Ethan Pompeo was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition called PANDAS when he was young. His symptoms came on suddenly and included everything from tics, OCD, and even rage. He found relief with Pot (marijuana); but didn’t like varying degrees of being stoned to decrease his PANDAS symptoms. Eventually he learned that it was not the THC giving him relief, but the CBD… which he could take without getting high.
PANDAS – Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associate with Streptococcal Infections
RESOURCES
- Visit Ethan Pompeo’s Website greenvalleynutrition.com
- Visit Green Valley Nutrition on YouTube
- Watch this episode on YouTube
- Listen to this episode on iTunes
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro Snip
00:40 When did you get Pandas and how did you treat it?
07:00 What was your original diagnosis?
07:41 How is the PANDAS condition properly diagnosed?
08:40 Eventually, what did Ethan discover helped with his PANDAS symptoms?
10:50 What are the chemical compounds in cannabis that helped you?
14:44 When should we supplement with cannabinoids?
16:32 What makes hemp the best food source of cannabinoids?
18:05 What are some of the problems CBD companies experience?
21:15 What is a serving size of CBD?
24:10 How important is a COA (certificate of analysis) for CBD products?
26:00 What inspired Ethan Pompeo to participate in the CBD marketspace?
28:10 What are some of the reasons people use CBD?
29:53 What is the CBD clinical trial you are involved for chronic pain management?
31:05 What is the benefit of hemp heart protein?
34:57 Is CBD a miracle cure?
41:53 Ethan’s encouragement to come forward with your problems so that you can get help and get in a position to help others.
44:34 How do you figure out how much CBD to use?
TRANSCRIPT
There’s over 30 active cannabinoids that we’re aware of at this time.
And they have very powerful anti-inflammatory properties.
You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life.
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This is the Dr. Haley Show podcast. I’m Dr. Michael Haley, the show host. And today’s guest is Ethan Pompeo. His life took a turn for the worse when he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called pandas as a kid. Now, his company, Green Valley Nutrition, is transforming the health and lives of others with simple, effective wellness solutions for the whole family.
Ethan, thank you for joining me on this podcast. You know, I think we are going to have a great discussion because a lot of
a lot of my followers, a lot of people that listen also have auto immune problems. And it seems like it’s something on the rise.
Not quite sure why that is. I have some ideas why that might be,
but there’s something you can do about it.
And in your case, you took charge of your life.
Tell us about pandas. What is it?
How did it get you? Why did it get you? And what did you do about it? Yeah. So thanks for having me today, man, I appreciate it. I love spreading awareness about this, and it’s something that very few people are aware of.
Even physicians struggle to diagnose this condition. And I myself was misdiagnosed for much of my teenage years. Pandas is pediatric autoimmune neurological disorders associated with strep. It’s a mouthful. It raises eyebrows when I say it. Essentially, it’s a strep throat infection that causes an unusual autoimmune response in the body, namely excess production of strep antibodies.
Antibodies are one of the few compounds that can cross the blood brain barrier, meaning, when these when these compounds are produced in excess, they can enter areas of the body where they’re not supposed to hang out and cause issues, inflammation. And for me, it was inflammation of the basal ganglia, which is the motor cortex of the body.
So I was left with all kinds of neurological symptoms from this unusual autoimmune response where I exhibited motor tics, loss of motor function, severe anxiety, other emotional, symptoms associated with the issues I was dealing with. I had anger, rage, some depression as a teenager dealing with all these issues. I had obsessive compulsive disorder, all these compulsive thoughts and movements and rituals.
And quite literally, I went from being normal and healthy one day to dealing with these tics and symptoms the next. So it’s very rapid onset. I want to back down, back up a little bit because, you know, growing up, I had strep throat a number of times and I would go and get treated or get antibiotics for it.
And you know, my sore throat would go away and I would think I was okay. But it seemed like this was something that just kept on coming up time and time again. Did that happen to you before you got this? Pandas? Yes. I had a recurring strep throat infection throughout my childhood. I was on and off antibiotics.
But I’ll be honest, a lot of times I would test positive for strep. Even if I was asymptomatic, I wouldn’t have any symptoms, and I wouldn’t even know I was sick. Yeah. So do you think the antibiotics helped you or hurt you at the time, or what should you have done or what could you have done differently?
