How I Reversed My Autoimmune Diseases and Got Interested in Gut Health

Hello and welcome to The Perfect Stool. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today's show is going to be a little bit different because I asked my sister Lauren to come and interview me to talk to you about how I got interested in this whole field and why I started the podcast and things like that, so you know a little bit more about who I am. So I hope you enjoy this new format or this different type of episode. And Lauren has put up with years of me talking about gut health and often is involved in those discussions with me. So she's not just an innocent bystander. And my husband complains incessantly about the fact that all we talk about is our stool. So—

or something.

Yeah. So anyway. Hello, Lauren. Hello.

What a treat to be on your podcast with you. So Lindsey, should we get right into it?

Let's get right into it. All right.

How did you get interested in gut health in the first place?

Well, so I guess I would say it probably started when I became lactose intolerant. And if any of you are lactose intolerant, you have probably suffered just the way I did while figuring it out. And for years I just took the lactose pills, but And even sometimes when you take the pills, it doesn't quite work. And you would sit for 45 minutes on the toilet and it was horrible and painful with hot flashes and stomach cramps. And sometimes I'd collapse on the ground in pain. And let me just say, if you've been through lactose intolerance and eaten lactose, it's a misery. So that was sort of the beginning of my interest in gut health. And then, you know, throughout my life, I had taken a lot of antibiotics and I actually, one year, I think I took 2 courses of 10-day courses of Cipro. And soon thereafter, I was diagnosed with 3 autoimmune conditions. One was Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Another was ITP, which is idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, which is a platelet disorder where your body destroys its own platelets. Hashimoto's is where your body destroys its own thyroid cells. And then B12 anemia, which can also be autoimmune. So that got me interested in gut health because I figured it was all related because my gut health had gone downhill. And I read a book at that time called "Missing Microbes" by Martin Blaser, which really kicked off my interest, although I think it probably started before that. And then there was the American Gut Project that had come out around then. And so I immediately, you know, asked for my birthday to have my gut sampled and I got my microbiome sequenced and was interested in that. And I was encouraging everybody I knew to do it. And I know I, along in there, I read David Perlmutter's book, "Brain Maker." And in there he talks about fecal transplants in particular with a child with autism and how dramatic an effect that had on him. And I, you know, just, I've read over the years a bunch of other books about gut health, The Good Gut and Robyn Chutkan's Microbiome Solution and I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong and others I can't even recall right now. But basically all through that time, I just started obsessing on fecal transplants. And every time my family saw me, I was talking to them about their stool and whether they might be good donors and, contemplating who would be the best donor for me. And I just was convinced that, and because I had seen the work of Dr. Borody in Australia, and there had been somebody who had ITP and she had been cured of it after fecal transplant. And I was convinced that that would help me. Now, at the time, I didn't know all that much about, you know, about the protocols for them or about, you know, now we know that people do 10-day horses and sometimes longer for serious conditions. But I was only thinking about just a one-off fecal transplant. And I talked about it for 3 or 4 years. What do you think?

Oh, at least.

Yeah. And then finally I just said, I'm doing this. Like, I'm done. I'm just trying this thing. And I thought, you know, I'm going to use my husband's stool because I'm already sharing germs with him in every possible way. So there's nothing I'm going to get from him that I've not already gotten. So one day I just did it. I gave myself a fecal transplant with his stool. And I was actually working with my doctor to some extent who was my hematologist, and I told him I'd done it and we tracked, and I had gotten blood tests right before and then after, and I was able to see that my B12 count immediately skyrocketed after that. So, it was like all of a sudden my digestive tract could digest B12 and I had had to be taking it either by shot or sublingual at that point. But that did fade back down. We did a test and I went on just regular B12 pills and not sublingual ones, and that ability went away. But I did see some changes, like my stool quality definitely improved more towards a nice Bristol number 3, I would say, after, number 3 or 4, say, after the fecal transplant. And that lasted for a bit, but it wasn't the full solution. And I actually then started having problems with my stomach. Every morning I would wake up and I would have pain in my stomach. And by then I think I'd pretty much— actually, you know, I don't know. I actually don't think I had gone off dairy. I think I was still on dairy, but I would just take lactose pills. And I had reflux too. I had GERD for— I'd taken proton pump inhibitors like omeprazole for easily 20 years. So at that point, I think I read the book, the Robin Shutkin book, The Microbiome Solution, and she had an elimination diet in there. And I decided that I would do that even though So for me, it seemed like an awfully big commitment because of the number of foods that you had to give up. Now, you know, I don't even think a thing about giving up different kinds of food or making serious diet changes. But when you're eating everything, it seems really insurmountable.

