 Hey, everyone. This is Dr. Ruscio. I am here actually with a childhood friend of mine who I haven't spoken to in maybe 15 years, Randy Arthur, who I was really pleased to see that we had this scheduled because you had stumbled across Elemental Heel and it had helped you with some gut stomp that you had going on. And I was like, wow, Randy, I haven't talked to Randy since we were running around as kids in the backyard playing soccer probably when I was about 13 years old. So, hi. Nice to see you. Absolutely great catching up. And it's kind of an important thing that I'd like to share too that I think it's important for people to know just from my personal story and what I've kind of been through dealing with Lyme and then the after effects from a lot of the medicines. I wasn't always exactly open to kind of trying alternative things and things outside, I guess, what would be the standard medical path. And I think because I knew you and because we had been friends for so long, it kind of gave me a faith to do that and encourage to do that. I'm very glad I did because I've had a lot of success with Elemental Heel and I certainly have passed it on to others that have had some more experiences to me. But anything that I could do to kind of help get the word out there, let people know about my particular story because if it's beneficial to them, the way that it's helped and improve my life, definitely like to get that out there. Yeah. Well, let's give people some of the back. So I know the short snippet I read in the write-up was Lyme, a decent amount of antibiotics associated with that treatment of course. And then your guts seem to go a little bit sideways, but give us some of the back story. Yeah, absolutely. So I unfortunately, and it's hard to believe, but went undiagnosed for a very long time with Lyme. So I was having a lot of side effects as far as inflammation, which has kind of been the general theme to everything I've experienced in a lot of issues with GI, which kind of got exacerbated by the fact that I was on heavy doses of antibiotics, also heavy doses of antivirals for a long time. And while one treatment was kind of helping in some regards with dealing with the symptoms of the Lyme, it left me pretty torn up from the GI perspective. They tried a lot of different things as far as medications to help with that, also specific diets, removing things, looking if there was some sort of an allergen that was causing that that really wasn't the case. And then just trying different, the low-fob mount diets and different forms of paleo and different things, which I had some mild success with, but that's when I came across Elemental Heal. And I started looking into using your product as a replacement for a full Elemental Diet, because I'll be the first one to disclose I'm not the best eater in the world. So it was kind of easy. And I think what made it even easier was especially the chocolate shakes were very good, which made it good to do a quick gut reset. I tried that for the three days. And I couldn't believe kind of just from the start, some of the initial transformations. I know it's not one of the things that you guys probably advertised the most, but the energy, having a four-year-old son at home and what a difference that made with being able to keep up with him. And as I started to feel better, being able to get back into routinely exercising, not that it was the same when we were 11 or so, but playing soccer again with a group of guys, it's just kind of improved the overall quality of life. But the biggest thing that I've noticed is kind of my dietary habits as I cycle on and off of that. I just don't have the flare ups anymore. None of the gas that came with it that I'm sure everybody is glad is gone, you know, the constant belching. And then mostly when I wake up in the morning, you know, my throat's not on fire. I don't have that lump feeling in my throat anymore. I don't deal with that. And I can't say I haven't fully come off it. I still do take it once or sometimes twice a day. It's kind of like a replacement shaker after a workout or something, but knock on wood to this point. I just haven't had those same experiences and it's worked better for me than any of the PPIs or the alternative treatments I've tried. Great. That's awesome to hear. And do you feel like the gut symptoms were longstanding? Do you feel that they were kind of provoked by the antibiotics? Prior to even when I had the treatment for Lyme, they were trying to find out what was wrong. I did some other treatments. I did the breath test and they diagnosed me with SIBO. And I did quite a few rounds of xifaxin, which is an antibiotic for that, which would be helpful, but it was always for such a limited time. It was almost like I was on a window after 12 weeks of being off of it. My symptoms would immediately return. It didn't matter what I ate or kind of how I dieted, not to take away from it. You know, 12 weeks of relief is still great when you're not feeling well, but it's certainly not something that you can just continue to stay on. And then over time, unfortunately, it's not as effective. Or at least in my case, it wasn't. Whereas with this, you know, I haven't gone out as far as I had, you know, cycled on and off of