Stories of Hope, Stories of Healing: Emily's Journey Reclaiming Health

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.

Emily, thank you for sitting down with us.

You're very welcome. It's nice to see you.

Good to see you too. So I'd like to start by asking people where they were with their health and what brought them to seek our care.

I, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when I was 17. I'm 35 now. Uh, myasthenia gravis. I don't know the statistics of it now, but it was pretty rare for a pediatric patient. I had a pretty tumultuous history with it. I was in and outta the hospital pretty regularly. I wanna say it was for about 12 years and I would have breathing issues, swallowing issues. It would be every time that I went into the hospital, it would be just to monitor to make sure that I wouldn't need to get intubated.

For people watching, this means that this disease, when it gets rolling and someone's having a flare, people tend to go into respiratory failure, which means that they are not able to continue breathing and they have to be intubated. So it's very common for us to meet these people in the ICU, in the respiratory care unit, step-down units in the hospital. So I got to know people like Emily in residency when they were usually coming off the ventilator and we were always nervous about them having to go back on because that was not uncommon.

Yes, because myasthenia gravis is essentially your muscles seem a little bit more tired than they actually are. So the connection between your brain and the muscle is compromised, and when there's less connection, your muscle isn't as strong, so it fatigues out really quickly. So, you know, my first symptoms were double vision, my eyelids would droop, um, you know, just general fatigue. I've always been very active, but I swam growing up, and I, I had a difficult time swimming. I would get very tired, um, and that kind of thing. But then it progressed into these breathing and swallowing issues. And so that went on for about 12 years. And I just became very frustrated by it being in and out of the hospital, having medications that I was allergic to and never really feeling a full resolution of my symptoms. I would, I was kind of living in fear of when my next flare-up would be because I couldn't figure out the triggers.

It's particularly terrifying for people with MG because you literally feel like you can't breathe.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's funny because I would, I would sit there and I would wonder, am I making this up? Is this a real flare-up?

Then it becomes a terrible mind game.

Yeah, it was, it was really hard. There were no real triggers and I was continued to be active throughout. Um, you know, especially even the really difficult times of my illness. And so I would continue to run, I would continue to swim and try not to let that get to me. And so when I became very frustrated, I started seeking out other forms of treatment for this, trying to get something that's more of a root cause as opposed to just a bandaid.

What time did you start looking?

This was in 2018. So I had had this for 11 years at that point.

Um, you'd already, you'd already gone through college and PT school, right?

Yep. So I went through college. I had about 4 or 5 years after college before I went back to grad school for physical therapy. I had a really difficult time in physical therapy. I was, we had, because insurance changed, I wasn't able to get a lot of medications. And so I was actually getting plasmapheresis once a week or sometimes even twice a week for, I think it was 6 months.

Which is the, essentially the last line of therapy for that. Cuz it's so intensive.

So intense. And I would get really sick afterwards. I would get like, my blood pressure would bottom out. It was, a lot of nausea, vomiting.

Yeah.

It was really not fun for me.

So 2018, you'd had enough.

Yeah. Yeah. I had had enough. Yeah. Very much living in fear of when my next flare-up would be. Cuz I actually remember one time I was training for a marathon. I had run a 20-mile training run and then 3 days later was in the hospital. So it was just, I had no idea when, when it was going to flare up. It was really difficult for me. So in 2018, I started out seeking out a functional nutritionist. I had heard her on a podcast. I liked what what she said. She seemed pretty thorough, pretty systematic about how she treated people. And that was the first time that I really took a look at nutrition and how nutrition can and does impact, um, you know, inflammation within your own body. And I really did get a lot better from it. I think that we cleared up a lot. I think that I was less susceptible to getting these random flares. And I think that during that time, I actually hadn't had a flare in the 2 years that I worked with, with the nutritionist, which was great. But I still didn't really feel 100%. I probably felt about, you know, 75%, which is pretty darn good considering I was still very active and doing pretty high, high intensity things at the time. So 75% was good, but I wasn't really thrilled. I was still really tired a lot. And my husband and I were just kind of on the path of trying to feel better. And we came across a lot of the quantum biology, circadian rhythm type things and and understanding how EMFs really impact our life and just how they kind of make me personally feel really drained and tired. Um, but I would never have known that if I hadn't come across all of this. Um, so we started to really change how we lived. We started to become really weird, you know, changing our light bulbs at night, turning off Wi-Fi at night, being outside as much as we could. And that, and that definitely helped my energy levels, but there was still something nagging. I still didn't feel great. This was around COVID or just after COVID. And I was working in a hospital at the time and they were encouraging us to get the COVID shot. I was really weighing whether or not I should. And understanding that something like that would absolutely flare up your immune system. I understood that there was a risk of me getting a myasthenia flare from that.

