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Feb. 21, 2019 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole

01:02:19

Delingpod 8: Lyme Disease Special

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	Welcome to the Delling Pod with me, James Dellingpoll.
	And this is a special edition this week, which may bore some people rigid, but it's going to be incredibly fascinating to other people.
	And it's a Lyme disease special.
	And my guest this week is Phil Batiade.
	Is that how you pronounce it?
	That's how you pronounce it, yeah.
	What's going wrong?
	Are you looking at...
	Are you checking out my equipment?
	I'm checking out your equipment and it suddenly turned off.
	No, no, it's still going.
	Okay.
	And Phil Battierde is the founder of the Infusio Clinic.
	Yeah, it's the Infusio concept.
	So it's a treatment concept there.
	So this is where...
	Some of you have been following me on social media and stuff, and all the articles I've been writing about it.
	After I got diagnosed with Lyme disease, I went to be treated at the Infusio Clinic in Frankfurt, which gives you stem cell therapy for treating Lyme disease.
	Now, Phil, the first thing I want to ask you is, I mean, am I going to get cured?
	Well, I definitely think you're going to get better.
	There's a question we're always asked, am I going to get cured?
	It's difficult to define the cure.
	So we say, well, we think you can return to normal life and be free of symptoms and do what you usually do.
	So yes, I think you can reach that goal.
	Well, free of symptoms is good enough for me.
	Let me just run through some of the symptoms I've had.
	For a long, long time, over decades.
	So I've had brain fog, which is when you can't concentrate, your brain turns to mush, you forget words, you forget people's names.
	This is all familiar to you.
	More recently, this is a kind of late Lyme problem you get.
	You get sort of nerve pains, you get the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, which is a real bummer.
	I'm 53.
	I do not expect to be getting rheumatoid arthritis at this age.
	My knees are going, you know.
	I mean, I like going running, or I do when I'm not feeling exhausted, which is another problem with Lyme disease.
	You get this chronic fatigue.
	That's true.
	Originally, I thought I had chronic fatigue syndrome.
	I mean, I... Let me just ask you a question about that.
	Chronic fatigue syndrome.
	Do you think most people who've got CFS or ME, as it's sometimes called, actually have undiagnosed Lyme disease?
	Yeah, I think many of them actually do have Lyme disease as part of the issue that's going on there.
	Yeah.
	I'm just trying to think what else...
	What are the other...
	Oh, God!
	Psychosis.
	Yes.
	Psychosis just has totally messed up.
	I mean, it changed my life in ways I would not even reveal on the podcast.
	I mean, I'm going to write a book about it one day.
	People will be absolutely horrified by how ruinous it has been for me and for lots of people.
	You...
	I mean, do you know what is psychosis exactly?
	Well, I mean, we're familiar with that with Lyme patients especially.
	I mean, we see just the Lyme or maybe it's inflammation triggered by the Lyme.
	It just changes your whole thought patterns and often anxiety or this kind of feeling of like pending doom is there in a lot of patients.
	They feel that something's very, very wrong and that must be so traumatic because it It makes everything else so much worse, yeah?
	So if you have pain but you have that anxiety in the background as well from the cognitive problems, that kind of amplifies the whole situation for you.
	So in the past I used to read about people with mental illness and, you know, I've had depression over the years.
	But...
	I always thought that mental illness was something that was, I don't know, generated by the brain.
	It never occurred to me that there are diseases out there which can actually make you mad, essentially.
	Yeah, most certainly, yeah.
	I think typically it's inflammation that does that.
	So I don't think it's a direct disease that's attacking the brain cells, but the inflammation that's triggered by that, that can really alter the way the brain cells function and alter the cognitive function.
	So is it not that the Borrelia, which is one of the active ingredients in Lyme, is it not that the Borrelia spirochete actually feeds on the brain tissue?
	Well the spirochetes can, they drill their way through tissue.
	So the spirochetes are kind of like spiral shaped bacteria and they turn around like little drills and they can drill their way through cells and things like that.
	But by doing that, they often trigger a lot of inflammation.
	And the inflammation, this cascade of inflammation that happens is typically what interferes with the brain function.
	Right, I see.
	I'm just trying to think of one other horrible thing.
	Oh yeah, itching.
	Mad itching.
	And there's another thing actually, one of the things I'm glad that's gone, one of the things that's definitely gone since I came to your lab and was experimented on like a guinea pig.
	Did we keep you in the cage?
	Yeah.
	It was a gilded cage.
	A gilded cage.
	Very nice, very nice.
	And this gives me hope because at the moment I'm at the stage where I'm thinking, look...
	I've had all this treatment.
	Is it going to work or not?
	I don't know.
	I don't know yet.
	Because I'm definitely not better yet.
	No.
	But one thing that went away, and this really used to annoy me.
	I don't know if you've come across this one before.
	I had this kind of pathetic little cough.
	Yes.
	And a shivering thing.
	Wherever I went into...
	The supermarket freezer section.
	I couldn't stay there.
	Whenever I was exposed to any kind of cold, air conditioning in cars, I couldn't bear it.
	Or when I went swimming, it would trigger this little cough and I would feel really, really rotten, kind of low-level nausea.
	I don't know whether that's Lyme or Borrelia or whether it's one of the co-infections you get.
	Maybe it's Bartonella.
	Your philosophy is you don't really care, do you?
	you.
	I mean, when I first spoke to you, you said it doesn't really matter what your, which co-infections, whether it's Bartonella or Bebillia.
	Babesia or Ehrlichia or Chlamydia or whatever, you kind of treat the whole patient.
	Yeah.
	I mean, my theory is that when a tick bites you, you really don't know what is passed So, you know, we look for Borrelia, we look for Elichia, we look, yeah, but we see patients that have come back with a negative Lyme test and their symptoms can be just as bad as someone with a positive Lyme test.
	So it's often difficult to kind of differentiate what is actually causing the symptoms.
	So for the infuser concept, I say it's a foundational concept.
	So what we're trying to do with that is rather than get lost in kind of chasing all these diagnoses, let's just get to the basic things first.
	Let's fix the basics.
	So it's almost like when you don't feel well and grandma comes and makes your chicken soup.
	You feel better just because it makes you feel better.
	So that's what I'm trying to do first.
	So correct the immune system, get the cells working well, get the detox path is working well and see what the body can do by itself.
	And then we can give some stem cells and things like that, which are also not a cure for Lyme.
	But they will help on a very foundational level.
	Right.
	And then often, once you get rid of all the smoke, you can actually see where the fire is.
	And then you can do a targeted therapy if you need it, yeah?
	Okay.
	And you can move on.
	Because some patients, they do have Bartonella.
	Bartonella is like a stealth disease that's there, yeah?
	In fact, recently I was at a conference and a scientist who was researching Bartonella.
	She showed me or showed us pictures of...
	It was an IV catheter that had been inserted.
	It was into her son.
	He had Bartonella.
	He'd had an IV catheter inserted and was getting antibiotic therapy for Bartonella.
	And when they removed the catheter, she examined the catheter under the microscope and found Bartonella stuck all around it.
	Which I thought was kind of an amazing thing.
