005 Mackay Rippey "Lyme Ninja"

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Yeah, as human beings, we don't do very well with not knowing something. So not having a diagnosis or not understanding something is the deepest pain. I mean, if you remember the times where you're kind of really suffering on a spiritual level, is you're asking the question why. You're either asking God or you're asking the universe. It's like, why? Why me? Why this situation? And Lyme gives a lot of people people an unanswered why.

Congratulations, Lyme fighter. Today you had the courage to open your eyes and face another day. Welcome to Lyme Voice. We're your hosts, Aaron and Sarah Satchis. This show's purpose is to help you put the puzzle pieces of Lyme into place. Each episode is designed to inspire, to educate, and to encourage you on your Lyme journey to wellness. Together we will fight. Together we will heal. And together Hello everybody, welcome to Lion Voice. Before I get started, I'd like to read a review from our website today. This review came from ASD Family. The title reads, wonderful outreach for chronic illness and pain, 5 stars. Sarah and Aaron have brought a very passionate compassionate, informative, and supportive program into our lives. Their message on perseverance in the face of incredible adversity is one of the most inspirational things I've heard in a long time. And if you're struggling with any kind of chronic illness, pain, or disability, not just Lyme, you will find a comfort and encouragement here. I hope this is just the beginning of this awesome Project 3 exclamation points. Thank you so much. That is very, very kind. We'd love to read your reviews, so go to limenvoice.com on iTunes, leave your review, and hopefully I can read yours next week. All right, very excited for today's episode. Today we're talking to McKay Rippy of Lime Ninja. Lime Ninja is a podcast that I've been listening to for, uh, several months now and enjoyed thoroughly, and I'm so honored to have McKay on our show today because he is one of— his show is one of the reasons that I and Sarah and I both started looking at doing a podcast. Today we're gonna actually talk with McKay about his show and then also about acupuncture. He is an acupuncturist by trade and has a lot of interesting things to talk about. Acupuncture is something that Sarah has used in her tool belt for Lyme, and I hope that if it's of interest to you, that you have a chance to look into it yourself. So here we go. I hope you enjoy today's episode.

Hi, Aaron.

How are you?

Hi, Sarah.

Hello, McKay Rippy. Are you ready to put the puzzle pieces of lime into place?

Absolutely. The ones that I can find.

All right.

Awesome. How are you doing today, sir?

I'm getting over a cold, so the answer is better. I'm doing better than I have been the past week. Yeah, I've been sitting on the sofa watching Korean soap operas.

Oh yeah? Are you fluent in Korean?

No, but I read subtitles very well.

Yeah, interesting. I've never tried.

You know, the great big world of the web, you just go down one rabbit hole and never come out.

That's so true.

So, McKay, can you tell us a little bit more about your podcast?

Sure. Um, Lyme Ninja Radio started, geez, I think 9 months ago, and I was inspired by Katrina, uh, Katina Makris's radio show, right? And, uh, probably the same sort of thing. I'm sitting and listening, trying to learn all I can about Lyme disease and listening to her interviews and searching to see what else was out there. And the answer was not a whole lot on the audio side of things, right? And I'm a little podcast junkie.

Yeah.

So I've been listening to podcasts for, oh, I don't know, 10 years pretty solidly. I record a bunch of them and sit on my tractor in the summer and just listen to them. And so I said, well, you know, why not start your own?

Right.

So I did. Yeah, it took several months of finding all the pieces and how to put them together because it should be simple, but it's, it's not. It's, it's fussy, right? So once that, once that all got going, I was actually— and I was blown away once I started emailing invitations to talk. I was blown away by how open the Lyme community was and how hungry they were to share their stories and, and any information they have. So it was— it's been a great experience. It's been a great ride so far.

Yeah, I know, I know what you're saying, and that's one of the reasons we kind of stepped up too is just there is so much need for information of any sort. We're not medical professionals by any means, but we've walked the path, and that's worth something to someone who hasn't. And so literally just by standing up and saying, yeah, we've been down this path and here's the mistakes and, and here's the things we can avoid and, and don't do and do this, and you know, all that kind of stuff, that is— I wish I had more of that. So that's basically the our basic reason.

Yeah, that's fabulous. I think the more voices out there just validating kind of the hang in there, baby meme, that you too can put your life back together, A, B, that you can get a diagnosis, C, that you're not crazy.

Yeah.

And to help families understand, look, they're not nuts, they're not faking it, they're not that person. You know, there are those people out there who are faking stuff, but the Lymeys aren't them. They're really sick.

Right. Yeah, and it's such a hard fight because it's, I mean, I've told Sarah many times, it's an unfathomable amount of pain. So it's hard for anyone who hasn't been down that path to even fathom what a Lyme patient is going through.

The torture of it. Yeah, it reminds me when I first started practicing acupuncture. So this is gonna be 20 years ago in the, early '90s, and Lyme disease was just kind of being recognized a little bit. I had this woman, and she was in her early 30s, came into my office and said, can you help me? And I was like, I don't know, let's see what we can do. And she said, well, I get these pain attacks several times a day. And, you know, so we talked about a little bit, and during her visit with me, she had one of these pain attacks. And essentially she just curled up into fetal position on the table and whimpered heard for about 20 minutes, and it was all I could do except, you know, just hold her hand and be with her. And, uh, it was the most humbling experience, uh, just, you know, after that I was like, I don't think acupuncture— at that point, you know, what I knew— I said, I don't think I'm the person to help you, right? Um, it was just, just way beyond my understanding of, of what to do. So it was, it was, it's crazy. And to see somebody in that extreme pain and just right, you know, just to suffer like that. She says, yeah, this happens. This is what happens 2 or 3 times a day. It's like, wow.

Well, at least you listened. So many of the doctors we have visited, you know, wouldn't even believe when we've had actual videotape proof of, of a situation similar to that where Sarah was herxing, and we had it videotaped and presented it to the neurologist, and they— he refused to even look at it.