Did your doctors tell you about that at the time?

So it's interesting because I don't think that I really consulted them on it because I didn't think that they would say anything that would convince me either way. Okay.

Did you get the flu shot every year as a PT?

Yes, I had to. And I, and I was fine with the flu shot and no adverse reactions to that at least. And so when I got the COVID shot, 2 weeks to the day after my second one, I ended up in the hospital with a big flare. And I remember going to the ER to wait to get my, to wait. And the ER doctor asked me, have you had any UTIs, any, you know, sinus infections or anything like that that might cause this flare? And I told him, no, I the COVID shot. And he said, no, it probably wasn't that. I was like, okay. So I had that flare. And ever since that, I felt really bad. I never really felt like I came out of a hole. And try as I may with, you know, different things like red light therapy helped, you know, things that, that stuff helped, but there nothing really got me out of the hole that I was looking to get out of.

What was it like when you first found this sort of more root cause systems-based functional medicine approach that got you, was it all the way better? 90% better?

I'd say 75 to 80% better.

Okay. And you were where when you found it or sought it out? 10, 20%, 30%?

Oh, I was probably about, I'm gonna say 40 to 50%. It took time to get there too. So at first I didn't know that it was helping.

That's a really important point cuz a lot of people throw in the towel not realizing that Consistency is key and healing is not linear. So you wind up with these exponential patterns of I was consistent for 3 months, 6 months, a year, and now it's starting to bear fruit.

Yeah. And you know, it, and it happens gradually over time too. Right. So I didn't even realize by the time a year came around how much better I was actually feeling.

People forget.

Yeah.

We have to remind them.

Yeah. If you, if you change a little by little, it's like watching a baby grow, right? Like you don't realize all of a sudden they're huge.

You're like, where did they get?

Get here.

Yeah. So you got to 75 or 80% and then the COVID shot took you backwards.

Fair?

Absolutely. Probably.

I was probably back at about 40%.

Zero is like, you know, in the, in the, in the ICU intubated on a mechanical ventilator.

Okay.

And 40% is in and out of the hospital, not feeling well.

40% was like when I got out of the hospital.

Oh, okay. Okay. So there was a lot of up and down in there, I assume.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I was feeling pretty bad for a while. Yeah. It's just hard. And then I found the quantum stuff that helped, probably brought me to about, let's say, let's call it 60%, feeling a lot better, but wasn't quite there. At the time I had continued eating well. I had been able to add back foods that, that I hadn't been able to eat before without any issue.

What kind of issues would you get when you ate foods that you were sensitive to?

Well, one time I had a beer and I ended up with a full-blown, like my eyelids were drooping and I had double vision. Yeah.

Yeah.