	What does that mean?
	Well, it was just so resistant to the therapy that it was there.
	I always see what you mean.
	But what I mean is, yes, we do have to address certain things, but I don't like to address them right at the beginning because there's so much going on.
	It's better to not worry about that right now, get the basics done, and then we can see kind of the individual things that need to be done afterwards.
	Definitely when I went to your clinic, my immune system was shot.
	What's the count, the thing that marks your immune system?
	Oh, look at white blood count, typically.
	Yeah.
	But there were some initials, three letters.
	My APT count?
	No, I don't know.
	Anyway, whatever it was...
	When I arrived, it was one level, and by the time I left, it had quadrupled, which suggests that...
	Because obviously I've been doing a lot of...
	Apart from talking to your people, I've been reading up a lot about this on the internet, as Lyme patients tend to do.
	And it seems to me that it's...
	That individually, these things like Bartonella, we're exposed to them all the time.
	It's only when...
	The Borrelia seems to act as a kind of battering ram.
	And all its mates come in with it.
	And they kind of batter your immune system to buggery.
	I think that's the technical term.
	And then you're fucked, basically.
	That's it.
	Forever.
	Unless you can...
	Unless you can restore your immunity.
	Right.
	I think you need kind of a perfect storm.
	So there needs to be kind of some stress to the cells.
	So, I mean, even our lifestyle, a lot of people just don't get enough sleep.
	They're not having a healthy diet, things like that.
	And just the physical stress of life stresses the cells.
	I think you need your immune system to be damaged through something.
	Yeah.
	And then you need the famous dick bite or the infection to come.
	And when those three come together, that's when you're kind of toasting.
	So is your theory, because this is kind of my theory, that 10 people can get bitten by the same tick and not all of them will get infected?
	Yes.
	And that's not just theory.
	I mean, we see it with families.
	You know, they'll go on a camping holiday together and get tick bites.
	And two of them will get Lyme and the rest won't.
	And so there's definitely an intrinsic factor.
	There's a factor somehow inside your body that decides, is this infection going to take hold of you and mess you up?
	Or can you recover like you would from a normal infection?
	So how did you get into this whole thing?
	Tell me briefly about your career path.
	Yeah, well, originally I was seeing patients that just had that chronic mystery disease.
	So remember back in the 90s, it was CFS, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia.
	No one was really sure what it was.
	It was something debilitating.
	Many patients just couldn't live normally anymore.
	They couldn't work anymore.
	They were just in this bad state and no one could really find out what was going on.
	I had a very close friend of mine too.
	She fell up the stairs and hurt her wrists, but that didn't get better.
	And then the pain spread to the elbows, spread to the shoulders, spread all over her body.
	And then she ended up being in bed for six months with this mystery, you know, we don't quite know what's wrong.
	It seems that something's wrong with your connective tissue.
	And these are the typical patients I was seeing at the beginning.
	Right.
	And because...
	But you're not a medical doctor.
	What were you seeing these people as?
	Yeah, I'm a naturopathic doctor, so I've seen these patients in that role.
	And it was just difficult to get a diagnosis.
	And then back then also Dr Klinghart came out and said, you know what, Lyme's going to be the next pandemic.
	And the German government actually then announced sometime in the mid-90s that every tick in the country has Lyme disease in it.
	And that's when the focus shifted towards Lyme.
	So the question was, do these people have this chronic mystery disease?
	Do they maybe have Lyme disease?
	And that's how I kind of slipped into that realm.
	So you've spotted a sort of pandemic about to erupt.
	Yes, most definitely.
	And good luck to you.
	I mean, you spotted an opportunity because even now there's not many people giving a toss about this disease, are there?
	I mean, anywhere in the medical world.
	Yeah, and I understand why because it's a very difficult disease.
	First of all, it's very difficult to define.
	It's not like, you know, if you have triple negative breast cancer, you know exactly what you're dealing with.
	But with Lyme disease, it comes from a tick bite.
	So, you know, it can be Borrelia, but it could be a lot of other things.
	It's so mixed that it's very, very difficult to define.
	And that makes it very difficult to define exact treatment paths.
	Especially if we can get into the world of insurance, health insurance.
	Health insurance likes a diagnosis with a code, and that code triggers these different treatments that are also coded.
	But if you can't get that exact diagnosis, you can't get the exact paradigm for all the treatments.
	So it puts it in this grey area that's really difficult to deal with.
	And then we see patients too, they're desperate.
	Doctors don't quite know what to do and that really upsets the doctor-patient relationship as well.
	So many doctors want to be very, very hands-off and, oh, I don't want to deal with these crazy people and that just compounds this whole problematic situation.
	It's interesting because I'm torn here.
	I mean, there's a part of me that goes...
	Allopathic medicine, you know, traditional, when you go to see your NHS doctor or whatever, that's the medicine that works and everything else is kind of airy-fairy, quackery.
	And part of me thinks, well, actually...
	The mainstream medicine appears to have failed in this area, and there seem to be...
	You look at countries like Germany, which are much more ahead of the game on naturopathy and these kind of alternative things, and homeopathy again.
	Where are you in homeopathy, by the way?
	I'm not the world's biggest fan of homeopathy, I must say.
	I think it might have a place in some treatments and I see that some therapies do really well with it.
	It's something that I don't really deeply understand and that's why I don't really use it in my therapies.
	Part of me thinks anything that's not kind of regular medicine is complete bollocks and part of me thinks, well, Actually, you know, for example, vets giving homeopathic remedies to cows.
	The cows don't know they're being given...
	Exactly.
	I think everything has some merit.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	So, naturopathy.
	Just what is it?
	Well, I mean, I guess it's kind of using traditional natural forms of healing.
	So these can be, you know, plant extracts and things like that, using vitamins, using minerals.
	So using natural things to help support health, I guess.
	So the stuff that druids would have used and the stuff that in kind of Latin America and stuff and Africa, they still use.
	And there were definitely all these plants and things which do have...
	Very powerful effects.
	I suppose you could argue that the whole of the medical marijuana industry is a form of naturopathy, is it?
	Yeah, I guess it is.
	But I think also many of the modern drugs that we have, they are based on plant extracts.
	So it's not that modern medicine doesn't look at that as well.
	But I think there's a very traditional thing there.
	I think, too, in Germany, what makes this very prominent is Germany is just simply the situation after the Second World War.
	Because, you know, in Germany, I mean, Germany was destroyed after the war.
	So they had no medicines?
	There were no men there.
	Most of them had died, yeah.
	And then the doctors, they were very, very scarce.
	So the German law actually allowed any natural healers, people that had been involved in it.
	To have, you know, almost like a medical qualification.
	And they were allowed to treat people.
	They had to do an examination, but they were allowed to treat people.
	And I think this is why this tradition is very deeply rooted still in Germany, because this situation was only, you know, 60 years ago.
	And that's why it's still very prominent in Germany.
	I didn't know that.
	I sort of, I mean, call me a hippie, call me a fool, but I'm increasingly of the view that maybe you naturopaths aren't such a bunch of loons.
	I mean, what's the training you have to go through as a naturopath?
