EPISODE 4: Moving Forward - Alysia's Story

BECKY: Welcome back to Autoimmune Adventures. Today we will be talking about moving forward, which is something we all need to do when we have autoimmune diseases. We want to make sure that we're thriving and not just surviving. Today, Alysia is going to be talking about her autoimmune journey and how creating momentum can help us move forward.

STACY: One way that we can start to create momentum in our life and really move forward is to reframe the narrative. And what we mean by that is to look at what's going on in our lives and put it into a better viewpoint or a better way of looking at things. So, one of the ways that we can do that is remember that even though autoimmunity is a challenge, it's not an absolute. You have to focus on managing your disease and not letting it manage you. When the disease becomes all that you are, you're losing out on being able to have a beautiful, fulfilling life. And so, you need to remember it's a challenge, and you need to tackle it like a challenge, instead of letting it overtake your life.

You also need to find your strength. We've talked about a lot of things in the last three episodes that will help you find your strength: finding your tribe, and those kind of things. You need to focus on what your body can still do, and the amazing things that you are being given a chance to overcome. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but honestly, get your fight on guys, get your fight on. Okay? You need to shift your mindset, focus on what you can control. Things like your attitude, your lifestyle choices, your self care, whether you're doing the big six like you're supposed to, What you're putting into your body. These are the things you can control. So if you shift your mindset, then you don't feel like your life is spinning out of control, and you can move forward.

ALYSIA: I don't think we can overemphasize how important that is - shifting your mindset. Um, I think that as I've mentioned before, when you have autoimmune disease, oftentimes you are physically suffering. If you have your mindset in one that is negative, one that is, "poor me, poor me," victim, you are choosing to suffer mentally as well...psychologically as well. It's not, it's not going to help you on your journey, right? So you've got to build this resilience, which is easier said than done.

I'm a child, well, a youth, I guess, of the nineties, and I think of that stupid Chumbawamba song that was so ridiculously repetitive. And it just says you get knocked down, but you know, "I get knocked down, but I get up again...No, you're never going to keep me down. I get knocked down," You know, and it's repetitive and it's, it's almost like a little internal joke that I have with myself, this stupid song that...it's actually really annoying to me, because I do, I mean, that's autoimmune disease will knock you down. You've got to get up again. You're never good. It's never going to keep me down.

I just...you, you just keep going much like Dory in Finding Nemo. You know, you "keep swimming." There's a million different references I could make here, and they sound cheesy and they sound like something that maybe, uh,, you know, a little motivational speaker would say in a cheesy story, but it's real guys. It really matters, right?

You've got to build that resilience. I read a book for book club a couple of years ago called Grit by Angela Duckworth - Grit (G-R-I-T]) The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Um, it was an amazing book. I highly suggest it. We'll have a link to it in our show notes on our blog But, I think everybody knows what grit is, right? It is finding the...like Stacy said, finding the fight inside of you. That's so important when you are diagnosed with autoimmune disease because it is gonna be a battle. It is, it is a challenge. So it's important to change your mindset and find your, find your power, your passion, your perseverance, your grit, your resilience, whatever you want to call it.

Um. And embrace gratitude. We've mentioned before the importance of focusing on gratitude, the good things in your life. Um, I think that's something that is easy to say that you're going to do, but it's harder to actually do it. If you...if it's not a practice you're used to doing, so seek help on how to change your mindset, seek help on how to focus on gratitude, read books, listen to good podcasts, things like that. Um, use your support system, develop your support system. Like we've mentioned before, your friends, your family, the online communities, your doctors. Develop that support system and, and always be networking to continue to grow it.

Focus on your personal wellness. The big six, prioritize sleep, eat healthy, manage your stress, meditation, yoga, you know, avoid toxins, all the things that we know we're supposed to do. Focusing on your wellness will help you be more resilient.

BECKY: And take that in little bites if you need to. Do not try to change everything all at once, or you're setting yourself up for failure.

ALYSIA: Yep.

