Lyme’s Complicated: Understanding the Epidemic, Lyme’s Symptom Cascade & Healing Hope

Let's clear up some misconceptions about Lyme!

Lyme disease is prevalent across all 50 states and globally, often mimicking other diseases and presenting a wide range of symptoms, making it challenging to diagnose. This discussion highlights the flawed CDC testing methodologies and the various ways Lyme can be transmitted, including tick bites, mosquitoes, bed bugs, lice, organ transplants, and other surprising ways. We talk about Lyme's ability to lie dormant and reactivate under stress, the potential for co-infections, and the challenges faced by sufferers, such as being misdiagnosed or receiving inadequate care from healthcare providers. We hope to equip you with a comprehensive understanding of Lyme disease, its transmission, symptoms, and the importance of being informed and proactive in seeking appropriate treatment.

In this episode you will learn about:

• Lyme disease, its symptoms, and diagnosis

• Opportunistic infections in Lyme disease, including herpes zoster, Epstein Barr Virus, and more

• Lyme disease and its various symptoms and misdiagnoses

• Lyme and CO infections causing psychiatric symptoms in children and adults

• Lyme disease testing challenges

• Lyme disease treatment options

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.

You guys, we are talking about Lyme. And boy, is it ever a complicated discussion, but I kind of want to clear some things up. I want to answer a lot of your questions, and I want to leave you with hope because there's absolutely hope around Lyme disease, though it is super overwhelming. But I do always think that there's a lot of power in knowledge and a lot of lameness and denial. So we're just gonna kind of jump in and learn all about Lyme. How do we get it? What does it look like? What do we do about it? So Lyme is often called the great imitator because it imitates a lot of other autoimmune disease and other diseases in general. So we'll definitely break down how Lyme kind of can look like other things and why that is. Lyme's also been called the 100 diseases syndrome. Um, some clients have shared with us that they've been told they have psychosomatic illness, where it's just their brain creating issues. That's what kind of doctors have told them. You know, chronic, chronically ill people, complex illness often does stem back to Lyme. So before you say that you've never been bitten or only bed-bound folks have Lyme or a host of the other misconceptions about Lyme, I want you to know a few things. Ticks are found in all 50 states. Ticks that carry Lyme have been found in all 50 states. Now, ticks carrying the Lyme disease bacteria, Borelia Bergdorferi, have been found in all 50 states. That's right, that's what I said. I think an important tenet is to understand that Lyme disease is the conditioner, the diagnosis that we give those who have an overgrowth of Borelia Bergdorferi bacteria in their body. We'll get into this more, but borrelia is the bacteria that causes Lyme disease or that causes Lyme or grounds for a Lyme disease diagnosis to be there. The Bergdorferi species is what we have most commonly in America, but Lyme disease exists outside the US in every single country. Okay, so definitely not just us problem. Um, it is a global issue. It is growing. So very few with Lyme recall a bite. It's important to know too, you know, we can easily say, well, I've never been bitten, so I'm out. Well, other vectors, other bugs carry lime, but also nymph ticks are poppy seed size. So just think about walking around in your yard. If the poppy seed got between your two toes and you meandered your day on, you don't necessarily notice that it's there. You may not notice that you've been bitten. Now, a tick's life cycle does last two years, so they can persist through winter, they can persist through freezes, and we kind of need to think about how our bugs are moved around our country. There are more lime endemic areas, but lime is truly being moved at rapid speeds, partially because birds, animals carry ticks, right? So they may pick them up in Minnesota, but they may wander themselves down south during migration and poop out a tick in an area. And I know that sounds kind of silly and literal, but it's really important for us to consider because a lot of times we say, you know, Lyme doesn't exist through a freeze. Okay, well, much of the northeastern U.S. really struggles with concentration, as does Minnesota and Wisconsin. The more north you go, the more concentration you see of ticks that are carrying Lyme disease. So it's truly a growing epidemic. In 2013, the CDC estimated there were 300,000 new cases annually. Now, I will tell you before we talk about any CDC conversation around Lyme, that there's definitely a lack of acknowledgement there. They didn't even update their diagnostic criteria until last year, after tens of years. They just began to recognize that late-stage Lyme is possible. Previously, they felt that it was only an infection that could come shortly after a bite. So there's definitely some gray area, some missing information when it comes to the CDC, and their testing methodology is flawed, very flawed, admittedly flawed. We'll talk about that today too. But in 2022, the CDC acknowledged that their previous number of 300,000 was grossly underestimated. And um they updated that number to 476 new cases annually. I will tell you, in my experience clinically with our clients, um, that most of our clients are not finding their Lyme diagnoses at their doctors, many doctors, many specialists, many acute illness treatments, many PCPs. Our traditional Western doctors just are not trained well in this. They're not Lyme literate. We'll learn that as language that can be used around practitioners who do have Lyme training and really understand and can identify it. And once you know what you're looking for, and hopefully by the end of this episode, you will have a much better understanding, be able to see things that look like Lyme or are Lyme. You know, once we understand that, it's it's very easy to see. But unfortunately, our practitioners, because our governing body around diagnoses is really not recognizing it in a full and complete form. So really important to understand that millions are suffering with Lyme and coinfections, aren't aware of it. So we're going to really dive deep into this area of discussion. We're going to look at Lyme, we're going to look at co-infections. And I want you to know that it's a layered issue and there is a lot of hope for Lyme. A few starting facts for us to kind of contemplate as tick can start to transmit an infection at the bite. We're kind of taught that a longer length of time is needed, but it's not necessarily needed. It can be instantaneously. A tick usually is going to feed on its hosts and take that blood meal and at some point vomit that blood meal back into its host, taking its bodily infections and injecting them into you. But that transmission can actually happen at the bite. And we'll learn about some co-infections that can be transmitted as quickly as 10 minutes. So it definitely doesn't take a long time. Lyme disease is an infection. We see it in stages, in different stages, there's different symptom loads. And the different stages look very different person to person, going back to that great imitator or the condition of a hundred diseases. Lyme absolutely looks very different in each person and looks different based on the amount of time that has been present, how um healthy or robust that immune system has been. So lots of things going on there. And Lyme can lay dormant in the body and activate when the immune system is challenged with a trigger or during immune weakness. So you may have had a bite 20 years ago and you go through a stressful season now, and that Lyme that has been relatively under control by your immune system, not raging, creating symptom load by any means, is now going to flare and full-blown become a disease and have a lot more pathology than it previously did. The key with Lyme is that it creates a host of chronic symptoms that they um the symptoms are multisystemic, so lots of different systems of the body, and it very often moves around the body. So you will have migrating pain, you will have migrating symptoms. We may struggle with this organ system for a few months, then we have a different issue in this organ system. We know that Lyme is gonna move around. That's one of his weird kind of oddities or or key flags. Um, and it doesn't always persist with the same symptom load. So Betty and Ginger may both have Lyme. One may be bedbound, the other one may be having psychotic episodes and and much um cognitive decline, while Joe over here just has extreme knee pain. So definitely can look different. Now, how do we get Lyme? We all know that ticks carry Lyme. Okay, I think that's pretty accepted, but less than 50% of people recall