Episode 190: All About Pain and Holistic Healing with Stacey Roberts

TRANSCRIPT

Johanna: Welcome Stacey to the Alopecia Angel Podcast: Awaken Hair Growth. How are you doing today?

Stacey: I’m good. Thank you so much for having me.

Johanna: My pleasure. So today’s topic, we are talking about pain and all about it. So tell me Stacey, how did you get into this field of work and this line of work?

Stacey: So I’ve been a physical therapist for about 35 years and back in the day I specialized in sports medicine, orthopedics. So helped a lot of athletes and continue to train professional athletes and their trainers in different types of pain relieving modalities. And just gradually started seeing people and then curious why some people got better and some people didn’t. So then it expanded into more of a holistic approach to address pain. Looked at stress and then gradually that led me to hormones and how that influences pain, which gradually led me to gut health and how that influences pain and food sensitivities. So really wanted to bring that all together under one roof, into a holistic program to help people that, have tried basically everything and nothing’s working.

Johanna: Understood. So let’s dive in into pain and how that is connected to hormone imbalances and what that looks like and for what age group, because normally my listeners are anywhere from 18 on up. And people who I work with are anything from infants all the way to 80+. And so you have the gamut of primarily women. Yes, I work with men too, but primarily women. And, pain can happen on so many different areas and levels, and so please share with us what that connection is.

Stacey: Sure. Absolutely. The first introduction to pain that, women would typically have if they haven’t had really experienced pain as a young child is, through adolescence and and having their menstrual cycle and potentially having pain related to that, whether it’s cramping or back pain, or just general pain overall. That lot of times can relate be related to hormones from the standpoint of estrogen, an imbalance between estrogen, progesterone, and if somebody’s a little bit more estrogen dominant. So estrogen’s like your, the hormone that makes everything grow and progesterone’s, like the, why can’t we all just get along hormone and we need the nice balance between the two.

From the standpoint of even starting an adolescence, we can recognize that hormones can be contributing to pain. Then we, move forward through our lifespan. And we might hit into those 20s and 30s where we’re regular with our menstrual cycle, but maybe there’s fertility issues or we’re not getting pregnant, what the way that we want to. Some people have celiac issues gut issues, which also can contribute to pain. And then we move into the transition of perimenopause where. Women’s estrogen, progesterone levels start to change. And as they drop, what a lot of people don’t realize is estrogen, progesterone are molecules in our body that are anti-inflammatory when they’re in the right levels and in the right balance.

So we then lose that protection of those anti-inflammatory molecules. So things that we were doing potentially previously that was causing inflammation. We now have that inflammation kind of bubbling up to the top and causing pain coming out of nowhere. Like I see a lot of people in perimenopause that are like I have no idea. I woke up one morning, my shoulder started to ache, or my ankle was hurting, or my knee or my hip was hurting, or my back pain is worse. And a lot of times that can be related to hormone levels. And then that can continue on in through menopause and beyond as well. Usually it’s a perfect storm of things like gut health. Also contributing food sensitivity is also contributing. And again, when we lose that protection from estrogen, progesterone, that can be a big deal in regards to the experience of pain.

Johanna: So how do you go about treating your clients when it comes to pain and their situation, especially the ones who’ve said they’ve tried it all and nothing’s working.

Stacey: So typically a client will come in and say: Look, I’ve been to physical therapy. I’ve had cortisone injections, I have massage therapy, I do chiropractics, I do acupuncture. What we break it down into is in all of those things, if the following 3 things aren’t addressed, then they’re most likely not going to be, becoming pain free. So we wanna find the trigger for the pain. A lot of times what will happen is all the things I mentioned can address the symptoms, but not the underlying trigger or the underlying cause of pain. So when a patient comes to see me, the first thing that we look at, which is the most obvious thing in regards to how pain develops is their biomechanics or how they move? Are there certain ways that they’re moving maybe after an injury that is increasing the inflammation in an area that prior to that injury really wasn’t an issue?

I’ll give you an example. I was at a wedding and I was doing the polka with my son because I was embarrassed for him about how horribly he was doing the polka. So I was trying to teach him how to do it appropriately, and also my knee popped. I had swelling and significant pain and I was able to treat that over the next week and start walking again. But 3 months later, I started to get pain in my heel. Like I’ve never had pain in my heel before, I developed plantar fasciitis. So why did I develop plantar fascitis while I was favoring the one knee that was irritated and that weakened my hip, which caused me to walk a little differently because the ligaments would now a little bit more loose in my knee that was injured.

