From “Dis-Ease” To Better Health: A Model for Recovering from Chronic Lyme Disease, Mold Illness, and Related Conditions

Scott Forsgren

Thank you, Dr. Kelly. So excited to be here.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Yes, Scott. When I got asked to do Dr. Talks, you are at the top of my list because you are so well-versed, so well-knowledged in so many areas of health. I know that you’ve had your own health struggles and both you and I had to go through everything to learn everything that we actually have under our belt at this point. And so can we just start by talking about your personal health journey with chronic Lyme disease and mold illness?

Scott Forsgren

You bet, yeah. So for me, it started with a tick bite in 1996, back in the dark ages with the dinosaurs here in Northern California. And I was fine until April of 1997. So I never made the connection. Started like a flu over the course of a weekend. It was so intense. It felt like a flu times a hundred neurological pain. This head to toe sunburn burning sensation that lasted for a long time, low grade fever that lasted for over a year, lots of these neurological-type symptoms like this motor-like tapping sensation in my left foot that just was constantly there, crawling sensations. It took me 45 doctors to finally get a diagnosis. And that actually came from an acupuncturist, which I’ll talk more about in a moment, but looking at a lot of the symptoms of Lyme, difficulty walking, balance issues, I couldn’t sit up in a chair without feeling like I was falling over. I couldn’t sleep at night without propping up pillows because I felt like I was gonna roll off the bed, joint pain, muscle pain, lots of gut issues, numbness and tingling, fatigue, tremors, this constant vibration, these internal vibrations, which we now know are probably more mold and Bartonella, muscle twitching, light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, heart palpitations, just a whole list of things. And so for the most part with these 45 doctors, what I got was a stack of referrals to a psychiatrist, and I knew it could not be psychological. 

Though eventually, I became open to exploring that, and that is gonna be a piece of recovery for many or most people. I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. At that time, it was on the internet that chronic fatigue syndrome generally resolved in about a decade. And so I thought, that that is not reasonable. I’m not gonna wait and see if that happens. So 2005, I started with a new doctor. He sent me to an acupuncturist that worked at an outlet mall next to a coffee shop. And she did electro acupuncture according to Voll or electrodermal screening. He said find out what foods you should avoid. That really could probably be the explanation for everything you’re dealing with. 

And what she said was I would get tested for Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia, Ehrlichia, all of these vector-borne infections. I didn’t take it that seriously. I thought, how am I gonna find the answer with this lady working at the outlet mall when 45 amazing infectious disease and neurology and all of these people couldn’t find it? Fortunately, she was very persistent in stressing the severity of having these things explored. We did get confirmation. Some of them, we had to repeat a couple of times. We know testing is not perfect, but we did get positive tests for all of those things ultimately. And the doctor I was working with at the time said, “You know what? I just didn’t put the pieces together. You have every symptom of Lyme. I work with lots of Lyme patients.” But he did get me to the person that was able to put that together. 

So at that point, the energetic testing that led me to my interest in Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt’s work. He has become my biggest mentor so many ways. Not only was I his patient from 2006 to 2012, and that was a huge part of me getting better. But the framework that he had created really changed my life in so many ways for the better. And so fortunately today, I’m doing well. I probably work too much. I love what I do, go to the gym every morning and work out. I’m super blessed. I would say that the message of chronic illness in part for me was to take better care of myself, to not do a lot of the things I was doing before. And so I think that is part of the message that we all get from this process of chronic illness. But I am so incredibly blessed and grateful for how well I’m doing today.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Yes. I mean, definitely, we share a lot of the same history with chronic illness and going to many practitioners and doing a lot of things. And I finally did get a diagnosis too, Scott, just like you from a Lyme-literate medical doctor. And that really changed the trajectory. And I know that, a lot of people ask me, Dr. Halderman, “What did you do to get better?” And it’s never one thing. Looks like it’s been 17 years since your diagnosis with Lyme. And then shortly after mold, have you discovered a model for recovering from health that emerged from that journey? And this is another tough question is how would you approach recovery if you were to do it all over again?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, I mean, it would be nice to have some of the resources that I now understand, some of the amazing books like Dr. Nathan’s book “Toxic.” A lot has really evolved. But I would say, first, I was so blessed that the universe connected me to amazing people. Like sometimes, I’m pinching myself being in a room with teacher Klinghardt and Neil Nathan and Simon Yu and Raj Patel and doing podcast interviews with people like Kelly Halderman. I mean, just helping to hand me pieces of the puzzle so I could then kinda go, “Okay, this is how it fits together in my brain.” And it’s always evolving. The steps are gonna change in terms of the order. It’s not the case that everybody has to deal with every one of these issues, but hopefully, it’s a pretty broad way of looking at things at this point. So for me, step one is always gonna be detoxification and drainage. 

Looking at the terrain. Step two is the external environment. So what can we do from a perspective of mold and EMFs to create a healing environment around us? Step three is optimizing sleep. Step four is the mental-emotional contribution to health and traumas and conflicts. And those certainly play a role for many of us. Step five is looking at the limbic system, the vagus nerve, the parasympathetic nervous system. How do we calm things down to support healing? We’re not gonna heal in a sympathetic dominant state. Step six is looking at immune and inflammatory modulation, mast cell activation, those types of things. Step seven is how do we optimize our hydration, our nutrition, our microbiome? Step eight is some supportive interventions like adrenal support. 

But now, even maybe bigger than that, mitochondrial support. And then looking at things like kryptopyrroluria and hypercoagulation, which I think is probably the biggest overlooked factor in this conversation of chronic illness. Step nine is then getting to the microbial overgrowths, the viruses, the retro viruses, the gut issues, the fungal and yeast overgrowths, Lyme co-infections, all of those things. Step 10 is looking at the dental contribution. Some people that could come much earlier, but there is a rationale for why in my mind this comes a little later. Step 11 is, as Dr. David Jernigan would say, “Once you address the termites, you still may have some structural issues that need regeneration, restoration, repair.” So it’s what can we do to then really help the body to repair?

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Great. So we’re gonna go through each of those in detail, but I love that you start with number one, your first step is detoxification and drainage. I have coined the phrase Phase 2.5 detoxification involving bile flow, bile production, because that is what moved the needle most for me. So talk a little bit about detoxification and drainage. What’s the difference? Why should we pay attention to this and why it’s number one in your mind?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, so it’s definitely number one in my mind. I think that if we didn’t have a toxic terrain, we probably wouldn’t have issues with chronic infections like Lyme and co-infections. So optimizing or improving the terrain is the road back to health in my mind. We know that certain organisms like candida or candida, or even parasites often are helping the body to protect us from heavy metals. So a lot of this detoxification is also kind of an indirect antimicrobial strategy as well. So you think, well, he’s not doing anything about microbes until the very end. No, we’re already starting to put this framework in place to create an environment that is not hospitable to these microbes or doesn’t need these microbes in some type of synergistic relationship. 

