Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome back to Integrative lyme Solutions with Dr. Karl Felt.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: I am so excited about the show that we have ahead of us. We have some phenomenal information that could save lives. You're going to need to tune in to what's going on today.
[00:00:16] Speaker C: The information is jam packed, so don't step away.
Hello.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Thank you so much for joining Integrative lyme Solutions with Dr. Karl Feldt. I am your host, Dr. Michael Karlfeld. I've been in clinical practice since 1987. I've seen pretty much everything under the sun, worked with so many different Lyme patients, and I know what a devastating disease this is. That's why I'm doing this podcast to make sure that you are armed with the information that you need in order to be able to be successful in your struggle with Lyme. We'll be featuring authors, doctors, professors, and also people like yourself that have gone through the journey that you're going through, that have been where you've been and is now on the other side. And they get to tell their victorious story as to how they battle Lyme so that you can implement that in your life as well. Be sure to like us and write a review on whichever platform that you're listening on. What that does is it enables other people to see us more so that they have access to this information as well. So I'm so excited that you're tuning in and get ready for this upcoming show. It is going to be amazing. Well, I'm absolutely honored. I'm always honored when I get to chat with Dr. Paul Anderson. He is somebody that I admire tremendously. And anytime that I want to kind of fact check things or really go back to, is this true? Does this sound right? Then I kind of fall back on the wisdom of Dr. Andersen. So thank you so much for being with me here today.
[00:02:09] Speaker C: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: So Lyme is such a big subject, and it seems to be that more and more people are battling chronic infections out there. And when we do the Umbrella of Lime, we're not just talking about Borrelia. We're talking about kind of a soup of things that creates so many different dysregulations.
Do you mind just kind of sharing a little bit what your view of lime is, what is really taking place and how is that impacting people? And if you don't mind just kind of giving the landscape of what you see so far?
[00:02:50] Speaker C: Yeah, sure.
I think, you know, having dealt with this with patients for a long, long time now, I think there's a Couple of things from the big picture. One is, although many of the players from a, you know, infectious point of view are similar, we're, we're dealing with a generally sicker population than we had 20 or 30 years ago. And so I think that only leads us to more people with the Lyme complex kind of a condition. But also they tend to go more quickly into some pretty bad symptoms and advanced sort of things that may have taken a long time before. So I think when I'm talking to a patient, what I try and start with is we, we have this kind of umbrella and a lot, a lot of times it's easy to would just call it, you know, Lyme, you know, Lyme illness. And that includes many things.
But what I try and kind of take it Back to is one infection that's chronic or 2 or 10, however many, you know, you can collect. Because our bodies are great at that. Once, you know, we're good at warding them off. We have wonderful immune systems. But once a good chronic infection gets in and the immune system gets sort of, you know, misdirected, then others will just sort of, you know, take advantage. And then, you know, we find ourselves with, with a bunch. But what they do is they buy this immune sort of insult that they have. They create a lot of dysfunction that our body initially tries to compensate for, because that's what our body's supposed to do. So one way to think of it is if on one hand you think of maybe you got, you know, a cold or something like that, a virus, but it's self limited. It takes you a few days and you get a fever, you do all the things right, but then you're over it.
That's an acute, self limited infection.
What happens in chronic infections is somewhere along the trail of the normal immune response to the infection, your immune system either over or under calculates. And that might be because there's other infections with it or you know, there's some other thing going on, or maybe you have a real low response initially and you don't realize you have the infection. And so the immune system sort of, you know, lets it go on by.
But the compensations then start rather rapidly. Even in a natural infection, like with a cold, we start to have of compensation from our hormones and we don't think about, you know, infection and hormone right away. But what keeps you having the fever response, but not forever with a cold is a hormone response. So our adrenals get involved and the thyroid gets involved and you know, eventually everybody.
And so in a Chronic infection. Imagine taking that sort of, you know, little computer program we have in the body of a hormonal response to help modulate immunity. Now, the immune system is not doing what it's supposed to. The hormones are reacting instead of responding. So one of the problems that we see with people, and you try and take a holistic look at problems, one of the first thing that goes down with a ship are your hormones. And it could be blood sugar, could be thyroid adrenals, could be even reproductive hormones will get very dysfunctional. And if a lot of people never get those checked, you know, but that's one area that, that sort of. Then once they go, the hormones and the immune system are all out of balance. Now, your body is still trying to compensate. And what happens is your. Your body is set up so that when you have these overwhelming forces that are disregulating, you know, your primary compensatory mechanisms, your body sends signals out to say, we're having some kind of problem. It's not going away. We need to turn the energy down in the body. So there's blocking hormones that get released that go and slow down your mitochondrial rate. There's a lot of, I call it cellular garbage that builds up and that slows the mitochondria down. A whole bunch of things happen. But the. One of the primary symptoms that we see with people is, you know, fatigue. Well, fatigue is all my cells and all their mitochondria rate that they have makes the energy I feel for the most part, well, if I have to turn that down, what I tell patients is it's like you're stuck in first gear and you can't get out. But your body's doing that to protect you because it knows it's sick and it doesn't know what to do with the sickness because it won't go away.
