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If you have a complex chronic illness, your body’s entire system is likely to be over-reactive, especially your nervous system. This includes the frontal and parietal lobes of your brain, your limbic system, and your cranial and peripheral nerves (or those nerves which extend throughout your body). But it is important to consider all the cells of your body, as well.
Most of us typically imagine our body’s stress response to be the main cause of its over-reactivity. This is because when our body is in fear mode, also known as fight-or-flight (or freeze), we are in what’s called sympathetic nervous system dominance, which puts our nervous system and the rest of our body into a state of overreactivity. Calming your body’s stress response with a variety of tools can address the hyper-reactivity of your nervous system.
Yet it isn’t just your limbic system and brain that are affected by over-reactivity, although correcting limbic system dysfunction can fix many things. The cells of your body can themselves become over-reactive, without any input from your measured nervous system. This is due in part to the fact that your cells have a sense akin to memory, and there are reactions in your cells that are external to your measured nervous system. This means that your cells can be in a state of over-reactivity or defensiveness, even if your nervous system is not directly involved!
This phenomenon of cellular over-reactivity has been demonstrated through the work of Robert Naviaux, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Pathology and Director of the Mitochondrial and Metabolic Disease Center at UC San Diego. Basically, Dr. Naviaux discovered through his research that the cells go into self-defense mode when under extreme stress. When in this mode, cellular
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metabolic and other processes become dysfunctional, paradoxically, in order to preserve the cells and the person from harm.i
Naviaux’s theory seems to support the idea that our cellular reactions are external to and somewhat independent from our nervous system.
Dr. Isaac Eliaz’ book The Survival Paradox: Reversing the Hidden Cause of Aging and Chronic Disease also provides evidence and examples which demonstrate that the cellular stress response is real. Whether this turns out, as Eliaz suggests, to be related to the chemical galectin-3, or as Naviaux posits, a purinergic signaling problem, or another mechanism yet to be elucidated, this response causes real sickness. Getting your body into a “non-survival mode” state is vital for healing and calming your system.
Over-reactivity then, is essentially about dysfunctional cellular processes that prevent you from healing, and which prevent doctors like me from helping our patients. Basically, if a patient comes in and I want to give them a therapy to address their symptoms or the causes of their symptoms, and I can’t do it because they react too strongly to that therapy, then it’s likely because they are physiologically over-reacting. While I would ideally like to find the source for why their system is not responding properly to the therapy, at this early stage in the process I am just wanting to “stop the madness”. It’s very easy to get caught in the weeds here if we choose to explore all the possible mechanisms for the responses. So, I often take a bushwhacking approach and use some tried and true approaches first, sorting out the reasons why a little later.
When you and your doctor are calming your system, you want to address your individual cells, not just your limbic system or other
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parts of your nervous system. To do this, you want to get your cells into a state of healing, where they can begin to let the good stuff in (e.g., nutrients), and become more effective at letting the bad stuff out (e.g., toxins). I share more about how you can do this, as well as calm your limbic and nervous system, in the following sections.
Calming the System of the Sensitive Person
If you are sensitive, your system is likely to be the most reactive of that of all three groups. As I mentioned in the Introduction, you may be the kind of person who can’t take just any remedy or eat any kind of food without suffering adverse consequences. Yet it is my hope that in this chapter, you will find some helpful suggestions for reversing that reactivity and calming your system.
In my work with sensitive patients, I employ a different mindset than I do with my other patients. I can’t just rely on my medical training or book knowledge. I need to use my instinct and experience to give me clues about what they may need. There is no cookbook recipe, and sometimes we must reinvent the wheel. But over time, I have learned some creative tools that work well for this group. It is very encouraging, as there are usually answers for even the most reactive people.
In order to find out what healing modalities will work best for you, you will first want to discover what you are sensitive to, and then find workaround tools, or treatments or therapies that will benefit you.
For instance, if my patients have trouble ingesting oral supplements, drugs or other medicines, then we will look for treatments that they don’t have to ingest, and which they can take
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via injection, intravenously, inhalation, rectally; through the skin or nose, or even via other means.
Or, if they have trouble taking chemically-based medications or natural remedies, then we may find electromagnetic, light, gas (oxygen, ozone, hydrogen, etc.) or other ‘non-chemical’ modalities to be more effective for their healing.
Often, I find we can decrease their body’s reactivity by using offlabel medications; meaning, using drugs for a different purpose other than for that which they were originally created. For instance, I have found that antiseizure medications like oxcarbazepine, levetiracetam and lamotrigine or very low doses of antipsychotic drugs like aripiprazole help some of my patients with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) to tolerate antimicrobial treatments better.
This approach may be met with trepidation or skepticism at best. Many of these patients have been offered psychiatric medicines by other doctors by the time they come to me. I want to be clear that I am not using them here as psychiatric treatments. But when we consider cellular and nervous system reactivity, many of these agents can lower the rate at which metabolic processes occur. They may slow down how fast nerves send chemical signals to other cells and the rate at which cells communicate with each other. If we consider over-reactivity as too much cross communication among cells this approach can make sense. These drugs can function as an entrée to help us to get further along with other treatments that have been stymied because of patients’ overreactivity.
If you are sensitive, you may find one or more of these strategies to be useful for you. Or, you may find that you reap the most benefit
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from taking just a tiny bit of one remedy, along with a tiny bit of another—and that when you take two or three remedies together, they will have a synergistic, or potentiated effect. That effect will then allow for you to suddenly be able to do many more treatments, all at once!
I treat this initial phase of the healing process as a “dance” of sorts. As part of this, you and your medical doctor or health care provider should together explore answers to questions like: “How does your body react and what does it react to? What are some of the very basic healing modalities that you can tolerate?”
