What 231 People Experienced with the Nicotine Patch Protocol with Troy Roach

What 231 People Experienced with the Nicotine Patch Protocol with Troy Roach

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Hey everybody, welcome back to the EnergyMD podcast where we help you resolve your long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome naturally so that you can get back to living your best life. So very excited today because we're going to be talking with Troy Roach about the research that he's been doing and what he's learned about the use of nicotine and long COVID. And if you've been following me, you have potentially watched some of my videos on long COVID and nicotine.

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Um, Troy had interviewed me on his podcast. So this should be kind of like the next in a series of information about nicotine to help you determine potentially if it's right for you, how it can support you, whether or not it would be a good fit for you on your journey. So let's learn a little bit about Troy. So Troy is a medical English teacher for nursing and physiotherapy students at two universities in Madrid, Spain, originally from California and a graduate of Virginia tech in international studies and political science.

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After being severely disabled or debilitated rather by COVID-19 in March, 2020, with his functional capacity dropping to about 30%, he became a citizen scientist focused on long COVID. He joined the renegade research community, including remission biome. And in 2023, led an observational study on low dose nicotine patches in long COVID, analyzing data from 231 participants and publishing the results with Dr. Lietzke in 2025.

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He is now preparing a longitudinal IRB approved follow-up study to further advance evidence-based recovery strategies for long COVID. Troy, thanks so much for joining me today. ah Thanks Dr. Hirsch for having me. Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's a really important topic. know, some of the most dramatic changes that I've seen for people who have long COVID has been in the utilization of nicotine. So let's kind of start there. uh

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You know, a lot of people have a hesitancy about utilizing nicotine because when they think about nicotine, they think about cigarettes, they think about pipe smoking. Can you kind of tell us a little bit about nicotine as a substance and how it differs from those other things? Well, the most obvious difference is that cigarettes have between 6,000 and 8,000 chemical components to them.

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of which more than 30 can cause cancer. And nicotine is one of those thousands of components that are involved in cigarettes, uh but it does not cause cancer. It's something that's been studied for decades. um So it's pretty clear that it's not one of the bad guys in the list of things involved in cigarettes. But part of the bad name

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which has to do with the way that cigarettes, especially when they add certain chemicals to make them addictive, is they blame nicotine for being the addictive component to cigarettes. Which when you're smoking is true because you're inhaling a major dose that's getting into your brain faster than it would if you were getting pure nicotine through IV. So if you were getting intravenous solution it would be...

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slower than smoking or vaping, et cetera. So that goes into your brain and your lungs, cetera, really, really fast. So you get a huge spike. So your brain notices that spike and that change. so it can make a connection between smoking and feeling fantastic, which then causes the addiction. But when you're using nicotine patches,

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you're getting a small steady dose through your skin over 24 hours and your brain doesn't have a way to connect whatever it feels with the nicotine patch with the actual nicotine itself. So, so there's no, in all of the research on nicotine patches, none of them show uh people are dependent on the nicotine patch. But

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That doesn't mean that there's not a withdrawal with the nicotine patch. If you're used to using something, then you'll have a withdrawal from it. could be the same with caffeine, sugar, potato chips. You can have a withdrawal from anything that you're used to using. And so it's not giving you that direct hit because you're not inhaling it.

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And so it's a smaller dose. Now, does it matter if it's the seven milligram dose of patch or whether it's the 21 milligram? I mean, has 21 milligram patches been shown to have addictive potential? No, I mean, with the nicotine patch, it has to do with finding the best dose for you to have the most benefits with a few side effects. As soon as you go up in dose, you have side effects and you feel sick.

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and that's not going to cause addiction. Nobody's like, I'm vomiting now, I'm going to do that again. So it doesn't have that same risk. then when the dose is too low, you don't even really ah maybe notice it, even if it might be doing something to your cholinergic system to improve the parasympathetic strength. ah But it doesn't...

