 Hi, everyone. This is Dr. Ruscio. I'm here with Mona, who's had a very interesting case with reflux and really much of Mona, what you've experienced reinforces what I often call an algorithm or an order of operations. So I'm grateful that you're willing to take the time to kind of explain what you were suffering with and what you've tried and kind of take us along the journey of steps over the past several weeks. So welcome. Hi. Thank you for having me. Can you tell people a little bit about the symptoms that you were struggling with? I said reflux a moment ago, of course, and kind of what the road would look like. I know you went to a few different doctors and at one point, I believe you even went to the ER because you were just distraught with what's happening in my body and didn't have any answers for that. So it gets up to speed what the road was before you and I started working together. Well, for eight months, I had chronic reflux and because I didn't have a medical background, I didn't know what that would look like. So I went to Kaiser twice and saw my primary care doctor who said I had a nasal drip and I had an infection. So he gave me antibiotics, which didn't work. Then I went back, he gave me nasal spray. Then I went to a specialist who did do the H. Pylori test, which came out negative. I got put on another set of antibiotics and my symptoms were a lot of saliva in my mouth. I had a really bad taste in my mouth. I was coughing and so from the bitter taste, I went to visit my dentist and he said that I needed to redo one of my fillings. That didn't work. So I went to get a second opinion from another dentist and she said that I had a cavity. That didn't solve the problem. So finally I ended up in the ER because I thought I was sick and it was stressing me out. And then we started working together and I guess first of all, let me say, I understand how frustrating that can be where you go to various specialists. They all have different ideas in terms of what might be causing the problem and you try all these different interventions and you don't really achieve any headway. So I understand how frustrating that can be and one of the things that we discussed is that this reflux and the symptoms of the kind of constant throat clearing and the bitter taste in your mouth and the saliva that might be a byproduct of what's going on lower down in your gut and may not necessarily be a problem in the mouth as the dentist's thought and there may be something there that's outside of H. Pylori because H. Pylori was tested but there's certainly more that can be happening in the gut than just H. Pylori. This is one of the reasons why for our audience, I harp on not limiting ourselves based upon lab testing because lab testing can be helpful but only really gives us a slice of what could be going on in the gut. And so we started off with kind of a simple approach as to not overwhelm you and decided to start with just a trial on low FODMAP and that seemed to work pretty darn well. Do you want to tell people just kind of in brief what you noticed from the low FODMAP diet? The low FODMAP diet was a game-changer for me. In a week, I noticed that the bad taste in my mouth had gone away and I didn't even know what it felt like to have a normal taste in my mouth anymore. Even gum would get bitter. I tried it to gum and I had no luck. And what was great about it is you gave me a list of foods that I could eliminate so I didn't have to really think about it. It was simple and what I noticed with the low FODMAP diet is it helped with my IBS. So although I was going stressing and losing sleep over my acid reflux, now I've actually helped heal my IBS. Were there some particular symptoms of IBS? Were you going to the bathroom often or not that often? Was there abdominal pain? What were the other symptoms that you feel like were helped? It was more growling in my stomach, bloating, more constipation. And I've noticed now that I've been so committed in this process and helped me heal. Oh my god, my skin's better, I have more energy, I'm less fatigued and I'm not bloated anymore. I thought I was cursed because my mom had IBS so I thought that I had to live with it forever. Right. And so some nice benefits in other non-gut areas, right? Your fatigue, your skin. And so we're off to a good start with just low FODMAP, but it didn't seem to get us fully out of the lurch, so to speak. You were clearly improved. And we tried something a little bit different with you where we put you on our intestinal repair formula, also known as intestinal support formula. And normally what I recommend people do is do that as kind of one of the last therapeutic options. But in your case, we decided to go for more of a simple approach and just try adding on this one thing. And, you know, again, that seemed to give you another bump in improvement. Do you want to speak to that briefly? The intestinal repair formula worked in about a week for me as well. I felt better, I know it was that and the FODMAP diet. I was more regular and I noticed that the coughing had stopped, the mucus was less. And then when you gave me the antimicrobials, I felt like it took it even to another step, where I felt like my gut was actually healing and kind of just kind of cleansing. I like that it's not really, you're not masking my problem. You've helped really heal my gut. So I thank you for that. Well, yeah, absolutely. That's my job here in this situation. And, you know, what's really interesting in your case, and I want to just kind of note this for our audience, is the order of operations. And I do recommend using the intestinal repair, aka intestinal support formula. But your case really reinforces that we should be doing the antimicrobials after diet. And so the antimicrobials are from our book protocol is our biotically 1A and 1B and 2A and 2B. And so there's a time and a place for all these therapies. But you really did seem to get a significant boost in your improvements from the antimicrobials. And so that really reinforced for me as a clinician that instead of going right to the intestinal repair formula, which has its own merit, we want to make sure to start with diet and then after diet, consider antimicrobials. And we also use probiotics. And I should just mention really quickly that probiotics we use along with diet and both of those seem to help you. And the picture I'm trying to paint for people here is sometimes to get over one symptoms. It's not just one thing. Someone might go to their gastroenterologist. If you had a really forward thinking gastroenterologist, as an example, they may have recommended a low-fobnet diet. And you may have said, wow, I got 30-ish percent improvement from that. But after a couple months, if that didn't fully lead to a resolution of all your symptoms, you may have said, well, you know, now what do I do? And then you go on to the next thing and people will jump from one thing to one thing to one thing. Instead of having this process of stringing together a few different helpful therapies, and that can be the mixture of healing inputs to the gut that can be needed to finally get over that hump. And so sometimes it takes a little bit more patience and diligence, rather than just looking for this one thing that will fix everything. In your case, it was such a beautiful example of that, this steady upward march of improvements, but not able to get there fully from just one change in and of itself. The probiotics I noticed also for me has helped with my dairy intake. So when I was bloated and just growling and just feeling fatigued, I thought I could cut out just gluten and dairy from my diet. And I've noticed ever since I've been taking the probiotics, I've been able to introduce dairy back to my diet. That's a big plus. It's nice because I didn't know any of this and I appreciate that you're putting the information out there. And I thought that I would just have to feel terrible and I thought it was my age. I wasn't sure what it was, but what I would suggest is if people feel bad, that they don't settle for it and it's simple, the process is simple. It doesn't have to be hard and you can feel 100% every day. Well, that's well said and I think a great note for us to end on. So Mona, thank you again. So excited that you're feeling better. Of course, it always makes me feel so good to see people not only have their digestive symptoms improve, but also have better energy and better skin like you were mentioning. So a wonderful depiction of how impactful it can be to improve your gut and then see all these other symptoms that can improve as a byproduct of that. So thank you so much again for sharing your story with us. Thank you. I enjoyed it.