(00:00) If you go to a polluted water source and you find parasites in there, are you getting sick because of the parasite or are you getting sick because you’re drinking toxic polluted water? What the deal is with parasites? Is it something we have to cleanse oursel from? We’re told that these things come from the outside and then live inside us.
(00:19) They’re there to cause disease and health issues for us. There is now publications saying these parasites that we thought were once pathogenic are actually commensal. They’re not actually there to cause illness. There are hundreds of forever chemicals being sprayed into our environment every day. It’s in our food. It’s in the clothes that we wear.
(00:43) It’s in everything. No one’s ever talking about that. It’s like it’s got to be the parasite or the mold. That is where I would look first. I would Hi and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan and today I have on my ally and friend Dr. Daniel Roytas who is one of the most rigorous investigators that I have in my corner.
(01:13) He published the book Can You Catch a Cold? And you can find the previous episode where we explore the myth of contagion and infection together. Today however we are taking on the sacred cow of a lot of the alternative medicine world which is parasite infection. So, we’re going to look at whether or not parasites actually exist, whether they actually cause illness, and what their role is, if they do in fact exist, so that you can begin to liberate yourself from the field of victim consciousness that is held in place by this extremely powerful thought form. Hi, and welcome back Dr. Daniel Reis to the show.
(02:01) Thanks, Kelly from uh or Dr. Broen. I don’t know which you prefer. Thank you very much for having me back. I’m looking forward to it. Kelly at this fine works. I am very very excited about this episode and as soon as I saw you present on the subject in a kind of closed door journal clubby kind of group that we meet in, I thought this has to be disseminated.
(02:32) And so my interest in peppering you with questions on the subject of parasites today is to create a a sharable collection of very provocative perspectives on this subject that I find has generated a thought form that is more contagious across more cultural domains than even viral theory. And what I mean by that is that I look at, you know, people who believe in contagion and they believe that viruses and germs cause illness.
(03:09) And of course, that’s a huge proportion of the human population still at this point. And then there are those of us who believe there are other factors, right, that drive so-called illness or that what we are calling illness actually isn’t the problem we imagined it was. But the parasite belief field actually bridges across these two collectives, right? And I have observed and and talked about because I’m interested in the consciousness uh that underpins some of these thought forms.
(03:45) I’ve observed that even and perhaps especially in the health and wellness world there seems to be like in medicine we will call it a diiathesis there seems to be this kind of uh collection of features that move together and I’ve noticed and I’m sure this list will grow as I continue to observe that and by the way this is like without any sense of superiority or I know better or whatever it’s just that these thought forms seem to to coalesce, right? So, there are the folks that are staunchly rapidly like antivaccine, right? However, they still believe in germ theory. I was this person at the beginning of my advocacy realm where I
(04:28) was talking about things like SV40 and talking about all of the dangerous, you know, viruses that vaccines are setting you up for, etc. So, they’re antivax. They believe though still in germ theory. They happen to believe in the globe and solar system and they also believe in the elect a hero you know kind of perspective on politics.
(04:53) They are to a person believers in Lyme disease and parasitology. So I have been very curious about what do all these things have in common and the closest I can get which I don’t think is nuanced enough is that victim consciousness underpins all of these beliefs right that there is a bad other externalized or a good hero externalized right in the case of the political arm of things and so it’s the the sinner outside the savior outside kind of consciousness where you’re fragmented and you’re not actually coherent in your inner polarities. I don’t know. But if I have
(05:29) to hear about a parasite cleanse from one other person who also has stood up about health freedom and all of the ways that the pharmaceutical industry is, you know, unsavory and unappealing, I am going to start, you know, collecting a tariff.
(05:50) So my interest in asking you about this today is just to sort of open up the conversation which you take further in your paid subscriber membership but just to open up the conversation on what the deal is with parasites. Is this a real thing? Is it something we have to cleanse oursel from? Is it something that we have to worry about? And we probably won’t touch on it today, but you and I have talked about how even in the veterinary world, this is a very penetrant, right? uh thought form as well.
(06:20) So maybe we can start off with what is a parasite? Great question. I mean this is something that I myself was taught in my undergraduate degrees and post-graduate degrees and then practiced from this perspective of parasites are bad, must destroy at all costs for over 10 years in clinical practice.