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You know, it doesn't work that way. And also with a nicotine patch, it's going through the skin and it takes like an hour for it to get into your bloodstream. Sometimes maybe somebody will get some effects after 15 minutes, but the same thing as soon as you pull it off, that's it. Within an hour maximum, you won't have any benefits or side effects from the patch, which is very different from anything else that you ingest.

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as supplement or a drug. Once you take it, that's it. You have to write out the negative effects for as long as it goes on. So let's go kind of back to the beginning. So why was nicotine starting to be explored with long COVID? Well, it was originally Dr. Leitzka with the paper that he published in January of 2023, which is what

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piqued my interest in nicotine. um And with that he had his theory, the blockade theory, and he had four case studies of people who hadn't been sick for very long, who recovered after only one week of 7 milligrams. um There was some talk about, in the medical community, about the fact that

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COVID they thought was a respiratory disease. So they assumed that smokers would be doing worse. But I spoke to people who were in the field working in hospitals during those first months and they were surprised to see that there very few smokers that were less likely to COVID, cetera. So uh in my opinion, that actually has to do with the fact that a smoker maybe is more likely to

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go outside to smoke, take a break from stale contaminated air, and maybe the heat of the smoke might kill off some of the spike or something if they're being affected. uh But smoking has already been shown to not be protective of getting long COVID or getting COVID in general. um And also, yeah, it's just not protective.

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the nicotine at that time when I found out about it, I was reading everything that came out on long COVID. At that time, there were very few studies and you read pretty much almost everything that came out if you were spending a lot of time on it. When that came out, it was actually recommended by a doctor on Twitter. I started to investigate it and I was very

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scared of the idea of using nicotine because my parents have always smoked most of my life. um I hate smoking with a vengeance. um And even my father has type four lung cancer that's gone into the brain and he won't stop smoking because it's so addictive. um With the nicotine patch doesn't do hardly anything for him.

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in the, you know, so he doesn't want to stop. uh So for me to actually really try the Nikitin patch, had to do a lot of research into it. And then when I saw the research, I found it quite interesting. uh So I decided to give it a try. And then when Tess Fowler from Remission Biome said, hey, who else wants to do more research?

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I said, yeah, okay, I want to research this nicotine patch thing. And then from there, it kind of, yeah.

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hasn't stopped for the past few years. Yeah. Nice. So tell us what the mechanism of action is proposed to be at this point. Well, at first it was just the idea that the spike would be attached to the, to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. And that would cause dysfunction of the nervous system because then the parasympathetic couldn't function because if your, if the receptors are blocked,

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no messages are getting through. But since then in the paper that I published with Dr. Leitzkhan in 2025, it's broadened quite a bit to say that it's the broader cholinergic effects that it has on the body. So blockade of the receptors or damage to the receptors could be one problem.

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When you use the nicotine, it increases the number of nicotinic receptors. So if they have been damaged, then they get replaced. uh It also helps with ACE2 receptors uh because ACE2 receptors get damaged in COVID and nicotine actually helps the body replace those ACE2 receptors, even though nicotine does not bind to

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the nicotinic receptors. So the effect is indirect. It increases nitric oxide, especially in the main arteries that get to the brain and the other organs of the body. It increases blood flow to the brain. It increases CSF flow in the brain, which is very important for cleaning out all of the debris left in the brain, which is why it's

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important to do lymphatic drainage when you're using the nicotine patch because you need to make sure that your lymphatic system is not blocked so that all of that garbage can get out of your brain. It also has anti-inflammatory effects, is broad. has anti-inflammatory effects all around the body. And nicotine is one of the rare drugs that actually get into the brain.

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and cross the blood brain barrier easily. And so that's an important uh factor. Another factor is that with the nicotine patch, it doesn't follow the same route as oral nicotine. And it goes directly into the bloodstream without passing through the liver or anything. It goes directly into the bloodstream all around the body, and then it collects in the gut. um So it has an effect on the cardiovascular system.

