The Missing Link Behind Fatigue, Anxiety, and Inflammation with Dr. Tania Dempsey

Most overrated thing in the chronic illness space right now?

This is gonna be a little controversial, but I think some of the functional medicine approach to chronic illness may be a little overrated. What has happened is it's actually become very similar to allopathic medicine. It just looks natural. So in allopathic medicine, you have high blood pressure, so you get a blood pressure medicine. It's always said like, here's the disease, here's the treatment, very much not about the root cause. Functional medicine disguises it a little bit as looking at the root cause.

Dr. Tania Dempsey, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

So, um, I was sharing with you a little bit about the inspiration of this podcast, and for our beautiful community, they know that the intention is really to help them feel more rooted, rooted in themselves and their health and their happiness. And what I really believe is this inner intuition and knowing that we can all heal ourselves. So to kick things off, I ask every expert like you, what helps you feel more rooted in yourself and your health and your happiness every day?

You know, I try to practice what I preach. And so when I talk to patients about how to heal and help them, you know, feel better, right? I think about what I can do for myself as well, right? It's all about life is so, intense and so many toxins, so many exposures on so many levels, right? So for me, it's movement is like key. And that for me is like, if I don't have a day where I can fit in movement, it just doesn't feel like the day is complete, you know? So the movement can be, it could be walking. I love nature. I love being outside. I love the sun. I love, right? I love all those things 'cause I think they're so healing. But we're in New York and we definitely have times when it's like the weather isn't ideal, right? So then I find other ways to move. So I love lifting weights. I think that's so important for our bones and all these things. So I do, and I've been bodybuilding for a long time. So for me, that's— it's exercise on some level, movement on some level, multiple levels. I think that especially 'cause I'm in New York and I can't always get really good sunlight, red light therapy is something that I try to incorporate as often as possible.

Mm-hmm.

We have a red light bed bed in our office. And I try to encourage the patients to use it. I try to use it at least several times a week because that does make a difference for me as well. It's like, again, light therapy is incredible. And the more I do it, the more I can say that it does make a difference. So for me, it's exercise, movement, it's light, it's family.

Beautiful.

And I have, I have 3 kids and they're, they're getting older, but they're in college. 2 are in college, one's graduated, but I have such great relationships with them and my husband. So for me, like that, that keeps me rooted. They will keep me rooted. Let me just tell you.

Yeah. Yeah. It brings you back, right? Brings you back from all the distraction. And I love that you pointed that out. Yeah. So many practitioners, it's the practicing, actually embodying everything that we preach to the people that we work with. Um, you know, we're going to get into your story and your practice as well today, but I also wanna know, you know, people think that practitioners like us, we've arrived at health. Do you notice, you mentioned obviously living in today's really busy world, it's very abundant. Do you notice when you drift and are there certain things in your daily practice that uproot you and dysregulate you?

Yeah.

Do you catch yourself?

I try, I try. This has been one of those weeks, to be honest. So it's a perfect question. You know, I have this drive. It is a very intense drive. I've had it since I was little for helping people. It is like I've wanted to be a doctor since I was 5 years old. So people are like, well, how do you know? I just knew. And I have a story behind that. But for me, it's this constant drive. And I just, I sometimes can't sleep because of it. And also because I can't help everyone. And this is like my challenge right now. My practice is really full. I'm trying to squeeze people in when I can. I have my own patients that I have to take care of. And so to do that, to do the work that I do, because I take care of patients who are ill, they require a lot of attention. And so what winds up happening is I sometimes forget about myself. And the whole thing is just about treating and caring for patients and for others. I'm a caregiver by nature.

Yeah.

Then what happens is that I, you know, stay up late. I'm working. I'm trying to get everything done for the patients, for the practice, supporting everybody that I need to support. And then, you know, it's like 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm thinking to myself, right, this is not good because I have to wake up in the morning and do this again. Now I haven't gotten enough sleep. And we all know how bad not getting enough sleep is, right? And so I had to check myself. So last night was one of those moments where I had to check myself. And say, this is not sustainable. You're gonna have to find a different way and you're going to have to find and delegate a little more and try to get more support because I can't, I can't do everything. But I, that's, you know, what I wanna do. I wanna be able to take care of everyone and heal everyone.

I'm so happy you shared that. It's funny, I've offlined on that topic with so many practitioners who've come on the episode, but we've never really done a deep dive. I grew up kind of like just with a similar desire of just wanting to serve. I just wanna help. I wanna help people. feel better. It's the inspiration for doing this entire podcast. But yeah, I noticed myself this morning, it was the first morning in a long time that I've gone for a walk and did some strength training and took some time. It's like, wow, I feel like a whole new person today.

It's amazing.

So it's a beautiful mission, but we have to remind ourselves and be the mirror for each other, right? Especially, you know, if you're not a practitioner listening, if you're a woman or a man who tends to pour a lot into other people, yeah, you gotta Pour from a full cup.

100%.

All right, so let's dive in. I don't have you for very long. So what we do typically is we're going to do some rapid-fire questions. I promise we'll go deeper into everything, but whatever comes to mind, whatever your gut instinct wants to say. All right, one symptom that people dismiss as normal that's actually a red flag for immune dysfunction.

Bloating. Abdominal bloating.

Most overrated thing in the chronic illness space right now?

I would say this is going to be a little controversial.

I like it.

Uh, but I think some of the functional medicine approach to chronic illness may be a little overrated. We can discuss that.

We'll deep dive on that. All right. Next, a food or a habit that silently aggravates mast cells that most people would never suspect.

The challenge with, with mast cells is that there's almost like nothing that you can say that is the same thing for every— everybody. So there isn't one thing. I wish I could say there's one thing, but there isn't because, because I could say, for instance, like, um, I'm gonna give an example.

Bone broth?

Oh, sorry?

Bone broth? That wouldn't surprise me.

Right. Like, like, yeah, I have patients who, because it's high in glutamine, maybe a little bit aggravating for the nervous system, but it also is high in histamine, so it may be aggravating for the gut. But I have patients who heal themselves with bone broth and they have MCAS, right? So, this is the challenge I have, is saying something because there's so much in terms of like, there are so many differences between one person to the next.

I love that answer. All right, one thing that you wish every GP knew about vector-borne illnesses?

That is very easy to get. That is much easier to get than you can ever imagine.

True or false? If you've never been bit by a tick, you can't have a tick-borne infection.

False.

Shocking.

Well, because you don't know if you've been bitten by a tick. Yeah.

You know, all of us have these, a lot of us have these memories of playing outside in the woods and the trees when we were younger. We just, we didn't know. It wasn't a thing back then to look, right?

But not only that, most of the infections we're talking about can be transmitted by other vectors outside of ticks, lice, fleas, biting flies, spiders, mosquitoes, right? So the reality is that it's very easy to get infected even without a tick.

All right, let's get to it.

Okay.

