Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome back to Integrative lyme Solutions with Dr. Karl Feldt. I am so excited about the show that we have ahead of us. We have some phenomenal information that could save lives.
You're gonna need to tune in to what's going on today. The information is jam packed, so don't step away.
Well, this is gonna be so fun. I'm with Katina Makris. She is a classical homeopath.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: She.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: And you've. I mean, you've written several books on Lyme and you know, we talked a little bit before and you have some genetics, actually, from the Schwarzwald, the Black Forest, you know, where. Yeah, I would say that's almost the birth of Lyme right there.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Right.
So true. Thank you for having me on your podcast today, Michael. It's my pleasure to join you and your beautiful audience and help inspire folks and give them hope as they walk what I call the lime road.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Well, so, I mean, obviously we're going to talk a little bit more about autoimmunity, your more recent books and Lyme and I mean, in that book, you really kind of outlined beautiful steps for how to address autoimmunity with Lyme.
But we have to mention one of the books that everybody raves about and have, you know, you have Richard, Dr. Richard Horowitz, you know, writing the foreword, you know, out of the woods, you know, so.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: First though, tell me why Lyme out of everything?
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Well, out of the woods, I'm just going to hold it up. Out of the woods.
Healing from Lyme Disease. Body, Mind and Spirit is my memoir, because what happened for me in June of 2000.
Okay, so it's 25 years ago.
I was living a very beautiful bucolic life in New Hampshire, rural New Hampshire. I was the town holistic practitioner.
I was 42 years old at a young family, organic lifestyle, way before it was hip.
My organic gardens are free range chickens. We had well water. We were very, you know, tuned in and. And I got vertigo. Violent migraines, Extremely strange, sudden onset. One day I had been playing out in the yard with my little son. We'd been playing baseball.
Feverish, sweat, swollen glands. I never got sick, Michael. I was one of these hearty types. And, you know, I was in my homeopathic office and I'd have kids barking, coughing, sneezing on me all the time. So had a lot of passive immunity.
This was very strange how this hit me and it didn't lift. Even when I took my homeopathics, echinacea, whatnot, three days Later I limped into my office. My business partner was an MD and I said to him, tom, something's really, really wrong with me. This is so strange, a summertime flu.
So he took my blood pressure, drew some blood, sent me home with colloidal silver and said, you'll pull out of it, you're very strong, I'm sure you'll be fine in a few days.
And I was not fine in a few days.
And he of course was on holiday for two weeks. I went to a backup physician who was not holistic.
They didn't know what to make of me. They thought maybe it was walking pneumonia because I was so weak I could barely like get out of bed. I had to hold the shower rod and it was very weak.
And anyway, we mumbled, fumbled along, they gave me some antibiotics that did nothing for the so called walking pneumonia.
Anyway, when Dr. Tom finally comes back, he looks at my blood work and he says, well, you know what, the only thing of note is you have a slightly elevated white blood cell count.
I'm thinking this is probably sinusitis if you're so dizzy and you know you're disoriented. And so he put me on amoxicillin, which, you know, we know could, now we know could, could do a little something for Lyme, but it was 10 days, it didn't really do anything.
Cut to the chase because the book shares the story in vivid detail is I basically went down the tubes and spent the next five years of my life completely destroyed. Three years bedridden in a wheelchair.
It was undiagnosed Lyme disease and it wormed its way, as you know, from the bloodstream into my connective tissues, hit my gut, hit my muscles. I had fibromyalgia style pains, vicious migraines. The neurological symptoms started, the palsies, the tremors, the dementia, the foot drop, cardiac symptoms. I had these clutching pains in my chest.
Homeopathy would band aid me.
I ended up self prescribing all my top homeopaths from India, England. No one could make heads or tails, you know. And I had been trained by a very premier world class master homeopath from Argentina way back in the 80s. I got my homeopathic licensing way back 40 years ago and he had a big hospital in Buenos Aires. And I ended up self prescribing for myself these minute clinical doses according to my symptomology, which at least got me back up on my feet so that I could empty the dishwasher, I could cook a meal, but I couldn't go to work for years, Michael. I remember I burned my patient files in year seven because we never thought I would work again.
My marriage went down the tubes. I lost my home, I lost my savings. I call it the tsunami of my life at tragedy at every level, physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually, Identity crisis, you name it. You know, you've heard the stories and I was a prime example of it.
I had a near death experience during this time where I, my heart stopped because I had a lot of cardiac symptoms. My heart stopped, I was out of my body.
I shared an out of the woods. And you know, who knows if I was on the other side, if I was in altered state. You know, we don't have clear knowledge of all of this.
But a messaging came through to me that if I dropped my ego and if I followed my intuition and I aligned with this spirit, it was a bald eagle that was communicating with me. I would be guided, I would be guided out of this morass of illness because I had been tested is what the messaging was. And I had passed the demons of the mind and the trickery of the trickery of the mind and the demons of the heart.
And anyway, long story short, I fell back in my body. It was this extremely, you know, extraordinary out of body experience. I fell asleep.
When I woke up, I had this instinct that I needed to get to my office upstairs above the garage because it was an Indian book on neurological conditions. And I thought, you know what, if I can get to that book, they might have some ideas of what homeopathics that can help me neurologically.
