Healing Lyme Starts on Your Plate: Nutrition as Medicine with Dr. Marie Matheson

Introduction to Lyme Bites Podcast 0:00

You know, we're trying to see a win. Really? At the end of the day, that's it. I always tell them, and that's the greatest way to approach this is that it's not a forever thing, maybe. It may be not be forever. And that's certainly something I tell the kiddos in the practice. The minute you tell somebody this is forever, I can tell you they're going to walk out the door, no matter how great our treatment plans are, they won't do it. And so they could self-sabotage subconsciously. It's a hard journey.

And so the minute you tell somebody it's forever, I think that's where the detriment happens. Hi, and welcome to the Lime Bites podcast, where we shine a light on the misunderstood science of Lyme and other vector-borne diseases, as well as the truths that many still miss. I'm Dr. Mariah Hinchey, naturopathic physician and fellow of the Medical Academy of Pediatric Special Needs. I specialize in treating chronic Lyme disease, as well as other complex inflammatory conditions. In this podcast, we break down what's working and what's not.

We share the facts that most people miss, we challenge outdated thinking, and we give both patients and practitioners the tools to heal smarter. So let's get into it and change the way we heal Lyme. Hi, and welcome to another episode. I'm your host, Dr. Maria Hinchey, and today we're going to be talking about another one of my favorite topics regarding Lyme and vector-borne disease. We're going to be talking about nutritional strategies for healing Lyme and co-infection, and really talking about how important feeding your body certain nutrients are when you're healing from these infections, as well as certain foods to avoid and why.

So here to discuss this with us is Dr. Marie Matheson. Dr. Matheson is a naturopathic doctor, and she is the co-founder of the BioHeal Ottawa, which is a multidisciplinary health clinic specializing in complex chronic illnesses. She's a community builder, creator, and facilitator of Lyme Bright Collective, which is a Lyme health education program and the online course, Tick, Bite, Ready. As a member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, or ILADS, she completed the ILADS Physicians Training Program with the late Dr.

Charles Ray Jones. In addition, she serves on the Advisory Board for the Forum of Integrative Medicine, or TFIM, and Dr.

Dr. Mathesonu2019s Path Into Lyme Care 2:25

Matheson is also a featured author of a chapter within Connie Strassum's groundbreaking book, New Paradigms in Lyme Disease Treatment. Welcome, Dr. Matheson. It's an honor to have you here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm so glad to be here. Absolutely. Tell our audience a little bit more about yourself and how you came to specialize in treating Lyme and vector-borne diseases. Yeah, thanks. So I would not be here today if it wasn't for my lovely niece Mia, whose journey with Lyme disease and my deep desire to help and help move her forward, helped me sort of expand and carve that path to help so many others with the similar struggles.

That path continued on with my own children's tick bites, of course, and then my own tick bite in 2021. And it's been my journey and to help so many out there. And I've really found that nutrition has been a really incredible way to help move people forward. Absolutely. I am one of those people that really believe that food is our medicine and that food really acts as medicine or poison to our bodies. And it's like, we have to buy food, we have to eat. So why not get it to work for us instead of against us?

Yeah. Yeah. Well said. No, and I think the longer I've been practicing, Raya, the less dogmatic I've become. It's almost like 20 years of practice has made me less pinch and hold in terms of what is the perfect diet out there? Because I just don't think there is a perfect diet. I think we have to look at the person in front of us using naturopathic medicine as we do best, looking at the individual in front of us. their cultural differences and their ethical differences, right? So we look at the individual in front of us and we look at the quality of food that we're putting in our mouth.

And I think that's really, really important when we're discussing what is the right food. We don't necessarily put everybody on a histamine diet or low oxalate diet. We look at the individual in front of us. And I think that's really crucial. If you take anything from this, try to less is more and look at the quality of our foods in general. Absolutely. So how do you feel, just like from a basic standpoint, what role does nutrition play in the recovery process of Lyme and co-infections? It's so huge, right?

It's so huge. I mean, I think about My own niece Mia, who relapsed a few years back, it was due to a food sensitivity. And once we removed that food sensitivity, it was gluten, if you want to know, her joint pains went away. And so it wasn't necessarily the Lyme infection per se, but actually the food that made the biggest difference in her relapse.

