Learn the Integrated and Functional Approach to Lyme

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Healthy Hotline. Today, I have a dear friend of mine, Dr. Cliff Fetters. He’s an amazing fellow, like has a great practice. I’ve met him through one of my mentors, Dr. Lee Cowden and his group that he’s set up, that he calls ACIM. And we met through Dr. Cowden’s associations. You know how you meet people sometimes in your life, and you just hit it off because you’re like-minded? He’s an integrated doctor, he’s a functional doctor. 

Dr. Fetters is the kind of doctor that you want to have managing your healthcare. He goes… He really searches, really deep for the root cause of the kinds of things that are causing you to have a health challenge to start with. And he works tirelessly to figure out the answers and each of his patients, he treats with tender care. Hello, Dr. Cliff. Can let me go back a little bit and just give us a little background as to kind of what brought you into the area that you’re in today? And then we can dive into some of the things that, pearls that you want to give us, the information.

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

Thank you, Robby. Yeah, I went into medical practice, 1988, in family practice in Carmel, Indiana. And within one year, I had just moved to a new city, had gotten married, acquired a huge new practice. The senior partner retired, and I bought him out. So suddenly, I’m seeing 40 people a day, my first year. And it was all good news, but stress raises cortisol. You know what happens when you have high cortisol? So actually I was developing inflammatory arthritis and I asked my partner, Dan, “What do you take?” “Just take Naprosyn.” I looked at, I said, “I’m not taking that. I almost killed two people last month with that.” And within three seconds, I realized, “Wow, what a hypocrite I am.” 

I just had a 28 year old woman with inflammatory arthritis. I gave her Naprosyn previous day. So I realized I did not want to be a hypocrite. And back then, there was not the internet, that I could not research what the natural things that treat inflammatory arthritis. And luckily through my mother, the holistic nurse, who had a chiropractor/podiatrist, she made me speak with him and he explained whole wellness and health and wellness. Way back then, he connected me with some certain people. And I was so disappointed in what I learned. In fact, the man was probably a 70 year old chiropractor, I said, “Why didn’t I learn this in medical school?” And he just laughed, “Son, they taught you how to use drugs to treat symptoms, not to treat diseases.” And when I realized there were so many things out there that could help people better, without side effects, my mission was, “I will find the root cause of every problem. I will not use drugs for any chronic illness.” And that’s why I’m here today.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Well, that’s so unusual, because on the allopathic track, it’s just like you say, you’ve learned certain tricks of the trade, but mostly through various kinds of medications. And that’s what really got me going with you because you’re just keep going and searching for not just the root cause, but natural ways to get the body systems to be working together, to create that healthy platform, not just for today, but just for the future and the longevity of the patient and a health and wellness profile. 

So it’s kind of interesting that you took that little right-hand turn, but the whole other parts of your education became a little less important or they didn’t serve you as much as the new area you were going into. Then when I met you, my God, I think you were going to every convention and you would just, you couldn’t get… You had an unsatiable appetite to learn the best natural ways to heal. And that’s truly amazing. So we’ve got the Lyme community out there, that’s listening today and you know, many of them are in bed. They’re exhausted. They’ve had health challenges for many years, built up toxicities, things like that. 

And it’s hard for them to get motivated, to kind of see that there’s a little light at the end of the tunnel. And then we have guys that are listening and gals that are fully functional and every so often they’ve got an episode here and there and they live with it, but they want to stay on top of their game. So, when I visited your practice, it was amazing. It’s like, first off you have to… it’s a state of the art practice. And people travel from four states around to get to Dr. Fetter’s practice. And he had room after room of technology. I thought that I saw everything in the first room. 

Then I entered the next room and he dialed it up even higher. And then, as you guys know us, we’re specialists on infrared stuff, he had this one room that he dedicated, that he had this amazing infrared bed that was electrically modified with some kind of a warm technology that he can raise and lower the height of the lights on top of the patient. And it was so techie, I couldn’t believe it. Dr. Fetters, you went over the top with all that stuff. So what kinds of things in your practice or in your whole journey yourself, have you seen that might inspire a Lyme patient listening today?

