 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. Could your home be making you sick? Well, in some cases, the answer is definitely yes. In just a moment, I'll speak with Autumn Boyle, the creator of the blog, Lekton Free Mama, one of the great blogs out there. After moving into a starter house with her husband seven years ago, Autumn began experiencing chronic fatigue, difficulty breathing, and a host of other health issues. Today she's going to reveal the exact source of her problems as well as how the right foods can help you bounce back from debilitating health issues. We're also going to discuss the healing powers of a practice called Neural Retraining. Stay tuned. And how to raise kids the plant paradox style to help them grow healthy and strong. Autumn, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. So it's great to have you on the show. In your blog, Lekton Free Mama, you say you and your family were living the suburban dream when you bought your first house. But quickly it became a suburban nightmare. Tell us about the health issues you experienced and how you finally found out what the culprit was. Yeah, so we bought the house seven or eight years ago and we moved in and we noticed when we bought it that there was a big drainage issue. There was like a standing pond of water in the backyard. And at the time, you know, it wasn't a huge issue for us. So we bought the house. And I was fine for a couple years. At the time I was working at a farm stand. Actually, I was on a farm. It was a conventional farm, not organic. So I was probably exposed to a lot of things working there. And one of the first symptoms I noticed was that I was always tired. Like I would come home from work and I would just have to take a nap every single day. And that was very unlike me. I'm very athletic. I do a lot of running. I've done half marathons and marathons and I've done a lot of hiking and I've always been just a very energetic, ambitious person. It was very unlike me to have to take a nap every single day. Of course, I was fine. That was really the only symptom I had until I became pregnant. And when I got pregnant, it was like someone flip the switch in my body. Everything started to go wrong. I had so many symptoms. And of course, when you're pregnant, no doctor wants to touch you with a 10 foot pole. So they all said to me, you know, this will go away once you have the baby. You know, this is just a difficult pregnancy. It's fine. And surprise, it didn't go away when I had the baby. It actually got a lot worse. So what besides being, you know, fatigue, what were the other things that happened during the pregnancy and then didn't go away? Oh gosh, my digestion just stopped. It was like every time I ate, I could feel it sitting in my stomach for hours. I just wouldn't go anywhere. So in my digestion, I wasn't sleeping very well because my adrenaline would rush at night. Just my whole body just felt off. Like every system in my body was affected in some way. So and I thought it was just pregnancy. I thought it was because I was growing a human. Right. And I'm sure your doctors said, well, yeah, you're pregnant and you got the nausea pregnancy and etc. Right. Yes. Yep. So after I gave birth, it was, it was like my body just shut down. It was far worse than when I was pregnant. I gave birth and I went through a really, really bad period of dizziness, numbness. I would have neurological issues where I couldn't feel my limbs and my digestion continued to get worse. And then summer came and I was, I had a pretty good summer. I always do well in the summertime. And then fall came around and I started to have symptoms of dizziness, fatigue. I would stand up and my heart rate just wouldn't go down. My heart rate was constantly high. And that was the year actually a few months later after those symptoms started, I of course was doing all my own research at the time because I went to a ton of doctors and none of them could tell me what was going on. I started to see a specialist for POTS. So that's it. Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. And I was diagnosed with that in spring after I had my daughter. So that, I thought that was the answer. I was like, yay, a diagnosis. But it's a very unhelpful diagnosis. It really doesn't mean anything because they don't know what caused it. So they just told me to like drink a lot of water and eat some salt and tilt the head of my mattress. That was their advice pretty much. And they had me try a lot of different drugs and none of them really helped. So that was what led up to me finding the plant paradox. So how'd you discover the plant paradox? Dr. Google or what? Yes. I was actually researching the concept of leaky gut because I thought that might be, since I was having digestive issues as well, I thought maybe that was what was going on. So I researched the leaky gut on Amazon and I bought the first book that I found on the subject which happened to be the plant paradox. And I started reading that and I started to implement it before I even finished the book. I just dove right in. 100% committed. I never commit halfway to anything. So I really was all in and it helped. It