Full Transcript Introduction to chronic illness and root-cause care 0:00 I'm not gonna be able to change your diet enough to get you past chronic illness. 0:03 I personally don't believe that if you switch someone from an organic, whole food, macro-balanced, eating enough calorie diet to vegan, 0:10 all of a sudden they're just gonna get cured. 0:11 Or carnivore, or you name the other diet, GAPS or FODMAP, they can be helpful. 0:16 Oftentimes, also with those labs, I am like, oh well, your mitochondria are completely shut down, you're full of aspergillus, 0:22 You have radium, and you also have Lyme, Bartonella and Babesia. 0:26 Yeah, there's no diet that's gonna to you out of that. 0:28 If you're overwhelmed with chronic health symptoms and still don't have answers, you are not an alum. 0:32 I'm Dr. 0:33 Javan and on redefining wellness with Dr Javin, we'll be exploring root causes like Lyme disease, mold and parasites and I'll guide you with simple and 0:42 practical steps towards real healing. 0:46 So I'm John Gaitanis, I am a child neurologist, also on the board of MedMaps. 0:51 And we are here at Medmaps conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, March, 2026. I would even more. 0:59 It was chiropractor who spoke to us on. 1:02 something that I know nothing about, which is radiation, but I want to let him bring the conversation to a little more to his practice, 1:09 the kind of patients he sees and get some of his clinical insights. 1:12 So with that, Javan, thanks for joining me. 1:13 Well, thank you. 1:14 Thanks for inviting me to this event. 1:15 It's been amazing. 1:16 Yeah, I'm happy. 1:17 And I mean, do you find, now is this your first? 1:20 This is my very first one, yeah. 1:21 All right. 1:22 Would you say having come that first time, sometimes the impression is that wow, these are my people. 1:27 But do you have a little bit of that sense? 1:29 Definitely. 1:30 You know, I wasn't sure what to expect because I'd had some kids that had came into me five, seven years ago that I worked with. 1:38 I had been to docs that were maps docs, right? 1:41 Map trained. 1:41 And so I add a concept of what some of them were doing. 1:44 But when I got here, it was just like, wow, you know. 1:47 Everybody's in the fight for kids. 1:50 and I haven't really seen anybody make any kind of statements where you know, there's any, like, this is better than that.
Meeting at the MAPS conference 1:58 It's just like hey, how can we help each other? 1:59 Yeah. 2:00 I think it does create a family dynamic. 2:03 And I thing hard of it is we're fighting, a lot of us are fighting very much the same battle. 2:08 Mm-hmm. 2:08 and it's a terrible analogy, but I can think of the island of misfit toys in the Christmas movie. 2:15 You know the toys that nobody wanted, it was sad. 2:17 But sometimes in medicine, I feel like a lotta the traditional colleagues don't want to see pans, pandas, pots, chronic fatigue. 2:25 The whole list of diagnoses that nobody wants to touch. 2:28 And so the patients come to you feeling gaslit and ignored. 2:32 Um, and so it sounds like you've got a lot of experience seeing that type of patient. 2:37 Oh, for sure. 2:38 I actually just hired an MD onto my team locally in Kansas City and didn't have any functional medicine training prior. 2:45 And I was like, that's all right. 2:47 We'll teach you. 2:48 Here's the one thing that you're going to run into. 2:50 Remember all those patients that were the stressful ones, the ones that a lot of clinicians are like I don't want to see that person. 2:59 As you said, then the misfit toys or the unseen patient. 3:03 That's everyone we see. 3:05 Yeah. 3:06 Now we just take the time and we figure it out. 3:08 We get to the bottom of it. 3:11 I mean, that was my story, just like so many of us that are in this. 3:15 And it creates the passion. 3:17 Yeah. 3:18 I would just say, I, mean in some sense, this is the case, but chiropractic training might be better suited to addressing those patients because so, 3:27 many patients who come for chriopractic care, already things weren't working for them. 3:32 Like they came having tried so much medical treatments, everything failed. 3:38 And then you get these amazing outcome stories. 3:41 Like you must have experienced that. 3:42 Oh, for sure. 3:43 And I think one of the things from chiropractic that just in our training is there's a couple of ways that you can look at the body. 3:50 You can at it from the microscopic, you look the pharmacology or you could be specially trained as a neurologist or a cardiologist or some of these brilliant minds, 4:03 but they're trained in one direction. 4:05 They look that piece. 4:06 Whereas chiropractic, we look at the entire body as a whole, and you're looking for what is creating interference.
