Conquering Ulcerative Colitis | Jim Laird's Holistic Healing Journey Pt. 1

Welcome to Integrative Medicine with Dr. Leland Stillman, the podcast where we explore the best of East and West, old and new, conventional and unconventional, in search of answers to medicine's toughest cases and most difficult problems. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Diagnostics and therapeutics discussed on this podcast may or may not be right for you, so talk to a qualified practitioner before taking action based on what you learn here. If you'd like to become a patient at my practice, go to stillmanmd.com to schedule a complimentary discovery call. Thank you for listening and welcome to today's episode. Hello everyone, Dr. Stillman here with Amy Arp. Our guest today is Jim Laird, who those of you who've been following me for a long time should know very well. Today we have a very exciting conversation on this episode of Stories of Hope, Stories of Healing. We are going to be talking to Jim about his journey through the world of health and wellness, a very unlikely place for him to have found himself given his early life. And Jim, where I'd like to start today is where you were and who you were and what was going on in your life when you first were confronted with the— let's call it the specter of illness. Having to assess or face a serious health crisis?

That is a, that is a great question. It's interesting because I had little warnings earlier in my life, particularly looking back now. I had something called Osgood-Schlatter's disease.

Osgood-Schlatter's. Yeah.

Which is basically where Osgood-Schlatter's. Thank you. It's basically where your, uh, your quads end up pulling the cartilage off, you know, the bone and you end up with, it's very painful and you end up, I have these huge bumps on my knees. And, um, the answer to that was to put my leg, my body in, in, in giant leg casts at the time.

How old were you?

And really knowing what I, uh, was probably in middle school. And knowing now what I know, that was because I was in an extremely high threshold strategy that was really jamming my pelvis forward. And that, that was basically— now that I, when I train kids that have, uh, you know, Osgood-Schlatters, I know I need to improve their pelvic position and their hip function, and I'm able to get them better in a few months. But it was because of the, the high threshold strategy that I was using to dominate and destroy everyone, uh, that got me into that place. So that was a warning. I just didn't understand it at the time. And then, you know, multiple injuries, hamstring pulls.

What do you mean by dominate and destroy people?

So I basically used extension to basically create tons of force, like high world— high level sprinters, high level weightlifters will use these extended position this over-breathing state to create intensity, to create force. Like offensive linemen tend to, to go into this camp. You look at Usain Bolt, he has a lot of, you know, anterior pelvic tilt extension, which allows him to run faster.

Mm-hmm.

That was where I lived. I never shut that off. So I was constantly in this like go, go, go kind of state and I never ever did anything. Well, you know, when I was young, I would go play and go fishing and things like that.

You were living in—

I was caught in Canada at the time.

What, where? Give us some more context, Jim.

Well, I was born in Red Lake, Ontario, which is a gold mining town in the middle of nowhere, um, above Dryden, Lake of the Woods. Then I moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, to the third grade, and then I moved to Edmonton, Alberta. I grew up in a little town called Fort Saskatchewan, um, Um, that's— I played every sport imaginable, and sports was my way of dealing with what was currently going on in my childhood, which the events of my childhood caused a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. And I used to act out in school, and then of course they told me to get into sports because there was an appropriate place to take that anger and that frustration out. So I got reinforcement to basically hurt people., and praised for it by, you know, hitting people in hockey and in soccer, slide tackling, things like that, football, eventually wrestling. And then, so I got done playing college football and, you know, um, I had a brief stint, a couple pro tryouts, and then I was just too short. And then, uh, those pro tryout stories are pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, they are. But then the next obvious step was powerlifting cuz I was really strong. I lifted weights for a long time. And then, so my major, my big major health scare was ulcerative colitis and that was around 2008, 2009.

And you were how old?

Basically? Oh, we'll do the math on that.

16 years ago. 16.

Yeah, 16 years ago. So 50 minus 16, it makes it easy. I'm terrible in my head.

34.

Yeah, so I was in my early 30s. 30, thank you. I was in my mid-30s.

What was your life like then, Jim?

Get up at 5 in the morning, train. Probably I was working with multiple high schools. I was working, I was training groups of people, individuals. From literally 5 o'clock in the morning until 8, 9 o'clock at night. And I was training, lifting during the day at a very high level, you know.

What does that mean?

Benching? Well, I was an elite level powerlifter, so I was doing things like benching well over 500 pounds raw, you know, benching 700 pounds with a bench shirt, you know, squatting close to 1,000 pounds. Doing good mornings with 1,000 pounds, uh, deadlifting well over 700 pounds, you know, dumbbell pressing the 150-pound dumbbells for sets of 20, um, things like that. And every workout was like no big deal, was just like, right, right. What, you know, every workout was a show. There was lots of huffing and puffing and, you know, you know, all that stuff, hitting your head against the bar, you know, between loud, loud music going on. So yeah, people, people could hear my music on the other side of the gym. I mean, Metallica, Pantera, Slayer on level 150 through your headphones. Ammonia caps. Oh yeah. Ammonia caps, you know, you know, sniffing that ammonia cap and getting like that. And, and so that was every workout, which was really dumb because you actually, when you train, you don't want to get revved up. Because when you go to the meet, if you have to rely on getting revved up at the meet, one, you look like a total fool, and, and two, you usually don't have any gas left to get revved up at the meet. And the meet goes over a whole day. So you really, you really should be in training, you should be focusing on technique and technicality and not going to that like, you know, war cry, uh, unless you really have to. Maybe if it's your So you do 3 attempts in the squat, you do 3 attempts in the bench, you do 3 attempts in the deadlift. So you start off, you have— I'm usually in the second flight because, you know, my openers were usually 700, 800 pounds on the squat. And so there'd be 2 groups. So it'd be the people that are lifting the lighter weights first. They'd all go through, we'd be warming up while they would go, and then I would squat and the first group is warming up for the bench. So this could, you know, start at usually the, the big heavy guys usually lifted in the afternoon. So a lot of times these meets would start at 3 o'clock and they might go to 11. We had one go to midnight. You know, so because you're going through, so it's an endurance event essentially. You can't get like this for that long a period of time. So I really, I could have lifted a lot more and been a lot more successful. If I'd have had a more methodical, technical approach. This is what I made my clients do. I, I never really liked loud music. I didn't like, you know, you know, shaking people and all that stuff that a lot of people do. Um, so, so that was kind of the status of, of what was going on at the time. And I'll, I'll give you some other background to that, but basically I'd had a whole bunch of catastrophes that I'll go into in a moment. But I, I remember I was working at a at a CrossFit, actually. I, I was working at a CrossFit and I just went into the bathroom and I was like, wow, oh, this is crazy. And, you know, basically my dad had colitis, so I was pretty familiar with what was going on.

