Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin

Sean (00:01.404)
Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. The Radically Genuine Podcast is now in the top 1% of global downloads. How did that happen? Don't know. Well, I have an idea. Okay. All right. We are not owned by a media company. We do not have a social media team driving exposure. Sure we do, Sean. If you wanna call him that.

We do not charge for our podcast. We have no advertising revenue. What we have is a loyal and growing listener base who is willing to share episodes. If you value our content and are learning very important information that is purposely being withheld from all of us, please do us a favor. Click five stars and rate the podcast. Even better,

write a review, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and share it with a minimum of three people you know. Wow. I like that. This is how movements grow. I actually believe actually know some of our episodes of potentially safe lives because I get the emails.

I recently posted a YouTube video on Lexapro for kids. It's not too long. However, our YouTube channel is heavily restricted. It's comical at this point. Well, you use, I'm very, I don't like to imply intent, but there's something funky happening. So to that point about subscribing, everybody listening right now in the show summary, there's a link to go to our YouTube page. Yeah, if you're not subscribed.

Just tap subscribe and here's the important thing. And I think this is where maybe we've been missing the mark a little bit is that you have to tap the notification bell and make sure you're choosing all so that all of our videos that are getting posted will get served in, in your feed.

Sean (02:05.536)
because I think that's where we're getting held back a little bit. So please subscribe. Yeah, when we talk about life-saving information, many people are still not aware that Lexapro was approved for children and teens as young as seven, despite a six-fold increase in suicidality compared to placebo. That's why this information needs to be shared. Our society is at a crossroads. We're awakening to a harsh reality. Our once trusted allopathic medical system

is entangled in a web of pharmaceutical interests, plagued by scientific misconduct and burdened by generations of healthcare professionals operating within a compromised framework. What's paraded as evidence-based healthcare often amounts to nothing more than a new drug, a mere band-aid masking symptoms, while the profound understanding of the underlying diseases and genuine path to restoration remain elusive.

The alarming truth is, despite the constant influx of new medications, our health care statistics paint a bleak picture. With life expectancy even on the decline, the sick care system seems to thrive on inventing new diseases, merely medicating symptoms without making substantial strides toward actual recovery. Many are trapped in a cycle of perpetual suffering, coerced into believing that

managing their ailment is the best they can hope for. Take a closer look and you'll find a landscape dotted with conditions by the name of fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is PCOS, mood disorders, ADHD, mere manifestations of a system more adept at

Sean (03:59.648)
challenge the status quo, demand that healthcare system that prioritizes well-being over pharmaceutical profits. At the forefront of this revolution stands ethical physicians who have liberated themselves from the matrix, seeing beyond years of indoctrination. While certain doctors may robotically regurgitate pharmaceutical narratives, their eyes glazed over in a trance, other surge ahead

Breaking free from the mold, determine to innovate and authentically restore health. It's a battle between those who cling to the status quo and those who boldly navigate uncharted waters in the pursuit of genuine healing. The Radically Genuine podcast seeks out individuals who defy the norm. Those brave souls with a story to tell, the ones who've dared to ask tough questions, emerge with answers that challenge the very fabric of our understanding.

We want to spotlight these disruptors, the thinkers and the healers who refuse to settle the search for truth. To join us today, we have one of those trailblazers. Her name is Dr. Kristin Ryman. She's a board certified family physician and author with a special interest in complex, chronic, medically mysterious illnesses. She's a graduate of Yale and Stanford school of medicine. Last I heard they're pretty hard to get into.

She is the author of Life After Lime, a comprehensive do-it-yourself manual to making a complete recovery from an all too common illness. She has a story to tell and I don't wanna give away too much of it upfront, but I'm fascinated to learn about her journey and her insights into restoring health. Dr. Kristin Reiman, welcome to the radically genuine podcast.

Kristin Reihman MD (05:54.782)
Thanks guys, it's really an honor to be here.

Sean (05:59.016)
Well, we have to start with your story. I know you've probably told it a lot on various podcasts or different work that you're doing. If you can kind of take us through your own personal background that's brought you to this place in your own mission as a healthcare professional and how you were able to restore your own health.

Kristin Reihman MD (06:19.858)
Yeah, I'd be happy to. I think I should start this story actually at Stanford School of Medicine because at the time, even though I didn't know some of the things I was learning to question would be really relevant to me later. Looking back, I can remember a moment sitting in microbiology class actually, where we were learning about Lyme, Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochetic bacterial organism that is the causative agent of Lyme disease.

I remember feeling like there was some hand waving going on. Like, you know, when you have like a BS meter that just kind of goes off, I felt like I had that moment and I was sort of like, why would there need to be any hand waving? We're just learning microbiology here. But they were saying things like, you know, 20% of people who get this infection don't really seem to, you know, recover on the antibiotics. And I was thinking, well, 20% is kind of a big number, actually, one in five, right? And they were saying things like,

You can only really get this if you get bitten by the black-legged deer tick, which really only happens in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and New York. And I was thinking, wow, how do ticks follow borders? Like, how do they pay attention to those details that are in this textbook and in this lecture? I've traveled to Pennsylvania, my husband's from Pennsylvania. I mean, I don't live there anymore.

We were learning that it could take years to manifest symptoms, meaning years after you returned from one of these three hotbed states and lived anywhere else in the world. And yet we weren't looking for this at Stanford. I remember we had one patient who was so sick, he'd been in the hospital for 600 days. I mean, that's absurd, right? He'd had every test known to man. The doctors thought he was faking it and crazy. And I just remember thinking, this was a healthy, robust, you know,

high functioning citizen who's now bedridden for 600 days in Stanford Hospital, I don't think he chose this. I don't think he's here wasting our time just to be a jerk. We just don't really understand what's going on. At one point, his wife brought up the possibility of Lyme disease. I remember the doctor's kind of laughing. He didn't have any history of Pennsylvania. I just remember thinking, how are we not thinking more broadly about these things? That was back in medical school.

Kristin Reihman MD (08:39.467)
I wasn't sick then. I was very robust. I had been an athlete in college. I sort of never thought I would fall into the category that many of my patients are now in, which is the person who becomes completely debilitated. But I did become debilitated after a tick bite in my 40s. So I was a new mom. I'd been up all night with a brand new baby nursing for several months and I was exhausted. And I remember feeling very tired and thinking, wow, this is really abnormal.

But I would wake up in the morning and say things to myself like, wow, this is maybe this is kind of how my patients with fibromyalgia describe how they feel when they wake up and all day long, which is like a truck hit them and they've had eight or 10 hours of sleep and they wake up exhausted and in pain everywhere. And I remember just sort of chalking it up to, well, I'm not sleeping. You know, I'm nursing every hour on the hour for months and months and months. And then a patient came to see me.

who was a new patient. And she had also been a highly functioning adult who had a job that she loved and she was actually an artist's model. And so she would pose nude for new artists and teach them how to sort of understand the human form. And she would teach other people how to do the job she did because she was so good at it. She was no longer able to do it because she couldn't control her bladder. She was just unable to control her urine. And she had been all over, she'd had sort of a

febrile illness, a fever after travel like walking in the woods and she had some rashes but no one had looked for Lyme in her and she was convinced she had not only Lyme disease but a couple of what's called co-infections, other infections that travel in ticks. So Bartonella, Babesia. I hadn't heard these bugs since microbiology back at Stanford. They weren't things that were commonly looked for or appreciated. And I said, wow, why do you think you have these things? And she said, I've been researching this for nine months and if you're gonna be my doctor,

you're gonna have to research too. And she just hands me the stack. It's like she had it ready. She hands me like the six inch stack of papers that she printed off the internet from her research. And I remember this moment in that moment of her passing it over to me. I was like, I'm gonna read that. Because she's, no one cares more about her health than her. She's obviously very intelligent. She's done this work and I'm missing something. And all these doctors are missing something in her and I don't wanna miss it too.

Kristin Reihman MD (10:58.922)
So I read all the information and there was lots of stuff in there. There were published papers that she printed out from PubMed showing that Lyme can still live on in dogs after four months of antibiotics and Lyme can still be cultured live out of a knee joint from a person who's had 10 months of IV, ceftriaxone for that Lyme, years later. And I was just like, mind was blowing in little directions for the whole time that I was reading it. And I just kept thinking, wow.

