Written by Christopher Kelly
Jan. 15, 2015
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Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and I'm joined today by Mickey Trescott.
Hi, Mickey!
Mickey: Hi!
Christopher: Mickey is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, chef, photographer, and autoimmune sufferer. She's also the author of the book, The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook. Did I get that right?
Mickey: Yup, that's it.
Christopher: It's a fantastic book. I've had a great experience with that, I'll tell you more about that later. But why don't we start by finding out what happened to Mickey.
Tell me, it all started with asthma and a dairy allergy, right? So what happened?
Mickey: Yeah. So I was diagnosed with asthma as a young child and it was pretty serious. I wasn't able to do any sports despite kind of looking athletic so people would be pretty confused when they threw a ball at me and it hit me in the face. I'm kind of known for being kind of klutzy, it was kind of sad. I couldn't do PE. I couldn't do any sports like normal kids. I had to take all these inhalers, I took three every day.
And when I was in college, I went vegan because when my roommate was doing it and I thought, "Why not?" and my asthma completely disappeared within a week and it was just like this crazy thing where I was like, "Oh, my gosh! Being vegan is the best thing ever!"
So fast forward about ten years, I have been vegan for that long which is kind of crazy and throughout the years, there were definitely warning signs that I did not listen to. I stopped getting my period for a certain period of time; it kind of came back intermittently. At the time, I was kind of like "Good riddance" which now knowing what I know it's like a really bad attitude to have about something that's so indicative of health in a woman's body. And then I just started getting tired, I started gaining weight, I started losing my hair. I had really bad anxiety.
And I had a couple episodes that when I went to the doctor, they weren't able to figure out what was wrong with me. They really thought that it was in my head, that I was just depressed and so on and so forth that so many people have this similar story. But I ended up digging and digging and I got diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease which is autoimmune thyroid and also Celiac disease which is when your small intestine is attacked by your own body when you consume gluten which a lot of people are familiar with.
And so I got those two diagnoses and I thought, "Okay, my life is going to change" and it didn't. It actually got a lot worse, I started having neurological problems. And I finally hit a bottom where I couldn't work, I couldn't do anything that I loved, I was completely supported by my husband who was working overtime in order to afford all the medical bills and make up for me not being able to work anymore. And I was super desperate and that was what it took for me to consider changing my diet because I had no other options. The doctors didn't really have anything for me; they couldn't tell me why I kept deteriorating even though I was doing everything right.
So this is where I found Paleo and I found AIP and I did the Elimination Diet and slowly but surely, I dug myself out of this hole of nutritional deficiency and changed my lifestyle and became a real person once again which is kind of crazy.
Christopher: Yeah, we actually have quite a lot in common. I've never done a biopsy test or anything like that to show that I have Celiac but certainly I have the HLA genes and then I have all the other symptoms, certainly the gluten challenge test worked spectacularly well on me.
I just wanted to pick your story apart because there are some things here that I see a lot in our practice. We've got to the point now where we're helping other people get through a situation exactly like the one that you just described. And the thing that jumped out at me most of all from your story was the hormone imbalance in exercise. I wanted to touch on that. What happened to you? You got kind of addicted to exercise and it would seem that that might have been important and played a significant role in the demise of your health.
Mickey: Yeah! It was really interesting. So when I was able to breathe again and literally, that's what it felt like. I went my whole life not being able to breathe without phlegm and without this constriction which it actually turned out to be a dairy allergy now I know. And when I told my doctor that, they said, "Oh, yes. That totally happens, not asthma." I was like, "You're fired."
I bought my first pair of running shoes when I was 18 and I was like "I'm going to go start running because I can do this now." I was so excited about it and I felt so good and I was so motivated and I got addicted to it. I got addicted to the endorphin rush and that feeling of kind of beating your body up and doing it again and again and again and getting stronger. So it wasn't just running, I got into cycling, I got into rock climbing. I just was kind of an all-around adventure type of person.
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And it definitely mixed with the type of personality that I have. I'm someone who's always trying to do more and do better and compete against myself and very hard against myself. It's really easy to run yourself into the ground when you're like that.
Christopher: Exactly! I think the endorphins thing is definitely dangerous. If you know you're not feeling 100%, you're feeling kind of grim, then getting out there, warming up, feeding some endorphins, it's like for some people that's the only time in which they feel good, and so of course they become addicted to it.
Mickey: Yeah, yeah! And I definitely felt that especially towards the end when I crashed. I was actually doing a cleanse prescribed by naturopath. Of course I know now it was a terrible idea. It was a liquid-only cleanse, it was super high-carb, I was eating a ton of sugar, I was drinking a lot of coffee, I was running really intensely every day, and I was cycling on top of that. I got done with this cleanse and I got sick and I didn't get better for six months. I mean that was the bottom. I just kind of ran myself into this hole.
Christopher: Right. So it's really not just about the diet. That's kind of my takeaway from this although the diet is I've seen an extremely important piece but there's other variables that you can manipulate and certainly you can send yourself over the edge by doing too much exercise even though you know some is good for you.
Mickey: Yeah! I mean it's a way to raise cortisol just like drinking coffee is and just like eating sugar perk you up, it's definitely something that you can misuse. When you don't have energy, you start grabbing for anything that will give you energy and that's definitely one of them.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely!
