Recovering from Multiple Sclerosis – MS.
From the best she can tell, Natalie Shultz has been sharing the real estate in her head with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) since the year 1999 right after the birth of her second child.
That is the earliest memory she can pinpoint her symptoms. She was in and out of doctor’s offices over the next several years trying to figure out what was going on. She had been given antidepressants, anxiety drugs, told to exercise, told she had IBS, sent to the eye doctor, sent to the dentist, CT scans….and so on.
A difficult road to Multiple Sclerosis Recovery
So, she stopped going to doctors, she felt like she was getting nowhere and fast. As her former life began to crumble and enormous amounts of pressure and stress built within her body, she began to have more and more trouble that started to affect her daily living.
Natalie of course was too stubborn and tainted from her last experiences with doctors, and excused every episode away.
She focused on rebuilding her life and doing things her way with no excuses, no regrets.
To find out more about Natalie visit the following links.
http://www.mssavedmylife.com
http://www.healthyhumanlife.com
For more interviews about multiple sclerosis check out the interview with Paralympic Gold Medallist Carol Cooke.
Transcription:
Intro 0:04
The transit lounge podcast moving you through life’s transit lounge and helping you go from where you are to where you’d rather be.
Bill 0:14
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Recovery After Stroke podcast for another amazing chat with my latest guests. Just before I begin the interview, I wanted to share a little bit about what I have been doing of late. After my own health scares recently, one of my goals became to help as many other people as I can to recover from traumatic brain injuries or acquired brain injuries and support their loved ones who do it really tough when caring for people that have lost many functions that we will take for granted. around three years ago.
Bill 0:49
I put it out there that I wanted to set up a charity to do exactly that. But never got it off the ground as I kept ending up in hospital myself. Recently, a car made me aware of a charity just emerging called brain injury Vick Foundation, which has already been established and does everything I hope to do in my own charity. So why reinvent the wheel?
Bill 1:13
At the beginning of the week I became a board member and now look forward to working with the team to support patients, carers, and researchers to help in the prevention and recovery from traumatic brain injury and acquired brain injury. For more about the foundation, go to bifvic.org.au that’s bifvic.org.au. And now on with the show.
Bill 1:43
Good day everyone. Welcome to another episode of Recovery After Stroke podcast. Today with me I have Natalie from MS saved my life after her diagnosis of MS in July 2014. The mother has three focused on building her life her way with no excuses. Sometime later, Natalie had great success in achieving better health after discovering Dr. Terry Wall’s Protocol.
Bill 2:15
Natalie is the co-founder of two health-based companies, healthy humans and culinary health, and is the founder of the Facebook site. Ms saved my life, which has more than 5000 followers, of which I am one. Today she is stronger than she has been in years tech zero medications and believes in positive thoughts. Welcome to the program, Natalie.
Natalie 2:41
Thank you, Bill. I appreciate it.
Bill 2:44
Wow, it’s such a pleasure to have the opportunity to chat with you. I really appreciate you making the time. I know you’re a busy person, a mom of three teenagers that that says enough.
Natalie 2:57
It’s true. Very true.
Bill 3:01
I’m over here in all the way over here in Australia. And recently, I became interested as well in all things, brain health, amongst other things. And one of the reasons was because I had my own health challenges around my brain and the function of the brain and the way that I was dealing with some three brain hemorrhages and the recovery of that, and I did a lot of things that you did.
Bill 3:32
And I found your story very inspiring. And I think it’s gonna be a story that is really helpful to others. And I think that’s basically what your life is about now finding ways to get to others and help others. How does that sound right?
Natalie 3:49
Yeah, yeah. When I first was diagnosed, my goal was not to share it with the world. That wasn’t my first thought by all means. It certainly is what I have been doing. Since about a week after my diagnosis, I did start my Facebook page pretty soon after. It was more as it started out kind of as a checkpoint for myself.
Natalie 4:13
And it really then became I felt so much bigger than me as I just started organically growing as I was sharing what I was doing daily, and I thought, you know, this is a lot bigger than me. So whenever I get tired, or I don’t want to post what I ate that day, or I’ve, you know, I’m just tired, quite frankly, I just always think you know, there’s a lot of people out there that are probably waiting to see what I ate and it’s soup. You know, if I don’t post something, I do hear about it. Just me.
Bill 4:43
Hey, what did you eat today? Why didn’t you tell? So we’re waiting for you to tell us we haven’t ate and as a result of you not telling us?
Natalie 4:49
Right, right and Will you please hurry up and write that recipe? Sure, hold on. I’ve got a couple extra five hours today. But I love it. I mean, I do. I love doing it. I wouldn’t do it if I did. I don’t do anything I don’t love doing today. I can tell you that.
Bill 5:04
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I understand as well. You did what I did at the beginning, you jumped on Google, how amazing is Google these days for being able to give people some, some control and some of their own sort of ability to look after themselves? How amazing was that tool for you?
Natalie 5:25
It was, it was absolutely amazing. I agree. I certainly wasn’t going to lean on the crutch of any, any doctor is all I knew I had heard enough about the drugs pretty quickly and started looking at the side effects and knew just because I’m a health-based person.
Natalie 5:43
Anyway, to start with, I knew that I could heal myself, or at least it had to start with food and I wasn’t and I’m still today, I would never say I’ll never do a drug. You know if I think something could help me, I absolutely would. But so far I’ve been able to 100% manage it through food. And so for me, drugs just aren’t even ever in my thoughts.
Bill 6:07
Yeah, I get similar conversations with people. And everyone says to me, you know, well, if you know what, what doctors are doing so bad, why do you go to a doctor for surgery? And why do you go to doctor for diagnosis and the rest of it? And basically, I tell them because they’re really good at diagnosing and telling me what’s wrong.