I have been missing Lyme all over the place in all sorts of patients for the last five years. And I think I might be missing it in myself because some of these symptoms sound just like a Lyme recurrence. So I sort of batted that idea around for a while. I was still nursing my last child and didn't wanna stop out of fear of having Lyme and passing it on to him because I was also learning that you can pass it on through breast milk and it's been found in placentas of miscarried babies. I mean, it really gets around.

this infection, although that wasn't something that we were taught in medical school either. So I was kind of freaking out, to be honest. I remember my oldest son came down one morning and I was like in my internet research craze and maybe I was crying and kind of overwhelmed and he goes, mom, why are you so freaked out by this? Why don't you just like get on antibiotics if you think you have Lyme? And I said, I really, that's a big decision and I don't wanna have to wean my kid to get on antibiotics and I'll probably have to treat him too. I don't really wanna give him antibiotics, but.

I don't wanna do that out of fear. And in that moment I had this clarity and I just said, you know what, I think I really need like a tick bite and a bullseye rash to really do this right and not be doing it out of fear. This was in November of 2011. After an ice storm three days later, I pulled the tick off my butt in the middle of the night while nursing. And three days after that I had a bullseye and I got what I asked for and I got really, really sick.

And there's a whole other journey after that I can keep going on. But long story short, it was really a near death experience for me. I was in my bed for months and months. I couldn't get out. I was in terrible pain that was only relieved by lying flat on my back, not moving. I wasn't able to work for five weeks. I had a hospitalization, nearly died from a Dilaudid overdose. I mean, it was nuts. It was crazy. And I've never been as sick as that. Never wanna be as sick as that again.

Kristin Reihman MD (13:26.926)
and it took another two years for me to kind of learn how to treat myself and, you know, build my toolbox with things that weren't antibiotics, because I tried that initially and it didn't help me. So, you know.

Sean (13:38.224)
Yeah, I wanted to ask what your experience was with the medical system as a patient when you were presenting with all these symptoms, how did they respond to you?

Kristin Reihman MD (13:48.654)
I was afraid I was going to get kicked out of medicine because I was learning not only stuff that we hadn't learned, but I was learning how politically incorrect it is to think that chronic Lyme is a thing and that you need long-term antibiotics to get out of it and that there's anything outside the standard rigmarole of what you're supposed to do, which is essentially diagnose it with either a bullseye rash or a two-step test, an ELISA test followed by a Western blot.

And if those are positive or the bullseye rash is there and it's over a certain centimeters and it's the perfect bullseye, like even the Lyme can present as no bullseye, no rash, it can present as some other rash. They're very dogmatic about it. We were trying to be kind of dogmatic about it. But I learned also that there are two sets of guidelines. And the second set of guidelines that we didn't learn in medical school, which come from the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society or ILADS, are actually

guidelines that work and if you follow them, people get well. But I was learning that you don't talk about those guidelines because those guidelines were written by the quote, crazy Lyme doctors. And yeah, those people were super denigrated. I remember them being denigrated in medical school too.

Sean (15:02.488)
I have to ask a question about this because, you know, these are things that we observe with our medical professionals. If they don't understand it, they assume there's no other answer and the problem is somehow then within the patient. And there is an arrogance that we certainly observe in situations like this. Obviously, there's limitations in your training. Can you help us understand the...

the training of a medical professional at the highest level, Stanford School of Medicine is one of the top medical schools in the world. If there's information that is kept from you and being able to accurately diagnose and treat a condition as common as Lyme's disease, what are the influences? What is happening within systemically within the training and the teaching that leads to the arrogance and the

limitations in their ability to extend beyond what they were told.

Kristin Reihman MD (16:03.274)
Yeah, so there's two, I think, two really important questions in there. One is about what systemically is going on such that doctors aren't getting this other set of information, you know, other bits of information. Why is it being kept from them? But then what about doctors and their training leads us to have such fragile egos, you know, that we can't be confronted with something that we haven't learned yet without feeling like we're incompetent or we're going to be found out as frauds. And I think it gets down, it gets, it comes down to...

the real lack of permission in medical education to not know, to express uncertainty. I was well known in my rotations for saying I don't know. And I got a lot of negative feedback for that. Negative feedback. People, you know, attendings would say to me, you know, you're really smart, you actually know a lot, but we're concerned that you say I don't know quite a bit. I was like, okay.

I see how this game is played. I'm not sure I want to play it, but I see what's expected.

Sean (17:04.284)
Well, Dr. Riman, when you were, excuse me, handed that stack of research from a client or a patient, how did you overcome that, that bias or that mindset that was instilled in you through your training at the university level?

Kristin Reihman MD (17:19.57)
Well, I don't think I ever really accepted that. I think I was an outlier in that way. I mean, I went to med school a little bit older too. So I had graduated from college and then I spent a couple of years in China and then I spent a few years in Texas learning all the pre-med requirements. I had to take biology and I had to take chemistry and I had to take organic chemistry and all the things I had skipped at Yale because I was an American studies major and those weren't required. So I had to kind of do a bunch of things before I...

was able to apply to medical school. And so I was older and I had a baby. I think to some degree I knew myself a little bit more than someone who may go to med school at age 20 or 21. And I also, I don't know, I don't suffer bullshit gladly. It's never really been okay with me to lie to people. And so when I sniffed it out, I kind of would just take note. I mean, I wasn't always vocal about it.

I mean, there's a hierarchy and you have to, to some degree, play the game in medicine, but I would make note. You know, I was aware of, as one of my mentors would say, like, the aware of the moment where you give yourself permission to abandon yourself, but you've made that, you've given yourself permission, and you're still yourself. You know, you're setting aside, I'm not gonna call this attending out for talking badly about a patient in front of these other students, because that's gonna be disastrous for my career, but I'm gonna notice it, and I'm gonna.

talk about it later with people and it's, I'm not gonna let it be okay. And one of the things that's normalized and okay is pretending you know things when you don't.

Sean (18:46.708)
You know, in my ex.

Sean (18:52.668)
Yeah, that's what I was going to say is I don't really know if people believe they're intentionally lying to their patients and instead I think they're lying to themselves. There's a story that, you know, that's been told and, um, that they're training. I mean, that we reside under the beacon of scientific supremacy and, uh, you know, what we're, what physicians are kind of taught and told is the highest level of kind of research evidence that exists and, you know, in a lot of ways we dismiss.

cross culturally, like a lot of other healing practices that historically have existed or, you know, from indigenous cultures or a number of things, which are a direction I definitely want to go into. But you know, when I was thinking about when I was thinking, when I was considering questions for this podcast, do you remember that television show? Wait, I'm the pop culture guy. House MD. Oh, I love House. That that television show was like from 2004 to 2000.

He was like this anti-social maverick of a doctor, like specialized in like diagnostic medicine. Same personality as you. I'm gonna say so. But he had this like advanced problem solving ability to like uncover the origins of mysterious illness, right? And I just feel like we're losing that from our medical professionals, this.

this passionate desire to like this seeking out truth by all possible mechanisms through advanced critical thinking and problem solving and asking the right questions. And I'm not certain if that is, you know, part of the training, it's a consequence of kind of the environments, which many professionals are just working in right now, eight minute meetings, or so, so forth, like you're just pushed to see more and more patients. But

Dr. Reiman, I mean, I wanted to get your thoughts on like our loss of our ability to critically analyze and provide patients valuable information. I mean, the COVID crisis has really kind of revealed some of these challenges.

Kristin Reihman MD (21:01.498)
Yeah, I mean that's still a tender point for me. I've been so disappointed, is not even a strong enough word, just so shocked and dismayed by the lack of curiosity and thinking among my medical tribe. I honestly don't even really feel like they're my tribe anymore. I can't really connect with the stories that people are living with.

kind of promoting. It's been really hard to watch. And I remember in the beginning of COVID, reaching out to, I just saw it recently in my outbox, was looking through emails and I found one that I'd said to my smartest and most thoughtful doctor friends. And it went out to like 15 people who since, between medical school, residency, training, my mentors, like different people I've met, who I just felt like we could have a real conversation about this, I believe.

about the narrative that's being promoted and whether it makes sense and how we feel about the fact that doctors who are questioning it are getting crushed and shut down.

We can have that conversation.

Sean (22:15.16)
You made me, you made me think of something. So I mean, we glossed over it, um, a little bit, and you mean talked about chronic Lyme disease and then this label of like crazy Lyme doctor. Um, what's being stigmatized now in that same manner.

Kristin Reihman MD (22:26.294)
Mm-hmm.

Kristin Reihman MD (22:33.766)
in terms of like writ large, like what issues are causing that kind of a.

Sean (22:38.154)
In the medical field. Anti-vaxxers? Yeah.

Kristin Reihman MD (22:40.498)
Definitely that. I mean, I can't speak actually from within the medical field anymore because I haven't really been there from the last few years. I really have stepped away. But before I stepped away, I was actually a professional development coach working with a local medical school connected to the program that I trained in and had been faculty in. And as a coach, I got to watch medical students go through their training for four years and meet with them every Thursday for several hours.

