Today on the Gut Health Reset Podcast, we are diving into an epidemic that might be at the root of your bowel issues! Constipation and IBS can be associated with chronic Lyme disease and co-infections of Lyme. But not only bowel disorders can be associated with this, it can also cause anxiety, depression, other neuropsychiatric disorders, joint pain, the list goes on and on. Today’s episode is packed with so much usable information on how to identify Lyme disease, moving forward, and more with Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer!

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We answer these questions:

– What is Lyme disease and how can you get it?

– Where might you be at risk of contracting lyme disease?

– What are some of the gut issues caused by lyme disease?

– Understanding Lyme disease and food sensitivities.

– How does histamine factor in?

– What steps should someone take to tell if they have Lyme disease?

– And more!

 

Still want to learn more? Schedule with Dr. Barter today!

 

Supplements:

Constipation Support 1: https://drannmariebarter.com/product/constipation-support-1/

Histamine Support 1: https://drannmariebarter.com/product/histamine-support-kit-1/  

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About Dr. Kinderlehrer:

Daniel A. Kinderlehrer, MD, is a nationally recognized physician with expertise in the fields of nutrition, allergy, environmental medicine, Lyme disease, and the healing of mind-body-spirit as a unified whole. He co-founded The New England Center for Holistic Medicine in Newbury, Massachusetts, and has taught extensively, including practitioner training courses at the Omega Institute, The National Institute of Behavioral Medicine, and the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. He created and organized the Lyme Fundamentals course which is presented annually at the International Lyme and Associated Diseases conferences. He is the author of several review articles in medical journals and the Lyme Times. His integrated medical practice in Denver, Colorado, focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of tick-borne disease. 

You can find him at: https://recoveryfromlyme.com/ 

And on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/LymeDoc 

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Subscribe for more gut health content and share this podcast with a friend! Take a screenshot of this episode and tag Dr. Ann-Marie Barter:

http://instagram.com/drannmariebarter

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Dr. Ann-Marie Barter is a Functional Medicine and Chiropractic Doctor at Alternative Family Medicine & Chiropractic. She is the clinic founder of Alternative Family Medicine & Chiropractic that has two offices: one in Longmont and one in Denver. They treat an array of health conditions overlooked or under-treated by conventional medicine, called the “grey zone”. https://altfammed.com/

https://drannmariebarter.com/

 

Transcription:

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:00:00] Today on the Gut Health Reset Podcast, we are diving into an epidemic that might be at the root of your bowel issues, constipation and IBS can be associated with chronic Lyme disease and the co-infections of Lyme. But not only bowel disorders can be associated with this. This can also cause anxiety, depression, other neuropsychiatric disorders, joint pain. The list goes on and on. Today’s episode is packed with so much usable information on how to move forward. If you suspect this, you don’t want to miss a minute.

Intro [00:00:44] Are you struggling with bloating, gas, constipation and fatigue but don’t know what’s causing these problems? The Gut Health Reset Podcast with Dr. Ann-Marie Barter dives deep into the root causes behind these issues that start in the gut. This podcast will give you the knowledge you need to heal your gut and reset your health.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:01:05] Thank you so much for joining us here today on the Gut Health Reset Podcast. I’m your host Dr. Ann-Marie Barter, and today I have such a special guest for you. His name is Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer and he is a physician, an M.D. that has expertize in nutrition, allergy, environmental medicine, Lyme disease and the healing of mind body spirit as a unified whole. He co-founded the New England Center of Holistic Medicine in Newbury, Massachusetts. He has taught extensively including practitioner training courses at the Omega Institute, the National Institute of Behavioral Medicine and the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. He created and organized the Line Fundamentals Course, which is presented annually at the International Lyme and Associated Disease conferences. He is the author of several review articles in medical journals and the Lyme Times. His integrative medical practice in Denver, Colorado, focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of tick borne diseases. Dr. Kinderlehrer is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast, and I am so excited to dove into your story, and I am curious what got you focused on the treatment of Lyme disease?

