 Hey guys, this is Dr. Ruscio. I'm here with Matt who's had some really good results after a couple speed bumps a couple ups and downs and really happy to say Matt is doing very well and Again, we had an up and down so you know Matt Do you want to tell people some of the roller coaster that you just went through? Oh, yeah You know, it's been it's been a bit of a journey. I think I've been working with you for about a year now and What's what's gonna happen is is as we've discussed different treatments and different You know did some initial lab testing to find out what could be going on We we decided on a few different approaches and once we get going often what I would find is things would work and I see improvement and I get really excited and then improvements in just to give people some context inflammatory bowel disease it was kind of indeterminate in terms of what type and some of the you know the bowel frequency and urgency and digestive distress or the symptoms that you were Played with and I mean to a certain point where they were even interfering with your job Which is what made me feel for your case so much Which was you had just taken this new job You were excited about it and then you know the GI symptoms were potentially gonna hinder your ability to do this job That you really like Exactly, and it's tricky to make you know life decisions on based on kind of how your symptoms are doing So when when you're doing well you want to bank on keeping them well but you know I've learned Through life experience now that it's not necessarily going to always be that way, but it's also important to kind of not lose your sense of direction and purpose and you know keep keep going the way the way that Things are kind of laid out for you because it's easy You know I found once you once you've had that progress and start regressing a bit to panic You know and think that that what you had was was useless and do anything and I'm glad I was able to check in with you during those times. I didn't completely lose my mind Let's expand upon that just just for me Yeah, sure so essentially we had started off with some kind of preliminary therapies But where we really broke things open and saw you improve nicely was really course of herbal antimicrobials And you went from zero to sixty in terms of healing in like a few days maybe a week or so Yeah, and I was super happy for you You looked healthier when when we checked in your symptoms were all gone and you were just ready to pull ahead in your life Sounds super happy for you Then you weeks later month or just a few months later you start to address and yeah I finished I finished the two months of antimicrobials, and it was feeling pretty good for a couple for a couple weeks And then quickly started to regress and was really discouraged obviously when that was happening And then I think even more discouraged when we said okay well this antimicrobial therapy has been helpful, but Maybe a little bit more of that stimulus to maintain you in this remission So we did the antimicrobial treatment again And I finished my two month course and it's like all right, you know give me the stuff that works again And then the second time it didn't really work And I think that was kind of this kicking a man when he's down Experience for you where you had to tie hopes for the therapy that got you to this plateau And then I didn't deliver and so for the for the patients and for the clinicians listening Don't be disheartened if that happens You know there there's a good therapeutic tool in the natural medicine toolkit that we can apply to inflammatory bowel disease And so what we did in your case was we use a short course on the elemental diet Which is some pretty impressive documentation for IVD and we paired that with this gut healing compound known as SPI Which it can help with binding toxins in the gut and restoration of the gut barrier and those two things have gotten you back to your previous Plateau in fact it sounds if you were unless a plateau your peak level of plateau And it sounds like you're actually even a bit better than you were at your previous peak Yeah, and we've talked about this before it's kind of like an upward trend of a stock market chart where you know It's it's it's progressing up, but if you if you look at you know the long-term picture There's always some dips in there and Exactly and so I definitely you know kind of entered entered a valley Not too long ago, but now we're back climbing up the mountain and doing well And and as we were discussing earlier, it's it's so important to not only keep keep a level mind about these things, but also Your confidence builds once you get more tools in your tool chest to work on on these types of things and know That certain things do work and you just sometimes you just have to give them time and sometimes you just have to have the patients To get through those those rough patches It's because it's so easy when you're in one of those rough patches to to think that you know You're never going to get back to where you were, but as long as you you continue to think about that progress you're making and work towards it Grateful that I was able to keep a level head with that and get to that point yep, I am as well and and You've also been able to move away from some of the drug therapy, which I'm not Philosophically opposed to but you know, certainly if we can find a natural and especially a nutritional based Intervention for these things rather than the drug therapy like prednisone you were using prednisone to call your flares and That doesn't come without a cost and you were aware of that and you're both aware of that And so we're really trying to say okay, you know the friend is on works, but it's doing other damage And so what are the options? Yeah, and you know, and I'm realistic about that, too I really try not to use those drugs, but I do you know It's like the in case of emergency break glass, you know I'm not gonna break the medicine cabinet glass, but it's in there And even you know, even when things were really bad and I was I was really struggling to get to