For instance, if you are sensitive to regular bottled water, you may tolerate spring water in glass bottles or even deuterium-depleted water. Or, if you can’t tolerate homeopathic remedies, you may be able to do low-dose antigen (LDA) or low dose immunotherapy (LDI), which can help to decrease your body’s reactivity to allergens and other toxic substances.ii (I will share more about LDA and LDI later). This may be time to consider that there are many medications that can be compounded without fillers or with a different base ingredient.
I encourage you to be open and to appreciate the vast complexity and majesty of your body, and know that certain medicines and dosages of medicines that ordinarily would not be deemed (in western allopathic medicine) to be effective, are sometimes all that you will need to calm your system. It can take time to discover the right dosages and remedies that you will need, so you have to be patient and do things little by little. Building upon small victories is an important process that helps to develop momentum.
Let’s say for instance, that you are super sensitive and can’t take any antimicrobial treatments whatsoever; things like antibiotics and
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herbs. If this describes you, know that you are not alone. Many of my sensitive patients can’t take antibiotics, at least at the beginning of their healing process. (Unless they get an acute infection like pneumonia, or a sinus or bladder infection, or an abscess—in which case they are often able to tolerate antibiotics for just long enough for their body to be able to eliminate that infection).
Yet if they are “raging with Lyme,” as soon as their body takes care of that acute infection, it goes back to not being able to tolerate antibiotics for the Lyme! It’s uncanny, but it’s as if the body knows ways to compartmentalize its dissatisfaction with exogenous agents somehow.
One of my goals in this book is to get you to the place where you can tolerate antimicrobial remedies, if you are battling serious infections like Lyme, parasites or other chronic infections. But you will most likely have to do a number of other healing modalities before you can even think about doing these heavy treatments.
Another thing that I have learned in my work with sensitive patients is that I can’t make any assumptions about what they can or can’t tolerate and what will benefit them. For instance, I have people who can’t tolerate mast cell stabilizers, or even breathing exercises.
So, I encourage you to not despair if you can’t do things that socalled “normal” people can. You just need to find those things that you can do right now, and as part of this, both you and your doctor will need to learn to think outside of the box when coming up with strategies to calm your system. In this chapter, I hope to shorten the treatment runway for you by describing some ideas that have worked for my patients, and which may also work for you.
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Doctors and other practitioners need to develop a lot of experience in order to be able to devise all of the creative strategies that they might try on their patients. They have to be open to the edict of doing things “by any means necessary, as long as it’s safe.”
Then, you as the patient need to be able to learn new treatment perspectives and to even reconsider trodden ones. Sometimes, when your body’s condition has changed over time, methods that have failed for you in the past, may actually work in the present. Patience is required for you to realize that healing is a marathon, not a sprint. The process of discovering what will work to heal you and then implementing those tools, takes time and fortitude.
In my work with patients, part of this process involves coming to the table simultaneously with both treatment ideas and a blank slate. I also listen closely to my patients and pay attention to their symptoms, as well as use my eclectic learning and experience. I find that I have the most reasonable chance of making an impact upon my patients’ health when I can be open and creative with them, have a sense of humor, and even find things they can do without them even knowing they are doing them! If I can make them laugh in an appointment, even if they feel terrible, they may get enough endorphins from the laughing to be able to tolerate or persist at a particular treatment.
Or, whenever patients participate in creating their healing plan, by contributing their own ideas (such as bodywork or lifestyle changes) during their appointment with me, this in itself can be empowering and healing for them. Consider these ideas for yourself as you seek out a competent functional medicine doctor or practitioner to help you, or as you work with your own doctor.
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Insights for Developing a Protocol to Calm the Sensitive Person’s System
In my work with my sensitive patients, I first visualize them being at the “starting gate” and then consider what it may take to actually get them there. Each person is different so I try to really get to know their life and health history, and envision what they need.
I prefer to meet my patients in person as there is a lot of non-verbal communication that happens in person that we don’t get in video or phone consultations. Gestures, postures and other means of nonverbal interpersonal exchange really matter here, and tell me a lot about what they need.
From this, I create a broad list of possible therapies and tools that we can start with, to try to determine what they can handle. I will sometimes do this even before I know what the exact components of their illness are.
As part of my evaluation, I will ask my sensitive patients questions such as, “Can you handle talking? Can you do visualization work?
Can you handle sitting still and thinking? Can you move your body in such a way that you can get a little bit of movement or flow into it? Can you deep breathe?”
If you can move and think a little, doing deep breathing exercises, or mind-body meditation and movement exercises such as Qigong or Tai Chi, this can be a good first start to calming your system.
If you are like many of my patients though and you have been sick for a long time, you may not be focused on what you can do, but rather, what you can’t do. And while finding tools that will be useful may require a bit of trial and error, I want you to think within the
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realm of possibility – believing that there are beneficial tools out there, just waiting for you to discover.
I believe it important to mention that while being your own advocate and researching new treatment modalities is important, spending every second of your waking hours devoted to your illness and on group forums may interfere with or delay your healing process.
It’s not just about determining what classes or doses of medicine you can take; especially if you have a body that doesn’t approach wellness in the same way as people who are more average. It’s about finding those healing modalities that will stabilize and calm your system.
While I will be sharing with you some tools that have helped my patients, you will also want to think outside of the box for yourself here. For instance, I may say to my patients as a means of suggestion, “What about grounding? Or covering yourself in dirt? Or playing in a sandbox? Or getting a weighted blanket?”
Grounding helps to balance your body’s electromagnetic fieldiii, and even weighted blankets can calm some people’s systems, and be life- changing for them.
I once even had a patient go to Mata Amritanandamayi, a spiritual leader in India who is known throughout the world as Amma, or Mother Hugger, for her selfless love and compassion toward all people.iv Just being hugged was transformative for that patient, and allowed her to take on more treatments afterwards.