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:02:38] OK, I have what might be called an apocryphal story. My medical practice was basically an integrative or functional medicine practice. We didn’t call it that back then. We had different names for it, like complementary, and it’s all an alternative medicine. I was trained as a classic internist, so I had that background. And in August of. 1996, I came down with this high fever, shaking chills, drenching sweat, the few severe muscle aches. It’s the middle of summer, and then two or three days later, I was fine. Went for runs, and then the next week it came back. And I was in denial, I thought, well, some virus. But then when it came back again, I thought, Hmm, OK, I got to get this shut down. I went to a friend of mine. We did some tests. We came back as Lyme disease and I thought, Oh, OK, that’s cool. I’ll take some antibiotics. I’ll be fine. But instead of being fine, I got worse in a different way. I developed severe anxiety and sleep problems. And I’m taking antibiotics. I got another test again confirmed that I have Lyme disease. I’m feeling terrible and I called up a doctor who then and now to some degree, is considered a world expert in Lyme disease. And he was at Tufts New England Medical Center, which is my alma mater. He graciously and courteously called me back and I presented my my situation to him. And he said, Well, you don’t have Lyme disease. I said, well, what about the tests, you know, they were a slam dunk. It’s a false positive. They were wrong. I said, Well, why don’t I have Lyme disease? He said, because if you did, you’d be better now. And I said, Whoa. Well, what do I have? And he said something else. That was it, that was the conversation, and I was somewhat stunned. It turns out he was categorically wrong. I absolutely had Lyme disease and he was correct. I had something else. I had the Baucus’s. But the bcos is clear for the listeners to understand. This is a co-infection among the handful of other infections you can get from ticks other than Lyme disease. It was mostly under the radar back then. It was years later that that was diagnosed, but it was causing these awful neuropsychiatric symptoms and eventually I ended up getting Bartonella too. I was living in Massachusetts and became a pretty endemic area, tracked all my kids and my ex-wife all get Lyme disease, and it became and I finally got better because I got I was sick for a long time and I was totally disabled for a while. It was apparent that the very few docs who know what they’re doing, the infectious disease inside of America and the CDC got it all wrong. And and I said, Well, you know, if I can help anyone not experience what I’ve gone through with this, I’ll have done a mitzvah, a good thing. And and so that’s how I got into it in ours and back then, by the way, so this is going back 20 plus years. Most of us, most of us physicians who are treating Lyme disease and chronic infections in particular. Either we personally had our experience with it or a close family member and just came into personal contact with the inability of the routine mainstream infectious disease doctors, whatever, they didn’t know what they were doing. That’s how we got into it back then.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:06:47] Yeah, I have so many questions to spin off of your stories. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that that will really resonate with some folks. You talk about in your book that Lyme is an epidemic, and I think it’s commonly thought, OK, well, I don’t live in the Northeast, so I probably don’t have Lyme. Can you discuss a little bit of just is Lyme just in the northeast type thing and just kind of Mythbusters out a little?

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:07:23] Yeah. So first of all, it is an epidemic and and even the CDC acknowledges that it’s an epidemic. According to the CDC, something like 40000 people a year are reported to the CDC. But do they do their algorithm and realize it’s probably underreported by 10 to one? That makes it 400000. However, however, they have very stringent criteria for reporting that is. Some studies would suggest that only about four to five out of 10 of those people. Who have lung disease would meet their criteria to be able to be reported. OK, so. So if you let’s say if there’s only four out of 10, then you’re going to have to take that 400000 and multiply it. And it’s going to be well over a million new cases a year, and that doesn’t even include the people who got Lyme who were asymptomatic when they got it and didn’t didn’t get clinically diagnosed. So there’s well over a million new cases a year. It’s it’s generally accepted now that 10 to 20 percent of them go on to become chronically ill. So now we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people every year becoming chronically ill, and that doesn’t even include those people who were never originally diagnosed and ended up being misdiagnosed with a chronic illness like chronic fatigue, syndrome, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disorders, neuropsychiatric diagnoses or labels. OK, so it’s a lot and it’s a lot. And then more to the point of your question, you know, the very first case of Lyme disease in the United States was in Wisconsin 1971, a dermatologist named Sacramento saw someone who had a tick attachment need a bullseye rash. He was aware of the European literature, which had been describing this for the better part of the century and put the person on penicillin. And he did fine, and then it was discovered in the late 70s and in. Lyne, Connecticut, where there was an outbreak of kids with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, a fairly uncommon autoimmune disorder in kids, which of course was JRA at all, it was Lyme disease to the doctor who headed. That investigation was the same doctor who told me I didn’t have Lyme, and here’s a rheumatologist. And basically, they zeroed in on the joint issues, but they never really acknowledged the neurologic problems. And I can tell you the neurologic problems are worse than the musculoskeletal ones, for sure. OK. It turns out that there were there are hot spots and then there’s everywhere else. It’s important to realize that Lyme disease has been reported in all 50 states. There is no state in the United States of America where you cannot get Lyme disease. There are places that you’re much more likely to get it. So we start with the Northeast, which is considered endemic and and definitely the Great Lakes, states and the northwest. And what they have in common is humidity because the ticks prefer humidity. But the southeast is really endemic to I see patients from the southeast with some regularity. The doctors there are not diagnosing it as much. So it’s not as obvious that there is a lot of Lyme there and you start heading west. And I see so many patients from Texas and Missouri and here in Colorado or beautiful state of Colorado, where the Department of Health says you can’t get Lyme disease here. Right. So so I would say that about. At least half my patients are from Colorado, OK, and the rest are from all over. And of those Colorado patients, I would say at least five percent of them got it in Colorado. No question. Absolutely no question. Along with all the co-infections that are described and I’m sure we’ll get into. So the point is nowhere is totally safe, but some places are a lot safer than others. If you live in this very safest place and go to New Mexico, where it’s so dry. But you know, I won’t vacation on Cape Cod, you know, and I’m just not going to go to those places. It is is just a huge problem, but it’s a mistake to say, Well, I’m safe if I go here or there and you’re not totally safe, it’s just safer and you should still do your due diligence.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:12:40] And I mean, the so you talked about neurological and joint problems, but I think the big thing that I want to hit on with this being the Gut Health Reset Podcast is I really want to hit on some of the gastrointestinal complaints as well that someone might present with with Lyme or with some of the co-infections. Can you maybe break some of those down?

