Welcome back everyone to the Rebel Nutritionist podcast today. I’m super excited. I have Shira McManus on today, and really, , excited to have you on, Shira. This is all about, your story, what you’ve gone through, and, so thank you for doing this. Basically what I wanna share with you guys is Shira and I, and then I’m gonna let her talk about her whole story, so we’re gonna get into that.
But Shira was working, or has been working with me for a while, but originally sought me out for her SIBO treatment, and she’s gonna get into her journey and her story and what we’ve done together and so forth. But I guess what I also really want to say and a big part of what’s – doesn’t really lend itself to why we’re doing this.
I always like to do these kinds of podcasts with clients who have had great success in their journeys because I think it really lends a personal effect to people, other people that are going through this, right? So it’s one thing when I say what results people have had, very different when that person is here in the flesh and able to talk about it.
And especially someone like yourself, you have got such a huge TikTok following. And I wanna talk about that because I’m envious of that and but that has actually lent to us receiving, a lot of referrals, which we’re grateful for. So I guess, let’s talk about your journey who you are, talk a little bit about, your TikTok experience, your TikTok community and we’ll go from there.
Okay. Before all of this crazy gut stuff, gut health issues I was a really healthy, 41-year-old. I’ve never had chronic health issues. I’ve always weight trained and done Peloton, and I guess at the time before this, I thought I was leading a, quote-unquote, “healthy lifestyle,” and I thought I was eating food. But this whole experience forced me to look at ingredients and not just macros. I think I was a typical female in that way and was like high protein, high fiber, and I wasn’t looking at a lot of ingredients. So I was pretty healthy before all of this. And I did not set out to get a following on TikTok. I found myself very desperate after months of telling me, GI western medicine doctors telling me I was, quote-unquote, “normal” and all my tests were normal, and I was still sick. And so it was like one day in January, after a month or two of just feeling so sick, I posted on TikTok and was like who else is dealing with this?
‘Cause this is insane. I don’t understand. I’ve never gotten sick and just not got, get, gotten better.” And that’s how it started.
So were you… Because it, it took a little while, you were doing your own thing for a little while before we got together. Right?
Do you wanna talk a little bit? So you got, people on TikTok, you started to create this community. But I don’t think that was leading you down the road of…
You were still feeling like you were getting the runaround. You weren’t finding solutions, is what I’m-
Yeah. It’s such a long story, Because I, there were so many places I tried to find help before I found you. To start everything off, I got food poisoning, and then thought I had gotten better from that. And then a month later, got hit from the flu– by the flu, and everyone else in my family got better.
And it was, like, week two, and I was still sick. And I was like, “What the hel– what the heck is going on?” You normally get sick, and then you get better, and I just stayed sick. And it was debilitating nausea. I ended up in the ER getting IV fluids ’cause I was so severely nauseous, and I felt like food would just not move in my stomach. I had never felt that. I had never had constipation issues. I had never had gut issues, and it was like a month or two And I was traveling for a new job at the time, and so I went to a GI doctor. And I am not a crunchy granola person. I, in the past, have trusted Western medicine. So I go to the GI doctor, and they…
Even with good insurance, it was thousands of dollars. They had me do an endoscopy under anesthesia. A bunch of tests. Of course, they offer what insurance will pay for. It’s the steps they go through, and Western medicine is dictated by payers, which is insurance. And it can be infuriating because they want to cover up symptoms with prescriptions, like a Band-Aid.
So she kept prescribing me things, and I knew literally in my gut that it was not what I needed. I was like, “I don’t think that’s what I need, and I don’t wanna be on a prescription. Something is very wrong.” And I went through the process with her for a few months and didn’t get better. then finally, one of my friends who had some chronic health issues was like, “Have you ever thought about seeing a functional health provider?” And I knew a little bit about it, but not a lot. So I saw one local in Austin, and he was helpful. He started me on, basic things like glutamine and doing like a fast, seventy-two-hour fast. A few different things, and it was really then that I w- that I learned the treating the root cause that functional medicine
Is based on. I did that, and I think I got maybe twenty, thirty percent better. But I was still nauseous. My, my food would not move in my body, and I was all of a sudden impo– I could not eat high FODMAP foods. I couldn’t eat dairy. I couldn’t eat a bunch of things that I would normally eat. I never drank a lot, but even just a glass of wine would make me really sick. And, I would go to bed crying, starving, because I couldn’t eat without getting sick, and crazy bloating. And I just started to go down rabbit holes on TikTok and found a few things that I think marginally helped. I then started with the functional health provider in Austin to do a… I did, finally did a SIBO test, tested positive, I thought, I foolishly thought, “Okay, I have a diagnosis.
Great. This is great. Now I can fix it.” Little did I know that SIBO is one of the most complicated and impossible things to heal. There’s a SIBO support group on Facebook that has over 200,000 people, and there are people on there that will depress you because they will say, “I’ve had SIBO for 10 years.