So when I actually got a treatment protocol, I wasn’t actually diagnosed with pandas until I was in my early 20s. So I went through it. But the strep throat so I’m talking about the strep throat. Yeah.
with the strep throat,
I don’t know, I it’s difficult to look back and tell you I think originally, the seven days of antibiotics or whatever that I was given was not enough to really rid my body of the infection.
So it wasn’t until I got the Pandas diagnosis that I had, long course antibiotics. I think it was 60 days or something, that it really purged my body of the strep bacteria so that I could have a fighting chance. Okay, so possibly every time you were treating strap, you were possibly just strengthening it because you would treat it but not get rid of it completely.
So possibly stronger variations were remain very likely. Yeah.
That’s interesting. I know for me, I eventually stopped taking antibiotics and realized my sore throat would eventually go away and my immune system would take over. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know if that’s the right solution or not. To someone that’s having the chronic strep infections, but I realized that as kids, sometimes we just, you know, my throat hurts.
Can I go to the doctor and your parents take you and you get the antibiotics again and again and again, or an ear infection or whatever? I almost wonder if that’s what’s breaking us down and but who knows. All right. So repeat infections. You got this ongoing strep. You finally got rid of it with a long course of antibiotics.
Were you cured? Certainly not. The strep throat infection was, in a sense, cured. But the lingering effects of the inflammation and the excess antibodies. I mean, I remember looking at my bloodwork, my strep titers were off the charts because I had just been fighting this off for so long. So the residual effects of that infection were the neurological symptoms, the inflammation, and everything else that I’ve talked about and that.
All right, I don’t get titers very long term strep titers. You mean antibodies. Correct. Okay. Immune cells there to fight the infection that was no longer. But that’s still there. And it’s now fighting you. Exactly. Okay.
All right, so, we’ve got this possible across the blood brain barrier in the brain causing inflammation because an immune response and inflammation as part of the immune response causing ticks, and it’s undiagnosed.
So how is it being treated? Yeah, for the first decade or so of
this illness, for me, it was essentially let’s throw drugs at it and see what works. I was originally diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, which was essentially a label that was put on me. Right? We didn’t know what caused it. We didn’t know what the cure was.
The first prescription I was given was an off label blood pressure medication. It was essentially, you know, it had been shown in certain trials and even anecdotally that, it could reduce tremors and tics. So we said, hey, try this, see if it works. And of course, it didn’t really do anything for me. Should they have run a different test?
How do you actually get diagnosed with pandas? It’s a clinical diagnosis, so it can be tricky, especially if you know the physician is not familiar with this illness. It there’s no blood test you can take to say, hey, you’ve got pandas, right? It involves looking at your blood work, your medical history, your symptoms, taking certain tests for strep or other foreign pathogens and putting the pieces together to determine, like, yeah, this is what’s causing your illness.
Okay, so drug after drug, trying to treat a symptom, you’re trying to stop a tick or, you know, stop. Change your chemistry. Really? Yeah. It’s funny because they say it’s a chemical imbalance causing this or a nutritional imbalance or an immune imbalance. It’s something we don’t really knows. We’re drugging it. We’re trying to change it.
With chemistry, you’re not getting results. And then one day, you found something that worked. Yeah. After being on over 40 different prescription medications, throughout the years, I was left, I had physician fatigue. First of all, I was sick of the doctor appointments, right? I was sick of the pills. Sick of the medication. And during my time in high school, I had been introduced to cannabis.
And so I was using cannabis recreationally, telling myself it was medical use for a long time. It was truly the only thing that I found that gave me some relief from my symptoms. But of course, I’m not condoning the use of cannabis, especially as a teenager. This is something that gave me relief, but I didn’t know why it was giving me the relief.
Yeah. And at this point, you know, going back to your the time you were using cannabis, do you know if it. Well, do you know what kind it was. Was it. You know, I know there’s some just kind of keeps you in a happy laughing mood. And there’s some that’s, a little more, trippy. It was whatever the guy on the corner had, man.
Like, that was. That was part of the problem, you know? It was different. It was different every time I got my hands on it. And so it was. It was not a medicinal use. There was so much variability from batch to batch. I didn’t always know what the outcome would be. So I was left with certain times I’d feel great.
Other times I deal with paranoia and increased anxiety. Other times I’d be lethargic and tired. So I had lots of side effects associated with that.
Yeah. Interesting. And that that went on for how many years? Oh, I, I discovered cannabis in high school
through friends of mine. You know, I found out, I decided it was working for me, and I stuck with it all through college.
So just about a decade of using that, I kind of gave up on conventional medicine and just started self-medicating for a long time. Okay, so cannabis has chemical compounds called what that you needed and what else where you getting in addition to it, and what did you discover finally. So yeah, the chemical compounds are called cannabinoids. There’s over 30 active cannabinoids that we’re aware of at this time.
And they have very powerful anti-inflammatory properties. There’s other benefits that we’re still learning and researching about. But what I discovered was that CBD, I call it nature’s most powerful anti-inflammatory, was present in every strain of cannabis that I got my hands on. I just wasn’t aware of it. We’re all
aware of that notorious THC, right.
The chemical compound that induces intoxication in the high you feel, from cannabis. But it wasn’t actually the one. That’s one cannabinoid, right? Correct. Okay. THC is one, CBD is another. There’s other CBN helps with sleep. CBG helps with mood. There’s these, the associations that we’re aware of for all the different cannabinoids and terpenes and different compounds that are in the plant.
CBD in particular is known for its anti-inflammatory properties, and it’s not intoxicating. So when I discovered that CBD was giving me that inflammatory relief, right, the basal ganglia inflammation, it was helping to reduce that inflammation and thereby dulled my symptoms, helped me to feel better. And if I would take a deep breath and relax and refocus and I didn’t have to smoke, right, I didn’t have to be intoxicated.
I didn’t have any of the health risks associated with the illicit use of cannabis. So it was it was an answer for me, right? Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the endocannabinoid system, which I would like to relate to. Maybe the opioid system. I remember the first time I heard endocannabinoid System, it was like, oh, come on, you’re making this up because you’re trying to justify, you know, getting marihuana, you know, legalized.
And it didn’t make much sense to me. But then I, as a physician, I started realizing, wait, we have an opioid system, which is a certain set of receptors, and we make, you know, endorphins and chemicals that bind to them naturally in our body. What’s the endocannabinoid system? Yeah. Like you said, it’s very similar. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not certain that they teach the endocannabinoid system in medical school.
At least
not typically. Right. Ironically, it’s the largest system in the body. I mean, it is active. It exists in our bodies from head to toe. And what’s very interesting about it is, yes,
these, plant based phyto cannabinoids that we’ve been talking about. THC, CBD,
we can absorb them through our bodies, through many different mediums.
Right. Orally, topically. Whatever works for you. They enter our bloodstream, and those compounds bind to our endocannabinoid receptors, very similar to the opioid system. Similarly, we have endocannabinoids that are ideally naturally produced in our bodies.
if we have a healthy body, mind, spirit, if we’re giving our bodies the inputs they need to thrive and be healthy.
Ideally, your body is producing these endocannabinoids in the right proportions. The right concentrations. And what they do is the endocannabinoid system is supposed to maintain balance and homeostasis. Preliminary research shows that it is related to everything from body temperature regulation to mood and stress control. And I mean, we’re really scratching the surface on what we know about this.
For many reasons that you may or may not want to talk about today. No endocannabinoid system was discovered in the early 60s, and today we still don’t really know much about it. Almost 60 years later. But what we do know is that you can supplement your endocannabinoid system if you’re deficient. If you’re not creating these compounds like you should in order to maintain homeostasis, you can supplement with those phyto cannabinoids.
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I understand that there’s also cannabinoids in things other than just marihuana or hemp. There are some foods, lots of herbs. Spices. If I recall, I think cinnamon, cocoa. I forget what other sources, but I know there’s things that were already. I think black Pepper was one of them that have these compounds that interact with the endocannabinoid system.
I believe hemp just
happens to be a more concentrated source. Correct. As far as we know, hemp contains all of the phyto cannabinoids that we know about, in one. So it’s like the mother, the source
of all of these. Right. And in fact, they’re saying that, these endocannabinoids are present in mothers breast milk.