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:13:05] OK, so. I’m going to work my way there. Actor. OK, so. Most of my patients have chronic infection. I see maybe a dozen recent infection a year and 95 percent of my patients have been sick for years or decades before they come to see me. So this is a first there’s a significant difference between recent or acute onset versus long term or chronic, the recent or acute onset, if they’re lucky, get diagnosed and treated properly and they can do fine. But I want to move into people who develop chronic illness. One thing is. I believe 100 percent of them have co-infections. I have not yet seen, not yet seen a chronic patient who did not have at least one and often several co-infections. And as an aside, so far of the hand I’ve seen maybe in within the past 12 months, maybe a half dozen acute onset Lyme disease, they all had co-infections, too. It’s really the rule. OK, now what happens when you get Lyme and co-infections? What happens with these infections is they don’t they they don’t invade tissue the way we normally think, say, of a strep infection or a wound infection where where the microbes are invading our cellular network. And then there’s a local response and inflammation that takes out the bugs and repairs the tissue and so on. That’s the way we normally think of infection. So instead of sitting hitting hardware, what these folks do is they hit software they dysregulated and they distribute. This regulate our immune system, our neurological system, our endocrine system, which, as you know, are really not separate systems at all. I mean, these things are all one integrated information network that’s trying to keep everybody in some sort of homeostasis and functioning properly. And the gastrointestinal system is part of that. Also, the gastrointestinal system, as you well know, has has more neurons than the spinal cord. It has more immune cells than the rest of the body put together. It’s got its own hormone network that communicates with the rest of the body, giving rise to the concept of a gut emotion, which is literally accurate. OK, so my point is that the what happens with line in which the bottom line is systemic inflammation. For people who haven’t been aware of this, think of it. This is what happens with COVID patients. OK, those of us who’ve been treating Lyme disease know, we know we understand what’s going on with COVID. And so when the GI system gets hit, an awful lot of things can happen. And then there’s the downstream things that happen. So the first thing that can happen is that the bugs themselves can cause gastrointestinal systems just directly the worst bug. The worst tick borne infection to cause gastrointestinal system issues is Bartonella. People who haven’t been in the lab community probably never heard of Bartonella, but it turns out to be fairly ubiquitous. If you read about cat scratch disease, that’s Bartonella. And and it’s interesting. Bartonella is a very weird but also very dangerous bug. Many people get Bartonella from a cat scratch, for example, and they still harbor Bartonella, and they’re totally asymptomatic. Some people just don’t react to it. So I should point out that some of this is a seed and soil issue. That is, it’s not only the bug, it’s our reaction to it, and that’s determined by a lot of issues, including genetics. So Bartonella has this potential to cause severe neuroinflammation. And in fact. When we see people with severe neuropsychiatric symptoms in association with Lyme disease, it’s usually Bartonella and Bartonella can cause severe gastrointestinal problems, and it can cause anything from so-called irritable bowel complaints to inflammatory bowel disease. I had I’m thinking right now of a young woman who had Bartonella infection that manifested as Crohn’s disease, and her doctors put her on a trend trending zone, and it made her dramatically worse. No surprise. And because prednisone suppressed the immune system and then the infection just got worse. I had a patient with Bartonella who was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and an even worse primary sclerosing cholangitis. That’s a that is not that common problem in which there is inflammation of the bile ducts both inside and outside the liver, and it can be fatal. It’s associated with a lot of cancers associated with cirrhosis of the liver. But Bartonella was in the colon causing colitis, and the immune reaction to the Bartonella was causing this cholangitis. And when when he was given vancomycin orally, which is not absorbed, which killed the Bartonella in his colon, the cholangitis went away because he was no longer having that autoimmune reaction to the Bartonella. OK, so Bartonella can cause neuro neuropathy, and you could end up with gastroparesis when your bowels just paralyzed. Don’t move. People with this really severe chronic constipation issues taking tons of Mir relax her needing to get enemas and all sorts of drugs now being developed to help treat this. But we can keep on going with the gut. One of the issues, as I described, is people develop chronic inflammation, and that includes multiple sensitivity syndromes. Most of my patients with chronic one have food sensitivities. Most of them didn’t have food sensitivities before they got Lyme. But because of the the perturbation of the immune system, and now it’s become more sensitive or hyper reactive. Now they’ve developed food sensitivities. Most common foods would be eggs, dairy and gluten. Those are the most common shares, but it could be a whole lot of other foods as well that are simply the most common. So those food sensitivities often manifest in gut issues and other systemic complaints that they eat those foods. Well, guess what? They sometimes get bellyache or diarrhea, but they also get brain fog and headaches and joint pains and things like that. So they often do elimination challenge diets. We also send out blood tests for food sensitivities should skip something. I’d mentioned how Bartonella can cause a neuropathy resulting in severe constipation, but it can also cause diarrhea just from the inflammation that I was talking about. OK. The busier sometimes causes these symptoms, and I should add. And by the way, they can end up with chronic nausea and sometimes with vomiting as well. So here’s one that we see a lot, and that’s cibo small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, right? And. So again, for the to your listeners, the the large colon is teeming with trillions of bacteria, the small intestine. It’s not sterile, but it’s relatively scarce in terms of bacteria, but under certain conditions, bacteria can over grow there. There’s two really common situations in my patient population that can allow that to happen. One is the constipation that can occur with Bartonella in particular and maybe some other issues like food sensitivities or parasites. These can cause constipation as well, right? So now you have bugs migrating from the large colon up, excuse me, into the small intestine. And you have overgrowth there. Another issue that is really not uncommon in my patient population is hypochlorite history, a fancy way of saying no stomach acid. As you know, high stomach acid gets all the attention. Why? Well, because we have drugs that treat it, and I think these drugs are terrible.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:22:44] And so also known as like PPIs or proton pump inhibitors, you just can you just touch on why those are terrible? Because I don’t think a lot of folks. I think a lot of folks think they’re pretty benign, and I think you bring up a really great point with that.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:23:01] Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Brenner, that we should talk about that.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:23:06] Really, we got a lot to cover.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:23:09] Yeah. So proton pump inhibitors, what they do is they actually decrease your stomach’s ability to to generate acid. And why? Why are they prescribed? Well. Because GERD, which is gastro esophageal reflux disorder or heartburn, you know, is very, very common. And when you decrease the stomach acid. You still get you still get reflux, but it’s not as acidic, and so it tends not to burn so much. OK. It’s so as prescribed, triggered and technically it’s only supposed to be used short term. But the gastroenterologist tell you, Oh no, you can stay on this stuff for life and and you can’t get off of it then. And in fact, I’ve had patients just take it for a week or two and have trouble getting off of it because here’s what what happens when you decrease stomach acid? There’s relaxation in the sphincter between the esophagus and the stomach. There’s actually more reflux, but it’s benign because it’s not very acidic. OK? But then you take away the protein pump inhibitor. You still have some relaxation in that sphincter left. You get people are worse when they try to stop it, they’re worse than before they started the pie. So, you know, when I have patients on PPIs, we do this very slow titration off of the eyes. It’s really challenging. OK, well. Turns out, hydrochloric acid is very important. I don’t understand why the gastroenterologists don’t understand that, but they don’t really look at things from a functional standpoint. They’re looking for sure