Andy Smith 00:00 
A quick disclaimer before we begin, the PEMF podcast does not contain any medical advice and the content provided is for informational purposes only. If you have any health concerns, please visit a healthcare professional. Welcome back to another episode of the PEMF podcast. Today, we're joined by Dr. Tom Moorcroft , who is widely regarded as one of the leading voices in Lyme disease and complex chronic illnesses. The founder of the Lyme Disease Practitioner Certification, a mentorship program and host of the Lyme Insider, Tom has spent over 15 years on the front line training clinicians to navigate Lyme, co-infections, mold illnesses and infection-induced autoimmune conditions. We'll tap into this clinical experience to explore where PEMF and other therapies can fit in within Lyme care as a supportive tool alongside a broader plan. Tom, welcome to the podcast.

Dr Tom Moorcroft 00:58 
Hey, thanks for having me, Andy. Great to be here.

Andy Smith 01:00 
Let's jump straight in because, um, I've heard of Lyme disease. I think probably a lot of people have heard of Lyme disease, but to be honest with you, I don't really understand what it is and how you get it. So if you can start there and tell us, you know, from, from the basis up.

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:19 
You know, Lyme disease is the name of a disease that we get from, you know, when we get infected with bacteria called Borrelia bordorferi. And there are also other bacteria, particularly in Europe, there are a few other Borrelia species that can cause it. But essentially, you know, you get bit by a tick that's infected and that tick injects you with this bacteria, you know, much like, you know, you go to school and somebody has strep throat, they cough and you inhale and get strep throat. This you need to get bit by this infected insect and then you end up with all these symptoms. And a lot of people talk about it. If you look at it under a microscope, the bacteria looks like a corkscrew and we call it a spirochete, very much like syphilis. But unfortunately, unlike syphilis, once you've figured syphilis out, we realized that it was exquisitely sensitive to antibiotics. As long as we caught it, we could treat it and you'd be good. Lyme's not quite that way. But yeah, the basics are go outside, enjoy yourself, this tick crawls on you, hides somewhere, bites you a little while later, stays on you for, you know, four to six days and then you end up becoming the, you know, getting symptoms and stuff like that.

Andy Smith 02:29 
And how quickly does that take effect because I've heard of people sort of thinking that Lyme disease is kind of taken effect like months after a bite or or is it usually instantaneous it's does it vary.

Dr Tom Moorcroft 02:43 
Yeah, it actually varies quite a bit and if we, you know, I think a lot of people who are listening to the PEMF podcast understand that, you know, what we talk about in conventional medicine may not be the be all end all, but even within conventional medicine, we were like, hey, we've got early disease, right? So within a couple of, it's usually a couple weeks after a bite to, you know, maybe a month and a half, we'll get like early disease and a lot of people are looking for this, what they call the erythema migraines rash or a lot of people just say EM and that rash can look like many different things, everything from a red-purple splotch to just like a little halo of red with a big central clearing and I think the most common one that people are looking for is this bullseye rash and, you know, and it looks like it sounds, you know, you've got a little red dot and then you've got clearing and then you've got another red circle and you've got these concentric red circles with clearing in between that look like a bullseye. Challenge is only about half of the people who get Lyme disease have a rash and of those 50% who get a rash, only about a third are this bullseye rash. So the rash is not the be all end all, but it's certainly helpful and that's typically an early, what they call localized disease, meaning you get bit, the tick injects you with this little spiral bacteria that we call Borrelia bordorferi and that rash is caused by this in bacteria in your skin and then we get like really disseminated disease where everybody looks, you know, and I think back prior to the pandemic, we could use the terminology summer flu and a lot of people who look like they had the flu in the middle of the summer, particularly in the United States, actually had Lyme disease because flu wasn't really that common in the summer. So you know, fevers and joint aches and muscle aches and just kind of this general malaise where you're feeling like crap, fatigue, you know, even brain fog. I can't remember. I said that already. But you know, yeah, so those things are some of the early things. And then you hear about late and those are all kind of in that first several weeks to maybe a month or so. And then later on, you get late disease and that's where you get like kind of the swollen knee or you get cardiac issues, sometimes heart block. Even I actually just was before we hopped on this recording, talking to the Lyme training program people and someone posted a thing about Bell's Palsy. So Bell's Palsy is a name for like where you have a facial droop on one side that's not a stroke and you know, it can cause by bacteria, it can be caused by viruses, it can even be caused by musculoskeletal changes in the neck, messing with, you know, the drainage around the facial nerve. But that may actually, I don't usually talk about that, but I think it'll come up later when we talk because PEMF could potentially help with that. And so, but you get this facial droop and yeah, a lot of people have it from viruses and such, but Lyme disease is one of the number one bacterial causes of that.  So, but that can happen like four, six, even eight months later, same with the joint issues. So even in the most conventional model, it's very confusing. And when we bring up, you know, syphilis back in the day, they call that the great imitator because, and they didn't understand what it was doing because it looked like so many things. You know, like when I say brain fog, fatigue and joint pain, I mean, while that just like narrows it down to about a thousand different things, right? So when we look a little bit more deeply, we're like, okay, you know, syphilis look like that. And it was very confusing because it wasn't until late, the early symptoms of the disease look so much like other things it's often missed. And then when we move forward and we're like, oh crap, now we had the swollen knee or we've got the heart problem, you know, Lyme's been in our body for six or eight months. And this was the same thing where we ended up with spinal cord issues and syphilis. So it's really important to understand that all things that look like a flu or a COVID may not be, you know, so we need to look a little more deeply. And the other challenge, and this is where, you know, PEMF probably comes in, at least in my world a lot is when you have, you know, brain fog and fatigue from stress, you know, and just not taking care of yourself and maybe a little bit of poor circulation, that really becomes an issue as well.

And we miss it so many times early on. So even in the conventional model, we know it may take, you know, months to even a year to present. And then when we start to look at the more nuanced things and sort of the functional medicine in the natural healing world, it gets even a little more complex.

Andy Smith 07:17 
Yeah, and this this might not be a straightforward answer or question, but like, is there an alarm bell symptom for you that you would tell people to look out for when it comes to Lyme? So like, you know, is like you said, brain fog and, you know, that that can kind of be linked to everything. It's like, you know, it's it's five o'clock here on, you know, five, five p.m. I've got brain fog. It's it's been the week. But is is is there something, you know, that for you really screams Lyme disease and in and when does that come along?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 07:52 
Yeah, so I think the biggest thing, obviously, as someone who specializes in seeing the people who get missed early on, I want to make sure that I don't... If you have the rash that you're unsure of, have it evaluated. If you have joint swelling, it's particularly large joints and the knee is the one we talk about a lot, but you could have an elbow or a wrist, definitely get that checked out. Things that come out that don't make sense. One of the hallmarks that comes out of the research on Lyme disease, especially looking at people who have been missed before, is the concept of migratory joint pain. Migratory joint pain in medicine is only caused by a few things, and Lyme is probably the number one. If we define migratory joint pain, that means my right knee hurts today, maybe my right ankle hurts next week, and then my left hip, and then it goes to my right shoulder, and it might be my right shoulder and my left knee. This moving pattern of pain, so if you have migratory joint pain, that's one of the hallmarks of Lyme disease, and really, there are a bunch of different hepatitis that can cause that. There are gonococcal arthritis, if you get gonorrhea and don't get it treated and you get joint pain from that, and inflammatory bowel disease are the other major ones that can cause it. The beauty is, those are much less non-specific, or in other words, we can figure those out much pretty easily through a good history, a physical exam, and getting testing, whereas Lyme testing can be challenging. These are relatively easy for a licensed healthcare practitioner to rule out. If you have pain that moves around your body, that's something that should make you reach out and talk to somebody and say, hey, do I have any of these other couple things? But that's probably the most pinpoint Lyme thing outside of the neon sign of the big bullseye rash.

