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Former anti-vaccine “crunchy mom” and current public-health nurse Lydia Greene joins us to discuss why she was susceptible to anti-vax messaging despite having a science background, how and why she developed orthorexia, how a chronic digestive disorder made her susceptible to “leaky gut” rhetoric, how her orthorexia affected her parenting, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into why she came to rethink her anti-vax stance, how she started to question wellness culture and heal from orthorexia, how her anti-vax views masked her son’s autism diagnosis, how she’s dealing with her digestive disorder now, and why she decided to become a public-health nurse and co-found Back to the Vax, a group devoted to vaccine advocacy.
Lydia Greene is a married mother of three. She spent over a decade as an anti-vax crunchy mother when the pandemic made her reconsider her views. Her family is now fully vaccinated, and she recently graduated nursing school and has now become a vocal vaccine advocate. Learn more about her work at backtothevax.com.
Resources and References
Christy’s second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Subscribe on Substack for extended interviews and more
Lydia’s group, Back to the Vax
Lydia’s booklet with Immunize Kansas, Vaccine Fears Overturned by Facts
Lydia’s Twitter
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Christy Harrison: Election Day is tomorrow, if you’re listening to this the day it comes out. I’ve mentioned this in the newsletter before, but if Donald Trump wins, he’s promised to make anti-vax entrepreneur and conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. a key player in health policy and food and drug regulation—which would be disastrous for public health, to say the least. So if you need a(nother) reason to get to the polls and stop Trump, do it to help protect science-based medicine and keep RFK Jr’s hands off our health policy. And look, obviously our healthcare system is far from perfect, but putting him and his fringe friends in charge is not the answer. You can go to vote.org to find your polling place, check your voter registration, and more. And if you’ve already voted, please consider helping your friends and family get to the polls, too.
Christy Harrison: So Lydia, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to talk with you.
Lydia Greene: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Christy Harrison: So you are a self-described former anti-vaxxer who is now an immunization advocate. And you also suffered from orthorexia, which many listeners may know is obsession with healthy eating for about a decade. So I'm really looking forward to talking with you about all of that and how you found healing. I'd love to start by talking first about your upbringing, just to kind of situate what you went through to see if there's any sort of genesis in the past or not. Like, I'm curious if there was any crunchy wellness type stuff on your radar growing up or food issues or whether your family was pro-vaccine or if it all kind of came to you out of the blue.
Lydia Greene: Yeah, so as a child of immigrants, my parents came from the former Yugoslavia roughly a year and a half before I was born. My parents, being from like a very communist country, you know, always seemed to have a mistrust in authority, in government. They weren't exactly focused on healthy anything. They both were chain smokers. Later on, my dad became an alcoholic. My dad himself is schizophrenic and was untreated most of my life. And I was kind of left to my own devices as a child a lot. For instance, I didn't have the healthiest start in terms of how I grew up. Started smoking at the age of 11, had like a very troubled teenage life with lots of alcohol and substance use despite, you know, living in poverty and having these issues. I always knew like I had to finish high school and make something of myself and that was the way out, so to speak, of that lifestyle. Went to college, like at a technical school and became a quality control chemist for a pharmaceutical company. You know, I actually did quite well.
Then I met my husband. We decided to settle down and have kids. So we moved to a rural area, and I left my career behind because my plan was to be a stay at home mom and do better for my children than I had. I was really focused on reading parenting books. And at the time it was like 2008. So I'm like going on blogs, you know, looking up different parenting methods and lifestyles and just wanting to do the very best. I became very hyper-focused, like I quit smoking before I even met my husband and having been diagnosed with Crohn's disease at the young age of 18 and you know, lived through sepsis, lived through the worst of my disease, maybe I thought if I changed my lifestyle around I could fix all that, and I could also give my child better than I had so that she would not suffer the things that I went through. So that's how my focus on health began from a very unhealthy upbringing to wanting to do the very best I could for my daughter.
Christy Harrison: You mentioned that you developed orthorexia around the time your daughter was born. But it sounds like the seeds were sort of there already in the Crohn's disease and wanting to manage that and starting to do all this research. Do you feel like you were exposed to a lot of this kind of orthorexic type thinking through the research you were doing at that time?