(06:42) So, we’re told that we’ve got these little creatures that come from the outside. So, like a protozoa, so-called single-celled organism, or a helmet like a worm that we get exposed to the eggs of something in the environment, either through our food or through some feces or maybe we get some dirt under our fingernails and have this like fecal oral root.
(07:10) We get exposed to these eggs and they hatch inside us and now we’re harboring these so-called parasites. So yeah, we’re told that these things come from the outside and then live inside us and they’re there for only really one reason and that’s to make our life hard and difficult and to cause disease and health issues for us. So yeah, there’s these two forms of so-called parasites.
(07:38) These protozoa and these helminths and like the protozoa are blamed on everything from like trypanosomiasis to malaria, right? These these little things floating around in the environment that will come and get us. Things like giardia, right? A very common type of so-called parasitic disease. And then yeah, you have the helminths which are the like roundworm for example.
(08:03) And then obviously in animals you have things like heartworm and tapeworm and all these kinds of different foreign living organisms residing inside us. And since basically this idea has come about that we’ve got these par these so-called parasites living inside us. We’ve been told that they’re bad and that we shouldn’t have a healthy human shouldn’t have parasites residing inside them.
(08:27) They should essentially be parasite free. That’s the way that we used to think about bacteria once upon a time. So the reason why we thought that people were sick is because we saw bacteria and we just went along with that idea until we realized, hang on a second, healthy people have got all kinds of bacteria in them. So then it came this idea of oh well then there’s good bacteria and there’s bad bacteria and yada yada yada.
(08:51) So we’re like only now just getting to the point I mean if we even subscribe to this idea of so-called parasitic protozoa which I’m kind of skeptical about because there’s so many different artifacts and things which could be confused with protozoa but like even if we just assume that there are these protozoa and obviously helminths cuz we can see these worms macroscopically with our naked eye regardless of the fact of their existence there There’s now publications coming out in the mainstream saying, “Oh, hang on a second. These parasites that we thought
(09:28) were once pathogenic are actually commensal.” So, they’re there for a reason. They’re not actually there to cause illness and to cause disease. So, they they do claim that there are some that cause disease, but they’re saying, “Well, actually, hang on, most of these aren’t actually a problem.
(09:46) ” So I mean I found a paper that was published at the end of 2022 in the journal of biology that talks about this. So it’s not like a unknown low impact factor journal by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a pretty um high impact journal. So these ideas are now being thrown around. So we’re kind of where we were we are now with parasites where we were with bacteria like 60 70 80 years ago where we realize that actually there is a microbiome and these things do serve a purpose. So that’s what we’re when we’re talking about parasites, that’s what we’re referring to. Either these sort of unicellular organisms or the
(10:24) multisellular organisms such as these worms and uh yeah, I think there’s even like ectoparasites that people talk about like ticks and fleas and all these other kinds of things. But maybe today we’ll just focus on the internal ones. I’m not sure where the conversation’s going to go.
(10:40) I just love doctor speak because I have like these two these two sort of tracks of awareness in my mind where I can imagine that there are probably a lot of things that you said that some people won’t know how to make sense of and I am always like appreciating even when I write little notes to myself how much of my medical indoctrination has permeated my communication.
(11:05) So I want to you know sort of summarize for the non-clinical non-scientific non-medical person listening because the meme of parasites has entered and penetrated no pun intended all of lay consciousness right okay so here is what I heard you say that there are these unicellular meaning one cell organisms that supposedly you can get tested for aka something like malaria Okay.
(11:30) And then there are worms that you can see with the naked eye. And there is also this idea of the asymptomatic carrier, which means that you can be somebody who has this stuff in you, but you’re totally fine. And maybe even it’s good for you, right? Maybe. We’re not sure, right? like the way that the conventional world talks about it.
(11:50) But for sure that concept is really essential as we know in the contagion infection psychology because without that concept you must acknowledge that there isn’t evidence for a causal vector. Meaning there isn’t evidence that this thing makes somebody sick when you’re exposed to it. Right? Because if you have somebody who’s got it and they’re fine, you need to explain that.
(12:15) So what I heard you say is like oh it’s the same thing that now even in the medical literature there is this idea that you can have common human parasites of the unicellular you know variety and it’s actually totally fine but maybe sometimes you have it and you get really sick. Okay.
