Beyond the virus: CIRS, Long COVID, and the toxin connection

it's time and this is war.

Hello, and welcome to Nurses Out Loud on America Out Loud Talk Radio. This is your show host, Nurse Melissa Shredfather. Here at Nurses Out Loud, we are with you Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and I do want to remind our listeners, every Friday we gather for our Q&A with the nurses, and we love to hear from you, so please be sure to check out our show page and submit any comments or questions that you have for the nurses. Well, I have a really amazing show lined up for you all.

today. I am honored to be joined by my functional medicine doctor, Dr. Eric Potter, which I was so thrilled that he had the time to email me back, because this man is so busy. People travel all over the country to see him, so I am just so grateful that he was able to carve out time to come on Nurses Out Loud, and a little bit about Dr. Potter.

He is the founder of Sanctuary Functional Medicine in Franklin, Tennessee. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt Medical School, and he also is specialized in adult internal medicine and pediatric care. He obtained his board certification through the Institute of Functional Medicine. He actually personally experienced a healthcare crisis from both sides of care, as a physician and as a family member to patients. Working within our broken healthcare system and taking his family members through the same system inspired him to look for new ways to deliver the quality of healthcare he envisioned.

Practicing functional medicine allows him to treat root causes rather than superficial symptoms. He endeavors to be the patient's trusted advocate with the goal of restoring a healthier, more abundant life. Besides serving as a physician, he is married to an amazing wife and has six beautiful children. Their family has been shaped by the providential occurrences in their lives, including the beauty of adoption. Dr.

Potter also enjoys running, reading, hiking, and spending time with his family. Welcome, Dr. Potter.

And it is always so fun to just chat it up with a functional MD that really gets it. As you all know, and as I have discussed before, I went to one too many functional providers, which again, I don't think that these people have bad intentions, but it was Dr. Potter was the only physician that diagnosed me with Lyme and mold. And it was discovering that I have that, that really turned things around in my health. And it was surprising to me how many functional providers may be board certified.

They may have the best intentions, but they're still just like, here's your supplement protocol. And they're still not getting to the root cause. And I know we have talked about some topics to go over. And we have discussed going over toxins and mold and talking about SIRS and, you know, long COVID and all of these things. And I think this is going to be a great topic.

And I'm just going to let you go ahead and get started. Like out of the topics that we discussed, where would you like to start with?

But one of the things that brought me into functional medicine were family members, as you mentioned earlier, and just the fact that family members who were not getting answers. So, like you, going through the system, both conventional and functional, were not getting answers or symptoms that you knew you had. It wasn't just all in your head. And that's why many people are told, oh, you just need a psych med. You just need to see a psychiatrist, a counselor.

But realizing these are real symptoms and then had some other family members come up with things, different, symptoms that didn't have explanations. So I started digging. It was a time in life where I was going through a little disillusionment already with how conventional medicine was treating people. It was not, you know, it's more of a patient mill. You run in, you run out.

You're basically, and I was working in that where, you know, look into your watch. Oh, I've got, you know, 12 minutes. I've got to get in. Get in and out, talk to the nurse, get to the next patient. I knew that I couldn't keep doing that.

So I had a business issue, how I could sleep at night, taking care of patients. And I had family members who were hurting. So as I started digging into this, I met some different people who have been in the field longer than I have. Started, realizing, oh, there is something to this natural medicine. I, you know, you mentioned Vanderbilt.

I got indoctrinated in the standard Vanderbilt education, except there's one thing. Vanderbilt, when I was there, taught you to think, to sit down, look at the big picture, put the evidence together. And we would sit around talking about patients, how, the ones that we couldn't understand why they were sick. So for me, that was very natural. So when I have my family, I start seeing patients that are coming to me for these different issues.

Research, research, research. And, over time, one of the things that kind of bubbled to the top that so many people had that I would have not known myself. And in fact, my wife had it for a while before I even realized that she had it. I actually was taking care of other people with mold toxicity before I realized we had been living in a house that was horribly moldy from that.

Lovely 2010 and the 2000s that I will never forget, leaving a house moldy, that my wife started getting sick and seeing other family members, not getting to all the details. So I realized mold was an issue. So we started taking care of patients with mold, learning from those who have been studying mold, whether it's Dr. Shoemaker or Dr. Neil Nathan, learning both sides.

