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Lyme Disease and the Brain: The Hidden Complexity of Lyme and Co-Infections

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (00:00.99)
Welcome to this episode of the Think Well, Age Well podcast. I am your host as always, Dr. Heather Sandison.

And today I am excited to introduce you to Dr. Mariah Hinchy. She’s a naturopathic physician and medical director of the Tau Center for Vitality, Longevity, and Optimal Health in Connecticut. After navigating her own journey with Lyme, she’s spent the last decade focused on helping patients with chronic tick-borne disease, especially those who haven’t found answers through conventional approaches. She has trained alongside some of the most respected voices in the Lyme community and functional medicine, including

Dr. Rich Horowitz, Dr. Neil Mason, and Dr. Mark Hyman. She’s also developed a thoughtful systems based approach to treating Lyme and its co-infections. In addition to her clinical work, she’s the founder of Lyme Core Botanicals and Lyme Bites, where she’s helping to educate practitioners and the public about what it really takes to diagnose and treat these complex conditions. Today, we are going to connect the dots between Lyme and the brain and how we age. So Mariette, I’m so delighted that

you’re here Dr. Henshie, welcome to the show.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (01:09.762)
Thank you Heather so much for having me.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (01:12.72)
Lyme disease is talked about, I think so many people, hear the word Lyme and it’s not well understood. They might even think they get it, but then when we talk about it, there’s so many misconceptions and misunderstandings. So from your perspective, can you just break down, like, what is Lyme? Is it one disease? Is it multiple? Can you get it if you don’t live in Connecticut? Tell us about how we should think about that word Lyme disease, this idea.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (01:39.278)
Sure. So I think a lot of people do use lime as a catch-all. So when they say lime, they mean the organism Borrelia burgdiferae, as well as the other species of Borrelia that cause lime, but also including all of the co-infections, like Bartonella, which is another bacteria, or Babesia, which is a parasite, or even the Powassan virus, which can be transmitted by ticks as well. And so that’s kind of a no-no.

Because then if you go and ask your doctor to test you for Lyme, they’re not going to be testing you for all of these various things. And so really the correct terminology is vector-borne disease. And so what vector-borne disease really means is that you can’t really pass it person to person, but there are some exceptions, like from mother to fetus in utero, for example.

But basically, you need something else to pass it from one person or one animal to another. So it’s most known as a tick, the black-legged deer tick doing this. But there are other ticks. And when it comes to Bartonella, they can be transmitted by mites, fleas, lice, biting flies, all sorts of other insects. So we really need to get away from using it as a catch-all.

And we also need to get away from thinking that it’s only ticks that can transmit these things.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (03:09.884)
And there’s also this sort of controversy between conventional medicine and maybe naturopathic functional medicine around chronic Lyme versus acute Lyme. So can you take us through why some people either aren’t getting insurance coverage for treatment or they’re not even being acknowledged as having Lyme by some doctors or providers they might encounter?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (03:33.624)
Sure. So I think the whole thing really starts with a lot of misdiagnosis. And it’s because there’s a lot of misinformation just in the medical field at large. And so even going to school to be a naturopathic physician, so we were taught the same thing that I think every physician is taught. You have to be playing in some tall grass, and you get bit by a tick, and then you end up with this bullseye rash called the rash.

and you have some joint pain and you go on 14 days of doxycycline and miraculously, you’re just cured. And that isn’t the case. There are so many different things that go awry with that first tick bite. And I think number one is that most of the time people don’t even know that they’ve been bit by a tick.

So there are multiple life or stages of these ticks. There’s the larva, which can carry all of these infections. There’s the nymph, and then there’s the adult male and female deer ticks. And they look very different from each other. The nymph is smaller than the size of a period at the end of a sentence, and the larva is actually translucent.

and you can barely even see it with your eye. then, know, yes, my son had one on him last year. I don’t know how my husband saw it. It was insane. But also, I mean, know, tics like to go to places where they’re not gonna be seen. So they go in our hair, they go in our armpits, they go in our groin. I had one in my belly button when I was a kid.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (04:56.714)
can be bit by the larvae?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (05:18.55)
You know, so a lot, we can’t just say, I never found a tick. I never saw a tick. Therefore, I can’t have Lyme disease. They anesthetize you. You don’t feel them biting you. A lot of the times when you do find a tick, it’s because of the histamine or immune system’s reaction to the tick bite or to the organisms that they’re putting into your body. And we start to itch. And when we go to scratch, we’re like, what’s that thing that’s attached to us? That’s how most people find them.

