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Test Don't Guess is the podcast unlicensed health practitioners interested in functional lab testing have been searching for! If you're anything like the host, Jensen, you had no idea you had access to all kinds of different functional labs when you graduated with your nutrition certification. Through interviews with practitioners, lab experts, and course creators, you'll learn how your colleagues are using gut, hormone, mold, mineral testing and more to confidently work with clients and grow your practice!
We are closing out the season of the Test Don't Guest podcast with this final episode. And today is gonna be a little bit different of an episode than anything that we've ever done here. I'm gonna go behind the scenes of what's been happening in my own life in the last 6 months or so, because there's been a lot. And I'm feeling really pulled to show up as authentically as possible for this community, and I think the podcast is a great way to do that. I absolutely loved this, the trend that went around on Instagram recently where people were sharing things online and just opening up behind the curtain a bit of, like, what they're struggling with.
Speaker 1:And I've always been a very private person. You know, I don't share about my kids or my family on my Instagram, and I've just kept things very surface level. And I think I'm ready to just be more real and share who I am a little bit more and the struggles that I've been going through, especially because I feel very strongly that they could help their people, especially practitioners. So I just wanna preface, you know, as my type a self that wants to put out a polished perfect product, this podcast and probably future podcasts are just not going to be that. It's okay that it's gonna be messy.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna be completely upfront and say I don't have all the answers. I don't think anybody expects me to have all the answers, but I don't have all the answers. Just wanna put that out there. And I'm here to learn too. So in January of this year, 2024, I found out that I have Lyme disease, and it has been the most shocking discovery of my entire life.
Speaker 1:So let me back up. I'll walk you through all of the testing and the whole backstory of everything that has happened, but I do want to preface with the fact that when I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, I knew absolutely nothing about Lyme disease. Even being in the functional medicine world for as long as I have been, doing the amount of research on things that I have, I had truly never gone down the rabbit hole that is Lyme disease until I found out that I had it. And so with that being said, I am still brand new. I will say, as of right now, in April 2024, all of my testing is showing up with no Lyme disease, which is wonderful.
Speaker 1:I feel like I am on the other side of this at this point. I don't have any of the horrifying symptoms that I had back in November when I started feeling poorly, but I still think that I have a ways to go. And so I'm gonna talk with you about the testing aspect of this and just my whole story behind it. So back in November of 2023, right at the beginning of November, my family came down with a virus. And so both my kids had it, and then my husband got it.
Speaker 1:And then I thought I was in the clear, thought I was, like, superwoman mom, and then, of course, I got it too. I got a, like, 103 fever, and I just felt absolutely horrible. Out of complete desperation, I actually took some over the counter medication that I wouldn't typically take. I have a 6 month or I had a 6 month old and a 3 year old at the time. As much as I would love to be sick and just, you know, relax, I think a lot of us can relate to the fact that it's really hard for moms to get sick, and so I was really not feeling well.
Speaker 1:So with that being said, I did I took some over the counter medication. I'm not gonna name what medication I took, but I had a really strong reaction to it. And I thought I I, basically, I felt like I was, like, hallucinating. I stayed up, I think, for an an entire day. Like, I wasn't able to fall asleep that night.
Speaker 1:I felt like I was high, and it was just the craziest feeling. And then the fever went away, and that feeling didn't go away. And the only way I could describe it was this disassociation feeling where I was floating outside of my body, and I know that sounds so wild and crazy. It was really scary. I thought that this over the counter medication had done this to me.
Speaker 1:And so I went down this whole path of, you know, obviously contacting the manufacturer of that medication. I did see online that people do have strong reactions to it sometimes. I thought that I had essentially, like, a medical injury or something, but the problem was that the symptom, this disassociation, this brain issue was not going away. It was affecting me in every single way. I was truly barely surviving, barely existing.
Speaker 1:I wasn't able to drive. I didn't feel comfortable driving because I didn't feel like my reaction time was good enough, especially with my 2 kids in the car. And so I was having to, you know, have grandparents come and help and take my 3 year old to school, and it was just it really shook up my life. It was just constant, and it wouldn't go away. And I wasn't able to be creative at work.
