Restart Your Nervous System with Acetylcholine for POTS & ME/CFS with Diana Driscoll, OD

Restart Your Nervous System with Acetylcholine for POTS & ME/CFS with Diana Driscoll, OD

00:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to the EnergyMD Podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue syndrome and long COVID naturally so that you can get back to living your best life. So if you've heard me speak before, you've heard me talk about the toxic five, the combination of the heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and nervous system dysfunction that I find are at the root causes of these conditions.

00:25

And I'm really excited because today we're going to be talking with Dr. Diana Driscoll, who is an expert in POTS and autonomic nervous system conditions. And so we're going to be getting her perspective on kind of how they play a role into these conditions. So let's learn a little bit about her. So an authority on the autonomic nervous system, Dr. Diana Driscoll, optometrist, is a world renowned expert on POTS.

00:53

which stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and other invisible illnesses. As an author, speaker, inventor, and devoted researcher with four patents to date, she continues to push forward with dramatic shifts in the evaluation and treatment of these conditions. Dr. Driscoll's personal battle with POTS inspired a decade of self-funded groundbreaking research and innovative treatment. Now an authority on POTS.

01:21

idiopathic intracranial hypertension, post COVID long haulers, ME-CFS, the vagus nerve, dry eye disease, neurologic gastroparesis and brain health. She offers the compassion of a former patient as well as strong science. Dr. Driscoll, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me, Dr. Hirsch. It really is an honor to be here. Appreciate it. Yeah, please call me Evan. Oh, very good.

01:49

Call me Diana. That works, Sounds good. So I always like to start off with definitions. So can you please tell us how POTS is defined? That is such a good question. And you would think that's a simple question, right? But I've come to believe that the labels really are doing no one any favors. So POTS stands for Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.

02:17

meaning the heart rate goes up when someone stands. And I was a patient just completely disabled by this condition as were my children. My son missed three years of school. I was on disability over 10 years. It was so much more than just the heart rate going up, right? So as long as we're using that label, we have the benefit of seeing something objective, the heart rate going up.

02:43

but the disadvantage of practitioners tend to think of it as a heart problem. And in I think all but one cases I've seen, and we've seen thousands, the heart was fine. The cardiologist checked it out. So I'd love to change that label, it's to more of why is the heart rate going up? Whatever is driving that is the real problem, and that's where the true label should be. Yeah. So what would you prefer to call it?

03:11

depends what's causing it. So in the research we dove deeply into, there are many reasons for a heart rate to go up. And I remember as a patient asking my cardiologist, they wanted to give me medicine, beta blockers to slow it down. And I said, okay, but why is it all of a sudden going so fast? And they said, oh, we don't know that. I said, okay, maybe that would be a good place to start because I feel like I'm sick from head to toe.

03:41

and the heart rate, just ignore that, that's like the least of my problems. It sounds like it's reacting to something. Could we figure that out? So in every case of POTS, there are some commonalities, but there are also a lot of differences. I would say one commonality that's very important to point out is that many patients are inflammatory patients. It can be various types of chronic inflammation, but the heart reacts to some of that chronic inflammation. The blood vessels get damaged.

04:10

we have a cardiovascular response. So I coined the term inflammatory pods to kind of explain that and COVID kind of helped explain that frankly, it's the abnormal inflammatory response to some viruses that can trigger some of these illnesses. So yeah. And do we have an idea about the pathophysiology? You know, like what is

04:33

You talked a little bit about it, but can we can we go? I have I have some thoughts that I'd love your take on. We can start there or you can kind of share what you think. Yes. Well, when I got sick and again, I was just slammed. couldn't even finish my last two patients the day I got sick. It wasn't subtle. And then my kids got sick like a year and a half later. So it wasn't for the same reasons.

05:00

But I remember thinking, what are the chances that I could develop this bizarre condition? My kids could be affected. My husband at the time was fine. And they're not to be a genetic influence, you know? So I set up genetic disease investigators looking for what are some of the commonalities here that could be genetic setups for us? And if we can figure that out and know that from a very early age, maybe we could help prevent.

05:30

some people from getting sick. So I do think some of us are set up for some of these inflammatory reactions. And there's some genes that help control inflammation. So through no fault of ours as patients, we can't always control inflammation that gets triggered. So it's like with COVID, we've seen some patients are saved by getting IV steroids if they start to go south, because it isn't so much

05:59

the virus that's making them sick, if you will, it's that abnormal inflammatory response. If it's chronic inflammation, because genetically we can't control it, we cannot stay on steroids. That just would be horrible. So we have to be a lot more clever than that. We have to pick it apart. But I think inflammation is a huge commonality that as practitioners will get better.

