Welcome to this week’s episode of Thyroid Strong where Darin Ingels, a licensed naturopathic physician, author, international speaker, and a leading authority on Lyme’s disease, gives a detailed description of what Lyme’s disease is, its origins and symptoms, and how it can lead to Hashimoto’s.
Key Takeaways
Lyme’s disease is a bacterial infection that can present itself with one hundred different symptoms making it difficult to diagnose. It is important to treat quickly if you find a tick on yourself. Darin Ingels ND shares where to send an engorged tick, where to get tested for Lyme’s disease, and his long-term integrative treatment plan.
About Darin Ingels ND
Dr. Darin Ingels ND is a licensed naturopathic physician, author, international speaker, and a leading authority on Lyme’s disease. He too was diagnosed with Lyme’s disease and suffered his own battle of debilitation until he found that proper diet, lifestyle management, and natural therapies worked with his body to heal instead of against it. He uses that same approach for his patients today. He has been featured in WebMD, Mind Body Green, Be Well Thrive Global, and also has a podcast, and is the author of the Lyme Solution, a five-year plan to fight the inflammatory autoimmune response and beat Lyme disease.
What Lyme’s Disease Is and What To Do First
Lyme’s disease is a slow-growing bacterial infection, often acquired from a deer tick. If bitten by a tick, gently lift it with a pair of tweezers and save the tick. Saving the tick allows the tick to be tested for various infections doctors can then look for in a blood test. Darin shares where to send a tick and where to get tested for Lyme’s disease. Know that only 30% of bites from a lyme infected tick result in the classic bullseye rash.
Lyme’s Disease That Can Lead To Hashimoto’s and How To Treat It
Of the one hundred different symptoms Lyme’s disease presents, an autoimmune response is likely. Darin Ingels’ hierarchy of treatment starts with a good diet and gut foundation, testing for food sensitivities, and then discovering other possible triggers, such as toxins, environment, etc. Darin Ingels looks to repair the terrain of the body first, enabling cells to heal faster and for the long term.
In This Episode
What Lyme’s disease is [2:15]
The most notable symptoms of Lyme’s disease [3:09]
How Lyme’s disease can lead to other issues, such as an autoimmune response like Hashimoto’s [ 7:08]
What to do first when bitten by a tick [9:28]
Treatment for Lyme’s disease [12:03]
Food sensitivities with the Lone Star Tick [17:34]
Most effective in treating Lyme’s disease long term [20:41]
Darin Ingels’ hierarchy of what to treat first with Lyme’s disease [26:11]
How to start treating a leaky gut [27:42]
Quotes
“They call it the great imitator or the great mimic because it looks like a lot of different things. So unfortunately, it's one of these infections that often people miss, just because they might mistake it for something else.” [3:00]
“The big red flag is when we see a combination of arthritic symptoms with neurological symptoms. Again, there's very few things that cause people complaining about neuropathy or balance problems, coordination issues, and they've got joint pain or muscle pain. That's a big red flag for Lyme disease.” [4:30]
“The CDC says that up to 80% of people who get bit by tick carry the rash, when you look at the research, the research suggest it's probably less than 46%. And those of us in clinical practice will argue is probably less than 20%.” [4:57]
“Lyme is a major trigger for Hashimotos particular hypothyroidism. So you know, limes ability to disrupt your immune system is a major problem. And we see various autoimmune effects from Lyme disease, we think that a lot of chronic Lyme disease is actually not the infection, it's per se that's causing the problems, but it's actually the autoimmune effect.” [7:00]
“It's what's unique to that person that gives us clues as to what those underlying triggers are.”[27:32]
“It's about eating whole foods. The less hands that touch your food, probably the better. If you can't read the ingredient on the label, don't eat it.” [30:41]
“If the germ is the problem, why do we get such varying responses to that germ? And I think a lot of it is the terrain. So how do we fix the terrain in a way that these germs just don't overrun our body?” [31:01]
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Guest Info
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Just because you've picked it up on a test doesn't necessarily prove that that's what's causing Hashimotos. But the fact that we know on the research that these are potential triggers, it makes sense that we deal with the infection and in many cases, again, we do see the load go down and sometimes I'll see thyroid antibodies dropped, they may not completely normalize, but we'll see the levels go down, see thyroid function improve, and of course, ultimately do people feel better?