Chiropractic philosophy and whole-body assessment 4:13 Now, original chirapractor training, what most people think about is the spine and adjusting, but just the philosophy conceptually is figure out what's 4:23 blocking the body from being healthy and remove that. 4:25 Yeah. 4:26 And let the buddy go back to normal. 4:27 So that idea immediately that kind of concept when I meet with a patient, I'm like, okay, well, here's your symptoms that you just told me about. 4:36 Why do those exist? 4:36 What is not allowing normal function is just the way that my brain is operating. 4:42 And so then when you start bringing in Lyme and mold and radioactive elements and all these things, like oh, that would stop normal functioning. 4:48 How do we remove that? 4:49 How to we change that, how do optimize away from that. 4:53 I mean, I think this is the case in my patients, but it sounds like in yours, it's often not a single entity. 5:01 One thing's piling onto another. 5:03 Yeah. 5:03 It's never one thing. 5:04 I end up oftentimes telling someone is, There's no like, well, what's the magic fix? 5:13 What's? 5:13 The one thing that I'm really going to feel so much better from them like that. 5:17 That happens, but that is not normal. 5:21 I remember a parent of an autistic child came in. 5:27 She had, I was reading on this forum and they said, Methylated B12 got their kid to talk. 5:32 Can we try that? 5:33 I was like, well, yeah, but it's usually not that simple. 5:36 It's not just like the one thing's gonna work for everybody, right? 5:40 And once you're weakened, once your body is broken down, I use a backpack analogy. 5:44 I'm like if you put your backpack on in high school, and I know kids today don't do this, for the rest of us that are 30 plus, 5:51 we had books. 5:52 And one book carrying around, you'd do that all day. 5:55 Two and three, starts to get heavier. 5:57 Well, a lot of our clients, the ones that chronically ill, My backpack has gotten so heavy with the lime, the mold, radiation, 6:07 parasites, and toxins from the environment. 6:11 They can't even stand up anymore. 6:13 It's soo heavy that, you know, if it's a thousand pounds, can you stand? 6:18 No. 6:18 If it 500 pounds can stand, no. 6:19 200 pounds stand. 6:19 Some people, yeah. 6:25 So if I take five and 10 and 15 pounds out of it, you can't stand up. 6:28 So the weight of the backpack or the way the burden on your body is so great. 6:33 Yeah. 6:34 That even as we work on them and we remove one thing, two things, three things. 6:38 You don't feel the change. 6:40 Which is why I think it gets so confusing to go right back to your question of, is it one thing? 6:45 No, almost never. 6:46 It's also why fixing one things oftentimes you don't necessarily always get results. 6:51 That's true. 6:52 I mean, because your lecture added one book to that backpack I never think about. 6:59 radiation, right? 6:59 I don't even go there. 7:01 And so, but my own, my, if I had to say, what are the common ones I look at? 7:06 Like I often, you know, I feel like infections are a really common one.