So how many years ago are we right now? We're talking about with Robert— Robin Chutkan.

What are we in? 2019? I reckon we're talking at least 5 years ago. Yeah.

And the fecal transplant?

Yeah.

When was that?

That was probably, I don't know, maybe it was like 2015.

Okay.

I don't know, it was sometime after my diagnosis. Well, actually those diagnoses were in 2013, so it could have been 2014. So I decided to do her full thing and I improved quite a bit on her protocol, which was an elimination diet essentially. And it led me to realize that I need to go off gluten and dairy for sure. And, but unfortunately, I wasn't terribly disciplined about it, which is what happens because when you give up everything for a month and then you're just like, "Forget it, I'm just eating everything." And I kind of just went back on everything and I didn't do a great test of anything. So, long and short of it is that I kind of went back on stuff. And then it took me a while. And then I decided to go full in on the autoimmune stuff. I learned a lot more about autoimmunity and about reversing that. And so, I did a full autoimmune protocol, which and, and was much more careful this time about testing my, testing my antibodies against the different foods I was eating, that led me to realize that gluten, dairy, and soy were the things that I was sensitive to. And then, to make a very long story a little bit longer, at some point I then saw a functional medicine doctor to just sort of do a full workup and, and see how I was doing. And they took me through a certain amount of protocols that, that they typically do, you know, from the stomach acid, low stomach acid questions, you know, they dealt with the— oh, they did gut testing, of course, and stool testing. I don't know that it was PCR at this— at that point. I don't know if that was available at that point. And then micronutrient testing and things like that.

And so how well did that work for you?

Well, I definitely— things definitely cleared up digestively. My, my issues definitely cleared up a good bit. I never had any actual diagnosis of anything like IBS, but, but what I did get a diagnosis of through that doctor was maybe just a slight SIBO. So that was the one thing that was concrete and maybe just a little bit of Candida. So he put me on herbals And I took those for about 6 weeks and I said, I don't think that was enough. So then I did a course of Rifaximin and I definitely felt better after that. And then we sort of did the gut rebuilding, but again, things sort of went downhill. And then I took some really strong botanical stuff about a year and a half ago that wiped out everything. I completely decimated my gut microbiome for other reasons. And that was a bit of a mistake, but finally this year I decided to get real serious and did the Organic Acids Test on myself to see what was really going on. Going on underneath. And I found out that actually I wasn't too bad off. I only had, I had a touch of Candida perhaps, or a touch of Aspergillus. We're not sure which one, which one it is, but, but that's the one marker that was high on the Organic Acids Test. And so over the last couple months, I've been retreating myself for Candida. And hopefully, you know, I'm doing, I'm doing two 30-day protocols with a week in between and seeing how that works for me. And, um, hopefully I'll be good as new when we're all done, and I'll finally be able to say I'm in great gut health As well as all the rest of mine. Oh, and in the meantime, I should say that all of my autoimmune diseases, I've completely reversed those. So my antibodies for Hashimoto's were up to 103. I brought them down to 2.4. I, my platelet count for ITP, that it's a platelet destroying disorder. So my platelet count at my last checkup was higher than it's ever been, solidly in the normal range. My B12 has gotten up to optimal ranges. So in every way, I've been able to reverse my autoimmune diseases.

Wow. So you've presented stories of do-it-yourself fecal transplants as well as fecal transplants done through doctors in other countries. So now what is your personal opinion of the do-it-yourself fecal transplants?

