We discuss how:
– At the age of 16, after his father died, Gabriel started to have gut dysbiosis
– He started to experience severe fatigue and stress response symptoms, nausea and so on
– He started having scalp psoriasis, and over time he got diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis
– His knees became the size of a softball and he started with prednisone
– After a meeting with his rheumatologist he started AIP with good results
– Doing a good amount of research on the internet he found the Paddison Program
– After six months, he’s now playing basketball again and feeling more athletic than ever
– He’s also a man of faith, and this is playing a key role in his approach
Clint Thanks for joining me again today we’ve got a guest Gabriel, and he’s going to be talking today about psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, knee problems, he’s also a man of faith. So we’re going to talk about the power of having God in our lives to help us with getting through very very difficult times. And he’s also going to talk about the effect of trauma and how that may have played a role in his early dysbiosis which may have led to his so psoriatic arthritis situation. But the story is once again a wonderful happy ending, but I’ll let him give a brief summary of how far he’s come in the last 12 months or so. So Gabriel thanks for joining us, and how are you now before compared to where you might have been a little while ago?
Gabriel Sure yeah thanks. Well thanks so much for having me Clint, it’s really wonderful to be talking with you it’s really been an amazing journey. In terms of the before and after at my darkest point I was thinking that I’d probably never play basketball again or at least never be able to do that without a lot of medication. And I even thought, I mean something like psoriatic arthritis you hear the horror stories that once it starts moving in your fingers. And I was starting to feel some swelling my fingers, you know then you’re in a lot of trouble. And so I started to get pretty worried, fortunately for me I think probably because your programs get a lot of momentum I was able to find it relatively quickly in my journey. So I didn’t have to jump on to methotrexate though I was close, I was offered that on December 17th of this past year, and found your program on Christmas Eve December 24th. So I started it on Christmas and thought this is where it’s at, like I’m going all in you know. And and pretty much instantly started noticing results. Most notably the fatigue went away like that was the most immediate thing. My knee was the size of a softball, when the doctor aspirated it when he pulled out the fluid he said that that’s what you would expect for an ACL tear. So there’s a lot of fluid in there and I just kind of normalize to it, and it’s just like in the last couple of days. I mean it’s it’s still getting better like a little bit going away every single day which is neat. But the last couple of weeks I started playing basketball again, no problem and actually feel more athletic than I’ve ever felt in my life. So that’s kind of cool. And almost all that swelling is gone, It took some patience you know to let that where we about three months now. But it’s just been wonderful, it’s been awesome. And all sorts of unforeseen benefits still.
Clint Yeah, Okay great. Well we’ll talk about those unforeseen benefits as we get into this in more detail, and we’ll talk about your psoriasis in a lot more detail as well because we haven’t covered a lot of that in detail in other episodes. So obviously other guests with psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis but we haven’t gone into a lot of detail in the ways in which we can influence it and exhibit power and control over it. So we’re going to get into that in more detail I know you’ve got some great tips to share for folks who have psoriasis. And this is also going to be really interesting from a point of view if people are interested in getting remaining or getting more physically active, because you’re a young physically active guy where strength, athleticism is important, and so we can cover that as well. Your story isn’t going to be particularly long, we’ve chatted about that just briefly before we started recording. But let’s spend the adequate amount of time going through maybe the formative years of gut dysbiosis. When did you start to feel that things weren’t right in the stomach which ultimately led to then getting these symptoms last year?
Gabriel Sure yeah. So first a brief comment, you often talk about the nose being an indicator of swelling. And now that I’ve gone through this experience and kind of reflected on it, I can remember having like there’s this very distinct memory when I was a kid of eating potato chips and having my nose swell up. And I think that’s really fascinating, now maybe I’m making that memory up you know I don’t know but I think I have a distinct memory of that so that’s just you know kind of on the side. But in my case as I’ve reflected on this throughout the process I actually think that the gut dysbiosis probably started when I was 16 when my dad died. He was born with a congenital heart defect, and basically his heart gave out. But my family also has a history of dying from heart disease. So as another side note getting into this dietary stuff has been really fascinating just to learn about prevention and reversal of heart disease.