But by the time that’s happened, they’ve usually been on there for so long that they’ve had the chance to transmit these organisms into the body. So number one is that, you know, relying either you or your doctor saying if you didn’t have a tick bite, you can’t have one of these things, that’s false. Number two is there was a really poor study that was done, very small population, very terrible criteria that showed that if you took a single dose of Doxy at

the time of a tick bite, it would prevent all of these things. And we know that that is very, very untrue. So we have this gross mishandling of tick bites in the first place. And then also 14 days of doxycycline, even in an acute infection, doesn’t resolve the infection. ILADS, which is the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, actually recommends four to six weeks.

And again, that’s just for Borrelia. Doxy doesn’t treat things like viruses or parasites. We need antiviral or antiparasitic medications. So in the acute phase, you can have the rash, but it’s actually only present 20 to 40% of the time, depending on the source. So it’s not there more than it is there, number one. Number two, symptoms are usually like that of the flu.

So you can have a fever, can have malaise, feel tired, just not feel well, feel achy, have a stiff neck, that’s it. And so a lot of people mistake it for the flu or a cold or a stomach bug or something else. And then it typically gets better, but then it goes on to develop these other symptoms.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (07:36.786)
Yeah, Lyme has been called the great imitator. And so this is another reason why I think it gets missed. From your perspective, what do you think the incidence of Lyme disease in the US is? are we under, do you think we’re underestimating?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (07:52.322)
I really think that we are. So the CDC estimates about half a million new cases a year. So that’s like one statistics, excuse me, statistic that we have. Then there was kind of like a review done looking at Medicare numbers and things and from various like surveillance reporting data. And the under reporting it’s thought

might actually, sorry, don’t, wow, sorry. I hope you can edit that part out. There are statistics from surveillance data and under reporting that actually suggest that that number is seven times more. So that would put us up at like three and a half million cases a year. And again, we’re just talking Borrelia, Bergdaphori, we’re just talking Lyme.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (08:27.744)
Yeah, yeah.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (08:46.552)
We’re not talking about the species, the Borrelia that caused tick-borne relapsing fever or cases of Babesia or Bartonella or Lycea, Anaplasma, any of these other co-infections.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (08:58.624)
So for someone who’s listening to this and wondering if Lyme is maybe part of their story, their health story, what symptom patterns would raise a red flag for you that would maybe trigger them to ask their provider for testing or to start exploring this?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (09:13.71)
Sure. So obviously now we’re talking about chronic Lyme disease or chronic vector borne disease. And I think that one of the most distinguishing things is that you start to have symptoms in multiple systems of the body. So it’s not just muscle pain and joint pain and stiffness, but we can start to have heart palpitations. We can start to have racing heart.

We can start to have urinary incontinence. We can start to have shortness of breath. We can start to have GI symptoms, nausea, stomach pain, indigestion. We can start to have a lot of cognitive issues, a lot of brain fog, a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression.

And so it’s kind of like, wow, what do most doctors say? Well, you’re just getting old. This is what happens as we age. The body breaks down. And since it’s happening in all of these systems, it’s just aging. And it’s not. So one of the hallmark symptoms is that immune impairment exists, and it gets worse.

as time goes on. you start feeling like, gosh, every time the grandkids come over, I’m catching like whatever cold or virus or bacteria they had, or I’m just getting one thing after another after another and starting to feel really run down. Or you might go in for a procedure or an operation and your body doesn’t heal the way that your doctors expected you to. Or another huge red flag is when you’re given a medication.

and I’ll use a psych med because that’s one of the most common. So you’re given a medication and you don’t get the expected outcome. So I have elderly patients, I have middle-aged patients, and I have kids who are misdiagnosed with a primary neuropsychiatric illness, and they’re given the appropriate medication, but it doesn’t work. And then they’re switched from that one to the next one, and none of them are working. And the reason is,

Dr Myriah Hinchey (11:27.02)
Lyme causes neuroinflammation, inflammation of the brain. And these medications don’t tackle inflammation. They balance neurotransmitters and things like that. And it’s like, it’s not a neurotransmitter issue most of the time. It’s a brain on fire issue.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (11:46.691)
I just had a patient recently come back from a hyperthermia treatment in Germany and I’m really curious because what your thoughts are on that. I have no idea what she’s going to say here. But he, the way he described his return and he’s a younger patient, he’s in his 40s.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (11:57.166)
Yeah.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (12:04.694)
but he’s had brain fog that he did not realize was related. He was like, oh my gosh, it was like I was going through cobwebs my whole life. And all of sudden that’s gone. He also had that very disorienting, confusing lime presentation where it’s cyclic. So he’d feel fine for a couple months, and then all of a sudden have a flare and crash and be debilitated. And then he’d feel fine for a little while. he’d kind of fall off the lime herbs,

things because he was feeling so great and then he’d come raging back and then when you’d start them it would sort of intensify the flair and so we were trying to figure out okay how do we get out of this cycle and that’s why he decided to go to Germany and do this hyperthermia treatment but the biggest most profound difference in his experience is neurological it’s his ability to think

clearly to make decisions. He’s not in that fog. He called it the neurological bog. It was his terminology for it. So I’m just so curious both about hyperthermia, but just how you kind of think through the cyclic nature of it. I mean, any and all of that. I want your opinion.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (13:12.748)
Yeah, so a lot of it has to do with the cycle of the organism. So with Borrelia, it’s slow growing. And so as it grows and it of births its next generation into the body, you get this increased load of bacteria in the body. And if you’re on treatment,

the treatment is going to kind of be like frying all of those organisms at once. And then you’ll have an increase in the endotoxin, which is basically the organism’s toxin that it releases when it’s dying. And then your body has to detoxify that toxin on top of everything else that the body is already struggling to detox because the Lyme impairs detoxification so much.

