The Hidden Cause of Your Chronic Illness (It's Not What You Think)

Key Takeaway

If you have persistent, multi-system symptoms, stop chasing isolated symptoms and create a timeline of possible exposures, infections, sensitivities, and symptom onset to review with a qualified clinician. Note water-damaged buildings or musty environments, tick exposure, new reactions to foods, odors, light, or sound, and autonomic symptoms such as palpitations or temperature intolerance. This history can help distinguish potential upstream triggers from downstream effects and guide a safer, properly sequenced care plan.

Episode Overview

Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Neil Nathan discuss a root-cause, systems-based approach to complex chronic illness, particularly mold toxicity, tick-borne infections, chemical sensitivities, and post-COVID symptoms. They argue that many symptoms are downstream effects of a body in a threat-response state and emphasize identifying triggers, addressing nervous-system sensitivity when necessary, and treating in the appropriate order.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Hidden Cause of Your Chronic Illness (It's Not What You Think) from The Dr. Hyman Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

What makes the nervous system so vulnerable? Once you understand this, you will know how to treat it. So when people develop chemical sensitivities, they're often told, "Oh, you just have to learn to live with it ." My message is: “ No, it’s not like that. We can fix this." We can also help people who have developed EMF sensitivity. We have been doing this for over 20 years. We have gradually expanded our arsenal of tools to truly help the majority of people who are seriously ill. Well, Nile.

Welcome back to the podcast. Very glad to see you again. We have known each other for decades and work with complex patients who are often trying to find a way out of a whole complex of symptoms - constant and debilitating, with which no one can help. You've developed an incredible system for understanding complex chronic illnesses: mold, Lyme disease, chemical sensitivities, environmental diseases, chronic fatigue— a whole spectrum of problems that conventional medicine often ignores, dismisses, or doesn't have the proper tools to treat. You have dedicated your life to trying to understand why these people do not recover, what challenges arise in their treatment, and how to solve these problems.

You were one of my mentors and teachers. I have greatly appreciated your wisdom, insight, and intelligence over the years, and it is especially important to me because I have suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome myself. I have personally suffered from Lyme disease and babesiosis. I had severe mold poisoning and almost died. I really faced these issues, heavy metal toxicity, mercury, and I had to deal with everything on my own. Now I feel healthy and well. I rode my bike 50 miles this morning. I am almost 67 years old.

I feel great. My time on the course is about the same as it was 10–15 years ago. I think I'm sharing this story because I want to show : there is hope. And you give a lot of hope. So, Neil, let's start by defining the problem: why are so many people suffering from all these inexplicable symptoms? And why are they so sick without any clear diagnosis? Um, and they're often told that their tests are normal. You know, it's just, well, psychological. And why is medicine, so to speak, not keeping up with this?

The way conventional medicine works is based on a concept that works great for simple problems but doesn't work at all for chronic illnesses of almost any kind . It's based on the concept that, okay, I go to the doctor and I have a sore throat. He takes a smear for strep. He is positive. He gives me penicillin and I feel better. Right. Nice, simple. But chronic illnesses don't work that way. Everything in the body is connected to everything else, and conventional medicine is based on a "one cause, one diagnosis , one treatment" model that simply no longer fits.

The world we live in is absolutely complex, as I know, you understand. Many people who come to us have been deceived by the medical community. They were told it was all in their heads, that there was no such thing as Lyme disease, that there was no such thing as mold toxicity. Yes. And we have helped thousands of people regain their health, knowing that there is a different model, there is a different path. But the other part of your question is that we live in an increasingly toxic world.

Yes. It is known that over the past 70 years, 350,000 new chemicals have appeared in our environment . The vast majority have never been studied to see if they affect our health or not. And we add to this the increasing impact of electromagnetic frequencies, EMFs. And so people are implementing 10G now , not realizing that we are being exposed to a huge amount of energy that our bodies were never designed to handle. So, we have an increasing amount of toxicity. Our livers are having to deal with things that no one had to deal with 100 years ago, and they are overwhelmed.