Why Nutrition Matters in Lyme Recovery 5:10

Food can actually support the immune system. It reduces inflammation. It helps with tissue repair. If we have nutrient-dense diets, we can actually aid our detoxification process, give our body fuel and energy. And it is an absolute game changer. To my point, in order to see me at the office, you need to see my nutritionist first. And it's often the case that by the time that patient comes in to see me, they are anywhere from 20 to 40% better, Mariah. So, you know, does food matter? You bet it does.

You know, we see it time and time again. When we eat the right foods, we become, if you will, when we look at the terrain theory, we become less of a host for these infections, whether it's a virus, a bacteria, fungus, a mold, it's our terrain. And so we give it the opportunity to not be able to fester and grow because we have the anti-inflammatory properties to be able to fight it on our own. These foods do become our medicine, including ginger tea every day or every other day. can be antimicrobials and using food and herbs as our medicine.

There's no wonder why, you know, in India we use so many antimicrobial herbs because of all the exposure to parasites, for example. So using some of the really key components that other cultures have used is really key when we're looking at lime treatment in terms of nutrition. Are you ready to revolutionize your approach to diagnosing and healing complex chronic inflammatory illnesses in both adults and children? The Lime Bites Symposium is your gateway to cutting-edge education, groundbreaking research, and innovative therapeutic solutions.

Join us at Lime Bites Symposium. at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott, Pompano Beach Resort and Spa. Lion Bites is the premier functional medicine conference on complex, chronic, infection-driven inflammatory illnesses. This year's meeting is jam-packed with leading industry experts discussing lung COVID, mycotoxin illness, PANS Pandas, as well as Lyme and other vector-borne diseases. This conference will arm you with the knowledge, clinical pearls, and practical solutions that you can implement immediately into your practice Monday morning that will literally change your patient's lives and get them on their path to true healing.

So join us at Pompano Beach or virtually from anywhere. Register now at lymebites.com. That's L-Y-M-E-B-Y-T-E-S dot com. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's funny because some of the things that, you know, our listeners would have heard by this point in the summit too, is, you know, talking about like the botanical medicines and going through how, you know, we're not just using botanicals that are antimicrobial, but we're using botanicals that are anti-inflammatory and botanicals that are immune modulating.

And when you look at foods, like real nutrition containing foods, A lot of them have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory immune modulating and even antimicrobial compounds. When we're looking at a lot of the fresh herbs and spices like oregano and thyme and things like that, so we don't have to actually always take something like as a supplement, as a pill. There's a lot. that we can actually incorporate in our foods, you know, getting bioflavonoids and polyphenols and all of these different things. But I'm getting kind of a little bit ahead of the boat.

So let's, let's start by, let's kind of put things into categories. So let's start with the things that you think are imperative to avoid when you have a complex, chronic, infectious illness like Lyme or co-infections. Yeah. And I'd like to preface, I'll jump into that. I always like to say to my patients, and this is, I'm speaking to you freely like I would with a patient, is that I always focus on the foods they can

Foods to Avoid: Sugar, Gluten, Processed Foods, and Alcohol 9:20

have before I pull away. That way you fill your bucket, you fuel yourself with all these incredible things and it becomes less of an urge or a need to focus on the things that you can have. It's like telling a kid not to touch a cookie jar. All they're going to think about is that cookie jar, right? But we do know there's some crucial things. So the first one would be refined sugars, right? So we know that once you eat a refined sugar, it decreases your immune system by anywhere from 50 to 80% within three to five hours of eating it.

That's huge, right? When white blood cells crash, that's not what we want. So eating sugar refined in that way can be really an important part. It also depends whether the person is taking antibiotics or are they just taking herbal medicines. You know, it's my advice to avoid all types of sugars if it's antibiotics for risk of C. difficile, etc., as well as yeast infections. But if they're on a herbal protocol, which is the advantage, they may or may not, but they may be able to actually tolerate some forms of honey and some forms of maple syrup.

The other big inflammatory food would be gluten, as I mentioned earlier. Gluten for a lot of people can be inflammatory and can be in some ways the cause, it's incredible to think, but the cause of some of people's joint pains, the cause of brain fog, the cause of digestive issues, you know, and it's unfortunate, but I mean, let me be honest, GMO foods and eating non-organic have really exacerbated that. Since 1996, since it's been introduced in our lives. And so, eating these foods that are all GMO'd, et cetera, including the gluten, can be extremely detrimental to anybody.