But now that toxin increases inflammation, so literally increases the inflammatory cytokines, which makes all of your symptoms feel worse. So this is the dreaded Herxheimer reaction.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (14:14.364)
And a lot of people feel better. I’ve heard this over and over again from my patients. They feel better with some binders. They actually get some clearing. And so I think sometimes people miss that, they’re thinking bug killing, bug killing, bug killing. And then they miss the opportunity to reduce their symptoms through just getting some of the toxicity out. So I mean, I feel like we could go in so many directions here. I’m so excited.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (14:34.52)
Right.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (14:38.424)
now.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (14:39.626)
I mean, this isn’t that fun to talk about except for that we’re talking about solutions and what can be done. And I think it’s hopefully opening up people’s awareness. So like, if you’re feeling this way, there might be a reason that can be addressed, right?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (14:52.408)
Right. And that’s the most important piece is that this isn’t, you know, this isn’t some doom and gloom diagnosis. If you find a root cause, you can work on healing.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (15:05.472)
So I want to go into the co-infections. What are the most common ones that you see? And can you help us kind of differentiate? You listed some of them, Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia. What makes them unique? And how do you treat them differently? Or do they present with different symptoms? How do you think through that and help someone navigate those? Or does it even matter?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (15:24.526)
Sure. Well, so if you’re going to use pharmaceutical intervention, it absolutely matters because it’s different antibiotics and different antiparasitics per the different infections. In the herbal world, there’s a lot of overlap, but I still think it’s always important to know what you’re dealing with because

Your outcome, as far as how long it’s going to take, how severe the symptoms are, what parts of the body these various organs invade, all depends on what the combination of co-infections are. So let me answer your first question. So there was a study of over 3,000 patients with Lyme disease. 50 % of them had at least one co-infection, the biggest co-infection being Babesia.

the second being Bartonella, and then 30 % of this group had at least two or more co-infections. So you’re actually just as likely to have one or more co-infections as you are to just have Borrelia alone. And that surprises people, but I’m not going to get into the why in this episode because I don’t want to waste our time. The hallmark.

symptoms. Let’s start with Bartonella because this is actually the one that I see most, even though the study said that Babesia was the biggest co-infection. Bartonella causes a lot of neuropsychiatric symptoms. So Bartonella often causes more central nervous system, so brain, spinal cord symptoms, than it does physical symptoms.

Some of the hallmark physical symptoms though are pain in the soles of your feet. Your feet are very stiff, very painful when you get up, especially in the morning. Having GI issues. Bartonella causes a lot of GI issues. It can also cause a striae rash or look like stretch marks, but it is not. And then Bartonella can cause a lot of headaches that get misdiagnosed as sinus.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (17:30.574)
especially like in the front of the face, Bartonella causes a sensitivity to the environment. So a lot of light sensitivity, noise sensitivity. Again, think of it as brain on fire. Bartonella, I’ve had people just develop panic attacks as adults, even older adults out of nowhere overnight, severe anxiety, homicidal rage.

Irritability, just emotional lability where like one minute they’re happy, the next minute they feel like they could literally kill someone and then the next they’re crying. Lots of cognitive issues, lots of brain fog. I have people describe this derealization or depersonalization where they feel like they’re going through their life in a dream. Like they’re watching from like just above themselves. I would say those are the main Bartonella symptoms.

Contrasting with babesia, babesia, a lot of times there’s a lot of flushing. There’s night sweats, day sweats, chills, a lot of lung and chest stuff. So realize that babesia loves the red blood cell. So it’s going to affect our ability to carry oxygen and waste. So there’s a lot of lung stuff, a lot of cardiac stuff, symptoms similar to anemia. Sometimes it can cause anemia.