And so gradually toxins continue to accumulate in our body. They provoke inflammatory reactions that become chronic, and we are racing in the right direction in the wrong direction. So I think that's what's happening, and it's really tragic. It's tragic, and I, you know, I don't know if you've ever experienced any of these problems yourself, Neil, but I experienced it from the inside, and I almost died when my whole immune system collapsed. I had a huge amount of inflammation and a terrible catabolic state, you know, because of Lyme disease.

I had severe fatigue, brain fog, and cognitive problems. Um, and you know , I've developed weird food sensitivities, weird chemical sensitivities. I got rashes when I ate certain things. It was just incredibly strange how my body completely broke down. And I think, you know, I felt so helpless about it, and conventional medicine didn't offer any solutions. And that's how I came to functional medicine 30 years ago . And I think a lot of people listening to us have these issues, whether it's chemical sensitivities or histamine reactions.

We now call it MCAS, well, you know, basically I have an advanced form of histamine intolerance. We have all these weird autonomic symptoms , these problems with prolonged COVID. People get so many tick-borne infections that they are not even properly diagnosed. And it's all one big mess. And often people have several problems at the same time. It's not just one thing. So when you start thinking about these patients, you know , and these people who are suffering, how do you start to approach them? How do you help them understand what's happening and then guide them?

Well, the first thing I always look for is the root cause. What is the main thing that makes my patient sick? Unfortunately, there may be several root causes. In your case, I remember us talking when you were very sick due to mold toxicity . Thank you, by the way. And please, by the way. The trick is to identify all the root causes, not focus on just one, and also try to prioritize which root cause needs to be treated in which order. And sometimes it depends on patient to patient.

It's not as easy as it sounds. The biggest root causes that we're seeing are mold toxicity , Lyme disease, we can also talk about other environmental toxicities, and prolonged COVID. These three are the most important ones we need to sort out. And many doctors or patients get hung up on things that are consequences of that. Mast cell activation, limbic dysfunction, vagal dysfunction, methylation dysfunction, mitochondrial dysfunction, recurrent Epstein-Barr or other viruses, and they can get stuck with it for years, thinking, "I'm treating the root cause," but it's not really the root cause.

The root cause is something deeper that weakens the immune system, and that's where we have to start, because otherwise we simply won't make any progress. I agree, and I, you know, noticed this very early in my practice: you have to focus on the root causes and keep going higher and higher until you find out what the higher order of things is, instead of just treating the symptoms. And you're right: autonomic dysfunction, histamine intolerance, chemical sensitivity—these are results, not causes of anything. And, to elaborate a little on what you said about mold, its role in prolonged COVID and environmental issues, you mentioned Lyme disease.

But when you say " Lyme disease," you mean the entire set of diseases transmitted by ticks, because there are a million of them: Lyme disease, babesiosis, borreliosis, bartonellosis. I mean Lyme disease and its associated infections. Yes. I knew you meant that . I just wanted to clarify for... That guy. That guy. Yes. Because not everyone is as fluent in the topic as we are. But I think this is actually a very important point. You emphasize this in your book when discussing the importance of doing things in the correct order.

You can make someone worse off by doing the right thing in the wrong order. I wrote an article about 20 years ago called " The Right Order of Things," which is exactly about this. You know, start with the basics and then gradually add more. If you start doing something that might help later too soon, it can only make the person's condition worse. Can you explain this phenomenon and why we need to be structured in our approach to these problems so as not to harm people? By the time people come to me, many of them are in a state like you are at your worst: exhausted, unable to think clearly, anxious, reacting to everything.

And in this state, it is especially important to act in the correct order, because otherwise they will get worse. And this order needs to be determined. For most people, the correct order is to start with mold toxicity . There are several main reasons for this, I will list a few. First, mold toxicity looks like Lyme disease with co-infections , like a prolonged COVID. That's why it's simply impossible to separate them by symptoms . So if we know that a person has mold toxicity , which is clearly reflected in a urine test for mycotoxins, other diseases are a little more difficult to diagnose with tests.

