Episode 46: Solving Complex Medical Mysteries, with Dr. Tom Moorcroft

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We are talking about mystery illnesses. So I really wanted to do this episode because so often I am getting patients in my office complaining of chronic fatigue or joint pain throughout their body that kind of just came out of nowhere. And oftentimes there was an inciting event and they felt like they were fine before that, and now their lives have changed. And I think that a lot of conventional doctors are overlooking some obvious illnesses that could be contributing to this. And so this is not my area of expertise, but I'm seeing it more and more. And so I wanted to find out The expert in this area, and that is Dr. Tom. And so he's going to talk about today what are the most common things that he sees, you know, causing these vague-like symptoms that overtake women and destroy their health. And it can be easily treatable things like tick-borne illnesses and viruses. And so It's important that you keep searching for answers. If you're going to your conventional doctor and you're not getting better, you're not getting back to your normal state of health, because obviously that wasn't the answer and you need to keep looking. So Dr. Tom also takes care of children who have what's called PANS or PANDAS. And that is where they have acute behavioral changes, meaning it's, you know, onset is abrupt and it happens and people don't know why. But he knows that it is usually associated with a bacterial infection or viral autoimmune encephalitis. And if you treat those children appropriately, you can get rid of These acute onset behavioral changes of anxiety and ADHD and all of this tick-borne stuff. So it's really cool, all of the amazing work he's doing. And my worries are that women are out there seeking this help. So I want to help you find people like Dr. Tom. He's amazing. So I just want to sing his praises really quick before we get into the interview. But if you— I really want you to listen to the whole interview. So if you feel like you don't have time to finish it, just hit pause and come back later. That's the beauty of the podcast and the videos, right? You can always watch later, come back later. So Dr. Tom Moorcroft treats some of the sickest, most sensitive patients suffering from chronic Lyme disease, tick-borne co-infections, mold illnesses, And like I said, children with infection-induced autoimmune encephalitis called PANS or PANDAS. He focuses on optimizing the body's self-healing systems in order to achieve optimal health with simple, simple natural interventions, utilizing more conventional approaches when needed. So each individual is a unique unity of body, mind, and spirit, and successful treatment strategies are patient-centered and address all 3 of those levels. So those are the true source of radiant health. It's within each of us, and he taps into that and truly helps you heal. He's pretty awesome. So you're really going to enjoy this today, I promise. I mean, Dr. Tom has 2 decades of medical practice. He's seen the importance of your mindset, the habitual patterns that create your results. His mission is to share proven strategies for aligning your conscious and subconscious mind so you can design your health, business, and personal goals and achieve them with amazing speed. You can immediately apply these principles to your life and improve results. So I just want you to listen to this episode if you are struggling or know someone who's struggling, or pass it on to a friend who needs to hear it because it's cutting edge. It's not standard of care out in conventional medicine. And if you're not finding the answers to your chronic issues, I want you to keep looking and consider reaching out to Dr. Tom. So I will have all those links in my show notes. We're going to mention them again at the end of the interview, but you can find him at Origins of Health. He has a virtual practice online that you can reach out to him. And like I said, those tips will be in my show notes.

Awesome.

And here we go. Well, welcome, Dr. Tom, to the Functional Gynecologist Podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me. So great to be here.

Yeah, I'm super excited for this conversation because honestly, experts like you don't come around that often, you know, and so we need to capitalize on this opportunity to hear about your wisdom in all of these mystery illnesses, right? That's your deal.

Yeah, it really is. It's kind of— it's an interesting thing. It's just like, you know, sometimes it's about just looking for sort of what's more common than we would think. It's almost like a lot of the things I find are being overlooked by a lot of people because it's like they did the cursory look at it and they skimmed right over it because we ran into something like—

Yeah.

I find we do so many like MRIs and tests and all this stuff, and it's like if you sit down and talk to the patient, You're like, wow, there's sort of a history that really guides you down what path to look for. And then sometimes it's hard to find some of these things, but it's been very gratifying to be able to serve people in this way. And I think part of it just comes from the fact that even before I knew what I was going to get into, I had my own sort of challenges that opened my eyes to this, which really seemed to help. Because I think that's how a lot of us get started in this, right?

Yeah, exactly. We have our own pain-to-purpose journey. We find Functional medicine and once you figure out that listening to the patient gives you the story and all of the answers are pretty much there, it's pretty awesome, right? I mean, I know you're a DO, I'm a DO, we learned that in medical school, but then you go out into residency and you're thrown into the MD world and they're like, oh, forget about all that holistic crap, right?

Right.

Get your differential diagnosis and then find the drug or surgery that works. And so it just— you go down that path, or have you always kind of been more holistic, functional med?

Well, it's interesting because I got into medicine through— I was injured on a wilderness trip by poor leadership. And so I said, There's got to be a better way to do this. And then also, if I'm going to keep— we need to prevent illness. But then if I'm going to be hiking and playing out in the woods as much as I do, if something were to happen, I should know about it. And so, I started training in wilderness medicine, and I got hooked. And so, I got to the point where I did all the training available. So then, I was like, well, the next thing I need to do is start teaching it so I can learn it more. And then I was like, but I'm still not learning it, because how often do you get to practice? First aid on a hiking trip, right?