Emily Kiberd:Dr. Darren Engels is a licensed naturopathic physician, author, international speaker and a leading authority on limes disease. He too is a former Lyme patient who overcame his own three year battle with Lyme disease after having failed conventional medicine treatment and became progressively debilitated Dr. Engels found that proper diet, lifestyle management and natural therapies worked with his body to heal instead of against it. He then applied what he learned about his own healing journey to his own limes patients and found that they recovered faster and with less side effects. Dr. Ingles has now treated more than 8000 lyme patients using his novel approach, many who have gone on to live healthy, symptom free lives. He has been featured in WebMD. Mind Body green, be well Thrive global, and also has a podcast and is the author of the Lyme solution, five per plan to fight the inflammatory autoimmune response and beat Lyme disease. Dr. Darren Ingalls Welcome to thyroid strong podcast. First time, we talked about Lyme disease. And I want to do like a quick run through again, because you have such a wealth of knowledge. And then we're gonna talk about some other infections. So welcome to that restaurant podcast. Oh, well, thanks for having me back, Emily. So this is very timely, it's summertime. The kids are outside, everyone's outside for those of the people who are listening who don't know what Lyme disease is. Can you give us like a quick snippet? Sure.
Darin Ingels:Well, Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that's primarily acquired through a tick bite. And we used to think it was something that people who lived in New England or the central part of the Midwest got, and we've now learned that really, you can get it living anywhere, certainly United States. And it's really found on almost every continent, outside of North America, with the exception of Antarctica. So it's the fastest growing infectious disease in the world. And when people get hit by this tick, this tick can transmit this bacteria through its saliva, it gets in your bloodstream, and it can cause any number of different symptoms of factors over 100 different symptoms associated with Lyme disease. They call it the great imitator or the great mimic because it looks like a lot of different things. So unfortunately, it's one of these infections that often people miss, just because they might mistake it for something else.
Emily Kiberd:What are some of the most common symptoms that maybe if you went to a conventional medicine doctor, they would pick
Darin Ingels:up? Well, the two symptoms that are really very specific for Lyme disease, one is what's called an erythema migrans, rash, or em rash, it looks like a target or a bullseye will, you'll see sort of these alternating light and red rings around the rash. It's a flat rash, it usually doesn't edge unlike, you know, mosquito bite or something like that, that might be raised and itchy. This tends to be flat and not itchy, at least not until the later stages. So that em rash is very unique to Lyme disease. There's nothing else out there that causes that. Unfortunately, it's a very small percentage of people that actually get that rash when they get bit by tick the caries lie more often that people don't get the rash. But if you do get the rash, again, there's nothing else like that that causes it. The other symptom that's very unique to Lyme disease is what we call migratory joint pain, which means that one day my right shoulder hurts than my left knee than my right ankle, when it kind of moves around your body to different joints. Again, that's also very unique to Lyme disease. Beyond that a lot of the other symptoms overlap with a lot of other different illnesses. So you can get headache, fever, swollen glands, neuropathy, or pins and needles, numbness in your hands and feet. Migraines, you can get Bell's palsy where one side of your face starts to droop, you can get high fever chills, your people with acute Lyme disease are acutely sick. For other people. They don't necessarily get that acute illness, they'll get the slow, insidious onset of symptoms. And for me, the big red flag is when we see a combination of arthritic symptoms with neurological symptoms. Again, there's very few things that cause belswans people complaining about neuropathy or balance problems, coordination issues, and they've got joint pain or muscle pain. That's a big red flag for Lyme disease.
Emily Kiberd:I heard a statistic thrown out that only 30% of the bytes that transmit Lyme disease will have that rash. Is that accurate?
Darin Ingels:It's probably even less. I know it's been See, the CDC says that up to 80% of people who get bit by tick carry the rash, when you look at the research, the research suggest it's probably less than 46%. And those of us in clinical practice will argue is probably less than 20%. So, you know, again, it's one of those things when people get it, we know that they have it, but more often that people don't get it. And there are other rashes associated with Lyme that are not the bullseye rash. Sometimes it's just a flat red rash. I think one of the unique things about it, though, is it tends to spread that may start in about the size of a quarter, maybe a little larger. And for me, I mean, I got Lyme disease, and my first rash was about maybe about three inches in diameter. And by the time it got done, it was almost 18 inches in diameter. So it's spread and got to be quite big, but it'll spread over the course of several weeks, it could be anywhere from three to six weeks. And again, that's kind of unique to lime.
