Remastered Episode: Gillian Szollos ON Treating Epilepsy with a Ketogenic Diet

In this episode of the Ketones and Coffee Podcast, host Lawrence delves into the impactful story of Jillian Zolas, a health policy promotion and education consultant who reclaimed her health and well-being through the ketogenic diet. Jillian shares her personal journey, from struggling with left temporal lobe epilepsy and the detrimental side effects of medications to discovering the life-changing benefits of a therapeutic ketogenic diet. 

With eight years of being seizure-free, Jillian's story highlights the profound therapeutic potential of keto, not just for epilepsy but for overall health improvement. She discusses the importance of nutritional quality, the pitfalls of 'keto' branded products, and offers practical advice for individuals considering a ketogenic lifestyle for therapeutic purposes. Jillian's narrative is a testament to the power of dietary intervention and the importance of community, support, and education in navigating health challenges.

00:00 Welcome to the Ketones and Coffee Podcast!

00:27 Introducing Jillian Zolas: A Ketogenic Success Story

02:21 Jillian's Journey: From Seizures to Keto Triumph

09:29 The Therapeutic Power of Keto: A Deep Dive

14:53 Navigating Keto: Challenges, Support, and Lifestyle Changes

20:00 The Importance of Support and Precision in Keto Success

23:36 Keto Misconceptions and the Path to True Ketosis

27:59 The Importance of Real Food in Your Diet

29:10 Navigating Keto: Personal Experiences and Adjustments

30:27 Addressing Health Conditions Beyond Diet

31:14 The Journey of Weight Loss and Managing Lipedema

31:36 Adapting Keto for Menopause and Personal Health Goals

34:06 The Role of Medical Supervision in Medication and Diet Changes

36:18 Engaging with Your Doctor on a Keto Diet Plan

39:46 The Power of Coaching and Mental Shifts in Keto Success

41:39 Understanding and Utilizing Ketones for Health

46:54 The Sweetness Dilemma: Adjusting to Healthier Choices

53:08 Closing Thoughts and Where to Find More Information

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Transcript

0:49

Hey guys, this is Lawrence and welcome back to the ketones and coffee podcast. And thank you so much for tuning in. I know everyone here that's listening are here because you want to create a sustainable, healthy lifestyle to the ketogenic diet. And every single week I try to bring in guests. That not only has knowledge, but these individuals has also been through the same trials that we all have been through. When it comes down to our search for a better health, we get together in hopes to assist you on your own journey. Stick around guys, because our guest today is a health policy promotion and education consultant with her mission to improve the health and well being of communities at risk. And she believes that optimal nutrition should be the standard of care. Her writing, interviews, coaching, and public speaking engagement serve as opportunities to build community and share successes while drawing attention to the therapeutic possibilities of a ketogenic diet to change lives, and in some instances, save them. She is a coach practitioner trained in a low carbohydrate and keto lifestyle. I'm here with Jillian Zolas. Jillian, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. What an awesome introduction. That was fantastic. Thank you. It's, it's my honor. Honor is all mine because, you know, by just looking at the title of this episode, you kind of know already to anyone that's listening, the discussion we're about to have here, she is also. One hell of a storyteller too. So, and how are you Jillian? What's, what's been keeping you busy these days? I have been very, very busy, but I'm well, thank you so much. And in fact, I just celebrated my eighth year seizure free thanks to a ketogenic diet. Literally, it was last week was my anniversary. So that made me extremely happy. I love that. Jillian's keto success story is, I promise you, one you don't want to miss. So stick till the end. So I'm going to shut up, shut up here and, and give you the floor here because you, you best told your story on multiple speaking engagement that you had. And when I heard about your story, I wanted to talk to you and bring you to the podcast so, you know, our listeners can, uh, Can, you know, listen and help them impact with your story. And Jillian, please tell us your story. Absolutely. Well, my story has a couple of parts. I'll sort of back up to, to my earlier life where, you know, just chugging along as a happy go lucky kid. Around the age of 12, I started to experience absent seizures and actually I guess it was probably a little earlier than that, but we didn't know what to call them until a bit later. And so, these would come and they would go and frequently they wouldn't be happening during the summer when I was off from school and I was having a lot of fun. So, when my mom was trying to figure out what was going on with me, all of the physicians were telling them, It's just in her head. It's a psychiatric issue. It's not a physiological issue because it only happens during school time and not when she's off for the summer. Progress forward a couple more years. These are getting more and more frequent. They're starting to come into the summer. And finally, my mom corners my neighbor who is an amazing urologist at a dinner party and says, I really need you to see my daughter. And at this point I was 14. And probably seizing. Anywhere from 2 to 15 times a day, and still being told that this was just in my head. Wow. So, it was in my head, but it wasn't something I had any control over. So, the neurologist did a bunch of tests, and definitely, I finally got a diagnosis of left temporal lobe epilepsy. And he put me on medication. And the medication I was put on at the time was something called Tegretol and it was very effective. It stopped my seizures. I had one ground mall seizure, but then after that I had no more seizures. But it came at a cost and that cost was my memory. So during high school, I didn't really care about my memory so much. I cared about driving a car. So that's, that was the thing that was the most important and not having seizures. So the medication is causing you this memory