395: Microbes Feed on Our Cells: How to Treat Chronic Infections Holistically | Dr. Bill Rawls
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Welcome to the Ancient Health Podcast, where East meets West in the world of medicine. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and here we explore how modern Western science and traditional Eastern wisdom come together to unlock the body's full healing potential.

Each week, we'll dive into powerful tools, techniques, and approaches from both sides of the world to help you optimize your health and live with vitality. Let's bridge the gap between ancient practices and cutting-edge medicine. Let's get started.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Ancient Health Podcast, where East meets West. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Motley. And today, literally, I consider him a friend because Dr. Bill Rawls, MD, is in the house. And we had, I did an interview with Dr. Rawls earlier in the podcast time when it first started. And

And I'm not trying to jump the gun, everybody that's listening. He wrote a really excellent book called The Cellular Wellness Solution.

And we had such a good combo. And I was telling our group, our crew, we had to get back on because he's so articulate. Doc, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you. Yeah, always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's nice. It's so fun. And when everybody out there is listening, I just want you guys to get a backdrop. We're going to go over some questions with Dr. Rawls. And we can't really pigeonhole everybody.

Dr. Rawls because he knows so much in his book. I was talking to him before we just jumped on here, but his book, he talks about herbs and minerals and he talks about endorphins. He talks about stuff before it got cool in functional medicine. So when we go through these questions, I want you to know that I'm saying that he has a wealth of knowledge. So you just got to follow him and keep going along with what he's saying because there's so much info he can cover. So, Doc, okay.

We have the intro, but can you give us a little backdrop about you? We want to know about your story. You've talked to us about how you've had Lyme disease. Can you give us your thoughts and insight about what you went through in your story? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I've told this story plenty, and it's...

It was all unexpected. I mean, I was a conventionally trained physician. I wanted to be a small town doctor. I was really not attracted to managing chronic illness with medications because people just never got well. So I gravitated toward OBGYN, dealing with healthy people, bringing life into the world, really cool. But that 30 years ago, that meant small group

taking call every second to third night in the hospital. 24-hour call and labor and delivery every second to third night, every second to third weekend from Friday morning until Monday morning. And, you know, there was always something going on. And I was one of those people. If somebody was in labor or something that was going on, I just didn't sleep. And

In my thirties, you know, you just push through it. It's like, yeah, I can do this. I'm good. I can do this. And you just push through and you crash when you're not on call and you make do. And it was a busy life in a lot of ways. It was really fun. But by my late forties, I was just not tolerating that anymore. And I started losing the ability to sleep and catch up when I wasn't on call.

And then my body started breaking down. Eventually, like around age 47, had to give up doing obstetrics after doing it like 20 years. And that I thought, you know, my sleep will come back. I can recover. I can do other things. I'll be OK. I just kept getting worse. It snowballed.

You know, heart issues, skipping my heart beats every second or third beat, chest pain, my joints were falling apart, brain fog, just everything. And so I started going to conventional doctors and they just kept doing tests and kept throwing drugs at me and nothing really helped. And all the drugs made me miserable.

And I kept coming back to what's going on in my body. And I kept thinking there's got to be a microbe or something that's driving me crazy. And I kept going back to Lyme disease because I was bitten by a lot of ticks when I was a kid. But that wasn't acute, you know? I mean, it meant that those things had been in my body for a long time. But I finally got a test that was positive. And I thought, okay, finally, antibiotics get well. But that made me sicker instead of better. Yeah.

And finally, and this was around about 2005 when Stephen Booner wrote his book, Healing Lyme, that offered an herbal protocol for Lyme disease. And it was well-researched. It had the kind of science that I was looking for. It was credible. But even then, my expectations that it was actually going to work, pretty low.

But it worked. It started getting better. And the herbs didn't wreck my gut like antibiotics did. And I just had this extraordinary experience. And, you know, it wasn't all rosy. It took me about five years to completely get my health back. But it was like, wow, it changed my practice. It changed my life. And for ever since then, now running up on 20 years since that day,

Everything in my life has been devoted. The passion has been figuring out because it just made me recognize these stark limitations in our conventional medical system, but also what our medical system is good for. And

Just helped me see this thing we call chronic illness very very differently than I did before It opened me up to natural therapies like like herbal therapy and Yeah, that's what I've been doing ever since and it's been good and you know, it's it's oddly enough I wouldn't trade it for anything because It's just been such a great experience. I

I really resonate with you, Doc, is because when I read your story and read your book, I had Lyme. I got bit up by C ticks and nymph ticks. I went through a nest of them when I was 14. I was looking for a dog in the woods. And all the classic signs, I didn't know what it was back then. Nobody, you know, I didn't know. And when you talk about body breaking down, it happened to me like 31, 32. I was working on somebody in the clinic and I bent over and almost passed out.