Andy Smith 09:47 
Yeah, okay. And like most experts in the field, you know, even myself in the in the PEMF industry, we've kind of lived it, we've been through it, we've experienced it. And the same could be said for you, Tom, you know, so I understand that you contracted Lyme disease at 23. You had a 13 year relationship with Lyme disease. And you've now been now been symptom free for 15 years. So what, what was that experience like for you? How was your experience of Lyme disease? You know, how did it affect your life? And, you know, how, and obviously, how have you got to the 15 year period now?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 10:23 
Yeah, you know, I mean, I think the big piece was I was doing the things I loved in life. And I think that's where a lot of people with Lyme disease and any other chronic illness are they're like, they're doing the things they love, and then they kind of get it taken away, you know, so I was teaching outdoor education, because I was like, I see us let's just like, abusing the planet. And I understand, you know, we live here, we're a little different than a lot of other animals, we have to, you know, understand we're humans and but we could find more balance. And so I was like, I was doing all this research and in college study, and I talked to all these adults, and all we did is talk, and then we would go out on a hike, and we'd plan a study, and we'd do a study, and we'd talk some more, and then we'd write a paper, and, you know, papers take forever. And this is the planet's gonna like be gone by the time any of us actually get our action taken. So I actually went to the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York to on an AmeriCorps scholarship to teach children about, you know, getting them stoked about the planet, because I figured if I got them stoked, then they would get their parents to take action, you know. And so then, and then I was like, one day, I remember very clearly, my boss shook my shoulders, and she's like, Tom, what the hell is going on? And I was like, I don't know. And I and kind of at that moment, we both looked down, and there's a puddle of drool on my shirt. And I the computer screen was blank. And she left my boss had left Chris had left me an hour ago, and said, you got it, your productivity is dramatically worse. Like, you're usually getting, you know, your work done in like half a day, what most people get done in two or three days. And so like, you know, she's like, kind of like, I was on remediation, so to speak. And like, and then she's like, wait, you haven't done anything in an hour. I'm like, I've been here at my desk working. And she's like, there's something really wrong. Go see your doctor. And literally, like, within the next 48 hours, I had a rash that started on my hip. But what was interesting is a plain ultimate frisbee. And I had bruised myself there. But out of this bruise that was now in the healing phases, it started to grow and grow and grow. And I had a ringed rash that certainly did not look like a bullseye at all, that encompass ended up encompassing most of my left leg, most of my chest and back and most of my left arm. And somehow by some miracle, I saw my dad's doctor and he's like, Oh, I know exactly what's wrong. You've got classic Lyme disease.

Here's doxycycline type of antibiotic. It's going to kill it. You'll be good to go in 10 days. And so for the first four days, I took the stuff I was, like you said, I was 23, I was laying on the floor. And I was alternating with shakes and sweats and chills and all this stuff. And I literally needed my mom or my dad to help me go to the bathroom, basically supporting more than 50% of my weight.  And I was like, okay, this is really not cool to have your parents taking you to the bathroom when you're in your 20s. But after about 10 days, I did get better.

And then over the years, though, the brain fog crept back in. The fatigue crept back in. I started to have muscle pain and stiffness. I had a lot of joint pain. And I went to doctor after doctor after doctor. And they're like, we don't know what's wrong with you. And so then somebody goes, Hey, you have major depression like your old man does. And I was like, well, okay, sure. That's probably not it because I'm pretty happy. It's just my body hurts and I'm tired. And then the next thing they say is like, try this medicine. Oh, you didn't respond the way most people do. So let's just take you off of that. And then I'm like getting more. And this is like three, four years in and tried multiple different antidepressants and other kind of meds. And then they go, Oh, yeah, bipolar disorder, you know, that type two, like all the good doctors and lawyers have, I'm like, I haven't met a good doctor who's got untreated bipolar. So I'm like, but I'm like, okay, sure. Give me the meds. They didn't work. And then the next thing I know, it's like, I go to this doctor and he's like, what's wrong with you? I go, I've got joint pain, brain fog and fatigue. And he goes, Oh, I know exactly what you have. You got fibromyalgia. I'm like, dude, you suck. I just told you a joint pain, brain fog and fatigue. And you told me I have a syndrome that that someone made up to define joint pain, brain fog and fatigue. However, the thing is, we don't know why you have it. Right. So I'm like, this sucks. I'm like, first of all, you don't you don't know what's wrong with me. You just told me I have a syndrome that describes the thing I told you. So that's like useless. And because you don't know and you don't have any options, you don't know what the cause might be, which means I have no hope for getting better. And so that was kind of like my big thing. And then what was interesting is around this time, you know, I'm in medical school. I get into osteopathy very deeply. We're doing a lot of cranial and energy work. And and I start to feel a little bit of something good happening. But I was still like I couldn't do two plus three in my head. I had to write it down on paper, which isn't really good when you're in medical school trying to learn stuff. But thankfully, most of our tests were on paper so I could barely get by. But then I just started going like, I don't know what's wrong. And again, I'm staring at, you know, I'm in my osteopathic fellowship. I'm staring at the wall of my apartment. So I'm staring at a wall again or a computer screen. And I go, I keep going down this path over here and it sucks. I don't really like it. But if I keep doing the same thing every day, every day, wake up, put my feet on the ground and do the same thing, I know what I'm going to get because now we're six years into this.  I'm like, what? But I'm losing out on what I want. I want to go hiking. I'm recently married. I want to have a family. I want to I love my dog and I want to go out and do hiking. I want to play Ultimate Frisbee again. I love skiing and mountain biking. I want to go do that. And within 48 hours, somebody handed me a yoga DVD. And I didn't really like it that much because it hurt really bad. But I went and I looked at where he had learned in India and I started looking at who are the people who've been studying there the longest. And I found this last stronger yoga teaching through David Swenson. And he said that yoga is movement on breath. And also the guru from India said, look, you do 90 minutes a day, six days a week. You take the new and the full moon off. And then outside of that, if you can't do the posture, it's a 90 minute practice. You breathe for the rest of the time. So I was like, I got nothing else to lose. So let's do it. And I started doing it and I would breathe. I would do yoga for like, you know, a minute, minute and a half. And my body was so stiff and so painful that I would just have to like sit down on the couch and then I would breathe for another 88 and a half minutes. And I was like, I was so like, I'm not. I don't want any more of this stuff. And I totally want, I have a life that I am not losing. And if I die in the process, it's okay. But I am doubling down on me and the future. And over time I would just breathe and breathe slowly. And then it got better and better. And then I eventually got over like, you know, six, eight months where I could sort of fudge my way through the practice, you know, for 90 minutes. And then over the years, it started to open up. And so about two years in, I look back and I go, wait, I'm moving better. My energy is better. My sleep is better. My brain is better. And I changed my diet. And along this path, what was really interesting was I had met some people who were breaking out EPEMF and introduced me to it at conferences. So I started to get a little interested in that because between my osteopathic training and yoga, I became really openly sensitive to these things. And I could actually feel when I was on one of these pads that it was doing something good for my body. I wasn't quite at the place where I could get one yet. And back then it wasn't like you could have little travel ones at the moment. So, but it was really interesting. And over that two years where I just focused on following the protocol, irregardless of what I thought about it, irregardless of like their good days and their bad days, at the end of two years, I estimate it was probably about 70% better because what came out of it was dietary change, lifestyle modifications, actually going to bed.  Because when I went to sleep now, I could sleep without getting woken up because I wasn't in as much pain. And then I, my brain started to clear up a little bit. So I still had a lot of brain fog, still had a lot of pain, but, you know, and at that point, another coincidence in quotes, so to speak, I got to run into at the last minute, I had to change in one of my medical school training rotations and I went to a local group where the lady was doing osteopathic manipulation to help the body open up and support self-healing. And then the gen, the guy, her husband was a great naturopath was, was diagnosing and treating Lyme and they were working together and at the, what was so beautiful about my first day there was everybody had joint pain, brain fog and fatigue or some variation on that, you know? And it was like, everybody sounded like me. And it was like, wow, for the first time in like over eight years, I met other people who were like me. So I felt more hope and then they tested me and found out I had Lyme and abesiosis and ultimately heavy metal toxicity. So we moved forward from there and that was, but, you know, the last 30% took another four years or so. But we got it. And like you said, now it's like, I haven't had a symptom in well over a decade, almost a decade and a half at this point, which is phenomenal. Cause in the Lyme field, a lot of people are like, you can't get better. I'm like, you definitely can get better. Not only can you get better, you can be cured.