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And then collecting the gut has a lot of benefits. There are certain uh irritable bowel syndrome type diseases that benefit from nicotine. And there's actually one type of irritable bowel syndrome that smokers never get, which is like one tiny advantage of smoking. so a lot of people report seeing benefits with that.

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Other benefits have to do with reduced pain. A lot of people report reduced chronic pain in their back or on their joints, cetera. So when you reduce pain, then you're reducing inflammation as well and reducing sympathetic drive, et cetera, et cetera. I could go on for hours, but I'll stop there.

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Yeah, that's helpful. um

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And so what about deposing the spike protein from the receptor site or having an effect on potential venomous proteins? Any thoughts on that at this point? I think it's possible. It could be doing that. It hasn't been proven that it does that. uh I would love to, if anybody has a few million dollars, who wants to lend us?

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I would love to see exactly what is happening. But I assume that it does have at least some effect on ah avoiding a blockade because the nicotine, the attraction to the nicotine receptor is multiple times ah stronger than the actual acetylcholine that our body makes to work with the receptor.

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So it's going to be a lot stronger than the COVID spike or any other type of toxin that gets in to disrupt those receptors. so I think that if it is doing that, then the main point where it's acting is probably in the gut and helping the vagus nerve uh be able to...

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send information up to the brain because the vagus nerve works mainly by sending information to the brain and less than, doesn't work so much taking information from the brain and giving it out to the body. So it's another way to access the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system. Yeah. Yeah. And actually when you're on lower doses, oh a lot of people actually can feel very sleepy with a nicotine patch.

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It's one of the side effects. It actually happened to me because at first the dose was maybe a little bit high for me at five milligrams. It was a little bit high. So I just felt like fantastic. And I had a remission event where I felt better than healed. I walked around, I felt like I was on drugs and like on MDMA or something for about a day and a half. And then eventually after about three weeks, my body got used to the nicotine.

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So that dose was too low. And so for about three weeks, I felt really sleepy because um he was activating the parasympathetic system so much. And the sympathetic system, wasn't hardly touching. ah So you have to kind of find this balance between uh activating the parasympathetic to get those benefits and then activating the sympathetic system a little bit.

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if you want to have energy, uh but not too much because if you do, then you start becoming jittery and then you start having uh side effects from the nicotine patch. Interesting. So how do you do that? How do you find that right dose? Well, in our protocol, we have people start at one to three milligrams depending on how adventurous they are and how much they...

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know their body will respond to the nicotine or not. ah And then they slowly go up in dose until they get to their best dose, which usually is somewhere between three and 10 milligrams for most people. And so eventually people start seeing benefits like, they have more energy and they have less inflammation and they have better sleep.

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Et cetera. And if they keep going up in dose, then they start feeling jittery or maybe they feel nauseous or maybe they feel dizzy, things like this then. that can be a problem. they had, so they decided, okay, well now I'll go back down in dose. And then maybe after a few weeks, they're adapted to that dose and then they have to kind of go up a bit again. But you don't, you don't have to keep going up and up and up in dose.

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constantly. um I think the only people that do that are the ones who are just too anxious. They're just like, I want to get better faster, faster, faster. And if they don't feel fantastic, then they raise the dose, raise the dose. But you have to be patient. And it's only one part of the equation. And what do you think the like, once you get to your optimal dose, what do you think percentage of people with long COVID see benefits? Well, from the first

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part of the research, the data says about three quarters see benefits. And about maybe 25 % of the people have a remission event where they feel completely cured or even better than cured for a few hours or for a day or two. But then 20 % say they don't feel anything.

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Maybe in part because they weren't patient enough to or didn't raise the dose high enough for themselves. And then 5 % report feeling worse on the patch, which is probably a sign that it's not the right time for them to be using the patch. They need to work on the other parts of gut health and everything before using the nicotine patch again.