ulcerative disease and tumors and things like that, you know, they look up to you, live down you. They don’t see anything. You’re fine, but you may not be fine at all. Right? You can have all sorts of problems with digestion and assimilation and inflammation that’s not visible. So. So hydrochloric acid is important for these reasons. One is you need it to kill light minerals for proper absorption, for women in particular, low hydrochloric acid is a major risk factor for osteoporosis, but all the minerals are going to go down. You need hydrochloric acid for proper protein digestion, and assimilation is our first step in breaking down protein into its amino acids. People all long term PPIs often are very deficient in amino acids. We also need it to as a barrier function, hydrochloric acid kills bugs before they get in to the small intestine. And therein lies low hydrochloric acid as a significant risk factor for cibo, because now we have bones getting into the small intestine that should have been knocked off at the stomach lining. So what is cibo? There is right now there are two classes of organisms that cause cibo. One is the hydrogen producers, and the hydrogen producers tend to cause bloating and gas and loose stools, often nausea. And then the methane producers, which are not bacteria, they’re called methanogens. They’re from some distant planet called archaea. I’d never heard of them before Cibo, and they now they now are their own kingdom. They don’t have this cell nucleus. I don’t understand them. But but they produce methane and they tend to produce constipation, as well as the bloating, the gas, the nausea and abdominal distress. And so we have different agents to treat those things, but we have to treat the underlying issue. You know, if someone is severely constipated, why are they constipated? And if someone has low hydrochloric acid, we need to give them hydrochloric acid and. The interesting caveat, I have had at least a handful of patients in my career where were given them one tablet of hydrochloric acid, and they had major heartburn and indigestion. Now, as you know, Dr. Barter one tablet is very little compared to what our stomach should be making. The issue has been that they have been hyper, they’ve been Eclair Heidrick so long that their stomach lining simply are not acclimated to acid. And then you give them a little bit and poof, they just don’t tolerate it. So we have to go very, very slow on a titration often starting with like a half a teaspoon of vinegar, which is the old time remedy for low hydrochloric acid, right? So OK. But now it gets everything about chronic liver is complicated. I was going to title my book Lyme Disease.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:28:16] It’s complicated because it is. It’s really complicated.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:28:20] It is, you know, so that’s actually one of the first chapters of my book is it’s complicated. Here’s why we’re not talking about a simple infection.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:28:28] So many people struggle with bloating, bowel issues, brain fog, fatigue. You might not even have any gut issues, but did you know the cause of it could be food sensitivities or gut infections? What I have done is I have brought a talented functional nutritionist into my practice. We have very similar training in the nutritional world, and her name is Alexis Appleby. She is awesome. So you can head on over to our website, Alt Alti Fam Fam Med Med and have a consultation with her and schedule so that she can help you get to the root cause of your problems.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:29:12] OK. Well, I suspect, like you, I see a lot of people with Cibo, but then we’re looking at what are risk factors, but also a lot of these people with Cibo have fungal overgrowth and a lot of them have parasites. So now we get into that many more problems. I mentioned when we first started talking about God that a lot of food sensitivities can cause gut issues that often manifest as, quote unquote irritable bowel, which for the sake of listeners, I just want to dispense of that diagnosis. It’s a garbage pass, wastebasket diagnosis. You know, it’s actually 80 percent of the diagnoses coming out of the gastroenterologist office, 80 percent of whom end up on pads. I mean, it’s really Meshuggah. It’s this is not a good situation. But, you know, it’s like equivalent to you go into a doctor, say, Doctor, I have this pain in my head and the doctors, OK, I know your diagnosis. You have a headache. You know, that’s what irritable bowel syndrome is. It’s like, we know what you have. You have irritable bowel syndrome. Well, that doesn’t tell us anything about about what you have and and and food sensitivities, as I know you’re aware, you know, they’re a big issue. And these all these other things I’m describing need to be investigated before Lyme. I did medical detective work on people with chronic illness, and I saw people with irritable bowel syndrome all the time. And when we looked at food sensitivities and stomach acid issues and pancreatic insufficiency, not enough enzymes, sometimes not enough bile secretion and then parasites are. I have to admit that I’m beginning to agree more and more with the trickling cart that most of us have parasites and. Most of us, if we’re really healthy, we’re well balanced, I don’t know who that is out there, I haven’t met them, but but but most of people, if they are otherwise healthy, the parasites can just be a colonizer, along with the trillions of other bugs that we cohabit with. And then when our immune system gets whacked out, now we’re reacting to the presence of these bugs. Just like react, react to Lyme and different co-infections. And they cause a lot of distress that can cause not only gastrointestinal distress, but it can also cause systemic inflammation from headaches and brain fog and fatigue. The joint pains so interesting when we start treating. When we started treating these parasites, the systemic symptoms did get better and when were people are not getting better from everything else we’re doing. I often say, you know, let’s let’s look at parasites. And as you know, the the the mainstream labs do a terrible job at recognizing parasites. I mean, I don’t even bother sometimes. Many times I just say, let’s just treat and see what happens. But there is a in our vicinity where we live. There’s a power wellness clinic in Aurora, where you can actually order a kit by mail. And they they do a much, much better job at finding parasites and worms. You’ll never get a worm diagnosed in a mainstream hospital. So, OK, here’s another story. So this is at least three or four years ago, a patient, lovely, lovely 60 year old ICU nurse who is she had Lyme in the back. She was about 80 percent better, and then she came in and told me this story that she was on the internet and she heard this discussion system. She had had some gastrointestinal system. Issues, but they were mostly better just being off gluten. Then she decided to go on this product called Mimosa Protocol Seed. Right. And now the interesting thing is I’ve been using mimosa protocol, not the seed for years because it’s a Asian antimalarial and it’s really effective for a C infection. But this is not what I was using, which was from the leaves and the stems. This is the seed and it has totally different action. And she took it sort of taking it, and she started seeing worms come out, including she identified a tapeworm. I mean, she just it was just, you know, quite amazing. And she had no idea, no idea. And then afterwards, she said she couldn’t believe how good she felt. So. After that, I started giving giving this most of fricassee just to patients and saying, why choose? You still see what happens? And at least 50 percent say, Oh my god, I can’t believe what came out of me. And there I have. Well, you love this story. So a kid who’s he’s got a pan syndrome, you know, acting out with all sorts of mood changes. And when he went on the boat, he had food sensitivities and that really helped. But the most supportive casi really helped a lot. But then it turned out he only needed to take it during the full moon. That’s when he was acting out more, right? When they say that these things get active, right? So it’s important for people to know that you can have parasites without having any idea you have parasites. And while they often cause or they can cause, you know, an acute diarrhea or dysentery dysentery syndrome when you first get it to your RDA, which is not uncommon here in Colorado. But chronic chronic parasites often cause constipation and other nonspecific bowel complaints. So that’s something we look at to, you know, when you bring up the GI system, as you know, I have a big chapter in my book on the GI system because. That it is finally getting the respect it deserves. You know, it’s this is really the first system in our body from an evolutionary standpoint. And and it’s developed in a way, you know, as much or more than most systems in our body in terms of how it interacts with everything else. Yeah. So I just gave a very long answer to your question.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:36:13] Well, I think it was a great answer. That was awesome. The one thing that I want to dove a little bit more into with GI symptoms is histamine, because histamine has become a big buzz word and we’re talking about antihistamine diets and whatnot. And so I want to know how what you see plays into that and maybe what the root cause is of the histamine reactions.