Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - How to do keto for kids - with Adrianna Stephenson

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

// E P I S O D E   S P O N S O R S  PRIMAL KITCHEN | Use code: PELZ Paleo Valley. Save 10% on your order with the code TheResetterPodcast // R E A D Y • S E T • R E S E T How to do Keto For Kids This episode is all about using the ketogenic diet to combat childhood cancer.  Adrianna Stephenson @keto4mykid is a brain tumor parent, real food crusader, and keto diet advocate. She has been utilizing a ketogenic diet as a therapy tool for her son, who experiences brain tumors. In this podcast, we cover: How keto can be a life-saving measure About the misinformation around keto for children  Talking to your pediatrician about the ketogenic diet  Popular keto recipes that kids love How to start cooking keto for your family  Why sugary treats should never be a reward  // R E S O U R C E S   M E N T I O N E D Keto4MyKid on Instagram Keto4MyKid on Facebook // F O L L O W Instagram | @dr.mindypelz & @theresetterpodcast Facebook | /drmindypelz & /theresetterpodcast Youtube | /drmindypelz

The information discussed in this episode is intended as general information only. It is not intended for one-on-one medical advice, and you should always consult your healthcare practitioner before making any changes. And if you like the content discussed in this episode, please go leave a review so that others can benefit from it as well. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the great, thought leaders and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again. My name is Dr. Mindy Pels and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me.

Okay, resetters, Jessica and I are back with another great episode and this is a life-changing interview. I will tell you, and let me just start off by painting a picture. for you. If you are a parent, put yourself in the shoes of my next guest. What would you do if your child was given a diagnosis of a brain tumor, your young child? And the solutions that the medical profession gave you were chemo and medication, and that was it. And the side effects of those medications were going to be quite intense. And then you meander, out of that appointment with the doctor and you start to do some research and you come to find out that nutrition, specifically the ketogenic diet, is a possibility to not only slow down

the progression of your child's tumor, but possibly start to heal and reverse the condition. And then you're left with this moment of how the heck am I going to get my child to eat keto. Well, that is the dilemma that my next guest had. And it is a question as well that we get all the time on how do you do keto for your family? How do you do keto for your kids? But have you ever thought that the possibility of keto could save your child's life? And we have seen so many miracles with the ketogenic diet. We've seen so many people of all ages really helped by it. But when it becomes life-saving for your family, you better believe that this next guest has some incredible tips for all of us. Yeah. And just an incredible perspective on how important food is and how much it matters,

whether your kid is diagnosed with cancer or not. I mean, your child's brain is developing. It needs to be fed and it needs to be nourished. And I think often, unless there's a significant issue, we don't always stop and think about food mattering, especially for your kids, right? Yep. Yep. And one of the things that I love that she said is that we tend to equate eating sugar with a happy childhood. And now she's in this dilemma. And she talked about how that was how she was raised is that, oh, it's a celebration we give sugar. Your kid did something amazing. You give them sugar. Like we look, we have trained our children to think that sugar is a treat. So what do you do when you've been on that path and all of a sudden your toddler now has a brain tumor and you've got to take sugar away?

But it's to save his life. Right. You know, that blew me away. I mean, I was literally in awe as we were going through this interview of just this is a mama bear on a mission. Yeah, her tenacity to save her kid's life no matter what. And then, well, in that process, too, remember, she was pregnant. She found that she was pregnant with her second one. So not only do you now have a kid who has cancer that you've got to help, you've got to make sure that you're taking care of yourself in order to have a healthy pregnancy. Yep. And she talked about what she called a line in the sand moment. And I think we all have this with our health, at least those of us who have had our health go south, is that there's a moment where we're like, enough is enough, I will do anything to get myself

well. And that was where she started to go, okay, if I'm going to, if keto's going to save my child, then I better figure out how to master this and do this in a way that is in alignment with the whole family, that makes it easy, that makes it fun, which is, again, what she is going to share with us. She had some good replacements for foods, but I think what's really important for you all to gather is that if we all have a line in the sand moment before the trauma exists, then or the moment of pain exists, then we can really truly start to change the health of our family by implementing the strategy that she gives. Yeah. She said eat how you would if you were told you had cancer, like start that today.

And I mean, we've heard this from lots of people that we've talked to that have a scary diagnosis or they have cancer and they all say if they could go back and have started, you know, making the right dietary choices and removing toxins and X, Y, and Z. That would be their number one piece of advice. Yet so many of us do not listen to that. And then we end up with that diagnosis. Oh, I had that experience with one of my patients and dear friend Lanny when she, got cancer. We were, she really, she had breast cancer and she really figured out that there was a

diet piece and there was a beauty product piece. And so she started to unravel the lifestyle that created cancer. And I would give these big health talks where people would come in and we'd teach people how to eat so they don't build cancer in their body. And she would invite all her friends. And she would always get so frustrated because she would say, all my friends come to your talks thinking they're supporting me. But what I want them to know is that if they don't want cancer, they need to listen to what you're saying about food. And the greatest way they can support me is by not getting cancer themselves. Right. And I think that's like what I want everybody to hear in this podcast is that, yes, this mama had to make it happen in order to save her child's life. But whether it is

cancer when your child's a toddler or an autoimmune condition when your child's a teenager or Hashimoto's or PCOS when your child is in their 20s or infertility issues, whatever it is, how we take care of our kids, what we feed our kids when they're young is going to determine it's going to make or break the diseases they get or don't get in there as they get older. Well, yeah, and again, just food matters. And if you haven't, if you're listening to this episode, you haven't listened to the episode we did, I don't know, two weeks ago about what you, with Brian Sanders, the food lies documentary, go back and listen to that and then come back to this episode and really get to understand like what our food industry, especially here in the United States, because there's a lot of

things that we're putting on the shelves in our grocery stores that other countries aren't allowing in. And we have to start paying attention to this stuff. Yep. We are the sickest country in the world because America is. I know we have a worldwide audience, but our food policies and the chemicals we allowed in our food are ridiculous and our people are suffering because of it. So if you're a parent and you've come to this podcast and you want to learn how to do better, I applaud you. Again, it makes a huge difference for what your child, the diseases your child will get or not get. And let me just tell you a little bit about Adriana so you know who I'm interviewing. here. Her name is Adriana Stevenson, and this is, she says she's a brain tumor parent, a ketogenic

diet advocate, and a real food crusader. I love that. A real food crusader. I want to be a real food crusader. I think you are. I know. You just have to call yourself it. Do I just label myself that? I think so. Shoot. It's good. Yeah, it's powerful. I want like a t-shirt that says that. So here's what she says about herself is that armed with an academic research background and the mantra, food is medicine, Adriana used a therapeutic ketogenic diet as a frontline intervention alongside standard of care treatments to battle her toddler's brain tumor. Her oldest son Parker is now a thriving five-year-old and is considered to have no evidence of the disease. So again, you guys, listen to this. Horrible diagnosis, she took standard of care procedures, mixed it with