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OK, so let's go back to to the ramp up. So you said starting people off with like somewhere between one and three milligrams. So most of the patches that I've seen are like 71421. So how do you get somebody one milligram? Is it with a lozenge or a gum? No, most of the patches are. Either they either have the nicotine inside of the adhesive.

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or there are a matrix patch. So those types of patches, the people using them have just been cutting them to get the dose they want based on that. The problem is that there are some patches out there which are reservoir patches, and those cannot be cut. And if you cut one of those patches, then you would get a mega dose, and it would be very, very dangerous. So another option is to only cut parts of the backing.

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of the patch and then stick on that part of the patch and then tape down the rest of the patch so that it's not flapping around, et cetera. So that's a safer way to do it. Instead of cutting the patch, you just cut the backing and then put the whole patch on and then add something to help keep it on there. Well, we never suggest oral.

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Nicotine at all because with any type of oral nicotine, then there's more chance of addiction for oral nicotine, I think the only If somebody has a problem with the patches the only oral nicotine I would suggest trying is the lozenges Because they can you can put them in your mouth and just kind of suck on them for a while And you can take like really really tiny doses ah

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But, and also I've tried one and it just tastes horrible. and I didn't like the feeling of it at all. So, ah it's probably less of a risk of addiction. Whereas with vaping or chewing gum or those pouches, some people use the pouches. I think those all have risks of addiction and they have more stuff in them as well.

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That makes sense. And so when you're talking about like cutting the backing, can you describe that a little bit more? Because the nicotine patches that I've seen, like, I don't know what you're referring to. You're talking about that there's like the nicotine is like in an adhesive that's applied to the thing that you peel off and that you can potentially peel off the adhesive part. Yeah. So instead of peeling off all of the

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It's usually a plastic or foil backing. Instead of peeling all of it off, just cut a part of the backing so that uh some of the patch is exposed, but most of the patch is still covered by the backing. That way, for example, if you wanted to use 3.5 milligrams, then you would take the plastic

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uh backing off, cut it in half and then uh leave half of the backing on before applying it. But since not all of it's being stuck to your body, then it'll be flapping around. So that's why you need to add some type of like silicon or micropore tape to keep it down. But so far in the group, in the Facebook group,

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There's 36,000 people and it's been going for a couple years. So there's quite a few people who have tried just about every brand. So you can go into the group and just search eh for your brand and you'll see posts from other people whether they were able to cut it safely or not. So that can kind of help feel more confident.

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Yeah, and I was going to say, do you have favorite brands that are that have been known to be able to be cut without an issue? All of the ones I've used didn't have any problem. Like. All of the kind of store brands in the United States. From the different pharmacies and big box stores like Target and Walmart and CVS, etc. I think all of those can can be cut.

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safely because they're all thin matrix type patches. And the ones that are made in China, Tolivita and Cephedon, those types of things, those are mixed in the adhesive. So those can be cut without any problem. The ones that you'd have to be wary of are the name brand ones uh that are sold in pharmacies that are more expensive.

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They're designed for smokers, so that's why they have a reservoir, so they can give a huge dose to the smoker right from the beginning.

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So the cheaper the patches, probably the safer they are. And also probably the lower the doses as well, because they're not so, it's not so uniform like other medications. It can be affected by so many different things by temperature, by the pH of your skin, by the type of application. There's so many variables. So. Interesting. So the cheaper.

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The more generic, it sounds like is going to be better. All right. Do you know anything about rugby? That's the one that I've recommended before in the past. It's kind of like easy to get through Amazon for a lot of folks. ah I've never tried it. I just know that there was this big problem of some imitations on the markets and they were saying that Amazon was mixing the imitations with the originals. ah

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So a lot of people stopped using rugby and switched. A lot of the people that were using rugby switched to Tolavida or CVS or one of those generic brands. And what was the one you mentioned before? Tolavida? Tolavita? T-O-D-E? T-O-L-L...

