Dr. Dylan Petkus reviews how Kyle bounced back from years of fatigue, brain fog, Lyme, and gut issues and left survival mode behind.
00:00
Dylan Petkus, MD
Hey, everyone, this is Dr. Dylan Petkus. And my light over there just went out, and that’s absolutely fine, because Kyle here is to help light up this entire interview here. And Kyle is one of our clients who had one amazing transformation and two laughs at all of my lame puns. So it’s why we have him here today with us here. Maybe partly not, but he’s to share with us his story in terms of a lot of the issues he was experiencing because it’s always great to be able to see someone else here who maybe they had a ton of brain frog, gut issues, things that we’ll get into, and being able to know that someone has gone from something you may be struggling with right now and is now on the other side and really leaving a big part of that behind.
00:48
Dylan Petkus, MD
And so, Kyle, thank you for joining us here today. And so, to kick things off, tell us about where you were when you first booked that breakthrough call and the symptoms and the limitations you were experiencing.
01:07
Kyle
Oh, yeah, sure. So I was pretty much confined to my room. I was sensitive to light, sound, pretty much anything I ate, wasn’t really able to work, had an incredible brain fog, extreme memory issues, which made conversation and socialization tricky, and just generally having a really bad experience of life. And that had been going on for years by that point. That’s it in a very small nutshell, anyway.
01:43
Dylan Petkus, MD
Yeah. And when we talk about the major labels, if you will, or like things that people have told you, like, oh, you have this. Those main sorts of labels for you.
02:00
Kyle
Yeah, I mean, definitely another big thing about it that I experienced was fatigue. So chronic fatigue would have been, I guess, probably the biggest label or adrenal fatigue. I also had a Lyme disease diagnosis from 2016, and pretty much any Western medicine doctor would have just pronounced me as having depression.
02:33
Dylan Petkus, MD
That’s the thing where so common, you get like, okay, it’s this and that and these five different things. I’m sure there are probably 20 things that were out in the periphery at certain points. And then in having those issues, I mean, we touched upon it a little bit already, but some of the major symptoms from the brain fog to some gut issues as well. Do you mind explaining that a little bit more?
03:00
Kyle
Well, I can talk about maybe more issues. It’s funny because I guess one of the things that’s great is that I now am having difficulty reconnecting with some of the issues that I had, but sleep issues. I couldn’t sleep at night. My schedule was all over the place. Definitely the brain fog, cognitive issues, and just generally keeping my life with any sort of structure were a problem. Appetite was an issue. Digestion was an issue. So any meals containing, like, fat or protein would basically just sit like rocks in my stomach. And I was relying a bit on digestive enzymes and Betaine HCl or hydrochloric acid to basically just digest food. Pretty much couldn’t eat a lot of foods, like, let’s say, corn or gluten or dairy, or even definitely caffeine. All of those things would just leave me kind of in shambles.
04:19
Kyle
Physical exercise is pretty much out. Sometimes even just going for a short walk would leave me, I’d say, out of breath, but it’s something worse than that, really. It’s just like you wonder if you can get home kind of a thing. In a way. You just feel like you just want to lie down wherever you are, going into a mall or a large box store or something like that. Just not knowing how long you’re going to be able to go and last for in there, whether it’s the fluorescent lights or the chemicals coming off from the products or just the building itself, just feeling really run down and then getting super irritable from the. I don’t know if it’s just the toxicity or the overload or the stimulation or all of it.
05:15
Kyle
Going to movies, coming out of there, like, holding the chair, because you’re just overstimulated and your body just is, like, in pure survival mode, just feeling, like, strung out all the time. Everything in life being like a burden rather than an opportunity. It was pretty rough.
05:38
Dylan Petkus, MD
Yeah. It’s good that it takes a little bit to kind of reconnect with those things in the past there and in dealing with those issues for so long. Well, I guess, I mean, two-part question. Part one, how long were you struggling with that? And what were like. I mean, we don’t need to go into the full encyclopedia of all the things that you’ve done, but what were some of the main highlights of things you’ve tried to address these different issues?
