Root Cause Solutions For You

Understanding Your Body's Signals: Navigating Lyme Disease with Sophie Alexander

• Fabiola Reyes, Root Cause Expert, Cert. AK, CellCore & Nutrition Response Testing® Practitioner • Season 1 • Episode 14

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What if you could address Lyme Disease holistically? Join me as I sit down with clinical nutritionist Sophie Alexander as we explore the unconventional yet effective ways of combating Lyme Disease, mold toxicity, and parasites. Sophie narrates her journey with Lyme, how it led her to seek help from herbal medicine, and ultimately, how it inspired her to become a practitioner.

As we navigate further, we illuminate the intricate relationship between Lyme Disease, mold toxicity, and parasites. Sophie emphasizes the need for a keen understanding of your body's signals and the importance of a practitioner who can reveal the root cause of your ailment. We delve into how these toxins can mask and maintain Lyme dormant in your body.

Strap in as we delve into Sophie's preferred methods for testing Lyme Disease, mycotoxins, and other harmful toxins. We underscore the significance of composure after a tick bite and the necessity for an all-inclusive approach to care. Sophie imparts invaluable advice for those grappling with probable Lyme Disease symptoms. Wrapping up on a hopeful note, Sophie assures us that no matter where you are in your health journey, there is always light at the end of the tunnel. So, tune in for an enlightening conversation filled with hope.

Sophie offers both in-person and virtual appointments!
 
You can reach her at info@nutritionalwellnesscenter.com to make an Initial Essential appointment.

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Disclaimer: The Food and Drug Administration has not evaluated these statements. This podcast is not a medical service; the information provided is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. The Root Cause Solutions For You, its practitioners, and employees make no warranties, express or implied, concerning the contents. The information shared in this episode is the opinion of the speaker and should not be considered medical advice. You should never disregard medical advice or delay seeking it because of the contents of this episode.

Fabiola :

Hello everyone and welcome back to the root cause solutions for you podcast. My name is Fabiola and I am your host. I am super excited to have Sophie Alexander, who is a clinical nutritionist and the owner of the Nutrition and Wellness Center, as a guest today. I have had the privilege to be working side by side with her. She's an amazing practitioner. She's got lots of information and helpful tips on how to navigate through, I think, a topic that it is just so hot right now, which is Lyme mole toxicity, and so I'm super psyched about having her on our show today. Sophie, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Sophie:

Oh, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Fabiola :

Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and what led you to be on this path of holistic care.

Sophie:

Yeah, thank you. Well, like many practitioners, it was a really personal journey that got me excited about nutrition and practicing nutrition, and one working with herbs. It was really, I think in my 20s I had a realization that things weren't going well with my health. I had in retrospect. I dealt with allergies my whole life. I dealt with hormonal imbalances and really bad menstrual cramps. I dealt with a lot of blood sugar handling issues and digestive issues. But it was really when I was about 22 and I got Lyme disease but didn't know it at the time that I got Lyme.

Sophie:

Then I really started to become aware about my health and wanting to take action about it. Yeah, unfortunately, it was Memorial Day weekend and I got severe headache, neck pain, night sweats. I knew something was really wrong. But this was 18 years ago and while people were talking about Lyme and suspecting Lyme, there was no bull-dye rash, there was no obvious tick, and by the time I got to a doctor, the doctor was like well, maybe it was Lyme, let's watch and see how you feel and decide whether we're going to do anything about it. Because by the time I got to the doctor I was feeling much better, and so then I went on to have a really healthy summer. I biked around Europe, I felt great, so there was no reason to suspect anything was wrong.

Sophie:

But it was about six months later that I started having really strange symptoms. One wrist would swell and blow up really big and be very painful, and then it would just go away, and then the next wrist would do that, and then I'd have a huge knee, swollen knee, and then that would go away, and then the other knee would swell up, and I was working on a construction site at the time and when I started to be able to not get down on my knees to do the work that I needed to do. I just had this light bulb go off, that something was really wrong and maybe it connected back to six months earlier. So, yeah, I did the Lyme tests that existed at the time. They came back positive. I did two antibiotics at the same time for about a month and it didn't really help.

