Stories of Hope & Healing: Amy Arp Part II

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 back with Amy Arp for part 2 of her healing from MS story. Amy, thank you for joining us again.

Absolutely. It's so fun to do this.

It is fun. People loved the first episode.

It was, yeah, it was fun. It's also kind of funny to talk to people that have listened to it about it, but it was really fun.

Well, what's let's talk about that because you mentioned it to me. You said you got a lot of people emailing you like, what did you do? Can you tell me more about it? And here's the cool thing: you can work with Amy and I if you would like to tackle your autoimmune conditions and problems in the autoimmune program that we are currently launching.

Yes.

And that's been in the works for at least 6 months now. Mhm. And we're going to give you details on how to do that. The basic, basically all you need to do is go to stillmanmd.com, click the schedule a discovery call link. Our staff will direct you in the appropriate direction. You'll get on a call with Amy. In the future, if this program grows, there may be other people you may get on a call with, uh, but rest assured they will be great people who we've trained to a T and you will get the same great care with them. So, uh, without further ado, Amy. Where we left off last time was the journey towards being diagnosed and deciding you were going to beat your prognosis from your, uh, conventional doctors. And now I want to dive into everything you tried and did over the ensuing period of time, and then what the time course was from start to complete reversal and healing from your MS.

Okay. Um, so I guess before I get into the actual what I did, I do want to say kind of like a preface. I want to say that, you know, every person's root cause in a disease is going to be different. And so as I've gone along this journey, I've met, you know, many people that have also healed from MS or other autoimmune diseases. And it's not the exact same thing for each person. So I guess I just want to say that what worked for me may not be the root cause or what works for someone else. And also, as I've gone through this, you know, when I was going through it, I just didn't know what I didn't know. And so now I have learned so much going through this process. I spent way more time, way more money, way more energy than I needed to.

Spill.

But I didn't know. I'll explain as we go through this. As we go through it, I'll explain. But I just wanna say that up front because I think that it could be really easy to get a podcast of, oh, this girl, healed from MS in this way, I'm just going to copy what she did and I will be fine. And I don't know if that's true for you. And so I just want to say, this is my story. I'm just sharing what worked for me. And, you know, there's so many different things that I would do now, hence why we have created an autoimmune program to kind of consolidate the most important things. So I just want to say that up front. Now we'll get into all the, all the things I did.

Yeah, it's like I tell patients, You're all special. You're all like, like a snowflake. You're all special. You all fall and you all melt in your own special way.

But it's true. It's so true.

It's not a, it's not a joke. No, it's not a dig. It's not an insult. It's just a fact.

It's very true.

It's, it's reality.

Mm-hmm.

So anyway.

Yeah. Anyway. Okay. So I think where we left off was I had talked about that I was in the hospital, you know, I changed my mentality, different things, but I didn't really get into a lot of the therapies that I had tried. So in the beginning, As I mentioned last podcast, I tried to be vegan. Remember, I tried to be vegan for a little bit because I had found one person who, who had been vegan and it just didn't go well. And so I tried that, wasn't good for me. Um, I had mentioned before that when I did my blood work, I already had very low cholesterol. And so being vegan probably made it even worse. It was just not helpful for me. So thankfully I quickly switched out of that. And so a couple months in, I started working with a kind of health coach person that worked only with MS patients, mainly only with MS patients. And I changed my diet back to meat and kind of more of a very extreme modified paleo. I don't know how else to describe it. It had only certain things in it. So I would eat eggs for breakfast with some vegetables. Then for lunch I would have meat with some more vegetables, and then for dinner I'd have meat and more vegetables. But I wasn't eating a lot of carbs, so the only carbs I was eating were vegetables, and I was eating 7 to 9 cups of vegetables a day.

So we're talking about root vegetables then?

No, they were not allowed. That was not part of the program. I know, I wish I had known. I wish I had known.

Did you find the Wahls Protocol at some point?

I did, yeah. So I—

this wasn't from that?

This wasn't from the Wahls Protocol, no.

Context for people who don't know, the Wahls Protocol created by Terry Wahls Wells, MD, I think University of Iowa.

I think so. Mm-hmm.

Hawkeyes or something like that. Anyway, she came up with this protocol. She recovered from MS. She was in a wheelchair. It's a similar story, and she did it all with diet.

She had a very cool story. And yeah, she did it mostly with diet, diet, and she had a few extra therapies in there, but not a lot more extra.

It was very like the integrative medicine scope of what we can do, what we know beyond what she published in her book, is amazing. There's so much more for us to share with people with autoimmune— autoimmunity today.