Sean (22:47.741)
Okay.

Kristin Reihman MD (23:09.714)
It was really an interesting thing to get to see. And I remember at one of their, and I could see their minds come in so open and their hearts so open and their curiosity really still intact. And then just, it all got kind of drilled out of most of them to the point where at one of their final gatherings, we had sort of a week long gathering at the end of four years for each cohort.

and one of the last ones I attended, they had sort of a case-based learning where you had to get in groups and talk about, how would you deal with, how would you have the conversation from a patient-centered, patient-centered consensus-based conversation with a patient who didn't wanna give their children a vaccine? And it wasn't actually that the facilitators weren't.

didn't have any interest in actually hosting or teaching them how to host a conversation that was open and neutral and curious and collaborative. It was really about how you get people to do what you want them to do despite the fact that they're crazy. And I almost had to leave the room and vomit. It was like so distressing.

Sean (24:16.453)
Mm.

Sean (24:21.876)
piggyback off that. So recently started doing some research into the flu vaccine. As many know, the flu vaccine is mandated for all healthcare professionals for the most part. I don't know how new that is. It's just that I'm dealing with it because I have a daughter who's in a doctoral program. I didn't know it was mandated. Doctoral program for physical therapy. And to do clinicals, they're requiring the flu vaccine.

Now, some things are imprinted on my mind. We had a patient here at Center for Integrated Behavioral Health years ago who was a healthcare professional, got the flu vaccine and developed Gillian Barr syndrome, I believe it was, and was really physically impacted. Was wheelchair bound. So a lot of concerns, right? The efficacy of the flu vaccine is very, very poor, right? So like there's...

There is not a lot of evidence to suggest that this is going to prevent you from getting the flu and or spreading the flu. But yet what's happening in her school are the professors are trying to guilt them because there is resistance because they're young healthy people and they're being forced to get a vaccination that doesn't work.

but they're being guilted by the same messages we saw around the COVID vaccine was that you have a responsibility to keep others safe. And, uh, you know, that, that pushes a lot of people to getting a medical intervention where they don't believe in it because they're fearful of like harming somebody else, regardless of what that evidence even shows. So, you know, the question is

Sean (26:19.836)
I want to get your thoughts on this, like the mandating of certain vaccines, like the flu vaccine. Now, what are your thoughts? Why is that even happening in your opinion, given the efficacy we have?

Kristin Reihman MD (26:32.658)
So I'm not an expert on why it's happening. And I would say the same for the question of, well, why is Lyme so controversial? And I remember going down both of those paths for a while and just becoming increasingly concerned that it led to money, like it had to do with money and it had to do with reimbursement to the hospital around from Medicare, I think. So again, I'm not an expert in this, but there was at some point,

clarity for me because I started refusing the flu vaccine after I had Lyme and I had to go through jump through a lot of hoops to be able to continue working in the hospital system I was working in because it was about the time was about 10 maybe 15 years ago that they started mandating that and I had been religiously getting my flu shot every year since I had a kid who nearly died of the flu when he was three And then I would I mean as a resident I would literally bring the shots home and give them to all of us in the kitchen because I was like look clearly

And then I had Lyme and I learned what I learned and I learned that a lot of people who have such bad Lyme disease as I did have a dysregulated immune system. And there was a lot of evidence that I found that vaccines can dysregulate your immune system. And not just evidence in terms of like first principles and scientific literature, but also evidence in the form of patients with stories who said, I had been fine with my Lyme symptoms. I was better until I got a flu vaccine.

and then everything crashed and I was back where I started. And so just based on what I was learning, I was like, well, not interested. Like the things I've learned about health and nutrition and sleep and exercise and all the foundational pieces for a healthy, strong immune system that I've had to cultivate to dig myself out of the hole that was Lyme, I still do. Like, and I'm not going back anytime soon. So I felt.

pretty safe in my ability to protect myself and my family from flu and other infections and then not be a danger to patients, right? But they wanted proof from my family doctor. Then they said, your family doctor is not good enough. You need proof from a rheumatologist or an infectious disease specialist. It was really ridiculous. I did end up getting probably eight years of vaccine exemptions, and it wasn't until COVID mandates came out.

Kristin Reihman MD (28:51.702)
and I got a COVID mandate exemption from my family doctor for the same reasons I had been exempt from the flu, and they refused it. And they said, by the way, we're refusing your flu shot exemption this year too.

Sean (29:05.684)
How do they get that right?

Kristin Reihman MD (29:08.714)
How did they get that right? Oh, the right to do it. I thought even how did they get it correct? I was like, I'm not sure.

Sean (29:13.72)
Oh, not correct. Yeah. How do they have the right to refuse an exemption? Yeah. What grounds?

Kristin Reihman MD (29:18.842)
I don't think they do. I think it's bullying. I think they can, so they do.

Sean (29:24.648)
Because this is where we're at. My daughter did have an adverse reaction to a flu shot. And they are saying that the only way that she can get a medical exemption is if the flu shot was potentially fatal. So it has to be a fatal adverse reaction. So she has to be dead? So she has to be, the logic in that.

Kristin Reihman MD (29:45.354)
Well, I mean, it's good that she's exempt then, right? I mean, at least she's exempt. What a ridiculous, no, if she's saying, I'm saying, it's just since.

Sean (29:51.437)
She's not exempt. Yeah, if she's dead. So she has to get a flu shot that doesn't work and have to deal with an adverse reaction to it. We don't know what actually would happen because they say so. And this is the medical authority that I believe this is one of the pressing issues of our time. See, I want the fight. My daughter doesn't want the fight. She wants to get her degree.

and she wants to get through her program. And I feel like we have to make this an issue, and I want to go on television about it, you know? And I want to talk about on the podcast, which I'm doing right now. But these are the things that are occurring across the United States. The fact that they're still mandating a COVID vaccine is insanity to me, absolute insanity. So I know we don't wanna turn this podcast into all the reasons behind this.

But it's worth noting for us to talk about what is actually happening in American culture right now, which I think does violate our rights, it violates our civil liberties. And unless we as a culture are going to rise up against these mandates, I don't think there's going to be change. Fear is very manipulative, very controlling, right? And I think, Chris and I want to ask questions about...

your recovery process and how you eventually did heal because, you know, I hear this word fear and how I know you see the mind-body connection in healing, but how did you move outside of the allopathic model and how did you actually find a way for your body to fight this off? I think our bodies are designed to heal. How did you get everything in alignment to be able to do that?

Kristin Reihman MD (31:41.534)
Yeah. Well, like I said, it was a couple year process. It started with like three or four months of antibiotics. And I was taking several antibiotics because I learned at that point that Lyme has multiple forms. And as soon as you throw doxycycline at it, which is kind of the first line agent that doctors will use if they're going to treat it, it rolls up. You'll kill some of it. But the smart ones roll up into hiding and they hide in what's called cyst forms or L forms, stationary forms.

and they hang out in biofilm, which is the layers they create, all bugs create in our body to kind of live in community and share resources and avoid the immune system, and it can't be killed, can't be killed. So I had done that for three months, and I was progressively better. I mean, I was sleeping 12 hours a night. I had fevers all night, but I was working still. And after three months felt better and stopped the antibiotics. Two weeks later, my symptoms all came back.

which I had been told they would, although I didn't really wanna believe that, because you really have to do an overhaul of your immune system to help it join the fight. You can't just keep hammering it with antibiotics unless you wanna be on that for life, which has its own downsides, right, in terms of the gut microbiome and all sorts of other things, mitochondria. And so I, at that point, had been learning some other things to do. So when it came back, I took a different tact. But I was still very, very ill. I mean, at that point, that was when I had the hospitalization.

were intractable pain and came home and was really, had lost 30 pounds, I was a mess and still not really getting out of bed without pain. I went to see a homeopathic family physician named Melinda Tony. She practiced in the Lehigh Valley for years and years. Many people knew her. I'd never met her before, but she was very kind and she offered to do like a session with me. So I sat with her and she listened to my story and the way homeopathy works is,

Doctor listens carefully for clues that might give insights into what remedy they need to use. And so she heard my whole story and she bustled off into her kitchen to whip up some homeopathy. She's like, oh, I know exactly what you need. So she's off making this little concoction for me. And I remember sitting on her couch in a blanket and just like shaking. And I just kept thinking, I feel like a shell. I feel like I've lost myself. I'm just a shell of who I was. And she comes back in and she says, take this homeopathy.

