062 Discovering Personal Empowerment Through Chronic Lyme

You know, I had a moment like you where, like, I thought, how can I help people? I thought, if I were a billionaire, how would I help Lyme patients? I thought, oh, I would start an insurance company that covered Lyme patients. And I thought, I don't have to wait to be a billionaire to do that. I can start getting donations and cover Lyme patients. And basically, that's what we do. So, you know, go to ticktoffoundation.org. And we have— and click on the grant link to see if you qualify. Because we're a nonprofit, there's some rules we need to follow. 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 live. Here are your your host, Aaron and Sarah 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.

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Now we're going to talk with Greg Kirk, the founder of the Ticked Off Foundation and the Ticked Off Music Fest. And Greg, you are a busy guy. Yes, deeply involved in the Lyme community, and I'm so appreciative of all that you do and your organization, and I just really appreciate your time and being here with us today.

Well, thank you, and likewise. And I'm surprised it's taken this long for us to finally meet each other because, you know, you're a big voice in the Lyme world too. And, you know, I'm glad we're finally meeting, and I hope we can collaborate on something big in the future.

Yeah, I know. We got to talk about that last week. It'll be interesting to see what comes from that. It's funny because all these conversations and relationships. We were just at the Tick-Borne Rocky Mountain Forum conference and got to meet a bunch of people a couple of weeks ago. And we're sitting there and we're having these conversations. And I was relaying some of it to my daughter when we got home. And she was kind of like asking me questions about like the longevity of it. And I was like, babe, none of us are going anywhere. Like, we're all in this for a long time.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So you, you're going to talk about this later in the interview, but you recently published a book called The Gratitude Curve, and the subtitle, subtitle is Using the Lessons of Chronic Illness to Reach Personal Empowerment. And I love, I just love the title.

Thank you. It, uh, well, I, you know, I lived it. Yeah, it's not just, you know, not just about my Lyme journey, which was actually a relief to some friends of mine who were, you know, basically one, one person said, oh, I'm so relieved it wasn't you going into all the gory details about all the terrible things you went through. You know, it does go into some of that, but, you know, my story will not be unfamiliar to most Lyme patients. You know, it's the whole, you know, misdiagnosis situation and long road to treatment and all that. But I found at the end of the journey that it was the amount of gratitude. It was just a total upside-down world where giving gratitude to the disease for changing my life was where I ended up, which, if you would have told me that in the beginning of the illness, I would have punched you. Yeah. And even still, when I I mentioned that to some patients, they were like, you're out of your mind, but it gave me a sense of, not just a sense of empowerment, it did empower me. So I'm now helping Lyme patients on so many different levels, including healing. I've become a healer myself and it just, as crazy as it sounds, the disease pointed me in a completely different direction. When I stopped fighting it, I started to ride it, like a wave. You can stand in front of a wave, learn to surf. And I learned to surf, and it took me to some pretty cool places that where I am now. And I'm really grateful. It's— I, I'm— I help people every day, and that's the most gratifying thing I can think of.

You know, Greg and I talked about this in our phone call that you guys weren't on, but that's what I— when I was looking at going back into real estate, I owned a real estate brokerage. And when I was looking into going back into that, I just thought, what right? Our time is so valuable. When you've gone through something like this, you realize your time is so valuable. And I thought, what would be worth getting up every morning for? Even if I'm not feeling good, even if I'm having symptoms, like, what's worth getting up and fighting for? Not a real estate brokerage. Like, frankly, that just was not going to cut it. And I thought, I want to be able to help people. Like, I want to, I want to stop the suffering. I want people to not suffer the way I did. And And we share that right away. When Greg and I got to talk on the phone, I was like, oh my gosh, our hearts are united in that. Like getting to help people on a regular basis stop the suffering is so worthwhile on so many levels.

Absolutely. And it's fun meeting other people like you who have that same mentality. When you start getting better, it's— there's some of us who are there, the first instinct is I don't want anybody to go through what I went through. So I want to help people. And as I said earlier, the feeling of helping somebody every day, it's just an unbelievable feeling. And I was in a situation like you where I was working for a big corporation and just making rich people richer. And I didn't have a sense of accomplishment or gratification when I would come home almost every night. But today, it's like every Every day is filled with, you know, literally people saying, you know, you changed my life, or you saved my life, or God bless you, there's a special place in heaven for you. I mean, I went through my entire first half of my life never hearing those words. So now I literally hear them every week, and that's what gives me the lift to keep going. So anyway, that's the whole story of the Gratitude Curve. It has some twists and turns in it. And I've talked to people who have said, I can't put it down. It gets into some wild stuff, some spiritual healing, some things that might push people's belief systems. But as my friends and my family will attest, every word in the book is true. So I guess the only warning is that it goes into some areas that some people might find hard to believe, and I'm one of those people.

Right.

