Season 8, Episode 6: Targeting and Treating Lyme Disease with Dr. Julianna Dudas

Evelyne Lambrecht: I love that I know you just love to plunge in the ocean even when it’s freezing. But I might have to go. I like to go once every few years when it is warm, like it is right now. So, yeah. Well, thank you for sharing.

And before we go any further, I do want to share a little bit more about you. Dr. Jules is a San Diego native who received her medical degree from Bastyr University, California and completed an undergraduate degree in anthropology at Columbia University. She actively participates in legislative efforts, meeting with Senate and representative offices in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. with the California Naturopathic Doctors Association, the American Association of Naturopathy Physicians, and the Center for Lyme Action. She was the recipient of an educational grant from the International Society for Lyme and Associated Diseases. And Jules, you’ve done some really other amazing things, and we’ll have your full bio in the show notes.

But one thing I do want to mention is that prior to becoming a doctor, you spent many years in the entertainment industry as an actor and as a producer. So that’s super cool.

And also, you and I met, I do want to share this, a few years ago, and I was super impressed with you. And then more recently in the last couple of months, we’ve been on a few walks in our San Diego preserves, and the first time we went on a walk was in the spring and so much was blooming. And it was so funny because neither of us could finish a full sentence about anything without pointing out another plant. So that was really fun. And then I found out that you teach botanical medicine at Bastyr, which is amazing. So we just go on walks and we’re looking at plants on our favorite app, which I do want to give a shout out to. It’s picture This. That’s two words. Picture This. If you want to learn about the plants around you, you don’t need the paid version of the app. So we’re both lovers of herbal medicine and of plants and hiking in our canyons and preserves. So I know we’ll dive a little more into the plants later on.

So first of all, can you share your story of how you came to specialize in complex chronic illness and how you even found your path to naturopathic medicine in the first place, especially coming from a completely different career?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Yeah, I like to say that life is a little bit like a Coinstar. For those of us who remember what the Coinstar machine is, you pour the change into the top. I used to have them at like the supermarkets. I know they still do. And then the coins bounce around until they find the perfect slot that they fit into. So there’s a slot for the dollar coins, there’s a slot for the quarters, a slot for the dimes, a slot for the nickels, a slot for the pennies. I definitely have bounced around a lot. And so when I, it kind of goes back to childhood, I spent part of my childhood in San Diego exploring the canyons here. I loved the canyon behind my grandmother’s house, but I also spent part of my childhood in Virginia, in the deep woods in Virginia, and I was really inspired by all the insects and the flowers.

And it was like coming from California, like my early childhood. And then going back there like my mind was blown because of just the difference in climate and all the crazy cool things like lightning bugs and the spring flowers and weather, so I really got interested in biology then, and it was just because I was so awe-inspired and I went to a high school that did specialize, it was like a STEM high school. So I had a lot of science background there. But my other passion as a child was being on stage and entertaining to theater and dance music, and I decided to pursue that when I moved to New York in my late teens. And so, yes, that was a first career.

But while I was pursuing that career, I took a side job. I was really into yoga and meditation, and through that community of people, somebody recognized that I was a very good yoga and meditation teacher. They liked my teaching, so they invited me to teach these cohort studies at UCLA Medical at the Semel Neuroscience Institute, where they were basically having people do yoga and meditate, and then they were doing a whole bunch of different brain scans and other inventories and other medical tests. And so they were measuring the efficacy of meditation and yoga. And I did that for almost six years.

But being around all those postdocs and the research and the medical center and just kind of being within that system, it opened my eyes to the possibility of a career in medicine. And that’s kind of how that parlayed. I know it’s an interesting balance, an interesting jump, but that’s how it happened.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And then how did you come to specialize in Lyme disease and complex chronic illness, etc.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: So I was finishing out medical school during the pandemic. It was a very interesting time to be a medical student, to say the least. And there was a requirement to work in a lot of these medical facilities where I was doing my rotations, as well as a requirement through the unions that I was still a member of through the entertainment industry to have the Covid-19 vaccine.

And I wasn’t somebody who is anti-vax at all. I thought the vaccines were great in terms of public health. And I really enjoyed learning about the history of things like polio and measles. But I did receive the Moderna vaccine and within a matter of days, I started developing, an entire bevy of symptoms. And, it felt like my body was completely hijacked. And it was very confusing. And, I mean, maddening. Really, truly, I nothing was helping. I tried steroids and, eventually one of my colleagues actually said, I think you might have something called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. And I at the time was unfamiliar with it.

Mast cell really sort of really came onto the map in 2016. Larry Afrin published a book on it and was doing a lot of publishing of case studies and stuff like that. And the first consensus criteria started, they started to come together as sort of world leaders in mast cell between the years of 2016 and 2020 and then into 2022. So it’s a it’s a fairly new thing. And I actually didn’t learn about it by that point in medical school. And so I started to do a deep dive into research. And sure enough, I was like, well, I fit the criteria for this. And I started trialing different agents that can be used to treat mast cell. And lo and behold there was symptom stabilization. And so that is actually one of the criteria of mast cell, is if you try something that is going to affect some of the mediators of mast cells, for example, histamine, that’s a common one. So you try an antihistamine and if it’s effective and like you know you have an excess histamine in your body So mast cells are released. You know just does that make sense.

And I basically self diagnosed but I did get a bunch of other markers studied for mast cell. And they also were congruent with the diagnosis. And in doing my research, recognizing that upwards of 20%, if not more of the population, is now affected by mast cell activation and the spectrum of the syndrome, and being like, okay, all these patients that I saw in my rotations in medical school, a lot of these mystery patients and we were trying so hard with all sorts of modalities to try to get them feeling better. They fell under this umbrella of mast cell. As soon as I learned to recognize it and can figure out this multi-systemic puzzle that is mast cell activation. So I developed a real passion for it. And I said you know what. I’m going to I’m going to niche in this because it’s affected my life so much.

And another part of that is recognizing that like my full medical history. So from the time I was a child, like the things I had experienced probably fell under this mast cell umbrella. So I developed a real passion for it. And when I graduated from school, I found a practice that was looking for a practitioner that that was going to address and treat mast cell. And so that’s kind of how that happened.

Evelyne Lambrecht: That’s great. Thank you for sharing. And we do have a separate episode coming on all things mast cell activation syndrome. So I want to focus on Lyme. And I know that there’s overlap right which I want to get into. So you worked at a Lyme clinic and you’re still seeing patients with Lyme now. But there are a lot of co-occurring conditions. And so it’s very confusing. And often like Lyme, you know, isn’t always diagnosed. So I want to get into that.

