350: Treating Lyme Disease Holistically: Expert Q+A
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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 friends, welcome to the Ancient Health Podcast. I'm your host Dr. Chris Motley and today we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to be answering your questions that you sent in about Lyme disease. So remember to subscribe to this channel if you love this information and click on the bell so that you get reminded every time a new episode is out. So we want to talk about Lyme disease and the reason that it hit home for me is because I had Lyme disease.

And Lyme disease is an infection, an infection state that can bring you to your knees. It is an infection comprised of different types of microbes, bacteria, parasites, and even some viruses. And this conglomerate of infections such as Borrelia, Babesia parasite, Rickettsia bacteria that causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever,

Bartonella gives you cat scratch fever. Ehrlichia will give you ehrlichiosis. Epstein-Barr virus. Mycoplasma gives you walking pneumonia. Even tularemia, rabbit fever. You can even have forms of fungal infections often associated with it. But these are being grouped in because this infection is transferred by ticks and by really any vector or insect that carries blood.

So ticks, mosquitoes, spiders, fleas, mites, the list can go on. And now they're showing that there's reports that these types of microbes can get into the belly of the infection and change its DNA to be able to handle the acidic levels and the alkaline levels of the infection, of the insect, so that it can survive and they get transferred into the host, which would be the person.

When I had it, I had severe symptoms such as migraines, headaches, vision problems, hearing problems, literally having swollen tongue, heart palpitations where my heart felt like it was beating out of my chest, chronic digestive issues, even foot and ankle pain that was causing leg weakness where I didn't feel like I could stand up all day and I almost had to quit practice.

It all came from the time I went through a nest of seed ticks and nymph ticks, which are baby ticks, and almost 30 of them attached to me. I think I counted 60 almost in total. From that time on, I had insomnia. I felt stuff crawling up and down my legs. I felt like I could not sleep at all. I was getting so frustrated and so angry.

And so whenever you know somebody or you yourself has had something like this, I want you to know that my heart goes out to you. So let's answer some of these questions. Let's go through this. And let's see if you have more comments or questions, send them to us. We like to record them down. We'd like to talk to you more about them. And we want to make sure that we answer as many as we can. Number one, what is the most common emotion linked to Lyme infections that prevents people from getting better?

Well, there are a few emotions that I like to go over because there are many organs that can be infected by Lyme disease. And these organ infections can cause a person to experience or express the negative emotion. In Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, organs are linked to emotions.

If an organ is sick or imbalanced, it will express or cause the person to express the negative emotion linked to the organ. I can go through all the biochemistry and the hormones that literally, literally validify why a sick organ would show a certain type of emotion. But that may be for another podcast. But what are the most common ones? Anger, which is the liver. Frustration is linked to that, which is liver and gallbladder. Fear.

Dread. Even the feeling of being stuck or you don't belong. So write that down. Fear, dread, I don't belong, I'm stuck in this position all my life. That's the kidney and the bladder. Or, I'm not good enough, I will never heal, I will always be this sick, and I'd rather people not worry about me because I am so sick they don't need to even worry about this. That's the spleen and the stomach.

chronic worry. So there are a few more, but those are my top choices. And I'm not going to forget about the heart. The heart takes a huge hit. It is basically where all the chi is dispersed. But I keep a special reservation for that emotion, which is passion and joy for life. So I'm going to go over a few of these. Let's say though, that if the liver gets infected,

By Lyme disease, it will cause a process in the liver, methylation, the natural detoxification process within the liver to be altered and imbalanced, causing infections to build up in the liver and the gallbladder. This causes it to become congealed, causes the blood to get thick,

causes the infections to stay hold in the liver because it's a free source of food through the blood lots of proteins lots of fats lots of sugars in the liver so the infections will stay in that area when methylation the natural detoxification pathway is reduced it will cause you to have dirty blood throughout the body Chinese medicine and in Western when dirty blood is circulating through your body into your heart

What does your heart do with dirty blood? What does a car with dirty oil do? It starts to sputter. It starts to skip. It starts to have a falter. What does your heart do? You start to have palpitations. You start to have afib. You start to have tachycardia, chest pain, tightness. Furthermore, the blood in the heart is shooting blood up into the brain. Why? You need to think.