And, you know, I went to the hospital and they were like, you're leaving out the, the key detail there, Jim, which is you went to the bathroom and evacuated a large quantity of blood.

And kept evacuating a large quantity of blood and kept evacuating a large quantity of blood. So I went to the hospital and they were like, hey, you know, we were gonna put you on corticosteroids, which I think is fine to help calm things down.

Sure.

But they were like, we need a surgery, you know? And I, and I saw what happened to my dad. My dad was a night shift worker, you know, he got colitis. They put him on prednisone. They never told him about dietary change. They never told him about lifestyle change. He just kept eating pizza at 3 o'clock in the morning and Chinese food. Cheetos and all the things that he loved to eat. Um, and then a year or two later, he's got, he's got an ostomy bag, right? I saw that and I was just like, this is not going to be for me. So I got an IV.

For those who don't know, what is an ostomy bag?

An ostomy bag is where you basically defecate in a bag. Yes, that's attached to your body. That is not my idea of a good time.

To put a fine point on that, so ostomies depend upon what's happened to the colon. So ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune disease. It affects the colon. It can affect any part, like it, it usually is the term. I mean, I believe it's, it's the terminal end of it. So, you know, as close to the rectum as possible, and then it can go up all the way through the entire colon. And there's a lot of, you try to manage these patients non-surgically. In the conventional medical world. Mm-hmm. Because obviously the colon's important. People don't like not having a colon because what comes out of the small intestine into the colon is liquid. Ostomies can be made from the small intestine or they can be made from portions of the large intestine and how much large intestine you have left essentially determines how firm your stool is. But the ostomy comes out through the abdominal wall, which means that if you wind up with an ostomy, you get to poop into a bag. That you then empty from your abdominal wall. The— this is, uh, it's actually very interesting when you look at studies on this. They find that people are— contemplate being absolutely miserable with an ostomy bag, but when you ask people who've had an ostomy bag for a period of time how happy they are, they're as happy as they were before the ostomy bag. But which implies that you can adjust or adapt to this change, but You know, be that as it may, I, I think everyone can agree that it's better not to have to resort to this.

Yeah, you know, of course, being a young man at the time, I immediately thought about what that was going to do to my personal life, and I just did not like that, um, at all. So I basically walked out of the emergency room. Yeah, hey baby, by the way, I have a surprise for you.

Well, it's, you know, it's it's sad. It's what's got to be even harder is if you're a young lady. Oh, that would be so hard.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh, for sure. For sure. So good point. So I literally told them that I had no interest in that. And I literally walked, I literally walked out of the ER and they literally told me, we're not going to let you leave. And I was like, good thing we're in the emergency room because if you don't let me leave, there's going to be a lot of people in the emergency room, but they don't have to go anywhere. I said, you've got two choices. Either things are going to get crazy and you're going to have a lot of injured staff, or you're just going to let me leave on my own fruition. Don't make me call my attorney. And after about 10 or 15 minutes and several security guards coming in and looking at me, they said, yeah, we're just going to let this guy go. And so they let me leave. Hold on, hold on. Well, and one of the guys that worked security there at where I was— I won't say the name of the hospital— he knew me, and he knew I was a, like, a national champion Roman wrestler. And he was just like— and I had fought him in MMA— and he was, he told him, he's like, this dude's a wrecking ball. Like, if he's telling you that he's gonna hurt a lot of people if you don't let him leave, he's gonna hurt a lot of people if you don't let him leave. And, and so You know, it was like, really? You really? No, I, I told them straight up, like, I was honest. I was like, look, you cannot keep me here. I have the right to decide what is done to my body. And if I decide I don't want a medical procedure, I will sign the waiver that says if I die, it's not your fault. I'm happy to do— I've signed that waiver so many times in my life, um, it's not even funny. Probably signed that 15 or 20 times. So I immediately go home and I get on Google and I get on PubMed and I start researching colitis. What is it? Autoimmune disease. Okay, let's check off the list of causes for an autoimmune disease. Trauma, ending a relationship. So trauma, just all the stuff I'd been through. Not enough sleep, inflammation. You know, at the time I was trying to gain as much weight as possible. I was eating massive amounts of food. Like a whole loaf of bread a day, probably 24 to 30 eggs, 2 or 3 pizzas a week, massive amounts of ice cream, just everything you could possibly imagine. Because it was very— well, part of it is I probably wasn't absorbing a lot of it anyways, right? But when you get to be a certain size and you're trying to put on 10 or 15 pounds, the amount of calories you have to eat to put on good weight is absolutely ridiculous. Plus I was on performance-enhancing drugs, which causes you to have an increased demand, um, for calories.

Give us a skinny on the performance-enhancing drugs. What were you on at the time?

Oh boy. Um, so I was on, uh, testosterone, probably 800 milligrams a week. I was on something called Equipoise, which helps horses eat more food. Uh, I was on a little bit of Deca, which is, helps protect your joints. And I think I was on Dianabol at the time. So, you know, as Ronnie Coleman says, you know, what, what supplements did you take? You know, a little test, little D-Bol, little Deca, you know, so just the basics. And I'm very honest about that. I, I didn't do any, I didn't do any performance enhancing drugs when I played college football because I got drug tested a lot because I was one of the strongest guys. On the team, so I got drug tested every couple weeks.

They just want to have to deal— you were, uh, you were, you were abusing?