So you’re giving it to your baby. And that’s why we call it, you know, milk drunk when you burp your baby. And he kind of coos and lays back and is all happy. It’s more like milk, milk high. this is because the baby feels great. You give that, you know, everything you need to grow and thrive and feel good in the breast milk.
But endocannabinoids, I think, contribute to that. That’s interesting. I never heard that before. And it’s kind of neat because, you know, you’re breastfeeding is, you know, probably encouraged and desired in that way because of that provision. Right. From both on both ends. You know, I like when my babies calm and my baby likes to be calm. So, you know, it’s a win win for the mom and for the baby.
Absolutely. All right. Very, very neat. Now, I don’t know if you know this. I actually used to have my own CBD line. Surprise. Yeah, I got rid of it in 2019 because I have a product that to me, is more important in the sense that, there’s a lot of competition
in the CBD industry, and there are some definite problems in that industry, one of which participating.
It is kind of frowned on by search engines. Yeah. Government agencies. And it was interfering with my ability to be known for the other product. That was very, very important that no one else was providing. So I decided and not only that, my, I was using PayPal on my website at the time and my accounts got froze for selling CBD on a website.
Yeah, THC zero, not thc free, if I understand. THC free is, you know, you’re allowed a small percentage, but THC zero has to be undetectable, which is what we were. And I got my accounts frozen, which means they held our money for a period of time, and we had to prove to them we weren’t selling it anymore.
Have you had any of those issues? Oh, boy. Yes. The banks, colluded. Right. It determined this was going to be categorized as a high risk product. You know, so I’ve had multiple accounts shut down over the years. Lately, it has become less of an issue. Especially as we’ve scaled our business. We’re working with higher level payment processors who know what we do.
But certainly if you’re selling other products, if you want to integrate CBD into your business, you’re looking at a nightmare of paperwork and higher fees. And, yeah, it I can understand why you made that decision. Really? Yeah. Well, getting aloe vera to our customers was, critical, and you’re gonna, you know,
there’s a lot of competition in the CBD market.
Now, the reason I got into it originally, and I know you’re going to understand this. I’m going to ask you a lot of questions that I know the answers to. But for the benefit of those listening, one of the reasons was what was in the competitors bottles, for instance, you can explain what this means. If I find a bottle of CBD oil and on the front it says something like 100mg, what does that tell you about that product?
Well, if they’re being honest, there should be 100mg of CBD in the bottle. But what often happens is either the potency is off and what’s on the label does not match what’s in the bottle. Or you could have 100mg of hemp oil in that product, meaning maybe it’s 50 to 60% CBD and you’re actually getting 60mg instead of the advertised 100mg.
There’s so much variability. And in the supplement industry in general, which is largely unregulated, it’s hard to know what you’re getting unless you see, like third party lab test results, to some kind of due diligence on the part of that company to know that you’re getting what you’re paying for. Yeah. Well, what it told me was it was a cheap product.
They didn’t pay a lot for it, or it was very diluted. If it was 100mg. And, you know, if they were looking that saying, well, a full dropper is going to be your serving and there’s 30 servings in a bottle, 100 is the total that’s in the bottle. You’re getting very, very low amounts right. Meaning for some people they might need 100mg per day.
So they should just throw the dropper out, chug the bottle and then go buy another one. I think 100mg would be a good potency for a cat. Maybe. Certainly not a human being. Yeah, there’s no chance you’re going to get the threshold dose at that potency. You’re absolutely right. And what happens is I’ve had so many people reach out and say, oh, I’ve tried CBD and it didn’t do anything for me.
And so the question remains, you know, how much were you taking? Where did you buy the product on Amazon, the like Amazon CBD is a bad category on Amazon. I can’t sell my products on Amazon. So what are you buying right. Yeah. And I’m going to clarify something. You said 100mg would be maybe a cat dose. You’re talking about a dropper out of 100 milligram correct bottle, which, you know, might be five milligrams or something like that.
Much smaller amount, maybe even three, whereas a person will probably do will probably notice a benefit somewhere between maybe 25 and 50, milligrams in a serving. Right. You know, you’re not going to. Yeah. So it says 100 on the bottle. That is 30 servings. And I, you know, most products, you’re probably going to want something that’s more like, you know, at least 500 or 1000 in the bottle.
