Finding Fascinating Videos

In the beginning of this disease, the first couple of years were depressing as I was fighting to reclaim my life. However, during this time, I was able to accomplish many things which I’m deeply grateful for. I received a terminal degree (PhD) and had three more pregnancies. Unfortunately, I lost a child. The miscarriage occurred very close to the time I took the injection to manage my inflammation. I found prior to this pregnancy, that it was difficult to get pregnant while on this medication. So while it was very heart wrenching to lose a baby, I was thankful for my two babies that made it. The fact that I would get ill more frequently while on the medication made me think twice about what it was doing to my body.  While I understood that all medications have side effects, it was conflicting cause I felt so much better when I was taking the medication. So how was this damaging my body? 

In 2020, I had my youngest child. He was born with a birth defect and this was certainly in the fine lines of the side effects in this medication I was administering. I was upset and realized I needed another option. I just was not certain what that actually would be at the time. My pregnancy with my youngest was the easiest on my body. I gained 0 weight and he was born a healthy 6lb baby. I believe God knew I would need the energy the next few years. That was truly a blessing! Our youngest would need extensive care and medical attention. Thankfully he is three now and we could put that past us! 

By then, I was taking the medication once a month even though it was technically supposed to be a weekly prescription. I can’t imagine what state my body would be in if I had taken it more frequently as prescribed. 

 It was April 2024,  I was losing hope. My medication I had been taking was becoming increasingly more expensive and really wasn’t working as effectively as it used to. Unless you had commercial insurance, you had to pay a pretty penny. At the end of May 2023, my rheumatologist wrote me a letter releasing me as a patient and that is when I really took a look at what my next steps would be. I knew something had to change. I had just had a baby two years prior and my thoughts raced as I asked myself: What if I could not care for him? What if I could not do the everyday tasks for him? This was devastating to me and I was afraid. I knew from the beginning of my journey that the pain could get severe without medication. I had tried several different health diets but nothing seemed to work. One of the most frustrating life experiences I’ve been through.

Then one beautiful sunny morning my whole household was sick. Fortunately, I was the last one to get it. We went through a series of sicknesses and we all took antibiotics to get through it. It was horrible however, this led me to what I am about to reveal. I was not eating because my appetite had decreased severely. Sick, tired, and bored, I started scrolling through YouTube to in hopes to find something uplifting. I came across a video channel @gabiafterhours where Matt Fradd interviewed Gabriel Castillo. At the end of this video they spoke about the interview Gabriel facilitated with Tammy and Jordan Peterson. What stood out to me was their discussion of the carnivore diet Tammy was on. If you do not know Tammy Peterson you can look her up. She survived a rare fatal form of kidney cancer in, 2019. Doctors gave her 10 months to live and said the cancer had a 0% survival rate. However, she survived and credits her recovery to prayer and a change in diet! This along with her daughter's (Mikhaila Peterson Fuller) story intruiged me tremendously!  In my next post I will reveal the videos and explain how I started this healthy diet that has changed my life. I will also post reference videos on my website. 

Doing the research

So, as you might have guessed, I started the Carnivore diet! What did I have to lose, right? I did not want to continue taking the meds and I no longer had a rheumatologist.  It was a surprisingly simple transition at first. When I was sick, I was eating next to nothing so eating animal products seemed easy. After watching several videos. I decided to take the plunge. Mikhaila Peterson’s ‘Don’t eat that,’ youtube video, is one you can look up. I will also list links in my web page titled “healing journey”. Weeks went by and I started feeling better. However, my muscles started aching at night. I did more research and talked to some friends that were also on the diet. I concluded that I had an electrolyte imbalance. I decided to buy LMNT which is an electrolyte drink. I was also drinking water with electrolytes and Ionized alkaline. Which I found out was not good for me. Plain natural spring water (i.e., mountain valley, ozarka, and arrowhead spring water) is the best. After a couple more weeks, still nothing really changed and the pain at night was getting worse. I took Ibuprofen and Tylenol but the pain persisted. One objective I had was to eliminate or decrease the amount of over the counter (otc) meds. I knew this was harming my body. For May and June, I kept up with a Carnivore diet which consisted of animal products, water, and salt. However, the pain was not going away and I was getting discouraged. Then after research and more videos  I decided to get more strict and start the Lion’s Diet which consisted of ruminant meat, salt and water. I started this in July, 2024. The Lion’s diet wasn’t terrible–I enjoy eating ribeyes! However, the muscle pain and fatigue continued and I could not stay off of OTC’s (ibuprofen and Tylenol). I noticed that my bowel movements were loose and according to experts like Dr. Ken Berry, Paul Saladino, and Anthony Chaffee, I was either eating too much fat or my body was not digesting the fat I was consuming properly. I thought maybe it could be my gallbladder because I had mine removed in 2005. I found out now I needed this organ to create bile. This made me feel helpless. Then one day I was scrolling through the many Facebook carnivore support groups, and I ran into a post by a young man (David Shims) that said he reversed his Crohn's disease with the carnivore diet. . A lot of his testimony made sense to me, especially the part where he said not to take supplements. In the last part of his post he mentions to ‘dm’ him with any questions so I thought “What the heck, why not?”. My initial question was about supplements. At this point, I had bought