Emily Kiberd:So I think you bring up a really important point with the joint pain, because so many other things could cause joint pain, right? So like Hashimotos, that underactive thyroid component of Hashimotos can cause joint pain, muscle aches, I think it's important to note that migratory joint pain and I, as a chiropractor when I have people come in, and exactly what you said, one week, their shoulder hurts, and the next week, their knee is swollen, and then their ankle, but there was no clear mechanism of injury, it sets off a red flag. And I think for every practitioner, it's just set up a red flag. And for anyone listening who has Hashimotos, just to kind of like put that in the memory bank, right? Because sometimes with Hashimotos, the Joint Pain will come and go. And we kind of just dismiss it like, oh, that's our diagnosis. Are there other insects that can transmit Lyme other than ticks?
Darin Ingels:Well, I think most of us think I agree that ticks are the primary carrier, there is some evidence that other biting insects can carry Lyme, mosquitoes, fleas and so forth. However, these other biting insects can carry other things that look like Lyme disease that aren't necessarily Lyme, we know that you can get Bartonella from fleas and lice, you can get Babesia from other insects as well. So you know, I think the overwhelming majority of cases do come from a tick bite. But there may be other biting insects that can transmit Lyme and some of these other co infections. And I think you know, very relative to your tribe, it's important to them that Lyme is a major trigger for Hashimotos particular hypothyroidism. So you know, limes ability to disrupt your immune system is a major problem. And we see various autoimmune effects from Lyme disease, we think that a lot of chronic Lyme disease is actually not the infection, it's per se that's causing the problems, but it's actually the autoimmune effect. We know that Lyme can cross react with the white and gray matter of your brain, it can cross react with your joints, it can cross react with your peripheral nerves, it can cross react with your thyroid. So that ability to cause destruction in your body is really that autoimmune effect, just by virtue of having that organism. So when we're talking about treatment, you know, it's not really just about killing the bug, you know, we have to deal with all these immune and autoimmune issues that it triggers.
Emily Kiberd:Yeah, I think, especially with the symptoms, especially because they're so similar. It can be hard to diagnose or as a patient, it can feel hard to diagnose, how do you approach it as a practitioner working with patients every day?
Darin Ingels:Well, you know, ultimately, Lyme disease is a clinical diagnosis. I think this is the most grossly misunderstood aspect of Lyme is that people really depend on the blood test as the definitive answer that you do or do not have Lyme disease. Again, we know from the research that the blood test, honestly, it sucks, you know, it's less than 43% sensitive, which means it literally misses half the people that have Lyme disease, I was a microbiologist, before I was a dog race, do these tests for a living and it's a good test will be 96 98%, sensitive and specific, you know, you want the test to pick up the thing that you're looking for. And you want to be sense enough that it actually picks it up, if you do have it. And when you've got tested has very poor sensitivity or very poor specificity. It's just not a great screening test. And you know, in 40 years of research, you know, they've held the standard, that this is the way you diagnose Lyme. But this test was never designed to be diagnostic, it was a way to monitor people that had known Lyme disease, we've got to get past the piece of paper, and understand that, you know, if you've got clinical symptoms, and again, if you have a test that shows that you've been exposed to Lyme, and you've ruled out other things, because again, Lyme looks like a lot of other autoimmune problems. You know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
Emily Kiberd:Yeah, let's say someone goes outside, they do a tick check at night, and they find a tick on them, what would be the doctor recommended steps of action,
Darin Ingels:you if you find a tick on you, you know, you want to be very careful in pulling the tech off. I mean, hopefully you've got a pair of nice tweezers nearby, you want to grab the tick as close to where the tick is inserted into your skin lifted very, very gently, don't try and gank at Target out, you can basically scare the tick and it might inject more of its saliva into you. So just keep pulling, pulling eventually the tick will let its jaws go. And then if you got the tech you want to save the tick. If you save the tick, you can actually send it to a lab and they can test the tick to see if the tick carries Lyme and this host other infections that can be transmitted with that we know, we know from some of the research and the ticks up in New England, you know, more than 30% of them carry something else. So if you do get bit by a tick that carries Lyme, it might carry another infection. And again, as a practitioner, that's good to know. So we know exactly what we're dealing with. So you can save the tick. And there are several labs, you know, there's tick report.com, there's medical diagnostic labs, there's few other that you could say the ticks send it out. And it's relatively inexpensive to test for Lyme and all these coinfections. And you know, it's not perfect, but at least it gives us an idea about what you may have been exposed to. And if you know, it's a tick, and particularly if it's a deer tick, and you know, for the average person wouldn't know the difference between a deer tick of wood tick a Dog Tick, you can certainly go online and look at pictures and try and figure it out. But if you're not sure, again, that's where sending the tick in is helpful, because they will tell you exactly what kind of tick it is, and what's in it. But my approach is to treat until proven otherwise, we know that early treatment gives you the best results and prevents any kind of chronic problem. So particularly if someone knows they got bit by deer tick, we save the ticks send it off to the lab. But in the meantime, we start treatment until proven otherwise, because the standard test out there is an antibody test, it can take up to a month for your body to make antibodies against that. So we've got very few tests that are true early detection. So until we give your immune system a chance to respond to the organism, we want to start treatment right away to ensure that it doesn't develop any further problems.