I had to crawl up the stairs. It was a hot summer day, my little doggie was at my heels.
And I get to the book and when I open it, I fall on the inscription page and it says, from one homeopath to another, may your life be filled with blue skies, health and happiness.
And I thought, oh my God, Dr. Jeff, why didn't I think of him before?
Because we used to share difficult cases sometimes together.
I limped back down the stairs. He always had like a six month wait list.
I got on the phone, I got his assistant, his secretary, and she said, oh, Katina, we just had a cancellation about 20 minutes ago. Can you come in two weeks?
I said, absolutely yes.
And so I had a friend drive me over, was an hour away. I'm in recline, you know, in the car with the pillows, you know, the folding wheelchair, the whole thing.
And I'm about 20 minutes into my case with him.
He says, katina, this is Lyme disease.
And I Said, no, it's not Jeff. I've been tested three times. I have. They're all negative.
Now, this is in 2005 in New Hampshire, northern tier of the United States. I know I have three negatives. He says, well, let me see the labs. And, you know, it was quest and labcorp. He says, no, no, no, no, no, no. And that's when I first learned about the eliza test, the western blot test, the blah, blah, blah. I didn't know.
My partner didn't know. My business partner. He didn't know.
And so Dr. Jeff had me tested. Both.
Igenx was brand new then. They were a few years old. And we used another lab, Bowen B o w e N. They were in Florida. They never got their FDA approval, but I came out positive, off the charts on both of them.
And I was never so elated and furious at the exact same time. Like, elated because it's a bacterial infection, we can kill it.
And furious, like, what is going on?
I had 17 neurologists. I had cardiologists, I had internists. I had everybody tell me I was perimenopausal. I had anxiety, I had this, I had that. Oh, my God, you know. You know the story. So Dr. Jeff, God bless, he helped me. It took us five years. And my new business partner, who's now very lime literate, he's been ilads train. He's a big, big lyme doctor up in new England.
I was the first case.
Anyway, I healed completely, as you can tell, 100%. I never took antibiotics. We did it all with Dr. Cowden's herbs, the nutrimedics herbs. Big, big piece. And I'll talk about it in my. In this book, the autoimmune book.
Detoxification, rebuilding the damages and depletions. This, for me, is like 50% of the story, killing off the organisms. And then the piece I add in all of this is mending the spirit is just as important as mending the body.
So that was a roundabout way of telling you how I wrote out of the woods, which went on to win two awards, and took me out into the world. Teaching, inspiring, leading, guiding, conferences, workshops, support groups, you name it. 200 of them I did before the pandemic.
And that eagle, that vision out of my body, that vision experience was 1000% accurate. If I dropped my ego, followed my intuition, I would be guided, and I would touch the lives of thousands. And here we are with you.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: What a powerful story.
How incredible. I mean, and the impact that this is having on the world and the. I mean, I mean it's like the eagle really know that you are there to soar and really to help, to kind of be a guiding light for all these other people that are going through this journey. Because it is exactly that journey. And it's so you're in that dark space spot and, and you just can't, you know, find heads to tails. I mean it's, it's all. It's so confusing.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: So very confusing. Extremely demoralizing. I think there's so many emotional components to this illness besides the physical destruction of your body is the emotional ramifications and the spirit spiritual ramifications. It's a very profound journey. The chronic form, I equate it to the ancients when they would take their vision quests or they had a pilgrimage, they'd walk those sacred pilgrimage walks, that famous walk in Spain, forgetting the name of it right now. You know, that very famous spirit pilgrimage walk. Or they take Otto Lourdes or they climb the Himalayas or the shamanic journeys. I equate it to those kinds of life altering experiences. But we don't have them built into our cultures anymore.
And I feel like, I hate to say it, but it's coming to many of us in the form of this profound illness.
It's asking us to journey within to the deepest parts of our inner self and find out what it is that is really you. Who are you?
What is your purpose in this lifetime? Because we're all here with a very, very personal reason to be here on this planet, contributing, sharing, caring.
And you know, it could be as simple as being a gardener and tending to plants, or it could be a teacher or a wonderful parent.
I happen to be a guide and a messenger.
You and I are both healers. But you know, all of us have this life path and I didn't realize it. I thought I was just supposed to be a good homeopath and take care of people that are suffering, but I didn't realize I was meant to be a guide and a messenger. It was this illness that brought me there.
And I know it sounds light or I don't know if it sounds light. It sounds simple that I'm saying that this now, 25 years later, but, but I felt it and I've witnessed it in my patients.
It's profound experience.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: And the thing is, you're saying light, but here, I mean the journey that you went through obviously was not light.
And then also here you are this kind of seasoned homeopaths. And I know I was chatting with a nutritionist A couple of nights ago, you know, we're having dinner together and, you know, she. She's been on this Lyme journey, and she's around all these, you know, phenomenal Lyme doctors. And she's. She's still having some tough times. And she's saying that. I mean, it's amazing when I talk about my story or talk about where I'm at. Yeah, I kind of feel shame, you know, that I haven't figured this thing out yet. And I haven't, you know, so there's so many emotional components to it. And there's so much, you know, like you're saying it's that healing the emotional spirit alongside with just the pathogen in the south, immune dysregulation, the mitochondrial.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: And all of these other physical things. But the emotional, the spiritual journey that this takes you on, it's profound, extremely profound.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: And that prompted me to write my third book, which is called Loving Yourself Enough to Live.