Take me through the process of when a patient comes to see you, like from when they first, reach out to you through like the treatment phase. And I’ll ask you questions throughout, like I want to go into lab testing and, you know, the kind of things that tip you off to, maybe this is where it’s Lyme disease, or maybe here, it’s like something else, the Lyme disease isn’t maybe the main issue. So let’s get into that. And I know this part alone could be like an hour-long conversation.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Yeah. So like I said, I come in being like all guns blazing. I’m going to treat mast cell activation right. As a new practitioner, a new provider. And what I very quickly realized is that mast cell is generally almost always, I have yet to see somebody who isn’t doesn’t fall into this, it’s secondary to some underlying things. And some of the main categories of things that I started seeing was Lyme disease and coinfections, mold illness and chronic viral. Okay. So this sort of milieu of chronic pathogenicity that’s been driving an immune dysregulation leading to mast cell.

So people would find me, just from our website at the practice, my website, as being somebody who treats mast cell. Maybe they had heard about mast cell activation on social media. Histamine has kind of been a big buzzword. And, you know, recent times and or somebody will refer them to me being like, hey, my own journey with mast cell. I think you might have this. So, you know, maybe talk to this doctor. And that’s kind of how I’ve seen a lot of my patients is mostly word of mouth.

So someone will come in and they’ll kind of give me the symptoms that they’ve been experiencing. I’ve been experiencing vertigo, for example. Or I have these joint pains or last Thursday, we had taco night, and I started getting all these rashes on my body. And so somebody will come in with something like that this has been happening. And then I’ll say for how long has it been happening? And then I start to get into their clinical history. Right? So the first step from my point of view is understanding that this is a multi-systemic sort of groupings of these symptoms and sort of what falls into Lyme, into the coinfections in the mold into the viral. And there’s a lot of crossover.

But then how that then affects like this manifestation in terms of what the patient is experiencing. The clinical history is so, so, so important. And a lot of practitioners will say that Lyme in these coinfections is a clinical diagnosis. However, there is testing and the testing has been improving in terms of the technology that’s available for it. So first step is to get that clinical history.

And then let’s say they are somebody who lived in Pennsylvania for 13 years, which is a very well-known endemic region for Borelliosis right. And so Lyme disease falls under Borreliosis. And this is Borrelia which is a genus of bacteria. They’re acute. And they can cause these sort of groupings of symptoms, like I was saying.

And so let’s say there’s somebody who has had a known exposure like that. So a lot of times people will not even they’ll say, well, I never had a tick bite. I never saw a tick on me. I mean, maybe I’m not sure. And we’re finding now clinically a lot of practitioners that people don’t even have to be bitten by a tick necessarily to get some of these pathogens affecting them in their body and to also be testing positive for them. So other ways that clinically we’ve seen that the these bugs can be transmitted, so there are other vectors. For example mosquitoes carry certain pathogens. Fleas are a big one, especially for Bartonella which is one of the coinfections. And then there can be kind of this, you know, you can get the infection, for example, in utero. So now that’s kind of scary for the mom is out there. Oh no. Maybe I’m passing these infections to my children. That is one avenue that it can happen.

And then there’s also a lot of evidence that people are potentially getting these from if they have a pet, that they’re really close to us like a dog. And whether that’s through saliva or maybe through the dog, like if the dog had a cut or blood, that kind of thing.

Or we are also seeing that these can be transmitted from partner to partner. There are a couple of studies that have shown that, for example, the spy recruits have been found in seminal and vaginal fluids. It’s a bit of a controversial statement at this point, just because there hasn’t been a lot of robust research on this. But I have to say clinically, for example, I’ll have an entire family, a mother and five kids that have like these mystery illness symptoms, they get tested. They have all these, pathogens that come up as being positive on testing. And the mother’s like, well, I’ve never left you know, I’m an urban girl. I don’t even really go hiking, I’ve never left Southern California. Like, how on earth could I have gotten all these Borrelia species in me? And then we ask about the husband. And the husband grew up in Connecticut. So I really do think that they can be transmitted that way from partner to partner, just because I am seeing clinically and others are too.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. I want to back up for a moment. So you’re mentioning Borrelia often. So is Lyme disease just the Borrelia species or is it multiple? Can you talk a little more about that.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Yeah. So Lyme, and it’s not Lyme’s, it’s Lyme and it’s named after Old Lyme, Connecticut, which is a town in Connecticut where there was a pretty large population of people who were found to have this bacteria affecting them, symptomatically, Borrelia burgdorferi is the bacteria that we call Lyme. So there was this guy, Willy Bergdorfer decades ago, and he was taking ticks from Shelter Island, which is 100 miles east of New York City. And in that part in that geography, in that part of the world. And he was looking at ticks and looking at what bacteria they had and could potentially transmit if they were embedded and bit a person. And he found this bacteria. And so it was named after him, Borrelia burgdorferi. Now, like I said, Borrelia is a genus. So there are, you know, dozens, hundreds, probably even thousands of subspecies that are within Borrelia, suburbia. Bergdorf. Right.

Lyme is just one species, but there’s so many other species. And California has its own species, Borrelia californiesis. And that was originally found in the coastal sagebrush. So along the coast. So for those who think that Borrelia or tick borne illness does not exist on the West Coast, it’s actually pretty prevalent here.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I have read that recently, and especially this year, that it’s really bad.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: When I’ve gone out into the canyons here, several times, I have either brushed against a small tree or maybe I’ll sit down on a rock or maybe I’ll brush my leg will get brushed against some taller grasses, and sure enough, a tick will appear. So, you know, prevention is the best cure. Right. And so I think vigilance in terms of looking out for ticks on your pets, your children and yourself.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Absolutely. Let’s talk about the testing a little bit more. Is there a difference when you’re testing someone acutely who thinks they may have been bitten versus like when you’re assessing for these chronic issues, what’s all the lab testing that you do? And are there any lab tests like in conventional testing, or is it all specialty labs?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: It’s a really good question and an important distinction. So standard testing that you can do through like a lab quest or that they might do like in a hospital system. It’s usually the two tier ELISA, then Western blot. I won’t get into the weeds too much with it, but it’s safe to say that that testing is well over half the time false negative. And it’s simply because of what they’re testing for and somewhat the methodology as well. And it has to do with, the history of Borrelia burgdorferi. And then they were trying to develop this vaccine. And this was decades ago. But, just because somebody will have like a standard Lyme test and it comes back negative, meaning it does not meet the CDC criteria for Lyme does not mean they do not have Berlioz’s or one of these coinfections. And same with like the, the Busia or the Bartonella testing that you can get through a standard lab.

So a lot of times doctors will maybe suspect, somebody will have like wandering joint pain. And they’ve ruled out a lot of other rheumatic conditions. Right. Like all these markers are coming back normal. And then maybe they’ll say, well, let’s test you for Lyme. They do the standard Lyme ELISA then western blot. Negative. Right. And then they say, well, you don’t have Lyme. However, they may still have Lyme okay. So that’s the point I’m trying to make.