The easiest thing to do is to test for mold, and if the mold test is positive, that's a great start. We know this for sure. Most often, if we get rid of the mold, people either recover completely, which means we don't have to go into the Lyme disease topic, or they get 70 % better, and what remains symptomatic helps us understand what the next level is that we need to treat. So, I usually start with mold. But, having said that, it's more complicated than it seems .

Because for most of my patients, mold toxicity causes dysfunction in the limbic system, vagus nerve, and mast cells. And all of this represents, from the body's point of view, safety or lack thereof. And we know that if the body doesn't feel safe, it can't heal. Not psychologically, physiologically. You're talking about a cellular response to danger. This is what you're talking about, right? That's right. That's right. Often, to even begin treatment for mold, many of our patients are so sensitive that they cannot take the necessary supplements, the sorbents that they need to even begin that treatment.

So for them, we have to start by rebooting the limbic system and the vagus nerve, then add work with mast cells, which is relevant for most of them, and only then can we move on to mold. When we remove that layer, we can see if there is a Lyme disease component or post-Covid syndrome and start working on that. If we approach it that way, we will make progress, but I have had countless patients who have worked for years on Epstein- Barr virus, mitochondrial dysfunction, or methylation issues, and have made no progress .

Yes, because these are secondary consequences. These are not just secondary effects; it's a state of cellular response to danger, which, for your audience, is a concept developed by Bob Navio. This is a brilliant way to understand the biochemical complexity of what happens in almost every chronic disease. At a simplified, cellular level that extends throughout the body: if someone is exposed to infection, toxins, stress, or a combination of these, the cell shuts down to localize the infection and deal with the stress that extends throughout the body.

And until that is resolved, you will not move forward. And this is not psychology. You can't just decide, "Oh, I'm going to be healthy." You have to literally heal the body so that it feels, "I am safe." The threat has disappeared or almost disappeared. Now I can move on to healing. So, this again helps us understand what to do and in what order? Because you are in the first stage of the cellular response to danger, the body will not respond to methylation or mitochondrial treatment. He will not respond to plasmapheresis.

It will not react to peptides. He won't respond to most of it. It's like he's saying, "Hey, I'm in survival mode. It's great what you're doing for me. But I can't accept it until I'm safe." This is how I imagine the order in which we should retreat. Have you ever gone to bed exhausted, but your body just won't shut down? Thoughts are racing, muscles are tense, and you can't fully relax. Often, this can be linked to one fundamental nutrient—magnesium. It plays a crucial role in sleep , recovery, stress regulation, and muscle function.

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If you're looking to upgrade your everyday essentials, head over to cozier.com/hyman and get 20% off. Yes, it's difficult. I almost died from mold. I...I'm in this barn right now that you see in the background. This is an old 125- year-old barn that was full of mold. I coughed for a whole year. I worked very hard. I worked at the Cleveland Clinic and just ignored my symptoms. I somehow suspected that something was wrong. The house smelled a little musty. I thought, "Oh, maybe something is going on." I checked and it turned out that everything was moldy.

I moved, but, um, I had a series of events start when I had a root canal removed. I was taking antibiotics. It gave me a clostridial infection, my body completely gave up, and I went into this massive inflammatory, cell-threatening, catastrophic catabolic state that kept me in bed for 5 months. I lost 30 pounds, couldn't eat, and my entire intestines and stomach were inflamed. And, you know, it was hard to get out of that. Um, and I think, you know, for some people, um, you know, the question is , what are the right levers and where do you start?