So my biomechanics changed and I all of a sudden started having plantar fasciitis symptoms. I’m in menopause, so I have less protection from my hormones. So if that patient comes to see me, I’m looking at how they’re moving. Even the shoes that they’re wearing, you know how they’re standing.

What can we change from a biomechanical point of view to take away the trigger that might continuously be creating that inflammation in that area. So that’s the most straightforward thing that a good experienced physical therapist should be able to help you with those movement patterns to take the stress off of the area. If that doesn’t work, that we’re utilizing our SoftWave device. Which is a modality that helps to accelerate healing by decreasing chronic inflammation, moving it from a pro-inflammatory state into an anti-inflammatory state.

And a pro-inflammatory state is if I keep scratching my hand and it gets red and puffy, that’s the pro-inflammatory state. The trigger to that is me scratching it. So when I remove that trigger, then the body can move into an anti-inflammatory state where it’s still sore and I can see the scratch, but I know that it’s healing. And then 2 weeks later, if I still don’t trigger it, I don’t even see the scratch anymore in my hand. That’s the body’s natural healing process. So what SoftWave does is help to accelerate the person into that natural healing process by upregulating that anti-inflammatory process. So that works perfectly for localized issues, right? So if the pain is only local, then that 70 to 80% of my patients will with biomechanics and the soft wave treatment, and maybe some soft tissue work will do extremely well.

But then there’s a percentage that they’re not doing as well as they should by the second or third treatment. So that’s when we move on to looking at hormones, gut health, and more of a systemic issue. If we look at alopecia, for example, the issue is in my family, that’s an autoimmune issue, right? It can be an autoimmune issue that is more systemic. So then we turn looking at trying to decrease that systemic inflammation that could potentially be causing, in my case, with my patients joint and muscle pain. And then we do that by addressing hormones, gut health, food sensitivities, and even stress that’s related to, having the chronic pain in the first place.

Johanna: With the people that you’ve had in your family with alopecia, have they resolved it?

Stacey: One was completely resolved, his was due to a significantly stressful event where it was alopecia totalis and just over a period of time just lost everything and then gradually all came back. And then another family member, she still struggles with it up and down but way better than what it was on its onset when she was just a child.

Johanna: It is a big deal. It changes your life in many ways. Going back to pain, and pain when it comes to, let’s say after childbirth and then sometimes your body, for the most part is not the same. Your body’s changed and it’s changed in many ways. And even when you have, let’s say, a 10 pound baby, you start to walk differently and you start to do things differently or you carry your kid on the, on your hip. This also creates

an imbalance with your posture. So how is it that you also can pinpoint these pain structures and issues with, let’s say a situation as postpartum where you’re healing, where you know things are like coming back together, right? The joints and the flexibility is no longer being flexible and they’re like going back together, what would be your approach for that?

Stacey: Great question, there’s so much going on postpartum, so much going on. It depends on what the person’s dealing with, i’m a pelvic health therapist and I work with sexual health as well too. So the patient’s coming in because they’ve, had a baby, went back to having intercourse and have extremely significant pain with intercourse. One of the places that we look would be looking at the pelvic floor, we would assess the pelvic floor. SoftWave again is fantastic in getting deep. So the penetration of the wave from SoftWave is able to get through all three layers of the pelvic floor.

So many times after postpartum that pelvic floor is a mess, right? A lot of things have caused it to either be upregulated or just not there at all. No support, very weak. So by bringing blood flow in both of those scenarios, we’re able to decrease the amount of pain that they have, and also it allows me to do my soft tissue work on those tissues more effectively and with less pain for the patient. And then depending on how that patient presents, whether they need strengthening or whether they need what we call downregulation we work with them on the specific exercises that they would need to help improve their situation.

It’s its own shockwave is its own kind of category versus electromagnetic field or even electromagnetic shock. There’s different types of shockwave. There’s piezo electromagnetic, ours is electro hydraulic, and then there’s a radial wave that some people call shockwave. So it’s just its own thing that out of all the mod modalities that penetrates the deepest and has a greater biological effect we can get down into the physics of it. SoftWave is the only thing that I’ve seen move the needle and really get people better faster, and it’s a nice adjunct to my manual therapy. It really helps my manual therapy be more effective as well.

Johanna: So what do you think of trauma when it comes to pain and how the body stores pain?

