EP 154 WTH?!? The Doctor's Chat: Lyme Disease Under the Microscope with Kris Newby

Hey everybody. Dr. Greg Eckel. And this is what the health and today's topic is the secret history of Lyme disease. And I have Chris Newby, who is an award winning medical science writer and the senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary Under Our Skin, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was a 2010 Oscar semifinalist. Her book Bitten won three International Book Awards for journalism and narrative nonfiction. And she has two engineering degrees and has worked as a science technology writer for Stanford Medical School, Apple and other Silicon Valley companies. Chris, welcome aboard.

Thanks Dr. Eckel, and thank you for having me on.

I am so excited for this because it is something that we have talked about in complementary alternative medicine and or functional medicine for a long time and you've brought to light and with well researched and documented research and truth. This is a hard truth for people to hear though. So you know, we titled our talk the secret history of Lyme Disease. Now, Lyme is rampant. So first let's just start out with what is Lyme disease and why is it so hard to diagnose and treat?

Okay. Lyme disease is caused by a little spiral bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi and it's transmitted to humans from tick bites. And it is a multi systemic disease which makes it and without really specific symptoms a lot of times. So that's what makes it really hard to diagnose. And the tests are bad.

It really is. This is one of those things that's always on the differential. You know, we specialize in recalcitrant in difficult conditions here at energy for Life centers. And this one is always there if somebody's got this persistent unknown malaise and it's just this lingering something. Now it can be more exact than that, but this one is like in there with mold and heavy metals and then there's Lyme. And how big is the Lyme disease problem?

It's really big and it's growing. The CDC's latest number based on insurance claims is about a half a million cases a year and that's about 1300 patients cases a day on average. Of course, most of those happen in the summer and Lyme disease cases have been found in every state. I think it's probably worse since COVID because people were adopting cats and dogs from shelters and they may have had, they may have come from different countries and have all sorts of tick borne diseases that they've brought with them.

Interesting. Yeah, because this isn't just from Lyme, Connecticut. It's not just a New England issue. It is everywhere. There's still controversy in the medical community around the diagnosis, is there not?

Yeah, it was discovered in 1980, so that's about 40 years ago. And they developed a test really fast and the symptoms of the disease without totally understanding the disease because they were trying to fast track a vaccine, a lyme vaccine. And 40 years later we're stuck with the antibody based test which is no, it doesn't work in the first month very reliably because it's an antibody test and it takes three weeks or four weeks to develop antibodies that can be tested. And it's no better than a coin flip later on because of complications in individuals. Like what other infections did you bring to the party? And, and what strain are they testing for? They mostly are testing the standard lab course or quest tests are testing for an east coast strain and not necessarily what we have in the west or California.

It is there is that nuanced diagnostics of Lyme literate physicians and providers which I do count myself in that category. Just with the 23 plus years of experience of, of understanding there are benefits and limitations to each type of lab. But when I see a patient with a just a western blot and or just a straight conventional test with the Lyme that is not enough to determine whether somebody has Lyme or not. And then you brought up this co infection component. How. What are you finding in the research around this kind of truth about Lyme disease? Why, why is it persnickety? And maybe this is a good intro to the, your video and film because I would really. We're going to put the links to this film because it is really a cutting edge documentary that has a lot of truth in it.

Yeah, the, the film really goes into the money and medicine aspects of why Lyme disease is fairly controversial. So about 30 years ago when they were working on the vaccine, there was a small group of people that had patented the tests that go along with the vaccine. So they were sort of circling the wagons around their definition of the disease and trying to protect their, their patent, royalties, et cetera. So that was a bad test and a bad list of symptoms and we're stuck with it. Forty years ago the, the film under our skin, which you can watch online for free or very little, it really goes into the patient perspective about why it's so hard to get diagnosed. So I mean I think about my family. We, my husband and my two middle school boys, we went to Martha's Vineyard, had a beach vacation and we came back and a week later we were sicker than we'd ever been before. And that's 2002. The doctors I, I said, we went to Martha's Vineyard. Lyme is a huge problem. It was number two in the US for cases. And they said, oh, Lyme disease is like a rare disease. You just have a virus. If you're still sick, come back in a couple weeks. Well, a week later we just feel like we're dying. It's just crushing fatigue, malaise, fever, neck aches. And we come back and say this is something more serious. And they said, no, it's know Lyme disease is rare. It would be, it would be like winning the lottery for you both to get it. So that was the start of a year of going to doctor after doctor after doctor. A lot of specialists and the specialists only see one part of your body. Oh, we're having GI problems. Oh, so you go to the GI doctor, they said it's infectious. You go to the infectious doctor and they said, I think it's psychosomatic because Lyme is so rare. And you go, you know, to the neuro because you're having brain on fire. And I think that's why physicians like you end up with a lot of Lyme patients because it is so neurological. It's jumping around your body, twitchy things, blurry vision, GI stuff. And I think physicians like you are more patient and used to looking at the whole patient.