06:23

about picking up on it, diagnosing it, and for me, I really want the genetics laid out. Before I exit stage left, that's been a huge, huge focus for me. Nice. So yeah, I love your take on kind of like how I approach it and my thoughts on it. So when I work backwards, it's like, okay, the heart rate is increasing because the blood pressure is dropping and the blood pressure is dropping because there's not enough aldosterone producing the salts.

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to keep the blood in the blood vessel. there's aldosterone's not being produced because the adrenals which are supposed to be making aldosterone is compromised because of the stress of the toxic five. So that's kind of, know, whether it's an infection or mold or whatever, that's what I see is like that causes inflammation, which upsets the adrenal gland. Adrenal gland can't produce aldosterone. Aldosterone can't manage the blood pressure. And then consequently,

07:20

When you go from a sitting to a standing position, blood pressure drops and the heart is pumping like crazy trying to get it back up. Yes. And I think your thinking is good. That would be more of an orthostatic hypotension when blood pressure drops. In POTS, the diagnosis is purely based on the heart rate. So in the majority of cases we see the blood pressure doesn't drop. It can actually go up. I know with mine, it went up. That was called hyperadrenergic POTS.

07:49

So, but there are some key pieces that get missed and I think this will make sense to you. And I put out a book, gosh, it's been, I don't know, 12 years ago, The Cause of POTS and we were covering Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is hypermobility. But one of the first things I figured out was there was a propensity to develop intracranial hypertension, high pressure in the skull.

08:14

And it's very easy to miss it because it doesn't always present as typical. The optic nerve isn't always swollen terribly. The MRI doesn't always pick it up. Sometimes there's some clues, but the pressure on the pituitary goes up when intracranial pressure goes up. For me, you could see the pituitary was flattening. In some cases, it'll basically disappear. We call it an empty cell. It's so squished. But as we know, the pituitary signals the adrenal gland.

08:43

right? So we can't ignore the role of intracranial pressure on some of the hormone production, be it aldosterone or what have you. And even cortisol, when that, my cortisol was rock bottom, I know my son's was too, our ACTH was also low, telling us what is up with this whole system is not working, you know, the intracranial pressure was affecting these glands.

09:11

So that was normalized, the pituitary gland actually had a fighting chance to normalize, which was a godsend to get the ability to control your own hormones without having to think about it back. And at PodsCare, probably 95 % of the patients we see are dealing with that idiopathic intracranial hypertension. The other 5 % are very prone to it.

09:38

So we've had patients where when we saw them, they weren't dealing with that. But later when inflammation surged for any number of reasons, then that was a problem. So we teach everyone that we see about that because we know we're very prone to that. And that's purely an inflammatory response. IIH or idiopathic intracranial hypertension is always due to inflammation. We know that as doctors, eye doctors usually are the ones to look for that.

10:08

And we look, unfortunately, for signs that it's been an overweight female because we think, oh, well, they're inflammatory. know, it's almost archaic, the approach that we're still taught in school. But as we learn more about chronic inflammation, it becomes very obvious that this isn't an overweight female problem. This is a chronic inflammatory problem. And it goes way beyond obesity or what have you. But it is very easy to miss. But it can affect hormones fairly dramatically.

10:38

And interestingly, the fluid, the cerebral spinal fluid collects around the brain, but it also collects at the base of the skull. There's a cistern back here and that puts pressure right on the brainstem oftentimes. So patients not only get kind of a stiff neck and some discomfort at the base of their skull, but they also will get some dramatic autonomic symptoms because of that pressure changing. And I went through that certainly. Wow.

11:06

And so then, so it sounds like 95 % of people with POTS have this intracranial hypertension. The ones we have seen. Do you know, we don't see like the easy cases, the ones that are just transient. We only see the ones who've been sick for forever, uh, who are very ill and they're stuck in it. So out of those patients, yes, it is definitely the majority is involved. Okay. And so then how do you lower that pressure? There's medicine to do that. it

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It happens to be a medicine that eye doctors keep in their offices because it's also used to lower intraocular pressure in some forms of glaucoma. It's used to help prevent altitude sickness if you go in the mountains or whatever. It's a drug that's been around forever, but it will lower the pressure. And then the job is to find out what type of inflammation is causing this to happen.

