Mariah's Journey to Deeper Health

In this episode we are exploring the journeys of a mother and daughter, Mariah and Sophia. Sophia, a teenager with eczema and a history of C. difficile infection, saw improvements through a root-cause approach that focused on her gut health and immune system. Meanwhile, Mariah, who had chronic health issues, benefited from immune therapy for Lyme disease and other infections, leading to better energy, sleep, and overall wellness. This discussion underscores the value of a personalized healthcare approach that targets root causes rather than just managing symptoms.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey, you're gonna be okay. I'm your host, Elizabeth May, and my functional health practice helps people heal when they've exhausted traditional options. When no one can figure your health challenges out, my team helps you resolve symptoms and restores your health. You're listening to my podcast where we'll hear stories of healing chronic illness from a root cause approach.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Today we're going to talk about a couple issues. We're going to talk about mom and daughter who we've seen and supported through kind of different situations. Um, but I have my friend Mariah here with me, and we are kind of friendly friends because Mariah does health coaching. And I actually remember meeting or seeing her in public. Our birthdays were the same, and we were out to dinner at the same place, not together for our birthdays. And I remember thinking that lady looks really familiar to me. And then I got home and realized I follow her on Instagram. And then I guess it's probably been like a year or two later, maybe like a year later, you um you all reached out about working together with your daughter, Sophia, and then you know, eventually worked with you. But um, I do kind of want to like dive into Sophia's stuff first, Mariah, and just talk through like what she had going on at the time we started working together and like what prompted um you all to reach out for care for her. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

So she was full of eczema on her eyelids, her inner elbows, the backs of her knees. I had no idea where it was coming from. Um but I knew it it had to have been gut related, having gone through all my health coaching studies and learning how the gut is just super connected to the rest of the body. And when I thought back to her previous diagnoses, um, especially with the CDF and the antibiotics she was put on and what that did to her gut, most likely, I just felt like we needed a different approach because we were hitting dead ends everywhere, kind of in the clinical world. And we did see a GI specialist, but um the protocol she wanted her to undergo was not something I wanted to explore. So that's when we reached out to you and kind of dove deeper into what she had going on and what we could look at and what we could test and kind of uncover for a roadmap to get her healthier.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah, and she was a little bit older when she first came to care. Um I get asked a lot, do we work with teens? Do you work with preteens? Do you work with like college? Yes, absolutely. And she's kind of in that teeny preteeny area. But you mentioned too her C diff experience, she was like four or five when that happened and had major issues at that point. And and I'm assuming at that point the usual treatment was what you guys were offered of antibiotics. Like, how was the C diff addressed for her and kind of severity when she was in that four or five-year-old age?

SPEAKER_03 3:15

So they put her on flagell, which is a very potent but necessary antibiotic to combat that virus, um, or not virus, but um bacteria. And we retested her and they said it was still positive. So they put her on a second dose right on top of her first dose. So she was on it for 20 straight days. And it was after that that we started noticing she was just chronically sick every year. She would just get she would pick up every cootie known to man. She would get strep every single year, more than once. She would get flu. I mean, she would miss so much school. It was just, it was unbelievable, which also is what led me to you to see what was going on with her. Because I'm like, why is my child always fighting some some sort of an illness?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

I don't understand it. So we just wanted we wanted better answers. We didn't just want to treat her symptoms. We wanted to figure out what's going on here. How do we get down to the root cause and treat that and heal her from the root cause to not have the symptoms return versus just a band-aid.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

