If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump! Mind pump! With your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. This guest we found actually through someone else.  We've mentioned his book, 12 Rules for Life a few times. And so I was going through his videos and then I saw an interview where he was on, it looked like it was a TV show. Like a Canadian news channel or something. And he was on there with his daughter. Now he had referenced his daughter in one of his lectures and apparently in his lecture he talked about how challenging her life was early on. I guess she had some health issues and stuff and that was all he had said. So then when I saw this interview with him and his daughter who now at this point was an adult, I was very interested because obviously we're a fitness and health podcast so I wanted to see what this was all about. And she shared this just incredibly compelling story of how she treated severe autoimmune issues where her rheumatoid arthritis was so bad and they didn't know what the cause was but she ended up finding out what the cause was herself. But they didn't know what the cause was. She had to get an ankle replacement and a hip replacement at the age of 17. She'd been on antidepressants since she was 12. Horrible crushing fatigue and the crazy part about this, I mean that alone is compelling. Her dad is a clinical psychologist who's also a bit of a celebrity. How did they deal with all that? And then you got the fact that she has depression that runs in the family, not just her. Severe. Her dad and her grandfather. She, through nutrition and through diet, was able to solve much of her health issues, everything from the depression to the rheumatism in her joints. I mean, just an incredible story. So I saw this video of her and I'm like, I want to talk to her because of her, the fact that she's indirectly in the Western medicine field because I know how Western medicine can be about this kind of stuff. You talk to a psychologist about treating or working on depression with diet and nobody wants to talk about that. It's actually like a third rail almost or it has no effect. You go to a dermatologist to talk about your skin. Nutrition has no effect. You talk to an autoimmune doctor about treating your autoimmune issues with diet. Nope, it doesn't have an effect. So I'm like, this is very interesting. And yet you see what it did for her. And it also reminds me a lot of Dr. Terry Walls and what she went through. It's a very similar type of a story. And it's through nutrition she was able to heal herself. It's so great. So it's a really compelling story. We had a very good time talking to her. We think you're going to enjoy it. I also want to mention that this month we are giving away free access to our private forum. All you have to do to get that is enroll in any of our maps bundles. If you're not going to enroll in the bundle, you're going to tell everybody what maps read basically is for maps green and maps black. I always get that. What exactly is it? If you want to build just strength and muscle, that's maps and a balik. If you want to sculpt your body and you're relatively experienced or you want to compete on stage, that's maps aesthetic. If you want athletic performance, well, that's maps performance. And if you have any joint pain or issues with movement, that's maps prime and maps prime pro. And we have bundles that combine most of those together and discounts them. And if you do a bundle, of course, you get free access to the forum. Those you can find at mindpumpmedia.com. Now, without any further ado, here is Michaela Peterson. By the way, she writes a blog where she talks about this whole process. You can find it at MichaelaPetersen.com. Now, Michaela is spelled M-I-K-H-A-I-L-A and then Peterson. So MichaelaPetersen.com. And you can also find her on Instagram at MichaelaPetersen. So again, here we are talking to Michaela Peterson. I found you because, so first I found your dad, Jordan Peterson. I watched an interview he did, the one that blew up everywhere. And then I listened to his 12 rules lecture that he did. I think it was in the UK. And in there, he talked about you and then how you had some health issues growing up. It was very, very brief. And then I found a video with you and him talking about how nutrition, how you use nutrition to basically heal yourself. And it was absolutely fascinating. As soon as I heard it, I came over here, I put it on the TV and I showed these guys because I thought it was just such a compelling story. And we talk a lot, obviously our show is a health and fitness based one. And we talk a lot about it and how food and nutrition can affect most aspects of life. We've experienced this just through training people. We've worked with people for 15 to 20 years. And to hear someone like yourself having gone through what you did and then having worked with nutrition to solve some of that stuff was just, and with your background, because you have an app.  I mean, just absolutely fascinating. So if you wouldn't mind starting from the beginning of, you know, when you were a kid and how your, your, what happened with your health and just start from there and then we'll take it from there. So when I was, when my parents noticed maybe problems when I was two, they put me on their shoulders. And then when they put me down, I'd cry and sit down. So they figured looking back that I had hip issues then. But when we moved, dad taught at Harvard and when we moved from Boston to Toronto, I started getting like slow walking up and down the stairs one foot at a time, crying, like just not being a happy kid anymore. And they figured maybe it was the move that had done it. But I started lagging behind getting slower and slower. And eventually I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which they later changed to idiopathic arthritis because I don't have the blood markers. So how did they determine that it was arthritis? If it was idiopathic was just from symptoms? Yeah. So I had like minor, minor joint swelling. So it was hard to catch, but the joint swelling was there. But I ended up being diagnosed with 37 active joints and I was in grade two. Wow. Yeah. So that was really not good. Do you remember that back then? It's kind of hard when you're a kid because parts of going to the doctor is still like novel and fun. So yeah, I remember it, but I didn't know what arthritis was or how awful it is. I just thought, okay, well, that's what I have. That doesn't seem so bad because I didn't know any different. And I kind of avoided, I guess, as a kid, avoided most of the activities that caused pain. So if I had my big toe was really affected, my right big toe. So whenever I had a flare up, I'd just stop doing things to avoid the pain. So it wasn't sad as a kid. Like being diagnosed with a health problem later is much more heartbreaking than as a child. You just don't know what's going on. That's so true. When you see little kids all the time, like I used to train a lot of surgeons and one of them used to work on children. And he would tell me after doing a procedure on a kid how adults with the same procedure would be in bed for three days, but the kid would get up and play around. Maybe they didn't know what was going on or didn't perceive it the same. Didn't know any difference. When did it actually change for you? When did that transition happen where it went from something like it wasn't that big of a deal to something now all of a sudden probably felt like a... It was weird. When I was a kid, I didn't want to... When I was first diagnosed, I didn't care if anybody knew. And then when I was in grade five, for some reason it changed and I think I became more aware that it was bad. And so then I didn't want anybody to know. And then in grade seven, I decided I didn't care again. And I guess it changed... Oh, you know what happened? My symptoms, I went on serious immune suppressants and they actually got rid of all my symptoms. And a percentage of children with arthritis grow out of it during puberty. So I went on the immune suppressants and I went through puberty and my symptoms went away and the doctors were hopeful that it had disappeared. And then in grade... So that was like grade eight and then in grade 10, I had like an elbow. My elbows started hurting and I went to the doctor and they were like, oh, it's in your elbow and they're very casual about it. But it's like, oh, surprise, it's not gone.  And that's when it got to me psychologically. Because I had, I guess I'd gotten hopeful that it was gone and that it was back and I was old enough to realize that wasn't good. And I also started... So I guess one of the other health problems. And the one that's probably... It's hard to say, but it's probably affected me more was like severe depression, which seems to run in my family to some degree. My dad has it and my grandpa has it and my great-grandpa had it. And so that got significantly worse around grade 10 as well. So that probably contributed to the arthritis psychologically affecting me more. Were there other things going on in your life besides just that that may be contributing to that when you look back? Not really. Like, I mean, I was a teenager and I just started drinking and everything. Which is normal. Boyfriends and heartbreak and all that. So yeah, there were ups and downs, but no, there wasn't anything else. That was just age or something. Now you've had some joint replacements. Did those happen around that time or were there before? No. So that was 17. So my arthritis, the immune suppressants seemed to be controlling my arthritis. And then I'd have minor flare-ups. But then when I was 16, like my hip started getting really stiff and we went to the doctor. They did an MRI and said, oh, by the time you're 30, you're going to need a hip replacement, which was crushing. And then my hip got so bad in the next three months that I needed a hip replacement right then. So when we're not entirely sure what happened, it was like, my rheumatologist had been working with kids for 25 years and I was the second kid that needed a joint replacement as a teenager and the only kid that needed two. So it was like, that was not common and all she did was deal with kids with arthritis. Wow, so you had hip and then what was the other joint? Ankle. Ankle, wow. And at this point, did