So the first step for me is looking at all of the external things that we’re bringing into the body. So personal care products, scented products, laundry products, dryer sheets, pure air, pure food, pure water, whether that’s reverse osmosis or distilled. This was an area that I probably didn’t focus on as much early on. I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna do all these things for detox.” But at the end of the day, you don’t have to detoxify the things you don’t bring into the body. So I think this is important. Sometimes, looking at things like implanted medical devices, whether that’s metal implants or breast implants, those can certainly be sources of toxicity, but also sources of immune dysregulation. Detoxification for me is primarily about binders. 

So once we get the toxins from the liver into the bile, through the gallbladder into the small intestine, we need something there to bind onto them to minimize their reabsorption or minimize enterohepatic recirculation of bile and thus toxins back into the system. And so this is the part that I really kind of really got underscored for me in our conversation on the podcast. And also, from some of Chris Shade’s work that even when you’re using binders, they may not be very effective if you don’t have bile with those toxins getting into the small intestine, moving through the gallbladder into the small intestine. You can take binders all day long, but what if there’s nothing there for them to bind? There’s nothing for them to meet up with? So critical to look at the bio flow piece to optimize what we’re doing with binders. Drainage for me is about the liver, the kidneys, the lymphatics, the extracellular matrix, which many people don’t talk about. Very, very important. 

The colon, the skin, the lungs. We have to optimize all of the exit routes or emunctories, thinking about getting people pooping. If you’re constipated, then this whole conversation of detoxification really is not gonna move past the starting line. You really need to look at that. And then your conversation around Phase 2.5 detox, so important. We need to make sure that that bile flow is really, really moving to optimize what we’re doing here. And so in the binder realm, I think there’s lots of great options. I, for many years, have been a fan of the Takesumi Supreme from Supreme Nutrition. I love the products that Dr. Todd Watts has brought out with the CellCore microbe formulas products. And then things like 

Zeolight in some cases, bentonite clay, and we do need to be careful to get clean sources of bentonite clays, ’cause they can be contaminated. But bentonite clay I find can be very helpful. Chlorella as well. And then in the drainage realm, my first go-tos are usually homeopathic drainage products. So things like Pekana or Energetix or DesBio. They have some fantastic tools. We can use herbs as well. So milk thistle or dandelion for the liver or solidago for the kidneys or red root for the lymphatics. And so lots of good companies that do work in that realm. Trace minerals I think are also important. If we had adequate minerals, we probably wouldn’t then hold onto as many of the heavy metals. Silica can be great for dealing with aluminum toxicity, which is a primary environmental toxicant. 

And so looking at, can we bring in some trace minerals to help facilitate detoxification as well? And then looking at movement being very important. At least walking. The more stagnant we are, the harder it is then for the body to keep the fluid flow moving, particularly with the lymphatic system. And then there’s a number of adjunct things that we can bring in. Coffee enemas for me, very top of the list. I mean, I honestly, that’s probably one of my top five tools that really helped when I had so much pain that I couldn’t move my head more than about an inch from side to side, that really was, at that time, kind of a survival tool. Colon hydrotherapy, ionic foot baths, cast oil packs, oil pulling, liver gall bladder flushes. But I would caution people, those should be medically supervised. Sometimes, people are not ready for them and they can have some potential downsides. Sauna. I like sauna, but I do feel like sauna is something that generally should be explored a little bit later after the adrenals are supported. I think people think, “Oh, I’m sweating things out,” which is true, but you’re also mobilizing toxins inside the body. And so if we don’t have all of those pathways opened up, the channels of elimination, if we don’t have binders on board, you could lead to some redistribution of toxins that might actually make you feel worse. So I like sauna, but I don’t think it’s something that people should push through. If you feel poorly, then listen to the body and don’t try to force yourself to do something. And I think that’s generally true for anything that we’re doing. If the body’s really pushing back, then maybe there’s something that we’re missing.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Excellent. So let’s move on to step two, which is improving our external environment. So Scott, why is this so important and how do we do it?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, so this is the piece that I didn’t understand when I got the Lyme diagnosis in 2005. Ritchie Shoemaker’s book “Mold Warriors” had just come out, took me a couple more years to kind of figure this out. But our internal environment is probably only ever going to be as good as our external environment is. So we’re not gonna be healthier than what surrounds us. And unfortunately, many people’s indoor environments are very toxic, so we can take supplements all day long, we can do everything to try to get better, but if our home, our school, our workplace, sometimes even our car, if those are our kryptonite, we may never again regain our superhero status. And so it’s just so critical that we’re thinking about the environment. The first is gonna be mold. I will say we generalize to say mold, but mold really is probably better identified as water-damaged building illness, meaning that there are bacteria and endotoxins and many other things that we’re exposed to. Parasites and microbial VOCs and so on. So I think we talk about mold because it’s maybe the thing we can historically test better for, but that really is just a surrogate way of looking at water-damaged building illness. So there is not a perfect test for looking at the environment. I think the ERMI or environmental relative mold index is a good starting place. Micrometric or Envirobiomics, it’s not perfect. 

You can then take those results and convert them to a HERTSMI-2 score, which is often very helpful. ImmunoLytics plates, where you set out a plate and you then watch it grow for a number of days and then you can send it in and have them tell you what grew on it can be helpful. I don’t think it’s the only thing people should do, but that combined with an army can be quite helpful. And then looking at, can we find some evidence of some mycotoxins in the body? So I am a fan of the RealTime Lab’s testing. That’s also the one that Dr. Nathan would use the most. There is a lot of debate about it. There are people that say that comes from food. That is true, but when you’re seeing really high levels, that is probably not from food alone. So Great Plains has testing in this realm. Vibrant has testing in this realm. I think it’s nice over time to see hopefully whatever your initial result is. 

And you start supporting detox and drainage. Ideally, you then see an increase in what’s being excreted, but at some point, that should start to come back down and become negative. Air filters, I think those can be helpful, but I don’t think they’re solving the problem. I think a lot of times, there’s a hole in the bottom of the boat and then putting an air filter in is kind of like bailing the water out of the boat with a paper towel. It’s not gonna solve the boat from sinking. And then once we identify whatever the exposure is, environmentally, then we either need to find a new environment or fix the environment or remediate the environment that we’re in. I think that that’s a conversation to have with an indoor environmental professional. Sometimes, it’s not solvable and you just need to move on. But I do observe that many people move from one environment to another environment to another environment and they always seem to find a mold problem. 

