Change Your Brain Every Day - The Lyme Disease Epidemic & the Inflammation Connection — A Conversation with Dr. Horowitz and Dr. Daniel Amen

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

What if Lyme disease is only part of the story?   In this fascinating conversation, Dr. Richard Horowitz and Dr. Daniel Amen explore Lyme disease, chronic inflammation, immune dysfunction, and the complex symptoms that can persist long after an initial infection.   Why can Lyme be so difficult to diagnose and treat? How might inflammation affect the brain and body? And what can we learn from looking at chronic illness through both an infectious-disease and brain-health lens?   This is a wide-ranging conversation about Lyme disease, inflammation, the immune system, brain health, and the search for answers when conventional explanations fall short.

If you're tired and you're achy and your brain's not working properly with memory issues, with psychiatric issues, insomnia, it's a really high chance you've been exposed to Lyme. This is a spreading epidemic across the world. 14.5% of the global population has now been exposed to Lyme. That's one out of seven people on the planet. I've seen patients after a tick bite all of a sudden become anxious, depressed, develop obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia with auditory and visual hallucinations. And in many of these patients, especially the ones with rage,

Bartonella species were usually underlying it. My whole life's work has been trying to find a cure to these chronically ill patients. What are some of the ways you have found to help people get through it? When people say I'm much more anxious, I'm much more depressed, I have much more pain, I'm foggy, it's inflammation. So what I did in the protocol is... Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day.

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every day. We are going to talk about something that's actually very important to many of you. And I think that is going to be a huge part of the future of psychiatric medicine. And that's infectious disease. With me today is Dr. Richard Horowitz, who's a board-certified internist and the medical director of the Hudson Valley Healing Arts Center, an integrative medical center, which combines both mainstream and integrative approaches in the treatment of Lyme disease and other tick-borne disorders. He's treated over 13,000 Lyme and tick-borne disease patients in the last 41 years, and patients coming from all over the world. He's dedicated his life to helping those stricken with this devastating illness. He has a new book, Ending Chronic Illness, a revolutionary new program

to reverse inflammation and heal persistent disease to out October 14th, right around the time will release the podcast. And, you know, Richard, I'm a psychiatrist, so why do I care about Lyme disease? When I started seeing, when I started looking at people's brains, I would often see one of two patterns, either inflammation that I couldn't explain, or a damaged brain that often was for. from a chronic illness like Lyme. How did you get interested in this work? Oh, this was a bit coincidental. In fact, by the way, you'll find this interesting.

I wanted to be a psychiatrist when I was in medical school. I did seven years of medical training in Belgium and Brussels. I won't tell you the whole story of why I didn't go into psychiatry. Let's just say internal medicine being kind of a medical detective ended up really catching me. but it was in my seventh year of medicine. This is all in French, by the way. I was studying with the Tibetan lamas. I'd been studying meditation for several years.

And I went to Lama Gendendan and I said, Lamagendan, I'm about to go out into the world as a doctor. What do you want me to know? What's the most important thing? And he said, Richard, the most important thing is exchange yourself with others. Put others, you know, put yourself in their shoes, do for others what you'd want done for yourself.

And it's kind of generic advice if you study with the Tibetans like love, wanting other people to be happy and compassion, wanting other people be free from suffering. But the reason I mentioned the story is I finished my residency and internal medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, in the city hospitals, and I moved to upstate New York about two hours north in the Hudson Valley and didn't realize

I was moving into the largest Lyme endemic area in the United States back in 1987. And here I see these people with bullseye rashes. Roughly 75% get better with doxycycline or amoxicillin. But then the 25, 30%, start coming back. And you do what you learn to do as an internist. You refer. They went to psychiatrists, infectious disease doctors, neurologists, rheumatologist. Nobody could tell me what was wrong. And then I remembered Gendon Rupert Shea's advice. And I said, you know, I'm going to do my best to

figure out what's wrong with these people. Fast forward now 42 years, 13,000 patients later. That's how this whole thing kind of got started. Just trying to find answers for these chronically ill sick people. There's a map from 1994 from Schizophrenia Bulletin that, actually two maps. On the top is the highest incidence of schizophrenia, which is the northeast, the north-midwest, and the west coast. And on the bottom was the highest incidence of Lyme disease. And they were identical. And it completely changed the way I think about many of my patients. It's what percentage of patients with anxiety, depression, brain fog, even psychosis,

have an infectious disease, Lyme being one of the primary ones. How would you answer that? So I have seen, because I've seen so many chronic Lyme patients, I've seen patients after a tick bite, all of a sudden become anxious, depressed, develop obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia with auditory and visual hallucinations. And in many of these patients, especially the ones with rage, Bartonella species were usually underlying it. And I'm sure you've spoken to other people about this. But we're finding at this point, it's not just Lyme that's driving some of this neuroinflammation. It's cartyella species along with it. Some of them have parasites like Babesia. Many of them have mole toxins and heavy metals getting in. But certainly I have seen like sudden switches where someone was normal. All of a sudden they get a tick bite and they've got OCD. They've got psychosis. And I have gotten people off of psychiatric medicine using some of the protocols we'll describe today treating what I'll call the biofilm persistor forms of the bacteria with