the ketogenic diet and has a healthy boy now. And she went on to say that the life-changing journey has ignited a passion for helping families navigate metabolic therapies. She works to empower others by sharing evidence-based research, which we love. We always want to bring you guys to science. We want to bring you tools that are backed by evidence that we know are going to work. And she's also into kid-friendly recipes and practical tips for everyday keto living. We dove into snacks. we do like all the things that I know as a parent I worried about all the things we hear from you guys but if you are interested in using the keto diet in your family you're definitely going to want to listen to this we are depending on when you're listening to this we are doing a fast training week

for our resetter community that is all based around the principles of ketogenic living fasting lifestyle before the month of august so make sure you find us in our resetter collaborative on Facebook or in the community section on YouTube so you can learn how your family can do fast training week with us this month. But this is Adriana Stevenson, just my like a mama on a mission. And I'm so excited to share this episode with you guys. Enjoy. Resetters. So Dr. Mindy here. And this next guest has so much information for you guys that you have been asking us over and over and over again, which is how the heck do you do the ketogenic diet with a family? So we have brought on Adriana Stevenson and let me just

start off by welcoming you. Thank you, Adriana, for being here. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Your story's incredible and I really want to dive into that because you didn't just go looking for keto. Hapazardly, it was a life-saving measure. that you found keto. And so why don't you start off just so we can fill my audience in. Sure. Your son was diagnosed with a, was it a brain tumor that he was diagnosed with? Yes. So my firstborn son, Parker, he was born in November of 2014. He had a full-term pregnancy. I did have to have an emergency C-section with him at 41 weeks, but I have, I've got scoliosis. So that was part of that, but beautiful, perfect, healthy baby.

I had been on a real food quest when I was pregnant with him. I had no toxic chemicals in my home. It was doing everything right. I breastfed him. At six months, I introduced organic avocado as his first food. I mean, we were doing everything right. He developed normally until about 14 months. I noticed he was really slow to walk. And that bothered me. He crawled on his six-month birthday. And when you're a first time, mom, you remember those. Right. Yeah. You're marking. You go back to the books. My second son, I have no idea. Right. And but then he didn't walk till he was almost 14 months. And that seems really, really odd to me. And but, you know, everyone said I was just worrying for nothing. Around 16 months, I noticed he started having,

left hand dominance. And what I mean by that is that he would put toys into his left hand. He would use his left hand for everything. And it seemed really odd to me. And my husband is left handed and was like, oh, he's going to be a lefty, you know, just like, just like me. And I thought this is way too young to have that kind of dominance. He was also really wobbly on his feet. But then again, toddlers total. That's what everybody tells us. Right. And it wasn't until his 18. month well baby visit that I told my doctor, I think there's something wrong. He at this point had not only was left hand dominance, he had started fissing his right hand and kind of putting his thumb in like this and holding it tight to his body when he was concentrating on things. And I had no idea what it could possibly be. And our pediatrician referred us to a neurologist who said, gosh, he looks great, but that right hand, it's abnormal. let's go ahead and do an MRI of the brain and the top of the spine to rule out anything. And we left that appointment thinking it could be a pinch nerve.

Right. Because he was perfect in every other way. And that MRI, it was sedated. And I remember thinking back to, oh my gosh, I can't believe we have to sedate my 19-month-old to do this MRI, all these first-time mom worries. And I knew something was wrong about an hour into his MRI. because we had to sign consent forms for contrast I. And I thought, oh, okay, it means they see something, you know,

or they want to look a little bit closer. They don't say anything. We get home. We were told our neurologist would call us in a couple of days. And 15 minutes after we got home, our neurologist called us and said, you know, I know why Parker is having difficulty with his right hand. I, you know, need you to sit down over the phone, told me this. Wow.

I was putting clothes away in his nursery. sat down and she said he has a large brain tumor. What goes through your mind at that? I mean, how do you even, as a mother, how do you even take that information in? You know, I think back to that moment a lot, I call it that line in the sand moment where it's like the age of innocence. Everything is different from that moment forward.

And honestly, we were worried that we would lose him in a matter of weeks. I mean, we had no idea. We truly had no idea what it would mean. I was honestly just flabbergasted because it was the furthest thing from my mind. I remember telling my husband before the scan, okay, they say pinched nerve and I thought, well, I had a C-section. Maybe somehow he had, you know, oxygen was cut off for a brief period of time. I'm going through all of these possible scenarios. And I remember saying, like, I don't think there's any way it would be something like a brain tumor. And I remember him saying, don't even say that. You know, like we didn't want to jinx it, You know, and because we had Obamacare in 2016, we were both contracting at the time. We didn't have a choice of hospital. We didn't have a choice of doctor. And there's only one pediatric neurosurgeon in Dallas that would take our case. And it's amazing how the universe works out. It's exactly who I would choose now, knowing everything that I know. And he is a true miracle worker. He is amazing. I'd like to give him a shout out, Dr. David Socco. He's head of pediatric neurosurgery at Medical City.

in Dallas. He's an amazing human being. And it wasn't until about four days later that we actually saw the MRI images. And I put a lot of those up on my social media for people to look at. It takes your breath away. A golf ball size, four centimeters across, smack dab in the middle of his head. It was in then around the hypothalamus, so the phlyamic region of the brain, which is, you know, very, very central part of the brain, really close to your optic nerve and your pituitary glands and all these incredibly delicate parts in every part of your brain is every millimeter is important but this is a really hard part to access and that was really important to know because it limited what our choices were. Go ahead. Yeah. One thought on the hypothalamus is it doesn't have a

blood brain barrier. So do they think that there was any like, did they ever give you any explanation of how it could form? Was it? So the type of, so, The type of tumor, we wouldn't know until we had a biopsy or surgery. And at this point, we were really weeks away from it encroaching so much that it would have led to hydrocephalus. So we actually caught it at an incredible moment. And we knew we had to debulk it somehow. Right. And that would also allow us to know more about what type of tumor it was. They thought just based on what it looked like, that it was a pylocytic astrocytoma, which is a type of glioma. And that was confirmed in his surgery.

So our surgeon went in amazingly through the top of the head in between the two lobes of the brain, through the fourth ventricle and literally scooped the tumor out from the inside out. I described it almost like a watermelon and leaving that rind and trying to scoop as much of the inside out as possible to help take the pressure off the brain at this point. These huge risk for stroke and other things like that. Can you get the whole tumor out that way? No. If it wasn't a different part of the brain, yes.

But near the hypothalamus, it touches so much, so many delicate parts of the brain that we knew going into it that a gross total resection was impossible. We were hoping he could get as much as he could, to be honest. So we always knew he wouldn't get all of it. He got about 70% amazingly. And the pathology did come back that it was a juvenile hyalocytic astrocytoma, a JPA brain tumor, grade one. That was great news. It's a type of glioma. These are typically slow, slow growing, although to be 19 months old and have a golf ball size tumor, it's not that small. And there were a lot of other risk factors that he had.

