April 8, 2025 • 58 mins
Guest:
Ethan Pompeo
https://www.greenvalleynutrition.com/
------------------------------
Terms to know:
PANDAS, or Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections, is a condition where children develop or worsen OCD and/or tic disorders after a strep infection, potentially due to an autoimmune reaction.
------------------------------
From obsessive-compulsive tendencies to debilitating anxiety, tics, or even personality shifts, these symptoms can be alarming and perplexing. Today, we delve into the complex and often misunderstood world of PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections), a condition that's increasingly capturing the attention of medical professionals and families alike.
PANDAS is a neurological autoimmune disorder triggered by streptococcal infections, such as strep throat. When a child's immune system mistakenly attacks the brain instead of just the strep bacteria, it can lead to a cascade of neuropsychiatric symptoms. This episode aims to shed light on this challenging condition and offering valuable insights for parents, caregivers, and anyone interested in the intersection of immunology and neurology.
In this episode, we'll explore:
for any health concerns or before making any decisions related to your health or treatment.
Ethan Pompeo
https://www.greenvalleynutrition.com/
------------------------------
Terms to know:
PANDAS, or Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections, is a condition where children develop or worsen OCD and/or tic disorders after a strep infection, potentially due to an autoimmune reaction.
------------------------------
From obsessive-compulsive tendencies to debilitating anxiety, tics, or even personality shifts, these symptoms can be alarming and perplexing. Today, we delve into the complex and often misunderstood world of PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections), a condition that's increasingly capturing the attention of medical professionals and families alike.
PANDAS is a neurological autoimmune disorder triggered by streptococcal infections, such as strep throat. When a child's immune system mistakenly attacks the brain instead of just the strep bacteria, it can lead to a cascade of neuropsychiatric symptoms. This episode aims to shed light on this challenging condition and offering valuable insights for parents, caregivers, and anyone interested in the intersection of immunology and neurology.
In this episode, we'll explore:
- What is PANDAS? We'll define PANDAS, explaining its relationship to streptococcal infections and the autoimmune process that underlies it.
- The Symptoms of PANDAS: We'll cover the wide range of neuropsychiatric symptoms associated with PANDAS, including:
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Tics and movement disorders
- Anxiety and panic attacks
- Emotional lability and mood swings
- Behavioral regression
- Sleep disturbances
- Changes in handwriting or motor skills
- The Diagnostic Challenges: PANDAS can be difficult to diagnose, as its symptoms often mimic other conditions. We'll discuss the diagnostic criteria, the importance of a thorough medical history, and the role of specialized testing.
- Treatment Options: We'll explore the various treatment approaches for PANDAS
- Parents and caregivers of children with sudden neuropsychiatric symptoms.
- Medical professionals seeking to expand their knowledge of PANDAS.
- Anyone interested in the intersection of immunology and neurology.
- Individuals seeking information on autoimmune disorders.
for any health concerns or before making any decisions related to your health or treatment.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
So tell us about PANDAS. What is that?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
PANDAS is not the cute, cuddly bamboo munching bear that
we're all familiar with. It's actually an acronym. It kind
of raises eyebrows when I tell people because it's lengthy.
It's pediatric autoimmune neurological disorders associated with strep. And basically
what that means is that there's a strep infection that
(00:27):
causes an unusual autoimmune response in the body. And for me,
that was characterized by motor tics, loss of motor function
and motor control, severe OCD and anxiety compulsions. Ticks. Yeah,
I went from being essentially normal, healthy young man to
(00:49):
at the age of thirteen, just waking up one day
and having these ticks and these rituals and these very
disruptive symptoms in my life. So it's very it's very
unusual that someone would get it that old. Usually it's
very much younger children that get it. But it's interesting
that it's a strep bacteria that causes this much larger
(01:11):
problem in your life.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah. Strep is super common, and I don't think people
are aware that it can ever cause anything.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Else, right, I mean, yeah, everybody gets strapped as a kid.
In particular, it's kind of expected. I had recurring strep
infections as a kid, and in fact, I would test
positive for strep even if I didn't have symptoms, so
I often didn't even know if I had it. But
you know, looking back in my blood work, my STRAP
antibodies were off the charts, and that was a big
(01:41):
indicator that you know, I had had STRAP over and
over again with or without knowing it. And antibodies are
one of the few compounds that can cross the blood
brain barrier, and so that's how PANDIS works, is your
antibodies are produced in such excess that they don't know
where to go, and they end up going into your
brainstem and your basal ganglia, which is the motor cortex
(02:03):
of your body, and that's not where antibodies are supposed
to hang out. So they can cause all these other
symptoms and problems that you would not normally associate with
strapped throat.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
How did y'all come up across the diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
It took a long time. It took about a decade
to get a correct diagnosis, and that was the hardest part,
quite honestly, for about ten years I was misdiagnosed with
Turet syndrome or anxiety or OCD. I was basically diagnosed
with the symptoms instead of what the cause of the
(02:40):
symptoms was, and so essentially it was a label. It
was an excuse to prescribe me drugs and medication as
a band aid or a mask for these symptoms, where
the root cause of my illness went unaddressed for a
long long time, and so everything kept getting worse. Really,
the medications never really worked for me. The side effects
(03:02):
often outweighed the benefits, and I was left with a
bad taste in my mouth for conventional medicine for that reason.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, that's that's a pretty common story also with the
Western world being heavily reliable on medications and them being
pushed on us whether we actually need them or not,
which you know, we don't want to play the blame game.
(03:33):
You know, it's not doctor's faults. They most of them
go into it with pretty good intentions. They're just a
victim of the system themselves, their tool essentially for big pharma,
And people don't realize that because well, I think it's
I think it's changing, I think it's becoming more prominent,
like prominently known that you can't take a doctor's word
(03:56):
for face value. But this is only like new new
in the culture. Before, like five years ago, people were
still putting doctors upon pedestals. People still put doctors upon
pedestals and just take their word for face value, not
realizing that you know, they're human just like we are.
(04:18):
And medical error is one of the leading causes of death.
Not to be scary, I am terrified of the system,
the medical system. Honestly, I'm just gonna kill overdad one
day and nobody's gonna know what happened, and we're all
gonna be happier for it.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I can relate to what you're saying. I mean, it's true.
I don't blame any of the doctors. However, you know,
the medical schools, they don't teach this stuff and something
like pandas experts are estimating that one in two hundred
kids has this now, so it's something that's becoming even common.
Yet it's still not taught in med school. People are
(04:58):
not educated or aware of it. Physicians don't know how
to diagnose it, and they certainly don't know how to
treat it in general, And so a lot of the
work I do is actually to promote awareness and advocacy
for PANDAS, and you know, fundraising for physician education, credits
to further education post grads, post doctor at school, to
(05:19):
help teach these people exactly that how to treat, how
to diagnose, how to recognize when something is going haywire.
It may not be that your kid has ADHD or OCD.
It may be an underlying issue that we need to
look for now. PANDAS is difficult to diagnose, even if
you are aware of it. It's a clinical diagnosis, so
there's no like blood test you can take that says hey,
(05:41):
you've got this. It involves putting together the piece is
looking at your medical history and your infection history and
your symptom load and all of these things, and putting
the pieces together to say, hey, here's a picture of
what you're dealing with, and it resembles or this is
definitively panned us someone who has been trained in this
(06:05):
and who is familiar with it and well versed, and
it can do that, but you're going to still have
to go through those protocol, those blood tests and everything
to get an idea of what you're dealing.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
With what was the alarming fact, like, you know, you
said you woke up one day and suddenly had OCD
and ticks and all of this. Did they did y'all
go straight to the doctor that day? Probably not right?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
No, No, I mean at first we brushed it off, right, Oh,
it's just my dad looked at me. Oh, he's just
doing something weird, you know. I at thirteen, we're all
just trying to figure out who we are. You know,
we're dealing with these body changes and all these things,
so we do weird things sometimes. So we first we
brushed it off. Once my symptoms became more severe over time,
(06:51):
over the next several months, we realized that something was
definitely wrong. I the part of the reason why I
was misdie noose with THERETZ is because I exhibited that
classic like profanity, cursing, impulsivity, on inability to control my
speech or my motor function. And you know, I would
(07:12):
do things like pick up my phone, put it down,
pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put
it down, over and over again until it felt like
just right. And I would do that with almost any object.
I picked up books, forks, pencils. It was disruptive on
so many levels throughout the entire course of my day.
And that's when we realized, like, man, something's really wrong here.
(07:34):
You can't, like I can't control what I'm doing. That's
when I had to really take a look at my
life and think, hmm, something is wrong with me. And
that was a very hard pill for me to swallow.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Sure it could be scary, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, it definitely was. Even from my parents' perspective. It
was scary like watching your child lose control like that
and having no idea what's going on, having way to help.
I was a very isolating and even depressing place to be.
So it damaged our family life. It damaged my health.
(08:12):
My mental health began to spiral as I dealt with
these symptoms for so long, because you know, I didn't
want to admit that something was wrong with me. I
wanted to pretend like everything was fine. I'd be sitting
in school in class and students would see me ticking
and say, hey, man, are you okay, and it would
just drive me insane because I didn't want to be
that guy who was like twitching in class. I didn't
(08:35):
want to be known as the weirdo or the guy
who can't sit still, and I just wished that everything
would be normal, and it wasn't, and I put myself
in a mindset of isolation and loneliness for a long time,
when looking back, I really didn't have to do that
to myself.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Were your parents supportive though.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, my parents were absolutely my advocates. I mean my
mom in particular, scoured the Internet and the library for
any resources you could find on this before, you know,
because even this was fifteen years ago, it was very
difficult to find anyone who knew about pandas. We actually
(09:20):
had to essentially figure it out ourselves and then search
for pandas doctors and find someone who was well versed
in panda so that we could go and confirm the
diagnosis and find a treatment protocol because quite frankly, I
was only aware of maybe two doctors at the time
who even knew what this was. Lots changed since then.
(09:41):
It's becoming more widely recognized, partly due to the work
that some of the organizations I work with have done.
But you know, it's definitely easier now to get a
diagnosis than it was ten fifteen years ago, and even now,
more insurance companies are working with these doctors in order
to provide a financial assistance once you get that diagnosis,
(10:04):
which is huge because I remember we paid out of
pocket for most of the treatments. They weren't recognized by
any of the insurance companies at the time. So just
again incredibly frustrating place from the doctor visit to the
insurance company that the whole thing was very lackluster and
put a bad taste in my mouth for conventional medicine.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Like I said, sure, did you have to travel? Imagine
that you found two doctors they weren't nearby? That right,
too convenient?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, I'm located here in central Virginia and one of
them was in New Jersey and the other was in Maryland.
So fortunately it wasn't Actually it wasn't like we had
to pack up and drive across the country. But yeah,
we did go out of state. We did drive several
hours to visit these folks.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
That is super lucky though, that it was just a
couple of hop skipping a jump away instead of what, yeah,
it's the entire country.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, I will say though at that point I had
serious physician fatigue. I mean I was sick of doctors.
