We discuss how:
– Rebecca was first diagnosed with Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism and then with MS
– She started having vision problems and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis
– She searched the internet and found a lot could be done with diet
– She found a whole body of study with different approaches, and ended up with a whole food plant-based diet
– Her 3 year follow up scans show that she has zero progression in lesions
– Rebecca has changed her whole lifestyle with diet, exercise and sleep
– She helps people on forums giving support and information and has presented her story at conferences
– She now doesn’t eat anything processed and prepares food from scratch for her children too
Clint: Today I’ve got a guest who’s going to talk about something a little different that we don’t cover too much on the show but it is a condition that’s very debilitating and very serious. But we have a positive edge to it and we’re going to be talking today about multiple sclerosis and how well it can be limited in its progress with right nutrition and the right approach. So I’d like to welcome Rebecca Stoner onto this episode. Welcome Rebecca!
Rebecca: Thank you.
Clint: Yeah. We connected online on Facebook and turns out that we’re both Aussies and that we’re both going to be attending a conference early in February which we can talk about a little bit later. A very exciting conference and you told me about your situation and told me how well you are doing with your awful diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. And so I thought my audience could really do with a success story outside of the realm of psoriatic arthritis or lupus or rheumatoid and these things that we hear a lot about. Because we don’t want to pigeon hole a wonderful or ultimate approach of a plant based diet to just one disease. We want to be able to look at other conditions and see how powerful this is and how it really is a one size fits all and that you’re really just taking nature’s best offerings which are nutritious plants and putting them into a body that finds it easy to digest and assimilate nutritious plants.
Clint: And so that’s why I wanted to bring you on the show and talk about your fabulous lack of progress is the way to say it with multiple sclerosis. So let’s start by going back to when it happened. You’re obviously young to talk about how this began and what the diagnosis was and when and what that felt like.
Rebecca: So my first symptom that I had sort of put my finger on was vision problems. So my right eye, my vision was sort of blurred and because I wear glasses I thought I’d probably just need new eye glasses. But it went on for a long time and it was a different… It’s hard to explain. Anyway I went to an optometrist. They had no idea, I end up going to the emergency at the hospital because you know changes in one eye that’s quite dramatic can be quite serious. So I went to emergency. They had no idea. I ended up seeing…. actually I ended up googling changes in my vision. You shouldn’t be used to Dr.Google.
Rebecca: I did and I kind of self diagnosed but anyway I eventually saw a optical NEUROLOGIST so a woman that sort of knows about the brain-eye connection cause really eye is just an extension of the central nervous system and she send me up for. The MRI showed I had multiple lesions in my brain so multiple sclerosis really means multiple scars. So I think I had about six or seven spots in my brain and my optic nerve was damaged as well. So yes she diagnosed me, I think it’s multile sclerosis which was horrific. My experience with them so far before that was I had an aunt by marriage not quite large who I think she’s still alive. She’d maybe made a finger on one hand now she’s she’ll probably end up on life support once she when she had it there were really no options, there were no medication, they didn’t know about diet changes and she was depressed badly and also affected her mood. She was always a very angry person. So I just thought I was going to go down that road of those and be in a wheelchair. So it was really really scary. Yeah I think with those sorts of diagnosis you go to lots of a process of grieving, denial and all those really typical sort of feelings.
Rebecca: So it was really hard but I have a science background. I studied science I went in science for about 18 years so I got on the Internet again and just asking basically what can I do you know diet, nutrition that kind of stuff. So yeah I quickly found that there was a lot that I could actually do to help myself.
Clint: When you get a diagnosis of MS. I think that it’s almost if you want to say the stereotypical most unwanted diagnosis other than cancer.
Rebecca: Yeah yeah but I thought to be diagnosed with anything like a degenerative neurological condition has to be the worst. Because you know you see people around I see people around and I know just by looking at them that they’ve gone missing. I think that’s to me unfortunate seeing so many people with so much better with themselves. I choose not to.