So sometimes, I think you can remediate the environment that you’re in. And oftentimes, that can be quite great. So thinking then of what are some binders that we can use in this realm? There are some that are a little more specific, like the BioToxin Binder by CellCore is really nice, the Pro-Myco product, which is not really a binder, but that’s a Beyond Balance product that can help facilitate the detoxification of mycotoxins. Colestyramine for some people can be a good tool. It’s not easy to tolerate. I’ve certainly had periods in my recovery where that was something that energetically was testing super well. And so you bite the bullet and you do it. But I would say that’s probably a tool that, if you have an ongoing exposure, maybe is more appropriate, versus if you’re minimizing your exposures, then a lot of these natural tools really can be quite amazing. And that’s really where I personally am gonna be more drawn most of the time. And then we’ll talk a little bit later about potentially needing to think about colonization. If I was breathing in aspergillus for 10 years, is it possible that it’s in my sinuses, in my gut that I fix the environment? Maybe I’m even in a clean room now with absolutely no exposure, but what if I have a factory of these mycotoxin producing fungi in my system? Then that potentially needs to be addressed. So I think once we rule out the mold piece that we have really or the water damage building piece, we’ve really removed a very significant roadblock to our recovery. I cannot stress enough. I know people don’t wanna test. 

It’s a scary path to go down this whole mold illness piece, but it will save people years of time and lots of money to make sure that that’s been addressed first. So that’s the mold piece. The other piece is the electromagnetic field exposure. And this is something that Dr. Klinghardt first started sharing with me around 2006. Most people at that time were really laughing at him, thinking, “Oh my goodness, this crazy German doctor. Like that’s so ridiculous.” I don’t think anyone’s laughing anymore. I think now we’re all becoming aware of how much all of these man-made fields are impacting our body. They can actually block detoxification. So that’s a significant issue. So things like turning off our wifi, things like tossing our cordless phones, if anyone still has those, sleeping in silver line cloth that can create a Faraday cage is something that I’ve done now for 16 years. 

I think it was very, very helpful. Sometimes, turning off the circuit breakers at night so that you’re not getting that exposure from the wiring in the walls that actually emanates out into the room several feet. And so what can we do in this EMF realm again to try and create a healthier environment for our healing? Interestingly, Dr. Klinghardt has said, for many years that mold growth in an environment, not only the growth but also their defensive mycotoxin-producing response is much more when we have exposure to EMFs. And so one of the first things he’s gonna say about, “Oh, I have mold in my home” is turn off your wifi because that’s one of the aggravators of these molds that then lead to more mycotoxin production. And so in the Klinghardt world, there is no road back to health without reducing EMF exposure. There are lots of meters and things you can use. 

I think there’s enough building biologists out in the world now that sometimes just getting someone to come out and test, because you need four or five or six different meters to look at the different types of potential fields that need to be mitigated. There is also some correlation between EMF sensitivity and heavy metal toxicity. So working on the heavy metal piece as part of step one with detoxification and drainage, that can, over time, reduce electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome or EHS. So the detoxification piece already hopefully helping here as well. And then there are gonna be some people that are more predisposed from a genetic perspective to being more reactive to EMFs. There are also gonna be people that are more reactive to EMFs because they have limbic system impairment that we’re gonna talk about in just a little bit.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Great, that was super well-stated in how important it is again to have external with the internal alignment, because you’re right. We’re never going to be healthy until we get that external environment cleaned up. And I had mold toxicity. And so I actually had to move. So I understand that personally. So your next pillar, your next step, rather, is optimizing sleep. I know this is so important. This actually just came with everything that I was doing. I think I should have put this higher on the list, but my question to you is, why does this come after the external environment around us?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah. So another teaching from Dr. Klinghardt is that a primary cause of insomnia is the EMF exposure, these frequencies that we’re all bathed in. So helping first to minimize that can set us up then to have healthier sleep. Lots of things that we can do in this realm, melatonin, which I joke is my drug of choice. I’ve always been a huge fan of melatonin. GABA, 5-HTP, lemon balm, valerian, there’s a lot of things there, but I think sometimes, we need to look into things like, what is your blood sugar doing while you’re sleeping? Is it going down to the point that then your body is producing cortisol to bring it back up? But then once you’re flooded with cortisol, you’re not gonna be able to sleep? What is your oxygen saturation? Sometimes, using things like weighted blankets can be helpful. 

I actually do incline bed therapy as well, which can help with drainage and the lymphatics by raising the head of the bed three to six inches over the foot of the bed. Things like brain tap. I actually, if I remember our conversation correctly, I think you were the one I was just exploring brain tap. There you go. I was exploring brain tap at that time and had done a podcast with Dr. Patrick Porter and asked you at the end what are some things you do on a daily basis in support of your own health? And you pulled out your brain tap, and you said that you had been measuring your deep sleep on your Oura Ring. And with the brain tap, it had like more than doubled, which to me is amazing. 

And that’s one reason I love the Oura Ring because we can see, well, what are some of these interventions we’re doing? And what’s the pattern in terms of our sleep score, our readiness can be amazing. There’s the Apollo Neuro band as well that just creates kind of a vibratory pulse on the wrist that can also kinda help calm the system down. And then we’re gonna talk about mast cell and histamine and just a little bit as well, but histamine also can play a role in sleep dysregulation. So we may need to look at some of the triggers for histamine and really every bit of improvement we can make here in the sleep arena is going to exponentially increase our overall healing potential. That’s why it’s so early in this process.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Yeah, I agree. It’s very important to optimize it and to track it. Like you said, Oura Ring. I love to do interventions and objectively measure the outcome because I think some people do things, “Oh, I took melatonin and I took GABA, but I think I slept better so I am a fan of using tools to measure.” So that was a great summary. Let’s go to step four. Step four being mental and emotional health. We’ve been told, you and I, that the problem was in our head. So is the problem in all in our head, or can you expound on this very important step?

Scott Forsgren

I would say that many of us have had some emotional trauma or conflict back in childhood, whatever, that sets the stage for the development of a chronic illness. Other people will be so invalidated by their medical journey, by the medical community, that their physical illness leads to an experience that creates a trauma. So either way, I think it’s something we have to explore to maximize really our health outcome. And we all have emotional issues to work through. Accepting that reality doesn’t mean that the illness is all in our head. But our mental and emotional health does play a role in the development of physical illness. I don’t think there’s any question about that. In the Lyme community, my observation over the years, and I’m guilty as charged, is a common pattern is a Type A plus overachiever perfectionist that may not feel they deserve to be well for whatever reason. 