Magnesium, potassium, D3, K2, for my muscle aches and grass fed gallbladder, ox bile and liver to help with digestion. David Shims (you can look him up and read his posts on facebook) advised strongly against any supplements. Wow! I still have all the supplements I bought in my cabinet. I did not take any of them for long if at all. And this began the most difficult part of my journey so far. After a talk with him and explaining what was happening, he said I needed to get adapted to fat. I don’t know why I trusted this gentleman; it could be that he gave all the glory to God and said he couldn’t have done it without Him. This intrigued me because all this time my family had been praying for healing. It was so difficult for my family to see me go through this. I also prayed daily for healing.

 I believe the biggest takeaway from all this is everyone is different and just because it worked for one person, it may not work for you. It’s best to research as much as possible and adjust things as you go. And if you are not the research type, hire someone to help you. This is what I ended up doing. I’ll tell you more about this later.

So David Shims advised that I get fat adapted and with this I would have to keep track of my ketones and eat next to nothing. This was called the paleo ketogenic diet. Hang in there with me. I switched a few times but animal based diet was always my base diet. In the next post I can tell you all the things I’ve adjusted, including more than just my diet. 

Back to the basics

t was important to add some of the skills I had learned in school. Some of the basic therapeutic skills I implemented were; journaling, balancing my circadian rhythm, and meditation. Funny, as a therapist, you recommend clients to practice these skills therapeutically and somehow I had forgotten how beneficial it would be for me. It had been a while since I practiced “grounding”; sitting outside in the sun in the early morning was very helpful. My stress and how I dealt with stress needed attention. Surrendering my health to God was helpful but it took a lot to get there. I also started going to retreats for myself once or twice a year. As a therapist, I came to realize that I needed to care for myself especially because sometimes you fail to put yourself first.

David was tough but he had great empathy and that’s what I needed to keep going when I wanted to give up. I had to adjust the type of water I drank and everyday products I used such as: laundry detergent, toothpaste, shampoo, dish soap, and lotion. Not to mention my makeup and cleaners.

The month of August was somewhat of a blur and things got worse before they got better. I was eating bone marrow, liver, very little ground beef and water (i.e.,46g of fat and 23g of protein for each meal twice a day). I also had to buy a keto- mojo (i.e.,a glucose and ketone meter), to keep up with my ketones. During this time I lost 20 lbs and I was only 120 when I started! I kept this diet up for six weeks. I was getting weak and my hair started to fall out. All this made my family and I nervous!

I decided to book an appointment with Zsofia Clemens, who runs a clinic in Australia named “Paleomedicina”. I’ve listed her on my webpage. At this point I could not lift my son or change his diapers. This was sad and depressing. Especially when I updated David about how I was doing. He would say, “you are really sick and it will take some time to heal from all the junk you put into your body” (i.e.,medication, junk food, etc.). If it was not for my faith in God and the support of my family I don’t know if I could have done it. There were times that my family did not understand. How could they?  Not even I understood what was going on inside my body. This was the loneliest time in my life. I spent days in bed resting. I started journaling and going outside in the mornings. I kept hearing David’s voice saying, “relax and let your body heal”. I have to admit after a couple of weeks of this I just could not help getting uptight about this whole thing!!

The virtual appointment with Zsofia Clemens went well but she didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know. Dr. Clemens said,  “eat more meat”! So I was frustrated and after consulting with David he advised me to do more research and do what was best for my body. I started to eat Lion’s again and ate more meat. I did not go back to the paleo ketogenic diet ( PKD) or Zsofia Clemens.  I started eating 2lbs of meat and made sure it was 80/20. Eighty percent fat and twenty percent meat. I made sure to salt my food to taste. This helped although my hair was still falling out! I did notice this time around my bowels were much better and I could ingest tons of fat with no problem. One of the positive results was I was now fat adapted! I was still having muscle fatigue. So I kept searching. Through the internet I ran into another Carnivore guru. Dr. Elizabeth Bright studied osteopathy and naturopathy. She also had experience with hormones and the carnivore diet. My appointment with her was months out so I just stuck with Lions until November. It was mid-September at this point and November seemed a long ways away. I decided to look at a local functional medicine doctor to see if I could get him to run some blood work. At this point I was looking at any deficiencies. Which, I thought I had because of the muscle fatigue and hair loss. The functional medicine doctor ran some tests but wanted me to start eating vegetables immediately. I was not interested in adding vegetables when I went all this time decreasing carbs by eliminating fruits,vegetables and grains. Why would I back track?! So I took the blood work and tried to make sense of it. It was very difficult for me to find a medical doctor that supported this woe, let alone write a requisition for the blood work I asked for. I will describe later how I got around this. Dr. Bright requested blood work and pictures,  in addition to two thorough questionnaires. This seemed promising yet it was a long ways away. A few days before I went to get my blood drawn, I decided to do a 48 hour fast. This was horrible! My body did enter autophagy. Autophagy is where the body goes through degradation and recycling of cellular components. The first panel of blood work I took was right after this fast and it threw the numbers off a bit. I found out later by Dr. Bright, that I was starving myself and this was increasing my cortisol levels. Not the best idea I had through my journey. Dr. Bright was certainly going to put some pieces to the puzzle together for me.