If you can find a compassionate and insightful doctor who understands that it’s important for you to prepare your body before undertaking more aggressive work, then you will be much better
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positioned in your recovery than if you see a doctor who uses a onesize-fits-all treatment protocol for everyone. You may need to find a functional medical doctor, naturopath or other practitioner who is well-versed in the complexities of treating chronic illness in people that have varying degrees of sensitivity.
I’ve found that whenever I can help my patients to feel empowered and embrace the belief that they have the resources from within to heal, they also tend to heal faster. Once you have harnessed the energy of empowerment, you can go to the next step in your healing process. You need to believe that you can get well, regardless of the challenges.
I have a philosophy with my sensitive patients, which is that if I can’t help them, then it’s only because I am not being creative enough. So, as a doctor, I like to think along the lines of, “If I were a magician, how could I get my patients to fly?”
I find it useful to put a lot of gaiety and levity into my thought processes, too. I perceive the health conditions of this most sensitive group to be dense or tight, like a closing in of walls. If I can be “light” in my approach with them, this helps them to find a space to expand; to find a physical jocularity along with an emotional buoyancy that will enable them to find treatments or modalities that will benefit them.
Continuing with this metaphor, you want to use treatments that are light on your system, not heavy. You can get denser with treatments as you move along the treatment path. But first, you have to make room for whatever is agitating your body and causing you to be sensitive, to move and flow.
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Along with this, I encourage you and your doctor to approach your healing with a mindset of creativity and levity as well, as much as possible.
Tools to Calm the System of the Sensitive Person
I have used and recommended all of the following tools and healing modalities to my sensitive patients. Again, I just want to reiterate that even within my cohort of sensitive patients, there is no onesize-fits-all tool or therapy that works for everyone. People have varying degrees of sensitivity, disease load and other factors, and different tools work for different people.
As you go through this list, I encourage you to highlight or write down in a notebook those healing modalities that most resonate with you, and share them with your doctor. You may be able to use just a few of the tools at first, or many of them. Let your gut be your guide, and your doctor (if he or she is open-minded) help to give you the wisdom that you need.
Movement
First, movement, or just thinking about movement (if you can’t move much), is one of the most important things that you can do to bring balance to your body. As I mentioned, gentle mind-body exercise practices such as Tai Chi and Qigong are helpful for not only strengthening your mind and body, but for calming your system’s over-reactivity.
You can take Tai Chi or Qigong classes in most larger towns and cities, or follow along with a DVD video at home. I particularly like “The Five Treasures” set; a short, 15-minute routine that is easy to learn and which reduces stress and revitalizes health. It is a gentle,
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Meditation, Prayer, Laughter and Tears
Meditation and prayer are two other wonderful strategies for calming over-reactivity in sensitive people. The benefits of mindfulness and prayer have been proven in multiple studies.
Scientists have shown that activities like mindfulness have a direct impact on the brain’s production of serotonin.v It is believed that meditation "bathes" neurons with an array of feel-good chemicals, including serotonin, GABA, and DHEA, while lowering cortisol, a stress hormone. And feel-good chemicals can play an important role in calming your system.
I encourage you to try one or both of these practices, if you aren’t doing them already.
In addition, laughter and having fun can be powerful for calming your system, too. Like meditation, laughter causes your body to release serotonin and dopamine, two feel-good neurotransmitters that have an effect upon inflammation and other processes involved in over-reactivity. Just watching a funny video, show or movie daily, or having a good laugh with a friend or family member, and intentionally looking for ways to enjoy life despite how you may feel , can powerfully change your chemistry.
People often come to my clinic, having restricted many fun activities in their lives, in order to try to feel better. But in doing so, they have literally become prisoners of the rules that they have set up for themselves. Yet if they can occasionally break their own stringent
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rules and have fun, this can stimulate the release of endorphins and create a positive effect in their body that outweighs any perceived benefit that they may have received from restricting their lifestyle.
Now, I have no legitimate science to back up this claim, and it obviously depends on what rule people decide to break, so please take this advice lightheartedly. Perhaps do what I tell my patients: “Do everything in moderation, even moderation.”
At the same time, inflammation and over-reactivity can occur when you hold negative emotions and your troubles inside. So, having a good cry and releasing emotions in a way that is natural and not too torrential, can paradoxically, also end up being very calming and stabilizing for your system. You release the energy of reactivity in your tears.vi
Similarly, releasing any anger in a productive, non-threatening or non- adrenal-exhausting way can be a release for your body and emotions. As Johnny Rotten of PiL sings, “Anger is an energy.”
For instance, Primal scream therapy has tremendous value for people who have the energy to release their aggression on inanimate objects like pillows or glass. Special rooms are even set up in some public places for this kind of thing. Or, you can just release any pent-up anger in the privacy of your home, if and when you feel angry.
Deep Breathing
Deep breathing is another wonderful practice that calms the system of the sensitive, and has many other health benefits besides. Pranayama has been practiced for centuries in the East, and we in
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the West are just now beginning to realize the profound benefits of it.
Much empirical evidence demonstrates the effectiveness of deepbreathing for improving psychological and physiological stress.vii As you deep-breathe and reduce the stress in your body, your nervous system calms down. Many great resources exist on how to deep breathe. For instance, the article, “The Power of Deep Breathing: 7 Techniques and Exercises,” by Daniela Ramirez Duran, is a good place to start. See the Resources section of this book for more information.
I also recommend Wim Hof’s deep breathing techniques. Wim Hof is also known as The Iceman; a Dutch motivational speaker and extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand low temperatures, in part through the practice of deep breathing. To learn more about his work, see the Resources.
Other practices that you may want to try include: going out into nature daily; especially a park, forest or beach, and grounding your bare feet for 20 minutes daily upon the earth.