Clint: Well let’s talk about that in a moment. Before we do, you mentioned medication. So what medications get presented as the correct approach or the standard approach upon diagnosis.
Rebecca: There are few,they don’t have really good… So basically with MS they’re relapses so it’s called relapse remitting in it. There are other forms of MS but that’s the most typical one. Where you have a relapse, it slowly goes away, the symptoms go away and then you have another relapse and it gets to the point where you don’t heal anymore and you keep getting worse and worse and dispiritingly.
Rebecca: So they reduce relapse rates.So the best one on the market might reduce relapse rates by 50-60%. There are injectables that you can have, so need to inject yourself every day or every few days which sounded poeple don’t want ot do that. There are oral medications and then there’s also a transfusion almost like a chemotherapy. We knock out our auto immunity basically and then you sort of rebuild them.They’re quite successful but also have their downsides. So there’s a lot out there. There’s a lot more tha there used to bee which is great.
Rebecca: So I had a MS nurse who come and visit me after my diagnosis. And you must know that you’ve got some pretty serious, (inaudible) to come and talk to you at home. And she went through all of them and it was just so confusing so much to think about. But she did sort of mention to me that you know maybe low saturated fat diet has shown to help some people but that’s basically what she said says she didnt go into a lot of details but she went to a lot of details about medications.
Rebecca: So for me like reducing relapse by 50% wasn’t really enough. So that means instead of having one every year, or every six months, I’m gonna have them just a little bit less but I’m still going to have them and I didn’t know why. I’m a kind of never want to happen another one thing. So I mean I did start medicating. The first medication I tried, I lost half my hair just spell out in clamps.
Clint: What was it called or what range of.. what sort of medication was it?
Rebecca: Yeah, it was an oral..the thing about them as well is that they give me those medications, they don’t actually know how they work. They do something to help but they don’t actually know what’s it’s actually doing to anybody so that’s scary.
Clint: Well my my rheumatologist told me something similar when he said to add antibiotics to my methotrexate and so I was adding antibiotics to Methotrexate but he said we don’t really understand on the medical publications don’t fully have a grasp on why the antibiotics can in some people help to reduce symptoms. So you know, years and years later I think I have a very good understanding why that occurs but certainly not in the published literature. And so I think it’s probably similar. You know when you’ve got one of these very complicated conditions you know, people who are doing the research on drugs to match with the reduction of the symptoms are not looking at all as to where it’s coming from. They’re looking at how to suppress those symptoms with this particular drug. And so it’s you know the focus is completely elsewhere.
Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting you say that there is..I can’t remember which one it is but there is an immense drug when you could incorporate it with a low dose of antibody, it’s more effective. And again you don’t know why, so..
Clint: Well it comes back to the microbiome doesn’t it? It comes back to good bacteria and bad bacteria and if you’ve completely got a dramatic overgrowth of bad bacteria and then you drop atomic bombs which kill bacteria, which antibiotics into your digestive tract then the majority or the bulk of death occurs from bad bacteria. And so you’re probably going to feel better but then you’re left with a wasteland with no bacteria at all if you keep it up for long enough and then that’s disastrous for your health as well. So yeah there’s definitely the implication of antibiotics with auto immune conditions. Yeah but I never see a good argument for antibiotics for autoimmune conditions and I know there’s popularity around some protocols out there which are sort of dying in popularity but definitely they exist and yeah I have my views on that which are pretty strong.
Clint: Okay. So tell us now back to your story. So you tried some medications for a while. You said you’ve got a science background just like myself. So did you when you began looking online come across some really popular dietary options that you thought you might give a go.
Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. The first one I found, I think I was looking on YouTube you know ,looking at TED Talks and things like that. And there’s a TED talk on YouTube by Terry Walz. So she’s a doctor in the US who has MS. She ended up in a wheelchair, really bad state. And she changed her diet with whole lot of supplementation and a paleo approach. So she looked into the science. Obviously she looked up on stuff for dairy and gluten and those kind of stuff and she took a paleo approach and did very very well.