Babesia has a lot of pressure headaches and a lot of dizziness, like this weird dizziness, tipsiness. And again, like I contribute that to kind of like the anemic sort of symptoms that it can cause. So those are my hallmark differentiations, but honestly, Babesia, Bartonella and Borrelia, Borrelia being Lyme, they have so many overlapping symptoms.

that it’s really hard to distinguish, which is why it’s important to test with a specialty lab that does sensitivity, proper sensitivity, specificity, as well as looking at the specific species of each of these organisms. Because of course, there’s more than one species, and you can only get the results for what you’re looking for.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (19:51.569)
So I want to talk about testing. I want to go deep on that for a minute because it’s notoriously imperfect in the Lyme world. But what do a lot of patients, know, lot of patients have tried to navigate the health care system for a while before they end up, sure, in your office. And you mentioned this litany of symptoms that can come up and the overlap and how confusing that can be.

What are the common diagnoses that people will get before they figure out it’s Lyme? So like, is that a way to kind of flag this? Like maybe you should consider Lyme if you have this, this or that diagnosis.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (20:24.014)
Right. So I would say number one is if your doctor tries to tell you that you have atypical anything. So, you have atypical MS. Well, what does that mean? It means you have symptoms of MS, but we’re not seeing on your, you know, MRIs, we’re not seeing the typical, you know, presentation. Your ANA isn’t even positive in your blood work, right? Like these very basic markers and diagnostic.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (20:32.704)
Okay, yeah.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (20:51.95)
criteria, you’re not meeting. You just have symptoms of that disease. So I often see, and I do have patients who do have typical diagnosed MS, but they also have these underlying infections. And when you get these infections and the neuroinflammation and the immune dysregulation under control, you can slow down the progression and the trajectory

of these illnesses. And some people even start to reverse symptoms. So MS, ALS, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple primary neuropsychiatric diagnoses, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, lupus, mixed connective tissue disease.

migraines. I I’ve seen a lot of endometriosis even driven by the presence of these infections, especially Bartonella loves to live in the vasculature in the endothelial cells of the blood vessels and increases VEGF, which is like a blood vessel, basically growth protein. So I mean, they are just notorious.

for causing immune system dysfunction and directing our body to build itself in a way that ends up being diagnosed as another illness or condition.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (22:32.886)
And so figuring this out, the testing, what are the limitations of standard testing? So if you go in and say to your doctor, I listened to those podcasts, I want to be tested for Borrelia, Babesia, and Bartonella. Is that going to be enough?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (22:48.472)
So going to a conventional laboratory, no. So there are multiple species of Borrelia, not just Borrelia burgdifori. And so I don’t use conventional labs very often. And so when we say conventional, we’re talking about like your hospital laboratory or Quest or LabCorp or places like that. And I’m not trying to throw them under the bus.

But typically, when you go to Quest, for example, the test would be looking at Borrelia burgdorferi or recently they do have Borrelia miyamotoi But that’s looking at two out of about 17 or 18 different species of Borrelia that cause Lyme disease. So the analogy that I use with my patients is if I’m holding a box of crayons and I’ve got 20 different colors, and I come up to you and I say, pick a crayon, and you pick a green one.

And then I say, OK, I’m going to test you for your crayon, but I’m going to use a test that can only detect a red one. And because your crayon isn’t red, I am going to look you straight in the face and say, you’re not holding a crayon. And you would tell me I was crazy, right? Because clearly it’s a crayon. It’s just green. It’s not red. But like, this is what we do. These patients get tested for Lyme. And because they don’t have Borrelia burgdifori, they’re told they don’t have Lyme.

And so that is just so improper. So if you really want to rule out Lyme to the best of a test’s ability, you have to go to a specialty lab that can evaluate every species of Borrelia that we’re able to test for. And I think there’s probably ones out there that we’ve not detected yet. And then the same rings true for Babesia and Bartonella.

So you have to look at all of the species that we can test for. And then going back to the conventional labs, their tests are not very sensitive. So they’re missing so many of the diagnoses because, for example, they look at immune response to the different proteins on the organism. And without making this too complicated, Quest looks at a total of 13.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (25:05.73)
Well, if you go and have, I can say names of labs and things, right? So like if we, okay, sure.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (25:10.966)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think it’s actually very practical and helpful. And I wanted like, I want to ask you, we use Igenics and we use T-Labs. And I really appreciate what Bob Miziani has done at T-Labs. I consult with him with some regularity. And I feel like I’ve learned so much from him and Steve Harris and some of the other people kind of in this world, getting good results. But it’s like, nobody’s getting perfect results.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (25:17.622)
Yes, yes.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (25:33.678)
great.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (25:33.8)
And I think the testing and the changes in testing have something to do with that. But, eigenics has been sort of this gold standard. I’m curious, there’s infectal labs as well. Like, what are you using? How do you navigate that? There’s cost. my God, the cost is exorbitant for many people. This is like just beyond what they can afford. So, how do you think through all that?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (25:47.608)
Yes.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (25:52.27)
Right. So I believe so much in informed consent. So I am always telling my patients all of the options, even the options with the conventional labs. sometimes we start there because 50 % of the time, if you’re positive, you will get a positive. So sometimes you can get your answer through conventional labs, but that is never, ever where we stop unless we’re getting a positive. So here’s sort of my hierarchy.