You know, now we’re now where we have something. Yeah. And thank you for clarifying that. I will say dosing is probably the most common question that we get, with Green Valley. It people are confused about it. They they’ve been fed so much information about this and that. And it’s difficult to give you an accurate dose.
I mean, yes, 25 to 50mg. That’s exactly what’s recommended. However, that could vary greatly depending on, you know, what you’re dealing with, the severity of the symptoms, your body weight, your metabolism, all these factors, play a role in determining how much you need to get the relief, the results you’re looking for. Yeah, I completely agree with you on that.
What other issues have you seen in the industry that would, you know, maybe raise flags? You mentioned sometimes. Not necessarily. What’s on the label being in the bottle?
Yeah. So when we go to get a certificate analysis, lab test results on our product, we’re doing what’s called a full panel analysis. So not only are we checking the concentration of the active ingredients, right. Ensuring, yeah, there’s no THC in the product and all of our products are 100% THC free as well. Zero as you described.
And for the reason for that is we want to offer a product that’s safe for everyone. You’re not going to risk losing your job from taking this, but we’re also testing for all kinds of, compounds that may be present through the agricultural system or the extraction process. We’re looking at residual solvents, microbiological contaminants, foreign pathogens, anything that may adulterate
your medicine.
Really. Right. At some point of the process. So, those lab test certificates are available online. You can grab them, look at them all you want. But basically what we’re trying to say is, look, there’s nothing in here that’s going to hurt you, right? It’s safe. It’s something that I take every day personally. Right? I put the pain cream, the topical cream on my wife’s shoulders and neck every night before bed, like, we all use it.
And we know if we’re putting it in our bodies, we want it to be safe for us and for our customers. So I think asking for those lab test certificates is critical. There’s so many companies that are just not doing that. And that’s like if again, if you don’t have a CoA, you don’t know what you’re buying or you’re getting a CoA of, batch from five years ago when they tested their first batch.
Yeah, that’s common as well. Yeah, yeah, I check the date on the CoA. It should be relatively recent. So what made you jump in and say I want to play in this market space? My entry to CBD was sort of serendipitous. I was actually working on a farm in Colorado when I discovered CBD. I had moved out there as really pragmatically, just trying not to get in trouble with the law because of my self-medication and my chronic use of this plant.
But ironically, moving out there with cannabis use as my motive led me into the CBD space where I got away from smoking and I got away from THC. So I did not expect that to happen. But when I moved back to Virginia, where I currently live, CBD was largely unavailable. I mean, you could not find this stuff anywhere in 2015, and I needed to get my hands
on this medicine that was that I knew was helping me.
So I reached back out to my friends in Colorado. They sent me some active ingredients, and I started mixing up different concentrations of oils and topicals and brownies and gummies and anything. Right. I just wanted to learn more about this and how it affected me, and to find that dose that worked best. And so what happened was, as I was experimenting with this, as I was researching, people started reaching out to me, my friends, man, what are you doing?
This is crazy. How is this legal? Right? My my family found out about it. Grandpa wanted to rub some on his knees and see if it help reduce his knee pain. Granny wanted it to. Wanted to try it for for sleep support. So all of these people started reaching out to me to learn more. And I realized, man, there’s a bigger need for this stuff than just me and my tics and my anxiety, like a lot of people can, can benefit from this.
So I started giving it away to friends and family. I launched a very small product line and started going to farmers markets and I mean people. It just organically grew from there. People wanted to get their hands on this stuff. And today we operate a state of the art manufacturing facility in Virginia. We’re shipping to all 50 states and internationally.
I’ve got like 30 different products.
it’s just amazing what it’s become. Wow. So let’s talk about some of the reasons people use it. I wanted to say conditions, but, you know, I don’t want to have to be careful there. Right? Yeah. We’re not treating diseases or anything like that, but people will use it to, maybe manage certain, challenges that they have.
Sure. And you also mentioned the fact that, you know, it could be in a topical cream. Remember your skin, it is a digestive organ. It absorbs and excretes just like your gut does. So yes, you can apply it topically for helping with certain challenges. What are some of the challenges that people are experiencing where they’ll want to use a CBD product?
