 Hey, hey everybody, welcome this Friday afternoon. If any of you saw the promo, what I love, we were just talking about before we came on live and we had so many of you be like, the Dr. Jills because it's funny, it's interesting. Both of us have a platform around complex chronic disease and mold especially. And of course, Dr. Jill, my friend Dr. Jill has written a book and so lots of synergies. And the other thing we were talking about and I hope you guys feel this with me and with interviews and definitely today, I love to collaborate and I love learning from my colleagues. I feel like we all can teach each other something and especially in this realm, there's so many camps and different thoughts of mold and mold related illness. And we were just talking about how important it is for us to continue to learn from one another. And again, I just come with a very open heart because I know that I don't have all the answers. But as we continue to collaborate, we can bring more and more good information to you guys who are listening out there, whether you're professional or patients or friends or family of someone who's sick, it's so important. And the other thing we were talking about that we'll get into today is when you're in clinical practice, what you have all the time is these patients that are in front of you that are with a complex chronic disease like mold related illness or Lyme disease or Pan and Pandas, which we'll talk about today. And you come to a prostrate where you don't have the answer. And again, in conjunction with the patient, if you have a good knowledge base and information, sometimes we try things that are new and sometimes we find they work or they don't work. And as long as there's safety, there's this idea of not only collaboration, but really trying to think outside the box to bring clinical solutions to you all. And I feel like my job is some of the clinical investigation and testing. And then there's researchers that are far better than me that can take that data and try to prove it out. But hopefully today you'll hear some of the cutting edge stuff that we're doing and trying and what's working and what's not working. Just a little background, many of you have been here before, but if you haven't, you can find all of my blogs, information on my website, just jillcarnahan.com. You can find products at drjilhealth.com. And I will put links to Dr. Christa's site, her book, her other websites. So you'll see all those below the interview today. So don't worry if you miss something, the links will be wherever you find this interview, we will have those linked up as well. And I'll try to, as I do, I usually go back after the interview and if there's products we mentioned or if there's anything like a third party website or resource, I try to put those all in so that don't worry if you miss it, I will do my best to link up on those. So welcome Dr. Jill Christa, it is absolutely a delight to have you here. Thank you so much, a delight to be here. I cannot wait to have this conversation. Me too. And I'll just introduce you briefly. You've got lots more credentials, but I'm gonna do a brief introduction. Dr. Jill Christa is a naturopathic doctor, best-selling author and an internationally recognized educator on neuro-inflammatory conditions such as mold, Lyme, PAN, pandas, and post-concussion syndromes. She's passionate about helping people recover their health after exposure to toxic mold. And she's the author of the book, Break the Mold, Five Tools to Conquer Mold and Take Back Your Health, and supports mold sick people through her mold canary membership. She also provides online training for medical practitioners wanting to become mold literate, again, such an important piece because that we need docs, right? Don't you always get the question because I'm sure you have a busy clinic and maybe sometimes a wait list or who knows how that works, but most of us are doing it and patients are like, where else can I go for resources and how can I get trained? So the more that we can reach even our colleagues with the information, the better. That's a lot of me talking. Now I wanna hear from you and I wanna hear kind of like, how did you get into this? Tell us your journey. Tell us a little bit about how you got into mold-related illness, complex chronic conditions, all of these things. Tell us your story. Sure. So I went to naturopathic school, ended up setting up in Wisconsin, which is near where my family is. And I had twins at the tail end of medical school, which I don't recommend that the timing, but I do recommend twins. And it turns out I had Lyme disease and I was pregnant with them. I didn't discover that until my kids were 11. And I didn't discover it until I was at a Lyme conference when I went to my Lyme training and heard Dr. Charles Ray Jones present. And it was the first time that I thought, I think my kids have Lyme. And so complex chronic illness has kind of been our story for a long time. They're 21 now, so we've been doing this for 21 years. I was told it's Fibromyalgia. Pick yourself up by air and bootstraps, that kind of thing. Everybody has aches and pains of everyday living, so that's my personal story. So I went to medical school and missed the whole thing. Didn't ever connect that here I was dealing with chronic Lyme, but I was doing well with it, which is such an optimistic story because of my diet and my exercise habits and my sleep habits and my spiritual practice and all of these things were keeping me held together. And so I established in Wisconsin, which is, Jamesville is a GM town, so we've got factories, we've got paper processing plants, we've got lead mines. So I ended up becoming focused in environmental medicine from nature, public family practice to environmental medicine, and then had these patients that weren't getting better when we detoxed them, when we did the chelation. And they ended up having Lyme disease, I discovered. So I realized I'm in the third leading state for Lyme disease in the country. So Wisconsin is third leading, yeah, no. So it bounces between third and fifth, depending on the cases each year. So then I realized, well, this is Lyme disease and I don't really know enough about it. So I went and I got trained with iLabs. And when you apply the functional medicine, naturopathic medicine principles of find and treat the cause, now that we had identified the cause, we kind of cleared