And tell me about living on campus? Do you think that was like sort of another key part of your downfall almost? When you're forced to eat somebody else's food, do you think that's a real problem that you could ever get around?
Mickey: Yeah. When I started being vegan, that's when I started to learn how to cook. This college that I went to, we had kitchens in our dorms which was really unique and really great. So that's when I learned how to cook when I started cooking for myself a little bit.
But before that, when I was eating at the dorms, it was terrible. I actually transferred schools to one that didn't have a kitchen and I had to eat the dorm food and it was terrible. I had a lot of problems there because they just didn't have any options for me and I remember living off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Christopher: Wow! Is that AIP peanut butter?
Mickey: No, it's not AIP.
So yeah, that was definitely really hard. You don't have a lot of control I think when you're in college and you also don't have a lot of money especially because a lot of this food is incorporated in the tuition so it's hard to justify getting your own food.
Christopher: Yeah, it's a tough one. And then what about alcohol, did it make a difference that you noticed?
Mickey: Alcohol's always been something that I've known that it makes me feel worse before I feel better. So I've never been one of those people that even when I started drinking when I was in college, I was never like "Oh, this is awesome. I'm just going to drink more." I would have a drink or two and then I would be like "Oh, this feels okay. Not great but I'm going to pretend it feels okay."
And so I didn't really get into binge drinking the way a lot of college students do but throughout the years I learned what I tolerated better and I would try to drink more of that and definitely ditching alcohol when I came down to it. even before I changed my diet to Paleo or anything, I quit drinking alcohol, I quit drinking coffee because I'd realized that both of those things were really negatively impacting my health.
Christopher: Interesting.
Mickey: Yeah. I mean this was six to nine months before I even started changing my diet.
Christopher: Okay. And what was the big aha moment for you? I'm just trying to even pinpoint that for me because we have a lot in common in that I was trying to be vegetarian. I wasn't going as far as veganism but I thought that eating less meat was the way that I can make a meaningful contribution to climate change which now I'm not sure about at all. But yeah, I was definitely headed down that path.
How did you realize… I mean most people, once they're in that groove, it's going to take something pretty significant to get them out.
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Mickey: Yeah. Actually I had pretty much said I would eat meat unless I was on my deathbed and I definitely felt like that's where I was when I considered it. I was pretty much housebound, I was unable to work. I was unable to even do the housework. My husband was feeding me and taking care of me and taking me to doctors' appointments and working like crazy. It was kind of a really horrible time. And that's when I said "Well, if there's any time to try meat, this is it." And we both talked about it and he agreed to purchase some meat and to cook it for me and kind of hide it in vegetables and I cried as I ate it.
Christopher: He was vegan as well then?
Mickey: Yeah, yeah! He was definitely more flexible about it more than I was. I really had this strong sense of not wanting to eat animals. I grew up loving and having lots of animals. For me I really didn't want any animals to suffer and I loved that feeling like animals didn't have to suffer so that I could do my thing.
It was hard to get past but I'll tell you what, I still have Hashimoto's and one of the symptoms is that we tend to have very low body temperature when we're having a flare. And I've been taking my temperature a lot because it was like something tangible, it wasn't like "Oh, how am I feeling today?" It's like, "Okay, my temperature is 95.6. I'm cold." It was in the 95, 96 range and actually I noticed even far before I got sick -- this is a little tangent but this is really interesting -- my temperature would plummet down to 92°, 93° after I exercise which is a really clear sign like you're really overdoing it if your body cannot maintain homeostasis after you do workout. I mean that really should have been a really big red flag.
But after I ate meat, I took my temperature and it went up to 97, it was like 97.6, 97.8, and I had never even seen that temperature the whole time I've been sick. So there was obviously something in the nutrition that I had just given my body that kind of sparked something in my metabolism and I noticed that right away and there was no looking back, I just went for it. That's why I enrolled in the Nutritional Therapy Association Program to do Nutritional Therapy not so much because I was looking for career change but I was just like how did I get so wrong and what is it about the nutrients in food that's doing this to my body?
Christopher: That's amazing. I never got diagnosed with Hashimoto's so I never showed antibodies although I only checked once but I definitely have the low basal temperature. So when I check first thing in the morning, it was around sort of 95-something. My understanding is like yeah, it's not normal. You want to be that 97.8 I believe is kind of the low limits of what's normal and certainly that's what I would get. I always check Julie, she's always 98 point something and our baby, Ivy, she's almost exactly the same, like the same. It's not normal to be walking around at 95°.
Mickey: No, no. and now actually I do take thyroid hormone, I haven't been doing diet for a long time and when I take my temperature, it's 98.1, 98.2. I hardly even see 97 anymore and I remember when it was the other way around so I know that there is some deep healing that's happened to my metabolism, the landscape has totally changed.
Christopher: Yeah, it's interesting. It's quite primitive, crude marker but everybody can do this. You can go to the pharmacy and buy a thermometer right now and be doing this and get an idea of where you might be at.
So how did you discover -- so the Paleo part, that came first presumably and AIP came after that?
Mickey: Yeah! So I actually found it by way of Dr. Kharrazian. I don't know if you're familiar with his work but he is a Functional Medicine practitioner and he teaches a lot about autoimmunity and thyroid. He had this great book called "Why Do I Still have Thyroid Symptoms When my Lab Tests Are Normal?" It's a really great place to start if you're diagnosed with any sort of thyroid problem.
