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The Chronic Illness Puzzle: Mold, Metals, Toxins, Infections

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this conversation with Dana Parish, Todd Maderis, ND, talks about his extensive experience treating tick-borne infections, chronic viral infections, mold illness, and other conditions associated with complex chronic illness. He underscores the significance of identifying the root causes of symptoms and how tailoring individualized treatment approaches is key to healing. Dr. Maderis also delves into the role of trauma in chronic illnesses and emphasizes the importance of gut healing and inflammation reduction through dietary choices. Dr. Maderis acknowledges the challenges involved in addressing chronic diseases and stresses the importance of a personalized, patient-centric approach.

“I think a lot of times in conventional medicine, we don’t think beyond the room that we’re sitting in with a patient, we have to ask about the environment. We have to look at more than just the symptoms the person’s presenting with in the office.”

– Todd Maderis

Dana Parish: I am so excited today because I’m here with Dr. Todd Maderis. Thank you so much for being here today. I’m thrilled to talk to you. Let me tell you a little about Dr. Maderis. He’s the founder and medical director of Marin Natural Medicine Clinic in the San Francisco Bay Area. He specializes in treating tick-borne infections, chronic viral infections, mold illness, and other conditions associated with complex chronic illness such as Mast Cell Activation Disorder, and ME/CFS. His approach to treating chronic illness is to identify all underlying causes of symptoms to provide a clear direction for treatment. With over a decade of experience treating Lyme disease and complex chronic illness, he knows that every patient is unique and requires individualized treatment therapy. Welcome! It’s great to see you!

Todd Maderis: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Dana Parish: How’d you get into this mess?

Todd Maderis: Gosh, that’s always a great question. You start going down a rabbit hole and sometimes you wonder, but I wouldn’t change a thing. My first five years of practice, I was treating people with common complaints: digestive issues, fatigue issues, thyroid issues, etc. I’m a naturopathic doctor, so we tend to see people that come with common complaints that maybe they’re not getting resolved in conventional medicine. Then one visit, I had a patient that brought in a Lyme disease test result. It was an iGenex test, but back then the results were pretty hard to interpret.

Ticktective with Dana Parish: The Chronic Illness Puzzle: Mold, Metals, Toxins, Infections

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Todd Maderis, ND

Dr. Todd Maderis is the Founder and Medical Director of Marin Natural Medicine Clinic in the San Francisco Bay Area. He specializes in treating tickborne infections, chronic viral infections, mold illness, and other conditions associated with complex chronic illnesses such as mast cell activation disorder and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. His approach to treating chronic illness is to identify all underlying causes of symptoms to provide a clear direction for treatment. With over a decade of experience treating Lyme disease and complex chronic illnesses, he realizes each patient is unique and requires an individualized treatment strategy.

To read the podcast transcript, click here.

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Bay Area Lyme Ambassador Shares Her Story

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Guest Blog by Jessica Devine

Bay Area Lyme Foundation is one of the first sources of information I found when I was finally diagnosed. I realized through the years that only a few resources could always be relied upon for accurate information based on scientific research. I also feel connected to BAL because I was bit in California by a tick that carried Lyme, Babesia, Bartonella, Erhlichia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and more. I have always trusted their information for over a decade now. What they do and continue to do to help this community is something I will always be grateful for.

Creating an uplifting space for Lyme patients has been my dream since my first TV interview when a local station asked me to come on and share my story. Once on camera, I was filled with passion when given the chance to speak about my story, the injustices of Lyme disease treatment and getting a late diagnosis.

From there, people started reaching out to me needing help. I had kind of lost myself in my illness and slowly, through advocacy work, I gained a feeling that I can only describe as finding your true purpose. When I help someone, I have peace.

I found groups to be depressing and I knew the only way to have the group that best served a patient in the ways I needed was to create it myself. I wanted a solution based group that required all of its members to act with kindness. Alongside my own Lyme doctor’s methods, member polls and an accumulation of top resources, I finally was able to create the first Lyme Disease and Co-Infections Directory to cover almost any topic related to these diseases. An easy way for a patient to find the information quickly and learn. I feel the more we understand about these diseases, why we have the symptoms we have and how to help ourselves heal, we become more hopeful and empowered.

