116: The Truth About Parasites No One Told You Yet | Daniel Roytas

If you go to a polluted water source and you find parasites in there, are you getting sick because of the parasite? Or are you getting sick because you're drinking toxic polluted water? What the deal is with parasites, is it something we have to cleanse ourselves from? We're told that these things come from the outside and then live inside us. They're there to cause disease and health issues for us. There is now publications saying these parasites we thought were once pathogenic are actually commensal. They're not actually there to cause illness. There are hundreds of forever chemicals being sprayed into our environment every day. It's in our food. It's in the clothes that we wear. It's in everything. No one's ever talking about that. It's like, it's got to be the parasite or the mole. That is where I would look first. I would... Hi, and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan. And today I have on my ally and friend, Dr. Daniel Reuters, who is one of the most rigorous investigators that I have in my corner. He published the book, Can You Catch a Cold? And you can find the previous episode where we explore the myth of contagion and infection together. Today, however, we are taking on the sacred cow of a lot of the alternative medicine world, which is parasite infection. So we're going to look at whether or not parasites actually exist, whether they actually cause illness, and what their role is if they do, in fact, exist so that you can begin to liberate yourself from the field of victim consciousness that is held in place by this extremely powerful thought form. Hi, and welcome back, Dr. Daniel Reuters to the show. Thanks, Kelly, or Dr. Brogan. I don't know which you prefer. Thank you very much for having me back. I'm looking forward to it. Kelly, this fine works. I am very, very excited about this episode. And as soon as I saw you present on the subject in a kind of closed door journal clubby kind of group that we meet in, I thought this has to be disseminated. disseminated. And so my interest in peppering you with questions on the subject of parasites today is to create a shareable collection of very provocative perspectives on this subject that I find has generated a thought form that is more contagious across more cultural domains than even viral theory. And what I mean by that is that I look at people who believe in contagion and they believe that viruses and germs cause illness. And of course, that's a huge proportion of the human population still at this point. And then there are those of us who believe there are other factors that drive so-called illness or that what we are calling illness actually isn't the problem. we imagined it was. But the parasite belief field actually bridges across these two collectives. And I have observed and talked about, because I'm interested in the consciousness that underpins some of these thought forms, I've observed that even, and perhaps especially in the health and wellness world, there seems to be like in medicine, we will call it a diathesis. There seems to be this kind of collection of features that move together. And I've noticed, and I'm sure this list will grow as I continue to observe that. And by the way, this is like without any sense of superiority or I know better or whatever. It's just that these thought forms seem to coalesce, So they're the folks that are staunchly, rabidly anti-vaccine. However, they still believe in germ theory. I was this person at the beginning of my advocacy realm where I was talking about things like SV40 and talking about all of the dangerous viruses that vaccines are setting you up for, et cetera. So they're anti-vax. They believe, though, still in germ theory. They happen to believe in the globe and solar system. And they also believe in the elect a hero, you know, kind of perspective on politics. They are, to a person, believers in Lyme disease and parasitology. So I have been very curious about what do all these things have in common? And the closest I can get, which I don't think is nuanced enough, is that victim consciousness underpins all of these beliefs, right? That there is a bad other externalized or a good hero externalized, right? In the case of the political arm of things. And so it's the sinner outside, the savior outside kind of consciousness where you're fragmented and you're not actually coherent in your inner polarities. I don't know, but if I have to hear about a parasite cleanse from one other person who also has stood up about health freedom and all of the ways that the pharmaceutical industry is unsavory and unappealing, I am going to start collecting a tariff. So my interest in asking you about this today is just to sort of open up the conversation, which you take further in your paid subscriber membership, but just to open up the conversation on what the deal is with parasites. Is this a real thing? Is it something we have to cleanse ourselves from? Is it something that we have to worry about? And we probably won't touch on it today, but you and I have talked about how even in the veterinary world, this is a very penetrant thought form as well. So maybe we can start off with what is a parasite? Great question. I mean, this is something that I myself was taught in my undergraduate degrees and postgraduate degrees and then practiced from this perspective of parasites are bad, must destroy