Why Some Chronic Illness Patients Never Leave Survival Mode

All right. Welcome back once again, everybody, to another exciting episode. I'm really excited to talk about a different topic. We haven't discussed a whole bunch in relationship to complex issues with Melanie Stein. She's a practitioner, um, naturopathic doctor who has her own health story. And so I'm just excited to get in our conversation. So after introduction, we will just dive right in. Dr. Melanie Stein is a licensed naturopathic physician and acupuncturist. She's also the founder of Restorative Health Clinic in Portland, Oregon. She holds a doctorate in naturopathic medicine and a master's in acupuncture from the National University of Natural Medicine. While she was in naturopathic school, Dr. Stein woke up one morning completely paralyzed. I'm gonna love to talk about this cuz this is a very interesting presentation. She was dismayed by physicians and given a diagnosis of conversion disorder, which basically means it's all in her head. Um, a condition often used as a catch-all for unexplained neurological issues. Rather than accepting that verdict, she began investigating on her own. Through deep research and special testing, she discovered she had chronic Lyme disease and a bunch of other infections. So, um, she's also got a book out, well, right now that we'll talk about a little later on, um, that deals with chronic health issues. So, Dr. Stein, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I'm really excited to be here today.

Briefly tell us a little bit, um, you know, you're a naturopathic doctor. Explain to the audience a little bit of what that, what that is, how it, the nuances of that. Um, and then I want you to tell us about your story, cause I think that was really interesting learning about, you know, a lot of people who get in this space have their own kind of health journey.

Yeah. So naturopathic medical, um, providers are, you know, in, in Oregon where I am, we are pretty much the same as medical providers. So we go to 4 years of medical school where we learn, you know, all the basic sciences, pharmaceuticals, but we also learn herbal therapy, homeopathy, and manipulative medicine as well. So we get a little bit more of a unique approach to medicine where the main idea is really about treating the root cause. So rather than giving different pharmaceuticals or supplements to, you know, suppress symptoms or move through, you know, an illness, it's really about figuring out why someone is sick. Preventing long-term health issues. Um, you know, and in my case, you know, what I really believe in is how do we heal at the cellular level?

Yeah. And so I didn't realize that in naturopathic school they, you also do manipulative therapy. So how deep do you get into that? Do you get to the level of like fascial work, um, stuff like chiropractic? How deep do y'all get into that kind of work?

Yeah, we learn, we learn, uh, osteopathic manipulation or naturopathic manipulation is what they call it. Um, and you know, fascial work as well. Pretty much, you know, 2 years every term we're in a class about it. So I would say, you know, if you really want to get good at it, you need to do some extracurricular learning. But, you know, I would say by the end of it, if, you know, one of my patients does have like a rib luxation or something like that, I can definitely help.

Yeah. So I realize that's good to hear. Good to know. Because one of the things just for my audience, a lot of the things with naturopathic physicians is state dependent. I'm in Virginia. And after 4 years of medical school, 4 years of undergraduate, 4 years of naturopathic school and a fellowship, you come to Virginia and you can't get a license in it. So you, you go through all that work and you literally cannot touch a patient, diagnose. So it's really interesting what some state, you know, some states, how limiting they are about on outside the box thinking. And you go to California and you have pain clinics where you have a naturopath, acupuncturist, and a pain specialist. And in Virginia, we're like, we don't license them. So it's just really kind of interesting how that varies across the country.

It is, you know, in Oregon we can pretty much do everything except oncology. So, um, and we don't have hospital, hospital rights as well, but so we're, we're really not limited in our scope here. And I think the, the stigma against naturopathic medicine is really changing and more and more states are, are gaining licensure, which is really exciting.

Be looking forward to that day here in Virginia as well. So tell us about your personal journey. Yeah. Cause you know, you had this bizarre, strange issue. One of the things I talk about a lot is medical gaslighting, and you mentioned conversion disorder. So tell us about that.