I think that Vibrant America does a good screening process. So if a patient can’t afford to do anything else, for somewhere between $500 and $600, we can look at Borrelia, we can look at Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichia, and Anaplasma through their TIC 1.0. And so a lot of doctors are using that as kind of like a general screen. Now, I have had patients who have gone on to test positive for things like Bartonella through…

Galaxy Labs, and Galaxy for me is my gold standard for Bartonella testing. They look at more species of Bartonella, and I do believe that their testing is more sensitive. But for Lyme and tick-borne relapsing fever, which is like the cousin to Lyme, also caused by Borrelia, Igenexx is the gold standard. And then also for Babesia, I do IgG and IgM immunoblots, as well as FISH testing.

through iGenX as well. So that’s kind of like my hierarchy. Quest seems to be pretty good at mycoplasma, chlamydia pneumoniae, or Lyckia anaplasma. But for the three Bs, definitely these specialty labs are necessary. But we’re looking for an infection that suppresses immune function and immune response, and in some people, the ability to make antibodies.

All of these tests are looking at antibody response. So number one important thing is you can’t just look for positive or negative on your test. You have to know how to interpret the test because if you have borderline response withigenics, for example, your test is still going to say negative, but to an astute clinician that realizes what you’re looking for, you would see that as proof.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (28:11.17)
that the immune system has been exposed to these organisms and is trying to fight it. So that’s number one. Number two, some people just don’t, they’re called seronegative and they don’t make the antibodies. And so all of these are a clinical diagnosis. And I think, you know, if our listeners don’t take anything else away today, Lyme is not a positive or negative on a test. It is a clinical diagnosis.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (28:38.09)
And part of this, I understand, correct me, you are the expert in this space, but what I understand is that Lyme, kind of like the way that we think about HIV or AIDS, right, it suppresses immune function by design. Like that is part of its role and part of how it works is that it’s suppressing your immune function. And so if you take a test that relies on your immune system mounting a response, then particularly if it’s chronic, that test is going to be negative.

because the Lyme is doing the work of suppressing your immune system. And is that right? Do I have that right? Is that only for Babesia? Or excuse me, only for Borrelia? Or is that for all of these? How does that work?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (29:17.292)
No, it’s pretty much for all of them. And the more of them that are in your body at once, the more they are synergistically manipulating the immune system. And for some people, that can result in autoimmunity too. So it’s not just immune suppression like with HIV, but we can have that opposite response where, because the immune system, I call it losing immune competence.

Right? So the immune system is no longer competent. It’s no longer able to find the infection and target it. So it just starts throwing these inflammatory bombs and it confuses the, what’s called the cell mediated branch of the immune system. And then the immune system starts attacking self. And this is where we can see a lot of like the neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases start coming into play that oftentimes people get misdiagnosed with.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (29:44.84)
Okay, yeah.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (30:15.072)
Okay. So asking for an unidentified family member, but my family has some goes to Minnesota up in the North woods for much of the summer. And a particular family member was bitten by ticks like 13 times this past summer, tested this person and came back positive Babesia, Borrelia and Bartonella. Babesia, Borrelia, Bartonella. Yep. All three bees has no symptoms. Highly competent, you know,

Dr Myriah Hinchey (30:32.142)
Wow.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (30:44.712)
was out there building a sauna, and that’s why this kept happening, was raking leaves, was doing all the things because they’re just in it living life. So what are the biggest questions that comes up for patients, but also for me? I’m sitting here going, wait, how does this one person debilitated, this other person is absolutely riddled with these organisms and has no real symptoms?

And some people just become debilitated chronically after maybe one exposure. What’s the difference between these presentations? Why?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (31:22.52)
So I’m going to use an analogy. I’m going to say that everything is straws on the camel’s back. OK, so the camel’s back is the immune system. And the camel’s back is going to depend on genetics, the microbiome, nutrition, micronutrient status, stress, environmental toxins, mold, all of the things. Well, so the immune system is

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (31:42.038)
toxic burden.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (31:51.534)
I started going on to the straws, right? So the straws are like the viruses, the bacteria, the parasites, the toxins, the mold, right? All of these things. so depending on, you know, the genetics and the microbiome and the immune status and the stress and all of these things, like that’s going to dictate how strong the camel’s back is. And so the strength of the camel’s back, person A might be able to tolerate 50 straws.

Right? 50 insults. But camel B, they can only tolerate five. And so, you know, these infections prey on our weaknesses and they don’t want to kill us. They’re like parasitic in nature. Even lime, even though it’s not a parasite, they’re parasitic. They need us to live. They just want to break us down and rob our nutrients and live inside of us. So they can’t kill us because then they would die.