We, I like to say we have deep presence and we listen and we treat you as a heart centered dynamic being. And I think in the reductionist model of care, that's where this folks with this constellation of symptoms just fall through the cracks because the docs just don't know what to do with multivariate, multi system symptoms. And I don't treat symptoms, we treat root causes. And this tends to be one of the persnickety ones as to, you know, it hangs on, it's, it's sophisticated, it evades our defenses, you know, and this is like it.

It.

My heart breaks for folks suffering with these symptoms because it can be a lifelong journey and you know, really rapid progression and deterioration and debilitating. And you know, I've been fortunate enough to be able to be open minded and have some mentors that alerted and enlightened me. And we also use a lot of different technologies to help folks. So around it, I feel fortunate. I've not had to use antibiotics in two decades plus of treatment of folks with Lyme and co infections and really looking about keeping people's head above water. Now what else in the Film. What else does the film cover? Because, you know, we titled our talk the Secret history of Lyme disease. So what is secret about the Lyme disease?

Well, that's covered in the book that I wrote afterwards. When I was doing the film. There were lots of rumors about a biological weapons route to Lyme disease. A lot of it is because Lyme disease started right across from Plum island, and Plum island was a center for the development of biological weapons against animals for use in war. And so that that rumor started. But we were told pretty much, we will not fund a film about biological weapons. But we did meet with Willie Burgdorfer, who discovered Lyme disease. And during the interview in Hamilton, Montana, where he worked at the bio level four lab there, he said he intimated that there were secrets about Lyme disease he wasn't telling us about. After this, the cameras closed. So what happened a couple years later is Willie Burgdorfer. Two things happened. Willie Burgdorfer said, well, he was ready to tell the secrets he didn't tell us in the film. And that is when I was investigating the outbreak of Lyme disease in Lyme, Connecticut. There was another organism there that I think may have been a biological weapon that we had worked on at Rocky Mountain lab. So Rocky Mountain Lab, part of nih, they consulted with the biological weapons headquarters in Fort Diedrich, Maryland, during the Cold War. And Willie was a consultant. And what he said in an interview with me is I was weaponizing fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes, stuffing them with dangerous pathogens for use in dropping on our enemies. So that was a shocker. And that really was the beginning of saying, well, I'm not really done with my job about reporting about what's so strange about Lyme disease if I'm not covering this.

Right.

And then I got another firsthand witness. Just randomly at a party in Texas, I met a guy who worked for the CIA, and he said he did a lot of really bad stuff during Vietnam. But he said, the weirdest thing I ever did was drop infected ticks on the Cuban sugar cane workers in 1962. So.

Wow. Yeah. So it spans way back. It spans way back.

Yeah. But what I did over the course of five years is I just interviewed a lot of people, went to 20 archives. I had access to Willie Burgdorfer's personal lab notebooks and the. His papers that were archived at the National Archives. And what I really did was trace the program and show how it really was a large. This. This biological weapons program is as large as the Manhattan Project for the nuclear bomb. And just as secretive, there's still a lot of documents that were destroyed or locked away at Fort Detrick. So the important thing is, in order to weaponize these living systems, you have to do a lot of prototypes and testing and field tests. And so in the book, I just go over, like, all these sort of uncontrolled tests with ticks, where the ticks got out, and they could be part of the reason that this epidemic is so out of control now.

Yeah, it is. It's like the. The tick was left out of the lab, so to speak. And. And that when you put a. An experiment into a living system, you have no idea what the outcome is. And, you know, a lot of folks are explaining the. The spread of Lyme disease around global warming and the habitats. And, you know, there's. Their ticks are able to survive for longer periods of time, and there's this other big component where there's this disconnect in our brains. Like, it's really hard to hear that. Right. So I'm wondering how. How have you been received with this message? Because it's a. It's a big. It's a big message, and we're seeing maybe some resonance with current affairs that there is a reality here. I mean, I'm sure you've been discounted. You've been called a conspiracy theorist, like, all of those things around, like, how could this be? And honestly, you, in the book, you have the evidence, and we have. We have. You have got firsthand information from the guy that Lyme disease was named after. Right? I mean, there's. There's pieces of it here that you can't now not look away. Right. Sorry for the double negative, but I had to put it in there. How. What is going on with this and why? I was really excited to get you on the show. While I want to focus on, you know, the positive components of what we can do, because it's here. But at the same time, is there a way that we can prevent other biological warfare things from not escaping the lab, as in, like, maybe a international treaty or ban on biological weapons or gain a function?

