How Lyme Can Be the Root to Chronic Skin & Weight Challenges: Siena's Story

In this episode, we explore the connection between Lyme disease and skin issues…

…focusing on a young girl named Siena, who began her healing journey with severe eczema and significant feeding challenges. Diagnosed with in utero growth restriction, Siena faced ongoing struggles with weight gain and persistent skin rashes that conventional treatments failed to resolve. Joined by her mother, Megan, we recount their experience navigating through pediatric and holistic care. Megan shares their emotional journey, from questioning care providers to seeking answers through functional nutrition and immune therapy, offering insight into how advocacy and persistence can bring about transformative results for both skin and overall health.

Please note that transcripts may contain minor errors or inaccuracies. We hope you enjoy reading them and find them helpful.

Hey, you're gonna be okay. I'm your host, Elizabeth Mae, and my functional health practice helps people heal when they've exhausted traditional options. When no one can figure your health challenges out, my team helps you resolve symptoms and restores your health. You're listening to my podcast where we'll hear stories of healing chronic illness from a root cause approach. One of the big things that we don't think about with Lyme is the way that it can connect to skin issues. So this story that we're gonna walk through today has a good bit to do with skin as kind of a presenting factor, but also some um just early-in-life feeding restrictions, weight gain issues, things like that. So we're gonna be talking about a little gal that I started working with when she was about 15 pounds. Um, and she is now quite a bit bigger for her, um, but she's still quite a little gal. So Megan, her mom, um, is not necessarily new to the functional world. She had worked with other practitioners and kind of been on this road for herself and then was referred to our practice for her very tiny person. So, Megan, I just kind of want you to share with me a little bit about how old Sienna was when we started, where she was, the challenges you guys were kind of facing in winter of 2022 when you leaped into care.

Yep. So Sienna was about nine, 10 months when I start we started working with Elizabeth. Uh, and we came to her as we were struggling with um waking, as Sienna was actually born um quite small. Um, she was diagnosed with inuteral growth restriction. So we did know she was small, but we did not know she would stay on this uh track and have the journey to get her to grow. But she developed some um pretty major skin issues in her diaper area around six months that we started to work with our pediatrician uh with pretty seriously on trying to just diagnose why won't it, why wouldn't it go away, um, using multiple different topical treatments and for months on end, which felt like that, but for three to four months when you have a continuous considered diaper rash, uh, we never got um to a point where we felt we were getting any relief. Um seeing multiple pediatricians, a couple uh dermatologists that we went through, and then just overall being an advocate as parents, you know, asking more questions, what else and how else can we get this diaper rash area um clear? So that's when we started to uh look into the more holistic uh route. And I have worked with a couple functional nutritionists for myself uh um throughout my journey. Um, and I actually was referred to Elizabeth for uh pediatric or for young kids. And that's where I found Elizabeth for Sienna, and we started about 10 months um on a eczema route is where we would kind of I would consider how you approached it um from the beginning based on what she had going on.

Yeah, so when we started, we were dealing with the eczema, she had some bottom diaper rash going on. You were still exclusively breastfeeding, and she was around I think eight months when we did our clarity call. So probably about nine, 10 when we started, and she just really wasn't eating much at all. Um, and I think we started working together before you introduced solids at all. We did a GIMT, yeah. Yeah, and an MRT to kind of see like food sensitivities, like what's there is that part of the food issues before we started bringing things in and you tailored your diet on behalf of her because you were still breastfeeding. Um, but I know that as we worked through things, we started to see kind of ebbs and flows around sickness, maybe around vacation, things would get a little better. So also just like from your perspective, I remember in the beginning, like, what was it like to navigate through having a baby who was having feeding challenges? You were exclusively breastfeeding. We could see things were causing reactions. Like, how was that just day-to-day for you guys?

