 Hello, everybody. I'm live here to answer your questions. I've got a few that have come in already, so we'll start with those. But I would love if you pop in, if you are here today, tell me where you're from. Say hello and please drop in your questions. I'm going to get my screen here so that I can see those coming in as I'm talking to you. And like I said, just feel free to drop in any questions. Say hello. Tell me where you're from. And we will be on for today's Friday afternoon live Q&A with Dr. Jill. I always love connecting with you here and answering your questions. And like I said, what I'll start with is a few that have come in beforehand, so we'll go there. So please stop in. Say hello. Tell me where you're from. Dana, you would ask a question when we mentioned that we were going live today. You said I have mold, Lyme, and Crohn's. I'm so sorry. That's a trifecta, if there ever was one. I had a doctor give me prednisone and it made it so debilitating the pain that I could not walk for a while. Is there anything you can do to reverse what the steroid did for me? Well, first of all, I really should say I'm not here to give you specific medical advice, because obviously I don't have a relationship with you as a patient, but I can give you some kind of general things and I'll do my very best to still answer all of your questions. So gosh, what probably happened? A lot of times steroids are used to treat inflammatory bowel disease or sometimes when there's nonspecific immune inflammation or autoimmunity. Steroids are one way that we've had for a long time that calmed down the immune system. So often doctors will prescribe steroids when the immune system is inflamed. So for example, someone who has autoimmune alopecia where there's scarring hair loss, often they'll get a steroid because of the scarring hair loss just to calm that down, but a steroid is very nonspecific. So it calms down the whole immune system kind of puts a wet blanket on it and downstream that can be problematic because it weakens the immune system's ability to fight infections. So our immune system was created and is made to actually fight those infections and those things like Lyme disease, Epstein bar or old viruses or things. So when you mention that you have mold and Lyme disease, when you take that steroid, you're actually suppressing your body's immune ability to fight off those infections. So it's possible that some of the flare of the pain came from that steroid suppressing your immune system and then old infections popping their heads up like Epstein bar or Lyme. Lyme in particular, Borrelia especially can cause a lot of chronic pain. So that may be the issue of why that popped up. So what to do? Well, what I would do is there's a lot of ways to treat chronic Lyme disease. That would be a whole hour lecture in itself, but there's many herbal tinctures. There's things like the Calvin protocol, Byron white formulas. If you haven't read Buehner's protocols or listened to maybe Darren Ingalls has written a book. Dr. Klinghart has written some books. Kindleer, gosh, I'm not even naming all the greats in Lyme to Dr. Horowitz, but those all are great resources on Lyme disease and it can be incredibly complex. The treatments often combinations of either antibiotics, medications or herbal. And I do find it works best to combine because just antibiotics alone don't typically cause a complete cure unless you use herbs and things to support the immune system. So that's a lot. But I would go after if you feel like the Lyme has flared with the steroid go after the Lyme with some tinctures. Some there are some essential oil blends and things as simple as that to get a start on the biofilms that might help. Other things that might help your pain are just SPMs. On my website, Dr. Jill health, you can find SPM active or SPM Supreme or even my very favorite mega mega, which is the combination of fish oil and SPMs together. And those are all really powerful anti-inflammatories for pain. Another one of my favorites is Dr. H. Rejoint at Dr. Jill health.com. And that one has a wonderful combination of celery, baswalia, garlic, all natural anti-inflammatories. If you have a lot of chronic pain. So, and there's other things like CBD tinctures and things that can help with pain too. And I'm so sorry you're going through that Dana. Bernie, he said I would love to see a doctor you could recommend where I live. I live in the Bay Area near San Francisco. I feel my team of doctors does not take the time to help me with issues and stick to the average lab results without taking into account symptoms. I suffer from Hashimoto's and probably heading into perimenopause and feeling so off. Bernie, I'm sorry. Gosh, it is sad, isn't it? Because I know, you know, I was trained conventionally. So I know how the system works. And they, there's a purpose for that if we're, you know, an accident or have a heart attack or something we want to be with the best medical center. But as far as looking for root cause or really taking the time as a medical detected to look deeper, you don't always find that. And I'm sorry you've had that experience. What I recommend is there are several organizations depending on what you're looking for that you might be able to find a doctor in your area that's well trained. I always recommend IFM.org, which is Institute of Functional Medicine Training Organization for Physicians Who Are Trained in Functional Medicine. You can look at A4M. They also train integrative and anti-aging medicine doctors. And if you're dealing with Lyme or mold, a lot of the environmental toxicity, you can look at ICI, which is International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illness, ISEAI.org. You can find physicians trained, especially with mold or chronic environmental exposures. And then