	Well, Germany is a little bit different because, as I said, after the war, they basically told naturopaths, look, we need you now because we have no doctors.
	So they had to regulate how naturopaths were.
	It wasn't just a matter of, hey, if you know how to do something, go treat people.
	So they made a provision, a law was put in place where the naturopaths had to go and do an examination with the state to prove that they weren't a danger to the general population.
	So that examination included that they could recognize kind of the The typical diseases, you know, heart disease, diabetes, they can definitely recognize those and diagnose them.
	Yeah.
	They can recognize infectious diseases because these are all very, very strictly regulated by law.
	Who's allowed to treat infectious diseases and how?
	So they have to be able to see those and things like that.
	And they were never really tested on their method, but they had to have knowledge.
	And so...
	Have you done a kind of naturopath's exam or whatever?
	Yeah, I had to do the exam.
	It's actually a very difficult exam.
	So, officially, you could just go and do the examination, yeah?
	But if you did that, you wouldn't pass.
	I mean, you really do.
	Usually, naturopaths go to school for three, maybe even four years.
	Yeah.
	To study up for this examination to be able to pass.
	What, a university course or what?
	How does it work?
	Yeah, there's special schools where you go to do this.
	So it's a very rigorous exam.
	First of all, there's a written exam that you have to pass.
	You might pass that.
	If you're very, very clever and read the books and things, you might get through that.
	But then there's the oral exam, which is a personal exam with the doctor who's in charge of the state.
	He will sit there and grill you with a team.
	And his job, he can pass or fail you.
	It doesn't matter what you did in your written exam.
	So he basically judges, is this person ready to go or not?
	And the key thing is that you're not a danger to society.
	You're not a danger to the population.
	And that's what's examined.
	But then, once you have that examination, you're now allowed to practice medicine, but then the law says you cannot do anything for which you haven't been trained for.
	This is where you have to go back to school now and you learn infusion therapy.
	Any treatment that you need to do, you need to go to the college courses and get that certification.
	So where we think of naturopaths as being homeopathy, it's really not that.
	You can really go into medicine, you can practice real medicine, but you have to have done all these courses.
	So it's just the same as a doctor.
	If I want to do ultrasound examination, I have to have my ultrasound certification.
	If I want to do IV therapy, I have to have my certification, my phrobotomy certification.
	So it's actually very, very strictly regulated what you can do.
	So naturopathy is bigger in Germany.
	I mean, in the UK, it's pretty much non-existent, isn't it?
	It's true, yeah.
	And I'm not quite sure if it's regulated in the UK for naturopathic treatments.
	I don't know how that is.
	So there's going to be people in the UK just going to be thinking, well, I don't know about it, so it's going to be crap.
	I mean, suppose there was a typhoid outbreak.
	I mean...
	You'd probably be wanting whatever drugs they use for typhoid.
	You wouldn't be thinking, where's the nearest naturopath?
	No, that's right.
	And also in Germany, a naturopath wouldn't be allowed to treat that.
	That would have to go into standard medicine because that is the official way to treat it.
	So, obviously, I'm most interested in the Lyme disease because I've got a strong vested interest in naturopathy and stuff.
	Tell me about the theory of...
	So, okay, so going back, you had mates who had Lyme disease or symptoms like it, and you thought, this is a growth area, and how did you then go about finding ways of curing it, or even knowing that they were?
	Well, I think...
	How kind of the Lyme patients came in is just because I was treating patients without a definite diagnosis.
	And any Lyme patient will tell you getting a diagnosis is almost the most difficult thing.
	See, there's a lot of false negatives that come up.
	I think a lot of people that have all these syndromes may not even have Lyme disease.
	And that's why people like the CDC say, you know, there's no such thing as chronic Lyme disease.
	I think on a scientific level, they're probably right to make that statement because they can't categorise it within the scientific parameters that we're used to dealing with.
	I've had that a lot.
	There's some very angry people out there who actually come and harass you online and things.
	Yes.
	Chronic Lyme disease doesn't exist.
	You are pushing it.
	But surely it's down to the definition of what chronic Lyme disease is.
	And that's exactly what it is.
	So I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it comes down to the definition.
	Fortunately and unfortunately, medicine has very clear definitions of what is what and how a diagnosis is made and how you formulate treatments.
	And Lyme just falls outside of that.
	And that's why it's so difficult.
	So this is the group of patients that kind of started to come into my clinic just simply because I was treating patients that didn't have a diagnosis.
	So that's kind of how we specialized in looking at that.
	And so I said, okay, rather than doing the typical paradigm of medicine, you have a diagnosis, this is the treatment.
	Let's start on a foundational level.
	So let's just fix the basics.
	Fix the immune system, get that going.
	And these are parameters we can measure.
	So do a blood test.
	We see the immune system's all messed up.
	We re-establish a healthy ratio of the immune cells.
	So the immune system's working.
	We know it can kill off bugs.
	And so we don't need to know what bugs.
	It will kill off bugs.
	Same with the cellular terrain.
	There's parameters that we can look at in labs and see the cells working correctly.
	If they're not working correctly, we can fix this.
	So we can, through IVs, we can put things in the cell.
	It sounds very easy.
	It's not just a matter of, you know, just hook you up on a Myers cocktail and you're going to be good, yeah?
	Yeah.
	There's very, very kind of strict physiological things that you have to look at.
	For example, when we look at cells, we know when they get into a hypoxic state, so let's say through inflammation, or we see this in cancer too, they're in a hypoxic state.
	So there's not enough oxygen for the cell, yeah?
	This means that the glucose that goes into the cell cannot really be metabolized by the cell.
	Right.
	Yeah?
	So that glucose now turns into kind of lactic acid, which lays around the outside of the cell.
	Because the cell's not being fed, the Krebs cycle, which is in the cell, which is actually the motor that keeps the cell alive, slows down.
	So the whole metabolism of the cell starts to fall apart.
	So the cell can no longer function correctly.
	So this isn't fixed by a quick Myers and a quick this and a quick glutathione and you're going to be fine.
	You have to go, when you're restoring the cell function, you have to do certain steps.
	So for example, we give something, let's say we give DCA. We know DCA can be transferred straight to pyruvate.
	So if the cell is not metabolizing glucose, we can actually put the fuel into the cell through DCA and this will kickstart The Krebs cycle within the cell.
	So we can kickstart the metabolism.
	So we can go around that.
	Then we can give things that neutralize the acid around the cell.
	Because if there's an acid environment around the cell, the cell just closes down.
	And this is just because the electrical charge is different outside of the cell and in.
	So the cell membrane is now closed.
	That means the cell can't take up nutrients.
	It can't release toxins.
	So if we neutralise that acid around, suddenly we've now got a cell that can get rid of all the toxins that are inside and be fed.
	Right.
	And this is where you can now start to give minerals and things like that to the cell.
	But if you don't do that beforehand, it just doesn't help.
	So this is why people are always banging on about an alkaline...
	Environment, body environment.
	Right.
	Which again, you know, you think, oh, take some baking soda and you're going to be fine.
	It doesn't work that way either.
	Yeah.
	So just like putting baking soda in the bloodstream, your bloodstream can compensate for that.