you get the depression before that or was it part of that period? No, so the depression hit around grade four. That's when it started to get bad. Now what was it like for parents listening if they have a young kid? Because I have two kids. I have a 12-year-old and an adult is probably better equipped to articulate what's going on. Like, what is that like? How do you express that as a kid? So for me, I was angry, really angry and I was a really happy kid. I was watching videos of family videos that my dad had converted to digital the other day and I was really, really smiley up until I was five or six and then at the same time as we moved, I got tired, sad, weepy and then by the time it was, so that was about grade one and then by the time I was in grade four, I was just angry and my dad had recently figured out that he had depression so he was more attuned to it but anger was the main. I think you can kind of tell with kids because, oh, how can you tell? I used to play with my friends, I guess, and then if they did something really small, I'd get really mad and it was evident enough that I started to notice things like slamming doors, being angry for no reason. It was anger, I guess. It's going to be hard to tell with a kid. It is. Were you self-aware enough to be like, hey, something's not right? Yeah. So grade five, it took a while but grade five, I got into a fight with one of my friends and I was so mad and I came inside after that and I couldn't calm down and I was like, nothing really happened. It was some ball game and someone didn't play by one of the rules or something for like half a minute and I was so mad and I came inside and thought I can't calm down. This is weird, but that was all. Were you getting any treatment at this? Because you're on the immunosuppressive drugs and I ran around this time too. Were you on medications for depression as well? Not yet. So that summer, that was grade five. That summer I went on antidepressants and like I mentioned this in a different podcast but my dad got quite a bit of flak for... You probably saw the YouTube video that we did. It was called Digesting Depression and it was how food has affected us mentally but he got some flak for that because he mentioned that I'd been put on antidepressants as a child and they were like, how could you do that to a child? But I was so unhappy. It probably made a difference, I'm assuming. Oh, it did. Oh, it made a huge difference. Again, I didn't know... It's hard as a kid to tell but yeah, the first thing that happened is I got put on them and then I relaxed like my whole body relaxed and I slept for like two days and then I was on them and yeah, I wasn't angry anymore. It was a definite improvement. I don't know how I would have survived through my teenage years without the antidepressants. It's obviously... I'm not on them now because I've figured out the food problems which is significantly better than being on them but there wasn't an option then. We didn't know about the food thing so antidepressants weren't necessary. What does it feel like? Is it like a numb kind of a feeling as far as like you don't really have as high highs or low as lows? Just being on the antidepressants. Yeah, so when I first started figuring out food I'd have some really severe reactions and I'd go back on the antidepressants for about three weeks just to get through the reaction and when I went back on them that's what it felt like. It cut out the bottom but it would dampen down the top. So once I started recovering from the food reaction and started getting the highs again if I stayed on the antidepressants it would dampen it down. But when I was a teenager and needed them I wouldn't be able to get to the highs anyway so all they did was cut out the bottom hellish area. Yeah, I do want to say this. I think it's... people have a tough time understanding because depression... that kind of depression can be quite crippling and medications can many times especially SSRIs which I'm assuming is probably the one that you're on can make quite a bit of difference to a person. So it's easy to be on... there's usually two camps with those, right?  Yeah. So you do the antidepressants then you're on immunosuppressant drugs.  You do the two joint replacements in the same year. Yeah, so it was May and then November. Wow. It was a really bad year. Yeah, how did you handle that? I was on oxycontin for that year. Who? Yeah, and which was also necessary because I couldn't walk. Like, it was weird. So September, they told me I was going to need a hip replacement by the time I was 35 and then I was playing hockey in January and on the court something happened, like my hip just... something happens, it's stuck or something and after that it was... I needed the replacement and so by the time like... what happened... oh yeah, so then January is continuing and I'm starting not to be able to sleep at night so it wasn't like I couldn't get into a position where it didn't hurt so then I'm not sleeping. So my grandpa came to visit and gave me Tylenol 3 for his back and so I slept a little bit and then we went back to sick kids and said you know, she needs a hip replacement she needs some pain medication and my rheumatologist had had a bad experience putting a kid on narcotics like an addictive experience so she was like, well, have you tried aspirin? Like Tylenol, I was like Tylenol? I need a hip replacement. If Tylenol fixed my problem I wouldn't need a hip replacement so that was not useful but I ended up finding a doctor and he was brave enough I would say to give me the medication I needed and OxyContin was just awful too but it's weird it doesn't really get rid of the pain it just makes you not care about it it's just strange but I mean... I've heard people say that before Yeah, it's weird so it was still horrible and being on OxyContin was horrible but it was necessary and the OxyContin was so strong that I needed to take I ended up taking Ritalin so that I wouldn't pass out from the OxyContin this was a really bad year I couldn't go to school This is 17-18, is that where you're at? Yeah, so I'm 17 in this, yeah so that was bad but luckily I ended up getting off of it and it wasn't disastrous getting off of it I think because I had been taking so much for the pain it was such a horrible experience that I didn't want it anymore at all so I didn't have any problems with it and it was extremely helpful it would have been better just to avoid the whole joint replacement thing in the first place but the OxyContin was helpful too Going through all this what kind of kid are you in high school? and what's your relationship like with friends and are you social? are you introverted at school? what's going through school for you? or what's going through school? I was definitely not introverted I was extroverted, I had lots of friends I went to parties obviously the OxyContin year it was a little harder to party you're already partying you're on a constant partying I somehow saved up $50,000 by selling it yeah exactly but no it was normal school was normal I was tired so one of the other health problems that I guess is on a lower category than the crippling depression and crippling arthritis was serious fatigue so around grade 10 things seemed to take a dip in grade 10 for depression, arthritis and then I started getting some other symptoms but fatigue was one of them so I think the only thing that was particularly strange about me in high school was I'd fall asleep during the second period at 11-ish every day and by the time I was in grade 12 it was so bad that I was just skipping second period and sleeping so that was probably strange but other than that, no were you still managing a decent GPA or how were your grades? yeah yeah yeah high school wasn't hard oh wow yeah that was high school it's crazy you say that so nonchalant but to be going through everything you're growing for me it was okay I went to an art school I don't know if that was easier or not yeah I never had any trouble with school obviously when you're on OxyContin I had trouble with school I couldn't think at all I couldn't remember like just to give an example I got my weirdly enough I got my motorcycle license that year because I couldn't walk and my parents got me a Vespa which was like a life saver so I needed to pass the motorcycle exam and I already had my driver's license which is just that like written test but for various reasons I got my M1 which is the first stage of the motorcycle license and then finished the motorcycle course and then didn't hand it in on time so I needed to redo the M1 and that was after the hip replacement and I was on so much OxyContin that the multiple choice questions I'd read the question and then read the answers and by the time I got to D I couldn't remember the question it was so bad yeah so you're doing the you did the immunosuppressive drugs you got the joint replacements the antidepressants Ritalin to stay awake OxyContin for the pain when does this all when do you start to figure things out for yourself or start to are you trying alternative things during the whole period of time as well well my mom was always trying alternative things so but she was trying everything and there's so many wrong paths you can do with alternative I guess medicine that we went down a number of them like I wanted to see natural paths we tried eliminating certain things like I went on a no sugar diet I went on a no dairy diet I went on a Candida diet we tried like muscle weakness tests we tried a whole bunch of real wacky things any success with any of them no nothing the only thing that did make a difference is I had a flare in grade 2 a really bad one after I started eating clementines and we didn't know what was going on my mom was freaking out and one of my parents friends said well did she start eating anything new and it was like oh yeah I should just ate this box of clementines so we cut out that and then from then on I avoided oranges because I knew oranges gave me a flare but we didn't look into any other foods for some reason mostly because we couldn't find a pattern we couldn't like we hadn't noticed any difference cutting out sugar didn't seem to work so I started actually experimenting with trying to fix things when I was 22 which is after I went to university and I gained a bunch of weight in the first couple of