The Hidden Trigger Behind Her Sudden Collapse

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 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, back for another episode of Stories of Hope, Stories of Healing. Today I'm very excited to welcome Kenna Cooley. Kenna, thank you for joining us.

Hi, thank you for having me.

So this is a fun story. Kenna started with us almost a year ago as a patient, and then last fall we were hiring and she applied.. And I'm always gratified to see when we hire that we get a fair number of patients applying, which means I know we must be doing something right. And we looked through all the applications and Kenna is who we hired for our new team member. So she's been with us for 3, 4 months now since basically the early year. Yeah. And you've been doing a great job and everyone's really happy. And you applied because you had a great result with our program.

I did.

And so today we are going to go through your whole story, but it's, it's an interesting story because it's much deeper than just working with us. So we're actually going to talk a lot about chiropractic care and all sorts of things. So again, thank you for joining me, and I'd like to start by asking everybody who they are and where they're from.

Yeah, so obviously my name's Kenna, um, I'm 20 years old. When I started with Dr. Stillman, I was 19 and I was in college at the time, but my symptoms were so severe I had to drop out of college and move to different states for trying to get different care, trying to figure out what was going on. And now I am fully healed after 6 months of programs and working with Dr. Stillman. And now I am blessed to be a part of the team.

Amazing. We love having you on the team.

It's awesome.

So tell us a little bit more about what you were dealing with when this started, when you contacted us for an assessment.

Yeah, so I wasn't sure what was going on at first. I just woke up one day and I wasn't feeling well. I thought it was the flu because my mom had the flu, my husband had the flu. So I was like, oh, surely it's the flu. And then it never got better. And I was like, well, the symptoms aren't really flu-like symptoms. I had really bad stomach pain, joint pain that was so severe I couldn't even hold my water bottle. My left eye was hurting. I just sat with it closed most of the time. I couldn't stand or walk for more than about 2 minutes. I needed help walking to the bathroom, to the kitchen. I had to be seated pretty much all the time because I would get so dizzy and feel like I would pass out. And I just had absolutely no quality of life. I couldn't be left alone and I couldn't do anything at all. It was absolutely horrible. And we had no idea what it was.

You had just gotten married, right? And started college. Isn't that correct?

Yes.

And where were you at college?

I was in Georgia.

Right. And you just moved into a new apartment. And when we met, what do you recall?

I remember you saying like, oh, this sounds like mold. If you wanna get better, you should like move to the mountains in Tennessee. And that's exactly where I am right now. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Not to give away too much of the end of the story. Yeah.

Yeah. Moved here and got better.

Yeah, exactly. So you got sick what month?

February of 2025. Okay.

And then when did you come see us?

Um, Memorial Day weekend, so the end of May, so a couple months later.

Okay. And what do you remember about what we did? What changes did we make?

Yeah, so everything, it was very customizable to me and personalized, which I really liked. The HTMA test was awesome. I had never heard of that before or done anything like that. And then comprehensive labs, we did an OmegaQuant, and then those were all the initial labs. And then as time went on, we did food allergy or food sensitivity testing and just different other tests, and I just liked how your approach was so specific to me, what was going on, and it was awesome.

Do you recall your husband being sick at all at this time?

Yeah, so he got sick after the wedding like I did, but he had the flu like my mom, and then he got better right away. So I was like, well, surely I don't have the flu. I'm still sick and it's like 3 months later.

And he didn't have any other illnesses?

No.

So it's interesting that you— that I said this sounds like mold.

Mhm.

Because one of the things you look for is multiple sick people in the same domicile.

Yeah.

You guys were living in an apartment, if memory serves.

Yes.

And you know what I look for when I'm looking for mold is the number one thing is did your health change when you moved? And that was the clear thing that I got from you because I didn't get there's a mold spot, there's a wet spot on the wall, it floods every once in a while, we live in a basement, there's prior water damage we know about. There was a hurricane, there was a sewer backup, there was a whatever. Because I mean, the stories with mold, it's just, there's so many ways for mold to become a problem and hide. And it's the hiding that's problematic. I look for it and I'm particularly concerned about it when I, when it's, it's like particularly like a young, healthy person who already knows a lot about health and wellness and you've been in health and wellness, I would say your whole life. You've been really interested in this. Is that fair?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. And so when somebody like you falls off a cliff with your health, I'm looking for a hazard that's crept in that you're not aware of.