loss. Yeah, but I was having quite significant memory loss. So by the time I was about 18 and I was looking at going to university, I really needed to change things up because I couldn't retain information for more than about 48 hours. So, I did a very stupid thing and something I would never recommend, which is stopped my medication. So, the good news is I did not have any further seizures. And so, I basically forgot that I had epilepsy. I went to university, I graduated, everything was good, I got married, I had babies, everything was good. And then, out of the blue, in 2014, as I started to enter those perimenopausal years where there's a lot of hormone fluctuation. I had a seizure and the very first sort of awareness of problems coming was an aura a few days before that seizure, but I, you know, was busy and had stuff to do and just decided to deny it, pretend it wasn't actually happening. So it took a few days. Gillian, I want to ask you before you continue with your story, why do you think, did you ever look up why? It's stopped after you stop your medications and why it came back at, you know, after 30 years. Absolutely. I'm going to tell you exactly why. I'll get to that. Don't worry. So in, in terms of the seizure frequency, once they came back, They came back just like out of the blue. So aura one day, aura two days later, first seizure the day after that, three seizures the next day, eight seizures the day after that. So they were ramping up and of course by this point I had been in hospital. I had been fully worked up. I had a neurology consult and they put me on medication. And this time they put me on a medication called Keppra and it did not take long before I was at the maximum dose of my Keppra. And this medication, it can be very helpful for lots of people. For me, the side effects were horrific. I had uncontrollable rage, uncontrollable depression, and I've never suffered from depression before in my life. So this was very new to me. And it got to the point where I was having a lot of suicidal thoughts, not just because of the Keppra, but because of how negatively my life had suddenly been impacted. You know, I was busy. I had projects at work. I couldn't go in. I was locked up in my house for months. Not being able to access public transportation because I live rurally, couldn't drive anymore. And my husband had to take on so many of the roles that I was fulfilling, you know, in, in our, in our relationship, I was looking after our company at the time and dealing with our kids and dealing with my aging parents and all of that burden had to get shifted to my husband, which made me feel terribly guilty. So, um, This perfect storm developed and drove me to a place where literally I was on a bridge contemplating throwing myself into the river underneath it. And at that point, and I credit, I will always credit my husband for saving my life because he did so physically, but he did so much more metaphysically as well. On that day, my extremely introverted husband created a Facebook account and started to research seizure support groups and in one of those seizure support groups he was told about a ketogenic diet. Once he told me about that, I said, okay, we're going all in. I have a scientific mind. I'm an analytical person. I wanted to measure everything. So I started measuring how often my seizures came and when they were during the month. And were there any potential triggers? And what I noticed was that I had way more seizures Right. In the middle of my cycle. So right when my period began and I would sometimes have a little blip of seizures right when I ovulated both two periods of time in ovulating women's lives where there's a big bump in hormonal fluctuation. So I started researching and I realized that my seizures were catamenial. And what that means is that they're largely hormonally driven. Big spike in seizures as I'm a pre pubescent girl and going into my early teenage years. Calmed down during my 20s and my 30s. Bumped up again as I started to enter those sort of perimenopausal years. And once I saw this picture very clearly, I took that back to my neurologist and said, Hey, here's my chart. What do you think of this? And he said, Oh, yeah. That's what this is. It didn't change the medication he wanted to keep me on, and it didn't change the side effects of the medication, but at least I understood what was happening. So as I transitioned onto a ketogenic diet, it was It's almost instantaneous, my seizure withdrawal. I would say less than a week, once I was in ketosis, I stopped having seizures. And I did not have another seizure for 49 days. And on the day that I did, it wasn't even a full blown seizure, it was an aura. On that day, it was the day before my period started, so I knew, okay. I'm going to be on a very strict ketogenic diet, but I still have to be even more cautious right before my period's coming or right at the time of ovulation. So if I were going to have a slightly higher carb day, it was not going to be right before my period arrived. So very quickly You know, keto literally saved me. It literally saved me. And there were some spinoff side effects for me as well, which we can get into a little bit later. Wow. You know, even if I heard that story already, I am just in awe of, you know, once you've told that story here today. And just to recap, you had stopped your medication at 18 years old and for 30 years you didn't had one seizure and it came back you were put on medications again and which caused this Rollercoaster of emotions for you and not just you your family as well found keto and made some tweaking you you Made your own observation and, you know, even went into a more stricter keto. And once you made that adjustment, you since then off medications, no more seizures. And how do we explain that? And alternative to that is medications, which, yeah, go ahead. And I think it's important for your listeners to understand that, you know, medications can be, can be really effective. And for some people they work very well. And for some people, even if they apply a ketogenic diet, They may still require medications, but it may not be as many or it may not be as a higher dosage so they can reduce the side effects, some of which are pretty horrible for, you