147: Small Steps, Big Healing: Harnessing the Power of Incremental Change with Dr. Tom Moorcroft

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

All right, everyone, how we doing? We're here for another one of these fun filled episodes of moldy stuff. Anyways, today's cool. So, you know, normally I, when I have guests on, we'll chat, you know, a little bit, kind of get a feel of, hey, where's this episode gonna go? What do we want to do with this? Right? And then it's been 25 minutes of us pre chatting, so I feel like I should have turned on the recording a little sooner than we did. But there's a lot of really, really cool stuff here for us to talk about. So with all that said, I have Dr. Tom Warcroft on as the guest today. So hello, Tom. And maybe take a minute to sort of introduce yourself, you know, who you are, where you are, what you do, and then we can dive into some stuff.

Great. Thanks for having me, Brian. I really appreciate it. Like you said, I'm Dr. Tom Moorcroft. I'm a board certified osteopathic physician and for the last 15 years I've had a practice that's really exclusively focused on the treatment of Lyme and other tick borne illnesses and pans and pandas. So kids with autoimmune encephalitis and then things like mold illness and MCAs kind of all come along with that because that's what we're seeing all the time. And I guess the long and the short of it was my goal is really for everybody to just live a really passionate life and shine that amazing, you know, unique light that is them on the world. And I was trying to do that back in the day. I was like in college, learning about, you know, landscape ecology, wildlife management, just love to play outside. And then I was talking to a bunch of adults and we were all in a room researching and talking all the time. And then I noticed people weren't getting anything done. So I was like, I want to get something done. I want to save the planet. I don't want to talk about saving the planet. I'm a big action taker, right? So when I got out of college, I had an opportunity to take an AmeriCorps internship, which is Essentially, like the domestic Peace Corps. And I went to a place called the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, which now has been renamed the Cary Institute. But we were studying a lot of outdoor stuff and doing a lot of really great research. But I joined the Elder education group so that I could really get kids motivated to be psyched about the planet, because I just wanted to, like, ski and hike and mountain bike, play the dogs and the family outside. And then one day, and my boss comes up to me, and she had to, like, shake me, too, at my desk, and she's like, tom, like, what the heck's going on? I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, we had a meeting an hour ago, and I needed this thing done a week ago, and, you know, you're just not getting the work done. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Then I look at my. Literally, I typed nothing in an hour. And then she's like, what's wrong with you? And we looked down, and I had drooled all over myself. So I got home, and I'm, like, trying to figure out what's going on. She's like, you got to go to the doctor. And I. In retrospect, I had a lot of brain fog and fatigue that had crept in, a lot of muscle and joint aches. But I. You know, I was younger. I just kept going. And then, like, the next morning, I woke up, and I had this rash start. And over the next couple of days, it enveloped most of the left side of my body. My arm, my leg, my torso. And so then I went to my dad's doctor, and he goes, I gotcha. Classic Lyme disease. Ten days of doxycycline. You're good to go. And So I took 10 days of doxycycline. The first four days, I laid on the floor, like, sweating and in a lot of pain. And then I'd be freezing. And my parents. I was 23. My parents had to take me to the bathroom, which is kind of embarrassing when you're an athlete at 23 and you can't even get to the bathroom on your own. And. But then I started to feel better. But unfortunately, over the next, like, four or five years, I started having joint pain and brain fog and fatigue creep back in. I went to doctor after doctor, and they're all like, oh, I know you're depressed. I'm like, no, I have pain. And they're like, oh, that's just depression. And then I was like, none of those meds worked. You know, I didn't know any of this stuff. So I just. Following the rules, right? They're like, oh, no, we were wrong. You have that hypomania thing. You know, the one that all the. It's bipolar depression, and all the good doctors and lawyers have it. And I was like, are you serious? I don't have that. But I tried the medicine anyway, and of course, that didn't work. And then the sort of the icing on the cake was I went to the doctor and I said, I have brain fog, fatigue, joint pain, and muscle aches, and it's been like four years ago. Oh. I'm like, dude, you're my last hope. And he's like, no, no, I got you. I got you. You've got chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.

Perfect.

