Lyme Disease, Mold Toxicity, and Other Complex Chronic Illness: Natural Treatment Options

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donny Wilson and I'm so glad you're here especially for this conversation with Dr. Diane Mueller. We're going to be talking about Lyme disease as well as mold toxicity. And really we're going to be covering complex chronic illness in general. For those of you who may have been dealing with chronic symptoms like fatigue and brain fog and pain and feeling like you're searching everywhere and trying everything and not getting better, this is exactly the conversation to help you and the expert to help bring that insight into this conversation. So thank you for being here, Dr. Diane. Diane is a naturopathic doctor and acupuncturist and has been practicing for many years and done all. She's written several books, including the book you see on her screen there. It's not all in your mind. That's the thing, right, Diane? It's like so much of the time when people feeling awful, we think it's in our head, right? We think it's all in our head.

Yeah, 100%. You know, it's like one of these things I'd like to orient people to is the brain really distorts reality. And some of this is because our brain is actually in many ways like it's our best friend, it's our fighter, is that person that, that part of ourselves that is looking for those things that are wrong. Right. So that the brain is looking for the things that are wrong. So I'll start off with a story of what I mean here because I think it'll ground us and kind of set the tone with where you're going, which is I had this patient and this patient came to me. She was about 30 year old woman. She came to me fairly early on in my practice. I was about five years in. And her biggest thing, she sits in my chair, she looks at me, she's like Dr. D. As everybody starts to call me, she's like, Dr. D. My face is tingling and it's crazy. And she had a lot of other symptoms, pain and fibromyalgia. She had headaches. There's just a, we had laundry list of things. But her number one thing is like this really scary 24 hours a day things, just tingling, tingling, tingling, tingling. And so it's very interesting because three weeks later she comes back for her next visit. This is the second visit now. We had only changed a couple things and she's like, well, nothing's changed yet. Dr. Dan it's like, no worries. It's only three weeks. As I lost your symptoms just to make sure. And this is why, you know, doctors like, like ourselves, we track things for our patients. Because I asked her, like, well, is it possible you've had any change with that facing ring? And she's like, oh my gosh, I completely forgot I had it. And that's the power of the brain, right? Because it's like distorts reality where it's so oriented to look for what is wrong with us. She still had a ton of other symptoms that we had to work through. But, you know, fast forward only three weeks and that main symptom was gone. And so that's like that brain distorting reality. So the brain can be, in many ways are, you know, our worst enemy around, like, focusing so much on the things that are wrong that we don't actually realize that we are getting better. But it can also be, when we use it, one of our greatest tools. We can begin to harness the power of the mind to reregulate our immune system and our nervous. Nervous system. We can actually really begin to get that healing response. So, you know, I like to always be careful when I say things like this, Dr. Johnny, that I want to make sure I'm not giving that impression that, oh, it's just all in the mind and we can just use the mind. We don't need to do the lifestyle and the sleep and, you know, the root cause, physical things. Of course we do. But there is this component of the mind that it really can be our, you know, one of our worst enemies or our best tools, depending upon how we use it.

I don't know if you see this, but I found myself having this conversation oftentimes with patients where at first, when patients are coming through this process of chronic illness where they have the pain and the fatigue and the depression, they start being in what I call a battle with their own body. Like, where they're like, angry that this has happened, that their body's not healing or angry that they're in pain. And. And I wonder what your, what your take is. How do you help patients navigate that? Like, you know what I mean? Almost like disconnect from our body since we're kind of going in that direction, you know, like when that oil light starts blinking, do we. It's tempting to just be like angry at our body. Why. Why is an oil light blinking? Why can't you keep up? You know? But I think what I find is helping patients to shift that and be like, oh, my oil lights blinking. I need to do something to take care of my body and that sometimes that's a real shift in the mindset.

Yeah, it is, it is. And it's such a great point. I'm so glad you're bringing this up. And I will, I do talk about this in my book that I know we're going to let everybody know about. So, so that is in there. But to give everybody like the brief summary of what I like to talk about is, is like the vicious cycle. Because I think like what, how I describe what you're talking about is like this chicken and this egg, this mind, body, vicious cycle. And what I mean by that, it's natural and normal to get angry when you're feeling well. It's like it's natural normal to get depressed and anxious on all these different things. The rage, the upset, all of that is normal. When you don't feel well for days, weeks, months, years, of course you're going to have emotions around that. That's so human. And the vicious cycle, right, that, that we see is when we have those things. Well, what comes with that is adrenaline and cortisol and typically a decline in the anti stress hormone gaba. Right. And when those things are happening, we are literally molecularly changing our body so that it is sending out signals to break down tissue and not to heal. And so the cycle, the vicious cycle, chicken in the egg that I'm talking about, that I, you know, I think we see as practitioners is emotions then that are naturally normal, validated, all those things, they actually can help to worsen the disease because of the tissue breakdown. And then we feel worse and then the emotions get worse and then we have that more adrenaline. So how do we get out of it? And a lot of how I work with people is like a, both and, and methodology. Meaning, like it's not to say like, okay, I'm just going to meditate my way out of anger. Right. I don't see that being effective. And I also don't see it being like compassionate and kind to ourselves with those things.

