Dr. Conners discusses healing chronic illness, including lyme, mold, brain fog, dementia, and more with Dr. Diane Mueller, ND, DAOM, LAc of MyLymeDoc.com
Take a look at her book, “It’s Not In Your Mind: Solutions and Strategies for Lyme Disease, Mold Illness, and Chronic Infections” also!
Microbes and Mental Health Summit with Dr. Diane Miller, Thomas Moorcroft, DO, and Dr. Miles Nichols
What are the keys to success?
Your brain is fascinating. It’s incredibly complex but also highly vulnerable.
Many things can threaten your balance and offset a mental health disorder from toxins and genetics to disease and injury.
The good news is, there are ways to identify the root cause and treat it.
Join me at the Microbes and Mental Health Summit premiering on March 14 to learn how certain environmental toxins and hidden microbial infections can trigger these illnesses and other brain disorders.
I will be speaking on how Rife light frequencies can help protect your brain and support mental health and your immune system, and the negative impact that microbes can have on the brain.
If you, or a loved one, are suffering from a misdiagnosed mental health condition, know that there is hope. You can find the root cause.
Your psychobiome is key. It has more to do with your depression, anxiety, brain fog, and other debilitating symptoms than you think.
When you know what the root cause of your mental health issue is, you can take appropriate action and regain control of your life.
Today you can find out how to do that at the Microbes and Mental Health Summit.
About Diane Mueller, ND, DAOM, LAc
As a survivor of mold illness, Lyme Disease, chronic IBS symptoms, and low libido, Dr. Diane Mueller is able to deeply empathize and understand how these sorts of conditions are beyond just the physical body. Just like many of her patients, Dr. Diane struggled with chronic fatigue, extreme digestive dysfunction and chronic pain for many years with conventional medicine only offering mildly palliative treatments. Relationships were impacted as social isolation was part of life due to the nature of the disease. Every day seemed like a struggle to survive.
She has two different medical clinics, one focused on chronic disease and the second focused on libido, pleasure, and aging gracefully.
Her clinic, MyLymeDoc.com, is dedicated to helping those with lyme, mold and other chronic infections/toxins that are driving symptoms such as fibro, headaches, hormonal imbalances, cognitive decline, chronic fatigue and more.
TheLibidoDoctor.com is focused on helping those that are looking to optimize their life, find their sense of pleasure and passion and have healthy hormonal balance in their intimate connections in life.
Dr. Diane’s journey to heal herself lead her to complete two doctorate degrees in holistic health care, one as a naturopathic doctor and the second as a doctor of acupuncture and oriental medicine.
As a national speaker and educator, Dr. Diane works to help both practitioners and clients understand advanced disease processes in very simply ways so they can apply the lifestyle and supplement protocols that will not only help them to restore help but to retain it. Dr. Diane is known all over the country as a functional medicine expert that other doctors seek to advise on advanced cases chronic disease reversal.
Stay tuned for Episode 35 (you can see all episodes on the Conners Clinic Live page!)
Listen to or Watch the Full Podcast Episode
Transcript
Dr. Conners
Hello, everybody, this is Dr. Kevin Conners. Welcome to another episode of Conners Clinic Live. Glad you joined us. We have a very special guest that interviewed me not long ago, so we’ve gotten to know each other. Dr. Diane Mueller is a specialist in mold and mycotoxin illness, Lyme disease, a whole bunch of different things. So, Diane, good to see you again.
Dr. Diane Mueller
Yeah, good to see you too again, Dr. Kevin, thanks for inviting me to your program here. Yeah, as far as what I do. In these types of fields that we work in, it’s yes, I treat lyme and yes, I treat mold and I do all this. But what I really do is treat the whole person because as I think we know with so many different diseases, like with lyme disease and mold illness in particular, one, they’re great mimickers. So somebody could have fibromyalgia or chronic pain or brain fog or neurological problems, on and on and on. They don’t even know they have lyme and mold. So a lot of times people don’t even come to me because of lyme and mold. Some people certainly do. But other people come to me because, wow, they had fibromyalgia and they heard a podcast about how that might be connected to lyme disease, and they’re really looking to get the answer. So a lot of what I’m doing is really helping people figure out the why behind their chronic disease situation.
