Episode 13 | How to Heal Interstitial Cystitis – Dr. Mandy LaGreca

Today we’re talking about interstitial cystitis. We have Dr. Mandy La Greca on the show and Mandy, thank you for joining me today.

Well, thanks for having me.

You know, what is your story? How did you get into helping people with interstitial cystitis?

That’s really simple. I have it too.

So the passion comes from within. Um, I started with my symptoms at age 31. Although now that I look back, I realize I probably had some urinary issues even through college because I was always at the bathroom. I had urinary frequency and they even nicknamed me the pisser. Oh my. When I was uh growing up and through college because I used to go to the bathroom a lot. So um, yeah, I probably started then, but then I was diagnosed officially at age 31 when my daughter was born.

And um, if I can just describe the pain that comes with this, it’s absolutely debilitating. I don’t wish this upon my enemies. You don’t I mean, I can’t even describe it. It’s like burning, sharp, painful urination, almost like glass was passing through and I didn’t have a UTI.

So that’s kind of how my journey started, just trying to navigate my own illness, going through all of the ups and downs of the weather western medicine way of doing things. Um, none of that stuff worked for me and so I decided that it was time for something different and that’s when I kind of the journey just brought me here. You know, I think everything happens for a reason.

Yeah, and obviously you didn’t, you know, have these symptoms and this condition and then just start helping people. In fact, on your website there is and I find found this interesting about Mandy page. So you go by Mandy which to me is a very humble way to go when you have so many letters that are before and after your name. Can you tell our audience a little bit about your education and how you got all those letters, what they are before and after your name?

Sure. I’m a doctor in clinical nutrition. I have a doctorate from Maryland University of Integrative Health. Um so how all this started was I went back to college and I got a master’s degree in biology. I was a teacher. So I’m a natural born teacher. I love educating people and that’s kind of what I do in my practice anyway. And then as I started to go through my own healing journey working with integrative practitioners, I got really interested in functional medicine. And so I decided to get my FDN. So I’m a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner which is a type of a health coach.

And then after that I got my CCN which is a certified clinical nutritionist and I was really into it and then I decided I’m just going to go ahead and sign up for the doctorate and so I did and I went through that program and then after I sat for the CNS exam, certified nutrition specialist, allowed me to get a license. So that’s what I am now and I love what I do.

Yeah. Yeah, helping people is that’s the reward. The hearing back from the people that you help and and I have a question coming up about that in just a little bit. We’ll come back to that one. Um

I looked up interstitial cystitis because honestly I know very little bit about it and really for me there’s there’s two ways to really help people when they have a condition. One is the completely blind approach which is where I tend to go in and say I don’t know much about that. What I do know is how the human body works and kind of what it needs and that most illnesses are really a set of symptoms from not having those things. So I can help you from that perspective. And then there’s the complete medical approach where we really studied this condition and and we know, you know, what causes it and how to fix it.

Um and then there’s that and I think this is you, which is in between those extremes because uh you’re not like me that knows so little bit about it, but you know a lot of about it and you probably know the medical and look at it from a natural perspective on the things that we could do to help. And it was interesting because the CDC website, cdc.gov, um number one listing for interstitial cystitis, um it suggests that medically very little is known about it. So, in Idiopathic. Idiopathic. Okay. Generally. Yeah, but that’s not true. In your words, what is it?

It’s inflammation. I mean, I know that’s oversimplified, but ultimately when you have pain, you have inflammation, right? Think about when you have pain, there’s heat, there’s redness, um generally that’s signs of inflammation. So, how does it happen? That’s where the idiopathic portion comes in. Medically, because they haven’t really looked beyond um medical reasons why.

Generally in medicine, they’re looking for pathogenic um triggers, like infectious generally or genetic. But in this case, because a lot of it is dietary and environmental, like toxicity, it’s not something I believe, and I didn’t go to medical school, like that type of medical school. So, what they’re learning, I from what I know and what I understand, they don’t teach them too much nutrition or too much of things related to environmental lifestyle, even mental, you know, psychosomatic triggers. A lot of my clients have history of trauma, for example.

