In this in-depth discussion, Dr. J and Evan Brand explore why Lyme disease is one of the most complex and misunderstood chronic illnesses today. Rather than existing on its own, Lyme often overlaps with co-infections, adrenal dysfunction, gut inflammation, mitochondrial stress, and environmental factors like mold, making both diagnosis and treatment far more challenging than most patients expect.
Instead of relying on long-term antibiotics, which can further damage the gut and mitochondria, Dr. J and Evan outline a functional medicine, systems-based approach. This strategy prioritizes immune support, targeted herbal protocols, accurate testing, and environmental remediation, while addressing the downstream effects of chronic infection. The key message: lasting improvement requires treating the whole terrain, not just the pathogen.
Highlights
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [00:00:00] Hey guys, it's Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio podcast. Feel free and head over to justin health.com. We have all of our podcast transcriptions there, as well as video series on different health topics ranging from thyroid to hormones, ketogenic diets, and gluten. While you're there, you can also schedule a consult with myself, Dr.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Jay, and or our colleagues and staff
Evan Brand: to help dive into any pressing health issues you really wanna get to the root cause on. Again, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free and share the information with friends or family and enjoy the show.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we're live. It's Dr. Je in the House with Evan Brand. Today we're gonna be talking about the great Mimicker, also known as Lyme disease.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you have Lyme? Is it something else like mold or gut health issues? Does it matter? We wanna have a good, all-encompassing. Philosophy and how we look at all the things that could be potentially wrong with you and not rule things out too soon or too early. Evan, welcome to the podcast, man. How we doing, brother?
Evan Brand: Hey man, I appreciate it. I'm doing great and I've got personal history with this crap. Growing up [00:01:00] in Kentucky, having who knows how many tick bites, as a kid having several bites back in 2017 and then getting mold exposure the same year. Man, I got to learn firsthand what the whole Lyme co-infections thing means.
Evan Brand: And sometimes these co-infections, which we'll unpack this today, but sometimes the co-infections are even worse. Bartonella, which can come from mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, lice. Cats who have Bartonella, they call cat, cat scratch fever. Bartonella is a beast. And I've actually got a cheat sheet. Let me pull that up and then we can hit.
Evan Brand: We can hit lime, but I just wanna go straight to Bartonella because me personally I just, I really think that Bartonella almost messed me up worse than Lyme. Can you pull this little sheet up here?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep.
Evan Brand: This is just a human body graphic if you're listening on the audio, and this shows the constellation of symptoms along with Bartonella, which is an inflammatory [00:02:00] bacteria.
Evan Brand: It can affect your gut, so you'll see symptoms like heartburn and reflux, diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain. You could have pelvic or bladder pain, you could have joint or muscle pain, intense depression, depersonalization, where you feel like you lose yourself. Intense anxiety or panic mood swings.
Evan Brand: Emotional instability, especially in children headaches, light sensitivity, chemical sensitivity, EMF, sensitivity, a sensation of vibration or trembling, which is a weird one because I would get this when I was laying in bed, so I'd be laying in bed and all of a sudden I'd just feel like I'm just buzzing.