know, for antiepileptic medication. But the, you know, the biggest piece for me was when I went to my neurologist and I said, Hey, I'm going to try this. He laughed at me. He said, No, that only works for kids. But it doesn't only work for kids. It absolutely does work for adults. And there are a group of us for whom it works really, really well. And then there's another subset for whom it works a little bit better, but not, it's never going to completely eradicate the need for medication. And then for some forms of epilepsy, it's not really going to work at all. And medication, you know, is, is going to be somebody's only option. But what I learned through this process is that keto is, you know, is a big buzzword right now. Everybody's using the term keto, but I bet you that if we polled a hundred of your listeners and asked them what keto means to them, it's going to be a hundred different answers because there's just so much. variation in, you know, in the, first of all, in the macros, and then in what is actually contributing to those macros. Are we talking about dirty keto or clean keto or what? So I do think it's really important that going forward, You know, you guys know that when I'm talking about a ketogenic diet, I'm talking about a therapeutic ketogenic diet where a person is in ketosis 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And that is not appropriate for the vast majority of people. Okay, it is very appropriate if you have epilepsy or if you have a brain tumor or if you have lipedema, but if you are a normal person who is trying to improve their metabolism and their metabolic health, then we can talk about. You know carbs in the range of 20 to 50 total a day So when we talk about a low carb diet, we're talking about under a hundred grams of total carbohydrates a day Don't talk to me about net. Net does not exist. Net is not a good thing when we are talking about therapeutic keto in terms of A very low carb diet, we're talking under 50 and a ketogenic diet is usually under 20 total grams a day and that is not where the vast majority of people who say they're on a ketogenic diet are. So I just really want to make that clear that most people don't have to go as hardcore as I do, but some people do and a lot of people who try and then say, well, it's not working for me might be because. They're applying net carbs instead of total carbs, and they actually are probably closer to 80 or 90, you know, total carbs, and that's just not a range that's gonna have, you know, the sort of neurological, you know, outcome that you're looking for. 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Yeah, it's great to point out that, you know, there are a lot of, like you said, variations of keto. And there's a lot of interpretations about what a keto diet is. Obviously, you know, when we talk about therapeutic effects of the ketogenic diet, we were talking about a well formulated keto diet. I want to also, you know, comment on, you know, keto for children, because you know. In the 60s, I think, or the 70s, the children were born with epilepsy who were, I think, drug resistant. They put them on this high fat, low carb diet. They haven't coined it keto yet. And they had huge success in that. So, I'm not sure why it's complicated for adults as I don't get that. How they, how it was good for children and not for adults. And, in your experience, you haven't had any seizures since. No, I'm, I'm eight years seizure free now. And I think, you know, the, the key piece to that though, is that even in those days when they were doing this diet, there was an awful lot of manipulation in order to get enough calories because these kids would lose weight and they would lose a lot of it. And you don't want that when you've got a baby that's trying to grow and especially a baby who, you know, is. Born neurologically really immature. Like most people don't realize that human infants come out only 25 percent hardwired. That's it. That hardwiring takes place in the first two years of life outside of the womb. So you really want to make sure that that kiddo has all the building blocks required to grow their brain appropriately and their body appropriately. And what I'm finding a little distressing about, you know, a lot of the sort of social media out there is that 90 percent of it is desserts, which is not really helpful for anybody who is trying to base their nutritional value. And I think that, that really what we need to bring the lens back to a little bit is that when we're making these changes, the goal here is to have a healthier lifestyle. So the goal should always be to have the most nutritionally dense diet you can possibly have given whatever restrictions you have to have for your. You know, your mental health, your, your neurological health. I can't have three big salads a day, even if I wanted them. I couldn't do it because I just can't have those kind of carbs. But I make sure that what goes into me is the highest nutritional And I do eat keto sweets. Yes, I do. If you look at my Instagram, there will be a few little things there, but they're rare and, and they're really for special days like birthdays or celebrations. And I really focus hard on, on trying to make sure that I give my body the best. best nutrition for optimal enzymatic function, metabolic function that I possibly can. And so, you know, kudos to everybody out there who wants to strengthen their own system and get, you know, healthier and keto is a great way to do that. But I do want to underscore that most people can get by on, you know, under a hundred grams a day and do very well unless they are metabolically really dysregulated and then they really need to get down under 50 grams. And that's a great opportunity to start building some intermittent fasting into there as well. And I don't mean. time restricted feeding because that's a little different but like actual fasts that are longer than 24 hours. Great way to spend some time in ketosis but also spend some time out because if you're a dual fuel burner and you are not metabolically broken, And then stay a dual fuel burner, but just make sure that when you are not in ketosis, you're not in ketosis because you ate healthy stuff, not because you decided it was time to head over to the donut