the metals and now we're dealing with the Lyme thing, a lot of people just got better. And that's so elegant and beautiful, but there is this group of people that still aren't getting better. And one of those patients' homes, they found black mold in his home. And when I went to go do, I did home visits in those days because I wanted to learn. So I followed the inspector around, I followed the remediators around and they estimate it was about a 12 year history and exposure. And that's when I thought, wow, I don't think I really understand mold. I graduated with some education in environmental medicine as a naturopathic doctor and very lucky that way. But, and I knew it as an allergy problem. And I knew that some rare cases people can get sort of an MS looking picture. That's basically what I was trained. And so when I hit the research for this patient, I'm like, oh, this is why he has tinnitus. This is why he has anxiety. This is why he can't sleep. This is why he's got some mess. This is why he sprains his ankle, stepping off the curb. This is why he has pelvic pain, urinary frequency. You know, and it started to just pipping, pipping, pipping, put all these things together. And then I realized my chronic Lyme patients were actually mold patients. We went investigating and it was like, oh my gosh, mold exposure history, mold exposure history, mold exposure history, or current in almost all of those cases. So that's when I really became the mold lady as you do. Yeah, you and I, this was the coolest thing about it. Yeah, I've heard you say, you didn't find mold, mold found you, you know, and that's kind of how that happened. So I became, I kind of had this protocol using naturopathic medicine and then my kids and I moved into a moldy house and didn't know it. And so that's the impetus for writing the book was that we started, I started saying, well, you know, I've had a really big loss in my life. I was going into perimenopause. They were going into puberty. And so you excuse all these things. Yes. And you pin it on other things. And the fact that it duped me and I had been working with it for 10 years, I was like, this is insidious. And then the flood kind of revealed itself for us. And I realized it was mold and I knew exactly what to do. And I had the people to call. I was so, so fortunate. And I felt so privileged. And that really was the thing that made me feel like I need to write a book about this because this is stuff everybody can do. Yes. Even if this is rocket science. Yeah. Yeah. And bring it away. So I love a couple of things I heard you say. Number one, these things like lime and mold, they're almost, first of all, we were in not only, you know, we're conventionally trained naturopathic for you, allopathic for me, but we're not taught this stuff in our training. And then even in the functional integrative realm, even there, it's not taught to the level that you and I have gone to. And what we found is we came across either ourselves or situations or patients where we couldn't find the answer. Kind of like we started off talking about, we're like, what else? What else? We need to know more information to help people. So this deep dive into the complex, chronic lime mold neuro-inflammatory stuff, it's so rare to have a doc that really, really understands it. And so the other thing that you and I share is this passion, first of all, it kind of discovered us, right? Cause we happened to bond and we felt like, okay, because we want to find answers for patients and ourselves and our family and those tough cases we had to, right? Like I always said, I don't want to do lime. Someone else can do that. And you've heard me say this before in these interviews, but then I was like, I have to, if I want to get people well, I have to understand the same with mold and mold for me the similar way it happened to me. And I was actually in denial for several months because like, no, because this will mean I have to leave my work or something pretty big is going to have to happen, right? And I was in denial, which is why I always have such grace with patients meeting them where they're at. And granted, they do have to get out of the moldy environment at some point or remediate, but I have a lot of compassion because I know myself, I kind of knew before I knew what was going on and it was hard to get my mind around what it was going to take in my life, the changes like all my medical school books for 20 years had to go and certain things. And it's all good. Like my health is worth everything, the same with yours if you're listening, but those things are kind of hard. And now that we're in it, it's like, of course, but I remember those feelings of like, do I really want to go into this? This is like, we've chosen by accident or purpose the most complex cases that we could have on the planet Earth, right? Right. Yeah. And they're the people I love to work with the most. Me too. The people bringing these charts that are four inches thick and like, oh my God, I'm so sorry for all those records. This is too much. I'm like, no, I love complexity. Bring it on the more the, and I actually, it sounds like you do too. I actually really enjoy the challenge. And not only that, but so many of these patients are traumatized. They've been to so many doctors and either they've said, oh, your labs are normal. It's all in your head. See a psychiatrist. I mean, crazy things, these poor patients. And I have such a depth of compassion because I know that there's real answers like you do. And I know that if I can't help them, at least I can start to guide them in the right direction. And there's a lot of people who've given up or given or taken away their hope, right? Yeah, yeah, you bet. Absolutely. I think that's what I align with the most of you is just the heart-centeredness of what you're bringing to the table. Thank you. Same with you. It goes right back to you. The other thing again, it was your journey of like discovery, like, oh, well, this is after starting, as you went through your journey and then you're home, then we have to discover like, we have to become first healers to ourselves. And I love that you started talking about too, the emotional, the spiritual, that we're gonna talk about some of the physical, the herbs and those things. But this, I found one of the most important things in these chronic complex diseases is actually addressing the mind and the mindset