Listen Here:

In this episode:

Dr. Julia Greenspan is an naturopathic doctor and published author of the book “Rising Above Lyme Disease.” She earned her doctorate from the National University of Natural Medicine in 2006. Dr. Greenspan is a Lyme Literate Doctor with a majority of her patient population having some form of tick-borne disease. Her focus in this area of medicine stems from living in New England, one of the most infected and infested areas in the country for Lyme disease. She is also well versed in general family practice assisting patients with other acute and chronic diseases.

Additional Resources:

BOOK: Rising Above Lyme Disease

Renowned naturopath and Lyme-literate doctor Julia Greenspan presents a Comprehensive and Alternative Medicine (CAM) approach for recovery for those who have been suffering with this disease for weeks, months, years, or even decades. Operating from the front lines of the epidemic in New England, she gives hope to those who thought there was none, or feel unheard by all those around them.

COURSE: The Lightworker’s Library

Over 40 activations to help the lightworker who wants to use their story with chronic illness to inspire others and activate their life’s purpose. These activations help you to rewire your beliefs around self worth, money, fear, time, confidence, and more.

MEMBERSHIP: Third Eye Collective

The Third Eye Collective is a community of empathic and highly sensitive souls breaking free of old patterns so that they can alchemize the dark with the light and have the impact they desire on the world. This is the place where spiritual ascension meets grounded leadership and your humanity meets your divinity. As empaths, you hold powerful medicine for this planet, but this journey begins with holding a mirror up to ourselves. When you step into this community you will realize the healing that lives within you.

Episode Transcript:

Hello friends. Have you noticed that you can get caught up in consuming content or maybe you noticed you are hyper hyper-focused on the doing? Empaths we often consume. And I know because that was me too; soaking up information from all my favorite teachers and mentors. But it wasn’t until I started focusing more on the being and embodiment work that the door to massive clarity was finally unlocked and I no longer got confused about what was my energy versus everybody else’s. I was able to become a more clear channel for creation and as a result, transform my life, business, and health. In fact, my meditation and embodiment practice is what helped me have a nearly $40,000 month this past January, see the highest downloaded month of the podcast, and finally release a lot of unnecessary stress. And my clients felt it and saw it in their lives too.

It wasn’t reading more articles, it wasn’t doing more busywork. So I’m inviting you to graduate from the spongy empath consumer into the self-activated sovereign healer. You can take your podcast listening experience from, ooh, I feel seen, heard, and inspired to holy shit, I actually feel different. My being has shifted. I am the embodiment of the woman I desire to be. The Third Eye Collective is a simple way to upgrade your experience and commit, not only to a meditation practice that compliments your healing but also receive personalized coaching so you can be clear on what direct actions to implement into your highest goals. There are two simple ways to get involved at 11 or $22 a month with no commitment. So if this is calling your name, click the link in the show notes to join this amazing and growing community.

Welcome to the Healing Uncensored Podcast. My name is Sarah Small and I’m a health and mindset coach for women with autoimmune disease just like you. I absolutely love helping you tap into your self-healing power, uncover the energetic side of healing, and release limiting beliefs around your body and your life. Think of this podcast as everything you wouldn’t hear at your doctor’s office. It’s a place for empowered souls to move beyond food and heal themselves on a soul level. I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Now let’s begin.

Welcome. I am so honored to have Dr. Julia Greenspan on the show today. She is a naturopathic doctor and the author of the book Rising Above Lyme Disease. She’s also a Lyme-literate doctor and a majority of her patient population does have some form of tick-borne disease. You’ll hear us chatting all things Lyme and other associated tick-borne infections and their relationship with autoimmune. So I know I learned a lot today. We’ll be talking also about some natural and holistic ways to treat and manage Lyme disease. And regardless of whether you’re struggling with Lyme or just learning about Lyme, I think you’re going to learn so much from Julia and all of her knowledge.

Sarah: Welcome to the show, Julia. I’m so excited to have you on today.

Julia: Great. Thank you for having me.

A basic understanding of Lyme disease

Sarah: So I’d love to begin with just a basic understanding of Lyme disease for all of our listeners because there are many women in this community who I have personally worked with or just chatted with on social media who have been diagnosed with Lyme. But just in case there’s someone listening who doesn’t know about it, or doesn’t have an awareness of it, can you explain what Lyme disease is and also how it affects our body?

