The Crossroads of Tick-borne infections and Mycotoxins

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Welcome to another session of “Mycotoxins and Chronic Illness” and today we’re gonna have a really good time. We got a chance to talk to Tom Moorcroft. Tom is a doctor of osteopathy and an amazing human being. He’s an educator, a teacher, and he’s someone we’ve worked with over the years at ILADS and has done a lot to really help teach people about Lyme disease and we’ll talk a little bit more about his current project at the end, which is very exciting, okay. But now I’d like to start off and have Tom tell us a little bit about how you wound up in this business.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Yeah, right, thanks so much, Eric. I’m so happy to be here. This is awesome. I’m looking forward to it. Yeah, you know, it was interesting. Like I always just loved playing outside. And one day I was, you know, I was studying natural resources in college doing the outing club and all this stuff and I was just like, one day I said, “How the heck are we gonna preserve mother earth, right?” ‘Cause I talked to all the adults and the scientists and they never listened or they talked and then they didn’t change. So I was like, “I’m gonna start teaching kids.” So I actually took this job at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, which is now The Cary Institute. And they do a ton of Lyme research from an ecology perspective. When I was teaching outdoor education and I happened to get, you know, Lyme disease and I had a big rash, right? 

Of course, I had this huge rash on my body. And actually, my boss found me staring at a wall drooling on myself. He said, time to go to the doctor, Tom. ” And so, you know, I got treated, I walked in and the guy’s like, “Hey dude, you got Lyme disease, classic case here, 10 days of doxycycline and you’ll be completely fine.” And you know, so 10 days, I was feeling better by that time. And then over the next eight years, I was, you know, I had, they told me that I had depression, I had joint pain, you know, maybe a rheumatologic condition. And then ultimately they’re like, you have ADHD. I’m like, “Well, duh.” I mean, as you know, I mean that’s kind of like our super power, right, is to get that, but then ultimately, they diagnosed me with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and you know, I was just looking around and I was so frustrated because all they were doing was, those are just labels that tell you that I have the symptoms that I’ve been complaining about. 

And so, a friend of mine handed me a yoga DVD, and I was like, I got nothing to lose. So I started doing this work and I really kind of got into it. And at the same time I was in osteopathic medical school. So I was getting a lot of hands on osteopathic treatment while we were practicing. And I was also starting to do this physical practice of yoga and what was really interesting is it was Ashtanga Yoga, which is very physical, and because I can’t sit down, like we were talking like we’re kind of all over the place, got all that energy, and because it was physical, it was allowing me to open up my physical structure, but also created this way that I could have an insight into the more mental and physical and spiritual side of it. And it was really cool to just see how that structural change really impacted me. And as I started to work through it, I stopped drinking Coca-Cola, I stopped eating crappy food, and I started to listen to my body. And so that was about six years after Lyme and between that time, and about two years later, I was about 70% better just from working on my own structure and calming my mind down and working on the vagus a little bit. Then I ran into somebody who was rotating in their office.

I had a last minute shift. It was like the universe said, “Go here, Tom.” And I walked in and they had Lyme practice. I had no clue. And what they put together was, you know, it was like a him and her thing. And he was treating the people with Lyme with meds and herbs and she was doing the osteopathic treatment. And they said, “People can’t heal from these chronic illnesses unless we address the whole person.” And that remaining 30% over the next four and a half years was able to be fixed and it’s been over a decade. I haven’t had any symptoms.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Wow. That is the journey that we would like people to have maybe a little quicker.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

A lot quicker, hopefully.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

A lot quicker, but you know, that is, you know, what I always keep trying to express to people is A, you know, to be fair, that’s a journey that’s not gonna work for everyone in that format. But the basic plan is what’s necessary is harnessing the healing power of your being in whatever language your body can understand, you know?

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. Through the process, I’ve learned over the years of doing this that so many people, there’s like several groups of people. And one of those groups of the people, if they ever lay down, they’ll never get back up. And I felt like I was that person. If I ever took my foot off the gas, my body felt so bad that I thought it would just collapse. And there’s another group of people who, if they don’t sit down right away, they’re gonna collapse and not get back up and they can’t do what I did. And they’re, like you were saying, there’s other ways to do it. And the beauty is there’s so many different avenues to address optimizing self healing and stimulating that. 

But I think that’s the part I’ve learned the most is like we go to medical school and especially osteopathic school and say, “Hey, the body has a self-healing mechanism.” It’s this unity of body, mind, and spirit. And, you know, the body has a tendency towards being healthy. Those are all great words, and it’s, I love the fact that I was taught a philosophy, but to actually be sick and see how it works for me, and then be at the privilege of working with other people to see how it uniquely works in them and why my healing journey and theirs are similar, but totally different, I mean, that’s where you start to really learn how to help that unique individual in front of you heal rather than just tell them to do what worked for somebody else.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, and that is what I hope people will be getting from our conversation today and this whole series is that, you know, just because it worked for your friend doesn’t mean it’s gonna work for you, but don’t give up when it doesn’t. Keep your heart open, look around, and just know that there, you know, you will find someone to love. Well, you’ll find a way to love you, a way for your body to feel the love that can let it change when you feel that you’re stuck. You know, and that’s the hardest place, that dark night of the soul when you’ve been sick for a long time. And you know, you’re dealing with a family that’s kind of fed up with you and friends that don’t want to really deal with the fact that you, you know, disappear on them all the time, you know, and get back to being a freely interactive person again. It’s not easy, it’s not easy, so.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

You know, I mean, it’s interesting. ’cause I had a conversation with one of my patients, I think it was just yesterday, was talking about how alone and frightened he was feeling. And he’s just like, “It’s so great to have a conversation because I’m talking with somebody who gets it.” And so many people feel hopeless and helpless and stuck and numb to all this because it’s been going on and so many them, we talk about polyvagal theory and, you know, it’s funny, I think about it and we look back and we talk about the gut brain axis all the time, right? Everywhere you look, it’s gut brain, gut brain, but you brought up to me what’s the actual key component is reinserting the heart because we know that the heart and the gut and the brain all have their own nervous systems and they all intercommunicate, right? 

And we just keep talking about the gut and the brain. I’m like, I mean, you gotta put the heart back in and when you look at polyvagal theory, it’s like that dorsal vagus, where we were looking primarily below the diaphragm. And that feeds back up to the brain. The thing is, that’s where we get stuck in this older school reptilian frozen state, which is so many people who are chronically ill just feel like there’s no hope. Whereas if we want to re engage people and get them to the point where they can heal, their nervous system is working for their benefit, not against them, we really need to bring them back into that thing you just said, love. Bring them back into the heart, work with the vagus, work with the heart and bring gratitude and love into your life, even if it’s like, when you think about that old adage, fake it ’til you make it, this is a place to do it, right?

Eric Gordon, M.D.

I guess.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

You’re not feeling the love or the gratitude, find something to be grateful for, but bring it into your heart because that sort of finishes the circuit, it reconnects it. ’cause we’re not just a gut in the brain. We’re a gut, brain, heart, and a complete unity. But I just think it’s, love is the thing we don’t talk enough about and that’s really where all healing comes from.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, you know, okay. With us talking, we’re gonna take a quick right turn. I know we’re gonna come back to mycotoxins in a minute, but what you said just inspired me to, you know, I’m a bug on Dr. Naviaux’s concept of the cell danger response and people should understand. It’s just another way to describe healing or when the healing doesn’t get totally finished, it’s not a thing in itself. It’s just purely a story, okay. But what happens with the picture of it is there are stages that your body goes through when you’ve been injured and you have to get back to the normal healing cycle, the normal health cycle, you know, which happens just when you go to sleep and you like knock off a few sick, old cells and you rebuild some healthy new ones. And it happens just very smoothly. 

When you have an injury, a big injury, you have to go through a few other steps of, you know, really getting rid of a lot of dead cells. So the point is, is that when you have chronic illness, this healing cycle, you get stuck in part of it. And you wind up just in, well, too old for, we used to call a do loop in computer science, but you know, it just, you keep your body stuck, repeating the same cycle over and over again. And we’re always looking for how to interrupt that. And love, that spirit, that open heart gratitude. You really nailed those two things because they’re really the same on some level, you know, that gratitude and love is the universal energy. It is the light of the body that will allow things to shift that we don’t know how to shift, because that is the big issue. Medicine is really good at removing bullets and arrows, but then we depend on the body to heal and it’s that magic of healing that we’re always tinkering with and we’re looking for ways to get to work better. And you nailed it.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

It’s an instinct.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

What you said, it’s that love and gratitude that is the universal potion, you know, we’re gonna talk about lots of other things that people can do, but that’s the one thing.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Yeah, and Eric, you know, the thing that’s interesting. One of my osteopathic mentors, Paula Eschtruth, old school DO, currently in her 80s, amazing, amazing person, studied, she’s like the primary mentee of Robert Fulford and anybody who studies osteopathy knows Bob Fulford is, you know, on a different level, different plane. And what she says is that, ’cause Fulford worked a lot with polarity, so it’s like, oh, are you gonna be with Stone’s work? Are you on the right or the left or gonna base on the sex? And everybody appall this stuff when we teach these courses and she’s just like, as long as you treat people from the higher vibrational frequency of love, it really doesn’t matter what you do. So whether you give them an herb or an antibiotic or an IV antibiotic or you do manipulation, if you, and it’s not just you bringing the love to them, I would add that you, we as physicians are to teach others and healers to teach others to bring the love back to themselves.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yes, yes.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

And one of the things that I learned the hard way was, you know, you said earlier, I think that I was one of the lucky ones to actually get sick. You know, I really look at my illness with a lot of gratitude and I go, you know, ’cause whenever I have a difficult thing in my life, I send it love. And whether that’s a politician or a friend or a bank or whatever, challenging patient, but also I recommend my patients send love to their disease because the thing is, what you’re really doing, you’re universally and energetically, yes, you’re sending out a little bit of positive vibe that’s gonna maybe change somebody else. But what you’re really doing is you’re sending that love back to yourself to really stimulate your own immune system. And so many people, when they’re looking at a spirochete, or they look at a mycotoxin and they’re like F this mold and F this, like, you know, Lyme disease and they contract around it and then that energy is within you. 

And so if you send it love and you can truly love it, you’re gonna open up the energy in you, whether you do something to the mold, toxin or Lyme, I don’t know. I’m not that smart. But what I do know is if you get mad, you can do it right now, get mad at your illness right, now send your illness love and see how, like, really for a moment, just for the sake of, you know, Tom’s little haha, experiment here, send it love, send it love, like it was your partner or your child or your dog, feel how that opens you up. So whether or not you focus… So if you focus on the negative of your disease or you just send it positive love, you’re still gonna be there. But think about the container for it. I can change the vibration of the container in the direction of health, just by thinking love and sending love to this thing that I can’t stand.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

You know, This is fun because you’re making me riff right off too. I mean, I got three ideas, but we real quick. One is, again, getting back to that cell danger response is that it’s about the thing that keeps us stuck is fear. And that is, but self-defense is, as people have said, self-defense is the first rule of life. I mean, you know, survival is about self-defense and yet love is about life. So there’s a little duality there, and our immune system is programmed to, you know, recognize danger, but it recognizes the danger when it gets the signal from the brain, that there’s something to worry about fear. And if anyone has chronic illness, I mean, going back to mycotoxins, you get in trouble with mycotoxins when your body’s not able to neutralize them anymore. 