Color Therapy and Art
Looking at patterns such as fractals, varieties of colors, scenery, and other kinds of art throughout the day, also can be very calming. I find that each patient resonates with a particular type of art which they find to be calming for them. You may want to explore a broad variety of artistic genres to try to find one that is comforting for you. Drawings, paintings, sculptures and mobiles all can be very therapeutic, whether they are in a book, on a screen (if you can tolerate screens), or a wall, floor or ceiling.
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Sometimes when we are really sick, we only look inward and don’t notice what other people’s creations have to offer us, which is why I recommend contemplating art in its various forms.
Further, if you change the manner in which you introduce visual stimuli to your mind, such as that which comes from art, the calming effect can be quite dramatic. You can do this by using blue light lenses, Irlen lenses (spectral lenses), prisms or other tools. See the Resources section for more information.
System-Calming Supplements for the Sensitive
Supplements that support the adrenal glands can be very useful for calming the system, too. You will want to take a “soft” adrenal support though, as stronger ones can overstimulate sensitive people, worsening their over-reactivity. Your adrenal glands are responsible for your body’s stress response, and supporting them can help to calm that response.
One product that I have found to be very useful is a supplement called HAD Adrenal Drops, by Genestra. This homeopathic formulation of rabbit adrenal and spleen extract supports your body’s own adrenal function. It also contains homeopathic milk thistle, ginger and other herbs. You can purchase it from a number of supplement websites.
Other herbs that I recommend, especially in homeopathic tinctures as they tend to be gentler, are passionflower and schisandra. I also like Pekana’s Stress Buster Kit, which combines three homeopathic medications that combat physical and mental exhaustion. Again, you can find these on a variety of supplement company websites. See the Resources section for more information.
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In addition to homeopathic and herbal remedies (or instead of), you may want to try an adrenal calming cream such as Apex Energetics’ AdrenaCalm, or low dose naltrexone (LDN) cream, both of which reduce inflammation.
Peptides are another useful supplement of sorts. Peptides are strings of amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. Supplemental peptides can help to rebuild your cells and restore proper cellular function, among other things. GHK-Cu, Semax and Selank are three peptides that I often give my patients to help calm their system.
Peptides need to be carefully prescribed, so if you are interested in these, you’ll want to discuss them with your doctor. Most peptides are taken via injection, nasal sprays or orally.
I also recommend certain dietary fats and oils to calm the system of the sensitive, including PEA or palmityl-ethanolamine, and phosphatidyl-serine, phosphatidylcholine, glycerol-phosphocholine and inositol. These oils are especially useful for calming your cells, rather than just your nervous system, since they support the integrity of your cell membranes, which play a major role in a variety of cellular processes, such as bringing nutrients into your cells, and carrying waste out of your cells.
In addition, GABA, theanine, and other amino acids and agents that foster the production or utilization of calming neurotransmitters can be useful, as can cannabis.
Doing things that increase oxytocin, also known as the “love” hormone, are likewise valuable, since oxytocin lowers stress chemicals involved in over-reactivity. Some ways that you can increase oxytocin in your body include: kissing and hugging a loved
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one, spending time with animals, listening to music and eating foods that are rich in Vitamins D and C and magnesium—all of which support oxytocin production. You can also obtain oxytocin as an oral peptide or nasal spray.
Finally, oral low dose naltrexone (LDN) is a medicine that reduces inflammation and stimulates your body to produce its own natural opioids, or feel-good chemicals. It is another great remedy for sensitive people. LDN is often given to people with chronic health conditions to alleviate their pain and fatigue, and to boost their mood. It is an inexpensive, common prescription that you can get from your doctor. For my sensitive patients, I may start with less than 1mg per day, and slowly work up to 4.5mg as they are able to tolerate it.
Bodywork Therapies
Many of my patients experience great benefit from Eastern healing modalities, and I have better results when I combine them with my traditional western medical tools.
For instance, Abhyanga is an ancient Ayurvedic technique that involves massaging your entire body using specific warm oils, which are applied vigorously to your body, including your feet, face, and scalp. It too, can be profoundly relaxing and calming.
The types of oil that you may want to use for this will depend upon your “dosha,” or body type, according to Ayurvedic medicine. There are tests you can take online to determine which dosha you are.
Instructions for doing Abhyanga can be found on numerous websites, such as: ArtofLivingAyurveda.com. See the Resources for more information.
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Shirodhara, another Ayurvedic practice, is a unique body therapy that can have a profound impact on your nervous system.
For this, warm oil (or another liquid) is poured in a continuous stream over your forehead, where you have a high concentration of nerves. The pressure of the oil onto your forehead creates a vibration and penetrates into your nervous system, immediately relaxing it.
To find a practitioner who does these Ayurvedic practices, you may want to start by doing an Internet search for your local area, using the terms “Shirodhara” or “Abhyanga” along with your city and state.
I think that the best Ayurveda is practiced in Kerala state in India. Somatheeram Ayurvedic Health Resort is my personal favorite place, but if you can’t make it to India, you may be able to find an Ayurvedic clinic in your local area.
Still another tool that I have found to be valuable for calming the system is neural therapy, especially in people who have pain or interference fields in their body. These are areas where trauma has occurred and the energy of the body isn’t flowing properly. Neural therapy restores function to the autonomic nervous system (ANS) or the system that is responsible for your body’s automatic functions, like breathing, heart rate and digestion.