Julia: Okay. So Lyme disease is what’s referred to as a tick-borne infection, which means that it’s transmitted with the bite of a tick. And most people, a lot of people, a lot of my patients don’t ever know that they’re bit. And so, you can actually contract it without even knowing that you were a bit by a tick and a lot of people get lucky enough to find it. I happen to live in an area that has a lot of them; in New England. And so, just people in their front yard going to get their mail or mowing their lawn or just tending their garden will pick up Lyme disease quite easily. But what it is, is that a tick basically feeds off of other animals. So most notably people think of a deer and also rodents, mice, squirrels; but other animals. They live off of the blood of other animals. So when they find an animal to feed off of they basically will ingest a blood meal.

So they have a mouthpart that’s almost like a needle so I always like to refer to ticks as nature’s dirty needle. Because they will go and basically go in just like a needle and then they’ll take their blood meal. And what happens is if they get stressed out or even just as part of their process, if they’ve collected bacteria from another animal they will take in, this is where it gets kind of gross, but they will take in some blood meal and then basically regurgitate the contents of their stomach into whatever it is they’re feeding off of. So let’s say a human; let’s say they fed off of other animals, picked up infections and they carry those infections in their belly and then they come to us as a human and by us, they transmit as they feed the infection into our system right into our bloodstream. Lyme itself is a unique pathogen. It’s referred to as a spirochete. And why Lyme has a relationship with auto-immune diseases is because Lyme is very mobile, they’re very motile.

So they are shaped like a corkscrew and they can move through the body and go into areas of the body that other bacteria normally don’t get into and that triggers the immune system to create responses. And it can go in any tissue in the body, so it can affect the nervous system, muscles, joints. The nervous system as far as how we hear, how we see, how we feel, and then creating more pain in the body in regards to fibromyalgia-like symptoms, specific joint swelling. You can also see autoimmune markers go up with Lyme disease as well. And frequently people complain of headaches as well and dizziness, fevers, flu-like symptoms. So that’s a little bit of what Lyme is about and how it’s transmitted. And it is across the country. People think of it in terms of its most concentrated in the New England area or northeast, but it actually is across the country.

Sarah: Yes. Yes, I think that’s important to note as well. And it seems like if you do know that you’ve been bit, you potentially can treat it more quickly and faster, but you don’t always know that you have been bit.

Julia: Exactly. That’s why I say if you’re going to get bit, if it’s going to happen inevitably, it’s a gift to find the tick.

Sarah: Gift to find the tick, I like that. So I know just from talking to women in my community and the Autoimmune Tribe community, that there’s a handful of people who have at least expressed to me that they sometimes will get tests back that say they’re negative for Lyme when they’re actually positive. They find out later on by retesting or doing different types of tests. So how do you get diagnosed with Lyme disease? And do you have any personal preferences or opinions on what testing is the best and most accurate to get that true positive or true negative?

Testing for Lyme

Julia: Mm-hmm. So the testing is really where it becomes more political or more difficult in the medical establishment as to who is going to agree on what that best method is. I belong to a group called ILADS, which is a collection of doctors around the world that view the testing model a little bit differently than the Centers for Disease Control or the CDC. And so, basically right now as it currently stands in the hospitals and your average doctor’s office, they have to do something called two-tiered testing. And so, they’ll initially test you with something called an ELISA that’s a screen, and that’s supposed to be really sensitive. It’s supposed to be able to pick up on proteins really easily. And then you do something called the Western blot. If your ELISA is positive as a screen, then they move on to the Western blot, which is the confirmatory test for Lyme disease. And so, they are mandated to do this two-tiered testing.

And in my office, I don’t do the two-tiered testing, I just do the Western blot. And that can be run through a standard lab; LabCorp, Quest, hospital labs that are national labs across the country, or there are also independent labs that do that. So IGeneX is one of them that gets mentioned quite often and utilized, as well as I use Vibrant America, which uses microchip testing. But as far as the difference between that and if you were to do LabCorp or Quest, which would typically go through insurance, you would want to ask a doctor to really just run the Western blot. And you can request that and it will be covered by insurance, and basically not do the ELISA at all and just go straight to the Western blot to see what will come up. But the other thing that needs to be taken into consideration is that the Western blot that’s typically run only looks at one strain and there are several in the United States. There’s about 50 that have been isolated. And so, that’s very limiting that if you get a negative to say, oh, you don’t have Lyme because it’s not there.