Absolutely. And so I started working with this kind of health coach with MS patients, got back eating meat, tons and tons and tons of vegetables. Um, at the time, the recommendation was not to eat root vegetables, so I didn't. Um, wish I would have, but it's okay, I still made it. And so got on that diet, was really, really strict. So like extremely strict for 2 years. Like, I did not cheat at all. I was so committed. And I had even talked to someone else who had healed from MS, had been symptom-free for, you know, I don't know, probably like 20+ years at this point. And he was very convinced that you had to be that strict for the rest of your life. Like, there was no cheating. That was just the way it was. So I had talked to him on the phone, and he was saying, this is what you have to do for the rest of your life. And I was kind of picking his brain about like, well, what do you do when you eat out? And what do you do here? And he had had his whole routine down.

Yeah, he had his whole routine down and just plan on staying in forever, basically.

I mean, it was kind of like that. It was like, I don't eat out very much. And so, yeah, that was a, you know, but I was prepared. I was like, if this is what I have to do to be symptom-free, that's what I'm gonna do. I was committed. I didn't, you know, I didn't know what you got to do. Exactly. I didn't know. And so I really focused on my diet, but as I mentioned, it's very, very restricted and limited. So just way less than even like a normal autoimmune paleo diet. Then I also worked on all the foundations, you know, of course, sleep, me getting my sleep right, mouth taping, do the, you know, the whole sleep routine, blackout curtains, you know, everything, sleep hygiene, grounding, breathwork, learning how to manage stress, filtered water, removing toxins from the home products, all that stuff. I remember one of the— in the very beginning, I had just been diagnosed. I was so overwhelmed, but I went into like a holistic grocery store to get some new cleaning products and I was so overwhelmed and I was like, I was like, it is not that overwhelming now, but I was just so overwhelmed with everything I needed to do and change. And I felt like I was healthy before that. So it felt like still even a big shift from where I was. And so I did all that. Then I went to see a doctor who had said, okay, let's get you on some phosphatidylcholine IVs. So I started doing a ton of phosphatidylcholine IVs. I don't know, maybe like 10. So I would go weekly for— which, I mean, it doesn't seem like that much, but when you're going weekly, you feel like you're like, is this ever going to end?

Can I ask what the price tag on each of those was?

Probably close to like $200 an IV, probably.

Yeah, I don't remember exactly, but I think most of it just costs Or is there anything else in there?

No, it was just, just phosphatidylcholine. And then on top of that, I was also doing high-dose vitamin C IVs, other like concoctions of vitamins and minerals.

So were those in addition to the $200 per PC?

Yes. Oh yeah. Yes. Yeah.

This is the destination wellness world.

Yes. So it was like every time you're like, oh, another— it felt like every time I went, it was like anywhere from like $200 to $500. And then you just like keep going in and you're like, When is this, when is this gonna end?

I know. Yeah, and I, I really believe we have to seek transparency for patients. Were I to ever have an in-person brick-and-mortar facility doing that, I would say, here's our autoimmune program, here's our success rate, total remission of symptoms in X, Y, Z number of months from start of program. Because people can do a program like this and get 50% better in the first 3 to 6 months and then 100% get better in a year, even if they don't continue with the program or the membership or whatever, however it's structured. But I really feel strongly that people should be able to see a number like, well, the average patient who gets better does 10 of these IVs in 10 weeks or 10 months or whatever it is, and they do this many of this IV, and— or they do this program and it costs this much. Because it is so— I've, I've never been in that position The closest I've been is with my son, you know, in the hospital when the hospital bill is so high, I haven't even told my wife what the total number is. And I'm not going to pay the whole thing, but it's not going to be small even if I don't pay the whole thing. So, uh, but the point is you're sitting there thinking like, oh my gosh, how is this going to affect my financial future? Am I going to be able to buy the house or the car? Or, and then you get into the situation where some people are selling their cars, you know, or taking out a reverse mortgage to pay for something like this. So I feel very strongly that people need transparency and they need data. They deserve to have data. Here's what it's going to take for you to get well based on our numbers. No guarantees are possible.

Yeah. And I wish that someone had kind of told me upfront just how much money we would spend on this. It was ridiculous.

You know, you will get there when we get there.

I know, I know. And so anyway, so I kept going in for these different IVs and obviously tons of supplements, you know, like It's not even worth mentioning all the different ones, but so many supplements on from every different angle.

What was the monthly supplement spend?

I don't know, hundreds of dollars every month, you know, on top of everything. It's like $300, $400 of supplements.

Say $500 to $1,000?

No, I would say probably like $300 to $400 at that time, but it still felt like a lot with everything else I was doing.

This was how long ago?

