Ep 132 Transforming Health with Food: Tim Kaufman's Recovery Story Part 2

What if the secret to overcoming chronic pain and illness doesn't lie in a pill bottle, but on our plates? Our guest, Tim Kaufman, knows this truth firsthand. His journey from a man dependent on opioids, tethered to a walker due to crippling pain, to a vibrant, healthy individual is nothing short of inspiring. By converting to a plant-based lifestyle, Tim found himself shedding weight, reclaiming his health, and breaking free from the shackles of chronic pain. An inspiring moment from his journey was his first walk after years of being sedentary. Hear his remarkable story in this episode.

Living with chronic pain comes with its own unique set of challenges, and our conversation today delves deeply into these. For those battling with conditions like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and finding little relief in traditional medications, there are alternative paths to explore. Tim found solace and relief in unexpected places like music, podcasts, and breathing techniques. His journey is a beacon of hope for anyone struggling with chronic pain, showing how alternative coping mechanisms can make a world of difference.

Finally, we'll see how the transformational power of food can help manage chronic pain. "Fat Man Rants" shares his journey of overcoming chronic pain and illness through dietary changes, emphasizing the importance of simplicity and preparation when adopting a plant-based lifestyle. Plus, we highlight the crucial role of doctors and offer a wealth of resources for those interested in making the switch. So join us in this exploration of the benefits of a plant-based diet, particularly for those with Ehlers-Danlos and Fibromyalgia, and discover how to find helpful resources and coaches.

The fibromyalgia starter pack  categorizes the episodes in a way that is more accessible for those new to fibromyalgia.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:48

Last week we heard about Tim Kaufman and a lot of the deep valleys he went through. He was battling addiction, alcoholism, severe obesity and this was just wearing down his joints. On this week's episode, as we heard last week, he had a change in perspective. He had seen two of his close family members go through cancer and then he thought life is too short. Let's make some changes and we'll hear about what inspired him and where that took him. Remember that while I am a doctor, I am not your doctor. All of your signs and symptoms should be discussed with your own individual physician. And now on to this week's episode.