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:36:43] Yeah. So thank you for bringing this up, Dr. Broder. So. What we’re really talking about is Massow activation syndrome. So mast cells are primitive white cells. You know, we talked about the primitive, you know, single celled organisms. And, you know, as they develop the the first line of defense was where these mass cells that would be particularly in orifices and areas where other agents might come in and we could react to them. OK, so so we still have mass cells themselves contain up to 200 inflammatory mediators, of which histamine happens to be the most famous. But they’re ones that are much, much more potent than histamine, like Luca Trinian’s, for example, and some of the cytokines. So the the. These these mediators sit inside this membrane and that makes up the mass, and then something can trigger the mass Zell. And these mediators release, then they release, there’s an inflammatory reaction and this can manifest a whole lot of different ways. It can manifest with our straightforward allergy symptoms hay fever, food reactions, anaphylaxis. This is all mass cell mediated, right? It can cause inflammatory system symptoms all over the body. And so we’re talking again joint pains, migraine headaches in the bowels. You can get dysentery, abdominal cramps and diarrhea syndromes and bloating. Yes, severe rashes. People with chronic Lyme tend to have Massow activation syndrome, where these mass cells whose whose main job really should be protection are overreactive. The threshold for granulation and release of these chemicals goes down, and the line packs fire to the line bacteria one of the things that can trigger it. And and then it’s adding to all this inflammation. So it’s sort of a responder, but it then it becomes the cause of tons of the inflammation, which is the again, the bottom line problem with these chronic infections. We we we we know histamine, and in fact, I’m going to recommend to your listeners that they do a little experiment, which is to scratch the inside of their forearm with their fingernail and just watch to see what happens if there’s a red line or white wine or sometimes a red line in between a couple of red lines, which I’m glad to say, I don’t see moment that. That’s called dramatic graph here, which is just Latin for skin writing, and that’s a histamine reaction. And that means there’s some excess histamine. OK. And consider that if the chronic symptoms that Marcell activation could be contributing to whatever that person’s chronic symptoms are. OK, well, what do we do about MS. Overactivation syndrome? One thing is we try to improve the integrity of the lining of the mast cells so that they don’t tend to discharge their contents. We try to make that more secure and we do that with certain nutrients like magnesium and essential fatty acids. Bio flavonoids in particular, like quercetin to New York City and bio flavonoids or vitamin C helpers. And they’re found naturally in the rinds of oranges and grapefruit that stringy stuff that people tend to throw away. And then there are medications like caramel and sodium, where Astrakhan people taking this gastric from before meals can often block food reactions back in the old days pre line. When I and I dealt, I did so much environmental illness. Back then, I took thousands of people through elimination challenge diets, and I saw people all sorts of different kinds of reactions, including anaphylactic reactions. And I actually had people who could take gastro chrome before eating their scallops that normally would cause anaphylaxis, and they were fine. Now you don’t do that at home, folks. You know, this was, you know, sitting in the emergency room parking lot with a friend who was ready to shoot them in and get a shot of epinephrine. OK. So but the point is, it can really help block these, these reactions, there’s another drug called ketone offenders. There’s certainly more things one can do at that end. And then there are agents we can use that that actually help break down histamine. They’re called D.E.A. or diamon oxidase, and that’s simply an enzyme that we use to break down histamine. But I can tell you that I could see patients with Lyme who develop really severe Massow activation, and now you have to avoid foods that contain histamine. And so there are these diets and I listed in my book. His diet were that, oh, there’s a long list of foods that include yummy things like citrus and tomatoes and avocado, and they are foods that not only that, that not only have histamine but trigger histamine, release and so on. So there’s a lot of potential diet considerations. But Dr. Barter, I’ll tell you that it’s really inconsistent one person to the next. So for example, my wife, who has pretty severe Massow activation issues. She can do avocados, but she can’t do tomatoes. You know, who knows why other people? It’s the opposite, you know, so you really do have to figure this out for yourself. But it can make a huge difference that can make a huge difference dealing with massive activation issues.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:43:24] Very good, yeah, I agree, I don’t think it’s across the board, I should just avoid these histamine containing foods, and that’s it. It’s really individualized. I would agree with that. So I think one of the biggest problems when it comes to treating Lyme, figuring out what the co-infections are. A lot of folks will claim to treat Lyme disease or you also get written off because maybe the initial testing, if you had that done in a traditional medical setting, might be negative. So I always get asked what the next step is to to find somebody that is trained to treat this. So what’s the next step? And if someone’s listening and they’re like, What do I do? Because my traditional doc said, Now this is this is normal.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:44:19] Yeah, that’s a great question, because I think it happens every day, you know, here in Colorado. So. This is interesting, so in the past four to five weeks I’ve had. Three or four new onset patients, you know, I I I don’t take new patients. I only occasionally take new patients, and that’s simply because I’m booked. I don’t have space to take them. I didn’t feel badly about it, and I end up with this long waiting list. But if someone has acute Lyme, I do cartwheels. I work an extra day, I do whatever, and then we see them because the sooner you treat, the better. And so if someone says, well, you know, a month ago, this is such and such happened and I was fine until then. We get we get them in that week and I feel great about that because I, whether they realize it or not, I’ve saved them a lifetime of misery. Absolutely right. By treating them. If someone had done that for me, you know, my wife would run a different course. OK. So, so here’s. Well, I’ll tell you a couple of different stories. This is a woman who was in Florida and she had a tick attachment and she developed a rash. And she three weeks later, she develops some other symptoms and whatever Chantel Ray from I can’t remember, but I remember she did have some neuropathic symptoms, so she had some, I think, some numbness and tingling and and some sharp pains. And I think she had some sweats and chills, night sweats in particular. And. She went to see her doctor this, who told her, are you ready for this? Well, you can’t have Lyme disease, just there’s no Lyme in Florida. Wow. I have a bunch of patients from Florida with Lyme, and there’s I have no idea where she got this piece of this data. And there are no Lyme in Florida. But why he would totally discount what happened to her was a tick attachment, arrest and then subsequent symptom. To me is just terrible, terrible medicine. But because of that and because she’s a smart cookie, she she searched and found one letter physician. And I said to her, Well, you know. It was probably a gift that this doctor refused to treat you, because then you sought out a doctor like myself and we went through her history. She had line ABC and Bartonella. She actually tested positive. All three of them, which is unusual simply because the tests for the and Bartonella are relatively insensitive. She tested positive to all of them, and I’m going to point out that the test was analyzed and was negative fact that I really have been disappointed in this tick testing. OK. Yeah. So at a very good lab, by the way, tested negative. Now you could you could imagine that maybe she had another tick attachment that and she never saw that one. And you know, as you know, these ticks, you know, two millimeters big, especially in the spring, they don’t get very big during the next stage. They tend to hide out in warm interchange A. places. So you know you’re in your crotch during your armpits and the scale between your buttocks. You know, this is why I really need an intimate partner to be checking each other at night if you’re in any area where you’re at risk. OK. So, so at any rate, you know, she sought me out and she got tested. Then I have three other patients that I saw over the past three weeks again with acute Lyme, and each one of them was put on doxy cycling by their doctor,