Clint Definitely.
Gabriel You know so it’s really important topic something really worthwhile to dig into who just for that. And I think because he died, well first off in terms of the mechanism as the cause causing the gut bysbiosis, I listened to a lecture by biology professor at Stanford on he’s got a book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and his name is Robert Sapolsky. Anyways the long story short is that ulcers in your stomach are caused by a stress response that changes your gut, and the changes in your gut lead it to being more friendly to bad bacteria and less friendly to good bacteria. And primarily because of something about stopping the blood flow and stopping the digestion, so you have stuff not being digested. So you have a lot of bad stuff happening there. So that leads to ulcers and that I think a guy won a Nobel price for that maybe even an Australian actually. But in my case when I started to experience after his death was severe fatigue, I mean typical stress response stuff. typical grief stuff but that lasted through a lot of my college years. So high school through college normalized to it. In college I had a year where I just had constant nausea, and my eyes would get really red. I was on the rowing team in college so pretty active guy but, I just wasn’t recovering and I mean just tired all the time.
Clint So I mean, I can only imagine that at 16 years old you know that your father’s got this susceptibility and a weakness in that particular area of his body. He passes away and you’ve immediately noticed after that a degradation in your health. I mean it on a scale of 1 to 10 was it for you at 16 like it 10 out of 10? This is like my life just sort of just changed in the worst possible way. Losing your dad, I mean it would obviously appear for most people to be the case. But did it just rocket to the core?
Gabriel Sure, yeah absolutely. Now for me, I’m the oldest and I’m also kind of a hard driven you know hard driving kind of guy. So my stress response was to just work, like just work work work work work and lose myself in that. Which probably also is somewhat related to the fact that I am susceptible to gut dysbiosis.
Clint Right. Yeah. It’s like Type A kind of go hard, everything’s gonna be a success kind of personality. Yeah this is so common.
Gabriel Right. I hear it like podcast, I’ve heard it from a lot of other sources and you know common wisdom just kind of tells us this. So in terms of like the level if I were to quantify that, I mean yeah definitely a 10 over 10 in terms of life changing, health changing. I was constantly getting tested for well not constantly, but a couple of times we had my mom’s a nurse and she said, you must have mono or you must have pneumonia or something like, you’re just so tired all the time. And so I get my blood drawn and you know we test for this every couple of years because I was just this severe fatigue and these symptoms I couldn’t explain. But the thing about fatigue in particular is that you normalize to it, and so you kind of just start to think this is normal, this is why everybody drinks caffeine. Now I was fortunate I never really liked coffee and I don’t like caffeine much, and so stay away from that. But I just kind of normalized to it and made up for it to a large degree just by being a workaholic. And slowly over the course of my college years I started to learn, hey I got to take care of my body if I’m going to get any work done you know, and especially if the quality of my work is going to be good. So I started really emphasizing my sleep, and trying to eat a relatively healthy standard American diet, you know trying to get a lot of greens and I thought if I eat enough greens I can make up for whatever else I mean.
Clint See that’s very rare for a guy at any age. I’ll never forget I was at the grocery store with a friend of mine a couple of friends of mine, and my friend in this story is called Justin. And Justin went up to the green section of the grocery store in the in the produce department. And he he lifted up a pack of their mung bean sprouts right, those little mung bean sprouts that you often see in well in our program or on things like Asian salads and stuff and stir fries. And I called over the other friends my mates who was with me and I said, his nickname is Hasim, look what Has is buying. What is that? And like I’d never seen it before and I was ridiculing him so bad because I was absolutely like blown away that anyone in the world would pick that up to eat that. That’s where I was that right, I was there I was and anyway I’ve never forgotten that because it was not because it’s relevant these days, but just because I’m still so shocked, the shock if someone would pick up mung beans sprouts is something you’d want to buy and eat. So that was a crazy moment for me.