Bill 6:26
They’re really good at surgery and opening my brain and repairing my brain. But they’re not really good at telling me what to wait once I’ve gone home after the surgery when I can’t walk or talk or move properly. So So, so how does that sound? That sounds something like the conversations that you have.
Natalie 6:48
Absolutely. I have these conversations all the time, practically daily with somebody. There’s a big gap from where doctors were, I believe they began to where they were prevented. To where they are now to where they just treat. I wanted to not only prevent or diseases in my body, I wanted to reverse them. It didn’t want to treat them because I needed to find out well, what causes this?
Natalie 7:14
If I don’t know what caused this, there’s no way I can heal it. So once I begin to understood what had caused it, and not that I necessarily am 100% ever going to be sure of that. But I do believe it stemmed from food. I do believe most diseases stem from our food supply. You know, and, and so yes, I hope that answers your question.
Bill 7:36
Yeah, no, that’s a lovely answer. It does. Curiously. Tell me about your thoughts about using immunosuppressant drugs to deal with a disease that attacks your immune system. Tell me what your thoughts are on that. I have my own thoughts about how we give how doctors prescribe drugs. suppress an immune system full stop, when and the whole purpose of the immune system is to help, repair, recover and get us better. Tell me about your thoughts on that. Right?
Natalie 8:13
And I’ll tell you, I don’t spend a lot of time researching drugs. I know. A lot of people can rattle off every single drug they’ve ever taken or is out there on the market. I do not spend my time or my days reading about the drugs or you know, initially I did what are the most common what was recommended to me, what are the side effects?
Natalie 8:34
I knew this being an autoimmune disease. I was not about to suppress my immune system, any more than it already was compromised. To me it seemed counterintuitive. I said, I need to, I need to help myself not not suppress it. So I knew it just wasn’t it. It just didn’t make sense to me. That’s all I knew. I was like, This doesn’t make sense.
Natalie 8:55
And so I just kept searching. I kept googling right you keep looking and looking until you finally find Something that makes sense. And when I found Dr. Terry walls, it made sense because here’s a doctor, she’s been trained, she understands the medical side, and she can speak to it. And quite frankly, her book is, I mean, amazing in every aspect.
Natalie 9:14
But it’s, it’s so deep in the medical side. That is it was really hard to digest the information. And I was pretty educated in the health food world because of my careers. And so I thought, you know, this is what people need to be hearing from doctors, this is what they need to be hearing.
Natalie 9:33
This needs to be the noise, not the noise about the medicines and what drugs you should be on. This is what everybody should be doing, whether you’ve been diagnosed, you haven’t been diagnosed, it’s for everybody. And so her book really is all encompassing as it is it’s very hard to digest and and to be able to implement it.
Natalie 9:53
And so I felt, I’m going to put this out there, what she’s done, and I’m going to show how I’m interpreting it. That’s what I do today is I take what she’s done, and I interpret it through and make it, I guess more digestible my daily bytes. And and I do believe it’s helping a lot of people. I hope it is.
Bill 10:13
Yeah, it sounds like it is. That’s what I’m hearing as well. So the reading that I’m doing, and the forums that I’ve come across and the work that I’ve been doing, it’s also helped myself. I’m not on a protocol per se, but it’s something that’s based on what Terry was discusses, and a lot of other people discuss these days with regards to health and what we should be eating and like you I’ve made my own version of what we should be eating,
Bill 10:40
Because it’s easier for me than doing somebody that some something that somebody else is doing. Just because, you know, I don’t like all the foods that are recommended by a particular nutritionist or a doctor or whoever it is, you know.
Bill 10:55
So when I’ve had a lot of benefits as well from changing my diet and And really the challenge now is to sort of spread the message for me as well to others about how important diet is, and what are some of the things that they should stop eating.
Bill 11:12
So just briefly, what are some of the things that you’ve discovered that we shouldn’t be consuming through all the work that you’ve been doing and the research and also how you’ve been feeling? Right?
Natalie 11:27
I can tell you when I changed my lifestyle as far as eating just whole real food, within three days and reading the entire book, I started my whole new foot food protocol for myself. I call it a lifestyle. I don’t call it a diet, everyone’s on a diet, right, but it has a bad connotation, you know, makes you think, Oh, I, I’m not gonna be able to have that.
Natalie 11:48
You know, if I’m on a diet, I’m restricted Well, I never think of it as restricted. I make a choice every day to eat the things that I eat because it does make me feel good within three days of changing my diet. I started feeling so much better energy started to come back. I was I was for a month before my diagnosis I was in bed, unable to walk, unable to talk.
Natalie 12:10
I mean, it’s just gone downhill so fast. So when I changed my diet within three days, I’m walking. I’m pretty steady on my feet. You know, my energy completely coming back, I start to look different. My husband noticed He’s like, wow, you’re starting to look like your old self again. You kind of just you lose yourself when you don’t feel like yourself.
Natalie 12:32
But I focus mainly on what I can eat. So when people I get asked that a lot, I get emailed a lot. Well, what Shouldn’t I eat? Well, I focused on what I could eat because I found it much easier to do that every day. What can I eat? Well, it started with real whole food.
Natalie 12:50
And I literally made a list. I’m gonna look at it on my phone right now because I don’t think I’ll ever erase it. It was the first thing I did. And I wrote a little list of everything I was going to eat every Every day, and I’ll read it to you and I, this is still what I go buy two cups of greens, one cup of sulfur, one cup of color, one cup of berries, six to 12 ounces of meat and you bury that daily, one cup of coke, full fat coconut milk, fermented foods, and up to a handful of raw nuts.
Natalie 13:21
So these are the things that I can eat every day. And that that encompasses a lot of food right there. Yeah. So when you say What don’t I eat? I don’t I choose not to eat dairy. It causes me inflammation. I didn’t know this. I love cheese. I’m a cheese freak. I’m Italian I grew up on and I’m like, that was the hardest thing that bread. I mean, I would dip bread and oil and vinegar every night. You know?