Well, the three main concerns and categories that we that we hear people reach out to us about and, you know, leaving feedback in the form of testimonials. Our customers say that it helps with their sleep. It helps them sleep better, sleep longer, fall asleep faster, and get that quality of rest, which is just so critical. I’m sure you’ve talked about this on other shows, right?
Sleep is so important. The second would be anxiety, and this has actually been shown to be effective in clinical trials. CBD has been shown to reduce anxiety naturally with no other changes to your lifestyle. Which is pretty impressive. And thirdly, pain relief. So reducing inflammation again can help reduce swelling in your joints. Right. Everything from neuropathy to chronic pain management, injury and surgical recovery.
In fact, right now we have a, a clinical trial ongoing with the university of Virginia. We’re looking at oral CBD for chronic pain management. We’re working with a osteopathic surgeon at the university who would like to use this with his patients in lieu of opiates and conventional pain meds. So I think there’s some promising, research going on right now that will give us a clearer picture of what this can actually do and how it could help.
But I will say I’ve got thousands of testimonials that just, you know, say how effective this is. So the anecdotal evidence is there. Yeah, absolutely. It’s crazy how demonized the hemp plant has been. You know, today on my salad, I had, you know, a big pile of hemp hearts sprinkled on them. But
I didn’t even know about hemp hearts until maybe five years ago.
I don’t even know if they were on grocery shelves, because hemp has been so demonized and people think, oh, hemp, marihuana get stoned, right?
Well, I understand you have a edible product that is not the oil, but
is it available yet? I heard you say something about, protein. Yeah. So that’s our latest product release. It’s, hemp heart protein powder.
So you said you have, you eat hemp hearts on your salad. Hemp hearts are possibly the I, in my opinion, the best number one source of plant based protein. It’s a complete protein. It’s got all of your essential amino acids that you need for muscle development. Or just, you know, a healthy lifestyle, right? Our, proteins are part of a biological pathways that help us to grow and exist and stay healthy.
And so it’s critical that you have a clean source. The problem with so many protein supplements on the market today is, well, first of all, many of them are isolated and concentrated in a way that also concentrates some harmful products. Like, for example, whey protein often tests high for heavy metal contamination because of the agricultural processes that go into it.
hemp heart protein does not need to be concentrated or heavily processed at all. It’s the hull that surrounds the hemp seed. It’s this little fibrous material, and essentially all we do is remove that husk from the seeds, pulverize it and put it in a package. I mean, it’s so close to nature, it’s so unadulterated and clean.
I had some this morning in a smoothie, like we eat it every day. We love it. It’s very rich in protein and, a
balanced omega three is an omega sixes. So you’re not going to get a whole bunch of one that could throw your system out of whack. You know more about that than I do.
But the bottom line is this is an awesome protein source. It sounds like the way we make our aloe vera, we, you know, filet it, run it through a grinder, put it in the containers, and we freeze it because it’s so wet product. So it has to be kept frozen. If you’re not going to, you know, add chemicals and preservatives and all that other stuff.
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What other products do you see yourself making down the, you know, down the road from here? Well, we’re always experimenting with different things. You know, some things hit it off and do great. Other things turn out not so popular. We had a CBD infused honey that a lot of people loved, but we discontinued that because it just it didn’t pick up much traction.
But it was very expensive to ship. So our core product offerings are
the topical, well, yeah, topical pain relief products. And, the oral tinctures. It’s not a true tincture. There’s no alcohol. We use a MCT coconut oil base infused with our active ingredient. And that’s it. There’s two ingredients. It’s very simple. We try to keep things as close to nature as we can.
But that and the gummies are actually very popular. You walk down the supplement aisle now, everything’s a gummy. So people want gummies. We don’t use any artificial, no flavorings or, dyes or artificial colors or anything like that. We use superfoods for the color. So again, we’re trying to be holistic and natural and healthy where we can.
But some people just want a gummy, which is fine. Yeah. Very nice. Now, I know you’ve made some other choices when it comes to your health, not just adding CBD. What are some of the other things that you’ve done to well, to get well
from pandas and, and the challenges you’ve had. Yeah. So CBD was absolutely the catalyst to my healing and my life style change.
