 Hello, everybody. It is Dr. Jill Carnahan and you're live with me today for Q&A. We have collected your questions over the last several days on Instagram and Facebook. So I have a whole list to go through and I will also be watching on the feed. So if you want to ask if you catch me live right now and want to throw in a question or two, I would love to answer. This is the first time I'm actually doing a Q&A live here, but I have a suspicion that it will go well and that hopefully you'll get a lot of questions answered and maybe someone else will answer it. We'll ask a question that you would have liked to hear, but stay tuned because like I said, if this goes well, I will be doing this every month or every several months. And so I will be back again to answer your questions live. I even asked my staff to write in and tell me some questions because they get on the phones at our office and they get questions all the time. So staff members, if you're out there or you're listening, feel free to write in questions as well of things that you often hear. So just a little bit of background. Most of you know I have a practice in Louisville, Colorado out here we call it Louisville not Louisville. But I have been out here for 10 years and I've been doing functional medicine for almost 20 years if you can imagine that my story and just a little bit of a nutshell is I always wanted to be a healer I didn't really understand it as a child. One of those of us who are healers were kind of born with that desire to heal and to help people. And I actually looked at physical therapy and chiropractic school and natural pathic school and acupuncture school because I knew I wanted to help people to heal from the inside out and not just use drugs and medicine. But then I actually applied to allopathic MD school in Chicago and I started getting acceptance letters. So what I ended up doing is I went that route because I felt like that would be the best route to really get into the system and understand the predominant system in the world, which is still allopathic medicine and still the best place you want to go if you get a broken bone or a car accident or trauma or heart attack or stroke. There's really no better system that takes care of emergencies. But we're not so good with chronic illness like infections and toxins and mold related illness and even things like diabetes and obesity. So the combination I always say now I have a bigger toolbox. So not only do I have drugs and surgery at my disposal or referrals, but I understand that at a lot deeper level the mechanisms of how the body goes wrong or what goes astray or what led to this process. So you know in traditional medicine we're taught to get to a diagnosis and then that's the end point. So all we need is a code and then that's the end point. But with functional and integrative medicine we not only we basically start there and the question that I'm always asking is why, why did this happen, what's happening with the body and how can we reverse it if possible. Just a little bit about me. You can find all of my past Facebook lives here under the video section. And you can find if you're on my YouTube channel listening or watching this you can subscribe right down here in the corner, and I hope you'll do that and continue to get all the videos that we put out because we've got lots of free and great content. And I've got a whole January and February scheduled already with upcoming great interviews with doctors. So like I said, stay tuned. My website is just Jill Carnahan.com my name, and there you can find free blogs free recipes products we love under the online store and the online store is at Dr Jill health.com so if you want to know about products that we have there again you can just search and look around and and browsers tons of free content for you. So, let's dive into the questions I'm going to go about 30 minutes today, maybe a little longer and see what we can cover and then I'll be back for more if we don't get them all covered. I'm going to start with some of the questions that came in through Facebook and Instagram, and feel free if you're watching this live I can see already hi Nicole hi Natalie hi Sonya hi Kristen. I'm going to get to your questions shortly so just stay tuned. So first of all, Suzy I'm going to use first names here no last names. Suzy ask. Of course I can't find a new specialist for my MCAS when I do have a visitor here today and he's just popping his head up but I'm gonna have him say hi real quick before we could go into this is Ravi my puppy. So I thought it says they don't have an interviewer, he wanted to be on my lap but now he wants to go play so that's Ravi. So there's two puppies a Balinese and a Havanese, the Italian and the Cuban, and they're 15 and 16, and they get functional medicine treatment so they're still going strong at that age they get collagen and probiotics and they get anti parasitics once every six months and all kinds of good stuff. And surprisingly for 16 and 15 the one you just saw is 15 years old, which is like, I don't know like 90s for a human. And they're in great great shape so your dogs can get functional medicine as well. So Suzy says I can't find a new specialist for my MCAS my worst problem at this time is my eyes which are likely histamine and happen over the years check for dry eyes which it's not tissue surrounding the eyes is swollen in the morning after watering during the night, the eyes are itchy and stuck together in the morning prescription drops and over the counter things for histamine don't work do you have any ideas. Thanks Suzy because the eyes are my nemesis I have been through mold related illness and lots of histamine issues, and I have definitely had my share. Some day, I don't have it handy but