helped so much. I almost all of my symptoms went away within a few months except for POTS. So my POTS continued to sort of ebb and flow. I would think that I was cured of it. I would last a few months and then it would start to creep back in. And I recognized this pattern that I was always really good in the summertime. And then in the fall when the season changes occurred, my POTS would sort of creep back in again. So I was fine with this. The plant paradox helped every single other symptom I had. Okay. Actually you're one of the few people that I treat with POTS that POTS doesn't go away. But it sounds like yours would wax and wane. It would get better and then it almost sounds seasonally. Is that correct? Seasonally, yes. And I would sometimes experience hourly changes. You know, I told my POTS doctor, I said I only have POTS sometimes during the day. And other times during the day, I'm totally fine. And he could not explain it. He said that was actually very unusual for even POTS patients to have such a waxing and waning of symptoms hourly. And I actually attribute a lot of the good times to doing the plant paradox. Because I did not have 24 hour symptoms. I felt fine a lot of the time. And then sometimes I would have the POTS symptoms. But it was just, it gave me such a false sense of hope because it would go away sometimes. And then I'd be like, yay, you know, it worked. And then it would come back. But I've since, I've since discovered something else that really helps. Yeah. And we're going to get into that in just a minute. But so about a year ago, you decided to become extra restrictive. And you found out it probably wasn't for you. Can you tell me what you decided to be, you know, really restricted? And how you, you know, did you find a middle ground that worked? I did. Again, last summer, I had a really great summer. And then in the fall, I started to experience symptoms again of POTS. And I thought, well, you know, I'm going to give this animal protein restriction a try. I'm going to, you know, reduce that, start to eat more vegan. I'm going to start fasting more. So I started to do those things. And of course, this coincided with the season changes. And it rained for three weeks when I started to do that. And it was like every single stressor hit my body at once. And I could not handle it. Like I got far, far sicker than I have ever been last fall. And I just, I couldn't, I couldn't get better. I gave up, I had to give up tons more foods. I was doing multiple diets. I was trying to give up histamines, FODMAP, oxalase. And it was like nothing, nothing helped. I was reacting to almost every food I put in my body. I became so sensitive to the mold in our basement that I had to move out of my house. I was taking dozens of supplements. Even, even yoga was too stressful for my body. I was doing detox, mold binders, limiting my wifi exposure. And I just felt so helpless because I was doing everything right. And I couldn't get better. You know, it's, it's almost a blessing and a curse to have such a, you know, I have a social media presence and I have this online platform and I see so many people having success on this diet. And then I have to be the one that says, well, you know, it's not working for me anymore. You know, something happened. There's something missing from my puzzle that I'm not getting. You know, I was, I was very aware that I wasn't addressing something that I needed to address and I didn't know what it was. So and I have a feeling I'm not the only one actually. I think, I think there are quite a few people who feel the way I did. They're doing everything right. And it's still not working. And I just want to encourage those people to not give up. There are so many therapies to try in conjunction with what you're already doing diet-wise. And there's hope and I'll share, I'll share soon what I found. So, okay. Well, I think that's a, now tell me about the mold in your basement because you haven't, you know, you mentioned the pond out back. Where did that, you know, how did, was that discovered? And did you, and it sounds like moving out of the house didn't, didn't fix the problem. Well, it did. And that was the thing. Everything I tried, all the things that I avoided worked initially. So when I started to avoid additional food, that helped for a few weeks. And then my body would become sensitive to something else. When I moved out of my house, I was better for a few weeks. And then I became sensitive to other things. So avoidance was no longer working for me. And we discovered the mold. I mean, I knew there was mold in our house because I could see it on the walls in our basement. It was very obvious that we had it. I just, I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think someone could be so sensitive to it until I was. Well, you know, I'm going to come back to the mold after you tell us about everything that went wrong and how you fixed it and neural retraining. What the heck is that? Oh, thank you so much for letting me talk about this. Because I feel like my, my journey is a little different than a lot of your patients. Because a lot of times giving up all those foods works. Like that's, that's