My name is Jade Nelson and I’m from Austin Texas. I also do some lifestyle coaching, working with people on building self-care plans. I’ve been on a ketogenic diet for 2 1/2 years now and that was due to my epilepsy. I’ve used medication but up until 2 1/2 years ago a phone call changed that, from my little sister.

And she said, “Look into the ketogenic diet”. And that literally changed my whole world and life. I’m doing a slow and steady approach because I’ve been on the med so long, but I’m on the least amount of medications I’ve ever been on in my life and that’s a pretty powerful thing.

Research – that’s the one thing I would tell anybody. Don’t step into a doctor’s office and just say, “Tell me what to do.” All different types of approaches to dealing with epilepsy, whether it’s emotional, if you want to go the medication route or the CBD oil route or the diet, I want you to go out there and figure out what to do and research everything you can no matter how scary it is.

That information is going to empower you to make really well-informed decisions and play a role in your own healing process. I sometimes felt like I was always trying to explain what I was doing or kind of defend it.

It’s still within the keto community low-carb, it’s still hard to relate sometimes, because you’re doing it for different reasons and it’s hard to explain that, when you hear the saying, “Don’t chase those ketones”… Well, I’ll chase them, because I’d rather be seizure free.

The thing I can say is I’m actually happy about life, I feel hopeful. My purpose in this life is to actually share the stuff I went through in hopes that it will reach someone out, and every time I get to sit in front of a camera like this or stand on a stage and share a small part of myself, all of that stuff I’ve been through healed me.

And I think each person that’s given a diagnosis, you can sit there and you can say this is end no matter what the diagnosis is. Or you can say, “This is the beginning and I’m going to simply take that fork in the road and go a completely different direction and I’m going to use it to empower myself, to change who I am on the inside and how to affect others around me.”

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