store and, you know, have your cheat day. I want you to take this back. I think this is important for people who maybe just found keto, you know, for it, maybe have they have the, uh, The same condition like you did, what made it easy for you to make a decision? I could imagine it wasn't that hard for you to make that decision to switch to keto. Once you've discovered it, you know what? It might surprise you, but it really was. And it was hard because it was hard to sustain back in those days. There, there was nothing with a stamp on it that said keto. And by the way, If it says keto on the package, it does not mean that it is going to keep you in ketosis. I just really want to be clear about that. You can absolutely be in ketosis eating carbs if you are in a state of calorie restriction. It is not necessarily about what your, you know, the, The, the, the food set that says keto doesn't necessarily mean it's going to keep you in ketosis. And a lot of the stuff out there now that I see branded as keto is garbage. And, and there's no way I would bring it near me. I've tested some of those foods with a, you know, beta hydroxybutyrate monitor before and after, and it blows out my ketones. So no, I, I really think it's important that people get That, you know, the food that you eat should be mostly made at home. And when I started, there was nothing. Like I couldn't even find almond flour, you know, half the time. And there were no carbonate bread substitutes that were roughly, you know, that were okay and didn't have a big boost of blood sugar. There was nothing like that even in existence. So, it was hard and every time I went to a meeting at work and everybody had all the junk food out there, that was hard. My husband cooked for me for the first eight months. He did everything. He made all of my foods. He made me little safe keto snacks that I could have without destroying my, my, my ketone levels. He did everything to help me on board. So my environment at home was really supportive and my kids For the most part, we're supportive, I'll be honest, you know, they were teenagers. They were like, what? We can't have any junk in the house? I'm like, nope, sorry, you can't have any carbs in the house, let alone junk. You want bread? You go get it at grandma's house. That's, that's sort of the, the, the, the environment that we had and that helped. And if you don't have that, if you don't have a partner or the people around you who are willing to be supportive, it is so much harder. Because even when I could clearly see. I just want to tell you that this was stopping my seizures. It was still a struggle. I'd say it took me four years before I stopped craving bread, like four years. And now I don't crave bread at all. It's not not at all on my radar. I miss wine, but you know, I every once in a while I'll have a glass of very low carb wine, but Generally speaking, I avoid alcohol because again, alcohol is very high up there, you know, in what gets metabolized first. So if you really need to be in ketosis, you can't be drinking alcohol, period. There is no good wine. There is no good beer. There is no good, you know, single malt scotch. There's lots of good single malt scotch, but there's none that's really going to be acceptable Because, you know, it just, in terms of, of what gets burnt first, alcohol gets burnt first because you can't store it anywhere except your liver. So it is, you know, it is off the list if you're on a therapeutic ketogenic diet. If you're just on a getting healthier ketogenic diet, then sure, in moderation, recognizing that, you know, alcohol first, right? So it's, it's important to, to minimize that if your goal is, you know, to not have seizures. Cheers. I love that your, your point with having that, my wife is here, she supported me when I was, you know, in my deepest depression and she was there and without her, you know, on my, you know, I was recently interviewed on another show and I told her, I told them that without my wife, she saved my life and it was, it was not the same like your story, but you know, you need great support to be able to, um, You know, sustain this diet because it's, it is hard. Nobody's saying it's easy. It is. It can be a simple change. You know, it's, it's, we can't say it's easy. We are trying to break habits here. Um, I wanna, you said there's a wrong way of doing this and you, you mentioned alcohol. What are the other, do you recall anything else? If, if there's anything that you would have done differently back then, knowing what you already know now, is there anything that you've cleaned up? Really helped me the most back then was that I really took control of. Charting everything. So I had a really good app, I use Chronometer, big shout out to Chronometer, fabulous app. And I put everything in there. I weighed and measured everything. I did not guess. I did not cheat. I took my ketones with a blood stick every single morning and my blood sugar every single morning. And even though I wasn't diabetic. I was pre diabetic back then. My doctor hadn't even told me that. I looked at my blood work retroactively and said that's way too high. So, you know, I didn't, I didn't realize it at the time, but you know now not a problem. But back then certainly was a bit of an issue. So I charted everything. And so if I had a day where my brain wasn't feeling really good, I looked at what I ate the day before and I wondered, did I overdo something or maybe something I'm a bit sensitive to? So for me, that charting really allowed me to clearly see Where I was making gains and where I was not and not a lot of people do that They may chart loosely, but they don't chart by weighing and measuring everything which is onerous. I won't lie It's like it's time consuming and sometimes it can be a bit OCD and if people struggle from you know Eating disorders or or OCD in general it can be a bit of a trigger so I just want to you know, I just want to say that that is absolutely a thing and and You know, shout out to, to the folks who are really battling with that. And we don't want to start triggering eating disorders with weighing and measuring. But again, if you're dealing with therapeutic keto, you have to, you don't get into a therapeutic level. And unless you are today, it's