 Thank you all for coming. My name is Brendan Kelly. I'm an acupuncturist and a Western and a Chinese herbalist. And my wife and I practice at the clinic we founded in Burlington, Vermont, Jade Mountain Wellness. And what I wanted to talk tonight about was Lyme disease. And our experience treating Lyme disease is we treat Lyme disease without treating Lyme disease. And the reason we do that is because as soon as we say that we're treating Lyme disease, we're oriented towards a particular perspective. And that perspective is a Western biomedical perspective. And we don't practice Western biomedicine. We practice Chinese medicine. And having said that, we treat a lot of people with Lyme. I would estimate over the last couple of years over half the new patients that I treat have Lyme. So I've treated hundreds of people with Lyme and my wife has also treated hundreds of people with Lyme. And what I can say definitively is that Lyme is totally treatable. Early stage, mid stage, late stage Lyme is treatable from initial tick bite through energy issues and digestive issues through late stage neurological Lyme. So the title of the talk tonight is treating late stage neurological Lyme. And having said that, what I want to do is talk about how we develop late stage neurological Lyme. Because that in Chinese medicine that doesn't develop on its own. That's part of a progression. And there's a disease progression theory that we're gonna talk about that luckily for us describes how something like an initial tick bite from Lyme can eventually result in late stage neurological symptoms. So Lyme is very, very treatable. But again, we don't have protocols for treating Lyme. We don't have acupuncture points for treating Lyme. And we use a lot of herbs. We practice Western and Chinese herbalism. Our focus with herbs is not on herbs that kill Lyme. It's not on herbs that kill Lyme spirochetes or address co-infections. And the reason for that is because from a Chinese medical view, that is not necessary. And again, if we say that we're using herbs or acupuncture points to treat Lyme, we're oriented in a particular direction. And that's not our direction. So we're gonna talk about diet, lifestyle, acupuncture and herbs to address these things. And I'm gonna talk about my understanding of where something like Lyme is coming from. So this is us. And this is a book that I wrote. And the reason I have this book up is because in my opinion, from my practice of Chinese medicine, what's happening in the climate is happening within us. Something like Lyme just doesn't appear on its own. In my opinion, and I think Western medicine, parts of Western medicine would agree, Lyme disease is really getting to be the point of an epidemic. The number of people who have Lyme is increasing exponentially. And also the fact that Lyme is spreading quickly, geographically also indicates it's an epidemic. And also the fear associated with Lyme implies an epidemic. So all of those things indicate Lyme is getting to epidemic levels. And as we're gonna talk about, the first stage of Lyme is the Chinese diagnosis of heat. Heat is analogous physiologically to inflammation. So when we have something like a tick bite introducing heat, that creates inflammation internally. It's not a coincidence that the planet is warming. It's not a coincidence that the planet is warming as the rates of Lyme disease are increasing exponentially. There's a direct correlation between the two, which we're gonna talk about. So Yin and Yang, fundamental to Chinese medicine, fundamental to understanding Lyme disease as well. This image is quite literally prehistoric. It predates any written history we have of its origins. And it is central to Chinese medicine. So a couple of things about the image, it's a circle. So a circle implies that things move, that one thing becomes another thing. And this is very, very important because the way I understand Lyme disease, the way we treat Lyme disease, is Lyme disease is a process. Lyme disease is not a thing. Lyme disease, as we'll talk about, is something that develops in the body. And as a result with that, it's important that we understand which stage Lyme disease is at. And therefore, not only can we treat the stage it's in, we can hopefully prevent the disease from moving deeper into the body. So Yin and Yang implies movement, it's a circle. And we'll talk about this a little bit too, but also we can see the white part is Yang and the black part is Yin. Within the Yang there is the Yin, within the Yin there is the Yang. So within one thing there is something else and this relates directly again to Lyme disease. Also we can see that when something reaches its full expression, it transforms. So you can see right here in this white spot that when the white spot, the white part, the Yang, is at its peak, the black begins to appear. And when the black reaches its peak, the white begins to appear. This is very important because this is specifically part of the development of Lyme disease. If you take something far enough, it transforms. Which again, implies that medicine healing, Lyme, is a process. Chinese medicine is really old. I believe there's different discussions about this. It's at least 5,000 years old. We have the first textbook that we know about in Chinese medicine called the Nei Jing, the book that's about the five elements, the five phases of Chinese medicine. That is dated within a Chinese medicine perspective to about 4,800 years ago. Chinese medicine is also coming from an agrarian culture. So the language that we use in Chinese medicine comes from nature. The language we use is yin and yang, hot and cold, damp and dry. We talk about the seasons in nature. We also talk about the seasons within us. And it's informed fundamentally from this connection of nature. So even potentially something as scary as Lyme disease, rather than talking about infections, co-infections, things like how spirochetes can hide, rather than talking about that, we can talk about hot, cold, damp and dry. And I think the value of that is one, it's very descriptive of what's happening, but we can also honestly take the fear out of it. With something like Lyme disease, I think because in my view, there is not a great diagnostic method from a Western view and also the treatment methods are pretty limited, there is a great deal of fear. So rather than talking about scary things like co-infections, we can talk about things like coolant and heat. Chinese medicine views things, not only holistically, but holographically. So the understanding is, it's not just that we're all interconnected here in the room, we're connected to our family and friends, we're connected to the world around us, but the understanding is the little picture and the big picture is the same picture. So the idea of a hologram, if this was a holographic image, and a hologram is a computer laser-generated 3D image, if this was a holographic image and we broke a part of the image off, it would have all of the information, all the visual information in this little section. Chinese medicine sees the world the same way. And that's very relevant because we can see that what's happening within us is happening in the world around us and what's happening in the world around us is happening with the climate. So climate change, what we're gonna talk about at the end is climate change and Lyme disease are very much connected. So in the first chapter of that book I referenced before, the naging, it says all of the influences in the universe are within us. So