12:00

And what else is it causing? What other dominoes are falling because of the inflammation? isn't, you see, I'm sure every day, it isn't just one thing going on, right? There's multiple things and there, there, as the dominance continue to fall, the patient's presentation continues to fluctuate. And that's where doctors think we're just crazy. We couldn't have 80 symptoms and have it change every week. Oh no, we can't. We absolutely can't.

12:30

Yeah, it's so hard because of the lack of validity that patients get. I certainly went through that. Very frustrating. Yeah. So what are the causes of inflammation that you see? There are a lot of them. I have a page on my website on PotsCare.com. It's called Inflammatory Pots. We lay out quite a few.

12:56

Diagnosing some of them is fairly straightforward. Some can be a little bit trickier, but it's, a decent place for patients to start things like, oh, mast cell problems, high triptase, uh, adrenal problems, genetic issues, eosinophil disorders, quite a few things to choose from there. Yeah. Yeah. And I would consider those a little bit more upstream. mean, isn't there, aren't there things below that?

13:25

And that's kind of like what I see with the toxic five. Like if you get rid of, you know, whatever's causing the immune system to be hyperactive in mass or something like that, then it goes down the immune system and then you don't need a steroid or some sort of anti-inflammatory. Yeah, it depends. And it does depend on the patient. And I'm one of those who I will always be a patient. I just am not sick. Okay. And one reason I'm not sick,

13:53

is I'm very proactive on how to control not only the inflammation, but the secondary effects of it. Things like oxidation that occurs, I just stay on that. I know I'll always be somewhat inflamed, just genetically, I just can't deal with it, but I don't want steroids, I don't need steroids. I'm very prone to having high intracranial pressure. Usually it's not high, or not terribly high, but I do have to be aware of it.

14:21

And then the inflammation continues to affect the neurology. And my specialty was figuring out how it was affecting the autonomic nervous system so much, including the vagus nerve, but not limited to the vagus nerve. And as long as I keep that in place also, again, I'm probably the most active person I know of any age because I am very healthy, but I can't go to zero hope for it, or those genes will just take over.

14:51

And I would be a sick person and that would be horrible. Yeah. How many genes are we talking about here? I oftentimes they work in combination and it's usually they do, It's like a Pandora's box. Once you start working through that. I love doing that sort of work that I found a geneticist actually out of India and we were working through a lot of this together and he had the same thoughts. I do.

15:17

So I look forward to down the road, being able to release panels. Um, and then you do as, you know, have to consider if there's a genetic setup, what else can make it worse or what else could make things go in another direction? So it is very complex as is basically every case of bots that we see is complex. We love medical puzzles that why do, um, and pick them apart. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, that's, that's.

15:47

That's really interesting. so are you finding that modifying the genes with prescriptions, supplements is supportive? No, we have not even tried to modify the gene. Honestly, I wouldn't even know where to begin with that. CRISPR might be able to help us with some of that. But there are some good things that come from these chronic inflammatory states. And I'm wondering if you see this.

16:15

we have some commonalities because as the inflammation goes up, cardiovascular systems affected, intracranial pressures affected, the vagus nerve and other neurotransmitters are affected, and we can correct all of that. But the oxidation keeps some of the inflammation going and it damages the blood vessels, it ultimately can damage organs, and it changes the brain chemistry, and it causes anxiety type symptoms to go up.

16:44

Sometimes that exhibits as anxiety, but oftentimes it'll exhibit as a high achievement, attention to detail, almost an OCD, desire to get everything right. And society rewards that. We tend to, as patients, be at the top 1 % of everything we do because we're such overachievers and it's a commonality we see that's kind of a benefit. You don't always want to take away everything, you know?

17:14

We had one doctor come in as a patient and she said, Diana, I really would like if you could help me with the illness, but not take away my gifts. I said, I don't think that's a problem. We tend to lean that direction anyway. And the brain is pretty well formed at this point. So it's an interesting aspect to the illness that we see pretty much a hundred percent.

17:40

Do you see a place for evaluation and treatment of toxins and infections? This is an interesting journey with most patients. What we see is as the inflammation goes up, the immune system goes down. One of the first things we see is dormant viruses just show up. So things like Epstein-Barr goes way up, HHV6, cytomegalovirus, you name it.