And obviously, since we’re always exposed to mycotoxins so ubiquitous in the back of the ubiquitous, in the background, you’re in the water damaged building with like, you know, 20 people. And usually only like one to five are gonna have issues. So there is a decision of your immune system to overreact and the same thing with chronic Lyme, you know, it’s, if you could, you know, it’s usually our immune system that is overacting inefficiently, ineffectively that keeps us sick. It’s not because it’s able, you know, many diseases we’re supposed to live with and what we don’t know how to co-exist with them is when we wind up with a chronic illness state. So, yes your admission to admonition, to like go to love is a better strategy. I mean, it’s just that A it’s gonna make you feel better. And B it’s gonna take some of that drive out of your immune system that’s not helpful. Well, you know.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

When you mentioned like the immune system takes all these cues from elsewhere and cell danger response and how it works, it’s like the thing is fight or flight and survival have nothing to do with immune function. It’s like, get out or dodge or get ready to fight the saber tooth tiger and win. Immune function, when you’re in this fight or flight mechanism where you’re fighting it, where you’re having fear about it. This is where immune function goes down. Because just like you don’t wanna pee and poop regularly, if you’re running away from a saber tooth tiger, it just doesn’t make any sense to prove your pants at that point. So for the state where the immune system functions the best is one of parasympathetic, relaxed, rejoicing, eating, having friends and having love and experiencing joy and laughter in your life. So it’s not just, like I say, Hey, just do it because it’s some sort of spiritual exercise don’t make me feel like, you know, I’m Yoda or something, but it really has to do with understanding how your nervous system works and how the brain the immune system is taking these cues from the brain. And so if the brain is saying, Hey, immune system, you’re free to work optimally or, you know, that’s way better than in a fear or a fight or flight state where it says, well, we don’t need you to do your job right now.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Right? Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s we forget that there is what works in the acute ill, the acute moment, the moment of action, and then what works over time and they’re different, you know, and you know what the cure for a disease that is either gonna kill you, or you’re gonna, you know, in minutes or days is so different from things that tend to want to live with us. And we have to find it different, different relationship to, but let me just run back here to get back to it. Cause I really wanna hear it. Because I have lots of places I wanted to go with you yet. Like where is when it comes to mold and mycotoxins cause we discussed in past episodes, how, you know, always remember if people discriminate between the allergic component and the mycotoxin component, because that often gets mixed together, but where, you know, what are your favorites, you know, just ways of thinking, of thinking about the whole mycotoxin issue? I mean, where did it start for you to really begin to pay attention?

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, you know, it was one of these things where I was seeing a few people and I wasn’t getting results. You know, I was like doing everything that I thought was right, because it was what I was trained in. And then there’s this, I heard about this thing called like, you know, real time labs. And then I heard about, you know, shoemaker’s work and Brewer’s work. And I was just, you know, between kind of hearing about it, you know, conferences and then go into a couple of little programs. I just was like, maybe I should look at this stuff. And I started looking at it and I was just like, I don’t know, this stuff makes that much sense, but it sounds kind of like my patients. So I kept looking and I started doing some testing and I found that there’s this subset of the people who were seeing me who really had a significant issue. And I started to look at it kind of, I mean, I think I’ve always looked at things this way. It’s not so much, like you’re saying, like molds ubiquitous, right. And then the question is, are you allergic to it? 

Do you have a mycotoxin exposure? Do you have some other issue? And for me it really becomes like, you know, I coined this phrase a long time ago, chronic toxin overload and really what it is, it’s not so much that you had the mold or the Lyme, but it’s the you had the mold, the Lyme and the Bartonella and oh, by the way, you lost your job. And then the house of cards collapses because your body can’t handle that overload, that chronic toxin overload. And that’s really where I started to think about it, because then the next question that comes to my mind is, okay, well, should I test everybody for everything? You know? And it’s like, do I do like a, you know, a two or $3,000 kind of Lyme co-infection workup, then do I do three different tests for mycotoxins and then check everybody for MCAS, and heavy metals and on down the line. And so I tried to figure out a way to think about it, you know, and it really was kind of like what, as an osteopath, we really look at like, what are the, the body has the ability to tolerate all of this, right. At some degree, and when it doesn’t, it has healing priority. 