Evan Brand: That's bartella. So it's a beast. And
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah,
Evan Brand: a lot of people who have Lyme probably have Bartonella also.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. Your top Lyme symptoms, right? Early Lyme or chronic Lyme, there's gonna be an overlap, right? So you're gonna have fatigue, you're gonna have potentially headaches, rashes, fevers, chills, muscle pain, feel like you're sick, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Joint pain, neck pain, this is gonna be acute. So if we have a tick bite or there's any connection with a tick bite, that's a really good sign. If we have a bulls-eye rash only, I think 20% even have a [00:03:00] bullseye rash. So I tell patients out of the gate if anyone gets a tick bite. Number one, we can send that tick to a lab and we can have it analyzed to see if it's carrying a co-infection.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we can use either tick report.com or tick test.com. One's outta my alma mater, UMass Amherst. I went to school for undergrad and they do an analysis there. My wife got bit like maybe two summers ago. We sent it in. It came back clean, but I always start people on an herbal protocol anyway, so we're always doing a spiky herbal blend.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No matter what. So if we have any acute connection, we're definitely going to use some kind of a support to get this under control. Support the immune system if there's a history. But then some people come in, they don't have a history and they just have some symptoms. 'cause chronic Lyme does overlap a little bit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You're not gonna have as much of the fever and chills, but you're gonna have fatigue. You're gonna have joy, pain, muscle pain, a lot of the cognitive issues, a lot of mood stuff, a lot of headaches, a lot of heart rhythm, heart rate stuff. But let's face it, you could have adrenal issues. You could have chronic gut issues that now create malabsorption, gut [00:04:00] permeability, leaky gut, which could exacerbate autoimmunity, autoimmune symptoms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You could throw in some mold issue in there. Mycotoxins in the home due to water damage. And it becomes a hot mess. 'cause then you don't know whether you're coming or going. So if we're dealing with early Lyme and there's a history and we can see that even if we have a bullseye rash or not, we're gonna treat herbally no matter what.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We're also gonna send that tick in if we can. So always save your tick, wrap it in some tape, send it to one of those labs that I mentioned, either tick test. Tick test plural.com or tick report.com. We'll put the links down below. I have some good labs that you can send it to, to analyze it, but I'm treating no matter what.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Remember two summers ago, my wife got it and we talked about it. You're like, dude, just treat for two months. Just treat no matter what. And we did that.
Evan Brand: Yeah, astragalus is gonna be key in the very beginning. Yep. So if you get a new tick bite, astragalus, and this is not medical advice, we're not treating you.
Evan Brand: This doesn't establish a doctor patient relationship. However, if you get bit by a tick, educational purposes only. Three [00:05:00] grams of astragalus. Three grams, that's 3000 milligrams. Most of the time you can get astragalus root, 500 milligrams. So do the math. That's six pills a day. You would take three grams of astragalus for about a month, and the goal there is to ramp up the immune system in a way to not allow Lyme to become chronic.
Evan Brand: See, in the conventional world, which we need to bring this up now, in the conventional world, you're gonna do antibiotics. Doxycycline or other antibiotics, and it doesn't work in chronic Lyme. It just doesn't. And in fact, hundreds if not thousands of people have come to me now after doing traditional antibiotic therapy.
Evan Brand: And they're way worse. Their mitochondria look garbage. Their gut looks garbage. It's an absolute. Fricking mess. And so if you get bit acutely, would a seven day doxycycline knock it out? Maybe. I don't know. But I don't prescribe drugs, so my bias is still gonna be towards the natural herbs. And yeah, tick report is good.
Evan Brand: I interviewed that guy years ago. It was a pretty fascinating conversation because he told me that. 51% of ticks in this country carry Lyme. So if you get bit by two [00:06:00] ticks, you're pretty much gonna win the lottery there. And then when it comes to Bartonella, Babesia, Anaplasma, AOSIS, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, the ticks that contain the alpha gout, it was much, much less, like maybe five to 10% of those ticks carry those bugs.
Evan Brand: Whereas Lyme was borella dory. That's 51% of ticks and. There is some bio weapon stuff out there. The book bitten the secret history of Lyme disease and biological warfare. I would add that to your reading list for Christmas. I interviewed the author named Chris Newbie, KRIS. She documented the she gathered all the.
Evan Brand: Declassified government documents from the 1950s in Colorado where they tested various diseases being injected into ticks. So one question a lot of people ask me now that have listened to that podcast and read that book is Evan, do I have natural Lyme, which is like Ozy the Ice Man, the Lyme from, thousands of years ago?
Evan Brand: Or do I have a modern bio weapon Lab created Lyme? The answer is we don't really know. There's no way to [00:07:00] differentiate the strains, at least not that I'm aware of. But the herbs are still the same, so we're still gonna use the same lime herbs and drops, whether it's a bio weapon or whether it's native Lyme.