Gabriel Yeah. Well and you’re also trained I don’t know if this is your experience especially as guy but you think it basically in terms of macro nutrients and you’re thinking primarily protein. And so it’s kind of like okay well what do I get from eating that, you know what diet is that?
Clint Right exactly, how does that help?
Gabriel Right. And you know kind of trained with this mindset not really well for one thing being way too much my head now listen to my body. I basically just kind of view the world in terms of macro nutrients (inaudible) I just got to pound the protein in basically. So you know years to that the wonder things start to get messed up and when you start combining a couple of other things you know, I still haven’t been able to track down the proximate cause to the arthritis it might have been eating a lot of mango. Right around the time it started to swell I was eating like two or three mangoes a day.
Clint If we just wind back a little bit here, you had already had the psoriasis which according to if you listen to the medical community it’s an autoimmune disease right? So let’s just sort of say that maybe that the conditions of autoimmunity had started already. And so the mango I think is being falsely accused in this part.
Gabriel Mangoes are great.
Clint But you know sometimes you know who knows right? I think what you said a moment ago we can’t pinpoint it, but my little way out of these situations is always to say well look if you simply have a Western diet then you have a chance of getting an autoimmune disease and that it is true, that is true. It’s just more I want to say fun or more satisfying when we can pinpoint there’s antibiotics involved or hey I had some immunizations months before or my hormones were all over the place because I’d just given birth to my second child. This stuff comes up all the time.
Gabriel Right. Well I guess maybe one quick comment on that. I think it stacks sort of pinpointing and scapegoating that makes it very difficult for medical science to actually appreciate dietary solutions. Because we fall into that so much well and also because we typically don’t abide by the diets that we’re supposed to be on. But because we fall into this scapegoating mentality we don’t have a holistic view of the body, so we think in terms of like this particular food or this particular food. But this experience has taught me to a large degree that you really got to be more holistic, and so you’re absolutely right in terms of pointing out the psoriasis. So something that’s fairly well-established with psoriatic arthritis is that psoriasis typically sets in four to five years before psoriatic arthritis for something like 70 percent of people who get psoriatic arthritis. And in my case I had scalp psoriasis primarily, but by the time that the swelling started I had a big spot here on my head, my eyebrows, and my ears, just like white flakes falling everywhere. I looked, I mean I don’t really know exactly how to describe it it’s just like these white flakes fall on everywhere, and I always thought well I’ll just dry skin.
Gabriel Psoriasis wasn’t a big deal for me because it didn’t slow me, I didn’t realize that it was slowing me down, and I just ignored it. You know it’s just a weird spot here on the back of my scalp you know no big deal. And that’s partially what you get when you come from this model of viewing symptoms as kind of isolated incidents. But if you start to see psoriasis as a good indicator, a very sensitive indicator of your immune system in your auto immune reaction, then you start to realize hey this is actually very very helpful because it’s telling me something about my body. And a good chunk I think maybe like a third of people who get psoriasis end up with some sort of psoriatic arthritis but because it happened so slowly we normalize to it. You know it’s like the it’s like the frog in the pot, you know the water gets warmer and warmer. So you had a breaking point and maybe it’s a good time to just kind of mentioned at breaking point on my end. Basically I had a couple of months of this so mid-July my arthritis set in my knees started to become the size of a softball. And went to the Sports Doc at the University of Notre Dame. So I went to a Sports Doc here, and I said OK well we didn’t MRI your knee looks perfectly fine, looks great actually. So here’s some prednisone you try 16 days of this, and see what happens. So pretty aggressive treatment, pretty aggressive dosage. Tapered off that felt great during the prednisone but still had some fairly significant swelling.