Andy Smith 19:43 
And that was actually going to be my next question is, you know, is Lyme disease something you get over? You know, you have a common cold and within a week you get over it and, you know, even when we compare this to cancer, you can end up in remission. It's something that ideally won't come back. Is, you know, in your opinion, do you think Lyme disease is something that's effectively curable or is it always going to be there in the background?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 20:06 
Yeah, I mean, from my personal experience and my professional experience, there are a large number of people who are curable. And if you take a step back to like, there's this conventional wisdom that about 80 percent of people will get better from Lyme disease with 10 to 21 days of an antibiotic. And a lot of people in the chronic Lyme disease world are like, no, that's BS. I'm like, well, if you look at the if you look at all the statistics, that's actually probably right. The problem is the, you know, in the United States, our Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which everybody calls the CDC, who's telling us that 80 percent of people get better. The problem is they make that sound like they talk about it. And a lot of doctors talk about that 80 percent, like it's 100 percent. The challenge is we've got another 20 percent of people that where that's probably not true.  And that's the people that I see and that's who I became. People were partially treated, misdiagnosis. And then there's some emerging evidence that they may get some of these in the kind of the chronic infection world. There's there these persister forms we talk about, meaning we try to kill it and then they go to sleep and chill out, you know, until we stop trying to kill it. And then they create more symptoms. So those persister forms that our antibiotics don't work well on are probably affecting, you know, 15, 20 percent of people at the time. A tick bite is what the newer research is showing. And there is a pediatric trial or, you know, research paper that came out about a year and a half ago that said, hey, 75 percent of kids will get better within six months. Twenty five percent will not. And that's really close to 80, 20. And then the research on mice showing this early persister thing is about an 80, 20. So the numbers are close. We need a lot more research. But I think what I'm trying to say is I think that this is less of a battle between like the medical societies or it should be less of a battle between the medical societies than it has been, because I think that both sides have a part of the truth. And it's kind of like the old like if you walk up to an elephant with a blindfold on and they let you touch their front leg or their trunk, you're going to describe that. But if you go, if they put you on their tail, they're going to you're going to describe the tail. And you're going to think you're touching different organisms or a different animal. But really, if you take your blindfold off and you look at you, oh, you're touching the trunk and I'm touching the tail, no wonder we described it differently. And I think that that's what's happening here is that a lot of people get Lyme. As long as you get some treatment, you're going to be all right. But there is a group of people, 15, 20, 25 percent of people who are really going to have a lot, you know, need a different approach to treatment.

Andy Smith 22:49 
Yeah, yeah.

Dr Tom Moorcroft 00:00 
and ultimately that first group of people probably are cured. And then for me, to answer your question, I mean, I haven't had a symptom in a very, very long time that I could even remotely relate to Lyme disease or Babesia. So I mean, people are using cure or they wonder if there's cured, but they're afraid to say that. So they say, hey, you're in remission or sustained remission. But the reality is after five or eight years, if you haven't had a relapse, if you have symptoms come back, you probably got infected again. And a lot of us, especially in the United States and we have high, high tick exposure rates. So no kidding, you're going to get bit more than once.

Andy Smith 23:30 
Yeah, yeah. And in your experience, you had the antibiotics, you felt better. But do you think that there was just a bit remaining? Is that and that's what kind of slowly crept back in?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 23:40 
Yeah, I think so. When you look at the literature, if you don't get it right away, we know that a month cures zero monkeys in monkey studies. If we give you IV treatment for a month and then two months of oral treatment, we cure 27%. Once you're around four to six months of infection without treatment, we're probably not effective with that short course of doxy. And then the other part is, there is that 20% who are probably getting persisters early. And so what I think happened in my case, based upon my personal experience, my research, and my clinical experience is that the levels of Lyme got knocked down, but they weren't eradicated. And if he'd given me three months rather than a week and a half, what I've been better, maybe, or maybe I needed some of these advanced treatment protocols that we use today to just knock it out. But to me, it's early recognition, early treatment, and early duration of treatment. Rather than two to three weeks, why don't we do three months? Because we treat strep throat for something around five to seven days, depending upon whom you see, maybe even 10 if they're really progressive. But if you look at strep, it reproduces 13,000 times a day on average. And Lyme reproduces on average about once every three weeks. So we're talking about a completely different time frame. So I once for fun did this little calculation. I was like, just made a ratio. And I'm sure it's not completely salient, typically validated. But I just said, hey, if I'm going to treat strep for seven days, and it reproduces 13,000 times a day, and I take the average Lyme reproductive rate, and I'm like, how long would I have to treat a human being to just match what I did with strep? And it would be 667 years, roughly. So clearly, we're not going to do that. But I think what it showed me was we just need to think about the reproductive rate, the persister strategies, because Lyme's been around and found in ticks that have been preserved in amber for over 13 million years. And cousins of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and anaplasmosis, which are other infections you can get from different ticks and anaplasm from the same tick that gives you Lyme, have been around for over 100 million years. So the one thing that that tells me is that they have figured out how to persist and thrive in the environment. And they just don't fight reality. It's like, if you try to kill them, they chill. And then when you let your guard down, they come back out, right? And strep is doing something, it just goes really, really fast. And then it burns out its nutrient supply. And it creates so much metabolic waste that it essentially burns itself out. And in strep throat, the real reason to give you antibiotics is to prevent rheumatic heart disease, because it only helps you feel better about 12 hours quicker, because it reproduces so quickly. Whereas Lyme, if you don't treat it, there's probably a few people on the planet who get rid of it. That's definitely your body can do that. But a lot of people are just going to have smoldering symptoms really low level. And that's kind of what happened to me. Once the treatment was removed, I was good for a while. But when I looked back, it was only like four or six months later, it started to creep in. And it was in cities. It was slow and steady. Oh, my fatigue got a little bit. Oh, then my joints started to hurt. Oh, my muscles got tight. But everybody's like, you're an athlete, and you don't stretch enough. And you don't this or that. And I'm like, no, I actually do all those things. So I do think that you can be cured. But I do also think that, and I think in our field, we have to remember you can be cured. But also, there's a lot of people who are not. And I think both sides of the aisle, so to speak, in medicine need to come together and realize that we're both talking that bit of truth. Because when we do come together and look at the science and the patient experience over, we do the thing that's most important to me, which is put the patient back to the center of medicine and our treatments.

Andy Smith 27:38 
And if it's out that there's people out there listening to this one and you know, they they suspect they've got Lyme disease or You know that or maybe they're having symptoms and they don't know what it is at the moment Do you have advice or like a protocol for people in the kind of I don't know what's happening stage because you know I've I've been there. I've been I've been at a stage in my life where I was and I was similar age you 23 24 I was in the GP office every single day Speaking to the same, you know doctor Telling them that I'm not right. I'm ill and sick and them telling me every single day. There's nothing wrong with me Please stop booking in you know, and I'm like Where do you go from there? You know you I didn't want to be in the doctor's office every day And I'm sure you didn't have had time as well and there must be people out there that are in that same situation So do you do you have any advice for that and how you can help people not be dismissed as often?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 28:34 
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things. I mean, one is if your doctor is cool, which like, and by cool, I mean like open to like, hey, they see you suffering, but they don't know what's going on and they're willing to have a conversation. One of the things you can do is like, you know, Dr. Horowitz has a great questionnaire out there. It's called the M-SIDS questionnaire, and it's great for diagnosis of Lyme disease. And it's been validated to say, hey, if you reach a certain number, you know, you're more likely and you have a few other clinical criteria, like, you know, some of these other things we've talked about with Lyme, that you're more likely than not to have Lyme or one of the other other infections you can get from the same tick. So that can be helpful.

You can, you know, and if you have an open doc who sees you suffering and what all they want to do is help you, but they don't know what to do, you know, you can say, hey, like people like, you know, Dr. Tom and a whole bunch of other people have YouTube information, we have blog posts and you can give them the information because a lot of docs know there's something going on, but they're just like, they don't know what it is and they haven't been exposed to it. And one of the things I try to do is lead with science and not the conspiracy theory or the political argument between the different sides in medicine. There is more evidence of persistence of Lyme disease than there is of cure. And any doc, and I would challenge any doctor to show me otherwise. And so, but, and not in an aggressive way, I'm just like, hey, like this is science, you know, let's have a scientific conversation because the patients are the ones suffering when we throw out science and we just buy in the big pharma or what the, what the, our national health services in any country I've talked to have. But then there's the other part, like, and this is what I learned through my healing journey. Like I say I was 70% better before I actually got a diagnosis and got the treatment. So a large part of my symptoms were downstream effects of Lyme disease. And part of that means Lyme disease is known to block up your detoxification pathways, right? We have science behind this. We know that the more we lay on the couch and sit on the ground because Lyme makes us the stiffer and harder it's going to be. So what I learned from Lyme disease is, is I see a lot of patients who kind of give up and they want to cure their Lyme disease before they live their lives. What I learned from Lyme is that my healing was actually in living. When I decided I wanted to live my life no matter what, I could take action. Now everybody takes, has a different experience of how much action they can take. So I always recommend people take about 70% of the action they think is their maximum. So, and then again, also what we learned from exercise and stuff like that is you can't always go to a hundred percent. So like if you were going to go like, you know, heavy in the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then do 70% of that. And obviously people with chronic Lyme disease are probably not going heavy in the gym, but I'm just as an example. But then on Tuesday and Thursday, you still do stuff, but you back it down. So always do, when you're periodic, following a periodization and you're going up and down, just like the ebbs and flows of life, do 70% of what you think your max is for that day. So you don't accidentally overdo it.

