021 Dr Shawn Naylor LLD, Lyme Voice

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I mean, I think people sometimes don't do a great job listening to their body. And, you know, because you see the commercial on TV where the 60-year-old guy is like, oh, you know, my pain was really cutting into my mountain biking, and now I just take this pill. I mean, I think that's a sort of American mentality. And I think that when your body's trying to tell you that it's not well enough to exercise right now, that's probably okay. I mean, exercise is great. If it knocks you flat for 2 days, you probably did too much and you should probably do less. And so I think it's hard for patients because sometimes finally they're feeling a little bit better, finally they feel like, oh God, at least I could do some yard work or clean the house.

Right.

You know, then they overdo it. And then they don't know what to do. But I think that, I think it's a balance and most people are able to find it, but it's easy to fall into it.

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Today you had the courage to open your eyes and face another day.

Welcome to Lyme Voice.

This show's purpose is to help you put the puzzle pieces of Lyme into place. Each episode is designed to inspire, educate, and encourage you on your Lyme journey to wellness. Together we will fight. Together we will heal. Together we will live. Here are your hosts, Aaron and Sarah Sanchez. Sanchez. Sanchez. Sanchez.

Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of Lime Voice. This is actually probably the fourth time that I've tried to record this intro. Every time we seem to have some sort of technical difficulty, or, you know, Lime Brain hits Anyway, this month has been a really awesome month for us, so much so that we wanted to communicate all of what's happened but just have not been able to. So keep your ears open, we're gonna keep letting you guys know what's going on in our lives and what's going on with LymeVoice. But for right now, let's go to our episode with Dr. Naylor. One of the things we wanted you guys to be able to take from this is to hear what a Lyme literate doctor is. You've heard us talk about how important it is to have a doctor who is sympathetic, who hears your symptoms and understands what Lyme is and how it affects the patient. Dr. Naylor is a great example of that. I know you guys are going to really appreciate it. And if you can walk away with anything, walk away knowing what a good doctor sounds like. That way, when you go visit your doctor, you have something to compare to. Hope you enjoy this episode. Hope you guys are enjoying your holidays. We'll talk to you soon. If you like what we're doing here at LionVoice, one thing you can do to help us is simply by going to iTunes or Stitcher and leaving your review. This really helps get the message of LionVoice out to others. Don't forget to go to our Facebook page, LionVoice, and while you're there, give us your like. Also, go to lionvoice.com and you can find all sorts of information and past episodes. Also, some of Sarah's blog posts. Don't forget to share while you're there. Hi guys, I want to tell you about Audible. I love Audible. Sarah loves Audible. I know you guys are gonna love it as well. It has been such a huge resource for us. We have an offer at lionvoice.com where you can actually get your first month free. This is a great way to grab one of those books that you've been meaning to read and be able to do it on the go, in your commute, while you're doing your chores, or if you just don't have the strength to hold up the book that day, this is a great way to be able to utilize the information that is so vital for your health and recovery. Go to lionvoice.com, get your free Audible download, and help support Lion Voice. Thank you guys so much. We really appreciate it. Well, hello friends. So excited for you to be with us on Lion Voice today. Today we have a special guest who was actually referred to us from Mr. Steven Groter. If you remember, Mr. Groter and his wife Heather were both on our show a couple times and really enjoyed their conversation with them. You know, Mr. Groter had spoke so highly of Dr. Naylor here. We wanted to talk to the man, you know. So without further ado, Dr. Naylor, are you ready to help us put the puzzle pieces of Lyme into place?

I sure am!

Alright!

Alright, well, we follow a fight, heal, live format where fighting is a mindset, healing is a choice, and living is an outcome. So as we begin the fighting as a mindset portion of our show, because of the fact that Lyme is such an opportunistic disease, we find that patients who recover are really having to fight for their health. But physicians also have their own fight in being allowed to treat. How do you personally as a physician become involved in helping patients fight Lyme?

