Valerie's Carnivore Diet Journey: Conquering Mental and Physical Illness and SAVES HER LIFE!

Valerie tells us in this interview that she is a carnivore because when she was young, existing on vegetables wasn’t enough and she became malnourished and anxious and depressed. She began several hospitalizations which just lead to an IV tube that was basically feeding her junk food. This didn’t help. Later she had many issues caused by the things she was doing and doctors suggested were a result of a lack of certain proteins and calcium which she wasn’t getting. She tried many things to deal with it but since starting to eat primarily meat Valerie started overcoming 20 physical illnesses and 6 mental illnesses, including anorexia. All thanks to the carnivore diet. She also discusses the benefits of doing an oxalate protocol, which involves slowly reducing oxalate-rich foods to avoid painful oxalate dumping.

Valerie also shares that she has read many books on anxiety and nutrition. She found it helpful as it recommends foods to help with anxiety. Valerie also mentions the importance of finding replacement foods instead of feeling deprived. The trigger for her anxiety started at a young age due to poor nutrition, gut damage from antibiotics, and trauma from her father leaving the family. However, therapy and healing have helped her deal with some of the emotional aspects, but not the mental illness. 

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Transcript

Valerie Podcast Transcript

Summary

Valerie tells us in this interview that she is a carnivore because when she was young, existing on vegetables wasn’t enough and she became malnourished and anxious and depressed. She began several hospitalizations which just lead to an IV tube that was basically feeding her junk food. This didn’t help. Later she had many issues caused by the things she was doing and doctors suggested were a result of a lack of certain proteins and calcium which she wasn’t getting. She tried many things to deal with it but since starting to eat primarily meat Valerie started overcoming 20 physical illnesses and 6 mental illnesses, including anorexia. All thanks to the carnivore diet. She also discusses the benefits of doing an oxalate protocol, which involves slowly reducing oxalate-rich foods to avoid painful oxalate dumping.

Valerie also shares that she has read many books on anxiety and nutrition. She found it helpful as it recommends foods to help with anxiety. Valerie also mentions the importance of finding replacement foods instead of feeling deprived. The trigger for her anxiety started at a young age due to poor nutrition, gut damage from antibiotics, and trauma from her father leaving the family. However, therapy and healing have helped her deal with some of the emotional aspects, but not the mental illness. 

Transcription

 U1 

 0:00 

 Hi 

 U2 

 0:01 

 there and welcome to another interview. Today I've got the fabulous and Valerie and Smith with me, and I'm going to ask Valerie the same question I ask absolutely everybody, hey Valerie, why did you become carnivore? 