I literally wanted to punch the guy because he just, like. I basically told him my symptoms, and he gave me a label that includes my symptoms, but he didn't tell me what was wrong with me or give me any hope for getting better. And, I mean, now we're all talking about gaslighting and stuff and being accidentally betrayed, essentially, by the medical system because they don't have the time nor the know how, you know, the conventional system to tell me what was wrong. And I just went on this crazy journey. And ultimately, I found, like, I started doing yoga really slowly over the years, and then that led me to dietary change. And ultimately, after about eight years, I was about 70% better. And then I had a little bit of a coincidence in my life where I got to change a medical school rotation. I walked into a office where this husband and wife team were seeing people, and they all sounded. For the first time in eight years, these people all sounded just like me. And so ultimately, it was beautiful because I felt heard. I felt like there were other people like me, and I had hope for healing. And over the next four and a half or so years, working with them and doing a lot of work on my own, I got better. And at the time we're talking, I've been 12 years plus without any symptoms of Lyme, Babesia, or heavy metal toxicity, which were the three big ones for me at the time. So at that point, I'm like, hey, if other people are out there suffering and not being heard, I got to step up, right? And so that's how we got started. In fact, I think earlier I was talking to. To telling you about one of the patients who we share, and, well, my patient, your client. This was literally the person I'm thinking of, was the first person that I ever treated for Lyme once I was in private practice and I just said, I see you, I hear you. I feel what's going on. I don't know who to send you to. So because I had my own personal journey, I was like, I'm going to step up for you. And then ultimately, I think through hers, how we actually ended up being connected, like, all these years later. So it's kind of ironic in some respects, but it's kind of like that air quotes around irony and coincidences. Right? Because none of it's a coincidence.

Yeah, it's crazy. Did you ever see that movie Butterfly Effect? I'm already going on a tangent. Ever see that movie?

I haven't seen the whole thing. I saw little bits and pieces, though.

Yeah, it's just like this whole thing, like one little tiny change here, and it just like, has this massive cascade. And, like, the further away you get, obviously, the bigger the cascade gets on the change in a direction or something like that. Think about that stuff. Like, what if I did this little thing instead of this, like, four years ago? Like, what would things look like now as compared to what they are?

It's really interesting because, like, two weeks later, I found out there was a person in Connecticut I could have referred this person to, you know, but. But it's really interesting because when you. When you look at some of the things we talked about, maybe chatting about, this is really what I'm trying to teach people with Lyme disease, whether you're a practitioner or a patient or a health coach, working with them, because I train people in all these areas, and I work, you know, work directly with group coaching with patients as well as in my private medical practice. But the thing is, you never know what that one thing that you choose to say yes to yourself today is going to do, or if you start trying to chase somebody else's healing path because you're comparing yourself to others, what tangent that's going to take you off? And it's like. It's like compound interest. Right. If I had only started investing $100 a month when I was 20, rather than when I was in my 40s. Financially, that's a big difference because you start to build on it. And also there's that ripple effect or that butterfly effect like you're mentioning. I just think it's about getting. The problem with lime and mold, to me, is that they change the way you think, and it also kicks up our emotions. So one of the things I'm always trying to do is say, what is your subjective experience of who you are and the experience you're going through, because that's important. But also objectively, what does your body need today? And a lot of times people get stuck in the emotion of it, which I understand. I've been there. Like, I wanted to, like, I literally wanted to beat the crap out of that doctor who told me that like, I had fibro. I'm like, duh, like, you know, so like. But now give me something that's actually going to be a cause of fibromyalgia so that I can get better and. But we never can. It's so hard to think about if I take one step further today than I did yesterday, how that's going to have a ripple effect later on. And it's even like mold treatments sometimes. We're talking about binders. I'm like, look, I want to take out just a wee little bit more toxin today than I did yesterday. Or I want you to and because that's going to ultimately lead to this huge effect. But you can't see that effect today. So it's really important. And mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, that's the truth. When you're in alignment with your passion, you will have things like the coincidence of these people coming in my life and changing a rotation to go find out what I really had. There's no coincidence there. I had been working on that for two years to make that coincidence occur. And. And that was what changed my whole life. Yeah.

You know, essentially what you just said, again, just going other directions. So like, I think I was reading something a while ago, I don't remember. I was talking about motivation, how people are motivated to do certain things. And it was talking about when the payoff of whatever you're getting motivated to do. So like this is in specific specifically about like exercising and working out. Right. So you have short term benefit, but then there's a lot of like long term benefit that's actually way more beneficial than the short term benefit. When you really think about what it does for prolonging your life and reducing Alzheimer's, like all the things on cardiovascular disease, all this stuff that just lifting some heavy things can do for you. But when, when the payoff is so far away, the motivation to get to the payoff is less. And when the payoff is perceived to be way closer than your motivation is more. What that does for people is that it, it messes with their priority system so that you start prioritizing the short term payoff because you're going to get it Quicker and you're ultimately prioritizing things that aren't as valuable as something that like down the road should be prioritized, just a longer play. And so I was like looking at this and thinking this is like it's, it's a tie between like short term to long term priority and that they are not always equal and the long term priority may be, may be longer away. So then the human element of motivation to do that then goes down. It's almost like the scale that's like going back and forth. And what you need to try to do is push up the motivation to get to the thing that's going to have the longer term effect, which is going to be a much bigger reward for you than whatever your short term effect. And I think in this world that's about working out, right? But in this world of chronic illness and healing and things like that, it's very easy to try to figure out like what is the quick thing I can do to relieve this immediate thing that's going on. And obviously that has to happen. It's not. You just pick one or the other, right? Like right now you do get short term benefit, but you are also going to be getting the long term benefit. Right? They come together and on the treatment front and on that journey piece, yes, like the short term piece is there, but don't necessarily be like dissuaded where if the short term piece doesn't seem as like immediate or rapid as maybe you want it to be, understanding what the long term, long term piece is going to look like and what that effect is going to look like is just like a mindset shift on trying to rework motivation and priority setting.

