While leading the morning run groups at Engine 2's Plantstock this August, I met a young woman named Emily Skamla. She was fit and speedy – easily pounding out 6-minute miles, and smoking me during the hill repeats.
I figured that the combination of youth, a Plant Strong diet, and a commitment to training were the whole story. Instructive, mildly inspiring, but certainly not Plant Yourself Podcast material.
Boy was I wrong.
Turns out, Emily has been suffering since the age of 7 with Type 2 Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD; now known in medical circles as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, but we'll stick to RSD since that's the term Emily uses).
It's a beast of a disorder. Triggered by an innocent-seeming wrist sprain from a gymnastics fall while in second grade, Emily's RSD led to changes in her bone and skin, tissue swelling, and extreme sensitivity to touch.
And constant, agonizing pain.
Meet RSD
The key feature for Emily was the constant firing of pain signals from the brain, even in the absence of physiological damage.
The worst part was, the RSD went undiagnosed for 14 years. Fourteen years of a childhood with an invisible disorder that her doctors didn't recognize or understand. Fourteen years of living with severe pain that was not acknowledged or explained. Fourteen years of fruitless surgeries, prescriptions, and other treatment dead ends.
Emily tried to live a normal life, but the disease took its toll mentally and emotionally, as well as physically. She suffered from depression and anxiety. She felt suffocated – a slave to the RSD that was dominating every cell in her body.
Healing
And then, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
Beginning with a whole f00d, plant-based diet. And a commitment to physical fitness and exercise that turned her into a formidable athlete.
Emily is very clear that she's not “cured.” But the plant-based diet has allowed her to feel healthy from the inside out, even as the pain remains.
And the pursuit of physical discomfort through hard athletic training has allowed her to reconceptualize the pain of RSD as soreness. As the kind of discomfort that leads to growth.
In addition to running lots of marathons and other races, Emily took up boxing and crew – more challenge and more discomfort.
In our conversation, we talked a lot about discomfort. And how discomfort can be our worst enemy, or our best friend.
And we compared her RSD with the discomfort of transitioning to a plant-based diet. The physical discomfort of cravings and withdrawal. The social discomfort of being different from your group.
I am indescribably inspired by Emily and her journey. She's another one of these people who blows my feeble excuses out of the water. I hope you'll find her story of healing as valuable as I have.
Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box or audio recording box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.
Links
Emily Skamla on Instagram: @emmskamla
Email Emily: er******@gm***.com
Plantstock 2019
Talk Back
Dr Howie Jacobson
This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).
My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.
Here are three gigs that I do:
1. Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation
I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.
At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.
My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.
2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance
I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.
We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.
The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.
3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams
I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.
So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.
You CAN Change Other People!
Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.
What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.
Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.
Music
The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.
It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.
You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.
Gratitudes
Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons – Kim Harrison – Lynn McLellan – Brittany Porter – Dominic Marro – Barbara Whitney – Tammy Black – Amy Good – Amanda Hatherly – Mary Jane Wheeler – Ellen Kennelly – Melissa Cobb – Rachel Behrens – Tina Scharf – Tina Ahern – Jen Vilkinofsky – David Byczek – Michele X – Elspeth Feldman – Leah Stolar – Allan Kristensen – Colleen Peck – Michele Landry – Jozina – Sara Durkacs – Kelly Cameron – Janet Selby – Claire Adams – Tom Fronczak – Jeannette Benham – Gila Lacerte – David Donohue – Blair Seibert – Doron Avizov – Gio and Carolyn Argentati – Jodi Friesner – Mischa Rosen – Michael Worobiec – AvIvA Lael – Alicia Lemus – Val Linnemann – Nick Harper – Bandana Chawla – Molly Levine – The Inscrutable Harry R – Susan Laverty the Panda Vegan – Craig Covic – Adam Scharf – Karen Bury – Heather Morgan – Nigel Davies – Marian Blum – Teresa Kopel – Julian Watkins – Brid O'Connell – Shannon Herschman – Linda Ayotte – Holm Hedegaard – Isa Tousignant – Connie Haneline – Erin Greer – Alicia Davis – Heather O'Connor – Carollynne Jensen – Sheri Orlekoski of Plant Powered for Health – Karen Smith – Scott Mirani – Karen and Joe Crabtree – Kirby Burton – Theresa Carrell – Kevin Macaulay – Elizabeth Rothschild – Ann Jesse – Sheryl Dwyer – Jenny Hazelton – Peter W Evans – Dennis Bird – Darby Kelly – Lori Fanney – Linnea Lundquist – Emily Iaconelli – Levi Wallach – Rosamonde McAtee – Dan Pokorney – Stephen Leinin – Patty DeMartino – Mike and Donna Kartz – Deanne Bishop – Bilberry Elf – Marjorie Lewis – Tricia Adams – Nancy Sheldon – Lindsey Bashore – Gunn Marit Hagen – Tracey Gulledge – Lara Hedin – Meg from Mamasezz – Stacey Stokes – Ben Savage – Michael K – David Hughes -Coni Rodgers – Claire England – Sally Robertson – Parham Ganchi – Amy Dailey – Brian Tourville – Mark Jeffrey Johnson – Josie Dempsey – Caryn Schmitt – Pamela Hayden – Emily Perryman – Allison Corbett – Richard Stone – Lauren Vaught of Edible Musings – Erin Hastey – Sean Owens – Sagar Naik – Erika Piedra – Danielle Roberts – Michael Leuchten – Sarah Johnson – Katharine Floyd – Meryl Fury – for your generous support of the podcast.
Disclosure
This post may contain amazon affiliate links. I may receive compensation from your actions on such links. It don't cost you a dime, tho.
Thanks for featuring Emily Skamla on your podcast! As her aunt and the family’s pioneering vegetarian, I encouraged Emily’s childhood interest in eating ethically, and watched that blossom into an all-consuming desire to go fully plant based, and that desire converge with her determination to best her chronic pain and the attendant issues of depression she suffered. Always athletic, Emily resolutely dedicated herself to making her body “pure” through a whole foods, plant-based diet (no salt or oil!) that not only improved her recovery time and amped her stamina, but tamped down much of the chronic pain she lives with. Nothing about what Emily has accomplished in her diet, health or athleticism has been easy, but she remains one of the most effortlessly kind and positive people I know, always willing to help others on their journey to health.
And thanks for your contributions to Emily’s (and the world’s) healing!
Yet another inspiring interview – thank you Howard for introducing us to Emily. wanted to suggest that you could introduce her to Alan Goldhamer at True North Health Center as I wonder if water only fasting might be a powerful therapy for Emily. Goldhamer has spoken of a case study of treating a women suffering from trauma induced chronic migrAines with water only fasting. Here is a link to the article on the TN website research page
https://www.truenorthhealthfoundation.org/health-professionals/journal-articles/challenging-case-clinical-practice-long-term-relief-chronic
Thanks, Tricia! I’ll pass this along… 🙂