The Evolution of Healing From a Fathers Perspective

In this episode of the Follow Your Gut Podcast, Sarah and Ty sit down to discuss their child's journey towards healing from a severe gut imbalance. They share their experiences, challenges, and insights into the evolution of balancing their child's gut including how they navigated healing after years of getting the run around from the medical system. This is a touching and inspiring story about not only how ōNLē ORGANICS came to be, but a family's journey towards wellness and healing.

Transcript:

Welcome to episode 40; The Evolution of Healing From a Fathers Perspective. In the last episode, my husband and partner, Ty and I spoke about the beginning of our gut health journey and finally, after 2.5 years of living in survival mode we visited a naturopath who helped us understand that our son's symptoms were all connected to an imbalance in his gut bacteria. In this episode, we will delve deeper into our journey and share our perspective on what our child’s healing looked like. We will also discuss the challenges we faced when our fourth baby started showing similar symptoms, and how we navigated the process of healing his body. 

We are also sharing this series in video format on YouTube, where we invite you to join us in our cozy little cabin for a more personal and intimate conversation. I will link the YouTube link in the show notes if you prefer to consume the conversation through video. Regardless, we hope that this series will inspire you to take control of your gut health and to know that your healing journey will evolve over time. So, let's jump right in and unravel this journey together as we delve into the commitment and dedication it takes to heal an imbalance and the constant back-and-forth periods we experienced. 

Welcome back to the podcast, Ty. Hi. Thank you. I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you. And to be able to continue sharing our evolution of our gut health journey. So in the last episode, we left off where we went to the naturopath, who helped us understand that all of our son's symptoms were connected to a gut and balance.

In this episode, I want you to share your perspective. Two and a half years were like from the time that we rebalanced our second child's gut, to fast forward a couple years, we had our third baby and our fourth baby, and when our fourth was four months old, he started showing many of the same symptoms I wanna fill in that time.

So I think when you went to see the naturopath. We were both at a point where something had to change and it was the first time that somebody had said, this is what's wrong. Let's heal this. Yes. He was the first person to ever acknowledge and validate what I always knew, which is that all of our son's symptoms were connected to one root cause.

And by this point, our son is two and a half. We've been fighting so hard for two and a half, really long and hard. And so we started the protocol that the doctor, the naturopath gave us, and I think there was a learning curve with it. We needed to understand what was happening, what was. How it worked. Great. How? How he sent us away with a bag of supplements. Yeah. That are equivalent to what you can now find in my children's gut rebalance kit. But at the time, this was all totally foreign to us. Totally. We had never heard of Silver as a supplement. Totally. You know, he gave us probiotics and told us how to take them and gave us, gave us a list of foods to avoid, which quite honestly was.

A real breath of fresh air because up to this point we had been on every elimination diet. Yeah. And so this small handful of foods that he said to avoid was, felt really easy. So we strictly followed what he told us to do, but we had so much to learn and so much to learn. I am always.

Sensitive about what I give our children and our family. And I had to do a lot of asking questions as far as the silver supplement went. Like I think both of us have a, a lot of, I don't know if trepidation is the word, but like we didn't know enough about. There's rumors always around, right? So if we, if we search like the safety of taking a, giving your child a silver supplement, there's not a lot of good that comes up.

Yeah. Like there was a lot of scary stories and so I, I had to ask a lot of questions. And finally though, I, we are at this point where, We can either trust what this naturopath is telling us and what he's given us, and he clearly has confidence in what he's doing. He is a very well known naturopath. His wait list was many, many, many months long, and the only reason we got in was because we were on a cancellation list and we either had to just go all in and fully trust his guidance or keep spinning our wheels.

Yeah, and what he was offering us felt more in alignment because it wasn't just a tool to mask the symptoms. It was fixing the problem. Yes, it was healing his body. It was healing, the healing, the problem. And that was the one thing that nobody would be w had been willing to help us with. And so it was, although.

We were still scared. It was still all scary, like we were still in the middle of it. The start of it was still just the middle of it, because there's this phase where it just takes time. Things take time to heal, especially after that long of him having an imbalance. There was a lot of time that needed.