And I never had – you're young. You think I can handle this. And so I was like I just – maybe I'm drinking too much caffeine. When you start to see your own frailty, you're the physician. You're supposed to be the one helping others, and you have this – you get this feeling, and you're like, wait, I'm supposed to help other people, but I can't do it like I used to. And that's why when I read your book, when you're talking about Stephen Buhner and I'm like – when I –

started to research herbs, it's a funny thing. And I'm not wanting to take away from our time with you, but one of my friends, Dr. Alan Linsley, he was, he was really sick too, doc. He was super sick. He started reading Dr. Buhner's work, Stephen Buhner's work, and he put together his own concoctions and he healed himself, got rid of all his lines. Cause he's like, he couldn't, nothing else was helping. So it's ingenuity. And one thing that I really appreciate too, I want to get into like, you loved herbology, you're, you're a master at herbs. Um,

But you're also focusing on cellular energy, cellular health. And that was one thing that I was really impressed with because even though you kill off an infection, people out there that have microbes, can you –

talk about about that, like the herbal aspect of killing off the microbe, but also what does it take for your cells to have energy to like keep prospering, to keep going forward? Right. Yeah. Well, you know, just starting with the cells, I mean, we are, we think of our body as the whole, you know, and that it's made up of parts. You know, we have a heart, we have a brain, we have muscles and joints and bones. And

That's a way to think about it, but it doesn't take the body down to its smallest functional unit. So if you look at like one of Elon Musk robots, that whole thing is a unit. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's made of parts and all of that is knitted together and, and run by computers. But if any one of the parts of it break, it's out of commission.

Which you consider how fast you go through a laptop computer. I don't know how long those things are going to hang around. But your body isn't that. Your heart is not a unit. Your heart is an organ made up of billions and billions of cells. Wow. And every part of your body, your whole body is made up of individual cells. It's like...

pinpoints of life, just trillions of pinpoints of life all knitted together, which is really cool. So the smallest functional unit in your body is a cell, which means your heart can lose cells and keeps right on beating. You don't have to shut it down and repair it like you would a robot.

So we're losing cells all the time. We're making new cells all the time. And our cells are networked together by, you know, hormones and signaling agents. And so all those cellular communications are knitted together. But cells are individual units. So you can think of your cells as little microscopic machines, little biological machines that do work.

And they're all independently functioning. So when you think about that way, instead of thinking about your body as a whole, you know, you think about, okay, these are little mechanical biological devices that are running my body. What does it take? What's the operating requirements for that cell to work right? And so...

When you get to that, you get to the formula of wellness, because if you do that for one cell in the body, you do it for all the cells in the body. So every cell in your body has to have five things to function right. Every cell has to have the right nutrients. Now, different cells require different nutrients, like our

Heart cells require fat for that slow burn. Our brain cells burn carbohydrate. Thyroid cells need iodine. But if you're eating a whole food diet, a well-rounded whole food diet, you're giving your cells everything they need to work right. So they need the right nutrients. You got to have that.

Second thing is they need a clean environment. So we're living in a world with the food and the air and the water and everything we're exposed to. We're picking up unnatural toxins in the environment that basically are hobbling our cells. It's like throwing sand in the machinery of your cells. They just, they have to work harder. They don't have as good output. And so it just kind of slows them down and affects every cell in your body. Yeah.

Number three, cells need downtime. Now, some cells, like our heart cells, have to rest in between beats, which is why our heart cells are so vulnerable. But most of our cells need eight hours of good sleep every night downtime. Average in America is six and a half hours. And if you do that, you start your next day with a deficit that your cells haven't recovered from the day before. Wow. Wow.

So that's really important to get that sleep. I learned that the hard way. It was really bad. So number four. Now here we're talking about physical factors. Exercise. The most important part of exercise is you move blood and lymph. And that moving blood flushes the space in between our cells, clears out congestion, debris, waste, and

and delivers oxygen and nutrients. So it's like it allows our cells to breathe. It's really important. So that's the main thing. And we're getting a lot of stuff from exercise, but that's the main thing. Of course, you can overdo it. So physical stresses, trauma, they can obviously damage your cells. And then the fifth factor.

Microbes are our enemy. And we don't think about this, but how microbes do harm is they're basically using our cells as a food source. Everything's got to eat and everything is food for something else. So we are food for microbes and that's why they want to get in our body.

And we recognize things that make us really sick, really acutely like Ebola or COVID or things like that. But it's these low grade things that we pick up all through our lifetime and end up being the problem. Oh, and when you have a microbe, like, you know, when we talk about cell as being part of the whole, I really love the analogy because individuals out there would ask doc, they would say,

Okay, so I'm taking all the right nutrients. I drink clean water. I breathe clean air. I'm doing plenty of exercise and I still feel crummy. I still have chronic joint pain and maybe microbes is something they haven't looked out for. Yep. So with the microbes,

How long? You talked about you had it for a long time. How long do microbes last in the body? I know that's a pretty general question because people are saying like, I never got bit. I got bit when I was 12, but I don't remember getting bit or having any infections. But do they last a long time?