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

Well, I’d say, we’ve come a long way since 1988. I would say in the past, I’d say, “Well, 90% of our people will get better.” And now I can say, “99% of our people would get better.” And we just have so many different modalities to use. We’ve learned so much about this condition. The herbs have taken primary treatment, which has virtually no side effects. For the first decade, all I knew was antibiotics. And I just try to keep the body healthy and not damage the body. 

And now I’d say, less than 5% people ever need antibiotics to treat Lyme. So the amount of Herxheimers, the side effects, the long-term potential side effects, is almost gone now. If you’re down, you can get better. You will get better, but it has to be one step at a time. I guess probably the most important things is, Lyme has gotten so easy. I had another chance, so now my main focus is on cancer. But the cool thing about the doctors that teach about cancer, they’re with me, they could treat Lyme in their sleep. So these guys I’ve learned more about Lyme disease than anyone else, because they are no longer, it’s a challenge to them. 

So to get over cancer, it’s almost Lyme, you have to get every body system in balance to be well. I do that personally because horrible things run in my family, the left and right. So therefore I don’t want to get those things, so that’s what I do. So, number one is your emotional health. With cancer, if you have any stage of cancer, if you cannot get in that parasympathetic, relaxed state, your body will not heal. 

You have to be. Your belief system is probably more than anything. So whether it’s cancer or Lyme, your belief system that you will get better, I believe in a higher power. And if it’s just about you, it doesn’t work . It doesn’t matter how down you are, you’re going to always help someone else. So humans are meant to help others. When you start helping other people, you just get in a different state, you go into a higher frequency and you can get into healing frequency. It doesn’t take money, it just takes other human beings that you can work with, and someone you appreciate, and someone you can help.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Wow, that’s so important. When you’re talking about higher power, we’re not necessarily talking about religion, we’re talking about our ancestors, that quiet voice that’s sort of in our subconscious, that connection between you and your ancestors and/or your higher power. And what’s interesting about that is that, I have to personalize this for myself, because I started hearing my voices when I was like nine years old. And then basically, I’d ignored them, as age appropriate, right, until I was sorta my mid-twenties. And then I started to think, “Whenever I asked myself that question and listened intently to that quiet answer, my voice inside of me was more right than wrong.” And so I denied that. I said, “No, that can’t be. Intellectually, I’m smarter than that voice inside my head, right?” 

And then all of a sudden, I started to realize, I started to play a game and almost put notches on my belt, which, who is right more, me and my intellectual approach, or that voice? And it was always the voice, Cliff. And so, it’s so true what you say. And I love the fact that you touched on emotional healing, because that’s, I think underserved, in terms of the full… We talk about mind/body, and mostly practitioners can work pretty well in systems that help the body, but they don’t quite make that connection between mind and body, and that’s the emotional piece. 

And like you mentioned in cancer, same thing for Lyme, if you don’t really half understand that it’s important to address the emotional part, like the pain and the suffering that you may have gone through, and the family dynamic that you’re surrounded with, and the people that are around you, that support you. Some of them aren’t so supportive and you can’t let those people in that much, because you have to have a unwavering constitution that you’re going to get better and kind of really see the light at that tunnel and then work through that. So I love that piece. What else do you have that you would recommend to me if I were one of those patients?

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

I mean, Robby, you did touch on something. I didn’t go that deep, but since you brought it up, honestly, with cancer, if you’re stage three or four, and there’s someone in your house who doesn’t believe in what you’re doing, they’re not supportive, the rule is they have to be in a different house, even if it’s your spouse. Negative energy of loved ones. That’s why it’s nice to have other friends or family, or just a belief system that you will get better, that there’s other powers, that it’s more spiritual, that wants you to get back. So that’s number one. 