But I started reading this book and he was talking about food. He kind of made passing reference to Elimination Diet and I went to his website and he had an Elimination Diet that is basically AIP. And then I had actually started listening to some podcasts and most notably Chris Kresser and he mentioned this Elimination Diet. And I noticed that they were like the same and I was kind of like, okay, if all these people online are kind of saying that this is what they're using to recover people from these autoimmune diseases especially if they've come to the conclusion separately which I think the Paleo community and Kharrazian came to this through their own research, that was more compelling for me.
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So that's kind of where I went. There was a period of a month or maybe six weeks where I was kind of starting to eat meat but kind of eating everything because I was confused. And then I finally found the Elimination Diet and I was like "Okay, I'm going to do this 100%. I'm going to take note of my symptoms, I'm going to reintroduce food systematically" and the rest is history.
Christopher: So how far off AIP were you when you started it? Because for me I'd discovered Paleo, was feeling much better on that, but I kind of started eating a lot of foods which are definitely not AIP. So the main culprits were eggs which I was eating tons of them and then nuts and seeds as well. I was eating loads of those. And this was just kind of I don't know what to eat, well I guess this is Paleo so I'll just take more of that.
So how far off were you when you discovered AIP?
Mickey: Yeah. I did the same thing and it was only a matter of a month because actually I had introduced eggs before I introduced meat. What was weird was they made me feel good/bad. Like I knew there was something in them that I really needed and now knowing what I know, it's like "Duh, cholesterol, choline, fat-soluble vitamins." Like I'm sure my body was like "Yes, please, I would love more of that" but then there was something about them that also didn't sit well, like my digestion felt off when I was eating them.
So there was this period where I was learning about the Elimination Diet but I'm eating these things like eggs and I did the same thing as you. I ate ton in nuts because I was like "What else is there to eat?" It was about a month before I dove into the Elimination Diet and took out all of those foods and did it actually systematically and didn't include them.
Christopher: Yeah, that's awesome. And we've been getting great results from them in our practice. I think it's quite difficult to do AIP like some people are extremely intimidated by it. But when you get someone that's totally up for it and they're a good cook and "Oh, this is what I've been looking for. I'm so glad that you showed me this" then you know that that person is going to get fantastic results. There's no question, like that's almost great.
Obviously you're a really fantastic photographer and a really good cook and the book wouldn't exist if that weren't true. Do you think that's required then? How good a cook do you need to be in order to be successful on AIP?
Mickey: I really like that question. I don't think you need to be a good cook but I think that if you are willing to learn, you have to have an attitude of setting yourself up for success. So it's not possible to do the Autoimmune Protocol and not cook your own food.
So if someone's like "I don't want to cook; I don't like cooking, it's too hard", I really go out of my way to create resources for people that have never cooked. A lot of my background is in cooking for people privately in their homes, working for people that may not know how to cook, may not have time to cook. And so I've kind of learned some beginner tricks that I share on my website, I share them in the book, I even have a video on YouTube where I walk people through like a batch cooking session.
And that's where I would encourage people to start is like go on YouTube, start watching videos. Look at how to hold a knife. There's people teaching you how to hold a knife, how to sear your meat before you put it into your soup, how to cook a steak properly. These are all beginner tasks that I think those of us who really like to cook, it may seem like second nature but as long as someone's open to starting out, there's definitely things that they can do.
So I don't think cooking is a skill that is only for the select few. I think that it's something that we all need to nurture in our own lives because we all need to eat.
Christopher: Yeah. No, it's consistently a problem. Like I have some buddies in my cycling team that really their only goal is to lose a few pounds. They have money like if they could press a button "Buy now" and just get the food, they would do it. I'm not sure that that's ever going to work. I'm not sure I have a fix for that.
Personally, I was extremely lucky that Julie, my wife, she's a food scientist and an excellent cook, and so basically she did all the cooking which I've thought about now. So yes, I did avoid that. I mean I'm not totally hopeless. And actually one of the recipes from your book was one of the only recipes I think I've ever cooked. I think it was liver with bacon bits in it.
Mickey: Yeah, yeah. The Bacon-Beef Liver Pâté, that is like one of my most popular recipes.
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Christopher: It's great. So I decided to see that we should be eating organ meat especially if I've made this decision that I wasn't going to be a vegetarian anymore, I wasn't going to eat bits of the animal because that's what I felt like eating. I was going to do the whole thing. And so I thought that that was kind of like a baby step and Julie, at the time, was really not into it at all. This was quite a long time ago. She will cook anything now like how things have changed. No, it was great.
I have to say the book I bought was an e-book actually, I didn't buy the hard copy one so I was like on the laptop trying to cook this thing and that worked pretty well. And it answered a really important question which was "What the hell do I eat?" It's kind of like such an important thing.
Mickey: That makes me so happy. That recipe is really near and dear to my heart because I realized early on that I'd been taking a lot of iron supplements and I was very anemic. It really is common problem for people with Hashimoto's and Celiac and other autoimmune diseases to have issues getting enough iron. And I did not want to eat liver, I've been vegan.
And so I developed that recipe after reading a post on the Paleo Drummer who had blogged -- I don't know if he still writes but he had a great idea to throw a bunch of bacon and onions and herbs and garlic and kind of masked that flavor. So I went and I ran with it. I posted it on my website and I got a ton of feedback from people that say they can't eat liver any other way so it's kind of the intro to eating liver.