Right, right.

Thankfully not too often. So then I did the ambulance and then the ER, and I actually got in really— I really enjoyed working in emergency medicine and critical care because it was an interesting place because you were able to, you needed to, you were forced to in a very short period of time create a very deep and trusting, compassionate relationship with someone right before you did something that could make or break the deal for them staying alive.

Right.

I was always— I loved that I had to be like as purely human and compassionate and loving as I could be in 30 to 90 seconds, you know, because that's all I had.

Yeah, yeah.

And then when I went into going into medicine, I just sort of got more hooked on caring for people in these situations. I was like, the system is so broken because outside of the trauma room, everything was— I was like, why are people suffering this way? So, I actually went into medicine, and I didn't know anything. I had my neck cracked a couple times by a chiropractor. I knew nothing about osteopathy. I knew nothing about functional medicine. It was just kind of like I knew it was broken. I thought I had to fix it. And thankfully, by paying attention to some of the— the guy who— Frank Hubbert was a guy who started Solo Outdoor Learning, which is the one of the— he's one of the 2 sort of grandfathers of wilderness medicine. All I knew was that he was like the coolest guy I knew in medicine, and he thought differently, and all his patients loved him the way I wanted to be, you know, and had a relationship the way I wanted to. And I said, so what's this DO after your name? What's the difference? And he's like, go interview at this place. And so I went to the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, and I was like, this is— it felt like home. I still thought I had to like recreate medicine like he had in wilderness medicine, but I knew it was home, and then I got there, and all these other people were doing the stuff that I thought no one knew, you know, so I could actually learn with somebody. So, that's kind of what started it all.

Yeah, isn't that so cool? Honestly, once I figured out what osteopathic medicine was, that was the only school I applied to, and everyone thought I was crazy, like, you're putting all your eggs in one basket? I'm like, that's where I want to go. Like, that felt like home. It's exactly like you said.

You walk in. And you're home, yeah.

Exactly. And then once you're done training, they throw you out in the real world, and some of us get lost like I did, but then I found my way back. So did you get lost and find your way back, or you always stayed on the path?

Well, I almost got lost. I got— the critical care junkie in me almost— I actually, in the middle, I did I did an osteopathic fellowship in school, so I did, you know, I added an extra year on medical school to really dive deeper into anatomy and manual therapy to support the self-healing mechanism in the body. But then I was like, I'm just going to go into family medicine because I wanted to learn more about how we harm people with these medicines, because sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not so good.

Yeah.

So let's learn it better. So that I would know what was going on. But about halfway through residency, I was so into like going to the procedures and the emergencies, and I was in the OR all the time, in the critical care unit, that I literally interviewed at anesthesia critical care places. And I actually had a contract, and I was like literally sitting there with a pen one night at my dining room table going, Don't, no, don't do it, you know, because I was about to give in to that sort of the adrenaline side, but But part I loved about it was, like what I was saying earlier, was that deep connection with people and, and letting them— having a way to provide hope for them when no one else could.

Yeah.

And I was really good at that. And so I said, well, I think as an osteopath going out in the world doing manual therapy, I could do the same thing. And then it was like I opened my private practice, and by the time I, I started working with some people, and I remember very specifically this one girl came in And she was— I put my hands on her, we were doing osteopathic manipulation, and I was like, you have an infection. You can feel it. This is not just like somebody with some musculoskeletal strain. And I didn't know what to do, but I was like, well, when I— a few years earlier, I had had Lyme disease and babesiosis, and I don't know, the way I used to feel is kind of like what she feels like to me. And so we ran some tests. And of course, we found she had Lyme and a few other things. And so I didn't know who could treat her. So I just decided to find out how to do it myself. And that started the ball rolling.

Oh my gosh, that's awesome. And now that's all you do, right? You just work on all these mystery illnesses. People doctor shop, they don't get better, they're miserable, and then they finally find you, right?

That's kind of the picture of how it happens. Yeah, you know, I mean, I've been doing it long enough that I do still have— I have a few people come in acutely where their neighbor has seen me, you know, after that story, and I get them fresh so that it's a short thing. But yeah, I mean, very commonly, doctor 12 or 15 or 30 in the list of people. And it's just kind of like everybody's looking for the common, you know, looking for the big bad things. And I'm glad that everybody's looking for the true life-threatening things off the You know, right off the bat, but we're missing some of the simple things, you know. I mean, and from a functional medicine perspective, I mean, diet is overlooked, which I don't know how we overlook that these days, but—

Yeah.

I have some opinions, but, you know, it's like they— and then I see a lot of chronic tick-borne illnesses, people who had a short course of treatment and relapsed, but then they were not retreated, which to me is like medical malpractice. You have Lyme, we treat you, you feel better, we take the treatment away, the same exact symptom comes back. If I change the word Lyme disease to pneumonia, we were trained in residency, if it comes right back, you just put them on the same thing, and then if it doesn't go away, you change it. And if I did that in Lyme, they get mad at me, you know?

Right.