Yeah, we we just were question marks would come up every day. I would say that it was never, we never really understood Sienna quite well because it was like, okay, is it diet? Is it something, you know, with my milk? Is it something that just she's she's just not going to eat a lot and not grow very fast? Um, quite she literally would not, she still to this day doesn't grow very fast, but I mean, we would go to the doctor for weekly and bi-weekly, and then we got to a point and monthly weight checks. So it was daunting uh as a parent, um, the postpartum depression I was knee deep in um because all you want your kid to do is grow. And uh that was something that we found to be our biggest challenge. Yet again, we were doing what we thought all the right things. Um so it just was a hard, it was a very long winter. We live in Wisconsin, um, and it felt like it was something that we were in a dark, we were in a dark hole because of how Sienna was growing, eating, and just going around other kids that were her same age. She was a half the size, if not a quarter. And it it's it's hard to do that too. Um, and just being able to know that there wasn't anything we were doing wrong. We just were working through trying to get answers.

Yeah. So in that beginning season, resistal testing, there were definitely some answers. There were very low beneficial bacteria. She had some elevation of what I would call like dyspotic or unfriendly bacteria, and her immune markers were really, really, really, really active in the gut. So we took that information and kind of compared it to her food sensitivities, and they kind of mapped out a little bit, kind of like suggesting some fungal issues, um, but they weren't profoundly high. And a lot of times when immune systems are really high, you're going to expect a lot of food sensitivities. That wasn't necessarily the case for her on paper. And then I do think, you know, we worked through things for a while and we saw intermittent improvements and things got better-ish. Um, and then late that spring, she had COVID, and that's when things kind of blew up even more. Do you remember maybe what was going on around that time and like what that yeah?

We had traveled, so we went to Florida um for spring break. Um, her daycare closed. So um, she did go to full-time daycare, so it was something we chose to do to take her. And we we all traveled. She came back, she was actually sick for quite a bit of the trip and came home and got COVID. And then also us as her parents got COVID. So we knew we must have gotten from her. Um, but yes, she was we did notice that when she was sick, she would eat even less, and she also her flit the flare-up of her skin was far worse. At that time, also, um, we it not only had spread from her diaper area, the skin, it was very much so on her cheeks uh that we noticed um into that almost close to the one year mark. Um, it came on to more of her uh face, but not fulfilling her face, just her two cheeks.

Yeah, and we were still kind of in the hole when it came to feeding, right? Like she was in the purees at that point, but still not much.

But barely, yeah. We it was more um she uh officially when I would say starting eating solids was around 16 months. So from like 12 to 16 months, which is seems like you would have a really good grasp on solids by then, was more of a it was the six to twelve months in time frame in a typical kid. So up to 12 months, she had really no interest in in food, whether it was bottles or pureees, and then 12 to yeah, 16, it just really was um learning to eat. We went through a we actually went through speech language pathology um to work with a food therapist um to help get her to learn to eat as well, um, which was a long journey. Um, but thankfully we are past that and have graduated out of there too.

So I know too, like we worked through that first phase, things got a good bit better. The diaper, like top of her bottom, like almost like the back where the diaper would hit, there would be ebbing and flowing of that. Um, and the traditional diaper rash. And then I know we reconvened like in the beginning of 2024. I'm not sure that I really recall what brought that about. I know how where she was when you guys came back and we started moving towards questioning Lyme. But what do you remember from that time or the in-between? I know you guys had tried um appetite stimulants and were really working hard, like through lots of different means. What was that traditional journey kind of like in that time?

Yeah, so once we got a good grasp on her, like actually having any interest in food, one of the big things was her with her skin still being absolutely completely exhausting. It was a day in and day out. Every diaper change was lather as much topical steroid or put on um Vaseline or aquifer, whatever we could do to get Sienna to stop itching her bottom area, as well as just being comfortable. Um, no matter what, it was a we had to dress her a certain way because of the way her skin was and how she re-reacted. And I feel that that was actually the tipping point is I was exhausted in how the diaper changing and how when are we going to see relief in how we don't not having to change our kids' diaper in a way that we have to, it's felt like addressing change every time versus just cleaning up a dirty diaper. Um, and it that's because of her skin was so um red and irritated. Um, and that's where we reached back out and I said, How can we get off these topical steroids that seem to only make this baby's bottom better um for a matter of moments, and then it's right back to what I would consider her on fire.