at all costs for over 10 years in clinical practice. So we're told that we've got these little creatures that come from the outside. So like a protozoa, so-called single-celled organism, or a helminth, like a worm, that we get exposed to the eggs of something in the environment, either through our food or through some feces, or maybe we get some dirt under our fingernails and have this fecal oral root, and we get exposed to these eggs and they hatch inside us, and now we're harboring these so-called parasites. So we're told that these things come from the outside and then live inside us, and they're there for only really one reason, and that's to make our life hard and difficult and to cause disease and health issues for us. So, yeah, there's these two forms of so-called parasites, these protozoa and these helminths. And the protozoa are blamed on everything from tryptospirosis to malaria, right? There's these little things floating around in the environment that will come and get us. Things like giardia, right? A very common type of so-called parasitic disease. And then, yeah, you have the helminths, which are the like roundworm, for example. And then obviously in animals, you have things like heartworm and tapeworm and all these kinds of different foreign living organisms residing inside us. and since basically this idea has come about that we've got these so-called parasites living inside us, we've been told that they're bad and that we shouldn't have, a healthy human shouldn't have parasites residing inside. Then they should essentially be parasite-free. That's the way that we used to think about bacteria once upon a time. So the reason why we thought that people were sick is because we saw bacteria and we just went along with that idea until we realized, hang on a second, healthy people have got all kinds of bacteria in them. So then it came this idea of, oh, well, then there's good bacteria and there's bad bacteria and yada, yada, yada. So we're like only now just getting to the point, I mean, if we even subscribe to this idea of so-called parasitic protozoa, which I'm kind of skeptical about because there's so many different artifacts and things which could be confused with protozoa. But even if we just assume that there are these protozoa and obviously hellmints, because we can see these worms macroscopically with our naked eye, regardless of the fact of their existence, there is now publications coming out in the mainstream saying, oh, hang on a second. These parasites that we thought were once pathogenic, are actually commensal. So they're there for a reason. They're not actually there to cause illness and to cause disease. So they do claim that there are some that cause disease, but they're saying, well, actually, hang on, most of these aren't actually a problem. So, I mean, I found a paper that was published at the end of 2022 in the Journal of Biology that talks about this. So it's not like an unknown low-impact fact journal by any stretch of the imagination. It's a pretty high impact journal. So these ideas are now being thrown around. So we're kind of where we were, we are now with parasites where we were with bacteria like 60, 70, 80 years ago, where we realized that actually there is a microbiome and these things do serve a purpose. So that's what we're, when we're talking about parasites, that's what we're referring to, these sort of unicellular organisms or the multicellular organisms, such as these worms. And yeah, I think there's even like ectoparasites that people talk about, like ticks and fleas and all these other kinds of things. But maybe today we'll just focus on the internal ones. I'm not sure where the conversation is going to go. I just love doctor speak because I have like these two sort of tracks of awareness in my mind where I can imagine that there are probably a lot of things that you said that some people won't know how to make sense of. And I am always like appreciating, even when I write little notes to myself how much of my medical indoctrination has permeated my communication. So I want to sort of summarize for the non-clinical, non-scientific, non-medical person listening. Because the meme of parasites has entered and penetrated, no pun intended, all of lay consciousness, right? Okay, so here's what I heard you say, that there are these unicellular, meaning one cell organisms that supposedly you can get tested for, aka something like malaria, right? And then there are worms that you can see with the naked eye. And there is also this idea of the asymptomatic carrier, which means that you can be somebody who has this stuff in you, but you're totally fine. And maybe even it's good for you, right? Maybe, we're not sure, like the way that the conventional world talks about it. But for sure, that concept is really essential, as we know, in the contagion infection psychology, because without that concept, you must acknowledge that there isn't evidence for a causal vector, meaning there isn't evidence that this thing makes somebody sick when you're exposed to it, right? Because if you have somebody who's got it and they're fine, you need to explain that. So what I heard you say is like, oh, it's the same thing that now even in the medical literature, there is this idea that you can have common human parasites of the unicellular variety and it's actually totally fine. But maybe sometimes you have it and you get really sick So what I also heard