What up my homies? This episode is probably one of my most personal episodes that I've ever released. So you may or may not know I've had a good or using gut health issues. Now maybe you're in the situation or maybe you just suffer from bloating or maybe you suffer from an intolerance or maybe you go to the doctor and they just tell you, oh no, no, you're fine. You just have IBS. Guys, freaking IBS is literally telling you, you have something wrong with your body. It wasn't until I was able to stare at myself nakedly in the mirror and be honest about what I had done to my gut and to my health, that I was able to actually make a change. And so today, guys, I do share this episode with me and my husband where I go really deep. I'm so open, I'm so vulnerable and I'm just damn honest about what the hell it takes to actually take ownership over your health. I became my best biohacker. I actually stopped just blinding listening to doctors and took it upon myself. So I go down into exactly what and how I did. And guys, if you've been following me for a while, you know my whole thing is about how do you show up? How do you build the confidence? If you are neglecting your health, if you are neglecting your gut, then this is one of the superpowers you are giving up. And so guys, right now let's dive into one of the most important subjects that I feel you need to do. And address when you're talking about stepping up, becoming a frickin' badass and owning your future. And before we dive in, guys, the one ask, I have please, I beg of you, my homie. If you enjoy this episode, if it brought you any value, please do rate, review, subscribe, share, tell your homies about it, we cannot change the world alone. So my girl gang, I am asking you right now to help her home now and spread the words that we all can be women of impact. And eventually it got to the point I remember thinking nothing is working. I've gone to all these doctors, we've paid all this money, nothing's working, and you kept going on in back keto. And that's when I was like, what's the harm? Like at this point, I can't,

like if I'm gonna be in more pain

cause I've had one meal,

what's the difference? I'm in pain every day, in a way, my hair's falling out. My nails are brittle. And so that's when I then started the ketogenic diet. But there were a lot of times I wanted to throw my hands up, but I just kept reminding myself,

all right, these are you've got a choice.

Throw your hands up and slowly start dying

or fight and slowly start living. Hey everyone, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is none other than Impact Theory's very own Lisa Billu. She's one of the founding members of Question Nutrition and she's my co-founder and Impact theory and if her last name did not give it away, she is also my wife. On top of all that, she is one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever encountered and I'm not saying that because she's my wife. She's my wife because I believe that to the core of my being. And what we're going to be talking about today is one of the reasons why I think that. how she's handled her battle with catastrophic dysbiosis. I've watched her fight through debilitating pain for years on her journey to recovery and we wanted to share with you guys what we have learned thus far. It is very much still a journey. I am sad to report, but I wanted to bring people up to speed on everything that we've learned so far. But I think before we can get to that, we need to rewind, tell people how this all kicked off. Yeah, well we had dream big, our whole lives. We finally had gotten like the house of our dreams quest for successful. We thought we were riding high. One of the dreams I had had was to do like that rap music video where I got champagne, I'm standing by the waterfall and then pouring it over me and we actually had the waterfall and we had this women pool and we had champagne and you took a photo and I'm drinking the champagne from the bottle and like what was it? five, ten minutes later, I was like, my stomach is really hurting.

And within the next 30 minutes,

it was half for me to breathe within an hour.

Like it was so debilitating,

I couldn't even step in the swimming pool

because just the water brushing against my stomach,

yeah, the pressure.