But then the other thing is I was really pissed. I was so pissed. Every doctor I want to guess, I mean, we didn't use the word gaslighting back then, but I was gaslit left and right. And then your family, you know, believes you. And then they make it worse or they don't believe you. And they make it worse. And it's like, we have a lot of trauma that comes from just being alive on planet earth, adverse childhood experiences, these ACEs, and from being sick. And so you got to do the work because you're worth it, right? And so what I learned is like, even when no doctor could help me, I figured out that I was just going to do everything in front of me possible, open up detoxification pathways. I can do breathing exercises that are shown to improve circulation. Everybody's like, what is the best, you know, how can I improve circulation and get the BZ out? How can I break down these biofilm things? Do I take enzymes? This supplement? I'm like, well, if you practice things like butako breathing, which has now taken off and been incorporated like breath holds and intermittent hypoxemic training, that is amazing for a few things. And one of the things it does is it opens up your nose and it creates more carbon through making more carbon dioxide and nitric oxide. We learned through COVID, nitric oxide is an amazing anti-inflammatory. So is carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide and nitric oxide open up your lymphatics and your blood and your veins and allow, so like if you had Raynod's and stuff and you did breathing properly, you could actually get better circulation in your fingers and your toes. Doesn't mean we're treating the underlying cause at the moment, but we're optimizing self-healing. We're doing practices that can do that. And then, you know, as you go down this rabbit hole, all these little things you can do like improve your nutrition. One of the other things I love talking about is the glymphatic system and drainage in the brain. Well, so if you want to know the world's best and, you know, brain detoxification supplement, it's sleep, right? And I know sleep can be really hard. I was unable to sleep forever. And I just had this moniker, sleep when you're dead. Because if I slept for four hours a day for a couple of weeks, or I slept 14 hours a day, which is usually what happened for months, I never had energy. But it was once I started doing the physical stuff and working on breathing, because my nervous system was so wound up all the time, the breath work that was... I could never sit down to do breath work or meditation. I wanted to. I knew it was good. I could not do it.

I was just like, you know, like just going because I was so vibrating inside. But the physical act of the yoga practice that taught me to do the breathing allowed me to do that. And that was my access point. Not everybody has the same access point. But when I started to do that, the sleep was better. And then I was like, OK, I'm going to just not be pissed off if the sleep is good or bad. I'm just going to do it. So I started to open up brain detoxification. And then that comes back to the breathing and slowing your breathing down. You don't even have to hold your breath. Most people are breathing 15, 20 times a minute. If you just breathe in, you know, and out like for, you know, and just did six or 10 breaths a minute. Right. So in for three out for three. Well, that's six seconds and now six seconds times 10. You know, but that would half what most people are breathing. And that will help. And so I would do five or 10 minutes a day, right? You don't have to start with some crazy practice. But the other benefit of that is when you slow that down, now you're opening up your nose a little bit. So if we come into the chronic illness where you're like, well, first of all, physiology, 20 to 30 percent of all the drainage out of your brain, the detoxification for your brain comes through here.

Right. Which is great. So it comes through your nose. So now I'm opening that up and I'm actually detoxifying my brain better through sleep and through opening up the pathways in my nose. And a lot of what we know about mold, which is another thing that's ubiquitous and gets wrapped into this chronic Lyme disease world all the time, because it's in the environment, you're good with it until you get Lyme. And now you have the straw that broke the camel's back and you just have what I call chronic toxin overload. Now you're opening up your nose, which then allows some of that to drain out of your nose better. So better detoxification, less mold, less inflammation in the brain. And it's just all this back and forth that really helps a lot. So I think what it is is finding the different things that optimize self-healing. And that's what I loved about osteopathy. And then when I in my medical training and this yoga bit, but then later on, you know, as I got reintroduced to PEMF, even when I laid on these pads, like when I was a practitioner and I could actually, you know, get some of these things in our practice, I was I could feel how this was calming my nervous system because that's a part that's another part we can talk about. But coming to nervous system, I felt safe. And I was also I know there's clinical research on optimizing these things. So maybe for me, I started because I didn't have a lot of resources back in the day with the breathing and the gentle body movements.  Later on, I realized, oh, I could optimize that with things like hyperbaric. I could optimize that with PEMF. And the cool part about the PEMF and my experience is I can choose different protocols and programs to I could just get myself feeling like I'm floating in my mom's womb with like a Shulman frequency or something and other things I could improve my energy. I could calm my nervous system at night. So I think that these different devices and different personal practices can make a really big difference in one's healing. And again, I'm not saying that this is treating the Lyme disease directly, but part of treating Lyme disease is optimizing your your body's ability to heal itself so that when you then that's what my story shows. When I got to treatment, it worked better and it worked effectively because I had done that work and I continued to do it. So I encourage people to reach out to doctors and other health care practitioners, help find somebody who knows what they're talking about. If you can't do it at home, travel, you may have to. But do the work you can do at home because that was most of my healing.

Andy Smith 38:00 
And so you mentioned the PEMF there was it the first time he was introduced to it was that kind of put upon you during your medical training or how was the you know when did you first bump into a PEMF mat?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 38:13 
Yeah, yeah. The first time I was introduced was very briefly in medical school and I was like, all right, cool, whatever. It was a conference. I saw it. I felt it because I was in my woo days of trying to feel energy and stuff. I thought, well, that's amazing. But I really never had exposure until I went to, and I don't remember if it was a Lyme conference or not. It might have been an osteopathic conference, but it was very early in my career right after residency. And I was really in tune with all this because I was mostly better by there. It was like two years into my clinical practice when I was spot on dialed. But I was like, how can I help people in my world who don't have the willpower and the must get it done that I did? Because I do understand that. I think there's a couple of groups of people in chronic illness. There's like two thirds of the people, maybe a little more in chronic Lyme world. If they don't slow down, they're going to fall down. And then there's people like me, whereas if I did lay down, I would never get up again. And so I was like, I can't lay down because if I do, I'm going to be in a coffin soon is what it felt like. So I understand not a lot of people have that amount of energy in their chronic illness to push through that. It's a smaller group. So for the bigger group of people, I'm like, they're so focused on their illness. They're suffering so much. They're trying to keep their job. They're trying to keep their family and their relationships together. They're trying to be great parents. But they're just like, I don't have time for this stuff. So I saw this guy at this whatever conference it was. And I was just like, that's really cool. I remember feeling the energy from that before. And I had learned more about frequency. And I was like, wait a second, can I hop on that thing? They do demos. And I'm on the thing. And I'm like, wait, are you doing it like a thing? It's like kind of goes like this and then drops and it goes like this and drops. And he's like, what the hell is wrong with you? Can you really feel that? And I learned about he would he had just for the demo put me on a sawtooth pattern of this frequency, whatever he was doing. And I was like, yeah, I can feel that. And so I actually threw my osteopath, just by innately, I realized when I was a kid, my parents tried to beat being weirdo out of me and being voodoo. But later on, I was trained in how to understand what the energy fields moving were. So I felt it. And I was like, that felt great. So I went and grabbed a bunch of my friends and I was like, you know, threw them on there and like my wife felt it. A couple other people were like, I don't really feel it. But the difference or the part that we noticed that was really cool is all of us were slept amazing that night, whether they felt it or they didn't feel it. And I was like, Oh, there's something to this. So I just pulled out the business credit card, slapped it down and kind of took a deep breath because I bought like one I could use in the office. And it was more money than I'd ever spent on a device ever. In fact, it might at that time been more than I spent on a car because I just got the beat up cars But it was amazing. And I started to put people on it. And I noticed that like, you know, it was great because it would calm their nervous system down. And then we started working to try to see who could get it into their house and all kinds of other stuff. But we would just have people come in like, you know, once a day or once a week, whenever they came for an appointment, you know, it was like, you know, however often however close they were to the office was as often as we could get them on it, because it just helped. You know, I saw so many benefits. But the biggest thing was I saw that it could help calm their nervous system down in whatever way they needed. You know, mine was so jacked up that like I was just going like the energizer bunny if you put a nuclear reactor inside of them, and that was burning out my body. But most people I work with are on the other side, they needed to essentially build up their body battery, you know, their charge. And also, so it's almost like that tired and wired thing. So they're super tired, but they can't sleep. And they're like, but they can't, you know, they have no energy. So I was kind of like seeing that we could bring down the hyper reactivity of the nervous system and bring up the body's energy levels all at the same time. And so that's really, you know, we saw really great benefit that way.