Ticktective with Dana Parish: On the Front Lines of Lyme Treatment—a Conversation with Pioneer Kenneth Liegner, MD

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ken Liegner, MD

Dana Parish interviews Dr. Kenneth Liegner, a Board Certified Internist practicing in Pawling, New York. He has been on the front lines of treating chronic Lyme and related infections since 1988. He has published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is the author of In the Crucible of Chronic Lyme Disease—Collected Writings & Associated Materials.

To read the podcast transcript, click here.

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The Misunderstood Infection that is Wreaking Havoc

Ticktective with Dana Parish and Edward B. Breitschwerdt, DVM, DACVIM, PhD

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this wide-ranging conversation, Dana Parish talks with eminent veterinarian Dr. Edward Breitschwerdt about Bartonella infections, the diseases and symptoms presentations in humans, how the bacteria are transmitted, and how doctors often miss Bartonellosis as the root causes in sudden onset of psychosis, frightening behavioral changes, and inexplicable physical deterioration in humans. Note: This transcribed podcast has been edited for clarity.

Dana Parish: Welcome to the Ticktective Podcast, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. I’m your guest host today, Dana Parish. I’m the co-author of the book Chronic, and I’m on the advisory board of Bay Area Lyme Foundation. This program offers insightful interviews with clinicians, scientists, patients, and other interesting people. We’re a nonprofit foundation based in Silicon Valley, and thanks to a generous grant that covers a hundred percent of our overhead, all your donations go directly to our research and our prevention programs. For more information about Lyme disease, please visit us at us at bayarealyme.org.

Hi, I’m Dana Parish, and I’m so honored to be the guest host today for the Ticktective Podcast on behalf of Bay Area Lyme Foundation, of which I am a very proud advisory board member, and we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Ed Breitschwerdt today. He is the Melanie S. Steele, Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. He is also an adjunct professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center. And we could read a bio for you that goes on forever because you are so incredibly distinguished. You’re the world’s leading expert, in many people’s opinions on, Bartonella, which is one of the main reasons that we’ve been brought together to talk here today. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this podcast and for being such an incredible ally and champion for this cause and this community and such a diligent, brilliant researcher and personally a friend. I really appreciate you, Ed. Thank you for being here. How did you get into this? A world of Bartonella?

Dr. Edward Breitschwerdt: I became a member of the American Society of Rickettsiology as a veterinary internist trying to understand Rickettsia. I was welcomed by members of the organization and a Rickettsiologist at CDC, Dr. Russ Regnery, at one of the national meetings, presented an abstract. That abstract was to tell us as an audience that they had finally found the organism that caused cat scratch disease. And that organism was a Bartonella that became Bartonella henselae, a bacteria. The thing I always liked about Dr. Regnery is he was a very basic microbiologist and Rickettsiologist, and I was a clinician trying to understand the basic concepts of these bacteria and the diseases they cause. So, the next morning we actually ended up having breakfast at the same table when I asked him how difficult Bartonella was to isolate, and he said: ‘If I could find three feral cats in Raleigh, I could come up with at least one and probably two isolates,’ which really says anybody that is very kind, very benevolent and out there feeding and getting scratched by feral cats, really needs to be careful. So, we knew that fact 30 years ago, when Bartonella henselae was first (discovered). So, the initial research in our laboratory focused on Bartonella and cats.

Making a Contribution and Feeling Heard—One Lyme Patient’s Experience of Participating in the Lyme Disease Biobank

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlights Series

In June of this year, Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB), led by Principal Investigator Liz Horn, PhD, MBI, conducted sample collection days at our partner site, Gordon Medical Associates, in San Rafael, CA. During the two-day event, we took the opportunity to sit down and talk with participants, hear their Lyme disease stories, and learn what motivated them to donate blood and urine samples to LDB.