A lot of that doesn’t come up, but if you look a little deeper, there are a few medical doctors who have gone a little further. One of them his name is Dr. Afrin. He is what very well known in the mast cell community, and so he has drawn the connection to IC and mast cell activation. And in fact, if you look at some of the urology published journals, they discuss the involvement of mast cells in IC pathogenesis. So, there is something going on with the immune system. It is definitely immune-mediated. It’s an immune problem. But, look around us. I think we are dealing with immune problems all around us anyway, so it’s not abnormal to see these types of diseases arise. In fact, almost all autoimmune autoinflammatory diseases are a dysfunction of your immune system. Can we agree? Mhm. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

And, you know, whether that’s gut-related or most likely, I would imagine. 80% of our immune system, right? 70 to 80. It resides in the GI tract. Yeah.

You mentioned some of the symptoms that you experienced. Um were there earlier symptoms that you may have picked up on? And the reason I think this is important, um the CDC site where I, you know, read about it, uh let me see if I can find it really quick because it was um the numbers were ridiculous. It was something like 1 in 100,000 people. It was believed that like 1 in 100,000 people have IC, interstitial cystitis, and that was updated to probably closer to 12% of women. Well, that’s a big it’s higher than that. Uh that’s reported. Yeah. Definitely higher than 1 in in 100,000.

I know that because all the phone calls that I take where people ask me uh about this, you know, they’re they call and they wonder if aloe vera could help. We can talk about that in a bit. Yeah. But, it went from suggesting 1 in 100,000 from early numbers to literally up to 12% and you think it might even be more. So I do.

For those people that might be getting this, what would be some of the before the intense pain, what are some of the early signs?

Urinary frequency. Yeah, and is that when you say that it does it mean lots of times in the day when and are you peeing a lot? Are you more thirsty or is it just

No, it’s urgency and frequency. So you when you go, you got to go. Almost like the IBS. You know how IBS when you got to go, you got to go? And then like you can lose control and it’s the same thing. You you have to run into the bathroom, leaking on yourself, and then also going often. So like it’s not normal for someone to have to use the bathroom every 15 minutes for example. Yeah, so when you go able to go hours between voiding.

Yeah, so almost like having a much smaller bladder with less control.

Um yeah, but I don’t think everyone has reduced bladder capacity. I mean some will because of the inflammation that’s run so deep especially if you’ve had it for a long time. There is scar tissue and fibrosis that occurs in the bladder. That’s absolutely certain. And as a result of that, the bladder does the capacity They say the bladder shrinks. The bladder is not shrinking. You’re just developing scar tissue and fibrotic tissue inside the bladder that’s causing it to have less capacity. That never happened to me. I actually had full bladder capacity.

What was happening with me was I was having a lot of retention. So I wasn’t urinating everything all at once. So I had to use the bathroom more often. Mhm. Because I wasn’t releasing. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. And how was it medically diagnosed?

Um hold on one second. Let me just make sure I get somebody off of here. I’m Medically it is um diagnosed via a cystoscopy generally.

I never did that though. I refused. Um but it’s very invasive. So it’s a very So the way some doctors will do it is they’ll go invasively and they’ll do a cystoscopy and every once in a while they’ll even do a hydrodistension where they where they blow up the bladder with um water and it allows them to scope it better, but also somehow somehow provides relief temporarily.

Or you can go the way my doctor did and he did it based off of just symptoms. So like a symptom questionnaire, uh I guess that’s called diagnosis of exclusion. We exclude everything else, you have these symptoms, therefore you have IC. Right. The Those are the only ways right now.

Um oh, there’s another test that some people will do, but I don’t think they do it as much anymore. It’s called the potassium sensitivity test. Where they’ll expose the bladder to potassium and if it has a reaction and burns, then you’re diagnosed. I never did that either. I didn’t do that. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, so it seems to be like almost like that, you know, catch all if you’re not having, you know, we can’t figure exactly what it is, therefore it must be this and it’s a generic general inflammatory you know, okay.

But may but but let me mention something. Um interstitial cystitis is actually part of a larger syndrome called bladder pain syndrome, BPS.