Dapsone combination therapy. My whole life's work has been trying to find. a cure for these chronically ill patients. And I think you know about the article I published this year in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease reports. I managed to reverse Ptow 217, the most sensitive and specific biomarker for Alzheimer's, in a chronic Lyme post-treatment Lyme disease patient who was sick for 15 years. We reversed it completely using this eight or nine-week oral generic protocol. So, yeah, I see these psych issues absolutely hand-in-hand with fatigue, with pain, with insomers,

we see it all the time. It's a very common association. So let's start. So many of the people watching don't know anything about Lyme disease or the co-infections. Could you just take five or six minutes and just give us the basics on what people should know, that it's not one thing that there are a number of different co-infections, parasites. Pretend I don't know anything and sort of walk me through what the average person should know. Okay. So Lyme disease is a bacterial infection. It's a spiroketal infection very similar to syphilis, which we knew 100 years ago was a major cause of dementia. So this spirocuital infection, Spiroketal infection, it's like a corkscrew bacteria like a helicobacter pylori in your stomach.

Also a spirochete, which gets up into the brain, has been associated with Alzheimer's. And what happens with this spiroketyl infection, it's mostly transmitted by tick bites. There are some cases where we've seen maternal fetal transmission, but mostly it's by a tick bite. And what happens is, is people get a tick bite. And these ticks are usually cesspools where they don't contain just one organism. It's shown, at least in my area, about 80% of the time. You don't just get this bacterial infection Lyme disease. You'll get a parasite called Babesia.

It's like getting malaria on top of Lyme disease where you get these drenching night sweats and chills and day sweats, air hunger. I can't catch my breath, sometimes very severe psychiatric symptoms with it. And what this bug does is it goes into your body and it attacks basically all your organs. It'll go into the heart. It'll cause third-degree heart block. go into your brain. They've now find spirochetes under biofilms. I'll describe in a moment

what biofilms are, but they find them in biofilms of brains of people who've died of Alzheimer's disease, along with some of these Alzheimer's biomarkers, phosphorylated tau, beta amyloid. So this spirochetal infection causes inflammation throughout your body. In the joints, in the muscles, in the nerves, in the heart, in the brain.

And people usually will say, Doc, all of a sudden, I'm very tired. I have migratory joint pain, migratory muscle pain, migratory nerve pain, a tingling, numbness, burning, stabbing, even vibration sense that's moving around my body for no good reason. And all of a sudden, I've got brain fog. I can't think straight. I walk into rooms and forget why I'm walking in. I can't remember people's names and phone numbers.

It's taken me hours to fall asleep. I keep waking up in the middle of the night. And all of a sudden, I'm anxious, I'm depressed, or I'm hearing things and seeing things. I've never heard before. So this inflammatory response from Lyme disease, it mimics, it's called the Great imitator, just like syphilis was. It mimic chronic fatigue syndrome, myelomyelitis. It'll mimic fibromyalgia.

It'll mimic long COVID, many of the same symptoms, although in Lyme, you have migratory pain, which you don't usually see in long COVID. It'll mimic mole toxicity. So it's a chronic fatiguing, painful illness with brain fog and neuropsychiatric symptoms. And many times what happens is these ticks are co-infected where you don't just get one organism in your body, but you'll get a parasite like Babesia. Or you'll have been previously infected with another bacteria called Bartonella. And there are up to 18 species of this Bartonella, not just cat scratch fever that most people have heard about. And when you get Bartonella species, this other bacteria combined with lime, combined with the parasites, and then combined with things like heavy metal and mold toxins, there's a huge fire.

in the body, fire in the brain that happens. And these people start getting extremely ill. And I've devoted, as I said, 42 years of my, you know, clinical life to figuring out how to cure these infections, how to address the inflammation in the body. I believe I found answers finally, which is, as you mentioned, it's in my new book and in chronic illness. It's out around October 13th. And it basically is my life work explaining how do we cure these people. My wife, for example, was sick for 25 years, with 16 different inflammatory factors. I call them MSIDS. I'll explain during the podcast what MSSIDS is.