I was sick of medication. From thirteen to seventeen, I
had been on over forty different prescription meds. None of
them work. You know. It was just like try this,
see if it works. If you feel crappy, cut back
if you don't notice the difference, Increase the dose. And
(11:23):
it was just like a guessing game, like throwing pills
at me and see what sticks. And they that was
not medicine in my view, and so I got sick
of it. I was tired, and at that point my
parents had to effectively just drag me to these appointments. Hey,
you know this time, we think we it's gonna work,
you know this time thing. So I had given up
(11:43):
hope for healing at that point. And what really changed
is getting that correct diagnosis. Getting the PANDACE diagnosis put
me from a mindset of, you know, treating symptoms with
pills to actually identifying the root cause of my illness,
which was these underlying infections, the inflammation, the chronic inflammation
in my brain and other parts of my bodies that
(12:03):
we're driving these these symptoms and targeting those issues so
that we could get the infection and the inflammation under
control and subsequently reduce the symptoms naturally.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And that's that's usually how it goes as the medications
just a band aid masking symptoms that it's not doing
anything for the root cause. And if you're not trying
to address that root cause, then most of the time
the issue is just going to get worse instead of
better over the long run. And that's what people don't understand.
They're like, you know, just give me a pill, Like, eh,
(12:37):
you don't actually want that. You think you do, but
you don't because not only that, but it's the side effects.
You're you're always trading off one thing for another.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Well did you know that the United States is one
of only two countries worldwide that allow direct marketing of
pharmaceutical drugs. It's it's it's insane to me, Like you
can't run a cigarette commercial, but you can tell people
that they need this medication to clear up their skin.
But you know the side effects are heart failure, death,
(13:13):
like depression. My mind is blown. Yeah, Like how is
that legal? You can just directly tell people, hey, you
need this, and now, you know, you turn the country
into a bunch of hypochondriacs who are drug dependent. And
it's crazy. I mean, it's a backwards approach. If you
you know, you see that commercial for prilosec or whatever,
(13:35):
it's like a heartburn medication. I think, like a digestive,
like just don't eat hot dogs all day, Like clean
up your diet. You know you're not gonna you're not
gonna need that pill. Yeah. So it's it's like, you know,
you're totally right about how you know the industry and
all that, but it comes down to like people want
(13:57):
that miracle pill. You know, they're looking for that easy answer,
and they're not willing to change their lifestyle change their health.
Everybody knows that eating riot and exercise is good for them.
Everyone knows they should pray and meditate, but how many
people actually do those things on a daily basis. Right,
It's a matter of prioritizing our health instead of waiting
(14:19):
until a health crisis hits your life to say, oh crap,
I need to get it together and make some changes.
And for almost a decade, you know, although I was younger,
you know, I was essentially just looking to the doctor
as like my first line of defense. You know, Hey,
give me, tell me what's wrong, give me a treatment
so I can go on my way. Now, if you
(14:41):
break your arm, though, chances to start, the doctor's going
to give you a splint, fix you up, and you'll
be out on your way and healed in no time.
But when you show up at the doctor with something unfamiliar,
something they haven't been trained in, it could be a
long road to recovery for sure.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, I think I think things are changing. I think
people are becoming more aware because I you know, when
we were growing up, I assume you're around my age.
You look like you are. When we were growing up,
it wasn't considered cool to eat healthy and exercise and
(15:22):
you know, read books. Even you know, the internet kind
of came along a little bit later, so people didn't
know that. They didn't know. You know, yes, we know
that we're supposed to exercise and eat right, but we
don't actually know how to do that or what that means.
We think we do, but we don't until we actually
try start trying to implement it. When I was growing up,
(15:47):
eating healthy was a salad iceberg lettuce, which is like
nutritionally void with fried chicken and drenched in ranch, cheese,
cre utons, bacon bits. You know, so it's not it's
it's still still chicken fingers. You know, you traded the
(16:08):
ketchup for the ranch, so you're not actually eating healthy,
but people think they are because it's a salad. And
so you know, there's there's that whole the ignorance of it,
and the knowledge wasn't available until the internet, really, and
even then it took until recently. I'd say, like I
(16:32):
started falling down the rabbit hole of health about ten
years ago, and at that point in time, everybody I
was like, Oh, my gosh, here's how you're supposed to eat,
did you know? And they acted like I was crazy?
And oh, did you know that exercising can actually look
(16:53):
like this and that and it doesn't have to be
just you know, sit ups which are excruciatingly terrible and
running a mile every day, like you can do it
like this or like that or like this or like that.
And people looked at you like you're crazy, and then
you become a conspiracy theorist because you're like, whoh, did
you know that doctor error is one of the top
(17:16):
leading causes of problems and pills are just band aids
And everybody thought you were insane. So, you know, the
culture had to shift, it had to change and it
is becoming more and more prominent, and more and more
people are starting to understand that they need to figure
(17:36):
out how to take care of themselves. And you know,
we can be like, well, our parents should have just
ate better and then we wouldn't have had to struggle
so hard, you know, And because that's how that's where
I am. I'm like, if I teach my children how
to take care of themselves, they're never going to have
(17:57):
to go through the struggle that I had to go
through of figuring out what that means even right, because
we think we know, but we don't until we start
implementing the habits.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah. Absolutely, And you know I fell into that bucket
in a sense with regards to exercise. I ran cross
country throughout high school. I ran track. You know, I
was very active and aerobically you're running all the time,
but it didn't do the trick for me. I mean,
my tics were still bad. I would have the skip
(18:30):
step when I ran, which was not advantageous in the race,
and all these these issues. I'd come home from practice
and just kind of explode at home when I let
my wal my barriers, my walls down. And what really
changes when I shifted into weightlifting. Actually, weightlifting has been
incredibly beneficial of my health compared to running because it
(18:53):
actually my functional medicine doctor describes the muscle mass I've
gained as a sink for eosfils, or these inflammatory compounds
that I was talking about that entered my brain and
caused the inflammation and caused the ticks and the symptoms.
I used to be very underweight when I was running.
Oh it was like one hundred and thirty five pounds,
really tiny, skin and bones, and those cytokinds. Those inflammatory
(19:18):
compounds had nowhere to go. I was skin and bones,
So that's what happened. They were produced in excess, They
went into my brain. They caused problems. But when I
gained fifty sixty pounds of muscle mass through a weightlifting routine,
eating right, staying healthy over the last several years, that
muscle mass, in effect, it diluted the effect of the
(19:41):
inflammatory compounds on my body because there was more of me.
But it also gave them a place to go, so
these compounds can be stored in the muscle tissue instead
of going into my brain. So it helped me heal
on multiple levels. And you know, that's not just true
of pandas I mean, it increases bone density, it helps
with anxiety. You know that the benefits of weightlifting and
(20:04):
strength training are benefits almost every area of your health.
It's amazing. So getting myself in that routine has been
incredibly helpful. And I would say my wife was the
one who pushed me in and said, you know, we're
gonna do this. You're gonna get a gym membership. And
I was like, oh, no, I'm too busy, Like I
don't want to do that. She's like, no, no, you're
(20:24):
gonna do it. And now it's like something that we
do four days a week and it's part of our
schedule and we just love it and enjoy it and
it doesn't hurt as much anymore. And like so just
pushing yourself to create those new habits in and of
itself can be healing.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, you start to crave it for sure, And you know,
any exercise will do most of those things. You have
to find what works for you. I can't stand to
go to the gym. It's just boring. It's not mentally
stimulating enough for me. And so like I'd watch shows
(21:02):
and I'd listen to podcasts and I'd listen to books
and you know, I'm all into the Wow. Okay, my
cat knocked over my puzzle table, so that's sad, but
I guess I was putting it together too quickly. Anyway,
I have to trick myself into exercise, so I of
(21:27):
course I teach yoga twice a week, and then I
also do jiu jitsu and play a ton of pickleball.
So there's exercises out there for everybody. You just have
to find the one that works for you and the
one that lights you up. And I'd say the biggest
factor of sticking with it and creating that habit in
(21:50):
the beginning is if you can find a partner or
a friend or a community and you know, like you
can start in it by yourself for sure, but it
needs to be something that you're kind of interested in, like,
for example, jiu jitsu. I didn't know anybody in that
(22:13):
community when I started out. It was just me being interested.
And you get in there and you just show up
and you show up and you show up and you
start to build that community. You start to build those
bonds with people, and then it makes going easy because
you're not only fulfilling your physical needs, but it's doing
amazing things for your mental health, not only in like
(22:35):
the endorphins and the uh lowered cortisol levels and you know,
all of the chemical physical mental aspects, but also most
people are starving for that community and that with people.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I like that. No, that's that's so true. I mean
building community is huge for many reasons, but yeah, just
to get yourself in those habits, to have someone behind
you encouraging you and calling you, hey, we missed you
a practice today, you know, that's huge. I would not
have pegged you for a jiu jitsu artist, but that's
(23:15):
really cool. Some of my best friends are into jiu jitsu,
and I mean they've it's very clear to me how
like tight knit that community is.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Oh yeah, you really build bonds with your sparring partners
for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
That's cool. Yeah, and I agree. You know, it doesn't
have to be weightlifting, but something that you enjoy, something
that you don't dread doing or putting on the calendar. Right,
you have to enjoyed it. For me, like running was
not it, Like I got I was so sick of
running by the time I graduated high school. I was
like I never want to do this again. So getting
me to run, Like, hey, Ethan, you want to go
(23:49):
out and run with me, I'm like not. But going
to the gym, I actually enjoyed pushing up the weights.
It does. It helps me feel good, It helps me
sleep better, you know, it improves my appetite. So all
those things are beneficial. I think too when you deal
with when you wrestle with a health crisis, sometimes it's
just really difficult to get out of that rut. Like
(24:12):
you feel stuck. You're stuck with your symptoms. In my case,
you know, I had these motor ticks and I would
physically be stuck doing the tick, and it's really hard
to just take a step back and move forward and
move out of that and find ways to heal. Oftentimes
you're just resorting to medication or self medicating or whatever
(24:33):
it is. It gives you a little bit of relief
for the time being, but you know that's not a
healthy way to deal with it. So I advocate for
finding things that can give you natural relief without negative
health benefits, like right, not drinking a six pack every
night or smoking, like, find something that's beneficial that can
(24:54):
give you enough relief to kind of step back, take
a deep breath, refocus, and move forward with your life.
And for me that it was anti inflammatory supplements, namely
CBD oil. It was huge. I mean, I smoked cannabis
for many, many years because it was the only thing
(25:15):
I found that helped reduce my symptoms. But I would
never advocate for that today because I saw the negative
impact of smoking on my life, the health consequences of
inhaling particulate matter, the trouble with the law that I
dealt with as a young man, right the breathing issues
that I faced, the psychosis and paranoia that I felt.
(25:37):
All of those things come along as side effects of
using cannabis. And I think our society has normalized the
use of that plant, but it's a dangerous game to play.