They’re doing, doing, doing to prove their worth and value in the world. Rarely do I find a Type B, the guy coming in on the surfboard on the beach and going, “Oh man, my life was ruined by Lyme disease.” I mean, once in a while, it actually happened one time and it kind of blew my story, but it’s not super common. And so in Dr. Klinghardt’s five levels of healing, the mental-emotional realm is the third level. The physical realm is the bottom or the widest part of the pyramid, and things that we can do on those higher levels have a downward effect. And so if we can shift something in the mental-emotional third level realm, that’s probably gonna do more than all of the supplements we could possibly take. 

So things that can be helpful in this realm are gonna be things like EMDR. Dr. Klinghardt’s applied psychoneurobiology or psychokinesiology systems like EFT or various tapping systems, emotion code. NET is another one that many practitioners do. And I think for people that are open to this realm, usually at the beginning, people aren’t as open to this realm. But eventually, people seem to broaden their toolbox and their thought process. I’m a big fan of Amy Scher’s book. It’s called “How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can.” Very focused on how do we do specific things. There’s scripts, there’s tapping, there’s things in there that can really help to release a lot of that cellular memory or cellular imprint that emotions have on our bodies and our physical realities. And so that’s a fantastic resource for people to explore this with.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Great, sounds great. So that brings us to the rule step five. So retraining the limbic system, tonifying the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic. So incredibly important. Can you expound on that step?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, it is really important. This is another place where I think brain tap kind of shines, but this is something that could come earlier, could come later. Generally speaking, I will say that limbic system retraining like with DNRS or Dynamic Neural Retraining System or the Gupta Program, I tend to think of those as tools that are better to reboot, as Dr. Nathan might say, or recalibrate your perception of threat compared to actual threat. So at one time, you’re living in a moldy house. It is a tiger. It’s not healthy for you. But then you do what you did. You moved, you’re in a better place. It’s now like the kitten walking outside the street, outside the window. And yet your limbic system sees the kitten and reacts as if there’s a tiger. So sometimes, you need to use these limbic system tools early on to be able to tolerate some treatment. People that can’t tolerate any supplements, they can’t hold their down to five foods. One person I talked to was down to one food and that one food was alligator. 

That’s the only thing they could eat. So a lot of times, people will benefit by doing some of this work to increase the treatment options they have. But longer term, these are built on a framework of environmental awareness. No one is saying, if you just do limbic system retraining, you can still live in your moldy house. And I think that’s a common misconception that the community, the online community tends to have. There is some resistance to this work. So the limbic system is the hypothalamus, the amygdala, the hippocampus in the Gupta Program. It also considers another structure called the insula. So this is all the feeling and reacting brain. It’s the alarm center, the anxiety switch. It impacts the function of the immune system, the hormone system or endocrine system, the autonomic nervous system, which then impacts our digestion and breath and heart rate and blood pressure. So it’s very upstream and many different things can trigger limbic system impairment. 

I do not like, though it does happen, I do not like to equate this limbic system work to mental-emotional work. You can benefit if you had a mental-emotional trauma that triggered your limbic system impairment, you can benefit from doing some of these limbic system things, but mold, chemicals, pesticides, pathogens, so many things can be triggers for limbic system impairment. So I think of it as more of a biochemical physical reality than a mental-emotional type thing. Then you get into using a tool like Annie Hopper’s DNRS or Ashok Gupta’s The Gupta Program can be tremendously, tremendously helpful in this whole recovery. And then one of the things that also can pair very nicely with the limbic system work is work with the vagus nerve. 

So how do you tone the vagus nerve that could be with things like the exercises from Stanley Rosenberg’s book, “Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve” that could be with other tools like frequency specific microcurrent. I mean, there’s lots of ways we can work with the vagus nerve, but we need to work on the limbic system and the vagus nerve simultaneously to support the parasympathetic response that is needed for rest, digest, detoxify, and heal. HeartMath is another tool that can be helpful in this realm, but we’re not going to heal if we’re in that fight, flight, or freeze response. We have to calm the system as much as possible to move into a healing state.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Great, great. And that brings us to step six, kind of building on all of this is that when we are in chronic illness, we have a lot of inflammation. The immune response could be the problem. One of the problems is that the immune response, maybe it was appropriate, maybe it was not appropriate for what was going on, but that can impact in cleaning that up, addressing the mast cells. I think this again is a super important step and its step six in your approach. Can you tell us why this step is so important?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, so I think getting well is not going to be about killing bugs. When I first started my journey, kill, kill, kill, then do some detox. Then those pesky emotions. Now, I think it’s exactly the opposite. We need to work on the mental-emotional health, we need to detox, and then the bugs really are kind of later in this whole process. And so I think that there’s so many factors in the world that are leading to immune dysregulation, mold exposure. Lots of people after getting the pandemic virus or having immune dysregulation, toxins, immune dysregulation. So a lot of times, it’s not so much that the immune system is weak. It’s that the immune system is dysregulated, hypervigilant, hyperactive, overreacting, creating more inflammation. And so if we look at that immune, the mast cells that can create inflammatory mediators like histamine and many others, they can be triggered by parasites, by Lyme disease, by environmental toxins, by foods and supplements, even temperature changes for some people, any type of trauma. 

Interestingly, I think we ultimately will come to the conclusion that a major trigger of mast cell activation is EMF, and Dr. Theoharides said at a conference that I was at a few years ago that mast cells are 10 times more active in the presence of a cell phone. And for me, even having already heard a lot of this stuff, it was like, whoa, wait a minute. 10 times more active just because of your cell phone. What about all the other things? What about all these 5G towers that are going up on every corner? I mean, it really is concerning. But I would say mold, parasites, EMFs, probably some of the bigger triggers of mast cell activation. Ideally, we start working in this realm by minimizing again incoming sources, low histamine diet, what are we consuming like avocados or bone broth or fermented foods or kombucha? Like all these things we think are great, they’re not great for people that have mast cell activation. 