Oh yeah. Yeah. So, um, I have kind of a unique story in the sense that I was on a qigong retreat and, uh, one morning while I was on the retreat, I woke up and I could not move my legs. Um, and so I, it was a pretty scary moment of my life where, you know, I didn't know what was wrong with me. I didn't know why I couldn't move. Um, and very quickly my symptoms rapidly progressed. Um, You know, I went to the hospital and by the time I was in the hospital, I was having full body, um, well, I would say from my waist up tremors, um, that were just unrelenting. It wouldn't stop, but my legs just would not listen. Um, and you know, it was a really hard journey in the sense that no one could figure out what was wrong with me. So they were running, you know, all, all the tests that they know how to run to figure out what's wrong, right? MRIs, CT scans, EEGs. And, uh, nerve conduction study testing and everything was coming back normal. Um, and so, you know, I remember this one moment where the neurologist actually, um, you know, he kind of picked me up and tried to stand me up and he just let me fall to the, to the floor. And he said, you know, get up. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to get up. He, um, you know, I still have nightmares about that to this day, but the, they told me, you know, uh, they, they brought in a, a neuropsychologist and they said, um, You know, uh, Melanie, you have conversion disorder. Um, we need to really figure out why you're doing this, what's going on with you. Um, you know, this is the only way through is we need to talk about this and we're gonna send you home. We're gonna discharge you. We can't figure out what's wrong. And I'm really thankful that I have, I have a pretty feisty family who said, absolutely not. You don't know this person. Um, she is probably one of the most stubborn people we've ever met. She has dreams and goals and Um, you know, it was really humiliating and it was almost to the point where after, you know, a month of still being like this and not having any answers, I did question it, right? Like we talk about the medical gaslighting. I really started to think like, am I doing this? Like, what's going on with me? But, um, about 3 weeks or so into, um, my hospital stay, or I guess I was actually at that point I was in rehab. So my family fought to get me into rehab because I wasn't, um, I mean, I, I couldn't walk. I needed to learn how to live in a wheelchair and live my life in this new state that they said I was just basically gonna be in. Um, I did develop a bullseye rash. And so, um, for those of you who don't know what that is, a bullseye rash is a red rash that looks like a bullseye, but it can look at many different, um, shapes and forms as well. And it is what we call pathognomonic, meaning the only thing that causes this is Lyme disease. Um, and being in medical school, I was like, Oh my gosh, the sun just parted. I'm not crazy after all. Um, I have Lyme disease. And so, you know, I, I remember sitting there like ringing the call light over and over and, um, they, they called an infectious disease doctor in and, um, you know, he's like, well, let's do a spinal tap. You know, we gotta figure out what's going on. And believe it or not, that was positive too. Um, and the infectious disease doctor came back in, you know, I thought for sure, okay, I have answers. I'm gonna be okay. I remember he sat down and he goes, you know, there's two worlds to Lyme disease. There's people who believe it's out here and there's people who don't, and there's no Lyme disease in the Pacific Northwest. This can't be what's going on. And I was just dumbfounded at this point because in my eyes, you know, here you are, this, you know, young, bright female with this incredible career ahead of them, a wonderful family, you know. And we have an answer. I have a positive spinal tap. I have a bullseye rash and you can't figure out what's going on with me. And, um, so it was, it was really, really demoralizing. And so I, I say that I broke free from the rehab because I just, I didn't want to be there anymore. And luckily being in the naturopathic community, I did have a community that was willing to treat me. And so I had a naturopathic physician who was willing to fight for me. Got me on IV antibiotics. Um, you know, and it, it, it truthfully was a really long road from there. Um, you know, we did lots of different therapies. I did herbs, I did IV ozone. Um, I did a lot of different, different modalities and slowly over time I got better until COVID hit. Um, so at this point, you know, I'm, I'm thriving. I'm in my practice, I'm specializing in Lyme disease because it became very apparent um, that, that was my calling was to treat patients with complex chronic illness. And, you know, I got COVID so extreme. Um, I was, I had COVID pneumonia. It was right in the beginning when people really didn't know exactly what it was, how to manage, uh, long-term symptoms. And, you know, so they put me on steroids and let me be sick. And, um, I developed seizures 20 times a day at this point. Um, and just, just really debilitating neurological symptoms. And at this point in my practice, I was already doing a little bit of the cellular work. I wouldn't say it was the core of my practice, but I got on the phone with my mentor and I said, you know, we gotta do something. And so we got me back on antibiotics, back on herbs. Um, we're doing spike protein detox protocols, every, you know, good treatment under the sun for these, these chronic illnesses, but nothing. Was touching it. And it was, you know, it was really when my mentor and I took this step back and we said, okay, nothing's working. What's happening to my cells? Are my cells able to communicate? Are my cells able to receive this input? And am I even able to detox properly? And so I actually flew out to his clinic and I did several weeks of, of very, very intensive IV therapy, which we could talk more about here in a little bit. And you know, over the next 2 months I regained my health again. And I didn't need antibiotics at that point. I didn't need all these aggressive therapies. I, and I, I really truly got my life back. And you know, I, do I still have some health stuff here and there? Of, yes. But for the most part, it is not something I think about on a daily basis.

And so I, yeah, unfortunately your story of having something that's, you know, all in your head being, you know, Conversion disorder sounds so much more sterile and clean. I like to say gaslighting because it has an emotion. Like, what do you mean I'm being, you know, right? And so, um, but just to go through all that and find I have a real diagnosis, that's a real issue, and then have the specialist ignore the spinal tap because this does not exist in the Pacific Northwest. I mean, you could have picked it up anywhere in the country. You could have been there for decades. I mean, but it's interesting how the specialists In our traditional care system, even though you're in front of them, literally we're ignoring the elephant in the room and saying, you don't exist. It's all in your head.

It's, it's absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. No. And I think in some ways I feel bad for these providers because I think there's a lack of education and a lack of understanding of these chronic illnesses. But at the same time too, I think it comes down to problems with the hospital system. Um, you know, where the hospital system will tell these people they can't treat it too. Um, so it's, it's, it's sad. And I think the more education and the more awareness we can, you know, bring out there. I actually had a, a bunch of us Lyme doctors in the Portland area had a meeting with the head epidemiologist of the Oregon Health Authority last weekend, and he was saying that he just found his first tick in a Portland park positive for Anaplasma.

His first.

Yeah, right. Well, for sure. Yeah.

What kind of thing? When I moved back to Virginia from the military back in 2007 and saw my first case of Lyme disease, I was like, I've never seen this before. So I called, and this is Virginia, this is Northern Virginia, right? So we're like, now we realize this is Lyme country. But back then when I called this infectious disease specialist, they were like, we don't take consults for that. And there's no Lyme disease in Virginia. And so it was kind of like, I need to figure this out. But it was really interesting when I talked to my veterinarian colleagues. It's like all 25% of dogs in Chesterfield County have Lyme. They just have no symptoms. And so it's like two, you know, doctors in different fields. One's like, this doesn't exist. And one's like, no, like this is everywhere. And so it's interesting how a lot of information doesn't span specialties. And a lot of what, you know, we do in the functional medicine world is we're that— our forte, we're the specialty, we're the specialty, we're the interstitium, we're the specialty between the specialties. And so, um, I want to dive into some of that stuff because you, you're clinic deals with complex issues, mold, Lyme, um, you know, mast cell, post-dysautonomia. Why don't you talk about like some of the connections between some of those issues? And I'm sure you're going to go to cell membrane and cell danger response. I want you to talk about how these seemingly unrelated things, how is Lyme related to mast cell? How is concussion and COVID related to autoimmune issues and dysautonomia? Can you talk about some things that might potentially connect all these seemingly unrelated things.