So I would say more times than not, I’m looking at the person’s story. I’m listening to the story, I’m looking at physical exam and I’m looking at other aspects; tick bite history and if they’ve got symptoms in their nervous system, in their musculoskeletal system, digestive system, cardiovascular, and listening to the story. And more times than not, I have to treat based on the symptoms here. So yes.

Sarah: I have a client who struggles with chronic migraines and for years was really desperately searching for answers and coming up to these roadblocks and was finally just diagnosed with Lyme, which I think so many doctors skated over that, missed that, just didn’t even see it as a possibility or maybe within the realm of what they would have ever considered. But it sounds like the main symptoms that can present themselves through Lyme are not always the same in each person and really do require you to listen to the full story and figure out what some of those missing links might be, is it possibly Lyme? Have you found people like that as well?

Julia: Oh yes. Yes. And it really depends on where the bite happened as to how the symptoms are going to land in the body. I always look at it more towards is it shoulders up, which is going to be more neurologic; more of the headaches, more of the issues with the eyes, seeing floaters, having light sensitivity, hearing a lot of ringing in the ears, the dizziness, cognitive issues. So a lot of individuals have issues with concentration, ability to have proper word recall, ability to read properly, which can be very limiting if they want to maintain a job or take care of the basics in their lives, or kids that are going through school oftentimes get misdiagnosed with issues around attention and behavior because of that. So that’s a factor. And then there’s the neck down. And so, if someone received a bite from the neck down, it’s more arthritic. So they’re dealing more with they’ve got joint swelling, joint pain, musculoskeletal pain, pain in the feet, the hips.

And you can have both. So it’s not limited to you either have from the neck up or the shoulders down. But there are individuals that will have more of that picture and Lyme can be either one of those. It really depends on where the microbe is choosing to live. Again, as I said, these microbes are wanderers and they can go into body cavities into areas of the body that other bacteria might not normally get. So it really just depends on where they live and then how your immune system is living with that and the symptoms that are coming from the fact that your immune system is not happy about that microbe being there.

Sarah: Yes. Yes. So you just published a whole book with a comprehensive approach to treating Lyme and I’d love for you to explain to the listeners what’s different about this approach or the approach that you take with your personal clients and how you came to develop this that’s more of this comprehensive and natural approach.

A comprehensive and natural approach

Julia: Yes. So I will state and be really honest about the fact that I am a naturopath by training and naturopathic doctors are trained as primary care doctors, general family medicine. I specialized in Lyme disease because of where I live. I live in an area that’s highly infected and there’s very few doctors that treat it. I also had it myself and treated for two years for Lyme disease and Babesia. And it’s been about five years that I’ve been in remission from that. So for me here as a practitioner, I think what was important and my motivation for writing the book, I talk about and try to bring forward the latest research on the herbs and on different essential oils and different protocols that are used and when they would be appropriate. But I think also for me, it was about talking about what’s happening socially for the Lyme disease community. Patients right now, I would say the biggest and most difficult piece—taking a medication is the easy part, except for minus the expense and the amount of time it takes to negotiate that through the day and deal with that.

I’d say the issues that are most difficult for the Lyme disease population is feeling accepted, feeling supported, feeling believed, not feeling alone. Isolation and loneliness is a really big problem with this because of limitations and physical limitations and how they’re perceived by the public, by their families, by the doctors they work with, what they’ve been told as far as a lot of patients get told they just have a mental, emotional, a psychosomatic issue, that they’re just making it up. And so, one of the main motivations was reading a research study about how one of the leading reasons why individuals with Lyme pass away is because of suicide. And I have a background in social work. So I used to do crisis management and social work before going into naturopathic medicine and I worked in crisis management around suicidal ideation and helping people prevent that. So to me, the main motivation was also to just continue a dialogue about what’s happening in the community so people don’t feel so isolated and alone.