My perspective, you know, Sophia came in with eczema presenting, but when we move into history and we start to hear, like, okay, there's the C div, there's kind of the chronic sickness stuff. She's always with a little bit of streppy stuff. That starts to paint a picture for me. They're like, hey, this is an immune system that is not online completely, and that TH1 killer side is not doing its job. So we need to pick that up and see maybe what's there kind of interfering. And we started with the GI map, and it really kind of matched up pretty great to what we were talking through. Her beneficial bacteria, so the good ones were low, which can come from a variety. I mean, if we've not had good bacterial exposure in our early years, that can happen if mom was on antibiotics and delivery. If we had a C-section, mom's gonna be on antibiotics. That early establishment of the microbiome can be altered, but also it can be altered if we've had to have heavy antibiotics in those early formative years under age six or so, when the microbiome is really like developing those good bacterial colonies. So she had low beneficials. There was some like low-level candida on her stool test, some strep and some staph. Um, but the part I think that was interesting was just the low immunity. Her gut immunity, her secretory IgA was very low. And so that kind of lined up with what you guys were experiencing with her, where like she would just kind of pick things up and she would have a course of whatever it was, and then it would move on. But there was always a little something. Um, and so we used that info and moved into kind of a protocol that had multiple layers for her. What was that like for Sophia to work through a protocol? Because we think about teens and preteens and swallowing pills and things like what was it like for her to get that done?

SPEAKER_03 6:27

I think she was so eager to get rid of her symptoms that she didn't care at that point. She was willing to do anything.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

And she knew, you know, we had open conversations about it because it's it's hers. You know, I wanted her to understand what we were doing. And she was fine with taking the supplements, you know. She would, it was hard at first. I'm not gonna act like it was perfectly fine from the get-go, but she worked at it to the point that, you know, she's she's absolutely comfortable taking supplements now. It doesn't even matter the size, really. Um but the the nutrition piece was the piece I was mostly concerned about, not because it was a drastic shift for us, just because of her age and her peers and having to say no to certain things because you know she's an athlete and she's a teens, you know, in school with her friends and at birthday parties and having to say no to certain things or bring her own things to have. But she was super dedicated to sticking to the protocol to try to get rid of the problem. Yeah. And she really did a great job because I'm pretty sure we tackled gluten, dairy, and sugar for her.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yeah. I think that would be all at once. If I know how I write protocols, yeah. So those things were kind of big changes for her because we really had to kind of cut back that candy a little bit. I do think I remember her too being seeing response relatively quickly. I think that is a good thing with teens. Like they're pretty honest. Like, if they feel better, they're like, okay, something's happening. I'll try your suggestion. She's a little easier than that. And I think that helps to kind of like fortify the effort and and get things clear for her. And um, and yeah, like I said at the beginning, like with you health coaching, like I've seen food journals for you, for her. Like, I know that things over there are pretty swick and span. You guys eat a lot of veggies, a lot of quality meat, like all those things are there, but still, when that immune system is um kind of hijacked, if you will, where she didn't have a strong killer side, not a not a good beneficial population. You can kind of see that sick illness, the little eczema, candida, things like that.

SPEAKER_03 8:53

Yeah, she definitely needed more support in her gut. So I think that really helped. She wasn't she wasn't supplementing in any way prior to us working with you. Yeah, she feels like a lot of what she was eating wasn't serving her well given her situation.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Yeah, I think that's a really odd thing that what she was eating was not serving her well given her situation. People ask all the time, I have to quit this, will I have to quit that? Will I not be able to eat these things forever? Modifying diet is for a season for a reason in my mind. Yeah, and also it really depends on all the things. Like she could have had her GI mount come back with good beneficials and just an overgrowth of strep and staff, and we would address that differently than if she, you know, than where she was where she had not very many good bacteria. We had to kind of all parts of test results are important, and then all parts of the client's clinical symptom picture are important. If I'd never heard the C diff thing from early in her life, I wouldn't have thought about her case the same. I wouldn't have considered her immunity in the same way. So that's kind of the beauty. I know that you know, of working from a root cause approach and that we have time, whereas your traditional doctor, you go in and you're like, we have eczema, and there's like, here's your steroid cream, come back.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

And that's exactly what we were given. Yeah. What we saw for dermatologist, she's like, here's a topical steroid cream, and off you go. But it's an inside job. There's yeah, it is 100% inside job. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