It's still separateness. Yeah, exactly.

Like we have Norway, it's normal to feel those things. So how do we begin to allow ourselves to feel them? And almost time box it a little bit more so that we're allowing some of those, those feelings and then beginning to develop practices where it's like, okay, I'm just going to just feel this anger. I'm just going to feel this and I'm just going to allow this to, you know, hopefully find ways of healthily expressing it. But, but really Allow ourselves to, to feel it deeply. But in 20 minutes now, I'm going to do my gratitude exercise to start pulling myself out of it so that I'm not stuck there and those kind of things. Because if the, if it's. It's good to feel it, it's important to feel it. And like you said, it is part of that integration of the body. But if we get stuck there, the thing is, is even though we're so valid to feel those emotions, they actually can get in the way of our healing process. So we actually have to become empowered to say, I'm going to allow myself to feel this, but I'm also going to be empowered not to get stuck there.

I love that you're like saying we can do both. Like, we need to allow the processing of feelings, not dismiss ourselves, but at the same time go, how can I. What things can I do to facilitate the healing process instead of stressing myself out, which only works against me. And yeah, I love those. Like, it's essentially a path how to navigate the healing process, because we don't. Otherwise how are you going to learn that?

Right?

You only learn when you're in it. And you go, oh, you know, we learn how. We go to driving school to learn how to drive, but we didn't go to school to learn how to heal. So that's why I'm so glad to be able to talk this through with you and say, and to know, like, this is what you and I do is help people to know how do you heal, what is every step in that process so we can effectively get you there. And I know that you yourself have dealt with chronic, some chronic health issues as well, because I think that makes a difference. I know for me, I've learned so much from my own healing processes. Right. So that. But maybe share a little bit about what did you learn from your healing process? That if there's anything we haven't talked about yet.

I think one of the top things I learned is pain and the level. Like, I was in such chronic pain for so many years. I had pain so bad that like, my, my muscle system would just go into like, freeze where I would get stuck on chairs and like a couple times, even toilets. Like, I couldn't get. Couldn't move myself physically because of the pain. So the way I would describe it is like people were sawing my leg off. Like, that's. It was usually all body, but usually my lower body was the worst. And that level of pain, the, the mental, like, like in other symptoms, I Had a lot of other symptoms. I was very sick. But the mental component of being able to manage, trying to stay positive and trying to stay in a good mood and trying to like not snap at people and all those things, it was a more than a full time job just to kind of manage the mind. And, and it just really, I think the biggest teacher, you know, I could go on about the details of all the symptoms, but I think more from like the lesson perspective, which is I think the most important thing just from a true understanding of like what we're talking about here around. Okay. Getting out of that cycle is, you know, is not easy. Right. And, and that's, I think it's allowed me to have a lot of compassion for people, but it's also allowed me to personally walk through literally everything we're talking about here. The both and of how when we're stuck in our pain body, when we're stuck in whether the pain body is true pain or whether it's some other symptom, right. When we're stuck in whatever is our, whatever is wrong body, right when we're stuck there, how much that does limit us. And because I, you know, I know you and I have both walked these journeys in our own way, it's so much easier, I think, to just help to encourage people and motivate people and show that level of compassion around like, okay, like I did this when I thought I was moving to a desert, you know, deserted island to basically die because I don't know what was wrong with me. And if, you know, people like you and I, just normal human beings are able to recover and find that both. And then I think it's just really helpful from a. It was just kind of helping people understand that they're strong and they have the power, you know, to do it too.

Oh, I love that. And I want to get to sharing more how people can. The work you do and the help you do, you give people. And some people listening may already know that they have Lyme or mold toxicity. But just for anyone listening who might now be thinking, might I have Lyme or mold toxicity? Maybe let's just, just touch on that first. Like, because of course, like, I mean, when I first started in practice 24 years ago, the testing was really, it was so hard to diagnose any of that because the test literally the technology didn't exist. And so a lot of times we were going by symptoms and history and you know, as best we could put the puzzle pieces together and say, maybe you have Lyme or Maybe you have mold toxicity, but now there's better and better testing. I mean, it's still. For Lyme disease, it's still a tricky one to completely get a positive sometimes. But talk us through a little bit of that, like, just in terms of helping people know if they're wondering, hey, is this happening for me? How are they going to find that out?