Dr. Conners
I love that. It is so true that people have been labeled by some practitioner or by themselves, maybe googling their symptoms, and really they have never gotten to the root of it. So they’re calling their disease a named disease that is really just a collection of symptoms. Never getting to the root cause. And as you know, and you alluded to, there’s sometimes several root causes to their disease.
Dr. Diane Mueller
Yeah. It’s a funny thing. I think so many times we get so excited about the label. We go so far, like it’s so common to see that we get so excited around when we’ve been sick for so long. I’m like, oh, okay, somebody finally told me that I have chronic fatigue syndrome, or somebody finally told me I have IBS. Unfortunately, I think there’s so much power that these labels have where sometimes people have this misunderstanding that the label is almost like the end, like they’ve finally made it. And in many ways, the label to clinicians like yourself and myself and many of us out here, the label sometimes is really more of the beginning. It’s more of saying, okay, well, we can put a tag on it, but we still have to go back and figure out why. Why do you have that tag?
Dr. Conners
Well, it’s like anybody with a diagnosed autoimmune disease. They have MS, well, lyme could be a cause of that. Mold could be a cause of that. Heavy metals could be a cause of that. You’ve got to get to the cause if you’re going to help these people.
Dr. Diane Mueller
Yeah, absolutely. And what we see with all those things you just mentioned, one of the things that winds up happening that leads to things like mold and lyme and metals causing MS, Parkinson’s, other neurological diseases can be due to blood brain barrier disease, where the blood brain barrier, which is largely supposed to keep things out, right? So we have this barrier that’s supposed to be fairly tight, and certain things are not supposed to have easy access to our brain. And with blood brain barrier disease, it’s one way, there’s other ways, but it’s one way that these toxins more easily get into the brain. And these toxins create an oxidative process in their brain. They create this chain reaction of inflammation. And what we see is that we actually see something called neuronal apoptosis, which is when our nerve cells actually die. And that’s what’s happening and leading to some of these types of neurological diseases. Or in cases like Alzheimer’s, we see there’s some research studies that are showing that the plaques that are seen with Alzheimer’s actually have an immune function to them. So it’s theorized that when we see this link between things like Lyme disease, for example, and Alzheimer’s, that what’s really happening mechanistically is that the body is creating these plaques as a way of almost trapping these toxins and these infections in order to help our immune system work.
Now, of course, in this example, this is the body going haywire and the body is trying to do a good thing, and then we have a less good thing happen. But a lot of the mechanisms that we see in the body that are leading to disease are really, in part, these toxins getting into the wrong place, creating this widespread neuronal inflammation. And that’s the pathway through which these diseases occur.
Dr. Conners
Well, we see so many of these things are becoming normalized by medicine today. But everybody knows somebody that’s 90 years old that has their complete mind and memory, and yet people are losing their memory in their 50s. There’s something going wrong. What would you do to assess to then try to help a person that’s in that category?
Dr. Diane Mueller
Yeah, it’s so interesting. When we look at things like dementia. So if you go in classically and do something like a mini mental status exam is a common questionnaire that’s used in the dementia world, for example. And if you go and you get a true, say, memory dementia type of workup, most of the time, if it’s very early onset and say you don’t do as well on some of these exams, but it’s not really dementia yet, you’re largely told to watch and wait. And so we don’t have any medications that are actually really designed to prevent, from a pharmaceutical standpoint, prevent the progression of dementia. So you can have something like mild cognitive impairment, as it’s called, which in the lay person world, we might call this brain fog. And there’s no good conventional medicines for stopping this. There are certain tests like the mini mental status exam that is going to help us evaluate from just a questionnaire standpoint where you’re at. There’s other tests like the Neuro Zoomer by Vibrant Wellness, which looks at antibodies to the brain and some of the brain tissue. Look at if we’re seeing inflammatory markers, looking for signs of leaky brain.
