The following is a transcription of a Facebook Live for your convenience. Please either read the transcription below, or watch the video itself! Enjoy!
Hi, everybody, I'm Dr. Yousuf Siddiqui. I'm a naturopath at NutriChem Compounding Pharmacy. And today, I'm going to be doing a follow up to the blog that I… that we posted on the NutriChem website about John, a 43-year-old burnt out male. But before I get started, what I want to talk about really, really briefly is the importance of getting to the root cause of what is going on in a lot of my patients. You know, I have quite a few patients who come in who are frustrated, they… they've been searching for answers, and they really struggle to get answers as to why they're feeling unwell.
And so today, I thought I'd present a case about John, who his name's obviously not John, but he's a 43-year-old male, and I see this quite a bit. And he came in… he came in with just not feeling like himself. I mean, he was fatigue, it was affecting his marriage. His confidence had… had… had dropped quite a bit. And I remember when I first met him, he came in with his wife. He was looking at the ground, there wasn't a lot of eye contact being made. And he was having trouble formulating sentences and… and really connecting in with what was going on in his body. He gained 25 pounds, he his body was really, really stiff. And he was really concerned about, you know, what was going on. I mean, he had thought that, you know, it's part of the aging process. He'd been working too hard, stressing himself out too much, and this was a consequence of his actions. But he reached a point where he started to ask questions within himself like, “Could my life be better? Like… like, could this pain go away? What would my life?” be like if he could go back to playing sports the way he used to?
And, you know, along his journey he had tried to (which I write about in the blog), he tried to go back to the things that had worked really well for him. But in this event, it wasn't… it wasn't working. So, he had seen his medical doctor, gamut of tests were done. He was told to manage his stress. And he was really frustrated by this answer. So, his wife actually had booked them in for an appointment and she attended the first appointment. So, I'm not going to go into details that were covered in the blog, but we did some testing. We did a comprehensive blood test to see what was going on in his serum. And what came back was subclinical hypothyroidism. So, that's where your thyroid’s not performing optimally. We know your thyroid gives you energy, it helps with your metabolism. It does a lot of different… has a lot of different functions within the body. I can go into detail. But what also… he also presented with was… was, you know, that ‘dad bod. Bloat. So, he… his… his abdomen was slightly distended. He just thought, “I'm in my mid-40s. This is what happens.” So, what we did was we requisitioned what's called the SIBO breath test. And the SIBO breath test helps to evaluate the microbiome and determine, “Is there an imbalance?” and then which category it falls into.
So, that's what I'm going to pick up on. So, he tested positive actually, for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth on the hydrogen side. So, the hydrogen, he was over… the bacteria in his gut were over producing what's called hydrogen… well, hydrogen. And that's a treatment on its own. So, we… like with a lot of my patients, we treat a lot of gut health. There's a preparatory phase where we open up the detoxification pathways in his body. There's an eradication phase where we kill off the excess bad bacteria in his gut. And then we move through kind of the restoration phase, which is where we start restoring the lumen of the intestine where we're really hammering down the good bacteria within his colon so that his… it was small intestines and his colon, so that his body can start to absorb the nutrients, he can start gaining energy from his… from his… the food that he's eating. Because at the end of the day, food is what gives you energy. It's what nourishes your body. So, when we fix the gut, it has a cascade effect on the rest of the processes in your body.
So, we went through this process. When he came back from his follow up from that protocol, he… like immediately, there was a decrease in his inflammation. When I palpated his abdomen, when I… when I did abdominal exam, I could actually press into his abdomen and feel his organs, were before, he was so distended that it was quite hard. And what he had noticed, the big thing for him was that he was no longer falling asleep after dinner. This was his big thing. One of one of his major challenges that he had was that, after dinner, he’d fall asleep, he wasn't engaged… he wasn't able to have the energy to start engaging with his… with his kids. And that was causing a lot of stress in his… in his marriage, because a lot of the day to day activities was falling onto his wife's shoulders as opposed to him.
