048 An inside look at treating neurological Lyme disease

And I would say that that is the number one mistake that I feel is being made for the Lyme community. And this is just personal opinion, but I think the number one mistake is that we're not addressing the whole person. We're not looking at all of the pieces to the puzzle, which it's oftentimes not just Lyme alone. It's a complex, and Lyme just made it that much more complex and that much more difficult on the body. And so by addressing all of the pieces, we get a much, much better outcome for patients. Because obviously, I mean, here's an example, just a quick example.

Yeah. Congratulations, Lyme Fighter! 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 You will live. Here are your hosts, Aaron and Sarah Sanchez.

Sanchez.

Sanchez. Sanchez.

Wishing your doctors could communicate and come up with a cohesive plan specific to your medical needs and genetics? At Invita Medical Center, they offer a team-style approach, giving you the opportunity to heal. In addition to a commitment of providing radical love and care for their patients, They are strategically located in sunny Arizona because Arizona offers the best integrative medical laws in the country. Call today to speak with one of their patient care coordinators. You can find them online at Invita.com.

Lion Voice thanks Invita Medical for the continued support. Please reach them at 1-866-830- 4576. Welcome, Lion Voice listeners, where fighting is a mindset, healing consists of choices, and living is the outcome. This episode is with Invita Medical Center. I think this is going to be a really encouraging episode because what we've done is we've gathered a bunch of medical questions that a lot of you have had and given to us and really talked with Invita Medical, kind of just dissected some of these questions. And so I think it really will be encouraging for you guys and answer a lot of questions.

Yeah, and the, the number one question that I get is, how did you heal from the neurological side? And I've said it from the get-go, that they— Invita has a neurological repair treatment program that they have in the middle of their treating, of their plan, and it just unlocked my brain. It was like a light switch, and all of a sudden I could spell, I could articulate, I couldn't follow along and not lose my train of thought. So I've been wanting to talk to them about this, and it just took a lot of years to get it scheduled. But there's other things they're talking about, the testing, and there are more improved tests coming on the market here within the next couple of years. So it's really this— I felt like it was just a really helpful conversation to see where things are headed within Lyme.

Yeah, and you know, one of the biggest complaints we hear about is brain fog and, and brain fatigue. And so I think this will be really encouraging that there is hope out there, there is treatments available., and you guys can benefit from these.

I say it in my blog post all the time, but I don't know if I say it here very much, that people are healing in a wide variety of ways. I see people healing from just homeopathy. I see people healing from orthomolecular medicine, which is just high doses of supplements and nutrients. I see people healing from juicing and coffee enemas. And people are healing in a variety of ways. It just seems to take a really long time, and it's an expensive road to be on.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, one of the things we've done with Fight Heal Live, that whole statement is that is the base to all these different protocols. So whether it be supplements, whether it be home remedies, or, or whatever It's that fight, heal, live attitude that really gets people past this. So I think this is gonna be a great episode for you guys to listen to, to gather information, to be encouraged, and I hope you enjoy it. If you haven't already checked out Little Bite, Big Trouble, you can find a link to that at lymevoice.com, or you can look it up on Amazon. I think it's a great little book. It's about Lyme and Sarah's journey through Lyme, written from a bird's-eye view through birds. I think you guys, it's really well illustrated. That project took 3 years.

Took a long time.

Took a long time.

So I took longer than it should have.

Yeah, good things usually do take longer than they should, but it was worth it, and I think you guys will benefit from it. That's available for purchase under $20. I think you guys are really going to enjoy that. Also, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, just go to iTunes or Stitcher, hit the subscribe button, and if you're really feeling generous, you can leave us a review. And what that does is it helps others find us and it puts us higher up in the rankings so that the message of LionVoice can go out there. And thanks again for being with us, and we hope you enjoy.

Dr. Hummel, thank you so much for being here with us today and talking to our audience.

Oh, you're welcome. Very happy to be here.

Awesome. So I really have wanted to do this episode for about 4 years and it just took a while to get around to it, but it's one of the most frequently asked questions is how to get over the neurological issues. And when I was at Invita, which was Shea at the time, when I went through their IPA treatment, so their neurological repair treatment, which is now called IRAD, insulin receptor antibiotic delivery, it was so huge for me. It, it truly felt like it just unlocked my brain each and every time I went through a treatment. And so can you just give us a broad overview of what that is?

Well, pretty much what we're talking about when we're doing this is we're really talking about delivering an antibiotic into the— intracellularly, and then we're looking at doing it into the, uh, the central nervous system, which is why for your case, it was likely selected because of the neuroborreliosis that was a complication there. And so, this is kind of a derivation off of what's called insulin potentiation therapy, which is basically using insulin and putting the body into a hypoglycemic state. And by doing so, we make the cells very hungry for glucose. And the same thing with the central nervous system, we make that blood-brain barrier more permeable to glucose because this is primarily the energy that your cells and the brain and everything need. And so that's really the crux of it. So by making these things more permeable and putting you in that hypoglycemic state, we actually create a perfect way to deliver the antibiotic a little bit, I'd say a little bit better than it would normally pass the blood-brain barrier and normally go intracellular. So we get a little bit more efficacy. I see doing that.