Absolutely. I could take this in so many different directions, so reel me back in if I go on too big of a tangent. You know, so I think that one of the main things that we need to think about with Lyme disease and, and mold is that these, these different types of toxins really dysregulate our immune system. Let's just take, you know, Lyme for an example. Lyme has multiple different ways that it actually alters our immune system as a way to trick our body. And when we start to, um, you know, get our body tricked, then it can bury in deeper and it can go systemic very quickly. But then it makes us even more susceptible to other things, right? Like my patients often ask me like, well, how do I have mold and heavy metals and parasites and Lyme? And I tell them, you know, it really comes down to the fact that your immune system and your cells just can't fight for you. Anymore. And when that happens, the body just starts to see everything as a threat. So when we think about the cell danger response, the cell danger response is this natural mechanism that the body wants to do to try to fight inflammation, infections, toxins, anything that, you know, is threatening our health. And when it does that, the first thing that happens is the body shifts into this protective state where we're no longer making ATP, which is energy. Instead, we're actually bringing it to the outside of the cell, which it creates a bigger danger signal and the body starts to reserve, just do all, all of its reserves. So we're not, um, you know, if you ever heard of that analogy, like when you're running from a bear, right? You're, everything starts to shut down and you're just focusing on just running. Um, And so when we're in that state, it just creates this mechanism of which we're just so much more vulnerable to everything else. But then what happens is we don't shut that down, right? So in a healthy individual, you know, we're being exposed to things all the time. And in a healthy individual and in a healthy cell danger response, we're having that initial shutdown of energy production, preservation of the cells, but then We shift out of it and we go back into, you know, just maintaining life the way we want to maintain it. Now, when someone has a lot of inflammation and oxidative stress, we're not able to get out of that. And so, you know, one of my, my biggest theories is that it really comes down to the cell membrane. So what does that, what does that mean? So we have thousands, trillions of cells in our body, billions of cells in our body. and we have brain cells, we have thyroid cells, we have lung cells. Every cell does something a little bit different, but they all have one thing or many things in common. But in my case, two things that I am really gonna talk about today, which is cell membranes and mitochondria. So the job around the cell membrane is to allow certain nutrients, hormones, proteins to come into the cell, to not let foreign invaders into the cell. And then to make sure we're detoxing different toxins and inflammatory components out of the cell. In the cell membrane, we have certain specialized fatty acids that make up these, these cell membranes. So two of the most important ones that we're gonna talk about today are phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine. And these two, these two fats need to be in a really nice healthy balance. Order to regulate these processes. And one of the things that happens in chronic illness when we have a lot of inflammation and oxidative stress is we actually start to oxidize those fats. So we start to change the structure and the shape of those fatty acids, phospholipids, so that they become thick and waxy. So now we're not able to regulate what can come into the cell and we're not able to detox and get things out. This transfers over to the cell danger response when The cell danger response is occurring and patients are, are experiencing this downshift in ATP production and this threat of like, hey, something's here. I need to help myself. That further, um, potentiates this cleavage of the cell membrane. It's actually one of the ways it tries to survive. Mitochondria, they also have cell membranes and the, the mitochondrial cell membrane is really unique. It has something called cardiolipin in it. And it really needs this specific curvature in order to have the electron transport chain, which is the, the cellular process that makes ATP occur. And when we're being exposed to inflammation and toxins and oxidative stress, now we're also going to get our mitochondrial membranes not functioning well. Now when we're doing that, we're getting, you know, decreased ATP production. Now we're starting to see chronic fatiguing-like symptoms. We could start to see POTS-like symptoms because our not autonomic nervous system can't regulate anymore. Our mast cells have membranes too. So now if we're getting mast cell membrane oxidation, that's one of the mechanisms of how, you know, when we, when we think about mast cells, we think about histamine, right? But we need to think about the other inflammatory components of mast cell activation syndrome, like leukotrienes and prostaglandins. And one of the ways that this, this, uh, mechanism occurs is that when the mast cells are oxidized, it actually releases arachidonic acid. So PLA2 is gonna cleave the phospholipids off the mast cell membranes, release arachidonic acid, which is a precursor of leukotrienes and prostaglandins. So now you're getting Lyme disease creating immune system dysfunction, maybe not able to detox the mold as prop— as, as well. Your autonomic nervous system can get dysregulated and now you're seeing POTS, you know, happening. Ion channels are not able to regulate as well. And then mast cells are just degranulating and now you have mast cell activation.

So, you know, just for some people in my audience who, you, I love that. It's a beautiful analogy, but the way I kind of think about that to simplify it for, for, for my, yeah, for myself as well, is like inflammation has to have somewhere where it does its damage and Ultimately, the cell membrane is where it sticks, does its stuff, and dysregulates everything else. And that's how one thing, you know, what's the one ring that rules them all? What's Occam's razor? The one thing that, you know, how can so many different things look similar? And if you go down to the cell membrane, this is where all the varied nuances of mast cell and POTS and dysautonomia and all these things, this is where they all connect and where the one thing that can cause all these other things kind of. Can start. That's kind of the way I— it would— do you have anything to add to that?

I think that was really beautifully said, you know, and I think, um, it just— to think about how it's all really interconnected. I think oftentimes we think that these conditions are very separate, but at the end of the day, you know, we can give all the best mast cell stabilizing agents or all the best antimicrobials for Lyme, but if we don't heal the cell membrane, when we stop those treatments, our symptoms are going to come right.

It's really interesting. When I was in medical school, you learn like thousands of diagnoses and how these— all these unrelated things, right? And then you're like, okay, what's the— then you kind of specialize and find these— the one, two thing. And then I learned functional medicine. I'm like, no, it's so complicated. There's a bazillion different things. And now with membrane medicine, it's like, no, really, we're getting back to the basics again, that you can have very complicated processes, but ultimately there's one place where it happens. And You know, I think maybe underlying cause for this, maybe just maybe, you know, I've got, I have all kinds of, I'm sure you have theories as well about why things happen, you know, but maybe just maybe part of the reason we're seeing this increase in chronic illnesses is we've been on a diet for half a century, a low-fat diet. And we've been, you know, let's not eat healthy saturated fat and healthy omega-3s and omega-6s. Let's remove them and replace them with trans fats, hydrogenate oils. Um, let's induce C15 deficiency and all kinds of other stuff. Um, do you think, question mark, this could be one of the things that might be underlying our chronic— not to minimize heavy metals and toxins and everything else, but do you think this could be something that could be making everything so much worse right now?