that's going beyond nature. It's not saying we are nature and nature is us, it's saying we are the universe and the universe is us. So that is the reference point. It's not only a holistic medicine, it's a holographic medicine and it's a medicine that's based on patterns and understanding patterns within us and in the world around us. A really important idea in Chinese medicine, fundamental in Chinese medicine is the idea of a differential diagnosis where we're trying to differentiate what's causing the condition. So when we say someone has Lyme disease or a few or someone else has Lyme disease, that's fine but that's the branch. The image in Chinese medicine are branches and roots. The branch is the diagnosis and the roots are where the diagnosis is coming from. So Lyme disease really quite literally from a Chinese view is just the beginning. That's not the end. If you get diagnosed with Lyme disease it's not like oh okay now we know what's going on and we can treat it. That's literally the beginning of the story because in Chinese medicine we wanna differentiate how Lyme disease is showing up within each individual and we wanna treat the individual with the condition. Fundamental idea in Chinese medicine is we treat the person first and the diagnosis second. Whether that's a Chinese or a Western diagnosis. So Chinese medicine I think by its nature is individually oriented. It's customized and so I think that's a real limitation if someone for example is diagnosed with Lyme disease or gets a tick bite and the assumption is everyone needs two to four weeks of doxycycline. That is not treating the individual. That is treating the particular Western biomedical diagnosis and if that helps people that's fine but I've treated hundreds of people where that didn't work. So it's more than just the diagnosis. It's where the diagnosis is coming from and who is this specific individual who has this diagnosis. And Yin and Yang. Yang becomes Yin, Yin becomes Yang. There's a sense of movement. Within the Yang there is the Yin. Within the Yin there is the Yang. So what is Yin and Yang? Well, Yin is water. Yin is the black descending part of the circle. Yin is coolant. Yin is fluids and water and Yin is latency. That last term's a very, very important one because I think what's happening with a lot of chronic diseases, Lyme disease for example or cancer is another one, is we as a group are losing latency. We are losing our ability to have something be out of balance within us but not have it be a big deal. So latency corresponds generally to the Western idea of things being subclinical. You have a condition but it's no big deal because we could all get bitten by the same Lyme tick and only some of us may develop problems. So then the question is what prevents those problems from showing up? I think with Lyme disease we're gonna talk about Lyme in terms of it being a hot condition, an inflammatory condition. One significant reason that Lyme becomes an issue is because we've lost latency. And in particular what that means with Lyme is we've lost Yin. We've lost coolant, we've lost relaxation. So this is a very, very important idea. So one idea that we're gonna talk about as a way to prevent Lyme is to reduce heat, to reduce inflammation internally and to increase Yin, to increase latency. And the other part of the circle is the Yang. The Yang is ascending, the Yang is going up, the Yang is rising, the Yang is fire. The Yang is hot and heat, fire, and Yang is an expression or a loss of latency. So this is significant because when we express things, hopefully we're expressing well-being. We don't, expression for the sake of expression is not necessarily health. Ideally we wanna be expressing well-being. So constantly expressing ourselves is not necessarily a sign of well-being. We wanna express well-being or if there is imbalance within us we want to not express that. So an excess of fire and excess of heat can come from a loss of latency. And again, latency is the Yin. Bienhua, very interesting idea. It's not something I've seen written down very much at all and I learned it from my Chinese medicine teacher. Bienhua is a disease progression theory that I think explains how an initial tick bite can eventually result in late stage neurological Lyme which is the last stage of Lyme. But before we get to the last stage we have to look at the other stages. So not written about, if you go and type Bienhua online you might find some references to some articles I've written or some talks I've given but it's not something that at least in English is readily accessible. So Bienhua is a classical Chinese medicine understanding. So what I mean by that is this is the old stuff. This is the stuff that predates the westernization of Chinese medicine that happened with the Communist Party in China starting in the 1940s, 1950s. And when I heard about this Bienhua, this disease progression theory, it was not in reference to Lyme disease. I was not learning about it. This is a way to treat Lyme disease. It was just presented this is a disease progression theory and when I heard about it at the end I was really stunned because I was already treating people with Lyme and I was like, oh my gosh, this describes the development of Lyme disease. And this is not the exclusive perspective that we use but is the primary perspective that we use to understand Lyme. So it describes the progression of disease. Again, life as movement, life as change, health as change and disease as change. So Lyme is not one thing. Lyme is a condition that develops and progresses. So it explains the progression of Lyme from tick bite through late stage neurological symptoms. And there's four stages. So this is important because as I see it, the emphasis in the treatment of Lyme, whether it's with pharmaceuticals or with herbs is focusing on one of those four stages. And it's the first stage and it's the inflammatory stage. And that makes sense because Lyme starts as an inflammatory condition. But after that condition, we have three other stages, which is why, again, I think if we're looking at things exclusively from a Western biomedical view, we're encouraged to understand this as one thing. You have Lyme, that's the thing, this is the treatment. And in my experience working with lots of people, I have many, many, many examples where that simply doesn't work. So four stages of progression. It's a classical view. Talks about the progression of the disease. It explains the progression of disease and there's four parts to it, four stages. The first stage, this is the one that's really emphasized in terms of natural medicine, herbal medicine and certainly in terms of pharmaceuticals. And it is a very, very important stage because if you treat Lyme effectively at this stage, the other stages don't have to show up. So this is obviously a very important stage. The first stage is heat inflammation and that occurs with the initial tick bite. And so this makes sense because if you get a tick bite, even if it doesn't have Lyme issues with it, a tick bite will create redness. Redness is heat. It will also create swelling, which is heat. It will also physically feel hot, which is also heat. So that clearly indicates that the first stage of Lyme is about what Chinese medicine would call heat from a Western biomedical view that would be called inflammation. So the signs and symptoms associated with this red skin, so the red bull's eye, for example, associated with Lyme, fever can occur. Days or even weeks, sometimes even longer after an initial tick