 U1 

 0:13 

 Hi, coach. Stephen. It's wonderful to be here. Um, I am carnivore because it healed my broken brain of mental illness that I suffered for for almost 40 years. Carnivore saved my life. Literally. And I've got a brand new life. A healed life that I never thought would be possible. And so now my mission is to share that with as many people as possible, to help others, because there are millions suffering from many forms of mental illness. And it can be can be healed. So that's why I'm kind of more. 2s I, um. I was very ill as a child. 1s Um. 1s I was anxious and depressed as a very young child. 1s And it only grew worse as I got older. By the time I made it to adolescence, I had also on top of the anxiety and panic attacks and depression. 1s I had developed OCD, otherwise known as obsessive compulsive disorder. 1s I had those regular behaviors that go along with that the body checking, the counting, the memorizing, the obsessive, intrusive thoughts. 2s About the time around 12 to 14. I also began a mental illness of the drive to starve, I developed anorexia. 1s And that was, of course, devastating. So as my weight continued to go down as a teenager. 3s It was. It was devastating and my life was in torment. I felt out of control. Everything was swirling around me. 1s And I couldn't keep control over it. So my way of controlling it, the drive to starve that started there was I could control what I put in my mouth. 3s Around the time of 14 to 16. It grew much worse and I was diagnosed with an additional mental illness of schizoaffective disorder. I. I heard voices 24 hours a day that would scream at me. And for me personally, it was a male voice. And I experienced paranoia. I experienced screaming to the point of telling me to harm myself, telling me to harm others. 2s Making me fear that others were trying to harm me. 2s My only escape in that was sleep. And as the years went on, I pray to not wake up anymore because there was no escape. 3s So I was diagnosed with all of those conditions, six of them in total. The schizoaffective disorder, the anorexia. 1s I'm five foot nine, and most of those years I was at a BMI of 11. I was less than £80. I was very, very ill. Hospitalized under traditional treatment. 3s The OCD was diagnosed that the anxiety, the panic attacks and the clinical depression. As the years went on, the OCD morphed into another subset condition of OCD, which is cutting. I was cutting my arms and legs and a condition called trichotillomania, which is hair pulling, and I was pulling air from my scalp and my eyebrows and my eyelashes. It was an uncontrollable neurological. 1s Disorder that I could not stop. I would have promised myself every day that I could control my hands. I could control what I did, um, with my anorexia two I would get up every day hoping to be better, hoping to. 2s The way that I. 1s Was told that I should be eating, and every night when I would go to bed, I would have failed miserably because I. I could not get better. 1s My first hospitalization was at the age of 16. I was put inpatient in a double locked down eating disorder ward. 1s And that was traumatic. 2s The concept of it, of course, is to keep you alive and make you better. 1s But in reality, what happens is you're going to double locked down unit, you're closed off from your family. This particular one that I was in, I was allowed no contact with my family for the first week. No phone calls, no visits. That was. 1s Heartbreaking for me. So I felt alone. Surrounded by strangers. And the first thing that gets done is a nasogastric feeding tube is inserted, an energy feeding tube through the nose and down into the stomach to give you supplemental nutrition. 1s But knowing what I know now on my healing and what I knew then, you know I didn't know that. 1s 5 or 6 times a day. This liquid is is put into your system to keep you alive and to force you to gain weight. But the ingredients are so highly inflammatory that they don't help anyone. It's canola oil, high fructose corn syrup, and soy. And it is the same top three ingredients that is in a toddler's nutrition drain. The same thing that's pushed on the our senior adults to um, and, you know, ensure and boost and boost nutrition. And it is the same thing that is given to any sort of patient from surgery that has had throat surgery or any kind of, uh, esophageal, you know, illness that they need ng feeding tube nutrition. And of course, it's commonplace in our nursing homes with our geriatric ages. And those ingredients are so inflammatory to the brain and to the body. And they don't heal anything. 3s When the feeding tube is removed in a hospital setting, whether it be in a mental illness ward or specifically an eating disorder, you know, reward you're expected to eat, then what is brought to you on the tray? And in the hospitals that I have been in and the. Within. 1s Overarching nutrition concept of those hospitals. Many of them are low to no animal protein. They are vegan, vegetarian, plant based. Many ultra processed foods that are presented to you to eat. Cakes. Cookies. Pies. Pancakes. Waffles. Bagels. Those sorts of things are what's predominantly on your tray. 2s And in my case, there was no animal protein at all. What was, um, instructed was the vegan concept of combining plant proteins to get a complete protein. Beans and rice. Wheat and peanut butter. 2s The concept is if you can eat this, whether it be regular things like beans and rice, or be ultra processed desserts. If you can, eat these. 1s You will gain weight and you'll be better. And if you can eat these and prove to us that you are capable of functioning out in the world, we'll pronounce you well and send you home. 1s And that's what happens. But you're no better. You walk out of there with a few more pounds on your frame. But the mental illness is no better whatsoever. 1s So I was under traditional treatment like this. For 40 years, I had over a dozen psychiatrists. 