And most of my patients, Mariah, I'm sure you'll attest to the same thing, is like they just remove it and they feel so much better and we haven't even started doing very much. So gluten is another big one on the agenda. The next one I think would be processed foods, right? So anything packaged, I sort of like, you know, I can't believe it. Sometimes I'm at the park with my, you know, my children are much older now, but with my nieces and nephews, and I look at all these mothers and everything that comes out of that diaper bag is packaged, right?

It's got an ingredient list, right? Whereas back in my day, I, you know, it was an apple, it was a cut up apple, it was cut up celery, cut up carrots, etc. So moving away from those as much as possible. So processed foods will contribute to inflammation. There's ingredients that you can't pronounce in there that could be really detrimental. And that goes as much saying, you know, some of these packaged organic foods that have, you know, natural flavors in them, right? Natural flavors only have to be 5% where it's an actually good thing for you.

So 95% of it is full of chemicals. And let me tell you this, it causes addictive needs for these children because that natural flavor makes the food consistent in flavor. So those goldfish you crave because they're always gonna taste the same way. Whereas you bite into an apple, it might be sweet one day, it might be sour another day, but that's real food. So really teaching our patients to eat real food, right? The perimeter of the grocery store, what we can find in our fridge, right? breaking it down simply that way, right?

If it's going to go bad, it might be actually good for you. If you can keep it in the cupboard for a long time, maybe that's not a good thing. So we don't have to be so neurotic about it. But we just want to go back to eating real food. And I think that's really important. And then give or take dairy. So some people react terribly to dairy, you know, they'll have digestive problems, acne, they may have other systemic inflammation such as eczema. So some of those are keynote symptoms of a child always has ear infections.

You may want to think about pulling the dairy, you know, or if I ask my adult patients, did you suffer from ear infections? Oh yeah, so much. I had to add tubes in my ear. I'll already be thinking about hmm dairy may not be so great for you. So sometimes I pull all of those things out first and then we tease them out and we say try to introduce this one next and see how you do and sometimes they can have those foods again. And then lastly, I'd say alcohol, right? So again, it is a sugar, it is inflammatory, it'll affect sleep, it'll affect energy, so many of my patients.

And you really do need to ask this because some patients are really suffering and it's their way to release. And so I teach patients, find other ways, try to walk. try to exercise at night when those cravings come. So you're looking for this dopamine hit and try to find other ways to achieve that if you can and try to find some sort of hope and benefit in your life that way. So those would be the key ones. By saying so though, I also want to say that You know, we're trying to see a win. Really? At the end of the day, that's it, right?

So I always tell them, and that's the greatest way to approach this is that it's not a forever thing, maybe. It may be not be forever. And that's certainly something I tell the kiddos in the practice, because like you, I treat a lot of kids. The minute you tell somebody this is forever, I can tell you they're going to walk out the door no matter how great our treatment plans are, right? I mean, they won't do it. Yeah. And so they could self-sabotage subconsciously and it's, you know, it's, it's been a, it's a hard journey.

And so the minute you tell somebody it's forever, I think that's where the detriment happens as a physician, as a doctor. And so I think it's key to just say, it's just for now, it's until we see a win, until we get better. I promise once we get better, we could potentially introduce this or we could challenge this, but we will do them one at a time so that we know, I mean, there's no better food sensitivity test out there than the challenge test, right? I mean, we can have the greatest food sensitivity test, but sometimes just pure avoidance and then reintroduction can be key.

I will tell you from clinical experience after all these years, it takes two to three months to get gluten fully out of your body. So if you have tried to avoid gluten for two weeks, I'm so sorry to say, but that's not long enough. If you feel better after two weeks, fantastic, then please keep avoiding it. Dairy takes about the same time. And eggs, I didn't mention eggs, because some people can be sensitive or not, so I don't pull that out necessarily. But just so you know, eggs takes far less time.

It takes about 10 days to get that out of the human body in order to see if it's an issue. So sometimes that's an easy one to see if patients are inflamed because of eggs. My theory is that it's the type of eggs, it's the mycotoxins that may be in the eggs that are creating this chronic sensitivity. And if, you know, you get to the farm and you open the mailbox, you put your $5 bill and you grab those eggs, typically people don't react to those. It's been my experience with my own daughter. So those are just some of the key ones that I would say to avoid.