Andy Smith 42:20 
And it's interesting you're saying that because like PEMF devices, you know, we say to people that, you know, somebody who's super alert can use it and it helps to regulate them. And somebody who's got no energy, you put them on and it's like, well, how is that working? You know, how, how is it doing? And and it's explaining to people that it's working on the bodies to rebalance, you know, we're giving the tools to the body to do what it needs to do. So it's not tuning people up and tuning people down. The body's doing that. But the PEMF is giving them the tools to use it. So it sounds like you started off using a lower intensity device because a lot of people couldn't feel it. But interestingly, you say that, you know, some people are quite sensitive to PEMFs and they're able, especially if you understand how the mechanism works and the frequencies you quite tuned into it. But I think you've been using some more higher, slightly higher intensity devices more recently, if I'm correct. Do you use a combination or how are you using them more these days?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 43:16 
Yeah, you know, things have changed over the last little bit. Prior to the pandemic, I was almost 50% virtual, meaning people would come once or once a year, and they were traveling from so far that I would do telemedicine even before it was a big deal. And with the pandemic, I primarily do telehealth now so that it's easy to reach people. So we don't have an office where we're actually putting people on. And at the moment, so now we were getting people to get some things at home or go with their local... Find a local clinic where they can go do it. So we do all kinds of things. What I found, though, is the stuff that a lot of my friends can't feel, and I can feel... I mean, I can literally, in the office, if I were walking past the room with the door closed, I would know if it's on or not. I'm just like, that's just always been me. But what's interesting and bring me back to that if I get off on this tangent, because I think this is an important part for our chronic illness people. When I was younger, and especially after I got Lyme disease, it got way heightened. If I went to the mall, which I think they still have malls, I don't really know. But it's like the light and the sound it made and all the different frequencies would just feel like they were assaulting me. And Lime made that so much worse because it just cranked up my sensitivity. But a lot of people in this world are like, hey, I'm super sensitive. But that's a blessing. You are closer to normal humanity than most people on the planet. It's just that you need to learn how to turn the ryo set up or down and balance out, give your body the frequencies it needs to heal itself so that you have the ability to use it. Because I use that as a tool now and it's not a disaster. And it was definitely worse when I was chronically sick. But to be able to feel things is being alive. But now if you're feeling them and it just wound up, it's like you were saying a minute ago, we give the body the tools to kind of balance it out. I'm always like, I want you living in optimal. I don't want you too high or too low. But that's not my choice. Your body innately wants to live in that place that many of us call optimal. So let's get there. So the sensitivity to me is a tool for you as a person, but also for me as a clinician, if you're hyper sensitive, that's just letting me know that you still have that power in you. But we're just feeding it energy into it the wrong way. So then when we come back to this, it's like what I found with my chronic illness people was I could feel it standing next to the mat. Some of my friends could feel it or not, but they would feel the benefit of it. And a lot of my chronic line people, I would just turn the machine on at like 99% of whatever this one thing was, one program was because it was really 99% of low is low. It wasn't like a high 99%, but overall in the grand scheme of what the machine could kick out, it was pretty low. But they would have to sometimes go really low even in that. And I don't think that it was really at those low protocols that they were not able to tolerate the protocol because they would all be dying on the mat and they would go home and sleep great. So then I would turn it down for them. And I think what happened was they were feeling more. And it didn't feel good because a lot of what we run into, and I mentioned ACEs and the adverse childhood experiences and the medical gaslighting, when we actually feel like trauma allows at which Lyme disease itself is a trauma, we go outside of the body. And so when we come back, one of the ways to heal, one of the best ways is a somatic experience and do somatic practices that slowly help you come into your body and feel safe. So what I learned early on, even before I understood what I just said, other than innately, and I didn't know the research on that at the time because it was just emerging, is in order to heal, you have to feel safe. And also we need to push a little bit. Going back to the gym, I need to train and sometimes I'm going to get sore and sometimes I'm going to back off and just have like a chill day. But if I over train, I'm going to collapse. And that's the same way the body heals. It's called hormesis. It's a little bit of a stressor, helps you grow. Too much of a stressor, too much at once or a low stress over too much time. Both of them are going to collapse you if you don't have a break. So what we needed to do was turn... These people weren't having a physical problem to it. They're having an emotional experience of too much. So I turned them down and we would coach them through it. We would let them start to feel a little bit of the benefit and we'd slowly ratchet up the protocol. So some of our chronic illness people are physically getting too much if they're cranking up the PEMF. But some of them are not physically overwhelmed. They're more emotionally overwhelmed. And the thing when we know that the body works is a body-mind-spirit unity. So you're Andy, you're not Andy's body, Andy's mind, and Andy's emotions and spirit. You're just Andy. So the beauty of that whole thing is when I recognize that, I realize that some of the people who have really weird reactions, it's definitely not a physical reaction. And you're the doctor, you know it's not a physical reaction. But they're having another reaction that's real for them, which therefore makes it physical. So there's no physical, mental, emotional breakdown in our body. We just use it for conversation. And when we look at that, that's where I learned I turned my PEMF down a bit and then they were like, oh my God, I didn't have a reaction. So some of them felt no positive benefit other than they didn't feel worse. And that was a huge win for them because now they had access and then they came in and we cranked it up just a little and we nudged it up over time. And then they're like, oh my God, I'm sleeping better and I'm not having a bad reaction. Or have a micro reaction rather than a macro reaction. And that was really one of the things that happened. And so then I was able, everybody's an individual. So I love the devices where I can go low and I can crank up and go high because most people probably need a higher dose treatment. But in the beginning, those lower doses that we often need to do are the ones that give them the total body unity feeling of momentum, even if I can't measure improvements in sleep, even if I can't measure improvements in toxicity levels, which I could at a higher level. So I meet everybody where they're at to the best of my ability. And sometimes I make mistakes and then I just backtrack a little bit. But the PEMF is great in those situations from low to all the way up to high, because I know it's working on their physiology and it's some of the devices. I even have a travel device right next to me here that I take and it's more for localized stuff. But for some of my patients, even that's a lot. So we can meet them where they're at and we can crank it up or crank it down as much as we need to, to give them the win they need. Because a lot of times that emotional win, that spiritual win, which then goes to the mental part of like, oh my God, it's actually I can tolerate something, that's the access point to the physical healing. So then again, and the problem is when I'm even explaining this, I keep saying it's one thing and I break it down into three or four parts, but the three or four parts are for our brain to think about it. And often that is the key to healing, is to let them have the wins and develop momentum.