So autoimmune disease is now one of the fastest growing categories of chronic illness worldwide. Nearly 80% of diagnosed cases are women. This is, this runs in my family, my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother. Yet millions of people are still told that their symptoms are stress, aging, or just anxiety. What's unique about your incredible work is that you treat patients with MCAS, with Lyme disease, autoimmunity, chronic fatigue, and these are conditions that medicine tends to just treat as completely separate issues. So can you share a little bit about what you see happening underneath all of this that doctors are missing?

I think what's there, the primary thing that they're missing is the connections between everything. So medicine is very siloed. So if you have a symptom, you go to a specialist for the symptom. So if you have joint pain, you're sent to a rheumatologist. If you have skin issues, you go to a dermatologist. If you have, you know, right? So everything is so subspecialized. And so what happens is that patients wind up going to a lot of different specialists for their these individual symptoms and no one's really understanding the connection and what's really at the root. And I think that that could be potentially life-changing. Actually, somebody DM'd me today because their mast cell specialist, which this was like shocking, couldn't— didn't believe that eating eggs could cause joint pain. So the GP sent the patient back to the rheumatologist and the rheumatologist said, well, your joints look fine, so it's not a rheumatologic problem. The And the mast cell specialist said, it can't be a mast cell problem, but it is a mast cell problem because it's something, a reaction to the eggs. Mast cells are everywhere and they're in the joints or whatever. So that's like, that was a perfect example. I looked at that and I said, this is siloed medicine. This is everybody pointing the finger to the other specialist and no one really understanding the connection. And the connection I really believe is this, and yes, this is my lens and I might be a little biased, But I will say that I think the root of a lot of the illnesses we're seeing that are chronic illnesses is mast cell activation syndrome. I think it is very much linked to autoimmunity, and we can talk about that connection.

Mm-hmm.

But there does seem to be almost all my patients with autoimmunity have some aspect of mast cell activation syndrome. So there's a connection. We can talk about it. Maybe it's bidirectional. Mast cell activation syndrome seems to be at the root of a lot of neurologic, neuropsychiatric, GI, even cardiovascular. Oh my gosh, the list goes on, right? Lungs, allergy. I mean, there's just so many symptoms. So if we think about it this way, that we live in a very toxic world and mast cells are really ancient cells. They've been in mammals for probably millions of years. And they're, they're really the first line of defense against parasites and bacteria, things that, that, that early mammals and humans were exposed to, right? Um, those were— that's what people died of 10,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago, millions of years ago, right? Primarily, right? It was injury, probably, and infection, um, that there was no treatment for. So the mast cells are really there to To help the body fight, but you know, in the last 50 to 100 years, we have these exposures that that humans and mammals or whatever have never been exposed to, right? Never seen. So I think what's happening is that these mast cells that are supposed to help to protect us have become dysfunctional because of these early exposures to things, whether it's in utero, whether it's epigenetic, whether it's some new exposures, pesticides, plastics. I mean, the list is kind of long, mold, etc. And I think that sets the stage. I think that many people are born with a susceptibility of their immune system, and over the course of their lifetime, they have additional triggers that bring it out and escalate it. And and then at some point, it just reaches a threshold that then I think that's when patients present with you know their full spectrum of of their chronic.

Gosh, you know, thinking about such a siloed system, I've experienced this. I shared with my community, my mom had major surgery almost a year to the day, and she had autoimmune disease. She's had rheumatoid arthritis since she was very young, and complete reconstructive surgery and new medication for her RA. And for the past 8 months, she's just been itchy and anxious and overwhelmed and issues with her bowels and her gut, and to the point where the itching just got so out of control. And her primary care didn't know anything about mast cells or testing. Her rheumatologist kind of looked at her and said, hey, you're crazy. You know, you're old. It's gotta be part of old age.

Oh, gosh.

Her GP, you know, who had gone through and kind of gave her advice with her surgery, but no one knew until we finally pushed. And sure enough, she did have mast cell activation, which is connected to one of the medications that she was taking, on top of autoimmunity, on top of likely being bitten by a tick in the past, on top of periods of stress, On top of all the issues with, you know, digestive issues that come with living with an autoimmune disease. So you're kind of bringing up a big topic, and I can just understand how challenging this must be for you because when we talk about root cause healing for something like this, where the heck do we begin when we're trying to decipher what the root cause was? How far back do we go? The unfortunate thing, as you beautifully showcased about like Living in today's modern world where we are naturally exposed to a lot of stress, anxiety, environmental toxins, and pollutants and stuff like that, a lot of people are starting to normalize their symptoms, right? If I do a conference, I ask how many people here suffer from stress, digestive issues, anxiety, dizziness, overwhelm, insomnia, food sensitivities. Every single hand in the audience is up, and it's often met with laughter. Which is a really sad thing because we've now identified with all these symptoms, right? So what comes first? Is this, is it this dysregulated state that impacts our immune system? Is the immune system that's activated for far too long that triggers the nervous system? How do you even go about finding the root cause?

Those are almost all the above. Yeah. You know, it's such a great question. I'm training a nurse practitioner in my practice right now. She asked me that question, you know, recently, and it was sort of like, well, how am I gonna know, you know, where to start, right? So what I do with patients is, especially, you know, I'm seeing a new patient and I'm trying to, you know, understand how all the pieces fit together for them. So I start their history, actually, I would say at birth, but I would say actually before birth, right? So it's the health of the mother before pregnancy, during pregnancy, what her exposures were, what her stressors were. if they know anything about it. You know, a lot of people don't know because either, well, they could be adopted or they just don't have, you know, that type of relationship with their mother. So they've never discussed it. But some people know, you know, they know that their mother was exposed to something or the mother suffered abuse or something. That sets the stage, right, for the baby. Now that baby's exposed to these things, there's some epigenetics that are involved. And then And so there's early in life, you know, triggers, let's say. And then, and I go through all that history, you know, what happened when you were 1, what happened when you were 2, 3, like, let's just go through the entire chronology of your life. And, and let's see if we can figure out where the, the major episodes are that we need to unravel. And it usually becomes very clear. There's usually Again, it's a bunch of, I'll call them milder triggers often earlier. And then there's usually some bigger trigger. Sometimes it's a tick bite, but sometimes it's a major stressor, a death in the family, a divorce. It could be a miscarriage, could be an abortion, could be, I mean, I can just think of like 1,000 things, traumas of various kinds. But they're also saying other things, right? They get Epstein-Barr, they get mono and they can't get better. Or they have frequent strep throats Or they have, they got bitten by that tick or some kind of insect and they've wound up with something, or they were exposed to parasites. They were traveling in Mexico or wherever, they got parasites. So there's usually some major trigger that then kind of sets the stage. So the reason that's important is when I'm thinking about how I'm going to get to the root, I've got to unravel all these pieces first and then decide, okay, so if there's infection, let's say, that's driving this, I probably will have to go after the infection on some level. But if the immune system is clearly a problem, which I would say really all my patients have an immune dysfunction on some level, and I would say, you know, again, 95% of my patients have mast cell activation syndrome. So there is that piece of it that, you know, I then try to find the balance between what am I going after, but also helping the immune system not just stabilize these dysfunctional mast cells, Mm-hmm. but also help the immune system kick in to take over. So all those things that are living in many people who don't know it can actually be suppressed and the person can kind of go on. It doesn't matter what infection is there. I don't know if that makes sense.

