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I wanted to send some love to Justin Bieber. Last Wednesday, when he announced that he had to cancel shows due to his illness, one of our listeners, Jen, asked, “Doesn’t he have Lyme like you JV?” I said “Yes, however Lyme is usually never just Lyme. It’s much more complicated than that.” Of course on Friday, Justin shared a video showing that his face has become paralyzed due to his “illness.”
PLEASE READ THIS WHOLE POST
Even if you don’t have “Lyme” or this virus that is causing Justin’s paralysis and you are currently healthy, you might want to read this. 6 out of 10 Americans are currently struggling with a “chronic illness.” The latest to be added to the list is chronic Covid. I don’t like that term chronic illness. Chronic means the illness is persisting. But usually what is going on is a a complex illness. Many people that have a current complex illness are usually dealing with a multitude of symptoms like migraines, fatigue, dizziness, pain, nerve pain, eye pain, chest pain and palpitations, numbing and tingling in the extremities, brain fog, short term memory loss, depression, anxiety and more. It can progress to extreme fatigue where people are confined to a wheelchair, extreme vertigo, major cognitive decline, bipolar disorder, facial paralysis (like Justin Bieber) and more. People with complex illness can have some of the the symptoms I mentioned, all of them or a combination of those and others. When they go to the doctors, if they don’t fit into a particular diagnosis box, they are often told that they probably need psychiatric care or something that all complex illness people have heard at one time, “this is all in your head.” To me that is proof that the doctor has a complete lack of understanding when it comes to the mounting health crisis that we are facing.
THE BASELINE OF DISEASE
From the time we were children, we started picking up germs. Germs are microscopic bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa and parasites that can cause disease. You can pick up disease causing germs from ticks, fleas, mosquitoes and even spiders. You can also pick up germs from the surfaces you touch, pets and other humans. And despite what some old-school doctors were taught, these microbes can stay with us for life!
When you were younger, you might have contracted chicken pox. It was blistery and itchy and you felt sick. With the help of your immune system and good bacteria, you got past it. But that herpesvirus 3, called the varicella-zoster virus lives in your spine and there are several things that can reactivate it. When this happens it can cause a shingles outbreak leading to facial paralysis (like Justin Bieber now has) hearing loss as well as other issues. I am currently dealing with an extreme stabbing pain under my ribs as well as strange hearing issues that come and go.
The same is true for another virus that you probably picked up when you were younger. The Epstein Bar Virus or herpesvirus 4 is one of the most common viruses that we carry—95% of people have it worldwide. It is spread most through bodily fluids, primarily saliva. That’s why people call it the kissing virus. It’s also known as mono. It can lead to other illness as well. Again, it stays in your body forever. There are several things that can reactivate it. The same is true for the microbes that are transferred via ticks. They also never fully go away.
The truth is, it started before you were born. When you were born, your mother passed along a wide array of bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses. As I’ve shared before on my blog, you have more of these things than you have human cells. But luckily you have an immune system (along with the friendly bacteria) that has been trained for millions of years on how to keep the most harmful bacteria under control.
Each time you take on a new virus, bacteria or parasite your immune system has to go into fight- mode. It causes your immune system to take a hit. During that time, you are not only susceptible new germs, the old harmful bacteria that you picked up earlier in life can become semi-active. As I’ve said before, these microorganisms have been around longer than people. They know how, when and where to hide in a host. If your immune system is down a bit, they know this is a good time to come out, multiply, move to other areas of your body and set up new pathways of communication.
ONE MORE THING ABOUT MICROBES
There is a doctor who co-authored a book titled “Chronic” after he and the co-author were chronically ill for years with Lyme. They gathered a lot of research to lay out a case for their belief that these microbes are what’s behind almost all chronic illness. A person might originally suffer from migraines or insomnia or psychiatric disorders and more. If not properly addressed, they lead to Fibromyalgia, MS, Lupus, Alzheimer’s, Dementia and just about every other chronic illness. I’m not sure if that is true. I’ll stick to what we do know is 100 percent certain. We as people have forced our bodies to deal drastic changes.