Really?

Yeah, it was, um, quite angering. Um, but okay, well, great, McKay. That kind of brings me to our first question. We like to hear about your fight story, so I kind of want to hear a little bit about your Lyme fight story. Now, I understand you had, uh, you've had Lyme at a, at one time.

Yes, at least That's what I believe because my test came back negative. Sure. Um, however, so I was down, uh, about— let's see, about 2 hours from where I live in the Hudson Valley, which is a big area for, for Lyme disease. And it's about 12, 15 years ago, and I was with a bunch of friends and we were messing around around a campfire and came back home the following day. And then at the time I was studying Aikido and it was just me, so I was just a beginner beginner. And I wasn't quite as old as I am now, but I was definitely not a young man. So I'm, I'm this old man in this Aikido studio with this master and another black belt. And I don't know if you've seen Aikido, but essentially what they do is you run at the Aikido master and they throw you across the room, right? So it's me getting thrown across the room, and it's, it's a hot summer day and I'm sweating like crazy, and I just just absolutely wore myself out. And the day after that, I came down with the summer flu. At least that's what I thought it was, right? And I hadn't felt this terrible in I don't know how long. I was crawling to the bathroom and whining and complaining and doing the usual whiny man thing. And about 2 days into this pity party, I kind of dragged myself to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, and on my arm is the most perfect bullseye rash you've ever seen. I mean, it looked like it had been stenciled on my arm. Wow. And, you know, again, Lyme disease, particularly in where we are right now, it wasn't high on the priority. But my wife had worked at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in their PR department, and so she came home, you know, a few times a week with a new way to die horribly. And right, because she's working with all these researchers, and one of those ways to die horribly was Lyme disease. So we knew about Lyme disease. Thank goodness. So, and the strangest thing, as soon as I saw that rash, I felt better. It was the weirdest thing. So nothing changed other than I gave myself a diagnosis and I instantly felt better. So we get in the car, go down to the ER, and the ER doc looks at me and says, "That looks like Lyme disease rash. Do you mind if everybody in the hospital who's on duty comes and looks at this? 'Cause we don't see this very often." So every nurse, everybody came by and had a look at my arm.

I said, "Oh, thanks." What part of the country are you in again?

Oh, good. Central New York. So about an hour east of Syracuse. I'm just outside of Utica, New York. Okay.

McKay, I'm surprised that they hadn't seen it because it seems like you guys are really drowning in Lyme out there.

You know, we're in a funny little pocket. So to the— Okay. To the west in Syracuse, they have more of it. And we're just in a little bit of an area where there are enough hunters and a little bit of control and enough really cold winters winters that it's just been slower getting started, but it's, it's here now. Let me tell you, it's here now. There's, there's no doubt about it. Um, so anyway, so this is 12 years ago. I got my 2 weeks of doxycycline, and, you know, being relatively young and healthy, I did some acupuncture follow-up and some herbal follow-up. It seems for the most part that I made peace with the bacteria. So there's some times where I still think it's kind of lingering, and, you know, I have funny reactions to things here and there, but we're— we've got a truce, we've got a détente going on at least. So my wife says for sure I lost about a half inch of hair. My hairline receded in, in, in that 2-week period, um, and that was probably the most noticeable thing. And I think my stamina, you know, I was never really A type A personality. I'm very happy to take a nap, um, but I think my stamina is even a little less than it, than it should be. So those two things are kind of the major, but, you know, thank goodness that's it.

Yeah. And has anyone else in your family been affected by it as well?

No, but in retrospect, after learning about the co-infections, I think my youngest daughter got Bartonella. Mm. We've always had cats around, and she's had these— she used to whine. Well, she still does. She's 20. She's just turned 20. She's gonna kill me if she hears this. She just turned 23. And she used to whine about her joints hurting her, and we just thought she was a whiny young lady. Mm-hmm. Right. And she is a little bit, but in retrospect, you know, we kind of went through her history. She said, "Yeah, I remember getting scratched by the cat and having a really bad fever." It's like, "Oh, okay." Yeah. So we've been treating her herbally, um, and that seems to help fairly significantly with her joint pain, joint and muscle pain. So I don't think anybody else has Lyme, but the Bartonella— again, it hasn't been diagnosed, but it sure is suspicious.

Yeah.

So you got— so if I understand your story, you, you got infected 12 years ago, and then You kept— but you didn't decide to do the podcast right away.

You— you— no, I didn't. What— so in that period of time, you know, the kind of the Lyme disease kind of came and went, and I'm practicing general acupuncture. I'm like a country doctor. So I see people who aren't happy with Western medicine in one way, shape, or form. So they don't like the diagnosis, they don't like the drug options they've got, they don't like the surgery options, or the docs just said, I don't I don't know what to do for you. So those are the people who come into my office. So I was doing a lot of that, and a friend of mine who I went to school with, he was a year behind me, his name's Greg Lee, and he started focusing his acupuncture practice with Lyme disease, eh, about 5 to 7 years ago. I'm not sure the exact date. And I started hearing about people getting diagnosed in this area. And then so went to take a workshop, acupuncture training with Greg, and got very interested in it. And that's when I decided, well, let's, you know, there's this void here, I need to educate myself. What better way to ask to interview experts than to start your own podcast? So part of it's to get the word out, part of it's to educate myself to help my patients.

Awesome. Great, and that brings us to the next question in our heal portion. You've had 9 months of interviews and you've been doing studying for 12 years now. So after that study, do you believe— one of the questions I actually hear you ask your interviewees is, do you believe that you can be healed from Lyme? Now I want to hear your answer after hearing and, and your study.

So the short answer is yes.

Okay.

And the long answer is, what do you mean by healed?

Good, good question. Um, healed where it does not impact your life on a day-to-day basis.