Bill 13:50
Wow. That was a typo. That was my staple. Oh my god. I’m a Greek background. And we grew up on bread, olive oil, cheese and tomato. Everything on bread just as much stuff on bread as possible.
Natalie 14:04
Absolutely. So so I thought okay, no bread, no cheese. Let’s see what else do I not and then the whole of gums and the greens like greens, okay besides being in my bread. I wasn’t wasn’t too worried about that the main thing that will lose the cheese, the cheese and the defeat of the bread.
Natalie 14:24
Those are the two main things. I did not miss cheese. It was more of a habit that I was eating the cheese more than the actual cheese. I notice so I never crave cheese. I never do bread. I still crave a bite of crusty bread now and again. I mean, it’s just it’s part of who I am. I love it. But do I eat it much?
Natalie 14:45
No, I will. I’ll tell you the last time I ate it. I posted a picture with a Christmas and we had gone out to dinner and I treated myself with a small piece of homemade crusty bread hadn’t eaten any in a year and a half in my belly blue out in Italy. Like I had I was pregnant.
Bill 15:02
Wow,
Natalie 15:03
And it hurt it for three days and I had to do fermented foods and drink a lot of water and flush my system. And I got right back to normal. But I thought, you know what, that’s inflammation. And that’s I just poisoned myself. And so I have not craved bread since then.
Bill 15:16
And that’s the thing. This is the challenge about people getting frustrated with a gluten free supposedly fed and the weight free fat and all that kind of stuff is actually toxic to some people. And what I’m reading from a lot of doctors out there is that not only is it toxic to some people who actually have responses in the gut, and you notice it in the gut.
Bill 15:37
There’s a lot of people having responses in the brain but because our brain doesn’t have pain receptors, we may not be aware that what we’ve just stayed in, whether it’s grain, dairy, or whatever it is, has actually caused inflammation in the brain.
Bill 15:55
And that’s what a lot of people recovering from stroke, MS and other brain Challenges are trying to recover from they’re trying to decrease the inflammation in the brain and recover the brain’s ability to operate properly.
Natalie 16:12
And now when I eat things that I typically do not choose to eat, I can or if I go out to dinner and somebody has used oil in a food that I was not aware of, I can feel it in my brain immediately. I can feel the inflammation in my neck. It sometimes it just depends on the area for what the food item is.
Natalie 16:33
It can affect it affects my vision immediately. It’s it’s the neck is really bad for me. I have a lot of lesions in that back area, but I could I could tell exactly when I eat something within 15 minutes.
Bill 16:47
Wow. That’s really amazing. That’s great that you’re aware of that. Now. What I’m curious to know is use you say that your first recollection of having symptoms go back all the way to 1999. So, knowing what you know, now, were the things that you weren’t paying attention to. All the way back to 1999, nearly 15 years before you were diagnosed.
Natalie 17:14
They were things that I was aware of, I’ve always been a person who didn’t take a lot of medicines, I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve been on an antibiotic in my life. I’ve always treated things very natural believed in movement. And so I was very attuned to when my volume was off. I mean, if I got a headache, I wanted to know why this is this is odd behavior.
Natalie 17:35
Why do I have a headache? So I started noticing things after the birth of my second child from emotional to just, there’s so many different you know, I could I would have to read my list off to you of all the different things that happened to me but I, I did start noticing them and I was making notes within my head.
Natalie 17:53
But there wasn’t any one time in there that I could go to the doctor and say, here’s all the stuff help me figure out what this is until 2014 when I had let it go so far, where I was unable to walk and talk for a month, I probably should have gone a little sooner. But my husband, he was mad. He was like, Why? You know, he wanted to take me a good four or five weeks before and I kept letting it run.
Natalie 18:17
But the good thing about it, and I really am thankful so many people I hear don’t get diagnosed immediately, and they go back and they go back and they go back and they get misdiagnosed. I was fortunate. I never went I never had all these tests. I never got misdiagnosed. I literally went one time.
Natalie 18:35
They saw it. They knew exactly what it was. And it is pretty short and painful. Quite honestly. painless. painless. Yeah. I was glad to know what it was.
Bill 18:45
Yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty good. Actually. Most people like you said they keep going back. They get sick of the doctors, they get sick of going on the merry go round of going through this specialist and that specialist and all that and I feel like that is you know Far more detrimental to somebody’s well being mental health and all that type of thing,
Bill 19:05
Then the actual diagnosis sometimes and there’s there’s a bit of power in knowing what you now have to deal with because now I can start looking at what I can do to deal with that. And that’s, and that’s excellent.
Bill 19:20
That’s excellent that you were diagnosed so quickly. You I love the way that you talk about Ms. And your diagnosis, though this is what really got me interested in getting to interview you was that you you talk about things like Ms is sharing the real estate in your head.
Bill 19:40
And Ms saved my life. They are two completely different things than what I would expect most people to talk like when, when they’re facing a diagnosis like Ms. Tell me about your mindset. Tell me about how it is that you come to talk about it like that.
Natalie 19:58
Sure. Well, it’s A little secret when I first started my Facebook site. I called it my ms battle. And that lasted only about a week because I very quickly realized, you know what Ms. Absolutely is saving my life because I knew what I was doing.
Natalie 20:16
After changing my lifestyle and what I was putting in my body and helping reverse and how I was feeling, and then seeing the effects trickle down to my family. I thought this is absolutely saving my life. And thank goodness, it happened to me, because if it had not, I would still be doing what I was doing before, which clearly wasn’t working well.
Natalie 20:37
So as I was looking around for I didn’t really want to go to a ms support group necessarily because I didn’t want to go talk about drugs. I didn’t want to talk about all of my symptoms. I didn’t want to I didn’t want to boohoo about it. I knew that because that’s just me. I just I needed to be in a positive way about it. It was how I was dealing with it.