CBD oil is the most I call it nature's most
powerful anti inflammatory. It's not intoxicating, it doesn't have any
of the side effects or health risks of cannabis. But
(26:00):
you can take it orally and get like clinically shown
anxiety relief from this product without any of those side
effects or risks. And so for me, I remember the
first time I took it, it was like a wave
of anxiety left my body. I could take a deep breath,
I could refocus, I could go about my day with
(26:20):
a little bit of relief. And that for me, was
like the catalyst for this lifestyle change I've been talking about. Like,
I don't think I could have done it without some
sort of relief because I was wallowing in my symptoms.
I was self loathing, I was woe as me right.
I was just in a really dark, negative, lonely place.
And I think finding that tool for me was CBD
(26:44):
and other powerful anti inflammatories that could give me some
relief to get me out of that space and into
a mindset of like there is hope for healing. What
are some things I can do? What are some habits
I can implement? And things I can get get rid
of in my life that are causing me more stress? Right,
and all of those things like transformed who I am
(27:06):
and how I feel.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah, it's really hard to find the thing that kicks
you off on this journey. It's your right. It's really
easy to just stay in that dark place.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, I know I was.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
We'll see. Gosh, where did I even start. I started
passing out all the time when I was about fourteen,
and I was diagnosed with hypogloscemia, and which is low
blood sugar. And going back to a lot of the
things we've already covered, the only advice my doctor gave
me was, oh, well, you need to eat more. Well,
(27:51):
it turns out that if your diet is garbage, it
doesn't matter if you eat more and eat more what right? Right?
And uh so, you know, we didn't know. So I
was just trying to eat more. So I was eating
more chips, and I was eating more hot pockets, and
I was eating more ramen, and nothing was getting better.
In fact, things were getting worse. I couldn't get too
(28:15):
hot or do any kind of physical activity without passing out.
I couldn't go outside because my allergies were so bad
that as soon as I stepped outside, my eyes would
swell up, I'd be covered in hives, couldn't breathe. And
it's amazing once you start figuring out how to actually
(28:40):
feed yourself, which a lot of people, you know, get
stuck on because okay, so I just eat salads now,
and like no, no, there's actually a whole world of
food out there that most of us are not familiar with.
You know, the standard American diet is burgers and chicken
fingers and ramen. And there's more than just fruits and vegetables.
(29:09):
And you can be like I don't like broccoli or
Brussels sprouts. It's like, well, there's a thousand different ways
to prepare broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and you cannot definitively
say you don't like them until you have tried it
every way. Just keep trying.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah. I think it also comes down to the habits
we form. I mean, if you're feeding yourself sugar and
processed foods every day, I mean, those foods are intentionally
designed to be addicting, right like, I mean we've all
felt it, Like it's like you get hooked on those things.
And you see it in your kids. You know, you
feed them candy and bubble gum. Soon they want candy
(29:49):
and bubble gum every morning, and it's like, yes, so instilling,
you know, if you're a parent instilling those habits and
your kids young, you I tell the story because it's hilarious.
My four year old, her favorite treat is a can
of sardines. I mean, I come home from the grocery
store with sardines and you'd think I walked in with
a bucket of ice cream. She sardine, She runs the table,
(30:12):
gets her played out like she's ready to go, and
it is. That's one of the most nutritious foods on
the planet. All the omegas you get from that, the
vitamins and nutrients, it's like so guilt guiltless. You know
you can enjoy that. Now most people don't want to
eat that much. Yeah, not everybody likes sardines, but find
those things that are healthy. And one of the tricks
(30:33):
I've learned is when you go to the grocery store,
avoid all the center aisles. Like if you walk around
the perimeter of the grocery store, that's generally where they
keep like all the fresh, healthy foods, the produce, the eggs,
like right, all the things that we can enjoy that
have not been highly processed or filled with sugar generally
are around the outside of the grocery store. And you do,
(30:57):
you're right. You see the culture shifting, like people are
asking for healthier things. People are trying to avoid the
dyes and the artificial food colorings and flavors and the
excess sugar. And you see that when how the grocery
store is transformed over the last few years. All the
new product offerings that are coming out that are actually
pretty good and healthy and quality ingredients. But you still
(31:18):
have to do your due diligence and weed through the
junk to find the good products. So taking your time,
reading the back of the ingredient labels, all those things
are really important.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, it can be really difficult too. On top of
being hopologostamic, I'm also allergic to soy, so I need
to eat more, but there's next to nothing that I
can eat, and so that was a really hard navigation
for me. In the beginning, I was living off of
oatmeal and yogurt and hummus, and it turns out that
(31:56):
if you eat too much of those things, body starts
to rebel against them. So now I can't eat oatmeal
anymore because it makes my heart race every time, which
is crazy. But we did really well with our kids
and sugar and whatnot until they started school. And as
(32:16):
soon as they started school, they come home with pockets
full of candy every single week, and it's so infuriating,
like why does why do public schools have sodas? Why
is that a thing?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's the culture, I know, and same when I went
to college, you know, you had unlimited access to these
dining halls with fountain sodas and sugary cereals and all
this stuff, and it wreaked havoc on my body. I mean,
the more insidious effect of eating junk is the inflammation
in your body. And so my symptoms just continued to
(32:52):
get worse as I lost control of my diet and
these things. And so I yeah, began like heavily self
medicating to deal with all of those those issues, and
I really did not put two and two together and
realize like what was really happening behind the scenes. So really,
like again, my use of cannabis was effectively the same
(33:16):
as a pharmaceutical medication, right. It was just intended to
cover up the symptoms so that I could feel better
for a little while, and then I'd have to go
back and use it again. And so while it seemed
like a natural option for me, it really wasn't. It
really was not a healthy option at all. And so again,
shifting away from that use of cannabis and self medicating
(33:40):
and finding like a more natural, holistic option was such
a key for me, and I keep touching on that
because you know, like we can talk about healthy eating
and exercise and all these things that we know, but
I think like a very a big culprit in our
society today is a self medicating right, Like people just
go home, PLoP on the couch, and get in their
(34:01):
routine and they don't think about, you know, where where
is this going to get me twenty years from now? Right?
Too often we like wait for that health crisis to
hit before we analyze our life or make those changes.
And I've seen it with the older generation. You know,
they wait, they wait to get sober until they're like
looking at a cancer diagnosis or something horrible. And so
(34:23):
I always that's that's why I do this, is to
just promote awareness, not only for pandas, but to say, like, look,
wake up and make these changes now. Well, it's easier
before it's too late.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Yeah, it's easier to fix a problem before it's an
actual problem. So if you're you're being proactive and preactive,
you don't have to be so reactive when things happen, right,
things are less likely to happen.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And if and I like that you pointed out the
part about your kids. You know, teaching them good habits
from the beginning. There. They listen to what we say,
but they really watch what we do. And so if
they're you know, if they're watching you go out and
smoke every couple of hours, if they're watching you pop
those beers back every night, if they're watching you eat
(35:12):
junk food in the morning, that's what they're going to
think is acceptable. That's what adults do. So you know,
getting yourself in those good habits is not only beneficial
for you, it's beneficial for the next generation to show
them how to eat, to show them how to act,
how to be active, how to get outside, how to
do all these things that are good for our health.
(35:32):
And that puts them at an advantage.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
It does. It gives them a whole lot more energy
space time to work with. And I don't mean energy
like I'm tired or I'm not tired. I mean energy
like the mental capacity that we that I know, I
spent so much mental capacity trying to sift through all
(35:56):
of my health conditions and trying to sift through all
of my habits and sift through all of my patterns
that were causing it and what's doing this and why
is this that and how the hell do you food prep?
What even is that that? You know, if they just
are raised already, that's normal, that's normal after them, then
(36:17):
they have the capacity, the mental capacity to focus on
all the things that you know, who knows what they
could do with all that leftover space.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, dealing with sickness or disability is exhausting for sure.
And you know, just knowing what I know now, I
wish I had had access to these resources as a
teenager at the age of thirteen. It would have made
my life a whole lot easier. And so the best
I can offer is just again being open and honest
(36:53):
about what I've been through and what I'm dealing with,
so that I can maybe help others who are in
a similar situation. I mean, I spent so many years
just being ashamed and afraid to talk about what I
was dealing with. You know, Like I said, I didn't
want to admit that I had a problem. I just
wanted to be normal and accepted. So when people asked, me, hey, man,
(37:14):
are you okay? When my parents said, you know, do
you want to talk about this? I just shut down.
I just said no. I boughted it all up beared
with it as an individual, and it only drove my
anxiety up higher. I mean, another big turning point for
me was when I decided to change my perspective on
this and say, look, you got a problem you're dealing with.
(37:37):
It's okay. Let's be honest. Every one of us has
a challenge or an obstacle they're facing in life, and
if you don't right now, you will at some point.
So just realizing that and thinking, you know, I'm not alone.
I'm not alone. There's other people who are dealing with this,
There's other people who are going through junk. And being
(37:57):
okay with that has not only taken the weight off
my shoulders and reduce my anxiety and expectations of myself,
but just put me in a position to offer this
advice to others and help others who are battling a
similar struggle. So that was very freeing for me, and
they's given me purpose. And so I always recommend, like,
(38:18):
if you listen to this, you got a health problem
or anxiety or some kind of issue you're facing, like,
don't be afraid to talk about it, because like bottling
it up, keeping it to yourself, it doesn't help you
it doesn't help anybody.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Yeah, you know, you got to use the resources that
you have available to find solutions, and the people around
you can be wonderful resources. Yeah, when they're not dismissing you.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah, you'd be surprised. I mean yeah, like you know,
you might have to go through twenty or thirty nose
before you get the yes. But like, you're never going
to find the answers if you're not willing to talk
about it in the first place. So being willing to
touch failure a few times in order to find success
is key. I mean I view a lot of the
(39:07):
failures and the medications and the things I tried that
didn't work. I view a lot of those failures as
just like, you know, I know one hundred ways not
to do it now, and I found the thing that
works for me. So don't be afraid to fail either,
but realize that, you know, that's just kind of the
process of figuring out what works for you.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, and talking about your struggles really brings the sense
of awareness. That's important is that social media has made
a lot of these problems. They've brought awareness things like
OCD and ADHD and anxiety mental health, which is great
(39:51):
in one way, but in another way, it's made it
almost cool to have these things. So on a regular base,
I hear people talk about oh my ADHD, and I'm like,
you were so not ADHD, and or oh my OCD
like child, So that bothers me. A lot of people
(40:14):
uh self diagnosing things that they don't actually understand because
they've seen TikTok trends on it and they're like, oh,
I do that. Well, I think everybody kind of cleans
like that, but okay.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, I mean everyone has those tendencies. But if you
feel like, if you feel that way enough to diagnose
yourself with those things, I feel like there may be
some truth to that. Maybe you don't have OCD, but
maybe you, like, you know, you have these compulsive thoughts
and you don't know what to do with them. You
don't know how to handle them and manage them. That's
(40:47):
probably the issue, Not that you like, are obsessive compulsive
to the point where it's like a disorder and you
need medication for it or whatever, but the fact that, like,
we all have these like inappropriate intrusive thoughts from time
to time, but it's about like, how do you push
them out? And move forward and not let it become
(41:07):
a problem. That's where most people I think are lacking
those management skills like ADHD. There's a recently there was
a study through an accredited university that put people in
front of two different screens. One of the screens was
a math teach a math lesson. They're sitting there watching
(41:28):
someone teach them algebra or whatever, and you see the
guy like rocking back and forth in the chair, looking up,
looking down, spinning around, tapping, doing anything except focusing on
the math lesson. Then they put that same person in
front of a Star Wars movie and he sits perfectly, still,
completely engaged in the movie that shows he does not
(41:51):
have ADHD. If you have ADHD, you wouldn't have been
able to focus on either one. It was a selective
attention problem that they have let go for too long
to where they cannot focus on math because they haven't
developed a discipline, they haven't developed the focused skills that
they need. Yet they can watch Star Wars and be
entertained all day. So I think OCD, all these things
(42:14):
are very much overdiagnosed, whether you're self diagnosing or getting
a diagnosis from a doctor. It's really easy to see
someone like not paying attention to math class and say, oh, yeah,
they need medication, Like that's the problem. We're over prescribing
these drugs. We're over we're over diagnosing people with things
that they probably don't even have. And if we were
(42:34):
simply to change our lifestyle, change our habits, learn how
to focus, teach ourselves new skills, we wouldn't have to
deal with these issues to begin with. Now. I like
to tell people with regards to PANDIS, I'm ninety five
percent healed at this point. I still deal with the
impact of this illness on my life on a daily basis.