Yeah. And at that point too, I think feeding-wise, like she was not really getting past pure race. Um when we kind of chit-chatted, you're in Wisconsin, but that rang a different bell in my head this time. And we kind of talked through the possibility of maybe lime and coast because her immune system was just so like hyper-vigilant, kind of in the rashy department, like the reactive kind of a way. Not, you know, sometimes we think about immune systems being hypervigilant, like, oh, I'm never sick. Well, that's actually not great. And oh, I'm sick all the time, also not great. That wasn't entirely her issue, but it did seem like she wasn't really interested in eating. And sometimes when appetite lacks, it can be because of pathogen load. There's lots of different reasons. But I remember asking about like, what are what are the odds that there's been exposure to these things? Are you open to that? And you popped right back, sharing, you know, kind of a an experience that you all had had, like epiphany for you. Like when we put the puzzle before.

Yeah, the exact day of when we something could have happened. Yeah. Tell me more about that part. Yeah. So um going all the way back to the journey of where we when we remember Sienna's skin first flared, which was right around six months. Um, and we had we have a couple cabins in northern Wisconsin that we visit. And um we actually had gone um up to the cabin about 10 days prior to the us noticing Sienna's first uh what I would consider rash. Uh, and um it was very noticeable that where the rash was and where it would stem from. Um, and how I go why I go back to this is where we would put the topical steroid, you would put it on and you would clear it, and then we would know right again where it would it would like light back up from one exact spot. So that's kind of what triggered the point of was she bit um at one point um in her lower area or bottom area.

And of course we never know, but sometimes we do have pretty solid hands like that. And then something else that happened in the meantime was you guys had tested and gotten low iron levels, and so she had started iron since I'd seen her last, and then you guys rechecked a couple of months later, and there was only a slight increase at that point, which was another cue for me to like, hey, the iron ferritin situation can be dysregulated in lots of different ways with Lyme. So this is worth looking into. Um, and then we did do testing for her, and we did find there it was. Borrelia was there, which is that Lyme spirochete, Babesia, which is the parasite that's associated. Basically, she has the three most common coinfections Borelia, Babesia, and Bartonella. All three of those things were there. So, you know, those things can be connected to the appetite issue in lots of different mechanistic ways. You know, you can not be hungry because there's too much pathogen load, you can not be hungry because there's a lot of histamine from reactions. There's lots of pieces. But once we started it on the immune therapy process, I think even before that, when we really focused on drainage and and detox and getting ready for that, yeah. How did things change for her when we started there?

Uh, we noticed right away um there was relief in the skin. And actually, we we hardstopped our um topical steroid to work through getting through that phase of like the withdrawal, which which we did not know it was gonna happen, but we found out that uh, you know, stopping and starting, but getting getting her little body uh reset, uh, which when I say little body, she was 19 pounds at 20 months old. Um, and it was something we needed to uh really make sure we were getting starting immune therapy, getting ourselves to a uh point, getting that detox. And the skin was relieved um in a matter of a couple of weeks where we not fully, but we saw relief in diaper changes were getting easier, not having to use as much uh cream or uh watching Sienna literally itch herself and not be comfortable day in and day out.

Yeah, hers is really interesting. A lot of kids who have really severe eczema or severe rashes will find that Lyme is a root player because of the way it dysregulates the immune system. Hers is so interesting because it really, really was so locally isolated to like in her diaper area. And then she had the cheek eczema, which pretty I think that fell off quite a bit quicker. Right, yeah, yeah, really started to ebb and flow as started as soon as we started prepping for the immune therapy. Um, and the feeding issues were continuing at that point. You know, she was still having, I think with her too, like even water was a struggle sometimes, like milk was a struggle. Everything it wasn't just like yeah, it's yeah, yep, which was so stressful to live in that like she's tiny, and I'm sure when you're going to the doctor, you're getting the like all the pressures that we all get, even if our kids like a teeny tiny bit behind weight wise, and she was definitely very behind weight-wise.

