 Welcome everybody to another edition of Dr. Jill Live this evening with Dr. Marty Ross. I am super excited. We just made this happen in the last week, literally, and both of us found time in our busy schedules. So excited to introduce my guest today because he has been just a leader in one of the most complex chronic epidemics, I'm going to say, that we are facing now in the medical system in U.S. patients, who many of you who listen to me and follow me, you know you have Lyme or co-infections and you've been dealing with this. But some of you, we're going to talk today about some of the other symptoms that could present where you might not even know that that's the underlying root cause, but getting to that root cause can really make a difference. And I have with me an expert who also has a new book out, you'll want to be sure and grab your copy. It's called Hacking Lyme Disease and we'll share where you can find that and all that information. Let me go in and introduce Dr. Marty Ross. He's the creative force behind Treat Lyme by Marty Ross MD and Marty Ross MD supplements and recently published this book, we're going to be talking about Hacking Lyme Disease and Action Guide to Wellness. He believes strongly that given the right information, people with Lyme and tick-borne illnesses can recover and so do I. He offers these resources so that all that have Lyme disease may recover. And again, we'll talk about how big a deal this is because even if you think you're not affected, probably someone you know or maybe even yourself is affected and you don't even know it. His office is in Seattle, Washington. He's treated thousands of patients across the U.S. in the world with Lyme disease and related illnesses. He's a reasoned voice about what works and what does not work. And I will just say my personal commentary, that's what I always appreciate about you, Dr. Ross, as you put out great information that's really practical and also honest about some of these things out there that we just don't have the evidence, right? So I love that. He graduated from Indiana University School of Medicine, completed a Stanley Medicine residency at the Georgetown University Providence Hospital program where he served as a chief resident. Through Treat Lyme and his weekly Lyme Q&A webinar called Conversations with Marty Ross MD. Dr. Ross has improved the lives of many with Lyme disease. His online publication is read by patients and medical providers alike. His webinars draw patients looking for answers and medical providers learning to treat Lyme disease. And without further ado, welcome, Dr. Marty Ross. Thank you, Dr. Clinton had very good to be with you here today. Yes, so we're going to dive in, but I always like to ask my guest a little bit about what got you into. So it's interesting. You're Indiana. I was Illinois. We're like the Midwestern and then also medicine. And first of all, how did you get into medicine? What was your story there? Oh, my gosh, you know, it's interesting. I originally went to school studying mathematics to become an actuarial science. Oh, my insurance mathematics. And so I did my first year of undergrad at University of Michigan in Arbor and decided that, boy, that's going to be pretty boring. I tend to be more of a people person. So that left me wondering, what do I do next? And I started realizing in my high school running career, I ran long distance and the two mile on track, I spent about half my time injured. And I wanted to, I started, I wanted to know what makes the body work. And that led me to thinking about medicine and my interest in helping people. And I decided I think I'm going to try out medicine. So that's how I got into it. Wow. And you did family medicine training. Like I did, which I think is just such a great baseline for any sort of trajectory where you want to go. But the sad thing is, I don't know how it was in your day, but the respect of family medical programs was pretty low on the totem pole, right, compared to like dermatology and orthopedics. Yeah. So, you know, it's a shame because being a family doctor, you're the front door, you're the front door to where people come into the health care system. And in some ways, that means you have to be because of all the things you have to have knowledge of that to me, it's a higher calling and a higher field than all these various specialties, right? And, you know, even today in working with treating chronic Lyme disease and mole toxin, all these illnesses that I do, you know, the foundation for it is my training as a family doc. When somebody comes to see me, I always have to ask, what could that be? Right. And I don't assume it's all Lyme disease or mole toxin or anything like that, but that fundamental training as a family doc, which is what could this be, you know, and having a general background to deal with a broad range of things is very helpful in this illness, too. I could not agree more. And there's another interesting similarity here in your background is the fact you were an actuary science. And this means you're quite analytical, you're a problem solver, right? And really at the core engineering, accounting, actuary sciences, all this pattern recognition, right? There's this skill set that you go from a mathematician or an engineer and again, that's my background, too. And I recognize that and it actually does really well in this very different process of medicine, because you're looking for pathways and problems and patterns, right? And as you see those patterns, you start to develop a repertoire of, oh, this is probably this and then use the science to prove it. So I love that. And then you went on. And the other thing I hear is curiosity, right? You wondered what else? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And aren't those things a doorways into light? Because we are in the field that is the most complex of all medicine, like the kind of patients we see tend to be the ones everybody else gives up on, right? Yeah, you know, I mean, so as like you, I am a functional medicine, integrative medicine doc now. So I work with the best of conventional medicine, prescription medicine. But I realize that's not the answer for everything. And so I branched out into looking at alternative integrative medicine, functional medicine field. And it really you just have to look broadly at illness. Illness is not as simple as take this pill and get better. And and so having that background as a mathematician, I used to do computer programming. I'm looking for patterns and I'm looking for clues in the story about what led a person to me to find those things that I might try for them. So yeah, it's brilliant. And again, it's why you're one of the leaders in this complex field because we have to be looking. We have this box of tools as family medical docs. It's great. We both use it. But it's beyond that we need more. We realized at some point in our career and I'd love to ask you when that was that you transitioned into the more complex chronic was a by necessity. But what happens in that toolbox? We realize there's not enough tools in our box, right? We need to expand that and say, what else is possible? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I mean, how I got into this. So they so I did my family medicine residency out at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. And I purposely chose that program because it was an urban inner city program. I was mission driven to work with the poor people. And and I went out there to do that. And it was great exposure. But we got a lot of our lecturers in my program were people that were based in various D.C. programs. And one of my main lecturers was a psychiatrist by the name of James Gordon. You probably know Jim Gordon, right? Jim, Dr. Gordon used to come in and do about a lecture, maybe an hour a month. And he would come in and teach us mind body technique. So you have us flapping our arms doing. And so he was, I thought this guy was really interesting. He didn't use any drugs in his practice. Everybody got acupuncture and he did herbal and diet changes. And I thought I want to work with him. So my last year of training, I got to do two months on a rotation just working with him in his office. And that just blew my mind way open to see, wow, there's more than drugs. There's diet, there's lifestyle, there's counseling and all those things. And it was all because I was introduced to it through Jim. And then what eventually happened is after my residency, I wound up doing a health policy fellowship for a year and working with a group called Healthcare for the Homeless. And the homeless was great because we couldn't do any blood testing. I had to rely on clinical skills to help people, right? So that honed in my ability to think beyond testing to really listen to a story and do an exam. So that was good. But after doing that for a year, I wound up working in the United States Senate for three years writing healthcare law. You have such a diverse background. I like it. Far removed for this. I was part of the general healthcare reform discussions and everything and fascinating time. But eventually I decided to go back into practice. And when I was looking to practice, I knew I wanted to work with underserved people again. And I was looking to expand my skills. I knew policy from working in the Senate and I wanted to do something administratively. So I looked for a job doing medical directorship in a community health center programs that work with urban poor and poor in general. But I found a program out here in Seattle that was in a group called the Community Health Centers in King County that was interested in setting up an alternative medicine clinic in one of their family medicine programs. And they needed a medical director to help them do that. And so that's how I got out here. And we started, we put together a clinic and we brought in, we had family docs working side by side with acupuncturists, naturopathic doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists. And I helped pull that off along with Bestiary University, we did that together. And that, oh my gosh, when I saw all that, all the good that was happening with people in that environment, I decided I wanna do all these things myself, not refer to the naturopath, refer to the acupuncturist, but I wanna do it all myself. And after doing it for three years, I went into private practice because I figured that way I could start taking on all these tools myself. And the first thing I picked up alternatively was I did a medical acupuncture course through UCLA, the Helms Medical Acupuncture course. And after doing that, I started treating my practice then as I was opening up, I was doing primary care integrative medicine and because I was doing acupuncture, my waiting room started filling up with people with fibromyalgia. And that then brought in all the people with chronic fatigue syndrome. So I studied with Jacob Tietelbaum in his approach, right? And