Number two, Mother Nature and outdoors. You have to walk. Dr. Horowitz, one the top guys in Lyme and , he says you have to be outside 30 minutes a day. You have to walk for 30 minutes. I don’t care if you’re walking one, two inches with each step, you have to be outside. You have to be moving. You have to do it daily. You have to be drinking water. And your food has, the organic has to be natural. If you have any tobacco, alcohol, drugs, you just have to do everything you can to purify your body and your health. And then now I believe our people get better 99% of the time, because then as a practitioner, it’s your immune system, 80% your immune system, 20% getting rid of the pathogens. So with the immune system, just with the proper nutrients, obviously your vitamin D, all your inflammatory markers have to be normal. 

And then we do use herbs and there’s herbs for all the different infectious agents. The beauty of the herbal concoctions now is, we have herbs that just vibrate at the pathological frequencies, and here’s the pathological germs, and when that’s matched, they just fall apart. So it’s just gotten easier and easier because the herbologists are better and better. So there’s just a basic concoction of , treat 90% of the germs. And we don’t need 100%. If the immune system will take rid of it, any allopathic doctor will tell you, when you have strep throat, we’re just slowing this thing down till your immune system clears it up. Every traditional doctor will tell you, “We don’t cure any infectious process, we whack it down until your immune system takes over.” And that’s the way Lyme is. 

So, the other amazing things we have for immune system, rather than just the normal vitamins that everyone knows, thymosin alpha one is a peptide that boosts your immune system and it’s been used down to age one for kids with autism. That’s a game changer. There’s thymus extracts. I mean, thymus extracts are $15 a month and that thymus just helps. In fact, when I treat myself for Lyme, in fact in 1988, I didn’t realize it was Lyme, so I did other things they told me to do, and I actually went in remission. 

But then ultimate remission was the thymus extract, $15 a month, put me over the edge, because I did try antibiotics. I didn’t want to. I said, “Well, at least I can say I tried it.” And literally within a week, I was almost throwing up on my patients. I said, “Antibiotics is not for me.” So there’s other immune boosts, those are the main ones. And then the huge things that most doctors miss is mold, 90% of our people get. I joke. It’s like we can just breathe on the people with what we do and 90% get better. The 10% that don’t get better, almost always have mold illness. And even if it’s not full blown mold, their TGF beta one is high enough, it’s suppressing their immune system. So you have to make sure your mold markers are okay. 

And if not, get rid of the mold toxins, that’s a huge thing. Otherwise, a lot of doctors forget about biofilm. Biofilm with enzymes. Other things are huge. There’s many ways that detox by the body improve lymphatics. And maybe you’ve mentioned costs, but we have our lost leader is ozone. So IV Ozone, we have a reduced cost. So IV Ozone is a game changer for many people. I tell my average patient, you do it twice weekly for three weeks and you’ll be 50% better, 90% of the time. And even though that’s a cost, but they get back to work two, three months earlier. Well, gee, that makes up the difference. And with that fancy red light bed, actually the sonodynamic, photodynamic therapy that I acquired from my cancer, that sensitizer was actually invented for infectious processes. SBDT does, which is actually use a sensitizer IV, it’s like chlorophyll, gets absorbed into pathogens and to your cancer cells, and when the red light activates, the chlorophyll releases all this oxygen and it just wipes out the pathogens, which is pretty amazing.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Right, it’ll initiate the production of nitric oxide, right?

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

Greatly. And we use lots of nitric. There’s so many different nitric oxide boosters out there, but as I get older, it’s like, it’s amazing what that does for your brain, your body, your sense of wellbeing, and the cost of everything’s coming down, the more people forget. The first nitric oxide stimulators were expensive, but there’s so much competition out there, it’s driving the market for it nicely.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Sure, and you can use that in sort of synchrony, or you can actually stack some of these things. So nitric oxide vasodilates, and it also creates a stronger or a better absorption of potentiating of oxygen into your bloodstream. So you can stack ozone and nitric oxide together. And so that’s going to allow your blood to grab more oxygen and bring that around to all your tissues, which supports your natural healing process. And also that sort of suppresses the anaerobic effect on the different microbes, so the parasites, the bacteria, and so forth are not going to like the oxygen, it’s going to help support your body, but it’s also going to knock them down at the same time, which is really the position that you want to be in, in the healing journey, right?