And also steroids interact with the immune system if we get down to it. And so, why do steroids help sometimes for a little while? Because they are addressing the immune component. And I think that part of eczema is really important because the way we resolve eczema is to resolve the immune system's relationship with the pathogens that are creating eczema. So kind of same thinking, but a more thorough, complete approach, if you will. But um, I just love Sophia's case because it it is kind of straightforward in a way that like testing really matched her history. Um, it really lined up with what she'd been through, and then getting a teen to follow through, like she really did follow through great. And those changes made a difference for her. And it really wasn't. I look back at her calls, like we really only did a handful. There were like three um that we worked through and kind of got some really good solving progress for her. And I think too, I hope that she felt like she learned some things in that process too. Like we're always trying to educate and help teach the why so that when you're gone from care, you can know how to continue caring for yourself. Or with teens, if they have more info and it's logical to them, there's a lot more buy-in, you know, or the payoffs, yeah. And I think too, with teens and skin stuff, it's such a big thing. Like, it's such a big motivator. A lot of times, parents think their kids aren't going to participate. But we have girls all the time who like can't wear shorts, can't wear they're wearing long sleeves in summer because their skin's just covered everywhere. It's uncomfortable. But also they find it. They did that.

SPEAKER_03 12:14

She would wear, she was so afraid to wear short sleeves because she didn't want people to see, even after the eczema had gone, she didn't want people to see the discoloration in her elbow from where the eczema lived for so long, yeah, and then healed, it kind of left a discoloration that has since gone away. But um to your point about kids, though, the way they respond, I just want to also say that it was wild to me how supportive other people were.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Like when I would share that this is what she's going through and she can't have these things, when she would go to gymnastics and somebody would be selling a break celebrating a birthday, they would bring her in her own special treat along with everybody else's. So she felt included. Yeah. So I think a lot of times parents are maybe a little hesitant to explore these types of options because it's going to be harder, not necessarily, but they think it might be harder for them out in the real world. Yeah. When if you just talk to your if you're just open and honest with the people that you're surrounded by, more often than not, they're going to be supportive also and help your child through the process.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Especially if you with how, yeah, because people do want to help. But I think the big issue is they don't know, they're not familiar. Exactly. And it doesn't take a whole lot. But yeah, that is a huge key. And even little tiny kids, kids going to preschool, like they want to have the same snacks as their friends. So we teach mom and dad like here are some subs for those things, have them at school in a little basket, and the teacher can grab whatever's like their peers' food that they're having, and then we're back to kind of normalcy. But that normalizing piece, that's a really good point. And like kind of the community part, yeah, which can be touch and go. It's me. Because sometimes they don't want anybody to know, but also something like gymnastics, like that's who she's with all the time, and it's important. And everybody has different things, so yeah, that's really good and and helpful. Thanks for sharing that part. But I do want to kind of move to like when we started seeing you, you came and were like, hey, having gut issues, thyroid issues, weight imbalance issues, that was really what you came in with. And then when we started to kind of go through history again, we kind of uncovered some things for you. So let's just like walk through um, yeah, like where you were when you came in, maybe some history pieces that you find key, and we'll kind of go from there. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

So after working with you with Sophia, um, I just started asking myself these questions. Like, I wonder how related her gut issues are to mine. Because I do have a history of intolerances that led me to a lot of discomfort in my gut. Um and my doctor back in 2019 did suggest going grain-free to see if it helped, and it 100% did. Um, but I did notice that there were other things that started evolving from there that were still triggering discomfort in my GI. And I was starting to gain weight. Um, I was bloated, I was gassy, I was super fatigued. Um, I do have a history of thyroid, so I knew that could be a possibility. Had my panels checked, they were normal. Um and I just wanted deeper answers um beyond the thyroid panels. And I know in conventional medicine, their panels are much wider than in the functional world, where it's it's a more narrow range. So you're you're more likely going to be outside of normal in the functional world versus the clinical world. Um and you know, going back to the thyroid piece and spending so much time outside and wondering if we had been bit by a tick somewhere along the way. And um there was just a lot to unpack that I wasn't getting from any doctor that I had seen.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:35