So I experienced wild things and I had a hard time believing it and still do. But I did live it and I'm just reporting it. So there are many ways to get healed from Lyme disease, and one way is through opening up and to yourself to all kinds of different alternative treatments. That's how I got better.

It really— my husband and I say all the time that Lyme makes you— it brings you to the place where you question every aspect of your life over and over again. Is this serving me? Is this belief getting me where I need it to go? Okay, what did I grow up believing about this? And what do I think is true? And I mean, it just forces you to evaluate everything.

Yeah. And I think that all starts with the situation that happens with Lyme patients when they go to the doctor and they do not have the typical diagnosis, treatment, cure, you know, scenario that they have when they go to a doctor to be healed from the flu, you know. So they've trusted their doctors for years, and they go in, and, and many, many, many doctors are not trained to recognize Lyme. Or to know what to do with a patient after they have been diagnosed. And, you know, my belief system got turned upside down. And I spent 7 years in the, you know, just treating with pharmaceuticals and antibiotics and Western medicine. I gave it a really good shot. I threw my heart into it, literally. And my heart got jabbed by a PICC line insertion and I almost died. And, you know. So my belief system about Western medicine and insurance and doctors and what they know and how they're trained was completely turned upside down. And I didn't start getting better until I left that system. So that may be a shocking thing for some people to hear, but for other Lyme patients, they're probably nodding their heads right now, like, yep, that's what I went through too.

I was totally nodding my head.

Yeah, right. Yeah, so, you know, I got— I started getting better with, with alternative treatments like herbal treatments and so forth, but I still kind of plateaued. And that's when I went completely off the reservation. I found a video back in, in 2011. Oprah Winfrey had done a— she was featuring a healer from Brazil named John of God. So, you know, I thought, oh Wow, a faith healer, you know, one of these guys who, you know, cuts into people with a rusty penknife and pulls chicken parts out of them or something. And I thought, this will be funny, because she was sending a Harvard-trained doctor down to debunk him. And I thought, well, let's see what happens here. So the doctor goes down, and, and he could not debunk John of God. He, at the end of the, the video, he basically said, I'm seeing what's happening with my mind. You know, he's witnessing miracles. So John of God cuts into people, they don't bleed, there's no anesthesia, they don't sterilize the instruments. He scrapes people's corneas, he puts forceps into their heads. It's just, that's unbelievable. But that's only about 5% of what he does. The other 95% is thousands of people come every day and they sit in a meditation room and he utters a blessing and people with stage 4 cancer just suddenly walk away with no cancer. So I was hearing all this and I thought, well, that's still pretty hard to believe. But this doctor said, I'm understanding what is going on here with my mind, but I'm not believing with my heart. And as he was talking, somebody off camera pointed that he was starting to bleed under his heart, like on his chest. He had a white t-shirt on. And he lifted his shirt and there was this tiny hole where he did not stop bleeding. And again, somebody off camera said, your heart has been open, you've received an invisible surgery from the entities that are in Brazil helping John of God. Well, that's all I had to see. That was unbelievable, unbelievable to see. Then I thought, okay, something very unusual is happening there. I'd already been trained in Reiki, so I understood how energy worked, and I thought, This is off-the-charts energy. This is something I've never seen. This is like biblical, you know, with thousands of people are coming and being healed. This could be a big deal. So I ended up going down and I went by myself and, you know, just the long— I wrote about it in meticulous detail in my book, but the long and short of it is the first few days I was there, I experienced the, I guess a miracle. And it changed the way I look. It changed my physical appearance. So that was—

what do you mean by that?

Well, it made me age regress. Like, it looked like I looked 10 years younger.

Like years had been restored to you.

Yeah. And how I noticed it was, you know, I was waking up every morning and, you know, washing my face and looking in the mirror and then, you know, going about my day and, you know, going to the casa, which is the place where John of God heals people. And I was going through the regimen where you sit in meditation for hours and experience, you know, you can feel these energy shifts happening. The first few hours I was there, I experienced an energy shift. You know, I've heard of different friends of mine who have had what they have called a religious experience. Yeah. And, you know, where they suddenly just started crying and they felt the presence of a higher being.

Yeah.