so after doing that for four years, my practice went from being just primary care family medicine, integrative medicine to really a practice that was almost 100% working with people with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia using alternative medicines that I picked up from Jacob Tietelbaum and that approach and acupuncture. And in 2004, a patient walked in and says, I think I have Lyme disease. And I said, oh, we don't have Lyme disease out here. Right, right. It was both laughing now, but it was totally good. I know. So I went up testing her and I did the worst as possible. I did a PCR test to see if the DNA of the germ is in you. And like all that, the worst test is it's only positive 30% of the time that you have Lyme. It's not a good way to screen for Lyme. But it came back positive. And I thought, holy moly, what am I missing here? And so I went back and tested everyone in my practice that had a diagnosis of chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia and I found 30% of my patients had Lyme disease. Yeah, that was the eye opener. Yeah. And yeah, yeah. So when you start treating Lyme, once you hang your shingle out and you say you're treating Lyme, but your practice fills up and my practice filled up with Lyme. So yeah, that's how I got into it. Oh, hey everybody. I just stopped by to let you know that my new book, Unexpected, Finding Resilience Through Functional Medicine, Science and Faith is now available for order wherever you purchase books. In this book, I share my own journey of overcoming life-threatening illness and the tools and tips and tricks and hope and resilience I found along the way. This book includes practical advice for things like cancer and Crohn's disease and other autoimmune conditions, infections like Lyme or Epstein Bar and mold and biotoxin-related illness. What I really hope is that as you read this book, you find transformational wisdom for health and healing. If you wanna get your own copy, stop by readunexpected.com. There you can also collect your free bonuses. So grab your copy today and begin your own transformational journey through Functional Medicine in Finding Resilience. That's all I got into. Oh, and it's funny because most of us don't like go out choosing to treat Lyme disease, but if we really love and want to help the patients, we can't help it because it's so prevalent. Tell us a little bit about, because I know how, I was like, you know, I'm in Colorado, right? So it's non-independent state and Lyme doesn't exist. Well, you know, tick-borne relapsing fever is here and so is some of the Lyme and everything else, right? I think that's one of the things. So what about, let's just talk to the person maybe like, oh, yeah, I've only heard Lyme is in Connecticut. Why is it so much more prevalent now? Why are you and I both seeing more and more cases? Like what is the backstory? Just the basics on Lyme disease and yeah. Yeah, great. So Lyme disease is an illness that's transmitted by tick bites primarily. There may be the possibility of during pregnancy transmission and there is controversy as to whether there might be sexual transmission, but probably if it is, it's probably a small percent best transmitted that way. But it's a tick-borne illness. So people get it in the areas where there's a lot of ticks that are infected. So the predominant areas are out on the East Coast, the New England States, the upper Midwest, Minnesota, Wisconsin, into the upper peninsula of Michigan is loaded. Northern California is loaded with it as well too. So those are the areas where there's a lot. However, it's everywhere. It's not just in those areas. So we get confused when we go to our doctors and we say, I think I have Lyme. And they say, well, we don't have it here. Well, that's wrong. It is everywhere. It just may not be as prevalent in some of those areas, but it is everywhere basically. And so the other thing to realize about Lyme is 50% of the time you have Lyme, you don't remember a tick bite. And 50% of the time that people have Lyme, they don't have what is described as a bullseye rash. So we're taught that we should think of Lyme if people get bit by something and they have this red circular bullseye rash. Well, that bullseye rash is not there 50% of the time. So people can basically have gotten Lyme from a tick that bit them that they didn't know bit them and not have any acute symptoms at all. And then years down the road start manifesting an illness from this germ that has been living in them that their immune system maybe kept under control for a while, but suddenly isn't able to keep under control. And so it's not always obvious that you have Lyme. So you gotta, so the illnesses that look like Lyme that make me start thinking about Lyme, the two big ones are chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. If you've been given a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, then you should also be looking for Lyme disease. You just have to do it because as I said here in Seattle, 30% of my practice. I discovered those patients had those illnesses because of Lyme triggering it actually. So the thing about Lyme is Lyme, when we say Lyme disease, it includes a number of illnesses actually. So the tick that bite you can transmit Borrelia which is the Lyme germ, but it can also transmit a number of other infections. And the main ones are a parasite that acts like malaria called Babesia. Another bacteria called Bartonella. And those, I