Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Jess Faulds On How Stem Cell Transplant Cured Her MS and the Nutrition Science That Promoted Recovery EP 93

Episode Date: December 28, 2021

Jess Faulds is a certified holistic nutrition consultant diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (M.S.) at the age of 15. Through her M.S. journey, she suffered through different disease-modifying drugs and treatments before having a stem cell transplant! She sits down with John R. Miles on The Passion Struck Podcast to discuss how Haematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSTC) cured her M.S. and the nutrition science that promoted recovery. New to this channel and the passion-struck podcast? Check out our starter packs which are our favorite episodes grouped by topic, to allow you to get a sense of all the podcast has to offer. Go to https://passionstruck.com/starter-packs/. Do You Need To Ship Packages? Try ShipStation ShipStation makes shipping the easy part of running your online store. So you can get back to doing what you’re passionate about—growing your business. Just go to ShipStation.com, click on the microphone at the top, and enter code PASSIONSTRUCK.   Like this? Please join me on my new platform for peak performance, life coaching, self-improvement, intentional living, and personal growth: https://passionstruck.com/ and sign up for our email list. Learn more about me: https://johnrmiles.com. SHOW NOTES 0:00 Introduction 3:41 Her diagnosis of M.S. at only 15 7:45 The rarety of it in teens 10:27 Different types of M.S. 16:33 Discovering nutrition science 19:33 Disease-modifying therapies for M.S. 23:09 Undergoing stem cell treatment 29:52 How nutrition science promoted recovery 36:19 Why more doctors aren’t talking about diet:  39:56 How the 5 AM Club changed her life 43:48 Discussing the book How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease 46:02 A typical day in the life of Jessica Faulds 49:09 She recommends eating the rainbow 50:34 Quick Rapid Round of Questions ===== FOLLOW JESS FAULDS ===== *Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicakcfaulds/ *Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alltherightbites/ *Facebook: www.facebook.com/alltherightbites/ * website: www.alltherightbites.ca   ===== FOLLOW JOHN R. MILES ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m * Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles​ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/JohnMiles * Blog: https://passionstruck.com/blog/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast   ====== ABOUT JOHN ====== John R. Miles leads a global movement called Passion Struck. He is passionate about being the catalyst who helps individuals expand into the most excellent version of themselves, unlocking the most no regrets life possible. He is a combat veteran, multi-industry CEO, successful entrepreneur, top podcast host, and author who is helping people worldwide regain their passion. John is one of the most-watched, quoted, and followed high-performance trainers globally, and his leadership acumen spans more than two decades. He’s founded or co-founded more than half a dozen successful start-ups, was a Fortune 50 CIO and CISO, mentors rising entrepreneurs, and invests in successful tech ventures. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, where he learned vital leadership skills and was a multi-sport Division 1 athlete.  

coming up next on the Passion Struct podcast. And so people would actually eat the food. People were eating the food and people were eating well enough that they were being released from the hospital earlier. So the food program itself cost more, but their hospital stay was less. The hospital bill, if you balanced it out, it ended up saving the hospital money. But nobody's like, last I heard, I've never seen a hospital that has adopted that kind of mentality.

People just don't place the importance on food and nutrition like they should. It's kind of a back burner for most people and most society. Welcome visionaries, creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, leaders and growth seekers of all types to the Passion Struck podcast. Hi, I'm John Miles, a peak performance coach, multi industry CEO, maybe veteran and entrepreneur on a mission to

make passion go viral for millions worldwide. And each week I do so by sharing with you an inspirational message and interviewing high achievers from all walks of life who unlock their secrets and lessons to becoming PassionStruck. The purpose of our show is to serve you the listener. By giving you tips, tasks, and activities, you can use to achieve peak performance and for too much passion-driven life

you have always wanted to have. Now, let's become PassionSt struck. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Passion Struck Podcast and thank you all of you for coming back each and every week to listen, learn and grow with us. And if you're new to the show or you want to introduce it to a friend or family member, we now have starter packs. These are your favorite episodes that are grouped by topic to introduce new listeners and even old ones. All the show has to offer. Please just visit passionstruck.com slash Starterpacks to get started.

Today's episode is with Jessica Foltz. Jess was diagnosed with MS when she was just 15 years old. Her diagnosis pushed her to discover how she could still live a full life and that diet, fitness and wellness were in the end her calling. In 2019, 13 years after her initial diagnosis, just underwent a stem cell transplant. Through her dedication to wellness and diet, she recovered from that procedure in record time. Much faster than the doctors to possibly believe. Now she helps people live a natural plant-based life so that they too can eat to thrive. In today's discussion, we go into life with the diagnosis, especially one like MS. What her diagnosis process was like, would it felt like to be diagnosed with a life-altering condition

and how she had to adjust her life once that happened? What MS is and what the different types of MS are so that you the listener has a better understanding. Why her focus on nutrition and wellness and the profound impact it has made in her life. What a typical day in the life of just eating habits are. The book she's a fan of and she'll call out a few of them and so much more. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me as your hosting guide on your journey to living a no regret life. Now let the journey begin.