If you know anything about that, there's a little disagreement between the two sides of how test and how to treat for mold. I try to take the best of both of those worlds. And then we hit the 2020s and all of a sudden we have this lovely little, what I call my least favorite four letter word, COVID. Yes, it's five letters. I know, but that's how I think about it.

I just hate hearing that, like we all do. And realizing that not only were my patients having these toxin issues, mold, and then heavy metals, forever, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, phthalates, parabens. We can, you know, go through our whole list. But the short story is those people who are toxic, even when they got better, were still prone to get COVID. And I started realizing the ones that were getting the most severe COVID and the long COVID were the ones who were also sensitive to the toxins.

The test we were doing for mold started showing that actually it's the same processes. So over time, we kind of realized, again, started looking to what others were finding. Bruce Patterson doing studies on long COVID and some of the abnormal immune markers, and realizing, oh, this is one big, you mentioned earlier, SERS. Some of your listeners, you may have talked about it before, SERS, the chronic inflammatory response syndrome, is basically a condition that I describe. instead of your body going from no inflammation, inflammation to kill a virus, say the flu, whatever other bacteria, whatever other virus, we want to say, your body kills.

that. Inflammation is good when it's killing things that aren't supposed to be there. And then you go back to normal. SERS, you get stuck halfway up the roller coaster. None of us want to be on a roller coaster halfway up.

We definitely don't want to be stuck halfway inflamed and never going down. Over time, your body does not like that. And we can get into more details if you want. But that's basically the life of sanctuary over the 10 years that we've been, this is our 10th year, 10 years of existence, is helping people, one, like I said, with mold and lime. You mentioned that as well.

And then throwing the four letter COVID into there just to make things a little more fun, when we already had enough, what I call the 300 pound gorillas to wrestle with. So it's a personal, it's a personal fight, a personal vendetta, with it, having attacked my family. And I want to help others come out of that darkness that we walked through. And I'm always a joy to see you in the office when I'm seeing a smile on your face that I know at one point you didn't have just because you were feeling so bad. So it is, it is always a joy to see light in people's face when they didn't think there was hope.

Because again, they've been to 10, you know, 10, I had one 27 year old who had been to 99 providers before. And it's insane. But people can't find help. And, like you said, it's not that these are bad providers. They help other people.

But sometimes with the mold or if you throw two or three things in there together, hey, you need somebody who's used to fighting, fighting on multiple fronts, which is basically what we do on a daily basis.

But then we know that there's this like 17 year time lag from when we discover new insights from the medical literature for when that gets implemented. And then we have this big industry that is making a lot of money off of disease and illness. So, you know, I mean, does big pharma really want to start funding studies to get to the root cause of disease processes? So I know when I came to see you, I had been around. Oh, this is like embarrassing to say, but I'm just going to say it.

I had been to like probably 20 holistic health providers before I came to see you. And you were the only one that diagnosed me with SERS, mold and Lyme. And what I was going through is all of these providers that were like, well, you've got food sensitivities. Here's this protocol. But it's like my gut wasn't completely healing and they would just give me another protocol.

And I was like, we're just spinning our wheels here, you know. But I think that sometimes in functional medicine, when you see that patient that you're working with, I think some of these providers, functionally, when they see their patients that are spending a lot of money out of pocket to work with them and they're not getting better, I wonder if they just assume, OK, maybe this person is just going home and eating Cheetos and not taking their supplements, you know, so I kind of felt like also functional providers didn't believe me that I was really doing all of the diet and nutritional stuff actually to a T, which was probably creating more stress. But I did want to ask you specifically about SERS. So when I went through this, I went on the autoimmune protocol, which I did show with Dr. Kira Widemann.

And I don't really recommend this frequently, but I had gone AIP, which is an extremely restrictive diet. And when I tried to reintroduce foods that I had eliminated, I was having these crazy reactions to basically everything that I had eliminated. And I wondered if that was because I had SERS that was untreated. So I wanted to ask you, do you see, you know, more food reactions, chemical sensitivities and things like that with SERS? And what types of markers do you rely on for diagnosis of that condition?

So as you're caring for those, you've got to be having your antenna up to think that's a possibility. And that antenna to think about SERS is multi-system, multi-symptom. So if they're, all they have is some allergies, if all they have is a irritable bowel. Eh, I'm not the first thing I'm going to be thinking about. But you mentioned food allergies, especially in children, teens, 20-year-olds, they will have a little bit more of those issues where they come in, like, you know, I know some different foods react.

