SOT Therapy for Chronic Illness: A Root Cause Breakthrough

So it's short for supportive oligonucleotide therapy, which works at a cellular level to target infections and restore immune function. Is that correct? Welcome Chelsea Azakon to the show.

Thank you. I'm really excited to be here.

Same, same. I'm excited to have you, and I'm really super keen to explore this promising new targeted therapy called SOT. That's helping people with chronic illness finally get relief for when nothing else has really helped them.

Yeah, mostly targeted infections. You will see immune function improve, but it's really just by virtue of the infections, uh, the infectious burden being reduced. It doesn't really have any direct immune stimulating activity.

Right. So can you explain to us what exactly is SOT? Therapy, and how does it differ from many conventional treatments, you know, for chronic illnesses and viruses, especially for people who have these long-term viruses that are kind of like stealth, they hide in, hide in the body and they just have it for years and no one can seem to do anything about it and they don't want just live with it?

Um, the lab has recently started calling it Q-restraint therapy. So if you read about it, you might hear, uh, hear about it under that name. Another name that it can go by is antisense therapy, and that one is valuable because if you want to look at— a lot of times people ask me, well, what's the research? Has— what kind of research has been done on this? If you go to PubMed and you type in antisense therapy, this is the same type of therapy, uh, that all those research articles are about. But what it is, it is a targeted, uh, RNA therapy. So we, like, let's say you had Epstein-Barr and we knew that because we had your labs positive for Epstein-Barr. So we could go looking for that infection. There's a lot of infections it targets. It can target a wide variety of chronic viruses as well as those sticky Lyme and co-infections, quite a few of those as well. And so we— the lab will go and they will find your infection, and then they will sequence its genome, and they will zoom in on the portion of the genome that is responsible for that organism's replication. And then they make an RNA particle that binds like lock and key. It will bind the portion of your infection's DNA. And it's really important to stress here that it's the infection's DNA, not your DNA, because I get a lot of questions about this versus RNA therapy, like other RNA therapies, which we can cover later. But it's going to bind like a lock and key with your infection's DNA that codes for replication. And so it will block replication for longer than the life cycle or replicative cycle, which I specify that because there's controversy over whether viruses are alive or not. But it's going to be blocking replication for longer than the replicative cycle of the organism. And then so the, the parent organism has time to die off or go into dormancy in the case of viruses, and then you don't have any more viral particles that are made or infectious particles that are made. And that is how it works.

I was going to say, when you mentioned the RNA, but you did touch on it there, that does bring up a lot of controversy around people because of the RNA vaccine that everyone was so fearful of. Um, so it's absolutely not the same thing. It actually only just goes to the virus DNA.

Exactly. So there, I mean, the crossover between those 2 therapies is that they're both, both using RNA. But the RNA vaccines were RNA that were— that was coding RNA. So it went in and it interacted with our DNA to cause protein synthesis, and then those proteins interacted with the immune system. And that's where, you know, a lot of people in the chronic illness space had variable experiences with the— with this vaccination. Whereas this RNA, it's a silencing RNA, so it's not turning on anything. It's literally just shutting off organism replication, and it is interacting with the organism's DNA inside you, not your DNA. So it's extremely, extremely targeted.

How come more doctors don't talk about this?

You know, it's been around actually for decades in Europe, so it's not a new therapy. I mean, maybe in the history of medicine it's newer on the scene, but it's not brand new. Um, but there are not that many— I'm in the States— there are not that many doctors in the States that are doing it, and there are a handful in Europe that are doing it, and a couple in Canada. And as far as I know, that's about it over the entire globe of practitioners who are doing it. And most likely with anything, you know, it— there— with anything that makes it in the medical industry, it really just depends on whether the pharmaceutical dollars are there and whether there's massive profit to be made. And whether this hasn't been developed in that way because of the preferences of the scientists who kind of discovered its utilization or politics and big pharma, I don't know the answer to that. But I do know that it is— it's a widely used— or it's a widely— it's not a new technology, but it's not widely utilized by a lot of practitioners yet. I mean, it's really neat because with, with a lot of treatments that people are doing for Lyme and viruses, they get a lot of die-off reactions. And you certainly will see people talk about die-off reactions, especially if you go into the online forums. But that's really, as far as SOT for infections goes, those are really the main side effects you have to worry about is die-off. There's not a lot of big safety, you know, organ dysfunction type of risks with it that you have to be concerned about. Now, SMT therapy can be utilized for cancer. So it's kind of a similar idea, but it's shutting off the anti-apoptotic sequences of certain types of cancer cells. And there are some different safety considerations with cancer because then you're, you're having a whole mass in the body potentially dissolve. And there's some things you have to watch out for with that. But as far as infectious safety goes, It really doesn't have a lot of risks, which makes it amazing compared to some of these other therapies like antibiotics.