ILADS is a great organization for specific training with Lyme disease. And that's I-L-A-D-I-L-A-D-S.com. And those are all great resources of where to maybe find physicians that can help you dig a little deeper. So thanks for that question, Bernie. Hi, Nola. Nola says, I have gluten sensitivity prior to H. pylori 12 years ago. H. pylori is an infection in the gut, in the stomach, and it can cause heartburn, burping, belching, bloating, and sometimes even pre-cancerous things. So that sounds like 12 years ago. Positive again on stool test as well as bacterial imbalance. Prior history of alcohol use been not so much in the past 10 years. Gallbladder removed in 2008. I have lymph nodes popped up on my fingers six months ago. Bad pain after last round of antibiotics. It's better but not gone. Feel best on a keto diet with fasting. Joint pain is rough. Staying away from gluten. Green smoothies with flax and chia, 25% fruit, pretty much off dairy but not coffee. So lots going on here. Kind of wanting to know what to do next. So is there any hope for me? Well, yes, Nola. There's always hope and thanks for asking. So first of all, let's talk about H. pylori. There is lots of natural treatments for H. pylori and I have found this to be successful and very helpful for some people. Mastic gum is one of the mainstays. So is berberine and so is bismuth and zinc carnicine. Those are my quad therapy for natural treatment of H. pylori. And if you do them in the right doses, they can be very, very effective. Usually you need eight weeks of those herbs. Mastic gum, berberine, zinc carnicine, and bismuth versus the typical two week course that's medication. But it can be very effective and especially if you have chronic H. pylori, taking those herbs together for a period of six to eight weeks can really, really improve your symptoms and often completely eliminate or eradicate the H. pylori. The other stuff, the bacterial dysbiosis. There's many herbs, things like berberine or undolysic acid or grapefruit seed extract or uva ursi. Just to name a few are great antimicrobials for the gut. And I'm a huge fan if you have bacterial or fungal dysbiosis with spore probiotics because they tend to increase diversity in the gut. So this is a great way to help heal your gut long term. The other thing I really like, no matter if you have fungal overgrowth or bacterial overgrowth, is gut immune powder. You can find on my website, drjilhealth.com. That gut immune powder has been shown. It's made of bovine immunoglobulins and it will passively bind some of those pathogens and things that are in your gut and be a real help to eradicating bacteria. So if you start with just a spore probiotic, my favorite is the one on drjilhealth.com. It's spore plus IG. And then if you want to add additional IG, you can use gut immune powder. And then like I said, you can do berberine. We have a product called Mastic Plus that has all those ingredients for H. pylori. And that's a real effective way if you want one thing that has everything. Hi, Michelle from Maine. Hi, Carol from Sarasota. Stop in, say hello. Tell me where you're from. Hi, Todd. Referrals. Yes, I mentioned that just a few minutes ago about where you might find other doctors. And I am actively working on finding more medical help at my office because I sure would love to help more of you out. So that is in the works, but still in the works. Hi, Don. Great to hear you here from you. And thank you for your kind words. What are my thoughts about bad IPS issues that seem to be not getting any better? I wonder if you mean IBS? Yeah, I think IBS would be irritable bowel syndrome. So typically irritable bowel about 60 to 80% of irritable bowel is actually small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So that's SIBO, S-I-B-O for short. And that can come from dysmotility, meaning lack of normal motility of the bowel, often if we're in stress or fight or flight or all kinds of things, even old tick-borne infections like Lyme disease can affect gastric motility or the migrating motor complex, which is the motor agent that causes peristalsis in our small bowel. If that's stagnant and not moving, we tend to get overgrowth. I always say it's like pond scum when there's no movement out and outflow. And so that lack of movement creates stagnation and then overgrowth of bacteria. Other things that can contribute to SIBO or IBS are lack of hydrochloric acid to lack of stomach acid or lack of pancreatic enzymes. And even lack of bile flow, if you have bile stagnation or problems with your gallbladder, can cause issues with SIBO as well. Bile is a natural agent that sterilizes a small bowel and prevents SIBO from occurring. I would say I would go with a breath test to detect if SIBO is present. So typically I use TrioSmart or Genova 3-Hour SIBO. Those are two companies that do great testing. TrioSmart is the only one I know that currently does hydrogen, methane and hydrogen sulfide, which are the three types of SIBO. So that's my favorite test. But there's many other tests out there, their breath test. You can also do organic acids in the urine to look at bacterial and fungal metabolites in the urine. And then you can look at a stool test. So that would be, if you have all the money and time in the world, the idea would be stool test, breath test for SIBO and to do a organic acid test. Hi Taylor, what's good testing for parasites? You're right, it sucks and it's really hard to find, that's what you said, so I'm just quoting, but true. It's really hard to detect parasites and they're surprisingly common. There are some independent labs called Parasitology Inc. and I think there's another one out there, similar name, and they are decent for finding hard to find parasites. Some of the tests like GI MAP, which is a stool test that's PCR, does do PCR