A lot of supplements that needed to be taken to help heal him. Yeah. He needed, I mean, it took two and a half years. His imbalance had been evolving and getting worse for two and a half years. Yeah. And so the healing process, you know, a lot of times when I'm sharing our story, it's easy for me to forget how long the healing process really takes.

Yeah. Because my memory says, oh my gosh. We found out what was wrong. We introduced these supplements and he healed. And that's the true story. I'm, I'm always being very truthful and transparent, but it's easy to forget the amount of time that healing really takes. Yeah. It takes commitment and dedication and there's a big period of like, we didn't have like a real true guidebook of what, what to do. Like we took the supplements, but. We'd go out to eat and have something that at the time we didn't maybe realize would affect AKI in a negative way and kind of push him back a little bit, right? And so there was a constant, like three steps forward, one step back, three steps forward. And we were always moving in the right direction.

But like there was always these back totally back and forth periods. So it was hard at the time because we were. Stuck inside of it, but like the change in even just like his skin or like his, his poop. His poop, like his poop was poop seems to always be the first thing to heal. Yeah. Like that sour smell goes away.

It becomes regular, it's not diarrhea or constipation. It's really regular and. So his, his poop healed and he had healthy poops for the first time in his life. And I remember like feeling so happy about that, but his skin wasn't healing as fast. And so I was, I would question it and every day I was evaluating him and I was taking really copious stuff and detailed notes, copi about his sleep and his poop and what he was eating. And I was very, very diligent and I was constantly monitoring it so that I could make connections, but. Have since learned is that healing is this beautiful thing that happens over time. And while there's value in being really in tune with what's going on and making those connections, you almost have to take a step back a little bit to evaluate the healing from a bird's eye view. Well, I think you talk about this like gut health on a spectrum, right? Like you're very rarely are you one end or the other. Sure, right? You're somewhere in between. Your gut bacteria fluctuates all the time. And that healing phase, we were really bouncing around within that.

And then ultimately, let's move forward a little bit after taking the supplements. A while, a long while, and doing a rebalance protocol several times. Several times. I remember, right? Yes. Like we.  finally felt like he was moving it. He, he was really, he, he healed his, he started sleeping all night. Yeah. He potty trained himself in that period.

Yeah. Like he started feeling really confident in his body. He could sleep not nursing all night long. Yes, . He actually, that's when we actually, he started sleeping. He decided to, he wanted to move into a. Our daughter and it was all like, yeah, child led, like he decided to do all of this, but he just had this whole new, new demeanor to him.

Like he was very calm. He was just clawing, calm and peaceful. Yeah. And he was craving healthy foods. I mean he, this is, again, this is over time, but from. The day we stepped into that naturopaths office and learned that his symptoms were connected to a gut, I balance to when I would say he was fully healed.

He was a completely different child. Yeah. And it gives me kind of goosebumps I think back on it, but I don't know if this is true for you, but I share about this a lot that I. Blocked it from my memory. I remember though, you know, we were traveling and we made a pretty strong community of friends while traveling and everyone we met.

I was always asking, have you seen a rash like this? What should I do? What do you think? Like half of them are nurses and Yeah, they're have you professionals like this? Yeah. And so we made a, a strong community of friends and when we finally healed his body, , everybody was very interested in what we had done, what, what was wrong, what did, what did we do?And a lot of people were interested in the supplements. So I was going to our naturopaths office and I was sending them supplements and, but over time I let this whole experience fade from my mind. Mm-hmm. , we had lived in survival mode for two and a half years and it beat us down. Yeah. And being able to leave it in our past.

A really beautiful blessing. Yeah. But before we move on to that part, something I wanna touch on is, I don't know if you remember this, so we did like one gut rebalancing cycle for aki. We saw great improvements. He is not to this place that we're talking about where he was fully healed. His sleep was still little restless, but we saw such great improvements that what we were seeing in him.