DRASTIC CHANGES
Our immune systems are trying to adapt to the drastic changes that we have created over last 50-75 years. It took millions of years for our immune systems to learn how to handle the microbes. And then we added:
CHANGE IN NUTRITION
Our bodies are trying to adjust to the major change in nutrition. In a short period of time, many of us have switched to a diet loaded with sugar, fast food, processed foods, meats pumped with hormones, artificial flavors etc. On the flip side, if we were consuming plants, herbs and botanicals (not covered in chemicals) we would be benefiting from their many natural, healing properties. Many herbs contain natural disease-killing properties. The kill the harmful ones while protecting helpful bacteria.
CHANGE IN ENVIRONMENT
Many of us are exposed to high levels of air pollution, mold, toxins like pesticides, cleaning agents, perfumes and heavy metals like mercury. Did you know that the mercury you consume from fish can destroy brain tissue? Human activities have increased total mercury concentrations in the atmosphere by 450% of natural levels. The biggest problems are burning fossil fuels like coal. Long story short, it makes its way into the fish. There is no way to cook or prepare the fish to remove the mercury.
We had a neighbor that went from being a highly intelligent app developer to a depressed individual with a serious lack of basic, cognitive function do to high levels of mercury and metals. Luckily, he finally found a doctor who gave him a full panel of tests including a heavy metals test. It took years to recover, but he did. We are also now dealing with micro plastics in our bodies. We shared an article on The JV Show Friday about how micro plastics have been found in the snowfall in Antarctica. It has also been found in human lungs during surgery as well as in human blood. These toxins are a detriment to your immune system.
CHANGE IN ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES
We are dealing with a major change in the amount of electromagnetic radiation we are exposed to. We are sometimes exposed to x-rays, however, we are always exposed to radio waves. In case you don’t know inside radio waves, we have various frequencies that have been manipulated for the use of FM and AM radio, television broadcasts , military communications, mobile phones, ham radio, WI-FI and numerous other communications applications. As we go about our day, we walk through a sea of currents that some scientists believe can be disruptive to the natural electricity of our bodies. Over millions of years, our cells have become specialized to conduct electrical currents. Electricity is required for the function of your heart. Electricity is what required for your nervous system to send signals throughout the body and to the brain, making it possible for us to move and think.
CHANGE IN LIFESTYLE
More than ever, human beings are on brain overload. We are working harder, spending more time watching toxic television (like reality tv or political programming designed to raise your stress levels), spending hours on toxic social media, and spending more time on electronics while getting less and less sleep. Again the body is not prepared to endure this sort of abuse for prolonged periods of time.
IT’S ALMOST NEVER JUST ONE
Chronic illness or what I call complex illness is never due to just one of these factors, like the single bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Complex illness is a due to a combination of two or more of the things listed above. Some people end up finding out they have a combination of all of it wreaking havoc on their system. Today ALL of our bodies are like pressure cookers. Our immune systems struggle to hold everything together. Then all it takes is one “event” to boil over. At that point a person finds themselves dealing with one symptom after another. They stack up and get more severe over time. The leads to people starting the journey to see 10, 20 or up to 70 doctors.
So what are these “events” that can be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back? It can be a car accident, other physical trauma, emotional trauma, loss of a loved on, loss of a relationship, loss of a job. Or it can be yet one more virus or one more pathogen from a tick bite. Covid 19 caused millions of people to “boil over.” 33 percentage of Covid patients cannot get symptoms to go away, yet they are testing negative. Welcome to the group of us dealing with complex illness. I’m here to tell you, it’s not just Covid. You are now dealing with the aftermath as your body struggles to find normalcy. Many people have asked wether the Covid 19 vaccine could have been the final “event” for many people. I’m only going to say, I know what is true for me. To say anything more…to even ask the question seems to still be controversial. To me that’s ridiculous. I was reading an article in Scientific American today that said, “Science is a process of learning and discovery, and sometimes we learn that what we thought was right is wrong.” IN MY OPINION, it is POSSIBLE that a vaccine can trigger the immune system in a way that ignites other dormant illness. For other people it is fact. Talk to the many people who had put Lyme or EBV in remission only to have their nightmare return.
