 Hi, everyone, this is Dr. Ruscio. I am here with Jen, who has had some nice results with Elemental Heal, and she was kind enough to share her story. So, Jen, I'm really excited to hearing more about your journey. Great, thank you. So, I don't know a ton about your case, and I try to leave these questions for us to go through in this conversation, but tell us a little bit about the road up to Elemental Heal. Your symptoms, maybe you've seen some doctors, maybe you've tried some diets. Tell us a little bit about what was going on up until now. So, for over a year, I had just had symptoms that continued to get worse and worse. I had been dealing with extreme belching, extreme stomach, just a distended stomach. I always felt like I was full, so I was never hungry, but I knew that I was having trouble eating pretty much right before I started Elemental Heal. I couldn't eat anything without having some kind of symptom. I had tried the low bottom-up diet, elimination diets. I had been through extensive testing with my gastro-specialist, and I had just finished a colonoscopy and some biopsies with no results that were helpful. Nobody knew what was wrong, and I said to my doctor, have you heard of SIBO? And he said yes, and we discussed it and decided that I would pursue antibiotics, but my insurance would not cover them. So, because I had spent such a long time trying to heal myself and try other methods, I chose to do some research and then I found Elemental Heal. I was pretty miserable by the time I wasn't sleeping because of the symptoms and I was having trouble working and thinking, so. So, not a very, unfortunately, not a very uncommon story where on the one hand, some good things. You had any major pathologies ruled out by your gastro and your conventional doctors, which I think everyone should, and just to maybe reiterate this for people, my position has always been, you should have at least one doctor on each side of the fence because while there is some overlap in the Venn diagram, there's also differences in what we're looking for. So, I was to make sure, in case there was any kind of major potentially threatening pathology present, you had that ruled out. So, okay, we can kind of check that, which is good on the one hand and frustrating on the other because it leaves the person saying, well, what do I do? And then you also try some diets. Low Fobbit is a great initial diet to try along with an elimination. So, those are both very intelligent first dietary steps to go through. So, you really have had done, I think, a kind of A-plus job on the way up to this point. And I also don't blame you for feeling a little bit miserable because when you're doing this stuff, seeing doctors and changing your diet and not feeling any better, it can be really frustrating. I'm glad that you are all about the potential of SIBO or some type of disruption of the flora in the gut. And Rhafaxin or Zyfaxin is definitely approved to help with IVS. So, that's definitely an option. But unfortunately, as you mentioned, for some people, it's really a battle with their insurance to obtain coverage. And this is where I think probiotics have a lot of potential utility because we haven't done the analysis yet, but I'm fairly certain that we do a cost analysis comparing the facts when the probiotics will find the probiotics are vastly cheaper as one option or the elemental diet as another option. The nice thing about the elemental is it can really do fairly rapid relief and symptoms. Not to say it's the best option, but it may be one of the more expeditious. Is that what you noticed? Was there a fairly quick response in terms of your symptoms? Yes, I would say within, definitely by the third day, my quality of life had completely flipped around where it was pretty, it was, if on a scale of one to a hundred, it probably was at a five and then it was up to 95. And to your point, I think the elemental diet and all the other things that I had tried, for me, I had been spending so much money on food and testing that it just, I really felt like I was out of options and I was willing to just drink liquid. So you have to be, I think, ready to do that too, but I was at a place where I was ready to do it, to do it consistently. So yes, my symptoms were, I would say they improved after just a day, but almost all of them were drastically improved by the third day. Okay, so yeah, and so again, that expeditious response. Was it difficult for you to do? One of the things I'd love for you to speak to, and there's no right or wrong answer here, I'm not trying to lead you in one direction, but one of the things people will read about online, depending on where they start their meeting with the elemental diet, there's some more data literature that, or opinions that elemental diets taste terrible, which is true based upon the early formulas, the newer formulas like the elemental heel line has said some major revisions in terms of flavor profile. So what did you think about taste? How difficult was it to do? And how do those other aspects feel for the person who may be saying, oh my gosh, exclusive liquid nutrition, that sounds really hard? Yeah, it was hard, but so I'm still using it, but for the first, I took it for 17 days, only that. And I just played around with ratios, so ice cubes, and do I wanna use a third, two thirds cup liquid or a half a cup or a full cup? I purchased the vanilla and the chocolate. I think the taste is fine. I had no problem tolerating the taste for the elemental heel formula. And I was really happy because I had read so many stories about diets like that, tasting really bad. So that was also important to me when I was doing my research and trying to figure out what diet I wanted to choose. I knew that I felt I would have a better shot if it was getting good reviews taste wise than it was. Sure, sure. So you've done it, you did it for 17 days exclusively and have you gone through the food reintroduction yet or what does that look like? Actually, did I say seven, was it 17 days? I think I'm wrong about that. It was just over, I think it was just over two weeks that I did it exclusively. Yes, so then I did reach out to your health coach and scheduled an appointment because I knew that I had to figure out how to reintroduce food and I was really nervous about that. To answer your question, yes, I have been introducing very, very slowly the three probiotics and then just reintroducing food. And I've learned the hard way from my moments of weakness that things, I guess things that I don't tolerate or how important