[00:00:08]
Unknown:
Welcome to another episode of the improving Berry podcast, where I Berry interview experts in health and wellness. And this week, I'm speaking with Giselle Bisson, aka the recovering vegan. Well, as you can guess from the name, She was a vegan for a very long time, and then she got really, really sick. It's really a sad story. And now, finally, she is recovering and she's getting better. You can find the full transcript for free on improvingberry.com. And there, you can also sign up for the newsletter. Now without further delay, here is Giselle.
Maybe we can start by, with with your story. So so the that's the Kum tours. You know? Can you tell me your story? Where where did you start?
[00:01:02] Unknown:
Well, in 2001, what, 1999, I This one that was a dress style tech executives doing PR Tech Companies in Silicon Valley. And I decided to take off and go to France, go to New York for the 1st, look for my ancestors. I'm half Italian, half French. So I went to the south of France and Italy and Spain. And while I was in the south of France, I met and fell in love with the French agronomist. Somebody educated in food wine. Organic agriculture. And he and I traveled all over France every next couple of years back and forth, and we had this got engaged to be married and traveled through the south of France. It was, like, right out of a year in provence.
Right? We went to wineries. We went to gardens. We went to each hit suit for us and gathered cherries and made our miqueurs. We visited, with farms and and looked for the best food all over France. We look for the best restaurants. And traveled to all the wine regions. And a lot of this was when he was on job interviews. So we would go to various regions of France while he was searching for his next job, and he was unemployed. I was unemployed. So they let him off. And I learned so much about agriculture and was also kind of a spiritual awakening for being this really up to the date corporate urban San Francisco girl to being out of the country and learning our original diet.
And what I saw, and, of course, like, my health thrived while I was there. I had been a vegetarian up until that point. I tried to remain a vegetarian in France. But, his ninety three year old grandmother, you know, when I wanted noodles or Right. Or something like that. Cars, you know, and she was generally making me very heavy protein and high fat dishes. And I'm with a salad, and that's helping me. And we did a lot of foraging throughout France. We porridge for wild mushrooms for wild blueberries. We want to know that we've porridge for wild chestnuts. And then we went to the coast, and we called Ansho. These we barbecued the molested of wood fire of Grapeines.
And these were just tickled bench states in the south of France. He was a big and rural, had grown up on a farm on a winery. And, So after a couple years of this, eating meat again, even eating foie gras. Right? Foie gras wants for breakfast. His mother named foie gras. Loath of it. And I was pretty horrified as a former vegetarian, you know, to eat quagrouting is delicious. And I ate a lot of it. I also ate a lot of stuff, especially dotcom fee and, different organ meats and The first line he ever said in breakfast was escargot. Now escargot isn't this fancy thing in France. It's garden snails.
And you clean them out by letting them you put them in a little cage and you let the sandals eat cornmeal until it cleans them out and fattens them up. And then you cook them with garlic butter. And they treated chili, like, ate this a breakfast. And I remember seeing the snails In the pan on top of the stove, just don't let's, you know, oh, I have to eat this, you know, I had to eat it, had saved it. But this is how humans traditionally ate. Right? We were hunters and gatherers. Most of what we gathered was wild, and most of what we gathered was small animals.
And his father kept pied on pigeons in the attic, and well up to the attic one day with his shotgun, shot a pigeon. For dinner. Just wild pigeon theory. Got it. People also kept rabbits in their garage. And they routed me. You know, this is people human student traditionally the big house. They ate small things that were easy to to raise, easy to catch, or even that you could find on the ground with you very ants and eat like sales, We also went to the coast and, and gathered urchin, sea urchin, a little kokeels, and you just eat them raw, like, sushi right off the beach. And I applied here at California, we have merchants all over the place. Nobody ever eats some. Nobody ever thinks of eating the stuff. We all, you know, we might have whether the beach should have all this wild suited or fingertips, but then we go to go to Costco shop. Right?
So I came home from France and went back to my house in San Francisco, and then I went to a grocery store, like a regular mainstream grocery store, to shop. And I was discussed You know, at the on a walk, this is around 2002. We didn't have the revolution in food in the United States that we have now. Right? The food was pretty bad in their grocery stores. And I remember walking in the meat department, and not only did it look disgusting. It's not really gross. If it's just oh, I can't eat that. I can't eat this American meat. I got spoiled by this incredible stuff we were eating in France. And so rather than looking for a better need is what it should have done.
I started reading about the American diet, about agriculture. I got very interested in this topic, and I read diet for of a new planet by Frances Morla Perry. I've read a book called Fast Food Nation I've read books by, John Robidence, former founder, inheritor, air to the Baskin Robbins chain, vegan, and very strong anti plate based diet. I remember reading this chapter, and at that time, it was a bestseller all. Good book, Fast Food Nation. And there was a chapter where he talks about slaughterhouses. And what goes into hot dog and and American meat production. And I literally almost got, like, to my stomach when I read this chapter, And that was when I was starting to think.
I I can't eat meat. Right? And then I, started getting interested in changing my career from tech PR into something more culinary and will start looking for a culinary school to enroll in and change my career to being a chef. And I found this culinary school that was vegan. And the regular school was, like Right. $20,000. And the food was very mainstream and very unhealthy. And I thought, I can't, you know, feed this really unhealthy people to people as a chef. I can't go to this colon very famous culinary academy. So I went to the Beacon cooking school, and by the end of those 3 days, I felt fantastic.
I had so much fun. Is there a spiritual? At that time, I was practicing yoga and getting involved in restaurants and spiritual community and just the cold turkey, vegan overnight. So I went vegan during that that weekend, and then I went through the full training and became an intern in the kitchen and went back and forth to the weekend cooking school. And I started hanging out of vegans more and more, going deeper and deeper into the spiritual community. Which was a Buddhist visiting places like Eslin owing to the San Francisco Zen senator. Even on the yoga Ashram.
And, and most of these pieces, you did karma yoga. And when you did karma yoga, you had working kitchen, So I was learning more lower back vegan cooking and and, doing that and eating that. And just went deeper and deeper and deeper in civic again, move it into the vegan community, which was very much centered in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I started promoting the jobs. I started promoting the events. Site started promoting festivals. Yeah. And some of the most famous begins were people I was hanging out with all the time, like, woah. Gabriel cousins, you know, the top in influencers of the time.
It's Terry Soria, who was my mentor, who had signed with at Ann Wigmore. She was protege of Ann Wigmore who was, you know, really one of the pioneers of veganism, raw smoothies, green soups, juices. And so I had a healthy I bought a diet mix. And I spent $500 of inviting me, except what did you serve already dehydrater and all of these really extensive appliances when I started vegan catering business. And was, like, so really one of the pioneering beekeepers in the bay area, and I did this underground event every weekend where I made pies with, like, cashews and fruit, you know, that no sugar, but only fruits and nuts.
And then made a vegan entree, that would serve 100100 of people this. And so when these vegans now are starting attack me on YouTube and Twitter and say, I was never really a vegan in a spot. You know, that that's the first thing they'll do when you leave the call of the unionism is they'll start attacking you. And, that really pisses me off. Excuse me. That really makes me bad. Because I'm devoted my whole life. Oh, you can swear. That's fine. So long, and I lost so much as a result. And I recruiting people. You know, it's that people who can vote. 100,000 of people saw me do this.
It's not a lie. I have witnesses. 100 and 1000 of them. I mean, I'm in the home right of a Yeah. A vegan musician who I became friends with who I travel, you know, who I traveled and toured with and loaded. I was really deep into it. Yeah. Mine helped what since you know? Over the years, it's vegan. It got worse and worse. I saw that happening my friends around me. And we just thought it was aging. You know, I started veganism around age forty. I was starting to come perio menopausal. You know, maybe it was just aging. Yeah. And then around 2014, 2015, you started seeing our friends die.
And I was living in a town that is very vegan. In Bay Area, with where we had an excellent health food store, and you know, some of the pioneering vegan cheese bars and vegan restaurants were right in our town with several of the top Really famous vegan chefs right there. And, you know, I would say the Still today, the majority of that county is very plant based, very health conscious, does a lot of juicy, eats a lot of Vegetor. And the county also has the highest rate. Marin County has the highest rate of breast cancer. In the United States and also high rates of cancer general.
And I started watching my friends dive cancer And then my best friend who I was working with and helping her produce conscious river rafting trips, the river guide is She's producing river rafting trips with yoga, vegetarian, vegan food, and She took her own life. Then another prominent yoga teacher part of our community jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. So we were seeing a combination of people starting to die of cancer and starting to have mental health issues that led to extreme depression to the point where they were committing suicide. And I started thinking, you know, I wonder if what we're needing has something to do with this, but are we so deep in today or not?
Except out. Yeah. They are healthy. Yeah. The best diet. You know, we were doing the best plan. How could this possibly have anything to do? With our off the church rate of cancer, the fact that my friends are are killing themselves or just mysteriously dying And, in 2018, I was in a car accident. And, I had a severe spinal cord injury. And almost overnight, my life changed I suddenly had trouble walking. I was in intractable. Intractable pain is when Your pain is just all the time. 24. Mhmm. I was you know, in a fetal position at night trying to sleep with, like, these electro shocks of pain going from my feet. To my head, like, my entire body, it felt like an electric shock.