Rebecca: So her story is really compelling. She advocates for I think nine cups of highly coloured fruits and vegetables a day. So lots of leafy greens up to four cups, lots of berries and trying to avoid fruits and vegetables without color. So if you eat potato, you eat sweet potato rather than white potato.
Rebecca: So that was really interesting. So I started on that straight away because her story was so compelling. She went from being in a wheelchair to walking unaided and running bikes and exercising. So I thought that’s what I’m going to do. And I did, but the thing that the woman said music hear about saturated fat having intonation in itis or you know he managed fat in the meat Nancy Shinkichi. She talks about baking you fry baking you put your kale and you’re just a little bit fat anyway. I looked a little bit further, and then there was somebody called Royce Swank. He study in her 50’s, he looked to be kind of 44 people with MS, report half of them a low fat diet and half of them on a I guess a standard average diet. Those on a low fat diet did really really well. I think there had been population studies where they show that people in war times MS was highly (inaudible). They were thin, they had any meat or dairy like they were eating cabbages out the garden. There was no MS, and it’s also geographical. So with MS It’s further you go away from the plate than the equator, the higher the rates of MS. So you know in South Australia you know it’s is nice and sunny Mediterranean climate but, we don’t get as much sun. So there’s some geographical. Maybe vitamin D, maybe actually just sun exposure, I don’t think I have actually decided on what it is.
Rebecca: So (inaudible) looked at all those sort of studies. And his diet was did incorporate some lean meats, and some egg whites, and fish, lots of vegetables, but basically keeping it to under 20 grams of saturated fat a day. Which to me is actually high 20 grams, you can do that easily without eating fried foods, or without eating fatty meat, and to eat just a little bit more. So this is the interesting thing about his study. If you ate just a few grams over the 20 grams saturated fats a day, you did very poorly. So I think (inaudible) his study, 80% of those people had actually died. And I think something like maybe 80% of those were from MS. So they progressed to the point where they were disabled, and they died with MS. And that’s just a few grams that extra, so that was really interesting. From there, the doctor in Australia called George (inaudible), he looked at Swain’s work and he developed that overcoming MS protocol. So I went on to that, that was the next thing. You know this is my journey of giggling, reading heaps of books, lots of information.
Rebecca: So it is a bit of a journey, like you’ve got to start somewhere. And I think my start with the palaeo part was actually really good start, because I learnt the length of that nutrient density, so I still incorporate that in my diet today. But George’s work, so he has MS himself, his mother had MS to the point where she’s quite disabled, She actually ended up taking he own life because her MS was so bad and she didn’t want to be dependent on other people. So George looked into all the factors that affect MS. He looked into diet his, his program also incorporates vitamin D and sunshine, meditation, stress reduction, exercise is really important, and sleep, another important factor for people. So I went on to that, and George’s program does incorporate fish as well, I was okay in egg whites and yeah I was doing all kind and that. But then, you know doing some more research and I learned about just inflammation basically in all animal products, and how they lead to inflamtion and so and you (inaudible) fish. So now I’m more of, it basically a whole food plant based diet, which all of them have that element. But I think the very low saturated fat, whole foods, and nutrient dense plants form all of the studies that I’ve seen I think is the best way forward for me.
Clint: Yeah that’s fascinating. Well we’re about to hear about your results in more detail and certainly from a results point of view which are the ultimate indicator of success. I mean nothing beats results, and I’ve always said this, I used to be working at a high tech start up company when I was coming out of university. And I was in the production line, I was in charge of you know making sure that we met our numbers each week with these fiber optic products that were being shipped to Japan, and Canada, and the US. And sometimes we were doing things that we didn’t even understand. I mean what we were doing more imprinting patterns into optical fibers that were nanometres separate not millimeters not micro meters but nano nanometres. It’s so small, It’s indetectable and we were getting these results and it was unusual the way we were doing it. But I don’t care how it works, I’m arguing with the Phd students. I don’t care, my job is get them out of the door. We have the results, the customers happy, and that was our philosophy. And I stuck with it, and we were wildly successful and the components were successful and everything was great.