Neural therapy involves injecting procaine, an anesthetic, sometimes in combination with homeopathic or isopathic agents, into the interference fields, so that energy can flow to those areas again. Interference fields can be caused by scars, injury, chronic illness or other emotional or physical traumas. By restoring energy
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to a location of your body that is blocked, your ANS function is also restored. In essence, and according to Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, neural therapy normalizes the illness-related dysfunction of the nervous system.viii
Low-Dose Allergen and Immunotherapy
Finally, there are times when paradoxically, it’s appropriate to “rev up” your system in order to calm it down. Low-dose allergen (LDA) therapy is one way to do this. LDA is a method of immunotherapy that involves desensitizing your body to environmental and other allergens by injecting it with low or homeopathic doses of those same allergens. By getting your body to stop reacting to foods, environmental toxins and other things, LDA calms your system. A number of functional medicine doctors do this therapy.
Similarly, Low-dose Immunotherapy (LDI) is a treatment for increasing your body’s immune tolerance when your system is overactive. Allergies and autoimmunity represent an alteration or overactivation of your body’s appropriate immune functions. LDI retrains your immune system to respond more appropriately to specific antigens, or foreign substances that are toxic to your body, thereby decreasing its overactive immune response and reducing your symptoms.
LDA was initially discovered in Great Britain in the 1970s and originally called “Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization” (EPD). The technique utilized very small concentrations of antigens along with an enzyme, beta glucuronidase, which helps ‘educate’ your body’s T cells, which are involved in its immune response. This treatment was brought to the US, but in the early 1990s the FDA stopped the importation of EPD.
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Subsequently, W.A. Shrader, MD, reproduced the EPD mixtures and called them LDA. The technique was later expanded by Ty Vincent MD and called LDI, which a number of doctors also now use to treat a variety of autoimmune conditions, using different antigens.
Many other tools, from emotional freedom technique (EFT), which involves rhythmic pressure point tapping, limbic system retraining, internal work, meditation, changing transforming wasted energy into mindfulness, walking barefoot in nature, and going into the ocean or warm places will all help to reset your system. I encourage you to try one or more of these practices.
Tools to Calm the System of the Average Person
As I indicated earlier, within each of the three groups or types of people, there is a lot of complexity and individuality, so you will want to take this into consideration as you read. However, one thing that people from all three groups have in common is systemic inflammation, and with that, the need to decrease the inflammation.
And if you fall into the average or middle-of-the-road group which represents the broadest category of people out there—your primary goal in reducing your body’s over-reactivity should be to decrease inflammation, as well as prepare your organs for more aggressive detoxification treatments down the road. I’ll share about some tools that you can use to do this, later on.
I liken average or middle-of-the-road people to Play Doh, while robust people are like hard clay. You have to push hard to make any movement or progress with the robust, but with Play Doh people you just have to give them gentle therapies in order to manipulate
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their body enough to where it is willing and able to receive more aggressive treatments.
If you fall into the category of average, you will be able to do more intensive healing modalities than the sensitive person, but you can also do some of the same ones. After all, things like movement, laughter and spending time in nature are beneficial for everyone.
I also recommend taking some of the same adrenal and stressbusting homeopathic remedies and oils, and doing bodywork.
In addition, what you will need to do also depends on what primarily needs to be calmed in your system, as well as what is causing its over-reactivity. For instance, your system may be over-reactive due to inflammation caused by a yeast infection, in which case, you’d want to eliminate the yeast. The yeast may not be your primary health problem, but it is an obstacle or hurdle that may prevent you from being able to do more important treatments or get to the root causes of illness, such as Lyme infections or mold toxicity.
Only by having your doctor thoroughly evaluate you and do the appropriate tests will you be able to find out what may be causing your system to be over-reactive, and what the root causes of inflammation are.
Maintain a Pristine Diet Rich in Live Foods
One of the most powerful anti-inflammatory strategies that you can implement is to ensure that your diet is as clean and pristine as possible. This will go a long way toward calming your system.
A pristine diet is one that is high in real, live, organic foods and low (or ideally, absent of) processed, sugary or unhealthy foods. I tell my
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patients that “if the food is white, it ain’t right.” Food coloring doesn’t count. So, stay away from foods like white bread, potatoes and sugar!
Live foods are fresh, raw and found in a condition that is as close as possible to their original, vibrant, living state in nature. So, for instance, eating live foods might mean having a green apple, instead of applesauce in a jar; avocados instead of reconstituted guacamole dip; a fresh chicken breast instead of frozen chicken tenders. You get the idea.
You may also want to follow a particular diet, depending on your needs. A number of diets are beneficial and calming for people with complex chronic illness. Some of these include, but are not limited to: low-glycemic, anti-fungal, alkaline-producing, anti-oxidant, lowphenolic, low-oxalate, Ayurvedic or specific food sensitivity avoidance diets. What you need will depend on what you and your doctor determine to be best for you, as not all diets are compatible with the above-mentioned guidelines or with one another.
For instance, in Ayurvedic diets, raw, live food is considered to be too energy-demanding for the body. Only mushy, cooked foods are acceptable in this and some other diets. But in general, live food guidelines apply to most people.
While there is no cookbook diet that is ideal for everyone, in general I have found that Keto and Mediterranean diets are the two best diets for people with complex chronic illness. Even so, there is still a lot of “wiggle room” for people to modify these diets, because for instance with keto you can over-oxidize and acidify your body (causing free radicals and inflammation). Similarly, I find that some people can’t always eat a lot of the foods on the Mediterranean diet, such as fish, especially if they have a lot of heavy metal toxicity.
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Authors like Mark Hyman, MD, David Perlmutter, MD and JJ Virgin have written some great books on diet and they examine some of the intricacies involved in finding the right diet. You may want to read their work as well, to help you formulate a dietary plan that will sit well with your chemistry.
I have found that most people with Lyme disease and complex chronic illness do better with a diet that includes animal protein and healthy fats. Animal protein products, such as lamb, bison, elk, turkey, duck, chicken and fish, give people more “life force” to fight infections, especially if they are taking antibiotics.