We don't know all the answers to that, Chris. I mean, it's, but we know a lot of stuff. And that's the amazing thing is things that I was theorizing about like 10 or 15 years ago, I've been able to find evidence to support. And AI, chat, GBT has accelerated the ability to do that. So I'm picking up more and more and more micro connections from

But this relationship we have with microbes isn't quite as cut and dry, I think, as most people think. It's like you think we get an infection and that infection enters our body, makes us sick. Our immune system, either we don't last and the microbes win or the immune system cleans it all up and they're gone, right? That's how people think about it.

So, when you got all those tick bites, you became more symptomatic because you got a big load of microbes, enough to really cause you some acute issues. But quite frankly, most people who get bitten by a tick, they don't know about it. Because different microbes, it all depends on whether we have built-in immunity, right? So, Ebola virus is really, really bad, right?

Because humans have never been exposed to it. We have no built-in immunity. So when that thing enters our body, it devastates, it ravages all the cells in our body and there's not a whole lot we can do to stop it. And when you have that immune function that we don't know enough, there's more technology hopefully that will teach us like as it grows, like we can have more ways to access if we have a microbe. And you're saying they're using us as food.

So that would give us an explanation, Doc, that that's why a person takes a whole bunch of nutrients and they still feel bad is like they basically are using our energy sources, correct?

Not necessarily. I mean, the problem with nutrients is your cells can only use so much at a time. And a lot of people, if you overload nutrients, you know, you may be just giving your cells a lot more than they can use. Even, you know, stress cells do need more nutrients. So when somebody's chronically ill, I do nutrient supplementation. But, you know, it's getting back to the infection thing.

Most of the microbes that we're exposed to, and this was really an interesting observation, the vast majority of them we do have built-in immunity for. They're not like Ebola virus. Ticks and tick-borne microbes, ticks have been biting humans for hundreds of thousands, millions of years. And Borrelia, man, it's at least 60 million years old that we know of.

Rickettsia, right? You talk about Rickettsia that can cause Rocky Mountain spotted fever. And you hear about our mitochondria were once bacteria, right? That we've absorbed these energy producing bacteria. They were Rickettsia species. So we've had this relationship with microbes for a very long time.

So when these things that are not necessarily our friends enter our body, their goal is not necessarily making us sick. That's the, you know, when you have somebody that gets deathly ill, that's a poorly balanced host-microbe relationship. That's not really, that doesn't work in the microbe's favor unless they can spread really rapidly. So when you look at all these tick-borne microbes,

They want to get in the body, get past the immune system as quickly as they can and enter tissues. So they're not in the bloodstream that long. So when they get to tissues, they invade cells because cells offer protection from the immune system, protection from the antibiotics, and they're right there in their food source, right? Yes, yes. So...

That's what Borrelli is doing. That's what Bartonella is doing. That's what Babesia is doing. That's what all of these microbes are doing is trying to get to our tissues, invade our cells, our brain cells. And they have sophisticated mechanisms of actually invading white blood cells and using that as a carrier mechanism to get across the broad brain barrier into the brain and through tissues in the body. And they infect cells.

Different microbes prefer different cells. It's like Bartonella likes cells that line blood vessels because it scavenges red blood cells, puts it in its place where it gets its food. Borrelia likes areas where there's collagen, so that's brain and skin and joints.

And so different microbes invade different areas, but they invade cells. Now, there's a part of our defense system that a lot of people don't realize. You know, we hear a lot about our immune system, but our cells can defend themselves. Using a process of autophagy, cells can expel microbes. Wow. So they're not defenseless.

But these microbes invade the cells and they have one other mechanism that they can survive. And this is really interesting. And this has been a focus of my research over the past five or more years of investigating this. This was kind of the missing piece I didn't have 10 years ago. Our cells need nutrients. Now, the problem is some of the most vital nutrients don't always make it to our cells.

Liposomes are microscopic spheres that transport critical nutrients into the bloodstream. They're made of phospholipids, which is the material that matches the cell membranes. So liposomes can actually feed the cells. I'm really excited to partner up with LiveOn Labs. LiveOn Labs was the first company to use liposome encased dietary supplements. Their liposome vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant that supports your immune systems beautifully.

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Now that's code D-R-M-O-T-L-E-Y. That's a $56 value with the code Dr. Motley. Go to liveonlabs.com. That's L-I-V-O-N-L-A-B-S.com and enter code Dr. Motley. Let's feed our cells. They can invade cells.