Okay.

And it's, it's the mold or it's, oh yeah, turns out there's a substation 2 blocks away from our house. Okay. Or, oh yeah, the smart meter's right next to the headboard. Okay. Or there's some kind of occupational or other environmental exposure that's just really overwhelming. So that was what really tipped my hand. And then I think I recommended that you do a— you did mold spore testing, right?

Yes. We got our apartment tested and our bedroom was 600% higher on the inside than the outside for mold, like right next to where we were sleeping. And I had only lived in the apartment for 10 days before I got sick. And it was like, this was just so fast.

And this is really exactly— and the 10-day velocity is insane. You know, I mean, you were in really quite good health before then, weren't you?

Yeah.

Right. And so that's a sort of a dead giveaway for mold in particular. EMFs tend to be more insidious and longer term, but mold will just poison you right away. That or another poison, like, you know, water's contaminated or there's a new food or personal care product. There's like a huge consumption going on. Like we usually see in the, in the hair in a case of poisoning, really colossal elevations. And I want to point out that it's really impressive that you had a 600% elevation of spore count because you were in, you were in Georgia, which is not the least moldy state in the country. I don't know if it's the most moldy state, but there's plenty of mold in Georgia and it was the spring, right? So it's not super cold. You know, it's not like the mold is all dormant because of freezing temperatures. It's actively replicating because it was the spring. So that really is very impressive number. I want people to know that we have a mold and healthy homes guides in process. So they're going to be at stellmanmd.com/autounmunity. Maybe by the time you listen to this, they'll be ready, but they're just ba— the, fundamentals that we want to walk through with people with water damage buildings, mold illness, all that stuff. It's all part of the book coming out, which also has a lot of material on this, The End of Autoimmunity, coming this June. You can preorder it now at store.stillmanmd.com. So that was what really made me confident that it was mold, and I'm really glad that you guys got out of that apartment. One of my anxieties whenever I tell people to look for mold is that they're gonna hire the wrong inspector or get the wrong test, and we generally recommend a, a test from Envirobiomics called the Hurts Me, but I'm thinking about adding their Actino test to that as well. And I'm anxious that people will do the right test because sometimes people will miss it in their testing, particularly the spore counts like you got are sometimes subject to false negatives because the spores won't be in the air, but the toxins will be in the environment. And so you'll end up with someone thinking, well, I don't have a mold problem because I'm mold testing and my house was negative. You dig a little deeper, you find the problem. I had a friend in Colorado, I'll never forget this. He had 3 different home inspectors come to his house and only one of them found the mold.

Yeah, that's crazy.

It is crazy. It's a bit discouraging, but here we are.

It is.

This protocol is personalized to you based on your labs. What did you notice in the weeks that followed?

Yeah. So once I got the mineral balancing supplements, I noticed like I started detoxing really hard and so I had to cut back on my dose significantly.

How soon did you notice that?

Probably within 2 days of starting.

What were the manifestations?

Yeah, so I was super nauseous, really shaky, really bad stomach cramps, and I was like, I don't know what it is.

Were you out of the apartment by then?

Yes.

Okay, got it. And so you started to detox?

Yeah, really hard. And so I had to cut back to like an eighth of a dose, like once a day, and then slowly work my way up. But I detoxed really hard for probably 4 or 5 months.

I remember because every time I would talk to the team, it was, she feels terrible, she feels awful, she's not any better. And you know, I gotta say, usually patients get a quick win with us because we usually will pull the trigger on some kind of protocol that will really— they'll be like, oh yeah, I feel better. And even if it's not a protocol, if it's just the 14-Day Reset, you know, or it's, you know, the X39 patches from LifeWave, they'll feel much, much better. You'll see worse detox reactions with higher toxic burden, and you'll also see them sometimes, I think, with young people more because the body is like, oh my gosh, finally the things I need to get rid of all the evil humors, and it starts to really push aggressively to get them out. So you backed off to an eighth of a dose and that was still effective?

Oh yeah.

So let's talk about that.

Like an eighth of a teaspoon, like, but yeah, everything I cut back a lot, like I did the MSM, vitamin C, Vicon, and all of it just made me detox really hard for the whole time I was on it. Yeah.

