Ep. 1178: Restoring Your Health for Adventure with Lydia Leskanic

You're listening to the Adventure Sports Podcast. We talk with adventurers from around

the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to get started in the

outdoors or to keep you moving if you're already there. Now here's your host, Kurt Linville.

Hey, all you Adventure Sports Podcast friends. I have one of my very favorite people on

the entire planet to interview today and I am super excited about it. This gal I've

known her for several years and it turns out she told me just today that she had never

been on the Adventure Sports Podcast which is almost true and we decided that it was

time because she has something very very special to share. If you are the type of person

who loves adventure but has a hard time finding the energy for adventure or maybe you would

love adventure but anxiety kind of scares you away from it. You just feel like it would

be too overwhelming or maybe you're someone that suffered from allergies or asthma or other

things that have kind of held you back. Well, this is an episode that's designed for

you and it's one that you're going to want to share with people who might be in a similar

situation. So that is today's topic, health ideas that can help you in adventure and

this wonderful person that I am interviewing is actually my daughter, Lydia Laskanik. Welcome

to the program. Thanks for having me dad. I'm glad to be here.

My sons, maybe all of them, I'm not sure if Luke's been on or not but my sons have been

on over the years here and there when we did a big adventure and it's pretty rare but

Lydia has not been on and there's there's a good reason for it. She didn't go on the

big adventure. Now she did go on adventures and but I want to tell you one story that

will kind of set the context. Lydia always chose to do adventurous things with friends.

She loves to be with people and it was more about the people that were going than it was

about the adventure itself and so we planned a trip. I guess we're going into mammoth basin

in front of James Peak in Colorado back packing and some of her friends came along and

we had a delightful time but it was a really steep challenging hike out of there and on

the way up she had an asthma attack that made it very very very hard to breathe and was

very very scary and she made it out just fine but that's just an example of some of the

challenges that has kept Lydia from having all the adventures with the guys over the years

and it's probably the number one reason she's not been on the podcast but she has been researching

health and finding ways to overcome health challenges that inhibit adventure not only that

but Lydia has a pre-med degree so she studied information that helped her in her pursuit of

her own personal health and she has come up with ideas and experiences that might be helpful to you.

This is not medical advice, none of it has anything to do with medical advice but we're going to

share Lydia's journey toward health and how her world of adventure is enlarging so Lydia did

I get all that right? Yeah that's a really good summary and I think that you know I hadn't quite

realized how much of you know my exercise induced asthma or my anxiety that I have been

fighting for my entire life has really kept me from doing a lot of adventures up until recently

when I was thinking back about everything that I missed out on and all of the cool stories that

you guys had that I just wasn't a part of because I just was too afraid of having a panic attack

in the woods or just having an asthma attack that was you know going to be so bad to the point where

I just coughing up blood all the time but for you asthma attack people out there you know what I'm

talking about you know you're the little blood vessels in your lungs actually just break open

and you're coughing up blood and it just it doesn't make the back packing is fun when that's

going on. Right well there's hope and that's the reason that I wanted to have Lydia on today.

She has been pursuing her own health journey and she's learned an awful lot and it doesn't

mean that this is what's going on with you but there are indications that this is going on with a lot

of people so I don't think that Lydia's story is unique and I think it's one that may be very very

helpful. One thing that our family discovered over the years we appreciate doctors and modern

medicine very very much and they're very very helpful but there are some things that modern medicine

kind of treats the symptoms of and doesn't have a good grip yet on what the causes may be that

could turn lives around and for all of our kids raising our family with four kids my wife and I

explored a lot of things like well what could be causing this what could be causing that and

we would find something that would literally change one of our kids' lives and it's not a medical

solution usually it's more of a natural solution it's like I'm a unique person and as a unique person

this is my thing that I got to watch out for so that's the journey that Lydia's been on and she is

now how old are you Lydia are you willing to say I'm almost 20 almost 27 years old so this has

been a pretty pretty long journey especially growing up in a household that was very very adventurous

and it has held Lydia back but she is beginning to find some answers that are very very hopeful and

that's what you want to share with you before we dive into that though Lydia I would like for

people to know what your adventures have been because you are an adventurous person so give us a

short adventure resume yeah well I would say I fell in love with rock climbing I did rock climbing

for several years I got really really into it in high school especially where I would do

indoor and outdoor rock climbing about five or six days a week um especially my junior and senior

year of high school I just I loved it so much because you know if I know a lot of you out there you

probably have a pretty loud brain and rock climbing is one of those things where you just have to

concentrate and you have to just put all of your mental energy towards figuring out the problem

on the wall or whatever you're climbing so I really really enjoyed rock climbing for a lot of

years until I tore ligament in my spine in a rock climbing accident whoops shouldn't have done

um and I've also really enjoyed skiing throughout the years just trying to hang with the guys on

the ski slope has been a good time for me as well when I've been able to do that I've done a little

bit of backpacking as well and I really just love being out in nature in general you know there are

so many amazing health benefits of being out in nature you know it essentially resets your

nervous system especially if you're walking around barefoot it can reset your

parasympathetic nervous system and just bring you out of that fight or flight and just into

peace and calm and so even though you know I might not be going out and doing extreme adventures even

walking around barefoot or putting my toes in an ice cold stream has been

just such a renewing and relaxing experience every time I've done that and I feel so lucky to have

grown up in the mountains and in the woods where I just now feel like the mountains are a part of

me they're just you know mountains and litty is kind of synonymous terms I've never felt more at

home than just walking around barefoot in the woods I'm gonna throw a couple more in

Lydia graduated from an outdoor leadership program where she learned how to lead groups in the

woods and learned all the things like wilderness first aid and survival skills and camping skills

and backpacking skills and that was something she did is part of a education program and Lydia is

also summited a couple of 14ers and that might be one example of something that health challenges

kind of kept Lydia from doing as much of you know my sons of some of them had been up 20 something