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:48:29] seen not commonly.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:48:31] And but I can also tell you that. I think that if they only have lime, that the doxy had a decent chance of getting it, maybe as far as I’m concerned, the dose that they prescribed is too low and they don’t keep people on it long enough. I will treat uncomplicated acute Lyme disease for six weeks of antibiotics, and I typically will add some, some herbal antimicrobials and so on. Well, as I’m thinking of these patients, one of them has lineman Bartonella, another one has Lyme and Bubka. And and the third one, I think has linemen the VkA as well. Well, guess what? They’re in for a world of pain. Just like what happened to me. I have Lyme and the when it started in just treating Lyme, which we treated aggressively, just didn’t do it and I became severely chronically ill again. I feel fantastic that I can treat these people early on and have a very good chance of of curing this. But you know, coming back specifically to your question of, I think people have come to me are certainly more conscious and aware of the potential of Lyme than the doctors in this state who I like to tell your story after story, but it’s so upsetting. You know what doctors say? I’ve had doctors yell at patients, What do you mean you want to be tested for Lyme disease? And I’m. I don’t understand why they’re so threatened. It’s really crazy, but they are ignorant. It’s really sad and. You know, one of the services that that I offer here. Is if someone wants to get properly tested for line that they can call my office and for a real nominal fee, we arrange for them to get tested at our genetics laboratory. Now that’s in Palo Alto, but we get them to chip on a requisition. They get their blood drawn locally. Three weeks I got the lab results. I call them up and say, Here’s what the results are, and here’s what I suggest your next step is.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:50:59] That’s the gold standard for both finding lime and its cofactor. So you’re covering everything at that point.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:51:09] I wish I were if I was going to do all the testing I’d like to do. And Agent X, it would cost about $2500. Yeah, so that’s what I’ve seen, so I start with just testing for Lyme and the best test. There is a line immunoblot. It’s much better than you can get in the commercial labs here. And it really has at least a 90 percent sensitivity. You still have to know how to interpret the test. It’s not just black and white. The test can confirm, but they can’t rule it out. It’s not a 100 percent test. They have to put it together with the patient’s syndrome manifestation symptoms. OK, so most of the time people know I call them up. I say, Why did you want to get tested? Oh, well, I have such severe fatigue and brain fog. My neck hurts all the time and my elbows, and that’s not so OK. That’s consistent with your tested positive for Lyme. And then it might ask some more questions. And I said, You have night sweats. Oh yeah. You know, sometimes drinking. I said, OK, well, you probably have the back of them, even though we didn’t test for it, you know? And and then I’ll ask some other questions. I’m going to tell you a story. This is amazing. It does relate a little bit to the gut. So a few years back, it’s four years now. A mother brought her 16 year old daughter to me, who was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, and she had been in and out of outpatient inpatient, outpatient immigration, outpatient five times to an eating disorder unit. But she was just refusing to eat. She had to get all her calories through a nasogastric tubes. And, you know, she basically had what we understand as anorexia nervosa syndrome, where she felt she had to lose weight despite the fact that she was slim and svelte. And and you know, it’s considered, you know, an emotional disorder. It also happens to be happy it has the highest mortality of any mental health disorder. Now that this is very serious anorexia nervosa? OK, well, the doctors threw up their hands, so we don’t know what else to do for her. But the mother was a nurse. They had lived in upstate New York, which is also highly endemic. In fact, a new patient last week was upstate New York and and so the mother had her tested for Lyme. It was positive she brought her to see me. She had three co-infections. She had Bubka, she had Bartonella and she had mycoplasma. Now Bartonella, as you probably know. Can cause an interesting skin manifestation. It can cause these these red lines, which are called Styria story for striations, and they can be misconstrued as stretch marks because they they can be read violations. They’re not in the same skin claims as stretch marks. And this person who had never been overweight had no reason to have stretch marks had these Styria, where she interpreted as stretch marks and further evidence of her need to lose weight. Oh man. Isn’t that amazing?