You need to either run from a problem or fight it. Fight or flight. So your brain is the recipient of all that blood flow from the heart in Chinese medicine. So whenever the brain is cloudy, it is always linked to the heart being injured. Do you have brain fog? Can't think properly with Lyme disease. So the heart is getting dirty blood from the liver and now the blood flow from the heart can't get to the brain. So the brain gets upset. It gets angry.

Dirty blood to the brain creates anger and frustration. So you're going to have a lot of anger and frustration with Lyme disease because the liver and the gallbladder are so congealed. Remember, as you clean the liver, you start doing gallbladder flushes and liver flushes and getting all that dirty bile out of the bile ducts, getting the infections out. You start to clean the blood, leading to a clean heart, leading to clean blood in the brain, and you start to feel calmed down.

You don't have infection poop running through your system. So you actually feel ease because you don't have so much toxins residing in your brain. Number two, you could have fear. You could feel like you are stuck in a position of life. I'm stuck here. I can't get out. But I feel like I'm a fish out of water. I feel like nobody understands who I am because I have Lyme disease. Or I know somebody who does.

And people think that I'm normal, even though I look kind of normal to people, but they don't know what's going on inside. That means you feel like you're out of place, but you're stuck and you're afraid you're never going to get out. That is the kidneys. The kidneys can get very toxic with Lyme disease. In fact, there's many reports in journals and through clinical studies and trials. And even in my clinic, I've seen the kidneys get so infected with Lyme disease and its co-infections that it can create cancer.

gallstones, I mean gallstones and kidney stones. It can create kidney stones, bladder stones, UTIs, bladder infections, and urethra itis, basically inflammation of the urethra.

So you start to see that the kidneys are trying to basically pull the toxins away from the liver because the liver is trying to put it into the colon to help it get pooped out. But if you're overwhelmed, your body goes, well, I'm going to try to use the kidneys because the kidneys and the bladder are another detox pathway.

But the kidneys, if they get infiltrated with these infections, it has been shown through research that many of the spirochetes in Lyme disease love to take hold within the kidneys and the bladder. There are many reports that have shown with biopsies that spirochetes love to hang out in the bladder. They'll infect those two areas, kidney, bladder. So when a person has this, this is really interesting.

The kidneys are up in the flanks. The area is right below your ribs. They are right near the area where your hip flexors are attached to your spine. So when the kidneys get tired and sick, it injures the kidneys, which injures the muscles that are right beside them, the hip flexors. The nerves get irritated. And what do the hip flexors help you do? They help you move forward. It helps make your legs propel forward. Literally, your kidneys move.

can paralyze or stiffen up the muscles that help propel your hip movement forward, which would make you psychologically and physically not want to move forward in life. You may think it sounds unusual and unorthodox, but I see it every single day in my office, and I'm telling you, that's what the research and clinical experience is showing. So if you can't move forward because your hips are too stiff, if you feel stuck and standing in one place, then that is the emotion of the kidney.

The next one, stomach and spleen. The stomach is receiving the food. The spleen is the big lymph node on the side of the stomach. It's helping filter the infections and toxins that are coming through the digestive system. It also helps filter a lot of the lymph nodes or the lymph fluid. And it helps with the creation of white blood cells and even red blood cells. That's what the spleen does. It does so much. Now, the spleen and stomach...

If you have an injury, if you have Lyme disease or any type of its co-infections in your stomach, you better believe that your spleen is going to take most of its time trying to filter the stuff out of your stomach. Why? Because your stomach knows it needs to have the strength to absorb nutrients to put it into your body so you get strength. Your spleen is going to work overtime.

And if you have anything like Epstein-Barr or Lyme disease or any of the infections, you'll have a swollen spleen because it's working to pull the toxins out and you'll get mono, a swollen spleen known as spleenomegaly. And so the body is trying to filter and this will cause the person to have the emotion of either not feeling worthy to heal, worry, pensinous, chronic worry, am I ever going to heal?

Or they get so tired they go, I don't want anybody to worry about me. Tired, nobody else needs to worry about me. In fact, I don't know if I'm ever going to heal my body. Don't even worry about it.

And that causes the body psychologically and physically to call all the defense cells. Listen to this. All the white blood cells, all the natural killer cells that are out in the periphery, out in the distant areas, in your hands and feet and your arms and legs that are sitting there working their hardest to go kill all the Lyme disease and kill the infections. You literally are giving them a signal going, hey guys, don't worry about it. Come on back to the spleen. You don't just stay out.