14ers by now and and we did a lot of 14er trips and Lydia was like yeah no thanks we'll see you

guys when you go but that's awesome you did do it you know the experience but you also found out

what exercise induced asthma does to a person on a 14er yeah that's a special one

yeah and so I think the point is Lydia can be sympathetic with health challenges I would

encourage anyone no matter what their challenge is to consider ways to work with it and overcome it

and do adventure on the level that is safe and that is appropriate for you and see if you can grow

beyond your current limitations and that kind of brings us to where Lydia it so our family

I'm gonna I'm gonna preface it this way our family seems to be susceptible to a lot of strange

allergies and when I found out that I was gluten intolerant it changed my life I don't want to

give too much information but I've been sick for many many years and I was diagnosed by a doctor

before being gluten intolerant was a popular thing when no one knew what it was that's when I

was diagnosed and when I managed to get gluten out of my diet I cut my food intake by two thirds

and I gained 30 pounds if that doesn't make sense think about it I wasn't digesting my food so

regretfully it is genetic and so Lydia inherited gluten sensitivities as did other people in my family

and it kind of went from there so Lydia will you share with us kind of your health journey

with allergies and sensitivities and what that's done to you yeah absolutely so I found out

that I was gluten intolerant around the same time you did like within a couple of weeks of each

other we found it out and I was I was nine at the time and you know back then I you know just

everything made me feel sick and I think I was probably a little bit underweight just because I

didn't want to eat because every time I ate it just made me feel sick and I also have struggled a

lot with anxiety my entire life and interestingly enough my allergies have gotten a lot worse over

the years and not better and we'll dive a lot more into why that is but essentially why

I I wanted to come on this podcast was just to say you know not to talk about all of these

these crazy health issues that I've been so stubbornly fighting um my whole life but

I wanted to come on and just say hey here's what's been happening in my life and here's my aha moment

so that if other people have been struggling with anxiety or food intolerance or

histamine intolerance or mast cell activation syndrome or heart palpitations or

exercise induced asthma any of these things or if you've been getting more and more food

sensitivities that you didn't have in the past and you're just wondering what the heck is going

on with me why is this happening that's why I wanted to get on here because I have some good news for

you hmm well that's exciting and I don't know how many people who just don't feel like they

can adventure listen to the adventure sports podcast hopefully many do because they want to

adventure even if they're not able to but I know that people that listen to this podcast know

people that are in that situation and I would say also if you are a big adventure and you just

don't understand why some people just don't do it you can't talk them into it that kind of thing

it could be very much related to this type of the scenarios so I'm encouraging you as you

listen to this podcast think about other people that it might encourage or help and let's move

forward so Lydia it's kind of hard to dive in because there are a lot of things that we could

address but if people find some of the symptoms that you've just explained right and including

general severe fatigue yeah that was one you didn't talk about but it's very very real yeah

then what are some of your ideas things that you've discovered that are helping you I mean

you've been to the doctors you've been to the native path doctors you've been to the MDs you've

been to you know an allergy specialist everybody you've been to man so you've learned from them

and they've been very helpful but you've also had to explore things on your own just lay some of

it out for us yeah absolutely so the first thing that I wanted to dive into is gluten intolerance

because that's something that so many people struggle with the main reason that most of us have

gluten intolerance is because we don't have enough of the enzyme and our pancreas that actually

digest the gluten protein um modern day wheat has about 100 times the amount of the gluten protein

that it did that our grandmother's ate so it's a different wheat right it's been genetically

modified and that has just cost a lot of people to become sick and in addition to that they're

also using glyphosate on many of these wheat farms and glyphosate is also known as roundup

they're spraying that on and that is something that makes the wheat even harder to digest for a lot of

people so that's why the the gluten intolerance has become more and more prevalent but there's also

another reason why gluten intolerance has become more and more prevalent and I'll get into that later

so that is one of the things that I really wanted to talk about that's just the the why of why we

have that gluten intolerance gluten intolerance can really affect your gut microbiome it can affect

your gut brain axis it can lead to a whole host of issues like ibs and chronic fatigue and headaches

and brain fog and so it's it's a really important thing that if you start to have some of those

symptoms that you know you may be pull out gluten and oftentimes gluten and dairy are hand in hand

with allergies so a lot of times people will pull both of those things out of their diet until they

can heal their gut and then they can usually reintroduce dairy back in again using the right kind

of dairy is also really important so using dairy that's a two a two low temp that pasteurized milk

is also generally really really good for that so just wanted to talk a little bit about the gluten

intolerance because it kind of ties in with this really much bigger issue that we'll go into later

about why so many people are struggling with this as well as so many other things and why it seems

to be getting so much worse instead of better i want to point out that you know I was careful to say

I was diagnosed before before being allergic to gluten was popularized and I say that because it

kind of did become a fad and actually everyone that I've talked to that went on to a no gluten

diet did benefit and I think that's because as a society we just have far too much gluten in our

diet now even people that aren't really you know that gluten sensitive still benefit because gluten

is a stressor to the body right but that was kind of the popularity side of it and I know I got

politicized around the time that it kind of became a thing in the social awareness I want to point

out that for people that are really gluten sensitive it's real and if you're beyond gluten sensitive

you might be someone that suffers from silly act disease silly act disease is it can be lethal

and that's an extreme form of gluten intolerance and it's a very real thing so for those of you

out there that are saying oh gluten gluten gluten everyone's talking about gluten well for some

people it's a very real thing and it's worthwhile to get tested to find out what your gluten

sensitivity really is so I would suggest maybe finding a good naturopathic doctor or maybe a

functional medicine doctor or someone who's just open to exploring these things with you and get

medical advice but let's let's keep going lid so gluten was the first one that you mentioned was

a big one and you said it's often tied into dairy here's our theory we're not medical people we're

not allergies you know but our theory is when your body is having strong histamine or allergic reactions

to something then it becomes ultra sensitive to everything else that could you know be a possible

so if you can find out what the big one is sometimes it allows you to manage the smaller ones

once you take care of the big one that's what you were talking about with dairy right that it

became something that you can reintroduce once you solve the bigger issue right yep absolutely

and the other thing too is you know our grandmothers they didn't have this super white shelf stable

flower they actually had the whole entire wheat kernel and that comes with a lot of the