Sometimes you’ll see it as painful bladder syndrome, PBS in some journals. So BPS, PBS. Um I believe in parts of Europe they’ve already separated IC from BPS as two separate diseases. Although the umbrella term is bladder pain syndrome, the IC is now being considered people who have a specific Hunner’s lesion, Hunner’s ulcers that show up on a cystoscopy, which is based off of a virus now, polyoma B I think it’s called virus.

Very small percentage of people have that, maybe 10%, 5-10%? And then BPS, but we we still call it IC in this country because that’s what we know it as. But like if I were to go truly by definition, it’s I actually had bladder pain syndrome and 90% of the people who are diagnosed have bladder pain syndrome.

Just Just to understand there are different subtypes and there’s that subtype with the Hunters that actually has to show up on that cystoscopy. So, you can have a negative clean cystoscopy and have none of the lesions and still be diagnosed because you still have the pain. Does that make sense?

It sure does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and the reason I wanted to talk to you about this today is because I we do get a lot of phone calls you know, at the Aloe company and some people want to know how to get help with this and how help with that. When it comes to IC, I have very little to offer and they want to know does aloe vera help with interstitial cystitis too, which I say, you know, scientifically, I’m completely unaware of anything connecting a benefit from aloe vera drinking aloe vera with IC. Why don’t you talk to and I point them to ICHealer.com? Your website. Is that still the best source? Yeah.

Okay. Um and I know obviously you’ve trial and error figured some things out. How is it treated medically and what would you do in addition to or instead of what medicine has to offer?

So, from what I’ve learned from a lot of the people I’ve worked with medically, the first line that people are treating it with is with a couple of drugs. One is amitriptyline, which is it’s used as an antidepressant, but it does help desensitize the pain. I’ve actually just learned that it’s also a mast cell stabilizer. So, maybe that’s another mechanism of action, but I don’t think that’s why it’s prescribed. I think it’s prescribed because it does reduce the pain. So, that’s has a lot of side effects. So, that was one that I tried. I did try that and I started gaining weight and I’m like, nope, not for me. So, I didn’t do that one.

The one they used to do a lot more until the FDA had to had some released some issues with class action lawsuits related to uh problems with the eye was Elmiron. You might have run into that in your research. Okay, that’s supposed to coat the lining of the bladder, but the problem is that’s assuming that there’s a problem with the lining of the bladder. So, my understanding was it doesn’t really work like that. So, a lot of people said they went on Elmiron and they didn’t have a lot of um improvements from that. Side effect, hair loss. That’s why I didn’t do that one.

You know, and it’s it’s not just the appearance, but if my hair is falling out, what else is happening to my body?

I’m glad you’re bringing up the side effects because, you know, sometimes we think, “Oh, I have this, I’m supposed to take that and everything’s good.” No, every medicine I look at it like this.

If medicine’s going to get someone sick that’s well, then, you know, it must make your health better, right? So, if we give it to a healthy person, they’ll probably get even more healthy, right? No. If you give medicine to a completely perfect healthy person, they become less healthy. It doesn’t move us in a direction of health. That doesn’t mean it can’t be beneficial and help our life happiness, quality of life, right?

Yes. That’s what we’re always looking for is is QOL, right? We’re always looking for that and that’s really ultimately the goal which is why I’m mixed when I I am a believer of I was on antibiotics a lot myself. I did take a lot of antibiotics for this. Um, at that time we thought I had an embedded infection. So, that’s another root cause of IC is embedded infection.

So, listen, if you need an antibiotic I mean, people ask me sometimes, “I have a UTI, should I take an antibiotic?” And I see this horrific um advice they’re getting on Facebook. That’s why I call it Dr. Facebook. I’m like, “Facebook’s not your doctor.” No, if you have an infection, take an antibiotic. I mean, at the end of the day, that’s why they were they were developed. It’s the overuse that we have to be careful of. So,

I think the pendulum when when medications came to this world, they saved lives. They absolutely when and penicillin was invented, it saved lives. The problem is the pendulum swung the other way. We started over prescribing, but I think we’re starting to bring that pendulum back down. I think people are starting to become aware and we’re coming back to center because ultimately nature does have its own healing like aloe vera. It’s part of nature. It’s been around before medications. How can we harness that? And that’s kind of where our job is as clinical nutritionist is to figure out, you know, I’m integrative. So, I believe how can we have a balance between medications and harnessing nature because nature is not available at everyone’s fingertips.

