Dr. Mary Talley Bowden

Summary

Podcast Summary: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Episode: Dr. Mary Bowden

Release Date: January 28, 2026

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Overview

This episode of Tetragrammaton features Dr. Mary Bowden, an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist based in Houston, who became widely known for her independent, patient-focused approach and outspoken stance during the COVID-19 pandemic. The conversation covers her journey into medicine, establishing a direct specialty care practice, the evolution of sleep apnea diagnosis and treatment, insights from the pandemic, controversies over COVID therapies, challenges with medical regulation, and her vision for the future of healthcare.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Bowden’s Path to Medicine and Practice Philosophy

• Early motivations: Started as a "science nerd," drawn to independence and curiosity about the human body ([00:23]).
• Career trajectory:
  • Residency in Texas, then transfer to Stanford
  • Noted cultural and practical differences between programs ([02:29])
  • Preferred autonomy, joined a small group practice in Houston
• Work-life balance: Four children in five years led to a seven-year break from medical practice ([03:43])
• Return and innovation: Returned to medicine six months before the pandemic, building a “third-party free” private practice that rejects insurance to prioritize patient care over bureaucracy ([04:02])

“When I went back, I was going to do it differently and call myself third party free.” — Dr. Bowden [04:02]

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2. Direct Specialty Care Model

• Flat fee structure: Eliminates insurance complications ([05:39])
• Patient autonomy: Allows for needed procedures without surprise bills
• Financial transparency and lower costs: Surgeries at her clinic cost far less than hospital equivalents ([85:48])

“My goal was just… be a happy doctor. I didn’t need the money. … It’s become so much harder to get into a doctor in a timely fashion.” — Dr. Bowden [85:10]

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3. Clinical Insights: ENT, Sleep Apnea, and Snoring

• Common ENT Issues: Tonsillitis, sinus infections, allergies, sleep apnea ([06:06])
• Evolution of Sleep Apnea:
  • Early 2000s: Stanford at the forefront
  • Surgery (e.g., hyoid advancement) often ineffective; over time, became more conservative ([07:41], [10:53])
  • Diagnosis advances: Shift from expensive, uncomfortable in-lab studies to accurate at-home testing ([12:44])
• Lifestyle impacts:
  • Weight loss can profoundly reduce sleep apnea severity ([12:21])
  • Body position during sleep plays a crucial role ([11:24])
• Snoring solutions:
  • Nasal sprays (e.g., Xlear, Afrin — caution for addictive potential) ([16:25])
  • Nasal strips, surgical interventions if necessary ([19:39])
  • Use of mouth tape or chin straps to encourage nasal breathing ([34:08])

“If you lose 10% of your body weight, you can diminish your sleep apnea by 25%.” — Dr. Bowden [12:21]
“Well, earplugs for the spouse. Seriously, it’s not…” — Dr. Bowden, on the simplest snoring fix [16:25]

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4. Perspective on Surgery and Medical Training

• Cautious approach:
  • Initial enthusiasm for surgical solutions replaced by experience-driven skepticism ([21:30], [30:16])
  • Prioritizes high-value, low-complication interventions (e.g., adenoidectomy for children) ([31:22])
• Personal accountability in medicine: Importance of direct doctor-patient relationship versus institutional diffused responsibility ([23:32])

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5. COVID-19 Pandemic Experience and Controversies

• Early cases and pragmatic early treatment:
  • Treated respiratory infections as before, with antibiotics, steroids, and breathing treatments ([36:07])
• Rise in distrust of institutions:
  • Patients often refused hospital care due to lost trust ([37:01])
• Therapeutic shifts driven by access:
  • Early success with monoclonal antibodies until government distribution restriction ([38:03], [39:19])
  • Shift to Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine when monoclonals became inaccessible ([40:45], [41:46])
• Regulatory backlash:
  • Faced disciplinary action from medical boards primarily for prescribing Ivermectin—and not from patients, but from other healthcare professionals and systemic actors ([61:33], [62:11])

“I ended up treating over 6,000 COVID patients, and everybody that got early treatment survived.” — Dr. Bowden [46:20]

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6. Medical Regulation and the Doctor-Patient Relationship

• Legal battles:
  • Sued over hospital privileges to treat a late-stage COVID-19 patient with Ivermectin; ongoing legal struggles and major personal expense ([56:50], [59:37])
  • Highlighted how current systems prevent patients from bringing trusted doctors into hospitals ([59:26])
• Systemic issues:
  • Directives from the Federation of State Medical Boards targeting doctors for non-mainstream COVID treatments
  • Cited politicization of healthcare and regulatory overreach ([63:58])

“They’re basically telling patients that you can’t sue a hospital. You can’t bring in another doctor for a second opinion outside the hospital.” — Dr. Bowden [58:12]

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7. Vaccine Mandates and Adverse Events

• Mandate backlash:
  • Hospital affiliations terminated after speaking out publicly against mandates, not the vaccine itself ([66:09], [66:47])
• Observations about vaccine injuries:
  • Rise in unusual rashes, neurological symptoms, and persistent high antibody levels in vaccinated patients. Notes difficulty in testing for spike protein or definitively diagnosing vaccine injury ([69:04], [71:59])
• Global perspectives:
  • Points to countries with lower vaccine uptake (e.g., Africa) faring comparatively better, proposes lifestyle factors also play a role ([77:30])

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8. Preferred Treatment Approaches—Supplements and “Off-Label” Medicines

• Frequent deficiencies: Recommends Vitamin D, zinc, vitamin C, NAC/Glutathione for respiratory and post-COVID symptoms ([43:30], [44:29])
• Off-label prescribing: Defends using medications like Ivermectin off-label, highlighting its safety record ([79:01], [46:20])
• Legal challenges: Fought for—and won—the removal of FDA warnings against Ivermectin for COVID-19 ([80:41])

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9. Vision for Healthcare—Direct Care and Patient Empowerment

• Promotes direct primary care model:
  • Monthly fee, better access, bypasses insurance for routine care ([82:18])
• Tools for patients: Recommends organizations to find independent-minded doctors:
  • Independent Medical Alliance (IMA)
  • Free Market Medical Association ([84:00])

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10. Practical Advice and Memorable Cases

• Sleep and insomnia:
  • Emphasizes behavioral interventions, circadian rhythm resetting (watch sunrise), and simple home tools over medications ([88:15])
• Tinnitus and hearing:
  • Discusses causes and coping strategies ([91:34], [93:47])
• Unusual cases:
  • Prisoner with ear bitten off, patient with maggots in a wound ([94:24])

“You created the doctor’s office you wish you could go to.” — Interviewer [87:48]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On bureaucracy:
  “What used to drive me crazy is ... the surprise element of what’s insurance going to do? I just hated that.” — Dr. Bowden [05:39]
• Battling mandates:
  “It’s just, you know, we can’t speak the truth about COVID or the vaccine.” — Dr. Bowden [75:09]
• On direct care clinics:
  “There’s options where you can be outside the system, but you’re still covered for catastrophic care.” — Dr. Bowden [83:54]
• On vaccine reporting:
  “I see a lot of vaccine-injured patients… but I am the first doctor that has reported their injury to VAERS.” — Dr. Bowden [76:25]
• On practice ethos:
  “I really wanted to make it easy. I actually located my clinic in a strip mall so that there was none of that.” — Dr. Bowden [87:48]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:02] Launching a “third party free” practice
• [07:41] Sleep apnea surgeries and research
• [11:24] Importance of sleep position
• [36:07] Early pandemic treatments
• [46:20] Experience treating 6,000 COVID patients; early treatment successes
• [56:50] Legal battles over Ivermectin, hospital privileges
• [66:09] Writing a book (“Dangerous Misinformation”)
• [69:04] Observing vaccine injuries
• [84:00] Direct care resources (IMA, FMMA)
• [87:48] The “spa” medical office and patient experience
• [91:34] Treating tinnitus and hearing loss
• [94:24] Memorable clinical cases

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Conclusion

Dr. Mary Bowden’s conversation with Rick Rubin is a sweeping, candid account of her evolution as a physician, the fracturing trust between doctors, patients, and institutions during the pandemic, and the urgent need for a more personalized, transparent care model. Whether discussing sleep science, the practicalities of running a patient-first clinic, the controversies over COVID therapies, or medical regulation, Bowden’s approach is grounded in direct experience and a commitment to patient autonomy.

For listeners interested in practical ENT care, vaccine policy, medical autonomy, and post-pandemic healthcare reform, this episode is an essential, thought-provoking listen.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

Tetragrammaton.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I'm sort of a nerd. Growing up, I loved speaking school, loved homework. I was good in science and math, and I wanted a career. So that's where it sort of started. But I remember thinking I could never be a doctor. Wow, that's like. That's just too hard. But then just bit by bit, it just happened. I mean. I mean, it started with me just wanting to have a career, wanting to be independent, and then curiosity for science and curiosity about the human body.

[Interviewer]

After residency, did you open your own practice right away?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No. I mean, you have. So when you finish residency, you have a lot of options. You can go on and do a fellowship, you can join an academic practice, you can join a big group practice, you can join a small practice, or you can go solo. I was done with the academic culture. When I finished residency. I wanted to get out of there. I actually got a job offer at Kaiser in California, Northern California. But I didn't want to be an employee. I wanted autonomy. But I was so young. I didn't want to go out solo yet either, because no one trained you during residency how to set up a practice. So I joined a small practice, which was wonderful. And it was just two other doctors.