I’ve had it for 20 years. There’s no cure.” And I started to believe them, and I think now a year and a half later on the other side, I realize those people did not go to functional health providers. They weren’t willing to change their diet. They weren’t willing to do a lot of stuff. And I think a lot of people become complacent and say, “Okay, I just have IBS,” that dreaded bucket that, doctors put you in when they are too lazy to figure out what’s wrong with you. And I would not accept that I was just gonna be sick for forever. So I did two weeks of antibiotics, the neomycin and the rifaximin, which are most commonly prescribed, which I later learned the efficacy rate is like under 50%.
And then I also learned you typically have to do multiple kill protocols. I…
Oh my God, I just thought at the beginning I was like, “Okay, I did the two weeks. Now I’m better.” of course, then I wasn’t. It was all this false hope of all these different protocols, and then a ray of hope thinking, “Okay, I’m better,” and then I’d eat something and be really sick for a week wonder why I wasn’t better. I did a six-week kill protocol. And then I was trying to do the rebuild phase, the reintroduction of food phase, and I was still sick. I think it was around month seven or eight, then I called you. I know you’re probably used to hearing from people when they are and they’ve already tried everything And I was like, “I’m a hot mess. I need a miracle. I need you to help me. I’ve done everything. It’s been eight months, and I’m still sick. I need help figuring this out.”
Yep. Yep, that was it through the tears, right?
So yeah, thank you for that. We’re gonna keep going with that, but I kinda wanna interject a couple things. And m- more to your point that, every, almost every single phone call that I get that’s around, gut stuff, SIBO stuff is exact- it was exactly your story, right?
But where people have gone the traditional route, they’ve gone on the medications, they’ve gone to functional docs, and they’ve gone on protocols, and I think the difference one of the main things that I wanna highlight in the way that we really need to pay attention to this and that I want people to really hear is that everybody’s journey is different.
So to be handed a standardized protocol, whether it is a antibiotic protocol, which again, highly ineffective even for people… I’ve had people, like yourself and others who have d- have done two and three and four rounds of the antibiotics, and yes, for, a few weeks they’re better, and then it just comes back because again, hasn’t, they haven’t gotten to the root.
And I had a conversation with someone yesterday. She’s been on that protocol and not better, and I think… And then what happens is, a lot of people then get concurrent diagnoses because their providers just want to… like you said, “Oh, I got a diagnosis. I felt better.” Because I think what happens is people want to feel validated, that it’s not in
Their head, that there really is something going on, and I’m not making this stuff up.
So when you get a diagnosis, it’s almost “Okay, I know what I have. I can treat it.” And I think that’s where… Then what happens is people get concurrent diagnosis, n- diagnoses. So for example, you I’ve got people now coming to me all the time ’cause MCAS, right? Mast Cell Activation Dis- Syn- Syndrome is now the big buzz thing.
And I’m like, “It doesn’t matter what we can label you as. Let’s not walk around with that label because then it, it becomes our identity”, and that’s a whole other thing that we need to talk about with people because I don’t want people to just be identified as their disease or as their condition. I’d rather you say, “I have a person who has SIBO”, not, “SIBO is my life.”
and it’s the same thing with MCAS, right? People are now coming and saying, “Oh I had SIBO, and now I have MCAS.” And I’m like no. It all starts in the same place, right?” You’ve gotta get to the root, and you really have to have someone who’s understanding what that root is. It’s not just look at the supplements that you throw at someone, and you can’t…
You have to do them… You have to really know the person you’re in front of, right? And understand, when we did our work, it wasn’t just the SIBO. We were also looking at your immune system, right? And we…
Yeah.
Go ahead, Rory.
what I think a lot of people don’t understand is SIBO creates a cascade effect in your body, and it- I did not know that until I was very far in. I thought, “Okay, I did all these things to heal my gut. Why am I still sick and so reactive to coffee and dairy and onions and garlic?” It wasn’t till I did the testing with you that you brought to my attention that my immune system was totally dysregulated
So that’s, that’s what I try and explain to people that if you don’t have someone who’s digging deeper and understanding there, there was a trigger, and that triggered, the SIBO, but what else is going on, below the surface that we need to pay attention to? And then what as a result of that becomes compromised, whether it’s your nutrients, whether it’s
All of those things. I think that it’s really important for people to hear the process is a process. Sometimes the diagnosis is the process of really understanding, peeling away the layers and figuring out where we’re going with this. And, and then also I think the other part of this in the diagnosis piece is the mindset piece, and we had talked about that quite a lot, and I
And that’s something that I feel not enough people are … either understand about or are willing, right? It’s understanding mindset and energy, and I know, you’ve done some work in that area. Can you speak to, your beliefs about, what your belief is about getting better?
Like you said, okay, I heard that, it took 10 years. That messes with your mind, right? I’m never gonna recover from this. How did you … what were the things that you did from that mindset and energetic perspective that, that kept you going?
I think there’s two barriers to entry when it comes to functional health for a lot of people based on the thousands of DMs and comments I’ve gotten on TikTok. Number one is money. People do not wanna spend hundreds of dollars on functional health, and I get it. I put it off for a while because of the financial part of it. number two, I think they can do their own research. In the world of AI, I thought, “I’m gonna pay $500 for this comprehensive stool test, and I’m gonna plug the results into ChatGPT, and it’s gonna tell me what to do.”
And I tried that. ChatGPT is wrong a lot. And also what worked for other people is not necessarily gonna work for you.
I joke that if you ask 20 different people what they did to heal their SIBO, you’re going to get 20 different answers. I found these creators on TikTok who went through what I went through, and I saw posts from a year ago with SIBO and then their posts today, and they were eating and drinking everything, and I was like, “Oh my God, they got better.
What did they do?” And I tried to copy the same supplements, and guess what? It didn’t work for me. So I think finally my husband was like, “What are you doing avoiding paying money to get better? This is your health. I can’t think of anything else that’s more important to spend our money on than you not being sick. Just, yes, it sucks, but it- it’s worth it.” So I think those are two things that I- are hangups maybe, and just realizing that it is so nuanced from person to person, and you have to do specific labs, whether it’s a comprehensive stool test, the blood and urine test I did with you, and you have to unpack that with a trained professional, not AI. But as far as, the healing process, I am the most impatient person on the planet, and I foolishly thought at the beginning I would do this one thing and I would get better. I am a s- I’m a straight A student. If you give me an assignment, I will do it, and I will expect results, and this is not something you can just throw all your attention at and check a box and get better unfortunately. is a lot of one step forward, three steps back, and the progress was not linear. And I would, add in one supplement and think, “Okay, this is gonna help me.” And then it would make me kinda sick for a week or two. Then all of a sudden I’d feel a little better, and then a month later I would try to layer in something else.
So it’s like very slowly layering things in, and knowing that the goalpost is gonna move, which is really frustrating. but I found when I was in the, in, at my sickest, maybe a year ago, I was very hopeless because with chronic illness, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. You’re, you have days where you’re like, “I might be sick for the rest of my life.” My husband and I cook and entertain and eat out and we travel, and food is a big part of our lives my marriage suffered. My relationships with friends suffered. My whole social life was on hold. It was really… It affected my mental health so much. The anxiety of going out to an event with friends or a restaurant and not knowing what was going to make me sick, what was in the food.
So there was a lot of anxiety, and the gut-brain connection is very real. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if my anxiety was making me sick or my sickness was making me feel anxiety.
Try both.
It’s co- a constant loop. So I’ve found that I really, the videos I would find online of, like hope of people saying, “You can get better,” were really powerful, and I needed that, so that’s what I’m trying to post on TikTok now, and I have so many people who are really sick right now messaging me being like, “Oh my God, I’m desperate.
What did you do?” I think that’s why I’ve been able to send so many people to you, and I didn’t post trying to do that. It’s just people are very desperate because they’ve already tried so many different things.
Yeah. Yeah. And right, and to no avail, and I think like you said, you start going down this rabbit hole of, “I’m just never gonna get better.” And
And I think something you said is, it is a slow process, and yes, you’re s- you, we as humans the emotional creatures that we are, we’re like, “Okay, I’m gonna do this and this,” like you said, linearly, “and I expect to feel this and this.”
And I still remember, getting multiple text messages or, the messages from you like, “I’m not feeling any better. This isn’t working.” And I’m like, “Please. Please.” And we’d have these conversations. I’m like, “Just trust me. Trust me. Trust the process. Trust that this is going to work.”
And, and there were times we had to pivot, right? But this is why I say you have to work with a practitioner who is going to listen, right? Someone who the… when I put someone on a protocol, I’m like, “You need to let me know in two or three days just how you’re feeling because we may have to pivot.”
We may have to change on some of these things. We have to really see how the body is responding because everybody responds so differently to different supplements or different protocols or different foods or whatever it is. And so I think understanding that it is nuanced and having a practitioner who will listen to that is really what functional medicine should be rooted in.
Functional medicine should not be rooted in, “Here’s a supplement. I’ll talk to you later. Here’s just a list of protocol, and let me know how… And check in a month.” It really… So I think that’s one piece of it. And yes, the other piece is the expense and, these tests are expensive.
They’re not covered by insurance, and it’s… look, I always say to people, “I’m not up-charging on the tests.” I don’t, right? Because I feel like you’re working with me, and you’re paying for my time to interpret the tests, so I’m not double-dipping, right? There are plenty of people who do, and that’s their prerogative, and that’s fine.