I mean, with your aloe, we you know, you’d have to buy it. If you didn’t exist, we’d have to go get our own and have to learn how to fillet it. I’m sure people would do that, but we’re thankful for people like you that have these kind of products. Thank you.

Yeah, I I almost look at it medicine kind of like, you know, I enjoy eating and I love eating ice cream. Now, I haven’t had ice cream probably in at least a year. Um but if I ate it as much as I wanted, although I had enjoyed it at the time, overall things for me would change. I’d probably gain weight and eventually have less health. Um and medicine can be used at certain times for a limited benefit, but if we rely on them, they take away from who we are.

So, We are one of nature, you know, and and ultimately, you know, your biochemistry is really everything. Your own biochemistry, which is why I love what I do because I can peek in your biochemistry with labs. I can peek in running a nutrigenomic panel, looking at your genetics to see what your you know, what your predispositions are. Um so, that’s the beauty of, you know, clinical and functional nutrition is the ability to do that.

Um, back to aloe, however, um, I discovered this, uh, well, you know, interesting, aloe was being used because Desert Harvest has an aloe vera product for IC. They specifically market it for IC. Um, I tried theirs. I didn’t really see a ton of benefit at the time. Maybe I wasn’t taking enough. I don’t know, it’s freeze-dried. But then I encountered your product because I was listening to Chris. Uh, he has that Chris Beat Cancer. Um, I you I think you had an interview with him. Um, I don’t remember his full name. Chris Beat Cancer.

Yeah, Chris Wark actually, uh, interviewed me at one point, so I’m on the, uh, there’s a aloe vera video on the chrisbeatcancer.com website.

Okay, that’s must have been where I ran into him. And, um, I was amazed by what he was telling the audience about acemannan and aloe vera and his cancer. And so I started doing the research. I went to PubMed and I was like, “Oh my god, there’s a plethora of information about this.” It’s not just aloe vera, it’s not just acemannan, it’s all the polysaccharides that are in aloe.

So, when I think about aloe, I don’t think about it as the way Desert Harvest advertises it as it’s coating the bladder.

No, I look a little deeper as what are the mechanisms of action of the polysaccharides and the acemannan on your immune system. Because ultimately, this is an immune dysfunction. It’s inflammation, does involve the immune system. There’s a trigger for inflammation. You’re not just going to have inflammation just because you have it. Inflammation occurs because the cells of your immune system, we know, the monocytes, the macrophages, the, um, eosinophils, the, um, natural killer cells, mast cells, and then your adaptive, that’s innate, and then your adaptive the system, your T cells and your B-cells are responding to something. They’re not going to respond to nothing. There has to be something.

Well, if you think about it, the majority of the things that they respond to are probably pathogens, those bacteria, viruses, fungi. Mold is a big one. Um it could be toxicity, toxins. It could be glyphosate. It could be pesticides. Stress can trigger your immune system. Ace The polysaccharides and acemannan in aloe vera specifically modulate your immune system. And I know you can talk more on this.

So, I look at it as how does how do the things that I recommend people help actually upstream? Upstream, not downstream. Medication is downstream. We’re upstream.

Right. I like that. Yeah. So, you Why don’t you talk a little bit then, now that we’re talking about the immune system, about, you know, what you know about aloe and the immune system?

Yeah, you know, I found out um actual real research on this, scientific In fact, in in a lot of our customers actually come because they’re using aloe vera uh either as replacement to or alongside their medical cancer treatments, which is a big immune system problem. And I realized that even chemotherapy companies have used aloe vera in research alongside chemotherapy.

Now, one of my favorite ones is 240 patients, all stage four, that were given 1 oz Only 1 oz of aloe vera per day with their chemotherapy. Actually, it was 119 were given the aloe vera. That’s What does that come out to? A quarter Yeah, that’s not even That’s not even a quarter cup. Well, yeah, 1 oz is Yeah, it’s it’s Yes, it’s cuz there’s

Well, there’s 8 oz in a cup. So, it’s an eighth of a cup. Yeah, an eighth of a cup. And

119 given the 1 oz and 121 just given the chemotherapy. And they put them into four categories like, you know, um no improvement, mild improvement, more improvement, and then the fourth category was the uh what they called a complete result. And out of the 119 with the aloe vera, 10 of them were given the complete result category, but the ones that didn’t get the aloe, only three.