the thing that gets them better. And for me, it, it actually being so restrictive made it worse, made me worse. So I was thinking, you know, it's not, it's not something external that's causing this. There's got to be, you know, something wrong with my body or my brain that's causing all of these symptoms and causing me to become so sensitive to everything. And so I first heard about it from Dr. Jason Fung. I, because I follow him for a lot of his fasting advice. And he mentioned that fasting will fix a lot of things, but it will not fix a maladapted stress response. And I was like, hmm, you know, what, what's that? So I started to look into that and realized that that's what I was experiencing. It's, it's basically where your brain becomes so overloaded with stressors that it breaks, like your response to stress breaks. And the filter in your brain that's in charge of telling you what's dangerous and what's not is so on high alert that everything becomes dangerous. So that's what I was experiencing is I was on high alert all the time. And no matter what I did to avoid certain things, everything was triggering me. So I started this treatment called neural retraining. And it's a different approach to healing. So rather than avoiding the things that are making you react, which for me was impossible because everything was making me react, rather than avoiding those things, you do these neural exercises that help you to change your physiological response to triggers. And not only is that possible, but it works really fast. So I've, I've been doing this for two months now. And I'm already eating, I'm back to eating every single thing on the plant paradox. Yes, Liz. And I've even reintroduced some phase three things. Oh my gosh, I just feel, I feel liberated, like I no longer have a fear of food. I've overcome all of my reactions to food. I can go into any buildings now. I used to react when I went into old buildings. I no longer react. I can go into churches and libraries and old moldy water damaged coffee houses. And I, I don't have a reaction. And so in what involves neural retraining? I mean, did somebody describe what the process is? Because I'm sure most of my listeners have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah. So there are a few different programs out there. The one, the one that I'm doing was developed by Annie Hopper. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her. But it involves, it's so, it's so hard to describe this. I really hope I can get this right and describe this well. So it involves, it involves purposely triggering symptoms and then using a set of neurological exercises to change your body's response mechanism. So every day I will trigger myself a little more. I'm actually doing that with exercise. So I started with just like one minute of jogging and that was enough to make my body react. And, and I go through the exercises and the exercises are very, they're repetitive. You use your happiest emotions and your happiest memories to recreate a neurological state in your brain and your body that will help you to change your physiological response. So give, give me an example of where, what, what do you do to find that happy place? I mean, is that mom and dad taking you out for ice cream at age six or, I mean, give me an example. Oh, it can be anything. I mean, it has, it has to be a really powerful memory because it has to trigger those neurotransmitters in your brain that are going to change the state of your body. And it's just, I find it so fascinating that there's a part of your brain that isn't aware of where you are. So if you, if you're thinking about a memory of something that happened in the past, there's a part of your brain that's literally experiencing that again, it's just as if you are there. And so you do that over and over every single day. I mean, I practice for an hour a day, and then I also use it when I have a, when I have a reaction sometimes during the day. If I, if I ever experienced symptoms, I'll sort of recreate some of these memories. So yeah, they're very powerful memories that I recall. And then the other part is future visualization. So I recall these memories. And then I think about something that would be a struggle for me, like walking into my moldy house or walking into an old building. And then I apply that physiological, neurological state that I've just created. I apply that to the future visualization. And I imagine myself being healthy and strong and resilient. So there are a number of programs in neuro retraining that actually use electrodes on your brain and measuring EEGs and the stress response. And then have you actually look at computer screens of various happy things. So you didn't, you didn't have to do that. No, I didn't not do any of that. Although it'd be very interesting to see what happens in the brain when you do this. And the program I'm doing right now is actually going through clinical trials in Canada. And they're going to be measuring all that stuff, like what, what changes are happening in the brain and how all those changes affect the body. Well, you know, there's definitely true that, you know, there is a gut-brain