Hmm. And I know for me, I went through at least 2 or 3 weeks of treatment before they started the, this specific therapy. Why do they do it in the middle of treatment?

A lot of people that come and see us are really, really sick. Yeah. And you know, one of the big things that you always worry about is that Herxheimer reaction, right? That Jarrett-Herxheimer reaction. And so what we try to do is just kind of clear out and get the immune system functioning and get body, you know, improving in terms of overall health, you know, with the nutrients and things like that. And then we do the more, what I would call more invasive therapies like IRAD.

Hmm. So do you guys hear from other professionals that antibiotics cannot cross the blood-brain barrier?

No, no, actually that, that would be not true. Okay. They, they can cross the blood-brain barrier. In fact, uh, there are many professionals out there who use Rocephin and, uh, you know, some of these other IV antibiotics and, you know, they use them to cross the blood-brain barrier and with people with meningitis and things like that. The problem is we want to ensure the highest delivery of these antibiotics as possible. And especially since Lyme, we know Lyme hides all over the body and, you know, Borrelia likes to go intracellular and one of the ways that we, you know, we work with that. The Lyme— typical Lyme community would say, "Okay, well, we're gonna give you a specific antibiotic that works a little bit better intracellularly," but the truth is it just doesn't saturate it enough and we have these pumps inside the cells called multiple drug-resistant pumps that will actually make it difficult to really saturate intracellular with these antibiotics. So we kind of use this therapy just to increased the efficacy. That's really what it is. It's, it's not that you can't have efficacy with the other therapies. It's that this one just has, in my opinion, greater efficacy.

Hmm. And so for me, as I would go in there, one of the common questions that I get from people is they think that you kind of are induced into a coma, and I'm constantly reassuring them that it's not, that it's actually a very It's not an odd experience at all, and you're sitting there and you're conscious the whole time, and you know, it's definitely not a coma. But for me, one of the things that happened is instantly, after years and years of losing my train of thought, not being able to articulate, I could articulate really well within just a couple of treatments. And my spelling improved, things that I had gradually lost over the years. Is that because the inflammation levels go down in your brain or what, what is that?

Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's actually exactly what's likely happening. I mean, what happens in the body whenever you have a long-term infection, especially with something like Borrelia, you know, and it goes into the nervous system, it starts to cause major kind of neurological damage, but not only that, it creates this uptick in an immune response, which is associated often with an inflammatory response. And so what happens is as you're able to clear out the, you know, all these antigens, all the infectious material, and really decrease that burden, what you see is a substantial decrease in inflammation. And when the inflammation goes down, suddenly things start functioning better. You know, suddenly the nervous system is able to create the appropriate amount of neurotransmission and you feel like yourself again. It's like coming out of the fog. For a lot of patients, that's exactly how they describe it. Hmm.

You know, when I went out to Invita, I had actually been sick for 17 years. I didn't know, but I actually had a bullseye rash. So once we kind of backtracked, it was easy to figure things out. But a lot of people know that they have had Lyme for a really long time and they've tried different treatments. And one of the things that happened for me is my husband is very dyslexic and has had dyslexia and different learning disabilities his whole life. The sicker I got, the more dyslexia-type issues I had. Hmm. And they were gone instantly when I went through those IPA treatments. And so just makes me wonder, even for him, and, you know, a lot of people who have Lyme, their kids have learning disabilities and their kids have dyslexia and a lot of other things. Are those related? Is that kind of like a simple form of your brain being inflamed and not processing things correctly?

Yeah, that's actually, to put it in the simplest manner, that's exactly how I describe it because it is inflammation, it's neuroinflammation. And when we talk a lot about autism and we talk a lot about just major kind of neurological disorders becoming more prevalent nowadays, and we also know that at least from the CDC's viewpoint, which is I think a gross underestimation, they're saying there's 300,000 new cases of Lyme per year. And so I think what we're seeing is we're seeing these underlying infectious materials causing inflammation throughout the body. So it doesn't have to just happen in the joint. 'Cause if you think about it, what's the common— when we think about the common Lyme symptom, we talk about joint inflammation and we talk about the bullseye rash. Those are two of the primary things everyone seems to understand. But what they don't understand is that anytime this infection is in an area in the central nervous system, you know, in a specific organ, you know, for example, the cardiovascular system in the heart, you get inflammation in those areas as well because basically what happens is, in a very simple, you know, way to think of it, is your immune system comes in and it attacks the Lyme and Lyme has all of these amazing, you know, adaptive mechanisms to work around the immune system. It hides from it, it shoots off little flares, like I mean it does all these things and you know, that's— flares is not exactly what it's doing but it does a lot. It does, it causes havoc and I mean they call it antigen, you know, mimicking and they'll do actually antigen shedding and all and that's what I call the flares. So basically what happens is they'll saturate an area with these little antigens and Lyme, the actual, you know, bacteria itself may be in a in a completely different area. It had moved on 'cause it has these little flagella, it can move. And so basically what happens is it leaves the area and now the area is very inflamed because the immune system thinks it's there and it's attacking the antigens that were shed from Lyme. And so it— the way our immune system attacks it is it basically in, you know, kind of a grotesque thought is that it literally just throws up oxidation onto the area and it tries to engulf these antigens but it also— puts basically hydrogen peroxide and these other very oxidative materials over your own cells and everything gets really inflamed. And you bring cytokines into the area and it just— everything gets really ticked up in terms of inflammation. When that happens to the central nervous system, anytime you change the amount of sodium in the area, in other words, you get swelling of cells, then you change the way that neurotransmission occurs. And not only that, your body's not focused on spitting out serotonin and dopamine and these things that would normally be there helping you with neurotransmission or GABA, right? That's another one, gamma-aminobutyric acid. That's an inhibitory neurotransmitter that kind of slows down your thoughts. And so what happens is when you're inflamed and you're not producing these inhibitory neurotransmitters, then you go into this almost neuroexcitatory state. People almost act like they're on too much adrenaline. And then over time, they just crash and it's like just a major level of fatigue. So anyway, that's kind of an overview of what I see happening in the neurological system that leads to those type of disorders like dyslexia and autistic-type symptoms and things like that. And I'm certainly not saying that's the only thing going on, but infections— are a big, big component out there that unfortunately are not being addressed like they should be.

