Working out Constipation

As a successful and experienced registered dietician Rocco knows that eating more fibre is important for bowel movement. But as he discovered some-times it's just not enough. Severe constipation is distressing and there are many causes and considerations. His journey involved experimentation and discovery. With 20% of the population experiencing constipation, this episode will get you going.

Transcript

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Hello, Rocco di Vincenzo, how are you? Very well. Daniel, how are you, mate? I am also well, actually, disgustingly well. Nice to see you. That's good to hear. That's good to hear. Rocco, you are a very experienced dietitian. Two decades of service and you're in Australia, or what is called an accredited practicing dietitian, and that gives you the highest qualification in your field for what you do. Have you been enjoying the journey so far? pretty good and in fact, I've actually now entered my third decade of work.  So I've been around, I've been around for 30 plus years now. So actually this year. So look, it's been a good ride so far. I mean, it hasn't been without its challenges, I have to say, especially when you start, start pushing the envelope in certain directions that perhaps the establishment is not entirely happy with nevertheless needing to do this, because I think we need to constantly challenge ourselves and constantly challenge what is the status quo. But I have to say that, you know, three decades on, I'm really optimistic, I suppose, in terms of where we're at right now and how the stars are starting to align. And I think that there's significant movement and traction in terms of embracing a more functional, integrative model, even within my profession. In fact, so much so that even this week, and I'm hoping to be in contact with the two conveners of this group, but an integrative medicine interest group has actually now been established with dietitians Australia. And prior to that we only had a discussion group, which doesn't sound like a big difference, but to go from a discussion group to an interest group, it's a lot more paperwork and it's a lot more paper filing and it just means that it's been elevated to a higher level. And so I'm really quite excited to potentially be in touch with the two conveners and see how our group, which is Amnec, the Advanced Medical Nutrition Education center and the Integrated Medicine Interest group, can work together largely to bring just quality education to those dietitians that are really wanting to learn more about integrative medicine. You are or have been an early adapter of holistic medicine in your practice. And, you know, I dare say that your chosen profession as a dietitian has been fairly conservative for many years. But I know that you studied all aspects of natural medicine many, many, many years ago. And you've incorporated various aspects into the way you practice and take a holistic beauty of patients, which makes you a fairly unique beast in the world, and certainly a pioneer. And pioneers often end up with arrows in their bums. But I guess you have a super understanding of health, how the body works, the processes involved. And we, in this podcast, we talk about patient stories, and for the purpose of this podcast, you are actually the patient. So you've been brave enough to put yourself forward. Thank you very much. Yeah. And in 2017, you presented to yourself, I guess, with severe constipation. You had a very strong family history of bowel cancer. And so I suspect, and I don't know, but I suspect that having severe constipation with your family history set up some sort of alarm bells for you. Would that be a fair presumption? Yes, it did. And I, you know, when it happened, I mean, I've always, you know, from early on, always had a somewhat, you know, sort of not volatile, but spasmodic digestive system. So I'd be prone to a little bit of bloating and a bit of constipation, et cetera. But you usually, it would just quite easily resolve itself by just being a bit more careful with what I would eat and drink. But this time around, in 2017, things felt significantly different. It was some of the symptoms that I had were really unusual, and they were concerning to me, given my strong family history of bowel cancer. And so I did what everyone would do. You go to your GP and you say, well, I need to get this investigated before I start trying to address this from a functional perspective. I want to rule out any underlying pathology. You know, I had the gastroscopy, had the colonoscopy, and it came back not unremarkable, but certainly no cancer, which was, I was happy to hear, but the results couldn't really explain in its entirety the symptoms that I was experiencing. And so then visited a few other health professionals to see how my symptoms could be improved. And basically, what I was experiencing at the time was a sort of chronic constipation. But other symptoms that I had was there was an intense level of histamine sensitivity. So, like, at night, I would experience this sort of intense, itchy skin without any rashes, per se. And the biggest problem was that every time I would then go to bed and, you know, my head would hit