When these events happen, the immune system can become compromised or overactive. Once the immune system is compromised or sent into overdrive, it often attacks healthy cells. "COVID is deranging the immune system," said John Wherry, director of the Penn Medicine Immune Health Institute. "Some patients, from their very first visit, seem to have an immune system in hyperdrive.”
When the immune system is disrupted old microbes, that we have carried our entire lives, can become fully active. But again they are intelligent life. They know how to hide from the immune system causing it to become confused. This sets off a cascade of other imbalances throughout the entire body from hormonal to adrenal to autonomic function.
It’s interesting because a few days before Justin announced that he was ill, I said, “I don’t like calling myself a Lyme patient. Because there is so much more to the story. I have several things that have been reactivated and several imbalances that I’m trying to get under control. But if I’m being honest, it was only a matter of time before I had the “boil over event.” Prior to my illness, I had a terrible diet, high stress levels, surrounded by EMF signals that disrupted my sleep and I was breathing constant city pollution. I also had chicken pox at 22, mono at 23 and I had been bit several times by ticks. As a child, I would leave them on my body for days. Once my event happened, the insane symptoms took over me like a monster.
WE ARE THE LUCKY ONES
Justin Bieber is lucky. So am I. We are both in a privileged position that has allowed us to get a whole panel of testing done by doctors who not only agreed to an extensive panel of testing, they also insisted on knowing every detail of our lives—from childhood viruses, to tick bites, to our eating habits, how much we sleep and what exposure risks we have. Appointments like these take about 2.5 hours. When my results came in, they painted a picture. Then I got further tests and more of the picture became clear. Just like Justin, I am dealing with old tick infections as well as old viruses that have resurfaced. And I’m dealing with many imbalances and deficiencies. This isn’t guesswork. I could see this all on paper. My panel of tests showed me what normal ranges look like and where my markers had shot up to. When I tested months later, many of them continued to get worse. It was scary to see, but it explained why I had so many crazy symptoms. I’ll say it again, my complex illness, that had so many doctors stumped, was caused by a complex set of factors. The goal now is to work on all of these imbalances and deficiencies, to decrease the bacterial and viral loads that have multiplied and become active and to restore my immune system so that it can take over once again.
I know it’s going to be hard. I’ve read stories about it taking people years to restore themselves. I’ve read many stories like Justin Bieber’s, where it seemed like he put one part of his illness (Lyme) in remission, only to have another, the varicella-zoster virus, cause him to be sick and to have facial paralysis. The battle to get them all under control is something out of a horror movie. And if you push yourself too hard or too fast in returning to the life you once had, you can be set back to those original dark, dark times. You might remember the initial days when we saw Justin with extreme weight loss and he was photographed many times crying in public. This is because these microbes feed in a part of the brain that helps you regulate emotions. You actually lose control of them. I was in that place for a long, long time.
I told a friend that I felt bad Justin may never be able to fully return to the life he once had. My friend said, maybe that is the point.” The life he once had might have been very unhealthy and toxic. The life he once had might not have brought about new growth we are all going to witness. I definitely applaud Justin’s bravery. I am happy to hear him say that he thinks there is a reason behind everything he’s going through. I’ll come back to that.