Sarah Reid’s Lyme story is not dissimilar to the stories of many Lyme patients in California. She never saw a tick; she never had a rash; and for a very long time—despite countless doctors’ appointments, interventions, tests, and hours of research—she had absolutely no diagnosis for her bewildering kaleidoscope of symptoms. When she finally received confirmation from lab tests ordered by Gordon Medical Associates that she indeed had Lyme and Bartonella, the news was a massive relief initially. She finally had answers. However, as the diagnosis sunk in, it sparked reflection on her lifelong health struggles and launched her into a new world of confusion, frustration, and decision-making as she learned to navigate and manage her Lyme.

Functional Medicine and How it Can Help Lyme Patients, Long Covid Patients, and Firefighters

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Sunjya Schweig, MD

Sunjya Schweig, MD is the president and co-founder of the California Center for Functional Medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of his Johns Hopkins studies on herbal medicines for Lyme disease was in the top 1% of viewed articles on Frontiers in Medicine. He explains the basics for functional medicine and how he uses it with tick-borne disease patients, first responders, and long Covid patients. Ticktective Video and Podcast Editor: Kiva Schweig.

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Bay Area Lyme Foundation Launches Ticktective™ Podcast

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Launches Ticktective™ Podcast

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., September 30, 2020 — Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, announces the launch of the Ticktective podcast and video series. Ticktective is a Bay Area Lyme Foundation program designed to investigate the latest scientific knowledge and advances in Lyme and tick-borne diseases. The podcast offers insightful discussion with researchers, physicians, patients, and thought leaders in the field.

“Because the science surrounding tick-borne disease is so complex and there are so many unanswered questions, Ticktective aims to share firsthand perspectives about the challenges of Lyme in ways that will intrigue more scientists, physicians and patients to join our battle towards making Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure,” said Linda Giampa, executive director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation.

There are more than 400,000 people diagnosed with Lyme disease each year in the US, and millions of Americans live with persistent Lyme disease (PLD) caused by an ongoing bacterial infection. The current “gold standard” diagnostic for Lyme disease misses up to 60% of cases of early stage Lyme disease, and if not treated promptly, Lyme may progress to a debilitating stage, becoming difficult, or impossible, to cure. Bay Area Lyme Foundation has funded over 100 research projects at 37 institutions across the US in a mission to find solutions for these patients.

Lyme Persistence and COVID “Long-Haulers”

By Computer Courage

Dana Parish

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Advisory Board Member, “Chronic” co-author and SonyATV singer/songwriter, Dana Parish, shares her perspective on chronic diseases, autoimmunity, COVID-19, and speaking out in the face of adversity. “Chronic: The Hidden Cause of the Autoimmune Pandemic and How to Get Healthy Again” is available for purchase on Amazon here. Ticktective Video and Podcast Editor: Kiva Schweig.

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Bay Area Lyme Foundation Tick Testing Program Adds Bartonella Pathogen Assay

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Tick Testing Program Adds Bartonella Pathogen Assay

Nationwide Free Tick Testing Initiative Will Inform Citizen-Science Studies to Better Understand the Spread of Ticks Carrying Diseases Throughout U.S.

Silicon Valley, CA, July 11, 2019 — Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the U.S., today announced the relaunch of its nationwide free tick testing program, which will include an assay for Bartonella, a disease-causing pathogen carried by ticks. Based on the success of the Free Tick Testing Citizen Science program, Bay Area Lyme Foundation has significantly increased funding for the 2019 nationwide collection effort, adding an automated submission process and increased research support. Researchers anticipate this citizen- science program will enable the organization to unearth further discoveries.

Results of the first citizen-scientist study were published in the peer-review journals PLOS ONE in 2018, and International Journal of Health Geographics in 2019. The study, which evaluated the prevalence of disease-carrying ticks throughout the United States, and included a massive sample of more than 16,000 ticks collected from 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico, led to the discovery of ticks capable of carrying Lyme and other tick-borne diseases in 83 counties, in 24 states, where these ticks had not been previously recorded. The program received a six-fold increase in tick submissions over initial estimates, representing unprecedented national coordination of a ‘citizen science’ effort and diagnostic investigation.