Gabriel After that he sent me to the rheumatologist my RA factor and my blood was negative so it wasn’t RA at least from the blood test wasn’t. So October 13th or so I saw rheumatologist in town, he came away pretty quickly just for psoriatic arthritis. And at that point some of my own research had begun to indicate that fortunately like the next day or two I had also set up a visit to the Cleveland Clinic Functional Medicine Centre. And just kind of mentioned this because I just watched Jackie’s podcast this morning, and she mentions this in there. I actually saw Jackie there on the day that she was there at the Cleveland Clinic Functional Medicine Centre. And I remember basically she said something like you know the diet has made a huge difference in my life, you’re on the right track, keep going.
Clint What a classic meeting.
Gabriel (inaudible) Yeah absolutely. So basically Cleveland Clinic recommends a basic elimination diet as kind of a baseline. So that’s a little bit more specific in terms of eat this food group, not this food group. And so I started on that eventually got into AIP.
Clint Just explain to listeners in 30 seconds what you were eating on AIP.
Gabriel Sure. So AIP primarily which you eliminate is most starches except for maybe sweet potatoes. And I also kind of thought OK well maybe I had some kind of Candida overgrowth or small intestine bacterial overgrowth so I should limit my starches, get most of my calories from, for me it actually was basically kind of like how I interpreted it. I was like where the heck am I going (inaudible) I mean trying to be active and like what am I going to eat to get Calories. And I saw a lot of success with AIP. I saw enough success to realize I was on the right track, and I slowly started to get more greens in and I learned a lot about gut science from some of the AIP websites. You know there’s some very informative stuff out there terms about gut health and I know one of the things that gave me some encouragement in this track was. I know a guy who overcame hyperthyroidism primarily using an AIP sort of approach with changing the gut bacteria, and his gut bacteria and I thought that’s pretty cool.
Clint Check with him in 10 years’ time and say oh he’s doing.
Gabriel Right.
Clint Yeah it’s a wait and see for sure. And I don’t wanna dwell on this too much because we’ve got a lot other stuff I want to talk about. But carbs and protein don’t digest well at the same time, right? So if we’ve got starchy foods and we’ve got high protein foods, one requires alkalinity enzymes and the other requires the proteins required and acidic stomach. So it’s best to keep them separated, so the old meat and potatoes thing although it’s famous is that a combination is not ideal for digestion. And so if you take one away you’re going to digest better. But my view is that’s taking the wrong one away, because if you take away the meat then you’ve got starches, complex carbohydrates which are the ideal fuel source for the body and you haven’t got the animal products and all the problems associated with the digestion and acidity and inflammation. So that’s one of the reasons why you feel better is because suddenly you’re digesting better because you’re not trying to do two opposite things at the same time. That’s one thing but the other thing with regards to your friend because I just got to always say this is simply by eliminating dairy products which is a plant-based diet and AIP both agree upon just by doing that for enough people can stop some auto immune symptoms. So it could have just been dairy.
Gabriel Right and I think one of the other kind of paradigm shifts that this whole experience has taught me is that, what you’re shooting for is wellness you shouldn’t be thriving. Not just like elimination of symptoms, and the sort of thriving that I’ve experienced I mean I literally just wake up every day feeling awesome and that’s what I tell people. And I look at their face there’s like they just don’t believe me, You know I’m like I have so much energy, my mind is sharper I just feel so good. You know like I want to just, I wake up and I’m just ready to go. It’s just kind of, it’s this normalization thing again you know it’s just kind of happens. Just to kind of pick up that thread I guess where I was at, so I started increasing my intake of greens, and started and notice some results. My psoriasis was really going down where it was controlled. I could identify foods that were kind of causing reactions, and then it really was so at that point I was pretty close to essentially a plant-based diet except for a lot of meat and in the oils. So that sounds kind of funny to say that, but what I mean by that is that dairy was out, I was being very careful about what I was eating. And really all it took for the shift to happen was eliminating the meat, and then eliminating the oil man, and then increasing my intake of big bowls of rice. You know it’s like this huge huge bowls of rice which are great, rice is great.