Wow. Yeah. As you're just saying that, I'm like, yeah, I mean, anxiety is one of the huge horrendous symptoms because it's anxiety over— you are actually dealing with life and death issues and, you know, there's a lot of lack involved with chronic illnesses. And so there is a lot to be anxious about, but I know so many people who have never had issues with anxiety, myself included, who are off the charts about the littlest things because their body can't cope with that anxiety.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's— and what does a doctor do when you go in, any physician that you go in and you say, I have anxiety, rather than treating the underlying cause, which could be, you know, this major infectious material being present and causing, you know, this neuroinflammation, instead they give you a benzodiazepine. So they replace the GABA because benzodiazepines Benzos act as a GABA agonist. And so they do this to basically slow down neurotransmission and you feel, oh good, I'm kind of calm. But the problem is your body adapts around that and the cause was never addressed. Wow.

So one of the initial diagnoses that I had, obviously I had chronic fatigue and chronic pain, fibromyalgia, but as more and more of my neurological issues started to surface, it was both a blessing and a curse in a sense. Like I had felt those neurological things happening internally for a number of years, and it wasn't until they started being external that other people could see them and it made sense, you know what I was talking about. But one of my early diagnoses was MS because I was losing the ability to walk and also my hands were curling in a ball real bad. And I know that that's just a generic neurological thing, but for about a year and a half or 2 years, my little kids would say, why are you, why are your hands in a ball? And I would just look at them and be like, I don't know.

What is it about inflammation or neurological stuff that curls your hands in?

Well, it's basically what it is, is anytime you have, and this is a very broad generalization, but I think this is— it's how we learned it in the beginning in medical school to help us understand it a little bit. But anytime you have generally bilateral, and it can be due to nerve root issues as well, but anytime you generally have a bilateral kind of tonicity of the muscles like that, hypertonicity, it's usually a central nervous system lesion. And so that's why they look at it and they say, oh, this is this is likely MS, meaning that your body is attacking your myelin sheath. Now, does that mean that's not what's happening? Absolutely not. That could actually be what's going on. It could be attacking the infection and in so doing, destroying portions of the myelin sheath, which acts as kind of a conductive— it helps. It's like the— what I describe it as, and probably not the best description, but it does work, is kind of the coating around our wires that allows that transmission to take place. And so what happens is, yeah, when you're really inflamed and you're getting damage to the myelin sheath or to the central nervous system, these lesions can cause what we call hypertonicity of those muscles. So it's basically that it's firing constantly and it's not relaxing, right? It's not stopping the transmission to allow that muscle to calm and relax. And that's probably the best way to describe it. Yeah, that's likely what was going on. So once you got the inflammation kind of knocked down and your immune system, you know, became not so dysregulated, then it was able to heal and you were able to start having normal neurotransmission.

Yeah. Wow. It's so complex. It's just crazy what it— we always say it's unfathomable and it really is because it affects you on so many levels.

Well, you know, I'll tell you something. I— it is extremely complicated in terms of, you know, just understanding all of the different aspects that could be going on. And I would say that that is the number one mistake that I feel is being made for the Lyme community. And this is just personal opinion, but I think the number one mistake is that we're not addressing the whole person. We're not looking at all of the pieces to the puzzle, which it's oftentimes not just just Lyme alone. It's a complex and Lyme just made it that much more complex and that much more difficult on the body. And so by addressing all of the pieces, we get a much, much better outcome for patients because obviously, I mean, here's an example, just a quick example. Let's say you're having all of these Lyme symptoms and you're, you're very, very ill. Well, there are people out there that literally have Lyme and don't have any symptoms with it. And, you know, we say, "Okay. Well, it's just smoldering in the body and someday they're gonna go through a major trauma or something and that's the Lyme's just gonna tick up and then that's gonna be where they start having symptoms." Well, I think that there's truth to that because the reality of it is that we, you know, our bodies have been dealing with infectious material, you know, since the beginning of humanity and we can deal with it when we're in— our immune system is functioning, you know, appropriately and there's always a battle between the bugs getting stronger and creating, you know, unique ways around our immune system and our immune system functioning well. But I think the reason that we're seeing so many cases nowadays where it's just getting worse and worse is not just because the prevalence of Lyme itself It's also because, well, very simply, we live in very poisonous environments. We're being inundated by toxic chemicals all around us all the time. We're getting hit with drug therapies that dysregulate our immune system. We're, you know, there's just so many avenues. We live in very stressful environments, you know, nowadays. A lot of us are very, are pushed beyond our limits, and so what ends up happening is we create a perfect environment for this bug to just take off and, and destroy and cause a lot of really difficult problems in the human body.