Because oftentimes my patients won’t talk to each other. They don’t want to have someone else reflect back to them and have to explain it all again and take the chance that someone’s going to tell them that they’re making it all up and not believe. So they tend to just keep it to themselves and not share. So then the middle part of the book is really more about that and also how we’re managing our stress and maybe a trauma history that’s also adding to how the illness is going. Now, as far as the protocols go on the medications, I’ve always been somebody who has been a little bit more in the middle. So I do treat with antibiotics when appropriate and when the patient chooses that, but it always is either natural medicine is used on its own or it’s always brought in alongside antibiotics. I never just treat with antibiotics alone. So the natural medicine is there to not only help clear the infection but also support the body with herbs that help with anti-inflammation, that help with detoxification, and also the hormone system; so the adrenals, energy, that type of thing, and help the body rebuild itself as it’s trying to heal and clear the infection, as well as supporting the flora of the stomach as they go through treatment as well, which is huge.

Sarah: Yes, absolutely. I’m so glad you brought up the emotional component as well that you mentioned is the middle part of your book because I think that probably is left out in a lot of conversations especially when people are going to see their doctor too. Their doctor might talk about the treatment and the root cause and stuff but might not address that also you’re not crazy and all of this is real and it’s okay to feel frustrated. And I think a lot of times it’s been a really winding path for some of these people to figure out, oh, it is Lyme. And then even when it is, there’s a lot of cofactors and infections that can also be at play. And so, to know that they’re not alone, I think that’s so important. I lost a brother to suicide and so that’s also something that’s really close to my heart is just, how can we prevent people from feeling like they aren’t supported and instead, just reinvigorate this hope within them that even if for years people have been telling them it’s all in their head; it’s not, this is real? And I think it just validates people in many ways and makes them feel like, oh, there’s a community around this and let’s start having a conversation about it, right?

How we can support our loved ones with Lyme

Julia: Well, in this language that’s used around telling someone that what they have isn’t what they have or that this doesn’t exist is that it’s disempowering. And when you disempower somebody, you actually end up causing changes to the immune system. You end up contributing to their illness. And there is something to that mind-body connection. We all know it; the science proves it. There’s science around this. Psychoneuroimmunology is one of the main focuses that really studies the connection between mind-body. But the issue is that it’s important to start being honest about what’s going on and helping people move through trauma because even if they didn’t have trauma prior to having Lyme, going through Lyme if they’re someone who didn’t get treated right away. For acute Lyme, if someone just gets bit, they go to the doctor, they get it dealt with, treat it, they move on, that is what it is. They move on, they don’t have any symptoms. Great.

The individuals we’re talking about are the ones that are chronically suffering, that might’ve had other diagnoses that took years for them to finally find out that they had tick-borne disease. Not just Lyme but Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichiosis, Brucella, Q fever, the list goes on of other things ticks carry. And that they may have had a really long road of pain, suffering, being told again that they have these other issues, that they have depression, anxiety. And then when they finally get to the point where they’re treating, there’s post-traumatic stress syndrome that comes with that because now as they finally let go and they’re finally getting treated, they’re not in survival mode as much anymore. And a lot of those emotions, it’s helping people through that.

I would say I spend a majority of the visit, I can get through the physical parts of it like, how are you feeling, what are your symptoms, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? Okay. Here’s your treatment plan. This is what we’re going to do. I would say the majority of the time I spend with a patient is really listening to them and giving them a space to be able to talk about this and to talk about how difficult it is. Because treatment, even once it’s started, it’s not easy to go through treatment because there’s something called the Herxheimer response, which is a flare where symptoms get worse before they get better and that can last for several months. So it’s sort of insult to injury getting through it. And that requires even more support as they go through it and almost coaching them and just reminding them why they’re doing this and it’s okay. So anyway, yes, I hope that answers the question.

Sarah: Absolutely. So you brought up some of the viruses and co-infections that can occur with Lyme and that’s what I hear from a lot of my community and clients as well, is that they have a lot of these other infections or viruses. So how are those affecting the Lyme or are they part of the Lyme or how do they even complicate treatment? I was talking to a client today about if Lyme’s your main diagnosis, there’s usually a lot of other layers underneath it. And I’m sure you’ve seen that in all of your clients as well, but can you talk a little bit about how just having multiple layers or other co-infections or viruses in the body might complicate that for somebody?

