Welcome back to our 2nd Cabral HouseCall of the weekend and I hope you were able to tune into yesterday's 6 community questions!
We had a great Q&A session and I'm looking forward to sharing more with you today with these brand new questions:
Mariellen: Dr Cabral, you have always helped me in finding answers to my health issues and I am on a journey to getting better. I am not writing in for myself. I have a friend who for years has had what I would say are seizures. She has crashed her car before, been on vacation far from home and had this happen. There seems to be no common factor in these episodes. When she was on vacation she had a wild dream about a ton of spiders and woke up and her fiancé found her seizing and she always throws up after and sometimes pees herself as well. Out to dinner, she became unconscious, no seizing (which she said sometimes happens) and this was the only event where this has happened where she has had alcohol in her system but she literally became limp and was completely out for a minute or possibly longer and was sweating perfusely and began to vomit minutes later. We had just finished dinner and she was drinking water along with her dinner. She is a hairdresser and yesterday had mentioned she did a wedding and barely ate anything all day. She always feels completely exhausted after. Sometimes there is seizing and sometimes, there is not. No one will give her answer. She once had her stitches taken out and had a seizure. Anything would be helpful. Thank you
In addition to my other question just wanted to add on that she smokes marijuana and in the vacation case, she hadn't smoked for 4 days and had one and yesterday was the first day she hadn't smoked in awhile. The doctors will not diagnosis her with epilepsy because whatever test they ran came back negative and they say what she has are not seizures. Any advice would help.
Josie: Dear Doctor Cabral, I've been listening to all of your podcasts and learning soooo much. I really enjoy listening. I am currently working on improving my own health, but my mother's health is very worrisome. These are a list of her major conditions. I was hoping you would have some ideas on a place for my mother to start. Primary liver sclerosis, State 3 liver disease Colitis Crohn's UC Diverticulitis Autoimmune Hepatitis IBD Hiatal hernia Osteoporosis Hepatocellular She has had part of her bowels removed 7 years ago. She gets esophageal varices because of her liver disease. She experiences abdominal pain, spasms, bloating, extreme fatigue. My mother is on a LOT of meds for her illnesses, but she is only 58! She has been on antibiotics for about 2 years. I hate that she is on them, but the doctors have had her on them since she had septic shock and acute renal failure in 2015. I would like to encourage her to strengthen her liver. We have listened her your podcasts and learned that low fat diets are good for your liver. I'm trying to get her to drop gluton and sugar, and start drinking warm water. She already enjoys water with lemon, but I'd like to leave her with more. Would you think that starting there is sufficient or might you have more recommendations? Thank you, thank you, thank you for all you do, Josie
Cara: Hi Dr. Cabral, First and foremost, I found your podcast a couple of months ago and I have been listening to you nonstop as I love learning about optimal health and nutrition. I value all of the hard work you do especially because it is derived from your own struggle and quest now to serve others. Recent History: I had a crash cesarean 21 months ago. I ended up with a very rare condition called velamentous cord insertion. My daughter arrived at 36 weeks 2 days (after a healthy pregnancy - no red flags) she lost a tremendous amount of blood before delivery, required intubation, 2 blood transfusions and was almost immediately transported via ambulance to CHOC where she was cooled to 91 degrees for 72 hours. She survived and thrived, no stroke no seizure, no developmental delays. We now share our story on behalf of CHOC at fundraisers and have contributed to the new NICU they just completed building. We have been able to serve others through our trauma. We eat paleo-ish, always organic / free-range / pastured / no gluten. I did start incorporating raw goat dairy a few months ago. I have one cup of coffee a day, usually half caffeine. I do yoga/pilates and with a toddler and two businesses I'd say my stress level is moderate. I wanted to clean up my system after having surgery and antibiotics. At 12 months postpartum (last November - January) I did a very in-depth 12 week gut thrive program. It started with an anti-inflammatory diet and moved into a pathogen purge, followed up my a reseeding phase. The clinical nutritionist is very similar to you in most ways with her philosophies and practices. The program included things like proteolytic enzymes, digestive enzymes, biocidin, atak, mors, diamateceaus earth+clay, triphala, Pure encapuslations/Orthomolecular high quality supplements, coffee enemas and probiotic enemas, heavy hitting oral probiotics, etc. I had to do the pathogen purge at 1/2 dose because I was still nursing. My husband and I did preconception work with our nutrition before I got pregnant with my daughter. I took a couple of different prenatals throughout: Innate, New Chapter, Garden of Life. Around 10 months postpartum I had lab work that confirmed I was low in D / K / B's and tested positive for MTHFR 1298C mutation. After finding this out, I switched to Seeking Health Prenatal which is high in methylated B's. I am now taking Orthomolecular prenatal. I am also taking your Daily Fruit and Vegetable powder and I just started trying your Nutritional support protein. Currently, I am still breastfeeding during the day. (we night weaned 3 months ago) I have had 3 menstrual cycles starting at 17 1/2 months postpartum and they have been irregular...roughly 40-45 days. I just had my annual blood work ran with a functional medicine doctor here in California although, he was not very thorough and still seemed to be on that 15 minute time allotment. Cholesterol was good. Total: 178 / HDL: 77 / LDL: 93 Triglycerides: 42 He said my D was low, but it read 53.4 so that should be good. Low in B's B12: 17 / Folate: 37 / Pantothenate: 9 Low in Vitamin C: 48 Thyroid: Free T4: 1.18 Free T3: 2.4 Reverse T3: 13.4 Thyroid peroxidase antibodies: