Infections And Toxins As A Cause For Brain Autoimmunity And Chronic Inflammation

Introduction and guest background 0:00

- Hello everyone and welcome to the microbes and mental health summit. I'm your host. Dr. Miles Nichols here today with Dr. Tom Moorcroft our co host and this is a unique opportunity to get a discussion with someone who really has embodied the treatment of Lyme as the primary focus for quite a long time and has immense experience with treating things like pans and pandas in Children that can cause mental health issues and that's informed his treatment on adults as well. So looking forward to diving in Dr. Tom. Do you want to share a little bit about your backstory and history? - Sure, Dr. Miles.

Thanks so much for having me here for the interview today and for allowing me to be on this journey with the summit. I mean it's so awesome to be able to be here and share all this great information with you know, everyone attending so that, you know, I was so excited when we met like we're on a similar mission to get this great information out to people and yeah, I mean I think a lot of it um I remember growing up love playing outside. I you know, my parents thought I was nuts because I was like, hey, if you stand still on the planet you can feel worms and other things crawling under your feet and like deep in the dirt and I put my hands on the trees and I was like wow, these things have water moving in them and then they kind of tried to beat this direct connection to the planet out of me, but they couldn't really stop me from doing all this. Um and I went to the University of Vermont for my undergraduate studies and terrestrial ecology and landscape management and really my goal was to find a way to get paid to play outside.

And at the same time I love mother earth, you know, I loved hiking and camping and mountain biking and just playing outside and I wanted this planet, I wanted to respect and love the planet. But the longer I got, I got so involved in in college and I was like, the longer I did this, the more I realized I was talking to adults who felt the same way as me and all we were doing was talking and the action was this bureaucratic long term thing and I was like, who do I know, who gets really pumped about things that if I worked with them and I got them excited about the things I'm excited about would actually turn around and make a difference and demand to change immediately. And I was like, hey, wait, that's kids.

So I changed a little bit and instead of working in research with adults, I decided to dedicate my next phase of my life to teaching Children. So I got this job at the, what's now the Cary Institute, but uh was back then called the Institute of ecosystem studies and gene likens the guy who discovered acid rain was a guy who started this whole place and it was all about this discovery of what's really going on around us and they had this great arm of just education and so I got to do a lot of education and one day my boss Chris comes up to me and she like shakes me on the shoulder, like tom don't like what's going on. She's like, um we had a meeting in an hour ago, I told you I needed this project, done the work you've been doing over the last several weeks is really kind of tailed off and I don't know what's going on. But looking at your computer screen, you haven't done anything in the last hour. I was like, oh, I don't, I don't. And as I was looking over to tell her, I don't know what happened cause I thought I was working.

I looked down because I and I felt this thing. So I looked down and there was a puddle of drool on my belly and I literally like, essentially passed out at my desk looking at a wall and then I was like, well I kind of realized I, I was tired and my joints hurt and then like literally within two days I had a rash that blew up out of my shoulder, covered 1/5 of my body through my groin down my leg and you know, at this point, like everybody around me is like, you, you can't think now you're telling us everything hurts and you're tired and we found you drooling on yourself and this big gas rash, maybe you should go see the doctor. So I walked into this guy and he goes, hey, tom I know exactly what you have. It's like 2.5 minutes, you have classic lyme disease, you don't need any testing, just take doxycycline 10 days and you'll be good to go.

So, you know, it's July, I'm at my I go to my parents place I take this doxycycline for the next four days. I'm flat out laying on the floor, alternating between sweats and chills. And you know, I was 23 at the time, my parents actually had to assist me to go to the bathroom. So I'm like, this outdoor sports a little weird, right? So long? And the short of it is 10 days later, I'm feeling pretty good. Over the next eight years though, I start to not feel well, brain fog creeps back in joint pain, muscle pain, energy is terrible sleep, four hours, 12 hours doesn't make a difference.

First. Get diagnosed with depression. You know when I go to see the doctor because obviously there's nothing wrong with me, It's all in my head and my dad has depression. So I have it and then they're like, well you're a little irritable and angry and you're also really hyperactive and I'm like, no ship has been my whole life. And so then they're like, oh, you have bipolar, but the type to kind like all the doctors and lawyers have, I'm like, oh that's brilliant. Um I happen to be in medical school at the time.

So I think that was really low hanging, you know, not really hard to make that up. Then they're like all the medicine, I just followed the doctors, all the medicines didn't work. Um so then they're like, oh you have A D. H. D. And like, no kidding. I mean this is like a no brainer. Like I have a cup of coffee,

Lyme illness and personal recovery journey 5:37

it's fine, don't worry about it. But even those meds that they tried me on didn't work. And then ultimately they're like, I go to my doctor, I'm like, I have brain fog fatigue and and you know, and all this joint and muscle pain. He's like, oh I know you've got, you've got fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and I was like, Miles, I was like, this is horrible because in the end, like, I just told you that and you basically gave me a label of my symptoms. But unfortunately that didn't tell me what the cause of what I had was or how I was going to get better. So essentially one day, a friend of mine handed me a yoga DVD, she's like, I have no idea why I'm giving this to you.

I got, you know, but I think you need it. And so at the end of the video, the breathing was wrong, but they didn't time with the body movement, but I said the guy screwed something up, but he was on, he what he learned and he's trying to present in a fancy way for the west is good. And so I looked at the back and there's this ashtanga yoga Research Institute. So I was like, whatever this is, I'm gonna check that out. And I started to dive deep into this ashtanga yoga and it really, you know, this is six years into being sick. I've got no one who has any clue what to do.

Um So I just started listening to my body. I tried this, I could barely touch my kneecaps. Um everything hurt. But the teacher, I had said something really brilliant, he's like yoga is breath on movement, it's not movement and then breathe if you can, which is what a lot of people do. They make it like a gymnastics, you know, contortion of fun. But for the, so after about six months I did six days a week, took the new and the full moons off because we were respecting the gravitational pull, the water in us and our interaction with the planet and not getting attached to the practice.

I started to really six months in, started to feel a bit better and I got a little more flexible, but my brain calmed down for the first time in, in as far as I can remember, I started to sleep deeper and ultimately I learned that this crazy idea that um coca cola, you're not supposed to drink a six pack a day, and it was like, my body just rejected it. So, I didn't even know anything about diet at the moment. I was kind of very, I was in osteopathic school, was very conventional, but it was like this, learning to listen to the innate wisdom in myself really, which is where I came from touching the tree and knowing my connection, feeling, you know, the energy moving through my body, it started to come back and and and where maybe all this stuck energy in the past caused a lot of pain.

Now it was enthusiasm. I was able to like, really experience life again and I didn't feel great, you know? But I would say over the next two years, I was um of continuous yoga practice listening to my body and changing my diet, not based upon what somebody told me, but what my body, what made my body feel better. What made it feel worse, deciding to believe in a thought. If it made me feel better, and if it didn't make me feel good, maybe I don't need to agree with that thought. And slowly but surely the inflammation came down, the sleep got deeper as the sleep got deeper, my brain started to get cleaned up because that sleep has a lot of that's where all our natural detoxification, the brain's happening and then ultimately about two years later, I had a coincidence again, yoga DVD coincidence, another coincidence where I had the opportunity at the last minute to change from driving an hour and a half, 11 way twice a day for medical school rotation to going right down the road and studying with an osteopath locally.

I walked into their clinic, every single person talked like I did and they were like, joint pain, fatigue, brain fog. I'm like, at the end of the first day, I went to the guy crying and I said, please, I don't care what it costs and what does it cost? Like 1800 bucks. I was like, oh my God, all right, just do it and they drew my blood and like two weeks later chronic Lyme disease and the part that was making me sweats and chills and, and so much pain back in the day, eight years before was the busy that no one diagnosed because they didn't care to look.

And so when I walk into their office than 75% better, I still needed them. And, and the line, the busy treatment and ultimately we found out a lot of the brain fog was heavy metals. So I had to do all that. It was still another like, you know, 3.5 years before the last 25% got cleaned up. But as we're talking, it's been over 12 years where I've had no symptoms of lyme disease, babesia or heavy metal toxicity. So when people, one I know a lot of you folks are going through and what you feel. I've gone through my own personal experience of it and I know it kind of wasn't feeling good at the time, but I know how to get better, but I also know that you can get better.

So it's a little bit of a long version of the story. I just got so excited all these parts, but I know you can get better. I know how to help people do it and that's why I love the conversations. We've had Miles. Like we're bringing these unique perspectives to healing here and everybody has their own journey. My journey should not be everyone else's journey, but learning the key, the key notes from the journey is what can help everyone. So I'm so happy to be to share about this. - Yeah. Yeah. This is amazing. And yours in my story have interesting similarities. I had early twenties diagnosis of, you know, I was feeling fatigued and this chronic fatigue is an explanation of what I'm feeling not a cause. And the doctor ran blood testing and said, well I don't see anything wrong, Maybe you're depressed and it's this weird thing that happens. And I found too that meditation and movement practices and breath work practices made a huge difference and took me to being able to get through school, being able to function but still not thrive optimally until finding chronic infection diagnoses. And like you I said Babesia and then bartonella.

And these really do impact many people in ways that I think are hard to understand until you've gone through the experience and some people think oh well I had fatigue and so like I can understand someone who's dealing with something like this, it must just be a little more intense than my version of this. But it's sort of like trying to explain something that until you've gone through the experience, it's hard to understand how significant the fatigue to pain, the brain fog and sometimes the mental emotional and neuropsychiatric symptoms can be.

So how about these neuropsychiatric symptoms and some of the research based root causes that we do know about Lyme and other infections with causing neuropsychiatric symptoms? - Yeah. You know it's kind of an interesting thing because the a lot of the infections we talk about are the environmental toxins that we're exposed to um can have been shown to trigger auto immunity in some way, shape or form and then it's kind of like but then once somebody gets it, like there's all this research and somebody gets it and people are just like well maybe probably they don't even look um I had the great pleasure of being mentored by Charles Ray Jones, M. D. Who passed about a year ago from the time of recording this. but he was kind of the premier pediatric lyme specialists in the world because he took on the cause of suffering Children where we didn't understand what was going on. And ultimately through his seeing over 30,000 Children with lyme and associated diseases and the associated complications, um really started to look into this thing that came on sort of the the the the mainstream of medicine called pandas. Right?

So we and basically it's an acronym talking about pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcal infections. And strep was the place that we originally named this. Um it's a it's a very specific name for this thing that we're getting to, but because it was similar to sitting hams Korea. But then what we realized is the weird pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric craziness that happens could be caused by other things like lime and Barton Ella, even baba's aosis, maybe a mold exposure, H. H. H.

Herpes simplex one and two other viruses, Epstein Barr. I mean a lot of things can be the original trigger. So then we just called it pans pediatric acute onset or nor acute onset acute neuropsychiatric syndrome. And um I know I totally screwed that one up, I say these so many times and you forget but but anyway, the point being is you're a kid and you freak out and you look like you need an exorcism and it's a syndrome because we're not sure what it is. So when you dive deeper, the thing that Ray jones did so well is he said this is an infection induced or an infection triggered autoimmune encephalitis or encephalopathy. So, a brain inflammation and this isn't the kind of brain inflammation that happens after you have a car accident, your brain is swelling, it's kind of like more like your knee hurts and you look at it and your knees fine, you know, it's like my shoulder hurts, but we don't find any gross inflammation, but it's not feeling right.

And so when you get that in your shoulder, you're kind of God, or your knee, you're like, damn, that hurts same thing with your brain. But in kids a lot of times it, this autoimmune um style of information that gets triggered basically break, causes a lot of um neuropsychiatric symptoms and when they went back and they, and they looked at this, you know, so the way that Ray put it, you know, broke it down with infection triggered Autumn encephalitis, I thought it was so good because it tells us how what it's causing it and how to treat it, and I just took one other step and I call it a toxin or technically a toxicants induced autoimmune encephalitis. So that we can also remember that infections are a type of toxicants that could be a trigger, but there's other external things coming into our body that could trigger this.

So if we step back for one second though, miles, um the important part about strep here for me is we have some more research on it than some of the other infections and what they found was recurrent strep infection, like how does this happen happen? So recurrent strep infections in the throat and the nose basically cause our own th 17 cells which are kind of the th two side of the whole, you know, you know, acute response that they well should should be, you know, responding in balance with this th one and the problem is like with lime, it turns off a lot of the part that would allow us to actually finish the the infective process

Neuropsychiatric effects of infections and PANS/PANDAS 16:58

and clean it out. It's basically we get into chronic infection pretty quick or chronic inflammation in a chronic infection state. Um anyway, the the th 17 cells are primed in and they come into our nose to help kill and defend us from strep. And what happens is when this happens the first time. No big deal. The second time, No big deal. But maybe the third, the fourth or the 16th time that someone is exposed to strep. We have so many of these th 17 cells congregating in the nasal associated lymphatic tissue. Just the lymphatic tissue in the nose that they start to travel back up the nasal lymphatic and they go directly into the brain and they break down the blood brain barrier. They cause these things called cross reactive antibodies which basically just leads to more inflammation and then they cause inflammation in these things called micro glia which are kind of like support structures as well as the white cells of the brain. And this is how in strep we it may trigger um pans and then we go wait. We have a lot of our kids who have chronic sinusitis. We have a lot of our kids who have a mold exposure and wow so these are leading to chronic exposures in the nose.

Well we know that mold toxins can trigger auto immunity but why couldn't a chronic mold exposure in your nose do the same thing through the same pathway as strep does. And so now we we see a way that the brain is being directly assaulted by itself. It's the body's own immune cells leading to this sort of you know inflammation. And in Children very commonly it's a behavioral issue that comes out of acute onset of rage regression food restriction. We see that you know um kids who were potty trained are now like wetting their bed or peeing their pants in school and you know so you see and then on and on.

But it's a lot of this regression and oddity behavior you know and anxiety O. C. D., rage all those things. And then so part of the issue is then we start going well what happens to these micro glia. Well the micro clear also things that are supposed to defend the brain against other things such as like Bartonella. We also know that Bartonella is an infection that loves to go interest cellular. And one of the places it likes to go are the micro glia. So now we're living in a world with a bunch of mold and maybe a bunch of strep infections or maybe just a congested nose and and I know all the breath work styles of breath work. You like to do our natural ways to open up the knees a fairing. So I hope that no so that I hope we can talk about that. But it's like and then we get an exposure from a cat or a tick where we've got lime or Bartonella and but it's like a house of cards falls down, it's like Jenga right? Because you just pull one thing and you're like oh darn those micro we weren't working so well so they weren't able to hit the Bartonella.

So now we've got inflamed micro glia. Bartonella comes into micro, you know and it's like and it just goes on and on and it's just a really interesting trigger that then leads to all kinds of changes and if it stays associated in the brain let's go beyond kids. I've had adults with acute onset panic disorder acute onset of A. D. H. D. But they're 40. You know they have social anxiety that they never had or they just have the job performance declines or they're getting sharp with their partner out of the blue in a very uncharacteristic way. So a lot of cognitive stuff and then what if in our adults are adults are actually acting like they have the same toxicants induced autoimmune encephalitis because they are. And then we also know that there's things like rheumatoid and lupus and scleroderma that are just pure those in thing those autoimmune conditions but there are other people where we find infectious triggers we treat it and those phenomena go away. So if it's in the if it's if it's an itis or an inflammation in the brain, look for the cognitive stuff, look for the behavioral stuff. But also remember that this auto immunity can be anywhere in the body which is where more we're gonna get sort of the inflammation of the fascists and the joints. So it's just like it's it's just an amazing conference that you're you're hosting here because it's like this is what we're talking about and infections can trigger this all throughout the body because it puts your body on hyper alert against everything including itself. - And it's so important bring together all these elements that are talking about because it's so easy even for me before I understood a lot of this and when I was just dealing with some chronic fatigue and before I was dealing with that I didn't really think there were many health problems, but I looked back and I see that I did grow up in a moldy home and that there were, I didn't realize this until a couple of years ago Tom, but my parents told me that they had to not have dogs for a while because there was a tick problem in the yard and I didn't even know that that was the case.

And then I found out that there were, I had multiple rounds of strep throat and it was always this weird strain, I'd go in and they'd swab and they'd be like, oh, you know, don't have it. And then they called back a couple of days later actually have this weird strain that we hadn't seen before. So, and then it was over and over and over again and then it just started to exceed and I didn't experience, luckily many of the symptoms that many kids do with some of the behavioral issues, but it started to build what I calling Alice static load to where in my early twenties, then it culminated in this significant chronic fatigue that was starting to get in the way of my ability to function in my quality of life. And I think this took me a long time to unpack and start to piece together. Wait, did the strep infections have something to do with it, did the tick problem in the yard have something to do with it, did the mold in the home have something to do with it.

Did the fact that my dad's mom was too ill and in the house and smoking cigarettes have something to do with the exposures that I had eczema and asthma as a young child. Are all these things related and I think it's hard to tease them apart and many of them get dismissed or isolated as one thing. But what I love about what you're saying here Tom is you're talking about bringing it together and saying there can be multiple rounds of issues that are leading to a gradual accumulation of these th-17 mechanism of the immune system that eventually at some point crosses a threshold and creates this imbalance this inflammation, this autoimmune attack against tissue in the brain or the joints or other areas of the body, even the organ systems, the gut, the thyroid. - Yeah, imagine that it's interesting too because I think that one of the things that we see a lot of miles and I would love to see what you're seeing in your clinical practice. But um is that people are going after names. And it's like we see that all the protocols out there are wonderful. But to me, I have to I always remind people protocols and guidelines are exactly what they sound like a guideline.

And what I think about is when we look at the wiz is this is we need to we need to take toxin induced autoimmune encephalitis as a framework and then we have to insert the body's wisdom because there ain't no way that I can think of that. All the things you just described in your health history that I can fix or I can help you fix. Right? But what's really cool is we don't need to do that. We need to look at your at least in my opinion and my training, we look at what are your body's priorities? Right?

What's really interesting is where priority means? One thing not, there's no plural of priorities, right? But we all do that. But so if you if you want to really get Stigler, what's the priority? And then what are the next closest subsets of that? But your body in my mind as an osteopath. Were trained to support self healing? Your body has this amazing self healing self regulating mechanism. So I come into it and I go, okay, where's the body stuck in its healing journey? How can I catalyze that? So, I think about it as like the car car stuck in the mud? Right. Well, so we all have tried on in the mud or maybe on a, you know in a bunch of on a snowy day to jam on the gas, right? You get stuck, you're not moving.

What's the next thing you do? You jam on the gas? Right, okay, Nothing's happening. What might be a better thing to do? One might be go slower to might be to back up a couple of steps and then go a little go forward but a little slower and another thing might be to chock the wheels and then so if I chalk the wheels and then I get over the slippery spot, a little chunk of ice or the mud or whatever, then guess what? The car will keep going on its own without further input from me. So I'm always trying to see what is the minimal catalyst I can provide to the system so it can continue its healing journey and its healing work, the natural healing work until it needs me again.

And we all know the reality of this is I'm probably doing a lot of support and a lot of catalyzing, but if I keep that in mind, I'm not because oh the conventional system just squashes the body and doesn't look for the root cause let's all be careful to not be the functional medicine, the integrated medicine docs, the natural medicine that smushed the system with the natural stuff. Let's use whatever intervention you know, to get the self healing mechanism moving forward because it knows how to heal your body, knew how to heal you, otherwise you wouldn't be healed.

And it's like I always talked to doctors in the hospital like so when I give an antibiotic to a person with pneumonia do I sterilize their lungs. No, I have literally asked us to at least 100 doctors and I have never heard anyone say yes. What they all say is some version of know what we do is we bring down the load of the infection until your immune system is back strong enough again to finish the job on its own. We talk about this modern medicine all the time but we forget about it. So I just want to remind people that your body has the wisdom to heal if we give it the right fuel and the right spark from the right angle when it needs it. And that's why I was able to heal so much.

I still needed the medicine. You probably still needed some treatments right? But it's like our bodies are healing and then we can also respect how come miles and tom take the same medicine have a completely different results are because it's our bodies have its own unique healing journey. So we take all the stories that everybody's telling us. We take all the public publications about double triple quadruple this, you know high dose or low dose that and or do this. Sauna don't do that kind of sauna, whatever it is.

And we remember that that's experience of other people that can help be a guideline for us. But we create our own particular plan of treatment that's uniquely based upon our

Root causes, immune dysregulation, and treatment priorities 28:38

response to different treatments. And I think that that's where we can merge this amazing sort of piece of lots of evidence based and data because I love our conversations are always like, you're always going back to the science behind it and we take the science and the rigor and the and that's the science of medicine and then we bring in the art, which is how does everything else that we know all the facebook stories, all the google, blah blah, blah, all the summit stories you hear, because you're gonna hear a lot of things in this summit and you're gonna want to try all of them. And the question is, what do you need next?

It's not, these are all tools and and and and the carpenter, the artist, the art of medicine when you work with a skilled practitioner and also you learn to listen to yourself as I did through the yoga practice and it's not yoga for everybody, but when you bring that together, that's how you can heal. Don't chase somebody else's healing journey. Don't compare yourself to them, listen to them and learn from them. But go on your own healing journey. The beauty of getting sick and the beauty is that you get to go on a journey that you know the destination right, choose the destination, which is better and doing the ship you love in your life. So the number one thing I wake up from every morning is focused on what I love doing and then I'm like, okay, well what is the journey to get there? And the journey is such a beautiful thing.

If we allow it to be and we don't try to copy someone else's journey. - Tempting to find the time to find the smoking gun. The magic one thing that's the solution to it all the quick fix, the thing that's going to make the difference and it's so often is trying to find what's going on that's causing everything and it is important to understand that yes, there are root causes and yes, we can find through comprehensive lab testing in a good case history and questionnaires that our research validated some issues that may be playing a role and it's usually issues plural that are playing a role or roles in the health picture and the default as you mentioned, it's important to remember the default is healing.

The default is that the body is capable of regulating. I'm amazed at how abused people can live their life and still function. It's amazing and incredible to see the level of craziness in terms of, of substance abuse and incredible lack of care of the body, that the body can still maintain a semblance of resilience through. And so when there's a lack of that exuberant to me, the default is this exuberant emanation of love and joy and if that's not there, then to me that already is off the default of what naturally is there and there's something in the way of that and it's not one thing, it's multiple things that have piled up into this load over time and to be able to, as you're mentioning, find what is it that gets over the hump or that crosses or the lever that for you or for me or for the person who's going through the experience is going to be the lever or levers that are going to get through to that. The body is now going back towards that immense sense of innate self healing capacity.

Had a teacher who said, you want to know why you have whatever problem you have, you were born, you know, if you hadn't been born, you wouldn't have the problem. So like let's set that aside and then let's figure out what do we do now here in the moment to overcome whatever it is that's helping the body to release and that's overly simplistic. But there's a wisdom to being able to let go of the rigid kind of a fixation on. I see people diagnostic label becomes externalized reason for why they aren't healing and that can become problematic and dysfunctional in and of itself.

- You know, I think it's really interesting to bring that up Miles and I couldn't agree more. And one of the things I talk about, like I love the word meditation right? And in the beginning, meditation sit down on a mat or cushion and I could never do it because it's too hard. Um and then through yoga I was able to, my brain actually calm down as my energy rebounds and I could do something that most people think of as meditation. But the more I studied it, I said, what does it really mean? And the definition of it, I love the most is to become familiar with.

So the goal of meditation is to become familiar with the state that you want to live in. So let's back up to what you were just saying Like I'm a limey, I'm a moldy. Okay, so all day long, you have repetitive thoughts like 95% of what we think in any given day we've already had and we keep saying to ourselves over and over. So if you do this exercise right down the top five things you say to yourself about yourself for the next seven days, you probably don't need to go more than two hours or probably even 10 minutes to figure out exactly what the answer in over seven days will be.

So if we're focusing on our symptoms over and over and over and we're labeling us, there's a limey and moldy or whatever, guess what that's called? That's called reprogramming our operating system with new code and that new code says Lyman mold. So guess what? Every moment. So what do we do if our phone isn't working properly, we reboot it and if we reboot it and it ain't working right? Probably it's what happened to my wife, she is really old iphone because she just like when she upgraded it once, like the people at the store screwed it up and she's like, I just give me the old one back and you know, and she woke up one day and it didn't work, it wouldn't connect to the cellular service, not even just like anything else.

It literally the cellphone power and she goes, I bet any amount of money, it's because I haven't updated it in like nine months and I was like, well that's probably pretty good bet they literally, because she hadn't updated, they blocked her. So she did and she did a system update and the update put in new conversations that now allowed the phone to reconnect to the cells tower, right? And we can talk all about when your wifi in your cell tower. I know we have these conversations all the time. But the bottom line is when, when her phone wasn't working the way she wanted it to, she upgraded the operating system.

So one of the ways to upgrade the operating system is to upgrade the story you tell yourself. And every time I broach this topic, somebody or 100 people go, I can't pretend that I'm not sick. I go, yeah, no, no, no, I'm not asking you to do that. In fact, I'll even tell you in a second how you can have a practice that empowers yourself by acknowledging your symptoms because most people, this is where when we do the positive mindset and secret and all the kind of power of intention and you know, thinking, you know, you know what you think about, you'll bring about all true, but we leave off this. What do we do with the fact I feel like crap today or mike kid is needs an exorcism because they have pans from Barton Ella and mold and strapped, oh then they were better and they owe somebody had the flu and now they've got double pants. You know, we all were getting in there.

The part miles that I think is so important is the stuff that we habitually tell ourselves becomes real. It becomes ingrained in our emotional, energetic spiritual vibrational and physical D. N. A. So let's just change that. So how are, how are ways we can do this. And one of the things is it's not just positive affirmation that's part of it, but you can literally write a new story. Um, I remember I had a really tough upbringing with my old man Uh, when he was 15, his father died of a brain tumor.

My my grandfather, who I never got to meet was actually on the boat where they signed the World War II Peace Treaty with Japan, the us and Japan. Uh, you know, so there's a lot of weird stuff that I don't know about in our family history and probably a lot of chemical exposures. But on my grandfather's autopsy, there are brain tumors and all kinds of other weird stuff. They couldn't even explain. Um that appeared to be toxic exposures. So when he was dying, he basically like tortured my father like in terms of like mentally and emotionally trying to prepare him to be the man of the house, you know, and then fast forward. I think my dad did the best he could, but he's always been a jerk and you know, a lot of verbal and and emotional sort of abuse and the threat of physical abuse, all that, that only really happened once.

But it's a scary way to live and it's super traumatizing and my whole life, we were just fighting back and forth, back and forth. And thankfully before he passed, we kind of got to a place where we saw eye to eye and we could have a nice relationship and then he ended up with dementia and all this other crazy stuff. Um so I'm glad we were able to connect a little bit, but about three or four years after he died, I'm at an event and um we're supposed to be in a power box and like really just dive into this peak emotional experience so that you can pull on one peak emotional experience and bringing in other aspects of your life when you needed it.

So I'm talking to this guy in my group and he's like, yeah, I'm 40 I just sold my internet startup company for $42 million. I don't ever have to work again. I'm like yeah that's pretty cool. And then there's other girls like, well I want a beauty pageant that I barely qualified to be in. Um and I didn't expect to do anything. Somebody else. I hit a grand slam in this big thing in college and I blah blah blah and like yeah, you know everything that goes well in my life, About three seconds later, somebody either kicks me in the groin or they tripped me and stop my head on the curb. I literally could not think of a time in my life where I had a sustained emotional high because of my mindset at the time.

And so I said, well I showed up here to try for myself and so I started doing this exercise and I'm like I don't have anything. Let me think about what should have been good. And what I realized was I had gone to the 1980 miracle on ice Rank um in Lake placid. And if anybody's a hockey player out there, or a hockey fan, this is where the United States, all these like non professionals basically beat the professional Russian team that had killed everybody forever. And miles. The thing that was so amazing, this is like mecca for hockey players, right? This is like the this is the holy grail of of hockey. And if you're if you're a U. S.

Hockey player. And what was interesting is I remember going to it. I had a really good tournament. I was top one of the top scores. My team lost every despite that my team lost every um game we're in and it was a horrible experience and I remember my dad yelling and screaming and stuff from the stands and I was like what an asshole. So anyway fast forward I go do this power box thing and I step in the you do it three times. The second one I'm just like I'm giving myself a shot this will be my thing.

I step into this box And the second time I do I almost inadvertently took a hockey shot like I was just in the moment and all of a sudden I realized that my dad screaming in the stands may have been the only time in our physical time together. He showed up 100% of the time for me. He showed up exactly the way I asked him to and I basically told him the f off because at the moment I couldn't recognize he was there for me. I was so immersed in the picture of my relationship with him sucks and my team is sucking right now that I couldn't see the one thing I had asked God for I asked the universe for my entire life showed up and I couldn't see it.

So we're fast forwarding 30 plus years and so this is the part that's most important here, everyone is, You can rewrite your story because more than 50% of your memory according to Nora scientists is wrong. 50% of everything we remember to start with is not how it happened. So I just went back and I said oh my God, on that day I realized that my father showed up for me the way I he just was unadulterated being a weirdo, He was very weird when he did it, but I video proof of it, but he was showing up like 100% showering me with love and never before or after that that I received that and so then I'm like okay, we are not going to,

Mindset, self-talk, and rewriting the healing story 41:48

I am not blaming myself for not being able to receive it because there is tension at the time, but what I am gonna do is I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna recognize that that was that loving moment and I just interpreted it different and from that moment forward, my whole timeline of relationship with him shifted and I have this amazing relationship with the guy who's been dead for six years and I have literally rewritten my and you can see the ripple effect through my whole family and none of them know this and it was moment after moment where I decided that I don't have to live that story, I can change what that story looks like and I can focus on that healing path that allows me to live the life I want and so I just hope, I know I'm kind of going off on this whole tangent, but it's it's such an emotional thing because we're talking about this whole thing, we're talking so much about the science and the auto immunity and the immunology and the hist a path of physiology, blah, blah blah. There is also this part of healing that you control and modern Western medicine wants you to give them control so that you can get on a pill, you can get a diagnosis, you get a fibromyalgia or bipolar and then they can, then they can just put you on a conveyor belt. You guys all have the ability to take this back and in my healing journey it was a huge amount of my healing for any given person, it's gonna be, it'll be different and it'll be different the percent that's mindset, heart set and love and the part that's gonna be, you know, modern medicine or integrative medicine at acupuncture, whatever it's all gonna change over time, but be flexible with it. And I guess I should, I want to say one other thing with this Miles to is one of the things that I learned though along the way is I always try to shove myself into that positive affirmation, just focus on what you want, it'll happen. The one thing like I mentioned a moment back that I can't stand it when people don't acknowledge the value of what you're going through. So one of the practices that I learned that I want to share with you guys is um acknowledge there are times and places to acknowledge what is going right and what is going wrong. So if you have a challenge like health challenge, you should objectively hopefully without much story presented to your providers so they can help you.

But the other thing is you're living with your body and your life every day. So one of the things you can do is wake up and say what challenge am I dealing with today? Okay and you can sit there and you can visualize that challenge. Give yourself three or 5 minutes at most. Put it on a timer, don't don't do this 25 minute meditation but be objective and acknowledge one major thing that you're dealing with today but don't call it lyme, don't call it mold, call it I'm having a hard time with my supplement protocol, being regular with my supplement protocol. I'm having a lot of joint pain, headaches and brain fog be very specific that you're not labeling it other than sort of break the label down to the essence of it, not a name, you know and I mean obviously joint pains and name but you know what I'm saying and then just look at make a vision of it because pictures or how our brain works, feel the emotions of it. And then in no more than five minutes, take a few deep breaths and let it go now you've put it out to the universe or God, the divine, whatever this amazing source of life is that we have that whatever label you like and don't worry about it now, just go through your day and let it be now in the evening. Play back your memory, playback that movie you created in your head that emotional experience. But this time do it a little quicker and then start to be be open to the next step of that of receiving the change, receiving the answer to what's the next step you can take is so basically what you've done and then you just kind of get into the solution but you don't, it's just letting it come. So in the morning you acknowledge the problem you have and then you give it away and you just let it be and you just go through your day doing the best you can and it's kind of like Tony Horton with P 90 X.

It's like I've been quoting him a lot recently, it's the strangest thing, but do your best forget the rest, you know, and then at the end of the day, just like touch back again. But now because your subconscious mind when you're focused on it, you can't come up with new ideas, you're just gonna come up with the same repetitive, let let go of it. Your subconscious mind will connect you bring in these amazing new ideas and that's where you touch base with the movie and the end of the day, the emotions and then you let the new ideas come and then you take a few deep breaths and you let them go.

And it's just a really interesting way that I found where I don't have to pretend I'm not sick or I don't have to pretend this or that doesn't hurt. You can acknowledge it and move forward with it, but but it allows you because, you know, you're coming back to it at the end of the day. Now you can have a little more freedom in the space in between. And that's where all this new healing and this new motivation comes from. - There's a fine line between blame and responsibility and I love that you touched on this, that you were tempted to blame yourself for the way that you responded to your father in that moment. But you were able to come to the perspective that you had the realization that that was in the past, there was tension there at the time, you did the best with what you had and could at that time. And yet now from your adult self experience relating to that experience, were able to shift the way in which you were relating to the memory without blame for creating guilt or shame or self criticism around that you didn't do that then, and that's really important because it can become especially with these affirmations and positive thinking can start to, for many people become this dysfunctional self blame. I created this.

How did I create this? And I'm and then there's this sense of carrying a burden and the heaviness of like, why can't I figure this out? I should be able I know I'm creating my reality and my thoughts and and then it gets into this other complex that creates its own problematic expression and its own contribution, even potentially to the chronic illness pattern. And so there's this fine line between blame and responsibility, responsibility for me. I the way I understand this for myself and what's been helpful is that that that responsibility belongs in the present and that I can presently change the way that I'm relating to a past memory. But if I try to put responsibility onto my past self, where the action is already done, and if I put responsibility onto the action instead of the way I'm relating to the memory, then that actually creates unhealthy tension that leads to blame self blame, guilt, shame, criticism, that can worsen the situation.

So, to be able to take responsibility and put it where it belongs, which is in the present, in the past belongs forgiveness and a reorientation towards the way of relating to the experience in the memory and the same is true for present moment symptoms, it's not that I can think my way out of fatigue if I'm fatigued, maybe that's possible. Instead, what I found to be more helpful is an acceptance and acknowledgement of the experience of the sensations and qualities of those sensations that I describe as fatigue in my experience, and knowing that the power, the responsibility that I have and the power that I have is how am I relating to those sensations?

How am I relating to the sensation of intensity that I call pain? I mean, I can take a step back from pain and say, oh, well, it's intense sensation and take a step back from that label and that can loosen a little bit even better. How am I relating to the sensations in my body that I'm labeling is pain. And is there an opportunity there to shift in the sense of the relationship to the symptom picture the chronic illness, the diagnostic label, the past memories. And that's where your so eloquently speaking on that aspect of healing. - Well, and I think the other thing is you're not gonna forget that your your muscles and your joints, hair or that you're tired.

Like, like, if you can think your way out of it awesome because now it's gone. But you it's like you can't make it. I mean, if you're not like, just don't add to it. Don't give it more than it needs. Right? So did I did my reorientation of my relationship with my dad change all the bad ship that happened. No, doesn't forget its but it doesn't give it additional non necessary negative emotional energy. And what I realized was like so many of us are tired, right. Whether it's just normal life or people with chronic illness retired, why give extra energy away that you don't need to so don't give your joint pain in your muscle pain, more extra energy because you're just depleting more your energy and all of these things that you just highlighted there and that I've been talking about this whole conversation is everyone's like how do I help my immune system function better. So if we go back to the beginning of our conversation, what's one of the most important things we need to do?

We need to modulate the immune system so that it's better able to treat the infections and when we do both those things, the inflammation goes down. So we just one we just got the goal you wanted. What's one of the very best ways to boost your immune system, to relax and to just feel the energy in your body and to shower yourself with love because yes, everyone here who's listening um you are worthy to receive healing. You are also worthy to do the things you love in life to the highest level that you want, right?

As long as you're not shipping on anybody else while you're doing it on purpose, you deserve to do that you are worthy. And if the only thing I teach people is you are worthy to receive your own love. We've done a good job today. And because when you love yourself, you spread that love to others. And when you do that, you receive more love back and you know what that word love does if you want to get all science, hey, as soon as I do love and gratitude, I improve my heart rate variability, which is a marker for my immune system being higher.

So equate love with immune system function if you want to, but there's no vibration that's higher than that word love and you can break it down if you want to get reductionist and parts of it, no, leave it together, allow yourself to love yourself body, mind and spirit and really because if you want to get better, you need a functioning immune system. That's not all jacked up all this limbic system stuff you hear everybody talk about, it's just your body not feeling safe. If you feel full of love and gratitude, you will feel safe.

It will be easy to slide back in the safety and when you know when you're out of sync and your body is, you know where we, where you're kind of in a comfort zone, which feel safe to your primitive nervous system but maybe not to your brain and you're like, hey, I'm going from, You know, I'm a nine out of 10 on the pain scale or the fatigue scale. Now I'm at a six. Well your body freaks out because that's not comfortable, comfortable is nine and suffering. So if we bring you down too quickly, you're gonna just bump back up.

That's why so many people are doing great in a protocol and as soon as they have a massive shift, they free freak out and something falls apart and they're back to square one, it's because your nervous system protecting you. It's not because you're a bad patient, it's not because your Bartonella freaked out all of a sudden after we beat the shift out of it for a year because your nervous system is afraid and trying to keep you safe. So one of the ways to allow that change to be more easily integrated is to just allow that self acknowledgement, that self love and Miles, I love the way you talked about the present moment. So these are just the thing and, and, and really allowing yourself to understand what is going on in the moment and and doing all that. So that's just kinda, I mean, I feel like we talked about this all day because this is like, this is the crux of healing because like so many people literally accidentally self sabotage, they change something, they stop something to do this because inside they're like, oh, I'm not worthy to hell, I'm not good enough or maybe it's just a nervous system reflex that says wow, you're getting way too better. Way to better is not comfortable because I'm not used to it anymore. You have to, you have to get used to these new improvements so it's not just getting worse makes you worse.

I mean getting better can actually trigger you to get worse Because your nervousness and protecting you. So just love on it as much as you can today and every day and the other part you are a guide. You are a beacon of light to everyone around you. You influence your partners, your spouse, your friends, your Children, even if they're a teenager who gives you this thing every once in a while and pretends they're not listening. I have a 13 year old right now she is always in the other room doing this and you are so everything.

If you want to be a beacon of love and healing for others around you start with yourself and if you don't have others right around you, you still got to start with yourself because you know what, When you look in the mirror you're gonna get reflected right back what's coming out and treat yourself with love and then all the medicines work better.