actually in some ways it's easier because there's a bit more access to the sort of stuff that we need to, you know, still enjoy life like erythritol, but. There's so much out there that's labeled keto and people think, Oh, if I just buy that, that's going to keep me in ketosis. No, it's not. When I do, you know, sessions in the community and I have 30 people show up, I'll test them all. Guess how many in a group of 30 actually have ketones? Like I'm talking any ketones, not just therapeutic levels of ketones. It's less than 5%. So it's important to understand that it's about ketones. You know, it is about calorie intake in the sense that, you know, 5, 000 calories is going to knock you out of ketosis. Especially if you're eating stuff that is labeled, you know, ketogenic that really maybe isn't. If you start looking at the ingredients, you can start to see a lot of things that are maybe not so healthy. So I guess what it all comes down to is every Every aspect of your health starts with real food. So if the, the guiding light in your dietary choices, whatever they are, is real food, then you are already on a really good path. If you augment that with the occasional yumminess from somebody's awesome, you know, YouTube channel or whatever, that's okay. But if you're basically living on, you know, keto fat bombs or on, you know, mug cakes and that's your, that's your diet, that is not going to contribute to your overall global health. It just isn't. So start with real food. Augment where you need to, but be really suspect when something says keto. It's like looking at a thing of broccoli and there's a plant based and a keto stamp on it. What? It's broccoli. You know, that, that, that is just all about pitching to you and selling to you as a consumer. And I think it's important that we just. We're a little bit suspect when people are trying to pitch stuff to us and that we read the ingredients. That's, that's really, I think got to be my biggest message. So I think. Also, an important piece that we need to highlight here is, um, you were, since we started keto going back to when, you know, beginning of the keto diet for you, you were still getting auras, like you said, and so it didn't completely get away from you and did, and you did mention that, you know, I think it is important because for anyone who is listening here, um, Can you go through some of the factors that may still cause aura and changes have you made in your diet to completely get rid of them? So I haven't had any auras since that first couple of months on keto. That, that, that breakthrough aura I had was definitely contributed, you know, by hormones. So, what I started doing differently was right before my period was due, I would make sure 100 percent that I was at like the 10 gram of carbs a day, which is basically the carbs that comes from your eggs, you know, and, and like maybe two tablespoons of whipping cream. That's it. So it's, it's not a lot. I have not had an aura since that. I do have other issues that I, you know, I have to be careful around. So I suffer from something called lipedema, which is a rare fat disorder where I have really, really little waist and really big hips. And lipedema is It's widely understood to not respond to any dietary changes. You could be eating 600 calories a day for a month, your lipedema would not be affected. You'd lose weight, but it would all be from your face and your chest and other parts of your body that are not affected by this, you know, this, this type of fat that is, is broken. The cells are just so huge. There's not a lot of good intercellular and extracellular communication happening anymore. So they don't respond to hormones in the way, you know, like they don't respond to insulin and in the same way as other fat cells do. So what I found is that all of a sudden with keto, I could lose weight. I tried to lose weight for 20 years. And with keto, boom, I lost a hundred pounds. I did not lose a hundred pounds in a year like a lot of people do because I have lipedema. It took me about two and a half years to lose those hundred pounds and, and I've been able to, by and large, keep them off. However, I am eight years older than I was when I started and that means that I'm, skirting with that lovely little phase of women's lives called menopause. And I'm almost there. And I'm noticing because I don't get hungry because I don't actually eat a lot of calories because I'm not hungry, I'm starting to gain more lipidema fat in my thighs. And I looked at this a couple of months ago and I said, okay, time to do some, you know, time to do a reality check. You know, how many actual carbs am I taking in? Where are those carbs coming from? Do I need to be eating more protein now? So I started doing a little bit of experimenting, you know, three weeks doing one thing, three weeks doing something else. And what I'm realizing is that for me at this stage in my life. I have to prioritize a minimum of 80 grams of protein a day, minimum, and preferably a little closer to 120. And I have to make sure that I'm not ever cheating. And cheating for me is eating the occasional bite of sweet potato, so I can't do that anymore. So I think what's also important is that people realize that your keto and my keto is not going to be the same. If you're a man, it's not the same as if you're a woman. If you're 20, it's not the same as if you're 50. If you were breastfed, it is not the same as if you were not breastfed. There are nuances that really impact what you need to do to move the lever on your own personal health goals, and they are not generic, so everybody is not going to be able to do the same thing and get the same results. We are individuals, we respond differently, our environments impact us differently, we have different epigenetic programming. So we do need to. Be able to tweak appropriately to get the results we want. Yeah, we, we do have different triggers and our bodies respond to keto differently. And you mentioned that you. Lost a hundred pounds in two and a half years, which, you know, on a strict keto diet, you know, to some, to somebody that's probably way too long to lose that much to lose a hundred in two and a half years. And you've been so consistent with this. I want to, I want to talk to you about