it and I can keep doing that. And did you have to do anything beyond diet? Was diet enough or were you in need of probiotics or enzymes? Or I did add probiotics and enzymes for a while. I thought I had a I pretty much read into it that I had a leaky gut issue from a lot of the medication just dripping. The neproxin is what I think caused it, because I probably took that solidly for almost 10 years. And it seemed as though when I kind of focused on getting that the leaky gut symptoms gone, doing a lot of the things you instructed, one of the weird things I did was I made my own enteric oregano capsules. And after that, it was kind of weird like that that week. It was kind of rough, but then it really straightened stuff out. So I'm not sure I was trying to get things into the small intestine, but I literally, you know, I pretty much use your info and a couple of the weird people in my health group gave me some enteric advice. So I made my own. But I think the leaky gut might have been the one that really changed things for me, because I think my body was constantly inflamed by things that were getting into my bloodstream. Right. Well, Holly, I mean, amazing story. Just great proof that your gut ties to so many things, your brain, your thyroid, your skin, your hair, your nails. So so thrilled that you found the book and kind of got off of that marigold again, not to disparage them, the medical system. You know, they're going to do some things really, really well. But in this case, you know, they may have been treating more of a symptomatic outgrowth of something happening in the gut. I'm glad you have those evaluations. I hope you continue to have the monitoring. But hopefully as you address this core issue, the need for conventional medical intervention will diminish as it already has. Hopefully we'll continue to and just, you know, thrilled that you're able to kind of take your health back and get in control of your life a little bit more. Well, thank you. Thank you for writing it. So. Yeah, pleasure. Any any parting words you want to leave people with? Um, don't give up right away. One of the things that I like that you say is, you know, don't get so caught up in everything has to be gluten free or I can only eat this. I still have fun. I still eat gluten right now and then it's enjoy your life. If you start feeling better, get out and enjoy it. Love it. That's a great message. And that it's a really important thing, I think, to reiterate for people, which is, OK, we may have to be a little bit diligent as we're trying to figure out the diet and acclimate. Sure. And there's that focus period. But then after that, don't think that your whole life has to be in that focus period. Relax the boundaries, enjoy your life, enjoy yourself. And we know that the hobbies, the enjoyment, the socialization are all so important. And I think it's a fantastic note to close on. So Holly, thank you again. Amazing story. So glad that you're feeling better. Thanks, Secretary. See you.