Oh, definitely. You know, I think that there's a big stigma around eating fat. Like, I was just at dinner with my mom last night and she was like, you know, you really need to stop eating so much red meat. It's so bad for you. And I said, why? You know, why is it bad for me? You know, I exercise, I take really good care of myself. I take my, you know, fish oils and my anti-inflammatories. Like my cholesterol's beautiful and I'm pretty much eating all carnivore. And I think, I think that, um, I, I could even go further with just kind of the way they replaced it with like Stevia and Splenda. And I mean, it's, it's, we replaced these healthy natural substances from the earth with these man-made processed foods that just completely dysregulate our body and our cell membranes. Um, you know, on one of the tests that we do, um, it's really common to see our omega-6 fatty acids really high. And when I see those, those fatty acids really high, I always ask my patients, you know, are you eating a lot of processed food? Are you, are you cooking with, um, canola oil? Do you eat a lot of soy? And Uh, my patients will tell me, you know, well, I'm not supposed to eat a lot of fat. I'm not supposed to eat a lot of olive oil. And I said, I want you to douse your food in olive oil and butter and eat tons of eggs, eat tons of egg yolk. That's the best place to get PC. Um, you know, but in, in this day and age we say we're not supposed to eat the egg yolks.

We need to eat the egg whites. Well, there's so many of my, that's, I think to your point, the egg yolks and PC, there's so many of my patients that are so unstable. You start to treat them, they hurt with everything. They react with everything, right? You start them herbal, you start them whatever. Because the cell danger response, you push things with your methylene agents and they have these crazy reactions. You're like, you know, how can I start detoxifying? And then just some of my training with some experts in this, in this realm, realizing you can start using PC and actually you can start using imbalance omega-3s, omega-6s. And all of a sudden with some omega-3s, then you can block the cytokine response with the omega-3s and pro-resolving mediators, which is another fat derivation you can use. PC, and all of a sudden it's like fats themselves are membrane stabilizing, mast cell stabilizing, detoxifying. Like they kind of do all these amazing things and it's like an essential thing we've removed from our diet for literally half a century.

Yeah. I have a seed cream that I give to my patients that I have them make a seed cream and I tell them, you know, make a shake every morning with the seed cream, maybe some collagen and, and your essential fatty acids in your, uh, your PC. You know, if you, if you, if you're reacting to all these foods, let's just see if you react to this and maybe even just start with like a little sip of it. Right. Um, and, and I'm amazed how many of my most extremely reactive patients are able to tolerate this shake. And over time it really helps lower their inflammation and then we can actually start layering in more things.

So talk about a little bit more about lipid therapy. What is it? How are you utilizing it? You've mentioned PC a lot. Like, what does that mean with your practice when you use fats as medicine?

Yeah. So one of the ideas is that when the fat distribution in the body gets depleted, we actually need to flood the system with the healthy fats in order to replenish the, the cell membrane content of the fat. Okay. So, um, you know, we just talked a little bit about oral PC, which is one way that we can, we can give it to our patients. But there's this concept called the bulk flow concept, which basically is, you know, when you give PC in really highly concentrated doses. We can actually displace some of those unhealthy fats in the cell membrane and embed nice healthy fats in it. So IV phosphatidylcholine, I say it's IV phosphatidylcholine, but it has, you know, some PC, PE, PI, PSO, inositol, serine, and ethanolamine. So some of those other fats that we didn't talk about as much, we give it an IV form and we flood the cells with that healthy. Fat in order to heal the membrane. Now, in order to do that, we also need something called butyrate. So I think of butyrate almost like a soap. Um, when, when we talk about butyrate a lot in practice, we usually are talking about oral butyrate, which is like, um, the tributynin form or butyric acid. Um, and that form's really good for the gut, gut health to help with short-chain fatty acid production as well, but it actually doesn't leave the GI tract very well. So when we're, when I'm talking about butyrate in this case, I'm talking about sodium phenylbutyrate. And so one of the things we need to give to displace the oxidized fat, that, that thick waxy toxic fat that I was talking about, is we need to give IV butyrate as well. And then, you know, depending on the patient in front of me, what I think they need, I'll give them different, give them different nutrients, maybe, you know, different mitochondria support as well in their IV. Sometimes I'll use things like IV MSM or Procaine to calm inflammation and pain. Um, but the, the bulk of it is, is the phospholipids.

So tell me about IV Procaine. You guys literally had never heard of that till this past November at an A4M conference and talking about neural therapy. And it's been, and it's been around, you know, the phrase was, the, the phrase was coined in 1925. And, and you're like, so it's been around for 100 years, like 5,000 practitioners using this in Germany. And it's like, I've never heard of this before in my 25-year career here in Virginia. Talk about that a little bit. Cause I feel like that's a really interesting thing that's accessible. It's been around for a century and like in my 25-year career, I never heard of it until like literally 4 months ago.