So, it's interesting, but yeah, we see a lot of people who have— and I think the complexity comes in, Tabatha, where they've had— it's been so long that they have these persistent infections, and then they have immune suppression, and then they have this other thing happening. Then they start to become less active, and then they start to eat or drink to sort of self-medicate. But they weren't like that in the beginning, but because it's been 4 or 5 years, now they have all these layers of changes that have occurred as compensation for them to maintain the best semblance of health they could. And so it's like you have to go in and unlayer it and sort of sort out, is it Lyme? Is it Bartonella? Is it mold? Is it your diet? Or is it all of them?

That's so good. Such an important point because people do just live with this and they don't realize that they have this low-grade infection going on or something that just never was treated or addressed. And like you said, they're self-medicating, they're just trying to survive. And if you are taking 15 minutes to see this patient, you'll never uncover that story, right? You'll never figure that out. I think it's so important. That we sit and listen like, hey, I didn't used to drink alcohol every night. I used to actually exercise and be able to move. You know, this joint pain is not who I am. And I love that you're hearing that, you're listening to them and you're digging deeper. So tell me like the most common bugs or tick-borne illnesses that you're seeing. seeing that conventional doctors aren't looking for or don't know how to look for?

Yeah, well, I think that— I mean, Lyme disease is by far the most common vector-borne illness in the United States, and it's probably the most common thing I see. And I see people miss it a lot, and I think there's a couple reasons. One is about 95% of people get Lyme disease will get it from the nymph, and the nymph is like the size of— at least of the deer tick that gives you Lyme— is the size of Of like a poppy seed. So, you know, we're used to looking for these bigger ticks, but these little ones, kind of like the no-see-ums, often do it. And there's this thing in the literature, everybody talks about, oh, the rash is absent about a third of the time, meaning it's there about two-thirds of the time. You look in the medical literature, it's more like 40 to 50, maybe 60% of the time we see it in clearly defined Lyme disease. But clinically, 15 or 20% of people present with the rash, and most people think of it as a bullseye, you know, this concentric sort of light, dark, light, dark circles. That's only about 20% of the true Lyme rash, the erythema migrans rash, because most of them are just red blotches or purple blotches.

Mm-hmm.

And so people miss those if the person even has a rash, and so some of our early diagnostics Which is the rash, which is pathognomonic for it, we miss often. And then sometimes people get bit and it's like they'll just have like an insidious onset of, you know, something like fatigue, and then they get a little bit of joint pain, and it kind of just looks like they're depressed or they have fibromyalgia or something. But it was like they, you know, they're 37 and they've never had depression, and they've had, you know, they've— it's just like it doesn't make sense when you talk to people. It's like Who has new onset depression at 37 with nothing happening? Or if they do, could we also look at the fact that it happened 3 months after this extended hiking trip? Or like my daughter last fall had acute babesiosis. She went on a school trip, 3 kids come back, and 2 weeks later they all have fevers. And she had a fever that didn't break for 2 weeks, and the doctor's like, oh, it's viral, it's going around, and we're like, just do your thing. The poor kid passes out and goes to the ER with like anemia and low blood oxygen levels, and they're all like, oh, it's probably viral. I'm like—

Or not.

I'm like, I'm taking over here. Like, I mean, they made sure she'd be alive till tomorrow, but, but it's just like, but this is what— and the problem is like in acute babesiosis, if you don't have the severe life-threatening form, it can actually just go to kind of It's more of a— almost like a subclin— we use the word subclinical a lot, but it's like low-grade symptoms, and then it goes away because your body can mount a response to it and suppress it, but it's not clearing it. And that's really what we see with Lyme, babesiosis, and some of these other tick-borne infections is unless you have the really classic acute presentation, people are missing it because people's bodies are really strong. It's almost like Super Size Me, right? If you watch the movie, it's like— Your body can handle McDonald's 3 times a day. It's not good, and it will eventually break, but your body is so miraculous if you have sort of this lower level where it just creeps in. Another way to look at it, too, is these infections have been around— Lyme's been around for over 13 million years.

Right.

Way longer than us, and so it doesn't want to kill you. It wants to live in you for a long period of time.

Right, it wants to be your buddy.

Right, and so you're— and one of the things that Lyme does and some of these other infections is they find ways to evade the immune system. They go into what we call immune system or immune privileged sites. They go to areas like your muscles and your heart and stuff and even your brain and they hang out and they don't want to kill you. They want a host. So we get That's where we kind of get into this chronicity. And one of the other things I think is really important to point out is a lot of people are looking at doing prophylaxis after a tick bite. There's that study that showed, oh, if you do a double dose of doxycycline once, it'll prevent a rash. And the problem is, it may prevent a rash, but rash is not equivalent to Lyme disease. And so the— in the study, they took people with rashes out, they took people with Lyme disease out, And it's like, okay, well, pick and choose and make a study say what you want. The problem with a short course of treatment is that it can actually block your antibody response. So we may be able to prevent a rash, but we may also block the antibodies that are what we test for. So now you have a person who's partially treated, who's still sick, with no rash and a negative test because of what we did.

