[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome back to Integrative Lyme Solutions with Doctor Karl felt.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: I am so excited about the show.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: That we have ahead of us. We have some phenomenal information that could save lives. I am Doctor Michael Karlfeld, and with me, I have my co host, Tanya Hobo.
You're gonna need to tune in to.
[00:00:21] Speaker C: What'S going on today.
[00:00:23] Speaker D: The information is jam packed, so.
[00:00:27] Speaker C: Yeah, don't step away.
[00:00:29] Speaker E: So excited. Let's go ahead and get this started.
Hey, listeners, this is Tanya, the co host of Integrative Lyme Solutions with Doctor Carl Felt. We've got some exciting news to share with you over the next few weeks, you will notice some changes, and let me just say, starting May 1 1st, be sure to go over and follow me on my very own brand new podcast, Lyme and beyond with Tanya. Also, be sure to stay here and follow your favorite Doctor.
[00:01:05] Speaker C: K well, Doctor Tom Moorcroft, it's such a pleasure to have you on this kind of follow up episode of what we did last week. Last week was phenomenal. We dove deep into your story and what you've learned and what took you to kind of that 70% better. And you, you started as a. As a medical doctor and then, you know, Lyme patient, and now you are somebody that specializes in Lyme. And I've helped, you know, countless of people through their journey, and you educate doctors and, you know, in the secrets and what you do to be able to help people. So I'm so excited to have you back again for this episode.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Thanks so much. I'm excited. Yeah, this is so great to be talking about stuff that's so important for people and just. Yeah, really excited for part two here.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Well, and what's so cool with you? And I want people to really know this, and I know you well. You're a man. You have a beautiful heart, great passion, and you are somebody that wants to be there and be there and help a person through whatever it is that they. They're struggling with, you know, with great love, great compassion, great patience, but still, don't let, you know, don't let people kind of do crap to themselves, you know, meaning that they, you know, sometimes a person needs to be told that whatever direction you're going is not a good direction. And sometimes that's a hard truth, but it's a real important truth. So I want people to really know what an amazing individual you are. And all the years that I've known you, I've always been impressed. So this is always truly a pleasure.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, thank you. It's interesting as you were talking about that, I was writing down two things, and one was, yeah, it's like one of my mentors always said, our job is to ask the hard questions and to stand up for what's right. And it's like, so really, it's about helping people not play small, not underestimate their own healing power, and to really share that love.
But maybe even the more powerful thing is, as you were talking, I was like, there's that moment of a little bit of uncomfortable when you're saying all those things about me. I'm like, wait, no, those actually are true.
Take that breath in and really just take a moment and receive it. And I would really encourage people to do that. Like, we are all amazing human beings and no one's better than another. And I would also suggest that so many of the people that I know are playing a little bit small. And when someone says something. Oh, don't. No, no, no.
When someone says something nice about you, just take that breath in, breathe it right in your heart, and then say, you know, and then, and then say, thank you. And so, thank you so much, Michael. That really was touching. And I know those things are all true, but so many of us are. It's taken me years and years, maybe decades, many decades, to be able to go even to say, wow, thank you so much for that. Because I really feel it, not just like, the knee jerk. Thank you. And, I mean, it's crazy. This is the stuff that the work you and I do teaches us, right? I mean, the body heals in so many amazing ways, and it's so nice to be a part of that and to also just, it's weird to feel how powerful we're, you know, it's like, it's so funny. I remember, like, Marianne Williamson has this amazing quote about, you know, and I paraphrase the crap out of it sometimes, but it's essentially, it's, it's our light, our dark, not our darkness that we fear the most. And she goes on to talk about, like, who are we not to be gorgeous and successful and all these other things, and we're children of God, yada, yada. But the bottom line is, it is. And it's so interesting that you started that way because it's like, I just feel that you get the passion going. It's like, I know we're going to be talking about nuts and bolts and stuff like that, but it's like, this is the thing when you deal, and even as family members or patients, when you have Lyme disease or you have cancer or you have mold exposure. You have many other things. Just life.
What is it? The thing that rejuvenates our energy and allows us to be able to actually show up. And part of it is just recognizing that that fire is burning in us. And we don't actually need to do anything to keep it going other than to acknowledge it. How amazing that love inside of us is. Thank you for starting that way. Made my day.
[00:05:55] Speaker C: Well, I mean, it's how I feel. It's true. And you're absolutely right. Is that.
I mean, I know you're right, and you don't need my acknowledgement to know that you're right. But the power, what most people fear, and it's the same with myself. And you always fear your own power. And because you. It's. It's like you feel that it's beyond who you are and you try to control it. Cause it's safer to control it. And you wanna walk that. That kind of safe pathway, rather than coming out with full power and trusting that with that full power, you know you're gonna be safe. Yeah. Cause all of us wanna feel safe, and we don't feel safe in our. In our true. In our true power. So. So that's why it's important to let go of safety and just rest in that power that we have.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: It's so interesting. I love the word safety because so many people, at least, who are chronically ill, have heard about limbic retraining and vagus nerve stuff. And so many people were talking about polyvagal theory, which is the understanding that we have a sympathetic and a parasympathetic nervous system that are responsible for sympathetic as fight or flight. Parasympathetic is rest and rejuvenate.