Age at diagnosis is a huge risk factor. Location is a huge risk factor. So there's a bunch of other things that that weren't so promising. But we knew that we would have a few months of watch and wait after the surgery to determine what would happen. So that was good news in the sense that we didn't have to make immediate decisions. He frankly, we were worried he wouldn't wake up from surgery. Yeah. An eight hour brain surgery, not a kid who's not even two yet, just the baby. And he did great. He recovered. We noticed that he was able, even in those two weeks between MRI and surgery, his right hand had gotten so bad that it was almost like in a permanent clawed position pulled back to his body. And that did relax right after the surgery, but he was still very weak on that side.

And we waited three and a half months, not knowing anything because we were told, you know, this, we have no idea. This could be enough to stop growth. It couldn't. We just, we have no idea. And week after he turned two, we went in for his MRI. and we were devastated to learn that the tumor had grown back. And it was almost the cavity space was almost as large as the original tumor. And so at this point, more surgery is off the table.

And we had 48 hours to agree to chemotherapy. Oh, my gosh. That was it. What do you do in 48 hours that can allow you to make a decision like that? I called every possible contact that I had to try to wrap my mind around. it, to be honest, I was coming from an academic background. I have degrees in the humanities, and I had been working at a university for a long time prior to this. And I knew people's husbands who were neurologists, who knew their oncologists. And I truly, I called in every favor I could.

I had a contact who was a researcher at St. Jude's, and she talked me through just what do chemotherapy therapy protocols mean, what does standard of care mean? I had no idea, truly had no idea any of that meant. And we kind of knew that we were going to agree to it, but I had to try to wrap my mind around it. And so within that first week from the bad MRI, we met with oncology. He went in for general surgery to get his metaphor placed. And then we were in the hospital after that for the next three days while they did chemo to see how he would react to everything. And then the day after we got home, I found out I was pregnant with our. I was going to say, and somewhere in the story, you were pregnant.

Oh, yeah, that was our big surprise. Yeah. So within a one week, Parker has a bad scan. We agree to chemo. He has surgery. He's inpatient. I tell my boss that I remember spending the night, that first night with him in the hospital. And I remember thinking, there's no way I can go back to a job. And because this chemotherapy protocol was an 18-month chemotherapy protocol of three different chemo drugs. I thought there's no way I can be the parent and advocate he needs and work. And I remember, I didn't even discuss it with my husband. He came in the next morning to bring me some coffee and I said, I'm quitting. I don't care. We'll deliver pizzas. I don't care. Like, we will have to work this out. I call my boss and tell her we get home that Sunday and then that Monday morning because I had given her a two week notice. I thought, gosh, you know, I feel kind of funny. I had one, like one pregnancy test left.

we weren't trying and I thought, how much more can I handle? Well, you can handle a lot more than you think you can. Okay, so that's good. This is a good because we always talk about on this, on this podcast, how it's, we all gain so much inspiration from people's pain to purpose story. And, you know, you don't, when you're in that moment of life where things are really pushing you up against a wall, you don't think you can handle it. And then you hear someone like your story. and you go, oh my gosh, I don't even think I've ever had that level of stress and look at what you've done. And do you know, I remember, now in retrospect, it was the biggest gift I could ever have been given because I had, it forced me to take care of myself. It forced me to eat and rest and ask for help.

I mean, to just, it's hard for people to wrap their mind around this. When your child gets chemotherapy and they are still in diapers for the first 24 hours after they've had an infusion, I wasn't allowed to change his diaper because it's so toxic coming out of the body when I was pregnant. So my husband and my mom both had to wear like medical sterile gloves to change him. If he vomited after treatment, I wasn't allowed to clean it up just because we just didn't know. I mean, I remember trying to Google anything to find another story of a mom who was pregnant with a kid in chemo just trying to find anything and there wasn't anything. Wow. I remember how hard that was. But it really, it did. It forced me to slow down. I frankly couldn't go home and drink a bottle of wine every night and stuff my face full of carbs. You know, I just find a difference. Those are my old coping mechanisms, right? So it ended up being a incredible gift. But it was very hard to. I mean, we.

I knew I would need a second C-section and we had to schedule my second son's birthday for around his brother's chemotherapy schedule. Wow. Crazy. Right. Wow. So when as you were going through this whole process, one of the things that I've seen with patients of all different backgrounds when cancer's involved is when you go and you ask what can we what else can we be doing? Right. And they're like nothing. Just do this and make sure that you feed them anything you want to feed them just so that they're happy. It's even worse with kids, to be honest. I mean, that's the thing I remember. I had mentioned before, even prior to getting pregnant, I was on kind of a real food quest for a long time. I had looked at paleo like 10 years ago when he was first stagnosed. My first, like one of those

like crazy freight train thoughts was no sugar. He can't eat any sugar. Because I had, you know, and I remember I told. that to one of those kind of friend of a friend clinicians who I was just trying to get feedback from. And she told me, I won't forget this, don't do anything to change his diet or to aggravate the tumor in any way. And it gave this brain tumor, this power over me. Like, I was afraid of it and I couldn't touch it. And oh my God, don't anger it. I remember thinking those thoughts. And at that point, we were heading into surgery and I remember thinking, you know what, I just want him to live. So I put that on the back burner.

Yeah. Put that on the back burner. And that whole fall, I think back to he was on some steroids coming. A lot of people are coming off of brain surgery just to try to keep the swelling down. Well, you know that steroids up your blood sugar like crazy, they give you a ravenous appetite. And I remember he would go through loaves of Dave's killer brain. red and butter because he was so little, you know, and I remember the... I mean, it was organic.

It was clean and organic. He doesn't have, you know, like all this chemicals in it. And now I'm just like... And the thing is, he ate... I mean, he ate real food too, right? But I remember he was two and we had just moved and just trying to get all of this together. So food was still really... I really couldn't focus on it.

And then he started chemo. And it was just about trying to figure out what that looked like and wrap my mind around all of this. And after three months after he's... started chemo, we had his next MRI, and the tumor was about 8% smaller. So it was a little bit smaller. But I remember at that moment, I remember breathing a sigh like, he's going to live. Like, he's going to live. But I also knew this was a marathon. And it really hadn't hit me that this wasn't going to go away. There was no, you know, there's no silver bullet to this. It wasn't just going to go

way. Getting 8% smaller, it was never, ever going to be all right. And so at that point, I had enough kind of mental space to go back and revisit my initial feeling of food matters. We have to do something about this. And I was scouring a Facebook parents group for these type of pediatric low-grade gliomas. That's like a general family term. Are there a lot of people out there with that? There are over a hundred different types of pediatric brain tumors. Wow. And it's a good idea. And this is one of the most common ones as brain tumors go. I believe there are something like 28,000 children currently living with brain tumors in the U.S. alone.

There has to be a reason for this. Do you have a theory on it? I do have theories. I think the more I've studied epigenetics, I think there was, and also to know that there are multi-generational epigenetic factors. I really believe that that's what we were dealing with because he wasn't alive long enough to be

exposed to a ton of time. We don't live in a chemical dump. We, you know, as I said, I ate organic when I was pregnant. I grew up in a really kind of crunchy household. I knew it wasn't any of those things. But I remember kind of when I started, the first book that I really read

that opened my mind in So it's been three months after he started chemo was tripping over the truth. It's such a good. I've got that book right behind me. I carry my dog ear and copy with me. It's what I tell everybody to read. It was the most empowering, enlightening book for me to read because it demystified cancer. It took the power away from it.