That said, some people with Lyme become allergic to certain meats either due to alpha-gal syndrome, or because they eat too much of it (due to leaky gut and immune sensitization), and/or they choose poor-quality meat, which can be harmful to their body. Eating too much meat will generate lots of inflammation-causing free radicals, so you want to be moderate in your approach to it. At the end of the day, balance and moderation are what matter.
Speaking of inflammation, you want to focus on foods that decrease the “fire” in your body and which don’t cause food sensitivities or allergies, both of which will ramp up your system. You can do a food allergy/sensitivity test to discover the foods that you are likely to react to negatively, and then avoid those as much as possible. For instance, many people with complex chronic illness react to foods with oxalates, which are natural plant compounds found in some vegetables such as spinach and kale, as well as nuts.
In addition to healthy, organic animal protein from pasture-raised animals and wild-caught fish, you will want to consume healthy oils
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and fats, such as those which come from avocados, sea buckthorn, sunflowers, grape seeds and olives.
You don’t want to overdo it here either, especially with animal fats, as they too create oxidative stress in the body, and with that, inflammation. Some oils such as flaxseed, corn and sesame can go rancid fairly quickly and cause oxidative stress. When you are battling a complex chronic illness, your body is already trying to eliminate so many free radicals from disease and environmental toxins, so you don’t want to generate any more from your diet.
Vegetables are also generally healthful for most middle-of-the-road people, although you may find that you do better with cooked veggies versus raw, or vice versa. The important thing is that you are able to digest them, and that they make you feel good, instead of more tired, grouchy or inflamed.
Reduce Exogenous and Environmental Stressors
Another strategy that I recommend if you are average is to reduce your exogenous or environmental stressors as much as possible. For instance, manmade electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure has been linked to numerous disease conditions and can put your body into a state of hyper-reactivity. ix
I encourage you to reduce your EMF exposure as much as possible, by limiting your time on your cell phone and computer, turning off your Wi-Fi router at night and so forth, and avoiding other environmental and emotional stressors. The idea is to create as much of a peaceful, safe and sacred living space as possible.
If you struggle with sleep, one of the best things that you can do is find solutions that will enable you to sleep better. This alone will
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reduce inflammation, as well as get your glymphatic system to begin draining. And at the end of the day, if you can do just this one thing, you are halfway to getting your system calmed down.
You want to cultivate a slow, calm lifestyle in which things can flow in your life and throughout your body. “Chill and go with it” is a motto I recommend adopting, rather than trying to grind and be on top of everything. Having obsessive-compulsive tendencies is a self- perpetuating problem; the energy that it creates can be uncalming for the body and make a steeper uphill battle when the illness needs less freneticness.
So if you tend to rush around, be high-strung, obsessive-compulsive in your thinking or “Type A,” you want to learn to slow down and cultivate mindfulness or awareness in your daily life, so that you can carry out your activities with a sense of unhurriedness and calm. Your nervous system will thank you for it as it learns to do this automatically. It may take quite a bit of active work at first, but it can and should be done.
Limbic system and brain retraining programs such as Annie Hopper’s Dynamic Neural Retraining System or Ashok Gupta’s Gupta Program, can also be incredibly powerful for calming your system and cultivating a balanced, peaceful lifestyle. For more information on both programs, see the Resources.
Address Your Hormones and Other Root Causes of Over-Reactivity
If you are the average type, you will also want to get to the root causes of your body’s over-reactivity, in order to calm your system. You may not be able to treat all of these causes right now (such as Lyme infections or mold toxins), but some, you will. For instance, if
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you have allergies to environmental chemicals, removing those chemicals from your environment however possible, is worthwhile.
Other root causes of over-reactivity may include things like root canals, breast implants, hardware in your body, or scar tissue from previous surgeries. Addressing these things in one way or another, such as with neural therapy or by having the root canals and implants removed, can help to bring your body into homeostasis or balance, and calm your system.
Hormone imbalances can also cause over-reactivity. Your hormones play a major role in how you feel, and if you have an array of symptoms, your hormones are likely to be out of whack, too. You’ll want to work with a competent practitioner to bring balance back to these, as well.
I find that some of my patients benefit from taking supplemental pregnenolone, DHEA, progesterone, estrogens, testosterone and other hormones.
To find out what imbalances you may have, you’ll want to do a saliva and blood hormone test panel. I recommend also maybe doing urine tests, as you can get a more complete picture of your body by doing various forms of testing. Many labs do this kind of testing, and in the Resources section I share a few that I recommend.
If you are average, you usually don’t want to treat your infections right away, except for perhaps yeast, if these are causing your body to over-react and flare with inflammation. If you do, you will tend to have a heavy Herxheimer reaction, or detoxification response that will exacerbate your symptoms, and which may actually worsen your reactivity.
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But you can do a lot of trial and error with your treatments, to see what works and what doesn’t, and it most likely won’t set you back in your healing.
This is not so if you are sensitive. You just can’t make too many mistakes with your treatment process if you fall into this category. Sensitive people have to have victories from the outset and build upon those victories, and doctors can’t “pummel” their sensitive patients by being wrong on what they are treating them for first.
Whereas if you are average, your doctor occasionally can be wrong and give you a treatment or dosage that may be inappropriate for where you are at in your healing process. But he or she must quickly notice the error and be able to adapt that information to your next treatment, so that you can heal, instead of getting worse. So, you want to pay attention to how you feel after starting a particular treatment, and make sure that any healing modality that you pursue is one that you can do without suffering from long-term negative effects. You always want to be able to “come back” from the consequences of any poor decisions that you or your doctor may have made.
I work with my patients in such a manner that if I make a mistake in their treatment, I always have a backup plan for them. I’m poised to do anything. You and your doctor will always want to remain flexible when putting together a protocol for your healing.
When I do treat infections in my average patients (which again, is not usually the first step in their healing process), I proceed carefully and don’t overcommit on the treatment, especially at first.