So this is why we take a great graded approach, which means that typical timeline is patient comes in, we talk to them about the detox powder. We talk to them and that's Dr. Stillman's detox powder. That's coming later. I have to publish that sometime. So Dr. Stillman's detox powder, there's the X39 patches. We like everybody to use because they're a huge improvement in just overall health, wellbeing, function. You got those in your program, I believe.

I did. Yeah. And I, yeah, was taking the detox powder the whole time as well. I forgot to mention that.

Bingo. Yeah. So we do the detox powder, the X39 patches, 3 10-minute walks. The whole 14-Day Reset, which is also encouraging complimenting or thanking 3 people a day and starting your day with light therapy, which is X39 plus or minus bright sunlight. And then this meal plan, which is root vegetables, greens, and proteins. I won't, I won't go too deep into the 14-Day Reset here, but it's, it's available. Look it up on Substack, look it up on stromanmd.com/autounmunity. Just those things will often cause people to detox. Like I've had patients come back and say the detox powder was too intense for me. I needed to back off. And they generally tolerate it better and better the more they take of it because it is really powerful. I'm also surprised by the number of patients who tell me they think it tastes good because I expected with the ingredients I put in it for it to taste horrible.

Yeah, I did not like the taste.

I don't like it either, but I still consume it. So here we are. We get their labs back. I do the initial assessment and then I, Amy, we get together, we talk about what protocol do we put them on for Vykon. Vykon's a really interesting company. It's custom personalized supplements. In Canada. Recently interviewed the founder. Her interview will be coming out here shortly. It may be available by the time you listen to this. She started the company because she loved HTMA, but she wanted customizable supplements and she wanted them to be available as powders, which is actually really important in our practice because we get some pretty sick people who have things like esophageal strictures or rings or webs or swallowing disorders like achalasia or esophagitis. And so they need a powder because a, a pill will not work for them. So we can do pills or powders. But what's interesting is we have this experience in the practice of we can use a variety of strengths of the protocol. So like, we could have put you on more to get you to detox, but we have this really interesting phenomenon where we will put some patients on tiny doses of ICON at modest doses of ingredients like the minerals. We won't use too much, we won't add that many amino acids or other vitamins, etc., and they'll still have these intense detox symptoms that actually prevent them from getting all the way to the full dose because they just can't physically tolerate it. At the same time, we'll have other patients where they go straight to the full dose and they feel great and they have no problems and no issues. And then we'll also have scenarios where sometimes nothing comes out in the hair, at least initially, or for multiple quarters at a time, but patients feel and function worlds better. And then the question is, where are the heavy metals going if not into the hair? Are we eliminating them from the gut without them passing into the hair, which would be great? I believe that's often what's happening. Or are we just nourishing and restoring the body and not actually getting a lot of metals out, which really we do want to do. But it's really interesting this, and I'm telling you all this because we can always push patients harder with more protocols and higher doses. It's a question of whether or not they can tolerate it, cuz that's ultimately what's gonna determine whether or not it's good for them. We'll have a lot of moms in the practice where husband, kids are counting on them. We don't push them hard because they cannot afford to miss work. Or not be available for family. And that's very important to them and to us. So we're always managing this so that we can get them better, but in a way that honors their other commitments and doesn't derail their lives. That's why I told you, best thing you can do right now, you're young, you're newly married, you have relatively few responsibilities. You rarely, like, hard to have fewer responsibilities than newly married and then 19 or 20.

Yeah.

I said, look, just get, get out there, get your health back on track and get out in nature as much as possible away from your moldy apartment, because minimizing the EMF burden, you're maximizing your fresh air, your earthing, your grounding. You know, you can get gentle exercise in nature, very healing. And I'm really glad that you did it.

Yeah, me too.

So you were at 1/8 of a, 1/8 of a dose, 1/8 of a teaspoon. Was that it?

Yeah, it depended on the protocol, but yeah, it was like I started with 1/8 of every dose. Yeah.