Yeah, it's a really great question. One of the things that I'm so glad you're asking this, because it's so easy to listen to a podcast like this and think, like, oh, I'm just going to go ask my doctor for a Lyme test, right? Or I'm just going to go ask my doctor for a mold test. And not saying that that's a problem necessarily, to start there, but it's probably a problem if it doesn't come up positive. So those, you know, kind of those tests that we get from our standard lab companies for Lyme and for mold, if they give a positive, that's good, but if they give a negative, it's basically like an unknown. There's. So the, the standard Lyme test in one study was shown to have up to a 67% false negative. And so that's really high. 67, you know, percent of people. And, you know, if you get a.

Negative, it really doesn't mean negative. It means this test wasn't good enough to really give you a clear answer. Correct.

Exactly. And now, like, lying to get, you know, try not to get into, so the weeds, as I explained this. But Lyme disease is classically caused by a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi. And Borrelia has a lot of other. The way to describe this to people is there's a lot of other sibling bacteria. So Borrelia burgdorfer, Lyme. We have Borrelia miyamoti, Borrelia California, Borrelia abzeli. Right. We have all these different types of this bacteria. And so these other sibling bacteria, technically, most doctors would say this is not actually line. However, they can cause basically all the same symptoms. So from a standpoint of, it's like, you know, this potato, potato kind of conversation around, like, we don't want to know just about this one microorganism. We want to know about any of these microorganisms that could basically cause the disease or the associated symptoms of the disease line. And so the standard test, not only are they, you know, not only is a 67% false negative for Borrelia burgdorferi, the main one, it's not even testing.

Right.

So. Yes. Like, like, even if you're like, hey, I. And. And this is the other thing is that a lot of people don't know they had a tick. Like, if we're talking about Lyme, we're assuming a person, you know, like, it's really easy if the person knows they got a tick. They saw the tick, they got the Lyme test. That's like. But that's only a small percentage of the time where the sequence happens that way. Right. It's like a lot of people never even knew they had a ticket.

Yeah, exactly. And that's, that's why this whole, you know, this whole month of May, that is Lyme disease awareness, but is so important because some of that is. It's like, bring the awareness of this out. And another thing, just so everybody knows, I do have an online Lyme quiz. It's super easy that. Solvesickness.com okay, greatsickness.com. it'll actually, it's not diagnostic. Like, you should still take your, you know, go and get a proper Lyme test. But I had this developed after, you know, 15 years of doing this, essentially. And what I did with that is seeing the symptoms that are most common with a lot of these different disease processes. So you take this quiz and it's like, oh, here are the top three things that are most likely missing. So if you're like, wow, you hear something like this and you're like, okay, after listening to Dr. Adani and Dr. Diane, I need 10 new tests. And like, how do I do this all at once? It's a way to help guide you to say, hey, based upon your symptoms. And these are areas that might be that because of your symptoms. The top areas where I as a doctor would be saying, hey, here's what you should look first, because you're right. It's like the, you know, the rash does not show up on even half the population. Right? It's so. So some of these things that we're, like, taught around, like, bullseye rash, what's not there? A lot of times, a lot of times it doesn't even necessarily look like a bullseye. It can be in these places where we get built bits at on our scalp, which is a cool, common place to get bit. We won't even have, you know, like, the ability to see that because it'll be under our hair for most of us. And then the other thing is, there's a couple studies. It's very, very limited, but there's a couple Studies that are actually showing that mosquitoes and even possibly fleas actually carry Lyme. So if you look at that, it's like, well, now we're not even just talking about deer tick. So we got a test. We gotta, you know, make sure we're using good tests and we gotta make sure we're working with people that understand Lyme enough to interpret the task. Because just like, you know, just like thyroid or anything else we talk about in naturopathic medicine, it's really about not just the test, not just the right test being ordered, but that a clinician really understands the nuances of how to interpret it correctly.

You know, it's really true, and it's so true with, with Lyme because the antibodies, there's the acute antibodies, what your immune system puts out when you immediately, when you first are exposed, and then there's the antibodies that are long term antibodies. And the way I think about it is most Lyme blood testing out there, if it's, if it's, if it's a couple months after you were exposed to this, this Lyme or Borrelia of any kind, if it's a couple of months later, you, you don't know whether if, say it's, if it's positive, you don't know if it was just a couple of months ago or if it was years ago. And what we also don't know is if it's still active. Right. You could have igg positive to Lyme and it may or may not actually be causing the symptoms.

