Let's Talk Wellness Now

What is lyme? Lyme is a tick-borne disease. Why is it hard to detect? Because testing is poor and many doctors still do not believe it exists. Dr. Deb talks about why it is hard to diagnose and what treatments are working today compared to even 5 years ago. 

Do not miss these highlights:

00:42 A number of practitioners today still tell patients that Lyme disease doesn’t exist.

05:50 Lyme disease or Tick-borne disease can cause many psychological symptoms like anxiety, depression, brain fog, and memory issues. 

06:30 Tick-borne illness or chronic illness can disrupt your hormonal function. 

08:44 Chemical toxicity is causing effects on the liver, heart and on the brain.

10:08 We have to start looking at what is going on in our environment that’s causing these problems and understand the damages that these chemicals are doing to our people, and to our children. 

12:40 With Lyme disease, there can also be chronic mold toxicity or other infections.

14:19 The best thing that we have is herbs because of their broad spectrum, and using these herbs along with different antimicrobial herbs or antibiotics can be extremely helpful. 

14:52 Treating Lyme is getting much more difficult to treat.

15:49 All kinds of different things to help address that chronic Lyme person.

17:45 Insurance is preventing you from getting the care that you need and you desire.

21:17 Make decisions for yourself on your own health care.

23:29 What are the symptoms of Lyme disease?

Resources Mentioned

Whether you are recovering from an illness or just looking to maintain your current overall health, schedule a consult with us at Serenity Health Care  by calling  (262)522-8640 or visit https://www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com 

Transcript of Episode 191

0:02
Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb. This is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging, and live our lives on our own terms. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb, I’m so happy to be here with you today. And we’re going to talk about Lyme disease. You know, it isn’t a conversation that people are talking about enough, in my opinion, I think it gets overlooked. And I’m amazed, maybe I shouldn’t even use the word amaze, maybe I should say appalled, because that’s what I actually am. I’m appalled by the number of practitioners that still today will tell patients that Lyme disease doesn’t exist. I don’t know, where they’re being taught that. I don’t know why they believe that. But it saddens me because there are so many people that are going untreated, or are mistreated, simply because somebody doesn’t want to admit that Lyme disease exists in their area, or they were told that we don’t have line in this area. What are you talking about? Why do you believe this? You know, I have been treating Lyme disease for gosh, 20 plus years now. And when I started out, I knew very little about Lyme disease. I knew what it was, but I didn’t knew how much it impacted someone’s life. And I had the luxury of sending all of my patients up to my friend Steve Morris here in Fond du Lac. And I started seeing his Our patients come back and feel so much better and have symptoms that they had been dealing with for decades, some of them start to magically disappear. And it really intrigued me, because I I’m one of those practitioners that I like to know what is going on. I like to know what’s happening. I like to dig I like to figure out those weird cases that other people can’t figure out. At my clinic, we are known as the medical detectives for that reason, because we will keep digging, we’ll keep searching, we will keep trying to find the answers until we find them for you. And, of course, we’re not perfect. Sometimes it’s really hard. And sometimes it takes a long time. And sometimes we just really don’t know we’re like in a loss. And we have to bring in other experts to help us try to figure out what it is we’re missing. But I will tell you that happens very rarely these days, that we can’t figure out what’s going on for someone. But back to the story. So when I was very young in my practice and didn’t know a lot about Lyme disease, I decided to go learn. I went up and met with my friend and watched him practice and listen to him take care of patients. And I remember sitting there just shaking my head going, oh my gosh, I hear this every day. And I’ve been missing it. And by the end of the day, I realized that all of the things his patients were complaining about were things that I had dealt with over the course of about six or seven years and didn’t know what was going on didn’t have a clue. And for those of you who’ve heard me share my story before my medical doctor diagnosed with me with fibromyalgia, and I never had fibromyalgia. I had a thyroid disease. But after learning about Lyme, I also recognized that what I had was a lime infection. And I was living in a house that had black mold. And those three things kind of did me in and no one ever asked me about the house I was living in no one ever asked me about a tick by no one ever asked me about anything in the traditional Western medicine world, and I hear this story quite often from patients where they don’t want to listen. They just simply want to put a bandaid on it. They want to give an antidepressant. They want to give an anti anxiety med they want to