2s Well, some. 2s Decided that I was permanently this way and they couldn't help me, and the relationship was severed. Some actually fired me and told me not to come back, because I wouldn't sign a contract to gain £3 a week. 2s I was on almost a dozen psych meds over the course of 30 years. Some for clinical depression, some of the older ones to see if they would help, like ellisville and amitriptyline, the new ones like Paxil and Prozac and Wellbutrin that are out there. I was on specifically antipsychotic meds like Seroquel and Zoloft and Haldol to supposedly quiet the voices, which never did. They just made me a sedated zombie who heard voices. 2s I was on sedatives, hoping that that would make a difference. And they, even at subtle points, put me on brain modulators like neurons. And to see if that would change brain chemistry and change any of my behaviors. I did that for 30 years until I titrated off of them on my own, very slowly. Ten years prior to my healing, I was functioning worse on them than I was off of them. 3s I finished high school and I attempted to go to college. That was difficult. I dropped out after two years because I continued to get worse. 1s Um. 2s Thankfully, I met who was then to become my husband, who loved me unconditionally. 1s And. Together. We we attempted to make me as healthy as possible, but still within the framework of all of the hospital food plans that they sent me home with and the dietitians and nutritionists that were still using that same plant based, carb heavy, no animal protein diet. And someone who's anorexic. I know for myself and many others that I've counseled. The first thing to go is protein and fat. 1s You know, you subsist on fruits and vegetables of the lowest calorie, the largest volume with the lowest calorie. There were many years that every day that's all I ate was a cup of spinach and a cup of celery. It had the largest volume with the lowest amount of calories. And that's all I cared about. That's all my brain would allow me to eat. Because part of the incessant voices that I heard told me that I didn't deserve to eat, or that the food was poisoned, and then I couldn't allow myself to eat that. 2s Anorexia holds the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric illnesses. It's at 20%. 1 in 5 perish, and they die of either starvation just from the illness itself, or from suicide to try to escape the torment and the pain, or from organ failure, like heart attack or a deadly stroke, because their organs cannot function without the nutrition that they need. 2s In my third decade of this, I had. 2s So many years behind me of starting that my physical. 1s Being my physical frame. 1s Just suffered immensely. I began to have major medical complications because of the decades of starvation. 2s I had been diagnosed at 18 with full blown osteoporosis. So by the time I was 40, my bones were. 2s Are hollow, basically brittle, just waiting to fracture. And within the course of five years, I had chronic bone pain and five fractures. 1s And the recovery from those was also difficult. Most people, when they fracture a bone, it's 4 to 6 weeks. They're on crutches. They have a cast, you know, they they take it easy. They are in a boot on their leg or they don't, you know, do no weight bearing with crutches or a wheelchair. And in 4 to 6 weeks they are back on their feet and slowly recovering. That was not my experience because I couldn't feed myself. And because of the health of my bones and because of the lack of meat and fat at that point for 35 years. 1s My bones were a mess. And so I just kept fracturing and the recovery was months. It would take me 4 to 6 months to recover from a fracture. And they weren't trauma injuries. They weren't falls from a second story window. They weren't a fall from a ladder. It was walking down a step wrong or losing my balance on carpet and breaking my wrist. 1s They were normal everyday activities that would turn into a months long recovery. 2s On top of the osteoporosis. I had other physical things going wrong. Many things about 20 different physical illnesses. I had hypothyroid, I had low cholesterol. 2s I had very low blood pressure. Sometimes it was 70 over 50 and of course the blackout. 1s I had IBS and a lot of gastro distress. Nausea, indigestion, heartburn. 1s I had. Of course, all of my hormones just completely leveled out and tanked. I had adrenal fatigue and a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome. 1s And I had some issues. Pelvic li I had what's called interstitial cystitis and I had bladder pain. 1s And I female condition called Belvedere. Those those conditions, for me, they felt like glass shards in the pelvic area. It was extremely painful. The only thing I can compare it to is maybe someone who has a kidney stone, and I would then find out and understand later. At my healing. That those specific pelvic illnesses were related to oxalate toxins. They were from overconsumption of the oxalate foods that I was eating. And I managed to, you know, heal from that by using a protocol. And we can talk about that later if you want specifics, but. Um, I ended up having seven inpatient experiences in 15 years. 2s And in 2010, one of the. Surgeries, but I had to have one of many. This was by far the most devastating. I had extreme pelvic pain in 2010, and I went to several specialists who had it diagnosed of what was going on. I was having trouble going to the bathroom and there was pain and pressure when I lay down and worse when I stood up. 1s The specialists were able to diagnose me, and what was going on was I had not only lost all of my external skeletal muscle from starvation, my internal musculature had also wasted away. I was completely sarcopenia. 1s And I couldn't hold organs in place any longer. So I had multi-organ prolapse and that's where the pain and pressure were coming from. And when I would stand up and move around, these three organs were actually prolapsed outside my body. And so I had to have a a triple surgeon surgery where they would tag team each other in the operating room in a 12 hour surgery. My uterus and cervix had to be removed. It was so damaged that it could not be saved. My bladder had prolapsed, and they did their best to put it back in position with a large amount of mesh because there was nothing for them to attach it to. And then my colon also prolapsed, 18in of my colon had to be removed and then re sectioned and reattached internally. 