Well, I think, I mean, Ryan, I think this is like, this is a direct, this is. I have forever compared athletes to chronically ill people because if you look at a marathon runner and their nutritional things and you look at a chronically ill person, it's almost the same thing. It is unbelievable, the parallels. But from a mindset perspective, I think there are two things. And this can kind of will dovetail us into kind of what Lyme does to the brain. But there's one thing is.

There'S a concept called the gap and the gain. And then the other thing is sort of like how do we heal, right? Because part of the problem with short term gain is that if we get too much short term gain, it actually our nervous system will revolt against it and pull us backwards. So if we unpack these two maybe sequentially, who knows? Sounds like you think Like I do. It's like in a circle, we eventually land it.

Yeah, I just like go. People are okay with it.

I really love, like Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy work with strategic coach. And I've just seen him do a talk and I saw Ben talk. And so I got the book called the Gap in the Game. But they are business coaches, right? And, but a lot of the way people excel at business is they do repetitions, boring crap every day for long term gain. And every once in a while they had a short term dopamine hit and they learn how to do that so that they stay motivated on the path. And one of the cues or one of the big keys, whether you're trying to be successful in a relationship, successful in raising a kid, in entrepreneurship, building a business, or healing, is that there's this concept of gap and gain. And so many of us are always like, the goal is so far away. And we're like, we wake up and we go, damn. I literally had a patient come in like two years ago and they go, Dr. Tom, I am 70% better in the last two months. I was like, wow, I'm going to pat myself on the shoulder. And then the next, the next thing they said is, I can't stand it. I cannot believe how much further I have to go. I'm like, you just literally told me you were 70% better. Every. How many people suffering with chronic Lyme, chronic mold exposure, whatever it is, would, wouldn't die. They would give a leg to get 70% better in two months. Right. And they were just like, but I have so much more to go. And so they're focusing on how much gap is between where they are and where they want to be. So what I'm saying is, yes, we have to have that target. But the problem is human nature is that target always moves. The closer you get to the target, the further it moves away. But there's this other thing where I can look back and I go, where did I start? And if I look at where I start and then I compare where I am today to where I started, I have a gain. And part of it is savoring the amount of gain you've had. In fact, literally the last patient I talked to today, same conversation, it's like they're so stoked about how much better they got, but then they're like, oh, I've all this, how far to go? I go. I agree. What is our endpoint? What is our goal now? Let's reflect and really feel what it is like to do that. So one of the exercises I have people do is at the end of your day, write down three wins from your day. Doesn't matter how big or small. If you had the world's worst day and you were in bed and it felt terrible, what lesson did you learn? What new insights like? And I actually think that this exercise works best when it's not a big thing. I think it's the more nuanced great things in your day that you notice, the better. Like I was able to go pee on my own. Like I was saying, like, my parents had to help me that first day where I could go to the bathroom on my own one time rather than every time needing help. That's a huge win. So you start to savor these things. And you do that right before bed. Takes like three minutes. Write down three wins for the day, but then write down three wins you're going to have for tomorrow. So you're literally pre programming the way you think. Because what's going to happen is as soon as you say, I'm going to have this win for tomorrow, your conscious mind is going to go, you know what? No, you're not. It's going to come up with all the reasons why you can't. But that's why you just write down three things. No matter how big or small, it doesn't matter. And then you just put it down and go to bed. And what's going to happen is when you finally fall asleep, because most people with insomnia at least sleep for 10 minutes. Ultimately, you'll eventually get there. You dissociate from your conscious mind and that subconscious that's trying to process this connects with life or God or whatever you want to call it, divinity. And you, it's sort of, you start channeling this universal knowledge and you're open to new possibilities. And then you wake up, you know, so it's kind of become super consciousness. And then you wake up in the morning and you read all six of them for 15 seconds and you're done. And so anybody who's listening is going, this is crap. Like, try it for a week and then tell me how you. What you think. Because usually around day three or four, you start to notice so many little nuances and coincidences again come up in your life where you're starting to savor the day. And then when you get to the end of the day to do this exercise now, it brings your nervous system from stress down, the parasympathetic rest and rejuvenate. And you'll Actually find, even people with insomnia will start to be able to go to sleep more easily because they get into this ritual that takes you all of three minutes at night and 15 seconds in the morning. Um, so if you're not willing to try it out, you probably don't want to get better because it's only three minutes and 15 seconds on a piece of paper and you, and, and you really start to get really calm and then you start to notice gratitude. And what's really important about noticing that you're having a little bit of gratitude is a lot of people have heard about heart math or, or rings or whoop or whatever. A lot of people are measuring heart rate variability because low levels is associated with illness, being stressed, and poor immune function. But when we can raise it up, we see improved stress tolerance, improved tolerance to toxins such as infections, we see immune boosting, and we see a better outlook on life and on and on and on. All these amazing benefits. When you do this exercise, you accidentally start to bump yourself, your heart rate variability up. So it's one of the easiest ways for someone who's chronically sick to start to one, change their mindset about sickness, but to physiologically change their heart rate variability and boost their immune system and become more resilient to these infections and such. So it's not just a mindset trick that all the gurus of the Secret are talking about. You can literally measure it. And if you happen to have one of these technology bits that can measure it for you, you will see over the course of one to two weeks, heart rate variability will start to change, your sleep will get deeper, and this is all stuff that really leads to improved brain detoxification, improved healing from infection. So it's so nice because it allows you to calm down and you start to see the beauty in your day. When a lot of us, like, I mean, really for like about eight years, I was like, there's not a lot of beauty in my day. Like, I know I'm living and breathing, but I wasn't really feeling all it. I wasn't feeling it, you know, so it's a nice way to start to do that. And if you look at the other side too, is when you have Lyme disease in particular. And I know that Bartonella does stuff like this. Mold most likely does stuff like this. They just haven't done the studies to connect it directly for sure. But we have science on this. When we talk about healing, a lot of us, the biggest thing is if our short term gain, if we go back to that terminology is too big. If you ever notice, like, and how many of you guys listening have experienced this or saw a friend like this, they start to get better and better and better and better. And they're. You're like, oh, my God, they're going to be cured soon. And then all of a sudden, they have the Herxheimer from hell. It's like a bungee cord smashed them, pulled them back and smashed them into the brick wall behind them. And they're like, crumbled, and they're as bad or worse than they've ever been. And then you're like. Then the doctors start going, well, you have an illness mentality, or you have secondary gain from being sick. I'm like, let's go back and see what really happened in your nervous system. The goal of our reptilian nervous system is to keep us alive so that we can pass on our DNA. Whether you like that or not, that's the best science we have today. But the problem with that is staying alive and passing along our DNA. Nowhere in that sentence does it say feel good, just says alive. So then we start to look at polyvagal theory and limbic retraining and the vagus nerve, when you look, the ability to heal is the ability we need to know that we're safe. So then if we look, unpack, safety. Because I think that a lot of people here, like, they're like, I am safe. I'm at home, I'm in my bed. I'm safe. I need to heal. Now really what's happening, though, is the reptilian part of the brain that wants to pass along our DNA, it doesn't really process safety. It's more familiarity, because familiarity is comfortable. So if you want to call it familiarity or your comfort zone, your nervous system loves you being in the same exact state more often than not. And so when I ask you to change. So now let's say you've been sick for a year, or in my case, six years, before I started to do anything. And before I got medicine, it was 8. When I go to change, my comfort zone or my familiar state is being sick. And so when I change, my primitive nervous system, which has this reflex protective mechanism, does not have the ability to tolerate big changes at once. So if I'm changing too rapidly, it gets afraid because it's unfamiliar, and just insert the word not safe.