Well, so, you know, this is a little bit controversial and I have, and people have criticized me for just presenting the do-it-yourselfs without any sort of qualification. And I have to say that I am a bit of a— I'm not a terribly good rule follower. So I'm not somebody who's afraid of doing a little health hacking on myself. And I'm not— and especially because it's just so costly. I mean, it's $10,000 to go to another country and get a fecal transplant. And it's— I mean, we're talking about poop here. At the end of the day, it's an enema that costs like $3 and some poop. So, but I do think that it's unwise if you're in very fragile health to do it with somebody's stool that you haven't tested thoroughly. In my case, I was not in fragile health. And so I wasn't I wasn't worried about anything that my husband could give me, but I could have gotten something. I mean, there's no telling. So I would definitely recommend that you follow the protocols that people have put on, like if you go to microbioma.org, where they're trying to find good donors for fecal transplants, you can find a protocol there for testing. And I definitely think that you wanna be super careful about your donors if you're getting somebody, especially somebody you don't know to donate. But in terms of actually whether one should do such a thing, you know, if you're, if you're suffering and there's nothing that the standard medical community can offer you, I think you should go for it. Now, that being said, I also think that there's a lot of conditions that are not related to your microbiome in your colon, which is what you're going to impact with a home-done fecal transplant. So if you have SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth, you're not going to likely impact what's in your small intestine with the bacteria in your large intestine being replaced. And if you have Candida, again, same thing, you need to kill that stuff and then maybe you rebuild with a fecal transplant, but I wouldn't necessarily— but you may not need to. Like, it may be more extreme than the average person needs to do in order to solve their gut issues. I think, I think it's important to get tests to figure out what you actually have, to take herbals or prescription medications to take care of your problem, and if that doesn't work, then to do that. But, but I think there are some conditions that we're seeing, obviously C. difficile, there's a 92% success rate in some studies with, with the fecal transplant. And it's a shame, frankly, that that's still only essentially approved for recurrent or for, for C. difficile that's recurrent and resistant to antibiotics, given the antibiotic success rate is in the 30%. And that's the only use that you can get it, you know, that you can get it for officially from a doctor in the US. But it seems like for colitis that that's a pretty successful treatment, not so much for Crohn's disease. And I definitely think there's a lot of mental health issues and things like autism where fecal transplants can clearly help. And so, you know, to be perfectly honest, if I were a parent of a child with autism, I wouldn't hesitate to to try and give my child a fecal transplant because it's going to jumpstart their development. And the longer you wait, if you wait 5 more years, like, how many years of development is your child going to miss out on as they get older? So I just think, you know, if I— I'm, I'm a risk taker, but not everybody is, right?

Right. All right. Well, it's always interesting for me to hear about the clients that you see in your practice as a health coach. Tell me a little bit about them.

Okay. Well, so I started as a health coach about a year and a half ago, and after getting training through Health Coach Institute, but obviously obviously a lot of my own training through my own readings and studies. And I also, I also have done a course through yourlabwork.com to learn how to interpret labs. So I have seen mostly clients who want to lose weight in a healthy, sustainable way so that they can just keep weight off for life. So that's, that's what I typically work with. But inevitably, most of my clients have other stuff going on. They have gut issues. They don't talk about it. Some people, you know, They say, "Oh yeah, I don't have any problems with my gut." "How often do you have a bowel movement?" "Oh, every 2, 3 days." That's a problem. That's called constipation. So there's things like that that happen. Or maybe they have really soft stool or they have diarrhea, but that's not what they come for. But inevitably, that's always in the background. Or they have autoimmune diseases. I've had 2 clients that didn't know they had Hashimoto's and I helped them get a diagnosis. So that happens inevitably. Yeah, so I've been working on all those sort of things. I really just try and help people get their health back in every possible way. So maybe they have sleep issues. They didn't come come to me for that in particular, but that's what we work on.

And what kind of things do you have planned for the coming year?

Well, so in my practice as a health coach, I really want to start focusing on autoimmunity and gut health in the sense that I would really like to work with clients who are coming specifically because they want to reverse their autoimmune disease. And often, you know, they have the gut health problems that are at the root of it. So whether they're coming for gut health or coming for autoimmunity to prevent— or coming for gut health to prevent autoimmunity because You know, you can only go so long with a leaky gut or with gut infections before you end up developing autoimmune diseases. So that's, that's a focus that I'm really hoping to do. And, and in particular, focusing in Tucson, really trying to develop groups of people who can be led through autoimmune protocols together with some support and with my friend who's a chef, Scout Noble of Noble Food Rx. And we're hoping to lead some groups like that. So if you're in the Tucson area, we set up a meetup. So you can find us on meetup.com. It's called Tucson Reversing Autoimmunity Naturally. And in terms of the podcast, I have some podcasts that are already recorded. I've got a naturopath, Dr. Corey Deacon, coming on who will be talking about brain injury and how that relates to the gut and how sometimes it's the gut influencing the brain, not the brain influencing the gut, and about electrogastrograms and cool stuff like that that you've probably never heard of because he's one of the few people who does this. He's up in Canada. And then I have Dr. Raphael D'Angelo coming on, and he is an expert on parasites, does parasite testing at ParaWellness. And then I have a mom I'm going to be recording with in the new year who has an incredible story of treating her kids through FMT or fecal transplants with— she had a child with pandas and a child with autism, and the incredible changes that have happened in her kids since doing those. And then I, um, I'm going to be recording with Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, who is the inventor of the GAPS diet. So I've got a lot of great podcasts planned for the new year. And then I'm also going to try and every other podcast, I'm going to try and do a short talk on a subject of gut health interest, just, uh, just me giving you some good information. So that's what I got planned.