Well, I mean, I, I don't know many providers who treat Lyme that don't have a personal experience with it. You know, to be honest with you. I don't particularly like talking about my own history with Lyme disease, but, you know, and I think probably most providers kind of feel the same way, but, you know, I think it's fair to say that I know what Lyme patients go through trying to find the right treatments. You know, to really dedicate your career to something like Lyme, you know, you have to be passionate about it, and there are people who have dedicated their careers and are passionate about it that didn't at one point or don't actively have Lyme disease themselves, but I think those people are in the minority and not necessarily something that's discussed or should be. I think physicians probably want a little privacy for their own healthcare personal information too, but I think that's a reality that is true among a lot of Lyme literate physicians, if you want to say that.

And from your perspective, what do you find most challenging about treating Lyme?

There's so many challenging things, really. I almost think it would be easier to talk about what isn't challenging. I mean, the medical legal environment is problematic. There's a lot of Politics and stuff like that definitely keeps me up at night. And, you know, and also the patients that aren't getting better for whatever reason. You know, that's really challenging. I think that Lyme is just sort of inherently, you know, ambivalent or ambiguous rather. There's a lot of, you know, there's not a lot of kind of clear yes or no answers to to any questions really. And, you know, I think that that makes it harder for everyone, especially when, you know, often necessary to use aggressive interventions. You know, the more aggressive your intervention, the more you'd like to be able to have, you know, unambiguous data to justify it. And, you know, as opposed to just saying, well, I've got some experience treating this stuff, This is what I think this patient needs now. I, I, I think the reality is that, that if you aren't willing to treat aggressively based on, in many cases, a little more than your experience, then you're probably not going to be very successful. But that isn't really ideal. So I guess, I guess that's a short answer to your question.

Yeah, well, that, that's awesome. That actually leads me kind of into my next question, which is, as you look at patients, the ones that are getting better, the ones that are walking out of your clinic consistently getting better, have you noticed common characteristics? For example, like when we went to the Living Well with Lyme Disease conference in Rhinebeck, New York earlier this July, one of the things that they noticed was that Type A personalities are, are kind of recovering better because they have the push-through-the-pain kind of attitude. So I guess My question to you is, what are some of the common characteristics that you see for healing?

Yeah, I do think, you know, you've got the patients who are kind of the go-getter types, assertive and aggressive with their treatment and good advocates for themselves. They follow your recommendations and they, you know, take good care of themselves. And that definitely makes a difference. And, you know, and the other side of that coin, I guess, is the more victim mentality. I think that's understandable. I think people are victimized by this disease and they go on and get victimized by a healthcare system that isn't very well equipped to help them in the ways that they need help. And unfortunately, the wrong kind of mentality can be a real obstacle to recovery.

Yeah, we've noticed that for ourselves too. It's hard to compare yourself to another Lyme patient because each person is so different, but One of the things we did notice with Sarah versus some of her friends who had Lyme and weren't advancing as much as she did is that she did have that fighting spirit where she had a lot to live for and she was ready to fight for it. And that really, I think, helps the person heal.

Right, right. I agree.

Yeah. Doctor, tell us, tell our listeners, is there things that we can do as patients to help you help us?

Sure. I think that having the right attitude counts for something, and I think that one of the things that sometimes is an issue for patients is expecting too much too fast. And I feel like this is another sort of difficult, challenging area among many in Lyme, which is like, somebody's really sick, their resources are stretched, and they're trying to decide what kind of interventions or treatments or whatever are most likely to bear fruit for them. And It was hard to ask somebody in that situation to give them 6 months or more of dedicated, committed, sometimes expensive treatment if they're not seeing progress. But unfortunately, I think that especially some people who are really sick and really toxic and have been that way for a long time, I think that for a lot of those patients, there isn't anything that is gonna work for them quickly. And so then they end up bouncing from one modality to another. When maybe there might've been more than one direction. There's more than one way home for a lot of people, but I think the sicker people are, the fewer their options are and the more committed they need to be to hopefully the right path.