Natalie 20:57
So when I started my site, it was based on That that whole premise, that whole positive premise, let’s share about what we’re doing today to be better, even if it’s just one thing. You know what? Today I did x. And that’s what I did today to be better, great. Some days I do 10 things to be better. Some days, I don’t get one thing done to be better.
Natalie 21:19
And I like well, tomorrow’s another day. But it’s when I surround myself with positive and positive people. And I think about this as a good thing in my life because of how it’s making me make better choices. You can’t help but believe that it’s a positive thing. You know, I mean, my family members have watched me over the years now.
Natalie 21:42
And every single one of them from my mom, my dad, my step parents, my brother’s friends, of course, my immediate family, my kids and my husband, they all eat this way now, and of course, they’re out there talking about it, and now their friends are eating this way. So it’s just amazing how many lives It touches. So even one person so you you’re you’re on my site, you might see one thing and go, Oh, that’s really good.
Natalie 22:06
And maybe you go share it with somebody that it just keeps going. And it’s amazing when you think about it like that. So instead of talking about, oh, you know, I feel like crud today, and I’m so tired, and I have a headache, and not that I don’t ever have bad days.
Natalie 22:20
And I will post about that sometime. It’s just to make sure people understand that I’m real. But to be honest, if I’m eating correctly, which I do, I would say 98% of the time, I’m pretty vigilant about it, because my life is so busy. If I don’t, I cannot function at top level. So to me the reward of the effort to eat the right things is huge.
Bill 22:45
Yeah. Yeah, the reward. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about how how you reward not only your body, but also your mental state about and when you say things, the way that you say them and when you do the things That you do has a physiological response in your whole body right?
Bill 23:05
And you notice it everywhere so when you say something that’s not Well, that doesn’t support well well being and good feelings etc you actually also notice that in your body and I imagined that what you do is focus on keeping your energy levels high and I’m not talking about being up and being able to run around for longer, but just feeling more more energetic longer.
Natalie 23:31
Yes, I you know what I concentrate on and I and I’m, I used to run around like a chicken with your head cut off. I mean, I had more energy to do physical activity in a day. In the last few years before the diagnosis gnosis I started noticing it was it was fading off and Did you hear me slur because then as I get tired, I get tired at the end of the day, my words will start to slur and I lose words.
Natalie 23:56
I can’t come up with words. But in the morning if you talk to me, if you were Talk to me tomorrow morning. I would be much sharper sounding I would sound very different. So I’m very conscious of that, that you know, the Spoon Theory. You have so many spoons and I’m very aware of that every day. And if I use up all my spoons before my day is over, then oh, well, time you go to bed, recharge and try again tomorrow.
Bill 24:21
Yeah, it’s the best thing you can do for yourself. A lot of people don’t understand that I I’m looking quite well and I’m feeling pretty fantastically and I have days that drain my energy quicker than others. And most people because we appeal well have that perception that hey, you look like me, you must be fine. Let’s keep going.
Bill 24:41
Let’s keep doing and I I tend to crash and when I tend to crash, I have the same challenges around numbness on my left side and I start, you know, walking into doorways, or losing my balance or feeling a bit you know, feeling a bit dizzy or whatever it is. I lose sensation in my hand, my left side. And very often I’ll drop things.
Bill 25:06
So the glasses and the plates in the house, slightly decreasing. And, and it’s just part of one of those things that I’ve got to be aware of. So I avoid that as much as I can. And the other challenge that I have is we get some people when we go out for dinner or whatever, and I say, Come I have a little bit of wine have a little bit of wine.
Bill 25:26
I said, Why would I? Why would I have some wine when it’s gonna make me feel like I’m having another episode again. And I don’t want to feel that way. And I know I’m not having an episode. But that’s what it does to my brain. So I don’t want to feel that way. So I’m going to avoid it.
Bill 25:41
So I think these chats help raise awareness of the stuff that people go through whether they’ve had ms or a stroke or whatever. And, and that just because somebody looks fantastic on the outside, doesn’t mean that all these well.
Natalie 26:00
Right. And I and I don’t think I, you know, I feel I can tell I function very differently. I used to do a lot of public speaking I used to wear heels and suits every day and I do not anymore and I feel very much like myself, but not like myself if that makes sense.
Natalie 26:20
I can tell how much I’ve changed but people around me say no, no, you seem you seem okay. And I I’ll stumble in the store and I’m like, I’m sure people think I’ve had a drink or two and I’m not and that’s what I’ve tried to tell friends is they’re like, well, what’s it feel like? You know, to have a mess. I’m like, well minus having a full blown relapse pretty much 24 seven, I feel like I’ve had a glass or two of wine. Just kind of how your brain works.
Natalie 26:46
You’re just very you know, so so like you said when somebody says Come on, let’s let’s have a drink. It effects I’ve already started long before. One trick comes. Time to go home. Yeah.
Bill 27:00
They’ve got to catch up. And they’ve got to catch up. They’ve got to catch up. If you’ve already had two drinks, and they’re just starting out, well, then they’re nowhere near you. Right? Well, it’s been really amazing getting to know you and understanding a little bit about what it is that you’ve been doing what you’re going through, tell me a little bit about what the symptoms were, that you started noticing that towards, you know, that diagnosis that made it really serious that you had to do something about it.
Natalie 27:37
Like I had mentioned, I was I had started getting to the point where I wasn’t feeling so well. I was just tired. And I thought, you know what, I’ve been tired for two years, I was growing a business. So I thought, well, this is normal. I’m just tired. I have three kids and a husband. I’m tired.
Natalie 27:53
And I wasn’t resting like I probably should have because I had did not have the diagnosis. So as I’m pushing myself Through this, this weakness, it basically kicked my hiney. And I ended up what I thought was an inner ear infection started. And I kept just stumbling and dizzy and I would throw up when I would move. And it just got worse from there. I mean, I lost. I couldn’t.