another point that I think we need to highlight is you, you, how did you taper off your meds or did you went cold Turkey with it when you started keto? Great question, Lawrence. Thank you for asking that. No, I, this time, because I wasn't 18, I went under medical supervision. We cut back my Keppra. Once we realized I wasn't having seizures at all, we dropped it back quite quickly. I was at the maximum dose, so we cut it in half. And then we cut it back in half again within the second month, and then I asked my physician if I could come off it entirely, and he was not comfortable with that. So he said, no, you're going to go and do blood work. And now we're going to scale you back over the next six months. So he made me take almost eight months to get off the medication when I would have been really happy doing it in three. But he said, no, we're, we're going to do the blood work. And when we did the blood work, there was no measurable amount of the medication in my bloodstream anymore. And that's when he said, okay, now we're going to cut you back to the lowest dose for a month. Just to make sure because he didn't want me to lose my license again He didn't want me to lose, you know, all of all of the stuff that I've been able to get back So I was very grateful to him for that supervision And so it did take about eight months to come completely off the meds and the funny thing is before I started keto Um, I I was taking the equivalent of about 1, 800 a month in medication. Now, for your US audience, they'll relate to that. In Canada, we have most of that covered. So, it wasn't costing me anything, but it was costing all the taxpayers of my country. 1, 800 a month. When I started keto, I stopped. all medicine. I didn't need medicine to sleep anymore, for pain anymore, for anything anymore. I didn't even need to take, you know, the occasional Advil maybe, but that's it. So I went from 1, 800 a month of meds to zero for the last eight years. I want to, you know, get to help somebody approach their doctor because, you know, it can be, it can be a hard thing to do once you decide to. Switch your diet and get off the meds completely. How do we best prepare ourselves when we approach our doctor about this? Because I understand that some of the doctors are not, don't highly recommend it, you know, getting off the meds first of all, and. You know, changing your diet to rely on that completely. What, to that, what do you say? Well, first and foremost, it's important that everybody understands that they have the right to informed decision making. And that means that your healthcare provider is there to provide you with information so that you can make an informed decision about your care, but it is your decision. It is not anyone else's decision except yours. So get your healthcare provider. on side by being reasonable by saying, This is something I want to explore. I don't want to be dumb about it. I don't want to be, it's unsafe about it. So let's do some baseline blood work, and then I'm going to show you what my plan is, and then we'll do blood work again in three months, and we'll see how that's going. And I'm not, I'm not just talking for epilepsy, I'm talking about for diabetes, or you know, whatever, whatever your issue is that you're planning to approach with a ketogenic diet. So Because some people are not good candidates for keto. And, and that, that is only going to be found out if you're doing the blood work. And if you, you know, have a history of, you know, family hyperlipidemia, this is not the diet for you. I'm happy to say it's a very small minority. But it is, you know, it is only those few people who have, you know, familial hypercholesterolemia and those kinds of things that who really have to watch out. You'll know if you're doing the blood work. You'll see everything get better if you're doing the blood work. And if it's not, then you can do some little tweaking, some little modifications to see whether you do need to add a few more carbs. And that's okay, but by a few I still mean under a hundred. And good carbs, like, you know, salad, sweet potatoes, vegetables. But I do think that this dialogue can be entered into when there is a collaboration. And, and I'm hoping that Everyone out there has a physician who is collaborative with them. And if you say, I want to do this, I want to do it with your support, so you tell me what you need to feel comfortable, that I'm not, you know, going to do anything crazy. We're going to talk about it together, create a plan together, do the blood work, assess it again in three to six months, and then make any changes that need to happen. Most of the time, your physician will be blown away by how much improved your blood markers are, And by blood markers, I mean fasting insulin, you know, your HbA1c, blood glucose, iron level, cholesterol for the large part does actually get better. Mine certainly got a lot better. So, but there will be some people who it doesn't and then that's a different discussion. But if you're in that conversation with your care provider, it's going to go so much better for everybody. So just really seeking out information and, and really trying to have that collaborative approach I think is, is going to be a winner nine times out of 10. I love that answer. And I think also having a coach, having somebody to keep you accountable again, because this is not an easy change. There's a lot of unlearning to do. And there's a lot of education because you have to know how it works. You have to know why keto works and how it works and how to fuel your body before you could actually, you know, get yourself going. And Most of this is mental, what needs to happen in, in your brain, you have to change your, you should have to shift that mindset into, you know, actually taking action, building habits, but, you know, easier said than done because there's a process to breaking those habits. And for you, you had all the reason to make a change, but it's, it was still hard for you and because that's a testament that how hard it is to make that change, you know, obviously. This is something that is very uncommon. Right. And you're basically going against the grain. And for me, having a coach is so important in the beginning. And if you're somebody that can't