it's been for me to introduce like one ingredient at a time so that I can really be a good detective and figure out what my body's responding to and what it doesn't like and what it can tolerate. Good, well, I'm glad that you're gonna be working with one of our health coaches. One of the reasons why I think that the health coaching is such a nice compliment to something like doing a reset with elemental heal is because from there, you're kind of back into the wilderness of, oh my gosh, all these various bands on the internet and it can be very hard to know, well, what is the best way to kind of parse through all these kind of opinions and really lay them out in a way where we're going to go with the steps that seem to be the most science-based rather than, as you may have heard, my criticism that there's a lot of conjecture on the internet and I'm sure most of the conjecture is well-intentioned but we should take opinions, filter the opinion through a filter of science and then on the other side, we retain hopefully the best recommendations which doesn't always seem to happen in the field and that can lead to consumers being really confused in terms of what to do because the recommendations that they get aren't all passed through that filter. So some of the recommendations may be sound, others may be really not very well-bedded. It's very hard for the consumer to know which one is which, which one do I do and that's where the health coaching can really be helpful. Yes, I wanted to, I didn't wanna walk right back into the place that I had been prior to elemental heal. I needed a plan and I wanted some support. Probiotics are definitely a great addition because those can, presumably, and this has been partially demonstrated, the best model that has demonstrated this is probiotics allowing those with lactose intolerance to have a better tolerance for redirection of dairy and there was one study that found that those who were non-seriac gluten sensitive who went on a gluten-free diet actually had a better symptomatic improvement when they also had probiotics on board at the same time. So the probiotics will definitely help you and the other thing that I'm confident our health coach will help imbue is not a fearful perspective regarding food which is another thing that's so easy to kind of slip into which is reading about all the foods that can be bad, carbs, oxalates, FODMAP, salicylates, all these things and it can be very confusing and people can start to take six different diets and try to follow all those rules at the same time and you feel like they've kind of shrunken their life into this carrots and turkey kind of diet which that's a little more extreme than we have to go. So that's why I'm really glad that you're on board with the health coach show. She can really help you through these next few steps. And have you started the reintroduction? So you're already kind of exploring a little bit into the reintroduction? Yep, about every 72 hours I'm reintroducing a food. I'm still staying away from dairy and one of my slip-up was that I let myself have a piece of dark chocolate and I was miserable. But the thing about Elemental Heal was that it really did help me feel like I was starting with a clean slate. So I got my quality of life back. I got some hope. I was sleeping better. So that gave me energy to keep, I know that I'm not finished yet but it gave me the energy I needed to continue to figure out this food situation for myself. Absolutely, absolutely good. So I think you're on a really good path right now. Just a few things maybe to throw out there and you probably already know this but just to make sure I put them on the board here. Look at those reintroduction as opportunities to learn. Sometimes I think we can be quick to beat ourselves up. And it's all about how we kind of frame this but okay, maybe right now chocolate and or maybe the dairy and the chocolate is a trigger for you. And it's frustrating on the surface but we can file that away as okay, here's the list of foods I'm gonna be cautious with. Come back to those a little bit later and I'm sure as you continue working through the food list you'll find many foods are okay and there'll be that small column of foods that seem to flare you which as you continue on your journey that small list of foods should get smaller and smaller as your gut heals the same thing that I went through. I used to have problems with beef, eggs, spinach, all these foods and every few months those intolerances really started to drop off. So just kind of keep that in mind that whatever your reactions are on day one or day five may not be the same a few months later so that you kind of keep that overarching philosophy of healing, I'm getting better and I'm going to consciously kind of trying to keep expanding the boundaries of my diet over time. Yeah, thank you for saying that, that helps. Good, good. Okay, was there anything else that you wanna share with people? I think just I know that if you are miserable it can be very difficult to figure out what works and maybe even to trust reviews but I wrote a pretty lengthy review because I just felt compelled to help other people. I'm truly grateful and honestly I think that it has a ripple effect. So your quality of life may improve with Al-Nel Heal but the quality of life of the people who love you also improves. I'm a vice president of an educational program so I'm able to do my work in the world that I was really struggling with. So I think it's important. Yeah, and I'm grateful. Yeah, well thank you and I'm so glad to hear that and I couldn't agree with what you said more and that's one of the facets of the work that we do that makes me so proud of the impact that we're having in the world is that knowing there's all these people out there who are presidents, vice presidents, mothers, fathers, you know, they're functioning in their lives like you said and they're showing up with more energy, vitality, happier mood, more energy and that has a big impact on how you're impacting all those people in your life and that's very important. So I'm glad you made that point. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Well awesome, I'm thrilled that you're doing better. Please keep us posted and I'm very confident that the road ahead for you will be a steady trend line upward. There may be a few bumps in the road that's just part of being human and not being a machine but I think you're on a really excellent path and I'm super happy to hear it. Thank you so much, I appreciate your time. Thank you.