Evan Brand: I know that's a crazy distinction to have to make, but this is a reality.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and you can go read the book Lab 2, 5 7, and you can go see the history of Lyme and how it came to be. How it was weaponized from people over in, let's just say in Europe, around 1940 ish. And some of these people came to this country afterwards, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You can Google, I forgot about that. You can Google Operation Paperclip and put the name Eric with a C, Eric Troub into the list and you can find the words Plum Island and you can find the words lab 2, 5 7, and you can go down a crazy rabbit hole. But we'll keep today's, we'll keep it more clinical. 'cause in the end it comes down to what do we do about it?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we have acute line, like Evan mentioned, right? And some of it, there's a manmade component whether or not you wanna go down that rabbit hole. Ticks have been [00:08:00] used to experiment and be a vector for other conditions. And so we have other conditions like Babesia Bartonella, or Licia, cia.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so we wanna use different herbs to support that. So whether it's. Andrographis, I'm sorry, Andrographis, astragalus, ka claw or cemento, whether it's turmeric. A long-term immune support may also be things like Ashwagandha or Rishi. If you look at any of Steven ER's work, a lot of the things he likes are gonna be your berberine and your Artemesia combined, your crypto lepus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: These are gonna be excellent herbs and so a lot of the gut. Clearing herbs that we use. There're gonna be some lime synergistic herbs in there just in case. My philosophy when it comes to lime is I've seen lots of patients that have already been through the ringer. They've already seen people or they've already suspected that lime is an issue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I just work on treating the foundations. I make a little note, okay, lime will come down to that. We'll come back to it or we'll come back to mold as well. I always test the home if we're uncertain. 'cause if they're living in a moldy home or they don't have good air filtration or they have chronic sinus stuff, we're always gonna deal with that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of [00:09:00] people who supposedly have chronic Lyme, we just do the functional medicine foundationals and we can get great results. And I think a lot of it is because, one, there's an overlap of the herbs that we use being supportive for Lyme and also because 80% of the immune systems in the gut. And I believe a lot of people who become susceptible to Lyme are people that have dysfunctional guts.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so my thing is, if you can get the gut healthier, so much of any Lyme issue down the road becomes much better.
Evan Brand: Yeah, look at me. I had h pylori, I had parasites, I had mold, I had candida. So I have all these other factors. You're
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: crypto, right? Yeah. So those things could be, 'cause not everyone who gets Lyme or gets a tick bite develops even any issues, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Most don't. And so then what's the variable? So is it 'cause you have gut issues? Is it because you have gut and then mold as well and your adrenals are fatigued and stressed? It's a combination of things and a lot of times it's the perfect storm and that's why people have a hard time. And I also see a lot of people, let's say in the ILADS community, these are people that are more conventional medicine people that put people on chronic antibiotics like long term, [00:10:00] like years and years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I've seen that almost create more problems because yeah,
Evan Brand: PI lines growing their gut. They'll go to the point of a PICC line. Yes. Which is absolutely terrifying and correct. Many of those people end up in 20 to $200,000 worth of medical debt. Yes. And they're no better when they come to us from those procedures.
Evan Brand: Even the ebs, EBOO, the oxygenated and ozonated type blood blood cleansing type things. It's not. I'm not seeing it move the needle at all. So if you go to a Lyme specialist, now granted, I would argue that you and I are somewhat of a Lyme specialist because we've had so much experience with it. However, that's not our only thing.
Evan Brand: And if you go to someone who you've used this analogy about hammers and nails and screwdrivers and stuff, what, which are great analogies. But the reality is if you go to these Lyme specialists, they're probably not gonna know about mold and they're not gonna know about mitochondrial issues. They might just say, this is the recipe for lime.