Kristin Reihman MD (34:08.358)
let me know how it goes and tell me how your pain is tomorrow. And I sort of laughed. I was like my pain, like my pain isn't even the worst of it. And this poor woman who'd already sat there for two hours sat back down and said, tell me what the worst of it is. And what I hadn't told her was that I had been, you know, in my bed for five weeks, had come down

one night for dinner and my husband Greg said, look mommy's downstairs for dinner, yay. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he goes, what are you talking about? You haven't been downstairs for a meal in five weeks. And I had this moment where I was like, oh my God, you guys must've thought I was upstairs dying in my bed, right? Did you think mommy was dying? Kind of making a joke of it. And they all kind of nodded and said, yeah. And I said, no, who really thought I was dying? And they all looked down at the plates and shook, said their hands, put their hands up. And I was like, oh my gosh.

Sean (34:57.779)
Wow.

Kristin Reihman MD (35:04.626)
my kids thought I was dying. And I'm 42, which is how old my mom was when she died and left four kids behind. And I remembered in that moment that I'd always sort of imagined I would die at 42 and leave four kids behind, you know? And then of course I had kids of my own and I was like, well, clearly I'm not gonna make that choice. Like, that's not my life. That was a random flu cancer. That's not gonna take me. But suddenly I realized, wow, I'd done it. Like I'd done it. And...

I said to her, the worst is I feel like I'm dying. Like I feel like I have to will myself to take a breath. That I have to talk my body into being alive every moment. And she goes, your mother died at 42, but that was her path. This is your path. She made her choice and you can make your choice. And it makes, your choice makes every bit of difference in terms of how I support you on your path.

So text me tomorrow and let me know what your choice is.

And that blew my mind a little bit. I got in the car, cause I wasn't driving, I couldn't drive, I was on, you know, fentanyl patch for pain. And my husband was like, how'd it go? And I told him that, and he said, oh, well, do me a favor and text me as well. I was like, oh my God, you poor man. You've like been holding it all together for months and months, and you also were experiencing me dying, and I was like, yeah, I'll do it. So I got into bed that night, and I remember lying there going, how do you make a choice like that?

Sean (36:20.512)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Kristin Reihman MD (36:34.686)
Said, well, how do I make any choice? I imagine myself on a path, I feel the feelings that come up, and I know once I feel the feelings what the right choice is for me. So I imagined myself dying, and nothing came up, no feelings. I was like, yeah, it's already happened. Like your work has gone down without you, they found replacements for you at work, they're getting the job done, your husband's taken over, your kids are fine. Like, I'll die, Greg will get a new wife, everyone will be happy, it would actually be okay. Like no emotion.

I say that now and I have emotion, but I'm like, I had no emotion. I was like, okay, that's interesting, or I could live. And again, I had no emotion, but I had this blast of awareness that said, yeah, but if you're alive, there's gonna be only living for love and bliss and saving the planet, jumping on trampolines with your daughter and your sons. There's not gonna be any fear of what kind of doctor you're becoming, or any kind of fear about practicing medicine in a way that's outside the box. You're only gonna live for the good stuff. And I was like, huh.

powerful and interesting. I still didn't know my choices so I went to bed. Woke up in the morning had the same conversation, no clarity, but the next thing that happened is I got out of my bed and the next thing I know I was like bouncing around the streets on the Lantabus on my way to physical therapy. And I was like that's interesting. Got to physical therapy, came home, and then found myself in the garden. Like literally I woke I was like my eyes open I'm like oh here I am sitting in my garden. Wow the red bud is blooming. Wow it's spring.

I better text Melinda. So I text her and I said, look, I don't really know what's going on here. All I know is I've gotten up and had breakfast downstairs. I went to physical therapy and now I'm sitting in my garden. I feel like maybe I'm choosing life. And she was like, woohoo, good job. Keep me posted, continue to stay the course. And that night when I went to bed, I got into my bed and I was like, wow. Hi stranger, I've been cheating on you all day with living.

without really knowing it. I mean, I can't say that it was intentional. My body was like walking me through the steps of living. And it just continued to do that for months without like, you know, me making it. So it's hard to say that because I'd been used to feeling like I'm in control of my story. I'm in control of my choices. I'm making these intentions and following them. No, I was following along as my body like took steps towards being alive. And it took a couple of years for me to really feel back in my body.

Kristin Reihman MD (38:58.246)
And there was other stuff, you know, I used a bunch of herbs, I used chlorine dioxide, all that stuff I think wouldn't have done anything without me really getting clear on my choice first.

Sean (39:10.004)
That's powerful. Do you believe coincidence exists?

Kristin Reihman MD (39:16.31)
depends on what you mean by coincidence.

Sean (39:19.54)
So was there some divine intervention for you to meet this homeopath and to get that message?

Kristin Reihman MD (39:26.598)
I think every bit of the story was divine intervention. I think the whole thing was a total gift and was part of my soul's path. I think I probably set it up with my guides and elders prior to coming here and we were like, look, there's gonna be this crazy experience which is gonna shake you to your core. You're gonna wanna die and you're not gonna die because you're gonna choose to live and when you become who you become, you'll look back and you'll realize that all this was part of it.

Sean (39:52.38)
You want, you want to know something that's fascinating. I have this one client that I'm struggling with meditating, trying to kind of get the answers, which generally come to me in meditation and I had this credible feeling that the answers were about to come. Um, in fact, I was even telling Sean before this podcast, I had this credible lift in mood and energy that I've been experiencing.

And this, your story is the solution. It's the answer that I need to be able to provide this client. And I know it in my heart. And listening to you talk about that experience with the homeopath and what she said to you, gave me tingles and a feeling of energy from my head down to my toes in a way that I can't even begin to explain. You scooted back in your chair. I saw you.

And I know exactly what I have to say now. And these are the things that, you know, I've certainly been experiencing. That uh...

Kristin Reihman MD (40:54.582)
Beautiful.

Sean (41:02.612)
when we have a shift in consciousness, when we expand our consciousness and we move beyond what we know in this physical reality, that you realize how self-limiting our minds are and that we are divine souls with an incredible purpose, but so many people are still asleep. They don't know it. They don't know who they are. They don't know what they're capable of.

And we have limited ourselves in our ability to heal, heal ourselves physically, heal ourselves emotionally, but also heal through our experiences, through our energy, our presence, through love. We have this whole self-limiting idea of what reality is that has been, in my opinion, sold to us. And an awakening for me is an expansion of consciousness.

about increasing awareness of what else does exist about other possibilities. For example, I mentioned, you know, how much, whether it's this like ethnocentrism that exists, you know, with Western medicine and denying the existence of other healing modalities and indigenous cultures and so forth.

Sean (42:25.776)
species of plant-rich, beneficial nutrients, phytochemicals, active elements, many of these have antioxidant, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory properties. They've been used as forms of medicine for centuries. But yet it is, they are...

They are restricted, they are censored, the information around them, they are kept, there are laws even that are protecting us from access to them. And you have to almost completely be willing to step outside what you've been taught and what you know to be true in order to have access to other information. And until you believe that this exists,

it will not be provided for you. But once you believe, and there's a power of belief here, Kristen, in which your story demonstrates that once you believed you could heal, once you believed you could live, once you believed you had a higher purpose and a higher calling, then you took those steps in that path.

Kristin Reihman MD (43:39.331)
Yeah, I used to, in medical school, I remember being in touch with some of these alternative, you know, alternative, traditional, deeply rooted, ancient, efficacious, safe, and nourishing traditions. Like acupuncture, I was always really interested in actually became an acupuncturist too during residency. I was really interested in Chinese medicine and herbs. I remember having this kind of diagram in my head going, wow, you know, medical school feels like drinking from a fire hose.

And we think this is all to know, which is why we study so hard to like gather all this information and systematize it and create structures that help us remember it and mnemonics. But I bet there's like, I bet maybe half of what's out there is medicine and the other half is everything else. Over the years, I've decided that little piece of the pie that is medicine is like so much smaller than half, you know, it's like minuscule. It's like 1%.

And yet doctors are trained to believe that 1% is the whole pie. And I think it's part of where that arrogance comes from and that, you know, in medical school, I coined the term misinformation with authority because we talk about some attendings who would just spout stuff and then you'd be like, I just saw him run to the call room to go read to make sure that was right or pimp us so that he didn't have to remember or look it up, you know, pretending he knew it or she. And yeah, there's such a...

There's such a culture of you have to know and you have to present yourself with authority. I have found that patients actually appreciate when I say I don't know and let's try to figure it out together. It's just so much more honest. I feel so much more in integrity. And yeah, I mean, there's so much less to risk if you upfront say this isn't my wheelhouse, but I'll do my best, you know?

Sean (45:28.276)
So on your road to recovery, um, what do you, how much do you think your mindset shift contributed to you getting well? And how much was maybe the holistic approaches you pursued?