Yeah, exactly. So without, without a doubt. Now, does that mean that every little last Lyme spore is removed from your tissue? I mean, is there any way to measuring that without, you know, killing you and grinding you up and doing a DNA test? So, you know, so you're going to get these, these philosophical arguments, uh, back and forth. But I do believe that you can get to a point where you can have a normal life again. It's possible. Now, I also believe it's possible that so much damage has been done that, you know, that's— you've got a new a new normal to negotiate with. Just that can happen from a psychological point of view. People have so much damage they can't recover. It can happen from physical injuries. We've all seen those. People just don't recover. But then there are people who are living with handicaps and struggling with various who have amazing lives. It doesn't mean they don't struggle from time to time, but they still You know, the Stephen Hawking movie, you know, is one great example. You know, is he healed? Absolutely not. Did he have an amazing life? Absolutely.

Right.

So it's, you know, it's not a straightforward question. It's not a one-size-fits-all answer for sure.

Yeah.

And again, it depends on what you mean by cured. And I do believe, you know, if you get your immune system back online, It's gonna take care of you. It's gonna take care of you if it's not overwhelmed. There's a patient today told me about a study being done at Duke where they're injecting this really severe brain cancer with—

Polio, right?

Genetically modified polio. That's exactly right. So because the cancer is your own body cells and it forms the similar kind of almost, like a biofilm, right? The body doesn't recognize it as an invader, and so it just leaves it alone. And this cancer particularly just takes over your brain in a matter of months, and you're dead. But they injected with the polio virus, and the body says, hey, wait, there's something wrong here, and starts attacking the cancer. And there's some people who've had some amazing results. So the body, with a little help, or a lot of help sometimes, can do amazing things. You know, it's just, you know, can you get all the pieces pieces lined up. And you've talked to people with Lyme disease, they can't sleep 'cause they're in pain or 'cause they just got insomnia. They are under the chronic pain, which just wears you out. You start getting all the gut problems with absorbing nutrients and maybe you have the MTHFR variant and you're not dealing well with things or maybe you have other variants going on. So you're not converting things in your liver. It's such a multivariant issue, and it's no wonder that doctors just throw up their hands and walk away because it's not simple. You know, there is not a magic bullet, a silver bullet that's going to take care of it.

Yeah, and it's interesting even how you were talking about that patient of yours at the beginning who, once you saw her pain, that for me, like, that That took over a decade to happen for me, where I kept describing all these issues that I was having. But it wasn't until I had a pain doctor and I was so frozen in pain and he could just see it because he was trying to give me injections and my muscles were so tense and tight that I was bleeding and I shouldn't have been.

Wow. And he was like, okay, she's not faking it.

Yeah. But that was huge for me because that was the first time in years that somebody said, what is going on? And he knew that he didn't have an answer. But like you said, I mean, you had the insight to say, at the point that you're at, maybe, you know, you're going to need additional help. And it is, it's so complex.

So I have a question for you. Did you cry when he kind of acknowledged you were going through something real?

Oh yeah. I mean, there were so many of those like moments where I was crying because I wasn't being heard or, you know, Yeah, just so relieved that— and he did. He was a pain doctor. And really, when I started seeing a pain doctor, I felt like I took a turn because he understood the severity of what I was living with. And his— he was trying to eliminate the pain. And the Lyme diagnosis actually came from another doctor. But, you know, he really helped me get to that place where someone was actually looking for something.

Right, and I just remind listeners out there, it is so important to find a Lyme literate doctor, at least someone that can listen to you. If you're not getting that from your current doctor, you can keep looking. Because I know for Sarah, when she did get the pain doctor and did get acknowledgement, it was, it was hope. Yeah, it was hope that someone was actually listening, and we have to fight for hope. I mean, it is a daily struggle to just make the decision to open your eyes and wake up and face the day one more time. You need hope. You need a fighting spirit just to do that. Anyway, sorry.

Yeah, that's all right. I'm gonna put on my ninja hat for a second. So Sarah, do you think you can be cured from Lyme?

Oh gosh, I don't know. I don't, I don't know if I've taken the time to form an opinion. I think, um, For me personally, it was interesting 'cause I was on the phone. I applied for disability 3 years ago and I'm just in April gonna get to go talk to the judge. And so I was talking with my lawyer and so they're asking me all these questions and I'm explaining like, oh, I'm so much better than I've been. Like because I don't have pain, my quality of life is 100 times better than it's been since I was 18. I mean, I'm just not in pain and I was for so many years. But I still don't have a lot of stamina. So like if something spills in the fridge and we have 5 kids, so something spills all the time and it's going to take 45 minutes of like undoing drawers and wiping it down. I literally have to schedule that in because if I do that one thing, then I don't have the stamina to do something else.

Right.

Yeah. And so really like Even though I can do things and I can work from bed or work with my feet up when I work from home and different stuff, really by the time I take care of myself and make dinner, that's about the day for me.

Right.

And that's, I mean, that's a fraction of what I've done. So I don't know, but I'm also totally committed to doing everything I've learned. I mean, I daily do coffee enemas, I daily do organic juicing, and I daily do supplements. So I'm better, but I can see how people just get lost in the protocol or lost in trying to heal. It's just, you have to, even if you have resources, you have to have a household that's supportive of you spending the money on those things.

Isn't that the truth? And that might be the biggest issue of them all, is these poor people who live with somebody who's, you know, who just can't handle the disability, you know, for their own personal reasons, and the strife and the pain within the family that that can cause.

Yeah. Yeah. We are a miracle couple in that we're still together because I know exactly what you're saying. I mean, I had to go through my own acceptance and I've always been attentive, but Lyme will test even the best people. Yeah, it puts you under the wringer and the sparks fly, and I didn't succeed a lot of the time. And it, you know, I can see now if I could prevent another husband or another spouse from making those same mistakes, I mean, it just, it just greases the wheels, you know, not to have that strife. Just to remove that.

I think even though you didn't know what to do, it was more about you not knowing how to help. It wasn't that you didn't believe me. And there's so many people who are in households or relationships where— I mean, because I have the opportunity to talk to people who are considering going out to Shea Medical for treatment, so I talk to several people a week who have these really extreme stories. And that's actually how we came to do our podcast is some of those questions But it's— oh shoot, I lost my train of thought.

Lyme does that to you.

Yeah, I lose my train of thought sometimes.

You were talking— that's all right. You were talking about it— well, Aaron was talking about it wasn't that he didn't believe you, but he didn't know what to do. And then you went on off that.

Thank you. Yeah. And I talked to so many people whose spouses or family members put them through rehab or put them in a psych hospital, right? And obviously, like, a lot of them, after they didn't get fixed going off of their meds and all those different things, their family members understood that there really was this bigger underlying infection. But I don't know, like, I feel like I fought so hard just to keep myself telling myself it wasn't all in my head and eventually I'd figure it out. If I didn't have support, I don't even think I ever could have done it at all.

It's too much.

Yeah, as human beings, we don't do very well with not knowing something. So not having a diagnosis or not understanding something is the deepest pain. I mean, if you remember the times where you're kind of really suffering on a spiritual level is you're asking the question why. You're either asking God or you're asking the universe, it's like, why, why me? Why this situation? And Lyme gives a lot of people an unanswered why. It reminds me of, there's a study done with rats, and what rats wanna know is where am I so I can escape? So if you put them in a new maze with the cheese, they explore the maze first, then they eat the cheese. So human beings wanna know why the cheese is there. So once they get a reason why the cheese is there, then they'll eat it. So if you take away why from human beings, We suffer at a deep, deep, deep level. And the pain just goes right through you. It just saps the will to go on. Yeah.

Yeah, I've been amazed 'cause I've been in, I went through treatment 2 years ago. So I'm approaching my 2-year window of being kind of in remission. And yet I've been amazed at how many layers of normalcy have had to come back into our lives. Yeah, it's amazing.

I can't even imagine. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just simple things. Like I realized a few days ago, I could walk to the fridge and talk at the same time because I've developed, because I couldn't breathe. I just would quit talking if I had to move. So it's weird. Those, I mean, those things are abnormal, but yet they become normal because you endure them for decades.

Right.

Yeah.

So McKay, how many, how, what is the percentage of your clients who are dealing with Lyme? Is that something you kind of specialize in now?

It's where I'm moving to, and I have— it's not a large percentage at this point, it's probably about 10%.

Oh, okay.

But they're by far my most interesting patients. And kind of what's happening is after, you know, it's one of those deals is like, you, you know, you buy yourself a green Toyota and all of a sudden you see green Toyotas everywhere, right? You learn about Lyme disease and these other co-infections and all of a sudden you see infections everywhere, except I really think they're there. So I'm diagnosing— a lot of people come in, you know, again because they've not had success other places, all these vague complaints, and I can't make an official diagnosis of Lyme, but I treat them as if they have Lyme disease. And it's, it's interesting because they get better. They get better. So they may not have Lyme per se, but they've had some sort of infection long-term, whether viral or bacterial. Um, and, uh, like, they had this— this man came in last week, and he has been all over the country and has been diagnosed sort of with this weird autoimmune thing that nobody knows what it is. And he has done every sort of treatment imaginable for this autoimmune disease, including steroids and chemotherapy and weird stuff I've never heard of. And he has been tested for Lyme 3 times, but I'm sure he got the Western blot test. 1 test came back positive and 2 negative. So in my mind, if you have 1 positive Western blot, it's like it's the jackpot. It's like you've got Lyme disease without a doubt. I mean, you've, you know, you've got the brass ring. But he's never been treated for Lyme. So he's got these strange neurological symptoms that nobody can explain. Right, because nobody's thinking infection. Yeah, so I'm gonna put him on some antibiotic herbs and, and treat his immune system, and you know what, I bet he starts getting better. Huh. So I, I think a lot of these weird fibromyalgia, right, weird psychological problems, kind of these funny chronic things, are, are I don't wanna say mild cases of Lyme disease, but they're these cases of Lyme disease where the person's been battling back and forth for years and sometimes decades, and their immune system's strong enough that it's not debilitating like Sarah, your story, where you've been absolutely wiped out, but they're kind of the walking wounded. They kind of are able to struggle through their lives. And I think there are a lot of these people around.

There totally is.

We think the same thing.

Well, for instance, we're in New Mexico. New Mexico supposedly doesn't have—

there's no Lyme disease in New Mexico.

Yeah, is what the ER doctor told us as he kicked us out.

But yeah, anyway, you crazy kids.

So, uh, I've lost my train of thought now. New Mexico, we don't have Lyme. Um, I still forgot it.

Well, here, I, I actually have a question. What, what is an antibiotic— what you said, holistic antibiotic or herbal antibiotic?

Yeah, there is. Oh, good grief, I can't pronounce his name. It's— I'm sorry, he's, he's German. He's a German herbalist, uh, Chinese herbalist, and he has a, a series of herbs called Classical Pearls, and he has 2 or 3, I'm thinking, well, 3 or 4 that he uses regularly for Lyme, and they're, they're really wonderful. And one other thing Greg has, has been experimenting with and taught is making liposomal preparations. So you take the herb and you encapsulate it in, in lecithin, essentially. So you make these little tiny microscopic fat balls that have the herbs inside, and they're essentially Trojan horses because the Lyme colonies will take in this fat and say, "Ooh, food." And then once they break down the fat, it's like, "Oh no, there's herbal things in here." So stuff that wouldn't get through the biofilm any other way gets brought in, and they can be very powerful. He's been using— Greg's been using some essential oils liposomally and the herbs liposomally with, pretty great results. So anyway, so that's, so that's, that's one of the things that I've, I've been using with some of my patients. And then for some of them who can't handle the, the taste of the liposomes, which is unpleasant, you can give them the dry herbs in capsules, and they seem to— most people can handle those. So that's, that's the— and then so people mix up their own herbal mixtures, and people use things like the teasel root, which is a very well-known known, uh, tincture for treating Lyme.