You know, and so. But then we. There's this. Both of these kind of situations, especially fight or flight, are sort of predicated upon the fact that we think we can win. So I like saber toothed tigers. I don't know why. It's just been a lifelong thing. But if you're hanging out in the campfire back in the day, saber toothed tiger shows up, you either stay and fight because you think you can win, or you flight, you run the heck away. But inherent is that you think you can get away. And in modern days, we have an example of this is like, if you have a cat that's outside playing, you know, with a. Chasing a chipmunk or a mouse, they're not going to fight because they're just. They're not going to win. So they run away, you know, but what if they get caught and they can no longer win? They can no longer run away. The first thing they do is they play dead. So they freeze, and the cat gets bored, spits them out. And then they wait a second and they scamper off, and the cat's like, oh, well, you know, but in humans, what this is is like, you know, like, in all this talk about passion and healing and the heart and all this stuff, you see, I get very, like, alive and vibrant. My voice goes up. Well, what happens when? Because that's because I feel comfortable having this conversation. I feel safe in my environment. But what if, like, I. What if I didn't feel safe, you know? And think about the pandemic. It's a great example, because most people did it. They isolated, right? They made us. But when we isolated, what happens? Well, people start to do this. They start to pull away, and their voice goes down. They look at the ground rather than up at you, and their body language goes down, and you know it. All of this just, again, going back to the immune system suppresses the immune system, and they're doing that as a protective mechanism, but forced isolation can lead to that and the lack and going out and not being isolated. And granted, if you're in the middle of something where you need to not be exposed to things, you can still interact with other people. You don't have to stay isolated. Although Zoom is wonderful, it's not the most engaging thing all the time, but it's like, that's where you need to engage and open up, because that gets you out. And so going back to safety, though, I think this is a key to healing from anything, especially Lyme disease and associated things. We understand that when you feed, when you're in a freeze state, you don't feel safe. So everybody's like, well, you got to feel safe. And so how do I do that? Well, the opposite of that is what they call dorsal vagal. And all this. All this fancy crap with the vagus nerve, but we want to get the ventral vagus. So the dorsal vagus goes below the diaphragm, more to your gut, and the ventral vagus goes more to your heart. So what do we do? Oh, we got to open our heart. We can vocalize. There's safe and sound protocols. How do you feel safe? Well, you start singing by yourself in the shower, go to public speaking, like, whatever it is. Most people, that's the number one fear of anyone, is public speaking of. Most people say, you're like, okay, that's not a good one. But the idea is you got to use your voice and you got to open. And you notice every time I say that, I'm kind of like, open your chest. But not everybody can do that. Right? And so when you're trying to heal, one thing I don't like is the term safety, because here you go. I know I'm safe. Duh. It's safe to heal from Lyme, right? Obviously, it's safe to not be sick, but. So then we have to think what's going on. Well, the safety we're talking about is that reflex protective mechanism of your ancient reptilian nervous system that's just going, saber toothed tiger going to eat me or not. I want to stay alive. And staying alive to pass in your genes does not mean you feel good. It just means that you're alive to procreate. So what ends up happening is, when you look into the nervous system and you look at that reptilian brain, what it does is it if you change the word safety to familiarity, that basic keep you alive nervous system will say, hey, if it's familiar, it's safe. If it's unfamiliar, it may be unsafe, and I don't like that. So if we take the extreme opposite end, I've seen a lot of people where we treat them, and they get well really fast. They've been sick for four years. In three months, they're 90% better.
I would say all but one person I've ever met who's done that within six months is back to ground zero or worse. And I think, what's happened? They crash, and then everybody. Oh. Then the other people are like, oh, it's all. See, it's all in your head.
And I'm like, no, no, no. What I think happened here and Lyme can be in your brain, and there's an important caveat about that. But what I think happens is we've gone from familiar way over here to way to unfamiliar, which is healed. So your brain goes, oh, Louie, I'm so much better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And your nervous system, at the deepest level is like, oh, my God, I'm about to die. And it goes, wha bam. Like in so many people that I've worked with. And this happened to me personally for a while until I was able to understand it better, was it would almost feel like you're on a bungee cord, and you're almost there. You're almost there. And it just went. Pulls you back, and it smashes you to cement wall.
And they're like, what's going on? And I go, well, we went too fast, so you actually got better too fast. And when you look at what happens, in order to heal, you need to feel safety, which is familiarity. Right.
But then you also have to do this thing called is the body needs a hormesis, right. There's this thing called hormetic stress. And essentially in pseudo English that means if you're exposed to a toxic insult for the right amount of time or duration, that's the same thing. Time or intensity.
So it's just long enough and just high and just intense enough, it'll stimulate healing. It's like going to the gym and I think you've heard me talk about this before, but it's like, yeah, like if I'm working out at the gym, most people know that you need to take a break. If you're training for a marathon, you have hard days, you have recovery days, you have complete rest days, the same for healing. And so what I need to do, though, is if I do nothing and I stay stuck in my comfort zone in my familiar state and I try nothing uncomfortable, you can't. It's not physiologically possible to heal.