Yeah, and you're right, we unfortunately don't practice medicine in the sense of looking at someone as a whole person.

Yeah, it's unfortunate. I just think that it's so much easier, and I understand it actually, it's what we do as human beings. We divide things up in order to to comprehend them. And you know, I'll tell you, if my heart is not functioning appropriately, the first person I'm gonna see is a cardiologist. Right. You know, and so I do have high respect for people going into their respective fields and really understanding it well. But I feel like, you know, if we could bring all of our knowledge together and really work as a team, you know, on a whole body perspective, I think we would get a lot more, you know, benefit for patients. And I think that's what we're doing here at Invita is we use everyone. I mean, when we know there's a cardiovascular issue, we recognize our limitations and we say, "Okay, we have a great cardiologist who's Lyme literate. We're gonna have you meet with them and talk to them. We have a great, you know, radiation oncologist who's amazing." So we just have all these great connections and we work together and we kind of quarterback therapy through the patient.

Yeah, and that was my experience as well. For so many years, I had been pushing, you know, I did not know anything about Lyme, but as far as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, I was just pushing my doctors like, something is really wrong, draw my blood again, something's really wrong. And I got the very common, well, I mean, literally told, oh, well, you have too many kids. And I do have 5 kids, but we had them all on purpose. And we wanted them. And I was a very high-functioning, I could be a mom and work at the same time. And that stress didn't ever cause me pain until I got sick. And I think that you bring up a really good point. There's a vast difference between how our medical system is set up to handle acute issues. And yes, if you have a heart attack, America is the place to be. But we haven't transferred that into the chronic areas of our healthcare. You guys have, you guys have, because I was blown away when I got there. I was like, this is what I've been looking for all these years. Because if I did have a specific issue, you guys really have a team of people who can target things. But that starts with looking at you as a whole person.

Well, I'll tell you one of the things that really drew me to Invita originally and has kept me here and why I love it so much. Is because, you know, we're always learning and we're always trying to perfect the treatments more and more because we recognize that there— I mean, even for example, we have an amazing success rate with Lyme patients, an amazing success rate. Since I've been here, I have seen so many people go home and just improve and improve and get better. But there's always this small percentage where, you know, we have done every therapy we know and the patient just is not getting the improvement I mean, there's always some improvement, but just not getting to the level of that where we'd like to see. And so we're constantly researching new therapies, new testing, and I'm telling you, I'm excited for what's coming here in the next year. It's gonna change the face of how Lyme is treated, in my opinion.

Oh, wow. Can you tell us, I know you guys have, don't you have a research facility out of the country somewhere?

Well, we have several facilities that we're working with and I can't go too deeply into it just because I wanna make sure that everything's going the right direction and we're still in research on a lot of these things. But one of the primary issues that we see, and this is just, you know, the best way to describe it is the primary issue is the difficulty in actually getting that Lyme diagnosis. And we're still using antiquated methods. We are still relying on Western blot and, you know, how the immune system responds. To a bug that is constantly evading the immune system. It's ridiculous. And we all understand, everyone who works with Lyme knows that the way that we're testing for it is not a good testing system. And so they're always— I mean, we have a lot of great companies out there working on better ways to test, but that's one thing that we've been really focused on. And I think you're gonna see, and you know, God willing, you know, knocking on wood and everything, that we're going to have some very novel testing methods to be able to really affirm that diagnosis and get people the proper treatment sooner, you know.

Which would make such a huge difference.

Huge. I think so. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what you went through, right? I mean, they were— they said, "Oh, you have all these other things going on," and even if they do test for it, very often they're unwilling, or if they do, they're using a lab that's only looking at, you know, a very set number of antigens and they're not looking at all of these subspecies that could be present. And, and so we just end up with a lot of false negatives, a lot of false negatives.

So. Hmm. So do you think we're moving in the direction where, I know Lyme has been compared a lot to AIDS and even polio in the sense of this, this being the epidemic of our era. Are we moving in the direction where where we would have it manageable? Like, and again, I know I'm being very general and broad, but can we do for Lyme what they were able to do with AIDS? Like, it just doesn't seem to be that simple to me. Like, can anyone with Lyme ever hope to just take a pill and have a decent quality of life in the future?