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E-V-I-T-A, I think. Okay. Okay, Very interesting. Thank you for that. Okay. So then that's the ramp up. We talked about the mechanism of action. That would be the ramp up. And then how do people know how often do they ramp up? know, every week, do you have them increase by a certain amount or what do think?

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I think it just depends on the person. Each person has, they feel more stable or less stable, more adventurous, less adventurous. oh So I usually tell people to try to raise it like every two or three days uh to make sure that they know how their body is reacting to the dose they're getting.

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Maybe in the beginning, maybe they ramp up faster. Maybe every day they would increase the dose because maybe they're not feeling anything at all. Um, but then when they start feeling something, then maybe they start going slower and, and giving it more time, like three days or five days or a week before, before increasing the dose. Okay. And are you increasing by a certain amount every day or every two to three days? Is that increasing by 3.5 milligrams, a half a

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a seven milligram patch or a quarter of a patch? What do think? Some people only increase by one milligram at a time. Some do it by three and a half. I wouldn't suggest increasing by more than the three and a half milligrams at a time because it's too big of a jump. Like some people jump from seven to 14 and it's that's just it's too much of a jump and also

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Somewhere between 7 and 14 is probably the limit for most people. Although there are some people who don't feel anything at all until they get to 21 or even higher, which has to do with genetics, probably.

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Okay, interesting. What's the highest dose that you've seen somebody report having benefit from?

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Um, on a regular basis, like maybe 21 milligrams. I've seen rarely, rarely, um, a couple of times I've seen people mention, uh, like 26 or 28 milligrams. Um, but also people have to be, be wary of the fact that because when you switch between brands, the way your body absorbs it and the different

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brand, their technology is going to be different. you can't compare doses between people because our genetics, the pH of our skin, everything is different. But also if it's a different brand, it's going to be affecting some people different. uh One person who actually uh sells nicotine patches said that they tried one of the more expensive name brand ones.

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at 21 milligrams and they felt nothing. And then because there was some pH mismatch between the patch and their skin, so it just wasn't being absorbed. And then with the brand that they sell, oh they use 14 milligrams and that's more than enough for them. So it's very variable. People shouldn't be obsessed with the actual

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milligrams per se, you know. So then how do people find the right brand for them? Well, I guess the main thing is in the beginning, people choose what's easy for them to buy, whatever's within their price range. I think that the placebo and nocevo effect is very important for any type of medication. So if somebody thinks that

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they only want to use a name brand because only the name brands are going to be good quality and safe or whatever, then they should buy that name brand that makes them feel more confident about it. oh And if somebody doesn't want to use one of the cheaper patches because they feel that the cheaper patch is going to be somehow dangerous for them, then they should avoid that.

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uh For me, I've always been price sensitive, so I've almost always just bought the cheaper patches out there. And so you're in Madrid. Yeah. And so what brand do you find over there? uh I used to buy one online on Amazon that was called Safedun Quit Smoking.

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But then that brand kind of disappeared from the market. And then I tried to contact a producer in China to get some samples. And those samples I didn't find to be very, very good. um They just didn't seem to be very good quality. um And then there are other brands in the pharmacies here.

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in Europe, which are much more expensive, which I've never tried those before. When I've been at home in the United States, I've bought the Equate brand from Walmart. And I looked at the manufacturer and it's the exact same patches you would get in Target, for say. And it's probably the same manufacturer in CVS.

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or other pharmacies as well, ah because they're all OEM manufacturing. But I've also used the Tolevita ah patches as well. So you're not currently using patches? ah No, actually I still use patches because based on all of my research, think long term, the long term, the benefits are far outweigh the risks.

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Um, with these diseases, one thing I've heard a lot of doctors say is that they're afraid of how it's going to affect, um, aging with dementia and cognitive impairment, et cetera. Um, so I believe that using the nicotine patch regularly, uh, possibly for the rest of my life would benefit me in that way to avoid having neurological.