Layered causes: toxins, infections, and environment 7:10 Right. 7:10 We have to think about tick-borne infections. 7:12 Sometimes there's a neuroviral thing that we have think, about of course, nutrition and for nutrition is a real problem and all the various exposures from 7:22 eating ultra-processed foods, et cetera. 7:25 Lack of exercise. 7:26 We've got to think too about telephone and internet use and why mine's not on me. 7:33 Yeah. 7:33 I mean, we're all like 5G. 7:36 So you start to pile up, right? 7:38 And you think, okay, now which one am I going to tackle first? 7:41 So how do you address that part of it? 7:44 In my education, I kind of tell people as we are getting into the process, there's toxins, trauma, and infections. 7:53 Those are the things that are hindering you that are not lifestyle oriented. 7:59 Cause you mentioned diet and shoot, do you eat enough calories? 8:03 Do you get the right kind of calories like there's so much that you can get into. 8:07 But my note, I structured in a way where even the note takes us down through the pathway that I want to help somebody heal. 8:15 So the first part of the notice, Do You live in an environment that is safe enough for you to be able to get well? 8:20 And it says air. 8:22 Radon mold, let's talk about those. 8:25 Water, which is what I presented on, right? 8:27 Like look up your water. 8:28 What's in there? 8:29 Is it clean? 8:29 Can we make it cleaner? 8:30 can we take that burden off of you if you're drinking radium or uranium in your Water? 8:35 Then I go from there. 8:37 I went to food and hygiene products. 8:39 So like what's the toxin in you food hygiene product? 8:41 So I have them kind of go through that with a health coach on my team so that we can support them in understanding Yeah, 8:48 that way that I was brought up with bleach being a good thing, like the smell is clean. 8:54 No, it's actually really harmful to you. 8:55 If you can smell a chemical, potentially it could be harmful, especially when that harsh. 9:00 Yeah. 9:01 So we go through that. 9:02 I go to a dental and implants. 9:05 It's like, let's create a safe environment. 9:06 That's got to be the beginning point. 9:09 And then we can go into when you're in a save environment, Do you feel safe in that environment? 9:16 Like I've created this little bubble for you to live in when you go home. 9:19 Do feel good there? 9:20 Do, you, feel, safe there. 9:21 And I don't mean feel in a, my symptoms are all gone away, but to where you're not worried about things. 9:27 So your nervous system can calm so that you can get out of fight or flight. 9:31 You can start to rest. 9:31 Your cortisol could come down. 9:33 Then we can go into talking about all the fun stuff that we all get on stage and talk about, which is the parasites, the Lyme disease, 9:42 toxins that are mold or glyphosate or atrazines. 9:47 Because if you're not in a safe environment, you are just re-toxing constantly, it's really hard to move the needle for somebody. 9:53 It's not that it can't be done. 9:54 Yeah. 9:55 That just makes it way harder. 9:57 Yeah. 9:58 I mean, it sounds like you kind of hit the lifestyle things first, the environment, and then move in. 10:03 Once you kinda get those established, so you have your pillars, that sounds, like, you've got the nutrition, water, those environmental factors, 10:10 then you move to the testing. 10:13 Is that a fair? 10:14 Well, I'm doing the test. 10:16 You can do both. 10:16 Before you even come into my clinic. 10:17 All right, all right. 10:18 So yeah. 10:19 Seek a walk and chew gum, too. 10:20 And part of the reason for the I don't know where to take your lifestyle. 10:25 Yeah, there's definitely standards, right? 10:27 There's Definitely standards. 10:28 But I Don't necessarily know exactly where I take a lifestyle until I have some of the data. 10:31 So, um, do you have oxalates in your body? 10:34 Yeah. 10:34 If you Have oxlates In your Body, then I'm going to look at mold. 10:38 And if you. 10:39 Have radium in Your hair or in you're urine, I am definitely going and looking at your water. 10:44 Got it. 10:45 It definitely helps to to Take me down a path. 10:47 I think there is really great diets out there, but there are so many. 10:52 And this is always triggering for a lot of docs. 10:55 Um, the majority of my patients that come in are already eating. 10:59 Well, they're already. 11:00 Eating a whole food, organic diet. 11:03 Yeah. 11:04 Most of the time I'm not going to be able to change your diet enough to get you past chronic illness. 11:09 And that's so crazy for some people to hear, but it's because the people coming to me are. 11:13 Pretty good.
