← Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
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- [00:00]
A
In your Lyme disease journey and you're a doctor, what did the traditional medical establishment miss when it came to your Lyme journey?
- [00:08]
B
There's very good evidence that long term antibiotic therapy is more destructive than it is helpful.
- [00:14]
A
How many people are walking around with Lyme disease and don't even know it?
- [00:17]
B
Most people who get bitten by a tick don't get sick. These bacteria can enter your cells and go into a dormant or fliescent state state and they can stay that way a long time.
- [00:53]
A
Lyme disease is a condition that affects millions, yet its true impact often remains misunderstood. And the path to recovery can be long and elusive. Today's guest, Dr. Bill Rawls, knows firsthand the devastation of chronic Lyme disease. After being struck by a health crisis that left him debilitated, Dr. Rawls found that modern medicine had little to offer in terms of lasting solutions. This personal battle propelled him to explore alternative healing methods, which ultimately restored his health and reshaped his approach to medicine. I thought this episode would be good to do because May is Lyme disease awareness month. Dr. Rawls's journey from patient to advocate has led him to becoming a pioneer in the field of cellular wellness, using holistic therapies and herbal treatments to fight Lyme disease and other chronic conditions. In this episode, we dive into the complexities of Lyme disease, the limitations of conventional treatments, and how holistic remedies can offer hope and healing for those suffering from chronic illness. Watch this episode on Culture Apothecary, Spotify or Real Alex Clark on YouTube. You can also follow the show on Instagram at Culture Apothecary or me at real AlexClark. And don't forget to join the cute Servitus Facebook group for fans of the show. Please welcome Dr. Bill Rawls to Culture Apothecary. You're a doctor who specializes in Lyme disease and you also had Lyme disease. So what can you tell us about that?
- [02:15]
B
Altix carry hundreds of different bacteria and every time you get bitten by a tick, you're picking up some of those things, and we don't even know what most of them do. But here's the deal. Most people who get bitten by a tick don't get sick, even though you do pick up bacteria. I didn't. I didn't get sick until later in life when I was under a lot of stress. But I probably picked up the microbes of bacteria when I was a kid playing in the woods. 95% of the people that I've connected with that relate or identify with chronic Lyme disease don't remember getting sick around the time of a tick bite. And a good portion of them don't even remember a tick bite, but they tested later positive for the bacteria. So these things are very stealthy. Right. So we know a lot about the things that make us very sick. Very acutely, we know more about Ebola virus than we do about chronic Lyme disease or Lyme disease in general. So we pick these things up. They don't make us sick. That's not their goal. All they want to do is establish a presence. I mean, you think about it, the purpose of a microbe is to. They need a hose to get resources, nutrients, food, and a platform to spread to other hosts. So if they make you deathly ill, you're not going to go out and get bitten by more ticks or whatever you need to do to spread that illness.
- [03:45]
A
Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Okay.
- [03:48]
B
So they have really sophisticated ways of entering our body, bypassing the immune system, burying in our tissues, and actually burying inside our cells. And that's the key to understanding these illnesses is is these bacteria can enter your cells and go into a dormant or quiescent state, and they can stay that way a long time.
- [04:10]
A
Well, you said something really interesting before we got started, which kind of made me think, you know, there might be somebody who saw the title of this episode or is listening right now. Like, I don't know if I'm going to keep listening because I don't have Lyme disease. So I don't know why this episode would pertain to me. Why is Lyme disease so crucial for everyone to know about?
- [04:25]
B
Because it's not just Lyme disease, right? So from the time you're born, you start picking things up, put things in your mouth. You get bitten by a cat or a dog or a hamster, you could pick up Bartonella doing that. Everybody pick up Epstein Barr virus, scores of viruses, bacteria, protozoa, yeast. We can pick these things up. And there's very good evidence. I mean, this is what I've been studying for the past 20 years, is all the things that we can pick up without knowing it that can end up dormant inside of our tissues, and we're fine, we're good. You have them. Everybody in this room has them. But then if your body is stressed, you're eating a bad diet. Me taking night call for 20 years, every second to third night and not sleeping and not eating like I should and just running stress and all these different stress factors that are coming at us from so many directions in Our modern world, these things catch up with us, and these things that are dormant start reactivating, and they start breaking down those cells and start invading other cells. That's what illness is. That's what chronic Lyme disease is. But there's very good evidence that it's what most chronic illnesses are. Okay, Multiple sclerosis, Most people test positive for. A lot of people test positive for Borrelia, the Lyme bacteria, but also chlamydia and mycoplasmas and Epstein Barr and all these things that we have become to associate with chlorine. Lyme, you see it showing up in other places, too.