It does.

There are things that we all acquire over the course of our lifetime. Not everyone gets sick, but it's usually a combination of factors. So I'm always doing this dance between Helping the immune system and trying to figure out what else I need to eliminate. And the nervous system piece is really, really critical. And I don't wanna ignore it because while reducing stress or doing vagal nerve stimulation or doing limbic retraining or doing— there are lots of different ways to get after that autonomic nervous system or the limbic system. and I'm a fan of all of them and I really recommend them to all my patients. They may not cure the problem, but they help to set the stage because the immune system and the nervous system are very interconnected. There are mast cells that line every nerve in the body. They're in, they literally, like, I think about it like, you know, I have like a wire here, okay?

Mm-hmm.

And the mast cell wire's like a nerve in the body and you literally have, the mast cells are like literally lining it. And so when the mast cells feel like there's something that they need to react to, they're gonna explode and release their chemicals. The nerve is gonna see that, they're gonna release their neurotransmitters. Maybe they release something called substance P, which is a, a pain neurotransmitter that, that sends a signal to the mast cell and it becomes like a vicious loop. So some people experience pain, but in the brain, maybe it's manifesting as anxiety or OCD. Or ADHD or some kind of neurodivergent manifestation. So there's like so many things that can happen. So I think that understanding that piece and sometimes going towards the nervous system part can be helpful. But I also have to go towards the immune system part to help the nervous system, right?

Right.

So I think we have to be careful. One of my biggest pet peeves that I see on social media is attributing one treatment as the answer, right? So I was listening to somebody say, I cured my mast cell activation syndrome by, you know, doing this meditation or this whatever, you know. All those things are great. I don't think you cured your mast cell activation syndrome. I think you calmed things down.

Yeah.

But we make promises to people. And for a lot of people, Their symptoms are so beyond that, that we can't just say that that's gonna be the cure. Drives me crazy.

I love that. Oh, drives me crazy too. And I love that you brought that up because what it does, it just creates more fear. By the time I get to work with a lot of people, the amount of fear that is laid from the social media that they're watching around the foods they need to avoid, the practices that they need to stop, the symptoms that must dictate the imbalances that they have. I just, you know, how could any protocol work when you're just, you're suffering so deeply, right? So I love that you call that out and I can hear that from your practice. It's almost like peeling back the, the layers, right? You're addressing the acute symptoms first, but you've gotta go on a journey of discovery with each patient one by one to really understand what the approach should be. Yeah. But I wish— that was beautifully said.

Oh, thank you. Like, I wish, and I have so many other practitioners who reach out to me and they're like, I just want the algorithm. Just tell me if they have this, what path do I go down? Right. But if I think of every single patient individually, you'll see that sometimes I'm going after their gut. It's very clear, you know, they have parasites or they have dysbiosis or they have fungal overgrowth or they have something, right? And so those are the patients that, yeah, I have to work on their gut. But there are other patients where they may have gut symptoms, but I actually don't go after their gut. They're not ready for that. I have to go, I have to do the simple things first and just calm down their immune system a little bit, right? So maybe they need antihistamines or maybe they need these other treatments that we use for mast cell activation syndrome before I can even touch anything else. But every patient is different. And I had a patient yesterday who sort of asked me this question, you know, like with my case, he said, do you have other cases like this? And what do you do when, you know, it's like this happens and I react to this? What's your next step? You know, for like all the patients who have this exact symptom.

Yeah.

And I said, there's no next step exactly for everyone, right? The next step could be, A, B, C, D, E, F. And we just have to figure out what's gonna be right for you at this moment in time. And we'll learn if it doesn't seem like the right, right next step. We talk about it. That's why we have— I have incredible relationships with my patients. This is so— this is like the healing relationship you have to have between practitioner and, and patient.

Yeah.

Because it doesn't work if you don't. And so I listen to my patients. I, I, I trust what they're telling me. They trust what I'm, I'm telling them. And we work together on trying to figure out what— why it didn't work and what we need to do next, you know? So it's not— I'm not, like, dictating their protocol. We're discussing it together.

I'm smiling so much because what do you mean? You're a partner in their healing journey? What a concept! And, you know, I'm saying that with— not to judge, but it's a sad state of, you know, doctors, the roles that they've had to take on. So in this conversation already, I've heard you mention IBS. You mentioned Epstein-Barr. I think you said mold at the beginning. I mentioned hormonal imbalance. We talked about living in a toxic world, nervous system dysregulation. Do you have a standard set of labs that in your practice you take people on? Do you do stool testing with everybody? Can you shed some light on some types of labs that people can inquire about?

So again, if there's a flavor to their case that I, that I believe they have immune dysfunction, rooted in mast cell activation syndrome. And again, if they're coming into my office, many of them already suspect something, right? So I'm going to put them through mast cell testing, which is a little bit complicated. It can be a 24-hour urine collection, a random urine collection, some blood. Everything has to be processed perfectly and everything has to be kept cold and get to the lab appropriately. My staff is amazing. We've created a system here that I'm really pleased because these are the tests that a lot of practitioners in the community say that's just impossible for them to get done. They send the patient to LabCorp or whatever because people don't understand how careful you have to handle the specimens. But in any case, we put people through the mast cell testing. And then again, based on that chronological history that I've taken, but also based on their family history and other factors, right? I'm gonna think about sometimes, again, depending on their symptoms. It may be gut, you know, like a gut stool test. It could be specifically a parasite test. Sometimes I do that right away. Sometimes I don't. Again, it depends on some patients want to know everything all at once and some patients are overwhelmed and they just, you know, can we piece this together a little bit slower and get to the, like the low-hanging fruit first and then work our way there, right? A lot of patients wind up with testing for the vector-borne infections like Lyme, the BCL, Bartonella viruses, because again, I do think that that's quite prevalent and really, again, underdiagnosed and underrecognized for a lot of reasons. Again, people, if people say they don't have a tick bite or they've never had a tick bite, the doctors automatically assume there's, you know, it's impossible. But these ticks are like poppy seeds. So what if it, you know, bit you in your head? How would you know that you did? You know, that's one thing. But again, as I said earlier, there are a lot of vectors in our environment that transmit infection. And so Bartonella Bartonella is very easily transmitted. It is epidemic throughout the entire world. I have a great map that I use for a lot of my presentations that shows the distribution of Bartonella. It's literally everywhere. It's like sub-Saharan Africa through— I mean, in places where like you would think, well, there are no ticks, but there are other insects and modes of transmission all over the world. Mosquitoes have been identified as carrying Bartonella. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah.

And we hear about these cases getting worse, you know, are we talking about it more? Are we looking for these more? But we're hearing about these cases more and more. So Bartonella. Okay.