micronutrients that you get you actually get 27 out of 30 of all the amino acids that you'd need

just through having true wheat so what a lot of people have found is actually just milling their

own wheat right before they bake with it like within 24 hours otherwise it starts to spoil and go

bad then they do get a lot of the micronutrients and a lot of those vitamins that you need and they're

buying ancient grain they're buying the unhybridized non genetically modified wheat that still has

that really low gluten content and that's called iron corn wheat that's EIN KORN wheat so that's

another option too that you can try as well as just using that wheat with a homemade sourdough

starter so if you think that you're gluten intolerant or you're just not really handling the artificial

almost flower that we have that's you know had cheap vitamins put back in it to try to make it

somewhat healthy if you try the the EIN KORN ancient grain wheat and you're milling it at home

yourself you're using it within 24 hours and you're also using a homemade sourdough starter that

could also be amazing for your health that might be the only thing that you need to do interesting

I'm going to throw something out there that I heard on another podcast a few years ago and I guess

it makes it hearsay because I can't quote the source but it's worth looking into because my

understanding is that it's valid when they first started making white flour you know where they

were actually getting rid of most of the kernel and just hanging on to primarily the starches in

the flour and then they would be bleaching it out and it made the most beautiful white breads and

and fancy cookies and pastries and all this sort of thing but in their early testing they found out

that it was actually deadly they tested on animals they would feed them a white flour diet and the

animals would start dying they developed all sorts of diseases that were not related to gluten

necessarily they were related to malnutrition because they had stripped so many of the vitamins

and minerals that are necessary that are essential out of the flour and so if you go to the store

and you pick up a bag of white flour and read on it it'll say fortified with and it'll give you a

long list of vitamins the reason it's fortified with these artificial vitamins is because it's

actually very very unhealthy if you have white flour that doesn't have artificial vitamins put

back into it so that's just one example of how our modern food has developed and there's something

to be said for getting back to foods that are in their original natural form because that's what

humans thrive done for millennia right yeah absolutely yeah and another interesting food related

thing while we're on this topic that I wanted to quickly talk about is seed oils I know that that's

a huge buzzword these days but yes the latest popular thing yeah buzzword for a reason um so my

husband and I actually experimented with this when we spent a month in Costa Rica um

there is a lot of research that shows that seed oils are actually what is causing the modern day

sunburn so if you have seed oils in your body it's causing an inflammatory response and

that also inhibits the melanin production and your skin which is essentially what causes you to

be okay with being in the sunshine without getting a sunburn so yes melanin is a tan the more melanin

that you naturally have in your skin the darker your skin is and so we're thought oh man that's

so fascinating so we thought well we're here in Costa Rica for a month we might as well try it

and we actually experienced that that if we weren't eating seed oils and we had our sunglasses

off which is another thing tied to melanin production that we actually got a natural tan and we

didn't burn I don't think and I just get red so for me to actually get a little bit tan instead of

red was a huge thing for me so now whenever I'm going out into the sun I don't wear sunglasses and

I know you know some people say that that causes a whole host of other issues but you just don't

want to overdo it in the sun right maybe if I'm up at a really high elevation I will wear sunglasses

I'll wear sunscreen I'll wear clothes that cover my skin so that my skin isn't being exposed to

the really harsh UV but when I'm you know in in Denver or in like sea level especially if you're

not eating seed oils and you're keeping your sunglasses off then your skin will naturally produce

the melanin that it needs to protect yourself from getting a skin cancer so it's another really

interesting aspect of seed oils that not a lot of people know about that's fascinating and that's

not one that I've ever tested but one thing that I did here a sun specialist talking about and it's

one of the approaches to sun I'm not going to say it's the only one but I liked it because I love

nature the idea was that if you put on a bunch of sunscreen a lather up of all this stuff it allows

you to stay in the sun way too long and by not using the sunscreens then you start to feel like

I'm getting some sun and you find some shade and that actually allows your body to keep up with

building the tan that you need so that you don't have the big extreme sunburns and that sort of

thing but the other problem is if you're using sunscreens you can actually be exposed to damaging sun

rays without getting a burn because you're protecting yourself from getting the burn but it's not

protecting you from overdoing it in the sun in other ways so anyway I just found that interesting

now if you combine that with a seed oil thing that Lydia was just talking about then it kind of

changes our perspective you know humans have been living in the sun again you know countless

millennia and we we tolerated it but what changed that's the question why is it that as humans

we don't tolerate it as well now now when people could say well the

illismate is not the same and all that kind of stuff everything comes into play I'm not an expert

I'm just saying maybe there's a natural reason and maybe seed oils are a part of it

yeah yeah it could be what do seed oils do to the body that that you would say is unhealthy I

mean why should people be worried about it well seed oil is just do a lot of really negative things

to your body they are really bad for your stomach lining so they just they cause a whole host of

issues a lot of people you know there's there's a lot of research out there that says a lot

of different things so you'll probably have to do your own research but spend a while since I

looked at the specific ill effects of seed oils because I just did a lot of research on it and I

said you know what seed oil is bad I'm going to avoid those and I felt a lot better so they can

lead to leaky gut which is essentially abrasions in your intestines that allow all of the the

waste to get out into your body so that's a really negative thing because your body's just

working extra hard to be a cleanup crew and it can cause a lot of stomach issues it can also cause

brain fog and it can cause a lot of these chronic conditions and a lot of people even think that

it leads to different types of dementia like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's so it's really just not

the best thing for you but again a lot of these these new oils that people have been using instead

of seed oils they're not they don't have quite as high of a smoke point as seed oils do so that's

another thing to keep in mind as well that you really want to make sure that the oil that you

are replacing a seed oil with has a smoke point that will be within the the temperature range that

you're cooking in so you would you don't want to use like olive oil for instance when you're

cooking at 400 degrees or high temperature cooking a lot of times I'll use ghee ghee is really good

it's a type of butter essentially it's just processed in a specific way to allow for high heat

and you can still use olive oil or different oils just add a lower temperature or just on salads

and things like that and that's when it becomes really good for you but they're also finding that