All to say that I’m very aware of, the financial aspect of what functional… of what… Let’s put it this way. Of medicine that is not covered under insurance. It would be nice if we could find the day and see the day that functional medicine is recognized just as Western is and is covered by insurance because people have a right to advocate for their health, to feel good, and they’re paying so much money for insurance.
And shame on these companies that are not reimbursing for functional, medicine and-
I think that also I’ve tried to stress to people, they’ll message me and say, “How much money did you spend? How many points did you have to do?” And I always remind them, “Listen, not all functional medicine providers are created equal.” A lot of them, like these pseudo trainers on Instagram, they’re, like, not experienced.
They make a one-size-fits-all training program for weightlifting for people of all different backgrounds, and it’s you really, you have to interview whatever functional health provider you’re hiring. And if you get a good one who knows what they’re doing, you’re not gonna be paying them for years and years.
You might only have to do four appointments with them or six appointments if they really know what they’re doing. And obviously I know it depends on their health issues, but if you hire someone that knows what they’re doing, it shouldn’t be this forever
No.
That you have to do.
So
my, feeling is you invest on the front end, and the back end will g- will provide you dividends that were far, far exceeded what you spent. If you think about it over time, the time and the money and the energy, add that up in dollars and cents and see what it comes out to.
I will tell you, it’s pennies compared to, what we charge. I think that’s hugely important for people to understand and to, be willing to lean into. And I think that’s the other part that you said. You can’t do this work and ex- and not do the work, right?
You can’t enter into it. Like you said, you’ve got to really be willing and able to do what is asked of you for the time that, that is needed to really see the benefits. To go into this and, and think, go… What were you gonna say?
I think it’s like hiring a personal trainer. You can pay them for the best workouts ever, but if you’re eating, fast food five days a week, then it’s gonna be a waste of money. And do you feel like most of your patients, their expectations really have to be managed with the timeframe?
Oh. Oh. Oh my gosh, yes. I have all day long, right? I have people who say to me, “I’ve been doing this protocol two, three months and, why am I not completely healed?” And I said, “This is not how the body works.” I think if people really understood what biochem- you know what happens, if our skin was clear we could saw what happened, underneath the surface, how the body works, what that biochemistry looks like, how gut, how gut health works over time.
It, again, like anything, like what you said, it’s not linear. The body doesn’t respond… people come to me and say, “Oh, I’ve done this for, I’ve I’ve done what you asked,” right? A- for two, three, four months.” I’m like, “No. No, this is years,” right? A- and it’s not just… And I think the other, it’s not like something you go on and off of.
And I think that I, speak to that all the time for people who have, forget about just gut issues, chronic illness where people have not healed. I said, look, I’m a cancer survivor. I did this work to heal and to recover after I got my treatment, and I have been a work in progress ever since.
I never went back. I always just keep going for- right? I have always been, how do I elevate my health? How do I elevate my longevity? That’s what I want people to get from this. That this is not just I am healing my gut. Yes, I’m healing my gut so I can get back to feeling like the human that I used to f- to feel like.
But if you learn anything, it’s about how do I then take this and continue to use this for my health and longevity as I age? ‘Cause look, none of us are going backwards at least not yet. And so I really think that’s such an important message that I want to share with people, that this work in my opinion, should never end.
It’s always about how do you make your health better? How do you improve upon what
Yeah.
you’ve done,
I remember when you started me, right off the bat on all these supplements from Vimergy, and I, spent a decent amount of money getting all of ’em. I went on a trip to Europe. My whole carry-on was all of my crazy supplements. It was so much work, and I was so diligent. And then after a couple months, I was like, “Okay, I’m done.” you were like no. Y- you’re gonna be taking these for a while.” I thought I would finish the bottle, and I was good to go, and I’m still taking the majority of those supplements now. And I still get DMs and comments saying are you normal now?” “Can you eat anything now?” I’m like yeah. I can eat anything, but I don’t choose to eat because why? I’m in my 40s, and I think there’s a very sharp fork in the road when you’re middle-aged and you’re going through perimenopause and you’re a woman between your friends who’ve always taken care of themselves and their friends who just kinda got by.
Oh, yeah
your friends who just started trying to get by are starting to not look so great and not feel so great. So yes, I can go eat Taco Bell every day, but I’m not. And
Thank God
I choose to eat n- 95% of the things that I eat from home because I can control what goes in them, within reason because I wanna l- look and feel good,
Yeah. And that is I think that’s a very important point is that you really, could you go back and eat the stuff that was garbage? Sure. Is that a good idea for anybody, forget about, with any kind of history? No, because again, if, what you put on the end of your fork will determine your health in the long run.