Yeah. That's a, that's a big one that I see more often than Lyme. I see a lot of Lyme too, especially in the Northeast here, but, but Lyme can be all over. I don't want to even say that it's only here, but, but I will, you know, we're in the epicenter here, so definitely we see a lot, but, you know, But Bartonella by far is the biggest driver. And I think when you say like, you know, why are we seeing so much of it? And I think it's been around for, you know, probably hundreds of years, if not longer. But I think the issue has to do with the changes in our immune system, the changes in our cells, the changes in our body that we are now no longer able to handle the effects of these things. And probably we've been exposed to for many years. I think that's one issue. Like, we look at, for instance, like Long COVID. I think that was a straw that broke the camel's back for a lot of people who were well before. They may have had these things, but that tipped them over the edge. I just think that that's why— that's part of what we're seeing. But I also think that with— I know I may be getting a little political here, but with climate change, with other factors, right, maybe we just have more insects, ticks, et cetera, that are able to transmit.

Right.

So it's probably a combination of factors.

Yeah, I agree with you. Multifactorial. And I love that you brought that up as well. I work with so many people who post-COVID, long COVID, subtle symptoms that they've just been on this kind of like slow downgrade of just not feeling the same way. We haven't bounced back to where we were prior to that. I actually had long hauler's COVID and I ended up getting mold toxicity. But there was no visible mold. It was through water particles in our HVAC system that I was sleeping next to that they finally caught. So there's mold everywhere. We've obviously lived with mold since the beginning of time, but all of a sudden becoming more susceptible to those things is a really great point. And it's a great share because a lot of people that I work with doing a lot of coaching is, you know, they tend to blame themselves. My body is broken, or I'm just getting older. A lot of women who pass 40, 45, it's like, This is what it is. And it's the suffering that goes with that when it doesn't have to be that way.

Thank you for saying that.

This is so enlightening.

Thank you for saying that. No, that's such a powerful statement. It doesn't have to be that way. And too many women actually think that they're just supposed to put up with it. And I'm also glad, I don't wanna hijack your question here, but I just, I'm so glad you brought up the HVAC thing. I'm sorry that you had to deal with it, but this is what, you know, we talk, I talk a lot with my patients because I know mold is a very big trigger for many of them. That's why they continue to be sick. But we have these conversations. Well, everything looks okay. I've not had any water damage. I've even had inspectors come out and test my home and it's negative. So it can't be mold. Did they check your HVAC system? Probably not. Did they do the right testing? Probably not. So it's a real— it's actually a real problem. So I'm sorry you went through that, but it is an important point. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah. And I'll hover on that too. We had 3 different companies come out. The first one and second one said it's all clear. They brought out the light, nothing was going on. And then the third one, I stayed in the room with them and then I just saw their reaction when they opened up the HVAC and then we knew. And just water particles, right? It didn't look like black mold or anything that was growing. Right.

Right. Because you don't need it. Doesn't need to be black. Doesn't need to be green or whatever color. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. And to add on to that, getting to this age piece, you know, we're in this conversation around hormones right now, blaming our hormones and the fact that it's got to just be our hormones. And yet I'm learning that a lot of doctors, they're not doing the foundational cellular work prior to assessing if it's just the hormones. So now on the other end, I'm working with a lot of women who are doing hormonal therapy, uh, and they're not feeling better. Right. Which means that deeper investigation is actually required. So you said 90% of the people in your practice suffer from MCAS?

Probably 95%. Yeah. Can you share?

Yeah. Share, you know, we've talked about some of the symptoms, but would you say that there's some, some dominant symptoms that are common in that demographic?

So, you know, first off, if we just look at the general population, It's actually more common than we think. So that it's it's been thought of as a really rare disease, and I just want to bring this up because I have patients all the time or people DMing me saying, you know, my doctor said it's it's rare. There's no way I could have this. But we do have a publication that that estimated it was done in Germany, and assuming that that their population is similar to our population, they estimated this was back in 2017. They they estimated. 2017, 2018, they estimated 17% of the population had MCAS. And it may— and it— but it was a spec— it's a spectrum disease. So some people who may not have even realized it, or very mild symptoms, all the way to severe symptoms. I would say post-COVID, we are looking at a much higher number. And, um, but again, I have to be careful. I know people are going to listen to this and say it's no way, it's impossible. But I will tell you that I think 20% of the population have, at least 20% of the population have this. So it's not surprising then that I have such a huge number in my practice. Obviously, I'm attracting those patients because this is my area of interest. And what I would say is that the key symptoms that people come in with, even if they don't even know about MCAS, I do have people who come here because they know they have a mystery illness of some kind. And some of them have never even heard of MCAS. They just want somebody to dig with them. Fatigue, very, very common. And again, I'm going to say the gut issues, so common. Food sensitivities, bloating, they just, you know, they just know their digestion is off and there are various ways it could be motility issues or other things. So those 2 things definitely. And then I would say that the other symptom that is very, very common is we'll say like neurologic. And the neurologic symptoms are really vast. It could be autonomic dysfunction. So it could be what we call dysautonomia. POTS is one of them. But it also can be, as I mentioned earlier, neuropsychiatric stuff, anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, as I mentioned. A lot of these things can be— and again, I'll see patients, sometimes they're perimenopausal and they're told this is menopause or perimenopausal. That's why they're anxious and that's why they don't feel good and that's why they're tired. And that's why, you know, their gut is not good. And I saw a post recently on attributing all these symptoms and bloating to perimenopause or something like that, or menopause. I'm like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's a stretch for me. Okay. I know, like, there's no question that perimenopause can cause a lot of problems, but what if perimenopause actually, maybe the hormones are actually affecting our immune system and it's really the immune system that's that's causing the symptoms, right? I always think about that connection, like what's actually causing the symptoms? Is it just the fluctuating estrogen or is it because the fluctuating estrogen is triggering the mast cells, which are then triggering inflammation in the gut, in the brain, in the nervous system and all these other places? So I just think about, I don't know if that answers your question, but these are the things that like come in every day, you know?

Fascinating, yeah. And to even think about, you know, anything that you're adding into the body, If your mast cells are already in activation or high alert, and yet here you are trying to put more things into the system where the body's like, enough, enough. I can't even, I can't even process this. Right?

No, exactly. So I'm a, I'm a huge fan of hormones and, and definitely love that there's so much out there right now supporting women and women's health. I mean, there's no question we needed this, but I definitely have patients who come to me who don't feel good on testosterone. I had a patient yesterday who's like, I've been listening to all the social media. about testosterone. I really wanted it to work for me. But the, you know, the minute the levels started coming up and on the tiniest dosage of testosterone, it caused prediabetes. Her hemoglobin A1C went through the roof, and she's on a carnivore diet. Um, all these other symptoms started acting up, and she's like, I don't understand. I thought testosterone was supposed to be good for me. That's what everyone said. You know, it didn't help her libido. It didn't help anything else.

Yeah.

Why? Because she has the dysbiosis. And Bartonella. She has some other things going on. Her mast cells are not are not functioning well, and so we're still peeling layers. And so yeah, for her, she's on some estrogen and progesterone. That does seem to at least help some things, but it's not the whole answer, right? And so this is why some of these like again these like they're silos, right, of information that that people are putting out there, which is amazing.