18:10

I went through all of that and I remember talking to my doctor saying, yay, we figured out the cause of my illness. It's this viral problem. And the doctor said, I don't think so. And indeed that was correct. When the inflammation was controlled, the immune system basically normalized and those dormant viruses went dormant again. One of our

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doctors, our first medical director, Dr. Cordes, who passed on, bless his heart, he worked in that field in early chronic fatigue syndrome and he said we learned a couple decades ago if we treat it just as the viral problem the patients will continue to be sick. So the viral problem could be secondary.

19:04

And if we can figure out what's driving some of the immune system to change, to allow those viruses to show up again, the patients will do better and do better faster. Having said that, when the antigens like the early antigens, Repstim, Barvirus show an active infection, yes, I would treat it. But if it's reactivation of a dormant virus, it's indicative in our minds that inflammation is up. Yeah.

19:32

Interesting. And what about the toxins, heavy metals, chemicals, molds? We find that almost every patient is toxic to some degree. I think probably a third of our patients are diagnosed with some sort of toxin. But again, the symptoms we find respond best to treating the inflammation, allowing the immune system to normalize, and then the effects on the neurotransmitters, the high intracranial pressure, and ultimately then the cardiovascular system.

20:02

that then whatever they're toxic with ends up taking care of itself. Well, didn't anticipate that either. So yeah, it's like the, the autonomic nervous system is of course the part of the body, the nervous system. You don't have to think about it. works all by itself. We don't need to make it happen.

20:27

Um, and it's in charge of regulating things like that. So when it breaks, a lot goes wrong. And that's one reason patients are so incredibly ill when we can get as much of the autonomic nervous system to work well, as well as the fallout that has occurred, the damage that's been done. Then a lot of things work normally again, right? The way they should, why the way the body was designed to do. So that's what we always hope for.

20:57

Yeah, excellent. Yeah, we about six months ago, we incorporated nervous system retraining into our program because I found that for some people it was like 90 % was nervous system dysfunction and that the other 10 % were the toxins and infections. And for some people it was the reverse and I didn't know who was what. Right. So yeah, big part of the work that we do. So is that is retraining the the nervous system one of the ways to control inflammation? Usually not.

21:26

And my thinking was as a patient, I got sick from a virus. Two weeks later, you know, I was basically disabled. So I said, I am almost 50 years old. My nervous system knows what to do. I thought I shouldn't need to train it. Right. And I was, I felt like I was flooded with adrenaline. My heart was racing. My baseline heart rate was like 123. Um, and that was at its slowest.

21:54

If you touched me, I jumped three feet in the air. I was shaking. I felt like I was just flooded with adrenaline, like I had an adrenal tumor or something. And that was ruled out actually. I knew I didn't have to work with my own nervous system that something medically just broke. What just happened? And the virus was kind of a clue for us because we can get a post-viral inflammatory reflex.

22:23

Like having the flu, for example, one of the diagnostic criteria doctors use is, okay, it looks like the flu. If it's the flu, the heart rate should be going up. And indeed tachycardia is there. When tachycardia is there, then doctors think more like, it's probably post-viral. With the flu, that tachycardia goes away because the flu goes away. But if it's a chronic inflammatory problem, that doesn't go away as quickly, right? Or it even can get worse. So,

22:53

All focus, at least initially, is on looking for whatever chronic inflammatory problem there is. Is the intracranial pressure affected? What can we do for the cardiovascular system? And then ultimately, how is this inflammation affecting the neurotransmitters? And that's part of those patents that you had mentioned. Nobody had really put all of that together. But I figured out, oh gosh, it was years ago.

23:23

I sent out symptoms spreadsheets to POTS patients, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and interestingly, PTSD. They also tend to suffer with autonomic problems. And I had a list of symptoms, I know, 150 potential symptoms. And in that list, I tucked in about 30, 35 symptoms of anticholinergic syndrome.

23:49

I suspected vagus nerve problems at the time because of the presentation with the GI tract, fast heart rate, et cetera. But I needed to rule out the possibility that it was a bigger problem than that. If it was a neurotransmitter problem, we'd see other symptoms like brain fog, loss of cognitive function, loss of executive function, large pupils, dry eyes. Those are not vagus nerve. Those are problems with the neurotransmitter.

