Can Infections Cause Depression, Anxiety & Brain Fog? | Dr Marty Ross

SHOW NOTES

𝗚𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁: 𝗗𝗿 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝗥𝗼𝘀𝘀❟ 𝗠𝗗

The episode also references resources including Treat Lyme’s testing information, the article 𝘔𝘪𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘭𝘭𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴, 𝘗𝘢𝘴𝘵, 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘍𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 by Robert Bransfield, mold/mycotoxin testing resources, and the Gupta Program. These are discussed within the episode and should be linked in the final show notes where appropriate.

“Can Infections Cause Depression, Anxiety & Brain Fog? | Dr Marty Ross”

00:00–02:14 Depression, anxiety and possible hidden infections or mold exposure

02:19–06:49 Dr Ross’s background and how Lyme entered his clinical work

06:49–12:17 Neuroinflammation, cytokines, microglia and depression/anxiety

12:17–17:08 Blood-brain barrier, antidepressants and the importance of taking a detailed history

17:08–21:24 Listening to patients, AI and the gut-brain connection

21:50–28:10 Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia and possible neurological effects

28:10–31:52 Lyme testing challenges, particularly in Australia

31:52–38:21 IGenex, Armin Labs and different approaches to tick-borne infection testing

38:21–40:19 Antibiotics, herbal approaches and supporting the body

40:19–45:44 Long COVID, post-infectious illness and vaccine-related injury discussion

45:44–50:03 What happens when underlying drivers aren’t addressed

50:03–52:21 Mold exposure and possible first steps

52:21–56:09 Healthcare system limitations, listening to patients and limbic-system retraining

56:09–56:22 Closing reflections and resources

Dr Marty Ross (00:00)

I wonder what led to this depression. For the people that are listening in, some things that you that they may want to think about that they could bring to their clinician to say, hey, I wonder if I might have an infection like Lyme or Bartonella or Babesia or mold toxicity leading to this. And it’s all based on the histories. You can get clues from the history of your illness. For instance, if you were doing well until you moved into a home.

And you found black mold back on the wall in the house, and that’s when you developed your depression, and that’s when you developed your fatigue. Well, guess what? Maybe the problem is black mold. Or again, if you developed your problem after, you know, say weeks or months after being bit by a bunch of sand flies or possibly even getting a tick bite, it’s time to start thinking, hmm, I wonder if there’s an infection under it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:45)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, today we explore neuropsychiatric conditions, like depression and anxiety, familiar terms to many in our society, but today we are approaching it somewhat differently. My guest is Dr. Marty Ross. Now, he’s trained at the Indiana University, he’s chief resident at Georgetown, three years as lead health policy advisor to the US Senate.

Before leaving Washington, DC, for Seattle, Washington. That was in nineteen ninety-five. So in and then since then, he spent twenty-five years treating chronic Lyme, tick-borne conditions, mold toxicity, long COVID. He’s the founder of Treat Lyme Disease. We’ll be talking about that. He’s also author of Hacking Lyme Disease. Now today we’re exploring a question that doesn’t get nearly enough attention.

How often is depression, anxiety, ADHD, and even psychosis actually undiagnosed, in fact often misdiagnosed. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Marty Ross. Welcome to the show, Marty.

Dr Marty Ross (02:14)

Doctor Ehrlich, Ron, thank you for having me here. I’m very interested in what’s in store here today.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (02:19)

Yes, me too. And I was I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. mental health is a big issue and so are environmental and other health issues, but not often drawn together, and that’s what we’re gonna do today. When did you first notice that psychiatric diagnoses masked an infection or a biotoxin, perhaps a mold burden or something like that? When did you first notice those connections?

Dr Marty Ross (02:44)

Sure. So I’m I’m trained as a family physician. So I’m a trained as a general practitioner. back in two thousand, I became very interested in working with integrative medicine. So working with prescriptions, but blending it with herbal medicines and looking at alternative ideas on health and and prevention, et cetera. I s f one of the first skills I added was doing medical acupuncture through a certificate training program through E C L LA university out here.

And what wound up happening is my as I started offering that service, my primary care integrative medicine practice slowly shifted to having a lot of people with fibromyalgia. And so fibromyalgia brought with it a lot of people with E or chronic fatigue syndrome as we call it here in the States. So E is the I’m not sure what they call it where you are, but I know in

Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:36)

It’s had various iter it’s had various iterations. chronic fatigue, my myalgic encafylitis. I think that’s the and remind our listener too, because I’m familiar with fibromyalgia, but just in case they had forgotten.

Dr Marty Ross (03:52)

Yeah. So fibromyalgia is a condition that is most mostly noted for having a lot of tender muscles, basically. And we don’t have a true biochemical marker for why it occurs. There isn’t a test you can do. The rheumatologists have perfected a test where you actually push on a bunch of spots. And if so many of those spots are tender in so many different areas of the body, we call that fibromyalgia.

But that doesn’t really explain anything about what’s under it. And and so but what it comes with is also a lot of fatigue and sometimes cognitive dysfunction. And some of us look at it as being one pole of an illness of which fatigue, chronic fatigue is on one side, fibromyalgia is the other, and you can kind of get a blend of these two these two conditions. But in

Where I was going is in two thousand four, one of my my practice slowly evolved into chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia. And with it I did have people that had depression. But what really opened my eyes is in 2000, one of my patients said she wanted to be tested for Lyme disease. And I looked at her, it’s really strange I said this now. I I said, we don’t have Lyme out here. I we I I don’t know why you want me to test you for it. And she goes, But I do. I said, Okay, we’ll test you for it. And I I did one of the worst tests.