being bitten by a tick, going back to that tiny nymphs tick stage. Often um, we're familiar with the erythron migrants, that bullseye rash, but only one-third of those who have been bitten with Lyme ever experienced that rash. Also, I would raise that a lot of people get bitten in their hairline, behind their ear, um, in their genitals sometimes, in your armpit. You surely can raise your arm up and see your armpit, but those other areas, you can't necessarily look or you can't get a good read on my dark head of hair, you would never really see a bullseye rash inside of my scalp, right? So even if I have that, that may not be something that shows up. If someone does have the keystone bullseye rash, that is as good as diagnostic for a Lyme disease. So if that's been something you've experienced, definitely want to start thinking about your symptom load and how it likely is related to Lyme disease. Now, initial bite symptoms when we're bit include headache, fever, fatigue, flu-like feels. Sometimes you've got that rash or not. These can easily be mistaken for an illness. A lot of times, if I hear a client talk about how they had a summer flu that year, a little cold, um, a little red flag goes up for me that, hey, maybe that was the beginning of the infection. Now, how is Lyme transmitted? We talked about ticks, absolutely, but some other ways may surprise you through vectors. So some sort of being that carries a pathogen, um, Lyme can be transmitted through insects, ticks, of course, mosquitoes, bed bugs, lice, biting insects and spiders. So you can see very quickly that you may not recall being bit by a tick, but all of us have been bit by a mosquito. Some of us have had lice in our lifetime, um, some of us have been bitten by spiders, and that Lyme and co infections can be transferred to several different vectors. We can also transmit Lyme through organ transplants. So any use of another's body parts or any cadaver material that is used in a surgery can transmit Lyme from the original host to the new host. Sexual transmission. This does mean that Lyme can be passed back and forth between partners. Also, another really, really great reason to be having safe sex because we really you don't always know when someone's carrying Lyme, right? They may not be that chronic presentation, but they still may have Lyme. But it's really important to think about in familial situations where one spouse has Lyme, we always want to be thinking about the other spouse there too. You can also transfer Lyme congenitally in utero. So if I have Lyme, I am pregnant, I have a baby, I can easily pass Lyme to the baby. Some signs that we seek often are babies who are refusing um food, who are having anaphylaxis, particularly if the anaphylaxis is shifting. A big thing that I see is um the inability to tolerate their mother's milk, inability to tolerate several proteins. That's always a big red flag to me that their body may be um misidentifying proteins that it doesn't like, Lyme, for proteins that it could like, mother's milk. So, really important to understand that we can pass Lyme from parent to child um through through birthing and and growing a baby. Blood transfusions are the final transmission method route. So if you have to have a blood transfusion, I absolutely would do it if you need it. If you're at that point where that's a discussion, it's necessary, right? But we want to be mindful that um blood transfusions can move the Lyme from one host to another. It's just a different vector, right? We're mammals, we're humans, we can be a vector just as much as a tick can be a vector. So another thing that's really important is all ticks can transmit. A lot of times we um identify with one tick or another where the lone star tick can move it or the black-legged tick, you know. Truly, at this point, some ticks do tend towards carrying more infection. But as time goes on, they continue to breed and multiply and migrate. There is plenty of Lyme detection in all varieties of ticks. Um, and we're seeing it not just in particular kinds. So coinfections are really important. And we know co-infections are infections that often come with. So you may get bitin, you may get that borrelia bergdorfe um strain of Lyme bacteria that's transmitted, but you may also and very often also get a host of co-infections, so other infections that bugs can carry. But it's important to know that coinfections can transmit through other vectors, including cats and dogs. So we've had a client before who um developed a coinfection very severely after a dog bite. So there's lots of different ways, and scratches are another method. So a cat can scratch you and you can transmit Bartonella, for example, as well. So co-infections can be transmitted through other vectors other than insects. Now, newer studies show Lyme spirochetes or the borrelia bacteria that causes the disease can be found in urine, tears, saliva, and breast milk. So it really begs the question: could we pass Lyme through breastfeeding? I think so. Could we pass Lyme through donor milk? I think so. Could we pass Lyme through saliva? I do think so. Um, I think it's really important to understand that Lyme is a bacteria, though it loves to burrow in the body and it doesn't want to be in the bloodstream because it prefers an oxygen-poor environment. Um, it's very possible that it's present, especially if it was a recent bite in those bodily fluids. So know the untreated lime travels through the bloodstream, it establishes infection in many tissues. And like I said, it prefers a low oxygen environment. So it wants to burrow into the body away from the bloodstream. It prefers connective tissue areas, it loves collagen as a food source. So it's going to try and get away from that blood flow, which makes it stealthy. It's going to go and burrow in tissue and can be difficult to get out from where it is. And it's going to trick the immune system. Big, big key of Lyme is that it's going to trick or modulate or change your immune system. We'll get into learning that Lyme actually can invade certain immune cells. So then the immune system becomes perplexed because there's Lyme inside of the immune system. So now the immune system has a hard time telling what's me, what's not, what's my host body, what's not. And now we have immune confusion. That is a big key of Lyme. So, what does Lyme look like in a person? Well, there are many species of borelia that spirochete. Spirochete's a word for basically a rotini-shaped bacteria. It's shaped like a little rotini noodle. It's a little corkscrew, um, which allows it to burrow, which allows it to be a little tricky, and that's responsible for Lyme disease. So a lot of times we talk about someone who has um a borelia infection in my office. You have a borelia overgrowth. Borelia should not be a part of your body, it shouldn't be something a human doesn't need to have it. Whereas like Streptococcus, there are nasty varieties varieties and then there are helpful varieties. With borrelia, we don't we don't really need it in our body at all. So we have borrelia overgrowths. Um, and an extreme borrelia overgrowth, I would say is called Lyme disease. Now in America, we do predominantly see that borrelia birdorphy species. And Lyme is really complicated because there are different phases, right? So when it comes to what happens after a bite or lime is transferred, we usually see eventual infection in three parts. You have the original lime, okay. You have co-infections, things like Babesia, Bartonella, Erlichia, anaplasma, mycoplasma, racketzia, rocky mountain spotted fever. These sort of things are co-infections that are transferred with a bite at the time of the bite. They can be transferred through other vectors. I've had clients who are like, I know I've had Bartonella since I was younger. Now that I understand it, but once I got bitten by a tick, it took off like rocket fuel. That makes sense because Bartonella and Borelia or Lyme really, really increase an intense inflammation cascade. And they can make it very hard for the body to recover and make it very, very likely for the body to be very, very inflamed. So you've got your co-infections next. When Lyme is transferred, we often have opportunistic infections. Now, these infections are things that are kind of run-of-the-mill. You may have had them before. So things like Epstein Barr virus or mono, cytomegalovirus, similar to mono, shingles. So that's our herpes zoster, right? These are infections that you may have had in the past. Shingles you have as a child in the form of chicken pox and it goes dormant later in life. If we have a stressful event, you may have a reactivation of that herpes varicellus auster and you now have shingles. So herpes one and two, very similar idea. Cold sores and genital herpes, these are responsible for. You don't have them all the time, but sometimes they reactivate. And when you have Lyme and coinfections come into the body, you