Yeah. I love neural therapy. Oh. Um, you know, neural therapy, when we think about it, I like to kind of compare it to acupuncture in the sense that with acupuncture, we have these different energetic meridians in the body that connect all of our body systems together. In neural therapy, it's kind of playing off the same concept of there's different energetic patterns that create these, these things called interference fields, which is an energetic block in the body from letting things connect. And so, you know, for instance, um, the sphenopalatine ganglion, which is a, it's a nervous system bundle kind of right here. I do neural therapy where I'll actually drip it into the nose to hit that, and it's one of the best things that I've ever done for my patients for migraines. Um, my patients will say, you know, nothing's ever helped my migraines. I've taken all the Topiramate and the, you know, going for the migraine cocktail with Valium. Um, but when we, when we do neural therapy, it's been a game changer for my patients, and I'll actually sometimes teach their family to administer it at home so they can manage their acute migraines that way. Um, IV procaine is, is a little bit more unique and, and some people are a little more comfortable with than with others. But, um, you know, I really like it because it's resetting the nervous system. It's giving the nervous system just kind of a little bit of a break to say, I'm safe. Um, I like procaine as well because it's a mast cell stabilizer. So believe it or not, in some of my And some of my really, really sensitive patients that I, I just can't do anything, I'll give 'em, you know, a mil or two of, of procaine, um, in an IV and it, uh, you'll just watch their whole body just calm down. Um, we call it truth serum because people get a little goofy and they'll, they'll tell you their, you know, they'll tell you their inner secrets. So that's just a fair warning. But, um, you know, it's, it's really, really safe when you drip it slow and you drip it at a reasonable dose.

Yeah. I've used it on a couple, we've, we've used it so far about 15, 20 patients and some migraine patients and dysautonomia many patients and even my wife, she has some health issues I've talked about on the podcast and it was really interesting to see how it just kind of like, she's like zenned out, felt great, no stress, lost all the, like, you know, hyperactivity to like the trigger response stuff. It was really interesting how it just calmed everything, everything down. And it's been around for 100 years, you know?

Yeah. You know, and I, I think the more you do it, you kind of get this longer lasting effect. So You know, some people are kind of hesitant to, cuz they're like, well, it's something I have to do every single week then. And I tell them, no, you know, it's, it's really this nervous system reset. So we need to do it every week for a couple weeks. But I find that after, you know, 3, 4, 5 weeks of doing it, you actually do have these lasting calming effects from it.

So, um, let's go back. So I love the idea of mast cells, neural therapy, and all this kind of stuff. You had mentioned the cell danger response. Could you take a little bit more of explanation in that and how, like, how, cuz that's something that, um, um, it's popped up on the radar in the last year or two. Dr. Robert Naviaux is the big researcher in that field. What is, you know, how does like chronic illness relate to that thing and how are you addressing it in your clinic?

Yeah. So to me it really still comes back to the cellular level, right? So there's 3 different stages of the cell danger response. The first stage is one that I kind of already explained where the body sees a threat and it goes into this survival stage. And in that survival stage, we talked about ATP being that master energy of the body, right? We're decreasing that energy production. And then, you know, the body starts to get this all safe signal, right? I'm safe. We got the thing out. We're not, we don't have the Lyme anymore. We don't have COVID anymore. And what we're supposed to do is we're supposed to transition into kind of this, the second stage of the cell danger response where the body starts to heal itself again. And then in the third stage, it's where all the processes start to turn back on again and we're no longer preserving our resources. But what happens in, in chronic illness, and this is kind of how it relates to the phospholipids and the cell membrane, is that as we're getting, um, oxidative stress and damage, and as we're oxidizing our cell membranes, We're continuing to trigger that danger response. We are not giving the all clear signal. And so the body gets stuck in this state where it's saying, you know, hey, something's here. I need to clear it. Hey, I have inflammation. I need you to do something. And the body's basically saying like, well, I don't know what you want me to do about this. And the body's saying, but wait, I'm going to release more inflammation because I need help. And the body still says, but what do you want me to do about it? And now we're getting just stuck in this perpetual cycle of less and less energy production, more and more membrane damage, more and more inflammation. And then kind of relating back to our first topic, right? More and more vulnerability to all of these complex conditions occurring. And so, you know, in my practice, one of the best ways that I've found to get people out of the cell danger response is, you know, first healing the membranes. Once we heal those cell membranes, um, and, and, you know, the body starts, starts to turn on the signal, it's safe. Sometimes then, you know, we do need to, um, attack tick-borne diseases, parasites, heavy metals. Um, and then, you know, really starting to give those mitochondrial nutrients as we're shifting out of the, the, uh, first stage into the second stage as the body's starting to say it's safe again. Supporting the mitochondria to heal, helping it turn back on its energy production and ATP production. And then ultimately, you know, I, I love to use peptides and things like that to, to then modulate that immune system so it's not overfiring.

And I actually read, um, today in my news feeds that potentially they're gonna be opening peptides back up, which I've, it's been back and forth for the last 6 months, closing down, opening up, closing down. So I'm like, Yeah. You know, um, I'm kind of a little bit, a little bit hesitant to get too excited about, 'cause it's been a back and forth, but I don't know if you saw that pop up in the news.

I saw it. Yeah. They, they at least took it off the Category 2 list and they're gonna give it a good, uh, good study to see, see what they really think of it, which, you know, I don't wanna get too excited either, but at the same time, I do want to get excited because I think that peptides are such an incredible gentle tool that we can use to help the body re-regulate itself and heal. Yeah.

I mean, I've had great results with them personally, with multiple patients. Um, and he had one concussion patient who I was using a peptide— I had to get it from overseas, but it's like literally he had post-concussive syndrome for like a year and a half. And after a month of, um, this particular peptide, which I'm not supposed to mention out loud, you probably know what I'm talking about, that all— literally all the symptoms went away. It's like, wow. And it's a drug overseas. Used in Germany and Austria. And here it's like, you know, verboten. If you even kind of mention it, you get in trouble. So it's, it's hopeful that we'll be able to have more access to some of this stuff in the near future.

Yeah, it's, it's a shame the way that they, they regulate treatments that, that really heal, you know, and I think the one caveat I will say is, you know, don't go, you guys go and get peptides from overseas without, you know, a doctor's supervision. We need to really make sure that we're sourcing them correctly because I think that they can be used really safely when When you know the ones I'm getting are pharmaceutical drugs from overseas.

They're not, I'm not ordering stuff from China and being a cheap thing.

Yes.

You know, people don't realize peptides are actually made. They're actually, they take chemicals and solvents to actually create the peptides. And they're really dirty. So you have to use some kind of gas chromatography or something to clean it. And what happens, and that's the expensive process. And so if you don't do that, you get these peptides, but they have all this other junk with them. That's what most of what people are buying online.