Because it's not worth it. You really don't have to clean up my body because other things, other people are more important than my health or other things are at the top of the list and I'm going to be below because I'm not worthy. I want you all to always consider yourself and you better make sure that you have a healthy respect for your body and love for your body. If you don't, your body will listen.

So you need to start having that natural love for the body saying, I am worthy to heal. And spleen, I want all those white blood cells to go out there and kill all the infections that need to be killed. So that's what one of the things that you will see with the spleen and the stomach is somebody who has low self-worth. And low self-worth, low self-esteem will lead to the reduction of white blood cells and defense cells out in the body.

If it goes back to the spleen, you'll get further swelling in the spleen. So we have to reduce the worry. We have to work with telling the body that I'm worthy to heal. And there are certain emotional processes that would help with your body with Lyme disease. I want you to write this down. Neuroemotional technique, NET. One of my friends on Instagram, Dr. Stephen Zodkoy. Dr. Zodkoy does amazing NET work. Another friend of mine, Dr. Carrie Jacobs, she's out of

Chicago. There's many docs that do neuro-emotional technique, but please look at NET Mind Body on the net. I like EFT tapping. I think it's wonderful. I think you should experience EFT tapping and you can use tapping on acupuncture points to help release emotions. And I love neurofeedback. L-E-N-S. Lens Oaks. O-C-H-S. Lens Oaks Therapy. Neurofeedback.

It's a machine. It's a technique that helps the brain to communicate in every part of the brain and wake up the sleeping parts so that you process your emotions properly. That's what it does. These are three great options. Those emotions, if they are continuously going, will prevent a person from getting better. Life today is stressful. Stress makes everything harder.

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Their mission is to help you take back control of your health. For a limited time, you can save 25% off a 90-day bottle of Just Thrive probiotic and Just Calm at justthrivehealth.com with promo code DRMOTLEY. That's like getting a month for free. To learn more about this groundbreaking company, check out episode 341 of the Ancient Health Podcast. Take control with Just Thrive. It happens. So if you experience the worry or the pensiveness, the chronic fear of being stuck, or anger,

then those organs are infected. If you have a low passion in life or no direction or you feel no joy, then your heart needs to be cleansed of the infection. Okay, those are the emotions. Number two, the second question, how to stay positive through the ups and downs of natural Lyme treatment. Again, this ties into the emotional aspect.

But the ups and the downs can deal with brain fatigue. I remember when I had Lyme disease, if I had high cortisol, it burned out eventually. High cortisol, low cortisol. High serotonin, low serotonin. High dopamine, low dopamine. The ups and downs are when you have low serotonin, you will feel no basic happiness.

If you have low dopamine, you'll have no pleasure. When you have an infection of Lyme, especially in the digestive tract, along with other infections like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, it will screw up your bacteria levels in the gut and that can basically imbalance your natural serotonin dopamine levels where you're not feeling happy, joyous, or pleasure. One of the ways to stay positive through the ups and downs is

is to do your best to create balance within your digestive system. A balanced digestive tract will balance your serotonin and dopamine. So using herbs and using proper diet planning can help you with the ups and downs. So I love to use things such as Cat's Claw, Cat's Claw Supreme, Japanese Knotweed Supreme. I also love to use Cryptolepis.

Those are three of my choices. And I love hutanya too. Hutanya. If you look into those four, those are used extensively for Lyme disease. They help the body with cleaning out the infections of Lyme throughout the gut. And if you can start to use them, you don't have to use all of them at the same time. But if you can use them or find out how to use those, you'll start cleaning the digestive system out. You reduce your sugars.

You use a low sugar, an anti-inflammatory type diet. Some people use carnivore, but some people have alpha-gal, which is a condition where they can't tear apart the beef and it causes an inflammatory response, a huge allergic response. So an anti-inflammatory type diet with low sugars and low beef because too much ammonia, which is a neurotoxin, can be produced for too much meat with Lyme disease.

But I want you to do a low inflammatory diet and that will help you with the ups and the downs. Most people say it's a positive mental attitude. I do believe that. But when it comes to Lyme disease, you need to use the herbals and the diet to help balance the digestive tract. You need to get your bacterial levels like a good probiotic and get your bacterial levels checked and see if a probiotic is needed. And truly, breath work.