So, it was more than three times in the complete result compared to you know, so that Obviously, something’s happening and they researched the acemannan and realized that the primary sugar molecule is mannose, which seems to interfere with the cancer cell ability to consume and metabolize glucose, which is what feeds them. Ah.

There’s so many possible pathways to how does aloe vera help the immune system? Um you know, it makes the gut healthier, which is where the immune system is. Uh Hippocrates health institute to realize giving small amounts with supplements, they tested the blood for the supplements and realized the nutrients that they tested were higher in every single person that got the aloe vera with their supplements. So, somehow it affects absorption.

Yeah, carry. Helps carry it in. I I did notice that.

So, having more nutrients probably helps your body work more like it’s supposed to and probably supports the immune system uh better. Somehow it lowers and stabilizes blood sugar levels in people that have diabetes.

Um you know, there’s all kinds of mechanisms, potential ways, pathways. It increases your tumor necrosis factor, interferon, and interleukins, which helps wake up the immune system uh to where the viruses and cancer cells are. Um when the cancer cells have that mannose molecule attached onto them, they can’t consume it and they can’t let go of it. Apparently, it’s a signal saying that I’m a cell that you have to deal with and the macrophages come and eat them. You know, there’s lots of neat possible pathways that it might help someone that doesn’t have their full health.

Um you know, you you have and I know it’s not all about aloe vera and I don’t even know if you mentioned in it in in the course, but you have an online course for people that have interstitial cystitis. What can you tell me about that?

So, I put together this course because I realized that learning about this it really to take Okay, to take charge of your health, you got to understand why you have what you have. I mean, come on. At the end of the day, if you someone just tells you just take this and you don’t know why you’re taking it, you’re not going to be motivated to continue. So, I was like, let me create this course.

And so, I went through everything I learned in my academics and I kind of try to summarize it even though it’s 10 hours of lecture time into this module that goes through all the different possible root causes and I go through the gut. I go through the immune I’m sorry, I talk about inflammation. I talk about the immune system, a little crash course, the gut, stress and how it impacts the immune system, detoxification, and really just helping people understand what’s going on inside of your body. And actually, let me show you. I have this um this chart that I made. If I could just share screens real quick here.

You have to give me the permission to share screens.

Oh boy, you’re going to make me figure something out here. Hang on a second. I don’t know how to do it. I got an idea. Is it possible that we can make it an attachment or a link that we click on or something like that in the description?

Yeah, it’s just the eight known root causes of IC. I I wanted to you know, half of the battle with doing what I do, this is a very complex thing. IC is complex, diseases are complex, and communicating it to people in a manner where they can digest it, no pun intended, where they can digest it is complicated because they don’t have a background in medicine. If they don’t have a background in any of the stuff that we know, there it’s going to be foreign to them. And you can’t expect them to open up a PubMed journal and be able to synthesize everything. It’s just you can’t expect that.

So, I wanted to make this really simple. So, I made this diagram of the eight causes of of IC. And so, I kind of narrowed it down to inflammation, gut imbalances, trauma, big one, big one, infections, genetics, toxins, food intolerances, and nutrient deficiencies.

So, those are like the eight. And through that, that’s the course kind of walks you through all those causes. Um it’s you know, it’s long. I mean, but the people who have actually spent the time to go through it and synthesize it have gotten the most benefit because they were able to take the information and apply it to their own issues because no two people are the same.

And that’s where sometimes it can get frustrating when people are used to the Western mindset where they’re like, “Tell me what’s wrong with me and tell me what to do.” And my answer is, “I don’t know much about you.” Like I have to figure out what’s going on with you. Just because you have bladder pain doesn’t mean that you’re going to be similar to the other person with bladder pain or that person with bladder pain. The reasons are all different. Even though the symptoms are similar.