So that's when I came to you and I was like, I think I want to do a GI math test. And then we I think we did that first, and then we moved into the tick-borne illness.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Yeah, yeah. And I think too, like we talked through you're kind of having having some thyroid, you don't have a thyroid, so maybe we started there, right? A long time ago, that was you went through radioactive treatment and and thyroidism issues started for you when you were very small. And when onset at 10, you'd had um maybe you tell me about it because there was like so much that happened then, and then there's a lot of pieces that came along with it. And I do wonder if that was kind of the first exposure of tick-borne stuff potentially, because it is a very it it kind of matches how the body can cascade. But what what was going on at 10 when the hyperthyroidism piece came in for you?

SPEAKER_03 17:27

So it was it was pretty tricky to get that diagnosis. Um, my mom noticed that I was gorging myself with food, but I was losing weight at a ridiculous speed. Um, I was very hyperactive. I couldn't sit still in class, I couldn't focus. And she took me to the doctor. They they wanted to diagnose me with um, I think it was ADHD and then diabetes. And she just felt like that wasn't right. So she just kept pursuing. And then we finally found a pediatric endocrinologist, and he determined that I, in fact, have like an extreme case of hyperthyroidism and Graves disease, and said that had two more weeks gone on, I probably would not have made it. So they put me on a slew of medications. If my memory serves me correctly, I think I was on like 14 pills a day just to try to get everything to calm down. I mean, my body was attacking itself. And um that's kind of just the way I lived for a long while until I got to high school. And then it was kind of like this ping pong of like hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism. Um so the prescriptions always fluctuated and changed, and then I got married. So now we're at my late 20s, and I was not on any thyroid meds at the time. But when I look back at that, I was so thin when I got married.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

And I can tell one of my eyes in my wedding pictures, one eye was a lot wider than the other. Like you could see the whites around um my entire eye. And from doing you know, some further studying about that, that's a clear indication of Graves' disease. So um two months after I got married, I got pregnant with my son, and they put me on a specific um medication for my thyroid that was safer for pregnancies. Um, had my son immediately got pregnant with my daughter. She kicked me into hypothyroidism. I had her, then I became allergic to the medication. And at that point in my early 30s, I had had it. And I I felt broken and like something was wrong with me. I thought my thyroid, my thyroid was, I was just born with a bad thyroid because it was never explained to me what the gland is, what it does, how it can be affected. Yeah. So I just thought it's faulty, and the only option I had was either to stay on medication that I was allergic to or take it out.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:15

And then I was given the decision do we surgically remove it or do we take radioactive iodine? And so I did the radioactive iodine and um it dissolved the majority of my thyroid. So and that was 312.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Yeah. I think that story's telling too, because you can look at it. We think about immune triggers, pregnancy is one, and you can see a shift in the thyroid when you got pregnant. Um, and then we see a shift again after Sophia, and even a shift in the immune system after Sophia, where that medication that you've been taking and was fine for your first pregnancy and afterwards, all that was fine. And then all of a sudden, now we're having this kind of allergic reaction response. There's another another immune shift, if you will, that's pregnancy related. But I do think an important kind of like note in all of this, too, is when you grew up, you grew up going to Maine in the summers. And when we start to piece the story together later, Lyme is a part of one of your root causes. And so it's interesting to me there too that that's like a Lyme endemic area. One of my favorite doctors I've learned a lot from has, I think, acquired so much information because he's had so much opportunity to, because there's so many folks there who have recurrent bites and it's just very, very prevalent. So that was a clue for me when we were talking through health history, too, is that there's definitely immune triggers here going on. The thyroid's a big part of your issues, which I could have taken your intake and said, okay, well, gut, thyroid, and weight imbalance, that can all just be thyroid for sure. But when we pulled out those kind of allergic pieces and the pregnancy trigger part, then it started to kind of show more through. And you Mentioned too the bacterial pneumonia episode. Tell me about that and how that had played out in your past.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