Isn't that awful? I mean, I know conventional medicine means well, but some of the things we do are not helping patients and we really just— We need to suck it up and admit that, right? And keep looking. It's time to eat some crow and do something different.

Well, you know, and I'm in Connecticut and anybody on the Eastern Seaboard and especially like in Mid-Atlantic and New England states, if you think it's Lyme disease, treat them for 21 days at a minimum and I prefer 6 weeks. The sooner the better and there's all this talk about chronic Lyme disease. If you actually diagnosed and treated Lyme when you thought about it, you would minimize that risk. If everybody would do 6 weeks of therapy and do it when they thought about it and not worry about the test— because if you're actually diagnosing it early and you do the test early, by definition, the test isn't— the antibodies haven't formed in most people. A negative test early isn't helpful. But what's really interesting is one of my nieces has been on minocycline twice a day for 5 years or so for acne. Give them minocycline for 6 weeks to prevent a chronic illness, please.

Right. I know. There's something wrong with that thinking.

And it's like, if you think about it, and you're in primary care or another provider who's seeing them in urgent care, Just treat people appropriately. I'm not asking people to do things that they don't like, but even as a resident, I got them to let— to treat acute Lyme instead of for 21 days for 28 days, which was a big win back then. But it's like the research shows that the early treatment is the best chance we've got. Otherwise, we're setting people up. So rather than saying all these doctors who treat chronic infections are crazy, why don't you just treat people for Lyme the way you would treat them for pneumonia? Do apply the same principles that you were taught in medical school and residency because it's— I don't know why we're not looking at Lyme the way we look at every other infection though.

Yeah, I really don't understand the stigma around wanting to change our mindset around it. Like, it really is a topic that fuels people's fire and they're like dead set, you know, we can't change it, this is how it is and I just think once you get to be closed-minded and you stop learning and looking for new answers, that's where you're going to fail, right?

I think keeping your mind open is so critical because one of the things is I often go to conferences and lecture and they're like, here, this is Dr. Moorcroft. He's a Lyme expert. I'm like, let me start it. Let me just restart this. Yes, my name is Tom Moorcroft. I am a doctor. But I specialize in getting people better. That's what a doctor does, right? So I happen to have an expertise in Lyme because I see a lot of people who happen to have Lyme disease. I don't— I tell people all the time, I do not care what you have. I don't care about the name of it. We need to find out what it is so we know how to treat you so that you can achieve your goal of getting better. But if it's not Lyme disease, I'm— I am so happy to tell people that. If it's something simple, if it's simple and complicated, I mean, I have people we diet— They think they have babesiosis for 5 years, but they have recurrent cancer that they haven't followed up on. I mean, you should keep your mind completely open to whatever it is, but unfortunately, it seems like the patients I'm seeing, everybody's looked at everything except the obvious. They grew up in Connecticut, they worked on a farm, and they've had fibromyalgia for 5 years.

Right, right.

Well, okay, well, one of the causes of fibromyalgia is Lyme disease.

Yeah. Oh, well, we'll keep fighting the fight because it's so important and you're actually making patients feel better, right? Whereas giving them a diagnosis of fibromyalgia or chronic pain doesn't make them feel better. You know, giving them narcotics and benzos to manage the symptoms doesn't help them feel better. It doesn't reclaim their health. So You know, even though we're not backed necessarily by conventional medicine, we got to keep doing what we're doing, right?

You know, we do. No, I think there's a couple of things we need to— I ask people what they see themselves doing when they're better. Because I want to know what they actually are trying to get better for. Yeah, then it helps to bring up a lot of the things because a lot of people have a psychological component to their chronic illness because they've been everybody they've gone to see has invalidated their experience of life for so long. I'm like, and let's get it all in a row, but also like let's find out what's this— what's the body-mind-spirit piece? What's mental? What's emotional? And what's physical? And, you know, I think that it's really important to, you know, find out what's wrong with them and treat them, you know, appropriately. And any treatment that I work with, it needs to be working. And if I give them a trial of treatment based upon my clinical suspicion, which we do in medicine all the time, Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

If it's working and I don't have another diagnosis that would be better, I go down that path. I just think it's so important to give them hope and to listen, but also not to buy into stuff because, I mean, we all see patients who they're just— they're at a point where they're grabbing at straws or grasping straws and it's like, I'm here to help them. really nail down a clear diagnosis. So I want to know what it is because once we name it, we can treat it.

Yeah.

I do think it's about really diving in and finding out what's going on on all levels and not just going, oh, like I hear, so it's supertentorial, like, you know, it's like, you know, meaning it's psychosomatic or whatever. I'm like, it's usually not. Most people really want to go to work. They really want to do something in their life. They want to feel better. And it's just that everywhere they look, they're not getting it. So that's the part that really just helps me keep my mind open. And I want to know whatever the diagnosis is. I say to people, let's find out what it is. If I'm the person who can help you, great. I can pat myself on the back, but that's not where I get the meaning in my life. It's getting you to the per— I'm happy to get you to another person. If they need a functional gynecologist, I'm sending them to you, right?

Right.