Sophie:

I mean, I started dealing with the acute symptoms, but I felt really rotten from that point onwards and felt like there weren't many answers given to me about what to do next or what else I could do, and so that started my journey. I started studying herbal medicine. I moved to Ithaca, new York, to study herbal medicine and then I also started once I lived in Ithaca working with a nutrition response testing practitioner at the Nutrition Wellness Center at the practice that I now own, and it helped me so tremendously that I have to do this work and I went back to school and started training up as a practitioner.

Fabiola :

Wow, that's awesome and you were right. But I think as practitioners we're often driven on our careers or make a shift in careers because of that. Either we have gone through something or a family member it's gone through something. So it's that motivation. And then wanting to find the answer is because I bet a lot of people like yourself who had the symptomology, a test or physical factors did not confirm what was going on and then went on about their life and then how many months later they find themselves in a more acute and at that point I guess, a chronic condition, yeah, and how harder it might be to manage and stuff like that. So tell me a little bit about your herbal education. I'm curious about that path because herbs have been such a fascinating topic to have been exposed to, just because they are a true medicine. I mean, how many pharmaceutical companies are trying to mimic nature and making drugs, mimicking some of these different herbs that nature has? So tell us a little bit about that education that you received. Yeah.

Sophie:

So once I was dealing with the diagnosis of Lyme and struggling with symptoms that just weren't clearing up really particularly for me it was the arthritic symptoms, it was joint issues and just really a lot of tea I started diving into Stephen Buehner's work, who is an amazing herbalist who's now passed and wrote all about Lyme protocols and there's known as the Buehner method. So that was my first introduction. But in Ithaca there's a wonderful school called the Northeast School for Botanical Medicine, run by Sevensong, and he's been running that for years and what I loved about his program is that he combined a real clinical approach as well as studying the actual plants, studying, gathering and making medicine and then studying practical applications.

Fabiola :

And I think Lyme disease is something that they call it a great mimicker. Is that correct?

Sophie:

They do yeah.

Fabiola :

Yeah, it could be so many different symptoms, right? So many of the headaches you were talking about, the hot flashes, the neurological and that it can have with that inflammation that it has been created by the bacteria. And then we have Lyme and the co-infections that we are often not necessarily educated on or exposed to. So how does your herbal background help others as a practitioner, and yourself through your Lyme experience?

Sophie:

Yeah, well, I think the herbs just offer so much more versatility and they offer different angles to approach things. And I think they especially with a body that just if you've done a bunch of antibiotics or you've done things that the body kind of knows okay, like that's what that's going to do to me and it knows how it's going to respond, the herbs come at it from a different direction. So there's a lot more what we call adaptability or ways of tricking the body so that you can address the immune challenges. And it just is broader spectrum too, because, right, certain certain drugs are better for different co-infections or not, especially with Lyme. But the herbs can then cover that whole spectrum and you can.

Sophie:

You can use a lot of them. They're safe, you know what I mean. You can have little kids use them. They don't have the repercussions of on the gut, microbiome or things like that. So, yeah, I think it just really my favorite thing is being able to then customize it to the person and really understand what that person is dealing with and get the immune system responding correctly.

Sophie:

again, yeah yeah, knocking it out.

Fabiola :

Yeah, that's, that's awesome. So you know what? What advice did you have for people who potentially have felt some of the symptoms you were mentioning that could be contributed to Lyme, and so that they don't necessarily go through a similar situation like yours, or to kind of pay more attention to how their body feels?

Sophie:

Yeah well, I think that's the number one thing listen right, Because it's creating symptoms and talking to you for a reason, and the more you can hone in to how you feel, how you feel when you eat certain things, how you feel when you take certain supplements, because the biggest guidance is your own body. But there can be, it's true, when you're feeling chronically unwell. There can be a lot of confusion too, and so I well, and especially because I feel like modern medicine and is not really. It's still learning and catching up, right, but there's not that many tools available to you. The tests are not super accurate or discerning.

Sophie:

That is really finding, you know, a holistic health practitioner, ideally someone who does muscle testing right, who does apply kinesiology, because it's a way of tapping into the body and starting to ask like, hey, why are you out of balance? Like what is causing these symptoms? How do you unravel and peel that onion? Because, because it can be complicated. You know, I'd love, I'd love to say to you that with my own story.