Yeah, and what do you say, what is a typical timeframe for recovery for people coming through your clinic? Because I know for me, I went out to a 9-week treatment program and then came home to a 2-year protocol, and as I meet other people who are further along, you know, I'm kind of getting this feel that it's really like, for people who are really debilitated like I was, it's really kind of like a 3 to 5 year process. Is that realistic?

Um, yeah, I've been telling most of my patients that I think I can capture 70% of the people who walk through my door with a 12 to 18 month protocol. I don't really believe in protocol medicine per se. I don't think I don't think that it's appropriate to treat Lyme disease with a cookbook approach, and I think that treatment very much needs to be individualized to the patient, you know, at every month or 2-month office visit. 15% of my patients, most of them who— the easier ones who haven't been as sick, who haven't been sick for as long, I think that 15% of those, or 15% of the total, which is the 15% that was less sick to begin with, you know, usually less than a year. But, you know, then you've got your other 15% the other end of 18 months, and some of those finally turned the corner after 2 or 3 years, and admittedly a few of them never did. So I think that it's a pretty broad spectrum, but I think that most people are looking at 12 to 18 months.

Okay, yeah, and actually again, that leads us right into the next segment, which healing is a choice, and we say that not, we can't choose what we get afflicted with or what obstacles we face, but with within our journeys, we do all have a certain level of choices. And so what are tests and labs or other data that are most useful for patients to have before they seek your— before they seek the opinion of a Lyme doctor?

I mean, I think there's something to be said for working with a Lyme doctor and letting him or her decide what tests they are most interested in, but especially if you're on some long waiting list and you wanna get the ball rolling or whatever, it's appropriate maybe to try to get some tests going earlier than that. And, you know, the IgG Western blots have been a mainstay for us for a long time, and I think that they're sensitive if interpreted liberally. I would say even more liberally than the lab interprets them. I mean, if you're familiar with the IgG Western blots, they come back interpreted according to CDC criteria and according to an alternative, you know, criteria that, that the lab helped develop, and And you know, the CDC criteria misses between a third and two-thirds of all true positives, especially in later stages. The iGenX criteria certainly captures more, probably at least another 15%, but you're still missing a lot. And I think that if you consider the IND bands, the indeterminate bands, as, you know, if you kind of count them as positive and reinterpret according to that, I think what you're left with is actually a pretty sensitive test. They're not counting the indeterminates even according to their own sort of interpretation criteria, and so they're counted as nothing. You're looking at those people coming back with sometimes tons of indeterminates but still a negative overall interpretation. I no longer have the emotional energy to argue with uninformed health or insurance company representatives about the nuances of Lyme testing. You know, I mean, I think for my— perspective, if the history is right and got some indeterminates at key bands. I think there's a scientific rationale for that approach, which, you know, which I think is sound. You never know when somebody's going to end up needing to fight for coverage or support from a former spouse or some disability policy through work. And if you're going into those with, with a few indeterminates that you're telling them that should really count as positive, you're not going to get very far. So part for those reasons, I'm really— we're trying to move actively in recent months in the clinic to more definitive testing. I've had a few people come back positive on the culture test, and people haven't had antibiotics for 6 months. You know, I know that test is $600, but I think we need to be using that more. It's pretty hard to argue with a positive culture. I mean, I know that lab, you know, the CDC is trying to say that some of these are false positive. I think their argument is really, really weak there, and I think that probably your disability insurance person probably doesn't I don't know enough about that debate to really throw it back at you, but the iSpot I think is showing some promise too. In an ideal world, I think I'd like to have all three. iSpot's somewhere in between in terms of pricing, and I think it's plagued with some of the same problems that the Western blot is plagued with, that being once your immune system is just really weakened, you might not be showing much on that test either, but it might turn out to be better than the Western blot. The iSpot I think is worth doing.

It sounds kind of— it might just be better for if we're waiting to get into a doctor, just as good just to wait for the doctor to tell you what kind of tests. Is that correct?