Andy Smith 51:02 
Yeah. And it's really important points you're making because the way that, you know, we, we also find that a lot of people that have either been diagnosed with Lyme disease, um, fibromyalgia, um, uh, mold toxicity, they tend to be quite sensitive, especially to start with. So, you know, we recommend the low and slow approach, same as you, and it's, it's all about building your tolerance up. And, um, something that people get confused with a lot of time is, is EMFs and high frequency EMFs. And we have to kind of educate people on that. So I wanted to kind of bring it up on this podcast in terms of, you know, high frequency EMFs, mobile phones, wifi routers, that sort of thing tends to be play havoc with, with people going through like Lyme disease and things. And it's, and it, you know, a lot of the time they want to find quiet place in the house, you know, because of all the noise that's going on around them in terms of the wifi and everything. Um, but PEMF essentially is a lot lower frequencies, a lot lower, more natural frequencies tends to be less than a hundred Hertz ones that you find more in nature and a more tolerated by the body. So it's just something I wanted to kind of get in there for people to understand if they're listening to this and they're thinking, well, you know, my, my mobile phone EMFs just drive me insane. So it's, it's not the same, same thing. Um, in terms of a protocol, where does the PEMF fit in your kind of normal protocol? Obviously it's just part of the puzzle. We'll come to that with other modalities that you use, but you know, where does PEMF typically fit into a Lyme disease protocol?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 52:34 
Yeah. And I just want to touch on one thing you said really quickly, because it's really important. It's like natural frequency, right, is really important. And the first thing in the United States, at least, where, and I think it might've been even in the 70s or PEMF was, approved by the FDA was for nonhealing fractures. So you broke your bone, it's sitting there, the two edges are together and there are not healing properly. So if we exposed you to this natural frequency, even if it was a little bit of a push in the intensity of it, it would actually allow those bones to start healing again. And you look at the Shulman frequency, let's see, like to me, or the Schumann frequency, excuse me. Um, one of the things that, you know, we noticed is that whenever I put anybody on that thing, like everybody's like, Oh my God, I just feel like I'm floating. So, and that's where people are, I mentioned the womb earlier. Like I've, I've had patients tell me, I feel like I was floating in the womb, surrounded by this beautiful liquid of life in my mind. Everything was just great. It's like, it's more natural, but I wanted to bring up another point too, before we talk about where it fits in. The important part to me is just because you can feel your phone and you can feel the PEMF, it doesn't mean they're the same, right? To your point. So just know that you may feel the PEMF and it might even feel weird initially cause your nervous system is on guard. It's like, Oh, this is different than usual. And it's like the phone, even though it's different than the phone, it's a little bit like it. So now I'm freaking out, right? So that's where the low and slow is good, but also take a deep breath and know that PEMF is not the same as these higher frequency EMFs. And it's also not constant, right? So I've even like cranked people up on dosages to do things like help bones heal or to stimulate it, but it's a momentary stimulus. Not like it. I mean, seriously, if you, if you flip open your, your, your cell phone now or your computer and you click for wifi, how many freaking different wifi routers can you connect to that aren't yours? This is ubiquitous and driving at us. So, you know, turn off your wifi router when you go to sleep. And if you haven't been able to sleep for a long time, if even if you're in an apartment complex do that, it's amazing. Cause it's all about proximity, you know? So anyway, I just think it's really important for people who are sensitive when they move into PEMF, they understand it is a natural healing frequency. You may need to adjust the intensity or the types of frequency in the beginning to get it right. But these are welcome changes in your body. And so again, going back to my 70% and this whole hormesis thing. Well, actually if I can for a second talk about hormesis, it's, it's that little stressor, but not too much and not too long. That's the key. And I was like, I did a lecture on this one. So there was over 1800 medical journal articles published on this that showed the optimal change from your stress baseline is 20 to 30% to lead to healing. So I just always say, Hey, if you're able to walk around the block, you know, and it's a mile, you know, 20% optimal would to increase would be over the next three months, go from one mile to 1.2 miles. That's almost nothing, right? And if you're walking a 10th of a mile, now it's like, you know, 0.12 miles, like it's a small amount, right? So you may need to start low and crank it up just a little bit. And if you do too much, it's back down, but it's a little bit, but don't be afraid to push a little, right? Just don't push too much or for too long. Um, and then in my protocols, I mean, I think it's, you know, and I, I mean, I have that, you know, a year long mentorship and lime and everybody said, what's the protocol? I'm like, well, you need to learn the foundational information of, of the, the, the infectious disease stuff, the biochemistry, the, the physiology of the body, the pathophysiology, how the bad stuff is making your physiology change. But then I need to move over and say, look, I'm looking at a unique individual in front of me. And to me, PEMF is something that we can use anywhere along the line. And often earlier than later is great because it's calming. It helps you do work without you having to do work. You know, it was like a lot of times, like the biggest thing is people will do a lot of this limbic training, retraining the amygdala work, you know, all these other programs that are designed to calm your nervous system down. And the biggest challenge is you have to do something, right? And then you have to do enough, but not too much. Whereas with the PEMF device, you just choose to do it. You hit the button and you can lay on it or sit on it, or depending if you're using a coil or whatever. But. you can do it with very little effort, right? You just have to decide that you're worth healing and incorporate it. So I incorporated kind of anywhere along anyone's journey where one, they're able to get the devices or borrow the devices. And to me, I wanna calm the nervous system down. I wanna optimize sleep. I wanna open up detoxification pathways and I want circulation now because the more we optimize circulation, we're getting more nutrients in, more oxygen in, more toxins out of a given spot. All these things happen very easily and early on with the use of PEMF. And if you feel overloaded by, this is one of the things, if I give you a bunch of glutathione, either intravenously it happens quick and there's a big shift and that might not feel good. If I give you glutathione in a liposomal oral capsule and you're taking a couple of times a day, you're doing this ongoing. With PEMF, I can give you a little bit and it's not doing the work for you. It's stimulating your body to do the work. And now is your body can dose it. So one, you're dosing the PEMF a little bit, but then also once you stop that stimulus, that directly, your body now has a choice in the matter. So you're filling the battery for the body to do its job better, but then the body's still allowing to be, in my mind, it can make the choice of, oh, do I keep doing this extra detox or do I crank it back a little bit? And that's really the sweet spot that Rio's step, turn it up, turn it down. I don't want my patients to become dependent on me or even a device, but when we stimulate self healing and we are catalysts of healing, rather than the doer of the healing and we allow the patient's body to do it, that's where PEMF can, you can start very early and get some stuff like, hey, that creates a thing called sleep and pain reduction. It's like the little travel thing I have, a friend of mine was showing me this device at a conference and he's like, I don't want to take it home. I'll give you a deal on it. And I was like, oh, I just tweaked my knee when I crashed my mountain bike or whatever. And I put it on and it felt better. And I was like, wow, I can get pain relief right away. But then I also know the systemic longer term things, I'm helping the body get to that self healing place, which is what I want. I want you to become more autonomous again. And these are great devices, whether they're a small one or a large one, I can get that job done. So to me, every once in a while I got to go, I've got to press the gas pedal really hard on botanicals or homeopathics or antibiotics or a prescription medicine early on. And I might have to blast them with some detox, but most people who are chronic, I need to ease into it. I ease in with some botanicals and then I get supportive things in right away. And PEMF should be right at the top of the list as far as I'm concerned.

Andy Smith 01:00:17 
And say someone's on one of these protocols and you know they're doing what they should be doing, they change a diet, they introduce a PEMF device. Is there ways in which they can track their symptoms that you recommend? Because obviously none of these are an overnight treatment, we know that. It's good that you mentioned sleep because that is for me like you know the first thing people know is that PEMF is sleep. But you know in terms of their pain and that sort of thing you know that is it's going to take time. But how can people effectively track that because it's a difficult one to mention to a lot of people.