(42:55):
I still have lingering tics, i still have lingering compulsions,
but I've learned life skills that allow me to move
forward it without them interfering with my life. I don't
have those flare ups and those mental breakdowns that I
used to have as a teenager because I've learned how
to manage these symptoms. I've learned coping skills like deep
(43:17):
breathing exercises. I've learned how to mitigate stress naturally. I've
learned how to eliminate or avoid stress triggers that bother me.
All of these things have led me to the point where, yes,
I've gotten rid of the strep throat infection. Yes I've
done a lot of things to reduce my inflammation, so
the healing part is valid, but also from like a
(43:38):
symptom management standpoint, I've learned so many of these skills
through cognitive behavioral therapy, training and other lifestyle changes that
have really helped me to heal on a greater level.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, I think a lot of us are taking just
the normal natural human experience, which is ridiculously complo and
quite painful a lot of times, just trying to figure
out how to navigate and emotionally regulate and to kind
(44:12):
of take the uh responsibility off off of us. We're
diagnosing ourselves with things that may not actually be things
to diagnose ourselves with, and whereas we could put in
a little work, a little discipline, and find habits and
(44:35):
patterns that could fix these things without medication. For sure.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah, I think the self diagnosing is almost a cop out.
It's like, yeah, oh yeah, I've got OCD. My OCD
is kicking in again, and it's like a humorous thing,
but it's an excuse to just like live out those
symptoms and not take responsibility for them, not work on them,
and it's like, you know, sorry if this bothers you,
it's my It's like, well, you're not sorry because you're
(45:03):
just doing it, you know. So if you really wanted
to work on it and improve your life so that
you you didn't have those symptoms, you can do it.
But again, we're not we're not equipped with those resources
unless we seek out like a specialist who knows what
they're doing. So I don't know, I've I've written a
lot about this on my blog and the things that
(45:24):
I've done, but I think like retraining your brain as possible,
especially if you're dealing with these neurosymptoms like we've been
talking about, like it's just so important to just take
control over your health and not you know, resort to
medication or just relying on a doctor or a diagnosis
to get you where you need to be, because you know,
(45:46):
nine times out of ten, that's not going to be
a good solution for you.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, everything starts in the mind, everything, so that is
absolutely the best place to start. But it's there's a
lot of factors in people not wanting to like trauma,
for one, those bad memories that you don't want to
relive because you're going to as soon as you have
(46:13):
time and space for them to come up. You know,
we have to We feel like we have to distract
ourselves twenty four to seven because if we sit still
for a moment, then we're going to have all those
memories are going to stir up, and then we're gonna
have to face them, and we don't want to face them.
We just want to run from moment. So it's proalysis,
(46:33):
you know, it's they don't want to sit in. It's
easier to keep doing what you're doing rather than change
the momentum. Because if you're moving in one direction for
say twenty years, and then you want to start moving
in the other direction, you have to slow the momentum
to a halt before you can flip over and start
(46:57):
going the other direction. And that's difficult in a lot
of ways for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Yeah, certainly, certainly is I mean with just you know,
looking back at for example, my cannabis use was it
was really difficult. I mean, I don't don't let anyone
fool you and tell you it's not addicting like I was.
It was definitely habit forming for me and to be
able to step back and reassess and change that lifestyle.
(47:24):
It wasn't just like quitting smoking. It was like the
paraphernalia that came with that, the people I was hanging around,
you know, the influences. It's just like there's so many factors,
and the deeper you get into these habits, like the
harder it is to leave them. So we do. We
have to be very intentional with everything we put into
(47:44):
our bodies and with everything we do, and think, you know,
why am I Why am I doing this? You know
why am I flipping on the TV when I get home?
You know, if TV's a problem for you, it sounds crazy,
but like get rid of it. Like I don't have
a TV in my house at all, Like we don't
watch it, and it's just because it is a window
(48:05):
to the outside world that is trying to sell you
stuff you don't need, fill your house with negative influence,
and it's like we just don't need that. You know,
There's so many other things we can do. We spend
a lot of time outside. My kids read more books
on an average day than most kids do in a month.
You know, we're just we're we're filling that time that
(48:25):
that would normally be filled with TV and video games.
We're filling those times, that time with more productive activities.
Yesterday we went out and we went down to the
lake and we fished and we caught bass, and it's
just being out in nature getting the sunshine. I mean it.
You know, fishing's not for everybody, but like finding things
(48:46):
that you enjoy that help you feel fulfilled, that give
you value and purpose, it's going to impact your life
on such a greater level than just trying to fill
that time with void, pointless entertainment.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Absolutely go to getting out in nature. The more time
you can spend in nature, the better you're going to
feel and be, and it will eventually kill you, especially
the more connected you get to it. We we garden
and we camp, and we do a lot of kayaking.
I am super excited for kayaking season to sort about
(49:22):
the water's warming up. I got a brand new kayak
for Christmas, so that's exciting. It hasn't been in the
water yet, but the serenity of being out in nature
is healing on a really deep level. Like it's something
that we've disconnected ourselves from nature and we all feel
(49:44):
like there's a hole inside of us, and we're trying
to fill that hole with stuff and entertainment and distractions.
When you can feel it by just going outside and
sitting and breathing, you can feel it by focusing on
the relationlationships in your life, because that's really, of all
the things we think we want in life, the only
(50:06):
thing we actually want when you really get down to
the root of it all, is we want to feel
good physically, we don't want to feel sick, and then
we want to feel loved and connected to people and things.
That's it's It's not really a whole lot deeper than that.
(50:26):
So if you can focus on self care, like people,
you know, they think they don't have time for self care.
They don't have time to exercise, they don't have time
to meditate, they don't have time to figure out how
to feed themselves. But if you don't figure out how
to make the time, because there's literally nothing more important.
(50:47):
You know, we've been sold the story of money and
cars and houses, and I would give absolutely every bit
of it away just to move in my camper with
my family. Like I absolutely would just move into the
woods and never look back. If only I could convince
my husband to do so.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Yeah, that's awesome. I've definitely had those inclinations at certain times.
For sure. It's a it's all that's awesome. Yeah, I
think nature is healing. And in fact, where my life
kind of transitioned was when I took a job on
a farm. I moved out to Colorado. I packed everything
(51:31):
I owned in my car and drove out to Colorado
and took this job on the oldest farm in the
state of Colorado. And that's actually where I was introduced
into HIMP and CBD. Ironically, moving out there with the
intention of like escaping the persecution for using cannabis here
in Virginia. I went out there with the intentions of
(51:53):
kind of like using my medicine without risk of getting
in trouble, and actually through that transitioned away from cannabis
and into CBD, which which kind of set me off
on my life's journey. But while I was out there,
I just fell in love with the lifestyle, eating fresh
farmed a table produce every day, working out in the
(52:15):
soil with my hands, exerting myself digging in the rows,
plant you know, seeing life grow around me every day.
They're just myriad benefits that came with that lifestyle, and
it was so refreshing. Moving from college, you know, fast paced,
stressful lifestyle to having basically no responsibilities except for getting
(52:38):
the day's chores done was freeing mentally. So I just
it was like a total transition from modern American college
life to working out in nature and relaxing and breathing
fresh mountain air and all these things every day. And
that was a big wake up call for me just
(52:59):
to kind of you know, when I was young, I
was care free like we all were, and running out.
I spent most of my time outside, but I kind
of lost sight of that through high school and college,
just focusing on career and what was I going to
be when I grew up and this and that, and
going out onto the farm kind of reset that for
(53:19):
me and put my focus back onto like the more
important things in life. And so I really appreciated that
experience and we kind of embody that with the way
we live today. We have ten acres out here and
we have a guarden, and you know, we love to
go fishing and all this stuff. So again, it's important
(53:40):
to support yourself and have a career and a purpose
and all that, but we also don't want to lose
sight of the things that make us feel whole and fulfilled.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Yeah, and most people, unfortunately don't realize what they're actually
looking for. You know. Our culture says to do more,
do more, do more, do more, and that's how you're
going to feel whole and fulfilled. When it's counterintuitive, but
we need to do less, lots less. If you don't,
if you feel like you don't have time, you're doing
(54:12):
too much. You're doing way too much. Why are you
doing those things? It's important to ask yourself why you're
doing what you're doing. Where did those patterns come from.
Is it something that actually supports what you're after, or
is it something that is just feeling time, escapism, lots
(54:34):
of things.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
Sometimes it's good to just sit back and do absolutely nothing,
and it is. It's freeing and relaxing. And we did
some of that yesterday on Sunday, you know, just I
built these rocking chairs and we sat back with the
kids and just rocked and listened to the breeze and
(54:55):
relaxed and it's just very refreshing, very good for the soul,
and especially moving into Monday, you know, it makes the
work week a little bit easier.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
Yeah. They say that there's like a proverb or something
and says everyone should meditate for an hour every day,
unless you're really busy that day, in which you should
meditate for two hours.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
I like that. Yeah, yeah, well that's very true.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
Let everybody know how they can find you, plug whatever
you like.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Yeah. So a Green Valley Nutrition dot Com is my website.
I have my blog on there. If you're interested in
pandas and my healing journey, I post on there, you know,
more specifically the things I've done with all my lifestyle change.
We have our annual five K fundraiser coming up in April,
which I'm really excited about. I posted on there. But
(55:48):
my website is a wealth of resources for that. You know.
We manufacture an industry leading brand of CBD products. I
started in the spare bed room in my house almost
ten years ago and now we operate a state of
the art manufacturing facility here in Virginia. It's a family
owned business and we just want to help people feel better.
(56:11):
So absolutely don't feel like you have to go buy CBD.