Evan Brand: And if you don't get better, then they throw their hands up. And that sucks too. So [00:11:00] you almost have to go to a generalist and a specialist like us where we can dive into not only the lime, but the mold, the dysbiosis, all these other factors. Because for me, I've played with many different herbs over the years, and I still take herbs on and off for lime, but it was never a 100% single.
Evan Brand: Remedy, like I'm still working on mitochondria and brain chemistry and amino acids and inflammatory reduction stuff and peptides. Yes. Like it's a Lyme tincture alone would've not fixed me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. And my concern is this, if you're gonna do long-term Lyme support, you have to be very careful of long-term antibiotics because a lot of the antibiotics that are used for Lyme.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Whether it's doxycycline or any of those families, the side effects of those antibiotics nearly match the side effects of Lyme. And so you become in this what's is this chicken or the egg, right? Are we having side effects from the antibiotics or are we gonna just say, oh no, let's just die off, keep going.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then you're in this vicious loop. How do you know we're just having a side effect of the medication? And then also, how much are we destroying the immune system? We're [00:12:00] down the road. Part of our issues now is our immune system is beaten up and now we can't deal with any Lyme where normally if our immune system was stronger, we'd be able to handle it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So my thing is outta the gate. Antibiotics may make sense acutely, but I think Evan and I tend to favor herbals because one, they're safer. Longer term, they're not gonna impact and negatively cause damage to the mitochondria, which a lot of antibiotics can. And they also create a lot of unwanted anti oxidative stress where a lot of these herbals do have long-term antioxidant support and they tend to have a little bit more safety in regards to less resistance.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Long term as well.
Evan Brand: I want to caution people against Facebook groups, meetup groups, Lyme support groups. Those people may have good intentions in these groups, but. There's a massively negative pessimistic bias because a lot of those people in there are suffering. They hate the medical system. They hate doctors, yada.
Evan Brand: Some people in there are gonna be know-it-all. Some people are just gonna be wounded [00:13:00] warriors trying to help people. A lot of people get freaked out by these groups because you might post something like, Hey, what do I do for my joint pain? And you're gonna get 700 comments from strangers on a Facebook group for Lyme.
Evan Brand: So I'm not saying don't do it. I think it's a helpful place to learn and get up to speed quickly on things that people have firsthand experience with, where doctors may not have firsthand experience with. But if you hire a provider to help you. You gotta be able to trust them and let them hold your hand through this process and not try to get 700 strangers advice too, because a lot of people end up doing this and that.
Evan Brand: They do the DMSO and then they do the ozone, and then they do the hyperbaric and they're doing 30 remedies, but they're literally just shooting at a dartboard and they're not using a targeted plan. Dr. J and I, our goal is to use the least amount of stuff in a targeted way to get you better. And we're not gonna send you down 50 different rabbit holes.
Evan Brand: That's the whole point of a provider helping you as opposed to going in these groups. So [00:14:00] I was part of one years ago and I had to leave it. I'm like, this is crazy. There's a million notifications a day of these people's sob stories. It was just too much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what happens too, is when someone comes chronically ill.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Their amygdala, brainstem, they become in the fight or flight and they become hypersensitive to everything. And I see a lot of people where they're going down these very nuanced protocols where they don't even have the guts or foundational things dialed in yet. And so when you start going down these crazy different protocols and the foundation isn't set, you're more than likely gonna have a lot of side effects.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then what happens when someone does get some results? It becomes like the magic bullet. And the question is why did that person get results? What about them and their overall treatment plan? Why? Why did that make sense? Why did that help someone? And then a good practitioner's gonna say, okay, now here's why.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Here's what we should look for in you to make that treatment worthwhile. And so the problem is people don't think like that. They don't try to say, where does this fall within your treatment? ProAm, they just say, let's just do it. [00:15:00] And so you don't wanna just be throwing darts at the dart board blindly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You really wanna have a treatment plan and see where this plugs in with the overall plan, if it makes sense.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and it's taken me years to feel like I've got on top of Lyme and the co-infections. I tested positive for Lyme, Babesia, and Bartonella. So just for folks that are listening, there's a urine test that we can run.