Speaker 2: 1:42

A little by little as I got better at this. My activity, to what normal people would say, wasn't really activity, but I was at least making an effort to change how I ate. But all that said, the short of this is I watched a film called Fat, sick and Early Dead about this guy from Australia, joe Cross. He comes over to the USC juices, consumes nothing but fruit and vegetable juice out of this juicer for 60 days. Super, super inspiring. I had no clue really what he was doing. I just knew I wanted the results that Joe had. So I ordered a juicer. That'll be 11 years January 1st. I started to juice fast, no clue what I was doing, no clue what was really happening. But the short of it that came out of that is we started learning how to shop. We started learning that we could buy produce and there's actually places to sell produce. So we started going to farmers markets. I was getting excited about kale, which I didn't even know what kale was, and I made a lot of mistakes. I can remember chewing a Copenhagen snuff. Well, I was juicing kale in cucumber and green apple. So I made a lot of mistakes but I kept learning, kept getting better. The first three days of the juice fast were insanely awful, but something really interesting the fourth day my hunger kind of subsided and on the fifth day I still get goosebumps. Every time I tell this, and I just shared my story with high schoolers I did 10 sessions over two days and I still get goosebumps. On the fifth day I woke up in the morning and I was in the same exact position that I'd fallen asleep and like that was a big deal for me. I still get teared up when I talk about that. That's what I wanted. I just wanted to be able to sleep through a night without being in this chronic pain tossing and turning. Every time I'd move, something would pop, something would tweak, and five days like five days off animal products and on fruit and veggies, and my life was changing. I would go on six and seven days. Eczema started clearing up, I started turning a color instead of this gray color. I was getting some pigments back in my face and I'd wake up and my eyes weren't cloudy and my sleep apnea was getting better and all these things. And I started forgetting to take some medicine. I was on some pretty heavy duty anti-inflammatories called indicin or endomethacin and in fact it was so bad they used to have to take stool samples once a month just to keep me on this stuff. And I was forgetting to take stuff. So towards the end of the juice fast, I realized like I can't do this juice thing forever, no matter how good I feel on it, I can't live on juice. By this time I had lost probably another 50 pounds because I watched Fet Sicken Nearly Dead. A film by the name of Forks Over Knives pops up in my Q, suggested Q, and I watched that and that was. It didn't just save my life, but it literally gave me a new life. I learned that I could just eat what I was juicing. I could add in some whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds and I could live the rest of my life like this. And I think when I first had watched that I was really frustrated because we just buried our two favorite people from cancer. And here you got Dr Colin Campbell on there saying he can turn cancer on and off, you know, with the same protein that's in milk and dairy. It's like why didn't anyone tell us about this? What's really interesting, heather's mom after she was in hospice, finally, you know, they made a decision to send her home from the hospital. They put a hospital bed in her house so she could finish her life, you know, with her family in her home and all she wanted us to feed her was blueberries and asparagus. She had this odd craving and you know, at the time we just thought it was a weird thing. But looking back, like you know, her body needed that nutrition and she was craving those nutrients and those, you know, antioxidants and stuff. And so we see that now at the time it was just some fluky, weird thing. But I was mad. I was mad because why didn't anyone tell us about food? Not one person told us about food. So that led into me really getting into the science of what's happening. Why we don't know. And I guess what I really found out is ultimately, broccoli companies just don't have the marketing money to run ads. I mean, these big companies and big food manufacturers do, and they make stuff look so great. Of course you're going to grab a bag of Cheetos over broccoli, right, it tastes better, but we don't realize the consequences of that. But anyway. So that's kind of how my plant-based journey started. The better I got at it, the more I wanted to learn, the more I started moving and probably one story that sticks out just to. There was a lot. I went to take my first walk I don't know if it was voluntary, I guess Heather, I was volunt told to go take a walk by Heather and the first walk that I took I was supposed to walk three quarters of a mile. That was a big deal for me. I couldn't make it. I had stopped and I had to sit on this big rock. Well, heather and the kids had to come pick me up and that walk that I didn't finish took almost an hour and I was hurt and I was in bad shape. But at this point I was in these things called immobilizers. They would use them for traumatic injury. It's kind of like a sleeve over your whole leg and your knees locked out straight, and I had two of them on because the braces I was so happy. The braces would just fold up on me even good braces. So they put me in these sleeves so my knees would stop whipping out to the side, and so that's how I was walking, with these things and so on. From there I started walking more, started becoming more comfortable walking. What I found for me if I sat on the couch, I was in pain. If I went for a walk, I was in pain. So either way I was gonna be in pain. But I really enjoyed once I started walking. I really enjoyed being outside. What I would find out is over time, the more I walked, and even to this day, if I sit still, for even a car ride, we'll go. We love to go to the Adirondacks. We'll drive for six hours, man, I'm hurting, so I gotta keep moving. But yeah, from there I would lose over 200 pounds really. And then, little by little, these walks would turn into hikes, and hikes would turn into little runs. When I was still in the mobilizer, I saw a picture of a mountain top and my cousin said you gotta see it with your own eyes, because the pictures don't do it justice. So stupid me. I'm like, okay, I'll cope, I guess I gotta climb a mountain. So I called the same doctor that sees me for the EDS and denied me the bariatric surgery and I said, hey, I'm gonna be climbing a mountain, so we gotta do something with these immobilizers. And instead of saying, no, just sit down, he goes. Okay, he goes, I'm gonna give you. This is back in the referral day. So he referred me to a prosthetic doctor. They cast in my legs, they made me these really cool carbon fiber was kind of a new thing and titanium and I got braces and I just started walking upstairs and I would do 10 stairs and the next day I would do 20. And before I knew it I spent the whole winter walking upstairs. And in 2012, I went to take my first stab at a high peak and I failed. I got about three quarters of the way up and I just I was done. But we went back a few weeks later and I submitted my first high peak, which is pretty. The adoranx is a pretty rugged terrain, especially if you have EDS. So it took I don't know, 15 or 16 hours. I probably almost died a couple of times, but I did it and that opened up a whole world that like, maybe they're wrong, like maybe they're wrong about this stuff. So from there I signed up for a tough mutter. That led into some jogging and then the jogging turned into our first 5K, then a 10K, then I ran my first half marathon with a still valid handicap parking pass and I got into cycling. I would do 100 mile bike races and then I did my first marathon. That's kind of where my story hit the papers is when I did my first marathon. From there I would get into ultra marathons and then triathlon and then Ironmans and then I went to the gym. I'm not sure if I'm going to get to the gym, but I still have EDS, you know, and I feel like I tell these stories and it sounds so cool but people don't see the rest of the story. These past two years, three years, have been utter hell with EDS from you. So my symptoms with regard to inflammation are almost zero. I mean, if I twist my ankle now, I don't think instead of getting that gerry inflammation, I get an inflammatory response, which is natural, but within an hour it's right back down, which I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing for me, because then I get right back out there. But yeah, so that's kind of my story, I guess.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Well, thanks for sharing that and I think a lot of things everybody's got their own individual story, circumstances and for a lot of people they have a spouse who's going through maybe EDS but also maybe other chronic pain related issues, and recognizing that doesn't change overnight. Some things can change. You can change your fuel. Walking up the mountain, running a marathon, that was slow because you have to gradually go up on that and one of the things if you have chronic pain is if you suddenly increase, your body is just going to get into this cycle. So, like you said, well, can you just stand? Okay, I can stand up or go from sit to stand. Well, I'll try it two times. Well, I'll try one flight of stairs, which probably started with one or two steps, and then a rest and then a couple of steps. So you're gradually building this up over time and hopefully for those who are listening here that are maybe in a similar struggle, because many people who have these unfortunately need more regular exercise than the average person and they need a healthier diet than the average person, but sadly they eat less healthy than the average person and they're getting less activity than the average person. And there wasn't a manual, which is kind of where you talked earlier about kind of getting mad. I wish I would have had this information way back when, where a doctor would have said, maybe somebody like me like, hey, this is rough, but what about doing a whole food, plant-based diet? I have patients who have all different types of success with this and yours with aerosol. It's in chronic pain, but you know commonly things like heart disease, diabetes, blood pressure. Not only did you lose weight, but I'm assuming you got off your blood pressure medicines and your blood pressures return to normal, your cholesterol numbers looked a lot better, all of those things and probably, quite honestly, you probably wouldn't be alive had you not made those lifestyle changes. 100% yeah, and so there is hope for going through that. And when I share this with patients at all different levels like, hey, let's try this. The patients who do this, they feel better, they lose weight, their blood pressure comes down, their glucose comes down, try this. And hearing stories like yours and another support with this that went along that you implied was that your wife was supportive of this. So if you are trying to support your loved one who's going through this, it's really much more helpful if you both are engaged and involved in doing this as a team, not like, oh yeah, dad's got to do his special diet. Well, we're going to have to suffer, but hopefully it's just a phase for dad. It's a different than just a temporary thing, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 14:25