So what happens is they prey on our weaknesses. So like if you, for example, have an old ski injury in your knee, that is going to be your most affected joint because you already have smoldering levels of inflammation there. And these are inflammatory infections. manipulate inflammation, use inflammation to break down our connective tissue, our collagen, our cartilage.

so that it can feed themselves because they can’t make their own nutrients. They need hours. And so…

A lot of people, I think, are living with some of these infections, and it isn’t until they go through an extremely stressful time or they have some hit to the immune system where all of these things come out. So I want to get back to your friend, but what I will say is that you would not believe the amount of people who are finding out that they have Lyme and other co-infections

Dr Myriah Hinchey (33:52.84)
after having COVID or getting the COVID vaccine because the spike protein, whether it’s wild or your cells are making it, are causing massive inflammation and immune dysregulation and incompetence in the body. So just like we all know and accept that the spike protein

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (33:54.998)
Yeah.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (34:16.244)
reactivates dormant Epstein-Barr and cytomegalovirus and all the herpes viruses, et cetera, well guess what? It also creates the perfect environment for all of these dormant vector-borne diseases to come out. And so my response about your friend, if he’s out on a mountain building a sauna, I would imagine he probably pays pretty good attention to the food that he’s putting in his body.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (34:30.71)
Got ya.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (34:44.098)
the air, the water, he probably is managing his stress, he probably doesn’t have dysautonomia. Like he’s probably doing all of these things to protect his body and to live a healthy anti-inflammatory lifestyle. And that’s probably why he isn’t symptomatic because his immune system is doing a good job of keeping these things in check.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (35:10.39)
Yeah, she will be delighted that you described her that way. So let’s get into treatment. You’ve developed a pretty unique approach, learning from so many luminaries in the field, and with your, I think, naturopathic kind of perspective, can you walk us through the key pillars of how you support patients who come into your office to see you?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (35:12.355)
Sorry!

Dr Myriah Hinchey (35:32.64)
Yeah. So I would say, number one, the focus is not on killing these organisms. And that surprises everybody when they hear me say that. I do kill the organisms, but that’s the last step. So step number one, figure out all of the terrain changes in your body that these organisms have now caused.

Right, so we have to look at all of the systems of the body, all of the organs, the hormones, the gut, detox pathways, et cetera. And we have to figure out what’s going on so that we know how to help them heal. Then we have to get to things that are going to decrease inflammation because like I said, this is an inflammatory infection and all of the symptoms that it’s causing are a result of that inflammation. So first looking at lifestyle.

You know, looking at all of the things that are going to increase inflammation in the body, you know, like stress, like dysautonomia, like pro-inflammatory foods, sugar, dairy, gluten, et cetera, but then also looking internally at that inflammatory cytokine cascade and using various herbs to modulate it. Also decreasing something called Galactin 3, which is an upstream driver of inflammation.

as well as inhibiting the inflammatory enzymes that literally break down the collagen and allow these organisms to feed. So once we kind of have that under wraps, then we have to move on to healing the gut. And it’s not moving on. It’s actually doing all of this simultaneously. Lyme breaks down the gut barrier, so does Bartonella, so do all of these pro-inflammatory cytokines. And if we have a leaky gut,

We’re going to be making food sensitivities and allowing toxins back into the bottom, causing more oxidative stress, damage to the mitochondria. So it’s like this crazy vicious cycle. And we can’t expect to be able to get our patients healing or even detoxing if we’re not fixing their gut. And then they have to be detoxing. If they’re not detoxing, the levels of LPS or endotoxins are building.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (37:48.11)
causing more inflammation, right? Again, another vicious cycle. And then we have to work on, again, the autonomic nervous system and dysautonomia. A lot of these patients are stuck in fight or flight, and they simply can’t heal because their nervous system won’t let them. The nervous system won’t let the immune system respond properly, okay?

Then we also have to balance the immune system. If we’re low in natural killer cells, we need to get them up. If we’re low in lymphocytes, we need to get them up. If we’re low in white blood cells in general, we need to get them up. We need to balance TH1, TH2, TH17, and that sounds complicated, but basically it’s just different branches of the immune system that do different things. When infections are chronic, they get stuck like a foot on the gas pedal.

And we need that balance between the two. And then finally, we get to breaking down the biofilms. So the biofilms are like these fort-like structures that the organisms hide behind to wall themselves off from the immune system, but also from the medications. So like, spoiler alert, you can’t kill anything if it’s hiding behind a biofilm. It doesn’t matter what perfect protocol you’re using.

You’ve got to break down the biofilm so that the medicines and the immune system can reach the infection to eradicate it. And then last step, kill the bugs. And so you can use pharmaceutical antibiotics to do so. I prefer using herbs that have been studied and shown to get after all morphological forms of these infections, including the persister cells and herbs that also break down the biofilm simultaneously.