Yeah.

Yep.

And that just creates more of a toxic mess in the body. So are you using, uh, are you microdosing GLP-1s at all in your practice?

So I've been, um, using, you know, I'm gonna start the, yeah, I've been using GLP-1 since 2006. So I started using Byetta when it was a twice a day medication for diabetes and kind of followed it through my clinical research company. We did a lot of trials with diabetes as well as cardiovascular risk reduction. And, um, so I started microdosing it probably, it was actually funny, a year and a half ago because a friend of mine, um, who's a PhD nutritionist had talked about it on her blog and she was like, hey Hartman, what do you think about this? And I'm like, that's the most ridiculous thing ever. Why would I ever microdose? Oh, you know, and then, um, and then I'm in a group with Dr. Aaron Hartman. I'm not sure if you're in the mastermind group.

Yeah.

And then we started talking about it there. Like, I got it, you know, a year and change ago and like I started using it and it's like, it's been ridiculous how like a lot of my patients who re— my wife is one of my, the people who reacts with like everything gives her hives and, you know, multiple patients, even some of my menopausal patients who are type A, um, hormones are a wreck, like a touch of a microdose has actually helped balance their hormones. So it's been really interesting to see how beneficial it's been. And again, something that's been problematic because some of the pharmacist pharmacies I'm working with are changing how they're doing the microdosing stuff and now limiting to meat a month. And it's just been, but they work great though.

They work great. I have a patient, uh, with pretty severe alpha-gal where if she even smells red meat, she goes into an anaphylactic, um, reaction. And we've tried everything under the sun and Emlenox helped a little bit. Um, but then we ended up microdosing the, the tirzepatide and Um, she told me the other day that, um, she was actually able to go, go to like a school. She's a school teacher. She was able to go to a school event where everyone was eating burgers and she did just fine.

I thought about using it for that one. That's interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah. I do.

Yeah.

I do microdose GLP-1s a lot and I'm, I'm going to skip it and scramble the last 2 weeks because my, the pharmacy I was using stopped mailing, stopped sending stuff to Virginia, which is where I'm at. And so I've had to resource. Literally everything in the last 2 weeks has been a little bit of a hassle.

Yeah. Well, we can talk after this.

I might ask some questions for you. That'd be amazing. So, um, talk about your clinic. Cause you know, when I was, one of the things I was actually reading your book, um, which you've got up on the shelf, you know, Breaking Through and seeing you, it sounds like your clinic is very similar to mine where you deal with mast cell, mold, like all these complicated things. Like how do you look at these patients? Cause it seems like they're so different and yet they have so many. Similar foundational, like root causes that you can treat literally mast cell, mold, and Lyme sometimes with one intervention. Like how do you kind of work through these complicated patients individually?

Yeah, I mean, that's such a good question. It's, it's the most frustrating and most exciting thing about this medicine, I think, because it always keeps us on our toes and we're always having to learn more. Um, but it is, it's like a big puzzle piece that you have to put together. I will say that, you know, first and foremost, mold, it come, mold comes first. You know, I just find, and I'm sure you could probably agree that if a patient is living in mold, working in mold, having a chronic mold source, um, of exposure, it's almost impossible to move them forward. So, you know, it's, it's a tough conversation to have with patients because, you know, I mean, gosh, my heart is, is in this and I know what I'm asking my patients to do sometimes. But there's times where, you know, we, we continue to work through things and we try to, try to get there. And, um, you know, I just had a conversation with, with my colleague today about this where it's like, we tried all these things for this patient and it just comes down to the fact that we know they're in mold and we know they're struggling to get out of it, but everything we give them, they're just gonna keep reacting to until they get outta mold. And that's actually my one non-negotiable with, with patients that come to the clinic. Patients fly all over. The country for the cell membrane therapy. And I, I just, unless we know you're not in mold, it's, it's not worth coming. Um, so, you know, I, I, and, and then I kind of put parasites up there too. So when I'm, when I'm looking at someone and especially if they again have a lot of mast cell symptoms, I really start to think about parasites, a lot of GI symptoms, mental health symptoms. But you know, I used to try to go after all of this and I used to try to say, okay, your bucket's overflown. We need to treat the mold. We need to treat the parasites. We need to treat, right? But going back to my roots of naturopathic medicine, like what is the root, right? What is the root of all of this? And so that's where the membrane medicine really comes in. That's where healing the cells, healing the immune system, getting the mitochondria back on board. That's where I'm starting first with a lot of my patients, you know? And, and granted, a lot of the times, like the patient population I'm seeing, they've already seen 15 other doctors trying to treat all of this stuff, right? So I'm not trying to say like, I'm not saying that's the way you have to go with every patient because I think that if you're in the beginning of your disease process and it's absolutely well worth the time to try all these other great modalities, but in my patients where they've done this for 10, 15, 20 years and they're still not better, healing the membrane first, healing the cell first, and then seeing what's left. And I'll tell you, a lot of the time I actually don't need to treat the infections. I don't need to treat all the other things. Spike protein, I do need to detox, um, because that just persists in the body. It's, it's pretty stubborn. Um, so, you know, a lot of the times in my long COVID patients, I'm doing some sort of spike protein detox alongside the membrane work. But a lot of the times when we go back and we tell the body it's safe again, help it exit the cell danger response, we don't need, you know, some of these other aggressive—