connection, but there's clearly a brain-gut connection as well. And so the power of the brain, as you're finding out, is very important in what happens to the gut. Yes. It was like, it was the other half of the equation for me because I was, I was doing everything right, diet-wise. But my, my poor response to stress was sabotaging my gut buddies. I mean, I could tell. No, and that's actually very well shown that, you know, stress on the brain actually changes the gut microbiome. I referenced that in the longevity paradox. And it also, it changes how your immune system, you know, reacts to the gut microbiome as well. Yes. All right. So you didn't just adopt a lectin-free lifestyle for yourself. You've been raising your young daughter this way, lectin-free. What influenced your decision to raise her that way and how's she doing? Oh, she's doing so well. And there really was no deciding moment where I was like, okay, I have to raise her this way. It was just, that's the way that we were eating. And I wasn't going to make her a separate meal. So I fed her all of the things that I was eating. And she took to them really well. She, of course, before I read the plant paradox, I was doing, I was going the traditional route. So I started, I read the plant paradox when she turned one. And so before then I was feeding her what her pediatrician recommended, which was all those cereals and grains and all that stuff. So that's how we started her off. But after I read the plant paradox, I thought, well, I'm just going to give her the foods that I'm eating. And she really liked them. So. And how old is she now? She's three. Okay. So what happens when she goes to a friend's house or does she go to preschool yet? She does. She goes to preschool. And luckily, last year, we found a preschool where we could pack her lunch. And that was actually a huge deciding factor in which preschool we chose because a lot of them provide lunch. And they're all, according to the government guidelines, whole grain, everything. And, and I just was like, nope, that's, that's not on our list. So, so we chose a preschool where we could pack her lunch. And the preschool she attends now is only half a day. So we don't really have to worry about that at the moment. And she doesn't, she doesn't go over to friends houses yet. So I'm not quite sure how we're going to navigate that in the future. I'm very blessed in that she has no health issues at all. She's very healthy. And I'm going to walk the line between letting her experience, you know, like an ice cream cone sometimes. And then of course, feeding her great things at home and also educating her about food and proper preparation methods and, and how to make things less select and full. You know, how to pressure cook and even how to ferment. I mean, fermentation is such a great way to reduce lectins and things. And it's so fun. I mean, that's like a science experiment in your kitchen. And I can't wait to introduce her to that. And I think it's going to be a lot of fun teaching her about food. So what advice would you give to other parents who just go, Oh man, trying to get my my kid to eat this way is just overwhelming. What do you tell the folks listening? So I feel lucky in that we started her so early on these foods that that's what she's used to. And you look at kids from all over the world in different cultures and they're eating crazy things that that our kids would not dream of eating. But you can really change you can change a kid's palate. They're very, you know, they might be resistant at first, but I have found what works for me. If she doesn't like something, I often discover that she doesn't like the way it's been prepared. It's not that she doesn't like that specific thing. It's just, I'll make, you know, I'll saute something in olive oil and give it to her and she won't like it. But then I'll sneak it into like a soup or a casserole and she'll eat it. So my advice is just keep serving something over and over in different ways if you can. And rather than writing it off as, Oh, my kid doesn't like this thing, just keep trying. And she she's done that so often where she won't eat something maybe six or seven times and then she'll start eating it. So it just I keep an open mind as to what she might like to try next. I think that's great advice. Yeah. You know, I tell anyone who will listen that a little child in Japan doesn't come out of the womb thinking that seaweed is what he wants to he or she wants to eat. It's, you know, and, you know, I, you know, my two grandchildren have been raised by my daughter and her husband on the plant paradox program literally since they were born and they're five and three now. And I can still remember pictures. I think I posted it on Instagram of my grandchild who was like one years old. And he was at the dinner table and his dad was giving him trying to get him to eat some humanely raised spare ribs. But all he wanted was broccoli. And he would just kind of push the spare ribs away and, you know, grab another handful of broccoli. Here's a one year old, you know, eating broccoli. My daughter is the same way. She eats salad. She loves green. We go out to restaurants and people