I wanted to know how it functioned. As I said, I've got an academic research background. So my mind is naturally inclined to question and to look for sources and to find patterns. and themes. And I remember kind of wrapping my mind around epigenetics and thinking that, you know, like my great-grandfather was in World War I. He was a surgeon in France on the front lines and he was exposed to mustard gas. And you think about how those things trickle down to the generations and then maybe Parker was exposed to a virus or anything else that could have just clicked on those epigenetic factors that caused this to grow. We just don't know. Gleomas are created from glial cells,

which are those star-shaped astrocyte nerve cells in the brain. So I don't know. That's my best guess. I think you're on to something. And for me, it was incredibly liberating to figure that out because any parent that deals with childhood cancer will tell you that the guilt you feel that somehow you've done something wrong. I remember thinking in like the crazy, you know, post-diagnosis.

this few months of, oh my God, I stood in front of a microwave or, you know, I smelled a cleaner or did something. And that's not what causes it. You know, and that's not, I want parents to take that away. Like, it's not your fault. But it took me, it took me almost a half a year to come to that realization that it wasn't my fault. But anyways, in reading Travis Christofferson's book, which for me was absolutely a life-changing experience to read that, because it started me on this whole journey. And once I understood how tumor cells functioned, and it really doesn't matter what type of cell it is, it actually understand the biology of how it works. It made so much sense to me. I came across in this Facebook group, another mom who was brave enough to share her story

of her daughter who had just finished treatment. So we were at the beginning stages of treatment. her daughter had just finished. Same exact tumor, JPA tumor in the hypothalamus. She had a partial debulking surgery. She had just finished her chemotherapy, although she had only done two chemo drugs, carbo-platin and bin Christine. We had Timeloma Zed added to our timidar added to our protocol, I think probably because he was younger, to be honest. And it was off of a St. Jude study from 2014. But her daughter had finished that, but they had started her on a therapeutic ketogenic diet day one of her chemo and her tumor was gone. Wow.

Completely gone. There was like a small area of what they thought might be scar tissue left. And I thought, I knew it. I knew there had to be something about it. And so I commented. She messaged me. And then she called me on the phone. We exchanged cell phone numbers.

She called me and she became my mom lifeline. And, you know, that's something. When I say I found out about this from another mom, that's the truth. This is like a grassroots mom-to-mom movement. And because when it happens to your child, you just never wanted to happen to anybody else's, you know. And she coached me and I remember thinking this is going to be, let's see, in tail end of March 2017, I remember being so afraid to start him on a ketogenic diet because how come? Because I thought I didn't want to do anything else to harm him. Yeah, yeah. It was this fear of he's going through so much.

There's so much misinformation and fearmongering around a ketogenic diet, especially with children, especially with a two-year-old, a pre-verbal two-year-old. I remember thinking, I just don't want to hurt him. And then I felt it was overwhelming at first. But I'm the kind of person that, you know what, when I committed to do it, we just jumped in, two feet, went forward, mistakes made along the way, but that's the only way you learn. And I just, we never looked back because I will tell you the amazing thing, his next MRI after starting him on a ketogenic diet. So it was another like three months.

That MRI tumor was 30% smaller. All post-surgical edema was resolved. Wow. And I thought, actually our neurosurgeon couldn't believe it. Did he know what you were doing? Did you tell him? I do. So the neurosurgeon, no, not at the time, because we were really only seeing him for consultations. Oncology, I will say this, and this is something I encourage parents to do, too.

I didn't keep it secrets, but I also did not ask permission. And so there's an amazing, amazing nonprofit called Max Love Project. I don't know if you know them. They're based in Southern California. They're all about helping kids thrive in during childhood, cancer, and then life after that, too. Everything that they promote is evidence-based research. And so it's also looking at the whole child. So sleep and how important community is and play and food. And they're really big proponents of the ketogenic diet. Their son, Max, the couple that started it, is still battling brain cancer eight years later. And a ketogenic diet is a huge part of his treatment process. And she, this mom connected me with Max Love Project. And they gave me, because Justin Wilford, the, the husband of one of the co-founders. He has two PhDs. One of them is in public health. And he gave me a 10-page annotated bibliography of studies and clinical trials and information about therapeutic ketosis.

And I handed it to our oncologists. This is why we're doing this. I'm also going to be asking for additional blood work. Or if you see, you know, if you see certain things come back in his blood work, this is why. So I want us to be on the same page. But I, you know, I held my own with that. But that's my personal. What did the oncologist say? Yeah, what the oncologists say? So our practice is for doctors. I will say that I waited to talk to the doctor I knew would be most open to it.

There's two doctors that I would never talk about it with because they're very old school. Incredible people, but I would never, they're just not open to that. One is too young. And the other one, just the sweet spot. And actually, he was very open. He had been, I was familiar with the ketogenic diet. for children with epilepsy. So it wasn't, you know, completely foreign to him. He had his concerns, of course, but he, I think actually giving him the literature in a way, it was a way to

respect his profession as well and respect the fact that I knew he would actually look into that research with me. It wasn't just a bunch of woo-woo. It was like, no, these are real studies. Let's take a look at these together. Yeah. And he was really pumped afterwards. He would come to, like, hey, did you see this clinical trial just got started? I'm like, yeah, you know, he, He also, he's not our primary oncologist, but every time we go back for appointments and visits now, he always makes a point to stop by and asks us, are you still doing keto? And I'm like, you bet, Dr. Hold on. Absolutely. A couple of interesting things in that story that I just think for everybody to realize, I love what you said that they, they will respect you when you bring the science. And I think that is

something for people to realize when they're working with their medical doctor, that that makes them feel calm because that's their training is that you need to look at these peer-reviewed journals and that's the only way that they're going to open a conversation. Otherwise, they feel it's too, you're going rogue or it's too woo-woo. So that's the first thing I would say is amazing. Second thing is, how sad is it that there were two doctors, three doctors you couldn't talk to and one that you could because food is so powerful and the ketogenic diet is so powerful. How could they not be open to want to hear that? You know, I think that one of the, I think some of them would be really open to hearing it, to be honest.

I have a very dear friend who is a pediatric doctor. She is an endocrinologist. And one of the things that she's told me is that a lot of these doctors are under incredible pressure and the thought of being sued by families and being. having the state medical board revoke their licenses. And the system is not well, is not really, doesn't really encourage doctors who question things, to be honest.

Interesting. And I can see that. And in oncology, there's a lot at stake. You have children dying. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, that's the thing. This isn't just, you know, something is a little bit out of balance.

You have children dying horrific deaths. And these doctors, they are incredible human beings. And they really are. and they would never want to harm their patients at all. But I think a lot of them are so, there is such in the business of like the triage of trying to save their patients that come to them, that the thought of something as simple as food just really that that isn't,

that structure really isn't built into their training. And it's not really encouraged or supported by the hospital setting either. That's crazy. So, okay, so give us an example of, how do you start a ketogenic diet with an 18 month old? He was two. Okay. How do you, how do you?