What do I mean by that? Well, if I’m treating patients with a Babesia infection, for instance, I may start by giving them a medication that
To sign up for updates and notifications regarding The Order of Treatment, please go to lymetreatment2024.com has a short half-life; say, Primaquine instead of tafenoquine, even though tafenoquine is a better medication. I do this so that if they have a negative reaction to the drug or if it’s too strong for them, they will recover faster than if they were to take a drug that has a longer half-life. (Note, I share more on how to treat Babesia and other infections later in this book).
Similarly, I don’t usually give my Lyme patients metronidazole (Flagyl), a very strong antiparasitic and antibiotic drug, at the outset of their treatment because it may be too potent. Spirochetes such as Borrelia either live in the body as motile, spiral forms or as semidormant cell-wall deficient cyst forms. They have been found to turn into cysts when stressed and back again into spirals when the conditions of the body change.x Flagyl likely only works on the cyst form, so if patients have a lot of dormant organisms and their doctors start off by giving them something like metronidazole, it’s a little like banging on a hornet’s nest. This agent may also cause them to have a heavy die-off reaction and their symptoms to flare too much.
But again, I don’t usually start my patients on strong medications until we calm their system and do other things to stabilize and strengthen them. Regardless, if you are average, you may be able to tolerate a lot of antimicrobial treatment just not right now. You want to respect the vessel that is your body, and work up slowly and gradually on antibiotic or other antimicrobial regimens.
System-Calming Supplements for the Average
I recommend Pekana’s Stress Buster, along with the same adrenalcalming homeopathics and cell-membrane healing oils that I also recommend to sensitive people. Please refer back to that section for more information on these products, as well as the Resources.
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You also may benefit from taking a quality probiotic, especially one containing Bifidobacteria, to calm and balance the flora in your gastrointestinal tract. This is because having a functional GI tract will help to calm your system, too.
Many people with complex chronic illness have mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), a condition in which their body produces abnormal numbers of mast cells, which are a type of white blood cell. In MCAS, your body’s mast cells release excessive amounts of histamine, whenever you are exposed to an allergen, toxin or other stressor; whether from food, the air or other sources. Lowering your histamine levels and stabilizing your mast cells can lower inflammation and with that, reduce your over-reactivity.
I have found that MCAS is usually only a problem with my average and sensitive patients. The exception is if a robust person does IVIG treatments, which can cause mast cell reactions in even those who are strong, but it’s only in limited settings that robust people need mast cell work.
To treat MCAS, I give my patients a wide variety of supplements and medications, called mast cell stabilizers. You may want to ask your doctor about these. Some are natural, while others are pharmaceutical drugs. You will need to experiment in order to find the ones that will work best for you.
Some of the more popular ones include: Montelukast (Singulair), Levocetirizine (Xyzal), Chromolyn sodium, Loratidine (Claritin), Cetirizine (Zyrtec), NeuroProtek (a natural supplement); Luteolin, Mirica (PEA plus Luteolin) and amlexanox. (Note, I share more about mast-cell stabilizers later in this book).
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Peptides such as BPC-157 and KPV are calming to the system, especially when they are taken together. BPC-157 in particular, is very healing to the gut. You may want to ask your doctor about these peptides, to find out whether they may benefit you, too.
While most peptides come in injectable form, you can purchase BPC-157 as an oral supplement, too. See the Resources for more information.
As with the sensitive person, stabilizing your body’s cell membrane chemistry is likewise important. Membranes get weakened and damaged by toxins, microbes and other factors, but phospholipids such as phosphatidylcholine can help to repair them, and indirectly help to calm your system. xi
While I mostly use oral substances for middle of the road folks, I also find that injections, especially B-12 vitamin injections, can calm the system down. Even folic acid can be helpful for people with certain genetic defects.
Finally, taking minerals, especially fulvic and humic acids can be unbelievably effective during this first phase of recovery, too. They exert their effects by balancing and/or neutralizing your body’s acidity. When your body is too acidic, none of its processes will work right, and your system will become over-reactive to many things.
In addition to supplements and medications, oxygen therapy, via nasal cannula or in a low dose hyperbaric chamber and/or ozone treatments, may also help to calm your system. Many functional medicine clinics now do IV ozone treatments.
Light Detoxification and Other Treatments
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Light detoxification strategies, which I will be sharing more about in Chapter Five, especially coffee enemas, green tea enemas, colonics, and Panchakarma, can all help to prepare your body to tolerate more aggressive treatments down the road. (See Chapter Five for more details on these treatments). As part of this, you may want to support your liver by taking milk thistle or supplemental liposomal glutathione.
As I mentioned, if you are average, calming your system is mostly about reducing inflammation and preparing your organs for more stress: that is, for more aggressive antimicrobial and detoxification treatments.
If you can afford it and your doctor does IV treatments, taking minerals via IV also can be profoundly restorative, as can IV ornithine, which eliminates ammonia, a major neurotoxin created by pathogenic microbes such as Borrelia, and which also results from normal metabolic processes.
Taking any substance that decreases glutamate, which is a neurotransmitter that becomes toxic when it breaks outside of the cells as happens in complex chronic illness may also be beneficial for calming your system. One substance that does this is oxaloacetic acid, which is found in products such as benagene.
If you have structural problems, resolving those can also be helpful. You may want to do traction or find body movements that bring more blood to your muscles, calming and healing to your cells, such as Tai Chi or Qigong. Movement is advantageous for everyone, but the type of movement that will best suit you will depend on your type.
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For instance, sensitive people may only be able to do a few stretches or light Tai Chi, whereas the average or robust may be able to do more aggressive exercises or routines. You don’t want to overdo it and become so exhausted though that you are more tired from the exercise than energized, as this too, can flare your body!