can then have opportunistic infections show up and then you start seeing symptoms of those. So a lot of times they'll have a client with Lyme, they may also have Bartonella, they have extreme fatigue and they feel like they're getting mono every few weeks. Well, they are. They have that opportunistic infection that's been dormant in the body that takes advantage of Lyme and its co-infections, making the immune system really tender to infection. So other opportunistics include HHV6 and 7, have a lot of neurological consequences, have relationship to seizures in children. Um, we've also got persistent candida or fungal infections. If you're someone who recurrently has UTIs, candida you can't kick, we want to think about are there coinfections, is there lime underneath of that? Mycotoxin sensitivities, extreme ones. You know, if you're living in full blood mode, absolutely that's its own issue. And we're going to talk about that being one of my big four very soon. But if you are extremely sensitive to mycotoxins in mold, we want to think of those sometimes as an opportunistic infection that are really taking advantage of the body weakened by Lyme and coinfections. We have other things that can be transferred too, via bugs like West Nile virus, Powassan virus, tick borne encephalitis virus. And then lastly, one of the big opportunistic infections we see a lot is streptococcal family bacteria. That is strep that we think of with strep throat, scarlet fever. Strep can cross the blood-brain barrier and create a neuropsychiatric, just like an acute presentation of major psych issues. So these opportunistic infections can be part of the Lyme picture. The big thing to think about again with Lyme and Lyme transfer is multi-system. We see Lyme dysregulating multiple systems in the body. You may have joint pain, but you may also have brain fog. And then you may also have severe eczema. So these are different systems, right? You've got nerves that are handling the brain communication, the pain communication. You have the brain that's having cognitive issues, you have the actual joints, a musculoskeletal system. Then we have the skin, your um epidermis, you have eczema going on, but that's also a bacterial issue. So Lyme dysregulates and allows multiple systems in the body to show symptoms. And these conditions can ebb and flow over the years. We have clients who say, yeah, psoriasis, but it's only bad sometimes. When it's really bad, it's really bad. And then I have dizziness, I have pain, and these things always change. Sometimes it's my shoulder for a few months, then it's my hip. That's an example of that. Multi-system imitating many other diagnoses. This is key for identifying Lyme. So there are different stages of infection. We have acute Lyme, kind of breaks down into two phases. You have an early localized infection when the bite is recent and the infection is still in the bloodstream. This is usually in that early zero to four month period. You can experience symptoms like that bullseye rush. You can have flu-like symptoms. There can be swollen lymph nodes, fever, chills, joint pain, fatigue, a stiff neck. Then we move into an early disseminated phase where the Lyme, still in that zero to four month period, is leaving the bloodstream and it is getting in and starting to burrow into different organs and systems in the body. And in this season, we can see all those base symptoms, but we can also see facial paralysis. We can see different rashes than just that bullseye rash. We can see joint and muscle pain, occasional or persistent heart palpitations, poor memory, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, and panic attacks are a big one. Um, vertigo, TMJ, a disoriented um nature. Maybe it's as simple as I came out to find my car, and now I can't remember where I parked it at all, and that's not like me, all the way up to you know, full-blown paranoia. We're really concerned about events that are not real. We're not likely. Um, oftentimes we have weakness in arms, legs, muscles. Some folks will have weakness in their public floor, their spine, a difficulty kind of holding themselves up. But that is when that lime is burrowing and is out of the bloodstream. After this initial stage, after that zero to four month period, we move into chronic Lyme. This can happen quicker than four months, but for most people, it's months to years. Lyme um burrows, it actually has a slow replication rate, but it is very potent. And so we can see symptoms like arthritis, numbness, tingling, extreme fatigue, heart problems, um, mood change, folks being bedbound, or folks really, really having a very different change of disposition. Um, speech challenges can come along with chronic Lyme, memory loss, whether it's short-term or long-term memory loss of things that you always could recall, you can no longer recall, problems with sleep, full-blown insomnia, early waking, very, very common with Lyme. Blood sugar dysregulation also often happens, which can then create every few hours waking at night. So we have lots of problems with sleep. And Lyme can also create um infertility. It can create hormone issues through a variety of means, whether that's hormone issues in young children and teens, whether that's really difficult puberty, whether that's, you know, males or females taking on opposite. Um characteristic. Most often males taking on more of a female presentation with weight distribution, kind of following a female model based on kind of that excess estrogen in the in the body. We can have hormone issues like endometriosis, PCOS. We can have gross in the body. Lyme, bottom line, creates inflammation, it disrupts blood pressure, it disrupts blood sugar, and there are big cholesterol changes often. And it can be all the above, it can be some, it can be part of your lipid penal. It doesn't have to be everything. Remember, Lyme is multi-system and it mimics. So it's not necessarily consistent person to person, but those are kind of some keystones. As infection progresses, we want to think about autoimmunity and how it's related to Lyme. Lyme can mimic any autoimmune disease. When the immune system is looking for the pathogen invader, that Lyme bacteria, it attacks your system at the same time. For example, your joints are swelling, they're stiff, maybe sometimes you lose function. We could call this rheumatoid arthritis, absolutely. But we also know that borrelia prefers to burrow in that connected tissue. It likes collagen for food in the low oxygen environment. Now the immune system comes and tries to clean the borrelia bacteria out of your knee and the joint swelling and the stiffness results. So is it RA or is it borrelia in the joint? Could be either. Autoimmunity is related to Lyme. We see so many autoimmune conditions that are connected. Now, Lyme and children, oftentimes, because of their growing their cellular replication rate, it shows up as mood and behavior issues the most. They can absolutely have fatigue, body aches, joint pain, swollen lymph, you know, growing pains that are kind of extreme or irregular. They can be less physically active, they can be less physically resilient than their peers. They can kind of appear lazy or have like a downturn in their interests and physical activity. But you're also really going to see a lot of those neuropsych issues, attention, brain fog issues are big. A child who can't follow from point A and the Z, especially if there's been a change in them at some point, can't complete tasks. Of course, that ADHD, ADD presentation can often be Lyme, neuropsychiatric issues that are on set. So if you're seeing big rage, if you're seeing behavior change, if you're seeing tantrums, all the way down to our children who are on the spectrum, we often find Lyme and co-infections in their host of physical dysregulations that are limiting that brain and body from moving forward in normal neurological growth and development. So Lyme can be in the brain. It's really important to understand that. So if we're thinking about disorders that are regulated by the brain, well, shoot, your brain's in charge of communication all around the body. So if Lyme can get into your brain, we can see that multi-system, multi-symptom presentation that Lyme creates. Borelia brigdorferi, which is that main strain right in America, main species, it can stick to and invade your neurons and create a cell death, similar to like food dyes. Those food dyes can excite neurons in the brain until they get to a dead point. Same sort of thing can happen here. Lyme and toxins really do harm the brain. And inflammation to the brain is something that the immune system mediates. So if the immune system is disrupted, it can either not inflame your brain, like in the evening, overnight when we sleep, we detoxify. Part of that detoxification process of the brain involves good inflammation. But if your immune system is confused and struggling, it may over-inflame your brain. It