will actually stop by our table and they'll say, I have never seen as hot a lot of salad before. And they think it's some sort of miracle, but it's just because we've exposed her to it. So often I just I always give her like a handful of greens and, you know, if she doesn't eat them, she doesn't eat them, but a lot of times she will. So it's just giving her the option to do it. Yeah, I think that's great advice. And, you know, that's why I wrote, you know, the plant paradox family cookbook because I have two young grandchildren and I wanted to help my daughter who's committed to this. And I have so many patients of my own who are children or teenagers who have, you know, incredibly horrible health issues with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn's or all sorts of colitis. And so a big part of my impetus in all of this was to give mothers, particularly mothers and dads and families ways to get their kids to eat healthy, to give their kids a great microbiome from the start. And we're finding more and more and more and more that the better we can make our kids microbiome diverse and happy, they're not going to have the asthma issues or the eczema issues or the obesity issues. They're just it's not going to happen to them. So it's never too early to start. I can tell you as a children's heart surgeon for all of my career that I would operate on children as young as eight or nine or 10. And I would already see plaques in the arteries of their aorta, the main blood vessel that came out, cholesterol plaques in these young children. And the experience from the Vietnam War of these young men 17, 18, 19 years old who were killed on autopsy, they already had plaques in their coronary arteries and in their aorta. So I think the important message that I want to get out and you certainly want to get out is that there's the earlier you start at this, the better you give your kids a chance for a great long life. And they didn't come out of the box needing chicken McNuggets and Kraft macaroni and cheese. They really didn't. Yeah, I really feel, I feel almost lucky to have gone through what I have gone through because I can pass this on to my daughter. I suffered from allergies my whole life. The day I was born I had an allergic reaction to a gown that someone put on me that had fragrance on it. And that was kind of the first sign I was going to have a tough childhood as far as allergies and eczema and asthma. And of course I don't blame my parents. I mean, they were feeding me what was supposed to be healthy and convenient. And they're just, I feel lucky to have the knowledge I have now and to be able to pass that on to my daughter. I feel it's going to help a lot in reversing this epidemic of allergic diseases. It really is going to help. Other than salad, does your daughter have a favorite recipe or two? She does. So this is Amara. This is my daughter. And I have some sample recipes here of the recipes that I would send my email subscribers. I don't think I've talked about that actually. Well, since you're going to mention what you send out, maybe this is a good point to tell us how people find you. Oh, okay. My website is lectenfremama.com. And when I started the website, I quickly realized that emailing was a lot easier than uploading recipes to the website. So I started an email subscriber list that I would send out five recipes a week to my subscribers, like five plant paradox dinner recipes. And I have kept that up now for almost three years. And I still, I still send them out every Friday. I send out recipes to my subscribers. And I have hundreds of recipes in my collection. So I have a few here. I have a few of her favorite recipes. So the first one we have is plantain crusted salmon and cauliflower mash. Do you like plantain chips? So she loves plantain chips. So I used them as breading on the salmon. Great idea. Do you like cauliflower? Yes. Do you like it with butter? Of course she loves it with butter. Of course. Okay. So that's one of them. Another one I have is Asian Sesame Sweet Potato Noodles. Do you like noodles? What's your favorite noodle? My favorite noodles is that. Those ones? These are her favorite noodles. The sweet potato noodle. The spiralized sweet potato noodles. And I mixed them with tahini, coconut, aminos, ginger, olive oil, sesame oil. Oh, they're really good. And then you sprinkle on some scallions and sesame seeds. Oh my gosh. Can we come over for dinner tonight, please? So what's next for you and Lekton Free Mama besides raising this beautiful child? Yeah. Most of my time is devoted to that. And I do what I can when I have the time. I would love to do like maybe a cookbook or something, but it's just not in the cards right now. So I'm just, I'm maintaining what I'm doing now, basically sending out recipes to my subscribers every week. I maintain a Facebook group that has over 15,000 members. And we give a lot of support in that group to people who are trying this diet. It's really great. I mean, I'm so blessed to have people that are interested in what I have to make. And just people who are willing to participate in a support group like that. It's been really great. Well, thank you for