[Interviewer]

Where was that?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Houston. So I moved out of California back to Houston.

[Interviewer]

And you're from Houston?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, I'm from Atlanta. And then I matched in Galveston, Texas for the first part, first two years of my residency, which was amazing because we had the largest prison hospital in the state of Texas. And as somebody who's training, it was incredible because the prisoners wanted to be there. They didn't care if you look like you were 16 years old and you were, you know, practicing medicine on them. And I mean, my very first day of residency, they threw me into the minor operating room by myself, just taking lipomas off prisoners all day long.

[Podcast Host]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Just very hands on. But my future husband wanted to move to California and the spot opened up at Stanford. So I moved. I transferred and finished at Stanford, and Stanford was total opposite. It was very hands off a lot of very important people as patients. You know, more observing than doing during your training. You know, this was during the dot com boom when we moved out there, and then we were there when it crashed. And then my future husband didn't like his job, so he decided to move back to Houston. So I joined a small practice in Houston. And that was great because I had a lot of autonomy, but I also had somebody dealing with the business side of medicine. I did that for seven or eight years. And I started having kids, and I have four boys. The first two I kept working. Then I got pregnant with a third and decided, okay, I'm gonna take a year off. And during that year, I got pregnant again. So I had four boys in five years, and I just couldn't do it anymore. We didn't have family in town, so I just stopped practicing medicine. And I stopped for seven years.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

And I did not go back until six months before the pandemic.

[Interviewer]

Wow. What motivated you to go back?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I just. It was an itch that needed to be scratched. You know, I. I missed it.

[Interviewer]

And the whole time. Did you feel like, I'll go back?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No. I wasn't sure. I just. I just kind of put that on the back. I mean, I was.

[Interviewer]

Your hands were full.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

It was. It was really hard. And my. My husband at the time was. He traveled like crazy. So I was like. I felt like a single mom. It was great, though, because I really didn't have to take him to the doctor because I could just check their ears all the time and all that. So. But I decided that when I went back, I was going to do it differently and call myself third party free because I didn't want the government butting in or insurance companies or hospitals. And I opened what's called direct specialty care. So I don't take insurance.

[Interviewer]

How did you get the idea to do that? Was it in reaction to the experiences you had before?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. I mean, what used to drive me crazy is, as part of an ENT exam, we often do an endoscopic view of the nose. So we numb up your nose with some spray, and then we put a little camera in there. It's not a big deal. It's five to 10 minutes. But we would bill for that extra as an extra charge, extra time. And you got the equipment and all that. And half the time, the insurance company wouldn't pay for it. And the patient would get some, like, a $400 bill. And then they'd come back angry, like, why did I get this huge bill? And I used to find myself debating whether to do this exam based on that, based on the insurance.

[Interviewer]

But if you weren't thinking about the financial side, you would definitely do the test.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right. That's what I mean.

[Interviewer]

You wanted the results of the test.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I would do the test. Right. And I shouldn't have to weigh in the insurance.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So now I just charge a flat fee. And if you need the exam, you get the exam. It's not even an issue. There's no extra fee. It's just part of the visit. But things like that, it's just the surprise element of what is insurance going to do? I just hated that.

[Interviewer]

So when you moved back to Houston and you joined the small group, tell me about what that practice was like. Like, what would people come in for?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Just, you know, a basic ENT practice revolves around a lot of acute respiratory tract infections, tonsilitis, ear infections, sinus infections.

[Interviewer]

What would you do for tonsillitis?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

It depends on. I mean, is it mono causing tonsillitis? Is it tonsillitis where you're on the verge of having an abscess? So we get, we as an ent, we see peritonsillar abscesses, which are. Can be a life threatening condition.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

It's highly gratifying to treat though, because you basically drain the abscess in the clinic and the patient's like just instant relief. Oh, that's great. As a doctor, like when you can instantly help somebody, that's very gratifying. But allergies is a big sleep apnea.

[Interviewer]

When did sleep apnea become a thing?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So I finished my training 2003. I actually was in Texas and I transferred to Stanford and we were sort of the cutting edge place. We were the place in the country where people were doing research for sleep apnea. You know, there had been some movement prior to that, but probably the early 2000s is when it really became a thing. So I remember feeling like, oh, this is great. We are going to make a huge impact in everybody's lives. And to some degree that was true.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

But there was a flip side to that. I mean, I saw surgical procedures being done that did not work at all. I actually published.

[Interviewer]

Did you not know that yet?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I was being trained to believe that you can fix sleep apnea with surgery. And actually I published a study about a procedure called hyoid advancement.

[Interviewer]

What is that?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So your hyoid bone is this little bone in your neck right under the chin. And there are a bunch of muscles that your tongue attaches to the hyoid bone. And so what we were doing is bringing that hyoid bone forward to try to bring the tongue forward. Most of sleep apnea basically comes from the back of the tongue falling into your throat and obstructing the airway. So the goal is to bring the tongue forward so that it doesn't fall back into your airway. That study taught me a lot because it made me realize how flawed a lot of studies are. The surgery really wasn't as standardized as they would have liked. You to believe there were different surgeons performing it differently. Like, some surgeons removed all of the muscles from the hyoid bone and then brought it forward. And some surgeons left all the muscles attached to the hyoid bone and brought it forward. But that really wasn't accounted for in the research. But I'm just a resident. I'm just sort of watching this. But. And we actually did publish a study showing that the hyoid surgery was not effective for treating sleep apnea.

[Interviewer]

So tell me the study you did.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

We basically looked at how successful we are in lowering the apnea hypopnea index. So that's the key number that you look at for sleep apnea. Apnea is when you completely stop breathing for at least 10 seconds. Hypopnea is when the airflow diminishes by at least 50% and the oxygen level drops 3% or 4%, depending on how you measure it. You add up all those events during the night, and then you get an average per hour. So you get the apnea hypopnea index. If it's over 5, it's considered sleep apnea. So 5 events per hour. If it's 5 to 15, it's mild. 15 to 30, it's moderate. If it's over 30, it's severe sleep apnea. So we were basically measuring pre and post apnea.

[Interviewer]

How do you do that test sleep study?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. And so that's another thing that has really evolved. But at the time, the gold standard was a sleep study overnight, usually in a hospital. Electrodes all over your body, electrodes on your.

[Interviewer]

That doesn't seem like the most comfortable night of sleep.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No, I don't really know how people do it. I mean, I will say if you have horrible sleep apnea, you can sleep through anything. But the people with sort of the borderline are mild. That really hard time falling asleep because you've got electrodes on your scalp. You know, they do an ekg, an eeg, they have electrodes on your legs. And it's expensive too. It's about, I don't know how much it was at that time, but right now it's probably about $1,200 to do a sleep study if you're gonna pay cash. So we were looking at, you know, before surgery and after surgery, and we did not find a statistically significant difference. But yeah, I came out of residency very gung ho to do surgery on patients.

[Interviewer]

Well, you want to help people.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, I'm an earness and throat doctor and we operate, we're geared to want to operate. And I joined a practice with another doctor who was very much interested in sleep, and he read his own sleep studies, which is not something that I was trained to do. We were trained to cut on people, but not read sleep studies. So I started reading sleep studies. And that just gave you a much better sense of what was going on. Started noticing that body position is huge with sleep apnea.

[Interviewer]

What's worse on your back? On your back.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

And I'm actually working on a study right now looking at this. But I would say the vast majority of people I see with sleep apnea significantly worse on their back. And some people, it's only on their back. So I would say to people out there who have been diagnosed with sleep apnea, ask your physician. Okay, what was my score when I was on my back versus when I was not on my back? A lot of doctors don't look at that, but that's key. And if it's only on your back, you can buy something off of Amazon called a sleep backpack. And it's like wearing a little pillow on your back, and. And it keeps you from rolling over. You just sleep on your side, and that can be curative. The other thing that we never talked about during residency is weight. I mean, weight is huge. If you lose 10% of your body weight, you can diminish your sleep apnea by 25%.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. It's huge. We did not discuss that at all. I mean, we basically said it's a lost cause.