Diet limits and the backpack analogy 11:17 And I personally don't believe that if you switch someone from an organic, whole food, macro balanced, eating enough calorie diet to vegan, 11:25 all of a sudden they're just gonna be cured. 11:27 Or carnivore, or you name the other diet, GAPS or FODMAP, they can be helpful. 11:33 But oftentimes also with those labs, I'm like, oh, well, your mitochondria completely shut down. 11:39 You're full of aspergillus, you have radium, You also have Lyme, Bartonella and Babesia. 11:45 Yeah, there's no diet that's going to get you out of that. 11:47 So that why it's so important for me to do that because also I find that very restrictive diets for the majority of people, 11:56 not everyone, but the major of the people that are chronically ill is even more stressful. 12:01 It's gonna graze cortisol, it's going to cause you to be in fight or flight because you don't know what to eat. 12:07 Then sometimes the benefit that we get out of it. 12:10 I'm going to throw one other thing in there, which is concussion. 12:13 So I would imagine, cause I see a lot of chronic fatigue, myalgic encephalitis, POTS, pans, and every now and then the concussions was part of the story 12:23 or it might've been a major trigger. 12:25 And unless he asked the question, you may not get that, that info. 12:28 What I find is it behaves not that dissimilar from, from say like a pansphere has a of those same features, the brain fog. 12:37 The chronic fatigue, sometimes lightheadedness, all can relate to it. 12:41 I love that you brought that in there. 12:42 And I agree with you completely. 12:45 Undiagnosed head trauma, which I said from stage yesterday, I was like, ah, remember getting a stinger and walking back to the huddle and no one ever knew. 12:53 Who knows how many. 12:55 head traumas I've been through in football and wrestling and track, well, not track but all these other sports, but that is missed by so many people. 13:04 And as a neurologist, I'm sure you're an expert in finding it. 13:07 We always think about it, we ask about, and one thing I started to conceptualize is that I think concussion and the infection story have a lot of similar dynamics. 13:18 So when you get into, say somebody comes in with Lyme and you go through the history, you find out that they actually, they had say Mycoplasma or they 13:26 have EBV and then they the Lyne. 13:28 It wasn't often the first thing. 13:30 They had multiple different infectious or inflammatory triggers and they got hit by the one that really caused everything to plummet. 13:38 So it's, in a way, I think, and concussion is similar. 13:41 If you have that single concoction and you fully recover, you're probably going to be fine. 13:45 But if you, have concusion after concussion, after a concussions, there's going be one where just the bottom drops out. 13:51 And then sometimes you can have a contusion and infection. 13:54 Right? 13:54 So you could have, a little bit of everything, but I, think in way I feel like the conduction piece and the infectious piece, 14:00 they mirror each other a lot and symptoms are similar, And I think having sometimes a frequent history of multiple events is a common part of the story. 14:09 I don't know if you see something similar. 14:11 Definitely have. 14:12 Um, I w I can't say that concussion is, uh, large topic of what I do, but I've worked with a lot of neurologists or functional neurologist or people that 14:23 specialize into more concussive type traumas or head traumAs, um, because I do believe that, I mean, when you get inflammation in the brain, 14:34 faculty and function changes. 14:36 And if all of a sudden your immune system isn't operating normally, if you have a chronic inflammatory thing happening that's self-perpetuating,
Concussion, brain inflammation, and vestibular rehab 14:46 then there may not be a easy way out of that and you need to bring in help. 14:53 I remember a woman I had worked with that had numerous concussions. 14:58 And a game changer for her was getting into vestibular therapy. 15:03 And by the time she started changing the brain dynamic, all of the internal work we did became so much more effective and she became significantly less reactive. 15:14 So I definitely brought in some of those tools over time. 15:16 So the chiropractic neurologists I've worked with have used eye tracking as a key feature. 15:22 They would look at nystagmus, sometimes turn the patient, see how their eyes are behaving, and then incorporate almost what looks like physical therapy 15:31 plan to work on balance coordination and sort of isolate often one side of the body versus the other to. 15:37 Work on the area that's weaker. 