I did a genetic test called a PCR, which I now know will only detect Lyme if it’s there 30% of the time. But when it comes back positive, it’s hard to refute the genetic material of the germ. If the genetic material is in you, probably the germ is in you. So it was a very positive test in the sense that it was positive.

Anyhow, I went back then at that point and retested all of my chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia patients and found that about 35% of those people, and this is a Seattle-based practice, tested positive for Lyme disease, actually.

And so that was how I got into this. Now, what I started observing with that is as I started treating people with Lyme who had depression, who had anxiety issues, that while I could use antidepression medicines if needed, or you know, try to work with counseling if needed, that really with a lot of these conditions, I started making the best pathway in terms of helping them with their psychiatric conditions by working out how do we get rid of the infection.

And there’s you know, through either through immune support or being on herbal or prescription antibiotics, whatever it would take, lowering the germ load, ultimately I started observing improvements in anxiety improvements and depression. And so that’s so I I I got into it already treating people with chronic illness and debilitating illness. so and that was my observation, just seeing it in my practice and seeing people improve.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (06:49)

Wow. I mean, you know, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are two two conditions which for the person suffering from it are incredibly frustrating because there’s not a definitive diagnosis or way of diagnosing.

And I can imagine when you’re feeling really poorly, it would be and people aren’t actually acknowledging that. That in i in in and of itself is is depressing and would make you anxious. But, how does neuroinflammation neuroinflammation produce symptoms that look like depression or anxiety? How does that actually happen?

Dr Marty Ross (07:27)

Well, I I’ll even round that out. I will answer that, but I wanna just round that out even a little bit further. I think it’s what I think it’s fair to say there’s a few things that there’s three ways I think that anxiety, depression or reasons it can show up here. One is reactive depression, reactive anxiety, which is I feel horrible and I’m tired of feeling horrible and that can trigger anxiety, that can trigger depression. I call that reactive.

Yep. there’s also for some of my patients who have been just discounted and gaslit by the medical system forever, telling them it’s all in their head, there is also a post-traumatic stress disorder component, I think, that develops here sometimes. so I would say that’s another way this can show up. But then in addition, when you have infections, they trigger, they do lead themselves to depression.

And there’s a number of mechanisms by which that can happen. Most of this seems to be related to inflammation in the body. And when you get chronic infections or you get moltoxicity, which we can talk about here too, or you get too many yeast living in your intestines, all of these lead the immune system to overproduce a group of inflammatory chemicals called cytokines. Now cytokines are good and bad.

They they turn the immune system on but if they are made in excess, they then lead to problems. And they can lead to problems with mood, sleep disturbances, they make you hurt, they lead to immune suppression, et cetera. Now, how it relates to depression and anxiety then is these cytokines that are made out in your body in response to having these infections also can be made up in the brain by a type of white blood cell in your brain called a microglia.

So these toxins like moltoxins or Bartonella infection, which is can be transmitted by ticks, might be transmitted by mosquitoes, fleas, biting flies, borelia, and babesia, all of these infections can also cross into the brain. And so they trigger the brain white blood cells called microglia to make cytokines too.

But the other way that cytokines get up to the brain is the aftermath of the infection out in the body, those cytokines also can get up into the brain because these infections lead to some leakiness of what’s called the brain, the blood-brain barrier, the that barrier that’s supposed to keep things out. with infection, they can get in. So cytokines are the number one problem. And then what happens is these cytokines up in the brain then lead to my the microglia activation as well too.

And the end outcome is that we probably have some disruption of of of of the conversion of tryptophan in the brain, which is a precursor for serotonin and for melatonin. And serotonin and melatonin, as you know, are metal melatonin is good for sleep, serotonin is good for mood, can help with anxiety too.

But instead of tryptophan being leading to the production of melatonin, leading to production of serotonin it’s gets diverted into producing something through a pathway called the kinarini kin can I’m gonna mess this up cunrinine pathway and it leads to the production of something called quinolinic acid, which is neurotoxic and brain toxic. And then finally the microglia that get activated wind up leading to less neurotransmitters being produced within the synapses between the nerves.

And you get also with the microglia being activated, you get less brain repair through neuroplasticity as well too. So it is a the these chemicals, the quinolinic acid and the cytokines actually directly lead to depression and anxiety. It’s not a feeling. It actually is, they are the cause of it as well too.

There’s another component to that too, I’ll just throw out, and that is these illnesses are lead the immune system to overproduce oxidation agents and the immune systems attempt to get rid of these infections. And oxidation is inju injurious, hurts the function of your power factories in every one of your cells called mitochondria.

So then you get your the parts of the brain that are supposed to affect mood suddenly can’t even get powered up adequately because you have mitochondria dysfunction as part of this as well too. So those are those are some direct ways that that this can happen.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:17)

I mean we used to think of the blood brain barrier as impenetrable o of you know for a long, long time. That ha that that idea has kind of fallen by the wayside a little as we learn more and more that gets through.

Dr Marty Ross (12:31)

Yeah, I would agree with you on that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:33)

And it’s interesting too, I’m sure you’ve recognised this, whether you’re attending a conference on cardiovascular health, autoimmune diabetes, cancer, and even mental health, so much is being seen now in terms of mitochondrial function, metabolic. It’s so interesting. So if someone’s spending has has got years on antidepressants with no real improvement and actually in in Australia, I don’t know whether this is true in America, but one in six Australians are on antidepressants.

Ninety five percent of antidepressants are prescribed by general practitioners, and the average general practitioner appointment is ten to fifteen minutes. So what should prompt the clinician to look elsewhere apart from the prescription pattern?