Lydia Greene: The forum thing was quite big, so you'd have these groups of like-minded people. I actually met a lot of cool people too, like on a Crohn's forum where, you know, it was mostly medically based care, but we were just there to support each other through commiserating basically over the struggles we were having because it's a bit of an embarrassing disease at times and it can feel kind of hopeless. So having that group was really actually quite helpful, and it helped me stop punishing myself. I used to think, well, I'm sick. No matter what, it doesn't matter what I do. And I used to be very hopeless about my illness when I was younger. I think even just getting diagnosed as a teenager is really hard.
And then just not having access to the proper supports to get through it. I dealt with it in very unhealthy ways and then almost died as a result. I was 22 and my bowel abscessed and I went septic and I almost died. I lost a foot and a half of my colon, and it took weeks to recover and had a colostomy for a while. And that was really hard for me. As a young woman I went from very unhealthy to like, trying to recover and fix myself. And these forums were very helpful, but at the same time, there's a lot of misinformation being shared on these forums. So that's where I kind of started getting access to some of these things that I believed that weren't necessarily based in evidence.
Christy Harrison: I can understand that. I have an autoimmune disease or actually several autoimmune diseases myself, but Hashimoto's thyroiditis being sort of the main one that I've tried to get help and support for over the years, looking online and different places. And, you know, I know Crohn's is autoimmune as well, and then also digestive. And I feel like that nexus of autoimmune, digestive and hormonal to some extent too. Crohn's is not hormonal, but I think those three are like such a hotbed of wellness culture and misinformation and, you know, alternative medicine and dubious diagnoses and all the things. And you've written that you thought you had leaky gut and sort of went down a rabbit hole with that - which, you know, we now know is a dubious diagnosis, but at the time I'm sure you really bought into it, so can you talk about that?
Lydia Greene: Oh yeah, I bought into the leaky gut thing and the microbiome thing and the various foods that, you know, are bad for gut health. And there's always a nugget of truth in what the wellness industry sells, but then they like to extrapolate and run with it, even though there's no, like evidence behind the theory. And it can sound very convincing if you're hopeful to help yourself.
A lot of them will claim, like, you can cure your illnesses, because of this or that. And if you just follow this way of life perfectly, you won't even need medication anymore. And medication isn't there to cure anything. It's just there to mask your symptoms. And until you remove the root cause you're going to be sick and it's your own fault, basically, if you are because you're doing something wrong, that’s what it boils down to. They may not say it that bluntly. But that's the messaging of all of that. Wellness culture is like, it's you. You're doing something and you need to change it. And then you can live free of medication is the promise, right? And then when you go back and you're like, well, I'm doing all of this and I'm still not better. They'll say, oh, it's contamination. It always comes back to you, like you must not be doing it well enough. And that's why it's failing you. It's not us, it's you. Try harder.
Christy Harrison: Totally. It is such a powerful message, because we all do feel so much guilt and shame, I think, for having these conditions. And there's such pervasive messaging in our society that like, your health is your responsibility and it's your fault if you're sick. And then it just gets so amplified and you know, those messages are just like at the heart of so much wellness culture. It's easy to buy in. So when you thought you had leaky gut, did you start pursuing sort of alternative medicine approaches? How did that play out for you?
Lydia Greene: I would see whatever like benefits would cover, you know, with various naturopaths and et cetera. And then I would buy books like I have like the GAPS diet book and that specific carbohydrate diet and then Paleo diet and primal diet and then I even did the vegan diet, which actually, out of all of the different diets I tried, was probably the worst for my health. And they don't like to hear that. Again, if it doesn’t work for you. You're doing it wrong. But it's also really easy. Just eat beans and rice. But also if those affect you differently, then try all these other hard to get foods.