the pillow, I'd get this urge to want to empty my bowels and this intense sort of. Itchy skin, which would keep me up for a half the night. And so. And that went on for a good three to four months. Right. And I was trying to manage it in, in different ways, even in terms of my own knowledge, from a gastroenterology point of view. They tried to put me on certain medications, like resitrans, to try to regulate my bowels, etcetera. And, you know, I tried it short term, but it really did not have the sort of effect that I was hoping that it was going to have. And to be honest, the difficulty I had with it was that it was still just really being a band aid. We weren't getting to the root cause as to why I was experiencing these symptoms. And so that then led me down a path that I thought, well, I need to get a little bit more. I need to think a bit more laterally here. And I've got a friend of mine who's also a herbalist naturopath. And as practitioners, sometimes we need our own practitioners. I wanted to get a second opinion from him in terms of what he thought it might be. And one of the things that was interesting that always bugged me with regards to the colonoscopy that I had done was that in part of the results, it said that there was some eosinophilic infiltration in part of the bowel. Wasn't around the time of hay fever or anything like that. And so I've always tended to associate eosinophils with potentially the presence of undesirable bugs, including parasites. And I asked herbal medicine friend of mine what he thought, and he felt that I was probably right on the money with that. And so with a background in herbal medicine, I thought, okay, maybe now's the time. I actually completed the Dennis Stewart herbal medicine course way back in 2000, 920 ten. And I had never really intended to use potentially liquid herbs in clinical practice. My main objective at the time was because I was using some nutraceuticals with herbal extracts. I just felt it appropriate that I needed to be trained in that area in order to be able to justify practicing in this way. Right? And so that was really the main reason why I did the herbal medicine course. But then I decided to use myself as a bit of a guinea pig and sort of implement some of the formulas that I'd learned with then a steward, in terms of treating these sorts of issues. And I put myself in some liquid herbs for a good three to four months. What sort of herbs, and what was the purpose of the herbs? The way my brain works is that I sort of think, well, if I'm going to use potentially herbs with patients or myself, that. And in this particular instance, I was obviously needing to think about using some antimicrobial herbs, right? And so in doing so, I always like to support the person's physiology at the same time. So I put myself, I think it was three bottles of different herbs, and two of those bottles were actually antimicrobials. And I went at it fairly hard from the point of view, because I was, again, experimenting on myself. And I always start, I always, what I always say to patients, you always start low and go slow, and the body will tell you if it's happy or not. And so I made up a couple of liquid herbs. One was really, I call it an antiprotozoan herbal mix, right. And then I also made an antibacterial mix, and it had things like barberry and goldenseal and blue flag, myrrh bakel skullcap, nigella sativa, black walnut. I mean, I used, you know, artemisia annua, chinese wormwood. And I really believe that it was actually the anti protozoan herbal mix that really kicked him, kicked me into gear. Right. Within the first week, I started feeling different and intuitively better. And what about your bowel? And the bowel started to move. Right. The intense, intense itchiness started to reduce. And, you know, I attributed that to, I mean, a lot of the herbs, but particularly the Bakel skullcap. And I just also felt better in other ways. I mean, I'd found that I was obviously starting to sleep much better because it was actually, at that point in time, I was almost on the verge of having to close the practice down because I was not sleeping. And if you're not sleeping, you're not resting. And the reality is that the next day when you front up to work and you've got a patient in front of you and you've got to put your thinking cap on and start problem solving. I was struggling with that. I mean, I surprisingly pushed through that better than I thought. But I knew that my days were numbered, that if I kept going down the path that I was at, that I would have had no choice but to do the, almost the inevitable. In addition to that, I needed to think about, as I undertake this process, can I support my physiology better? Right. And I know that obviously, from the point of view of once you start taking some antimicrobial herbs, you know, you're getting. Start getting a little bit of die off, your liver is going to have to work a little bit harder, the kidneys are going to have to work a bit harder. So I made up a mix where I put in some. Some liver supportive herbs, like some, some dandelion, and I also used some schizandra, some St Mary's Thistle, and I put in some herba Ursi and couch grass to look at supporting my kidneys and