bite. Fever again indicates heat. Joint aches also, there's swelling, there's inflammation in the joints. And then headaches because heat by its nature is young. We talked about this before. Young rises up into the head and can cause headaches. So this is an essential stage. If this is treated well, then the other three stages don't have to appear. Having said that, my understanding of how to treat this is different than the Western biomedical view. I'm not here to speak badly of Western medicine. I'm not here to speak badly of the use of antibiotics, if it helps people, great. But at this first stage, the heat is introduced externally. The heat is on the skin. The heat is introduced by the initial tick bite. Not only are we trying to clear heat, the direction that we're trying to clear heat from is up and out. The Chinese term for that is called release exterior. We want to promote the release of the heat through the skin. Antibiotics do not do that. Antibiotics do not create a release of heat through the skin. They're too cold. What antibiotics are from a Western herbal view is like the equivalent of maybe taking a half an ounce or an ounce of golden seal. Or from a Chinese view, it'd be like taking a whole lot, maybe 10 grams of this really cold herb, shogao gypsum. They're both anti-inflammatory, but at the beginning, the direction we want is not to clear down. The direction we want is to clear up and out. So we want to use herbs. We want to use Western herbs, Chinese herbs, acupuncture points that bring things up and out. So the term for this would be diaphoretics. We want to use herbs or substances that create a mild sweat to release things up and out. Antibiotics simply do not do that. They don't create a sweat. From the Chinese view, they don't release exterior. They don't bring things up and out. Because they're so cold, they push things down and in. And if that works for people, great. And I'm convinced that that doesn't always work because I've treated enough people that it's clear to me it doesn't always work. So first stage is heat, the thinking in Chinese medicine. The heat is on the surface, so let's clear it up and out. Let's release it through the pores. Second stage is related to the first stage. So again, yin and yang, things transform. One thing becomes another thing. So the first stage of heat, the second stage is dryness. And that's a very simple idea. If you have a pot on the stove and you have the pot filled with water and you crank up the stove, the fluid gets cooked off. So heat creates dryness. This is a very simple basic Chinese medicine understanding. That's yin and yang. So if you take one part of the circle far enough, it becomes something else. So this is essentially a development, a intensification of the first stage. So the signs and symptoms are similar, but there's more of them and it's becoming more intense. So dryness is this stage, the technical term in Chinese medicine is called yin deficiency. Yin is the coolant. Deficiency means not enough. So the heat is going up and the coolant, the yin is going down. Internal fluids are being cooked off. So this is just more of the first stage and now we're developing some specific symptoms to this diagnosis of a lack of coolant in deficiency. So one classic sign and symptom of this is night sweats. When you get hot at night, whether it's lime related or not, that implies that the coolant is being cooked off because the night, it should be the coolest, the most relaxing time of the 24 hour cycle. So if you don't have that at night, then things get hot. So being hot at night in particular implies, strongly implies this next stage, which is a lack of yin. So all of the other symptoms are relevant also and now there's more of them. They could be increasing in intensity or frequency and now we're developing things like night sweats. Okay, so first stage, heat. Second stage is dryness. That's basic Chinese medicine theory. The next two are where things get interesting. From the lack of coolant, the lack of yin, what can happen is the body can compensate or overcompensate and create too much yin, too much fluid. And the reason for that is because the body in its wisdom, if it doesn't have enough of something, it will try to get it from somewhere else or it will hold on to whatever version of that it has. So the third stage is what Chinese medicine calls phlegm, which is like mucus. But it's not just mucus in the nose, the throat, the lungs, it can be mucus anywhere in the body and it can also be mucus that can be affecting other things physiologically. So heat creates dryness, lack of fluids. The third stage from the second stage is from the dryness, there is an excess of fluid, stickiness. And that stickiness, that heaviness is occurring because there's a lack of healthy fluids. So the body is either holding on to or creating whatever fluids it can that won't be cooked off because the clear natural fluids are being evaporated essentially. So what's left over is heavy, sticky fluids. So at this stage, all of the other symptoms are continuing. So again, life, health, healing, lime as a process. It's something that's developing, it's not static, it's not just something that's set in stone. So all of the other symptoms that we've spoken about are occurring and because there is phlegm, phlegm in Chinese medicine is associated with the digestive system. The digestive system is the stomach and the spleen. The spleen in particular in Chinese medicine is responsible for cognition, for thinking. So when the stomach and the spleen get dampness, dampness is heaviness and stickiness and things being weighted down. Things are getting heavy internally. When the spleen in particular gets heavy, its energy cannot make it up to the brain. So we start to get brain fog. So this is the stage in Lyme disease of brain fog and many, many, many people have brain fog with Lyme. So this is brain fog, this is cognitive issues which is just thinking issues. There's a decrease of energy. So this decrease of energy is happening because the body is compensating for a lack of fluids by creating or holding onto heavier fluids and that heavy fluid is weighting things down. Things are getting worn out and descending too much and it can also be connected to digestive issues. So this is a way to describe the brain fog that's coming with Lyme, cognitive issues with Lyme, decrease in energy with Lyme and digestive issues. So this is important because so many people have this and when folks come in or if you know what people when people start to get brain fog, it can really start to get scary, right? They're not sure what's going on. They look damp, right? They look flemy, they come in and they might even be a little unstable. The next stage is really about that instability but their thinking is slowing down. Energy is slowing down, digestive system is slowing down. So the good news about all of this, this is totally treatable. There's acupuncture, there's herbs, there's diet, there's lifestyle for all of this but for this in particular. So is brain fog and cognitive issues associated with Lyme treatable? Absolutely, it is totally treatable, right? And having said that, I think it's essential for us to understand where the dampness the phlegm is coming from. The dampness in the phlegm is coming from the dryness and where is the dryness coming from the heat. So all of this is originating with heat. So heat is paramount to treat. So it's often important to understand where all of this is originating from. So it's not just about