may not inflame the brain to where we get clean out. There's a lot of dysregulation there, right? The core understanding when it comes to brain health and Lyme in the brain is there is actual destruction of brain tissue. So we'll talk later about the hope there is to reverse and correct Lyme, but also the importance of not living in denial and not addressing or exploring that if it seems to be something that can be true for you because Lyme does create destruction of tissue, even brain tissue. Now, when it comes to Lyme, coinfections make everything complicated, okay? Coinfections often are the thing that make you more sick at times than the Lyme does. Like I said, Lyme has a slow replication rate. Some of these other bacteria replicate quite a bit faster. So we're just going to kind of go through some top ones. I want to just draw up some general info to help turn on little red flags for you in your brain that are like, you know what, that may be something I need to think about. So Babesia is the most common coinfection to Lyme. It's a malaria-like parasite that infects our red blood cells. Now we know that red blood cells go everywhere in the body. And this destruction of red blood cells can, in its worst, lead to hemolytic anemia. We can also see jaundice in it. Um, Babesia is transmitted usually from a tick bite and could begin as flu-like symptoms. It could surface later when the immune system is weakened. When we're thinking about symptoms, we want to think about a lot of sweating, especially at night. We see shortness of breath or air hunger, that sensation that you need more air, even though your pulse oxometer may be telling you have great oxygen saturation in your body. Um, you're gonna kind of want more air, basically. A lot of headaches are present with Babesia, mostly like a frontal head pressure headache or um a headache in this front sphere of your head. A lot of times clients will express the headache feels like a vice grip is squishing my brain. Intense psychological symptoms like hallucinations, um, extreme cognitive dysfunction can come along with Babesia, major disconnect on it, normal everyday tasks. Like you cannot have the focus to get from the intent to do an activity to the completion of doing an activity. And remember, when we become infected, these things should be a change or new. But also, you can easily have been infected as a child and have always kind of struggled in this way and it get worse at some point in time. Shaking chills are classic Babesia symptoms, dizziness, decreased appetite, insomnia, panic attacks. We see a lot of neck, back of the head pain, and tension. We also see um a lot of shaking. So sometimes that's you know, shaking or twitching legs or whole body parts, but Babesia can cause these symptoms and more. Another very common co-infection, and one I see often by itself, is Bartonella. Bartonella is an opportunistic bacteria. It's going to take advantage of your downed immune system. It can lie at tolerable levels and hang in the body for years. A lot of times I'll have clients with recurrent GI issues, and it's actually Bartonella, or it can expand profoundly very quickly. Um, it's a bacteria, like I said, there are 40 documented species in America, and Bartonella is a tricky one to look at on testing. The best testing that we have available to us, and the testing that we use in my practice looks at four strains of Bartonella. So we have to consider the symptoms of Bartonella. We need to know that Bartonella can be transmitted through bug vectors like body lice, spider bites, mosquitoes, tick bites, or the bite or scratch of a cat or a dog. You can absolutely have it without having Lyme. Um, triggers, when this happened, lead to a whole host of inflammation, just like Lyme. These are kind of our two big ones that have intense inflammation cascades. They'll affect the limbic system, they'll affect the vagal system, they create a very, very sensitive patient. Sometimes we get clients who, you know, have had mold illness, they have verified they've cleaned out the mold, but their symptoms persist. A lot of times Bartonella has either been opportunistic in that mold exposure or it's just part of the general presentation, or maybe the Bartonella was the original issue that made the client very, very hypersensitive to small amounts of normal mold exposure that they can no longer tolerate. So symptoms for Bartonella, again, headaches, but they're going to be local to the back of the head, down that neck and brain stem. You're going to see stretch mark rashes. So these marks that look very similar to stretch marks. I always say if you have stretch marks on your belly from being pregnant, that's not what I'm talking about. If you have stretch marks in random parts of your body, if they weren't necessarily connected to anything that makes sense or logical, that could be that typical Bartonella rash. We can have numbers or tingling in the body. Plantar fasciitis is a huge connection to Bartonella. And I would say is one of those areas where maybe we've diagnosed this plantar fasciitis, but truly it's a Bartonella overgrowth. Bottom of the foot or shin pain that's particularly worse at waking, that is a key symptom for me. You may not pull Bartonella on a test, but you got that symptom. We're going to address it. And through the addressing, you're going to experience every single time you take dosage of that pathogen-specific immune system, your feet are going to hurt a whole, whole bunch. That symptom is going to flare itself because it is a symptom of Bartonella. Increased sensory sensitivity, and this is all senses. A lot of my clients have increased, greatly increased auditory sensitivity. Sometimes it is touched to the point that vibration, other people's noises, chewing, these things like really can bother some most people. But we're talking about like an extreme, like you need to change your behavior to get away from these sensory disturbances. Um, you can also kind of see how maybe Bartonella would be an easy co-infection to add to the presentation of autism, right? With this sensitivity of all sensory things. So EMF sensitivities, huge extreme auditory sensitivities, like I talked about, an increase in emotional instability, rage, antisocial behavior, anger. Um these sort of things are very characteristic of Bartonella. So if we think about kids and tantrums and meltdowns and inability to cope, I want to be thinking about and considering Bartonella. Depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, joint and muscle cramping, swollen glands under your arms and the groin, especially can be connected to Bartonella, as can be the line. Um, eccentric or uncharacteristic rage, as I mentioned. And that can be someone who really is never ragey and developing new rage, or it can be my anger is no longer controllable and it is, it is vet, it is met a raging place. Um, alcoholism and addiction, very common with Bartonella and dry eyes, visual changes or disturbances, blurry, changing vision, blurry eyes that change throughout the day, or this week they might be rough, and then next week things are fine, then it comes back in. But your your vision checkup is good and great. We want to be thinking about Bartonella. Now, Bartonella also has a strong association with many melanomas. The key here is that Bartonella, like Lyme, creates a very, very progressive inflammatory response that over-excites or wires the immune system and the nervous system. So think about all of your nerves, your brain, your cranial nerves, your spine, all these things are incorporated. The immune system as well, an over-reaction or underreaction that can more over-reaction can kind of be from that Bartonella being part of the picture. Another common coinfection is mycoplasma. Mycoplasma is also a very small, though, bacteria. It's self-replicating, it has no cell wall. That means it can go anywhere in your body. There are 60 plus species that have been identified. And with the no-cell wall, symptoms can look like a bacteria, fungus, mold, parasite. It can go lots of places in the body and do lots of things. So mycoplasma is also going to create an increase in systemic inflammation, particularly when respiratory challenges are involved, things like asthma, allergies, okay, breathing difficulties, things like that. Mycoplasma may require cholesterol, and it, like many other bacteria, needs to obtain nutrients from the host. So again, with all these bacterial infections, we usually see people who are eating very, very well, who need to eat very, very clean, who need to eat really nutrient dense to feel okay. Um, but also we also see people who have really, really extremely low cholesterol. Mycoplasma can be a piece of that presentation. Chronic cough. There's a lot of respiratory challenges that mycoplasma is at the root of. I see it a ton in children's chronic asthma. Um, again, there are very many species of mycoplasma. So one species