Recover From Infectious Triggers of Autoimmunity

Introduction and Dr. Tom Moorcroft's Background 0:00

Hey, Tom, I am so glad you joined me back again. And I value your expertize. So please come. Could you introduce yourself and explain why you're an expert in this field? Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Terry. It's always wonderful to have an opportunity to chat. My name is Dr. Tom Moorcroft. I'm an osteopathic physician. I've been practicing in the field of chronic Lyme disease and other chronic tick borne illnesses mold, illness and autoimmune encephalitis, which we often call pins and pandas in our kids for the last 14 plus years.

And I really got my start by. I had an unfortunate incident with a tic where I ended up with chronic Lyme in Derbyshire and some heavy metal toxicity from some mercury amalgams went through a really long healing journey. And the beauty is, at this point, I'm really on a mission to help people understand that they can heal. So after 13 years of suffering, I have been symptom free for over 12 years. And I'm here to help other people do the same thing. So thanks for having me. Thank you. You know, I love talking to other physicians have been on healing journeys because we have insight as physicians and insight as patients.

And that gives us really a unique perspective as we take care of patients through their complex chronic health problems. So let's dove in. What is the role of tick borne illness in autoimmune disease processes? Yeah, you know, Terry, it's it's a really interesting, you know, and unfortunately, I say to my patients, you don't want to be really interesting to your doctor because then it's a challenging and type of thing. But yeah, you know, there's a couple of pieces and one is there. The bug that causes Lyme disease is called is a type of bacteria called a spiral key.

And on the tail of this fire key, genetically, it looks a lot like myelin, which is the sort of that insulation around the nerves in our in our brain. And so some people we talk about, you know, mice and other nor degenerative things as sort of where we see demyelination or the breakdown of that insulation around the nerve and proper conduction and there's this question of whether the the genetic closeness of the sequencing on the tail of the sparky and the myelin allow for more easily to be set up for an autoimmune condition.

So your body sees Lyme, it's killing Lyme and then maybe Lyme is mostly treated or all the way treated, but your body's still going.

How Tick-Borne Illness Can Trigger Autoimmunity 2:45

Oh, wait, that myelin looks a lot like that bug. And that may trigger a sort of that autoimmune condition where we're seeing ourself as enemy or as not self. And the other part too is so that's just kind of like maybe we get sensitized to that, you know, the appearance of the of the tail, the Lyme disease bug. But when we go a little broader, a lot of these chronic infections being around for longer periods of time do set up a situation where and we see this a lot, there's some really good evidence in strep that recurrent infections in the throat and the nose can actually just have a congregation of your own immune cells ready for the next time it shows up and they're all like, Is it coming?

Is it coming? Salma Any of them conjugate in the nasal associated lymphatic tissue that they actually migrate back up into the brain and cause autoimmunity that way. So inflammation and cross-reactive antibodies and all these fancy things we talk about, but essentially it's being exposed to an infection repeatedly or over time that can set our own immune system kind of on hyper alert. That then triggers the autoimmunity. And I guess the other part where we're really looking at this is in mold illness, where there's a lot of colonization in the nose and the sinuses.

We are seeing things that look very similar to the way strep has been shown to trigger autoimmunity. So we're starting to recognize that other sort of chronic anything in the nose or a chronic infection in your body that's been there for duration of time could set us up for this phenomena. So I want to clarify also, if I've had early antibiotics, which I did very early, I have indications of Candida overgrowth. So thickened toenails in your suggesting that I probably had candida my nose and throat, does that increase the risk then of activation of the immune system in my brain?

Well, I'm not I haven't seen so much in Candida. And, you know, if it is in your gut, obviously, which after your antibiotics, it certainly could set up that phenomena. I'm always try to be careful because I think what we know that Candida can trigger is one of the known triggers for pins and pandas and children. And it's probably through a gut mechanism more than the nose mechanism. But, you know, I don't think we know enough. I know for sure the research really has focused on Unstrap and now we're sort of branching out to other things in the nasal pharynx or in this sort of area in the face.