And I just said to you,

baby, I don't know what's going on,

but I can't stand, I can't breathe my entire stomach had protruded out. And so that was really the start, which knowing now there was really the start was 15 years before, but it finally all caught up with me. And that was the day it really just changed my life. It's interesting that that's like the marker for you. That's not how it started in my mind. Where it started for me was we were about to go to Vegas. I had shown up to work with my luggage. We were getting on a plane in a couple of hours. I was so excited, needed a break. And you text me and you're like, I'm feeling weird. And I'm like, what do you mean you're feeling weird? And then the next text was, I need to leave. And then the text after that was, I just threw up. And I was like, what? Like, do you have the flu? Which was what I assumed was, oh, this is the flu. And so for a long time, I was like, I didn't think it had anything to do with your digestion. I thought you had the flu. And so then finding out that, okay, it wasn't a flu. It was probably a parasite. And then this notion of a threshold event. and tell people about your background that led to the threshold event. Yeah, so around 60, so I grew up very skinny and so my entire life is especially as a girl, I would get older women that would be like, enjoy it now, enjoy it now. And then growing up, I would see my mom eat very little and looking looking back now I do believe that she was some form of anorexia and she was eating very little. Then my sister when she got to 16 she would drink slim fast and so it was such a different world for me until I hit 16 and I started to really develop and a boyfriend at the time grabbed my heart, my hip and was like, oh aren't you getting fat? And that one comment maybe because I've been primed for it, you know, with like women need to be skinny, you need to eat a little and I would eat everything I saw. So that was where that shift changed for me. And I went from eating anything I wanted, not really thinking about body image or anything like that to people saying oh, cheese is really fatty, it's really caloric, so I cut out cheese and then all carbs are really bad, so I cut out carbs and before I realized I'd cut out carbs, I'd cut out fat and all I was eating was protein and then before I knew it, I asked how I was eating, year after year, not realizing that the immune system's carried in your gut, so I was getting sick, which when we first met, I was getting sick what, once a month maybe? I wasn't quite that much, but it was, I'd pay you that every couple of months probably. Yeah, I didn't realise though why I was getting sick. And so I was taking antibiotics and I would feel better. And then within a month or two I'd get sick again. I suffered from chest infections. That was like a thing. And I would get sick antibiotics, six antibiotics. I had a reduced diet so I wasn't replenishing my gut with different types of bacteria. And over year after year I started finding it more and more difficult to foods and I didn't know why. I just thought it was me because here I was with a husband who could stomach anything and my family could as well. So I literally just pegged it is, oh it's me, it's nothing I can do, it's not out of my control. So yeah, our whole relationship together, I could always eat whatever I wanted. I would put on fat, but I never got an upset stomach, whereas you wouldn't put on fat, but you did get an upset stomach. And that was something that you hid from me for a long time. Not necessarily even like intent. I mean, maybe you were, but didn't feel like you were intentionally hiding it, but I was very surprised by that. And then sort of doubly surprised that you would eat like that anyway if it hurt your stomach. And I think one thing that will be very interesting for people to hear is that relationship with why didn't you give up the food if it was hurting your stomach that much? How did that plan to some of the emotional distress around this? Because that really, I think, is the thing I most want people to understand is the physical discomfort is terrifying.

But the reason that this episode is so powerful is the emotional distress

became all-consuming for a while.

Yeah, when you say it's funny, I never really thought of it. I was like, I was deliberately hiding

it from you, but I was like, now it's not how I was lying, but the one thing that's always been very prominent with me is being aware other people around you. So when I'm sick, I was like you are affected by it. And to just think that it's happened into me because I'm feeling the pain, I think is very unfair and rather dismissive of the partnership that we have. If I'm sick, it affects both of us. I'm not gonna be that person that's like, woe is me, I'm gonna stay in bed and you have to serve me. It's this is affecting both of us and I felt somewhat guilty that I was bringing that as part of our day-to-day lives. And then on top of that, especially as Quest was developing, I'm like, here we are. We own one of the largest nutrition companies in the world. And I'm sick, I can barely eat our product. And I didn't want that a to have a reflection of me, but then also because you were the president of the company, I didn't want that to then have an influence on how other people saw you or saw the company. And so there was an element of shame to it that I don't think people really talk about. And I was just ashamed for that this is happening to me. And so that's probably part of why I didn't change the way I ate and just suffered in silence. Because I didn't want people to be like, oh my god, are you okay? Like, oh what's wrong? Oh Oh, you can't even eat your own product. So I just thought better to just not say anything and basically suffer in silence. Not realizing I was doing worse and worse to my body. If I'd realized that, like, all right, Lisa, now's the time if you just stop, then you can recover quick. Of course I would. Everything's in hindsight, but I didn't. So I would just kept going,

and I just thought, well, this is just me.

Cause that was the belief I had.

...