	So it's not actually even going to get to the cell.
	Right.
	So this is where we need very specialized things to actually get to the cell on that cellular level to neutralize the acid.
	But this sounds like way beyond plants and herbal things.
	Definitely.
	And this is what I'm saying.
	Naturopathy, you think of it just being, you know, let's make you a tea and give you a compound of this and this.
	It's not.
	This is high science.
	So where do you discover this stuff?
	This is research that's there.
	So we have PhDs that work with us.
	We sit down and we research certain things and self-function things and look for ways that we can influence it.
	Right.
	And this is what we're doing in Fusio.
	So even though we're naturopathic doctors, but we really are scientists of what we're doing.
	And this is important.
	So once we start to fix the cell, of course, the cell is going to start to detox.
	Again, that's another thing.
	People think of detox, you know, they think of these toxic substances oozing through their body.
	Detox is just metabolic waste.
	So that might just be salt that's coming out of the cell.
	So it's not really toxic per se, but if it's in the wrong place...
	It's going to disturb the cell function.
	Yeah.
	So the detox pathways that we open are basically, you know, we're normalizing the cell function and making sure the cell can just get rid of the waste, the metabolic waste that needs to come out.
	So that might be supporting the kidneys, might be supporting the liver, but it's also kind of within the cell matrix we've got to do things there to help the cells rid themselves of this metabolic waste.
	And so when you...
	So after you've...
	The patient's been to your clinic and had all these potions like Myers Cocktail.
	What's Myers Cocktail?
	Well, Myers Cocktail is just kind of vitamin C with some minerals and other vitamins.
	Yeah.
	Which is, I mean, it seems weird that such a thing could be effective, but it is quite widely used for cancer treatment and...
	Yeah, again, I don't think it's a magic potion, but put together with other things, it can be effective, yes.
	So after you've done that, you then take some stem cells from, well, you took some stem cells from the fatty tissue in my lower back, and then you, am I right in thinking the stem cells are inert at that stage?
	Yeah.
	And then you put them in, you shake them up and clean them up.
	What do you do?
	Well, let me just go a step before that.
	So as I was explaining before, once we've kind of sorted out the cellular terrain, the cells themselves have defense mechanisms.
	So cells can, they can release certain proteins or peptides that will get rid of any microbes that are within the cell.
	So this is why it's so important for us to get the cells healthy so they can defend themselves as well.
	So if you think we've got the immune system that can now attack microbes, we've got the cells that can defend themselves and they work well, these are all the prerequisites to get rid of any kind of bugs that are there.
	So again, we're not targeting anything, but we're optimizing the terrain to make it very unfriendly for any bugs to live within that terrain.
	So that's kind of how our approach is at the moment.
	So that's when I say to you, it's not so important what's wrong with you, It's just simply because we change the terrain and make it very, very difficult for anything to survive there.
	When it comes to the stem cells, I mean, stem cells, they're not a cure for disease.
	I don't think they're a cure for Lyme or a cure for Bartonella or anything like that.
	But stem cells are there because they can repair cell functions.
	Stem cells are just cells that can become anything and they can trigger other cells to do things that they should.
	So we have stem cells that are stored in our fat tissue and that's why we take some of the stem cells from the fat.
	What we do, though, is not just use stem cells.
	We produce something called stromovascular fraction, which is a mix of stem cells and other proteins and cytokines and anti-inflammatory things.
	So there's all kinds of signals in that, which is like grandma's chicken soup.
	It's got some really good basic things in there that just help.
	So we can take that from the fat, we extract it from the fat, and then we put that into the bloodstream.
	Now, studies have shown that patients who have a chronic illness, if we measure the amount of circulating stem cells in their bloodstream, it's often very low.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So we think of the fact stem cells are there to repair, but if you don't have enough available, you're not going to get that cell repair going on.
	So basically your body is going to go into kind of a state of demise because the cells aren't being repaired the way they should be.
	Yeah.
	So what we do, and so studies indicate that patients who have chronic disease have lost the ability to mobilize their stem cells from the reserves.
	Yeah.
	Or that ability has been impaired, let's say.
	Yeah.
	So what we do is take some of those cells out of the reserve, put them into the bloodstream.
	Now they're mobilized.
	The first thing that these cells do is basically die off and mobilize.
	All the things that they release mobilize these cells now out of the reserves.
	So we basically fix the problem that you can't mobilize your own stem cells.
	And once that's been fixed, then you have access to all those stem cells that can then go in and do what they should be doing.
	Do you have a...
	Do I have a limited supply of stem cells in my body?
	I mean, in the fat, is there only so much there and after that they're all gone?
	Yeah, there is a limited supply within the fat, but again, your body can produce more stem cells.
	So the bone marrow makes stem cells, and then these can be stored.
	And that's also part of our treatment.
	We stimulate the...
	The way the body can produce stem cells.
	So by using laser and other things that we're doing, we're actually stimulating the production of stem cells as well that's there.
	Because what I'm thinking is, you know, in 20 years time, if I need more stem cells for whatever medical technology has improved, I don't want to have run out.
	I'm not going to run out.
	I don't think you're going to run out, no.
	And even super skinny people, because say if someone comes...
	I'm not very fat.
	I know, yeah.
	The amount of stem cells in the fat are just more concentrated.
	So let's say someone is very voluptuously built, let's say, yeah, we can take out some fat, but then there'll be less stem cells just because the concentration is less.
	Everybody has about the same amount of stem cells in the fat.
	Okay.
	So, we don't know when, because I've now had stem cells for my fat and ACT, which is what?
	Yeah.
	So, with ACT, basically what we're taking is we take some blood and we spin it down, and within that we can get a layer of cells that are very specific to the immune system.
	So, these cells are called PBMCs.
	It's very similar to a stem cell.
	And also there's some immune cells there.
	Because again, my theory is we don't know exactly what bugs have been in your body.
	So I can't do like a selective therapy to treat this bug and that bug and that bug.
	But your immune system knows that.
	It's already produced antibodies to whatever's infected you.
	So if I can take those cells that contain those signals and activate them, Now you've got like a vaccine.
	Now you've got a whole army of cells that know exactly what they can do and they can go and move in and kill off even more bugs.
	So at the moment, as I mentioned to you before we started the interview, I've been through a kind of sort of slight relapse phase.
	And inevitably I've been thinking, well, oh my God, it's not going to work.
	I'm stuffed.
	Yeah.
	How can you reassure me that something's going to happen?
	Well, that's very common.
	And we actually try and warn our patients before.
	If I'm doing the goodbye speech with the patients, I'll tell them, look, you're going to go home now and probably be disappointed because you've been here two weeks and you don't really feel any different when you go home.
	And then you've got that disappointment because all your friends and family have been rooting for you.
	They have.
	They do.
	And then you get home and they're expecting you to be like, ah, and you're not.
	Yeah.
	And then that disappointment hits.
	We know that's going to happen, yeah?
	Because really with the cell therapy that we give you at the end of your stay with us, that's the beginning, yeah?
	to really do what they need to do.
	So we often find after about four to six weeks is when people start to feel somewhat better.
	Yeah, so those cells are kind of doing what they're doing, they're relieving the inflammation, things like that and working.