I am so excited to have Jessica Bold on the Passage Struck podcast. Jess, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Well, I'm excited too. It's been a number of weeks since we last spoke. So it's nice to see your face again. And as we talked about before, we're experiencing about a 105 degree temperature difference between our two locations, Tampa and Calgary today. So I'm nice and warm and you're nice and bundle up. I am very bundle up. Well, I thought a good starting point for the audience would be to take this story all the way back to its origin. And so you are in your teens and you start experiencing some symptoms that

are completely abnormal for what should be going on with you at that time. Can you explain what was happening to you and kind of what were you thinking when it did? Yeah, so I was diagnosed with MSNR was 15 and it was a really crazy experience. Then kind of the night before I had been up playing computer games and my cousins boyfriend, I got me a new computer game and I was playing it and I went to bed and my left eye had frozen in place. So if you looked at me, my one eye would move normally, and my other eye wasn't moving at all, which explained the double vision. And it really, really freaked me out, but it was a Saturday, so it was like,

I don't have to go to school. And so I spent most of my Saturday just kind of like watching TV with one eye and trying to hide it for my parents because it had freaked me out, and I didn't want to go to the hospital. And then that night I went out to dinner with my parents. So with my mom and my grandparents, because my dad was away. And my mom looked at me across the table and she goes, why are you holding your head like that? Look at me properly. And then she saw my eye and she was like,

cool, so we're going to the hospital and my grandparents took my sister home and my mom gave me no choice. And we went to the hospital and I run of the songs that was playing on the radio. And I remember this so clearly was double vision by foreigner. And my mom looked at me and she's like, huh, this kind of describes you right now. And I was like, thanks, mom. So we went to the hospital. And the doctor actually just told me he's

like, it's kind of a lazy eye. We played video games last night. Nothing really wrong. If it hasn't gone away by kind of Monday when you go back to school, then go see an eye doctor. And of course, it hadn't gone away by Monday. And so we went to see an eye doctor. We couldn't get into my normal eye doctor. So I had to go see this man I had never met. And that was an experience in itself because I remember him just shaking as he had examined me going, oh no, oh no. And then he looked me in the eye at 15 years old and told me I had a brain tumor and then walked in the room. And my mom and I kind of sat there and were like, my mom's crying. I'm stunned that she ended up having to call her family doctor and her family doctor was reassuring my mom going, you can't diagnose a brain tumor by looking at someone.

So like bring Justin in the morning, we'll get it sorted out. They got me in for an MRI, which ended up having me go to sick kids in Toronto, just a fantastic hospital and having another MRI there. And it was the second MRI where they said, we're 90% sure you have MS based on where you have your lesions and all these scars on your brain. But because it is MS,

an MS by definition is multiple, they don't diagnose you based on one situation. So they said, we're gonna send you home, they gave me medication to help fix the eye, call a print zone, and they sent me home, and they said, we're gonna have you come back in three months, we'll do another MRI, And if there's been progression, you'll get your official diagnosis.

If not, then we'll just kind of watch it until we see what happens. And so unfortunately, three months later, it was in August, I did go back to sick kids, had another MRI, and they did diagnose me officially with MS. So at that point, I started the whole treatment choosing and that's when my journey kind of really began just before the 10th grade Well, and how unusual is it to

Get a diagnosis of MS that young in life It's pretty rare From what I understand less than 3% of people who are diagnosed with MS or diagnosed before their 18th birthday So far the youngest I have heard his seven. I have a really good friend, and he was diagnosed at seven years old, which clearly he does not fit the Caucasian email between the ages of 20 and 50,

which is what everybody thinks of when they think of an MS diagnosis. And so yeah, he got diagnosed at seven. I did go to an MS summer camp, and there's always 20 to 30 of us. But that was a summer camp where kids flew in from Canada and the States at the time. So it's not very common to be diagnosed so young.

Okay, and how often is something going wrong with your eyes, a leading indicator, because as we talked about previously, one of my girlfriends, best best friends has MS and she learned because she was all of a son having trouble with her eyesight and luckily my girlfriend works for one of the leading eye surgery centers in the in the world and so she was able to get her in and before she even left the specialist who saw her suspected that it was MS and then suggested she get to the hospital for more testing. But she almost went blind if they hadn't caught it. How common is that that's how this whole process starts?

Yeah, so it depends on the person. There's over 100 different symptoms that people at MS can experience. Optic neur, there's like, I don't even, there's over 100 different symptoms that people then ask and experience. Optic neuritis is a really, really common one. So I've had that as well. And that's when you have like gray double vision blurry vision. Kind of color, it can go dark and black. My friend who was diagnosed at seven, like I said, his was eyesight problems. He still has eyesight problems. I would say it's one of the more common ones that a lot of the kids that I met

even during my summer camp are diagnosed with. The other one tends to be like balance issues or numbness and tingling throughout your body. All symptoms I have experienced. So there are symptoms that are more common. Isis is one of the big ones. Optic neuritis is one of the, kinda hallmarkers of MS. Okay, Optic Mariettes, is one of the, and a home markers of MS.

Okay, and I am not that familiar with MS. I'm just gonna put it out there. It was one of the reasons I wanted to get you on the podcast is to bring more awareness to it for the audience. So if they're not familiar with MS and they just hear that term, are there different types of MS that you can have in different severity levels? There are.

And they're actually coming out with new types, even I used to work for the MS Society. And I remember being on the phone with someone, they said, oh, I have the newest type of MS. And it was a type of MS I had never heard before. But for most people, it falls down into one of two categories. One is called Relaxing Remitting, which is what I was diagnosed with.

And with Relaxing Remitting, you'll have a period like where my eye sight went. So my eye froze in place and I had those symptoms. I took some prednisone, the symptom went away, and I went kind of back to my baseline normal, and that's what happens with relaxing remitting. So you'll have a relapse, and then you'll go back to your baseline normal or pretty close to it, and then a little while later, don't know the time period of different for everyone, you have another relapse, and you go back to normal. I attended to have relapses every one to two years, always in August, when it was really hot, and the other type of MS is called progressive. So progressive MS unfortunately is when people will have a relapse, but they never fully recover so they will progressively get worse.