So that didn't happen with everything. It certain happened, it certainly happened with more gluten-based foods, but eventually I was able to even, you know, eat more sourdough breads and whatnot. And even, you know, occasionally some just like regular bread and pasta without issue, without fear that something was going to happen, which was really nice. Yeah. And so then I was feeling a lot better from the Quantum, the Quantum strategies and maybe even got back, got back up to about 75%. And that is when I met you for the first time because you had a course on minerals. And that was probably one of the more compelling things that I had heard because, you know, minerals are metals, right? They, they interact with our environment in very specific ways. And, you know, it kind of brought things a little bit more full circle as to, well, why is it important to go outside? Yes. Like it is, it is important to go outside because there are pathways in our body that respond to different light frequencies and whatnot. But also because the metals in our body, which are abundant, change and interact with our environment. And I, you know, if you have an imbalance of these metals, then it would make sense that there is dysfunction along the way as well. Right. And that's something that I had never really considered for myself. And, you know, it is a pretty complicated thing to consider, to understand the interactions between metals and, you know, increase one, decrease another and whatnot, and how our bodies respond to that. And of course everyone's very individual, so you don't know how that will manifest, but understanding that interplay between different, different metals is extremely important. And I felt like you had that little link that I, uh, it was a link that I was missing. And then another thing was that I really appreciated that, that you are a medical doctor because you have this training that a lot of these other people don't have. Um, and that's not to say that these other people aren't, aren't good at all because I've definitely seen benefit from them. But there are many times that I've seen someone and they've said, well, I have the cure for you. I have the fix. This is definitely what it is. When maybe it's definitely, it's, it's a piece of it, you know, for me, a piece of, of my problem, you know, it led to a lot of inflammation that I think was contributing to my flareups and whatnot, but it's not, it wasn't the only thing. And so having this more comprehensive understanding of disease, you know, different modalities to treat disease was really appealing to me because that's something that I think was lacking in the other avenues that I sought out.

Absolutely. Yes. We see that a lot.

Yeah.

And we take care of a lot of people who feel like they've seen everyone, tried everything, and are wondering, you know, what else could there be? What else could I be missing? A lot of them are, I would say, jaded, skeptical.

Yep.

Maybe soured by their experiences with other practitioners, practices.

I get it. I get it. It's really, it's really difficult to meet with somebody and say that, hear them say that they have the fix and then not feel 100% better afterwards. Yes. Very difficult.

People feel sold, you know, like they were overpromised and underdelivered. And the sad thing is, is that when you don't do that, you do, because we actually have to really spend a fair amount of time getting people comfortable with the level of uncertainty that is a reality in medicine.

Yep.

You know, I had a really long conversation with a woman just before this call who's thinking of joining the practice and she's been thinking about it for a whole year. I told her very clearly, I said, 'cause she was sort of like, what, what do I have to do? And I said, I don't really like thinking about what you have to do because I don't know what you have to do. You're gonna say, I wanna make this goal. And I'm gonna say, here are the tools we have in the toolbox and here's what I would do. And you're gonna come back to me and you're gonna say, maybe I don't wanna use this tool, or I'm not open to that tool. And I'm gonna say, okay. You know, but if you tell me that you wanna build a house without using any power tools, it's gonna take a lot longer, be a lot more involved.

Yeah.

If you go ahead and just pull out the reciprocating saw and the power drill, and that's just part of the deal. Thank you for sharing all that.

Yeah, absolutely. I understand it. I think that we live in a day and age where we are overpromised. And I, I think that medicine, while it can be really great and it has helped me very much, it has conditioned us to want a quick fix. For things.

And a quick answer, a label. I have myasthenia gravis.

Yeah.

And the treatment is prednisone.

Never.

Yeah. Right. And it's, it's a little bit more nuanced to say, well, you have a complex, you know, autoimmune condition that is being driven by elements of your diet and your lifestyle and your environment. And when we alter enough of those conditions, then the complex condition that you've developed will change and maybe even go away.

Yeah. That's the amazing thing, right? It's, it's understanding how there are so many factors at play, um, and, and to the point where we don't even fully realize that, you know, it's how can any one person fully realize how many factors are at play? But one of the things that I really appreciated that you did was you allowed— you have never thought that you know the exact answer. You've been interested in finding out the answer, but you, you haven't presumed the answer. And that I appreciate because It allows me to try different things to improve, you know, sure. Because more likely than not, changing something is going to help. If you are changing, you know, for the better, it's not like a trial by fire. You know, usually we're trying to balance something out, but you haven't presumed, oh, this is the one thing that's going to get you there. And so I really appreciate that because it allows me to improve a little bit, to improve a lot. You know, to not prove much, improve much. And so there you have a lot of tools. I hate the term tools in the tool belt, but they are, but they are. Right. And so I appreciate that because there are a lot of different tools that you can use to help a person get there.