Everything that sensitive people need to calm their system is also great for those of you who are average or robust, but some of the tools may be a waste of your time, energy and money if you really don’t need them. But certain things, like movement, laughter, fun and living life as peacefully and calmly as possible, are crucial for everyone.
If you are sensitive and wondering why some of these additional tools wouldn’t apply to you as well, the truth is, they may. I am simply prioritizing healing modalities according to those that are likely to most benefit you and not cause you to become more reactive, given your particular type. But if you feel that you can incorporate some of the strategies of the average into your regimen as well by all means, please do so.
Tools to Calm the System of the Robust Person
People who are robust make up the smallest group in my practice, but if this is you, you are fortunate. Because while you, as many robust people, may be very ill with multiple infections, toxins and other issues, constitutionally, you are probably strong and can handle treatments of all kinds.
If you are robust, you will typically be able to tolerate lots of antibiotics or other antimicrobial remedies, along with other healing modalities, without going into a heavy Herxheimer reaction,
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symptom exacerbation or flare.
Still, if you are robust, your system needs to be calmed too, because chances are, the disease process has caused it to be overreactive. But this step for you is more about finding all of the direct cause(s) of your illness and addressing those, than it is about finding specific modalities to directly calm your system. Therefore, you can often combine this first step with some of the later ones that I share throughout this book.
If you are robust but have multiple tick-borne infections, the solution to calming your system is to simply treat the infections that are the root cause of your disease. This is because treating infections actually calms the system of a robust person, rather than flaring it, as happens with average or sensitive people.
If you are robust, you probably won’t have a severe Herxheimer reaction or suffer from a worsening of symptoms when you do antimicrobial treatments, and you can probably tolerate massive doses of antibiotics. As you tackle the infections and toxins, your system reactivity will gradually go down. So as a robust person, chances are, you can go through many the steps of healing that I share in this book concurrently.
Similarly, if the cause of your over-reactivity isn’t just toxins or infections, but factors like a poor diet, you will want to consume more real, live foods, or address the other causes of over-reactivity, whatever they may be.
Consuming live foods is so important because you are eating food as it’s found in nature, with all of the enzymes that your body needs for health and life. Foods that have been processed don’t contain these enzymes. See the food recommendations that I shared earlier
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I have found that in some ways, calming the system in people who are robust is the easiest and yet hardest thing to do-hard because it’s not always easy to pinpoint the major causes of their overreactivity. Yet it’s easier because once you find out what the direct causes of your disease and over-reactivity are, you simply do the right treatments to eliminate those causes, and once you do, you improve.
If you fall into the robust category, I encourage you to ask your doctor to do extensive lab tests on you right at the outset, so that you can more quickly get to the root causes of your reactivity, and illness.
These tests might include:
• Food allergy testing.
• Nutrient testing through SpectraCell to identify nutritional excesses and deficiencies .
• Fatty acid testing through Kennedy Krieger Institute.
• Mycotoxin (or mold toxin) and organic acid testing through Real Time or Great Plains Laboratories.
• Lyme and co-infection testing, viral testing, antibody testing, DNA and RNA testing.
• Heavy metal testing (both unchallenged and challenged urine, sometimes hair).
• Stool analyses.
• Blood coagulation testing.
• Hormone testing.
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See the Resources section for information on where to do or obtain these tests.
By doing all of this testing, the biggest causes of disease and overreactivity in your body are likely to emerge. And once you and your doctor treat those causes, your system will calm down, and you will feel like yourself again. In Chapters Five and Six, I will share with you how to treat the most common infections and toxins that I find in people with complex chronic disease.
In the meantime, I encourage you to implement some of the lifestyle strategies that are beneficial for people of all types, such as laughter and maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Final Words
As a final note, you should know that sometimes, people switch types. I have some patients that start off as average, but who become sensitive over time, due either to the circumstances of their condition, or because they do treatments that are too harsh or inappropriate for them and end up becoming sensitive. So bear in mind that this could happen to you as well if you are too aggressive with your therapies. Start out slowly and carefully, especially if you fall into the average or sensitive category.
Also, I just want to reiterate that you’ll want to work with a doctor who can help you to feel empowered in your journey and meet you where you are at in your healing process. If your doctor or practitioner isn’t open-minded, you may have to find someone who is or undertake the strategies that I outline in this chapter by yourself, until you are able to do more aggressive treatments such as antimicrobials.
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Healing is an art as much as a science, and in the end it’s really all about being creative and finding what works. One person may not want anything “too fluffy” while another does. It all depends on your chemistry, beliefs and worldview, among other factors. For instance, I often see relentless engineers who are into energy work, and artists who just want pharmaceutical drugs.
In any case, I’ve learned over time that it’s important to honor my patients’ wishes and realize that it’s their journey, because their belief in any particular modality is vital for enabling that modality to work. So even if I see that my patients are not taking the most efficient route toward healing (in my estimation), and I don’t completely agree with a therapy or tool that they want to try out, I have to take a step back and empower them in their journey.
Because again, belief and empowerment have a lot to do with healing. So I encourage you to believe in whatever it is that you choose to do, and know that you can get well, regardless of how sick or sensitive you are.
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vi Bylsma LM, Gračanin A, Vingerhoets AJJM. The neurobiology of human crying. Clin Auton Res. 2019 Feb;29(1):63-73. doi: 10.1007/s10286-018-0526-y. Epub 2018 Apr 23. PMID: 29687400; PMCID: PMC6201288.
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xi Jelske N. van der Veen, John P. Kennelly, Sereana Wan, Jean E. Vance, Dennis E. Vance, René L. Jacobs, The critical role of phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine metabolism in health and disease, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Biomembranes, Volume 1859, Issue 9, Part B, 2017, Pages 1558-1572,