you can use up to 30% of seed oils and things like olive oil and avocado oil without it being without

affecting the taste and even though that's illegal in the US there's actually a black market with

olive oil so that's another thing to check too is just making sure that you're olive oil

coming from a single origin that you can actually trace the manufacturing of that because

they are finding a lot of undisclosed seed oils in 100% pure extroversion olive oil

great so one thing that we learned many years ago when we were raising our family is that

hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils this is old stuff PSHOs people talked about this a

decade ago but what was happening is that hydrogenated oils block your body's absorption of

essential fatty acids the oils that your body needs to be healthy and it does cause all sorts of

brain challenges emotional challenges mood issues the ability to think sharply that kind of thing

if you take a low-temperature oil like olive oil and you heat it up too hot you hydrogenate it and

now you've got a problem because you're taking hydrogenated oils so it's not just hydrogenated oils

it's also seed oils if you want to learn more about it I would encourage you to go online and look

at the details about how seed oils are manufactured and then more modern testing is showing that

the end results are of eating ingesting these seed oils it's kind of scary I was really

disappointed because I love things like tortilla chips right and it's just hard to find those

sorts of things that aren't cooked in canola oil or vegetable oils or cotton seed oils all these

oils are the seed oils we're talking about to do the damage so look into it for yourself don't

take our word for it right don't take our word for it what have been some of the the good effects

that you've noticed besides not sun burning as easily what are some of the good effects you've

noticed when you eliminated seed oils from your diet you know I have just I've really struggled

basically having a chronic upset stomach and it's really helped me just to to feel better in

that regard and just not feel as sick all the time and there's you know seed oil is just really

really hard for your body to digest so just from a qualitative standpoint if I eat a seed oil it

just feels really really heavy in my stomach and it just feels like you know whatever food I just

ate kind of sits like a rock in my stomach and that'll happen a lot when I would go out to eat

so going seed oil free just helps me to digest the food better and I feel like I'm you know what I

ate is actually working with my body and my body just likes to to digest it when it doesn't have

seed oils in it so that's helped a lot but I think for a lot of people it does help with their

brain fog and chronic fatigue to to avoid seed oils for me I have some other underlying health issues

that I will talk about soon that I think will really benefit a lot of people to learn about it

is kind of keeping me from probably having the full effect of going seed oil free so it just

for reference right now before we get into all the the chronic stuff that I've been dealing with

that I finally think that I've unlocked the the key to finally after six years of truly trying to

figure out what's been going on with my body for really my whole life okay so we've talked about

gluten we talked about how other allergies especially things like dairy can be very much related

to your body just being so stressed by a primary allergen in in your case which was gluten

we've talked about seed oils and how your health improved when you got away from seed oils

you know one example of that everyone has experienced this you have the food coma after lunch

and it's probably because you had the hamburger and the french fries and the french fries it's not

the potatoes folks it's the oil they were fried in that does this to you and so if you feel like

you have a rock in your stomach and you need a nap that's because your body is stressed

your body is like what did you just throw at me you know I need to lay down so I think you might

be surprised if you can avoid the the seed oils which is very very hard to do because seed oils are

ubiquitous in the American diet this one takes a lot of effort it really does to to have a seed

oil free diet but try it see what it does for you work with a medical practitioner who is well

informed on these things don't take our word for it again we're not giving medical advice

let's go to the next one Lydia some of the stuff that you've more recently discovered

so can we tell the story of your trip to France and how it almost didn't happen

yeah yeah absolutely so my husband has this amazing group of college friends

they're just the best people that you'll ever meet their most of them are they've been an entrepreneur

in some capacity or they're just really forward thinkers and they're just so intelligent they're

so fun they're so kind and every year they go on a ski trip together so they can actually see

each other because they live scattered all over the US and so last March we were planning to go to

Maribel the three valleys which is three different ski resorts in one it's actually the largest

ski resort in the world and when you combine all those three they have hundreds of lifts and it's

just an amazing spot to be so I for that past year you know we had gotten married in August so we

had been married for about half a year we moved into this apartment that was a beautiful new

apartment it was built in like 2017 and when I moved in there I really started struggling with panic

attacks and I would have two to three panic attacks a day I remember one day I had a panic attack

for about five hours my husband Matt was gone for that day he was at a business meeting a few

hours away and another part of the state and I just could not get my body to calm down and all

of these panic attacks that I've experienced are physiological so it's nothing to do with what's

going on in my brain I'm not stressing myself out you know one minute I'm thinking about puppies

and then the next minute I'm having a full-on physiological meltdown where my heart is skipping a

bee I feel so anxious and a few times I literally thought that I was about to pass away because

my heart just didn't seem like it was working appropriately and I was scared to death so

you can imagine my trepidation when this france ski trip comes up because I a lot of times get

the physiological panic attacks from anything that peaks the adrenaline in my body so taking a walk

can even cause a panic attack even with that very slight amount of adrenaline spike which happens

naturally every time we exercise it's a really healthy thing to get that adrenaline spike it's

really good for your heart it's good you know that's that's why cardio is so good that adrenaline

spike can be very good for you and it can serve your body really well but in my case with

this dysbiosis in my body was something really wrong um every time I have a slight adrenaline spike