You know, I hold hope for that. I hold hope for that. But the problem is I think that just like, like HIV and any infectious, like some of these infectious diseases, there's a lot of research on, okay, how can we control the disease itself? And you can get, I think, some really significant benefit from these different treatments and from the research that's coming out. But ultimately, I think the problem is, and I'll say that, kind of reiterate this, the real issue is that we live. And when I say toxic or poisonous environment, I mean that. I mean that we're— food, our water, our air. And that pretty much sums it up. So we just had all of these toxicities that are basically feeding, basically creating a— what I would describe a disrupted environment that allows for these infections to really take root. And so no pill is going to make up for, you know, the amount of poison that we're really putting into ourselves right now. And so in my opinion, what I think is that yes, I think that down the road, I think they will come up with some incredible novel therapies to treat Lyme, but the first step is being able to identify that it's even there, you know, and then once we can identify all the different species and, you know, subspecies of Lyme and be able to know, okay, that's the infection that's— there is that infection in this patient, and then we are able to start focusing on, you know, the research to treat it very specifically. Right now, and you're very aware of this, right now, it is a really invasive, extensive amount of treatment that takes place to really overcome the level of infection that can sometimes be present. So unfortunately, and this is talking about chronic Lyme, obviously there are those patients who they don't really, you know, show the symptoms of it even though they may have it. And then there are those patients that, you know, they had acute Lyme and it was treated right away and it literally never came back. It just was gone. And so there are these, you know, avenues to consider as well. But ultimately what it comes down to for me is that that we can't really heal, you know, any of the diseases fully in our society until as a whole we start treating the body as a whole and we start cleaning up all of the things that we put into it.

Hmm. Yeah. And that's where it gets really complicated because I remember the learning curve and it had started before I ever got out to Envita. I had started reading the Gerson Protocol, which is the gist of juicing and coffee enemas to heal chronic fatigue. And then you guys also recommend 2 to 3 coffee enemas a day during treatment. And I just remember thinking like, there were so many layers of it. Like, okay, I can't drink tap water. Tap water has chlorine and fluoride in it. Okay. And then the pans that I use, I realized weren't good pans. And that, you know, it just kept going on and on for a number of years. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh. 'When does this end?' Like, we're having to shed all this stuff. And it was a, it was a somewhat painful process. But you're right, when you realize the levels of toxicity that exist in our lives, in practically every product that we use, no wonder we're all struggling.

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And it's, it's heartbreaking because sometimes You know, the body is an adaptive, amazing healing mechanism and it can do things that are just— that seem like miracles to us when they occur and we rely on. I mean, as physicians, we are not treating the disease in a sense. We're really helping the body be able to heal the disease. And one of my favorite I guess metaphors when I'm describing the overall or analogies, I guess, with what's going on is we're sending in missiles and the missiles are definitely wiping out a good portion of that population of Borrelia and the co-infections, which, you know, that's a big part too. But ultimately, the only way that people heal and the only way they really get better is when the ground troops go in and clean it all up. And that's what your body has to do. Otherwise, you know, I mean, HIV is a great example. You brought up an amazing example there because I can tell you that it doesn't matter if a person gets what we call a nosocomial infection, right? Basically, they get a common infection that's in the body anyway and they have HIV. It's usually that infection that kills them. And guess what? We have plenty of antibiotics that normally would fight that infection. But it's because the immune system is not functioning that it doesn't matter. You can hit that as long as you want with antibiotics. Eventually, the bug will adapt around the missiles. It'll learn to hide and infect how it needs to and not be affected by those missiles, and then, you know, it'll ultimately, you know, overcome the human being. And so that is what our goal is as a whole is to make it so that You know, the missiles do their best in terms of clearance, but ultimately the body has to do the healing.

Hmm, that's a great analogy. That makes so much sense.

For nearly 2 decades, Invita Medical Center has been leading the way with the latest in personalized treatment options designed for patients dealing with Lyme disease complex.. At Invita Medical Center, they offer a team-style approach and the latest technology regarding treatment and testing at an unmatched radical love and care environment for their patients. Call to speak to one of the patient care coordinators today to learn why hundreds of patients choose Invita Medical Center each year. You can find them online at invita.com.

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So let me ask you this. A couple weeks ago in one of the Lyme groups over in the UK, they— on one of their newspapers in the UK, it said that doctors, they were in the process of allowing doctors to not treat people who had been Googling their issues. And, you know, there's different aspects of socialized medicine that are good and that are bad. But this was something that I dealt with from the get-go in the sense of, you know, here I am losing more and more quality of life as the years go on. And I'm just being told it's stress and anxiety and depression. None of which I had a history of, and in a sense being dismissed. I feel like they were doing the best they could with what they knew, but it really took me— my Googling and my researching kept me alive, and I know that it did for a lot of other patients. And if I had waited for one of my physicians to figure it out, I would have died because I was so close for— I was so close in 2013. Tell me about the level of patience when you're— you guys have a patient that comes in. I am assuming they have a massive amount of education because that's what, that's what I see is by the time someone gets to a basically a crisis care clinic like you guys are, they've had to learn so much. How do you guys handle that? And one of the things I felt was you guys were the first you guys were the first people I talked to who were ahead of me in the sense of when I was explaining my symptoms, you're like, yeah, yeah, we got that. And so it was really relieving, but tell me about the education that people come to you with. And then I've got a couple more questions.