But when I went and looked and what is that proper amount of stress? Just enough to get you healing but not beat you up, not go way over the top. And it's only like 20%. There's something like 1500 articles that say the optimal stress is 20% to 30% above your baseline, right. So an example is like, I don't know, I always use a weird example, so I'll come up with a different one if you want to. Because I always talk about, like, margins on sneakers for some reason. But like, let's say, let's say you want to do, you're doing push ups, right? And you're able to do ten push ups, right? And you want to, you know, how, what is 20% to 30% more? Well, there's twelve to 13 push ups. And if you're already able to do ten, doing twelve is probably not that far off. It might be pushing it, but then you go back to ten for another week and then you go to 20, so the difference isn't that much. Or if you like to walk, I mean, if you walk a half a mile and you want to walk 20% more, that's like six tenths of a mile. It's really not that much if you're already able to walk a half. And so that's where I think about it. It's a minimal amount, but you have to be a little uncomfortable. And when you get a little uncomfortable and then you go back, and then you go a little uncomfortable and you go back, that will help you move your set point. So some people are afraid to move at all, and other people move way too much and their nervous system freaks out. So that's when I hear about safety. It is. It's like there's that balance point, but you don't have to go crazy. And again, it could be, when we talked about in episode one, it could be as simple as just a little breathing before you go to bed. That could be pushing it enough for you. That could be your 20%. Because the thing is, it's not just physical. If you're pushing yourself mentally and emotionally into a zone that's uncomfortable, just do a little bit and then relax. Just do a little. So maybe it is. It's writing down three wins for one day might be. Whoa, that's a lot. That might be all you need to do. You don't have to go out and go to the gym that day. Maybe, but don't sell yourself short.
[00:16:15] Speaker D: Hello, dared listeners. This is Doctor Michael Karlfeldt, your host of Integrative lime 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 Karlfeld 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 IV's, 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 minutes 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, Doctor Michael Karlfilz, 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
[email protected] or call us at 208-33-8902 to schedule your free discovery, call at the Karfeld center. We believe in healing naturally, effectively, and holistically. Thank you for tuning in into integrative Lyme solution with Doctor Karlfeld. Remember, true health is not just the absence of disease. It's achieving the abundance of vitality. Let's discover yours together.
[00:18:16] Speaker C: There's such a powerful point because a lot of people, you know, because you have kind of the Lyme aspect, where they have Lyme, and then you do all these different therapies, they feel so much better, and then it goes back again. So what you're saying is that it could be that the nervous system is not just handling, it's so unfamiliar to be well, that they rather kind of move back to what is familiar. And it may not be that, it is just because all these infections just took hold. And now I'm bad again. It's more of a nervous system response and the importance of then addressing the nervous system in addition to maybe some pathogen or whatever it is that you're looking at.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting, too, Michael. Like, I have a friend who's world renowned expert in mast cell activation syndrome. Number one thing, they do work on the nervous system.
I mean, literally, it's step one. And I'm not here to say that that's the only thing to do or that you can't do the other things at the same time, but I'm just saying that, like, one of the things that I want to, you know, that I think is so important is in order to understand that you're safe, you have to understand facial expression, gestures, and vocal intonation.
So if you can't do that, you can't understand, you physiologically cannot understand that you're safe.
So what does Lyme disease do? Well, if you have neurologic Lyme, which could be direct, you know, bacteria in your brain and. Or the nerve, which is much more common, would be, number two, inflammation from Lyme that's adversely affecting your brain, but you still don't have the spirochetes, and they're not, like, eating your holes in your brain, but they're affecting the way the brain works.
It very commonly will affect parts of your brain that are responsible for understanding gesture intonation and facial expression. So if you can't do that because of Lyme, it's like the double whammy. But what's beautiful about that is maybe you're doing Lyme treatment, and it's adversely affected your brain in one way, and that's healing. But now you're like, well, why is that good? Because you have an access point if you are also doing some of this limbic retraining type of things. And granted, theres a ton of programs out there that are great, but really, all it is is getting you to breathe in and feel your body and have some gratitude. Thats the starting point. And be comfortable being in your body rather than out of your body. And you can do that with breathing into your chest. Its free, its easy. It doesnt take any time. We talked about that in episode one. But when you do that, that's allowing you to have an access point to healing what Lyme is messed up. So rather than wait for Lyme to be gone and then fix your nervous system, start to fix your nervous system and allow your nervous system to do what it does best, which is fight off Lyme disease.
So it's kind of like empowering ourselves beyond just the medicine.