And then once we minimize as many of those things with dietary intake, then looking at what can we do to stabilize the mast cells to reduce histamine things like quercetin, luteolin, holy basil. NeuroProtek is a product that Dr. Theo created that’s amazing. Dr. Ben Lynch has his ProBiota HistaminX. So probiotics are triggers of mast cells and histamine as well if it’s the wrong kind of probiotics. Dr. Chris Shade created a liposomal formula from Quicksilver called Hista-Aid that I really like as well. Pharmaceutical interventions like compounded ketotifen or cromolyn, those can be great. And then a lot of times, when you just start addressing the mast cell activation piece through diet, and some of these things that we just talked about, people symptomatically feel a lot better. Their symptoms resolve or reduce. The inflammation is much better. And at the same time, then we wanna work on those triggers. So the mast cell activation piece is kind of what’s creating a lot of the symptoms, and we wanna work on that so that the person doesn’t have as many symptoms. But it’s not gonna resolve unless we fix the triggers. And so the mold, all of those pieces. Additional inflammatory support, I think some of the pro-resolving mediators like SPM Active or Microbiome Labs, Gut-Specific Fish Oil. No, I was not on the marketing team that named that product. I think those can be helpful for resolving inflammation as well. And then what can we do for immunomodulation? Low dose naltrexone. I think right now, lots of people benefit from low dose naltrexone, low dose immunotherapy, Ty Vincent’s work, homeopathy. 

There’s a product from Beyond Balance I like called IMN-CALM. And then Dr. Samuel Yanuck with Cogence Immunology, he’s a fantastic teacher in this realm. It’s very complicated, but he’s incredible. And he’s worked with Pure Encapsulations to create a line of products Th1 support, Th2 modulator, balanced immune, innate immune support, history reset. I mean, lots of tools that are emerging here. I’m also excited about and still kind of in the exploration stage, but there is now finally a test called the Cyrex Lymphocyte Map that gives us some insight into Th1, Th2, Th17, Treg, all of that, that could then give us some clues as to which way the immune system is tilted, so to speak, and how can we bring it back into balance? And so I think it’s important to remember that getting well is not about boosting the immune system. 

That can actually make things worse, particularly for people with autoimmunity, but it’s more about modulation, calming, integration with our microbiome. And I do think that this is an area where peptides can really shine, the immunomodulation piece. And I know sometimes it’s a little tricky to get access to some of these. I definitely don’t recommend people get them online and from sources that they don’t really know, but things like thymosin alpha-1, thymosin beta-4, thymulin, KPV, a lot of the peptides I think really shine in step six, where we’re looking at the immunomodulation piece. And I think this is really foundational to do before we get into the killing piece a little later.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Very good. So that leads us to step seven, which is about optimizing hydration, nutrition, the microbiome and gut health. You kind of alluded to that in step six about, are you a histamine sensitive? Is that an issue? Are your mast cells degranulating? Should you go on a low histamine? But this brings in deeper dive. Can you elaborate on that?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, so in this realm of biotoxin illness, I think many people are drinking water all day. They’re peeing it out. They have low antidiuretic hormone. They’re still cellularly dehydrated. So I think about things like structuring water, adding some electrolytes, adding some trace minerals, maybe a pinch of sea salt. There’s devices out there that can structure water. I mean, there’s many different ways of doing that. 

There’s a homeopathic from Energetix called Rehydration that I really like as well. There are some waters that are quite good that you can purchase but they’re expensive. Shipping costs almost as much as buying the water. And so I don’t know that that’s always a great way to do it. I’m personally just starting into more water distillation, which I used to actually be against, but learning from Dr. Todd Watts, distilling water to get out all of the bad stuff and then in some cases, adding some of the minerals back in. So hydration, really important. Remembering then that the immune system largely comes from the gut. So if we have foods that we’re eating, that are triggering the gut, we really wanna get rid of those triggering foods. I do think gluten just needs to go away for anyone in this conversation of chronic illness. I think cow dairy’s gonna be bad for most people. 

At a minimum, a two cow dairy might be better. Sheep or goat is probably gonna be better. Getting rid of as much of that as you can is probably gonna be best. Sugar’s gonna be bad. High histamine foods, we talked about, also bad. Lots of different diets out there. In my experience, probably in the more chronic illness recovery, I think the low histamine diet is the one that I’ve seen produce the best results. It’s not a forever thing. So you might later move on to a autoimmune paleo or a paleo or a keto or something else. But I do think low histamine can be really great. And then whatever you are consuming, how do we make it as nutrient dense as possible? My favorite meal of the day is my morning power shake, which unfortunately, depending on the amount of cilium I put into it, sometimes it becomes power pudding. It’s a little bit thick at times. But some type of high quality protein, a good fiber blend, some phospholipids, the phosphatidylcholine with the phosphatidylserine, N-acetyl ethanolamine, all of those things. Good healthy fats. 

Maybe some chia seeds or flax seeds and organic nut milk. It’s an incredible way to start the day. And for my own, I really had in my earlier recovery more of like a sarcopenia where I would look at my calf muscles, and they used to be huge and they were just gone. And I was like, what the heck? And so this kind of focus on nutrition really helped tremendously. I think thinking a little bit more about how do we support the microbiome is important. MegaSporeBiotic is something I love. It’s great even for most people dealing with mast cell activation or even SIBO provides those keystone strains to optimize microbial diversity of the microbiome, but also can help with modulating inflammation, modulating the immune system as well, helping with intestinal hyperpermeability. We can also think about some of the peptides here like BPC-157 can be great for helping with the gut. Dr. Zack Bush’s ION Gut Health used to be called Restore can be fantastic as well. So just making sure that we’re getting a lot of these water and food and gut and microbiome things dialed in, let’s just do a few little things for each of them to support and optimize our outcomes.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

One quick question for you, Scott, are you a fan of Butyrate?

Scott Forsgren

I take it every day. Not only do I take it every day orally, but I also, over the past couple years, have gone through the whole Patricia Kane protocol, which uses IV sodium phenylbutyrate as well. So yes, I do use a lot of butyrate. And interestingly, if you look at like with the new biome effects that Microbiome Labs works with as well, a lot of times you’ll see that your microbiome doesn’t have the diversity needed to produce butyrate. And so, yeah, I absolutely. I mean, I’m guessing by your smile that it’s a big one for you as well.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Yes, I’ve just seen so many studies on butyrate and all the magical things that it can do that even though it stinks like terribly, and it comes down with a warning on the package, “This is supposed to stink,” I mean, pretty much. So don’t be afraid.

Scott Forsgren

I like some of the, I’ve kind of switched to more of the tributyrin type, Tributyrin-X is one. Designs for Health has another one that are more like soft gels and they don’t have that smell at all. And I think those seem to work quite well. So I’ve kind of shifted away from the smelly ones that they put the cherry capsule inside just so you can tolerate opening the lid. But I do think that they’re all very, very helpful from an inflammation perspective and a gut health perspective.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Great, great, great tip. I will definitely order those. So that brings us to step eight and that is about adding supportive interventions beyond gut. So talk about mitochondrial support, adrenal support, coagulation, as you mentioned. Kind of go into to those for us.