dampness, it's not just about dryness. This is all starting with the initial inflammatory response from the tick. So this potentially scary stuff, loss of energy, brain fog, thinking issues, digestive issues, all totally treatable. And again, this is coming from other places. And so heat creates dryness. Dryness creates damp, which is phlegm, stickiness. And the fourth stage is response to the third stage. The fourth stage is response in particular to the nature of dampness, the nature of phlegm. The nature of phlegm is things are heavy, weighted down, sticky, things are slowing down. So the body in its wisdom is trying to respond to that. What it's trying to do is get rid of that excess heaviness. And so what it generates, what it summons in the body is what Chinese medicine calls wind. And in order to understand wind, just think about wind outside. Wind blows things around. Wind can knock branches off a tree, can knock things around, throw things around. It's an impetus for change. So that's what the body generates as a response to the third stage. Because dampness is a lack of movement, a lack of change. So the body generates change to try to literally blow the dampness away. And wind is responsible for a lot of issues in Chinese medicine. In particular, wind is responsible for all neurological symptoms of any kind. Whether it's in Lyme or whether it's with other things. So does that mean neurological symptoms are treatable? Absolutely. Connected to Lyme or not connected to Lyme? So tremors, twitches, seizures, a lack of balance, migraines, all of those things are not only treatable, but we have a specific neurological tradition in Chinese medicine that lays out how to treat it. So again, these can be scary symptoms. Someone comes in or maybe you're experiencing yourself. The brain is kind of foggy, which is dampness. And with that fogginess, things are starting to become overstimulated. There's a lack of stability. There can be tremors. There can be twitches. There can be migraines. So these, again, can be scary. But is it treatable? Yes, this is absolutely treatable. Because once we have a Chinese diagnosis, once you have a Chinese medicine understanding for what's causing the condition, it is treatable. There's specific acupuncture, specific herbs, specific formulas, specific diet and lifestyle suggestions. So the title of the talk was understanding neurological Lyme. This is neurological Lyme, right? This is tremors, twitches, dizziness, migraines, just a lack of stability. And sometimes people will describe that with Lyme, right? They describe, they feel unrooted. They feel top heavy. They feel like they don't have their feet on the ground and the brain is overstimulated. That is wind. That is the nature of wind. Wind unroots things. Wind brings things up. It's an excess of yang. It's an excess of energy going up in general, but specifically going to the brain. So is neurological Lyme treatable? Yes. Is it very treatable? Yes. And in order to treat it, I think it's vital that we understand where it's coming from. Because where does the wind come from? Where does the fourth stage come from? The third stage, which is the phlegm. Where does the phlegm, the third stage come from? The second stage, which is dryness. Where does the dryness, the second stage come from? The first stage, which is heat. So often you have to treat all of that at the same time. So as I started, what's the protocol for treating Lyme? There is no protocol. What's the herb for treating Lyme? There is no one herb. What there is is an understanding of the development of the condition and then you're customizing the treatments to the individual. Now, once we have this roadmap of these four stages, then that's kind of giving us some opportunity to understand where things could be going. And what I wanted to emphasize is the saying historically in Chinese medicine is the superior physician understands transmission. So the way I would translate that the superior practitioner, or let's not be so egotistical, will say, a good practitioner will understand where something could go to. So if someone does not yet have late-stage neurological Lyme, we're conscious and we're treating them. We're conscious that we're specifically trying to prevent that. So we may be doing acupuncture and herbs for wind conditions, for neurological conditions, before they have been developed. So this is a genuinely preventative form of medicine. And when we have a roadmap about what could be happening, we're specific about what we're trying to prevent. We're not just preventing things in general. We're trying to prevent the next stage or the next stages from developing. So this is how we get neurological Lyme. It is treatable. It can be scary. But if we have an understanding of the condition and where it's coming from, we can not only treat it, hopefully we can prevent it before it's even an issue. So the techniques that we use for treating neurological Lyme or Lyme in general are the tools that we have, acupuncture, herbal medicine, diet, and lifestyle. And so we really emphasize all of it. But diet and lifestyle are really specific for us, because those are things that we can all do. So there are herbs. There are foods that are warming and cooling. There are foods that are drying and moistening. And there are foods that subdue wind or increase wind. So when we talk to folks, we get very, very specific about that. And so for us, honestly, the last part, the diet and the lifestyle in all honesty is as important as the herbs and the acupuncture. So I think that's important because there are things we can do. There's things that we can do to keep ourselves healthy and to treat the different stages of Lyme. So it's very, very possible to do that. If all of this is starting with heat, which I think it is, then the most urgent thing to do with Lyme is to decrease the heat. So now this is going to be different than a Western biomedical view or even some other national medicine discussion of it. So if Lyme starts with heat, we want to reduce heat. So I have something that I like to share because it's important. Not everyone likes to hear it, but I'll say it anyway. The food that I think introduces the most heat in our culture is coffee. Coffee is uniquely inflammatory. Coffee is so uniquely hot that when coffee was introduced in China in the 1300s, by the 1500s, there was consensus about it. And the consensus was it's pretty much bad for everyone all the time. And I thought that that was so important. I wrote a chapter in my book about coffee. So our goal is not to tell people what to do and to take away the things that they like to do, but it's very, very difficult to treat Lyme with people drinking coffee. I would say, in my opinion, I wouldn't really know how to do it very well. So coffee is essential to cut out. All spicy food is essential to cut out. So you'll know something is spicy if you put it on your tongue and it's spicy. So onions, garlic, ginger, cayenne, nutmeg, turmeric, cinnamon, all of that is hot and spicy. But those things are good for us. Onion and garlic is good for us. It boosts the immune system. Ginger is good for us. It promotes digestion. Cinnamon is good for us. It promotes circulation. Yes, all of that is true. And the way that it does that is by warming the body. So again, we want things to be person-specific. We don't just have general categories. We don't just say, this is good and this is bad. Chinese medicine is much more open-minded about it. My thinking is something is good or bad for us based on