It just does. And like I said, that longevity of it is how do I really wanna manage my health moving forward, and what do I want my health to look like in my 40s and 50s? Because here’s what’s gonna happen, is that women who are going through perimenopause and in their early 40s and then start to get
If you don’t get your foundation together … I was gonna say shit, but if you don’t get your foundational health together at that point, you’re gonna get into menopause and it is really going to be a shit show because a lot happens, not because of menopause per se. A lot happens because the foundation with which you’re going into it is just unstable, and that’s where the rubber really meets the road for, women and even men.
Men go through, andropause at some point. All to say that, yeah, this journey should start as soon as it can right? Regardless-
Think a lot of women… there’s a book di- by Dr. William Davis called Super Gut that
Oh yeah
applied to me, some of it didn’t, but it was really interesting. And I think he said that, th- like more than half the people who have SIBO don’t even know that they have it. And I follow a lot of these content creators on Instagram and TikTok, what I eat in a day, what… And it’s like all these beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables. And I will look through the comments, and just today I saw 10 comments on this one girl’s video who has a million followers saying, “How do you eat all those vegetables?
I get so bloated every time I eat.” They do not understand that is not normal. Your body should be able to handle fiber and raw vegetables and beans. And people so quickly become complacent with everything. There are people who become complacent with, “No, I just have to take Tums every day.” That’s just…
Or, “I just have to take Pepcid AC every day,” or, “No, my back just always hurts.” you should not be bloated after every meal, and I think a lot of women are because we have to deal with hormones. We just chalk it up to hormonal issues. And I think most people, I have girlfriends who saw me go through this whole ordeal, and they were joking may- wait, maybe I need to get some of these labs because I have some of the things that you’re talking about.”
So people accept their norm as normal
Because again the conversation, prevention isn’t sexy. Nobody’s … you’re not going to the doctor and they’re not looking at your labs. First of all, they’re not even doing the right kinds of labs. But think about it. Most people go to the doctor, they do their routine just minimal blood work, and the doctor’s “Okay, you’re fine.”
But nobody really, or is it’s the rare person who’s looking at the doctor and going, “Oh, but what can I really do to optimize my health, Doc?” “What can I do to make things better?” Nobody’s doing that, and nobody’s looking at the doctor and going, “Where’s my vitamins and minerals?” And, “Oh yeah, how is my immune system?
How is my gut?” Nobody’s really doing that, right? We’re accepting normal for normal and just thinking that you’re right, like you said “Oh I’ve been constipated my whole life. Oh,
yeah. People take MiraLAX every day for their whole lives. And when it comes to the testing, the one, one of the tests my GI doctor did, which was like, “We’re gonna do a stool test.” I was like, “Okay, that sounds really unpleasant, but fine, I’ll do it.” Let me tell you, if you’re pooping in a bag, it’s not fun.
It’s not great. I drop it off, and then afterwards find out they only tested for H. pylori because that’s all insurance will cover. And I said wait a minute.” I didn’t have the wherewithal at that time, ’cause I wasn’t as educated as I am now, to say, “No, I will pay cash if I’m doing this. I want you to test for everything.” I didn’t know to ask for that, and I was like, “Wait, you tested for one thing. I don’t wanna have to do that again.”
Yes. Yeah. No, and it’s true, right? So again there’s that, y- people are misled because they think they’ve done a stool test. I get that too, right? “Oh, I’ve done a stool test with my doctor.” I’m like, “Not nearly comprehensive enough.” And they don’t necessarily understand that, and, educating people around that, I think is super important.
And and then, the other thing that I think that you’ve said that I wanna circle back on, because it is so in everyone’s face, which is that whole AI thing, right? And I do get people all the time, “Oh I did my functional health, and I did my stool test, and I did my genetics, and I did this, and I threw it all into ChatGPT, and this is what it told me.”
And I’m like, “Great.” Whether it’s ChatGPT, A, Grok, whatever it is, right? H- Claude, any of those. Sure, it’ll spit out what there… what was fed in, right? And the algorithms and all that kinda stuff that fits the here’s the result. Here’s what you should do based on that.” But unless you have someone who can look at the big picture as a diagnostician, which I think requires a human, to really put these pieces together, AI is just linearly going, “This is what you have.
This is the correlation, and this is what you need to do.” But nobody’s looking at the context. And the biggest piece is the mind-body connection. We know the gut-body connection. We know if there’s stress, if there’s nervous system dis- dysregulation, if there i- are lifestyle things, environmental exposures, all of these things are huge, that AI never takes into consideration, right?
Your relationship, your trauma. That’s a huge one. I don’t care. Big trauma, little trauma, mild stuff. If you’re not looking at your relationships over time, right? Your… where you grew up, all of that, and AI is not looking at that, and I think that’s the other missing piece that so many people don’t realize.
I have had a conversation recently with a client who came with gut issues, and ongoing gut issues. SIBO is one of them, but there’s other things. We start digging deep into her timeline, there’s a significant amount of trauma that has contributed over time to what is going on, right?