- [06:05]
A
How many people are walking around with Lyme disease and don't even know it?
- [06:08]
B
Oh, that's hard to know, because if something is dormant inside your cells or inside your tissues, you're not going to test positive for it. The only way for us to know is something that we don't typically do, which is take really deep tissue biopsies or chop people up and look in their tissues, look inside their cells. And if we did that, everybody in a tick brine area, like New England, I think we'd find that good portion of the population have some of these microbes buried in their tissues.
- [06:40]
A
What exactly is Lyme disease? How debilitating is it, and what are.
- [06:44]
B
The symptoms, typical symptoms of Lyme disease? So what Lyme disease is technically what Lyme disease, how we've defined it, is an infection with a bacteria called Borrelia. There are actually 21 different species of Borrelia worldwide. Borrelia has been found from the tropics all the way to the Arctic Circle. It's really common, so it's virtually in every environment. Not around here in Phoenix, where it's so dry, not many ticks have to worry about rattlesnakes more than you do ticks. But in a lot of environments around the world, you find this bacteria inside ticks. But ticks carry a lot of different things. So technically, Lyme disease is in infection with that bacteria. And typically, the early symptoms, like if somebody does get symptomatic. Now, what I'm finding is a lot of people don't get symptomatic, or it's very mild. They think, I had a mild flu for a couple of days or that's it. And they don't really get anything. But you have fever, malaise, muscle aches, joint aches. You can have heart symptoms. But, you know, I didn't have any of those things in the beginning. It was later, when I was under this stress and it got worse and worse and worse. And then, then when someone identifies with chronic Lyme, which by the way, isn't even recognized as a diagnosis by the conventional medical community.
- [08:13]
A
In your Lyme disease journey, and you're a doctor, what did the traditional medical establishment miss when it came to your Lyme journey?
- [08:21]
B
Well, they don't really have any tools to treat it. I mean, it's frustrating for them because, you know, if you look at the CDC recommendation, which I think is a very reasonable thing to do, if you are bitten by a tick and you develop symptoms, fever, malaise, muscle aches, etc. Then you should receive 21 days of antibiotics. According to the conventional medical community, that should cure you. Though we know that 20% of people that are treated with antibiotics get sick later. So that in itself says, well, even the antibiotics aren't eradicating the bacteria.
- [09:01]
A
They're not eradicating the bacteria, and they're wiping out your gut microbiome, which is probably making you sicker in other ways.
- [09:07]
B
Well, you've got a short window there. You've got a short window of about 10 or 20 days that you're not going to wreck your gut if you take antibiotics. So short term use of antibiotics is a reasonable thing to do. But I always tell people, don't stop there. Think about taking some herbal therapy too, which is. We'll get to that. That idea of acute Lyme disease is frustrating for a lot of people because, you know, doctors really don't understand it and they don't have good tools to treat it. But then, so you get bitten by a tick, you pick up this bacteria, you don't get sick or you don't really notice it, and then you get sick six months, six years later, and you test positive for the bacteria, and then you develop all these crazy symptoms. I mean, insomnia. I had heart issues, neurological issues, and a lot of people have same symptoms that they might have with Ms. I had pretty severe cardiac manifestations, but also, you know, burning feet and just these odd, what we call paresthesias. Just weird tingling throughout my body and just felt like I was a wreck, you know, I mean, I got up every day feeling like I had a really bad flu every day of my life.
- [10:33]
A
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- [12:50]
B
Because the whole concept of diagnosis and chronic illness is flawed when you look at that idea of diagnosis. All right? What we're doing with a diagnosis is determining what's wrong in the body and how we can Administer therapy to treat that. Where we do really well in conventional medicine is acute intervention. You break your leg, you have a blocked artery in your heart, you have acute infection, then we have what you need to get it fixed. Single problem specific therapy. It works just fine, right? When you look into chronic illness though, it's not one thing going wrong, it's everything going wrong in the body. So instead of looking at for causes of what that might be, or treating one thing specifically, we start putting out fires everywhere with treating with drugs. And when you look at that idea of chronic Lyme disease, there's very good evidence that long term antibiotic therapy is more destructive than it is helpful. But when you think about it, I mean, think about your body. If you had just kind of peppered with dormant microbes in your tissues and they were reactivating so you still have dormant microbes and they're growing slowly, Antibiotics just aren't a good, good, good solution for that problem. So here's the deal. Antibiotics are single chemical agents that work really well for fast growing bacteria. So if you develop a pneumococcal pneumonia, you've got pneumococcal bacteria invading your lung in one spot. Those bacteria are turning over very, very rapidly. So the average turnover rate of pneumococcal bacteria in that pneumonia is every 20 minutes. Geez, really fast. So somebody can get very sick very fast. So within that 10 day window of antibiotics, you can hit them really hard and you're not going to wreck the gut before you kill these fast growing bacteria. Borrelia, the Lyme bacteria, it turns over an average, so it's doubling time is 12 to 24 hours. And that's in its active state, not in its dormant state. So it's not surprising. Antibiotics just don't work that well for that bacteria. So to control this chronic thing where you've got it all through your tissues and your immune system is doing odd things and your, you know, your whole body is being controlled by the microbes. It's like, you know, you turn your body over to the microbes, your body becomes basically a food source for the microbes. They're growing, they're breaking your body down and shifting your internal environment from healthy cells to food for your microbes. It's going to take a long time, it's going to take months or years to control that. So if you do it with antibiotics, you're going to absolutely wreck the gut. And that's what happens. So conventional doctors, it's like, well, if I don't have Any tools to fix something. I don't really want to know about that thing.