So it was survivor mode. That's how it felt. Um to keep your to keep your kid alive without what I we we asked many a times. Um, is she a uh candidate for feeding tube? I mean, honestly, when you don't see a kid grow and for how many struggles when it comes to skin, not growing, not eating, all the above, you the you just want answers.

Yeah, and there were so many times too, or one is so stressful. And like, I guess I'm curious. I know how I showed up in those times for you, but what was it like to kind of work here versus working in the other realms with like feeding therapy and patricians and things like that? Did you feel like a different support? Or did you feel like, I mean, because I know a lot of times I was like, hey, I'm not gonna talk about feeding tubes with you today. We're gonna work on what I need you to do, and then we're gonna see how we are in two weeks. You know, like how did that feel to go through that while also living in like stress and fear and all those things?

Yeah, it making sure that we were heard and being just Sienna's best uh advocate, it was something that we felt and we to this day, you have to be your kids' best advocate. Um, and asking the right questions and asking more questions of who else can help us. Like, I still don't think that we would have seen a dermatologist, we would have seen a uh an additional um feeding therapist if we wouldn't have asked for it, or even to see GI to get um on an appetite stimulant, all because we did not feel like we, you know, at some points in time with different questions we uh had to ask or were asking. It was as long as she's growing on her curve, she's doing the best she, you know, what that she's doing what she should be doing. Um, and that didn't quite sit as well with me as it probably could or should. Some parents may accept that I was one that just kept pushing because it was we we are talking a gal that barely sits on the for one percentile charts. And where where do you go if you're not on the charts? You go off it. And the words failure to thrive and the words of just feeding tube, it was something that I was very, very well aware I was okay with if it got there, but what can we do to not get there?

Yeah, you definitely carried an intuition that like something else is here. Yeah, it was a regular thing that you were like, uh, and we would check in often, I think too. Sometimes when people approach this care realm, they're really fearful of like one, moving away from their traditional providers. That's not something that I really encourage you to do. I I often will ask if you feel like you're in a good place with your providers, if your pediatrician's listening, if they're open to what um you're requesting, or if they're trying to kind of convene together. But also, like, we're always like I'm not your only person. And I think I kind of made that pretty clear that, like, hey, you need to rock out that feeding therapy. Like, let's take a trip to GI, let's just rule things out. Um, I'm curious if that, if that supporter helped made a difference, or you know, if you felt like there was kind of like a team.

We don't allow people to have have my my um I I I felt in the way my I was I had my pack, like no, no matter what, if I would go to the if I needed to come to you with questions, even questions that my pediatrician asked me, I would come to you with or random questions. But there were times that, yeah, pediatrician, our pediatrician was um, you know, doing doing the best they could. They, you know, they know Sienna only so much, but it was a way that we felt a few times we needed to ask for additional support. We also switched her pediatricians twice um given the uh just the way and the support we were getting. Um we do feel supported now with our primary care. Um, but it it is. It's just a it knowing knowing we're her, knowing we're getting the support we have, um, we we definitely Sienna's had a big team. Um she's only barely 2.5, uh two and a half years old, and she's had a lot of uh eyes on her for months.

Yeah, and I think that's so key to like you're a first-time mom, and I think that there need to be more voices just in the world that say, like, if you don't feel good in the care provider situation, like you can switch. And I feel like even in the second switch, you're a little bit like we're gonna go see somebody else. And I feel like a little bit much like moving to some, like, could it be possible that they both weren't great? And I was just like, Yeah, go to some we can go to somebody until you find somebody that drives, but also like their job is to symptom support and diagnose, right? My job is a little bit more to be a detective and figure things out, and also simultaneously check in and make sure that the things that are needing to be present, like I was always checking in about language like, is she developing? Are we still walking? Are we moving in that direction? Are all those things continuing? Then it kind of helped too to clear the air that this wasn't entirely a developmental thing, that it seemed to be an immune-mediated thing because of the way symptoms would show up. But she was still developing with her low weight-gaining power. Like she was still doing for the most part what she needed to do. So what was it like once we switched into the once we started immune therapy process? Um, where did rashes go? You know, where did growth go? Like what changed once we started addressing Lyme and those co-infections?