Okay, so to recap for our listeners, Now, obviously they're not all absolute, but refined sugars, gluten, dairy, potentially eggs, definitely processed foods, and then GMO foods, of course, because, you know, not only are they Not only have they been genetically altered, but you are pretty much guaranteed that they are going to be drowned and round up, right? Which is one of the most toxic pesticides that we have. And to your point that disrupts the gut microbiome. So for all about the gut microbiome, that is the number one takeaway with GMO foods is that it alters gut bacteria.

End of story. Right. And I'm sure we will get into at some point the importance of the gut microbiome for the immune system and the ability to control inflammation, et cetera, when we get further into the foods. But talk a little bit further about the dangers of eating GMO foods, especially when you have an infection like Lyme and why trying to eat organic, especially for, you know, for the dirty dozen is so important. Yes, absolutely. So as much as when we know better, we do better. So we just do our best.

Okay. And I know that in some cases it can be expensive, but we try to buy things on sale. We try to buy local as much as possible, but genetically modified organisms basically alter gut bacteria and damage the intestine. It increases zonulin, which is a byproduct in the gut that can actually degrade the gut lining and the gap junction. So we've got these sort of cells that are all sort of stuck together and zonulin can kind of sort of irritate those gap junctions and make food particles that are not supposed to be actually absorbed into the bloodstream go through.

And when there is a particle food that is bigger than it should be in terms of those amino acids, for example, if it's we're talking about a protein,

GMO Foods, Gut Health, and the Recovery Foundation 18:35

then the immune system actually will react to that. It will say, this is foreign, this is not something that is good. And it will start blasting off and create a slew of inflammatory cascade, which can cause autoimmune illnesses, et cetera, and exacerbate your current symptomology of Lyme. I've had so many patients who just switched to organic non-GMO and already see the inflammation coming down. So really want to be thinking about this analogy of the sink, right? Right? So right now we've got this sink, everybody close your eyes, imagine this sink and you've got the faucet and a drain and by mitigating the infill with GMO foods, then you are allowing that these toxic products to actually get out of your body and you are no longer filling yourself and exacerbating your symptomology.

So it gives your body a break to be able to detoxify better. It decreases, you know, your major detox organ is your liver, right? So if we don't give that liver a break, it does so, so much for us. Eating GMO foods will exacerbate that and make the detoxification a lot harder. Can I just say it simply? If you don't spend it in your food, you will end up spending it in a supplement. Right. Right? So let's start with the foundation. As you know, at BioHeal, we have a road to recovery. It's our classic pyramid.

And at the bottom of the pyramid starts with nutrition and detoxification. And that is key because everything else, you know, sleep, adrenals, infections, biofilms, all of that will fall apart if you don't have the baseline of nutrition. So it's really, really important. I know we want to get ahead of ourselves and go, but I need to treat this infection. but it's much more important to spend money on really good quality nutrient dense. And there's ways to do that inexpensively. My kids know, you know, we didn't buy strawberries today because they weren't on sale, but I bought raspberries, right?

So I buy local in season what's available. And there's often times at the grocery store where I'm grabbing the organic celery and somebody else has grabbed the conventional one that's more expensive than the organic one. They just assumed it was more expensive, right? There's ways to do this to make it feasible for everybody. Are you suffering from Lyme disease or another complex chronic illness and aren't sure who to trust when it comes to herbal supplements? Hi, I'm Dr. Mariah Hinchey, founder of Lyme Core Botanicals.

As a naturopathic physician specializing in complex chronic infection-driven illnesses like Lyme disease, I needed herbal medicine I could truly trust. That's why I formulated Lyme Core Botanicals. where our herbal tinctures are handcrafted in small batches right here in Connecticut. We use the whole herb, never isolates, to preserve the full spectrum of medicinal compounds. Every single step from sourcing to extraction is done with precision to ensure maximum purity, potency, and consistency. These are the same herbal formulas I used to heal myself and have used for years to help my patients and family members heal, too.