years and I got significantly worse in every way enough that I was like I can't this is bad and I can't keep living like this so I got super desperate you felt like you reached a breaking point? yeah it was like I had severe depression I had these two joint replacements and then I was on medication for arthritis and then I started getting oh and I was couldn't stay awake because by the time I got to university the fatigue was extremely bad like 17, 18 hours of sleep a day bad holy cow yeah I was just asleep all the time and then I was itchy that hit when I was about 14 to grade 10 so like I was itchy all the time and then it got to my skin so I started getting breakouts and like rashes and I thought okay I already have like okay crippling depression getting arthritis I've seemed to be able to manage so far but I can't handle like anything look wise deteriorating on top of that I was like that's too many things and I'd gained weight and I was just like I can't I can't do that it was too many things yeah so what did you look at what did you start doing at first that started working I guess well nothing started working I oh the doctor who had given me oxycontin I had convinced to give me Adderall so that I could stay awake and I ended up going to see a sleep doctor and he confirmed yeah she needs some sort of amphetamine in order to sleep stay awake because she has idiopathic hypersomnia so like another idiopathic thing everything's idiopathic yeah which like I know that's why I'm going to you I'm trying to figure out what it is how frustrating is that for you seeing specialists after specialists after doctor after doctor and feeling like oh it's awful because you always get hopeful right you're like oh I've heard really good things about this specialist he'll know something and then he just says the same thing that everyone else has said and it's like telling me I have like even the term idiopathic arthritis it's like you go to see a doctor because you have idiopathic arthritis and then they tell you that's what you have and you're like that's why I came in that's the problem here did you ever snap did you ever come include on any of the doctors because of things like this no it was more just like I just I don't go I don't go anymore yeah so I never snap because most of the time they're trying to help are you ever asking yourself like what is the depression from or is it more just you're trying to deal with it are you ever trying to like dig into it like is this caused by something yeah all the time okay I mean I figured out how to avoid it so it's not here anymore but there is there's something there's something missing still but being able to avoid it is good enough for now I've been looking into like we've looked into vitamin deficiencies like bacterial infections like fungal infections there's some sort of genetic component probably but there's so many options and all of them seem plausible and none of them are testable while the vitamin deficiency thing is but that doesn't seem to be right either so yeah we're trying to figure out the root cause but tell me how you're avoiding it right now I'm only eating meat yeah let's talk about that so when did you start to figure out things that worked in terms of diet like how did that what did that look like at first so I started researching with the Adderall I managed to stay awake long enough to actually like look into some things and I started researching these skin rashes I was getting and it took me like a year and a half of Googling the most random things and seeing a whole bunch of horrifying pictures on Google and I finally found the rash that looked like my rash and it was a celiac gluten caused rash and so I went to the dermatologist I was seeing and I was saying oh my god I think that's the problem and he literally laughed at me and I was like I'm dying here and you laughed at me so I didn't go back to see him but so I cut out gluten like that day after reading that article because I thought okay so say I have I also did 23 and me and the celiac gene showed up there so I was like okay say this whole thing has been celiac disease you can get arthritis from celiac disease maybe that's my problem so I cut out gluten completely and honestly didn't see much of a difference but I was still sure that that was part of the problem so that was May or June 2015 and then September my mom brought me to a naturopath and she said try an elimination diet she gave me this list of foods that was just a random list of foods to eat and I thought this doesn't make any sense why can I eat well some of it just didn't work for me like why can I eat oranges why can't I eat oranges but I can eat lemons I just didn't understand the list so I cut down to beef, chicken, carrots, broccoli I was actually eating a wider range than I was still eating rice that was pretty much it so it was very cut down I cut out like soy, sugar, most fruits I was still eating apples then too so I cut down to that and in a month everything went away like yeah a month what do you mean everything? no not everything but the arthritis was gone so I had stopped taking before that I had stopped taking my immune suppressants because I wasn't convinced they were working anyway and I wanted to be able to monitor flare ups when I had cut out gluten just to see so you wanted to go off of them so that you could identify what's working and what's not working trying to figure things out for themselves many times people they'll have so many factors and it's hard to control which one best thing you can do is eliminate all of them and then introduce one at a time which is what you did with the immunosuppressive yeah yeah so I cut those out but I actually it's more coincidental because I cut them out in January and I didn't cut out gluten until May that's when I figured it out so I cut out well no I cut one of the immune suppressants out because I didn't think it was working then I cut the other one out in May but yeah September I went on this diet and at this point I was still taking antidepressants I was still taking birth control I was still taking Adderall I was still taking gravel so I could sleep from the Adderall so I was still on a whole bunch of medication and I think part of the reason I had a fairly easy time in the first month cutting out all those foods was because of the Adderall which is a serious appetite suppressant it didn't have the cravings or anything so it wasn't that and I was very focused so it wasn't that hard cutting out all the foods but yeah a month went by and my skin healed I went down like two pant sizes um I guess I should say at this point too I had already lost some weight from university because I moved back home and I started eating better I mean university I was literally surviving off of instant noodles and pierogies that freshman 15 man it's oh man it was so bad it happened to me and it wasn't a freshman 15 I went from like I'd had surgery in high school so I was pretty skinny so I was like 120 I went from like 120 to 138 in two years and I was like what is happening is this the eye and my parents were like just stop drinking and I was like you know what drinking actually makes me feel awake I don't think that's the problem although I was drinking a lot of beer which was part of the problem but it was mostly the instant noodles and pierogies and cheese that's pretty much what I ate it was terrible so I moved back home and started eating more chicken and broccoli and just naturally lost some weight but then yeah I cut out gluten it didn't do much then I went on that elimination diet and I shrunk a lot more than the weight like I think I lost five pounds but I went down like overall like four pant sizes it was crazy yeah it was all water and inflammation so your joint pain went away yeah so that was a month and I mean you must have tripped you out like having to deal with that for so long and then all of a sudden it being gone that must have been crazy oh yeah psychologically it messed me up for a while but yeah the arthritis the arthritis went away in September and the arthritis wasn't that bad like I guess my shoulders hurt when I slept but I wasn't like crippled from it so the joint pain went away and I was like okay that's good like the fact that my skin healed I was probably happier about that being honest at that age right that's what you're thinking yeah yeah so that was September and then I reintroduced almonds so that I could have like an easy source of protein like almond butter is healthy and I had a terrible response to almonds and my skin flared up again and the arthritis I was still taking the Adderall so I still had the fatigue and the depression at that point that didn't lift until December November mid-November I started feeling better emotionally and for the type of depression I have whatever it is it gets worse in the winter and we thought that was sun related I'm a little bit more convinced that it's because you eat so many sweets around December could be but mid-November I started feeling like I'd never felt before I used to see people walk down the street smiling for no reason and be like there's something wrong with those people and you just couldn't connect with it well I was just like nobody's smiling for no reason and by the end of November I was smiling for no reason and I was like what's happening so I tapered down the antidepressants and I was off them and I was like I was tapering them down before because for various reasons and it had never gone well I had always needed them but I didn't need them Were you getting symptoms of too when you were tapering down were you noticing like symptoms of taking too much like in other words I know when people are on antidepressants they'll know they're on too much by getting there's like weird side effects that people will get were you starting to get side effects or were you just like hey I'm already feeling better let me just try taking as I was happy well no before that like I got happy on them and I'd never been happy on them so I got happy and was like well if I'm happy maybe I don't need as much so I wasn't really experiencing that you get finger weird finger things uncomfortable feeling no I just felt better so I stopped taking them now this hasn't happened in quite a while but when I was experimenting they were okay and I'd have these terrible reactions