And you're reminding me of two of my favorite quotes. So William Osler said, medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. Einstein, Einstein said, I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

Oh, that's a great one. Yeah.

And that is how I feel about getting patients well.

Yeah. Cause it, it's a puzzle, right? And it is.

And it's an all ever-changing puzzle. I also say that you never treat, no physician treats the same patient twice cuz they're not the same patient. They're not the same doctor. Of course I got that from, I think it was Herodotus.

I like that too because I think that that's very true. But everybody has the assumption that it is the same patient. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. I know. But here we are.

Here we are.

And so you went through the circadian rhythms and it got you a little bit better from your worst after the COVID vaccine. And then you found us and then what ha— and how much better would you, did you say you got with the circadian from the 40% after the COVID shot?

I think I got back about back to where I was pre-COVID shot.

75-something percent.

Cause I was feeling pretty good, but I was still, I think I was just more acutely aware of how tired I was feeling and how because I had gone backwards. I think that that was pretty eye-opening because you almost don't know how bad you feel until, or how good or how bad you feel until there's a big shift backwards. And you can look back and you can say, I actually wasn't, I'm actually not feeling as good as I thought I was, or I was feeling a lot better beforehand and I didn't realize it. You know, because again, those changes happen little by little and very easy to miss.

Very easy.

Yeah. So I, I, that was really helpful. And so then I, so also around that time, my husband and I were trying to get pregnant. Mm-hmm.

And this is what, 20, 2021 by now?

Yeah.

Must have, that was the year of the vaccine.

Yeah. So he and I, so we got married in 2019. We weren't not trying to get pregnant, but he's military and he deployed right after we got married. So we weren't able to, to really try, but 2020, 2021, 2022 was really when we were trying to get pregnant, couldn't get pregnant. I had found a lovely primary care doctor who, um, does a lot of assisted, assisted reproductive technology or medicine.

Is that the practitioner who did NaPro with you?

Oh, yeah. No, she's, she's wonderful. And helped me understand that alongside of all of this, alongside of how I'm feeling, I was feeling my hormones were in the gutter. I think my estrogen was pretty, it was very low. My progesterone was okay, but would drop off. And then my testosterone, my free testosterone. Felt like it was negative. Like that was a big factor as to us not being able to get pregnant. So then we, we found, we found you and figured, you know what, there, there's, there's another piece of the puzzle. And you're, I think, I think that you're willing to look for as many puzzle pieces as, you know, your patients allow you to look, look for, right?

Yes.

And so I appreciated that.

If, if I may actually, I can actually pull up your hair tests.

Yeah. So I was on vacation, um, with my husband. Um, we were visiting his family in Colorado and outta nowhere I had a, um, myasthenia flare and ended up in the hospital in Denver. Um, and this was a month later and no heavy metals apparently.

Very misleading. 8 months later we met, we did a NutrEval. Yes. What did you see based on the protocol that we started based on the NutrEval?

There were two things in particular that I noticed were particularly helpful for me. One was that we started on high-dose iodine and I felt a mental clarity that I hadn't had in a long time.

How long is a long time?

Years?

Decade?

No, no. Because I want to say that I was pretty— I felt pretty sharp during grad school and during my residency for PT.

Okay.

So it must have been after the COVID shot, to be honest.

Oh, okay.

Got it. Maybe a little bit before then even. Yeah, it had been some time. I wanna say it was a year or two, but I felt a mental clarity that I hadn't felt in a long time. You had started me on glycine based off of some of the things that you saw from a metal perspective in my NutrEval. And I was on a lot of glycine and I remember feeling pretty tired for a little while, admittedly. And that brought us to our next hair tissue mineral analysis.