And again, like I said, I needed medicine multiple different times in the court, and I was on years of medicine, but the reason my body could accept it and could accept the change was because I was doing the other work first, and then I was doing it concurrently. And so I think that that's really the powerful point, is Lyme might mess up your brain and cause the problem, but you can actually, you have powers that are beyond just Lyme disease that can help move it out and get your body ready to go to that next step.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: I want to kind of bring back what, what you're mentioning. But in the prior episode, you were talking about yoga, and here you kind of gradually stepped, you know, you started just a few minutes being able to do yoga poses, or maybe it was a minute, I can't remember. But then the rest of the time, you were just doing breathing. And then over time, you get better and better. And just that, seemingly, from what I understand, you get like 70% better. Just kind of doing that type of work, working on your nervous system, working on your breathing. And so it just kind of highlights exactly what you're saying is that most of us, we jump on, you know, think, well, you gotta do japanese knot weed. You gotta do, you know, all cat's claw, whatever it may be, and then not look at the nervous system regulation.
Another point you made in the prior episode was in regards to sleeping and how you've been able to down regulate the nervous system. And here we have something that's very common mast cell activation, which is when the immune system is just think it's under attack the whole time and just spewing out cytokines all over the place here. By then, calming down the nervous system, you're then also calming down, obviously, the way that the immune systems are functioning. And now you're less inflamed, less you're able to handle treatment better, your nervous system doing better, think better, and all of these kind of things.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's so interesting, too, because I'm not saying that I did yoga and that fixed everything, but what I'm saying is the way I was taught yoga taught me to do all these other things that I didn't know I was doing. So, because what I learned was yoga was movement on breath. And if you couldn't breathe fully, no matter how crazy the pretzel you were in, you were in the wrong position. You can only. And I mean, I did ashtanga yoga, which is well known for being insane, like, where power yoga came from, but I couldn't do it forever. But my teacher, because it was about the breath, the breathing will bring. Well, so much of the way that people work with trauma. Trauma is a real or perceived threat to one's life or ability to persist on this planet.
And it's real. When I say real or perceived, it means someone really is about to harm you, or you thought you were about to be harmed. Your body processes it the same way, which is one of the reasons I say love. Have you loved your lyme? Because I don't want it to have any additional power. I don't want it to be traumatizing you because it's a real or perceived threat. And in that case, it's real. But don't keep living in that place because it's just additive. So when I look at it that way, I was learning so much of the trauma work that people do is bringing people back into their body so they're less dissociated and they're more comfortable in their body. What's the easiest way to do that now? What is one of the other? And I learned this accidentally, but I learned to get really slow with my breathing, with this yoga practice over time.
But why did I say do the five and a half? Five and a half. And get your optimal heart rate variability of five and a half to six breaths per minute. What else does that do when you talk about mass cell activation and mold and lyme, all these concurrent, environmentally acquired things? Well, and sleep. Right. So, one, if we can calm our nervous system down, especially before bed, with some gratitude and some breathing, we get more parasympathetic. We get out of fight or flight and freeze or a little more relaxed and rejuvenate. Now we start to sleep deeper. Well, why do we care about that? Well, a lot of, you know, a lot of people like, have brain fog and fatigue. Well, sleep helps with fatigue and brain fog. When does our brain detoxify? Well, 70% to 90% of your brain detoxification happens while you're sleeping.
And its primarily deep sleep. How do you get into deep sleep? You chill out. So thats good. We start there. Now, what do we usually do? And if you look at Buteyko breathing, Doctor Buteyko found that people chronically overbreathe.
Hes found out that we could cure anxiety, we could cure asthma in a lot of people if we just slowed down their breathing, got them a little more tolerant of carbon dioxide. Well, if you're usually breathing 15 to 20 times a minute or more, which is what most people I see are doing, and now I've got you practicing six breaths per minute once or twice a day.
The more you practice that, the more that becomes your natural state. So you're going to breathe less and less. Well, when you breathe less oxygen or more less times per minute, what do you do? You allow your carbon dioxide levels to rise. Why do I care about that? Well, we breathe based on carbon dioxide tolerance, not on oxygen being low. It's high CO2. So if we can allow ourselves to get a little more tolerant, it does a few amazing things. One is it's an, it's nature's anti anxiety medicine. So if you have anxiety, slow your breathing down and increase your carbon dioxide till you feel it. You just breathe a little slower, you feel a little weird, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's like, I took a valium, but I didn't take a valium. I can think clearly and I feel relaxed, but it calms you down. It also vasodilates, which is a fancy way of saying the blood vessels open up, the lymphatic channels open up, so we get better circulation to the small blood vessels in our fingers and our toes. If you have, like, raynauds or you get cold really easily, you can actually, like, improve circulation there. What's really nice about that is there's really small blood vessels in places like your heart and all of your organs, for that matter, and your brain. So if you want your heart and your brain to work a little better, breathe a little slower, which is really cool, because now we go, oh, what does carbon dioxide do? It also opens up your sinuses. And if you breathe slower and you increase your carbon dioxide, your peri nasal sinuses, all the sinuses in your face will start to create nitric oxide, which also will then further vasodilate. If we're talking about our mold people, they have a lot of mold colonizing your nose. And we know in our kids with autoimmune encephalitis from infections, we usually call it pans or pandas, but it's pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric syndrome, at least if strep is triggering it. One of the most common problems is recurrent infections in the nose and the throat. And then stuff goes back up your nerve of smell along the nasal lymphatics into your brain and causes autoimmune problems in your brain. And you can see this in children and adults. Well, what is the drainage pathway out of the brain? Nasal lymphatics, 20% to 30%. So if you want your brain to detoxify better, you need to sleep better, and you need to open up your nose. And if you want to minimize your risk of, like, autoimmune encephalitis from community acquired pathogens and from mold, open your nose. If you want to calm down your nervous system so your mast cells calm down, open up your nose. How do you do this? Well, there's a lot of complicated ways, or you could just slow your breathing down and do six times a minute.
