She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
I'm tiff. This is Roll with the punches and we're turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go to court, and don't. My friends at test Art Family Lawyers know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution. Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples, custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements
and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so reach out to Mark and the team at www dot test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Amy mcgare welcome to Roll with the Punches.
Thank you so much. Very very excited to be here. Not sure how I ended up here, Excited to be here.
Through our mutual mate, Cam McDonald. When he tells me to chat to someone, I'm like, you're awesome. They must be awesome too, So no, no, biggie, but you you know, don't let me down.
Yeah. Thanks, that's another thing I have Cam to thank for.
So he's good like that. We actually I just got off a call with him and Craig and just love, just love picking his incredible brain about I'm guessing you're part of pH three sixty absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. And my listeners, most of my listeners are pretty familiar that it gets weaved into conversations here and there. If you're not guys and you feel lost, reach out. Soe yeut, I'll point in the right direction for the episodes that
talk about it deeply. How do you introduce yourself? Who's Amy mcgare well.
The reason I ended up here was I did, like you mentioned, I got very well and truly sucked into the pH three sixty universe, which is just been the most life changing, just game changing thing for me. And I know the potential that this has to help other people. And essentially I have been through a huge health journey of my own, went on a search for a way to heal myself.
Then when on the search for how do I actually help other people?
Do it?
Been through health science degree, been through sport and exercise science degrees, and it wasn't until I discovered pH three sixty and I actually found this beautiful mixture of the deep science that I just absolutely love and connected with this person centric almost spiritual kind of it's so hard to articulate, but yeah, just discovering that universe has been a real game changer, not just for me, but it's now the view that I can use to actually help these people in such a meaningful way.
So when did you what was? So you've done heaps of education to find kind of where you like at what point of those courses? But do you always feel like welcome to me? Also taking twenty minutes to ask a question which you'll end up would You'll end up a question that's got forty eight answers and you'll be like, oh, there's a lot in that. I've got to get better at not doing that tip, just ask one question at
a time. I guess what I want to know is because we do this a lot, we go all, right, here's this is, this is what I want to this is what I want to do and find out, and then we choose the path. Right, Okay, that's the course that where I'm going to go.
I want to learn that.
Like when I first become a PTE, I went, Okay, I've got the qualification, but I actually don't know anything about strength training and programming. So where do I find that, and I asked a whole bunch of people and I went to I won't I won't name it because it sounds like I'm dising the I'm not. They're an amazing organization that has a huge regard for what they do.
But I landed there for this strength and conditioning training information and it was kind of like, oh, this is kind of aimed for training strength and conditioning for teams, Like I want to learn how to program individuals and how to technically lift weights safely and well? And why did everybody point me into this direction? So I told
you to be long question unnecessary? What did you What was your journey like when you got into doing some of the studies, were you like, this is actually not no, this is not giving me the answers I want.
It's so interesting that you say that, because very very similar story on my part. And it's one thing that I've learned along this journey is these people like us have this you know, this need or this want to help people, and the first thing we do is go, I'm going to be a pet. And I don't know why, but that's just the repeated story I keep seeing. And I started the exact same way thought, how do I go about making a difference in the world. Did my surt three and my sert for and let me out
into the world. And I just thought, if I couldn't read and discern for myself, I'd have no clue. And very similar thing happened in my first degree and got three quarters of the way through that and I was like, this just isn't It's not giving me what I need. And so basically right before the finish, I switched and I went to a more sign like a more science based degree, so that my goal then was to then go on to research. And so I knew that no one with the first degree I was doing, no one
was going to take me seriously as a scientist. So I went and did a really more prestigious science based degree and so I ended up as a let's call it crazy hippie at a very prestigious private university as part of the health sciences and medicine faculty and COVID HIT and so that was a very interesting journey for me. And as you say, how did you end up where you did? I mid twenty twenty was questioning my life choices,
how did I end up here? But I learned through the whole process of just the one thing it did teach me it was really how to break down scientific articles and how to really read and properly discern.