That was horrible feeling. It's really hard to describe. How awful this is. It was some sort of nerve pain from a damage to my bun cord. And, I went through I'm not allowed to talk about this too much because I was involved in an injury case. As a passenger in this car accident that entered me. But I can say that it was a long journey to figure out what was wrong. And I went to dozens of doctors. Yeah. I called to dozens of doctors. I had finally finally fine. And I had a chiropractor. The first treatment I had was a chiropractor in Los Angeles. Oh, very good chiropractor.
And he said to me, I think he should take omega-three fatty acids, and then my flat plate. I said, well, that'll help you with your pain. But how could a omega 3 fatty acid's dish oil help me with this pain? I don't get it. And every time I went I went into his office literally every single day for his treatments over a period of his, I don't know, 8 weeks. Limping there, you know, in extreme heat, and he did all kinds of work, cranial sacral, different things. As he was working on me, I would ask him questions. Just like you, I was curious. I wanted to heal myself, and I would pick his brain.
And, he taught me about inflammation. I didn't know until that point, that inflammation and pain are the same thing. That they're interrelated.
[00:17:17] Unknown:
Right? Always a chiropractor, isn't it? Chiropractors are smart?
[00:17:21] Unknown:
Yeah. They they have a different approach to the doctors. Right? And he was also something called paleo. He and his wife looked fantastic, by the way. They were like, really buff and tan and super sad and really young looking for their age and super vital. And then for snacks in the office, he had little dishes of nuts. And he's he outside of all these supplements, which included things like celtic sea salt and different minerals and fish oils and things. And so he honestly, you know, he didn't, and come out and say, you really stopped being vegetarian. But he teach me that if, he taught me about the relationship between cortisol and pain and cortisol and our ability to sleep. And at that time, I couldn't sleep at all. I have so had such bad insomnia that I'm just lie I embed it, like, You know, it's staring at the ceiling, praying to sleep.
Part of it was pain, but there was something else going on. And he said, well, what do you wait first thing in the morning? Uh-uh. Oh, you know, I had a big smoothie with fruit and greens in it. I eat so healthy, you know, and then I have, like, starting to eat eggs again. I have an omelet with Pewa in it, you know, side of south. You know? Oh, I love to. I mean, you know, eat my balls, you know, and then bean soup. So my it's so healthy. That was living in LA and going to all the vegan restaurants and juice bars and our local health could store with a 100% being with this big raw section with all the and it is I'm wasting all this money.
All this stuff. Plus taking supplements, like, every morning, you know, handfuls. Of the supplements with the smoothie, lots of supplements. And, you know, the really healthy ones, like, sterilina and the vitamineral green with all the greens that, and You know, meanwhile, my am I arthritis? It's just like, I, like, I sound like rice krispies, when I walk, you can hear my joint pop when I go up and down the stairs. And these doctors are seeing, you know, you're only, I think, oh, it's 56 at that time. Why is your arthritis so bad? You know, I was a fifty six year old woman. Really bad arthritis. And, I started going through this this journey of trying to figure out what was wrong.
And it was a really long time before I was able to see a real doctor and get an MRI. But when I finally got the MRI, And I finally got it examined by a doctor. And at this point, my whole red side of my body is going numb. I had lost you know, 80% of my sensation in my fingers because of peripheral neuropathy and nerve damage. I had horrible, horrible headaches, on one side of my head. And then along with all of this, I had IBS. Like, the worst IBS Really bad. And I know you've had this too and struggle with it. And, I started noticing that the IBS flares seem to be concurrent with the paint flares.
I did notice there was some sort of relationship between the pain, the arthritis, the IBS, but no doctor knew anything about Right? And I saw the neurologists, doctors, surgeons, you know, I I had my brain scanned. I had an all over body MRI. And when they did the MRI, the first thing There I was, you know, so sick. I barely do anything except to Kate into a cell phone. I couldn't even type anymore. My brain wasn't functioning. I was in horrible pain. I was exhausted because I couldn't sleep. And there were times when I just saw it. If I have to keep going this like this, I might as well die, There's no point in continuing to live in this much paint.
It was horrible. And nobody understood. Nobody empathized My clients were firing me because I couldn't even stand on a trade show. Yeah. I had to wear orthopedic shoes, so I did look cute. I I looked terrible. My hair was breaking off and falling out. I had bads and dark circles, under my eyes, you know, like, three layers. Like, I had the bad and the dark circle and then another bad and then another one. And, you know, nobody wants to hire you when you look like that. You're that tired. I went to a corporate Party in Beverly Hills, really fancy party where I was inviting.
There were even celebrities at this party, and I was so exhausted. I fell asleep. During the party. And then I got fired. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So Well, rock bottom. Finally, when I rock bottom, oh, you every time you think you hit rock bottom, there's another Bebble, you can go even worse. And that's what this journey has taught me. You know, every time I thought I hit rock bottom, no. There was another There. So when I finally got the results to the MRI on a CD ROM, and I looked at them. And I started learning how to read an MRI and how to understand all these terms that were going on inside my spine.
But the first thing that was really weird about the report from the neurologist is that my my pelvis was full of tumors. So I had, you know, what was going on in my body, was it just the spinal stuff? I actually and you could see all the inflammation in my intestines. Very inflamed. And my uterus had, like, literally, like, 100100100 of Mass is in. And I also had sis sell over my service. And the doctor, when he looked at this, he said, oh, well, that's normal. You know, these are benign tumors and and lots of women in your age have one that has As you go further into menopause, they'll shrink and disappear. They're just from excess as stroke, Lisa.
And I just saw, you know Okay. B s. And I want that inside my body. There's something going on here. I don't think that's normal. And one of the tumors was so big. It was blocking. You can see it right there in the MRI. It was blocking my my, bladder. So my bladder was, like, at 1 third capacity. Because of this big tumor. And, doctors are just blowing all this soft. It's normal. And then I read what was going on in my spine, and I had fluorosis, stenosis, degenerative disc disease, myelopathy, and, in addition to all of this, something called spondylitis, something called severe, right sided, Sasted arthropathy.
But the so it started, you know, looking up these words on the internet to figure out what all this stuff was. Myelopathy. What do I see? What causes myelopathy? Vitamin D 12 Not sure. Deficiency.
[00:25:34] Unknown:
Right? Oh, there you go. So
[00:25:37] Unknown:
so I I see this article written by the famous vegetarian being a doctor what's his name? He's the guy. He's super skinny. They're always making fun of in the carnivore community. He looks terrible, but he's the vegan doctor. Anyway, he has this article called that's Terrence, how the disease named after that. It's called the vegetarian myelopathy. And so even the top vegan doctor in the world admits The veganism causes the spinal cord degeneration. Myelopastae is this extreme degeneration of the spinal cord that's caused by, malnutrition.
Not in all of vitamin D12. And as I went deeper and deeper into all of this, I started noticing that there was some sort of of a link between all of these problems going on in my body and possibly my vegan diet. But at that time, I still hadn't woken up. Right? So a joint Yeah. Twitter to follow the keto diet community. And the reason I did that is One of my friends, who was supporting me in this journey was a disabled woman. It was in wheelchair. Who had lost to the ability to walk. And she's pretty savvy about all the things Dude, she said, you know what? Here's the heat. A lot of people are using keto diet to deal with pain and and, disability.
He might look good to Keto. And so I didn't know what Keto was. Right? I had no idea, and I it's a lot to learn. When you go from a plant based diet into this other world, You don't know any of this. I knew nothing about carbs. I knew nothing about which foods are low carb, which ones are high carb. Had no clue. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm starting to read the card counts. On foods. And what a wake up call, you know, when you realize that the stuff that I was eating was all carbohydrate, very hard in carbohydrate, all the plant based food. But something like, smoked salmon, Was only 100 calories.
And look at the nutrition on here. I was with blowing away. Wow. We can lift stuff in this three and a half ounce piece of salmon. We're only like a 100 calories. Yeah. And Helen and Parks, 0. And I started learning from following people on Twitter. I did that anonymously as recovering vegan for a reason because my family was all vegetarian and vegan. My relatives, my best ones, the guys that was, you know, had been dating in the last 18 years. I mean, my whole world was all vegan all time. And not only could I not learn about this from them, but if they saw I was doing this, I would probably get ostracized. Or hurt their feelings.
I didn't wanna insult anybody Yeah. Hurt their feelings. So I found this Stocks photo of a woman hiding on a bunch of kale, and I posted that as my picture, and we can't recall my video. And, that was 3 years ago. And I bet you like this overnight influencer. It was really weird, within those 1st couple of months. I was reaching 3,000,000 people a month. What's? And people who are following me at, like, the rate of a 100 a day. And the vegans started attacking me, giving me death threats. They were very threatened by what I was doing. You know, and, it is intimidating.
And, the Carnivor and the Keto community were very, very, very supportive, and they were messaging me behind the scenes and saying, block the vegans. Don't listen to them. You need to, you know, you just need to focus on your own healing. And, so the people who were giving me advice were now becoming very influential. Over the last couple of years, you know, we've seen this rise of awareness. Now, Sally Norton who just wrote This best selling book about, oxalate. She was messaging me behind the scenes. Michelle her and who's the red a registered dietitian who wrote the dietitian's dilemma. She messaged me behind the scenes and gave me her book.
