 Hi everyone, this is Dr. Ruscio. I'm here with Valerie who has had some good results using some of the principles that we discussed in Healthy Gut, Healthy You, and she was another person who was nice enough to share her story. So, Valerie, welcome and thank you for being so kind to share your story with us today. Oh, my pleasure. So, tell me a little bit about kind of the road that you were on before you found Healthy Gut, Healthy You. Of course, so two years ago I was diagnosed with SIBO by my naturopathic doctor and I tried to treat it but I wasn't getting anywhere. So, then a few months later I signed up for a program, an eight-month program with a functional medicine doctor and we tried a bunch of, we did a bunch of testing, we tried a bunch of supplements and I didn't get anywhere with that either. So, then I discovered Healthy Gut, Healthy You and I read it like three times and I implemented it and for the first time I felt like I was actually getting somewhere and it was really reassuring to kind of have, how do I go from point A to point B in the same spot. So, I already could see ahead and kind of plan where I wanted to go. So, yeah. Right. Well, that's great. I mean, it's always such a reassuring reminder to hear that people have seen naturopaths, seen functional medicine doctors and those providers are probably trying to do the best that they can but there is a lot of wisdom written into the protocol in Healthy Gut, Healthy You as someone who specializes chiefly in gut issues. I think it's sometimes hard for patients to wrap their head around the fact that a book written by a gut specialist might get you better results than a generalist even if you're working with them one-on-one and doing testing and having all this personalization because fortunately if you understand the way that the gut works there's kind of this map or this algorithm that you can work through like you mentioned and I've also found your other point that it is helpful for patients to understand the one thing that we're doing right now that's not the end all be all. That's one stepping stone and a number of different therapies that can kind of be woven together to get you 20% from the diet, 20% from the probiotics, 20% from the antimicrobials and when you have that bigger picture vision and the kind of that long game perspective I think it really helps people not get frustrated and say ah I did probiotics but I didn't I wasn't cured well you know they may not cure everyone they may not completely resolve everyone's symptoms but if you get a nice bump in your improvement and that's a step in the right direction then we re-evaluate and we take another step and it seems like that's kind of what you did with healthy good healthy you. Yeah absolutely and another thing I want to mention that I really like about the book and the program is that it teaches you how to deal with setbacks. So basically when I was first diagnosed my doctors told me that I would have to deal with this for the rest of my life and like they kind of put this negative image on it like I was stuck and there was nothing I could do for myself so right from the get-go I felt discouraged and I felt like kind of hopeless but the way that the science is presented in the book and the way that the the steps are laid out it really it teaches you what to do when setbacks happen and now when I have a setback instead of feeling like oh no I have SIBO again and I have to get tested and I you know I just try to revisit the therapies that worked for me before and it works and then it only takes a matter of days and I'm back to normal again and you you mentioned it so well in the book like sometimes you know it makes me realize okay I haven't been sleeping that well recently or I've been kind of falling off my diet you know so it really encouraged me to be mindful about everything that I'm doing. I mean that's such a fantastic point and and you know I just want to echo the fact that it is discouraging when you have a setback and if you don't understand that setbacks are kind of normal then what can happen if you don't understand that is people start to really kind of psych themselves out like you're saying oh my god SIBO is back I've got to get tested again and then sometimes people even say well screw it I'm not gonna keep eating healthy or keep using my probiotics or whatever and that kind of potentiates in the snowball whereas if you have a different frame of mind on this you realize we all have ups and downs you know I think everyone has these ups and downs it's just are your ups and downs down here where you're feeling terrible or the ups and downs up here where you're feeling pretty good most of the time and yeah you have a couple of days that aren't as good as others but you understand that those little setbacks occur and they're not abnormal so that's fantastic and it's really you know really pleasing for me to hear that because I do see first hand here in the clinic how patients struggle with the mental aspect of this so I'm so happy to hear that the book kind of helped pull you out of the lurks there of despairing thinking. That's awesome yeah it really taught me about the importance of having a good mindset because the minute that I realized that I can do something for myself was probably from that point on I started getting better and it's so empowering I mean well said so happy that you had that kind of realization from from a psychological perspective tell us about some of the symptoms that you were suffering with. So the most annoying symptom that I had was bloating I was really uncomfortable and I would be bloated all the time like even from the moment that I woke up in the morning until the end of the day and I just felt this heaviness in my stomach just standing up was like not fun at all so that was probably the the the biggest complaint and I also had constipation and some belching which were other unpleasant symptoms and then I had like the non digestive symptoms like joint pain and just brain fog and headaches and yeah I'm so happy they're all gone now. Yeah and it's so fortuitous that that the gut can drive all of those problems right you have the gut problem in and of itself and you have the gut joint and the gut brain with the joint pain and the brain fog and that's why it's it's so powerful the impact one can achieve when they improve their gut health. Now you said you had SIBO was this tested with the naturopath or with the functional medicine doctor do you have a formal SIBO breath test? I do yeah okay and the reason why I asked is because there there's this thinking that probiotics are bad for SIBO unfortunately that that rumor kind of circulates in some circles and there you know there may be a degree of truth