Anyway, it didn't work for me. That's not to say that certain diets didn’t make me feel better for a while. I mean, obviously, one, there's a bit of a placebo effect. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with how strict the diet you're on. So I don't think there's just one specific way that's gonna, you know, help everybody. And you know, this is how everybody should live. And I think that's what a lot of these health gurus, they get into these camps of like, well, now you're seeing like carnivore and all this stuff. Like, it's just more and more extreme diets with more and more like things that you have to cut out. And let's say it is the cure. Let's say eating only this one food is the cure. Is that sustainable in our society, in our social groups, where food is so centered to culture and tradition and gatherings? Like, is that sustainable long term, not just the health of your body, but the health of your mind?
Having to go to family gatherings and then being upset because my kid had a cupcake with food coloring. It's a birthday party. Enjoy the party. That's more healthy, I think, than avoiding that cupcake for that one day and having anxiety over like all the different things it's going to do to your child. And then you're not now you're not even in the moment with your child. You can't even enjoy the birthday party. So it's like, is that healthy? No.
Christy Harrison: There's entire dietary systems built up around these tiny studies and you know, or epidemiology that's like people who eat this diet tend to be healthier in these ways. And it's like, okay, great, but who tends to eat that diet and why and what of those variables are contributing to better health that have nothing to do with the diet actually.
Lydia Greene: Yeah. And there can be like the healthy user effect. Going back to the anti-vaccine thing, I know I haven't really touched on it yet but like a lot of people are like, what do you mean? Because they'll bring up SIDS. And I’ll say, actually the data shows vaccinated babies have less SIDS there's less SIDS occurrence in that population. And they're like, well that's just dumb. Like how can you say vaccines reduce SIDS? And I'm like, no, I said that it was associated with less SIDS. I didn't say it was like a causative thing. And I said it's probably because they're taking their kids to the doctor and getting evidence-based advice like putting your baby on their back to sleep and safe sleeping guidelines. So those things are probably hand in hand. A parent that's bringing their child in for vaccinations is probably listening to what their pediatrician recommends regarding sleep. So you know, yeah, that's probably why. And it's another reason why evidence-based care is so important.
Christy Harrison: Totally. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the anti-vaccine stuff. That is definitely, you know, such a huge part of your story. You became anti-vaccine and were in the anti-vax world for about 12 years, you've written. What made you start to question vaccines? Was it related to this sort of preexisting orthorexia and crunchy world that you found yourself in? Was social media involved? What were the factors?
Lydia Greene: Like I said, I became obsessed with doing the best for my daughter. I had her in 2008. I did my prenatal appointments, and I wanted a healthy child. I even had a flu shot while pregnant with her. So I wasn't anti-vaccine and I had a scientific job, so it wasn't like anti-science at that point.
Christy Harrison: You were a chemist at a pharmaceutical company, right?
Lydia Greene: Yeah, so I did quality control. So I know how many standards and stuff we have in big pharma. Like we are audited randomly. Every piece of paper is saved. You cannot have scrap paper. Like everything is saved, collected, documented and stored. I can't remember for how many years. After, you know, like a lot of the testing I did was in the manufacturing area where they would clean out their equipment and then I would take a swab and swab like a 10 x 10 cm area of the equipment and then extract that swab and see if there was any residue left because you couldn't even have any remaining. Like that's how strict it is. Right. And I joke and like you can't fart there without documenting it. Like you're documenting everything.
And the reason why you'll hear in the news like a factory was shut down is because we do they do those audits. That's a thing that happens randomly. So if you are doing something wrong, you're not going to be doing it for very long because someone's going to show up. And then having a failed audit is a big, big deal. Like it's a huge deal. So yeah, so I even have that background and still like went down that rabbit hole just even knowing what I knew beforehand. But yeah, I planned on everything. And then I had an interaction with a nurse when my daughter had her two-month vaccines where they like downplayed, did the “you're a first time mom” and like made me feel kind of embarrassed for even asking but also still scared for her.
Christy Harrison: Because she was having not a bad reaction, but she was crying a lot, right?
Lydia Greene: It was a very average reaction, but I didn't know that. So she was crying a lot. She was pretty much inconsolable. She's having these crying jags and then very tired and not nursing. And when I called in she was like, well it just sounds like you're being a first time mom, but if you really think it's an emergency, you could take her to the ER anyway.