Clint Rice is great. And so in the interest of time and I want to cover some other things. And we and we both sort of touched upon a summary of your improvements at the start. You then were able to, you shifted across to that. Christmas day you started the program it sounds like you got immediate results, and you haven’t looked back in the last three months, and now you feel tremendous and wake up every day feeling awesome. Have I missed anything that we should cover before I’ve got other questions for you?
Gabriel No I think that’s pretty good. Yeah.
Clint It’s great. I know you’re still working on your knee but you’re playing basketball again, you’re pumping that through some very very intense leaping, jumping, landing. And so anyone’s knee that’s not 100% is going to have a little bit of nurturing to do, I mean you see the NBA players they always taking a time out. I’m a fan of the the 76ers, and you know that Joel Embiid is always taken time out he’s got (inaudible). So here are the things I want to get some tips from you. You mentioned just before we started that you wanted to talk about miso paste. Let’s talk about miso paste and its connection to your health.
Gabriel Sure yeah. So cutting out the meat, cutting out the oil, increasing starches was great. And then I kind of hit it not quite a plateau because I saw a lot of consistent results like every day I was seeing progress. So every day I wake up and feel my knees, you know I’ve heard you mentioned that too, like to feel you didn’t feel like it was the swelling at, where’s the swelling at. And so I kind of thought OK well maybe the next step is I need to get my probiotics in, maybe I just need to really pump those in because I heard you know pump them in. The only thing that I had on hand at the time at the seminary, so I live at a seminary kind of an institutional setting. And that made for an interesting experience they’ve been really great and helpful, my kitchen staff here with all of this. Anyways we had some dairy Keefer on hand, and I listen to your podcast on fermented oatmeal. So I thought you know what like things are going well I’m just gonna try as fermented oatmeal thing out see what happens. And basically I think what happened was one of two things, either it helped for a bit and then maybe my body got to the point where it wasn’t helping at all or probably more likely my body was doing an incredible job of healing, and the probiotics that it was getting maybe they helped a little bit but like maybe was able to kind of just handle it.
Gabriel So that was my first foray into Keifer but I did notice touching on the nose again, right away when I did the keifer, the fermented oatmeal my nose would open up and I thought that was interesting I thought you know maybe a good sign. So I did some further testing a couple of months down the road, and had been doing kind of some fermented oatmeal and at this point I’d gotten so good that really my psoriasis was my main indicator of whether or not food was good. So the cool thing about psoriasis is that it reacts pretty quickly, and it will tell you pretty much I mean usually within 12 hours you know if you’re on the right track similar to the way that you would use your pain as your measurement. My psoriasis my measurement because my arthritis at the very least it’s actually not been that painful, it’s just a lot of swelling. So the psoriasis is really helpful. So anyways long story short I said I need to get some fermented vegetables. What’s the easiest way to do that? And I’ve been holding off on the miso paste mainly out of laziness like that I was so happy with the results I was seeing, and I was like where the heck do I buy something like that you know. Anyways I found an oriental store here in town and realized this is super cheap you two-pound bag for $5, and it tastes great. And so I just started pumping it into my rice you know a couple of spoonful’s my big bowls of rice.
Clint I call that the mega miso soup.
Gabriel Oh yeah it’s great. And I started the seaweed too, the seaweed was great. And yeah so I’m at the point now where I can basically tell if I go a couple days without miso or kimchi the skin it gets a little bit more flaky. And I think maybe if I keep pumping in the probiotics I get to a better equilibrium point but it’s a start. I think it’s starting to be at this equilibrium now where it’s kind of steadily it’s getting better and better. But the miso has been really important, that’s kind of been that the thing that got me over that initial kind of plateau.