This was 6 years ago. Yeah, 6 years ago. And, you know, maybe it's increased a little bit, but still quite a bit on supplements, taking a ton of supplements. But then you had to, you know, you have to space them out, which I understand some supplements you need to, but I was on this regimen of like, okay, 30 minutes before I eat, take these supplements, and then with my meal, I take these supplements, and 30 minutes after I eat, I take these supplements. So it just felt like it was a lot. All day long, multiple times a day. Yep, full-time job. Um, so after I did that, then I got a sauna. So I started saunaing pretty extensively, which was really helpful. And then let me look at my notes here. Wrote it all down because I— there's so many different things. So then after that, I— so I was working with them, um, a great center that they had done and that I had mentioned is like no longer in existence here in San Diego. And started doing, you know, IVs, supplements. I did some— a little bit of bodywork. They did a little bit of, you know, the kind of like OMM style from like, um, you know, osteopathic manipulative therapy, a little bit of that. And then after that, I found another— so the coach that I had been working with that only worked with MS patients was really big and focused on parasites being the kind of— her philosophy was that that would be the root cause of MS or any other autoimmune disease. So I had done some herbal parasite cleanses with the doctors over here, but it didn't do anything, or it felt like it didn't— it didn't feel like I'd moved the needle at all. And so I started doing some pretty extensive parasite treatments with antiparasitic drugs and antifungal drugs at very high doses. And there were only, you know, very few doctors that would even prescribe the dosages that they were recommending at that time, or even still now, very few doctors would ever recommend that. Um, I had told these other doctors over here what I was doing, and they were just like, what? Just couldn't believe. And so this whole journey, I was kind of like doing one little lane here, working with this other person over here, and just kind of managing them separately because no one seemed to agree fully with the other person of what they were doing. So, you know, I would tell this person what I was doing, and then I told the, you know, the lady what I was doing, and she's like, you don't need to do any of that. And it was just kind of this back and forth, and I was like, okay, get very uncomfortable. Yes, and I get it. They want to be in control of like the treatment process, and, um, but it was— I kind of had to then manage my own process on my own.

I, I don't get it, and I want to talk about this for a minute because I was definitely trained in residency in medical school, and I mean, I, I understand why they do it, but I don't think it's appropriate is what I mean by I don't get it. Because in med school and residency, they train you to basically be, you are the boss, you are in charge, you tell the patient what to do. And basically anything they do outside of what you tell them what to do either doesn't matter or is actively going to harm them. Very much the, like, I have a friend who used to joke that some people think that MD stands for minor deity. And it's like, that's, that was kind of like the mindset. Like, you are a minor deity, you tell them what to do, they get better, they ignore you, they die. Of course, it's total nonsense. But anyway, but I felt that it was, you know, I don't know everything. And oh, you don't? I definitely have seen when things go wrong. And so I'll always tell patients when I think what they're doing is going to actively harm them, but I also am not going to begrudge them the opportunity to, as I call it, choose their own adventure and try something else because maybe it will work for them. And, you know, with all therapeutics, there's a failure rate and there's a success rate. And the real question is, what's the success rate? And the rest of it is details, you know, success rate at how many weeks or how many months or how many treatments or what dose or with what other mitigating factors. And so I think it's very— I, I think what ends up happening with practitioners who don't really respect their patients' autonomy, uh, or decision-making capacity as individuals, is that they— I, I see that they're kind of on the churn and burn train. You know, every year they've got another 200 people, and every year they lose some number of that because they, you know, didn't get the results they were looking for and started to try new things and knew that they would get pushback. And then just said, well, if I can't talk to you about my care, I'm gonna leave. And I've got patients who are very motivated, high-achieving, they've tried everything. And, you know, we're now in a very collaborative process. And I describe my process with patients as being very collaborative, not, you know, dictatorial. And we collaborate on, well, what are we going to try next, with a real clear understanding between ourselves that we don't have a knowledge of, well, if you do 10 hyperbaric oxygen treatments or 100 PMF treatments at this setting, It'll all get better, you know? So it's all about what do you want to spend your, what do you basically want to roll the dice on next for your wellness? Because that's, I mean, and Osler said this, William Osler founded Johns Hopkins. He said, medicine is an art of probability and a science of uncertainty. And people don't get that and they need to understand it because it's all a matter of, uh, in the end. Chance and probability.

Absolutely.

So back to you, Amy.

Yeah, no, that's great. Okay, so then I was doing these high-dose anti-parasitic drug protocols, antifungal protocols.

How long were you at the Destination Wellness Center with the IVs and the supplements? How many weeks or months approximately?

I mean, I worked with them for about a year. So yeah, so I had worked— not— it wasn't a year before I worked with this person. I was kind of working with everyone concurrently. So I started one and then started another. So I would say I found that center maybe 3 months after my diagnosis, and so I started pretty quickly. So the first couple months, you know, I had tried the vegan, and then I quickly found this center, um, as I mentioned last time, with just calling around asking for nutrition advice. I really had no clue that this type of a center even existed. And so, and then they just happened to say, oh, you know, we work with a lot of people that have been diagnosed with MS, and and, you know, see great results. So that's how I found them. And so this other person, this other lady, kind of health coach in the MS world, I did lots of rounds of high-dose antiparasitic drugs. So what I would do is I would do like 2 weeks on of the drugs, and then I would go on to antifungals for a couple weeks, and then I would take a little bit of a break, and then I would do that again. So I kind of would do rounds every I don't know, every month, month and a half, um, depending upon the different antiparasitic drugs at that time that I was taking. And so I did that for probably 6 or 7 months. So I probably did 6 or 7 rounds of that, which— that was brutal. That was a lot. Um, I would take, um, you know, 4 to 5 antiparasitic drugs at one time and then the antifungal drugs after that. And that was where I was very, very sick. Like, I felt nauseous all the time. Like, the first couple rounds was just brutal. Like, I just feel like I was like, this sucks.