Oh yeah. Um so we moved to Kentucky 10 years ago. And I wanna say it was six years ago. I think it was 2018, maybe. That's what I had. Maybe sooner than that. Yeah. Yeah. Um I just got I just didn't feel great one day. And I didn't know it was a strep again because, like we talked about earlier, I just had this recurring strep infection, just like my daughter, every year, at least twice a year. Um and I just remember thinking, I bet it's just strep again. So I was kind of fighting through it, and I remember being in my kitchen and just thinking, oh my gosh, I have the worst headache. It is relentless, it will not stop. I went to bed that night, I could not sleep. Um and I just woke up my husband and said, Something's just not right. I need to go to the hospital. And so we went to the hospital and they did x-rays and said, Yes, you have bacterial pneumonia and put me on an antibiotic, and I was there for four days. And that that scared me. I have a pretty pretty high pain tolerance because I had both kids without drugs, and um that was that was something. So I've constantly yeah, just constant every season, there's just a constant fight in my body. Just there's a war going on between all these things I'm exposed to and my immune system that's trying so hard but struggling.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah. Yeah, and we talked through a lot of those kind of your sickness things, all kind of were always on the bacterial side. A lot of times the body will bend one way or the other, and your issues were always streppy, the bacterial pneumonia, even you know, the recurrent, the recurrent part of the strep as an adult was an interesting piece too. But when we started working through symptom load, when I was kind of like trying to investigate, okay, like who's the root? Where's this coming from? Is Lyme potentially a factor? You know, you shared that you'd always kind of had arthritis and shoulder and knee joints, but you'd also had injuries in the past. So it's so easy to look at those. And I also like it could absolutely be from injuries, but you mentioned like you absolutely could not sit like crisscross applesauce, like your joints not correct to do that business. Yeah. Um, sugar, we go through food reaction kind of things, and you mentioned sugar creates heart palpitations. Well, that's a ding-ding-ding for me, because that can be something sugar feeds bacteria. So then we think, okay, well, what bacteria can be connected to to heart kind of things? Um, you mentioned too like lower back pain and ache, which is just like a constant thing. And I know you to be someone who's like regularly strength training, regularly exercising. Like, if I think of my friends who are like top disciplined with that kind of stuff, like you're you're in top three. Like it's a constant, there were no questions from me, like, okay, well, maybe she doesn't take care of herself. Okay, maybe this is left over from having babies and not getting strong yet. None of those things were true for you. You really did take care of your of your body, you eat really well, all those things. And when we started working together at that point, too, you'd said, you know, okay, like there's a lot more fatigue than there's been. I haven't worked out in 10 days, which that's like a big red flag because that's not your normal at all. But it was like interfering with life, and you were having middle of the night waking, and you'd started to kind of notice some correlations too between like wine and symptoms, like when you would have your clenching and jaw pain. Yeah, yes, but when you would pull that out, it would kind of go away. So, again, to me, I'm thinking, huh, that sounds like alcohol feeding some bacterial something like Bartonella that can interfere with jaw stuff. So all of those things were kind of matching. And I think I threw to you, okay, we've looked at blood work, we've looked at a GI map, and your map, your GI map wasn't wildly eventful. Very similar to Sophia's in that you know, strep was there. Um, there was like some low beneficials, a little candida, and your immune was really like kind of run of the mill, I wouldn't call it weak. There wasn't a lot there bacterially. So we moved into looking um at the full pathogens panel. And even there, there wasn't a ton on paper, which I think this is such a good example of when we're looking at Lyme and Co's, testing doesn't always solve it. Sometimes we have to kind of pair, it's always a full picture of symptom load and testing. So we kind of did to a little um different strategy. We looked at Lyme, and there were some markers, but you weren't necessarily um like CDC Lyme diagnostic. It was definitely there. And we looked at um some individual titers of like mycoplasma, Epstein Barr. Those were raging. Um, and we had this together too. You'd had plenty of strep. There's strep in your gut. So that was something we addressed in the jaw pain, back pain, joint pain in the way that it was. We brought in Bartonella and you worked through immune therapy for all of those, but what was that process like for you? What things came up? How did it feel? How did it feel over time, even?