But I, I never sell it as a miracle pill. Frankly, I don’t think a miracle pill exists. Right? Part of living? Well, there are certainly tools we could use to help us, but I think part of living well is really stepping back, taking a look at your lifestyle and identifying things that need to change. For me it was moving away from illicit use of cannabis, right?
Stopping smoking. Stop hanging out around negative influences. Stop being lethargic, stop eating inflammatory foods of junk and processed foods and so when I was stuck in my symptoms, I was stuck. I mean, physically stuck in ticks, mentally stuck in my self-loathing and my substance dependency and all these things. It’s very hard to make progress on your illness when you’re living that lifestyle and in that mindset.
So I think what really changed for me is, is learning how to retrain my brain and it change my lifestyle. And part of that was undergoing cognitive behavioral therapy and learning how to retrain my brain to respond differently to triggers that caused my tics and my compulsions and my anxiety. And then also to change my lifestyle. I started, weightlifting, exercising on a daily basis.
I cut out sugars and inflammatory foods that were driving the cause of my illness. I changed who I hung out around. I started doing things that made me
feel fulfilled, such as playing drums and just getting outside more often. All these things that we probably know we should be doing. But many of us wait until we hit a health crisis to actually do them.
Yeah, I played my drums for about a half hour this morning. Awesome. And yeah, there’s no better anxiety relief to just beating the drums and, you know, making music and contributing to something.
it is very therapeutic. Yeah. Yeah. Not. Do you get to perform. How are you playing out in front of people I do I have several buddies that I jam with and just have fun and make music together.
But I play at our church every Sunday, so we have Thursday night rehearsal and Sunday morning, performance in front of, decent crowd, every week. And so it’s very fulfilling for me. That’s great. That’s really, really good to hear. What kind of church do you go to? We are, technically Church of God, but we’re more or less non-denominational.
But, I do, you know, we have an awesome worship ministry at our church. We, we’re just so focused on not performing and not impressing people, but just bringing in the spirit of the Lord to those who are in the building with us. And, so I said, it’s fulfilling to me, but really, it’s just that’s my worship is getting behind the drums and putting all arms and legs and everything into it.
You know, I like doing that myself, too. I wasn’t really gifted with the, you know, voice of angels. So, you know, I, I, I like to sing by hitting things with pieces of wood, much more fulfilling. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, Scripture says, you know, worship with the clanging cymbal and the gong and all that. So you know where you’re gifted.
That’s where you should, put your efforts. It. And we have very talented singers as well. There’s one gentleman who plays the saxophone. We have keyboards. So there’s an opportunity for everyone to serve based on what their skills and talents are. I wish more kids were picking up instruments these days, though. And, you know, having that same joy.
I think there’s enough musicians to replace us when we get old. I’m not sure. Not fully confident, and I’m hopeful in that. Or maybe it’ll be a different kind of instrument. Maybe they’ll just be, you know, this might be their instrument right here. No, don’t say that. Oh, man. Just sit aside, my friend. Yesterday. So my my videographer, my photographer, we’re close buddies.
And I went over to his studio yesterday and he said, listen to this, buddy. He puts he pushes the spacebar and a song played that was written completely by AI. It had somebody singing, it had all the instruments. it was unreal. So I guess that’s the direction we’re heading. But I yeah, one of my podcast guests, he made a song about aloe vera and all he did was submit the lyrics to whatever website, and it cranked out a few different versions of very cool sounding songs.
Yeah, weird. Definitely weird. But you know, like the song I’ve been playing.
One other thing I’ve been doing, is actually teaching the younger generation. So I have two students who, not official students, but, you know, I teach them drums, once a week. And so that’s been super fulfilling to have those mentees where I can just pour into them what I’ve learned.
So these are young teens, and they’re, you know, they would love to replace me at some point. So empowering them as well with what I’ve learned is a really great feeling. Now I’m curious, is your church online? It is. Yeah, it’s Riverstone Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. So all right, I’m going to have to check it out. So hopefully they got the worship included in the services there.
They do. So yeah here’s some excellent. We can hear some, Ethan Pompeo drumming for the Lord 10 a.m. eastern. Yeah. Go ahead, tune in. We have a chat and everything. It’s, a good option for people who are not local or maybe struggle to get out. That’s great. I’ve been playing in the church probably for, I don’t know, maybe a little over ten years now.