And this book opens with my near death story.
And then it's filled with a bunch of different quotes because I have had such a devoted spiritual practice in the process of going through the illness and in the aftermath. I mean, every morning it's meditation and then I just open a book near me of poetry or spirituality, Pema Chodron or Thich Nhat Hanh or something. And then whatever that feeling is, I just journal.
And that sort of moves me for the day.
And in that time, a lot of messages came to me. And one of my editors I had along the way, she said, you know, Katina, we should really take some of these messages of yours, these quotes, because we were peppering them in the autoimmune book. She says, why don't we put them together in a nice little, you know, slim book for folks they can just turn to and like one of them. I was looking at it earlier, before we were speaking, I thought I might share it.
I mean, just a few of them. Tending to a broken spirit.
May we embrace our own purpose. Like, these are just some of the quotes. The world is your playground.
This one, I thought, the power of will.
I'm going to read this.
Chronic disease is a journey of spiritual transformation.
It makes us dig deep. It makes us fight with the strongest fortitude of a warrior.
It makes us reach beyond the limits of ourself, of our ego, of the parameters of what you have been taught is medicine and healing, and find the great gifts of your own powerful inner resources. The power of will, the power of intention, and the power of purpose aligned.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: With faith, love, That I love that.
To me, it's almost like you're saying that in the ancient days, we had these spiritual journeys, and that's where we connected with who, you know, higher selves, you know, who we truly are, true identity. And obviously, at the end, at the core of it, it's love. You know, it's love. Love the creation, love for ourselves, love for God.
And you know, that that's at the core of it. But it's a journey to go there. It's almost like these, instead of coming from this fighting personality that I got to kill this, I got to destroy this.
It's allowing this then to be your teacher and allowing this to take you on that quest where you then can find yourself.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: I agree with you 100%.
And I remember reading a book early in my Lyme journey from a famous naturopath in Germany, Dr. Wolf Storl, and there was a quote I remember of his.
He said, I don't have it exactly. So. But he said, lyme is a journey, like we just said, that ask us to align with the forces of nature, because in modern civilization, we have separated ourselves too severely from nature, and it's the presence of nature that we'll find our cure.
And I think that circles me back to what you just said, and what you and I are in attunement with is the.
The. The act of stillness, the placement of being.
And, you know, Western society is very achievement oriented.
We do a lot. We teach our children at a young age to recite the Alphabet, to learn numbers, to achieve this, to play soccer, which is very much doing. And we don't have a lot of time for inner reflection and peace, especially now with the electronic kingdom taking over.
I mean, I was born in the late 50s.
We still had a lot of time to daydream, to have imagination play, to read a book on a rainy day.
And I think that this illness, for me, it put me down like I was on the sofa for years, very still, looking at a maple leaf out the window.
A lot of inner contemplation.
And I think this art of stillness is very precious.
And I think that's where a lot of the healing resources can be found.
I'm also certified as a spiritual healer. That happened during my Lyme journey. I ended up going to a beautiful program, the Stillpoint Integrate Silpin school of Integrative Life learning.
And that's when I learned about the seven energy chakras and the organs that each is affiliated to each, and then the emotions that are affiliated to each and then exercises that we can do to activate chakras, balance chakras, and the, and we're, we're, we're a self designed self writing unit.
The human being is very, very impressive.
We are self writing. We have fevers, we have diarrhea, we have sweats, we have things to purge, we sleep, we have all these things to help us calibrate. And we push it and we ignore a lot of it or we suppress it.
And this act and art of stillness, I think helps us align to our inner self. And then like we said in generations prior, we'd have the Sabbath day, we'd have that day of quiet and stillness and prayer and contemplation.
You know, we'd stop doing things and be with our family, or people would have their morning prayers or the evening prayers. It was very routine. And I don't see those routines unless someone's very intentional about it.
And I think it's very important because when we are able to align, you know, prayer is up on the seventh chakra. That opens us up to divinity. Because prayer is, we ask for something.
We ask, please protect me. Can you show me?
You know, watch over my son. Like, you know, we're opening up that channel.
And then meditation here in the six, meditation is we, we are clearing our mind.
You know, we're dropping the thought.
We are, if anything, receiving.
We receive what message comes through, right? And then we have the power of our voice, which you and I are using today to communicate. But within that, you know, we carry our joy and our elation, our messages, but also our sorrow, our sadness. You know, we need to keep it moving.
We move through the whole energy network.
But we have that faith, we have that vision.
We have the authenticity. We have the love, the compassion, the passion of the heart. We have the will of the third chakra right in our center here, the hara, the athletes have it, the martial artists, we have that will, that will force. And we have the creativity, the hopes, the dreams of birth and creation. And then at the bottom, at the, at the first chakra, we have this act of doing and being, this fulcrum, the centering.