Awesome. Um, okay, well, that brings me another question. So you as an acupuncturist, um, how can— if someone's listening and like, we're, we're converted hippies, basically. We, you know, we grew up conservative, and like, if we were doing really good if we ate our vegetable or ate our vegetables and took our But we're a lot different now. So I don't know much about acupuncture. Sarah does a little bit more. She's visited. But how can— so you've described a lot of different tinctures. I mean, if someone was wanting to do what you were previously speaking about, what's the best path for them?

Wow.

I mean, do we have to go to New York to visit you? I mean, we've flown all over the country.

Of course. We'll put you up.

Awesome.

Um, the— there's several layers here. So first, there's the Lyme part. So if you can find, you know, the, the rare bird that's an acupuncturist/herbalist and is Lyme literate, then you've hit the jackpot, right? But there, there are even fewer of us than there are Lyme-literate docs, I think, just because they're just not that many acupuncturists. You know, Greg's doing his part to train people and get the knowledge out there, but it's, you know, it's, it's just a small number. However, a smart— excuse me— a smart patient can use an acupuncturist who's not super familiar with Lyme disease as an adjunct. Okay. Now, there's certain things that Greg has pulled from different traditions that are very specific, and they're unusual techniques. So there are things that I'm doing now that I wasn't trained initially to do. But acupuncture in general can be a great adjunct to just keeping— I'm going to say— your spirit alive. So one of the things that's really remarkable about acupuncture and And you know, there are different styles of acupuncture like there are different styles of psychotherapy. So they talk about the energy in different ways and do different point combinations and things like that. But in general, most people say on some level, you know, after my treatment or during my treatment, I feel so relaxed or I feel so much better. And often early times in treatments, people say, you know, my elbow— I have this woman coming You know, how's your elbow? She's coming in for this really bad tennis elbow that she's had for about a year. Well, it still feels the same, but man, I feel great. You know, I haven't felt this relaxed in a long, long time. So that's like the first step. So the acupuncture can be this great support. It can help with some of the aches and pains on, on some levels. It can help with the inflammation. It can help with the fatigue. It can help with all these associated symptoms. You know, even if the person isn't that familiar with some of these specific techniques, uh, to help with Lyme, the infection itself, there's this concept in, uh, in Chinese medicine that's kind of been abandoned, uh, and it's been brought back, uh, by the, the, the practitioners who are working with Lyme disease. And the concept is called GU, G-U. And GU were these— were essentially, there were infections. Um, and the, the Chinese— ancient Chinese described them as like oil seeping into flour, and then the practitioner's job is to separate the oil and the flour again. And that's how difficult these goo infections were. Wow. And they were talking about things that were probably in some way very similar to Lyme, um, you know, whether they're other spirochete infections or, you know, other, other Bartonella, Babesia, that sort of thing. So that's, that's a long answer. So I mean, acupuncture is just this wonderful wacky tool. Yeah, that just— it just comes from a different place than traditional medicine. And I, I'm trained in a branch of acupuncture called Five Element Acupuncture, and we're like the hippies of the acupuncturists.

Oh gosh.

Yeah, so We get into emotional stuff a lot more than a traditionally trained acupuncturist. There's this whole patterns of emotions that are dealt with, and then we take it to a whole nother level. We really bring in a person's kind of mental and emotional state in addition to their physical being. From our point of view, how can you separate the two?

Right, which you can't. That's what I was thinking as you were saying that. Of course they're all linked.

Well, yeah, and that's great to hear too, because I think as we've gone through, I've seen how emotion plays such a huge role in her health and how she's feeling. And if we can keep—

and then we also have two adopted children who are, um, have a learning, um, well, they both have attachment disorder, which is basically It's just early, early trauma.

Yeah.

And they cling, huh?

Yeah. And it's been amazing to me because I had read a ton and done a lot of research before, before we got them, just on the whole loss and grief and trauma. But as I've been coming out of my own trauma, um, I understand like why my daughter can hold it together at school, but then a rock trips her as she gets off the bus, and then someone, he bumps her before she steps in the door and she's falling apart. And I didn't understand that you just kind of— when you're walking this precarious line of health, you can only handle so many bumps in the road or so many trips over the rock in any given day before you don't have anything left, and then you're just a wreck, right?

And even healthy emotions too. I mean, if we're doing something fun like a celeb, like a party, that will wipe you out almost as bad as a trauma, you know, a kid throwing a fit or whatever.

I mean, it's— yeah, it's, it's weird.

It's less now, it's less extreme now, but especially when you first were going through treatment, and it was, it was extreme.

One of my favorite illustrative stories is I had this patient about 12, 15 years ago, a woman. She was having kind of minor back pain, and she went to went to visit her first grandson and came back in really pretty severe back pain. And after talking with her a little bit and doing my diagnosis, taking her pulses, my diagnosis was she was literally overjoyed by the experience, and the joy had burnt out her stamina and was causing back pain. So my treatment was not to treat her back but to calm down her joy. And not to take her joy away from her, but just kind of just cool it off a little bit. And her back pain was better immediately. It was— it's one of the most amazing things. So we kind of— we're told that, you know, mind over matter kind of thing, but we forget it's a, you know, it's a two-way street there. Yeah. And, and it can affect both ways.

I don't think I would have understood any of that pre-launch And I get it now. I totally understand what you're saying just because of seeing emotion destroy you or Sarah as she's going through it.

Yeah. And what I was saying earlier was even when I actually got out to treatment, I was like shell-shocked because I mean, I seriously was at the point where I was not able to keep food or water down. I had signed DNR papers because I felt like I was probably going to end up in the hospital and I did not want want to be kept alive because I was just very done. And, and so when I'm sitting there at treatment, like, really 3 weeks later, it just like hit me like a ton of bricks. Oh my gosh, it's not over. But it was also this, like, I felt like I was already at the end, and yet I had this huge fight in front of me. And the emotions of that, I felt like, were so intense because because for 18 years I'd basically been told it was all in my head. And so it is, it's a lot to process. And then you're basically going through chemo. So you're sick and, you know, I went through major 8 weeks of antibiotics, but it's a lot. It is, it's not simple. There's so many factors.