- [16:08]
A
Right, right.
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B
So that's kind of how it is. So it's not even considered a diagnosis.
- [16:15]
A
What is the best testing for Lyme?
- [16:17]
B
Talking to the patient, asking some questions. Look, you know, I did first phase of my career in OB GYN for 20 years. And the second phase has been just this journey of really understanding illness and coming to a very, very different place. And I don't think about diagnosis and chronic illness in the same way. And I went through a phase of functional medicine that I was doing lots and lots and lots of testing, testing, testing, testing, testing. What I found is a lot of testing isn't that accurate. And if I sat down and talked to someone and really piece together all the reasons why they were ill, I didn't need a lot of testing. So it's really helping people understand. And I use a formula for that that I'd be glad to share. But it really gets down to the crux of what illness is and what, what wellness is.
- [17:15]
A
Yeah. What's the formula?
- [17:17]
B
So your body is completely made of cells. Everything that happens in your body, whether it's your heart beating, whether it's thyroid hormone being produced, everything that happens is done by cells. So every single one of your cells is like a little microscopic biological machine. So it's a self contained unit. Now all of our cells are working together, they're all dependent. And that's what hormones are doing. That's what all these hormones and chemical messengers is. Cells talking to one another, coordinating their functions. But every cell is independent. So every cell needs very specific things to be healthy. And if your cells are healthy, you're healthy. It's as simple as that. So you think about it, it's pretty logical. So every cell in your body needs the right nutrients. So that's one five things. So your cells need nutrients, different cells. It's like your heart burns mainly fat. Your brain needs carbohydrates for a quick burn. Your thyroid needs iodine to produce thyroid hormone. But if you're eating a whole food diet, whole food is whole cells. You're getting all the things that you need for your cells to function.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Number two cells need a clean environment. Think of all the chemicals and everything that we're exposed to in our environment today, and radiation and everything else. All of these things are toxic to our cells. So any chemicals that are foreign basically gum up the machinery of our cells. Little microscopic machines, they don't work as well. So it's like throwing sand in the machinery of your cell, it still works, but it has to work harder and it burns out faster. So that's number two. Cells need downtime. So our cells work hard. And one of the most remarkable things about our cells is they can repair themselves is that sleep, sleep, everybody needs eight hours. So if you're running on an average of six and a half hours, which is what most Americans are doing, you start your next day with a deficit that your cells haven't recovered from the day before. So you need downtime during the day and a good eight hours of sleep at night for your cells to function normally. If they're not getting that, they're not keeping up, they're not repairing. So your cells are working at a deficit. Your cells are stressed. Four, your cells need good flow. So our cells think about our tissues. Our tissues are really tight. Our muscle tissue, organ tissue, all the cells are compacted very tightly. So nutrients and oxygen have to get in those spaces. So you leak plasma from your bloodstream and it flows between the cells. So it not only brings nutrients and oxygen, but it also washes away debris and congestion and it helps the cells purge those toxic substances they're getting rid of. So if you're not moving, you're not getting good blood flow. So that's the most important part of exercise, is getting out and making blood flow and that pushes it through the lymphatics, clears up that space. So you, if you're not getting exercise, if you're not moving, you're getting congestion and that builds up and that threatens the health of your cells. And number five, protection from microbes. Microbes are our arch enemy. Microbes have to eat everything. Living is food for something else. We're food for microbes and they're our greatest threat and that can be an acute infection. So like if we get something, something that really makes us sick is because we don't have built in immunity to it. Like Ebola virus is really bad because nobody's ever been exposed to it. We have no built in immunity. When N enters our system, it basically ravages all the cells of our body. When you look at all the other things, most of the things that we're exposed to through human history, we've been exposed to them over and over and over again. I mean, ticks have been biting humans since the beginning of humans. And Borrelia has been with them along with rickettsia and anaplasma and a whole bunch of other stuff too. So we have natural built in immunity to these things. But Again, they're very stealthy, so they get through our system. They find ways that they can survive and wait it out.