Clint Yeah. I love what you said about the taste as well. When you’re trying to avoid adding too much salt there’s not a lot of sort of other spices and things that go with simple foods like rice doesn’t sort of go that well. I mean the Japanese have got these interesting mixes that you can add which are all these different little herbs and stuff, but I never really got into that because I looked at the ingredients and all these little things I didn’t recognize and didn’t. It felt like I was about to test 40 things at once you know what I mean. Absolutely and then the bacterial factor as well always was front of my mind when I was putting it onto my meals and felt comfortable about it. And all the research I’d done made me just feel comfortable about consuming it in pretty high quantities as well. Let’s talk about, you’re living in a faith-based institution, obviously you’re a big part of your life. In what way have you utilized your faith in God to help you whether it be relying upon it or just basically giving you reassurance? And to what extent do you feel that that has helped?
Gabriel Sure. So just the background on me, I am in the congregation of Holy Cross. Studying to be a priest within the Catholic Church and also a consecrated religious. We among other things are known for founding the University of Notre Dame here in the United States, and also the University of Portland’s which I had my shirt off for them. We’re a religious order founded in France and we are predominantly educators, we teach so that’s what we do. That’s what I feel called to do ultimately with my life is to teach. Probably something like philosophy, we’ll see. I am in my fourth year of seminary now and fourth year with the congregation, and I’m living my second year of temporary vows of poverty chastity and obedience, and just about to renew those this summer. What we do in Holy Cross like to a large degree is informed by spirituality that as the name would suggest it is all about redemptive suffering. So we sit with Mary at the foot of the cross, and we believe that the resurrection is always present in the world even though it might appear to be very dark. And so the spirituality to a large degree is what drew me to Holy Cross. And also we have a strong emphasis on family. So we’re modelled as a community after the holy family, we have priest brothers and sisters all living and working together as religious. And so in conjunction with the spirituality that really is holding onto the hope that the resurrection is always present in the midst of even the greatest darkness. We also always have supportive family and friends, and where I live I actually live in the town were so my seminary, my university here is in the town where I grew up so my family’s close by. And then I have a community of a couple hundred priests and brothers to support me.
Gabriel Now in terms of concrete aspects of the spirituality that have been very helpful. The darkest point for me in the journey was when I realized how devastating that psoriatic arthritis can be. And there was one point where I was trying to row on my rowing machine and I just couldn’t keep going. I was alone, and it was just it was just rough. And I remember thinking at that point it just kind of speaking I mean with my heart and just saying you know God I want to live, I want to be alive. And shortly thereafter in my prayer we do a lot of praying as you can imagine. And so I put this to prayer often, and in my prayer when at one point I just said you know God I accept this, and I say yes to it. You know I’m grateful for all the gifts that you’ve given me. And while I don’t think that this illness is a gift persay you know God does not wish bad things upon us but he works through them. The resurrection is present even in the midst these things. And to some degree that resurrection happens when we embrace the cross. So when we say yes to the moment, when we say yes to the pain, when we say yes in my case of the arthritis and also the dietary intervention. Now you have this wonderful opportunity actually to say yes to every day, to say yes to every bite of food, and say I take responsibility for this day for myself, and I offer it up like in service to God in service to his people. And that mindset of saying yes and accepting everything as a gift has really I mean that was kind of the, that’s really the fundamental spiritual shift that has borne tremendous fruit in this whole process.