So, you know, now we have some hormones and immune system not so good. But what gets at the core of the.
I believe, you know, beyond the infections and that part, what gets at the core of keeping the person feeling so horrible and sick persistently is that their body's fighting. It knocks the mitochondrial activity down, but it doesn't really have a reset to let it back up. So then that becomes our job as clinicians to clean up these different areas. And what I've, you know, I think, you know, if we think back, let's say 20 plus years ago, every. Every day I do this longer, you know, but let's say 20 or more years ago, we kind of knew, you know, we knew Mitochondria were there, we knew they were a part of the problem, but we really didn't focus on them as much. We didn't really, we didn't really have a lot of great tools, honest speaking.
And now I think we more think of them earlier on as a target. Because if a person is suffering and their quality of life is as horrible as it tends to be, yes, we have to work on these other things that get deranged and yes, we have to maybe work on the infections. But if all of my mitochondria are stuck in first gear, I'll never feel better. And then the other side of the coin there is my immune system requires energy to operate too, from our bone marrow and all of our immune organs. And so if they're down in first gear, they're going to be having, you know, a 25% response to the problem I've got. So, so I think that that's been a big change in the major landscape is we're kind of looking at, yes, we've got all these, you know, areas of the body that we need to get reset, whether it's the gut or the hormones or, you know, obviously a lot of immune things, et cetera. But if we can get the mitochondria to slowly come back online and work more at their, at their potential person feels better, we can deal with, you know, the downstream effects of that and then their immune system actually will work better for whatever other therapies we might want to do.
[00:10:09] Speaker D: Hello, dear listeners, this is Dr. Michael Karlfeldt, your host of integrative Lyme solutions. Today I'm excited to share an exclusive opportunity from the Karlfeld center, where we blend healing power of nature with groundbreaking therapies to combat Lyme disease and its associated challenges. At the Karfeld center, we're not just fighting Lyme, we're revolutionizing the way it's treated with cutting edge therapies like photodynamic therapy, full body ozone IV therapy, silver IVs, brain rebalancing, autonomic response testing, laser energetic detoxification, and more. We aim to eradicate Lyme. Our approach is comprehensive, supporting your body's immune system, detoxification processes, hormonal balance and mitochondrial health, ensuring a holistic path to recovery. Understanding Lyme disease and its impact is complex, which is why we're offering a free 15 minute discovery call with one of our Lyme literate naturopathic doctors. This call is your first step towards understanding how we can personalize your healing journey, focusing on you as a Whole person, not just your symptoms. Our team, led by myself, Dr. Michael Carlfields, is here to guide you through your recovery with the most advanced diagnostic tools, individualized treatment plans, and supportive therapies designed to restore your health and vitality. Whether you're facing Lyme disease head on or seeking preventative strategies, we're committed to your wellness. Take the first step towards reclaiming your health. Visit us at thecarlfolcenter.com or call us at 208-338-8902 to schedule your free discovery call. At the Carl Feld center. We believe in healing naturally, effectively and holistically. Thank you for tuning in into integrative lyme solution with Dr. Karlfeld. Remember, true health is not just the absence of disease. It's achieving the abundance of vitality. Let's discover yours together.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: So as a protective mechanism, and I usually, you know, when I talk to patients, I talk about, you know, like a car, for instance. You don't want to drive a car that's about to fall apart at, you know, 200 miles an hour. You know, you compensate, you slow down, you know, how fast can that car handle to drive, you know, without breaking apart. So we don't always want to just kind of be able to have that energy to go full speed.
So when you're then stuck in that first gear and the body says, kind of put you into that first gear as a self protective mechanism because there's so much stuff going on in the body, how do you, how do you. Because if you then turn on the mitochondria, then you start to kind of accelerate the process. And are there then concerns as you're doing that that you are now putting the body at risk because of all these stressors that's going on in the body?
[00:13:10] Speaker C: Yeah, that's an excellent point.
I think it has to be done in the context of working on some of the basics and we can talk about those. But the idea being, okay, what would be most affected in the body if the mitochondria do start to produce more energy? Well, you're going to have maybe a more reactive immune system for a little while, is going to fight harder, but that can give you symptoms. Certainly your hormones might actually start to work more normally and that, you know, that might need to be balanced, you know, any number of things there. But the other thing is, you know, sort of euphemistically calling it a lot of trash builds up in the cells.
One of the, you know, oldest tenets in naturopathic medicine is making sure that the Moncteries, the way we get rid of junk out of the body, are open before we do anything to the person.