It's not just because I treat Lyme, and mold, and Bartonella, and PANS, and stuff like that that everybody has that. I mean, when you're an expert, a lot of people come to you, but I do want to send people to the right person. I work with all our community docs, and we get them to the right person. It's about helping people get better by keeping our— I was told in residency, even if you have a— in your mind, it's a crystal clear diagnosis, always keep your blinders off just in case there's something else that could have been missed.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there could be a big story the patient didn't tell you about, but I love that as a male physician, you embrace the idea that it's not all psychosomatic. Every time I hear that, I think of the word hysterectomy. It came from the word hysteria. Doctors used to cut out women's uteruses because they acted crazy and it worked half the time because they took the ovaries and changed their hormonal status, right? That doesn't mean that was the correct answer or diagnosis, but that's what they did. And we accepted that as medicine. And so I just think we have to give the medical community some grace in the fact that they don't know everything, but they also— those same doctors need to admit they don't know everything and that there might be a different way or a different reason. And so I just think it's so important to be a lifelong learner and keep your mind open. And I think patients appreciate that so much because they don't want doctors throwing their hands up and saying, I'm sorry, you're just going to have to be miserable. You're just going to have to live like this. I mean, that's the patients I get. I get women saying, you know, I can barely get out of bed and my doctor has no answers. They told me all my labs are fine. And Sent me on my way. I was like, that's not okay, right?

I saw a woman this morning, 25 years old, that is exactly the story. And I'm like, it is not okay. No. And, and, you know, I always try to make sure that when I'm chatting, it's like, the thing is, I want to know, I want to treat the whole person, and I want to make sure that we're looking at whatever might be wrong with them. People in the tick-borne illness world, like Lyme-literate docs or whatever, often will get a bad rap because it's like they just treat Lyme and some associated symptoms. They give them meds, and they give them herbs, and it's like now we're just on this, oh, you're not getting better. It's this other thing. For me, some of the— we have a lot of research supporting chronicity of Lyme, chronicity of Bartonella, and the difficulty in treatment, and that when we get more than one infection from a tick bite, which is now Known to be much more common than we previously expected. And this is, this is like Yale, Johns Hopkins, Tulane. These are big universities publishing. It's not just like the Lyme literate community. And we're finding that, yes, infection can be hard, but the other part is we're not giving people that hope. We're not giving them something to live for. And I'm like, stop focusing on being sick. Let's work. And I push people when it's the right time. And I'm like, what do you want to do? I talked to one of my patients today. She's also one of my— I do, you know, like mindset groups because it's like after you've been sick for 4 and 5 years, it's like, okay, well, there's the infection and then there's this other piece. And I want to empower people to understand that they have a self-healing mechanism themselves that they can supercharge. So I talk a lot like placebo is about a third of all medical outcomes. But the trick with placebo is if you don't work with it, it's a crapshoot. Are you going to get a 33% negative or a 33% positive? I like to put the 33% positive back in the medical thing. And what I found is you can easily get 33% more bang for your buck in whatever you're doing, your surgery, your medical treatment, if you have the right mindset. But if you focus on really what you see, what you would love to do and what you would do in the future, like as if it's already happening. Like I have all these people that can't bend down, like they want to get on the ground with their grandkids and play. That's way more motivating than getting better from Lyme disease, is I want to be able to play with my grandkids. And when they feel that emotion and they, they get into that and they, they can start to harness more than 33%. They can get 40% and 50% and 60% and more. They start to create this health abundance in their life that allows them to do even more. As an example, I talked to someone this afternoon in one of my groups, and she was like— we're treating her for Lyme and Bartonella. Then it turns out— I said, I think you've got a mold thing, and they find out that in their apartment complex, on the next wall, there's a leak, and they sent me these pictures— mold everywhere.

Mm-hmm.

She's got all kinds of mycotoxins and all these other inflammatory components But all her doctors said, you've had— she's like 45, she's had 2 hip replacements and a spinal fusion that's been revised.

Oh my gosh.

Right? They're like, you will never hike again. You will never do the things you love. And I said, why not? They just— why not? And so, we started working with her, and she started getting better, and we started treating the infections. And I said, look, those will come with time, but let's also start working on what you're going to be doing when you're completely better. I'm like, well, what are you going to do? She's like, well, I have a goal. I want to go hiking again, and I have this mountain that I want to go hiking. It's, it's a moderate-sized thing. It's not big, but it's really hard. It's like a 3-mile to the summit. And I'm like, well, what are you going to do when you get there? And she's like, well, I'm going to drink some champagne. And I'm like, that's my kind of hike, right? And, and I go, not too much so you can make it down and not break any of your hip or joint stuff.

Right, right.

But so this was a goal she set 2 weeks ago. No, actually, I'm sorry, last week, and she said, I want to do this by the end of next summer. And then we got off the call, and she was so motivated by it, she went and did it the next day.

Oh my gosh.