Clint: Nothing beats results, if you get the results, who cares how you got there. I’m familiar with everyone you mentioned in your evolution to your current platform. Now let me just make my own personal observations. Dr. Terry Wells, she’s got a very famous name in the autoimmune sphere. And a lot of people who don’t have MS or familiar with her work as well. She’s crossed over not just from MS but into sort of the whole autoimmune space, her books are wildly popular and all that sort of stuff and the image of her being in a wheelchair and then walking and speaking on stage is very powerful and compelling just like you said. Now my personal views on her work is that she succeeded in spite of the meat in her diet not because of but in spite of. If you eat that much wonderful rich colorful fruits every day and then in ordinate amount of vegetables, then that can counter act the negative impact of whatever else you have in your diet as well that it’s like she’s saying throw some kale on the bacon and what she’s virtually saying is let’s try and offset the bacon with the kale.
Rebecca: Use it as a condiment. If you want that flavor.
Clint: Right. So look these are just my personal views and I think that if she went a little bit further and just eliminated the rest of the problem and got rid of the meat too, then she’d have the ultimate plan. But I’m not sure if that’s consistent with what people want to hear. People don’t want to give up the bacon is unpopular. There is definitely a much greater return if she continues to have things in her offerings that people like to eat. Now I don’t know that science supports bacon for multiple sclerosis but I don’t think it ever will.
Clint: When you talk about Roy swank he’s one of my heroes if you like. Dr McDougall’s heroes. It’s funny how the hero Che and the way Dr MacDougal put it is that he stands on the shoulders of other heroes and Dr. Swank’s work is some of the most pioneering of all. The way that Dr McDougall talks about Dr Swank’s work is that it was mostly fruit and white rice. That’s the way he describes a lot of his dietary recommendations, just fruit and rice. You know when you think about fruit and rice there’s very little fat in that. Almost zero. And I wasn’t aware that he had some of those other allowances that you mentioned and maybe at times he did and at times he peeled back on those recommendations or maybe they were for people who just really were finding it hard to remain compliant and they were compromises perhaps.
Rebecca: I think you get better adherence to the program if people can have a little bit of those foods they’re familiar with and like Paleo approach or even George Lennox approach where he got recipe fish and egg white, with a little bit of cake occasionally. And he says a little bit of olive oil’s okay, you can have cake parties or you can go out to eat with your friends you can have a bit of salmon so I think it helps people stick to it.. It’s not too extreme to go from you know eating meat heavy diet (inaudible).
Clint: Yeah I completely agree. And so now to speak on George’s work I actually have open on my screen at the moment the cover of his book. I bought his Kindle book about a year ago and I enjoyed reading through that just so that I could familiarize myself with the approach that he gets so much success with and you’ve got the hard copy right behind you it seems.
Rebecca: Yes.
Clint: Fabulous you’ve got the more recent edition.
Rebecca: A new edition and it’s got neuro-science in it too which is really good.
Clint: Awesome!
Rebecca: And one thing i really like about George is that he still continues to do research. I’m on a few Facebook groups and forums and things and every time there’s a bit of new research that maybe counteracts something that he said in his book, he’ll just put it out there and say I think there’s something about salt recently. Salt is known to be very bad for people with auto-immunity but there was an even more recent study that showed actually they couldn’t find that. So he said well maybe if you want a little bit salt for food to taste nice so then have a little bit but then not too much.