Emily Kiberd:Do you treat whether the tick is in gorged or not?
Darin Ingels:If the tick is embedded? Definitely there's this big question mark about how long does the tick need to be on you to transmit disease. Now we know with Lyme it probably is a function of hours. However, with other infections, it's a matter of minutes. So although it may not be Lyme itself, there may be something else that got transmitted by starting treatment, you know, we're not just treating Lyme, we're potentially treating these other co infections, because again, we don't know until we have an opportunity to test the tick and to test you and find out what you've been exposed to.
Emily Kiberd:And what would be the treatment for Lyme.
Darin Ingels:Well, the conventional treatment is antibiotics, the CDC recommendation is basically for adult doxycycline 100 milligrams twice a day for two to three weeks. What's kind of strange is that we know that Lyme is a very slow growing organism, you know, most bacteria in your body replicate every 10 to 20 minutes. So if you get strep throat or a staph infection, seven to 10 days of antibiotics will usually do the job because that's all you need to cover the bases. But because it's a rapidly growing organism, it's easy to do that. But for organisms that are slower growing, you often need a longer course of treatment. And just for example, if you get tuberculosis, they'll put you on a triple antibiotic cocktail for up to a year. And the reason is that it's a very slow growing organism. But to put it in perspective, most bacteria replicate every 10 to 20 minutes, TV replicates every 15 to 20 hours. Well, Lyme replicates every one to 16 days. So why we're willing to give lyme patients two to three weeks of treatment, well, we'll give TB patients a year of treatment. And Lyme is more slow growing than TV. It makes no biological sense. That's the conventional approach. Those of us in the Lyme world will especially if it's acute Lyme, will treat for at least six to eight weeks, sometimes longer. Again, for me, I will start treatment until we get the tick report back if they save the tech. And if they didn't weren't able to save the tech, then we'll treat it we have an opportunity to test the patient find out if they had exposure. And antibiotics are a way to do it. In my practice, often I use herbs, herbs work really well. And they have less damage to the gut microbiome less damage to the mitochondria. So it really kind of depends on the patient, what their preference is. I think with acute Lyme disease, this is a case where antibiotics are actually very well indicated. However, I have some people for any number of reasons where antibiotics may not be indicated or they just don't tolerate them. And herbs certainly are a very good option
Emily Kiberd:for someone who doesn't say that tick, and then gets the antibody test on themselves how long from tick bite to getting that test, because some people get a tick bite and then they get the test the next day or two days after.
Darin Ingels:Yeah, I mean, I will usually wait at least a week. And sometimes we're doing multiple tests. I mean, a week would be early, usually it takes about a week to start developing antibodies. So that's kind of on the early end, but anywhere from one week to three weeks is where we try and get people tested. And sometimes we'll test people the week and if everything looks negative, we might test them two weeks later and just double check and make sure so it really kind of depends, but week is probably the minimum, there is a new test that just came out literally just came out. It's called T detect and it's instead of looking at antibodies, it's looking at T cell activation, and T cells are part of your immune system that are your first responders. So at least in theory, this would pick up Lyme much earlier than the antibody test. So it's brand new. I honestly I haven't used it yet with anybody. So I can't give you any feedback on whether it's good or bad. But at least for those people we think are in that very early window. It would be worth trying to see if we can pick it up a little bit earlier
Emily Kiberd:in terms of testing? Is there a lab that is considered more the gold standard than others potentially?