Those are the people that you'll tend to see on shows where they're in wheelchairs, or it's a very quick, it can be a very quick process, it's a lot more aggressive form of MS. When you have relapse intermitting, about 50% of people who are diagnosed with relapse intermittent will progress into what's called a secondary progressive where they stop having a return to baseline. So it starts off as the two relapse intermittent and primary progressive and about half the people for relapse intermittent will eventually transition into a more progressive. Okay, so I just can't imagine being in high school So I just can't imagine being in high school, getting this diagnosis, how, how at that point did it change your life?

Or were you able to kind of immediately learn coping skills? So I would say, I remember the day that I was diagnosed, and I remember my mom breaking down and just being so devastated and crying, and my dad has always been the very stoic one. So he's like, okay, what do we do now? And I was just like, yeah, okay, what do we do now? And so I had to pick medication and my medication was I had to give myself needles all the time, which wasn't fun. So that was what I was coping with in high school. And in high school,

I don't think it really hit me that I had MS. People go through their coping at like different time periods like and everybody it takes different amounts of time. So when I was in high school, I would say I was kind of ignoring it. I took my injections, I would give myself candy after the injections. I didn't really acknowledge it. And then when I went to university,

that's when it kind of hit me. Fatigue is a really big factor with them as. And when I went to university, that's when it kind of hit me. Fatigue is a really big factor with MS. And when I was in university, obviously everyone watched that university experience. And I was on a in-res and people were going out drinking every night and I physically couldn't do it. And physically couldn't go out drinking every night if I wanted to wake up for class.

And I was having to leave once a month for my infusions. And so it was when I was in university that I really started going, huh, okay, this is something that I can't ignore. This is something I have to kind of have a game plan for and deal with. And so the, I would say as a teenager, I was still kind of lived the I'm invincible life.

I was like, it's not gonna affect me. I didn't really have any major. I had like a relapse during my last year of high school but that was it and it was not a major relapse. It was when I got into university that it really started to hit me and I had to start coming up with a game plan because I would not have made it through

my two university degrees if I had continued to ignore it. We will be right back to the PassionStruck podcast. This episode is sponsored by Shipstation. The holidays are the most wonderful time of the year, but if you're running an online store, you also know that it can be the craziest part of the year. I know this firsthand from my experience running both Loes.com and Dell.com. There is inventory to manage, orders to fill,

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So we put them in a cleaning place, the show notes for each episode. Please consider those who support us and make the show possible. Now, let's get back to the Passion Struck podcast. As we previously talked about along this journey when you're in college, you find that diet was going to change your life. How did that come about? Yeah, so when I originally went to university, I had this grand idea that I was going to be a doctor. I was going to be my doctor who diagnosed me. Her name is Dr. Brenda Vanwell and she's this amazing pediatric neurologist who specialized in MS and she kind of changed my life.

And so I was like, I'm gonna be the next Brenda Banwell. I'm gonna be a doctor. And then when I was in university, during my second year of university, I took a nutrition course. I took my first ever nutrition course. It was really basic nutrition, like protein, calories, and carbs, and fats,

and very, very very basic And everyone obviously knows like my parents have been honest since I was a young kid. You should be healthy But I started really looking into the fact like the effect that diet can have on you as a whole and so I kind of started doing my own I want to call them a little diet experience on myself I had a relapse during my second year of university while I was taking this nutrition course and I ended up needing a cane. I have lesions that they call my T8, my T10 vertebrae, which affected my balance, my ability to walk.

And it took me about six months to recover from that. And I had a beautiful purple cane and people knew, like all my friends knew about it. And everyone was really great. And so when I was in university, I started saying, okay, what if I changed my diet? What if I started really focusing on healthy food? And I had gone vegetarian. And I started playing around with my fitness and going to the gym and kind of just. My mindset became, well, if something's going to knock me on my butt,

I want to be as strong as I physically can. And so for my third and fourth year of university, I'm going to knock me on my butt. I want to be as strong as I physically can. And so for my third and fourth year of university, I was just reading everything I could on diet. There's a bunch of different MS diets out there. And I was trying all these different things and what made me feel the best. And then I had another relapse. I had their same relapse in my fourth year.

But my recovery time went from six months to three weeks. And I bounced back so much quicker. And then after that, I was like, okay. So if I can be as strong as I physically possibly can, and I'm going to have this relapse again in the future, I've now had the same relapse twice. It's going to come back in the future and we don't know when. Then my goal is to make it as short a time span as possible.

And so I would say in my fourth year of university, I just threw myself wholeheartedly into a healthy diet and working out pretty regularly. Okay, and then it seems like you sustained a period of time where you were able to function fairly normally. You like CrossFit, you like high intensity workouts, I've seen you mountain climbing, other things like that. But along the way, you have to get chemotherapy

and then in 2019, which is roughly 13 years after the initial diagnosis you have to get, you decide to go for stem cell treatment. Can you kind of talk about those two inflection points and along that continuum? Yeah, so I'm always someone I believe in science, I believe in the disease modifying therapies, so I did all of that for my MS. I have been on Ford disease modifying therapies or DMTs as they call it.

So when I was in university, the first time I was on Tisabri, then I did something called Jalenia. When I was finishing my second degree, I took a drug called Lentrata, which is kind of my friends all called it chemo light. It was a drug I believe that was originally developed for cancer, not 100% sure about that one, but it was basically five days of this infusion that really knocks you on your butt, was not a fun time.