Yeah, and actually that's kind of what happened to us. So when I started doing this, heather didn't have anything to do with it. In fact, it was over two years of her stealing my food that she finally hopped on and that was a result of her going into the hospital for a medical procedure and it brought back all that memories of her mom and I came up to the room she's sobbing and she goes. I can't control everything in my life, but I can control what I eat. And she went that day 100% whole food plant based, and she's never looked back and she too, she was the kid that would skip gym class if they have to run that army mile, and she's an avid runner, a very competitive runner. But I think you're right that people get this idea. I mean, that's why I get to share my story, right, because a lot of EDS patients can't run 50 miles or do iron man's. But that's not the point. The process is the point and I think what happens is, I know, for me, looking as that's why I don't like doing this, because for me looking 400 pound person, looking at me today, I could have gave you a whole list of reasons why I couldn't do what I could do. But we get so hung up on that and it's a great excuse so we don't do anything. And the truth is what I found with my joint and even with the nerves like yep, I can't do a lot, but I can do something, and I think we have to get to a place in life that we have to do the best that we can with the tools that we have available at the time. My body does not look like it did even six years ago. I have bolts and plates and I don't have. I'm missing. I'm missing five, four, four bones in my back. I'm there to take my whole spine apart practically. I almost had an amputation about a little over two years ago. They gave me the choice between amputation or they would try a fusion. Hopefully it was bond that would join. So I obviously took the fusion. I had a couple big tumor effect I'm going to be honest with you literally just pulled in right now from a cat scan because I think I have another bone tumor. They pulled one off a year ago. That was like a golf ball out of my ankle on the other side, the good side. Now they tell me that I have a torn meniscus on the inside and outside of a torn ACL. They won't go clean it up and fix it because they want to give me a whole new knee and I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not saying that for sympathy, but I'm just being real. I still have EDS. Life is not going to be perfect, but it can be beautiful. The other thing that happened with me I felt so strongly about the opioids. I went through these surgeries. I had some really serious, so I had stenosis almost like overnight. I knew it didn't happen overnight. It was so bad to put. I lost function on my legs and they were pretty worried about my bladder and bowel function as well. I was out. I could not move. I went from running half marathons to two weeks later. I couldn't lift my toe over a floor mat. So they said I had strong core, he's trying to keep the rods out. So they did a laminectomy. They did a four level laminectomy and they wheeled me in. I'm going to probably cry talking about this. I don't talk about this much, but they wheeled me in. It was the first major surgery I'd had and I said look it, I don't care how you do this. The whole team was there, about 12 people on a team to do this and I said, whatever happens, I want no opioids before, during or after the surgery. And it was silence, like all they're all like hurrying around. And then all of a sudden everyone was still. Like the anesthesia team said they kind of stepped forward and they wanted to know why. And I said, well, you know, I made myself a promise that I would never have opioids in my veins again, sorry. And he said, well, you're not going to relapse. Like it's been 10 years, you're not going to relapse. And I'm like I'm not worried about that, I'm just worried that I made myself a promise and I would rather die than break that promise. So they said, okay, we'll be back. They went out for about 15, 20 minutes. They came back with a new plan. So I'm not saying that to brag, but I that surgery I had no pain meds at all and I couldn't take like Advil or anything because it's a blood thinner, and I got through it just fine. And I went on to get a failed ankle reconstruction. I had tubes hanging out of me, no opioids for that. And then I had a fusion. The point is I had a bunch of operations that would normally prescribe some pretty heavy medicine, never took any. I learned that music was great for me. I learned that podcasts were great. I would just sit and relax. Breathing was a big part of it. All this stuff sounds woo-woo, but I could just go to a place that nobody taught me Like I could just like kind of. I know it sounds weird, but I would just like the pain just go in and out instead of like bottling everything up and just trying to eliminate it with substance. I just let it do its thing. You know that pain is there for a purpose. It tells us we're injured. It tells our bodies we've got to heal. But I say all that to say some. I believe that these pain meds are overprescribed and I know everyone's different. Everyone's going to have a slightly different view For me. I'd rather die because I got bit so hard with these things. I want nothing to do with them.