1s And they attached it to my tailbone in some way so that it would never happen again. And that was where they had deemed was the best place to to attach it to 1s the reason 18in had to be removed. It was badly damaged. I spent many, many years. Purging. Not like a bulimic vomiting. My purging was excessive cardio and swallowing bottles of laxatives. These harsh stimulant laxatives damaged my colon lining. And that's what, of course, piggybacked off of the loss of muscle and the prolapse and the damage to my colon that, um. That recovery from that surgery was long. 1s Very long. I was supposed to be on my way to feeling pretty good at two months. It took me a year to finally feel like. 1s I could walk around in rooms and not be in excruciating pain. Um. Not only did I have pain internally from the surgery, but it was a horizontal incision and that was. That healed rather slowly also because there was no nutrition. Helping 1s my family suffered a lot during these years. They, um. 2s Like me felt helpless to to help me. 2s Ah. Sometimes they would come at me with compassion and love, and try to convince me that I was worthy, and that I needed to recover and stay alive. Sometimes it would turn into frustration and anger, which I totally understand now. 2s To try to shock me, to get me to do something, to change. And I desperately wanted to change. But nothing worked. Now the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. 1s I had done this over and over and over for 40 years, and it was not going to get better this way. 1s I knew being weight restored on carbs, which I had done twice in those 40 years. I knew that that was not my answer because it did not fix any of my mental illnesses. It did not produce any reduction in any of my symptoms at all. 2s I began to wonder if there was something that I could understand and research about our brain chemistry. Not come at this from a practice of weight restoration, but actually from what does our brain need to function correctly? That took me down a path of. 1s A first two books that I found at the library, from an author named Julia Ross. Her two books, The Cure and The Diet Cure, were the first inklings of understanding the over 100 neurotransmitters that we all have that need sufficient and ample and abundant amino acids in order for those neurotransmitters to be made for you to have optimal cognitive function. Yeah, I had nutrition classes I'd had. 1s Health class in school. And we talked about the macros of protein, fat and carbohydrates. But no one ever talked about what the brain needs. And so that was my first introduction into that. 1s After that, I began to wonder if there were people online, um, through YouTube at that time. Ted talks were very famous, and so I began to search on YouTube for anyone that would back up what I was reading in these two books. And that's when I found Doctor George Aid and Doctor Chris Polar Bear, early work that I found in 2016 2017. 1s Were my first glimmer of hope. My first light bulb moment that could this. Actually help me? I was very skeptical. I was very doubtful at this point in time of my life. Doctors said that I'm just going to have to accept this, that there's nothing more that we can do. 2s But what was interesting to me is that what they were telling me that needed to happen for my brain to work correctly was animal protein and saturated fat. Those were the two things that I had not consumed in 35 years. So there was my light bulb and my glimmer of hope. 2s Next came trying to implement this. 2s I was not the normal person who is eating a standard American diet that could trade one plate of food for another. 2s I, like I said, was eating a cup of spinach and a cup of cooked celery. 2s So this to embark on this was difficult. 1s But I set myself on a plan and this is what I did. I know it now. It's basically reverse dieting where you put something in and you build upon it, which is what, you know, bodybuilders and fitness influencers do to build muscle. So basically what I did was I reversed diet technique. But for me it was it was very small and it had to be built on very slowly or I would relapse because if I felt that I ate too much one day, the next day, I wouldn't eat at all. That's how I lived my life for 40 years. If I had taken a bite of something that I felt was forbidden, I would either spend hours doing cardio to work it off, or I'd spend the next two days literally not eating anything at all to make up for it. So I knew. I knew my thought processes, I knew my habits. I knew my pitfalls. I knew what would sabotage this. 1s So my plan was to pick a protein that was the most mild, but I could think of. And for me that was that was fat free chicken breast. And so that's where I started. And I promised myself that I would eat an ounce, two tablespoons an ounce 1s every day. And that first, that first meal, that first day was traumatic to to say the least. I sat at the kitchen table and cried trying to get this down. 2s But I had nothing else to try, so I was in this for the long haul. I wasn't even saying, I'll give it 30 days, I'll give it 60 days. This was I was in it until and unless I didn't make it because I wasn't going to survive another year at £75 with the physical medical complications that I was experiencing. 1s I was hoping that a week into this with the one ounce of chicken that I could then double it. And thankfully, that is that is what happened every week to ten days. I would get used to it. And then that one ounce became two, and two became three, and three became four, and so on and so forth. When I got to the eight ounce of chicken mark, that's what I found. Doctor Sean Baker and Doctor Tenbury and Doctor Anthony Chafee. 