that antibiotic. But so far to date, luckily, I've had a lot more success with it being sustainable. Yeah. And you make a couple of really good points. And you're not alone in this kind of cohort of patients who respond to xifaxin for a temporary period. And to your point, great, right? They're seeing some improvement. But then they kind of backslide. And this is one of the things we try to offer people a few different types of supports, probiotics as one that can be helpful. And elemental dieting is another, and I'd much rather someone do another round of probiotics or this kind of periodic low-level elemental dieting like you're doing, rather than just repeat, you know, refaxin or xifaxin. And there are studies showing safety and tolerability of repeats xifaxin or refaxin. But still, I like the idea of elemental dieting better than just antibiotic round every, you know, four months or so. No, I definitely agree. And I think the biggest advantage of it is you don't have the highs and lows either, you know, because when they're coming off and you're going on to the antibiotics, and, you know, also the side effects of that aren't always pleasant at first, even though it starts to work. So, you know, depending on what works best for the person, I definitely think that I've had more benefit from this diet. Right. Right. And so energy better, the kind of gird, burning the throat better, some belching of, it was also some abdominal pain that you said was occurring? Yeah, I had a little bit. It's more so I would constantly, even when they did like the barium swallow test, my esophagus would never empty. It was always, you know, having continually presence of that in there or something being left. A lot of it is, and just in general, whenever I go to the doctor, regardless of what the situation is for, the common theme is always you have an abnormal amount of inflammation. It's like, great, I know that. But what do we do about it? And basically, sort of being on high doses of prednisone, nothing has really given me relief. That's not something, obviously, that's sustainable. So just trying to find the right diets and modifying exercise routine and trying to live cleanly as best you can. I think that, you know, to a certain point, you realize that, you know, especially after you've had Lyme, you're probably never going to be exactly the way you once were. But that doesn't mean you can't have quality of life. And it doesn't mean, you know, that you can't have improvements. And I think my biggest thing was trying to fight the inflammation and the joint issues and the ligament issues while also simultaneously dealing with horrible reflux was almost like a lethal combination to just get rid of the reflux side of the house and only deal with the other, you know, and moderate, you know, sustainability. I think it's probably, you know, as best as it's going to get for me. But it's a lot, lot better than it was for sure. That's great. And there is research to back this up. And you may have seen some of this Randy in some of your reading, but for joint pain for RA, specifically rheumatoid arthritis, there was one trial that found that elemental dieting was as effective as corticosteroids. And there's been a couple of studies that have found elemental diets can be helpful with this kind of upper GI reflux and or GERD in really elimination diets tend to be helpful for that also. And then a number of studies, not that you have this, but a number of studies in inflammatory bowel disease, which is a hallmark by obviously inflammation that have shown really nice improvements in that. So, you know, that's, that's great. This is a nice anti-inflammatory intervention. It's non-drug, which, you know, is always a win, at least from my vantage point. And I like how you fall into this kind of intermittent use. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Because that's one thing that people sometimes think, well, there was a study in SIBO that was two weeks exclusive. So it's either that or nothing. And one of the things I'm trying to bring to the forefront is it doesn't have to be quite that prescriptive. Yeah, I guess, you know, I shouldn't say that I just kind of made up my own book as how I was going to use it, because I definitely kind of did some reading on your site and talked a lot about it with my doctor. And the idea was to see how my body reacted to it first and kind of do that quick two, three day gut reset and see if I had any improvements. Because obviously, if you're not improving, there's no point, you know, continuing to go on. It can take certainly others longer time to see advantages or, you know, to benefits from, you know, a diet, especially. But like I said, the thing that really amazed me is within, I would say, probably two days, I noticed immediate difference, which was huge for me, because especially as we talked about going on and off cycles and medicine for long periods of time, not really seeing a drastic improvement. I think that kind of told me that I was going down the right avenue and, you know, following the right course. And to answer your question is kind of intermittently or being off. One, I mean, for me personally, it doesn't bother me. I know a lot of people have problem digesting it. But