I mean, I've sat with so many parents that are like, they like this, they don't like this. I can't get them to eat that. So where do you start? I have a lot of thoughts on this. You know, one of my, the biggest concern I had when I started him on this was I wanted to make sure it was nutrient dense. because I had read some criticism that this isn't, you know, this isn't a nutrient-dense way of eating for kids, not like, you know, goldfish and peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Yeah, right.

But I remember thinking, going back to that whole, I don't want to harm him at all. I want to make sure it's nutrient-dense. So I started with that. I also, before I kind of get into the specifics of the food, the other thing that was non-negotiable at the beginning was routine blood testing. And from the beginning, I have. tested his blood glucose and ketones. But we had a rule that every time Parker got poked, Mommy got poked. I was going to, it's funny because when I was preparing for this interview,

I was like, I wonder if she did ketone testing and, and because we get people all the time that are like, oh, like adults that are like, I can't do that. There are weanies about it. And the thing is, it also, it all comes down to your attitude as a parent, right? And so for me, it was really important that I de-escalated trauma because trust me, it's incredibly traumatic to see your two-year-old have a giant chemotherapy needle poked into their chest. I mean, truly. I mean, like, you have to numb it with cream and then put saran wrap around it before you get in and then it's just this giant. I mean, that's trauma. I didn't want testing his blood sugar to be traumatic is really what it was. So I thought I have to de-escalate the trauma on this. I also wanted to normalize it.

I never wanted to give him a complex about food. I didn't want him to feel. I didn't want him to feel weird about things. So for us, what worked for us as a family was that I made it a whole family affair. My husband and my mom lives with us as well. And I was like, you're grownups. When you're out, you can eat whatever you want, but I'm not going to buy it here in the house. Because even though he was only two, as I said, I knew this was a marathon. We were going to be in this for the long haul. I had to make sure that this was a sustainable way for us to eat and for him to see that this was normal in our house. So kind of those are my caveats to everything. I tested myself every time he got tested. And at the beginning, it's really important to know how food affects you,

right, and affects your child. And so it would be, you know, I would test them in the morning. I'd also do post-pranidial testing. I would do, you know, sometimes three or four times a day, means I got tested three or four times a day. There's a reason I've also gotten a lot healthier after I had, after I had my second son, I've lost, you know, almost 60 pounds. I'm, you know, I've reclaimed my own health in all of this, too, to be amazing, which most, I don't know very many moms that can say my child got a brain tumor and then we both got healthy. Right. I know. It doesn't happen overnight. And I want to people to know that it doesn't happen overnight. And you know what? It's not very sexy to say it's showing up day in and day out.

It's trudging. It's making every month. meal. I mean, that's the thing is that it's not, people want this like glamorous thing. And you know, it's showing up every single day in your kitchen and looking long term, the long term view of what you're shooting for. So at the beginning, because he was on chemo and he was pre-verbal, I had to just go off of like physical cues to how he was feeling with appetite and everything else. And so we started with really basic foods. It was pastured eggs, grass-fed butter, MCT oil,

avocado, grass-fed ground beef, and full-fat cheese. That's what we started on. And some, a little bit of almond flour as well, because at the beginning, I made him cream cheese pancakes, which are literally cream cheese, pastured

eggs, almond flour, and that's it. Blitzed in a blender. Wow. You put tons of butter, you put tons of butter on, top. I mean, he would eat some days. I would also add extra egg yolks in as well. And so there are some days he'd eat, you know, five, six pastured eggs. And I thought it's the best nutrition he can get. I mean, he would ask for carry-gold, thank God you can buy carry-gold butter at Costco. And so I bought the best ingredients that we could because I knew that was really important.

And he would eat chunks of butter, fomless burgers, quality bacon, avocados. Luckily he gets his love of avocados from me. The avocado. It's amazing. It's like a ketogenic dream. Yeah. You know, and then as we pretty much ate those on repeat for him the first three months. And then we started branching out a little bit more to make more recipes type of thing, right?

So we would make, you know, fat head pizza. We always come back to basics. I honestly didn't introduce like fruit, like blueberries or strawberries, like low glycemic index fruit like berries. And so probably, I don't. know, six, eight months after starting the diet because I really didn't want to give him a taste for those things. Right. Right. But you were low, low keto. Oh, I mean, and that's what I want to tell people to, like, when you're doing this for medical reasons, like, that's why I use a term like therapeutic

ketosis. This isn't just I want to feel better in my genes. This is you are literally trying to get their glucose low, their ketones high to get what they call that GKI, that glucose index. Yeah. I was going to say. index. We weren't going into days that he had chemo. I wanted to get him around a one or lower, if possible, because the evidence is there, actually, that it increases the efficacy of the chemotherapy, there's neuroprotective qualities. So I thought all we're going into chemo, because as you know, chemotherapy doesn't differentiate between bad cells and good cells. It's all cells, right? So if we could help protect his healthy brain while he was getting a chemo, I figured that was the best we could possibly do. A lot of heavy cream to use things. We make our own fat bombs, lots of so many fun things,

but we kept it really simple. And actually, I keep it really simple these days too. I kind of, I tell parents, like, I like what I call ingredient meals, right? And that's, I mean, like kids like that too. I mean, we have fun plates and, you know, that look like cars in each different section has something different in it. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. We eat nuts, coconut. As I say, we make our own fat bombs. He can eat a lot. more protein now that he's post-treatment. But we kept it really simple and it didn't have to be complicated. And at the beginning, I only worried about him and I. And then everybody else kind of had to fend for themselves. But there were only so many foods to choose from. Did he ever push away?

Did he ever like say like push the food away? Yeah, because he's two. Right. The thing is, parents give up really easily. And the thing is is that how do you get your kid to eat this? Well, number one, I'm in charge. I'm the parents and I buy the food and you know, my kid only eats goldfish will stop buying goldfish. And I know it's not always that easy, but sometimes it is that easy. You don't have to buy it. Most kids will eat when they're hungry. People always love to come back and be like, well, that's not true with it. Well, you know what? The majority of children will eat when they're hungry. The other thing, fat makes food taste great. Oh, amazing. Yeah. You know, I mean like, if you haven't had real,

like that's such a disservice like don't eat some right literally a beautiful steak with a really quality grass fed butter and really good salt on top there's nothing that tastes better than that you know and so the other thing you didn't get a you didn't get a lot of pushback when you're feeding your two year old grass bed steak and then the thing is too is that modeling is so important i mean any parent knows this if you want your children to eat something just sit on your plate to sit down to eat, right? And then it's like what you got over there. And that was really important too. And I think that for me, because he was so young, I knew we had this window of opportunity that if we all ate this way as a family, it's what he sees. It's what becomes normal to him. And so if he sees me eating the same foods

as him, he is much more likely to try new things as well. So that really, that is the formula that worked for our family. So what about hunger? I'm in charge. And you're in charge. I love it. And what about hunger? Like, surely that killed his hunger. Like, if he wasn't verbal, how did you know, were there any moments you sat down and he would just not, didn't want to eat? So, I mean, the thing is, is that I offered him food pretty frequently throughout the day was one thing. He always was a bigger breakfast eater to begin with. So I don't, I mean, I think that it's hard to remember three years ago what it was like when he was so little.