24:18

And indeed, the majority of those patients showed the majority of those symptoms. And I knew likely this was a neurotransmitter problem and then tested the receptors of the vagus nerve to make sure they were still viable and they were. And then came up with an oral supplement to trigger these nerves, replace the neurotransmitter, not just for the vagus nerve, but also for the pupils, tear production.

24:47

had to cross the blood brain barrier for cognition. And that was a key part of recovery. While I was sitting in my house even, putting this together in my kitchen for my kids and I, I had no intention of ever putting it out on the market and used it for years. And the only reason I thought, gosh, maybe I need to get in the supplement world was I developed pancreatitis once I was in the hospital.

25:15

They gave me an antibiotic that ignites inflammation, not knowing, you know, which is cause a horrible, horrible, um, a syndrome that I fell into almost couldn't pull out of it. But one of the consequences is pancreatitis. And that is there any chance if I get the vagus nerve working again, it's the anti-inflammatory nerve. Pancreatitis is inflammatory.

25:41

The pancreas is under control of the vagus nerve. That would make sense. And I started taking what is now Paris and plus, and two days later it started to turn around. And I remember thinking, okay, I got to get this outside just our little house, you know, using it. But it was a key piece to recovery. Yeah. Nice. That's great. Yeah. And we'll put the links to that, um, um, in the show notes. And so the Paris and plus looks like it's a combination.

26:11

of nutrients, herbs, vitamins. so tell us again what it's doing exactly. it's activated, it's increasing ACH, the acetylcholine in the body or? Yes, it is. And I could talk about this for a while, but my goals in establishing this were that it did have to trigger the vagus nerve. And the only way I could know if it was triggered was if patients had a bowel movement.

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I got to the point where I could not have one. My gallbladder had failed. They wanted me to remove it. And I remember thinking, okay, does it have gallstones? Is inflamed? Is it going to blow like an appendix or something? I said, no, it looks okay. So does the opening stuck? And they said, no, it's open. So this sounds neurological. I really want to see if I can save this organ. And indeed, that's what that was.

27:08

But I also knew I got to the point in my illness where severe insomnia morphed over about three to four years to almost narcolepsy. I just couldn't stay awake. I couldn't think. I couldn't make a to-do list of even two things. And if I wrote down one or two things, I was on the floor asleep for seven hours. That emotional, mental,

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exhaustion was so extreme and that can be a presentation of the low acetylcholine and fortunately I figured it out just in time. I was awake maybe an hour and half in the morning and an hour and a half at night and it was getting worse and I remember telling the neurologist do we like just snuff out you know stop waking up what the heck he said it sounds neurodegenerative but he couldn't label it.

28:05

What is now Paris and plus the first day I put this together made sure it crossed the blood brain barrier. had to, it had to cover any genetic defect in the pathway of making acetylcholine. I'm very proud of that work. I pulled out my old organic chemistry knowledge, which was like, you know, I had to dust it off. But I was always an overachiever in school and,

28:31

figured out where the defects could be with some patients. And I thought, I don't want them to have to know their genes. Let's just cover for these in the pills. And then you have to be very careful when you're dealing with receptors of the autonomic nervous system, because you can flood them, if you will. You can get too much of something. And the receptors go, oh, well, I don't need all this. I'm just going to shut down. And they basically become more dormant.

29:01

So you can end up needing more and more to keep them going. didn't want that. And then I wanted to make sure it hit not just the nicotinic receptors of the vagus nerve, but there's also muscarinic receptors. And this is where being an eye doctor was really helpful because I noticed in our patients, the pupils are huge. And that's a sign of that parasympathetic and sympathetic imbalance. And

29:28

The pupils are under control with the same neurotransmitter as the vagus nerve, but it's a different receptor. Those are muscarinic. And the way I could be sure that Paracin Plus was hitting the muscarinic receptors was the pupils got smaller and then tear production went up. So it was quite the journey in figuring all that out. It wasn't just throwing ingredients together. It took about three years and fortunately I was a patient.

29:55

And I had two lab rats available and yeah, I just stayed in the science to pull all that together, but kind of a godsend. Yeah. a gift. Well, that's one in you, you and this product. So it sounds like, cause, I noticed that it is for sale on the website. So it sounds like people can order it and utilize it. So what do they need to know?