Sophie:

Yeah well, I just, you know, I started doing muscle testing and I felt better within months and it was just boom, boom, I took some herbs and I treated that line, but that's all my story at all and that's not what I see generally with clients. You know, I I did a lot of work on my digestive system and yeah, and even then I think I just my body had a certain level of resilience and capability that I started feeling so much better. But I learned over time, like you know, the line was not gone and there were other things like holding it in place. So it's yeah, it's working with someone who, like knows how to navigate that with you and and help you peel that onion, because then you're really going to get to the bottom of it and then you feel so much more empowered about what's going on in your body and there's so much more hope about feeling well.

Fabiola :

Yeah, and that was going to be my next.

Fabiola :

You know like kind of question you know.

Fabiola :

So let's say someone has had Lyme disease or any of the co-infections and they've gone other through conventional handling of it or in more natural approach and you know there are less symptomatic right, or at least their symptoms are a lot more in check.

Fabiola :

And I think, as a practitioner working with someone who has Lyme or has had Lyme, there is so much that needs that it is done as from a lifestyle perspective diet, supplementation or whatnot, to sort of keep those symptoms in check. So can we then have a perception that Lyme is no longer an active, you know, stressor in this system? Or is it truly, like you just mentioned, it is kind of still there and because we're doing such a great job at through diet and blah, blah, blah, keeping it in check, but and you know, let's say that you have, you go off of one of your supplements or you are exposed to something and then boom, you know, like those symptoms just come back again. So what are some of the things that could be keeping Lyme kind of hidden in the system, dormant, that you could educate us about?

Sophie:

Yeah, well, the two big ones that I see a lot in clinical practice and is also a big part two of my story is parasites and mold toxicity, but you can broaden it to other toxicities as well. But I think there's a real relationship between mold and Lyme and they perpetuate each other and they're both like the great mimicers and their symptoms overlap a lot right. So myself, dealing with all this joint pain and thinking, oh, that's the Lyme symptom, that's the Lyme symptom, you know, eventually, with peeling the layers of that onion and you know, continuing to do the ongoing work with multiple testing, is when I learned well, actually, for me what was keeping that going was mold, and that was a huge light bulb when that happened, but unfortunately it was. Yeah, it made sense in retrospect, but at the time it was a hard listen to learn, right, because I was doing exactly as you said. I was eating this very tight diet, right, no grains, no sugar, barely any fruit. Right, lots of supplementation, like an overall feeling good, but it was interesting. There were certain things that didn't add up and then the stress of having children and starting to own a business, like how that started to take its toll. Right, I'd be like, yeah, I feel great, but I keep having all these gallbladder problems and I eat so well. Like why can't I eat that and why does my gallbladder hurt me all the time? And I was doing my coffee. I'm daily doing all these things to really maintain my gallbladder.

Sophie:

And then when I started to approach the mold toxicity and saw that that was an issue, and then learned about all the parasites that were coming with that, because parasites can. There's been studies shown that parasites actually can hold onto mold toxicity and they can hold onto Lyme too, so they're almost you can think of them as a protective mechanism with the body. But what happens is the combo of mold and parasites. They really gum up the liver and the bile flow and so forth. That messes with the gallbladder and so you have a body that's like functioning and overall appearing fine, but it's slowly shutting down right, like the liver flow is just getting worse and worse, more clogged up with bile. That's again messing with hormones.

Sophie:

And so I have three children, each pregnancy overall presented as healthy, but each birth just got subsequently harder, right and had weird things, things that didn't really make sense happening too. And by number three, when I lost a lot of blood and just was in a really weakened state. That's when my body was like here it all is and yeah, and I had to rethink. I had to rethink like what my thought process was about, what my story was with Lyme, but also it was huge for them, for clients, that I saw hitting similar walls or the body presenting just different symptoms. That were indicators of things not progressing as much as we should and it really caused me to hold a higher standard of being like no, you don't have to eat like just in this little box all the time and that's for the rest of your life. You don't have to be on a mountain of supplements for the rest of your life, like we just haven't actually gotten to the root of what's keeping everything in there, true, yeah?

Fabiola :

And with that said, I think it requires a lot of patience, not only as a practitioner, but also as a person who is going through because it's a chronic stage of illness, right, I mean some people and it depends on your immune system, right, how much, how much tolerant your immune system it's, it's it's willing to to have being exposed to the different pathogens and the different things that we are exposed to.