	But then you go through an adaptive stage where things need to be adjusted.
	So that might be your hormone levels might go up and down a little bit.
	Your neurotransmitters might go up and down a bit.
	There might be some inflammation that's produced because certain cells need to be broken down before they can be reproduced and things.
	So this all triggers symptoms.
	I can give you a story.
	Well, not a story.
	It's a scientific experiment that was done.
	And this was a study on rats.
	Yeah.
	And with rats, they induced a heart attack on the rats by tying off one of the little arteries that go to the heart.
	And then they gave the rat stromovascular fraction, so stem cells, to see how this would affect the heart, how this would affect the rat.
	So the rat's still alive.
	What they saw is after giving the stromovascular fraction, immediately the blood pressure dropped for the rat.
	The area around where the damage was went into a state of kind of hibernation.
	The rest of the heart started to pump more vigorously.
	So with that basically it secured that the rat could survive.
	So the damaged area was just kind of put to sleep.
	The non-damaged areas were doing more work to compensate and the blood pressure was dropped so there wasn't so much pressure on the heart.
	So basically that state was preserved.
	Now if you were that rat, how would you have felt?
	Really, really low blood pressure and your heart pounding.
	You don't feel good.
	But then, when you observe what happened over the weeks, a whole network of capillaries grew over the damaged area.
	When that was set up, the area woke up, any cells that didn't wake up, that weren't replaced, let's say, by the stem cells and didn't wake up, were broken down.
	So what we saw, there was a whole system that happened, and it happened over weeks to fix that area.
	So the same thing now through translational medicine, when we give you stem cells, certain things are going to happen within you.
	In order to facilitate what the stem cells need to do.
	So this might be blood pressure up, blood pressure down, hormones up, hormones down.
	But that's something you're going to go through.
	So you're going to feel that.
	You're going to experience that.
	So if your testosterone's up, you might be all kind of aggressive.
	If suddenly estrogens are up for some reason, you're going to be all kind of teary.
	These are the fluctuations that you go through.
	And then inflammation is a major issue.
	So sometimes to break down damaged cells before they can be repaired, we need inflammation.
	And inflammation can hurt.
	Inflammation can trigger all kinds of things.
	It can trigger neurological symptoms.
	It can trigger discomfort.
	It can do all kinds of things with you.
	So all of this is going on during this time.
	Yeah.
	And we know that happens.
	So we call this the adaptive phase.
	Yeah.
	And typically that starts to kind of calm down a little bit after about three to four months.
	Right.
	At that stage is when we like to go in and give ACT, which is basically kind of the immune boost to tail patients.
	Yeah.
	So you might feel good for a couple of weeks after ACT, and then a lot of patients do not feel good afterwards.
	Yeah.
	And I think that's kind of where you're dipped that you're going from.
	Look, loads and loads of people are going to be listening to this thing.
	It's going to be out there on the internet.
	And Lyme is...
	You know what we're like.
	We have...
	We're like sharks to blood on any scrap of hope, any information, whatever.
	And some of them are going to be thinking, well, this is the answer to my prayers.
	And others are going to be saying, this is absolute bollocks.
	And you know, there are these forums on Facebook and stuff where people say, people slagging you off saying it's just complete con.
	Right, right.
	I can tell you, I haven't looked at those forums and the reason is I don't want to depress myself.
	Because I know what it's like.
	Right.
	If I went on there, I would read this stuff and I'd be thinking, it's over.
	I've just, you know, it's been a complete waste of time.
	Well, I'm the same too.
	If I read that stuff, I think, what am I doing?
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	So tell me about those.
	What...
	What do you say to them?
	Well, we try and tell our patients, look, be patient.
	This isn't a magic bullet.
	Yeah.
	This is a process that we're putting in place.
	It's not like, you know, you have an infection, I give you antibiotics, 10 days later it's gone.
	Yeah.
	They even tried that with a Lyme, you know, I give you antibiotics, it's not gone.
	You're in this chronic state.
	I know.
	Just briefly there, I mean, there are places which specialise in giving heavy duty antibiotics, I mean, intravenously for a period of, like, three months.
	Yes, sure.
	I don't want to diss these, because they may have some success, but the impression I get is that past a certain stage, antibiotics aren't that effective.
	It's true, it's tricky.
	They don't always work the way they should work, and that also has to do with how Lyme affects the immune system, and we can talk about that a little bit too in a minute.
	So it doesn't always work.
	Also, we have these stealth diseases like Bartonella that can be quite resistant to antibiotics simply.
	I told you about the catheter the IV patient was getting there.
	The actual catheter where the antibiotic was going through was covered in Bartonella.
	It's shocking when you see that.
	So a lot of them are just simply resistant to that thing.
	I mean, that is definitely a course of treatment that some patients can consider, and I think some patients do well on that course of treatment.
	But that's not the course of treatment that I offer.
	So we're looking for a different course.
	So I interrupted you when you were defending yourself against all your critics, and I think it's important that you answer them.
	Yeah, so definitely.
	So as I say, this isn't a magic bullet.
	It's a process that we have to go through.
	For example, what we're now seeing in the medical world, and we've seen this, we've been to several conferences this year that we've been to, the major issue that Many, many, many doctors are having, and not just in the Lyme world, is there's suddenly been this appearance of inflammatory disease with patients.
	So we were recently in a conference in Las Vegas that was more geared towards plastic surgeons and people like that, yeah?
	Yeah.
	The major issue for them is suddenly these patients are having these inflammatory reactions after their surgery and their nice little facelift with their tidy, tidy little sutures suddenly all getting inflamed and we have scarring, yeah?
	This is a major problem that we're seeing.
	So inflammatory disease is becoming a problem.
	And what we've seen with our Lyme patients, and even the Lyme doctors and scientists researching this are actually indicating that maybe Lyme is not the actual problem.
	That maybe these patients that develop this full-blown Lyme disease actually have an underlying kind of malfunction of their immune cells.
	So we call this mast cell activation syndrome.
	So the mast cells that control kind of the inflammation flare-ups are there.
	They're saying that maybe they already have an underlying defect there, but these cells then react inappropriately.
	And when you speak to Lyme patients, a lot of them have these inflammatory syndromes.
	They eat things and they can't tolerate their food, or they have the brain fog, or when they go into cold suddenly, they can't bear the cold and the heat, they can't bear the heat.
	These are all typical inflammatory things or arthritic symptoms.
	It's all related to inflammation and related to the mast cells.
	So the indication is maybe that these patients that get this chronic Lyme actually is an underlying malfunction of the mast cells rather than the actual Lyme disease.
	Can you deal with that?
	We can deal with that.
	And this is what we've seen.
	So we've had a whole group of patients that they've been through our whole program and they feel worse at the end.
	So obviously there's something we've got to address and we've been addressing this.
	So we've set up a system where the patient can get in touch with us and we do certain blood tests and look at them.
	Amazingly...
	Most patients that get back to us, and we work with army labs, for example, to run specific labs.
	We look at Ellispot and other things.
	Amazingly, their Lyme, which was positive before, is now negative.
	They're not having a positive Lyme test.