So I’m always trying to find out what are the top one, two, three things that the body is focusing on. So I can remove those and then let the body do the rest of the work. And through that kind of approach, I found that some people with mold exposures would do okay, but a lot of them, if they had concurrent Lyme and co-infections it, you know, all bets were off. And then ultimately I started going, well, maybe I need to treat mold first in some people. And so it’s about that, trying to figure out what the body’s stuck on, you know, and I’ll tell you what Bartonella and mold, man, if you can tell the difference between them, without mold growing on the person’s face, more power to you.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

You know, I mean, this is the old joke one day, you know, in the old, before, you know, one man’s, but BCL list is another man’s Bartonella list. I mean that is, and at the same time, yeah. Bartonella and mold are especially difficult to tell apart by symptoms. You know, people think you can, but yeah, you know, it’s…

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

And I’ll tell ya. As we were talking about this, I just thought of like one of my early mold patients and men, this guy, we were treating his Bartonella and he was getting better and better and better. And then all of a sudden he just took his neuropathy, just went like someone pulled the carpet right out from under him. And he tanked and there was no amount of Bartonella treatment in the world that was helping him. And it turns out that he had had, they’d had a pretty significant mold exposure at work. And we actually were able to not only get his area remediated, we identified it and remediated it and he’s gotten, he’s fine now. But there were like 20 other people in his office that were helped by him being sick. I mean, I don’t know that he feels that way.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

But, you know, what’s happening is that we’re at least raising the consciousness because, you know, the insurance industry has spent, you know, I dunno lots and lots of money trying to make sure that the courts pay no attention to mold as a danger. You know, I mean, we’re having the same battle with mold that we had, we still have with Lyme and these other diseases, you know, again, we understand bullet wounds, you know, took what 50 years to get, you know, cigarette smoking to, you know, be realized, oh, might not be good for you. Well, we’re on that same trajectory with Lyme and mold and these other things that don’t kill people and don’t kill every, or don’t even get everyone exposed ill. And I think that’s what we always have to let people understand is that it depends on what your body is doing. 

These are poisons, but the dose depends, your response depends on what else is happening in your body. And I really appreciate what you said to Tom, about, you know, looking at the layers of illness. And yes, it often is good mold often needs to be treated first, but it’s not a law of nature, you know? Cause we went through the same thing in the early 2000s when we started finding the BCS more and more. You know, we were finding, we didn’t know how, we just, you know, in the 90s, everybody was treating Lyme. Right everybody. I mean, to be honest, I just started treating Lyme for like 2001. And I worked with Dr. with Wayne Anderson and Wayne was treating Lyme and I was looking, oh, I was treating chronic pain and I was going, oh my God, the patients that didn’t make any sense, they look like his patients.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Right. It’s kind of like, yeah.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

I mean, anyway, but the point is we got locked in, you know, people like rules and the big issue. And I think, and I know that’s why I’m excited about the course that you’re teaching is because it’s teaching people to know what to look for but remember they got to keep open mind. Don’t assume that because someone told you in a course that X causes Y and you have to treat it first, no, look at that patient because that patient might have a different setup. Their immune system might be more ticked off by the beast of a BCL than the mold right now.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

And when you look at even like cell danger response, we talked about the normal healing cycle is adaptation, recovery, right? So you look at the concept of hormesis. So that toxic exposure is actually good for you if the dose and or the duration is within your capability to adapt and recover from it.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yes. 

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

And if the dose of the duration is more or longer than your ability to adapt and recover from it, you get sick. And it’s just kind of like a gunshot wound. It’s like, cause I came up in emergency medicine and critical care. So I, you know, I’m all about like, I’ve seen a lot of those, but it’s like, boom, immediately the dose of toxin is way more than my body can handle. Cause I just got shot, right. And so you need to do something quickly that’s kind of equal and opposite of that to heal it up. But a lot of these other things are when we chronically live in that place of stressor, maybe that’s like, I even joked around in the past. I used to talk about like, some people could literally go and live in a moldy cave, and they’d be fine as long as nothing else happens.

But if they go outside and they get stung by a horsefly or something, then they’re gonna fall down and they’re gonna be, oh, it was the horse fly. I’m like, well, no, it’s actually, you lived in mold, you know, in a cave, in a petri dish. And so it’s just, some of these things are not causative, but it’s sort of that additive. And sometimes even unfortunately with these toxins, it’s more of a synergistic thing. And that’s where I see with like Bartonella and mold. It’s not that either one of them is innately horrible and my body can’t handle it. But those two together do seem to have more synergy than say like, you know, mold and a little bit of dehydration. I am making that up, but you know what I mean? Like there’s other things aren’t as severe.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean that is one of those yes. Mold and Bartonella is just a terrible, terrible combination. Cause they both seem to tap dance on your nervous system, you know, in a very similar way. And they’re really, they’re really hard. So when you’re looking at Michael Thompson exposure, I mean, how often are you finding that carriage is a big issue for your patients? You know, the difference between, I mean, you know, just for our listeners, you know, that we have the exposure and so may people they’ll be exposed and then they, you know, move out of the house or they have the house fixed, but they’re still having symptoms. And so that’s what I’m throwing to Tom. How often do you see that scenario playing out?

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Well, if I understand the question, I mean…