drives respiratory system infections. Um, if you've got recurrent bronchitis, I am absolutely looking for mycoplasma. One of the strains is commonly seen in ages five through nine with a chest cold. So it doesn't have to be this full-blown awful thing. We also know that mycoplasma is included in the ingredient list, the Pfizer-COVID vaccine. So we can also see transfer of mycoplasma through vaccines. Another variety can cause walking pneumonia. So lots of different respiratory ties for mycoplasma. Mycoplasma can create quite a bit of damage in the body, in the organs, cells, mitochondria with no cell wall, it's going to be moving where it pleases, right? It also creates chromosomal damage, triggers autoimmune disease in this destruction. Because of the chromosomal damage, you may have energy issues, but we can also see mycoplasma influencing infertility because chromosomes are needed, right, to make a healthy baby. And if we have damage there, we can see recurrent miscarriage, we can see loss and issues. Another family of co-infection bacteria is Ricketsia. So Ricketsa is a bacteria that's found in ticks, lys mites, chiggers, fleas, and mammals. Most well-known variety be Rocky Mountain spotted fever. There are about a dozen other spotted fever illnesses. Um, Rickettsia is most commonly transmitted by wood ticks. Um, so again, this is one of those where infection can be transmitted within 10 minutes of attachment. You're also gonna see a scab or a little mark at the bite. Um, it may take it a bit time to heal when Rickettsia is involved. So symptoms here are gonna include headache. Fever is a huge one. Um, relentless fever is often present with the Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Um, you're gonna see rashes, muscle aches, you can see a spotted rash with some of these varieties. Nausea and vomiting, also very, very common. So again, you can kind of see how, okay, you got a little rash, you got some nausea and vomiting, got a headache and fever, maybe we just got the flu. Like it's very easy to mistake these things for common conditions, right? With racketzia, significant neurological issues very quickly follow of all varieties. So that's another, you know, if we've had an illness and then we're starting to have this neurological cascade, maybe Raketsia is part of that. That Rakettsia family breaks down into multiple others. So, of note, another coinfection called anaplasma is in that Raketsia family and invades white blood cells, specifically your granulocytes. It was first described in 1990 in Wisconsin. It's spread predominantly by black-legged ticks. It's mostly found in the upper Midwest, Connecticut, New York, Northern California, but it absolutely continues to expand geographically just like all of these infections do, because ticks are expanding geographically. Now, symptoms of anaplasma include that typical onset of a fever, malaise and chills, headaches are a big one, abrupt headaches. Um, and an acute, intense infection of anaplasmosis, you may see muscle aches, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain is a big one, diarrhea, sore throat, cough, rashes, a dry cough, and the headaches in particular are like a sharp, knife-like pain from behind the eyes. Earlichia is another member of the Sriketsia family. Again, it's a bacteria that's going to invade white blood cells, monocytes in particular. So sometimes we see really low levels of monocytes on testing, or sometimes we see the body trying to create a lot more monocytes to kind of make up for this cellular infection. And I call Erlichia the great magnifier. It really magnifies your Lyme symptoms when it comes as a coinfection. It's mostly spread by the lone star tick. It can absolutely be spread by other ticks. It is mostly common in the southern U.S. So we think of Lyme as being a northern U.S., Minnesota, Wisconsin issue, but this is mostly south, southeastern U.S. where we're seeing a lot of Earlichia transfer. But again, ticks travel, right? Birds move them around, animals move them around. So it's important to know that Arlichia can be outside of these um endemic areas. Erlichia is interesting because historically it had been identified as the cause of a worldwide severe disease outbreak in cattle, but we now know that it can be transferred to humans. And again, it's just a bacteria. So we just use like basic logic. Why wouldn't it be able to transfer from an animal to a person? Very possible, right? When we have Reliquia, you're going to see the same usual onset of fever, malaise, chills. You may see that abrupt headache. Um, the headaches in this sense are more sharp and knife-like, again, kind of behind the eye pain, like the anaplasma. So you can start to see how symptoms will be similar, and we do have to rely on testing really to identify co-infections a lot. Now, Arlichia is more likely than anaplasma to invade and infect the central nervous system, which can cause confusion, neuropathies, both cranial neuropathies. So things like Bell's palsy, a lack of um or a loss of control over like the vocal area, for example. There are lots of different cranial palsies, um, but we can also have peripheral neuropathies. So you can have um loss of sensation in toes and feet and arms and hands and have issues there. So really important to really think about these coinfections in addition to Lyme. We call this like a Lyme complex disorder where someone has Lyme and coinfections. It is extremely rare. And I think that I'm right when I say I've never seen someone with Lyme without at least one co-infection. Then there are also usually opportunistic infections. So, really important that we consider, you know, all of these things. So now that you've kind of gotten to know Lyme a little bit and you're getting to know these co-infections, it may be turning on some bells for you, ringing little bells in your head, like, I didn't have that, I didn't have that. But it can't be me because I had a negative Lyme test. Okay, this is absolutely something we have to talk about. There are a lot of flaws in Lyme testing. I want you to know that there are 70 plus tests on the US market, uh, mostly because none of them are perfect, none of them are fantastic. Um, also because of the nature of Lyme, it burrows and it hides. And we have to look at tests that are going to test for Lyme directly and indirectly. We need to be looking at antibodies that your body creates against the infections as well as physical DNA and uh evidence of the pathogens. So you want to find testing that combines both. Um, the CDC's recommended testing is a two-part system with lots of flaws. I kind of want to start there because if you've had a negative Lyme test that probably came from your PCP or some sort of other usual practitioner, um, and there's gonna be lots of flaws with that. I think one of the most important things to know is just one of those tests, the Elaxa test, has a documented 50% false negative rate. That means that 50% with Lyme who take this test will get a false negative. So you can have Lyme, take the test, and 50% of the time the test is faulty and isn't going to identify that. The CDC has admitted this. We know this as a fact. Um, so you can kind of start to see now that that is tricky. The other test of Western blot has its own issues, it's only looking for particular things. So again, not a thorough testing of issues. The testing that we use is looking at um antibodies, it's looking at physical evidence, DNA evidence of um actual spirochetes and co-infection material in the body. So, really, really important to do to do um indirect and direct testing. Also, extremely important to only be working through testing with a skilled practitioner who takes a history, who understands the expanse of symptoms of Lyme, the co-infections, and the opportunistic infections. So a lot of times I hear, I saw my PCP, they tested me, or I saw my rheumatologist, they tested me. I definitely have symptoms, but they said I was fine. That's not where the box stops. We have to have a more comprehensive picture. We need to be taking a health history, a thorough one for many years. A big part of our work and why it's wonderful and why it's different than even an integrative approach is because we spend the time, we go through your health history, we map out symptoms, we're looking for clues, we're looking for when the dysfunction started and when did it happen, because we want to figure out what the root was that started that cascade and the power of root-cause functional approaches that we're trying to pull out absolutely the root so that all of your symptoms go with it after we address that very um original event that caused the body to struggle after that point. So, really important to have good testing, have good practitioner, and really look at a full clinical picture. We cannot rule things out just because of a negative test. Now, there are definitely nuances to testing, and I honestly hope to do