[Interviewer]

And at the time, the only solution, the surgery that didn't work was.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, no, I mean, the CPAP machine. So CPAP machine. And I'm not saying that we just rush. You know, we always encourage people to try the CPAP machine first. I mean, that's very gold standard.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about the CPAP machine.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So there's no downside to the CPAP machine. If you can't tolerate it, it's fine. It's not like, you know, surgery, and it's not taking a medication, but you do have to. You have to strap this mask on your face. There's some that just go on the nose or some go in the nose and the mouth. And I will say the people with severe sleep apnea adjust to it pretty well and pretty quickly. And once they adjust to it, they will not sleep without it. They love it because they feel so much better. What happens, people with severe sleep apnea, they don't get the deep sleep that they need because your body is sort of fighting all night. You know the deeper you sleep, the more likely you are to obstruct. So your body to compensate for that, keeps you at lighter stages of sleep so that you don't obstruct. And then you end up just feeling like even though you slept for seven hours, you feel like you got very little sleep. So those patients with severe sleep apnea, once they get adjusted to cpap, they feel amazing and they don't want to sleep without it. The harder people are the ones with mild or even moderate sleep apnea, they have a much harder time adjusting to it. And so those are the patients where we try to find an alternative like surgery. Now, I want to talk about sleep testing too, because that has changed since I was in residency significantly. I used to be a real snob about it. Like you have to do an overnight study in a sleep lab and then once you're diagnosed with sleep apnea, you have to go back for a second night and do a CPAP titration study. Well, now the technology has gotten so good that that is unnecessary for the vast majority of people. Unless there's something strange going on where you're having like possible seizures during your sleep or just something other than routine snoring, you really don't need to do a sleep test in the lab. You can do them at home. The device I use, and I have no financial ties to this company, but it's called Itamar and it's a watchp. You put something on your wrist, you put something on your finger, you put something on your chest, you don't have to have anything on your face at all. The equipment's disposable information goes to the cloud. I can get a sleep study the next morning on my computer and then go over the results over the phone. And if you do have sleep apnea, you don't need to go in for a CPAP titration study anymore because the machines now automatically titrate the pressure with each breath.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So we call it cpap, but it's really auto pap. So you basically just give the machine a range, which is standard, 4 to 20 centimeters of water pressure. You do a ramp where it's like a little 15 minute window where it gives you, eases you into the pressure. And you can do that at home. And it's become much easier now. Honestly, I think it should be over the counter. There are loads of apps you can download on your phone that will record you while you sleep to see if you're snoring. So that's an easy Starting point, if you're not sure, it's just get the app, see what's happening while you're sleeping. And if it's questionable, then see a doctor.

[Interviewer]

Does everyone who snores have sleep apnea?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No. Definitely not. No.

[Interviewer]

What else could it be? It could just be snoring.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Just snoring? Just turbulence of the airflow in your nose or your throat.

[Interviewer]

And what are the best solutions for snoring?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, earplugs for the spouse. Seriously, it's not. If it's. No. If it's just snoring and not apnea, check the nose. So oftentimes there's an issue. You know, allergies can be part of the problem. Wait, you know, there are a couple over the counter nasal sprays that could be tried that are easy. I mean, like X Clear. Yeah, I love Exclear. It's going to be more subtle than the medicated sprays. Exclear is a. It has xylitol in it. And Xylitol is a natural sugar which has decongestant effects. Is that sugar is actually poisonous to bacteria, so it helps with infection. If you want to do something a little bit stronger, you can try Afrin as a test. You know, I know you're, you're grimacing it. Afrin is highly addictive, so everybody needs to be forewarned. But Afrin has some wonderful uses. It's very effective for nosebleeds, but it's also a good test for snoring. So if you use Afrin before bed and it significantly improves your snoring, that means that the problem is from your turbinates, which are these things inside your nose that swell. So you know when you get congestion that comes and goes, that's turbulence inside your nose and they get congested. The Afrin is a strong vasoconstrictor, so it shrinks the turbulence dramatically. So if that fixes your snoring, then you know that turbulence are the problem and you can address that long term with medicated sprays or surgery. And there are some procedures that can be done in the office that are fairly non invasive. But using Afrin as a test can be helpful.

[Interviewer]

Are there any other natural remedies like Neti pot or anything like that?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

The Neti pot is a little bit harder to do than just a squeeze bottle. Yeah, but everybody kind of calls it the Neti pot. But the squeeze bottle is a little bit easier. There's also the Navage, which is sort of a power wash. You can use more salt to get more of a decongestant effect. You should never forget to put the salt in there because you put straight water in there, it burns like crazy.

[Interviewer]

I've had that experience. Feels like your head's going to explode.

[AG1 Advertiser]

Yes.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, it's crazy. And then I personally, I have my patients, I give these little bottles out in my clinic, which is half baby shampoo and half betadine. If you're allergic to iodine or betadine or shellfish, you shouldn't do this. But betadine is a wonderful antiseptic. It's what we used in surgery. Kills viruses and bacteria, fungi. You add a couple drops of that to your water, you drink it. No, no, no. In the sinus rinse kit. No. You flush your nose with it.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could drink it, but this is for your nose. Just to try to, like, kill if you're. If you're. If you have a cold or something can be helpful. And then the baby shampoo breaks up biofilms, which is a sheet of bacteria, adheres to the lining of your sinuses and can be resistant to antibiotics.

[Interviewer]

Are there other devices that can hold your nose open? Do those work?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yes. Well, there's Breathe Right nasal strips. Most people have probably heard of that. It's like a little plastic adhesive one.

[Interviewer]

You see football players wearing them sometimes.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, yeah. Well, so what that does is opens up your nasal valve, and that is the most narrow part of your nose. So the Breathe Right nasal strip is tried and true. It is. You know, personally, I don't really like having that adhesive on my nose, but there is a magnetic one, which I actually haven't tried. That looks great. And then you can also have surgery. You can have surgery to basically strengthen the nasal valve, because as you get older, the tissue gets weaker, the structure gets weaker. So some people, you can put a little cartilage in there to strengthen that nasal valve area.

[Interviewer]

Are there any devices to sleep with, to put the tongue in the right position physically?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. Well, you can have a mandibular repositioning device. It's like a night guard, but it brings your lower jaw forward. Yeah, I do talk to patients about that. But it can irritate the TMJ joint, which, once that gets irritated, can be a big problem for people.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

And it's also expensive. It's thousands of dollars, usually. I know there's things that hold your tongue, but I'm not aware of anything that's really been super successful. There is a newer surgical technique that. It's called Inspire where they implant an electrode that connects to the back of your tongue, and when you're asleep, it stimulates the back of your tongue so that the tongue shocks you. Yes. Yes.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I usually do not recommend that for people. It's a four hour operation, and then you have an implant in you for the rest of your life.

[Interviewer]

So there was a surgery to solve the problem that didn't solve the problem. And why did you decide to do something about it instead of the system?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, during residency, I didn't really do anything about it. I just sort of observed. And I'm naturally conservative about surgery to begin with. And during residency, I saw, because I'm an ent, we do sinus surgery. And I just remember seeing these patients come back for their fifth or sixth sinus surgery. I'm like, what more can be done? I mean, we. I don't understand what more can be carved out of the inside of their nose? So that made me a skeptic. And then.

[Interviewer]

And that's your job. That's what you're trained to do.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right. And then, you know, when you get out in the real world, buck really stops with you. When you're a resident, the buck doesn't stop with you. When you get in the real world, you have patients coming to you and you're suggesting they get this surgery that has risk to. It has a pretty brutal recovery. Like when you operate on somebody's throat, it's a brutal recovery. You want to make sure it works because there's nothing worse than the patient coming back to you after they gone through all this and said it didn't work. So I'm very sensitive to that. And I'm very cautious about sending people the operating room unless I can see a very definite problem that can be fixed. And I'm fairly certain fixing it's going to improve their life.

[Interviewer]

You do that personally, but on a systemic level, you weren't trained to do that.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No, but it's just something that comes with. When you're in an academic institution, you've got a team of people to diffuse the blame. A patient may come back and see an entirely different doctor for their follow up. So it's a little bit easier to contend with that as a doctor, I think. But when the buck stops with you and you're alone with the patient, you give them bad advice, it comes back to you.

[Interviewer]

That's a really good argument for always finding a doctor who's you are a specific doctor as opposed to an institution, because just in terms of accountability in that relationship with you and the doctor, they'll feel some sense of if this doesn't work, they're coming back to see me.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Personal accountability. Yes. Yes.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, Seems reasonable.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, it's true for any profession, honestly. Right.

[Interviewer]

What is a nebulizer used for?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Nebulizer? Breathing treatments. So it is, it's a very simple machine. It's a small little motor and it connects to a tube. It sends pressurized air through that tube. Tube connects to a mask. Connected to that mask is a cup that you put medication in and the pressure aerosolizes the medication. So it's distributed throughout your nose, throat and lungs.

[Interviewer]

And what would you use that for?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Asthmatics. Use it. They're having an asthmatic attack. The two primary medications that are used are albuterol and budesonide. Albuterol is a short acting bronchodilator. It opens up the airways when you're having a bronchospasm, as asthmatics do. And then budesonide is a steroid, it's anti inflammatory, it's longer acting. And I use the budesonide nebulizer treatments very routinely in patients with stubborn. You know, when you have a respiratory tract infection, the first week, you know, you get the fever, the congestion, the sore throat. And then the second week in some patients, it kind of settles into the, into the lungs and you're not really suffering from an acute infection anymore. You're suffering from an inflammatory response. And those breathing treatments can be incredibly helpful. Can you get that persistent cough that won't go away?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So it has applications beyond just asthma. I use it all the time for treating respiratory tract infections.

[Interviewer]

Would it also be helpful for pneumonia?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yes. I mean, it. So it does have a steroid in it. So you need to make sure that the infection is under control because steroids suppress the body's ability to fight infection.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

If you give steroids too early in the course of an infection, that can backfire and make the infection worse. But like I said, in that second week, as long as the infection's under control, super helpful.

[Interviewer]

And can you always tell when the infection's under control?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

If you're experienced, I mean, not always, but there are patterns that as a doctor you recognize.

[Interviewer]

Other than the steroidal treatment, are there any other things you can nebulize that would be helpful for something like pneumonia?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, even just plain sailing, yeah, it helps just loosen up the phlegm. A lot of people are nebulizing colloidal silver, food grade hydrogen peroxide. I personally don't tell my patients to do that just because I haven't needed to, I have enough tools in my toolbox.