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damage because I know that I've had neurological damage from long COVID. oh It's pretty clear, especially when I had a lot of uh brain fog in the past. Yeah. makes sense. And so then what patch are you currently using? oh Right now I'm using the Tollavita patch. I also sometimes mix in other brands as well, just to change.

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Yeah. Yeah. Change things up a little bit. And so, are you able to purchase those locally or do you need to purchase them online? ah Those I got in the United States because they can't be sold in Europe. There's a lot of restrictions on these types of things and crossing borders. So I actually got those in the United States. So I bought a few packs. um

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And what was the other question? No, that was, yeah, that was it. Which ones are you, which, which, uh, which brands are you currently using right now? Is it just the Tola Vita? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Mostly the Tola Vita. And then I have a few other brands that I have just kind of laying around. And were you able to get those sent over to you in Europe from the U S or did you have to like come visit family in the U S you bought a whole bunch and you took a bag with you?

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I had to go to the US to get those. Yeah. OK, so you can't even OK. Yeah, well, I think they're also sold in the UK as well. OK, I think as well. So yeah, OK, interesting. Yeah, so there are there also one of the cheaper ones out there too. Gotcha OK, so effective and cheap. We like that. Yeah, and I also because people have doubts about the patches, so I started buying.

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Um, the urine test strips to test for, for nicotine in the body, it actually tests cotinine. And so I've tested, uh, a few patches that I've used with that, um, those test strips to make sure I was actually getting nicotine, cetera. So it helps just to make sure, okay. Yeah. I'm, I'm getting nicotine from this patch.

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So, and my body is absorbing it as well. So it's something people can do if they have a doubt, they can buy those test strips on Amazon. They usually are sold 10 strips for well, $15 or $20. And then it takes a few seconds to test yourself to see if you're actually getting nicotine. Just use the patch for a couple of days before you actually test yourself.

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Okay, that's helpful. And then, you know, I've had um some people able to tolerate 24 hours of a nicotine patch, swapping it off every morning. And other people have to remove it before they go to bed because it's too stimulating for them and negatively affects their sleep. What have you seen in terms of how long people need to wear the patch per day? Whatever works best for them. If it, in my opinion, sleep is

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critical for recovery. So if something is making your sleep worse, then you don't wear it to sleep. When I first started using the patch, at first I was only using it 16 hours a day oh because it affected my sleep. But then after about a month or two months, then I uh started using it 24 hours and it didn't affect my sleep in any way.

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Even if somebody is affected in the beginning, eventually they might be able to wear it 24 hours as your body adapts. But if you're only using it for eight hours a day or 12 hours a day and you're getting benefit, then great. Yeah. I call that the Goldilocks dose. Getting that ideal dose that's helping you, it doesn't matter. You look at those different variables of the duration, how long you have it on, the frequency.

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Are you using it every day or every other day? And then obviously the dose in milligrams to determine kind of like what your ideal dose is. Would you agree that that's a good approach? Yeah, I always say more is not better. Better is better.

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That's great. I like that. so, and so going back to the, the ramp up, seems like even if you, so if you're going, are you using the same unit? Like if somebody starts off with like a quarter of a, of a patch and then they go up to, so that would be like 1.75 and then they go up to 3.5. And then do you continue to increase by 1.75 every two to three days, as you mentioned?

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until people get to their ideal dose or do you feel like you can then ramp up to, you know, 3.5, make 3.5 milligram changes? What do you think? What have you seen? I think that 1.75 is probably better than 3.5 as a step. Also, just because your body is always looking for homeostasis. So when you increase the dose,

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then your body has to adapt to that change. So if you're doing small steps, then it's easier for your body to adapt. But I mean, that's just my opinion. There's no research on that. One of the people from the original case study, he accidentally bought a 21 milligram patch instead of the 7. He put it on.