what's happening with us internally. So I would go so far as to say, if you have Lyme, spicy food will be contraindicated. Despite the belief that things can be good for everyone, nothing is good for everyone. Things really need to be person-specific. Alcohol is also warming, so that's not so good with Lyme. So that's the first stage. The next stage that would be relevant would be the damp stage when cognitive issues are developing. So the things that really create dampness would be white sugar. Now that doesn't mean sweetness. Sweetness has its place. Honey, maple syrup, molasses. Sweet is not bad. It's the version of the sweet. White sugar, it's not only creates dampness, it also creates heat. So it encourages both of those conditions. Also, all dairy can create dampness. And we're in Vermont. I love Vermont. I love Vermont Dairy. The neighbors across from us, they have 300 acres of dairy pasture. I love cows. I'm not anti-cow. I'm not anti-dairy at all. But if you have dampness or you don't have Lyme, cutting out dairy I think is very, very important. Gluten can also contribute to dampness as well, because anything that's sticky like that, like gluten, is visually representing what it can create, which is dampness. And then the last stage is when this, again, can be different from a Western biomedical view. The two foods that really contribute to wind are birds, chicken and turkey. Chicken is warming, and turkey is hot. So wind is the movement of air. Air is moving. Birds move through the air. So the idea in Chinese medicine, other forms of traditional medicine, indigenous medicine, is this idea of doctrine of signatures, that you can look at something and understand the nature. But birds, by their nature, are stimulating because they fly and they move through the air so they can create wind. So birds are not so good. Birds that are not in water. Duck is OK, because duck is in water. And water is in, and it's cooling. But birds that you eat that would fly are warming, and they will likely contribute to wind. So in place of chicken and turkey, heavier meats, I think, are really useful for wind, beef and pork. But wait, chicken and turkey are good for us, and beef and pork are bad for us. That's what we've been told. It depends on the person. It depends on the condition. So beef and pork can root things down. If you don't want to do beef and pork, then root vegetables, non-spicy root vegetables. Carrots, turnuts, beets in particular. Because in the Chinese medicine neurological tradition, the cure for wind ultimately is having enough blood. And beets look like blood, they're red-like blood. So beets in particular are really useful for subduing wind. So again, a diet that can be useful for one person may not be useful for somebody else. So beef and pork would be good. Chicken and turkey not good for wind. And root vegetables in particular would be good for everybody to root things down. So again, the idea that the best diet is person-specific. So we have four stages, right? And this is a way to understand what people are describing, even if people are not understanding this particular disease progression theory. Most pharmaceuticals and natural medicine treatments are focusing on the first stage, which is relevant, because that's the beginning of it. But that's not the whole thing. And if you're using very cold things at the first stage, cold pharmaceuticals like antibiotics, cold herbs, a lot of the herbs that people are using as anti-lime herbs are very, very cold. Cold substances descend. Cold substances are in. That's appropriate in one context. But again, the directionality. We want, in the beginning, we want things to come up and out. So it's not only that things are cooling, but the direction that we treat them is very, very important. And this first stage is only the first stage. There's the other three stages. And there are four stages, which is why I think it's so relevant, even at the beginning stage, to understand the later stages, to understand how this could all develop. So as I mentioned, cold treatments. So from the Chinese view, if you have something that's hot, cold treatments can make sense to treat the heat. But here's the thing. Something that is too cold, and what I mean by too cold is something that is too cold for the individual to digest effectively can create phlegm, and does create phlegm in Chinese medicine. And so what's the third stage? The third stage is phlegm. What's the fourth stage, wind? So here's an interesting point. Correlation is not causation from the Western view of our Chinese view. So simply because something happens in a certain way or a certain time, that doesn't mean that something is causing something. But correlation is relevant. All the people that I've treated who have severe developed late-stage neurological line, all of them took a lot of antibiotics. Does that mean antibiotics causes late-stage neurological line? Not necessarily, but that is a correlation. And the correlation can be antibiotics are very, very cold. The cold eventually affects the digestive system because even when things are hot in general, the stomach, the digestive system, still needs enough digestive fire to break things down. If that fire is getting subdued by antibiotics, that can create damp, which is the third stage. And then the body can try to generate the wind to blow away the dampness. So this is not something I've heard spoken about, but I have seen it over and over and over again. So we want to try to be effective at treating the symptoms and then also not causing other problems. So often not 100% of the time, but often we're treating multiple stages at the same time. And in many cases with late-stage neurological line, we're treating all of the cases, all the stages rather simultaneously. We're treating the heat, we're treating the dryness, the damp and the wind. And sometimes if you treat part of those stages or two or three of those stages at a time, it can work. And sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you really need to treat the whole progression because that's what's creating the issue. So again, it's not enough just to treat the neurological or the cognitive, the damp or even the dryness or the heat. Sometimes you can and need to treat all stages simultaneously. And this can seem very complicated, but it really doesn't have to be. When we put together herb formulas, it was often not a lot of herbs in them. When we do points, we try not to use a lot of points, maybe six to eight acupuncture points at a time. So having lots of things to treat doesn't mean necessarily big complicated herb formulas or big complicated acupuncture treatments. You can use a single herb to clear wind. You can use an herb to treat damp. You can use a couple of herbs to treat heat, a couple of herbs to treat dryness. So treating multiple stages can still be done in a relatively simple way. And then certainly diet and lifestyle is relevant too. So my inclination is when something is showing up a lot in my community, in our communities, I really try to think about its connection to the bigger picture. And I wrote a book with that kind of motivation. And that book really looks at, in my opinion, the underlying causes of climate change. Because climate change is really a reflection of what's happening within us internally. Climate change just didn't appear. Climate change was based on our own internal condition. And that internal condition is based on our assumptions about the world. So could it be that there is a connection between Lyme