The other thing that he noticed, the other big thing that he noticed with the decrease in inflammation, is that his joints, the joint pain, the joint stiffness that he was feeling, the, you know, tried stand… going from sitting to standing was no longer a challenge for him. He could go for a walk and his ankles wouldn't hurt, which was what was another thing that was quite… was bothering him quite a bit. So, this kind of systemic decrease in inflammation and increased quality of life. And from all of that, the other thing he noticed was that, when he woke up, he used to, you know, wake up in the morning, kind of groggy, feeling really fatigued. And by rebalancing his gut flora and by balancing and helping others thyroid, you know, wake up in the morning, energized and completely refreshed. He even noted that he started waking up with morning erections, which is a sign that his testosterone is actually doing what it's supposed to do.
So, all of a sudden, in about 3 months of treatment, 3 or 4 months of treatment, this guy who came in who was completely fatigued, burnt out, lost and quite frustrated, was all of a sudden working out, he’d taken off weight, he’s participating in like his daily household routines, he was more engaged with his kids. His partner, his wife, they were married… or are married, was ecstatic, because all of a sudden, she felt like she didn't have to look after another child for her. All of a sudden, she felt like her husband was an equal partner within their marriage. And for him, because his wife's response was so happy, his confidence started to go up. Their intimate life improved significantly. And… and they were able to reconnect again as a couple.
So, the take home message that I'd like to talk about in terms of this case study is that when… when… when… at least for my patients, when my patients aren't feeling like themselves, it's really important to investigate what the root of it is. And those of… a lot of my patients watch these videos and so a lot of this will just sound really quite familiar. But the important thing is to remember that there are trusted health care practitioners out there who can walk you through this process, who can… who can help to identify what is going on in your body and help to strengthen it. And based on my clinical experience, a huge proponent of it is, how are you breaking down your food? What is your digestion like? Because at a fundamental level, if your gut health is compromised, even not so significant, but even slightly, it's going to affect things like your immune system, inflammation within your body, your neurotransmitters. We look at things like mood and energy, they're all tied into gut health. And in the blog, you'll see I wrote about how the thyroid, even the proper functioning of the thyroid, plays a key role in… in like the lumen or the… the… like the insides of your intestines. It… it… the thyroid plays a role in your energy and in your mood too, as well. It also helps things like pulling cholesterol into your mitochondria so you can make your sexual… sex hormones. It's… it's really, really intertwined.
But at the end of the day, back to John, after about 4 months of treatment, his bloating had gone down, his digestion had gone down… improved, his energy had gone up. About 6 months after… about 6 months after we had initiated treatment, we had at that point reintroduce foods. So, all of a sudden, he was able to eat… we were able to expand the foods that he was eating and tolerating really well. And because the system was starting to reset, I initially had put them on 30 milligrams of desiccated thyroid, we reduced the dose to 15 milligrams and he stayed on at about… we kept them on 15 milligrams of desiccated thyroid just to keep… keep the support going. But overall, John, is a completely different person now. And… and yeah, and I thought I would share this story with you.
So, for those of you who have any questions about John, feel free to write something in the comments. I did include the before and after… which I should have mentioned earlier, the before and after bloodwork. So, you can see that things like John's ferritin had dropped from, I think the 500s into the 300s after about 6 to 8 weeks of treatment. I can't remember exactly, but 6 to 8 weeks of treatment. His thyroid within that time period had also rebalanced. And it was at that point that we really saw some serious gains in his health. The blood work itself is… there's a link to it. It's in the comment section; or there will be in a minute. I will… I will add that in a second.
But if you have any questions about… about John's treatment, or if you have any questions at all about what it is we do at NutriChem, feel free to give us a call. I do… if you're unsure about if you even need to see a naturopathic doctor, I offer a 15-minute meet-and-greet appointment. So, those are appointments where we chat over the phone, and you can establish if you think that I'm a right fit for you in managing your healthcare. Or on the flip side, it's also an opportunity for me to say, “You know, I completely have the skill set to help you regain your health.” Oh, Sam did it. And… or maybe there's someone that I would refer you to who might be a better fit. It really depends. But feel free to give our clinic a call. I'm more than happy to answer your questions in the comment section on the blog, and I look forward to answering them. Have a great day.
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