BECKY: Don't say I'm gonna start eating right and sleeping more and you know doing all, all of the big six all the very next day. Yes you want to get there, but do it a little bit at a time, and do it in pieces so that you have a better chance of success.

STACY: You have to have a sense of humor. Um, you know, don't be afraid to laugh at yourself. Find the humor in the situation. Lighten your load a little bit. Try not to be too overwhelmed by some of the stuff that happens, because there are, there are going to be things that you just can't laugh at because they're too painful, too serious. But when you can laugh at the more little things like the fact that every time I walk out in the sun, I have an uncontrollable sneezing fit. And, um, it's just, I have to laugh about it because I could be annoyed, but I know it's coming. I know it's going to happen. And so I try to make it funny and, uh, it, it always makes my husband laugh and my dogs kind of look at me like I've lost my mind, but I'll just start laughing, and it's a lot of fun.

ALYSIA: I, it, it reminds me, we were talking earlier before we started recording and, uh, we had a crazy rainy day yesterday and I, and I was like, you know, I feel very much like a little old lady. "Oh, my aching bones! This, you know, this storm's a coming!" Like I laugh about it, but it really is true. I hurt, I hurt when the barometric pressure changes. Um, but it is kind of funny to, to think about it's, it is important to smile.

BECKY: It is kind of along the same lines. I mean, if you can make a joke of it, one of the things anybody who has lupus knows, there are certain things you're supposed to avoid, and obviously one of them we've talked about is sunlight. Garlic is actually one of the things you're supposed to avoid. And so it's a standing,running joke at my house that I'm a vampire. I can't handle the garlic and I can't handle the sunlight and, um, I've just learned to laugh at it with everybody. It makes it easier.

STACY: You have to have, you have to find the funny things. Um, you really do.

Another thing that you can do that helps is to seek out positive content. So surround yourself with uplifting stories of other people who are managing their autoimmunity. Um, It's really the time for you to clean up your social media and start following accounts with positive content. Find people who make you laugh, smile, feel grateful, and it doesn't have to be about autoimmunity. It can be anything that brings joy and laughter into your life. So look for the things. That are positive. Look for those positive, uplifting people on social media. Look for people who are, um, going to make you laugh, even if it's a little bit on the sarcastic side or snarky side, just find your jam, whatever it is that makes you happy and fill your life with all the good stuff.

ALYSIA: Right. I feel like sometimes you do have to have a little bit of a dark humor, right? You start to develop a little bit of a dark humor when you have autoimmune disease. One thing that I just thought of, because as we're sitting here recording, I currently have two of my cats just chasing each other and wrestling, and that is something I think is not to be overlooked. If you have pets, that's so, that's so good for you. Like, pets are so good for making you smile, making you laugh, lifting your mood. And I know not everybody's in a position where they can have pets. I just know for me personally, that my pets, all of them are empaths, and when I'm feeling terrible, they come to me. I don't ask them to come to me. They know and they come to me. They, they make me feel better. They're silly. They make me laugh. Like I feel like my pets are medicine personally.

STACY: Yeah. I do too.

BECKY: Me too. Um, so I, I would say an other way when we're talking about moving forward, another great way to do that is to make sure that you're living a fulfilling life. And some of you might question how you can do that. We're giving you some ideas here. There's a lot of things you can do. And. Um, one of the big ones I would say first off is to set realistic goals. Break down your goals into smaller, more achievable steps. Kind of like we were talking about earlier. Don't try to do all of the big six. If you haven't been doing any of them, don't try to do them all at once. Do them one at a time and do them in smaller pieces if you need to.

Um, Try to embrace new activities and that can be hard sometimes, but adapt activities you love if you're finding that it's hard to do them because of your diseases or, and this is where it can get hard because - we've talked about how you have to grieve it sometimes you have to grieve the things you can't do anymore - sometimes you have to find new activities that fit your energy levels. And you'll hear me talk more about this. We are going to do a, um, a few podcasts down the road. We're going to do one about adapting your life. But as I've told you, my little, my little farm is my little piece of heaven, but I have had to adapt it incredibly. Um, we've been here about 11 years, but. I cannot do everything that I could do 11 years ago, and we've had to adapt it a lot. I still love it. It is still my slice of heaven, but it is just a different slice of heaven than it was 11 years ago. And so we need to learn to embrace new activities, and we need to learn to live in the moment.