1s And I began binge watching everything I could find about the superiority of beef over other meats. All meat is good, but beef and I. As some special nuances to it that I feel are specifically helpful to the brain. So I switched from chicken to beef. The eight ounces for the eight ounces. 2s At the three month mark, I began to notice a little bit of change. The first time in my life that I had any reduction in my anxiety, a panic attacks, my depression. 1s A small reduction in the OCD. 1s There was a small reduction in. How often I was cutting my arms and legs, they became fewer and far between. 1s I was beginning to notice these changes and. 1s I had hope. 2s Even if I never got any better than that. It was better than I had been since I was 12 years old. 2s At the six month mark, I was able to change from the eight ounces of ground beef to putting whole roasts like chuck roast in the crock pot. That gave me the fat profile that I needed for my brain. 1s But it also was aligned with knowing that I couldn't swallow tablespoons of tallow or oil or butter. That was not something that I could do. So that got me to the next level of healing was changing to those fatty cuts of meat. The fat within the meat. 2s At the six month mark, I noticed more changes, and at the nine month mark there was even more. At that point, I was up to about a pound of the chuck roast a day. 1s I was learning about oxalates. At that point, I was still consuming the cup of spinach and a cup of celery with the pound of beef, and I decided to go on only beef, salt and water. Back then, we didn't have a term for it. Now we know it's the lion diet. 1s I wanted to see if anything that I had previously consumed or over consumed in terms of fruits and vegetables and plants would have any bearing on my physical illnesses that I was suffering with. 1s And of course. What? 1s It was. It did have a very, very large bearing on how I was feeling. And many of those illnesses quickly turned around and. And the ones that even lingered eventually healed also completely. These 20 physical illnesses were at the one year mark, completely gone. 2s And the six diagnosed mental illnesses at the one year mark were also completely gone. That voice, those voices. 1s At the six and nine month mark. That finally got to the point where they were quieted to the point. 2s It sounded like they were in another room with the door closed. I was overjoyed at that point. I had never, ever in my life experienced any reduction in those voices. And then another three months in at the one year mark. They were gone, never to return again. My thoughts are now on my own. I have nothing in my head that is screaming evil to me. There's only joy and love. 1s It's there. 1s All of the anorexia features are completely gone. And it wasn't because I gained weight at that one year mark. I had not gained a single pound. The mental illness has to be healed first. Through nutrient dense nutrition. Once the mental illness is healed specifically for anorexia, then. You are completely free to add those pounds on any which way that you see fit, whether it be through strictly through eating or weight training like I do. 1s Plus the added protein. 2s It's completely gone. All of the anorexia features. There is no drive to starve. There is no chance of relapse. There is never a time when I have eaten less or. That lasted longer than I anticipated, and the thoughts creep back in and say, oh, can I go longer? Or oh, I can reduce this food that's not there anymore. That used to be there all the time and these incessant thoughts over food. I used to think about food constantly. That's also gone. I'm so satiated and so healed on the amount of meat that I eat. Now, on my second year and now I'm in all the way up to six years carnivore and I now eat £3 of meat every day, and I enjoy intermittent fasting. I love living my day in a fasted state and weight training in a fasted state and putting on muscle the. 1s The energy that I feel from being in ketosis during the day is just amazing. The joy that I have and the freedom that I have is absolutely wonderful. And then when the fast is over, it's time to feast. And and I equally enjoy that also every day I love. 2s Beating my body I love. How I feel. I love how I have been able to transform and reverse the diagnoses that were said to be permanent. The doctors told me that that you can't really heal hypothyroid without going on my meds. You definitely can't reverse and heal osteoporosis, which I did, but I don't have the diagnosis of either one of those anymore. I researched and figured out and planned my own protocol of what to eat, how much protein, what supplements, and how much weightlifting to turn both of those around. And I live in such a thankful, grateful place that I speak out every day as much as I possibly can on social media and through interviews. 2s I tell people there's no one beyond hope. There is no one that's too far gone. There's no one beyond healing. No matter where you are or how many decades that you've suffered. I know based on what I've experienced that you can be better. And I just want to tell as many people as I possibly can. Mental illness is skyrocketed. The last 30 to 40 years. And I believe so much of it is because the world is being pushed into a plant based diet. Our brains aren't getting what it means. And it's also getting the anti nutrients of an overconsumption of plants and grains that are harming them. 2s Yeah. Not. Yeah. Not everybody has to be strict. I always tell people to go strict as your illnesses dictate. Many people can be ketogenic and still enjoy those low carb vegetables in there. For me, that was something that I had to eliminate because I had illness from them. But I support, you know, all ranges of any sort of low carb, you know, high fat, no sugar, no grains diet, um, ketogenic, carnivore or lion diet. You know, they all have nuanced variations and they all get you to a place of, of healing. And I support all of those. So it's an amazing journey. And. 1s I. 1s I wish to. To help others. This mission. 