But even amongst the symptoms, there’s a wide range of variation in the symptoms. You can Not everyone has, for example, urethral pain. I had mostly urethral, but some women have just pelvic pain or just bladder pain.

And it does affect men, by the way. I want to mention that. Men are affected. I’ve had a handful of men come to me with this issue. Generally, they have more also prostate-related issues along with the IC. But men are also afflicted.

All right. So, and I like that. And for the listeners, you know, I’m a chiropractor. And before becoming a chiropractor, I had an 8-month-long barely able to walk problem from my low back while I was in college and I kind of figured out on my own how to help it in the course of about 2 weeks towards the end of that 8 months, which is what pushed me to be a chiropractor. I said, “Man, I got to help other people with this.” And I became a darn good chiropractor, especially helping people with low back pain.

Mandy, Dr. La Greca, she went through this, experienced it, studied it, and in her course is presenting the likely causes and action steps that you can take Absolutely. to correct those.

Um I like going through those things with people and a lot of times it’s like, “Which way which one of those do you think you’re not doing?” Or which one of those areas do you think uh needs improvement? And the from what you told me, it sounds like as people are everyone’s different, so as they’re going through this, there’s probably going to be some areas that stand out in their minds as they’re listening following the course and say, “This is what I have to really focus on and I can make improvements here.” Um so I like that. I like the way you do that.

Yeah, I think generally though, I could say everyone has something with the immune system, for sure. Uh is definitely dysfunction. Um why? That’s individual. And what’s like it’s kind of like a you know, teeter-totter, which one’s heavier than the other.

Like for me personally, my gut was almost everything because even when I look at the symptoms of mast cell activation syndrome, which generally most people with IC have some level of this, and I will see all the symptoms associated with it, you would think mast cells would mean allergies, like, you know, anaphylaxis, eczema, itchy eyes, coughing, you know, the typical. Had none of that. So you wouldn’t have even classified me as mast cell, but there’s a strong component of digestive imbalances related to mast cells because the mast cells there’s tons of mast cells in the digestive tract. In fact, mast cells are found anywhere that there’s a uh what what anytime that there’s a barrier. So, it separates the inside and the outside world. So, your mouth, your nose, your gut, bladder, and vagina.

So, I when I look back at some of those symptoms, I’m like, “Wow, the only ones I had were digestive and bladder-related, but that’s that’s okay. You can have

Some have just localized pain, but then there’s other people who have a variety of other symptoms as well as the bladder pain, such as eczema, acne, skin issues, hormonal imbalances, brain fog, um fatigue, bloating, you know, anything. Any kind of pain in the body can also go along with this condition. It’s not just bladder pain.

Generally, the younger people have just bladder. The older people have other diseases along with it. So, if you’re like in your 20s and you have bladder pain, you’re kind of early in the game, and I would tell my younger clients, I’m like, “Hey, you’re early in this game. This is the best time to start healing because as you get older, it you only add on to it, and you you just get worse and worse and worse, and then before you know it, you’re in your 50s, and you’ve got like six other diseases along with IC.” Yeah. That’s Nobody wants that.

Yeah, that makes sense. Hopefully, people aren’t hearing this where they’re at the, you know, worst stage, but finding out early and taking charge now.

Um all right, so I I visited your website, IC-Healer.com, and there was a tab, courses, and underneath it uh we find this particular course. You have a new course coming out.

Yeah, I’m working right now. I um I just bought the domain, Aviva Immune. And what prompted me to do this is because of um COVID, you know, and all the viruses, and people are just starting to wonder like, “How can I protect myself?” And you can. You absolutely can. You can There’s prevention, and there’s also things you can do nutritionally while you’re sick, and there’s also things you should need to do after the illness because um this virus, I think the flu does the same thing, it comes with a lot of inflammation. So, there’s like four phases of a virus, there’s prevention, there’s illness, infection, there’s inflammation, and then there’s recovery.

What I think I’m finding out is a lot of people will think that once their virus is gone, like, “Oh, I’m better.” They think everything’s better, but in reality, there’s a whole another area that you need to approach on an inflammatory perspective that happens on the tail end of the virus. So, I wanted to educate people on these four different phases and nutritionally how they can support that.