looked at also supporting my adrenals. So looking at Withania Ashwagandha, some rhodiola, etcetera. And so I would then, you know, make some changes to those mixes because they'd last for about three weeks. And. And I did this for probably a good four months. And I just found that, you know, within about three months, my problem was resolved by about 80%. Right. The remaining 20%, I felt, was more structural. And so, as lots of practitioners unfortunately have to do, they sit a lot of the day, maybe. And at that time, I wasn't moving enough. So then I embarked on, you know, getting into some fairly serious exercise, some pilates, and also some additional fitness training called nine round. It's more station type training, where it's a bit of mix of high intensity, high intensity of interval training. Exercise is so important, isn't it? Because especially moving your gut muscles or your stomach muscles puts pressure on your intestines to increase movement of the bowel. Absolutely right. And what I actually found that where one of my biggest problems is that I would tend to get very tight glute muscles. And when my. My glutes were really, really tight, that would also contribute to my constipation. So by addressing that through specific exercises to release tension there, I found that the combination of what I had achieved through diet, as well as from a herbal medicine perspective, and the exercise is allowing me to talk to you today. You put yourself on a. What you told me was a Sibo style diet. What is that? What is a Sibo style diet? Well, basically, a Sibo style diet is almost like a bit of a. It's a more severe sort of low FODMAP diet, right. I mean, the objective was really to try to starve these opportunistic bugs. I actually didn't undertake or do a comprehensive stool analysis at the time. In hindsight, I probably should have, because just from my own interest in terms of potentially what I might have been dealing with, and I sort of went at it a little bit blind, particularly from the point of view of just assuming that I had sort of some parasite involvement, just in terms of symptoms, plus what the stool report was telling me, I felt fairly confident that that's what it was. And I thought, okay, well, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna trial it and just see how I go. And I think I was right on the money personally. But also, the other thing is that when you're using, for example, liquid herbs, you know, most herbs that are, they're antimicrobial, so they're actually working across the board, whether it be fungal, bacterial, parasitic, etcetera, they'll often exert a fairly favorable effect in that area. And unlike antibiotics, I find that they don't have as devastating an effect on the gut microbiome in combining that with the diet, with the Sibo diet, which was really more about minimizing fermentable carbohydrates and optimizing adequate protein, non starchy vegetables, etcetera. And then, as every few weeks went on, I would then start to then reintroduce a lot more of the fermentable vegetables and some other carbohydrates. Because as with, like, a low fODMap diet, you should never be on such a neat regime long term, because the gut microbiome can really suffer to the point where, in fact, you could potentially lose species and not be able to regain them. And the interesting thing was, was that I did put my, there was a focus on Sibo diet, but with specifically low histamine. Okay. And that made a huge difference. And the analogy that I often use with patients with regards to, like, a histamine sensitivity, it's a bit like the gut has a big part to play in processing histamine, particularly as far as activity of dio enzymes, etcetera. But your liver is really the organ that has to really deal with it. And the, the analogy that I'll often use is, you know, if you think of your liver as being a little bit like a bathtub, and you're pouring water into that bathtub, but instead of water, you're pouring histamine before too long, if you don't take the plug out and allow that histamine to be released and eliminate it, that bathtub is going to fill up and it's going to start to spill over. And once it starts to spill over, well, then you're now starting to sort of ensure that the regulatory mechanisms in place are not able to cope. And now the body will then start to use other avenues to then deal with it, whether it be the skin, etcetera. And so what I think I was able to achieve, not only was I not pouring as much histamine into my liver. Right. But I was also, through, particularly the antimicrobial, starting to knock off some of these bugs that were actually generating the histamine. And so I was allowing my body to be able to cope better with what was going on. So some of the histamine rich foods are things like cheeses, fermented foods, fish from memory, anything else particularly that's high in histamine? Well, being italian, you know, it was very hard for me to let go of. Let go of the passata and the tomatoes. That was particularly difficult, as with the red wine and the hard cheeses. You know, the parmesan had to take a backseat for quite a few months there. Again, histamine is found in a whole range of different foods. And as you quite