As for me, I followed all the dietary recommendations. I took all the supplements I could. I thought I was doing everything right. But it turns out that I... I had to, and it sounds like a crazy option to people, but I heard it from one of my patients, and I usually listen to patients because they report what actually works. He said, “I did ozone therapy. I had very severe mold poisoning, I did ozone therapy, and it helped me." I'm like, "Okay, maybe I'll try it because I'm dying ." I don't know what else to do." I did this, and literally in 2 days, I was pulled out of that state.

I don't know exactly how it worked, but, um, then I went on to detoxify the mold, and I think, you know, lipid metabolism, which I find very helpful, is a completely different approach developed by Patricia Kane and others, which uses high doses of phosphatidylcholine intravenously along with glutathione, methylating nutrients, and other minerals to mobilize toxins. And I find it extremely useful. And this helps many patients. So there's a lot in the toolkit for people , but you know, I think, Neil, you're talking about what people really need is the right " map." And it's worth really thinking about it.

Maybe we can step back a little bit and talk about this phenomenon of toxicity versus sensitivity. What's the difference? And how does this transition from tolerance of things to intolerance occur? For example, people become intolerant to food, smells, light, and sounds. It's like they react to everything at once. So, how, how does it work? Sensitivity refers to something neurological. Like our feelings, all our feelings. Touch, smell, um, hearing, light, sound. So, sensitivity refers to sensitivity to light, sound, touch, smell. Toxicity is the presence of a toxin in our body that inflames it on a systemic level.

Therefore, it is useful to separate these concepts, and we can do this simply when talking to patients and taking their history. One of the questions I ask every patient is: Have you developed any sensitivities? And we ask about one thing in particular. If so, they are already telling me that their limbic and vagal systems need help. Because the key to sensitivity is the limbic system. This is the part of the nervous system that specifically monitors our sensitivities and goes out of control when inflamed by anything.

The toxicity of the mold is the main thing. This is what we see most often. So, listening to a patient, if they tell me they can't think clearly, have cognitive impairment , fatigue, um, joint and muscle pain— that's general inflammation. This can be called a toxicity category. Sensitivity is when these senses are on high alert and people become extremely sensitive to smells, for example, they may smell mold when no one else in the family can . Yes, like a bloodhound for mold. I have one .

I can walk into a room and say, "Oh, there's mold in here." Well, we know that dogs have a sense of smell a thousand times sharper than ours. But even humans can develop something similar when their limbic system becomes sufficiently excited. And, you know, I knew you when you lost 16 kg, and you really look a lot better. Thank you. Now than then. Nice to see. This, this, this, this is the amazing ability of the body to recover, and if you, you know, for people who are listening and feel like it's hopeless, I know people struggle with these conditions.

It never seems like they get the answers, but, but there is a structure for thinking about it, and your book is such an important contribution to the field. It's called "Toxic: Healing Your Body from Mold Toxicity, Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and Chronic Environmental Illnesses," and you wrote it and then revised and updated it in a second edition that includes EM sensitivity , environmental toxins, COVID, and post-COVID syndrome. I think this is really important, and I personally use this book because it is an extremely detailed resource for understanding these chronic diseases and gives hope to those who are truly suffering.

So I would add that I wrote a book called "The Sensitive Patient's Guide to Recovery, " which focused specifically on the sensitivity component. In this book, 20 experts share their experiences looking at the causes of hypersensitivity of the nervous system, and once you understand it, you will know how to work with it . Often people with chemical sensitivities are told, "Oh , you just have to learn to live with it ." My message is: "No, that's not true." We can fix this. The same goes for people with sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, we can fix that.

These are things that, now that we understand the physiological causes of increased sensitivity in the body , we have the ability to cure. I want to emphasize the hope you mentioned: we have been doing this for over 20 years and have gradually filled our arsenal to the point where we can really help most people who are very sick. Let's discuss how we diagnose and treat these conditions, what works and what doesn't. I think it would be useful to know your opinion on this cocktail of chronic diseases.