 U2 

 35:09 

 That was amazing. 1s Um, so I'm just going to say to people, I've just been standing here in awe of what you just went through and told us about. It was amazingly emotional, actually, to listen to that. And many people say, wow, you don't jump in and ask questions because sometimes you just want to stand and listen to a story and be absolutely amazed at firstly, the the trauma and the terrible period of your life. 40 years 

 U1 

 35:42 

 is is very difficult for me to grasp just how bad that was, but I just let your words and your story speak for itself and the glimmer of hope that you mentioned and, uh, some great names there, Julia Ross and, uh, uh, Doctor Campbell and we've got Julia Eade, who was a guest recently, Sean Baker. Chaffey. They're all of them. They're just just 

 U2 

 36:04 

 helping people like yourself find the answer. Um, you touched on something and will come back to the oxalate protocol. I'll ask you about that in a second. But I also want to get into. Something you told me. Uh. When you put online as well, that you went back to these doctors thinking that they would be interested in how you reversed everything, but you didn't find them being as receptive as you expected. 

 U1 

 36:32 

 No I didn't. Um. 1s I began to go back to the most recent and and I was prepared to, you know, make a list and try to find as many as possible. And there were a lot. I had been to 45 doctors in those years, you know, 12 of which were psychiatrists. But there were a lot of, um, general practitioners, a lot of psychologists, a lot of surgeons. You know, there was no way I was probably going to be able to find all of them. But I went to the most the or most recent, hoping to just have a voice with them, hoping that they would be overjoyed at my healing. 1s And would be at least open minded to listen to how this came about and what I had to do in order to heal my brain. 1s I was met with so much resistance and so much patronizing attitude. 2s They looked at me and said that I was experiencing a placebo effect, and that I'd better get back in treatment before I had a psychotic break. 1s And some of them said carnivore is just masking your symptoms. That. Once the shock of this diet wears off, you're going to be right back where you were before, and then you're also going to be unhealthy because you are going to have a heart attack or going to have type two diabetes from going meat based. I was met with such resistance and I finally decided that. That was not a good use of my time because I then was losing my joy to anger. I didn't want to give them any more power over my life than what they had already previously had, so I. I stopped doing that. I stopped visiting hospitals. I stopped going back to my previous doctors and decided I'm going to live a life of abundant joy, and I'm going to try to reach someone right on my own level. I'm going to try to reach other sufferers and give them hope, and tell them that you don't need a doctor's approval to do this. This is not a medication with side effects. This is food. And you can work on this yourself without a clinical trial, without a clinical study. I'm all for those. I can't wait for the randomized controlled trials to come out that will validate that a ketogenic and carnivore diet heals mental illness. I am ready for those days to come, and I applaud every clinical trial that's going on right now. There are over 15 going on worldwide studying ketogenic diets for mental illness. But in my case. 1s I didn't, I couldn't I couldn't wait for a doctor to to guide me through this. I wouldn't have survived. And so I encourage anyone out there. 1s To read as much as you can to. 1s Undertake those doctors that we know that have books out there to be as knowledgeable as possible and and just start yourself. So yeah, I stopped going back. It was it was it was not helpful to me or to them. But I was disappointed, I really was. It was just, 1s you know, 