So then what's the reaction then? So you're. You're getting better. You have, theoretically, what we're talking about, our nervous system doesn't like this.

How is it creating that bungee cord Herx that you talked about? Like, what's actually happening?

Yeah. Your ner. Your nervous system, like, will do everything in its past. I don't know that we know the exact mechanism by which it pulls you back, but it will literally, like, go, I know we can't handle this too much too fast. And it will do whatever it can to pull you back. Right. And so, typically, the way I see it unfold is people will start to skip taking their treatments. They don't follow through, or they double down on a treatment when they're really supposed to take, oh, I made a mistake. Right. It's like. So it's essentially the mechanism that triggers self sabotage. And my message here is there are people who self sabotage, but it's very few. This self sabotage that I'm talking about is like, you can't stop yourself from doing it. It's not you doing it. It's your nervous system initiating self sabotage. So the way to get past this is to stress your nervous system a little bit on a regular basis and let it rest a little bit. So if we look at the concept of hormesis, which a lot of people, when you're trying to rejuvenate your mitochondria or get your cells to detoxify, we talk about this. But it's a little bit of stress over a little bit of time that allows you to grow. And what happens is you want to be uncomfortable but not too uncomfortable. So a lot of times when I hear about limbic retraining, everybody wants to be as comfortable and comfortable and comfortable and never be uncomfortable. But you can't get out of the rut if you're never uncomfortable. But if you're too uncomfortable, then your nervous system will hijack you and pull you back. So you have to find a place where you're kind of just pushing yourself a little bit and you're not falling backwards.