(12:35) So what I also heard you say is that you’re not convinced that these protozoa or these one cell organisms actually even exist, right? So, so then what happens when somebody goes and they get tested for, you know, something like malaria or giardia or whatever, uh, and they, you know, cuz they have diarrhea or they’re traveling or they have a fever or whatever non-specific syndrome, you know, manifestation, what is actually going on there when they are being diagnosed with this kind of parasitic infection? if this thing doesn’t actually exist and has never been proven to exist and certainly hasn’t ever been
(13:14) proven to cause illness. Like I think that’s the point of cognitive dissonance for a lot of folks. Even when I, you know, sort of chat about it, it’s like, well, but that makes no sense. Of course it exists. You can get tested for it. Undoubtedly single-celled organisms floating around.
(13:34) Like you can take a drop of water from a pond and look at it under a microscope and you’ll see things floating around. So I don’t deny that. What I’m not convinced of is that those things are what we claim them to be. So that they are this thing that comes in and infects us and then causes a specific illness. What are those things? I don’t know.
(13:54) I’m not convinced that a lot of the biology or microbiology world and the pathology world is even really certain about what some of these things are because when you look through the literature, it’s very common. Let’s just say it’s not uncommon for them to look at something and go there, that thing, that’s a parasite.
(14:20) And then with further investigation, they go, “Oh, actually, no, that was a yeast cell or that was a like a fungal cell. That was a spore from something. That was a pollen spore. That was a piece of dirt on the slide. That was artifact from a like some reagent that we used in the medium. there’s all these different artifacts that they’re observing and you’re like, well, we can’t really tell the difference between a lot of these soal parasites and these artifacts.
(14:43) So, that fact makes me curious about what is it that they’re actually seeing? And how do you know what those things are? Have those microorganisms been isolated and then exposed to a healthy host and shown to cause disease? Maybe, possibly. I’m not convinced that that’s been sufficiently shown, but again, like I’ve got a super open mind to any of this.
(15:08) Someone could come up to me tomorrow and say, “Hey Dan, here’s a paper where XYZ bacterial or virus caused disease. I’m on board. Cool. No problems. But you got to show me first.” So it’s the same with the parasite thing.
(15:27) I’ve been looking for evidence to demonstrate this and it’s like not as easy as one would expect. So I think for for something that we just accept to be true that all these things are out there causing illness and it’s being demonstrated conclusively as I said I’m not so sure. So like one thing that complicates this is that is the topic of pleomorphism. When you discount that as a thing and you say no no no there are just specific species.
(15:54) there’s like one specific type of this entamoeba and there’s one type of this giardia and there’s one type of this bacteria and whatever and they’re set in stone in their form and function then yeah maybe that way of thinking makes sense but when you look on the other p from the other perspective and there’s all these researchers and scientists and whoever saying well hang on a second these microorganisms can change their form and function and you find papers where they took a pure culture of bacteria and exposed it to a certain condition and then they started
(16:30) observing so-called parasites in those cultures. Where did they come from? The argument is well they the sample got contaminated. But the authors were saying no no no we actually think we’re observing the original organism that we had in that culture morph into all kinds of different things. So if that’s the case, then who knows what it is that we’re looking at inside a fecal sample.
(16:56) Like those things could change from hours to days to weeks. So you may find something in there at the start, look again in a in a week or a day and it may not be there anymore. So, like I’m at the point now where I have no idea about what anyone’s seeing under a microscope in a sample of bacteria or parasites or whatever.
(17:23) If that theory of pleomorphism is true, it changes everything and we basically have to re re-evaluate what we think we know about microbiology. So, what is it that’s being tested? What is it that’s being observed under a microscope? I don’t think anybody really knows. So, I want you to imagine what it would be like to never ever be afraid of a symptom again.
(17:47) To be comfortable in your body, have easeful digestion, stable energy, to never need a doctor or prescriptions again, and to learn the language of your body so that you can read your yes and your no and trust your intuition. The truth is that you already have the power to heal anxiety, resolve depression, and to put an end to all of the enduring effects of stress. I’m Dr.