You were eliminating a ton of copper.

Yep.

And you were eliminating an enormous amount of aluminum.

Yeah, it's a lot.

One of the biggest aluminum dumps we've ever had in the practice.

Wow. I'm honored.

We've got two people who, who beat you, trumped you. One 139, another 119.

That's amazing.

It is amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. I was doing a lot of sauna at the time.

They both had a current aluminum exposure though.

Oh, that would do it. Yeah, no, I, that was something that I had, I had gotten, I mean, I had been aware of for a little bit. Like I had changed my deodorants and, you know, didn't stop using aluminum foil. I don't drink out of cans cuz I don't like soda anyway.

But, and beer gives you a flare.

I had already been kind of staying away from aluminum for a little bit too. This was after only doing glycine. We hadn't done any other kind of, really? Yeah, we hadn't done, you didn't do any of the other minerals I recommended? No, we did other things. Yeah, we did other things, but you hadn't done another hair tissue mineral analysis at that time.

But I mean, I, I would've recommended usually some—

Yeah, I was on some B vitamins. I was on— Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was on, I was on a, a plethora of things.

Okay, good. Yeah. Because it's very, I mean, it would be unheard of for just glycine to do all that. No, all that in a bag of chips. How often were you saunaing when you were doing this?

Gosh, a few times a week. A lot. Somewhere between 20 and 45, depending on the sauna that I was in also.

Yeah. The synergy between the sauna and the mineral balancing is just tremendous.

Oh my gosh. I felt, and that was the funny thing too. I felt great every time I came outta the sauna.

Yeah.

But you were also, didn't you start to run into detox reactions at some point?

That was after we got this test back and we started on a specific protocol based on the hair test. And I started to get breaking out into hives with, and it was always coupled with taking one particular supplement. Which one? Renamide. It was very potent for me. I started feeling a lot better and it took a little bit of time, maybe a few months. I started feeling like I had a little bit more energy and my, oh, the other big thing was that I had been taking, I have an Oura Ring and I was getting my HRV and that finally started to increase. So prior to this rebalancing, I, I think my HRV overnight was like 15 to 20 and I knew that wasn't normal for me because I had been taking HRV years prior and it was 70, 80. And so being in, you know, 15 to 25, I felt really bad all the time. And that was with getting great sleep. I was getting really, really good sleep at night. And so it was finally starting to creep up and I think I got up to, you know, 50 intermittently with my HRV, but it was more regularly, you know, about 40, which was really nice. So I noticed that as we started to do some targeted minerals for the hair test, you mean the detox reactions and the, okay. Yep. Great.

And then what?

And then we got pregnant. It was amazing.

At that point, how many, how long have you been trying?

About 4 years, I wanna say 3 and a half, 4 years.

And you'd already implemented pretty much everything you could find in the health coaching, quantum biology, circadian rhythms, the whole, Yeah.

And I admittedly, my hormones weren't entirely back to normal because we continued to get them checked with my primary, primary care doctor.

Yes. But you felt like you'd hit a plateau with everything you'd been doing and you were—

Absolutely.

Needing something to get you to the next level.

Yeah. Yeah. And so she and I, she, we had been trying to do things with her. The success rate was just kind of like for, to accomplish what, what we were trying to do was just, was okay. But next thing we know, we ended up pregnant and, um, that was a big surprise and we were very grateful and I wanted to continue doing a lot of my supplementation, but I was just really sick in my first trimester, so I couldn't really swallow pills very well.

Yeah. Right.

So I mean, I figured I, it would, it would be okay. I would continue to eat healthy once I was able to really stomach things and be aware of getting as many minerals as possible through food. And that's what I did and had a really healthy pregnancy. Felt really good. Throughout, didn't have any issues during pregnancy. And then as far as it goes, a pretty fine delivery and postpartum has been okay. That, that's actually one thing that I would've been very nervous about beforehand. You know, I spoke to my neurologist and he said that, you know, the first month postpartum is really the, the biggest risk of me getting another MG flare. That's because you don't sleep.