Clint: Well that’s really interesting and supports my work because I encourage people to put some celtic sea salt or Himalayan sea salt on their meals because by doing so it helps them stay compliant to the meals and the meals will save their life. And so if we need a little salt, it’s the least of our worries compared to if we give up right then we’ve got an enormous worry. Yeah yeah. So that’s always been my view and it’s of course there’s a subtlety in that explanation that’s got to be carefully explained. And so that’s my view on this. So I’m enjoying where this is going. I love George’s work as well. I enjoyed reading his book and what was interesting to me was that he did say a little bit of olive oil is ok, a little bit of fish is okay and I must say it frustrated me because I’m a purist in terms of pure plant based and yet I also remained humble and thought you know what Clint, just because you work with autoimmune conditions that are inflammatory arthritis it does not mean that it’s the same for multiple sclerosis and maybe although you don’t believe it, just maybe you have to have a little bit of this animal fish or you have to have a little bit of olive oil and it’s never sat well with me and so please let’s talk about that. I know we’re all gone off personal opinions here but what are your thoughts on this?
Rebecca: Yes, George goes into detail in his book about the inflammation caused by oils and there’s good fats and bad fats you know and everybody agrees that cutting on oil is (inaudible) but it’s not.
Rebecca: When he talks about immune response so putting these oils into your body these fats that aren’t working well with the cells so he goes to the cellular level. To some of the science is pretty in-depth and he has little summaries which is really good if you don’t get from the science that somebody like me wants to read the details. And so he advocates for using flaxseed oil. So I’m sort of the more I read about oils and pure (inaudible) stuff I don’t (inaudible) but there are studies to show that just having flaxseed oil in your diet is so anti-inflammatory that it will kill (inauduble). So he advocates for 20 milis a day. Olive oil, is doesn’t cause inflammation but it doesn’t reduce inflammation so but it has higher saturated fat content. So when you start out on his program you do tend to count the grams of saturated fat and it can help in the beginning and you get sort of an idea of how much you’re consuming. He said some nuts and seeds are ok if they’re lower in saturated fat. I’m tending to go without any nuts or seeds at the moment because they can (inaudible) inflammatory. So yeah a little bit of olive oil to him is okay. For me, the more I read about oils the less…specially if (inaudible) so I can have an Olive’s that’s okay, if you’re having flaxseed in your smoothie that’s ok. But having them purified is so calorie dense and the saturated fat I mean you know you put olive oil in the fridge it goes hard because it has saturated fat content.
Rebecca: But my idea is you know I still want to go out with friends and family and have a meal. So I usually go and get(inaudible) a salad or something like that and just say no dressing. I usually bring my dressing on a little jar. But if I do happen to get a little bit of oil on something then I’m ok. At home you know I’m pretty strict with what I eat. Mean looking at science work. I can’t not be strict. Yeah. Yeah exactly. And I don’t know I was helping my first mate. I’m going to go. Mess. So I think I’m a bit strange. Yeah. Pretty extreme. You know why do you eat like that? Yeah. I’ve got to be straight. You know the rest my life.
Rebecca: And George in conjunction with somebody else also on another book called Recovery stories MS I think 12 different people who were basically you know wheelchair bound or very very severe MS and ended up being very very well. So that recovery story is everybody (inaudible).
Clint: That’s brilliant. Well let’s take a break away from all of the nitty gritty about the oils and stuff for a moment and let’s just talk about how well you have done since you’ve gone down this path. Tell me how do you monitor the progression of the condition. How often do you measure it and how your measurements have been over the past three years.
Rebecca: Yes. So I have MRIs quite regularly so for me in six months maybe more frequently in the beginning.
Rebecca: And so they are looking for basal changes in my lesions in my brain. So M.S. everybody doesn’t know M.S. is where my autoimmunity is, that’s my central nervous system. So it takes the sheet away from my neurons in my brain. So they just basically don’t work so well. So the areas that you can see on MRI appear in spots because they are litle scarred and demyelinating. So every MRI that I’ve had since then have been no change. I had one last week one week ago and I’m not meant to know the results because usually you have to wait a few weeks before it’s (inaudible). Well be patient and I knew I’d be talking to you. And I rang the clinic and I said look we really need to know. Has there been changes and apparently the report said.. stable disease or no activity. Which is great, I mean that’s what I’m aiming for. So between the three years since diagnosis I was probably doing the paleo approach for three months and then after that I went on (inaudible) I’ve had no progression. So MS is a funny thing that hits everybody differently. So for me I had to are obviously optic, some sensory issues at my fingertips and sometimes a bit of cognitive. Yes a little bit of that that goes with it as well. And everybody is different but some people don’t have any problems with functioning and thinking all that stuff whereas other people may not be able to walk.
