 Hi, this is Dr. Ruscio. I'm here with Mason who's had really great results and I almost don't even want to say too much and let you kind of tell your story because it's a great story. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you were suffering with, what you were told by other doctors and then some of the results that you saw and I'll chime in here and there. Okay, well I've been a healthy vegetarian for 40-plus years and about seven years ago all of a sudden now I was having trouble just with girdling stomach, a lot of bloating, a lot of belching and then at night starting to experience acid reflex in the middle of the night. I went to my general practitioner explain what was happening and the first thing he did is he prescribed putting me on prilosec and basically being elevated, kind of looking for trigger foods, that type of thing. I found that the prilosec really didn't help me at all so I stopped taking that. Sleeping elevated helped a little bit. About three years ago just continued to go back to general practitioner each year. He finally sent me off to a gastroenterologist, gastroenterologist. And that gastroenterologist basically put me on a heavier dose of prilosec and what happened then is I broke out in a rash all over my body and at that point he said well obviously you can't handle that so he put me on a pepsin drug and that was helped a little bit. I thought after a while that was really working either so I stopped taking that and I just basically was trying to look for trigger foods, that type of thing. About a year ago my condition worsened to the point where I broke it out with a rash. I'd gone to two different dermatologists. The first dermatologist gave me a salve and said oh that'll go away. The second dermatologist biopsied the rash, the rash was in my scalp, on my chest, my back, on my ankles and it was really miserable, real itchy. And he sent a sample off the lab, came back that it was called lichen probis I believe. And the dermatologist said I'm going to give you this salve which kind of desensitizes the itching but for the most part we have no idea how to cure it. And it's something you may live with the rest of your life so I accepted that. But at that time also I was really having a tough time with loose bottles to the point where you know you'd leave home and figure if you had to use the bathroom someplace where might that be. And it just got worse and worse. I watched a series that time called Interconnected and in that series they interviewed Dr. Ruscio and talked about his book. And I was really impressed with what I heard in that series so I bought the book and within two days read through that book completely. Put myself on the food map or five map diet and that helped about 30%. Then I got an appointment with Dr. Ruscio and met with him and then he basically felt that my problem was that the doctors were prescribing medications to limit acid production where in fact what I really needed was more acid in my system. So at that point he put me on a hydrochloric acid pills and almost immediately all of my digestive issues went away. He had mentioned too that maybe as a plus that the acid would actually help with my rashes and sure enough it did. Within about two weeks I started noticing that the rashes were going away. Within about two to three months they were pretty much gone. So that really helped and the acid treatment has just been miraculous for me. I want to make sure we don't forget to include this. You were saying that when you forgot to take your hydrochloric acid supplement you noticed a pretty immediate reaction. Let's say you go to somebody's house and you're having dinner then you forgot to take your pills with you or just forget to take it. I noticed immediately that I'm bloating and gas and those types of issues. So I'm very confident that the HCL is really helping me with my digestive issues. And that's a clear indicator obviously that it is helping you of course. One of the things that I'm hoping that we'll get to in time is a little bit more resiliency. So you can deviate and what I'm hoping will happen is right now deviate one meal you notice a change. Six months from now you deviate one a week you notice a change. A year from now you deviate three weeks you notice a change. So I'm hoping that your latency will become much more prolonged or I guess however you want to kind of label that there. That's another thing just to kind of keep in mind that where you are right now only being a couple months in is likely at the same place you'll be six months a year a year and a half. Just kind of as a note of encouragement because it's great on the one hand that you're noticing this quick feedback. I'm also hoping that we'll get to a point where you can forget your pills and not have to really worry about it. And in addition to the acid I'm kind of curious to have you share with people we use hydrochloric acid supplementation and this is something that I talk about in Healthy Good Health U which can be helpful it's not helpful if we talked about a moment ago it's not helpful for everyone and some circles on the internet kind of inculcate everyone into thinking that everyone must be on acid and there's factors that we can look for and certainly being 65 or over increases of likelihood that acid may be helpful and the challenging thing is is that reflux can indicate either not enough acid in some cases or too much acid in others and that's that's a real kind of quandary which is well how do we know and really the the best way to navigate through that is to do a cautious trial and in your case almost instantaneous improvement so that tells you the acid is the right maneuver. But we also use probiotics and some gut soothing nutrients or our gut rebuild nutrient powder and the vegetarian low-fog map and I believe you had been on the low-fog map prior. Yes. So that wasn't that wasn't a change when you came in but there was acid there was the probiotics and the gut rebuild nutrients now it seems like the acid led to the most improvement but what about the probiotics because so here's an interesting bit of context when you came in today you said I was a hundred percent last time we spoke and now I'm still doing great at maybe 95 which is still great but you had gone from the probiotics every day to I think every three days correct and come off the gut rebuild nutrients powder which is what we want to do we want to figure out the minimal effective dose but sometimes to figure out the minimal effective dose you take not enough of a dose and some symptoms kind of start coming back a little bit so anything else to share there with these other supports and things that you've noticed in terms of do the probiotics seem to be aiding in any unique way or any any feeling on those well the whole package really helped in the beginning and just recently I noticed that kind of gave this very very minimum symptoms coming back and that's what we discussed so I will definitely go back and try more probiotics again and and had you also I believe you said sorry I'm trying to remember all the chart notes here had you also backed off your dose of the acid at the same time no the acid was so that's been so the acid's been constant and the probiotics have decreased to once every three days from once every day and the gut rebuild nutrient powder is now gone so you know I think patients they have more power in their in their hands and they realize sometimes if we can just try to isolate these variables so now all we're going to do is go back on the full program wait a few weeks until symptoms can be back to that hundred percent and then try to reduce these kind of one at a time and that makes it a little easier to kind of tease out that cause and effect so that's that's kind of the synopsis but we really see here if you can be strategic when you use hydrochloric acid and and for the clinicians you really want to see a notable symptomatic improvement and that's what we should be looking for you could have great results and then another awesome example of the gut skin connection and this is something we were talking about a moment ago we're just scratching the surface on the gut skin connection and there are sometimes skin lesions of various sorts that we don't even have a name for that you may see improve when you improve someone's gut or that have no no treatment that you may see improve so I don't want to oversell that case but certainly if you're having skin issues one area to consider is your gut and there's the old naturopathic saying that the skin is a reflection of the gut and so in this case an added bonus that we weren't even expecting to see right anything you want to kind of leave people with and close I've been very happy with the treatment plan it's changed my life so awesome you know obviously I'm thrilled that you're doing so well and for those watching this don't underestimate the power of some simple things like a hydrochloric acid supplement you could buy online may actually be more effective than a ppi from the gastroenterologist again always check out with your gastroenterologist it's not to say don't follow the recommendations but don't be shy about getting a second opinion because in your case boy it's your reactions and minimal changes in your symptoms with one approach and if we go over to a different camp of thought it turns out that was a much better fit for you right awesome well thank you so much and I'm glad you're feeling so much better thank you