When I eat these things, I feel bad. I try cutting them out. And when I add them back, just like you said, pretty soon I have patients who are down to 3, 5, 10, 20 foods. And yes, they're feeling OK doing that. But it's a pretty miserable existence when you're limited to, you know, 10 different foods.

Often weight goes down. And then there's all those other things that go with it. The chronic headaches, people aren't sleeping. They move to Tennessee and think, oh, well, everybody in Middle Tennessee is supposed to have allergies. That's normal.

Well, it may be that you moved into a moldy house. That was one of the things that we did not realize for my wife. We moved into a moldy house. It was moldy before the flood and the flood just added to that. So with that, with the surge, you're looking for certain patterns, multi-systems, multi-symptoms, could be just about anything.

And then you're thinking about, OK, exposure histories, going through that list. Have you, you know, did your symptoms start with living in a new location, taking a new job, starting your kids' symptoms, start with a new school? Did you start noticing weird reactions to medicines? Maybe you always had unusual reactions to antibiotics or medicines as a kid. Then, when you start going into stores, you start having the multiple chemical sensitivities where you smell the detergent and all of a sudden you're having migraines, you're breaking out in rashes.

Your body, with chronic inflammatory response syndrome, becomes hypersensitive. The other metaphor I use is the dominoes. So SERS primarily starts by interacting with your immune system. Genetically, about one in five people in the world are prone to react to mold and other biotoxins. For SERS, when we're looking at those patients who have those multiple systems, multiple symptoms affected, we're starting to think about what are those patterns?

What have they been exposed to? Have they moved, started a new job, new school? Are there times, oh, yeah, we had a water leak and, well, we got somebody to clean it up, but did you really dry it up? So we start asking those questions. Once we see that, yeah, there's a risk, probable exposure, they've got the symptom patterns that fit with that.

Then we start looking at tests. Now, this is where I mentioned Shoemaker versus Dr. Nathan, and there's a lot of opinion. And honestly, you can get to the same end point, caring for someone with mold toxicity from either direction. Both of those that follow Shoemaker, those that follow Dr.

Nathan, both can help patients get better. But the difference is Shoemaker leans towards more blood tests to look what I call the alarm bells. Shoemaker has a long list. The ones we start with are transforming growth factor beta-1, C3a, and C4a. All of these are things, part of the innate immune system.

This is just part of the system of our bodies for immunity that react first. People will know about antibodies. You know, if you get a vaccine, if you want to get a vaccine, you're triggering antibodies for the most part. What I'm talking about is the first thing, cells, other proteins in your blood. As soon as it sees a bad guy in there, it says, hey, let's start going after this.

So your innate immune system gets all revved up. Now, there's some other markers. Shoemaker will go through 5 to 10, depending on who you work with, and look at those things to see if those alarm bells are abnormal, mostly high, a few things looking lower levels. Then you have the other side of the coin where those who follow Dr. Nathan's approach, and there's a group called ISEAI, they basically look more at the urine mycotoxin testing.

Now, I mentioned earlier, I use both. I want to see if a person's body's reacting, but then, once I see, there is a reaction to a biotoxin, biotoxins include not only mold, but Lyme, Bartonella, which is cat scratch, brown goose, spider bites, rattlesnake bites, although those are usually pretty easy to figure out when you've been a snake bit, but there's also some toxic algae exposures. We do have a few patients who have from Florida who have been exposed to red tide or blue-green algae in some of the estuaries of the more swampy areas, and then spike protein from COVID has been what I would call the latest biotoxin to throw its gorilla weight in there, and it's probably at some point, or some worse than the other ones, but doing the Neil Nathan approach, you're going to look at the urine mycotoxins and say, oh, yes, you've got elevated levels. Does that, then you have them look, does it match up with what they've been exposed to, you have them. do some testing in their home, work, possibly cars, church buildings, school buildings, whatever it may be, kind of work through that, starting with usually home, because that's where you're going to be the most exposed.

But we have stories of college students who go to a dorm where, a year after they got, you know, they left because they were so sick at college that they couldn't function, they tore the dorm building down. I've got several of those stories where the dorms, you know, flat roof buildings with a bunch of teenagers who have lots of pizza boxes laying around and like to flood toilets. Speaking from personal experience from my college days, there's going to be some mold in those buildings. So if you see that matches up, they've got those urine mycotoxins, and you see those Shoemaker labs showing, yep, they're reacting to it, although some that are the sickest, those Shoemaker labs will be normal. So if there was a high suspicion, we'll still go looking for the urine mycotoxin as well.