call those the big three, Borrelia, Bartonella Babesia. There's some other infections to get transmitted to called Ehrlichia and Anaplasma. Some viruses that might get transmitted, but the big ones are Borrelia Babesia and Bartonella. And the thing that they all do, which makes them look like fibromyalgia and look like Lyme disease and look like chronic fatigue and look like chronic mole toxicity is all of these trigger an immune reaction where your white blood cells try to get rid of the germ and they manufacture a bunch of chemicals called cytokines to turn on the immune system. But in those illnesses, immune system doesn't do well sometimes and it makes too many cytokines and too many cytokines give you, here's the symptoms, okay? They give you fatigue, they give you brain fog, so you can't think. They make you hurt all over. They sometimes make it so your nerves don't work right. Either you start losing feeling or you get tremors or shakes, okay? Those are the main symptoms. So if you have an illness where you're fatigued, aching all over, you can't think straight and your nerves aren't working right, think Lyme. If you have, and also people often get bad insomnia with these, okay? So these are, those are the main symptoms. So if you have a lot of those kinds of symptoms, start thinking about maybe it's Lyme and Lyme disease or these other infections. Also, don't ever forget about considering mold toxicity first too. So mold toxicity is a situation you know this to, but about 30, about 25% of all people have a genetic problem where if they go into a building that's full of mold behind the walls and they breathe in the mold cloud or the mold toxins, 25% of people can't get those mold toxins out. They become trapped in that, okay? And those mold toxins trigger cytokines. So they all start looking the same basically, right? Yeah, yeah. So if you are a person that has bad brain fog, fatigue, hurt all over, have some neurologic dysfunction and has insomnia, I would be wanting to get tested probably for a, see what your mold toxin levels are and I would want to be tested with a high quality test to see if you might have Lyme or some of the co-infections that go with it too. Brilliant, brilliant summary and so true that it is all over the US and that many people are walking around, they don't feel well and they don't know that this is one of the roots. And as you said, it is treatable, it is treatable. If someone suspects they have this, obviously there's tests you and I do that are a little bit more specialized. What are your favorite tests? And if someone's out there and they want to ask their doctor, what could they possibly ask for for testing? Yeah. So testing is controversial and the standard way that's recommended to test for Lyme and co-infections are ways that are recommended by the US Center for Disease Control and a group of doctors called the Infections Disease Society of America. And they're this complex of doctors that have a wrong opinion, to be honest with you but their way of testing is something that your doctor would do unless you request something different. Their way of testing is to do a test technique called a two-step test which involves doing a one blood draw and to that blood draw, they do an initial screening test in the lab called an ELISA test. And what an ELISA test is, it's a method to say of all the antibodies that your body has ever made to fight an infection could some of those antibodies be ones that were made against Lyme? And if it comes back positive, then the second step that the lab does is something called a Western blot. And what they do in a Western blot is they take proteins from the Lyme germ and they see do your antibodies actually attach to those proteins, okay? Now the problem with that two-step method is the ELISA part of it misses chronic Lyme 50% of the time. It's like why even bother wasting your, it's horrible, right? It's horrible, right? And then the way that the CDC and the IDSA recommend doing the Western blot, they're basically testing to see if you have antibodies to the original East Coast strain of Lyme from the 70s. The original strain, okay? But we now know that there are about eight different kinds of strains of Lyme that infect people in this country. And yet they're only testing against one. So their Western blot portion of this test will also misline if it's there about 40 to 45% of the time. So if you really wanna be tested and your doctor says, well, just go to lab core or go to Quest, don't do it because, but they're using the standard two-step test that CDC and IDSA recommend, okay? I know it's expensive, but I would get, I like doing my testing through a lab called Igenics. Igenics is an independent lab in California that has focused on tick-borne illnesses now for 20, 30 years basically, and they have perfected tick-borne testing. What makes them good is they have developed tests and they do validation studies. They actually take their tests, they take samples of blood where somebody is known to have the infection and somebody's not known to have the infection and they see how accurate are they at determining which ones have it really and which ones don't have it, okay? So if you're gonna go to an independent lab that's gonna use a test kit that's not approved by the FDA or CDC, you gotta make sure the lab has actually tested their test to make sure it works and Igenics does, okay? So what Igenics does, if I'm screening somebody for a Lyme, I wanna do one test