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

Exactly. That’s why I use ozone. Oh, vitamins D, I loved, it worked great for me, but really ozone is more gentle. And as you know, it supports the entire body, and with stopping the cytokine storm, just even with mold toxins, helps people with mold toxins, the decreased vascularity and increased in the fibrinogen and the blood vessels, just opening them up, allowing the red blood cells to be more flexible, just makes a huge difference in healing.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Right. Well, you’ve mentioned so many… You glossed over them like you’re wearing ice skates on a really smooth surface. But I’m just going to recap some of these because they’re amazing, like get outside. Well, of course, we’re in winter, coming out of winter, so might be a little hard and with COVID, it might’ve been a little hard to get outside, but I think when you’re referencing Dr. Horowitz and certainly something that we all believe in, it’s sort of getting connected to nature again, being part of the microbiome, getting grounded so that some of these exogenous frequencies like EMF and ELF, the extreme low frequencies, that have been proven in recent research to activate Lyme and cancer and many of these chronic elements that don’t need to be activated. 

So to sort of balance that, you just touch the earth and get grounded again, get movement, moving lymphatic system or movement does stimulate your lymphatic system, which, these are all your detox pathways. So, it’s a little hard when you’re hurting, and you’re in bed or you’re not feeling great to get motivated to take that first step. But I like the idea of having that support group around you, that’s fostering the vision of good health, listening to your voice, touching base with your higher power, understanding that you don’t have to use pharmaceuticals, that you can use natural flower remedies and essential oils that are like medicines, to stimulate your immune system and to help you to help you up better, and know it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. 

And the mold piece, I think that’s mostly misunderstood, because as the Lyme patients out there can probably appreciate this. You can get a functional Lyme patient that’s doing well, and they get influenced by mold that comes into their house, or they get surrounded by that. And they go from functioning to non-functioning almost overnight. So that’s a big tip, because if that’s you out there and you’ve all of a sudden had that big shift, the first thing to check out is possibly that you have mold in your home or in your living surroundings, and that’s what’s putting you over the top. And you really can’t get better or it certainly slows down the process of getting better if you’re constantly exposed to mold. Wouldn’t you agree?

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

Oh, 100%, 100%. Normal laboratory values aren’t really the labs that we look at. They don’t show optimal, so a TGF Beta one, really Labcorp’s probably the only company that’s accurate, most are not accurate, which is a national company, and it should be less than 2,400. And we see 30 or 40,000, but even anything above 4,000 can be a problem. So that’s something, it’s not complicated, any mold literate doctor can help people go through that.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Okay. Do you use binders at all in your protocols when you’re key lading or getting your patients, on the detox side of things?

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

Yeah. I mean, I believe… Well, of course, based on people’s personality type and the MTHFR mutation, which is most of our clients, I mean, heavy metals is an issue in virtually everyone. So there are universal binders that bind both heavy metals, as well as mold toxins, which I would say, even my healthiest people take binders. I think, until we solve the pollution problem, I think everyone, including myself, should even when you’re feeling well, you should take binders at least periodically. And I’d say, my blind patients, virtually 100% will take them, virtually 100%. 

Oh and then, not a plug for you, but I’ll tell you, grounding mats, you have to be grounded 100% of my people, you have to have infrared sun. You want to get rid of heavy metals. You double the excretion of heavy metals when you use a infrared sauna. So I have my people using the binders plus infrared sauna. It’s amazing how they sleep well, they feel well. And again, they get the motivation to get outside, get back-

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Yeah, that’s amazing, because that’s how simple it could be. Get shifting your sleeping pattern patterns. Many of the Lyme patients out there, they’ve got their circadian rhythms are a little bit messed up. And so kind of like readjusting that bio clock, getting a better night’s sleep, waking up a little bit stronger, that helps build your immune system. Wow, all of these things you’ve mentioned, Cliff, are just really spot on. And I love the eating well, doing your best to eat organic, non-GMO. 