We all talk about this with mold treatment. If you're on a binder, well, what's too much versus not enough? Well, if I take a binder and I feel a little off for three or four days, great. And then it starts to balance out. Sure, keep doing that. But if you feel it's almost like the exercise one, if it's getting worse, if your recovery is worse and worse and worse, then you got to slow down. Right. And so that's. It's. It's one of these things that requires a lot of personal responsibility and work with your practitioner to as an objective measure to help you just kind of move a little at a time. And that's why I say, like, it's. We're pushing you a little bit to get grateful about how your sick life is. Right. You know, that exercise is like, it's a way to start it. And then a lot of the work we do in our Thrive with Lyme program is to get people to recognize the sensation of constriction and or contraction. So, like, it's interesting and if you've gone through this enough and if you haven't, just try this on for size and then come back to it. But when you're having a herx, there's a little bit of extra. Like my osteopath mentors, they often talk about a herxheimer or a die off reaction as a vital reaction. And I really like that terminology because when you're feeling it, you're like, I don't feel well. But there's a bit of positive, like, energy and a positive vibe behind it. But when it starts to get to the point where it constricts and you're like, talking about it to friends and you just feel yourself getting tighter and tighter now, you know you've gone beyond vital and you've gone to reflex. Pulling you back.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot in this that makes a lot of sense. I mean, in that last piece, I've told this story before, but not to you. I was, I was going through the, the cell core.

Gut cleanse, whatever it's called, whatever, or the parasite cleanse. And man, the die off was bad. It was bad to the point where, like, I was falling on. I had to like, lay on the ground and curl up in a ball because the pain was so significant. And on one side I'm like, all right, well, something is happening. Like, and, you know, luckily I know enough people to talk to are like, okay, that's die. Like, so all these things hold all these toxins and all this stuff in here. When you kill them, it all comes out. And so if you're killing a bunch of them, you're flooding your body with all this stuff and then that can happen. Right? So it's kind of what you're saying, like, you start balancing out, like, how much can I handle? Because I'm like one of those people. Like, I want to handle as much as I can to try to get through it as fast as I can. But then there's a point where I'm like, all right, I need to, like, that's enough, Right? And that's, you know, so. So it kind of, like, reminded me of that. But the other thing that I wanted to get in, because when you're talking about the nervous system, it almost sounds like.

What'S a way to put this? It either can be, like, on your team or not on your team. It can be on either side. And it's sort of your job to draft them to be on your team as opposed to let them go be on somebody else's team. And the discomfort, comfort thing, I feel like this is pretty constant in a lot of areas of life. And you go back to exercise. There's so many things in health and exercise. You get uncomfortable for a minute, you're sore for days, and your body grows back and it builds stronger, right? And, like, that's how exercise works. That's how stamina builds up. That's how you build up, you know, strength for cardiovascular system and all these things. There's like, all this stuff, and it's this thing of not always being comfortable. And. And I was listening to somebody else a while back talking about comfort, comfortability and actually saying that. That com. Being comfortable is the precursor to death, basically, is what they said. Now. They. They said it. It was a very, like, extreme way of saying it. But basically, I think the point that he was trying to get to was if you think about what happens as you get older and older and older, you stop doing things that are uncomfortable when you're a kid, you're playing sports, you're running, you're jumping, you're doing all this stuff as you get older, you do less of that, you sit more, you do this more. And then when you get really old and you're kind of, you know, in your last, you know, five, ten years or whatever, like my grandma right now literally just lays in bed all day, right? And so the shift of being comfortable to the point where I just want to be comfortable and I don't want to be uncomfortable, and then that isn't what allows your body to continue to thrive and do what it's built to do, and then it basically speeds up that process, right? And so flip that on the other side and talk about what you're talking about. If we can do some things that push a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling on a regular basis, then if you take that other concept and say, okay, I buy into this concept, listening to it, then you're kind of reversing or prolonging that. Actually, not reversing, but you're extending out, like, where that, that point at the end, eating it all makes a lot of sense because we weren't built to just sit around all day, right? And, and I, I say that in a broad scope. Obviously, we're talking in the world of someone with a chronic illness. It's not that you're just choosing to sit around all day, right? So that's not what's happening here. But like, in a general sense, we were built to move and have all of that to move our lymph in our body and help and help mobilize. Like, all this stuff is done in movement and sweating and all of these things. And so when we take all that away, that's why a lot of this is part of your detox process, because your body is actually meant to do all this stuff to get out of there, right? So if you are in, you know, going back to more of a chronic health condition, you know, the expectation isn't that you're running around and playing basketball and stuff, right? But it's these little things that you're talking about. A little bit of discomfort to just make sure your body isn't getting too comfortable being comfortable and pushing it along to help get some of these little wins.