through Igenics because Igenics has a bunch of panels that are super expensive, don't waste your money. Get one test and that is their test called an immunoblot for Lyme. And it's that you got a test for two antibody families, somebody called an IgM family, somebody called an IgG family and their immunoblot looks to see if you have antibodies against eight kinds of Lyme germs, okay? So that's why it's better in the CDC method, right? And they're using, they actually take these proteins from these eight germs and they grow them in bacteria in the lab and they genetically modify them to remove pieces of the proteins that might hold on to antibodies made against chronic virus infections that could give you a false positive test. They basically remove those pieces of the proteins so that when your antibodies are stuck on these modified proteins, they truly are being stuck on there because they were made against Lyme and not made against a virus, for instance. So in other words, when it comes back positive, it's real, yeah, yeah. And so their chances of finding Lyme with that test is about 90%, which is about as good as we get. The other thing, if you have Lyme, see if you can find a Lyme literate doctor, somebody that identifies themselves as a Lyme literate doctor because 10% of the time we make a Lyme diagnosis based on the history and the symptoms because testing is not always reliable as well too. You can get your Igenics test kit, you call up Igenics, you say, send me a test kit, you're gonna order it online. You can get the test kit yourself. You can circle on that test the immunoblot for IgM and IgG for Lyme, and you bring it to your doctor and you say, this is the Lyme test I want. Will you sign off on it so I can get it dropped? That's what I have my patients do sometimes too, yeah. Dr. Ross, you always do such a great job of bringing number one. It speaks to your community background because you are so good at, there's thousands of people that can't see you, right? I mean, you could, you know, as they would be, but you were really, really good at giving this great information where they can actually follow up and do something about it versus if they can't see your eye. I love that, and I so appreciate that. It's so practical. I agree 100% with everything you just said. I use Igenics, I, yeah. And I would also say Medicare should cover this. So if you do have Medicare and you have a doc who knows how to code with an infectious symptoms or maybe a rash or brain fog or fatigue, you may be able to get it covered by some insurances. Yeah, yeah. And if it's not covered, so the immunoblot method through there, Igenics is currently charging, I can think about 450 by the time, $450. I know that's expensive, but if you're trying to get to the root of why you've been sick for years, it's worth it. And at least you can check that one off too. Yes, yes, I so agree. And again, these other panels which have the Babisi Abartanella are really expensive. They're upwards of 1,500 or more. So that's a great place to start. Yeah, start just don't get hoodwinked into doing one of their panels that cost $1,000. Just get the immunoblot because if that's positive, then if you're going to start seeing a doctor that manages Lyme disease, they're gonna ask you questions about your symptoms to see, do you have symptoms that also suggest Babisi? Do you have specific symptoms that suggest Bartanella? And often we're not even testing for those. We're treating you based on enough symptoms that say they're there and we're saving you the testing money by not necessarily testing for those too. Agree 100% there too. Because again, this history that we've learned is really, really valuable in that clinical diagnosis. Let's start just briefly. I always say like the personality profiles of these things if someone is Babisi Abartanella, tell us and you do such a good job of explaining what would that look like if it came alongside in Babisi and then in Bartanella? Yeah, so first of all, all of these infections, Borrelia, which is Lyme, Babisi Abartanella are all gonna have excess cytokine symptoms. So that people are gonna have fatigue, they're gonna have rain fog, they're gonna have body achiness as well too, okay? Probably in some insomnia thrown in, all right? But then things that make you start thinking about some of these other specific infections is for this bacteria called Bartanella, if your thinking is relatively impaired, much greater than your energy is impaired, think Bartanella. In other words, if your brain's functioning at 30% and your energy is 50%, think Bartanella, okay? The other thing is Bartanella gives a lot of neurologic and psychiatric problems. So commonly people with Bartanella have ongoing persisting anxiety that just cannot be quieted. It's not truly a psychiatric illness, rather it's the germ triggering that. People that have tremors or shakes or neuropathies, think Bartanella. People with Bartanella sometimes get a rash that looks like scratch marks or stretch marks. And the rash tends to go in a direction opposite your skin lines. So your skin lines, if you're trying to squeeze the skin on the back of your hand, you'll see that it easily folds when you squeeze the length that goes towards your fingers, okay? That's where your skin lines run. If you try to squeeze the opposite direction, you're gonna see they don't pucker up as easily. That's not in the skin lines, okay? And you can do that at various places on your skin and the