do this by yourself, know that there's an option there for you. I want to know, Jillian, do you still coach people today? Yeah, I do. Especially people who are looking therapeutically because there's so many little I do. Ways to get derailed from that and so, you know, I can really help people get into a place where they understand what is you know, what is going to work for them and that they How not to get derailed by by all the stuff that says it's keto I hear that a lot, but it said it was keto and now I'm you know My ketones are blown and that's another thing to just kind of put out there that But people are measuring ketones and sort of chasing ketones and that's not appropriate either. Ketone measurement is a tool to help you figure, basically biohack yourself. But in the early days, if you're just testing with acetone strips, peeing on them, I rarely test positive with acetone tests now because I've been doing this for eight years. I've been in ketosis for eight years. I check my beta hydroxybutyrate every single morning. And that is when it will be the lowest in the day for me and I check especially when I'm working out I will check pre and post workout because I'm using a lot of ketones during my workout So it's a it's a threat area It's an area where anyone who's got a seizure has to be a bit careful and I'm generally not a big fan of I'm a big fan of exogenous ketones for people with epilepsy, especially children. If they are doing a lot of activity and they're on a ketogenic diet, I've had parents call me and say, but you know, Jill, my son after his first soccer game is fine and he always has a seizure after the second soccer game. Yep. Cause he's blowing through his ketones. He's using them all for energy and that is actually causing his brain to not have the level it requires to remain seizure free. So that parent. started implementing a ketone supplement right before the second soccer game. And lo and behold, no more seizures because we needed to bring that up artificially for that, you know, hour or two that he was playing soccer, after which his body gets back into its normal state. So ketones, but they do have a role to play and their main role to play is to help the is in a therapeutic application with things like epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, you know, those kinds of, those kinds of issues. Definitely not for anyone who wants to lose fat because Why would you want to drink ketones? You want to be making them? Because making them means you're burning fat. So I do think that it is important that, you know, people don't sort of misunderstand the power of ketones. The real power of ketones is the ones you make yourself. That's the real power. From a therapeutic perspective, exogenous ketones have a very important role to play and they will, you will see more of that in the science and just look at the work that Don D'Agostino has done over the last 10 years. So I really think that they do have a role, but it's mainly in a therapeutic role, not as a nutritional adjunct. I think that, you know, those who are really trying to improve their health. Need to actually do the work and that means not second back, you know, a ton of beta hydroxybutyrate salts that, you know, don't taste very good and artificially increase your ketone levels. You know, some people are very, also very hard on themselves too, because I understand that for me, I've been, you know, on the Keto diet for, you know, not long, three years now, but I still do crave. I still have those times. And this is something that's a practice that you have to do every single day. You have to consciously. Decide for yourself and what's good for you. And what's the alternative really for me? The alternative is, you know, eating junk and being depressed. So no, thank you. So that's what keeps me consistent on this diet. And if you don't link eating this way to feeling good, you won't make that connection. You have to. Link feeling good to eating a well formed keto diet or, you know, some food that's, that's nourishing for you because if you don't link it, then you're not going to be, you're not gonna credit. eating well. So you're always going to be looking for those cravings. It's never going to be worth it for you. Yeah. So did we miss anything Jillian here? I don't want to miss anything. Jillian I think to sort of carry on from what you were just saying there, Lawrence, I think, I think you're right. It's got to be, it's got to come from within. You've got to want it for you. And you do have to link back to that feeling of wellness. However, I will say that we all in North America live in a food obsessed society where we have access to so much junk all the time that it is really, really hard. So you can pick the days. You can say my birthday every year. I'm gonna eat all the things that I want to eat. I used to love Nutella. Like, if you'd put a plate of Nutella in front of me, or just like a bucket of it, I would go to town on that. Like, you would not believe. I'd eat the whole thing. I don't think I could even eat like a teaspoon of it now. It is so sweet and my palate has changed so much in eight years that biting into a strawberry blows my mind. Like that is like, Oh my God, it's orgasmic. It tastes so good because I have a much lower sweet perception. So one of the tips I might give your listeners is to You're all going to make keto sweets. We all do it. You're, you're going to find the perfect cinnamon bun recipe and you're going to make that recipe. I know it. You're all going to do it. But if you start by dropping the required erythritol in that recipe by a third, and in a few months you drop it down to a half, what you will end up doing is Still getting what you want. Your brain will not be quite so cravey about it and you won't want to eat three. You'll just, you'll be very happy with just one. And, if, you know, we're dissing on all the folks that are eating ten pounds of sugar every year and What are we doing? We're just substituting it for 10 pounds of erythritol. That means we haven't addressed the core problem, which is that we have a problem with sweet stuff. Our brains are programmed to like it, and we have a hard time letting it go. So do yourselves a favor. Any recipes that you're