Natalie 28:20
I mean, I couldn’t walk to the bath, I couldn’t walk at all. I started losing all of my speech. Everything I was craving to eat was the absolute opposite of what I eat today. So here I am, at the lowest point I’ve ever been in my life, and I’m craving the grossest things, and I’m eating them because I’m like, I had no idea.
Natalie 28:40
So I’m making myself sicker and sicker and sicker to the point where I lost. I mean, I couldn’t function at all. So my husband literally scooped me up one morning, as I’m just throwing up throwing up throwing out nothing that you know, and just couldn’t walk and he takes me in to the hospital.
Natalie 28:57
And I have to say that was absolutely the lowest lowest point than it got for me. I had did not tell him how sick I had been for the past year, he would go off to work, I would send everybody off to school. If I had to drive anybody, I would come right home.
Natalie 29:14
I would work from home for that whole year. I would just say I’m not coming. I’m not going to work in the office this year because we we were growing a business together. And I would literally go back to bed for an entire year. I would just lay in bed.
Natalie 29:26
I worked a little bit but I wasn’t working real hard because I couldn’t and and it led up to that huge episode. That huge relapse where I got my diagnosis, but, you know, a lot of my girlfriend’s go well, how How did you know? How did you know to go in and you?
Natalie 29:41
You know, it was 15 years of coming to this. You know, it was the crescendo was not being able to walk or talk? Yeah, but there were a lot of other things. I mean, I had numbness I was tripping. I had foot drop in my in my right foot really bad for the last year. I kept tripping My husband just thought I was being lazy and not picking my foot up.
Natalie 30:03
You know what I was I lost all sense of taste. And that went on for about two months. I had my bowels. I mean it was really I couldn’t make it to the bathroom half the time this is I thought what is going on? I am. I had tingling and numbness, numbness going down my face.
Natalie 30:26
My vision had gotten terribly just so terrible. I was living with constant what I thought were migraines. Just really bad. You know, I’d have to I’d almost have to look at my list. There were so many things, but those are the main ones that bothered me day to day.
Bill 30:44
Yeah. Wow. So what I’m curious about is what makes you wake up in the morning after year after year of having all these symptoms and avoid doing anything about them and ignoring them because I did something Similar so I took seven days to get to the hospital after I noticed numbness in my leg.
Bill 31:05
And as the numbness spread through my body, my wife was saying things like you’re walking funny, while you’re dragging your leg. I will tell her she’s crazy. And I leave me alone and then talk to me. I’m busy, I’ve got stuff to do. There’s nothing wrong with me, the chiropractor, I went to the chiropractor, because I thought I tweaked my back.
Bill 31:21
And I said to him, you know, sought me out of it to get back to work. I’ve got a really busy week, we have a property maintenance company. So you know, I’ve got to, you know, lift heavy stuff and be a real macho man and do all this kind of stuff. My chiropractor said, go to the hospital. Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with your back and need to go to the hospital.
Bill 31:37
And I said to him, No, I can’t go to the hospital. I’m too busy. What happens in your mind that makes you do all the things that you did to avoid people finding out that there’s something wrong with you? what’s the what’s the psychology of Ms. Like, this is what I really want to sort of understand.
Natalie 31:55
Well, I didn’t, I didn’t want to go to a doctor with just a few cents. For one, I didn’t know all these symptoms were related number one, so I would, I would have never gone to the doctor, I did not go to the doctor because I have a plate full of symptoms to take to him.
Natalie 32:10
They were they were presenting one at a time two at a time, until they all picked me on my hiney at one time, so once I once it did that I thought now I have something to take. Then I went into hiding while I researched what was going on with me. Then I told my very immediate family about a week later, which I think it affected them way more than it did me.
Natalie 32:36
Everybody was very upset, sad and scared and researching and wondering why I wasn’t going to take the drugs. My mom’s a registered nurse and she was very concerned. But we we were very steadfast my husband and I and what we knew was right as far as food.
Natalie 32:54
And so once I got past the whole hump of telling my family digging in the trenches and healing my body, you know, when I started that Facebook page, and I thought, you know what, I’m just gonna put it out there. And once I put it out there, and everybody found out my entire network of friends and family, I mean, it was amazing.
Natalie 33:16
It was amazing the support and curiosity quite frankly, that I got back. And I was happy to tell people because how many times have you heard of multiple sclerosis, but really didn’t know what the heck it was? Yeah. I had heard of it, of course, and I felt dumb at the doctor saying I really didn’t know what it was.
Bill 33:39
Yeah, so we have a lot of campaigns. We have one called the MS. readathon that we used to do. I’m 42 years old this year, and wish to do Ms. readathon when I was in primary in, you know, early school, and we used to read books, and if we read X amount of books, we raised a certain amount of money for the multiple sclerosis. It or somebody like that in Australia.
Bill 34:03
And I heard about Ms and continued to hear about Ms all the time, but we didn’t really know what it miss was and how it affected people. So we would never have been able to pick up the symptoms, if one of our loved ones was showing those kind of symptoms. Similarly, with stroke, everyone’s heard about stroke, but they expect that stroke happens to people that are older.
Bill 34:23
And when I presented with the symptoms of stroke, I didn’t know they were symptoms of stroke. And nobody else around me knew that I was symptoms of stroke because we never had anybody in our family that experienced a stroke. And it was kind of like, you know, it’s just numbness and it was so far away from just being numbness that we had the same challenges with our family.
Bill 34:48
My biggest challenge in hospital was keeping everyone else come because you know, we have the emotion, we emotional, you know, Mediterranean and Greek style response to everything. And seriously guys, you know, I do Just need everyone else to walk in the room and be normal because if you’re normal, then I don’t panic. Is that something similar to your experience?