It stands for multiple systemic infectious disease syndrome. 25 years she was ill with fatigue and brain fog and pain. She's eight years in full remission. Not one symptom. And I've seen many patients now like that, but it required figuring out very specific and thank God to the universities like John Hopkins and Stanford why these bugs are persisting in the body.

But that's essentially what they do. is these bacteria and viruses. We get reactivated viruses in long COVID with Epstein-Barr and herpes virus six. We just see all these infections reactivated viruses and parasites and bacteria, even fungi, fungus, getting into the body, driving inflammation, and then they mix with these other factors driving inflammation, and you end up getting tired, achy, neuropsychiatric symptoms. So, Lyme, Babesia, Bartonella, two bacteria, one parasite, but they all have multiple types, how are people effectively diagnosed?

Because I understand that can be tricky. That's correct. The diagnosis is very tricky. And part of it is exactly what you said. There are multiple strains. It's like having cousins of Lyme disease. So if this standard testing that the CDC talks about called the two-tier test, an Eliza, ELISA, followed by a Western blot. This is what health departments normally do to epidemiologically screen large populations. But the problem is there's not one strain of Lyme disease anymore making people sick. There's a minimum of nine strains. With Bartonella, there's a minimum of 18 strains. With Babesia, there are three strains. There's actually a lot more, but three main strains that we

Bibesia micrody, dankane, and otocolii. So first of all, what's needed to understand for most people is it's a clinical diagnosis. You do not make the diagnosis based on blood tests. Then the question, of course, becomes, well, how do you make the diagnosis? So we validated a symptom screening questionnaire called the HMQ, the Horowitz-MSempsets questionnaire. We validated this in 1,600 people through three medical practices. People can find it on my website, Can Get Better.com. and if you score over 63 on this questionnaire, and there's 38 items on the questionnaire with other sections,

but if you score over 63, there's a two-standard deviation to the right means that you're going to have a very high probability of having Lyme, especially if you have migratory pain, and you've been ruled out, obviously, for other diseases. So the first step is getting a pre-test probability. What are the chances, right? I'm tired. I'm achy. I have brain fog. I have psychiatric issues. What are the odds? Well, if you look at BMG global health, they've told us that 14.5% of the global population has now been exposed to live. That's one out of seven people on the planet. The CDC has told us it's roughly half a million cases per year. Medicare rates seven times higher, two to three million. It's a really high chance you've been exposed. This is a spreading epidemic across the world, not just the United States. So, you know, if you're tired and you're achy and your brain's not working properly with memory issues with psychics. psychiatric issues, insomnia, it's very likely you've been exposed at some point in time. I had it 30 years ago. The only reason I'm not sick is I got it early. But it's a clinical diagnosis. So I suggest people first take the questionnaire, see where you score, and see if you have migratory pain. The hallmark of lime is migratory pain. The pain is all of a sudden moving around your body and there's no good reason. And there's only six other diseases in medicine that cause that. So it's really important first to understand, get kind of the of all the symptoms that you have. And then there are specific tests.

I likeigenics in California. They're FDA approved. It's called an immunoblot. It checks for nine strains of Lyme, not one. So the two-tiered testing that the CDC recommends, you're going to miss it about half of the time. But anigen X immunoblot, which checks nine strains, I like playing a game with people called Lyme bingo.

And if they have any one of five numbers on their immunoblot with a chronic fatiguing, a musculoskeletal neuropsychiatric illness, and those numbers are the 23 out-of-surface protein C, 31 out-of-surface protein A, 34 out-of-surface protein B, 39, very specific ban, and or the 83-93. Any one of those numbers on an immunoblot means at some point in time you've been exposed to Lyme.

And for Babesia Bartonella, we also use immunoblots because they check for multiple strains. and then there's RNA testing called fish, fluorescent in situ hybridization, that researchers look under the microscope, and if they see Bartonella or Babesia, it fluoresces green, like they can actually see it under the microscope with these very specific tests. So, you know, there's, I describe all of this in detail in my new book and then chronic illness, but you have to know how to use specialized labs,

because if you go to Questral Lab Corps, a bioreference, and you just do an Eliza, and you follow IDA, say guidelines which say you have to have the two-tiered test, unfortunately a lot of these people are going to be missed. So that's kind of the basis. Let me have a website again where people can take the questionnaire. Cangetbetter.com. Can get better.com. My daughter went to TCU, and ended up with five infections, actually had to go home. One of them was Lyme, was also COVID-CM. the, and two other ones I can't think of now. I mean, it was just a mess.