doing that. And we all appreciate it as well. It's really, you've been great support for so many people. So as you know, there's a segment of the show for the audience question. And we're going to have you give me the audience questions today. How's that? Yeah, sounds good. So some of these are based on my own journey, of course. Do you feel that there are any dangers or downsides to giving up too many foods in addition to the no list? And if so, what is your recommendation for people who are navigating multiple food sensitivities? Well, I think the, you know, an elimination diet, however we want to describe that is actually a very good idea for most people with multiple sensitivities. And I found through the years that while the vast majority of people do really well just following the no list, as I've done this longer and longer and have more sophisticated tests, there's absolutely a group of people that will react to raw vegetables, particularly raw greens, and that they need to cook them within an inch of their lives or nuke them or make them sauces or soups. The other thing is I'm finding certain individuals absolutely react to not only KCNA1 but KCNA2 and even whey and milk. So we eliminate milk in those people. And I'm finding a surprising number of people that react to eggs, either egg white or egg yolk. And so in those folks, I do take those away. Now I don't in general go all the way to the carnivore diet where we take away all plant materials, but we've had podcasts where we've discussed that that's there's nothing wrong with that for a short term, but we're talking a short term rather than a long term solution. The other thing I think there is a portion of the population that view can get addicted to having a very restrictive diet. And I think that's why particularly, let's just categorize young women in particular, this is probably not a good idea to severely restrict a diet. And I've said that before. So I have a daughter who's now grown and doing thriving who was anorexic and bulimic. And so I'm very cognizant of those things. Again, she's fine now. It actually follows my program for the last 15 years. And it's actually one of the things that broke her out of her spiral. So anyhow, that's another story. Okay, second question. So I told you about the neural retraining. Is there any recommendations that you have to increase the body's resilience to stress so that maybe maybe we wouldn't be so sensitive? Well, you know, I think there's so many things that you can do. There's there's fascinating data that the more time you spend outdoors, particularly in a park or a woods or a forest, the better off you're going to be. My personal feeling is that every human being should have a dog or a cat. And one thing a dog does is it makes you go outside for a walk twice a day. And the other thing that I find dogs very useful for is they are great socialization creatures because if you're walking a dog, the odds are other people are going to interact with you. And you know, get yourself a cute dog. Although I have three cute dogs and one rescue dog, but he's just as wonderful as my cute dogs. So those are things. The other thing I think meditation and however you view meditation. And for instance, you're you thinking of some of the happiest moments of your life is a form of meditation that it's at its very, you know, it's at its very core. So I think you finding this was, you know, a brilliant salvation for, you know, kind of stopping your brain from short circuiting. Yeah. Okay, the last question I have is about kids. Do you have any general supplement recommendations for kids that have no health issues? Healthy kids? Is there anything we can give them to boost nutrition? Yeah. So I yeah. So in the plant paradox family cookbook, I have a whole section on supplements for kids. And I think one of the most important things is you've got to get DHA, which is a component of fish oil, or also in algae based DHA into kids. The evidence is overwhelming that kids will do better in school. They are intellect will be better, their brains will be bigger. And there's good controlled studies on this. So get them some fish oil, it's easy to get in it. You if you get cod liver oil, you can hide it in salad dressings or even in soups. There's no fishy taste to good quality cod liver oil. He loves cod liver oil. Yeah. So that's just an easy thing to do. The other thing is really kind of from an early start, get small amounts of vitamin D in them, particularly in Northern climates, we really don't have enough vitamin D. And so that's just a quick overview of what's in the book. Okay. Okay. So unfortunately, that's all we got time for on tonight's today's podcast. And I really appreciate you being here and please folks go to her website, go to her Instagram, go to her Facebook page, lectin free mama. And thanks again, it's great meeting you in person, kind of in person. I know, it's been so great to see you and talk to you. Thank you so much for having me on. All right. And that's it for the Dr. Gundry podcast. We'll see you next week. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, because I'm Dr. Gundry, and I'm always looking out for you.