[Interviewer]

Understood.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

But I know people are doing those and have told me they found them helpful.

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[Interviewer]

Can you remember any cases along the way that were pivotal? Either didn't go the way you thought or it gave you new insight about what to do going forward?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, yeah, there was one case where the va, this patient came in with very subtle swelling of the soft palate. And I was suspicious of a tumor. I ordered the mri. I was very proud of myself because he had a huge tumor in there.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I left that. So you do a rotation. So you spend several months. And the patient ended up getting an operation. It was a benign tumor, but it was big. Ended up getting an operation and ended up hospitalized for six months. Wow. Died.

[Interviewer]

And I'm like, well, maybe for a benign tumor.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, maybe. No, but maybe I shouldn't have picked. I wish I hadn't. You know, he probably would have been totally fine. It probably was slow growing. But sometimes you can, you know, you can overdo it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then would you Say from that time forward, you would be more wary.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. So one good example that we see as emts is acoustic neuromascular, which is a benign tumor that grows on either the hearing nerve or the balance nerve, and it can present with ringing in one ear or hearing loss in one ear or balance problems. And for example, if you see, if you get a hearing test and there's a significant difference in hearing on one ear, it's pretty rare, but about 1% of the time that will be from a neuroma. So standard is you get an mri and then if you pick up the neuroma, what do you do? Well, in residency, I would have said, go get that thing, you know, go operate on it. Cut that thing out. Now. I'd be like, oh, I would just watch it, you know, see if it grows, see how fast it's growing. And. But that, you know that that's not the mindset when you're in training.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So basically you've come to realize that you just won't rush into surgery. It's not the solution for everything. But you don't it out.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No.

[Interviewer]

And you still do surgeries.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. So one of the most gratifying surgeries I do is just a simple adenoidectomy.

[Interviewer]

What is that?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So you have a ring of tissue in the back of your throat, your tonsils, your adenoid, and the back of your tongue, the base of your tongue. It's called Wall Dyer's ring. All this tissue does is produce white blood cells. So people get very concerned when you take out tonsils and, you know, destroying your immune defense in the back of your throat. That would be very hard to do without removing the base of your tongue, which most people don't do that. So when you take out the adenoid and interestingly enough, your adenoid shrinks and basically disappears by the time you're an adult. But in some kids, it just completely blocks the nose. So the stuffy kid, where the nose is always draining and it can lead to ear infections. And taking that out is like life changing. Kids are out of anesthesia usually that night they're back to their normal selves and then they're like all of a sudden can just breathe. Wow, those are very gratifying.

[Interviewer]

Do you ever consider changing someone's diet for allergy?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, yeah, but it can be overkill. You know, some people, because there's some diet tests and you have to be careful how you test because there are some tests out there that over call it. And then people get very wound up and overly cautious about what they eat. But definitely there's, you know, some dietary things. And the way I usually tell people is, you know, eliminate things and then maybe test to confirm rather than test first.

[Interviewer]

Elimination diet.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right.

[Interviewer]

What is tongue tied?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So I was trained and I still, I still go by this when the tongue is sort of tethered to the floor of your mouth and it's hard for you to protrude your tongue. So, like if you're trying to lick an ice cream cone, you found that difficult. You might have tongue tie. And newborn babies sometimes have difficulty breastfeeding because there's a little bit of tethering there. Well, I was trained. You just go and snip it and we're done with it. But now it's become a thing where you have to use lasers and you have to do physical therapy after. And it's become complicated and expensive. So I'm old school. I just keep it simple. You can do it in the office. You do some topical anesthesia scissors. And done.

[Interviewer]

And is there any reason not to do it?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I've never seen a complication from it, I'll say that. So I wouldn't say it always solves the breastfeeding problem, but I've never seen it backfire or have issues because it was done.

[Interviewer]

What are your thoughts on mouth tape?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I'm an advocate.

[Interviewer]

When would you use it and how do you use it?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, what it does, it forces you to breathe through your nose, which also forces the back of your throat open. I actually want to do a study on this because I could only find one study published about this, which is interesting because it seems to be. Everybody's talking about it, but it makes sense because if your mouth is, you know, if the air is going through your nose, it's going to have to go through your throat. I personally, I sleep with a chin strap because I don't want that tape on my mouth.

[Interviewer]

But you can buy the same thing.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

It's basically, yeah, just keep your mouth shut while you're sleeping.

[Interviewer]

And has your sleep changed when you started using that?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, I can tell if I. If I don't use it. And my ma. If I wake up, my mouth is super dry, then I know, like, I've probably been snoring and. Yeah, so I feel like I sleep better with it.

[Interviewer]

So you come back, you start your new dream practice that feels more like a spa than a doctor's office. And tell me how it started.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, I mean, it was quiet, slow, manageable. You know, a lot of people Word of mouth. It was easy, it was quiet. It was great.

[Interviewer]

What happened next?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. And then Covid came.

[Interviewer]

Do you remember the first person who came in with it?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. It was very interesting.

[Interviewer]

Did you already know it was called Covid at that time?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No, it was very interesting because it was friend of the family, and their child had been in China for an exchange, like some sort of school trip, and just came back with stubborn bronchitis. And I remember saying to them, have you heard about that virus in China, do you think? And they were like, oh, no, no way. And sure enough, within a couple weeks, it just explained. Exploded in the U.S.

[Interviewer]

What did you recommend for treatment in that first case before you even knew what it was?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, you cover for secondary infection with antibiotics. You give steroids if needed, you do breathing treatments. Just sort of basic common sense, what I'd always done for respiratory tract infections.

[Interviewer]

Were there any cases where you couldn't help the patient?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, when Covid got really hot and heavy, I had some patients come in. I can only think of two. They just couldn't get better. But they came in, like, very late. Very late.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

But the early patients, and even some of the late patients, I had some really severe cases come into my office who normally I would have called 911 because they were so sick, but they refused to go to the hospital. And we just brought them in every day and we threw the kitchen sink at them and saved them. It was amazing.

[Interviewer]

Why would they not want to go to the hospital?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Because people had lost all trust in the system.

[Interviewer]

Because even early in Covid, that was.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, this wasn't. I wouldn't say this is super early. Super early. I didn't see super sick people. It was more. It was the fall of 2021, when things. That was the third surge, and it was also the largest surge. And that's when a lot of people ended up going in the hospital, more so than the earlier parts. And early on, I was using monoclonal antibodies, which worked very well. They were not controversial at all. And initially, I could get as many doses as I wanted. I could just reach out to the manufacturer. They'd be at my office the next day. Unlimited supply. Wonderful. And, yeah, I never rationed them. So I became known in town as the place to get monoclonal antibodies, because other places, you know, you had to be a certain age, you had to be a certain ethnicity. Like, they were even doing it by race.

[Interviewer]

And what would that be? If it was something that you could call an order for anybody?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, they were Expensive. And the government was paying for them, I'll say that. So I didn't ration them. I didn't give them to, you know, there was an age cut off. I didn't go do that. But if you were, I think it was, you had to be 12 or older, I can't remember. But as long as you were the right age, I didn't. It was come one, come all. And they worked really well and people bounced back very quickly. And then what happened? The government took over distribution. So then it became harder and harder to get the monoclonal animals.

[Interviewer]

Why would they do that? Well, if the health care system was working, why would the government want to take it over?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I have theories on that.

[Interviewer]

Do we not know for sure?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, we don't have proof, but I mean, looking at the timeline, it all coincides with the COVID shot. They basically, the government took over distribution of the monoclonal antibodies became harder and harder for me to get them. And then they completely shut down the monoclonal antibodies at the exact same time. And this was early September 2021 that they mandated the COVID shots. So to me, the timing is just not a coincidence.

[Interviewer]

Now, if the monoclonal antibodies were working and the vaccine was new and we didn't know much about it, it seems odd that they would discontinue something that was working. I can see doing both.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, well, the people were not getting the vaccine because they knew they could get monoclonal antibodies. You actually were not supposed to get the vaccine for three months following treatment with monoclonal antibodies. You're supposed to wait. And the government was getting frustrated because people were not on board with the vaccine as much as they would like.

[Interviewer]

I remember people desperately trying to find the vaccine.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I actually, I looked at this this morning because Curious. In the first three months, only 30% of the people got the shot. Got one shot.

[Interviewer]

And it was available to everybody.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I don't remember when it became available to everybody, but I don't know. I saw in Texas, I saw some people just because I actually emailed my patients, curious, like, okay, what's your stance on this? And there were people on both sides of it like, hell no, I will never get that thing. And other people sign me up asap. It was interesting. So it came out in December, end of December. And you know, ivermectin got chastised for the first time in March.

[Interviewer]

Had you been using Ivermectin before that?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I only started using Ivermectin when I couldn't get monoclonal antibodies anymore. Yeah. They took away monoclonals.

[Interviewer]

And then in your experience that the ivermectin worked as good as the monoclonals?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yes, but I was nervous about that because I was like, monoclonal is like, overnight. People would wake up the next morning and feel wonderful. I was like, there's no way ivermectin is going to work like this. And I wouldn't say it doesn't. It's not as quickly impactful as the monoclonals.