So those types of things are really great to use diagnostically as an initial way of actually analyzing where you’re at. It’s not telling us, they don’t tell us the root, but they give us that baseline to say, Okay, well, here’s where your brain function is now. And then the next phase is actually to figure out what the root is. And then we use things, we can use things like the Neuro Zoomer, like the mini mental exam in order to actually track our progress along the way and make sure that we are seeing the positive changes in this example in our brain. And some of the lab tests really are widespread. Definitely, really proper lyme disease testing is important. A lot of the lyme disease testing that’s done in conventional medicine is very problematic. It’s not very thorough. It has a lot of false negatives. Mold testing is really big. Metals, like you mentioned, so we want to test for all those things. We want to make sure that is… One of the things I always like to emphasize is as we’re talking about some of these more complicated type of lab tests, things that people may have not thought of, we never want to forget about the basics, too.
So it’s like, we always want to remember that the whole picture of wellness and brain function really is a puzzle piece. So we want to make sure we’re doing our full thyroid panel, and we’re looking at the adrenals, we’re looking at micronutrient levels, we’re making sure we don’t have leaky gut and doing our GI stool cultures and our SIBOs, and all these different, depending upon your symptoms. So it can seem like a lot if you’re listening to this, and it can be. But that’s the point of working with a clinician like yourself, like me, like several others in the field that are really looking to say, Okay, for the uniqueness of your condition, these are the root cause based tests we need to do. And then let’s use some of these other things like the Neuro Zoomer, for example, to really make sure we’re tracking our progress along the way.
Dr. Conners
I like that. I know some patients might have a push back on spending money on different testing. But if you don’t look at the big picture, it’s so easy to miss things. And you hear, how many times have you had a patient that said, I’ve been to 20 other doctors. It’s because maybe the 20 other doctors didn’t do a real complete job of looking at the big picture because it might be something way out of the outskirts that is causing a lot of your symptoms that has never been addressed.
Dr. Diane Mueller
Yeah, it’s so true. It’s so true that I feel like most of my patients at this point have seen a dozen practitioners or more. So I hear that really, really commonly, and it’s really hard. I feel like I spend a lot of my time counseling people on understanding why it’s good to invest their hard earned dollars and figuring out the root. And I get it. It’s like our medical model is really messed up in this country. The way we’re doing things, I don’t know of a perfect medical model in the world, quite frankly, but it’s not a perfect model. We have a lot of problems with the medical model. But when it really comes down to it, if you ask some of my patients, I have a lot of patients in the MS/Alzheimer’s type of world and a lot of people that are much less progressed, brain fog and basic stuff like that. But if you ask some of my Alzheimer’s patients, if they would go back to 20 years ago when they had brain fog, and if it cost them some thousands of dollars, a few thousand dollars or whatever it is to get well, they would hand that over tenfold to get them out of that situation.
So it’s not said to scare anybody by any means, but I think we really need to work to change our orientation to medicine as an investment that we all pay for it now or later. If we don’t pay for it now, the disease progresses and we’re going to spend so much money on things that insurance doesn’t cover later in life if our body is falling apart because we haven’t figured out what the root is. So not many people get out of that. Some people do. But for the most part, I think it’s like a pay now or pay later type of situation. And it’s unfortunate that that’s what it is, but it’s your health and it’s your life. I hope that people hear this and feel motivated and empowered to take charge.
Dr. Conners
Now, you mentioned earlier, I want to touch back on that, blood brain barrier disease. So tell me how you would treat that in a person because that’s got to be pretty common common out there?
Dr. Diane Mueller
It’s real common. And it’s another point when we’re talking about the root where a lot of treating it is understanding what’s causing it. And this is another area where it gets complicated where it’s important to work with all the different root causes because high cholesterol, for example, actually will cause blood brain barrier disease. So sometimes my patients when they come in and they’re complaining of chronic fatigue syndrome, for example, and we’re doing all these tests, I’m like, Well, we got to throw in a lipid panel. We got to look at your cholesterol. Why? I ate a good diet. It’s never been high. It’s like, Well, you haven’t tested this in the past year or so. And if cholesterol levels go up, we can actually get leaky brain from that. Another example of something that causes blood brain barrier disease is gram negative bacteria. So this class of bacteria, when they die, they secrete what’s called an endotoxin. And this endotoxin will cause blood brain barrier disease. Now, this class of bacteria is real common. So chronic UTIs are usually caused by a gram negative bacteria, small intestinal bacteria overgrowth, which has a lot of bloating for a lot of people, constipation and or diarrhea.