But any time that we've got something that can change that gut microbiome, anything that we've got that is persistently sitting there and retreat and irritating, essentially irritating our immune system. It's kind of like your friend who keeps popping you on the shoulder. You you're set up for the possibility of autoimmunity through that mechanism. So I definitely think that I wouldn't say that I'm for sure know that Candy is up in your nose. I've certainly cultured it there in a few people. But, you know, gut seems to be a really big place for it.

And that definitely could feedback and create that autoimmune trigger for sure. Now we have these different infections, you know, EBV, coronavirus, strep, staph and tick borne illnesses are associated with higher rates of autoimmunity. How is it that we we have all these different organisms that are all associated with higher rates of autoimmunity? I think part of it is all of the ones that you mentioned have one mechanism or another of chronicity. And you know, like if you look at COVID, I mean, I think we're looking more at inappropriately retain spike protein as opposed to chronic viral replication as maybe the trigger.

But but again, it's that constant ringing of the bell on the the immune system. And I always think about like when we talk about muscle activation, it's just where my brain really goes to think about this mass cells are these white blood cells that are kind of sentinels. They're protecting you from your environment. But one of the things that we run into and again, the mast cells are just an example of a part of the immune system because this happens across the immune system is but they're always on guard.

And the way our system is meant to work is to be on guard when we needed to be on guard and then calm down and, you know, be able to relax a little bit. But if if your mast cells, as this example is goes, are always on gardener like you know what's coming after me now and it's kind of like your friend where you say boo and they jump because they're so anxious. It's like there's a hair trigger on the immune system and I don't know that it's just say strep or just say Lyme or just say CO, but I think it's really that we've gotten to this place where we have this chronic state of toxin overload.

As a society, we have a lot of stressors, we have a lot of exposures that we may not have had 20 or 30 years ago. And it's really the totality of, you know, maybe it's not just the Lyme that does it, it's the Lyme plus the molds or the lime plus the mold, plus the COVID. Because you see so many people, they've been on their journey healing from Lyme disease and co-infections. They've been working on the mold. They don't have a new mold exposure, but then they get a viral illness. And at the house of cards seems too far.

Chronic Infections, Mold, and Immune Overactivation 8:30

And it but it looks like your original symptoms and so your body is really I just go back to my cup you know it's just like a really simple ill situation. But I have a vessel that can handle so much toxicity and so much stress. And if I'm right here, I'm kind of good. If I'm down here, I might be better. But if I'm here and then I get another infection that goes over the top, I just my glass overflows. And I think that that's why we're seeing such higher rates of autoimmunity is there's more exposure.

And a lot of the things that like I have, like in my own story, Terry, I had having, I had mercury amalgams, heavy metals obviously in my body, but my brain were great. Then I got Lyme disease into B.C and I got a short course of treatment ten days and was sick over the next eight years before I got that proper diagnosis and started the true healing journey. But what we found towards the end was all of the physical symptoms of Lyme started to get better, but my brain still didn't come back online and I was like, What is going on with my brain?

And in the meantime, I'd learned about amalgams I had even had them removed. But then when we did the urine testing to look for heavy metals, my levels were sky high even though I had had a biological dentist remove everything for me properly. And as I dove into the research more, we find that Lyme can set up ways where you have you're more likely to hold on to more heavy metals than you would have otherwise. So it was like Lyme triggered a situation in my body that allowed another toxicant to become problematic, whereas before maybe I was tolerating it.

Okay, so there's a lot of this kind of straw that breaks the camel's back and the system tends to get overloaded because there's so many things that are out in our environment that we're being exposed to. Well, what do we do that know? If I know that I've been exposed to a tick, I can take myself so I did a lot of wilderness travel, a lot of backpacking. I, I camped extensively in endemic areas and probably had multiple tick exposures in. That would be true of folks who were enjoying the wild across most of the United States.

What do we do if we have an autoimmune disease and we know that we had numerous exposures that. Well, I mean, I think if you have a numerous exposures in your background and there is an autoimmune sort of situation, I do think that, you know, if you haven't already looked at tick borne illness, it might be something you want to look at as a potential trigger. And if I rewind a little bit, I still go outside. I still I mean, anybody knows me. I'm like outside every day playing. And so yeah, I do my tick checks and all those fun things, but I think it's about leading.