(18:13) Kelly Broen, an Ivy League trained clinical psychiatrist who once believed so much in the conventional model of medicine that I specialized in prescribing to pregnant and breastfeeding women until I was diagnosed with my first potentially chronic illness and I decided to find a way out.
(18:38) And what I learned was how to walk through a life crisis and into your power. Since then, I have published many history-making cases of others doing the same through my 44-day health reclamation program, Vital Mind Reset. And I’ve learned that despite what I was taught in medical school, your lifestyle choices do matter. And you can make chronic illness a thing of the past.
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(19:30) Inspired by my vital mind reset program. Comment below to check it out. The concept of pleomorphism also I think calls into question this idea of studying outside of the body, right? The processes that are internal to the ecosystem of the body, right? Because without that context and with with all of these artifacts, with all of these artificial external variables, you’re never going to see what actually goes on in the body outside of the body.
(20:06) It’s not possible for the reason you’re suggesting which is that you know the responsiveness of these organisms that were assumed to be static. And I think this idea I I don’t know many people walking the street who’ve heard of pleomorphism. I haven’t seen this idea really like penetrate into the memeified psychology of the average person the way that you know germ theory concepts are very easy to grasp onto.
(20:37) But this idea it’s almost magical right that this idea that you know what what we are calling microorganisms could change form in response to the needs of the body right that that relationship is not only you know symbiotic but it’s also very complex and nuanced and impossible to freeze on a slide I think is asking a certain kind of expansion of these reductionist like really tempting reductionist ideas that I’m not I’m just not sure how ready people are for that and it is the it’s the nail in the coffin of that kind of materialist science as far as I can I can tell right I think I think you would
(21:19) agree that pleomorphism is it’s what it’s the bridge to this new way of thinking and I wonder if there’s like anything else you want to say about it just so that people can really start to marinate in this this new idea Yeah, I don’t know if clomorphism is actually a thing because the counterargument is there are germs floating in the air and they’ve contaminated the sample. So that’s hey, maybe that’s possible.
(21:43) Maybe that’s what’s going on. I I don’t know. But like some major institutions around the world have looked at this like the US Department of Agriculture looked at this in the 1920 and they said, “No, there’s definitely pleomorphism going on.” So I don’t know. Like even if there’s not even if there’s no pleomorphism and there are these little microorganisms in the environment that can like infect a person when you look at the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers with these illnesses it makes you scratch your head so I think it’s
(22:19) entamoeba histolytica is said to be like one of the most common and pathogenic organisms known to man. If you go and look up the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers, it’s 90 plus%. So what that means is that more than n out of 10 people, if you go and test them for this thing, whatever it is, like a lot of people will say, like here’s the other really interesting thing, Kelly, is that people say, “Yeah, the reason why you can have the asymptomatic infection is because those people have got really strong immune systems.” The issue with
(22:55) that is the population groups who have these so-called infections are in the third world or or sorry the developing world. So giardia intera all these kinds of so-called human parasitic infections are most commonly seen in developing countries most commonly seen in the world’s poorest most malnourished like they’re homeless. They don’t have access to health care. don’t have access to clean drinking water.
(23:24) They don’t have access to good food. They’ve got access to very little. Those people should technically have the weakest immune systems. So, how is it that the world’s poorest, hungriest people are somehow able to have a strong enough immune system to protect them against these parasites that are in their gut? Like there’s so many things you have to come to terms with in grips with and then explain away so that this idea that parasites cause disease makes sense.
(23:55) I’m not exactly sure how all those pieces of the puzzle fit together, but if you approach it from this line of thinking of maybe they are just a part of us and they’re not out to get us and that it’s the environment that actually determines their presence and maybe they’re actually there for us and not against us. Maybe that makes a little bit more sense.
(24:26) It’s very difficult, I think, for someone to just say parasites are the cause of all of our problems because there’s all of these inconsistencies with this idea. So, it’s kind of like the whole bacteria thing. XYZ bacteria causes disease, but most of the people who are asymptomatically infected are those people in the developing world.
(24:49) How do they have immune system strong enough to protect them? It it just doesn’t make sense to me. So like the counterargument to that is well the reason why they don’t get sick is because the symptoms only occur when the immune system is strong enough to mount an mount a response, right? So you’ve got a like a really super strong immune system cuz it just kills off the stuff.