I mean, even look at the conversation, right? Like, I bring up hormesis because it's at like, you know, the biological response to low dose and low duration toxins and other stressors being generally favorable for your health. If we don't move, we fall apart. Unlike your car. You know, if you started a car once or twice a year and you keep it inside, it'll be fine. If you do that through a person, they don't live literally the comfort zone is death, ultimately. But I mean, I think that one of the things is, and I think even if it's just the hormetic stress is the challenge of have of listening to our conversation where we're going to challenge like, hey, you're nervous. And I would say the nervous system is 100% of the time always on your side, but it's what part of your nervous system do you choose to objectively interact with? Which brings it back to your personal responsibility. And a lot of people with chronic illness are like, it's the Lyme or it's the mold. And that's not my fault. And I go, I would agree with, I mean, unless you put the tick on yourself.

Or knowingly moved into mold, but it's like, yeah, it's not your fault, but.

Healing is a choice, right? And a lot of people don't like to hear that, because they're like, oh, but it's Lyme. I'm like, yeah, but if you do nothing, Lyme wins. And one of the things that I love about telling people about Lyme, that often pisses a few people off, but I love doing it because I want to challenge people to get better, because I want you better. Like, I don't really care the name of your illness. I need to know it so it can help you get better. But I don't care what you think about your illness. I don't think you care about me. I mean, I'd like people to like me, but I want them to go, this guy challenged me and helped me move to that next level, right? So the thing with Lyme disease is it doesn't fight reality. So when you get bit by a tick and it injects Borrelia burgdorferi, that spirochetal bacteria that causes this thing we call Lyme in your body, where does it go? If you have a good knee and a bad knee, where's the first place it goes? Your bad knee? And then when you try to treat it, your immune system goes after it. You take herbs, you take medicines. What is everybody talking about? Oh, it goes in there. It rolls up into a ball we call cyst or a round body, goes in the biofilm. It hides in these areas that antibiotics can't get to, and it just waits. So it knows how to hide. So when the environment in your body is inhospitable to Lyme growing, it just waits. And then when you stop treating it and kind of forget about it, or your doc pulls your meds, then it comes back out, and then you treat it again, it goes and hides, and it never fights the reality. So if we can say, look, I'm sick and I feel like crap, and there is something I can do today to help me get better, and I'm not going to focus on the fighting the reality of the fact that I am sick. You are sick.

Great.