Darin Ingels:Well, if you go to a regular reference lab like quest or LabCorp, you know, we know that the tests because they use again, aren't very sensitive. So there are labs that specialize in tick borne illness. And I think the majority of us in the Lyme world use iGenex, which is a lab out of Palo Alto, I use a lot of a lab called medical diagnostic labs in Hamilton, New Jersey iGenex does great testing. The downside to them is that they don't take insurance unless your Medicare MDL takes all insurance pretty much. So it just saves people a little bit of money. I think that both great labs, they do great testing Galaxy labs, we use a lot if we're looking specifically for Bartonella. Yeah, between the two or three labs, I think they give us the best return on our investment for testing.
Emily Kiberd:So you mentioned earlier that Lyme disease can cause Hashimotos. So obviously, there's a genetic component Hashimotos, right. It's kind of like the genetic component, but then our environment pulls the trigger. What have you seen with your Hashimotos patients, specifically with lime or just in general? Because I think with Hashimotos, we sometimes first think, okay, medication, manage the thyroid hormones start to change, potentially diet, lifestyle, and then sometimes the environmental factors that can put load on the body I feel like are often overlooked, or looked at last or down the road in terms of a treatment plan with a practitioner? Well, I
Darin Ingels:think and with Hashimotos, we're always looking at, you know, what are the triggers, what's instigating this autoimmune process. And I think we would agree it's not necessarily just one thing, it's the load on the body. So genetics, diet, environmental toxins, mold, Lyme is just another factor. But I have a lot of patients, you know, because a lot of people get their thyroid routinely checked. And they've got bloodwork that prior to Lyme, their thyroid was fine, they had no evidence of Hashimotos after Lyme, now their TSH goes up, we see thyroid antibodies, and what's the thing that changed, and consistently, I've seen this with 1000s of patients that they were thyroid normal prior to Lyme, and then afterwards, now they start having all these thyroid issues. So it's just a another trigger. But in treating Lyme, if that is part of the cause, then often we do see thyroid antibodies normalized, we see thyroid function improve. Obviously, we're doing everything else, you know, that we would do with every other Hashimotos patient. But there's that other aspect now that we have to deal with the infection.
Emily Kiberd:I've heard recently that there's a newer outcome from potentially a tick bite called Alpha gal. Have you heard this? Yeah,
Darin Ingels:so the Alpha gal issue is actually not the same tick that causes Lyme disease Alpha gal is mostly from what's called the lone star tick. And when you get bit by lone star tick, this causes a cross reaction with this thing called Alpha gal, which is a protein that cross reacts with beef. So it makes people like anaphylactic allergic to beef products. And it's just the craziest thing I've seen now a few cases of people with this alpha gal sensitivity. Again, it's kind of unrelated to Lyme disease. So people who get Lyme disease don't really get this alpha gal sensitivity, but the other ticks can cause it. And then yeah, now we have to treat people for their beef allergy, which we do in our practice, but it's tough. And it's just the craziest thing and anaphylactic
Emily Kiberd:shock to eating beef. Is it also like being near cooked beef, or
Darin Ingels:usually it's with the ingestion of it, you know, they it's that they eat anything with a beef in it that will trigger some sort of allergic reaction. It's not necessarily to the sensitivity where if they smell it, or if they're in the same room with that, I haven't seen that in my practice. And it's usually people who are eating it. But still, because the FBI products, a lot of people eat them. And again, that might be in something that you're unaware actually had a little bit of beef protein in it. So people who develop this sensitivity just have to become extremely careful about looking out to where beef products exist,
Emily Kiberd:other than being careful. How do you approach that treatment?