Dr Marty Ross (13:28)

Yeah. This is a complicated question because in your I mean, I I again I I had been a frontline primary care provider before. So I get somebody comes into your office, you’ve got you’re programmed for 10 minutes to spend with that patient, and they come in with depression, and the easiest thing to do is think about what can I give you for that, rather than I wonder what led to this depression. you know, so taking a careful history, right?

So for the people that are listening in, some things that you that they may want to think about that they could bring to their clinician to say, hey, I wonder if I might have an infection like Lyme or Bartonella or Babesia or mole toxicity leading to this. And it’s all based on the history. So you can get clues from the history of your illness.

So for instance, if you were doing well until you moved into a home and you found black mold back on the wall in the house, and that’s when you developed your depression and that’s when you developed your fatigue. Well, guess what? Maybe the problem is black mold. Okay. Or again, if you developed your problem after, you know, say weeks or months after being bit by a bunch of sandflies or possibly even getting a tick bite, it’s time to start thinking, hmm, I wonder if there’s an infection under it.

So those are kind of more the obvious things, like a clinician should we all should take histories where we say, tell me what was going on in your life when you got sick. We all should do that. But I think in the and that even means stresses in your life too. But I I think in the the time constraints of the the crazy medical system we have here and what you’re describing there, where everything’s down to, you know, the doctors are a widget now in the healthcare system, the nurses do their thing. No one really spends time holding the patient’s hand.

And talking to them anymore, really trying to understand what’s happening. But if you spend that time and if you really talk to people about what’s going on in their life, that would be a clue as to where they were, what happened when they evolved. Secondly, if you have as part of your depression or anxiety, a lot of non-mental health symptoms like joint pains, muscle pains.

Severe fatigue. Now I I know depression and anxiety can sometimes lead to fatigue, but I’m talking drenching fatigue. So if you got body pains, you’ve got joint muscle pains, you’ve got severe fatigue. And then finally, if you’ve got neurologic syndromes with this, like tremors or shakes or loss of feeling or nerve pains, which would have qualities of sharp stabbing, shooting, burning, piercing, electric.

In other words, if this is more going on physically than just I feel depressed or I’m anxious, those are clues that make you also want to talk to your doctor about possibly looking into whether it is moltoxicity or an outgrowth of long COVID, for instance, or too many yeast in your intestines, Bartanella, Borellium, Babesia. Those are things, those would be things that would make me want to look further.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (16:39)

It’s so interesting because a mentor of mine who used to be a do I was a doctor in America who Janet Travell, Doctor Janet Travell who has written textbooks on on chronic pain, she once said if you listen to your your patients and ask them the right questions, they’ll not only tell you what’s wrong with them, but they’ll often tell you how to fix it.

Dr Marty Ross (17:01)

Well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:02)

And and that’s really a powerful tool. That’s what this podcast is about, Marty, and I’m sure a lot of your work is too.

Dr Marty Ross (17:08)

Yeah. I mean I’ll I’ll just was yes, absolutely. And and I’ll just say one thing. I mean, I I am known in my visits just to look at a patient, you know, and I’m I’ll ask them, I’ll try to figure it out. But then I’ll also I love, especially when things are really complex, I’ll ask them, I said, What do you think is going on?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:27)

Yes.

Dr Marty Ross (17:28)

I mean it is and but it is it’s amazing what I learned from that. I mean they and I and they’ll ask them and I will periodically ask, what do you think we should do about that? You know, what are your ideas? And these days what’s interesting too is, you know, with AI now everyone people come in already having talked to AI and although

And and AI may not have everything right, but AI does give some interesting ideas, sometimes things I haven’t thought of before. So absolutely we should be asking our our patients, our our customers, our clients, what do they think? They may have the whole answer for us on that. So yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:08)

And really people aren’t not just patients but doctors aren’t even connecting the dots of say moving into a house that has had mould and symptoms beginning then. What’s the connection there? I don’t get it, you know. And that’s not just patients, that’s many practitioners as well.

Dr Marty Ross (18:26)

absolutely. I mean, I’ll even throw another one in here too. You know, if we look at COVID as an example, long COVID, COVID, I’ll say COVID and then f people possibly have long COVID as a result of it too. The there was a couple things that happened that led to a lot of neuropsych issues in COVID. number one, the acute infection triggered a cytokine surge. And I think we were all aware of that was the damage to the lungs that people were dying from, et cetera.

But Cytokine surge, as I just said earlier, it’s cytokines that ultimately cross into the blood-brain barrier and lead to quinolinic acid and decreased tryptophan production, et cetera. Okay, or tryptophan being turned into serotonin, et cetera. But the bigger thing about COVID is there, COVID led to a lot of disruption in the intestinal microbiome.

So you suddenly lose and as we know over time, and I know I’m sure you’ve had some discussions here on your podcast about this too, is just this growing knowledge of importance we have now about the health of the intestinal microbiome. And I like to think of the intestinal microbiome as the brain of your mental health, the brain of your heart, the brain of your immune system, the brain of your muscles, et cetera. What goes on in that intestinal microbiome is key because.

Disruption of the good germs there leads to changes in neurotransmit or chemical transmitters that get to the brain, et cetera, and direct everything. Okay. But the bigger, so that was one thing that potentially was part of mental health issues. Secondly, though, COVID disrupted the uptake of tryptophan in the intestines. And so tryptophan, again, is the chemical building block that leads to serotonin.