I get a physiological panic attack and so we were going to go on this trip to France and I was

getting panic attacks like two or three times a day I was throwing the kitchen sink at it to try

to figure out what was going on with these panic attacks because I just say you know what this

is not me I am not anxiety I am not panic I am peaceful and I am stubbornly joyful and I just

want to get through this I want to figure out what's causing this and I want to get past it

and so I was just kind of attacking it from every single angle I was like is this adrenal

fatigue is this a new food allergy is this a parasite is this some sort of other systemic issue

that I hadn't found yet I cut out alcohol out of my diet completely I cut out caffeine out of

my diet completely I cut out any inflammatory food completely and I was still having multiple

panic attacks today and so I just didn't want to go on this trip to France and so I just

man I was just terrified to to go on this trip to France and to go on this adventure and to go

scheme because I knew that anything that increased my adrenaline I would just get a panic attack

and so I called that and he just said you know what you're gonna regret it for the rest of your

life if you don't go so I ended up just doing it scared I you know I I was in the airport and we

were in a lounge and we were getting ready to hop on the airplane and I got another panic attack

out of nowhere when I was trying so hard to be peaceful and I literally ran to the bathroom I

couldn't make it in time almost I was so close and I just literally puked with the bathroom stall

wide open with all these other women in the bathroom that were like oh my goodness what's

happening because I was having this physiological reaction to whatever was in my body and then

you know I got past it and then we ended up getting on the plane but I almost didn't get on the

plane because I didn't know what was wrong with me I didn't know why my heart was having these

palpitations and why it was skipping these beats all the time and I went skiing anyway in France

and I had a panic attack on the slopes a few times because you know every time the adrenaline

went up in my body then it would cause a physiological panic attack and I'm so stubborn I just went

and I did it anyway knowing that I would have a panic attack and at that point it almost

wasn't a big deal to me even though I you know on my body I felt like I was about to pass away

in my brain I knew I would be fine in like half an hour if I could just really feel it

and you know almost cause the panic attack to flood over my body and then just get rid of that

excess cortisol in my body which is a stress hormone also really good for you in moderate amounts

but if you have too much cortisol it it can cause anxiety and panic attacks and things like that

so that's the story of the of the trip to France such an amazing opportunity life experience

that you almost missed and even though you went which I'm very proud of you for

it was really really hard and I want to say I know Lydia very well Lydia is an extraordinarily

strong person she's one of the strongest people I know and so if you know someone that's suffering

from panic attacks don't think well they just don't have their act together they're weak somehow

they're always scared of everything you know people get agoraphobic because of this

because they know if they have a panic panic attack when they're out and about it's going to be

very uncomfortable they might cry uncontrollably they might shake they might even need to scream

they might throw up they might have to rush to the ER because they're they feel like they're having

a heart attack and so you get to the point you don't ever want to leave home yeah yeah it's a

really scary feeling I you know my very worst I was a little bit agoraphobic just because I didn't

want to have a panic attack when I was driving because you know in the back of my mind I thought

what if this actually does become a heart attack because my body is so stressed out and what if I'm

what if I'm driving and I have a panic attack and it turns into a heart attack and all of a sudden

I'm you know alone on a highway somewhere and you know the worst happens so it it really is

just a really scary feeling and for anybody out there the struggles with this I just want you

to know that you're not alone and one of the wisest things I ever did was just not be afraid to

tell the world about it and just say hey here's where I'm at and you know my my husband's friends

which I do consider to be my good friends now they actually witnessed me having a panic attack

on the slope in Shamanee which is another place that we went when we were in France but that

story was a little bit different we have time for me to tell that story real quick you know what I

think that there's so much good information that you're gonna share here in a moment I do want to

hear that story but I'm gonna just let everybody know we're gonna go ahead and let this podcast run

long I'm not gonna stop at 55 minutes or an hour because I want to make sure that you get the

encouragement that you need because I think what Lydia has to share could change a lot of lives

so yeah Lydia tell us what happened in Shamanee but then I want us to transition into things that

you have found that are really helping a lot yeah absolutely so when we were on the slopes in Shamanee

we had gotten about a foot and a half of snow that day it had just absolutely dumped it one it was

one of those days where it had snowed for the entire 24 hours the day before and then it was just

a bluebird powder day and for all you skiers and snowboarders out there you know that that's about

the best kind of skiing that there is with the beautiful champagne powder and just a clear blue

sky and so we were skiing in Shamanee and there was this little hut that we were trying to get to

that you have to take the extremes to get to you have to take a double black to go down there

and it was just a beautiful day so we were skiing about halfway down the slope and all of a sudden

this really really thick fog rolled in and you know if you've ever skied in Europe you very much

have to stay on peace you have to stay on the exact ski route that they have you on and it's

marked by poles about every 10 feet so you just have to stay on this very narrow spot there so

if you get off track a lot of times you're going to get into avalanche territory or you're just

going to ski down to a spot where you're gonna have to hike about five miles to get out so when

this really thick fog rolled in it was hard to see where we were going and so we were looking and

looking for this hut where we we're gonna go get lunch and then all of a sudden the mountain

started shaking under our feet and we couldn't see where the avalanche was because we were in this

really thick fog and we just looked at each other and thought are we gonna die right now is there

an avalanche above us because they're not always known for their avalanche mitigation in Europe

and we weren't sure if we were still on peace or if we were off peace at that point and this

avalanche rolled in and our feet started shaking from underneath us and then the sound finally stopped

and we realized later once the fog had cleared and we were able to see what was going on that it

was actually an avalanche on the other side on a different mountain but it was such a huge avalanche

that we actually felt it on our mountain and so that was a little bit anxiety inducing

I think that would be for anybody yeah absolutely so that was one of those things where I ended up

having a panic attack right there in front of my husband's friend and the reason I share that

story is because it's okay to do it scared it's okay to just go out there and live your best life

and still have a panic attack in the middle of the ski run and it's okay to let other people

see you in that vulnerable state because my husband's friend he's he's a really good friend of mine

too and he just said you know what you are the strongest person that I've ever met because