disease and climate change? The answer, of course, is yes. There is. Not only is there a connection, there is a direct connection. So the biennial of light, heat, dryness, damp, phlegm, the wind, how does this relate to climate? This relates directly to climate. And this relates directly to climate change. So the first stage of the biennial of climate is heat. So what is that with climate? The planet is warming. We know the planet is warming. There's been conclusive evidence for three decades about the climate warming. The only discussion now is how severe and potentially catastrophic it's gonna be. So the planet is clearly warming. We've known that for clearly for at least three decades. What is more recent in the last 10 to 15 years, 12 to 15 years, is that climatologists are understanding that the ability of the planet to sequester greenhouse gases, the ability of the planet to hold methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide at bay has gone down. And that's from the loss of forests, forests capture greenhouse gases. There's a tremendous amount of methane underneath the ocean floor that's being released as the planet warms. Permafrost, glaciers, those by their nature were holding onto sunlight. And as they melt the soil, excuse me, they weren't holding onto sunlight. They were reflecting the sunlight. As they melt the exposed soil and water is now absorbing the sunlight. And as the permafrost and glaciers melt, tremendous amount of decomposition that was being stored underneath them as being released, huge amounts of methane are being released. So what that means is the planet is warming and the ability of the planet to sequester greenhouse gases is going down. So what is that? The heat is going up and the coolant is going down. That is heat and dryness. That is yin deficient heat. That's the first two stages of line. So two out of two so far. So what would be the flam of climate? Flam of climate is pathological fluids, right? So as the planet is warming, the planet's ability to sequester greenhouse gases is going down. I would say as a response, there is an excess of fluid. The excess of fluid is flooding. I opened the very first chapter, first page of the first chapter of my book about tropical storm Irene and Vermont in 2010, right? All the flooding that happened, all the water, all the runoff, that was yin, which is potentially cooling and life giving, becoming pathological. So flooding in particular, I think is pretty easy to see as yin out of balance because that's what flam is within us internally. Flam is something that is life giving that has gone off. And I think an excess of water in the climate, in the planet is very similar thing. So another way of saying this is parts of the planet are really rapidly drawing out and parts of the planet have an excess of water and are flooding. And so what's the fourth stage of climate? Yen Hua, wind. What is wind? Wind is wind. Wind are storms. The rate of storms are increasing, not only the intensity of the storms, but the frequency. So much soar so that the American Meteorological Society, there are five stages of hurricanes. They're saying actually they need to create a new level which would be level six because the storms are so severe. And I talk about this in my book, but it really is getting really extraordinary. In Vanity, which is an island in the Pacific, right as I was starting to really write my book, they had a storm with sustained winds of 170 miles an hour, not gusts, sustained winds of 170 miles an hour. There were pictures, because it's in the tropics of coconut trees that had been ripped out of the ground by the wind and embedded into cement walls. Literally the coconut tree is into the wall, perpendicular. Sustained winds, there is nothing or almost nothing that we can build that will last with 170 mile an hour winds. So the frequency of storms are going up, the intensity of storms are going up. It is becoming more windy. And how do we describe that? Wind. So this is the same dynamic, right? So this is the dynamic that's playing out internally and it's playing out in the world around us. So this is important, right? So microcosm and macrocosm, the idea that we are nature and nature is us. I believe what climate change is about is it's trying to get our attention. And I think what Lyme disease is about is it's also trying to get our attention. And what it's talking about is imbalance. Climate change could not exist if we were in balance. Lyme disease on a large scale could not exist if we were in balance. I think symptoms are the messenger, whether it's the destabilization of the climate or the destabilization of our own internal climate. Things are out of balance. Things are at such a severe tipping point that we really have to, I think, it's of urgent support that we look at what's going on. Climate change could not exist if things were in balance. Large scale Lyme diagnoses also could not exist if we were in balance. And so what we try to do at our clinic is try to help people find balance. Acupuncture, herbs, diet, lifestyle. I very much believe climate change is something that can be addressed, but it cannot be addressed by maintaining are the views that created climate change. I also think that a Western biomedical view of Lyme disease is limited. The reason I think that's limited is because it's only looking at one of the four stages. But I also think part of the limitation is just the philosophical orientation of treating Lyme disease. Antibiotics, right? We break down that term, anti is against. And biotic comes from the term bios, which is life. So antibiotics are anti-life. That's not a Chinese medicine assessment. That's a linguistic assessment. So the name we have given the medicine to treat Lyme disease is anti-life. We can do other things besides that. And we don't have to wage war against Lyme or against spirochetes. We can absolutely treat the Lyme and build up people's energy and wellbeing as a way of getting rid of things. And with something like climate change or something like Lyme disease, I don't think fear is such a great motivator. I think we can use the motivation of health and wellbeing and wanting to live happy and healthy lives. Okay, that's it for that. Any questions? Yeah. It sounds like you could use those same ideas with any chronic issue. Many. Not just Lyme. Many, yes, especially the first three stages. He creates dryness, dryness creates damp. That's the first three of those four are a lot of what we used to treat cancer because cancer is an inflammatory condition from a Western and the Chinese view. The heat creates dryness. When there's a lack of dryness, when there's dryness, when there's a lack of fluid, there's a loss of latency. And then with a loss of latency, then these cells can metastasize. So heat creates dryness. Dryness creates damp. Tumors are dampness. Tumors are an accumulation. So one reason that the tumors occur is because it's an excess of fluid and excess of dampness. The dampness is trying to hold the heat in place. So the issue with removing a tumor is, and I'm not, we all have to decide the kind of treatments we want. But an issue with removing a tumor is the tumor could be the body's response to a lack of latency. So if you just remove the tumor and we don't understand why the tumor is there, we may be removing the body's chance to keep things down, to push things down. So yes, this disease progression theory is very relevant. We use it for a lot of things. We use the first three stages for cancer. We use the first three