But, I mean, he would sign for more. And the thing was is that his, where his tumor was, located. He had an expressive language delay, but there was nothing wrong with his receptive language. So he understood everything. And he would say yes and no and more and please, Mommy, but just couldn't, you know, didn't have more complex sentences coming out of that. So there were ways to gauge that from there. And then we did do things to make it fun too. At that point, there were no, like, there were very few keto treats on the market three years ago that had ingredients that I was comfortable with, to be honest.

And mostly I'm real stickler for the type of sweetener, obviously. We didn't want to do maltitol or aspartain or any of those really yucky ones. Does he like stevia? Will he eat stevia? I don't like stevia. I don't like stevia either. And there were only a few. Arithratol was really just starting to kind of come out.

Lilies had just kind of come out. Allulose wasn't a thing then to be able to get it. So erythratol really became our primary one that we used. And there is a cookie type called fat snacks. And it was at that point the only clean keto cookie I could find out on the market. And those were his treat when we go to infusion that I would bring that. And so he got to have cookies when he was there. And yeah, nuts, olives.

There's so many fun fingers for kids. Olives. Olives are the. I always tell. all of our fasters. I'm like, olives are amazing. There's no carbs, no protein, no calories. They're all fat. And for a kid, you can put them on your fingers probably. Oh, man. I have like pictures with me like, no, yeah. I mean, it's part of my secret plan to get him to love all the foods. I love really too. I mean, you know, cheese and steak and avocado and all of those are all my

favorite foods too. So, no. But really, we use treats occasionally. And you know what sometimes I bribed him with treats. It would be like Lily's chocolate chips because I knew that getting nutrition in him was paramount. And so it would be like, take a bite of egg yolk, have a Lily's chocolate chip. I mean, to be honest, I didn't see anything wrong with it. I still don't either. Yeah. And so as you started to do the ketogenic diet, what other than changes in MRI, anything else that you saw?

Did you see changes in behavior? Did it have hand show a different? So one of the things was, and you can really see, I mean, it's really, it's so painful to see your child's in chemotherapy because they go from this incredibly vibrant child to all of a sudden their skin has no luster, their hair starts to fall out. It's brittle, sunken eyes. You know, you just, I mean, because you just see it like killing them, right? You know, it's just terrible. And the three chemotherapy drugs he was on are not there. incredibly toxic, but there are worse ones to have, too, you know? One thing we noticed is that his hair didn't completely fall out, which was amazing. And he started to regain some of his coloring. And actually, after about a year on the ketogenic diet, when he was finishing up chemo, we went on his Make-A-Wish trip, which you can go on a Make-A-Wish trip and not be a

terminal case. I didn't know that. It wasn't. I mean, just the people know that. When they said that, our neurosurgeon encouraged us to do it. And I was hesitant, but we did. And it wasn't a really wonderful way to celebrate the end of treatment, actually. Yeah, I bet.

Where did you go? We went to Disney World. Awesome. He was three and a half. He wanted to see Poo Bear and Tigger and do all that, Piquet and all that. But you'll see him in these make-a-wish pictures, and people wouldn't believe that he was still on chemo. And that's the amazing thing. Like, I can see small changes in him and his hair was still brittle, but it hadn't

completely fallen out. People couldn't believe because he looked so healthy. healthy while he was on chemo. And I think a lot of it was that we were nourishing his body as best we could. Yeah. We see that even in adults in my clinic. Like, you know, they're going through chemo, but you put them on the ketogenic diet and it's like they look better than ever. Like they look better than the person sitting in the waiting room who doesn't have cancer isn't on keto and is eating the standard American diet. Exactly. And you know what? He never went nutripanic either is amazingly. And the only time apart from his initially, his initial inpatient to start the chemo, the only time he was hospitalized was actually one month before finishing treatment. He developed the court line infection. That's the only reason we were ever hospitalized, which unfortunately, then you have been in the hospital for a week. And it's 24-7 IV antibiotics because it's very dangerous for those kids. Because those, you know, those reports are arterial lines.

Yeah, no, they're hard. Yeah. But even then. I knew I had made real progress because our favorite oncologist, the one I had talked to about keto, he was actually our admitting doctor when he went in with a fever and we knew we had to be admitted. And I was already prepared, of course, going into the hospital, like, what we could order and foods I was bringing in and things like that. But I remember the nurse came in when it was time to order. She's like, oh, yeah, you know, your doctor, he put in that he's on a ketogenic diet, like, put it into his orders.

And I was like, yes, but I feel so vindicated. It was amazing. It was amazing to see that. So they didn't question me when I was like, my son would like your, you know, your three egg omelets with five pieces of bacon. I want four sides of avocado and they didn't question it. And I thought that was amazing to me. They actually will serve a ketogenic meal in the hospital? Wow. Sort of. They will. Unfortunately, a lot of Keto dietitians are they try to create ketogenic ratios using standard American diet foods. So you can have like two pieces of spaghetti if you drink it in MCT oil, right? It's looking at it from like a, I think kind of a backwards perspective.

Really what that order did was it allowed me freedom to order him what we needed to. And then we brought in from home and I brought him butter and, you know, squeeze the bowl, that pack. Yeah. Amazing. But the happy ending is that... Yeah, I was going to say, how is he today? Well, it's been 11 months since his last scan. He has actually officially been considered NED, which stands for no evidence of disease since December of 2018. How old is he today? He's five and a half. Five and a half. Wow. And is he still on a ketogenic diet? So he is, I would say it's a modified ketogenic diet. I don't count protein.

anymore. Okay. And I used to because and the fact of the matter is you really do to get those low G. I numbers, you either have to fast for significant periods of time or you have to drop your your total carbs below 20 for extended periods of time. And for us, we wanted to be fasting, mimicking for him because he was so young. We didn't want to obviously restrict food from him. And so for us, we really had to drop his protein to get those numbers. But now we don't. And yeah, he's a low carb. I would say he's a keto low carb kid. We still eat the same way. I mean, 90% of our diet is real food, ingredient meals, keeping it simple. He's five and a half. So he asks for more keto treats sometimes. And we do give him one free meal a month that he can choose whatever it is that he wants to eat. How does he do with that? Is he good? You know, it's so funny. He's not like a, ice cream guy because it's funny because he doesn't have a taste for those kinds of sweet. So we've given him taste of like regular desserts before and he's not interested because they're just way too sweet for him. We live in Texas. My husband's like a sixth generation native Texan. So we love really good Texan

and Parker's favorite thing is rice and beans. Oh gosh. Oh yeah. So that's what that's very non-kito. You have very non- keto, rice and beans, and he'll have some fajita meat. And honestly, and that's like he, that's what he loves that or a bun on his hamburger is what he asks for. And you know what that for us is part of our life balance right now. And he's been so long, you know, without any recurrence. But I was telling you, we actually have his scan in two weeks. And no matter how long we've been at this, it's really hard for a scan. I think not to come up.

because the thing is is that there is no crystal ball. You can do everything right. And we're the poster child for that, right? We did everything right. It still happens to us. And, you know, people ask me, you know, what would you do? And the thing is, we keep doing exactly what we're doing now. I would just have to tighten his food back down again.