We know how devastating antibiotics can be on the microbiome, and then you end up with so many other side effects and downstream problems. So this sounds like it really does target that root, like what so many people with, you know, especially Epstein-Barr virus, that can turn into so many other things years later and affect you. And, you know, I've heard, I've heard for myself, I've heard it for my son, you know, from doctors, it's just like, oh, well, you just have to live with it and manage the symptoms. This sounds like you're really getting to the root cause and not just managing the symptoms.

Yeah, 100%. You are silencing the virus, which is really neat. Um, now, sometimes you only need one, one SOT for that. It is different with everybody. So there's some nuances with viruses, you know, it's a little bit more clear cut when you're working with an organism like a bacteria that has It can live and it can die. And when it's done, you know, when— if you block replication and it dies out, it's dead, right? Unless there's some that you didn't hit because it's hiding somewhere in, you know, a biofilm or all these different places those organisms hide. You hit it. With a virus, you know, it really goes more in and out of dormancy than dies off. But I feel like the SOT does a phenomenal job silencing the virus because you're giving it a— one, there's a long runway period. I mean, those particles are in there for around 6 months, is around their— around the time for them to hang around. So that is a lot of time for the Epstein-Barr to be quieted. Um, and also, it's— you can work on the other things going on in the body during that time. And we do see— we see labs seroconvert. So I see viral titers go back to, uh, go back to negative, basically, where they don't have any elevated antibodies, which is really remarkable. And like you said, you know, it's targeted at an infection, but the applications of it are all these other things that these infections turn on. I mean, MS and, um, some types of cancers and autoimmune disease and Hashimoto's— these are all different use cases where SOT could be valuable because a lot of times there's infections running those Uh, immune processes.

That's what I was going to ask, actually, which chronic illnesses can— so this doesn't actually target the chronic illness, it targets the virus causing the chronic illness, right?

The virus or, or the bacteria. So like in Lyme disease, we actually want to get as granular as what strains of Borrelia do you have? Do you— what strains of Bartonella do you have? And we can throw SOTs at those. Um, you Then with other chronic illnesses like Hashimoto's or MS or some of these other things I mentioned, we're looking at what infections you have present that are turning it on and driving it.

The, what I'm gathering is the SIT is very personalized.

Yes.

And what kind of testing or diagnosis is needed before you start, or is there any that is needed?

Yeah, you have to have a positive test result within the past 6 months in order to make the SOT. Part of it within the last 6 months is because these organisms, you know, they go, they mutate. And so we really want to make sure that we are, we accurately know what we're looking for and that the lab can make an SOT, an RNA particle that is up to date with the organism's genome. So yeah, you do have to have a positive test result. If the lab cannot find that infection, they don't make an SOT. So that's really cool too, because you, as you probably know, for some of these infections, there's a little bit of an art to interpreting labs. You know, we accept a pretty wide margin of error with the labs. And so you have to go based also off of clinical symptoms and how high the titers are. And do we think this is an IgG or chronic infection or past infection? And so the SOT is neat in that way too, that it's often confirming what you were suspecting was there. Because if you have an RNA made, that means that that lab found the infection enough to actually sequence its genome.

But what I'm understanding, it silences it, so it doesn't get rid of it, so it doesn't eliminate it, it just silences it for a period. And can it reactivate or can you get rid of it totally?

Well, that kind of gets into some of the nuances of what you're treating. So like, let's take the bacterial use case first, because that's simpler. So if you are blocking replication of a parent organism longer than its life cycle, then you are going to get rid of some of that infection because it's going to die and you haven't made any more. We don't really have a way of guaranteeing that every single spirochete in your body got bound and blocked by an SOT. So that's the hope, but we can't really guarantee that. I would say it's— and there are so many places that Lyme can hide, or different organisms that create Lyme disease. It is— the SOT is still pretty good at getting to it, but we can't 100% say you got every single last particle. What I will say is people go into remission from Lyme after having SOT oftentimes, and so we get enough of it that people can get well. Now, with the viruses, viruses, we are— we have— I mean, I have to use the word silence for that because We don't even really know at this point whether viruses are alive or not, right?

Mm-hmm.