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:00:51 
Well, there's a ton of different ways. One of the things that I have my patients do is, I took the validated questionnaire that Dr. Horowitz made, and a lot of that comes through some of my other mentors like Joe Borscano and Charles Ray Jones, who, you know, did a lot of adult work and then pediatric work respectively with these symptom trackers. And I have age and birth sex trackers that are set up so that they can track your physiology. And they're subjective, right? They get their frequency and severity of symptoms, but it's really just about, you know, I do it every time they come see me to see their trajectory, but it's on their patient portal. They can log in and they can fill it any time that they feel like they need to, they want to track their symptoms so they don't have to remember, do it there. And so you could even do, one is, you know, the Horowitz questionnaire is available online. You just gave me the idea that maybe I'll just put my symptom trackers on because it's just frequency and severity of what you have. But I might take, if you have like three or five top symptoms, I might write them down and then I might say, hey, you know, do, do I, is this like zero through three, right? Like zero, I don't, obviously don't have it, one mild, moderate, two severe three. And the same thing with frequency, you know, just kind of do it, don't have it almost never, sometimes all the time. And you just do your track, so zero to three on your, but don't, don't, you don't have to do what I do in the clinic because I'm tracking things and over time and, and putting them into, you know, databases to try to figure out patterns to help heal people better doing recent, you know, just pick your, your top ones that are kicking your butt and you know, like sleep and joint pain would be good enough and just rank them daily or weekly on and weekly is probably better. So you're not like staring at your symptoms all day long, you know? But do that so that you're just getting like a score and you can get zero to six, right? On your top two or three symptoms and just track them over time, you know? And then the other one I love, just like, you know, looking at your day and just go, hey, was it a good day or a bet, you know, or is it better or worse, you know, than the day before? It doesn't have to be complicated. I think that's a lot of what we do is we complicate things. It's like a couple of symptoms, track them once a week and then just see where they go over time. And I think what most people will notice is if you implement something like PEMF and then you get to sleep, the first, let's say fatigue is one of your big symptoms. So you do PEMF, you start sleeping better. The first thing you're going to notice if it's working right, most likely is that you're more tired. In fact, your pillow becomes and your bed become like your best friend, you're like, I want more. But it's not because like you just have no energy, it's like because you're sleeping deeper and your body wants to sleep more. So when I first turned it around, I literally was sleeping eight and a half to nine and a half hours a night. I literally tracked it. I was like, I know sleep is important. The good thing was I was recently married and I actually liked the person I got married to. So it's a little easier to lay in bed longer. But I needed to be sleeping, not goofing around, right? But what I noticed was for the beginning, I was way more tired. It was so hard to get out of bed at nine hours, right? But then I started to have more energy around 4.30 in the afternoon. And then a month or two later, I was getting energy at 2.30 in the morning, but it was still a beast for me to get out of bed. It was terrible. And I kept doing that where I found that my clock of where I was getting energy kept going. I got energy later in the day, but earlier and earlier and earlier and the clock just kept going back. And it was like, hey, 11 o'clock in the morning at energy, 10 to 11 months in, I started to wake up with energy. So with pain, I would expect pain to maybe get a little worse for, you know, a couple of days to a week and then get better or get better and then come back, get better and then come back. And then ultimately the time of better is longer. But I do want to warn people, my personal experience in 15 years plus of clinical experience doing this energy levels typically, like you feel kind of clearer and better and maybe like you have energy, but you really don't for a long time. And that's probably, but be objective. Are you beat up in the morning or are you like, Oh my gosh, I feel so heavy. I just want to sleep more and it feels good. And that's what I felt. And that's what a lot of our patients feel. So don't get all beat out, you know, been up. Your energy levels are actually lower for a little while. Your body is in sleep debt and our research. I remember, I don't know if you know that you had this experience, Annie, but when I was younger, they're like, Oh, you only had to pay back one fifth of your sleep debt. And then you have to pay back a quarter. The research shows you got to pay back a hundred percent. So I got out of residency. I'm like, wait, chronic Lyme disease and residency. I am here. I had to sleep so much for so long to really power back my battery. But when you do, it really makes a big difference. But that also is a beautiful tool because you start to feel good and you start to go, wow, that bad, that like lack of energy is more like I want to sleep more rather than lack of energy. And so you start to get a little more objective with how you feel. That's the only caveat I would say to sleep because you'll sleep better. You'll be, I slept better, but I'm more tired and you'll be, I'm sleeping great, but I'm more tired and it's not working like, no, actually that means it's working. So rate your, like rate your quality of sleep, like what you think, how you think it was. I woke up last, I felt deeper. And if you wake up feeling like you can't, like you are just like a blob of goo in your bed and you're like, you just don't want to get up. That's perfect.

Andy Smith 01:06:33 
Yeah, so you've mentioned mold toxicity a couple of times on this as well as something obviously you were involved in quite a lot and Interesting story is that our partner in Australia? For the celerate brand he was a good friend of mine at school and he moved out to Australia to get married and He got really sick and he later found out three years down the line that he had mold toxicity He was back visiting the UK we gave him a celerate device and we said to him take it home get use it and He had such a turnaround similar to my story when I was introduced to PEMF that he's now our he's now Australian distributor out there so But for his benefit and for anyone else that is listening to us with with mold toxicity how hand-in-hand does that go with Lyme disease in terms of like the symptoms or And and the protocols and the treatments is it is it quite similar as such or? They two very complex things

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:07:30 
I would say yes to both of those, they're very, they're, you know, they, they go hand in hand because, you know, at least my experience primarily in the US, but Australia is very similar as like mold, mold is ubiquitous, right? And it's not that we want no mold in our lives, but we don't want a high concentration. And we also have to optimize our ability to get rid of the toxicity and our ability to tolerate toxins. So from a mold toxin perspective, it's interesting, outside mold is cool. It's not really until it comes inside that it creates all these toxins because it's not its normal environment. And so now you take a mold that's not in its normal environment and you put us in our home and it's like, and it's confined, you know, we have a higher exposure risk. And like on the east coast of, you know, the United States and most places in the US, there's a fair amount of mold, right? So it's not, you want no mold, but you don't want a lot of mold. Then you want to optimize detoxification. And then if you look at, say, the east coast, which is, you know, a hotbed in the United States for mold, well, for mold too, but for tick-borne illness. And unfortunately with global climate change and habitat modification, a large part of our country has become a hotbed for tick-borne illness. But especially on the coast and the upper Midwest and the lower, you know, the lower, the southern states, which is most of the country. What we're seeing is that people, you know, where, you know, we have people who are going outside in their yard, and Lyme is what they call paradigmatic, meaning about 75% of people get it in their backyard, the park or their friend's backyard. So it's not going deep in the woods. It's actually going along trails. It's going along gardens and the edge between the woods and your lawn, which is where everybody puts their swing set with the kids. That's also the people who are out there doing all that in those environments. A lot of those environments also prime environments for water damage and mold being in your house. You know, so there's a ton of overlap. And when you look at the symptoms of mold, because Australia, to the best of my knowledge, has quite a different Lyme disease risk than the United States, you know. And so when you look at mold by itself, the symptoms of mold look a lot like Lyme. They look a lot like another infection we haven't talked about as Bartonella. But a lot of these infections overlap. And so the problem is, we said at the top that, hey, Lyme and syphilis were the great imitator. Well, I said syphilis was called the great imitator. Then they called Lyme the next great imitator, because we fix syphilis mostly for people who find care. Mold is like the great imitator too. I mean, it's like brain fog, fatigue, and all these weird things. Now, there are some minor differences where it's more likely mold than Lyme. But yeah, they're very nonspecific, especially in the beginning, unless you have one of these hallmark symptoms. And so mold is like a pain in the rear end. It's like, hey, you know, you can't think, you know, everything hurts, you know, your sleep is off, then you start to get more like mast cell symptoms a lot of the times, you know, and you're reacting, you're hyper-reacting the food. You're hyper-reacting to your environment, you smell something, it's like you look like you have chemical, multiple chemical sensitivity. So all these things kind of, they're not always cut and dry different, you know, and the treatments are a bit different. But so with Lyme, we have to, if I start from the kind of the most conventional, it's like you have to treat the infections, right? And then we have to optimize detoxification. And then we, then modern medicine forgets about the self-healing that we've been talking about. And in mold, really, we want to get out or remediate, you know, if you have that exposure. But then we want to, you know, basically optimize your ability to get rid of the mold toxin on its own. Most commonly, that would start with using binders because you're that work in your gut because your body's already peeing out and pooping out all of these things. But in your gut, the way it gets dropped into the colon is through bile and bile digests fat and gets rid of toxins. But your liver makes this, and it's very expensive. So it recycles a lot of it. So we just want to grab those toxins so that we're not recycling the toxins and we're, so we're optimizing you getting them out. Then we want to mobilize toxins from their binding sites, which is kind of complex and often needs different bioflavonoids. Things like PEMF would make the body less hospitable for these toxins. So it would help your, say, okra toxin is a really, it was one of the big ones. It loves to get stuck in between the cells of the kidney. And so when you have bladder issues, we're like, hey, is it ochratoxin problems or is it Lyme? Because both do it. But in this case, I could give you biflavinoids to do it, but I can also optimize your body's function and with PEMF and other modalities to help flush that out more easily. And then we want to go start treating in the nose. So again, start doing the things you can do on your own, which is opening up your breathing pathways and draining the brain. Because mold does a couple of interesting things. One is it's just going to, it may lead to chronic sinusitis, but it's more likely it's just hiding in your nose in a biofilm and it's not causing nasal symptoms, but it can. But it can lead to autoimmune encephalitis where you're getting like, you can't think clearly, you're forgetting names, like you're not performing well at work like me back in the day. And mold wasn't even on the map, so we never looked because there was no way to look unless you had it in your lung and you had a pneumonia. But anyway, so then if I open up the nose, I make it less likely that mold can bother me here than when I do nasal in the brain. And when I do nasal treatments, if they're more effective and they have to do nasal treatments, I do gut treatments. But all of that is like this protocol of natural and conventional medicine combined together. But again, at the bottom of that is the foundation of self-healing that we've been talking about. So my preference is to put self-healing at the top because that's stuff that each and every person listening can do no matter who they're working with or if they don't have anybody in their area, they can still get that 50, 60, 70 percent going on their own. And then the rest of it is an interesting combination of putting the two together. If both are present, that's where you really need to be working with somebody who knows how to stage it. And then if you just have mold, it's just then we start working in that pattern. But I will say at the one of the things I love about it is the things that work best for mold other than the exact direct like antifungal treatment and the things that work for Lyme other than the exact like Lyme antibiotic versus the antifungal for mold, they're all the same thing, right? It's we're supporting detoxification, so I'm just saying you can take the supplements, you can do all these fancy things, but why don't we utilize things that are going to catalyze and stimulate you doing it on your own? So I like the things you can do on your own, but that requires a lot of work, even that Butteko breathing is the idea to remember to do and you got to hold your breath when you're moving, blah, blah, blah, PEMF, just turn the thing on and hang out. And sometimes you got no energy. That's all you can do. Yeah, I love it.