and start taking them again when I could feel the reaction wearing off I would get the side effects and the uncomfortable feeling thing and know that I needed to stop but at that point that didn't happen and then in December I reintroduced soy because I had been craving soy for quite a while that was one of my favorite foods soy sauce on everything and I made like a feast of different forms of soy because at that point I thought what if I can't eat soy again I'm just gonna eat as much as I can now get it all out of the way which now I know is a really really bad idea but I didn't know that then so I had the worst like the worst experience I've had probably since I needed an ankle replacement reintroducing soy because I wasn't on any medication anymore I wasn't on any antidepressants and I got more depressed than I've like ever been it was so awful was it overnight? I did that last a month were you aware like okay it's the soy avoid everything well like yes logically so that night I had a whole bunch of soy and then my digestion was just fucked and I was like oh well that's not helpful and then about four hours later I got itchy everywhere I was like okay well that's not good but then my itch came back so that's some sort of reaction this morning I got into the shower and I just bawled for no reason and I was like oh no this is bad and then man like it's hard to believe but two days later so by the next evening I was messed up and then the evening after that I hallucinated some sort of demon face like you know when you're a kid and you're in the dark and you're looking at shadows and you see faces that are scary it was like that happened but it wasn't quite dark enough and I was like okay so my brother had driven me home and I turned around to wave bye and he'd had this sort of like demon face-ish type of thing I was like okay I went upstairs smoked a bunch of weed and like hid under my covers yeah yeah after that well I was like this is bad because I was starting to get super panicky so I was like I just saw something I know it's not real that opposite of what I would have done I'm seeing things more rolling I just saw a demon I need some weed oh no it helped it helped but I hid under my blankets I was like this is bad and I was like okay logically speaking I was absolutely fine two days ago and then I had the soy and then I had digestive troubles then I got itchy and then I was depressed I was like this has to be the depression lifted for the first time ever because I cut out food so this has to be a food reaction but when you're that like messed up with those reactions you're just like oh no maybe I was just like convincing myself that all my problems were gone and now they're back and I'm such a fool so there was that too but I was like I'll just wait it out so I just pretty much smoked weed for a month and waited for it to end that was before I realized I could just take antidepressants for a couple weeks and like lift it a little bit but I was like no I'm never taking any medication again so but then it lifted and I was like okay so yeah soy is not good I ended up getting soy a couple more times that year because I didn't realize that even in minute amounts I'll have that reaction so it was like I had salad dressing like a vinaigrette turns out one of the oils in one of those crappy vinaigrette dressings is soybean oil so I had a reaction it wasn't as bad but it was bad from that and then so I was like okay so that's much smaller quantities still does it and then at another point I introduced some sort of multivitamin that had soy in it and I had the same reaction I was like okay I can't have any it can't be like you can't touch soy people don't realize that by the way supplements many times will have you know like soy lecithin or you know gluten as a binder even in supplements many times and if you have a if you're hyper reactive to foods then even just doing that I noticed the same thing with myself my health had a bad turn about maybe eight or nine years ago the smallest amount of the food that bothered me would cause a reaction and what I've noticed working with people in these situations is you almost there's a there's a logical stuff that's happening in front of you like objectively like okay I can't eat this food but then there's a psychological piece was like well if I have a little bit well if I try it a little bit more and it's like you got to learn the lesson over and over again okay I'm done I know it has to hit you like man I must have hit like nine times of just that year was rough it wasn't rough because I knew like it could go away but man I reintroduced so many foods that did that it was like everything I tried to eat um did that nothing was as bad as the soy probably because of quantity I made like it was it was a good meal I made like homemade miso soup which and I bought the miso it was worth it miso can be mixed with gluten so I like bought stuff so that it wasn't mixed with gluten so I knew exactly what's happening and I had Adamami beans and tofu I had like every form of soy oh shit you went crazy that's one way to test it yeah I did not recommend that so after this this period of time now you're figuring out little by little what foods you have reactions to and what foods you don't have reactions to and what have you identified that you so you said you just eat meat so you have a reaction to everything but me okay so so that was December 2015 which is also at the point well so I got better right and around December I like remember December 13th I tried soy it was really bad so um but before that I told dad I was like I'm better like something changed and I'm better and you need to do this because you have the same depression as I do now what's this is a great question because your dad is a clinical psychologist and uh in western medicine because I've dealt with dermatologists rheumatoid you know rheumatoid doctors I've dealt with uh psychologists and psychiatrists and I'll have clients who will go to their doctors even a dermatologist what you think would be obvious and they'll say to them hey listen when I eat like this my skin gets worse and they'll they'll laugh at them or they'll deny it or say well you know do what you want you have a difference or it's not going to make any difference at all so your dad is trained in obviously western psychology and most of the literature maybe now you'll find some but even five years ago like it would say food had no effect whatsoever on your mental or emotional well-being it just doesn't at all um or the proof isn't there yet yeah was was that tough talking to dad was was he like what would he say to you about this um the change in me was so drastic that there wasn't anything he could say like I can see it he could tell well yeah um my fatigue also lifted around December so my depression went away in November and then my fatigue around December I think I went off Adderall in December um so I went from literally like being half dead and sleeping all the time with horrible skin problems to better and off of all my medication so for the first time ever and I don't have like these aren't problems that just magically go away so there wasn't really much he could say I said this works for me and he was like yeah it did and I was like you have to try it but you have to be really careful and you can't mess up so when I first told him to try it it was before I had experienced the soy thing so I didn't realize that once you introduce the food back in the reaction can be like way worse than you've experienced before so when I had told him to do it I thought it was fairly simple choice because it was like oh now I'm better but I didn't realize that once you cut it out if you mess up you're not better at all so he went off at that December I'm sure that that'll come up later in the conversation so uh so you're doing this uh with your diet you're noticing all your symptoms are gone now it's as you said you just eat meat or oh yeah how did that come about so by December 2016 once I'd been like fooling around with food for a while I had kind of made a list of foods I could tolerate and it was like it was the list of 24 foods some spices sweet potatoes, parsnips broccoli, carrots, most green vegetables meat, fish that was pretty much it but it was a list oh yeah apples, pears and peaches I could handle all those and I was like December 2016 and November 2016 I was at like a 10 out of 10 um mood wise health wise like everything was fantastic I could tolerate all those uh and then I got pregnant and then something changed so it turns out this like my I guess what I think happened and you can see in scientific literature is your microbiome gets less diverse when you're pregnant that's just what happens your microbiome ends up less diverse through subsequent pregnancies so I think my best guess is I lost something that allowed me to tolerate those few vegetables um so once I had the baby I kept having like something was still wrong and I could tell I was like a little bit arthritic I was getting these I was randomly itchy I and I wasn't happy and I was like what's what's happening now um man one day I typed into Google out of frustration allergic to everything because I thought I thought I know I can eat meat and nothing happens I don't know about the vegetables that I used to be able to eat but I know meat is okay um but aren't I gonna die if I just eat meat so I hadn't done it and so I typed in allergic to everything and then this woman who had been treating her Lyme disease with an all meat diet popped up and it said you know she'd been eating ribeye for 15 years and she was still alive and she was fine and I was like okay I'm gonna do that then I'm I'm done like if it affects my mood having a little bit of joint pain I can handle itching things but anything that affects my mood is out so you switched to that and you noticed so I switched to that and so that was December and I noticed like it wasn't as big a change as when I cut out everything but I did my mood improved and my arthritis went away again and I never got like I'm still not at the 10 out of 10 I was before the pregnancy but I'm I'm good good are you familiar with leaky gut syndrome and intestinal hyperprimability or whatever yeah so when you we've had the luxury of being able to talk to experts on these particular topics and I'm this is