and the trauma and the relationships and all of these pieces are part of it as well. Yeah. Yeah, oh my goodness. As I was going through my own healing and then real healing, you know, like the deep healing, I realized I invited mold. You know, I had an energy of fear and involution and it was sort of like, I signed up for it in a way. And I'm sure that I made that contract of like, I want to help people globally in whatever way that I'm most meant to do that. And, you know, my angels are like, okay, you know, here you go. Oh, I totally understand because I've learned in my life, it's all experiential. And so I have to experience some of these things and then understand it at that deep level because some of the understanding you and I have that's unique is that we've lived it, right? And that makes a lot of, because there's little tiny things that you recognize not from a textbook, which there is no great textbook out yet or from a training, but actually from experience and understanding and recognizing. So let's turn just a little, I want to come back to mold and Lyme and how they play, but let's talk pan and pandas. What is this, first of all, kind of define what it is and how I would say not only children, which is typical, but adults can have some of these symptoms. And then let's dive into what, how would you look at those patients and that? So let's dive into pan and pandas first. Yes, my goodness. So I'm a mom of twins with pans. So that's been my, in the trenches learning as the research is catching up and the protocols are catching up. And Dr. Charles Ray Jones, who was a mentor of mine, he really helped me understand that this is one of the conditions under an umbrella of infection induced autoimmune encephalopathy. So if you think about the idea that in pre COVID, nobody really got this. And now I feel like that's going to be the other complex chronic disease that we're dealing with, you know, this chronic infection from COVID. And so that's infection induced autoimmune, meaning an infection started this to have your body attack itself and the way or the location it's attacking is in the brain. So that's what the encephalitis and encephalopathy part is. So pandas and pans are just two, and they're actually sort of two separate diagnoses because the criteria for diagnosing them is a little bit different. The suddenness is a little bit different. The age is a little bit different. But basically with pandas, it's tied pretty strictly to a strep infection. And then once that's turned on, once those autoantibodies are turned on, which are attacking the basal ganglia of the brain, the brainstem, our reptilian brain, you know, our safety. Once that's turned on, now those immune cells of the brain are primed so that any subsequent infection, even viral, can flare the condition. So it's got a wax and wane pattern, meaning the flare and a calm and a flare and a calm. And the hard thing for us doctors is if you don't know, then is the person getting better because my protocol's working? Or is it because it's a normal course of this condition? And sometimes you don't know. Sometimes you have to kind of weed it out and see. And then you don't know if there's been a flare. Is this the natural progression of the illness or did they have a new infection or a new exposure? So it makes it kind of complicated to treat. The symptoms that are going along are pretty consistent with both, that there is what we're calling in medicine OCD, which people in the public hear that and they think repetitive hand washing or the movies that you've seen is someone, open the door, close the door, open the door, close the door. They have to do it five times before they can walk through the door. In a child, that's gonna look different. That's just compulsions. So it might look like kids who just can't follow the directions because they're overriding their thought process with the compulsions saying, if you put your shoes on and go to school, something bad will happen to us on the way to school. So they're saying, I have to stay home. And so it seems like they're not listening. What they're really doing is trying to control this compulsion that makes them feel unsafe. It's just so sad to your heart to think about a little one having that experience internally. Also ticks are quite common. You might see some sort of anxiety, depression, oppositional behavior. It's just like the kid with a panda that's like they changed overnight. Pans, it can be very different. And I'm seeing in my own practice that it's usually kids who come into this situation with maybe a congenital Lyme. They never really had a normal immune system. So they're onset is gonna be less rapid. But both can also have handwriting deterioration, learning difficulties, food restriction or food avoidance. And the way that I see that is that's them naturally saying, this might have something infected in it. This is probably gonna increase my life of polysaccharides as I know you've talked about. And that's gonna increase my brain inflammation. So I'm just not gonna eat. And so I think that if we really can start to look at what is the symptom telling us and then we know how to help them out. I see also a lot of bedwetting, abdominal pain and insomnia. That's a big one, sleep problems with these kids. So yeah, it's just, I think of it as they came into the infection with an immune depletion of some sort and mold is very commonly the reason for that. So you're framing it as, and this makes sense, basically some sort of immune weakness allowed this infection to get the upper hand. And they probably have a genetic susceptibility to neuro-inflammation or auto-immunity as well. Kind of like the, yeah, okay. And you gave some really good descriptions of how you might see that. And you mentioned in vitro transmission of infections. And let's talk just a little bit about that cause I don't know that people really understand or know but there's been a lot of cases where I'm talking to a mother and we're talking through and we're realizing, oh gosh, she definitely has Lyme and co-infections we test, we find it. And then she's like, my children also have symptoms and some of them were, and I have a suspicion and in many of them there is that transmission, especially how would you differentiate? And again, sometimes we don't know for sure. Of course we can test the child, but is that common? How would we see that present? And