I couldn't imagine still being as joyful and as kind as you are and going through all of this

stuff that you've been going through and that's why I wanted to share it with you because I've

gotten a similar response to this with everybody that I've shared it with and panic attacks and

anxiety can be so isolating and the best thing that you can do for yourself is just be vulnerable

with people and share what's happening to you because then it does become as big of a monster

yeah you pulled the teeth right out of that monster but I have to highlight here

so many people would say wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute you're on a double black

you're in the fog so thick you can't see if you're on trailer off and an avalanche is shaking the ground

maybe that justifies a little bit of a panic attack but it also goes to show that Lydia truly is

adventurous I mean she's no stranger to double blacks and that kind of thing I I just want to point

that out so Lydia you've been finding some solutions and they are related to health and diet and

physiology and I point that out because while some panic attacks might might be treated by

you know mental health professionals counselors there are techniques that can help at least to

help you manage it but it could be that this is actually your body doing this it doesn't it doesn't

mean that you're a weak person or that something's broken inside right and so Lydia will you

share with us some of the things that have been providing breakthroughs for you now yeah absolutely

so something that I've been learning a lot about recently is how to calm your nervous system

and how important that is for so many different aspects of health and the main thing that has been

really really helpful for me with this besides actually figuring out the health thing that I am

working on detoxing from my body right now which we'll get into in a minute but your body can't

really detox very well if it is in a fight or flight state and it also can't digest very well so

if you're constantly in a state of fight or flight meaning that you constantly have a lot of

anxiety in your body or you're just feeling like you have you're running on adrenaline right

your body's not going to be able to digest and it's not going to be able to detox properly so you

end up holding a lot of toxins in your body because of that and one of the things that is really

helpful for many many people and that was helpful for me is doing somatic therapy because somatic

therapy just essentially tells your body in a very specific way it's okay you're safe and it

tells your nervous system to just chill out and because of that it puts you in your parasympathetic

nervous system so you're able to digest and you're able to detox and all of the organs on your body

are working as they should and it actually helps with neuro inflammation as well which a lot of

times is what causes anxiety and panic attacks is just inflammation in the body in every single

part of your body there's just inflammation in your brain there's inflammation in your gut especially

and so if you have inflammation in those two places then a lot of times it can trigger you know

panic attacks and anxiety so somatic therapy is very very helpful making sure that you have the

right amount of iron in your system especially if you're a woman having the right amount of iron

and checking your pharison levels is really really important the last thing that I want to say about

this is magnesium especially magnesium glycinate specifically really really good for your body because

magnesium is one of the first things that your body actually gets rid of when it's in a stressed

state constantly because magnesium is essentially you can think of it as as the mineral that calms

your body down or the element that calms your body down so if you're really low in magnesium because

you're constantly stressed then that can kind of cause a positive feedback loop and cause you to get

more anxiety so taking magnesium especially in the evening is really really good for sleep and

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I want to highlight somatic therapy because that's a buzz word and people are going to say what is somatic therapy

I mean there are people here are the words soma and they might think about a drug from

1884 Brave New World always get confused but soma just means body right and somatic therapy are

physical exercises you do that release the stress that's trapped in your body and I have come to

learn personally how trapped emotion in the body needs to be exercised out and that's what somatic

therapy does so it's it's nothing fancy all you do is like lay on the floor and move in peaceful

ways but it really it really does benefit to work with someone who knows what they're doing with

somatic therapy because people have learned you know over time the types of movements that release

this stored stress and energy so that's what it is look it up it's powerful yeah okay let's keep

going so you said magnesium you said somatic therapy these things were making a big difference for you

but it wasn't a hundred percent yet but you're you're you're winning you're starting to win the

battle right right so what came next so I started getting worse and not better over the course

of about six years and you know I was getting more and more careful about the things that I was

putting in my my body and I was taking all the right supplements I was seeing all the right doctors

I was doing all the right labs and I still had all of these symptoms that were seemingly unrelated

and I'll just lift lists them off in case any of these resonate with the listeners out there too so I

have currently still experiencing but I'm working on it I have chronic fatigue I have brain fog I've

got chronic chronic inflammatory response syndrome also known as serves I've got mast cell activation

your mast cells in your body are immune cells they're really really good for fighting inflammation

and infection they're what cause swelling when you get a cut in part but if you have something

that's constantly triggering an immune response then your mast cells are just overfiring all the time

and that can cause some health issues so I have mast cell activation syndrome I have the

chronic fatigue I have the brain fog I feel like I'm 80 years old when I get up in the morning because

I have such stiff joints and pretty major joint pain my you know my my stomach has been all over

the place despite cutting out all of the foods that are really bad for me still getting panic attacks

still having a constant sense of anxiety and um I am just really really low energy all the time and

I can't I can't do all the things that I would normally love to do I also have been getting an

increase in my asthma my exercise induced asthma is a lot worse in addition to this I also have

histamine intolerance so I have really high levels of histamine um it's been tested in a lab

in your body actually produces histamine it's really good for you because it's another immune

response that helps your body to fight off things that it is allergic to or just like foreign

substances in your body that's why in the summertime if you have seasonal allergies you're sneezing

or you're coughing or you have a ready nose it's from the histamine and your body clearing out

that allergen so it's just trying to return your body to homeostasis but if you have something

chronic going on in your body a lot of times you'll have a histamine intolerance where you just

essentially have too much histamine in your body because your body is trying so hard

to clear out whatever is going on in your body so you've got a lot of histamine got a lot of

mast cell activation in your body so your body is having this huge immune response to neuro

inflammation and just general inflammation in your body so what do all these symptoms add up to

trouble hey may I I want to share a story because you were talking about histamines may I tell

the story about Vancouver Island and going to wild play yeah this was part of it was part of

the solution so yeah go ahead and tell it so we were up in pacific sands and Lydia and her husband

Matt and I decided to drive to wild play on the way to the ferry to get go back to the mainland

and wild play used to be called Trego or Moncaito it's had different names but it's a high ropes

course with zip lines and a lot of games 70 feet off the ground where you're trying to balance

on crazy rolling logs way up in the air and all this kind of stuff so Lydia loves this stuff

with you know she's talking about panic attacks and yet she wants to do this

high-robe zip line it's three hours of being up in the tree canopies but we're driving there

and Lydia's behind the wheel and she wasn't worried about wild play but just all of a sudden

she pulls over and stops and I looked at her say what's going on she goes I feel like I'm having

a heart attack it was a panic attack we didn't know why and so I'm like well Lydia if

if this is too much histamine what would happen if you took an antihistamine

and so Lydia took a zirtec and Matt started driving so Lydia could just chillax and guess what

the panic went away and that's when we started to realize that this hyper histamine response

was triggering some of the panic challenges and by the way we got there and Lydia did spin

three hours at 70 feet in the air with all these crazy zip lines and games and everything else

and and she did she did very well she overcame that panic I can't tell you

how impressive that is to me when you think you're dying you're having a heart attack your body

has shut down it has gone into fight or flight to the point that you're totally dysfunctional

and Lydia pushes through in an hour later she's doing a high-robes course that's why I say folks