But I think we're kind of missing the In the medical community, are you noticing that doctors are checking for vector-borne illnesses without asking? Obviously it's a specialty that you have, but for listeners now, I'm assuming it's gonna feel like an additional request. The doctor's gonna say, well, why do you wanna check with that, for that anyways?

Right? Right. And I, and I wanna mention, right, when I'm doing my history, right, I'm trying to figure out their exposure. So have you ever been bitten by a cat or scratched by a cat? Did you grow up with cats? Or dogs, because cats and dogs carry it. Cats are huge carriers of Bartonella. Bartonella is cat scratch fever. That's what it's called. That's how I learned in medical school that if you get scratched by a cat, you can get this disease. But it's obviously transmitted. It's actually transmitted by the flea that the cats can carry under their nails. It's kind of crazy. So I ask all these questions that doctors are not asking. There's no way that people are asking flea exposure, lice exposure. But all of a sudden, like a lot of patients, they've had lice or their kids have lice, have had lice, or their dog has had fleas, or, right, they have all of a sudden all these things come up, right? So for me, it's like, oh, there's, of course they've been exposed to these vectors, these insects that they could be transmitting this. I'm going to test. But I think that, that unless you're, this is on your radar, a lot of, definitely GPs are not going to even go there. They're not going to know what to test. They're not going to know what to do with it. They have 10 minutes to talk to you, right? So if they get a result, they have a positive Bartonella result, what are they going to do? Like, what are they going to do? You know? So I think that they default to that position of, well, let's better not to test because they don't have time to deal with it.

No doctor has ever asked me, as I rub my finger over the wildcat scratch that I had when I was younger, I can still feel it. Yeah. And I'm sure a lot of the, you know, I know. Cats with fleas, or pets, or playing out in the wild, or the ticks, or the mosquitoes. Like, there's so many things. And what I love about the way that you educate— you're such a great educator— is it's not fear-based. I don't feel overwhelmed. I feel like, wow, what if there was, like, just deeper introspection for me to understand my physiology? And that's really what I want the most for listeners right now. Just like, could you go deeper? Could there be deeper discovery within your physical body that's worth uncovering so that you can better create a holistic, personalized healing protocol that's unlike anyone else, which means that you could turn down all the noise of what you're listening to, reading, watching, searching for, for trying to figure out what's wrong with you, right? It's so enlightening.

Thank you.

That's so true.

And I don't wanna—

yeah.

Yeah. I'm glad you said that because I do sometimes worry. I don't wanna overwhelm people. I don't want them to hear this as negative. This is positive. This is hope. For me, knowledge is power. If you have the knowledge, then you have answers and you have solutions. So like, I just think like, you know this, you can get better, you could feel better, you can have incredible quality of life and longevity and whatever you're looking for, you know?

Can Bartonella be checked through a blood lab then?

So there are several labs that are able to adequately test for it. The problem with Bartonella is that it's a type of bacteria. That is, it is a very difficult bacteria to isolate. So first off, a lot of people, a lot of practitioners, doctors rely on antibody testing. And that's true for testing for Lyme disease. They'll do like a Western blot and they'll, like on Quest or LabCorp, they'll order a Bartonella henselae, which is cat scratch fever antibody test. What happens with a lot of these infections is that they actually suppress the immune system. So sometimes the antibodies are not there, and it doesn't mean the person doesn't have infection. It's just that the, the immune system has, has become dysfunctional and is not actually acting like it's fighting. So that's like the worst test, but that's one that a lot of people do. What we want to do is we want to be able to see if we can isolate it in the blood. We actually want a molecular test. And so we have a couple labs that are able to look in the blood and see where it is. Now, Bartonella, can live in red blood cells. That's one of the sort of places that they like to live. So they enter into the bloodstream, they enter into the red blood cell, and that's a problem because in the red blood cell, that's where your oxygen is being carried. That's where your iron is. Bartonella has this need for iron actually, but it can't It can't process it completely on its own, and it relies on other things to help it. It turns out that Babesia, which is a blood parasite, actually has a synergistic relationship with Bartonella. So it seems like they're often transmitted together. Maybe they're transmitted because they're in a biofilm together, but Babesia and Bartonella kind of rely on each other to live, and they both live in the red blood cell. So if at the moment in time we're drawing blood on a patient and they're in the red blood cell, we have these labs that are able to pick it up, isolate it. They use a technology that's like a fluorescent stain that's hooked up to a protein that matches the sort of the DNA or RNA of the Bartonella or Babesia or whatever we're looking for, and then it lights up. And so under the microscope, they can see.

Wow.

the bugs there. It's pretty remarkable. I mean, what we have now, it's mind-blowing. But a lot of doctors don't know about this because these are more specialized tests and they can be a little more expensive, which is part of the problem.

Yeah.

But the other problem with Bartonella specifically is that sometimes it's not in the blood. It's now entered into various organs. It's entered sometimes just there, it's living in in the skin can cause these stretch mark type of look. Some people have these like red, angry, and the doctor will say it's a stretch mark and it's probably not because it looks different than a stretch mark and it's in different directions. So Bartonella can be living in the skin, but it can be living in the blood vessel itself, like on the walls of the blood vessel causing endothelial dysfunction. And it can be living in the gut and it could be living in all these other places. So sometimes we draw blood and we don't find it, right? And the patient thinks, oh, I don't, I don't have it. And this is a challenge with testing. Sometimes you have to test again. Sometimes you have to figure out how to, how to find it because these are tricky bugs. They, they will hide, they will find a way to evade everything that you try to do to get rid of them.

And do you notice a pattern? Will you often see things like Epstein-Barr activation? 'Cause it begs the question then, like, what came first, right? Is there activation from one thing? The deeper investigatory process. I get it. All right. And for that molecular test, do you know offhand the name of the company or the lab?

Yeah. The one that I prefer is called T-Lab.

T-Lab.

Yeah. And Dr. Bob Mozayeni, who's also on, was a He was a former president of ILADS. I'm on the board of ILADS. I've worked closely with him. He's really been an amazing advocate and proponent of Lyme disease and vector-borne infections. And so, he actually created the lab and he's expanded the lab. He's really— his interest was in Bartonella originally, but then he realized that all these other infections are associated. And so, the lab has been really, really incredible for my patients and really trying to get, get the answers that the patients need, you know.

Thank you for sharing that as we all take notes. The sad reality is, is that a lot of people right now in this world, you know, we're spending a lot of time, energy, money on the supplements, on the protocols, on looking for what detox that we still need to take. And on the other end, we still feel stuck and it comes with a lot of overwhelm. And, you know, a lot of people are just putting their hands up and saying, I just don't know what to do anymore. And So this is inspiring because the invitation to go deeper, and that invitation I've heard a couple doctors speak to when you speak about not only cellular health, but biofilms, which is something you just said. Why does understanding your biofilm, how does that help us understand what we're suffering from and may prevent us from fully healing?