And the goal of this drug was to completely halt my amats. And at that time I had had even though I was doing my diet my exercise, I was still having little flare ups, but because I was so healthy, I was able to bounce back pretty quickly, and they were not taking me out for months. And so I did this drug called Lentrada. So it was five days in 2015 and then it was three days in 2016 and the goal of that drug was to completely halt my amnes. Unfortunately, although I didn't continue to have relaxes afterwards, my MRIs were still active. And so I moved to Calgary in 2018. And when I moved here, my neurologist wasn't comfortable with the direction that my MRIs were going. He said, you're doing everything you

possibly can. You've taken all of the drugs. I took like the newest, the greatest. I was the first person to sign up for everything. And he said, I think you'd be a really excellent candidate for stem cell transplant. Yeah, and if we can, and can we just stop there because as I understand Lentrata, it, there are your normal courses of treatment, and this is one where you're going to go bold, but, you know, they're inherent rest, but there could be big wins from it. Is that kind of? Yeah, Lentrata was a drug that came out right around the time that I think I took it. Like, it was made public, at least in Canada.

And I think I was my doctor's first patient on it. And I had sat him down. I said, I want this drug. I don't want to have to take a pill every day or an injection or through the infusions. I want this drug. And I basically told him that I was gonna take it. And it's an amazing drug. It's a great drug. I have so many friends who are on it and it worked for them. I have

a friend who he literally hasn't had a single issue since he took it, which is why I was willing to take the risk. Unfortunately for me, it didn't work. Also, after my first five days of infusions, I ended up with something called Necrotizing pneumonia and Legionnaires disease, and I ended up in the hospital for two weeks. Again, bounced back a lot quicker than you would have expected. I was in the ICU for four days. I lost about 15 pounds, but I did run my first half marathon three months basically to the day from being released from the hospital. And I did the mic drop with my Legionnaires doctor, because he had told me I should try walking again first. And I was like, I'm running a half marathon.

And I did, and I went sub two hours, which was my goal. But it's a fantastic drug. It's one of at least in Canada, we call them the big three. So the big three drugs are Lemtrautia, Tisabri, and Okravis. And so I unfortunately did fail off of Tisabri. I failed off of Lemtrata, which when you bring it back to the stem cell,

I either had, I could do the stem cell transplant, or I could try the third drug. And those were my two options. There was no other option or way for me to progress in my treatment besides those two. And so you've had the stem cell treatment now and what were the results of that? The stem cell treatment is by far the most intense thing I have ever done in my life. There's a lot of side effects that come from the stem cell transplant, one of them being

menopause for women. There was, I went completely bald, it does involve 11 rounds of chemotherapy in eight days, that was the protocol that I did in Canada. It was quite the experience, they harvested my stem cells from myself, so that was part of the treatment, was they stimulated my stem cells, they harvested, and then I say they took them away and did some magical budu to them, because I have no idea what they did, but they did something and got them already. And on July 19th, they kind of, they brought them back into my room and what I can only explain is like, it reminded me of the scene of Indiana Jones when there's like a guy being carried in on the shoulders of everyone else.

They brought the man on this cart with like Or nurses and three doctors and then they hooked out up to an IV and they all sit there and they watch you and they just stare at you for like 15 minutes It was the most anti-climatic moment of my life But the result was I have had zero I have had no progression since I did the stem cell transplant There's stem cell transplant like I said it kind of, I had one of two options. And I chose the stem cell transplant because when I talked to my doctor, I said, well, if I'm trotted, it didn't work, and I sabre, didn't work. How different is the third one in the way that it works? Is it, I'm going to try the third one, I've already failed off on two of the three. And I just kind of pushing back, having to do the third one, I've already failed off on two of the three. Am I just kind of pushing back

having to do the stem cell? The stem cell transplant is known that the younger you do with the better it works. So that's why I did decide to go the stem cell route. But it was worth it. I've had, like I said, I've had zero progression. They did tell me to prepare to be sick for the entire year afterwards, which was quite scary. That was probably the scariest part of choosing to kind of go through it, but just like I did with the Lentrada after in the Luchiners disease, I was actually back in the gym four weeks post-emsel transplant and I was boxing. So it was worth it for me, but it was very intense. And everyone I've talked to who has done it

has had pretty phenomenal results. Okay, well that's, I mean, that's a great story. So it sounds like in retrospect, you would recommend this to another patient if that was one of the options that they were being given. I would 100% recommend the stem cell transplant. It is an expensive treatment. Luckily, I live in Canada,

so I didn't have to pay for the treatment here. But it is a very expensive treatment. It is a very intensive treatment. I had to have the sign off by four different doctors. I did an egg harvest so that if I want to, or when I decide to have kids, I can still have kids. So there were some downfalls to it, but as a treatment as a whole, I've shown zero MS in terms of sense. This year,

for the first year, I don't even have an MRI booked. That's amazing. And your story reminds you of reminds me of a person I think I told you that who was on the podcast, I think I told you about who was on the podcast way early in the beginning, Cindy Hooper, who lives in Ottawa, but literally within two to three months of undergoing whipple surgery from pancreatic cancer, she bounces back, it's still on chemotherapy and ends up doing the whistle or iron, full iron man.

So you two are both amazing stories. One thing I did want to ask because I think the medical system is so different in Canada than it is here in America. I would imagine all of these treatments cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And in our system, probably a big component of this is going to fall on the individual to have to deal with. How is that different in Canada? So when I was diagnosed with MSF 15, I immediately started on a drug. And that drug cost about $40,000 a year.