Despite the fact that if you talk to conventional medicine, they will just say poo-poo, the idea that it matters. But I will put it simply, if you've been in battle and you've seen things happen, and you see people get better from treating the things that I've seen, you can't, you know, beat it out of me. You can't make me forget the fact that I have seen patients, again, smiles on their faces, patients who come in looking puffy, they're swollen, they look inflamed. And you look at them all of a sudden, there's a gleam in their eye. They've got color back in their face.

The puffiness on the back of their hands has gone away and they're like, hey, I can see my tendons in my hands again. I haven't seen that in 10 years. And they're going back to doing things with their family. Whereas when, you know, they were not able to get out of the house and now they can go to children's events. They can go back to work.

You know, a lady who was disabled from Parkinson's, who was able to go back and work and drive again after getting the mold out of her house. That was quite bad, but it was exciting to see her smile on her face as well.

So, while we are about halfway through, so we're going to pause just for a moment to take a break. I also do want to remind our listeners to check out chemical free body. They have some amazing products that I actually am personally taking and can't speak highly enough. So make sure you check out their gut trio, go to the America out loud store page and put in the coupon code out loud for 20% off all of our shows, go to podcast. Typically a day or two after the broadcast is heard on I talk radio and you can hear them on Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora, I heart podcast, and many more.

Be sure you subscribe and rate this show on apple podcasts for me.

I've relied on the sanitizing power of povidone iodine for years. COFIX Rx has harness that power to help cleanse germs, allergens, and viruses in your nasal cavity. You brush your teeth and wash your hands daily. Stay healthy by using COFIX Rx to wash and cleanse your nose daily. Get COFIX Rx today.

Go to America out loud shop and click on the COFIX Rx banner or type in COFIXRx.com forward. slash out loud. Buy now and receive a 20% discount with a 30 day money back guarantee. The buildup of spike proteins is dangerous to your health. Global healings.

foreign protein cleanse detoxes your body, removing the spike proteins, allowing your body to repair from within. formulated by Dr. Edward group and by Dr. Brian artists. foreign protein cleanse targets and detoxes spike proteins in the body.

Go to America out loud dot shop and get 15% off using the code out loud. global healing, giving you the power to take control of your health. naturally. I'm so confused. I don't know what to do.

I'm afraid of going to the hospital.

Any voices, one freedom united in the first amendment.

Our goal is to herald the voice of genuine liberty at America. out loud doc news, a place where you'll find the naked truth expressed with a patriotic heart.

Now is our time by fellow Americans, America out. loud, talk radio, liberty and justice for all.

Hello and welcome back to nurses. out loud on America, out loud talk radio. This is your show host, nurse, Melissa Schreiber and I am honored to be joined with Dr. Potter with sanctuary functional medicine and Franklin, Tennessee. Dr.

Potter is my functional medicine provider, who I've been seeing for years now. I like recommend him all the time. He is a wealth of knowledge. And today we are discussing toxins, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. Lyme disease, mold illness, and also how this relates to COVID.

So we just went over talking about mold and chronic inflammatory response syndrome and how to test for it and how, you know, we can really, by actually figuring out what is causing these God awful symptoms and dysfunction in the body, we can really help to restore vitality. And I did want to go in to the elephant in the room. And this is something else I really respect Dr. Potter for. is, you know, there's so many.

Medical providers that we know that we are singing vaccine injuries. Um, and, but there's so many that are just, they don't have the courage to speak out about it. So I'm really, really glad that Dr. Potter, not only does he treat things like vaccine injury, but he is also happy to provide education about this. And, um, I know that, um, we talked about how.

You know, when we introduce COVID and spike protein induced diseases that can really stir up things like SERS and make things a lot worse, um, could you speak to how, um, say both COVID infection, long COVID or COVID vaccination can affect the health in somebody who, say, has already been experiencing something like SERS or maybe is in remission of SERS?

So when you have someone who has a toxin in their body, their interstate system, that is connecting those different systems, their body, um, are going to have problems. Those toxins trigger immune responses. Those immune responses then set off inflammation changes, kind of like a spider web, is another metaphor. Uh, I'm always in danger of mixing metaphors, but I'll try to stick with the map. So you're connecting those in there.