Or is it because your progesterone drops out?

Probably a little bit of both, right? Yeah, probably a little bit of both. And so I was nervous about that and I was, I've, I've been more resilient, um, which has been nice.

When was your last myasthenia gravis flare?

Uh, it was around New Year's 2022.

So that would've been before we met, correct?

Yeah. So then since, uh, actually no, that's incorrect. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. Um, that was my last hospitalization. I had a flare in the April. I had a flare the April before I started working with you. It was short-lived. It was about—

I remember talking about that cuz we met in May.

Yep. It was about a week long. I was going to be set up to get a home infusion, but they never called me back and I never called them because I was starting to feel better on my own. That was my last flare. It was April 2022.

Okay. So now where would you say you are as far as a percent?

Well, that's a really difficult question because we have an 8-week-old.

That is so funny. That in and of itself is what you wanted.

Right. Which, yeah. And such a blessing. I actually feel, I was talking to my husband and I was saying that I feel a lot better than I think I normally would during this time because I'm not getting, I was used to getting 9 hours of sleep at night very regularly. I took off the Oura ring. I'm not even tracking at the moment. I am able to function during the day. I, I take naps, but I don't feel like I need to take as many naps as I think. I don't like napping anyway, but, but I don't feel like I need to take a lot of them. I'm able to get through and I feel fine. I feel good. So percentage-wise, that's difficult. I don't know.

That's a loaded question with a newborn.

Yeah. But she's so wonderful.

Or so, but the bottom line is you're well.

Yeah.

You haven't had a myasthenia gravis flare in 2 years and a half now, almost.

Yeah. Yeah. Almost 2 and a half years.

So that's very profound. I like to ask people what they give the credit to as far as where coming from, where they were initially, which is tough to sort of quantify with you because you have this very clear story of, well, I was here and then I got to here and then the COVID shot took me back to here and now I'm here compared to at your worst. What do you give the credit to as far as how much improvement you made and divvy it up in terms of What gets the credit?

Um, it's true. Oh gosh. Honestly, what gets the credit is my own readiness to change and having a spouse that will walk alongside me because I think doing it on your own is really hard, especially if you are surrounded by people who don't necessarily understand or agree with or believe anything that you're doing. I think that that's really difficult because even within my own family, you know, I've had family members ask, well, why are you eating this way? Or why are you, you know, my dad My dad calls me, calls us the mole people because our lights are, you know, amber at night and right.

You know, now he's got his granddaughter so he can say whatever he wants.

Yeah. And I, I would say that I don't think that it's one thing. I think that it, the big thing is, is readiness to change because there was a time where I was not ready to change, where I was not ready to implement any of these things. And the second that I really committed to doing so, because it, the thing is that it, none of this happened overnight, right? Small hinges along the way that swung big doors.

So funny. We say that all the time. All the time.

Small hinges. Yeah.

Small hinges swing big doors.

I think it's, I think it's doing the little things along the way and being patient and understanding that it's not gonna just change overnight. Those, those two things have been massive.

You guys did do the HTMA course.

Yeah. Yep.

So, but you did group coaching, you had one-on-one consults, you did supplementation protocols, you did, and you put all that together in the right combination formula for long enough, and that's what Got you the results.

Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's been doing, it's been all the little things. I can't say that it's been one, one particular thing, which has been nice because I think, I think it's also very easy to get hooked on one thing and say, well, this is the one thing that's supposed to make me, you know, the red light therapy's supposed to be the one thing that is the death of progress.

And it's a very, a lot of people end up stuck there and find us when they've gotten to the end of that road.

Yeah.

And they've realized that just that one thing was not going to get them the results they were looking for.

And you can't, yeah, you can't put all of your, your eggs in one gizmo, right?

Because it's not a good strategy. So thank you for sitting down with me. I really appreciate your time.

Of course. Very happy to.