We shouldn't let fear, because I think it's so easy when we have autoimmune diseases, to let the fear of having a flare hold us back from enjoying life. That said, you still need to be careful. Like, the example I always think of is, Um, I shouldn't let a fear hold me back in going to do things that I love, but at the same time I shouldn't say, "Woohoo, I'm going to go take a beach day, and wear a bikini, and not wear sunscreen and whatever, because, realistically, I have lupus. I do that, I'm going to have problems. But can I go to the beach? Sure. Am I going to have to adapt how I do it? Absolutely. And so, don't, but don't let the fear of having a flare stop you from doing things that you love. Find your joy and your passion and follow it. That is the big part of moving forward.

STACY: I know that there are times where we feel very, very, very alone. But I feel a lot less alone when I remember there are millions of people in this world managing their autoimmune disease who still live fulfilling lives. And we have to try to join the people who are living fulfilling lives, so we find ways to make our lives fulfilling. We shift our focus. We keep moving forward, because that's what we have to do to be happy.

You need to remember you are strong and you are capable. You are still here and that means you are strong. So focus on that inner strength and resilience and use it to power through. So, choose to focus on the good and move forward with hope.

ALYSIA: I think for me, hope, um, Is, is something I had to focus on in my early days of, of having an autoimmune diagnosis and what drove me to do that was my children. Um, I think my autoimmune journey would have been a whole lot different if I didn't have five children that I was trying to live for and raise.

I had a pretty healthy childhood myself. Grew up in a beautiful area. Um, Moab, Utah, lots of outdoor things to do. I was out a lot, outside a lot, very healthy, loving family, good support system, really an idyllic childhood, actually. I was generally healthy, but I did have a lot of ear infections when I was young, which led to a lot of antibiotic use, which I believe could have had a long-term effect on my gut health, which we now know is very much linked to autoimmunity.

Um, I married when I was young. I had three children by the time I was 25 years old. I just started moving forward with my life. We were always out doing something -busy, busy, go, go, go - and I had the energy to do it. I had the capacity to do it. Um, I thought at that point that we were done having children.

And so as a treat to myself, I thought I would have, um, breast implant surgery, and so I did that in April of 2009. And I think that was, that was a trail marker. On my autoimmune journey. Um, I became pregnant shortly after that, even though we thought we were done having kids. I was just, I was much more tired. I did not have the same amount of energy about the same time. My husband got a job across the country, we made a humongous move all, you know, all the way across the country, different state...didn't know a soul, starting over from scratch. And it was a, a lot of change. For my, for my body physically and for us, um, environmentally. Like there are just so many things that happened in a short period of time, and I believe the combination of all of those things really sort of triggered some of my autoimmune symptoms.

And about this time, when I was struggling with pregnancy and being in a new place, I came across, uh, the mantra that "I can do hard things." And I love that mantra. I still love it to this day. I have it on a wall in my house. I say that to myself regularly. I tell my kids that regularly, "I can do hard things." Um, and living with autoimmunity. It's a hard thing. Uh, I challenge you to adopt that mantra yourself, that you can do hard things.

My symptoms really seemed to go up a notch. I never really felt like I recovered from that pregnancy. I had extreme fatigue. I had hair loss. I had brain fog. I had depression, which...I'd had postpartum depression before. This was different. It dragged on and on. And I had this crazy joint pain. Um, I thought for sure I must have some kind of arthritis going on, but my doctor, you know, ran all these tests. Everything was fine. He dismissed my concerns.