Yeah, yeah. And that's the, that's the thing of why it's important to work with somebody that understands exactly that. Because, you know, in most disease processes we run those, those antibody tests that like you're talking about and we can see, oh, this is current, this is past. But because of Lyme's ability to go into, into the cells, out of the cells, it goes dormant, it becomes active again. Just like ebv, just like varicella, like, which is essentially chickenpox, shingles, you know, so just like those other diseases where they can go dormant, it's like we can have chickenpox, at least those of us that are in our age ranges. We can have chickenpox as a kid and develop shingles as an adult. We don't have, we don't feel like we have chickenpox or shingles most of our life. Right. It's just that reactivation. Well, same thing with Lyme. We can get it, we can go into remission years later, can come out of remission and understanding how to interpret those, Those antibodies, those IgGs and IgMs, in a way where we actually are incorporating that knowledge in and not just saying, oh, this just can't be Lyme, active Lyme, because it's an igg. That's a really important thing to understand.

I've done a lot of detoxes over the years and many of them made me feel a lot worse. Not only that, but I've had a lot of patients come in and tell me how after doing a detox they have a stomachache and headache and they.

Can'T sleep and they're feeling anxious and I'm like, I can't just recommend that.

My patients do a program that's gonna make them feel worse. So I, I finally decided to design my own detox program. It's a 14 day detox program that's not like other detox programs out there in several ways. One is that I'm focused on helping you to get the toxins out in a safe and effective way using nutrients, antioxidants and supplements supporting our natural detoxification pathways in the body. Also, I'm helping you to decrease your exposure to toxins by learning the ways that you've been exposed to toxins and how to change your day to day lifestyle to decrease your toxins over time. And I'm helping you to look not just at chemical environmental toxins, but also emotional and energetic toxicity. And yes, it's possible to accomplish all of this in 14 days. I have so many patients who have done the 14 day detox and report back to me how much better they feel. And I think it's also because I help you to know what to eat. You are getting adequate food that tastes good, plus protein shakes that I developed that are good for your body, that your body knows how to use these nutrients and take them in and use them to help you safely detoxify without feeling worse. Also, I help you to balance your blood sugar levels, get better sleep and introduce things like meditation, biofeedback and other types of stress recovery into your day to day routine. So, so I just am so excited about it. I want to make sure you know about this 14 day detox. I'm going to put the link, you can find it at drdani.com forward/detox-program but I'll also put the link below so you can find the 14 day detox program@drdani.com I look forward to guiding you through this detox so that you can actually feel better. On your way to better health.

Oh, it's such a good point. And I see that many times too, we. When some. When a symptom disappears, sometimes we don't realize it's gone because we're so focused on the other symptoms. And it's. It's when we can talk through as a practitioner and say, okay, how does this. How is this?

How's this?

And then we start to go, oh, wow. And we actually see some improvements. Because it's not like usually in this healing process with complex illness, because I see a lot of complex illness illness too. It's not like in overnight, everything goes away at once. Right. It's usually. Tell us more about that progression of healing from chronic illness, because I think that also. Right. That helps us to understand this process of healing.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's that progression of disease, right. And it's kind of. We go one direction, and then the progression of healing, like you mentioned, is, you know, in many ways, just simply going the opposite direction. So for most people with chronic illness, it's a compounding thing. It's like sometimes we wake up one day when we realize, like, how bad it really is. And maybe there's this day where it's like, oh, my goodness, I gotta get help. But usually there's like that feeling, you know, going up to that around, like, oh, maybe I'm more tired or like I've been waking up, I guess, for a little while with this headache or I'm getting a little heartburn. Right. So there's those. Those things that start to accumulate. And usually what happens for most people is by the time we're reaching a chronic illness standpoint with a. With a lot of symptoms going on, it's so many different things. And I think because of how we think about acute medicine, like I have strep throat, so I go take an antibiotic for my strep, and my strep goes away. We get really trained because of acute medicine, of, hey, there's one disease process for, you know, for a symptom. And obviously with a chronic illness, there's many symptoms, but we're still trained from that old mindset of acute illness. And so when it really comes to chronic illness, I think some of the progression. You know, take it to your question. I think some of that progression really is coming about from just us collecting things. So, for example, we can. I work with a lot of Lyme and mold. I work with thyroid and adrenals and sibo and all the things that a lot of us as Naturopathic doctors do. But. So let's say, for example, it starts. Somebody's disease process, starts with moving into a moldy house, and they're feeling bad, and they're feeling bad, and. And the mold's building up in their body due to a genetic anomaly where they can't breathe or they can't detox the toxins they're breathing in. Well, all of a sudden those toxins can actually start attacking their nerves. It can attack, for example, the vagal nerve, which is about our nervous system and our gut health. Then perhaps they're gut gets out of balance because of that nerve attack, and they might develop something like small intestinal bacteria overgrowth. And because of that, then there might have. Because we have so much of our immune system in our gut, they might all of a sudden develop all these immune abnormalities and then maybe dormant infections like we were talking about offline, like HPV and Lyme and EBV and on and on and on. These types of diseases then start. That were kind of hidden. They were in remission. Then because of the immune dysregulation, they get worse. And we know this is like one of many examples that I think you and I could draw out, like the, the chart of all these different webs of connections. And, you know, we can probably draw, you know, hundreds of, if not thousands of these different types of connections of how the one leads to another. But that's just an example, right, that we see around. Oh, you get one thing, and then it just causes this direct dysregulation. And because of the system so interconnected, there's that next disease process and the next and the next.