what's your thoughts on the transmission in utero? So we don't have studies in humans that we do have some studies in dogs. And they found that mothers who've got Lyme disease and will just stick with Borrelia cause it's an easier one. We know that Bartonella and Babesia can also cross the placental barrier. So we can assume that's probably the situation with these but they're kind of different in how they infect the cell. So with the Lyme bacteria, when the mom got an active Lyme case pregnant, most but not all dogs got the Lyme as well. So I don't know if that's then that genetic variation in the pups who got them in the pups that didn't, but the majority then of the offspring do actually get Lyme disease through the placental exposure. And that's again what I've seen clinically and whether or not, often we do test. Sometimes I'm not seeing the children so I don't always, depending on what the situation is, but I'm always not really surprised especially if it's a really complex eating issues from birth, feeding issues, failure to thrive. There's a lot of things you can see in the children. So quick question. What would you do if you had a woman either who was wanting to get pregnant or pregnant and you knew she had an active Borrelia, Bartonella or Babesia are all three. Would you do herbal treatments? Would you watch kind of your thoughts on pregnancy or pre-pregnancy planning with Lyme disease? That is a great question. And again, I go with my training with Dr. Charles Ray Jones. He has total comfort treating pregnant moms with antibiotics. I did not as a naturopathic doctor coming into that training. I was just like, I don't know about this. It's gonna kill the babies. Got microbiome and everything. But you know, when you have something that is as microbiome disrupting and high force as Lyme or even co-infections now on top of that, sometimes you have to meet it with the same amount of force. So I got very comfortable using antibiotics in some of those more tender situations because now as a mom living with kids who are given congenital Lyme, I can tell you I would have much rather spent the first year repopulating the gut and working on gut healing than 21 years working on an autoimmune disease. Yeah. And so I really, I meet the patient where they're at. If they really drive the bus on this one, I try to talk with them about what the risk factors are. Yes, they're, you know, antibiotics are going to cause some gut problems and plants work perfectly well. You know, it's if there's true belief in the remedy that you're using and it's aligned with who you are and the way that you live your life and the belief system. If we can match those, then it works so much better. But I rarely give an antibiotic without also doing the plants. And I think that makes me very unique just because I've seen so many studies where it's reducing resistance. It's reducing some of the negative side effects of the antibiotics. Yeah. And I'm assuming like with pregnancy, the penicillins or the cephalosporin to be your safer alternatives. Yeah. It's usually a combination. People actually use the Moxosilin as well. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. That's it. And I love your perspective because it's so similar to me. Again, I was one of those who was like, I don't want to hurt the gut. I'm not doing antibiotics. And then you realize is not only just sometimes it works better. Whether it's pregnancy or no pregnancy, I'm just talking all over for Lyme. And I'm definitely like you. I feel like there's an absolutely appropriate place for these drugs and they really are game changers. And sometimes what's your experience for me, the herbals? I love, I use all the time. And I just like you. I love what you said because I'm kind of checking in with the patient. We have these options. What feels best to you? I can use all of them. I would say my experience herbs tend to really suppress and control, but they don't always eradicate as well. But what I would love, you're the expert with herbs as a naturopath. Have you felt like you've been able to really truly eradicate without medications? Yeah, definitely. In some cases it takes heavier dosing than people are comfortable with. And even how I was trained. But, you know, when I came to this position of like, okay, I'm about to give this person the re-antibiotics. Yeah. You know, so, okay, we're going to about to do doxy and bithromatic and pulsing tin tonight is all. Yes. Or I could try going higher on my herbs and just see. And, you know, thankfully I had patients that were adamant against antibiotics. And so I was like, well, then it's game on, let's figure this out. And so I used much higher dosing with the plant medicine tincture particularly because I feel like that has it, that alcohol seems to disperse it better. And that's a Chinese medicine here. Because all of a sudden, sometimes I go with the alcohol free because I think they'll tolerate it better. But I agree. I think the alcohol tinctures actually work better. It's so great. Yeah, I think they kind of push and disperse. So yeah, I was giving doses in the, you know, two teaspoons, four to six times a day sort of dosing. And yeah, it does get better. You know. This is great. And that's been the conundrum for me is the stuff I use at the doses I use, I feel like we can control it, but they're on the herbs. And once we take them off, often they'll flare. What are some of your favorites? I mean, I saw the John Hopkins study with Japanese nutweed, a Crypto Lepus, some of the leaders, I do love those. Let's talk herbs and some of the favorites. And the funny thing is that was in vitro. I still clinically find you still often need others and I don't find their end all be all, but you're the expert on herbs. Let's talk, what are your favorites for, say Borrelia? Yeah, so Japanese nutweed. Yeah, definitely. Interestingly enough, in the East Coasters, they tend to do very well with a little Echinacea, which is very different than the Midwest Borrelia. Yeah. And I would have been concerned about that with just overstimulating, like say you had an, yeah, that makes sense though. Yeah, yep. And then something berberine containing, so either, you know, usually I just use berberist and or it could be Oregon grape root, something like that. I love Stefania for pain. A lot of that inflammatory joint stuff, somebody's expression is really jointy. Also Japanese nutweed