Amazing. Yeah, because it was so much better than where he had been. And so we completed one full gut rebalancing cycle. So that's a 64 day rebalance. And one of the foods that are really important that you avoid while rebalancing the gut is wheat. Wheat feeds the bad bacteria and yeast in the gut. We strictly avoided it for those 64 days, and then we went and celebrated.

We got, I remember we were renting this little apartment in Bozeman because I was pregnant with our third, and we parked our Airstream for a little bit so we could have our third baby. And we went to the market and we bought an organic loaf of sourdough bread to.  SP is healing  . So, so ridiculous. Now I know, but this is a real, this is a real thing.

I get this question a lot from mamas. Yeah. We thought we were done is, I mean, to a certain extent we thought we were done and even when I share like this gut healing protocol with moms, like you have to avoid wheat while rebalancing the gut. Yeah. I get asked a lot. What about sourdough? . I remember asking the naturopath that question, and so when we thought we were done, we had done it. We made it. We celebrated with sourdough because that was what we missed the most.  and his symptoms quickly came back on. So we were done with supplements. We introduced wheat and his rash was back. He was breastfeeding throughout the, that's what night I remember the most. His rash coming back so aggressively, so aggressively. and his poop started smelling sour. And that's when I went back to the naturopath and I said, I don't know what happened. Like I thought we were done. Is he just, is he gonna battle with this for his whole life? And that's when it became very clear to us that  healing is a process and it takes time. And we were just at the beginning of his healing.

And I also vividly remember emailing this naturo.  in the wee hours of the, are you sure that it's okay that he's still taking the silver? Are you sure he can do a whole nother rebalancing cycle? Because it was just so unfamiliar to us and I just needed so much reassurance. Yeah. And as pregnant with our third, and so we also had a midwife, and I remember asking the midwife, , what are your thoughts on this?

On a silver supplement, she's like, oh, I sell it right here. I have it on my shelf, like I love silver. And it happened to be the exact same brand that we are getting from our naturopath. And so with time, I gained confidence and trust in the silver supplement for sure. And. Now I want to fast forward a little bit so we gain confidence and trust in healing in this healing process.

And we committed. We cut sourdough out  permanently. We, which I wanna go into that in a little bit because this is, This is a big part is the whole food component can be really intimidating to people. Sure. And saying you've gotta cut wheat out forever is not practical. And maybe that doesn't have to be the case for everybody, but through our experience, we just learned that we do best without wheat.

And there's other things out there that there's like really good bread. Yes. Really good sourdough bread. Yes. So, I always encourage mamas and our family to anytime that you are avoiding a food, it's really important and powerful to focus on the opportunities that that's opening up for you, not what you are missing and what you are lacking.

And so, That goes with life. Any totally. If we're all thinking about the things that we don't have, we will always be dissatisfied. But if you're always, or trying to be grateful for the things that you have or the, or the opportunities that you have, life is a thousand times better. Yes. And so, Wheat free has opened up so much for us.

Yeah. We've had the opportunity to learn about each ancient greens and travel to wheat free cafes, and it is so exciting and satisfying when you find something, and honestly, it gives you a, a different level of appreci. , don't you think? Like, I appreciate our organic sourdough camu bread way more than Well, it's precious.

It's precious. I think that's why. That's it. It's precious. That's a good word. And, and it's not just it, you could do it every day, I guess, if you had a lot of extra time, but , but it, it becomes precious and, and honestly, that's probably the healthiest thing, just like everything else. Like if it's.  in moderation.

Most things are pretty good. Yes. Sometime we're gonna talk about Kumu and we've got, I'm lining, I've gotta write down the episodes that we're creating just by our conversations. . But Kumu should be an ancient Green, should be a podcast episode because this is another question I get asked. I see that you're cooking with Kaun.

Can we do that during the rebalance and. My honest answer is I would wait. Yeah. I would fully heal the gut and then slowly introduce and experiment. Because should we talk about like what you do once you've gone through like healed and then what that actually means? Like Yeah, so, oh, that's a great idea.