So it's really, it's interesting how nature put this whole pathway together, that if I calm my nervous system, it works in conjunction, but it's going to improve your brain detoxification. It's going to improve your sleep. It's going to improve your breathing. Can't breathe through your nose like that. How do you open it? Breathe through your nose. How do you breathe through your nose? Slow your respiratory rate down to start with, and it'll open. I mean, it's glorious. I mean, mother nature, God, whatever the heck you want to call the source of life in the universe is really intelligent. And if we listen, we have these clues to healing, and. And it's interesting how the stuff that calms your nervous system is the same stuff that heals you from all these other things. And, you know, it's just. It's just beautiful. It comes together, and all you have to do is start by slowing your breathing down.
[00:30:28] Speaker C: Yeah. And carbon dioxide is like the anti aging molecule. You know, like, for for skin regeneration, for tissue regeneration, it opens up, you know, when. When your carbon dioxide is not high enough in the bloodstream, oxygen can't enter into the cell, into the tissue, you know, so it's a powerful power signaling mechanism. So if we think we breathe fast and we just kind of hyperload with oxygen, then we just got a bunch of oxygen that is not able to go into tissue. Yeah. So, you know, so that. This is huge.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: What.
[00:31:03] Speaker C: What I really wanted to kind of bring and really highlight with, with our discussion, because you, you're somebody that. That, you know, teaches the doctors, so to say, I mean, you. You have training for them to help them to better take care of Lyme patients out there.
What are some of the things that you feel is lacking out there among the doctors, or that could be improved, I should say not lacking, but that could be improved in the care of Lyme patients from the doctor's point of view?
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a great question, because part of it is recognition that Lyme is a thing. I mean, it's funny, as you're asking the question going, well, I have our small group of functional medicine practitioners who are much more open to this, but overall, I think it's the people understanding that there is a possibility of cure and there is a possibility of chronicity. I mean, we've talked about that a little bit, so both options are on the table. So not everybody who gets Lyme is going to be sick forever, but a good chunk of them may be, and we should. The best thing is early diagnosis and early treatment. And if I look at the conventional model, my biggest challenge is they all want to have an erythema ryegrance, bullseye rash, and a positive blood test, or they don't say it's Lyme. So if you're in a Lyme endemic area, an area where there's a lot of Lyme, like the northeast and much of the eastern seaboard and the midwest, if it looks like lime and smells like lime, it's Lyme. Don't test, just treat them. I mean, it is a clinical diagnosis supported by lab data up to date. Says this, Harrison's textbook Internal Medicine, and if you say it, so treat it. And in Connecticut, I did this in my residency, and I was trying to be a bit of an ass to everybody because they just weren't open to it. And I said I got this bright lime green background that I was going to use in my PowerPoint on this whole one whole side of the wall was like just the screen and it was in the dark. So everybody's like, brain was in line, you know, but it was like, I went down and I went to our lab and I said, what do we're told that the screen, we usually do a two tiered screening test. We do an Eliza antibody screen followed by, or some variation on an antibody screen, and then a western blot to confirm if it's positive or borderline. The problem is, when I went down and I looked at what we had, and our hospital had data sheets from Quest because that's where they sent it, it should have been a western blot was the screen, and the antibody test was a confirmatory test.
But the testing is just terrible. And when you look at, if you order it too soon or too late, it's not accurate, and then if you order it in the right timeframe, which is probably three to four weeks after tick bite, and for the next handful of four, five, six weeks afterwards, we found that when you look at all the, you know, when they do a meta analysis, they look at all the good papers out there, figure out, they figured that it's about 56% sensitive and 99% to 100% specifically. So people, like people, spend their whole careers not knowing what those two words mean.
Essentially, if we boil it down, it means that you're going to miss 44% of true positives. In other words, if you test 200 people who have Lyme disease, you're going to miss 88 of them with that testing strategy, then I also looked and I said, well, if your pretest probability is over 80%, your risk of a false negative is through the ceiling, and if your pretest probability is below 20%, your risk of a false positive is super high as well. So it's for those in between things. But I'm like, well, what does that really mean? So if I'm a practitioner in the northeast of America and I think Lyme disease, I'm already above 80% pretest probability. It's just like, let's just cut to the chase. If you think it's probably that, so you should probably be making a clinical diagnosis and treating. But we also know with that testing strategy, it just doesn't cut it. So if your person has it, maybe you need to look a little more deeply.