06:10
Kyle
Yeah, I had noticed I was starting to slow down a little bit in 2013, so I had started seeing a naturopath and getting on supplements or just trying different things. And that was around the time I had started a mobile game studio. Just a small one, maybe like five people, but it was quite an undertaking. And by 2014, I also had some started having heart palpitations started, I don’t know, every, like, six weeks or so. I was basically in the hospital wondering if there was anything wrong with my heart, and just the stress of that company and everything going on with all the long hours and everything, I think, was contributing to whatever underlying issues were already there. And by the end of 2014, I would basically have adrenal fatigue symptoms, like just crashing.
07:23
Kyle
Crashing in the evenings and then waking up around, like, 1:00 or 02:00 a.m. And then crashing again in the morning, and my whole schedule was thrown off. I became more irritable and all that. Anyways, moving on from there, things just kept getting worse. More sensitivities, more crashing. I became really sensitive to cold and heat. Those would really drain me. By 2015, I basically had to go live with family for a while and was pretty much just doing absolutely nothing. And all the symptoms were in full effect. And I started working with a new Naturopath and doing things like IVs and trying to think of some other things that I did. But as well in 2016, I was diagnosed with a likely case of Lyme disease.
08:28
Kyle
Never fully proven, but a lot of the lab work to a Lyme literate doctor looked like that was what was going on. Things like low thyroid, or, sorry, high, what’s it called? TSH, low testosterone, and various other things. Diagnosed with heavy metals, and other infections like EBV and CMV, and just generally overburdened with lots of different symptoms or diagnoses, and just struggling a lot to do anything, everything I tried. So, first of all, I cut out, like, gluten, dairy, sugar, caffeine, and various other things, which helped reduce the pain or pain of being alive, but never really helped me improve.
09:41
Kyle
Things that I’d done throughout my life that I would try would be like juicing or just trying different things with diets and different protocols, whether it was like a Lyme protocol, which I did see some improvements on, but it was mostly doing this thing that would make you feel like garbage for a couple of weeks to feel a little better, and you’re kind of like, trying to go up and up. But I plateaued with that. First of all, I was a very delayed case in terms of getting the gains on that protocol. And then, even once I plateaued, I started coming back down. And it seemed like that may or may not even have been my issue.
10:26
Kyle
And just years of trying various protocols, many of them complicated and requiring a lot of discipline, a lot of money, and just a lot of trouble for somebody who can barely get out of bed, or who can barely go to bed, for that matter, for years, you know, scraping by financially, scraping by physically, mentally, and just a lot going on.
11:00
Dylan Petkus, MD
And that’s so many times, unfortunately, the story of years and years. And I think you were saying, like, 2013, 2014, and for people watching in 2000 and 2050, this was filmed in 2021, just to give the relative time frame. But just this long journey where you do the protocols, the supplement, the cleanses, the different diets, and still just kind of in this survival mode. And so you’re in that search, you’re in that hunt. And I’m not exactly sure how you found us, but then maybe you saw the ad, or you watched one of our videos, and what was running through your mind as you first saw, like, okay, what is this? What’s going on here? Is there something different? What was coming up for you at that time?
11:52
Kyle
I remember I first saw you. So I had already in my head the context of, like, I need to get better. I had already created that for myself. It’s like, okay, I’ve got the opportunity of a lifetime with basically a new career path I just had set out on. And so my brain was already dialed in to like, I got to get better. Really, if I’m going to do this thing, I need to get better. So really, I think I was on Facebook, and I just saw your ad, and I’m like, okay, well, what’s this? Watched it. Watched the video. And at first, I was, it’s, I don’t really know what’s going on.
12:33
Kyle
I hopped on a call with you because I, despite the fact that I felt like there weren’t a lot of details in that initial video, which is fine, I still felt like there was something more fundamental to the approach that you were taking. And so that’s what I was curious about because I had tried all the complicated stuff, and I wasn’t getting results. And I knew that.
13:08
Dylan Petkus, MD
To a lot.
13:09
Kyle
Of these protocols, they’re not purely benevolent. There are usually trade-offs. You’re doing some harm now as well. You’re putting your body through something. And I didn’t know what the long-term effects of continuing down these complicated protocol approaches were going to be. So I was kind of attracted by the idea of a more fundamentalist approach to health. That was the main thing that got me to come on board. And we had spoken, and then it was about a month before I actually dove in. And it was during that month with you.