And I just want to point out to people, you know, we'll have patients come in who are on handfuls of supplements, like multiple times a day, like very, very, very, very heavy protocols and they're not getting better. And it's not that they're not taking enough supplements, it's that they're not taking the right ones. So we saw a really interesting test earlier today. It was a comprehensive urine organic, urine elements test. And this woman's chromium, molybdenum, vanadium, and selenium levels were horrible, but her copper and zinc levels were actually elevated. So, you know, I share this with people because so few doctors like me are really talking about the labs they see in real patients with real problems. Which I don't understand. I'm not the only person doing this kind of work, but I bring it up because we will get better results with fewer supplements because we use a much higher quality product and we have the ratios dialed in, which is another thing I really want people to know. I'll often have a experience where patient will say, can I keep taking this or that supplement with the protocol you're giving me? The answer is generally I don't advise that because we're trying to balance the nutrients against one another, and it's a little bit like thinking, you don't want your car to be oversteering to the right or the left. And the nutrients are actually a lot like that. So you don't want to have too much of this or too much of that. You want to have them in balance based on the context of your body. And we, we deduce what you need and what we should give you based on hair and blood testing and sometimes urine to really get a full picture of what's going on with your metabolism in real time. And then we reiterate that and repeat that every 3 to 4 months so that we can change our approach so that We're not treating— I always say that a doctor never treats the same patient twice. They're not the same patient. It's not the same doctor. We don't want to be treating the same results that we did 3 months ago because the patient may have changed substantially and you'll actually get very mediocre results doing that. So what happened next?

Then I feel like I just woke up one day and I was like, I feel so much better.

And I was just—

yeah, I think beginning of December, like my joint pain went away. I could obviously like hold more than just my water bottle. I could walk for more than 2 minutes and I was like, like, it's been so long and this feels so nice to like be able to do all of this stuff again. I didn't have the eye pain and everything was just completely fixed. And now everything that I was dealing with a year ago was completely gone.

It sounds like your belief was strengthened by finding the mold.

Mm-hmm.

And then by actually feeling worse with the supplements.

Yeah.

You knew they were doing something.

Yeah, I knew they were doing something all along. It was just a matter of time, and I just knew like eventually I'll get better, so time will pass anyway. I might as well do something that's going to help me while the time passes.

What went through your mind when you felt worse with the supplements initially?

I think initially, like, I knew that detox symptoms were going to happen. I didn't necessarily know what that would look like for me, but I kind of expected it in a way because I know my body is pretty sensitive to those types of protocols. And so I was— as soon as I started feeling bad, I was like, well, I guess here goes the detoxing. I was like, I don't know how long it'll be for, but I'm really glad I stuck it out since I feel totally better now.

Amazing. So talk to me more about your attitude as you went through this. Why did you have so much— what inside of you, why did you have so much trust in your body's ability to heal?

Yeah, I think that was largely from the chiropractic journey I've been on before. So I was sick from the day I was born until I was 15 when I found chiropractic care. Chronically sick, missed years of school, like 30+ days a year. I did all of high school online, just chronically sick, missed, you know, birthday parties, things with families, just day-to-day life. I never ever felt well. And I just knew like eventually this isn't how it's supposed to be. At some point I'll feel better. And then when I was 15, I found chiropractic care and within 3 days I was 90% better doing like specialized focused neurological chiropractic care. And then That was 4 years before I got sick with the mold. And so I just had that same attitude going into it. Like, eventually I'll feel better. I don't know when, but I know the possibility's there. You just gotta wait it out.

Did you have a functional neurologist?

No.

Okay. But you said targeted chiropractic neurological. Did I hear that right?

It's neurologically focused chiropractic care. Mm-hmm. But yeah, they're all chiropractors.

Yeah. So 3 days, 3 treatments. What was going on with your health?

Yeah.

And what transformed with that?

Yeah. So at that point when I started chiropractic care, it was like the worst of my past sickness. I walked in on crutches. I was nauseous 24/7 for 8 years straight. I like, nothing would help my nausea. Lots of panic attacks. They would last up to 3 hours a day and I could have up to 20 like small episodes a day. Just horrible. Not going to school. And by my 6th adjustment, I was 90% better weaning off my anxiety meds. The nausea left after 8 years. And actually after my first adjustment, I walked in on crutches and then by that afternoon I never had to pick up my crutches again.

Amazing. Such a good story. So you were how old then? 15?

I was 15 then.

Did you continue with chiropractic care?

Yeah, I still go twice a week.

I didn't even know you were still doing that. Great. So then what else did you find, and what other health issues did you have along the way? Because I know there were, there were other things that intervened between then and when we met.