And then the other part about the conventional thing and acute Lyme disease that drives me insane is the CDC says about 70% of people get the erythema migrans rash.
If you look in the medical literature, across all the papers, it's between 40% to 60%. So I just call it 50%. It's an average, but it's still well below 70%. Even if it's 60%, that's a big 10% difference. And then I go, okay, well, if we call it, for sake of argument, 50 50, 50% of people get the erythema migraine. That's 50% don't. Then I go, okay, what is an erythema migrans rash? Everybody's like, it's a bullseye. And I go, no, no, no. That's not what it is.
Of all the true positive erythema migrans rashes, only 20 to some papers say 30%, so call it 30%. Are bullseyes having concentric rings of red with clearing? Red with clearing. So it's red and skin. Red and skin. That's only about 30% of the 50%.
[00:36:44] Speaker C: So now we're looking at 15%.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: You got it?
[00:36:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: And now. So you go, okay, what are the other rashes? Well, you could have a single red ring. You could have a purplish red blotch. You could have multiples of any of those. But a lot of the rashes look like bruises, and so a lot of people missed those. And so if we could do a public service announcement, have your doctor look up what an erythema migrans rash is, because it's so interesting when I do, I actually have some videos up. I did a free public training at the beginning of the month to just go over everything for people. And it's like, I just always put up this little thing, and I'm like, look, that's the bullseye rash. All of these other ones are physician confirmed. Biopsy proven rashes with Lyme spirochetes in them. None of them look like a bullseye. And some people get rings all over their body. I mean, it's crazy. Or blotches. And you're like, what are those? So you just have to be aware of that. So I think from the conventional perspective, we need early diagnosis and treatment, and then the question and identification of the rash. I guess the other thing from everybody's perspective is, do you treat a tick bite? And there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into this. I do, like, entire modules on this. I have a lot of blog posts and videos on this. But if you're going to get bit by the doxycycline, 200 milligrams once is one of the most flawed studies I've ever read.
And the problem is they use the erythema migrans rash. And I'm just going, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they knew how to diagnose an EM rash properly and not just a bullseye. But the problem is they use it as a surrogate for Lyme, and they use the absence of the rash to prove that they prevented Lyme.
The problem is only half of the people, maybe even 60%, as many as 60%, get that. So that's not a validated surrogate for Lyme. That's not it. That's when it's positive and present, I should say, then that's proof positive you have Lyme. But when it's absent, it doesn't mean you don't have it. And so they had people in the study who actually got Lyme that didn't have a rash, and then they had people that they treated with a single double dose of doxycycline, 200 milligrams, who developed seronegative Lyme disease, meaning blood test negative. So what did we find? We might prevent the rash in some people, but they would still get Lyme, and we might actually not do anything. So it's like you could blunt or lead the sere negative line where you blunted the antibody response. So two of the best indicators we have that you definitely have it, we basically erased those and made it harder to treat, to identify. So I'm typically. And I said, okay, what else do we have in the evidence? What should we do? Well, we have a whole bunch of prophylactic treatment studies in humans. Well, by a whole bunch, I mean like three or four, none of which are very good.
So then we have mouse models, and we know that if we treat for anything less than ten days, we do not prevent Lyme or another tick borne infection that comes from the same tick called anaplasmosis. But what we do know is if a mouse gets infected with Lyme disease or Lyme disease and anaplasmosis together, if we give them a 19 day long acting doxycycline, so essentially they inject them, but it lasts for 19 days, it's 100% effective.
The closest thing we would say is, why don't we do 20 days of prophylactic treatment based on pretty crappy evidence, but it's the best we've got in humans. We usually err on the side of 21 days because for whatever reason, we like prescribing medicines in weeks, so we get 21 rather than 20.
Some people even do six weeks. Based on that study, I typically feel it's okay.
Obviously, you got to talk to your doctor to make sure you don't have a reason not to use the medicine. But if you're in a high risk area, I typically say, go over the risks and benefits of your doctor. But my niece had been on minocycline 100 milligrams twice a day for like, five or six years for acne. Nobody ever told her to take it. Probiotic. When she finally listened and did, her acne cleared up almost all the way and she stopped the minocycline. I'm like, okay, so we can use it for acne for years and it's fine, but we don't want to prevent Lyme disease. I'm like, that's crazy.
I'm not saying that everyone who gets bitten by a tick deserves prophylaxis, but I think everyone who gets bit by a tick deserves to have the conversation. The studies I just talked about and the recommendation that I generally give people I just talked about is for deer tick bites in a Lyme endemic area, and dog ticks and Lone Star ticks carry other infections. It's a completely different conversation. Um, but you know, that I have, like, that's why we train other doctors, because it's not like we can just go on the Internet and tell everybody what to do, and it's just a blanket statement that works, which is why we need to train more doctors to think the way people like you and I do. But they're kind of like, I think the big things is understanding testing, early diagnosis and treat. Well, early diagnosis and treatment. So you have to understand testing, you have to understand what a rash is and understand what conversation to have about prophylaxis. So. And if any of the docs out there are interested, I mean, I have so many free things on our YouTube channel and on our website that they can just. They're out there for the public and for practitioners. And obviously, what we do in the practitioner training is much more in depth, so I just think that those are important. And when we talk about chronic Lyme disease and stuff, that's a. There's a whole nother slew of things to look at, but that's a good starting point.