Evan Brand: There's a good lab that does it. And the reason why we use a urine DNA sample, I'm open to others as well. I'm open to anything that gives us an answer. But we've seen some disappointing results using the typical blood antibody test. 'cause here's the deal. As you've mentioned already, this idea of immune stress, if you have a dysfunctional.
Evan Brand: Immune system. It's very possible that you're not making antibodies at the time of the test because Lyme is a stealth infection. It tries to evade the immune system. Correct. So if you've tested ne, if you've tested negative via blood, the DNA urine doesn't care about your immune system. It's strictly looking for that organism showing up in the body after provocation, meaning sauna or some sort of exercise and then collecting urine.
Evan Brand: I've seen [00:16:00] literally hundreds, if not thousands of cases where people tested negative with their conventional doctor blood, and then they did the urine and. They showed up and we pursued it and they got better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct? Yep. And so you're a bigger fan of using the urinary DNA, correct.
Evan Brand: It's the best one. I think it's the most accurate.
Evan Brand: I'm open to the other ones, but I just find more, more good. It seems to just show false hygenics and some of these other fancier ones. Yes. Armin Labs, I've looked at those two and I still find the DNA urine to find even more.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The big issue I have with some of those is. Everyone tests positive at some level, and so then it's if everyone's positive, then no one's positive.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's, it becomes like a point of where's it helpful if everyone's positive practitioner?
Evan Brand: Yeah. And the reference ranges are quite confusing on those as well versus the DNA. It's either gonna be a positive, it's gonna be indeterminate, meaning the size of the organism was weird or pretty much not at all.
Evan Brand: Where, like you said, on the Armin, you could have three different reference ranges. It's like kind of positive, slightly positive, really positive. It's man, what do you do with [00:17:00] that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that's what becomes really tough. And that's why with so many of these patients, I make a note. Okay, great. We're gonna, we're gonna table this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We'll come back to it and we'll see how much better they get within the treatment program as we address all of the foundationals. It's like bowling. Okay. That's like the second row outside pin. Like maybe we just hit the ball down the middle. Everything knocks over and those side pins get knocked over too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that's my thought. Now, if we're not getting results or the, let's say the needle's not moving, then we can always come back to that. 'cause remember, the gut is where 80% of the immune system is. And if you look at, some of the herbs that Steven Buhner has recommended over the years, we talked about some of them here already.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: These herbs are gonna have a massive benefit on the gut as well. So whether we're doing crypto. Cry. Cryptos, whether we're doing AAL cornea, whether we're doing cita, acua, biden's, right? Whether we're doing huia or sas, these are all herbs that have been around for a while. Andrographis, astragalus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: These are all great herbs that are, have an impact on not just. Killing the [00:18:00] microbes. We also want herbs that actually support the immune system. Astragalus supports the immune system. Risi mushroom supports the immune system. Ashwagandha supports the immune system, so we want things that also support and tonify the immune system as well as the adrenal glands.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And these people also tend to have depleted DHEA sulfate. So their adrenals are depleted, they're making less sex hormones, so they're more in a catabolic state, meaning they're breaking down more than they're building up. So if we could just start shifting physiology more to anabolic versus catabolic, it creates a major benefit.
Evan Brand: Yeah, said. And so just to compare and contrast that, you made a great point. The catabolic nature of these infections. So I lost 30 pounds without trying, I've told that story before. Many people with mold, they gain weight. Some people do get skinny due to the issue with the leptin receptors being blocked.
Evan Brand: But in the case of mold toxicity, I find a lot of people put on a bunch of weight by accident with Lyme and co-infections, I find people lose a bunch of weight and get. Too skinny. So if you're having weight issues, you're having trouble with [00:19:00] muscle mass, it's something we definitely will look at.
