Ending Chronic Illness: A New Model for Treating Complex Disease

Introduction and summit theme 0:00

Hello everyone. My name is Doctor Richard Horowitz and I am the co-host of this year's 2026 Doctor Talks Healing Lyme Summit. This year, the topic of our summit is protecting the brain and neuroinflammation. And it's mainly because we have some exciting news that you may have heard about already from the summit that we are starting to find ways of reversing some Alzheimer's markers with some of the available treatments we've had for chronic Lyme disease. So what I'd like to talk to you today about in this new mini talk is Ending Chronic Illness.

It's my new book from Simon and Schuster. It just is coming out in October of this year. It's now available for preorder, and I want to talk to you about why I wrote this book. I want to talk to you about why, for the chronic Lyme disease community and just the chronic disease community in general, this book for me is the most important literature that I've really, I believe, ever put out. So what we first need to understand is that half of all Americans and at this point, pretty much worldwide, half of all people are going to develop chronic disease.

50% of Americans already suffer from one chronic disease and 25% have two or more. So the problem is, is that many of these patients and you know this

Why Ending Chronic Illness was written 1:12

because you've experienced this yourself, are disabled, you have chronic fatigue, aches and pains, muscle pains, joint pains, nerve pain that migrates around your body, insomnia where you can't fall asleep or keep waking up in the middle of the night. Memory. Concentration problems. Mood disorders. Depression. Anxiety. Right. All of this is not just part of chronic Lyme disease. It's also chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalomyelitis. It's also the same symptoms of fibromyalgia, including dysautonomia.

With Pots. It's also the same symptoms we see with long Covid. So the problem is, is that what medicine has done is that we have named a disease and then thrown drugs at it instead of getting to the underlying causes of why that disease is present. And when I was starting to write this book, approximately a year and a half ago, we published a study showing that all 16 factors were associated with long Covid, so that the same 16 factors. And I described this sometimes as a patient going into a doctor's office with 16 nails in their foot, saying they have foot pain.

And the doctor pulls out one nails and says, come back in a month and tell me how you're feeling. And obviously it's never going to be enough. So the problem with this model is that we need to get to all the nails. Well, about a year and a half ago, we published in the journal microorganisms in 2024 that we found all 16 of these episodes factors in long Covid. And then I started looking at other diseases. And the next one I looked at was Alzheimer's disease. And I did a deep dive in the medical literature, and I discovered that Alzheimer's disease had all 16 factors associated with it.

The 16-factor model behind chronic disease 2:51

And in fact, we've heard about during the summit, I submitted an article to the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Case Studies, and it's the first time this has ever been published in the medical literature that we were able to reverse inflammation, both peripheral inflammation, rheumatoid factors, and a chronic Lyme disease patient, with joint pain, but also reverse some of these inflammatory markers, such as tau 217, which is a marker that is been showing up in patients with Alzheimer's disease. And up until now, again, we name the disease.

We call it Alzheimer's disease. But the best that we have in medicine is to use aricept acetylcholinesterase inhibitors or memantine namenda, or use lecanemab. In other words, they try and break up the amyloid and get rid of it instead of trying to figure out why is the amyloid there to begin with. And it turns out that Borrelia burgdorferi is one of the reasons why amyloid shows up in the brain, along with biofilm and peto. So based on either Shopee's work and her colleagues a few years ago, where they showed that in autopsy specimens of Alzheimer's patients, they were able to find Lyme disease, Bergdorf Frye with biofilm, Patel and amyloid.

We decided to try the nine week taps on combination therapy. And lo and behold, in one of our patients who's had an elevated Alzheimer's marker, P2 17 with initially normal beta amyloid, three months after doing shown her Patel 217 was completely normal and she had less beta amyloid. The beta amyloid ratio improved. Now, this is groundbreaking for those of you who've not been following the literature. This is groundbreaking research because we we don't really know. They're estimating that maybe one quarter of all the Alzheimer's cases in the world is an estimate may be due to Lyme disease.

And that about there's a chance a 42% chance that as you get over 55 years old, you have a chance of becoming demented

Alzheimer's disease and Lyme-related inflammation 4:46

with 46 million Americans having preclinical dementia. So again, it's not enough to name the disease. We need to get to the underlying sources of it. So when Simon and Schuster gave me a contract to write the book and I said, well, we we know that we have Lyme disease and long Covid, and here it is with Alzheimer's. What I didn't know when I was starting to write my book is that every major chronic disease that I would be looking at basically had the 16 point absence model underlying it. So what we did in our book, and you can see this here in the beginning part of the book, we have here first with the M6 map.

What is it? And I've expanded in the first couple of chapters. The differential diagnosis. So for example, if you have neuropathy, we describe all the different factors that cause neuropathy to make sure that if you're suffering from these burning, tingling, numbness, stabbing pains in your body, it may not just be the Lyme you'll you'll discover as you get from the book that it may be also that due to Bartonella and it may be due to heavy metals, mercury, lead and arsenic, it may be due to mole toxins.

It may be due to B12 deficiency hypothyroidism. So in the first couple of chapters we go through the differential diagnosis of all of these different diseases that underlie each symptom. Then we go through the reasons why you stay stick the three eyes infection, immunity, and inflammation. In chapter three, the physical and emotional overwhelm that we have. And then finally, environmental toxins. One thing that is completely new in this book, which I think people are really going to enjoy, is chapter five is about lowering inflammation.

