 One of the things that has surprised me the most as I historically went through my process of trying to find the solution to my GI problems Was how often you can see someone who's an expert and they can be very confident about their diagnosis and treatment And yet they can still be very wrong Now in this video, I want to share a bit about my personal story of how I came to Finding and getting treated by traditional Chinese medicine doctors When I had already seen most of the people that I should have seen in the conventional biomedical space I had seen my physician and specialist, etc. I want to share a bit about my experience and the results I had and what eventually led me to continue to be interested in Chinese medicine Hey guys, Alex Hine author of the book master of the day now, you know for me where everything began Was as a kid. I was always very thin. I was very underweight I really struggled with digestive problems, especially and for me honestly I would have a bowel movement maybe once every three days sometimes four or five seven days I didn't really think about it that much because I just didn't really talk about it with anybody And I thought it was kind of convenient actually. I was like, oh, I have to go to the bathroom every day Like I see everybody else But in my late teens or so when I was in college I noticed more and more discomfort from the days when I would not have a bowel movement I'd feel pressure a little bit of bloating and It just I started not to feel good, right? I mean 19 years of Constipation basically make anyone not feel good So it started by me trying out a bunch of things on my own and when those didn't work I went to my general practitioner the physician and he said, you know to try to increase fiber and just see how that goes No results. He referred me to a nutritionist nutritionist was a great very sweet woman very knowledgeable She also advised me to increase fiber So I already had a healthy diet and I just started pouring brand fiber on top of my oatmeal in the morning because again Her philosophy was that I had slow bowel transit. So what I needed was just more fiber Well, that gave me really really bad abdominal pain and bloating where I couldn't sleep at night So she referred me to the GI specialist The GI specialist said, you know, he palpated my abdomen for two minutes and was like Sounds like IBS so literally in under a five minute chat, he booked me for a colonoscopy and Honestly, he was at that point where I was a little bit Disheartened I was like number one. I'm not dying. I don't have ulcerative colitis. I'm not bleeding I don't like there's no acute threat to my life or my health besides this annoying problem And I'm eating healthy. I was raised in a healthy eating family. I don't know what it is But because everyone was looking at it from a mechanical standpoint, right? Everyone was just saying like no one asked me any other questions about my life. Are you stressed? Are you overworking? How's your sleep? No one asked me any of those questions. Do you feel anxious? Like what's going on? Everyone just was like diet. Okay mechanical approach I took the GI specialist advice, but then I later canceled my colonoscopy and I never went to a doctor again for my digestive problems So flash forward about six years In those six years, I tried every Therapy imaginable every intervening year, right? I would be good for a few weeks and then something would happen and I'd get constipated for like five days And I'd be so miserable or in such bad discomfort that I would like buy ten books on from GI specialists or Nutritionists and I would try all those diets right order all these weird supplements. I would order hundreds of dollars of supplements and They were worthless the thing that helped me the most was the specific carbohydrate diet now So I found one solution and I relied on that SCD diet for on and off for ten years From my early 20s until almost 30 Now as time went on over and over and over It was interesting that the SCD diet made me feel good But I lost a lot of weight because it's basically no carbs So I'm already an underweight guy historically my whole life SCD makes me amazing with digestion But I just cannot satisfy my hunger now because I feel like I'm always hungry not eating any carbs And I was also going to the gym four or five days a week So at least I had one solution a temporary solution was that diet. It was a godsend and Then I had a friend who had Crohn's disease that was really severe and already in his 20s Physicians wanted to resect his bowel and possibly give him a colostomy bag so he saw this Chinese medicine doctor that was recommended to him and He said that it helped him make some breakthroughs and even though it didn't cure him. It was the best results He had gotten so he went to see this doctor and he referred me the you know the doctor's information now I saw this doctor and Actually the very first herbal formula he gave me those 30 days I had the best most normal bowel function in 29 years of my life 28 years. I was 28 or 29 So that blew my mind because first of all if this guy could do that so easily and Even my physician and specialists couldn't What the hell was I doing going to the doctor? It just made no sense to me that no one knew that this was an option No one knew that this alternative worked so well Now that Chinese medicine doctor had a fully packed clinic hundred patients a week Booked out for months at a time. I mean he got people undeniable clinical results and it just piqued my interest And so I offered to pay him. I said hey, can I just pay you one day a week to pick your brain about Chinese medicine? I'm now. I'm really intrigued and He said you know what? Why don't you just come work here for a few hours a day because you own your own business If you want to go into this field you'll learn the things you don't like Which is like the phone and front desk stuff and we could also just talk about Chinese medicine all day long So that's what I did. I worked there for a year I continued to build my business and work part-time in the evening hours And we would just discuss and learn I would just learn, you know at the feet of this mentor About what Chinese medicine really was and how it worked and why no other Physicians and no other really specialists and practitioners these highly educated credentialed people They just thought Chinese medicine was a bunch of bullshit and yet here I was and thousands of patients getting better results and leaving the conventional medical system So all I cared about was getting better, right? I couldn't have cared less about the philosophy of Chinese medicine alternative versus conventional medicine I didn't care. I just wanted to get better and get the therapy. That was the best long-term fix for me Now this experience, you know later Obviously now I'm wrapping up a doctorate in Chinese medicine and I can even treat myself with formulas and things like that And I don't really have any digestive problems after 30 years And it taught me a few key lessons that I think will help you if you're going through something very similar in your life the first key lesson is that Your intuition is something you should really take seriously when it comes to illness if you've gone to your physician You've done the conventional therapy, but your intuition says I should look for an alternative Look for an alternative Listen to it. Your physician might not support that but you should take your physician's advice and See an alternative. The second thing it taught me about is The danger of experts and authority because every physician I saw they were all good people I still like them as humans, but none of their advice helped and they were all very confident that they were right But they were wrong and so at the end of the day let results be your guidepost You may have the most highly trained Harvard specialist in whatever But if the results aren't coming that you want Maybe it's time to see somebody else and the last thing is to really understand that you are your own doctor You are the person that eventually Primarily and eventually heals yourself So you need to be proactive in trying out the things and documenting the results you get or don't get I mean I have an Evernote document. That's probably 60 pages long every intervention I tried and the results I got from my digestion if you really want to get better take it seriously You need to be the problem solver and not relying on everyone else outside of you Take their advice But you need to be problem-solving in your own time and then be honest with whoever you're working with So I hope that helps you guys obviously this completely changed my life. I mean Life-long digestive problems to no digestive problems and understanding that there's a real alternative to the the mainstream medical system Or a compliment to the mainstream medical system And I would obviously advise people to get the best of both worlds for whatever you're getting seen for All right, so I hope my story helps a little bit And if you want I have related videos on this exact topic and a bit more on my story right there and right there