So what I love about this T-Lab, I'll say that they not only test for Bartonella and Babesia and Lyme, but they do a biofilm Oh, that's great. And it's really, really great because sometimes we think, I think I'm treating the patient's biofilm and I've put them on everything that I think should help the biofilm. Then we'll repeat the test and biofilm, like, hasn't moved. And I'm thinking, okay, what are we missing? Biofilms are really, really critical, I think, in the concept of chronic infection. They're not the only thing. These infections have their own mechanisms of persisting in the body. But the biofilm is like a— I use the analogy of like a spider web where things get stuck in it and then they can't get out, but it's a protection, right? So you can have Epstein-Barr, that biofilm, and strep and staph and lots of other bacteria that are sort of like normal. And then you can have these Bartonella and Lyme and Babesia and all these other things in there. And then you can have garbage and platelets and things that are dying.

And so—

So the challenge is really, yeah, breaking those biofilms up so that you can get directly to the infections. And that's sometimes, sometimes that backfires. You open up a biofilm, if you're not ready for what's going to come out of that biofilm, the patient's going to be really sick. And, but sometimes we think we're breaking up biofilm and we're not. And so what has been really helpful for some of my patients, I just have to bring it up because I think it's been really exciting.

Yeah.

Is therapeutic plasma exchange or plasmapheresis.

Fascinating. Okay.

So we've done some patients where they have severe biofilm. They also have other things, meaning that they have the Lyme, they have mold, they have whatever it is, they have toxins. But we do this, let's say, T-Lab, and we see the biofilm, but we're having trouble breaking it down. They do however many rounds of plasma freezes we think is appropriate for them. And that's, you know, pulling out all the plasma where all the biofilms, a lot of the biofilms are. Now, you can have biofilms in other places. You can have biofilms in your sinuses. You can have them in your gut. But the blood is a very, very common place for a lot of biofilm, especially for people where we know that their blood is like sticky, a little bit more, you know, that microclot thing that everyone sort of talked about post-COVID.

Yeah.

That's all related to biofilm on cells. So, so when you pull all that out, now you're, you're sort of giving them a chance to really recover. Now we can see the Bartonella and go after it. Maybe we've pulled out some of the Bartonella too. And so we've done the test after they've done plasmapheresis and you could see that it's starting to break up. And that's been really, really exciting for, especially for people that have been hard to treat.

Yeah. And do you ever start with something like ozone therapy or EBOO therapy before going for TPE?

Yeah. I mean, there are different orders of operation. I love ozone. Ozone also breaks up biofilm. It's just a little bit longer process, but it's also a little— but it also is a little gentler, let's say, than a little bit more cost-effective sometimes, or a little less costly than plasmapheresis. So there are different ways to do it. I love ozone. I think there are a lot of benefits, especially if we say that the Bartonella and Babesia are in the red blood cells and they're affecting oxygen The oxygen carrying capacity of the red blood cells. Like a lot of patients just feel like they, they have brain fog. They don't, they, there's something missing. They, they, you can't see that their oxygen level is actually low. You know, they'll put the pulse ox on, it's normal. But there is a sense that when you talk to them, I get a sense that like maybe they're just not oxygenating well. And then they do ozone, which is super oxygen, right? And now we're able to oxygenate the tissue and we're able to get— what happens is those red blood cells pick up— the, that, that oxygen that's coming from the ozone. And I think it's actually pushing the Bartonella and Babesia off. And then the ozone in the blood is a disinfectant. So then it's killing some of the Bartonella and Babesia in the blood. So I think that there's a, there's definitely a place for it.

I'm so excited about this testing because I'm one of those people, I've done TPE after ozone Specifically though, I felt like I could have run a marathon. I just felt such a drastic change in how I felt afterwards. So again, worth investigating. And a lot of these, um, when I look— I'm half Danish, and when I speak to my family in Denmark around ozone therapy or some of these modalities, they're so much more familiar with it, with them, than they are over here. Doctors are talking about them a little bit more. I think there's a lot of influence that also comes from Germany as well. So it's interesting, you know, even for something like TPE, for these things to become more mainstream out of necessity, but also to become more affordable.

Oh, definitely.

So what's the demographic like in your practice? I'm guessing that it's mostly women. Yeah.

So, right. I would say up until 5 years ago, up until COVID, I would say that it was definitely majority, but it's changed Because of COVID And so we're seeing many more men, young men, middle-aged men who are— sometimes it's from COVID itself, they have long COVID. Sometimes it's some other trigger. But I think that something changed with COVID I don't know if it's the isolation that changed the nervous system, that affected the immune system. And so some of them don't have long COVID, but they're, you know, they're definitely suffering. But a lot of them do have the sequelae of COVID And so, yeah, so it's starting to shift and I'm definitely seeing more men.

Can you break down, you know, I'm curious around the feeling of anxiety. I can imagine that this is a really common symptom. I'm curious from the medical point of view, when do you really assess anxiety as a clinical symptom versus you know, a general complaint, you know, where someone is saying that they feel some anxiety every day. It's just daily life. They feel stressed. Of course I'm anxious. Look at my life. Look at, I have to live with my kids every day. I have to show up for work. There's so much that I have to show up for. But is there kind of like a clinical shift that you see happen when this inflammation takes over?

It's a good question. I think, as we sort of said earlier, I think women, a lot of women sort of minimize, right? They minimize their symptoms and they just think it's, oh, it's because I'm stressed and my kids and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And maybe they're perimenopausal. But I think that any anxiety, in my opinion, is not really normal, right? That's not a normal— that's a response to something. And— but I really think that it's generally— I know this is gonna be controversial and I know I might get some hate here, but I don't really think it's a mental illness. I really don't. I just don't. I mean, or maybe I won't get hate. Maybe people will like that response.

I think people will like that. I don't think—

I don't I don't think this is mental illness. This is an immune neurologic connection. And I think it just manifests differently. So some people have it on a very low level, so they're still highly functional, but it does, it's there, right? And they just, I guess they learned to deal with it. I still think it's pathologic though in some level. Like that's not, that's still not good. And there are others that it is so severe where it's almost like it's painful. Right? And they wind up in the hospital because they have chest pain with it and they have all these other symptoms. To me, it's rooted in physiology. It's a physiological response. It's not, it's not truly just anxiety, right? Yes, I guess there's— look, I don't want to minimize— there are times when there are events that happen in your life that maybe bring out anxiety. I'm talking about people who have this generalized, this concept of generalized anxiety. where there's nothing specific causing it. It just caused— it's coming out, right? And the psychiatrist will say, that's generalized anxiety. That's what the diagnosis is. They're like, that's ridiculous. What's generalized anxiety? Why do you have anxiety every day? What is that? You know? So that is— that's the mast cells. I'm sorry, I'm gonna bring up the mast cells again. These are the mast cells. They're dysfunctional. They're reacting to something. There's something in the body that is causing them to release these mediators that they make. These mediators are very inflammatory. They're causing inflammation in the nervous system. So this is a neuroinflammatory process. And it, you know, again, it can manifest anxiety in some people, maybe depression in others, maybe OCD in others. I mean, it just, it can be varied. I don't know why some people get the anxiety and some people get something else, but it's on the spectrum to me kind of all the same. And if we treat the physiological problem, right, if we treat the immune system, a lot of times that gets significantly better. You know, and that's what's really encouraging to me, right? I'm not treating anxiety. I'm treating their immune system. I'm trying to get to the root. I have a patient, for instance, who has palpitations. So it feels like anxiety. Initially, she called it anxiety, but it really is palpitations that she feels. Her heart rate goes up, goes down all day long. And it's very, no rhyme or reason, but it drives her crazy. And it can be really, really debilitating along with some other symptoms. But when we treated her underlying problems, so I attack her mast cells and try to get them to calm down. And then I attack whatever else, maybe, you know, Babesia in this case was a big, big issue. We treat that and then the palpitations go away. So she doesn't feel anxious. And like the anxiety for her came from this feeling of like, oh my God, what's going on with my heart? But that was not an anxiety problem. It was a medical problem, right?