I think my parents paid what we call our co-pay. So it's basically what we have to pay shoppers drug art for giving us our drugs. I think it was like five bucks. Every time I did my prescription or no, we pay like five or six dollars. It was not a big deal. Every single drug I have ever been on has been covered by insurance. The most I have paid is that shoppers charges you $7 for your drugs. When it came to the stem cell transplant,

like I said, the stem cell transplant here costs over $100,000, $100,000 Canadian. I can honestly tell you that I did not pay a single dime. I didn't pay anything for my stem cell transplant. I spent one month in hospital in Canada, so I, and I had about two months of appointments, like I had all the beginning stuff even leading up to the stem cell transplant. I didn't pay for any of that. There was no cost to me for any of that. The only thing in the last 15 years that I have paid for out of pocket would be my Icarvest. That was the only thing that I decided to pay for or had to pay for. And I actually was even

I qualified for grants for that. So I think if I remember right, I paid like $4,000 total for my for my Icarvest. We've been very, very lucky to like I never paid for any rise. I've had about 30 of them. I've never had to pay for any hospital stay. And so one time I died nice out down and we did the math. And I think all in all, if you count the stem cell transplant, it's been about three quarters or $700,000. And if you sum up what I paid, I paid $5,000. So that is amazing.

And night and day compared to what we have here in our health care system, which obviously needs a huge overall. Well, thank you for sharing all that. Now, along this whole journey, you are finding after the doctors are looking at you with kind of like bewilderment at how quickly you were recovering,

you know, boxing weeks after getting this done and doing the full workout. And so you finally reach this conclusion that it's likely because of your diet. Is that accurate? Yeah, so one of the things that I've noticed the most when I was preparing for the stem cell transplant, I was like, I'm going to be as strong as I physically can. So I was out running six, 7K and I was doing weight lifting and I was eating really well. And part of the stem cell transplant

is they have to harvest your stem cells. So they do that by giving you these things called GCS app shots. And these shots are designed to basically pull your stem cells from your bones into your bloodstream. And then they kind of hook you up to almost like a dialysis machine that will harvest the stem cells. And so the first sign for me that I was doing something very right with my diet was when I was doing the harvest, one, my counts were through the roof. So the doctor said I had come in with the highest counts of the day,

which made it really easy for them to harvest my stem cells. But where they're harvesting the stem cells, there's me and there's another guy who there's another gentleman in there with me who was also going to be doing a stem cell transplant, his was for cancer. But he was this big, burly tattooed like blue collar, like super tough looking guy and he leaned over to me and he said, how were your GCS shots. He said, how were your GCS at shots? And he actually compared his two being shots, which I don't know, I was like, I don't know how you're comparing yourself to that. I don't think you probably have ever been shot. But he said it felt like he had stamen pains

and massive bone pain along all of the bones in his body. And he said, I've spent the last four days in the fetal position at home. And he's like, you're a little girl. How did you handle it? How was it? And I looked to the eyes, and I said, I ran seven kilometers this morning. I didn't have paint. I had no paint. I had a little bit of bone paint on the tops of my foot. And I was like, but I also dropped something on

my foot. So who's to say what the pain came from? So I had no pain. And my counts were like like insane and I was still at the time I had the port in my chest and I was still boxing I was still eating and then I did the whole stem cell transplant and I was just antsy I said can you take the line out I want to go back boxing let's go boxing and when can I go boxing again when they took the line out after three weeks, that's when they took the line out, and I immediately went to the gym. And I was like, I don't care if I can't do the 45 minute class, I'll do every other song or something. And I immediately got back to it. And the doctors after they had released me from the hospital, you had to come back in like every day,

and then every other day. And then every third day. And so they slowly kind of drag at the time so you don't have to come back as much. And they would, I could hear them in the hall fighting over who got to see me. They'd be like, well, I want jazz. No, I want jazz. And there was three people looking after me. And so I would come, they would come in and they'd be like, so what did you do this? So like yesterday, what were you doing yesterday? I'm like, oh, I went for a run or or I went for a walk. And I had bounced back so quickly that even when I was asking them, well, when can I expect to be having my hair go back? Or when should I expect to return to work?

Or when should I expect for all of these kind of major mile markers that they told me would be months in the future? They're like, we have no idea. You have recovered so much faster than anybody we've ever had to a stem cell transplant. And these are just doctors. I was like patient five or six who had done it for MS. These are doctors who had done it for cancer for years.

And we're some of the most brilliant doctors and they said, we don't know what timeline you're on because you're bouncing back so much quicker. You were back in the gym within three weeks. I went back to work after six weeks and they had told me to prepare to be sick for a year. So that 100% I put down to diet. I had my mom bringing in food for me in the hospital instead of eating the hospital food. I said no, I don't want the hospital food. Well, I have a next question, but I'm going to lead into it with the story of my sister. So for the listener, if this is the first time you've been on the podcast, a little bit over a year ago, my sister completely out of the blue started having

unnatural fatigue, the worst she's ever experienced had just visited my parents went in to get a check out and she thought that there was something wrong with her bile duct. It turns out that she had pancreatic cancer. So immediately they start giving her chemotherapy, et cetera, and during this time, she also unfortunately finds out about three months later that it is metastasized

to her liver. It just so happened that just around this time, she met a homeopathic pharmacologist who started giving her some homeopathic drops to take, but she also consulted with a world renowned homeopathic doctor and dietitian about how she could radically change her diet. And miraculously, she, at that point, was told, you probably have months to live. I'm going to visit her and she's doing high intensity boot camp workouts with me two or three days a week and the doctors are like, how are you doing this? She's doing chemo at this time.