Rebecca: So a friend of mine (inaudible). She went straight from having no MS to having I think secondary Cressi which means basically all the damage you get stays doesn’t go away. So yeah I haven’t had the impression, I think you know years before I had a couple of children which is pretty stress for anybody. And after that I think even before the first or my second child I started to get a few symptoms.
Rebecca: I remember going to the doctor and saying I dont feel right, I just feel weird all the time. I feel like I’m on a boat but not really balance issues just some weak stuff. He did a few blood tests and it turned out I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. So when you have auto immune condition you can get more than one. And then after the birth of my second child I’ve got more symptoms and I always put it down to just think sleep deprived and I did have a batch of weird eye issues the winter before, so people with MS because of the daylight and the Vitamin D deficiency problems, you usually tend to have a lot of symptoms in winter. so I think it was going on for quite some time though I’m not sure how many years I had it before I was actually diagnosed.
Clint: Some really interesting things there and overlap with what I’ve learnt from inflammatory arthritis. First of all yes with something like rheumatoid you quite often see particularly Hashimoto’s or hypothyroidism occur as a almost like a precursor and you know it’s always that order it’s always the Hashimoto’s and then rheumatoid. It’s always that order.
Clint: And so anyone who’s got the Hashimoto’s is on extremely heightened risk of getting a second auto immune. And I think rheumatoid and multiple sclerosis they’re like the Big Brother or thousand pound gorilla kind of auto immune and the Hashimoto’s is kind of like the junior and I don’t mean to take anything away from how bad that is on its own. But yeah like in terms of life destruction, there is a bigger gorilla than Hashimoto’s in the form of M.S. and rheumatoid.
Rebecca: I just keep thinking if I only knew what I know now. I mean I remember distinctly going to see an (inaudible) after I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. Is there anything I can do. Are there any dietary changes that I can make you know, anything and he just said No there’s nothing.
Clint: That’s nuts, that’s just stupid.
Rebecca: I know and if I knew it then I mean that was a thing BOUT 20O3 IF I knew I wouldn’t have been diagnosed with MS perhaps I wouldn’t have declined to that point.
Clint: My belief is that you probably would not have if you ate the way that you are now after finding out you had Hashimoto’s. I would be shocked if you then went on to develop multiple sclerosis or a different autoimmune condition and let’s face it, the condition that you and I got diagnosed with is only a predisposition from a genetic sort of weakness or predisposition or whatever.
Clint: Right so it’s kind of just the way that your body responded to the same abuse via the mouth and via the lifestyle and via particular medications you may have taken which I’d like to explore before we kind of wrap things up prior to getting the Hashimoto’s and prior to getting the MS. And so you know if you mess things up then the weakest point breaks down and in your case it was attacking the nerve endings. And in my case it was attacking the joints and so forth. So let’s explore a little bit. What do you think caused it. Now I can trace back most of my clients and say it was probably that or it is probably that and in some cases it’s just absolutely shocking diet for many many years without exercise and in the very few cases it’s just living a Western diet in general is just a way of encouraging a problem to occur. We don’t need a a very bad Western diet to have a potential problematic outcome. Do you think there was one thing like taking a lot of antibiotics or taking painkillers every month for your monthly cycle for two decades or was it maybe something else like, I don’t know. Was there something you think was a great contributor.
Rebecca: Yeah. So knowing what I know now, I read recently I’ve been studying to put it together and I’ve been thinking about what my life was like let’s say six years ago just before my son was born. No exercise. I didn’t go outside very much because I had the kind pale skin where I’ve had a couple of skin cancers removed already. So you know we don’t get outside and expose our skin. I mean you know I was trying to lose weight sometimes I was always a little bit overweight as well.