Now you know, we all think of as of of depression as being a serotonin deficiency syndrome. And I’m being facetious as I say that. That’s the conventional viewpoint. Here, take your serotonin. but there is a role for serotonin here, okay? But in COVID, there was dis so 95% of the serotonin in your body is made in the intestines. Yeah. It’s not made up in the brain. It’s made in the intestines, gets absorbed into the bloodstream, eventually crosses up into the brain, okay.

And in the intestines there was disruption in tryptophan uptake, and therefore you had marked decrease in in in serotonin, so you had more depression. Then finally, COVID led to increased cytokines, which affected that too. So, you know, the thing about and I know I’ve kind of diverged to COVID here, but COVID is more than just managing your cytokines, and it’s also about thinking about especially acutely, what can I do to increase serotonin production in the intestines. And then finally, it’s also about reprogramming, rebuilding the healthy intestinal microbiome. It’s very key, as part of how you manage mental health problems in COVID as well, too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (21:24)

It’s interesting, you’d be interested to hear one of the podcasts that I’ve done is with a very well respected gastroenterologist here in Australia and I asked him about his thoughts of the gut as the second brain. Mm and and he said he said, I disagree. And I thought, okay, that’s gonna be interesting. he said, I believe it’s the first brain.

Dr Marty Ross (21:46)

Yeah, good for him. I always wonder if that’s what you’re gonna say.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (21:50)

It kind of stopped me in my tracks and I thought and he said, When you think about it in an evolutionary sense, yeah you know, the gut’s been around for a hell of a lot lot longer than brains and here we have these neurotransmitters. But coming back to you’ve mentioned it a couple of times, Bartonella and and the other Lyme, why is it s why is it such a disproportionate driver of of these issues? Sure. Of these cognitive and psychiatric issues.

Dr Marty Ross (22:14)

Yeah. So there are three infections that are thought to be tick-borne infections. one is borelia, which we also call Lyme, okay, or that’s the the germ that triggers Lyme disease. but also these ticks can transmit another infection, which is a blood parasite called Babesia. It acts a lot like malaria, gets in your red blood cells and and and acts the way malaria can in some ways. And then there’s Bartanella.

And Bartonella, we think it can be transmitted by ticks, although we know it actually is carried by ticks. We’re not fully clear if it’s really transmitted. It may be. But also Bartanella is fairly ubiquitous out there. Meaning it’s just found in the general population, even in healthy people in large numbers.

So I have a theory with when we see Bartanullah show up in chronic Lyme disease or when people have borrelia or Bambesia, I wonder if it’s just a reactivated infection that was already there. I think we can make that argument. I don’t I don’t think we fully know that. Okay. But what makes Bartonella so insidious is two things. Number one, it can trigger all this cytokine mess like I talked about earlier that leads eventually to depression or anxiety.

But the other thing that it does is it infects one of the areas it likes to infect are the the cells that line your blood vessels called the endothelial cells. And within the endothelial cells, they can lead to a vasculitis or inflammation of the blood vessel lining, which can lead to restricted blood flow. I mean you can see where this can go, okay. The other thing that it may do is and we d no one’s done the science on this, but you’ve got to wonder, I wonder, I’ll what I’m gonna say, I wonder.

There’s a layer that covers the endothelium that separates the endothelium, the the cells that line your blood vessels from flowing blood. And that layer is something called the endothelial glycocalyx. And you can kind of is it so it’s a kind of a mucousy membrane, it’s got a bunch of filaments that stick up into the blood flow.

And as blood flows over these filaments, it hits them, and that triggers the endothelium and the endothelial glycocalyx to release nitric oxide. Well, guess what nitric oxide does? It dilates your blood vessels, so you get better blood flow deep into the brain. But also nitric oxide is

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Dr Marty Ross (26:04)

Anti-inflammatory. So okay. So one of the things I wonder and and is that is part of the reason that people get mental health problems, cognition, and psychiatric issues in Bartanella, is it because we have some injury to the endothelioglycocalics? It makes sense. It’s I mean it’s sitting right over. And if so, is that part of the thing that we need to address? And there are ways of addressing.

I do to address that idea in and how I approach it. There’s some things you can take to rebuild the endothelicocalyx. Where we do have some proof of endothelicocalyx injury actually is in COVID. COVID is thought to have injured the endothelicochalyx, the spike protein bound to the endothelicochalyx and may have injured it.

So in COVID is another idea of basically arterial inflammation you might have gotten in COVID leading to mental health problems, also similar process to what we might see in Bartonella. Now, I’m postulating on the Bart Nella endothelial glycachaelics, but boy, I wonder, because sometimes when I do things to rebuild that, which is basically there’s an extract from from a type of seaweed called monostrum nididum. Love that name.

But there’s a an extract called Romnin sulfate that comes from monostrum nitidum that has some scientific evidence that it can resupport, rebuild the endothelial glycocalyx. I know when I use it in my practice, I see improvements both in mental health and I do see improvements in cognition. And these are people already that I have on antibiotics and other supports for their Bartonella.

So to sum this up, what makes Bartonella, I think, mo harder from a mental health and even a mental standpoint is you’ve got cytokine issues leading to decreased of your neurotransmitters that support function, keep you out of depression. And then secondly, you have some arteriitis, I think, that’s involved in this and and limited possible limitations of blood flow deeper into the brain as well too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (28:10)

You and Marty, as you were speaking there, it reminds me of something that I felt for a long time, and that was if I had a choice of what I would go back and study, it would it would be physiology, biochemistry, you know, cell function, that that kind of go back to basics and integrate it into the clinical findings that you see in front of you.

I think also one of the really frustrating things, and I’m not really quite sure why it’s such a pariah, but the s to some practitioners, to some medical association, just the word Lyme disease is like, Are you kidding me? you know, what’s the story? What what should someone ask their doctor to test for if they had get that kind of reaction?