If you have the chance to and you're coming at this and you're listening before you're sick, it's about leading a detoxification lifestyle. Lifestyle. It's about well, and even beyond that, it's just leading this wonderful life where you're doing the things you love to do and you're also taking care of your body at the highest level in order to continue to do this. So, I mean, I do my best to minimize my stress every day. But when I was sick, I didn't for the first eight years, I didn't even know anybody.

Every doctor I went to couldn't answer the question. So about six years into suffering, someone handed me a yoga DVD. I didn't even understand it. But what I learned was if I did a little bit every day over the course of a month, I'd see progress if I did a little, if I continued to do a little bit more every day, even though for two or three days or the first week or two, I didn't feel better. In fact, I might have felt a lot of times I felt worse. I would continue to go down and lead this lifestyle of healing.

And then it became it went from the drudgery of having to just get better to this was my lifestyle that I love to live. And so from a medical perspective, I'm like, I know toxins are coming in, but I also know that I can do an unchallenged urine test and I can find mold coming out. That's great. Your body's already doing the work, so I just kind of try to take those simple things I can do at home, the proper hydration and the food. And I mean, I don't know anybody who talks about nutrition better than you do.

And I mean, it's like everything online and it's like your doctors in your front. I talked to so many people are parents, Terry, and and especially because I see a lot of kids with autoimmune encephalitis and I'm like, what can I do to get my kid to do this? And I'm like, Well, the first thing you can do is lead by example. And so if you're an adult who's a caretaker, a friend, or you're a parent, you can be a leader for the other person and model that behavior. So you're caring for yourself first and also leading the other person because it does rub off.

And if you're sick, be the role model for yourself. Be the person who steps up and says, I'm going to live life as if a healthy I was a healthy person. I'm going to lead my lifestyle today as if I were the person who knows how to get better. And like in summits like yours and all the work you do, you give people the proper guidance. Now all they have to do is take action. And so I try to just say take a little bit more action today than you did yesterday. And it's it's like compound interest. I wish someone had told me this.

Like, I heard like what if you if you're 21 and you start investing in index funds, like it's like something like 100 or a couple hundred bucks a month. By the time you're 49, you have $1,000,000 in investments. And all you've done is take out a couple of hundred bucks a month. And it's like that would have been difficult to do back when I was 20, but not impossible. And so if I just start to do a little bit because I think we all look at it and we're like, I'm here and I need to get up here. And I'm like, Well, you're here, let's get you there and then let's catch you too. There and then.

And then when I look at the difference, I'm like, Yeah, there's a long way to go but celebrate down here and live in this place where you've gained so much, you know? And I talk to my patients that you can look at the domain, you think of the domains in a very large way nutrition, food, meeting, the stress, reducing practice that I'm using,

Healing Principles: Detox, Lifestyle, and Small Steps 15:00

the movement practice that I'm using, the gratitude, relationships, spiritual, religious practices that I have. And look at all those domains. It's okay. What's the next small little step that I could take in the domain that interests me? And you work at that little step. If you find you're not doing it, then I go back to, well, you picked a domain that you don't really care about or you picked a step that's too hard. Just just go to domain that you care about and a step that you think you could do.

It's so brilliant, Terry, because I hear in the back of my head like a little, you know, like, yeah, of all the little voices and stuff. Not that I'm hearing voices, but, you know, there's parts of my brain that are going, you know, you're Dr. Tom and you're supposed to get on here and tell everybody all the different pieces of how you can get better. And I'm like, But that's why they come to us, right? So what I recommend to patients is find a practitioner who's highly qualified and you resonate with because if you're if you're probably talking to Dr.

Terri Walls or Dr. Tom Moorcroft, you're probably not in a situation that we're going to fix in a week. Sometimes we pull off miracles, but the reality is you're coming to us because we know how to help successfully guide people along a healing journey and a more of a longer term health thing. And I got into medicine because I wanted to help people live their greatest lives so that their health could be there, so they could do the things they love in life. And then I got in the Lyme and I'm like, Wow, what a weird thing.