15:39 Um, but the eye movements were a giveaway and we don't like it. 15:43 I mean, clinically, that's not an area we spend a lot of time thinking about. 15:47 Have you ever worked with anyone who's used the tracking and then yeah, tell me about your experience there. 15:54 Yeah, I was more of just the observer more like where you are. 15:58 They were at a functional neurology clinic and they're using that to. 16:04 to both, I guess you could say diagnose or at least track progress through recovery. 16:09 Because when the eyes, to the best of my ability to explain it, when when he eyes aren't aligned with what the body wants you to do, 16:17 it's going to create a fight or flight response that then for me was disallowing me to be able to even bring in supplemental protocols, 16:27 work on those Lyme and other types of infections. 16:31 And I think it is an underutilized tool. 16:33 So what I found is that chiropractic neurologists were using that both the diagnostic and treatment plan, we're getting really good outcomes. 16:42 What they weren't doing is they were doing the kind of diagnostic approach you're doing now. 16:46 I wonder if you merge those two. 16:47 You know, it really could perhaps yield an even better assessment or outcome. 16:53 I would agree. 16:53 I think, you know, and more that the chiropractor, the functional medicine world, I remember going to some training in both and it's like functional neurology 17:03 is years and years of training. 17:05 Yeah. 17:05 And then functional Medicine is as you never ending palette of information to bring in. 17:11 and I even tell patients, like I need you to go functionalologist. 17:14 Like I wish I knew all that they knew about that, but it was just It's overwhelming to know them all. 17:19 And I, but I think the, what I'm, where this is bringing my mind, those are often seeing the same patient, But they're doing their assessment in two very 17:27 different ways. 17:27 Yeah. 17:28 and I there is a place for both to some degree. 17:32 Because one of the areas that's often overlooked in things like chronic fatigue is the role of exercise. 17:37 I feel like the functional neurologists have seen, they do incorporate a physical therapy plan as part of it. 17:42 And that's an area I have a little trouble counseling is exactly how I mean, I try to give that guidance as best as I can, 17:48 but it's definitely outside my expertise. 17:50 But I feel like you can't necessarily make that full recovery without the exercise component. 17:55 I think I agree. 17:56 And even beyond functional neurology, limbic retraining type exercises, vagal nerve exercises. 18:04 There's a program called Primal Trust that Doctor of Physical Therapy built and it's an online membership. 18:10 And it is great for people that are stuck in that fight or flight type state. 18:14 So these are more like your mass cell, SIRS type individuals a lot of times, but I found it to be incredibly helpful for PANS families because it so stressful 18:27 to have a child that is very difficult to manage at times. 18:31 And the parents then will become stressed out, which then stresses the family. 18:36 And I've seen getting them in there.
Functional neurology, exercise, and brain retraining 18:38 What I call it is physical therapy for the brain. 18:41 Yeah. 18:41 I'm like, so often we need to be doing physical for their brain because even for individuals that are sick, it creates adaptations, 18:48 whether that's to how you behave in life, how do you respond to different types of triggers, pollen mold in the hotel. 18:55 And we have to rehab your brain out of that. 18:58 Yep. 18:59 So that you can get back to the normal function. 19:02 If you go to a hotel room, or a Walmart or wherever, and you smell or your body senses the slightest amount of mold and then you get a headache or migraine. 19:11 That is a, in my opinion, over the top response for what your immune system should be creating. 19:17 Give you a little post nasal drip, have your face red in a bit, that tells you, hey, this is an area where my body's having a response. 19:22 We don't have to go all the way to, I mean I've had clients that were having almost seizures from walking into a place with mold because their body was 19:30 so hyper reactive. 19:31 That's where I send to a primal trust or a functional neurologist. 19:34 Let's do some brain rehab. 19:36 One, one part I think about there from that is sewn pants, for example, I might get the inflammation down, but if they had a lot of fight or flight, 19:43 even once you get things in a better state physiologically, the fight-or-flight is a learned response. 19:48 It might continue on much longer. 