Dr Marty Ross (28:55)

So this is what’s tough in in Australia in particular. So across the world, even though we have some more latitude to treat tick borne infections here in the States, it’s been a hard fought battle to get to this place. And many of us, including myself, have had medical board investigations for what we do. All right. So it’s not, even though the states it looks like it’s easier to practice here and help people this way, it is, but it’s not, it’s still been a battle.

Your country has gotten really bad here lately. what I understand, and this is from hearing from there’s so I run a a consult, a remote visit service where people from around the world can visit with me. And I do have a number of people that do visit with me from Australia. And what I understand has happened recently is the the the authorities within Australia are basically telling primary care doctors.

That they cannot order Lyme disease testing for for Borelia. And that the only people that can order it are your infectious disease specialists, and they’re only allowed to order it for people that left the country and might have gotten bit by a tick outside. Your authorities are steadfast in saying that ticks in Australia do not transmit borrelia.

And I I don’t know how they can make such statements. So it’s really complicated then in terms of getting tested there. Okay. So first of all, it would be impossible to get your primary care provider in Australia to actually test for it using the standard lab. Now I will say something about that too, and then and I’ll tell you, I’ll give you an idea of what they can do instead.

So in Australia, the method that they are using to test for the infectious disease doctors are using is what’s known as a two-step test, which is they draw blood and they look with part one of the two step is to do a screening test called an ELISA, which asks the question: Do you have some antibodies in you that might be made against borrelia Lyme infection? It’s a might be test, okay? And if that could have antibody test comes back positive, then they’re supposed to confirm it doing a second test called a Western blot.

Which is the definitive test. If it’s positive, it means that those antibodies really are being made against Lyme. Okay. Now that two step test has been shown in chronic tick borne and chronic Lyme to only find Lyme if you have it sixty fifty to sixty percent of the time. It’s a hor it’s a it’s a it’s a flip of the coin. It’s a hor horrible test. Horrible test.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:37)

This is for this two step for this two step.

Dr Marty Ross (31:39)

And that’s what you would get if you went to one of your ID doctors. So even if it comes back negative, that doesn’t prove you don’t have it. It just may mean you were on the wrong side of the coin when they flipped it, basically. So

Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:52)

Yeah.

Dr Marty Ross (31:52)

There’s a better testing out there now. And if you’re so there’s two tests that I would encourage if you if people are thinking they might have Borelia.

And Bartonella. Well, let me talk about Bartonella real quick too. So you probably could go to your primary care doctor in Australia and say, I wonder if I have a Bartonella infection leading to mental health problems. The trouble is, we think there’s 15 strains of Bartonella that may lead to mental health problems. And standard lab testing in my country, in your country, is only going to look for two strains: antibodies against something called Bartanella hensili.

And maybe str antibodies against a strain called Bartanella cantana. But we think there’s 15. Okay. So the issue of getting it tested in Australia is you may they may just not be throwing a big enough net to look for all the of the strains, right? And then finally, with Bampezia, which is more rare that it leads to mental health problems, we think that there are maybe 10 to 15 strains, and standard testing is only looking for maybe one or two strains. So

I’ll just throw that out. That’s the issue there. Okay. So because of that, there are two independent labs that people can use to get tick-borne testing. One is a lab here in the States called Igenix. The other is a lab in Germany called Armin Labs. And they both do they do a different technique.

My feeling is the IGenics test is better. And so what IGenics is doing is they’re doing an antibody test called an immunoblot. And for borelia, they’re looking to see if you have antibodies against eight strains of Lyme germs, versus that one done in Australia is only looking for the original strains, not looking for the eight that we think cause it now. Okay. And then for Bartonella, they’re looking to see if you have antibodies against the genus of Bartonella, the family, which includes those 15.

Plus, they’re looking to see if you have antibodies against four specific strains. And for Bambezia, they’re looking to see if you have antibodies also against the genus, the whole family, in addition, three strains. So that test through IGENIX is 93 to 94% sensitive, which means it has the ability to find the infection if it’s there 93 to 94% of the time. That’s pretty good.

So you, but to get it, you would have to what clients can do, or you’re people listening and they could Google IGENIX on the internet, contact them, s have them send a test kit. They’ll have to pay to have the test kit sent to them. And then circle the test they want, bring it to their doctor and say, I think I have tick-borne infections. Will you sign off on this? Okay. So they have to get a doctor to sign off on it. All right. so and the test is called an immunoblot.

For your listeners, I’ll be glad to share this resource with you at the end too. But they’re through my Lyme disease information site, which is called Treat Lime by Marty Ross D, and it’s at treatlime.com, T-R-E-A-T-L-Y-M-E.com. If they go into the search bar and just type best test, there’s a whole article I have on what do you order and what are the test numbers you want to do to get this immunoblot testing done through IGENIX. Okay, so that’s number one.

The other way they could do it is Armin Labs out of Germany has the ability to order the test directly without having to get your physician to sign off on it. And so for that reason, a lot of people from Australia tend to rely more on Armin. What Armin is doing is they’re not, it’s not an antibody test, but it’s a test to see have your T white blood cells, a type of white blood cells that fight infection, have they tried to attack.

Bartonella or Borelia or Babesia in the last two months. And specifically, what they do is they take these T cells, they take some proteins from Bartonella or Babesia or Borelia, they introduce it in the test tube, and they see do those T white blood cells make a pattern of cytokines, meaning that they’ve tried to fight that infection. And what’s significant about that is T cells that they’re looking at only live for two months.