Natalie 35:09
Absolutely, absolutely. And I literally, I avoid people who who are with me, I call them. I can’t do it. I just can’t do it and I won’t. I won’t let them around me because I don’t have the reserves to to handle it. So yes, I’m a fighter and I was at a meta training background and I can’t tell you anything but like,
Bill 35:34
Yeah. Do you have anyone in your family that does hyperventilating when they get bad news?
Natalie 35:41
No, you do.That would be horrible, you know that.
Bill 35:49
They start hyperventilating. And they make everyone else hyperventilate, but they come from a beautiful place, so I still love them and they’re still dear to me. I just don’t want to make My room when when I end up in hospital
Natalie 36:04
Well what am I? The thing is is I, I started, I never cried hardly growing up. I just was not like one of these little curly girls who cried a lot. My dad would always say, you know, I used to worry about you because you didn’t cry a lot. That was one of the things that changed.
Natalie 36:18
And then you can use an MS symptom I found out you know, Funny enough, is you cry easily. I started crying so and today, like anything can set me off and I can be in a work meeting and it’s something I cannot control it. And it’s awful. So I’ve learned to isolate myself and work circumstances where I do not put myself in situations where it may happen.
Natalie 36:39
Because there is zero control of that. Now I do do less of it today. So I’m sure the food is helping reverse that symptom. Thank goodness. That is not a comfortable situation. To feel like you can’t control you know, your emotions. And then yeah, the emotions and then the brain fog. It’s a hard that’s a hard symptom to describe to people how it feels.
Natalie 37:02
And that’s probably the one my family doesn’t understand the most. And how and I don’t drive on highways anymore. I only drive short distances, you know, around town. Because of how it feels to be inside of my brain.
Natalie 37:19
It is very, it’s a different space today. Yeah. I can think very cool. I mean, I, I run a company. I mean, I’m a co founder and president of healthy human and we let me tell you, I spend my my days using nothing but my brain. And,
Bill 37:36
Yeah, I love I love what you said about how it feels to be in your brain, it feels completely different to being in the version of the brain that you have now as opposed to the one that you had earlier. And, and and other people can’t get that they can’t get that because thankfully, their brain is still the same one that they’ve always had.
Bill 37:53
And this is the challenge that I also face because my left side feels like it belongs to somebody else. And somehow they had attached to me, and I have these two very different parts of myself trying to do the same things, and I get different feedback at the same time from them. I’m trying to work out the whole time. Okay, well, what does it mean on the left side?
Bill 38:12
And what does it mean on the right side? Okay? Because my left foot hurts and my right foot doesn’t hurt. Is it hurting because of something that I’ve stepped on? Or is it hurting because it’s more tired? or What is it? So these are the little things, the little intricacies that we get that others don’t get? And we wouldn’t even want them to get it to be honest, because that means they’d have to have some kind of an illness, wouldn’t you say?
Natalie 38:36
Right, right. Well, and how I, you know, and all these things we’re dealing with every moment of every day of our lives, takes up space in our brain. And so because it does, it takes up your thoughts and it takes up energy.
Natalie 38:51
So you always have to leave that slice of pie in your brain that like okay, this is for all the time spent thinking about how am I going to get around walking or How am I going to you know, we’ll make it through this meeting or whatever your challenges are for that day.
Natalie 39:05
But then making sure that the rest of it stays intact to to make sure you get done with needs to get done. It’s a very interesting way I think about my day now. From the time I get up, and now I’ll be like, yeah, I’m not making the bed. Too much work where before, I would have never left the house without making a bed.
Natalie 39:23
Now, I’m like, you know what my bed has been on made for a week and I’ll tell the world because I’m like, you know what, I don’t care. It’s I had a really busy week. So and that was one of the things I let go, and there’s a lot of other little things that I’ll do. I probably have a few dishes in the sink. But that’s scary. But see, these are unusual for me. Yeah. So I just take places where I can shave off time and energy and I just, I put it where I need it, whether it be my family or my business and or your house.
Bill 39:55
Better Yeah.
Natalie 39:57
Health is always first. Yeah, if I if I don’t have that I can’t do the other two.
Bill 40:01
Yeah, that’s amazing. I can relate to a lot of those things as we sort of get to the end of the chat. And I know I don’t want to keep it too long because I really do appreciate your time. I know exactly what you’re going through. I do really want to talk about how the human and culinary Health Team A little bit about how to human and what that’s about.
Natalie 40:23
Helping human when you were talking about how your grip in your dropping glasses and plates that started happening to me, I was switching out, you know, the toxins in my food and replacing with real food. And as I started looking in my kitchen, I was seeing plastics and different things in my kitchen that I was I was like these are full of toxins and I wanted to switch over to glass.
Natalie 40:47
So I started saving pickle jars and you know, buying all these cool glass containers that I could put leftovers in and store them. Well. Next thing you know, I’m sorry, I’m dropping everything and it wasn’t even shocking. anymore. It just got to the point where I was like, Well, now he dropped another glass. So, to this day, I will not touch a glass.
Natalie 41:08
If I if I’m at a restaurant, I will but so I thought, you know what, I had this online company with my business partner. And we were focusing our product line. That year, right after my relapse, we were literally in the midst of going in a direction of really focusing down on one one product.
Natalie 41:27
And I said, I came in one day, and I told him, I said, I know I know what we need to do. So we started chatting about stainless steel, water bottles, water, water was one of the biggest things besides food in conjunction that I could do immediately.
Natalie 41:44
It was one of those changes, that if somebody says to you drink more water, you will feel better within hours, days, whatever. And I said, Okay, so I started drinking more water, I started feeling better, my skin looked better, and it was easy.
Natalie 41:59
And so I’m trying to take care walk around with me all the time I didn’t want a glass water bottle obviously because I would break it. I didn’t want a plastic one. So I was looking for a stainless steel one. I couldn’t find one that was designed with all the things that I needed. I needed a handle that I could carry easily because I do drop things easily.