Yeah, along the way, lots of GI issues, and that's one thing that I'm still working through a little bit, but it is so much better than it was, like 90% better. And still just some hormone things here and there, but again, that's 90% better than it was. But I took a lot of things into my own hands with changing my diet, changing my lifestyle. And so through all of that, I'd lost 20 or 25 pounds and just completely changed the way I eat and just my overall lifestyle.

Got it. And if I recall correctly, you were referred to us by our chiropractor. That was how you found out about us.

Yeah. So the chiropractic office that I started with when I was 15, one of the chiropractic assistants, she was scrolling one night because I had been there to try to figure out like, oh, is this POTS? Is it something else?

And she said, you had this new health crisis that the UN sought out care for. Okay.

Yeah. She was scrolling one night because I was having all these iron issues and she saw an article you wrote on iron and she was like, maybe it's worth reaching out to this guy just to see like what he thinks. And so that's how we found you. So I'm so grateful that she took time off of work to try to help me and figure out what was going on.

That's a great story.

Yeah.

That's great. We have to, I have to like reach out to her or something. I have to give Rosalinda like a thank you note.

Yeah, I reached out to her and I was like, told her like, thank you so much, I'm all better. And then a few weeks later I was like, oh, I'm working for him now.

Do you remember what happened with your iron?

Yeah, so the iron issues came out of the blue when I first got sick in February. Like throughout February, March, April, I had multiple lab panels done and like one day I was anemic and like 3 days later I was overloaded with iron and it was just like a back and forth cycle. And I was like, I don't feel any different day to day besides just worse. Overall. And I was like, I have no idea what's happening with this iron. I never had iron issues before and it just made no sense.

That's right.

Yeah.

And what happened when we started you on personalized supplement protocols?

I haven't had any more issues with my iron. Yeah. Nice. It's all been fine every time I've gotten it.

Did we give you any iron supplements?

No.

Yeah, exactly. So to unpack that for people, iron is controlled by other elements and nutrients. And I'm gonna make this really simple and then I'm gonna make it a little complicated, so just bear with me. So the simple version is basically iron sits at the center of so many different metabolic pathways that are critical from oxygen transportation in the blood to energy production in the mitochondria. So abnormalities of iron handling are a major, major, major problem. Patients feel, I mean, night and day difference between life and death in terms of iron overload versus iron deficiency. So you wanna have really tightly controlled iron levels in your blood. And too much or too little really do create, or I shouldn't say create, but they accompany a lot of disease. But then people get this idea that the iron is the problem. Well, the iron is not the problem in a lot of cases. It's actually just a bystander. And when you look at the actual bottom body mechanics, or I should say biochemical flows of iron in the human body, it's actually very hard to get rid of iron. And so a lot of people end up with a diagnosis of iron deficiency when in fact what they have is just poor iron handling and their total body iron may actually be going up. Now that's not always the case, and obviously this requires lab data and consultation to really get to the bottom of, but I see this all the time. People have got the wrong idea about what's wrong with their iron, and you're not the only case in the practice where we gave you the right minerals and vitamins to mobilize and use iron.

Okay.

And your iron studies normalized without iron supplements, without huge dietary changes. And more important, you know, cuz I'll, I'll have, I'll see this all the time. Patient's iron is low or high and they're exhausted. And then we normalize the iron and maybe their symptoms improve, maybe they don't. But a lot of the time the iron is like not driving the process and we'll fix something else. And the iron, iron levels will, I mean, they almost always normalize. So long as we have enough data, we have enough HTMAs close, hair tissue mineral analysis close together enough. Cuz if you space 'em out too much, you'll lose momentum and you won't make the same progress, but we'll see this picture emerge that the iron is not the problem. It's the nutrients that control the iron of the problem. For the geeks in the crowd, the way I think about this is the periodic table of elements. Iron is in the middle in the transition elements and is very heavy. And the other elements on the sides are really what build the structures that iron sits in. So if you don't have the right macros, the right other trace elements, the right macro minerals, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, iron will never be in balance. And that's why so many people are out there just chasing their iron problems around, never getting to the bottom of them, frustrated because the iron supplements make them feel worse when they're supposed to make them feel better. We take a different approach and get a different result. So what else, Kenna?

