 Hey everyone, this is Dr. Ruscio. I'm here with Kachina who has been able to improve her health thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, because if you've been suffering with health stuff like I had at one point, like Kachina was at one point, it's so nice to be able to improve your symptoms. And she's here today to kind of share her story with us. So Kachina, thank you so much for the willingness to be open and use your story to help give other people hope and hopefully some instruction for how they can navigate through not feeling well. Of course, yeah. I'm glad to be here because it's been a long road, honestly. Yeah, the road often is. Tell us a little bit about the road. What were your symptoms? What were maybe some of the things you had tried prior or doctors you had seen? So I've never really seen a doctor. When I was 18, I went into massage school. And while I was in massage school, we had, I can't remember exactly what the class was called. It's been a long time ago. But it was, he was a chiropractor. And I think it was called touch for health. And I remember one day coming into, I had, I hadn't had any kind of gut problems. And I think this started with some food poisoning. Because then I went into class and one day I just could not, I couldn't, I couldn't even get out of my chair. And so I would lay down in the back of the class and listen to this chiropractor. And he's like, what is going on with you? I said, I don't know. And so he started muscle testing me for different foods. And sorry, really quick, was this because of digestive symptoms you were having, bloating, pain? Yeah, major bloating, terrible, terrible pain. I've never experienced that before. I just, it was just awful. And so he did some manual muscle testing and asking my body what was going on. And so he'd, he'd found through that that like onions and garlic were kind of a culprit. And that orange juice was terrible. And I have not drank orange juice since because every time, well, I haven't, I shouldn't say that. I've tried it a couple of times and it just tears me up. I can't drink it. It hurts my stomach. I get bloated, pain, stuff like that. So that was when I was 18. And I, he just kind of mentioned that I might have some irritable bowel syndrome stuff, but I've never actually been formally diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. And so I've just been living with all this stuff, basically my whole life, and just kind of saying, okay, what do I, you know, do I stay away from garlic? Do I stay away from onions? And it's just been this process. And I am 46 now. And so over half my life, I've been having these issues. And probably about five or six years ago, I ran across some leaky gut stuff that Dr. Axe was doing. And so I started taking some probiotics of his, which, you know, it helped, but it wasn't, it wasn't really, it wasn't a cure. You know, and I was really hoping that I would find something that would be just be done. I would be done with doing all these, having all these horrible pains. So I started doing probiotics. I never did go to the doctor for it because I didn't know what they could do for me anyway, because I'd always heard that IBS was, I mean, it was something that you kind of had to live with. And the other thing is that I had also heard that, you know, antibiotics are so hard on the gut. And I didn't really want to do that, you know, for these other things. And so I just, I have been just playing my own, not playing, but just going my own way. I just, I haven't really done anything for it because I just didn't know what to do. And then probably about two years ago, I had seen you on the SOS digestion with Siobhan, and you're talking about the elemental heal. And I just thought, oh, well, that's interesting, you know, I'll have to kind of give that some thought. And then last summer, when I would start my menstrual cycle, my cramping would actually flare at my IBS so bad that I looked like I was about five months pregnant, and just having terrible pains and all these things. And I would actually have to miss it at least one day of work, because it was just so terrible. And I just thought, you know what, I'm going to give your stuff a try. So I did, and I used it for, I think the first 14 days. I was supplementing the chocolate one for just a meal. Did you do 14 days exclusive or were you kind of doing some whole foods in there also? I was still eating, I was just supplementing the elemental heal for my breakfast. Gotcha. So I did it 14 days in a row. And I started feeling a little bit better. And I just thought, okay, well, we'll see how this goes. The next month, I started the elemental heal before I started my menstrual cycle. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm not I'm having my own cramping, but it wasn't flaring up my IBS, right at all. And so I had done that for the next couple of months, and it stopped. And I was to the point, honestly, that I went to my gynecologist and said, you need to give me hysterectomy because I cannot take this anymore. And then I started doing your elemental heal and he had ran into me into the hospital, probably like a month or two later, and he says, Hey, he says, I haven't seen you. Are we still on for that? Or what do you want to do? And I said, you know what? I have to tell you, I got my gut back on track and I haven't had those terrible pains. I said, No, I'm not taking that out. I am not having hysterectomy. So it's been a life changer, honestly. Awesome. Awesome. Well, yeah, anytime we can save someone from the surgery, that's of course, a huge win. And then also, the day to day quality of life improvement that you'll see by not having these symptoms interfering with with things. Obviously, another huge win. And a couple of things just to kind of touch on there from your your history. Food poisoning is known to be an initiating factor in IVS. That's something that was really one of the most, I think, novel findings from Dr. Pimentel at Cedars. So we know that's one fact that kind of tip you over into IVS. And then unless you do the right thing is to try to repair your gut or get the microbiota back to balance or help with inflammation, there's multiple mechanisms that will likely rectify once your symptoms improve, which is why I look at symptoms as such a chief aim. And so in this case, we had the first domino that fell, the IVS, which again, we know that can lead to IVS, the food poisoning. But also something else that you said is such a common observation that I even wrote about it in Healthy Gut, Healthy You, which is a book dedicated to gut health, but there's this tangential section on female hormones, because so often there's this interplay and this bi-directional feedback