13:58
Kyle
I think it was, I don’t know if they were every day, but you had emails set up coming through and just looking into some of your podcast appearances or some of your other videos from your Facebook group and those kinds of things with the mindset of like, okay, well, I really want to commit to something and really get back to. So all of that combined really had me take a hard look at what it was you were doing and really get behind the approach. I don’t know if I actually answered the question.
14:44
Dylan Petkus, MD
You did beautifully. Just like we rehearsed. I’m joking, everyone. These are not just all my favorites, but the first thing that I love is that you said immediately was you set your mind to get better. And what happens so many times is people will. I remember when I was in my stuff just like, okay, let’s just get through this day, get through this day. And there’s this different mindset of like, okay, we’re getting out of here, we’re getting out of this town, we’re getting out of Crapville and going to Awesometown here. And then that’s what then allows you to find these sorts of things, because a lot of times people, they’ll be in survival mode. They may see the class and, ugh, whatever. I don’t even really need that. And it’s just a different mindset to really approaching these things.
15:32
Dylan Petkus, MD
And that was the other piece because there are so many little things you can be doing, like bandaids or superficial things, or like you’re going down rabbit holes. Like, well, I thought it was lime this year, but now we’re really going to go on that EBV master cleanse or whatever, and there’s just all these different things. But that’s the beauty of the fundamental approach and why so many of the client testimonials and stories that we have. It’s like all these different places that people go in their own health journey, but at the core, there’s these things that we get people like you doing and then make these big shifts. And so for you, Kyle, in those first few weeks, however long ago that was, what were those big shifts for you that you were just like, okay, things are clicking here.
16:20
Dylan Petkus, MD
This is moving in the right direction. This is trending upwards. What was that for you?
16:27
Kyle
Some of it was within, like, 72 hours, really. I was just able to sleep at night almost right away. Definitely within the first week, I noticed.
16:43
Dylan Petkus, MD
Yeah.
16:43
Kyle
Again, even within the first week to ten days, my, I guess, in terms of, like, I guess washroom activity, it was noticeably improved. Like, probably the best ever in my life. Sorry. My appetite came roaring back in a huge way, which was weird because I’ve never really in my life experienced what I would consider to be like typical appetite, where it’s like I was practically hangry by the end of ten days, where it’s like my body is like, okay, let’s eat. If I didn’t eat within an hour, of waking up, I almost couldn’t function at all. And that was probably just a recalibration thing going on from the gains that were happening. But yeah, it was great because I could go eat, feel satisfied, and not feel like I wasn’t going to digest anything. Everything was moving through my system very smoothly.
18:01
Kyle
I started being, within the first few weeks, I started being able to just go out every day if I wanted to. Like, okay, I do my work, I go out, I go for a walk, I go walk all the way to the beach, I watch the sunset, I figure out my way back. I don’t have to worry if I’m going to make it back. I don’t have to check in with myself to be like, do I have enough energy to go or how far can I go? Or whatever. I was able to just kind of go do what I wanted without having to think about it, but sleep again, going back to sleep, just being able, just feeling tired at night, sleeping and then feeling, I guess, rested in the morning.
18:51
Kyle
Or at least I think I still needed some naps for a while to make it through the day. But that was more due to the, I think, just the nature of my work with being pretty mentally taxing and still trying to get improve the brain fog, which happened over time a little slower than the physical. The physical improvements were pretty fast. The brain improvements took probably six to eight weeks, but those were slowly improving as well too. And that was the thing I was the most interested in improving.
19:34
Dylan Petkus, MD
Yeah, awesome. And for those who need the translation, the washroom is also a bathroom. And also for people in the United Kingdom, that’s also known as that’s the loo. And for our Mexican viewers, that’s el baño. But in all seriousness, all these things kind of just coming like clicking back on whether, you know, bowel movements, digestion, and then also being at a point of where everything, the highlight is like, you’re still living life while this is like, you’re doing all this. This is not like a stop everything that you’re doing. And then this is something where you’re able to integrate it into your life and be able to be more present in what you’re doing and also add those things on as opposed to going to some cool treatment center. That’d be fun.