something that interests me tremendously because I experienced it myself like literally out of nowhere my body just rebelled on me and I couldn't keep weight on and all of a sudden I couldn't eat anything all the foods I could eat before and so I became quite passionate about learning about this and what I noticed through this process was that the list of foods that I could eat became shorter and shorter and shorter and what I've learned about leaky gut syndrome is when you have inflammation in the gut that's present even in small amounts that causes the gut to become hyper permeable and whatever you eat a lot of then can become something that your body recognizes as a foreign invader and can develop antibody towards so you know initially I just I determined it was dairy gluten and egg whites were the big ones for me so I avoided those like crazy but then I would eat a lot of these other foods and I'm the kind of person that if I like something I just eat the hell out of it and probably because of my fitness background right so it's like oh chicken breast here and you know same types of foods and then I noticed that oh now I can eat soy that much or now it's starches that I can't eat that much and what seems to happen and this is the profiling theory from what I've heard is that I never I don't really get the gut inflammation to go down completely and so when the guts inflamed the junctions between the cells get spaced out a little bit particles get through that into the bloodstream recognizes a foreign invader so whatever I'm eating a lot of at the moment then becomes something that I become intolerant to and so what I had to do and what I've done now is I've gone back so far to where I was like perfect get the inflammation down completely and then slowly start to work things back in and it seems to have worked but there's a couple other things that I've done that I was gonna ask you I don't know if you've implemented a couple of these things you mentioned smoking weed and we laughed about that we're big proponents of cannabis but cannabinoids certain cannabinoids I did find had a very positive effect on me in terms of getting my immune system to relax a little bit did you notice anything like that with yourself have you tried using cannabis in that particular way no I'm not exactly so I haven't usually I've had these food reactions and then once they're over I'm back to being perfectly okay again so I've used weed throughout that mostly for mood just like the anxiety levels are just unbearable so if you smoke enough weed and it's not a comfortable amount of weed but it'll lower that and for some reason that also does seem to help with like overall nerve and body pain that I get as well so I've used it that way I haven't used any of the like components I guess there's what's the pain-killing one well so there's lots of cannabinoids but cannabidiol is the non-psychoactive cannabinoid and now all the cannabinoids have anti-inflammatory and immunomodulating effects so it's important to say that they're immunomodulating and not immunosuppressive because immunomodulating means if you have a depressed immune system like you have HIV or you have cancer it can actually strengthen your immune system to where your body starts to kill more of the cancer cells or your body doesn't, right? If you have an overactive immune system like people with, you know, Crohn's disease or rheumatism or other forms of autoimmune it seems to tamp it down a little bit so that's what I've experienced and what I do is I use cannabidiol I do use some THC because I notice a little bit of it but I use cannabidiol I use a lot less of it now but I used to use it regularly and I noticed if I used it consistently it would make a difference now I'm lucky that I live in California and it's been medically legal for a while now now it's recreationally legal so I can actually go and get products that are, you know, high quality like high CBD edible or high CBD cannabis and I like it because I don't want to be high all day but I do want the anti-inflammatory you're up in Toronto, right? Is it available there too where you can go into a dispensary or is it still difficult? It's not difficult you can go into a dispensary and get it it's not being legalized until the summer I believe but you can get it so I haven't tried that for I don't know, I guess I just haven't gotten to it I tried I tried a whole bunch of things the first year to try in I figured if it was an immune response I would at least dampen it down if it's like a histamine response or I tried anti-histamines like benadryl and all that yeah, so I tried satirazine because benadryl makes me sleepy but I tried anti-histamines they didn't seem to do anything I tried different minerals and vitamins and high doses of random things nothing seemed to do anything activated charcoal, if I eat something wrong and then I immediately drink a whole bunch of activated charcoal it calms my digestive system down infrared sonnaying helps get rid of whatever's in me that helps because I have a mood boost as soon as I get out for about like four hours longer if I'm feeling good but it's shorter if I'm not feeling good I haven't got around to CBD but I have suggested dad use it for like four well, because there's some nerve pain associated with it I know a good dispensary nearby, I'll point you in the direction what about fasting? have you played around with fasting at all? so I tried fasting in university because I think dad actually was looking into fasting for I don't remember if it was mood or arthritis but I tried fasting and I was so messed up that it didn't do much I got like dizzy I didn't really see any benefits I haven't done it now because well, part of the I've looked into fasting a bit and I can't tell if it's actually the fasting that's good or if it's that you coincidentally cut out everything that's not good for you probably both yeah, so I haven't done fasting either so with fasting so I've just started implementing a 72 hour fast every month because the best literature we have right now by the way this isn't conclusive by any means but shows that when you fast you get a lot of programmed cell death cells that are older kill themselves stem cells get stimulated then you refeed and those stem cells get turned back get turned into now new cells to replace the old ones and so they've done this with animals where they've shown that they can replace an immune system on a cat with like a three day fast so I'm like holy shit if my immune system is hyperactive then maybe fasting would be a good idea because I'll be able to kill off the ones that are dysfunctional and replace them with new ones I've only done it now for two months and tremendous results but I do want to be clear too on the podcast is if you're listening like the individual variance with all this stuff is tremendous and by no means and maybe you can echo what I'm saying are we recommending people go off medications without oh yeah a physician yeah I just wrote I actually wrote an article because someone was saying what do I do if I'm on a whole bunch of medication and I actually yeah what I think is you're going to feel better regardless of the medication like cutting out these foods the medication isn't going to stop you from feeling better so I think it's safer especially with like antidepressants things it's safer to stay on the medication cut out things see how you feel first at least my experience was I was still taking Adderall I was still taking antidepressants and I got better anyways and then I dropped them and that's like there's no point in being miserable and depressed and having all these weird food symptoms and food cravings and then trying to figure it out then so now you're off everything yeah so I haven't been on anything yeah since well for at least at least a year more more two years how different is because you were on these medications how long were you on antidepressants for since since what age so since I was 12 so since you're 12 10 11 years 11 years so how different is life now off of all these things is it is it weird is it totally different for you my brain was so fuzzy I think I don't think it was necessarily the medication I think it was more the diet but my brain was so fuzzy especially from like 17 to 22 that I honestly can't really remember it was like September when I went on that elimination diet and I was still eating some things that bothered me but only a couple of them I remember that month and I don't really remember anything before that it's it's like it's scary I went through like a memory box that I had and I couldn't remember things like hockey games I had gone to apparently I've seen Calgary flames and I don't remember that at all and that was like great 11 that's something I should remember so yeah so how do I feel like different I've never felt like this before I've never been able to have a conversation and remember what I was trying to say at the beginning I got so I had serious brain fog where I'd have this idea and then I'd be having a conversation I'd be desperately trying to remember what my point was so that's gone I can remember lyrics I could never remember lyrics and I can remember lyrics to songs that I knew as a teenager so those songs that I couldn't remember then I know now so it's like the memories were there and I couldn't have I couldn't get to them so I mean it's a huge difference there's no comparison I used to spend a lot of time even when I was driving trying to focus on staying awake this was before the Adderall and I was driving and just falling asleep all the time and to the point of it was not good I was like this is bad I need to start taking medication or I'm gonna die this is not good and that's gone so it's completely there's it's completely different I don't know how to explain do you have like a like a your sense of life it's like because you had that experience and now everything's so different are you like okay anything's possible now I mean do you look at do you look at it all as like a gift in the sense that you know how I guess blessed you are now to to be healthy versus how you felt for so long before does it change the perspective in that way yeah okay so one one thing that happened when my depression lifted and when I figured out all the stuff was food related is every time I went outside and saw