Tell us about the uninvited guests.

Yes, uninvited guests. I found them. So a lot of people will say when they do antiparasitic protocols, like, oh, I get all these strings out of, you know, whatever. And I don't think a lot of that is actually parasites. And I saw a ton of that stuff. It's like, you know, just mucus and the inside of things.

Some really strange things that come out of people.

Yes, very strange things.

It's, you know, and I— it truly, it puzzles me. It really does puzzle me. We never talked about it in residency. We never talked about it in training. I can't even tell you how many, you know, colonoscopies, colonoscopy photos, endoscopies— I mean, there's doctors who are literally scoping the human GI tract every day. But anyway, the idea is like these guys are, are literally in and around the human GI tract with high-definition cameras all day. They don't see any of this weird stuff. And I have serious questions about what on earth is that stuff, and has any pathologist ever anywhere taken whatever that stuff is and put it under a microscope or put it into a Petri dish and seen what's grown? Because it's just bizarre. And some of it is the small bowel, which we can capture images of with a capsule endoscopy, but capsule endoscopy misses a lot of things. You would still think you wouldn't miss, you know. Anyway, so it's just, it's very bizarre. I'm very curious about this, and no one has really good answers in my book.

Yeah, it's true. And so, um, you know, I did definitely see a couple, like, a couple, like, they were like worms. They were not this stringy thing, like, because at that time, you know, the lady I was working with had recommended, okay, let's, you know, you can put like a— so we would do enemas with this. So at that time, I was doing tons of enemas, like every other day I was doing an enema. Enemas with Um, I did both coffee and chlorine dioxide. So at that time I was doing chlorine dioxide enemas with the parasite pills, and every other day, and also drinking the chlorine dioxide as well. That's like a whole nother therapy treatment. And so then a couple ways was, you know, she would recommend inspecting very closely after you do the enema. It's actually really, really hard to find parasites when you do this. When people say like, oh, I found— I saw a ton of them, I'm I'm like, no, you definitely didn't, because they are very hard to find. Um, there were times where I would, like, as gross as this is, like, put a colander in the toilet, and then you would, like, you know, let all the liquid go through. And so there were a couple, like, definitely worms that I saw. One of them very much looked like, you know, it had ridges on it, and I'm like, this is disgusting. One of them was like 6 inches long, and I'm like, this is—

I have to say, working with the people that I worked with There's an irrational desire that I've seen patients have to share the photos with the practitioner.

Absolutely, yes.

Dr. Stillman, you'll never believe what came out of me. Um, as a matter of fact, I will totally, and I don't need to see it. Totally.

It's really interesting. I don't know, I found it so fascinating. My poor husband though, I was like, oh my gosh, look what kind of— look who came out of here. I would always tell tell him to come over and look at this.

And for richer or for poorer, totally, through parasite cleanses and chlorine dioxide enemas. And we actually, we have to make a little quick announcement here because the first episode we talked about you, your struggle, your concern about being infertile. And for people who are not watching the video of this, um, they missed, uh, little Amy, Amy's little, uh, little, uh, firstborn child. Yeah.

Um, move from one side to the other.

Yeah. So we recorded episode 1 when she was pregnant and we recorded episode 2. He's how old now? 12 weeks.

Yep. 3 weeks, 3 months. I guess 3 and a half months now. I don't know. Crazy.

Time flies when you're a nursing mother.

Yes, seriously.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's quite a story to be able to record this at this sort of like culmination of anything, you know, not only are you, are you completely in remission and healed, but you also have, you know, the child that you were told you'd never have.

Absolutely.

Yeah, amazing.

Okay, back to the parasite pills.

Back to you. Back to you.

I get through all these things, otherwise people are gonna be like, you didn't even share what you did. Um, okay, parasite drugs. So as I mentioned, that was a really brutal process. I was very— lots of Herxing reactions very sick. Um, but I did tons of enemas every other day for months and months and months. Um, I did the parasite treatments. I think they're probably for like 7 months consistently. So I would be on them, off them, on them, off them. Um, just rounds and rounds of them. The theory behind that was, you know, that parasites will have different life cycles, and so we want to make sure that we do enough rounds of them to actually get the parasites. And so that was super good. The parasite treatments were awesome though. Like, I'm very thankful for all the things that I have done because I saw so much symptom relief when I was doing those very extreme parasite treatments. I was so encouraged.