(25:06) And then if you have a really weak immune system, you don’t get any symptoms cuz it’s not mounting immune response. So you got to fall somewhere in this sweet spot right in the middle of having like this under functioning properly functioning immune system. That’s like reminds me of the aid story.
(25:26) It’s just I don’t know maybe I’m missing something here but yeah it’s a lot of post talk massaging of the of the variables. Yeah. And and to you know to to revert to the point that you made earlier, you’re not even convinced that what we you know like if you go and and search up you know the images of these single cell parasites these protozoa you’re not even convinced and neither am I that those have even been properly isolated and identified consistently as valid entities.
(26:01) So, right, when we’re talking about whether they are vectors of illness, whether they’re just co-inhabitants, we we first have to decide, you know, whether scientifically these entities are real, right? Or or are they artifacts? Are they misinterpretations of other visible entities on a microscope slide? So we are left with the question of whether or not these one cell organisms that are so commonly blamed especially for you know traveling related illnesses and developing world illnesses even exist. We’re left with the question of whether there’s any
(26:40) evidence that even the ones we can see the helminths could possibly cause diseases. Right? And then the speculation around well okay at least the ones that we can see what role do they play like what’s actually going on if they if these unicellular ones exist and the worms like what actually are they doing and and I mentioned in this group discussion that we had that I had a window in my clinical uh career when I was very interested in the sort of I don’t know actually in the literature was called paleo deficit disorder you know, as people started to talk about it as the sanitation movement was actually
(27:26) what was responsible for a lot of the burgeoning chronic illness that we were seeing. And so there was this concept that if you could expose yourself to more, you know, dirt, expose yourself to more variety of environmental stimulus, including these microorganisms that are out and about in the world, that you would actually be healthier.
(27:46) So during that time I actually worked with helment therapy as it’s called in an effort to restore microbiome diversity and I had decent outcomes like I’m a huge believer in the belief field. Okay so like the placebo effect etc. So who knows you know what role that played I didn’t do a controlled study but I wonder you know I wonder what you would make of that uh and what you make of at this point.
(28:16) So, so the potential beneficial use of helmet eggs, let’s say, which sounds super gross, but actually you just get a little vial and there’s like you can’t even see anything. It’s not gross at all. It looks like water in case people had images of me like shoving worms down my patients throats. So, you know what you make of the beneficial use of these these parasites? And then also, you know, I know your answer, but what you think of the collective obsession with parasite cleanses and this notion that you have to like rid yourself. Like, is there ever a situation where that’s actually advisable and you would work with, you know, these complex herbs who
(28:49) whose mechanisms have been reduced down to anti- microbial or anti-, you know, parasitic and you would work with that to restore health. So, I wonder what you think of like both sides of the spectrum, like fight the parasites versus like work with them or just leave the whole thing alone as is.
(29:07) They’re all really good questions. I think it’s also just important to point out that I’m certainly not the only person who’s asked this question in history like a lot of this discussion is already has already been had in the literature. So for example, blastocystus harmony which is a really common so-called parasite and in the alternative medicine world everyone blames their ill health on blastocystus that was discovered in I think the early 1900s or late 1800s by a Russian guy and for 70 years like up until the 1970s or or early 1980s that
(29:46) was thought of anytime someone saw blaster sisters they said no no no that’s just an artifact it’s not a parasite and it’s only in the 80s and ‘9s that was like, “Oh, actually, no, maybe this isn’t a parasite. Maybe it’s the cause of all of our ill health.
(30:06) ” So, I mean, there’s seven decades of there of people looking at something and going, “This isn’t actually a real entity.” And like, there’s many other parasites that have been thought of as as artifacts for a long time, too. So, yeah. Like what are worms and possibly protool parasites doing in our gut? What is their role? A, I don’t know. B, there’s considerable research in the literature that suggests that at least some of these are what they called or what they call sentinel species.
(30:39) So a sentinel species is like a canary in a coal mine. They’re saying that these parasites are indicators or bioindicators of environmental toxicity. So back in the day, coal miners would take a canary down there and if poison gas was released into the mine, it would warn the miners to get the heck out so that they could survive. The coal miners didn’t die because the canary died and released some toxic gas.