Breath work and emotional techniques like I just mentioned before, NET, EFT tapping, neurofeedback, and breath work will help you with the ups and downs. Some people incorporate other things like CBD, cannabinoids. Others use cannabis.

certain types of kava, they'll use good mushrooms. I like mushrooms. I think they're great. I'm talking about reishi, mataki, we're talking about turkey tail, agaricon. Those are different kinds of good mushrooms that will help with the ups and downs. These are just options. But please look into using host defense mushrooms. Now these will help with the inflammatory processes.

So remember that use good mushrooms to help with the ups and the downs. So we have diet, emotional techniques, breath work, time with friends. Do not get isolated. Do your best to stay in movement with daily walks. And for goodness sake, please watch things that make you laugh. You have to laugh as much as you can, not hysterically, but true laughter. Hope that helps with that to stay positive.

Now, does autophagy help Lyme disease? It does. Autophagy is the process where the cells, if you go into a fasting state,

your cells will not have to process foods or sugars or starches or carbs and so it turns into a self recycling system it'll actually go internally into the cell and start to recycle all the toxins within the cell and use those components of toxins and literally convert them into usable parts within the cell like a recycling system a Japanese scientist did a research on autophagy and won a Nobel Prize for it now autophagy helps Lyme disease

certain ways now certain individuals do certain forms of fasting so that they can actually clean out their cells of the Lyme toxins if the Lyme is within the cell if it's inside your cell even like Babesia Babesia gets in your normal cells it gets in your red blood cells it can tear them apart but autophagy is when your body tries to help break down the natural toxins now I do believe it can help with small forms of fasting in the day in the morning for certain individuals

So let's put that straight. Yes, certain forms of intermittent fasting, low levels of intermittent fasting can help with Lyme disease by using autophagy. But if you're very sick and have no meat on your bones, I would not suggest that you do too much intermittent fasting. You need to use a good diet that's been set up for you, particularly. Maybe it's a Pritikin diet, a diet that has the type of protein that you can eat.

and low level inflammatory foods. And when I say that, you have to find and research which foods that you have allergic responses to by using like a good allergy test, like Dunwoody Labs or Alcat. But you have to find out which ones do not work with your body. And if

You need to use food as medicine, but I would not necessarily try to use too much fasting if you're really thin or not very like you don't get enough calories. You have to get calories to be able to support your body during this time. So I believe autophagy can help in many, many ways. But if you have Lyme disease, remember, you're going to have to keep supporting your body with good nutrients throughout this time.

You're going to have to use good herbals and you can use good therapies to help clean them out, especially frequency medicine. I love red light therapy, laser therapy, red laser therapy. Yes, that helps kill off infections or help cleanses the body from the infections. And I love using microcurrent technology to help kill off the infections like there is a

There's a technique or a machine called an IMAET, an IMAET.

And it's amazing. Look into that. I made. But there are many microcurrent machines and Google that that help with killing off infections. Now, to be very careful, because you don't want to kill it off too quickly through electrical microcurrent, electrical activity or current. But I'm saying this using that with a proper diet and herbals can help really clean the body where you don't have to necessarily fast too much. I know people feel better when they fast because they're not having to process too much food because their guts so tore up. I get that.

But again, you still need to make sure you have the nutrients running through the system. So you have to create that healthy balance. Next question. What healing modalities do you do for Lyme disease? I guess I just answered that. So I'll answer this hopefully simply and easily. Number one, I love using good herbals. I want you to write these down if you guys want to have a list. I'm going to give a simple list. I love herbs such as Japanese knotweed, cat's claw, hutanya, cryptolepis. I love artemisia.

Those are some of my top five choices for herbals. The next thing is homeopathics. I love and endorse Desbio, D-E-S-B-I-O, homeopathics. And they have formulas like the SSR, serious symptom relief boxes that you can take to help you with babesia, borrelia, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, symptomatology.

Like treats like. The homeopathics help the body recognize or it's a telephone call to the body to recognize what infections are hiding. It helps remind your body of what the symptoms are because if your body doesn't know what the symptoms are, literally it forgets, it tries to push it away, it'll allow that infection to stay in the body. You have to remind the body and allow the body to experience it through the homeopathic like a telephone call waking you up

and going, oh, that is what I have going on in my body. I push it away and try to forget about it. And you're reminding it with that homeopathic saying, no, this is what Rocky Mountain spotted fever is. This is what Borrelia is. This is what Babesia is. And you take that and you start to see that it loosens it up. I love using the homeopathic and then using the herbs to help clean them out as well. I love microcurrent technology. I love frequency medicine. There are many great machines out there.