When your body is in fight or flight and survival all the time, it is not in rest and recovery and repair, and you need to be in that if you’re going to heal
That’s crazy. It’s, I know, G- ChatGPT can be helpful. When I was reintroducing food, created a schedule for me to, how long to eat garlic and what quantities, and then what ingredient to do next. So it can be helpful, but not really when it comes to diagnosing and treating specific,
Situations
yeah, all that adjunctive stuff, great. You wanna make up a meal plan, wonderful. You wanna do all that stuff, look it’s wonderful to be able to do that. But I think ultimately, at the root, it’s never gonna be able to do what a human can do in terms of interpret, right?
I, I wanna ask, I know we’ve gone through, through most of the, your journey, but what would… I guess part of it is like you said, where, you’re telling people, “Okay there is a light at the end of the tunnel.” And what would be that moment for you that you were like, “All right I know I’m healing.
I got this. I…” That th- that this is working. Do you remember what, when that moment was and you’re like, ‘Cause you talk about the I felt hopeless.” Where, what was the moment that you were like, “Oh, wow, this is I’m better”?
I was, my diet was pretty limited. I think people’s world gets really small with what they’re eating when they’re- because they slowly eliminate foods, and then they can’t eat anything ’cause they’re so reactive. think the big most important thing when people say they wanna heal is, I think it’s two parts.
You can correct me if I’m wrong, and you made me realize this. The first part is the kill phase. You have to get rid of the bad bacteria. But unfortunately, herbals and antibiotics get rid of the good stuff as well. So there’s a big rebuild phase, and I remember I did the SBO kit phase one. It was 90 days.
It was like a million pills. And I did it, and I was like, “Okay.” And I was still kinda scared to reintroduce food. And you were like, “I highly suggest we do a rebuild phase. There’s a phase two SBO kit.” And I slowly added in like sodium butyrate, but I really had to build up the good guys in my gut again, and I was scared to add in food ’cause I had done it and gotten just false hope so many times, thinking, “Okay, I’m better,” and then I’d add in a food, and then would get sick. And I remember having a conversation with you telling you all the things I was doing. And you were like wait. You can’t eat garlic or onion or beans?” And I said I don’t know.” And you were like you need to try. It’s time.” And I was like, “Okay.” I think I was scared. I got, just got so used to those things being off limits. I was like, “Okay. Merrel said it’s okay, so I’m gonna do it.” And I started with a fourth of a teaspoon of cooked garlic for a few days. It was like, okay, little reaction. I was My anxiety was so heightened every time I would eat something new. was scary. And, I would be a little bloated.
And I was like, “Okay, let’s go up to half a teaspoon,” and then a three-fourths of a teaspoon. And as soon as I could tolerate a decent amount of cooked garlic in a meal, then I was like, “All right. Let me move on to onion.” And it was like, oh my God, I’m okay. My husband and I cook nonstop. It’s our love language, and we make homemade marinara and really healthy stuff and beans. And so I’d gotten used to making like crappy low FODMAP marinara, and I slowly started to add in like the onions and, this was months. It took a really long time. I am typically like full throttle, no patience. So I had to really learn take that approach. And then I was eating apples. I missed apples so much, and cherries and all the high FODMAP fruits and vegetables. And then it was like, okay, I’m gonna try lentils. Those are supposed to be, That’s I tried lentils, and then slow- tiny bits, and then beans. So I slowly built up, and then it was like, “Oh my God,” “I am gonna be normal again. This is crazy.” The no coffee thing killed me. I love coffee, and I wanna be a tea drinker, but I hated it. I tried to gaslight myself into putting half-and-half into my tea, and it was just never the same. So I slowly was able to enjoy coffee again, and I, for work, will bring coffee to doctor’s offices, and wasn’t able to enjoy any of that for months. And finally, I remember getting Starbucks for one of my clients and enjoying that coffee, I texted a picture of it to my husband and said, “Oh my God, I just had coffee for the first time in over a year with one of my offices.”
This is a miracle, and I wanted to cry. And every time we’d go out to eat and I’d have a meal, it would be like a 12-hour waiting on pin, on pins and needles. Am I gonna get sick? Am I gonna get sick? And I didn’t. I used to, and it was very scary. And then once in a while, having a glass of wine and being like, “Oh my God, I didn’t die.”
“I’m not sick. I’m okay.” So it was very slow and gradual, and it was baby steps, and I still pinch myself when I can… just, I love cooking more than anything, and when I can make, an amazing bean recipe with goat cheese on it and onions and garlic it’s amazing. It feels really good
Yeah. Yeah. And and thank you for that. I think people do need to hear that with the caveat that, yes, it takes time and everyone’s journey is different, but that there is hope even for those people that have been living with it for 10 year- if they’ve, if you’ve been living with it for that long, you just haven’t met the right person to treat you yet.