And I, I feel these chronic illnesses. And we can dovetail now if you would like, how Lyme disease, this bacteria that's so aggressive gets into our system. You know, it leaves the bloodstream pretty quickly.
As most of us know, the best hope is to kill it quickly with antibiotics in those early weeks before it, you know, spiral its way. It loves to eat fatty acids.
That's one of its favorite foods.
So what does it do? If it's in your joint, there goes the synovial lining. If it's on the fascia of your muscles. Yummy, yummy. All those nice flipids in there that make the muscles so stretchy. Now they're all gobbled up. And now we have fibromyalgia pains or gets into the gut and the inflammation of the whole elasticity of the gut. Now we have Crohn's or colitis or irritable bowel or it's in the lining of the bladder and we have interstitial cystitis and gobbling up those fatty acids.
So by the time it gets to the nervous system, of course the brain and the neurotransmitters and the myelin and sheaths, they. Yummy, yum.
This bacteria loves all of this. So we can talk about the ravages and I do in this book. It might be a good time to swing over to this book. Autoimmune Illness and Lyme Disease Recovery Guide.
Mending Body, Mind and Spirit. I wrote this because I knew what it took for me five years, five years of treatments to get well.
And as I said, we didn't use antibiotics.
And I'm 100% well. And I've been infected two times.
In 22, I was infected, and now 2022 and 2024, I was reinfected, caught the infections early.
So the protocol that worked on me and that I use a lot in my practice and that is outlined in this guidebook, is that number one, before I do anything or we did anything with me, was get the big organs of detoxification working.
So liver, kidney, spleen, they are big, strong organs, right? The liver can clean up that bloodstream, get all the impurities we need to get them out.
Kidneys, God bless them, they work with the whole fluids, you know, again, get all the toxins out. Flush, flush, flush. Spleen. I love the spleen. Spleen's on the left side onto our left ribs. All those dead white blood cells, it's a big graveyard for them. So the lymphatic system, as everyone can feel when their lymph nodes are puffed up and white blood cells are running around in there trying to grab these spirochetes, but they go to the spleen. But if you're laying on the sofa like I was, your lymphatic system is not moving because the lymph system only flushes with movement.
So why are we all foggy, groggy, boggy, and brain foggy, and we can't because we're trashed and sleeping. And so I use a beautiful line of homeopathic organ formulas from Germany. Actually, it's a company called Picana P E K A N A Bioresources brings them into North America, and they've got their kidney drops, renalux, their liver drops, hepaticol, and their spleen Itero. So I open up these organs, first two weeks on each of those.
You know, start with a spleen, go to the liver, end with the kidney. And then we can add in, you know, this. I'm sure we can add in things like bentonite, clay, charcoal, that are binders that suck up a lot of the toxins. And then we push them out with milk thistle or alpha lithic acid, glutathione. You know, we can. We. I know you've talked with other practitioners about the genetics, why some of us take a longer time to heal than others, which is that methylation pathway, the MTHFR pathway. I fortunately only had one gene flaw on it.
A lot of folks have the double gene flaw. And they're the ones that really run into major autoimmune illness troubles because you're not purging. And then here we go. We talked about the lipids being gobbled up and also the little adrenal glands. I mean, I love the adrenal glands. When I was 13, I wanted to be an endocrinologist.
God knows where I got this idea, But I did, and I went to Duke University. I did my pre med at Duke to become an endocrinologist. And I had an identity crisis in the late 70s. This was because I didn't like the doc or doctors. I called them clipboard doctors because they just like, took notes, looked at the patient and handed it to the nurse. And then the nurses did all the healing. And I remember saying, oh, my God, like, I'm also empathic. Like, I want to help them. I can't just be a clipboard doctor. So big crisis. Thank God I found homeopathy because it weaved it all together to me. But what do I do now?
I tend to the endocrine system because it's the first system that gets trashed from this invasive bacteria, right? Because the little adrenal glands. I have a nice chapter in this book on the adrenals, the poor things. I mean, they are designed to really only make a couple of weeks of anti inflammat for a twisted knee or a gaping wound, you know what I mean? Our body was designed for warrior and, you know, hunter gatherer, you know, it wasn't designed for.
So here they are, these adrenals, pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping out all these natural steroids and histamines and cortisol. And they're stimulating the thymus and the hypothalamus to get going here, make fighter cells.
And then everything starts weakening. And I think of the endocrine system like a symphony.
Like, the woodwinds need to come in at the right time, the strings at the right time, the horns at the right time. If they don't, it does not sound like a symphony. It sounds like a complete ragtag disaster band. And I think of that as the endocrine system. So there goes the adrenals in week two of the Lyme infection. And then thyroid and thymus are, like, not getting their clues, so they flounder.
And then we see people either gaining weight, losing weight. We see hormonal fluctuations, we see sleep deprivation, we see the pineal glands off, the pituitary's off. It's a mess. End up with pot syndrome.
And, you know, it can all be restored, thank God.
But it leads into all these autoimmune disorders.
We see lupus, we see fibromyalgia, we see chronic fatigue syndrome, we see Crohn's. We've just mentioned a whole bunch of them. When underneath it, the root is this infectious organism that's going crazy. And then the endocrine system fails, the mitochondria collapse, get histamine reactions. People are toxic.