Maybe 15 years, I don’t know, it’s awesome. Most Sundays I’m getting older now. They’re starting to work. Some of the younger guys in, so I might play, you know, three Sundays out of the month now instead of, you know, four and five. But I definitely enjoy it. And, you know, it’s way easier than singing. All right, that’s, fun discussion.
Glad to hear I am going to check your, your church channel on on YouTube. That’d be great. Ethan, I want to thank you for joining me on the podcast. I think, you’ve really given us a lot of beneficial content, do you? Is there anything that I left out that I should have asked you? I think it was a great discussion.
I really do. I just, one thing I like to leave people on is just letting them know that, you know, it’s okay to admit that you have a problem when you deal with these health struggles, like I did for so many years, I battled that I was ashamed of what I was going through. I did not want to talk about it.
I was unwilling to admit that I had this problem, and it just put that weight and that pressure on my shoulders. There was no need for that. I find that being open and honest about your situation puts you in a position where you can get help, and eventually where you could be in a position to help others. I like to consider myself mostly healed at this point.
I still deal with the impact of Pandas in my life through some tics and some compulsions, but through the lifestyle changes I’ve made, and using these tools we’ve talked about,
I’m a completely different person now, and most people would never even know that I had this illness. So talking about it on your show at events and everything that I do has brought awareness to this so that we’re, you know, equipping people like yourself to, to effectively diagnose and treat people who are dealing with Pandas
So I think being open, having dialog about this is, is huge and relating to each other and moving the needle forward. So if that’s encouraging to people
that’s my goal for someone that wants to try CBD. They never tried it before. They’re going to head to your website. What’s the web address and what one product would you suggest would be the starting point for trying CBD, and how would you suggest they use it?
Yeah, so it’s greenvalleynutrition.com You’ll notice at the top my logo is a panda. So that’s an indicator. It’s a cute little panda bear. Our top selling product across the board is our original 1000 milligram CBD oil drops. That’s going to give you, anywhere from 30 to 60 servings, depending on how much you need.
It’ll give you enough time to kind of play around with dosage to see what works best for you. There’s it’s virtually flavorless, so it’s very palatable for most people. If you’re, averse to those herbal flavors you may have tried with other CBD products. But that’s where we typically recommend people start. It’s very easy to dose.
It’s fast acting. I put it under my tongue and wait about 30s before swallowing, and I just feel that relief, within less than an hour. So it’s a dependable product, that you can take with you and then use as needed. I used to encourage a little bit of front end loading, meaning initially having a little more than maybe what would be called for.
How do you feel about that? Yeah, I think that’s great. You know, again, with any supplement, I personally think the whole idea is to identify the minimum amount that achieves your maximum benefits so you can start low and work up, or you can start at a higher dose. And the only real common side effect of CBD is drowsiness, which is why people use it for sleep support that’s typically seen in higher doses.
So if you notice yourself feeling sleepy or lethargic during the day when you don’t want to be tired, that could be a sign you’re taking too much and you can cut back. But there’s certainly no risk
to taking a larger dose. I mean, CBD is one of the safest compounds either there’s no toxic dose that we’re aware of, so you’re not going to get sick or hurt yourself by taking too much.
It just seems like there’s a diminishing, point of returns where more is not necessarily beneficial. Correct. To find out where that is sometimes having a little more at the front seems to, you know, okay, now I see what this is doing for me. If I cut it in half, I wonder if I’ll have this same benefit. Oh, I do great.
So let me try to cut it in half again. Okay, now I feel like I need a little bit more. And then you find that sweet spot for you that works for you. All right, well. That’s excellent. I, appreciate your time today. I’m going to make sure that there’s, link to your website, in the description of the YouTube video below, the podcast, whatever channel people are consuming this content, there will be links to Ethan Pompeo’s website.
Thank you for checking out this podcast. Thank you for joining me, Ethan. Yeah, thank you so much.
I hope you enjoyed that episode today on the Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on drhaley.com. If you want to geek out with Dr. Michael Haley on other radical health topics.
Be sure to check out his YouTube channel where he posts exclusive video content. All the details are at drhaley.com and we can’t wait to hang out with you on the next episode.
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