 U2 

 40:04 

 and I'm not surprised. That's the sad thing about this is I hear this all the time. They just don't want to know. So you dropped in a little teaser, which was excellent. Um, you mentioned you did an oxalate protocol and you said maybe we'll come back to that. So here we are. We're coming back to that. So would you want to do you want to just, um, sort of fill out a little bit more detail on the oxalate 

 U1 

 40:27 

 protocol? 2s Um, oxalates. Oxalic acid is an anti nutrient. And um, in plants, in, um, some grains in fruits and certain vegetables. They can cause an illness. That will manifest differently in different people. It's difficult to even just string a list of 5 or 6 illnesses. It would feel pages and pages of what people experience them individually, personally. What one person experiences as a kidney stone, which is calcium oxalate stone developing in the kidney. Someone else will experience with ringing out the ears like tinnitus, which I had also. Or it could be digestive issues. It could be anxiety and brain fog. It could be like me, the interstitial cystitis and those oxalate crystals forming these tiny, painful crystals in the urethra and in the digestive tract in the bladder. 2s For me. Um, I had so many years of overconsumption. You know, our bodies can be laid out a certain amount each day, and we just fine. A lot of these vegetables that are high in oxalic acid used to only be consumed seasonally, like nuts and spinach and rhubarb and raspberries. That was how nature intended these vegetables and fruits to be consumed. We would consume them when they would arrive, or 2 to 4 weeks out of the year, and then our bodies would then collate that out the rest of the year where we didn't consume them. Well, in this day and age, we can go to the supermarket and buy in abundance everything that we want. 1s And because of the plant based agenda. 1s So much of it is. Almonds. Almond milk. Almond yogurt. Just eating almonds, almond flour that's, um, used so much in the ketogenic world for cooking because it's low carb. 1s In a day. If you have something almond based and you then have a spinach salad or a spinach smoothie and you, you chop it full of raspberries and then the evening meal, you have sweet potato or French fries. You're in a day. You're overloading your body with these high oxalate food. And day after day after day, month after month. 1s People will develop illness. 2s Many will develop arthritis and joint pains. That they then are diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and they end up going on steroids that will lower their immune system and lower their inflammation, thinking that that's going to heal it. And that's not treating the root cause. That's just taking a medication that. What was their immune response to the toxin that they're ingesting? So many people find as they go off of these high oxalate foods that they slowly heal. 2s The way to do this. I learned through Sally Kay Norton. I found her also early in my journey before she had released her book, Toxic Superfoods, which is now more widely known and can be purchased everywhere. And I direct people to her book and her work every chance that I find someone that may have oxalate issues. But her early work before she put her book out led me down this path of understanding what they could do to me, what illnesses I had that possibly could be caused by this, and how to heal without causing more illness and harm. If you eliminate all oxalates completely abruptly, you will go through a very painful oxalate dumping experience. 1s I didn't want to experience that. I already had enough illness. I was living with. 2s So I did what she instructed online and on her website and the talks and writings that I found back then, that you slowly reduce the oxalate. And you on purpose, leave a small amount in that will signal to your body to release the oxalate slowly and not dump it all at once. So for me, I chose a black tea. Tea is is has a fair amount of oxalate in it. Not super high like spinach and almonds, but you know enough so that my two cups of black tea each day and also slowly eliminating the spinach and the celery that I had was currently consuming, bringing those down to nothing. No consumption of them within about eight weeks. But keeping the black tea in kept me from experiencing that awful, painful dumping that other people go through. And of course, in her book, she talks. She's through all of that now, and her book is awesome because she also has charts in there so that you don't feel deprived of those vegetables and fruits that you, that you still want to have in your diet if you're ketogenic or if you're still consuming vegetables and fruits. She has charts in there where if you love raspberries, trade them for blueberries that are a little lower, you know, and if you love this food, tried it for this one. And that's also helpful to not feel like you're so deprived. If you're still leaving some of those foods in your current way of eating. 2s William, 

 U2 

 46:46 

 it's been an absolute pleasure. Um, listening to you. 