But we do know that they replicate and turn off that replication. Now, viruses can actually bind human DNA and they can be very tricky to get to. And so we are not really flushing a virus out of the body in the same way that maybe we are a bacteria that dies and then its byproduct is gonna be excreted like any other toxin in your body. With the SOT, we are just silencing the replication of the virus. Now, how long it chooses to stay in silence, that is where a bit— we have a big question mark. And part of the reason we can't completely eliminate it is because it's so tricky to get to. Um, so there you— you're silencing the Epstein-Barr. It's probably still in your body. It does have potential to reactivate, but it seems to work a lot better than other therapies like antivirals, which are just kind of trying to always be blocking replication. We're not— we're actually pushing the virus into being silent. And so that buys people a lot of time. And I think people can go into remission from these Epstein-Barr and other type of viruses with doing SOT. But it's possible in, you know, 5 years you have a really stressful event, maybe you'd have to do another SOT. That's a possibility. But you have this quality of life and this time for the diseases that it's activated to actually get— make some headway on healing because you've been able to do the silencing work that I don't think a lot of— I don't really don't think there's another therapy out there that can silence in the same way that this therapy can.

And the potential of this for people who have struggled with chronic illness and virus— and viruses for so long, you know, it must be like music to their ears, really. We've talked about sort of like the conditions and the viruses, but for someone who have a very complex, you know, health concern, and they may be experiencing different viruses at the same time, like they might have Lyme, they might have mold, or, you know, and, or Epstein-Barr, like they have several. Is there one that you would target first, or do you target them all at the same time?

Well, kind of both. And actually different practitioners have different opinions on what sequence you should go for these. I tend to go with what I think is creating the most symptoms. At the time, or if there's an organism there that's going to make— like, for example, Bartonella makes Borrelia a lot harder to treat. So maybe I'll knock out the Bartonella first. But you can give the SOTs for the infections 2 weeks apart. So for example, when I first did SOT, I think I did 4 of them and I was done with all 4 in 8 weeks. So that hit 4 different infectious targets. So I mean, as far as 8 weeks goes. I don't even— I mean, you can't even really treat a chronic GI bug in 8 weeks, you know, taking oral stuff. So you could consider that all at the same time, but you are parsing it out a little bit.

Well, it's not a— we're not— you can't take it and look at it as a quick fix. Nothing. Yeah, nothing is a quick fix. And I think, you know, within health, everybody's got to change that mentality about, you know, I just take a pill or take this and it's a quick fix for me. I don't think anything is. And if anybody does, you know, promote that, it's just not true. How do you administer this?

It's given intravenously. So we, like my office, will get these little RNA crystals, and the day that someone comes in for an SOT IV, we'll dilute the crystals with some sterile water and some saline, and then those are given as a push. So basically, we hook up an IV, we drip a little bit of saline, and then we actually inject into the IV line this SOT. One thing that people like to know is it's generally advised. It's actually considered part of the protocol to use steroids ahead of time, a rapid steroid drip just in the office. You're not taking a prednisone pack home or anything like that. And what that does is it tightens up the blood vessels because the SOT particles are so small. You don't want them leaking out of the blood vessels before the blood has a chance to transport it to these different areas in the body. So that's the purpose of the steroids. But a lot of people with chronic illness have. Variable relationships with steroids. So if the risk outweighs the benefit of using steroids, you can administer SOT without, but you're risking losing some of the potency of it. So, but it's, I mean, it's pretty much done in around the whole process itself, maybe takes 20 minutes, and then the patient hangs out for another 20 minutes just to make sure they're feeling okay. So In less than an hour, you have made major progress on a chronic, like a chronic lifelong infection, which always blows my mind every time.

Absolutely.

3 minutes of my day and someone's gonna like get years of their life back.

It is because it is so debilitating. The fatigue, the brain fog, the skin condition. Oh yeah, I mean, it's just endless what people are struggling with. And to think that something like this has the potential To help them in maybe just a few sessions, or like you were saying, like 8 sessions. I mean, 8 sessions of 20 minutes. I mean, compared to years of struggling. And obviously the tests that the doctors are doing are missing— maybe they're missing a lot of these viruses, but it's definitely missing the potential of what to do with them. After you've had these IVs, or maybe you finish your protocol of having SOT, what do you do then? Is there a protocol after that?