I think so. I mean, you know, all of these tests that I was talking about are out of pocket and might get something back if you really fight with your insurance company, but you'd hate to spend a lot of money on testing that your Lyme doctor didn't really, didn't really want. But I mean, I think that You know, all Lyme doctors want some piece of paper that says positive on it. And if you've done all 3 of those tests, there's a pretty good chance if you've got Lyme disease, you're going to get a positive on one of them.

Okay.

How far away do you think we are before having like a globalized test that is acceptable to everyone in the medical community? Is that even a possibility?

Well, you know, I'm not really aware of, you know, any other like test methodologies on the horizon, really, if that's what you're asking.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that the problem with the Western blot is that if you interpret it liberally as you probably should, you're going to find out that there's a lot of people walking around with Lyme disease that aren't necessarily really even that sick. I'm not really so much of a conspiracy theory guy, but I can't help but wonder if the bar has been raised as high as it has been raised on that test in part because if it was raised to the proper level, there'd be a lot of people testing positive in a lot of difficult sort of situations where, well, you know, is this patient really need to be put on antibiotics if they're not sick. You know, there's a lot of people with Lyme that aren't sick, and so invariably they find their way into negative control groups, I think, for some of these lab tests, and that's, I think, part of the reason why the bar has been raised on some of these lab tests so high. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. Wow. I know for me that I had struggled with fatigue and a few other symptoms, but then after a minor car accident, I was thrown into extreme pain and fatigue and eventually started having tremors and stuff. My auto accident was really a mask for this underlying issue. Do you see a lot of traumas and accidents or genetic issues dominant in the Lyme population? Is that really how things are kind of getting manifested?

Yeah, I think it's kind of a good segue maybe even from the last question, just thinking about how, well, if people are walking around with this and they don't know they're sick and then suddenly they are, like, what changed? And I think in people who are walking around with these infections, the immune system is very often containing it well, or maybe there's sort of a homeostasis going on. I mean, these pathogens, they're sophisticated, they're highly evolved, they've been around for millions of years, and over that time they've figured out that it doesn't serve their purpose to kill the host, right?

Right.

And yet eventually the, you know, the scales seemed to tip, and very often it's a car accident or it's a surgery or it's a— yeah, pregnancy is stressful. And, you know, even just a really bad, a bad period at work where there's way too much stress and a lot of deadlines, a car accident like you said, and suddenly the scales tip. The stress of an accident is going to jack up your cortisol, which is going to be immunosuppressive, and, and now suddenly the Lyme infections have the upper hand and And getting people back to homeostasis or whatever, I mean, usually requires a lot of treatment.

So now let me ask you this. How far away do you think we are from being able to effectively and affordably treat people seeking treatment? So I still feel like from what I— the feedback I get in my own experience, that it is very expensive to get better. And when are we going to be at a place where people without massive resources can get adequate treatment?

The way you phrased your question, you're suggesting that we're moving in the right direction. And to be honest with you, I mean, I feel the amount of coverage that people have through their health insurance, you know, only seems to be going down. So people's deductibles are higher, their out-of-pocket costs are higher, their copays, their coinsurance, the out-of-network coverage has really gone downhill in just in recent years. I think that from those perspectives it's moving in the wrong direction and it's getting harder. Wow. I mean, I use a lot. I think that it's very difficult to treat this disease effectively if you're just using prescriptions.

Right.

So I use a lot of herbs in my clinic. Depending on how good your insurance is, they're either more expensive than the drugs or less.

Right.

I feel that being able to make things affordable for middle-class people most of the time if they have some insurance, I think, especially. But yeah, in terms of helping people who are more working class or poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, I don't think that short of some good grant funding or whatever, I don't know where to go for those people.

Yeah, you bring up a really good point. And that's a big issue. We got an email from someone even in the last couple weeks and she said, just to get the testing costs more than my mortgage and I'm a single parent. And yeah, it's hard to tell, it's hard to know what to tell people if they are on disability and/or qualify for Medicaid because it just doesn't seem like a lot of the treatments fall into those categories.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like we can blame the insurance companies, but there's a lot of government pressure on them to not raise premiums as well. So in order to, so their move, which is the only real, well, the logical move for them is to say, okay, what can we get away with get away with not covering what seems fringe and potentially unnecessary. And, you know, the IDSA guidelines really create fertile ground to deny coverage for even simple things like a generic antibiotic. And I'm like, gosh, if I can't get a generic antibiotic without a prior authorization, you know, that takes my office 40 minutes to, to do, that, that ends up getting denied anyway, um, you know, that's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. It really is a fight on a lot of fronts.