- [22:01]
A
Why doesn't the CDC acknowledge chronic Lyme?
- [22:03]
B
Because they don't have anything to fix it.
- [22:06]
A
Could Lyme disease be the cause of tons of, like, mystery illnesses that doctors can't explain?
- [22:12]
B
Yes, of course. You know, this whole, you know, getting back to that idea of diagnosis, you know, you break your leg, you want to know where it's broken so you can go and fix that. So when you've got chronic illness and everything in the body is breaking down, we don't have anything specific that we can target. So, you know, we've talked about the causes of disease. When you look at causes of any chronic illness, it's on that list of five. And it's never one thing. It's typically all of those things. So I don't think when you look at any kind of chronic situation, chronic Lyme or Ms. Or any other, it's not just one microbe. It's a. A lot of things that are reactivating in the body because they have an opportunity. It's really whatever you've picked up that concept of diagnosis. And chronic illness really gets complicated because you know what the purpose of a diagnosis is to lead to therapy. You have a broken leg, the diagnosis defines the therapy and the solution. You know, it's going to fix that broken leg. When you get into chronic illness, though, we're not fixing the causes, we ignore the causes, because that's complicated, because that's behavioral modification. You know, I've got five minutes to talk to this patient. I don't have time to talk to them about diet, what toxins they're exposed to, and all of this. We don't have time for that. We have time to order lab tests and write a prescription. So when you look at chronic illnesses, prescriptions are designed to block symptoms or other manifestations, but they're not doing anything to block cellular stress. They're not doing anything to understand and restore cellular stress. So what healing is, is the ability of your cells to recover from stress. And they're very good at it. If you take the stress off, drugs don't take the stress off. So people end up in a state of chronic, minute, managed illness, and they don't get well. 60% of the American population are defined as having a chronic illness. That's the CDC defined. 60% of the American population is chronically ill. We spend more on healthcare than any country on earth, and we're some of the most unhealthy people on earth.
- [24:33]
A
Exactly.
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B
Because we are treating the symptoms instead of addressing the causes.
- [24:39]
A
Yes, yes.
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B
It's as simple as that.
- [24:44]
A
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- [26:58]
B
It's possible, but like I said, they specialize in, in ticks. All right? Microbes are opportunist. They're going to do whatever they can to survive. And you know, and, and spreading from host to host is what they do. So if they can do that in utero or sexually, they may, if it works for them. So yes, it can happen, but it's. It's not that common. I think a big problem with where we are with chronic Lyme disease or chronic illness is that we always are looking for one specific thing that's making people sick. And you know, we, we've found that there are a lot of co infections with Lyme disease and the list of co infections gets longer and longer. So it's more the fact that we all pick up things throughout our lifetime that can become dormant in our tissues. And then when we're stressed, these things can reactivate. How they reactivate depends on your genetic makeup. So we talked about the difference between Ms. And Lyme disease, Right. So a lot of people with Lyme disease have Ms. Like symptoms, neurologic impairment. They have found that demyelination, which is the process of ms, occurs in Lyme disease. Borrelli has been associated that. So it comes from the bacteria scavenging the myelin off of the nerve, which is kind of like. It's like the plastic on a copper wire. And if you scavenge that protection, then our nerves short out, and that's what causes the symptoms. Well, they found that in Lyme disease, they found borrelia in Ms. So why do some people get ms? And that's. That study that I was reviewing suggested that it's genetic factors. People that progressed Ms. Have genetic factors that make them more susceptible.
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A
Do you believe that's true?
- [29:03]
B
Yeah, I think what genetics does isn't necessarily make us sick. You know, there are very few.
- [29:10]
A
It loads the gun and our environment pulls the trigger. Yeah, yeah.
- [29:13]
B
You know, it's. I always say it's the hand that life deals you, and it's how you play that hand.
- [29:19]
A
Right.
- [29:20]
B
So it's how it. Your genetics basically defined how you tolerate certain risk factors.
- [29:27]
A
What are some symptoms of Lyme disease in kids?
- [29:30]
B
Very similar, but you know, it can cause behavioral modifications, a lot of other kinds of things. And you know, it's never just borrelia. And part of it in kids. I mean, I do worry about our kids just because they're exposed to so much stuff in the food and the food itself. And, you know, so I think they're more vulnerable than they used to be.