And so there are a bunch of specialty labs out there now. And a lot of these labs are also doing a lot of research along with the data that they’re getting from the tests. So this is great because then this can push forward, you know, the research. And then in terms of education and treatment for, ultimately getting better testing, better treatment and then like better awareness of these illnesses.

So there are a couple different kinds of tests that we can do. The most popular is going to be like an immuno block with immunoglobulin. So this is serum right. This is serology testing where we’re measuring immunoglobulin G or M or both. And it’s also imperfect because when we’re measuring immunoglobulins we’re just looking at somebody’s immunological response to the pathogen okay. So we can have like an IgG and an IgM for a specific antigen, for a specific protein on a Bergdorf. Right. Okay. And somebody may have Borrelia Bergdorf. But for whatever set of reasons, their immune system is not coming online to develop these immunoglobulins that we’re basically going against the pathogen.

And that can happen when somebody maybe has been on steroids and maybe they, have some HPA axis, dysfunction, other immune dysregulation. They might be somebody who, you know, for whatever reason, maybe they’ve got chronic viral infections. They’ve already got kind of a low IgF, IgG. So when I do testing I often like to get a complete immunoglobulin panel as well as sometimes a lot of the interleukins and other markers, just to see as a gauge. Does this person have an on track, robust immune system? Is it overreacting? Is it under reacting? Because that can kind of help to guide whether or not, IgG or IgM results are even going to be somewhat, you know, what does it mean. So there’s that way of testing immunoglobulins.

There is PCR, although the caveat with PCR is that a lot of these organisms can hide, so to speak, in biofilms, in various tissues, in the body tissues vasculature. So there may not be a lot of genetic material available to test. There is one lab that is doing like triple culture on somebody’s blood, or other body fluids, and then trying to get the potentially, that genetic material, you know, in a higher level so that they can actually measure it. But PCR, I don’t know, it’s kind of like not my favorite testing for these pathogens.

And then one of my favorite ways to test is actually it’s called FISH. Right. So you’re doing an immunofluorescence like you’re actually taking a picture of the person’s blood, like on a slide, and you’re staining whatever’s in the blood. So the genetic material for that pathogen gets stain and it’s going to like latch on to the thing you’re staining with. And then essentially, it’s almost like putting a black light on something. And then you see the color pop up. So you’ll see a picture of somebody’s blood, and then you’ll see all this evidence of the pathogen. And that to me is like the most direct. It’s like, there it is. We have a picture of it. We know it’s there. So that’s the basic testing at this juncture.

Evelyne Lambrecht: What lab company does that last test that you just mentioned?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: My favorite is T Lab. And they’re out of, I think, Gaithersburg and Maryland or Fredericksburg. They’re in Maryland, a little more rural Maryland. They’re wonderful, Dr. Mozayeni, and he’s doing some really fantastic research with these organisms. And seeing kind of what pathogens tend to go together, we’ll see this pathogen with this pathogen like those who have it tend to have Bartonella Hensley or whatever it is. He’s collecting that data, which is really nice.

IGeneX also does a FISH so you can order FISHES through IGeneX, but I find that the T Lab is a little bit more. They’ve really perfected the technology there.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And then how do you determine like which test you do on which patient. Or is it kind of like you’ll try to do the FISH test. And then maybe if you don’t see it you might do something else or vice versa?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Honestly, it usually comes down to budget.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah, that makes sense.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: The reality is that by the time patients get to me, they’ve probably already seen, you know, five, nine, 13 other practitioners. They’ve been at this for years. So, you know, they’ve already spent a lot of money. They’ve spent so much money on different supplements and herbs and different protocols and different IV treatments. And they’re like, you know, how much more money do I have to spend? IGeneX have now an at home test that you can do. It’s called the Dart, the AcuDart. And that actually was recently within the last like 12 to 16 months, FDA cleared, which is actually kind of a big deal to have an FDA recognized test. It’s an immunoblot, and you can do those at home. It’s called the AcuDart, and it’s not very expensive. And you can order them for each sort of family of pathogens.

So because it often comes down to budget, and I have no affiliation with any of these labs, by the way. So this is just what has worked for me, and other practitioners that I know. Vibrant has a panel that you can either do a dried blood spot, so you do a finger prick, and then it’s like a card and you can put your blood into these little spaces on the card and send it off.

That is pretty accurate. You can get a pretty good measure of your immunoglobulins that way. They also have a panel where you can have blood drawn. So there’s the serology plus the PCR. It’s a little bit more expensive. MDL is also doing that immunoglobulin testing. And they work with insurance that has like out-of-network coverage and coverage for various specialty labs, which is nice.

IGeneX, their immunoblot. That’s my favorite test, I think. All in all, because they do the genus testing. So they’re looking at genuses as opposed to just specific species of these organisms. So it’s almost like a broader like you’re like taking a step back so you can see more, and it is getting covered by Medicare. So if somebody is a Medicare provider, you can order one of these immuno block panels through IGeneX, which is really nice.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Great. And I know there’s a lot of like overlap with patients who come to see you between like Lyme and mold. And we have done a show on mold before and MCAST and Long covid and even fibromyalgia. So how do you even begin to untangle that web? And can you maybe share an example from your own practice, where it was actually something else that was driving the symptom picture, like more than the Lyme itself? And I would just love to like, hear your thought process around that when you’re working with a patient.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Yeah, I’ll give you two examples. So first example was I think it was a 27-year-old male who came in and he said, Dr. Jules, I went to my doctor in Maryland. He was from Maryland. So endemic area for Lyme. And my doctor ordered me standard Lyme testing. And look, it’s come back positive. Okay. So he was somebody who actually tested positive on a lab for Lyme.

And then I said, okay, let’s just run this vibrant panel to see if there are any coinfections. Sure enough, I think he came back with, the BCA and Bartonella and a bunch of viral stuff as well. He didn’t really have much of a history of mold exposure. He had a lot of tattoo ink, though, and he admittedly had kind of a fun partying lifestyle for the last decade. So this is somebody who maybe wasn’t getting the best sleep, who maybe was ingesting larger amounts of alcohol, maybe not eating a balanced diet, stuff like that.

So I said, okay, well, we can we can treat your Lyme. We can definitely get into that. But let’s get a really deep functional health history for you. And so he had tried a bunch of different antibiotics, which is a standard treatment for Lyme. But he was still having symptoms. Right. So I think there was joint pains, but he was having a lot of nausea. He was having a lot of strange things, like eye watering, vertigo, headaches. I don’t think he was anyone who had any rashes, but he was having a good amount of GI symptoms. So I said, okay, let’s kind of focus on your GI. So I did some stool testing on him. So that was kind of the next step here. And we were trying to stabilize these symptoms because it was a multi-systemic picture. And he did kind of fit the picture for mast cell activation, even though certain mast cell markers that I did in terms of testing were not necessarily coming back positive.