Kristin Reihman MD (45:44.102)
I think the mindset shift was probably necessary but not sufficient. I don't think anything else would have really worked until that happened. I really believe that it was a pivotal moment. I mean, like I said, I went to bed that night not out of pain, but I wasn't suffering anymore. Like the next day I was bouncing around in the Atlanta bus in pain, but I wasn't suffering. I was just like, wow, this is 10 out of 10 pain. I should lie down.

And I did for the next two years, I was most of the time in public on my back, on the ground, because if I had pain in that moment, I would lie down, no, it would be instantly reset, take me like five minutes. You know, I'd go to, I was working with a computer on my back, you know, a laptop, because that's the only place I was out of pain, but it didn't, I wasn't like getting all up in the weeds with that, I was just like, this is what it is. So I think without that moment, that pivotal choice, I still would have suffered.

And I don't know if that other stuff would have worked.

Sean (46:44.232)
I want to ask more about your spiritual path and the journey that you're on. So a near-death experience is one of those events that lead people to a profound shift in the manner in which they live, as well as probably our own exposure to people who have gifts. It seems like this homeopath had some gifts. She was aware of things that most people aren't aware of.

Sean (47:13.732)
spiritual journey and some of the things maybe you have learned since these events about life, about healing, about the universe. Anything that you think that can help inspire and maybe can I mean just spur into more conversations about you know expanding our own consciousness to things that we're not aware of.

Kristin Reihman MD (47:36.934)
Yeah, that's such a great question. It's a really big question. I'm not sure where to start. I will say what popped into my head, as you said from this point on, like what did you learn from this experience? I think that clarity that came in the question of do I wanna live or do I wanna die, you know, when I said do I wanna live and had that moment of like, yeah, but on these terms, on these terms, I feel like everything from that point has been, I imagine if I'm in the midst of a decision, a spectrum of.

my choices and how they're gonna impact me in the world. And if neutral's in the middle, and like bliss is over here, and despair and fear and you know, hatred of my neighbors are over here, like I'm not gonna choose anything that isn't either neutral or on its way to bliss. There's just no time for that. There's no interest, there's no, I don't feel compelled. I'm just like, no energy, like I get really tired. If I consider messing around on that part of the spectrum,

I start to yawn, I get exhausted. I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah. I'll take that small whisper universe, I don't need the two by four anymore. I know that this is what I'm shooting for. And it does feel like a life or death decision. It feels to me non-negotiable because I know what was happening. I believe that part of why I went down so hard is because I wasn't on my path. I was working in a hospital that was pretty toxic as a building.

with a lot of toxic relationships and a lot of power plays and power struggles and just bad behavior from doctors and otherwise. And I wasn't able to do the kind of work with patients. I was expected to see them in eight to 10 minutes. And part of that time was the time I was supposed to write the note so they could get reimbursed for my time. I wasn't expected to consent people for vaccines, for example. That was actually a big sticking point at the end. They said, listen, we hear you're having conversations that take up the whole amount of your time here.

your eight minutes, you're using your eight minutes essentially to get informed consent. And I was like, there's nothing more important than informed consent when you're doing a procedure. And I want people to understand that the whole vaccine schedule has never actually been studied. The entire schedule has never been studied. You can't say this population got the whole thing, this population didn't get any, and here's the difference. The experiments on us.

Kristin Reihman MD (49:59.41)
and it's not really consented and it's not blinded, it's not randomized and it's not really being studied. The data's not really being collected and analyzed. So you have to be aware that if you're making that choice.

You know, and oh, by the way, if something bad happens, which it does to some people, and it's really hard to know up front who it might be, you have no recourse, you cannot sue anyone, can't sue the pharmaceutical company, can't sue the doctor or me or the nurse, it's kind of on you. So if it's on you, you owe it to yourself and your child to really understand what the potential risks are of getting this infection for your child, and what the potential benefits are. And by the way, we don't really know until it happens, right?

Until you're dead, we don't know if you're going to have a serious reaction and therefore deserve a mandate. And we don't know the benefit. Flu year is a great example. Every year they know the benefit after the fact and it's usually less than 40% efficacious. So I think people need to understand that before they make a decision that could derail their lives. And they were like, yeah, we don't have time for that.

we just need to get these done. If we don't have a certain number, we don't get reimbursed by the federal government for these vaccines. And I was like, that doesn't feel like the neutral to bliss category for me, you know? So for me, it was like a major clarifying moment in terms of standing in my truth and integrity and not.

and letting the chips fall where they may. I mean, I eventually lost my job in that hospital because I refused to get a COVID shot and they didn't accept my doctor, who's known me for 20 years. They didn't accept her exemption. And I said, fine, I don't wanna play with you guys anymore.

Sean (51:44.688)
I feel like you've taken the first do no harm the way it's supposed to be. And you truly do believe in that statement. And now you've gone down this path towards, um, other approaches towards like healing yourself and

Your area of maybe expertise is in the area of Lyme disease and you've written that manual, that book on it. There's a link in the show summary so everybody can click there and there's a discount we'll mention at the end as well. But I'm just curious. I've been interested in, there's a podcast I listened to maybe about like 10 years ago. I think it was Radiolab about parasites. And there was a gentleman who had like severe allergies.

And was reading about parasites and gave himself hookworms. I think he went down to, uh, maybe Africa and like walked around, um, some. Not very clean areas to give himself hookworms and he was able to, to cure his, his allergic reaction. Um, and I see an area where you also speak about is in the area of parasites. I'm just, when it comes to all these organisms that are living in this.

Do we really understand whether or not they're harmful or if we're just coexisting and being healthier as a result of them being a part of us?

Kristin Reihman MD (53:04.838)
No, not really. So I think for me, it's so complex, right? And any effort to really sort of understand it to me is an exercise in the illusion of control because it's so complex. So what I always like to do is take a step back. What does the scoreboard show? Are you happily living with your parasites? Because we all have them. We not all have hookworm, but we all have some. And some of us have more than others. Some of us have more than a fair share. And some of us are doing just fine with all our...

Sean (53:26.301)
Yeah.

Kristin Reihman MD (53:34.174)
the parasites in the microbiome that we house and live with, and others are not. And so I'm always big on getting into the ring with those things, whether it's Lyme. I mean, Lyme is another similar thing. Like a lot of people have Lyme and don't know it because they have no symptoms, because their immune system has walled it off, and it's not causing any trouble. To which I say, keep doing what you're doing, right? You're doing something right for your immune system. Same is true of parasites.

Sean (53:59.68)
Okay.

Sean (54:03.092)
So.

Kristin Reihman MD (54:03.906)
can be very anti-inflammatory, which is why the guy who stomped around in pig, I read that article too, 10 years ago, stomped around in pig poop, and his asthma and allergies went away. Because parasites down-regulate your immune system so that the immune system doesn't come and kill them. It's, they're basically anti-inflammatory, some of them. Others of them can be more inflammatory.

Sean (54:24.116)
So when we talk about the human body, just being so unique and so diverse, and there's different ways that your body reacts to everything, we could all have parasitic infections right now, but it's just a matter of how our body's responding to those, whether or not they could have any type of long-term consequences.

Kristin Reihman MD (54:41.682)
Yeah, I mean, and I wouldn't even call them infections. We all have travelers within, and for some of us it reaches the threshold of symptoms, in which case we might call it an infestation or infection or something to do something about, and others not so much. I mean, I meet a lot of people who hear this and they say, well, I don't have itching, I don't have worms coming out of my butt, and I say, well, listen.

there's a lot of symptoms that you've probably normalized, such as seasonal allergies, such as asthma, such as that itchy tickle little in the back of your throat that comes usually around the full moon, you might start to notice, and then you have to swallow it. Hello. Yeah, it is. This was one of the moments in med school that I was like, ding, something interesting was just said by an ER nurse who said, oh, it's a full moon, everyone, get ready. I was like,

Sean (55:22.25)
Please talk more about the full moon because I think that's so interesting.

Kristin Reihman MD (55:36.662)
What do you mean? Are there werewolves here? She's like, no, but the full moon brings out the crazies. The people get crazy on a full moon. And I was like, what is that? Okay, file that away in my little X file box and figure that out over my years. And one of the things I've learned is that parasites in our bodies move around to mate in the gut on the full moon and sometimes new moon. So if people have cycles of every two week crazies or every two week can't sleep or every two weeks they're.

Seizures get worse or every two weeks their pandas flares or their autism is worse like parasites. Always look for parasites.

Sean (56:14.undefined)
Yeah, this is fascinating because I used to work in a psychiatric hospital. And that was very well known. Yeah, I mean, there's just so much we don't know. We we had a gentleman on the podcast by the name of Dr. Leland Stillman, who is a functional medicine physician, thought he was amazing. He said, part of my job is to remember things others have forgotten. And so he was talking a lot about, you know, what we've learned from, from history and

Kristin Reihman MD (56:18.517)
Right?