And so that's certainly something, you know, because people sometimes say, well, why. Why would I start to take things that, you know, I might think of as like, detoxifying or, you know, helping to move things along, whether it's physical, something like sauna or, you know, or maybe herbal, things that would help the body, et cetera. And part of the point is, look, once we start to make things move, just the way the cell works is as the mitochondria works better, it. It actually will force more junk out the other side. So we gotta be ready for that. And I think that's why a lot of people. I'll just pick one example, but we'll talk about probably a bunch of them. Sometimes people will do like a NAD iv, right? Which is very. It goes right to the mitochondria. It's like, boom, it's there and they'll feel horrible afterwards. Now, most people don't. They feel energy and everything. But what I've seen is if somebody does that, but then they're unable to deal with the energy that's created and they just get more toxic, then of course, they don't feel very good afterwards.
So I do a lot of groundwork. You know, obviously we don't want to make people wait so long and feel horrible. Just, you know, but. But I always say we're going to step into these mitochondria. You don't go from first gear to, you know, fourth or fifth gear. It's.
We're going to do the groundwork and bump them a little bit. Right.
A lot of chronically ill people have had another experience that people relate to, and that's. They'll. Their thyroid will be low functional, and so someone will treat it and they feel worse. And they wonder why that. What's the same as, like, giving NAD when there's not. You can't. The mitochondria respond to the thyroid. And then if it's a sick body, like you said, you're pressing the accelerator on a motor that doesn't appreciate that, you know. So I think it's always done in steps. And they're. In my clinical experience, they're slower in the beginning because we're putting kind of all these things into place.
And then the way I characterize to patients is you could have 100 people with chronic infectious problems, and all 100 will do it differently. So we're going to do the basics. We're going to move you from step one to step 1.5 and then your body will tell us, are we doing enough here? Too much. Should we reshuffle things? And then once we kind of know how that person responds, then it can go faster. But yeah, you definitely have to have the way out of the body, you know, for toxicity and because most people are not coming to us for help and they've just been sick for a couple weeks, their body's been building up junk for a long time. So sometimes it's, let's get that moving first and then we'll, you know, kind of work our way into these other areas we talked about and then it's, it's not as traumatic.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's the thing is that if we don't have those eliminatory pathways open. Yeah. When we turn on the energy, the toxins that we're trying to get out of the cell to clean up the mitochondria, clean up what's going on inside is just going to recirculate and just put more stress on the body. So. Yeah, that's, yeah, exactly. Now opening up those eliminatory pathways and then with that, then as you're looking at them, kind of turning up the energy a little bit, working on the hormones, balancing out and being adrenal, thyroid, pituitary, sex, steroid hormones and kind of working it that way and then seeing how the body's responding to that and then addressing whatever comes up. So to say.
[00:17:56] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And then, and then once you see how the body responds to kind of the first couple of interventions, you can see maybe I need to go very slow for a bit with this person. Some people I can push things along, you know, more quickly. And also sometimes the, the body's response will say we could, we could handle more areas being dealt with. You know, I, I'm sure you've seen the same thing as I have. A lot of people get diagnosed with Lyme or Lyme complex illness and the first treatments they'll get are, are purely anti infective, which makes sense because it's an infectious disease. But there's not really attention to these other areas. And so a lot of people I've, I mean I, I've had people where they were on, you know, IV antibiotics for two years and they were not getting better. Well, at that point it's not a deficiency of killing things that we have. It's, you know, the rest of the body is having a problem.
And the opposite is true too. Sometimes they have no anti infective treatment, you've got to do something there.
So, yeah, that's what makes it quite a challenge for the patient is the. They don't know what's lying beneath. And you really need a fresh set of eyes from the outside to kind of work on these things.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I, yeah, if you don't mind chatting a little bit more about that, because that's exactly what people do. You know, they, they're diagnosed with some, you know, with, with Lyme or, you know, find out that I have Bartonella, Babesia or whatever it may be and they, they go into. Well, I was just want to annihilate. I want to kill these things and once I've killed them, then I'm going to be all better.
But what I'm hearing from you is that that is not always the case. If you start to go after those and you don't have the energy to be able. The immune system doesn't have the energy to be able to deal with them. And then also you don't have the ability to move the toxins out as you do all this killing process, then essentially you're creating almost more harm than good.
[00:20:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
And certainly you have to balance that. You know, if there's a bad or dangerous infection, it's always good to try and kill it. But with these chronic organisms that hide, you know, and some of them, you know, go into cyst forms or go in the cells or do other things or they sequester in your nervous system, you, you, you often, unless you catch it very, very early, the killing sort of treatments have to be balanced by all of these other things or they, you know, you sort of kind of chase. Chase your tail, basically.
And I see this a lot. And the other thing that you see clinically is human nature. It's not, you know, I've certainly made my share of mistakes as a doctor too, but it's we, we might test for one thing or two, and you find one infection and you blame everything on that which is human nature, and you really try and kill that one thing. And you don't realize that there's, you know, a whole bunch of other things that tagged along with that one. Right. And they don't die the same way that, you know, you're trying to kill that one.