And even after getting chemo, she would still go on a three to five, five mile walk. Then a few months later, we're all pushing the doctors to do more testing. They finally do. It doesn't show up on the MRI. She got that done at one hospital. The doctors, MD Anderson, who were treating her, wouldn't believe it because they've never seen anything like this.

We finally have to push them to do a group together. They do a CT scan long and behold, the cancer metastasis is now disappeared completely. She gets the whipple surgery and now a year later is cancer-free. But where I'm leading with this long-winded story is that there are two great examples of the importance that diet and fitness slash exercise can have when you've got an illness like this.

And my question for you is, why is no one talking about it? I don't know. I honestly couldn't tell you why people aren't talking about it. I think people are starting to talk about it. My, my own neurologist now, he tells me that because I am plant based, I'm a vegan, he wishes that he could bottle me and give me to his other patients, because he tells them you should be eating more plant based. So I think some doctors are coming around to the idea of nutrition and to the idea of wellness as a whole being more than just here's a prescription.

But I think that there's a lot of work to happen. I don't know what it's like in the States for medical school, but I know in Canada for medical school, I think all the doctors do like one day of nutrition. I don't think it's a shame. I think that nutrition has kind of been lumped into this category where they're like, yeah, everyone should eat healthy, but there's no evidence or like there's no proof that vegan or plant-based or all these diets, like what's one's good for you. We live in kind of like a world where everybody wants to eat all of the protein is the big one that I hear as

someone who follows the plant based diet. They're like, well, how do you get your protein? You're not eating animals. You're not getting protein. But I think it's people look at nutrition as being expensive when it's not. I think the doctors are all saying, well, if you have blood pressure, here's a pill for that. That's kind of the society we are in now, where there's, if you've got aches and pain, well, there's a pill for that. If you have X, Y, and Z, there's a pill for that. You can take this stuff and you can kind of eat whatever you want.

Eating healthy takes discipline. I like cake. I love cake. I want to go and eat crap sometimes, and sometimes I do, but it's one of those things where I care so much about my health that I'm going to go back to my healthy eating. I wish more people were talking about it. There was a study done years ago that I remember reading about in school and it talked about how, like I said, I was when I was in the hospital, I didn't eat the hospital food. I got to a point where the guy who would bring me the hospital food every day, he would poke his head in and he would be like, today, and I'm like, no, don't even bring it in, it smells terrible.

They didn't have options for people who are veggie. They didn't have any of that. And so my mom would bring my food in every day and she'd be like, what are you, she would ask, she would text me first in the hospital and she'd be like, what are you eating? What are you wanting to eat today? And I would tell her I want this. And my boyfriend's mom was making me treats that she knew my favorite cookies. So she was sending in food that I wanted to eat.

And years ago, there was a study where there was a hospital who took away that like card that you filled out the night before and you circle, well, I don't want the orange juice or the grape juice or whatever it is. They took away that card and they just said it was almost like a room service at a hotel so you would call down when you were ready to eat and they had a menu and you would say I would like the mac and cheese or I would like the veggie burger and you would get to pick what you'd want and then they would bring it up to you and so people would actually eat the food. People were eating the food and people were eating well enough that they were being released from the hospital earlier. So the food program itself cost more, but their hospital stay was less. The hospital bill, if you balanced it out, it ended up saving the hospital

money. But nobody's like, last I heard, I've never seen a hospital that has adopted that kind of mentality. People just don't place the importance on food and nutrition like they should. It's kind of a back burner for most, most people in most of society. Yeah, so I remember when we talked last time I recommended the book for you because I know you love to read, which I'm going to get into next, but it was by Dr. Stephen Gundry who had spent 30 years being a world renowned cardiologist and then came to the realization that when he looked at all his patients, there was one thing that kept coming back to him and it was diet. And so it led him to do a tremendous amount of research on this and apply it to his own life because at the time he was 75, 85 pounds overweight,

lethargic, and he started implementing this diet then wrote the book, The Plant Paradox, and now has written many others. But he's one of the few who's using his scientific, fact, research and experience to now combine it with the results. And when I talked to him and he gave a diet to my sister, he's saying now hundreds and hundreds of people who are having chronic illness, who are using his recommendations, are feeling tremendously better, recovering faster, having completely different outlooks than they would. So I just wanted to put that out there as well. So I did want to get into your reading because

I heard you like to read two to three books a week. I heard one of them might be a romance novel, but the other two are not. But I remember hearing you on another podcast. I think the person who was the host was sounded like she was from Australia or South Africa, but you mentioned the 5 a.m. club. And I was hoping you could talk about that and whether you're still doing it.

Yeah, so a two three books a week right now, not as much romance novels. I'm kind of into crime novels. I like to read like the crime mysteries and see if I can solve it and like guess the ending. So I read those at night, but every morning I try to read one or two chapters from kind of like a personal development book. And the book that actually started it off was a book that is called The 5 AM Club. And it's a really cool book because it's not like a development

book where it says you should do X, Y, and Z. It's kind of this book and it's written. So it's taught a guy who's taking these two people who are in the book through the 5AM Club. And it says, every morning you should wake up at 5 and you do like 20 minutes of like thinking and you do 20 minutes of your personal development book and you do like 20 minutes of exercise.