you say is that you not convinced that these protozoa or these one cell organisms actually even exist right So then what happens when somebody goes and they get tested for you know, something like malaria, GRD or whatever, and they, you know, because they have diarrhea, they're traveling, or they have a fever or whatever nonspecific syndromal, you know, manifestation. What is actually going on there when they are being diagnosed with this kind of parasitic infection if this thing doesn't actually exist and has never been proven to exist and certainly hasn't ever been proven to cause illness? I think that's a point of cognitive dissonance for a lot of folks. Even when I sort of chat about it, it's like, well, that makes no sense. Of course, it exists. You can get tested for it. Undoubtedly, single cell organisms floating around. You can take a drop of water from a pond and look at it under a microscope and you'll see things floating around. So I don't deny that. What I'm not convinced of is that those things are what we claim them to be, so that they are this thing that comes in and infects us and then causes a specific illness. What are those things? I don't know. I'm not convinced that a lot of the biology or microbiology world and the pathology world is even really certain about what some of these things are. Because when you look through the literature, it's very common, let's just say it's not uncommon, for them to look at something and go, there, that thing, that's a parasite. And then with further investigation, they go, oh, actually, no, that was a yeast cell or that was like a fungal cell. That was a spore from something. That was a pollen spore. That was a piece of dirt on the slide. That was artifact from some reagent that we used in the medium. There's all these different artifacts that they're observing. And you're like, well, we can't really tell the difference between a lot of these so-called parasites and these artifacts. So that fact makes me curious about what is it that they're actually seeing and how do you know what those things are? Have those microorganisms been isolated and then exposed to a healthy host and shown to cause disease? Maybe, possibly. I'm not convinced that that's been sufficiently shown. But again, I've got a super open mind to any of this. Someone could come up to me tomorrow and say, hey, Dan, here's a paper where XYZ bacteria or virus cause disease. I'm on board. Cool. No problems. But you got to show me first. So it's the same with the parasite thing. I've been looking for evidence to demonstrate this and it's not as easy as one would expect. So I think for something that we just accept to be true, that all these things are out there causing illness and it's been demonstrated conclusively. As I said, I'm not so sure. So one thing that complicates this is the topic of pleomorphism. When you discount that as a thing and you say, no, no, no, there are just specific species. There's one specific type of this entamoeba and there's one type of this giardia and there's one type of this bacteria and whatever and they're set in stone in their form and function, then, yeah, maybe that way of thinking makes sense. But when you look from the other perspective and there's all these researchers and scientists and whoever saying, well, hang on a second, these microorganisms can change their form and function and you find papers where they took a pure culture of bacteria and exposed it to a certain condition and then they started observing so-called parasites in those cultures, where did they come from? The argument is, well, the sample got contaminated. But the authors were saying, no, no, no, we actually think we're observing the original organism that we had in that culture morph into all kinds of different things. So if that's the case, then who knows what it is that we're looking at inside a fecal sample. Those things could change from hours to days to weeks. So you may find something in there at the start, look again in a week or a day, and it may not be there anymore. So I'm at the point now where I have no idea about what anyone seeing under a microscope in a sample of bacteria or parasites or whatever. If that theory of pleomorphism is true. It changes everything and we basically have to reevaluate what we think we know about microbiology. So what is it that's being tested? What is it that's being observed under a microscope? I don't think anybody really knows. So I want you to imagine what it would be like to never, ever be afraid of a symptom again, to be comfortable in your body, have easeful digestion, stable energy, to never need a doctor or prescriptions again, and to learn the language of your body so that you can read your yes and your no and trust your intuition. The truth is that you already have the power to heal anxiety, resolve depression, and to put an end to all of the enduring effects of stress. I'm Dr. Kelly Brogan, an Ivy League trained clinical psychiatrist who once believed so much in the conventional model of medicine that I specialized in prescribing to pregnant and breastfeeding women until I was diagnosed with my first potentially chronic illness and I decided to find a way out. And what I learned was how to walk through a life crisis and into your power. Since then, I have published many history-making cases of others doing the same through my 44-day health reclamation program, Vital Mind Reset. And I've learned that