And now I'm making them available to practitioners and patients everywhere. Lyme Core Botanicals, herbal medicine you can trust from a doctor who lives this work. Learn more at Lyme Core Botanicals. That's L-Y-M-E-C-O-R-E dot com. And I think it's important to consider too, you know, everyone's treatment time varies. And the more compliant you are, this is what I find in my own experience with my patients, the patients who are more compliant in making the lifestyle changes, altering their diet, spending the 120 bucks on an IgG, IgA, food sensitivity panel, so we can see what foods have gotten in and what foods are you know, overreacting or distracting the immune system and causing inflammation, spending that extra money and being more diligent might make your treatment plan only be a year long or a year and a half, not your treatment plan, but like your journey, right, in healing.

And you're spending X amount on other supplements and botanicals and whatnot, but the other person who's just taking the botanicals and the supplements and refuse to change anything about their diet or their lifestyle, they might still be going at like year two, year two and a half, year three, and it's going to cost them twice as much money. I know that we all only have a certain amount of money that we can spend, but I guess the point is that we really have to look at how it's going to impact up the speed at which recovery comes, because to the point that you made earlier, you know, you make some of these hard but simpler lifestyle changes, like just by emitting the five grains that contain gluten, right, and anything made from it.

And that is going to change permeability of your gut for the better. It's going to decrease inflammation. It's going to allow your body to start to heal in most cases because gluten also increases zonulin, increases leaky gut, increases your chance for food sensitivities. Sorry, I'm like going down a rabbit hole. Oh, I love it. It's great. I tell patients, it's like, if you're just going to take the herbs and the supplements, it's like we're pushing a boulder up the hill. If you can get your food to work for you and your lifestyle to work for you and get in a healthy mindset and come from a place of gratitude and you've got this and you have hope, it's like all of a sudden that boulder is going down the hill, right?

And things are just getting better and better and better and better. So sorry, that was a very long-winded, I agree with you. No, I love it. Exactly. It's because we agree with each other.

Building a Healing Diet: Macros, Meal Prep, and Micronutrients 24:55

It's just so fantastic. And case in point, it's starting to be somewhat still cooler right now. I was feeling my hands were a little cold, so I made myself a huge pot of fresh ginger tea. My hands are warm right now, right? This is nutrition. Yeah, I could have taken a herb. Yeah, I could have done a lot of other things, but I decided to use food as my medicine, right? And same goes with, can we talk about binders a little bit? Because we often use that in treatment, right? What about culinary binders?

Right? Those are so important and they're just in our cupboard. We use chia seeds and hemp seeds. And if you've got SIBO, then grind up some nuts, grind up other nuts where that won't cause a reaction. But these are great ways to actually bind mycotoxins or bind endotoxin from the release of killing the Lyme bacteria or the co-infections. So really thinking about, yes, you could be on charcoal, yes, you could be on all these other things, but using food that we have to our, you know, in our cupboards to really help improve and move ourselves forward that way.

So use it in various different ways. Yep. And Jill Krista, who is another naturopathic doctor, for those of you that don't know her, she's amazing. Most people that know about mycotoxin illness know how important the various binders are, and she's very, very passionate about using these various foods as binders, like you said, chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds, all of these things. And then also using bitters to stimulate the flow of bile. And again, using food as medicine instead of taking everything as a supplement that's been manufactured in a pill.

And this coming from someone who owns a supplement company, you know, is still very much. Which is what makes you so, which is what I love about you and what makes you so ethical. That's, you know, I think that's great. But speaking of bitters, you know, it's like romaine lettuce is bitter. Arugula is bitter, right? So we have these things. They don't all have to come from a pill or from a bottle. We have them in our fridge to stimulate that. And then we can make teas, you know, you and I are naturopathic doctors.

So tea is a great medicine, especially if it's super potent. Yeah, exactly. So what would you say? Give us an example. of what a day maybe would look like for a patient with Lyme, more focusing on like, what should their minimal nutrient intake be? And obviously, this is different child versus adult, you know, man versus woman activity level, etc. But just kind of like the basics from a macro standpoint, and then get into like, what micros do you really think are important when it comes to giving the body like the medicine that it needs to heal?