4:57
push you aside and say Do what you have going on isn’t physical, it’s somatic, it’s in your head. And I’m going to tell you that in the 10,000 Plus patients that we’ve treated at my office, I don’t know of one that I would say had symptoms that were all in their head, they were making it up. I understand that people that have multiple symptoms, and they sound strange, they sound weird. They don’t make sense. People don’t believe you. I understand where they get labeled as it’s all in your head, or you’re crazy. But I can tell you from all of the practice that I’ve done, that’s not the reality. Can Lyme disease or tick borne disease make you feel crazy? Absolutely it can. It can cause anxiety can cause depression, it can cause brain fog, it can cause memory issues. You know, it can cause a lot of those psychological symptoms, the OCD, learning difficult difficulties, focus concentration issues, it can cause a lot of those things. But that doesn’t mean that that’s what the cause is, it just means it’s a symptom of what’s going on. You know, the other thing that we rarely talk about when it comes to tick borne illness or chronic illness is the fact that these diseases can disrupt your hormonal function. And it is not uncommon for us to see people go into early menopause as a result of having a tick borne illness, or lose their sperm counts and have low testosterone and low growth hormone and in more progressed, advanced aging can happen. These are all symptoms that happen as a result of the tick borne illness. And when the tick borne illness comes in, and takes over the hypothalamus and the pituitary, which are the Divas of our hormonal system, right, they’re up in our brain, they are the Divas, they make us get all of our hormones, and they control everything. Well, they can certainly cause you to have an early decline in your ovarian production. Especially we see this with toxic mold, people who have been exposed to toxic mold for a long time and didn’t know it, they can go into early menopause, it can just disrupt their hormones enough, where they’re having problems with their menstrual cycle, you know, it’s off, if it doesn’t come regularly, it’s heavy, it’s light, it’s a couple of days, and then it’s gone again. And then two weeks later, here, we are bleeding again. And so we have to realize that even though our bodies been parted out into specialties, I let that’s what I usually like to call it, you know, we

8:01
have a specialist for everything. And the specialists are grateful for them because they know things about diseases that the rest of us don’t know, because we don’t study that specialty. However, in that same token, when we’re not looking at the body as a whole, it’s very easy to miss something. And if we just think, well, your hormones are just your hormones, and you need to see the endocrinologist or the gynecologist and they’ll know exactly what’s happening with that. That’s not necessarily true, because if they don’t understand that tick borne illness or mold toxicity or chemical toxicities can cause your hormones to be out of balance. Well, then they’ve just missed something. You know, even the chemical toxicity that we’re seeing today, causing effects on the liver and on the heart and on the brain are incredible. I can’t tell you how many people we treat that have fatty liver disease as a result of having an exposure to some kind of chemical in their lifetime that either they worked with or that they came in contact with maybe they were living on a piece of property that was toxic, or they were near a piece of property that was toxic. You know, we’re all hearing right now about the lawsuits with camp la June and Campbell is June is just one of many toxic dumps that our military and their families have been exposed to and the people in those towns have been exposed to. And one thing that we never think of is if I was exposed to that when I was a young woman, and I bore a child on that property, or shortly after living on that property, can my child be affected? And the answer to that is yes, they can depending on where my toxic load was when I was pregnant, I could pass some of those toxicities on to my child. And when we’re looking at numbers of The increased risks of autism reaching one in two by 2030, or 2035, I think it is, we have to start looking at what is going on in our environment that’s causing these problems today. If we don’t start looking at what’s going on environmentally, we will never get to the point where we can truly treat and address these issues. Now I get that there’s a community of people that say, we just need to accept people for who they are and how they are. And that’s fine. But if we look back in history, we know that we have never had this many complications born to children before. Now, some of you are going to come on, and you’ll you’ll disagree with me and say, well, we lost children all the time back in the day. Yes, we did. We lost children. But it wasn’t to things like we’re dealing with today, we lost children back in the 1800s, in the early 1900s, primarily to infection, because we didn’t have a way to treat infection back then. Or they were they were lost in childbirth, because we didn’t have a way to get the baby out safely, before we lost both mom and baby. So there were a lot of losses to children back then. But it was not as common to have a child born with a disability, like what we’re talking about today. And from a natural aspect, I’m looking back and saying, Okay, what has changed in all this timeframe? Well, the biggest thing that has changed is the chemicals and the toxins that are dumped into our environment every single day, whether it’s by companies, whether it’s by our own government, whether it’s by people, whatever it is, you know, even our soils are depleted of their nutrients, because of all the toxins that we dump on them. So we can grow bigger crops, so we can have better supply so we can make more money. And I understand that from a farming family, I understand that. But I also understand the damage that these chemicals are doing to our people, and to our children. You know, when we’re seeing skyrocketing numbers of cancer, we have to stop and take a look and say what is causing this. And so I know I’m off track a little bit, and I apologize for that it’s so easy for me to get off track and go down these rabbit holes sometimes. But