I don't know. I feel like that was pretty much everything that I was going through, but just like you were always so great and super encouraging and like everything was very personalized. And so I knew like you were trying to make it as specific as you could, and I always knew that. If I messaged or booked a consult, you would try to figure out why I wasn't getting any better. And so it was just super encouraging to know like how invested you were. And I could tell that even not working, like you're so invested in all your patients and it's just awesome.

I'm very intense about what I do.

Yeah.

And I think you've heard me say I hate losing more than I love winning.

Okay.

And when patients aren't getting better, I feel like I'm losing. And you see how it drives me nuts now. Um, okay, so give me some numbers here. If 10 is where you want to— you want to be, and 0 is where you were when we started, where are we now?

With everything I came in with, a 10. Now, just working through the rest of the GI issues and everything, probably an 8.

Amazing.

But yeah, everything I came in through, 100% better.

Okay, and top 3 things you came in with, if you had to list them?

Yeah, joint pain for sure, the inability to stand or walk for more than like 30 seconds to 2 minutes, and probably the eye pain.

Okay. And how severe were those on a scale of like 0 to 10, 10 being the most excruciating pain that you can imagine and 0 being no pain at all?

They were probably all about an 8. I mean, my eye pain was so bad, like I've got a brain MRI because I wasn't sure if something was structurally wrong or not. And I mean, I couldn't be left alone at all. I always had to have my husband or my parents, someone with me because I couldn't walk by myself because I was too unstable. So my mom would literally have to help me walk to the bathroom. Yeah.

That must have been so scary.

Yeah, it was.

I don't think I asked you this, but what was it about your case that led your chiropractor to think that chiropractic care alone would not get the job done?

Because I have done multiple intensives throughout the past 5 years since finding them. Like, if I'm sick after I had COVID, just different things, and I would always get better within 2 or 3 days. And so when that wasn't the case, they're like, okay, we don't think this is something like neurological going on. We don't think it's just that your nervous system is imbalanced. We think something deeper is going on. And so We were all trying to figure out what that was.

What's your perspective on the deeper causes of this? Um, now that you've been through this whole experience?

Yeah, I definitely think it was like the mold and just heavy metals, toxins just built up as an accumulation throughout my life. Cause I had all my vaccines when I was younger. Just, I was never healthy to begin with. I was born 8 weeks early, put on a vent in the NICU for 13 days. Mm-hmm. The whole thing. So it was just, I was never at a healthy place. And so I think at some point your body is just gonna give out a little bit until you give it the proper nutrients and nourish it and then detox the right way.

Yeah, I remember this actually now quite vividly. I remember that the first day you felt better was the day you stopped our vitamin C. Yeah, how much vitamin C were you on for those 5 or 6 months?

I think I was taking 1 teaspoon once a day, and even that, like, I just couldn't go any higher than that.

You noticed that you couldn't go higher with it?

Yeah, because I had tried to a few times and I would just feel so much worse. I was like there's no sense in— like, I'm already detoxing, like, I want to make it a little bit easier for myself. Yeah, as soon as I stopped taking that, I felt so much better.

Yeah, let me unpack that a little bit. So it's pretty common for the vitamin C— okay, so most patients feel much, much better on the vitamin C. We get rave reviews. But occasionally someone will take the vitamin C and it will make them feel worse. But what's interesting about that is those are the people who, when they are detoxing, right, they get to the end of that and they stop their supplements and they feel So much better, but they really have to get rid of that total toxic burden in order to get back to a state of good health. And so it's sort of a, you know, if they don't use it, they won't feel better or faster. If they do use it, they feel worse now, but they will get rid of the— they will resolve the repair deficits that long-term are driving the illness or dysfunction. Does that make sense? Okay. All right. Couple of quick additional questions. So these are 10-second answers. People who only see, you know, short piece of this interview. If you had 10 seconds to tell another young woman who feels like you did, What changed for you? How would you finish this sentence? I used to be the person who, now I'm the person who.

Yeah, I was the person who I couldn't even walk by myself. I couldn't be alone or anything, and now I can walk on the treadmill. I can play with my dog. I can go out and do whatever, and I can, I can do it all now.

Amazing. Finish this sentence. The first time I realized I was actually better was when.

Yeah, the first time I realized I was actually better was when I just came downstairs to do the laundry and I could hold the laundry basket and it didn't hurt my hands anymore.