Okay. So most patients that come and see us are just like you, you state very well educated when it comes to their symptoms and their disease state. And you know, it's funny, I think tying this into what you were describing in terms of the UK saying that they can turn away patients that are doing their own research, it's unbelievable and that's ridiculous. There is no better advocate for your care than you. You are the one that's living in the unique body that you have. Now, we understand things on a physiological perspective from a percentile basis, right? We look at it and we say, Okay, 90% of the patients who have this type of physiology do well with this type of treatment, and that is the only way that we can really do good medicine. It's what they call evidence-based medicine. And so the issue there though, that what happens is we take away the individualization and then the people who suffer are the ones that don't fall perfectly into those categories. Like for example, the people that realize that they have Lyme and they're not just doing symptomatic suppression anymore. Like for example, taking the benzodiazepines. Azepine for anxiety. So the reality of that situation is this: highly encourage people to be their own advocates. And I can tell you a lot of what I've learned has been from the patients that I treat. Basically, the way that I, I describe it, what we do here is we recognize that we're all human beings. And, you know, even though we're all very well-educated in Lyme disease and in chronic infectious diseases and, you know, and cancer, which is primarily where we, we remain focused, we recognize our own limitations. And truthfully, it takes, I think, honestly, you have to be humble and know that yes, this person that comes in likely has a really great understanding of what's going on with them. And so the goal is, at least for me, whenever I'm meeting with a patient is to one, be very, very prepared in terms of my understanding, which is, Hey, here's a unique patient. Have you guys seen this before? And we talk about all of the different aspects as a group because you have several physicians working here. We have our, our DO, we have the other physicians that are all working through Invita as well. And basically we all discuss the patient cases and we talk about things that we don't— have you seen this and how would you approach it? So we get kind of a multifaceted approach to the treatment. So when someone is surprised by how much we understand, how much we know, it's usually because, well, yeah, we see a lot of patients that are very advanced and in similar situations, but also we recognize our own limitations and we rely on each other and really conferring and understanding deeply what's going on with each of our patients. So that is one of the things that we do. That I feel is a real plus.

Yeah. In conclusion here, let me just ask you about insurance. And I, I know that it's such a huge issue for a lot of people, especially people who are totally disabled, that a lot of clinics and a lot of effective practitioners don't take insurance. And I know there's a lot that goes into that on both sides. Do you Do you see us moving in the direction where insurance ever will cover extensive effective treatment? 'Cause honestly, it almost feels like we're going backwards in that regard.

We kind of are going backwards in that regard, unfortunately. And I think the truth is it comes down to, really it comes down to money. It's a, you know, it is definitely a monetary thing there. The, and this is just, again, my opinion on that matter, but what happens is we see that the insurance agencies are looking to maximize profit and still be able to support the people that are in their insurance plan. And there's a few ways that you do that. You don't cover really expensive or extensive treatments, and that's one way to do it. And, you know, you, if you think about like Lyme, Lyme is a very extensive treatment protocol. And so the same thing occurs with cancer patients. I see that quite frequently where they're willing to cover the basic standard of care, but they're unwilling to cover the newer therapies that are coming out that are of higher, a better standard because everyone is looking to make profit off of it. So for example, the company that just created this new drug is charging "$10,000 per treatment for this drug." And the insurance companies are saying, "Well, we can't afford to pay for that." And because if we do that for enough patients, we won't make enough money. And ultimately, it's, it's the bottom line is monetary. And that's one thing that I really, really love about being here is that, you know, we ultimately, we have to make money, you know, to keep the business going. Disheartening. But one of the things that I really love about here is that the focus is doing what's right for the patient and doing what is ethically right and still doing the best to balance the monetary side of things too. So it's not— the focus isn't just monetary. And I've seen it again and again where, you know, patients get the help they need despite the, you know, the monetary limitations that might be there. And so it's disheartening the way the insurance field is. And I do think that as soon as they come up with the pill, you know, the one pill and it's, and then it goes through, you know, the years of patent and then ends up being really inexpensive, then that's when, that's when they'll cover it. That's exactly when we'll see it. And it's unfortunate that our insurance system is that way. It's kind of unfortunate that the system is set up that way. I think if we were looking at things from a more preventative and causative treatment approach, then the system would function a lot better and if we had more people, you know, really in it for, you know, the right reasons rather than for monetary reasons, I think that we would have benefit there as well. But it's ultimately what I tell people, I say this all the time, water runs downhill and the majority of patients, you know, it takes a long time to get sick enough to say, "Okay, I'm gonna do all of these things to get better." And so they wanna choose the easiest path, which is take a pill to suppress the symptom. And then the same thing with the doctors. Hey, if I can see 30 patients in a day and bill at that and only have to follow an algorithm that says you come in with this problem and I give you this, that's easy medicine. I don't have to think. I don't have to work hard and I get paid well. And so everyone is looking to follow downhill medicine. And the truth is that it is always harder to go uphill. Uphill. And that's what you get here in Envita. That's what you get. You get people that are willing to make the trek with you uphill. And it's not easy. And it's very difficult. And you're going to hit snags and you may not think you can make it up the next little, you know, path. But ultimately, we're all here to help you get there.