Cool. I bet all of your listeners are dying to know whether your sister has experienced any of the same gut health issues over time. What do you think? Think they're dying to know that?

I think you've been awfully lucky when it comes to your gut health, as far as I know.

Well, you know what? As often happens, it's like the mechanic who never takes care of his own car or the computer person who never fixes her own computer. That's kind of like me, but I'm just in denial that I have any kind of problems whatsoever.

Well, what one person considers a problem, the other person might consider just regular everyday stuff.

No, I really do think I have— Fantastic gut health in general.

Which is amazing given all the other things you've gone through.

That's true.

That's true. Well, any gut health questions that are just burning in your head that you—

Well, your guests probably already know all these things, but when you say autoimmunity, can you just give me a list of what autoimmune diseases? Like name.

Oh, sure.

You know, what are the most common autoimmune diseases?

Yeah. So rheumatoid arthritis. Hashimoto's thyroiditis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, Graves' disease, Addison's disease, Sjögren's syndrome. I mean, there's pretty much for every organ in the body, there's an autoimmune disease. There's, there's 80 to 100 autoimmune diseases. So basically, you can either have an autoimmune disease that attacks just one organ, or it can attack entire body systems. MS, of course, that's a big one. Oh yeah, yeah.

So would you say that there's probably just all kinds of people out there with autoimmune diseases who have no idea that they have something called an autoimmune disease and they don't know that it's— I mean, they may not even—

Right. They don't know what's going on. Right. No, absolutely. In fact, they took blood samples from soldiers that they had just had in storage and they tested them against— I think there's some sort of antibody that just shows whether you have any autoimmunity whatsoever going on in your body, not specified which one, and some very high percentage showed that they had autoimmunity going on. So in fact, it's a lot more common than we realize. But 80% of the autoimmunity that's diagnosed is in women in the US. Hmm.

I wonder if that's just because women actually focus on their health more. Go to the doctor. Yes, go to doctors more often.

Distinctly possible. Well, yeah, but the amazing thing is that there are people who have reversed their autoimmunity from very serious illnesses like MS, people, you know, who've been in wheelchairs and are now biking and jogging. So it's quite possible to do a lot of things naturally. And the kind of medications that traditional doctors are giving out for autoimmunity are really harmful to your system, depending on what kind, can suppress your immune system because that's what they're trying to do is suppress your immune system so you don't keep attacking yourself. And so They're not great for long-term use. And then, and then of course there's bowel issues like IBS that are, it turns out, are in some cases autoimmune resulting from food poisoning that then becomes— it basically keeps the cilia in your small intestine, attacks them and keeps them from doing their job and it ruins your migrating motor complex, which moves food through your small intestine. And it turns out that something like 80% of IBS is in fact due to an episode of food poisoning, and, and then you get the small intestine bacterial overgrowth. So yeah, so it's an exciting time in gut health to, to be figuring out all this stuff and seeing how there's better ways to treat them.

Well, that is cool. Amazing stuff. You're doing some great work, Lindsey Parsons. Thank you.

Well, thanks for coming on and interviewing me, and I hope this all— this was informative to all of you, just so you know better who your host is. And I so much appreciate all of you who listen and just want to, you know, wish you all a great 2020. And my specialty is helping women lose weight without cutting calories or giving up any major food groups, so it's done in a healthy and sustainable way so the weight you lose stays off for life. So if you're needing some help in that area, you can set up a free 1-hour discovery session with me from my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, under Working with Me and then Health Coaching., and I also offer one-off consultations on gut health and autoimmunity if you just need some direction and ideas and a set of recommendations to walk away with. So if that speaks to you, you can find it on my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, under Work With Me, and it's called a Functional Health and Nutrition Review. And I'll put both of those links in the show notes. And that's it. So thanks for tuning in, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.