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for a day and he was sick. He was vomiting and diarrhea and headache. It just felt horrible. So at the end of the day, he took off the patch and never wore it again. But he was still cured anyways. But the other three cases, they used the seven milligrams for a week and they didn't have to go through the vomiting and everything. But who knows, maybe there's a benefit to vomiting. And there's actually some...

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anecdotes of people saying that as they were ramping up the dose, they vomited once. And then after they vomited, they felt fantastic. Like they were, they were not just vomiting up the nicotine, they were also getting out some other garbage that shouldn't be there as well. Fascinating. So if you vomit, if you vomit once, it's not so bad. But if you vomit like

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Continually then then no, that's that's not a good idea. Take off the patch, right? Yeah, yeah fascinating. Okay, and um And then so you ramp up on the dose you get up to your ideal dose that doesn't make you feel worse Maybe you vomit once and then how long do you stay on that dose for? For everybody it's is going to be different

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For now, we suggest that people just stay on it for weeks or months without taking a break. And only take a break when you feel like you need to take a break. Because there are some people that uh were following the early protocols and when they took a break, they felt horrible and they went backwards. And it was just too much of a disruption to their system. uh

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So to avoid that disruption and the risk of going backwards, it's just to stay on it until you feel like, hey, I want to take a break for a day or three days. If you take a three-day break, it's enough for the receptors to completely reset. oh But it can take between two and three weeks break before you oh

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completely, your whole nervous system has kind of readapted to not having the nicotine again.

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Okay, interesting. And in terms of preparation for this, you know, I've read and implemented in our program, you know, that people should be on natokinase before they start taking um the nicotine because it can potentially digest any proteins that are being released off of the ACE2 receptor. uh You know, there's other thoughts on taking antioxidants and vitamin C.

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making sure you're drinking lots of water. What sort of things do you want to have on board before people experiment with the nicotine patch and what other supplements or recommendations kind of like once they're on it? Well, since about 25 % of the people who use the nicotine patch go through some type of Hercs, Virks sickness reaction, then I think that they have to be prepared for that.

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um Maybe they'll feel fantastic for two days and then they'll feel bad for five days as they go through that detox phase or her phase. so I think understanding that is important. So looking at people's different stories, reading different cases on the Facebook page to understand the different ways people respond. But then as far as supplements,

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I think that uh nato-natochinase or lopokinase or also NAC, those types of things are good. It's also very important to hydrate and get electrolytes while you're on the nicotine. Probably more of a chance of being dehydrated when you have something like long COVID and not having enough uh electrolytes like magnesium and potassium.

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et cetera. So make sure you're getting plenty of that before and during the nicotine patch. And then now I've started to suggest lymphatic drainage. And in the research trial that I'm setting up, the people will start doing lymphatic drainage two weeks before they actually do the patch to make sure that their lymphatic system is flowing. They don't have any major blockage.

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And my hope is that if people are doing that, then there would be fewer or no Herck's reactions because things were already flowing in their lymphatic system. And it won't be such a big shock when all of sudden they have all of this nicotine pushing out the garbage down the lymphatic poop chute.

45:29

Yeah, that's excellent. And that's kind of what we already do in our program. So, you know, like we go through a process of got a four step process. Step three is to open up these exit pathways to the lymph and the liver and the kidneys and the gallbladder and the intestines. uh In preparation for removing, we remove toxins and infections and and all that. And so it sounds like everything that you're talking about kind of resonates. I haven't been using.

45:56

Things that I normally use for a herxheimer reaction for somebody who's having a reaction to the nicotine patch So that'll be really interesting because we could just say you know much like killing off You know some sort of infection go ahead and increase your die off your herxheimer reaction support ah And so that's that's really supportive So doctor dr. Leitzko doesn't suggest using binders. It's one of the common questions uh he

46:25

He doesn't find them useful. He thinks that the body should be able to do the job of getting all of the garbage out of the body. And binders have side effects of absorbing some of the ah nutrients that our body needs, or they might be absorbing some of the supplements or drugs that you're taking. ah So he's against using binders. But I guess there are some people who

46:55

em feel better using them for whatever reason, and they just try to use them at a time when they're not going to be affecting their food or supplements or medications. know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's certain binders that need to be 60 minutes away from food and supplements. There's some that need to be 90 minutes away. So yeah, I find binders to be very helpful.