Well, compared to my friends, I didn't have to take that much because I already— that isn't a lot compared to bodybuilders and other powerlifters. Like, I know people that were taking 3,000 milligrams a week of testosterone a week. I know guys that take 1,000 milligrams a day. And just to give people context, 250 milligrams is your typical, 'cause I was getting ready for a competition and I actually set a huge bench PR like 2 days before. I almost, you know, bled myself to death. Yeah. So, you know, I would take larger amounts getting ready for a competition and then I would come off to a more therapeutic dose for a few months and then add some androgens in that weren't as hard on the body, things like Primobolan, I would take things like Anavar, things like that to preserve muscle but allow my physiology to kind of come back into order. And I did that from the time I was 25 until I was, you know, in my mid-30s. And so I'm very honest about it. I, I'm, it, it's able, it's allowed me to educate people that want to do it on the dangers of it and also just kind of educate them on, you know, what the risks are. Because I've done it, I'm not just like saying don't do it, it's bad for you. I'm saying, hey, these are the consequences, these are the trade-offs if you do these things, these are the risks. There's a probable cause, probable risk that you're probably going to have to take it for the rest of your life. There's the mental addiction of being like Captain America and feeling like Superman, and then going back to normal levels and feeling like a mere Turtle, that's a, that's a giant mind, whatever words you want to fill in. So that's the addictive nature of it. So, you know, telling a, you know, telling a 16, 17-year-old kid, hey, you're going to have to take shots for the rest of your life if you start on this stuff, makes them at least think about things. And hey, you might want to wait until you're in your mid-20s before you start this. Get as strong as you can. And then if you decide to do it, you know, do it when you really need it, not when you're 16 years old. But that's of course is a personal choice and all that sort of thing. But you know, I will say the anabolics allowed me to drive myself as hard as I did and maybe prevented a heart attack, maybe, you know, protected me from other things. I'm very lucky that my digestion was my weakest link, which is easier to fix than your heart or your brain or whatever else, right? But I wouldn't have been able to drive myself that hard if it wasn't for the stimulants, it wasn't for the testosterone. I would have been stopped dead in my tracks long before that. So, so it allowed me to drive my car harder for longer.

I want to focus on this moment. You were told by medical professionals you need this procedure or you're going to die. Do you remember— do you happen to remember how low your hemoglobin was at the time?

I can't remember. All I know is that, well, it was probably not that low. Well, I don't know, but it was bad. The main thing was dehydration. Why did they tell you dehydration?

You need to have your colon out immediately. They said it was— had they already done a procedure to remove your colon or what?

Yeah, they did all that fun stuff. Um, but they had told me that it was so— the inflammation was so bad that they needed to, to stop the damage and stop the bleeding and stop the me just losing, you know, lots of fluid.

You know what's crazy about that, Jim, is that I remember going through training in 2010-ish. That's when I left med— I left college for medical school. And by that time they were really, and this obviously was earlier than, well, actually it was around the same time. It was only a couple years earlier. They were already lecturing us on the importance of non-surgical management of this. So I'm kind of surprised that was their recommendation, but be that as it may, sure, sure. Their recommendation was this. What went on in the mind of Jim Laird in that moment from, hey Jim, you need to have your colon cut out surgically, to no thanks, I'm leaving the hospital?

It was instant because I looked at my dad and I watched my dad disintegrate and I was like, there's no way I'm going out like that. You know, I, I'm not going out. I'm just not. That's not for me.

And I said, if you, if you're comfortable sharing, what was it about that, that, that feeling that you got thinking about your dad's case that prompted you to make that decision?

Well, one, uh, this is going to sound horrible, but I didn't want to be anything like my father. So, uh, did not have a good relationship with my mother or my father, so anything that he did, I wanted to be the complete opposite. And that's one of the reasons I threw myself into the weight room. That's one of the reasons I wanted to be as masculine as possible. I wanted to be the complete opposite of him. So a lot of it was just hate and spite. This is the road he went down. I am not going down that road. I am not going to be like my father. I will die trying to be the opposite of him.

And I think there's a, a part of that where you see him as being dependent and in some ways sort of a slave to the things he likes— the Chinese food, the pizzas, the shift work.

Well, I saw him— I saw him as weak, and he was. So I didn't want to be anything— I did everything in my power to be the opposite of that.

Well, I also sense in you a, a deep desire to be independent.

Correct. I want to go out on my own terms. You know, if the good Lord decides to take me in a certain way. But that's just— I watched my father and what he had to go through with, with that, and I just, I didn't want to have anything to do with it. That's me. And, and forgive me if you've had this procedure, uh, God bless you. Like, I think it needs to be an individual decision. That was just my feelings at the time. And, and so I don't know, I probably wouldn't want one now either. Um, but who knows, when you're looking, when you're looking, when your life is in front of you, mortality is in front of you, you tend to make different decisions. You can speak big and tough, uh, when everything's going well, but when your life's on the line, you tend to make different choices at that time. Because when reality's right there in the, in your face, things tend to be a little different. So I started researching hard. I started researching really hard.

I have one or two more questions about that.

Sure.

You looking at your father, how he did clinically— sure, uh, you must have had— and I, and I'm curious, what I'm really wondering about is when you look at how his case went, what do you think his clinical team could have done differently that could have given him a different outcome that you were looking for that he didn't get?

Stop working night shift, you know, start eating real food. You know, they really didn't talk to him about diet. They didn't talk to him about anything. And then of course he ends up with, you know, he probably already had type 2 diabetes, but he ends up a few years later getting type 2 diabetes. And of course the recommended treatment, dietary treatment for type 2 diabetes in Canada is 6 to 8 servings of, bread and rice a day.

Wow.

Yeah. I tried to, I tried to help him. I tried to help him and, and got him eating more of a paleo style diet and his doctors told him it was dangerous and it would, you know, and I basically got on the phone with them. I was like, give him 6 months, you know, and we'll see what his labs look like. And if they're worse, then you, he'll do whatever you want him to, but let's at least try this. He improved, but he, he, he didn't have control. He, he didn't have control over his addiction. He used food as comfort, and he had Cheetos and potato chips and everything else stashed all over the place. And so, you know, I tried to help him, and he just, he just wasn't ready. So, you know, he's been battling diabetes, you know, the fact that he's still alive in his 80s gives me hope because I've driven my body like a stolen car. And obviously, so is he, not to the physical extent, but the night shifts and all you know, like night shift his entire life. He's still alive in his 80s. He's got an ostomy bag, he's got diabetes. So that gives me hope that I've at least got a few more years left, you know.