But I'm teaching people the step by step approach so that when they're healthy, they can, you know, maintain it. But it's interesting. I hear two things in the back of my head also, and one is a friend of mine was like, every time I hear you talk, Tom, I want you to just say this to everybody now, because what you say is the healing is in the living. And I was like, That's how I got better. Terry I didn't wait until I was better to do what I wanted to do. I did the parts of what I wanted to do that I loved doing to the best of my ability, maybe a little lower because I'm a big 70 percenter.

I'm like, If you think you can, you can walk a mile, walk 7/10 of a mile, right? Like don't overdo it, because a lot of us are so excited that we've gotten some benefit. But really focus on those little wins, those little things in your life that you're passionate about. And yeah, maybe you can't go hike a mountain right now or go skiing, but you can do a piece of that. You can get there's a little increment you can do. And one of my mentors is a boy's a hard lesson for somebody like me who's all in with everything.

But he taught me to say to patients when they're asking about like the whole perspective of all the options that are out there and say, you know, you can say something along the lines of, yes, that's true. There are so many different things to do, but you have enough to work on for today. And it. Isn't it. And it was like and I will admit, Dr. Neal Nathan shared that with me. And I think he deserves all the credit in the world for it because we there are so many different options for the way we could treat someone, but so much of it depends on number one that they are they they are willing and able to do it.

So I'd rather you get one thing that you're going to do and do it because then you're going to be successful and then we're going to build on that momentum. And then the other part is a lot of what we do is there's a gazillion protocols out there, right? There's a protocol in the title of your book. Within the protocol, though, the way we apply a guideline to someone is based upon how their body responds to it. So I really think about there's all these protocols and these great guidelines for how to get better.

Then you sit down with your practitioner and you create your plan. And to me the plan is protocols applied to the individual and then we say, Hey, let's get back together in four weeks, six weeks, 12 weeks, whatever the number is. And we're going to modify your plan. We may integrate other pieces of protocols, but we're going to do it based upon how your body responds. That way we can take great research and apply it, which is typically applied, thought about from a general population, and we apply it to you as the unique, wonderful, amazing individual that you are.

And when we're able to do that, our patients can get a little more space. They're less likely to compare themselves to their friend over here, the Facebook group there, and really compare their progress to themselves because everyone has a unique healing journey. And man, when I used to compare myself to other people, boy, it kicks in the rear end so hard. There's it's so hard to get out from under that stressor. And we don't need to compare ourselves to others. And we realize that we have this beautiful body that's doing everything it can to heal and we can work with it.

Then we have this individual journey where we can celebrate our differences and our wins together. I think that is so true that people can get lost in all these play all these protocols. In many ways, if you read the protocol, there are like 100 and I think 120 different steps that I'm talking about. Well, no, nobody can start 120 steps. I can't do 120 steps. There are a couple of things. I'm really working on it any given moment. So and there's only so much time I can spend on my self-care on any given day, depending on when my next grant deadline is, when my next manuscript deadline is.

And so even my, my own self-care sort of ebbs and flows. You know, some days I can do two and a half hours of self-care. It's really quite lovely. Some days I'm only getting in 35, 45 minutes. And so today, you know, it's going to be a little smaller amount because I have a research abstract that we're submitting to a major meeting that's due this weekend. So I really want to be sure that that abstract is perfect. Yeah, that late, late breaking abstract is a very big deal. It's a very exciting abstract that we're working on.

And so a stack of it, two and a half hours of self-care this week will probably be more like half an hour to an hour of self-care. Well, it's interesting too, because I think about it and it's like I was telling everybody to put themselves first and you know, because if you're a parent or part a spouse or, you know, if you don't put yourself first, you're not fully there for the other person. And but there are days as a caregiver or a loved one where we are definitely putting ourselves first is maybe putting our child first.