You also have the mitochondria, our energy cell, uh, powerhouses, uh, are kind of like the power lines between those different body systems. Uh, those are affected by mold, toxins and COVID. Uh, and then you have your hormones. They kind of, or the trains, that kind of influence things, thyroid pressing on the gas pedal, reproductive hormones, uh, balancing a lot of different things, uh, adrenal, about how you can fight inflammation, infection, uh, have energy, have blood pressure when you try and avoid things like adrenal fatigue. Uh, so you have all this interconnectedness.

So you have something like a mold, um, toxin or Lyme, uh, that is in someone's body. Uh, it's already got the interstate system a little goofed up. Uh, it is turning, you know, direct redirecting traffic, causing, uh, issues with your GI tract, is causing issues with the neuro nerve system. Uh, then you throw into the fact that mold can interrupt your inner, um, mitochondrial function, uh, so you can't produce as much energy. So your muscles are not going to be able to work as well.

You're going to be fatigued easier. Your brain, which is the second, your nervous system is the second most energy producing or energy utilizing, uh, organ system. Uh, if you don't have energy, you're not going to think as fast. You're going to have some weird symptoms. Uh, so you have mold or Lyme or one of the other toxins in there, stirring that up.

Then you throw, um, gasoline on the fire. Uh, I mentioned earlier that COVID, uh, is kind of even as much, uh, as I've seen, mold or Lyme and Bartonella make people horribly sick. I will say that COVID, uh, has come in and is a biotoxin on steroids. Uh, now maybe, and I think this is the case for a lot of people when you have those interstates, energy, the, uh, power lines, you have all the trains of the hormones already in disarray, you come in, you take a spike protein, uh, which doesn't just stay in your nasal or your respiratory tract, uh, but multiple studies have shown it spreads throughout your bloodstream and it gets in reproductive organs, liver, different places. Uh, you are basically taking a system that's already on the brink, or sometimes over the brink, for our patients who did not know they had mold, but sometimes a lot of patients never knew back out.

Well, I just have migraines. I don't sleep well. I have some allergies. Ah, I have a nervous stomach. They don't know that mold or Lyme are causing those symptoms.

But then, when COVID comes in, it turns, ramps up, uh, the intensity. Uh, and then they think, Oh, I've just got post COVID. I've got long COVID, long haul COVID, whatever you want to call it. They come to see us. We're helping to do the things that are turning down those processes.

But as we were taking care of our mold, then, COVID patients, we realized most of the therapies overlap. There's a few things that are a little different, but the same things, um, like glutathione, now I say these supplements, not so you go out and start buying these right away and popping a 10,, 20, 30 pills a day of this, but so you are educated about the different things. So if you hear this from another provider, or if you come into us, you've already heard about it a little bit, the curcumin, the omega threes, the glutathione, the vitamin C, those are the things that are turning down the processes in the interstates, in the power lines, making those systems work again. But for many of our COVID patients, or post COVID or post vaccine, as you brought up earlier, it's spike protein. Is it, well, we'll just go ahead and say it.

I would say, is it natural, but we're not really sure it was ever natural to begin with, um, you know, you can debate with whatever government official about whether it came out of a lab leak or not, but we all know there's a little more to it than meets the eye. Um, with that, then you have the created one, uh, that is created for vaccines. Uh, either way, it's a spike protein that has the same potential to trigger TGF beta. I will say, when we talked about the transforming growth factor beta one for mold, that is the one that we have seen for, um, COVID, the spike protein, to trigger the most stuff. I've had one or two patients that I think it's also triggered the C4A.

Uh, but there are some subtle differences between these two, uh, different biotoxins, but basically the COVID comes in, stirs things up even worse. The problem is just turning off the COVID inflammation. Once the fire has started, you got to go back and deal whether it's Lyme. And we've had some patients where they got a vaccine. They were partially paralyzed after vaccine number one, went ahead and got another vaccine a month later and a month or two later, I can't remember exactly how long it was, but, and then was paralyzed below the waist, uh, within 24 hours of getting, uh, the first booster.

Uh, so with that, we're seeing it both with the post vaccine, long haulers, COVID, if you don't deal with the other toxins underneath, the body is not going to heal once you've started the fire. Uh, so that's where patients will, why do I need to deal with mold? Why do I need to deal with heavy metals or whatever other toxin? Um, because those things I say, one plus one equals five. Uh, you have two different things that when you add them together, create a lot more symptoms, uh, and pathology, uh, that we can measure with those labs and see that elevated, uh, and it's for those who are able to press through that.