for worms and parasites. Even so, if you're not shedding actively, it can miss those symptoms. Signs of parasites might be bloating that hasn't responded to other treatment or symptoms that especially are worse around the full moon. It's crazy as that sounds, it's typically more active around that time. So if you have cyclical symptoms that are worse around the full moon, you might want to check and make sure there's no parasites. Well, hello Karen, love you right back and thanks for saying hi. Amna, please share the best protocols for lowing viral load. Okay guys, so this is a big one because a lot of people post COVID are having some symptoms and what I'm seeing is a type of, what I'm seeing post COVID is a set of factors that are common in a lot of people. Number one would be activation of B cells and this would be more autoimmunity. A lot of the tissues are being from molecular mimicry being mistaken, you know, when the virus is there in the spike proteins and then all of a sudden that patient will develop autoimmunity after they get COVID. Number two is T cell decrease. T cells are the things that buy viruses and cancer and other bacteria and often you have a weakened immune state after COVID. Third thing would be reactivation of old viruses like Epstein-Barr. We're seeing lots of shingles, HSV, cold sores and these things will tend to pop up because that immune system is in a weakened state. And then the last thing that we're seeing that's kind of sad and contributes to pretty severe fatigue in some people is low cortisol. So I'm looking for these patients if they have long COVID and symptoms as such, I'm checking these markers and seeing. So your question, Amna, is what to do for viral reactivation or viral load? Lots and lots of different ways you can go about this. Some of my favorites are L lysine, humic and fulvic acids can be powerful. They're actually detoxifiers but also antiviral. I like monolorn at 1800 twice a day. I like olive leaf at about a thousand or more twice a day. And then there's lots of good herbal tinctures. I like Byron White, EBH6. And you can find all of these on my website, drjilhealth.com. And I also like the Beyond Balance IMNv2. Those are all real good antivirals that I've used. I don't use all of those together, but those are some of them. Other things like a stragglist can be powerful for some people. And those are the big ones for Epstein Bar and reactivation of viral load. And there's more cysts, cysts, tinctures that can also be helpful. And I usually just try a patient on a certain protocol and then reassess how they're feeling if the fatigue is better and check titers in the blood for those viruses to see how they're doing. Hi, Michelle. How can I help? My daughter is having upper stomach pains, gave her meds. Dr. Gave her meds and said it was IBS. She's 13. Oh, I'm so sorry. So upper stomach can typically be, I mean, it could be H. pylori. You might want to have her checked for that. It could be maldigestion. So she's not making enough pancreatic enzyme. And so it hurts when the food is sitting there. Even low stomach acid proteins might be more of an issue. What I would start with is checking for food allergies and making sure gluten isn't a trigger because that can cause inflammation. If there's a bit of gastritis, things like my gut calm powder could help. It's a real gentle combination of glutamine and DGL and some things that will soothe the gut. And zinc carnicine, which is our zinc soothe at Dr.JillHealth.com, can be really helpful as well for that stomach pain. In a lot of cultures, they use that zinc soothe product for healing gastrointestinal ulcers or gastritis at inflammation. So making sure there's no food sensitivities, trying some things like gut shield or gut calm powder. And zinc carnicine would be a way to start and check for H. pylori. Hi, Cindy from Pennsylvania. Thanks for joining us. Hi, Jean from Rochester. Thank you. Thank you. Dawn, LPS. Sorry, I think I read that wrong. So what to do with LPS? Thank you. Thank you for clarifying. So let's talk a little bit about LPS. This is a big one. LPS is lipo polysaccharide. This is the bacterial coating that can leak from your gut into your immune system. The blood stream basically just one cell layer thick. And that LPS is a potent immune stimulator. We know now that LPS is at the root of obesity of heart disease, diabetes, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and so many other conditions. So this is a huge player causing inflammation to the immune system and creating issues in the body. So what happens is in the condition of a leaky gut, that lipo polysaccharide coating can leak over across the wall of the cell, the lumen of the gut into the bloodstream. And it triggers an immune response. And that immune response then can cause weight gain, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and all the things that I named. So what to do about it? Well, the first thing would be to try to heal the gut. But you really can't heal the gut unless you know what's causing that. Is it a fungal overgrowth? Is it a bacterial or parasitic infection? Is it a bacterial overgrowth? Is it inflammatory thing like mold exposure? And mold can definitely cause permeability in the gut. Is it a parasite like Giardia? Is it toxic chemical exposure? Is it poor diet with artificial preservatives and flavorings? Is it excess glyphosate because you're not doing organic foods? So all those things and more could cause leaky gut, which allows for that LPS to cross over. So the first thing you got to do is find the root cause, fungal overgrowth, bacterial overgrowth, and all the things that I mentioned. And then you got to start to treat that first. That's removed. That's the first R. And then after that, you can start putting in things like gut immune