despite what I was taught in medical school, your lifestyle choices do matter and you can make chronic illness a thing of the past. You can also disrupt patterns of struggle in your relationships and in your life's escape through an intentional reset. No deprivation, gadgets, supplements, doctors, healers, or gurus required. I'd love to invite you to my free Calm Body Clear Mind Masterclass where you will learn three quick win steps that you can take today to ease anxiety, resolve brain fog, and restore your energy inspired by my Vital Mind Reset program. Comment below to check it out. The concept of pleomorphism also, I think, calls into question this idea of studying outside of the body, right? The processes that are internal to the ecosystem of the body, right? Because without that context and with all of these artifacts, with all of these artificial external variables, you're never going to see what actually goes on in the body outside of the body. It's not possible for the reason you're suggesting, which is that the responsiveness of these organisms that were assumed to be static. And I think this idea, I don't know many people walking the street who've heard of pleomorphism. I haven't seen this idea really penetrate into the memified psychology of the average person the way that germ theory concepts are very easy to grasp onto. But this idea, it's almost magical, right? This idea that what we are calling microorganisms could change form in response to the needs of the body, right? That that relationship is not only symbiotic, but it's also very complex and nuanced and impossible to freeze on a slide. I think is asking a certain kind of expansion of these reductionist, like really tempting reductionist ideas that I'm not, I'm just not sure how ready people are for that. And it is the, it's the nail in the coffin of that kind of materialist science as far as I can, I can tell, right? I think you would agree that kleomorphism is the bridge to this new way of thinking. And I wonder if there's anything else you want to say about it, just so that people can really start to marinate in this new idea. I don't know if kleomorphism is actually a thing, because the counter-argument is there are germs floating in the air, and they've contaminated the sample. So that's, hey, maybe that's possible. Maybe that's what's going on. I don't know. But some major institutions around the world have looked at this. The US Department of Agriculture looked at this in the 1920s, and they said, no, there's definitely pleomorphism going on. So I don't know. Even if there's not, even if there's no pleomorphism and there are these little microorganisms in the environment that can infect a person, when you look at the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers with these illnesses, it makes you scratch your head. So I think it's Entamoeba histolytica is said to be like one of the most common and pathogenic organisms known to man. If you go and look up the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers, it's 90 plus percent. So what that means is that more than nine out of 10 people, if you go and test them for this thing, or whatever it is, a lot of people will say, and here's the other really interesting thing, Kelly, is that people say, yeah, the reason why you can have the asymptomatic infection is because those people have got really strong immune systems. The issue with that is the population groups who have these so-called infections are in the third world, or sorry, the developing world. So Giardia, Entamoeba histolytica, all these kinds of so-called human parasitic infections are most commonly seen in developing countries, most commonly seen in the world's poorest, most malnourished, like they're homeless, they don't have access to healthcare, they don't have access to clean drinking water, they don't have access to good food, they've got access to very little. those people should technically have the weakest immune systems. So how is it that the world's poorest, hungriest people are somehow able to have a strong enough immune system to protect them against these parasites that are in their gut? There's so many things you have to come to terms with and grips with and then explain away so that this idea that parasites cause disease makes sense. I'm not exactly sure how all those pieces of the puzzle fit together. But if you approach it from this line of thinking of maybe they are just a part of us and they're not out to get us and that it's the environment that actually determines their presence and maybe they're actually there for us and not against us. Maybe that makes a little bit more sense. It's very difficult, I think, for someone to just say parasites are the cause of all our problems because there's all these inconsistencies with this idea. So it's kind of like the whole bacteria thing. XYZ bacteria causes disease, but most of the people who are asymptomatically infected are those people in the developing world. How do they have immune systems strong enough to protect them? It just doesn't make sense to me. So the counter argument to that is, well, the reason why they don't get sick is because the symptoms only occur when the immune system is strong enough to mount a response. So you've got a really super strong immune system because it just kills off the stuff. And then if you have a really weak immune system, you don't get any symptoms because it's not mounting