	So really, we can say, hey, we've done our job.
	You came to us for Lyme.
	Lyme's gone.
	But they're worse.
	They're not feeling good.
	Which, first of all, is the proof that Lyme is not necessarily the thing that's making you feel so groggy.
	But then it's moving us to look at other things.
	Now, I'll go into science a little bit.
	So, about a year and a half ago, Dr.
	Nicole Baumgart, she's actually a veterinarian, so she works in veterinary research.
	She published a paper about Lyme disease and how it adapts your immune system.
	And one of the things she says is that when you have a Borrelia infection, it goes into the lymph glands and it stops your body producing certain immune globulins.
	So immune globulins are there.
	Basically what they are are antibodies that attach to the Lyme and neutralize it.
	So we have different kinds of immune globulins.
	So typically when you get an infection, it goes into the blood and then we see on the labs, we see what's called immune globulin M will go up.
	So any doctor knows this.
	They'll look and say, oh, immune globulin is that?
	You have an acute infection.
	So let's say this happens with your Lyme.
	So it gives you antibiotics.
	But then the next stage, after immune globulin M, usually infection moves into the tissue.
	And the tissue has its own immune globulin called immune globulin G. So in a typical infection, we'll see the M go up, it'll go down slightly, and then the G goes up.
	This is the typical thing that we see.
	But Borrelia actually blocks the production of immune globulin G. So the M will go up, the doctor gives antibiotics, the M goes back down, and the G doesn't go up.
	So the doctor says, hey, I've treated you.
	That was a successful antibiotic treatment.
	But actually it's not.
	The Lyme has now moved into the tissue, but there's no immune response within the tissue.
	There's no IgG there.
	And that's why Lyme can just proliferate there and stay there.
	If the tissue is now not really producing enough IgG, then other things move in.
	Epstein-Barr will move in and cytomegalia and all these kind of viruses, they move into the tissue and can proliferate there.
	Because there's no immune function.
	So you've just given me the medical description, something that I've sort of intuited, which is that it's the battering ram thing.
	Right, exactly.
	That's exactly it.
	So it kind of takes out that defense.
	Now what we've seen with our patients where we've reviewed them, and we've seen this with just about every patient that's been through our program, we suddenly see the IgG shoot up after cell therapy.
	So the IgG typically goes to a level of about 600, goes to about 800, and in some patients goes up to about 1,000 and stays there.
	So what we've actually done, we were wondering why is this suddenly happening, yeah?
	But what we found is that we've actually kind of fixed the function of the IgG.
	So now we've restored the body's ability to produce IgG.
	So remember stem cells, they're not a specific treatment, but they restore functions within the body.
	Now this function has been restored.
	So now we have IgG, which is great because then this immune globulin can bind all those bugs basically that are in the tissue and bring them down.
	And this is why we're seeing that Testing for Lyme is coming back negative because actually it's a successful immune response to what's been there.
	But now we have a problem.
	If somebody has underlying mast cell issues, so this inappropriate function of mast cells, the things that mast cells hate is immune globulin G. It will trigger the mast cells.
	So these patients go into this massive inflammatory state.
	Great.
	What makes it worse as well is that the stem cells, actually, if you have any neurological problems or a neurological repair needs to happen, the breakdown of the nerve cells and the rebuilding of the nerve cells triggers the production of more mast cells.
	And some studies indicate that if you go through that process, your mast cells will multiply by about 10 times.
	So let's say you had wonky cells already, now you've got 10 times the amount of wonky cells, and then suddenly you've got the immune globulin G hitting those wonky cells and triggering them all, you're going to feel horrible after the whole treatment.
	So of course you feel much worse, but you've traded one thing for another.
	So I liken this to when you do cancer.
	You go to a doctor, you have a tumor, and you want that tumor to be gone.
	You're prepared to go through chemotherapy, surgery, radiation.
	So you're prepared for someone to cut you open and go through all that pain.
	And then they blast you with radiation.
	You have all these burns.
	You do your chemotherapy.
	Your hair falls out.
	You have neuropathy.
	But your tumor's gone.
	You go and shake the doctor's hand and say, Oh, my tumor's gone.
	Thank you.
	And then you can deal with the rest afterwards.
	And you kind of swap one thing for another.
	And this is kind of what we've done here.
	So we can address the Lyme issues.
	But now you're going to...
	If you have...
	You know, mast cells that don't work properly, you're going to be in a horrible inflammatory state afterwards.
	Oh, great.
	So what's the answer?
	And this is where we need to come in and treat that.
	And we can get them, yeah?
	The tricky thing with mast cells is they trigger each other.
	So mast cells are triggered by hundreds of different things, yeah?
	And so once one cell starts, it can trigger the next, and that triggers the next, and then it snowballs out of control.
	Oh my god, this doesn't sound good.
	No, it doesn't sound good, yeah.
	And it's not good unless you know how to kind of intervene in that.
	So we've found ways now where we can break that inflammatory cycle, yeah?
	And that calms down the mast cells.
	And what is it?
	This is where we use exosomes, and this is something we've been experimenting with for quite some time.
	Exosomes are the signals that stem cells send out, or all cells send out exosomes, yeah?
	Yeah.
	In this case, we're taking exosomes from stem cells.
	So we're taking actually stem cells from placenta.
	So these are the youngest, youngest, youngest stem cells.
	We stimulate them and produce exosomes, the signals from these stem cells.
	And we take these signals and we can give them to patients.
	Now these signals, the exosomes themselves, they're absorbed by the cells.
	So the exosome, it contains lots of anti-inflammatory proteins, but it also contains RNA, which is basically the recipe to produce these proteins.
	And so the exosome, we can insert it into, let's say, a mast cell that's out of control.
	First of all, that protein will calm down the cell, but then the cell now has the programming to produce its own calming process.
	That sounds really good.
	So essentially you are a work in progress.
	You're trying to feel your way through this.
	Yes.
	So where we have a lot of patients that actually react really well to therapy and don't go into that state.
	We see there is about a 20% group that do go into that state.
	And that actually fits with national statistics or international statistics about people with mast cell...
	Mass cell disease is about 20% of the population.
	So this actually fits, the model fits.
	But we know we can intervene in that and we can calm down the mast cells.
	That also doesn't mean you're magically cured because there's still, you know, some patients might still have underlying allergies.
	Some people have just genetic problems that...
	Prevent them, let's say, from detoxing mold toxins and things like that.
	But then now you can identify them.
	We've got rid of all the smoke and you can say, okay, this is your issue.
	You've got to avoid mold.
	You are gluten intolerant.
	We can find specific things.
	Yes.
	And that helps to calm things down.
	For example, we see a lot of patients have, within the methylation cycle, they have a problem that's called CBS, which is a certain cycle within the methylation.
	If that is going too fast, These patients, you know, they go into an inflammatory state very easily.
	First of all, they produce lots of ammonia.
	If ammonia is not broken down, that causes all kinds of head issues.
	It causes all kinds of cognitive issues, anxiety, that feeling of doom.
	Yeah, it's typical for ammonia.
	Oh my God, you reminded me.
	The itchy arse.
	Exactly, yeah.