Speaker 1:I was really just kind of keeping everything going. I went to multiple doctors, just conventional doctors. I think I was so embarrassed that I had taken some over the counter medication and that caused this, that I wasn't really going the functional route. And looking back and laughing because, you know, we all have taken something over the counter at some point. And I think I was just, like, beating myself up about that, and I'm letting that go now.
Speaker 1:Definitely letting that go. And now I know what had happened is basically that that virus had made me immunocompromised. And for some reason, the line flared up. It had been dormant in my system for a long time, but the virus activated it in some way, and that's what was causing the symptoms I was dealing with. I I went to multiple doctors.
Speaker 1:I went to the ER at one point. I was kind of hoping, I guess, for, like, an MRI or CAT scan. I don't know what I hoping for, but I was hoping for some sort of testing to look at my brain to tell me that I wasn't completely crazy. But at the ER, all they did was these basic neurologic tests, and they would, like, touch my knee and say, can you feel that we're touching your knee? And I was like, yes.
Speaker 1:I can feel that. And it was just so frustrating because, you know, they would do blood work and everything would, you know, come back fine, of course. But even with me looking at the blood work from a functional perspective, it all looked normal from my normal and what I knew that I've, you know, been dealing with for a long time. Then I went to my primary care doctor, and I I wasn't able to get in with him, who I actually really love. I had to see somebody else in his office, and that was honestly, like, rock bottom for me because when I was describing my symptoms and I was just telling her how debilitated I was, her only answer to me was, this sounds like probably anxiety or depression.
Speaker 1:And she was like, you have 2 small kids. Right? She's like, it's, you know, it's postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety. And I was like, no, this came on so suddenly, and I I don't know what to do. So she literally just wanted to write me an antidepressant and, like, send me on my way.
Speaker 1:And I was like, there is something else going on. I know it. So I reached out to, you know, my colleagues within the functional medicine community. I was telling them what had happened, telling them about my symptoms. And, luckily, somebody connected me with the medical director of her program, and I was just incredibly grateful.
Speaker 1:She was like, you know, work with him and see if he can help. And I just will forever be grateful for that recommendation, that referral, because he ran some blood work for me, and he was just trying to, you know, hit all the boxes. He was like, we're just gonna run, like, a really wide panel. And it was a panel that I wouldn't necessarily run for somebody. Like, it was beyond just the CBC, the CNP, you know, iron panel, all of that.
Speaker 1:It was like he ran a western blot for Lyme disease. I'll never forget that when it showed up like, you know, I I showed up to my appointment, and he just looked at me and he goes, you have Lyme disease. And I was like, what? Like, how in the world could I have Lyme disease? I was like, I definitely I haven't been bitten by a tick, and so I would have never in a 1000000 years tested for that or even thought of that.
Speaker 1:And he we were really shocked. Both of us were really shocked, especially when he told me that, you know, my western blot showed up as CDC positive, which meant that there were 5 bands showing positive. And he said that's incredibly rare. He's like, the western blot test is not very sensitive, but he's like, yours is lighting up positive. So he's like, yes.
Speaker 1:You're CDC positive for Lyme disease, and it completely explained my symptoms. And so it was my IgG that showed up as positive. I didn't have any bands positive on the IgM of the western blot. So the IgM would show if the Lyme was, like, a recent infection, and the IgG shows if it's, like, chronic. Let me just pause and say chronic Lyme is incredibly controversial.
Speaker 1:I realize this. Again, I don't know everything with this. This is just my experience. And so during that initial meeting with him, he was asking me all kinds of questions about my history, and he said, how long have you been anemic? Iron deficiency anemia has been my number one health concern for the last, I don't know, 4 or 5 years.
Speaker 1:And I just never I've never been able to get on top of my iron levels. My iron is always incredibly low. My ferritin is low. My iron saturation is low. My TIBC is high.