And so that's another just historical thing I'll look at is, okay, if you've had treatment and you know, okay, good. We, you know, the previous provider found this infection, but you've treated it long enough that should be not such an issue now we should really broaden our horizons.
The other thing that will sometimes surprise people, sometimes it's terribly obvious, is the GI tract. Obviously, every treatment we do pretty much affects our GI tract. Well, also we have a GI immune system and a GI nervous system and a microbiome, and they're all very complex.
And we also get a lot of pathogens that hang out in the GI tract too. You know, the longer we've been sick, the more antibiotics we take or whatever.
And sometimes that's an area that goes completely overlooked. You know, it's certainly a limitor too. But so I found people where, you know, either because of the treatment or maybe it was there before they started treatment and they've got potentially parasites or other. A lot of viruses grow in the gut, et cetera. And so if those aren't addressed, and they might be totally different than the thing that you got on your blood test that you said you're sick with, again, they'll live happily through most of the treatments and they'll mess up your microbiome and they mess up your elimination and, you know, all those good things. So I think that, you know this.
I always tell patients I have no problem, you know, killing bugs, but it's a piece of the puzzle. And the puzzle is you. And it's a pretty, you know, complicated puzzle. So if you've been sick longer than a few months, we might have to really, you know, work on everybody. And then what I'll say is, you know, our goal with your immune system is to get it like it used to be, where it didn't let stuff in. You know, I mean, sometimes we can't avoid getting things. But the stronger your immune system is, the less of the opportunistic organs or organisms that follow these bugs in are, because, you know, everybody's exposed to most of the CO infections and they don't get them. But once you get, say Borrelia or one of the big bees, you know, that you mentioned, or once you get a really bad long term viral problem or something, it just knocks the immune system down and the opportunistic guys, your whole family won't get it, you'll get it and it's there and it doesn't want to leave, you know. So I think you often have to take a couple of steps back and say, maybe, maybe we need to pause the killing for right now and rebuild your gut and work on the elimination.
Let's see where your hormonal system is at. Let's see, you know, toxicity and the Other things.
And then let's do some baby steps to get your, you know, your mitochondrial energy working again. Yeah.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: Like you're saying, I mean, you called it a Lyme complex or. It's not just the one bug. It's a complex of things, of dysregulations that takes place in the body. And you need to create, you know, you need to look at the hole in regards to that. And then when your immune system goes down, that means, like you're saying, it opens up for all these other bugs to come in. And so it becomes. And then if you just focus on one of the bugs I kind of talk about, let's say you have a gang in LA and you eliminate that one gang. Well, if you only focus on that one gang, then all of a sudden you have the other gang. Say they get open rule. So at the end of the day, what we want to do is to kind of support the whole. The health of the city in a way.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's an excellent analogy.
And that in my mind, that is how opportunistic infections work. And if you don't keep the gut as another, you know, focus of where we get a lot of infections in that mix, I've also seen where people were doing a pretty good job with the systemic part of it, but the patient just sort of keeps circling back to being sick. And there was so much gut dysfunction that. That's a huge part of it. Yeah.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: And one of the issues, you know, you talked a little bit about the immune system and, you know, as you then bring energy to the immune system, it starts to react stronger. And a lot of the symptoms that we. That a person experiences is because the immune system may be a little bit kind of extra active there. You know, the mast cell activation type of aspect. So how do. How do people kind of navigate that space? Because that is a very common scenario and very challenging. Yeah, it creates pain case, brain fog, anxiety, depression, skin issues, inflamed joints. It does so much when that kicks in.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think that's, you know, for. For the patient and the doctor that that's one of the more frustrating things is when you do start to make some progress. Often initially there is, you know, even more symptom level for the patient. As you say, you can have joint pain and all those things.
And so the first thing is recognition that, you know, this, this is. We are now going to take you from first gear and kind of almost, yes, you don't feel good, but you sort of don't notice any Difference in anything. And this is part of that. The way I'll tell them is this is. Your body will tell us what's wrong. It just doesn't use English as a language. It will tell us by symptoms and. And the parts of you that feel worse, et cetera.
And then that usually is the guide as to, okay, what do we need to support more to help the person through that.
So, for example, it's very common, and almost any type of infectious agent, it doesn't really matter, but when they start to die, it is very common for people to get joint pain or joint swelling even.
And. And as you mentioned, like mast cell problems, there's sort of two pathways. One is more of a pure. You know, you could call it die off, but it's really your cytokines are sort of releasing a lot of triggering to the immune system to kill things, et cetera. And then some of the organisms will leave a lot of residue behind. You know, when they die, they. They literally will poison you a little bit.
So there's that pathway, and then there's people who maybe do, or don't know, they have mast cell sensitivity, where there's a group of cells. We blame mast cells, but it's a little family.
And so that family gets very triggered because mast cells and their cohort are turned on by the same things that you turn on when you kill a bug or do other things. So the worse your infections are under the surface, the worse your mast cell problems are going to be. So sometimes if it's real bad, you know, we'll have to do things.