But they can slow their growth or even go dormant. So they can just hang out inside cells indefinitely. Wow. And they can stay that way as long as your cells are healthy. Oh, wow.

Right. So, and this had been documented, not just for the tick-borne microbes, you know, are you aware of pandas that kids get and it's, you know, associated with streptococcus? So it was like, could this be going on in that? So I found a study looking at the

the type of streptococcus that is associated with pandas. And there was a study documenting that these bacteria could invade cells and go dormant and stay dormant for weeks or months and then reactivate later. And they can invade white blood cells and get into the brain and invade blood cells there too. So same mechanism. So I've documented this for Bartonella.

Babesia, which is a protozoa. Just about all of them use this strategy. So the deal is there's a lot of possibilities. The other day, just for kicks, I asked ChatGPD, "What do you know about how many possible co-infections there are that could be associated with Lyme disease-like symptoms?"

gave me 50 different microbes, 50 different microbes. And my list is actually a lot bigger than that, but I wanted to know what it knew. So what that means is you can have all the symptoms of chronic Lyme disease and not be carrying the Lyme bacteria. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Wow. That's because the co-infection can mimic what the Lyme can. So you have these different co-infections because

That would explain a lot with some of the patients that have come in, Doc, because I've had some patients that look like exactly they have Lyme disease and they don't have it. I mean, I've literally had – I know you've seen this. I've had people that have had like E. coli, like in almost similar symptomatology. I'm like, I don't understand this. That gives a good explanation. So –

They use your cells, the white blood cells, they infiltrate your brain so they can spread and they want your cells to necessarily be healthy so they can keep thriving, basically. Yeah, yeah. They want a platform that when you grow older or you get a little bit sick, they get an opportunity to reactivate and start growing. Wow. So-

So, Doc, answer me this. So individuals out there are saying, OK, so you get a little sick. Is that why some individuals would say flu comes around this season or whatever is the big infection of the year? They get that and then another virus or something is showing up in their blood work and they're like, wait a minute. Flu's going around, but I've got enterovirus. What is it?

Is that what happens? That's what happens. Things that are already there. So something comes along and tips of balance causes cellular stress, right? So you picked up things. Maybe you had tick bites. Maybe you picked up mycoplasmas from somebody or a respiratory infection. Everybody's got Epstein-Barr and a whole list of other viruses and you've got all this stuff.

So the extent of what we actually each are carrying, we don't know. It's probably a lot. And this looks like it's a normal state in everybody. So these things are just hanging out. So the next question I asked ChatGPD was, is there any association between those microbes and other chronic illnesses?

It exploded. I just got multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's. You just get all these different illnesses, which suggests that here we're looking at a basic model of what's happening with most chronic illnesses. What? And so you could see there's an association, like you say MS or Parkinson's,

That there could be infections that could contribute to those types of conditions. Right, right. Wow.

And I found a paper recently looking at the underlying causes of MS, things that would put someone at risk of developing MS. And they listed dietary factors, toxic factors, not exercising, mental stress, and not sleeping. So all the things I mentioned, but they also listed various microbes.

Mycoplasma, Zebstein-Barr, chlamydia, which is really common. A lot of kids get that and there are other ways of getting it. Also Borrelia, the Lyme bacteria was on the list. But there was another factor and that was genetics. And they found that the people that actually went on to develop MS had certain genetic factors that put them at greater risk.

So that's where genes fall into place. If your genes define what microbes you best tolerate, what stress factors you best tolerate. So genes aren't actually a cause of disease, but they are a factor in how you tolerate certain stress factors. So you could have the genes for a mess and be fine your whole life. But if all the right factors, microbes, et cetera, come together,

You might get MS where somebody else just gets chronic Lyme disease or something else, right? So it's really interesting to start putting these pieces together. It's fascinating. And I mean, I love talking with you because the people out there listening would say like genetic expressions are,

There can be different different genetic expressions of what you're saying, depending on the person. And so, like, you could have different states or conditions or diseases because of your genetic expression or how you express your genes. So I know this is a pretty general question to doc, but are there with the microbes, how they infect your genes and.

Are there particular herbs or particular things that you, Dr. Rawls, say like, I think my patient should take these things to help keep cells strong, to help them with autophagy? Are there a few things that you recommend as your top? You know, it's –

Over time, I've started thinking a little bit differently about the herbs. After the remarkable experience I had, I studied traditional Chinese medicine, as I'm sure you have, Ayurvedic medicine, others, and there's a lot of commonality with all of those things. But I also was interested in the science of what was happening with the herbs, the chemistry of the herbs, and how is it affecting the microbes, the cells, etc.,

So I came back to that and realized that most all of our herbs are going to have some commonality. So when we look at an herb, we're talking about a plant, another living organism. Well, that living organism has to defend itself against microbes. It has to protect itself against free radicals and toxic substances and basically all the same things that we have to deal with.