Sean (56:42.148)
and cross culturally and so forth. And he recommended a book, and I'm just putting up right here, it's called Is This Your Child by Doris Rapp MD, discovering and treating unrecognized allergies in children's and adults, where so many of these symptoms that we now label psychiatric actually, have real legitimate origins, medically, right. And it's psychiatry has become, you know, this profession that is just

It's kind of the go-to course if anyone is struggling with mood or anxiety or other common psychiatric symptoms, and they have no value in the medical system and being able to really truly do a medical workup to understand all the potential factors that could be leading to that person's presentation. So they're, they're more fully invalidated then in the medical system by telling their symptoms as all are psychiatrically or emotionally. And by the time these people come to me and I'm working with them and I have the time to work with them.

hour sessions one, two times a week, you get to learn about their entire lifestyle and their entire experience and the way that they live. And I just think immune health is the answer. If anyway, whether it's from mental health, behavioral health, to all other aspects of the system, we should all be integrated in some way to enhance one's metabolic and immune health. And we should be examining everything that contributes to sleep.

that contributes to energy, nutritional deficiencies, metabolic health, gut health, right? Because all these things are part of that holistic integration of mind-body. And we have a medical system that's like mechanistic, you know, everyone's kind of separate in their own system, in their own specialties. And we've forgotten how to be able to treat the whole.

Kristin Reihman MD (58:22.558)
Yeah.

Kristin Reihman MD (58:32.85)
Well, first of all, just preach to all of that. Second of all, it's not just that we're mechanistic, it's that the way that our system is reimbursed for care, the way that doctors and hospitals are reimbursed for care leaves little time for people to actually have those conversations. But even if they had that time, they wouldn't know what to say. I mean, when's the last time you went to a doctor and they didn't look toxic?

Sean (58:57.556)
Good point.

Kristin Reihman MD (58:58.698)
they're not following those rules because they don't know those, they've forgotten those things too. People don't know how to eat anymore, they don't know how to sleep properly. People use an alarm clock by definition, they're sleep deprived. If you use an alarm clock by definition, you are not getting the sleep you need. And people hear that and their eyes start to glaze over and they start to twitch and I'm like, but think about it, your body will wake up when you've rested enough, right? If you're not letting it wake up on its own, you're sleep depriving it. And people have forgotten these basics. And

The truth is it is all the myriad of things that can actually come from not following, a right way of living basically, eating and thinking and sleeping and exercising and interacting and expressing joy and finding your joy. Like all those things are few, but if you don't follow them, they can lead to pretty much any chronic disease we have. Everything in the ICD-10 code you could look up would probably get better or if not cured by following right way of living.

Sean (59:57.052)
role of fear on immunity. Tell us about it.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:00:01.07)
Oh, it's toxic. And there's actually a lot of papers on this. You can see that the white blood cells diminish, your natural killer cells go down, all the things that are your front line, your first line of defense against an infection just tank when you're in fear. And one of the things about Lyme that I find so curious, I was never a fear-based person, I don't consider myself one now, but when I had Lyme the first time, actually that near-death experience was the second time, the first time was just an easy peasy, but when I had Lyme the second time, I was really in a state of fear.

that was so unusual for me. People would say to me, what is going on with you? I have this permanent crease here in my forehead that came during those two years when I was like, ugh, in so much pain and in so much fear. And I really, I see people who get these bugs who just, it's almost like the bug brings it in with them. It's like the energy, the frequency of that infection brings in fear with it. And I look around at all the fear in our world and I'm like, wow, what are we all?

what is our microbiome looking like these days? Because there's a lot of fear out there and it's just not, it's not part of our healing team for recovering from these things.

Sean (01:01:07.104)
That placebo effect, the power of beliefs are something that we have not been able to really utilize to benefit our patients in a manner in which we can. Because, you know, beliefs matter. And when someone is in a fear-based state with fear energy, and they are kind of grounded in this self-protective mode of the next bad thing that could happen, you know, it's just a matter of time before that becomes manifested into reality. Because it has so many negative consequences because

Kristin Reihman MD (01:01:32.617)
Mm-hmm.

Sean (01:01:36.552)
We are creators of our own reality. I'm convinced of that. So you believe something to be true. It is your truth. It is real. And you experience that at every level of your being and your experience, including the cellular level. I mean, it's just a matter of fact that we do not utilize to our benefit.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:01:56.95)
Yeah, totally agree. I tell my patients sometimes, your cells are programmed to do your bidding. So whatever you're telling them that you want them to do, either because you truly want it or because you're afraid of it, whatever that loop is going on in your head, you're blasting that down to all of your minion cells every single day. Like, of course they're not gonna get well if you're saying, I'll never get well, I'll never get well.

Sean (01:02:21.428)
So when you talk about fear, you're talking about like extreme fear about what's happening. No, I talk about your fear. I hide from my son all the time and I jump out and scare him. Not that fear. And he has a cold right now. Did I get him sick? I don't know about that, but I want you to see fear differently, Sean. Fear is an attack thought. Do you know what an attack thought is? Is that like your parasympathetic, like your brain is constantly in a state of like looking around for threats?

Kristin Reihman MD (01:02:21.618)
Very powerful.

Sean (01:02:51.824)
Well, I mean, that might be that higher level of fear that you can consciously pay attention to and be aware of. But are you aware of all your attack thoughts? You know, an attack thought is any thought that pops into your mind that creates separateness, that somehow we're divided or we're separate or someone can hurt me or someone can take this or inner competition, or I have to protect myself against this person. That can, that is frequent for a lot of people. And they don't even have

the capacity right now to observe that as just a thought, it is their reality. So imagine what that does to your body. The argument you have with somebody in your mind when that person isn't even there. Exactly, exactly. Or the conversation or the thought or the prediction, you know, that you're trying to protect yourself or every time you go and you look at your 401k and then you, you know, you wanna see where the stocks are going. Like all these attack thoughts that are constantly impacting our body, that's a fear-based state.

And many live in that and that has physical consequences on the body.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:03:54.282)
Well, it also has social and emotional and conceptual repercussions because if you're in a fear state, you're just wanting the fear to go away. So you're gonna follow people's orders, you're gonna do their mandates, you're gonna resonate when they tell you if you don't get this flu shot, you're gonna make yourself or your patients sick and you'll be ostracized. I mean, it allows people to, I think, become enslaved to other people's agendas.

Sean (01:04:16.96)
Exactly. And even when we talk about my daughter right now, to me, I'd be willing to pull her out of school for the fight. But to her to have some student loan debt, right? And to it, that's like unfathomable to put that work in and to she's got the sunk cost fallacy right now. But that's how you're that's how you're controlled. And so the difference between you know, a fear based state would be to live in that. Well, Kristen had to take the leap.

that she had to choose an entire new way to live, to work. You know, she had to leave, take the risk, to leave what she knew, what was secure, what was safe, what provided income. And if you probably look back on that, it's probably a blessing. The Lyme's disease, the COVID, right? That was a blessing that was probably, obviously stressful at the time, but now looking back, it's probably, you have a different perspective on it.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:05:15.762)
Yeah, the lime didn't feel like a blessing when I was lying in my bed. I remember telling my son, my oldest, he was probably 16 at the time, the story that I told you and the choice that I made. And when I got to that part about the choice, he burst into tears and said, "'That's so selfish of you. "'How could you choose to leave us? "'How could you choose to die?' I said, well, first of all, I didn't. And second of all, it didn't feel like a choice. It felt like an ultimatum. And like I said, it was a very...

powerful moment for me and all I can say is it happened and I'm sorry that you're scared by that. I'm glad I'm here too. But I remember thinking in the moment, if I'd known that level of pain was coming my way in this lifetime, I would have said, no, I pass. So I'm glad I'm on the other side of it, but it didn't feel like a blessing in the moment. Everything since then, it's much easier to see because I haven't had that extreme two by four.

Maybe I haven't needed that because I've been more on track with what I'm supposed to be doing. That's the way I understand it. That's more about my spiritual beliefs. Like I believe we have a purpose and I believe if we get off track, we get nudges and whispers and then we get a two by four. We don't listen to the nudges and whispers. I don't want any more two by fours. Despite the fact that it seems like I have a couple behind me holding up these books. I am like, I'm over that. No, I'll take whispers now.

Sean (01:06:35.988)
Hahaha

Sean (01:06:40.764)
was, there was a, there is a physician by the name of Brian Weiss. He actually used to write books back in the eighties because he was a psychiatrist, the old time psychiatrist, not the one that wrote the prescriptions all the time, the one that actually was doing therapy. And he stumbled upon past life regression work. And he started writing books on his hypnosis and his work with clients, uh, in past life regression.