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Oh, I’m sorry.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Yeah, I think I know where you’re going, but like, I mean, I see people who have been in mold and then they’re out of it for years and they’re still colonized and they’re still sick. And I also see other people. I just had this conversation the other day with somebody, they found multiple over the course of the last, like 12 months, they found like three major mold issues in their house. There was one and then another, so there were immediate to everything. And then they had a big old leak inside of a new one and they ended up not catching it in time. So they had a third exposure with the removal and the remediation that seems to be successful now. She’s actually more symptomatic and looks like she’s having, like, she’s like I’m hurting all the time. I’m like, well, based upon knowing her through the course of all of this and having treated her when she’s been exposed, I think she’s actually detoxifying really well now that she’s not exposed, but she’s also focusing on the detox. So I see both things. One is like, people get out and they feel like dirt and they’re like, I’m supposed to feel better. And I’m like, no, that’s your body getting rid of the stuff. And then the other people who get out and they feel like dirt because they’re not detoxifying and they’re not mobilizing those toxins or there’s a colonization like, you know, in the sinuses and such.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, no, we went, you know, you raised, I think really good points. I’d like to make a little more emphasis on is how confusing it can be because, you know, toxins are just that. They’re toxins and your body, you know, the best thing to do is to be able to break them down, attach another molecule to them, make them so they don’t bind to receptors and cause problems. That’s probably, I would like to think the healthy response is that we see it, we deal with it, we change it, we get rid of it. But when that gets, when that’s not happening and it’s when, you know, usually because your liver and other organs are a little taxed, you wind up storing it because that’s the other thing, if you get it out. So it’s not circulating around. If you stick it in a fat cell or in a fascia somewhere where it’s not too reactive, you know, let’s like, you know, hiding the garbage works, you know, a company comes, throw everything in the closet. And so what you’re talking about is that, but once the company has let, you know, if you throw everything in the closet and when you take the pressure off, you still got to deal with that.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Right. Well, it’s interesting too, because throughout the whole thing, like the people who are doing the work sometimes get really frustrated that the closet door doesn’t open up and just go right into a dumpster and take it away. It’s like, and so I see that, but when you get the pump prime, one of the first things I learned was a lot of times in this field, whether you’re talking about mycotoxins specifically, or even in Lyme sometimes, we need to go slower than we would expect because the body, like you said, that those toxins have built up in the liver and other organs are taxed. And, you know, it’s interesting that you bring up fascia as an osteopath, you know.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

It’s been a long time with fascia, I figured right.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

But adipose too, for the protective, I see so many of my patients they’re like, you know, they’re gaining weight that they don’t want to gain, or they have really have myofascial pain and they’re all like, you know, kind of thrown up their arms going, I don’t know where this stuff is all coming from. I’m like, well, a lot of this is actually your body doing the right job properly. It can’t get rid of it. So it’s storing it in a place to protect you as best it can. I would much rather have an extra five or 10 pounds holding on the toxins, than have my liver go to pot. You know? And when I was sick, myofascial pain was a massive problem for me. And so I just think back, I’m just like, wow, my body was so smart. It couldn’t do what it’s first choice, but it had a backup plan that saved my ass. And I think that that goes back to the gratitude part. 

Some of the things is just to go like a lot of us feel almost like betrayed by our body. I mean, I get two big betrayals in my office betrayed by the medical system, whether people feel it’s purposeful or not, usually it’s not, but sometimes it is. And then as if our body has betrayed us, I’m like, no, you know what? Your body is 100% of the time doing the very best it can in that moment. And to recognize that your fascial pain means that you’re not having pain somewhere else. You know, it’s just interesting because physiologically and structurally, fat and fascia are protecting us, even if they’re hurt. I mean, I don’t know that fat hurts, but I know fascia can hurt pretty damn bad.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, yeah. So it’s that, you know, it’s yeah. You’re that, I just liked the way you phrase that is that, you know, this is your body generally is trying to protect you. It rarely, you know, anytime you feel like your body’s attacking you, it’s usually because it’s been confused, you know, and most, I mean, again, I mean, just like you said, most symptoms are just your immune system is trying to either kill something or give you a message. You know?

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

You gotta listen.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Sometimes both, but when it’s hard, we don’t listen. Well, I mean, that’s human nature. If we listened, well, life would be, who knows? We wouldn’t learn, maybe we just learn quicker, but we don’t.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

This is I think Eric, I think this is one of the most important keys here as practitioners, we also need to start to learn how to listen to the clues the body’s giving us, because the question I get all the time, both from practitioners and patients is, well, how do I know what to do in this situation? How do I choose what… you’ve mentioned these priorities, how do I figure out what those priorities are? Well, the first thing is like, I go back to, somehow I had some sort of, you know, some enlightenment or something in high school. My high school yearbook quote was a James Thurber quote, which is, it’s better to know some of the questions, than all of the answers. And for me, I go back and I go, okay. I’m asking, what are you telling me? What am I supposed to learn here? And again, it’s actually from an osteopathic perspective, one of my first medical students, a national case presentation, I titled the day I learned to listen.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Wow, yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Because it’s about figuring out, like listening to what the body’s telling us. Is my mycotoxin patient just detoxifying really aggressively because they’ve done all this work and are finally out of it or are they not? Because those people can look pretty darn similar. And it’s about, and part of the reason I know in the one person what I think is going on is cause I’ve worked with her for a year plus, and I’ve been treating her along the way and seeing her reactions. So I talk a lot about playing Lyme chess and the reason I call it Lyme chess is because that’s where I got. That’s kinda like my primary thing. But even in mycotoxins like, I may have all of the toxins that come up positive on the test. And I might’ve found what you have in your house. Now I’m giving you some binders and you’re not acting the way I think you should. So I start to go, oh, I know, I know the research on binders. I have a lot of clinical information on what binders should do, what for what mold toxin. And when you react the way I want you to, or the way opposite of what I think you should react, that’s all clues as to what might truly be going on.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

You know? Because you’re listening and then our patients, you say, get so frustrated with doctors because we are taught to make the diagnosis and be done. It’s like, I did that, that even though it’s clearly that doesn’t work, but that in training the emphasis on diagnosis, come up with a name for something like if you had the name or you understood the pathophysiology, then the rest is easy. And again, that’s an old bottle that again works with acute injury with bullets and stuff like that.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

It’s like razor and that single unifying diagnosis because once you know the diagnosis, treatment is a piece of cake.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah. Yeah. In fact, yeah, that’s a joke. I’m gonna rib Dr. Afrin with when I got to be talking to him, but Larry’s is, I mean, I’ve learned so much from him and somebody gave me his book because I had been treating, I had a patient who had mass cell issues like few years before. So I had been looking for it, but I wasn’t looking for it in all the right places. You know, I was just only if they had a rash or if they had, you know, severe esophagitis, you know, but I was missing a ton of it. So I was really excited when I met him years ago. But early on, he thought that it was like, you know, it was mass cell, but no, I said, no, no, no, no, the mass cells are acting up because there’s triggers. and there’s lots of different triggers. 