I had cardiac symptoms. It was lining the pericardium of my heart. I mean, you know the story.
But this.
I know, I say, I mean, I know we just went through the COVID epidemic, and it's, you know, it's here to stay as well. But this Lyme disease epidemic is really.
It's a huge crisis. It's a huge crisis. I mean, I think, you know, the United states has recorded 50 million autoimmune cases.
50 million.
50 million.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: That's the sixth of the population.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Right? And in our grandparents time, my grandparents. I showed you my picture of my grandparents a little while ago. They didn't have Parkinson's and Ms. In those days. And they lived to be 89 and 92. And they ate lard and had butter and had a drink of bourbon now and then because, well, first I had very clean food.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Well, they had food.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Yeah, they had wholesome, whole food from their farms, Right?
And fresh meat and fresh butter. It was home churned like healthy food.
And, you know, I have read different sources that the native Americans called Lyme disease. In the old days, they called it deer fever, and they treated it with teasel root and sweat lodges.
Now, I think that was a milder version of what we're dealing with. Now, if we go into the whole other domain, which is not my arena, but is this a bioweaponized organism off of the Plum island theory? I don't know. That's not my forte.
My forte is to help people get back on their feet, get their life back, mend their body, mend their spirit. But, you know, it could have been around. They remember that caveman they found the bones, remember a number of years ago, and he had the DNA fragments of the bacteria, so who knows? Michael, it's been around, but I still believe I've seen it with myself, with my son, with my patients. We can recover from this.
We can recover. And your nutritionist friend. I'm sorry, she's still struggling. But, you know, I'm a big fan of all the metabolic profile analysis tests, you know, the GI map, testing, the cortisol function of your adrenals, the molds. Molds are huge. I think mold is a big underpinning for all of us. I had a black mold in my house, the house that I got the Lyme in, Food allergens, you name it. There's a lot of pieces to fix up the physiology.
And then we talked about the stillness and the attention to the spirit and the heart.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Hello, dear listeners, this is Dr. Michael Karlfeld, your host of integrative Lyme solutions. Today I'm excited to share an exclusive opportunity from the Karlfeld center, where we blend healing power on nature with groundbreaking therapies to combat Lyme disease and its associated challenges.
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Well, and I think talking about autoimmunity, so you kind of look at, well, what is autoimmunity? Well, it means that there's a section of you that's going after a part of you, you know, so there's this kind of battle within.
And so if. If you spiritually are not in line or you are eating in a way that does not support your true identity, then these pathogens, you know, when we consider them pathogens, but in reality, like you mentioned, you know, you found this caveman, and then, you know, they saw fragments of Lyme and that caveman. So it's something that's been around for a long time. It's nothing new.
And so in reality, these different organisms, they serve a function.
They do not exist because something went wrong. They serve a function, and just like mold, it's a cleanup crew. Mold goes to where toxic, you know, dead stuff is, and they go to clean things up. So our job, essentially is to not, you know, fill ourselves with. With dead material, with garbage, toxic stuff, you know, true. These different pathogens, you know, or these organisms, they look and see, oh, I see a bunch of, you know, dead white blood cells and the spleen, right? So I got to go there, and I got to help to clean that up. You know, this is what I feed on, and that's my job. And so that's. That's what happens. And then, you know, we have. Then the immune system. They go and see, hey, what's happening over there? Let's go and attack that. You know, so.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: It's a whole. I think it is just the.
The convenience disease, you know, that feeds into the Lyme disease. And so by shifting our way of thinking, our way of being, our energetics, the nutritional content, eating food that supports our physical.
Our cellular function.
And then like you're saying, supporting then the elimination of the byproducts of all the metabolic waste and all that. Supporting all of that. Now we're creating an environment that yes, maybe we have, you know, aspire Keat, but it's really, it's not a lot for them to do or attack in that body.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Exactly. And you know, you're prompting me for another. One of my messages I used to bring when I was out teaching, you know, workshops and support groups is, you know what, I might still have some limes by repeats in there, but I can be a healthy host.
I can be a healthy host. I've gone to Mexico and gotten Montezuma's revenge, but I've also gotten home and taken a bunch of probiotics and gotten my gut back in order again. Like, we can be a healthy host. Like, how many animals do we know that have all kinds of organisms in them? They're out there grazing in pastures and eating all kinds of roadkill and all kinds of things. They're healthy hosts. So that's speaking to what you just said. Like, how do we keep that balance point of organisms within, but not too much garbage? And that circles us to the terrible deplorable situation of the food chain in the United States.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, so we have, you know, we're talking about dare tics and the dare sharp host of all these ticks and they jump from dare to us. And you know, but they're on the deer and the deer seems to be fine. Yeah, it seems to be okay. But what's the deer eating? Well, it's eating real food and it's out in sunshine, it's out in nature, and it's connected with who they are.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: Exactly. And I think of horses too.
I'm in North Carolina right now. I just relocated last month to North Carolina after 35 years in New Hampshire. And a lot of folks up north have horses and other animals too, like cows. I would be out on the farm I was living on. The cows had like tons of ticks on them. But they weren't sick, they weren't lame.