for that. And then casclaw is lovely. And you can use it in tincture. You know, there's this whole thing about TOA-free and I used whole plant casclaw and, you know, and have done just fine with patients not having problems. And if you found casclaw also has a good antiviral activity because I feel like it's a good, like with that. With that good Epstein bar, you know, that layer of like an HHB6 and an Epstein bar. Yeah, so it's olive leaf. Sometimes you do. Yes, I love olive leaf. And olive leaf begins my clinical experience but it feels like the only one that people don't really hurts. Like it's such a supportive, nurturing herb that I don't know if I can remember anyone who's ever had a bad reaction. It's very just nurturing. Yeah, and it's nice because it's anti-fungal. Yeah. So if you do have somebody that has been on antibiotics and they have this candida overgrowth or biofilm or something like that, that's when I'll kind of toss in that little bit of olive leaf or something that will help on a broad spectrum standpoint. If there is mold in there as well, I use time. That's one of my favorites because it's ultra safe. It's broad spectrum. In the hospitals, they used to use time essential oil for fumigating rooms. I'm like, well, if that worked in hospital-based medicine. Yeah, I'll point at that, right? Righty. Yeah. And then dipzakis with, or T-cell root, I'm very careful with. I'll drop dose that. And I put that in a separate bottle. They just drop it in water and then can sip off of it because that can really hurt the person. And that might be a Midwest thing. I know that it's one of them that I see for Rocky Mountain spotted fever. And I just saw that you were talking about that in your newsletter. So I'm careful because sometimes I think we might flare a Rocky Mountain spotted fever with that one. And then Smilax glabra or Star Separilla is a endotoxin binder. So that one is great for the person who's gut is a mess and they can't tolerate even a little sprinkle of megaspore, you know, like just trying to get them some spore biotic and they like sprinkles and they have a host in that and I'll add the Smilax. Oh gosh, so helpful. Yeah, those are some of my favorites. That's tremendous. What about like in that John Hopkins study, cryptolephus? My experience is that one's really harsh. You have to be kind of very careful but any experience with that one, do you feel like it has a place? Is it on the higher spectrum of aggressiveness or anything in particular on cryptolephus? I start with Artemisia when it's a BBCA combination. Then if that's not kicking it or because that does sort of, we get liver tolerance to that. So that one is when you kind of pulse in and take out and pulse in and take out. You couldn't, you know, pulse for a good two weeks but if that's not kicking it, then I will add the cryptolephus. And then for Bartonella, Hutinia is lovely. Yeah, my favorite. We used to call that hoity-twity in the office because no one... Oh, yeah, but I totally love that one. Everybody says it differently in our office. Yeah, that's ours in milk, so everybody's like, ooh, she needs a silly bum. Yeah, exactly. Oh, this is tremendous. Okay, so we talked about a little bit what is PNPandas overview back here at Lyman-Herbs. Let's go back to like, so say you suspect PNPandas neuroinflammation of some sort. How would you work out that patient? Do you do neuro-autoantibodies or do you do clinical diagnosis or how would you look at the patient who comes in whether it's a child or an adult with neuroinflammation? Yeah, so for PNPandas and PNPandas, those are still both considered clinical diagnoses, just like Lyme disease. Even though we love... Really like having labs for Lyme, but it's still really truly is still okay to have it be a clinical diagnosis. Because of that immune deficiency antecedent state, I do like to do an IGAM. So an IgG, A-N-E, subclasses of G, subclasses of A. Just to see if we're gonna do any infection labs, now I have an idea of if we will need to sort of augment the results because they could be muted if the child's in a low IgG subclass. And we typically see two and four, is what I'm seeing in practice. IgG subclass three, I'm pretty much thinking they have a mold exposure if that's low because that has... Or a candida overgrowth because that has that disulfide bond like the gliotoxin does. So that's super informative and that tells me if that's the kid who's going to be, typically if I see that, I need to be supporting their IgG in some way, shape or form, or they're not gonna, they're gonna be susceptible to infection in flares. So that would be number one. And then a good old CDC, we can tell a lot from a really inexpensive CDC. A lot of them have their white count is just edging on low or low. My functional level for white count is 5.0 to 7.0. That's the sweet spot. I feel healthy, healthy, total, you know, and so I'm so lucky I was trained in that functional stuff way before we changed numbers. Right, because then they keep changing our numbers. Same thing. And I love that you said that because that's one of those flags where people all the time, oh, my doc said, I've had that for 20 years, that white count of three, right? And you're like, but wait, there's something, right? There's a big deal there. I love that you mentioned that. If you're listening to your doc said, your white blood count is low, but it's normal. Find someone to help you figure that out because there's usually an underlying cause. Absolutely. And then platelets, if platelets are low, then I think about mold as well because that combination, you know, mold is one of the few things that can cause low platelets. So again, you hear that a lot of, they're like, my doctor said it's okay though. You know, so it's like, you can tell a lot from the CDC and the chem panel, that's why we run them, you know? Yeah, and some of the things that there can be inborn errors and metabolism that are not pandas and pans that you can rule out. And there can be other things like, so that would be things like copper and pre-atnene clearance and things like that, that are totally not related to pandas and pans, but have a very similar picture and as well, B12 deficiency. Yes. A lot of kids have B12 deficiencies because their guts from pesticides and glyphosate, they're not able to take it in anymore. And so that now we get that deficiency and it can look a lot like the narrow