Yeah. So I'm going to just say a standard adult 140, 150 pounds should be having protein at every meal. And we're looking at around 20 to 30 grams of high quality protein. That would mean lean meats. That would mean, you know, grass fed beef or bison. That would mean pastured chicken, right? It's not grain fed. It's pastured. It's rubbing on seeds and grubs and worms. It's free to roam. That may mean eggs or legume or plant-based ones such as lentils or chickpeas. I would definitely recommend some sort of healthy fats, so some sort of olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, or some sort of nuts or seeds.

with that, it would include vegetables, especially your, you know, focusing your plate on half your plate at least of vegetables. I like a rainbow of vegetables, but I definitely want to make sure that my patients are having some sort of leafy green. And yes, we can talk about kale, but there's other ones too. There's collard greens. I love using collard greens because they're a stiffer green and they're fantastic to use as a wrap. So you can actually put carne asada and all your stuff and nothing will fall apart, right?

So I love using collard greens. I love Swiss chard, chopping that up, making a really quick soup with that. So making sure that you're having lots of variety of vegetables, the cruciferous vegetables, your broccoli is your cauliflower. You want some redness in there. You might want some peppers. You may want some red cabbage. So we do want a rainbow. But we do want to make sure we do have a concentrated amount of those leafy greens for sure. And then if tolerated, complex carbohydrates such as squash, sweet potatoes, maybe some tolerate some form of grains.

Quinoa would be a really fine idea. Absolutely. As long as that's right and tolerated by the person. And then really focusing on how we're How are we making the food? So soups, stews, crockpot meals, smoothies, sort of these easy to digest foods, especially if digestive tract is compromised. These are a wonderful way to go. Stews or crockpot meals are just fantastic because you can stretch a meal for a long time. I often get patients to focus on cooking on Sundays as a family, making two major meals, like maybe you're making a chili and maybe you're making some sort of stew.

And then you're going to have one of those for that meal, but you're going to freeze the rest really in two or four person portions or small little portions so that when the going gets tough and you're having a bad day, you're herxing, you're not tempted to order in. You're not tempted to eat processed. You have a freezer full. It may mean investing in a chest freezer down in the basement, but I think it's worthwhile because we never really, we always have something in the freezer on the go that we can just, it's a long day.

Let's just pull this out for tonight, right? So I have busy days too, and I am not perfect, but I sure am glad to have those meals that I prepared in the freezer that are sort of ready to go. So that would be sort of a day-to-day of inclusion of really good macro foods to include. Yeah, I think that's great. And it's something really important about that too. It's like, if you've had a really stressful day, right? Or you're herxing and you've had a really hard, terrible day, it's like, when does your body need the nutrients?

That's when it actually needs that home cooked, you know, mostly organic, high quality protein, healthy fat meal, not something from takeout that's been cooked in seed oil and, you know, is just complete crap. Like, sorry, but it is, you know? And so it's like in those times of stress and trouble, like that's when we really need the nutrients, but we end up grabbing, you know, something else that's more convenient. So I love that idea. And something else to point out, you know, when you're making soups and stews and crock pot stuff, you're not losing any of the nutrients.

because it's there like in that broth, in that liquid versus, you know, any other form of cooking. We lose so much of the nutrients, you know, like in the water if we're steaming or, you know, in the pan that we were cooking at where like all of, you know, kind of like the healthy fat that we need is now in that pan. So, love the ideas of the soups and the stews and cooking anything in the crock pot that's great. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I grew up, my mom made the best chicken soup as a child and it was like real bone broth.

And so oftentimes I will put a beef bone or a chicken bone in my spaghetti sauce. Yeah. and I will try to extract some of the nutrients out of that. You know, collagen is the big on the market. Well, it comes from that bone. So the tomatoes acidity will actually extract the calcium, magnesium and the nutrients, all those amazing minerals from those bones. So those are ways that I try to extract and increase. My goal is always whenever I'm cooking is how can I make this more nutrient dense? How could this be just a step up, right?

So if you love chocolate, how could you do that? So you could actually melt some coconut oil with your favorite nut butter, whether that's cashews, sunflower, you know, anything you want. throw in some stevia, which will, you know, fight biofilms, maybe some cocoa powder or carob powder and melt it. Then you put it on a cookie sheet with parchment paper and you pour it on. And then you put in the freezer. Sometimes I'll add a few drops of peppermint oil at this time of year for Christmas. Sometimes on one half, I might.

put some walnuts or some toasted almonds or coconut, shredded coconut, just for a little added crunch. Once it's frozen in 30, 45 minutes, I break it all up, put it in a Tupperware and you can actually have this whenever you have a craving, you know, whenever you're feeling like, Oh, I just want something. So trying to find ways to increase. So trying to find ways, where can I add more chia seeds, right? So I make some of those seed crackers. Sometimes I add more chia. I add it to any homemade granola that I make.