A lot of. A lot of histamine metabolism support and histamine blockade and all sorts of stuff just to keep a lid on the mast cells so that you, you know, survive your early treatment. Right.
But the. The other side of it is, is that a lot of the worst mast cell patients, once the infections get cleared as much as they can and the immune system's back in balance, the mast cells calm way down. It might not take all your mast cell problems away, but it will bring it way, way down. So that's another.
It's kind of like juggling a lot of balls. It's one of those things you watch for, and if it comes up, then it needs to be addressed. It's a little easier if you already know the person has mast cell activation problems, and then you kind of, you know, prophylactically try and head that off with treatment to get them through it.
We. I think we're a lot better now at doing that. Than we used to be. Also, of course, we know more now, but I think we're better at it.
And the other thing, I think that's, you know, talking about hormonal things.
The first two responders, when we have an, I'm going to call it a normal infection, so not like Lyme, but, you know, not a chronic infection.
The first two hormonal responders are actually thyroid is first because it's triggered by the fever center in your brain to raise your temperature. Well, thyroid is the quickest way to raise your temperature. Raises your basal metabolic rate. And then very quickly after that, triggering, your adrenals will start to slowly put out more and more cortisol.
And the purpose of that is in the beginning, it allows the fever to go through and the cytokines that make us feel achy and all that.
And as the cortisol rises, this is if the adrenals are working, then they reach a point where all this immune stimulation starts to calm down. It's the adrenal output of cortisol that does that.
So if you imagine a person who doesn't have an acute infection, but they have this chronic, you know, fire burning from all these infections, their poor thyroid in their adrenals are always confused. You know, sometimes, sometimes in younger healthy people, the adrenals will stay over functioning. They'll be kicking out tons of cortisol because they don't know what else to do. And they're young and they can do it. Most people who've been sick a long time, they're, they're under function, functioning. And a lot of what triggers are, you know, go back to joint pain and brain fog and mast cell problems.
The more out of fun, out of balance, the thyroid and adrenals are, the worse it is for those mast cells as well. So again, you can take a look back in. This is why we like to baseline test people at the beginning, see where those functions are. And we might not necessarily treat them immediately, but if they start to have symptoms, we know the adrenals probably need a lot of attention here. And that can make it much more comfortable as they go through too. The other thing is the toxic part of that, of whether it's just the chemistry of the illness or literally things dying and leaving behind different cellular poisons and stuff. Sometimes that's a time where what I would call more physical or interventional therapies are very helpful immediately. You know, if somebody calls in their home and, you know, we're, we're not at the clinic or something, if they can get any kind of heat applied to them or do a home hydrotherapy, something like that. Be very useful.
And often that feels good. So they can do it. Or sauna.
From the point of view of things you can do clinically, red and near infrared light is extremely helpful with those reactions.
And then, you know, we, we can kick it up to things we might do in the clinic, like hyperbaric and photodynamic therapy and oxidative therapies and all that sort of thing. And sometimes initially you need some of those just to get you through that because your body's overwhelmed.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: It, It, I mean, it, it sounds. Yeah, so you're talking about, you know, talk a little bit about fever in regards to thyroid being the one that kind of steps in to kind of trigger that, that, that fever response. And obviously the immune system. Yeah. When the fever is as elevated, that means the immune system is activated. So, you know, should a person, when they're dealing with these type of things, I mean, is it feasible then to induce fevers? Meaning, can I do pot baths, you know, saunas? Yeah. Just to kind of trigger that fever response or even if you are uncomfortable with a fever, then to almost support the body in that process to make sure that that process is complete. Like you were talking about how, you know, it kind of raised, you know, brings in the cortisol to kind of raise it to that peak, you know, to complete the process. Can, can that help them to complete the process for that killing?
[00:34:00] Speaker C: Yeah, it, you know, the, the basis in infectious medicine of hyperthermia is, is just that to try and, you know, almost take the body's response to another level.
And when, when you're having. Because your body really only is set up for acute infection, so it has one blueprint. Right. But when you're having that and you're trying to recreate that by, you know, various means, the body releases, when you hit different temperatures, a whole lot of triggering chemicals that literally go tell all the various immune cells there's something we need to go get, and there's things that we need to either kill or clean up.
And so go do that. Well, if you never are developing a fever, it's really hard for the immune system to send those signals out, for one thing. The other thing is if you're always suppressing the fever, you know, because most people have been grown up, you know, that they should take something if they get a fever.
Well, even in, you know, the last 15 years in moderate infectious disease, in the hospital side, the infectious disease doctors, if they have Any control, don't allow people to suppress fevers anymore unless, you know, unless there's seizures or something like that. Well, it's because they realize that that's part of getting a better response to whatever your infectious protocol is.