But the problem is we tend to just always go outward. And so but I think it is there's that ebb and flow of different things and that kind of goes back to I look at, you know, as an osteopath, we had this crazy concept of body, mind, spirit, unity in the human being from the mid 1800s. And it's really been interwoven into what I've been taught and ingrained in medical school. But the mental, emotional, spiritual component of toxicity or detoxification is a big thing. And so a lot of times I think it's just really important to understand that some of the trigger, especially re triggers in like autoimmunity, like to having flare or as I see it a lot and kids with the pans pandas phenomena that pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric syndrome where we're seeing behavioral regression, OCD rage even food restriction in response to repeated exposure to the same or a variety of infections can once it's triggered stressful events and life traumas and such can be sort of the re triggering inflammatory piece.

So while it may not be a true original trigger, once we've got the autoimmunity set up, we find that a lot of different things re trigger it. And what do we have control over? I mean, I may not have control over having a re-exposure to streptococcal infections, but I certainly and I may not even have the ability to keep my a stressful event out of my life. But my response to a stressful event in my child's life, at school, the lifestyle that we lead, that give them the mental and the emotional sort of flexibility to handle those situations, those are are things that have been ingrained over time.

And we can always slowly move in that direction of more resilience. It's almost like I think about metabolic flexibly and that adaptation. You can do that with dealing with stress. And part of it is like you're week you're describing, I think that you're going to be just fine getting through the whole thing because when you, you your lifestyle for as long as I've known you, it's like balanced. And balanced does not mean I never have stress. It's or I never have any of these other, you know, downtimes.

It's like I just I focus on myself as much as I can. And when I have more time, I do. I've told people forever. They're all like, Do you eat this way and do you live this way? Like, Yeah, I do all the time. And the thing that's really interesting is the sicker you are, probably the more strict you need to be. Maybe in the steps of the walls protocol, right? You need to follow it a little more strictly. But as my diet got super ultra clean when I was sick and I got more flexibility as I was less sick.

So as we bring the toxin load down, we have a little more flexibility.

Mindset, Resilience, and the Healing Journey 25:00

So I can go on a vacation. And if the food's not what I would usually eat, you know, I have a little bit of resilience built into my system. You know that. Hang on time. Yeah, yeah. So true. Early in my healing journey, I had an incredible need for green, for greens, for big salads, kale. And that's probably having 6 to 9 cups of leafy greens measured raw every day. And what felt like was why I could travel and go to conferences. I couldn't quite have met my greens and 36 hours away from that I could tell my mental clarity was declining and I had that really high need for four years.

On the fifth year I could travel and not have my greens for a couple of days and I was still mentally clear. Yeah. So yes, that and my patients told me that as well early on. They have to be very, very attentive in as they get further into the healing during they realize they have a little bit more flexibility with either their detox protocol, their stress reduction protocol, the rigor of of some particular food nutrient that they so appreciate, they finally have replenished enough that they have a little more flexibility.

Yeah, something that my patients have really taught me that I had to pay more and more attention to that and regain talking about their their purpose, the hero's journey, the mindset of have you found that in your in your practice? Yeah, I do. I mean, first and foremost, I find it in my own life. So I, I have a and of one that I experience every single day. And yeah, I do. I find that like the people who continue to live their lives and focus have a support system that really helps them focus on healing.

And and actually, I love the hero's journey conversation because the word journey is really important. It's like, you know, who was it? T.S. Eliot. I think like, you know, basically like you I'm the quotes escaping me, but it's like essentially, you know, that you go through your entire journey and then you come back around and you arrive to your starting point for the first time. And it's interesting because it's like when you when you go through your journey, you learn so much. And it's not about the destination.

It's really about the the all the little pieces along the way. And there's so many nuances throughout our day that are so wonderful. And for me, I find that those who get focused on a label, Terry, like I'm a limey or a moldy, or my kid has pens and they're going to have this forever and no one listens to us and all this the think about just like do an exercise today and you could do it for the whole day. You probably only need to do it for 20 minutes. Think about what repetitive thoughts you hear in your head that you're saying about your health.