an immune response. So you got to fall somewhere in this sweet spot right in the middle of having like this under functioning properly functioning immune system That something that reminds me of the AIDS story It's just, I don't know, maybe I'm missing something here. Yeah, it's a lot of post hoc massaging of the variables. Yeah, and to revert to the point that you made earlier, you're not even convinced that what we, you know, like if you go and search up in the images of these single cell parasites, these protozoa, you're not even convinced, and neither am I, that those have even been properly isolated and identified consistently as valid entities. So right when we're talking about whether they are vectors of illness, whether they're just co-inhabitants, we first have to decide whether scientifically these entities are real, right? Or are they artifacts? Are they misinterpretations of other visible entities on a microscope slide? So we are left with the question of whether or not these one-cell organisms that are so commonly blamed, especially for traveling-related illnesses and developing world illnesses even exist. We're left with the question of whether there's any evidence that even the ones we can see, the helminths, could possibly cause diseases. And then the speculation around, well, okay, at least the ones that we can see, what role do they play? Like what's actually going on? If these unicellular ones exist and the worms, like what actually are they doing? And I mentioned in this group discussion that we had that I had a window in my clinical career when I was very interested in the sort of, I don't know, actually in the literature was called paleo deficit disorder. You know, as people started to talk about it as the sanitation movement was actually what was responsible for a lot of the burgeoning chronic illness that we were seeing. And so there was this concept that if you could expose yourself to more dirt, expose yourself to more variety of environmental stimulus, including these microorganisms that are out and about in the world, that you would actually be healthier. So during that time, I actually worked with Helminth therapy, as it's called, in an effort to restore microbiome diversity. And I had decent outcomes. I'm a huge believer in the belief field, okay, so like the placebo effect, et cetera. So who knows what role that played. I didn't do a controlled study. But I wonder what you would make of that and what you make of at this point. So the potential beneficial use of Helminth eggs, let's say, which sounds super gross, but actually you just get a little vile and you can't even see anything. It's not gross at all. It looks like water. In case people had images of me shoving worms down my patients' throats. So what you make of the beneficial use of these parasites, and then also, I know your answer, but what you think of the collective obsession with parasite cleanses and this notion that you have to rid yourself. Is there ever a situation where that's actually advisable and you would work with these complex herbs whose mechanisms have been reduced down to antimicrobial or antiparasitic and you would work with that to restore health? So I wonder what you think of both sides of the spectrum, like fight the parasites versus work with them or just leave the whole thing alone as is. All really good questions. I think it's also just important to point out that I'm certainly not the only person who's asked this question in history. A lot of this discussion has already been had in the literature. So for example, blastocystis hominy, which is a really common so-called parasite in the alternative medicine world, everyone blames their ill health on blastocystis. That was discovered in, I think, the early 1900s or late 1800s by a Russian guy. And for 70 years, like up until the 1970s or early 1980s, that was thought of anytime someone saw blastocystis, they said, no, no, no, that's just an artifact. It's not a parasite. And it's only in the 80s and 90s that it was like, oh, actually, no, maybe this isn't a parasite. Maybe it's the cause of all about ill health. So, I mean, there's seven decades there of people looking at something and going, this isn't actually a real entity. and there's many other parasites that have been thought of as artifacts for a long time too. So yeah, what are worms and possibly protozoal parasites doing in our gut? What is their role? A, I don't know. B, there's considerable research in the literature that suggests that at least some of these are what they call sentinel species. So a sentinel species is like a canary in a coal mine. They're saying that these parasites are indicators or bio-indicators of environmental toxicity. So back in the day, coal miners would take a canary down there, and if poison gas was released into the mine, it would warn the miners to get the heck out so that they could survive. The coal miners didn't die because the canary died and released some toxic gas. It wasn't the canary's fault. The canary was an early warning system. So now in the literature, they're looking at some of these parasites and they're saying, we think they're sentinel species. We think they're there as a warning, not only as a warning, that there may be some environmental toxicity, but also to help clean up toxic waste. So these, particularly the helmets, for the protozoa, they're now suggesting, well, they've got xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes inside them and they might be there to metabolize these toxic, harmful chemicals and all these kinds of things. That's sort of up for debate. But yeah, for worms, they bioaccumulate heavy metals, for example. In nature, we know that there are many types of worms, like mealworms, for example, that eat plastic and then convert plastic into non-toxic substances. there are many kinds of so-called worms in nature that do these things that convert like toxic substances which can't be used by any other organisms and break those things down into things like organic acids which can then be used as a fuel source for other forms of life. So are the worms in our gut doing a similar thing? In the animal world they've done studies to show that animals who have got these so-called worms in their gut protected against the harmful effects of heavy metals. So in animals that do have the worms in their gut, when they go and look at the concentrations of heavy metals in their internal organs, they're negligible. But when animals are exposed to heavy metals and they don't have the parasites in their gut, well, guess where the heavy metals go? Into their internal organs. So there's sort of musings and suggestions in the literature that these might be protective organisms that are actually there to serve us rather than to harm us. Now, in my clinic many years ago, yeah, we were doing like helminth in a practice that I worked in that was using helminth therapy. So I literally give the eggs to people, the helminths would hatch, and people were recovering from all kinds of diseases. So you have to ask the question, like, what are these things doing? Are they there to get you? Are they there to help? There's even clinical trials where they've done this and people have gone into remission for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis and these kinds of things. So are they bioindicators? Are they bioremediators? If you go to a polluted water source and you find parasites in there, what is their role? If you drink the water, are you getting sick because of the parasite or are you getting sick because you're drinking toxic polluted water? So many questions. And that final point you asked me about was in regards to anti-parasitic therapy. So this is a big thing. And I used to do this too. You test people's feces. Oh my God, you've got XYZ parasite. We need to destroy it. So we come in with all these anthelmythic or anti-parasitic herbs. And in some cases, I would refer people to environmental medical doctors and they would prescribe them anti-parasitic drugs to try and wipe these parasites out of their gut. Let's just say that there are disease-causing parasites. Is that even a good idea if there's also commensals in our gut which are there for us? So it's kind of like taking an antibiotic. A lot of people are like, no, I don't want to do that because it's going to kill off the so-called good stuff as well as the so-called bad stuff. So what is it that these anti-parasitic herbs might be doing? Because you would have instances of people taking these herbs like artemisinin and black walnut and whatever. And a week later, I'm pooping out worms. It's working. I'm getting rid of the tapeworms. And then I feel better. So the worms must have been the problem. There are other explanations about this. So it just so happens that things like Artemisia, that anti-parasitic plant, grows really well in contaminated soil. They use this plant to bioremediate mine sites in soil that's being contaminated with heavy metals. So that plant uptakes the heavy metals into its tissue and then starts to work on converting those heavy metals, like methylating mercury, for example. I think some of these herbs do that. to make it non-toxic to the environment. So when you take these anti-parasitic herbs, are they actually binding up to harmful substances in your gut like mercury or arsenic or lead or something like this? And basically, when I say chelate, bind to and then remove from your gut and then also upregulate certain detoxification mechanisms in your liver and your kidneys and whatever else. that basically supports the body's elimination capacity. So it's not only like removing the food source for the worms, but then it's supporting the body's process to clear itself out. So the worms are going, well, we don't need to be here anymore. Our job is done. Let's pack up and leave. And then you see these parasites in your stool. Is that possibly what's going on? Maybe it's an alternative explanation. so it's not necessarily that these things are acting as anti-parasitics from the guise of killing the parasite they're actually supporting what the parasite's trying to do so when you think of it from that perspective maybe this this isn't like a warfare model approach where we're trying to kill things off what we're actually doing with those plants is supporting the body. So if you're enjoying this episode, I want to extend a $300 gift to you so that you can start your Juvent journey. Head to juvent.com forward slash Kelly Brogan. The code is Kelly 300 to use at checkout. So I believe that movement is medicine. And even though I prioritize exercise and dance, I am definitely not walking five miles a day barefoot to get the micro-impact that my biology is expecting. Unlike vibration plates, Juvent's micro-impact platform is an expertly calibrated and personalized technology with data behind