Yeah, so I'm always doing SOT as part of a whole body approach. And, you know, because you will sometimes read people say, you know, I did this many SOTs and did nothing, or I felt really sick. And I don't see a lot of that in my clinic. I mean, you know, not every single patient who's walked through my doors, their symptoms are 100 or even 75% gone after doing their shots. But they— I don't— I really have very few patients who really suffered. And the patients who were non-responders almost every time were— had a really high mold burden and/or were living in active mold. So I'm looking at these other factors, like what could also be making the body sick besides just these infections. And I know that sounds like a no-brainer, but when you've had like this infection be responsible for so many things for so many years, a lot of people hyperfocus on the infection. So I'm looking at that as we're treating the infection, but we're also working on the immune system. We're working on the things that have gone out of balance— mitochondrial health, endocrine health, whatever that is. We're looking to see if there's toxins or other things that would make you sick, and we're working on that alongside the SOT. Now, for some people who are really, really sensitive SOT and just supporting their detox pathways is all they're going to be able to handle because we need all the detox pathway, we need all the body's capacity going towards cleaning out all of that junk that basically is produced, inflammatory chemicals that are produced when you have these microbes dying off and things. So that would be generally what I am working on alongside SOT.

Like you, you mentioned the complication of mold. Would you look to see or test to see if someone had mold in their body prior to starting this protocol?

Again, I mean, that's something where you're going to get a different answer. I mean, the Lyme people are going to say you need to treat Lyme first. The mold people say you need to treat mold first. Um, there, I mean, there we definitely know that mold inhibits the immune system's ability to fight Lyme. But with something like SOT, we're not asking the immune system to fight Lyme. We're just trying to move the Lyme out of the way so the immune system can come back online. So for me, it's really personalized. If somebody comes in and they were living in an apartment with black mold and they have muscle weakness and headaches and sinus issues and their eyes are burning ever since, uh, then I'm going to work on mold somewhere in there. If they come in and, you know, they have a tick bite and/or history of tick bite, and they have been getting muscle pains and fevers and joint pain, I'm gonna work on the Lyme first. Usually it's not so clear-cut. A lot of times it's your symptoms could be explained by either one. So I might test both and see what they test most strongly for. And that would be the nice thing too with SOT is I might give the SOT, and then, like I said, those particles are gonna be around for 6 months. So we're just kind of waiting for them to work for the next 6 months. So a lot of times I'll take that time to start getting somebody going on a detox to get those toxins out.

Do you have a success story? I know that you use this because you had Epstein-Barr, was it?

I had Lyme with probably about 10 co-infections, and I had Epstein-Barr and several viruses. So yeah.

Wow, you were complex.

All right, when I was looking I mean, everything, mold, MCAS, everything, you, all those chronic things, I've lived it. So.

And how are you now?

I'm doing so much better. I mean, my success story is really amazing. Actually, I did it on myself and I did it on my sister as well. So she got diagnosed with Lyme about a year after me.

Sorry, what was she diagnosed with?

Lyme. And Lyme, a year after me. She was actually being groomed for the Olympics. And she had to retire from her sport. So it really impacted me. But I was— I mean, fatigue was really the big, big symptom for me. I would like— I could work a job, but it would be, you know, it was a struggle to stay awake during the day. And then just driving home 20 minutes at the end of the day, oftentimes I was just crying because I was so tired. The walk from the car to the front door at the end of the day was just like Everything in me. I would get recurrent febrile illness where I would have— I would have these debilitating body pains. I actually got a mobility assistance dog because it would be hard to move. I remember at one point I couldn't even turn my head side to side without horrible pain. I had weird neurological symptoms. I had a kidney disease. I had an endocrine condition that shut hormone production down at the level of the brain. The kidney disease had a life expectancy of like 15 years, and I was diagnosed with that as a teenager, and I'm in my 30s now and no signs of—

You were diagnosed with a life expectancy of 15 years?

Like, kidney disease I was diagnosed with, its average life expectancy is 15 years, and that was when I was a teenager, and I'm in my 30s now. So I had a lot of things going on. I also had horrendous insomnia, um, and it was really cool because I did my SOT, and I would say within the first Couple months, I started noticing I would take a nap if I could. Like if I had a day where I wasn't working, I would nap, which was actually phenomenal for me. I mean, I was one of those like many with chronic illness where I felt so tired and yet could not fall asleep. So a nap was just life-changing. And then I started being able to fall asleep a lot easier. I mean, I was still taking a lot of natural supplements to help me get to sleep, but Before, and those wouldn't even work. So now I'm falling asleep with natural supplements. I would still wake up in the middle of the night, but I could fall back asleep, whereas before I would be— I was up for hours every single time that I woke up. So that was really— that was awesome, and that was life-changing. My mood got a lot more stable.