30:23

If they are, because it sounds like dosing is can be very specific and you shouldn't take too much. So what can you tell us about them? Yes. And it was designed so you don't really have to worry about that. My first day where I was able to get the neurotransmitter to the brain, I took what is the equivalent of five doses, but it would last about an hour and a half. And then I'd start feeling like I need to lay down, go to sleep. I just took more and come back. Then I get tired again and I take some more.

30:53

It was wild. And then I could go to three doses and then I stayed on two for probably two, three years. Then I went down to one, then I went back to two and it kind of just watched for symptoms of low acetylcholine. So for me, it was obvious if constipation was coming back that I wasn't getting enough. It's very rare to get too much because the way the pill is designed.

31:22

But if there's too much, the eyes start to water. Pupils are very small. And I would challenge anyone with chronic fatigue, post COVID pods to ever get too much of this. see that. just don't. The sympathetic nervous system is so much an overdrive, it'll importantly get the vagus nerve working where that's your anti-inflammatory nerve, right? So it wasn't just the gallbladder. wasn't just constipation.

31:51

And then ultimately malabsorption syndrome or malnutrition, I dramatic symptoms of that. It was, couldn't control the inflammation genetically. Then ironically, the vagus nerve would shut down because the neurotransmitter was affected. I didn't have a chance of fighting that inflammation. putting that back in place at least allows the body to do what it was designed to do. And if that's enough that you don't need medicine, that's

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rate. If it's not, at least it's an important part of it. This is great. Because I, you know, I do believe that chronic constipation oftentimes comes from gastroparesis. Yes. And my paradigm is that there are toxins and infections that cause neuropathy and consequently causing that. But this is, yeah, but it sounds like it mean it.

32:46

It has to be multipronged and it sounds like you have to turn on the vagus nerve. You know, I mean, we teach people how to do polyvagal stuff and breath work and whatever, but it sounds like by taking the supplement, it's a little bit of a jumpstart. Absolutely. Absolutely. And with, when I was sick and my heart was racing and everything, the doctor said, um, Dana, maybe you just need to meditate.

33:12

And I said, I just got hit by a tsunami. if I think meditation for me would be like a teaspoon against an ocean. said, if you help me with the ocean, I'll do my part with the teaspoon. But first I have to figure out what, what the heck just happened. Um, and importantly, we don't ever want patients to feel like their illness is their fault, right? Like you need to take it in your own hands, make yourself well.

33:41

Cause they didn't make themselves sick. Yeah. So it's important for us to recognize every medical problem we can find. And then the patients have a fighting chance to do their part, right? To, to promote their own health. And that could include whatever you need to do to reset the nervous system or diet and exercise that sort of lifestyle changes, which ultimately can be very important. Yeah. think the challenge for patients is that.

34:11

Yes, sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs to meet a prince, right? I mean, like you go to see your local provider and they really don't know what to do with you. Right. And then you kind of you go, you get a whole bunch of referrals and you see all these specialists and they don't know what to do with you. And then oftentimes people are seeing functional and integrative docs and they can also often help people a little bit, but then they plateau and then they start searching more for specifically what they have. They've got pots, they've got ME CFS, they've got

34:40

whatever it is, and then they can kind of find people who do this all the time and that ends up helping it get better faster. It's, gotta say we as patients are the people the doctors don't want to see. And one reason is they don't feel like they can help us. Right. So as a doctor, you want to be able to help your patients. And it's just like banging your head against the wall. I think in research as we find research is way ahead of practice.

35:09

Right. And there's this gap because the research is released. That's great. But they don't learn that in medical school. It's not in textbooks yet. And that huge gap is where we as patients got stuck. So we have to look for people who are on the cutting edge of everything. I couldn't find that. just on my own. So my heart always goes out to anyone dealing with these illnesses when they're caught.

35:39

where they're real, they're medical conditions, they're suffering so much and they can't even get validation from a lot of their practitioners. The practitioners look at them like, oh, they're one of those. I remember that look. It's horrible. It's just a terrible place to be in, to be suffering that much, not have any hope, not have any help, not have any answers and not have people believe you. Recipe for disaster.

36:08

Yeah, I call that medical trauma. Oh gosh, yeah. And I definitely have compassion, you know. I used to be one of those providers where somebody would walk in and I didn't know what to do with them, but I did not act poorly because I had been sick and my family members had been sick and I wanted to, I didn't want to act in that way. And so I did the best that I could for them. if I, and then I referred them on or whatever, but the reason why doctors and providers behave poorly,

36:37

when people come to see them is because when they realize that they cannot help you, you make them feel badly about themselves. That's right. They have shame. And so then their shame turns to blame and blame the person. And they want to do whatever they can to get them out of the office because it makes them feel awful that they can't help them. So it's not excusable, but it is understandable. And obviously doctors, you know, they've gone the intellectual route.