Mm. So now tell us what happened in your brain where you thought there's got to be a better way, and you immediately said search the internet, right? What did you even think you would find? And and what did you in fact find?

Mm-hmm. You know, I didn't know what I thought I was gonna find at the time. And, and, and I've always been a problem solver. Like, one of the things I like about my job is, you know, one of my first clients in Lexington was a guy that fractured his spine who was 13 or 14 years old. And so I started researching, like, the kid, he was in a back— they put him in a back brace for 8 months and we rebuilt him from the ground up. And so I had to basically take him like he was like an infant. And, and, and I had another girl who had blown out 3 ACLs, uh, in, in 9th or 10th grade. And so we had to revert, I had to research and reverse engineer and look at all the stuff she did in her physical therapy and everything she was doing to get, come back from her 3 knee injuries. And I was like, okay, we need to reverse engineer this and obviously do the opposite of what she'd been doing in her recovery. So I had this, you know, when somebody came to me with rheumatoid arthritis, so they came to me with this or that. I would dig into these, these things and do the research. I didn't know what I would find. I, I thought I was, you know, I was this big strong guy. I could lift all these heavy things. I thought I was relatively healthy. You know, at the time I had the mindset of like, I don't care what it takes. Like if you tell me if I took a pill, th— this is like the Olympic, the Olympic athlete kind of mindset. Like, sure. You know, they, they surveyed a bunch of Olympic athletes and they said, you know, if you— we give you a pill and you want— you would win every gold medal in the next year, but you would die in like a year, like 90% of them said sign me up, you know. Like, that's just the mentality I had at the time. Wow. But I really—

I really—

I think reinforcement of being— getting validation from, from being, you know, a warrior from being, you know, um, just people saying, dude, you're one bad mother effer, you know, like I never had any validation growing up. I, I didn't have any, you know, um, sense of self-worth or purpose. So if people were in awe or like, you know, they'd see me pushing 150-pound dumbbells and they'd come over and they'd be like, oh my gosh, dude, that's insane. That, that fed me. And so what I kind of—

to me about that is that I've seen people also go the other way. They're high performers, they're successful, then their health goes out, and rather than say, I'm going to take the same mindset that I bring to my training— no matter how they developed it, right, whether it was a healthy mechanism, whether it was, you know, society, their friends, their family, their school, whatever they'll apply that and they'll say, I'm just gonna take this mindset of I am invincible, I can do it, I can overcome. They won't adapt that mindset to their illness and they'll wind up in a very much a victim negative. And I find that that's often frankly inculcated by doctors and the healthcare system. You are a victim. You have a doom. Here is your doom, and, you know, resign yourself to it. There's nothing you can do. There's no way you can Google your way out of this. So tell us what happened when you, when you started to, to search for this.

Well, the first thing I did was like, what are the causes of this? And of course it goes into like, car accidents can be a factor, and I had just been in a car accident like 2 months before. Relationships I had just broken up with a redheaded Scorpio. That was a total disaster. Uh, it was just so much trauma. Uh, it was insane. Um, you know, career change, stress. I had just had a misunderstanding at work, which led to me having to go find another place to train people somewhere. I had trained people for 8 or 9 years and all of a sudden I had to find a new location. Um, you know, lack of sleep, inflammation. So I had every box I checked, you You know, not able to relax, over-breathing, stress, you know, all the things like, you know, diet, all these things. So I looked at that and then I started like cures, you know, and I saw, well, acupuncture is very effective. So I immediately scheduled an appointment with an acupuncturist. And I remember the first time, it was the first time I'd ever gotten acupuncture. And I laid down on the table and she started putting these needles in me and she's like, oh my gosh, you are on fire. She's listening to my heartbeat or feeling my pulse and she's like, I've never seen anybody as revved up as you are. And literally, I sat there and I took a couple— I took a couple deep breaths. Well, the funny thing is too, this was right around the housing crisis. And yeah, I had lost probably 50% of my clients due to— they were real estate agents, they were in the horse industry, and all of a sudden all of that fell through and they owed taxes from the year before and they didn't have any money to pay it. So I lost probably 50% of my clients. And instead of being smart and saying, well, I'm going to cut my expenses, I'm just like, well, I'm going to go bounce at the local gentleman's establishment and make a couple extra thousand dollars a week. So I continue to go out and eat every day and I could continue to do all these things that I was doing. You know, I was eating out like 3 or 4 times a day, you know, throwing money around like a fool. I tip very generously. So that, that was a big part of it as well. Was, you know, instead of resting, you know, here I am. And the girl I was seeing, she would, you know, she would come over on the weekends. She lived in Ohio. And so of course, I didn't get much rest on the weekends at all between the work and her visiting. So all these things basically pushed me off the cliff. I mean, it took a lot to basically cause this. I mean, it was— I mean, I, I should not be here technically. And so I, I remember the first acupuncture where I actually got, I just basically was forced to relax on the table and I literally felt like I levitated off the table and started spinning around in the room. Like I just, it, it felt like, it felt to me like there was energy coming out of me and that actually helped a lot. So then I, I started drinking aloe juice and then I found a study that nicotine was like, you know, 85, 90% effective in common colitis flare up. I went right to Walgreens. I took like, a whole box and I just started like, you know, putting them everywhere on my head, everywhere I could put them. And then of course I ran into like, you know, Rob Wolf and a guy named Paul Cech and I started listening to— it was like it was Sean Croxton used to have a podcast. I can't remember what the name of it was, but he interviewed Paul Cech and Rob Wolf and all. I started listening to his podcast religiously and Paul Cech said something to me that just hit me right in the forehead and I still use this quote all the time. In order to work out, you first have to work in. And I always thought that a day off from training, and I was really good about taking rest days, but it wasn't truly rest because I was working a 12, 14-hour day. I was drinking energy drinks just to have energy throughout the day. I would literally go sleep in between sessions and you could hear me snoring, you know, out in the hallway. They'd be like, oh, Laird's sleeping again. And I would, I'd have to set like 2 alarms and have someone come wake me up. 'Cause I was, I was so sleep deprived every, every year in the, in the winter, I would have a massive health setback. And I'd actually gone and seen a functional medicine doctor in Lexington. I won't say his name, but you know who he is. And, he did all these tests with me and I was depleted and everything. Like my, my D, my, hold on.