another episode about that because when you've had a negative test and someone else says, hey, you need to do testing, and the testing's expensive, it's not necessarily your first yes, right? But some things about testing, when you test, it really matters. Antibodies don't begin in the body for anything until several days a week. When it comes to Lyme and Co's, it often takes two to three weeks after a bite for antibodies to show up. So if you're only doing antibody testing, you can be super ill with Lyme and not see anything on testing and you look just great and fine. The other thing is the immune system's engagement or power at the time of testing can change the result. So with our testing, we often, depending on the client and their situation, we're drawing total immunoglobulins so we can see numbers on what state of activity or depression your immune system is in. If you don't have adequate immune cells, we cannot think that a test testing the immune system for Lyme is going to appropriately respond. That immune system's weak. It literally doesn't have material to respond to the test. So the immune system engagement or power can change the result. We also want to think about in America the amount of prescriptions that folks are on, or therapies, or biologics, anything that's a that's going to interact with the immune system or prop up the immune system like a steroid or suppress the immune system like immune suppressants or interact with the immune system like antibiotics or limit the immune system like antibiotics. These things can change the result of tests. It's also important to know that Lyme spirochetes themselves do different things. They will remodel their surface in different environments. So we may not be able to recognize that on testing, your immune system may not be able to recognize it because it's changed its surface proteins. And so the immune system goes and sees a cell and it's like, oh, well, that one doesn't have up the Lime sign. It's not Lime trick ja that spirochete can remodel its exterior so it doesn't have the lime sign up. Spirochetes can also morph from that bacterial corkscrew shape into a cyst form where they remain dormant. So really important to understand that cysts are there and are growing because they are protecting something, or it can actually be a pathogen or bacteria that is formed into a cyst. And in that cyst form, for example, Lyme isn't as receptive to certain antibiotics. It's not um as observable by your immune system. So there's lots of different deviations where we're going to see Lyme testing not be accurate. Lyme does absolutely shut down the immune system. That's how it lives in the host. It does it through a variety of ways. And of course, the immune system is very, very complex. So there are lots of options for dysregulating the immune system. But testing that looks just at the immune system's responsive antibodies has to be interpreted inside of a larger picture because that immune system can be defunct. The dysregulated immune system is absolutely the key to Lyme's progression in the body. And on the hopeful side of things, it is absolutely the key. Re-regulating the immune system is the key to beating Lyme, putting it in dormancy, and pulling out the original root of all of your health dysfunction. So what do we look for then? There are clinical manifestations of Lyme. There's Lyme mislabeling. I would say a lot of diagnoses in America and anywhere have been mislabeling of Lyme. Not for lack of effort. Absolutely, Lyme is matching those diagnostic criteria. But what's really underneath of that juvenile arthritis or that chronic fatigue syndrome, it might actually just be Lyme. And that condition is the symptom load that Lyme has created that matches that diagnostic criteria. And boom, you have a mislabel of Lyme or a diagnosis that does fit, but doesn't explain it all. So Lyme can be your complex illness root. Let's talk about these clinical manifestations, multiple chemical sensitivities. Um, MCS often is Lyme, postural, orthostatic, tachycardia syndrome, POTS. If you're having any kind of dsautonomia, I would be working with someone and evaluating uh could this be because of Lyme and coinfections? MS often finds its roots in Lyme because of the amount of nervous system and brain dysregulation. You can have lesions on the brain not only from EBV, but from other pathogens. Fibromyalgia is a huge one if we think about the way Lyme creates fatigue, body pain, you know, fibromyalgia fits that picture, as does chronic fatigue syndrome. Anyone who's suffering with fatigue, bedbound days, we have got to be thinking about Lyme and coinfects. Infections can lead to a lupus diagnosis very easily. Those who feel like they feel better after their lupus diagnosis that may or may not have really fit the criteria, I want to be thinking Lyme. Um those who feel better on antimalarial medications, I also want to be thinking Lyme and coinfections because what is very similar to malaria? Babesia. So if you're on an antimalarial medication, ongoing for some sort of other condition, which I see very often is an off-label use of medications um prescribed by rheumatologists, I want to be thinking, uh, why is this working? Is it working? Because Babesia is part of the picture and Lyme is here as well. Really important. Shogun syndrome, very similar. Arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, these are big ones, right? Ketone of Lyme is joint pain, swelling. It doesn't have to be there for everyone, but a lot of times it is. Alopecia, hair loss, um, different pathogens can affect your hair follicles. So we see a lot of strep as the root of alopecia, but absolutely Lyme and co-infections, which um strep is an opportunistic infection, can be from alopecia. Bell's palsy, we talked about those cranial nerves being affected. Parkinson's Lyme can be a root cause of Parkinson's. And if that was something that had appeared for me as a diagnosis, I would absolutely spend the money to rule out Lyme and coinfections. Um, it could be a very simple to some degree reversal to Parkinson's. Intense nerve pain affecting the spine. So if you're somebody who is like a chiropractor, frequent flyer, like your back hurts, you've got major pain going on, know that this could be Bam Moore syndrome and is often a misdiagnosis of Lyme. So we want to think about not just like your spine, those are joints, my friend. Your knee is also a joint, but your neck, your spine, your lower back, again, joint points where Lyme and co infections can burrow. And if you look at how the nervous system runs through your spine, you can have major nerve pain coming from the root of Lyme and coast. Many pro-inflammatory and immune suppressing, immune modulating effects with Lyme. So we want to think about kind of all the consequences of those. MCAS, MCAS, mast cell activation system. This is one of those places where the immune system is like super inflammatory, super keyed up, and Lyme is often at the base of that. A lot of my very sensitive clients who couldn't do anything, couldn't tolerate anything. Once we began to drain and address their Lyme within a month, completely different MCAS presentation, getting all their foods back. When I have kids who have anaphylaxis or they have shifting anaphylaxis where we're outgrowing things, but not all things, or they change to other allergies. I want to be thinking Lyme because Lyme is pro-inflammatory and has major immune modulating effects. It doesn't always just shut it down, it can ramp up arms of the immune system. So this is, you know, addressing Lyme can really shift our allergic reactions. EMF sensitivity is big flag for Lyme and coast. Vertigo, big one, right? That is ENT stuff. We want to rule that basic ENT cause out, but there's a lot of neurological issues, a lot of cerebellum activity that can create vertigo. Rashes are a big one, rashes of all kinds. Rashes look different ways. So if we ever do a clarity call, I'm gonna ask you for a picture of your rash, nausea, ongoing nausea, car sickness, um, being someone who struggles with motion sickness, a big flag for me too. Umingitis can be caused by Lyme and co infections. Urinary issues are huge, interstitial cystitis, a host of bladder disorders, um, urinary frequency. Lyme is cleared predominantly through the urinary tract. So if we're having lots of issues there, Lyme can absolutely be the cause. Adrenal dysregulation, things like Addison's disease or cushions. That's dysregulation of the adrenals, which make our cortisol, right? So if your body's stressed out because there's a Lyme infection, you're you can count on having dysregulated adrenals and they can go to the extreme extent of Addison's or Cushings. Um, flushing of the body, pulse and blood pressure variability, whether that's high blood pressure, whether that's blood pressure that's super low or swings, that can be a sign. Um dyslexia, word finding issues, classic Lyme connection. Sometimes