Christopher: Yes, it's a great recipe and I had that same response. We have so much in common. So I ended up in the hospital having iron put into me with an IV. That was expensive. You don't even know with some of these deductibles --
Mickey: I kind of avoid the infusions. I didn't have health insurance.
Christopher: Okay. I had like the very best PPO insurance that you can get and it still cost me an absolute fortune. It was unbelievable, like thousands of dollars to do that. And then the iron supplements just made me really ill. They gave me pretty bad diarrhea, just totally cleaned me out. If you've got any qualms about liver, they're not nearly as bad as either of those two alternatives.
Mickey: No, no! And that's something that I tell people even today. Like I don't love eating this, this isn't like candy to me. But I know that it's really good for me and so I go out of my way to make it at a certain interval every other week and I actually have the batch and freeze half of it so that I have it every week available but I don't actually have to be touching it and making it which is the hardest part for me. I don't really like handling raw liver, it's not something I enjoy doing. So break it up like that. But it is really a big part of my healing journey and so yeah, I encourage people to eat it.
Christopher: Yeah, it's awesome. And Ivy eats it all the time now, she loves it. I wonder if it's just one of those things that if you get introduced to the taste early enough then you're just never going to have like a weird aversion to it.
Mickey: I think so. Yeah, I think that's true. Because my husband grew up eating it and he can pan fry it and just eat it straight and I could not do that.
Christopher: Yeah, yeah. She eats the Pâté but we give it to her on like pears have been in season here, maybe not quite so much now, but yeah, she loves it. Like pear dunked in the Liver Pâté is kind of one of her favorite things.
So tell me about your experience helping other people. So you've gotten to the point where your own health is really well under control now and obviously you must be thinking who else is affected by this and the answer is probably about 20% of women in the US. They probably should all be eating this diet, right?
So what happened next? Was the cookbook the first thing that you thought of that would help these people?
Mickey: It was really interesting how it happened. Like I said before, I started changing my diet and my first thought was like "How could I have been so wrong?" How did I not know this really important information about food? How did I not know about fat-soluble vitamins and B12, and Zinc and get all these things that I need to know about but I just never knew.
And so I enrolled in the Nutritional Therapy Program partially because I was curious and I didn't want to make the same mistake that I had made just being vegan and really thinking that I was just doing the best thing for my body while ignoring everything that's true and right about nutrition. And it wasn't so much like a career change. I'd gone back to work as personal chef and I really enjoyed my work. I started my blog and I actually wrote my book as a community project for my Nutritional Therapy Program so at the end of the program you do like a community outreach project.
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And since I had been blogging and I was online in Facebook and member of a bunch of Hashimoto support groups, I wrote the book to answer the question of "How do I do this Elimination Diet?" because back then there were not 40 blogs talking about the Autoimmune Protocol, there were not four print books out there, there was nothing.
And Sarah Ballantyne's site had all the information on it and she was writing recipes, I was writing recipes, people were just really intimidated with how do I start, how do I do this? So I wrote the e-book and I gave it to my group for free as like my community project but then I put it for sale on my blog. I was really super overwhelmed by the response because I didn't know everyone and their mom was googling Celiac disease diet, Hashimoto's diet, Rheumatoid Arthritis diet and landing on my blog because I was one of the only people who was writing about it, one of the only people with a product out there about it. People were buying my book like crazy.
And so I just decided to make it a print book and that was a whole process. And I started practicing, doing nutritional consults with people so it just kind of transformed to cooking for a living to incorporating that into teaching people how to cook through my blog and my website, coming out with a better version of my book which is what the print book is, and just working with some people one-on-one helping guide them through their transition and process.
Christopher: Okay, that's awesome. And I'm so glad to hear that part of your success is through making money with a product. I think there are too many people out there -- I would say this because I'm doing it personally -- but if you want something to be successful, make money doing it. So people will take notice if you start making money and that's a really good way in the country that we live in for a message to be spread quite quickly. Most people don't know about this Elimination Diet and they sure as hell will if a bunch of people start making money using it so I really want that to happen.
So tell me, you've done some studying, how did you find something that was relevant? I'll give you an example. Julie has a Master's degree in Food Science but I think when she did the nutritional component, it was all food pyramid stuff, right? So it's like worse than useless in terms for what she's practicing now. Obviously there was biochemistry, physiology and stuff like that is very helpful to her now, how did you find something that was actually going to useful in practice?
Mickey: So it would be hard for me to go back for something like a Master's because I have a degree in Music for my undergraduate so it's kind of like…
Christopher: So I've got a degree in Computer Science, that's not useful.
Mickey: Yeah, yeah, that's not going to help.
So really because I was seeking information mostly for my own health and to better inform my blogging and my cooking, and I didn't really look at it as being a Nutritionist, I was open to the idea that some of these more unconventional programs. Like the Nutritional Therapy Association, they follow the Weston A. Price Foundation which is very similar to Paleo except they do like properly prepared legumes and properly prepared grains and some things like that.
But really the foundation of the nutrient density and digestion and focus was really what I wanted to learn about. It was just kind of the right fit. It was the right location, the right timing, the right price. I really enjoyed the curriculum and when I looked at their course outline and I looked at all the books that they were going to have us read, I have already read half of them.