A friend of mine described that experience to me. I thought, wow, it's like a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Well, I've had that happen so many times I can't count. So the first time it happened to me, I felt this heat move down while I was, you know, sitting there. And actually, I was sitting in a situation where I had just flown down, and, uh, they ushered me through, and I, you know, the first day seeing John of God, and they said, you know, make sure you touch his hand, look him in the eye, and he'll tell you what the next step is. Well, they whisked me through. There was hundreds of people in line behind me. I didn't touch him. He didn't even look me in the eye. And they just pulled me away. And I thought, oh no, that's it. I flew down here. I blew it. I don't know if I'm going to be able to see him again. I screwed it up. I started having all these terrible feelings like, oh my God, there was my chance and I blew it. And they said, go sit in this meditation area.— and, you know, wait, just wait. And so I did. And I was feeling sorry for myself. I thought, oh God, you know, how could I screw that up? And then within minutes, I felt this heat come down on me, and my heart opened up. And I just had this sudden awareness that there were so many beings, some angels, whatever you want to call them, just on the other side of the veil there in Brazil and wherever we are. That we're being loved and so taken care of that we never need to worry about anything. All we need to worry about— we don't need to worry about anything, but all we need to do is just open ourselves up to this, to this, just, just knowing that there is love and healing available to us if we just relax and open up. And that was, that was a mind-blowing thing that occurred the first hour I was there. So anyway, I went through days and days of this kind of stuff.. And it was changing me on every level. I went down for physical healing and I was getting three-dimensional healing, you know? Yeah. So the one day that they— it was a Saturday and they, they said, you know, John of God doesn't practice on the weekend, so, you know, we are going to take our little tour group down to the sacred waterfall. And I almost didn't go, but, you know, people said, oh, it's an amazing waterfall. It's a small little waterfall, but it goes through an underground cavern that goes across all these quartz crystals. And it's just a very high vibration place. And when you go, you're not supposed to talk and you can't disturb any of the foliage. And sometimes you'll see monkeys or toucans and all kinds of amazing birds. But you just don't, you treat it like church or something. It's very sacred. I'm like, all right, I'll go. I didn't think anything of it and I went. And I was waiting in line for my turn to go under this tiny little waterfall. I felt every cell in my body just explode with energy and I felt every symptom go away. And then it was my turn to go and I stood under the waterfall and my face was nowhere near the waterfall and it was hitting my back, like the middle of my back. And it was cold and it made me recoil, but something else, something kind of supernatural was happening. My entire body went into a muscle spasm and I started breathing heavily like I was going to pass out. And people on the side said, let go of anything that doesn't serve you. And I'm like, what? And I could tell I was holding on to stuff. And the more they said, pray, do whatever it is, just release anything that doesn't serve you. And as I did that, my body relaxed. I stopped hyperventilating. And I can't even tell you what I felt. I felt everything went away. It washed away with that water. And when I went back to my hotel room, they told us, they said, leave that water on you. It's sacred water, basically. And you don't need to take a shower till tomorrow. But I went in and I washed my hands. I looked in the mirror. And that's when it happened. I saw myself in the mirror and I just laughed because it didn't even look like what I had seen earlier in the morning. Everything looked different. So, you know, I thought, am I losing my mind down here or what? But I got on FaceTime with my wife. I didn't say anything. And her first words were like, oh my God, what happened to you? You look different. And I, you know, I burst into tears. Wow. So that was, you know, just one of the stories I, I, I have that, that is in the book. But, you know, I ended up going down 6 more times, or 5 more times, and, um, realizing that I didn't need to have to go continue going down there to receive the healing. I could make myself open to it. And, you know, I've helped other patients go through to see John of God, not just in Brazil, but when he comes to the Omega Center in Rhinebeck. New York every year. So that's just one of the things. He's not coming this year. He's going to be— he's going to return in 2019. But anyway, that's kind of what triggered me to start wanting to help people. And when I came back, you know, I have a background in event planning and I'm a musician, so kind of the no-brainer for me was to start a benefit concert.

And so I started the Ticked Off Music Fest in 2012 and Which I just want to say for the record, I thought was so brilliant when I very first saw a Ticked Off Festival music concert. I was like, oh my gosh, that's such a great idea. I was appreciating it from afar even though I didn't know who you were.

Yeah, oh, thank you. Well, you know, it's, it's a lot of fun. And, you know, we did our first event in 2013, and I thought, well, you know how these benefits run, you know, you, you get a bunch of good bands, you get a a bunch of people to show up and you get people to donate and you raise awareness. And kind of the way I had seen fundraisers in the past is, you know, you raise awareness and you push for a cure, you know, so research and find a cure, all that kind of stuff. So that was my plan. And I did that for about a year. And then the thing that surprised me was 80% or more of the attendees at the ticked off festivals were Lyme patients. And I'm not talking the kind of Lyme patients that are functional. I'm talking the ones that are in wheelchairs and have oxygen tanks or walkers or you name it. And, um, you know, I remember I told you the story on the phone, but yeah, this blew my mind.

Yeah, yeah, tell the story.