And if those repetitive thoughts are, I'm a limey and mom all day, I'm not getting better. Life is really hard. I need to do more research to find out how to get myself better. These are all things that are really disempowering. But there's our nervous system sets them up to protect us. And I find that my patients who live in that zone tend to have a much harder journey. And those who are kind of like, I'm sick, I'm here, let's work together. I'm ready to do the work. I have things to do in my life.

They seem to get better a lot more easily. So the folks on the other side who are having that habitual pattern of negative thinking, we can work with them to slowly move in that direction. And again, it's like those steps you're talking about, you don't do 120, you start with one step and like with food, if your kid doesn't want to eat green leafy vegetables, it's not remove all the sugar and get them eating green. Leafy is it's maybe what? Let's add one vegetable that they will eat and then get their body used to it and then add to.

So I recommend people just take a little break and if you if you're aware that you're calling yourself a limey, maybe you just create a little mantra that you say to yourself when you recognize that. So you don't beat yourself up for calling yourself a limey. You just go, Hey, you know, I'm a person as Lyme disease, and I'm in the process of healing a completely different statement that I'm a limey because a limey basically is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if you're like constantly worried about your EMS, constantly worried about your child's pins, you're like I say to people, like, take a moment to focus on the good stuff or the possibility, because you're never going to forget.

You don't feel well. It's like essentially impossible if you can think yourself out of feeling poorly, then you're healed, right? And I think there are people that power your brain, mind and your body are that powerful. Most of us don't have that in us. Right. I think I think we kind of need a combination of all the things, which is why I love when people ask me for where's the go to resource for autoimmune eating and diet and lifestyle stuff. I send them to your book because it's like it's the comprehensive peace.

So it's possible all these things are possible. But when we label ourselves as sick, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And when we label ourselves as someone who is sick and getting better, well, we at least have a half a chance to get there and most of the people who just change their mindset a little bit ah, it is amazing how many people where I get testimonials for our practice and almost every once in a while said, Oh, they gave me this herb, they gave me this glue to fire and they did this. They found out what was wrong, but most of them are.

They helped me sort of identify my patterns of thinking and they got me meditating or they got me reading or they got me back into the thing that I love to do. I'm playing guitar again, I'm writing, I'm sewing, and now I see that even that there is a possibility for me to get healing, to receive healing. And so I tell people, like one of the biggest things I run into, Terry, when I interview my patients is it's almost like people if I was on a cliff over here and there's a rope bridge on the other side 200 feet away, and you said if you walk to the other side, you'd be healed.

Most people would really second would have a hard time figuring out whether they want to walk across a little rope this, you know, this wide with two little handrails over a 200, you know, a cliff that's going to fall to your death if you miss it. But if you're a kid or your partner were on the other side, you'd sprint, you wouldn't go. You would overcome every single obstacle of fear and anxiety inside you. And it might not be easy, but you would do it. So I just ask people to do that for themselves because your will, you are worthy to receive healing.

It's not just for other people, but you are so worthy. And my goal really in life is to help people shine their light, you know, to inspire other people and help them shine their light on the earth because they're so unique. And I'm just it's so interesting. And yes, it's a protective mechanism where we would do anything for our kid that we might not even do for ourselves. But I'm like, when we have a moment to heal, we're safe, right? We have a team around us who can support us or we're creating a team.

We may be in the process of creating our team, but we know that other people are able to heal. So let's just be open to receive it and shine that love that we share to everybody else on ourselves so that we can really crank up that light and then we can share even more love with those around us. Now, again, everyone who's listening, we're talking about, in a way, the concept of learned helplessness. We common I see patients who have adopted learned helplessness and they don't think there's anything that they can do.

They're waiting for Tom's magic elixir or my magic elixir that will heal them without any effort on their part. And that's not the person I will let into my practice because we interview folks, to be sure that they're willing to do some work that will help them give them suggestions about their little tiny steps. But if someone has so learned helplessness that they can't envision taking any action, doing any work, then they're not someone I can help. We really have to help people get out of that learned helplessness.