I—

after I did Epstein-Barr, I had chronic lymph issues, and I did every natural lymph thing you can think, and it was just— I could hardly stay on top of it. And those went away after I treated Epstein-Barr. My hormone condition started normalizing after I treated Epstein-Barr. I have not had one of these, like, recurrent febrile illness patterns. I mean, I may have had a fever from a flu or something, but I have not had a flare of recurrent febrile illness patterns. I don't really get the body aches anymore. I mean, I may get I think my recovery is still a little bit slower than, you know, most people my age. But when I say recover, I mean, I can— I like to bike and hike and ski and run, and I exercise 5 times a week. And I mean, I remember when exercising 5 minutes a day, I just felt like a superstar, you know. So my turnaround has been absolutely dramatic. I don't get to You know, 2 o'clock is just not like a fight to keep my eyes open. I can make it through my day. So it has been a really— it was life-changing for me.

Did your sister experience the same good results?

Yeah, she went into remission from Lyme as well.

And how did the both of you get Lyme? Did you both get bitten by a tick?

We actually— we don't know. So, um, I've wondered about vertical transmission from our mom. She had some chronic health issues. We've never checked her because we probably should, honestly. But she never— her symptoms didn't manifest quite in like the same dramatic way that a lot of Lyme people do. Um, so we have never checked her. So I've wondered about that. But then, you know, it's very possible we got bit by a tick. You know, a lot of people get bit by a tick and they will never know. The tick bite is painless, and not every tick bite has a rash. And ticks like to bite you in your hair and all these, uh, all these different places that you may never know. So it's, it's possible we both got bit by a tick And when you were saying—

when you referred to your mother just then, are you saying that this can be hereditary?

Lyme can be transmitted, uh, through the placenta to babies in utero, like Epstein-Barr. Epstein-Barr can be as well, and a few of the herpesviruses.

For once, there's actually some hope for people who are struggling with this, where, you know, they just go on for years and years and years. I mean, I've definitely felt the effects of Epstein-Barr. I know my son was like devastated with Epstein-Barr being an athlete, and they, you know, they, um, test their immune system, and then he's in the water all the time, so, you know, germs, etc. It has been devastating. So to think that people with chronic illness and all those symptoms and all those viruses, that there is something for them. Now, I believe You said it was only in America and Europe.

Uh, and actually there's a few places in Canada as well.

Oh, in Canada as well. Well, I honestly think it's worth traveling for if people can.

Me too. Yes. I mean, if I had to go to Europe to get it, I would do it personally, or Dubai, or, you know, wherever I would have to go to get it, I, I would do it. So, but what I will say is, I mean, I, I really welcome people contacting me. I do my best to Try and connect people with it all over as much as possible and as affordably as possible. I mean, I have my limitations on what I'm what you know I'm not I have my limitations on what I'm able to do, but I really try to do that because one thing that goes around SOT on the internet is that it's thousands of dollars per IV, and it is expensive. It's you know there's no cheap way to get a custom RNA made for you, but I. Compared to like what people are— what I charge for it is really similar to what someone might spend on, you know, 10-pass ozone chronically or something like that. So they're basically— what I'm saying is there are providers out there who are trying to make SOT accessible at as affordable a price as we can, and that is what the lab encourages. So I wouldn't like— don't let a couple horror stories of people who overpaid scare you away from it.

Can you just give us a little snapshot of what we've spoken about, what it is, how it helps, and, you know, the results that people can possibly achieve? Just for someone who's been listening to this, they maybe feel a little bit overwhelmed by all the, uh, medical talk.

It's really simple. Um, it is a— so basically SOT is an RNA therapy that blocks either a bacteria or a virus that is triggering chronic illness from reproducing. The benefit of that would be actually getting some of the viral and bacterial load off of your immune system, giving your body a chance to heal. And for some infections, you could even potentially put those infections permanently into remission. And you can do that with as little as one IV. Of course, some people might need more, but— And Really low, uh, or a very good safety profile, and for many, low side effects. So a lot of good highlights to SOT.

It's just so encouraging and so many— so hopeful for so many people, you know, to think that they can actually get rid of those debilitating symptoms that can keep them in bed for most of their life.

My life is 100% different because of it, so I'm very thankful for that.

Absolutely. Chelsea, thank you for coming on and for sharing this innovative, uh, therapy with people. And I really hope that people do listen to this and take it on board, contact you. Chelsea's— all her details will be in the show notes. Please contact her and even just chat to her about what's possible for you. Don't dismiss it just because you think you're not close enough. Don't let location stop you. This I love this groundbreaking, you know, therapy. It's just wonderful for so many people.