And when I scanned her, she had that dramatic overactivity in her limbic brain or emotional brain that I often see. So if a lot of us have been exposed, how do we know if it's active? if it's part of the problem. So, as I said, because Lyme is a clinical diagnosis, usually there are several very classic ways from a clinician's perspective, you know. First of all, it's a multi-systemic illness. It's not impossible you could just get a swollen knee or a swollen ankle.

But for most people, it's multisystemic. It's day sweats, night sweats, chills, flushing, air hunger, unexplained cough, babesia. Those are questions 1 in 22 on the whole. Harowitz-Ms-Sense questionnaire. It's fatigue. It's migratory joint pain, migratory muscle pain, migratory nerve pain. Again, migratory pain. There's only six other diseases, which normally you would not confuse with it, like ulcerative colitis, inflammatory bowel, writer syndrome, gotacococcal arthritis, acute rheumatic fever, hepatitis, lupus, those are the other six, by the way. So you're looking at symptoms that come and go with good and bad days with no reason,

migratory pain, you're tired, you're achy, It's migratory. You have brain fog, and you've been ruled out for B-12 deficiency and folic acid deficiency, and your thyroid functions are normal. And you've checked for heavy metals like mercury lead, and you've checked for mold toxins. In other words, you've done a differential diagnosis, and you've ruled out, like other causes. Now, I will say that in my world, it's never one cause. These people who come to see me, they usually have the three bees, Borrelia, Babesia,

Bartonella, they have mold, they have heavy metals, they have microbiome disruptions in their where they have the wrong types of bacteria because all these environmental toxins are getting rid of your short chain fatty acid bacteria in your gut, which means you get more inflammation in the gut that gives you a leaky blood-brain barrier, where now you've got molecules getting across your intestinal barrier, causing the brain to be more inflame. You get intestinal hyperpermeability with or without mass cell, vitamin mineral deficiency, sleep disorders. I call these the six rivers of inflammation. So my patients don't just come in with one thing, but keep in mind, It is a clinical diagnosis.

And once you've started to rule out, like other diseases, what you'll find is Lyme will usually not be there alone, but it will be one of these overlapping factors driving inflammation in the body as part of why you're tired and why you have pain and why you have brain fog and cognitive issues or neuropsych symptoms that just don't get better with SSRIs and SNRIs and tricyclics and all the other pharmaceuticals we're throwing at people. So it is clinical, but it does mean you have to have a differential diagnosis to see the other inflammatory factors. Many of our patients have hormonal dysregulation, low testosterone, low thyroid, low adrenal function, mitochondrial dysfunction, Potts disorder. Right. Shows up in long COVID and Lyme and Bart and mold. All of these things need to be checked because they're all overlapping inflammatory factors keeping people ill. Happiness isn't something that simply happens to us.

It's a skill we build. One student said, I was struggling with maintaining a positive mindset before this course, but now I feel more empowered to control my happiness. That's the kind of growth I love to see because happier brains build better lives. Start the 30-day happiness challenge. at amonuniversity.com. Talk to me about what you discovered that works. What's the highlight of the program in the book that you're really excited about?

So about in 2015, John Hopkins' research discovered that Lyme disease, Borrelli-Bergdorferi is a very specific type of bacteria called a biofilm persistor bacteria. Roughly at the same time, Stanford, Northeastern University, Kim Lewis, Eva Shoppy from the University of Hugh Haven, pretty much they all came up with the same conclusion at the same time. It's not a standard bacteria. It's like tuberculosis and leprosy. And when I heard from John Hopkins that this was a biofilm persister bug, and just to give people a sense of what a biofilm is, so you go to the dentist to take plaque off your teeth. That's a biofilm. If you don't get rid of the biofilm, you develop gingivitis. and there is a bacteria called porphromona's ginger valis associated with Alzheimer's disease.

You get inflammation in your gums, go straight up to your brain in some cases. So the biofilms are protecting these bacteria where your immune system, we said before, that the lab tests are not reliable in finding Lyme, in part because there's nine different strains or more, but also because your immune system can't see the bugs because they're hiding under these biofilms. And the antibiotics don't penetrate well through these biofilms. So the first important kind of light bulb in my head that went off was when John Hopkins discovered that, I said, oh, well, when I was in residency 45 years ago at Mount Sinai during the HIV epidemic, I was treating these HIV patients with mycobacterium avium intracellulari with TB.

I got used to using TB drugs, refampin, Ian, Ian, Pyrazinamide, and I said, gee, I wonder if I looked at these TB drugs, maybe there's an answer. So I looked at Dapsone. Dapsone and Raphampin are used to cure. leprosy. So I said to myself, well, hold on, if they use dapsone and refampin to cure leprosy, they use it for one year and it cures a biofilm persistor infection, let me look at dapsone for Lyme. So I looked at the literature. Dapsone was an oral drug with great penetration into the brain. I said to myself, gee, maybe I won't have to use IV drugs like rusephine. Dapson is anti-inflammatory.