Even-
I have comments like that, and I say, “Have you seen a functional health provider? And if not, why?” And they say I never thought of that.” And my mind, it’s mind-boggling to me. I had lunch with a client who was a doctor in his 60s, and he has severe gut issues, and we were eating lunch talking about all the things he can’t eat. He’s a doctor, a urologist, and I said, “Have you ever seen a functional health provider?” He’s “I don’t know what that is.” And he laughed at me. I think, from what I understand the research on gut health is 20 years old. It’s in its infancy, and we’re just now learning about it, and they are not teaching that in the curriculum at med school. And it is so sad for the people who just, they just don’t know. I have all these comments, people who have been sick for 15 years. I’m like, “Why are you accepting that?” Invest a few hundred dollars. Get one functional health provider appointment. Make two appointments. Do one lab if you can’t afford it.
Do, something, and they just being sick, and it is insane to me. I just refused to accept it.
And good for you. And I, and, a- and again, good for the people that are out there. But I think, like you said what I would say to a lot of these people out there, whether they’re phys- I’ve worked with physicians as well who haven’t been able to diagnose themselves through the modern, modern medical system because modern medicine’s great at acute illness, right?
You break a bone, send me to the ER, great. All day long, right? You have appendicitis, great . But anything that is a chronic, long-term health concern is not treated through modern medicine because it’s not in their toolbox, right? The medic- medical school don’t teach nutritional biochemistry. A doctor
I hear this all day long. “Oh, my doctor said I should be on XYZ diet.” I said, “Your doctor knows that from probably a commercial they saw on TV,” “certainly not from their training.” And, they have no clue about nutritional biochemistry, nor should they be making… Really, they shouldn’t… They’re not qualified to make nutritional recommendations.
But, but-
And the nutrition thing, they don’t most people don’t understand that 80% of your chronic health issues can be fixed a lot of the time with diet, and I think people in denial about how
yeah.
food can be
Oh, 100%. And because a lot of people don’t want to change. They don’t wanna hear that I, oh, I can’t have this, or I shouldn’t have this, and they wanna do everything else but that. Or, the whole exercise piece. Look, we could talk for hours about all of these different things.
But I think, suffice to say that if … Yes, looking at the, when a regular physician says, “What is functional medicine?” Shame on them for not really advocating for their own clients who need to be treated, right? Or … A- and look, and not all functional medicine providers, just like not all physicians, are created equal, and I think you do have to interview and make sure that you’re not just ending up with a lot of tests and false hope and just supplements, right?
You’ve gotta really make sure that someone knows how to put all these pieces together for you, and I think that’s a big piece of this. So yeah, all to say, we are beating the same drum, and I I appreciate your time in explaining all of this. And I think, other people really do need to hear it from you, right?
From someone who’s gone through it, who’s now on the other side, who was deep in it, in the despair, and, now can lead a, normal, healthy, vibrant life.
Yeah
think as a result, I do wanna talk, ’cause I wanna be mindful of our time, but tell us all what you’re doing now. You’ve got this new venture I’m excited to hear
I think as cheesy as that saying is that, this whole thing happened for me and not to me, I had to believe that at times because I spent my 20s and 30s just wanting to look a certain way and caring about health. And now I, instead of having a protein bar with 50 ingredients or a protein powder with 50 ingredients ’cause it has good macros, I’m now looking at what the ingredients are. And so many things in our food system have been made to be shelf-stable because companies wanna make money. And I think also consumers want convenience, and I get that, but I think there is a happy medium. You do not have to spend eight hours cooking every Sunday. And so my husband and I love entertaining, we love cooking, and there are so many things that we now make at home that are not shelf-stable, and we take pride in that.
Marinara, salad dressings, making your own bread baking things. And so we created a brand called Shelf Unstable, and we have, Chef Unstable. We have a lot of friends who are always asking like how do you do this? How do you do that?” And I’m like, “Oh my God, if they knew how simple this was.”
We are not that, we’re not trained chefs. We figured this out, making your own bone broth. It’s cheaper, and it’s better for you than any garbage packaged collagen supplement. so many things you can do at home. And we love teaching. My husband loves teaching, but I have found that I guess I like it too from the TikTok situation. So we created this idea to basically be half dinner party catering and half education cooking class. And the idea is we’re gonna have people get maybe five, six couples at their house, and everyone pays a certain amount, and it’ll be a different theme. We might have like Italian night, where we teach you how to make your own marinara, store it in Mason jars, put it in the freezer so you can meal prep it.
We’re gonna do a a homemade ramen one, where you can te- we teach you how to make your own bone broth ’cause it’s cheaper and it’s healthier for you. And so I’m so passionate about ingredients now. And I do protein powders every once in a while, but I get the ones that have five ingredients, not 50. And am a busy, working mom, and I get it that people don’t have time, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. We put aside an hour or two on Sundays, and I whip together a dressing in a Mason jar, and it lasts the whole week.