Co-infections, viruses and layers of Lyme

Julia: Yes. So typically when a patient comes in and I initially meet with them, I’ll do lab work to look at again, Lyme, I mentioned Babesia and Anaplasmosis which are actually two of the other top tick-borne infections in the country. Bartonella, Ehrlichiosis, Brucella, Q fever. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is another one. So you’re in Colorado and that’s more thought of, oh, it’s the Rocky Mountains, the Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, it’s, there. Well, it’s actually here too, and I see about three or four cases of that a week. So then I also look at viruses. So Cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr, Parvovirus and the Human Herpesvirus, not the STD Herpes, but one that’s… Most of them are herpes viruses. And what is it? We collect these viruses; we get them when we’re younger. They move through families; they’re very common in the human condition.

And then Lyme comes along or tick-borne infections and what happens is that they piggyback off of each other. And so, if let’s say Lyme comes in and Epstein-Barr is there, then chronic fatigue may come up more frequently. Epstein-Barr is related to Mononucleosis. And it doesn’t mean you have to have Mono to be carrying Epstein-Barr, but you can have Epstein-Barr and flare. Epstein-Barr also creates a lot of other conditions and has been related to different autoimmune conditions, thyroid impairments, issues with gut and digestion. And so, basically, they take advantage of the immune system being lowered, your internal vitality being lowered and your immune system can’t keep the viruses in check anymore like they used to because they’re trying to manage this other infection.

The other component here is also toxicity. So we have another part that is important to take a look at is heavy metals and toxins that have built up in the body. And everybody’s going to have different levels of that, depending on their genetics, depending on where they live, choices they’ve made, lifestyle choices and exposure; that they just didn’t really have any choice about that, it just was the environment. So it’s important to take a look at those and assess how much that is also playing a role in their immune system being reduced and having a harder time at clearing the infection and making your symptom picture much more difficult.

Sarah: Yes. Yes. There is a header in your book that said Chronic Lyme disease has no quick fix and that it can be difficult and expensive to treat which might seem kind of daunting for the person who’s just diagnosed but at the same time, there is hope, there is treatment available, but it’s not a quick fix. I think as a society we’ve been so conditioned to expect almost a quick fix for everything in life; like our food needs to be here immediately, we need to be able to fix this with one pill. The Chronic Lyme; it’s going to take more than that, it sounds like. And really you have to go and dig underneath all those layers to affect all the different factors that are affecting the body before you’re really, really going to start to feel better, it sounds like.

Julia: Yes. And it makes it difficult because there’s so much conflicting data about what the right choice is to make especially when we start treatment. And I can’t blame people that, okay, we diagnosed what you have; you have tick-borne disease and okay, here’s your med, whatever it is, whether it be herbs or whether it be a combination of antibiotics and herbs or whatever that path is that, okay, so now you’re going to feel worse before you get better. That doesn’t sell well. And it may take six months to a year before you feel better depending on how long you’ve had this and how long this has been—And usually with most patients, especially in this area, it’s not just one bite. It’s been a lifetime of getting bites, maybe since they were young, over and over again that’s brought them to a point where they are.

And that makes it difficult in a system right now that is saying that Lyme doesn’t exist. And then people go and they just want to end their suffering. They don’t want to be in pain anymore. So it’s sometimes easy to drop treatment or walk away from it or try to go and look for other diagnoses because it’s so difficult. And I can’t blame them. I can’t blame them for feeling that way. I felt like that many times in the two years of my treatment. So yes…

Sarah: Do you see any common mistakes or things you would categorize as a mistake when people do start to treat Lyme? Is there anything that you see as common like going down the wrong path or might not be right for people or maybe just not looking at it as a whole perspective?

Common mistakes in treating Lyme

Julia: Hmm. Well, I would say common behavioral stuff in the patient population, the first one is typically doctor hopping. I mentioned that in the book, and again, I can’t blame people for doing this. But it’s that thought that okay, if I try this new thing, it will get me there faster and if I try this new thing…and this isn’t working because I don’t feel comfortable, if I go over here, it’ll get me there faster. And that might be the right choice and that might be the right answer for them but a lot of times, it’s still going to take that amount of time to get to the end result. And a lot of times people end up spending a lot of money because people are promising things and promising a cure. I would say if you find a doctor that’s saying, I’m going to cure you of Lyme; run. Okay? That’s something I would never tell someone. I don’t decide what someone’s body does and what it’s going to choose to do. For me, what I’m trying to get people is quality of life back.