But again, for me, that was like the catalyst for
my healing and finding those tools that worked and helped
me to feel better. So if that's something you're you're
interested in learning more about, We've got plenty of information
and resources on that CBD is if it's if it's
(56:34):
THC free, if it contains no intoxic and compounds. It's
safe for everybody. It's safe for people being drug screen
for work. It's safe for pets, it's safe for grandma,
it's safe for your kids. Like, I can't tell you
how many people are using this for their ADHD or
their kids with autism, or their achy joints or help
(56:55):
them sleep better. I mean, there's so many benefits from
dysantine fla inivatory compound in your life. It's generally worth
a try if you're suffering from any of these ailments.
So anyway, go to Green Valley Nutrition dot com check
it out, Feel free to contact us. I'm easy to
reach and so happy to help or provide insights any
(57:19):
way I can.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
Awesome, and I'll make sure all that's linked below. Yeah,
there's always another tool, always another noodle to throw at
the wall and see if it stinks. So the important
thing is just not to give out for sure.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, life will hand you challenges and thanks
you're not prepared for. But definitely not giving up is
the key. Right, try try again. I love Thomas Edison said,
you know, he had ten thousand different iterations of the
light bulb before he found what worked. And when they said, like,
(57:53):
you know, why didn't you give up after all these failures,
and he said, I didn't have any failures. I just
found nine ninetynine ways not to make a light bulb.
So not giving up. You never know, how you know
you may be one step away from finding that thing
that works and that success. So never giving up and
trying again is the key. It's easier said than done,
(58:14):
but hopefully that resonates with people and encourages them.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Absolutely well, thank you so much for being here today.
We'll let them go and enjoy the rest of their day.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Yeah, nice to meet you, Savannah. Thank you
So tell us about PANDAS. What is that?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
PANDAS is not the cute, cuddly bamboo munching bear that
we're all familiar with. It's actually an acronym. It kind
of raises eyebrows when I tell people because it's lengthy.
It's pediatric autoimmune neurological disorders associated with strep. And basically
what that means is that there's a strep infection that
(00:27):
causes an unusual autoimmune response in the body. And for me,
that was characterized by motor tics, loss of motor function
and motor control, severe OCD and anxiety compulsions. Ticks. Yeah,
I went from being essentially normal, healthy young man to
(00:49):
at the age of thirteen, just waking up one day
and having these ticks and these rituals and these very
disruptive symptoms in my life. So it's very it's very
unusual that someone would get it that old. Usually it's
very much younger children that get it. But it's interesting
that it's a strep bacteria that causes this much larger
(01:11):
problem in your life.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah. Strep is super common, and I don't think people
are aware that it can ever cause anything.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Else, right, I mean, yeah, everybody gets strapped as a kid.
In particular, it's kind of expected. I had recurring strep
infections as a kid, and in fact, I would test
positive for strep even if I didn't have symptoms, so
I often didn't even know if I had it. But
you know, looking back in my blood work, my STRAP
antibodies were off the charts, and that was a big
(01:41):
indicator that you know, I had had STRAP over and
over again with or without knowing it. And antibodies are
one of the few compounds that can cross the blood
brain barrier, and so that's how PANDIS works, is your
antibodies are produced in such excess that they don't know
where to go, and they end up going into your
brainstem and your basal ganglia, which is the motor cortex
(02:03):
of your body, and that's not where antibodies are supposed
to hang out. So they can cause all these other
symptoms and problems that you would not normally associate with
strapped throat.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
How did y'all come up across the diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
It took a long time. It took about a decade
to get a correct diagnosis, and that was the hardest part,
quite honestly, for about ten years I was misdiagnosed with
Turet syndrome or anxiety or OCD. I was basically diagnosed
with the symptoms instead of what the cause of the
(02:40):
symptoms was, and so essentially it was a label. It
was an excuse to prescribe me drugs and medication as
a band aid or a mask for these symptoms, where
the root cause of my illness went unaddressed for a
long long time, and so everything kept getting worse. Really,
the medications never really worked for me. The side effects
(03:02):
often outweighed the benefits, and I was left with a
bad taste in my mouth for conventional medicine for that reason.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, that's that's a pretty common story also with the
Western world being heavily reliable on medications and them being
pushed on us whether we actually need them or not,
which you know, we don't want to play the blame game.
(03:33):
You know, it's not doctor's faults. They most of them
go into it with pretty good intentions. They're just a
victim of the system themselves, their tool essentially for big pharma,
And people don't realize that because well, I think it's
I think it's changing, I think it's becoming more prominent,
like prominently known that you can't take a doctor's word
(03:56):
for face value. But this is only like new new
in the culture. Before, like five years ago, people were
still putting doctors upon pedestals. People still put doctors upon
pedestals and just take their word for face value, not
realizing that you know, they're human just like we are.
(04:18):
And medical error is one of the leading causes of death.
Not to be scary, I am terrified of the system,
the medical system. Honestly, I'm just gonna kill overdad one
day and nobody's gonna know what happened, and we're all
gonna be happier for it.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I can relate to what you're saying. I mean, it's true.
I don't blame any of the doctors. However, you know,
the medical schools, they don't teach this stuff and something
like pandas experts are estimating that one in two hundred
kids has this now, so it's something that's becoming even common.
Yet it's still not taught in med school. People are
(04:58):
not educated or aware of it. Physicians don't know how
to diagnose it, and they certainly don't know how to
treat it in general, And so a lot of the
work I do is actually to promote awareness and advocacy
for PANDAS, and you know, fundraising for physician education, credits
to further education post grads, post doctor at school, to
(05:19):
help teach these people exactly that how to treat, how
to diagnose, how to recognize when something is going haywire.
It may not be that your kid has ADHD or OCD.
It may be an underlying issue that we need to
look for now. PANDAS is difficult to diagnose, even if
you are aware of it. It's a clinical diagnosis, so
there's no like blood test you can take that says hey,
(05:41):
you've got this. It involves putting together the piece is
looking at your medical history and your infection history and
your symptom load and all of these things, and putting
the pieces together to say, hey, here's a picture of
what you're dealing with, and it resembles or this is
definitively panned us someone who has been trained in this
(06:05):
and who is familiar with it and well versed, and
it can do that, but you're going to still have
to go through those protocol, those blood tests and everything
to get an idea of what you're dealing.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
With what was the alarming fact, like, you know, you
said you woke up one day and suddenly had OCD
and ticks and all of this. Did they did y'all
go straight to the doctor that day? Probably not right?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
No, No, I mean at first we brushed it off, right, Oh,
it's just my dad looked at me. Oh, he's just
doing something weird, you know. I at thirteen, we're all
just trying to figure out who we are. You know,
we're dealing with these body changes and all these things,
so we do weird things sometimes. So we first we
brushed it off. Once my symptoms became more severe over time,
(06:51):
over the next several months, we realized that something was
definitely wrong. I the part of the reason why I
was misdie noose with THERETZ is because I exhibited that
classic like profanity, cursing, impulsivity, on inability to control my
speech or my motor function. And you know, I would
(07:12):
do things like pick up my phone, put it down,
pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put
it down, over and over again until it felt like
just right. And I would do that with almost any object.
I picked up books, forks, pencils. It was disruptive on
so many levels throughout the entire course of my day.
And that's when we realized, like, man, something's really wrong here.
(07:34):
You can't, like I can't control what I'm doing. That's
when I had to really take a look at my
life and think, hmm, something is wrong with me. And
that was a very hard pill for me to swallow.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Sure it could be scary, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, it definitely was. Even from my parents' perspective. It
was scary like watching your child lose control like that
and having no idea what's going on, having way to help.
I was a very isolating and even depressing place to be.
So it damaged our family life. It damaged my health.
(08:12):
My mental health began to spiral as I dealt with
these symptoms for so long, because you know, I didn't
want to admit that something was wrong with me. I
wanted to pretend like everything was fine. I'd be sitting
in school in class and students would see me ticking
and say, hey, man, are you okay, and it would
just drive me insane because I didn't want to be
that guy who was like twitching in class. I didn't
(08:35):
want to be known as the weirdo or the guy
who can't sit still, and I just wished that everything
would be normal, and it wasn't, and I put myself
in a mindset of isolation and loneliness for a long time,
when looking back, I really didn't have to do that
to myself.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Were your parents supportive though.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, my parents were absolutely my advocates. I mean my
mom in particular, scoured the Internet and the library for
any resources you could find on this before, you know,
because even this was fifteen years ago, it was very
difficult to find anyone who knew about pandas. We actually
(09:20):
had to essentially figure it out ourselves and then search
for pandas doctors and find someone who was well versed
in panda so that we could go and confirm the
diagnosis and find a treatment protocol because quite frankly, I
was only aware of maybe two doctors at the time
who even knew what this was. Lots changed since then.
(09:41):
It's becoming more widely recognized, partly due to the work
that some of the organizations I work with have done.
But you know, it's definitely easier now to get a
diagnosis than it was ten fifteen years ago, and even now,
more insurance companies are working with these doctors in order
to provide a financial assistance once you get that diagnosis,
(10:04):
which is huge because I remember we paid out of
pocket for most of the treatments. They weren't recognized by
any of the insurance companies at the time. So just
again incredibly frustrating place from the doctor visit to the
insurance company that the whole thing was very lackluster and
put a bad taste in my mouth for conventional medicine.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Like I said, sure, did you have to travel? Imagine
that you found two doctors they weren't nearby? That right,
too convenient?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, I'm located here in central Virginia and one of
them was in New Jersey and the other was in Maryland.
So fortunately it wasn't Actually it wasn't like we had
to pack up and drive across the country. But yeah,
we did go out of state. We did drive several
hours to visit these folks.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
That is super lucky though, that it was just a
couple of hop skipping a jump away instead of what, yeah,
it's the entire country.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, I will say though at that point I had
serious physician fatigue. I mean I was sick of doctors.
I was sick of medication. From thirteen to seventeen, I
had been on over forty different prescription meds. None of
them work. You know. It was just like try this,
see if it works. If you feel crappy, cut back
if you don't notice the difference, Increase the dose. And
(11:23):
it was just like a guessing game, like throwing pills
at me and see what sticks. And they that was
not medicine in my view, and so I got sick
of it. I was tired, and at that point my
parents had to effectively just drag me to these appointments. Hey,
you know this time, we think we it's gonna work,
you know this time thing. So I had given up
(11:43):
hope for healing at that point. And what really changed
is getting that correct diagnosis. Getting the PANDACE diagnosis put
me from a mindset of, you know, treating symptoms with
pills to actually identifying the root cause of my illness,
which was these underlying infections, the inflammation, the chronic inflammation
in my brain and other parts of my bodies that
(12:03):
we're driving these these symptoms and targeting those issues so
that we could get the infection and the inflammation under
control and subsequently reduce the symptoms naturally.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And that's that's usually how it goes as the medications
just a band aid masking symptoms that it's not doing
anything for the root cause. And if you're not trying
to address that root cause, then most of the time
the issue is just going to get worse instead of
better over the long run. And that's what people don't understand.
They're like, you know, just give me a pill, Like, eh,
(12:37):
you don't actually want that. You think you do, but
you don't because not only that, but it's the side effects.
You're you're always trading off one thing for another.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Well did you know that the United States is one
of only two countries worldwide that allow direct marketing of
pharmaceutical drugs. It's it's it's insane to me, Like you
can't run a cigarette commercial, but you can tell people
that they need this medication to clear up their skin.