And if we can do that little step by step, then really wonderful things happen. And I think your point is so important because I find that people are we're in a society where we've given control away to others and our medical system has designed in such a way to for us to think we need a surgery or a pill to get better. So that is an external locus of control. And I just want people to recognize that they can bring it back in. And in my journey, 70 to 75% of my healing was everything I did. And it wasn't until I did all that work over two years that then an opportunity to walk into the office of the two doctors who helped me figure out what that last 30% was, was done.

But now if you think about placebo, you're saying a third of medicine is in your mind, body is in your in your head. And we have to it's so powerful our mind that we have to control for it

Practical Self-Care, Gratitude, and Next Steps 35:00

in pharmaceutical studies to see if a pill works or if it was just your mind making it seem like it worked. But in my world, 70 to 80% of your healing is all in you, and you might need ten 20% help from somebody else in a chronic setting. A lot of acute things. That's where modern medicine shines. So I just think it's so important. And you also reminded me of one thing I think that's a really important point is the learned helplessness. Helplessness, the victim mentality that a lot of people talk about.

I feel like when you're talking to people like us, that is not a we're not putting anyone down. We're not saying that you did something wrong. You act. There's actually research that shows if you're chronically ill over time, your nervous system is trying to protect you. And that's why it sets up this way of thinking. So and then if you look at Lyme disease like so we talk a lot about poly vagal theory, right? Fight or flight or freeze. So we have this if you think you can win, you're going to either fight the saber tooth tiger or you're going to run away from the saber tooth tiger. Right.

So when you when you have the energy and the feeling that you can succeed, you're going to fight or you're going to run away. And that's what most people think of as our sympathetic nervous system. And then we think of parasympathetic as a thing where we rest and rejuvenate and we have fun with our friends. You know, we laugh and giggle with our children. You know, it's a relaxed time where we feel safe and that's parasympathetic. But there's another part of the parasympathetic nervous system that let's go back to my saber tooth tiger that I just pulled out of the hat there.

And what if the saber tooth tiger grabs you and you're in the saber? And we, many of us have seen a cat outside it grabs a chipmunk or a mouse, and the mouse that was just running away will stop and just play dead. And what we find is that's a situation where our nervous system feels that it can no longer win. It's run out of energy, it's run out of options. And the best thing it can do to remain safe and alive is to freeze. But in a in a human being, this freeze state, that you lower your eyes, you lower your head, your voice goes down, and you hope your mike picks it up and and it's like people withdraw.

And that's where you saw so much with COVID forced isolation is this is the same phenomenon as forced isolation from your infection. So I got really interested in how do we get people out of a freeze and. Well, a lot of people think we stay in. We're either in the freeze or fight or flight. And I'm like, well, different days. You could be in both. So it's your nervous system isn't just stuck in one place, but what's really interesting is how do we know? How do we teach the nervous system it's safe to heal and get out of that frozen state?

Well, one of the ways is we have to use our voice and expression and interact with each other, even if it's virtually. But what's really interesting is Lyme disease has the ability to cause metabolic disruption in areas of your brain that allow you to understand gesture, facial expression and voice, intonation, action. So now those three things are critical for you to understand that you are safe. But now so you've been sick for a while with Lyme disease. It's helped you get into this state of frozen.

So again, it's not you didn't make yourself a victim here you were. You did receive some Lyme spirit kits that made you sick. But part of that is it could change your brain in a way that you don't know you're safe. But what's really cool about this, Terry, is we're not letting anybody off the hook here. It doesn't mean that old made it. So I can't recognize I can get better. So now I'm just screwed forever. That's not the case. What's so great is you have an ability to read Booth that those areas of your brain by the way you think and the the mindset practice you have by the gratitude you practice by the food you put in.

So one of the easiest things people can do is recognize that there's 8 to 12 or I should say 9 to 12 cups of fresh veggies is actually don't just do it because Terri Walls told you to and Tom said Terry was right. Don't do it because you have to do it. Make it a ritual where you say, this is a part of my healing process. This supplement I'm taking, you know, whether it's my you, my organ, my pill with my desiccated organs or whatever it is, use it as a symbol to your body and your mind and your heart that you love yourself so much you're willing to do whatever it takes to heal.