They were eating beautiful, you know, natural pasture grass like you just said. Or the horses. Same thing too. I mean, every once in a while one of them might have had an issue, but not, not like us humans.
And up in New England, I think everybody probably is infected with some kind of tick borne organism because it's so rampant up there and stretching over into the Great Lakes.
But you know, some people manage just fine, you know, and then others fall Quickly.
And you know, I think some of it's genetics and then some of it is, as we just said, is the health of us on the inside.
And I'm grateful, actually. Way back in the early 80s, I dialed into the idea of organic food and joined a health food co op in the early days where you lent your time, you know what I mean, to be part of the co op. Like I had to give six hours a month or something when we bag, you know, rice or oats into smaller quantities. And I made my own bread and grew my own vegetables.
I had, you know, free range chicken so we can have our own eggs. And I raised my children on raw milk from a neighbor neighborhood farm dairy because I just knew that there was growth hormones in the animals feed.
And I could see the youngsters in my practice getting larger by the year, and the young women, young girls becoming women too young, like a 10 and 11 getting their menstrual period.
And I knew it was those growth hormones in the chicken and the meats and everything. So I forbade them in my house. I also forbade plastics because I had seen a study, this was in the late 80s, that the United Kingdom had outlawed the cling wrap because the polymer in it mimicked estrogen.
And so I banned cling wrap. I still don't have it in my house. I banned that in plastic bags. We use cellulose bagg.
And I moved over to glass, you know, storage containers. And I would only let the kids when they got a treat, like at, you know, the convenience store or something, I only let them pick a drink, even if it had sugar in it, that was in a glass bottle.
So I was kind of ahead of my, of the. You know what I mean with this thinking, thank God, because I think it helps me get a leg up on recovering from such an advanced case of cardiac and neurological Lyme.
I remember I was very sick and we were in the hospital for some visit, you know, and I lost my marriage, as I had told you. But I fortuitously, I don't know, God's grace is I had a very loving boyfriend who then became my partner for 10 years. And he was very caring and he would take me to a lot of doctor's appointments. And I overheard them talking from the other room and I heard the physician say, well, you know, it's very good that she has you, that you can care for her, because I really only give her about a 10% chance of survival because of the heart problems, not recovery, Michael. Survival.
And I heard those words and I get the chills thinking about it even now.
But also part of me inside, like I bit down, like I was like survival. Well, they don't know me.
I'm going to rise above all of them.
And I have a bit of my dad's spirit in me. And my dad was a very powerful man in my life. And he had three near death experiences starting with World War II.
And he would coach me when I was having really hard times, you know, before we had my diagnosis. And I'd be crying on the phone to him and I didn't think I could go on. And it was so hard and I can't even get up. I can't make a sandwich. And my little son was like 5, 7 years old and he was this bright blue eyed, just beautiful little thing. And I just wanted to see him just graduate from high school and be an adult. And I was fighting to hold on. And my dad would say to me, listen, sweetheart, you can do this.
The power of the mind is stronger than the body.
And God gave you a mind and it's your job to use it wisely. I don't care what the doctors say. I don't care what kind of news they have. How many times did they tell me I wasn't going to make it and I made it? He says, now you have to override those negative thoughts. That's just their words, their thoughts. They don't know. They don't know you. They don't know the power of your mind and your spirit and your heart. Now you're a Macris. That's our family line right out of northern Greece. So you're Macros and we're tough.
Now, don't forget, now you use that mind of yours. He says, now, sweetheart, pick a place that you love. Pick a place somewhere in the world, in the country, anywhere. Pick a place that you love and tell me about it.
And I told him about this beautiful beach in the Bahamas that I loved. It was called Tahiti Beach. He says, okay, so tell me about Tahiti Beach. And I described it and the colors and the COVID and the trees and the light. Okay, what are you doing? I'm in the water. I love to swim. Okay, what are you doing? I'm floating. I'm swimming. Okay, great. What are you wearing? I was in a red bikini. Okay, beautiful. How does it feel? Like I'm giving him the whole, you know.
And he says, okay, how do you feel there? I say, I feel fantastic. I love it. I want to go back because, well, you're there right now.
That means your spirit's right there.
If your mind is there and your spirit's there, then the bodies of your cell can be there too.
The cells of your body can be there too.
So now I want you to visit that spot every day, three times a day.
Put all those positive images, positive feelings, positive brain chemicals in your body. Flood it, flood it, flood it, flood it three times a day. And he says, you're going to start feeling better.
God bless him. He was so on.
And a month or three months later, I'd be floundering with something and he'd say, okay, honey, tell me what's one of your favorite songs?
And I drum up a song or something. He says, well, is it near you? Can you put it on?
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Now?
[00:46:54] Speaker B: This was in the days of CDs, right before we were on digital. I said, I think I can find it. He goes, will you find it or have your son find it and you play it? Now you start playing that song. I want you to listen to that all the time.
And he, you know, he was on the brain chemistry. We know now, the trickle down effect of those neurotransmitters.
So, you know, I want to inspire folks with these things. You know, they seem small, but they're not insignificant.