And so, you can, you can support it with things like aloe, that would be on my list, AHCC, vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, all the basic stuff, but also, if you haven’t gotten sick yet, what can you do now to prevent? And a lot of that is geared towards reducing your whole body inflammation. Mhm, yeah.

Yeah, I actually just got over COVID. I had it in July of 2021. Woo! That was hard. Yeah.

I I had it, too. I had it last month. I had

Okay, probably about the same time, and, you know, even now, having tested negative more than a month ago, there’s probably still a little residual of I want to clear my throat. And it was I’ll say that that was actually the worst illness that I’ve ever gone through, meaning I’ve never had a fever lasting more than two or three days, but this was a fever for more than a week, and you know, Oh, wow, you got hit hard. Back pain and just no energy. I mean, to where you didn’t even want to get out of bed to pee, you know? Oh, wow. You did, but you didn’t want to.

I didn’t have that ex- I didn’t have that experience.

There was no interest in hydrating or eating, none at all. I had to weigh myself daily to make sure I was staying hydrated, um because there was sense of smell?

You know, for me, for whatever reason, I haven’t had the sense of smell for years. Um but taste was definitely um affected. And my wife had it alongside with me and and she just after a month uh I was making coffee and she said, “I smell coffee.” I said, “You smell coffee?” And then there she realized, “I smell coffee.” You know, finally came back after after the month. Uh so that was an exciting moment for her.

But Um can I say something? If you lost your sense of smell, you might want to get your zinc levels tested. Okay. There’s a correlation to zinc and loss of smell.

You know, it’s interesting because uh with COVID, I must admit I’ve been uh taking zinc recently. When I when the symptoms start I I took them just a little bit here and there and then I started taking it as I knew I was getting COVID symptoms and threw it all. Um and I started questioning myself, “Am I starting to smell again?” So I appreciate that and now I know to look into that connection and see if I have a zinc deficiency. That would be something.

Yeah, there’s actually a copper People have a oftentimes when they zinc deficiency, they have high copper. And there’s their antagonist. So sometimes if someone’s concerned, we can actually run labs for that to see where the copper’s at and where the zinc is. And oftentimes they’re finding out that And if you have zinc deficiency going into COVID, you’re higher likelihood to lose your sense of smell while having it. And I have chronically low zinc as well. I think that there’s a genetic transporter issue with me because I take zinc and I’m still always low.

So I did lose my sense of smell for about 2 weeks. But I didn’t have the same experience with you, but I did follow this protocol that I’m going to be sharing nutritionally. I’m going to be sharing with this new course. And I followed it to the T and I really truly believe that’s why cuz Terry also got it and he got sick with me and he followed the protocol and we both had very minimal symptoms. I think we were sick for maybe five or six days. Mhm. So, yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited to be able to share this with people.

Awesome. I love it. You know, and it when it was COVID people I’m going to say this only everyone’s been asking and I’m not asking you to divulge this information. For me, I was not vaccinated and I evaluated daily did I make the right decision cuz I asked patients of mine that got COVID that weren’t vaccinated and some said they wish they had gotten the vaccine. Every day regardless of how I felt, for me I was glad that I did not and I’m happy with the choice I made. It was never that bad. Um but at the same time I recognize that it was bad enough that some of my friends probably would not have tolerated what I experienced.

Yeah, I it’s funny you bring this up cuz somebody asked me the other day it was a friend of ours who’s 85 years old and he asked me and I said it’s a case-by-case situation with that. My opinion, my professional opinion is I think it’s case-by-case.

And I agree with that. with you with that. Yeah, so just because, you know, we’re talking about this and saying, you know, for me saying I wasn’t vaccinated, I went through and it was hard. For me, I’m super glad to have natural immunity which I believe is going to be a lot stronger and longer-lasting than anything medically that I could have had done which isn’t a guarantee either. That was part of it, too. Because we believe that we caught it from someone at a party that was fully vaccinated who came up down with their symptoms, you know, a day or two before us. Um so, kind of interesting how that happens. It’s not a guarantee that we would not have gotten it.