So, you know, there are things, again, you can have people do at home, certainly, you know, home hydrotherapy where you're wrapping up or immersion, you know, in a hot bath. If, if people are too hot, they can do some cooling treatments that, that actually will have a rebound of, you know, some fever later on, but it'll make them feel better in the moment. So there's a lot of ways to deal with that.
I've, you know, nothing as anybody listening. If you, if you have Lyme complex, you know this, but nothing works for everybody.
But I have a previous relationship with some hospitals outside of the country where we did hyperthermia and we were doing it for cancer and things, but we started to do it in people with chronic infections, especially the Lyme family. And so we would get them kind of strong and ready and then we would give them different types of IVs, you know, before and after their hyperthermia treatment. And in most of the infectious patients, we do whole body hyperthermia. And, you know, as opposed to, I've done some testing internal core temperature with a, with a really good far infrared sauna that has good wattage, good generators. You can get a person's temperature, Fahrenheit, up to about 100 and 101.8 or 9, maybe 102, which is pretty hot fever range. Hyperthermia, we take people to 104 usually, you know, which is, they're usually sedated, et cetera. But what we found is if the groundwork was done and maybe they did need some antibiotics or whatever, but we would also do a lot of natural IV therapy.
A lot of people would have, you know, it's sort of like it didn't make everything magically go away, but they go from eight out of 10 chronic symptoms down to, you know, five or six or four or something. So sometimes external treatments, you know, that you can't really do at home because if you're going to have someone take you to 104Fahrenheit, you need to be monitored, etc. But, you know, sometimes those can be very useful. I was just talking to some doctors, you know, as we do now electronically online about, well, should I send my patient with Lyme for hyperthermia? And it's like, yes, but do the groundwork first. Get Them ready, because it's not magic. It's a piece of the puzzle. But it's certainly, you know, external hyperthermia. Whether you're doing, say, you know, some people will work up to daily far infrared saunas, which are real good, and they, you know, but you gotta work up to it, or you're doing, you know, fever range hyperthermia, they can be really, really wonderful. But it's just like turning on the mitochondria. You gotta be ready for it because you're gonna be getting rid of a lot of, you know, junk on the other side.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: So it sounds to me, you know, you're referring to the groundwork. It sounds to me that that is what we were talking about, right. Where we kind of opening up the eliminatory pathways so you can detoxify, you support. You kind of check the endocrine system or the hormonal system, and then also you start to support the mitochondria a little bit with nutritional support.
So is that what is included in doing the groundwork?
[00:39:08] Speaker C: Yeah, that's the groundwork. And then I always say, at least being ready with your baseline testing to know if we have to do some hormonal support. These are the areas that are the weakest or the most out of BAL balance. Because that. That's a pretty big needle mover once the. Once the immune system starts to work. Yeah, and.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: And when we talk about the mitochondria, you know, what do you do? Obviously, if we support the thyroid, that will increase the mitochondria, you know, adrenals as well. You know, how would an individual. If we start to kind of accelerate the mitochondria a little bit, what does that look like? I mean, you talked about NAD iv, which obviously just, you know, fires up the mitochondria immediately.
But what are some of the common things that you use that you feel has been very beneficial when a person is dealing with these kind of situations?
[00:40:02] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that, you know, similar to the other things, you want to start with the basics for the mitochondria and then build. So, for example, because we brought up nad, NAD is a direct primer to the mitochondria making energy.
But there's a whole lot of other nutritional players that make the mitochondria work. And so it kind of goes back to the analogy of, you know, pressing the accelerator on a car where the motor's about to fall apart. Maybe not a good idea.
The two big baseline things for mitochondria 1 are the supportive nutrients, which you could kind of Categorize into the B complex of vitamins.
CoQ10 is very core.
A lot of people don't realize there's two spots where iron sits, which is why when you're real iron depleted, you feel so tired because there's no oxygen and your mitochondria slow down.
And so getting. And then there's some trace minerals. So getting the basic nutrition going into the person first. So then the mitochondria are kind of ready to accept the stimulation, whether it's thyroid or any of the other things.
The other thing is in people where we may have. Well, everybody has toxicity, but in people who've been sick a long time, alpha lipoic acid is really useful for both supporting mitochondrial function, but also helping with detoxification in the cell. So a lot of times Coq10 comes first because it's part of the respiratory chain. But ALA is a good accessory. So then once those are in with. One little footnote would be if they're very metal toxic, the metals like the mitochondria. And you think of the way mitochondria makes energy is it. It pushes electrons through a chain just like the electricity in your wall does. Well, if I have metals in there that aren't supposed to be there, that kind of can derail, you know, they call it uncoupling and other things.
So if someone's real metal toxic, sometimes, you know, you have to clean the metals out and then work on a mitochondria. But let's say there's not a terribly large amount of metals. Get the basics in, make sure that, you know, there's enough. And I have to put a plug in for another, what I call a hygienic thing. Just what grandma would tell you to do.