their claims around enhancing athletic performance, musculoskeletal support, and a host of benefits related to lymphatics and fascia When you invest in one for your family you can put it in the living room and hop on it for 10 to 20 minutes a day knowing that you supporting your longevity and youthful body in ways that are proven Again that juvent forward slash Kelly Brogan The code is Kelly 300 for $300 off at checkout. Your future body will thank you. And if you don't completely love it after six weeks, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Enjoy. Yeah, I've always thought that reducing these extremely nuanced, complex, and intelligent botanicals to a warfare intentionality and then efficacy is just how we're choosing to catalog these things. It's not actually a fact of the natural realm. So, yeah, I love that explanation. And to me, it's inherently logical. I want to ask one more question because I know this could be its own weekend workshop, but I have observed that Lyme disease is the sacred cow of this culture that I referenced earlier, right? which is the folks who have awakened to a certain level around the allopathic system, and yet they're somehow still swirling around there being root causes for a lot of their syndromal manifestations. So in this case, whether they have excessive fatigue or migratory pain, or just like a decline in functioning in general, they often get into this psychology towards the conventional medical world that says, well, they insist that the testing is unreliable and they don't want to validate, they don't want to acknowledge that Lyme disease is real and it's real and you have to find a clinician who's going to support your diagnosis and who knows how to treat it, right? So it's this identification with a chronic illness that I see happening in the alternative medicine world. And I would say probably especially functional medicine world, but probably also naturopathic world, right? And I am almost always tempted to say, you know, like, it's not probably what you think it is. And then what would you do if you needed a whole to go back to the drawing board about what's going on in your life and understand that the narrative unfolding of what has happened, you will probably find that there is some very ready catalyst that you can point to in your life that preceded whatever this multi-month, sometimes multi-year experience that you're calling Lyme disease actually is. So what do you think about this phenomenon of Lyme disease and the way that it's been embraced by the alt-medicine world? And do you think it really falls into the same category of scrutiny that we've been exploring here, which is to say that it hasn't been sufficiently identified. Maybe the conventional world's actually right about this, and it hasn't been proven to be a vector of illness. And even if you get bitten by an insect and you actually develop a rash, that is probably not a sufficient explanation for what it is that you are attributing to it in the ensuing months and maybe years. What do you think about that? There always seems to be... I think what we like to do is we try and blame Mother Nature for all of our ills. I don't actually think Mother Nature is necessarily out to get us. What is causing people's problems? I don't necessarily know because it's pretty nuanced and I think it's different for each person. But yeah, is there a microorganism that's so-called infected them and causing Lyme's disease? Maybe. I'm skeptical. I mean, once upon a time, everything was candida. And once upon a time, everything was blastocystis. And once upon a time, everything was black mold. And now it's Paris, like it's Lyme. Right? What's the next thing going to be? And are we just going to keep blaming nature forever? Now, in my experience, what I've found is that When you take that perspective and you try to kill things, people are sick for years and years and years and years and years. And the excuse or the explanation is, well, it's just a really stubborn thing to try and get rid of. It's a really hard thing to kill. Is it that or that the treatment and the focus is misguided? So actually the cause of the problem is something else. So what if it is toxicity? What if it is like heavy metals? For example, I watched this really interesting movie last night. I don't know if you've seen it. It's called Dark Waters. Have you seen this with Mark Ruffalo? So this is the, it's a big Hollywood film, but this is like the story of Teflon and how Teflon was being leaked into water supplies from production plants in America, making its way into the water supply and basically poisoning the people of nearby towns. And they were coming down with all kinds of different illnesses. Now, imagine if we were just going to blame it on the germ, bacteria, virus. It's Lyme. It's a parasitic infection. It's whatever. And we try and treat that. No one's going to get better because actually the thing that's really making them sick is the Teflon chemical in the water supply. Now, there are hundreds of these, what they call forever chemicals, being sprayed into our environment every day. It's being sprayed in our food. It's in the clothes that we wear. It's in the water that we drink. It's in the air that we breathe. It's in everything. And there's all kinds of heavy metals and things in our environment, xenobiotics and pesticides and herbicides and fungicide, all of these things. Wouldn't it