Got it.

So I hope that, I hope that makes sense.

You will not get hate mail from that. I promise you. Yeah. This investigatory path with a lot of people I work with to understand how they experience anxiety in their bodies and Eastern wisdom, a lot of Eastern traditions will just recognize a, they would say it's a red light flashing on your engine light. You know what I mean? For deeper inquisition to tune into something in the system being off. And yet we just, we live in a world where we tend to identify with these symptoms and we want to blame them. And often it's It's an act of self-love from the body. Let's go back to, we started and we were talking about the world of functional medicine and where they're really missing the mark. And there are so many tests that you can do right now and there's so many supplements that you can take, but tell us your thought about what you're seeing or trending right now.

Yeah. So my biggest concern about, and I use the term functional medicine, but I think it's just this whole area of integrative, functional, however you wanna look What has happened is it's actually become very similar to allopathic medicine. It just looks natural. So in allopathic medicine, you have high blood pressure. So you, you know, you're, you get a blood pressure medicine. You know, it's, it's always that like, here's the disease, here's the treatment, you know, very, you know, very much not about the root cause. Functional medicine disguises it a little bit as looking at the root cause, But it's still, oh, your blood pressure's high? Well, let's use, I don't know, hawthorn, or let's use bergamot, or let's use— I still see it very much as like that same concept of treatment. Here's disease treatment, disease treatment, like very direct. And while there is still root cause stuff going on, I don't think it's going deep enough. And that's my biggest disappointment with a lot of people who do functional medicine. But it's not, it's not a criticism. There's some There are amazing practitioners out there. I don't wanna generalize.

Of course.

But I still think, 'cause I still see patients who come to me, they've been to many functional medicine doctors or naturopaths or integrative medicine doctors, and they still don't know what's really happening. And I think what the biggest message that I'm hearing in that community right now, which is really driving me crazy, is that there's this constant, sort of philosophy or thought process on MCAS specifically. And the thought process is this. You get rid of the triggers, you get rid of the Lyme or the mold or whatever, and your MCAS goes away. You just have to treat those things and the MCAS goes away.

Mm-hmm.

MCAS is something that's actually been with you. You're not gonna reverse MCAS, okay? What you're gonna do, but that's not a negative. That's just, it is who you are. That is, that is how your nervous system reacts. That's how your immune system reacts. You can have an amazing full life and, and keep it under control, but you're not reversing it. It's because it was there first. It was there before the Lyme. It was there before all these triggers brought it out even more. So you eliminate the triggers, you recreate a, like a new baseline and you can feel better and, and feel like you don't have it anymore, which is amazing. But like, they, they, it's again, that concept of you just do this and this goes away. I mean, I wish it was that easy. That's, that's my pet peeve on this, on this subject. Again, a lot of people might not like that.

No, I couldn't agree with you more. And these are the exact conversations that we need to be having, 'cause a lot of people aren't getting better. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners have gone through many different functional practitioners. And it's not to say that the effort and desire and desire to care was not there. It's just the training that we've received. And the time that, you know, you guys actually get with your patients, if you're under time constraint, stuff like that. And I really do fear now the supplement industry is becoming the next pharmaceutical, right? There's a lot of cash to be had to put these supplements on labels to fix certain parts of yourself that a lot of us are suffering from, and yet it's still not understanding the root cause.

Exactly.

And I think you're the first person to make that distinction. When we go in healing, I often, kind of how we just, we started this podcast, a lot of people think that we've arrived at optimal health and then that's the end goal. It's to be on this journey and whatever you're holding within you, it's to put out the inflammation behind it, whatever's activating it. And you're the first person to say that it's not about making it disappear forever. It's about putting your body back into a state of ease so that you are not so inflammatory anymore. Is that correct?

That's 100% correct. Correct. And it's a lifelong journey. I mean, I wish I could say, you know, this is a big— this is frustrating for patients. You know, they put in all this effort to get better, right? And they get to a point, right? And they're better, right? And they just wanna be like, oh, I'm better and I don't have to worry about anything anymore. And I wish I could say that's the truth. But again, with everything we're exposed to on a daily basis, all the toxins, all the plastics, all the viruses, all the whatever, I don't wanna say, again, not to sound negative, it just means that it is constant work that we put in for our health. It's the way it is right now. Unless I guess you live on a private island and you, I don't know.

Grow your own food.

Yes, exactly.

Manage your stress.

Exactly.

Yeah. And look, I think that you and I can have some fun and laughter around this because being on a healing journey is a beautiful thing. And once you kind of identify how unique your body I'm somebody who's got all these weird genetic imbalances and I just, I recognize, oh, I'm drifting from the things that make me feel really good. Let's just get back to it. It doesn't have to be so hardcore, something that has to deplete you at all. So thank you for saying that.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's really beautiful.

Because, because I have to say, like, you know, I, I, I get out, you know, go on these podcasts and social media and I send these messages, but I'm on my own healing journey. I'm always on a journey, right? And, and that's what people need to understand that, that I'm not perfect either. My body has its own issues that I've had to deal with over the course of my lifetime, right? So I understand the struggles, you know.

Beautiful. Thank you for humanizing yourself just a little bit.

Thank you.

Was there a story about your mother that kind of helped pave your journey?

My mother and my grandmother. So it's a little bit of a long story, but I'll try to, I'll make it short. My grandmother was equivalent to a nurse practitioner in Russia during World War II. And she had also this incredible passion to heal people. She actually forged her birth certificate to be— I think she was 16, she needed to be 18. She forged her birth certificate so that she was 2 years older so she can go to nursing school and treat people. This was like her thing. And I grew up, and thankfully she survived the war. And lived in the States. And I grew up with her. She really kind of raised me. Of course, my mother did too, but I spent a lot of time with my grandmother. And she spoke about her experience treating patients. The stories of her journey in healing people was so powerful to me. And I think back to the stories she told me. I was like 3, 4, 5, like probably wasn't super appropriate.

Yeah.