to your point, I had a patient. That when I first started doing this kind of medicine, you know, maybe 15-ish years ago, who had like 5, this is a standard, you know, LabCorp Quest band positive Lyme. This was when at that point in time where I'm like, I'm not going to deal with Lyme. Like, I don't want to do it. I don't want to touch it. I'm not going to stay away from it. And so she went up to a clinic in DC that basically just gave her antibiotics for a year straight. And they're getting ready to put a PICC line in her. And her mom was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So she came back to me at that point in time. I actually already started learning some of the mold stuff, et cetera. And, you know, it was interesting because after a year of AnaBiotics, her banning didn't change at all. It was the exact same. And so I'm like, well, I kind of felt like relieved, like, well, I don't have to worry about AnaBiotics with you. You're not going to help, right? Even at all. It's not going to do anything good for you. So start talking with her. It's like, oh yeah, you know, crawl space and water leaks and damage. And let's start you on some Lipids, some PC, Body Balance, or on some other things. And Um, it's interesting, over the period of 6 months, all of her bands normalized without antibiotics, without herbs, simply remediating her house and using lipids. So like, to your point, it's sometimes these infectious disease issues aren't ultimately an infectious disease issue. They're a membrane, you know, toxin in the membrane, however you want to say it, but they're, they're less than, you know, 3 anaerobics, 3 types of anaerobics every, you know, day for months and months.

Right. And something I'm using a lot for Lyme, once we do heal the cell membranes, is I'm using a lot of SOT therapy now. Are you using SOT at all?

That's something we can talk about. Interesting. Cause we just, I'm in the process of doing the training for that. I had a PA who's come and joined us who actually was doing it at a Lyme clinic in Northern Virginia for the last 5 years. And so we're in the process of adding it, but how do you, so why don't you talk about SOT therapy a little bit? Um, cuz all my experiences, an, is, is, is, uh, through her and her experience.

So, um, what, what about that?

Cuz it's really, when I first heard about it, my first thing was like, whoa, like what's this weird thing overseas? So I started researching. I'm like, wow, this is being, this is pretty deep in the science. Like this is kind of cool.

It is. And, and you know, for a couple years I kind of just like sat and watched, like my patients are like, okay, I'm gonna go fly over to this clinic and go get it. And I'm like, okay. You know, it had, I was like, okay, what, what is this? And, and over time I watched it really help some of my very complex patients and patients were just begging me to start doing it. So, um, so what is it? So it's, it's actually being rebranded as Q-Restraint. So if you hear that term, um, but, um, you know, so SOT is called supportive oligonucleotide therapy. So what that means is, um, Okay, so basically I, my brain is very science-oriented, you guys. I apologize. And I, I'm working to help explain things more simply.

Let's, let's, so, you know, 10th grade people, everybody can be the 10th grader in the room. Explain to us.

Yeah, so, okay, so in our body we, we have our DNA, right? And our DNA gets read and it, it's how we make all of our different proteins. It's how our cells replicate is by reading that DNA. And a lot of different antibiotics, um, actually will target the mRNA, which is that, that strip of the DNA that gets read, and it, it tries to block it from being read so that you cannot replicate your cell and your cell dies. So what SOT is, is you actually sequence the genome of the specific species of the infection you have. So let's say you have Bartonella henselae. We send your blood off to Greece and they'll sequence the genome and they make something called an siRNA, which is basically like, you know, um, let's just use the analogy of like a boulder in the road, right? So you're going along and you're traveling to where you wanna get to, and all of a sudden you just see a boulder in the road and now you can't get to where you wanna get to. That's what the siRNA does is it's basically placing that boulder in the mRNA so that it can't be read. And so now, um, when that SI, when that mRNA can't be read, the, the cells can't replicate. We can't make hormones, we can't make proteins. And then so ultimately the infection's gonna die. Um, so what I like about this is it's one IV. It is one IV per species. So if you have, you know, Babesia duncani, Borrelia burgdorferi, Bartonella henselae, you would need 3 SOTs. Um, but it's very gentle. It's not disrupting your gut microbiome, and it works for 6 months in the body, just kind of living in your blood looking for the DNA of your infection. Now, I will say I've seen some of the worst Herxing or die-off reactions, um, with SOT that I've ever seen, which on one hand that tells me it's working. Um, But, you know, so that's kind of my one precaution with my patients is like, hey, if we give it to you, we can't slow down, right? Like, it's in you. All we can do is help support your detox, inflammation, and manage your Herxing. Um, but you know, I've seen it just work so well, and now we're not needing triple antibiotics, we're not needing 15 different supplements. Um, you know, it, it's a little bit spendy, but when you think about how much you're spending on supplements with 3 years of treatment, it It's really not.

That was one of my concerns, uh, that was to your point, like for some of my mast cell patients and patients who react with everything, you know, um, you gotta get them, I guess, ready for realizing that even when you put them on it, they still might have a significant Herx reaction. For those patients, how long do they Herx for typically? Like, so say you put it in, it's a bad reactor. Are they gonna be like that for, you know, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 3 months?

I would say the worst I've seen in the last 3 years of doing it is 4 weeks. Um, you know, in my patients that we've met, uh, stabilized their membranes first and we've done some of the cellular work, a lot of them actually just feel better. You know, um, like I had a patient that we did it on, I just had her 3-month follow-up and she said, you know, so this is the interesting thing about SOT is it's not like you're gonna hurt the next day. At any time in that 3 months you could hurt, or 6 months you could hurt. So the first 2 months she noticed nothing. She was like, Dr. Shine, I spent all this money, this isn't gonna work. You know? And then she had a 3-day herx from all, you know, it was horrible. Um, and then when she came out of that herx, she said she's never felt this good. Um, she was having some really severe neuropathy and she said her neuropathy was gone. And so, you know, that was just like a, a 3-day herx and that's more like maybe a couple days what I'm seeing. But I mean, I spend a lot of time talking to my patients about how to manage these reactions. Um, and that's something that I feel like is really missing in a lot of doctors who treat these complex chronic illnesses is we need to give tools to help. I, I call it balancing the teeter-totter, right? Like not letting you just fall down and crash.

Yeah. Managing HERCs can be, can be difficult and complicated sometimes, and particularly if your patients who react with everything. So, um, but we're hoping, we actually, um, are hoping to start doing that in our clinic hopefully in the next, I don't wanna give a timeframe, but soon. I, my, my standard is before I introduce something, I need to do the training myself. So I think the big gap is me. I'm starting that, that whole, the 4 things. I'm starting that in the next week or 2. So hopefully we'll do it in the next couple months.