And I admit it's not easy. It is, it takes a lot of work, but for those who press through that, they can restore that health. Uh, they can get over both the COVID and the mold or other toxins that set them up. Um, the other way I describe it, it's like it pushed them to the edge of the cliff and they were standing on the edge. COVID just kind of gave them that last tip over and their body can't fix itself unless you deal with both of those issues that created the problem in the first place.

Uh, so that's how we have, you know, the big picture of how we approach, but yeah, we've seen, you know, the paralysis from COVID or the VACs, we've seen the chronic fatigue, the fibromyalgia flares, the, um, relentless, uh, shortness of breath, uh, where patients can't get breathing. And that seems to be a neuro, actually a neuropathic. It's not actually that they are actually hypo hypoxic. They they're getting plenty of oxygen. Uh, it's just, they feel like they can't.

And then, if you get the mitochondria working better, you calm down the inflammation, you get the toxins out of the way, they start feeling, Oh, I'm normal again with breathing. The neurocognitive issues, uh, you're seeing where patients are able to get the blood flow back to the brain, which is, we haven't brought this up, but there's other issues called microclotting. Um, we all know the macro is when you have a heart attack, stroke, but COVID is not only causing the COVID and the vaccine, uh, causing a lot of heart attacks and strokes increase, but your pipes get a little bit smaller because it gets gunked up, just like under your sink drain, um, it slowly fills in. For those small vessels that can make a big difference. Obviously, if you're not getting blood to your brain, it doesn't work very well.

Uh, so we're seeing all those different things. Uh, and at some point, if we want to go into more detail, I do have other, other.

Mechanisms by which COVID and mold work together, or crossover. Uh, but that gives you probably the big picture of most of the big things that.

Um, but so my husband, who does not have any issues, he gets COVID as well. By the way, we are both definitely not COVID vaccinated, but anyway, my husband, he's down for three days and then he's a hundred percent. I had. my fatigue came back. Like I felt like I was hit by a bus.

I had worked so hard on my health. My hair was looking really good. My hair fell out, grew back, all just, it's still not the same, you know, but I had all of these random symptoms. And so I can attach to, cause. if I hear, you hear different things.

Um, I hear a lot of people in that, that are, that are opposed, that oppose the COVID vaccinations, that are basically like, nope, long COVID is from the vaccine. But I'm like, well, I also see a lot of people that are unvaccinated that also had long COVID. But I feel like if you've got really sick from COVID or even if you get the flu and that takes you down, you need to look at that, like that is where check engine light coming on. Um, but I did want to ask you, because we know that spike protein biodistributes all throughout the body. Um, for me personally, I just don't believe that, you know, COVID.

just, you know, it just came about randomly and just happens to happen in the same city where they basically have the coronavirus lab, I just don't buy it. But I do think it's kind of similar to Lyme, where it's just causes all kinds of systemic dysfunction and it's really difficult to treat, um, that I have also seen in the literature that when people are getting, um, COVID vaccinations and the boosters, I've seen where there is some negative efficacy, where, you know, we end up suppressing the toll life receptors so many times that can make people more susceptible to infection, so they may be getting infected more frequently because it is a stressor to the immune system to go and continue to get these boosters. And then I also have seen evidence where when people are vaccinated, we don't know how long that spike protein is lingering in the body and we know it biodistributes to major organs. So I have seen where there's a lot of evidence that people who, you know, we know these vaccines don't prevent infection, so when they go and they get the vaccines and then they get naturally infected with COVID, that these individuals may have a higher accumulation of spike, so may be more susceptible to long COVID and other, say, adverse reactions. Is that something that you're seeing?

Patterson's research. One of the things it showed, is Lyme proteins can get stuck in what are called non-classical monocytes. These monocytes, when you do things like exercise, will get inflamed. So you'll actually have some of that post-exertional fatigue when you've like, oh, you exercise one day, you know, walk for 30 minutes and you're wiped out for three days. Lyme disease can do that.

They're finding the spike protein stuck in those cells, just like Lyme proteins. So you have a lot of those post-exertional fatigues, you know, called fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, or whatever name you want to give it, uh, and you see that, um, and then there are, there's a lot of debate, how much spike protein, uh, is accumulating, uh, inside tissues. Now there are some processes like where I talked about, with SERS, the interstates, the power lines, all those things where you don't need the spike protein to be there for ongoing reactions. Once kind of the snowball starts rolling down the hill. But as time has passed, since 2020, the fateful year we all hate to think about, there is more and more research showing, like I said, with Lyme, uh, those spike proteins can get stuck in certain cells, that normally those cells turn over and die off, but when spikes there, they stay around many years.