As a doctor , if I could do two things, I would rid the planet of mold-related illnesses and Lyme disease, because they cause so much suffering. But we have to deal with it. The issue is that conventional medicine doesn't really recognize these conditions. Diagnostics are not actually performed. What diagnostic methods do you use to figure this out ? And after that, let's talk about the correct approaches to treatment. There are four laboratory tests for diagnosing mold toxicity. Three of them measure mycotoxins in urine, and one determines the immune response to them in the blood.

Any positive result from these tests indicates that you do indeed have mold toxicity . Although people argue that it can be obtained from food , I haven't noticed this, and I can explain why. So you think: yes, because people reject it . They say, "Oh, it's just toxins from the food. It's not real when you..." It's not. Does this contribute even a little to the appearance in the urine? Yes, but not so much that we wouldn't detect it during the tests. So a urine test for mycotoxins is the standard.

Everyone who has a complex disease should take this test. If you want, I can discuss brands or which tests are better, but I do n't have to. The bottom line is that you need a good test to measure. So you're talking about mycotoxin urine testing, and then there's a whole industry that Richie Shoemaker, a pioneer in the study of mold-related diseases, is talking about. He describes a phenomenon called CIRS , where many biomarkers are used, including MSH, C4A, or TGF- beta-1. These are blood tests that can be done.

Are they useful? Do they help? Do they not matter? First, if you're wondering, I just finished a podcast with Richie where we discussed the difference in our approaches. It was a two-hour conversation with Scott Forsgren on his podcast "Better Health Guy." So if you want a detailed discussion of these differences, it will be available, and I'm very glad we were able to do that. All the tests you mentioned are blood tests: TGF-beta-1, C4A, MMP9, VEGF. These are indirect indicators of inflammation. They are useful because they tell us, "Yes, you have inflammation." But they will be positive not only for mold, but also for Lyme disease, co-infections, other infections, and some viral diseases.

So, if you want to confirm that a person has inflammation, they are useful. Will they accurately indicate mold? No, they won't tell. The urine mycotoxin test is completely specific for mold. Sorry, but this is not rocket science. If you excrete mycotoxins in your urine, they leave your body. You got them into your system. So, if we can measure significant amounts of mycotoxins, mold toxins, in your urine, you have them . Sorry, there is no doubt here. For me, this is the most useful test that helps put an end to this issue.

This is very accurate, um, and very useful. Then, in the area of ​​Lyme disease, our tests got better. We have gone from fairly imprecise Western blots to much more precise immunoblots, identifying significantly more Lyme and Bartonella species than we could detect before. And new tests have appeared that I really like. Bob Mozayeni has a T-Labs test where you can send in a sample of your blood and it will be checked under a microscope with a special fluorescent dye that only stains that microbe, and it will say, "Is this in your body right now?" And I find this test particularly useful.

Because our serological tests check the functioning of the immune system. When you look for antibodies, it doesn't always help. So what exactly does it measure with this test? Immunological tests are a great way to find out if you have a disease, or at least if you were susceptible to it. But even when you've recovered, your body continues to produce these antibodies through what's called immune memory. The same concept that we use for all vaccinations is immune memory. So I always want to know: OK, the diagnosis has been made, how is the treatment progressing?

Have we managed to get enough bacteria out of our system so that we don't have to continue treatment and take antibiotics? And for me, the T-Labs test helps a lot with this. Here's an example of a test that I really like right now: Bruce Patterson's Radiance Lab tests for 14 different cytokines. Cytokines are what our immune system activates in the body when we fight toxins and infections. It turns out, especially from Dr. Patterson's research, that Lyme disease has its own unique cytokine pattern. There is a different cytokine pattern in prolonged COVID, so we can identify that much better.

I'm currently doing research with him where we're identifying another distinct pattern for mold toxicity . So, with one blood draw, you can see exactly what the immune system is fighting right now. What cytokines does it produce in such a combination that makes me immediately think, "Oh, this is a pattern of prolonged COVID." Or it could be all of them together, because we see this quite often. So, we are now developing much better tests than we were 20 years ago to start to pinpoint which of these problems is the most important and which I need to treat first .