people I could see who was really affected by it and that kind of messed me up psychologically like even taking the subway you see people and they're like they're passed out they're falling asleep they're seriously overweight they're like their faces are kind of swollen and it's not their fault per se like there are some people like that you know they work out all the time it's like they're still eating so many things wrong that they can't get out of that so that messed me up for a while so I didn't take the subway a while because I was looking around and being yeah and being like this is horrifying and you know they're going to the doctor and the doctor's being like well why don't you work out more right like stopping so lazy and it's like that's that's not the problem that got to me you write blogs and stuff about this now yeah okay so thinking about it as like a blessing or a curse well it's hard once I start feeling better it's like I instantly forget what it's like to be sick and it's scary so my arthritis will go away the depression is gone I don't have any physical symptoms I mean fortunately or unfortunately my ankle replacement is still a pain so that kind of reminds me but I basically feel completely normal and I'm like well I don't have to deal with that anymore you got to feel like you're in a sense you got to still the reason why I think what you're searching for Sal why she's not where she's got to feel like she's still in the fight you got to feel like you're kind of in the fights yeah right yeah well it's not like reflecting like oh that was the old me it's like this is still you and it could go back there if you make any bad right so it's got to be it's got to be a total different feeling than somebody who probably feels blessed that they went through this this you got to probably feel more like on guard if anything I would meet I'm on guard like I'm and it's some things are scary like the the effect that gluten has on me is it's like a it's worse than the soy right in minor quantities and it's like I'll be depressed for a month I'll be arthritic I'll be in pain like I won't be able to sleep which is weird that it goes back to being not being able to sleep instead of being instead of having too much sleep but anyway yeah I'm I'm kind of terrified all the time I don't need out at restaurants anymore like my life just changed completely but there's no comparison what's it like for you having a father who who can relate in a sense because he battles with depression do you guys get a chance to kind of confide in each other or does it make it more difficult like well getting him to like convincing him it kind of sounds like a conspiracy theory right if you're on the outside so being like you know he'd go on this diet and he cut out he did like 99% and he cut out like everything but occasionally he'd some one of his friends would pass him something to eat and he'd feel rude right so he'd eat it and he would do that you know every three weeks which the reaction is a little bit longer than that so couldn't get out of it so what happened with him it's been good to have someone to confide in but it's been hard to convince him that this is the issue there's no like he thinks that now he knows that this food thing is an issue he knows that in minute quantities he can get really sick and he gets really messed up too did you guys kind of battle a little bit at that it's like you're figuring things out and then you still see him kind of struggling and you feel like you can help him out a little bit did you guys battle at all with that there wasn't much of a battle I felt bad because I had introduced this new diet to him and then his depression seemed to almost worsen when he messed up and he wasn't I don't know exactly how to explain it he wasn't being careful enough not to mess up because out of careful you have to be as like if you go out to eat and then you don't feel good a couple of days later it could have been that meal right even if you can't see anything on it and he was like I mean the thing is he had a whole bunch of physical symptoms right he like he lost a whole bunch of weight he had some psoriasis he had gum problems he had GERDS that all went away so all his physical symptoms went away but the depression which is the worst one like it almost got worse so that wasn't good I mean now now it's under control but for the first year it was rough so it wasn't as much of a team as me feeling bad for trying to make him better and accidentally making him worse psychologically right so that was bad but then once I kind of got across the point like you can't really eat out you have to be so paranoid it's ridiculous about things touching your food once he kind of like got that he had a couple of really really bad reactions once he got that down now it's been fine what's this got for your mom to have a daughter struggling with this and a husband struggling with this well she was always on the she's got to be super weird weird food train so like when we were a kid when we were a kid it was we only ate that bread that's like whole wheat and covered in seeds and things just anything that was really dark and gross and I was like where's the white bread at where's the iron kids so she was always doing turns out that wasn't healthy anyway but she was always doing the healthy thing and then she found out about 15 years ago that she thought she was allergic to wheat turns out she's got the celiac gene too she got out wheat and she didn't recognize that it was a gluten issue so I explained that it was a gluten issue once I figured it out but she'd already cut out wheat for 15 years so this hasn't weirded her out at all she does the cooking for dad because he's too busy like it takes time to be able to although eating only meat is pretty quickly pretty quick and pretty convenient but he's not just eating all meat he's eating the first diet that I had made that worked for me initially it's like green veggies, meat no fruit he doesn't do sweet potatoes anymore either so like no carbs basically but green vegetables the way I looked at it for myself was and maybe this is just me making myself feel better about it because it's very difficult to go through my symptoms were not nearly as extreme or as long lasting as yours but I had some pretty difficult ones that lasted for a while and you know the way I viewed it after a while was you know here I am I have this very outward clear you know sign that something is off and everybody else or most people may not have as clear of a expression but a lot of people when you look around are kind of feeling crappy not great sleep hormones a little bit off you know of course obesity is a very clear one because you could see some skin issues like you know what maybe I was better off because I had such a loud signal that I was able to identify these things whereas you got these people kind of walking around in this you know mild zombified state not knowing that you know food is and it's much more common these days have you had a lot of people reach out to you saying wow you know I've had similar stuff happen to me and I fix it with food have you been getting a lot of feedback like that yeah I've been getting lots of people reaching out I mean I've heard a lot of really sad stories where it's people with you know they say well they tell me what happened to them and a lot of these are like autoimmune disorders and things that just wrecked people and a lot of these people are older too I guess one of the things I feel lucky about is like a couple of things let me allowed me to figure out if it was food and one of them was the doctor that gave me the medication if he hadn't prescribed me Adderall and I wasn't on a weirdly high dose of Adderall because otherwise I would pass out from being tired if he hadn't prescribed me that I wouldn't have been able to stay awake enough to do the research to figure out gluten might have been an issue it's a great attitude to have on that yeah so like that was lucky I also I guess feel lucky because this art depression and this horrible depression that runs in our family does run in our family it's there's some genetic component regardless of whether or not it's diet and the chance of me passing that on I think is fairly high especially considering it's gone like great grandfather grandfather dad me my brother doesn't have it but it seems to be pretty strongly genetic so now I know that if anybody else in my family has this it's not lifelong antidepressants crippling depression it's food sensitivities that's as much as we know now I'm sure there's an underlying cause maybe it's bacterial or something but at least I know that I can get rid of it so I'm lucky like we've had this for what four generations at least we don't even know what happened before my great grandpa because he was adopted so I don't think that family was very put together either but at least I know that it's it's done we're done with this we're done with autoimmune problem we're done with the depression so that is really good you had to solve it yeah for the family yeah that's awesome yeah you're incredibly strong I mean this is this is the lot like to go through and you seem so strong and confident and successful in spite of all these different things where does that come from maybe it's from I guess it's from a number of things one is probably getting hit with it when I was really young probably wasn't as psychologically damaging as getting hit with it when it was a bit older so I was more used to it when I was diagnosed with depression it wasn't like oh my god I'm messed up it was I don't know I don't feel so good and now I'm taking a pill and I feel pretty okay that that was literally as simple as it was and same with the arthritis initially so that there's also like what's the option the option is you're either really sick and you die I mean you just like you let it take over or you don't and like I wasn't going to I was going to put up a fight before I decided just to let it take over a lot of people choose the first one though a lot of people choose to give up or to act out and project I mean the fact that you kind of internalized it like that and sought out to solve it versus continue to feel sorry for myself I think is even when you brought up and you just kind of grazed over that with high school being popular and having