Darin Ingels:So we use different types of immunotherapy in our practice. At that point, now they've been sensitized. So we tried to desensitize them. And we primarily use a therapy called lda, or low dose allergy therapy. LDA is actually made by a pharmacy and a food mix. So they actually has beef and then 60 other different foods in the mix. So the concept behind it is that if you become allergic to someone of the foods, we can try and desensitize you to that food. And if you're not sensitive to the other foods in the mix, well, who cares because you're not allergic to it. And it seems to be helpful for a lot of people with that alpha gal sensitivity by treating the food and the dilution is so high that it doesn't trigger the reaction. There's technically some definit it's not enough that it actually makes people feel sick. So that's been the safest way that we've been able to approach it to try and help desensitize people against that alpha gal. It takes a while. It's not like it gets done in a matter of a few months. Often it takes several years to desensitize people but again If it prevents them from having that anaphylactic reaction, that's a win because from a conventional allergy standpoint, they don't do anything. They just say you're sensitive, you're allergic, don't ever eat a beef product again. And that's the way it goes. But we try to help improve people's immune tolerance to it. And in many cases, it does help reduce their allergy and sensitivity
Emily Kiberd:going back to Lyme disease. For people who do have chronic Lyme disease. I feel like sometimes there's this desperation to try any and all treatment. Are there any treatments that you would potentially recommend staying away from? Or certain treatments that you would be like, Yes, this is legitimate. Have you come across that?
Darin Ingels:You know, I think I've seen everybody do everything. And it's one of those things like you said, No, there's a million things you could do. You could spend 100 grand a month easily online treatment, if you have the money and the time and the energy. The reality is that a lot of the treatments that tend to be I'll say the high ticket ones, the ones that tend to be the most expensive, they aren't necessarily the most effective. And in many cases, I think they're minimally effective. I think the people who honestly do a lot of these high ticket treatments in their office promoted because moneymaker but I mean, for me, it's very foundational things, I think that give the best results. It's diet. It's gut health, it's herbal medicine, it's getting good sleep, it's moving your body, all these things to help correct your terrain, give you the best long term results, I'm not really interested in a therapy that might make you feel better for a couple of days. And sometimes you got to get people out of the weeds if they're really suffering, but I want something that's going to correct the problem long term. And a lot of the big ticket therapies out there. Don't necessarily do that. I mean, you know, we do ozone therapy in our office, we have a hyperbaric chamber, you could do IV, UVA, UVB therapy, again, there's a lot of very high tech stuff, and everything works to varying degrees to various people. And there's no one treatment I've ever seen, helps everybody. But I've seen a lot of things that help most people. And again, for me, it's let's start with the least invasive, most effective, most cost effective. And then we work up from there if we need to use some of the more advanced therapies, because we're not getting the results we want. Great, but it's not generally where I would start. So I mean, I wouldn't start someone on ozone therapy. I think ozone is great for acute Lyme disease, I've not seen it be terribly successful for chronic Lyme disease, it's very expensive. Same thing, hyperbaric oxygen is great. I've had some good success, but it's expensive, and it's time consuming. So against that generally where I start. So until we get all these foundational things in place. First, I think people can probably wait on maybe some of the more expensive therapies, and then see how you respond. Because sometimes it's amazing how well people do when you get their gut working better when they get them eating the right foods. It makes it's a big shift in their body that often again, we don't have to do the more high tech stuff.
Emily Kiberd:For people who don't know what ozone is. Can you give a quick description?
Darin Ingels:Yeah, I mean, ozone is a gas, it's basically you know, oxygen is oh to ozone is oh three, it's three oxygen molecules. And ozone itself has a lot of health benefits. I mean, it's anti microbial. It helps with tissue repair. Ozone can be administered through different ways to help depending on what tissue you're trying to affect. And again, it has a lot of benefit. It's interesting, it's demonized here in the US yet they use it widely throughout the world for various conditions. And again, it is effective, and there's a lot of good research on it. But again, it just it tends to be fairly expensive. Now there is a way to give ozone intravenously, you can inject ozone, you can put it up just about any orifice again for Lyme treatment. Again, my experience within again, I'm a live patient, I went through line myself and I did ozone therapy. And personally, I never found it did anything for me. I've had other patients that they feel good for a handful of days afterwards, but then they kind of slipped back. So again, I think as a first line therapy, that wouldn't be one that I would jump to but again, get these foundational things done first, that's the most important part
Emily Kiberd:for sure. We talked about infections adding load, and there are obviously more infections. There's a slight disease that Hashimotos ladies can struggle with if they've been exposed. So some examples would be Epstein Barr Virus is a really common one. Herpes Simplex H. Pylori. When you are seeing patients and they have a known Hashimotos diagnosis, how do you start to potentially uncover exposure to these other infections?