I said to myself, well, gee, all the symptoms from Lyme and these co-infections due to inflammation, that's great. Thirdly, it hits malarial organisms like Babesia. It has antiparacetic effects. I said, well, maybe it'll work for Babesia in some patients. Number four, it hits autoimmune reactions. Many of these Lyme patients get autoimmune reactions in the body. Dapsone is used for autoimmunity like Bissette syndrome. So it checked all the boxes, and it's a biofilm persistor drug. So what I did is I added a tetracycline, like doxy or minnow to refamp and dapsone, and I published my... first study on Dapsome combination therapy in 2016, 10 years ago, the doses were 25 to 100 milligrams immediately then. It was like it was a home run out of the park. It was people said,

my fatigue is better, my brain fog's better, my joint pain's better. So I knew I was onto something. But when I stopped the dosing, people would relapse. And it took me about 10 years to figure out the dosing. And by the way, you may know this in medicine. The way I figure out the dosing was not some brilliance on my part. It's because patients made mistakes. They accidentally doubled the doses of some of the medicines I was giving them. And they came in going, oh, Doc, I feel horrible. I went, oh, what are you taking? Refampin twice a day? Doccy twice a day. And Dapsone twice a day said, oh, you're taking too much Dapsone. It's 100 twice a day. Stop it. Come back in a month. The guy comes back in a month. This was a 27-year-old guy sick for seven years who could not go to school or hold down a job. He comes

back one month after doing three months of Dapsone. He's now off it for a month. And he goes, Doc, I'm a new man. I go, what are you talking about? My fatigue is gone. My pain is gone. My brain is great. I went, what? He said, I said, don't take anything more. I don't want you taking anything else come back in three months. He comes back in three months. He says, I feel great. We did this for one year. At which point, I turned to my wife and I said, sweetheart, would you like to be a medical guinea pig? Because my wife is now sick with Lyme for decades. She takes double-dosed absone 100 twice a day. She had previously taken 50 milligrams and loved it. Felt great, but relapsed and was DNA PCR positive in her blood for Lyme. She then takes 100 for

six months. She feels great. She stops it. She relapses. She takes one month of 100 twice a day like this guy did, and she's eight years now in full remission. So I figured out by these patient stories, by mistakes, just listening to my patients taking a good clinical history, that's how I figured it out. And that's how I figured out the dose for Bartonella. I had a patient double, double-dose dapsone. They were on quad dapsone for several days. Severe Herksheimer. Herczheimer means you're killing the bugs. You get an inflammatory reaction with worse fatigue and pain and brain fog. And then she felt great. So it was just really as a doctor take, you know this in medicine. They teach you. 90% of everything you learn is take a good clinical history, right? And you'll figure it out. That's how I figured it out was my patients made mistakes. It turns out, I've now described. I've now described. I discovered a nine-week oral generic protocol. It's dapsone combination therapy. And just this year, which is the most exciting thing in my whole career, I discovered that this same protocol may be able to help a certain number of Alzheimer's patients because the last year of clinical practice, I started checking my Lyme patients for Alzheimer's biomarkers. It had been reported in the medical literature for decades by Dr. Shoppy, Dr. McDonald, Judith McClossie from Switzerland. that they're finding in autopsy studies of Alzheimer's patients, Lyme spirochetes, under biofilms, with phosphorrelated tau and beta amyloid. And I said to myself, well, hold on, Quest and LabCore, and now offering these tests, these biomarkers,

let me check my chronic line population. Well, over half of my line patients started checking positive for these Alzheimer's biomarkers. So I decided to try on one of my patients who had never done Dapsone. She had chronic Lyme, post-tripe, and Lyme, she had an eating. EM rash failed oxy 15 years before. She met every criteria for the CDC, the NIH. Her P-TOW 217 was more than twice elevated, which is the most sensitive and specific biomarker for Alzheimer's.