[Interviewer]

But monoclonals are intravenous. Yes.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

You could do an inject, you could do four injections, or you could do an iv. But it was a very. It was, you know, a quick IV, like 15 minutes. It wasn't a big bag.

[Interviewer]

So in one day, you would get the full dosage. You wouldn't have to take it over time. With Ivermectin, it was more like an antibiotic. You would take it over time, right?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. Ivermectin. The earlier you took it, the better.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I mean, you could still take it in the late stages, but the earlier you took it, the better.

[Interviewer]

What were the other things besides ivermectin and the monoclonals that made a difference?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Hydroxychloroquine. Personally, I used. I got Covid early on. I mean, it like, melted it away. I had that chest tightness and with the COVID and I was shocked. I was like, wow. I mean, instant wow. Hydroxychloroquine. But, you know, Trump came out and said how great hydroxychloroquine was. And then it became forbidden. I mean, the Texas State Board of Pharmacy actually told doctors, you may not prescribe hydroxychloroquine for Covid.

[Interviewer]

He was president at the time, wasn't he? That's just a wild story.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

He became very political.

[Interviewer]

Wow. It seems like health shouldn't be political.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

It should not. I was not political at all prior to Covid. I hated politics. But, gosh, it became very political. And, yeah, Texas State Board of Pharmacy took it away from us. So I put it. I put that on the back burner. I just assumed at that time I wasn't fighting everything. So. Okay. And then I just did my best with breathing treatments, and I would use steroids and antibiotics as needed.

[Interviewer]

But then I also remember the way they got the vaccine out fast. What was it called?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Operation Warp Speed.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, Operation Warp Speed. I remember the president on TV touting Operation Warp Speed. And many people on television saying, I will never take that drug because that's the president's drug. We will not take that.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right, yeah. And then they're. And then they changed their tune.

[Interviewer]

It's all so strange.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

It's all. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Hard to understand.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

It is. It's very. We need to get the politics out of healthcare.

[Interviewer]

So then any other things besides the medicines? Did other things help or did you prescribe any other supplements or lifestyle choices?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Vitamin D is the most common deficiency I see by far. I mean, we can test for it very easily. And I would say when I look at that, probably 70% of my patients that I test are low in vitamin.

[Interviewer]

D. And you're in a sunny place.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

In Houston.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. Yeah. So that's a very easy thing. We did vitamin D, zinc.

[Interviewer]

Why do you think vitamin D is low in people who live in places with a lot of sun?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, we're still, you know, you're inside a lot. Think about how much time we spend inside at the desk on the computer. And then, you know, when Houston's hot, people basically it's like, stay inside with air conditioning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The vitamin D is huge. We did zinc, vitamin C. Vitamin C in high doses. There's great studies showing it prevents sepsis when given early. And there's also a lot of data showing it just, you know, decreases the duration of colds. So vitamin C was big.

[Interviewer]

If you were sick, what's the mega dose of vitamin C? That would be the right one if you're not.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, I tell my patients, you know, just at home taking five grams a day. But you can, you know, we do IVs where you get high dose vitamin C for people that are sick, like 25, 30 grams.

[Interviewer]

Wow. And there's no toxic reaction to that.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, you do need to make sure they have an enzyme that can process it. So it can. There's, you know, there's some caveats to it, but. And if they have kidney stones, that can sometimes be an issue. Zinc, that was another one. Inhibits the virus from entering the cells. Glutathione, which. Glutathione you can't take orally. So the oral form of that is called nac or nac. That can be helpful for respiratory and inflammation. Yeah. The nasal irrigations, the saline also irrigating your throat. But, you know, ivermectin has been sort of the mainstay. I'll say that. Of all the things. I was a skeptic about it actually, before I started using it, I really dug into the safety and I did my own research. I didn't just Take anybody's word for it. I went to the FDA's website and I found the study where Merck, that Merck had to submit to the FDA to get it approved. And in that is all sorts of toxicity data. And a key number that we look at is called the LD50, which stands for Lethal Dose 50. It's a benchmark number about toxicity of drugs. And it's basically the amount of drug that would kill 50% of lab animals. And what I found is the LD50 of ivermectin is, I mean, at least 100 times higher than what we're prescribing.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

It's super safe. And then I also did a literature search trying to find reports of accidental and intentional overdose from ivermectin. I could not find any reports, whereas if you do that search for Tylenol, you'll find thousands. So I knew it was safe and then I started using it with sort of trepidation, wondering, is this really going to work? But I ended up treating over 6,000 COVID patients, and everybody that got early treatment survived. About one third of those patients were monoclonal antibodies, and about 2/3, I didn't have the monoclonal antibodies at my disposal.

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[Interviewer]

What happened next?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So I was also doing testing for Covid and we became known in town as the place you could go to get a COVID test and get the results back quickly. And we did a saliva test.

[Interviewer]

Was that not available elsewhere?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No. So LabCorp became the first in the country to do testing. And this was March, I think it was like March 10th. And they quickly became inundated and they were taking two weeks to get results.

[Interviewer]

Back because they were getting all the tests from all over the country.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right. And they were the only lab doing it.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

And so people were advised to quarantine for 14 days if they got exposed. So the point of testing was so that you didn't have to quarantine, but the results were taking two weeks, so it was completely pointless. So I had already been working with this lab called Microgen dx, and they do a PCR test for bacterial and fungal infections in the sinuses. They do it skin. Their specialty is PCR testing. So they came out with a PCR saliva test for Covid. And because I'm in a strip mall, it worked out very well because we could take a cup out to people's cars, they could spit in the cup. They could leave it in a basket outside our office, and they didn't get swabbed at the nose, and our staff didn't get exposed, and. And we'd have the results back the next day. So my little clinic, it kind of exploded because of that and the monoclonal antibodies, because I was doing testing. Once the vaccine came out, I started to track people like, he's been vaccinated, and he's not. And so what I found was that the vaccinated were outnumbering the unvaccinated, and they were just as sick, if not sicker. I had privileges at Houston Methodist Hospital, which was the first hospital in the country to mandate the shots. So they did this on April 1, 2021, five months before the government mandated them, sort of paved the way for mandates. And I had privileges, but I had never used them. I was very loosely affiliated with them.

[Interviewer]

What does it mean, having privileges with a hospital?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Meaning that if you have a sick patient, you can admit them to that hospital and treat them at that hospital. Sort of just had it as backup, because I'm an ent. I'm primarily outpatient. And I actually did have a good relationship with them because I was working with them on research, because I was doing so much testing. We were looking at sort of ENT symptoms with COVID And. But when I started seeing this trend, I reached out to them. I said, hey, are you seeing what I'm seeing? Like, I'm seeing all these breakthrough cases. Is that what y' all are seeing? You know, curious.

[Interviewer]

What's a breakthrough case?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

People that are vaccinated, that get Covid.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

And I sort of got the, you know. Oh, well, we think it's just going to lower severity. Well, this is the first hospital in the country to mandate the Shots, I would think they'd have a firm response to that. Like, I'm sure they were tracking it. So that didn't sit well with me. And I started speaking out on. At the time, it was Twitter. Now X I started speaking out on Twitter. I did not have a following. I mean, I have. You know, I'd post something and no one would like it. I had no following. But, you know, and I was pretty timid compared to things I'll say now. I mean, I said ivermectin works and vaccine mandates are wrong. I had a lot of people very distraught about the mandates, which I legitimate concerns. I mean, this is. Had not been tested long. It was a new technology. And, you know, I just saw firsthand how distressed people were over these mandates.

[Interviewer]

And you saw firsthand that it wasn't necessarily helping the people who were getting it.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right. Like, I knew early treatment worked.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

And I was seeing the vaccine wasn't that bad experience.

[Interviewer]

Before the vaccine ever came, you were dealing with it and having success, Right.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. I wasn't fearful of the virus because I saw that we could treat it, and I didn't see a need to mandate these shots. So started speaking out on social media about it. And then things really heated up in the fall of 2021, and that was the third and largest surge of the pandemic. Nine months following the rollout, these shots. So theoretically, we shouldn't be seeing a surge. Right. And in October, it was October 22nd, this woman reached out to me wanting help because her husband was in the hospital and they had determined they had given up. They were talking hospice, and she wanted him to try Ivermectin.

[Interviewer]

How old was he?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

He was in his 50s, late 50s. Sergeant's deputy, father of six. You know, served his community for 30 years.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How long had he been in the hospital when you got the call?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

About a month. And some would say, well, it's too late for Ivermectin. That's not true, actually. Even at that late stage, people found it effective and it was so safe. It's like, what's the harm in trying? Especially if you're saying that he basically has no chance of living. And he had tried to get ivermectin prior to becoming hospitalized and couldn't. So we knew she knew he wanted it.

[Interviewer]

And just to be clear, Ivermectin is over the counter in some parts of the world.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yes, it is over the counter in five states.

[Interviewer]

In five states?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. Now, wow.

[Interviewer]

I've been in other places in the World where you can just go into the pharmacy and buy Ivermectin, like, next to the clotrimaton, let's say Mexico.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

People buy it from India all the time. I mean, it's super safe. So she decided to sue the hospital because they tried to find a doctor in the hospital who would prescribe it. They would not. So they had to find a doctor willing to prescribe the Ivermectin to submit with the lawsuit. So I became that doctor and I agreed to help. And it turned into a big.