Natalie 42:17
I wanted to carry a lot of water so I didn’t just want a small one. So it had to be something pretty hefty but that I could hold and I wanted it to keep my liquids hot and cold. So we literally designed and created a whole stainless steel line of products of drinking products from water bottles, two pint cups and two tumblers.
Natalie 42:42
The tumblers I use for my smoothies every day and the water bottle Stein’s I use every day for my water. When I take around my bone broth because I drink bone broth every day. I store it in their hot I bring it to work 16 hours later. So they have been an absolute Just godsend to me. And so we created we’ve trademark patented.
Natalie 43:06
We launched. It took us over a year to get everything created. But once we launched in October 2015, we released the products they sold out within three months, completely sold out. And I was I was like, happy and sad.
Natalie 43:22
So I was like we’re out of products but so here we sit Monday we get our excuse me Monday we have finally our second shipment coming in. But this this company was literally born from my ms diagnosis because I would not have ever thought about this. If I did not have Ms.
Bill 43:39
Yeah, that’s amazing, isn’t it? What comes to mind when you need to find a workaround of a challenge that you don’t want to be working around but nonetheless you’ve got to deal with it.
Bill 43:50
And I love that this came from that because that means that everyone else who’s experienced something similar to you will be able to directly relate to that. and benefit from it in one way or another and I always wondered about bone broth and how I’d be able to, you know, eat more have more. And I never, believe it or not, I never thought about putting it in a thermos and taking it with me wherever I needed to go.
Natalie 44:16
It’s really good and you know, you know that this is one of the best easiest recipes I swear anybody can do. You do equal parts bone broth, two equal parts, full fat coconut milk, and you put in a couple heaping tablespoons of curry paste, chili paste, curry paste, and you heat it up. That’s it. It is the best soup ever. And you can take that anywhere and it is it’s got your fat and it’s got all that good collagen from the bone broth and it’s so healing and if I don’t, if I don’t have them broth on a regular basis, I absolutely can feel inflammation creeping up. Absolutely.
Bill 44:53
It’s amazing how connected the tummy is to healing the body which would seem obvious to most people on the planet that if you put good stuff in, you get good stuff back. But, but there was a real disconnect there for a time.
Bill 45:06
And I think we’re starting as a society to rediscover how important nutrition is because we were overfed and undernourished because a lot of the foods we’ve been eating were nutritionally sort of bland and had no, no real positive impact on us. So I love what you’re doing. I love what you’re saying. And healthy human. Sounds like an amazing thing to be a healthy human.
Natalie 45:29
And we went, we went after and to be honest, I knew the Paleo world. So I went after the Paleo world, showing them our healthy human products and they adopted it so quickly. Food matters, food matters, actually enjoys our products, and we’re going to be doing it and we’ll do an interview with them.
Natalie 45:49
But so many of the big paleo big people are have our products now and are interested in it. We got voted number one best paleo product by the Paleo magazine. Wow. So I mean, it’s a it’s a huge movement in a world of people just eating clean. And so that to me, you take eating clean, you need clean products. So to me it’s a it’s a perfect marriage, and people are getting it.
Bill 46:15
Just before we move on to the next part that I really want to touch on as well, which is culinary health, tell me about where people can go to get the healthy human products.
Natalie 46:25
healthy human products are sold strictly by us. You cannot. You can go to healthy human life calm, or you can find them on Amazon in the US and we’re actually going international this year, we will be in the UK. And we will be moving into Canada as well.
Natalie 46:44
So we do not wholesale to anybody. We are strictly an online product because I have had a product that I had on all the whole foods, shelves and I’ll tell you what, I’m not interested in that business model. Again, it’s very hard, it’s tiring. And quite frankly, I don’t have the energy. I can sit behind a computer and run a business today.
Natalie 47:07
We have, we have employees all over the world. And it’s very easy to run a business today from a computer, thank goodness because that’s how I’m able to do what I do. Probably very much. I don’t know how much you’re working outside your home now, but it’s important.
Bill 47:24
How little I get outside to ride a bike, go for a walk, meet with people at a cafe. That’s what mostly the reasons why I get outside these days and I do most of my work at home. And it works and it’s possible to be contacted by anybody at any time so nobody misses out on seeing me.
Bill 47:41
If they need to see me all they gotta do is book an appointment and I’ll just go out and I’ll be with them and I can’t do the physical work anymore of being a maintenance contractor. So I’m trying to transition out of that particular company, but and the people that do the physical work for me, I have different rules around how they do that work.
Bill 48:00
Because I don’t want them to be working the crazy ways that I was working in the past because, you know, it doesn’t sit well with me to know that I’m putting somebody through something that I wouldn’t want to go through anymore, you know.
Bill 48:11
So it’s an amazing time we live in, and we’re very lucky. And I’m so appreciative that we live in this particular part of, you know, the human existence, because we don’t have to conform to the old ways of doing things, especially when it’s, you know, for people like you and I, when that doesn’t work anymore, therefore, we’re not frustrated about it.
Bill 48:35
Therefore, we’re not feeling like we’re not part of society anymore. Therefore, you know, all the things that other people would have suffered 5060 or 70 years ago if they had the diagnosis that you and I have had, and other people have had so completely different way of doing life. And I’m loving that you’re so adamant that it’s an online business. That’s how you will sell it and no matter what, it’s not changing. It’s good.
Natalie 49:01
Yep, that’s exactly what that’s that’s what we’re doing. It’s our business model. And we have wholesale inquiries every day. And we had Dick’s Sporting Goods wanting to carry us and it’s just, we’re not interested. And we’re growing by leaps and bounds.
Natalie 49:14
So, yeah. Now the other business, which is culinary help, I hoped I helped co-found that my husband actually runs that one. It is a corporate wellness program. That, again, was spurred from two things. We had a prior company we still have called grow foods, which is a raw granola bar that we used to manufacture and sell into the whole foods I had mentioned earlier, and a whole other line of snack products that are that were raw.