But you know the side effects are heart failure, death,
(13:13):
like depression. My mind is blown. Yeah, Like how is
that legal? You can just directly tell people, hey, you
need this, and now, you know, you turn the country
into a bunch of hypochondriacs who are drug dependent. And
it's crazy. I mean, it's a backwards approach. If you
you know, you see that commercial for prilosec or whatever,
(13:35):
it's like a heartburn medication. I think, like a digestive,
like just don't eat hot dogs all day, Like clean
up your diet. You know you're not gonna you're not
gonna need that pill. Yeah. So it's it's like, you know,
you're totally right about how you know the industry and
all that, but it comes down to like people want
(13:57):
that miracle pill. You know, they're looking for that easy answer,
and they're not willing to change their lifestyle change their health.
Everybody knows that eating riot and exercise is good for them.
Everyone knows they should pray and meditate, but how many
people actually do those things on a daily basis. Right,
It's a matter of prioritizing our health instead of waiting
(14:19):
until a health crisis hits your life to say, oh crap,
I need to get it together and make some changes.
And for almost a decade, you know, although I was younger,
you know, I was essentially just looking to the doctor
as like my first line of defense. You know, Hey,
give me, tell me what's wrong, give me a treatment
so I can go on my way. Now, if you
(14:41):
break your arm, though, chances to start, the doctor's going
to give you a splint, fix you up, and you'll
be out on your way and healed in no time.
But when you show up at the doctor with something unfamiliar,
something they haven't been trained in, it could be a
long road to recovery for sure.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, I think I think things are changing. I think
people are becoming more aware because I you know, when
we were growing up, I assume you're around my age.
You look like you are. When we were growing up,
it wasn't considered cool to eat healthy and exercise and
(15:22):
you know, read books. Even you know, the internet kind
of came along a little bit later, so people didn't
know that. They didn't know. You know, yes, we know
that we're supposed to exercise and eat right, but we
don't actually know how to do that or what that means.
We think we do, but we don't until we actually
try start trying to implement it. When I was growing up,
(15:47):
eating healthy was a salad iceberg lettuce, which is like
nutritionally void with fried chicken and drenched in ranch, cheese,
cre utons, bacon bits. You know, so it's not it's
it's still still chicken fingers. You know, you traded the
(16:08):
ketchup for the ranch, so you're not actually eating healthy,
but people think they are because it's a salad. And
so you know, there's there's that whole the ignorance of it,
and the knowledge wasn't available until the internet, really, and
even then it took until recently. I'd say, like I
(16:32):
started falling down the rabbit hole of health about ten
years ago, and at that point in time, everybody I
was like, Oh, my gosh, here's how you're supposed to eat,
did you know? And they acted like I was crazy?
And oh, did you know that exercising can actually look
(16:53):
like this and that and it doesn't have to be
just you know, sit ups which are excruciatingly terrible and
running a mile every day, like you can do it
like this or like that or like this or like that.
And people looked at you like you're crazy, and then
you become a conspiracy theorist because you're like, whoh, did
you know that doctor error is one of the top
(17:16):
leading causes of problems and pills are just band aids
And everybody thought you were insane. So, you know, the
culture had to shift, it had to change and it
is becoming more and more prominent, and more and more
people are starting to understand that they need to figure
(17:36):
out how to take care of themselves. And you know,
we can be like, well, our parents should have just
ate better and then we wouldn't have had to struggle
so hard, you know, And because that's how that's where
I am. I'm like, if I teach my children how
to take care of themselves, they're never going to have
(17:57):
to go through the struggle that I had to go
through of figuring out what that means even right, because
we think we know, but we don't until we start
implementing the habits.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah. Absolutely, And you know I fell into that bucket
in a sense with regards to exercise. I ran cross
country throughout high school. I ran track. You know, I
was very active and aerobically you're running all the time,
but it didn't do the trick for me. I mean,
my tics were still bad. I would have the skip
(18:30):
step when I ran, which was not advantageous in the race,
and all these these issues. I'd come home from practice
and just kind of explode at home when I let
my wal my barriers, my walls down. And what really
changes when I shifted into weightlifting. Actually, weightlifting has been
incredibly beneficial of my health compared to running because it
(18:53):
actually my functional medicine doctor describes the muscle mass I've
gained as a sink for eosfils, or these inflammatory compounds
that I was talking about that entered my brain and
caused the inflammation and caused the ticks and the symptoms.
I used to be very underweight when I was running.
Oh it was like one hundred and thirty five pounds,
really tiny, skin and bones, and those cytokinds. Those inflammatory
(19:18):
compounds had nowhere to go. I was skin and bones,
So that's what happened. They were produced in excess, They
went into my brain. They caused problems. But when I
gained fifty sixty pounds of muscle mass through a weightlifting routine,
eating right, staying healthy over the last several years, that
muscle mass, in effect, it diluted the effect of the
(19:41):
inflammatory compounds on my body because there was more of me.
But it also gave them a place to go, so
these compounds can be stored in the muscle tissue instead
of going into my brain. So it helped me heal
on multiple levels. And you know, that's not just true
of pandas I mean, it increases bone density, it helps
with anxiety. You know that the benefits of weightlifting and
(20:04):
strength training are benefits almost every area of your health.
It's amazing. So getting myself in that routine has been
incredibly helpful. And I would say my wife was the
one who pushed me in and said, you know, we're
gonna do this. You're gonna get a gym membership. And
I was like, oh, no, I'm too busy, Like I
don't want to do that. She's like, no, no, you're
(20:24):
gonna do it. And now it's like something that we
do four days a week and it's part of our
schedule and we just love it and enjoy it and
it doesn't hurt as much anymore. And like so just
pushing yourself to create those new habits in and of
itself can be healing.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, you start to crave it for sure, And you know,
any exercise will do most of those things. You have
to find what works for you. I can't stand to
go to the gym. It's just boring. It's not mentally
stimulating enough for me. And so like I'd watch shows
(21:02):
and I'd listen to podcasts and I'd listen to books
and you know, I'm all into the Wow. Okay, my
cat knocked over my puzzle table, so that's sad, but
I guess I was putting it together too quickly. Anyway,
I have to trick myself into exercise, so I of
(21:27):
course I teach yoga twice a week, and then I
also do jiu jitsu and play a ton of pickleball.
So there's exercises out there for everybody. You just have
to find the one that works for you and the
one that lights you up. And I'd say the biggest
factor of sticking with it and creating that habit in
(21:50):
the beginning is if you can find a partner or
a friend or a community and you know, like you
can start in it by yourself for sure, but it
needs to be something that you're kind of interested in, like,
for example, jiu jitsu. I didn't know anybody in that
(22:13):
community when I started out. It was just me being interested.
And you get in there and you just show up
and you show up and you show up and you
start to build that community. You start to build those
bonds with people, and then it makes going easy because
you're not only fulfilling your physical needs, but it's doing
amazing things for your mental health, not only in like
(22:35):
the endorphins and the uh lowered cortisol levels and you know,
all of the chemical physical mental aspects, but also most
people are starving for that community and that with people.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I like that. No, that's that's so true. I mean
building community is huge for many reasons, but yeah, just
to get yourself in those habits, to have someone behind
you encouraging you and calling you, hey, we missed you
a practice today, you know, that's huge. I would not
have pegged you for a jiu jitsu artist, but that's
(23:15):
really cool. Some of my best friends are into jiu jitsu,
and I mean they've it's very clear to me how
like tight knit that community is.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Oh yeah, you really build bonds with your sparring partners
for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
That's cool. Yeah, and I agree. You know, it doesn't
have to be weightlifting, but something that you enjoy, something
that you don't dread doing or putting on the calendar. Right,
you have to enjoyed it. For me, like running was
not it, Like I got I was so sick of
running by the time I graduated high school. I was
like I never want to do this again. So getting
me to run, Like, hey, Ethan, you want to go
(23:49):
out and run with me, I'm like not. But going
to the gym, I actually enjoyed pushing up the weights.
It does. It helps me feel good, It helps me
sleep better, you know, it improves my appetite. So all
those things are beneficial. I think too when you deal
with when you wrestle with a health crisis, sometimes it's
just really difficult to get out of that rut. Like
(24:12):
you feel stuck. You're stuck with your symptoms. In my case,
you know, I had these motor ticks and I would
physically be stuck doing the tick, and it's really hard
to just take a step back and move forward and
move out of that and find ways to heal. Oftentimes
you're just resorting to medication or self medicating or whatever
(24:33):
it is. It gives you a little bit of relief
for the time being, but you know that's not a
healthy way to deal with it. So I advocate for
finding things that can give you natural relief without negative
health benefits, like right, not drinking a six pack every
night or smoking, like, find something that's beneficial that can
(24:54):
give you enough relief to kind of step back, take
a deep breath, refocus, and move forward with your life.
And for me that it was anti inflammatory supplements, namely
CBD oil. It was huge. I mean, I smoked cannabis
for many, many years because it was the only thing
(25:15):
I found that helped reduce my symptoms. But I would
never advocate for that today because I saw the negative
impact of smoking on my life, the health consequences of
inhaling particulate matter, the trouble with the law that I
dealt with as a young man, right the breathing issues
that I faced, the psychosis and paranoia that I felt.
(25:37):
All of those things come along as side effects of
using cannabis. And I think our society has normalized the
use of that plant, but it's a dangerous game to play.
CBD oil is the most I call it nature's most
powerful anti inflammatory. It's not intoxicating, it doesn't have any
of the side effects or health risks of cannabis. But
(26:00):
you can take it orally and get like clinically shown
anxiety relief from this product without any of those side
effects or risks. And so for me, I remember the
first time I took it, it was like a wave
of anxiety left my body. I could take a deep breath,
I could refocus, I could go about my day with
(26:20):
a little bit of relief. And that for me, was
like the catalyst for this lifestyle change I've been talking about. Like,
I don't think I could have done it without some
sort of relief because I was wallowing in my symptoms.
I was self loathing, I was woe as me right.
I was just in a really dark, negative, lonely place.
And I think finding that tool for me was CBD
(26:44):
and other powerful anti inflammatories that could give me some
relief to get me out of that space and into
a mindset of like there is hope for healing. What
are some things I can do? What are some habits
I can implement? And things I can get get rid
of in my life that are causing me more stress? Right,
and all of those things like transformed who I am
(27:06):
and how I feel.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah, it's really hard to find the thing that kicks
you off on this journey. It's your right. It's really
easy to just stay in that dark place.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, I know I was.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
We'll see. Gosh, where did I even start. I started
passing out all the time when I was about fourteen,
and I was diagnosed with hypogloscemia, and which is low
blood sugar. And going back to a lot of the
things we've already covered, the only advice my doctor gave
me was, oh, well, you need to eat more. Well,
(27:51):
it turns out that if your diet is garbage, it
doesn't matter if you eat more and eat more what right? Right?
And uh so, you know, we didn't know. So I
was just trying to eat more. So I was eating
more chips, and I was eating more hot pockets, and
I was eating more ramen, and nothing was getting better.