So you don’t get away with the opt-ins racer so easily, not in medicine. When you’re dealing with people, a lot of stuff is happening simultaneously. But listening is your magic, you know? And all, I think everybody who sees physicians, who really work in this field, the difference is, is that, you know, either they got sick or they just learnt to listen to people and know that we don’t know the answers because if most doctors, if they don’t know the answer, they assume a, if I don’t know what it is, it’s not going to kill you. So, because that’s what we’re good at. We know most of the things that are gonna kill you and then if it’s not gonna kill you and I don’t know what it is, it’s probably nothing, or you worry too much.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

It’s interesting when I think back, because like I, I started my practice to do osteopathic manipulation. I was sick, I got better. And I was just like, do I do critical care? Or do I get paid to meditate all day? I’m like, I’ll choose meditation here, you know? So I sat down and I was working on somebody and this is one of the clues that I have, that I can use is that like, when I put my hands on them, they weren’t responding the way I would expect. So whether it’s using a manual therapy or even giving them an herb or medicine, when they’re not responding the way you expect them to, you should, this is kind of like a big neon flashing sign. Say, I’m trying to tell you something here. And so this one person, I was like.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

I just lost your video.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Oh.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Okay.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Is it there?

Eric Gordon, M.D.

No, I still don’t see you. Talk to me.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

What happened?

Eric Gordon, M.D.

I don’t know, oh, there you go. Now you’re back.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Weird.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, the universe just popped in and out, but you’re back.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

All right, good.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, you were working.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Yeah, so I’m working in my practice. You know, and I put my hands on this person and it just didn’t feel right. And so I was just like, wow, you know, I don’t know what the answer is here. And then I was like, well, based on some training I’ve done, I think it might be Lyme disease, you know? And it felt kind of more like there was an extra, an infection. Cause in my training, my mentors are always like, no matter what you are doing, put your hands on, open your eyes, listen, right. And use your hands to palpate. So I learned, I remember the first time I saw chronic leukemia, it was just like CML. I put my hands on. I was like, oh my God. That’s what, you know, that type of particular leukemia feels like, and it’s different from others. So when I felt this, I was like, I wasn’t sure, but it sure is how it felt like an infection. And I was like, I didn’t know anybody who could treat her. So instead of going, well, it’s probably not gonna kill you. You’re just crazy. I said, I don’t know the answer. I’m gonna go figure it out. And then I figured it out for her and she told one person and now we’re here.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, yeah, no, that is it. I don’t want to waste, not waste, but I digress too much into one of my favorite topics is what’s wrong with medical education, but that’s it, we’ve lost the ability, the freedom to figure things out because you know, my patients, you know, like yours, they’ve all, we’re on the west coast. So they’ve all gone to Stanford or UCS or they fly to Mayo and, you know, and it’s, I always encourage them because, you know, God forbid there’s something I’m missing. I don’t know, but generally they don’t, even if they find something, but because there’s no double blind placebo controlled study that shows that X is gonna work for them, they have no treatments and that’s what’s wrong. I mean, we’ve lost in the lab. I mean, I’m all I started medicine. You could still just do things. 

I mean, it’s true. You could hurt a few people, but when someone has been suffering for years and years, if you try things at very low doses with very low side effects, side effect profiles, it’s probably worth it. You know? I mean, if it’s my, I mean, I think, you know, again, you have to inform consent, really explain to people what the downsides could be. I mean, I think that’s what happened. I mean, like, you know, we had a lot of, you know, rogue doctors who had good or whatever that did terrible things to people, but as always the pendulum swung so far to the other direction that now very good doctors can’t treat it if they’re in the university system.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Well, and again, I mean, I feel like unfortunately we become widgets on a conveyor belt, right. I mean, and you know, talk about that grizzly, but it’s like, I mean, we basically, you know, the system, the broader system has been set up to keep it as sick as possible for as long as possible so they can make as much money on us for as long as possible.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Well, it just works. I mean, to me, I don’t like to think they set it up that way, but you know, if your drug is designed to just, you know, prevent illness progression and not really do anything to do with the illness being there, you know.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

A resolution.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

It’s band-aid medicine. And I say, we are trained in, I mean like the critical care is bandaid medicine at its best. ER, in critical care.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

What’s really interesting, one of the things I really think is so interesting and you can put the word Lyme in here, you can put the word mycotoxins or Bartonella, but what’s really interesting, especially in Lyme disease. It’s like if I treat you for acute Lyme and, you are, I’m gonna give you 21 days of a treatment, 10 days into it, you are asymptomatic. You are completely cured, I stopped your antibiotics. And on, you know, three days later, all your symptoms return, if they’re like, oh, you have something different, you have post-treatment Lyme syndrome. And if it goes on for six months, now you magically have fibromyalgia. However, I went back and I said, Hey, did my thing just go off again.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah. Yeah, you just did, but I didn’t want to break your train of thought.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

What is? Give me one second. I don’t, this is just last night for the first time ever and I’ve no idea what the hell the problem is.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Okay.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

So it’s interesting because I, you know, when you contrast all that to what we were taught about in pneumonia. So when I was in my training, if somebody had pneumonia and I put them on an antibiotic and they got better, I sent them home and they finished the course and it came right back. I remember the first time it happened, I was talking to my preceptor. I was like, oh, I got to see him again. They’re like, oh, you just stopped the antibiotic a couple of days ago. It’s just the pneumonia wasn’t better, just double the course. And then if it didn’t work, then they would change the antibiotic. And then if it didn’t work, they would see him again. And I was just like, oh my God, why is something like Lyme or mold exposure treated differently than we treat other infections in the medical system? 