Christopher: That's a good sign.
Mickey: Yeah! I knew that the interest kind of lined up and I know that there are few other programs that are really great now that people are going through to get their Nutrition certifications. I just think it's awesome because the world is just super sick and they need people with great ideas to help bring about change with food and everything. It's in a mess right now.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. Our link to this is called the Nutritional Therapy Association, right?
Mickey: Yup, yup!
Christopher: Okay. Yeah, I'll link to this because people ask me all the time, they go through one of our programs… so I'll tell you what our programs consist of. People come to us and we do some diet, lifestyle coaching. And then if they're already doing most of the things we suggest for those, then we recommend doing some lab work and then we interpret the labs and design protocols which quite often consists of supplements based on those results.
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But a really common path is that people come just feeling grotty and then they feel better and then they get really excited. They're like "Okay, so what do I need to do to be able to do this for other people?" So I'm always looking for courses and certification that are actually any good.
What we're doing at the moment which I think is totally awesome is Bryan Walsh. He has a course called Metabolic Fitness Pro. And so Bryan Walsh is a biochemist, a really talented one. He just stands up in front of a whiteboard and goes through huge sections of biochemistry and physiology with what looks like he's reading from an auto prompter but I'm absolutely certain he's not, like he's unbelievable.
Then the course, he's provided the whole thing in videos and then this multiple choice questions and stuff which for me is a fantastic way of making it all stick. There's definitely real aha moments, we talk about nutrient density. We just kind of like this phrase that semantically doesn't really seem to mean that much. We know we want it but we're not sure what that really means but when you understand the biochemistry, like you see how these different vitamins and minerals and other co-factors, these enzymes and stuff exactly where they come in and make a difference and you can see immediately how something which stopped working should you be lacking one of these nutrients. Suddenly you understand what nutrient density really means.
Mickey: That sounds extremely fascinating. I'll look that up after we are done talking, it's awesome.
Christopher: Yeah, it's a bit of a course and it's ridiculous, it's cheap. It's like $300 at the moment.
Mickey: Wow! That's why I love all these people that they really just want to share their knowledge and they're producing their content and format that people can afford and they can add it on to their learnings. That's awesome!
Christopher: I wanted to ask you, so you've been working with the Paleo Mom in her consultancy, right?
Mickey: Yeah. Yes, I work for her.
Christopher: Yeah, that's awesome. And then I wanted to know what it's been like trying to get compliance with the AIP diet. How successful would you say you've been?
Mickey: You know what's really interesting is I think I have the reverse problem that I actually assumed that I would have. I thought I would have a hard time getting people to be compliant but actually I find that more people are too compliant or that they've been doing AIP too long and that they have been hesitant to go in to their doctor and get further testing and look for some underlying causes.
And so that's actually the bulk of the people that I work with because people know me as the AIP person and they come to me having already done AIP and maybe they are not seeing success so they want some troubleshooting. And so what happens a lot of the time is I'm coaching them on how to ask their doctor for these lab tests. SIBO is a really big one. Other gut stuff is a really big reason why they might not be feeling better and so just trying to get that testing. And then in a lot of cases, just relaxing the restrictions and incorporating more foods and going the other direction, how to find the forever diet.
It's interesting because as a practitioner people know you for different things. And so if I was working with people off the street who are on a standard American diet, it will be a whole other ballgame trying to convince them to change. But I think because of who I am, I attract these people that are already pretty with it as far as the science and information and everything so they're not hard to convince.
Christopher: Right, that's interesting. And it's interesting you should say about the lab work as well because that was certainly my experience was the AIP diet was the foundation of the solution for me.
But at the same time, it got me thinking what I was going to be done and like you I got into the podcast and I just happened to pick up on someone, a Functional Medicine practitioner, and I just yeah, bring it, I'll do all these tests. And I did a ton of tests, like maybe five different tests, and I think I found some of the same things that you might have seen and then certainly I have found the same things that I see in all the people that we work with now. And the kind of the start of it all, you know that something's up when you've got super low cortisol and low DHEA and low testosterone and then for the women low progesterone and low estrogen. People use this phrase "adrenal fatigue" which I'm not sure about anymore but is that what you found, is that what you're seeing in the people that you work with?
Mickey: Yeah! So it is really all very complicated and there's a lot of testing out there. Like as a Nutritional Therapy practitioner, I'm really not qualified to be ordering and interpreting testing.
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And so with NTP I'm consulting, working for Sarah Ballantyne, we do have an acupuncturist who is a Functional Medicine trained practitioner. And so we will refer people to her for testing and if it's something that requires medicine treatment like SIBO is the biggest thing that I deal with where I can't do anything about it. I can't help them, I can't give them supplements like if I think they have SIBO, I really do think they have to be treated with antibiotics and they need a doctor for that.
So with most people, I'm referring them to their doctor. I'm telling them which test they want, I'm giving them information on test interpretation because most these doctors don't know how to interpret the test; they don't know how to treat it. But given the right information and given the right coaching on how to talk to their doctors, a lot of people can be successful in convincing them to give them the treatment that they want.
So I do a lot of that. And right now, for some reason, I think I've attracted a ton of people with SIBO and so that's the biggest thing I'm dealing with. But the adrenal issues are rampant.