Things for myself.
And another thing that I learned through that process too was that I actually have the capacity to think for myself a lot better than it seems other people do. And going through let's say, the adversity that I did at the time, it really gave me this better sense of character. And so while I got I got a lot of great experience with athletes. I got to work with Wallabies and x nrral professionals and women in the Aussie sevens, like I got to work with this extremely
great caliber of athlete. And one thing it did teach me was that pro sports not where it's at for me. But yeah, it's I don't think it ever matters how deep you go into education. If you can't read and discern and think for yourself and you don't have that first for knowledge, then you're probably never going to be the satisfied. And that is part of the reason why I'm still so passionate about going into research, is there is that much stuff that's there to uncover that is
really going to help people. And I may not have given I may not have been given all the answers through studying, but it's definitely put me on the path to know the how better, how much better I can contribute to, you know, the pursuit of science?
Yeah, or I love that. I love that a lot because I feel like it lands with me. I feel a little bit the same, although I do not have the attention span for long term study in one direction, but even just through a process like the last five years of podcasting and going, it's funny because I have this.
It almost feels like polar opposites where I go, the more I've learned, the less I the less answers there are, and the more it's all just a bit of bullshit and you've got to figure out what works for you. But as I say that, I go, yeah, but what do you mean? Because you're so passionate about seeking people out to learn, So what's the point of learning if
there's no answers? So it's but it's that how do we critically think, Okay, well I talk about this and talk about that and see where the intersections are, and how do we allow people to think for themselves. Yeah, and what might we uncover in the process.
Absolutely, And it's one thing that I've really learned across my own journey with chronic health condition is with allopathic medicine, its cause and effect, and there's cause and then there's a cure. Whereas for chronic health issues, and that's where PHA sixty fits in so beautifully, is there's one condition that they've named it this, but ten different people will have ten different causes.
So there's never going to be a cure.
And I think that was the thing that really got me interested in the whole thing in the first place, was there has to be a way to fix these things. But modern medicine is never going to say we have a cure for this because we can't pinpoint the cause because different people with different biology, it's triggering the same thing but through a different mechanism.
Okay, tell us the journey of you and your health. Did it start before all of the study or did it slide in in between.
No, it started very very early on.
I was about fifteen at the time of diagnosis.
We'll say I had had.
Kind of weird health things from very young. I was told like I was having leg pain and just weird pains and things. And I always remember being told as a kid, I was just growing pains. It's just growing pains. When I was in my mid twenties, I'm like, my leg's still hurt. I'm pretty sure I haven't grown for the last ten years.
So yeah.
But I got quite ill around fourteen fifteen and just constantly tired, and then i'd go to sleep, I'd go to bed, couldn't sleep. So I was really really tired, really really wired. Doctors, all your bloods are fine, et cetera, et cetera. And that turned out I had a test for just general viruses and they found an epstein bar infection and essentially the doctor said, oh, by the looks of this, it's been an infection for quite a while.
You've probably got chronic fatigue. Sorry, and that was it, and I was like, okay, so chronic fatigue is my label.
Off you go.
And you know, as a teenager going through high school and getting close to year twelve and all the rest of it, I was competing in two different sports at the time. I was a dancer and I was also competing at a national level in karate, and it I was like well, I've just kind of got to get on with it. And I got the typical you don't look sick and you look fine, and you know, you can't possibly be that bad if you're training six days
a week or whatever it was. And so I thought, all right, well, I've just got to, you know, get it all together and just keep pushing on through.
You know.
Finished year twelve, turned eighteen, learned to party, loved it. It, moved away from my hometown, ended up grossly overweight for my frame, and I just said, do you know what, enough's enough? Sick of feeling really poorly, and I just kind of went on this journey of reading everything I could get my hands on, and literally, when I say I tried everything.
I mean absolutely everything.