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So, thanks to tests we can check for mold toxins in the urine, we can see different immune responses to tick-borne infections. There are ways to test for heavy metals, there are ways to assess the level of toxic load on the body. All of this gives some clues about what is happening. In treating these patients, do you usually start with lifestyle, diet, and gut, or do you go straight to what you see as a trigger, like mold or... My tendency is to start with the root cause.

Many of my colleagues start by improving detoxification strategies and diet, but the problem is that the vast majority of mold patients have SIBO. They have intestinal dysbiosis. And you can't fix it until you get rid of the mold and candida first. One of the main principles of functional medicine is to treat the gut first, and then everything will improve. The exception is mold: if you have mold, and with it almost always comes candida, and you don't work on it, any strategy is unlikely to work. Our patients respond to rifaximin, they get better for a couple of weeks, and then they go back to their previous state.

So my approach is to first eliminate the cause, and honestly, once you get it out of the body, the body's natural healing powers will fix everything themselves over time. And if not, we can use our regular tests and say, "Okay, you're deficient in zinc and selenium." I can assign them and they will help you. I can look at the fatty acid imbalance and we can fix it. But you will respond much better if you first get rid of the main root cause. So let's talk about it.

When we talk about diagnostics, mold and mites—that's what I think about in every patient with any chronic problem, even if it's an autoimmune disease. It doesn't have to be chronic fatigue, histamine intolerance, or anything like that. This could be a real disease that has not yet been discovered. For example, I had ulcerative colitis. That's what I had, you know? But that wasn't really the problem . The problem was mold. And once I got rid of the mold... You may not know this, but I have it too .

I also got ulcerative colitis from mold. So I ... Wow. Good. Brothers in misfortune, what can you say? And don't tell. My God, that was horrible. I had 20 trips to the bathroom with blood a day. I lost 15 kilograms. I couldn't eat. My entire intestine was inflamed. And only when I finally dealt with the mold did it help. I'm curious, you know, when you have a patient with a complex disease like mine, where do you start if not with the gut, and if you try to get to the root cause right away?

What are the methods of therapy? What approaches exist? What treatment do you think is most effective for such complex chronic patients? Including mold, but I also want to talk a little bit about issues related to mites. Of course. First, I think this is the main thing. We start with a detailed history. Again, when we talk about why traditional medicine often doesn't work , you know, my history taking takes 2 hours. Therefore, you need to really listen to the patient carefully. They will usually tell you what's going on if you just sit back, listen, and don't interrupt their story.

If you don't interfere or push them. But then, when you listen to their story, you can delve deeper into the details. Asking them, as in your case: were you exposed to mold? Do you smell mold? Is there a barn or something similar nearby where there might be moldy hay? Simply put. A building with water damage, water...You start asking these questions. As I said, I ask each patient about their sensitivity. As soon as they say, " Yes, I am sensitive to light, sound, smells, and chemicals." I already know they have limbic system issues and we need to address that as soon as possible .

If we do n't do this, we wo n't get anywhere. I'm asking about mast cell activation in the early stages. I ask: do you ever have an immediate reaction to food or drink? There are other manifestations of mast cell activation, but this is the first sign. When someone says, “I immediately get bloating and gas when I eat. "I don't even have time to finish eating." Perfectly. I already know that you have mast cell activation, and that's part of the problem. And then I also look for vagus nerve disorders.

I pay attention to symptoms of the autonomic nervous system: heart palpitations, temperature dysfunctions. The vagus nerve controls the gastrointestinal tract, so I view any gastrointestinal symptom as likely related to it. POTS, low blood pressure—these are all things that indicate that the vagus nerve is involved. So, as I listen, I try to piece together in my head what the root cause was, what it provoked, what the further consequences are, so that I can formulate my overall picture. So yes , I always want to work with the root cause.