downloading. automatically cut back the sweetener by a minimum of a third and then retest. And I remember I was actually at KetoCon probably two years ago. I guess it was right before the pandemic. That was the last time I was able to get down there. And I was talking to a lot of the people who were, you know, offering up stuff, you know, stuff, just cookies and cakes and all the stuff that they have there. And, and I, I went to one. Place and they were offering this Frappuccino that was meant to compete with the Starbucks Frappuccino and I had a taste of it and I had to spit it out and I said, Oh my God, that is so sweet. Can you not tone down that a bit? Because the people here are not eating nearly as much sugar and they're going to have a lower threshold for sweet. And the guy said to me, but I'm competing in the market with Starbucks Frappuccino, so I have to make it the same sweetness. And I thought to myself, he totally missed the point. The person who wants to pick up that Keto Frappuccino is trying really hard to make their health better. So, why don't you help them do that by tone it down, even if it's just by a third. So, you know, my news to, you know, my, my, I guess my message to all of the keto creators out there for food is either you need to have levels, you know, like beginner keto where the sweetness is a lot higher and, you know, hardcore doing this for eight years keto half as much sweetener. I don't know how you got to do it, but I frequently don't buy any of that stuff anymore because it's too sweet for me. I'd rather make it myself and reduce the amount of sweetener in the recipe. I'm going to go online right now, download about 10 recipes and change it to half of what their sweetener is and make it my own. Put it in a book. What's your favorite food, Lawrence? What's your, what's your go to, what's your go to gravy food? Ah, it's the burger without the buns, lettuce wraps from Wendy's. No, no ketchup. Just, uh, just the lettuce wrap for me. I I'm a burger guy before I love burgers, but, but for me, I I've enjoyed lettuce wrap ever since I started keto. So it's for me, Maria Emmerich. I'm not, I'm not sure familiar. Maria Emmerich said that once you, once you, once you. Change your mindset from, I can't have that to, I don't want that. Then that's when you know, you're turning the corner. So that that's stuck with me. And to this day, when I go to the grocery store, to the aisles, I don't want it anymore. It used to be, I can't have that now. I don't want it. I don't have that same, you know, cravings for those items anymore. It's not worth it for me, man. So I used to struggle with that. Like just seeing it is. Well, when Maria and I did the Keto Cruise together, and I gotta throw this recipe in for Maria because it's a great, it's a great recipe. When Maria and I were on the Keto Cruise together a couple of years ago, and we were, we were just hanging out and I was telling her that the first time I ever tried her chocolate egg pudding, which is literally made with hard boiled eggs, I, I was like, Maria, this can't be a thing. Like, honestly, I don't buy it. I do not believe that you can make chocolate pudding taste good made out of boiled eggs. And so I sent her a message and I said, I'm going to try it, but I'm only going to make half the recipe. Cause like, I just, I can't, I can't see it. And oh my gosh, it was so good. And so now it's like a go to for me, and it's delicious. And when I want chocolate pudding, I just make Maria's egg pudding, which is delicious. It hits the spot. I feel like it is all whole foods, and it has even, you know, lower sweetener than even she recommends. And she's actually pretty good about not making the sweetness level insanely high in her recipes. But try it. Just, you know, try modifying just a little bit and, and it's okay to have the things that you love. Find the things you crave and, you know, make them a little bit healthier. I won't say make them more keto because there's really no such thing as a ketogenic food. It is either food that keeps you in ketosis or food that kicks you out. But that doesn't mean by itself it is a ketogenic food. So I think it's important that we, that we, Use that language as well, and just remember that all the decisions that we make are about how we want to feel, you know, six hours from now, tomorrow. So you, you are obviously doing an amazing job on your own journey, and kudos to you, because it isn't easy. And there are people around who want to derail us, and, and just, I think that, Being an educator as we are is actually a really helpful way of helping keep us ourselves on track, right? And keeping ourselves accountable because it also means that, that we can share when people are saying, Hey, come on, Joe, why don't you just have this one little piece of chocolate I'll say, cause I don't want to be able to educate them about why it is. I love it. Jillian. I enjoyed this conversation so much. And not just because of what you're sharing here about your story. You're, you're definitely changing lives out here. But also how you approach things is, is so different from like other people that I've talked to and you have, you, you have this passion that I feel that energy that you have, that's, you know, just wanting to help others out there to do this the right way. And so I, I really commend you on that. And congratulations for, you know, not having seizures for eight years. That's amazing. And, uh, If that's not, if that's not, you know, evidence of keto working for, for, people for your condition. I don't know what it is. Thank you so much once again for sharing your story here today, Jillian. I appreciate it. Where can people find you, Jillian? You can find me on Instagram. I'm on Instagram, and I guess you can just sort of attach this all to the podcast so people can find it, but I'm keto. for, spelled out, F O R, dot life on Instagram, and ketoalldayeveryday. com. And, and they can, they can email me at keto all day, every day at gmail. com. I'm going to definitely going to link everything in the description below guys. So definitely check out Jillian again. Thank you so much, Jillian, for sharing your story and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much, Lawrence, keep doing what you do. Bye bye.