So there’s a lot to it, and it sounds really complicated. But if you’re working with somebody who is coming from, I call it the 10 base approach, we’ve to cover all our bases here, then you can resolve not only this infection, but all of the other illnesses or dysfunctions that it’s now made come out in your body.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (40:03.54)
Yeah, that’s so fascinating. I think it’s so important that people understand it’s not just about the one thing and killing the bugs, but really about creating an environment like the terrain where those bugs are not going to thrive, where your immune system can start to meet the entire milieu, right? your immune system can work with whatever bug killers that you’re getting at those biofilms. This is, I think, just a crucial part of how we approach this, just like we approach dementia.

It’s not about one thing, it’s about all the things that make up whether or not our cells are healthy and happy and thriving. I’m curious where the research is.

on Lyme and increased risk for neurodegenerative conditions. So Lyme and Borrelia Babesia. I know that Borrelia has been found in the autopsies in the amyloid plaques of people who have lived with dementia. On autopsy, they see the Lyme spirochetes. So there is a neuro Lyme presentation and the amyloid plaques are there to be protective, right? They are there to be antimicrobial and protect the brain from the spirochetes. But I’m curious what the latest

research is. I think we’ve known that for a while. What is the latest research around Lyme and neurodegenerative disease?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (41:22.05)
You know, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I know that Dr. Horowitz just did a case study on using Dapsone to treat one of his patients who had Alzheimer’s and had high levels of beta amyloid plaque and P-tau. And basically, the outcome was that after appropriate treatment, the levels actually normalized. And so.

you see this, OK, as you said, it is the brain and the body’s response to the infections trying to protect the brain from them. And then you have the development of these things. So if you’re getting to that root cause, which in this case was Borrelia, and you are eliminating the Borrelia infection,

then these numbers improved because the body didn’t need to make them to defend themselves anymore. At least that’s the simplistic way that I look at it. One of the really cool things is that a lot of the herbs that act as antimicrobials that I use in my main arsenal to treat Borrelia, for instance, also help to break down beta amyloid plaque as well as P-tau.

and can inhibit some of the pro-inflammatory cytokines like nuclear factor kappa beta, IL-6, IL-1 beta, and the inflammasomes that actually are driving a lot of these pathways. So curcumin, Japanese knotweed, Chinese skull cap indirectly.

are amazing not only at helping to resolve the infection. Now, anyone listening, it’s not just those three things. So don’t take that and run. I’m using that as an example. But they’re also able to help to break down these accumulation of plaques and proteins in the brain.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (43:24.278)
Fascinating, fascinating. Yeah, I think my understanding in the the lime space is like cryptolepsis, which is used for Borrelia actually has even sometimes some better results for people than prescription antibiotics. I think sometimes I think of herbs as like the gentle way that will heal slowly and then the big guns are bringing in these antibiotics. But even with Bartonella, it’s like garlic and oregano can work.

better than some of the antimicrobial pharmaceuticals. So just kind of keeping that open mind and exploring this and seeing what works.

I think this can feel complex and overwhelming, but there’s so much hope. think just like in the dementia space, it’s an exciting time out there. There’s new research. There’s a lot of really dedicated providers who are working really hard to understand this, create better testing and better treatment so that people can get on with healing and living their lives. I’m curious, I ask everyone on our show, what brings you the most joy at this stage of life?

Dr Myriah Hinchey (44:27.15)
brings me the most joy? Well, two things. Number one, my nine-year-old little boy. He is the biggest joy in my life. he’s, it’s just such an awesome age. Like he’s just, you like you go from being a little kid to like, you know, a real human. That sounded silly. I think everyone listening knows what I meant. You know, the other is being able to share all of this.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (44:47.87)
And we know what you mean.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (44:54.542)
Lyme and vector borne diseases have impacted many of my family members. They impacted me personally. They impact many of my patients. And I think that they are really grossly underdiagnosed. I think that they’re way more prevalent than we know. And it really does bring me joy to be able to

share what I know with people and hopefully give them hope, you know, that they can get better and they will get better if they find someone that is knowledgeable about all of this stuff and can guide them and that, you know, they really do have the power to control their own health.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (45:41.76)
Now, I know you need to go pick up your son soon, but if you have just another minute more to share a little bit about your personal experience, I know that our listeners would love to hear that.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (45:43.895)
I do.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (45:51.606)
my gosh. so well, was bit by a tick. I was bit by multiple ticks when I was younger. mean, ticks were everywhere. We used to pull them off the animals and squish them in between rocks. Like, you we were never taught that they were dangerous. And when I was somewhere between 10 and 12, I had a tick on me and it was when, you know, my mom was aware of Lyme disease, my cousin was suffering from it. And so…

I was brought to the hospital and I was given a blood test within two days of finding the tech and they started me on, I think it was amoxicillin immediately. And then, you we got the phone call three days later and it was like, she’s negative, stop the antibiotics. So knowing what I know now, there was no time for my immune system to mount that antibody response, which of course is why my test was negative, okay?