Because the more you do, these little you make. So you may have no energy to do much of anything other than eat and take a couple of pills and then sleep. Make all three of those situations like this ritual of healing and acknowledge it and give it back to yourself. I am loving myself by taking this pill. I am drinking my water with my electrolytes in my height or whatever it is, and really just celebrate it because so many us get into this pill fatigue thing. I'm not fatigued from taking anything because I'm so excited that I'm loving myself and it helps you get better.

And so then you can reverse those patterns in your brain and put your brain back on track and make your brain inhospitable for the Lyme, which then makes your Lyme easier to treat and it makes harder it harder for the Lyme. So I always say like become the world's worst bacterial and viral host. Like don't just make it so that it can't live in your body, you know? And if it does live in your body because I don't know if lives in me or not, I just haven't had a symptom for 12 years. So just make it so that if it is living in you, it's symbiosis and you're in charge, right?

And make your body this temple and just share that love with it through your actions. Because sometimes you don't have the energy to do a 30 minute meditation or go in the Himalayas for two months. Like some of the people I talk to, you know, do. Simple. Things and celebrate how much you love yourself and care for yourself. Because these are the hidden keys to overcoming autoimmunity and chronic infections. It's not that we don't have to do the other work, but we need the energy to do it. And we need to take.

Let's pretend placebo is only a third of your healing. I'm going to harness that stuff all day long because I know Lipitor is only 42% effective, which means it's only 8% effective over placebo. I'll take that. I'll take those odds all day. I'm going to bet on me because I know I'm showing up for me. So anyway. Now this has been just so wonderful. You and I could chat all day. I'm so looking forward to the next time that I see you. Now, briefly, could you give our listeners one simple next step that they could take?

Yeah, for me, it's it's really about the power of gratitude and self-love. So I try to make things very complex. So I've learned to boil them down a little. I learned a quick trick from Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy that I love to share. At the end of your day, give yourself 3 minutes, no more, no less. Write down three good things that happened if you had the worst day you've ever had. Write down three lessons you take from the day. And I found the smaller, the better. And then write down three things that are going to be amazing tomorrow.

Three wins you're going to have, doesn't matter how big or small. Again, smaller is usually better after you write these three things down are, I should say, these six things down in 3 minutes, read them over one time and go to bed. When you wake up, when you wake up the next, read them again, especially the three that are going to be great for today. Two things that are important. The first 3 to 6 days are probably going to seem like this is ridiculous, and then all of a sudden you're going to notice, Holy cow, I've got 20 things that I'm grateful for because you start to savor the little moments in your life.

The other powerful part to bring this to a close here, Terry, is when you go to a lot of times and you write down the three wins you're going to have for tomorrow or even the ones that you had today, you're conscious mind is going to go, oh, no, no, no, no, that's too hard. You can't do that. You failed yesterday. Tomorrow is not going to be any different. The beauty of doing it right before bed is when you eventually fall asleep or you get so insomnia that you're hallucinating and you dissociate from your conscious mind and your subconscious kind of really taps into its connection with life and this miracle of life and it really becomes super conscious and you're open to new possibilities and you're going to wake up the next day and you're going to have answers to questions.

You never even knew were a question. And your life is going to change. And all you have to do is spend 3 minutes at night and 15 seconds reading them in the morning. And after you do that for seven, ten days, send me an email and let me know how it goes. That is amazing. Okay, Tom, this this has just been so, so wonderful. Where can people find you to learn more about the amazing work that you do? Yeah. Thank you. I'm at Origins of Health.com and on social media. You know, most of the YouTube and Facebook is Origins of Health, where Dr.

Tom Mark hopped on Instagram. And then we have a great program for people who are interested in this kind of work and adding this to their armamentarium, if you will, because we're on we're off waging this sort of health march together called the Thrive with Lyme Blueprint and just put dot com after that and you can find all about it has Lyme in the name but it's really for anybody who this kind of conversation resonates with. Tom, it's always a pleasure to chat with you and look forward the next time we get to see each other in person.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Terry, and thank you, everyone else. It's an honor and much love to all of you.