Here it is. The first, the first music fest in Wilmington, Delaware. It's my, my, one of my hometowns where I grew up. I went to school. And it's minutes before I'm supposed to announce, ladies and gentlemen, the first Ticked Off Music Fest. And the crowd is coming in and an older gentleman about 80 years old is in a walker and he's got his wife next to him. And all of a sudden we hear him yell out, "Help, we need help!" And of course we thought he was having a stroke or something. And I ran over and I'm supposed to be on stage at this point announcing, And we ran over to see if he was okay. We said, what's the matter? He said, we have Lyme disease, so we need help with it. I'm like, oh, okay, let me go do this thing. We'll come— I'll come back, we'll talk about it. So, um, that, that, you know, we hadn't even started the first event and that was going on. So that continued to go on for a couple of years, and then I got it through my thick head that, hey, maybe we should start a foundation to help patients because awareness is one thing, raising money and research is another, but patients need help every day and insurance not covering anything. So if the treatments that I've noticed that are working better, that work better for me in particular, or the alternative treatments that are not at all covered by insurance. Insurance will cover some antibiotics and pharmaceuticals, but, um, you know, that's, uh, they do help some people. Obviously, they help people in the early stages of Lyme before they go chronic, but the long-term antibiotics, I, I can tell you from firsthand experience, starts to become more damaging than, you know, more harm than good. And then eventually, you know, I was having— I was paying for bottles of Mepron, you know, to fight Babesia. They were $400 after insurance covered it. Right, right. So I had a moment like you where like I thought, how can I help people? I thought, if I were a billionaire, how would I help Lyme patients? I thought, oh, I would start an insurance company that covered Lyme patients. And I thought, I don't have to wait to be a billionaire to do that. I can start getting donations and, and cover Lyme patients. And basically that's what we do. So, you know, go to ticktoffoundation.org and we have— and click on the grant link to see if you qualify. Because we're a nonprofit, there's some rules we need to follow set up by the IRS, but really all you need to do is to prove that you're— you have financial need and prove that you have Lyme. You know, we will work with patients on that, and then once the patients qualify, they qualify either for a grant and/or discounts on treatment. And the biggest one is through the Cowden Protocol. So after I started the foundation, Nutramedics reached out to me and, and said, hey, we like what you're doing. We'd like to use your mechanism of, you know, finding and qualifying financial need patients. We want to give your patients a 6-month discount, a drastic discount on the Cowden Protocol. You know, so the Cowden Protocol costs about $350 a month, and you know, it's a, it's a lot. It's, it's 14 different herbal tinctures, a couple bottles of supplements, and you know, it's very involved protocol that luckily they give you a booklet, a dosing calendar, you know, because it's 4 dosing times a day. Well, that's, you know, each month that's, that's $350, but through our foundation and the discount we get with Nutramedics, it's only $40 for the first month. And then $150 for months 2 through 6. So, you know, most patients can afford that, and the others who can't, we help with a little bit of finances. But, you know, as Dr. Cowden says, he's asked us not to give away the protocol because he says it doesn't work as well with some patients. They've actually done studies on it. Yes, it's true. Because patients don't value it and they don't take it seriously. So we help with that. We don't ever give it away. So after that got started, the CEO of Nutramedics said, hey, how would you like to be trained by Dr. Cowden? And I had never told him I had a background in Reiki or any kind of healing. And I said, well, I don't know, I'm kind of busy, you know. And he wouldn't let it go. And he finally said, look, we'll pay for you to go down to Harrisburg, PA, and be trained. And, you know, I was still scratching my head because here I was in a room with 15 doctors and me. But, you know, I, I was— I'm normally one of these guys that sits in the back of the class, right? And, um, I was right up front with my notebook and pen, you know, hands folded, front of the classroom, and just absorbed everything Dr. Cowden had to say. I was fascinated. And after I started doing that, I started helping patients for free through the foundation. And after I'd reached about 70 patients, you know, they started telling me, hey, You know, you're helping me more than my Lyme literate doctor or other doctor, you know, and, you know, you're not charging me any money. I'm like, yeah, of course. But then I started thinking, well, what if I open a clinic here in Connecticut and start helping patients? And that's when I started the Lyme Recovery Clinic here last summer. So now I'm helping patients with the Cowden Protocol, other herbal treatments, as well as I'm a CBD distributor. I'm gonna be a doTERRA essential oils distributor as well. And then I do energy healing and Reiki and remote Reiki. I actually do, excuse me, remote energy healing through phone calls and all that kind of stuff I get into in the book, in "The Gratitude Curve." But that's, you know, starting to find out that some of the Lyme patients that are getting stuck who have tried, have thrown basically every kind of physical treatment at them at the Lyme and are not getting anywhere, that they are stuck on an energetic level. And that's— a lot of patients are starting now. A good amount of patients are starting to notice that. And that's where I'm giving my assistance with those types of patients. So it was funny, like, as soon as I announced the book was out, I had one patient contact me literally hours after I'd announced the book was out and she said, I've already read half the book. I, I want to be your— I want you to do energy healing on me.