We do the same thing where we prioritize sunshine and sleep and exercise and community and quality food and all of that. That's what we do. We do the same thing we're doing now. I think it's actually a really good question for people to ask themselves is if you don't want cancer, if you never want to get a cancer diagnosis, ask yourself if you're doing today, if you're living the lifestyle, you would live if you got a cancer diagnosis. Right. Because if we all just did that, we would never have a cancer diagnosis or we would at least minimize it. So it really is a powerful

question. And I think that a lot about myself, you know, my mom was with us. And she has had her own weight struggles and has had struggles with type two diabetes and then it then has some lingering kidney issues that unfortunately come up with a lot of people that deal with type two diabetes for a long time and she's gotten a lot healthier i mean she's cut her medications in half but there's some long to 76 there's some long term damage that's been done right that you can't that she can't reverse and i look to my one of you know my motivations for myself every time i want to I want to kind of go back to old habits, especially this whole COVID thing brings up all of those reasons we emotionally eat.

Absolutely. I think to myself, when I'm 76, I don't want to have those same issues. She and I are so similar in appearance and body type and everything. It's been really eye-opening for me that I think the way I'm eating now is the way I want to eat when I'm 76. and I know that the reason I feel so good is because I spent 40 years eating this way. You know, and that's helped me kind of get over my own food issues too. Because I think that's the thing with our kids. We unwillingly bring our own issues with food into the mix.

And I tried to be really conscientious that I didn't want to give him issues around food. And it's meant that I've had to do a lot of mental work. Yes, right. And really be cautious of what you say. Yeah. So help people. One thing that and why I wanted to have a conversation with you is that for everything I know about the ketogenic diet and fasting, I just look at everything children are going through. So you're on one end with cancer. But then we've got ADD and we've got, you know, people, kids that are on asthma medication. I mean, the generation growing up right now is so sick. And they could be so helped by the ketogenic diet. So what like can you give us some idea? on like how do you start? Are there cookbooks you can lean into? What can a parent do to start this journey? Absolutely. I think one of the things you can do is stop equating a happy childhood with

sugar consumption. And that is a huge problem we have in this country. Every holiday is what sugary treat can we get? What treat do we bring to school? And, you know, I mean, you think with these kids, I mean, every random holiday we celebrate with a donut. Like I just, I think it's such a systemic problem that all you can do is resist and model for other families. So one of the things that we do, and you can do that and still honor your family traditions in the same way. Yeah. One of the things we do for Halloween, for example, is two years ago I made the decision not to hand out Halloween candy. And I handed it out the first year that Parker was keto because he was so little.

And my husband was sure we would be ostracized from the neighborhood. if I didn't hand out candy. And I finally was like, you know what? No, I do not feel right doing this. And so we hand out glow necklaces and bubbles and stickers and tattoos and all kinds of fun stuff. And our like zombie fingers and all kinds of just fun things that kids love. People go crazy for them. Our kids, we allow them to trick or treat. And then we do a switch witch where the witch comes at night. She takes their candy and I leave a basket out of goodies for them that they can enjoy. And it's a combination of some keto candy. And then, some little goodie or book or something like that.

So he can't have any, so they don't get any of it. I don't because I think it's, I honestly think it's all garbage. Yeah, it is all garbage. Yeah. You know, and so for us, it's the more, you know, and then I just bring our candy. I really want to throw it away. Yeah. Most of the time I bring it to our office, but this year, I don't know.

I don't know. I'm still torn on that. We're still figuring it out too, but for us as a family, we don't buy the candy and I don't let my kids have any. And yet, they still have an incredible Halloween experience. because for us it's all about the costumes. And there's so much more. Pumpkins and all kinds of fun stuff.

Like it doesn't have to be about that. And then we still make fun treats. Like silicone baking molds are like a keto mom's best friend. Because you can make any fat bomb into any shape you can possibly imagine using those silicone mold. So I have ghosts and pumpkins and all of that. So he can have seasonal fat bombs and things like that. Do you have a favorite?

That's awesome. I did. Do you have a favorite cookbook? My favorite cookbook. Actually, I make up most of my recipes myself. Oh, you need to do a cookbook. I do. I do.

Well, my favorite starter cookbook for, especially for families coming from what I would consider more of like a standard American diet background is simply keto by Suzanne Ryan. She's also a really amazing, genuine person as well. She's an incredible human being. Her recipes are all fantastic. And a lot of them are also free on her blog, her simply. keto blog. Like her crockpot, keto crock pot chili, I actually won our office chili cookoff last year with my keto chili that nobody knew was keto and it was like the crowd pleaser. So that made me

feel really good. So that's a great one. I love the Southern keto cookbook as well by Tasha Newton. That one is really good. And then from there, there's so many free things out there. I think all day long, I dream of food. Her blog, she's got a lot of baking tips. I think baking is the heart to master. If you can master fathead dough, you can do a lot. What's fathead dough? Oh, fathead dough. Okay, so it is, I don't know if you ever watched the documentary that came out like, gosh, seven, eight years ago, a long time ago called Fathead. And it was the first thing I ever saw that like blew the light open to me that our government lies about food and the food pyramid and all it's all about lobbying and, you know,

on all of that and Ansel Keys and everything. And it was the dough that he and his brother created fathead. And it's literally mozzarella and cream cheese that you melt together. Then you add in an egg yolk and some almond flour and a little bit of seasoning. And you can actually mix it and then roll it out like pizza dough. And it tastes like thin press pizza. It's amazing. It's really fun for your kids to make too.

So it's literally just cheese, egg, and almond flour. And you can make a multitude of... Amazing. Huh. Okay. I can't believe I've never tried it. Get your kids in the kitchen. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. You've got to do it. Yeah. No, I'm going to look it up when I get home. But it's, and that to me is we've tried to make it fun. And that also comes back to my attitude as a parent, right? If I say this is the most awful thing to do, I feel so restricted. This is so unfair.