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, so I think adrenal support is sometimes important. I mean, the stress of, who doesn’t in our world today have ridiculous amounts of stress? I just recently added some ashwagandha in, felt like I needed a little support. So I do like the adaptogens. I do think some people certainly do well with low dose hydrocortisone as well. So the adrenals are still part of the conversation, but I think the mitochondria has really become maybe even a bigger part of the conversation. What can we do to support energy production, to support ATP, the energy currency of the body, but also really the energy currency of healing? How can you heal when you don’t have enough ATP to do what the body needs to do? So more recently in this realm, I mean, there’s lots of cool things. I love red light therapy. Lots of tools in that realm that I think can be really great. Also, they can be helpful for collagen support, which sadly Borrelia really affects and so do a lot of other organisms. So red light therapy is great. There’s lots of things like CoQ10 and PQQ and methylene blue can be interesting as well in this conversation. But more recently, I’ve gotten, super thanks to Dr. Neil Nathan, who urged me to read the book “Thiamine Deficiency Disease or Disorder” by Dr. Derrick Lonsdale and Dr. Chandler Marrs, who I interviewed Dr. Marrs. And so it’s using the right type of B1 to help the body produce energy. And so very excited about the thiamine conversation relative to the mitochondria. The kryptopyrroluria piece here in step eight, that’s something that Dr. Klinghardt introduced to me about 15 years ago. And essentially, it’s the idea that we’re peeing out our zinc, B6, and other cofactors that are needed to support the immune system. And you get then to a place where your white blood cells, as he would say, are like an army with no bullets. So supporting those deficiencies can be very important as well. That is something that, for me, I continue to do. It’s probably a lifelong supportive thing. Maybe just more genetically that that’s an issue. And then when we’re looking at hypercoagulation, this was a huge issue for me. We’re hearing a lot more about it now in the COVID arena. 

I do continue to take some nattokinase, some Boluoke or lumbrokinase every day, because I’ve always tended to, at least as long as I’ve looked at it, tend towards hypercoagulation. Very well supported now. My tests are all normal, but you have to look for, is Babesia flaring? Are heavy metals an issue? Are you getting exposed to mold? Those things can create thickened blood or hyperviscous blood. And if you have hypercoagulation, you’re not going to get delivery of nutrients and other therapeutic interventions in an efficient manner to parts of the body, and you’re not going to optimize oxygen delivery and you’re not going to optimize waste removal. So hypercoagulation, I honestly think in this realm of chronic illness, Lyme, mold, all of these things, anyone needs to be looking at hypercoagulation to make sure that that’s not something that’s being missed. I think very commonly, it is something that’s being missed.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Do you think that’s why people experience benefits? And it’s more of a bandaid effect. It’s not treating the root cause with the BEMER technology perhaps?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, and PEMF in general I think is supporting microcirculation. It is helping with oxygen delivery, waste removal, all of those things. So I think PEMF could be one excellent way to help deal with some of the hypercoagulation while you’re addressing the mold and the Babesia and the heavy metals and all of these other things. And there’s probably still a role for some low dose Boluoke or nattokinase or something in that realm to support thinner blood. But yes, I think PEMF can be a tremendously helpful tool in that hypercoagulation conversation.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Okay, super. And step nine, that’s the step that I thought that was step number one if you had to ask me 15 years ago, right? I was gonna kill all the bugs. Kill, kill, kill, while I was killing myself pretty much. And so when I respected the fact that I needed to clean up my terrain first, and I put the bugs aside, again, supported all your steps above, that’s when I was moving the needle with feeling better. But we’re at that step. We’re at where we can talk about those pesky critters. So how do we support the body and the microbial overgrowth?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, so I mean, I like that you used the word overgrowth. I think the reality is we’re not ever going to eradicate Borrelia or Bartonella or Babesia. They are going to be with us until we are no longer on this planet. And for some people, that’s like a really discouraging concept. Like what do you mean I have these things forever? Well, lots of people have ’em and they’re not sick. So I actually think it’s more empowering because it’s not a reality that we can even achieve that. And so it’s really about managing, reducing the burden, the boulders that are on the body, so to speak. So the body can then write itself and come back to balance or homeostasis. So I think the killing piece is not the focus. The immunomodulation piece is probably much more important relative to the bugs than kill, kill, kill. But once we start supporting the body against these different pathogens, I think it’s also important to know that the order is gonna shift. It’s gonna be different for everyone. Generally, I tend to think of the viral-retroviral pieces. I do have the opinion that Epstein-Barr virus, herpes zoster, herpes simplex 1, that these viruses play a significant role in chronic illnesses. 

I know a lot of times, people test for them and they say, “Oh, look, it’s just IgG. That means I had it in the past and I don’t need to worry about it.” I don’t think that’s really true. And that’s where I think the LE Spot or T-cell based testing is starting to show us a little bit more that there is still often an active engagement of the immune system with these things. And usually, treating the viruses doesn’t lead to a huge Herxheimer type reaction. So I usually like to start with viral-retroviral support, then looking at the gut, the parasites, the SIBO, those other dysbiosis, then thinking about the fungal, yeast, mold colonization, then later the Lyme and co-infections. And then finally, if necessary, some of the biofilm tools. I don’t think everyone needs to address biofilm. Not all biofilm is bad, but some people certainly can benefit from support there. So that reactivation of Epstein-Barr human herpes virus 6 herpes zoster, some of the endogenous retro viruses that can be made worse by EMF exposure. I mean, we need some of these retroviruses. They’re important in many ways to our bodies. 

I think they make up something like 8% of our DNA. Don’t quote me on that, but they’re not insignificant. But once they reactivate, then we need some longer term support to kind of calm them down again. Lots of good tools. Dr. Klinghardt has, with his work consulting with BioPure, they have tools like NV and Vital-9, Cistus tea. I like some of the Beyond Balance tools. CellCore has some the ViRadChem product I like. But then things like sulforaphane or pantethine or selenium or even lysine, homeopathics can play a role here as well. Viru-Chord from Energetix, for example. Then we’re thinking about parasites, SIBO, gut issues. I think the parasites are so incredibly common, testing is terrible. Very few times where you find parasite positive tests in most stool or urine type sampling. Dr. Raphael d’Angelo from ParaWellness Research is probably my favorite in this realm, but then doing that and also some of the energetic work, whether it’s Dr. Klinghardt’s autonomic response testing, or using the ZYTO or the Qest4 or the Asyra or Dr. Simon use acupuncture meridian assessment. Things like that can be really helpful thinking about what tools then can we bring in, and we’re not talking about just worms, but also protozoans, Giardia, cryptosporidium, toxoplasmas, those types of things. So I like the Paragen product from Dr. David Jernigan’s work, homeopathics like UNDA 39 or Energetix Paracord. CellCore has a lot of tools in this realm. And there is a place for some of the pharmaceutical antiparasitics, I would say, in the pharmaceutical realm, having myself done pharmaceutical antibiotics for over three years when I first got diagnosed with Lyme, ’cause we didn’t have any of what we’re talking about. This was 17 years ago. But I do like the Alineas and some of the other ones that we don’t talk about anymore because they’re also used in some of the current virus situation. 