No, but was the flu was the flu vaccine ever? Yeah. Was the flu vaccine ever? That’s the question I ask people cuz people always ask me this and I mean I, you know, I think I have my professional opinion, but I think everyone has the ability to make a decision for themselves. But my question back to you to everyone is, well, when you got the flu vaccine and you got flu, did you ever question the efficacy of that? You know, at the end of the day, the the virus is going to do what it’s going to do, and it’s going to mutate, and it’s going to create variants, and then we have no control over that.

But if you’re 85 years old and you could die from the flu, then if the vaccine reduces the severity of it for you, then that’s the right decision for you. And that’s why I think everyone should take a look case by case, and also look at your health history, cuz your health history and age age is a big factor. I mean, children, by nature of being children, have higher innate immune system. Their innate immune system is stronger. As you age, your innate immune system starts to decline, and your adaptive immune system starts to get stronger. That term is called immunosenescence. It’s it’s a phenomenon. So, as you’re older, you are going to be more prone to infections.

Yeah. Uh all my kids in the same house did not get it, or they’ve already had it, but their symptoms were so low we couldn’t tell. You know, we don’t know. their antibodies, you’ll know for sure. Yeah.

Um I don’t And And whether you vaccinate or not, you know, we’re getting on a whole different subject. Whether you vaccinate or not, um get to your ideal weight, you know, if you have blood sugar levels that are up here and you’re 200 lb overweight, you know, work on both of those, and your high blood pressure and stuff. Okay, just getting to the right weight can so increase your your

Well, that is always the first line. That is always the first line. The first line is always we always talk about like weight and height. Make sure you’re at the right weight for your height. If you’re not, get there first, and then everything else comes after that, because a lot of times your problems get better just when you lose weight, cuz fat is pro-inflammatory. Just having fat on your body is pro-inflammatory.

But even when it comes to inflammation, you can be at, you know, a lot of my clients I work with are actually underweight. Well, that’s the opposite problem cuz they’re underweight because they’re not absorbing their nutrients and they’re not assimilating what they’re eating correctly because they have digestive you know, insufficiency. Yeah. So it’s just as bad to be underweight as it is to be overweight in a lot Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, I and I’ve never really thought about that because I’ve never had that problem myself. I always tend to struggle with the I just love to eat and and gains.

Yeah. Oh well. I could just look at cake and it comes right to my hips.

Um I I love your website. You got a lot of information there. I I I didn’t check. Do you cuz I know you do a lot on YouTube. Do you have links to your other places where people can find you? I see Healers at the number one place to go and then they’re connected.

Yep, so my Instagram is uh right on the bottom. So if you scroll down on my homepage, there’s my Instagram feed that comes right to my webpage. You can just go there, follow me on Instagram. I do a lot of rich content. I do a lot of reels. I also have a YouTube and links should be there on the website as well, a YouTube.

Um I’m not really on Twitter, not yet. Um and then I just got on TikTok, but I’m not a fan of it. I don’t know. Everyone’s like, “You got to get on TikTok.” I’m like, “Oh gosh, do I really have to?” Ugh. Oh yeah. did, but I’m not really as active on there as I am Instagram. Instagram is my thing. So if you want to follow me, you want to get some rich content, I I post at least 3 days a week on Instagram. I do posts, I do videos, and I do reels.

Yeah. Awesome. You know, I want to thank you for who you are um as a healer, your wealth of knowledge, taking time to share it with with me and with our audience here Haley Nutrition. Um and also thank you for your transparency on your website ichealer.com. Uh you go into your history and how you really got to this place and um you know, you open yourself up to the trials, the real trials that you went through. So um that’s bold and and just thank you and thank you for being on my show.

Thank you so much. It was a very difficult journey, but I have to thank people like you for enlightening me on different ideas that I would have never encountered. So, I think, you know, one thing I really love about life is when one door opens, it opens other doors. You just have to be willing to open that first door. And so, that’s where I feel like people like you have been very very beneficial for my growth, my own personal growth. So, when I I really love interviewing you, all the interviews that we’ve had, um, people have really benefited from them and um, the people who bought the aloe have really loved it. So, it’s been Thank you for continuing to have that available to us.

Oh, thank you so much. Um, until next time. Blessings to you.

You too. Thank you so much.