I mean, weird. And then I’ve asked doctors, I’m like, do we sterilize people from pneumonia and not a single person that said, yes, the antibiotic is used till we can bring down, the load of the bacteria and allow the body, the immune system to kind of come back up to the point where it can handle it and take care of the rest of the job itself. So when we take away treatments and things come back, it’s like everywhere else in medicine, we call it the same thing. And also, we also maybe not overtly, but we acknowledge the fact that the body’s actually doing most of the work. And so why does this all change when we go into Lyme? I mean, mold toxins like weird.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Well it’s because people don’t die quickly or usually don’t die, thank God. And so it’s not it, and the bugs don’t reproduce that fast. It’s not as clear cut. It’s harder. It’s been really our diagnosis that isn’t as good. And I think the biggest issue is the bias of seeing our failures because I’m giving a little talk on chronic fatigue, Lyme issue. And one of the things I realized is that a lot of the chronic fatigue doctors that I’ve known over the years didn’t really believe in Lyme. And I believe, you know, and these were very good doctors who listened to their patients, but the reason they didn’t believe because they saw a lot of our failures, okay. 

They would see people, cause you know, there are some years ago we had people who would like put people on IV antibiotics for long periods of time with minimal results. You know, I think most of us have advanced since then, but that was a very common pattern, you know? And so these, and so then they, because people with long standing lines often look, if depending on your filter, it can look a lot like a chronic fatigue person, especially when the pain is better because sometimes we have now. But anyway, that’s another story, but you know, so, and we have that issue and the same thing happened with the infectious disease docs. They saw our patients and they just flipped because in their world, if you don’t have a clear cut diagnosis under the microscope, you shouldn’t be using long-term antibiotics, even though they closed their eyes and do that lots of times.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

But you know, in that moment of self-righteousness, that’s, you know, not done. So anyway, so we have this bias that developed over the years and I hope that as we get better testing, we’re gonna be able to change that a little bit. And we can validate that yes, these people really do have active infection. So I’m hoping as our tests improve, we’re gonna do better with that.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Absolutely. I definitely need advances in that area for sure.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah. You know, and so let me just, I was gonna get so many things, so many different places to go, but I want to make sure we have enough time. I want to talk a little bit about, you know, your training program because, you know, that’s another thing that’s been missing in the line world is a dynamic. A lot of people are giving courses out there, but I don’t know many of them that are out there that have had your depth of experience, you know, with training, what I consider all the facets, you know, cause there’s a lot of people who are giving mold courses and mycotoxin courses or giving, you know, Lyme courses, but, or, you know, telling people how to treat pandas, but, or, and the mass cells world, and you’re somebody who was a man after my own heart, because I often, this is one big rodeo.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

And I’m gonna on real, I don’t know what is going on. Right.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Two there, you know, that, you know, cause that’s what excites me about your course, because I think from what I’ve looked at, you’re gonna be making sure that people understand they need to look at everything. And so, yeah. Tell me how you’ve put this together.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Yeah, you know, my biggest frustration sounds like yours, you know, is that we have a bunch of people who are learning pieces, but not how to come together and actually create a, you know, a diagnosis that’s unique to that person and then create a management plan. And, you know, I think that I’ve done so much training, but I’ve always gone back and I go, well, what I do with that person and, you know, hey, that didn’t go the way they said in the lecture. So now what do I do in the real world? And so, you know, I really created the Lyme disease practice, mentorship and certification program as a place where, you know, it’s got Lyme at the top, but in order to treat Lyme, you have to understand co-infections, tick-borne and otherwise. I mean, you know, things like Mycoplasma and Chlamydia, Yersinia, Brucella, all these kinds of things out there. And oh, by the way, these people also have straps and they might have pandas or pans. 

And also I learned a lot with kids. When you look at pans that autoimmune encephalitis actually happens in adults. And we actually kind of about this sometimes as infection induced auto-immunity. And like, along the sort of the gut, the road back foundation type of work in Dr. Brownsburg community. But I’m like, but wait, but what about the person who has cognitive dysfunction as an adult? Well, that could be an autoimmune encephalitis. And then as we’ve been talking, hey, well, there’s things called Bartonella and mycotoxin exposure. And then a lot of times that’ll trigger MCAS. And so the idea behind it is to give people, you know, the other thing so many of the times it’s a weekend workshop. And then I go back to my office and I go, OMG, what do I do with this information? Because, you know, so the idea is we’re doing a six month mentorship program with the option to extend some of the mentorship. 