I don’t know that diseases ever really leave the body, but what we’re trying to do is find harmony. Either it’s going to live with it in harmony so that you can just continue to live your life and do what you want to do and not have the disease making choices for you or that it’s going to clear from the body. I would say the other one that is a delicate thing to bring up is over-researching. And again, why it’s delicate is because I want people to feel educated, empowered. I want them to know what’s going on with them. I want them to feel as well-informed as possible. But it gets to a point sometimes where people get hooked on being online so much and so in-depth with it that when they finally do start to feel well, it almost gets hard to pull away from that need to feel like they need to keep going and researching and finding and digging instead of being able to really let go of Lyme and move on. And that’s especially with parents.

So if you’ve got children that are suffering, again, I find no fault in it. I’m a mother. And parents and moms especially, who just want to find the answers so that their kid will not be suffering anymore, they tend to be the ones that get so wrapped up in it that it ends up being a huge stressor for them and another thing to recover from. So I would say as far as pitfalls, those are common ones for patients. And then I think also buying stuff like a lot of marketing strategies of this supplement’s going to cure you, this and that. And people come in with huge grocery bags full of supplements that they bought that they never used because once they got it home, they didn’t even know what to do with it and they get overwhelmed. They finally look at all this stuff they have on their kitchen counter and they don’t know what to do with it. And then it ends up sitting there and it’s money lost because they don’t know how to manage all of that. So yes, those are common things. I see.

Sarah: And those are great tips. Thank you so much. This is a listener question; they want to know how and why do Chronic Lyme symptoms cycle and rotate so dramatically?

Julia: Yes, so Lyme, again, is very mobile through the body and it also has a life cycle. It’s a living thing. And so, you’ll have different colonies that are within the body. One that might be living in your shoulder and another one living in the knee. Those colonies that are living up more in the brain in the nervous tissue of the brain and they’ll go through their own cycles. Eva Sapi is a researcher at the University of New Haven and her and a group of doctors have done research for years, and they’ve got pictures of Lyme living within something called biofilm. And biofilm is like a goo that a lot of microbes create in the body. It actually serves a really amazing purpose, but in this particular case, it makes it very difficult to clear Lyme because this matrix that they create almost like a biodome makes it difficult for meds, herbs, whatever, to pass through.

Spirochetes live in three different forms. So there’s the spiral form that’s the mobile one, that’s the swimmer, then there’s the L-form that’s sort of in this process of going through metamorphosis and they’re kind of kinked, they’re not as mobile, and then they come into this thing called the cyst, which is a ball that basically just goes inert or is in a sleep stage. And it actually changes its entire biology as it goes from one form to the other, which also makes a difference with the medications and how useful they’ll be. But I will say that it comes in and out of that and as it does that, the body, sometimes it’ll pull away and it won’t be as active and it won’t be triggering the immune system. And then they’ll come back out. Usually, it’s every four to six weeks that they’ll go through a cycle. And then you might have one that’s going through a cycle that’s in your hip or in your knee or in your foot or other places in the body where it’ll feel like it’s migrating around in the body but actually, it’s just the lifecycle of the microbe in that particular area.

Also, there’s a correlation, especially for women, around their cycles and around their hormones fluctuating throughout the month that will make Lyme feel like it’s cycling. So when women get closer into their cycle and their periods about a week before or maybe about a week after, they’ll have this uptick in their symptoms; more headaches, more fatigue, more brain fog, and body pain in general. And that has to do with hormone fluctuations close into their cycle.

Sarah: That’s fascinating. It makes so much sense but I have never heard that before. So thank you. I’ve also had a couple of women reach out and there’s Lyme and they did finally get this diagnosis of Lyme, but then they also have either Mold Illness, mold toxicity, or other gut issues and they’re wondering how do you prioritize? Where do you start? Do you do them at both? How do you balance treating multiple things going on in the body at once?