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:54:40] That’s so sad.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:54:41] It’s sad. But here’s the good part. She took it. She was on antibiotics for a year, including some intravenous antibiotics. She’s been in total remission for four, four, three, four years now and then. Now I’m talking with some people around the country, including the Columbia Lyme Disease Research Unit, about doing a study on patients with anorexia nervosa. Where we test them, we test them for these different microbes. We also test them for autoimmune inflammation in the brain, which I’ll get to in a minute and then compare that to a control population and see what happens. So I just want to mention that in 1994, Susan Psuedo at the National Institutes of Mental Health described kids who were fine. Then they got a strep infection, and then they fell off the cliff. With these neuropsychiatric symptoms, particularly OCD anxiety syndromes, but often depression, all sorts of mood swings and oppositional issues, and they started the cognitive function decline. They often have had tics and these involuntary movements as sort of bedwetting and sleep problems. OK, so she called the panda’s pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disease associated with streptococcal infections. But it turns out that it’s not only strep that does it. It turns out that viruses do it. Epstein-Barr. HIV can remember the common cold has been shown to do it. Influenza and Bartonella and mycoplasma a common tick borne co-infections. Perhaps long. We can’t say for sure if line by itself does it. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to, because I never see a line without these infections, right? So how do you know? Excuse me. At any rate, it’s now called Pan’s pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric syndrome, I think it’s a lousy name. Excuse me. I think it’s a lousy name because it’s not just pediatric, and it’s not just a cute answer. It can be more of a stuttering or gradual onset rather than falling off a cliff like some of these kids do. And it turns out that the primary characteristics are either OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder or. Dietary restriction, anorexia nervosa, those same primary ways that it manifests and of course, mental health disorders in all age groups, but particularly children and adolescents, is skyrocketing.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:57:41] It needs to be looked at. I think it really needs to be looked at and addressed. I. Yeah, absolutely. I could literally talk to you all day long. You’re just such a wealth of information and knowledge. But I want to make sure that listeners can find you if they want to get in touch with you. So, so where can folks get in touch with you and find your book?