And what's most interesting is what the wisdom and the learning that came out of those sessions, because they were lessons from the guides. That each person has guides that I think we all as collective humanity have guides. But some of the lessons were the most profound wisdom that you could ever imagine. And we ask ourselves these profound questions regarding pain and suffering. If God exists, how could this happen?

how could that happen? How could there be war? You know, these are the things that lead people to lose any kind of connection with a higher being. But the truth of the matter is that in eternity, you know, our souls are actually eternal, that this time is actually a blip in the radar, so fast, that the events even as painful and even the ones that, you know, have profound suffering can lead

Sean (01:08:08.undefined)
growth and evolution that you would choose them ahead of time. If you're sold, you're sold it. And these are the things you've learned from past lives that these were all experiences to promote your continued growth. Now that's very hard for, I believe for us to understand and grasp because, you know, when we're born into this body, we forget, right? And that's the illusion of separateness.

when in turn we're really all connected. I don't believe there are coincidences. There is no coincidence right now that I met Kristin and she is sitting on this podcast with us and having this conversation. And there are going to be thousands and thousands of people are listening to this right now, not by anything other than something that it was meant to occur. Now you adapt that mindset, right? It is an expansion of consciousness. You now think differently. That has a profound impact on your wellbeing and health.

because now every person in your life could be a blessing. Everything that is provided to you is for your growth because I believe they're always knocking on the door. We just don't, we choose not to answer it. Right, so I, this book by Doris Rap MD, is this your child? I don't think it was a coincidence that I have to read it because what happens is kids come with hyperactivity, depressed mood, eating disorders.

And if I just go ahead and work with those people in the manner in which I was taught, I'm going to fail many, they're going to get horribly sick. And everything that I do in my life, all my purpose, I will not be able to meet that purpose because I will just be following the rules that were provided to me when I see harm. I've just been having a number of consultations with families across the country recently on the...

on the concept of eating disorders. And some of the food that we're putting into our bodies is leading teenagers to be insulin resistant and pre-diabetic and obese, and they're engaging in binge eating and then purging afterwards. And they go to their typical doctor, eating disorder specialist, and they tell them there's no such thing as a bad food, as if that idea of bad food is what

Sean (01:10:29.928)
drives the eating disorder. And until we heal them, because the type of food that they are eating is actually poisonous and making them feel ravenous and hungry all the time, how do we not have that part of the treatment plan? How do we just consider it to be a psychological or emotional issue and completely invalidate what that person is going through physically? I mean, I don't know if you've ever...

You know, you go through the holidays a little bit and eat some bad food or you have some sugary food and have some drinks and all that. I don't know about you, but then I'm craving sugar the very next day. Now imagine like what somebody is going through when they've been binging on this food, and they're 16 years old, and they've been doing it for months. And it's just insanity to me that their recommendation is Prozac and just changing the and change and in a therapy, right? Like

Kristin Reihman MD (01:11:06.294)
Yeah.

Sean (01:11:25.832)
without being able to target those. I mean, that's part of the sick care system that we're in. And my point being is, all this information has been provided to me. I just had to open the door and accept it. And I only accepted it when I knew that it was there for a reason, and I didn't dismiss it. And every person I met was giving me something, and it's profoundly changed my life. So, you know, you talk about these little nudges and voices and we have to listen to them sometime.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:11:31.571)
Yeah.

Sean (01:11:55.416)
I feel like that book was brought in here for a reason. And I'm a father of a three-year-old, I'm surrounded by other families with young children and some of them have behavioral issues, some of them have delayed speech development. And is it possible, Kristen, that there are some of these common nutritional deficiencies, diseases or parasitic infections that cause behavioral problems in children and what should parents be looking for?

Kristin Reihman MD (01:12:26.274)
Sean, I think it's not only possible, it's probable. And that comes from the evidence I have of sitting with families who have kids. One of the jobs I do is I'm the medical director for a center called the Family Hope Center. And there we teach parents of kids with neurological issues of any kind. And that can include extreme behavioral problems that have kind of gotten them labeled as ODD, or ADHD is also one of the things we see a lot of, and all of these kids.

two-a-one, have massive reduction in symptoms from just changing the diet, cleaning up the sleep and the environment. Like, you know, nutritional is sort of a holistic approach, right? It's not just the food you put in your eat, it's how much screen time you have and how much time you have to eat and stress there is at the table and what you're actually eating and are there healthy fats? And there's so many parts to this that are, again, things that we've forgotten as humans that are species appropriate for us, but that we've gotten away from.

And yeah, they make a massive difference.

Sean (01:13:28.296)
Yeah, I have some families and, um, you know, their children might be going through like early intervention for speech development and, um, and some behavioral problems, and I feel like that's, that's part of the solution, but there's so many more other parts that need to be looked at as, uh, possible causes, and it's not something that has ever really spoken about because there's maybe this, and we started off having the conversation about this, like stigma associated with, uh, certain approaches.

And my wife is one who has always embraced acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and I do believe it led to a successful birth for our child, because there was a lot of things in her body that needed to maybe come into alignment, or homeostasis, or whatever you wanna call it, that made her more receptive to allowing a child to come into the world. Whereas she went to a traditional doctor, it would just been, you know,

pumping her full of hormones, trying to get her ovaries and all that stuff. So it's, um, there's so much in this world that we're constantly exposed to. That is part of this learning process that we realized that everything we're taught or that we believe to be true. Um, isn't necessarily the only explanation. And that's, that's what I'm really enjoying about this process of the podcast is the more I learn, the more I realize I know nothing. It's fascinating.

Well, have you grown over? I know. I know. But you would have never said I know nothing. I know. I was in a totally different world. I have not. I was not in this space.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:15:05.734)
transformational effects of podcasting.

Sean (01:15:08.276)
Yeah, I know, right? I was on a podcast last night in Australia. So the woman who was doing the podcast is from Australia. And she was telling me a little bit about the culture of Australia and how sometimes the pendulum kind of swings in a direction to the dialectical opposite or extreme. And so a lot of the problems that they're saying in Australia do mimic what we see here in the United States and

we were talking about the cultural issues around parenting, for example, how, you know, there was a time where it was a very kind of authoritative approach for parents. And, you know, if you were a child of a very controlling or authoritative parent, you may have then learned that there could be a better way. And then you swing to the opposite end of the dialect and

You kind of give up all aspects of like structure, discipline and control in your home. And then that's, you know, chaos as well. And one of the things I've always been saying is that parents are now parenting in fear. They're parenting in fear based on many factors. One of them kind of our expert culture, always kind of conditioning parents to believe that you can screw up your kids all the time. And so we've had to kind of swing the dialectical kind of

balance back to the middle. There's more of a middle path that you can have structure, discipline and do it in a loving way. You can foster flexibility, independence, while at the same time, yanking them from running out in the middle of traffic kind of approach, right? So like we have to be able to also deal with our own fears as parents and we have to have a willingness to be able to...

make hard and difficult decisions to save kids from themselves because developmentally they need us to do that. And we have to reframe love in that way.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:17:02.974)
Yeah. One of the things I've loved so much about your podcast is how much emphasis you put on where resiliency comes from and the need to expose our kids to things that are hard and expose ourselves to things that are hard because that makes us stronger and better. And I think that a lot of what happens when parents parent out of fear is that they end up protecting their kid from the sort of milestone failures that are necessary.

for kids to, safe to fail. I mean, this is kind of how I treat Lyme. I choose things that are gonna be safe to fail. Like if it doesn't hurt you and it's potentially helpful, we're gonna do it, right? I'm not gonna make you do anything that could kill you or really damage you or create long-term harm, but we don't know in advance what's gonna work. And I think the same is true of parenting. Like all parenting is pretty much an experiment. Every kid is different. You're different at every stage of your parenting career with every kid. It's a big complexity model. And I think going into it with the understanding

You are doing experiments and you want them to be safe to fail. But you want to do them and let your kid have those moments so that they can build resiliency and competency and self-confidence and capacity, really.

Sean (01:18:15.168)
this process of hormesis, right? We've talked about, yeah. Yeah. Speaking of which, right now I am in a 24 hour fast. I'm pushing towards 72 hours. I've never fasted for more than 24 hours. So this will be the first time I do it. And, you know, I've heard people talk about this biohacking kind of movement and talk about things like, hey, if I can suffer for a short period of time and it can provide me some

Kristin Reihman MD (01:18:17.714)
Yeah, hormesis. Hashtag hormesis.