How can I add it to a smoothie or hemp seeds? I can get away with hemp seeds with my kids, you know, soaking the hemp seeds a little bit for a few minutes before I blend the smoothie. The chia can make it a little bit thick, but hemp seeds are really great. And so I, I don't actually use a nut milk in my smoothie. I just use the hemp seeds with water and then I add my fruit, my protein, et cetera. So I try to, everything I think about everything I make, I'm like, how could I just 2.0 this.

Food Sensitivities, Oxalates, and the Carnivore Diet Debate 34:45

That's just slightly better. And then even using the flax meal, the fresh ground flax meal instead of eggs, it does the same functionality in any recipe that you're making, but now you're getting all of the health benefits of having that ground flax meal. and maybe not having eggs because a lot of my patients can't tolerate eggs. Correct, correct. And you know, the key with the eggs, I know a lot about it because my daughter was sensitive to them, is that eggs make baking fluffy. So you may want to look at just upping the baking powder slightly or upping the soda powder slightly and then making sure when I do that flax egg that I really am whipping it because that's what makes baking so fluffy.

It's the eggs. I didn't realize that until I removed eggs. And so that's just a little trick of the trade. Another trick of the trade is gluten. I learned this from my sister with Mia, is that gluten in order to make it fluffy gluten baking, you actually have to over mix it. So we're told in baking, don't over mix, don't over mix. Well, when it comes to gluten free, please over mix. We literally put the gluten free flour in our mixer. My husband makes this amazing gluten free chocolate cake. And he walks away for seven minutes.

Oh, wow. So that's where I'm going wrong with my sourdough then. That's as hard as a rock in a block. It's not over mixing. Over mixing. Little tips. Yeah, it is. All right. So do you want to tell us any more, like from a micronutrient standpoint, things that you're looking for in someone's daily diet? Well, we just want to make sure that we're making sure we're getting a slew of all the vitamins. So vitamin A would come from your carrots, any, you know, any of the orange type vegetables or fruits, vitamin D from eggs, if you tolerate them from the sunshine, right?

Of course, vitamin C, we don't make vitamin C, we have to get it from our food. it's not just citrus fruits so red peppers would be a great way to get some vitamin C and then all of your minerals that could be found in a lot of meats and a lot of legumes if you tolerate them etc so we just really want to get our nice variety of whole foods Yes, I know a lot of my patients with Mass Cell Activation Disorder come in eating three foods, right? Once we treat the underlying cause, I don't focus on the foods, honestly, Mariah, it's like running an uphill battle.

Once we treat the mold or the lime or we get them out of mold or what have you, once we find the underlying issue, the food, the mono diet expands. Yeah. Okay. So that, that's my strategy around that. And if you're a viewer right now listening, and that is you, that is who we're talking about, then you may want to find a practitioner to work with to find the underlying cause as to why you're on this mono diet, why you can only tolerate chicken and cucumbers, right? So we don't focus on that. There's limbic system issues that may be related to that, and that's for another one of your interviewers to discuss.

But the point is, we really want to focus on the underlying cause as we move people through nutrition. Yeah. Great point. I think the last thing I'd like to explore is so, you know, there's a lot of info about lectins and gut health out there and inflammation. There's a lot of issues with oxalates. Like, how much do you focus? Like, do you look at these things with your patients? I mean, I guess it would kind of fall into the same category maybe as histamine, right? Like there's got to be a reason why the patient can't tolerate the oxalates or why all of a sudden every food with lectin is bothering them, etc.

Do you end up having to look at these individual things or do you feel like kind of the big picture changes in the foundational work that you're doing alleviates issues? Yes, well said. I'm going to go on a whim here. I hope I don't get much hate mail, but I'm going to say this. We don't accept hate mail. Okay. We are omnivores, okay? So I understand when I have a patient who comes in and says, Dr. Marie, I'm doing so great on the carnivore diet, right? I'm doing so well. Right away, I have a red flag for mycotoxins, and I'll tell you why.

I think that avoiding oxalates, which is, you know, that avoidance of the vegetables, the oxalates are byproduct from yeast and mold. And I think that that can actually exacerbate that patient. And so they feel good at first, at first on the carnivore diet. But as the months go on, they start to come back to their old self because the body just re-equivolates and the inflammation is still there and they haven't dealt with the underlying cause. We are omnivores and, you know, I'm a big plant-forward girl.