stages for a lot of different things. And I think it's particularly good with Lyme. Yeah, I understand the latency seems very important with Lyme, too. Yeah. Because if that's all about imbalance, right? It is. It is. So things that create latency are doing less and hanging out and slowing down and being more content. So being freaked out about Lyme disease is not transformational. Being freaked out about climate change is not transformational. One of the best things we can do if we're concerned about climate change or concerned about Lyme disease is hang out. But there's so much to do. Yeah, there is so much to do. And one of the most urgent things to do is to cool down. So sitting on your couch, laying in bed, reading a book, watching the grass grow, those are all really relevant things to address climate change and Lyme disease. Can you speak more to the cooling foods you mentioned? Yeah. It's hard to understand, like, cooling when you think hot coffee or, I mean, you know, ice cream, Ayurvedically is really bad at creating slime. Yeah, Chinese medicine, too. Yeah, there are other ones you could name that aren't necessarily intuitive. Yeah, leafy green vegetables are really cooling. Yeah, and moistening. So those root vegetables can be cooling and moistening. But leafy green vegetables in particular are cooling. Yeah, green tea is really cooling and drying. So green tea is good for the hot stage of the condition and the damp stage of the condition. So there's a reason why Asian culture, Chinese culture, traditionally, was really into green tea and really not into coffee. Green tea is cooling and drying. Coffee creates heat and damp. So green tea can literally be the remedy for the effects of coffee. So leafy green vegetables are really good. Water. Water is one of the very best cooling substances, right? So that's sometimes the best remedy is the simple remedy. So drinking lots of water will physically cool things down. Yeah, and unfortunately, ice cream, the dairy can create damp. The sugar can create damp and heat. And the cold temperature will also create damp. So my wife and I say that's just phlegm in a cup. No, I like ice cream. We get one to three creamies a year. I'm not anti-ben and jerrys or anti-ice cream. But if you have dampness or heat, that's probably not the best thing. And if you are going to eat it, it should be limited. Yeah? I was wondering if you could share maybe a couple of your favorite herbs from earlier. Sure, diaphoretics. So from the Chinese view, we would say release exterior. From the Western herbal view, we would say diaphoretics. But we want the specific category of diaphoretics that are cooling. So not ginger, not cinnamon. So the ones we use a lot of from the Western view would be yarrow, cooling diaphoretic, bone set. Also bitter, really cooling, cold diaphoretic. No, it's not. It's interesting. So bitter implies descending. So I think, I haven't really heard about this, discussed this way, but I think that the descending of the bitter of the bone set is descending. I think it's either a laxative or a diuretic. Like it flushes things out because bitter descends. But bone set is an incredible release exterior plan. Yeah, so yarrow, bone set, Western herbs, Chinese herbs. Oh, this could be Western and Chinese, would be bird ox seed. And from the Chinese for that is nui pungse. So we can say, oh, I'm using nui pungse. It's very far off and exotic, and it's just bird ox seed. The Chinese herbs would be like liang khao or jinyan hua. It's very similar to bone set and yarrow. So we can use the local plants. We can take these theories, and we can use the Western local plants. And I love to teach about that, how to kind of take Chinese medical theory and apply it to the medicine we have around us. OK, any other questions? Yes? So I created this tick kit for if I'm out and about and get a tick fight so I can deal with it right away. And I built it based on lunar herbal recommendations. So like bentonite clay and andrographis, tincture, homeocathic, apis, and something else. You have something that you would recommend kind of putting in a kit in between when we get that and can go to you for acupuncture and herbs, like something we can take right away, put on it, or is it similar? Yeah, so just a comment on that. I think the clay can be good, because clay is drawing and it's detoxifying. It's pulling things out. But I would not say clay is releasing exterior. So it's pulling and drawing, but it's not creating a little sweat. And andrographis, from the Chinese view, is very, very cold. And I would say it's in the category of clear fire toxins. So fire toxins is cold that, excuse me, heat that's gone bad. It's like toxic. So the thing about that perspective is, again, that's going down. So my opinion, my experience is you want cooling, but at the first stage, it's so much easier. It's on the skin. Let's just go boop and just clear it out the skin. So what I recommend topically is yarrow. Yeah, dried yarrow. Yeah, powdered, or even just raw dried yarrow. Chew it up and stick it on there. That's great. And then to release exterior in the beginning, the Chinese herb formula we use is a well-known one that's cooling for release exterior called yinchao, yinchaosan. That vents things out. If you wanted to, what's that? Yes, Y-I-N, Q-I-A-O, and then san, S-A-N, or sometimes just called yinchao. So those are herbs that release exterior, but we could do something very similar with Western herbs. We can make a formula of yarrow, tincture of yarrow, and bone set. We could put some echinacea in there. Echinacea is a wonderful herb for inflammation and for Lyme, because echinacea, by its nature, it goes up and down. It does have the root in particular, does release exterior somewhat, but it also clears things down. So we're going in both directions. So we could put yarrow, bone set, echinacea root, mint. Mint will gently kind of clear things out. And then to make it taste OK, we could put a little licorice in there, because Chinese herbalists like to put in licorice. So something that, again, it's not just that we're clearing heat is the direction. We want things to go up and out. Yeah, and have it on here. Yeah, I would say three times a day. Depending on the concentration, I would say two to three mils, two to three droppers, three times a day. And we've seen lots of case studies where that's worked. Great. I was treating a woman who had been diagnosed with Lyme four times before. And she came in and she had a classic bullseye. And she didn't have a lot of money. She was an old-time Vermonter. And she said, I don't want to do antibiotics. I'm like, OK, let's try something else. So we did one acupuncture treatment and just dried yarrow, nothing internally, because she didn't have the money. So one acupuncture treatment, yarrow topically, totally went away. No Lyme symptoms. She had the bullseye. So that indicates she had Lyme. I think it's because of how great yarrow is. Yarrow just pulls things out of the body. So my approach would be cooling and drawing, but the yarrow to draw things out and then yin-chao or an equivalent of Western herbs to really cooling, release exterior herbs to go boom. You're welcome. Yeah, question? What do you think about taking a song out? I think it's very hot. Yeah. Yeah, I understand the thinking behind that. The thinking behind it is you want to detoxify. And also it probably feels good. Because you're creating endorphins when you get hot when you're creating endorphins. But ideally, we want to treat things symptomatically