Darin Ingels:Yeah, I mean, fortunately, a lot of these things we can do through simple blood test or maybe a stool test for like something like H. Pylori, and again, I expect that people might have other symptoms. I mean, for people who have h pylori infection, often they have stomach complaints, they get heartburn, they get reflux and they have Hashimotos. Okay, that might be an indication that you're dealing with H. Pylori. If someone has lower intestinal problems, they get chronic diarrhea, chronic abdominal pain, maybe it's Campylobacter. If they've got swollen glands, they get intermittent fever and they have Hashimotos Maybe it's Epstein Barr Virus, maybe it's herpes simplex, we're looking at the collection of all the symptoms, you know, not just Hashimotos by itself, that gives us some clinical clues. And again, we can run blood tests to see, do they have antibodies against these different viruses or the bacteria, or ergonomists. And maybe we'll do a stool test to try and pick up some of these gastrointestinal bugs. But it's really a pretty simple process to try and help identify if you've got these other infectious agents that might be potential causes. Now, just because you've picked it up on a test doesn't necessarily prove that that's what's causing Hashimotos. But the fact that we know in the research that these are potential triggers, it makes sense that we deal with infection. And in many cases, again, we do see the load go down, and sometimes I'll see thyroid antibodies dropped, they may not completely normalize, but we'll see the levels go down the thyroid function improve. And of course, ultimately, do people feel better?
Emily Kiberd:How do you create a hierarchy of what to treat first, because I think a really good practitioner will step by step treat things one by one versus maybe a newer practitioner will just try and treat everything at once. How do you go about creating an for like priorities around what gets treated first,
Darin Ingels:kind of the same for Lyme you know, diet and gut are the foundation, we know that leaky gut is a potential cause for pretty much any autoimmune disease. And knowing that, you know, your gut microbes play an important role on modulating your immune system and the development of any autoimmune problem. So again, for anyone who's got chronic GI issues, that is a potential problem, and an autoimmune disease. And then the of course, again, you know, what you eat is important. So I test a lot of my patients for food sensitivities, because they can, that's a big add to their load. So between food diet food sensitivities got, that's always pretty much where I start for Hashimotos. And then beyond that, then we start looking into okay, what are the other potential triggers? Is it a toxic trigger? Are we looking at mold, mycotoxins and again, that kind of depends on where they live? Or where they have lived? What kind of exposure they had other toxic exposure? Did you grow up near a farm? Did you live on a golf course? Did you get exposure to pesticides, herbicides, and then again, we can start testing for infection. So again, a lot of its environmental overview, where did you live? Where did you grow up? That kind of thing? And then beyond that, what other potential exposures have you had? And it's just teasing through that. So it really does become I'd say, kind of an individual approach diet and gut for me is pretty much everybody. And then beyond that, it's what's unique to that person that gives us clues as to what those underlying triggers are.