You know me, we went to that farm, great restaurant in San Antonio, right? I'm a big plant-forward girl, but I do think that we should all have some form of protein. We are omnivores, but I take patients where they're at. If they're vegetarian, that's okay. But to my point, I think that the carnivore diet is not the keystone diet to strive towards. It's a diet to get you out of that inflammatory pattern for now. But exactly what you said, I treat the underlying cause issue of the patient, and then we typically find that they can actually start eating their normal foods again.

and eating a really culturally appropriate diet for their culture as well as for themselves, and that's real food. And, you know, a lot of them do like it at first, but tell me, like, I really miss a good salad, right? And so I think, to your point, that that's really key. So if you had just one piece of advice that you could give the listeners who are dealing with Lyme or have a loved one who is, what would it be? Oh gosh, it's such a tough question. There's so much. I really believe that there's hope.

I really believe that you can get better. I really, to my own patients, I really want to thank you for your trust in me to helping you move forward. And I think that, you know, using food as much as possible as your medicine is the right way to go. It may not be the only way to go.

Hope, Ginger Tea, and Listener Resources 41:25

It typically isn't. You typically need more. But starting there is a really, really foundational base. And I will tell you, on behalf of Mariah and I, I can speak, I hope I can speak for you, is that you make our job easier when you eat right. It becomes easier to treat. It becomes easier to see people going forward. And in fact, when I don't see patients moving forward, there are a couple of key things that I'll ask for in that, are you living in mold? Are you really following the dietary strategies?

And oftentimes we find, I've slipped up and such. So my key thing is that there's hope. And the other thing is include ginger tea every day. I almost every day, especially if you can. I just love that stuff. I'll just leave you with this. My favorite way to do it is buying a whack of organic ginger, putting it in your Vita mix with a little bit of water to slush it around and then putting it in ice cube trays and freezing it and then keeping in the freezer in a big bag so you can use it in your cooking when you're making curries for anti-inflammatory.

Make tea with it It increases circulation. It decreases this hyper coagulation that we're seeing post pandemic. So if there's so much, you know, ginger does everything we learned in school, right? Yeah. Yeah. It decreases pain, right? It decreases substance paid and inflammation. Thank you. Kills all sorts of infections. All of them. So that's a great idea. I love the ice cube idea. Yeah. I have patients do that by the way with bone broth because it decreases. So like, you know, if you have bone broth in the can or in the box, it's, it's a super high histamine food, but if you make it and freeze it right away, right.

And then, yeah, then it helps to deal with that histamine issue. But yes, I love the ginger. Thank you for that. Yeah. So you have a lot of programs that patients can do on their own that can help them achieve a pretty good level of healing. So share with our listeners how and where they can get access to those programs. Okay. Well, I'll first start, we have a free one, you know, five mistakes you might be making with Lyme disease to your health. The second one is our tick bite ready course. So it's, it's everything you need to know in the maximum amount of like an hour and a half, how to treat a tick bite from A to Z.

how to diagnose, how to treat, and what to do and what to look for. So it's a great one for everyone. And then my last two would be the LIME 101, which is for practitioners and patients. It's excellent in going through all of the nuances with LIME, how to treat, diagnose, the politics, et cetera. And then we do have the LIME Bright Collective, which is an eight module program, which you can do in on Zoom within a group or as an evergreen as a program and they're all on sale. Awesome. So where would someone go to find those?

What's the website? Yeah. So website is www.biohealottawa.com and you can also email us at info at biohealottawa.com. Awesome. And are you or anyone in your practice still taking new patients? Absolutely. We are still taking you patients. I am as well. There's a little bit of a wait for me, but you can still get in. We do virtual or in-person. We have three other doctors that are also taking patients. So we are here to help. Wonderful. And same website, if someone would like to be a patient. Yes, correct.

Well, thank you so much for being here with me. It's always an honor and a pleasure. Thank you. Absolutely. And to all of our listeners at home, I hope that you found this helpful and it helps you on your journey to healing Lyme. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. If this episode gave you an answer, brought you new insight, or made you think differently, subscribe to the Lyme Bites podcast and share with someone who's ready to take control of their healing journey. And if you can, please leave a review.

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