rightly put it, a lot of fermented foods will generate more histamine. So. But for me, you know, you know, your dark chocolate, the red wine, and the hard cheeses and the. The passat and all that sort of stuff really had to take a backseat for quite a few months. When I actually then started reintroducing those histamine rich foods, I did so through a reintroduction and rechallenge type method. And so I just introduced them. And then every day, I'd have a little bit more until I would have what would be a standard quantity of that food. And if it wasn't affecting me, then I'd move on to the next food and then introduce other foods from there. And until I was able to pretty much be on a fairly broad, varied diet, which I'm, you know, I'm still on. Now, you also had a long history of flatulence, and it could be offensive. And so at some point, you considered a liver gallbladder flush for one of a good old fashioned naturopathic term, and I'm wondering what all that was about. Yeah, that was interesting. And, I mean, it's interesting. I always tell people that it's important to be observant of their symptoms. And I have to say that I used to, probably for many, many years before 2017, I'd be prone to getting a bit of wind, and it wouldn't smell the best. And I suppose you try to be as discreet as you can, obviously, but you live with it, and you get used to it. And before too long, it actually becomes normal. And I realized that that wasn't normal. And I said to myself, okay, well, I intuitively felt that there was something going on with my gallbladder. In fact, there was an osteopath that I still see occasionally now who does a little bit of obviously, body work, but incorporates a little bit of applied kinesiology into his practice. And as he's going around doing his thing, he sort of felt that there was something not quite right with my gallbladder. And that really sort of, it was almost like a light bulb went off. And it sort of said, this makes absolutely perfect sense to me because obviously your gallbladder produces bile. And if you're not secreting sufficient bile into the small intestine, then you can't emulsify fats as you should, as you should. And so you get fat malabsorption, and that can cause, you know, stinky wind. And I found that, interestingly, when I did the herbs, that improved significantly, but I would still be prone to wind, that. That I wasn't particularly happy with. And I did a little bit more research, and I looked at this liver gallbladder flush, which is not something that is really promoted much these days. And I understand why that is. It's one of those areas that really, it needs to be tackled with caution because you don't want to make things worse. And I did the right thing in terms of, you know, I went to the, to my GP and I said, look, I want to have a bit of a look at what's going on with my gallbladder. So we did an abdominal ultrasound, liver gallbladder ultrasound, to see if there was any stones present or if there was anything going on within that region. Any sort of the results came back and they came back largely unremarkable. And I've always believed that we know that through a process of increased intestinal permeability, that the body has the potential to absorb a whole heap of stuff. And there is no reason why bugs can't translocate from the bowel and disseminate into potentially other parts of your body, including liver, bile duct, etcetera. And because of that belief that potentially some of these bugs did not only just reside in the bowel, but they could be residing beyond the bowel, we know that flukes can exist within the liver, for example, there's every possibility that you could end up having certain bugs even in the gallbladder duct. Right. But knowing that, my belief was you've got to be very careful if you're going to engage in a liver gallbladder flush, because obviously you're going to be pushing whatever's in the gallbladder out. And if there is an unresolved infection, potentially in the bile duct, infections generally cause inflammation and they can potentially cause constriction. So the last thing I wanted was for a stone, if there was one, there, to get lodged in my bile duct and then end up having to be carted off the hospital with pancreatitis. So I sort of felt intuitively that if I'd done all the work beforehand in terms of cleaning out the pipes, as it were, and then if I engaged in a liver gallbladder flush after that, that there would be less likelihood of there being any, any consequences. So what are the mechanics of a flush? How do you do a liver gallbladder flush? I'll let you know, because I've done, I'm probably the, one of the, one of the experts of gallbladder flushes in this country because I've actually done quite a few of them, and I will often do them periodically, probably once, once a year, to maybe every 18 months. And my body sort of tells me when a flush is needed. Believe it or not, I start to get a little bit of an ache around the gallbladder region. And so to tell you what's involved, it basically takes about a day and a half to two days to complete. Usually a day and a half is enough. And so the first day, what you do is it's very important that the bow be just cleaned out. Right.