37:06

But they have not gone the emotional route. Their EQ is crap. But they basically had to take their emotional health and put it on a shelf for 30 years, you know, and then come back to it. But it's yeah, it's unfortunate that our system doesn't necessarily support them in their own personal evolution. You know, honestly, I look back and I think would I have been one of those before I got sick and went through that? Possibly.

37:34

I like to think, no, I would, you know, keep my mind open, but we don't know that. So that's where that personal experiences we've gone through changes things. Yeah. And I think it can make you more open to understanding that we don't know everything, you know, um, and makes you kind of softer. There's certain empathy that for me, that empathy never goes away.

38:00

That journey was so horrible for me. I see a patient. I'm just right back where I was, you know? Yeah. So it's incredibly tough. I hope that we can look back in 10, 10 years, that'd be great. It be 20 and go, we really messed up with these patients. This should have never happened. Um, and this is how we can figure them out. This is the correct labels and move on with it. But it's, it's, yeah, it's really.

38:29

a sad state of affairs right now, as you know. Agreed. Let's go back to gastroparesis. you explain, you define that for us and kind of talk about it in the context with acetylcholine? You know, that's interesting because normally we think of gastroparesis as like a paralyzed gastric tract. So bowel movements basically stop. For me, it was more than that.

38:55

The stomach acid production was messed up, certainly the transit time. The gallbladder stopped working, as I mentioned. The pancreas was affected, developed rather aggressive dysbiosis where I had so much Candida. I was sent to a specialist who said, you've lost all ability to fight this. okay, well, what do we do? Well, I don't want you really to stay on antifungals. Okay, so what do we do?

39:24

You know, I don't know. don't know what. Yeah, it was brutal. So we can end up with, like I said, malnutrition, malabsorption. I was hallucinating sometimes. It wasn't like I wasn't eating. I wasn't absorbing. My son got so bad, he developed severe osteoporosis. He broke his arm just putting on a coat, throwing a ball. He was so fragile. It looked like he was a cancer patient.

39:54

Um, we had one and this got published in peer review who had had pseudo seizures. You know, they look like seizures, but there's no change in the EEG and she lived with those for years. The doctor said, you're just going to have to live with them. You can't live like that. You know, it was a severe vitamin B six deficiency. So when that inflammation affects the neurotransmitter, you know, acetylcholine that all shuts down.

40:22

So what started as kind of constipation punctuated with episodic diarrhea where I was so excited to have diarrhea, ultimately got to the point where even my iliosicule valve, the valve between the large and small intestine, slams shut. It wouldn't open. And I even was sent to a surgeon to consider opening it. All of that was neurological. So whether it be constipation, sluggish digestion,

40:52

complete paralysis of the whole digestive tract. Neurology is behind much of that in many patients and it gets missed because there's not a blood test score. Doctors are trained to recognize anticholinergic syndrome by the symptoms. But we as patients don't go to the emergency room saying, know, I fleshed, my heart's racing, I'm constipated. When we go to the emergency room, we feel like we're dying.

41:21

right? And we have 80 symptoms and those symptoms get lost in there a little more subtle. Um, so I understand how it gets missed. It's very easy to do so, but it can be life-changing to put that back. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems like the, the paracim plus and, and stimulating acetylcholine would be helpful in a number of different digestive issues, everything from SIBO

41:48

to the chronic constipation, to the bloating which is happening because you're not making enough stomach acid and that's because the ACH is not activating on the right receptors to make the stomach acid, right? So it seems like, yeah, you're kind of like an acetylcholine expert. Yes, I kinda went there, that's right. I've gotta tell you that, I mean, I was forced to dive into acetylcholine autonomic nervous system. Most doctors,

42:18

hate the autonomic nervous system because we don't really understand it that well. It's invisible. We can't measure things, but I was forced to become an expert. Yeah, it is what it is. Um, but you are exactly right. And because there isn't a blood test for a lot of that, you have to be able to pick it up, um, by looking at the patient presentation and that can be tough, but I know there are a ton of gallbladders yanked out there.