And I was like, okay, but like this is happening, you know? Just kind of blew me off and then I just kind of felt really embarrassed, but also still really worried. It was just not a good interaction that you would hope to have with healthcare. Like, I really wish she would have just said, well bring her in, let's have a look. I understand you're worried. So, yeah, I went to the group online, the forums, you know, the forums in 2008 were really big. Went back to that group that helped me breastfeed again when a doctor was like, “don't be so broken hearted. It's just formula. Just give your kid formula, it's fine.”
So these women helped me as a group, and it started as like a hippie magazine out of, I want to say Oregon. And they helped me breastfeed. So I was like, I'm going to go back to these women and ask them about my daughter's reaction. And they're like, oh yeah, you know. It’s in the inserts. That's cryencephalitis. That's DTAP cry. Your daughter has brain inflammation and it's causing pain and that's why she's screaming. And I wouldn't do it again. Like, you don't know what it's going to do to her next time. And that was enough to scare me. And they did show me the inserts. And it does say that, you know, this is a thing, but also consult your doctor and to determine if that's a thing. And I didn't because they blew me off. So then I just was like, what am I supposed to do?
And at first I can even see my progression. I have all my old forum posts still there and I'm like, you see the progression of like, okay, here's my new schedule. I'm going to spread them out. I'm going to spread out the vaccines. I'm going to skip this one next time and going to go slow. And then I like took her for a couple more four months where I skipped the DTAP vaccine and she was fine. She didn't even like have a fever after those. By the time six months came, I skipped them all together and I just stopped vaccinating her. And so it just was this progression of, well, it's probably okay. I just should just spread them out. To like, these are dangerous and my child is going to suffer horrible consequences if I continue to vaccinate her.
And there's like, I see a few times when I thought about vaccinating her for potential traveling or whatever and I would go back to the mom group. And they'd be like, don't you do that. It's poison. There's no point. There's no point. There's always a work around every disease. Like measles is just a rash and all these other things can be treated with antibiotics and we have sanitation now. So you don't actually need that vaccine anymore. And like, so there's always a reason not to. The diseases are always downplayed, but the vaccines are made out to be the worst thing ever.
Christy Harrison: Right? Like the vaccine is somehow worse than the disease. I mean, it sounds like this was a very community driven kind of thing that you felt dismissed by healthcare and like this nurse that you should have had more of a relationship with and who should have been more accommodating and you know, just caring and stuff, empathetic. And so you found that empathy in the online group. But then it had a side order of all this other misinformation.
Lydia Greene: And sometimes they're right. When I was having my breastfeeding issues, they helped me fix my latch and they helped me fix my supply. And then, you know, I actually went on to breastfeed my daughter for two years. So it worked out, kind of, you don't forget the help and you think well, they're still helping me. And then the people that you want help from aren't helping you. And this is why I get invited to talk to doctors now about that relationship and how to like foster conversation and trust. Because now more than ever it's needed.
Christy Harrison::
Right. Especially with the disaster that COVID was totally during that time. Like, do you feel like you got sort of deeper and deeper into the anti-vax world as time went on? Like after those initial decisions, how did that unfold for you?
Lydia Greene: So I was into like the organic food and like I said, I breastfed. All my kids were breastfed for about two years each. And I'm not going to downplay how awesome breastfeeding is. It's obviously good for babies, but also it's not going to save your kid's life from measles. But they kind of sell it like that. But breastfed babies are susceptible to illness too. It's not going to protect them indefinitely. All of this perfection, that's what they sell.
So now you're not vaccinating, but you're still afraid on some level of your children getting sick. So how are you going to fix that? Well, they have the answer for that too. You're going to use these supplements. And I don't think babies and children actually need any supplements. They should just be eating a normal varied diet. And you know, if you live in Canada like I do, maybe a vitamin D supplement in the wintertime. But other than that, they don't need much unless they're like deficient in something. In these groups, they're giving their kids herbs and supplements and potions and lotions.
Christy Harrison: And tinctures.
Lydia Greene: Yeah, it's like a magic stick that will prevent everything wrong. They really exploit that fear of something going wrong with your child and having a chronic health issue. But if you go on those groups, they're like, my kid's been coughing for three months straight. What should I do? One of them was so absurd. They're like, give your child a catnip enema. I'm like, what?