With SIBO, I think it’s more about upstream factors like the vagus nerve, the migrating motor complex, bile flow. So I’m guessing you see Phase 2.5 detox as critical in resolving SIBO. In fact, I don’t even need to guess ’cause I know that’s the case. And so thinking about what can we do to support those issues and dysbiosis like Clostridia and Klebsiella and all of those. So biocidin from bio botanical research is great. MegaSpore is great here as well. Moving then into, and maybe I should say, ’cause I don’t think I finished that thought, but with SIBO, I think of the overgrowth as the effect and not the cause. I think if we’re addressing SIBO from a perspective of kill, kill, kill, we’re gonna have SIBO every time we stop killing, right? We need to work on those headwaters as Dr. Corson would say or those upstream factors as well.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Absolutely.

Scott Forsgren

Then we get into the fungus, the yeast, the molds. Many people are familiar with candida or candida, but could we have colonization from aspergillus? Yes, I mean, I think that is possible. It is debated. So it’s not a black and white conversation. But I like things like the Microbiome Labs. MegaMycoBalance is great. CandiBactin AR and BR from Metagenics are nice. Beyond Balance Byron White formulas, they all have great tools in this realm. Some practitioners will use itraconazole as well for dealing with fungal colonization. Then we get in towards Lyme and co-infection. So what can we do to support Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia and even the opportunists like mycoplasma and chlamydia? Lots and lots of tools at this point that we can use. And I think it’s a good strategy to be fairly targeted initially. So not to take something that’s gonna kill or manage Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia all at the same time. But if we’re using tools like the Byron White formulas or the Nutrimetics formulas or the Beyond Balance formulas, they have combinations that are a little more specific for Babesia or Bartonella so that we’re unlayering things in a way that’s a little more tolerable for the person that’s going through that experience. And then once you’ve unlayered things, then we can use broader spectrum tools without having such a negative response. In the biofilm conversation, there are lots of enzymes and other things we can use there. Cistus tea has been one of the big ones that Dr Klinghardt has talked about. And I think can be very helpful. One of the things to remember when you’re dealing with biofilms is whatever is left, microbes, toxins, all of these things that are in that biofilm that’s being broken, those are also now getting released into the immune system. So we’re gonna trigger mast cell activation. We need to have support on board for whatever’s coming out of those biofilms, right? So it’s not that we’ve stopped the antimicrobials and then moved into the biofilms. But I think of that as a later strategy, once people have dealt with the majority of their microbial burden. There certainly are some things in the pharmaceutical realm that are interesting. I’m open to any reasonable tool in the toolbox. I did antibiotics years ago because that was really the only tool. 

Would I do it again? I don’t think so, but I do think that they can be very helpful. Many people benefit from disulfiram, for example, in the last maybe three years in the Lyme community. So I’m happy that the toolbox is broad. In my toolbox, kind of the primary tools in kind of the Lyme and co-infection realm are gonna be those things from the BioPures, the Vital Plans, the Supreme Nutritions, Beyond Balance, DesBio. We talked about herbals, Research Nutritional, Nutrimetics, I mean, thank goodness the toolbox is really large compared to when I started down this path many years ago. I am excited that Dr. David Jernigan’s working on his induced native phage therapy, which is supposed to be available in the next few months to practitioners as well for helping to deal with some of these microbes as well. 

And then I would say, what can we do that’s more of an adjunct type intervention? Sometimes people can’t always take things orally to deal with some of the microbes. Maybe they’re dealing with SIBO, they’ve got limbic system issues, they’re reactive to everything. So can we bring in some frequency type tools? And still use about five days a week the FREmedica WAVE 1 device, which is a light device that piggybacks frequencies that can help support those people dealing with Lyme. So sometimes, coming at it from different perspectives, but that’s kind of my overview of how to manage rather than kill the microbes that are contributors to our chronic illnesses.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Excellent overview. And I think it really drives home the point of why we wanna get all the other steps in line, why it’s important to not go for the bugs first, with everything that Scott was saying about how you’re gonna be killing off different things. Your detoxification pathways need to be open. So I really appreciate that it is step nine. I think step 10’s very interesting because I think that we forget that the mouth is part of the body a lot of the times. A lot of the times, the things that are going on in our mouth, we think, “Oh, it’s just my mouth.” Like neglecting how crucial it is to have good dental health, especially when we’re trying to recover. Scott, will you go into that for us?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, so some of my mentors like Dr. Klinghardt and Dr. Simon Yu, they generally think of this in some people as a fairly early intervention, but even in their more recent models, Dr. Klinghardt would suggest addressing some of the retrovirus first. Dr. Yu likes to address the parasites first before you get into some of these more significant dental issues. We could be talking about something here like amalgams or root canals. Those certainly can affect the body. The root canal’s affecting the meridians and thus the organ systems. But probably the bigger conversation here is gonna be more of the cavitations. So areas in the jaw, usually where you had prior teeth extracted, so the wisdom teeth sites are fairly common areas for cavitations, and you develop an infection in the jaw bone. So Bartonella, Babesia, some of those co-infections can certainly make these things a little more likely, but they’re also fairly common in the general population that doesn’t identify with the chronic illness. So what has to be done with these cavitations is generally reopening the site, scraping out the softer jaw bone, oftentimes now putting in something like PRP or PRF to facilitate the healing process and minimize the chance of a recurrence. 

And then that’s getting a fairly significant burden off the body. These infections, these cavitations, they produce mercaptans and thio-ethers that are toxins that are very, very carcinogenic. So I, years ago, was reading a book by Perry Fields who was an Olympian and read her chapter on her cavitation. I think I was reading it while I was doing a coffee enima. Just so you know, I really do do these things. And I remember thinking, “Thank goodness, I didn’t have to do that.” And then I went to see Simon Yu. I was at one of his conferences and said, “Hey, I’m here, I might as well do an evaluation.” And sure enough, he identified two cavitations. And so I think we want to prepare the body before we do something significant, so that we’re going to tolerate the procedure, heal well, and have longer term positive results. 