And she had joint pain and her rheumatoid factors were positive. And no one had ever reversed it before. I give her the nine-week DAPSone protocol. I check her biomarkers three months later. The P-TOW is completely normal. And I published it this April in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease reports. It's the first time. in the world anyone has ever proven the infection amyloid ptow hypothesis and since the NIH told us just

last year that 42% of Americans are become demented over 55 years old. This is directly from the NIH. We have a big problem on her hand. I discovered in this article that all 16 MSSIDs factors that are associated with Lyme, in other words, the same inflammatory factors I've been publishing on Lyme, same 16 factors I published for long COVID two years ago, are associated with Alzheimer's dementia. And this woman said my cognition got better as the P-Tal went down. So it doesn't mean I've discovered a cure for Alzheimer's,

but it opens the door for research. Finally, that we may have an answer for some of these Alzheimer's patients who have no answers. Discovered that Alzheimer's isn't one thing and that infectious disease is a major cause of dementia that very few people get screened for or people think about.

I have a mnemonic called Bright Minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors. Like B is for blood flow, R is retirement and aging, eye is inflammation. The second eye is immunity and infections. and the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease published an editorial where they had 33 scientists from around the world go, infectious disease is a major cause of dementia that very few people ever even think about. So I applaud you.

I'm very excited about this discovery that you've made. How many doctors outside of your clinic, or using the protocol that you have developed. Because I know in the Lyme community that you're highly revered. I'm actually speaking at the International Lyme Association in a couple of weeks. Oh, my goodness.

I know. I'm going to see you there. Yeah. And I'm very excited, you know, as sort of a psychiatrist to talk about my experience. But how many people are starting to, use the protocol you're talking about and you talk about in your book? So I've trained hundreds of providers in the DAPSome protocol.

And I do consultations at this point because I just retired from clinical practice after 42 years and I'm moving into research because I realize that all the stuff I published, if I don't start to do multi-center placebo randomized control trials, right, with DAPSone and the M-Sids model, I mean, who's going to do it if not me? So I'm moving into one-on-one now to serve the millions. But the answer is hundreds of doctors I've trained. And one of the doctors, Dr. Tammy Lidey, who I spoke to a few weeks ago, you know, I trained her basically in many patients. We work together. And I said, Tammy, please check these Alzheimer's biomarkers because I'm finding it over 50% of my patients. She told me that she's finding it over 90% of her patients with chronic Lyme disease who have not yet done these biofilm persisted drug regimens like dapsome combination therapy. She's finding elevated petal low beta amyloid ratios. I mean, it's a little scary because it's, you know, this. This is kind of a new finding.

And obviously, I need much larger studies to be able to see what I've really discovered. But based on the literature by others, there's a 10 times higher risk. If you have a spirochate in your brain, you're going to become demented. And the only reason the American Academy of Neurology is not kind of embrace this, it was all autopsy studies, right? They found spirochetes, beta amyloid, petal, biofilms, but it had never been done at a live human being. I finally did it. So now we've just got to kind of move it out.

but the answer is hundreds of doctors, but I will tell you that there's a hesitation in some of the doctors about using dapsone because of the potential side effects, which I call do no harm. H is herxheimer reactions. You can get a large inflammatory response to this, which I kind of worked into the protocol to keep it down. A is for anemia. Dapsone causes a folic acid-induced anemia where I'm using over 300 milligrams of combined of lucovorin, folinic acid, and L-Methylopholate. But you will get about a three to a half to four gram drop in hemoglobin, which goes back to normal when you're done. But it scares some of the people off. And methamoglobin levels where you're not carrying oxygen as efficiently will happen. But because I use methylene blue and antioxidants, it averages about 5 or 6 percent. But these side effects, they're keeping some of the docs away from using it.

And unfortunately, from my perspective, it's the fastest, most effective protocol I know of. So what I did in ending chronic illness in my new book is I wrote it out like a textbook for people. And I even put in a low-dose-dapsoan protocol where you can start and stop the protocol if you need to for the anemia and the rest. Because what I've noticed is even if you stop the protocol before the ninth week and you go back to it later, you still get the benefits because it seems like these biofilm persistor forms of the bacteria, they don't grow back the same way. but I kind of wrote it out like a cookbook to make people feel comfortable. But a lot of doctors are using it, but not enough, actually, in my opinion, mainly because they're worried about the side effects. But I tell them, look, it's like cancer chemotherapy.

If you knew you had lung cancer and you went for radiation and chemo and had a great chance of full remission, but they told you you were going to get chemo, brain fog, and neuropathy, you'd probably still do it. Well, there is no long-term neuropathy or brain fog with dapsone. The labs go back to normal. but people have to get used to the protocol. I mean, that's what it comes down to. I think the more doctors they get used to it

and the more studies we can do going forward, you'll see this will probably be the standard of care because it's the fastest way I know how to get people better, even if they're sick for 10, 20 or 30 years, but you still have to treat the Babesia. You still have to treat the Bartone with pulsed apsohn at least four times. You have to treat the mold toxins.