I'll see families where everyone is struggling with dyslexia in one form or another. Um, and I want to be thinking Lyme. Is this something that's been spread familiarly, congenitally? Very important to consider Lyme with word finding issues or abstract reason, um, struggling with spatial concepts. It's just the way that Lyme interacts with the brain that we tend to struggle with these things. Again, that ADHD, ADD presentation where we have an inability to sustain or complete a task, where we have a really, really active nervous system, um, where we have executive functioning differences or difficulties. We want to be thinking about Lyme, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, um, suicidal ideation. This is a huge, huge passion of mine. I want to have more discussions about this. I want to be considering Lyme and co-infections in our young people. I want to be considering Lyme and co-infections in our postpartum women, especially. I think a lot of um postpartum psych disorders have a lot to do with reactivated co-infections and Lyme and infections in general. After that immune system has made a shift for good for pregnancy to protect a baby, and then it tries to shift back. We can often see um infections and Lyme and co-infections surface, and then we see the psych presentation that's acute. And it could be hormone disruption, um, but it could absolutely also be reactivated Lyme and coinfections. We see it regularly. OCD, obsessions, compulsions, intrusive thoughts, especially onset, again, can go back to Lyme and coinfections and mood swings, even mimicking bipolar. Several clients who received a bipolar diagnosis at some point, or they got an almost bipolar diagnosis, or it's been discussed a lot, or it just doesn't fit, medication doesn't work, all these sort of things. We want to be thinking Lyme and co infections because of the effects it can have on the brain. PTSD or CPTSD, of course, you can have these conditions from a particular event or trauma, but an ongoing chronic illness that affects multiple systems in your body can absolutely be something that causes CPTST or PTSD. So if we have we're fitting symptoms of that, but we don't necessarily have like an original cause, we want to be thinking about Lyme. And let's kind of talk about what are the systems affected. We need to look for it. Lyme does do damage, it does damage tissues, um, it damages organs, it damages nerves. And part of healing is rebuilding, but part of just figuring out what's going on is kind of recognizing, like, okay, what systems could be affected? Musculoskeletal pain is huge. Your musculoskeletal system can be affected from collagen disruption to pain to joint smelling to lymph drainage issues. Know that we have lymph nodes in our neck, but we also have lymph nodes throughout our body in our groin behind our knees. And if we're having swelling areas, one of the key things that lime will do is it will thicken or disrupt um or clog your lymph areas, and then we can have swelling of those lymph nodes, but pressions on portions of those joint areas or body parts, and then we have all sorts of other issues kind of follow um in a cascade. So any cascade of symptoms, I want to be thinking Lyme. Our detox organs are often very affected. Um, we have clients who have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, we have clients who have hepatic issues, we have clients who've lost gallbladders for no reason. We have clients who've had acute um appendicitis episodes that are unexplained. Liver, kidneys, anything there with a detox organ struggling. I'm gonna be thinking lym and co infections. Mitochondrial function can be affected quite a bit. This is where that fatigue is coming from, energy irregularities. Important to think about mitochondria. They're in they're in our cells, right? They're the powerhouse of our cells, they create energy, okay? And so mitochondria are part of reproducing, right? We make babies, they have mitochondria in their cells, they have chromosomes. There can be different disorders of these things in an infant, which can lead to miscarriage, an inability to get pregnant, an inability to stay pregnant. Nervous system can be affected. Absolutely, this is a huge one. Everything from burning pain to shooting to stabbing to twitching to convulsing body parts to numbness of different body parts, any disorder in the nervous system, um, especially disorder that comes and goes. Sometimes it's there, other days it's not. We want to be thinking about Lyme. The big thing that I want us to all really think about and understand is Lyme is not just this bedbound experience. I see so much Lyme and co infections manifesting in the brain as psychiatric symptoms. Okay. So severe mood disorders, any onset of a psychiatric issue, I want to be thinking about Lyme and co infections. Sleep disorders are huge. Insomnia, and sometimes we credit these to different seasons of life. Like, oh, I'm going through menopause, insomnia is just part of it. Is it? Or is menopause a big triggering event? Because that's a huge hormone shift. The immune system can struggle in that time to keep Lyme dormant, and now we have all of a sudden this extreme insomnia. I want you to be thinking about insomnia, early waking is huge, not being able to stay asleep at night, being extremely wired at nighttime. I'm not talking about you had bad habits during the day, you didn't get to bed a good time, you wore yourself out, and then you're wired. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about where you seem to have an inability to go to sleep at night, but you may be able to sleep in the morning. If we go to sleep and we start right back up, that is a chronic thing for you. It comes along in stressful seasons. I want to be thinking about sleep disorder there with Lyme. Um, onset, sleep apnea. I want to think about Lyme as well. Uh, in our kids, sometimes we see them sleeping with their arms above their head, with their neck reaching back, they're trying to get more oxygen. There can be these little signs, they can be other things, but they can absolutely be signs of Lyme and co-infections. If a child has Babesia, they're gonna have that air hunger. It's not gonna present like you and me being like, I can't get enough air. Like I, they're not gonna talk about it. They're gonna, they're just gonna intelligently, intuitively solve it on their own and pull their neck back and pull their head back and deal with it that way. So depression, anxiety, really big um psych symptoms, cognition issues, dysautonomia, like I said, POTS, twitching and cramps, um, pans and pandas. So pediatric acute neuropsychiatric um disorder. And then we've got pediatric acute neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcus, oftentimes, especially when rage is present in children or adults with acute psych issues or pandas, pans, Lyme is there too. So really important to be thinking about that. Now that we've gone through a lot of overwhelm of identifying Lyme and co infections, what can we do about it? We can absolutely have hope. We have clients myself have recovered from Lyme, are thriving, are doing well. You can absolutely have your life back. The degree to which you get your life back, and how quickly you get your life back depend on the mode of treatment. So your body was designed to heal. This is absolutely true. Your body takes care of itself all the time. It can grow babies by itself. You have nothing to do with that. It breeze, it runs your heart rate. It is designed to function, okay? When it's not functioning, it needs the interference. What's standing in the way of your body functioning? We need that removed. So when we're looking at Lyme, we obviously need that toxic infection removed, but we need nutrient lacks replaced. We need the proper materials for your body to repair. We need vitamins, we need minerals for those with methylation, methylation, for those with methylation differences, we need more methyl groups provided to support detox. There's a lot of nuance to helping the body have interference removed so that it can heal. Now, evidence of Lyme in history, I think it's really important to kind of think through like, where did this biz come from? Because it can feel super overwhelming, like, okay, it's growing, it's everywhere, it's bugs, I can't get away from it. What am I gonna do? No, Lyme's been around, y'all. There is evidence of Lyme as a bioweapon. Um, there's lots of books on it. Bitten, I think, is probably the best you can dig into that. I really like to dig into profitable things about what do we do about it now that it's here. Um, but you can rabbit hole that for sure. We've also found Lyme in 5,500-year-old caveman. And he was wearing a little pouch of a lime-specific herb, um, which I just love so much. So we know lime has been around since caveman and people have continued to exist. So it's absolutely possible. Now, I want you to know too, there's