Lydia is so strong unless she's had to to battle these things over and over again

so Lydia you found that your histamine response was a big part of this yeah what else

yeah so something that is really helping me for right now is taking zirtec and taking pepsid

both of those things together essentially take out all of the extra histamine and your body

there zirtec is an H1 histamine blocker and pepsid is an H2 histamine blocker so they

they get rid of the extra histamine in two different parts of your body essentially in two

different systems of your body so taking those two things together is really really good but

once again talk to a doctor yeah yeah it was really really good for me personally this

isn't medical advice i'm just saying things that have worked for all those people that are just

trying to throw the kitchen sink at this because they've seen a lot of people struggling with all

of these weird random symptoms that I laid out that just seem to make no sense and some people even

in addition to this will have a lot of coughing or running nose or at their you know just their

eyes are watering they're tearing up a lot of times for seemingly no reason so you found that

taking an histamine has been very helpful and that was doctor recommended by the way for you not

for everybody else for you it's been helping what other things are you exploring that you're

finding some benefit from yeah so um oh I also wanted to to mention for the ladies out there

um a lot of times this seems to be coupled with estrogen dominance as well um which can lead to

really bad PMS symptoms or even PMDD which is pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder which is essentially

just your pre-menstrual syndrome on steroids um it's just really really bad like in your

luteal phase right before you hate your your menstrual phase so all that to say if your body is

going through some of these symptoms maybe not all maybe it's just a few of these symptoms the

answer is probably mold toxicity in your body mold mold toxicity so okay you know I have to

point out that several people that are really big in the social media circles these days have been

having mold toxicity challenges Chris Williamson just came out with a full disclosure about his

challenges with it Jordan Peterson has been hospitalized he's now at home still I guess

recovering but it's for months because of mold issues you're saying that mold is causing your

issues too yeah so all of these seemingly unrelated symptoms they are all symptoms of

mold toxicity so about 25% of the US population lacks a gene in their body as part of their DNA

that allows their body to detox mold so um you head around 26 27 years of age and if you've

been exposed to mold like I did when I was in a moldy dorm room my freshman year of college

or in my brand new apartment that was built in 2017 that turns out there was mold in the HVAC system

so I was living there for like six months and I was constantly inhaling mold my symptoms were

getting worse and worse and worse and I was getting more and more panic attacks and I couldn't

figure out what was going on it was mold I was inhaling mold and I think I don't know this for

sure but I probably don't have that gene that allows me to detox mold naturally another hypothesis

that I have for myself actually is I may have a latent virus that is also causing some issues with

detoxing mold so this is something that would be really really good to talk to a functional

medicine doctor about that specializes in allergies as well as immunology because they can talk to

you about mold the other thing that is fascinating about this is a lot of times if you try to test for

mold if you have a lot of mold in your body that's been building up for years and years and years

you're going to get a test that comes back negative because mold is both water soluble and fat

soluble meaning that it can actually go through your cellular membrane and it can impact every

single aspect of every single cell in your body and it can go into your brain and it can go into

your heart and all of these different areas so all that being said if it's just deeply rooted

within your body if you've been struggling with detoxing mold for a lot of years you'll try to

take a test to see if you have mold in your body and it'll come back negative even though your

body is filled with mold so if you think that you might have mold and you want to do a test and

you think that you've been exposed to it for a long time you probably want to take some things that

will mobilize the mold in your system for about a week and then get tested again this isn't medical

advice this is just something that has helped some people so obviously talk to your doctor about

this but taking things like NAC and touring for a week or a couple of days can help mobilize that

mold out of your various cells and then you can take that test usually it's a urine test that you

can take that will actually you'll get a positive read for specific types of mold that are in your

body to help just get rid of that out of your system but if a urine test doesn't work you can

also do a blood test that shows essentially two different types of proteins that are in your blood

there that show up when you have mold in your body but you just can't tell the exact type of

mold that's in your system from a blood test I want to just kind of highlight that mold is

everywhere and it's not all bad I like moldy cheese it's so good but there are some types of

mold that create mycotoxins and these mycotoxins some people are really heavily impacted they get

sick yeah absolutely and mycotoxins are a waste product of mold too so that's the interesting

thing about mycotoxins is they're not alive it's just a waste product of mold that a lot of people

react to yeah and there it can be in the air you know it can be put out by mold that's living

in your body it could be in foods that you eat there are a lot of foods that do have mold in them

as they're processed and if you're sensitive to the mycotoxins or maybe you're struggling from

serves or something like that again it's not medical advice these are ideas for you to explore with

your doctor but foods that have mold in the process of making them might trigger you and a lot

of primary suspects are surprising coffee is a big one black tea another big one and the reason

is because they ferment these things is they process them and that fermentation allows the

mold to grow and they they grab some mycotoxins and for most people you have your coffee it's no

big deal it's just coffee but with people that have a sensitivity to this it can trigger things

like how about a dry cough a tickle in your lungs that lasts for a day if you have a cup of coffee

how many of you have experienced that or maybe you didn't know why your dry cough wouldn't go away

try going a day without your coffee and see what happens right so I mean these sorts of things are

elusive and they seem really strange because it's like coffee can't be causing my problems

you know why would it be coffee but it can be the mycotoxins that are in the foods you know

even breads because of molds that can develop on the grains you know I mean it's there's so many

sources it's not just your house necessarily or where you work or the environment you live in

you might have to put on your Sherlock hat and start saluting out what it is that's triggering

your issues and what you can do about it yeah absolutely and good news for those coffee lovers out

there they do make mold-free coffee that is third-party lab tested so you can look up mold-free coffee

that is third-party lab tested for mold and mycotoxins and even you know heavy metals and

all the other crap that is in coffee and you can get some really clean coffee you just have to

do a little bit more research and you might have to order your coffee yeah there are there are

solutions in our modern world it's a beautiful thing that our modern world has so many options so

you really can do a lot where we're very very blessed to live in the time in which we live

absolutely so now I'm at this point in my journey with mold where I figured out what it is I

figured out was causing all of the inflammation and neuro inflammation in my body and right now