There are so many factors. So one of the things in 5 Element Acupuncture, we kind of, when we were taught this, we talk about walking the circle. So there are 5 hardwired— I'm gonna do a little teaching— there are 5 hardwired emotions that are in the reptile part of the brain, and they're fear, anger, joy, and one neurological researcher calls it disgust, and we call it sympathy. So they're kind of like the flip side of the same thing, but kind of the mothering reflex. And then there's grief. So those are those 5 emotions. And those emotions— an emotion really is like a reflex. So something happens, we have an emotional response to it, and if we're healthy, it just passes like a thunderstorm, and then you kind of clean up the branches that have been blown around and put your life back together again. But when we're not healthy, 2 things happen. One is the emotion never gets triggered and so it just kind of builds like a pressure plate, like an earthquake waiting to happen, or it gets stuck and we never clear out. The thunderstorm doesn't go away. And so this is when emotions become toxic, you know, or if you're in a situation where the emotion is triggered, you know, you're in a home where you're just scared all the time because you're, you know, whatever, father's an alcoholic or there's something going on, where it's just fear after fear after fear after fear, and then that does its damage. And we talk about things from kind of more of like a psychological point of view, but sometimes it's just on this— I want to distinguish emotions from the mental part of it, this raw emotion part. And then also, there are 5 spirits, quote unquote spirits, and the spirits are willpower, right, number one. So willpower, the Chinese viewed as a substance. So you talk about being at the end of your rope, and they've done studies like this. They put a cookie in front of people and then have them do math problems. And the longer the cookie's there, the worse their math abilities get because your willpower gets used up. It really does get used up. So you do get to the end of your rope and you need to recharge somewhere. Away, or get infused with hope or something to kind of give you that willpower back. And then there's this— the Chinese call it the Hun, and it's our yearning for something greater than us. You know, so there's this— as human beings, we're going to believe in something. Even if we believe that there's nothing, we still believe that with all our hearts. Right. You know, we all believe— we're human. We all believe in something greater than us. We do. There's just no other way. Then there's the emotion, they call it Shen, and that's really, that's our personality. The way I look at it, that's the mold that gets broken when we're made. It's like, that's our— and it's also our ability to see the glass half empty or half full. So the Shen kind of presides over the rest of the body, and you know, when it's kind of calm and cool and collected and we're doing our meditation, we can handle the storms that are around us. But when the Shen gets disturbed, we have bad dreams, we don't sleep well, we don't think well. It's like everything starts falling apart. And then there's this ability to think clearly, and Lyme clobbers that— the neurological Lyme. Yeah, I don't know, you know, you're a great example of it tonight. Just, wow, just lost my train of thought. You know, it's just that part of you isn't functioning 100%. And you can think of it as, okay, it's just a little brain problem, but in Chinese medicine, it's one of the spirits, this ability to think through a problem. My youngest daughter, her Yi, it's called Y-I, was not very strong, so she would have multi-level math problems like in 7th grade, and she would whine. She says, "Oh, I can't do this homework." It's like, "Please bail me out." It's like, "No, you have to sit there and chew on this, think through the problem." And then the final one is our animal appetites, right? So we've got this heavenly yearning, but we also want to feel good. We don't like pain. We like chocolate. We like getting a massage. We like being warm and toasty. We like all those things. We have a desire for all that stuff. So in Chinese medicine, when you're interviewing somebody, you're looking at all this stuff, right? That's what makes it so much exciting and fun. So somebody walks in the door with a migraine headache. I'm interested in how are your emotions? You know, how are your spirits doing? You know, how's your energy doing at whole? And then we can begin to have a discussion about it, you know, how we're gonna treat this. So you'd never have, you know, it's not like a doctor's office where during flu season they're just handing out the Tamiflu, you know, person after person after person, pour it out of their skulls. You know, it's personalized medicine. [Speaker] Yeah.

Which is, you know, I mean, that was one of the things I was looking for. I said, gosh, I just want somebody to look at me as a whole person instead of saying, oh yeah, you're having this stomach issue, go see a specialist. Okay, you're having this brain issue, go see the neurologist. Because we couldn't piece them together.

Right. Yeah. Humpty Dumpty. Yeah.

Well, we're getting close to our time here, McKay. One more question before we go. Um, what's one thing that you've been doing recently that's got you excited, that's helped maintain your health? Um, what's the latest greatest in your, in your world these days?

You know what really interests me these days is sleep.

Okay.

And, and I— big reminder of this, I came down with a springtime cold last week, and it was mostly because I was staying up late with my wife watching Korean soap operas, and that's the truth. So I need to go to bed at about 10:30, and, you know, I'm fairly robust. So if I do that, you know, go to bed late a few nights in a row, that's okay, you know, I'll catch up over the weekend. But this went on for about 2 weeks, and, um, it, it just clobbered me. So that plus The light emitted by your cell phone, by your iPad, by your computer, by the lights in your house disrupt your sleep even if you go to bed on time.

Yeah.