- [29:53]
A
Why do most Lyme disease treatments fail? And how is your approach just radically different? Like, how is the chronic Lyme disease controversy holding back millions of people from healing?
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B
Yeah, I think the big deal is you've got the conventional medical community that's saying, yeah, it doesn't really exist. And people get labeled with fibromyalgia or whatever. You know, I kind of oscillated between fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. Fatigue for years before I actually defined that I was carrying these bacteria and started understanding things. That's why I don't really think about diagnosis the same way as I used to. But it's so the first thing I, you know, it's like, okay, I've got this bacteria, I can take antibiotics, I can get well. And I did that round after round of antibiotics and just got sicker.
- [30:44]
A
Right.
- [30:46]
B
And just realizing that that wasn't the right solution. And I was very fortunate that, you know, I was a, I was a small town doctor. I had to stop practicing obstetrics, which is what I'd been doing for 20 years. And I created a, you know, a small primary care practice so I didn't have to take call, but I was attached to that practice. I couldn't leave town. I couldn't just been really didn't have the finances to go and pursue, you know, therapies that could cost a hundred thousand dollars, which is really common because.
- [31:20]
A
If you're in a small town and you, you as the doctor are sick and dealing with some kind of chronic disease, like. Yeah, like you can't tell and who's going to replace you. This little town needs you. You're the only doctor probably.
- [31:30]
B
Well, it was a big enough town though. It was a hospital. They were other doctors. But it was. But still, you know, it was my livelihood and I couldn't just quit. I didn't. Couldn't declare disability and I couldn't really tell people what was going on. That's a weird thing about Lyme is, you know, a lot of people find that you don't really look sick. So what's the matter with you? Why can't you do what you were doing before? My, my previous partners just didn't understand it. I didn't understand it.
- [31:59]
A
Did you lose personal relationships because of the disease?
- [32:03]
B
Yeah.
- [32:03]
A
Wow. Oh my gosh, that's so sad.
- [32:05]
B
My wife stuck with Me. That's good.
- [32:07]
A
That's good. You found some natural remedies that were able to help the Lyme more than the antibiotics ever did. What were they?
- [32:15]
B
There was a book published. This was about 2005, and there was a book published called Healing Lyme by a guy named Steven, Steven Booner. And, you know, I looked at everything. I looked at crazy stuff, and by then I was really trying to figure it out. I was. I had become certified in holistic medicine. And so I was really open minded to anything beyond conventional, because conventional obviously wasn't the solution. I was aware patients used herbal therapy. I was aware of that, but really didn't give it much credit, you know, And I read about this protocol and it's like, I'm desperate and I'm going to give this a try.
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A
And what did they say to do for a natural remedy to Lyme disease?
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B
Well, it was using herbs and really high grade extracts. Herbs that you wouldn't find like at a Whole foods or a natural food store. I've come to know them now, and they're much more mainstream.
- [33:20]
A
Okay, so what are the herbs?
- [33:22]
B
At that time, it was Japanese knotweed, cat's claw, Chinese skullcap, andrographis, reishi, cordyceps. And that's kind of the core of my protocols today. Other herbs too. But it was really high doses and high concentrations. I mean, I, I was taking handfuls of capsules two or three times a day. My wife thought I really lost it.
- [33:50]
A
And so when you have Lyme disease and you're doing these natural remedies, do you have to keep up with that then forever? Like, are you still having to do all these supplements or are you okay to go without them now?
- [33:58]
B
Nope, that. That's the thing. Yeah, that's the thing. And, and that's a big message that I have. So I did the herbs and within six months and, you know, and really going into it, it was like, I'm going to try this. I don't have high expectations that it's going to help me. If it actually is killing the bacteria, then it's probably going to wreck my gut, just like antibiotics. But I started getting better and it didn't wreck my gut, which was really cool. I was kind of back and forth that I would get like 70% better and I'd run out of herbs. And it's kind of like, okay, well, this is good enough if I can live with this, because, you know, I was worried that I was going to die. Yeah. Then I would have some stress and be Back to square one. And I'd start all the herbs again. And this went on for several years. And I'd really. I had very severe heart issues, which really concerned me at the time. You know, that's. I ended up with a cardiac cath and all kinds of evaluation, and my vessels were clear. And it's like, we don't understand why your heart is skipping every second to third beat. Here, take some drugs and see if you can stop that. And I couldn't tolerate the drugs. It took about three to five, four years before those symptoms completely resolved. Right. So healing takes time. What healing is, is the ability of cells to recover from stress. So our heart cells, they don't get to rest all night. They have to keep beating. They have to rest in between beats. Our heart cells are very vulnerable along with our brain cells. Our brain just doesn't really ever stop. So nerve cells, heart cells take a long, long time to heal. The amazing thing was it did. And that was just remarkable in itself. But I found that every time I stopped the herbs, I would start relapsing.