Let me just tell you, there were some things that like maybe, you know, she actually had a baby, delivered a baby in the woods herself. Like she was pregnant when the war just broke out. She had this baby, she left it with her mother, and her mother and her family perished during that Holocaust. So she lost that. She never saw, obviously, the baby again. But those were things like I was learning about her incredible resilience, like resilience is like, I can't even— she was like this big. And she was like a powerhouse. And so I grew up snuggling in bed with her, hearing these stories, and just always wanted to be like her. Like, I just, I thought there was nothing else, like there was nothing else I could think of that I would do except be just like her. And so I said, well, she— and she would say, you know, if you, if you're interested, you'd be a doc, you know, just be a doctor, just be a doctor. So easy. So I think I I was like 5, you know, like around 4 or 5, I'd be like, I want to be a ballerina. I want to, you know, all this stuff. And then like, I was just like, but I did— I need to be a doctor.

You knew.

My mother, um, actually went to medical school in, in Poland. So it's a long story of, of, of their journey. And my family went through a lot during the war and after the war. But my mother was born right at the end of the war. And, um, she, uh, they lived in Russia, they moved to Poland, So in Poland, she was a teenager, a late teenager, and she actually started medical school, but they needed to come to the United States. And so she never really finished up her schooling. And so in the United States, she sort of tried a lot of other trades and did a lot of other things, but her passion for medicine was always there. So she wound up actually for 20 years working as a medical assistant in a dermatology office and doing some nursing. Wow. She finally did it here when she was older, but she also had this philosophy about health and healing. And so when I was growing up, it was always trying to find the safest way to treat something. So I'll give you an example. If I had a pimple, she would be like, okay, you ate too many sweets. We've got, you know, like, let's give you zinc and let's, you know, do this. Like, she always had this very holistic way of thinking about the body. And so— and she still does. So she always has been an inspiration as well. Yeah. Pretty cool, like really strong, strong women in my family.

What a gift. Yeah, these personal stories are so powerful. And I think that especially in the work of healing, no matter what type of healing that you want to put out into the world, there's some wisdom that really comes with it. And a lot of what we're learning today around genetics and what's transferred to us through genetics from our mothers and grandmothers and—

And not just genetics, but epigenetics.

Epigenetics.

Epigenetics.

The body.

So I think about, like, what my grandmother was exposed to during the war and the stressors then transferred to my mother. And my mother has a lot of IBS-type stuff, mast cell-type stuff. And I think that that's all from her exposures, because she was born right at the end of the war when my grandmother was really probably very stressed out and probably malnourished and whatever else, right? So you have to imagine how that impacts the next generation and the next generation, right? It's pretty, pretty cool.

Absolutely. Yeah, my mom shares stories around her mother stealing jam from restaurants so that they wouldn't get scurvy as kids. It's like these women, man, like these incredibly strong, resilient women that we have. So, The story is so beautiful also because, you know, in our suffering, I feel like in today's world, healing, getting better, being on any type of journey can feel overwhelming because we are so focused on ourselves. It's a very self-centered way of being. And not that that's a criticism, it's just the way that society is set up to be.

Yeah.

Whereas before, we had access to community and story and sharing like we are doing today. To be able to pull back the lens of like, okay, things could be a lot worse. I'm not going to focus on my suffering today. I'm going to focus on the possibility behind that. So thank you for sharing that.

Thank you.

Yeah. All right. So can you tell us how you were so active online? Now you're on a bit of a tour. How can people connect with you? I think a lot of people might be calling your clinic. Are you accepting new patients right now? How can people find you?

Okay. So, um, Unfortunately, right now I'm not taking on new patients. My goal is I'm creating a practitioner program that I'm hoping to launch in the next couple of months. And that— my hope is that I can train more people to do this work because I'm one person.

Gotcha.

Unless I can clone myself into like 5 other people, I just can't see everybody. And that really, really like hurts me deep. I wanna help everyone. Now, I do have other practitioners in the office And I have a nurse practitioner I'm training. I have another nurse practitioner who's been in practice for a long time. And then I have Dr. Afrin, who is the world's expert in MCAS. So the good news is that they're all— they're taking patients. And so we can get people in, just not directly with me. But my hope is that if I can train more people, then they get the care that they need. They deserve and need. So that's what it is. So, you know, I have a website with a lot of information, drtonyademc.com. Obviously, I was a lot on social media, Dr. Tonya Dempsey or Dr. Tonya Dempsey, MD. I, I obviously doing a lot of podcasts. I have my own podcast, Mast Cell Matters. So there's a lot of mast cell related information in those podcasts that people might find interesting. You know, I think we're living in a world where patients have to be their own advocate more, more than ever. And I recognize that because again, there's just too many people who— too many practitioners who don't know enough about this. So that's my goal, even though I can't take on new patients right now, but I hope that will change. I think that if patients are educated and are— they have the tools to maybe advocate for themselves and get a doctor who is at least open-minded, willing to work with them, even if they don't know exactly all the information, then I think that just helps them and benefits them. So that's, you know, that's what I hope to do is what I'm, you know, what I'm putting out there. And I have a book hopefully coming out next year as well.

Great. Oh, congratulations. Yeah, I think this is all aligned with, with your intention of helping as many people as you can. So that's beautiful. We'll link out everything and go Check out Mass Cell Matters, the podcast. I was glued to so many episodes just trying to do some research and learning about your work, and I just I love it. You're an incredible educator as well, so I'm excited that you're training other people and sign me up for that course. That's great. Oh, awesome.

We'll have to have you on my podcast too.

Thank you. I'd be honored. All right, to wrap things up, tell us one thing that you're most excited about.

I guess for the future of healing or Well, you know, I'm excited that we have more and more tools. We have more and more ways of understanding things. 5 years ago, 10 years ago, it's not that long ago, we didn't have all these options, right? So for me, the fact that we have more and more at our disposal, and I always tell my patients that I'm going to keep searching for other treatments, other diagnostic criteria, different testing, We're gonna figure this out. And so I'm excited 'cause I think the future is there already. I think there's just a lot that we have coming down the pike. I think we have technology to look at gene therapies and other things that could make a big difference. So I'm excited about that. I think that what I love is thinking about the healing journey and thinking about the potential ...for turning the chronically ill person into someone who then can think about their longevity, right? This is, like, exciting to me, and I see this all the time, right? So, when you listen to this and you're thinking, I'm so sick, how am I gonna get there? Right? So, again, we have more tools than ever. We have more information than ever. Not perfect. I know there's still, like, work to do. But what I see is that at some point, like, there's this transition, and then people now can—

Right.

work on the other stuff, the things that you can't concentrate on when you're chronically ill. So that's to me exciting. I don't know if that answers your question, but I think that there's a lot of potential.

It really does. Yeah. And I think that today, and even answering that question, you've really given a beautiful reframe on not only what it means to feel rooted in your health and what that can feel like for the future, but also to really understand what root cause healing healing actually means, which I think is a refresher we all needed. So, Dr. Tanya Dempsey, thank you so much. To be continued. We're going to do this in person one day.

I love that.

So grateful. That was so wonderful. Yeah.

Thank you.