Andy Smith 01:14:54 
Okay. I want to, I want to run a couple of quick fire questions for you. Um, just before we wrap this one up.

So it's, um, uh, just like one or a couple of word answers from you and then we can drill into them a little bit afterwards. So, um, I'll ask you these ones. What's the biggest myth about Lyme disease?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:15:12 
You can't cure it.

Andy Smith 01:15:13 
Most underrated symptom people ignore.

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:15:15 
You know, the first word that comes to heart, to my mind, believe it or not, is broken heart.

Andy Smith 01:15:18 
Oh, really?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:15:20 
100% migratory joint pain for those who want to be scientific about it.

Andy Smith 01:15:25 
First sign you've personally ignored?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:15:27 
Fatigue.

Andy Smith 01:15:27 
One thing you wish every new patient knew about Lyme?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:15:30 
They can get better.

Andy Smith 01:15:31 
Diet priorities for Lyme, more protein or plants?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:15:38 
Both

Andy Smith 01:15:38 
No good answer. PEMF is a standalone or a supportive therapy for Lyme?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:15:44 
Supportive.

Andy Smith 01:15:45 
And H-BOT, when do you consider it for Lyme?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:15:49 
When people have access to it.

Andy Smith 01:15:51 
Top two other complementary therapies outside of PEMF and the antibiotics?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:15:56 
Gratitude and movement.

Andy Smith 01:15:57 
How important is sleep for Lyme disease?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:16:00 
100%.

Andy Smith 01:16:02 
No, good. Thanks for that. I mean, we touched on it there. So if you had to pick a couple of other like top, top therapies for, you know, outside of the antibiotics and outside of the PEMF, you know, where would you point people to get like the most, the most out of their buck? If that makes sense.

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:16:22 
Botanical antimicrobials are amazing because we're using most of the time a whole plant. So we're not focusing in on like, a single active in constituent. So we're doing it as nature intended it, as source created it. So we have a lot of fringe positive benefits. And the things about botanicals are, not only are they really often good at the growing forms that are what the antibiotics do really well, but they look at these persister forms. And while they can change your gut microbiome, they generally are much more positive overall. I also use a lot of homeopathy in various forms to support detoxification, as well as to help your body remember that these organisms are not used. Sometimes they've been there so long, you start to remember they are you. And like I tongue in, I didn't, I was gonna say tongue in cheek, not really tongue in cheek, I truly meant gratitude is huge because a lot of times, and I recommend people do a very simple gratitude practice at the end of the day, take three to four minutes, no more, write down three wins for the day and then write down three wins you're gonna have for tomorrow. So you pre-program your day. When you wake up the next day, you're going to read those over really quickly. It takes like 10, 15 seconds and then that's it. And everyone I've ever asked to do this between four and seven days starts to notice that there's actually a lot more good going on in their life than they ever thought. And they start to see serendipities and coincidences and all those in quote words where they're manifesting little things. And I liken it to, if you're someone who's a connoisseur of wine or food, where you're sitting there and you take a bite or a sip and then you just savor it for minutes or you have a sip of wine before a piece of beef or after a piece of beef and you're just sitting there going, oh my God, the nuance changes where you appreciate life more. Because with the gratitude practice, a lot of my people are like, well, I don't sleep well. I'm like, well, let's plan sleep, you know? And so I wanna help people get more parasympathetic, relaxed, calm so that one, they can sleep. But also when you're sleeping is when your gut, which houses 70% of your immune system is most active. When you wanna absorb those nutrients the most, it's why you're sleeping and calm and in this parasympathetic state. And that's the healing state. So if I can help you get there by just going, wow, you know, my life, I feel bad. You're not gonna forget you feel like crap. I mean, that's the other thing. You're not gonna forget you have Lyme or mold toxicity, right? I mean, it's just not. If you really have it, you can't forget about it because it sucks. So when you start to focus on some of the other things, you put, you know, I always say like, I'm a big believer in meditation. Everybody's like, well, that word can have some, can be charged for certain people. I mean, it has a meaning for everyone, right? Positive or negative. And so I'm like, to me, the best definition I ever heard was to become familiar with. So I wreck, I go, Hey, are you becoming, so are you living your life in a positive meditation or a negative meditation? Most of us don't need to become any more familiar with Lyme disease or mold toxicity. So let's stop focusing on it because you'll never forget it. Let's start to become more familiar with what the way you want to live your life. And the easiest way to do that is to just say, Hey, you know what? Even on your worst day, you can learn a lesson, you know, or you could say, I woke up this morning and I took a nice breath. You know, or whatever it is, I had a sip of water. And the other thing too, when you're putting on your PEMF machine or you're drinking your water, right, or you're taking your supplement or your medicine, stop being pissed off about having to do it. Go, just recognize, be grateful for the fact that you're willing to do that in order to heal. I'm willing to purchase my PEMF device and press play every day or whatever your protocol is. I'm willing to sit down and write this. I'm pissed off. I have to write this down because Dr. Tom told me to no, write down like I'm willing to write down my gratitudes that can be, you know what I mean? Like you start small and and then the three for tomorrow is really the key. Well, both are the key, but three for tomorrow is interesting. Most of us, when I say, Hey, tomorrow I'm going to have a great day and I'm going to have an energy immediately, your conscious mind says no, because you've not had it in a while. But what's great is, and that's okay, but when you go to sleep, your conscious and your subconscious might disassociate and your subconscious plugs into the universe, source, God, whatever you want to call it. And that's your super conscious mind. And that's where you're open to new healing possibilities. And so now you just created three things that eventually you're going to pass out, whether the sleep is good or not, you're still going to have a moment where you can connect to that source. And now you wake up the next day and you're like, oh, that's going to happen. And you don't believe it because you're consciously reading it. But then four or five, six days later, you start to go, oh my God, that really does happen. And you have more control over your health and your life than you think. And then when you start to go to that, you start to feel good when you do it in a week. And when you feel good, then you accidentally trip yourself in the gratitude, which then accidentally makes parasympathetic easier, which then accidentally makes sleep better. And you pair a gratitude practice with sitting on a PEMF device at the same time. Now, now that's a massive shift and you do it at home for free. At least the first part, you got to get yourself a PEMF device, but it's still worth it.

Andy Smith 01:21:59 
No, good. And I think I think that's a great way to sign out, to be honest. And, you know, we're running out of time today, but how can how can people find you if they're, you know, if they're in this situation and they want to find you, they want to talk to you, they want to find your protocols, you know, where's where's the best place to start?

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:22:14 
Great, yeah, thanks for the opportunity to share that. Our clinical practice is at originsofhealth.com, and for our practitioners who are looking to get more training, it's limetraining.org. And other than that, if you look up Tom Moorcroft or Origins of Health online, pretty much everywhere, it will pop right up.

Andy Smith 01:22:35 
No, thank you. There's there's so much I wanted to talk to you on touch on as well But you know we're running out of time So what I'll do is we'll have to get you on for another episode at some point and and go through everything else But to our listeners, thanks for listening again to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe Send a do a five-star review We can get amazing people back on like dr. Tom Moorcroft to share their knowledge with you on all these amazing subjects But for Tom for today.

Thank you so much

Dr Tom Moorcroft 01:23:02 
You know, thanks so much for having me and really appreciate the opportunity.