So unlike our immune system, which is cellular, plants basically have an equivalent that's chemical. So they use chemical warfare.

And so all plants are putting out a wide range of chemical substances to defend their cells, themselves, their cells against a wide range of bacteria, viruses, protozoa, yeast. But it's selective. There's an intelligence built into it that

It's targeting pathogens, but not targeting things that would be defined as normal flora. And that's why I could take those herbs for all those years and not disrupt my gut was because it was selecting pathogens in my body.

There's no antibiotic on earth that will do that. Yes. Because that sophistication, that intelligence isn't there and it's built into the herb. But it's not just protecting the cell from microbes. It's from free radicals, toxic substances, all these other stress factors.

So when we take that plant, we're gaining that. And that's true with virtually any herb that we use. We're getting some of those things. But what's also present in plants is the chemical messaging system of the plant. So plants are complex multicellular organisms, and they have to use chemical messengers to define cellular functions.

Change in seasons, change in weather, all of these things are happening and the plant is using chemical messengers to change, to modify cellular functions to meet those environmental demands.

A lot of those chemical messengers are the same ones that we use to balance our chemical pathways. But different plants are using different things. Plants can't move, they're pretty much stuck where they are. What a plant produces to modify its chemical structure or cellular structure and functions and protect itself from microbes is very dependent on that plant's native environment.

So you use different plants from different places and you get slightly different effects. And some plants have evolved differently. It's like none of us would use poison ivy as a medicinal, right? So certain plants are poisonous to us, but

Some of those chemical messengers can be either calming or exciting to us. A good example is caffeine is exciting to us. Well, that's a chemical messenger that a lot of plants are using.

Nicotine and tobacco. That's exciting to us. That's a chemical messenger that plants are producing actually to disrupt the nervous system of insects, you know? So different plants are going to give her slightly different effects.

So I tend to use herbs that are either neutral as far as how they make us feel or calming. Like ashwagandha is a great herb for calming our hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, helping us resist stress and all the adaptogens, you know, our adaptogens.

do that. But they all have cell protective effects. Ashwagandha, it's a pretty good antimicrobial. So there are a lot of different herbs that we can use. And so there's some really basic ones that anybody can use, like the adaptogens, like rhodiola, ashwagandha, like turmeric, which is a great anti-inflammatory. And it's...

So you can't go wrong there. And then, you know, when you get into subtle things that you're trying to more specifically solve a problem, then an herbalist or a naturopath can help you, help guide you into some of those choices. But there's a lot of stuff that people can take every day that they can benefit from that could make their lives a lot better.

I do love how you chose the adaptogens, those that can help bring calmness, but they can also kill off infections, which I love to hear at the office. I'll definitely try to find herbals that do kind of like killing two birds with one stone, essentially. And when we see like how herbs, you say there's an innate intelligence, I've always been astounded that herbs,

with Chinese medicine, doing a lot of pulse point and doing some different types of analysis, how much a person, their body chooses an herb and they choose an herb that works well for them. And you're just, and it is astounding because people, if you're listening, like sometimes an individual's pulse point, which is an analysis type procedure, they'll calm down when you give them the right herb. And it's just like their body craved it because it met a need. And so when we see this doc, that

You're talking about cellular health and cell dysfunction, cell death. You have these herbals that can actually help clean out the microbe and calm down. Are you finding that this day and age we're having, you say, like the environment stressing the cell, things are just really bombarding it? Yeah.

Are we in a, you think in this area of cellular health and longevity, there's a big discussion about longevity. And do you find that there's a top things that you would say in the environment that you would clean up? Of course, we got the microbes. You got to clean out the microbes. You got to get those things out. But are there a few things that you would say really injure the cells even extra to microbes that you've been seeing that lately with longevity? Yeah.

You know, longevity is all about cellular health. I mean, we collect cells through our lifetime until we get to about age 20. And at that point, we've got five or 10 times the cells we actually need to function. And over the rest of our lives, we're gradually losing cells. So our cells basically run out of energy because they run out of mitochondria.

And that is in a nutshell what aging is. So you want to protect yourselves. You want to increase the longevity of yourselves.

What's amazing to me is I know through the time I was sick, I burned a lot of extra cells. You know, I burned down my night lives for sure. But here at age 67, I don't expect to have the energy when I was 30 or 40, but I'm

I'm doing pretty darn well and just feel good. And I don't have symptoms and all of that sort of thing. So I think it's amazing what you can do when you treat yourselves well. And, you know, big things out there, food,

high carbohydrate diets people are just killing themselves with carbs and Our cells just aren't designed from that You know our ancient forage past was pretty much low carb low fat and full of vegetables and lean protein sources and we're just overloading ourselves with fat and carbs and

It's just it causes us to burn our mitochondria out faster. Besides that, it just does a lot of harm to ourselves. So that's top of the list. I think that's one of the worst things that people are doing for themselves is.