But I could go back a little bit more to previous question. I mean, you were wondering about the genetic things and I think that there's been some interesting stuff in just recent years about the methylation defects and—

Can you tell us what that means?

There's an enzymatic process in the liver that that is part of what is sometimes referred to as phase 2 detoxification, whereby various molecules— for the purposes of this conversation, we'll call them biotoxins made by infections— are made more water-soluble so they can be more readily excreted in the kidneys. In order to be, you know, for chemical transformation to take place, a methyl group, which is just a carbon and 3 hydrogens, is transferred from, from basically vitamins over onto the toxin. And so this is a kind of complicated chain of events where this methyl group is passed like a hot potato from one molecule to another. And it does seem that the enzymes that catalyze these various steps work better in some people than others. It's been our observation that most people actually have at least one methylation defect. Those that have two or more seem to be— that seems to be a negative predictor from an outcome perspective. Those people are harder to treat. And, you know, you can partially overcome that with pre-methylated supplements that are pre-methylated versions of folic acid and vitamin B12. It's probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Okay. So as we head into the living portion of our show, we like to say that living is an outcome. And for some of us, that means learning to live from bed, and for others, they're going to recover, and that means learning to live a more normal life, but for some people, they have to come up with this whole new normal. So we have so many patients and their families whose lives have really been decimated after years of illness. And as they heal, they're trying to get back into the business of really living, and that can be this really monumental task. What are some of the common mistakes you see Lyme patients making in their effort to live a normal life?

Well, I mean, I think people sometimes don't do a great job listening to their body. And you know, because you see the commercial on TV where the 60-year-old guy is like, oh, you know, my pain was really cutting into my mountain biking and now I just take this pill. I mean, I think that's a sort of American mentality. Sure. When your body's trying to tell you that it's not well enough to exercise right now, that's probably okay. I mean, exercise is great. If it knocks you flat for 2 days, you probably did too much and you should probably do less. And so I think it's hard for patients because sometimes finally they're feeling a little bit better, finally they feel like, "Oh God, at least I could do some yard work or clean the house." And then they overdo it and then they don't know what to do. But I think that, I think it's a balance and most people are able to find it, but it's easy to overdo it and I think we need to try to move slow and work up to, to doing more.

Yeah, for Sarah and I, it was— that has been part of the battle for the last 2 years while she's been in recovery, is to adjust our efforts according to what we want to do and what we can do and what she can do, and to listen. Because there has been— we made, we made those hard mistakes where we pushed her too hard, and then we paid a longer price of recovery where it just extended the recovery time. For us, we need more help from our friends and our families because of the illness. How can loved ones help the process of recovery?

Well, I mean, they can give money.

No, that's perfect.

Yeah, we'll put our vote on that one too. It's hard because like sometimes people really, you know, burn out their support system because, you know, they've been sick for a long time and they've been seeing a bunch of doctors and nothing seems to be working and that, that can be, that can be hard on the support system too. They start to wonder, gosh, am I enabling this person to go on being a faker or something? I mean, it's hard. And I think that the controversy surrounding Lyme disease obviously plays into that in negative ways. And so yeah, I mean, that's a problem for patients as well as support. But, you know, I also think that there is a fine line. Like, you know, there is some situations where maybe a parent-child situation or even a spouse situation where there's codependency or a dependency that perpetuates the problem more than the solution. And so I think, you know, being loving and supportive is really important. And I think that it's important also for the spouse or the parent or whoever it is to be able to have their own life independent of the other person's illness and maybe get some other support for themselves once in a while. Right. Away from the caregiving and is important, I think.