Stacey: Oh, yeah. It’s a big deal. Anybody who is has been trained in pelvic health is trained in trauma-informed care because it’s such a significant impact. So that’s where we go to the brain and pain, right? So the brain after trauma, the brain is trying to protect the body from more trauma, right? So we can become hypersensitive to pain or to other sensitivities because of the trauma that we’ve had in the past. We could have a discussion of whether, trauma might be stored in certain areas of the body and muscle, things like that.

But from my perspective, I look at it again from a holistic point of view, is how is that affecting that person mentally? How is it, how are we gonna approach, how helping them who, somebody who’s had trauma potentially with being able to have a good

sexual relationship with their partner, right? If they’ve had sexual trauma in the past that can, those two things can collide and cause issues for patients as well too. So it is a very a real concern for patients who’ve had trauma in the past. And really when we do my, our physical therapy together we work through those things slowly.

SoftWave sometimes can help with improving the ability for me to do some of the work that otherwise, if you know what’s with vaginismus is, which is the fear of having intercourse due to significant pain. And many times there’s trauma involved in that. Not necessarily all the time, but with SoftWave, it allows me to bring blood flow to those muscles that are really tight and upregulated because of that trauma response. And it’s able to allow those muscles to relax and those tissues to relax so that we can do the job internally that’s gonna give give them long-term relief.

Movement is key there. There’s been, even with soft tissue work, there’s been sometimes where I’ve been working on somebody’s soft tissue and they just start bawling, really. They just have this significant emotional release because of, for whatever reason in that area, that pain or that trauma, if you will, was stored. And once it’s released, they just have this major release and then the pain goes away. So that’s definitely something that, that over the years, for sure.

Johanna: So what is something that you would like all listeners to know in terms of pain, their pain and getting over it, and maybe some natural methods that they can use or look forward to or look into in terms of managing or healing completely?

Stacey: First thing is that pain doesn’t have to be a life sentence. Unfortunately the conventional way of dealing with pain is typically just treating the symptoms and not the underlying cause, popping a pill because you have pain. But those NSAIDs or non- steroidal anti-inflammatories as well as pain medications have been shown to actually contribute to the development of chronic pain and increasing pain hypersensitivity. So a lot of the things that we do to get rid of pain in the short term, actually make pain happen more often in the long term.

So first thing is if you have tried all the conventional approaches things like even cortisone injections, stuff like that, research is showing that actually degrades the joint, breaks it down, versus actually helping to prove and get to the root cause of why the problem is there. So I would tell them to start stepping out of the conventional aspect. It certainly works for some people. So if it’s worked for you, great, but that’s obviously not the people that I’m talking about. I’m referring to the people that the conventional system hasn’t worked for them. Understand that your life can be pain free, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want you to have any pain, because pain is there to protect us, right?

When we are experiencing it for too long of a period of time, it changes our brain structure and physiology. We know that from the research. So we really need to break outta those patterns and allow ourselves to see ourselves without pain again in the future. That’s a very simple thing that somebody can do, is just try to imagine

themselves in the future without that pain. A lot of times they struggle with being able to see themselves doing the activities that are now painful, doing them pain-free. Just a simple thing that they can work on, is just continue to visualize that themselves being pain-free, because that helps to create new neural connections in the brain by way of something called neuroplasticity, which is really important, and again, very well researched now, so we know we can change those patterns in the brain that are contributing to those chronic pain issues.

Johanna: How do you feel about grief and overcoming grief? This is an emotional pain. It could even be psychological, and it’s one of those things that a lot of people don’t get over. Years pass, decades pass and still people don’t get over. And yet, that pain, that emotional pain, manifests into other aspects of pain too. And I even truly believe that it even manifests into other sorts of disease that again is suppressed within the body. So what’s your philosophy with grief and helping somebody who’s got obvious grief?

Stacey: So I like the story that is utilized a lot of times about how, what grief actually is. Many people who’ve experienced great trauma with grief say that, it’ll never completely go away. And it’s that, grief is like putting a stone in your pocket and you can feel it at first when you put it in there. You feel it all the time. It’s something that you know is there 100% of the time. But as you leave that in the pocket and you do some things and you get on with your life and you’re moving and working through things, that stone is still there, but you don’t feel it all the time. It’s something that is less and might come up in at different points in time versus being something that’s overtaking your life all the time.