So it interferes with the melatonin release, which has to do with serotonin, and melatonin is an antioxidant, and that has, you know, so forth and so on. So people who don't sleep well get sick, they don't heal They put on weight. They get depressed. They have mood swings. The list is just endless, and it's such a simple thing, but it's like Lyme. It's invisible. Our sleep deprivation and our poor sleep hygiene is killing us as a culture, killing us, and it's just beginning to bubble up into consciousness, and people are coming up with technological ways to deal with it. I just saw on the internet that they're selling filters which block the blue light. It's the blue light in our devices that really affect our brain. So when we were reading late at night with candlelight, you just get tired and eventually go to bed because it didn't interfere, or even oil lamp, something like that. But it was Edison. As a matter of fact, Edison only slept 4 hours a night, or 4 hours at a time, and he believed that sleep was the work of the devil. He, he was going to cure the world from sleep. That was really— he really believed that. And, uh, he, he did. He, he was successful, unfortunately. And we're just— right, we're just now figuring out the other edge of that technological breakthrough. I mean, light, you know, thank goodness we have it. It's a miracle. Yeah. But we, we're just now realizing how it's damaging us and how we need to to kind of shift as a culture and as individuals to make up for the damage that it can do. And technology is like that. It's been going on. There's a great quote from 2,000 years ago. One of the original Chinese acupuncture books said, you know, the ancient people, so this is 2,000 years ago, the ancient people, they knew how to live in concert with nature. Today, nobody knows what they're doing. That's why we only live to 60 years old. In the old days, they lived to 150. 50, you know, and this is 2,000 years ago. So what technology did they have? Well, they had the oven and, you know, whatever else they were doing, the cities, right? You know, and think of, you know, we have to exercise because we built the little gas engine, right? Everybody sits with the leaf blower. Nobody rakes anymore, you know. So now we got to go to the gym. So it's, you know, light, light and sleep is, you know, if you're a Lyme patient— I'm going to get on my soapbox— if you're a Lyme patient and you're not sleeping Well, you have to make that one of your top priorities. Figure it out. Yep. Get all the help you can to get sleep because your body cannot heal. Cannot heal, right? Doesn't matter if you're doing everything else properly. If you're not sleeping, you're not going to heal, you're not going to get better.

And yeah, and the evilness of Lyme is it— that's one of the things that really attacked for Sarah is her sleep. Yeah, yeah.

I didn't— I had like a 10-year stretch where, I mean, I used to keep track of it. I know that there was like less than 10 days a year that I was sleeping like a a regular night. But see, and that's the thing, no one was offering me anything else, like, besides just taking more sleep pills, which I was already taking a lot. I, you know, and at that, that was before I had actually found acupuncture and some of those other, other things. But it really is this whole body shift. And I, I, maybe, maybe you see it differently, but how many of your patients patients? Like when you're, when you're explaining to them, gosh, sleep is really important, gosh, herbs are really important, or all these things, do you see them— do you see it clicking with them that it's— most things are not just an easy quick fix, that it's really this like whole body lifestyle that has to shift?

I try to work with them to identify what's what's the— and I don't mean easiest like things are easy, but what's the easiest thing they could implement that's gonna have the biggest impact right away so that they can say, "Oh, I can make changes in my life." So for one people, it'll be like, "Okay, try cutting out the gluten." For another person, it'll be, "Okay, I don't take probiotics." For somebody else, it'll be, "Turn off David Letterman and go to bed." or get blackout curtains or something. So I try to pick— it's too overwhelming. You know, I've heard stories, you know, go to the Lyme-littered doctor, they come back with a book of stuff to implement, right? Like, how, without any guidance holding your hand from remote control, can you give somebody 30 interventions to do and 30 new supplements to take and expect the person to be compliant? Client. Oh yeah, that's one of the things I think, you know, I understand what they're trying to do. It's like, you know, they have one shot and they— this is all you need to do to get better. But from just the bedside manner point of view, that's, that's, you know, one patient in 100 is going to be able to implement all that stuff. Yeah. So it's, you know, I don't know. So, you know, it's like, what's, you know, what's the tipping point? What's your leverage point? What's— what can you put in? So if you are struggling, if you're out there and you're struggling sleep, the, the thing you can put in is a 20-minute nap, a 10 to 20 minute nap during the day, once or twice during the day. Okay. And that little input there can stave off some of the damaging effects of a poor night's sleep. And you kind of have to experiment to find out, you know, too little, it doesn't do any good. Too long, you wake up and you feel like you're The Walking Dead, right? So you want to find that sweet spot where it's, you know, you get that power nap and then, you know, learn to set the timer on your phone. Yeah. And, uh, you do that twice a day and it can go a long way to keeping you healthy even though your sleep isn't that great. And maybe that's enough to help you regenerate a little bit.

Yeah, yeah. I, I have— I used to run marathons, and when I do a lot of training, um, I'd have to take power nap because to train for a marathon is ridiculous. You got to, you know, run 15 million miles before you even get to the race. So you need a lot of time. So I'd end up sleeping less and I learned to take a 20-minute power nap and I kind of just— I could tell I was asleep but awake enough that I could wake myself back out.

Yes.

Oh, it was interesting. And let me ask you this. You said something earlier interesting about the screen screens and filters, I heard that you can go ahead and like go do something really simple by going just to Home Depot and buying safety glasses. They're yellow safety glasses, right? Yellow lens.

Yep. Or red lens. Yep.

Right. And I've heard of people just wearing those 30 to 40 minutes before they go to bed for all lights. Have you— is that, is that a good approach?

I haven't done that myself. And yes, the goal is is to filter out the blue lights, either turn off all the lights and go to bed about an hour and a half after the sun goes down. Good luck with that. Or to block out the blue lights. And you know, there's all this technology now with those color-changing LED lights. And so we're gonna, it won't be too near in the future where people's homes will be lit with red light in the evening. Happening. It just will be a thing. Yeah, I mean, we're just— we're right on the edge of that happening. I just— it's gonna happen. Yeah, it's just gotta happen. So yeah, so the, the yellow, um, the yellow glasses, or— I'm familiar with the red glasses, but both— I, I don't know about the yellow. The red glasses cut out the blue light. You want to filter out the blue light. That's why everything looks red, because it's filtering out the blue.

You know, I might take a look online and see if we've— maybe Amazon has something like that. If I find it, I'll put it on the website and on our website and people can find it, um, the link through there.

Yeah, I know people are doing that for sure. So that way you can watch David Letterman and, and not do the damage.