The power of our mind, the power of our thoughts, the power of our beliefs, of intention, of will. You know, some of the things we touched upon, those are born into us.
We have these all on the inside.
We can use that vision. Like my father taught me, pick a place that you feel great in. Music again. Get it going.
I remember one day in my meditations, I was, you know, I had a diagnosis, but I was still very weak.
And my doctor, who is now a really big Lyme doc, I remember when he saw the metabolic profile analysis of my adrenals and my thyroid and my neurotransmitters. And he said, oh my gosh, Katina. He said, you are, your nervous system is so frayed. He says, if this was 50 years ago, I'd put you in a hospital for a month and have you on IVs and, you know, good foods, whole foods. He goes, you need to replicate this in your home. You need to create a retreat center in your home, you know. And he says, I don't want you having any negative stimulation.
No TV news, no action films, no horror films. He says, just stay at the level of your 8 year old.
Watch Disney and, you know, happy shows. And don't, don't get yourself overly excited either way. Like, you've got to keep Your adrenals, and try. Try to stay even.
And it was during that time, you know, I was reading, like, you know, light books and romantic, you know, novels and just keeping it light and easy. And I. In one of my meditations, I said, well, you know what? What? You know what? What do you want? You're feeling so limp, you know, like a limp, wet noodle or something. What do you want to feel like?
This is akin to my father with the mind.
I said, you know what? I want to feel like a beautiful, big, strong copper beech tree.
I love those beech trees, but the copper ones really have this gorgeous. I said, I want to feel and look like a copper beech tree. Those big limbs that stretch out that I used to love to climb on when I was a kid and hang from. And, you know, they were like, my friend, I love those big trees.
I want to be a copper beech. So I wrote myself a meditation, like a visualization of me standing strong and proud like a copper beach. And that I would be full of sunlight and that my arms would stretch wide and my roots would be way into the ground, and I'd be solid and strong.
It was not the wet noodle that I was feeling.
And so I started practicing it. Michael.
I first was sitting pretending I was a copper beach, and then I was standing.
And, you know, I then had to learn to walk because I'd been bedridden for so long. And my. My partner, he walked me out the front door in the house, down the sidewalk, in the house. Like every day, we'd went a little farther around the side in the back door, you know, inch by inch down the block back. Had a little Welsh corgi dog at the time, and then he started coming along with me, and then that took me, you know, out and about. And I remember the day I did a mile.
It was about two months into relearning to walk again, and I was so elated. It was a February day, and I didn't care that the car splashed snow on us and wet when we drove by, because I did it. I made a mile.
And I said, you know what? I am like a copper beech tree.
And, you know, that's what I want to inspire folks with, is that we have a lot of knowledge about Lyme disease that we did not have 25 years ago when I was not properly diagnosed.
We have the newer labs, you know, besides hygienics, we have the other good ones out there now, Galaxy and others, and we have so much more knowledge. You know, we have so many of These tests we just talked about finding out what glands are doing what in the gut and the brain chemistry.
And we have a lot of great herbs, we have a lot of detox protocols. We have a lot of these things that we can work with. That 25 years ago was really, I remember going to my first ILADS conference 12 years ago and there was very little natural medicine talk.
And here I was recovered fully from natural medicine protocols. So I feel really grateful that a lot of this knowledge has come forth. It's being shared. There's more integrative practices, more functional medicine doctors, not too many homeopaths because our training is very steep and difficult.
But I'm grateful for this. But I still want to empower people about what you and I have been sharing today, which is these inner gifts we all bear and how do we ignite them?
How do we ignite this mind, body, spirit pathway? How do we ignite and light up the brain, the heart, the spirit, the will, the creativity, the self belief, the self love, the self care that is required to take this pilgrimage quest, this journey into the unknown. To be brave, to be a warrior, but also to be a compassionate warrior. To have loving self care, to have belief in the self, to understand that we are a self righting organism. We need to nourish ourselves. Like we just talked with the proper foods, clean foods, but also to nourish ourselves. Find the beauty, find the moments of grace and, and peace.
Be with ourselves on the inside. Don't beat yourself up.
If a doctor missed the diagnosis, they missed it. That doesn't mean you can't recover. You can still recover.
We've all met people in our lives that have beat stage four cancer, that have come out of hellacious fires. My father left for dead in the Philippines of World War II.
You know, we've met folks along the way that have thrived amidst adversity.
And that's what I would like to empower everybody with, is to turn on that gene pair we have inside us. In epigenetic medicine. The thriver.
The thriver goes beyond being a survivor. A survivor makes it through something adverse. The car wreck, the house fire, the hurricane.
But you know, not all survivors are happy people. Some are bitter, some are angry, some are traumatized. They turn to drink, they turn to negative thinking, they hibernate, you know, whatever.
I don't want to blame. This is not a process of blaming because I have been traumatized. I have had terrible ptsd. I've been decimated. And I don't ever want to blame anybody that's struggling. I'm a compassionate homeopath of 40 years. I have loving compassion for anybody that struggles and suffers. But I also believe we can go beyond being a survivor. We can be a thriver.
And that is what you and I have been talking about, is turning on this inner conduit of these personal power skills that we all have.
And I just believe in each and every one of us.