Getting answers

For six weeks, I stayed on a strict Lion’s diet. Eating nothing but ribeyes, water, and a very little amount of salt. Thankfully, it was getting easier to make meals for my family again. In the beginning, cooking was a terrible temptation to cheat. I have always tasted my food while cooking for my family. Well, I couldn’t do this anymore and this kept me from cooking. My virtual  appointment with Dr. Bright was in the early morning because she resides in Italy and we had an eight hour time difference. I sent her pictures of most of my joints and facial features. The blood work included a metabolic panel, lipid panel, along with a HDL and LDL. There were more tests she needed, but because there was no communication with her beforehand, I had no idea of the specific tests. After review of my questionnaires, she started with my pressing question about my hair falling out. She quickly told me this was a thyroid issue. After telling her about my autoimmune disease and the medication I took for 14 years, she said she was certain it was hypothyroidism. She said I probably had this illness since adolescence. I was taken back. I would have never thought it would be my thyroid. I was certain she was correct. I had read her first book, Good fat is good for women and found plenty of interviews of some of the doctors also invested in the carnivore diet. She said that heightened cortisol levels, usually increased by trauma, could be the cause of my autoimmune disease. This made sense so far. She wanted me to take another panel of blood work. My free t3 and t4, anti-thyroid-peroxidase, anti-thyroglobulin, and an adrenal saliva test. This would confirm her prognosis. She said after increasing my fat intake and taking a thyroid supplement this would help with my symptoms. How exciting! She fortunately has a wealth of information and sees self-pay patients from anywhere around the world. 

This is where I describe how hard it was to get the blood work and also the treatment prescription she wanted me to take. Most people have family practitioners and some of these practitioners will write requisitions for blood work, but I didn’t have a family doctor. Even if you have a doctor, some will not fill a requisition for the specific free t3 test you need. I was fortunate to have a shared policy (not insurance) that allows you to use an independent lab facility and request the exact tests I needed. I found there are also other independent facilities that will do this in each state.

After confirming my new diagnosis, which did show my free t3 was low, I needed to get an MD to write a script for NP, a pig’s thyroid supplement. She told me she could write it, but it was going to come internationally and it would take a few weeks. Wow! I felt desperate! I called a couple of my health care colleagues and finally figured I would go to a minute clinic and show them the blood work and hopefully they would prescribe it so I could start taking the thyroid supplement. 

It had to be the grace of God that I found someone that would trust that I was telling him the truth about my international doctor and script. He prescribed the supplement! I got a 90-day supply’s worth. Yes, this was interesting! It was a supplement that needed to be prescribed but was not a pharmaceutical. I took it immediately and it, for one, definitely gave me more energy. My hair wasn’t falling out as much with the supplement. My muscle cramps and energy improved. The holidays were coming and, while I was excited about this, trying to stay away from all the delicious food that comes with Thanksgiving and Christmas was going to be a challenge! 

Where I'm so far

Where I'm at so far.

The tricky part of this WOE is that just like prescription drugs, if you feel good your mind tricks you into thinking if there is no pain, I am better and I can cheat here and there. That’s not true. It will keep you from healing completely. If you do happen to cheat like I did. It’s ok but get back on track quickly and keep going. It may take a long time to heal your body so don’t get discouraged. I have to admit I still get discouraged but quickly bounce out of it and keep going. For most of us with severe issues we have no other choice if we want to stay away from pharmaceuticals. I had to ask myself, “did I want to manage my illness or get rid of it!?”

My next appointment was months off and Dr. Bright wrote me a precise protocol that I was to follow. She wanted to see if my adrenals or cortisol levels were low and this would help determine if I needed an adrenal supplement. The amount of information she gave me was overwhelming but at least I could put a name on the issue and start from there. The adrenal test was a home kit and I had to take samples of my saliva and send them in to get evaluated. I had a slightly low level at night so until I see her again I’m taking an adrenal cortex extract supplement, she advised I take. I found the supplement on Amazon.

Anyways, this is as far as I’ve gotten and in April it will  be a year that I have not administered any pharmaceuticals. I’d say that’s pretty awesome myself.

Thank you for taking the time to read my journey. My hope is that whoever was called to read this took something with them.  I feel much healthier in all aspects of my life. I’ve taken my life back and no longer have to be dependent on a drug that will only manage my pain. Took lots of hard work and dedication to get here but if I can do it anyone can. With God's help of course! I will send an update as things progress. Until then if you have any questions or if I can help at all please reach out to me. You can dm me or email my confidential email.

So far this last month I have had several prospect and former clients that have had struggles with rare illnesses and/or hitting a dead end road. Either with diet plans or giving in to pharmaceuticals. Paying it forward is how I like to put it. I will put my energy into helping those that seek my help.