[00:42:56] Speaker C: And do you mind just sharing your website? I mean, where people can go for more information?
[00:43:03] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
It's simple. It's. Originsofhealth.com is our main website, and that's the same place we are on YouTube. It's just origins of health. And then we're getting some more information, including my podcast is out on YouTube and all the other things, but a lot of
[email protected]. Dot so. But, yeah, we try. My big goal right now, actually, is in addition to the practitioner training, which for people who want to specialize or at least see a lot, it's a year long mentorship. It's definitely the way to go because it's like, we can teach you all these little parts, but it's like, what do you do when you're actually out there seeing patients? And that's the mentorship is really the part that I had to try. I was very fortunate. I had two men, and it really just helped me so, so much. I mean, Richard Horowitz and Charles Ray Jones are just amazing individuals who gave everything. But I was like, I'm asking all these questions that I know a million other people have. Why don't we just have a community where we can all ask a question and share with each other? But the other thing is, the podcast is the Lyme insider and says our newsletter, and it's all about sharing this information with people for free, getting them in front of, like, we've had some amazing breakthroughs in babesiosis treatment, both acute and chronic. This year, within four weeks of a paper being published, I had a podcast with the lead, with the guy whose research lab does all this, Babesia Dunkany research, and another PhD researcher on there to help make sure that I wasn't just doing what the DomD people do and over interpret the information. I got two phds to have the conversation, and that's what I love doing, is bringing the researchers. So not only do we know what the latest research is, and I can bring the clinical part, but how do we then how do we sort of unpack what the researchers have found from their perspective?
And so it's a really great thing. And for everybody listening, it's all free, right? I mean, that's why you're doing this. Like, let's get that information out because people need it so we can alleviate suffering. And then, hey, if you're a practitioner, who wants that extra sort of the family, the community, that village behind them so they don't feel like, scared shitless like I did for about a decade. When you start doing this stuff, you're like, wait a second, am I doing antibiotics for six weeks or six months or a year? You're like, oh, my God.
But one of the things that's so interesting, Michael, is there's precedent for all of what we're doing in Lyme disease. There is more evidence of persistence than there is evidence of cure, period.
I would argue with anybody who would be able to provide me with scientific research that showed the opposite. And I just went to a very, not a very right, conservative, sort of ivory tower medical scientific conference. And you see, there are even some people who've been in the Lyme field for longer than I've been alive. They've been researchers, and you could start to see them. They start the weekend, they go, and this is all just right wing research. And I use that term loosely because I don't want to. It's not a political conversation. It's like ultra conservative medicine versus more open thinking about medicine. I don't mean it any other way, but what's really interesting about our colleagues is they're seeing what they said in the seventies, the eighties, and the nineties isn't true all the time. And I think that our community, sort of on the line community, if you will, which I think people should let go of that word. But I understand the need for community, for sure. But when we bring it all together, they're seeing that the science is showing that the experience of our patients with chronic Lyme is real. And they're starting to go, wait. I actually saw one guy at this conference who's done Lyme research, literally since I was in diapers by the end of two and a half days, was like, started to change his opinion, because one of the other guys, who's like, the biggest satanic character in the field, so to speak, for people with Lyme, because, like, really isn't. He was like, no, actually, what you said isn't correct. This is the research that we're seeing, and everybody's coming back to the middle, and I want people to know that, that the p. They were, these people over here and these people over here are trying really hard for you, and they may have opinions that you don't agree with, but they're doing their best. But now what we're seeing is they're coming. They're, like I said before, we have to come together. They are. And what's bringing together is the science. And that's what I would encourage the doctors to do out there and the other healthcare practitioners is to go read the science or just sign up for check out the podcast or join the program, because I'm spoon feeding the science so you don't have to spend all day doing it. But it's so important to understand that what our patients are experiencing is being supported by science, not all of it, but what's happening is as it's catching up. It's proving more and more and more what we've experienced over here, while also saying, hey, people over here aren't complete idiots. They just, they're. They started with a part of the truth and now they're working this way. These people started with another part and they're working this way. So to me, there's never been a better time to have Lyme or chronic Lyme. There's never been more hope out there. Now, I'm not saying go get it. That's why we focus so much time on early identification, and early treatment is still number one. And I would say, hey, look, the other thing I'll throw out there is anybody treating somebody strep throat? We usually treat for, like, seven to ten days, some people, five. Right, but I did. On a seven day treatment. If you look at the reproductive rate of strep, it's about 13,000 times a day.
Right? So then if I look at treating it for a week, that's our starting point. Lyme reproduces anywhere between once every couple of days to once every month or so. The average in most studies is once every three weeks. So I did a little ratio of treatment, and I said, if, based on the metabolic reproductive rate and the reproductive rate of strep, if I wanted to expose Lyme to a similar amount of antibiotic, how long would I have to treat you for? So I did their just the straight up ratio would be 667 years.