Hmm. So one of the things that I've sent, I, you know, I just see it so clearly now. For me, it took so many years to figure it out. And so— you know, there's people all around us with Lyme and chronic fatigue, and especially people who cannot find a diagnosis. And for those who have a lot of neurological issues, I have just begged people to go out and do testing with you guys because it is so comprehensive. And it— when you need a clinical diagnosis for something, you can oftentimes— you can't get it from your primary physician. And so I know that you guys do a a large amount of testing and then combine it for a clinical diagnosis. But for people who can't get out to Invita to do testing, what are the most accurate tests that you guys recommend at this point?

Well, that's where we're really trying to change that. I wouldn't, I couldn't confidently say that any of the tests are really, really accurate. I mean, we like, we like using iGenics you know, through their, their Western blot and the, the iSpot tests and these different immunoblot kind of testing. They're decent, but again, they have their limitations. They're a good company and I think if that's what you have access to, that's what you use. And, you know, as well as, you know, any sort of Lyme and co-infection polymerase chain reaction, they're not the best. Again, there's no— there is no perfect testing right now, which is part of the main issue. Looking at CD57, is that, you know, the absolute CD57 gives us a really good idea of that particular natural killer cell. And if you do have chronic Lyme, it's often low. And that's based on a couple of studies that, you know, have shown that and in our own, you know, experience we've seen that. And we look at just, you know, so we're looking at basically the immune system, how it's reacting. We're trying to catch how many bugs are present. And then ultimately really what Lyme— the Lyme diagnosis is based on, and this is the reality of it due to the flawed testing, is it's based on the clinical diagnosis and it's based on the, the patient's symptoms, their history, and the cumulative knowledge that we can acquire from the testing.

So, okay. Yeah, I know that's such a hard hard topic to handle because it's like, well, it, you know, people are like, I can only afford to do X, you know, X dollars of testing. And you're like, okay, well, you're probably gonna need a lot more than that just to get going, which is unfortunate. But I think one of the best things, one of the best, the best advice I ever got here in New Mexico was from a physician who's a friend. And, you know, I was just going way downhill. I was blacking out and he said, I emailed him and I said, what would you do if this was your wife? Like, what would you do for her? And he said, get out of the state. That was his, you know, we were in New Mexico at the time and New Mexico is a very, very poor state, but it, it was huge to, and I know not everybody has this option. And even for us to be at a place where we could operate outside our insurance, that to me was this huge thing. And I, I regret that it took me so long to realize I needed to go outside my insurance. I think in a sense, I naively thought that my insurance company was looking out for me in some way. I don't think that anymore, but being able to operate outside your insurance seems to be such a key factor.

Yeah, that's un— it's really sadly unfortunate that that is a, a key factor, but very often it's true. I mean, we see that people that are operating within insurance are operating within a very tight regulated bubble of what we call standard of care. And unfortunately, the standard of care, you know, my best example, my favorite example recently in the last few years was the huge nutrition panel that was put together, the government panel, and basically everyone came in and all these scientists came in and said, here's the research. These are the new guidelines we need to be following in terms of putting out nutritional guidelines in the schools and, you know, to people. And so they gave all of this information from the research and from, you know, experience and knowledge that's been gained through empiricism, right? And what ended up happening is they also had several people that have skin in the game is the best way to describe it, such as the food industry, many people in the food industry who basically said, "No, we can't put out that guideline. This is our evidence to show that that's not true." And what ended up happening is a compromise. And that's what you see with our current nutritional guidelines. It's a compromise between industry and research. And that is— and unfortunately, industry oftentimes will fudge that research too, to a certain extent. And so what you'll see here is the same thing occurs, you know, with these insurance companies and the insurance system is that, you know, there's this interplay of standard of care that is based upon not only what is best for the patient, you know, from research perspective and from a clinical perspective, but also what is best monetarily for the system, and it's kind of not the best system in terms of getting people better. So that's why we work outside of it primarily. We work within and without, I'll say that. And the truth is we try to do the best that we can within it too, but even we have limitations. There are times where I know that what we could be doing for the patient is likely gonna be the best thing that they could get, but because of the concern regarding litigation or concern regarding what is considered standard of care, we have to follow very specific guidelines. So we're all within this system that's kind of twisting what would be a perfect system, right? So that's, that's the reality of it. But I will tell you that the way we have it set up is probably, at least in my opinion, based on my experience, which is, you know, I've seen a lot of clinics, I've seen a lot of ways people are working. I mean, what these guys are doing here and what we're doing here is, is what works. And unfortunately it doesn't fall within that standard of care realm in terms of insurance covering everything.

Yeah. Well, I know we started this conversation by talking about the neurological repair program, but I greatly appreciate your professional side opinion on things. I just have two more questions. One is about mold. And then I want you to tell us even why you guys practice in Arizona and what Arizona allows. I think there's more freedom holistically.