Yeah, and then it says, like, layers on. And so no wonder a person starts to feel like, oh, this started with what? You know, oh, I just started with fatigue, or I just started with, you know, let's say migraines. And next thing I know, like, oh, now I have these, this and this. And now there's autoimmunity, and now there's. And so then it's like spirals in this, this kind of negative direction. And next thing you know, you're like, what the heck? How am I supposed to recover from this? And unfortunately, in the conventional medical system, and even, I would say a lot of times, even with functional medicine practitioners, people can really get lost in the system and be stuck with now all these symptoms you've just listed and feeling like, what am I supposed to do next? Because in the conventional medical system, it might just be, oh, you can take antibiotics again. Or you can take these pain medications, or you can take these antidepressants, but it's not really getting to solving and healing. Tell us more about like, what you see in terms of, you know, how much people are experiencing this. Kind of like seeing numerous practitioners and.

Not getting better over and over and over again. The number, like the average type of client that walks into my office is somebody that's seen oftentimes a dozen or more practitioners. And you know, I think some of it is exactly what you said. I think it is. There's all these different components and root causes and. And I think another thing to add on there, like one of the things that I see happen oftentimes too with, with. I see this in particular with Lyme patients where they get their diagnosis and they've been so sick for so long. And yes, like, Lyme is a multi system disease. Right. It affects so many organs and so many glands and so many different hormones and parts of our body. So it does make sense why practitioners, when somebody has a, when they find Lyme for somebody, why they would say, this is it. This is the thing, right? So this is causing everything. But the number of times people with Lyme reach my practice after dozens of things, and they'll say, they'll come to me like, well, what sort of Lyme treatment do you have that's different than all these antibiotics and all these herbs and the ozone and the rife and on and on and on. And I look at them and it's like, there's not like that's a magic wand type of treatment. If you've tried two dozen different treatments and none of it's changing, doesn't mean you only you don't have lime. It means that there's something else driving it, and it's not just the lime. And I think one of the things that can happen negatively sometimes when we get that label, right, that diagnostic label of Lyme, of mold, of hbb of fiber, or whatever it is, can sometimes be like that end point for doctors and patients to say, oh, now we know what's happening, versus, like still keeping that open curiosity to like, okay, well, the treatment's not working. Sure, it's possible that it's the wrong treatment, but it's also hugely possible that it's only one piece of the puzzle. And I think that's where people get lost.

Yeah, I agree with that. I, I find that I like it whenever someone's, we're doing some things or they contact me and they're like, I've tried This, but I'm not getting better, right? It's that key phrase. And it's like, then I think as naturopathic doctors, we immediately think, what are we missing? Right? What are we missing here? We have some good information, but we must be missing something because I think it's because ultimately, as naturopathic doctors, we come from a principle that the body can heal. Right? Like we see. And we know the body has the ability to heal when we give it the right support and address what needs to be addressed. So if, if a body's not healing, it means we're not addressing what needs to be addressed yet. We need to be digging deeper and looking. Because it's true, like you mentioned, a lot of times, like Lyme or mold becomes the label, but we still have to look underneath that. Why does the person have. Why is the Lyme able to continue to proliferate? Why is the Epstein Barr or HPV able to proliferate? Why is that? You know, like. And sometimes underlying that is the mold toxicity. But it could be other things too. Maybe talk through that. Like, what are some of those other things that you find underneath that? We're getting myths that people didn't realize.