They circulate for two months. So, if it comes back positive, meaning they reacted, it means somewhere in the last two months that germ was in you. Okay. Now that sounds great. Here’s the limitations. the limitation is that there Armin is only testing for three strains of borrelia. So they’re testing for borrelia bertorphi, which is the common strain, borelia afzeli and borrelia garinii, those are the two European strains.

They’re not hitting the other five strains that Igenics does, okay? And then on Bartanella, they’re only testing for Bartanella hensili, not the additional 14 strains. And for Babesia, they’re only testing for Babesia microdi. They’re missing the potential 12 other strains. So that now they think that their test cross reacts with these other strains. So it may pick up more, but I don’t think so. So I think there’s an issue of yes, it’s easier to get Armin

And maybe that’s the best you can do, give it a try. Okay. But because you don’t need your own physician to sign off on it. It’s a blood test. It’s a blood test.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (37:14)

This is a blood blood and when we’re doing blood tests internationally like that, well there’s gotta be limitations there too, hasn’t there, on on the quality of the specimen? Is that an issue?

Dr Marty Ross (37:29)

Mostly these are FedExed. As long as you’re getting your sample to the lab within a day or two, you’re going to be fine. So you know, you’re not going to want to have it drawn on a Friday and having sitting in transit over the weekend, for instance, but you’re you’re gonna you’re probably gonna be fine with that. the other thing, so the testing you’re gonna wanna get through Armin, it’s called an Elispot.

That’s the name of the test for these these that T cell reaction test that’s called an Alicepot. So those are the two leading labs. And I would encourage everyone, I know this is a brief you know, this is a brief podcast here, but if they really want to read more about testing, read my article called Best Test at treatlive.com and I’ll be glad to share that resource with you later too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (38:10)

I’ll definitely be having that in in the show notes. It’s it’s so interesting to hear you s say that. I wasn’t aware of the of the restrictions being placed in my own country. thank you, Marty. Thank you.

Dr Marty Ross (38:21)

No, and I I also hear from my patients that you’re even restricting how many days you can give doxycycline, which is the most common antibiotic we use for all this. Although I’m just yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (38:32)

I hate to be cynical about this, but I I think it’s you know, our T GA, which is the equivalent of your FDA, is ninety five percent funded by the the pharmaceutical industry. And I I would say the problem with giving docs a cycling for too long is that it’s a very cheap medication and therefore for that reason alone is to be discouraged.

Dr Marty Ross (38:57)

I get it. And and now also just so the listeners would know too, you know, there although I’m talking about prescriptive antibiotics, how you manage these illnesses us ultimately I mean you’ve got to support sleep, you’ve got to deal with supporting your adrenal system, you’ve got to deal with lowering those inflammation cytokines. There’s some herbs you can take for that. But ultimately you’ve got to do something ultimately to lower the germ load.

And b these days there actually are some really good herbal antibiotic regimens you can do. my site has lots of information about that if people are interested, but I would just throw that out. We’ve got a lot of research in the last five years came out of our Johns Hopkins University here in the States that really has given us a good at least laboratory foundation as to why a number of herbs can be quite effective as herbal antibiotics against these organisms as well too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (39:53)

Now, you know, we’ve talked about lime and partonella and Bambezia, but the COVID is an i is something that’s fresh in everybody’s mind. but what did and you’ve mentioned long covid for earlier, what did long covet confirm about post infectious neuropsychiatric illnesses? Yeah. that you know, that you that what did it teach you after all your experience in this area?

Dr Marty Ross (40:19)

Well one thing I I mean I as an observation, one thing I was glad to see is that finally these long infection illnesses c came out of hiding. Because if suddenly the authorities are starting to recognize, gosh, there is something called long COVID, then maybe they’ll give greater attention to long lime and long Bartonella and long Bambesia.

So it in some ways it was I I mean, god god forbid that that this happened to people. Don’t get me wrong with this, but in some ways it was a good thing in terms of some recognition and maybe even better acceptance of these, at least here in the States, of the fact that we have these chronic tickborne infections that are wreaking havoc on people as well, too.

So I just would point that out. the second thing is, you know, it didn’t surprise me when I saw people coming in with COVID and I would see worsened depression or depression that even months, three months, four months after we would think some of the acute effects should be gone that they’re depressed.

I already had a framework of how to look at that, which is, yeah, it’s probably cytokine related. And maybe we do have some maybe there is still chronic infection in there. you know, there’s science goes we don’t have proof of that. There is some science that says maybe for long COVID, there is still a reservoir of active infection or maybe we have remnants like spike protein remnants from COVID that is still stirring up the immune system.

So I already had a framework to deal with that, to consider that, yeah, this is a possibility that this is this is still COVID related, either from COVID remnants, meaning spike protein, it’s stuck in these people. They’re not clearing, triggering cytokines, or from reservoirs of infection.

And I think those you know, the science is still being done out there, but I think there’s still is some valid reasons to think that for some people with long COVID we have a chronic reservoir of infection. I don’t know that we know how to get rid of that reservoir yet. And I do think that for some it is chronic spike protein that they just haven’t been able to clear. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (42:25)

So it’s interesting to hear you make that observation about the positive side of this that acknowledging a long term infection, because one of the things we talked about this before we came on here, that long COVID, you do hear about it a l quite a bit, but you hear nothing about adverse reaction to the mRNA spike protein i you know, vaccinations and y and w this is now being we’re not talking about adverse reactions. This has got to be long covert. That’s a more acceptable way of of dealing with it. What are your thoughts on that?