At Doctor Paul Saladino, he gave me his book to read as a PDF. And, Yeah. Now I'm getting advice. Oh, you know, just so many people. It's been wonderful. Kim Menick. Eat me, be happy, woman, a big chest, and she's really sexy and hot. She's given me a lot of advice. And all these people said, don't listen to what anybody else says. You know, your health is more important. And, but I still was not able to really eat meat in any, significant quantity. And I started of following different influencers like YouTube. And what is this guy named?
And there's a woman called Reg vegan. She was also anonymous. A lot of the word anonymous at that time, vegan. Big and deterioration. And I started following these different channels, and I binge watched. Oh, and doctor it is Sean Baker. And doctor Saladino, and, there was Something a lot of these people hadn't come and they were X vegans or X raw vegans or had been heavily plant based and went to the absolute office of eating nothing but me in order to heal. And, I started binge watching on YouTube while I was sick going to my doctor. By now, I had found a doctor who, was recommended to me by the disabled woman, and I was traveling, very I'd moved to live closer to him. I traveled long distances to see him three times a week and get spinal cord decompression therapy and physical therapy.
And I was getting to a point where I could walk longer distances and and do more with my body. My pain was starting to be reduced, but at the same time, I was starting keto diet. And my doctors and physical therapist didn't even know anything about Tito. And but they could see that I was improving. My body was changing. That was losing weight. I was getting more muscular physically fit without much physical exercise just by lowering the carbs. And, but it still wasn't eating that much meat. I'm still eating a lot of plants. And it wasn't until I mean, could fast forward after a couple of years trying to eat more meat, Nikkito, following the community.
I was slipping due to social pressure, I was eating too many plants and too many carbs. And Yeah. By December of 20 22. My pain was coming back I was really fat and bloated. I weighed a 148. You know, I think if you you do keto wrong, and you eat too many carbs with it. It's even worse because you'll you're you're getting all the fat, from the high fat Diet plus the carbs and the sugars. It's a disaster. At least it was eating meat. But I wasn't looking so great. Wasn't feeling very good. I was also drinking alcohol. You know, want, and lots of coffee and taking tubs of supplements. And my IBS was getting worse.
And worse. And by Christmas of this year, the IBS was so bad. Was starting to worry that I should get a colonoscopy? I started Yep. Worrying maybe I had colon cancer. I mean, it was it was severe. I don't wanna get into the details. It's pretty awful. And and those daily flares were accompanied by really bad pain flares and joint inflammation. One of those flares during the last couple of years sent me. Actually, a couple. Several, flares were so bad that and suddenly couldn't walk. And, one of them sent me into the 2 or 3 H sent me into the emergency room, one of the flares that sent me into the emergency room, inject me with steroids and pain killers, Wheel me in a wheelchair.
And the doctor said your spinal cord injury is so bad that if you slip and fall one more time, paralyzed from the waist down. And, did you, you know, she said you really need back surgery? And I was told by a neurologist, 2 different surgeries, one in my neck, one in my lower bowel. And, I was really afraid of this. And, ideas was getting worse and worse. And then January 1 this year, there was this cardboard challenge. Right? You know, we're on Carnivar Hunt. Go Carnivar with us. Yeah. And people have been telling me for the last couple of years shipped out full car war, and there was no way I could do it. And it was just just so gross.
So thought of going from being, total vegetarian for so many years only eating meat for a couple of years and and then turning around eating. Nothing but meat was just almost impossible to to grasp. But at that point, I was so desperate for answers, and I saw that people with ankylosing spondylitis and arthritis and IBD, IBS, were having full remission of their autoimmune disease. And this isn't just anecdotal, Michaela Peterson. I started watching her videos on YouTube and her TED Talk. And she said that she had a full remission of her autoimmune arthritis a lot of people were messaging me, behind the scenes. He said they, full remission.
Of IBD, IBS, cholesterol's, auto immune the rare autoimmune diseases, in closing, it's modelized in particular, and so I did it. And I wrote on Twitter. I just, you know, I said, oh, I'm gonna do a carnivore diet. And it went viral on. When the year's resolutions, I didn't expect it, 275,000 people reach that tweet, reached 270,000 people, and I saw, oh, wow. I can't quit now. I have to do this. And I was really thinking of not doing it. Yeah. And after the First day, eating all corn. I get really sick. You know, you get really bad diarrhea. Often.
And after the 3rd or 4th day, although my brain started to feel really good, certain aspects felt and then they, however, diarrhea was severe. It got to the point where it was, like, ten times in one day. The detox. You get foamy urine and cloudy urine, and I started looking these things up and thinking oh, no, I better go to the emergency room. This is really bad. You know, maybe I started getting pain in my kidney. And different car wars behind the scenes were messaging me, including the woman named the low ox Kuria law. Jeannie?
Yeah. She's great. And she started giving me advice on Instagram. And she told me about citrates, museum, citrate, calcium, citrate, And then people started teaching me that you've gotta dump all the the the supplements. They're probably ear treating you and causing more harm than good with your IDS. Get rid of those supplements, but only take minerals. And so I started taking the minerals, the electrolytes and thinking more salt, and they taught me Bit by bit. I've learned about this. I felt like there was no vibe to being carnivore out there. I had to sort of stumble through it.
With the feedback. And, it was a very difficult process. I was really sick I'm just letting you know it was pretty sick for the 1st 3 weeks. And there was there were other carnivores that were doing great and weren't having these difficulties. But they hadn't been vegan before. They hadn't had a diet of nothing but green smoothies for 18 years. It's super and tons, supplements, and found a couple other Yeah. Women like Jeannie, the Loebox Grandma, a couple of other women on Twitter and Instagram were having similar levels of difficulty because of oxalate And right around that time, Sally Norton, the nutritionist from Cornell, her book toxic super foods came out.
And everybody said, you'd buy, read, I would sit superfoods. So I wrote super publisher, said I'm an employed source. Send it. Can you send me a copy of the book? They sent me the book. And I read it immediately, as I was binge reading her book, the light bulb went on. Oh my god. It's everything she's talking about. This is exactly what's going on in my body. Every health problem I've had over the last 18 years, and even prior to that as a vegetarian, was leaked to an overload of these plant toxins, the oxalates, which literally look like a crystal under a microscope, and they're sharp.
And I could feel them exiting my body when I had these layers on ED flares, it was like, rocks. We're scraping my guts. You know, I could feel it. Almost like sand. And some people, when the oxalates are exiting their urine or their feces, they even see it. It's like sand or crystals. Many of the people who were detoxing oxalate said it would come out of their skin. And I saw that. I saw little crystals that you pick out of a little bits of your skin, sort of embedded in there. I was getting, you know, these fatty things on my skin, on my face that were from the detox and, you know, the foamy urine, the really painful scraving your gut's feeling.
After 3 weeks though, when I added the citrates and the minerals, and removed all the plants from my diet and listened to all the feedback I was I suddenly had a date with no YBS. You know? And then another. And then another. And I'm a fan IBS freak. I was sued by the end of the month. I and I was taking pictures of myself. And I could watch my face just, like, reverse aging. It's unbelievable. I still I look in the mirror some days, and I'm like, who's that person? You know? I'd say, like, I'm looking at myself at 40 instead of 60. And it's only been 2 months, not even 2 months yet today.
So, after my 1st couple of weeks of coronavirus, I was able to feel sensation in my feet, and it was a weirdest feeling. You know, if your feet have been numb for years, They feel warm and you feel the sheets under your feet in bed and you feel the ground on your feet when you're walking. Woah. I can feel things in my feet. I could type faster. My hands were moving faster. The floaters in my eyes, which had been so bad. It's like looking at ranches, blooming. You know, it's best if you look at a a white wall or feel the snow or the bright select. The floaters were starting to fade My night vision was improving.
My daytime vision, my brain clarity, unreal, and the sleep. Suddenly you're going to sleep at 9 o'clock at night. Wanna go to sleep when it's dark, and you wanna wake up. It's exactly when the sun rises. And whether I got 6 hours or 8 hours doesn't matter, I feel refreshed like, bowling way. Jumping out of bed. I was able to touch my toes for the first time of 4 years. Banned over, new yoga postures. Like, so many things just cleared up. Instantaneous. Like, I I can't they're d's. Like, today, I feel so good. I would have to see on that baseline. This is how the human body is supposed to be. I don't have a headache.
I'm not having ringing in my ears. I don't have any pimples. My teeth are hurting. I don't have any gum. Pain or gum bleeding. My fingernails are growing in strong and not chipping. They have which is a sign of health. My hair has not looked as good decades. It's softer. You know, it's weird. The hair responded almost immediately. My eyebrows are and eyelashes are growing and thicker. I don't have dark circles under my eyes. Fewer lines in my face. You know, to go head to toe. Everything's different. Toenail had fallen off. What what am I feet? It grew back. It had completely fallen off.
Toenell Group 2 months. Oh, just All kinds of miracles.