Emily Kiberd:Is there anything specific to diet that you start to recommend to heal the gut, someone has a leaky gut,
Darin Ingels:you know, what I think we all kind of preach kind of a similar diet. I think, you know, I've read I think every book out there on autoimmune disease, no, between my book, Amy Myers book, Isabella wins, everybody, I think we're all kind of promoting mostly plant based diet, get rid of all of the junk food, get rid of all those foods, we know that tend to be aggravating to the immune system, it's kind of saying I mean, I am a fan of an alkaline diet. Basically, what that means is you eat certain foods as they break down in your body that can make your cells alkaline, they can make them acidic, or they're kind of neutral. We know from cell biology, that your cells generally function best in an alkaline state, the exception of your skin, your stomach, your bladder, for women, the vaginal area, which are very acidic, that's to help protect against outside invaders, the rest of your body is more or less alkaline. And we've got research that when your cells are in an alkaline state, all the enzymes work the way they're supposed to the cell functions kind of at its highest level, you get better tissue repair. So it just makes sense to me that if we're eating this way, we're giving your body at the most cellular level, the best opportunity to heal. And so I've kind of broken it down to three categories that there's category one, these are foods that are very alkaline forming in your body. And again, this isn't about the pH of the food, like lemons and limes are acidic. If I squeeze lemon juice on pH paper, it will turn acid. But when you eat lemons and limes, they break down your body and actually make you very alkaline. So again, not about the pH of the food, but how they break down in your body. So yeah, so category one are foods that when they break down, they make it very Alkalyn, you'll find it's a lot of vegetables, there's some nuts and seeds, and legumes, and so forth. Category Two are foods that are neutral to maybe even mildly acidic, so you'll find a lot of fruit, all animal protein falls in that category. So I try and tell people to keep it down to about 20 25% of their dietary intake. And so if you look at your plate divided in quarters, category two should be like a quarter of your plate. So it's not that you're not eating these things. It's just they're not the bulk of your diet. And then category three are really foods that are very acid forming. So it's a lot of junk food, processed food, dairy products, coffee. Fortunately, it's really easy for people to measure this because you can get some pH strips at the pharmacy 30 minutes after you eat to go pee on the strip and see what your urine pH is, we try and shoot for a urine pH of 7.2 or higher. And that gives us a pretty good idea that your body is in that more alkaline state. And again, clinically, my experience with it has been quite good. Dr. Terry walls, the walls protocol has a diet that's very similar her diets a bit more restrictive than kind of what I promote. But in the end, I think it's doing a lot of the same things is that you're talking about high nutrient dense foods, low processed foods. Ultimately, I know her diet, because I've had my patients measure, it does make your body very alkaline. And so she's a bigger fan of limiting like high lectin foods like legumes and nuts and seeds and things like that. I'm not so much in the lectin camp. But at the end of the day, I think it's about eating whole foods, the less hands that touch your food, probably the better. If you can't read ingredient on the label, don't eat it, that kind of thing. For
Emily Kiberd:the listeners who are listening in who have Hashimotos, maybe they have struggled with chronic Lyme, you are on the other side of this right? You had Lyme disease. And now you're on the other side. Yeah,
Darin Ingels:I mean, I got bit by tick in 2002. And, you know, it took me really three plus years to feel like I got my life back. But eventually got to the point where I was symptom free. So for people who are in the fight, it feels like it's daunting at times. But the beauty of being human, I suppose, is that it's built into our DNA to heal, we just need to get these obstacles out of the way to allow that process to happen. So that's why I talk so much about really fixing the terrain, getting down to the most basic tissue and cellular level. Because let's create an environment that's hospitable for healing, not hospitable for infection to overrun you. And you know, even with Lyme, and we could say with every other infection, I mean, COVID put 100 people in the room that all get exposed, you get 100 Very different responses. If the germ is problem, why do we get such varying responses to that germ? And I think a lot of it is the terrain. So how do we fix the terrain in a way that these germs just don't again, overrun our body?
Emily Kiberd:I love that message. Darren, thank you. You're such a wealth of knowledge, where can people find you,
Darin Ingels:you can find me at Darren Ingalls nd.com. And we'd love to share with your audience that you know, we're launching, I've got a free lime mini class. And it's basically I've developed four products with Allergy Research Group. And the supplements are really designed to help people with Lyme disease, I created a little mini class around that that's free to drop a link in for you guys to check it out. If people are really interested, I have a much longer bigger Lyme class that kind of walks you through all the aspects of Lyme treatment. But I think this free mini class is kind of a good introduction to what we're trying to achieve that we'd love for people if they're interested to check it out. Great. Thanks.
Emily Kiberd:If you enjoyed this episode, or even learned just one new piece of information to help you on your Hashimotos journey. Would you do me a huge favor, rate and review thyroid strong podcast on iTunes, Spotify or whatever platform you used to listen to this podcast and share what you liked. maybe learn something new. And if you didn't like it, well shoot me a DM on Instagram Dr. Emily hybird I read and respond to every single DM I truly believe all feedback is good feedback. Even the ugly comments if you're interested in joining the thyroid strong course a home workout program using kettlebells and weights where I teach you how to work out without the burnout. Go to Dr. Emily cowbird.com forward slash T 's waitlist you'll get all the most up to date information on when the course launches and goes live special deals and early access bonuses for myself and my functional medicine doctor friends again Dr. Emily khyber.com forward slash T s weightless hope to see you on the inside ladies