Sean (01:18:45.108)
profound, long lasting health benefits. That's what I want in life, right? I'm willing to accept some degree of pain or suffering for greater benefits, whether it's mood, longevity, strength, you know? And I think we have to kind of reclaim that back in our lives. Like there has to be some degree of suffering for growth. Right? Like I don't think it's in the best interest if a kid has a social phobia or speaking phobia to give them a

some form of an IEP so they don't ever have to speak in front of a class. Like, I don't think that benefits them. Right. That's, I think it's pretty clear because then what happens is you just develop a relationship with fear in which whenever you experience anxiety, you avoid something. And that is certainly the, I think a path to misery in life. Instead, we have to embrace, we have to embrace discomfort, right? And that discomfort is really what drives us. Some of the mental benefits of doing hard things.

and the mood boosting effects of doing hard, difficult, challenging things are unmatched in life.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:19:52.274)
I think it might be a good time to give you some props for a hard decision I made recently to do hard things because I really think it might have come from the episode you did on 70 was it 75 hard?

Sean (01:20:02.452)
Oh no! Ding, ding, ding! We get in the episode again!

Kristin Reihman MD (01:20:07.642)
Yeah, a friend of mine who I swam in college and I recently reconnected with all my swimmer team, my girls. And one of them said, look, I'm taking my daughter to Greece for a seven day swim training trip, not a vacation, but like five kilometers a day swimming between islands. And she put it out to the group and I kind of...

Sean (01:20:25.961)
Wow.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:20:27.882)
joked about it, like, oh, that'd be fun, that'd be fun. And a day later when I got back to her to actually look at it, all the spots were gone. And I breathed a sigh of relief. I was like, oh, thank God. But instead of telling her I was relieved, I reached out to her and said, how dare you dangle this in front of us and then there's no spots left. All of your master's club team from Boston is going, but none of your swim friends from college. And she's like, I'm so sorry if a spot opens up, I'll tell you. So on Friday of last week, she texted me, a spot just opened up, somebody dropped. And I went on the website and I checked in with my husband.

I looked at the dates, my kid wasn't graduating then, and I was like, this feels really uncomfortable. I haven't trained in 30 years, I'm doing it. And so I signed up for that thing on Friday, and this week I've been to four out of five masters swim sessions at our local masters club, which has been really hard. Mostly hard just getting out of bed at five in the morning. But yeah, it feels really good.

Sean (01:21:06.112)
All right.

Sean (01:21:15.144)
Love it.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:21:23.538)
And I want to attribute some of that to you because really that has stayed in my head is like it's important to do hard things. Like it's not gonna kill you and it's gonna make you better and you're gonna get to go to Greece and swim among islands without drowning.

Sean (01:21:36.416)
You're going to have to come back after your trip to Greece and there's going to be something that happened there that you're going to want to relay the story to us. And it was because of the 75 heart. There are no coincidences.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:21:47.206)
episode and I'll be the next to follow up episode. Yeah.

Sean (01:21:49.736)
Have you ever heard of the sports swim run?

Kristin Reihman MD (01:21:53.116)
No?

Sean (01:21:55.108)
Swim run. So you go to like an island chain, it's a competitive sport, and you swim, run across the island, swim again, run across the island, swim again. Get out of here. It's called swim run, you can look it up, yeah.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:22:10.494)
It's not just called biathlon.

Sean (01:22:13.32)
No, I actually googled it too to make sure I got it right while you were talking. There's swimrunusa.com. All you need to know about swimrun. They take you to some of the most beautiful places in the world and they compete there. I knew somebody who did it so it just popped in my head. Cool idea. Well listen, we broached a lot of different topics today. I think we need to promote you a little bit because you're doing some...

Kristin Reihman MD (01:22:17.299)
Wow.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:22:29.782)
Wow.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:22:33.11)
That's cool.

Sean (01:22:42.28)
you're doing some really fascinating and interesting work from a model that I really support. And we've had other professionals on here now approaching the coaching model. Cause that's, I think from just a financial investment perspective, I think over the long run, if you're willing to invest some money actually into healthcare practitioners who are designed to kind of restore your health, then staying in the sick care system with the insurance base over and over and then, you know,

having to deal with all the consequences, both financially, personally, and so forth. Like I think when you see these physicians who are breaking free of the model, and they are entering into a different kind of paradigm of care with clients that has much better results because you are going to be holistically treating that person, they're going to look at all aspects of their life in a similar way that, you know, Kristen, when you met with the homeopath, you know, you were treated differently.

Right? The approach was different. So you are doing some interesting work now. Can you tell us a little bit about the actual work that you're doing? If you can give us any information on how people can find you. And I know that we have a special coupon code too for some money off your own ebook that you wrote which is fabulous. So I wanna give you some time to promote yourself.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:24:05.478)
Okay, thanks. Well, as I mentioned earlier, one of the things I, the only way to really see me one on one as a new patient is to see me through the Family Hope Center. So people who have neurological issues of any kind can check out the familyhopecenter.com. It's not my business, but I love this. I love the team and I love what they're doing. And I want everyone who has any kind of a brain not functioning optimally to know about them because it's a very holistic, natural, you can do it at home. It's not super, not super complicated. And it really works.

I also am coaching, so I'm doing a lot of online groups. I started in 2020 something called the Healing Grove, which is a membership where people meet every week online together. I facilitate those meetings. We have support groups. We also have experts I bring in. You were an expert, Roger, recently on the Healing Grove, and that was really fabulous. I ended up releasing all those conversations as part of my podcast, which is kind of my free way that I'm reaching as many people as I can with tools and tips and mindset shifts for

holistic whole person healing. And the Healing Grove is something that's a paid membership and we have people in there who are well, who are sick and looking to be more well and people who just are really interested in kind of learning alongside other people, tools and tips and practices. And we really get into it together and I guide people through that. And then I recently started a Lime membership. So for people who, because I'd closed my practice to new people, I still have

20 people a week call me saying I have a new diagnosis or an old diagnosis just found out I have chronic Lyme and I just don't have the capacity to see everyone. So I've opened up another membership, which is my Life After Lyme coaching program. So people every week for an hour sit with me in a group on Zoom and we do one case review. We go over one person's story in depth and we point out maybe gaps in the protocol or areas to consider or.

here's what you might have missed, or here you're doing great here, just stay the course and just wave pom poms sometime, which is always a fun call. And then we also have time for people to provide updates and get support and guidance. And that's been really, actually really well received because people just don't have access to Lyme doctors. They don't have access to people who understand how to treat this. The ebook is where I started. It was as I was leaving my old hospital job and really just wanted to download everything I had in my brain that sometimes took two or three hours or two or three sessions to download

Kristin Reihman MD (01:26:26.09)
for patients and teach them. And of course their brains are foggy and they're sick and they're not taking it all in. And often people would say, oh, this is such great information. Do you have it all in a book? And I'd be like, no, didn't you just take notes? Like that's the book, that's your book. And it wasn't enough. So the ebook was really my attempt to just get all this information to people's hands in a way that's kind of handheld and guided and easy to, I hope easy to access and understand. And most everything in that book, minus antibiotics, which don't have to be part of your story to recover for Lyme.

can be done without a doctor. So it's really a kind of a empowering self-help tool.

Sean (01:27:02.372)
And Dr. Riman has been very kind to offer $10 off this ebook. So if you look in our show summary, there's a link directly to the ebook and there's a coupon code, just put a rad gen podcast and you'll get those $10 off and thank you for that. Dr. Riman.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:27:18.27)
Yeah, my pleasure. And if people need more off to be able to access it, just contact me. You guys can contact me through Instagram or on my website. There's a way to get in touch. So yeah, I want people to have this information. It's just, to me, it's the map that I wish I'd had. You know, I created it through walking it and looking back and figuring out kind of what worked and what didn't work. And it's less about...

actual tools and products and more about a mindset and more about an approach that helps you understand that when you're dealing with a complex issue such as Lyme disease or really any of the mystery illnesses, you have to be willing to engage in small mini experiments with safe to fail things and learn from your successes as well as your failures and make more of the thing. Again, ouch yourself from neutral to bliss. Make more of the choices that are going to get you in the direction you want to go.

Sean (01:28:08.788)
pop culture reference, you learn that you either get busy living or you get busy dying. What's it from? That would be the prison movie Shawshank Redemption. Yeah, great, great line. And I feel hopeful after today's podcast because, you know, I think people are going to listen to this and get busy living. Yeah. So Dr. Kristen Ryman.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:28:24.618)
That was a good one.

Sean (01:28:36.016)
I want to thank you for a radically genuine conversation.

Kristin Reihman MD (01:28:41.283)
Thank you guys, this has been awesome.

Sean (01:28:47.452)
Alright, if you can just hang on here, we just