someday I'll show you all a picture of me at the worst when my eyes were red swollen like just bright, the skin was all denuded and raw because of the mold and mass cell activation. So if you understand your pain, first of all, if you haven't tried one of my favorite remedies which is happens to be right here in my drawer is napkin a it's an over the counter anti histamine drop you might have tried this it might not work that's okay but I think you should try it. There is other ones with this active ingredient this used to be prescription only I've used this often on for my itchy and dry eyes for years and it really really does help. The next thing that I would recommend is looking at fungal to spaces and mold exposure, because those tend to really aggravate the eyes a lot of the fungal and mold issues. Patients will have that red irritated eyes, and make sure you have plenty of B vitamins college and powder and some of those very basic things. If you haven't tried over the counter histamines like course it in. And the histamines assist in our store at Dr Jill health calm. And we also have histamine blocker, the histamine blockers better for meal time if you have histamine related food sensitivities. It contains a DAO enzyme that helps to break down the histamine in your foods, and histamines assist is a combination of bromelain and course it in and luteal and in some of those anti histamine components that will help as well. There's also things like catatophan and monoluchus that can stabilize the mast cells, but it sounds to me like this is a real topical kind of issue. If it's the skin you may want to get a very low potency, steroid from your doctor called desinide. It can actually help on the skin of the face that's real reactive. I don't like to use steroids long term, but if it's severe and inflamed, it can be helpful. So thanks Susie Andrea. So where do you treat infections if someone has many like H pylori SIBO parasites mold and is HCl supplementation a good or bad idea when one has H pylori. Much mixed opinions on this. Okay Andrea. This is a great question because most of my patients that I see have multiple layers of infection in the gut. The first thing as the medical detective is to look at those infections and see if I can cross treat any of those. So for example, say someone has methane SIBO it's a little harder to treat than hydrogen SIBO and you need a combination not only of refaximin, but you also need a combination or metronitis all with that if you're going to treat with medication. If you're going to treat with herbs you need those stronger herbs like Allison extract, or potentially black human seed or other forms of garlic that could help, because by itself things like berberine or Reagan may not work for methane SIBO. With H pylori mastic gum tends to be a really good antimicrobial. And if you're doing medications again you need sequentially the quad or triple therapy. So all that to say what I try to do is combine a treatment that's going to treat the most things all at the same time. Versus sequentially although you can do sequentially. In that case if you have SIBO and H pylori I would try to do a regimen that would treat both of those because they both are antibiotic types of regimen. I would probably lean towards the refaximin metronitis all or tonight is all plus something like amoxicillin or chlorethromycin that kind of combination and again you'd have to work with your doctor. But if you can cover both the SIBO and the H pylori all with one round. That would be your best bet. If there's yeast which there often is in someone who has multiple infections, you must be careful to use anti fungals with that as well. So it's not uncommon for me to have use of refaximin. Tonight is all our metronitis all with fluconazole on a statin. So a lot of things for two weeks all at the same time. Now again you need to work with your doctor because there's a prescription. I am not giving any medical advice here. But you can also do herbal regimens and mastic gum tends to be particularly well for each pylori. Burberry and oregano grapefruit to dextract and Allison or garlic can be good for SIBO. And then the fungal component you can use caprylic acid or again the GSE or the oregano. So again this is complex because every single patient is different and I don't use protocols I go by what that patient has and then I create a plan specific for them. But for you it sounds like a combination of herbs or antibiotics would work best. So if I have an infection mold in the background, if I have to order Lyme disease and mold and MCAS and all of those things, I would order it and you calm down the immune system so you treat a little bit of MCAS and maybe something with the limbic activation, and then you treat the mold, and then you treat the Lyme. The reason for that is often the immune system gets weakened in a moldy environment, and the Lyme will pop up as an infection. Sometimes that infection is an issue only because of the weakened immune system. And if that's the case, then often I will treat the mold and the immune system and then the Lyme may or may not ever need to be treated, because that immune system comes back online and keeps it in check. So that's one of those things. I've got quite a few more from Facebook but I'm going to go to this these are the previous I've got a ton coming in 40 comments holy cow I'm gonna have to do this every month this is so fun. I've got a lot of you writing in. So I'm going to get to a screen where I can see all of your comments real quickly. Give me just one second and then I'm going to answer some questions there. I just have to go to a different screen so I can see you all. There we go. Alright, so here these are live questions. Addison's disease from Leslie besides