We’ve got glyphosate in our atmosphere, our water and our food sources now. So the environment itself is so toxic that, that it doesn’t work in our favor, so you have to do other things, through your food sources, infrared sauna, things like that, just to kind of stay even, and then start catching back your momentum on your wellness plan. All great tips. I probably should have asked you before we started, or told everybody, if people need to get ahold of you, what’s the best way? Do you have a website ? I went on your website and it’s gorgeous and I visited your clinic and it’s amazing, but how would you direct people to get ahold of you, through either email or website or Instagram? What are the ways that people find you, Dr. Fetter?

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

The best way, through our website, just our initials, Health and Wellness of Carmel, so, HWOFC.com and our phone number 663-7123.

Robby Besner PSc.D..

Awesome. Well, I’m wondering if there’s any last tips that you want to offer, inspirations or anybody out there, before we bring our interview to a close today?

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

I guess probably the biggest thing is, we’ve used SOT gene therapy for cancer for 15 years, but we’ve been using it for Lyme for the last five years. So, literally everyone knows about the RNA vaccines, but we’ve been using for a long time. We can look at whatever type of strain of Lyme you have, we have custom made RNA that blocks the replication of your strain and it will work for five to six months. So that is a game changer for many, many people.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

What? Wait, wait, wait, stop the presses. Let’s go back a little bit because this is revolutionary. So understanding the cold psychology behind someone chronic, if you could give them a lead time of five or six months, of being less symptomatic. And like you said earlier, just getting three months jump on getting back to work sooner, lowering those thresholds of pain if that be, or short-term memory, cognitive challenges, this is a game changer. But now you’re talking about a kind of supplement that it’s on the vaccine scale, right? It would be kind of on that order of things. Explain a little bit more about how you go about doing that?

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

Sure. And I would say theoretically, I won’t knock the vaccine, but it should be infinitely times more safer than any of the current Messenger RNA vaccines, because the current vaccines infect your cells and turns your cells into a COVID factory, where our RNA only compliments your strain. So basically Lyme has genetics that says, “Replicate, replicate, replicate.” So our Messenger RNA is only eight to 12 strands that sounds the program that tells Lyme, “Stop replicating, stop replicating, stop replicating.” So if we accidentally put it in every person in America, those people with that strain of Lyme would lose their Lyme, but it would not affect any other part of your body, no other cells, no other genetics. 

So the safety is virtually 100%, other than people can have die off and 90% of my people get better without doing anything fancy. That last 10%, get rid of the mold. And if that doesn’t work, we do SOT. Now I have wealthy clients that let me start with SOT, and you know what? It doesn’t work. If you don’t pay the price, get rid of the toxins, get rid of the co-infections, it just doesn’t work. But once you’ve got your foundation and just like you said, Robby, you want to get back to work. You just stop that, you keep working on everything else and will get better, so much faster.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Wow. Wow. So you guys out there listening, Dr. Fetters has just told us, there aren’t really any shortcuts to this. You have to kind of do it methodically, in a certain order, build up a strong foundation, a strong platform, for healing. Get your ducks set up, get your immune systems deported, get your detox pathways working, and then, sort of the polish or the icing on the cake, is to actually go after the very thing that’s troubling or the source of it, by knocking out their on replicating system. These organisms actually know how to do three things. One is kind of take over your cell or use your body resources. They like to poop a lot. That’s a toxin. And their only job is to just replicate, reproduce. 

So if you can knock out, change your internal environment, so you’re not a perfect host anymore and knock out their replicating system, they’re not happy. They’re going to die off naturally and your body is going to continue to thrive. These are amazing comments and revelations, Dr. Fetters. Thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate you taking off your time to be with us today. And everybody out there, get ahold of Dr. Cliff Fetters at his practice, the Health and Wellness of Carmel. It’s amazing. They’re doing cutting edge technologies, using cutting edge technologies to make a difference in your health care. Dr. Fetters, thanks for joining us today.

Clifford Fetters, M.D.

Thank you, Robby, I appreciate it.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Hey everybody, it’s Robby Besner. Thanks so much for joining us today. Please share this content with anyone that you think might benefit from it. And we’re looking forward to having you with us tomorrow for another great interview.