[00:45:29] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, you're finally nourished now. So after decades of malnourishment and hurting yourself, Now finally, you are getting the right stuff that actually that's what your body is made of of this stuff. So now finally, you can heal yourself. I'm so glad for you that you that you found this. And I'm so disappointed that it took so long and that that this insidious scrap of, you know, this healthy diet and healthy lifestyle, because I get it. You know, you're not eating processed food anymore. You're in this healthy hip culture of, you know, food stores that are all vegan and everything is vegan, vegan, smoothies, and, you know, crispy looking vegan people.
And I get it. It's just very attractive, and it's a very it seems healthy, but The the message to do that is so strong, and so wrong as you found out. It's it's it's very difficult for people especially, like, young people to resist that message because, you know, it seems correct. Right? Plans are good for us. And especially if they're raw. Is this Why wouldn't they be? Right? So everything says, influencers. Yeah. There you go. But you found the right path All around us. Very glad for you.
[00:46:50] Unknown:
I am too, but I'll tell you it's been difficult. My family, my friends, they think I'm kind of a freak. They're, Yeah. Yeah. And they think it's disgusting. Of course, I could have done this in secrecy. And continue to be secret and not show my face, but I felt there was this point of the last straw. And the last straw was when somebody very, very close to me told me it was bad, a vegan vegetarian for a very long time. She told me she was diagnosed with MS. And I was angry. You know? This is hurting people. This is hurting people I love. It hurt me. And I've had so many of my friends die.
4 friends, all vegetarian, mostly vegetarian, or vegan, or plant based, all died this summer of cancer. I have several girlfriends who are vegetarian or vegan who currently have stage 4 breast cancer or cancer. And,
[00:48:04] Unknown:
Yeah. It's terrible. I
[00:48:07] Unknown:
it's terrible. And they're Yesterday, I was visiting one of these friends. I brought them a a vegan soup. That I made, and I tried to make it as low and oxalate as possible. And I even ate the suit. In solidarity, even though it was free. It was gonna make me sick. You know? I wanted to make her Ross. I wanted to nurture her, but, you know, or give her raw milk a beer or here have some butter with real honey. Yeah. But he was so angry. And she she said, Well, you know, you've gotta stop preaching to people. And I know this is working for you, and you look fantastic. And I can see the changes that you know, you look amazing. It allows 2 months. It's like, what has happened to your body plus the weight loss.
And but she says that everybody's body is different, and this is just working for you. Must be your blood type or your genetics or Whatever. It doesn't even work for other people, and everybody's all their own past. And then she sat there in front of a juicer. And she took bunches of celery. Without I tried to tell her about Keitan and said, you can't watch everything. You've gotta wash it really well because there's this new insecticide they're using that's made out of the skins and bugs. And if this isn't a lie, you can just look it up. Cutaneous is being used as an as an organic insecticide, but it can have a very bad allergic reaction in people and it's good for you to thoroughly wash everything, raw, or cook, and peel as much as possible.
She took these 2 whole bunches of celery, including the roots, didn't wash them, threw them in the juicer. She took lemons. It's a Tuber. You bought a skin, then we gotta take the seeds out because the seeds are toxic. It's no. You can't put the whole skin of fruits of it. Or the apples with the seeds and the skins, the lannums with the seeds and the skins, the cucumber wouldn't seed. It wouldn't peel it, but the whole cucumber in there. And she made this juice. You know, this this oxalate toxic poison juice. This much of it.
To prepare for her cancer surgery. I'm just wanting to cry, man. So this could be for this advice. What? Think to these people. This is August. This is hurting people. And with a whole, like, full of supplements, you know, the supplements some might help, but some of the life just add to the oxalate overload. People need to learn about oxalates. They need to learn about Pat talks and They need to learn about lectins and bites. And and and that the b 12 is not the only nutrient in animals that we need are 20 nutrients. Essentially human health that are only found in the animal Kingdom.
And people don't know the difference between an omega 3, fatty acid or an omega 6. And, you know, of course, they don't know all this stuff. It's taken me 4 years to learn it all.
[00:51:26] Unknown:
Previously, painfully. Yes. But also, you wanted to learn it.
[00:51:30] Unknown:
Yes. And I wanted to learn it because I was motivated because I was in so much pain.
[00:51:37] Unknown:
Yeah. And and even, people that are in extreme amounts of pain, like your friend that has cancer, you know, you would think that that level of pain would incentivize you to look further, but I think, the the diet is so entrenched with your identity, and you just take that messaging for granted for so many years, that you just don't wanna believe anything better or different because, you know, if you would have to admit that that would be wrong, that would just be devastating to who you are and what you believe in. Even if that means that you might die because of your beliefs, which is which is terrible, but, you know, you you just can't get people to to look into this stuff. That's in in general with health. You just can't get people to change. All you can do is just be the best that you can be you know, show that you can heal yourself, and then people can say, wow. You look great. What what are you doing? How do you do that? Maybe you can tell me. You know, that that's all you can do, unfortunately, but you're doing it. So by example.
[00:52:47] Unknown:
Yes. Right. And logs what I'm trying to do. Yeah. I've been trying to certainly Yeah. Encourage people on letting them know, but I'm realizing that You know, if I cook meat around them, if I eat meat around them, if I talk about it, I post about I'm in danger of losing all my friends and even alienating my own family. So
[00:53:14] Unknown:
The other day It is what it is. You know?
[00:53:18] Unknown:
I ran into a very famous Man, who do I've done a lot of promotion for? Who's been a long term vegan and Rob vegan? And his age is exactly the same as mine's birthday is 1 month from me. He's always looked quite a bit older than he is, and he's always had terrible health problems. And he's always considered himself a healer. In spite of this, very savvy about supplements and everything. I was out of concert, and I walked in the door, and he saw me. And he hugged me. And he said, oh, if we're wanting to talk to you. And I thought, oh, no.
And he said, I've been reading your posts on social media. I'm like, oh, no. Mhmm. You know, brace, hang for the vegan backlash. And he said, I was really, really sick. I've had COVID 5 times. Chronic cough. I got to the point, and I also have cancer. And he said, I got to the point where I couldn't hold down food anymore, and I was vomiting up everything that I ate. And I was so sick. I thought I was dying, and I didn't know what to do anymore. And he said, I decided to eat meat. But he smiled, and he says, oh, I'm a carnivore. Lisa, thank you so much. It should save my life. Oh, eating meat all the time now. Most sleepy and Liam.
I'm shocked, man. I was so shocked. And when he, of all people, approached me, this is very influential, very you know, a person who's got a huge following vegans. And, of course, he says, I don't talk about this publicly. And, of course, he doesn't because he would alienate fire falling, but he does look dramatically different. He's gained quite a bit of weight. You know, he's looking really solid. I would say he's probably still eating too cars. But but he's in that process of evolving. I was in where you first starting meet, gradually learn that you have to get rid of the plans.
And, That was when I realized it was on the right path.
[00:55:45] Unknown:
Alright. So we are, an hour in already. It's quite a story that you have there. I'm really sorry that you suffered that much. I'm very happy that you're not anymore and that you are now on the way to really gaining your health back and building on that because, you know, yes, this is great, but trust me, it will probably get better and better and better and better. So, you know, can you imagine feeling better than you do now? Of course, it will. Yeah. And, you know, I think you're doing a great job. Like you said, you already helped your friend there, which is great. And I think, if you keep putting this stuff out there. You'll help lots and lots more people as well, even though you might be attacked by people that don't like this message or you know, you might alienate your friends and family.
You know what? It is what it is. If people don't wanna hear this message, that's totally fine. Keep doing what you're doing. Where
[00:56:49] Unknown:
They do wanna hear it. I mean, I'm followed by 12,200 people on Twitter. 57,000 followers now between all of my social media pages. They're reaching over 4,000,000 people a month. An an agent contacted me yesterday. She'd found me on Facebook and real agent, the same agent for one of the people who just wrote a best selling book about this topic She wants to talk to me about doing a book, and it originally started out as a journalist. I wanted to write books. So I know that this is all happening for a reason, but I'd suffered a lot. I lost a lot of my life.
Yeah. A lot of my lies. And Yeah. I now see, like, I have, you know, a new life ahead of me at this age. You know, maybe another 20 years for 30 years or maybe even more where I can actually walk and Yeah. My brain actually functions, like, sit and drive a car without pain. I mean, I'm hoping. That I I regain more.
[00:58:01] Unknown:
Yeah. And I'll bet, I'll bet that you do. So where can people find you exactly on the social media. What's your your handle there?
[00:58:11] Unknown:
Recovering vegan. Well, it's actually vegan recovering. At read b and recovering on Twitter. And there, you'll see a link to my link tree that links to all of my other pages, blog, on on immediate again under my name, and I'm on Twitter, us getting Instagram as they'll recover it again. And on Instagram. Wait. Instagram, Facebook on recovery in vegan. And I'll have a blog at the scene at recovering vegan
[00:58:45] Unknown:
and see Excellent. And I will link to all of that stuff, Oh, yeah. And I will link to all of those things in the show notes so that people can find that easily and start following you as well and help to spread the words. A balance is very important topic. Thank you very much for talking with me today. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for spending time with me to learn about health and wellness. For the full transcript and more content, visit improving varied.com. That is improvingbadoubry.com. And here is a disclaimer. The information in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor patient relationship is formed.