Christopher: Yeah. I feel like it's a symptom more than anything else rather than a true underlying cause. But certainly yeah, the whole SIBO thing was something that I definitely had. And although I didn't do, my understanding is the gold standard for testing for SIBO is the hydrogen methane breath test but we've been using the Genova Diagnostics Organics profile.
Mickey: Yeah, so organic acids is a great way to test for it too. But most people I come across, I have them try Low FODMAPs for a week. If they're like "Oh, my gosh, that was a miracle. I had no symptoms and then I started eating onions again and I was a balloon." I've actually haven't had any people who have then gone on and had testing through their doctor and not had SIBO.
So I've become fairly confident based on inquiring with people about their symptoms that if they go to a doctor, it's a good way to ask for the test and then they can get treatment from the doctor. Because otherwise if they get the test and then they take that to the doctor, then the doctor's kind of like "Oh, what are you doing ordering these organic acids?" like most doctors don't know what to do with that test. Most doctors are like "This is gibberish and I don't understand how this means that you have an overgrowth." So the lactulose test really it makes sense to them and they're most likely to prescribe the treatment for that.
I've actually had a lot of people come to me who've already done the organics acids test maybe on their own or with another practitioner or something and so that's always really useful information.
Christopher: Yeah, definitely. And my experience with my doctor was utterly, utterly useless and there's no way they would have ordered a test that they didn't know how to interpret and that's probably actually quite good conduct for them. It doesn't make any sense to them to order a test they don't know how to interpret.
The other thing you've got to watch out for, I heard about the other day, is we do a lot of stool testing as well and Genova has this fancy new 2200 series test which they use this technology called PCR DNA Analysis. It's like the technology forensic scientists use and they are able to identify bacteria down to the species level now. I'm not exactly sure how useful that is right now but I think it could be extremely useful in the future.
So someone we know went to the doctor and got them to order this test. They ended up billing their insurance for $2600. It's like their insurance company they pay for like $1000 or something but ended up with a bill. So you can order this test through us for like $370 and I'll interpret it also.
Mickey: That's crazy!
Christopher: I know! So it's like the insurance sometimes is kind of, people think that they should be able to save money by ordering these tests but actually it could end up significantly worse.
Did you ever do any of that thing? Because that was an important part for me. I had like weird amoeba thing and then also a pinworm that was actually pretty easy to get rid of.
Mickey: Yeah, I had that too. And I was like, "What is the natural treatment for this?" and my doctor was like "Just take…"
Christopher: Yes. So we sell a bunch of botanical herbs. Depending on which bug you find on the results of the stool test, we can get rid of it with herbs for most of them but the worms, no. it's so easy as well --
Mickey: Two doses, yeah.
Christopher: Exactly, it's like two teeny tablets.
Mickey: Yeah, it was done.
[0:39:50]
Yeah! I did the METAMETRIX, the GI effects panel. And what's really interesting, so I did all these testing when I was first diagnosed. I was not using a Functional practitioner, I didn't have insurance. I had a couple hospital visits where they did a CAT scan of my chest because I have a genetic clotting disorder so they thought that maybe like I had pleurisy which is inflammation of the lining of the lungs and it was very, very painful and they thought that maybe I had developed a blood clot in my lungs. I had an MRI.
I ended up paying for all of that out of pocket which was kind of insane. So when I actually found all of these Functional information and these tests, like the Genova test is like $380, so I ordered it for myself online. I came up with H. pylori, overgrowth of bacteria, parasites. I was kind of mad when I found it because I'm like "Why didn't I do this sooner?" I got treated for all of them. The only conventional treatment I did was for the parasite and everything else I used botanicals and it really changed a lot for me so I'm a big fan of that.
Christopher: Yeah, I mean I had exactly the same experience. I was so outraged by it, I got together with a medical doctor and started a new practice and that's what we do now. I'm starting to wonder whether everyone, like if you've gotten to a point where you know that the Autoimmune Protocol is helping you, I'm just wondering whether everybody…
Because these parasites, it's not like you got unlucky. Like I've done a ton of kiteboarding and I've been to Thailand and I've done quite a lot of traveling. So I've had loads of opportunity to pick up all kinds of weird and exotic things I'm sure but it's not about that. It's not about you got lucky and you got contaminated, it's not like stepping on a nail or something like that. It's the fact that you were run down, you were over stressed, your gut was a mess your immune system was compromised and that made you a fantastic host for whatever it was that was at your local salad bar.
I'm wondering whether everybody should be doing these tests now, because certainly the stool test in particular, we're seeing like six or seven of them come back with something like H. pylori or Cryptosporidium parvum or something.
Mickey: Yeah, I think you're totally right. I think it's something about the environment of your body and an unhealthy body is just very hospitable to these things. With autoimmune and everything, they love to grow inside of us which is kind of gross.
But I think healthy people are less susceptible to that. I recently moved and so I'm working with a new doctor. She's an MD but she has Functional training. It was really interesting, my first appointment with her because I told her "I'm on Autoimmune Protocol" and she says "Oh, I'm also following that diet. I have Hashimoto's too." And I said, "Oh! Well, I wrote the book" and she's like "Oh, the Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook?"