Dr Marty Ross (43:02)

You know, it’s interesting. So I will I I am not an anti vaxxer. I’ll just start by saying that. I mean, I I advocated, especially early in the va in the COVID crisis that we were under, that when you weighed out, yes, it was a partly untested vaccine. I mean, there was some tests done, but there was partly untested, but you had to weigh that out against the risk of dying from COVID. And everyone, you know, people were dropping around this all the time. So I think at that time.

It made sense at the beginning of the of this to recommend COVID vaccines to my patients. And I did. on the whole, I think most people tolerated them well. There were some people that didn’t. And I do believe there is such a thing as vaccine-related injuries. I we’re not, it’s unclear totally yet why these have happened. Some of it may be autoimmune related.

Some of it may be that the vaccines triggered cytokine excess, which could lead to permanent injury as well. I mean, there’s various theories about this, but two, I do acknowledge that I think there were higher rates of injury from this vaccine, and we could say there probably is vaccine-related injury. The way that I counsel my patients now when I get asked about COVID vaccines is given that there is some risk of harm from this vaccine, I think there is.

And I think s you know, the tide is changing here too. I I mean our our Secretary of Health, Mr. Kennedy, I I don’t like a number of things he does, I’ll be quite honest with you, but but at least he is he’s brought that idea that there could be harm from the vaccine to our public health system.

Now I think he’s gone too far, but I won’t go there. But anyhow, just say that. Okay. But but I think it acknowledged yeah, yeah. And so what I counsel people now is: look, at this point, unless you have a severe immune suppression illness that makes it so if you get COVID, it really could kill you. meaning, are you on chemotherapy or are you on steroids for something? Do you have diabetes? Do you have chronic kidney illness, those kind of conditions?

Then I think it’s worth to say if you don’t have one of those, I don’t know that getting a COVID vaccine is a good idea anymore. I think the the risk of harm is outweighed by benefit. And I also say that knowing that most of us now have probably some baseline immunity because we either got it or got it multiple times, or our immune systems have been primed by having had the COVID vaccine as well too. So we’ve got some innate im immune ability to fight this thing off now.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:44)

Yes, I remember during the pandemic and after it, so we there was a legitimate question being raised that is natural immunity still relevant? I mean, that sounds like an absurd statement. But but it was a question that needed to be asked. The other thing is you know, we talked about th learning that more stuff is crossing the blood brain barrier. Yeah but this MNR MRNA vaccine actually crossed the cell membrane.

Yeah, barrier too, which is even more frightening. But but listen, you’ve seen you’ve worked in this area for a long time and you’ve seen I’m sure patients who have had this for a very long time. What happens to patients when the real drivers of this problem of Lyme disease and are are not addressed? W what what happens?

Dr Marty Ross (46:33)

So there’s a couple things I would point out here too. There’s a thought I have one more another point I want to make, but I’ll come back in just a minute. I’m gonna set that aside. I have one more point. I’ll come to it in a minute. So, you know, the problem is is again, I think for people to have these infections considered, they’re gonna have to bring it to the attention of their healthcare providers. And so again, looking at what their history said this could be, the other thing that they could do.

To try to get their providers on board is one of the thinkers in this area here in the States is a guy named Robert Bransfield. I’ll give you the link to his article as well, too. But he’s a psychiatrist. And in 2024, he published an article in healthcare that people could print off and bring to their doctors.

It is the case for infections leading to mental health problems. And the article is called Microbes and Mental Illness, Past, Present and future. And it lays it out in clear terms that any doctor could understand, any patient, any people living with these illnesses would be able to understand. And I think it’s a good starting point for trying to get their doctors to help them. Okay.

And especially if and I I would be thinking about that in p cases where people have depression or anxiety that’s just not responding. They’re not getting over and it becomes a chronic condition. But also if they look back in their history and they think maybe they had mold exposure or maybe they had got bitten by something before they got into their depressive episodes or their anxiety, then those are reasons to bring it up to your doctor as well too.

The risk is if these conditions are not treated, is that people remain sick. The risk is that if they’re not treated as we age and our immune systems decline, because they do, I mean just like people get shingles as they get older is because their chicken pox reactivates because their immune systems aren’t able to keep it under control anymore.

And we may see that with people that have tick-borne illnesses causing their mental health illnesses, we may see as they get older that maybe their immune system starts losing to bat a little bit more and they now start getting icky joints or they start getting bad fatigue, for instance, too.

And then finally, you know, there’s a lot of work that’s been going on here in the States, and I I you probably are aware of this too, but there’s a physician named Bredison that has something called the Bredison protocol for treating Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment. And what Bredison’s been able to show is that there’s a number of reversible components that add together to give you these the myelin or the the plaques that develop and and am the amyloid plaques I should say and and all that.

And and that the some of the factors include chronic infections, moltoxicity, sleep deprivation, poor social is you know networks, et cetera. But but the two points I would raise is mycotoxins and chronic infections are some of the things that le in their studies, they are showing that they have led to Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer’s like mild cognitive impairment. And if you deal with those, you can reverse it.

And so I would say is there is I we don’t have long-term studies on this, but I think that if your infections that led to depression and anxiety are not being handled, I and if there are infections under it, then they could be a precursor to bigger problems down the road, which is Alzheimer’s or dementia down the road as well too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (50:03)

Well we know this whole mould issue is an interesting one and we’ve done programmes on this as well, particularly in this era of energy conservation and keeping our houses nice and tightly sealed up. And so many of the building procedures, if they get water damage, you have got an ongoing problem which can be just festering there without you even knowing it. And dramatic, dramatic impact.