Fabiola :

And while some people might be like, hey, you know, I did this and blah, blah, blah, whether it was conventional or natural and I'm fine and I'm going about my life, but then some people whose immune systems are have been heavily compromised by the continual exposure or, like you said, like the dormant aspect of Lyme and co-infections being held by some of this other pathogenic parasites, or like we've come to learn and understand the huge role that mold plays into keeping the immune system down and not be able to regulate and defend itself. So it's, yeah, it's just so amazing how everything is just so connected. And you're right, every day we learn something new. Every day we're like, oh, are there a new study or a new book, right? Or someone's out there doing the hard work and doing all this, the, the studying and the research for patients, clients and practitioners to be able to have more knowledge about this. Different factors that are really keeping people ill. Yeah, so.

Fabiola :

I wanted. So, chemicals, you know, I think we there's been a lot more highlight lately, I feel, because recently there's been a lot of understanding or like, really I don't know, maybe exposure maybe that's the right word about forever chemicals, you know, was having news. It was in the radio, it was literally, you know, honestly, social media pretty much everywhere, and that was just a few weeks ago, from where this is September 2023. But so just from a few weeks ago there was a lot of that going on. So what is your opinion about the role of chemicals and how that is suppressing the immune system, that in this, then keeping some of this mold parasites, I lime disease and its co-infections in place?

Sophie:

Thank you, yeah, I think chemicals play a huge role. I consider them one of the main stressors that's the term I use to say what's getting in the body's way of its ability to heal and repair itself. And I think that we really live in just a chemical soup, right from the things we put on our skin to how we wash our clothes, to gosh even just the air quality that we are exposed to Like. We went through that a lot this summer in Ithaca with all the wildfire smoke coming from Canada and just the amount of chemicals that were in that smoke, either from things that were burning or things that were put on the fire, we don't know, but we just know that we were, how poorly people were reacting to the smoke and how much it was testing with the muscle, testing as chemicals.

Sophie:

So I do think it can perpetuate so many imbalances in the body and can be one of the trickiest things, a bit like mold in that it's everywhere and so it's harder to avoid and it's more. You just address as much as you can in your own personal space and then you well, I work with folks to up their bodies' own resiliency, you know, improve how the liver is detoxing, improve how the liver converts in and expels chemicals so that people are not as susceptible, right. But I find that folks who are super sensitive to chemicals, like they walk into a room and the fragrance that someone's wearing gives them a headache. That's me, you know. Like I walk into TJ Maxx or one of these department stores and you know all the chemicals on the clothes, I just, yeah, immediately start to feel ill. That really indicates how congested the liver is and is often really indicated with mold toxicity too. So they all interweave in such a like complicated way that I find we have to work on all of them in different stages, because it's not usually just one thing.

Fabiola :

True, yeah, that's true, and earlier you mentioned testing. There's been a lot more reported Lyme cases. I think it now is not just isolated to specific states. I think it's now like where it's really just an epidemic, where you could literally go to every state and you find someone who has Lyme. And so what are some of your favorite? You know, testing whether I mean you use muscle testing, and then I know that's your biggest, biggest way of determining whether the energy of the pathogens are affecting someone's system. But is there a lab test or anything that you would recommend someone potentially look into? Yeah, Well, yeah.

Sophie:

I was exclusive muscle testing only for about 10 years and a lot of that had to do with being in New York state and being a clinical nutritionist, not a chiropractor or some other degree that gets you access to ordering blood work. But I do think things have. You know. I'll say first of all, I am learning now that I'm working more with functional medicine, testing how much that can can highlight and give another viewpoint into the body. So I do really think that over the 10 years I've seen it, it shipped and changed and I'm using blood work more and having people do these functional tests that are now available because they do, yeah, I just say another viewpoint of the body, another angle, because muscle testing can be very much about what the body like, so upset about what's the biggest priority right now, and these other tests can help us to understand other ways to approach it or see the roadmap that's laid out and give us ideas of what might come next.

Fabiola :

Yeah.