Is that accurate in Arizona? Yeah, I will tell you, Arizona so far is one of the best states in terms of your ability to practice with a certain amount of freedom and not worry about, you know, your board coming down and saying you can't do this. Now, I want to, I want to emphasize one thing that I didn't get to earlier. I actually forgot to mention it, is that we— our ultimate goal as at Invita. And, you know, the owner and, you know, kind of with his creative genius, Dr. Prado, Dino Prado, his goal and where he's guiding the company is towards changing the face of medicine everywhere. And so you mentioned talking about what tests are we going to be able to run, you know, for these patients and what can we do now? Well, we're not quite there yet, but I promise you in the next couple of years, The vision of Invita is to get into other doctors' offices to make it so that standard and it's out there for everyone. Wow. That's awesome. That's a, that's a big, big component here.

And you know what? I hear that so much. Dr. Richard Horowitz spoke at the Living Well with Lyme Disease conference and he's, as far as I know, not seeing patients anymore. He's training physicians and Lori Dennis, who's an author and psychotherapist, she is in the process of creating a program program where she's training other therapists. And so you just, you see this kind of like natural momentum of people who are excellent in their field kind of having to take, take a step back and saying, okay, how do I maximize what I've learned? So that's awesome that you guys are doing that.

Yeah, it's coming. And I, I see, you know, some major, major changes in the next couple years to how Lyme is going to be, at least, at least in terms of getting more effective treatments out there and more effective testing, which would be huge. There's going to be some big changes, but awesome.

So go ahead. So let's, let's end on mold. And more and more, man, I feel like 4 years ago it was barely mentioned, and now it's a daily conversation within blog pages and Facebook groups. And I've seen it firsthand. I have 2 friends specifically who have gone through extensive amounts of treatment and both of them were not making a lot of progress, ended up realizing they had mold, remediating it, and then their healing just increased exponentially. Is mold almost like you talked about with AIDS, how the common cold can be something that kills someone? Is mold just another symptom of the fact that their immune system is so weakened?

Well, you know, it's interesting that you say that mold in itself has an immune system weakening effect. And that's where it's really very interesting. So this is a lot of where you're hearing a lot about the main focus on mold nowadays is coming from Dr. Richard Shoemaker. And he is, I think very highly of him, very well-researched, very intelligent man. And so he's been putting out this information for quite some time and making effective changes for a lot of people who have these sensitivities to mold. What happens is not everyone is as sensitive to molds, but everyone under certain conditions with mold types are not gonna respond well. And so for example, we have, you know, what we call black mold, right? And that black mold releases a particular type of mold toxin and that toxin— so the difference between, just to get a little technical, the difference between a toxin toxicant. So toxicant is that the toxicant usually comes from environmental things, for example, like chemicals in our environment, and a toxin usually comes from a living something. And so when we're getting technical, that's the— if you have, you know, an environmental specialist or a physician that you're talking to, that's one of the big differences. But the toxin that is produced by these black moles, the trichothecene toxins, they will actually have have a suppressive effect on particular aspects of the immune system. And same with candidiasis, right? Which is, you know, a yeast in that kind of fungal family that— but basically what you have here is a particular type of toxin can be produced, for example, gliotoxin, which is a little bit controversial, but I know that it is present and oftentimes seen with Candida, you know. And so basically this will actually act to suppress the immune system. In fact, there's been studies that have where they've literally taken some of the components, you know, for pharmaceutical studies and tested it as an immunosuppressant. And so when you're constantly bombarded with these molds and these toxins, they have an immune dysregulating effect themselves and it allows these other infectious material that would normally be able to, you know, be held back by the immune system. For example, one of the common infections everyone seems to have is Epstein-Barr virus, right? Mono. And that one is kept pretty much in check throughout our lives because our immune system takes care of it. But you see it reactivating again and coming back in patients who are chronically exposed to molds. And so mold is a big, a big concern. And if you have a particular human leukocyte antigen, you know, you may actually be more sensitive than others. And so yes, I think mold is a really big concern. A good majority of Lyme patients that I've seen, I mean, think about the states that Lyme is most commonly in, you know, the main ones that the CDC primarily recognizes, even though it's much more than that. But you look at those states, a lot of them are very high moisture content, right? And thus high moldy environment. So you cause a suppressive or dysregulative effect on the immune function of the patient, and you end up with a worsening of Lyme etiology as well.

Hmm. Dr. Homol, thank you so much. That was a very enlightening conversation. And I had a ton of questions. Thank you for shedding some light on it.

No, I appreciate it. I like talking about medicine and I love geeking out. Well, thank you so much.

You're very welcome. Really, really appreciate your time. Yeah.

Wishing your doctors could communicate and come up with a cohesive plan specific to your medical needs and genetics? At Invita Medical Center, they offer a team-style approach, giving you the opportunity to heal. In addition to a commitment of providing radical love and care for their patients, they are strategically located in sunny Arizona because Arizona offers the best integrative medical laws in the country. Call today to speak with one of their patient care coordinators.

You can find them online at invita.com. 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. 'Kay, Lincoln? 'Kay. The medical information on LymeVoice is provided as is without any representation 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.

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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 this podcast.

Got it, Lincoln? Got it.