Treating multiple illnesses

Julia: So in listening to those two things, the first thing that would be a priority is the gut. Because if the gut is out of balance, then me trying to put something into somebody is going to be very difficult if they’re in pain, if they’re having irritable bowel issues, sensitivities. So getting that stable and finding out what can we take out? Are we going to take stuff out of the diet? As I said, a lot of individuals that maybe were right on that edge of having a gluten intolerance, as soon as they get Lyme or these infections, their immune system, as we said before, just can’t manage all of this and then it starts to overreact or react inappropriately to things in foods that we’re taking in. And so, a lot of my patients develop gluten intolerance that they didn’t have before. There’s also with certain strains of Borrelia, a meat intolerance; a red meat intolerance. That can also happen, that’s an immune response.

So oftentimes it’s just I try to isolate what’s the cause of the inflammation in the gut. And then once we get that stabilized, then it gets easier to decide, okay, based on your symptoms, if it’s mold, I typically follow protocols by Ritchie Shoemaker. And his website’s survivingmold.com. So I’ll typically do labs, HLA testing, looking at people’s genetic pathways, and looking at different inflammation markers. And that is more about isolating, okay, are you currently in a situation that’s mold-infested that no matter what I do, if this isn’t fixed, then you’re not going to get better? So do we need to fix something within the home? Do we need to figure out where mold is in the home? And then get that remediated. Are you in a work environment or school environment that has a lot of mold like a sick building? And again, trying to isolate that cause.

Treating Lyme and mold at the same time can be very difficult because the medications, according to Ritchie Shoemaker’s protocols, one of them is one that binds onto toxins in the gut and grabs onto stuff and it’s not really selective about what it grabs onto. So this medication has to be taken away from food and other medications. And if you’re trying to treat Lyme and you’re taking meds through the day, it can be really difficult to find that time of day where taking this particular medication would be appropriate. So I guess it just depends on, again, the individual who’s coming in to see me, what symptoms they’re presenting with that creates that priority, and also what the patient’s priority is. If they’re telling me, no, I really want to focus more on the mold right now, then that’s the direction I’m going to go.

Sarah: Yes. We’ve talked a little bit about the person who’s in it, in the thick of it, trying to figure out what to do and all these different other factors going on, but do you have a couple of tips for both the newly diagnosed person with Lyme who’s probably feeling overwhelmed and maybe a little confused and then also a couple of tips for the person who is in remission and potentially kind of fearful of relapsing and what people in both phases might be able to do to maintain health?

Julia: Well, so the most important thing for the newly diagnosed, hopefully, they’re working with a Lyme-literate specialist and ILADS; so it’s the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. The mouthful. But basically, they have a list of doctors that are part of their organization across the country. So try and even give them a call or reach out to them to find a practitioner. Also, lymedisease.org is another place to find practitioners that are trained and that acknowledge Lyme and that might have that approach that’s going to work better for you. Because it’s really going to be about finding a practitioner you can work with. Telemedicine’s becoming more popular now, working online and if that works for you, that’s fine. I’m going to be providing that too because of a lot of law changes that happened this year. But working with someone in person, I think there’s a lot to be said about that and it’s important; so if you can find a doctor nearby that you can have face-to-face with.

And again, reading; so the book that I just published or other books like Richard Horowitz’s book, Why Can’t I Get Better? There’s different books out there on Lyme disease, The Lyme Disease Solution, and educating yourself is going to be important. Finding a support group; so local support groups for Lyme so that you can go and talk with others and realize that you’re not alone. And finding that community is going to be very helpful. For the individual who’s been treated and is in remission, I would say, first off, it’s going to be moving on from Lyme in a sense, moving on with life, being available to others, noticing it in others, and being that Jiminy Cricket on the person’s shoulder. Because a lot of times, again doctors don’t necessarily test for Lyme and think about that initially, so if someone who’s had it can help another individual learn that they can ask for that in the doctor’s appointment and bring that up with their doctor, it’s going to be really helpful.

And then of course screening. So if you live somewhere where Lyme disease is more epidemic or at a higher level, I think, just like going in to get your cholesterol done and your vitamin D, your general checkup, your yearly checkup with your PCP, that Lyme titer should be done on a regular basis. Because again, as we talked about, bites can happen and you don’t even know it. And you could be walking around and be very functional with Lyme. There are many people who are, I refer to them as functional Lymies that have no idea that they’re carrying Lyme or that their titers would be elevated, but they’re not manifesting the symptoms in which case, then that becomes a different type of a conversation. Do we treat just based on what your labs look like just in case to be preventative for a short period of time? Because there could be that next bite that comes along that you don’t know about that takes you to that next stage of a place where your physical symptoms are going to be even more difficult, even though they’re not right now. So hopefully that’s helpful to your listeners.