Yeah, so um I'd say it was it it definitely uh was something that a light went on in her body. Um we we definitely noticed it night and day within the detox was still happening. You could tell it was there was it things were dwindling um in the skin. But overall, Sienna just looked healthier. She gained almost, which doesn't sound like a lot, but she gained two pounds in two months, where she gained two pounds and six months in the first half year of her being once she turned one, barely two pounds. So in this was the second half of her first year, 18 months to 24 months, that she uh really took off and was able to start eating not a whole lot more in intake when it comes to food. She's still only, you know, very little, little body, little intake, but she was able to understand that this is this is what you do, this is how I eat. Um, but really it the detox and then into the immune therapy. Um, we it was, I would say, a full eight to ten to maybe twelve weeks before we and we saw clear skin and we haven't stopped since.

Oh, I love that. And she is mostly finished at this point. Now she finished the bulk of things last week and then has just a few more weeks of one support. Something too, like a lot of times people are intimidated by walking into this process A with a very small child. Like, you know, sometimes you do get a Lyme diagnosis from traditional medicine. You know, there was a bite and there was a change, and families that will come to us and say, like, well, this baby is so small, and this is what they're recommending we do. And I remember talking with you too, because geographically, like the odds are you probably know someone near you or around you that's had Lyme. You're familiar with the traditional treatment, but you know, like what the beginning phase did you guys feel confident? Unsure? Was it really difficult? Like, what was the practicality of you know, working this through a tiny body like?

Uh, I would definitely say, I mean, I there was hesitation of reaching out to you and in, but I was also desperate. Um, so it, you know, there's there's times when you are you exhaust all efforts and you need help in ways that you are on, you know, on it's unknown chart. It's that territory that you with you not knowing that type of care. Um, and I I I owe it all to you. That's how I have to say it, because there's no other way. We our skin, her or Sienna's skin would not, would probably to this day still be the same. We would still be struggling if we did not start that immune therapy.

Yeah, and that really like for her was, I mean, she's small, so little kids can always articulate other things going on in their body, but like that, the appetite, the failure to thrivey, weight gain issues, which could have had other roots as well. Like, I don't think that that was only limey, but there wasn't a big symptom load. And that immune marker being so, so high on her stool testing were really kind of like our biggest clues. But I know in the beginning too, um, she kind of had some GI stuff we had to work through. There was a lot of diarrhea at first, which is just really the body clearing a lot and the itching of the diaper rash came and went, but we'd already been through quite a bit of worse, I think, you know, than that. Um yeah, and then like bathing, and I just think about all the normal things that were difficult for you all to do with her that I would imagine have changed now. You know, like you should be able to give your baby a bath and it'd be like, no big deal.

You should she has nightly bubble baths that I up until about April of this year, 2024, she was unable to be in a bath for more than a couple of minutes because she would start to itch and grab at her bottom. So we have a completely different kid. This kid can wear whatever she wants because she's not grabbing in her diaper region. She can eat what you know, what we would hope she, you know, eats. We put in front of her. We continue to encourage her to eat a well-rounded diet instead of just getting food into her. Um, it is it's much more um relieving on that end. Uh, but it is we we do. We have a we do have a new kid. Um is it's something that we can be proud of.