Well, even— well, with us, our house, we have 5 kids. So, you know, someone wakes up and you got to take them in the bathroom. So you're, you know, you can wake up and you throw on the lights and it wakes you right up. And the theory is if you wear the glasses, it won't jolt your system into—

Right, you can buy amber LED nightlights. Those are out there also. So if, you know, you could probably make a whole list of sleep aid type gadgets out there. But again, it's the same thing. If our brains are designed to react to sunrise, which is this bright, you know, even looks yellow and colors in the morning, it's got that blue light. So it stimulates our brain in a way into thinking that it's awake. So if you do get up 2 or 3 times a night to go to the bathroom and you flip on the lights, or my toothbrush has this stupid blue LED light to show that it's charging. I have yet to put tape on it, but I'm always pulling it out of the charger.

Oh yeah.

Because even it's a tiny little thing, but that's enough. That's all it takes. You know, and it's just, it's so pernicious. I flip my alarm clock on its face so that it's, anyway. Yeah, I'm— I've turned into a weirdo in my old age. I've got all these quirks.

Well, yeah, I mean, like you said earlier, it is essential for healing. So it's all those little tips. I mean, maybe it's not going to give you the full 100% relief, but 5% here, and you move the toothbrush light and you get another 1%, and you know, it all adds up in the end. And you have to fight on every level. It It— Lyme just invades your entire existence and you have to adjust for it, right?

And it's, it's— so Lyme is one of those things where all your bad habits get flipped back against you. You know, part, part of the people with chronic Lyme is like discovering all their bad habits and eliminating them so they can heal. You know, when you're relatively healthy, you can have bad habits and you can skate by You know, maybe you're not functioning at 100%, but you know, you're not Garry Kasparov, you're not a chess champion. You know, you don't need to be at 100%. You can get through your day at 60%. Yeah. You know, and probably do all right. Nobody knows any better. But with Lyme disease, you're already knocked down to whatever percentage, and so all those other little bad habits, the diet, the sleep, the quality of your relationships, you know, so forth and so on, just pile up on you.

Well, McKay, it has been awesome talking to you. I really enjoyed it. Before we go, I want to encourage people to go check out McKay's show, Lyme Ninja. He's got great interviews. How many episodes do you have to date?

I'm at 33. We got stuck at 33 because I got sick. Oh, yeah. So soon, 34.

Congratulations. I really liked your episode on epigenetics.

Crazy, huh?

Yeah, I loved it. I've listened to it twice. It was just so good.

Yeah, so go check it out and, and, and subscribe to his podcast as well. It's great information and it's free, so, you know, go grab it. But before we go, on your podcast, if anybody is familiar with it, you always give a Lime Ninja— well, you work with your daughter on the podcast, is that correct?

Yes, with Aurora. Right, right.

And she always gives the Lime Ninja fact of, of the day.

Yes.

Can you give us your favorite, uh, Lime Ninja fact for, for our audience?

So did you know that the ninja calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd? No one fools a ninja.

Awesome. I love it. Well, thank you again. I really enjoyed talking to you, and I can't wait to— I'm gonna be continuing to listen and hear what else you're coming up with. And again, thanks for your time. Sarah, did you have anything?

No, thank you so much. That's great.

You're welcome. And when have you come out with your first episode yet?

Yes.

Yeah, I gotta get— which— what's your website?

It is limvoice.com.

Okay.

Or on iTunes, it's just Lime Voice.

Okay, cool. So I'll subscribe to you as well because the— like I said, the more voices out there. And thank you so much for doing this, it's incredible.

Yeah, and I really feel like our shows complement each other because you definitely have, um, the medic— more of a medical side, and ours I feel like will be more some practical stuff, but more social-emotional stuff. Um, so I really feel like they complement each other really well.

Yeah.

Yeah, fabulous.

Yeah.

Again, well, thank you.

All right, thanks. Have a great night.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with McKay as much as Sarah and I did. Uh, one thing I got— I want you guys to come away with is whether it's your primary doctor, your pain doctor, your acupuncturist, it doesn't— it almost doesn't matter what your approach is as long as you have a doctor that's Lyme literate or Lyme attentive or Lyme aware. You know, someone that's going to listen. I think if you're lucky enough to find a gentleman like McKay to help you, great. If not, maybe we all need to travel up to New York to see this will help, just another puzzle piece in the Lime picture, in the Lime puzzle. Please take some time and check out limenoice.com. Some of the things we talked about, some of the products that we use are going to be listed on the website in our products or resources pages. There's also a donate page. If you like what we're doing here at Lime Voice and you want to help, please fill in your amount and that'll help us continue fighting. That's it for this week. I'll leave you with Sarah's quote: "Disease is contrary to life. Therefore, wherever disease exists, life must also fight to exist." Keep up the fight. We'll see you next time. Hello. Hello, Lincoln. You ready for this?

Yes.

LymeVoice contains general information about medical conditions and treatments. The information is not advice. Medical advice and should not be treated as such. Okay, Lincoln? Okay. The medical information on LionVoice is provided as is without any representations, warranties, expressed or implied. Okay?

Okay.

LionVoice makes no representations or warranties in relation to the medical information on this podcast. You must not rely on the information on this podcast as an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. If you have any specific questions about your medical matter, you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. And for you, you consult your parents, okay?

Okay.

If you think you may be suffering from, from any medical condition, you should seek immediate medical attention. You should never delay seeking medical advice, disregard medical advice, or discontinue medical treatment because of information on this podcast. Got it, Lincoln?

Got it.

From the creators of Lime Voice and Disappearing from Society comes a brilliantly simple idea, but this time it comes as a book. Imagine a world in which birds can talk like people. You'll get a bird's-eye view of life with Lime disease as one bird family must unite to overcome the obstacles of life with Lyme disease. Guaranteed to make you laugh and cry. Written in a way that helps you articulate the losses you are experiencing as a household while simultaneously empowering you to keep fighting. Little Bite, Big Trouble is available today at Amazon.com. Design.com.