picture of pandas and pans. And I don't know if this range is for you, but I have a bits below 500, I'm thinking there's an issue. Is there something? And support it, you know, and it tastes good. Like a sub-lingual B12, what kid is not... I know, right? There's lots of cherry flavor there, yeah. Yeah, they're like, oh, do I get my, you know, cherry can? Right. Yeah, yeah. And then a natural killer cell total and function, that's kind of expensive if someone doesn't have insurance coverage. So the natural killer cell function, and I'm only running that if I think that I'm not sure, you know, if I've run the IgG or the Igam, then I might add that natural killer cell, especially if there's a known mold exposure. That tells me then if that kid is gonna be able to respond to IgG therapy or not. And what do we need to be doing to boost that natural killer cell count? And there's simple, easy things like thymus gland, like the SBI protect from orthomolecular. That's giving actual IgG. And people say, well, that can't work because your stomach acid will denature it. And it, well, I've seen it bring up numbers. Me too. I always used to say it's a close to IV IgG. So just for people who don't know, IV IgG is an intravenously immunoglobulus from plasma donors, like thousands of donors for the patient who has a severe immune deficiency and low total IgG. It's a game changer. Like it can turn around, but it's very expensive. Like we're talking eight to 15,000 per infusion. And of course, usually what we do is we get insurance coverage. But as you can imagine, it's expensive. It's time consuming. It can be hard to titrate and tolerate. So it's amazing. But what Dr. Kristen, I are talking about is oral bovine immunoglobulins, which is like colostrum, like new milk. And it contains all those immunoglobulins. And I agree with you when I don't have the option of IV IgG or I just need a little extra support. And the studies show that these immunoglobulins orally bind, passive binding of viruses, H. pylori, lipopolysaccharide, which is... I did not know that. Yeah, like it's... This is why I'd love to learn from you. Oh, it's mutual. So yeah, the studies H. pylori and viruses, even the coronavirus, not necessarily COVID, but that whole family, there's studies that show that it passively binds. So when I have someone who has COVID actively, having symptoms, I immediately put them on a spore probiotic and go find immunoglobulins, and they do a lot better. That's great, too. Interesting, interesting, yeah. So I love that you mentioned that immune system and I kind of interrupted you on labs. Do you do natural color cells, blood counts? Yep. Is there anything else that you wanted to mention? Yeah, vitamin D. I mean, and that's kind of what we should be checking on on everybody, but specifically people with immune issues. I do a 250H and then a 125. Those are two different for people listening and I don't know that the 125 can be a really good marker for brain glutathione status. Wow. That's sort of my cheap and easy get insurance coverage test to get that done, because I've seen so commonly then that those are the people that respond better from glutathione supplementation. And really neat. Oh, this is fantastic. It's on a different perspective, this is great. Because what I'm thinking of, I've heard some of the lectures on intracellular infections, like mycoplasma and atypicals and then aspergillus. So if I see that conversion that's going really high. So if you're listening, what we're talking about is the regular vitamin D that most doctors check is 25 hydroxy. And we want that to be my range is like 50 to 80, maybe even a little higher. Optimal. It's getting 90 for me, yeah. Perfect, yeah. So real similar. And then for that conversion, that 125 hydroxy calcitria is active D. And you don't want that super high, but if you see that really high, especially when their D is low, they're converting to that active form. And there's a reason. So you're talking about brain glutathione status. I'm seeing intracellular infections. So to me, it's the clue, there's something creating this inflammatory process. And I'm looking for infections. The common ones are mycoplasma, chlamydia, pneumonia and aspergillus or some sort of a mold or yeast issue. And the glutathione, that would make sense because they're probably depleted in glutathione if any of those infections are present. Exactly. Yeah. How interesting. It is. It's like, this is great. My thought was, oh, so MMP9 can also be blood brain barrier with mold as a whole nother issue. But when you mentioned blood brain barrier and glutathione, the higher than MMP9 can often be associated with more leaky brain if we put it in layman's terms. Would you say that's kind of how you view the other thoughts on MMP9? Yeah. And actually our colleagues, Dr. Raj Patel and Dr. Talia Hale have, they just presented at ILADS maybe last year. I think it was in person. So whenever we could do that, the last in person one presented, Dr. Hale presented that they are a single correlation between MMP9 and histamine intolerance and onset of mast cell activation. And I just think that's, then it makes it such an easy way to test histamine. You don't have to be doing Mayo Clinic, send the sample on deep freeze, you know, all that kind of stuff. You don't have to deal with any of that. Yeah, because how many times triptase or histamine and you get negatives because they're not in the midst of, so those are just for your listening, those are markers for MCAS, but often unless we catch someone in the midst of a flare, their triptase is normal, their histamine is normal. So MMP9, this is, and it makes perfect sense because histamine creates ability. So it grows right along with blood brain barrier permeability issues too. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? I love it. It's like all full circle. Do you ever do a Cunningham panel or any of the autoimmune neuro, I mean, those are expensive. Again, I like like you, I try to do the cheapest easiest things to start. Do you like doing that? Do you feel like you needed to, you maybe don't even need it to confirm, but do you use that very much or anything else in that realm? Syracuse? Just like in the mold world because I have identical twins, I do a lot of split sample testing combining the two of them. Love it. I just can't help it. My kids tease me that I'm Hitler. I'm like, hey, I'm just friend in lab tests, but yeah, so the, what I learned is that I have my sicker twin. That's when I learned how to do IGAM first. He had more severe IDG subclass deficiency and he had a more normal looking Cunningham panel. Healthier kid. And it makes sense when we think about this from as a vitality thing. My more healthy kid was a positive Cunningham full on and that was when we could, it was first available commercially. So I don't, I think they've changed numbers now and his IDG subclass was normal. Wow. And I just thought, you know, so then I contacted Dr. Cleary in University of Minnesota who is doing studying on ASO. So anti-structilizing O, which is one of the things that a pandas panel might include. So also pneumonia titers, there's kind of anti-DNA speed, ASO, those are the all when we get into the panda specific things, not just the immune assessment things. He found that there's a high prevalence of seronegative ASO with pandas and pandas kids. And so I think that that's, again, that kind of confirmed my thing of like, ooh, before we're running any of these other tests, we better make sure we know that in your globulin status of this child or we're going to be thinking things are negative and they're not. And so that research is really fundamental for my understanding of it's, it really does still need to be a clinical diagnosis because that Cunningham panel, while they have adjusted the numbers, I think it's still, you know, it could still be a tricky as with anything, you know, as with Lyme labs or even a strep or, you know, any normal antibody or a monotest or something like that. It could be seen in the numbers. So I love because again, that's something I do on every patient immunoglobulins total subclasses, not a lot of docs are consistently doing that, but I find it core, which we're going to talk about next immune system because that's one of the core things here and everything we're talking about, but that makes so much sense. So if you're listening to your doctor, if you're a patient, ask your doctor for these tests, it's really important to check total IgG, total IgM, total IgE and total IgA. IgA is your mucosal immunity. So your sinuses, your mucosal surfaces, your lungs, and there's a lot of people with deficiencies there and they're going to have more proneness to candida in the gut, chronic sinusitis. Anything on the mucosal surface, they're going to have more difficulty kind of eradicating those bugs. They're probably going to have more trouble with biofilms and there's something called selective IgA deficiency, which can be diagnosed by a low serum IgA and is a clinically significant immunodeficiency. There's a high correlation with celiac disease in that. So you have your doctor check for celiac or gluten sensitivity, that's low. IgM is less common, but that's one of the immunoglobulins that's also important and that actually defines an immunodeficiency as well. IgG is the one we're mostly talking about, the most common one. And there's a new study, I don't know if you've seen this, I think it was just a few months ago, that they're actually classifying IgE deficiency in and of itself, which we've never, that's more of a histamine response, but it's usually high. Right, but if it's low, it actually qualifies as a new diagnosis. It's a different type of course. And I've just been finding a few of those with zero IgE and that also qualifies in the realm of immunodeficiency, even though it's kind of a different arm of the immune system. Interesting. Yeah, I had not seen that, that's really interesting. I'm glad. And it's amazing, it really speaks to our environmental impacts, doesn't it? We're just getting more and more immunoglobulins getting knocked down. Yes. Well, and let's go transition in the last 10 minutes or so immune system, because I think we think very much alike. I'm always telling patients, I think if we tested 10,000 people on the street for Lyme disease, we'd find a lot of people have Lyme and they don't even know it. But they're walking around, they're asymptomatic, they're fine, right? And this is important for patients to not feel like victims because they get this diagnosis of Borrelia, Lyme disease or any co-infection. And sometimes they're like, oh my gosh, I read this book or I saw it with Facebook group and am I gonna die? Or you know, they go to the worst case scenario. And I always wanna frame it and again, I wanna hear your perspective in a second here. In the fact of what it means is if it's presenting with symptoms, our body should be able to keep some of these old viral and infections under control. So what it usually means is there's a weakness in the immune system that's allowing that to pop up and our job as clinicians is, yes, we treat the infection, the load, but part of it, the majority is actually, how do we support your immune system because you should be able to walk around with old infections and not have them all take you down. Thoughts on that, your approach, because immune system is so core, right? Yeah, 100% agree. Yeah, immune system is so core, it's so important. And that resilience, it comes down to when we're talking about trauma and adverse childhood events, it's so neat that that conversation is moving into resilience. It's not like that everybody doesn't have trauma when you're growing up. It's about how resilient are you? Same thing with infections. And that's one of the things I remember so shocking in the early days of my Lyme training, they said, will you never get rid of Lyme? Yeah. I was like, what? What do you have it? You have it in your body. And I'm, that can't be right. There's people that I've treated, cured. And yeah, if you were to take tissue biopsies and stuff like that, and that's from Dr. Allen McDonald's research of finding it in the brain, finding it in different places in the body, that just lured me. That's when I realized, wow, okay, this is really about patient education and building that resilience and trusting your body. I say that with mold a lot, but it took a mold exposure for someone to say, now I know it's okay to be the inconvenient one at the restaurant or at the hotel and ask you for another room. It's okay to be doing that, where before they might have thought, I don't think I feel very good in here and they would have stayed. And so it's all those- That's my story. I had to learn to so get it because it was like compliance and easy to get