Let's make sure I got the timeline here, right?

You get before I got, before you got Crohn's, before I got ulcerative colitis, because I was having like these periods of time where I couldn't get out of bed for like 2 or 3 days, maybe a week.

Uh-huh.

So my body was giving me like a, you better slow the, and that's why I tell my clients all the time, I'm like, look, here's the choices. Your body's telling you, you need to stop. You can do all these things to override it and try and find a hack. But if you don't actually slow down and relax, take your car to the shop, your body will make you stop. And it's not fun. Now, most people are not gonna go to the extremes that I did cuz most people don't have the hatred and the vitriol. And actually looking back, if it wasn't for strength training, if it wasn't for combat sports, I would be in prison. There's no doubt about it. If I didn't have that outlet for that hate and anger, I'd be in jail for sure. Right? And so I'm very grateful that I had that outlet. Obviously, it could have been, should have been handled a little differently.

But we also grew up at a time when it was not really a big deal for two guys to throw down, you know, in a bar or whatever, especially, especially in Canada.

Well, I never got into fights publicly because I would act out in school and get in a fight. But once I had the ability to do that legally on the football field, I didn't have the need. And I'm actually very patient. I bounced in nightclubs for years. I've had people spit in my face. I have very— I'm very patient. I'm very calm. It's really weird. But, you know, when you work in nightclubs and you, you got people throwing beer in your face, you can't just like kick their butt. You end up in jail. So I, I have this weird combination of like Tasmanian Devil and like Buddhist monk. Like, I'm able to like take tons. I think a lot of that comes from my childhood, from the amount of mental, emotional, and physical abuse I took growing up. I mean, you just can't like can't hit your parents. I mean, that's just not, you know, not an option, particularly your mother. So, um, you know, I basically, from the time I remember, 3 until I was, you know, um, you know, until I moved out of the house when I was 16, I just— massive emotional trauma and abuse with no real way to stop it on my own, right? Um, so I had extreme— I still have extreme patience. Like, some people will get on coaching calls and people will be difficult and people will say, how do you deal with that? And I'm just like, I just do, you know, I, I realize it's not me, it's something that's going on in them, but that's besides the point. But I started listening to Paul Chek and I actually met Rob Wolf in college before he was a paleo guy. And so I started in integrating a lot of these things into my life. I learned about the float tank. I started doing float tank. It took me about a year to learn how to actually calm down and relax. I tried to sit still for 30 seconds one time and I was like a human jackhammer. And so I started using binaural beats. It was a process. Um, I literally would sit there and I'd be like this. And then I, and then I, of course, after my, my back was bothering me and I went up to see Bill Hartman and Bill was like, dude, you're so extended. Like you need to like get some flexion in your life. You need to breathe into your low back in the car. And he explained that part of the colitis thing was me over-breathing all the time and not being able to exhale and relax. Because when—

hold on, you're going— you're in like fast forward. This is like the movie trailer version of this story.

We gotta— yes.

So you, you start Googling things, nicotine, aloe, um, and acupuncture.

And this is in the week. Stress management, sleep. Yeah, sleep. You finally started to sleep doing all this stuff. I'm doing all this stuff in the first week. I'm throwing the freaking kitchen sink at this bad boy, right?

So you went down, I got blog post rabbit hole. You consumed all the content. You just, you assaulted the content on ulcerative colitis like it was D-Day and you were Patton and you were leading from the front and you got into your Sherman tank and you—

yeah, unfortunately Patton wasn't involved in D-Day. They used him as a diversion. I know. I would say, I would say analogy. I, I was like Erwin Rommel in, in North Africa, just like, we're gonna outflank them and we're gonna, we're gonna go right, you know, or in the beginning of World War II when Rommel drove into France, you know, they, they drove so fast that the English and the French got overwhelmed. That was my approach. And that's kind of how I am with everything. It's like, burn the ships, you know, we're going full, like, moving to Nicaragua, burn the ships. I'm moving to Nicaragua no matter what, you know, what it takes. What I'm gonna do, right? So I was doing all these things, but it took time. And then I was listening to a guy named Roy Masters, who's very interesting. I started doing his meditation, and he started talking about hate, anger, and resentment. And I sat there and I was like— he's like, that resentment just burns your, your nervous— it's just like a coal, like hatred. Because I hated, I hated my parents. So much that if I went and seen them in person, I would start shaking. Like, my father would call me on the phone and I literally would want to just strangle somebody. And I was like, they did the best they could, like, you know. So I called my father and I said, hey Dad, you know, you're not going to want to hear this, um, but you know, you failed me as a parent and, uh, I forgive you. I I know you did the best you could. And his response was, how's the weather down there? And I was just like, that's, that's who he is. So I was able to forgive. And that was a, that was like this humongous chain being lifted off me. All that hate, all that anger was gone. And then all of a sudden I needed to learn how to like motivation to work, motivation to train. That was all fueled by hate. And I didn't know how it took me a good year or two once I got healthier. To learn how to train because I love my body and I love myself and I had value and I wanted to do this to help other people, as opposed to like— or going out with a girl was basically to make myself, make myself feel better about myself, as opposed to having a relationship because I have value to add to that person. I was putting immense pressure on that person to make me feel valuable, and of course that leads to massive frustration because, you know, um, basically it sets the expectations way too high. And if you're look— if you're trying to look for somebody else to feel good about yourself, that's extremely exhausting to them. And then it ends up not ending well, obviously. Um, so thank God I didn't do something stupid like get married at that time. Um, it would have ended up in a total, you know, uh, disaster.

So If you're comfortable, I think you alluded a lot to how a lot of this started with how you grew up, what your childhood environment was like. What of that would you feel, um, someone who's going through the process of healing needs to hear so that they can heal?