47:24

It's interesting that he has those concerns. mean, there's always, everything has a risk-benefit ratio. If the benefit is going to be significantly more than the risk, if you can do it properly and take it correctly, then I'm inclined to use it. At the beginning with the nicotine, think people were more obsessed with

47:51

the numbers, they wanted to get higher and higher numbers of nicotine. So they would have side effects from the nicotine. And then they would take the binders to absorb the nicotine and say, well, just take a lower dose. Yeah, right. And skip the binder and you're fine. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of it. Yeah. That's a very good point. And you have to take that into account as well. Yeah. But I mean, some people feel like they need the binder and

48:20

maybe there's some type of even just a placebo effect and I'm I'm pro placebo. As long as it's not causing problems. Me too. And then will this work for vaccine injury as well? Yes, vaccine injury uh also benefits in the data we have. Actually, one of the guys that started the Facebook group with me uh

48:48

was an ME-CFS patient who had vaccine injury. And he was one of the early beneficiaries from the nicotine patch back in 2023. So that they benefit other people who have other things, lime, worms, those types of things. I think they also benefit as well.

49:17

There are some people sharing pictures of, I guess, worms that they were pooping out because they were using the nicotine patch. um Actually, nicotine has been used as a kind of pesticide because insects and worms don't have defenses against the nicotine, so it actually paralyzes them completely.

49:46

So it should help with those types of. ah

49:54

diseases as well. Yeah. It's fascinating. And know, Native Americans were using tobacco as a therapy for millennia, right? For many years. And I would imagine, I mean, I don't think tobacco necessarily is unique to the US, to this part of the world, right? I mean, there's been, it's been a ceremonial uh herb in other parts of the world too. Are you aware?

50:21

I think originally it was only in the Americas, tobacco, and then it was exported to other countries for production. Fascinating. So we're going to conclude here in a moment, but just uh tell us a little bit about the best place where people can go to learn more. Is it going to be going to the Facebook? I know that you have your blog and we'll drop that link.

50:50

And then the link tree will drop that one as well. And then I don't have the link for the Facebook group. So if you want to give me that link, we can include that as well. But are those the main links for people to go to learn more? The link for the Facebook group and everything is in the link tree. So from there, I suggest people join the Facebook group and then they watch our videos on YouTube because then they can learn from the experiences of others.

51:18

Almost everything that we've talked about today here, I've created little mini FAQ videos answering different questions ah for people, especially beginners. And then I have various interviews on there as well. And then I have linked a few of the articles that have written about us. And then there's also links, the research that we've published on nicotine is also.

51:47

linked in there as well. So everything's on the link tree. The other blog is just my personal blog, which I have a few things regarding my recovery, like when I did long fasts and antibiotics and different things to work on the myofascia issues and cervical issues, etc.

52:15

those are all more specific to me. CB the work that you're doing is really amazing. I'm so pleased and so grateful for everything that you've done. We never know why we end up getting these diseases. I had chronic fatigue syndrome for five years and just about destroyed my life. But it taught me so much, not just about myself, but the information I needed to help other people. And so you've kind of done the same thing. And so really appreciate all the work that you're doing.

52:43

I'm excited to see some more of this research coming out that you'll be doing and keep up the good work. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me and also thanks for all of the work you're doing to help people. Thanks, Troy. Good seeing you. So if you have chronic fatigue, whether it's from long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome, go ahead and click the link below to watch my latest masterclass where I go deep into our four step process.

53:13

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.