And yes, I am still part of the 5AM Club. I get up every morning at 5AM. I've got one of those fancy like alarm clocks that I've stolen from my boyfriend for the night being but it like makes you rise up with the sun because obviously at 5 a.m. in Calgary. Our sun doesn't rise until about 9 30 in the morning right now 9 a.m. So it's one of those things where the sun it makes it look like the sun comes up. I wake up to birdspping, I get up at 5 a.m. I walk my dog, that's kind of my morning like wake up to exercise, I read my book and that's when I have my 20 minutes of me time and it's my favorite favorite thing in the world. I love 5 a.m. It's kind of the world is no one else's up at 5 a.m. so the world is quiet and that's when I am the most productive and that's just kind of when I get

everything that needs to get done done and I get my workout in and I plan my meals for the day and I spend snuggle time with my dog and I walk my dog but I highly highly recommend the 5am club for anybody who is looking to kind of give themselves a jumpstart in life. 5 a.m. is the jumpstart. Okay, and what are some other books you might recommend? Yeah, so there was one that's a really great book and it's called How Not To Die. And it is by a really great doctor and I'm drawing a blank on his name. I think it's Gregor, Gregory. But he kind of talks about plants. He talks about plant-based living. That was one of my favorites. That's probably the one I would recommend the most. I've also read Atomic Habits because I really

like trying to build healthy habits. That was one of my big ones, but yeah, 5 a.m. club and how not to die are the two that I tell everybody because how not to die is actually, like, he talks about all the different powers of like beans and lentils and legumes and like, it's stuff that I had learned in all the meditation courses and I was kind of already eating that way, but it was like, this is a really nice kind of a confirmation and he lays it out with all of the science. That's what I love.

Every single chapter where he talks about beans or lentils and I talk about healthy food, he has study, after study, to back it up, which I think a lot of people will respect as the science in it. Okay, well, we talked about a lot of books here and I mentioned a couple of two, so I'll put these all into the show notes.

But, you know, I think James Clear did a nice job laying it out. When I read Atomic Habits and I've read it a couple times now, I never thought there was anything rocket science about it. I just thought no one kind of laid it together in the journey that you take and the behavioral changes that you make. And so to me, that's why it's such a, I think he's up to three million sales now book. And yeah, I would not be surprised. And I know if you try and get it for my library, I think it's like a 24 week wait.

I have like whenever I finish it, I'll just like put a hold on it so that in eight months, I can always have a refresher because I like the book. And I like, I have a tablet that took up to my library. That's one of the things I did during COVID. Well, I'm going to jump from there to if a listener wanted to eat like Jess, what's eating like Jess in a typical day like?

So I'm a very boring person,'ve been told because I have the same breakfast every day. I'll have the same snacks and lunches and dinners kind of the only thing I change. So every day I have a steel cut oats and lentils for breakfast. So I do like a vanilla steel cut oats and lentils and lentils are such a fantastic food. They're high in protein, they're plant-based food, they're supernatural. So I do that because I consider lentils one of my superfoods. So I have that every morning, I'll change the toppings, normally I'll put a scoop of some kind of nut butter. I believe in having nuts every single day. So I'll do either peanut butter or I'll do fresh shop walnuts.

For my snacks, I do, yeah. There you go right there. Every single day, I'm a big walnut person. Most people don't realize that like one serving of walnuts have all of the omegas that you need in your day, that you can get it without like fish oil pills, which frankly tasted gross when I took them. So I chop up walnuts and I have that.

My snack, I always do either a black bean dip or a hummus with lots of vegetables. Very big cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli cauliflower, those kind of things. Huge, I have them every single day. Broccoli is very powerful. Also, I am protein for people who are worried about protein. But it is like a really, I believe broccoli should be a super food in its own right. Right now, because it's winter here, I have soup every day for lunch. So every week I make a new soup. This week I'm having this delicious butternut squash white bean vegan sausage soup. So I'll have soup

and I'll have a tofu ricotta salad on the side. And then for my afternoon snack, I normally have granola and vegan coconut yogurt, which is delicious. And then for dinner, I love food in general. I do tacos, I do bowls, you do pretty much, as you name it, the most recent thing that I made that all my friends are teasing me for is I make something called a taco brodi, which I should trademark because I'm pretty sure I came up with it, but I make homemade paroies, which are actually if you make them yourself and they're not processed,

they're pretty healthy. So I make homemade paroies and then I bake those and I put taco toppings on top, so I do a vegan cheese sauce. I've got like my TVP ground beef. I've got my vegetables and avocado and salsa and like all this great food. So it looks super delicious and sinful, but it's actually all homemade and completely healthy. So I do fun stuff like that. I try to basically minimize as much of the processed food as I can. The only thing that I have every day is two squares of pure dark chocolate, sea salt dark chocolate, I have those from my evening snack, I have an apple peanut butter every day, but mostly if you're eating like jazz, it's a lot of vegetables.

Very large numbers of vegetables. I spend a lot of money on vegetables every week. Okay, and what would be your biggest advice that you give a listener? My biggest advice would be to one vegetables and to try to, I always tell people to eat their rainbow. So everyone gets like really hung up on spinach or I have to eat kale, which is great. They're great foods, but I always tell people, eat what you love.

I personally, not a huge spinach person. So I'll put it in a smoothie, but you're not going to have me have misfinished salad. So I always say, eat what you like and eat the rainbow because every different color does something different. Like white vegetables are for your immune system and like yellow and orange are good for eyesight and they're all good for different things. So if you eat the rainbow then you're not going

to miss out on kind of key nutrients. Then I also tell people to have your beans flintils and legumes because everybody seems to be really afraid of beans. People are like, oh, if I have beans I'm going to be really gassy. Fun fact, if you rinse your beans really, really well, you won't be. And they are so good for you. It's beans, lentils, like goons, tofu, all of that. More plant-based, you can eat better. I won't tell Dr. Gundre you said that

because he's like Mr. Antide, Lagoons. Oh, I love my beans, my lentils. My, how not to die, very big on beans and lentils. Because that's for me, that's where I, I eat beans lentils in my goons every day. Okay, well thank you for sharing that. Well I wanted to go to kind of fun part of the interview. I'm going to just ask you some general fun questions. So the first one would be, what are three things in life you couldn't live without? Chocolate, 100% would be chocolate. I could not live without my boxing. I started boxing five years ago and took it completely changed my life. I should probably say my family, but also my dog.