I think that's one thing too that folks get really nervous about, and I have conversations Monday through Friday about is food change. And we did restrict her food a teensy bit, like we removed some fungal feeding groups with her. I really was like, if she just eat, that'll be fine. But we did remove reactive foods and we kind of stayed away and more of like a low mold low fungal diet. But once we got into the immune therapy, she really cleared so quickly. Like looking back at my notes, it really was like about a month in, um, where she was moving right back into dairy and um getting cheese in, which for somebody who's got weight gain issues, getting some caloric density there through dairy. Yeah, we work on fats.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she didn't have fats are her primary source of uh weight gain now, we would consider. I mean, if it's if it's not butter, heavy whipping cream. I mean, as a weight gain, as a kid who struggles to gain weight, that's our first what what whole fat cheeses, yogurts. Um, she does she does not have a uh food intolerance to dairy. We definitely ruled that out. Um thankfully, because honestly, that has helped us get our gal to our the the small weight gains that uh that we get.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's important from like a practicing side because when you're addressing roots of rashes that have fungal beginnings and even bacterial, a lot of times diet changes the big, I don't know, piece, the big lever that we'll pull on. And that really used to be quite a bit of how I practice. But with children, we find that their immune systems are still developing under seven, eight. And when they are greatly dysregulated, those pathogens are allowed to stay and hang out because of the shape the immune system's in, not because of the foods that we're feeding. We can still use those foods as a lever to maybe reduce inflammation like we did at the start or to calm some GI distress. But really, for Sienna, us addressing her immune system was the key that turned the lock to no more rash stuff, no more issues. So, and she was able to eat like a normal, as much as she is willing to, normal kid for the most of her immune therapy process, and she still has gotten better. And I think if you've gone through healing for skin stuff and you've already gone the functional route and you've not been successful, um really restrictive diets is are part of that. And I just want to clearly say that's not the whole thing. If that's not shifting it, there's an immune component, and a lot of times heavier pathogens can be under it. So, last little wrap-up question I have for you is, you know, Sienna's tiny and you guys dealt with chronic illness in a different way than most people maybe do, or what we think of as chronic illness, but truly she was chronically struggling with her health. Where is one way that you guys felt supported, loved, cared for in your normal realms as you work through that? What was one place someone really like helped um encourage or support your family?

Yeah, so we have um, I have a cousin, her name is oh, her name is Jenny, and she had a son that needed a new liver when she was he was born. Um, and she had gone through basically from being a kid being born with something needing right off the bat, out of the womb. Um, and I would say she was just somebody that we could lean on. Um, being seen at a children's hospital, being seen um day in, day out by care providers and being there to say that you need to advocate for your kid. Um, and we could lean on her day in and day out.

That's really helpful. I think it's so, especially with children, like a lot of us are familiar with older people who struggle with health issues. But to have a kid who struggles with something and Cena's issues are super disruptive, but they weren't anything like terminal or like, you know, when somebody has cancer, then we kind of tend to know how to deal with or help or support. But knowing that even if you don't understand is like a peer to someone dealing with chronic illness in their child, being a listening ear, being someone being a listening ear was exactly what we needed.

Yeah, no one we have not felt or heard from any parent that there's another sienna out there that we the kit the care she's needed or the parent type that you need to make sure that she's getting what she needs.

Yeah, I think that's so big too, because people are quick to offer opinions, right? We're not always quick as to offer a listening ear. Yep.

And I'm questioning why she's so small, like just just the it's it I've grown a lot as a as a parent just because of it.

Yeah, yeah. I think that part can't be understated either. When it's the first baby and things are off and you're not sure what's up, definitely following your intuition and leaning on people who encourage you to do that. And it's okay to lean away from people who want to solve fit for you because we all want to help, but we don't all necessarily have skills to do that, but we do all have skills to listen. So I love that you shared that. It's very common with our with our kid parents. So um, I guess last question for me, would you do it again? 100%. Yeah, cool, cool. Yeah, all right. Well, thanks so much for spending time with me and sharing. I hope you're leaving encouraged, curious, and hopeful. If you learned something, I'd love for you to share this episode with a friend. Hey, we're all healing together. You can learn more about my practice, our team, and what it's like to work with us at heyheymae.com. I teach lots on Instagram and answer questions each Monday. My Instagram handle is at @HeyHeyElizabethMae. And my cookbook, Hey Hey Everyday, is available on HeyheyMae.com and Amazon. Happy healing.