And everything said you can't do it because in Lyme they told— well, first of all, the doctor said your body's too broken, you'll never be able to do it. Then she got Lyme and Bartonella and mold, and she went in the groups, and the group said you can't do this because if you do too much, you're going to crash. Well, someone else, that's true. So I said, why don't you just do 70% of what you think you can do? And she's like, I think I can do this. And she literally went up the next day after about 3 months of treatment and 2 weeks of doing some mindset work, did it, and then had her champagne. And as she was drinking champagne, a hawk flew past her, and she's got like her spirit animal now and all this. And she was able to hike down. And she didn't crash. And it's like so much of what happens is we read one person telling us, the doctor says you can't do this, the Facebook group says you can't do this. And in some cases, you're medically unstable, you shouldn't do a certain thing, but the vast majority of people that I see who are suffering chronic illness, they believed a thought from someone else that said you can't get better.

Right. That is so beautiful. So important. Like, I just— that's probably the most important part of the treatment right there is knowing that your body has innate intelligence. It knows how to heal. You got to remove what's impeding it, right? That's your job. And then believe in your healing ability and know that you can get back to how you should be. I just— It's That's the most important thing. And like you said, people lose sight of it when they're in that medical system for years on end with chronic pain, chronic symptoms, and disease, because all of a sudden you just become your diagnosis and your days are filled with your doctor's appointments and your pill taking and your testing. And I mean, it's like consuming. You talk to these people and that's all they have to talk about is how they're feeling and what the doctor said today. And so to remind them that they're more than just their diagnosis, that— you're amazing. That's awesome. Good for you. I just, oh, I wish we could get more doctors to do that.

It's the simplest thing. Well, I think one of the things that keeps rolling through my mind as we talk about this, some of the reason that a lot of doctors don't do this stuff is because then you have to look in the mirror and do it to yourself first. And if I ask you to lose weight, well, right? If I ask you to work on your mindset, if I ask you to take these pills or these herbs, I got to be willing to do the same work, right? I've done all this work. I've done all the Lyme and the Babesia work and the heavy metal work because that's where I came from. I, you know, I have some, you know, certainly we can all benefit from upgrading our mindset from time to time.

A.V., COVID!

Well, you know, it's interesting. In the beginning of COVID, I was like, the thing you need to do is— they're so simple. It's like, get some fresh air, get some vitamin D, eat right, sleep, and there's all kinds of science behind all this, and then chill out. But the thing that really has driven me nuts about the functional medicine community, and the media, and the regular medical community is it's all fear-based. I mean, see yourself on the other side of it as healthy.

Yeah.

You're getting results, right? I mean, we all know this. We're going to— if we live and breathe, we get results. So do you want to have it by default or by design? So I'm just like, I choose to design them. So I just make a plan for my future. And I just see that as already happening. Because if I wake up today and I go, I'm healthy, I'm strong, I have energy, my brain works great, I have love in my life, whatever it is that you need, and then you're grateful for that. What happens if it doesn't show up today? Nothing, right? Because if you go like, oh, I feel like crap today, well, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. How many people who feel good say, oh, you know what? I woke up this morning and I said I felt like dirt today and my day's going to suck. And so then, but you know, just like, I just started walking around and I was so much happier. It doesn't happen that way. But people who wake up feeling crappy will go, you know what? I decided that I was going to have a good day. And like this, all of a sudden, somebody, my friend texted me or called me. And I felt better, or this, you know, something happened, the hawk flew by, the butterfly, whatever, and it's like you feel better. So amp up your immune system by thinking about an immune system that works, that rocks.

Exactly.

You know?

Yeah, you can't— a body that you hate won't heal. I always say that you have to love your body and you have to give it grace and believe in it. Believe in the ability to heal. I love that story.

Yeah. Good.

So, you know, I deal with women only, even though I have you as a guest and as a male. You're like my 3rd male guest now. That's pretty cool. I just think that women need someone like you when they have like done all of the conventional things and they don't know where else to go, right?

Right.

Do you work virtually with patients?

I do. Yeah, we've had it with COVID We've had a lot more access to, you know, true virtual care. You know, that's with the MD and DO sort of after anyone's name. There's a little different licensure and stuff, but there's a lot of things that we do, you know, full on now with some of the virtual stuff. And there's, there's other options as well. You know, what's interesting when you say that, it's like people are always asking us, well, who do we see? And I'm like, well, I see like 35 to 55-year-old women and their children and occasionally their spouse that they drag in. And there are very few men who really take advantage of functional medicine without their wives bringing them in. And I see a lot— being a family practitioner, board certified and all that good jazz, I see a lot. And with tick-borne stuff, I see a lot of autoimmune encephalitis, behavioral regression, Mm-hmm. Acute changes with whether it's strep or mycoplasma or even Lyme and mold triggering it. We see these children who have acute ADHD, acute OCD, and rage, and tic disorders, or it came on over 3 or 4 weeks or something, but it's just out of the blue mostly. With these people, it's like— so it's the moms bringing their children in, and so that's primarily— I mean, if I look on any given week, I mean, there could be days I go by that the only men I see are the dad coming in or the son Of the woman. So it's like, it's funny, I'd probably say like, you know, 86, 85% of the adults I see are women too. And it's just, it's very interesting who takes advantage of—

Yeah.