I believe that, you know, you can thrive amidst adversity. And, yeah, maybe you lost a limb, or maybe your heart has some damage, or, you know, maybe your gut is, you know, raging and raw. But you know what?
You know, there's still. There's still hope.
There's still times of grace, times of beauty, and sometimes you just have to cherish the most tiny little pearl.
You know, sometimes it's just a sunset. That was my only moment of beauty in that day.
Or maybe it was my dog giving me a kiss. Or maybe it was my son when he came into the door with his eyes sparkling bright blue. Maybe that was my only moment of beauty or joy in the day. But you know what? I had it.
And I can string it on my necklace of life.
[00:55:43] Speaker A: And I think you can be there. I mean, you got to experience it. I mean, this. You. You were there. And I mean, not being there meant that you didn't get to have that moment. And. But you were there, and we. We all have. I mean, like, you're talking. You said kind of turn on that. That. That gene, you know, that thriving gene. I believe we have like this God coding in our genes. You know, we. We are meant to survive. We're meant to thrive. We're meant to heal. We're meant to soar. You know, that power exists, is coded, you know, into our genes, and all we need to do is just recognize it and turn it on.
[00:56:25] Speaker B: I 100% agree with you, Michael. And you know, Bruce Lipton wrote a very powerful book a number of years ago, the Biology of Belief.
And it's akin to what we're speaking of right now. And there's some other wise teachers and writers out there that I think in these times of trouble, we read some of their works. At least for me, it would give me hope and inspiration. Like, I'm thinking of Pema Chodron with some of her work and a lot of the other spiritual leaders.
And, you know, if you're from an organized religion family. My family's Greek Orthodox.
I didn't really follow that pathway, but my sister has.
And, you know, there's a lot of power in Some of the disciplined religions. And if that's your place, fine. That's beautiful. Go there. If that's going to give you solace, if that's going to give you strength, if it's going to give you inspiration, if it's going to give you some tools, go there.
Because we are spiritual beings and we are so much more than our body.
You know, there's a lot of energy we carry, and I think it's harnessing that energy. Even when mine was so flaccid and I had. I embodied the copper beach.
It's okay, whatever it is. That eagle, that beautiful eagle. I still. I always make sure I have an eagle in my dwelling.
You know, whether I have a beautiful eagle from one of my father's ships. My father was. He was in the shipping industry, and he always had eagles on his. On his ships. I think a lot of naval people do, right. People having to do with the waters.
And I remember when I got my first house, my father proudly gave me one of the big eagles that was up on the small smokestack of his ship. One of his ships. And he says, you put this on the hou. Your house, you need this to be a protect over you.
And don't forget, he was an old World Greek, so there was some superstition and, you know, whatnot. I don't care. It was a metaphor. I've carried that eagle with me from house to house to apartment to apartment. It's right here on the balcony of my current apartment. Like, it's weathered, it's had robin's nest on it.
It's had all kinds of things happen. But, you know, we need those touchstones.
It's different for each one of us, unique for each one of us. But I think it's beautiful.
[00:58:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, I think that these kind of things that connect us generationally as a society, spiritually, and so. So important.
Well, Katina, thank you so much for this. I mean, the. The power that flows through you, you know, because of these experiences and because of who you are and the impact you have on people is so powerful. So powerful. Well, how. Where can people connect with you? Where, you know, and. And where can they find these books? You know, these. These are amazing books. Out of the woods, obviously. And then autoimmunity is just something that is just taken off outrageously.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you so much. This book is very pertinent. I'd like to give it a push, you know what I mean? Because I think it's timely. Thank you. So much for having me and for this beautiful visit together. I've enjoyed every single minute of it with you. You're wonderful to do this.
My website is probably the easiest way to find me. And that's katinamakris.com and it's Katina K A T I N A. There's no R in there. I joke. I'm not a hurricane. I'm only a tropical storm.
Drop the R.
Catena, which means purity, actually, in Greek, makris M A K R I s. So katinamakris.com is my website. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, on LinkedIn, all those places. My books are available off of my website. They're all at Amazon. You could also go into a bookstore. They'll order it from you. They're all available in distribution. They were published by a New York City publisher, Skyhorse, so they're still in the big distribution systems.
So if you want an actual, you know, one from your bookstore, you can go in and request them.
Amazon and my website, Katinamakriss. And come follow me on social media because I'm very active.
I'm always putting up posts every day. I always want to put something up to make you happy or to make you feel enlivened, even if it's like, I saw a beautiful plant yesterday. I was coming back from the ymca. I am a swimmer, and I was on my way home and, oh, this beautiful flower that I had to put up for everyone.
So join me, because our podcast will be there.
If I'm teaching, I'll have something up. So wherever, come join me. I, I More the merrier. We're here to help. We're on this planet to share and care.
[01:01:35] Speaker A: I love it. I love. Well, Katina, thank you so much. Thank you for everything you're doing and powerful books. Powerful. So thank you.
[01:01:45] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you so much, Michael. I appreciate you. And thank you for acknowledging my work and my contribution.
Thank.
You.
[01:01:59] 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'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 friends, 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 integrative Lyme therapies my center offers, please visit thecarlfieldcenter.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.