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:58:10] OK. The book? My book, which came out in March after several years of work, so I’m really happy and it’s gotten and I’ve gotten wonderful feedback on it. And you can get in any bookstore on Amazon, there’s tons of reviews on Amazon. So the book is easy to get and it goes into things we’ve talked about in tons of detail in the book was written for. Both doctors and patients, there’s enough detail in there to really help a lot of patients know how to evaluate workup and treat these different imbalances, and it’s written out in lay language that patients can easily understand and become empowered to do a lot of stuff themselves. OK, so that’s the book. If they want to get a hold of me, probably the best way is I now have a website and actually, no, that’s great. I started out. I never needed a website. I always had patients. But but because of the book, I have the website. It’s called Recovery from Lyme dot com. So it’s really the book’s website, but it’s mainly about me. I give a lot of talks and then links to those talks or posted articles that I’ve posted and and this podcast that we’re doing when that’s already that I don’t get posted on the website. Dr. Kinderlehrer, thank you. So that would be and then you can contact me through the website.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:59:40] OK. We’ll make sure that we have those links below as well so that people can easily get in contact. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time and being on the show today.

Dr. Daniel Kinderlehrer [00:59:53] You’re welcome. Pleasure on my side, too. Hope we can do it again.

Dr. Ann Marie Barter [00:59:58] Thank you for listening to the Gut Health Reset Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe, leave a rating and a review. More people can hear about the podcast and hey, take a screenshot of this episode and tag Dr. Anne Marie on Instagram or Facebook at Dr. Ann-Marie Barter. And for more resources, just visit Dr. Ann-Marie Barter.com.