In modern tumor biology, they have discovered hydration. And what they found out is if we're dehydrated, cancer spreads faster. Imagine that. Well, it's the same with your mitochondria and getting junk out of your cells. If you're dehydrated all the time and you're sick, you've got all this stuff building up and the fluid can't move through. So hydration goes with your B vitamins and your CoQ10. But then it kind of depends a little on number one, what the person can do, what they have available, what the clinician has available, et cetera. And so there's another. So NAD is directly what feeds the mitochondria.
There's another drug slash product that people use a lot that's become very popular. It's 300 years old, but it's methylene blue.
And so people will say, well, why. When would you pick methylene blue versus, say, nad, you know, for this purpose? Right. Well, the way I look at it is if. If you're giving the B vitamins, there will be some nicotinamide in what you're giving. And nicotinamide does feed nad, so you're indirectly feeding it.
The way I kind of would do it is if somebody comes and this is the same with long Covid, if they're just really fatigued and it's. They're kind of the same symptom picture as a Lyme complex patient. And we know we can safely, like, get the body working a little faster because we've done all the other stuff.
I look at it more like methylene blue is not part of your body and how it works, but it can go in. And instead of being like NAD at the top of the chain, it goes in at the side and kind of forces the chain to run faster.
So I make sure all the nutrients are there. And then I might have the patient take an NAD primer, you know, orally at home, like nicotinamide riboside, for example, and then I may, you know, pull out the heavier equipment to kind of move them off first base and get things going that could be oral or IV methylene blue.
And just like IV NAD hits, you know, right away. IV methylene blue hits right away as well.
And especially.
And a lot of people don't realize that they. One of the biggest places outside of emergency medicine, NAD or methylene blue is you used is in neurosurgery to help your brain mitochondria not, you know, respond so terribly to having your brain operated on.
They will use a lot of it in that. So for people with brain fog, for people with nerve issues, et cetera, chronic pain, I find that's when methylene blue can kind of come in and do things that NAD really can't.
But again, I tell people that the methylene blue is more to get the ball rolling, get you moving, because it's sort of forcing the issue. And then we want the nutrients to kind of keep the ball rolling.
The other nice thing is that what we've discovered with photodynamic therapy is red near infrared light spectrum activates the same part of the respiratory chain that methylene blue does. And so we'll use them together, and it actually works better.
So, for example, clinics that have endolasers where run the IV over different colored light in the vein, you can use the infrared setting with methylene blue and it can be quite synergistic.
In the midst of COVID when people weren't leaving their homes and things like that, we were doing a lot of that and having people order red near infrared pads, you know, the larger ones, and do them over their torso or wrap up in them or whatever. And you know, take the methylene blue orally and it was quite helpful.
So you sort of think of it like methylene blue is like sort of jump starting but it's not part of your original equipment. And so you get NAD support maybe orally methylene blue, whatever way you're getting it. And then as you kind of crawl out of the hole and you're in third gear or something, then usually supporting NAD is enough at that point in but methylene blue can be terrifically helpful the longer you've been sick because you've got chronic brain fog and you've got chronic probably pain and all the other things. So it's a really wonderful use for that particular agent.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I love methylene blue.
And so you brought in then something's called photodynamic therapy in combination with methylene blue.
So with. Yeah, so we've been talking about the mitochondria, how we turn that on. Methylation blue helps with turning on the mitochondria, but in the role of photodynamic therapy, that role shifts a little bit. So then it becomes an additional benefit then of the methylene blue when we also add the light that responds that turns on the same component of methylene blue. So, so do you mind telling me a little bit, what is that photodynamic therapy? How does that impact a chronic infection?
[00:48:19] Speaker C: Yeah, so there's a number of ways it can be used, which is really a nice thing about light therapies. So again, you've got a whole spectrum from things that are external that, you know, someone could do at home, to, you know, higher powered units that we would use in the clinic, to things we might put inside the vein or even inside the body.
And so there's a couple of ways to look at photodynamic therapy. One is just naturally, what does the wavelength do to your cells? Okay, so the red and especially the near infrared end of the spectrum penetrate the deepest into the body. That's why we can use them as external pads. And you know, people that think this is, you know, really woo, woo, they, they did, they've done lots of research with it, but they did hospital research during COVID especially when the earlier variants were there and people are having a lot of lung problems and they would, they had these vests that they would put on that were, you know, red near infrared.
And the people did much better and recovered much better when they, when they had the, the actual red light treatment.
So, so there's, there's that and basically what that does, there's three different ways that a red near infrared turns on cell activation and it's through three different mechanisms. But basically it helps the mitochondria like we talked about, it helps a couple of enzyme systems and it actually helps get rid of junk, it helps with the detoxifying enzymes. So that can be very useful. And so sometimes just the light on its own is, you know, one thing. But then if you use, if you use light as a photo activator for whatever you're putting in the person, each substance for the most part has a wavelength that it has its highest absorb absorption of light. Yeah. So for example in this drugs or natural products, whatever, so methylene blue, it's up there in the red end of the spectrum. So that's kind of what does that. So people say, well, how, how do they actually meet and work together? Well, when the substance like methylene blue and then the light come together, it actually photo activates the molecules.