So it was this crazy experience where my doctor actually knows about AIP and does it herself and so that was really cool. But what I really wanted to tell you was I've always wanted to be tested for SIBO because working with people, it's like most people have it and so I'm like "How can I not have it?" I've never tested myself for it. And so I asked her my last appointment and she was like "If you don't have symptoms and you don't think you have it, you've been doing this healing diet for so long. That kind of an issue isn't going to be flaring up in your body where you're at right now. Maybe where you were like a few years ago, if we would have tested we might have found it but I'm sure if you had it, it has worked itself out."
So part of me is really grateful for that kind of advice too because it is really tempting to do every single test you can possibly do and try to find out everything you can about your body. It is important to step back and go "I actually am having regular bowel movements and I don't get bloated when I eat and I tolerate a wide variety of foods and I feel great for the most part. So why should I suspect that something's wrong?" I think that anxiety comes from working with clients and just seeing what you uncover for other people and feeling more unsure about your own stuff.
Christopher: Yeah, I would agree with that. And there's definitely a theme running here which is you did something and you got good results of it and of course you want more of the same.
Mickey: Yeah, yeah! It's like okay, if I could find something else out… that's kind of how I feel about the methylation for a lot of people. This thing they find out about but there's not really a lot to do about it. For some people you can do something but it's not very easy, I guess, to get a result from that information. And so yeah, it can be kind of a rabbit trail.
[0:45:00]
Christopher: Oh, yeah for sure. I think it's like I can't decide which is more useful -- going to Prometheus and examining your genetic data or avoiding the stress by not going there and just like spending that time doing something useful. It's really not clear to me which is.
But I've kind of been sucked in for another reason which is athletic performance. So we talked about the biochemistry and how important all those different vitamins and minerals and co-factors are for the cellular metabolism to happen as well as it possibly could. And of course, when you look in to win a bike race, at the tiniest, tiniest level that's really what you're trying to achieve and so botanic acids in particular have been really good for me.
Mickey: Yeah! What's really interesting, there's an amazing parallel and I realized this when I was studying my Nutritional Therapy program what the diet and nutrition for someone healing with chronic illness is very similar to someone who's trying to maximize athletic performance. There's a lot of parallels there.
I don't know if you know this about me, I don't know how you would, but my husband races Cyclocross. He races bikes. And so that's kind of part of what we were dealing with when I was changing my diet, he was trying to increase performance and of course his performance went off the charts when we started eating different. But it was really interesting to kind of be working together towards a dietary goal but me, I was getting healthy and him was like becoming stronger and faster.
Christopher: Yes, it's true. Like when you look at the needs of the chronically ill and the high-performance athlete, they're both trying to achieve the same thing which is produce more energy.
Mickey: Yeah, super nutrition. You're looking for more nutrients and more building blocks so it's really cool to look at it that way.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely, and we've been getting great results! Like some of the people that come to us, they're not looking for a cure for some serious autoimmune disease. They're just looking for the extra 5% or 10% in their performance that's going to allow them to win that race which the testing can be great for that.
So I guess my final and probably biggest question is the Autoimmune Protocol, is it forever? Do I need to keep eating it forever?
Mickey: Yes. So the answer is probably not. In my experience there have only been a few people that I've heard of or that I've worked with that can't tolerate any foods beyond the Elimination Diet. So most people, when they do the Elimination Diet, they'll try to reintroduce foods. Those foods may or may not work but over time you can usually expand and I think people should expect to be able to tolerate foods better over time.
If I use myself as an example, when I first started I did the Elimination Diet for a few months before I started reintroducing nuts and seeds. That went fine. And then I tried to reintroduce eggs, it was totally not good and I stopped trying to reintroduce anything because my reintroduction went so bad. I waited another nine months which is kind of a long time but I just ate AIP with nuts and seeds and I was happy because I was making progress. When I reintroduced eggs a second time, they were fine. And then I tried to reintroduce things like white rice, it was totally okay. And then recently, this is about three years from the original Elimination Diet, I've been able to tolerate some nightshades which I thought that forever, those would be out.
And I think that for people that have been doing this long term, I have a small community of women -- Sarah's one of them, my friend Angie Alt from Alternative Autoimmune -- we all talk about our struggles. We're really eating a lot of foods that we really didn't think that we would ever be incorporating on a regular basis back into our diet and these are nutrient-dense foods. Like eggs are not something that you really want to avoid for the rest of your life especially for someone whose allergic to dairy like me, I need K2, where else am I going to get that? Egg yolks are a great way for me to get it, fermented foods but if I can't eat eggs, I don't want to be restricted for too long.
So for people out there that are thinking like "Oh, this is so restricted. I don't know if I can do this forever" -- it's not forever. You do it for a little while and if it doesn't work, get help from someone who can guide you look for some underlying issues. If it works like magic, then awesome! Use that information to inform a better lifestyle and better food choices that will keep you on that healing path. So that's what I have to say about that.
[0:49:52]
Christopher: Yeah, I have the same experience. I find that it varies as well, like you have to understand that the diet is not the only variable in this equation. And so for me as a bike racer, like if I go do a bike race, then I need to be pretty strict on AIP afterwards otherwise my digestion is going to completely fall apart. Whereas Christmas day, where maybe I've not been on the bike very much then sure, I can have some of these foods which are definitely not AIP so you kind of have to look out for that.
Mickey: Yeah! Just like our thought, like our emotional state, our stress level, the quality and quantity of sleep -- all of these things can affect our gut as much as food can. I've actually had a client who has symptoms, horrible, horrible symptoms unless she's on vacation.