You got to forgive. Have to. Yeah, that's so powerful. The only, the only person that is affected by hate is you. And really, you're giving that other person power. And I don't know whatever you believe, but that is the enemy's goal, is to make you hate. Because that hate is being passed on to the next generation. And then you take that out on that person, and then they hate you. And so it, it, it distracts you from who you're supposed to be. It distracts you from being a person that's able to be forgiven, to have empathy. Um, if you, if you have resentment and hatred, you're going to have a miserable, miserable life. And that's why forgiveness is really the key to healing. You've got to forgive those who transgress against you. That's why it's in the Lord's Prayer.

When you think about— when you think about how that affected your healing journey, do you have any thoughts on how that was passed down in your own family and what else could have been done to prevent that?

Well, I'm not going to get into too many details on that, but my, my, both my parents had, you know, things that happened to them that weren't good. And it happens in families, it goes generation to generation to generation. And, um, you know, I don't want to get into too many details because people are still alive and I want to have respect for, for them. Um, but that's generally what happens is the pattern, you know, the narcissist creates another narcissist in the right? It just kind of— somebody's got to break the chain eventually. You know, somebody's got to say, look, I'm going to set some boundaries. I'm going to— and that's why I moved out when I was 16 years old. I'm like, there's no way I'm going to have a healthy, happy life if I continue to live in this environment. And so I removed myself from that environment. I've had to put up boundaries. I don't, I don't talk to my parents very often, if ever. And that's a personal decision. And I just said, hey, you know, like, if you can't conduct yourself in a certain way, um, I just can't deal with you. And so they, they continue to conduct themselves in a certain way, so I've, I've detached myself, uh, from them. Oh, gracias, my food just arrived. Sorry, no worries. 10:30, she's always early. So thank you. Yeah, um, so, so You know, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

So people are just doing the best they can. So you got to understand that most people, when they have issues, it's probably not with you, it's probably with themselves, or something was done to them. So that makes it a lot easier. You know, what did Jesus say? Forgive them, Lord, for they do not know what they do. Yes.

And Hosea 4:6 says, uh, my people perish for lack of knowledge.

And I, I find it hard to believe that there are massive amounts of psychopaths and sociopaths that love to torture people on purpose.

It's like 1 to 3% of the population.

Yeah, I would, I would like to think it's, it's rare. Most of the people are acting like that because it was done to them. It's not because they're deliberately making a conscious decision to torture people for fun and like a Mengele. Yeah. And, um, and enjoy it, you know. So go ahead.

Yeah, so, so you had this profound— and what was the time course over which, you know, you said in the first week you were doing all this stuff, you drank from the fire hose, as we might say, of content information, you made a lot of changes, you took massive action in order to change your life. And then you went to see a functional medicine doctor who found you to be deficient in many, many, many things.

I saw, I saw him before I got colitis.

Oh, okay.

And he gave me about, he gave me about $700 worth of supplements and never talked about my lifestyle. He told me to get off testosterone and take, he's like, get off testosterone, take this herb, it'll raise your testosterone back up to normal. And he gave me 7,000 supplements, never talked to me about sleep, never talked to me about stress, nothing. He just basically handed a big bag of supplements to me. And I walked out the door, and of course that never really did anything, so, except be really expensive. So he could have the opportunity to be like, dude, you're killing yourself, like, you need to, you need to do, you know, you need to basically make some changes in your life. Yeah, unfortunately I, I did for a little while, and I was just, it really didn't do much because I was still driving my body like a stolen car. I was like, ah, what does he know, I'll just take more caffeine.

You know, let's unpack that for a minute. You described it as variously as 7,000 supplements, 700 supplements, 7,000, whatever. Lots and lots and lots of supplements. We're talking bottles and bottles and bottles and bottles, right?

And yeah, like 700 back in 2007, right?

So that'd probably be like 1,000, 1,200 maybe today. So yes. Um, did he expect you to take that many supplements every month?

Pretty much. He's like, you can come back when you're done with these. I'm just like, wow, I'm done with them right now. Yeah, you know, I didn't even spend that much money on anabolics. My steroids only cost like $200 a month, you know.

And this is why we have a process where— and you know, Jim, you've been a big part of us creating this process of We basically don't let you do that at the practice. We make sure that you are going to have a reasonable lifestyle because one of the things that we find is that if you are running your engine as hot and as hard as Jim was, there is no way supplements are going to make an impact. Just as Jim said, you know, you took $700 worth or whatever of really high-quality supplements and saw no significant difference. I'm not at all surprised by that. And then you ended up getting ulcerative colitis anyway, and then you dug into what really ultimately caused it, and you found all these other things that got left on the table. Or as we talk about it, we talk about it as like fruit on the— low-hanging fruit on the tree, right? The supplements are in the middle to the top of the tree, and people are just giving you a ladder telling you to climb up there, pick them all, when you can just run around picking the low-hanging fruit, which is ultimately the foundation, which we talk about all the time. Of really amazing long-term results. So you had this period of, of weeks. During this period of weeks with the aloe juice and the nicotine and the, and the acupuncture, were you taking a lot of supplements or, or changing your diet at all?

Oh, I went to GAPS protocol immediately.

GAPS.

Okay. Bone, lots of bone broth. I simplified everything, got all the gluten out, uh, was, well, was I was, once I heal, started healing, I was so gluten sensitive. Like maybe it was psycho psychological, but if I went to like Whole Foods and I had like a, a chicken breast that had like a sauce that had gluten in it, I would start throwing up.

Yeah.

So I think at the time it was like gluten was like, I think that was when like, uh, wheat belly and all that was, was out. And so it was very, it was very hip. And so, you know, Um, that was, I think, maybe mentally part of it, but, you know, part of it is, is I missed a huge part of the equation, which came out later. So in, in about 4 months, I was able to completely get my colitis under control. Within a couple weeks, I was able to get— that's really incredible. In about 4 months. I mean, I was going all out. I mean, I was driving to Cincinnati twice a week to do a float tank cuz that was the only one they had in, in the area. Um, you know, I was doing like binaural beats like it was nobody's business, you know. I was—

how did this impact your, your cash flow, your career? I can only imagine you started to dip into savings and stopped working and started—

I worked through the— I worked, I worked, I worked through the whole thing.