 U1 

 46:50 

 Um, 

 U2 

 46:51 

 I will finish the interview here, but I'm going to leave the recording because I've got an extra question I want to ask you, but I might take it out, by the way, because you might not want to answer it. Okay. So, um, I'm going to thank you now. 

 U1 

 47:06 

 But coming on and here's 

 U2 

 47:08 

 that there's a left a little gap there to edit anyway. So I want to ask you and if you don't want to answer this is fine. And what do you think was the trigger that started all the anxiety because you said it started at a very early age. If there's something traumatic in your life, you don't want to talk about that, that's fine. But, um, if you want to talk about what you think the trigger was, what started it all. But, you know, I would be fascinated to know. 

 U1 

 47:35 

 Well, I'm an open book. Um, anyone can ask me anything, whether it be in an interview or when someone reaches out to meet you. Direct message. There is no subject that I'm not comfortable talking about. So what I think was going on, um, part of it was nutritionally, in the 70s, we were at the crux of no fat, low fat margarine, um, no eggs, no protein. You know, everything was switched out from bacon and eggs to cereal, um, from butter to margarine. 1s And it was a time period that. 2s You thought you were doing. What was helping? It was, you know, holy pasta and holy bread is the best thing for you. Um, and and peanut butter and and things like that. So I grew up, um, eating a lot of pasta. 1s Um. Potatoes. 2s Um, things of that nature. No dairy? Um. No eggs. I think nutritionally, that set me up for. 2s My brain not functioning already. 1s I was. 1s My earliest memories. Three and four years old. I wasn't well, 1s and, um, I had physical illness too. I had a lot of antibiotics use as a young child. I had strep throat. I had mononucleosis at 12 years old that was misdiagnosed and undiagnosed. I spent eight weeks taking eight different antibiotics during the course of that, when they would not test me for mono telling, telling my my mom that it wasn't possible at 12 to have mono. And of course it was. So I think there was gut damage that happened from all of those years of illness and antibiotic use. And then the nutrition component. Um, I, I definitely don't blame anything that went on with that with my family, because we all ate that way. It wasn't something that was withheld from me. It was the 70s. It was how everybody ate. 2s I'm. 1s It was just seemed to be more in me. 1s The third component in this. 2s My father left our family when I was three and it was a traumatic experience for me. I felt unworthy and unloved. I felt abandoned. I felt like trash that was thrown away to the curb. He not only left us. 1s But. 2s The verbal and emotional abuse continued on after that because he would pop back in on life. Frequently and act like nothing had happened. 1s I promised to pick me up on the weekend, and I would sit with my little suitcase on the stairs, and he would not show up. 2s And it was damaging to me as a child. 1s Because that gets internalized. A child can't look at that situation and say, there's something wrong with my dad. A child looks at that situation and says, there's something flawed in the. 1s And those three things together. 1s I feel our are what caused this firestorm for me. And then of course, all of the years of therapy I worked through, all of the trauma. I worked through, the abandonment, I worked through all of that. I no longer hold any animosity towards him. We actually have reconciled. So healing that. 1s That part. The emotional trauma still did no healing in my mental illness. It played a part in how I viewed myself, but it did not play a part in the neurological mental illness deficiencies that I was experiencing, if that makes sense. 1s Honoree. 

 U2 

 52:06 

 Thank you for sharing that. And, um, if I could give you a virtual hug, I would. Um. Choked me. But anyway, thank you for your time. And, uh, hopefully we can do a sort of catch up in maybe a year's time here, so 

 U1 

 52:20 

 we love to do that. I would love to do that. Yes. Thank you so much.