It interferes with the success. You've got to get the microbiome in order. You have to treat the leaky gut and the food sensitivities in mass cell. You got to get them to sleep. You got to treat the vitamin mineral deficiencies, the mitochondrial dysfunction, the hormonal dysregulation, the potts dysotidonia. And I know you'll get this one, the limbic retraining that's needed for the trauma. These people with past emotional trauma with physical abuse, emotional abuse or sexual abuse, who get these diseases, they have the most difficult time getting over it because they're amygdala. You were talking about it earlier.

that part of their brain just lights up with inflammation. They have the hardest time. And I have to put them through vagal retraining and limbic retraining and EMDR and cognitive behavioral and sending them to the psychiatrist and psychologist. I mean, it's a lot of work. But boy, when they get through to the other side and they've addressed all these MSSITs factors. And by the way, immune is mine too. We find immune disorders, low immunity. Lyman Bartonella knock out your B cells.

A lot of these people come in with chronic variable immune deficiency and subclass. deficiencies. And then they get long COVID and their T cells are knocked out with T cell exhaustion. And then they get mold and they got gliotoxins knocking down the immune system further with autoimmune reactions. Exactly what was in your model. Our models are actually very similar, right, in that perspective. But the Dapsome protocol to be highly effective, you've got to get all these other overlapping sources of inflammation or you're not going to see the full effects. Let's talk about Herczheimer's because it's, you know, I've caught it several times. on scans, and it's so impressive. It's like this explosion goes off in your brain, which means it's

going off in your body as well. How do you help people? So you warn them, you pre-frame it for them. What are some of the ways you have found to help people get through it? How long does it typically last, and what makes it worse and what makes it better? So in designing the protocol to make it more tolerable, we basically worked into the protocol a way to block certain inflammatory pathways. When people say, I'm much more anxious, I'm much more depressed, I have much more pain, I'm foggy, it's inflammation. So what I did in the protocol is we worked into, and I know I'll explain these inflammatory

pathways in layman's terms, so people get it. there's a switch inside your nucleus. It's called NFCAPA B. This switch when it turns on, and especially when it turns on in your brain with the microgliol cells, the small cells in your brain that turn on, especially with activation with Lyme disease and Bartonella, you get a huge amount of inflammation in your brain when these microgleal cells get activated and when there's an inflammatory pathway called the NLRP3 inflammatory pathway. There are all these inflammatory pathways that get activated. What we did in the protocol is I give nutritional supplements, Nesedal cysteine, alpha-ypoic acid glutathione that blocks that first switch and of Kappa B.

I use nutritional supplements to stimulate a second anti-inflammatory pathway that opens up detoxification and helps also to tell your genes to lower inflammation. That's called the NRF2 pathway, turmeric, cuckermin, broccoli seed extracts, sulfurasein, glucosinolate, resveratrol and organic green tea, EGCG. We use low-dose naltrexone to help with microglial activation, maybe a little bit of low-dose melatonin on occasion. For inflammatory prostaglandins, we use omega-3s that are mercury-free. So what I built into the protocol are these nutritional ways of helping to modulate inflammation

while there's four different probiotics twice a day to keep your microbiome in good shape with four different biofilm agents to open up the biofilms. But when people get Herczheimer reactions, I found that if you give them up to 2,000 milligrams of glutathione, and this is usually oral, not IV, and you do it up to three times per day while alkalizing the body, because you get a lot of acidic byproducts when you're this sick, we found that that will calm down these severe Herczheimer reactions. And a lot of times the severe neuropsych reactions, the pain, the fatigue, the brain fog, it will get better with high-dose glutathione. but we again, we're using a lot of these nutritional supplements, very low-carb diet.

We keep the sugar out because we don't want candida overgrowth. We don't want insulin spikes. So there's a lot of diet and exercise and sleep and all the good things you need for health that you have to do while doing the protocol. But I designed the protocol, and again, it took me a decade to tweak this protocol to the point that it's nine weeks. Now, you will notice normally the greatest effects of Dapzone four to six weeks when you're done. And usually at that point, people will see like, it's like peeling an onion. Let's say they have Bartone and they need four pulses of high-dose dapsone. The first pulse, which is nine weeks, the longest, they may come out of it and go, you know, I started at 30% of normal.

I was horribly tired, achy, brain fog. Doc, I'm at 60% of normal. I'm definitely better. But I still have fatigue and pain. And then three months later, they'll use 13 days of antibiotics for Bartonella. That's all it is with six days of dapsone. You wait four to six weeks after it's done. Again, it's like peeling an onion.