Yeah.

What do you think, and this is purely hypothetical, if we could fast forward 20, 30 years, what do you think the medical community's view on Lyme will be 20, 30 years from now?

Well, you know, that is something that I think is moving in the right direction and it's surely the science is going to keep up with the reality, you know, or catch up with the reality eventually. And I think that the embers monkey study has been a big thing. Well, I mean, there's 30 studies now, you know, documenting evidence of persistence of infection past 4 weeks of antibiotics. For years, the IDSA and Gary Wormser basically have pretended that that research didn't exist. But, you know, this is the information age now.

Right.

Yeah, Google Scholar. Reveals much at the touch of a few keystrokes. So I think that the tide is turning. I think that we're moving in the right direction. I think that the efforts of ILADS and various other Lyme organizations is creating a groundswell that's turning the tables and we're moving in the right direction. I don't know, we'll see if the IDSA guidelines, which I think are due to be re-released in the next year or so, Yeah, there's been a lot of talk about what those are going to contain.

Do you have any influence in that, or being part of iLads?

I have no idea. Yeah, there's probably better people who have more insight into that than I do. I just, I couldn't believe that in 2006 they dug in their heels as much as they did and refused to move in the right direction. And I don't know how much longer they can keep doing that. Despite, you know, the mounting evidence to the contrary and the shifts in public opinion and, and, and the science. But, but we'll see.

Yeah, and it's great to hear because we've heard the same from different doctors throughout the country who are saying the same thing, that change is coming and, and they are being forced to listen. ILADS having a great influence in that.

Yeah, there's a lot of people in that organization that are really capable and competent and sincere and hardworking and have done a lot and are treading a fine line between their own reputation. I think that sometimes I wish they would go further, but I also sometimes think that they know that they need to be careful to not go too far.

Let me ask you this. Lyme transferring during pregnancies to children. Are there studies that are reinforcing that in your opinion? Um, for instance, when I went to my pediatrician and I said, hey, my kids are testing positive for Lyme, she's like, well, there's no proof of that at this point. And she's not a Lyme literate doctor. And how do you go about that? Is there evidence at this point, medical evidence? Is that a widely accepted thing within the Lyme community?

I probably shouldn't speak for the whole community, but—

Yeah, I guess not.

I think that if you were to do a survey, most Lyme doctors would tell you that they believe it's transmissible to an unborn child. And I think that I would maybe defer even back to Charles Ray Jones, who probably has more experience with this than anyone else. And I heard him say once at a conference that he thinks that if mom's infected and she's not treated, possibility of transmission to the fetus is about 50%, and if she's on one antibiotic, then maybe only 20%, and if she's on two antibiotics, maybe, I don't know, 5 or 10, I think he thought, if she was on two antibiotics. I mean, that 50% sounds like a coin toss, but it would be just like Lyme to be so ambiguous that it's about 50% chance either way. I've seen cases where, where it was pretty apparent. Actually, just recently someone brought in— she has 4 kids and brought in a culture test on all 4 of them, so that's a pretty big investment, but sure enough, 2 were positive and 2 were negative, and clinically I think the test was right on all 4 of them, and so she wasn't treated during any of her pregnancies, but it seems like she transmitted it, and I've had a lot of moms who had 2 kids and felt pretty crummy during one pregnancy and that kid was sick and, you know, did respond to Lyme treatment and the other one did not seem to be sick and wasn't treated and so that's another up-in-the-air thing.

Yeah.

But in terms of the data, you know, I'm almost not sure if I want to go down that road. I should probably know more about it. I know that, you know, when I was looking for information I came across an interesting mouse study where they showed that the the males were deliberately infected with Lyme, they usually found it in the offspring but not necessarily in the moms. And I thought that was kind of interesting. Did the moms acquire it but just not make an antibody response or enough of a response to test positive, or was the Lyme kind of hanging out in the mouse's vagina and it passed on to the kid there but didn't really go systemic in mom? So that's a possibility. You know, it's also possible that, you know, things— it turns out that mice immunologically are pretty different than humans. Like, if you're doing a study on, say, sepsis, like a systemic blood infection that puts people in the ICU and sometimes kills them, and you're trying to use a mouse model to study it, you need to hit the mouse basically 100,000 times harder with an infection in order to get a model that would be useful. And so that makes, you know, you wonder like, well, okay, if the mouse studies say that this tick needs to be attached for 36 hours before the Lyme is transmitted, is that information applicable to humans? Is it 36 hours for humans, or is it 1/100,000th of 36 hours? Probably somewhere in between.