12:40
you know, when we’re looking at Lyme disease, these are some of the other things that we’re looking at. So typically, with Lyme disease, there can also be a chronic mold toxicity that’s happened or other infections that happen, especially viruses, viruses love to attach to bacterias. And we’ve heard a lot of discussion these days about Retroviruses and what they’re doing and how they’re happening. And in the Lyme world, we’ve talked about retroviruses for a long time, not to the same degree that we’ve been talking about it recently, since the whoo flu. But we’ve learned a lot about these Retroviruses and how to treat them and how to address them and how to manage them. Are we good at it yet? Probably not. We’re okay at it. But we’re not great at it because there’s still a lot of decoding that needs to take place. In order for us to be able to truly address some of these retroviruses. In my experience, I’ve had the best success dealing with retroviruses in using herbs, the antivirals that we have are just not that great. They’re they’re meant to treat the herpes family viruses. And if it’s not in that family, it’s probably not going to help a ton. But in the herpes family virus like HHV, six or HSV or HSV, one and two, those things, even shingles, because it comes from that same family can do pretty well with the antiviral medications that we have out there. But without having enough, the best thing that we have is herbs because they’re broad spectrum. They cover a lot of areas, they’re easy to get access, most people tolerate them very well. These days, they’re much less expensive than prescription medications are. So using those along with different antimicrobial herbs or antibiotics can be extremely helpful. What I’m going to tell you today, though, from a lime aspect, what I have seen over the last five to seven years in treating Lyme is it’s getting much more difficult to treat. Where in the past we could use oral antibiotics or start an IV antibiotic. And a couple of weeks later, somebody will already be turning the corner. Or at least we’re seeing some change whether it be good or bad, we’re seeing some change in there, it’s getting much more difficult, we’re not seeing that same benefit these days. And so if you’re seeing a Lyme literate practitioner, and you’re feeling as though they’re bringing out a ton of different things to you, that’s probably why because we’re seeing changes, we’re seeing more resistance, I can tell you from an aspect of my practice, what we’ve been doing more recently, is implementing a protocol of multiple modalities. And that seems to work much, much better. So we’re using biofeedback, we’re using lymph drainage, we’re using detox, we’re doing IV, nutrition, IV, antibiotics, IV, ozone, we’re using peptides, we’re using all kinds of things, photonic therapy, we’re using all kinds of different things to help address that chronic Lyme person. Because without doing all these modalities, even at one time, it can be a challenge to get that lime under control, where if we use multiple modalities together, we’re seeing much better success. And quicker results actually. And I can share a story with you from a young patient that I just saw last week, who has been truly debilitated for the last three to five years, she’s not been able to function not been able to go to school not been able to work. The first couple of times I saw her, she couldn’t sit up, she couldn’t have a conversation. And we implemented this very drastic protocol, as some people would say, with her over a two week period of time. And I can tell you, my heart just filled with joy when I saw her. After about 10 days on the protocol. She was bright eyed, she was smiling. When I saw her in the office, she was talking, we had a conversation and the young woman is so intelligent and bright. And it’s amazing to see that kind of turnaround in just a couple of weeks.

17:33
But these are the kinds of things that that can turn your life around. Do they take commitment? Yes. Do they take time? Yes. Are they costly? Yes. Does insurance cover it? No, insurance doesn’t cover anything these days. As a matter of fact, we were just notified a week or two ago that the Obamacare plan insurance company is raising their premiums and their deductibles. So the new Obama plan deductible is going to be $9,200, I believe it is 9100, maybe for a individual and it’s going to be 18,005 for a family. Where is that helpful for anyone, you’re already paying an astronomical premium. And then the insurance company isn’t going to cover anything anyway. And so what I have found over time is many people exhaust their funds inside the western medicine, treatment and don’t get anywhere, and then there’s no money leftover for doing the treatments that really make a difference. And that is it’s so hard. And it’s so challenging, and it breaks my heart. But at some point, we got to get to the place where we tell Western medicine, that they’re not working for us anymore. And these insurance companies to you’re not doing what I want you to do. And another little tidbit about insurance that no one’s talking about. And I suggest that you guys check this out, because the tax restriction or the tax penalty, I should say, for not having insurance goes away this year. But nobody’s talking about that either. So the mandate for you to have insurance, otherwise you’re going to be penalized on your taxes is by by this year. So there’s a lot of people that are going to start saying, forget it. I’m not going to carry this kind of insurance for something to cover nothing. And they’re going to start looking for insurance policies and plans that meet their needs that pay for what it is they want, and pay for what they need and what they do. And so, you know, if you’re in that boat, I would encourage you to talk to a knowledgeable insurance person to help you find a plan that’s going to pay for the services that you want and need and not the services that the federal government and the insurance companies think we need, because they’re not helping us in any way. And they’re in a lot of cases, delaying treatment from people, because they have to go through the hoops of, you know, seeing their primary seeing this specialists having this test on having that test done. And before you know it a year and a half has gone by, and you still don’t have a diagnosis for what’s going on with you. And one or two visits with an integrative medical practitioner, you could have figured out what was going on. And it would have costed a fraction of what the insurance company builds, or what the hospitals build your insurance. And if you disagree with that, I would just encourage you to go back and look at your explanation of benefits your EOB that shows what the hospitals and doctors charged your insurance company and what the insurance company actually wrote off and what they paid. Because it’s a significant difference these days, and