Sarah: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. And is there anything else that you feel like listeners should know about, need to know about in regards to Lyme disease and treatments that you’d like to share today?

Julia: Yes. Well, I would say first off, I think a lot of people don’t know that they can have the tick tested. If you do find a tick on your person, on your body, or on someone you love, or a friend, don’t throw it away. A lot of people tend to panic and flick it and just want to destroy it and there’s a lot of information within the bug itself. And it can actually be sent off to be tested. I think one of the companies that does it is tickreport.com. The cost is not very much compared to the data that you get. And it really can help come down to what was in the tick, what could have been transmitted to you, and can be another piece of information. Because the antibodies from Lyme don’t show up for a few weeks and it’s precious time when you first get bit to get treated as soon as possible. So a lot of patients don’t know that they can do that and doctors will tell them that they won’t send it out to be tested. But patients can actually take the tick themselves, contact the company, pay. And they actually give you real-time online play-by-play as far as the tests that are coming back. They get back to you really quickly within a few days.

And so, that can be helpful taking that into the practitioner and saying, hey, I got bit. Here, this showed up positive from the tick. And it will be helpful with you getting treated sooner rather than later, instead of the delay in diagnosis. Because the biggest issue here; so in my mind, the Acute Lyme is on the tick. We get bit, that’s just the way of the jungle here. It’s the law of nature; the environment and our relationship with bugs. Chronic Lyme is a man-made issue because of delayed diagnosis and denial of its presence. So the most important thing is to again, find a practitioner who will stick with you through the process. On average, a patient needs to be treated, a chronic patient I should say, six months to a year, at least. So you want someone who’s going to go the distance with you but also be open to you branching out and seeing energy medicine providers if that’s something that you really enjoy or have, and that’s something that you want to pursue. Chiropractic, massage, body medicine and different routes of that, nutritional counseling, counseling-counseling to move through any stuff that’s coming up while you’re going through the process and having that support system for you, kind of like a team that’s going to be there to support you and move you through it. So there we go.

Sarah: Perfect. That was so valuable for our listeners. And I think that one of the things I’m taking away from this conversation is that it is extremely important to have that support team and that community, especially with some of the statistics you were sharing in the beginning around just how emotional all of this can be to have that support, whether it’s an online community and in-person community, family members, friends, whatever, just to be able to even talk about this and know that you’re not alone. So, so much valuable information today and I’d love for you to share where everyone can purchase, find your book, or learn more about you and your practice.

Julia: Yes. My book; it’s on Amazon. It’s also being sold as a Kindle edition as well. And my website for the book is risingabovelymedisease.com and for my practice, it’s greenhousemedicine.com to learn more about my medical practice.

Sarah: Thank you again so much for all of your knowledge, all of your wisdom, and for being on today. Thank you, thank you.

From the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul thank you all so much for being here. Truly, honestly, it has been almost one year since The Healing Uncensored Podcast was launched. Last March 2018, I decided to do this thing and go for it. And I had no idea what direction it would take or how it would turn out or what the response and feedback would be but it’s truly been incredible. We are coming up on 55,000 downloads and I really just wanted to take the last few moments of this episode to just say, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am so grateful for all of you for tuning in, for sharing episodes you love, for recommending the podcast to your friends and family and fellow Spoonie Sisters. So I have some really exciting things up my sleeve that are going to be coming in the next week as we celebrate this one-year anniversary. But again, today, just sending you so much gratitude for being here. And if you haven’t already, I would really, really appreciate if you could go rate and review the podcast. Just leave an honest review on what your thoughts are, how this podcast has potentially helped or supported you in your own healing path and that would mean so much to me. Again, thank you and I’ll see you next time.

Connect with Julia:

Rising Above Lyme Disease

http://www.greenhousemedicine.com/

https://www.risingabovelymedisease.com/

Connect with Sarah:

Instagram | Facebook Community | Pinterest | YouTube

Work with Sarah:

Online courses | 1:1 coaching | Send show requests to sarah@theuncensoredempath.com!

This post contains affiliate links. We may receive a small commission for purchases made through these links. Thank you for your support!