My dog and a teller is at my feet and without her, I would not be with me. She's my mountain climbing partner. Okay. If there was one motto or a mantra that you have and you practice it, what would that be? I like to swear. You can kind of paraphrase because we have kids who watch this. So I always just say, effort, what's the worst that can happen?

So I always just say, effort, what's the worst that can happen? Um, because so it's kind of my motto to just still like, okay, screw it, what's the worst that can happen? Let's do this. I had that motto when doing Lentrata. I had that motto when doing the stem cell transplant, um, every kind of idea that I've ever had.

I just say screw it. Let's try it. What's the worst that can happen? Um, and so far nothing too terrible has happened. So I just go screw it. What's the worst that can happen? Climb that mountain, let's do this. Okay, if there's a person alive or dead that you have never had the chance to meet, but you could, who would it be in life? You have never had the chance to meet, but you could. Who would it be in life?

I would want to meet either, I'd be one of two people. I'd either want to meet Steve Prefantane, who is a very famous runner. I used to watch his movie when I was growing up and everyone always said run like free and he would run out in front and take on more pain than anybody. And I would just want to ask him how he did it.

How did you have the mindset, because you were crazy and amazing. And the other one would be selfish and be bun jovy. I've seen bun jovy play live three times with my dad, and he'd bun jovy fan. So if I could, I would love to meet bun jovy. Okay. Okay, and then the last one is if you got the opportunity to be selected to be an astronaut and you were on the inaugural mission to Mars and they told you that all five of you who went on this mission could make one law that would stay permanent for Mars, what would yours be? I would make Mars plant based.

I would say like, cool, we are now a plant based planet. I'm vegan for a number of reasons, but for my health in general, I think the world would be a better place. People's health in general would be better with plant based. And so I would say let's make the whole plant-based. Well, you know, it's interesting. I probably need to eat more of a plant-based diet than I do.

I do eat a lot of plants. But when I got COVID, I lost taste for, I don't know, six to eight weeks. And it's amazing when you can't taste, I wasn't eating any junk food. In fact, I wasn't even eating that much meat. I was eating like lots of things I normally would, like plants and fruit and other things as my primary diet.

So it's interesting that when your body doesn't crave the taste, what it instinctively goes for, which I think tells you a lot. Even though I was on a chemo, before I went through chemo, I was plant-based, I still had meat a little bit. Chemo was the nail and the coffin for me, for me. My body absolutely rejected all things meat.

And so, if people don't like the taste of vegetables, I tell them that they haven't found the right vegetable and they haven't found the right spice yet. Don't be afraid of spices. I've got 65 different spices in my cupboard right now. Yeah, spices are good. I love to cook. So you can't ever have enough spices. I'm always buying new ones. So I know you like to help always buying new ones. So I know you like to help people and coach them on diet. So if someone wanted to get a hold of you and I'll put this in the show notes, what are some of the best ways that they can? Yeah, so I shared my entire journey from Bald Jess to Kimo Jess, there's pictures of me crying, there's pictures of me celebrating on my Instagram, all the right bites. My Instagram is all the right bites. I have a program called Eat to Thrive that I'm actually launching in the

New Year and in the New Year we're going to have a recipe database so people can actually eat like Jess and have all of the recipes that I live off of every day in it. So they can do my Instagram. You can find me on Pinterest, all the right bites. You can find me on my website, all the right bytes.ca, because I'm Canadian. And I'm pretty easy if they just search Jeff's Faults as well. I know there are other Jeff's Faults as because someone else got the Gmail email before I could, but I think I'm the first one that comes up.

Yes, with my name, it is very difficult to get the first of anything, especially because there is this famous English rock star, so it's like impossible to compete against him when it comes to Google name recognition, so I understand that completely. Well, Jess, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It was a great episode, and thank you for sharing and being vulnerable with your story. Thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun, and I'm only a little bit mad at you

for being down there in the nice weather. Well, I love skiing and I love snowboarding and those things, so I wish I could be up there at times as well. Well, we got lots of snow. If you go to the mountains, there's tons. Okay, well, I will have to remember that for later in this winter. Well, thank you again. What a great episode that was with Jess Foltz. And I wanted to highlight a few episodes that we talked about on the show so you had them as a reference point. The first is episode 10 with Canadian pancreatic survivor,

Sydney Hooper, who did the impossible and completed a full Iron Man triathlon while she was still on chemotherapy. And I also wanted to highlight episode 75 with world-renowned neurologist, Jalen Bard, who talks about how he has taken an integrative approach to solving neurological disorders such as MS. I also wanted to let you know that in the show notes, and also in our book lists, I'll

put several of Jess's book recommendations, including the 5 a.m. club, Atomic Habits, and the Plant Paradox by Dr. Steve Gundry. You can purchase these books using our affiliate links where all the proceeds go to help support and to show even the lights on around here. And if there's someone that you would like to hear me interview or a topic or question that you have that you'd like to see me answer, please DM me on Instagram at JohnRMiles. Now, go out there and become PassionStruck. Thank you so much for joining us.

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