And so you basically take the, in the morning of the, of the day, when you start to prepare for the flush, you basically just, you can only eat fruit from around about nine, nine am till about 02: 21:06

00 p.m. and you can have as much fruit as you want. Then come the afternoon you prepare, it's about, it's about a literally of water with epsom salt. So, in fact, it's around three heaped tablespoons or almost dessert spoons of epsom salts in around about 750 to one liter of water.

And then around 04: 21:40

00 that afternoon, you have your first glass of epsom salts.

Second glass is around 06: 21:45

00. And then pretty much within a short period of time, there's trips to the loot, and it really cleans up the bowel. Right. So you have a loose ish or liquidy type motion. Well, it depends on, you know, if I was constipated, then it might be formed initially, but really by the end of it, I mean, you know, epsom salts are pretty, what I call pretty full on, you know, from the point of view of causing water to enter the bowel, the bowel and then causing that evacuation. Right. And in fact, one of the things that I've changed to the protocol, which has been a really enormous value to me. Was that the first time I ever did it? One of the problems the next day, and I'll get to the actual flush itself, but was this incredible level of dehydration. So it's really. Epsom salts can be really brutal if you're not careful with it. Right. And so what I did was, I'll just finish off the process of the flush.

So then what you then do is, is around 10: 22:44

00 that night, that same day, when you've eaten the fruit and having the Epsom salts, you prepare a concoction of 125 mil of grapefruit juice, 125 prune juice, and 125 extra virgin olive oil. So it's about close to 400 mil.

And you scall it, you drink it, and then you go to bed around 10: 23:04

00 and lie on your right hand side. Okay. Right. Why on your right hand side? Well, that's what they say to do. It's supposed to encourage drainage, right? Yep. And so then I thought, as someone who likes to experiment a little bit, I thought, I really want to see what comes out here. And so I ended up buying a disposable colander, because by the time I went to bed, my bowels, I'd gone to the toilet, and there was really nothing in the bowels. Like, there was no fecal material in the bowels left. Right. So I knew that the next day, once, eventually, I got an urge to go to the toilet, that what I should be seeing is, in fact, what actually would have come out of my gallbladder. Now, the next morning, the process is that you still take another glass of the epsom salts.