So, I was feeling a little bit like maybe I was a hypochondriac at this point. I was thinking maybe things were all in my head. And, you know, at this point I have four kids. Of course I'm tired. Of course I'm, you know, struggling, but I never really got to be myself after that, but I did keep going. I had children to live for. I couldn't just lay down and sleep all day. Um, And I had to just push through, and it was hard, but I did find things that I loved. I started a book club. Um, I went back to school. I found a passion for photography. Um, I found a passion for nutrition, which lended it...lends itself well to me, um, a few years later, because I was diagnosed with celiac disease.

I would never have been diagnosed with celiac disease had I not had the support system of my sisters. Um, it was Stacy who had just herself been diagnosed, who told me I needed to ask for that test, and as mentioned in Becky's episode last week, um, My doctor didn't want to order it for me. He thought there's no way he, he wouldn't...he would never think of to order that himself because I didn't have any of those typical symptoms. Right? But, um, at Stacey's encouragement, I went back to the doctor again.

I said, "Can you please test me for this?" Um, to his credit, he was willing to do that, and he was quite humbled when he saw the results.

Um, and so, because at that point. Surprise! Pregnancy number five. And, uh, I got my diagnosis while I was pregnant with my fifth child. And, um, my doctor said, well, you know, I really, we can't have you do an endoscopy to check and see, uh, what the damage is to your intestines, but your blood test is positive, so go, go gluten free now. Then when the baby's born, um, you can reintroduce gluten for a period of time and then go get the endoscopy done and, and see what it says.

Well, I went gluten free. I had a lot of support in doing that because of Becky and Stacy, and because our father had been gluten free. It was not, um, it was still daunting, because I had a large family I was trying to feed and I was trying to keep my gluten free food separate from them, trying to manage a budget to feed that many people.

It's tricky. Gluten free food is not cheap. Um, So I think after a few weeks, I had been strictly, strictly gluten free and in a moment of weakness, I had a piece of pizza. Um, don't do that guys. Just don't do it. You don't need to learn that for yourself. I'm here to tell you, do not do it. Um, nothing tastes so good that I would be willing to suffer that way. Um, and, and I felt so incredibly sick. And so when a baby, my baby was born, um, and my doctor said, okay, you can start eating gluten again so we can, you know, do this endoscopy. I said, Oh no, I will not be doing that. There was nothing that could have been told to me that would have convinced me to eat gluten again.

And, um, even though I had gone gluten free, I was still really tired. And again, Five kids guys. Of course, I'm tired. No big surprise, right? Um, but my doctor was continuing to dismiss the other symptoms that I was having. I went back. I've gone gluten free. I'm still tired. I'm still losing hair. I still have this brain fog, and, um, it was getting really hard to be positive because I was tired all the time. And it's just not me. It's not my personal, my personal...like my soul, my energy is a, is a high vibration energy. I am a, I am somebody who does things. I'm somebody I don't do well when I am sedentary for a long period of time. When I have low energy, it really is hard on my mental health. And I had to, I had to fake it till you make it because I had these kids, right?

You wake up in the morning, you're trying to get the older ones out the door on their way to school. You're trying to manage the little ones. You feel like you've been hit by a truck and you're just trying to survive, and I'm telling you, I had to wake up and look at myself in the mirror some mornings and say, okay, I know you feel half dead right now, but you have got to paste on a happy face because you don't want your kids remembering you as a cranky mom who just is powering through to get it done. So, "fake it till you make it."

I have, I have a lot of mixed feelings about that phrase. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing to do, but in this case, I had to, I had to fake it. But here's the good news. There is some validity to that. If you act happy, it can have an effect on your actual happiness.

BECKY: And I think, I think one of the important points that you've made too is you're not pushing the mental health to the side during all this time, you were getting help for it. You had good doctors that were helping you. Sometimes you needed to have medication. You got the things that you needed to, because "fake it till you make it," there is some truth to it, but as we've talked about before, there are times where if you need the mental help because you really just genuinely can't.

Get the help that you need. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health.

STACY: I agree. If you go to a place where faking to make it is not working, that means there's something clinical that needs to be addressed, and there is no shame in getting that extra help. If you're finding that you can't like, just by brain power alone, get yourself into a good head space, that means that you're depressed enough you need a...you need some extra help. And that's when you need to advocate for yourself and go in and, and get that extra help.