I tried, you know, keto, carnivore, I've done vegetarian, tried vegan that wasn't going to happen for any longer than a few minutes, tried tried, tried vegan.
Sorry, I was like, fried vegan. That doesn't sound good.
It's basically just timper of vegetables. Yeah.
But literally experimented on myself with absolutely everything, and it wasn't until I decided to have a baby that I went through through a naturopathic preconception program, found out all this stuff about how I have.
Mthfi gene mutations and.
All the predispositions that that kind of comes with low ability to detox and I have lymphatic issues and that kind of stuff. And so that in my early was about twenty five at the time, that really changed my whole kind of changed my whole world. And going down that rabbit hole and realizing that all of these issues could literally be stemmed from this one little thing that
was going on in my body. And if I'd known about it, I could change the way I eat, or I could change the way I move, and you know, these things may not have become quite so apparent. And yeah, that really So my son's now almost eleven, so it's been these last eleven years it's been a really really big kind of deep dive into that and just this one little thing that I have as an example, the
MTHFI gene mutation. Up to forty percent of the population have it, and it's such an easy thing to essentially bypass, and it's just crazy that there's not many people know about it.
When you were doing all of the other self experiments. What sort of time frames were you putting in place to assess is this working is not? Did you have a process, were you pretty diligent with it, or was it a bit of a dog's breakfast.
So, yeah, I figured out pretty quickly if it was going to help or not. I stuck with a vegetarian thing for a solid two years before then. When I decided to have my son, I was like.
Can I need to get some meat back into my life?
Yeah?
Yeah, And I would find things like.
When I would get on keto, I would feel great for the first week, then you'd get the dreaded keto flu for a couple of weeks, come out the other side of that, and then for the next probably two months, would feel amazing, and then all of a sudden the effect would start dropping off again. And so then the next time I tried cyclical keto, so month on, week off, month on kind of thing, and then that would balance
out a lot better. There was a yeah, there was a approach, But yeah, like I said, I'd figure out pretty quickly if it wasn't if it wasn't going to work, tell.
Us about that. Mt HFR gene.
Okay, So mt HFR gene is I it codes for, So essentially it stands for methyl tetrahydro fol late reductise and it codes for it's a it's a gene that I've just It's one of those things where as soon as you ask this question, now, I've like totally gone blank, and I'm like, I.
Know so much about this. Yeah, I've looked at it in previous times, and that's why I chiefly asked you. I was like, I'm just going to get to explain it again because I can't quite recall it all. I know that I've got one one copy of a variant of it, but when it comes to this, it's like I should know more about that and do stuff about it.
So yeah, So essentially it affects fol late metabolism and it's kind of basic level. So there's two different two different alleles, so there's two different issues you can have with it. I have got one of one and two of the other. So essentially one just just does really.
Work at all.
But that especially with in pregnancy, folate is super important. And another thing that also needs to be said is folate and folic acid are two very different things, and it's because it affects detox pathways, and depending on which mutation you have, it depends on how early in the detox pathway that can actually affect you. And so essentially, in my case, mine just doesn't work at all, So
I have no choice but to bypass it. And it can be little things like I just feel a bit brain foggy one day, or there'll be other days where like my whole body just feels like it's twitching and it's not lovely.
M Yeah. So, based on what you know of chronic fatigue, do you feel that it is a condition or just a cluster of symptoms that get given to people when they don't fit a box that has a definitive answer.
Yeah, absolutely, it's a label given. I feel it's a label given to people as they do. It's a collection of symptoms, and as like I'd said earlier, it's because it could be a different trigger or a different cause with each person. There's never going to be a this is chronic fatigue, this is what it looks like, and this is how we fix it because it is it's just a symptom of a cluster of symptoms.
Yeah.
Yeah, And what did your process for management look like? And how long did that kind of take for you to or you might still be in a level of self management and learning, but yeah, I'd love to hear about the experience with it.
Yeah.