I said clinically you kind of have this. So let’s try different mast cell stabilizing agents and see if they can help. And they were helping a little bit. Right. And meanwhile we’re trying to sort of like chip away at this chronic viral picture, bringing down his viral load with various herbals and antivirals and maybe adding in a little bit of Lyme stuff to see if he would have a response.

So a lot of times people will have a Herxheimer, which is kind of like a healing response. So the Jarisch-Herxheimer, in essence, you will give somebody a treatment, a specific agent that might specifically target an infection. And all of the sudden they have this bloom of symptoms related to the infection. They feel terrible. You know, more fatigue, more joint aching, more nausea, for example. And what it is, is it’s like your immune system coming online. It’s like giving your immune system a stepladder or a signal, like poking at to say, go. And so it’s stimulating cytokines in this clearing. And, and people can feel really, really sick as, you know, these pathogens are coming out getting into their lymphatic system. Your liver, your kidneys, your gut is having to process all of this. So, you know, it’s basically like your body’s saying, well, okay, I’m processing a lot. I kind of need to take a step back. But it’s kind of another like way of testing. Right. We can kind of do this like poor man’s process. If we give specific treatments like specific agents that might target one of these infections. And somebody has Herx, then it’s like data for us, okay, maybe this is something that’s in your system and we can kind of assess that without testing.

Anyway. So we were doing that with him. Some things were kind of working, but not really. And so then I said, you kind of like, given what’s going on, I feel like your liver might be a little bit compromised. And I see this so much with this population, it’s almost like the liver takes the big brunt, the big burden. And I have this theory that the liver has its own microbiome. It’s a ductal organ. Right. So not only is it doing so many of these metabolic processes, but it’s also like helping with all the, all the cleanup in your body. So these bugs, right, whether it’s Borrelia or Bartonella, the BCA, a virus, they all create toxins, right? These bio toxins, these endotoxins mold has its mycotoxins. All of that goes through the liver.

If it’s something that can be sort of broken down and it’s water soluble, then it’s going to go out through the urinary system, right? Your kidneys and then into your bladder and on out. And that’s kind of one clinical pearl that I could maybe offer is that a lot of times people will have interstitial cystitis, but they won’t have any. Nothing will come up on a urinalysis. Even if we did like, micro, which really goes into, it’s like a deep PCR of potential bacteria and fungal growth that’s in the urinary system. It’ll come back negative, right? There won’t be anything that will be found on that. But this person is having urgency, frequency, burning pain throughout their urinary tract that oftentimes can be it can be Lyme, right. It can be Borrelia or some of these coinfections, but it can also be mycotoxins because it’s like those water-soluble things are coming out for the urinary system. They’re getting held in the bladder. The bladder is lined with immune cells, mast cells. When they sense that some of these toxins are there, they kind of detonate and it’s almost like they’re like, get out, get out, get out. And so the urinary system gets very irritated, so to speak.

Anyway, I got a little bit off track, but I wanted to go back to oh, so that’s the water-soluble. And then there’s lipid soluble. So a lot of these toxins are only going to be able to be coming out through lipids, through the fat, the lipid system which is going to be your bile. So that’s where the liver really comes into play. And I have this theory, like I said, that a lot of these toxins almost like accumulate in the liver. They create this sort of, the analogy would be like a swamp, like a very like a rich, almost decaying, there’s a lot of bacteria, there’s a lot of fungal, there’s a lot of just stuff brewing in there.

And then single celled pathogens, whether it’s protozoa or other kinds of parasitic stuff can then also live in this milieu. The liver becomes almost very inflamed and compromised. I see a lot of these people. They’ll have very, high lipid markers, right? Like they’re like, why is my cholesterol through the roof? I’m somebody who eats a really clean diet, and I work out, and I sweat, etc. to me, it’s a marker of inflammation.

And it’s not only the liver that’s like having a hard time. Their liver enzymes might be elevated.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I was just going to ask that.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Yeah. Or they can be low right. So compromised in that way as well. But then it’s also like cell membranes. So we need cholesterol. So cholesterol being the backbone for our body’s own anti-inflammatories. You’ve got your cortisone, your cortisol, and then also your androgens also act as neuro-steroids. Right. So the backbone of that is going to be cholesterol. And then also, you know that the cholesterol necessary for cell membranes as well. So when we have a lot of this toxicity in the body, it’s almost like the body goes into this gear.

The liver goes into this gear of creating more lipids. And when we do certain IVs, like IBU, a lot of times when the blood is coming out, you can see, you can actually see and when I do, blood draws on people. I’m getting a lot of blood. I’ll take larger amounts of it.

Or when I’m doing ozone and I’m ozonating the blood. And I’ll actually see, these lipids, it’s almost like there’s white, it’s like it looks like soap in the blood. So I suspect it with that patient 27-year-old male that his liver was somewhat compromised and then that was compromising his sort of like biliary. Like maybe the bile coming out was like triggering mast cells in his upper gut. But also maybe it was like compromising his pancreatic and his biliary, like all those necessary components of the bile and what the pancreas releases and also like stomach acids. And so all this wonderful stuff that helps to break down your food.

I was suspecting that there might be a breakdown there, given his GI symptoms, and then also his mast cell activation stuff, and that the fact that he was improving was H blockers. Another clinical pearl is that H2 receptors, a lot of them that’s histamine two are in the gut, especially the upper GI. So when people have kind of this like whether it’s esophageal into the stomach, like kind of a Gerd, you know, into the upper intestine. Small intestinal, a lot of times I’m thinking, okay, there’s something that’s pissing off those mast cells there. So we have to look back to how’s the liver functioning? How’s the pancreas functioning as the stomach functioning?

So I was kind of honing in on that with this patient. So I was like, let’s just do let’s give you some things, some herbs to help along your bile, your bile flow, your liver here. And let’s give you a little betaine HCL because I’m suspecting that maybe like your stomach acid might be a little low. He comes back into my office and I’m like, hey, how are you doing? And he’s like, I’m cured. I’m good. I’m not going to see you again. So I just came in to say goodbye. And I was like, that’s my goal. I mean, I never want to see you again. I mean, I know that’s a strange thing to say to a patient, but, I really I want them to be able to go live their life.

So, you know, that was enough to kind of help him to get the stabilization of symptoms and then continuing to kind of do things, you know, with his diet, with his lifestyle maybe some supportive, herbals to kind of help along, to continue that process is helping along his liver, helping along his immune system. And as far as I know, he’s doing great. So that’s one example there.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Jules, I love this story. Well, I loved, hearing you thinking through that case and everything that you did, but then I also love that one of the solutions was betaine HCL, which is so simple, so simple, so awesome. That’s amazing. That’s really, really cool. What’s the other example you were going to share?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: I actually have two. The first one’s really quick. It’s not a long one. So another guy in his 20s, he had severe mold exposure. He was in one of these coastal apartments here in one of the beach cities. We have these super mold species that are developing. I know you’ve had other guests on who have talked about this, but I think between the emfs, the building materials, and then also the coastal moisture, we’re really developing almost these like resistant mold species, and the mycotoxins.