I am taking those anti-histamines the pepsid and the zirtech to help mitigate my histamine response

which is helping with the panic attacks a little bit but that is a bandaid and I've tried balancing

out you know I have some hormone issues as well from all of this so I've tried you know balancing

out the estrogen dominance and things like that with bioidentical progesterone but I really think

that the answer here is to just get rid of the mold and I'm still in the process of trying to

figure out the best way to do that but essentially from all of the research that I've done if you're

able to have mobilized mold in your system and you do that lab test that I was talking about

that urine test you'll be able to see what kinds of mold you have in your system and from there

you'll be able to choose an appropriate binder for that type of mold because some types of

binders actually work better for specific types of mold so like if you have ochre talks in a

as a mold in your body for instance really good binder for that is activated charcoal but if you

have a different kind of mold in your body then a better binder might be bentonite clay and you

can also buy some binders that are specific to detox that have multiple different kinds of binders

in them like there's one that's called an ultra binder that has an activated charcoal as well as

bentonite clay and a couple of other things in it as well I'm not really sure what's best at this

point for doing that I do know that there are a lot of good anti-fungals out there I don't know

which one is going to be best for me yet I'm still in the middle of this journey of figuring it out

I do know that I've had a functional medicine doctor recommend to me merinda which is a fruit

that grows in Hawaii it's naturally an anti-fungal so it's really good for anti-fungal properties

also something called undiscellenic acid is a really good anti-fungal NAC is a really good anti-fungal

as well the key here is that you want to take all of those things in the morning and then

take your binders separately from that because otherwise they're not going to absorb in your system

binders absorb everything so any vitamins or supplements that you want to take you want to

take it separately from your binder and again this is not medical advice I'm not telling you to go

out and just take this stuff because for me I'm actually waiting on a lab report from my doctor

and I'm going to work with them to detox the mold properly from my body because it is so deeply

ingrained in my body that every time I've tried to detox it in the past I've gotten so sick from

it even you know checking all the boxes and doing the detox thing the right way quote-unquote

so just make sure that you're working with a functional medicine doctor that knows what they're

doing and I will put some resources in the show notes we'll put some resources in the show notes

to just like for a database where you can find a functional medicine doctor that works specifically

with this and a lot of them do telehealth as well so even if they're not in your state you can have

a zoom call with them and they can just get you rolling on getting this stuff out of your system

I want to highlight a couple of things and I think maybe we can wrap this up but the first thing is

Lydia has struggled with this from the time that she was an infant

not mold necessarily but sensitivities to various allergens and her mom and I have worked very very

hard to sort out what causes it over the years and Lydia's continued that journey and it's like

peeling back the layers of an onion you know you find one thing that helps a little bit but then

you find there's another layer you have to address and I just want to encourage anyone who's out

there with similar sorts of a story that there is hope and you can still have an adventurous

healthy lifestyle and it's probably well worth the effort to find out what's going on and find

the solutions and I've watched Lydia go what's wrong with me I'm having panic attacks I'm not sure

if I'm functioning well I've watched her go from that mindset to I am sorting this out and

overcoming this and soon it's going to be behind me and it's just such a beautiful shift from

despair to hope and that's the reason why I wanted to have Lydia come on today because there are

others of you out there that need that shift from despair to hope and Lydia you just made an email

address so people could contact you if they just have questions not that you won't give medical

advice but you can say well here's some some resources that I've looked into that I've learned

some things from and that address is Lydia's health ideas at gmail.com so we'll put that in the show

notes too but again that's Lydia Lydia's health ideas at gmail and Lydia is spelled L-Y-D-I-A so

Lydia's health ideas at gmail.com Lydia what do you want to add?

Well I wanted to add that I one symptom that I forgot to mention is something called post-exertional

malaise which I think a lot of you adventures might have if you have a lot of these other symptoms

and that's essentially where you feel like you have the flu after you work out that is most likely

due to your body working to detox the mold from your body well it's just working out and exerting

itself because when we exercise our body goes into detox mode so if you're also struggling with that

I just wanted to give you some hope with that that there's a fix for that as well that isn't

you know a pharmaceutical if you're not into that kind of thing you can fix it with

and just fixing what may be the root cause which may be mold and it could be too much beer too

yeah but I I just wanted to say for anybody out there that is struggling with these health issues

I see you and I think that you're amazing for getting up in the morning and just fighting the good

fight and carrying on with your life despite having all of these issues because it is so hard

and it is also so hard to go to so many doctors and for them to not fully believe all of the

symptoms that you're going through or they might think that you're a hypochondriac or they you know

you you say hey I think this might be mold and they laugh in your face and they say now it's

definitely not mold mold isn't that dangerous it's not bad for you so I just want to say that if

you have that experience and you're just dealing with the mental load of trying to figure all this

out in addition to the chronic health issues you are a warrior you were doing an amazing thing and

I am so proud of you and if you have any questions about my journey or things that have worked for

me that you can talk to your doctor about just send me an email I'd be more than happy to just

you know set up a conversation with you or just email back and forth and we can get to the

bottom of it together okay well Lydia thank you so much for being so open and sharing with us

and I think that this can provide hope not like I said in the beginning not only for people that

love adventure and are struggling with it but for people who know people who can't adventure

because of these challenges there is hope and I encourage everyone continue to exercise get out

there have the fun live a balanced healthy life enjoy the community the healing that nature brings

the the strength that comes from exercise the fortitude that comes from challenges all of this

stuff is what the adventure sports podcast is about and if you're struggling with some of the

symptoms that Lydia described there is hope don't think oh it's just me I'm weak that's not true

that's not true you'll be as strong as you want to be you just might have to put the work

into do it so Lydia thank you very much for being on the show today thanks for having me dad

you bet and I really appreciate your vulnerability and being discounted with the audience I think

it's going to make a huge impact so everyone out there until the next show get out there and have

some fun