first make sense to deal with the known harmful toxins and then in the aftermath of dealing with all that, and then there's a few people left over going, I'm still sick. I'm still sick after dealing with all of that poison and toxicity. Then maybe you start looking for a germ, right? But we jump on the germ first. How many people do you know in your life who have gone, I had pesticide poisoning or pesticide toxicity. I had Teflon toxicity. I had PFOA or PFOS or whatever these chemical toxins are. I had that poisoning. No one's ever talking about that. Isn't that strange? It's got to be the parasite or the mole or the fungi or the yeast or whatever. and no one's ever thinking, oh, it's heavy metals or it's something else. So that is where I would look first. I would minimize my exposure to that stuff and support my body's channels of elimination and change my diet and get outside in the sun and start drinking clean water and getting better restful sleep and moving my body and just like doing all the simple things which we all take for granted. And then if there's still a problem, then maybe you start looking for a bacteria or a virus or a parasite or something else, right? But it doesn't work that way. And it's like no one ever thinks about the elephant in the room. We're just so laser focused on these microorganisms, which is kind of unfortunate, really. Well, you're referencing what may be the greatest ask of a child psychology, you know, permeated collective, which is to take responsibility, you know, to take responsibility for your daily choices, for your lifestyle and to come into full acceptance. You know, because if you think about I was just sort of thinking of the constellation of, you know, Mother Nature and this sort of wayward masculine, this like wayward father energy of the chemical world. Right. And not to sort of like segregate them, I don't know, in too forced a way. But there is an embrace of what is there is like seeing with sober eyes. There is an opportunity to just say this is what I incarnated to experience. What are my choices here? Living outside of the natural world is not really an option. So how do you come into harmony? How do you come into full embrace? How do you come into acceptance? I think a huge part of it is just to stop blaming, you know, to commit to no longer blaming. And then when it comes to, you know, the chemical, it's like such a fine line I found because the awareness that leads to changes in your choices is very empowering, right? But the awareness that leads to further powerlessness, including around chemtrails, if you're not going to engage in local activism that you know is going to have some dividend, it could end up not actually serving what it is that is your intention. And I've been stuck in that field of disempowerment that comes from learning a lot about this toxic world. So the best way, I think, to thread the needle that I'm referencing in all of these different arenas is to just look at, I call it chopping wood, carrying water. That's what you're referencing, the basics, the basics of what you do every day and see if you can prioritize that. Because I'm a big believer in the power that we reclaim through simply prioritizing through our attention, really. So that is, you know, as resounding a message as there ever was. And I hope that this conversation served to at least dislodge a little bit the certainty that there is such a thing as these bad, nasty parasites that can happen to you that you then need to fight and purge yourself of and cleanse yourself of so that you could finally be, you know, holy and pristine and the good girl or boy you were hoping you were born to be, right? Like whatever it goes, it's wrapped up into that fight. It's very deep emotional woundology. So I so appreciate you. I know the research that you take the time and put the care into exposing, you know, most of us are not. And certainly there are assumptions being made in all of these conversations around parasites that have never been held up to the basic, you know, sort of research itself. And I so appreciate that you do that. And I consider you such an important ally and friend and colleague. And I want to thank you. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks, Dr. Brogan. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. And Yeah, I agree with everything you said. I think a back-to-basics approach is really the way forward. And unfortunately, we overlook those really simple things because they are free or very low cost and they're low barrier to entry. And they just seem really simple and we discount them because we think, well, no, health can't be that easy. It's got to be complicated and expensive and it's got to be long-winded. and only the person with the prescription pad holds the answer to my problems. But yeah, I think we can take a lot of responsibility and there are many things that we can do that are very simple, very straightforward and very effective. And I have certainly seen this in my experience, have profound effects on people's health and well-being. So get the foundations right first. And if there's still things left over, then you can start looking at all these other things. But if you haven't got the foundations down first, you don't know what's going on. It's really hard to see the forest for the trees. So, yeah, thanks for the opportunity to come and talk shop with you. It was great. Thanks. Worst falter