[Interviewer]

Did you know what you were getting into at the time or.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No, no, no, no.

[Interviewer]

There was a guy who was sick.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right.

[Interviewer]

You've seen 6,000 patients get better.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right.

[Interviewer]

And you feel like you can help somebody who's dying.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Is that correct?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

Okay. I just want to make sure I understand it.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Clearly what happened.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I had never had this situation before, and this is very unique.

[Interviewer]

No, your intentions are good, and you're doing what you would normally do.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right. Right.

[Interviewer]

There was no criminal intent.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No. And I knew that the ability for him to get Ivermectin depended on the outcome of the lawsuit. Like, it was never under the delusion that I could just give him Ivermectin. I knew it all hinged on the outcome of the lawsuit. And so I testified. And a Texas senator also testified during this hearing. And we won. And the hospital was ordered to grant me emergency temporary privileges so that I could give the patient the Ivermectin. And during the pandemic, that was. That process of getting privileges was expedited. It was usually a same day process because they were in such need of doctors helping. You know, they didn't make you go through all the rigmarole that you normally have to go through, but not in this situation. They made me get letters of recommendation. I had to submit my surgical caseload. They waited three days, and then they decided they were going to deny my privileges, even though, I mean, I had a clean record, never been sued at that time. I still had a good reputation. So it became very messy and complicated because they had to go back to the judge because they were. They were defying the court order. And then after a bunch of back and forth, the lawyer for the patient said, we're good to go. I talked to the lawyer for the hospital. It's all been worked out. We can send a nurse to the hospital to give him Ivermectin.

[Interviewer]

It's also been days and the guy's dying.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right, Right.

[Interviewer]

You've already wasted days and this guy's life's hanging in the balance.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right. So I send the nurse, and the police show up. They call the police on her. And the hospital had appealed, and the judge had granted them a statement stay, meaning that the order, the original order, was no longer valid, but the lawyer for the patient never got the stay. She didn't know about the stay. So we were under the impression that the order was still valid, but the nurse left like it wasn't. Like, she tried to shove into the ICU and she left. So they. The hospital turned me in the medical board. They actually turned me in the medical board before this even happened. They turned me in medical board as soon as the lawsuit occurred, where I wrote the prescription for the Ivermectin as part of the lawsuit. And I am still battling the board to try to clear my name.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. I could have made it all go away If I paid $5,000, took eight hours of CME and then retook the jurisprudence exam.

[Interviewer]

What is that? Eight hours of what?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

CME. Continuing Medical Education. There's a legal exam that all doctors have to take in Texas. They want me to retake it. I could have made it go away with that, but I just decided to fight just on principle, because the principle.

[Interviewer]

Of it was it has nothing to do with that. Is that right?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, it's become politicized. It's lawfare. You know, it was a messy, complicated situation where my intentions are good. And they're basically. They're basically telling patients that you can't sue a hospital. You can't bring in another doctor for a second opinion outside the hospital. It's really giving the power to the hospital and not the patients and.

[Interviewer]

Sounds really dangerous.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and from this, what I would like is to have some sort of legislation in place where patients can bring in a doctor from a. Who doesn't have privileges to give a second opinion as long as their license is in order.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

You know, any doctor should be able to come in and give a second opinion if you have a relationship with that patient. As a patient, you have a doctor, you really trust that doctor to have privileges at your hospital. The patient should be able to bring that trusted doctor into the hospital again.

[Interviewer]

So if you have a doctor who's your main doctor, and they know you, you know them. An accident happens and you go into the emergency room and you end up in the hospital the way it currently stands, your doctor can't come in and give their opinion.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No, no, no.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. We should change that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Especially if you have a trusted relationship with. With anyone.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

So that's been going on for how many years now?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Four years.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

$250,000 on legal fees.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

It's crazy.

[Interviewer]

Unbelievable. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I mean, I'm appealing, so so far it's been trapped in the executive branch. So. So it went from a little informal settlement conference and then it goes to the state Office of Administrative Hearings, which is administrative law judges that are not elected and they work for the medical board, basically work for the state. So now it goes outside of that system to the judicial branch. So I'll take it to a state district court and then from there I'll have to appeal to the Supreme Court of Texas, but. And then I'm also suing them just for violating my due process rights. There's been all sorts of shenanigans that are just, you know, they're just trying to make this as difficult as they possibly can.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It's a wild story. Anything you looking back, could you have done anything differently or now, if you had it to do over again, what would be different?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I wish I had started using Ivermectin earlier.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I wish I'd been more outspoken. Yeah, I was.

[AG1 Advertiser]

Just.

[Interviewer]

Because you saw it work.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. Yeah. But I don't have any regrets over the trouble it's caused me.

[Interviewer]

No. Because you, I assume regardless of what is being put on you, you did what you thought was right.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right. Right.

[Interviewer]

What do you think happens next?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Like I said, I'm still in the midst of all this mess. I want to see that legislation we talked about. One thing we didn't talk about is the head of the snake is the Federation of State Medical Boards. So when I got my complaint, I got three complaints from the medical board all about ivermectin. So not just this one, but I had two other complaints and not from the patients.

[Interviewer]

That's what I was going to say. Patients didn't complain?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No, no.

[Interviewer]

Just the system.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. I had a pharmacist complain about me, so I prescribed for a 17 year old boy and I talked to the dad and the stepmother. I thought it was. I didn't know it was the stepmother. The mom complained about me prescribing it to him. He never even took it. And there was no harm or anything, but it was just basically, she had preconceived notions about Ivermectin and she thought I was trying to poison her son. But doctors all across the country, it was the fall of 2021, we all got complaints from the medical board over Ivermectin.

[Interviewer]

And if you prescribed it the year before, what would have happened?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So the organization, the fsmb, Federation of State Medical Boards, sent a directive to all the medical boards across the country to go after doctors for prescribing Ivermectin. So it wasn't just me.

[Interviewer]

Are they doing this because they thought it was dangerous?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, I think, you know, like monoclonal antibodies. Ivermectin was demonized because they wanted more people to get the vaccine. You know, if we had treatment, early treatment available, then people are less likely to get the vaccine. And I actually sued the FDA over this, because the FDA, they put something on their website in March of 2021 about doctors should not prescribe Ivermectin and patients should not take Ivermectin for Covid. And then August 23, 2021, they put out, I don't know if you saw the infamous horse tweet, but they put a tweet out with attractive woman nuzzling a horse, and it said, seriously, y', all, you're not a horse, you're not a cow. Stop it. About Ivermectin. And that tweet really did some damage. It went viral right after that. They went after Joe Rogan for taking Ivermectin. Rolling Stone put out that misinformation about, you know, they show these people lining up for the emergency room claiming that they were poisoned by Ivermectin and that people with gunshot wounds couldn't get in or something like that. It was insane. And then shortly thereafter, the Surgeon General came out and said, we have to put an end to misinformation from doctors.

[Interviewer]

From doctors, yeah.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

And then the Federation of State Medical Boards sent out directives to all the state medical boards to go after doctors. So I'm actually in a lawsuit against them with three other doctors.

[Interviewer]

Are the people on the board all doctors?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No. It depends on the state. In Texas, I think it's like 75% doctors, 25 non doctors.

[Interviewer]

Wow, it sounds like. No wonder people have lost faith in the system.

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[Interviewer]

Have you documented this whole thing? Have you written a book?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I've written a book. It comes out in May. It's called Dangerous Misinformation. It was actually four years ago, almost to the day, that I got just publicly shamed by Houston Methodists. They sent out a tweet. They suspended my privileges because I was speaking out against mandates. And I found out that my privileges were suspended from a text message from a reporter at the Houston Chronicle. So they went to the media before they went to me, and then they tweeted out that I was spreading dangerous misinformation.

[Interviewer]

Just to be clear, you weren't against the vaccine, you were against the mandate?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I didn't see any harm. I didn't see the people getting harmed from the vaccine. I just saw it wasn't working right. And so I was anti mandate. And I actually, days before they did that, I tweeted out vaccine mandates are wrong with screenshots from patients sending me emails. I tweeted that out 25 times in one day. And that made them mad.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What were the screenshots of?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I sent out an email to my patients and when that hospital, Texas Cheekley Hospital, denied my privileges, that same day I got a notice from a surgery center that I had privileges at that I had to get the COVID shot or I wouldn't be able to operate there. And that same day I also got a frantic phone call from a patient who had a history of bladder cancer and her urologist at Houston Methodist had called her and said, you may have to find a new doctor if you don't get the shot because we're talking about not letting patients in. So all those three things happened on the same day. And so I sent an email to my patients explaining that. And I said, going forward, I'm going to prioritize seeing the unvaccinated. So I'm not taking new patients that are vaccinated unless you have a life threatening issue. I never upheld that, but I was trying to make a statement and also.

[Interviewer]

If the medical establishment was saying, we're not going to treat the unvaccinated, you're like, you can come to me. It's like I'm the alternative.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right. And so I got a lot of emails in response to that. So I did screenshots of those responses and then I put on the heading of the tweet was vaccine mandates are wrong. And I literally did 25 of those in one day. And at the time, I really didn't have a big account. I mean, I had like.

[Interviewer]

But the idea is that everyone deserves treatment. That's. You were going with the idea that all humans deserve compassionate treatment.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right, right. And you should be able to choose what you put in your body.