Amazing. For someone scared the protocol will be too hard to stick with, what would you tell them in 10 seconds?

It can be hard, but I feel like I picked my hard. Like, it's hard going through the detoxing, but it's also hard to feel sick all the time. So it's better to just go through the detoxing.

Yeah, I'm reminded of this quote by John Wooden. He said, if you don't find the time to do it right now, when will you find the time to do it right later? And that's a lot about how I feel about integrative natural wellness. It's doing the right thing for your body. You know, I had a mentor, he was so funny. He would say, what we do is complicated, convoluted, sophisticated, and time-consuming. And he was sort of joking because it's like, yeah, this is not some kind of attractive, amazing, like people are not jumping in and signing up for this left, right, and center. I say that smart people understand that this is the thing you sign up for because it is the best thing for your long-term health. And the thing I would contrast it with is like the GLP-1 craze. Which, you know, we get the GLP-1 side effect cases in the practice now. Mm-hmm. Horrible muscle mass loss, weak hormones, all disrupted, exhausted, sleep destroyed. Now they really can't lose weight and they're gaining it back. I mean, it's a terrible drug the way that people are using it. And, but there's this tension in the human brain of, I want it now and I want it the way that I want it and I don't want to have to work for it and make a bunch of diet and lifestyle changes. And so, you know, we talk about this because And you know, we've talked about this recently in just every day it feels like it comes up, you know, the people who are really engaged with the process are getting great results and the people who are not are not getting great results. And I haven't published this data, you know, like publicly, but I'll, I'll, I'll share a little bit about it here. We have this dashboard where I can see everyone in the practice, how well they feel that they are in their subjective assessment. Like we, the way we ask it is just the way I asked Ken earlier, 0 to 10, 10 being where you want to be, 0 being where you are now. Where do you want to be? The average right now in the practice is like 5.3. Now that's people who've just started with us, people have been with us for years, but the average compliance is like 7.5. So we ask them, how compliant are you with what we're recommending? And they're like, 7.5 is the average. Now I will say some people are not honest about their compliance. And we know that because we'll, we'll look through their chart, we'll look through their diet and lifestyle. We'll say, you know, you think you're doing the things, but you're not, which is not, not gaslighting, not belittling, totally get it. I'm the same way. We designed our process. Basically, I designed a lot of our process around like the stuff that I realized I was doing wrong despite thinking I knew all the things. Imagine that. I like, I'm my own worst patient. And I also designed it around all the things that I don't want to do. Like, I don't want to get up and take a complicated supplement protocol. So I try to make it as simple as possible. But I share this data and this information because I want people to have full transparency of like what it takes to get well. Kenna executed really, really well. You did all the things as fast as possible, very quickly. You radically modified your, your lifestyle and your environment. Not everybody has to do what you did for the record. Most patients don't up sticks and move. Although I will say like getting well in a super moldy apartment like that is not—

it would be tough.

It's not likely. It's just a terrible— the odds are not with you. I've tried to get patients well in moldy environments. It's, you know, I'm candid with them that I don't want them to waste their money. I would rather they do whatever they need to do to move. But yeah, you did great. You did get a great result and we're so glad you're part of the team. We're so glad you're well.

Thank you. Yeah, it's been amazing to be a patient as well as working for you guys.

Yeah. Share with people what you think now that you're sort of behind the curtain.

Yeah, I think it's great. I feel like you are so similar to how you were like when I was a patient. Like you're still so encouraging with both the staff and the patients. And so it's been really nice to see it on both sides because like you really are just super bubbly and trying to be as encouraging and you as you can. But you also will be like, you know, why aren't you doing your protocol that you were supposed to be doing? So You, you have a good balance.

That's great. I like to hear that. Anything you think prospective patients should know now that you've been on both sides of the, of the practice?

Yeah, I think just the most important thing is like you, you do have to put in the work. Like we can give you all the protocols in the world, but if you're not gonna follow it, then you're not gonna get any better.

And, or do the lab testing.

Yeah.

Or do the lab testing in a timely fashion.

Yes. Do your labs.

Yeah. We understand that life gets in the way, but we also At a certain point, we got to get off the X and get things done.

Yes, absolutely.

All right, Kenna, thank you for joining me. Thank you everyone for tuning in. See you next time.