The use of information in this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for
Welcome to another episode of the improving Berry podcast, where I Berry interview experts in health and wellness. And this week, I'm speaking with Giselle Bisson, aka the recovering vegan. Well, as you can guess from the name, She was a vegan for a very long time, and then she got really, really sick. It's really a sad story. And now, finally, she is recovering and she's getting better. You can find the full transcript for free on improvingberry.com. And there, you can also sign up for the newsletter. Now without further delay, here is Giselle.
Maybe we can start by, with with your story. So so the that's the Kum tours. You know? Can you tell me your story? Where where did you start?
[00:01:02] Unknown:
Well, in 2001, what, 1999, I This one that was a dress style tech executives doing PR Tech Companies in Silicon Valley. And I decided to take off and go to France, go to New York for the 1st, look for my ancestors. I'm half Italian, half French. So I went to the south of France and Italy and Spain. And while I was in the south of France, I met and fell in love with the French agronomist. Somebody educated in food wine. Organic agriculture. And he and I traveled all over France every next couple of years back and forth, and we had this got engaged to be married and traveled through the south of France. It was, like, right out of a year in provence.
Right? We went to wineries. We went to gardens. We went to each hit suit for us and gathered cherries and made our miqueurs. We visited, with farms and and looked for the best food all over France. We look for the best restaurants. And traveled to all the wine regions. And a lot of this was when he was on job interviews. So we would go to various regions of France while he was searching for his next job, and he was unemployed. I was unemployed. So they let him off. And I learned so much about agriculture and was also kind of a spiritual awakening for being this really up to the date corporate urban San Francisco girl to being out of the country and learning our original diet.
And what I saw, and, of course, like, my health thrived while I was there. I had been a vegetarian up until that point. I tried to remain a vegetarian in France. But, his ninety three year old grandmother, you know, when I wanted noodles or Right. Or something like that. Cars, you know, and she was generally making me very heavy protein and high fat dishes. And I'm with a salad, and that's helping me. And we did a lot of foraging throughout France. We porridge for wild mushrooms for wild blueberries. We want to know that we've porridge for wild chestnuts. And then we went to the coast, and we called Ansho. These we barbecued the molested of wood fire of Grapeines.
And these were just tickled bench states in the south of France. He was a big and rural, had grown up on a farm on a winery. And, So after a couple years of this, eating meat again, even eating foie gras. Right? Foie gras wants for breakfast. His mother named foie gras. Loath of it. And I was pretty horrified as a former vegetarian, you know, to eat quagrouting is delicious. And I ate a lot of it. I also ate a lot of stuff, especially dotcom fee and, different organ meats and The first line he ever said in breakfast was escargot. Now escargot isn't this fancy thing in France. It's garden snails.
And you clean them out by letting them you put them in a little cage and you let the sandals eat cornmeal until it cleans them out and fattens them up. And then you cook them with garlic butter. And they treated chili, like, ate this a breakfast. And I remember seeing the snails In the pan on top of the stove, just don't let's, you know, oh, I have to eat this, you know, I had to eat it, had saved it. But this is how humans traditionally ate. Right? We were hunters and gatherers. Most of what we gathered was wild, and most of what we gathered was small animals.
And his father kept pied on pigeons in the attic, and well up to the attic one day with his shotgun, shot a pigeon. For dinner. Just wild pigeon theory. Got it. People also kept rabbits in their garage. And they routed me. You know, this is people human student traditionally the big house. They ate small things that were easy to to raise, easy to catch, or even that you could find on the ground with you very ants and eat like sales, We also went to the coast and, and gathered urchin, sea urchin, a little kokeels, and you just eat them raw, like, sushi right off the beach. And I applied here at California, we have merchants all over the place. Nobody ever eats some. Nobody ever thinks of eating the stuff. We all, you know, we might have whether the beach should have all this wild suited or fingertips, but then we go to go to Costco shop. Right?
So I came home from France and went back to my house in San Francisco, and then I went to a grocery store, like a regular mainstream grocery store, to shop. And I was discussed You know, at the on a walk, this is around 2002. We didn't have the revolution in food in the United States that we have now. Right? The food was pretty bad in their grocery stores. And I remember walking in the meat department, and not only did it look disgusting. It's not really gross. If it's just oh, I can't eat that. I can't eat this American meat. I got spoiled by this incredible stuff we were eating in France. And so rather than looking for a better need is what it should have done.
I started reading about the American diet, about agriculture. I got very interested in this topic, and I read diet for of a new planet by Frances Morla Perry. I've read a book called Fast Food Nation I've read books by, John Robidence, former founder, inheritor, air to the Baskin Robbins chain, vegan, and very strong anti plate based diet. I remember reading this chapter, and at that time, it was a bestseller all. Good book, Fast Food Nation. And there was a chapter where he talks about slaughterhouses. And what goes into hot dog and and American meat production. And I literally almost got, like, to my stomach when I read this chapter, And that was when I was starting to think.
I I can't eat meat. Right? And then I, started getting interested in changing my career from tech PR into something more culinary and will start looking for a culinary school to enroll in and change my career to being a chef. And I found this culinary school that was vegan. And the regular school was, like Right. $20,000. And the food was very mainstream and very unhealthy. And I thought, I can't, you know, feed this really unhealthy people to people as a chef. I can't go to this colon very famous culinary academy. So I went to the Beacon cooking school, and by the end of those 3 days, I felt fantastic.
I had so much fun. Is there a spiritual? At that time, I was practicing yoga and getting involved in restaurants and spiritual community and just the cold turkey, vegan overnight. So I went vegan during that that weekend, and then I went through the full training and became an intern in the kitchen and went back and forth to the weekend cooking school. And I started hanging out of vegans more and more, going deeper and deeper into the spiritual community. Which was a Buddhist visiting places like Eslin owing to the San Francisco Zen senator. Even on the yoga Ashram.
And, and most of these pieces, you did karma yoga. And when you did karma yoga, you had working kitchen, So I was learning more lower back vegan cooking and and, doing that and eating that. And just went deeper and deeper and deeper in civic again, move it into the vegan community, which was very much centered in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I started promoting the jobs. I started promoting the events. Site started promoting festivals. Yeah. And some of the most famous begins were people I was hanging out with all the time, like, woah. Gabriel cousins, you know, the top in influencers of the time.
It's Terry Soria, who was my mentor, who had signed with at Ann Wigmore. She was protege of Ann Wigmore who was, you know, really one of the pioneers of veganism, raw smoothies, green soups, juices. And so I had a healthy I bought a diet mix. And I spent $500 of inviting me, except what did you serve already dehydrater and all of these really extensive appliances when I started vegan catering business. And was, like, so really one of the pioneering beekeepers in the bay area, and I did this underground event every weekend where I made pies with, like, cashews and fruit, you know, that no sugar, but only fruits and nuts.
And then made a vegan entree, that would serve 100100 of people this. And so when these vegans now are starting attack me on YouTube and Twitter and say, I was never really a vegan in a spot. You know, that that's the first thing they'll do when you leave the call of the unionism is they'll start attacking you. And, that really pisses me off. Excuse me. That really makes me bad. Because I'm devoted my whole life. Oh, you can swear. That's fine. So long, and I lost so much as a result. And I recruiting people. You know, it's that people who can vote. 100,000 of people saw me do this.
It's not a lie. I have witnesses. 100 and 1000 of them. I mean, I'm in the home right of a Yeah. A vegan musician who I became friends with who I travel, you know, who I traveled and toured with and loaded. I was really deep into it. Yeah. Mine helped what since you know? Over the years, it's vegan. It got worse and worse. I saw that happening my friends around me. And we just thought it was aging. You know, I started veganism around age forty. I was starting to come perio menopausal. You know, maybe it was just aging. Yeah. And then around 2014, 2015, you started seeing our friends die.
And I was living in a town that is very vegan. In Bay Area, with where we had an excellent health food store, and you know, some of the pioneering vegan cheese bars and vegan restaurants were right in our town with several of the top Really famous vegan chefs right there. And, you know, I would say the Still today, the majority of that county is very plant based, very health conscious, does a lot of juicy, eats a lot of Vegetor. And the county also has the highest rate. Marin County has the highest rate of breast cancer. In the United States and also high rates of cancer general.
And I started watching my friends dive cancer And then my best friend who I was working with and helping her produce conscious river rafting trips, the river guide is She's producing river rafting trips with yoga, vegetarian, vegan food, and She took her own life. Then another prominent yoga teacher part of our community jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. So we were seeing a combination of people starting to die of cancer and starting to have mental health issues that led to extreme depression to the point where they were committing suicide. And I started thinking, you know, I wonder if what we're needing has something to do with this, but are we so deep in today or not?
Except out. Yeah. They are healthy. Yeah. The best diet. You know, we were doing the best plan. How could this possibly have anything to do? With our off the church rate of cancer, the fact that my friends are are killing themselves or just mysteriously dying And, in 2018, I was in a car accident. And, I had a severe spinal cord injury. And almost overnight, my life changed I suddenly had trouble walking. I was in intractable. Intractable pain is when Your pain is just all the time. 24. Mhmm. I was you know, in a fetal position at night trying to sleep with, like, these electro shocks of pain going from my feet. To my head, like, my entire body, it felt like an electric shock.