Speaker 1:And with learning about the, you know, the patterns and all of that in the data, I've learned that I have iron deficiency anemia. I've been going to doctors for years about this, functional, conventional, everybody across the board trying to figure this out, and I've been told so many times that my labs literally don't make sense. They'll be looking at, you know, that my iron flow, and then they'll look at something else on my labs, and they'll say, oh, well, when your iron is typically this low, this other thing is also typically low or this other thing is typically high, but yours is fine. And so I've had so many doctors say to me just these labs just don't make sense. And so, you know, that's wonderful to hear.
Speaker 1:And with my own understanding of iron and copper imbalance and all of that, for all the people that are that know HTMA, I was beating myself up for years years years thinking that I was dealing with copper imbalance, which I might be still, but as we know, copper needs strong adrenals and strong bile. And me being the type a person that I am, I just kept thinking, my adrenals are just shot. Like, I just, am working too much or I'm I'm too hard on myself or whatever. And, like, I just that's the that's the iron issue. And in my meeting with this doctor, about the Lyme disease, he asked me how long have you been anemic.
Speaker 1:And I was like, I mean, as long as I've understood blood work, I've been anemic. And he was like, well, Lyme eats iron. And he's like, so the lime has just been eating your iron for, you know, at at least few years. And he's like, that's why you're anemic. He's like, we need to take care of this infection.
Speaker 1:And it's just so funny because I have always thought that I had something systemic going on. I've done I mean, of course, I'm sure you guys can imagine. I've done all the testing, of course, on myself. I've done the GI maps. I've done the, oat test.
Speaker 1:I've done the dodge. I've done it all, and nothing has ever been a huge, you know, red flag from any of those. Maybe TMI, but my, you know, my bowel habits are, like, completely perfectly fine, normal, no problems at all. And so I always thought, you know, I had heard parasites eat iron. And so I always thought, oh, I must have a parasite.
Speaker 1:You know, I I traveled a lot in college and spent time in India and Thailand and Rwanda and all of these places. I'm like, surely, I have a parasite, and it's just not showing up. Like, it you know, on the GI map, it doesn't a lot of times. And so I've done all of those protocols. I've done it all, and I've never seen my iron come up.
Speaker 1:So as you can imagine, as a practitioner, that's very difficult for all of us when we're dealing with our own health issues and being and trying to help others. It's very difficult to be dealing with your own thing, and you're like, why is this not working for me? What in the world is wrong with me? And so I thought I've always thought there's something systemic going on. And so as soon as he told me that I had Lyme and he explained what it was and all of that, I was like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:It makes so much sense. And then I was really blown away by his recommendation for treating it because it was one single herb and then some other supplements to help, you know, my mitochondria and just, like, boost up my vitamins and minerals, all the things that I know, but it just came down to literally taking one herb. And he wanted to test that out because Johns Hopkins has done studies on it, and they ended up proving that it killed Lyme disease better in test tubes than even antibiotics. And so the herb is called cryptolepus. It was something that I had never heard of.
Speaker 1:It was fairly difficult to find. I ended up just ordering it from his practice, and that has been the best quality one that I've found. It's from Orthomolecular. But as unlicensed practitioners, we don't get access to ortho, and so I can order it through his website. But cryptolepus, very interesting now that I've, of course, done a deep dive on it.
Speaker 1:And that is the only thing I have taken. And I'm on it for a full 6 months, so I'm on month 4 or so right now. But my brain fog, my dissociation, whatever you wanna call it, disappeared in the 1st month of taking it. And we retested my iron levels because we were saying that's gonna be really the telltale sign that we're getting rid of the Lyme because you can't really trust a lot of the the actual Lyme testing out there because it can show up as negative and somebody could still be positive for for actual Lyme disease. So it's very tricky.