Natalie 49:45
We all got very tired of the manufacturing world and knew that we wanted to transform that company into something else. We really wanted to go more into the educational side. So as we were, you know, whiteboarding for months and months trying to figure out where to start. direction to take the company.
Natalie 50:02
My diagnosis came and my husband said, we absolutely have to go out into the education now we absolutely have to get this out to people. And so he developed a whole corporate wellness program that he just has launched literally within the last three months.
Natalie 50:21
And he’s got some huge accounts and in the beta program that are getting amazing results with some really good on, you know, return on investment for these large companies that they’ve now asked them to already re up and come back for the next year, you know,
Natalie 50:36
Quarterly maintenance things so so the whole message of this real whole food and just teaching people about it in a whole different way, not saying count calories or cut this out of your diet or restrictive or points or you know, some crazy diet that you bounce back it literally it’s just a lifestyle of let’s talk about what real food is and how it relates to You in your region. And so that’s what culinary health is. And I’m excited to see where that company goes.
Bill 51:10
Yeah, it’s really important to spread the word. We need to educate people. That’s part of why I do the podcast and why I really appreciate you coming online and sharing your story and what you’ve learned.
Bill 51:23
I know that it’s going to make a huge difference to help other people go through their diagnosis with a little bit more grace and dignity, which is what we all aspire to in some way, shape or form especially after such a supposedly, you know, terrible diagnosis.
Bill 51:42
And I really do appreciate you what you’re doing with even the products you know that I haven’t seen yet that I’m definitely going to go on the website and have a look at because that also makes people feel a little bit bitter about not breaking stuff permanently.
Bill 52:00
I don’t mind breaking a glass or two but then it does get a little bit old when you just pick up something and it falls to the ground and now you got to spend the time cleaning up whether it’s the food, the drink that was in it as well as the glass and all the stuff that’s in it so it’s gonna make a huge difference.
Natalie 52:19
I will send you a gift box bill I will package it myself and send you one and you will absolutely enjoy it and you won’t ever break a glass again.
Bill 52:30
That’s too nice. That’s nice. Thank you so much as we wrap up, because I don’t want to keep you any longer although I would love to have a chat with you for as long as I possibly could. I totally respect what it is that you need to do after this conversation which is probably chill out. your long term vision is to wake the world up as to what they are really putting in their mouths and to change before they are sick.
Bill 52:58
This is my passion today. Help people shift before they’re sick. The challenge that I struggle with Natalie is that my family knows what I’ve been through. They know what I’m doing to help me recover. And the people that I can influence the list my family, and it’s really challenging. Tell me a little bit about your long term vision.
Natalie 53:21
I hear I hear that a lot. You’re not alone in that. You would think the first people that would rally around and really help in my case it was but a lot of people they have a struggle with their family understanding or supporting or any of the above.
Natalie 53:39
My long term vision really, is just to keep doing exactly what I’m doing. I didn’t know where MSA My life was going to be. When I started it. I had no idea how the human was going to stem from it. I had no idea I’d speak speaking with you.
Natalie 53:54
I had no idea that any of this was going to happen and I’m absolutely thankful. That I don’t have to stress about every little thing in my life like I used to. I used to obsess about every little thing and plant it and try and control it and I’ve learned that with Ms. I cannot control everything and then it eats up too much energy. So the more I let go, the better quality life I have. So my long term goal is to do more of that.
Bill 54:25
That’s perfect. That’s perfect. And that’s a wrap Natalie I love ending the program with such you know, simple and profound words. It’s beautiful. I love it. Thank you so much. Before we finished up completely Can you please tell me other than healthyhuman life.com Where else can people find you online?
Natalie 54:47
They can. Mssavedmylife. I’m on Facebook and MSsavedmylife.com is my website. You can message me through either. I prefer you message me if it’s about Ms on my MSN. My life platforms.
Natalie 55:02
If you want to talk about healthy human, you can absolutely contact me through through our website and it will get redirected to me and if you say you want to talk to me about a product or you have something maybe you want me to support something you’re doing and you think healthy game, it would be a good fit. You know, I’m always always looking to partner and help help people grow and understand what’s going on in their bodies.
Bill 55:25
That’s fabulous them it. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for being a part of the program. I wish you well and your recovery and in all in in all your new endeavors and challenges. And I look forward to following your the things that you’re going to be doing because I’m inspired by it, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you somehow from now on.
Bill 55:49
Hi, it’s Bill Gasiamis. The latest research in the field of neuro gastroenterology has discovered the impact that food has on your brain. If you have perience the food comas or brain fog, you might not realize that certain foods are more likely to interfere with the way your brain functions. I have spent the last four years researching and reading the latest findings.
Bill 56:14
And after implementing only a few of these changes in my lifestyle, I have reduced the crippling fatigue I used to experience after three brain hemorrhages lost more than seven kilos or 15 pounds without exercising. And that’s not because I didn’t want to it was because I was following doctor’s advice due to my condition. I’ve also lowered my blood sugar levels and my cholesterol levels or without taking any medications.
Bill 56:42
If you are looking at improving your health, get in touch, go to billgasiamis.com and fill out the contact form we can meet in person or via Skype. The first session is always complimentary. If you enjoyed this episode and think it would be useful for others to hear do go ahead and share it via Facebook, or other social media sites. Thanks for listening and look forward to talking to you again in the next episode.
Intro 57:11
The presenters and special guests of this podcast intend to provide accurate and helpful information to their listeners. These podcasts can not take into consideration individual circumstances and are not intended to be a substitute for independent medical advice from a qualified health professional.
Intro 57:29
You should always seek advice from a qualified health professional before acting on any of the information provided by any of the transit lounge podcast. This has been a production of recoveryafterstroke.com Check out our page on Facebook and start a conversation by leaving a comment at https://www.instagram.com/recoveryafterstroke. Subscribe to the show on iTunes and check us out on Twitter.