So the mycotoxins, right, are released when the mold is like, don’t bug me. Like, and, you know, the clean heart studies we know that all these emfs that are happening, not WiFi, Bluetooth, 5G, 4G, all of it is just really these molds are like pumping out more of that because they’re like, we feel bothered. It’s like their natural defense mechanism, you know, molds fungus has their own natural defenses that mycotoxins plants have their phytotoxins.

So anyway, he had a very high mycotoxins burden. And he had a lot of mold. So we were thinking mold for him, but he was having, like, he was having, like, crazy lymphatic like, his neck. It just I mean, it looked like he was wearing like a neck donut, right. Like it was just all puffed out, and he was miserable, and he was like, I’m having trouble swallowing. And, the main thing for him, though, was the skin. And he was having it looked like eczema wasn’t the classic histamine rash, but it was this irritated, and to the point where it was becoming like sores that were peeling, oozing. I mean, it was burning. It was hurting. It was causing neuropathy.

Anyway, did a whole bunch of testing on him. He had really crazy high levels of certain interleukins, that were then kind of signaling into, like he had an extreme level of immunoglobulin. E, right. So like gas or cutting or like allergic reaction. IG. and I said, okay, there’s some really wonderful smart drugs out there right now. And I had tried everything with him, and he couldn’t tolerate things because he had this muscle picture. So like, nothing we gave him orally, he could tolerate, like everything we tried, whether it was a medication or food, he was on the one food all this guy could eat was beef. Oh my goodness, this just good quality beef. That was it. Beef and water and had a few patients like that. So he was so sensitized, so like reactive and toxic. So I said look, okay, based on these interleukins and your IGA, there’s a new smart drug out here that is going to block. It’s just going to block the receptors for these interleukins. And it’s a subcutaneous injection. Let’s just try it. Within a week he started feeling relief.

I’ve had a few patients for whom we’ve taken that route, and I am a naturopathic physician. Right. So I love to look at basic determinants of health first. Right. Like, are we breathing good air? Are we getting good sunshine? Are we drinking good water? What’s our diet like? So all these foundational things and then also the herbal medicine. But I have to say some of these new biologic are incredible for just stabilizing. We’re just sort of putting a cast on at the top. And then we can start chipping away at what the underneath, kind of issue is. So and I saw the guy actually last week skin is like perfectly smooth. Now, he’d been able to go out in the sun, he’s able to eat everything, and he, this is interesting. He really took a deep dive into doing some nervous system regulation work, because I was really pushing that on him. I did a vagal reset exercise with him in office, and he kind of, you know, there was a shift like an immediate shift for him. So I really suggested that he, look into primal trust, which is a limbic system retraining program. It’s a wonderful program. And so he, he started it, and he was really responsive to it in his nervous system.

Because when we have all these infections going on all the time, and this is part of the mast cell thing and part of like I mean Lyme can really do this as well. Lyme mold, the viral stuff. It’s telling, it’s constantly telling the limbic system that something’s wrong, that there’s danger, there are pathogens in the body. And this is like so all the signals to keep the lights on to like keep the sympathetic nervous system on, we’ve got to get it out.

So it’s like, people will have this like diarrhea, this frequent urination, like they can’t sleep. You know, they’re just constantly wired, they’re maybe they’re having a lot of cardiovascular symptoms, the palpitations, your hunger, the pox, all of this. It’s related to this limbic system that’s like, oh my gosh, there’s this danger here. Constant danger, danger, danger, danger.

So then that’s then signaling into the body to respond to that danger. But it’s also keeping people stuck in these symptoms. And then they’re just it’s a cycle of misery.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Crazy. Hold on. I have two follow-up questions before you share the next case. I think everybody’s wondering what is the drug that you used? So you have to tell us now.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Oh, well there’s two there’s two that I’ve particularly been using for people. So for him, we tried Dupixent and then we tried Zolair.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Okay. I’ve never heard of either of those, but very interesting.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Again, I have no affiliation with the pharmaceutical companies. I just think that sometimes these biologics can be a really useful tool to address the underlying cause.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And then you also mentioned a vagal reset exercise that you did in person. Is that something you can share really quick?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Sure. So, like, we can walk through it. I actually have a YouTube video of me doing it. And what’s great is that I’m, so in full disclosure, I’m in the YouTube video with my mother, who suffers from hypertension, and it is something that’s, related to her nervous response. Her body’s sympathetic versus parasympathetic. So essentially it’s a breathing exercise. It’s akin to box breathing. And I have the people, the patients breathe through their nose and then kind of hold it and then exhale through their mouth with the rounded mouth.

You know, there are a lot of nerves, right? The cranial nerves, you know, so your eyes, your ears, all of this. Right? Your mouth. And there’s, the vagus nerve, innervates. Right. Like, up and through a lot of, the tongue, the mouth and the speaking, and the breathing. So there’s a lot of nerve signaling that happens when we do exercises that involve breathing or different positions of the tongue over the mouth.

Okay. And so I have them do that. I then have them turn their head and their eyes so they have to like, look their eyes like as far to the side as they can. So we’re activating all this, you know, all these nerves, right. As far as they can to one side. Well, continuing the breathing exercise until they sigh or yawn, which is a state change, right? Which means maybe we’re coming in more into a parasympathetic.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Now I’m yawning. You just have to say the word yawn and I start yawning.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: I love how suggestible. But then I have them go to the other side too. So, you know, we’re moving the eyes with the breathing, the movies. I have to do that. And then, like in the case of my mother and some of my other cardiovascular, the affected patients, you know, where there’s, autonomic nervous system, you know, so this would be like, you know, the pot, the more adrenal stuff, catecholamines, there are receptors that that kind of family of things. I will have them just do a little almost like carotid massage Just briefly. You got to do just one side and then the other, just on their neck while we’re still doing this breathing. The in through the nose, out through the mouth, which I’m walking them through. And then I just have them relax just in a comfortable seat. But you know, with a good spine and their hands, you know, just on their legs.

So for my mother, like, she would have her blood pressure to be like 190 over 110. Well, which of course everybody’s like, oh my gosh, ER! ER! I’ll do that exercise with her. And it’ll come down to like 125 over 76.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Incredible.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: So just and so you can see that in the video that I have on YouTube. Like you actually watch that.