Christy Harrison: Oh my God. Oh no!
Lydia Greene: And then that in the same breath they'll say, “my unvaccinated child never gets sick.” But they're also like coming to the group when their children are sick and they’re worried. The Facebook crackdown was a result. You know, when they were saying we've got to get rid of misinformation was because of a moment a mom went to one of those groups, their child had influenza and the doctor prescribed Tamiflu and they told her, don't give your kid Tamiflu.
That's poison. And then her child ended up passing away from influenza.
Christy Harrison: Oh my God.
Lydia Greene: You know, this misinformation can be deadly. And they will scaremonger like, it's terrible. And I'm not going to say for sure that Tamiflu would have helped that child or not. Like, I don't have a magic crystal ball to know that for sure. But it statistically reduces the risk of death and, you know, maybe it would have helped.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. There's so many life saving and public health saving treatments that these groups will encourage moms or, you know, parents in general. But I think especially moms.
Lydia Greene: It's usually moms. I did a research paper for nursing school. I think mothers make 80% of the healthcare decisions in the household. So it's really targeted toward mothers because they know that it's mothers that are making these decisions for the most part.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I mean, let's talk about that sort of machinery of the anti-vax movement. Like you were a firsthand witness to this. And I have never personally participated in it, but I've read a lot of research on it about how these sort of entrepreneurs, anti-vaccine entrepreneurs, will target mothers, grieving mothers or mothers with sick children and bring them into this anti-vax fold. And it sounds like for you, you were a mom who wanted to get things right and do things well and like, know everything there was to know about how to keep your kids safe. And that is so many moms, you know, and that made you vulnerable maybe.
Lydia Greene: Because, like, you know, you go to the doctor. Like, it's anxiety. Mothers can be very anxious. And the thing about anxiety is it can manifest in certain ways. Like people can get, you know, OCD and they do XYZ and they feel protected from the bad things they think are going to happen if they do their rituals a certain way. And I think, you know, motherhood's no different.
Like if you're anxious and you're looking for a way to soothe that anxiety, it'll manifest its way potentially as being anti-vaccine and being obsessed with every possible bad thing that could potentially cause harm to your child. And I'm not saying you shouldn't worry at all, but there's a healthy amount of worry and then there's like a complete and total obsession where you're no longer able to be present emotionally for your children because you're just so constantly worried about the physical realm that you can't even enjoy, let's say my example from before, like a birthday party or a family dinner, you know, where, oh, don't give my kid that cookie. I brought my own cookies for them. That's how far it can go.
Christy Harrison: Totally.
Lydia Greene: And that's not fun for your kids either. Like they just want to participate. And that's what I mean. Like, okay, so you're sustaining it, but is it beneficial? I think it's more healthy to just enjoy family time and make memories as opposed to like pre-making a bunch of food because you don't want your kids to eat certain additives or ingredients or food groups or whatever.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. Do you feel like that's what happened to you? Like, did you get caught up in all that?
Lydia Greene: Oh, yeah. I would get really strict about it at times, and it did cause tension at family gatherings. And I'm not really huge on social media, but one of the TikToks I made that has a few hundred thousand views now is like this girl was talking about throwing out an omelet because it was made with canola oil at her dorm and I just kind of stitched it and I was like, I remember when I was an arsehole at family gatherings and restaurants because my orthorexia was so bad and a lot of people were like some people got it. And then some people, you know, they're like, but canola oil is poison! And I'm like, yeah.
Christy Harrison: Is it though? No. So how did you start to change your mind about vaccines then, and come out of the anti-vax world?
Lydia Greene: I started noticing the hypocrisy and just the mental gymnastics when COVID happened. So they'll tell you, vaccines actually didn't save that many lives. And, like, it was sanitation and clean water and hygiene. These are the things that actually brought down these diseases. This is why we don't see measles. Even though measles is literally, before COVID was the most contagious virus ever. If you're in a room with someone With measles, like, I think it's like, if it's 20 or 15 people, 12 of them will get it. Something like that. Like, it's an incredibly, like, aerosolized contagious virus. And before, like, I think Omicron kind of beat the contagion in that one. But before that, it literally was the most contagious virus.