But I thought you said that you were—

same pace.

Exactly, same pace.

Yeah, I cut back. Well, I just— I quit training like a maniac. Ah, personal training time. Yeah. Yeah. And I got away from the crazy redhead and then I quit the job working nights. So that, that really helped. And so the, the, the working hours, I obviously sleep, I read about sleep, but I became friends with Dr. Kirk Parsley at that time as well. And, you know, Kirk helped me with figuring out the right amount of HRT, so to speak, for me at the time. And, um, Kirk was, Kirk was very helpful and he understood my mindset. You know, the guy was a SEAL, uh, guy's a doctor for the SEALs, so he kind of understands the crazy in my head and he also understands going through, you know, the mental gymnastics. Um, so I got that under control and years go by. I'd started a gym, uh, with my business partner and, you know, I'm dating a young lady and I go to get a pedicure and all of a sudden 4 or 5 days later I'm in the emergency room. They're probably gonna have to take my leg.

We're gonna have to save that for episode 2, Jim.

Oh, okay. All right.

'Cause I wanna keep these under an hour, but suffice it to say that you eliminated gluten, you eliminated dairy.

Mm-hmm.

You simplified your diet, went to a GAPS protocol, stopped training like a maniac, stopped working nights, started resting, started sleeping, implemented acupuncture. Yep.

You—

when did you see Bill Hartman? Because you talked about seeing Bill Hartman as part of this whole thing, or was that later?

I had saw Bill Hartman— I saw Bill Hartman just a couple months, like a couple months after I'd gotten colitis, because I, I was having problems getting my back to feel better after the car wreck. And he was just like— and I think a lot of it too is I was slowing down. I was becoming more mindful. Before, I didn't even know my back hurt because I was just like I don't have time for my back to hurt. Like, you're so revved up, you're producing so much cortisol. Like, I don't feel pain. Like, literally, like, people don't understand. Like, you can hit me with a hammer, you can— like, I walked into the doorframe the other day, split my head open and like cut my eye, and I just like, you know, I mean, you know, it's just like, I don't— like, you know, I don't, I don't feel stuff like that. So, uh, I think part of it, it was becoming more aware of my body and actually listening anything in my body. And then I saw Bill and he's like, dude, you got to—

before this. Okay. And do you think his—

I've known Bill for a long time.

You think you— he, he had recommendations that helped you recover from the ulcerative colitis?

Oh, well, definitely being more aware of my breathing. And I, I don't even know what my respiratory rate— I had, uh, I had Joel Jamison gave me like the first version of HRV, which was called BioForce, and I remember my HOV was like, like 4 or something like that when I started. My resting heart rate was stupid. It was ridiculous. So I, I would probably guess I probably had a 30 respiratory rate, probably, you know, I was 200, 195 pounds. Yeah. Just based on, based on if I, I see what I feel like when I have like, when I had that little hiccup like a year or two ago when I had that very bad fever. My respiratory rate was like 22. Mm-hmm. Usually around 12. So I, I, I know what 22 feels like and I probably was running 28 to 30, maybe 25 to 30 on a regular basis cuz I was just, I used over-breathing and to, to, to lift heavier things, right? Which is great. Which is fine to lift heavier things, but you gotta be able to shut that off when you're done. Right. And I didn't do that. I just kept revving and revving and revving. And I just kept taking more stimulants to keep revving. And you know, then the, the wheels blow off the car, right? So, but Bill, Bill really helped me understand the exhalation part of things. And once I started exhaling and putting my body in positions where I could exhale and take a full exhale, it really made a big difference in, in getting me to relax and calm down. He's like, dude, if you're breathing this much and you're overbreathing and you can't go the opposite direction. Even when you sleep, you're gonna be revved up, you know? So that was a big part of it.

And so after 4 months, your ulcerative colitis was in complete remission.

Fair? Mm-hmm. Fair.

Was it healed? Were you completely better?

Yeah. I mean, my digestion started to improve. I would have a hiccup if I had gluten or something like that, but it was better, better than, I mean, it was, anything's better than what it was. And I was doing way better. I felt better. I started, my body composition was, I mean, I wasn't fat before, but like when you're 285 pounds, like you're gonna have a little bit of body fat. But I started getting a lot leaner. I started doing some movement. I started training again, but it wasn't like, you know, death metal and bang your head against the wall.

And ammonia caps.

And no, yeah, I stopped the ammonia caps, but I still, you know, one of the, I'm such a, Terrible person. Um, I would sneak up behind a girl, a girl I like at the gym, and I'd crack the ammonia cap and I'd walk up behind her and I'd just put it under her nose real quick. Just the reaction. Yeah, I was bad at the time. Wow. I mean, yeah, it got me a lot of dates though. Any girl I did that to would go out on a date with me. It's funny how that works. It gets their attention.

Okay, got it. Unconventional dating advice with Jim Laird.

Yes. Not, not recommended. I don't recommend that. I don't recommend that either, especially— that's— yeah, that's kind of—

I think in 2024 there might be some stiffer penalties or consequences for that in certain places.

Yeah, it was totally different in 2008, 2007, but it was, um, you know, I was just a big, loud, obnoxious person. And that was part of being a big, loud, obnoxious person.

So 4 months, ulcerative colitis completely healed. Did you see any practitioners do any other lab testing, take any other supplements in order to get that outcome?

Nope.

So what would you say to sum it up, wrap it up for somebody who's dealing with a new diagnosis of a chronic disease, who's looking at a long-term prognosis that's probably been handed to them by a medical professional or by society or by Dr. Google. Or— and one thing that I'll mention here that's important is that I remember what it was like to use the internet and search functions in order to find information 5, 10, 20 years ago. It was amazing. And now it is absolutely just thought control propaganda coming up at the top of every search function. You cannot find basic information about natural medicine, the kind of things that Jim used to reinvent his health. If you go out and try and find them through Google or any other search, search engine that's based on Google, which is practically all of them as far as I know, you will not get this information. It's now all behind paywalls. It's on these niche websites that you'll never find. It's been memory hold. I've got friends who went from crazy Google traffic to nothing overnight.