Evelyne Lambrecht: That’s great. We can link to that video in the show notes. Okay. You have another story that you wanted to share. Can you share it very quickly? Because I have a couple other questions I really want to get to.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Well, this one is so this person came to me because she thought maybe she had mast cell. And she was open to the idea that maybe she’d had mold exposure, but she wasn’t sure where the mold exposure had come from. So, we were trying to do, again, like stabilizing agents for her. She was not able to tolerate anything. Just absolutely nothing. We finally got her able to tolerate certain herbs and certain vitamins orally, which was great. But she was still having a whole bunch of symptoms. So urinary, sexual, digestive, neurological, immune. So just so many things were happening. Cutaneous. She was having rashes. So she was unable to, she was mostly bedbound because of the pain. So she sent me some pictures of these rashes, and I was like, girl, that’s shingles. Like, straight up. Just that’s shingles. So put her on Valacyclovir. Which she was actually able to tolerate. And some herbal teas, like lemon balm. I put her on, I tried some lysine with her. Just sort of like our anti-herpes family virus family of agents.

Anyway, the rashes cleared up, right? She was somebody who didn’t have a whole lot of money, so we didn’t have a whole lot of testing on her. But she came in with some other mystery symptoms that that were happening a lot. So one of the main ones was foot pain. That was worse in the morning. And she would have this sensation of internal buzzing. Okay. So I’m immediately thinking that’s Bartonella, right. So I asked her, I was like, hey, have you ever been around cats? And she’s like, yeah, I’m a cat breeder.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Oh my.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: I said, oh wow. So then she’s sharing all because we’re on zoom, or on telemedicine. She’s sharing all of her beautiful cat she has a gorgeous cat. But I said, you know, have you ever had an issue with fleas? And she’s like, oh, yeah. And I’m like, okay, so girl, you have Bartonella. We need to treat Bartonella. And you know where her rashes were on her back, she also had these, so they’re like a classic Bartonella sign. So it’s like these, they’re almost like these horizontal stretch marks, and they’re like, if somebody has fairer skin they’ll be kind of like pink. So she had those that would just appear and disappear kind of in her like mid-thoracic spine. And she would also have pain with that. So anyway, so this is somebody who we initially thought maybe this was like mold driven, cell activation. But then all of a sudden we discover what’s underlying is really like this whole bunch of viral stuff that’s happening. And then with her gut, we’ve been treating yeast overgrowth. And then now we’re getting into Bartonella with her.

So it’s this idea of this complex chronic illness where peeling back the layers and with each layer, when we start to treat it, people will have that healing response that Herx. And that’s clinical data for us that can then help us guide the next step.

I like to tell all my patients, you’re going to have one of three responses to anything we try, right? You’re going to feel better. Absolutely nothing’s going to happen, which in the case of mast cell is kind of a good thing. Or you’re going to have a negative response. And is that negative response because your immune system is so dysregulated and so hyper reactive, or is it a healing response or Herx? So that helps guide us as we move along the healing journey.

Evelyne Lambrecht: I think it also speaks to the importance of asking the right questions, but also just letting the patient share, right? Because sometimes it’s like just in them sharing about their lives or their symptoms. It triggers something like, oh, maybe that’s it, and maybe it wouldn’t have come up if we don’t listen for that. So that’s a really, really interesting story.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Yeah. And another part of this woman’s story is she was going to Michigan a lot because her husband was from Michigan, and she was saying that where they were in Michigan, you know, it was a little more rural. There was a lot of livestock, but there was also a lot of humidity and a lot of mold. And she said she’d noticed mold in the bathrooms there. And she would be like, yeah, when I would go to Michigan, I would have all these symptoms pop up. And one time I had to go to the ER.

Getting the history is so crucial. And when treating complex chronic illness, just like you said, Evelyne, the patient will tell you. They will give you what you need to kind of put the puzzle together. And sometimes, and I credit one of my mentors, Dr. Paul Anderson, with this. But he was somebody who said to me, sometimes you have to just like take a step back, when a patient is talking to you and they might be telling you something that you’re like, oh my gosh, I had no idea what could be causing that symptom. I have no idea why this would go with this. That makes no sense. But take a step back, like take a beat and I know this is kind of almost in the woo or like the intuitive level of things, but like it comes like the patient later than said, like, oh, and by the way, I was around this cat or oh, by the way, I went to Michigan and this happened. So it’s like just truly like that. The answers are there. The patient has them. And it’s just that’s always true.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yeah. So I want to ask you quite a few more things and something that always comes to mind when we’re talking about complex chronic illness, Lyme, etc., is shouldn’t our bodies be able to mount an immune response? And is it possible to build a strong enough gut and immune system, a strong enough body, to mount an adequate immune response to all of these things? And I know that there are so many stressors in the world. And yes, there are EMFs, but I would just love to hear your thoughts on that.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Yeah. Another excellent question. And in the realm of complex chronic illness, this is, you know, kind of what we’re dealing with. And Paul Anderson even says, 15, 20 years ago, we were not seeing patients that were sort of at this level of complexity, at this level of advancement, at this level of toxicity. So we’re bio accumulators. All organisms are, all mammals are, we’re constantly just, we take in from the environment what we’re exposed to, what we’re eating, etc., and we’re living in an ever more toxic world. And these toxins are evermore forever and beyond. And it’s not getting any cleaner. They are disrupting the immune system.

So presumably, if somebody is like, say you’re, you’re a newborn, or even just a kid, you’ve got a really great immune system. You’ve developed a good immune system. You’ve been exposed to enough so that you can develop good immunity. But, good diet, good determinants of health, you know, great community, great family, whatever. Let’s say you have everything going right for you and you get bitten by an adult tick and it’s embedded on you for a long time. And by the way, a tick could be embedded for just even 20 minutes. But if it has the bacteria and if it’s bitten enough other organisms, you know, if it’s already got that blood in it, it can still transmit the bacteria.

Right? It’s not like there has to be on for 24 hours. But so let’s say you’re exposed to something like that. Presumably the immune system should be able to do its job. Come in. Create an immune response, tamping down that infection, you know, maybe have an initial inflammatory response and then, the person can be on their way without symptoms.

But what we see with complex and chronic illness is that these other layers come in these other waves of life. They had the mold exposure. They had the series of traumatic events, they lost their job, family member passed, they went through a really upsetting breakup, all these things that just happen in life and it disrupts and dysregulates the immune system and then this milieu of pathogens that we have, we all have exposure to viruses. We all have exposure to bacteria. We all have exposure to fungal stuff and parasitic stuff. They just start to party. The immune system no longer has the resources for it. And that’s when we see this like huge wildfire happen, like the fill barrel has completely spilled over. We’ve got this big oil spill now that we have to clean up.

So in the naturopathic medicine paradigm, we believe that the body has an innate ability to get itself back into balance, to heal, and that it wants to. So we have to trust that, we always have to trust that. It’s just that maybe there are some obstacles that have gotten in the way some of these pathogens, some of these toxins.