So, okay, awesome. 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. Hi guys, I want to let you know about a book I wrote called Little Bite, Big Trouble, and I'm going to read a review that recently came in. This is from Carolyn, and she says, thank you so much for writing your book. It has become the means by which I have explained Lyme to my 4-year-olds. They asked for it to be read as a bedtime story over and over again and love that the mama birdie does yoga and juicing like their mommy. I can't thank you enough for writing this book. It has helped my family so much. You can find it today at Amazon.com. Little Bite, Big Trouble. See, you know what though, isn't that exactly the same as like the guy at the concert bringing his wife like, hey, we need help? Like, people, you're hitting, you're hitting a pressure point within the Lyme community because people really need help and you have viable answers for them. I mean, honestly, like what Stephanie was saying earlier, like to be able someone's like, no, I can't even afford— I'm drowning physically. And for her to be able to say, hey, by the way, since you're at this place, here's this foundation that can help. I mean, that's incredible.

Yeah. Well, I, I think we ended up where we are because we listened. You know, we started by living it, you know. So Stephanie and I and you have been through everything that we've been through. And we know what we would have wanted, right? Right. That's, that's actually another thing that I created back a couple years ago. I created something, a website called limenowledge.com that I created the website I wanted, you know, back in 2005, which it gets into, you know, what is Lyme disease, you know, how do you know you have it, that kind of, you know, basic boilerplate stuff. But then we get into the treatments, and I just wanted to know a rundown of what are all the treatments that people are are getting into. And, you know, so we do a little rundown of Beyond Balance, Buhner Protocol, Zhang Protocol, Cowden Protocol. And just that alone, you know, I've seen those— that treatments pages has been shared by a lot of patient groups who say, hey, these guys got it right. You know, they got the breakdown. Here's all the herbs that are in Cowden. Here's all the herbs that are in Buhner. And you can just kind of look at those and pick and choose. And then, I started blogging after we kicked it off. And so, I got some fantastic input by Lyme patients who had even deeper knowledge than me in like the sensitivities, EMF sensitivities, and things like that that some patients are experiencing. And then, I just started blogging about the various things that Lyme patients are going through like, "Hey, it's not one size fits all." You know, for instance, one, and, you know, 'cause I see these fights that start all the time in the Lyme world where, you know, somebody will say, hey, I did this treatment and I got better. And then somebody will say, you're a liar 'cause I did the same treatment and I'm worse. And I'm like, guess what? You're both right. That can happen. That's a thing, you know? And I said, you know, in the blog, I say bee venom therapy is like the perfect example. It's like, you know, it helps some people. I've heard it actually cures some people, but some people will go into anaphylactic shock and die. So, you know, that can happen. You know, there's something that's a poison to somebody else and a curative to other people. So, you know, Lyme disease is not one size fits all. Everybody needs to go off on their own and really kind of— once you get past the phase of feeling like you have to trust your doctor with every step that you make, once you shake that loose, you're kind of free to investigate. And of course, some doctors don't want to hear that. The doctors that really want to help you will welcome that. So I had doctors where I would bring in sheets of information I'd printed off the internet, and they would say, oh, you're one of those guys. I'm like, what, somebody who's interested in his own healing? Yes, I'm one of those guys.

Someone who's trying not to die.

Yep, that's me. You should be more curious. In your job, you know.

Anyway, um, so yeah, well, and for those of you, limenowledge.com is a wealth of information. Oh my gosh, you, you're underselling it as far as the amount of content that's on there. There is a ton of information and it is laid out really well.

Thank you, thank you very much. Yeah, so, you know, and we also have a doctor referral on there, so that's a free service we offer. So if, you know, you would like to find a Lyme literate doctor in your area. We actually do it. We try to respond within a day or two and give you, you know, a response there to help you find. That was another thing I would have liked, but, you know, I live in Connecticut and it took me 2 years to be diagnosed. So for all these people who think, oh, you know, Lyme is a, you know, New England disease, um, you know, the Lyme doctor's here. Or actually just the regular doctors here, it's not the first thing they look for or test for. And, you know, so my doctor, along with all— I'm sure a lot of people went through this— where my doctor said, you know, asked me, are you depressed? You know, or maybe, maybe your symptoms are, you know, they're not life-threatening, so maybe you learn to live with them. I'm like, really, really, really, really? You're not curious about this, I can see. So I'm paying for a service and I don't like the service, so you're fired. Yeah.

You know, it takes a long time. Well, it did for me. It just took me so long to realize that I didn't need their permission or approval to keep moving forward. That— I mean, I literally remember the moment I realized no one is staying up at night and here I am fully disabled, signing DNR papers, seizures. I mean, I'm wishing I was dead.. And I'm thinking, no one is staying up at night trying to figure this out. Like, I am absolutely on my own. And it, like, a switch flipped for me and it was like, okay, I have to change what I'm doing. And for me, I started operating outside my insurance company and started seeing naturopaths and changed everything. But that's a journey that, I mean, for me, it took over a decade for me to be at that point to realize, yeah. This isn't working.