And second to that, yeah, there is a lot of stuff out there and it's affecting every living organism on the planet. I mean, you know, when I was born, there were three billion people on the earth and most of them didn't drive cars. Now we have eight billion people and we have just about as many cars as we have people. Wow. And.

Every one of these cars, even with improved systems, they are still putting out hydrocarbons that are toxic to us. And it's, you know, when you look at coal and petroleum, if you went back millions and millions of years and ate the plant matter that would have become coal or ate the algae that would become petroleum,

it'd be really good for you. Yeah. But millions of years of pressure in the earth with coal has buried heavy metals into the substance and also distorted those chemicals into a form that's not consistent with biological life. Same thing with petroleum. The algae, the molecules have been distorted

And so when we release those things out in the atmosphere and chemicals and automobile exhaust and plastics and everything else, these chemicals are just permeating everything. And they act like other organic chemicals. So our body, our cells absorb them very rapidly. But when the cells try to use them, they don't have the enzymes and everything to break them down. So they basically just sit there.

And they clog up our cells and basically just mess up the machinery. So our cells are pretty good at purging that stuff. But man, we've just got so much coming at us. So, you know, getting around it, using air filters,

trying to live in clean places. I mean, I'm lucky enough that I live on a marsh surrounded by trees and the air around me is really, really clean. But that's just not true for a lot of people. So you have to kind of create environments that are healthy to live in. There's a problem with supermarket olive oils.

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and taste the difference freshness makes. That's GetFreshDrMotley.com for a free bottle and pay just $1 shipping. GetFreshDrMotley.com. With all the stress, with computers, with schedules, with everything, people are pushing the stress button too much and that's affecting their sleep. And when your body is, you know, it's, and this is especially true, and this is something that I've come to appreciate about chronic illness is

When your body is in alert mode, that over-exaggerated fight-or-flight response, all the normal functions shut down. I mean, when you look at the group of most GI issues that people have, it's not as much what they're eating. It's the fact that their body is in continual fight-or-flight mode. Yes. And that causes slow motility. And when you slow things down,

It gives bacteria more time to grow. We're supposed to move everything through, but that causes bacterial overgrowth. Everything gets backed up into the liver that compromises detoxification and it makes a mess. So this over-exaggerated fight or flight response that we all live in is just really horribly bad for us.

And on top of that, we're not doing the one thing that could neutralize that the very best, which is moving.

Right. And, you know, so when you look at cellular functions, bringing it back into your field, all of our cells are networked together and they have electrical impulses as well as chemical impulses. And it throws off our electrical meridians and everything is a mess. And that just opens us wide open for those bacteria that we've all picked up.

to say, hey, it's time. And they break down cells and invade other cells. And before we know it, our tissues are shifted from these healthy tissues to stuff that favors microbe growth.

And that's what chronic Lyme is. And it's so it's it's an issue for a lot of people. It's not surprising, really, that 60 percent of the American population are defined as being chronically ill. And you you've hit so well, Doc, about the person as a whole, as holistic, because you say there's biochemical changes.

electrical changes and there's mental changes emotional changes physiological you know structural changes and you're right we don't move and we're seeing culture now like i mean

You know, people say back in the olden days, but I remember I was had a really fun discussion with somebody about their children, how they could go to the we had to go to the library. Like, I remember I had to go to the library like you had to move you to go do something. And now everything is right there. They can just get on their iPad and get everything article they need. And we're starting to see a high sedentary rate. Of course, even with children, I'm surprised that.

Because I'm still in pretty much full-time practice. I am full-time practice. Go on the go most of every day. And you're seeing younger and younger kids that are sicker and they have cellular dysfunctions. Parents these days are kind of at their wits end. But like you have mentioned, these are things that we need to check out. So we like clean water. You mean clean food. You need to get electromagnetic radiation. Look into microbes. And

I would hope that now in our culture today that there's going to be more books like yours that actually discuss these types of issues. And I'm thankful that more there's more holistic, you know, medicine out there. So, Doc, you have you have a program. I know you have like a new program that for people that live with chronic illness and you are a proponent of it. Can you can you talk about that, that program you have? Right.

You know, looking at this thing, we have been, you know, after I went through my journey, I stopped practicing obstetrics. I shifted to a practice that was more like a functional medicine practice today. I got certified in holistic medicine. And I went through a phase that I was testing, testing, testing and all of that sort of thing.

And I came around to the fact that kind of like you were talking, the more you just paid attention to the patient, talked to them, looked at them, really put together that thing they've been through to become ill. Wow, I just didn't need to do as much testing. You know, you get back to those root causes of helping them make better choices. But by the time someone is chronically ill, right?