So I truly believe that anyone you know can do that process of peeling off the layers and going through the healing responses and getting the body back to a place where we can get the immune system. Maybe if it’s gone off track, we can get the train righted back on track. There is a saying in the Lyme world that Lyme is treatable as long as the patient can tolerate the treatment, and that it is true to a good extent. I will say that the most successful patients that I have, they’re not afraid of going through the fire, so to speak, in terms of having those healing responses. A lot of times people are so sensitive and they have such a strong cell danger response that we really do have to come in with either, like I said, that nervous system regulation stuff or some of these higher level interventions, these smart drugs, which, you know, then create almost an immunocompromised state, right?

Because we’re now also disrupting the person’s immune system, but so that their symptoms can be stabilized. So and then the diligence and the treatment fatigue is something that I completely understand. And it’s very, very real. People are just exhausted and tired of doing treatments. But one thing that I think I have learned is that it can be simple, right?

Like the botanical, you know, we were trying all these things with this guy, and same with some of my other patients. And then it’s like we find the one thing that can just help, help us get things calm down and then we’ll find the next thing that can then help to rewrite the immune system.

And there are so many wonderful botanicals and so many wonderful nutrients that can help support these immune pathways. So making sure that we have all the right cofactors, making sure that on a cellular level, I know mitochondria is a really big thing right now. There’s a lot of, the hydrogen and oxygen therapies. There’s a lot that can be done with energy work. People swear by rife machines or the PMF, but all of this is kind of designed to kind of help a little bit of hermetic, like shake things up a little bit or add in a little bit more somewhere to just kind of rewrite the whole system. I know there’s a long answer to your question. I hope I answered it.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Yes you did. That was great. And since you brought up botanicals and nutrients, I know that it’s going to differ for each person and what they’re dealing with. But just generally, what are some of your favorite nutrients and herbs?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Oh, yeah. So many. I mean, obviously, yes, it will depend on the patient and what their particular picture, like, their particular soup, their milieu is and, and what is popping up the most, what’s bubbling up the most. In terms of like the mast cell and mold stuff? I love nettles and you can pick them wild. They grow wild almost everywhere and you can get them in capsule form, but you can also get them in dry bulk herb form like you can buy them.

There’s some really wonderful companies you can get them on the internet from. I get no affiliation, but I really like Star West and Mountain Rose botanicals. If you want to get like a big bag of bulk, I use nettles. I drink some every day. I make a large pot of tea. So I do multi-gallon pot, and then I don’t even necessarily strain it right then and there.

I just heat it up to almost boiling, let it infuse, let it cool down, stick it in the fridge. And then I will drink that as an iced tea. Or I’ll heat it back up as a hot tea. And you can add whatever you want to it, like whether that’s lemon, help the liver along a little bit, especially when you have more a nice empty digestive track that can be wonderful. Maybe a little honey, if you’re somebody who can tolerate that. Or a little monk fruit. I love monk fruit. So, yeah, I’ll add some minerals to that. And then I make a nice little froth up. I blend it up and do a matcha. But nettles can also be used like you can add it to a soup. Like it can be used as a food. And it’s so nutritive. Then all these minerals, all these cofactors, that are needed for so many different immune functions. I’m somebody who’s actually prone to anemia, iron deficiency. And I by the way, I loved your episodes on the hemochromatosis, but metals can actually be a source of bioavailable iron.

The thing I love about herbs is that the nutrients are bound in a way that the body knows, like what to do with that. Like it can utilize it as it needs to, you know, almost. It’s like the concept of like the adaptogen. And I find that with herbs, with the multiple mechanisms of action and all these different nutrients, they it’s just that it’s the bioavailability that’s so, so wonderful about them. So nettles is a big one for me. I also really like luteolin, in terms of immune regulation. It’s kind of high up in terms of a lot of these immune pathways and cascades. I really like turmeric. I know a lot of people like curcumin just it’s great, wonderful anti-inflammatory, a gentle key later, a lot in the gut. So many herbs. I really like polygonum. And so that’s your Japanese knotweed, especially for people who have a lot of vascular symptoms and vascular dysregulation from some of these coinfections like the Bubesia, the Bartonella, which are blood parasites. And yeah, I mean, so many I guess one more that I will say is larrea triedentata, it grows natively here in our deserts a little bit further east. And it’s an incredibly potent antiviral. And I have yet to see, one of these chronically ill people who doesn’t have a nice blend of chronic, reactivating virus stuff. So the larrea is incredible for just nipping that in the bud.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And then, speaking of viral things, I know I’ve heard you use some other things and even mentioned lemon balm in this episode. I don’t think you mentioned licorice, but you did mention lysine. Do you use things like monolauren, impatiens?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: I mean, there’s a lot of great viral antiviral blends out there that have some of these cofactors in small amounts, right.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Okay. I have another question for you. And you mentioned the vascular aspect. And when you and I were preparing for this episode, you told me about how these, I think it was you were talking about the endotoxins and their effect on the connective tissue in the fascia. And you were talking about the cranial cervical instability, but also the endothelial tissues. Can you can you talk about that part? Because I found that just absolutely fascinating.

Julianna Dudas: Okay. Connective tissue. Let’s just talk about fascia for a second. So the fascia which is around all of it’s around all our muscles. And it sheaths, it kind of covers it, it’s all throughout the body swaths of it and these sort of overlaid crossing, it’s just amazing stuff. It is interwoven with all kinds of little nerves.

So when we’ve had an injury and that connective tissue gets stretched right, the nerves can get bothered when we have some of these chronic infections, especially Borelli and some of the viruses love nerve tissue. They just can say they find it really yummy. Okay. They like they’re cozy. They’re happy there. And it’s their metabolism. So the organism that it basically eats and poops essentially. It has a metabolism. It’s their toxins. It’s their endotoxins. Or, maybe the organism has a lifespan and then it dies.

And it’s sort of the component, the endotoxins from the dead organism to that can be incredibly irritating to nerve tissue. And so when we have, so they call it the terrible triad. But MCAST can go along with the download spectrum, which is connective tissue. It’s the spectrum of connective tissue disorders. So basically when people are, the classic is like they’re hyper flexible. So their connective tissue is little stretchier. They might have stretchier skin. They might have stretchier joints. You know they can do crazy things like that. Party tricks. So when somebody is maybe on that spectrum, it’s almost like those nerves can get even more, agitated, irritated when we’ve had car accidents or maybe our connective tissue is a little bit looser and in the cervical spine. So the cranial cervical, where all those cranial nerves are coming up right into the central nervous system here. If the spine, if the connective tissue is in any way compromised, then the vertebrae, the muscles like that whole structure can start to impinge upon these cranial nerves and particularly like it can when it is impinging upon the 10th cranial nerve, the vagus nerve in any way. That’s when we can get like a ton of autonomic nervous system dysregulation, because there’s literally like a pinching or an impinging.