ALYSIA: So for years, my body had the up and down of pregnancy and nursing and, um, this, the very real stress and lack of rest that your body goes through when you are birthing and, and parenting children. And so, I could have done a better job. While my kids were young, taking care of myself, but I really did feel like I was in survival mode some days. And on the days where I did find that energy, I made my life and my children's life as fulfilling as possible, but it was definitely a different mom that my two younger kids had than the mom that my three older kids had when they were small.

Um, but during this time, when I went gluten free, I, I did find a love of gluten free cooking. That was a passion that I found something I dove into and, and my sisters, um, were helpful with that as well. We talked about different recipes. We talked about different kinds of flours, um, different kinds of binding agents. I mean, we've talked about it all, and we have, we've...we make some darn good gluten free food.

You know, after a couple of years, still having all these symptoms, I kept, I kept going, I kept moving forward, but I did go back, um, to a different doctor this time, um, and said, listen, I'm still having all these symptoms and I need you to test for... test my thyroid, because every I mean typical typical symptoms of low thyroid. And once again, my sister, Stacy this time said, "Oh, you need to make sure you ask for an antibody test. Don't just go to the doctor and say test my thyroid. You need to specifically request a full thyroid panel with antibodies."

And, uh, you know, sure enough, it came back positive for Hashimoto's. My antibodies were sky high, and the doctor was so confused because he said, "Your, your TSH levels are totally normal, but your antibodies are so high."

Guess what guys? That's not uncommon. If you, if your doctor has told you, and I'm guessing, I'm guessing a lot of you listening right now have had your thyroid tested, and been told that your levels are fine. Go back and get tested for antibodies.

I did get started on levothyroxine. It's a very common medication, probably the most common one prescribed, and initially there was improvement. And, um, to this doctor's credit, when I asked him what else I could do besides take this pill that might help me, he said, "Well, you know, there's not a lot of scientific evidence, but. I have heard that a paleo style diet can really help you feel better, help your symptoms."

I wanted to, to, uh, give it a try, and I did. And I'm going to tell you, it...I've never felt better than when I was on a paleo diet, a very strict, clean eating diet. It's a...feeding a family of seven is a struggle bus, and trying to do it on a paleo diet was very, very difficult.,.and about the same time, um, my husband lost his job. I, we kind of had to go back to eating like, like college students, and, and that was unfortunately more of the standard American diet.

I ended up going, because of this Hashimoto's diagnosis, I thought, well, I'll go see an endocrinologist because some of my symptoms were coming back, even with the medication, I didn't, I still didn't feel great.

And I waited for months to get into this specialist. And it was, I gotta tell you, it was a rough. It was a rough appointment. I had to fire this doctor on the spot. She was unwilling to do the tests that I had requested. She said it didn't matter. Um, she would only test TSH and it didn't matter what my other tests said. It wouldn't change how she gave me her...the treatment plan she would suggest. Um, she said there was nothing I could do, except for take a pill for my thyroid. Nothing I could do with my lifestyle was going to have any impact on my thyroid function. And that is when I said, this is not a good doctor. No doctor should tell you that there's nothing you can do in your lifestyle to feel better.

BECKY: Yeah.

ALYSIA: That is just untrue. And I've recognized for what it was. She was unhappy with me before I walked out of her office,and I was extremely unhappy with her. Um, It was, it was uncomfortable to say the least, but I'm glad that I advocated for myself.

Another big move for my family. And, um, a lot of those symptoms still me... still, still there fatigue, brain fog, hair loss, you know, joint pain, these things. And, and it's, it's hard, it's hard to live with those and you get used to it day after day, you just get used to it and you do keep pushing forward, cause really what other choice do you have? But I wasn't just going to sit there and not do anything about it.