Okay, cool. We know we're here to help you, but focusing exclusively on being sick just gets you more sick. You hear every neuroscientist say the catchphrase, what we think about, we bring about. So if you focus on what you don't want, you get more of it. If you focus on what you want, which is health, presumably, you are going to eventually get more of it. So I really think that that is a really critical piece to understand that we can have that opportunity to change the way we think about it. Now, if we One of the things we talked about earlier, Brian, was like, what Lyme can actually do? This is, again, I'm not going back. And I think you said it so beautifully. We're not telling people, you know, they're not sick. We're not telling them it's not hard to improve from chronic illness. But Lyme can actually lead to inflammation in areas of your brain that will limit your ability to recognize this. Cues of safety, and the major cues of safety are gesture, vocal intonation, and facial expression. But Lyme actually can lower the metabolism and the function of the brain in the areas that allow you to perceive that. So that means we may need to focus on treating Lyme or mold as a primary tool at one point. We may not be able to access it that way because our nervous system is so hijacked. So we want to bring down the nervous system. But when we see the protocol that says everybody has to start with the nervous system first, everybody has to treat MCAs before they treat mycotoxins, before they treat Bartonella, before they treat Lyme. I just don't agree with any of it, except when that's true. Right? So everybody has their own unique approach, because sometimes you need to work on a hijacked nervous system. Sometimes you have to work on this. But typically, simple techniques like the gap in the gain gratitude, exercise, exercise I described, or something like one of the best things, everybody's like, I want more energy, I want more autophagy, intracellular detoxification, and I want to have better, you know, cognitive function. And. Well, how do you do that? Well, one of the things you can do is a very simple hermetic stressor at home, which is practice any of the myriad of breathwork things that a lot that teach you how to hold your breath for a little bit. And when you hold your breath for a short period of time, you get uncomfortable. And if you. Unless you hold your breath for a really long time, your oxygen is not going down. It feels like it, but what you're feeling is carbon dioxide going up. Carbon dioxide going up does a whole bunch of really cool things. One is when you have 100% oxygen saturation, one of the challenges is if you don't also have enough CO2, carbon dioxide, it's really hard for that oxygen to come off of the red blood cell and go into the tissue. So you can have all the oxygen you want, but you can't deliver it optimally. So we have to do both. The other thing with carbon dioxide is directly and also through stimulating increased levels of Nitric oxide. It improves circulation. Fingers, toes, hands, brain organs. And one of the other things that I love about it is it opens up your nose. So nitric oxide gets created in the sinuses around the face. That and carbon dioxide will help open up your nose. And why do I care about that? Well, one is, when you look at the way the brain detoxifies, about 20 to 30% of all the dirty water, if you will, coming out of your brain comes out along the nervous smell in your nose, along the nasal lymphatics. So what we really need to do is get that to. If we're using a nose, it's all congested to detoxify. It slows it down. So we want to open it up. But the other thing is, if we look at, say, mycotoxins, so many of us talk about how we get colonized in the nose. And the respiratory tree is one of our primary mechanisms for or modes of getting mold and mycotoxins in our body. So let's open up the nose so we can drain that out before we kind of start treating in the gut area. But the other thing is, I treat about 45, 50% kids at any given point in time. And so many of them have autoimmune encephalitis triggered by toxins, whether that's mold, whether that's Lyme and Bartonella, or even just something simple like staph or strep or mycoplasma pneumonia. But when we look at strep causing all these crazy behavioral changes and inflammation in the brain, we find that recurrent infection in the nose and the throat leads to our own immune cells against strep, colonizing our nasal lymphatic area. And then it goes way back up into our brain, and it causes all this inflammation and breakdown of a blood brain barrier and all that other fun stuff. Well, what happens if we have chronic sinusitis or chronic mycotoxin? I mean, we know through Brewer's work we can find, you know, mycotoxins and. Or I should say nasal sinus biofilms or fungal biofilms. So we have fungus trapped in our nose. So we haven't. No one's really looked at this, but why would it be any different? We know that mycotoxins, like in our lungs, will trigger autoimmunity. What about in our nose? I mean, it's just the other end of the respiratory tree. So what we want to do is open up that nose to have it the. Allow our treatments to get up in there better and to have everything drain out so that we can clear out that autoimmunity that's probably being triggered by the mycotoxins and also get the mycotoxins out so we're not currently continually receding our colon. But this is a really simple thing because holding your. Even if all you did is you didn't look up Wim Hof, you didn't look up any of my breath work or whatever, you're still know that if you just hold your breath until you're a little uncomfortable and then you just breathe in and out of your nose for a few seconds and then do that four or five times, once or twice a day, it doesn't matter if you're uncomfortable at 7 seconds or 37 seconds, it still works. You just have to feel a little uncomfortable. But the then on the flip side of this, all those wonderful things happen. But a couple other really cool gems happen is you get more energy and you clean out your cells acutely. And then also when you get this increased CO2 and increased carbon, or I should say and increase nitric oxide, it's also profoundly calming to the nervous system. So if you practice this a few times, you can actually get yourself out of a panic attack by doing this. So it's really like super low hanging fruit. Wow. You could do breath work for five minutes a day and you could do gratitude for three minutes a day and you could potentially do them at the same time. And you can really change and that getting your nervous system to understand that a little bit of a stimulus leads to healing and relaxation. Now you're saying that little bit of a hermetic stress or that uncomfortable state, oh, I can handle this. And then it up levels you1. You know, it's like you went up one step and then you do it for a few more days. Now you go one more step and one more step. And what's so cool about all this is it's not like you always have to just go one. Yeah, we kind of have to do one foot in front of the other. But ultimately your nervous system, when you train it to get a little more comfortable with uncomfortable and then it sees success, you'll actually see compound interest, almost like an exponential curve. So in the beginning, all this stuff is hard, but like you were saying, is it short term gain? We have to get enough short term gain to actually get gains. But we don't want to go too much that we freak out. But ultimately the compound interest part of that exponential curve shoots up and you'll be able to heal really quickly. So this is where the tortoise wins its race of chronic illness almost all the time. Right. And it's like, so we just pick up that momentum that you were talking about. And I mean, if you, if you can't hold your breath, that's fine. Like, you know, just sit in the chair and move your legs like 10 times more than you did the other day. Because, I mean, you know, but you got to push it just a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's in what you just described going back to the short term game versus long term and, and prioritizing your motivation. Right. If you're not getting first off five, eight minutes, you know, it's, let's say it doesn't work. Oh, well, I lost five or eight minutes. Like that's, that's all it is. And something you mentioned, I do this a lot too. I stack things on top of each other. So I'm not doing eight minutes. I'm doing, let's say five minutes. Because I'm doing the three minutes of the one thing while I'm holding the breath and doing the other thing. I do this myself when I do full body vibration and red light. I'll just stand on a vibration thing, but then I'll do the red light. So I'm doing them both at the same time. I'm not done with time on that. Right. Like, you could do these in a lot of different ways to kind of cut down on your time. So it's almost like an exercise of project management and like, how can you project, manage your time in a way, but something like that, you may not feel the short term a whole lot. Right. And this is where, going back to this idea of understanding the priority of short versus long and how you described it, the exponential effect of the long as compared to the short. Right. I'm not getting an immediate dopamine hit off of this. I'm not getting an immediate win. I don't really want to do this. But you know, a year later or whatever it is, it's going to have a very large impact on what's going on. Like you, you have to mentally make that decision in that shift to do that. Because every night you know, you're going to say, ah, I don't want, you know, I don't want to breathe for five minutes, which you're breathing anyway. It's just a little different way of breathing. The other thing about you also try not to breathe really heavily in a space that, you know, has a Lot of water damage or a mole problem.