Speaker 1: 20:47

Yeah, I 100% agree with you. It's something that we were taught like. You're going back to the 90s, early 2000s to understand pain. But how do we manage it? I just had an interview on my podcast with Dr Afton Hassett from the University of Michigan. She's a psychologist and has a 30-day pain reset and it's all about ways to help cope, kind of a menu of options and things like music and diversion, other things to try out, and everybody may have that We've talked about, had a guest on talking about his role of battles, going through this, looking at playing the guitar and creating music, doing photography and other things of helping find other ways of coping with that. Along with it and it's not one magic pill my family who doesn't take care of patients? They're my kids and they go. Why didn't you name the book Conquer your Fiber, melody? And I said no, no, it doesn't work that way. It's an ongoing kind of process that's sort of like a battle. It's a process and it's not usually a cure or it's a temporary remission but there may be flare ups and other things and things that are in our control. And then when you look at Ehlers-Danlos things that break down from joints, that just the tendons and ligaments. I should say don't allow the joints to perform in the normal motion that they're supposed to. I think that what you're doing is so good in offering hope with your story and help in giving this real understanding. I think in the first half of getting a chance to hear that you had real battles a lot of times when you see maybe that and maybe the last three years have been much more of a struggle but people think, well, I'll never get there. But if they don't know that you were in the trenches with many people who are listening or at any other last thoughts that you have for, I guess, maybe three groups of people one, people who are out there who are struggling, their support people and then for doctors out there who are really just, maybe don't have a lot of experience in this, but want to offer the best care.