Yeah, it shouldn't have taken that long, but I know, I know, but you know, everybody kind of, you know, accepts things at their own rate, right? And I went— I took— I was about the same amount of time, so I stayed on antibiotics for 7 years, and, um, I didn't want to hear anybody tell me to, to do anything otherwise because I was convinced, because my doctors were telling me that herbal treatments were not as strong. And, um, and of course that is completely untrue. So I found that out as soon as I went on the Zhang protocol after being on antibiotics, and it kicked my ass way harder than the antibiotics did in terms of a Herx reaction. So that proved to me right there, oh, and you know, herbal treatments are— they're strong enough, you know. So I don't know, it took me a while to shake loose that mentality. So Yeah, I went from the stage of having to second-guess what my physicians were telling me to becoming my own health advocate to eventually becoming my own physician because nobody else was doing it. And I was getting advice from friends and family who hadn't done all the research I had done. And I was listening to some of them to a degree, but I had to do it myself. And so it's— I have come to respect— So when I first got better, I was an evangelist against antibiotics, which I was out there saying, "I've never heard of anybody who's been cured by long-term antibiotics." And what shut me up was a couple of people who had told me some things. So one was a doctor. I watched a presentation by Dr. Liegner, Kenneth Liegner, who's a well-known Lyme doctor who uses a lot of antibiotics. He showed a lot of documented cases of where he saved people's lives using IV rocephin because, you know, they were having encephalitis, you know, brain swelling, and they were dying. And I understand that, you know, of course, that's— that there's a place for that, absolutely. And that's probably the best tool of all for, for IV rocephin. But, and, and I've also heard of some other patients going into remission. Now, this is secondhand, so I don't know them. So I've dialed back what I'm saying about antibiotics, but I've seen a majority of patients who are suicidal or having seizures who are on multiple antibiotics, and they're afraid to go off of them because their doctors have told them, "Oh, this is it." And so that, I was in that mode, not realizing it was, I wanted to die when I was on antibiotics. And when I went off of them, I was like, oh, this is what it feels like to live again. So, you know, it didn't happen right away because there were so many toxins I needed to get rid of. And again, no, none of my standard physicians were telling me about detox methods. So I was doing research on the Gerson therapy, you know, Gerson protocol and doing coffee enemas and, you know, things that were completely off the ranch back in 2005. Now it's almost kind of trendy to do coffee enemas, but I was a classic coffee enema guy way back.

That's so funny because you don't know this, but I did Gerson for several years. I still do it in a modified version.

Right, right. Yeah.

Well, I think it's amazing, but it's very time-consuming if you want to do it.

Very time-consuming. Yeah. So my big takeaway was, hey, coffee enemas are actually amazing. And the first time I did one, actually, colors got brighter for me. My vision kind of changed and I was like, wow. Wow. Biggest thing I've ever done that's like peeled off layers of detox. So anyway, but yeah, I started doing those kind of things and then started just getting— doing my own research and getting better and then, you know, doing herbal treatments. And that's when, you know, eventually I went to see John of God and then boom, everything really changed. And I went from being my own practitioner to helping others and never thought I would get there doing that. You know, but so now every day it's helping patients on multiple levels, you know, with the support, with finances, with treatment protocols, and with hands-on, hands-on healing or remote healing, whatever, whatever is needed.

That's neat. You know, you mentioned Dr. Kenneth Liegner, and I actually heard him speak just 2 weeks ago. He spoke at the Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Forum. Out in Colorado. And what was interesting, he did go into very— the very specifics of like what types of antibiotics he has. They're mostly talking about neurological Lyme, treating the neurological Lyme. And he was going into like very detailed information about very specific clients and how they like helped eliminate the bulk of their neurological stuff. And some, some didn't. But what was fascinating about his talk is he was going into such detail And I afterwards told Aaron, I said, you know what? Like, he's this incredible doctor if you have access to him. Like, he was talking about all the advocating he did behind the scenes and getting his patients put in like assisted living care and like all this information and all the antibiotics and dosing and pulsating and all this stuff. And I just told Aaron specifically, I said, most patients are never gonna have access to a doctor who will fight like that for them.

Yeah, yeah, I've been fortunate enough to hang out with Dr. Ligner for a while, and he's an awesome guy, and he's a fantastic trumpet player, by the way. And yeah, but you're absolutely right, you know, the patients like him, you know, I've hung out a little bit with Dr. Horowitz, it's the same kind of thing. They're helping patients a lot behind the scenes, and they are, you know, they're completely booked up. And people are flying in from all different parts of the country to be treated by them and they're overwhelmed.

Yeah. Interesting. But like you were saying, the bulk of people are getting better with— well, some people get better with antibiotics. A lot of people are getting better with herbs and supplements. And so there really is that— you said it— there's no one size fits all.