But to your point, that significant grief, if it’s being either denied either by the person themselves or by the people around them to just get over it, then that, yeah, that can be internalized into something that can create a physical issue or a physiological issue like you pointed out in the direction of creating, disease in the body. So my philosophy with that is, as with all pain, is we need to get to the root cause, right? So if grief is part of the root cause of the pain of the patient that’s coming to see me, then we’re gonna be looking at recognizing that is one of the issues and what’s the best way for that patient in that particular situation to be able to work through their grief.

Johanna: Are there any modalities for grief that you know of to help any listeners that are going through grief? I know a lot of times with any disease, with any diagnosis or any life situation, grief is something that I think we will all experience at some point. Whether it’s the loss of our hair, the loss of our health, and hopefully regaining it, recuperating it. But it could be the loss of an identity, the loss of like who you used to be to who you are now. It could be a loss of a loved one, a pet, so many things. Even when you move away from friends, potentially family, community. There’s a lot of loss in, in changing jobs even, or being laid off.

Stacey: Yeah, this caught me by surprise, but I, when I got a divorce I, we both mutually wanted to be out of the relationship. We knew that we, as we go, our separate ways, it would be better for both of us. But I went through a period of what I now determine as grief and kind of a, a down I wouldn’t say that I was clinically depressed, but definitely.

Felt much more depressed and I realized I was grieving the loss of that relationship or a relationship even if it wasn’t that one. I hear what you’re saying and I can totally relate. And then obviously I’ve lost loved ones and, even now my mom while she’s on hospice, I’m grieving that, who my mom was prior to having her recent health issues that she has now, where she’s really not who she used to be.

So we can grieve somebody even while they’re alive and we can grieve somebody if they, have passed, right? So I think what people can simply do is recognize that’s what you’re going through and that, you might need some help and guidance in getting through that as well too. That is recognizing what the root cause of the unease or unrest or even pain in your body is. And if it is grief to look. For the best ways for you to be able to address it. Again, somebody cognitive behavioral therapy might be what they do. Another person, it might be meditation, another person, it might be group therapy. Everybody’s gonna be a little bit different in how they are able to move through to try to resolve that as much as possible.

Johanna: In regards to overcoming pain in general. Are there any tips or suggestions of like, where to start first, what to look at first? Because potentially maybe a listener has already tried a couple modalities and still, like in my own case, seeing the chiropractor, seeing the acupuncturist, seeing the massage person, like they’re all great people. It’s just, I just wasn’t getting anywhere.

Stacey: You’re a perfect example of a person who didn’t settle for what didn’t work and just accept that this was your lot for life, right? So I think that’s the first thing is for people to keep looking, right? Keep trying to find the program, the person, the, the area, the modality that works for them, right? So keeping your mind open, you might have to go through a lot of different people or a lot of different places to be able to find what’s right for you. When you do find what’s right for you or what you think is a potential thing that you wanna pursue is look and see, what’s the proof out there?

For me, it’s research. When I was first exposed to SoftWave therapy, I was like, there’s no way that this works. Like I was completely skeptical. A friend of mine dragged me along to an appointment. She wanted me to see what it was because she, knows I’m a physical therapist. She’s known me forever and I was completely, disinterested. I went along because it was a free lunch and I was, excited to, spend some time with her and make sure that she was safe getting this modality that I’ve never heard of. And then as the treatment went on and I saw how well she was doing, and afterwards her pain was gone. I was like: Wait, the pain’s gonna be back in a couple days, there’s no way that this could work. And sure enough it wasn’t and she was doing really well.

So I think being open to different opportunities and then I just dug into the research and for me that was, that’s my way of telling whether something has the potential to be beneficial and I dug into the research and found research to support it. So I trusted and verified and then pursued having that in my clinic and it’s been amazing ever since. So I think, again, people like doing what you did is continue looking, continue trying to find what’s gonna be the right thing for them, and allowing yourself to explore that. If

somebody’s gonna charge you $20,000 for those exercises, probably not something you were gonna pursue. So if it makes sense to you and it, and you feel connected to it, I think making sure that you’re pursuing that is important.

Johanna: Anything that we should know as consumers in order to maybe verify what the practitioner or person that we’re looking into for our pain management, pain reconciliation that we should be asking?