if you take that chocolate shake and you put a tablespoon of almond butter in it, I mean, it's basically like drinking a peanut butter cup. It's pretty great. So that kind of makes it easy. The energy that it kind of gives me is told because I don't drink coffee anymore, which I used to do a lot of, which just reflux is a bad habit, not really the best of choices, at least for me anyway. So I find that, you know, having one in the morning is a good way to start the day off. It gives me energy from my exercise cycle around lunchtime. And that works out. If I did flare back up again, or had symptoms, I don't think I would, you know, hesitate to do another three day reset, just because like I said, I saw the benefits of that. So soon it's kind of been sustained. But I think for me anyway, you know, one or even two a day, depending on, you know, how things are going, feeling as a substitute have been very helpful. And it's kind of just an ongoing thing for me. It's certainly not anything that I would say was a hard change, only because again, I'm a picky eater, but it's something that I enjoy, but definitely the benefits of it have worked out very well. Awesome. And also just for our audience, there is some good two to three year longer term data with this sort of what they term in the research literature hybrid use where you have some elemental meal replacement shakes and some whole foods. Mainly this comes from a cohort of research in Crohn's disease children. And they've documented that the control meaning they're not doing anything versus those doing the elemental diets have better outcomes, better symptoms, even better growth. So this is definitely something that has a fair, you know, bit of information or evidence showing that this kind of replaced one or two meals per day is actually something that can be done in the longer term safely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm still trying to work with a paleo diet outside of that, just as I had had some benefit from it. I think in combination, the two are the right fit for me, but definitely it's not an all one or other situation where I have to have it three times a day for the rest of my life. But definitely I think that's something that works for me. Yeah. So it's a nice support to have when you need it. Yeah. So I mean, great. This is exactly what I would hope someone would find in terms of the use of the elemental diet. I'm glad it worked for you. I'm glad you like the taste. And I'm glad that we're seeing that nice anti-inflammatory benefit. Anything else you want to share with people? I know. Like I said, I just really thought it was important because I went through probably longer of a period than need be. And I wish I had found something like this sooner without having taken a lot of medications that probably weren't entirely necessary. But unfortunately, it's not a perfect science. We got to try and diagnose and figure these things out. But I think it's amazing and really good about the product and the reason that I had sent the email one to thank you and obviously to get back in touch. But two, there's so much information out there overload with supplements, and especially I mean, even if you're on Facebook or any social media, you see all these wonder drugs, they're going to do all these things. And some of it is just not backed and it's hard to find facts or information. And that's what I thought was really helpful when I checked out your site and I kind of did some research before taking it. There was a lot of beneficial information that was just kind of based on common sense approach. This wasn't going to be a miracle cure that was just driven from nowhere and no one knew about it or some secret herb from the rainforest. Exactly, right? But it just made sense. And along with the dieting that I had, it felt like just a healthier lifestyle and alternative choice to make. And it's really benefited me. I think anyone that really does deal with inflammation in any regard or excessive inflammation, because it can cause so many different things, I would definitely recommend trying this, especially if your doctor supported it the way that mine did. Because I think the benefits can far outweigh long-term cycles of things that just might not do anything for you, but have a lot of negative effects at your health as well. Awesome. Well said. I'm glad that you had a doctor also to his or her credit that was supportive and not kind of combative, because that makes it harder for people who are trying to integrate other therapies into the conventional model if there's not at least a degree of open-mindedness. Sure, we want to filter out the quackery. I totally agree with that, but we should maintain some porosity in that filter too. So Randy, I mean, great story, super happy to reconnect with you. Obviously, we'll have to catch up more after the recording here, but just really appreciative of you being willing to share your story, because these really do help a lot of people. And for anyone out there who's dealing with something similar, consider ElementalHeal. And again, Randy, thanks for sharing and so happy to hear that you're feeling better. Yeah, no, thank you for the great product and I appreciate your time today. 100%. Take care, bud.