That was horrible feeling. It's really hard to describe. How awful this is. It was some sort of nerve pain from a damage to my bun cord. And, I went through I'm not allowed to talk about this too much because I was involved in an injury case. As a passenger in this car accident that entered me. But I can say that it was a long journey to figure out what was wrong. And I went to dozens of doctors. Yeah. I called to dozens of doctors. I had finally finally fine. And I had a chiropractor. The first treatment I had was a chiropractor in Los Angeles. Oh, very good chiropractor.
And he said to me, I think he should take omega-three fatty acids, and then my flat plate. I said, well, that'll help you with your pain. But how could a omega 3 fatty acid's dish oil help me with this pain? I don't get it. And every time I went I went into his office literally every single day for his treatments over a period of his, I don't know, 8 weeks. Limping there, you know, in extreme heat, and he did all kinds of work, cranial sacral, different things. As he was working on me, I would ask him questions. Just like you, I was curious. I wanted to heal myself, and I would pick his brain.
And, he taught me about inflammation. I didn't know until that point, that inflammation and pain are the same thing. That they're interrelated.
[00:17:17] Unknown:
Right? Always a chiropractor, isn't it? Chiropractors are smart?
[00:17:21] Unknown:
Yeah. They they have a different approach to the doctors. Right? And he was also something called paleo. He and his wife looked fantastic, by the way. They were like, really buff and tan and super sad and really young looking for their age and super vital. And then for snacks in the office, he had little dishes of nuts. And he's he outside of all these supplements, which included things like celtic sea salt and different minerals and fish oils and things. And so he honestly, you know, he didn't, and come out and say, you really stopped being vegetarian. But he teach me that if, he taught me about the relationship between cortisol and pain and cortisol and our ability to sleep. And at that time, I couldn't sleep at all. I have so had such bad insomnia that I'm just lie I embed it, like, You know, it's staring at the ceiling, praying to sleep.
Part of it was pain, but there was something else going on. And he said, well, what do you wait first thing in the morning? Uh-uh. Oh, you know, I had a big smoothie with fruit and greens in it. I eat so healthy, you know, and then I have, like, starting to eat eggs again. I have an omelet with Pewa in it, you know, side of south. You know? Oh, I love to. I mean, you know, eat my balls, you know, and then bean soup. So my it's so healthy. That was living in LA and going to all the vegan restaurants and juice bars and our local health could store with a 100% being with this big raw section with all the and it is I'm wasting all this money.
All this stuff. Plus taking supplements, like, every morning, you know, handfuls. Of the supplements with the smoothie, lots of supplements. And, you know, the really healthy ones, like, sterilina and the vitamineral green with all the greens that, and You know, meanwhile, my am I arthritis? It's just like, I, like, I sound like rice krispies, when I walk, you can hear my joint pop when I go up and down the stairs. And these doctors are seeing, you know, you're only, I think, oh, it's 56 at that time. Why is your arthritis so bad? You know, I was a fifty six year old woman. Really bad arthritis. And, I started going through this this journey of trying to figure out what was wrong.
And it was a really long time before I was able to see a real doctor and get an MRI. But when I finally got the MRI, And I finally got it examined by a doctor. And at this point, my whole red side of my body is going numb. I had lost you know, 80% of my sensation in my fingers because of peripheral neuropathy and nerve damage. I had horrible, horrible headaches, on one side of my head. And then along with all of this, I had IBS. Like, the worst IBS Really bad. And I know you've had this too and struggle with it. And, I started noticing that the IBS flares seem to be concurrent with the paint flares.
I did notice there was some sort of relationship between the pain, the arthritis, the IBS, but no doctor knew anything about Right? And I saw the neurologists, doctors, surgeons, you know, I I had my brain scanned. I had an all over body MRI. And when they did the MRI, the first thing There I was, you know, so sick. I barely do anything except to Kate into a cell phone. I couldn't even type anymore. My brain wasn't functioning. I was in horrible pain. I was exhausted because I couldn't sleep. And there were times when I just saw it. If I have to keep going this like this, I might as well die, There's no point in continuing to live in this much paint.
It was horrible. And nobody understood. Nobody empathized My clients were firing me because I couldn't even stand on a trade show. Yeah. I had to wear orthopedic shoes, so I did look cute. I I looked terrible. My hair was breaking off and falling out. I had bads and dark circles, under my eyes, you know, like, three layers. Like, I had the bad and the dark circle and then another bad and then another one. And, you know, nobody wants to hire you when you look like that. You're that tired. I went to a corporate Party in Beverly Hills, really fancy party where I was inviting.
There were even celebrities at this party, and I was so exhausted. I fell asleep. During the party. And then I got fired. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So Well, rock bottom. Finally, when I rock bottom, oh, you every time you think you hit rock bottom, there's another Bebble, you can go even worse. And that's what this journey has taught me. You know, every time I thought I hit rock bottom, no. There was another There. So when I finally got the results to the MRI on a CD ROM, and I looked at them. And I started learning how to read an MRI and how to understand all these terms that were going on inside my spine.
But the first thing that was really weird about the report from the neurologist is that my my pelvis was full of tumors. So I had, you know, what was going on in my body, was it just the spinal stuff? I actually and you could see all the inflammation in my intestines. Very inflamed. And my uterus had, like, literally, like, 100100100 of Mass is in. And I also had sis sell over my service. And the doctor, when he looked at this, he said, oh, well, that's normal. You know, these are benign tumors and and lots of women in your age have one that has As you go further into menopause, they'll shrink and disappear. They're just from excess as stroke, Lisa.
And I just saw, you know Okay. B s. And I want that inside my body. There's something going on here. I don't think that's normal. And one of the tumors was so big. It was blocking. You can see it right there in the MRI. It was blocking my my, bladder. So my bladder was, like, at 1 third capacity. Because of this big tumor. And, doctors are just blowing all this soft. It's normal. And then I read what was going on in my spine, and I had fluorosis, stenosis, degenerative disc disease, myelopathy, and, in addition to all of this, something called spondylitis, something called severe, right sided, Sasted arthropathy.
But the so it started, you know, looking up these words on the internet to figure out what all this stuff was. Myelopathy. What do I see? What causes myelopathy? Vitamin D 12 Not sure. Deficiency.
[00:25:34] Unknown:
Right? Oh, there you go. So
[00:25:37] Unknown:
so I I see this article written by the famous vegetarian being a doctor what's his name? He's the guy. He's super skinny. They're always making fun of in the carnivore community. He looks terrible, but he's the vegan doctor. Anyway, he has this article called that's Terrence, how the disease named after that. It's called the vegetarian myelopathy. And so even the top vegan doctor in the world admits The veganism causes the spinal cord degeneration. Myelopastae is this extreme degeneration of the spinal cord that's caused by, malnutrition.
Not in all of vitamin D12. And as I went deeper and deeper into all of this, I started noticing that there was some sort of of a link between all of these problems going on in my body and possibly my vegan diet. But at that time, I still hadn't woken up. Right? So a joint Yeah. Twitter to follow the keto diet community. And the reason I did that is One of my friends, who was supporting me in this journey was a disabled woman. It was in wheelchair. Who had lost to the ability to walk. And she's pretty savvy about all the things Dude, she said, you know what? Here's the heat. A lot of people are using keto diet to deal with pain and and, disability.
He might look good to Keto. And so I didn't know what Keto was. Right? I had no idea, and I it's a lot to learn. When you go from a plant based diet into this other world, You don't know any of this. I knew nothing about carbs. I knew nothing about which foods are low carb, which ones are high carb. Had no clue. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm starting to read the card counts. On foods. And what a wake up call, you know, when you realize that the stuff that I was eating was all carbohydrate, very hard in carbohydrate, all the plant based food. But something like, smoked salmon, Was only 100 calories.
And look at the nutrition on here. I was with blowing away. Wow. We can lift stuff in this three and a half ounce piece of salmon. We're only like a 100 calories. Yeah. And Helen and Parks, 0. And I started learning from following people on Twitter. I did that anonymously as recovering vegan for a reason because my family was all vegetarian and vegan. My relatives, my best ones, the guys that was, you know, had been dating in the last 18 years. I mean, my whole world was all vegan all time. And not only could I not learn about this from them, but if they saw I was doing this, I would probably get ostracized. Or hurt their feelings.
I didn't wanna insult anybody Yeah. Hurt their feelings. So I found this Stocks photo of a woman hiding on a bunch of kale, and I posted that as my picture, and we can't recall my video. And, that was 3 years ago. And I bet you like this overnight influencer. It was really weird, within those 1st couple of months. I was reaching 3,000,000 people a month. What's? And people who are following me at, like, the rate of a 100 a day. And the vegans started attacking me, giving me death threats. They were very threatened by what I was doing. You know, and, it is intimidating.
And, the Carnivor and the Keto community were very, very, very supportive, and they were messaging me behind the scenes and saying, block the vegans. Don't listen to them. You need to, you know, you just need to focus on your own healing. And, so the people who were giving me advice were now becoming very influential. Over the last couple of years, you know, we've seen this rise of awareness. Now, Sally Norton who just wrote This best selling book about, oxalate. She was messaging me behind the scenes. Michelle her and who's the red a registered dietitian who wrote the dietitian's dilemma. She messaged me behind the scenes and gave me her book.