Uh, there's many studies that are showing that, rather than say the vaccine being gone in 24, 24 hours to one week, it is persisting, not in everybody, but in some. they're genetically susceptible for some reason, toll-like receptors, whatever you call it. Uh, they're having those spike proteins stay potentially for years. Uh, and some from natural infection, they're seeing that patients one to two years later still have some level. Now it's not maybe as high as it was when you had an acute infection, but it is sticking around longer.

Uh, and for those patients, part of the reason they're being followed is they'll often have those lingering symptoms. They're not better in the one month that you're supposed to get better after a bad, uh, viral infection. So there's definitely research that shows it's still there, um, which then even lends more credence to the fact that you see, oh, ongoing, just like mold toxins, if you don't get them out of your body, are going to keep, uh, picking the scab off, if you don't stop picking the scab, your kid keeps pulling that little scab off, they never heal. If you keep poking at, uh, your immune system. with mold toxins, COVID, spike protein, Lyme proteins, you're going to stay in that chronic inflammatory state.

Uh, so there's definitely proof again. Um, oh, I know I was something I was going to mention earlier. This gets back to the point until there's a medication that can be patented. Yes. I'm going to.

just, I'm going to say it till it can be patented. You're not going to see a big medicine, which is what I call it. Big pharma, big medicine is not going to invest a lot of money in this kind of research that is going to help people, especially mold toxicity, uh, because the things that help, or mostly 90 to 95% of those things, are supplements, nutrients, things that the average person, if they know what to do, can treat themselves or can easily buy from a supplement store, uh, with the guidance of a functional medicine provider, uh, helping them know what is perfect for them, uh, especially for those who are sicker. So we're not going to see big answers, uh, from big medicine. Uh, this is something that you were going to have to take it into your own hands.

I've heard you say that many of times, both on air and in person, uh, we can't sit back and wait for someone else to take care of us. We're going to have to step in. Uh, and I'm glad to be a part of that fight. And again, to speak up to some degree, you, you mentioned all this at the beginning, the big elephants in the room. Yeah, there's a pink elephant in the room.

We just got to face it. We can't keep hiding from it. We've got to do something because, yes, people are getting sicker. And that's the other thing. I always think of things randomly.

It comes back in my head. You probably noticed that when we're talking to each other in the, in the office, but with the immune system, we have proof. with repeated flu shots. There's some decreasing efficacy of flu shots. Now, I don't advocate flu shots.

I don't think they're very helpful at all. And they have some other side effects, but for those who want to, each one gets a little less effective. Uh, if you go get a pertussis shot, there's proof that getting a pertussis makes you more susceptible to peripertussis. So just a different infection. So, yes, we're playing around with things that we think we know what we're doing.

I say we, as in big medicine, um, which I technically don't want to be a part of, but we're playing around as a society, uh, with things that have the potential to cause us greater harm. Uh, and that's where I think some of the things we're seeing with COVID vaccine and, you know, we could probably have one or two more, uh, times talking for an hour about other vaccine. in my opinions on different ones. And with that, I will say I'm not 100% anti-vaccine. I was going overseas.

There's a couple of vaccines I would probably get, because the risk benefit ratio is a little, is a little crazy. I would rather get the, take that small chance with the vaccine than a life threatening encephalitis or meningitis. If I'm in Africa and don't have access to medical care, but I'm not going to do all the vaccines, that the risk is low for getting the disease, but the risk for the vaccine is actually pretty comparable. Uh, I would rather take my chances, um, with my natural immunity that God gave me.

actually, every single shot on the schedule was not placebo safety tested. The COVID vaccines were actually the only ones on the schedule that were, but it's really risk versus benefit. Many of these shots on the schedule, you know, classic example, hepatitis B. If the mom is negative for hepatitis B, why would we, um, you know, why would we expose the infant to those risks? So there's a lot of things in medicine that don't make any sense, but it's so important to, you know, just do your own research.

If you ever have a medical professional that is trying to discourage you from doing your own research, then, um, head for the hills. So there's something else that I did want to touch on, you know, when we were talking about, um, COVID and just spike protein in general, because, again, I think that there is so much we don't know about spike protein. And I think that since so many of us have been infected naturally, and then we have, you know, approximately, I would say, what over 70% of the population that has also been COVID vaccinated, I have seen some studies. I know that there was an in vitro study for our listeners. That's a test tube study on nanokinase, which is a herbal supplement that's made from fermented soybeans, that it showed that it was able to degrade spike protein.