Well, would you have stuck with it if you hadn't seen that?

Oh, if I— no, I don't think so.

That's the thing that's really interesting to me about therapies is that a lot of the time people will bail, and I don't blame them. But it's, it's really interesting, you know, how long are we going to kind of fish before we cut bait on a therapy? Because we can't do all the therapies at the same time. Not other interactions and contraindications, but there's also just, well, if we're going to spend a year on every little rabbit hole for the cause of my disease, I might not get better for 10 years. I don't have that kind of time.

Absolutely. Mm-hmm. So I slowly, like, as I started doing them, I, you know, one of the rounds I remember my, my urinary incontinence went away and I was so excited. I was like, it was like night and day. Like, it was just like I did the 2 weeks and then I could hold my bladder overnight, and it was just amazing. I was like, what? How is this even possible? Like, this is incredible. I was so happy. I was so happy. And then there was slowly, like, after each round, I could feel a lessening of the, um, numbness, you know. Numbness was going away, tingling was going away, all of the different symptoms, um, the heat intolerance. And so slowly, little by little, I started feeling better, and I was thinking I mean, this is amazing. Um, you know, was it exactly— was it parasites, or was it, you know, all of the other mechanisms of action of all of these antiparasitic drugs? I don't know. We're never fully gonna know. But either way, it was very helpful one day.

But don't hold your breath.

Yeah, I know. Oh, one other thing I was going to say was, um, you know, as we had gotten different parasites out— I didn't personally send in my parasites, but the lady that I had worked with, she had partnered with a lab at some point, and so she did send in parasites that people would get out and send in. So they were actually confirmed parasites, like they were different types of whatever species, whatever. And so it wasn't all just the kind of mucusy stuff. I'm sure they also saw that and realized that's not a parasite. Um, but it was really interesting. So I don't know exactly what lab that she'd worked with, it was international, but, um, I was very excited that she was doing that. It was a cool thing that they were actually sending in parasites and getting some data back So that was interesting. So then after that, I also kind of during all of this time, I also did a bunch of IV chelation. So I know that we're HTMA fans over here and I wish that I had found HTMA sooner, but the doctor— is—

chelation though.

Yeah. So, but the doctors I had worked with would recommend IV chelation. So I did a lot of that as well. So I did EDTA, I did DMSA. Just to kind of— their theory was to get the different— they bind to different metals and higher affinities. So I did a lot of those. That was interesting because that was actually kind of hard to get. Like at that time when I was getting the DMSA, there was like, you know, people were trying to come into centers and like prevent them from even ordering or buying it from overseas. And it was this whole thing. So like they were, you know, but I found all of it, got it all done., and then did like the urine tests to like the however many hour urine test to get, see what actually came out of me in my urine. And we did remove a lot of metals. Obviously now we know like that also removes so many other minerals and not the best, not the safest way to remove metals.

Um, you know, but it can be, it can be, it can be, it has to be done properly.

Correct.

Yeah. And a lot of people wind up demineralized. After chelation because there's not the proper follow-up.

And so interestingly, when I was doing chelation, I did have immediate symptom relief, which was wild. Like, there would be days where I would go and do the chelation, and then I'm like, oh, that symptom is gone, and it did not come back. And so it was really, really cool. But also, I recognize, like, there's pros and cons, there's times and places for all these things. And so now, knowing, you know, what I know, I would recommend someone to do HTMA first because it's way safer. You stay mineralized. So many different things.

I'll put one caveat to that. If someone's got chelation available at a place with a good practitioner who knows what they're doing— I can't tell you how to identify that person in a podcast, it's too complicated— and they've got the money, uh, then it can be a huge benefit.

Absolutely.

But you know, when you're talking about, well, I've got to work with an X or Y or Z budget, you can blow the whole thing on chelation and then not get better.

Mm-hmm. Very true.

So yes, because, you know, chelation will be $2,000 to $5,000 for one course depending on how much you wind up doing. And for a lot of people, that's all their disposable income for the year, or more than their disposable income for the year, and they're looking to finance it.

Mm-hmm.

So absolutely.