along with and not making waves. And you know, one of the things that I don't know where I was told this, probably a therapist at one time, but I actually write it for patients all the time, be kind to yourself. Like literally I write them a prescription because so many of our patients are empaths, they're givers, they're nurturers like you and I, they're healers even. And that nature is beautiful. They're people who are giving to their family, their friends, their children, their parents. Everybody in the world gets their love and compassion except themselves, right? And to teach that again, I had to kind of learn that. Like it's actually being kind to yourself when you say, no, I'm sorry, I can't eat that or no, I'm sorry, this room doesn't fit for me, I need to. So that is so important in the teaching to heal people is it's okay to love yourself enough to take care of yourself and to be kind to yourself. Beautiful, yes. And it's hard when you're a kind person. You feel like you're putting people out or you know, it's a whole new thing to learn, way of being in the world. It really is. Gosh, this is so much fun. What last bits have we not covered or would you say are super important to people listening if they have been diagnosed with Lyme or they have a child or loved one with pan or pandas, which is becoming more and more common or, you know, the complex chronic, a lot of people are really suffering now or even post COVID, maybe you're out there and you're like, I haven't been the same four months ago when I got COVID and I'm still trying to recover. What can you leave them with as far as hope or insight or any last bits of advice? Yeah, well, there's one thing that I've kind of stumbled on, you know, in the mold world in the shoemaker training is VIP spray, you know, game changer for people, regulates that hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal access but a lot of my patients didn't tolerate that when I kind of learned the shoemaker protocol, I was like, oh, I'm missing this whole thing. And so reformulating things, I've reformulated vasopressin into homeopathic. So it's like an ultra small dose and it trains the brain to start making it again. And I've done this with the IP as well. And so I feel like, and it's, there it is, it's a game changer for people and they can tolerate it and you don't have to wait till all their infections is on and blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. So I think just my message of hope is if something that you are working with your doctor on isn't working, if you're a complex chronic illness or sensitive person, try an ultra, ultra, ultra small amount of that. Like I was referring to the spore biotic, you know, sprinkles and because it may be that you are so receptive, which is a gift that you are so receptive and willing for healing, you're open, all the channels are open, it only takes a micro dose to make a difference. So sometimes that, we talked about Lyme, I'm using, you know, big doses of tincture but sometimes it's just like a drop of a Byron white formula and that's all that they need. And their body is in a state of receptivity. So don't see that as a, don't feel cursed or beat yourself up or those kinds of things. Like that is actually a sign that you are very receptive for healing and ripe for change and finding your health again. Oh, I love that you ended with that. That's kind of my story. I remember when I first got molded, she was like, I'm gonna kill this and that was all on the, I'm gonna just, you know, take care of this and I, people have heard me say this before but I was like, I don't know how many binders I took but I like loaded up the binders for two months, I had hives for my neck down, my whole body was covered, like three plus pitting edema. I was a wreck. I mean, I was going way too fast for my sensitive soul, which I had to admit that I was. I feel excited, I'm a sensitive flower. But what I've learned is exactly what you said is all of a sudden now like homey pelvic doses are gentle things. I do so well with these things and they're just tiny little drops of this or that or small doses or intermittent, you know, pulse dosing. And now that I've accepted that I am sensitive, it's actually this kindness to ourselves back to the original story there when we do that. So again, if you're listening and you're like being blown out of the water, work with your doc or just try things in a lower dose because sometimes you'll get a really great response at a lower dose. And it's kind of counterintuitive. Yeah. Ooh, I just got chills. So that's so true. So how do you, listening, we just hit something there. We did, I know, because again, and I'll tell you guys are the worst. I don't mean to stereotype, but the men are like, give it to me, give me a plan, give me a protocol. I just want to beat this, you know that. And again, not to stereotype because I'm sure there's some women out there and there's some men that aren't like this. But in general, they're like, they want to go and get at it. And sometimes I'm like, it's actually better if you go more slowly. Right, yeah. Now we don't have to pick your kidneys up. Exactly. Because your wrinkles are like totally dry. Oh, this is so much fun. So where can people find you? Where can they get your book? I'll be sure to include links, but I want to have it on here as well. So tell us. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so my website is drcrysta.com. That's D-R-C-R-I-S-T-A.com. You can get my book on Amazon at Barnes and Nobles or wherever you get your books. You can get it from my website. My training course for practitioners, if you're a practitioner listening, that's on my courses tab. And if you are a person that's suffering from complex chronic illness, you can check out my membership on the memberships tab. And it's super fun. Like we have these open Zoom rooms where people can share with each other and the members are mad. We've attracted like the neatest people and they're all there to help each other. Yeah, it's great. That is so great. Because that's one of the biggest things in healing is realizing you're not alone. So again, if you're out there feeling alone, love it, I would highly recommend. Well, thank you for your time today. And I know it'd be a treat and it was. And I appreciate your advice and insight. Thank you. I appreciate the invitation. I can't wait till we chat again. Sounds good.