friends and being quote unquote normal I mean that's a big fucking deal the fact that you could even be normal in such an abnormal state I mean that says a lot about your character and it's just interesting do you have a do you confide in friends a lot would you say you have more are you closer to your family do you get to talk to people about this before obviously now I guess I should add one of the things that probably helped was when I was first diagnosed with arthritis my dad made it really clear not to use it as an excuse so he said you know because it's easy to use your problems as an excuse and it's really hard to tell when you actually need a day or if you're just being like a week so I guess I was constantly thinking you know am I so tired that I need to stay home or am I or am I just using it as an excuse and I think looking back I probably could have used it as an excuse a lot more than I did but it was good to know that so I think that probably how was that communicated to you just straight like that don't use your illness make sure you don't use your illness as an excuse or things will go much worse than they could go and you obviously trusted him by telling you that because he's dealt with depression himself you have obviously a lot of respect for your father so it was well received yeah well I'm pretty sure he told me that in grade two so because at that point that was like oh I don't want to go to school I'm tired right or I don't want to just go to school for all these reasons but like what you either stay home and you feel like that or you go to school and you feel like that it was well received yeah that was a good thing to say now how is the you have a baby six month old how are you going to handle nutrition now for your family and for your child okay so my husband actually when we first started dating I was just figuring this out and he had some serious issues that he wasn't aware of he was kind of like what I don't want to say he was a walking around zombie because he was with it but he had some issues and I was like are you like are you okay something's wrong here and it turns out he was really depressed and hadn't recognized it as depression he was like oh no this is just what life is this is just how everyone feels like not everyone feels that horrible all the time so it turns out he's got the same he gets the same horrible reactions to food and was like that's great we're a great match here he's not on an all meat diet he can tolerate pretty much what the initial diet was for me so what are we doing with food so she just started introducing solids I've introduced obviously beef and chicken and sweet potatoes and parsnips she's never going to eat gluten but I think that's bad for everybody dairies out sugars out I don't know she's going to hate me when she's teenager I disagree I think we train their palate at that early of an age that I don't think it'll be that missed oh yeah well there's no like I'm not doing it so that stuffs out I'm trying to figure out I don't know I guess I'm hoping we can just play it by ear I'm going to introduce things that I think are really safe because I don't know how much of this is genetic and I don't know how much of it is just previous damage I'm hoping a lot of it is damage but it's hard to tell so I'm going to keep it pretty limited and just monitor obviously introduce more vegetables so far things seem fine but like it's hard to try I tried to give her probiotics she can give babies probiotics and I can't tolerate probiotics for whatever reason they give me a flare up which they're not supposed to do and I can't eat like any of them so I tried to give her probiotics and she didn't tolerate them well she had a stomach ache it's happened twice now and she never gets stomach aches otherwise so I don't know if that's because you know babies inherit a lot of their mom's microbiome so now she just has a messed up microbiome or I don't know it's so there's so many variables it's new it's all new emerging science it's very very difficult to to pinpoint anything it's so complex we're starting to understand a little bit of it not even maybe a fraction of it in terms of the microbiome I mean we know some bacteria are good some are bad and then everything in the middle they've done fecal transplants with humans and animals that seem to cure people which is kind of crazy so just this weird it's this weird area of science you know I wanted to ask you because because you're talking about feeling like your your depression getting better as a result of changing your diet that can be a very touchy subject in fact I'm very I'm very careful when we talk about that on the show because when I talk about how diet can help with skin and people don't seem to have that big of an issue but when you say oh it can help with mental and emotional issues or psychiatric issues boy that's like a third rail man have you been getting any pushback or anybody angry that's messaging you from this my husband's parents won't recognize me as like who their son is married to what so yes there's been some pushback they think your story's bullshit they think that I'm going around convincing people and it's some sort of cult yeah it's really nasty so there's been some pushback but to be fair I guess before I started this diet I think what happens is you have a conversation with someone who doesn't have depression and they go oh well just stop eating crap and you'll feel better which is this is your fault and what you're doing wrong is causing you to be miserable and that's not a good way to introduce it like I think for me even if I had improved my diet it wouldn't have got rid of the depression I had to cut out everything that was causing it even in minute amounts so I think maybe if it's not introduced as it's a your fault type of thing and more as how strange is this who would have believed this try it for a month and see what happens type of thing but yeah there is definitely pushback against mental problems but I think it's because people are blamed for it I agree I think when you're suffering from something yourself and you've tried everything that you know within your own with the information that you know and then you see someone else and they're like well I got better just by and they're like screw you man like I've tried everything and I feel terrible like it's not my fault I can totally understand that but from in the context of an immune reaction I think I have to make this clear to the audience like you can definitely lower your calories and you can lose weight and people can feel better and healthier as a result of that but if you have any a strong immune reaction which when you have an immune reaction what's happening is you're causing a cascade of events that triggers inflammation of some sort and inflammation can be very systemic so you know you can get localized inflammation like I bang my hand and I get swelling or I bang it or I can get the systemic which can affect any part of my body it can affect my eyes it can affect my teeth it can affect my bowels it can affect my brain which is where the depression comes from and they're finding now that quite conclusively that there is they don't know which is first or whatever but they do know that there is some sort of inflammation present in most you know that causes or can be a part of depression definitely a strong correlation or connection there and systemic inflammation happens when you have an immune reaction to food and it's very different from just reducing calories and changing your macronutrients to get in shape if it's an immune reaction that's you gotta think of it like an allergy like someone who gets anaphylactic shock you know like I have a nephew who is allergic to several foods and you know peanuts being one of them and if he has the tiniest amount of peanuts like a speck or if it just touches his food he would need an epi shock because he would go into anaphylactic shock well it's not that different when you have but it can be other symptoms like yours and so you have to avoid them completely and if you don't and that's I think what makes it difficult is people avoid them for the most part and they're like well it didn't work for me not realizing getting friends off of gluten and it's like oh I cut it all out but I still drink beer and I was like well that's just it's not gonna work you have to get rid of it completely although I have met a couple of people who didn't seem to affect as much mostly people who have had absolutely no mental health issues I still think it's a terrible idea and you shouldn't be doing it but it doesn't seem to affect them like you know you get covered in a rash and then you're arthritic and hallucinating demons that type of thing so moving forward I know you have a blog you talk about this on social media a little bit is this an area now where you want to help others or spread the word or is it just you just enjoy writing about it no I don't particularly enjoy writing about it it's just like I said I'll feel better and then I'll forget and then I'll have one of these reactions and I'll be like oh my god this is 1% of how awful I used to feel and I've forgotten and then it makes me feel terrible to just have been that ill and not tell people what happened because I've talked to lots of people and they're in chronic pain like chronic like nerve pain or you know and have an autoimmune disorder and are depressed and are overweight and they try and exercise and they try and wake up every day and they try and eat healthy and they're just dying and it's not I don't think it's fair I don't think it's fair for me to not say what happened to me what advice do you give to those that are listening that are on a path maybe not as chronic as yours but any sort of path and they can't put their finger on it what it is what kind of advice would you give to somebody who feels like they've been trying to figure this out and struggling a lot I guess depending on how like how sick you are there's like the autoimmune disease pretty sick and then there's some serious mental problems that are pretty sick and then there's just being overweight but being pretty happy or just being kind of tired depending on what level you're on yeah look into diet and cut out I would say get rid of sugar, dairy, soy and gluten for like minimum right get rid of all of