Anyway, yeah, so I did IV chelation, um, at that time, you know, it felt like it was helpful, so I did so many rounds of that. Then after that, I at some point in my journey ended up finding another doctor. So as I mentioned, I'm like going from doctor to doctor. There's so much in that of like, you know, why I changed from one to the other and kind of decided to find additional practitioners. Don't really have time to get into that. But for the sake of time, I did go to another practitioner who also had understood the kind of theory of these high-dose antiparasitic drug protocols. And he also was very big into dental infections. And so at that time, I did focus on, you know, looking into, okay, do I have dental infections? And so I did end up, through all the tests and everything, find out that all 4 of my cavitation— or all 4 of my wisdom teeth sites were infected in the bone, and they wanted me to do cavitation surgery on all 4 of them. So at first I did 2 because obviously all this stuff is expensive and also it's just hard on your body to go through a surgery and all the things. So I did 2 of them the first time and then I did the other 2 at a later date. Um, the, you know, cavitation surgery is very important. I didn't necessarily feel symptom relief at that time. I think that was towards the end of my journey, so I was pretty symptom them free at that point already. But I still wanted to get it cleaned out knowing like, I just want to clean out everything from my body because I don't want this, you know, if anything is left in, I just, I don't want it to return. I don't want any of these symptoms anymore. I just want to clean house and do everything. So I did wisdom teeth cavitation surgery. I also did hyperbaric oxygen chamber. So I did many, many rounds of hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

How many dives?

I don't remember. I think you can buy in packages of like 10 or 20 dives, so maybe I did. Yeah, I, you know, bought a couple packages. I didn't do like 40 dives. I know you had mentioned something about that, but I, you know, doing 10 at a time, so you like just space them out.

Yeah.

Um, did IV ozone at some point throughout the journey, you know, doing different ozone treatments. I also did chiropractic work. I did body work. I did emotional work, you know, did lots and lots of emotional work. I also dove into, you know, okay, are there spiritual roots of disease? Like, what does that look like? Because some people believe that's a thing. So kind of ventured in to see like, okay, where do I stand on this? And, you know, all the different things there. And then of course, prayer. We prayed a lot. We had lots of people praying for us. I know you also did with Benjamin. And, you know, prayer is powerful. So will we ever fully understand the impact of that?

No.

But I know that it's important and very valuable and was a part of the journey.

Okay.

What else did I do?

I don't know.

With that, so many more supplements, like, but that's kind of a list of a lot of the treatments that I did.

What was this timeline start to— well, I guess wrap it up for us. What was the sequence of your symptom remission over this period of time? And then what was it sort of start to finish?

So for me, as I mentioned in the beginning, I was numb from the waist down, sensory nerves, and just couldn't feel a ton in that. I also had heat intolerance where I would go out even in 75-degree weather and just have a flare-up of symptoms. Like my face would go numb, my hands would go numb, like, you know, all these different things. I did have numbness in my fingers that took a long time to resolve. I also had bladder incontinence, urinary incontinence, and fatigue, like extreme fatigue. So my symptoms, they gradually decreased. It wasn't like this one moment where all of a sudden everything was gone. You know, I woke up one morning and everything was gone. I so desperately wanted that, but that wasn't my story. It was a very gradual, um, you know, progression of improvement here. So it would be slowly, like, you know, I would— like, my bladder symptoms definitely went away in the beginning first. And then fatigue started slowly going away. And then my, my feeling just slowly came back over the course of months. And so I would say that it was probably about 1 year from the beginning of being diagnosed where I was actually symptom-free, where I was like, this is the first time that I've had like 2 weeks in a row with no symptoms. Because eventually towards like the last few months before being completely symptom-free, the symptoms would, you know, I would say I would have days where I could feel my feet, and then I'd have other days where I couldn't feel my feet. And so it was this like thing where I would like went from being numb for, you know, constantly, to then slowly being like, oh, I can actually kind of feel my toes. I would have my husband like poke me or touch my toes or kind of see if I could feel anything constantly. I was like, try, try my toes again. Um, so he would like try them or poke them or whatever, because that's what they do when you go to a neurologist. They like poke you. They're like, can you feel this? Can you feel this? Can you feel this? So I had him do that constantly. And then eventually it got to the place where I was thinking, I was like, I can actually feel, I can feel my toes. And that was such an incredible feeling. It was just so exciting to be able to feel my toes, feel my fingers. And then I told you, I said at the end there was kind of this flip-flop where it would be numb some days, not be numb other days. And so at about the year mark is when I fully would say that I had about a 2-week period of being completely symptom-free. And then it, like, after that was longer stretches in between. And so I would say it took about a year to be fully symptom-free, um, where I felt really good. And so then at that time, that's when I, you know, reapplied for school, ended up going and getting a master's degree and doing all of things that I did after that because I actually felt good. And after that, I did go and get a master's degree from one of the medical schools in Chicago. And those programs are very stressful, very, very stressful. So I did the first year of med school coursework with earning a master's degree, and I did all of that and was completely fine. So I definitely was concerned coming into that, thinking, oh no, is the stress gonna flare up symptoms, or am I gonna have some issue? Because they tell you like stress is what causes it.

Did you tell them that you'd done this?

No, absolutely not. No.

So did you, did you bring it up at all? Did anyone at these, this place know that you had had MS?

Nope.

Nobody.

Nobody knew.

Oh my gosh, that's so funny.