Stacey: I think today is a lot easier to be able to kind of suss people out practitioners or, anybody, if you will, who’s offering a solution. Reviews, on websites are great reviews from people who’ve been to those people as well too. Listening to people on podcasts like we’re doing right now. There’s so much information and so much more ways to verify what this person does and what they have done in the past now. So definitely doing your diligence with that. But then, what I also would look at is if you’ve done everything, been to everyone and you’re going to a new person, you’re gonna wanna say: Okay so how are you different from X, Y, Z? And in my case, it’s if you ask me that question, I’d be like, we look for the root cause.

And if you are not better by the second or third time that I see you, if you’re not 50 to 100% better, we’re gonna be changing direction. So there has to be a point in time where there’s a reevaluation. If you’re not getting the results that you want, what’s that reasonable timeframe? What does that person think it is? And if that’s gonna take a year to get better. There’s some patients that I see with constipation issues that have had those constipation issues for 12, 15, 18 years, a year might be reasonable. But for most people that I see for pain, for localized physical pain, they should be better up to 100% better in 3 to 6 treatments. So you wanna make sure that person has a very clear idea of how long it should take for you.

For example, if you’re seeing someone with alopecia and how long would you say that it would be till they start seeing some sort of change.

Johanna: In less than 8 weeks.

Stacey: So you want somebody who has had enough experience. In a positive way with the people that you’re trying to see, and they can say to you: Okay, this is when you should start seeing changes, or else we need to shift gears, or we need to look at other options for you.

Johanna: Going back to NSAIDs and just, for those people who don’t know, NSAIDs are your Tylenols, they’re your Advils. Could you share with us some of the potential warnings or situations that NSAIDs use on a regular basis? Let’s say going back to menstrual cramps, or let’s say the person who’s got constant headaches or migraines, like using this every month on a consistent basis, let’s say for cramps. Why we shouldn’t be doing that? What you know, what could this cause later on down the road and what would be good alternatives?

Stacey: Great question and a huge answer, so I’ll try to sum it up. So there’s anything that you take potentially could, that’s not, food or natural or even food could even impact the health of your gut, right? In a good way or bad way. But we’re putting the synthetic things in that we know via research. Tylenol is not an NSAID it’s acetaminophen here, like I said, paracetamol in overseas. But when I was researching how Tylenol works to see how it works for people with pain, they don’t even know how Tylenol works, but they still call it safe. So Tylenol’s been around for decades and because it doesn’t kill you basically right away, they basically have said it’s safe. But when we look at Tylenol, we don’t know the mechanism and how it works, but we do know that potentially by taking it for long periods of time or too much of it, you can have liver damage.

That’s, again, now well established, but that Tylenol plus NSAIDs, like you mentioned, ibuprofen, Advil, Aleve, all those types of things that are NSAIDs or these non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. We do have data to show that. Taking them long-term, which they’re really not meant to be taken long-term. Taking them long-term really increases our risk of developing chronic pain, and it also increases our risk of developing pain hypersensitivity, meaning the pain that you were taking it for as a result of taking it and over again every month for your menstrual cycle, every day for your headaches, all that type of thing. The pain that you were taking it for is actually gonna be worse. Because you took it over a long period of time, right?

So it changes the body. Also, NSAIDs can have a negative impact on the kidneys as well too. Again, well documented and why people try to stay away from it. Strong NSAIDs like Meloxicam can be a really big deal to try to come off of, because your body is relying on it and all of a sudden you come off of it and then all of this inflammation comes back and you’re like: I really need to take this. But the answer to that is no, you don’t. You’re not deficient in Meloxicam. You need to figure out what the underlying cause of that chronic inflammation is and address that. And then everybody pretty much knows about opioids these days and how that can also contribute to pain hypersensitivity and how addictive those can be as well too.

If you’re taking those things, what you wanna do is work with somebody to help minimize the amount that you’re taking. You don’t wanna stop them all together, especially if you’ve been taking them for a long period of time, because you will bottom out and crash and be miserable. If you can get through that, okay, but you wanna work with somebody who can help you minimize what you’re doing. Minimize the amount that you’re taking and work on your gut health to be able to improve that because the gut is basically a significant aspect of our immune system, helps to regulate inflammation significantly and work on your eating plan in order to create an anti-inflammatory eating plan so that you don’t continue to create more inflammation just by what you’re putting in your body.

So NSAIDs, there’s a lot of things that people just don’t realize about them because, everybody is just taught to take them. We’re just conditioned to take those things instead of thinking about what is that actually doing to my body and what is this pain trying to tell me? Like back in the day, my mom would’ve said, go outside or drink some

water or eat a banana to replenish me if I’m dehydrated, not just take a pill. So we have to really rethink how we’ve been conditioned to take those things as the first thing, instead of stopping and going, what’s this pain telling me that I need to do versus just taking a pill to get rid of it quickly.