that are also curing things. We want to treat the branch and the root. So if all of this comes back to heat, then I think adding more heat to the body is not going to be curative. So I'm not a proponent of saunas. I'm not a proponent of infrared saunas. I'm not a proponent of hot tubs. I'm not a proponent of people getting hot in general, because this is all starting with heat. So we want to detoxify. We want to get rid of things in a way that's appropriate to where it all came from. So my view is different than a lot of other people's views on that. But ideally, we want to have the logic of this disease progression theory inform what we do. So even if it feels good to get really hot and sweaty, if this is starting with heat, I don't think that's going to work so well. And also, again, heat and dryness. The saunas, if you're getting hot, that's heat. And if you're sweating a lot, then that means you're sweating out the fluids. And so that can contribute to heat and dryness. So yeah, so I'm voting for cooling rather than warming. Okay. Any questions about, yeah, sometimes we get the things we're looking for to talk and sometimes we don't. In general, I don't think we as a people need more hot things. We need more cool things. Where even in a lovely state of Vermont with all the rural and lovely stuff we do, we're still overheated. Is it in the winter time? Yeah. You see, the thing about the winter time is, right, is it can, a little bit of warmth in the winter is fine. But even in the winter, what's our internal condition? Are we still a hot, overstimulated, too busy people in the winter time? Yes, we are. So you can have cold on the outside and still have heat on the inside. And that's a very common diagnosis, right? Where you get chilled, you're out skiing or ice fishing or whatever you're doing. Bringing wood in. So the heat, the cold comes in from the outside and you feel chilled. So yes, we want to warm things up to kick things out, but what's our internal condition? In my opinion, our internal condition is primarily hot. So we don't want to do things, to clear things out on the outside that contributes to our internal diagnosis. So my orientation is we're too hot. So I'm looking to cool things down. So basting yourself in front of your wood stove all winter is not a good thing? No, that's fine. No, that's totally fine because we're probably not going to be standing there drenched in sweat next to the wood stove to get warmed up. Sure, if you're cold in the bones, absolutely. But that doesn't mean you get the wood stove up as hot as it can and you're hugging the wood stove, right? Yeah, it feels good, but not to the point of getting hot and sweaty. Yeah, just balancing with those seasonal hits. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, and we don't want to overdo it because too much heat is not, it's the cause of Lyme disease. I also think it's the cause of climate change. It's a cause, in my view, of most chronic conditions in our country. Lyme disease, cancer, pain has a major heat component, rheumatic conditions, rheumatoid arthritis. Most gastrointestinal issues start with heat in the stomach. Skin conditions start with heat in the skin. Anxiety, stress, insomnia, that's all heat. So we're overheated. So just thinking about cooling things down is a good remedy for all of that. Okay, any other questions? Yes. Excuse me, I guess, goodness. I'm sort of a late, blind, diagnosed person. I have neurological problems and I wondered what your philosophy is with relation of Lyme and MS. Yeah, yeah. With the diagnosis of MS two or three different times over the past 20 years. Yep. If I had Lyme, I guess I'd do it if it was back 30 years or more. Mm-hmm. And I try and struggle with it as I get into, it's in my brain. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So I'm just trying to understand how some people can tell you you have MS. Some people say you have Lyme. Well, what I would say is the connection between neurological Lyme and MS is wind. It's the same Chinese diagnosis. Regardless of where it's coming from, whether it was MS or Lyme, any neurological symptom is the diagnosis of wind. And there's a very well-developed neurological tradition in Chinese medicine. So that's very true. Regardless of where it comes from, that is treatable. And I've treated lots of people who say they feel like they have Lyme in the brain. The brain is overstimulated. Some people even say I feel things crawling around in the brain or crawling around in the spine. The good news is that's totally treatable. The way we treat the brain in Chinese medicine there's different ways. But the way we treat the brain is by treating the wind. And the organ that we use to access the brain directly in Chinese medicine with acupuncture and herbs and diet is the gallbladder. So the good news is the whole blood-brain barrier, like you can't treat the brain, from a Western view, you can absolutely treat the brain. There are points throughout the body, including on the head and the neck that treat wind. There are specific herbs that treat the gallbladder and treat wind. So all of that is potentially treatable. So I think the reason someone could say you have MS and someone else says you have Lyme is because it's wind, right? Wherever it's coming from, the diagnosis is wind. One other question. Yeah. Since the first year, I've been experiencing a decrease in the strength in my legs. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we've always been very active people, you know, in the first black ride, and do walks and hiking. And I'm not there this year. At least two possibilities. One, again, it can be the nature of wind. Wind is young, young ascends. So what can happen is if you have too much activity up here, you have too little activity down there. So your head can be overstimulated and you can have weakness in the lower part of the body. What that indicates, that's a classic understanding of wind. There's acupuncture to treat that. There's herbs specifically that treat that. So the thinking is we need to relax up here and strengthen down here. We need to let this out and we need to take this excess and sink it down into your legs. So that would relate to lack of sleep? Well, I think a lot of things relate to a lack of sleep. Yeah, lack, because... Why are you having trouble sleeping? Yes, absolutely. And the other thing with Lyme again is that third stage is dampness, which is phlegm, and that's when things start to get tired. So a general sense of tiredness is that stage where things are kind of getting gummed up and then when things get gummed up, the body overcompensates and so things are kind of getting gummed up in the abdomen. The body tries to blow it away. You get neurological symptoms. So it's different versions of the same thing which can be tiredness. Too much up here and not enough down there. So relax this and strengthen that. So that would, that makes sense. You know, how that could develop in terms of this disease progression model. Okay, any other questions? Okay, thank you all for coming. I'm happy to hang out. There's information over there. I am teaching a class in September here in Montpelier at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism on this disease progression theory and Chinese medicine understanding of Lyme and then using Western herbs. So folks want a Western herbal medicine understanding of that, that's available in the poster over there. And then I have some other articles about Lyme and some other things. So thank you all for coming.