[Interviewer]

Of course. What have you learned since?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, so I saw that the shots weren't working initially, but then I started to see people that were harmed by the shots.

[Interviewer]

How would you see that? How would that come up?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So I would see previously healthy people come in with dramatic changes in their health status in short proximity to time they got their shots. And I started to see a pattern of symptoms. I would see strange rashes, rashes that would not respond to antihistamines or steroids. I would see strange.

[Interviewer]

Was that different than the people who had contracted Covid prior to there being a vaccine?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yes, yes, definitely. I mean, I definitely have seen long like Covid with prolonged symptoms. I definitely, and I believe that there is such a thing as long Covid. What I've seen with these vaccines though, is more dramatic, like long Covid on steroids. So strange rashes, strange neurological issues like severe pain in one part of the body and the imaging studies, there's nothing to explain where this pain's coming from. Seeing a lot of pots P O T s, it's when your blood pressure and pulse become erratic and you may stand up and your blood pressure drops and you feel faint or you may just be sitting there and all of a sudden your pulse just starts racing for no reason. A lot of fatigue. And some people have strange. Like I had a 39 year old male, I mean, I'm still seeing this four years later too. People still coming to my office, swelling under his, you know, initially under the armpit where the shot was given, and then it's. It migrated to the other armpit and then it migrated to his groin. And it's been going on for four years.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

That kind of thing.

[Interviewer]

Have you seen any patients who've had similar things who were not vaccinated?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No. I mean, no. And I mean, that ends even People who've had Covid. Well, I would say I think the mechanism is a spike protein, and the spike protein can be from COVID or it can be from the COVID shot. Problem with the COVID shots is they were designed so that your body creates a spike protein with no off switch. So the concern is, and I don't think it's in everybody that got the shot. I think some shots were more potent than others. The shots required very stringent storage requirements.

[Interviewer]

Is that possible that some shots could be more stronger than others? That sounds crazy.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, manufacturing, so manufacturing, you know, these things were operation warp speed. Right. Super fast. So there could be discrepancies in the quality from manufacturing. But the other factor is the storage requirements were super. Like you had to buy specialized freezers and they could not sit out at room temperature for very long. And so my theory is a lot of people really kind of got a dud.

[Interviewer]

I remember you could get it not at a doctor's office, but just at.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

A tent or a lot of people. You know, I don't know how it was here, but in Texas, you could go down to the NRG stadium in your car. So I'm like, how do they keep those shots, you know, fresh when you're.

[Interviewer]

Just tents in parking lots?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the problem, though, with these vaccine injuries is we don't have a lot of tests. There's not a test for spike protein in the body. The only thing that I have found useful is looking at antibodies. So after you get COVID infection or a vaccine, you produce an antibody response, and that's a lasting response, and it does wane with time. But what I'm finding in the people that got the shots is these antibodies are staying super high and for very long periods of time. And in the patients that got the shots, the average level I'm seeing is about 13,000, and the people that not get the shots, about 1300. So it's about 10 times higher. And this is four years later.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

They should dissipate. Right. So it's a little bit muddy, but it suggests that there is lingering spike protein in the body.

[Interviewer]

If there was a desire to get to the bottom of this, what would be the tests that would be needed to see the spike protein in the body? Could there be one?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I just got a note about this yesterday. A lab that says they have a test for spike protein, but it needs to be validated. And there is a lab in Germany that's doing it. But I've had mixed reviews on that from other People, so I don't use it.

[Interviewer]

Do you know of other doctors who also were helping people who needed help during this time?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Oh, yeah, yeah. And a lot of us, you know, I'm not the only one that's been dragged through the mud because of that.

[Interviewer]

Excited to see what happens and it would be really great to find out more information like if we could really.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Find out what well we have. The current administration is saying, oh well, we need more data. We need more data. We do have an abundance of data. We have over 3,600 peer review published studies showing adverse reactions from these shots. We have autopsy reports, we have life insurance and disability data that peaked in the third quarter of 2021 when the COVID shots were put on the market. Other countries like Czechoslovakia has data showing that the harm you look at all cause mortality. Czechoslovakia has a very convincing data that all cause mortality shot up after these Covid shots. You know, you look at the swine flu vaccine in 1976, it was pushed out hard. A large number of Americans took it. Approximately I think 25% of the country took it. They had 30 deaths and they pulled it off the market. So it's kind of a similar situation, right, the emergency situation. They pushed out this new vaccine. They quickly identified that the vaccine was potentially harming people and they acted on it. Here you look at the first three months similar. About 30% of Americans took the shots. Pfizer. According their own data, 1233 people died from the Pfizer shot in that first three months. Now compare that to swine flu shot. 30 people died. And what do we do? Not only do we ignore that, we double down and we mandate it. There's a website you can [e-mail] and VAERS is the vaccine adverse event reporting system. It's known to be underreported. So I will say of all I see a lot of vaccine injured patients I see every day and it's four years later and invariably I'm not the first doctor they've seen, but I am the first doctor that has reported their injury to VAERS. It doesn't have to be, you know, 100% confirmation. It just needs to be suspicion that these patients aren't getting reported to VAERS because there's been such a, you know, we can't speak the truth about COVID or the vaccine. But if you go to openvars.com and there's just a, just a stunning graph, you look at, you know, there's been very few reports severes and then you get to Covid and it just. It's a volcanic explosion. During COVID Of the reports from the injuries and the medical profession, only 10% of doctors are continuing to get these Covid shots. So 10%. 10%. And this is by the CDC. They announced this during the last ACIP meeting in September. They talked about this. Only 10% of healthcare workers are continuing to get these shots. The gig is up. The doctors know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. If the doctors are not taking them, that tells you something. Tell me about other parts of the world where maybe they didn't have vaccine or couldn't afford the vaccine. How did they fare during the pandemic?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. You know, our country, I think we have 4% of the world population and we had 15% of the COVID deaths. Wow. And I don't. I should have looked this up. I know Africa fared much better and much lower uptake. Now, Africa, probably. They probably live a cleaner lifestyle than Americans, I would imagine. But we should have led the world. Right. We saved the world with the COVID shot. Right.

[Interviewer]

What percentage of the people that come to you now come to you with COVID related stuff? Is it all back to normal of people coming in with tonsillitis?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

I wish. I miss those days. I miss them terribly. No, I'm telling you, every. Almost every day, I am reminded of the carnage from these shots. I see it and it's. People's lives have been utterly destroyed and they're not getting any help. I mean, they go to other doctors and they're just told there's nothing wrong with you, or they're put on psychiatric medication. Wow. Oh, yeah. I saw a patient that was put on a sleeping pill, Valium and an antidepressant.

[Interviewer]

What are the things you can do for the patients who come in with either long Covid or a vaccine injury?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, the most effective thing I've found is Ivermectin.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yes. It's not, you know, a lot of it's trial and error.

[Interviewer]

Is that legal now?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, yeah, it's always been legal. It's just. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Is it legal to prescribe, though?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, yeah. It's never been illegal to prescribe. So there's. It's off label. So off label means that the FDA has not said, okay, this medication has been tested for this disease and been shown to be effective. But doctors use drugs off label all the time. Like, prior to the pandemic, it didn't even occur to me if I was using something on label or off label. Label. Because, you know, a drug can be in use for, you know, it initially gets approved for some issue, and then doctors kind of figure out, oh, it also works for this.

[Interviewer]

Can you think of any example where that's the case?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, gabapentin, which is a horrible drug. I don't like it. But there's something like 18 different uses for it. Even that go beyond its initial off label. But that's a widely prescribed drug that no doctor kind of goes in, looks up. Oh, is this on label, off label? I mean, that's just not the way any doctors practice medicine. I never gave the FDA a second thought prior to the pandemic. I mean, it was just helping people. Yeah. The FDA is there to approve a medication and. But they normally wouldn't be involved. And I don't think I explained this earlier, but we did sue them over that. Because when they. When they put out that tweet and they put out the stuff on their website, they were basically interfering between the doctor patient relationship. They were telling doctors what you can use, and they can't do that, and they were telling patients what they can take, and they're not allowed to do that. So we actually successfully sued the government, which is really hard to do. And they had to take down their tweet and they had to take off the misinformation on their website. That was a win.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I can remember Peter Itia early in the pandemic, looking at all the studies and seeing that Ivermectin was helpful, and he was prescribing ivermectin for his patients. And then one day he called the pharmacy to call in the ivermectin order, and they said, no, we can't do that. And he went berserk. And he's like, no, you're the pharmacy, I'm the doctor. The pharmacy can't tell the doctor what to prescribe.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Oh, yeah, don't get me started on the pharmacy. I gotten so many. So unfortunately, in Texas, there is a law that gives them the final say.

[Interviewer]

Wow, the pharmacy over the doctor.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. I mean, the purpose of that was because of the abortion pill. If a pharmacist felt morally against dispensing an abortion pill, that was the purpose, to give them that freedom. If, you know, they're anti abortion that, you know, but they abused that. There was no, you know, moral thing over Ivermectin. So we had, like, this underground. It was like the underground railroad of pharmacies. Like, we had a little secret net secret list. And I only. I recently publicized it for a long time, that list I had to keep secret. I was scared that people would go after these pharmacies. Yeah, this is crazy. But now Ivermectin will become over the counter. In Texas. They just passed along.