Who's more in touch with that. It's like, I mean, are you more in touch with your feminine side or what is it? But it's like that, that motherly healing side, you know, and I think that men and women can benefit from balancing themselves a little more and Guys could be a little more open to the fact that maybe what their wife is telling them or their girlfriend's telling them about, you know, healing, you know, maybe, maybe they should take care of themselves, you know.

Yeah, I usually see my patients start to, you know, feel better. They're losing the weight, they have energy all of a sudden, and their husbands are like, wait, what? Can I do this too? So that's how it starts. Yeah. So What are some common things that you wish people would check off the list before they get to someone like you? What are some basics that people miss beyond all that mystery stuff?

Well, I think that a lot of docs will check for Lyme disease and— but they don't check for the other infections that are in the ticks. So, like in the deer tick that transmits Lyme disease, you can also get anaplasmosis, you can get babesiosis, and there's multiple species of that. There's a thing called Borrelia miyamotoi, which until recently we really haven't had really good antibody testing, but now Quest has purchased a company and rolled out their test, and that's quite good. Borrelia miyamotoi, I think I published 2 of the first 24 cases in the country back in 2014.

Wow.

First 73 in the world. It's new-ish, but it's been 6 years. We got it Catch up. It's in ticks, you know.

Mm-hmm.

I also think we look at Lyme and we don't— we try to always meet these criteria for research. We don't need research criteria. If we have specific bands for Lyme, we should— and really anything we do in medicine, it's a clinical diagnosis supported by lab data. So when we look at the lab data, if it's almost— if the clinical is like a slam dunk and the labs are almost there, I mean, usually, like, that's in the hospital. We would go err on the side of caution and treating the patient. Um, other things are Bartonella henselae and Bartonella quintana are infections that people argue whether or not you can get from a tick or not. Depending upon the year and the region of the country you look at, you can certainly find it in ticks, but we see it in cats. So it's, you know, cat bites and scratches. Cat mites can give it to you. Fleas can transmit it. And where I see it really commonly for all the moms out there and the teachers out there is lice can transmit Bartonella. And every time I do public lectures and there's teachers in the room and I say the lice thing— They all scratch their heads. Well, what they end up having is they'll have lice go through the classroom, which is totally normal, and then they have 3 or 4 kids who have acute onset anxiety or acute onset ADHD right after lice goes through. I'm like, this is not acute onset ADHD and acute onset OCD out of the blue, especially after life's go-through. It's like it was from that. Maybe look at Bartonella henselae and Bartonella quintana for that. It's really big. The other thing that drives me nuts is acute fibromyalgia.

Right.

By definition, it has to be at least 6 months without a better medical diagnosis to explain it. I've had people, they're like, oh yeah, I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia. When did your symptoms start? 2 months ago. Not possible. It's just by definition, you know? And so, we should start to question the easy out, you know? And certainly, I see a lot of people who are exposed to mold, and not everybody who's exposed to mold gets sick.

Right.

But when you have kind of the chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, brain fog, and nobody knows why. Think about it. If you've had water damage in your home or at work, or if there's a known mold exposure, it's possible. I have children with vocal or physical tics, like an eye blink or a grunting or a hand flapping, that they're doing better, and then they have a mold exposure, and it'll throw it through the ceiling. Sometimes it's as simple as cleaning mold off the window by a heater in the winter, and Tones them down. So mold is another one to keep an eye on in addition to those. And then I guess the other part for the moms out there, PANS, which is Pediatric Acute-Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome, is where you have all these acute behavioral changes or even regression, including like bedwetting and peeing your pants, which— or frequent urination, which is a big one.

Yeah.

In addition to food restriction in kids. who previously didn't do that. They can happen after strep or like a chlamydia or mycoplasma pneumoniae exposure, and these are just things that go through the classroom and any kind of virus. So if they're, you know, if you're thinking, you know, your kid acutely changed their personality or their behavior or their school performance and it doesn't make sense, talk to somebody about maybe looking for strep or some of the other causes of PANS.

Wow. Yeah, that's such good information. I mean, that's still new to me and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but it makes total sense that you can have these infections and maybe they don't get treated. They weren't really, you know, dealt with, and then you have the aftermath of them. And with PANS, is it real— is it true that you have to get like immunoglobulin therapy, or is there other treatment for that?

Yeah, so I break it down kind of, uh, calling it a toxin-induced autoimmune encephalitis. And meaning, so we have the toxic or infectious insult, we have an autoimmune thing, and then we have some inflammation typically in the brain. Um, and so I look at those 3 pieces. So I want to find out what the underlying cause is and treat that. And then I look to the immune system and I say, is it If it's really bad and really acute, IVIG, the gamma globulin, is, is a good treatment. If it's more chronic, sometimes it's needed, but often we can use things like low-dose naltrexone. There are certain peptide therapies like, you know, thymosin alpha-1 can be beneficial along with some other ones. Sometimes exosomes can be helpful. Sometimes the autoimmune piece can just be finding out, hey, is gluten triggering you a little bit too much? And also the strep and treating those and then calming it down. So it's something that'll calm down the immune system. It doesn't always have to be IVIG. And one of the tricks too, and that would point out PANS, is ibuprofen at a, at a weight-based dose, meaning like whatever is appropriate on the back of the bottle for your child's weight, um, you know, every 6 hours while they're awake for a week. If that knocks the symptoms of their behaviors down— You really want to go see somebody for PANS. It's a neat trick we all use, and it doesn't always work, but if it does, you know, it could kind of give you the diagnosis before you even get to the doctor. I've seen CBD oil help with that inflammation and modulating the immune system, and there's one other big one that just slipped my mind. after they have a PANS thing, it can often immune modulate too. So those are a few things.