Love, nervous system safety, and integration 55:48

The herbs work better, the supplements work better and I ain't got no more. - I honestly believe that one of the biggest, if not the biggest obstacle to healing for a large percentage of people is comfort and I don't mean that in the way of consciously, I mean in the way that there is this home, a static mechanism to, like you said, the nervous system protect itself, There is this what becomes comfortable, becomes familiar, becomes ingrained into the structures of the sense of self, because the sense of self, usually for most people, it's based in who was I, and have I been, is who I am, and if it doesn't feel familiar and comfortable, then it's not me. And that sense of I and working with those self structures is challenging because you have to break out of what's comfortable and familiar and that doesn't feel like self and when it doesn't feel like self, then it can be very difficult. There can be a sense of this imposter syndrome or many different names for this sense of this tension of the discomfort associated with change, and that discomfort associated with change.

It's very easy to fall back into the structure of self that's been formed over a period of time. And by asking yourself to move into a destination that's substantially and significantly different than where you are at the moment. There is going to have to be shifts in that structure of the self sense. And those shifts in the structure of the self sense inherently come with discomfort and an uncomfortable feeling and an unfamiliar feeling of new territory or differences in the way that who you are is expressing in the world and what you're pointing to here, that I love tom is that you're saying that you can regress back and often blame than other things instead of recognizing the importance of that this is natural and normal. These self structures are very organizing around this homo static, bringing you back and it does take focus, it does take dedication to shifting the relationship to what is in order to be able to embody and integrate these new structures into the self sense.

Even psychedelic experiences, which can bring people dramatically out of their self sense often comes right back into the same self sense when there's not the integration of the ability to create those structures as part of who a person is. So, I think this is an important dialogue and I agree we could go on for a long, long time, but this sense of love that you're pointing to this, I believe this is the innate inherent unconditioned if we take away the cell structure, what's underneath, I do believe to be this sense of energy, not an emotion of love, but more of an energy of a love that is universal, unconditional that isn't affected by externals. And it's the thing that people talk about that they've they've found inner liberation in a concentration camp or some horrible external where there is this inherent ability to access something inside that seems to be not something you need to necessarily cultivate externally.

It's something I believe to be inherent and accessible and available. It's not that we need to achieve this love, it's that we need to remember this love that it's already there and settle into it and allow for the structures around it to loosen enough to rest inside of this sense of this profound care towards self, others life and even the challenges and struggles and to relate to the most significant struggle to relate to. My, my mom recently passed to relate to an experience of tremendous change in grief from a place of love for me that's my work right now is how can I relate to my mom's passing from a place of profound love that is unaffected by this experience while also acknowledging whatever grief process and other emotions may come up around this situation and how can I shift the way that I relate to the memories of my mother, like you did with your father to transform how that experiences into the future and these are so important and I'm so glad that we've touched on this. - Yeah and so much love to because I mean I I know how it feels and for me and I don't know how it feels for you and I think that's you know that uniqueness that we can share, we can share that common experience, but also within the common experience there, there's a unique piece um they just kind of wrap one last thing I was thinking um as you're saying all that when I started like you know it's a lot of times people asked why lime and martin knell and mold, why is it so easy for them to take hold here? And one of the things that I thought of was we are one of the only if not the only organism that fights reality Lyme disease does not fight the reality of the internal environment in your body once it's there, I mean obviously it's valuable for free and related bacteria but this bacteria know how to live and persist because if it's if it gets in you and it's ready to go good, go to town. Very opportunistic.

But if you're if you start some doxy or you start some herbs or whatever it's going to go hide in places and it waits and it waits and it waits. But it just doesn't fight the fact that right now is not the right time to attack you. And then when you remove a bunch of stuff maybe it comes back out or maybe it doesn't.

How to connect with Dr. Moorcroft and closing 1:02:08

So think about this vibrational frequency we're talking about. So whether you're talking about the vibration of Steph try axon or doxycycline crypt Aleppo's whatever the vibration of your morning smoothie or the vibration of love what vibration is going on in your body because if you're allowing a negative vibration that is more set up with lime or Barton l it's easier for it to be there. And I think that's really the conversation we're having is tend your internal garden, tend your external garden and allow that vibration to be one of what you want to see in your life. And don't beat yourself up if the vibration is not where you want because you can just keep changing the rheostat and adjusting it until you get there. Just like that old tv that when I was a kid.

Um so really allow yourself this opportunity to heal and allow your body to get back on that highest vibrational frequency. Because if you're in the state of that love that we're talking about that will be a state of optimal function for your body in that moment. And that will more likely than not not jive with Lyme and Bartonella and mold. Right. And then the other question is what's mold around for to decompose, what needs to be decomposed before you're allowed to release the mycotoxins. What lesson Physical, mental emotional do you need to learn? So Miles.

Um lots of love to with your recent loss. And I mean, thank you so much for the conversation. This is so much fun. This is like the real nitty gritty of healing because we can always dry. We can teach everybody drop the meds on. - Yeah, important conversation tom and I know people are gonna want to know how to get in touch with you. I know you're very popular and you have a waitlist. So what would be the best way? Where would what should people do if they want to learn more? If they want to hear more?

If they want to get in touch. - Yeah. Thanks so much. I'm our clinical practice and most of our online social media stuff is simple. Its originsofhealth.com. Or just origins of health on pretty much all the major places except I g where it's dr tom Moorcroft and we have a really great program where we dive into both sort of the natural healing aspects and going over the medicines and all that stuff, but also really a deep dive into transforming this, you know, through um getting your mindset, get doing that system reboot, right, putting in that operating system that you're really, really wanting to see lived out in your life so you can live your late, highest and greatest life um and let your heart sing and that's the thrivewithlymeblueprint.com. - Wonderful. And some practitioners may be interested in training. I know you offer training for providers and practitioners, how do they find out about that? - Yeah.

And that that's a lymepractitionercertification.com. And if you ever get lost with any of these things, just head over to origins of Health and we'll get you squared right away. - Fantastic. Well, thank you Tom it's been a pleasure. And Dr. Miles with the microbes and mental health summit. Thank you everyone for watching.