- [35:57]
A
So you're still on them.
- [35:58]
B
I've been taking herbs now for 20 years.
- [36:01]
A
Wow.
- [36:02]
B
Not at the levels. I mean, I take pretty good healthy dose about once a day. And I've enjoyed some of the best health in the past decade that I've enjoyed in my whole life.
- [36:16]
A
Okay.
- [36:16]
B
Japanese knotweed symptoms that I had in my 30s.
- [36:22]
A
Amazing.
- [36:24]
B
My knees are great. I mean, I just finished hiking probably over three days. We hiked 20 or so miles up in the canyons.
- [36:33]
A
And how old are you now?
- [36:34]
B
68.
- [36:35]
A
Okay, that's great.
- [36:37]
B
And, yeah, so I'm still kite surfing and, you know, paddleboarding, all kinds of stuff.
- [36:44]
A
Okay, so what are the top three things that everybody should do to protect themselves from Lyme this summer?
- [36:48]
B
Being vigilant about ticks is really, really smart. You know, protective clothing. I don't use the chemicals. I just don't like the idea of putting chemicals on my body. So I use essential oil preparations.
- [37:03]
A
What essential oil is good for ticks?
- [37:05]
B
There are a lot of them. Essential oils in general. Basically, they're the plants. Insect repellent. But it's. So there are a lot of good products out there. I use one called Murphy's Naturals. But, you know, and I used to wear full clothing and all of that sort of thing. But I've gotten. So I'm back to hiking just in shorts again, because I'm just really sensitive to not being. Being brushed. You know, I like wide trails and things. And I'm constantly checking myself. And I. I'm. I. I can feel a tick on my skin where I'm just, you know, years ago, I wouldn't pay attention to that. Now I'm really vigilant.
- [37:44]
A
You're, like, hyper vigilant.
- [37:45]
B
Yeah, but that's another reason for hiking out here and where it's really dry, there aren't any ticks.
- [37:50]
A
Can Lyme disease damage DNA and accelerate aging?
- [37:53]
B
Well, yes, it can. It damages cells, right? So your body is made of cells. We talked about that. Here's aging in a nutshell. Through your lifetime, through your childhood, you are building cells. So by the time you get to age 20, you have five to 10 times more cells in your body than you need to survive. And how that. We haven't really done the science to look at how much a factor is that in someone's total lifetime, but how many cells you accumulate during childhood, how good your diet and health are during your childhood up until the age of 20 is really important. So after that point, when you hit peak adulthood, you stop building, and there you start losing cells. So your cells are burning out their mitochondria and losing energy. So for the rest of your lifetime, you lose cells. Cell count is really, really important. So when you look at your cells, they're losing mitochondria, they're losing energy. So most professional athletes are retired by the age of 40 because they've burned through half of their residual cells. And all their cells have an energy deficit compared to when they were 20, half again by the time you head to age 80. So if your cells are stressed, they're working harder, and they're burning out faster. So if you're eating a bad diet and not getting sleep and not getting exercise and exposed to toxic substances and have reactivation of microbes, which we all have a little bit of that to a certain degree, throughout your lifetime, then you're burning cells faster, and so that affects your ultimate lifespan. And it's really as simple as that. It's all about cells. Any aspect of any topic on health and illness can be described by cells.
- [39:55]
A
What is the freakiest thing you've learned about Lyme disease that would shock people?
- [39:58]
B
The freakiest thing, I think, is just that I think it's a lot more widespread. I think there are connections to it that are bigger, and there's so many people out there that just feel totally helpless. You know, they are not getting a straight answer from both the conventional community or their Lyme community. You know, people are getting pushed into situations where they feel like the only way they can get their health back is by doing these really extravagant therapies. I mean, I've talked to so many people that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- [40:34]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [40:35]
B
Online therapy, and I didn't spend much anything.
- [40:39]
A
What do you think is the future of Lyme disease treatment?