Hmm. Interesting. It's so complicated. Yeah, it is. Well, we alluded to it a little earlier, but just that Lyme affects you physically, mentally, emotionally, socially. So beyond treatment, what are some of the puzzle pieces that you see are really helping people succeed post-treatment?

Well, you're saying post-treatment, which is a strange way of saying it to me. Sorry.

No, that's fine. Yeah, you can rephrase it.

I guess I would say that if people are post-treatment, they should be all better and they shouldn't really need to put together too many more puzzle pieces. They should try to watch what they eat and stay out of car accidents and take care of themselves. But if you're talking about what other puzzle pieces are missing from treatments for whatever reason is turning out to be not sufficiently useful or effective, I mean, we talked a little bit about the methylation stuff. I think that people who have unresolved emotional traumas are often not responding to treatment the same way. There's something called neuro-emotional technique that I— there's other variations on that theme, and but there's some interesting and innovative ways to address the physiological effect of unresolved emotional trauma that in my opinion are more effective than talk therapy, which is cognitive behavioral therapy, sort of de facto therapy, talk therapy, whatever, is good. But maybe there are other more comprehensive approaches that I think are better.

Yeah, can you tell us what that neuro-emotional technique is? What does that look like?

Most people are using some kind of muscle testing to get insights into answers to questions about what the underlying traumas are, and then they're often using acupuncture, acupressure-based techniques like tapping to try to mitigate the physiological response to that trauma. So I think they're kind of trying to uncouple the psyche from the negative impact that it has on the body by intervening at the level of the nervous system, which is really where acupuncture lives. And that, I think, is the nervous system is kind of the bridge between the consciousness and the in the physiology and it can be useful or detrimental to have— it can go both ways. So yeah, I think that there's a lot that needs to be done for some patients in that realm and I think that people who live in a moldy house may not get better until they do something about it and sometimes moving is the only solution. Unfortunately, I've seen some people who spent some money on remediation that didn't work, but then, you know, you've got not very reliable tests to determine whether this is really a problem or something. And maybe for most people it just turns out to be your nose. If it smells moldy every time you walk into your house, it's, you know, and you're not getting better, that might be a big factor.

Yeah, we keep hearing more and more about mold. What do you think? And again, this is just your opinion. Even with Lyme in other countries, do you feel like we have an edge or an insight, or are there countries that are ahead of us? Where are we at worldwide?

I haven't really spent any time in with any practitioners who are treating Europe or treating Lyme in Europe, so I maybe wouldn't be the right person to ask. I guess I have the impression sort of superficially that a lot of the same factors apply in terms of obstacles and insights. I think that in Europe there is at least a better appreciation for the fact that Lyme is caused by spirochetes, especially Borrelia. Well, maybe exclusively Borrelia, but not necessarily just Borrelia burgdorferi. You know, in Europe they know, you know, it's Borrelia afesi or it's Borrelia garney, and it really doesn't matter which one it is because you can get, you know, probably equally sick from either of them. But in this country, there seems to be still this pervasive prevailing mindset that, you know, it's got to be Borrelia burgdorferi, and, you know, you're not going to get any symptoms if you have afesi or or Lone Starry or Miyamati, and that just, that doesn't make any sense. But it's also probably true that the tests are being, being that they were designed to detect Borrelia burgdorferi, are probably less sensitive in the detection of other Borrelia species, which are probably more prevalent than Borrelia burgdorferi, especially in non-Lyme hotbed regions. Like, there's a common misconception, for instance, that, you know, there's no Lyme in Colorado. You know, you'll have some other doctor kind of shouting at the top of their lungs. And in fact, there was clear evidence of Borrelia in Colorado in the late '90s in Ixodes ticks that they studied. And a few years later, they came back and said, okay, we're gonna We're gonna decide that this, well, they decided that it was Borrelia bisetti, and so therefore it's not Borrelia burgdorferi, therefore it's not Lyme disease. So there's no Lyme in Colorado. Well, okay, so maybe it's Borrelia bisetti in Colorado, but that doesn't mean it's not gonna make you sick.