Lyme literacy when you're going to practitioner and there's Lyme success. You absolutely have to work with a practitioner who has dormancy success. We can be literate, we can understand it, but you want to be in the care of someone who knows what they're doing and has had success. There are different approaches to treating it. You can use antibiotics, which is kind of the traditional route. For many, this takes years, multiple antibiotics before progress is seen because of the spirochete burrowing and antibiotics are often sent through the bloodstream, which we learned that the spirochetes don't necessarily stay there. They often don't. So, antibiotics also is going to keep the infection at bay. How your habits are feeding the bacteria, um, what you're doing with your lifestyle is gonna decide whether or not you're able to keep it dormant. So, really important to understand that antibiotics can lessen the infection. Sometimes they get it into dormancy, but it's a tough approach. You can do an integrative or more of a functional approach, which adds either layers on top of antibiotics or um uses instead of antibiotics herbs, supplemental aids. There are plenty of herbs that help to um eradicate or kill the spirochetes and coinfections, and plenty of herbs and supplements that can help to manage the inflammation cascade, support all kinds of things. In my practice, we use a multi-strategy that gets Lyme into dormancy. This is kind of like you had chicken pox as a child. You had it, you carry the dormant virus, but you keep it dormant, okay? Unless you have a shingles activation where it's not dormant anymore. So our strategy for addressing Lyme is multi-systemic, okay? So just like with that chicken box as a child, we're trying to get Lyme into dormancy. Chicken pox is the herpeserous cell exhauster. It goes into dormancy after you have chicken pox. It doesn't reactivate unless you get shingles later in life. You're carrying that dormant virus. Um, but as long as it's not reactivating, you're not having an infection or issue anymore. Same kind of strategy. We begin with deep detox and drainage. We want to make sure it's all able to leave. We want to deal with those lymph congestions. It's really, really important. We want to counter the way that lime congests the lymph, right? We want to remove and improve all chemical, physical, and emotional stressors. Lyme is no joke. It can be really destructive. It can take away people's ability to walk, to function, to speak. Like it can be really, really destructive. And we have to give the body like all tools on board for it to be able to really function and deal with that infection. Okay. So we do that. We want to remove other toxins, other infections. Then we're going to immune modulate. We have to teach the immune system, hey, you have to go clean up this lime. You cannot let this persist because lime restrict the immune system. That part is huge and part of how we have such success. We're going to nourish with the needed materials. We're going to repair and rejuvenate in the organ stage and help you purge the rest of the Lyme and coinfections after we've kind of recalculated that immune system. Okay. Now, important. Our strategy is going to include full guidance on diet and sleep and rest and lifestyle and oxygenation. Because Lyme is multi-system, you have to address it in a multi-system way. We use pathogen-specific immune therapy alongside herbs and other supplementation habits, diet, et cetera, to modulate the immune system so that the immune system can rebuild tolerance against the various pathogens that have infected your body. Now, this piece is also how we create the client losing their previous or new allergies. Anaphylactic to seasonal, things are going to improve as the immune system re-regulates and gets resensitized to the pathogens and desensitized from the foods that it never should have been mad at in the first place. When a body is having an issue with all sorts of pathogens and in an allergic reaction type situation, we want to be thinking about the total pathogen load on the body. Is the immune system getting dysregulated? Where now your immune system is like, we're really mad at eggs and beef and crab and shrimp and shellfish and milk, and we're just mad at all of those. Why? Those are foods. You should be able to eat those, right? But if your immune system has been dysregulated from Lyme, or there's major lymph blockage to where your system's not draining well and becoming hypersensitive, you're gonna develop allergies, you're gonna develop sensitivities, food reactions again. That goes back to where that immune system is dysregulated or imbalanced. We talk about the TH1 and TH2 side in earlier episodes. This is exactly Lyme is the king of dysregulating that, creating lymph blockage, creating hypersensitivities in the body, which equate to these allergies, anaphylactic to seasonal, and they fall off when we address Lyme in this complete composite kind of way. So really important to note there is hope. Plenty of people have recovered. I would say as the years grow post-COVID, we're moving into a season where Lyme is going to be part of a lot of people's lives, where recovering from it is going to be ordinary. It's just gonna be something that we all do, just kind of a rite of passage that's very common, someone that you know, maybe not all of us will do, but um it's going to touch. And it does currently touch, it's just unidentified, so many different people. So lastly, I just want you to not remain ignorant. Denial is very tempting. Um, but pathogens do grow and they destruct over time. You want to use your time wisely. I would much rather discover Lyme and COS in someone early on before tissue destruction has occurred because we can do more about it. That's really, really important. Okay. It's easy to say that's not me or this is super overwhelming because truly, if you have Lyme, your system is overwhelmed. Um, it's easy to say, you know, like that couldn't happen to me to just like shrug it to the back. But this is why you work with skilled practitioners who see it, who see it regularly, who can identify it, who can help you deal with it. It's so important, okay? Um your body is overwhelmed when you have Lyme there, right? You don't need a DIY approach or denial contributing. You need support, you need support people who understand what's going on. Um, it's really, really important. And it's important not to remain in denial of the fact that like ticks exist. They have a two-year life cycle, okay? They're in all 50 states. Freezes don't kill them. Additionally, climate change is making tick growth and survival more prevalent, predominant. Um, ticks also love high altitude. They can survive there too. So it's it's not that there's like lots of off-limit territory to this, and birds are carrying them around, animals are carrying them around, okay? So they're not just hanging out in these traditional lime endemic areas, though I want to think about those and remember that maybe you don't live in Michigan or Maine or New Hampshire or you know, like Wisconsin. Um, but if you've taken a vacation to those areas, even you could have easily had exposure. So we can't remain ignorant or in denial about these things. Lime and coes left for more time, make more damage, they replicate, they'll be harder to remove later. They absolutely still can be, but more immune system dysregulation will be in place. And you must consider the potential for symptom cascade as more of our world changes, there's more chemicals, there's more pathogens. None of us expected COVID to occur, right? That was a major immune trigger for so many people. Life goes on, there will be more immune triggers for you. And if Lyme is laying dormant or Lyme is slowly progressing, an immune trigger like pregnancy, antibiotic, an acute sickness, a stressor, a divorce, and a loss, death, all those things can trigger your immune system to be very weakened and allow that Lyme infection to come forth. So have hope. We work with countless clients. We love this work. I really, really love this work so much. I love it so much for those who are in pain, but I love it so much more for children because to be able to pull out a lime root is pulling out the most complex and deep root of them all that allows all sorts of other symptoms and conditions and presentations to cascade. And when we pull a lime root out of a child's body, they are able to go develop and grow and live, and they actually get to walk out the rest of their life with immunity against Lyme, with a healthy body. And that is more important, I think, than anything else. Way more important than denial, way more important than the comfort of ignorance is being able to see what is there at the root of complex illness.

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 @HeyHeyElizabethMae. And my cookbook Hey Hey Everyday is available on heyheymae.com and Amazon. Happy healing.