And so they will, whatever they do in your body, they will do it usually at a, you could say a faster rate or more efficiently, basically.
And I've actually done this with people with very severe acute infections where we were giving them intravenous antibiotics and we photo activated the antibiotics. And I would warn them, you know, tonight might be a rough night, like you're gonna, your fever may go way up and there may be other things, you know, you may feel great right now, but you know, just, just remember what I said. And indeed usually that happens. So it's, it's just a way of matching what's going in the person with the light wavelength that, that activates that. And some things are more activatable than other things. But we do it with natural products.
All of the vitamins have wavelengths and all of the herbal extracts have wavelengths and stuff. So it's a really wonderful tool.
Like you know, kind of during COVID we were forced to work a little differently, differently than we normally did.
And if a person could only have one thing at home, a good red near infrared light pad, you know, that they could cover in their, as much of their body as they can with, would be the one I, you know, I would normally go with because it's going to get through their skin. It's going to get in. It's going to at least get their mitochondria kind of cooking and activating.
But yeah, phototherapy is, you know, it's. It's as old as the sun.
We just have a lot of, you know, modern tools and ways to do it now.
[00:52:41] Speaker B: And that would.
And that kind of has a destructive quality to it. I mean. Yes, it turns on mitochondria. So for the healthy cells, you know, it's extremely beneficial. It supports the function. But it also has that display destructive quality where it supports the killing of viruses, killing of pathogens. So you add that layer when you bring in something like photodynamic.
[00:53:11] Speaker C: Yeah, especially so for.
We started with methylene blue, which is more at the red end of the spectrum.
The ultraviolet end has a lot of direct killing activity, which is why a lot of the original blood irradiation devices and things that predated what we use now, they were all in the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. And that's because we've known forever and ever that UV light is very antimicrobial, et cetera.
And we still use it that way. Yeah.
So anything where you can actually get to the blood, you know, don't have to go through the skin. Ultraviolet works really well for.
[00:53:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And then. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. I know both you and I, we use. We love photodynamic therapy.
[00:54:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:08] Speaker B: Are there any. Just because as a wrap up. Are there. What are some of the kind of main strategies or one of these tools that are out there in clinics that people you see really get benefit from? You know, we mentioned the methylene blue photodynamic.
What are some of the other things that really seems to move the needle? You know, in addition to also hyperthermia that we talked about.
[00:54:37] Speaker C: I think especially people have been sick quite a long time.
The.
The group of oxidative therapies really for sicker folks. Ozone, that ozone family is probably the most useful.
And that could be, you know, single pass, like done forever. It could be, you know, bigger 10 pass, which you have to be a little careful because you kill too much.
Or. Or the more modern, you know, extra corporeal, like the IBU systems where there's an actual filtration component. You know, I really feel like beyond the things we've talked about, ultraviolet, you know, blood treatment and then ozone are probably the two biggest tools to move the needle. And if you think about them, you know, there's really nothing added there. You're either irradiating the blood as it goes through a closed system or you're using oxygen, you know, so it's, it's two of the most elegant, simple things. And, and I, I think if, if I could only pick, you know, one of all is it. We have many things we can do. I, I would probably start with ozone, you know, and then all the basic things we talked about, really, I think ozone just works on a lot of levels. And then kind of like we talked about with methylene blue, you should reach a point where then you can graduate to, you know, something else.
[00:56:10] Speaker B: Yeah, so it seems. I mean, here you have the basics. You have oxygen, you get light. We talked about water. Yeah. So it's just foundational components.
Well, Dr. Anderson, it's always such a pleasure and I always appreciate what, what you do in the world to really bring knowledge and understanding for a lot of providers like myself and for all the training and education that you provide and for all the research and all the books that you've written. So thank you so much for spending some time with me and for everything that you do.
[00:56:48] Speaker C: Thank you so much. It was fun.
[00:56:57] Speaker A: The information this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not designed to diagnose or treat any disease. I hope this podcast impacted you as it did me. Please subscribe so that you can be notified when new episodes are released. There are some excellent shows coming up that you do not want to miss. If you are enjoying these podcasts, please take a moment to write a review. And please don't keep this information to yourself. Share them with your family and friends. You never know what piece of information that will transform their lives. For past episodes and powerful information on how to conquer lyme, go to integrativelimesolutions.com and an additional powerful resource, limestream.com for lime support and group discussions. Join Lime Conquerors Mentoring Lime warriors on Facebook. If you'd like to know more about the cutting edge integr of Lyme therapies MyCenter offers, please visit thecarlfeldcenter.com thank you for spending this time with us and I hope to see you at our next episode of Integrative lyme Solutions with Dr. Karl Feldt.