20:20
Dylan Petkus, MD
But if it doesn’t work, then that’s kind of pointless, but being able to be in a space of where this is something that you’re doing, you can continue it and be in a place of where you’re not feeling restricted or like, why do I have to chop these vegetables for 4 hours? Like some diets will do? And so being able to continue with things as you have, where would you say you are now? Like, looking back, the biggest improvements that you’ve seen, whether it is more the mental or the physical, what have those been for you?
20:55
Kyle
Well, I mean, just to say it in as few words as possible first. I mean, I actually have my life back. Like, I. I can do things. I don’t. I don’t just wake up and just feel like I have to suffer for another day to figure out what I can accomplish in the face of feeling like I’m just a suffering machine. That’s kind of where I was at. And now it’s like I get up and I think about like, okay, well, what am I accomplishing with my work today? Or what do I need to get done? And then I just go and do it.
21:37
Kyle
It’s as simple as this is something so basic for a lot of people, probably not a lot of people watching this video, but for a lot of people in the world, they might feel a little tired or be a little run down or something, but they just go get their stuff done, whatever they’re dealing with. Whereas somebody who is in my state, it’s like, okay, well, I guess I’m putting that off again. Or not even thinking about the things that you could be doing because you’re just there hearing a bug walking in between the wall, like, three rooms over, and you’re just like, screaming on the inside about, why can’t you get any peace? Or it’s just, yeah, so this was where. Where I am now.
22:38
Dylan Petkus, MD
Yeah.
22:39
Kyle
Or I can’t remember, but I’m. Yeah, so it’s where I. Yeah. Getting my life back. So it really is like, it’s to somebody who, again, who hasn’t gone through, like, some type of chronic illness, this is going to sound like, oh, you’re just whatever, you’re just normal. But to somebody who has been chronically ill, to be able to just not have to think about managing your energy or how much it’s going to cost you if you go out to eat with friends or because of the. It’s kind of playing roulette, Russian roulette with your food that you’re going to be eating.
23:25
Kyle
Or if I go out, am I going to feel like garbage because of the lights or the sounds or some of the smells or the chemicals from whatever building I happen to be going in or the food that I’m going to be eating or am I going to get too drained from a social conversation and maybe not be my normal self. I’m going to be a little bit irritable or something like that. It’s just not having to think about any of those things and having to. Most of my life spent as a chronically ill was spent managing how I was going to function in a situation rather than just deciding what I was going to do. And now it’s just doing things. And yeah, I still see that.
24:17
Kyle
I’m excited because I think I can even get more improvements as I go and kind of optimize where I’m at and then kind of like, the sky’s the limit with all the tools that I’ve gained from the program, but even where I’m at now, I still don’t even have to think like, yeah, maybe I didn’t sleep enough last night because I was working late, but I could work late. I actually was able to just be like, you know what? I got to get this thing done for tomorrow. I’m going to get it done and not just crash and then wake up at like three in the morning and then maybe I can try and get it done, or maybe I can’t get it done. And maybe I wasn’t even able to commit to that particular project because I wasn’t able to function reliably or whatever.
25:02
Kyle
So just being able to do things without having to manage myself or my energy levels or my circumstances or whatever else, some protocol that has 85 steps or something like that, just to keep.
25:23
Dylan Petkus, MD
Myself, ours just has 84. We’re good there. Draw the line. But a lot of that, the freedom and potential that is now there, the freedom of being able to, I mean, being in tech, I think you were saying in our graduate group, like working 60, 70, 80, 90 hours a week, which before would seem like the most impossible thing on the face of the planet, and also being able to have that life outside of it. You want to go for a walk? Go ahead and do it. You want to go out, you go ahead and do it. You want to stay up late a little bit one night, that’s absolutely fine because your body has that resiliency in it, and it’s building and building. Because like you said, a lot of people watching this, many are in the survival mode.