	Oh my god.
	I mean, I don't want to upset people listening to this, but I'm afraid to say that I did have this...
	It's actually not so bad now.
	No, it's probably getting better, yeah.
	But I had this terrible thing where I would wake up about four in the morning...
	With the itchiest arse imaginable.
	Yeah, and that can be ammonia.
	And ammonia.
	And that's produced by?
	Well, it's usually produced by the breakdown of proteins.
	Yeah, so let's say if your gut's not working properly, you have the wrong kind of bacteria in there, they're not breaking down the protein correctly, a lot of ammonia is just simply produced.
	And if your CBS cycle is not working properly, again, a lot of ammonia is being produced and not being broken down correctly.
	Right.
	So that's where we have to intervene and help support the CBS cycle and break down the ammonia.
	So giving something like ornithin, which is an amino acid, we know that the body needs ammonia to break down the ornithin.
	So we can get rid of the ammonia from that side.
	If the CBS is not working properly, your homocysteine levels are going to go up, which also trigger inflammation.
	Yeah, so these are things that we need to look at as well, and we're seeing these are very, very common with the patients, that we need to kind of support these areas as well.
	Why do you think this epidemic, or pandemic, I hate to use that word, it's wrong, but this apparent sudden awareness of inflammation as a global problem, is it just because it's always been there, people have become more aware of it, or do you think something is causing inflammation, something about the Western lifestyle?
	I think something is causing inflammation.
	I think it might be environmental factors.
	It might have something to do with our food.
	In fact, there was a very interesting paper published, I think it was last year, and it was just kind of a byproduct of an experiment.
	So it was a scientist that needed krill for an experiment.
	And krill feed on plankton.
	So what he did is stimulate the plankton because he needed large amounts of plankton.
	So the plankton would grow fast to feed the krill.
	He had massive amounts of plankton, but all the krill died.
	And when he looked into it, he found that the expansion of the plankton, the speed of where it was being produced at, actually reduced the quality of the plankton such that it couldn't support life.
	And he concluded that maybe we've reached that tipping point already in society, that the quality of the food that we have is no longer adequate to support life.
	And this is why we're seeing this sudden outbreak of all these different, you know, immune problems and things of people.
	Interesting.
	So hence this obsession with organic food, to try and recreate the food of our ancestors.
	Yes, yeah.
	But again, there we've got problems.
	I mean, in the US we have the big Monsanto thing, yeah?
	So...
	Sometimes if you insert certain things into a plant to let's say make it more resistant to bugs so you don't need to spray it, it can be labelled organic but now that plant maybe has more lectins or more gluten or more something in it that it should have.
	So when we consume it, it's going to trigger problems in our system.
	So the green revolution Which enabled us to feed our growing populations by developing these better strains of wheat, more disease-resistant, may possibly be an explanation for...
	It may be.
	I think it's a little bit of a two-edged sword.
	So, yeah, we produce more food, we produce the food faster, but is the quality still in that food?
	Right.
	And even if we go to...
	We often talk about grass-fed beef and things like that, yeah?
	Yeah.
	The grass that the cow eats is still rained on by a polluted rain, and that pollution the cow eats and it concentrates it in its tissue.
	But I mean, now this is an area of my interest.
	I know that SO2, for example, is far smaller.
	It tends to be stripped out of the industrial process now.
	To the point where actually farmers have to put chemicals on their grass in order to give it the flavour that cows were used to.
	So, I mean, we've made great advances in dealing with pollution.
	Yes, definitely.
	But yeah, you're right.
	There must be something in the ether which is making us sick.
	Because it's everywhere.
	We see it mainly in the Western world, but we see that somehow there's a problem everywhere.
	Because, weirdly enough, before I knew I had Lyme disease, when I thought it was chronic fatigue, the only method that I found effective...
	Was, in reducing my chronic fatigue, was this breathing technique called Boteko.
	Boteko breathing, yes.
	Do you know about this?
	Yes.
	And, you know, Boteko was a Ukrainian doctor who theorised...
	He talked about diseases of civilisation, and these range from asthma to Crohn disease and stuff.
	And he noticed that these were on the increase.
	And his theory is that...
	Well, it's known that CO2... It acts as a catalyst to enable the oxygen in your body to be better absorbed.
	So he developed this breathing technique to increase your CO2 levels.
	And this really, really did help.
	It stopped me being a cripple, effectively.
	I could go back to playing with my children and taking exercise.
	I really couldn't for a time.
	So, I mean, that must be kind of on the level of the sort of thing that you're interested in as well.
	Yeah, most definitely.
	I mean, even this method we've employed with patients, we see it to treat anxiety, treat asthma, all kinds of things.
	Some patients react very well to that.
	Yeah.
	So as you see, this is so multifaceted.
	There's so many things.
	So I wish I had a kind of one-size-fits-all treatment and say, okay, let's do this and you're going to get better.
	It doesn't work like that.
	So what we have to do is basically, you know, we're trying to get rid of the smoke so that we can see the individual fires.
	Yeah.
	And unfortunately, it's just a process where we have to say, hang in there.
	Yeah.
	And we can, let's say we do our standard therapy and a large group of patients get better.
	There's still a group that's not better.
	Then we have to do something else.
	And of that, there's still going to be a group that doesn't get better.
	And then we do something else and there's still going to be a group that doesn't get better.
	But this is the step-by-step way we have to kind of go.
	But that's very tedious, especially if you're suffering.
	Tedious and frustrating.
	It's horrible.
	It's just like a living death.
	And there are many people out there who are far worse than me.
	What I want to do is to give them hope, but I don't want people to sit there saying, well, you didn't put the hard questions to him.
	I mean, it really matters to us because it's a matter of life and death.
	No, sure.
	And it matters to me too.
	And I really do understand the frustration.
	And that's where the social media comes in, in these groups.
	Yeah, yeah.
	What we often see is patients that get better, they leave the group.
	They don't want anything else.
	They don't want anything to do with that.
	So they move off.
	So you kind of concentrate the patients that are not doing well.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And that becomes a problem.
	Yeah.
	Our interest is really to help everybody if we can.
	I know we're not going to be able to help everybody, but I really do try and bend over backwards to really help these ones and individually get involved in their cases and see what can we work out for you as an individual.
	But it's a process.
	By the way, why haven't you got a clinic in the UK? It's something we have considered, working with doctors here.
	I think at some point we might consider that.
	I mean, the UK is quite restrictive.
	I was going to ask, is the stuff that you can do in Frankfurt that you can't do over here?
	Yeah, there's a lot that we can do in Frankfurt that we can't do over here.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah.
	I must say, Germany is kind of a paradise for any kind of, you know, out of the...
	Out of the standard realm treatment.
	The laws are very accommodating for us to even make medication for our patients.
	A lot of our IVs, we actually compound and make them ourselves, so we can actually individualize them.
	And this is not always possible in other countries.
	So here in the UK, we can't do that.
	In the US, you have to go to compounding pharmacy, but even those things still have to be FDA regulated.
	So it's not that I can say, I want something that has this much of this and this much of this in for that patient, but I want you to change it for that patient.
	There's standards that you have to adhere to.