So many, you know. And I do think that the foundation of this work really is as naturopathic doctors, I think you and I are just like, really positioned so well with our education to help chronic disease situations because this is, this is what we do, right? It's like, what are all. It's like organ by organ, gland by gland, system by system, nutrient by nutrient. What is out of balance and realizing that all of these areas can create disease. And, you know, it can be sometimes really simple things, in answer to your question. So it can be simple as thyroid not being tested. Well, and I see stuff like this all the time. I got another patient this week and thyroid, all the general kind of standard markers, TSH, free T4, free T3. So the brain hormones for our audience as well as the two thyroid hormones, one being that super active thyroid hormone that does all the things that we think of for thyroid, you know, energy and hair and bowel function and all those things. So that was normal with this patient, but skin was scaly, hairs falling out, constipated, like, still has all of those thyroid symptoms. Well, so we test reverse T3 and reverse T3, elevate. It will block thyroid from doing its job in the cells. And hers was a 24, which is a really, really high number. And sometimes I think some of the doing we're talking about these Basics, you know, I know you see these the same things. It's like sometimes it's like not only the basics, but the basics haven't been rules in and out in a way that is allowing us to really properly say, like, yes, it is a thyroid problem, or, no, it's not. But certainly making sure we're doing, like, basic thyroid pan or not even just basic full thyroid panel, and then thinking about things like adrenal levels. Another common thing I see. And this is a misunderstanding, I think, of, you know, so many people thinking, oh, they ran a basic thing like a CBC and a CMP and those types of letters. Right. Those are your standards for listeners. Those are your standard, very, very basic blood tests that they're running at most conventional places. And they're good to run. Right. It's good to look at those things. But they show nutrient level. Right. We gotta look at them. But they show levels of micronutrients. And what I think a lot of people also don't realize when we're thinking about some of those fundamental things that are also driving us is those micronutrient levels we see on those basic blood work. They don't tell us about micronutrient levels at a cellular level. Yeah, right. So we can be super deficient at a cellular level in calcium. This is like my favorite example for people, because I think it's so easy to explain that our heart needs calcium to contract. We have all these hormones that will stabilize our blood levels of calcium within a pretty narrow window. Because, frankly, over survival, heart contractibility trumps bone health. It just does. So we will actually leave calcium out of our bones to stabilize our blood so we can make our heartbeat. And therefore we're, like, depleting our actually internal cellular level of calcium. So, you know, that's another common thing. It's just making sure we're doing some of the more advanced tests to actually evaluate some of those micronutrient levels. Because sometimes it's just. It's. It's not only that, but sometimes a missing link is something as. As basic as that. Even on people that are eating, you know, really good, balanced, organic, clean, healthy, wide variety of foods, you know? And I imagine you see similar.

Absolutely. And I love this point you're making, which is like, you might have had regular blood work done that was all normal. But then what you and I tend to be is like, these detectives to say, actually, there's some other tests that some of which you might be able to get at the regular lab under insurance. And some of which you need to go to a specialty lab and pay out of pocket. And at that point, right when you, if you've tried all of this stuff that's covered by insurance and you're not feeling better, it's, I would say, and I think you'll agree with me, it's worth it at that point to invest in out of pocket testing and experts to help you get that. The information you're describing here, where you can get the information that can really shift your healing process, would you say is that a lot of where you come from too?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, it's, you know, we can get into all the, say, broken things about how our medical model is organized in, you know, in many different areas throughout the world, really. But when it comes down to it, really with health and medicine, it really is pay now or pay later. And, you know, the, an example I can use. I had this married couple I was treating and I was mostly treating the wife. She was a regular patient of mine and every once in a while her husband would come in, but it was like once a year. He never wanted to actually get to the root. And every time I would come in, I'm going to call him Jim, that's not his name. But every time he would come in, I'd be like, Jim, you know, there's a lot going on. Like he would be getting on and off the massage table for acupuncture, just like, you know, groaning and barely moving and having a hard time getting in, you know, down to the floor in his, you know, very early 60s. And you know, so we kept talking, I kept trying to get him in. He's like, I just don't want to spend the money. I just don't want to spend the money. Well, the last conversation I had with him, fast forward a year later, I didn't see him again. I saw his wife, you know, she was a regular patient. And so she tells me, she's like, yeah, she's like my husband Jim, he's had two carpal tunnel surgeries this year to hip replacements, a stent put in and out of pocket on like after what insurance covers. So they had insurance, they had regular insurance and they still had a six figure medical bill.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, like crazy. And that's like the story I like to give people of, like, unfortunately, yes, some of this has to be an investment, but I feel for, you know, and some people get lucky and they, you know, they, they live old and they don't have any of those things. But for a lot of people, I think most people, if you're having symptoms, it's your check engine light, you know, it's your check oil light. It's your, it's your, your sign, your symbol, your flag of your body saying something's not right. So we can either pay for the oil change or we can wait till we need a completely new engine. Right. And that's, you know, it's never like an easy thing to look at, but I really think it's important to at least like, if you decide to wait and replace your engine, that is, you know, we all have to decide what's best for ourselves. But really understanding like this is your oil light, this is your check engine light. Like as much as possible, I really just like empowering people to understand that of like, if we can find a way to like fix the symptom now, it could prevent the hundred thousand dollar medical bill later.

Yeah. And too, and this kind of brings back to what we were talking about is when we again, I always come back to this question of like, why, if, if say we're thinking that, like say you do that, they do this, your Lyme questionnaire, and they see, yes, I have the symptoms and maybe they do or don't have a positive IgG, then we want to ask, well, say there's the potential that Borrelia has reactivated. Why did it reactivate? Right. Why is it happening now in your system? Because it's easy to go after with antimicrobials, as you mentioned.

It's.