SPEAKER_03 27:29

Um, I'd say my first response to the whole process was relief because I finally had an answer other than your thyroid labs are fine. So it was a new territory to explore to to try to get myself to feeling better. So I was, I was, I was excited, and I was also very eager to get the ball rolling. Um and I knew the process was gonna be challenging, but time passes either way, and I just figured I'm just gonna do this because what's the alternative? The alternative is an option I don't even want to entertain. So we're just gonna do this. Um, and you know, I just spoke openly about it with my family, and everybody was very supportive. And I said, you know, I know I'm gonna have probably a higher symptom load at the beginning as we reintroduce stuff to work through the immune process, the immune therapy. Um but there's light at the end of the tunnel, and we're gonna get there. So it was it was hard at times, like in a challenging way just to kind of get through the day, just with all the symptoms. But if I just kept my mind focused on why I was doing it and that we're it's gonna be fine. Um that's exactly what happened. You know, we still we got through it, and it wasn't hard, but there were there were moments where it was a little challenging just from symptoms.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yeah, and symptoms I think a lot of what I heard was just the kind of the achy fatigue here and there, signs of it. Irritability irritable, yeah. That bar knock can make you really irritable. And there were little like odd skin things, kind of uh barrier stuff, like cracks on your like nostrils and some things, but I think energy maybe was probably like a core theme, if you will, and then like kind of like those achy flu feels, but also pretty early on when we would meet, you would be like, Okay, that day did suck, and I was on the couch, but then I had a day of like really good energy, and that was good, but then it wasn't very, very long. So there's definitely like that like ebb and flow piece, yeah. Yeah, totally, totally with that.

SPEAKER_03 30:08

Um, and so and the energy piece I think was probably the hardest for me just because I'm such a high energy person, yeah. So that that was probably the most frustrating part. I'm not one to just sit around. I am just a goer, a doer. I just I'm always on the move. And I knew I needed to let my body rest and heal. So that was probably the most challenging part. But again, I knew I was gonna get through it and come out on the other end.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

So and you did a really good job yielding because, like I said, you're definitely like exercise is irregular for you. And we all know like it can really be like a great stress reliever and a good positive, like routine kind of thing that when that's part of your life and you can't do it, it can be super frustrating. But you are great at yielding to me, saying, like, hey, that's probably too much right now. We need to like back off a little bit. Let's try this more chill version. Let's like not, you know, do that. And I think that part also helped you kind of like move out of that first couple months and get some good days sooner because you did yield to the rest piece, which is hard for sure.

SPEAKER_03 31:25

Um, anything else? Yeah. Um, I would do like gentle yoga, always sitting outside, you know, in the morning sun as much as I could, just to try to help give my body what it needed.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you were easy to work for because I could give you like a gentle reminder, like, hey, we need a little circadian support. And you're like, I'm on it, I'm doing it, I'm doing a little more. I'm outside. I'm having my coffee outside, my work is outside, I'm good to go. Um, and that's really, really helpful too. There were some weird things too. I think you kind of had some like limited taste and smell here and there, and like some was like, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

Yeah. The cigarette smell was so bizarre.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Yeah. So bizarre. The smell taste stuff is interesting with lime. You can have like odd things like that. Like a lot of times, people have like a metallic taste in their mouth, or for um some it'll be more like you're eating something, and the first two bites are great, and then the third bite tastes like mold really intensely, and you're like, Well, this is just the other half of the apple. I was nothing has changed food-wise, but you can have taste and smell modifications really quickly. But that was something that kind of like ebb and flowed, and like I think coffee for a little while had no smell or taste for you randomly, yeah, in that kind of circle.