to that whether it might be a very small subset but I think what ends up happening is one person said it another person said it now enough people have said it where that canard kind of has some ability to kind of self propagate itself and then patients think that and so they placebo themselves into expecting to have a negative reaction from probiotics while in actuality I would assume it's probably five percent or less of people but what was your experience with the probiotics what did you notice from using them? So they mean you feel a lot better from day one I tried the three categories and I'm still on them like currently so I take them every other day and sometimes I just do a full week on them. They were very helpful with the bloating even with anxiety and other non digestive symptoms. Sure and that's what the research tells us the research has shown clearly as I talk about how they get healthy you the probiotics can be quite helpful for IBS which could include bloating and constipation and for SIBO according to more than four clinical trials SMRS and one-minute analysis two-minute analysis showing the probiotics can improve mood so for anyone who might be in a similar boat as you where they have had a positive SIBO breath test and maybe the provider is telling them oh don't use probiotics it's not to say that you are guaranteed not to have any kind of negative reaction to probiotics but I would certainly say they are well worth a trial and I mean clearly in your case they were it sounds like they were pretty pivotal in that row of improvement that you're on. Absolutely. What else were there some other things low FODMAP, elemental diatomic robials that seem to stand out in terms of being able to help you? There's one thing that really took me like from here to here in terms of the foods that I could tolerate and that's the intestinal repair formula. It really allowed me to like enjoy off-plant foods from time to time even things like eggs and stuff and like it I was on it for some time and it really it really helped with my symptoms because I so the I followed the program and I was kind of stuck on that step removed so the part where we yeah and the elemental diet I felt better but I wasn't quite where I wanted to be and once I tried intestinal repair formula it was like night and day it was such a positive improvement that really brought me forward to where I am today. Awesome and that's definitely something I see with some patients where and again so for audience I should clarify one thing that we updated the name from intestinal repair formula to intestinal support formula it's the same exact compound just for regulatory reasons apparently we can't claim to be repairing anything only only a drug can do that so we had to change the name but one of the reasons why I do recommend using intestinal support formula at kind of an end-phase application is because that's when patients tend to respond to it the best and so you had to work through the majority of the steps and you had gone through diet and probiotics and also antimicrobials and elemental diet improving all along the way but then it seems that you were unable to successfully reintroduce foods and that could be because the immune system in your gut was still really quick to attack all the other work had likely very much so improved the state of the bacterium fungus but the bacterium fungus have to also be in harmony with the immune system and so this may have been why the reintroduction of food wasn't very successful was because the immune system was always just ready to ready to attack and so this is what the intestinal support formula does nicely is it binds to various irritants in the gut gives the immune system a chance to calm down and then the immune system tends to ramp itself up or calm itself down people tend to get stuck in these self-feeding cycles because if you eat a food that causes inflammation that may damage your gut that leaves a leaky gut that leads to further immune system activation that's just kind of downward cascade you can get stuck in but if you can interrupt that cycle there's no longer that inflammatory response of the food then the leaky gut can start to heal then the immune system can start to tone itself down and now you start to kind of have this upward cycle and improvement and that manifests in your case as the ability to bring in new foods which is a huge win it may sound kind of silly and simple but for someone who has a really sensitive gut just being able to eat something like eggs or broccoli or garlic and not have you know a flare of joint pain or bloating can be a godsend and that's the difference between being able to go out and maybe have a meal with friends or kind of having to reclude into your your bubble of safe food so from a lifestyle perspective I know that that can be very very nice to to have that that the way yeah totally awesome awesome well great I mean I'm so so happy that you came across healthy gut health to you for for our audience listening I hope that this helps you or for maybe people who are new to our audience and they're trying to figure out where to go with how to resolve their health complaints definitely consider giving healthy gut healthy you read because I wrote that book as an experienced clinician who focuses in the gut and trying to provide the reader with a map of how to go through all the different steps rather than just trying one thing that you write about or trying another thing that you write about or going to a well-intentioned doctor but who might be a generalist and might not have the scope and the depth of knowledge on gut ailments and how to effectively kind of remedy those issues and you're such a beautiful example of that bloating, constipation, joint pain, brain fog you know those things all now I'm assuming are pretty much under wraps oh yeah absolutely yeah awesome awesome well great I mean thank you so much I really appreciate you sharing your story do you have any kind of parting words you want to leave people with no just to say that I think the book is a really good investment from my point of view and like to give it a try and kind of take responsibility for your own health yeah yeah and I want to second that I think people don't understand how much power they have if they have a good clear process right in front of them and they take these things one step at a time and there's definitely a time and a place for doctors and clinicians but you know I think we should close with this kind of note of empowerment because you can achieve more than I think you might give yourself credit for if you have the right guide and the right process absolutely awesome Valerie thank you guys been a real pleasure chatting my pleasure bye