At Doctor Paul Saladino, he gave me his book to read as a PDF. And, Yeah. Now I'm getting advice. Oh, you know, just so many people. It's been wonderful. Kim Menick. Eat me, be happy, woman, a big chest, and she's really sexy and hot. She's given me a lot of advice. And all these people said, don't listen to what anybody else says. You know, your health is more important. And, but I still was not able to really eat meat in any, significant quantity. And I started of following different influencers like YouTube. And what is this guy named?
And there's a woman called Reg vegan. She was also anonymous. A lot of the word anonymous at that time, vegan. Big and deterioration. And I started following these different channels, and I binge watched. Oh, and doctor it is Sean Baker. And doctor Saladino, and, there was Something a lot of these people hadn't come and they were X vegans or X raw vegans or had been heavily plant based and went to the absolute office of eating nothing but me in order to heal. And, I started binge watching on YouTube while I was sick going to my doctor. By now, I had found a doctor who, was recommended to me by the disabled woman, and I was traveling, very I'd moved to live closer to him. I traveled long distances to see him three times a week and get spinal cord decompression therapy and physical therapy.
And I was getting to a point where I could walk longer distances and and do more with my body. My pain was starting to be reduced, but at the same time, I was starting keto diet. And my doctors and physical therapist didn't even know anything about Tito. And but they could see that I was improving. My body was changing. That was losing weight. I was getting more muscular physically fit without much physical exercise just by lowering the carbs. And, but it still wasn't eating that much meat. I'm still eating a lot of plants. And it wasn't until I mean, could fast forward after a couple of years trying to eat more meat, Nikkito, following the community.
I was slipping due to social pressure, I was eating too many plants and too many carbs. And Yeah. By December of 20 22. My pain was coming back I was really fat and bloated. I weighed a 148. You know, I think if you you do keto wrong, and you eat too many carbs with it. It's even worse because you'll you're you're getting all the fat, from the high fat Diet plus the carbs and the sugars. It's a disaster. At least it was eating meat. But I wasn't looking so great. Wasn't feeling very good. I was also drinking alcohol. You know, want, and lots of coffee and taking tubs of supplements. And my IBS was getting worse.
And worse. And by Christmas of this year, the IBS was so bad. Was starting to worry that I should get a colonoscopy? I started Yep. Worrying maybe I had colon cancer. I mean, it was it was severe. I don't wanna get into the details. It's pretty awful. And and those daily flares were accompanied by really bad pain flares and joint inflammation. One of those flares during the last couple of years sent me. Actually, a couple. Several, flares were so bad that and suddenly couldn't walk. And, one of them sent me into the 2 or 3 H sent me into the emergency room, one of the flares that sent me into the emergency room, inject me with steroids and pain killers, Wheel me in a wheelchair.
And the doctor said your spinal cord injury is so bad that if you slip and fall one more time, paralyzed from the waist down. And, did you, you know, she said you really need back surgery? And I was told by a neurologist, 2 different surgeries, one in my neck, one in my lower bowel. And, I was really afraid of this. And, ideas was getting worse and worse. And then January 1 this year, there was this cardboard challenge. Right? You know, we're on Carnivar Hunt. Go Carnivar with us. Yeah. And people have been telling me for the last couple of years shipped out full car war, and there was no way I could do it. And it was just just so gross.
So thought of going from being, total vegetarian for so many years only eating meat for a couple of years and and then turning around eating. Nothing but meat was just almost impossible to to grasp. But at that point, I was so desperate for answers, and I saw that people with ankylosing spondylitis and arthritis and IBD, IBS, were having full remission of their autoimmune disease. And this isn't just anecdotal, Michaela Peterson. I started watching her videos on YouTube and her TED Talk. And she said that she had a full remission of her autoimmune arthritis a lot of people were messaging me, behind the scenes. He said they, full remission.
Of IBD, IBS, cholesterol's, auto immune the rare autoimmune diseases, in closing, it's modelized in particular, and so I did it. And I wrote on Twitter. I just, you know, I said, oh, I'm gonna do a carnivore diet. And it went viral on. When the year's resolutions, I didn't expect it, 275,000 people reach that tweet, reached 270,000 people, and I saw, oh, wow. I can't quit now. I have to do this. And I was really thinking of not doing it. Yeah. And after the First day, eating all corn. I get really sick. You know, you get really bad diarrhea. Often.
And after the 3rd or 4th day, although my brain started to feel really good, certain aspects felt and then they, however, diarrhea was severe. It got to the point where it was, like, ten times in one day. The detox. You get foamy urine and cloudy urine, and I started looking these things up and thinking oh, no, I better go to the emergency room. This is really bad. You know, maybe I started getting pain in my kidney. And different car wars behind the scenes were messaging me, including the woman named the low ox Kuria law. Jeannie?
Yeah. She's great. And she started giving me advice on Instagram. And she told me about citrates, museum, citrate, calcium, citrate, And then people started teaching me that you've gotta dump all the the the supplements. They're probably ear treating you and causing more harm than good with your IDS. Get rid of those supplements, but only take minerals. And so I started taking the minerals, the electrolytes and thinking more salt, and they taught me Bit by bit. I've learned about this. I felt like there was no vibe to being carnivore out there. I had to sort of stumble through it.
With the feedback. And, it was a very difficult process. I was really sick I'm just letting you know it was pretty sick for the 1st 3 weeks. And there was there were other carnivores that were doing great and weren't having these difficulties. But they hadn't been vegan before. They hadn't had a diet of nothing but green smoothies for 18 years. It's super and tons, supplements, and found a couple other Yeah. Women like Jeannie, the Loebox Grandma, a couple of other women on Twitter and Instagram were having similar levels of difficulty because of oxalate And right around that time, Sally Norton, the nutritionist from Cornell, her book toxic super foods came out.
And everybody said, you'd buy, read, I would sit superfoods. So I wrote super publisher, said I'm an employed source. Send it. Can you send me a copy of the book? They sent me the book. And I read it immediately, as I was binge reading her book, the light bulb went on. Oh my god. It's everything she's talking about. This is exactly what's going on in my body. Every health problem I've had over the last 18 years, and even prior to that as a vegetarian, was leaked to an overload of these plant toxins, the oxalates, which literally look like a crystal under a microscope, and they're sharp.
And I could feel them exiting my body when I had these layers on ED flares, it was like, rocks. We're scraping my guts. You know, I could feel it. Almost like sand. And some people, when the oxalates are exiting their urine or their feces, they even see it. It's like sand or crystals. Many of the people who were detoxing oxalate said it would come out of their skin. And I saw that. I saw little crystals that you pick out of a little bits of your skin, sort of embedded in there. I was getting, you know, these fatty things on my skin, on my face that were from the detox and, you know, the foamy urine, the really painful scraving your gut's feeling.
After 3 weeks though, when I added the citrates and the minerals, and removed all the plants from my diet and listened to all the feedback I was I suddenly had a date with no YBS. You know? And then another. And then another. And I'm a fan IBS freak. I was sued by the end of the month. I and I was taking pictures of myself. And I could watch my face just, like, reverse aging. It's unbelievable. I still I look in the mirror some days, and I'm like, who's that person? You know? I'd say, like, I'm looking at myself at 40 instead of 60. And it's only been 2 months, not even 2 months yet today.
So, after my 1st couple of weeks of coronavirus, I was able to feel sensation in my feet, and it was a weirdest feeling. You know, if your feet have been numb for years, They feel warm and you feel the sheets under your feet in bed and you feel the ground on your feet when you're walking. Woah. I can feel things in my feet. I could type faster. My hands were moving faster. The floaters in my eyes, which had been so bad. It's like looking at ranches, blooming. You know, it's best if you look at a a white wall or feel the snow or the bright select. The floaters were starting to fade My night vision was improving.
My daytime vision, my brain clarity, unreal, and the sleep. Suddenly you're going to sleep at 9 o'clock at night. Wanna go to sleep when it's dark, and you wanna wake up. It's exactly when the sun rises. And whether I got 6 hours or 8 hours doesn't matter, I feel refreshed like, bowling way. Jumping out of bed. I was able to touch my toes for the first time of 4 years. Banned over, new yoga postures. Like, so many things just cleared up. Instantaneous. Like, I I can't they're d's. Like, today, I feel so good. I would have to see on that baseline. This is how the human body is supposed to be. I don't have a headache.
I'm not having ringing in my ears. I don't have any pimples. My teeth are hurting. I don't have any gum. Pain or gum bleeding. My fingernails are growing in strong and not chipping. They have which is a sign of health. My hair has not looked as good decades. It's softer. You know, it's weird. The hair responded almost immediately. My eyebrows are and eyelashes are growing and thicker. I don't have dark circles under my eyes. Fewer lines in my face. You know, to go head to toe. Everything's different. Toenail had fallen off. What what am I feet? It grew back. It had completely fallen off.
Toenell Group 2 months. Oh, just All kinds of miracles.