In fact, things were getting worse. I couldn't get too
(28:15):
hot or do any kind of physical activity without passing out.
I couldn't go outside because my allergies were so bad
that as soon as I stepped outside, my eyes would
swell up, I'd be covered in hives, couldn't breathe. And
it's amazing once you start figuring out how to actually
(28:40):
feed yourself, which a lot of people, you know, get
stuck on because okay, so I just eat salads now,
and like no, no, there's actually a whole world of
food out there that most of us are not familiar with.
You know, the standard American diet is burgers and chicken
fingers and ramen. And there's more than just fruits and vegetables.
(29:09):
And you can be like I don't like broccoli or
Brussels sprouts. It's like, well, there's a thousand different ways
to prepare broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and you cannot definitively
say you don't like them until you have tried it
every way. Just keep trying.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah. I think it also comes down to the habits
we form. I mean, if you're feeding yourself sugar and
processed foods every day, I mean, those foods are intentionally
designed to be addicting, right like, I mean we've all
felt it, Like it's like you get hooked on those things.
And you see it in your kids. You know, you
feed them candy and bubble gum. Soon they want candy
(29:49):
and bubble gum every morning, and it's like, yes, so instilling,
you know, if you're a parent instilling those habits and
your kids young, you I tell the story because it's hilarious.
My four year old, her favorite treat is a can
of sardines. I mean, I come home from the grocery
store with sardines and you'd think I walked in with
a bucket of ice cream. She sardine, She runs the table,
(30:12):
gets her played out like she's ready to go, and
it is. That's one of the most nutritious foods on
the planet. All the omegas you get from that, the
vitamins and nutrients, it's like so guilt guiltless. You know
you can enjoy that. Now most people don't want to
eat that much. Yeah, not everybody likes sardines, but find
those things that are healthy. And one of the tricks
(30:33):
I've learned is when you go to the grocery store,
avoid all the center aisles. Like if you walk around
the perimeter of the grocery store, that's generally where they
keep like all the fresh, healthy foods, the produce, the eggs,
like right, all the things that we can enjoy that
have not been highly processed or filled with sugar generally
are around the outside of the grocery store. And you do,
(30:57):
you're right. You see the culture shifting, like people are
asking for healthier things. People are trying to avoid the
dyes and the artificial food colorings and flavors and the
excess sugar. And you see that when how the grocery
store is transformed over the last few years. All the
new product offerings that are coming out that are actually
pretty good and healthy and quality ingredients. But you still
(31:18):
have to do your due diligence and weed through the
junk to find the good products. So taking your time,
reading the back of the ingredient labels, all those things
are really important.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, it can be really difficult too. On top of
being hopologostamic, I'm also allergic to soy, so I need
to eat more, but there's next to nothing that I
can eat, and so that was a really hard navigation
for me. In the beginning, I was living off of
oatmeal and yogurt and hummus, and it turns out that
(31:56):
if you eat too much of those things, body starts
to rebel against them. So now I can't eat oatmeal
anymore because it makes my heart race every time, which
is crazy. But we did really well with our kids
and sugar and whatnot until they started school. And as
(32:16):
soon as they started school, they come home with pockets
full of candy every single week, and it's so infuriating,
like why does why do public schools have sodas? Why
is that a thing?
Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's the culture, I know, and same when I went
to college, you know, you had unlimited access to these
dining halls with fountain sodas and sugary cereals and all
this stuff, and it wreaked havoc on my body. I mean,
the more insidious effect of eating junk is the inflammation
in your body. And so my symptoms just continued to
(32:52):
get worse as I lost control of my diet and
these things. And so I yeah, began like heavily self
medicating to deal with all of those those issues, and
I really did not put two and two together and
realize like what was really happening behind the scenes. So really,
like again, my use of cannabis was effectively the same
(33:16):
as a pharmaceutical medication, right. It was just intended to
cover up the symptoms so that I could feel better
for a little while, and then I'd have to go
back and use it again. And so while it seemed
like a natural option for me, it really wasn't. It
really was not a healthy option at all. And so again,
shifting away from that use of cannabis and self medicating
(33:40):
and finding like a more natural, holistic option was such
a key for me, and I keep touching on that
because you know, like we can talk about healthy eating
and exercise and all these things that we know, but
I think like a very a big culprit in our
society today is a self medicating right, Like people just
go home, PLoP on the couch, and get in their
(34:01):
routine and they don't think about, you know, where where
is this going to get me twenty years from now? Right?
Too often we like wait for that health crisis to
hit before we analyze our life or make those changes.
And I've seen it with the older generation. You know,
they wait, they wait to get sober until they're like
looking at a cancer diagnosis or something horrible. And so
(34:23):
I always that's that's why I do this, is to
just promote awareness, not only for pandas, but to say, like, look,
wake up and make these changes now. Well, it's easier
before it's too late.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Yeah, it's easier to fix a problem before it's an
actual problem. So if you're you're being proactive and preactive,
you don't have to be so reactive when things happen, right,
things are less likely to happen.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And if and I like that you pointed out the
part about your kids. You know, teaching them good habits
from the beginning. There. They listen to what we say,
but they really watch what we do. And so if
they're you know, if they're watching you go out and
smoke every couple of hours, if they're watching you pop
those beers back every night, if they're watching you eat
(35:12):
junk food in the morning, that's what they're going to
think is acceptable. That's what adults do. So you know,
getting yourself in those good habits is not only beneficial
for you, it's beneficial for the next generation to show
them how to eat, to show them how to act,
how to be active, how to get outside, how to
do all these things that are good for our health.
(35:32):
And that puts them at an advantage.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
It does. It gives them a whole lot more energy
space time to work with. And I don't mean energy
like I'm tired or I'm not tired. I mean energy
like the mental capacity that we that I know, I
spent so much mental capacity trying to sift through all
(35:56):
of my health conditions and trying to sift through all
of my habits and sift through all of my patterns
that were causing it and what's doing this and why
is this that and how the hell do you food prep?
What even is that that? You know, if they just
are raised already, that's normal, that's normal after them, then
(36:17):
they have the capacity, the mental capacity to focus on
all the things that you know, who knows what they
could do with all that leftover space.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, dealing with sickness or disability is exhausting for sure.
And you know, just knowing what I know now, I
wish I had had access to these resources as a
teenager at the age of thirteen. It would have made
my life a whole lot easier. And so the best
I can offer is just again being open and honest
(36:53):
about what I've been through and what I'm dealing with,
so that I can maybe help others who are in
a similar situation. I mean, I spent so many years
just being ashamed and afraid to talk about what I
was dealing with. You know, Like I said, I didn't
want to admit that I had a problem. I just
wanted to be normal and accepted. So when people asked, me, hey, man,
(37:14):
are you okay? When my parents said, you know, do
you want to talk about this? I just shut down.
I just said no. I boughted it all up beared
with it as an individual, and it only drove my
anxiety up higher. I mean, another big turning point for
me was when I decided to change my perspective on
this and say, look, you got a problem you're dealing with.
(37:37):
It's okay. Let's be honest. Every one of us has
a challenge or an obstacle they're facing in life, and
if you don't right now, you will at some point.
So just realizing that and thinking, you know, I'm not alone.
I'm not alone. There's other people who are dealing with this,
There's other people who are going through junk. And being
(37:57):
okay with that has not only taken the weight off
my shoulders and reduce my anxiety and expectations of myself,
but just put me in a position to offer this
advice to others and help others who are battling a
similar struggle. So that was very freeing for me, and
they's given me purpose. And so I always recommend, like,
(38:18):
if you listen to this, you got a health problem
or anxiety or some kind of issue you're facing, like,
don't be afraid to talk about it, because like bottling
it up, keeping it to yourself, it doesn't help you
it doesn't help anybody.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Yeah, you know, you got to use the resources that
you have available to find solutions, and the people around
you can be wonderful resources. Yeah, when they're not dismissing you.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah, you'd be surprised. I mean yeah, like you know,
you might have to go through twenty or thirty nose
before you get the yes. But like, you're never going
to find the answers if you're not willing to talk
about it in the first place. So being willing to
touch failure a few times in order to find success
is key. I mean I view a lot of the
(39:07):
failures and the medications and the things I tried that
didn't work. I view a lot of those failures as
just like, you know, I know one hundred ways not
to do it now, and I found the thing that
works for me. So don't be afraid to fail either,
but realize that, you know, that's just kind of the
process of figuring out what works for you.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, and talking about your struggles really brings the sense
of awareness. That's important is that social media has made
a lot of these problems. They've brought awareness things like
OCD and ADHD and anxiety mental health, which is great
(39:51):
in one way, but in another way, it's made it
almost cool to have these things. So on a regular base,
I hear people talk about oh my ADHD, and I'm like,
you were so not ADHD, and or oh my OCD
like child, So that bothers me. A lot of people
(40:14):
uh self diagnosing things that they don't actually understand because
they've seen TikTok trends on it and they're like, oh,
I do that. Well, I think everybody kind of cleans
like that, but okay.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, I mean everyone has those tendencies. But if you
feel like, if you feel that way enough to diagnose
yourself with those things, I feel like there may be
some truth to that. Maybe you don't have OCD, but
maybe you, like, you know, you have these compulsive thoughts
and you don't know what to do with them. You
don't know how to handle them and manage them. That's
(40:47):
probably the issue, Not that you like, are obsessive compulsive
to the point where it's like a disorder and you
need medication for it or whatever, but the fact that, like,
we all have these like inappropriate intrusive thoughts from time
to time, but it's about like, how do you push
them out? And move forward and not let it become
(41:07):
a problem. That's where most people I think are lacking
those management skills like ADHD. There's a recently there was
a study through an accredited university that put people in
front of two different screens. One of the screens was
a math teach a math lesson. They're sitting there watching
(41:28):
someone teach them algebra or whatever, and you see the
guy like rocking back and forth in the chair, looking up,
looking down, spinning around, tapping, doing anything except focusing on
the math lesson. Then they put that same person in
front of a Star Wars movie and he sits perfectly, still,
completely engaged in the movie that shows he does not
(41:51):
have ADHD. If you have ADHD, you wouldn't have been
able to focus on either one. It was a selective
attention problem that they have let go for too long
to where they cannot focus on math because they haven't
developed a discipline, they haven't developed the focused skills that
they need. Yet they can watch Star Wars and be
entertained all day. So I think OCD, all these things
(42:14):
are very much overdiagnosed, whether you're self diagnosing or getting
a diagnosis from a doctor. It's really easy to see
someone like not paying attention to math class and say, oh, yeah,
they need medication, Like that's the problem. We're over prescribing
these drugs. We're over we're over diagnosing people with things
that they probably don't even have. And if we were
(42:34):
simply to change our lifestyle, change our habits, learn how
to focus, teach ourselves new skills, we wouldn't have to
deal with these issues to begin with. Now. I like
to tell people with regards to PANDIS, I'm ninety five
percent healed at this point. I still deal with the
impact of this illness on my life on a daily basis.