Evan Brand: And then I don't know if we hit on this much today, but dizziness and vertigo, that was a big one for me. So ly bartonella, Babesia can certainly get into the brain. So if you are struggling with chronic dizziness, this is also ramped up from the virus, from the injection, from long haul syndrome. So there's a lot of people having vestibular issues now when they're going to physical therapy, which is great 'cause you can do vestibular rehab exercises like this.
Evan Brand: So if you're listening on the audio, I would basically do these little trainings where you're following with your eyes. You try not to move your head. You try to just follow your eyes. I went to a physical therapist that taught me some of that stuff and it was helpful, but it's not root cause.
Evan Brand: You're just trying to help your brain adapt to the dysfunction rather than getting the toxin out that's damaging your vision anyway. And funny enough. A Lyme test was run after an eye doctor saw me, so an eye doctor saw me 'cause I thought I had vision issues. He said, no, you're 2020. Or even 2015.
Evan Brand: He said, if you looked into Lyme, and I hadn't yet, and then I [00:20:00] tested positive. I was like, holy crap. Thank God for this optometrist because. I didn't really make the connection and since looking into it, yeah, floaters, little black spots, blurry vision, contrast issues. Lyme affects the vision significantly.
Evan Brand: So before you go run to getting glasses. Look at lime.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, no, that makes sense. What are your, some of your favorite herbs? I mentioned a couple here already. Is there, do you have any specific herbs that you like to use specifically?
Evan Brand: Yeah, the O Toba bark is fricking strong, but it works good. O-T-O-B-A-O.
Evan Brand: Toba bark is amazing but very potent. I love Japanese knotweed. It's helped me significantly and I use a lot of red root also because at one point my spleen, so when you look down at yourself to your left side, your spleen's down there, I was very tender. And the Red Root helped my spleen, so I love those.
Evan Brand: And then also I use what's called Camp Casandra, which is a bark that's really helped to knock the Bartonella down. And then you mentioned Hata, so I'll mix those. Yeah, the Camp Casandra Hata [00:21:00] combo is potent. And I give this stuff to some of my kids too. So if you, just to quickly mention this also, if you.
Evan Brand: As a mom listening, if you have Lyme or co-infections, your kids probably do also. So you may wanna check your kids out. Kids may experience different symptoms. They may have a pale skin tone. They may complain of their belly hurting. They may have headaches. They may have a DHD or a d. D diagnoses. They may have pans or pandas like symptoms meaning sensory, OOCD, bedwetting.
Evan Brand: Anger, irritability, problems with putting on clothing. They may have food aversion, so your children may need to be looked at as well, because Lyme does go through the placenta. So in a mother who didn't treat Lyme preconception, it's possible that your kid will be positive. I've seen tons of kids that are positive that have never had a tick bite,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. A hundred percent. So it's good to have some good immune support on there. Even just a simple tincture, like just a simple cat's claw [00:22:00] tincture can be very helpful because that's gonna support the immune system. Even just a little bit of reishi mushroom can be very helpful. But again, a lot of these people I see there's, their diets are still very inflamed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I saw your Instagram video last week where you talked about using a tincture. And seeing if you had any die off symptoms. And I know you use tin, I like tinctures in people that are sensitive because we can really microdose and then grace to talk about the dosing scheme and how you adjust that dose and what you're looking for.
Evan Brand: Sure. There's different brands. Some brands max out at about five drops as a max dose. Other brands can max out at around 60 and. Dr. Nathan in his book, toxic, which is a great book about Lyme and co-infections and mold. In his book, he talks about using this trial, either if you don't have the budget for lab testing, or if your lab testing came up inconclusive and you're confused and you're still miserable.
Evan Brand: The idea is that you take a tincture that kills Lyme and if you get a reaction, good, bad, or different, meaning you and I are hanging out together. We're like, okay, here we go. Boom. Squirt in 10 drops of this lime tincture, and then we track you. [00:23:00] Did you get a headache? Did you get dizzy? Did you get diarrhea?