Yeah. And I'll just say one thing about antibiotics. So I saw Dr. Stephen Phillips speak at a, at the Lyme Connection patient conference last month, so that here in Connecticut, and he was talking about he's, he's, you know, helping patients get into recovery through pulse therapy. And that's the one thing that I will— that's the one big asterisk about, you know, long-term antibiotics is I That I'm seeing, if you do— so for the people who don't understand what pulse therapy is, it's like 3 days on a certain antibiotic and then 4 days off, or it's a combination of days. I may be getting the days wrong and different doctors have different days on and days off, but the point is you're creating confusion for the pathogens. The thing you don't want to do is to stay on antibiotics for a couple of months because really what the pathogens, they understand that there's antibiotics in the bloodstream. Dr. Cowden showed this in his training, and they start hyper-reproducing. They start creating the cysts and the buds, and those turn into new spirochetes, and they leave the bloodstream, and they go into muscle and bone and, you know, pass through the blood-brain barrier, and they create havoc. So it's like, you know, the pathogens are not just antibiotic resistant. They are antibiotic reactive. So it's like pouring gasoline on a fire. Yeah. When I saw that presentation, I thought, wow, you know, I've been on antibiotics like single— well, multiple antibiotics, the same ones for years. And I just thought, wow, what have I done? So that's why, you know, it took years to undo that. But so that said, you know, patients who do pulse therapy for antibiotics are noticing improvements. Some, some can even go into remission. And, you know, Dr. Phillips has helped some patients with that. But, um, for the love of God, you know, just warn people who might be listening that please don't stay on, you know, 1 or 2 or even 3 of the same antibiotics for months and months, because it's, it's really been proven by Dr. Cowden and some other doctors to— well, I mean, there's more and more studies that are saying that long-term antibiotics are, you know, they don't get rid of the entire pathogen load at all. Right. And they cause it to go into dormancy and so forth. And, you know, it can cause more trouble than it's worth.

So I want to go back and just talk about your foundation a little bit for those people who are looking for, who are in need of affordable treatment options, who would be interested in applying for, I know you said you have a grant and a couple different things. So if I understand this right, through the foundation, they can get signed up to have access to Cowden Protocol for $40 a month.

Is that accurate? Well, $40 for the first month. It's a 6-month discount. Okay. So the first month is $40, and then months 2 through 6 are $150 each. So that's one of the big discounts we get.

Okay, awesome. And then in addition to that, you through your Lyme Recovery Clinic can also help people go through the Cowden Protocol via Skype visits. Is that correct?

Or is that separate? Well, it is separate. Yeah, so the, the clinic and the foundation are completely separate. So I help patients— so that for the patients who qualify for financial assistance, I will I, I've created a private Facebook group of the patients I'm helping, and I offer free help. Um, oh wow, wow. Yeah, yeah. So, um, yeah, that was the incubator for the, uh, the, uh, the clinic, because, um, I've got almost 80 different patients I'm helping across the country right now. So they ask a question, and they're— they've become like an amazing knowledge base themselves. So I believe it. We, you know, because I've got some— I've got other people who've written are in that group. They're herbalists. They're just amazing people. And, you know, one woman— so, you know, mainly we talk about treatment, Candida Protocol, and I usually help people not have Herx's. That's like 90% of what I help with. But, you know, the other day somebody said, hey, I need to get on disability and should I mention Lyme disease? And, you know, somebody said, no, you know, I've been through it 3 times and I can tell you, here's the advice. So, So we have those kinds of conversations happening in that group as well. So it's pretty cool. And yeah, so the clinic is a separate thing and that's, you know, I help if anybody, so it's for people who don't qualify for financial assistance. It's for people who have a little bit of money, but you know, my intake fee is only $50. So I don't compete with the Lyme, LLMDs who are charging $1,000 a visit like I experienced, you know.

Okay, but if someone is interested in doing the pout-in protocol, they can book an online Skype session with you for additional support.

Uh, they can, but— or call me. Yeah, yeah, okay. But you know, I like to try to keep everything in the Facebook group because if somebody asks a question, it's going to benefit all the other people in the group. But, and most, I'd say 90% of the people who qualify for financial assistance end up in that Facebook group. But we, you know, I still have people who are not in the group and, you know, they contact me directly or, you know, there's some shy people who are, they're still in the group, but they're a little shy about talking about what they're going through. I've been seeing more and more of something I didn't know about, which is emotional herxing.

Whoa, explain that.

I've never heard that term. Yeah, well, I just made it up, but I mean, it's something I've noticed over the past year and a half. So, and it's even triggered by a particular herb more often than not in the Cowden Protocol. So, patients are noticing when they get to this certain month in the protocol, they'll take this herb and boom, they start uncontrollably crying. Well, not uncontrollably, but they start crying more. They feel somewhat suicidal. And when you go through something like that, you think you're losing your mind or something. And you don't think— the first thing you don't think of is you're having a Herx reaction, but that's actually what is going on. So they find out that when they start doing more detox measures and dial back on their dosage, lo and behold, that goes away just like a regular Herx. So that's an interesting thing.