(42:55):
I still have lingering tics, i still have lingering compulsions,
but I've learned life skills that allow me to move
forward it without them interfering with my life. I don't
have those flare ups and those mental breakdowns that I
used to have as a teenager because I've learned how
to manage these symptoms. I've learned coping skills like deep
(43:17):
breathing exercises. I've learned how to mitigate stress naturally. I've
learned how to eliminate or avoid stress triggers that bother me.
All of these things have led me to the point where, yes,
I've gotten rid of the strep throat infection. Yes I've
done a lot of things to reduce my inflammation, so
the healing part is valid, but also from like a
(43:38):
symptom management standpoint, I've learned so many of these skills
through cognitive behavioral therapy, training and other lifestyle changes that
have really helped me to heal on a greater level.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, I think a lot of us are taking just
the normal natural human experience, which is ridiculously complo and
quite painful a lot of times, just trying to figure
out how to navigate and emotionally regulate and to kind
(44:12):
of take the uh responsibility off off of us. We're
diagnosing ourselves with things that may not actually be things
to diagnose ourselves with, and whereas we could put in
a little work, a little discipline, and find habits and
(44:35):
patterns that could fix these things without medication. For sure.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah, I think the self diagnosing is almost a cop out.
It's like, yeah, oh yeah, I've got OCD. My OCD
is kicking in again, and it's like a humorous thing,
but it's an excuse to just like live out those
symptoms and not take responsibility for them, not work on them,
and it's like, you know, sorry if this bothers you,
it's my It's like, well, you're not sorry because you're
(45:03):
just doing it, you know. So if you really wanted
to work on it and improve your life so that
you you didn't have those symptoms, you can do it.
But again, we're not we're not equipped with those resources
unless we seek out like a specialist who knows what
they're doing. So I don't know, I've I've written a
lot about this on my blog and the things that
(45:24):
I've done, but I think like retraining your brain as possible,
especially if you're dealing with these neurosymptoms like we've been
talking about, like it's just so important to just take
control over your health and not you know, resort to
medication or just relying on a doctor or a diagnosis
to get you where you need to be, because you know,
(45:46):
nine times out of ten, that's not going to be
a good solution for you.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, everything starts in the mind, everything, so that is
absolutely the best place to start. But it's there's a
lot of factors in people not wanting to like trauma,
for one, those bad memories that you don't want to
relive because you're going to as soon as you have
(46:13):
time and space for them to come up. You know,
we have to We feel like we have to distract
ourselves twenty four to seven because if we sit still
for a moment, then we're going to have all those
memories are going to stir up, and then we're gonna
have to face them, and we don't want to face them.
We just want to run from moment. So it's proalysis,
(46:33):
you know, it's they don't want to sit in. It's
easier to keep doing what you're doing rather than change
the momentum. Because if you're moving in one direction for
say twenty years, and then you want to start moving
in the other direction, you have to slow the momentum
to a halt before you can flip over and start
(46:57):
going the other direction. And that's difficult in a lot
of ways for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Yeah, certainly, certainly is I mean with just you know,
looking back at for example, my cannabis use was it
was really difficult. I mean, I don't don't let anyone
fool you and tell you it's not addicting like I was.
It was definitely habit forming for me and to be
able to step back and reassess and change that lifestyle.
(47:24):
It wasn't just like quitting smoking. It was like the
paraphernalia that came with that, the people I was hanging around,
you know, the influences. It's just like there's so many factors,
and the deeper you get into these habits, like the
harder it is to leave them. So we do. We
have to be very intentional with everything we put into
(47:44):
our bodies and with everything we do, and think, you know,
why am I Why am I doing this? You know
why am I flipping on the TV when I get home?
You know, if TV's a problem for you, it sounds crazy,
but like get rid of it. Like I don't have
a TV in my house at all, Like we don't
watch it, and it's just because it is a window
(48:05):
to the outside world that is trying to sell you
stuff you don't need, fill your house with negative influence,
and it's like we just don't need that. You know,
There's so many other things we can do. We spend
a lot of time outside. My kids read more books
on an average day than most kids do in a month.
You know, we're just we're we're filling that time that
(48:25):
that would normally be filled with TV and video games.
We're filling those times, that time with more productive activities.
Yesterday we went out and we went down to the
lake and we fished and we caught bass, and it's
just being out in nature getting the sunshine. I mean it.
You know, fishing's not for everybody, but like finding things
(48:46):
that you enjoy that help you feel fulfilled, that give
you value and purpose, it's going to impact your life
on such a greater level than just trying to fill
that time with void, pointless entertainment.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Absolutely go to getting out in nature. The more time
you can spend in nature, the better you're going to
feel and be, and it will eventually kill you, especially
the more connected you get to it. We we garden
and we camp, and we do a lot of kayaking.
I am super excited for kayaking season to sort about
(49:22):
the water's warming up. I got a brand new kayak
for Christmas, so that's exciting. It hasn't been in the
water yet, but the serenity of being out in nature
is healing on a really deep level. Like it's something
that we've disconnected ourselves from nature and we all feel
(49:44):
like there's a hole inside of us, and we're trying
to fill that hole with stuff and entertainment and distractions.
When you can feel it by just going outside and
sitting and breathing, you can feel it by focusing on
the relationlationships in your life, because that's really, of all
the things we think we want in life, the only
(50:06):
thing we actually want when you really get down to
the root of it all, is we want to feel
good physically, we don't want to feel sick, and then
we want to feel loved and connected to people and things.
That's it's It's not really a whole lot deeper than that.
(50:26):
So if you can focus on self care, like people,
you know, they think they don't have time for self care.
They don't have time to exercise, they don't have time
to meditate, they don't have time to figure out how
to feed themselves. But if you don't figure out how
to make the time, because there's literally nothing more important.
(50:47):
You know, we've been sold the story of money and
cars and houses, and I would give absolutely every bit
of it away just to move in my camper with
my family. Like I absolutely would just move into the
woods and never look back. If only I could convince
my husband to do so.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Yeah, that's awesome. I've definitely had those inclinations at certain times.
For sure. It's a it's all that's awesome. Yeah, I
think nature is healing. And in fact, where my life
kind of transitioned was when I took a job on
a farm. I moved out to Colorado. I packed everything
(51:31):
I owned in my car and drove out to Colorado
and took this job on the oldest farm in the
state of Colorado. And that's actually where I was introduced
into HIMP and CBD. Ironically, moving out there with the
intention of like escaping the persecution for using cannabis here
in Virginia. I went out there with the intentions of
(51:53):
kind of like using my medicine without risk of getting
in trouble, and actually through that transitioned away from cannabis
and into CBD, which which kind of set me off
on my life's journey. But while I was out there,
I just fell in love with the lifestyle, eating fresh
farmed a table produce every day, working out in the
(52:15):
soil with my hands, exerting myself digging in the rows,
plant you know, seeing life grow around me every day.
They're just myriad benefits that came with that lifestyle, and
it was so refreshing. Moving from college, you know, fast paced,
stressful lifestyle to having basically no responsibilities except for getting
(52:38):
the day's chores done was freeing mentally. So I just
it was like a total transition from modern American college
life to working out in nature and relaxing and breathing
fresh mountain air and all these things every day. And
that was a big wake up call for me just
(52:59):
to kind of you know, when I was young, I
was care free like we all were, and running out.
I spent most of my time outside, but I kind
of lost sight of that through high school and college,
just focusing on career and what was I going to
be when I grew up and this and that, and
going out onto the farm kind of reset that for
(53:19):
me and put my focus back onto like the more
important things in life. And so I really appreciated that
experience and we kind of embody that with the way
we live today. We have ten acres out here and
we have a guarden, and you know, we love to
go fishing and all this stuff. So again, it's important
(53:40):
to support yourself and have a career and a purpose
and all that, but we also don't want to lose
sight of the things that make us feel whole and fulfilled.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Yeah, and most people, unfortunately don't realize what they're actually
looking for. You know. Our culture says to do more,
do more, do more, do more, and that's how you're
going to feel whole and fulfilled. When it's counterintuitive, but
we need to do less, lots less. If you don't,
if you feel like you don't have time, you're doing
(54:12):
too much. You're doing way too much. Why are you
doing those things? It's important to ask yourself why you're
doing what you're doing. Where did those patterns come from.
Is it something that actually supports what you're after, or
is it something that is just feeling time, escapism, lots
(54:34):
of things.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
Sometimes it's good to just sit back and do absolutely nothing,
and it is. It's freeing and relaxing. And we did
some of that yesterday on Sunday, you know, just I
built these rocking chairs and we sat back with the
kids and just rocked and listened to the breeze and
(54:55):
relaxed and it's just very refreshing, very good for the soul,
and especially moving into Monday, you know, it makes the
work week a little bit easier.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
Yeah. They say that there's like a proverb or something
and says everyone should meditate for an hour every day,
unless you're really busy that day, in which you should
meditate for two hours.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
I like that. Yeah, yeah, well that's very true.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
Let everybody know how they can find you, plug whatever
you like.
Speaker 2 (55:28):
Yeah. So a Green Valley Nutrition dot Com is my website.
I have my blog on there. If you're interested in
pandas and my healing journey, I post on there, you know,
more specifically the things I've done with all my lifestyle change.
We have our annual five K fundraiser coming up in April,
which I'm really excited about. I posted on there. But
(55:48):
my website is a wealth of resources for that. You know.
We manufacture an industry leading brand of CBD products. I
started in the spare bed room in my house almost
ten years ago and now we operate a state of
the art manufacturing facility here in Virginia. It's a family
owned business and we just want to help people feel better.
(56:11):
So absolutely don't feel like you have to go buy CBD.
But again, for me, that was like the catalyst for
my healing and finding those tools that worked and helped
me to feel better. So if that's something you're you're
interested in learning more about, We've got plenty of information
and resources on that CBD is if it's if it's
(56:34):
THC free, if it contains no intoxic and compounds. It's
safe for everybody. It's safe for people being drug screen
for work. It's safe for pets, it's safe for grandma,
it's safe for your kids. Like, I can't tell you
how many people are using this for their ADHD or
their kids with autism, or their achy joints or help
(56:55):
them sleep better. I mean, there's so many benefits from
dysantine fla inivatory compound in your life. It's generally worth
a try if you're suffering from any of these ailments.
So anyway, go to Green Valley Nutrition dot com check
it out, Feel free to contact us. I'm easy to
reach and so happy to help or provide insights any
(57:19):
way I can.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
Awesome, and I'll make sure all that's linked below. Yeah,
there's always another tool, always another noodle to throw at
the wall and see if it stinks. So the important
thing is just not to give out for sure.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, life will hand you challenges and thanks
you're not prepared for. But definitely not giving up is
the key. Right, try try again. I love Thomas Edison said,
you know, he had ten thousand different iterations of the
light bulb before he found what worked. And when they said, like,
(57:53):
you know, why didn't you give up after all these failures,
and he said, I didn't have any failures. I just
found nine ninetynine ways not to make a light bulb.
So not giving up. You never know, how you know
you may be one step away from finding that thing
that works and that success. So never giving up and
trying again is the key. It's easier said than done,
(58:14):
but hopefully that resonates with people and encourages them.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Absolutely well, thank you so much for being here today.
We'll let them go and enjoy the rest of their day.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Yeah, nice to meet you, Savannah. Thank you
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