 Hey everyone, this is Dr. Ruchio. I'm here with George and Rose, and George has had some help with reading Healthy Good Healthy You and also using our elemental diet amongst other things. Not fully to where he'd like to be, but definitely making some steps on the road to recovery and he was kind enough to share his experience with us today. George, hi. Thanks for sharing your story. Hi, Dr. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about the road to now. Well, I've kind of had a lot of troubles with my stomach. It seems I've struggled with it. It seems like my whole life I've had heartburn problems and I've been on all sorts of medications for that. I've been taking a call that it was maybe six years ago where it was discovered that I had Lyme disease and through that I figured out how to eat properly and change my diet and knew, you know, how important that the gut was to your health. It seems that though I haven't been able to get better and recently I found out that I've got C. diff. So now I'm struggling with C. diff and clearing that out and that's where my wife found your book and, you know, we've read through your book and I've been using your elemental diet and it has been a lifesaver for me. I mean, it truly feels so good in my gut when I get it in there. It's amazing. I've actually been on it now for probably over three months. Now, I'm assuming you're kind of doing a mix and match where you're having some food and some elemental. I've been trying to mix in food but with the C. diff it kind of hasn't been allowing me. So even I've been on pretty much the elemental diet for that amount of time. I've been trying to throw in baby food as much as I can but not having much success. So right now I'm on my third round of antibiotic treatments and starting to kind of have some success where I've started to eat some food but I still have to have those diets to get me through and to get calories in me. Gotcha. So if not for the elemental, really nothing does not go right through you. Yeah. Yeah. With severe stomach cramps and stomach pain and then I mean everything that comes with it. Sure. Sure. And are you using probiotics in conjunction with this? Yes, I have been. We also came across Michelle Moore. I think her information in regards to C. diff and what to use and I was using a lot of her protocols for it all in conjunction with the antibiotics. I mean I believe in herbal medicines and all that also. Sure. But I was on her stuff for about four months and was still having problems and still tested positive. So that's kind of why I'm now back to my third round of treatment and still just trying to get my gut and intestine right. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well I'm not sure if you've heard of the discussions that we've had on the podcast before or just one of your doctors have made you aware of an option to consider down the line once you've exhausted antibiotic therapy, it could be a fecal transplant. Is this something you've heard of? Oh yeah, yeah. We're taking all the steps to get there but we have to do the protocols. Yep. Yes, it's been kind of, I mean that would have been my first go to to be honest with you. I don't have any problem with that but the insurance has a different plan. So right they can do all this first and then they reserve that for the last treatment. Sure. Well if I fail after this third antibiotic round then I'm allowed to go in and do that which I don't understand or why but you know. Now you had been using antibiotics I'm assuming historically somewhat regularly for the line. Is that what you think led up to this position? I think that's what you picked it up. Yeah. Yep. Now were you using probiotics at the same time you were using antibiotics historically during the line treatment? On and off not regularly and definitely not the last the last few years not enough for sure. Okay. Okay. All right. And you tried all three of the probiotics that I recommend in conjunction? No. I have not tried your antibiotics yet. I was working with the mega spores from Ms. Moore's program. Okay. So that's definitely something I would try. He's using all three of the probiotics in conjunction that may be enough to kind of tip you over the edge to where you'll start to see some of the benefit that you're hoping to see and that you haven't seen yet from just one probiotic. It's not a guarantee but there are certainly cases and some of which we've documented here on the program of people who have otherwise been non-responsive to other therapies including probiotics and when finally going on all three in conjunction they saw some significant improvement. And you could almost think of this to pay a loose analogy. You probably started off with one antibiotic and now they may be using a cocktail of multiple antibiotics for the C. diff. It's a similar sort of track for the probiotics where one, and the analogy we use here is if you have a stool like you would sit on, the probiotics are trying to support balance in that ecosystem in your gut. And what you don't want is the ecosystem to fall over into