26:06
Dylan Petkus, MD
And then being able to get to normal and then also like, hey, if you like normal, let’s kind know, build it up and up. And that’s what’s possible when you have that powerful foundation to build on. And that’s so much of what we help people with. And so in wrapping this up here, because where Kyle, he had his journey and where it started to be on that fastest trajectory, was being able to get on the call with me and the team here, where we have our breakthrough session, where we talk about what the issues are, where your goals are, where you want to be, and be able to show you how to get there. And simply, it’s 45, 60 minutes. You can go to optimalcircadianhealth.com/talk. There’ll be a link down below for that. Just go there.
26:55
Dylan Petkus, MD
There’ll be a little calendar, pick a time, fill out a form, and then someone on our team will call you and have the same conversation with you that Kyle had. And then you could be someone who, 8 to 10 weeks down the road, when you’re through the program, can be doing a video just like this with us here. And so in wrapping up, Kyle, for those who may be thinking about the call, or even like you speaking to yourself when you’re looking at that call link, what would you say to that person who’s just thinking about doing that?
27:26
Kyle
From the position of what’s going to get me to actually make the call?
27:31
Dylan Petkus, MD
Right? Yeah.
27:34
Kyle
Well, first of all, it’s free. So, I mean, if you just want something free today, there you go. Dylan is not really, he’s interested in it. Yes, you’re, you know, like, I think, first of all, I think everyone who does this program, even if you’re healthy, I think you could get some improvement for yourself out of the program because it is a fundamental thing, and it’s a thing that even as somebody who’s done the program, there’s a lot of things that can bring into your life that can just, if you put them in, it’s basically like reactivating your native program for your operating system, like your body itself. So I think anybody can get improvement out of this system. No matter how healthy you are, there’ll always be something you can improve.
28:34
Kyle
As for why someone, let’s say, in my position, where it’s like, what can I say to you to make that call? I would say that after being sick for so long, there’s definitely, like, if I didn’t have that, I need to get a better mindset already in place, which is what pushed me. I know that what I was dealing with was like a huge mindset problem. I have already conditioned myself that I’m a person that’s just struggling in life. And I had almost forgotten what it would be like to have a normal life. And so I was coming at it from I’m unwell. And my mindset was all geared towards the like, life is difficult, life is oppressive life. I’m sensitive to everything. My conversation around life itself had become something that I was kind of like a fish in water.
29:39
Kyle
So I wasn’t seeing where my mindset was until maybe that little catalyst of I just need to get better. And I hadn’t really created a future for myself. And I think Dylan’s really great at just getting underneath those layers of your own mindset. The things that we’ve kind of forgotten about as we get sick that we kind of forgot what we forgot. So we’re not remembering that there is a real-life that we can live on the other side of our illness. And just the way that we relate to our day or our life, our energy or whatever it is, it’s undermining our ability to get better. The program focusing on that is a huge deal.
30:35
Kyle
There are physical aspects, like, there are physical things that are done and the physical improvements that happen, but ultimately the physical aspects that improve kind of hold up the house. The mindset builds the foundation and that foundation, you plop the house back on it, and then you’re really just a fully synergistic human being ready to go and tackle whatever it is you want to do. So I would say that anyone who can admit that maybe you need some help on just the mindset side of things, Dylan’s going to be great for that. Again, it’s like you get 45 minutes to an hour with him, I remember, very committed to getting in your head in a good way about maybe what it is you would look forward to in life if you actually had health again, really creating that future possibility for yourself.
31:33
Kyle
And then that is what will help you with that little engine that could get better, can help you actually excel through the actual steps in the program, to keep that discipline, to keep that motivation through and actually get better. Because as I said at the beginning of this spiel, I really do think that anyone who took on the program for real, did all the steps, took all the coaching, would see some improvement, and the tools would allow you to consistently improve over time. And that’s it.
32:11
Dylan Petkus, MD
Awesome. Well, Kyle said it better than I could, so thanks for that, Kyle, and we’ll go ahead and wrap again. You know, being able to make this transformation that jump starts with the breakthrough call. So go to optimalcircadianhealth.com/talk again. Just pick a time on the calendar, fill out your form, and then a member of our team will give you a call and help you out, just like we’ve been able to help out Kyle here. So we’ll sign off, for now, everyone. So thank you again, Kyle, for joining us here, and we’ll just kind of wave goodbye to the Internet at large, or whatever new devices are present at the time we release this.