So I found out very quickly that once I had given up all the fun things I stopped in preparation, especially for having my son. I gave up drinking before drank no alcohol for about a year or so before the planned pregnancy. Obviously came off oral contraception. Oral contraception which is a whole nother topic that I am extremely passionate about, and that really did change my whole world.
Especially coming off the pill and then figuring out the severity of the mtfr gene mutation and the side effects that I potentially could have had from being put on that at such a young age is just mind blowing.
So giving up all the toxins.
I literally threw out all chemicals, stopped coloring my hair, you know, the whole lot, and instantly, instantly things got better. And so there were a lot of years of just kind of protecting that feeling good.
One of the issues that I have is a like issues.
With moving lymph, and so I found that once I became a PT and when I was teaching, you know, thirty hours of gym classes a week, I was feeling great because I was constantly moving and draining that lymph. So like detox pathways, not only were they not as loaded because I'd gotten rid of chemicals and alcohol and all the rest of it, I was also finally had that limp flow that was I was very, very stagnant.
Yeah.
God, it's so fascinating, isn't it. Like I love conversations like this because it's just that we can be told, or we can read about, we can be told all sorts of that, do this, do that, don't do this, and it's like, shut up. When you just hear someone sharing their own experiment with themselves and what they learn, it's like, oh, everyone, just shut up, all of us. Yeah.
What's really crazy, too, is the first week of knowing about pH three sixty all these issues I had, they were like, yeah, that's a biology, that's a biology, that'sy biology. And I'm like, if I'd known this twenty years ago, this total game changer, wouldn't have had to go.
Through all those blood tests and things.
I would have known based on my biology, my phenotype that I was predisposed to the MTHFI gene mutations and it's just it's yeah.
It's crazy.
What's your health type?
I am a three to five diplomat, so I'm right on the edge of censor, but I have a large chunk of my brain that's an activator. So I am a bit of a weird mix.
And when did you start pH three sixty?
My friend Steph first introduced me a bit over a year ago, but it wasn't until I did my husband and I did a coaching session with her and I heard how she was using my diplomat status to communicate with his crusader that I realized. I was like, hang on a sec there is really something cool here. And it's been when I started the Level one six months ago and now I'm in the Inner Circle program. So it's just been this whirlwind the last six months of just soaking.
Up all the amazing and the amazingness that is. Yeah, PO THR sixty.
Yeah, what are the practices or changes that you've implemented that surprise you that have had a huge impact on your levels of on your management of in inverted commas chronic fatigue?
Huge?
Just one for me has been learning about how important my place.
Is, and because that's not the kind.
Of thing that people think about as having an effect on your biology, it's just like, oh, yeah, that's just where I live.
And Yeah.
When I found out that place is actually the number one level of importance for a diplomat body type, I was like, hang on, this makes so much sense because I've been through a lot of not so great things the last three or four years. And it wasn't until I kind of relocated out of one environment that and it wasn't I didn't change the people around me. I literally just changed the location and things started to open up and I started feeling clearer, and which has been
an absolute game changer. And at the moment, we're renovating our house and just that of just I really desperately want to get in there because that's, you know, my space and my place, and just I feel myself going, I'm a bit anxious, like that place is just so important and it seems crazy and it seems really trivial, but for my health type, it's so huge.
Absolutely. It's funny you remind me of similarly to yourself, when I'd first gotten on board and was looking at my own profile, and so it was like really important for you to have lots of color and natural things in your house. And I was like, oh, that's hilarious because I get indecisive and I always so everything in my house at that time was black or wooden, like,
it was all neutral colors. So then it went out and I bought a lot of plants, but I bought some really bold colored artwork, and I could not believe the effect that it had on how I felt then, sitting in my own lounge, I was like, how is this even a thing?
Yeah, and it's those little things that you would never consider.
Yeah, yeah, that has been the most mind blowing for me. Yeah.