That oftentimes is gram negative bacteria overgrowth. We can have that in our stool. So many different types of illnesses have this category of bacteria that will actually cause blood brain barrier disease. So we can do various things, but really the fundamental root of working with blood brain barrier disease is removing the cause of what is actually creating it.
Dr. Conners
So what would you like to leave people as far as… If there is just a couple of key points, because I think a lot of people that have chronic illness seem overwhelmed. So if you could just narrow things down to a couple of key points for people to focus on, what would you say?
Dr. Diane Mueller
So the foundational methodology that I use in my practice is metabolic synergy, working on all your metabolic systems. So your hormones, your micronutrients, all of these types of things, lifestyle, and in this order, typically, detox, and then killing, or microbial balancing, as I call it.
Dr. Conners
People want to jump to that last one, though, don’t they?
Dr. Diane Mueller
People want to jump to that last one. And we want to get to that point where it’s like, oh, we finally found the bug. And it’s all the germ theory of disease, germ theory, germs cause disease, and germs certainly have a big influence on disease. But for so many people, the body, when we have these long term chronic things, is exhausted. The immune system is depleted, the nutrients are depleted, you’re not absorbing anything. And when we’re asking you to do the work and killing things and detoxing is a lot of work. I’ve seen that it works really well to build up the body first. And that’s why for many people, I do start the metabolic work before the lifestyle. Those those can be used interchangeably. But the point of using the metabolic work first really is that oftentimes for people when they’re chronically ill, sometimes doing the lifestyle stuff, it’s like, I don’t even have energy to do that. So it’s like, Let’s first start with giving you energy. If you have energy for the lifestyle stuff, get on that right away. Remember that this is in steps and you’re listening to this and you’re getting to the root, I would definitely encourage you, step one, take a first step and really think about how you can rebuild your body in a simple way.
And look at what that means. Does that mean doing a basic micro nutrient test? Does that mean starting yourself on a B vitamin? Does that mean getting your thyroid tested? But just if you haven’t done some of those basic things before you jump into these other things. And I encourage you if you have some of these widespread symptoms I’m talking about to do so. But before you do that, start with the basics. Build up first, help your body get a little bit stronger so you can do this. And then the second thing I will say is just to move on to the lifestyle thing, probably one of the number one areas in the lifestyle component of this matrix that I see to be problematic for people that’s a really simple hack is lymphatic work. So the lymphatic system is the system, vasculature, and these lymph nodes that carry around, they help our body carry out toxins and trash and help our immune system flow. And the lymphatic vessels get really backed up, and in part because lymphatic flows through our fascia. It moves really only when we contract our muscles. And oftentimes when we have chronic illness, we’re not moving our body a lot and the lymph gets backed up.
And oftentimes when we try to detox, for example, before the lymph is moving, that can really make people feel really sick. So a really easy hack is just go on YouTube, any other type of platform like that, and look up self lymphatic massage. There’s a ton out there. You want to definitely focus on starting with your neck first. And you can go get professional lymphatic massages as well. But it’s super easy to lay in bed at night, give yourself a two minute lymphatic massage. Very easy, very gentle. It’s a lifestyle hack. And oftentimes when we do this and we get to the detoxifying stage later, we can very much for many people, we don’t see oftentimes as many bad herxheimers as they’re called, type of reactions when we have detox reactions or die off reactions because the body is able to move and the fluids are able to move appropriately. So it’s a small hack that it’s two minutes a day. But I really see this making a huge difference for people and get them prepared for all of the more intense, aggressive treatments.