We can go, we can go after antimicrobials all day long from every type of antimicrobial. But why is it activated? Because if we don't address that, we're not getting anywhere. And I think that comes back to where you're saying, like, we need to get at these. Is there a nutrient deficiency? Is there a hormone imbalance? Is there something else going on that making you susceptible to that reactivation at this moment in time?

Yeah, 100%. In fact, like in my process as well as in my book, what I start with, I go the phase one of care. Phase one, when somebody has Lyme is not actually to treat the Lyme because it's to treat the thyroid, the adrenals, the nutrients, you know, it's to look at the overarching fundamentals that we learn, the monctories, lymphatic system, these types of things that we learn and that we practice in, you know, in holistic medicine. Because of exactly that. Because of the why, like you said, it's like, and that's the piece that I feel like, like, kind of like we were saying earlier, like the diagnosis oftentimes is like when the curiosity shuts down versus like in many ways I feel like that's when the curiosity should really kick up. Like, well, why is this happening? Why would it reactivate? And, and it is, it's these fundamentals so many times, but then also to come full circle, it really also comes down so much to the mind and the stress. And I feel very clear with what I've seen clinically over the years that the top people that relapse are the people that have not worked with the mind to figure out. Because we all have stress as humans. Like you know, unless, unless somebody maybe is like living in a hut someplace in the middle of nowhere and maybe they don't have a lot of stress, but I imagine they still are worried about food and sunburn and you know, lions and tigers and bears.

Different stresses still, no matter what. Right?

Get out of it.

Yeah, that. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, were you going to say something?

No, no, I'm excited about what you're saying because that's exactly why, you know, I wrote the book master your stress, resave your health. Because it's like, it's when we start understanding, hey, not about, oh, I'm supposed to have zero stress, you know, and that's really an illusion or delusion anyway. It's a matter of like, hey, I'm human, I'm going to have stress. How do I help myself recover from that stress so that I can really heal? Right?

Yeah, yeah. I remember in like some just kind of trainings I was doing for Mindset for just like kind of spiritual personal development over the years there were some teachings around like, oh, if things are going, you know, poorly in life, like it's maybe because I'm like thinking wrongly and I'm attracting wrongly because of my thoughts. And, and you know, I really challenge that now like, because I feel like, like yes, we always want to look at our thoughts and our emotions and we, you know, and examine that because it could absolutely impact things. But sometimes things are just stressful. Not because we're doing anything wrong, just because that's human life. And so it really becomes around like certain things, like we can control things if we're in a really stressful job and like looking for a new job is within our control. But it doesn't mean that just because we have a new job we're going to have a stress free life. We Just might have maybe less stress in this area. So I love the title of your book because I think it's just super, you know, brilliant for. For really helping people understand that, even just within the context of the title. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

To me, it was really important to go beyond just managing stress to saying, let's master it, because it's. It's gonna be there. How do we help. Help ourselves, take care of ourselves? Again, like, as we're talking about, listen to your body, give it what it needs. Ask the question why? And as we've been just as we're summarizing here, like, sometimes it is about being willing to invest in working with an expert and doing the test, specific tests, like we're talking about. Even also, if you're wondering about mold toxicity, there's specific tests we can do. So we know for sure. Whether we have mold toxicity does not have to be a mystery. And we can. Once we have those specific pieces of information, like with any kind of puzzle. Right. Like, if you have the puzzle pieces, you can solve the puzzle. And I think a lot of times, like, practitioners are just, maybe they're not aware of the tests or they're not aware of how to interpret them, and so then you. You're missing information. And so no wonder. You're not, you know, if you're not experiencing healing, we're not. You may be missing information or you might be, you know, missing that support on the healing process, which is, again, why I'm so. I just am so proud and. And happy for you to be sharing all of your brilliance. So. To share. Tell us. Tell us again, because I know you have that. It's not in your mind book, but you also have several other books, including the Lime and Mold E book. But tell us more. What. How people can. If they're like, oh, my gosh, I need to learn more about this. Where should they go?

So the easiest thing is just go to solve sickness dot com. Take my quiz. So that's the easiest thing. But you can always go to my website, which is my lime document. And. Well, yeah, I'm sure we'll have all that kind of stuff in the show notes as well. Yes. Yeah. And then the other thing, just to let everybody know is it is Lyme disease awareness month. And so through May, as well as into the first part of June, I have so many promotional things going on. So I have days where my book is going to be free, the Kindle version. I have days where the audible version will be free. I have days where everything is super low price. I actually have days where I'm giving away. I have an online course in hacking your mind, which is my version of how to reset the limbic system, the nervous system, how to get yourself out of those vicious thoughts. So I have some giveaways for that. So you'll find out all of that by just going to solve sickness. Take that quiz that'll put you on my mailing list and then just look out for that, because the whole. The whole theme of Lyme disease awareness month is that is awareness. And so that's what, you know, my team and I are really focusing on. That month is, you know, just an honor of getting the word out because there is so much misunderstand, misinformation and misunderstanding. We're really focused on getting the word out to you and helping some of the basic understanding of this be super accessible. So please go to that quiz. Please join my mailing list. We'll get you all of that promotional information as far as how to get a lot of my, you know, my courses and content totally. At very little or no cost to you.

Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much. That's really awesome. And. And it sounds to me like it's. It's going to be supporting them to heal from Lyme, but really any of this chronic illness symptoms we've been talking about.

Right.

Is like, how do we. So even if you don't know that you have Lyme or you don't think you have Lyme, it's still worth it to check it out and even then, you know, more in case that comes up in the future. And. And I was gonna say that.

Let's see. So we got the book, we got the course, I got the link. I'm so glad. And there's something else I was going to share. I'm just trying to remember what it.

Was, but.

I'm just glad that they have that. And so. Oh, my gosh, thank you again so much for joining me and sharing all of this with everyone and. And for all of your wisdom and your resources. It's really wonderful and amazing and I can't wait to get to connect with you again soon.

Yeah. I just love our chats. I love every moment, my moment. I have a chance to chat with you, so thanks for having me. Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to serve and help your audience. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Oh, you're welcome, Diane. And I'm so. You're such an inspiration because, you know, just in terms of hearing your Recovery and now being able to not only help people from around the world, but also being able to do what you enjoy in your life. You know, Diane loves to snowboard. She lives near the mountains. So it's like, you can't be in pain and be snowboarding. You have to be like. And I think sometimes maybe that's a nice way to wrap up here is just to say, like, you know, sometimes it's a matter of, like, really checking in with ourselves and saying, hey, what do I really want to be doing in my life? What's my goal? Right? What's my. I want.

Did.

Was that part of it for you where you're like, I want to be snowboarding. I need to get better so I can get out on the mountain or, you know, like, how do people, like, get themselves over that hump to get to where they really want to be and doing what they really want to be doing?

I definitely think the future pacing is a huge portion of it for sure. I mean, the depths of, of like, when I was feeling real bad, I just was like, I want to be able to walk around the block. So I kind of snowboarding.

Start small, right? Yeah.

You know, even though I've been an athlete my whole life, like, like during that time, it was like, let's just work on like, walking up the stairs without being pain or not going to some place and seeing an escalator, an elevator, and being like, wow, that'd be really cool if I didn't feel like I had to use that sort of thing. But I do think starting small and like, like celebrating the little wins and that's like the gratitude and around how to get our mind out of that vicious cycle that we're talking about. Sometimes it's as simple from a standpoint of where you feel like, that's so hard to be grateful. Like, I feel so bad. Sometimes it's as simple as, like, wow, like, thank God during this time I have a really good bed, you know, or I have really comfy slippers to walk to the bathroom because that's all I can do today. But at least I get to do that in my comfy slippers. And like, as. As crazy as that can sound, sometimes I feel like those types of orientations can be really helpful and then celebrating those, you know, those small wins around, like, all right, like, and that, because I do start with so many people around, like, our goal is a five minute walk, you know, that's what we're working up to. Right? And when we do that, we celebrate a five minute walk and we move on to seven minutes and, and those kind of things. And so it's just orienting to those little tiny. Like the James Clay clear in his book Atomic Habits I think is so brilliant. You know, where he looks and it's like starting with breaking down these, these things that we're really bringing back to our life and is these small attainable goals around mindset. So maybe you're looking forward to just sitting at the table with your children and your partner and just being able to stay focused throughout a conversation without losing track of it because your brain fog so bad. You know, all of those tiny little things can be really big markers and can also I think create that motivation that you're talking about. So that's what I see. Honestly, like snowboarding was like so far in the distance for me, but eventually it became a motivating factor again.

I love it, I love it. And, and yeah, I think that's, that's so important, right? We gotta like celebrate the small steps and then little by little you start to go, wow, what's possible? And I hope that, that anyone listening really sees that, that that healing is possible and that, that that recovery from pain, whatever the cause of the pain, is possible and that, that to start to dream about what your future might hold for you because that will start to pull you forward. Right? Little by little. It's not like you. Because we don't want to create like a disappointment the next day. Oh, I'm not out on the mountain yet. But like, wow, this is possible. How do I. How can I get there? So thanks so much for, for listening and thank you Diane, again for sharing and for all of your resources. I'll definitely put all the links below. Thanks everyone for joining me here at How Humans Heal and you. This is such a story of how humans heal, so I'm really glad to be sharing it with all of you. Please subscribe if you haven't already so you don't miss the next episode. And I look forward to connecting with all of you again very soon.

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