Evan Brand: Did you get stomach cramping? Did your joint pain move around? It went from your shoulder to your hip. Those reactions would indicate a positive result, meaning, okay, this guy had a reaction. Lyme might be there. If you take the whole bottle or a whole squirt and nothing happens, you probably don't have those infections, and so we can ultimately use your body as the test.
Evan Brand: The only downside to that is. If you are a very sensitive person, you could have die off for potentially days after this. So you really wanna work with a practitioner that's gonna coach you on how to ramp this up so you don't just destroy yourself.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, no, I think that's solid stuff out of the gate.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And yeah, the nice thing about that is you can start with, 20 drops twice a day as a goal and just start with one drop in the morning, one drop at night, and dilute it in water and just go slow and see how you do. I think that's a great way to do it out of the gates, but also foundationally, make sure you're hydrated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Make sure your electrolytes are dialed in. 'cause I see a lot of heart rhythm. Heart rate. And so if we don't have the good sodium chloride, potassium, magnesium, we're not hydrated enough. Again, if your gut's all [00:24:00] jacked up, we may even need some trial carnivore diets, even a trial elemental diet, just to make things really easy to digest, cut down the inflammation and just get nutrients into the system without a lot of digestive distress.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That can be helpful.
Evan Brand: Yeah, my. My system was jacked up and you mentioned the amygdala. So one other component to this is the mental aspect. Yeah. And you have to believe that you're gonna get better. It's very easy to just self pity and think you're just stuck forever. And I certainly had some of that because I was just feeling so bad.
Evan Brand: I thought, man, how am I ever gonna get outta this? And that's hard. So I just encourage you that. You. You have to believe that healing is possible. Now, some people ask about can you fully cure this? If you ask 20 different practitioners, you're gonna get 20 different answers about the word cure.
Evan Brand: I just focus on quality of life. If your quality of life is getting better and your symptoms are decreasing, to me that's a win. You always test positive at some level. I don't know. It's tricky. What do you say to that question when people ask you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so what [00:25:00] happens is when you have Lyme or other issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's not just the Lyme or the other co-infection that is the issue. And so I tell patients, it's if you're driving around, you get a flat tire, you're like, okay, I got this flat tire. That's the root cause of what's going on. And you say, I'm gonna just ignore this. We're gonna drive around on this flat tire of the year.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The symptoms start to get worse and worse. You're like, all right, I'm done. Let's just fix the underlying root. Cause the flat tire or the lime and things should just go away, right? You get the tire, you get the flat tire fixed new tire's on. It's awesome. Guess what? Your car still drives like crap.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Why? Because there's been collateral damage to other systems of the car, the front end, the axle, the suspension, the tires are have worn unevenly, right? There's a lot of distress throughout the car. And now the root cause may have been the root cause. If you fix it in the first week, it may have been fine, but because you created collateral damage over the years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now other systems are dysfunctional and you have to go around and start supporting other systems. So it's easy to be like but that was the first shoot of fall. It's yeah. But now it's spiraled [00:26:00] out and other things have to be addressed.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good, oh yeah,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: and that's where our functional medicine people come in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know what's where our functional med really comes in, you gotta look at it.
Evan Brand: I appreciate that. You gave me a link in the chat here for a blend. That's really cool. It's got salvy in there too, which I love. Yeah, that's awesome. Biden's. Yeah, Cita co.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Couple of herbs that Evan and I use, some of the buhner stuff's great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then, even just as someone's really sensitive, we may just do a crypto lepus tincture or a cat claw tincture. But again, it depends. If someone also lives in a very moldy home I may prioritize getting the home a little bit cleaner first. Yeah, get a good air filter. Figure out why that's there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is it just high humidity? Can we get a really good HEPA filter in there? What's going on, right? So that may be a bigger priority. 'cause if the mold's jacked up and all that's there, then maybe that is weakening the immune system. And then now the Lyme's a problem. But now the Lyme may be a thing, but now when the mold's gone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The sinuses are better. They're not chronically congested. Now the immune system improves. Now the Lyme becomes like more of a, an artifact. It's not really the root issue.