powder, gut shield, gut calm, anything with either bovine immune globulins or with glutamine powder will start to heal. And then ideally a spore probiotic is very effective for LPS and healing that gut microbiome because that will help to stabilize the issue. And then after you heal the gut microbiome, you can bind LPS with bovine immune globulins as well. So there's multiple different ways. This is not an easy overnight answer. I wish there were like one product or one thing that you could do, but it isn't a huge underlying issue. And it starts with diet, starts with removing the pathogens and it starts with replacing the things that will start to heal the gut. And then we're re-inoculating with healthy probiotics. Like I said, spores are our favorite, but you may need a combination of other things. We've got lots of different probiotics. We've got your daily probiotic. We've got your probiotic with IG. We've got your probiotic with sacro, if you have fungal issues. And we've got the probiotic 100 billion. If you have inflammatory bowel or more deeper issues. Okay. Let's see here. Hi, Taylor. Thank you to you as well. Hi, Michelle. What could you give an eight-year-old with major chronic cough from grass and ragweed? So this is like an allergic cough. So Michelle, I would say Corsitin would be real fine for an eight-year-old. You might want to dose like 250 BID versus higher doses. But Corsitin is quite safe. And I would say eight and above it'd be perfectly fine to try Corsitin as a natural antihistamine. Hi, Misty. What do you recommend for reflux? So reflux, there's lots of causes. You could have low stomach acid. You could have H. pylori. You could have issues with the lower esophageal sphincter opening up and allowing the reflux of acid. You could be eating the wrong foods. So I would try first, maybe elimination of gluten, dairy, sugar. See if that helps. And then second, DGL. We have a product called DGL Plus at DrJillHealth.com that's really wonderful for kind of coating and soothing that mucosa. If that doesn't work, you could try Zinc Soothe, which I mentioned before. And those two things can be really helpful at coating and soothing. If you prefer a powder or gut shield powder, really great because it has a lot of ingredients like the DGL and the Zinc Carnicine and it can code and soothe that esophagus. And that's probably your best bet. Okay. That is all the questions I have at the moment. Feel free to pop in and say hello or put another question in there. And I can stay a few more minutes if you have more questions. As always, it is so fun to be here with you and answer your questions. And I will, if you missed this month, I will try to be back next month for more. Okay. Hi Stace, is there anything to help bring back nerves or prevent nerves from dying? And thank you, Misty, for thanking me. So we'll answer this last question and then we'll come back for more next month. So and what's the best air filter? So first question is nerves. Okay. Nerves are tricky and there's a lot of people that are suffering now with neurological either numbness, tingling, because toxins like mold can create more issues with nerves. Infections like Lyme disease, Bartonella and some of those can cause issues with nerves. And this is tricky because I do believe you can stop the damage when there's autoimmunity or something causing the nerve damage. But there are times when you already have some damage that's happened, like maybe diabetic neuropathy that you can't always reverse completely what's already happened. So the some of the main ingredients that I really like for nerves are glutathione, methyl, B12, methylfolate, arlypoic acid can be really powerful or alpha-lypoic acid, anacetyl cysteine, and bostidylcholine. So those are some of the real core nutrients for the nerve regrowth and the nerve health. And there are some products like neurochondria from thorn that has all of those in it. I think brain sustain, neuroactive brain sustain from simogen is another great one. And again, you're looking for glutathione, anacetyl cysteine, lipoic acid, sometimes bostidylcholine or bostidylserine for the nerves. And one more question from Darla, what's the best air filter for your home or someone dealing with mole exposure? And you're welcome. So air filters, I'm a big fan of the air filters that have a VOC filter as well. So there's a couple brands. My number one is Austin Air. I have three of them here in my small condo and I have five of them at work and they have saved my life multiple times just because it keeps our air so clean. So I'm a huge fan of Austin Air. If you do ever want to know more, we are a dealer. And I did that just so that I could give patients a discount. So if you want to discount one in Austin Air, call my office. We can take care of it for you. But there's other brands too. You don't have to get it from me. Air Oasis and IQ Air, especially. I would be cautious about those that have, they sometimes react in the air to the molecular. They'll say like they have a UV filter or some technology that purifies the air. And while these are great for someone who's healthy with no issues, I find that patients like myself who are sensitive to mold and have sensitive lungs, sometimes that reaction to the process of the air, sorry, the chemical, certainly a chemical, but the process in the air of remediating the air can cause reactive oxygen and it can be irritated to the lungs. So I'm not a fan of those air filters. So IQ Air, Austin Air, my favorite, also Air Doctor, that's a new kid on the block. I have one of those in my office as well. Huge fan of Air Doctor. So well, everybody, thank you so much for joining me today. I will be back. Stay tuned for more and you can always watch this recording anytime you like or share it. And we'll see you soon next time.