	Whereas in Germany, I can basically go into my lab and mix whatever I want for that individual patient.
	It's funny, isn't it?
	You wouldn't have thought that of Germany.
	You'd think it would be kind of hyper-regulated and very strict and stuff.
	So, yeah.
	I mean, I am quite reckless, I must admit.
	And I didn't really sort of consider that there might have been any...
	I just thought, yeah, stem cells, potions, whoa, cool, cool, because, you know, throw stuff at it.
	But I imagine that there must be people on the kind of conventional medicine side of the argument who, like, hate you.
	Oh, definitely.
	Yeah.
	But at the same time, we really try and work with these doctors.
	So I don't believe in alternative medicine.
	Yeah.
	Alternative sounds like, you know, it's this or the alternative is that.
	Yeah.
	You go to a normal doctor or the alternative is this.
	And I think any branch of medicine that claims the absolute kind of authority is wrong.
	Yeah.
	I think everything has its good parts and its bad parts.
	So for me, it's important to act on an integrative way.
	So our approach is integrative.
	So We see a lot of cancer patients.
	You do.
	And you met them when you were there.
	Because briefly, because obviously Lyme isn't the only disease in the world and cancer is quite serious.
	And I did, I loved being with a cancer patient because I can see that...
	Like a lot of people, I think, before I hung out with cancer patients, I sort of thought, slightly like people look at lepers, you know, you almost don't want to...
	Right, yeah.
	You don't want to intrude on their pain, number one, but number two, there's a kind of element that they're sort of...
	Cancer is so scary.
	Yes, yeah.
	So why do you specialise in...
	Is there some sort of...
	I don't think there's a link between the patients, but between our methodology of how we approach this.
	That's where cancer patients can benefit.
	I don't think you're going to get better from cancer if I give you a quick vitamin C, IV and a few herbs from the garden.
	Cancer needs some serious medicine.
	But again, you need to combine things.
	So even in our naturopathic practice, we're associated with the university clinic.
	Our patients do receive chemotherapy, for example, some of them.
	But then it's not just standard, you know, put it in the vein.
	We'll do very targeted.
	We can do something called TAS, where we go in through an artery, through a catheter, and you can seal off the tumour and just put some drops of chemotherapy within the tumour.
	So you have a localised chemotherapy.
	And at the same time, then we can bring in our naturopathic knowledge and give supportive things so that you don't lose all your hair and have all these horrible symptoms going on at the same time.
	So we can help control the environment.
	Studies show that if you approach cancer as a disease of the immune system, and that's what we do, your outcomes are so much better.
	And so this is where we like to integrate things.
	We're an integrative practice.
	So some of our cancer patients have surgery, some of them have chemotherapy, some of them might even need radiation.
	But we can do a lot of other supportive things to make that outcome better for them.
	Yes, because I know you've got medical doctors working outside with naturopaths.
	We have three professors there, you know, who are at the university clinic.
	These are, you know, some of the country's leading oncologists that are working with us.
	Right.
	Because they understand the system that we're working with.
	And this is the important thing to be integrative and not just say, you know, this is the alternative and this is all we do, because I don't think that helps anybody.
	One of the sods I've learned about Lyme disease is that it makes you more likely you're going to get something like cancer.
	Is that not...
	Well, I mean, maybe.
	I think if your immune system's not working properly, yes, that can be, yeah.
	So my next question is, should I ever get cancer?
	Do I just ignore the NHS and come straight out to you?
	I mean, are you going to save me more than...
	No, I think when you have cancer, you shouldn't ignore conventional medicine.
	Especially in recent years, there's been some really good advances in immune therapies.
	You notice even in conventional medicine, we're shifting away from chemotherapy and going into immune-specific therapies.
	This is what my friend Jim Mellon, who's really been doing a lot of research here, and it's much more about teaching the body to heal itself.
	Exactly, yeah.
	Which is the line from, I keep questioning this, there's that famous line of Jesus's, physician heal thyself.
	Right.
	And I just think, wow, he had the secret.
	Here we are, over 2,000 years.
	Right.
	And we say too, one of my mottos is, you know, research is a science, but medicine is an art.
	And medicine's always been referred to as an art.
	When you look back in ancient Greece and things, medicine was an art.
	Yeah.
	If medicine was an exact science, you wouldn't need people.
	It'd be an algorithm.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But, you know, that's why there's good doctors and bad doctors because you need that kind of individual touch and kind of, you know, the abilities of the doctor to be able to treat you as a person.
	It's a very artsy thing when you get to that and that individualization, yeah.
	And so, you know, that modern medicine really has made advances, especially in the cancer world.
	So I would never ignore that, yeah?
	Yeah.
	But it's nice if you can complement it with other things.
	Sure.
	And I think that's the important thing.
	Well, look, I was very interested in what you said about how people you've cured just disappear and don't trouble the internet again.
	And I hope that this is one of the last things I ever do about live, because it'll be a sign that I... Because obviously, if I have to spend...
	victim of being immensely tiresome and and it would mean that i haven't been cured apart from anything else right yeah and i think as i said at the beginning what amplifies this for lyme patients is you talk about that feeling of doom and the kind of yeah yeah you know if you're not doing well and now you've spent all this money and you've been through this and you're still not doing well plus you have that kind of the brain pressuring you and causing more anxiety that really compounds the problem so i understand that these patients then become very vocal or become aggressive or yeah
	it's kind of part of the the disease of the wind yeah and so yeah and so It makes it very, very difficult for everybody to deal with this.
	And I think this is why a lot of doctors don't want to deal with Lyme patients.
	It's tricky.
	You know, you have patients come in, you talk to them, and then 10 minutes later, they can't remember that you've spoken to them.
	Or, you know, you tell them what to do and give them all the things they should do.
	They go home and the next thing you read online, oh, I went there and they gave me stuff and no one told me what to do with it.
	Yeah.
	This makes it very tricky to manage, yeah, for everybody.
	So I think it's really important to have a good relationship and to kind of try and preserve that relationship you can have with a patient and the patient with us as well, so that we can really work together to find solutions because that is what we're about is finding the solution.
	We're trying to think outside of the box.
	We're trying to individualize what we can, but that is a process.
	Yeah.
	It can take time.
	Yeah.
	Well, I think we've kind of covered the bases there, haven't we?
	I think so too, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, so we're on a journey and I just bloody well hope that the journey ends with me, like, prancing about in flowers.
	I don't really want to see that.
	Well, yeah, but prancing about in the fields, not afraid, because...
	Because I remember one of your doctors, Bijan, saying to me that...
	I said, look, what if I get bitten again?
	Right.
	And he said, and I hope he's right, that if your immune system is functioning, it's not going to be a problem.
	I think he's correct, because I say there needs to be the perfect storm.
	You know, the damage to the tissue, the immune system not working, and the bite.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and I think, you know, if we can establish all these other things, we should be fine.
	Okay.
	Well, thanks very much, my special guest, Phil Batiade.
	And I hope this has been helpful to all those people out there who've got this bloody awful disease and are just looking to know a bit more about it.
	Great.
	Okay, thanks very much.
	Thanks.
	Bye-bye.

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