42:47

We have patients, everything from part of the intestines removed, have tons of feeding tubes, et cetera, that don't need to be there. We can correct that fairly quickly with this Paracimplus. So it's easy to miss, but life-changing when it's figured out. Yeah. And so what else do you like to have in your arsenal? I know that you've developed a number of other products you want to talk about.

43:16

There's one other that I would really love to mention because of that commonality where the oxidation affects the brain chemistry. And the brain chemistry change that lean toward anxiety, overachievement, et cetera, is just a symptom. That's all that is, right? But the oxidation causes further damage to the blood vessels, ultimately to organs and the cardiovascular system that's basically invisible. So we look for signs of that anxiety.

43:46

And all inflammatory patients suffer with oxidation. There is no exception. The two always come together. But oxidation can be equally as difficult to figure out, right? So one of the other products is called NACMAX, where we want N-acetylcysteine to produce glutathione. But I figured out a way to, if we produce glutathione, how can we add other ingredients to recycle it so it can go up faster?

44:17

and that's what NACMAX is for. So when I was recovering, I just carried this bottle around with me. And every time I felt this kind of buzzy, hyperadrenergic, short fuse, kind of sympathetic overdrive, I just took more. And it eventually starts to come down and you have a fighting chance to recover the health of the blood vessels and ultimately the organs too. So controlling oxidation is also huge.

44:46

Paracin Plus and NACMAC should always just go together. Yeah. Excellent. And you know, I don't recommend glutathione because I find that it's too potent for people. So I do prefer in acetylcysteine. Are you finding that as well? I have something to say on this. This is fascinating because there is a feedback loop. We produce our own glutathione, acetylcysteine's limiting factor, right? We would test glutathione in the blood in patients for a long time.

45:16

the only patients who ever had low levels were taking glutathione. What it was doing was shutting that feedback loop down so then they couldn't produce their own. And you have to produce your own to be really effective at controlling that oxidation. So yeah, I wonder if that's some of what you're picking up on.

45:38

is when patients are put on glutathione, you get that first like, you know, and then their feedback loop shuts down. The body says, Oh, I have plenty of that. I don't need to make my own. And that works against them in the long run. Yeah. Blood tests pick that up for us. Interesting. Really interesting. Yeah. Well, this has been great. We're just about out of time. Yeah. I really appreciate you bringing your insight to this. definitely learned a lot.

46:06

Yeah. And it sounds like you're really doing amazing work. So we'll drop the links below, but tell us verbally where you, where people can find you. Yes. I'm at potscare.com in the supplements. talked about our Vegas nerve support.com and a few other places, but those are probably the main places. And I really appreciate the opportunity to share this. I, and I appreciate your work so much because

46:36

I'm only one voice, you know, you can reach so many others and there's so many people suffering that shouldn't be. And that's our lives mission, right, is to help them. So without amplifying that voice, we can't really do it. So thank you. I think if there's anything I'd want people to consider before we say goodbye is that there's always reasons for the illness always. if they don't have all of their answers,

47:05

Like right now doesn't mean there aren't aren't answers. And even if their doctors are struggling to figure it out, it doesn't mean there won't be a breakthrough. So never give up. There's always hope. And someday they will have the validation they deserve. And keep kissing those frogs. You're not getting the help that you need. I usually say in about six months or you don't have a plan for recovery.

47:31

It's time to move on to the next person. And it's really hard to be resilient about that, but you will be successful as long as you keep taking that next step. That's right. Yeah, don't give up. Can't give up. two last things. One is that it sounds like that there's a 10 % discount code that we can provide people. We'll a code underneath this video in the show notes.

48:00

so that people can get a discount on these products. And then can you just tell us about how you work with people? Yes, well, we're in transition right now, interestingly. I want to train others to do what I do. It can't all just run through me and if I get hit by a truck, then it just stops. So we are creating education to train others on how to deal with this.

48:28

but I offer consultations and do so around the world and happy to do that while we're in transition. Wonderful. Well, Diana, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure. It's been an honor. Thank you so much. And thank you for the work you do for patients who struggle so much. Your breath of fresh air. Thank you. So if you have chronic fatigue, whether it's from long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome,

48:56

go ahead and click the link below to watch my latest master class where I go deep into our four step process that has helped thousands of others resolve their symptoms naturally. After you watch that video, if you're interested in seeing if we're a good fit to work together, you can then get on a free call with me. All right, thanks so much. I'll see you over there.