(31:06) It wasn’t the canary’s fault. The canary was an early warning system. So now in the literature, they’re looking at some of these parasites and they’re saying, “We think they’re sentinel species. We think they’re there as a warning, not only as a warning that there may be some environmental toxicity, but also to help clean up toxic waste.
(31:25) So these particularly the helminths for the prozoa, they’re now suggesting, well, they’ve got xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes inside them and they might be there to metabolize these toxic harmful chemicals and all these kinds of things.” That’s sort of up for debate. But yeah, for worms, they bio accumulate heavy metals.
(31:45) For example, in nature, we know that there are many types of worms like meal worms, for example, that eat plastic and then convert plastic into non-toxic substances. There are many kinds of so-called worms in nature that do these things that convert like toxic substances which can’t be used by any other organisms and break those things down into things like organic acids which can then be used as a fuel source for other forms of life. So are the worms in our gut doing a similar thing? In the animal world, they’ve done
(32:22) studies to show that animals who have got these so-called worms in their gut protected against the harmful effects of heavy metals. So, in animals that do have the worms in their gut, when they go and look at the concentrations of heavy metals in their internal organs, they’re negligible.
(32:45) But when animals are exposed to heavy metals and they don’t have the parasites in their gut, well, guess where the heavy metals go? Into their internal organs. So there’s sort of musings and suggestions in the literature that these might be protective organisms that are actually there to serve us rather than to harm us. Now in my clinic many years ago, yeah, we were doing like helminths in a practice that I worked in, they were using helmet therapy.
(33:10) So they literally give the eggs to people, the helminths would hatch and people were recovering from all kinds of diseases. So you have to ask the question like what are these things doing? Are they there to get you? Are they there to help? There’s even clinical trials where they’ve done this and people have gone into remission for like Crohn’s disease and ulcer of colitis and these kinds of things.
(33:33) So are they bioindicators? Are they bio- remediators? If you go to like a polluted water source and you find parasites in there, what is their role? If you drink the water, are you getting sick because of the parasite or are you getting sick because you’re drinking toxic polluted water? So many questions.
(33:53) And that final point you asked me about was in regards to like antiparasitic therapy. So this is a big thing and I used to do this too. You would test people’s feces. Oh my god, you’ve got XYZ parasite. We need to destroy it. So we come in with all these anthelic or antiparasitic herbs and in some cases like I would refer people to environmental doctors and they would prescribe them like antiparasitic drugs to try and wipe these parasites out of their gut. Let’s just say that there are disease-causing parasites.
(34:26) Is that even a good idea if there’s also commensiles in our gut which are there for us? So it’s kind of like taking an antibiotic. A lot of people are like, “No, I don’t want to do that because it’s going to kill off the the so-called good stuff as well as the so-called bad stuff.” But yeah, that’s besides the point.
(34:45) So, what is it that these antiparasitic herbs might be doing? Cuz like you would have instances of people taking these herbs like artisan and black walnut and whatever and a week later I’m pooping out worms. It’s working. I’m getting rid of the tapeworms and then I feel better. So the worms must have been the problem. There are other explanations about this.
(35:09) So it just so happens that things like armia, that antiparasitic plant grows really well in contaminated soil. They use this plant to bore remediate mine sites in soil that’s being contaminated with heavy metals. So that plant uptakes the heavy metals into its tissue and then starts to work on converting those heavy metals like methylating mercury for example.
(35:35) I think some of these herbs do that to make it non-toxic to the environment. So when you take these antiparasitic herbs, are they actually like binding up to harmful substances in your gut like mercury or arsenic or lead or something like this and basically when I say keilate like bind to and then remove from your gut and then also upregulate certain detoxification mechanisms in your liver and your kidneys and whatever else that basically supports the body’s elimination capac capacity.
(36:10) So, it’s not only like removing the food source for the worms, but then it’s supporting the body’s process to clear itself out. So, the worms are going, “Well, we don’t need to be here anymore. Our job is done. Let’s pack up and leave.” And then you see these parasites in in your stool. Is that possibly what’s going on? Maybe it’s an alternative explanation.
(36:35) So, it’s not necessarily that these things are acting as antiparasitics from the guise of killing the parasite. They’re actually supporting what the parasite’s trying to do. So, when you think of it from that perspective, maybe this this isn’t like a warfare model approach where we’re trying to kill things off. What we’re actually doing with those plants is supporting the body.