Right. Okay, but you bring up a really good point, something that we have continually dealt with, and we're in New Mexico, is people continually email us and say, my doctor just said there's no Lyme in New Mexico. And it just, like you said, we are in the information age. Like, this feels like it shouldn't be happening, as if, like, ticks don't transfer state lines. What, what is that?

Yeah, I don't, I don't really know. I think that probably the CDC deserves some of the blame for that. They have pretty strict reporting criteria that I think artificially restricts the epidemiology. Their job is to track the spread of this stuff, but trying to find information about other Borrelia species and where people have looked and maybe where people haven't bothered to look, I think that's, that information I have gone looking for on a couple of occasions when I maybe didn't have enough time. I haven't found as much there as I would have liked, but yeah, I think a lot— most of my patients got Lyme disease somewhere else and grew up on the East Coast or the Upper Midwest or something like that, but it's certainly true that the misconception that there is no Lyme disease outside of the Upper Midwest and Northeast contributes to people not getting treatment early when they're more treatable.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was the main reason that Sarah was 15 years misdiagnosed is strictly for that because she had— she was— she lived in New Mexico, and that was the only reason that they could really say she doesn't have Lyme.

Right, right. And I've seen people make that assertion without even asking, right, you know, did you— were you fine until you went to that wedding in Cape Cod? Or, you know, or did you, you know, live the first 10 years of your life in the woods in Pennsylvania?

Well, and for me, which happens to other people, is I got bit in New Mexico. I had the bullseye rash, but I was told it was a spider bite that was infected, and I had it for like 2 months. And so I just didn't know what a bullseye rash was until my doctor said, hey, you're looking like this has Lyme disease. And so there is— there are so many battlefronts for you guys as physicians, for us as patients, and we just really appreciate your time coming and talking to us and just trying to help put those puzzle pieces in place.

Yeah, I really do. Before we go though, uh, in case people are listening as on their drive and they don't have a time to click through to the show notes, which we will list all of the information on our show notes, but can you tell us where we can get a hold of you if someone wanted to inquire about having you treat them?

Sure, my, uh, my clinic is called The Sound Clinic. Which is maybe a bad name because people think I'm an audiologist or something, but I was mostly using like the alternate definitions of sound, like sound mind, sound body, sound advice kind of thing. Anyway, so soundclinic.com, there's a website there, but it's just to an email, but info@soundclinic.com is a good way to reach my office about making an appointment.

Awesome.

Awesome. And is there any thoughts that you share with us as we get down to the last couple of minutes? Is there anything that's near and dear to you at the moment that can make a difference for people listening?

I think it's important for patients to be, you know, patient but persistent in looking for the care that they need. And it takes a village, but in most cases, you know, if people get the right combination of herbs and antibiotics, you know, they're gonna get better. Not always and often not in the first 6 months, but But I think it's, I think it's a fight worth fighting to try to get better.

Awesome. I like that. Patient but persistent. That's a really good, that's a really good thing to keep in the back of your mind. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Naylor, and we will have the links to our show notes page so that people can get in touch with you.

It was a pleasure. Good to talk to you too. Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Disease is contrary to life. Therefore, wherever disease exists, life must also fight to exist.

Good job fighting, Lyme fighters! Keep it up. We'll see you next time. LymeVoice contains general information about medical conditions and treatments. The information is not advice and should not be treated as such. 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 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 on this podcast. Got it, Lincoln?

Got it.

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