But I went on to develop severe anxiety, some separation anxiety from my mom. I started sleeping outside of her door in a sleeping bag. I was afraid someone was going to break into the house and kill us. I couldn’t sleep. And I started wetting the bed, which is just, so embarrassing at that age. And so looking back, it’s like, wow, you had pans. But pans wasn’t a thing back then, right? So then I went on for the rest of

my life, so to speak. And I got through school just fine. It’s funny, I all of a sudden was having issues reading though, which nobody picked up on. So I got special help and kind of like went to the special resources room after being like in top classes and ahead of everything, by the way. And so, but I went on to be fine. I went to my undergrad at UConn and I went to medical school and everything was fine.

But then in my mid-30s, I went through a really, really stressful time, like very stressful. And I also was bit by another tick that I suspect had babesia. And that’s kind of when all heck broke loose. So I would be mid-sentence and I would forget what I was saying. I couldn’t remember words. I was word combining, misspeaking, walking into a room, not remembering why I was there.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (48:07.788)
I was waking up at like 3 AM with drenching, mean drenching night sweats, pain in my head, waking up with a headache and you know, we’re taught in medical school, you know, brain tumor. So I went and got an MRI. Like I was really, really messed up. I started getting paranoid, not good. And so lo and behold, thank God I was already Lyme literate. I ended up testing positive for Babesia.

Bartonella, Borrelia, Mycoplasma, and Chlamydia pneumoniae. So I had all of those things all at once. Again, I suspect the Lyme for most of my life and probably Bartonella too because I was a very thin person and I had stretch marks all over my hips, all over my back. And everyone was just like, it’s just because you grew so fast. You’re so tall. So.

I’ll get through this as quick as possible for the sake of time. I ended up doing 18 months of combination antibiotic therapy, which is what is necessary if you’re gonna do pharmaceutical antibiotics for Borrelia. You have to treat the modal form, the intracellular form and the cyst form, and that requires three different types of antibiotics at once. And then I also had to take a Tovacone for my Babesia.

And so I got to the point where I was symptom free, but every time I tried to stop taking the antibiotics, I would relapse. Like I would feel like there was a crowbar through my head. I would start having all this brain fog. And it made no sense to me. And it definitely perplexed my Lyme doctors that I had too. And then one morning at 3 AM, no joke, when I woke up thinking I was going to die, like in a night sweat, I found Master Herbalist, Steven Buhner. I had never heard of him. I didn’t know who he was.

and he was having, he was from New Mexico and he was having a Lyme disease seminar an hour from my house in Massachusetts like two weeks later. So talk about like Kismet, right? In the universe intervening. So I went to that conference, I met him, started corresponding with him, got all of his books, read all of his books, probably like 20 times by this point.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (50:26.742)
and started taking all of his herbs and then started using the herbs on my patients that I was treating because the part that I left out is like, I’m already Lyme literate for 10 years at this point. I’m already like, you know, actively diagnosing and treating and all of this. And thank God, because I say this not really lightly, I probably would have ended up like in an institution how bad I was. So.

I start taking all of the herbs, and within about six months, I’m finally able to stop the antibiotics without relapsing. And so I stayed on the herbs for another several months, probably about a year in total, and I was able to stop without relapsing. And so we waited about a year to make sure that I didn’t relapse and ended up conceiving a perfectly healthy, beautiful little boy, my Everett.

But I mean, it’s like such a story, and was a big part of my life. And for a large part of it, I wasn’t even aware. And it’s like if I had actually just got that proper diagnosis and treatment when I was a tween, I wouldn’t have ended up with all of these other things. But my story compared to a lot of people’s story,

Like I came out good, you know what I mean? Like I’m one of the lucky ones. Like I was not debilitated. I did not have a severe case compared to a lot of the people that I see.

Dr. Heather Sandison, ND (52:03.04)
Thank you for sharing that story. I appreciate your vulnerability and just your willingness and openness to share everything you’ve been through.

This has been a really important and illuminating conversation. And what I really appreciate about your work, Dr. Hinchy, is that you’re bringing nuance and depth to a condition that I think is too often oversimplified or just even overlooked and dismissed entirely. And so helping us understand not just Lyme disease, but the bigger picture of how infections and the immune system, and especially this terrain, that environment that the infections can thrive in or die in, how that all interacts

So if anything in this conversation has resonated for you, our listeners, or if you’ve been searching for answers that haven’t quite come together yet, I hope that this thread is something that you maybe find worth exploring. Dr. Henche, thank you for the work that you’re doing, for the patients that you serve, and for sharing your perspective with us today. I’m so delighted and just privileged to have you here.

Dr Myriah Hinchey (53:02.574)
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.