Speaker 1:And lo and behold, when we tested my iron just 6 weeks after starting the cryptolepus, my iron levels were starting to come up, and I was truly shocked and so grateful and just over the moon that something was working and that we had figured out that that I've had a systemic infection for as long as I can remember. This is this might be controversial, but my understanding is that Lyme disease can be passed in utero. I actually wonder if I've had it my entire life. I've always reacted to different, you know, viruses just differently than anybody I've ever known. In 7th grade, I was in the hospital for a couple days for a migraine that I had had for, like, a month straight that was causing these, like, brain spasms, basically, and they weren't able to ever tell me what was going on.
Speaker 1:I think they ended up giving me some saline and doing some different medications, but there was never any answer on why that had happened. But everything has always been all of my weird things have always followed, like viruses and things that had made me immunocompromised. My mom actually knows of a tick bite that she had when she was a child. My mom has always had a lot of health issues. She has never gone the functional route or the alternative route, but so through, you know, conventional medicine, she's been told she has fibromyalgia, but has never really dug deeper than that.
Speaker 1:And I now wonder if she had has Lyme and that she passed it to me in utero. And it was just heartbreaking to me in that initial, doctor's appointment where as soon as I found out that I had Lyme, I was like, oh my gosh. My 3 year old has it. Like, there is no question in my mind if she has it. I have been asking her pediatrician, and I've been doing my own research since she was, like, 1a half.
Speaker 1:And I've thought she's really tired. Like, she would eat breakfast and, like, go climb back in bed, or she just, like, lays down on the floor and will just literally just, like, lay down. Part of me wonders if she's bored. You know, I've given myself all of these reasons why she would do that. She just, you know, wants to be close to our dog or whatever.
Speaker 1:But as soon as I found out I had Lyme, I was like, we are getting her tested. And so that's that takes me to talking a little bit more about the testing aspect of this. We ended up starting with a western blot for her, and one of the bands showed up. And so, you know, in my functional mind, I don't really care if it's CDC positive. I'm like, why is one band showing up for her?
Speaker 1:That's interesting. So I'm not thinking that she has Lyme based on that, but then I run an iGenics test for her. That one comes up with 2 of the bands positive, and there's, like, a scale of the intensity of the infection, and her little body had, like, 2 plus signs for both of the bands. So, like, a lot a good amount of infection for both of the bands. And according to iGenx, if you have 2 positive bands, then you have Lyme.
Speaker 1:So we have now put her on the cryptolepus as well. I consulted with, my doctor and made sure that the dosing was right and all of that. So this actually prompted me to get an HTMA done on her too because I wanted to create a custom Vicon to make sure that we were supporting her minerals as well. And this is something that I shared about in my, you know, tell it all Instagram trend is that I had never done any testing on her because I felt like I would be neurotic about it. And so I know it's probably kind of shocking that I have never done an HTMA on my own kid, but, you know, there's certain things that you just know about yourself, and I've done, you know, plenty on myself.
Speaker 1:I know what my levels are like, and I assumed the same for her because, obviously, she came from me, and I was correct. Now she's on a custom bike on blend specifically for her, which is just amazing, and she loves it. And we're doing the crypto Lepus. And 1 month into the protocol for her, her fatigue has gone away, which if you've ever had a 3 year old is a curse and a blessing. I will say I'm very glad that she's feeling better, and I am just so incredibly grateful to know this and to have been able to catch it so early because I think that this would have just followed her through her adolescence, and who knows what it what would have happened.
Speaker 1:But I'm just so grateful to know and that we've taken that we're taking care of it and that I'm seeing how her body is now reacting to the minerals and everything. Like, it's like her body is just, like, soaking it up, and she's doing so much better even though her symptoms were not that drastic. I think just when you're a mom, you can see it in your kid. And my so I have a now 1 year old, and everybody's asking me if I'm going to test her. And I've said, if I see any sort of symptom, yes, I will, or I might just try the cryptolepus.