body. And if you got a rash that looks like a scratch mark, try to figure out where your skin lines are by just doing that squeeze test I just told you. And if it runs opposite the skin lines, that could be a Bartanella rash as well too. And finally, Bartanella sometimes gives people a feeling of air hunger. They feel like they just can't get enough air sometimes, okay? Babesia gives people a lot of night sweats, drenching night sweats is common. They also can sometimes get a lot of panic attacks. They often will have a lot of headaches in the front of the head. They also can have that air hunger that I was just talking about. It can occur in Babesia too. And then an odd symptom, this is the one I find the most interesting, is, and it's very useful to follow when you're treating somebody, because if this is there, that this will get better as they're getting better. And that is people at Babesia frequently have frequent deja vu experiences. It is the strangest symptom. But if they are one of the people that have excess repeated deja vu, as you treat, follow that symptom. That's a good indicator that you're getting your germ under control basically. So, yeah. So those are the symptoms. Love this, really practical pearls. So treatment, there is, we could spend two hours on this and we don't have that time, but just briefly, obviously you use medications and you have so many resources on your website. Let's give that out verbally just because you have a lot of stuff there first. So if you're looking for resources and then I can kind of walk through where to go with it, there's two big resources I have out there. Number one, I have a whole Lyme disease information site that has information about how to diagnose and how to treat. And that site is called treat Lyme by Marty Ross MD. The URL is treat Lyme.net. And that's T-R-E-A-T-L-Y-M-E.net, okay? And so that has all these resources, okay? Secondly, I have a book that I just published and the book is called Hacking Lyme Disease, a guide to wellness or an action guide to wellness. And the book is basically a compilation of the 40 key articles from my site. So if you're a person that doesn't like to read things online or you like having that book in your hand, that book is for you. So all that information that I have on the site, the key 40 key parts of it are now in my book. And so the book you can find at Amazon's one possibility but you can also find it at my online supplement store, which is called Marty Ross MD supplements. There, if you go, the URL for that is treat Lyme.com. So my information sites.net, my stores.com, but on the store, there's a books page. You'll see it in the navigation menu, click on that. I would suggest buying it for me instead of Amazon because I don't charge you any state local taxes and I'd free ship if you have a total order over $50. So I think I can beat the finances over what Amazon's doing, but you can get it on Amazon as well too. Yeah, and I would highly recommend it would be in the process of my book too. Go to his site and support Dr. Ross. And again, if you're out there, just even wanting to know more, one of the reasons I ask you to be a guest here, Dr. Ross, is that you are so good at giving such practical information online all these years. And even like you said in your bio, you actually train some of the docs that are looking for information. Cause many docs out there are like, oh, what do I do? And you're so practical. So in two or three minutes, I know again, treatment could be so large, but maybe a few pearls about how we talk about drugs and herbs and combinations for these. So the big thing I would say, so if you go to my site, you're going to see, and in my book too, there's something called the Ross line support protocol. It is key steps that you would need to take to build any type of treatment. And again, you can find it at my, there's a tab on it at my treat line.net information site or it's in the book. I built it into the book too. Okay. All right. So number one, these are steps that should be in any treatment. Number one, make sure you're doing things to get seven to nine hours of sleep. If that means an herbal medication to do it, if it means lifestyle changes to do it, if it means you got to be drugged with drugs, get seven to nine hours of sleep. The reason is that restores the immune system and sleep lowers those inflammation chemicals called cytokines that gives you all your symptoms. Okay. So number one, get sleep. Number two, take something to lower your cytokines. And my go-to herb that I like to do for that is curcumin. Curcumin is a component of turmeric and it gets inside white blood cells and limits their production. And so I recommend that at 500 milligrams three times a day is what I recommend on that. Okay. Number three, be on something that supports your adrenals and your thyroid. We call those adaptogens. The adaptogen I like to use is something that comes out of Ayurvedic medicine and Chinese medicine is called Ashwaganta. And I like to have people take about 800 milligrams in the morning and about 800 milligrams somewhere between one and two in the afternoon. Okay. Number, and if you notice, I haven't even talked to a drug or an herb to kill any germs yet. I'm talking about the support you need to do to get through this illness. Okay. All right. The next thing that you need to do is look at symptoms to figure out if you might have low adrenal function or low thyroid. If you do, those may need to be corrected