Dr. Conners
When you’re dealing with people, how much of your practice really boils down to education and getting people to understand that it’s a process and it takes time. People get impatient. They’re used to the standards of care medicine where they take some benzodiazepine and they feel better in a week. It just isn’t that way when you’re really going to heal the body, how do you deal with that?
Dr. Diane Mueller
I actually have a chapter in my book called “Doctor hopping, when to hop and when to stop.” I go through that exact topic. And one of the things I counsel people on in my book is how to think about when it’s truly not the right fit or it’s not working, because there’s definitely times where it’s like, this is not the right philosophical, it’s not the right fit. There’s no right one right clinician for everybody. That’s why there’s good thing there’s so many of us. So some of it is really beginning to analyze when do we actually move on? When do we stay put? But I do do a lot of counseling and education on that in answer to your question. I think there’s a lot of really of managing expectations because we are so used with basic things like, Oh, I have a headache, pop an Advil, pop a Tylenol, whatever. We’re so used to these conventional things that just make the symptom go away that there’s, I think, this societal, almost subconscious belief that symptoms are supposed to go away quickly. And so there’s definitely a lot of counseling. But the other thing I wind up doing for my clients is I use the MSQ, that questionnaire that goes through and looks at a lot of symptoms.
I use that at the very beginning and everybody rates it. And about every month or two, I have them redo it. And I have found that that really helps my clients a lot because one of the problems I think with long term disease is the brain is more oriented to what is wrong than what is right. So my example of this is I had a client come in, her number one symptom was face tingling. And it was her number… She had a bunch of symptoms. The number one thing. It was so easy to get that one gone. It was just gluten for her. So she came in, we run lab test while the lab tests are coming in, took her off gluten. Three weeks later, she comes back to go over the labs. I was like, How’s it going? What’s, anything changed? She’s like, No, I feel the same. So I do what I always do when people say that, which is still ask them all the questions around what they came in to see me. And she’s like, Oh, my gosh, Dr. Diane, the face tingling is totally gone. I totally forgot I even had it.
And it was the number one thing she came to see me for. So it’s just an example of how the brain… It was a normal process. There wasn’t any forgetfulness. It’s just the brain is not oriented to track what’s right. It’s oriented to track what it needs help with. So I use the questionnaire throughout my practice to help people see, Okay, this isn’t a magic pill. But look, you had higher is worse in the questionnaire I use. And so it’s like, you had 122 score, and now you’re down to an 80. So that helps to give the brain the feedback loop to say, Okay, I actually am getting better. And that helps a lot I see with this whole thing around like, Okay, it does take longer than popping a pill, which isn’t curative, it’s just palliative.
Dr. Conners
Now you touched on one thing about a very special thing that you have done. You’ve written a book. So tell us about your book.
Dr. Diane Mueller
Yeah. The book is called “It’s Not In Your Mind,” and to properly, I feel like, identify this thing that so many people feel like or have been told after seeing dozens of clinicians and not really having much luck or having one thing wrong on the lab and try to do something and it doesn’t really get better. So it’s really a book we focus a lot on lyme, and a lot of mold. We do talk about parasites and viruses and other toxins as well. And it’s really looking at chronic disease and a solution and a strategy for getting well. So I go through in there, I go through protocols I use, I go through a lot of research, mechanisms of actions, why this is happening, labs to use. And then I do link people even to my online store where they can have access to some of these types of things at physician grade supplements and those things as well to help them with their journey.
Dr. Conners
That’s fantastic. Well, I just want to thank you so much. You are a wealth of knowledge. And I think our listeners are just going to love what you do. What is your website in order for people to connect with you?
Dr. Diane Mueller
Super easy. MyLymeDoc.com
Dr. Conners
I appreciate you being on. I’m going to have you on again if you will be so kind to do so and grace us with your presence again.
Dr. Diane Mueller
I would love to, Dr. Conners. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Conners
All right. Bye bye now.
Dr. Diane Mueller
Bye.
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Dustin has been passionate about holistic health since he met his wife, Dr Mallory Ranem (Conners) 20 years ago. As the Digital Media Manager, he coordinates content across Conners Clinic’s large online presence, including written, video, and audio.