SPEAKER_03 32:53

Everything, which was frustrating because I'm a huge foodie. Yeah, like I love to cook and I love to eat, like it is a passion of mine, and I was robbed. I was just robbed of being able to smell or taste anything.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Yeah, but those things are back now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was just a short-lived thing, yeah, yeah. Sleep was another thing for you. That was a big issue. Tell me more about sleep was awful. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

I had a I always could fall asleep. I could never stay asleep. Um, three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning, like clockwork, every night I would wake up and I would just toss and turn. Like my body felt anxious and restless. And I just couldn't, I couldn't go back to sleep because I just I couldn't, I don't know. I I don't even know why. I just couldn't. Yeah. And that that affected me because I mean, sleep is a huge component to our health. And if we have broken sleep, then the day is just not gonna go great. Yeah. Um that was hard. Yeah, the sleep, the sleep disruption, that was hard. And with lime, yeah, it'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

That's good. And we often see the early morning taking with Lyme, and then we can see blood sugar affected. Some people will wake multiple times a night, and other people have a really hard time calming down in the evening to go to sleep. But the sleep dysregulation is a classic Lyme symptom. Um, and I think towards the end, really, things just kind of kept peeling off for you. Like you would mention kind of midway, like, okay, I had a glass of wine, that was a terrible idea. I felt horrendous. And then later on, you're like, I was able to go and have a little of some things. Now I'm eating dairy. That's not bothering me anymore. Motivation, energy stuff kind of creeped in over time, too.

SPEAKER_03 34:47

Um, the energy, the energy piece has been monumental. You feel working out again. Yeah, it just I can work out and I can smell and taste my food. All is right in the world.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

Those are big wins, those are like foundational human things. I know. I know. Can't have those taken away. But it is interesting how, like, you know, at the beginning of things, like you didn't feel your best, but someone observing you from the outside would be like, I don't know, she looks great, like she sounds fine, like she's fivacious, she's living life, doing all the things.

SPEAKER_03 35:24

She well, right. That and that's exactly what my endocrinologist said to me. She said, Your labs are fine, and she looked me up and down and said, You look great, you look better than most. Just go buy new clothes.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Yeah. And you were like, Oh, maybe not, because this is a little bit bored for me.

SPEAKER_03 35:40

It's your professional opinion. Fantastic. We're gonna move on.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Yeah, yeah. But also, there's more under there, and sometimes it takes thinking about things differently from a different perspective to kind of 100% yes more. Yeah. Well, I think you shared one thing about Sophia, like a way someone cared for you all well, but in your own personal walkthrough, figuring out pathogen stuff in Lyme and immune therapy. What was something that anyone did to care well for you or your family while you were walking through the chronic illness journey?

SPEAKER_03 36:13

They just extended me such a tremendous amount of grace. I mean, and stepped up to the plate and helped out where I was lacking, where I would normally just take over and take charge and, you know, go in mom mode. Um, my husband really stepped it up, helped out around the house. So did the kids. I remember one time I was frustrated and irritable, and I kind of snapped at my daughter, and she looked at me and she goes, Mom, it's okay. I'm not mad at you because I know that you're going through immune therapy and you can be irritable. Oh my god. And I was like, You're right, but it's not okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

You're right, but I won't do it again.