19:50 And so there often is still a need to help ease that adrenaline reaction. 19:56 Sometimes that makes people think they're still in a flare, but it really may be that the fight or flight itself has to be dealt with as a separate issue. 20:03 And you can do both. 20:05 You know, you could certainly do Both. 20:06 But I think if you don't get the inflammation down, You'll never get a fight of light down. 20:09 Yeah. 20:09 you got to kind of treat the infection or get information out first. 20:13 But once you do that, that fight or flight can really perpetuate for long after. 20:17 Yeah. 20:17 With some of the doctors in my clinic, I mean, well, as needed for the individual, uh, always like to try to start natural and use, 20:24 a queer sin and LDN and DAO try bring down histamine response in the body. 20:30 That's generating inflammation. 20:31 Maybe that's not strong enough. 20:32 And they would have to go to chromal and cathodic and LDN. 20:35 Uh, sometimes peptides like diamonds and alpha KPV, BPC TB 500. Like there's. 20:42 a plethora of options to bring down inflammation. 20:45 But I tell people, I'm like, just because you put a Band-Aid on it and it's better for the moment, doesn't mean it is gone. 20:53 We've got to do something that retrains your body out of that behavior. 20:56 And with pandas, now you have an antibody in your, and anytime your mucous is going to get triggered, if you go back there for, 21:02 up to a year, And once we get past the year, I see a lot more long-term success, which means we've ruined enough of that response. 21:12 The bodies, the memory cells are calming. 21:15 I'm not saying it's perfect, but we're calming, so yeah, it, looking at the person in a holistic view, back to that chiropractic idea of like the philosophy 21:28 being remove the interference and let the body heal. 21:32 The problem with that statement is you assume the body is going to heal correctly on its own. 21:37 When you remove the interference, what I've found is the bodies really good at adapting to survive and really bad at returning back to what it was like 21:45 before that adaptation without some help. 21:48 That describes it perfectly. 21:51 Removing the trigger is never sufficient. 21:54 The healing process is really very different than just treating an infection. 22:00 You can treat the infection, but the healing is something that we don't learn in medical school. 22:06 But it's a whole different kind of medicine that really here at MAPS that that, we focus on.
Healing beyond triggers and closing remarks 22:11 Yeah, it has been great. 22:13 And the conversations I've been having with every degree type, whether it's a RN, a coach, medical doctor, naturopath, DO. 22:25 Everybody's view is just like, how do we find every tool that you can possibly find and work together to solve problems? 22:32 I've gotten so many contacts of physicians with different specialties and all across the nation. 22:38 And I'm like, perfect. 22:39 Now when I have a client that needs a psychiatrist in New Jersey, I got somebody. 22:43 Exactly. 22:44 I was like that's perfect because there's so many times where, you know, yeah, can work with somebody, they can fly in and we can get them going, 22:52 work them virtually later on. 22:55 But sometimes people are chronic enough, and they need lots of tools. 23:01 the community. 23:02 Well, it's a great reminder that as we wrap up this discussion, there was a good discussion. 23:06 Let us know where to find you. 23:07 Yeah, I'm in Kansas City, Missouri and finding me is usually pretty easy. 23:11 You just use my name, Dr. 23:12 Jaben Moore. 23:13 I am on almost every platform, have a podcast and we're putting out content constantly because when I was sick, and I had Lyme disease, 23:23 It was 2012. There wasn't a lot of people out there teaching resources. 23:34 So my goal has just been to be able to get information to people so that they have the informed consent to make a decision. 23:39 Yeah. 23:40 That's great. 23:41 Others can have hopefully a smoother and better journey than perhaps the one you had to go through. 23:45 Well, I appreciate it. 23:47 I mean, Simon's been awesome. 23:48 We'll talk more and we'll see you next year, right? 23:51 Absolutely. 23:51 Awesome. 23:51 Javen, thanks for your time. 23:52 Thank you. 23:54 Thank you for tuning in to redefining wellness with Dr. 23:56 Javin. 23:56 If this episode spoke to you, please follow and share this podcast with someone who is ready to take control of their chronic health symptoms. 24:04 Also, consider leaving a review. 24:06 It helps more people find the show. 24:08 See you here again.
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