- [40:41]
B
Well, you know, I hope we're building that, you know, so part of the herbal thing is that your whole body's on fire. And if you throw a bunch of herbs in there. You know, part of what I learned in my journey and with helping people all these years is that it's just. It's just you're almost intensifying the fire inside when you just dump a lot of herbs in now. I did pretty well with it. I have a high pain tolerance. I persevered with it. But one thing that I've been creating, I found that instead of seeing patients in a practice, building protocols and programs for people is really helpful. So thinking about that cellular thing again, you know, if you can imagine every cells throughout your body are in distress. Well, when cells are in distress, they let your brain know about it. Like if you cut your finger, cells that are injured release chemicals that send a message to your brain that you've had an injury. So think about cells that's happening throughout your body. Your brain is bombarded with these distress signals that send us into that overactive fight or flight response. And that keeps us from sleeping and keeps. It cuts. Slows our gut down. It just messes up everything. And that makes it harder for you to take the herbs and the therapies that can get you well. So we've started a protocol that for the first couple of months, we're really working on calming that sympathetic overactivity that fight or flight, using herbs like ashwagandha and calming herbs to bring people down. At the same time, starting off lower doses of. Of herbs that are well tolerated to start reducing that microbe load. And then once you do that, then you can start working on the gut. You know, everybody thinks that gut problems, digestive dysfunction is mainly diet, and it's actually mainly stress. So when you're stressed, when your brain has in that fight or flight response. Right. When you're running from a tiger, digesting food isn't a priority. Overactive fight or flight shuts your gut down. Slow motility. If you're not moving, everything gets backed up.
- [43:01]
A
Yeah.
- [43:02]
B
Into your liver. So you get bad liver gallbladder symptoms, reflux indigestion, small bowel bacterial overgrowth occurs because of Slow motility, you don't move. You have food in there, you don't move. Bacteria overgrow and they started damaging the intestinal wall and you get leaky gut and food sensitivities and all that. You have to address that sympathetic overactivity first. Once you do that, then that. The second phase that we do is moving into restoring gut function. Get people on a healthier diet, start getting their body detoxifying, it's ready by then. And then the third phase, we move into those stronger antimicrobial herbs when their body is really prepared for it.
- [43:56]
A
So I landed in Miami a few hours before hotel check in and thought, you know what, I'll just hang by the pool. No big deal. Well, big mistake. I stayed out too long at peak sun and by the time my room was ready I looked like a lobster. Luckily, I had active skin repair hydrogel in my bag and I started applying it immediately. That burn calmed down fast and within days it faded into a tan instead of peeling like usual. This isn't some trendy burn cream. It's made with hoci, a molecule that your white blood cells naturally produce to promote healing. It's sting free, totally non toxic and smells like nothing. No sticky residue, no chemical scent, just fast clean healing. Most wound care products are outdated, messy, harsh and even toxic. But active skin repair uses medical grade science to work with your body. It's safe for all ages, even pregnant and nursing women, and comes in spray or gel, depending on what you prefer. Use Code Alex for a discount and head to activeskinrepair.com that's code Alex@activeskinrepair.com don't travel without it. I used to think good sleep was about a melatonin gummy in a blackout curtain. Turns out it was my sheets sabotaging me. I was waking up hot, tangled and honestly just irritated. So then I switched to Cozy Earth's bamboo sheet set and everything changed. I didn't even know that sheets could feel this way. Smooth, soft and so breathable. It's like sleeping under a cloud that regulates your body temperature. They're made from 100% premium viscose from bamboo and somehow they get even softer with every wash. I've never looked forward to bedtime more. And the best part, Cozy Earth gives you a 100 night sleep trial and a 10 year warranty. I mean, who does that? Visit cozyearth.com and use code ALEX for up to 40% off your order. It's cozyearth.com with code ALEX for up to 40 percent off. A better year starts with better sleep. Wrap yourself in cozy earth, ladies. Imagine this walking into a room with thousands of bold, faith filled women who actually get you. That's what the Young Women's Leadership Summit is all about. It's happening June 13th through 15th at the stunning Gaylord resort in Dallas. You're going to hear from people like me, Ginny Urich, Riley Gaines, and Brett Cooper, all while building real sisterhood. Bring your mom, your sister, or just come solo. You're going to leave with a community. Get 25% off your ticket at ywls2025.com with code. Alex. See you in Texas. Is your practice primarily just focused on Lyme disease?
- [46:23]
B
Now it doesn't matter whether you're talking about Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune, really anything. It's all cellular stress. It's all involved those five things. You know, I've been able to find a micro factor in virtually everything, cancers, you name it. You're going to find a micro factor in virtually every chronic illness.
- [46:44]
A
And where are you at? North Carolina?
- [46:46]
B
Yes.
- [46:46]
A
Where for people that want to see you.
- [46:48]
B
Best way is just for us online.
- [46:50]
A
Okay, dude, so you're doing virtual appointments.
- [46:53]
B
I do more structuring these programs. So, you know, for a long time. Well, I did a practice for years and I found that the more I talked to people, the better I could help people. So I started doing just online consults.
- [47:09]
A
Okay.