Like maintenance moving forward, like, because we still take silver every day. Okay. Right. I think you're going in a fantastic direct. But I think that's a little bit further on in our journey. Okay. Okay. Because we didn't understand that still. Yeah, that's true. When we fully healed aki. Right. So we, his healing took many months.

Then we had, we had our third baby. We hit the road again. We traveled for a long while. Came back home to have our fourth baby. Yeah, we're traveling again. We were. Do you remember where we were? I'm just wondering. It's aph Phenol. Oh yeah. You do remember? Yeah. We were on the West coast. I know. I remember this specifically because you hadn't had any weeds since aki Probably, and I would indulge because I was breastfeeding. You were breastfeeding the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. And so I would indulge occasionally on something that really spoke to me and. We're in Tofino. We're camped in the wilderness. It's a national park there, so we're on the ocean. There's wolves and bears. It's magical, it's unbelievable.

And there's this little town that has a vegan bakery. What are the odds that there's a little coffee shop that has plant-based donuts, , which happened to be a favorite of mine. So I go and I have a donut. I think I had two that first. And then I brought home half a dozen. Ty is the sweet tooth king.

Yeah. So I wanna tell you really quickly. So we learned that our child thrives not eating wheat. So as a family, we decided to not eat wheat, right? Like Ty was saying, he would ac, but, but, I never had the temptation to try wheat. I saw how it impacted our son and I was either pregnant or breastfeeding for many years to follow, and so I strictly avoided it because I was way too scared that it would have the same impact on our children.

Yeah, so we're in Tofino. . Ty finds these, they were spectacular. I mean, he, he, they were said they were the best donut he'd ever had. They were . I still stand by that , and so I brought some home thinking, okay, this is an opportunity to really indulge and give Sarah a treat and. . So I think you had half a donut.

I don't even think you could finish the first. I couldn't even finish one. Yeah, so he brought me this beautiful box of love home. We sat like we are camped in this. We waited until the kids were asleep. Yes,  we're camped in this lush forest with this mossy ground, and it's like on a cliff side and the ocean is right below us.

I remember sitting outside and just like, oh my gosh, I have not eaten something like, Yeah, in many, many, many years. And it was too much and I couldn't finish it. So Ty finished it for me. And not even a day and a half later, we were still in Tofino. We hadn't left yet. We hadn't left yet our, and he started baby, who was four months old.

Little Birdie. Broke out in this rash and it full body rash. It took us a couple days to kind of piece it together like we had been crawling in the sand. We had been in the ocean. It was really damp. It was humid. Yeah. Like, oh my gosh. We found some mold in the trailer at one point. Like there were several things that could have been other indicators.

Yes, and, but remember, we. So how old was AIE when Byrd was born? How many years? I mean, we are at least two and a half years more than that. Of Archie's gut being healed? I think it's, yeah, three years at least three, I would say three years. Okay. So AKIs been fully healed for three years by this point. I've not thought about his experience. I've blocked it from my mind. , you know how you do that? Like, it's just like natural human preservation. Like you go through something really hard and you can close that door when you make it past. Yeah, and, and we had closed that door, so when birdie. Developed this rash.

It took us a little while to piece it together. We were exploring everything else. Yeah, I mean we, so we left Tofino, we took a ferry from Vancouver Island to Washington. We were finally, I wanna say we were in Boise, Idaho, and I was like, something is really wrong. That's right. We've gotta go see a natural path.

So I found a naturopath. We went in and she's like, this is for. A reaction to mold. You've gotta like tear your Airstream apart, top to bottom. Find mold and get rid of it. Here is like $700 worth of detoxing supplements You take them, have your child take them. I was like, oh my gosh, this is so scary. Yes, let's do it.

So we kind of started the whole process again and there was a tiny spot of mold under one of the mattress. And so we replaced that mattress. We did the supplements. Nothing changed. Well, cuz we were right back in it. We were both, we once again, were experiencing this. Panic and fear that parent only parents can understand, I think.