What we did is we discovered that although we found all these 16 factors underlying all these chronic diseases, we discovered that there are 16 inflammatory pathways underlying the 16 factors. And I discuss in the book the natural ways with nutraceuticals, natural ways with diet, not just with medications, but ways that we can block the inflammation. So what we're doing in this book, we're describing how to get to the underlying sources of the inflammation and how to block the inflammation in these biochemical pathways.

How the book is structured 6:57

At the same time, when we then look at part three, lowering inflammation, the keys to good health, and part four, the ABCs of Chronic Disease Medicine. We start out, for example, with a is for A.D.D., ADHD, Alzheimer's disease, autism, allergies and asthma. And again we show how all 16 factors underlying this. So for example you may not have known, for example with allergies and asthma that changing certain of the microbiome in your gut can help some of those inflammatory pathways. We show you exactly what bacteria they are that caused the inflammation, and how to get those bacteria back in balance under chapter for the bees Borrelia.

But Beezy, a Bartonella, I described the Daptone protocol in great, great detail so that you and your doctor can use the protocol effectively. We described the newer protocols for treating babka, including some of the more resistant strains like the Busia, OTA coli, and finally, how to treat Bartonella with the two week Daptone pulses, and also how to use low dose APS on combination therapy and reverse some of the side effects, so that if you have been afraid of using daptone, which for me is the most effective protocol, short term protocol, I have a profound for treating this chronic illness with patients who have been sick for 3040 years, who are now.

Well, I describe to you ways of kind of putting your foot in the water and getting used to this protocol so you two can reap the benefits. Under the C's we have C is for cancer, cardiovascular disease and chronic fatigue syndrome. Myalgic and suffer myelitis and fibromyalgia. So if you're someone who's been diagnosed, for example, with cancer, you may not have known that all 16 M six factors have been associated. Same thing with chronic fatigue syndrome. It may have been due to a virus initially like Epstein-Barr herpes virus six, but you may not have realized is that there are other bacterial infections, microbiome issues, hormonal disorders that still may be driving the chronic fatigue and illness that you or your doctor didn't know about.

With that, you may have gotten years later after the initial diagnosis. For D is for digestive.

Treating major disease categories 9:09

We go through, and this is actually one of the largest chapters. All of the major digestive diseases. So over the years patients have come to me saying, doc, I've got constipation, I've got diarrhea, I've got gas, I've got bloating. All of these GI complaints, hiatal hernias, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, all 16 factors are underlying these. And we go through these in detail, but also with parts of the book that show you how to make the diagnosis. In other words, what are the symptoms of Sibo small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

What are the testing you need? What are the most effective treatments with medications and supplements? E is for environmental medicine, F is for functional medicine, G is for genetics, which is for hormonal disorders. We go through all the major hormonal disorders how to regulate them, not just again with standard medication, but also with natural supplements and nutraceuticals. To get these in balance. And we do the same for immune disorders, autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis.

We go through Hashimoto's thyroiditis, a Crohn's disease, many of the autoimmune diseases, and finally even mood disorders. Major depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, all 16 factors. So this book is like nothing that I have ever written before, and I'm really excited to share it with you, because even if you don't suffer from every one of these diseases that I just mentioned, there are people who get these diseases after tick bites and getting environmental toxins, or you're chronic Lyme disease patients, who has some of these things overlapping.

For example, we've had patients with true M.S. who get Lyme disease and Bartonella making their M.S. worse, or they never had Ms., but they didn't know how to differentiate true M.S. from Lyme disease. And Bartonella causing demyelination. So I'm very excited to share with you ending chronic illness. You can go on my website Ending Chronic illness.com. You can take a look at an overview of the book, but I'm very, very excited. Please share this with everyone who you love and you care about. And for the line community.

This is my great gift to you. This is my gift to the world. Because right now, knowing that half of all people living on the planet have a chronic illness, 25% have two or more. It's responsible for 86% of our health care costs. 70% of the deaths in this country are due to chronic disease. It's 18% of our GDP and people don't trust science anymore.

Prevention, patient stories, and closing remarks 11:45

People don't know where to turn for reliable information. Well, I've been doing medicine for 41 years with 13,000 of the most chronically ill patients, and every one of the stories in this book are from our patients who I personally treated, whether it's a patient who is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or a patient who was diagnosed with ADHD or chronic fatigue syndrome. These are all stories that indicate how we use the map and how we improve the treatment, so that if you're someone who's suffering and you don't know why you have these illnesses, this book is for you.

And the chronic illness, if you have a disease and you might be doing better with medication, but you're still not completely well, ending chronic illness may give you the keys that you need to be able to get you better. And for those people like myself who are blessed, I'm in good health at 70 years old, and you'll see that I'm taking a lot of the nutritional supplements I describe which block these inflammatory pathways in the book. For those interested in prevention, like myself, because my whole family died of cancer, you'll see that there is every chapter.

There is an element of prevention with diet, with exercise, with sleep, discussing all of the natural things you can also do to support your health. So please take a look on the website. The ending Chronic illness.com and I want to thank you for attending the Healing Lyme Summit again. I'm so excited to share this with you. I believe that this is really, for me, the most important book that I have done to date, and I hope that this will be the key to the healing of your illness or prevention that you and your family and your loved ones have needed.

So thank you again for listening and for tuning in to this year's Doctor Talks Healing Lyme Summit. My name is Doctor Richard Horowitz, co-host of the Healing Lyme Summit. Thank you again for tuning in. Bye bye.