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(38:26) I’ve always thought that reducing these extremely nuanced, complex and intelligent botanicals to a warfare, you know, intentionality and then efficacy is it’s just how we are choosing to catalog these things. It’s not actually a a fact of the natural realm. So yeah, I love that explanation and to me it it’s inherently logical. I want to ask one more question because I know this could be its own weekend workshop, but I have observed that Lyme disease is the sacred cow of this culture that I referenced earlier, right? which is the folks who have awakened to a certain level around the alopathic system and yet they’re
(39:10) they’re somehow still swirling around there being uh root causes for a lot of their syndromeal manifestations. So in this case, you know, whether they have, you know, excessive fatigue or migratory pain or just like a decline in functioning in general, they often get into this psychology towards the conventional medical world that says, you know, well, they insist that the testing is unreliable and they don’t want to validate, they don’t want to acknowledge that Lyme disease is real and it’s real and you have to find a clinician who’s going to support your diagnosis and who knows knows how to
(39:48) treat it. Right? So it’s this this identification with a chronic illness that I see happening in the alternative medicine world and I would say probably especially functional medicine world but probably also naturopathic world right and I am almost always tempted to say you know like it’s not probably what you think it is and then what would you do if you needed a whole to go back to the drawing board about what’s going on in your life and understand the the narrative unfolding of what has happened. You will probably find that there is some uh very ready
(40:26) catalyst you know that you can point to in your life that preceded whatever this you know multi-month sometimes multi-year experience that you’re calling Lyme disease uh actually is. So, what do you think about this phenomenon of Lyme disease and the way that it’s been embraced by the alt medicine world? And do you think it really falls into the same category of scrutiny that we’ve been exploring here, which is to say that it hasn’t been sufficiently identified? Like maybe the conventional world’s actually right about this, you
(40:59) know, and it hasn’t been proven to be a vector of illness. And you know, even if you get bitten by an insect and you actually develop a rash, like that is probably not a sufficient explanation for what it is that you are attributing to it in the ensuing, you know, months and maybe years. Yeah.
(41:20) What do you think about that? Yeah, there always seems to be I think what we like to do is we try and blame mother nature for all of our ills. Now, I don’t actually think mother nature’s necessarily out to get us. What is causing people’s problems? I don’t necessarily know because it’s like it’s pretty nuanced and I think it’s different for each person.
(41:39) But yeah, is there a microorganism that’s so called infected them and is causing Lyme disease? Maybe. I’m skeptical. I mean, once upon a time everything was candida and once upon a time everything was um blastois and once upon a time everything was black mold and now it’s paras like it’s lime, right? what’s the next thing going to be? And are we just going to keep blaming nature forever? Now, in my experience, what I found is that when you take that perspective and you try to kill things, people are sick for years and years and years and years and years.
(42:16) And the excuse or the explanation is, well, it’s just a really stubborn thing to try and get rid of. It’s a really hard thing to kill. Is it that or that the treatment and the focus is misguided? So actually the cause of the problem is something else. So what if it is toxicity? What if it is like heavy metals? For example, I watched this really interesting movie last night. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s called Dark Waters.
(42:46) Have you seen this with Mark Ruffalo? So this is the it’s a big Hollywood film, but this is like the story of Teflon and how Teflon was being leaked into water supplies from production plants in America, making its way into the water supply and basically poisoning the people of nearby towns and they were coming down with all kinds of different illnesses.
(43:19) Now imagine if we were just going to blame it on the germ, bacteria, virus, it’s lime, it’s it’s a parasitic infection. It’s whatever. And we try and treat that. No one’s going to get better because actually the thing that’s really making them sick is the teflon chemical in in the water supply. Now there are hundreds of these what they call forever chemicals being sprayed into our environment every day. It’s being sprayed in our food.
(43:43) It’s in the clothes that we wear. It’s in the water that we drink. It’s in the air that we breathe. It’s in everything. And there’s all kinds of heavy metals and things in our environment. All these xenobiotics and pesticides and herbicides and fungus, all of these things.