Gabriel And now that I’m on the other side of this, I think you know to a large degree the resurrection is imminently you know like a parent. Like getting diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis in many ways has actually been one of the greater gifts I’ve been given. Aside from my life, my family, my friends, my vocation, it was like a spiritual wakeup call to say hey you’ve got to realize that everything is connected. And that nature is this wonderful harmonious thing and you have to appreciate it, and you can’t take it for granted, and you have to take responsibility for it, that’s been just like this tremendous insight. And not to mention I mean just in terms of kind of moving forward with what I’ll do with my life as an educator, as a priest, pastoral sacramental ministry to be able to talk to people about suffering to be able to meet them there. But also in some cases to be able to offer some concrete assistance and say hey this sounds crazy but there’s actually some good clinical evidence to suggest that by shifting your diet you can make some really good changes in your life. That’s really this is in Christian terms, Christian theological terms that’s where we bring down what seems to be the ideal of heaven where it meets earth. When you can actually kind of embody bringing about some of this goodness. You know in a good and healthy way which we’re listening to nature, and which were like listening to our bodies and realizing that I mean we’re gonna die eventually. But but to live life to the full while we have it you know it’s such a wonderful thing. I think that’s what I might say about that.
Clint Yeah that’s beautiful. I mean when you’re talking then I’m seeing your future in a way that’s really beautiful which is to be able to not just have physical strength and a physical presence that is vibrant. Because if the you know that the foods that you eat the lifestyle that you have. But also be able to be not just the spiritual support exclusively for a lot of people who come to you as the Minister and say look I’m going through these challenges and you know I used to go to church every week when I was in my university years when there was one right there on campus and we used to go east to go every week. And I used to talk to the minister here and there about things I was going through, and everyone was doing it. I mean that’s part of the sort of the role I think to be there as a support and a leader. And as you say to have this additional ability to help or to offer at least some guidance or some direction in case some of that stuff is physical. Which let’s face it in a western world a lot of people’s problems are physical problems, and without you overstepping the role of what you are therefore but being able to just say hey look I’ve had some personal experiences and you can offer some direction.
Clint This is powerful and you’re going to have exposure to a lot of people, you might be in front of a lot of people over many years and so the opportunity to help is is enormous and that’s where I think the gift comes in. If we can acknowledge that this is our cross to bear, then an AI disease is something that’s long term and that’s going to always show up as a dot or show up as a joint pain or show up as a knee pain. If we’ve got those barriers in our life where we’re not allowed to cheat like other people with their fast foods or whatever. If we can accept that and say yes to that to use your words which is great, to say yes to that then we can say yes to what comes with that that can be positive for other people. And that’s where the powers at.
Gabriel Absolutely and maybe just the final comment on that to it. To a large degree this this process is not so much about information it’s about witness, it’s about actually living the life. And you know I’ve told a lot of people about it and it’s not really what I tell them, it’s it’s actually seeing somebody else do it, seeing you do it, seeing all the people on your podcast do it. That’s what’s so cool about this whole thing, we’re not selling anything really. You know like it’s it’s not a quick fix, it’s actually just pretty basic stuff, really cheap stuff to rice and beans. It’s more like a way of you know it’s the way of responsibly approaching the world and approaching your life and anyways so this has been great.
Clint Yeah. Thank you and I know you’re aware of the clock as well. We’re recording this we’re coming up to to the end of the turn of the alley here and I have a I’ve got a one on one call that I’m working with someone very shortly. But I’m happy just to let that go just a few minutes they’ll understand when I explain where we’re at this conversation. I also one thing I just want to maybe close with is what where we can really benefit from having more people with influence, and more people with who can act as an example is strong men like yourself who run a plant-based diet. Okay. So I want to keep like I know it’s probably not in your nature or whatever to be on social media platforms showing off you know physical strength and stuff. But in terms of your community that you’re with on a natural basis around you who work with you, on a college campus. And if you’re a slam dunking and you’re waking up fit and strong each day and you’re lifting heavy weights at the gym which I believe that you’re on a path to be doing. This is a fabulous example, and this is helping the world on a community level in such a positive way.
Gabriel I can’t wait until that. You’re probably familiar with it that the game changers documentary comes out.
Clint Yeah.