Evan Brand: I will tell you with [00:27:00] 100% confidence, if you were treating Lyme in a moldy environment, you are going to spin your wheels.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep.
Evan Brand: Trust
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: me, that's where you have to have a priority. In regards to your philosophy of how you treat someone, and you don't ever, I don't dismiss patients, it's just okay, we're gonna put that on that shelf, that on that shelf, and we'll come back to it if the program is not giving us the results we want over time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I tell patients five to 10% improvement per month, what we wanna be seeing on average. And ideally we continue to compound month after.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So if you need help, reach out to us. We're happy to get some of these labs ordered. And can we do some trials with herbs? Yeah, there are some places around the world where the international logistics and customs make it very difficult for us to do the Lyman co-infection test.
Evan Brand: If you're in the US, Canada, most of Europe, we can get it done quite easily. But if you're in some of these far off places ahead, a lady in Saudi Arabia, I'm like, I don't think we're gonna be able to get that test to and from fast enough to the lab via. Urine. So in those cases, we might just defer to the herbs and test it that way.
Evan Brand: But either way, let us [00:28:00] know how we can help. You can reach out to Dr. j@justinhealth.com. We can help you with these issues. Evan brand.com is my website, and let us walk you through this thing. It's not an overnight fix, so just have some realistic expectation. As you mentioned, five to 10% improvement every month would be awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and if you're gonna start with something, start with a single source herb. Maybe a crypto lepus or maybe a cast claw slash cemento or maybe just a, an astragalus single source and just get it maybe liquid or just a small dose and put it in a little water twice a day and start there if you want something.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But then if you're hitting your head against the wall, get a good functional medicine practitioner in your court like Evan or I. Evan's website is evan brand.com. I'm Dr. Jay justin health.com. We see patients worldwide. Feel free, you can click and reach out to our teams. We're happy to, get a discovery call on the books for you, a new patient console where we can dive in deep and figure out what makes the most sense for the next step in your.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Plan.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Said, man, don't give up. You just gotta keep going. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? You got one life? Try to make it the [00:29:00] best. So
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah,
Evan Brand: It's very easy to just throw your hands up and be like, I'm done. I just don't have it in me. But you gotta fight one more fight.
Evan Brand: So if you're listening, you feel like you're into the, you're at the end of the rope. Trust me, I was there. The stuff I went through, I wouldn't wish upon anyone. And I got through it. So just know your body is pretty amazing at healing when you get the roadblocks out of the way. So Lord willing, we get all the testing done, we get all the data you need, and then we'll create a plan to help you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I agree. That makes sense. Also, let's go over the lab. What's your favorite Lyme test? Again, for looking at the actual microbes in the urine?
Evan Brand: Right now I'm using DNA connections.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's the one I've been using too. I don't do it as much 'cause I have my protocol on how I do it. Yeah. Where patients improve or not.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But yeah, it's something that I have on my list. And we always come back to it if we need. I'll put a list of products that we typically use or would recommend in the description link below. Advocates do the same. I typically don't recommend just self-treating when it comes to Lyme because it can create a spiral of side effects and [00:30:00] then, okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It only really works in conjunction with a bigger overall plan. Evan said, if you have a moley environment. It's gonna be spinning your wheels. If you have a chronic gut or adrenal issue, it'll probably be spinning your wheels as well. So you want to get tests, so we wanna assess, not guess.
Evan Brand: Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome, Evan. Alright man. Great chatting with you today, brother. We'll talk soon. You guys have an awesome day. If you enjoyed the podcast descriptions down below, love to see your comments, support us, and you guys have an awesome day. Take care, y'all.
Evan Brand: Take care now. Bye
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: bye.
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