I have one patient who was diagnosed with ALS, a gentleman in his 30s. And so, yes, we discovered the Lyme, the Bartonella, the mold toxicity. He remediated his home. We were treating the viral and everything like that. He was still having like really serious bilateral weakness in his upper limbs, this bilateral right. It wasn’t one side. So I said, you know what I want, I’m going to have I’m going to put it in order for you to have cranio cervical imaging, because I want to see what’s going on there for you. He went to a specialist who put him in a specialized like neck brace, basically said, I want you to do this experiment to the patient.

He said he had it on like even for just an hour, and all of a sudden, his arms felt better because that, that and that constant just like gentle impingement was stopping. So that was kind of an amazing thing to just see that there was just really, truly this, like structural component, a sizable component to his case.

Evelyne Lambrecht: That’s super interesting. And what about the endothelial tissue part that you mentioned to me?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: So as far as like the vasculature, for example, like the BCA, it would actually I can create these like nests in like small vasculature, like capillaries and stuff like that. But then we have like these larger vessels which then also have like, there are receptors, but other receptors that are signaling to the autonomic nervous system, so like your heartbeat, like your heart rate, but also like you know, your, your vessels to, contract. If you’re if you’re standing up, you know, you want your, your lower like there needs to be a compression so that all the blood doesn’t just, like rush down into your lower limbs. Like, so all this homeostasis stuff that the, that the body wants to do.

And so there are mast cells throughout different parts of the vasculature as well. And when there is that immune dysregulation, when there is that limbic dysregulation the mast cells can then like detonate and there can be a disruption with all of that. And then you combine that with the connective tissue stuff like maybe somebody has like more floppy valves, their venous valves in their lower limbs, it can just create this whole host of symptoms that happen, they might be fainting or might be nausea. They might be dizziness. All right. The POTS thing.

Another pearl that I’ll just throw in there. There is a lot of research that’s happening right now as far as this whole like EDS, Lyme, in terms of the vasculature throughout the pelvic bowl. So the pelvic region and there’s pelvic congestion syndrome, right. That can cause like vulvodynia, sexual dysfunction, you know, maybe, or like, do I have endometriosis. So basically, a dysfunction and impingement of pinching with the connective tissue or a disruption with the vasculature that can happen throughout this very sort of complex region of the pelvis. Just because the way the vasculature is there. So, yeah, lots to talk about.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Super interesting and also scary what you said about them, like embedding in the small vasculature. That’s frightening.

Jules, I know that you also use some pretty unique therapies. And in your practice, you mentioned some of them actually, you mentioned EBOO, and I wanted to clarify what does that stand for again?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozone.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Okay. But I just wanted to ask you quickly, like, is there anything else that you’ve seen that you’re really passionate about when you’re working with patients?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Well, one of the therapies that I’ve been using for a few years now is the support of oligonucleotide therapy. That can be pathogen specific. So this is it’s essentially an autologous therapy. Right. So a sample of your blood is sent off to a lab. And then the lab is searching for the genetic material for a specific pathogen that you’ve already tested positive for. So you know that that it’s existing in your body. And you have symptoms for it. So we want to treat it. So let’s say that, Epstein Barr virus or let’s say that’s Bartonella Hensley. So the lab will then create an mRNA molecule that is going to match, almost like a lock and key to genetic material in that cell, in that pathogen cell.

So it’ll get, in theory it goes into the body, it goes into the bloodstream, we infuse it and it goes to find the pathogen. It gets taken in by the pathogen. It then stops protein production within the pathogen. So the cell then essentially dies. It happens. So it’s a really safe like not really many side effects except for like maybe potentially this hurts healing response way of targeted therapy against a pathogen.

And we have found that it can be incredibly helpful, particularly for these tickborne pathogens. But also for some of these viral infections. So that’s SOT or they’re now calling it QRestring therapy. And that’s something that I offer at my clinic.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Very, very interesting. Thank you so much for sharing, Jules. I know we’re definitely out of time, and I know there were other things that I wanted to talk about, but I do want to ask you our questions that I ask every guest. So just really quickly, what are your current three favorite supplements?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Oh my goodness. Well, I think I kind of already mentioned some of my favorite antivirals. I really like a good mineral supplement. Like I was talking about the minerals. I think we all need minerals right now. I like a really good bio flavonoid mix that can be really helpful for so many different kinds of conditions, whether it’s the cardiometabolic or the immune or the chronic illness or even like oncology. We all need bio flavonoids. We all need minerals. And let’s see, I really like Gaba, so I think we all need Gaba too. Yeah, it’s good for right now.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Absolutely. And what are your favorite health practices to keep you healthy and balanced?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: My number one is probably yoga. And that’s something that can be done anywhere. You know, you can do it in your room. You can do it in a hotel room. And it can be simple. You can do it in a chair. And yoga is simply like a conscious moving and breath practice. So it can be very, very simple and it can start very small or yeah, it could be like a huge power yoga. So yoga is, my mainstay. It’s just so crucial for balancing the nervous system. And it’s just so simple in terms of the technology, you know, balance, strength, flexibility.

And the other thing that I just, I feel like I cannot live without is tuning in to nature. So even if you’re somebody who lives in a city, I mean, I’ve been to the busiest cities in the world, but there’s always going to be a bird somewhere that you could listen to and watch. There are always little parks somewhere, so just connecting with the elements, connecting with something that’s natural. And if you do have the luxury of being able to get out on a hike, that’s the best at forest bathing and getting all those wonderful volatile organic compounds from all the great, whether it’s the sagebrush or the pine trees, it’s, listening to the bird sounds. Your limbic system can attune to that. It knows what that means, that signal of safety. So yeah, nature of that.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And what is something that you’ve changed your mind about through your years in this field?

Dr. Julianna Dudas: I know other people have said this as well, but I think the dietary component. So I’m somebody who’s been on a journey of cutting out this or cutting out that or trying this or trying that. I think a lot of us have been and I used to think that everybody needed to eat one way or then everybody needed to eat another way. It’s like, wait a minute. How can some people be right and some people be wrong? And what’s the right? What’s the answer here? And so what I’ve learned throughout this journey of being a practitioner and even long before that is truly that everybody is unique and everybody has their own unique set of, you know, nutritional like capacity and needs. So I think just like opening my eyes and opening my practice to how helping guide people to figure out what is best for them and their unique body.

Evelyne Lambrecht: Absolutely. Thank you, Jules, so much for this conversation. I loved taking some of the conversations that you and I have when we’re out in nature, and bringing them to an audience via the podcast. So I really appreciate your expertise and I always just learn so much from you. And this is such a complex topic, and I’m always just impressed by how simple you make it.

But I also, I loved all the stories you shared. I know so many practitioners will resonate with certain aspects of what you said today. So thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it.

Dr. Julianna Dudas: Of course. Thank you for having me. Love talking with you.

Evelyne Lambrecht: And thank you for tuning in to Conversations for Health. Check out the show notes for resources from today’s episode. Please share this podcast with your colleagues. Follow us, rate, leave a review wherever you listen or watch. And thank you for designing a well world with us.

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