So clearly we're not going to do that. That's insane. But what we can do is go, hey, maybe I can treat a little bit longer, because in the chronic Lyme treatment, if you've infected a monkey for six months, 28 days of doxycycline cure is zero.
And if you treat for 28 days with ceftriaxone intravenous antibiotic, and two months after that of oral doxycycline, you cure a whopping 27%. So if you've been infected for more than six months, we only know how to cure 27%. So duration of therapy is likely important, but we don't know what the right duration is.
So I would suggest don't get to six months. That's why I'm always early diagnosis, early treatment, but people are working on answering the question of how long. And the other part that's really cool and to me get super exciting, is COVID happened. We all have opinions about COVID but one of the things that happened in COVID, like loving Lyme disease, but you can leave, is COVID made us really jump forward at light speed with testing. And not all the COVID testing turned out to be great, but what it did was there's digital droplet PCR got super charged into the future. Light speed ahead.
Now researchers are starting to be able to put much better quality DNA PCR testing into action. For anybody who doesn't know, a lot of our testing that we talk about is antibody based, which means your immune system needs to be working properly. Which is why I said, why don't we focus on your own immune system first? But the gold standard is really directly identifying the organism in your body.
With these updates in DNA technology, we're actually finding bits and pieces of these organisms. When we can find the actual living organism in a culture or in your blood, we can find the DNA. We're proving that you've had this in the last day or two. It's not the same in muscle tissue or in membranes and biopsy specimens. And certain ones it is, certain ones it's not. So don't get too crazy about it, but blood testing is really pretty easy compared to other testing, but it's not that good for these particular organisms. But now, following COVID, the advances made because of COVID are actually turning out to really help us in Lyme disease, babesiosis, Bartonella infections. And we're getting better and better testing, and more work is being done. And to me, that's great, because if we can do early diagnosis with a definitive thing rather than an antibody thing, now we're talking, and now people can start to agree.
And actually, the other light of hope, Michael, that I hear anybody who's been in the field and knows I said, hey, that testing is miserable. It's like 50 50, essentially. There are actually companies combining multiple different branches of your immune system. They're doing B cells or antibodies plus t cell testing. They've already gotten themselves up to over 75% accurate, rather than 56. But what was really cool when I met these people is two things. One is they're already doing trials with the FDA so that this will be insurance based, which is not usually the case in this field. But the other part is they recognize that 75% is not enough.
They're like, that's nowhere near good enough. It's better than what we have. But they're not resting. They're like, we need to have over 90, and the gold standard is 95%. It's really hard, but they're not resting, which is awesome. The company could roll it out and start making money right away, and they're like, no, we need to do better. And I'm like, I love you people. So these people out there that a lot of the community, if you will have seen, is not part of us actually get it. And they're trying so hard, and even though they have a commercially viable test that the FDA would let them throw out there right away because it's way more accurate than what we got, they're not, they're, they're, they're. They're still working harder on your behalf. So, anyway, I just get so excited because it's like we are in a place where we're changing the name of the game, and so I can teach you what herbs to use, and I can go, oh, use japanese knotweed and cryptoleptic and chinese skull cap, and add the cat's claw, and if you need this, add that. If you change this, do this, do that, do the homeopathy, do the vibrational blah, blah, blah, and here's all the antibiotics, and I can teach you that in a course, and I can give you an algorithm. But if the person's body isn't like, have a baseline, foundational, sort of strong foundation to accept and receive the treatment, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. And if we can't even make a diagnosis.
So now we have a lot of people really working on behalf of people, whether you're part of the Lyme community or not. The bottom line is there's a lot of caring people who recognize that it's not just about making money on these tests. Although I think if your test is 95% accurate, rather than 75% accurate, should make more money, too, which is a win win. But, I mean, they're out there really making a difference here, and, and I think it's just really gonna make a huge difference in both people who don't have Lyme and get it and want to get it diagnosed and treated early. And also in changing the name of the game for the chronic Lyme community.
[00:55:05] Speaker C: I love it, tom. I feel.
I feel this is actually a good kind of wrapping up point, and I feel that we need another episode, because this is kind of cool because we've been talking about the testing, your personal story, and then a testing, and then I would love, you know, would love a section of. To do of kind of the.
The next session, so that'd be amazing. Let's do that. This is awesome. Thank you so much, Tom. Doctor Tom. This is great.
[00:55:40] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:55:49] Speaker A: The information, this podcast is for educational purposes only, and it's not designed to diagnose or treat any disease. I hope this podcast implies 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're 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 integrative limesolutions.com and an additional powerful resource, limestream.com. For Lyme support and group discussions. Join Tanya on Facebook at Lime Conquerors mentoring Lyme warriors if you'd like to know more about the cutting edge integrative of Lyme Therapies Mind center offers, please visit thecarlfeldcenter.com. Thank you for spending this time with.
[00:56:50] Speaker B: Us, and I hope to see you.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: At our next episode of Integrative Lyme Solutions with Doctor Carl Feldt.