well balanced non process food stress relief what else can I do. So Addison's is where your body is your adrenal glands are not doing their job. So it's different from adrenal fatigue I actually don't like that word anymore because it doesn't really describe what's happening in the HPA axis. It's true and pure adrenal failure hypoadrenia or hypo cortisolemia, many different terms for this. So, with that you're going to need to stress dose for hydro cortisone or whatever you're on, because when you have stresses or when you have surgery or when you have illness, you're going to need other things would be you want to change your lifestyle so that it's not stressful so you're getting plenty of sleep, you're eating clean food, it's organic non GMO local if possible get out all the type typical allergens like gluten dairy soy egg, corn, peanuts, alcohol, sugar, and then you want to really support yourself you do not want to do vigorous activity, if you have absence you're going to want to do more gentle like you can move you can do yoga you can do hiking Tai Chi movement with breath work is the best for adrenals. So I'd recommend hiking, probably not even jogging or running, but yoga Tai Chi all those things that are movement. Thanks, cute. Thanks Elizabeth cute dog. I think I've been exposed to COVID what supplement should I take to help. Oh, I love this question Natalie and I'm sure that's because you get it all the time. So let's talk about COVID now I am not diagnosing or recommending treatment protocols here. But I know that's a big concern your immune system so what I know to be true is there are certain nutrients that support the immune system. Some of those are zinc vitamin D you've heard all the studies if I had to pick a desert island vitamin and just like one, it would be vitamin D, and then vitamin C also important. Now if you take too much vitamin C guess what, you're going to be running to the restroom because it causes diarrhea. So the best way to do that is take liposomal forms because you can get higher doses without affecting the gut. It goes right into your tissues. So in our store we have quick silver liposomal, one of our favorites, and really effective and you can get the doses higher. And if you were to have the infection right now, you could take that every few hours and keep your vitamin C level very high. Corsetin and melatonin can be helpful if you do have the infection because they decrease the cytokine response. So I have to recommend six to 10 milligrams of melatonin at bedtime, and then we have Corsetin in our histocyst product, and we also have plain Corsinase from Thorn Research on drjilhealth.com if you want to look at that, and you can take one or two caps twice a day. Those are the main things, but other things that are really critical would be glutathione. You can take that liposomaly or orally, and n-acetylcysteine. And n-acetylcysteine, all of those are great antioxidants. So that's kind of the immune support that I usually recommend for my patients. And then I see sassy recommending mitochondrial biogenesis, which is just like a fancy term for how do we support our mitochondria. Sunshine. Nicole says my question is someone suspects chronic Lyme. What's the best most affordable route? Okay, this is a great question because Lyme is complex, and yet there are things we can do. So I still like to get a good diagnosis because I never want to assume, because we all know what assumption makes out of us. You've heard that one before. But instead of assuming I like to test, iGenX is the best test out there because they have the most antigens for things like tick-borne relapsing fever, and they have very good technology, the immunoblot. So I still like to use iGenX, but it's very expensive. I mean, we're talking the main Lyme test that I order is minimum $800, but with co-infections $1,300, $1,500. So I know that's a lot of money, and depending on where we're at with the patient and the journey, if we really need answers, I still often do recommend it. But there's other labs out there. I use vibrant labs. We can use galaxy labs. We can use, so there's quite a few out there that you can use. You can even do them in the serum from like Boulder Hospital or any of the local labs that we have around here, lab core quest, etc. But they're not as accurate because they're testing one strain of Connecticut type of Lyme. So if you got bit in Wisconsin or California or Florida, it may miss it, or if you have tick-borne relapsing fever or babesia, you may miss it as well. So the real question was, what do we do if we're on a budget? First of all, like I said, I like to test. I like to know what's going on. But if you can't do that and you suspect it, there are herbal remedies. There's three main types of brands. We carry these in our store. If you ever want to have questions, you can call us. Neutrometics is one line, and two of my favorites with them are cemento and vanderal. These are kind of a one-two punch that are very good for treating Lyme disease. Byron White makes some other great protocols and beyond balance, and these are all tinctures. And I can treat tick-borne infections without using drugs in some cases. So those are quite effective. So that's how I would treat Lyme disease. Best air purifier model for mold. Well, you guys probably already have heard me talk about Austin ears. I have two here in my condo. I have five at work. I'm such a big fan. I actually became a dealer just so I could get discounts for my patients. So if you do want an Austin air filter, call our office so we can get you a deal. But there's other ones out there, too. IQ Air is an excellent brand. My main criteria is that you want a good HEPA filtration system so all the particulate matter is filtered out. Thank you also.