But the idea is we’re gonna get you all the information that you need to know how to treat all of these things we just talked about, but then you’re gonna have, we’re gonna do actually like real cases. So, you know, there’s always the case that you show in the lecture, which I do a lot of, but then I’m gonna have people in the program actually bringing their cases in the real world. We’re gonna discuss them, give them ideas, bounce ideas back and forth in real time, they’re gonna go back and do it and then report back. So people, to me, it was like, it took me like a decade to gather all this experience. I didn’t go on vacation for like nine years. I mean,a vacation, I went to a conference, you know, I want people to be able to in six months, get exposed to enough experience as if they had been in practice doing this for 10 years and really give them that platform. So that’s really kind of the goal here.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

That’s good. And that’s so important because, you know, we, you know, I’m in my office now I’m training people, and it’s so hard because a lot of doctors, you know, go to IFM, you go to many training courses, but I said, you know, that stuff works great for healthy people. You know, it’s just that, you know, and it’s good. You need to do that. It’s the basis. But the thing that has makes this difficult is that it’s that clinical experience because we’re treating diseases, not diseases, we’re treating what your body does when it meets the disease and that’s different in everyone. And that’s why it takes this ridiculously long time of seeing people and not understanding what’s going on with them, you know, till you get a flavor. And that’s not what people want to hear when they want to go to a doctor, they want a diagnosis and they want a treatment plan. People are always calling, you know, what’s your treatment plan, you know, and I say, depends on what you do. And so it’s, you know, I said, we’re going, but we’re your course. And I think others are moving forward and getting exposed to it, so doctors are getting exposed because otherwise the only reason doctors work things is because they listen to their patients and they hit walls. 

They hit places where they didn’t know what to do, and then they would, if they were good, they would learn something. And I think now what you’re doing, and I think what, you know, ICI as an organization I think is trying to do is expand the field of possibility. You know, and what I hope ILABS does in the future too, is just let people know that it’s their body dancing. And we have to teach people how that dance works and teach them to just listen to the person in front of them. But one more little thing, a little plug, and I’ve been interviewing people. And what I’ve seen is like, you know, we have lots of testing or we use like, you know, the great Plains and the real time for mycotoxins. And I’ve been playing more with the my for looking at the antibodies. And I, you know, interviewed Dr. Campbell for his perspective. 

It was very interesting. And, you know, adding in, I said, I’m using a lot of the infective lab now as a way to just, you know, along with the IGeneX and the other labs for, you know, cause we’re learning, we’re getting new tools, but we still have to figure out where they fit. And I think that’s my message. And that can be discouraging to people out there who are patients. It’s because they’re coming to us for answers and disappearing again, but I’m gonna finish with it. We have a lot of answers, but we still have a lot of questions. But the thing that’s wonderful about the last, I think maybe three to five years is I just feel that we’re getting a lot more scientists really interested in these fields because these used to be places where scientists were afraid to tread, because if they spend too much time in these kinds of like chronic fatigue, Lyme, mycotoxin world, they would be really kind of discriminated against in their institutions and other, other docs. Other scientists want to play with them.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Oh, I got it. The last 18 months have been amazing for research, right? 18 months to two years, across the board. And I’m really glad to see all that because that’s what we need to do. And you know, for me, it’s kind of like the idea is to create this residency, like an environment where you can still be in private practice, but you can get that intensive training where we can bounce it. And somebody’s, you’re trying this, I’m trying that, now we’re gonna bring it all together. And we’re gonna share with you the best of what we found. So your patients, not the Guinea pig, but you know, we’re working collectively because that’s what it’s gonna take. It’s gonna take the village. I mean, I say all the time, it’s like, this is an epidemic, right? And alone, I can only see one person at a time, but together we can all make a massive difference and learn together how to use all this new information and really make a huge.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, and this is and should be how we do medicine. Imagine if we had used this approach to treating COVID, I mean, whatever your belief systems are, if we had actually listened to the frontline doctors and tried things that weren’t gonna hurt people, you know, cause we have a lot in a week, you know, believe between you and me. I think the nonsteroidals and the proton pump inhibitors are probably, you know, I mean more dangerous than most of the other medicines I use. And those are considered candy out there by conventional doctors. Those are dangerous drugs.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Ivermectin which is so safe.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

I know, I mean, it’s like, Ivermectin, we have used for years and it’s the one drug that I’ve always told people, my most sensitive patients. I mean, I had maybe, you know, I mean, almost nobody has reacted to low doses of Ivermectin, you know? I mean, I never want to say never, but compared to IP, more people have reacted to vitamin C and glutathione. Far more.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Far more I got, right?

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Far more than have reacted to Ivermectin.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

And it does such a good job with so many things.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

I know, and you know, I mean, this is a funny ending here, but we’ll keep it in because I just want to mention it’s just like over the years I always was. I didn’t understand why when I treated possible parasites, people had so many positive results with the rest of their symptoms when I used Ivermectin. And I’m embarrassed that I didn’t do a deep enough dive, you know, on the mechanism of Ivermectin, you know, I did superficial things and I didn’t realize all its effects on the immune system.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

And people ask what do you think about Ivermectin? I’m like, it’s awesome for modulating the immune system. That’s the first words out of my mouth.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Yeah. Now, but honestly, I didn’t know that six months, a year, a year and a half ago, I really didn’t and I’m embarrassed, but you know, I just thought it was, seems to be really interesting cause I know I’m not just treating parasites with it.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Right, right.

Eric Gordon, M.D.

Anyway, this has been, I’ve had a wonderful time. I hope our listeners have been able to follow through the ping-pong of our minds, but I just want to let them know is that, you know, this is the nature of treating illnesses that don’t have a textbook answer and yeah, really. Thank you so much, Tom. It’s been a real pleasure.

Thomas Moorcroft, D.O

Thanks for having me, Eric, this has been a blast.