(44:00) Wouldn’t it first make sense to deal with like the known harmful toxins and then in the aftermath of dealing with all that and there’s a few people left over going, I’m still sick. I’m still sick after dealing with all of that poison and toxicity. Then maybe you start looking for a germ, right? But we jump on the germ first. Like how many people do you know in your life who have gone had pesticide poisoning or pesticide toxicity? I had teflon toxicity.
(44:34) I had PFOA or PFOS or whatever these chemical toxins are. I had that poisoning. Like no one’s ever talking about that. Isn’t that strange? It’s like it’s got to be the parasite or the mold or the fungi or the yeast or whatever. And no one’s ever thinking, oh, it’s heavy metals or it’s something else.
(44:56) So that is where I would look first. I would minimize my exposure to that stuff and support my body’s channels of elimination and change my diet and get outside in the sun and start drinking clean water and getting better restful sleep and moving my body and just like doing all the simple things which we all take for granted. And then if there’s still a problem then maybe you start looking for a bacteria or a virus or a parasite or something else, right? It doesn’t work that way.
(45:28) And it’s all like no one ever thinks about the elephant in the room. We’re just so laser focused on these uh microorganisms, which is kind of unfortunate really. Well, you’re referencing what may be the greatest ask of a child psychology, you know, permeated uh collective, which is to take responsibility.
(45:57) you know, to take responsibility for your daily choices, for your lifestyle and to come into full acceptance, you know, cuz if you think about I was just sort of thinking of the constellation of, you know, mother nature and and this sort of weward masculine, this like weward father energy of the chemical world, right? And not to sort of like segregate them I don’t know in too forced away but there is an embrace of what is there is like seeing with sober eyes.
(46:26) There is an opportunity to just say this is what I incarnated to experience. What are my choices here? Living outside of the natural world is not really an option. So how do you come into harmony? How do you come into full embrace? How do you come into acceptance? I think a huge part of it is just to to stop blaming, you know, to to commit to no longer blaming.
(46:53) And then when it comes to, you know, the chemical, it’s like such a fine line I found because the awareness that leads to changes in your choices is very empowering, right? But the awareness that that leads to further powerlessness including you know around chemtrails if you’re not going to engage in you know local activism that you know is going to have some dividend right it it could end up not actually uh serving what it is that is your intention and I’ I’ve been stuck in that field of disempowerment that comes from learning a lot about this toxic world.
(47:24) So, the best way I think to thread the needle that I’m I’m referencing in all of these different arenas is to just look at I call it chopping wood carrying water. That’s why you’re referencing the the the basics the basics of what you do every day and see if you can prioritize that because I’m a big believer in the power that we reclaim through simply prioritizing through our attention really.
(47:51) So that is, you know, as resounding a message as there ever was. And I hope that this conversation served to at least dislodge a little bit the certainty that there is such a thing as these bad, nasty parasites that can happen to you that you then need to fight and purge yourself of and cleanse yourself of so that you could finally be, you know, holy and pristine and the good girl or boy you were hoping you were born to be, right? whatever it goes gets wrapped up into that fight. It’s very it’s very deep the emotional woundology. So I so appreciate you. I
(48:26) know the research that you take the time and put the care into exposing, you know, most of us are not and certainly there are assumptions being made in all of these conversations around parasites that have never been held up to uh the basic, you know, sort of research itself.
(48:48) And I so appreciate that you you do that. And I I consider you such an important ally and friend and colleague. And I want to thank you. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks, Dr. Broen. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and yeah, I agree with everything you said.
(49:07) I I think a back to basics approach is really the way forward and unfortunately we overlook those really simple things because they are free or very low cost and they’re low barrier to entry and they just seem really simple and we discount them because we think, well, no, health can’t be that easy. It’s got to be complicated and expensive and it’s got to be long-winded and only the person with the prescription pad, you know, holds the answer to my my problems. But yeah, I think we can take a lot of responsibility and there are many things that we can do that are very
(49:37) simple, very straightforward and very effective and they I have certainly seen this in in my experience have profound effects on people’s health and well-being. So get the foundations right first and if there’s still things left over then you can start looking at all these other things.
(49:58) But if you haven’t got the foundations down first, you don’t know what’s going on. It’s really hard to see the forest for the trees. So yeah, thanks for uh for the opportunity to come and talk shop with you. It was great. Thanks. [Music] I feel like I feel [Music]