You know, all of that garbage. Our kids are such sponges and they will absolutely repeat those things. If you come into it being like, this is no big deal, this is fun. What can we make today? Let's choose this together. Come help me in the kitchen and you make it part of an adventure, then they're going to pick up on that too. It may not happen overnight, but you can't give up either. So that's been a huge part of our success is my kids come cook in the kitchen. Yeah, it makes a huge mess. Things don't always work out, but we've laughed a lot more than we've cried in the kitchen. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I love what you said about the Halloween, the sugar, because I feel like one of the things that parents do is they

want to reward their kids by giving them a sugary treat. And it's like, that's not a reward. That's, that's poison. And if you look at it like poison, you would see that withdraw, withholding it from them, you're not making them worse. You're actually helping them and you're saving their life. And I think we have such a mixed up way of looking at treats for our kids. And I realized, you know, for myself, I really had to figure out what traditions were really important to me to pass on because they were, they're more than just about the treats. So making Christmas cookies with my kids was important to me. And I narrowed it down to two or three recipes that we could make keto. And that way I could really have that same experience with my kids in the kitchen like I had growing up, making Christmas cookies. And we made keto. And we made keto. Christmas cookies. They don't know any different. They don't know. They're just cookies. It's like to pass that down, you know, and it's funny for myself, trying to separate just the food and emotion from those holidays has been really important to. And I did kind of a challenge for myself over the last holiday season where I didn't, I kept a very strict carnivore challenge for myself. Because I wanted to see what it was about. And I did it. And it was amazing to me, the kind of range of emotions I felt that I realized. all of these feelings about holidays and everything that comes up is so tied to food. And a lot of

the negative things that would come up would be tied to food. And it really for me was a step in helping break that cycle too of what's really important and focusing on that and then finding new ways to honor traditions. So, I mean, so smart. So smart. So I've gone back to eating avocados. So it wasn't for me, but it was a great experience, not actually. Yeah. Yeah, I know we do a lot. We've tested the carnivore diet with certain people in our community. And it works for, it's great. It's a great thing to put into your variation. That's what I always say. It's like we, if you, if you vary it with the keto diet, it can be quite amazing. So, so, okay, so how do people find you because you now have a, you're on Instagram and you're sharing your story. Are you sharing recipes? Like, how do people? Absolutely. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, very active on Instagram. Everything also feeds over to Facebook. So you can find me on Facebook, too. It's going to be much of the same content that's on Instagram. I'm at keto for my kids. So it's keto, the number four, my kid. And I share a lot of things. I share evidence-based research. I

share recipes. I share our life because I want people to know that we're, you know, we're a regular family. And this is how we make it sustainable and have fun. And, that my kids aren't always, you know, perfect angels sitting down to eat. You know, I'm a real mom. I've got a full-time job outside of this. This is what I do for fun to help connect with other families. So I share all of that. And actually one of the biggest gifts has been I have connected with other brain tumor,

predominantly moms, but parents from all over the world. Because everybody, when it happens to your child, you'll scour the ends of the internet to try to find somebody with a similar story or to offer some sort of hope. And that's been really important work of just connecting with those families. And then I do some work with Max Love Project as well. And I'd like to give them a shout out and the Charlie Foundation to incredible resources for keto and kids. And those are two nonprofits based in Southern California.

Do you feel like the ketogenic diet is picking, like gaining traction in these communities? Do you feel like because the science and more stories like yours is getting out are people more receptive? Absolutely. And I think that to me is, you know, people get upset because Okito's become so mainstream and there's all this misinformation out there. And while that, that is true that there is a lot of misinformation, to me, I am, I like, I'm a global picture thinker. Yeah. I think all of that's actually really good news because it means that we're normalizing it. We are making it more accessible to people. The fact that you can buy primal kitchens brand foods at Walmart. is awesome. It's amazing. And their salad dressing, by the way, is amazing. Oh, man. That barbecue ranch, I have to be careful because I can drink that.

It's so good. But I think that's what's wonderful about it is the more mainstream keto gets, the more likely that people and families that really need it will be less afraid to try it because they can go to Walmart and buy their groceries. They can go to Kroger and get this. Their friends have heard of it so it doesn't seem so weird to put their kids on it. You know, and you brought up a great. point. It's not just kids with cancer. I connect with a lot of moms with epilepsy, but actually when I was at

the conference in January, there's mounting evidence because as we know, ketone bodies are so neuroprotective and it's such an anti-inflammatory diet and they can pass that blood-brain barrier that you think of a lot of other neurological conditions and behavior conditions that all surround inflammation. This is a great solution for a lot of those families to try. It doesn't get rid of things. And that's the thing is people think. People want that magic pill, right? They want to be, oh, you do this and the tumor goes away. You do this and the seizure stops. You do this and my child doesn't have these outbursts anymore. Well, life isn't linear like that. But if it can give your child a better quality of life, then it's why not? It's just food. And, and ketones raise GABA and GABA calm. So if you want your child to be relaxed more, get them some ketones. Absolutely. And I mean, I know. I think, you know, you think about even, gosh, when my cousins were younger, and I remember it was all

about, they're probably 10, 15 years younger than me. It was just coming out of that food die was bad for kids. And that food dye and gluten were two things. And people remember how taboo that was to talk about. And now we just consider, yeah, oh, yeah, we don't do food day. We don't do gluten. We've normalized those things. And that's really helped a lot of people on now if we can take it to the next level to be like, you don't need refined carbohydrates to be happy and healthy and to grow tall and grow strong bones and build that brain. You don't need them. You need fat and protein. Beautiful. Well, your story is incredible and I just am so grateful that people like you who go through those struggles then are willing to come out and really share your story so other people can benefit

from it. Something is as great as an Instagram presence where we get to see what it looks like because it's one thing to hear it and then to go, well, but how could I ever do that? To be able to go and follow you on Instagram is incredible. So thank you for doing that. You know, I have the greatest gift. I still have my child. And, you know, I've followed a lot of families and helped families where they don't have, they don't have that and they lose their children. And, you know, for me, it absolutely has ignited a life of purpose because, you know, it's my pleasure to share this information because we have our son and he's and he's happy and healthy and if I can help just one other family then it's worth it. So let's finish on this note. If you had

one message for the world that you could just scream from the highest mountain, what would that message be? That message would be that statistics are not destiny and that food is medicine. I love that. I love that. Well, again, thank you. I mean, your story is incredible as a mother. I can't even imagine what you've been through, but to be able to come out the other side of it and then turn around and we all get to benefit from it. Thank you so much. Just appreciate you taking the time and really just showing up for the world in such a big way so that so many people can benefit from your journey. So this was amazing. Yeah. Great. Thank you. And everybody go check out her. Instagram, again, just seeing it in action, whether you have a child that is dealing with a diagnosis or you want your children to be the healthiest they can be, you just have such a message for

both camps. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Have a beautiful day. You too. Thanks. sponsored by Primal Kitchen. And if you follow me on Instagram, you may know that I'm a little obsessed with salads. In fact, it is truly my love language to my family. making a good salad, putting as many different plants that I can put into the salad, making it as diverse as possible. But one of the challenges that I've had is really trying to find the right salad dressing. So one day, I stumbled upon Primal Kitchen and found that they not only had one amazing salad dressing, but they have a whole line of salad dressings with great oils, no toxins, very little added sugar, and they taste incredible. So,

So we have become, and when I say we, my family and I have become huge fans of their products. My son is it loves the basalmic vinegar. I like the honey mustard, the lemon turmeric's really good. And they just add so much flavor to even just a bowl of greens. So enjoy. Go check them out. My staff really likes their catch up. And if you go to their site and you put Pels in, they'll give you 10% off.

So they're super generous. They're on a mission to get you healthy food, and it tastes amazing. So be sure you tag me in whatever post. If you take a picture of it, tag me in the post so I can see what you're making. You might teach me something. And again, incredible products. So excited to share this with you. It's out.

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