Wow.

Oh, and steroids are sometimes useful, but typically not the go-to. Um, you know, so gamma globulin I reserve for like sort of the really bad cases early on. And then there's— there are actually in chronic kids hemolytic, you know, the, the hemolysis where they're— which is a whole thing that I haven't really got into, but I have some friends who do a lot of just for immune modulating and stuff as well. There's a lot of different options. I wouldn't— the simple things are get to the doctor, find out what's wrong, and just get them to give you a course of antimicrobials, whether they're herbs or antibiotics, to see if we can stop it. That's the biggest thing is getting rid of the infection first and then modulating the immune system.

Wow. Yeah, that's really good information for moms because I'm hearing about it more and more. And so we need to realize that there's information out there that your primary care doctor might not know about. Right?

Right. Right.

So, so important. So where can my listeners find you, Dr. Tom, and follow you?

Yeah. So I'm at originsofhealth.com and that's our main website. And then I also, Over on Facebook, we have Origins of Health for our practice, and I have a Facebook group called Empowered by Lyme, and that one's really for sort of if you have questions about this, and it's not just Lyme, it's kind of any of the things we've talked about, and you want to get some answers, or you need some positive support.

Mm-hmm.

That's really a good place because I don't tolerate people whining. Like, I want you to show up and share what your concern is, and then let's find an— let's look for solutions. And then also on Facebook, I have Full Cup Life because I don't think it should be a glass half empty or half full. It should be full all the way and overrunning. And that's really, if you really resonate with the mindset stuff, that's support for people as well.

I love that. Okay. I'll have all of those in my show notes. That's so good. I love it. And if they go on your website, they can get the top 5 brain detox tips, right? That's a really good one. You're doing so much good work. I love it.

Oh, thanks. Yeah, and definitely go grab that one because, um, you know, one of the other things— and my, you know, it's all my, my tech people are like, oh, surprise people with more stuff. I'm like, I just— I'll just tell them. I did this thing, Relax and Reboot, which is like one of my favorite things ever, where I have 3 exercises where people can pick one to help them calm their nervous system down and bring up immune function and it starts working right away. It's like you could start doing it tonight. It takes like 5 minutes for either one and that comes in with the top 5 brain detox tips and a few other fun things. But yeah, we just— we need to share and get this information out. I can't thank you enough for the opportunity to share with your audience. I know I'm a guy and all, but I'm married and I have a daughter who's 10, so—

That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I'm not the Lyme expert. Right, and I get women who come to me with chronic fatigue and a lot of times I need a partner in treating them. So I love that I have you as a connection and other doctors in our community. So thank you so much for coming on.

You're welcome. And yeah, and one last piece, I throw this out to everybody and especially to you, but I'm always happy to help other physicians learn about this. So if you do Everybody listening can reach out and I'm happy to help. If you have an open sort of physician who wants to learn a little bit and dabble a little bit more, we certainly do physician training. And I just really want people to have options. So it's just not always coming to me or to you. You know, it's like we can really uplift our whole community. So thank you so much.

Awesome. All right. Thank you, Dr. Tom. Well, take care.

Talk to you soon. Thanks.

Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. I hope you got something out of it. It's really important to understand the difference between conventional medicine and functional medicine. There is a time and a place for conventional medicine, but when you're dealing with chronic disease or diseases that have made their diagnosis based on a constellation of symptoms, then you know you need a functional physician who will get to the root causes of the issue so that you can actually fix the problem and it doesn't keep recurring. Or if it does recur, you know what to do to get that back into remission. Such an important distinction. So I really want you to take one golden nugget of information from this episode, add it to what you've learned from the prior episodes, because I I promise, if you make one little change, one little baby step every week, and are consistent with your changes, they add up. And it's not a 1+ 1, it's exponential. They multiply upon each other and you will reclaim your health and get back to being the amazing woman that you're supposed to be. So that is my goal for you, but I need you to do the work. I need you to find what needs to be dealt with and start working on it. Please don't hesitate to shout me out on Facebook or Instagram at Dr. Tabatha. That's 3 A's, no I. T-A-B-A-T-H-A. Tell me your questions. I am here to serve you. I honestly do this for you. I don't get paid. This is, you know, not my day job. I do this As a side hustle because I have a strong desire to help you. I want you to live your best life. This is a sisterhood, not a competition. We're all in this together, and I just want to lift you up and help you be the amazing woman that I know you can be, and I want you to believe it as well. So please shout me out if you tag me and share my podcast. I will send you a free gift. That would be so amazing. So thank you so much for trusting me to be your functional gynecologist, and go have a kick-ass week.

Bye!

Bye!