[Interviewer]

Congratulations. Yeah, the pandemic is over. How would you like things to be now?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, I would like the government to go away.

[Interviewer]

You said before COVID you weren't aware of the government's involvement in anything?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

No, I never paid any attention to anything.

[Interviewer]

No reason.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Cdc, fda, they did their own little business. It was, you know, and you know, thankfully, because of my practice, Medicare, Medicaid, all that was just, it was just outside my realm. I was practicing medicine without any interference and I would like to go back to that. But there is a growing movement called direct primary care. And it's basically like affordable concierge care. So you pay a monthly fee, it's comparable to a gym membership and you get much more time and access to your doctor. You only use your insurance for catastrophic care. Kind of like your cars, right? You don't use your insurance to get the oil changed. And you know, it's rare to find specialists like myself that are cash only. But that is also growing too. That's the direction I would like to see occur. I know that there is talk and maybe it's already been implemented, but I know that improving access to health savings accounts so that you can use your pre tax money towards health care expenses is a step in the right direction and moving away from these insurance companies. Just the only winner is the insurance company and the hospitals, they actually do well. But doctors don't win, patients don't win. There's options where you can be outside the system, but you're still covered for, you know, catastrophic here.

[Interviewer]

So if somebody wanted to opt out of the system, what is the best way to find this type of practice?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

There are two websites. Independent Medical Alliance, IMA and Free Market Medical association. Fmma Independent Medical alliance grew out of the pandemic and it used to be frontline critical care alliance, but then it just sort of rebranded since COVID is over. But it's independent minded doctors that, you know, had the guts to go against the grain during the pandemic. And then Free Market Medical Association, I was actively involved by the pandemic. They kind of cast me aside. I was one of the directors for the Houston chapter. But when I became infamous.

[Interviewer]

Radioactive.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yes, yes. They kind of distance themselves from me, but I do believe in their organization. They're not all like minded, but for the most part I like the way their independence from the system is good.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about the new practice. Right when you started it, did you imagine it would be just like the last one, but now you're doing it yourself and no insurance?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. So it's. It was actually, it's financially risky because, like, doctors aren't going to refer to you because their patients have insurance. And. But I, to me, my goal was just, you know, make enough to cover the overhead and see where that goes and just, you know, be a happy doctor. And I didn't need the money to do the practice. I was just doing this because I wanted to be a doctor again, you know, because it's become so much so harder to get into a doctor in a timely fashion now. I became sort of the acute care clinic for respiratory tract infections because I can see people that day.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

So that's sort of how I started. The other thing that I had advantage of is people that have high deductible insurance plans, basically cash on my patients, come see me because I knew exactly how much it would cost. It wouldn't be some pie in the sky, have no idea until I get the bill. And even with surgery, like, I can do surgeries for so much cheaper than what a doctor that takes insurance. Like, for example, if you needed your tonsils out, my fee, and that's not just me, but anesthesia and the surgery center, about $3,500. You go to Houston Methodist Hospital, that'd be $17,000.

[Interviewer]

Wow. Big difference.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Would you say that your office functioned more or less like an urgent care if people could just come in?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, I would. And you know, my goal was to make people psychologically better because, you know, I was pregnant for basically five years straight. It would wreck my day going to the doctor. So Houston's home to the largest medical center in the world, the Texas Medical center. And navigating that monstrosity was, you know, you go up a 10 story parking garage, then you go down, and it's like being at the airport, basically the Houston airport. So I really wanted to make it easy. I actually located my clinic in a strip mall so that there was none of that. It was very easy. Park and go in. I used spas as inspiration, so I infused the air with peppermint spray.

[Interviewer]

Nice.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

And I play spa music. And my waiting room is tiny. And if you do have to wait, we put you in a zero gravity massage chair. And you do not fill out any papers that used to drive me. I fill out every time I was at the OB's office. Papers.

[Interviewer]

You created the Doctor's office you wish you could go to.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Right, Exactly.

[Interviewer]

That's great.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah. And then I provided on site, so you can get your lab drawn in my office. If you need an iv, you can do in my office. If you need a breathing treatment, do it there. If you need a CT scan, we do it in the office. So, you know, it's a hassle. You go to the doctor, and then. Okay, well, then I got to schedule this somewhere else, and it goes on forever. Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Do people come to you for insomnia?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

They do, but I. I'm pretty strict about not prescribing medications to help people sleep. So people book an appointment with me. I'm like, well, you can come see me, but I'm not prescribing Ambien or any of those. But I do think there's sort of this basic fundamental issue with sleep that it boils down to you've got to calm your sympathetic nervous system down and stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system. And there's some very common sense things people can do. You know, you get into this horrible cycle where you can't sleep, you stay up too late, then you end up taking a nap during the day, and then it just kind of perpetuates the problem, and it's a vicious cycle. But if you've ever cleaned out your garage or spent the entire day, you know, working on your yard or cleaned out your attic, that is something you can do that will completely exhaust you, will help your mind calm down, and kind of reset your focus. The other thing is, it's important to reset your circadian clock is to watch the sunrise. That is the most potent thing you can do to reset your clock. So reset it by watching the sunrise and then just completely exhaust yourself doing something, you know, don't. You know, if you tell somebody who's not sleeping to go run three miles, that's a lot harder than, okay, clean out your garage. You will completely exhaust yourself. And then once you get back into a better pattern, that can be all it takes. Women, I will say menopausal women, when they start losing their hormones, especially progesterone, that can contribute to problems sleeping. So that is one medication I will use in women is progesterone to help them sleep. Men, oftentimes it's the prostate, and they have to get up to go to the bathroom. So that's not something I treat as an ent, But I'll, you know, have them recognize that that can be a problem that needs to be addressed. But the other tricks I like. So if you have a pillow on your eyes, any kind of weight on your eyes stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system. So a trick we all learn in our training is if somebody comes in the emergency room with a hypertensive crisis, if you rub their eyes, it will bring their blood pressure down. So it's the same concept. You put weight on the eyes, it stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system. The other thing is a weighted blanket. Now, sometimes that makes people too hot, but if you can tolerate the extra heat, that weight on, on your body also stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. And then if you just can't shut your mind off, I listen to an audiobook. If, when all else fails, just to get my mind sort of focused on somebody else's problems, and then I drift off to sleep. I used to use that with my kids all the time, too. When I couldn't get them sleep, I would just put an audiobook on and that would definitely do the trick.

[Interviewer]

And what about ringing in the ears?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Ringing in the ears is very hard to treat often, or typically, it's from damage to the tiny hair cells and the cochlea. And then they start emitting sounds. The only success I ever have in treating ringing, assuming it's just the most common type of ringing, where it's sort of this low hum that doesn't pulsate with your heart, but just is a noise in your ear. If you pop your ears and it changes the tone of the ringing, then fixing the eustachian tubes can help the ringing. So sometimes it's because there's too much pressure in your middle ear, because the eustachian tube is clogged, and that pressure in the middle ear is transmitting to the inner ear. And if you fix the middle ear, then the inner ear will be better. It doesn't often cure it, but it can make it better. And sometimes it's more than just using sprays like you have to try steroids or something like that. But if the nature of the ringing changes when you pop your ears, there's more hope that you can do something about it if it doesn't. And, you know, typically we recommend you get a hearing test because you want to make sure that you're not seeing an asymmetric hearing loss in one ear, because that can be a sign of more serious problems. But assuming that it's just regular old tinnitus, there's not a lot you can do for it. There's a newer Device called the Lineup, but I don't have a lot of firsthand experience experience with it. But it's basically biofeedback. And sometimes hearing aids can be programmed to drown out the ringing. A lot of people, once they know that it's nothing serious, they just learn to get used to it. It's kind of like if you moved into a neighborhood right next to the airport, the airplane might drive you crazy when you first move in, and then eventually you just forget about it. So people adapt to the noise, but it can. It can be very bothersome for a small percentage of people.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about when you would recommend that someone get hearing aids.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, it's funny. People are often pretty resistant to hearing aids compared to glasses. And I would say, you know, if you're not sure, start with something inexpensive like Costco or, you know, and see how you like those. And then if you find them helpful, then maybe upgrade to something fancier where, you know, they can program them so that when you're in a noisy restaurant, it helps drown out the background noise and amplify the voices close to you. But, yeah, I would say just start with something inexpensive. If you're not sure, just test it first.

[Interviewer]

What's the most unusual thing anyone's come in with?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Well, the most memorable, I think, is when I was in Galveston. So I'd started my residency at UTMB in Galveston, Texas. They had the largest prison hospital in the state of Texas, and they bus people in from all over the place. And I. I saw a prisoner where the other prisoner had bitten his ear off, and I had to sew it back on. So that was probably the most memorable. And I remember seeing some patients come in with maggots. So people with chronic wounds sometimes get infestated with maggots.

[Interviewer]

What do you do for maggots?

[Dr. Simone Gold]

You just clean them all out. You debride it, and it's usually around dead skin. So they're cleaning the dead skin. So it's basically just cleaning off the wound.

[Interviewer]

And you've seen a lot in your life.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Yeah, it's not that exciting now in the real world, but during residency, you see so much. You see just wild things.

[Interviewer]

Tetragrammaton is a podcast.

[Dr. Simone Gold]

Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge.

[Podcast Host]

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