between the gut and the female hormones and vice versa. And you'll often see exactly what you described, which is some of these premenstrual pains or swelling that tend to get better when someone improves their gut health and does nothing else. Now, there are some herbs like our astro-harmony and progest harmony that can help if a woman only sees partial improvement in those female hormone symptoms and needs another little push. Your case is a beautiful example of how, again, always thinking through things in this kind of pyramid model, where we start with the most foundational layers, give the body some time and then reassess. So in your case, there wasn't a need to layer in additional supports. It seems like the elemental heal was enough to starve what I'm assuming was some kind of bacterial overgrowth or imbalance, potentially also a fungal overgrowth and imbalance, likely some inflammation. The inflammation makes you hypersensitive to gas pressure that all causes this feeling of bloating and pain. So it's just fantastic to see how a simple intervention of the elemental diet was really able to move the needle for you. And there's something else there that I think is really worth repeating, which is you only used it to replace breakfast. And this touches on another concept that I've tried to share with the audience repeatedly, which is we want to be evidence-based, look to the science, yes, but not be evidence limited, meaning if the elemental diet, let's say for IVS, has been used in the application of two weeks of your only nutrition, meaning it's exclusively liquid, it doesn't mean that's the only way that we can use it. It just means that a group of researchers use it in this application, they documented improvements, but a clinician can modify and loosen up some of those boundaries so as to make it more doable outside of a research setting. So in your case, I'm assuming it would have been a much harder sell if we said two weeks, nothing but liquid nutrition. But if we said, hey, why don't you replace breakfast with a shake, much more doable. And in your case, that was enough to get you devoid of symptoms. And I'm really glad that you found that information regarding the elemental dieting because I'm sure you would agree, much easier to get you over the hump to replacing breakfast than replacing all of your food. I totally agree. And honestly, I was at the point that I was going to have surgery. That's how terrible it was. I couldn't function. And so once I found that, and it seriously changed my life. Awesome. Awesome. I'm so, so grateful that you've come up with this product. In fact, I'm drinking on this morning. So great, great. Yeah, I usually try to drink it twice, at least twice a week just to kind of help me, you know, maintain some stuff. So either two or three times a week, I drink this elemental heal. So great, great. Awesome. Well, I mean, it's just wonderful for me here again as someone who had really bad fatigue, mood dips and food reactive brain fog way back when just knowing how a day you could be feeling great. And then all of a sudden, you feel terrible and how no amount of money can be assigned to the value of getting out of feeling terrible and just being able to feel normal. So I'm obviously thrilled, they're feeling so much better. And some of the details of your case, I think are really good lessons for our audience to learn from. We don't have to be dogmatic or super strict in how we use elemental heal and remember the connection between female hormones and your gut health. And that's a good place to start with your gut. Sometimes a female hormone needs some additional support, but you're a great example of how just getting that inflammation down likely improve both some of the pain associated with your sensitivity that can occur as your hormone skew. But also the bacteria in the gut help to detoxify astrogens. And so that's another mechanism by which multifold improvements can be experienced just by rectifying and balancing your gut health. So just a fantastic story. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to share with people as we kind of move to a close? You know, if you think that you should try it, just give it a try. I was at that point, I was so desperate. I mean, what do I have to lose, honestly. And I have nothing to lose. And so, oh, and the other thing I do take that I really have enjoyed is your other product is the intestinal repair formula. I think that's been helpful as well. Now, did you layer that in afterwards or was there a kind of sequencing first elemental and then you started with the intestinal? Nope, I actually got both of them. I read up on your intestinal repair formula and just thought, you know what, what I'm just going to try both of them and see how it works. And I've just been so I take that intestinal repair formula in the morning every day. And then, yeah, like I said, I drink the shakes like two to three times a week. And then when I'm really stressed out, I usually try to drink more of the elemental heel just because I'm hoping that that will help too with all my stressing out and my gut and things like that. So, perfect, perfect. And another important concept there, which is sometimes with issues that are internal, we tend to beat ourselves up more psychologically. If we have a flare, something's wrong with me. Oh my goodness. I always like to parallel this to something like an ankle sprain, where if you were overdoing it after you sprained your ankle, and you had a little bit of soreness, you take it a little bit easy. And you wouldn't really think, oh my God, something is deeply wrong with me. But for some reason, these gut issues, and maybe because they're truly at the core of us, they tend to mess with people's minds a little bit. But I just think it's really worth repeating that if you're stressed, or maybe if you're traveling or eating some bad food, not abnormal to feel like things regress a little bit doesn't mean anything's wrong or broken. So we shall be careful not to frame it as such. And just knowing a simple therapy you can do to improve your status like using more elementary heel is almost like taking some time off the ankle or doing some mobility work or what have you. So it doesn't mean anything is wrong or broken. We're just learning how to optimize your system and how to offset for some of the knocks that life can give you when you get off of kind of your your ideal routine. Yeah, completely agree. Awesome. Well, great stuff. Thank you so much. And I'm thrilled to heal here. Excuse me that you're feeling so much better. So just awesome stuff all around. Thank you so much for creating that. I really appreciate it. You're very welcome. All right. Take care. You too. Bye bye.