Speaker 2: 22:54

Yeah, those are all so okay, so there's three. That's good, because that limits me. Stay on target. But I think I guess, kind of to piggyback on what you said, someone that's dealing with a chronic disease, whatever that is you got to get out of your head that it's going to get better. You're going to get rid of it 100% because you have to learn tools and things that help you get through it. And I think for me this sounds really harsh. But realizing that EDS doesn't have me, I have EDS and I'm going to have bad days, I'm going to have surgeries, I'm going to be looking at things that are scary. Even now, they're ready to schedule this knee and I'm like I got Ironman in July so I said schedule it in August. It's scary, I'm afraid. I don't know if I'm going to make it through the training. I don't know if I'm going to be walking in two months. But you can't think like that. You got to realize that this is what it is and you got to do the best that you can with it, and I think that's a huge thing because you don't get rid of this. I hate the word cope, because I believe that you can thrive in spite of this. I also think that sometimes we look too far out ahead to try to predict to where we're going to be and we need to worry about today. You got today. You got your loved ones today. If you're having a painful day, you know what you might only have today. So take advantage of the time that you have, because we are not promised tomorrow. So for I guess, people with chronic pain and chronic conditions, do the best that you can, but don't get stagnant. Keep moving. Whatever movement looks like, just keep moving. And I know for me I don't know if this is relatable to fibromyalgia, but my shoulder was awful and the stand and I guess we could tie in the medical kind of community here too. My shoulder, I had the surgery To this day. I put two fingers on my wrist, it'll pop right out, but so the physical therapists and the doctors, they want to target that area that's injured. For me I couldn't do this, and maybe this is the same with nerve damage. What I could do is I had my hand still, so I just started strengthening my hand. It's not even close to my shoulder, but I mean, if you look at the map of your body, everything is connected somehow and the same nerves that run through my armpit are on the tips of my fingers. So I just started squeezing a ball. Squeeze a ball, and if my wrist would pop out I would just squeeze it less and it sounds stupid, but even like rubber bands on my fingers, open and close and open and close. You think it has nothing to do with your shoulder. But eventually I got my hands strong enough that I could work my forearm. Then eventually I could support my shoulder, work my bicep and tricep, which would give my elbow eventually target that shoulder. We want a quick fix for everything right. We want to go right for the spot. But sometimes you've got to start way away, take your time. You've got to fall in love with the process, not the result. So this is all about habits and my favorite thing about lifestyle change is no one knows how to do it. Like we hear lifestyle medicine. That's what you practice, right, but who the heck can change your lifestyle? Really no one, because what does that even mean? What I love about lifestyles is you can break it down and you can break it down into routines and you can break the routines down into habits, and the habits are broken down into choices and I love that. To me, that is the most freeing thing, because I don't have to change my lifestyles. I just kind of make my next choice my best choice, and anybody can do that. So forget the lifestyle, just make good choices and keep stacking them on top of each other, and I think that's the way we don't get out of this, but that's the way we can live our best life, whatever that looks like. I love to be loved once. I usually speak with regard to addiction, but it's a hard place to be. I don't know if you call it tough love. Whatever you call it. I just interviewed a guy, matt Long. I don't know if you've ever heard of Matt Long's story. He's a man, what a guy. So he was a New York City firefighter, literally got ran over by a boss, crushed his whole pelvis. He was a great athlete, like days before just qualified for Boston, and now the guys got like a half percent chance to live, I think 43 units of blood just to get him to the next morning. We had no chance to survive, basically, and he did survive and he was like skin and bones. Long story short, they bring him to his house. He's sitting in his room. He needs help with everything and he just wanted to die. And he went on like this for years and finally his mom came in and she said I won't say it on your podcast, but she said, if you're gonna keep being a bag of blank, she goes. I'm not helping you anymore. She shut the door and she said that was the hardest thing she ever did. So with loved ones. It's hard. It's hard to watch someone suffer because all you feel is sympathy for that person, but sometimes we gotta push people to do what they don't know that they're capable of. So it's hard. It's hard, I think, for me. I think it was harder a lot for Heather going through this, watching me go through it, than it was for myself, to be honest. So I don't know if I hit the three things. Doctors, practitioners, food is everything Like. Food is something anyone can change and there's no excuse. There's a lot of people you can say go, walk them out. They can't walk them out, fine, but you can eat broccoli, you can eat kale, you can eat greens. At least have a salad a day. And plant-based food does not have to be boring either. So, doctors, get on that food train, because it is so, so important.

Speaker 1: 29:22

You know, when I have other people like yourself say that it makes me feel better, because a lot of times is I get a chance to be in the plant-based world myself. I watch the Forks Over Knives movie. My wife's a dietitian. Oh, she said, oh for continuing that I read this China study book. You should probably read it. And then I read it. I had recently found out I had high bad cholesterol for seven years before family history of heart disease, diabetes, so I was eating kind of a health-ish diet, kind of Mediterranean type diet, if you want to call it, and then I'm recognized the limits of medication for cholesterol. And then the forks over knives came out and I watched that and I said, wow, this really puts together a lot of great information. I tell a lot of my patients to go watch, listen, come back and say, hey, food is medicine. Unfortunately, the it's growing the interest, but it's not the majority, it's still a minority. And I think hearing the benefits from people who are listening and go, what do I have to lose for those of you who want to incorporate it? And maybe, to finish, we could keep probably talking for a couple more hours, but any simple tips or suggestions or resources that you would recommend to get started with this.