The question is, if we’ve been through this much hell, why did I say that Justin and I are lucky? Because we were able to find doctors that would listen and help us start the long recovery back. Most people will never get that, because most doctors have been taught to put a single name on the illness and then medicate. That’s not going to work with complex illness. With multiple things going on, you need a doctor that understands that all of these things can play a factor, which is why no two patients would be alike. The doctors that treat complex illness are incredibly expensive. They are not covered by insurance. This complex illness has completely wiped out my savings thus far. But, I am still lucky. I am fortunate enough that I had a savings that allowed me to realize what is going on. Most people don’t.
The reason I’m sharing this post today is to acknowledge the people that are suffering from multiple symptoms. I know it’s painful and scary. I know that you have been told by doctors that there is nothing wrong with you after a few tests or a MRI. Many of you have been told that this is all in your head. I know that many doctors only take people seriously after they see someone like Justin walk in the door with their face paralyzed. For any doctor to say our complex illness is in our heads is criminal. Criminal, as that response has lead to many people taking their lives.
Hey doctors, if people come in with multiple symptoms that you don’t understand, seek the wisdom of other doctors who are now trying their best to understand and treat complex illness. If you refuse to research or seek the help of other doctors who are now dedicated to this field, help your patient find the doctors who are. These patients need doctors who will run the following basics
- “Tick or Bug-borne" bacteria like Borellia and Bartonella
- Viruses like EBV or Varicella-zoster
- Parasites like Babesia
- Mold, Toxins, Heavy Metals
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Thyroid, adrenal, hormonal, gut imbalance
- Possible genetic tests
People that are suffering, hang in there! There are not only medications that can help address complex illness, more importantly, there are natural remedies. They are all expensive, but I hope and pray that with enough people speaking up when can not only get affordable testing but affordable treatments covered by insurance.
I can’t make recommendations on treatments right now because I would be at risk of being in trouble for giving out medical advice.
People who are currently “healthy” please take care of yourself. Try to eat better food. Rest. Sleep. Tell your job “no” sometimes. Try to avoid toxic cleaners, pesticides and foods that are toxic like tuna or too much seafood in general. Turn off toxic tv like reality shows that are designed to get people emotionally rattled. Skip past toxic posts on social media that got you into fighting with other people. Take really long breaks from EMF devices and connect with nature instead. You might wanna bring some natural bug repellent. Lol Maybe if you do these things your body can better deal with the various viruses and parasites that we carry and encounter. Btw, you still should wash your hands, and if you are stressed, have poor sleep, or a poor diet, try to avoid viruses that are circulating. Minimize your risk of contracting another virus. If you are already immune compromised, minimize your risks! It’s not that hard to add a layer of protection. I personally still wear a mask because I’m in no condition to take on another virus. I don’t give a sh*t what people think. I’d like to see people that look at me funny go through what I or Justin has gone through for even one month.
A final word on Justin Bieber. I think he’s going to learn several things on his journey. I know I have. One thing I’ve learned, besides that I’ve had to change the way I eat and the way I live, is that I need to help speak up for others!! Honestly, there is a long list of celebrities that have been diagnosed with “Lyme.” I know their doctors gave them a full panel of tests and told them, “we actually have several things to work on to get your immune system back in charge.” My question is, where is the call from celebrities to ask that ALL people with a wide-range of strange symptoms get this panel of tests at an affordable price? Where is the call for ALL people to be shown that there are many options and paths to take to return your health (but your intuition will also have guide)? And where is the call for all of us to wake up and realize that these viruses and microbes have only gotten smarter. The sobering reality is that antibiotics are starting to no longer work, because these organisms are becoming resistant. If we stay on this path, humans are not going to win this battle, the organisms will. I know we need to research new medicine. However, we have to also change-how we treat ourselves, how we treat this planet and how we treat each other.
Maybe Justin Bieber and others will do what I’m doing today. Echoing the words of 2Pac when he called on us to make CHANGES.
2Pac
“It's time for us as a people, to start making some changes.. let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live, and let's change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so its on us, to do what we gotta do to survive.”
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photo: getty images