work I was able to hold off because I just I Wanted to but you you always want to weigh that because I also knew I wanted to get out of this Or because you're not you're not getting healing done, you know while that's that's kind of happening And I was able to discover first time trying an elemental diet that after four days of that I was having the same improvement that I would have if I'd been taking 40 milligrams of prednisone And and some of the research literature corroborates that So it's nice that you know, we have these different options and again not saying that You should not use medicines or medicines are better or worse, but let's start with the least invasive Essentially a hypoallergenic meal replacement nutritional shake compared to prednisone, which one makes more sense pragmatic and start with Yeah, so you've done fantastic your digestive symptoms have gotten better globally The other thing I just want to mention really quick for people is your fatigue and brain fog also got better Which just illustrates the profound gut-to-brain connection anything there you want to chime in on Yeah, and you and that's the type of thing where It's it's hard to when you when you talk about dealing with with digestive symptoms like this and you say Oh, it's difficult to leave the house or go to work and those things It's not just because of the An anxiety of you know having to urgently use the restroom It's the fact that you are tired because when your immune system is is working its tail off to To try to heal yourself constantly, you know on 24 seven basis. It's going to sap a ton of energy So you just don't Not so not only are you doing with the stress of going outside You just don't have the energy to do those things and affects your The clarity of your mind as well, which is you know why in my mindset Like I I wouldn't have even considered taking this this more high-intensity job that I did for the summer If I hadn't you know had that improvement before I'm very glad I did do that Even though I did have you know a brief rough patch in the middle of that job And that was a rough time but it in the grand scheme of things it was it was short-lived You know, it feels like a long time when you're in the thick of it, but I'm glad that you did take that job because that really gave you something to motivate to get back to being well As fast as you could it kind of gave you know Put things off. It's like yep. God. I gotta take care of this right away Exactly and and I know it's different for different people but I for me personally I've had that before where uh the previous summer because I work at it I work at a school primarily so I get fortunate enough to get summers off And so last summer I you know, it's just going to take some time to to just Relax a bit and try different things and man I just I kind of regressed because I didn't at least for myself I didn't have the motivation to like have something to work towards I'm just kind of sitting around hoping things were going to get better We're having like it was it was tricky, you know, balancing the stress of it of this job but from for me at least that was a motivation to to really buckle down because You know the the hard thing is the worst you're feeling the more energy it takes to try to try to get better And that's when you're at your least and an amount of energy that you have to work with So, you know, it's that that cycle is kind of or you know, that direction is kind of working away from you but if you can finding yourself to When you're at that low point to actively think about how you can work to get yourself better As soon as you start seeing a little bit of progress, that's going to be enough for motivation to Preval you forward Have an external motivator to make sure you don't just kind of tip into I guess this this illness induced Despondency is very So yeah, which is very common, you know Well, my man, you've done great. I'm really happy to hear that you're you're Stable and stable at a level of improvement. I don't think you could shoot historically And we'll continue to check in periodically, you know, do I expect anything? Maybe I should show this also. Do I expect you're never going to have a little bit of a regression? No, you know, you probably will at some point and the analogy I used earlier in our visit was Like someone who pulls a hamstring maybe in college Will they ever have an ache in that hamstring again? Yeah, I mean, they'll take some time and they'll heal There's some stretching or do some therapy they'll do some foam rolling and their hamstring will probably be solid Like your gut is right now But if you know enough time goes by and their exercise or king gets a little unbalanced or they're sitting too much Or what have you could that hamstring start to flare up a little bit again? Yeah, and would it be a big deal to have to do some more stretching and PT and foam rolling or whatever No, and so in your case Maybe once in a while you have to do a little short, you know day or two on an elemental diet to calm things down Wouldn't be the worst thing And now, you know When that does happen, I now have the knowledge and the tools to kind of know what to do Or at least an approach of things to try and something we've worked through rather than just having an oh crap moment What do I do? Yeah Yeah, well well said. Well, thank you Matt for for sharing anything else you want to say in close You know, I think I think you know, especially for somebody who's been in the same boat as me where you may be going through that rough patch And you're just searching for any type of inspiration if you're going and Like I'm just here to say, you know, keep with it keep trying Because you're not alone a lot of people have dealt with this and and I've seen it firsthand and I've been fortunate enough to kind of learn that advice of sticking with it and keep keep educating yourself keep learning and Good things happen as a result. Awesome. Awesome. That's a great closing point. So thank you again, Matt For sharing that with us and congratulations on your newfound health. Okay. Thank you so much