So you're telling me, like, washing my hands is what got rid of measles? No, but that's what they say in those groups, and you kind of just go along with it. When COVID happened, we don't need to sanitize our hands. That's destroying our microbiome, and, like, we don't need to wear a mask. But I'm like, I thought we said hygiene and sanitation is what brought these diseases down. Now you guys don't want to do the things that you say work. It just seems like such hypocrisy to me.
And then being, you know, a child of immigrants who came from a country that, you know, their economy collapsed, their healthcare collapsed in, like, other countries that happened to, you know, measles and diphtheria and stuff came back. And I'm like, what if I can't access these vaccines? I started thinking about that. I'm like, well, maybe I want a couple. Like, for diphtheria and measles. Just, like, a few started, like, and then my youngest was like, two at the time. And I believed this myth about the blood brain barrier that it doesn't develop until they're two or three. Because that's what they say, two or three. I'm like, what is it? Is it two or is it three? And it's not even true. Like, there's not a single piece of evidence I could find that says anything like that. And that newborns have an intact blood brain barrier.
Christy Harrison: It's fully developed, develops in the womb, I think.
Lydia Greene: Yeah, yeah. How did I believe that? I just believed it. I didn't like actually see evidence for it. And then I was like, I have some soul searching to do. You know, what else am I believing without evidence? Because there was a few like cherry-picked studies where I was like, yeah, the science shows, you know, and there's actually bigger studies that disprove it. They don't show you those.
Christy Harrison: Or like the Andrew Wakefield study that got retracted.
Lydia Greene: Yeah, like that was a whole disaster too. And what else am I believing that I just don't have a single shred of evidence for? So I started like asking people who I used to think were my enemy. It's actually funny because I used to really hate Paul Offit. You know, Dr. Paul Offit. I actually met Dr. Paul Offit. I presented at the same conference he did. And we got to meet and he actually stayed and listened. I was like, please listen to me. Because he had to go home earlier. But he actually left later than he wanted to to stay and listen, which is super sweet. So, yeah, I started like reaching out to these people and saying, hey, I've noticed some things and I'm really scared but I think I want to start vaccinating my kid.
There's so many things that I've believed about vaccines. I was just like can you explain to me how this is like your version of what this myth is or this talking point is? I just, I really need to know. And they were totally willing to just explain to me. And they are busy people. Like a lot of these were like pediatricians or researchers and I've made so many cool friends in this journey and they were willing to have a discussion with me, which is what I needed.
I think in 2008 it happened. Eventually what they said made sense and I learned a bit about like the hierarchy. And even though I had a career in science, you know, I was more like a technician in a way. Like I wasn't doing research, I was just doing quality control, which is a very important job. But you're not really researching per se, so it's hard. And you know, I always go on about the hierarchy and how to use that as a tool to evaluate evidence. If you're going to use scientific evidence when you make a choice, you should know how to evaluate it and what lens to look at it as. And I think that a lot of people don't understand that.
And so when they say, well, I'm following the science, are you? I'm not sure. You know, you have to look at it. And I say, like, you know what? If you just want to say it gives me the heebie-jeebies and I don't like it, I almost respect that more than someone who's like, using Wakefield's study to say vaccines cause autism. You know, I just think that's a little more respectful because at least that's honest and that's more understandable than having to do these mental gymnastics to make a choice.
Christy Harrison: Right. People still want to have evidence as their barometer or, you know, to be able to say, I'm evidence-based and this is grounded in science because maybe there's a part of them that doesn't want to totally give up on science and thinks that's valuable.
Lydia Greene: And I'm guilty of it too. I'm always guilty of it too. I'm not going to say I'm perfect, and I made all those mistakes and it's hard. It's really hard to have that. It's very psychologically uncomfortable to realize you're really wrong about something so important. No one wants to believe they put their kid at risk. I don't want to believe that I did that.
Christy Harrison: This is like, probably a question that can't be totally answered, but do you have any thoughts on what made you more willing to do that work? More willing to consider that you might have been wrong?
Lydia Greene: Oh, man.