it for a solid month and then introduce one back in and see how you feel like even if it's something you don't believe if you get rid of those things and then you go out for a donut and see what happens I think people will be able to make up their own mind once it's so plain so my girlfriend's going through this right now right so for Lent she gave up chocolate which is her favorite thing in the whole world like in the whole world like this is a big deal for her right so she gave up chocolate and right around her period she'll break out a little bit and it's like really stresses around she gets really angry because we're both fitness and health fanatic so she's like I'm really healthy like what the hell yeah like why am I getting and skin things are freaking frustrating it's displayed for everybody to see so she's like what the hell is going on here so she cut chocolate out and all of a sudden her skin is like super clear and so we're sitting there talking about it and I'm like you know honey I'm like I wonder if it's the chocolate that might be the issue and she's just like no no no it can't be can't be the chocolate I don't think it's chocolate she's like I've always eaten chocolate I'm like well yeah and you know how food intolerance has developed like maybe you developed an intolerance over time and it took her like five days for her and she would even get angry she was even getting angry we were talking about so I had to lay off because I know with that feeling I know what it's like to be like fuck my favorite food I can't eat it anymore or whatever take that from me now it's like you know what I think it might be I think it might be the chocolate and so you have to I think your advice is great because until you do that you don't want to believe it like you literally don't want to believe it because we're so attached to the foods that we especially the ones we eat all the time you know I did want to make a comment about genetics you said you're you know there's a genetic component of course there is but I don't remember who said this and I'm quoting somebody but the genes are load the gun and your lifestyle is what pulls the trigger so it's like you've got the predisposition for things to happen and everybody has their own genetic makeup and likelihood of being reactive to particular things or whatever but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen you have to also there's an environment factor as well and now we know about epigenetics too there's tons of factors don't you guys believe that I mean if we know now that the brain and the stomach are inversely connected and we know how the brain predicts are directly connected right so would you I mean I would venture to think too that even where your mind space is when you consume some of these foods that could potentially affect the way it expresses it also so I don't think it's so direct as like we were we've been talking about this actually more recently obviously the gut we know has a very strong connection to the brain now we know that in the gut is where you produce the majority of your neurotransmitters so when we talk about like taking antidepressants what antidepressants aim to do but the most popular ones at least like Prozac try to do is they increase the amount of circulating serotonin in the brain well most of that serotonin most of the serotonin in your body is produced in your gut so that's a very clear one but there's lots of these other things that we're starting to discover in terms of the gut you know brain connection and one of them which is very fascinating now and this by the way I'm going to give the credit to your dad because I've been watching some of his videos and he talks about the evolution of things that we've done in culture and why they stick around for so long because there's something about them that is useful and one of those things is prayer and in particular prayer before food eating and so I had this experience relatively recently we had a guest on the show who didn't follow any particular religion but you know you call himself maybe spiritual and we all had a meal together and when we served him his food he like look like he was meditating before he ate or did something or either praying or meditating or something and then he ate his food and I asked him afterwards I said were you praying like I didn't know you were religious and he goes no he goes I just asked the food if it wanted to be a part of my body and I asked my body if I wanted the food and I did this whole thing and I thought oh that's kind of weird and then I thought to myself like wait a minute like he's just becoming really aware of what he's about to do like I wonder how many people would not eat a pop tart if they did that before they ate the pop tart you know what I mean like right right before you eat the donut if you stopped and asked yourself it might be a holy pop tart yeah you probably make a better choice and then more recently I don't remember who we were talking to but we were I think it was Ben Pekolsky and he was talking about how parasympathetic yeah you're digesting is parasympathetic in the sense that you have the two autonomic systems or parts of the autonomic system one is sympathetic which is fight or flight characteristics of energy wakefulness you know higher cortisol higher inflammation but it gets you moving or whatever this is what you want in the morning you want to be sympathetic when you wake up and then there's parasympathetic which is rest and digest and he said man if you're eating really fast on the go and not allowing your body to go parasympathetic that can cause issues as well and I thought about that like holy shit absolutely and this may be why things like prayer have been present for so long before food of course they're using it in a spiritual sense but it lasted because maybe it helps people it puts you in that state where you're like okay now I'm gonna eat everything calm down let's digest this food properly or whatever let's be more aware of what we're eating so that's why I believe fascinating that's why I believe it's more than just a macronutrient or micronutrient for us that there is a there's an element or a piece of even where your mental space is currently at when that happens too I think there's I think that's another variable come on I mean raise your hand if you get super nervous and you feel butterflies or something stomach I mean you obviously feel it right so there's definitely that connection so I don't know that's a good theory the prayer and digestion thing fascinating theory I haven't noticed like for me I haven't noticed anything like that that affects me well as much as what I eat but all those things that's I like that theory yeah right fascinating you're so you're gonna go down a similar path like you're gonna start noticing all these things that connect to your food and digestion and just goes it gets so deep and we're so connected to our food I mean cultures have been designed around food so there's obviously tremendous tremendous importance around what we eat and it's much more than we think and in western societies we've disconnected from our body so much so that we don't even know what makes us feel good and what makes us feel bad until we eliminate everything and then slowly pay attention and reintroduce it so probably because these foods are introduced at such a young age like how are you supposed to know you're not supposed to eat gluten if you've been eating it like since you were six or seven months old exactly and you and you've now trained the palate to crave it too on top of that so you don't only not only should you not be eating you probably are in love with it because you've been eating your whole life yeah so do you incorporate you obviously look very fit I'm sure part of that's your nutrition but do you also incorporate exercise how has that helped you or hurt you or have you noticed anything from that honestly um so my ankle right now because of the replacements kind of in bad shape so I haven't been able to do much and then if I end up working out I develop muscle fairly quickly so then I end up with a weirdly strong upper body and a weirdly weak lower body which is not a good look on a girl so I've just been like until my ankle is figured out I've just been avoiding it when I was in university and I was gaining weight I used to go to the gym quite often and I put on muscle fairly well then too but I mean it hasn't made as much of a difference as changing what I eat um it has yeah no so no I know you guys do a whole bunch on exercise which I would be into if I didn't have an ankle replacement um one thing you said earlier about like epigenetics how you can have you know you can have bad genetics depending on the genetic problem obviously but you can have something that can be changed I think if I had gone back to two or whenever we introduced foods I don't think I would have any problems so just for people listening with auto immunities like for kids and things they haven't really noticed much of a genetic predisposition to autoimmunity I guess with ankylosing spondylitis there's a bit and with celiac disease but with things like arthritis there's not much of a genetic component they can find I think if you can figure it out with your diet you don't really have to worry about that much as much children wise like I'm not concerned about my kid that way they're finding now like what the mother eats and experiences even in utero then will affect you know the baby as well kind of scary but yeah it's controllable but yeah control exactly exactly if you know so well um I want to thank you for coming on yeah absolutely I mean very compelling story like I said when I first heard it I was like wow this is you know this is a story people need to hear you're very the way you explain it the way you talk about it very brave very nonchalant but it must have been incredibly challenging so I appreciate you coming on and sharing that with everybody thank you thank you thank you for listening to Mind Pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com the RGB Superbundle includes Maths Anabolic, Maths Performance and Maths Aesthetic 9 months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the RGB Superbundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it 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