Rebecca: I’m just five or six kilos that my whole life is a little bit overweight. And so I wouls eat things like chicken salad thinking that was really healthy and try to cut down carbs because carbs are bad for you apparently. But I would eat lots of gluten so gluten is another thing I removed from my diet because of the potential for leaky guts and auto immunity, and molecular mimicry and so I don’t eat dairy for that reason but as before i think you had to have dairy for strong bones (inaudible) cheese and milk and stuff. So yeah it was pretty awful and antibiotics. When I had my son you know I was breastfeeding and hadn’t started taking antibiotics all the time when I actually had an him, i had a ceasarian. But I had a really bad chest infection and I had two forces of very strong antibiotics. I was coughing while I was staring. I was coughing. It was just horrible, was just a perfect storm really, sleep deprivation. You know when you have a little baby, fine, he would need you in the night time and I always spend a lot of time with both my child in the night. But that does play a big role I think in just generally wellness. I wasn’t a healthy person. I think there are a lot of things that went wrong that led to it and it took time but I can look back over the last 10 years and see how it progressed and I should eat right and I know I should have looked at warning signs but I didn’t know and I’d ask that you know and even the first neurologist I saw. I said is there anything I can do or changes as I can make? He said no, nothing can help.
Rebecca: You can try but it won’t help you. And now I know that the pulley of (inaudible) actually heals it takes time. George’s program he says it takes three to five years to get that diet to actually take effect. So it takes time. You know I was 40 when I was diagnosed so 40 years is a standard diet doing what everyone should have done and didn’t in any favors.
Clint: Yeah. We all wish we could turn back the clock. It’s amazing when you reach a state of enlightenment certainly in one part of life when it comes to food. You feel you do feel a sense of regret because really it is simple. I mean as much as we’ve talked about making some compromises to an ideal eating approach we’re a little bit of this, little bit of that. Various authors who either through suggested science or through their own sort of wanting to appease more people or somewhere in between. You know I personally look back and think Oh I wouldn’t have made any mistakes and I did not make any knowingly make any mistakes once I knew the way that I had to eat so as to keep disease as an absolute minimum. And we go through life and we just continue to eat blindly without thought, without compassion, without thinking like hey you know I reckon that half the population would eliminate eating animal products if they spent just a half hour in an abattoir. And you’ve even put an abattoir aside and don’t even worry about the stench and the filth and the horrors of the abattoir but let’s just see someone actually try and kill their own lamb.
Clint: I want to see someone try and do it I reckon one in 100 people would successfully kill a lamb and then cart it up and then cook and eat it. And the process of watching that animal suffer and having to have the savage kind of real Neanderthal mindset to be able to end its life so that you can eat it doesn’t exist in the human body or it really unless we’re in a survival last meal or die sort of state. So anyone digressing but the point is that once you know how to a eat and you have a reason that’s big enough a big enough stick to keep you on that path then it’s actually pretty easy and I don’t find any problems with the way I eat. In fact I love it.
Rebecca: You and I are similar in that sense. I do know a lot of women and for MS mostly women are diagnosed. I don’t think they even know why, i think it’s 75% women have MS. They still won’t change their diet, they know they’ve been told, we’re on forums you know. And people are saying – Oh I’m doing very poorly and I’m Oh have you heard of MS? Well they don’t want to hear it, they don’t want to know, because that means they have to give up the cheese. I know one woman who’s got MS. And she said I just can’t give up cheese and then she complains about all these problems that she’s having with MS and I’m like just give it a go. Cheese doesn’t taste as good.
Rebecca: (Inaudible) in one of George’s books about a couple driving long they can smell a hamburger joint or something like that and I go oh that smells amazing but the person with MS said I actually smell like wheelchair. you rather you know I would rather walk. And I think my motivation is my children. You know they were just tiny at the time I was diagnosed so it was just frightening to think that I would be going to their school with my wheelchair or know how they feel about that and get a run around ride bikes, we ride bikes together. So what more motivation do people need to stop putting that from their mouth.