But again, that's in a test tube. What do we know about what it's doing in the human body? Have you seen, do you have any, um, you know, therapeutics that you have seen, promising research or anything that you're using clinically that you find is helping, to, you know, bring down that burden of spike protein in the body?

Uh, that nidokinase, or another product called lumber kinase, uh, that's from earthworms, uh, but basically have similar functions in breaking down those micro clots. Uh, also, as you mentioned, may have some, uh, ability to actually degrade the spike protein. Uh, it, they are just enzymes, uh, enzymes. We, our bodies, are filled with thousands of enzymes. Uh, each of them has specific uses, uh, specific functions.

Uh, we can use some of those from natural things, papaya enzymes, to help digest. Uh, there's tons of those out there we use for different purposes. These two just do seem to have the ability to be absorbed into the bloodstream, break down micro clots, possibly break down spike protein. We also use bromelain, uh, from pineapple core. Uh, that is another one that does seem to have some benefit, uh, in lessening the symptoms.

Um, from there, most of the other things, we're treating the inflammation, uh, as you lower that inflammation, our bodies do have some ability. Uh, if you get rid of the toxins we talked about earlier, get rid of the inflammation, kind of the, the flames that are burning, our bodies can do a pretty good job of healing if we get the junk out of the way. And the other thing we do at our clinic is making sure patients have the right nutrients. We haven't mentioned this, but so many people today with our food supply, uh, which is again, another whole, another topic we could talk about some other day, uh, is not as nutritious as it used to, uh, be when you're growing things on industrial farms, uh, getting things locally, getting things that are more grown from a natural standpoint, rather than industrial farms, you're going to get more of the vitamins, nutrients, phytonutrients, uh, and our bodies are going to heal up faster. Uh, and then then it can take care of a lot of this on its own.

Uh, if we get the bad stuff out of the way, put the right, good stuff in our bodies, we heal, uh, may take a little time, but, uh, they will definitely heal rather than get stuck in this chronic inflammatory state and suffering from COVID till kingdom come.

And I just love that. you are just like around the corner from me and Franklin. And I did want to ask you, um, are you for, um, for, uh, our listeners, are you accepting new clients? Are you able to see, um, you know, clients that live out of state? Like.

what kind of, um, offerings do you have if someone is looking to get us to get established with you as a functional medicine patient?

With that, we're accepting new patients. We just hired a new physician assistant, uh, who is helping me. So we have two nurse practitioners, two physicians assistants. Uh, so we have room for new intensive patients. The other thing, though we did this year, was the lower end of the spectrum.

There's a lot of people out there who are healthy, uh, you know, who haven't been through long COVID, mold, Lyme, who want to avoid and know that the conventional system is not designed to make them well, it's designed to treat their illnesses, uh, but not designed to make them well. Uh, so our direct primary care, where you can get the services of, uh, our physician assistant, Lynn Day, who started in the past year, she's helping those families, children, adults who just want to know, okay, what's the right answers in this crazy world where you could go crazy trying to avoid toxins, uh, or you could just suck down every toxin around you and find yourself needing our intensive program a year or two later. So we're wanting those, uh, family members, especially of intensive patients, to not have to go through the same thing that their loved ones did. So we're trying to cover both ends of the spectrum, uh, between the intensive and the direct primary care.

Um, and now I'm, um, in another, um, uh, subscription plan that you offer. So, but I just cannot recommend him enough. And, um, for our listeners, where is the best place for them to find you?

I've tried to put everything I can to equip patients to understand their health. Uh, so, even if you don't need us as a patient, uh, you're at a distance, because we do have patients come to us from other states that you mentioned earlier, uh, if you come to see us, we will not do telemedicine only, uh, just because it is not good care. We're still going to give you the best of medicine by seeing you in person. But for those who are wanting to, they can learn from us. Uh, they can look on our website and they can, uh, request more information.

And one of our staff will contact you and talk to you by phone. So, get to know you a little bit and see what needs you have that we can meet.

Potter's blogs. They're fantastic. Especially if you're a nerd like me and you like to read those types of things. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. And all of our shows go to podcast, typically a day or two after the broadcast is heard on top radio.

You can hear them on Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora, iHeart Podcast, and many more. Be sure to subscribe and rate the show on Apple podcasts for me until next time. Be safe, be well, and God bless.