Yes, there's so many of them that really you often look at it and go, oh I already leaned towards that, or I did once and you but we get in our own way. But some of those small things are just like you'd never no one's ever going to well, I think this is the problem is that I don't have any bright colored artwork on my walls. I think that's why I'm feeling this way.
That's exactly right.
I've as pte getting up at five and running off to clients and all the rest of it. And a big thing for me was I would always be like, this takes me so long to get out of bed, and I find it really hard, and I'm running through my head all the things I have to do during the day. And as I found out as a diplomat, I supposed to have no stress in the mornings, like I can still get up at five, but I need to be able to get off get up at five
and not have to think about anything. And it wasn't until I was like, take the stress out of the mornings that all of a sudden life gets better.
And just understanding other people relating tops and dynamics, and.
Yeah, that's been very interesting. I remember I was on a call with the guys once and someone was saying about one of the health types and you know, you need to understand and that accuracy isn't their things, So you implement an eighty twenty rule with them, so twenty percent of the time they might be a little bit off on accuracy.
And I was like, oh my god, that makes me.
Want to cry, getting heart palpitations, and I was like, Okay, nope, that's their biology.
I need to understand these things.
The thought of being wrong twenty percent, like inaccurate twenty percent of the time gives me anxiety.
So we just when we had Cam on the other show, we harps who was He's talked a little bit about but he's not really familiar with the health types and he's starting to get quite curious. So he's talking about giving somebody feedback, and he wanted to know if there was a particular health type that dealt better or worse with feedback. And funnily enough, they particularly started talking about the activator, which is me. So it was which they
labeled Jane. But it's so funny to talk about interaction and how to manage different interactions with specifics in mind, which is Yeah, that's fascinating this shit out of me.
Yeah, And that's funny you bring that up because I'm not a compliment sandwich guy. I'm like, just give me the feedback, give it to me direct and we're good.
Don't tell me I did this great and then oh but by the way, and then tell me I did something else. I don't just cut it. And it's funny.
When I was listening to your podcast with Cam and Ann Larsen and you're talking about the boxing and stuff, and I had this epiphany about how it was the activator part of me that got me into karate, because I guarantee you, the sensor and the diplomat side of me never in a million years would go for the confrontation, but that activator part of me was like, yeah, like, let's get in the ring.
So fascinated. That's actually really fascinating. So with everything you've learned about you, what do you do wing with that now? As a whether it's a train or a coach or a research what are your plans now?
So I am just relaunched my coaching business with the help of the guys at pH three sixty, because now we have got just this great program that is finally going to get people the results that they deserve. The first program is based around chronic illness and you know, thriving rather than just managing. That's one one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to launch this program and why I wanted to start this way is because everything that's out there at the moment is all about managing
your condition. It's not about healing and thriving. So the current for something like chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. The current standard of treatment is pacing, which is you know, you do XYZ this week, and then the next week we'll add one more task to you. So essentially you just kind of increase the amount of energy you expand over time.
And the other thing is cognitive behavioral therapy, which as soon as someone says that it makes me think, you think it's all in my head, and it's essentially talk therapy to try and make you feel better. Now, cognitive behavioral therapy absolutely has a place in the treatment of mental health conditions and all the rest of it. And this is no way a dig at that. It is a dig at the fact that they are using this
treatment to because the conditions are poorly understood. They essentially a lot of people who have had to deal with it have been made to feel like it's all in their head for a very very long time. And so whenever I see that as a treatment, it just it triggers me. And yeah, so that's essentially I've been working with the guys that pH TH sixty two just get this program up and running, running a small group program as well as one on one using the shade tech, and just to get people better.
Do you find that people that come to you that have been labeled with this or I don't know, maybe you've you've connected with people on your own searches at times. What's the what's the typical response to people believe there's help out there? Are they are they ignoring information or are they just accepting it?
Like?
Where are we at in terms of that?
The answer is yes, all of the all of them.
There's there are people like me that are like, no, no, no, there's got to be away, Like I wasn't born like this, There's got.
To be away.