Speaker 1:There's no downside in doing the crypto. My doctor actually because it is such a potent herb, he recommends it to his clients as something that they do twice a year for 1 month or, like, 3 weeks at a time just to, like, get rid of any of those stagnant viruses, parasite, anything that might cause an issue, this will wipe it out. There's no downside in my mind to to trying this crypto with my daughter, and I have it on my calendar now as an ongoing thing that once I'm done with my protocol, I'm gonna be doing it yearly as maintenance. I've just been so blown away by how well it has worked, And I don't think that it will work like that for every single person. I don't wanna come off and say anything, like, blanket statement like that, but I do think that if someone is struggling with something chronic that they haven't been able to figure out that their testing is maybe a little weird.
Speaker 1:I do think it's worth a try. And so we're monitoring my blood work, and we're seeing my iron raise, which is just like chef's kiss at this point. Just so grateful to have my iron levels coming back. He also ran a marker that I had never heard of personally called the complement C3a and C4a, and those are inflammation markers. They're more commonly used for mold and to see, like, how your if your body is actively reacting to some like a biotoxin like mold, but it's also used for Lyme.
Speaker 1:And mine is incredibly high, like, way crazy off the charts, and so that's something that I'm monitoring right now. And I'm hoping that once I'm done with the full 6 month protocol of the herb that that will start to come down, but it does show me that my body is still dealing with an active infection and that I need to be aware of that. So I guess what I wanna share and the way I want to kind of close out this episode is, first of all, even if you don't know of a tick bite, there's still a chance that you could be dealing with Lyme disease or your clients could be dealing with Lyme disease. If you've been dealing with chronic symptoms or just unexplained things, I feel like Lyme needs to be lumped into that category of, like, EBV, mold, heavy metals, just all of these things that are burdening our immune system. And I just maybe I'm not in the right circles for this, but I just don't see Lyme being talked about that often.
Speaker 1:And I do know that the testing is really tricky. You know, going the conventional route, a conventional doctor will test, it's called an ELISA test, first before they move on to the western blot. It's really unhelpful because the ELISA could be negative and the western blot could still be positive. And the western blot, as I mentioned before, is not even that sensitive, to be honest. Then we can look at the more functional tests like iGenics, or I think Vibrant Wellness has 1.
Speaker 1:And those are much more sensitive. They are much more expensive. But at the same time, even if you don't show up as having positive bans, you could still have LINE. So I think one of my main goals of this podcast is to just really get the information out there about cryptolepus, the herb that I have now been introduced to. And I would just really recommend doing research on this.
Speaker 1:It's something just like a lot of different herbs that you would wanna start really slow, like literally one drop in water, morning and night, but seriously working up so slowly because it's so incredibly potent, and it tastes like nail polish remover, so that's wonderful. I have 2 main resources that I recommend on learning about Lyme disease. I did do the RUPA boot camp on iGenics testing, which was helpful, very helpful. But if you're trying to learn about it or share about it with somebody, there is a documentary that you can rent on Apple TV or Prime or, you know, any of those places called The Quiet Epidemic, and that really explains truly the quiet epidemic of it and just how incredibly prevalent it is and how it masks itself as so many different diseases, conditions, symptoms, whatever you wanna say, and just how debilitating it can be. I ended it in tears because I was just so grateful that I am connected the way that I am and that I was able to get into this doctor who was able that knew to even run this test and that I was able to take care of it as quickly as I did because I don't think that that's the case for many people.
Speaker 1:But watching that documentary specifically has given me, like, a renewed passion for the work that I'm doing and this community, this test don't guess community of hopefully being able to share with as many practitioners as possible about my story and just put Lyme disease on people's radar. Because, you know, I tend to lean towards the GI maps and the HTMAs and the Dutch test, the oat test, the things that, you know, are very common functional tests, and I don't think we're talking about Lyme as much as we should. So, hopefully, this was helpful in some way. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for joining me on this podcast for the last season, or maybe you're a listener that's been around since it started, but we will be back for another season at some point. But for now, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. And make sure that you're in the Test Don't Guest Facebook group and following Test Don't Guest on Instagram because that is where everything's gonna be happening. Thank you so much.