I've started noticing in the past year. Interesting. You know, when I went out to Invita Medical for my treatment of late-stage Lyme, and that was in 2013, and they actually told me, hey, right about— and I think it was like week 2 or day 12 or something— you're going to get something in your IV bags. And it's very emotional. They didn't call it an emotional herx. But that is a perfect articulation of it. Because, and for me, they didn't know exactly when it would hit, and I didn't even realize what was happening. I was so much in shock and so much just like days had only gotten a Lyme diagnosis a couple of days earlier. The whole thing was just shocking. And I'm in another state. All my kids are back at home, and I just identified it as like, grief. And of course, there was grief, but I wept for days. Like, I could not stop crying. And I would not have even thought that you could address an emotional Herx in the same way that you can address a physical one. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Interesting.

Well, Greg, thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you so much for all you do for the Lyme community and all your projects and everything that you have going on. We will have all of Greg's contact information listed on the show notes and also at lionvoice.com if you want to get a hold of him. Greg, do you want to leave us with a certain story from your book as we conclude? I know, I'm sure, I, I know when you write, everything is deeply, deeply personal, but what is something, I don't know, what's one of those significant stories from your book that you would want to share with our listeners?

Oh wow, that's a great question, and I'm completely caught off guard. So, oh wow, I'd probably, you know, prob— I would say, you know, the experience I had in Brazil was pretty huge. But, uh, you know, just, uh, I've— I keep hearing this time and time again, you know, something that, that hopefully will give people a little bit of hope. So the other side effect of the concerts that I started, I started noticing that the concerts themselves were like a mild healing agent for people. And what do I mean by that? Well, you know, these concerts that we throw, a lot of times they're like 6 hours long. And, you know, I'm saying— I'm telling you, these Lyme patients are showing up and they're not going home early. They're staying the entire day or night, whatever, whenever we're holding them. And I've had several people come up to me and say, I love the music, I had such a blast, I forgot I was sick the entire time. Wait a minute, that is very unusual because I remember in my healing journey, I noticed the exact same thing. If I listened to an entire record of my favorite record, you know, in the midst of me being just depressed and feeling suicidal, I was like on a little island of bliss. You know, if I was listening to some music I loved or if I was watching one of my favorite comedians doing a standup, I actually noticed like, wow, that entire hour I forgot I was sick 'cause I was laughing my butt off. And I thought, you know, what's up with that? So one, I ran into a patient, a Lyme patient in Brazil who was being treated by Dr. Klinghardt, and she kind of helped me make sense of it. She said, you know what? He says that the pathogens are intelligent and they know when you're paying attention to them. And he, you know, she said, Dr. Klinghardt told me the best thing you could do is ignore the disease. It hates it. Hates that. It likes it when you're being bummed out and you're paying attention. And I remember, you know, I would wake up in the morning and feel an ache or a pain or feel crappy and think, oh, here I am. And I would think about the disease all day long. It was those moments when I stopped thinking about the disease that I got a break and I felt like I got a leg up on it. So, you know, I write a little bit about that in the book, but that's kind of a little, You know, something I'd like to throw out to anybody who's listening to give you some hope that you ever feel at your lowest moment, you know, go watch your favorite comedian on TV for an hour. It's like taking a pill or, you know, taking a pain pill or something. It can really help you forget the disease for a while so your immune system can kick back in, so.

Hmm, wow. Just on the episode we just released prior to this one, we talked about this conference that we'd gone to, the Rocky— Third Annual Rocky Mountain Forum. And it's the same thing because we actually went and saw, um, back in 2014, we went out to the Omega Institute for the Living Well with Lyme Disease conference and saw Dr. Richard Horowitz. And we experienced the same thing that we did a couple weeks ago at the Rocky Mountain Forum, which is just that— what you said, a mild healing agent, just being around other people in wheelchairs, just like being around a community of people. Because our conference went all day from 7:30 to 5, and you— like, people labored to be there. Like, they paid a heavy price to be there. And there's something about being around other people who understand your suffering or your struggles that is so healing.

Absolutely.

All right, well, thank you so much for being here with us today, Greg.

We really appreciate it. Thank you for everything that you do. Um, and let's, let's do something together. Okay, you guys are, you guys are fighting the good fight on the other side of the country. That's awesome. So bless you with everything you and Aaron are doing, and, and thanks for having me on.

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 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. Lime Voice contains general information about medical conditions and treatments. The information is not advice and should not be treated as such. Okay, Lincoln? Okay. The medical information on Lime Voice is provided as is without any representations, warranties, expressed or implied. Okay? Okay. Lime Voice 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 this podcast. Got it, Lincoln? Got it.