Sophie:

And so the main one that I like the best is called Vibrant America, and they have a lot of different tests, but I think they have some of the most comprehensive Lyme tests that I have seen, just because and gosh, I couldn't go into detail with you because I don't know the technicalities of how they differ from these blood tests, but they're just, they're a lot more sensitive. They test for more of the co-infections. You don't run into the same barrier of just being like, well, are there antibodies there or not? I think it's just like the sensitivity level allows it to be more clear cut. Yeah, and they offer a variety of other blood tests, and I also really love their urine tests for mycotoxins.

Sophie:

I think that can be incredibly helpful, because mycotoxins are the toxicities that mold gives off, and so the muscle testing will tell us, okay, it's mold toxicity. But the mycotoxin tests can then tell us well, what mycotoxins is it? Which then helps you to understand yeah, is it coming from water? Damage building, is it coming from food? How much is being expelled in the urine? How big of a burden is this?

Sophie:

But, bringing it back to what you previously asked me about, what I look with Vibrant America is that you can just run just a straight mycotoxin test, but you can also test the urine for all these chemicals that we're talking about. So they have a forever chemicals test and can test for heavy metals and all sorts of chemicals in the urine and it could be really eye-opening if someone is running into something and you don't. The muscle testing is not focused on that, but is there in a really high level. I've had that happen with clients who didn't think they were running into glyphosate, which is roundup of pesticide. They thought they're just eating really clean, but then to see that there was that much glyphosate in their urine. Okay, this needs to get addressed along with everything else.

Fabiola :

True, and it's just like the comprehensive approach, because one single modality or test is not going to give you. Then you mentioned all the information, but how do we use all the different tools that we have in order to get that comprehensive approach to be able to? Then, okay, this is your, like you mentioned, you know your roadmap to see. Okay, this is your trajectory at times of care, and you know, because one could have had Lyme, and then I mean you might be. I mean, if you're a hiker, you're an outgoing person.

Fabiola :

Unfortunately, I was never into nature and it was just up to recently, since, you know, living in a small, smaller town where there's more nature, nature activities. I never had to think of, you know, like protecting myself or my dogs or whatever against ticks, or looking for ticks after coming back from from a hike. And I think it's important to highlight that just because you've been bit or stung by a tick, it doesn't mean that there is the, that tick is carrying infection, right? So I think it's important to also not panic, because it's easy to to be like, oh my gosh, I found a tick and now, like you're panicking and I have, like all this awful thoughts going through your mind, I have Lyme now, or you know what does this mean?

Fabiola :

And I think every state might be different, but there are some programs where you can send your tick, there are some labs that will test the tick, and I think it's always important to save the tick and follow through. Just one, that piece of mine, and two to prevent. You know, like, don't ignore it. And what's your, what's your opinion, what are some of your, your tips that you will could give people about like, okay, we found a tick and this is what do you do?

Sophie:

I know, I think, different personality types like different options, so I advise clients to do a variety of things, depending you know. If they are someone who they see that tick and they're immediately concerned, like there's, there are wonderful precautions that you can take. It's where herbs really can shine right, because they're not going to cause any harm and they could help if there is something that's been transferred. Right, because, yeah, all the studies that were done on how quickly things get transferred from tick to human were done on animals. So, like they had the ticks have to crawl over all that fur to attach the skin, so there's concern that things could be attached faster or passed faster than we think. Right, so I love having people make a charcoal or well, preferably a bioactive carbon binder paste or debated carbon paste, and putting that right on the bite or because of a sting, because it can just immediately start drawing out. I like working with these herbal blends from Cellcore that are they are specific to Lyme and there are a blend of a wonderful amount of herbs that are a lot of them that I recognize and are taken from Steven Buehner's work and built off of his herbal studies with the blunt disease, and they're great because you could take them, you know, just a low dose internally you can, and you can put them right on the tick bite as well.

Sophie:

And because I see some doctors react where they're like, oh you've got that tick mite, here's your one day dose of doxycycline. There's people who are immediately put people on a week of doxycycline. There doesn't seem to be like set protocols, it seems more of like addressing people's worries about it, and I just think that you could get bit pretty often, like it's common to find ticks. Like I found a lot more on my kids this summer than I have any other year and if I were going and having them take doxycycline every single time that happened, I think that would be a real overuse of that antibiotic. So but I like having immediate actions that people can take, because then you're doing something.

