Christopher E.

I really enjoyed Christopher’s story, and it’s one I think you’ll want to share with friends or family members who are hesitant to try out this lifestyle. – Dr. Perlmutter

Thought I’d throw this out there because I’ve managed to drastically improve my health with a few changes.

I didn’t start out unhealthy,  but I had let myself get run down through a combination of work stress, physical stress, and poor nutrition. I’m not an old guy and I’ve always been able to get away with whatever I wanted to do, so why not work eighty hours a week, train to climb a mountain, and knock out the Bataan Death March all in a six month period, all while getting four hours of sleep a night and supplementing with lots of coffee!  Shockingly, I started feeling super-fatigued every day a few weeks after the mountain climb, and then, to my surprise, my hair started falling out. Seriously, patches of hair started falling out!  Being an Army Officer, I keep my hair short, but one day one of my sergeants said, “Sir, what’s going on with the back of your head?”  I checked it out and sure enough, I had a bald patch on the back of my head.

Over the months, it kept getting worse, and the dermatologist said it was alopecia and that we might be able to treat the patches with steroid injections. Without that, Doc said they may get better or worse, but said the best thing I could do was limit stress.  Yeah right.  I got orders to change duty stations, and my wife told me that we were pregnant all in the same month. The patches kept getting worse over the months, and being a leader and a guy who works in healthcare,  it certainly didn’t help my leader presence or put patients at ease to see my patchy head.

Fast forward eight months or so after moving and I picked up a copy of Grain Brain. Intrigued by the assertion that some nutritional supplements (gasp) were being touted by a Neurologist as being neuroprotective and restorative, along with the idea that the gut microbiome could impact not only brain but also just about every system in your body, I quickly read the entire book.

Feeling and looking terrible, I went ahead and gave the ketogenic diet a shot and I began six of the seven supplements suggested in the book  (minus the resveratrol).  We had the baby the next month (Sep 2015), so my stress level and sleep got worse, but the patches magically started filling in. By January they were all gone, and I no longer feel like I’m lifting a piano every time I get out of bed. I’ve also lost 20 pounds.

The success has inspired and empowered me, and now I’m tackling my stress and sleep.   I recently began a daily meditation period this week (not sure if it’s doing anything but I’m hopeful), writing  a gratitude list, and I’m trying to get seven hours of sleep every night. I seriously used to think this homeopathic stuff was laughable (was actually taught that it was garbage), but after my own personal case study (n=1), I’m starting to come around.