So we got, that was when we moved out here to Minnesota. And, um, shortly afterward, I decided that I was going to, um, find a functional medicine doctor after my Hashimoto's diagnosis. I had devoured information, books, podcasts, webinars, kinds of things, uh, to try and learn about my autoimmune condition and to try to empower myself, and one of those things that I came across was maybe a functional medicine doctor would have a little bit of a different approach.

So, I found one, she was amazing. She did extensive testing. She did genetic testing. She found some genetic mutations, um, that affect my, uh, absorbency of certain vitamins. She asked me to do a lot of hard things. She gave me a lot of recommendations for expensive supplements. Um, it was a little discouraging to try and do all those things at once, and, um, I couldn't afford to keep going to her. She was not covered by insurance. Um, I, I was also, if I'm being completely honest, I was unwilling to do all of the hard things she was asking me to do at the time. I wasn't ready to commit to those. And so, um, I went back to just eating a regular gluten free diet with continuing processed foods and, you know, loving my Diet Coke and, um, not surprisingly, All my symptoms remained, and a few years after that, I ended up in a rheumatologist's office, um, suspecting that I had arthritis, and grateful that I don't, uh, it was a fibromyalgia diagnosis, which I wasn't super surprised by, um, considering my mom had had it, and my, my sister as well.

Um, for the, for the most part. I have been able to manage my fibromyalgia with a mindset shift, um, some lifestyle changes and a muscle relaxant. Um, but in recent years, I have also, um, discovered that certain supplements have been beneficial, how, how important sleep is. I mean, again, the big six, we're going to bring it up because those things matter. I have discovered CBD for my pain management. I just, I got to the point where I was taking too much ibuprofen and I almost gave myself an ulcer.

BECKY: With my fibromyalgia and lupus, I have found a lot of relief in getting regular chiropractic care as well as acupuncture. And, uh, there are a lot of alternative treatments that are ways that can help with the pain and honestly treat some, you know, treat more than just the symptoms.

ALYSIA: So, functional medicine doctors sometimes get a bad rep, uh, chiropractors can get a bad rep. Really, uh, anybody that is doing something against the grain of, uh, Western medicine, but I feel like for me, my chiropractor is at the top of my list of people on my support system.

Pain management is something that I've definitely had to work on. It is important to be proactive about getting on top of that pain. So, because if you don't, the pain really will manage you. You know, we talked about not letting your disease manage you, you manage your disease when pain is part is, is your main symptom, if you do not proactively stay on top of it, your disease will manage you.

So about that time, I started my muscle relaxant and I thought, you know, and really things were going okay, um, physically, and then out of nowhere, I mean, out of nowhere, I start having anxiety and I didn't know what it was for a long time. I just had like that itching, Impending doom feeling, or that I was forgetting something, or it's just uneasy. And it took me a while to figure out what that was. Um, but when I labeled as anxiety, I realized that, um, I'd been having it for a while and it just kept getting worse and worse. And now, um, years later, I know that there is an absolute link between mental health and your gut health, and you're...we know that autoimmune disease is directly linked to your gut health. So, as we've mentioned before, if you have autoimmune issues, you likely have impaired gut health, and that can impair your mental health as well. So, um, this is where I am so glad I found a specialist. Like Becky talked about in her episode last week, finding a specialist was exactly what I needed at the time.

I love, love my primary care doctor, but she really didn't know what to do with me anymore at that point. And so, she sent me to a psychologist and this guy was amazing. He just was amazing. And I got help for my anxiety. I got on a medication. I continue that medication. It has been absolutely life changing for me.

And it was terrifying to start. I'd had some really bad drug reactions to other drugs in the past. It was terrifying. It's scary to start a medication that's going to affect your brain chemistry, but I am here to tell you, much like finding the right doctor, finding the right medication can seriously change your life, and it did for me.

I also started keeping really good track of what my body was doing with different foods. I found by tracking myself, uh, what my food intolerances were happened to match up exactly to what the functional medicine doctor had found years earlier that I was unwilling to accept and act on, because she told me I needed to give up dairy, and I didn't want to, cause that's a hard thing to do. Um, But you know, I, I did, it got to a point where I could not do it. It's not, it wasn't a choice of do I want to or not? It was, if you do, you will be so sick. It will take you out for, for 36 hours. So, I just, I, it was. It's easy to give something up when it makes you that sick.