I want to say this simply, look up and research microcurrent technology with infection healing. The iMate machines, I'm not endorsing them, but they have a good machine. I use old school microcurrent system to help with using frequencies to clean up the infections. I love radionics, look into radionics and infection therapy or basically balance radionics.

These are really good technology. There are some that are overseas that are being used with microcurrent and radionics that are so good at helping using the frequencies to clean the infection. I love red light. I love infrared. And I love violet light therapy. Violet light therapy, whether it's in a booth, whether it's a box, whether it's in a laser, to help clean up infections in those areas where they're deep in the tissue and maybe where an herb or a tincture cannot go kill them off. Those are just a few.

I love colonics, coffee enemas. I love using cold baths, cold baths if you can handle it to help with the body's parasympathetics. And I love cranial sacral type techniques such as SOT, sacral occipital technique, sacral occipital technique, SOT, along with kinesiology. I mean, I'm not forgetting acupuncture. I always say acupuncture. Acupuncture is my go-to. But kinesiology, applied kinesiology is amazing.

These are some of the main ones that I use to help with Lyme disease. Now, that's in the alternative medicine world. But remember, I want you to look for those deep hidden areas of Lyme. If you suspect you have Lyme, you want to make sure you have good testing. Check this out. Igenex, I-G-E-N-E-X, Igenex out of California is a great lab for Lyme.

And I like DNA Connections with an X. C-O-N-N-E-X-I-O-N-S. They have a really good urinalysis test. Those are just top two that I think that are good to do well. There are some in other countries, but for this purpose, I would say look into Igenex or DNA Connections out of Colorado.

You need to make sure you have proper testing. If you have any type of parasites that are along with Lyme disease, go to parasites.org and use theirs to help find out if there's any infections or toxins in the gut that could be accentuating the Lyme disease.

There's formula LSF 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. They help with Borrelia, Babesia, Bartonella with parasites. There's a mixture of great, great herbs. And you can go to their website, regionxnaturals.com, regionxnaturals.com. And it's like R-E-G-E-N-X naturals.com.

And it will show you what it does. And his website, they have some videos on there that show what each one will do. And he talks about Lyme disease because he himself helped me with my Lyme disease. He's such a good friend and so smart. Those herbs would help with Lyme disease. And when you use the herbs I just mentioned and you research them, you'll find that you have a chance and a possibility to help clean out the Lyme.

Another great source to learn about herbs is Herbal Antibiotics by Stephen Buhner. B-U-H-N-E-R. B-U-H-N-E-R. He has a great book about natural antibiotics for antibacterials and natural antivirals. He has a great, great book about all the herbs. He goes in there and explains them. And I've seen them do wonders just from this book. These books on patients with Lyme disease. Please look into...

His book, Healing Lyme Disease. It's amazing. He's very, very brilliant. Stephen Buhner. There are some good books out there about Lyme disease, and there's more information about how it causes more autoimmune. But I am going to be a testament that I've been cleaning Borrelia and Babesia out of my body, and thankfully my signals don't show.

But I'm always on the hunt to find out if I need more parasites or any type of Lyme-related infections that are lingering in my body. I take a lot of good herbs. It could be because I want my body to stay healthy. It could be because I don't want anything to ever come back. But one of the biggest things I want you to know is that I use homeopathics to help keep reminding my body and telling my body it's okay to heal and to flush these things out. So please remember that you need to research homeopathics as well as you use herbs. I really like this format. I hope it goes well.

If you like this type of info and you want to go even deeper and you have more questions, please check out the membership that I have on my website and also in the link in my Instagram. I have a membership that goes and has more videos that talks a little deeper about these types of conditions like Lyme disease and parasites and such. But I do it in a simple manner so it doesn't seem like it's overwhelming. So if you want to go a little deeper, head over to the membership.

And I'm just so grateful to be able to answer these questions. We're going to have more of this type of format and it may be more live interaction soon. So everybody out there, I'm so thankful. If you have more questions about Lyme disease, remember, you can also send us some comments, send us some questions here on the podcast. Remember, like and subscribe. Give us a thumbs up. And if you know anybody with Lyme disease and want to get this information to them, just forward it over to them. Really appreciate it.

From all of us here at the Ancient Health Podcast, I'm thankful for all of you. Have a blessed day. Take it easy. 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. Always consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your health regimen and do not disregard or delay seeking medical advice for any condition you may have. 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.