But for many of our patients, I can't treat the root cause until I first address the limbic, vagal, and mast cell systems. And how, how do you initially deal with these things? Well, there is a separate treatment for each of them . So, for the limbic system, there are a number of great programs that patients can do to reboot . This is, for example, Annie Hopper's Dynamic Neural Retraining (DNRS) program. Or Ashok Gupta's amygdala retraining program. The amygdala is another name for the limbic system. There is also Kathleen King's Primal Trust program .

These are my three favorites, but there are others. On the vagal side, there are many new devices on the market called vagus nerve stimulators. You have to be careful with them. My sensitive patients can't stand direct stimulation. There are devices, like the Gamma Core, that are worn around the neck. There are devices that attach to the earlobe, where a branch of the vagus nerve passes. Most of my patients require indirect stimulation, so I often use the Apollo Neuro to help reboot the vagus nerve. I love osteopathic cranial therapy for working with the vagus nerve.

I love specific frequency microcurrent therapy. And almost anything that calms the sympathetic nervous system: tai chi, yoga, meditation—they're all great. But it usually takes several vagal strategies, combined with limbic ones, to move people from a hypersensitive, bedridden state to a more functional one, and then to the ability to do more. Then we move from mold to taking sorbents specific to what we see in their urine. We know which mycotoxins are found in your urine, and in my book Toxic, there is a large table that shows what is known from the medical literature about which sorbents work on which toxins.

You can literally look at your report and be like, " Okay, I need activated charcoal, clay, chlorella, and Wellchol or cholestyramine to get this out of my body." So you're saying there are specific sorbents for specific mold toxins. Yes, we can turn this into precision medicine. And then, many of our patients have not only mold toxins, but also colonization. The mold has actually colonized their sinuses, gut, or sometimes lungs, and we will have to use antifungals to get rid of it. So, that's all about mold treatment.

Do you add, in addition to sorbents and antifungals, something like ozone therapy, phospholipid exchange, or other methods? I know, I know, ozone helped you. This doesn't help most people . This is significantly more effective for Lyme disease and co-infections than for mold. I love phosphatidylcholine. I think this is a wonderful thing. One of my favorites . I mean, I use dozens and dozens of, let's say , naturopathic approaches to treating mold: other naturopathic sorbents, gallbladder boosters, liver and kidney detoxification, and saunas to better eliminate toxins through the skin.

I've intentionally simplified things, but we have a lot of tools to help people on their journey to detoxifying their bodies. What about tick-borne infections? Because mold sorbents, antifungal agents , phospholipids—these are all excellent treatment methods. Tick-borne infections appear to be more complex and resistant to treatment. They are more complex and harder for the body to tolerate , because in my experience, most people are unable to recover with herbs alone. They are helpful, and I use herbal medicine, but most patients will need antibiotics for a longer period than anyone wants to completely get rid of this germ.

Unfortunately, the same antibiotics do not work equally well on different coinfections. That's why we use certain antibiotics to treat Lyme disease itself, others for bartonellosis or babesiosis, and then there are the lesser- known anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, and so on. This is a whole direction, as you well know. There is a whole group of doctors called LLMDs— Lyme disease specialists. We were all forced to study this because it's not as simple as with a streptococcal infection: take antibiotics for a week and you're healthy. That won't work with these pathogens.

They are much more insidious. So the whole area of Lyme disease treatment, in my opinion, is more complicated, and again , a whole arsenal of tools is needed to remove these "residents " from the body. They are called " hidden" infections. They hide inside our cells. They don't just float around in the bloodstream. We literally have to "pull" them out of the cells and get to them, which, sorry, is quite difficult. One of the most important things you can do for your health is to cook more meals at home.