Gabriel Like when I have that in my back pocket, I’m like, Hey I’m like Look you don’t just have to take my word for it you know I might tell you that I’m like far more explosive never felt. But here’s a whole bunch of professional athletes who are saying the same thing because that’s the question you know all the young guys ask are like where do you get your protein? Can you really thrive on that diet? You know Aren’t you going to melt away? And I’m like it’s one thing I can eat pounds of food like I just, it’s great, and it tastes great. But it’s actually I mean if I were just an athlete looking for a competitive advantage, you know I would totally just do this just for that alone.
Clint Well let me just say something on that. I noticed that when I go to the gym these days and I don’t know if that’s got something to do with age, I’m 43 and when I used to work out a lot for cosmetic sort of image reasons not for joint protection reasons. I used to get tremendously sore from working out and it would take me three or four days before I could do my chest again if I did a chest workout. And I’ve listen to some plant based bodybuilders talk about this which is certainly overlaps with my experience, when I work out at the gym now even if I push pretty hard I don’t get that intense really intense soreness that I used to get when I was eating a very inflammatory diet. Have you experienced this?
Gabriel Absolutely same experience. I think to some degree psoriatic arthritis is maybe like an advance case of that kind of experience. But for myself what I’ve noticed is I recover it’s not instantly but like really quick, I don’t have this real experience of soreness anymore. And another really cool thing and this might be more of a psoriatic arthritis thing, but I’ve added inches of flexibility it’s like my hamstrings, my shoulders, all sorts of stuff like the quality of my muscle is just much better and my tendons and everything. And I have done some work with that like I don’t know if you’ve heard of the book Becoming a supple leopard.
Clint No.
Gabriel It’s by a physical therapist guy. The basic idea is how do you get your body always in a state of being supple like a leopard, you know like Are you always ready to go. And I was doing all these exercises and really you know foam rolling and doing all that stuff really helpful, but what’s been like exponentially more helpful is dietary intervention. I feel ready to go all the time you know for the most part, and limber and just it’s really kind of neat. Nobody believes me of course, you know I tell people as in my case you don’t like that bad nagging kind of injury you know maybe this diet might help, give a try you know. Nobody wants take me up on the offer but.
Clint It’s a hard sell. Until they need, you know a lot of people it takes either a great compassion for animals and I see this a lot particularly with very sensitive you know caring nurturing females. A lot of them move to a plant-based diet because of that, and of course there are obviously a vast number of men for the same reasons who just care about animals. Or it’s more commonly at least in our sphere of community health condition. And if you don’t have either of those two you just got the blink blinders on to the to the suffering of animals or you don’t have any kind of massive health problem then your kind of just keep in to your own path aren’t you? The third one of course is to save the planet. No one’s gonna go play advice to save the planet. I’ve not met one yet.
Gabriel I’m much more open to that now though. Like now because my body’s like a microcosm of seeing the environment. And realizing all that food that I was eating like look what I was doing to my body you know and just realizing that nature creation is such a wonderful gift. And you know we got to we have to appreciate it.
Clint Absolutely. I know it’s crazy. It’s almost like when you’ve flick the switch and you’ve freed yourself up from that situation where you’re eating the the animal foods, then you can suddenly celebrate that you are now contributing to a healthy planet that feels good in your life. That’s a great thing that I could never have expressed before you know.
Gabriel Right.
Clint Look Gabriel I’m going to have to say thank you at this point and close this out. It’s just been really really cool, and perhaps one day we’ll get to meet in person I’d love to meet in person.
Gabriel Yeah that’ll be great. If you want to come up to the University of Notre Dame, I’d be happy to have you here, that would be awesome.
Clint Awesome man, it’s got such a great reputation a very famous education institution, and your parents must be very proud of all that you’ve achieved so far and especially turn it around your health like you have so quickly in the last several months. Keep up the great work and I look forward to staying in touch down the track.
Gabriel Yeah absolutely. Thank you very much Clint.
Clint All right.
Clint Oh man it’s it’s a pleasure. You can see why do it right when you feel good you want to share with other people.
Gabriel Absolutely.
Clint OK. Thanks, so much man.