Sophie:

And of course, if you start to have like some of these more serious onset you know you do get the rash or you do get the, you know the acute neck pain and headache and things like that then that's going to be a call for more right. But the topical is great and then I think testing the tick can be so eye-opening too, because every time that kind of clients do that it typically comes back negative. Very rarely Does it come back positive. So it just means that there are a lot of them that aren't carriers and it removes some of the confusion of like, well, what kind of tick is this and is it high risk or is it not? And things like that, because not everyone wants to just have to know all this information, right, they just want to know how to take care of themselves and their family.

Fabiola :

True, yeah, and it's overwhelming, right, I mean, you can't live in a bubble, you know. You were just saying we're just. If people even eat it organically, they're showing for high levels of, you know, glass of satin that's it can be. Yep, yeah, and what are you going to do? Like not, you know there's forever chemicals in your house. You know there's, like maybe your couch is made out of you know this off-wolf outbreaks, and so it's not that even staying home secluded will prevent you from being exposed to some of these chemicals or whatever mold that it is impacting your immune system.

Fabiola :

And how then you, your body, your immune system responds to then, having been exposed to some tick bite or because now I mean it's like not just a tick bite or a sting, but it's also a mosquito right, a bed bug, a flea, and I think that's like that explains our horizon on why, okay, I never have found a tick on myself, but now I have all the symptoms going on. You go out and get an antibody test or whatever. It shows positive and you're like, okay, and it kind of makes you feel like where did this come from? And this oriented and that panic moment that you know what do you do so. Those were great tips and having some of those. Would you recommend having some of those tinctures just handy? Whether you have ever headline or not, that's what I do.

Sophie:

And that's what I advise clients to do. Yeah, yeah, there are two particular formulas from CellCorps, one called ISBOR and ISBOOST, and I have both of those on hand. And yeah, that's just what I advise people to just do is immediate topical and internal protocol until they get the test results back from the tick or assess themselves for future further symptoms or get into the office where we can help them to further assess, like, how is it going?

Fabiola :

Yeah, yeah, perfect. So we'll make sure to include a link on how to be able to order some of those CellCorps products. You wanna order them from a practitioner because you wanna make sure that you get in the right stuff, so we'll make sure to include a link so that you can access, create an account and access some of those products as well. Yeah, cool, wow, we cover so much, and I think you know it's. Some of the information you've given us is so important, right, so basic and at the same time, it can make a huge difference whether someone has been impacted by Lyme or not, or a family member. I think nowadays it's very common to know someone who, unfortunately, has been impacted by Lyme disease, and I think the more we know, the more we can help them.

Sophie:

Absolutely.

Fabiola :

Yeah, and then. So you work with your clients locally, but if someone is listening, they're like, oh my gosh, I'm ready to be working with Sophie, and how will one go about finding you? What do you do? How do you work with clients?

Sophie:

Yes, so yeah, my practice is in Ithaca, new York, and is primarily in-person, but absolutely can work with people virtually as well. So I think the best thing to do is get in touch with the office. Right, you can find us at Nutritional WellnessCentercom and it has all of our contact information there, and then you can learn about the intake process and what is all about discovering whether what we do is the right fit for you and helping you, the goal being to help you get to the real root cause of why you're not feeling well, that's awesome.

Fabiola :

Yeah, so we'll make sure to include all that information as well in the show notes, so that it is super easy for people to be able to reach out to the office, and I know again from firsthand a knowledge that you have held hundreds of people reclaim their health. We all have our passion, like you said, for you it sounds like it's lying, but just what is keeping lying there? As far as the person's and the mold, well, I really appreciate your time that you spent with us today. All the information has been super eye-opening, and are there any last words of wisdom that you would like to tell to our listeners?

Sophie:

Well, I just say thanks so much for having me, and the word of wisdom is that there's always hope, right, I think there's always more that can be done and there is always different angles of how to look at a situation. So, no matter where you are in your own health journey, and especially if you're feeling stuck, there is always hope and hopefully we can help.

Fabiola :

Awesome, well said. Thank you so much, sophie, for being here today and, with nothing else, we'll be signing off, alright. Thank you so much, fabiola. Thank you so much for your time.