- [47:10]
B
And typically in a consult, it will last like an hour, an hour and a half, just carrying people, sometimes starting back at their childhood, piecing together why they got ill. It's really important. What we do in conventional medicine is we define how people are ill and we treat the how instead of the why. And understanding why people get ill is so remarkably important. And that can take a lot of time. It's really intense. I could only do like a few consults a day. Oh, I'm sure I was talking to people all over the world. I wasn't managing medication, so it was more like a high level health coaching call. So what I've been working on in the past several years is how can I do that for a much larger group of people? Because this one on one with just a few people at a time. So a year ago, we started building a community within something called mighty networks, that we're building out this really robust education system that basically I'm carrying people through that process and they're with us for six months. We go through those different steps and it's just robust Education videos of me, group sessions, answering questions that people have and helping them to piece together the why of, of the illness.
- [48:39]
A
Do you call the community Slimy Limey?
- [48:42]
B
Pretty close.
- [48:45]
A
Okay, Dr. Bill. So, okay, random question only because I was told, like, you have to ask him about this. My audience knows I have Hashimoto's. And allegedly you have the most unique Hashimoto's take in all of the medical community. So what is it?
- [48:58]
B
I have theories that we do have microbes present in our cells. And this is more theory. It's, it's, it's hard to find the absolute evidence for hype, for hypothalamus, for, for the thyroid gland. But I still think that we do have microbes there that reactivate. And when you look at autoimmune, I mean, you think about it, so your cells are stressed. They have, you know, some of the cells have microbes. They start reactivating, they start breaking down those cells and invading other cells where your immune system sees that and goes, we can't have that. And it starts attacking the cells when the microbes are coming from. So I think it's really hard to explain autoimmunity if you don't have that. So if you can imagine your cells in your body are stressed, that's worked your thyroid cells too hard, that's caused reactivation of microbes. So your immune system starts attacking your thyroid cells, making the problem even worse.
- [50:03]
A
Right.
- [50:04]
B
So the problem is an overall cellular stress problem. And when we look at thyroid or adrenal fatigue, it's all cellular stress that's driving those problems.
- [50:16]
A
Oh my gosh. Fascinating.
- [50:17]
B
So it's a little bit different way of thinking about it. Totally. Most people do.
- [50:21]
A
What is the website or social media that people can go to if they want to learn more about Lyme from you?
- [50:25]
B
Our main website, just for information, is rawlsmd.com and if they put rawlsmd.com resources, it'll have some, some special information for, for them.
- [50:38]
A
So I ask every guest at the end of the episode if you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture. It could be physically, emotionally, or spiritually. What would it be?
- [50:48]
B
Live more naturally. Try to live more naturally. That's really important because we're just really off the map of how humans live. Eat whole foods. That's, that's really important for people to eat whole foods, you know, and you can't do that with everything. Eat. I mean, I don't make my own mayonnaise, but I'd say 90 plus percent of my food. I'm making myself and I'm making it from whole foods and take herbs every day because not only, you know, you look at all these herbs that we've talked about for chronic Lyme disease, every single one of them has anti cancer properties too.
- [51:25]
A
That's right.
- [51:26]
B
Why would you not want to do that?
- [51:27]
A
Exactly.
- [51:28]
B
So they're definitely herbs you wouldn't want to take on a daily basis. But the herbs that we've talked about here and adaptogens like reishi and cordyceps and rhodiola, all of these things are herbs that don't have drug like properties that are how they're working is they're protecting ourselves from all of these stress factors that we've talked about. So cellular protection is really important. So eating a good diet, that's great, you know, getting sleep, all these things. But the microbe protection, all herbs have antimicrobial properties. All plants have that. Very different than an antibiotic. It's not disrupting its selective group pathogens, so it's not disrupting our gut flora. So taking herbs every day, what you're doing is just bringing on, you're borrowing the plant system of robust cellular protection, protecting yourselves from free radicals, toxic substances, radiation, microbes of every variety. So taking herbs every day is just really, really important for staying healthy.
- [52:36]
A
Dr. Rawls, thank you for coming on Culture Apothecary.
- [52:39]
B
Pleasure. Thank you.
- [52:43]
A
I'm really struck by the powerful insights that Dr. Rawls shared about Lyme disease and the importance of looking beyond traditional treatments. It's clear that Lyme is far more complex than many realize and it affects so many aspects of our health. You know, what stood out to me most is this idea that healing doesn't just come from addressing the symptoms, but from supporting cellular wellness and strengthening the body's natural defenses. Share your Lyme disease story in the cute servatives Facebook group. Mondays and Thursdays at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. New expert guests bring their own unique remedy to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally or spiritually. Subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube and follow me on Instagram at realalexclark. You can also find the show on Instagram at Culture Apothecary. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.