Johanna: I agree 100% How much of pain patients, do you see that their pain is related to their weight? Because when we are overweight, that puts a lot of pressure on joints, on our feet, on our, on all of our extremities on all of our organs. It puts a lot of extra pressure. It’s like everything is in overdrive, right? Your heart has to pump faster, has to do more work, versus when you’re 300 pounds versus a hundred pounds, right? So how much of. Because we have an obesity epidemic situation here in the us. Which not to say that it’s not in other parts of the world, but it’s rarely seen in other parts of the world compared to the US. It’s actually quite astonishing.

Stacey: So here’s the interesting thing and leading up, in the early days of being a physical therapist you just say, we have to lose weight to take the weight off the joints and that will decrease the pain. Some of that is still true, but we have to again, look at it from a bigger point of view. If somebody’s obese, they’re significant systemic inflammation, so there’s a lot of inflammation in the system, but you can have obese patients or people who are obese who have zero pain, zero joint pain, zero muscle pain, zero arthritis. So it’s not always just the weight that’s causing the pain, but the inflammation that’s associated with the excess weight can absolutely contribute to the pain and the increased pressure.

In the new research, and that looks at the gut joint access, most people who are obese may not have the healthiest diet, may not have the most diverse gut and microbiome, and therefore they end up with a leaky gut or in medical terms, increased intestinal permeability. If that’s the case, then things that shouldn’t be getting into the body that should be get, get processed out of the body, actually start to leach into the body. Something called like lipopolysaccharides, which attach themselves to a bacteria can get into the body from having leaky gut. What’s interesting is if your obese, you have higher levels of those lipopolysaccharides that potentially can get in the gut, and if they settle in your joints.

We wanna be healthier. Optimize our glucose metabolism because if glucose levels are high, that’s gonna cause more inflammation generally in the system. If we change our diet, that can regulate our glucose levels, decrease inflammation overall. If we’re out of shape and obese, we can have very low heart rate variability. That’s also been associated with increased pain. There’s so many things associated with being obese and having, or even if you’re not obese, just significantly overweight, you can have significantly larger levels of inflammation in your system that can affect your muscles and joints. So by addressing that and decreasing some of the weight, some, sometimes only 5 to 10% of the weight that you would ultimately need to lose can significantly reduce the pressure on the joints. Significantly reduce inflammation, significantly improve hormone balance, and while you have less pain as a result.

Johanna: Thank you so much for your time today. Anything that you’d love to leave our listeners with?

Stacey: Just, like we had talked about earlier, if you are having pain, that’s not resolving, be open to looking for other opportunities, other solutions to your issue. I would encourage people to keep hoping and to keep searching because the answer is likely out there. And pain doesn’t have to control your life.

Johanna: Amen to that. Thank you so much, Stacey, for your time, your wisdom, all your knowledge. Where can my listeners find you?

Stacey: So they can reach out to me at New You Health and Wellness, which is the name of the clinic that I have in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. I also have written and published the Pain-Free Formula, solving the puzzle of muscle and joint pain without surgery, drugs, or injections and that’s available on Amazon. And I have the Pain-Free Podcast, which is available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Please feel free to reach out in any of those ways and I’d love to hear from you and get any feedback as well too.

And thank you, Johanna, for all the things that you’re doing, you’re changing lives. That such emotional and difficult. It’s such an emotional and difficult thing to deal with when you’re dealing with alopecia and I’m just so happy that there’s pe somebody out there like you who’s really helping those patients that are struggling, helping those people who are struggling. So thank you.

Johanna: Thank you, Stacey. I appreciate that. That’s very sweet of you. I don’t know if you know my story, but my struggle was just just so traumatic, so devastating to me where it just didn’t make sense. It took me 4 years, but then after the four years, okay, it’s been now more than 9 and alopecia has never returned. Every day I wake up so grateful that I get to help people spread the word that this other alternative, this other door exists. It sounds like that you’re doing the same thing, that there’s another alternative, another door and back pain or any type of pain doesn’t have to lead to surgery or medications and being on them long term. Because that’s the worst that’s clearly not your stance and it’s not my stance either.

Stacey: Great. Thank you so much for this opportunity to be here.

Johanna: My pleasure. Take care.