There are others that are, you know, going into their doctors every however long and just being told, sorry, your blood's are normal, There's nothing we can do, You're just tired. There's people at all stages. I am hopeful and I do believe that we are getting to the point now where a lot more people are asking more questions and they are saying this isn't good enough, like I can't exist like this, and they are looking for better answers that are actually going to help them regain their health.
Do you think there are any damaging approaches out there which might just be the doctors and the rest and they're like, what's being prescribed that is doing more damage than it is good.
I don't so because I've kind of just taken on my own. I'm operating kind of as my own health practitioner, because I've had found a doctor who was absolutely brilliant I won't name her and is squarely has been squarely one hundred percent on my side with a.
Few issues, but because of how.
She is regulated as a doctor, there are things she couldn't do or couldn't help me with because she would be deregistered. And that as someone who is basically you're right, but I can't help you, it is absolutely infuriating. Yeah, so I've totally forgotten what the question was.
Well, yeah, damaging, damaging, Yeah, practices.
I don't know that there's a lot that is physically damaging.
There are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there.
And the thing is, when you are in this chronic state of pain and brain fog and all the rest of it, you will try anything. And so I don't believe there is stuff that is making it physically worse. But there are definitely a lot of people out there that aren't helping, and there are lot of practitioners saying
there's not really anything we can do. We've just got to manage it, and then these poor people are sitting there going I'm just going to be like this for the rest of my life, and psychologically that's hugely damaging.
Yeah. What kind of becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, doesn't it?
Absolutely? Yeah?
Absolutely yeah. Aside from the obvious witches, get the hell on your programs, figure it out. What is your advice to people who have this or some sort of a similar you know, whether it be auto or immune, a similar debilitating condition. What's your advice for people to start getting somewhere?
Yeah?
Take responsibility, Like the first things first is, no one is going to change you for you.
You've got to take responsibility for yourself.
It's not your fault, but you need to own kind of where you're at and take your own steps. Don't don't take no for an answer, Like, don't don't let someone tell you that.
You have to feel like crap your whole life.
You deserve you deserve health. It's a birthright to everyone. You know, everyone deserves basic vitality. Don't don't take no for an answer. I'm and it's easy for me to say. I'm the kind of person that will kick a door in and be like, I'm here, deal with it. And I know there are a lot of people that aren't and they will sit back. But don't don't take no for an answer when it comes to your health. At the end of the day, it's the only thing you've got. Don't take no for an answer.
Where can where can we find you and follow you and get on board?
So business profiles and all that are being reset up at the moment, So I don't know if you have show notes or anything we can put that in.
I'll do yep, I'll check some. I'm in there.
Yeah. But the business name is the Delta Project.
And yes, coming soon to an internet location near you.
Tell me about the name, the Delta Project. I'm interested.
So I love that. So Delta is so that great clatter.
Delta is the symbol for the chemic, the symbol for.
Change in science.
So when you're writing out a scientific equation, you use the delta symbol as that's the change in And so that's where it came from.
Bloody love that. I love that I asked that question.
I love that you asked that too, because I love that story.
Yeah, I'm like, there's got to be storied it is. What does that mean?
Yeah, I'm so cool yeh, super science nerd and so I love it.
So thanks.
Oh well, that's this has been a really great chat. I love chats like this, so thank you so much. Keep being amazing and creating shit. It's actually going to help so that more awesome people can do more awesome stuff in the world rather than bloody stay in bed and be tired.
Thanks so much. I so super appreciate you having me. And that's exactly the point. It's to get people out of bed and being able to bring their gifts to the world. And that's the thing is I've found through this process that this is my gift to the world, and the idea is so that these people can get better and whatever it is that their talent is, they can finally bring that to the world. It's exactly right, get more awesome people to do more awesome things. I just I love that.
You are a bloody superstar. Thanks Amy, Thank you so much.
Tiffany, thanks, she.
Said it's now and ever I got fighting in my blood started plea