So around the 06:00 mark, and then at around about 08: 23:56

00 you take the last glass. So it's generally between three to four glasses of the Epsom salts, and then whatever comes out comes out. And I was absolutely gobsmacked in terms of the very first time that I did this in 2017. And I've actually taken. I've taken photos of this, and I've read a lot on. So are you there? Yeah. I just feel that I have to introduce a drum roll now because I'm ready to be gobsmacked. So, I mean, I couldn't believe it. I just could not believe it in terms of the stones that came out. And I've read on the Internet that, you know, some of the. Some of the practitioners or people who believe that there's nothing in this sort of liver gallbladder flush, that what comes out is the coalescing of the olive oil and what have you. These were full on stones that there's no way that they could have been formed by what I'd had consumed. Absolutely not. Right. Okay. And I've actually taken photos of them. And the relief that I experienced digestively post that liver gallbladder flush was just, I mean, it was incredible. And I now knew what it felt like, I suppose, to eat food, sometimes a little bit of indulgent food and not suffer. Wow. How big was the biggest stone, for example? Millimeters or centimeters? Oh, it would, I actually measured it. The one of them was, it was around the four centimeter mark. Wow. I mean, they, they should have landed me in hospital with that size. It should have landed me in hospital with potentially pancreatitis. And is it, I mean, 4 cm, could that travel down the common bile duct or is that something that was in the gut? All I, all I can say is that obviously bile ducts are often surrounded by, say, a little bit of smooth muscle. If, if there's, if there's no infection in there, then there's no inflammation, there's probably not going to be much constriction. So it's a lot more pliable. Right. And so things can sort of push through and just push out. But I made it a point of actually recording and photographing what came out because I just didn't want it to be hearsay and not because of any other reason other than to convince myself in terms of what I've done. And I think that, I mean, I can only go by, one, what I saw and two, how I felt thereafter. And it's one of the reasons why I will do it every year to 18 months because, you know, my diet's pretty good, but, you know, I love food and I, you know, I like to indulge a little bit. And I probably would not need to do a liver gallbladder flush if I didn't like saturated fat to any great extent. Right. Because I really believe that, you know, saturated fats tend to potentially contribute more to these sorts of issues. These sorts of issues more so than plant based fats like your olive oil, etcetera. Now, one thing that I want to add to this, which I think is important, and in fact, if I can find, I'm not sure if I've got it here, actually, I do actually have it here. I mean, I think, you know doctor Sandeep Gupta. Yes. Okay. Now, he came out with a quote, funnily enough, and maybe it's just the stars are aligning this week. But this quote resonated so much with me, not just for myself, but also for a lot of the patients that I see. And he. He basically says, you know, emotional trauma creates the weakness and stealth, infections and toxicity then take up residence in that bodily area. Right. Now, I can tell you that that is me. I mean, I had. I won't go into the details of the emotional issue that I had, but it was with a particular family member. Right. Yeah. And something that my body type is such that I don't do well with injustice. Right. And so what happened weighed heavily on me. And it's something that sort of was not. It was, you know, it wasn't something that I could resolve because like most issues, you need two to tango. And, you know, whilst I was more than amenable to address whatever the issue was, the other person wasn't, and it was not of my doing. Right. So. And that was clear. But it weighed heavily on me for several years. And we know in traditional chinese medicine that particularly with liver and gallbladder, a lot of it has got to do with resentment, anger, frustration, irritability. And with this particular issue, I would. I found that I would often get. I was really resentful, really resentful. And it was just brewing in me. And I'm convinced that that is what started getting the ball rolling with me with regards to this issue. And whilst I'm a lot better now, you know, seven years on, if I said that this issue doesn't affect me anymore, I'd be lying. And I dare say that that is what makes me a little bit more prone to issues with impacting on sort of gallbladder and liver function. And it's probably one of the reasons why I choose to do this every twelve months to 18 months, because it works for me and it allows me to just be more functional. Yeah. I think when I look at the history and culture of many medicines, throughout history, there's been a strong association between those emotions of resentment and anger with the liver. And many medical cultures had their own version of how that happens. And I think you're spot on there. I think that association is very strong. But I know in previous conversations with you that you had to find a way to try to forgive this family member for your own survival, I guess, and. And you came to recognize that. So I'm also interested in exploring how you came to that point where you decided that forgiveness was the only or the best way out for you and how that process started. Because for a lot of people. Forgiveness is, is not just a light switch you switch on and off. It's a process. And. Yeah, how did you start that journey? And how are you going with that journey? Yeah, look, and it's an ongoing journey. I mean, one of the therapies that I've used has been EMDR. It's this eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. I've never heard of that. So EMDR is a modality that a lot of psychologists are now incorporating in their practice. And it's really a technique whereby as part of the work that they do, they sort of get you to track their fingers. Right. And it's an opportunity to be able to sort of reprocess and become desensitized of whatever the issue is. The EMDR is just purely interested in you letting go of whatever the problem is. It doesn't care about the problem, it just wants you to let it go. And often a lot of these issues are trapped within us at a subconscious level. So you can see a psychologist till the cows come home, sort of dealing with CBT therapy. And whilst that can be really valuable in terms of providing you with strategies on how to deal with matters on a day to day basis, sometimes it just doesn't help to resolve the underlying issue, whereas EMDR sort of seeks to really, at a deeper level, at a more subconscious level, help to resolve the issue. And I through that. And it's not something that necessarily works overnight. And this is something that I've really just been recently exploring, but it's really an opportunity to allow the body to just accept that this is something that you should not be owning and this to let it go. You know, you can't, we can't change people necessarily, and we certainly should not be owning what other people are dishing out to us. And