Rob Wolf. Yeah, he's kind of the number one health people, and he went to like not even being found on the front page.

And the reality is they just don't want people to have access to this information. Yeah, because there's such a profit to be made when people are chronically ill. Like you mentioned your father, ostomy bags, ostomy supplies, diabetes medications, and anti— um, or immunosuppressive agents. Then you get on all the drugs for the anxiety and the depression and the fatigue that come along with all that. There's a massive gravy train that wants people to not do what Jim did, which is because— and we're going to cover— I want to go over your, your issue with the, um, your, your lag and your, your recurring infections. Another episode, but there's a huge industry and set of industries that don't want people like Jim to go from gurney in the hospital about to have their colon out, destined or doomed at that moment to a lifetime of drugs, surgeries, doctor's visits, and medications, to Jim Laird living in rural Nicaragua on zero— well I don't know if I can say zero. I won't speak for you, but HRT, HRT, you are dependent upon a very small number of things to perform at a very high level and enjoy your life and live well. And you're certainly not, you know, glued to some doctor's prescription pad in relative terms.

Yeah. Fair. At, for, for 50 years old, I think I'm doing pretty good. I mean, I can run circles around people half my age in the gym. You know, I played soccer for 45 minutes with 10-year-olds yesterday and didn't like break my leg or die of a heart attack. Yeah. So I'm doing, I'm doing pretty good now. I, I know you're gonna ask me next, what would be the biggest thing, advice you could give to people that are in a bad place? Slow down and listen to what your body's telling you. I was so caught up in repressing my thoughts, repressing the voices in my head that I'd never stopped and slowed down. My body was trying to tell me to stop. My body was trying to tell me to rest. It was making me tired for a reason, and I just overrid it with caffeine. There was a point I took so many stimulants, I could take 2 caffeine pills, which are 200 milligrams apiece, and 6 ephedra tablets and aspirin and go take a nap. Wow. That's how many stimulants I was taking.

Wow.

So my body was trying to tell me to slow down, and I was just like, screw that. My, you know, my bearings on my wheels were making noise, there's smoke coming out of the engine, and I'm like screw this, I'm gonna put it down, you know, put the pedal down. You've got to, you've got to slow down and listen because your body will tell you what it needs if you have the courage to sit down, experience the pain, accept responsibility for your dumbassery, which is what I had to do. I've been a dumbass. Learn from it. And the good news is when you learn these things, you can help others. That is the key. And so I'm very grateful for my childhood. I'm very grateful for my past. I'm very grateful for the stupidity that I did to myself because it allows me to have an empathy and, uh, a way of reading people that I, I really, I think that most people don't have. I have an intuition that, um, I've been told this anyway, so I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet, but I have an intuition of when to be firm when to be empathetic, when to be stern, and when to give people a hug. Just because I've been through so much myself and I have empathy and sympathy and I've been at rock bottom and I know what that's like. So be still and know, and don't be afraid of what comes up because it might be the number one thing you need to take care of. Don't be afraid of silence. Make time for it. And I think you'll, you'll, you'll be amazed at what the good Lord, or whatever, whoever you believe in, will reveal to you. Just have the courage to, to actually deal with it instead of being distracted by working too much or doing dumb things and, or, you know, spending money and doing whatever it is you do to medicate yourself. Have the courage to take it head on and deal with it.

One of the things I've noticed, you know, working with you, working with our patients, our clients, is that the people who most need to hear that and take action on it are the ones who most vigorously deny that it's for them.

Correct. It takes usually a couple months with those people of me saying over and over again, hey, I actually just got off a call with a lady who was like that for probably 3 or 4 months, she's finally like, I get it now. I finally get it. I finally— it's— I don't have to do everything perfect, but I just have to— few— I found a couple simple things that I like to do, and it's made a big difference for me. Thank you for that. And that's wonderful. It sometimes take— it some— it sometimes takes time for people to hear this message, and you have to be— you know, when I remember when I first started working with you and I told you about how many years it would take, or months, for some people to get in to buy into what I'm selling, and you're like, you got to be kidding, and I'm like, no, people people are going to need to hear the same message over and over again, and they're going to be so sick and tired of hearing it that it's just so— you feel like a broken record. And it doesn't matter whether it's training or working out or anything. That's why people have coaches in the NFL, because these guys have been playing football their whole life and they still make dumb mistakes, and the coach has to hold them accountable. They still need to do all these little simple drills that they find boring and they'd skip if they didn't have the coach there to do that. It's the same thing with life. You know, most people don't have the self-discipline to self-regulate. Even myself, I need accountability as well. Um, you know, so having a mentor, having someone to give you guidance to help keep you accountable, because our lives in the past would automatically give us the things we need. You know, we wouldn't have screens. There was, you know, there's— when I grew up, there was 3 TV channels. So you couldn't binge watch Netflix for like 3 days. There just wasn't enough good content. You'd be watching the same show over and over again, right? I mean, you can only watch the Three Stooges so many times, right? Um, so, you know, now we have this ability to veg out and check out, um, for hours on end. We don't have the, you know, children aren't playing outside, they don't do puzzles, they don't draw anymore. They're glued to their screens. So we got to make these conscious choices to be more present, to get out in nature, and to really slow down and, and be present. Not live in the future or the past, but live in your present moment. Absolutely.

Mhm. Jim, it's been great chatting with you. Thank you for this.

It's an incredible story.

Look forward to part, part 2, where we will talk about the next— it's really just I mean, I don't know how else to put it. It's part 2 of Jim's health and wellness saga.

On to the next, on to the next, on to the next crisis. You know, I just figured out I have it all figured out and then here this, the next thing comes along and I get hit in the face with, oh yeah, you've got this, this, and this right, but you missed this huge part. Um, and I had to be taught the hard way, of course, about it. So thanks for having me on. We'll probably, the much as I talk, it'll probably be part 3, part 4, part 5, but We'll see about that. Cliffhanger for part 2.

Yeah, thanks everyone for joining us.

I've got lots to share.

So thanks everyone for joining us. Again, the podcast is at stillmanmd.substack.com if you'd like to get it delivered straight to your email inbox. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.