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PEMF, or pulsed electromagnetic therapy, transmits gentle electromagnetic frequencies into the body that mimic those we naturally receive while spending time on Earth. Combined with red and near-infrared light, it's one of the few recovery tools that works while you do absolutely nothing. I wear it for 30 minutes while reading or relaxing, and I notice that I sleep better on the nights I use it. It's lightweight, has a low EMR, free shipping , is HSA and FSA eligible, and honestly, it's one of the easiest things I've added to my evening routine.

So go to bondcharge.com/hymen and use the code hymen for 15% off. It's b o n c h a r g e.com/hymen and you'll get 15% off. Yes, that's right. That's true. And I think, you know, we're talking about how we can improve the condition of people. Um, both you and I are dealing with patients who have already exhausted all options. And me, me, me too for most of my career. I joked that I worked at a health resort, so I was a resort doctor, but at the same time a doctor of "last resort." And I think, I think you do too.

Are there people with these complex chronic illnesses that you simply haven't been able to help? Are there people who are so dependent on their biology that they can't fix it somehow ? Because what I see in biology is a kind of looped process from which it is impossible to escape. I was in this trap myself and couldn't get out. It was like...it was a vicious circle. No matter what I did, I couldn't break it. I really am. I don't think there is a doctor who can say they cure every patient, and I'm certainly not one of them.

I would say that I helped the vast majority of people I worked with, but of course there are people I didn't help. And I will give you a few reasons why this happens. In the field of mold treatment, the main reason people don't get better is that they have n't been able to get out of the mold-affected environment. They failed to properly clean their home. Um, they're still there. Financially, they cannot afford to move. And if it is impossible to get out of the moldy environment, it is impossible to recover.

So this is the main problem. Other people who are very ill often have a spiritual, emotional, psychological, or energetic block that prevents them from responding to treatment on a deeper level. This requires deeper work with the patient to figure it out together; I usually tell them: you know, you don't react to what I do. Do you have any idea where your block is or where you are " stuck"? And most people have some idea. Most people will say, "Well, you know, I had an early childhood trauma, and I never ...I've worked through some of that." "I'm not sure I 've worked it all out." And I noticed: if we delve into this, and it might take another year before they can go back to treatment, then they can move on.

But we have to find this block. I call it a block when something energetically obstructs the flow of energy in the body . There are energy healers who can sometimes do a great job in this regard, you just have to look deeper. Sometimes, although I do n't like to talk about it , people don't have the will to live. They become so sick that they simply decide to give up. And this way of thinking prevents any treatment from having a positive effect. So this all becomes very complicated.

And our goal as doctors or potential healers is to dig as deep as the patient will allow to find what they need from us to move forward. Yes, I think it's very important, you know. I mean, people get desperate, frustrated, irritable, and sometimes suicidal, and I definitely found myself in that state at different points in the different illnesses I've had , and I thought: I can't take this anymore . But I hope that people take away from this conversation is that there is a way to think about this , that there is a roadmap, that there is an understanding of what happens when people have these chronic complex diseases.

And if you are struggling, don't lose hope. There is, there is a way to get through this. I think I would encourage everyone to buy your book and follow you on social media, on Instagram and on your website neilnathanmd.com, and the book is...get well. It's called " Toxic: Heal Your Body from Mold Toxicity , Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and Environmental Illnesses." She has already left. Neil, thank you for your dedication, your work, for your teaching me, for your help when I was sick. And I think, you know, you and I are proof that there is a way out of this.

We were both very sick of it, and it probably motivated much of our work. And then there is a way to figure out how to solve these chronic complex diseases. So, thank you so much for your career, your work, your dedication, and everything you put into your book. Thank you. My main conclusion is that everything we talked about today is treatable . So yes, there is hope. Certainly. And I am a living example. I had all of that. I had mold, mercury, Lyme disease. Lyme disease, yes.

That 's all, you're right. And still, still here to laugh about it. I'm still here. Actually, I feel great. I really feel better than ever. This is great. Fantastically. Yes. Okay, now take care of yourself and we'll talk soon. If you liked this video, you'll like the next one. Watch it here.

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