Definitely. Well, if you ever, ever need anything, they're really, the company is really amazing at walking you through things and you're always willing to reach out to, because I've been thinking about 3 years.

Yeah, we're offered, it kind of popped up in our, in the our mast cell group a little bit in the last little bit, which working.

Yeah. I'm actually less hesitant about doing it in the mast cell patients. Um, because usually the mast cells, they're reacting to something that they're taking constantly. And the day you give it to them, you give them a little bit of a steroid, which I love hate about it. Oh, but you give 'em some famotidine and you give 'em a, a steroid. And I actually find that it doesn't trigger my patients' mast cells very much.

That's a good point. I've had some of my patients early on when I started doing this kind of stuff, and a lot of my dysautonomia patients, I, who had autoimmune issues, I started doing these. And this was back when I was playing, playing rheumatologist and everybody gets steroids, right? And finding out people with like these small steroid doses that may, makes a lot of their issues go away. Now I know that's not ideal, but you know, I did that for several years as I was managing some of these complicated rheumatoid patients in our, in our area. It takes like 6 months to see a rheumatologist. So sometimes you're stuck figuring it out on your own. What would you say is the most in your clinic right now is the, the newest unique? 'Cause I feel like every couple years I'm seeing something new that becomes the next trendy thing, right? For sure.

So my obsession of the month is, is photobiomodulation therapy, red light, green light, violet light therapy. I mean, that's kind of my, my nerdy thing of the month. So we actually got some, um, Arconia low-level lasers. So I have a red and a violet and a green and a violet light, and I'm pretty much every patient that'll let me shine the lasers on them, I'm, I'm shining lasers on them. And so these low-level lasers actually work to calm inflammation and increase ATP production. Um, and, and my patients are just loving it. It's something so simple that can provide really quick results and relief. Um, and so that, that's my obsession of, of the month. We actually just got some really big red light panels. And I'm trying those out on the patients and I'm just kind of letting anyone who wants to go lay in the bed, go lay in the bed right now.

Free trial. See what happens.

Yeah. Get to know, I mean, you need to get to know, like you said, right? You wanna get to know that modality. And, um, but so far patients are saying that they just absolutely love it. It's like bathing in the sun, which here in Portland we, is, is well needed.

So what kind of new, so you mentioned ozone, do you do like EBOO or IV? You do IV ozone. What other kind of therapies do you do? In your office?

Yeah, so we do, we do IV ozone. Um, we, we have a lot of acupuncturists in the office as well. We do neural therapy. We talked about IV chelation, um, nutrients as well. And then, and then the lasers. I do a lot of, um, a lot of neural retraining as well. So we have a couple different vagus nerve stimulators, um, that we'll use on our patients because I think the limbic system and getting the vagus nerve regulated is key, but pretty much when you come visit me, we're using all of the little fun tools we have. Like, it works.

Try this, try that. Yeah. I have a handout. I give my patients. There's a lot of, there are some different things, like different, there are a lot of actually products you can buy online now that are vagal nerve activators. Obviously what you have in your office is probably more potent, but, um, limbic dysregulation, vagal nerve dysfunction. I feel like all my chronic patients have some degree of vagal nerve dysfunction, limbic kindling. Whatever term you wanna call it, your trauma brain, whatever you wanna call it. I feel like in chronic low-grade years.

Yeah.

It's a kind of medical trauma that I feel like all my patients have it at some point in their healing, their healing journey. You have to, when you get to that point, then you have to work over that, that hump. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I actually recently bought myself an Apollo Neuro, which is kind of just a little watch device that vibrates and, um, you know, they offered to send me a free one, so I said, okay, sure. You know, I'll try it. Oh, I didn't think that something that just vibrated on my wrist would do anything, but man, I'm sleeping so good. It has a sleep vibration that I'll notice if I get a little, you know, I mean, I really care about and love my patients. So if I get a little worked up, you know, if someone's just not getting better, if they're crying, it'll start vibrating. It's amazing how much it just calms me down. So now I'm actually recommending that to everyone because it's, it's something so simple that you don't have to actually do something, right? Like that's one of the things with our chronically ill patients is it's like one more thing to do, right?

But the Apollo Neuro is just a little watch that you can just wear and you have to start using the Pulsetto device, which is similar to that for some of my POTS patients. Same thing. Some people works great. Some people love it. Some people are like, I just wasted $300. But it's like, you know, sometimes you gotta try these things and see what works.

Yeah. Yeah. I have my Pulsetto sitting right there. We have, we have a Pulsetto and a TrueVega in the clinic. Um, and an AlphaStim. And I'll let the patients try it and say, you know, which one works, works best for you. And I'll let them try it before they, they buy it so they can see, you know, how does it feel and how does it work for them. Although that being said, you really need to keep doing it to see those long-term results.

Dr. Stein, I really enjoyed our conversation. I feel like we could keep on going down all these little rabbit holes, but I want to respect your time. So if people want to learn more about you, you mentioned your book back there. I did. What led to this conversation was actually reading your book. So why don't you tell us about that a little bit? And if people want to learn more about you, how they can find out more about you.

Yeah. So, uh, my book is called Breaking Through Chronic Illness. It's available on Amazon. Um, and it pretty much goes into a lot more detail about all of this cellular work that we just talked about today. Um, and then, you know, I, my Instagram is @DrMelanieStein, um, where I like to post a lot of different medical tips and tricks and facts. Um, and then, you know, as we kind of mentioned, I'm in Portland, Oregon. Restorative Health Clinic is my clinic. And so, um, I'll give you all of the information that you can, you can post in the show notes.

Um, when we, we follow up, I'll email you and you can send me that stuff to make sure we get in the show notes. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. It's been a great conversation. Um, take care.

Yep. Thanks.