Nobody knew. The doctors that I had worked with, they had told me, they're like, you can't mention this to anybody. And I was like, okay, great. So they had prepped me pretty well of like what to expect and kind of how to navigate it. So I told nobody. I literally told nobody. I never signed— I never told anybody anything. And then thankfully, as I mentioned, I had like— I was healed at that point. And so I didn't have symptoms over the course of that year, even though I was under tremendous stress, like very high stress environment, you know, in a new— and like enduring the winter where I had never experienced the winter before in terms of living there. Um, so thankfully I didn't experience any of that. And then, um, yeah, and so I've been symptom-free ever since, and it's been wonderful.

So about a year to be symptom-free, full-time job, getting well, no work during that time, just focusing on your health.

Yes, and thankfully I was able to do that. I know that's not everyone's story, and so that was a luxury for me. But as I had mentioned, I think last time, I was already preparing to go to grad school. I was, you know, in the process I got accepted when I was in the hospital. So at that time I was working in a hospital, but I quickly ended that, you know, job at that point because I, I just needed to focus on healing. And so I did have the luxury of doing a full-time healing, and it really was like a full-time job healing. And so can people obviously heal when they're working? Yes, absolutely. It may look a little bit different. You may have to configure your schedule a little bit differently. But you can absolutely heal while working full-time or having a job or having kids or whatever that looks like for you. Um, just, this is just my story, so that's what I'm sharing.

Would you be comfortable sharing what the total spend was on this journey?

Yeah, I mean, I probably need to look up the like actual total. I remember at the like 1-year mark, so So before we kind of embarked on this journey, you know, we were just to kind of paint the picture, we were living in a one-bedroom apartment in San Diego, nothing fancy. Like we were married, living obviously on one income because I wasn't working at that time. So we were fine, but we weren't, we didn't have like excess. We didn't have like hundreds of thousands, you know, we didn't have tons of hundreds of dollars or even thousands of dollars of excess this money. So what we had done was when I was working my job before, we had saved a little bit of that money hoping that we would use that to go to school so that I would have less student debt when I came out from the master's program and ultimately medical school at that point. And so we had, I think, a cushion. I don't know, we had maybe saved like, I don't know, $20,000 or $30,000 for schooling purposes. So we had that as like a savings. And so we ended up using all of that. I think probably at that point I probably spent $30,000 or $40,000 on health at the, at that point, but at the 1-year mark, um, probably I would need to go back and look exactly, but it was a lot of money, like a lot of money. And it was definitely sad to have to drain that amount because at that time that could have been a small down payment for a house or something. And so I'm like, here we are spending all of the money. And of course it was worth it. I was like, my health is so much more worth, you know, more important than a house or any of these other things. Um, so then when we did go back to school, I did have to take out student debt again because we didn't have that savings. Um, but yeah, and then of course, like, since then, you know, you continue with different treatments. Um, not treatments, but like, you know, I keep up with supplements, I keep up with some different things, so that adds cost over the course of time. But yeah, it's a pricey endeavor. And I don't think that you need to spend that much. You know, I wish that I had had someone at that time who kind of directed everything and said, okay, Amy, here are the things that you need to do. Here are the things you don't need to do because it's such a waste of time and money. And if I had had a coach or someone just kind of guiding the process, I would have saved so much money. You do not need to spend that kind of money on your health treatments. It's just not necessary.

Correct. Totally agree. And that's why we decided to put together the autoimmune program. Amy, do you want to share what the program is and how we put it together?

Yeah, so the program is going to consist of, you know, a lot of the things that we found are very, very important in healing from autoimmune disease or overcoming autoimmune disease. Um, and so obviously I can't tell you exactly what's in it. Come join us. But we have lots of different video modules. We have a process where I will be coaching you and so will Dr. Stillman, guiding you through this whole process. So we're going to take you from start to finish and just help you along the process. As we mentioned, each person's journey is very different and unique. And so we can't just say, okay, here's the specific treatment that every person is going to get. It just doesn't work like that. And so what we're going to do is we're going to guide you through the process. We're going to coach you through the process. Process and what that looks like specifically for you.