Clint: You and I talk in the same language and I’ve got the discipline of a machine right. Nothing can get in the way of me getting what I want as an outcome for my health. So let’s talk about next steps for you. Do you have a blog or do you have a way of people can watch what you do, see how you eat. Are you on Instagram, how can people learn more.
Rebecca: Yeah. I don’t have a blog at this stage I’ve been asked a couple of times, I think it’s a time factor. I work, gott a family and you know you’re keeping yourself well. It takes time you know. I don’t eat anything processed, even for the kids I’m preparing their food from scratch. Everything takes time. I am on Instagram and I have got I guess my gmail account too which I’m really happy to talk to people as well.
Rebecca: And I actually presented at a Nutrition and Healthcare Conference in Adelaide last year. It was November and Dr. Michael Klapper came out to Australia so I was asked to present there and tell my story, it was really nice and I got to meet people then just answer a few questions and actually there was another woman who was sent there who had RA. So we both Dr. Klapper’s book, he was amazing. And I told my story and then this woman came up and tell her story about RA. And she had it I think for 40 years. So she had what’s his name swollen joints. She says she could barely walk. She couldn’t get the toilet by herself all that kind of stuff. She changed her diet and within two weeks all her pain is gone and she broke crying and the whole auditorium was in tears. It was such a powerful story to have such chronic pain for so many years and it just disappeared. It was just amazing. I went up to her afterwards (inaudible). But her story was just incredible. Yeah I was right on it. And yeah I’m really happy I did. I just want people to know, I found it really hard sometimes to not tell people a little bit (inaudible)
Clint: You know I can see that you’ve got the fire in the belly to go and spread this message a lot more and if you just keep that vision in your mind of being onstage and telling and and helping people then the floodgates open and people reach out to you and you can definitely find that there’s a platform however you want. As I said back stage or online or whatever but certainly your story is in high need of being shared a lot more. So think about, dream about the way you want to do it.
Rebecca: Yeah I think so and I think a lot of people say that you know you can have books or publications or all the science in the world but it’s people’s individual story that motivate other people to change.
Clint: Exactly, look at our whole podcast. I don’t know how much like this podcast number 102 or something like that right. And I think something like 80 of them are just people stories just telling stories because people can relate. People can see themselves in your shoes. People can feel that situation or they’ve been there or they’ve had experiences like that or know someone like that and they can connect and it moves people to take action or in some cases just to stay on track because it’s a hard road, this road. It’s a challenge when we have distractions and influences around us all of which aren’t going to support our health.
Clint: So thank you. So thanks for coming on the show. I just want to mention that we will be meeting each other in person. We’re going to be both attending a conference in February that’s going to be held in Melbourne and it has been made known recently that Dr. Neal Barnard is going to be at the conference.
Clint: It’s going to be the biggest plant based event that Australia has ever seen with Dr. Neal Barnard as well as Dr. Scott Stoll who organizes the plant based nutrition in health care conference in Anaheim every year that has over 1000 doctors attend from all around the world which I was at last year. So he’s going to be speaking at the event I believe we’ve got a couple of other international speakers. I’ll actually be hosting the event. So it’s going to be a great opportunity for me as well to know. Oh I know Dr. Stoll but It’ll be nice to meet Dr. Bernard. And just to connect with other like -minded individuals. So if you’re listening to this around about the time that it’s released then we’re talking about this conference being in February 2019 so everyone can come and attend the conference. It’s not just for the medical community. However the presenters will be a lot of doctors talking a lot of medical literature and convincing science based around a what’s been published and what’s been shown. But certainly it’s going to be a great event for the public too so we want to encourage everyone to come and I’d love people who like the things that I do to come and I can meet you there and I’ll be telling my story at the event too. So it’d be great to meet you in person, Rebecca that’ll be lovely.
Rebecca: Yeah
Clint: So thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for sharing your story and congratulations on how well you’re doing and keep up the great work.
Rebecca: Yeah. Thank you.