Because really, what. There's so many parallels between what happened with Lyme disease, deja vu all over again, and the COVID vaccine. I mean, they. We need to shine light on these programs. We need to know where our research dollars are going. And with Lyme disease and Covid, the incentives are in the wrong place right now. So in 1980, this. This law was passed. Bey Dole that said that Researchers at universities and CDC and NIH could profit from discoveries so that all of a sudden when there was a dangerous new pathogen, they kept that information secret rather than sharing it in journals as soon as possible. So we can build knowledge on how to treat these and their mechanisms of action. But with Lyme disease the cure was a $10 of off patent antibiotics. With COVID there is a lot of research now that Ivermectin, a really cheap 20 year old safe antibiotic helped keep COVID patients out of the hospital. And so we just, we need to mainstream journalists need to take a critical look at the evidence and not just take this herd mentality of lemmings. Oh you know, NIH said this is the way it is. New York Times said this is the way they have to do your own research. As for science journalists which I'm part of. So I think it is the whole society has gone through our 12 step process on do we believe our government anymore? In every aspect and it's a lot of work for us but your life.

Depends on really does. And I think there's this concept of agency captures and when you follow the money we know our system is broken. People know it, they're experiencing ill health as result and this aspect. So what, what would you recommend to our listeners and viewers here if they are suspecting that they have a tick borne disease or illness?

Well I start, start with your primary care but know that if they order the quest or lab labcor test it, it could be wrong. So Lyme disease diagnosis is primarily a clinical diagnosis. You have to look at the whole person, their history, their travel history. Do they sleep with their dogs? You know, did they take in a dog from Connecticut? So all this and doctors like you take a thorough history in the sort of puppy mill medicine institutions you get like 13 minutes with your primary care and they'll just send you from specialist to specialist. So I would say try, try with your primary care but if you feel like you're not being heard and they're writing off your symptoms, I mean they told my husband and I we were had a psychosomatic couples things, you know, all in our heads. But this was after it took us 10 doctors and a year to get diagnosed. And once we use the right test we both came up CDC positive in every dimension and we had a second CO infection which is babesiosis, which is a red blood cell parasite which can kill you if you have a damaged spleen. And why did it take a year? In hindsight our symptoms were classic. So that's why it's good. If you're not getting satisfaction in your mainstream, go to a specialist and know that time is of the essence because the longer you have this chronic condition, the harder it is going to, it is going to be to get rid of it. And at a certain point it's hard to ever get rid of it 100%. So find a specialist. Just like if you had had a brain tumor that was really rare, you find the person who had treated that brain tumor before. So find someone who has seen all the variations of tick borne diseases. I mean when a tick bites you, there's 20 different diseases in the US you can get. I mean you're not going to get all of them, but you could get two or three.

Yeah.

And doctors, I, I talked to newly minted physicians all the time. Oh, how much did you, how much time did you spend on tick borne diseases? Oh, 15 minutes.

Yeah, right. And they're all clumped together. You know, it's not even, it's not given due diligence and in the effects of what it is. I mean you mentioned the CDC says this many cases a year but my guess is it is three to tenfold higher because physicians aren't trained to diagnose that. And, and so that, that piece of the puzzle, it is always on the differential with all of the neurodegeneration that I see here in the centers because it is one of those great mimickers, we call it a great mimicker of other conditions and it really puts patients right because you brain fog and trouble focus and fatigue and it's really hard to be your own advocate when you're, you're really on the line and you're you know, really going down quick. So that, that aspect. We're going to put up some of your links for some further education for folks, for physicians and lay public. Of course the start with the film under our skin and share that because we're really here to get the message out. The, the time is the, the information is not coming from above. It's not coming from mainstream media. There's dollars going in different directions and it's not for health and it's not for humanity. And I think the time is now and is of essence to get the, get the word out and get people educated. So I really, I thank you for the work. I know it's been, you know, based on your health journey and your background as a professional reporter and it's not been easy. And so everything that we can do here, I want our listeners and Viewers, if you like today's show, give us a five star review and, and put in there what you learn. What is your take home? And I'm wondering, Chris, if you have any parting, parting words or message for our listeners and viewers today?

Two things. First of all, if you see the film, you'll see sort of the spectrum of symptoms that you get with tick borne diseases. I think that's important. The other thing is to be on the lookout of Alpha Gal red meat allergy, because that's on the rise. In my book Bitten, I talk about how lone stars carry this sort of protein that gives you an allergy to red meat, red meat. And it, in some cases it's lifelong. It used to be a southern. It's a new condition I think related to the lone stars being weaponized in the cold war. But these ticks used to only be in south of the Mason Dixon line and now they're creeping upward to Maine. And, and so the symptoms of that are if you eat red meat four or five hours later, you get really nauseous and you can break out in hives. And so maybe you can put a link on the symptoms. There's a really good Alpha Gal site because that's a new disease or condition that the CDC is really worried about and it's very hard to diagnose unless you know it's out there.

Yeah. Yes. And that is, that is making the rounds in my provider networks as far as be on the lookout and watch for the symptom pictures. And we will put a link to that. Thank you very much.

All right.

All right, everybody, this is what the health and we want you to share this with your loved ones because it's not coming from anybody else. So we will see you next time.

All right, thanks.