Speaker 2: 30:37

Yes. Well, the first tip and there's two tips that I think are the most important, because we work with a lot of people, we kind of see where people stumble First thing is keep it so simple, like simplicity. You don't need all these weird herbs and stuff and three-hour dinners with all these recipes. Keep it simple For us. We love the electric pressure cooker, the Instant Pot, in fact. I'm getting ready as soon as we hang up. I'm going to go fill that thing up with black beans and mung beans and just let them cook for a little bit. Which brings me to the second tip that I think is also important is prep. If you think you're going to go buy whole foods and it's going to be clean, it's not going to happen. You got to get at least semi-use to the kitchen, even if you hate cooking. So many tools out there now, like the Instant Pot, you can make your food for the whole week. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make my food for the whole week. It totally takes decisions off the table. When you come home, you're hungry, you're emotional, you're in pain. I love eating when I'm in pain. You open the fridge and it's all your little boxes of beans and greens and rice lentils and sweet potatoes. They're all sitting in front of you and you're prepared. Keep it simple. Be prepared. Find someone that you like to follow. We have a website called Fat man Rants like yelling, like rants. That's a long, long story. So, fatmanrantscom you can find us on social. We have a beautiful group called Fat man Rants getting the healthy together. We have a cookbook. If you go up to the top of my website, you can get a free 80-page cookbook, the same one we sent to the publisher, 100% free. There is the paperback. But why would you get the paperback when you can get it for free? There's all sorts of resources. There's so many resources. When I went plant-based, there was nothing. I had forked-soberknives. That's all I had. Now it's like the internet is just loaded with plant-based gurus and cooks and it can get as crazy as you want it to be or as simple as you want it to be. Is that what you're looking for?

Speaker 1: 32:50

100%. Those are great Really. I'm so appreciative of your time. You can just be assured that you've touched many people listening out there and an audience that maybe you haven't reached on other podcasts talking, focusing on people who are struggling with a lot of the chronic pain and overlapping issues. I think that many never have heard your story, even though you've said it a lot in the internet's out there. You're bridging your story of hope and realism and helping with that. Just thanks again for spending your time with us today and the podcast.

Speaker 2: 33:27

Yeah, it was a pleasure. And chronic pain. I never get to talk about it, but it's a topic very close to my heart because I feel like I know offense to you, doctor. Every time I talk to my doctor I'm like you don't know, you don't understand. People that are in chronic pain are the only ones that realize people get hurt. The pain starts out high and then it tapers down and it goes away, but to wake up every morning in the same pain you went to bed in man, it's like being in hell just cycling through hell. My heart goes out to the chronic pain warriors and the zebras, but you got to keep moving. For me I'm just going to reiterate this that for me, when I sat on the couch doing nothing, I was in pain, and when I went for a walk, I was in pain and, as it turns out, the more I walked, the less pain and I could say this might not be a typical result, but I can say for me my pain is 98% gone. I have very little pain at all and I'm very grateful for that. So there is hope out there. There's hope to get better at what we do. So awesome.

Speaker 1: 34:40

Thank you, I hope you really enjoyed getting a chance to hear Tim's story. I know that I did. There is a lot to consider and ponder, a lot of mixed emotions as you hear his story, and he's just being honest. He had some choices, he made some changes. We talked off the air about how faith has an impact on his life and there's some previous episodes episode 58, 59 and 60. We have an interview with Luke Thompson where we talk a little bit about that. We talked on today's episode about diet and making those changes and keeping it simple principle. I do think that for most people it's very helpful if they get some guidance or a coach, the addition to help them work through this, and he has his cookbook and website. Also have another option Plant Powered Joy. My wife, who got me into eating whole food plant-based teaches people how to do that as a dietitian under the Plant Powered Joy website and there's other resources out there. The main thing is to make some choices, make some decisions and you never realize the powerful impact that the food choices you make have on your health. I also am hoping to do some future podcast episodes on Ehlers-Danlos, diving into the science and other co-occurring health conditions and help grow in our understanding, because so much of Ehlers-Danlos overlaps with Fibromyalgia. One example of the overlap is the high prevalence of neurodivergent style brains and nervous systems, as we've talked about a fair amount on this podcast. I wish all of you the best Until next week. Go, team Fibro.