And, and we're not sleeping. Yeah. Except now it feels even worse because we have four children. Yeah. And yeah, , everything is heightened. And in the midst of it, we are living in our Airstream and we would meet with four other families once a year to do what we called Rome school. We would meet for a month of homeschool, we would travel around a certain area together, and we are meeting in City of Rocks, Idaho.

And so we stopped at that naturopath on our way to City of Rocks. And I remember it was the exact same thing. You know, some of our friends were nurses, some of them. You know, they all have these amazing, extensive backgrounds and I'm saying, have you seen this before? What do I do? What do I do? And looking back, I just cannot believe that it took so long.

I know for it to click and sink in. So we did the whole mold, mold protocol, the detox, nothing changed. His symptoms were evolving. He wasn't sleeping. He had really bad reflux. All of a sudden he was really fussy and screaming all the time. And his.  was even more horrendous than our second childhood been. I had, I've never in my life seen skin like our baby's skin was.

And I remember we are in City of Rocks. I was holding birdie in our little, in the baby carrier, bouncing him while I made dinner. And I looked down and he's tugging his ear, and the back of his ear is just covered in scabs. And that's when I was like, My gosh, you were outside talking to some of the other dads and I called you and I said, babe, could this be a gut imbalance like AIE had?

And we just kind of sat on it and we were like, there's no way. There's no way that it could just be that simple again. There's no way that two of our kids could go through this. Yeah.  and we figured we had nothing to lose. So I called the naturopath. I got, I ordered the supplements. They sent them to us.

We went through the whole protocol, and he healed really quickly because he was, he had, he had only been struggling with this imbalance for maybe a month by this point. He, he hadn't had a life, his full life of imbalance mm-hmm.  to make it so that it was so much harder. Balance his gut again, and it is the same thing.

His poop healed really quickly. It went from smelling really sour and full of mucus to a regular breastfed baby. You know, he was exclusively breastfeeding and he had healthy poops, and it took a, it took some time for his skin to heal. His skin was so dry and chopped and itchy. Yeah. So I would mix, you know, a silver topical gel with castor oil every night.

I made a concoction in my hand and I would just drench his whole body in it because yeah, his skin was so dry. That castor oil, I'd forgotten about that combined with the silver gelt, just like was the magic. Yeah. And so we healed birdie and that was really when a flip switched for us. Yeah. Of realizing.

Because once something works one time you go, okay, that's pretty cool. But I mean, it's pretty That's, that's great that it worked. Yeah. But then when you see something or two times you go, well, this is, I mean, there's no, there's no coincidence in this second guessing it anymore. It is. This is absolutely remarkable and has changed the life of our family and our two boys two times.

Yeah. And.  that gets us up to healing Birdie and our opportunity of.  getting to dive into gut health two times, but at this point we really don't know a whole lot about gut health. No, I don't like it still was, you know, birdie's imbalance was triggered by that wheat, but you can, I can look back and. Small patches of eczema before that wheat.

Yeah. The wheat was really just what is a catalyst that really made Ignited it. Ignited it. Yeah. Like there were other subtle things I think from birth, but he was, he, I would still say he was thriving. Yeah. But consum, me consuming that wheat and him getting it through my milk, just lit his imbalance on fire.

So I wanted to say, I think this is where we should wrap this episode up. Okay. I think next week I wanna share from Healing Birdie to deciding that we need to share this with the world and how that all came.  to fruition and fruition. Fruition. Yeah. Fruition is something different. What's that? I think that's a made up word.

Oh. Oh, . Well, that's part of the podcast. I make up words all the time. Nice. So fruit to Fruition. Fruition. Okay. Fruition. One. Either one works new, one works. How, how That, how we got to launching only and then there's gonna be a fourth. , the evolution of starting a gut health company and where that has us today and how much it has changed our family and deepened our knowledge on gut health and what our gut health maintenance protocol looks like today.

You brought that up earlier. Yeah, and it's really important. It's a huge part of our life now, but even up to Healing Birdie, we didn't know it yet. And so thanks for being here. Okay. Thanks for having me. All right. We'll see you again next week. Okay. Bye.