Right, Right. Well, it's really interesting to me though too, is.

Let'S say you don't want to do a breath holds. We essentially, all you need to do to increase carbon dioxide levels and promote nitric oxide production. And if you have Raynaud's, you're going to love this exercise, but.

Is all you have to do is slow down your breathing. So most medical thing people are taught 12 to 20 times a minute is a normal way to breathe. That's like ridiculous. That is like way too much. So if you're two really quick breathing things you can do, that'll just slow things down a lot. And you don't even have to get too uncomfortable. All you have to do is count.

If you do anything in like a one to two ratio. So inhale for three, exhale for six, inhale for three, exhale for six. And preferably in and out through your nose is you're going to get this great stimulus in your nose to keep it open. Because if your nose is clogged and you want it open, you have to breathe through your nose, not your mouth. But when you do the one to two ratio, so, like, what you end up doing is it just triggers a parasympathetic state. So this is a really great pattern to do at bedtime. So you could do two in and, you know, four out. You could do six in and 12 out, wherever you're at. And what I notice is it's different at different times of the day, and it's different on different days, even for me. And I do tons of this. And it's like, I feel like a well trained breathwork machine. There's days I can hold my breath for like 12 seconds, and other days I can hold it for three minutes. It's just like, go with the flow, right? And the other thing is, if you want to. And that'll slow down your breathing because it's literally, if you do, say three in and six out, you're now at nine seconds, right? So there's. You're not going to get the 12, you know, so you're already only breathing six, seven times a minute at that rate. If you look at another thing that. Because I like to give people options for things they like. If you want to breathe in for five and a half seconds, they go, you know, 1 in, 2, 3, 4, 5, and out, 2, 3, 4, five. And so that's about five and a half seconds in. Five and a half seconds out, you will now breathe about five and a half times per minute. So you've accomplished the same thing. You've now cut your respiratory rate down, you're getting yourself parasympathetic, and by default you're increasing CO2 and nitric oxide. So there's an access point for anyone to be able to do this. And I would say, like, the one thing I want to just not forget to say is I want to challenge people. Because you're worthy, you are so worthy to heal and you deserve to heal just as much as anybody else. And I really, my deepest desire in my heart is that we can help everyone who wants to heal to heal. And I don't know what that all means because cure and heal are different. Right? I can't guarantee we cure everybody, but we can heal and become whole again and have this experience of just like loving doing what we love passionately rather than waiting until we get better or we don't get better to really live what we love. And these little tricks and tips will help you do that.

Awesome. I think that's a really good place to wrap it up and 100% agree. And listen, there's getting everything perfect and then there's getting everything good enough to where you can thrive and be yourself and be who you want. And at the end of the day, nobody's perfect. Everybody has their stuff that's a little off in them or whatever's going on. You just have to be able to live and be functional and be able to, you know, excel too. Right? Like that's where we all want to be. So I, this conversation went a lot different than I thought it was going to, but I actually think it was really cool. So I hope that everyone listening thought that it was interesting as well. Dr. Morkoff, if you want to share where people could find you, you know, if you guys are vibing with what, what he's talking about, he has a, a lot of different ways that, that he can work with you, whether it's coaching, training programs, different things like that. So maybe want to share a little bit of how people can find you.

Hey, great. Thank you so much, Brian. I, I love the reflected back. I mean, what a great conversation and I love the opportunity to be able to talk about the things that we talk about all the time in a different way because it's, all of this stuff is part of healing and it, this is just one small piece of it. But yeah, I appreciate it. Our medical practice is at origins of health.com and for people who are interested, you can apply to be a patient. There Both myself and we have some other doctors in the clinic who have trained with me for years. Love to help out anybody who needs help. And we also have a group program called the Thrive with Lyme blueprints. So it's conveniently thrive with lineblueprint.com. get some information over there. If you have any questions. Our team's always available to help with that. And just it's a way to apply a lot of the stuff we're talking about. And in addition to kind of getting deep dives on herbs and meds and lab results from the perspective of just like, hey, like, what did you wish your doctor would be telling you but they don't have enough time to tell you? And it's all there in the lessons. And we have live Q and A. And even like last night we did a live Q and A, and tomorrow we're doing, you know, a live group healing experience. So we mix it up and we cover all of the branches of healing. And then for any practitioners out there, we do have a Lyme practitioner certification and mentorship program where we dive deep into all the aspects of healing. But give, there's so many great people out there training right now, but it's that mentorship where you can get the actual real life, real time questions answered and really develop your acumen really quickly. And that's the linepractitionercertification.com so. And thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for being here.

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