Now if someone was if someone was listening, what would be the first step for someone who recognises in themselves what we’ve been talking about. and and and we are, I should say, have links to your site and be able to then access some of those resources. But what would be what would you advise?

Dr Marty Ross (50:44)

So number one, as I mentioned earlier, I would print out that article from Robert Bransfield that I just mentioned. I’ll send you the link on that. but that’s the microbes of mental illness to so that they can bring it to their doctor and say, I think I have this. Here’s a doctor that wrote about it. Okay. Doctors will respond to medical information.

So number one, I would probably do that. number two, I would consider, especially in Australia, you’re you’re gonna have to get the testing yourself. I don’t I think you’re gonna have to work either with your primary care doctor to at least add a signature to the IGNX form, or you’re gonna have to work with Armin to do the less best test, but still get it.

Get some testing that you can bring into your doctor. The third thing is you’ve got to go looking for mold toxicity. And I think that the the best way to look for that, I am a subscriber to the idea that you have to look to see if the toxins are in you.

And the way to look for that is there’s urine mycotoxin testing you can do. The idea that if you’re peeing out a lot of toxins, they’re probably backed up in your bloodstream, there’s two US labs that you can access through parts of the Australian healthcare system, or the lab system, and that is a lab called Real Time Lab, and another one called Mosaic Diagnostics. I there’s one of your alternative lab systems in Australia that will send things to there readers will just have to Google it and see how to get that done there. But that I would that is those tests you sometimes can do without having a physician order it as well too. yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (52:21)

Yeah, well we’ll have links to that as I said. Listen, I just want to you’ve given us so much to think about here. It’s it’s great and and to understand and realize how interconnected the body is and and how our connection to the environment is and how that presents itself. But taking a step back from your role as a doctor or specializing in this area, because we are all individuals on a health journey in this modern world, what do you think the biggest challenge for us as individuals on that journey is?

Dr Marty Ross (52:52)

Wow. I think it is getting people to listen. I think the biggest obstacle right now is the orientation of our healthcare system to looking at providers and nurses and medical assistants is widgets whose job is to quickly get you through the office and they each come in and touch you for five seconds and then they move on to the next thing. No one is sitting there and spending time with the patient.

To say, what’s going on with you? Tell me more. You’re not going to get that by darting in and out of a room in five minutes. You just can’t. And I think that’s one of the biggest obstacles.

I mean, here, like here, I am basically gone to a cash-based model because I can’t do it within the insurance system, meaning I can’t spend the time that I want to spend with people to help them and I know that there are naturopathic physicians, I believe, in Australia that can ha do that.

They probably have some functional medicine doctors that basically are doing this. And so sometimes you just have to step out of that standard insurance-based system. I know it’s hard to do that because it everything costs money, but sometimes to get people to listen to you, you’re gonna have to step out and possibly get into a a type of office where they can listen to you longer.

There’s one other thing I want to add here too, that I wanted to bring up earlier.

So one of the things that happens in these chronic infections and moltoxicity is there’s a part of your brain which is called the limbic system that is the regulator of your adrenaline, anti-adrenaline system. So it regulates the autonomic nervous system, it regulates eating, it regulates your fight or flight response, it regulates your sleep, it regulates everything.

Okay. And part of the structures of it are part partly involved in depression and anxiety as well, too.

One of the things that I see in patients that have had these illnesses for a while is that there’s a theory that your limbic system gets stuck on. And it’s not it stays in a constant flight or fright fear system, triggering the body to hold all of these symptoms. Okay. So it’s not I’m not trying to say it’s in your head. I’m saying it is a response that an area of your brain has had. And there are some useful programs that can help improve this.

And they’re they fall under the rubric of brain retraining or limbic system retraining. One of my favorites is a program called the Gupta program, which your listeners can find online. And Gupta is a guy that had chronic fatigue syndrome himself in the UK and was able to cure his chronic fatigue by doing the techniques that he teaches, which is a lot of trying to get the the frontal cortex to try to tell the limbic system to calm down.

So there’s ac brain exercises you do there’s relaxation techniques, breathing techniques, journaling, learning how to find joy in your life. But it’s a six month program and his data suggest, and it’s independent research that’s looked at his that you can have improvements in your chronic symptoms, either from Lyme, mold, COVID, of up to fifty percent. This is all through just retraining your brain. And I I would encourage I encourage my patients to look at that as well too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (56:09)

Well, Muddy, I wanna thank you for sh sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us here today. And as I’ve mentioned, we’ll have links to your site and those resources. Thank you so much.

Dr Marty Ross (56:19)

You’re welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (56:22)

Well, it’s a constant reminder of how interconnected the body and the brain are. The mind and body connection is inseparable. And compartmentalizing things as we do in our Western medical model really doesn’t lend itself to this kind of exploration of complex health issues, whether it’s Lyme disease or whether it’s autoimmune or whatever it is.

These factors are always important and how diseases express themselves is often where genetics does come in, making you more predisposed to it than perhaps someone else. We’ll have links to all those resources that Marty mentioned. He is also available for consultation. So in this day of interconnectedness globally, that’s an option for you as well if that is of interest. We did a program now. Marty mentioned the Dale Bredison Protocol, and we did that with Joe Graben. It was a great episode.

A few months back, but definitely worth revisiting. I’d encourage you to join our Unstress Health community. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

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Ron Ehrlich

I’m Dr. Ron Ehrlich, passionate about helping individuals and health professionals lead healthier, happier, and more fulfilling lives. With over 40 years of experience as a holistic health practitioner, I now focus on mental fitness, coaching, and mentoring, empowering you to tackle life’s challenges with a positive, thriving mindset.