21:09
they are your gatekeepers, they are preventing you from getting the care that you need, and you desire. So just take a look at those things, make decisions for yourself on your own health care, work with people that are going to get to the root cause of your problems, and listen to you and believe you I mean, that is probably one of the saddest things that I hear every single day is a patient who is talking to their practitioner and telling them everything that’s going on, and they don’t believe them. They don’t believe that they’re that sick, they don’t believe that they’ve had these problems for this long. And everybody deserves to be listened to everybody deserves to be heard. And everybody deserves to be believed until proven otherwise. Right? I mean, that is how we were raised. That’s the golden rule. But today, it seems like it’s a bigger problem. Because today, nobody believes anybody, nobody trusts anybody. And in the medical world, if we don’t believe our patients, and we don’t trust them, and they don’t trust us, we’re going to have a real difficult time breaking through to them and getting them to do what we need to do for both parties, right? I mean, if if as a patient, I don’t trust my practitioner, am I going to call and let them know when something’s going wrong? No, I’m not going to, I’m going to go to Google or I’m going to go to a friend or I’m just going to stop something and I’m not going to talk to anybody about it. And that’s really where the problems become an issue. Because we don’t trust and we don’t want to rely on each other. And in the world of tick borne disease and mold toxicity and chemical imbalances, we need to be able to listen to one another, we need to be able to trust one another, we need to be able to have an open dialogue with one another. So that’s my soapbox, and I apologize. Because I couldn’t get ranting on some of those things, you know, but let’s talk about some of the symptoms that we’re going to experience with all of these. And so many of the symptoms are overlapping in every single piece of this. So mold, which we call mycotoxin, chemical toxicity or tick borne illness, Lyme disease and some of its CO infections. A lot of the symptoms are very much the same. We’re talking about lack of focus, lack of concentration, muscle pain, joint pain, that’s migratory in nature. We’re talking about numbness and tingling and twitching and headaches and blurred vision and vision changes. You could have ear ringing or ear pain, sore throat, swollen glands, limp swelling underneath the armpits, you can have a lot of Gi discomfort. So gas and bloating and diarrhea and constipation, a lot of insomnia, a lot of foot pain happens. And the weird thing about all of these symptoms is they’re usually not constant. The symptoms typically come and go and they ebb and flow. And there’s no real pattern to them. There’s no rhyme or reason. Like you can have muscle pain and you didn’t do anything. Or you can have numbness and tingling and you’ve never had that before you can get weird twitching in different parts of your face that you’ve never had before. So these symptoms kind of come and go they’re random in nature can’t find a pattern to them.

24:59
Oftentimes they can Come on slowly, so you don’t really notice them. Like you might have a sore knee one day. And you’ll think, Oh, I just overdid it, I went for a walk, or I went for a jog or I was working out at the gym. And then all of a sudden, it’s the right shoulder and the left elbow and the large toe, and then it’s the ankle, and then it’s your neck, and then it’s your fingers. It just randomly pops up. And it’s not until the symptoms start talking louder and louder, that people put together what’s actually happening. And that is why it’s called the great silent disease, because the symptoms do not follow any patterns. That makes sense. So if you’re struggling with these kinds of symptoms, what I would really encourage you to do is meet with an integrative practitioner, talk about your symptoms, let them do the history and ask the questions that nobody else asks, dig down deep and find the answers for what’s going on with you. And the testing is simple. Oftentimes, it’s a blood test, or a urine test, or a saliva test. It’s not complicated. most insurances don’t cover some of these tests, sometimes there is insurance that can cover it. But honestly, if you’re looking at testing to figure these things out, it’s it’s a couple $1,000 to do it, but it gives you the answers, and it gives you the answers very quickly. And then you can start putting together a plan of care that works best for you. And, and one that will get you better as soon as possible. I will be honest with you treating tick borne illness and mold mycotoxin disease is not a quick fix, it is not something that a month later, after you do treatment, you’re going to be better and everything’s going to be gone. It’s not like that, it can take a very long time to get under control. And depending on how long you were sick, or how long we think you might have been exposed to these things, the longer it can take to get better. But I don’t want you to give up I want you to stay the course and know that if you’re working with a knowledgeable practitioner, they will get you where you need to go and it will not be as bad as you think it is. So I hope this was helpful for you guys today. And if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to an integrative practitioner that is knowledgeable about Lyme disease and mycotoxin illness tick borne illness. You could find a lot of these practitioners on ai labs.org, or even a four m.com We’ll have many of these practitioners listed in a directory so you can find them in your area. God bless you all be well and stay safe. Hey, it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the let’s talk wellness now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel as though this episode would help someone else we’d love for you to leave us a review, share this podcast and if you don’t want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live every day to the fullest