separate. And what happens is these cytokines that you get with Lyme interfere with the brain's ability to directly tell the thyroid and the adrenals to work. So sometimes we have to give you thyroid medicine and sometimes we have to give you some adrenal medicine to help you while we're trying to get the germs out ultimately. Okay. So that information is in my protocol too. Okay. And here's one of the big things to think about. The next thing I try to do is make sure that people don't have too many yeast in their intestines, right, as we start treating. Yes. Okay. All right. And this is huge actually. You know it too well too. So remember I said these illnesses are all because you've got too many cytokines running around giving you all the symptoms, right? So often because of immune suppression from Lyme or having been on antibiotics for things that you were mistreated for, they didn't recognize it was Lyme. People by the time they come to see me have too many yeast growing in their intestines. And I wanted to get those yeast out because it will help lower cytokines. But also as I start treating and using herbal or prescription antibiotics, I may trigger more yeast. So I'd like to get rid of those, all right? So do something, you can go herbs for that. You can do drugs for that, but do something. In my protocol, I give you both herbal and prescription options to do that, all right? Then finally, we get to the other things I recommend is try to be on a plant forward paleotype diet initially or a plant forward Mediterranean type diet. These both of those are anti-inflammatory diets, all right? Probably avoid gluten. Gluten can be very inflammatory, all right? Then if you have Lyme and if you have Bartonella and if you have Babesia in my protocol, I recommend various herbal antibiotic options you can start with or various prescription options that you can start with. And it's all dependent on what the infection is, but that's all built in there as well too. So it's a lot of stuff. I mean, it's not just the one thing I wanna leave you with or anyone not leave you with, but key message I want everyone to have, two key messages, make sure you don't have yeast in you at the beginning if you do clear it out. Secondly, to get rid of chronic Lyme is not just about taking antibiotics or herbal antibiotics. You have to write the ship. You have to correct the imbalances that were created from the germs. And that's why sleep, cytokines, all those other steps I walked you through first are so important. Brilliant. And you did that in like five minutes. That was amazing. Now, if you wanna know more, go to treatlyme.com and get his book because I just, I can't say enough about my respect for you, Dr. Ross, because again, you're putting this information out and I can tell again, it goes back to your story. The heart is like helping the people who need help and that we maybe can't reach and you're still doing that today. You still have that humanitarian effort and I appreciate it so much. And it's good information. Like you really hit the nail in the head in all areas. So can't tell you how much we appreciate it. Any last tips? So say some of the other like, oh my gosh, I might have Lyme, they know how to test, they know the basics, they're gonna get your book. But any last tips, just you talked about mind, body because this is a hard thing to deal with. What were you gonna leave them with? Yeah, it is a hard. So one thing I wanna leave you with is it is a complicated illness, but you have great chances of recovery. I want people to know that you can recover from Lyme, Bartonella and Babesia. It may not be easy to get there but you can recover from it, okay? So number one, you can recover. And in fact, 85 to 90% of the time that people get treated, they can get well from this illness, okay? I have to admit, there's 10 to 15%, we haven't found the way. That doesn't mean we still can't get you better but we haven't found the way. But I think for the majority of people, you can recover, okay? Number two, it's gonna take time. If we look at some studies, LymeDisease.org out of California has a project called My Lyme Data where they asked people living with Lyme, what did it take to get you well, right? And what that, it's a really interesting study but what it said is the thing that has the best chance of getting you well is antibiotics, not alternative ways of killing your germ but literally antibiotics, either prescriptions and I say herbal antibiotics too, okay? Second thing that got people well is working with a Lyme literate medical doctor or Lyme literate condition, somebody that knows how to weave in and out of the illness, okay? And then the third thing is time. The average person that treats Lyme, the Borrelia, not Babesia and Bartonella but Borrelia is one to two years of treatment. So sorry about that but that's the reality. And if you just stick with it, you can get well. The good news is Bartonella and Babesia on average are about four to six month treatments and they're done, okay? But the Borrelia, it takes longer. So you just gotta hang in there and keep working through it basically. Awesome, what a great thing to leave our audience with and Dr. Mardiwas, thank you for making time for us today. Thank you for your wealth of information. And I will link if you're listening here to Dr. Ross's website, so you can go buy the book yourself, Hacking Lyme Disease. Thank you, Joel. It's been very good being with you here today. You're welcome.