[00:45:29] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, you're finally nourished now. So after decades of malnourishment and hurting yourself, Now finally, you are getting the right stuff that actually that's what your body is made of of this stuff. So now finally, you can heal yourself. I'm so glad for you that you that you found this. And I'm so disappointed that it took so long and that that this insidious scrap of, you know, this healthy diet and healthy lifestyle, because I get it. You know, you're not eating processed food anymore. You're in this healthy hip culture of, you know, food stores that are all vegan and everything is vegan, vegan, smoothies, and, you know, crispy looking vegan people.
And I get it. It's just very attractive, and it's a very it seems healthy, but The the message to do that is so strong, and so wrong as you found out. It's it's it's very difficult for people especially, like, young people to resist that message because, you know, it seems correct. Right? Plans are good for us. And especially if they're raw. Is this Why wouldn't they be? Right? So everything says, influencers. Yeah. There you go. But you found the right path All around us. Very glad for you.
[00:46:50] Unknown:
I am too, but I'll tell you it's been difficult. My family, my friends, they think I'm kind of a freak. They're, Yeah. Yeah. And they think it's disgusting. Of course, I could have done this in secrecy. And continue to be secret and not show my face, but I felt there was this point of the last straw. And the last straw was when somebody very, very close to me told me it was bad, a vegan vegetarian for a very long time. She told me she was diagnosed with MS. And I was angry. You know? This is hurting people. This is hurting people I love. It hurt me. And I've had so many of my friends die.
4 friends, all vegetarian, mostly vegetarian, or vegan, or plant based, all died this summer of cancer. I have several girlfriends who are vegetarian or vegan who currently have stage 4 breast cancer or cancer. And,
[00:48:04] Unknown:
Yeah. It's terrible. I
[00:48:07] Unknown:
it's terrible. And they're Yesterday, I was visiting one of these friends. I brought them a a vegan soup. That I made, and I tried to make it as low and oxalate as possible. And I even ate the suit. In solidarity, even though it was free. It was gonna make me sick. You know? I wanted to make her Ross. I wanted to nurture her, but, you know, or give her raw milk a beer or here have some butter with real honey. Yeah. But he was so angry. And she she said, Well, you know, you've gotta stop preaching to people. And I know this is working for you, and you look fantastic. And I can see the changes that you know, you look amazing. It allows 2 months. It's like, what has happened to your body plus the weight loss.
And but she says that everybody's body is different, and this is just working for you. Must be your blood type or your genetics or Whatever. It doesn't even work for other people, and everybody's all their own past. And then she sat there in front of a juicer. And she took bunches of celery. Without I tried to tell her about Keitan and said, you can't watch everything. You've gotta wash it really well because there's this new insecticide they're using that's made out of the skins and bugs. And if this isn't a lie, you can just look it up. Cutaneous is being used as an as an organic insecticide, but it can have a very bad allergic reaction in people and it's good for you to thoroughly wash everything, raw, or cook, and peel as much as possible.
She took these 2 whole bunches of celery, including the roots, didn't wash them, threw them in the juicer. She took lemons. It's a Tuber. You bought a skin, then we gotta take the seeds out because the seeds are toxic. It's no. You can't put the whole skin of fruits of it. Or the apples with the seeds and the skins, the lannums with the seeds and the skins, the cucumber wouldn't seed. It wouldn't peel it, but the whole cucumber in there. And she made this juice. You know, this this oxalate toxic poison juice. This much of it.
To prepare for her cancer surgery. I'm just wanting to cry, man. So this could be for this advice. What? Think to these people. This is August. This is hurting people. And with a whole, like, full of supplements, you know, the supplements some might help, but some of the life just add to the oxalate overload. People need to learn about oxalates. They need to learn about Pat talks and They need to learn about lectins and bites. And and and that the b 12 is not the only nutrient in animals that we need are 20 nutrients. Essentially human health that are only found in the animal Kingdom.
And people don't know the difference between an omega 3, fatty acid or an omega 6. And, you know, of course, they don't know all this stuff. It's taken me 4 years to learn it all.
[00:51:26] Unknown:
Previously, painfully. Yes. But also, you wanted to learn it.
[00:51:30] Unknown:
Yes. And I wanted to learn it because I was motivated because I was in so much pain.
[00:51:37] Unknown:
Yeah. And and even, people that are in extreme amounts of pain, like your friend that has cancer, you know, you would think that that level of pain would incentivize you to look further, but I think, the the diet is so entrenched with your identity, and you just take that messaging for granted for so many years, that you just don't wanna believe anything better or different because, you know, if you would have to admit that that would be wrong, that would just be devastating to who you are and what you believe in. Even if that means that you might die because of your beliefs, which is which is terrible, but, you know, you you just can't get people to to look into this stuff. That's in in general with health. You just can't get people to change. All you can do is just be the best that you can be you know, show that you can heal yourself, and then people can say, wow. You look great. What what are you doing? How do you do that? Maybe you can tell me. You know, that that's all you can do, unfortunately, but you're doing it. So by example.
[00:52:47] Unknown:
Yes. Right. And logs what I'm trying to do. Yeah. I've been trying to certainly Yeah. Encourage people on letting them know, but I'm realizing that You know, if I cook meat around them, if I eat meat around them, if I talk about it, I post about I'm in danger of losing all my friends and even alienating my own family. So
[00:53:14] Unknown:
The other day It is what it is. You know?
[00:53:18] Unknown:
I ran into a very famous Man, who do I've done a lot of promotion for? Who's been a long term vegan and Rob vegan? And his age is exactly the same as mine's birthday is 1 month from me. He's always looked quite a bit older than he is, and he's always had terrible health problems. And he's always considered himself a healer. In spite of this, very savvy about supplements and everything. I was out of concert, and I walked in the door, and he saw me. And he hugged me. And he said, oh, if we're wanting to talk to you. And I thought, oh, no.
And he said, I've been reading your posts on social media. I'm like, oh, no. Mhmm. You know, brace, hang for the vegan backlash. And he said, I was really, really sick. I've had COVID 5 times. Chronic cough. I got to the point, and I also have cancer. And he said, I got to the point where I couldn't hold down food anymore, and I was vomiting up everything that I ate. And I was so sick. I thought I was dying, and I didn't know what to do anymore. And he said, I decided to eat meat. But he smiled, and he says, oh, I'm a carnivore. Lisa, thank you so much. It should save my life. Oh, eating meat all the time now. Most sleepy and Liam.
I'm shocked, man. I was so shocked. And when he, of all people, approached me, this is very influential, very you know, a person who's got a huge following vegans. And, of course, he says, I don't talk about this publicly. And, of course, he doesn't because he would alienate fire falling, but he does look dramatically different. He's gained quite a bit of weight. You know, he's looking really solid. I would say he's probably still eating too cars. But but he's in that process of evolving. I was in where you first starting meet, gradually learn that you have to get rid of the plans.
And, That was when I realized it was on the right path.
[00:55:45] Unknown:
Alright. So we are, an hour in already. It's quite a story that you have there. I'm really sorry that you suffered that much. I'm very happy that you're not anymore and that you are now on the way to really gaining your health back and building on that because, you know, yes, this is great, but trust me, it will probably get better and better and better and better. So, you know, can you imagine feeling better than you do now? Of course, it will. Yeah. And, you know, I think you're doing a great job. Like you said, you already helped your friend there, which is great. And I think, if you keep putting this stuff out there. You'll help lots and lots more people as well, even though you might be attacked by people that don't like this message or you know, you might alienate your friends and family.
You know what? It is what it is. If people don't wanna hear this message, that's totally fine. Keep doing what you're doing. Where
[00:56:49] Unknown:
They do wanna hear it. I mean, I'm followed by 12,200 people on Twitter. 57,000 followers now between all of my social media pages. They're reaching over 4,000,000 people a month. An an agent contacted me yesterday. She'd found me on Facebook and real agent, the same agent for one of the people who just wrote a best selling book about this topic She wants to talk to me about doing a book, and it originally started out as a journalist. I wanted to write books. So I know that this is all happening for a reason, but I'd suffered a lot. I lost a lot of my life.
Yeah. A lot of my lies. And Yeah. I now see, like, I have, you know, a new life ahead of me at this age. You know, maybe another 20 years for 30 years or maybe even more where I can actually walk and Yeah. My brain actually functions, like, sit and drive a car without pain. I mean, I'm hoping. That I I regain more.
[00:58:01] Unknown:
Yeah. And I'll bet, I'll bet that you do. So where can people find you exactly on the social media. What's your your handle there?
[00:58:11] Unknown:
Recovering vegan. Well, it's actually vegan recovering. At read b and recovering on Twitter. And there, you'll see a link to my link tree that links to all of my other pages, blog, on on immediate again under my name, and I'm on Twitter, us getting Instagram as they'll recover it again. And on Instagram. Wait. Instagram, Facebook on recovery in vegan. And I'll have a blog at the scene at recovering vegan
[00:58:45] Unknown:
and see Excellent. And I will link to all of that stuff, Oh, yeah. And I will link to all of those things in the show notes so that people can find that easily and start following you as well and help to spread the words. A balance is very important topic. Thank you very much for talking with me today. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for spending time with me to learn about health and wellness. For the full transcript and more content, visit improving varied.com. That is improvingbadoubry.com. And here is a disclaimer. The information in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor patient relationship is formed.
The use of information in this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for