I also had a hysterectomy and, and quite a, quite a difficult recovery from that one. So just a lot going on in my body and, uh, about this point COVID hits. And, um, you know, when you have autoimmune disease, obviously you have an impaired immune system. And I happened to get COVID on the day of my son's last football game of the senior year. And I was at home on my couch, so, so, so, so sick, and just so sad that I was missing his game. And, but I thought, It'll be fine. They're supposed to win this game. No big deal. So I, I text him after the game to see how it went. And he said that they had lost, and I didn't believe him. I thought it was kidding, but I sat on my couch there absorbing the fact that I had missed my son's last game. He wasn't going to play again. He wasn't going to play in college. He wasn't going to play in the NFL. You know, this was his last football game and I was at home and I was sick. And at this point, yes, it was COVID. This was, it was COVID that had me sick right then, but that night was a trail marker for me.

It was a day when I in tears just demanded of myself that I do better. I had had years of yo-yo dieting and I had years of trying different programs. I've probably spent tens of thousands of dollars on different supplements, and trying to find quick fixes to feel better. And, um, I even, I even removed my breast implants. Uh, I, at some point had, um, thought maybe that was affecting my autoimmunity. And, uh, if you have them, you know, look into it. I don't know. It didn't solve all my problems, but it's, it's worth looking into, um, to consider. And I, I committed to myself that I was going to make some changes and I did, I, I really did.

I realized that I knew a lot of the things I should be doing and I wasn't doing them. And that was, that didn't make a lot of sense. It's, it's essentially, you know, this knowledge that I had was useless because I wasn't using it. You know, I have so much that I have absorbed from all this research I've done and, and all these books on my shelves, all these amazing doctors I've learned from, and, and I just wasn't putting those things into action.

And I realized I needed to make sustainable lifestyle changes, permanent lifestyle changes. I find that I am feeling better. I do have more energy. It is still a struggle guys. I worked with a nutritionist last year. She's absolutely amazing. Um, but she really got into, she did a lot of other testing on me and she found some crazy infections going on in my gut. You know, we treated mold, there was, there's mold exposure and we focused on detoxing my body from heavy metals and, and mold and infections. And, and then she also really helped with shifting my mindset. Um, I have found more than anything that shifting my mindset has been the most beneficial thing. Those big six are instrumental in managing your autoimmune journey.

As I said before, gradual progress is going to be what you're going for. You're not going to be able to just start all of these things that you need to be doing at once, small changes. Start with a few things. Um, going gluten free is not a simple change, but it will be hugely impactful.

BECKY: One of the other things we discussed is that sometimes one of the first steps, it's easier to add things than to take things away. So if you're not eating enough fruits and vegetables, or if you're not, if you're not eating some of the nutrient dense foods that are good for you, or if you're not exercising, rather than saying, I'm not doing this, I'm taking this out, rather than looking at it as taking things away. Add good things in, and then you can release the things that are not good afterwards.

ALYSIA: Right? And, and that's what we mean by keep moving forward. Just continue making those changes, and you will see, when you look back in a year, things that were difficult for you a year ago are not so difficult now. So just consider us your cheerleaders. We know it's hard to make these changes, especially when you are managing symptoms, right?

If you're exhausted all the time, it's really hard to be like, Okay, let me plan it, plan a trip to the grocery store and I'm going to buy all this healthy food and then I'm going to come home and I'm going to make it and it's not easy. We get it. But guess what? You can do hard things, and they'll have...they'll make a difference.

STACY: So this week, we're going to challenge you to keep moving forward, because when you join us next week, we're going to be talking about a growth mindset and the importance of how it helps us to do the things that we've been talking about these last few weeks. And we hope that if you have any questions or any comments that you would like to make that you'll leave them in the comment section, and if you want to see what we're up to go to autoimmuneadventures.com.