So yeah, here's what the journey looks like. You go to stillmanmd.com, you book a discovery call, that's a complimentary 15-minute call. You can answer any or ask any basic questions that you may have on that call. And then from that call, you have the opportunity to book what we call a practice membership evaluation. This is a very unique call. It is not like any call I see anyone else offering in the health and wellness world. And basically the goal of the practice membership evaluation is to make sure that we're a good fit to work together. We do occasionally get people calling who are totally unreasonable and unrealistic. We're not a good fit together. We have to discover that at the beginning because one of my, uh, goals in the practice is to have 100% patient satisfaction, and I can't cure everyone of everything, so I can't base patient satisfaction on that. I have to base it on Did we meet or exceed your expectations? And were we there every step of the way? And did we overdeliver and underpromise? So that's the goal. And the goal at the practice membership evaluation is to really help you understand where you are and what it's likely to take for you to achieve the results you would like to achieve. And we walk you through what the whole process looks like. And the beauty of programs is that what I found working with people over the years in integrative medicine is, is when you go with the à la carte model model, which has been the standard and the norm for a long time. Number one, patients have this sinking feeling every time they go to check out of, oh my gosh, another $500, another $1,000, another $2,000. How much longer is this going to last? You know, am I going to be able to— I mean, am I going to impoverish myself seeking my wellness? Right. So we avoid that because you know what it's going to cost upfront. There's some add-ons. Add-ons. Like, we can't predict what people are going to need. For example, we don't ship everyone vitamin D. Why? Some of you might live in Southwest Florida and you have a UV index of 14 6 months of the year, and you can go outside and get your vitamin D at your lunch hour. And some of you might live in Maine and you're going to need extra. So we just don't know exactly what you need. And that's the thing that Amy, you know, has come back to multiple times. We don't know what you're all going to need, and that's one reason why it's not just an online course, you know, the Dr. Stillman and Amy Arp Cure Autoimmunity course. It's a program where we have a dialogue with you and ongoing relationship and helping you understand yourself and your body and picking and choosing what to do first and second and third. And a lot of the time, you know, what I think patients don't realize is it's a lot like baking a cake. You have to follow an order. And it's not the same if you beat the icing into the batter before you've baked it. And you also can't just take the batter and put it in the pan and then throw it in the oven on broil. It's not the same as if you bake it for 2 hours, right? So all these things have to be understood, and that's why it's set up as a program. What we do with the programs is we basically look at the member price at the practice, which is what people pay if they're going, so to speak, à la carte as members of the practice. We don't actually have an à la carte option. You have to be a member to access services with a monthly membership due, but we take the membership price and then we discount it by a certain percentage so that essentially all you're paying for is our time to help you, and you're getting supplements and labs for very close to our cost, which is way better than you're gonna find anywhere else. And I break these numbers down in the programs if people care to look at them. Them. But I mean, we're saving people hundreds and thousands of dollars because it only makes sense that way. We're making it simple, we're streamlining the process, we're making it more affordable because we would really prefer to help more people, deliver an exceptional service, and make it an offer that people see as just being a no-brainer for their care if they're dealing with an autoimmune condition.

Um, a couple other thoughts I had just on kind of, you know, um if people have questions about this, but, you know, after I was symptom-free, now I have a baby, which is very exciting. And a lot of people, when they are diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, you know, they'll talk to you about how, you know, pregnancy might be great because your body's kind of like suppressed immune system. But then after you give birth, a lot of people will then have like a crazy relapse of some sort. You know, that could be be worse than their first. And I have talked to people that do have MS who had that very experience. They had a baby, had a horrible, horrible relapse, um, you know, had to work really hard to regain even that amount of health that they had before. And, you know, in my pregnancy it was awesome. Like, my pregnancy was awesome. I had no morning sickness, no nothing. I felt great. And then since having the baby, for the last 3 and a half months, I have been doing amazing, still symptom-free, still feeling awesome. Even with the sleepless nights and the stress and everything that goes with it, I feel phenomenal. I have so much energy. I feel great. I have had no postpartum depression, nothing. Like, I feel awesome, um, you know. And I just think that part of that is really just taking control of my health and choosing to figure out the root causes and then letting my body heal and being in this place. So I just wanna say that as kind of a, like, if people are like, what happened post-baby and how is that affecting you and how are you doing? And I'm doing great. Great question.

And so we'll teach you everything we know about how to recover from autoimmunity. There's 2, 3, and 6-month programs. We're gonna be constantly reiterating them. So things that in— they're included and not included are going to change over time, which is one reason why we're not gonna give you more details now. Inquire@stolenimmunity.com if you're wondering if it's right for you. Essentially, we engineered these programs to be right for anyone who has significant severe symptoms of an autoimmune disease or a disease that might be autoimmune, because a lot of people who have a serious illness, they haven't yet received some kind of clear autoimmune diagnosis, but it's in the picture. And sometimes they're even, well, we don't know what you have, but we think it's autoimmune. And maybe you'll go see some expert somewhere who will figure it out. But most of the time, um, those people I find don't get a definitive answer. Uh, and we would like to offer people really cutting-edge integrative medicine for this so that they can do just as Amy has, uh, go out and achieve their hopes and dreams.

Yeah, it's possible. There's so much hope out there.

Absolutely. So any closing thoughts, Amy?

No, I think that's it. I think my only— I guess my only closing thought is there's so much hope, and I just— we are super passionate about helping people actually achieve the things that they want to do in life.

So we are. It's true. Thanks for joining me.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Thank you everyone for listening. We'll see you next time.