SPEAKER_03 36:57

Yeah.

unknown 36:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

So just they were, they were super supportive. And so were you and your team, like just so good at explaining things and helping me walk through the process and making me feel like I wasn't crazy and always there whenever I had questions. You always, you were just always super supportive.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Good. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 37:22

And people need that.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Yeah. Yeah. You really need that after you go through traditional spaces that should be helpful to you, you know. Like it kind of creates this weird trust, not trust situation when providers haven't either been able to help you because it's not something they can legitimately help with, or when they haven't put forth what I would consider fair effort to help, right? Respond to testing requests or things like that. Right. It is really refreshing to have support um and to have time with the provider who can explain. And it's a it's really why I moved into this space myself when I went through my original health journey. I had the same, like where you just get looked at and you're like, You look fine, right? Just postpartum stuff, and like which is so dismissive. It is, it is so dismissive, and it doesn't recognize or honor that each human has their own intuition and their own brain, right? Just because I say this all the time to clients when I'm like, This is what I think. If you think I'm wrong, let's talk about it. Because I've been wrong before, but that is not always the vibe that happens when we go to the traditional medical.

SPEAKER_03 38:30

Yeah. Um, I think too that we know ourselves better than anyone else. And so if we can be honest with what we're going through and with the person that's caring for us, and you have to have that trusting relationship. Um, I think that's a such a key part to it, too.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:53

Like just because somebody has MD after their name doesn't mean they know your body better than you. So I think advocating for ourselves is is a huge part of it.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

I think too, you did a great job of kind of saying early on, like, I know something's off. I'm not receiving help. I just kind of feel like we need to walk through whatever you think I need to walk through, and this is where I kind of need to be. And that like that intuition that we all have is there. And I see it in kids where they're like drawn to foods that their body needs, where they're nutritionally deficient, and they're they're not interested in eating something that makes them feel bad. And the same with adults, we're like drawn to this form of exercise, or we're really interested in going to the sauna because our body needs to clear stuff. Like there's these things, and the same can be true of kind of being drawn to particular care method or or provider, you know, all those things are true too. Um, but yeah, I think that honoring your like trusting yourself, knowing like I know myself better than any other you're with yourself all the time, no one else is.

unknown 40:03

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Yeah, it's really important.

SPEAKER_03 40:05

No one knows you better than yourself.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

And it's so easy to gaslight ourselves too, after we've gone to the doctor and been like, this, this, this, and this happened. And they're like, You look fine, you look great. Then you're like, Does it is it really that bad? Like, right. Maybe it's not, but it's important to kind of honor those things. And right.

SPEAKER_03 40:23

Or these are just the cards I was telled. I guess I just have to deal with my symptoms.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Yeah. Even with some of your like arthritis y stuff, right? Thinking about like you legitimately had injuries to the places where you had the most body pain, but also Lyme was definitely playing a part in that body kind of arthritis stuff. So it's easy for us to like create healthy coping mechanisms and messages to ourselves around our symptom load. But sometimes when they're all strung together, you paint a different picture, and that's important. And I think you're a little open too.

SPEAKER_03 40:56

Sometimes that is so important when I'm having to really convince um that can be hard, but that probably it just makes the process a lot easier to go through when you're just open and honest and willing to just participate, you know.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

Yeah, and I think the whole basis of a functional approach is curiosity. Like I try to go into every clarity call. I am by nature, like curiosity killed the cat. That's me. Like, I just want I'm just so curious about whatever. But that's a question to figure things out, you know.

SPEAKER_03 41:33

You're solving a mystery. We can't see inside the body when we're just having a conversation. So yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Yeah, that curiosity is really important. Well, I really appreciate you sharing about Sophia's journey and yours. And I hope it's helpful to kind of help other people see themselves in symptom load and to kind of know that you don't have to live forever with a host of random things. Sometimes random things add up to a very normal thing if you're in the right place looking for solutions. Yes, I couldn't agree more. All right, well, thanks for being with me.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Yeah, thank you. I hope you're leaving encouraged, curious, and hopeful. If you learned something, I'd love for you to share this episode with a friend. Hey, we're all healing together. You can learn more about my practice, our team, and what it's like to work with us at heyhey may.com. I teach lots on Instagram and answer questions each Monday. My Instagram handle is at Hey Hey Elizabeth May. And my cookbook, Hey Hey Everyday, is available on heyheymei.com and Amazon. Happy healing