Christopher: Okay, yeah. That makes perfect sense though.
Mickey: Yeah. It's the only time she has relief from her symptoms. I felt really bad but I was like "We can continue working together but at some point, you just have to make the connection between your work and your stress and everything." Doing everything perfectly with food can only go so far.
Christopher: Of course. I think the other thing you've got to watch out for with reintroducing things is certainly with Julie, she wasn't sensitive to nightshades before but we're pretty sure that she is now. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that she's not been eating them for like maybe a couple of years. I wonder if you eliminate everything and that's the right thing to do, you eliminate everything that could be suspicious, that way you create a clean slate and you start to heal.
But if you weren't sensitive to something and you eliminated it for a year or more, then I wonder if there's a chance that you could then become sensitive to it if you just reintroduce it like that. I'm not really sure about that.
Mickey: I think like anecdotally I've heard the same thing and I've definitely experienced that with my husband who is a very healthy person and doesn't have any health problems. Same story. He wasn't eating nightshades because of me and then he started eating some and he actually tolerates them less than I do. He gets joint pain from them now. He doesn't have an autoimmune disease.
But I think in the case particularly with those foods, there is a substance in nightshade. It's pretty well documented that it's harmful for a lot of people, like they use it as adjuvant in vaccines to get the product into the immune system. So it really is known for causing like that leaky gut.
It's kind of the same story with gluten. Some people may be technically can tolerate it but for everyone it's just probably not the most optimal food. And so I kind of put some nightshades in that category.
Christopher: Yeah, I know. That sounds like a really great advice.
So the book's been out in hardback form for a few months now which is awesome. I'm not a big fan of cooking in front of a laptop but… you've got some events coming up right so you're going to be doing some book signings?
Mickey: Yeah. So the book's coming out in stores January 6 which is probably going to be before you put the podcast out but I'll be traveling all over California, Oregon, and Washington and I might even make it up to Vancouver on my first run. And then I plan on driving from Oregon to Paleo f(x) in Austin so I'm going to do some Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas run in April. And then I maybe will do East Coast after that, we'll see.
Christopher: Whatever you do, look after yourself. That sounds kind of hectic. I don't want to name any names but it seems like a few people of the Victory Belt Publishing, I'm not sure if your book's are Victory Belt but --
Mickey: I self-publish.
Christopher: It just seems a lot of those people are working too hard in books which I'm greatly appreciative of but then they fall apart themselves and I'm not sure that's the right thing to do.
Mickey: I totally have something to say about that. I really don't think that we need to compromise our health to provide these products and to make these books. I'm not really talking bad about anyone because I know everyone's doing the best they can.
But I didn't work with a publisher, I self-published and it took me a lot longer to get my books in stores. If I had pitched it to a publisher right off the bat I think things would have been different but I think my stress level would have been really high. And in various points throughout the process, I did have the opportunity to work with publishers that would have taken over. But then I would have deadlines and other people telling me what to do and I just want that stress.
For me, that doesn't have to be the story for every author. And for me, writing a book was an incredible experience, it was not something that destroyed my health. It was something that I felt really enriched and really grateful to have the opportunity to share that with people.
[0:55:02]
As far as the traveling, I'm driving because I really have a hard time with plane travel. I have a hard time not really having like my tools and my setup so part of what we're doing -- my husband is going with me -- for the first tour is going to be six weeks. We used to live in California so we're driving down the coast and staying with a bunch of people. We're going to be camping, we're going to be hiking so we're kind of using it as an opportunity to catch up with people we love, stay with people, stay with family, do some trips and stay active and also do these events which can be kind of stressful. Maybe I'll let you know when I'm in the other side.
Christopher: You should. We're in Santa Cruz here so if you need someone to stay, we've got tons of room here. That would be great to have you to say thanks for everything you've given to us. Because it's not just been my health that you've helped restore, it's the health of many other people through our practice.
Mickey: Thanks!
Christopher: That's really great to hear. I'm glad that you're not going to be spending the first part of the year in hotel rooms and airport lounges.
Mickey: No. And part of what I want to do is like through Instagram, I love the community on there and I love sharing kind of how I hack it, how I hack being on the road. I love traveling, I love road trips and that's something I haven't been able to do very much of since I got sick. It's something I want to do more of this year so we'll see how it goes.
Christopher: Excellent. So what's the best way to find you? If I just Google your name I'll find the website?
Mickey: Yeah. It's autoimmune-paleo.com. I'm also on Instagram like I just said. My handle is @mickeytrescott and I've got an email list which is probably the best way to keep up with all my tour dates and what I'm up to and I send that out once a week. And if you sign up I have a free two-week meal plan and recipes and everything's free on the site.
Part of my philosophy of what I do, like obviously I have a book that I would love people to buy but I want to make all the information free on my website that don't have the money and just want to get started, it's all there. There's no excuse to not get started.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely, that's what I do to. I point people at the resources and say, "Look, if this is helpful for you then you should buy this person's book." I'm pretty sure people almost do so I like that strategy a lot.
Excellent! Thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a great pleasure.
Mickey: Yeah! Thank you so much for having me, Chris. It's awesome.
Christopher: Cheers, then. Bye-bye.
Mickey: Bye!
[0:57:42] End of Audio
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