unfortunately, in life we will come across people who are, unfortunately, they are toxic to our being. And sometimes, you know, when it's a family member, it can be particularly hard to accept that. But in the, in the interests of self preservation, sometimes that's what you need to do. And I really believe, I mean, you know, sort of relative to my own experience, but even with patients that I see, I mean, there is no question that unresolved mental emotional trauma is so central often to their dysfunction and their diseased state that failure to address that those issues is fundamentally failure to address their health concerns. And that's outside my scope of practice. So I try to work in with people who are good at that and who are sort of aligned from a functional, integrative perspective in terms of embracing the sort of philosophies that we do. And I really believe that at the end of the day, if we're going to make a difference to people's lives, we need to collaborate with other professionals that align with us but do work in different areas to us. Yeah, look, I think I can support that with just about every patient and or practitioner I've interviewed in the last year because I just can't believe the message that keeps coming through case to case of some of the deep seated emotional traumas that are driving some chronic diseases. It's quite extraordinary. And one of the beautiful things that, you know, you and other holistic practitioners do is spend the time with people, allowing them to actually delve deeper into what's going on. Yeah. And, you know, starts to take it out of just the physical state and get a deeper understanding of the human, because humans are not just a physiological machine that we need to use either drugs or herbs or vitamins just to adjust all the time. You know, there are layers and. Yeah, I'm glad you found your way. So how are you doing now that you've activated that thinking process, started the process of forgiveness, how are you doing physically now? Yeah, I think I'm certainly much more stable. I mean, there's. There's less, far less regression, you know, in terms of, like, if, you know, if I get, you know, emotionally upset and angry, my body's a lot more resilient compared to where it would have been in the past. I mean, it's interesting going back a few years, if I'd had. If I was affected emotionally, it. It's almost like my goal. It would almost feel like my gallbladder would seize up and stop working, and then that would automatically trigger the constipation. I mean, it's quite remarkable. And we're talking within a day or two, I'd be back to square one. Right. Whereas that doesn't happen as much. And it's an area that I'm continuously working on because I think that even if the issue was from on behalf of the other person, they have their own issues. Right. I try to be empathetic and I try to understand that maybe, you know, where they're at is not necessarily a good place. And I try to forgive that. And I think that's helped me be able to sort of move on. And it's interesting because, and again, I always look at things from a family history point of view. And whilst in my family, you know, there's lots of metabolic syndrome related stuff, you know, related to, you know, obesity and diabetes and sort of cancer, etcetera. There is very little by way of autoimmune disease. Right. What I find is in a lot of patients with autoimmune disease, one, there's a very strong family history of autoimmune disease in their family. If you look far and wide and as soon as you throw in emotional traumas into that mix, my summation of all that is that that seems to be quite a critical component in potentially stopping or impeding people with autoimmune disease from recovering. Yesterday, I interviewed a lady who was diagnosed with very significant multiple sclerosis, who reversed it once she identified the emotional trigger from her childhood and worked on letting that go. That's a big story. It's massive and I believe 100% in that because all of a sudden the body, physiologically now, is in a position where it can actually genuinely heal itself. Yes. And we don't focus enough on that. I mean, I think in Australia it's starting to change. We know mental health is huge and supporting people with mental health is huge. I just think we need to think a bit more laterally in terms of what we can enable patients to have access to from an intervention perspective. And I think therapies such as EMDR or in fact, ego state therapy or resource therapy, which really work more at a subconscious level in the hands of a competent practitioner, could do a world of good potentially, when incorporated with other interventions that patients are receiving. Absolutely, Rocco, we'll wind up here. But, you know, one of the important things I feel like I got out of our discussion today was, what I love is your trust in your own intuition and belief. And I feel that's something that is quite lost amongst many practitioners and also the general public. We happily hand our health responsibility onto somebody else, but often just don't give us a moment just to stop and think about our body and what our body is doing, what our body needs and what we feel is the right thing for us at that particular time. So I'm glad you brought that up. Thank you. And I look, and I agree 100%. I mean, I think I always say to patients that I see, I say, you are your best doctor, you are your own best doctor, you know your body better than anyone. Right? What you need sometimes is guidance from practitioners and perhaps even other people who can help make sense of what it is that you're actually going through, but always go with gut feel. And I think that if something doesn't feel right, then it's probably not right for you. And I follow that for myself. And I found that it's been a value to me. And as I've become older and hopefully a little bit more wiser, I've become more disciplined. So, for example, roll back 30 years ago, I would have been more accepting of things that I shouldn't be accepting of. Right. Move forward 30 years time. I don't take that anymore. I'm very clearing and possibly a little bit abrupt. But if something is not right, then the person's going to know about it. And it's not because I'm trying to be disrespectful, but it's because I'm needing to protect myself now and not allow myself to be potentially a punching bag. Fair enough. And that's good advice, mate. So if people want to find out more about you, or perhaps reach out if you allow that, it's Brunswick integrative care. Brunswickintegrativecare.com dot au is your website. That's our website for the clinic. Yep, yep. And yeah, look, and also if people. Are interested in the sort of, you know, additional work that we do in terms of trying to educate other dietitians in this. This area of more. More of an integrated functional medicine space, then there's the app, the Amnec website that they can come to, which is the Advanced Medical Nutrition Education center, which is www.amnecame.com dot au. Thank you so much, mate. I really appreciate it and I really appreciate your honesty because, you know, it's sometimes hard to share some of this personal stuff, but it really helps people. So thank you. No, all good. Thanks, Daniel. Thanks for having me on.