Oh, Doc, I'm at 70 or 75%. Every time you go in and you keep knocking down the load of these bugs and in between addressing the infections, I'm detoxing the mold, I'm pulling the heavy metals, I'm working the microbiome, I'm doing mitochondrial regeneration. Their hormones are balancing like I'm working these 16 MSids factors, which is all about what's in my new book and in chronic illness. And it takes about a year for people with Bartonella with mold.

the average person it takes a year, because these Bartonella pulses have to be done two or three months apart for the labs to keep coming back to normal, which as I said, they always do. Please, it is safe and effective, but we'll do randomize studies and prove this to the world. In fact, by the way, I put in for an R34 NIH grant to prove to the world that I have an effective safe protocol, and do you know they turned me down? And the answer why the NIH turned me down, it's not a chronic persistent infection. that was what I was trying to prove to you by using these biofilm persistor drugs. So now I'm going to have to go outside the system. What's not a chronic persistent infection? Borrelia burgdorferi Lyme disease.

That's insane. I know. And now I have to go outside the NIH to get funding because they turn down my grant. Although the new administration is more focused on Lyme disease and more open. I don't know if you've been working with anybody. there. I've been working with them, but they didn't know that the NIH researchers who were viewing my grants, it was like one hand didn't know what the other one was doing at the time.

Yeah. But no, I get your point. Well, I am so excited to support your book, to get it, to read it, to share it with our doctors here at Eamon clinics. This is a topic in a lot of the patients that, we see. And some of my best stories are people who came to us. We saw inflammation. It diagnosed with Lyme of one sort or another, got treated and got better. Now it seems like, you know, there's a protocol that can get people better, faster, which is always my interest. It's like,

let's end suffering as quickly as possible. What else should I ask? And by the way, if you want to integrate the DAPSome protocol and the model in your clinic, I am more than happy to work with any doctors in your clinic because I had Mount Sinai on board. I had University, California, San Francisco on board. Andrew Wiles has been speaking to me from his clinic. If you want to be a site to actually try this in some of your patients, please let's work together in the future.

Happy to do it. Yeah, absolutely. I know you know Ebony Cornish. So when we're in Washington together, you know, let's make sure we meet so that, you know, I'd love to try it. And we love studying what we do. And we have the benefit of imaging. Oh, your image would be amazing to see what happens to these brains before and after DAPS. own, whether it's spec or pet or whatever it is that you're looking at. Yeah, we do spec. Yeah, no, we'd have that ability.

So the book is out, October 13th. Yeah. Ending. By the way, what I think, Daniel, you also find interesting is for the mood disorders, I discovered the same 16 factors for every mood disorder I was looking at with anxiety, depression, OCD, bipolar, psychotic. It was these same 16 factors kept showing up, and you know this as a psychiatrist. but I don't think we've ever put it together across specialties,

that these same inflammatory factors are like affecting all these different diseases, whether it's rheumatology or neurology or psychiatry. It's inflammation. Well, and the American Psychiatric Association is open this year. You know, I've been at war with them for 35 years, but they wrote a paper in May saying biomarkers and biologians and biologians, and biological factors are essential in psychiatry. So they're really changing their tune, including imaging.

But, you know, they also mentioned C-reactive protein, and I'm like, oh, we can do so much better than that. So I would love to see this and very excited to learn more. How can people find you? I know the book is out nationwide in a couple of weeks. How can people learn more about your work? So if they go on my website, CanGet Better.com, you can find out about the book. You can order it there.

I also have the HMQ questionnaire there. Podcasts like ours will be there for people to watch. So can get better. I have a medical detective substack that is free to sign up. It's a weekly substack where I look at new. things in medicine every week and comment. Today, the one that I did was actually on the CDC telling us that 75% of Americans, I don't know if you saw this, are tired and also have anxiety, depression, and cognitive issues. And it's like, and they didn't tell us why. They just came out

and said, everybody's tired in the United States, but they didn't give you an answer. It's like, oh, that's a good substack. I'll take that one on. So substack medical detective, it's free to sign up. And Facebook is Dr. DR. period, Richard Horowitz. That's pretty much how people can get inside with me. Great. Thank you so much for your time. I've enjoyed this immensely. I never get tired of hearing stories of hope. Gregory shared that after taking Happy Saffron Plus for several weeks, he felt more hopeful, less overwhelmed, and experienced no negative side effects. Hope changes everything. When people feel better, they think better, make better decisions, and create better lives. That's why stories like Gregory's means so much to me.

Visit BrainMD.com and use code podcast 20 for 20% off. Ending chronic illness out soon. I'm Dr. Daniel Aiman with Dr. Richard Horowitz. Thank you for watching, listening to change your brain every day. comment, leave a question or review, we're grateful for you.