Their body is in a full tailspin and their whole system is out of whack. You know, they've got this exaggerated fight or flight response. Their tissues are congested. I mean, everything is going on. And so, you know, after my practice, I started...

creating herbal products and from formulating herbs. Um, we had these protocols that people have been using that over the years, you know, writing and learning and modifying. Um, it's like, how do we help people better? Because we found that a lot of people just, even with great herbal therapy, they just weren't receptive to the herbs. Um, and,

Because their body was in such a mess. And I've come around to appreciate just listening to people that you really have to solve this problem in phases. And the very first thing is calming that overactive sympathetic response. You know, that is kind of the root. That's why they're having gut dysfunction. That's why they're not detoxifying. That's why they're not tolerating the therapy.

So moving toward, all right, let's ease in some herbs that do have some antimicrobial because we want to get that microbe, but let's not doing it quite as intensely. And using a combination, the first product ever formulated was a high-grade ashwagandha and theanine and several other calming herbs. And

That it's not as strong as a drug, but it still helps just get people in a better place. And then teaching them relaxation techniques, getting them practicing Qigong and and doing some things like that just to calm that, to short circuit that response.

because they're not going to be out of it until their cells are well, right? Because the cells are bombarding the brain with distress signals all the time. But you have to short circuit that and help them, you know, dampen some of those pain responses and calm that sympathetic overactivity, get them back to normal vagal tone. And then their body starts opening up

to therapy so you can start addressing detox issues, you can start addressing gut dysfunction, and then you can start adding in those stronger antimicrobial herbs. And so,

I really realized it's about a six-month process to do all of that. But if we can do it in phases, then people are going to have a lot better response. So that's what we've been working on. This is something I've been kind of working toward for years and finally just have the whereforeall and the team to start putting this in place.

Really excited about it. Oh, yeah. It's a lot of we are really, really excited just to kind of take that next step. It's when you have this the team and I think that people out there can be encouraged that have dealt with a chronic Lyme or chronic infections if they do know it or.

You know, having a doctor like yourself that can actually understand it to calm down the nervous system because you've heard the stories about individuals who know they probably had like Epstein-Barr or they had some kind of infection and then they just bombarded and took all the antimicrobials and it literally almost killed them. They're like, I was in bed for like months or, you know, I've had you've had that too, Doc. And to know that your system is sensitive.

to know that you have to calm the body down, get into a peaceful place, learn about restoring some basic relaxation to the body. To me, it's encouraging because when – even here in the office, the one thing that I've – I think –

that people like when they come in is that I always tell them I'll move low and slow. Now I'm like telling them, I'm like, I know you want to get rid of this thing really, really quick, but I've got to move nice and easy. I got to do what your nervous system would allow me to do. And, um, but we're not in that system anymore. And then our world, our world's like, get it done now. Give it to me now. I can look at my iPad and it's right there. And it just trains their mentality to like, I need it really quick. And I'm like, no, we can't do that. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. No, healing takes time. You know, it's about cellular recovery. I mean, it generally takes people years to get sick. It's not just going to flip and happen overnight.

And so, yeah, the program we're building is that comprehensive education pathway with lots and lots of support. But it doesn't exclude a provider. I encourage people that, you know, if you've got all the symptoms that I had and most people with chronic Lyme have,

go do a medical workup because you don't know, there might be something hidden that does need immediate medical attention. So I'd said, you know, everybody needs a primary care provider.

But outside of that, I think it's important to get a provider like you, someone who understands natural therapy that can help guide them in other ways that they might be able to use herbal therapy and other kinds of things or help relief. You know, we know that acupuncture and other kinds of things can be really beneficial for helping to short circuit that therapy

dysfunctional cellular mess that's going on inside. All of those components together,

make for success and get people not just transient benefits. I've seen so many people do these therapies, antibiotics or this or that. They go and pay tons of money and they get benefit for a month or two months or three months. And then they're right back where they were spending more money, chasing the next thing. And it's like, just do the things that you need to do to your body to get well. And you're going to get well, but not only that, but

you're going to know what you need to do to stay well for the rest of your life. And, you know, I mean, I just, I mean, I'm an example. I mean, I'm 20 years out from this thing and just really still enjoying life. And that's, that's special. That is special doc. This has been such a good combo because I see what you're saying. Like when, when you can help a patient, um,

See the basic structure, like the basics of, okay, we found like through some analysis, I think you have like, let's say chronic strep or, but instead of trying to go through every single program, just stay steady and just find out what you can do to, like you say, strengthen yourselves, clean this out gently. And, you know, you and I've seen people that like, it may take a year, two years, maybe three, but they go, oh, my life's back.

And I can tell us the type of energy that you emit and that you're giving to your patients and you're giving to this program.