Yeah
Because, think starting in like the 1940s, a lot of food manufacturers started to add emulsifiers in things and gums and things that really disrupt the gut to make things look pretty on a shelf. And the, I don’t know, packaging is just, the FDA, it’s like the Wild West. They really do not
No.
a lot of things
Nope. No, but not only do they not monitor, but they allow so many questionable, unhealthy, unsafe ingredients. If anybody follows The Food Babe, and you follow all these women who are champion- championing for better food labeling and better product and getting out all of the garbage and the chemicals in our food it’s crazy what’s going on.
And I… it’s a travesty really because w- who it’s really affecting is our kids, right? The younger generation who’s eating all this garbage food and packaged and processed food that’s loaded with chemicals, and it’s just disrupting their hormones, and their guts, and their immune systems, and so it’s terrible.
But I love that you’re doing that. Not only, I think there’s a component, I’ve always said this, I always have felt like the downfall of our society has been the disintegration of the family meal, meaning community, sense of community, sense of connection. So the fact that you’re doing this and you’re bringing together people, and you…
it is this sense of community, and it’s offering connection. I think there’s something so special in that, and so wonderful and beautiful, and I love that you guys are doing that. So I’d love to be able to support you no matter how, what that looks like. But-
Yeah
I was never a great cook, and I think then COVID happened, and the number one thing that the number one piece of advice I can give people is just don’t be afraid to screw up in the kitchen, ’cause that’s how you learn. There was a lot of trial and error. And I think our goal is to take people from all their different skill levels and make them realize they can build on that, and you don’t have to be intimidated.
And cooking should be fun. There were a lot of meals that I would make that did not turn out right, and I learned from it. And now I, a lot of times I can kinda use a recipe as a blueprint, but I don’t have to. And you have to just be okay with experimenting, and it’s okay if you
Yep.
mess something up
I, listen, I feel like that all the time. People always say how, “You’re such a good cook. You da.” I’m like, I wasn’t trained. It… I, over my whole life I’ve st- been self-teaching, and modifying, and redoing and, and it’s very rare that I have a recipe because I just wanna experiment, and if it doesn’t come out good, I’ll do this all the time.
The kids’ll come over for dinner and I’ll make something and they’re like, “Oh, it’s so good.” And I’m like, “Oh, but I needed to do this,” right? But it comes with trial and error. And like you said, I love that you said there is… You just keep experimenting, right? So if something has too much of something or too little of something, the next time, the next time you change it.
But it’s not like anything bad is gonna happen. I think that people are afraid. There is this intimidation factor that we really need to get over. And I think we also need to learn in society where it’s so fast and fast-moving and fast-paced, and everything is go, we need to slow things down a little.
If we really wanna… And I tell this to my clients all the time. Yes, I know we want convenience, and I know. But here’s the thing. There’s a price to be paid both with our bodies and our health for convenience. So we’ve gotta find that happy medium of where am I willing to maybe spend a little more time in the kitchen, spend a little more time prepping for my health because otherwise on the other end, I’m gonna pay for it
Yeah. It’s, it doesn’t have to be, like I said, hours in the kitchen. I think we’ll front load a two hours of effort on a Sunday, and then during the week when we’re running around for kids’ activities and work and school we don’t have to cook every
Exactly.
really is time-saving.
Yeah
It, like the choose your hard. Either
Choose your heart, exactly. It’s all heart. It’s hard being sick, and I, yes I’ve always loved that, right? But but yeah, so I just, yeah, we… You and I could probably talk for hours, but I do wanna be mindful of the thing, of the fact that we both have things to do. But I really wanna say thank you for trusting me with your health, and I’m always humbled to be able to help someone.
And, and also grateful for you sharing the story because it definitely has helped us. And look, we are just looking to change lives for the better, right? I always say I wanna heal one person at a time, and that’s the work that I’m so passionate about and that I love doing.
So thank you for allowing me to help you and subsequently help others. And any last words?
Just, I just want people to realize they don’t have to live a mediocre existence, that can get better and to be advocates for their own health because there’s you really do have to fight because the system is really not set up advocate for us, unfortunately
Yes. Yes. I love that. So thank you. We will be sharing all of your contacts so more people can follow you on TikTok for all your great stuff that you do. I’m gonna have to… Offline, we’re gonna have to talk about the things that I need to do, ’cause I’m definitely an amateur when it comes to that. But we will do that, and we’ll be in touch.
And we hope that this has touched you in one way, shape, or form. And if you know someone who would benefit from this, please share this and subscribe, and and go follow Shira for all her great stuff. And we will see you on the flip side. This is your Rebel Nutritionist signing off. Make it a great day, everyone.