imbalance. So a one-legged stool is somewhat conducive to balance but it's wobbly. But the three different types of probiotics together are more conducive to supporting balance in that ecosystem in your gut. So something to talk with your doctor about and consider incorporating into the current treatment plan that you have for your C. diff. Well, I want to do those while I'm doing the antibiotic treatment. Would I want to start those afterwards or what would I want to be putting those in? This is definitely something I want to run by your doctor first. However, there is a fair amount of evidence showing that when probiotics are taken conjunctively with antibiotics, they actually increase the clearance rate of a given infection. This has been documented for H. pylori. It's been documented for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It's been documented for certain fungal infections. I'm not sure if this has been studied in C. diff specifically or if it has, I haven't seen any of those studies. But there seems to be this general trend that antibiotics and probiotics work synergistically, which makes sense when we understand that probiotics actually exert antibacterial action. So again, clear this with your doctor, but certainly the majority of the data thus far suggests that the probiotics will potentiate the ability of the antibiotics to clear out an infection and re-establish balance in your ecosystem and reduce some of the side effects that can be associated with antibiotics also. Okay, so elemental heal has been helpful, but clearly here we see elemental dieting almost as a rescue therapy, which certainly sometimes we need a rescue therapy, so totally fine. But now we need other supports to, in this case, really get the C. diff under control. And it sounds like hopefully with this recent antibiotic cocktail you're making some headway, I'm hopeful that by the addition of the additional probiotics, again, clear that with your local treating doctor, that that may be able to get you over the edge into where your gut ecosystem balance is out. But as you already know, FMT is something that has been shown to be very helpful for those who are otherwise non-responsive. Yeah. So again, another question I had for you is, as I'm coming off my elemental diet, what diet should I introduce back, you know, with the foods back into? Should I be looking at it like a low-fibre diet? I mean, I'm not too familiar with all the technology or terminology, but... Sure. That's a great question. You know, if the food reactivity from the C. diff is so severe, it may be really hard to get a read on what diet works best for you, because you may notice you just react to anything across the board. Now that being said, there are some diets that we know tend to be helpful for those with sensitive digestion. One is your kind of traditional elimination diet, like I talk about in the book, a paleo-type diet or your standard kind of elimination of kind of provocating inflammatory foods. Another could be low-fob map. And you may want to go to the paleo plus low-fob map and start with kind of the most restrictive diet since you're coming from a very sensitive place, and then over time try to broaden your diet. There's different approaches with how we can tackle this. In many cases, I recommend people kind of start working their way up that dietary pyramid from the least restrictive diet to the bottom, and then if they don't respond to those, they move up to the more restrictive diets. But since you're coming from a really sensitive, reactive place, you may want to start with the most restrictive to try to get as much benefit out of the gate as possible and then move down the pyramid and broaden over time. So the paleo-low-fob map or even the low-fob map with SCD, and we do have a diet pyramid in the book that lays all this out, that might be the best place to start, and then incorporate some elemental diet meal replacements as part of your transition back to food, so you don't go from all elemental to all food. And then over time, gradually try to expand down the dietary pyramid to more of a paleo or just a low-fob map and try to scale back the amount of elemental healing that you're using. Awesome. All right, so your midstream, would you please let us know how the rest of the path goes? I'd love to kind of follow up with you, post, to discuss and share with our audience what's worked for you. Yeah, yep, yep, we'll do, yep, and I'll work on those probiotics, and yeah. Awesome. And is there anything else that you want to share with people, anything else that you've picked up through reading the book, or through using the elemental heal? No, not right now, no. Okay, well I'm glad the elemental heal is providing you some relief, because right now I think any relief you can get is a huge win, all right, and you're still working the problem of how to get your gut back into balance, and hopefully what we've discussed today will help you, but again, please do keep us posted, and thank you so much for sharing your story. Great, thank you so much, Dr. Thanks, Dr. Rochia.