And, Doc, where would they find it? I know it's on your website or is it on Instagram, the program? A couple of websites. RawlsMD.com is just an informational website that I have that we're rebuilding right now to help just deliver that information better. The company website is VitalPlan.com. VitalPlan.com.

And that's a good place to find information. The program we're calling Restore 180, you know, we've had this package of supplements called the Restore Kit for 10 years now and just taking everything we've learned from that. And it's like, all right, just give us 180 days. I know that sounds like a long time, but you're going to be so much better by the end of it.

And I'm not expecting everybody to be absolutely well by the end of 180 days. I mean, it's like it took me five years to completely get things. But where I want people to be is in a position that they know what they've got to do.

to keep moving forward from that point. And they just keep building on it and building on it and building on it. So it's this transformation that we're trying to carry people through to put them in a better place of taking care of themselves for the rest of their lives. Oh, doc, this has been great. This is really, you're right because people need hope. And I want to, you know, testify to you guys that Dr. Rawls has a great heart and, and,

If you are dealing with chronic illness and you really need some answers, I would look into this programs and we're going to put it on our show notes doc. We'll have it there for people to go and be able to be linked to it. If you guys that are out there listening,

shoot us comments, shoot some comments in the comment section. And if you guys have any more questions for Dr. Rawls, you know, you guys can send them our way and a producer could possibly, you know, we can get them down and then maybe he'll have Dr. Rawls back on and he can, if he has his time to do it and we can talk more about these things because, um, we're all about helping people with a chronic illness. I just want information. That's what I'm on. I'm just here for information to get people like, let you guys can heal. And, um,

And Doc, you give that hope. And I'm so thankful. I really am. And I was going to say, we always at the towards the end of the podcast, because you got such a gentle spirit, but we always ask like some fun questions too. I mean, this is like,

you know, not taking away from the convo, but people need some levity. I mean, people out there are like, you know, we can't have docs that are just like super stiff and robotic, you know, but do you have like something about you that nobody really knows that you like, like a hobby or something of that sort? Do you have anything that you say? No, I love to, you know,

cook or something. Do you have anything like that? No, that nobody knows about it, I guess. Well, I mean, just, you know, rare and random, you know, I do like to cook. My mom, mother taught me how to cook when I was a child. And my big thing is making vegetables taste good because it's important. But, um, I do a lot of physical activities. Um, I, you know, I kayak, we'd see kayak, um, and

and ocean kayak in the summertime and still kite surfing. I didn't think I'd be still doing that. So doing a lot of fun things. I love outdoors. Just being outdoors is just wonderful. Anytime. Oh, yeah. I love this, Doc. And this is one of my other ones, but I love that you're outdoors. You're teaching people to get out there and ground, get into the air. What's your favorite type of music? Type of music?

or band. That's a more of an indie music kind of guy. I, I don't like, I like new stuff that's new. That's coming out. I don't, I don't go back and listen to, I mean, there was a lot of great music in the seventies and eighties and nineties, but I tend to look for things that are new a little bit more in the indie alternative genre and,

Oh my goodness. Like, it's almost like we're similar. Cause I'm telling you, I, I don't, I don't look at like, I do listen to some old stuff. I'm like, you know, people are like, yeah, Motley likes this kind of music, but I really am the same. I do. I try to look for new stuff. I don't know what it is. I was like, I'm not very nostalgic. I'm just, I'm like, no, I never have like being nostalgic. I do not like watching movies that are nostalgic. I do not like getting all sappy about stuff. I'm like, just got to move forward. Come on. Um,

Doc, this has been such a good combo and I really mean it, doc. We, we will have you on again and I just really appreciate it. I think if everybody out there, if you guys want more of this information, send us some questions. Remember to hit the bell on your, the bell on the channel to be reminded when new podcasts come out. And again, we're going to just, we're going to keep this longevity talk going this year and I'll get you back on here, doc. This will be great. Okay. All right. Sounds good.

Well, everybody, thank you for tuning in to the Ancient Health Podcast. And again, Dr. Rawls, we are so thankful that you joined us today. Kindred Spirits and everybody out there, remember to check out Restore180. Check out his website, RawlsMD, and look at this program. If you have anybody that has chronic illness, chronic microbes, or suspected, please check out his information, and you can live life. So thank you so much. Until next time, bye, everybody.

Before we wrap up, please remember that the information shared in this podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. No doctor-patient relationship is formed through this podcast, and the use of information here or materials linked from this podcast is at your own risk. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

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Thank you for joining us today on the Ancient Health Podcast. We hope you've gained valuable insights into the harmony between Eastern and Western medicine. If you've enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, share, and leave us a review.

Remember, true health is about balance, mind, body, and spirit. So stay tuned for more episodes where we continue to explore how ancient wisdom and modern science can work together to help you thrive. Here's to your health, balance, and well-being. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and I look forward to our next episode together.