The other thing in this whole conversation to think about particularly in kids is what about the impact of the tonsils? If the child is dealing with PANDAS, for example, with a strep associated infection, then the tonsils may need to be either treated or in some cases even removed. To your point, even if we’re not doing something very significant, we wanna think about what are we doing every day to minimize pathogens in the mouth that contribute to systemic pathogen burden. We know now that we find things like treponema denticola and P. gingivalis from the oral cavity in the brains of peoples with Alzheimer’s disease. So some of the things that I think about doing would be essential oils, like Supreme Nutrition has one. Bio-Botanical Research has their Dentalcidin, a couple of different formats of that that can be nice. Oil pulling. 

I like that some companies like Research Nutritional are starting to introduce tools that are focused on the oral microbiome. So rather than kill, kill, kill, what are the right pathogens or the right microbes? They’re really not pathogens, the right microbes to put back into the mouth like a probiotic? And so my thought with this whole thing is there are things we wanna do first. This could come earlier in the process, but I would also urge people to have a good conversation between their doctor and their dentist or surgeon to make sure that the captain of their ship that’s guiding their care feels like it’s the right time. That there’s the right support, that they’re thinking about, well, what if some of the systemic infections become a little more active because of the stress of a surgery on the body? I think sometimes where people get into challenges here is when they jump into doing that work with their dentist, biological dentist importantly, or their surgeon without making sure that the person who’s treating their Lyme or their co-infections or their mold illness is part of that conversation.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Right, I totally agree. Great overview. And brings us to step 11, the final step. And you mentioned regeneration and restoration. Can you tell us more about that?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, so I think by the time you go through Lyme and co-infections and mold illness, it has taken a toll on the body. So what can we then do to support regeneration restoration? We’re talking here some about thyroid. So hormone replacement could be very helpful in this realm, whether that’s thyroid or bioidentical hormones. I think these, in many cases, could come earlier. However, and this is really the premise of your new book, “The Thyroid Debacle,” if we’re thinking about thyroid conditions as a type of cell danger response, if the body is shifting into a hypometabolic state as a protective mechanism and putting on the brakes, we don’t always wanna put on the gas pedal at the same time. So sometimes we wanna address a lot of these triggers of that protective response before we start thinking about introducing some of these things. 

But there certainly is a place for hormones. I think that many people do super well with progesterone, particularly for sleep and just feeling better in general. So hormone therapy could play a role here. Phospholipids, phosphatidylcholine and others, they really repair the cells and create healthier cell membranes. So it could be that power shake type thing that I talked about earlier, or it could be the IV Patricia Kane type protocol, where you’re really getting a lot of these healthy lipids. That’s what I did over the past couple of years, and think that that was helpful. Peptides absolutely shine in this regeneration and restoration realm. They’re becoming a little more difficult to get, but there are still ways to get peptides that are still not a problem. So BPC 157, for example, is one common one that we talked about a little bit earlier. Photobiomodulation, the red light therapy. I think a lot of times, we need more collagen support. 

So supporting the collagen by using red light and frequencies, getting more of that photon support, that vital force can be very helpful. I’m interested in the stem cell and exosome conversation, but I have to say at this point, I’ve been largely disappointed. I also, years ago, more than a decade ago, at that time, everybody was saying, “Oh, the way to get past Lyme diseases, go do stem cells in some other country. It wasn’t helpful. I wouldn’t recommend people do that. I think some of these things can be helpful for a knee or a hip or something like that. But if you’re dealing with a systemic burden of lots of things and all these steps that we talked about, there is no get out of jail free card. We have to go through the process. So I’m glad to see there are still things that are evolving in this realm but haven’t yet personally gotten super excited about it. I like the exercise with oxygen therapy. So Live O2 is one system. That is what I do every single morning. I would guess that I probably missed less than 10 days of doing that in the last year, because I just absolutely love it. So lots of tools we can use in this restoration and regeneration realm. But I think by the time someone has had an illness for years, sadly, oftentimes decades, that there is gonna be some place for tools in this realm to really kind of support the body once we’ve addressed a lot of the other pieces.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

Absolutely. Scott, you’ve given us so many wonderful things to think about and to ponder and to research. I’m definitely going to be looking up a few of the things that you mentioned. Some of these are new to even me. So I always learned something and I am a faithful listener of your podcast. Everyone, just listen to it, it’s amazing. I also voted for it cause I know that you are one of the top podcasts out there. So do you have any final words for us?

Scott Forsgren

Yeah, first, I’m just so thankful that you invited me to share this information with your audience. I think for practitioners that are listening, I am the co-founder of the Forum for Integrative Medicine. We put on an annual event that’s focused on practitioners and collaborating and talking about practical solutions. So if people are interested in learning about that, the website is forumforintegrativemedicine.org. I’m also a board member of the Limelight Foundation and we provide treatment grants to children and young adults, 25 and under, for treating Lyme disease where they otherwise may not be able to access care. So I think at this point, we have helped people in 49 states, about $7 million at this point. And so if someone’s listening and they’re dealing with Lyme disease and they need support, feel free to reach out. 

If you’re listening and you’d like to support the work we’re doing, feel free to reach out, limelightfoundation.org. And I think the last thing that I would say is don’t lose hope. There are more reasons now than ever to be hopeful. There were so many years where I just felt like nothing was changing. There were no new tools. There was no new understanding. And I think that’s changed a lot. There’s a lot more research. There’s new things emerging. Some of these tools where they can screen hundreds or thousands of medications against specific organisms. I mean, the technologies are really advancing. So I think with that new tools, new solutions that it’s important just to really be hopeful. People do get better. It is a challenging and difficult journey at times, but many, many people do get through it. And I just think it’s important to hold onto that.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

That’s great. That message of hope is so, so important. And I second that, you can get better. Again, the technology, when Scott and I, back when we got sick, it has advanced so much. But Scott, it was just such an honor to have you. I say that with all sincerity. I’m probably your number one fan. I know I’m one of your number one fans on your Facebook group, because I got that little diamond that says I have a Super Fan, so.

Scott Forsgren

You’re probably gonna have to talk to my mom. She might disagree.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

But I’ve enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much

Scott Forsgren

Thank you.

Dr. Kelly Halderman

For your time. I appreciate it.

Scott Forsgren

Thanks, Dr. Kelly. Thank you.