Chronic Illness
THERE IS A BETTER WAY
CHRONIC ILLNESS is often caused by a “perfect storm” of factors - the combination of your genetic makeup, your stress level, the environment you live in, the varying degrees of dysfunction occurring in the body, your level of toxicity, among others.
We often look at chronic illness as one problem in one organ or system of the body, when in fact chronic illness is complex and layered.
By reducing toxins and repairing cells, we can undo dysfunction and address chronic illness at its source.
​
Our first-hand experience with chronic illness influences all that we do. We understand the challenges that come with complex health issues, and provide every client with focused, compassionate care. Your story matters.
​
Lyme & Co-Infections
Lyme disease is an epidemic: it is the fastest-growing vector-borne disease in the world and mimics common diseases such as Fibromyalgia (FM), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (also known as ME or myalgic encephalomyelitis), autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and MS, as well as psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety.
More and more people are showing up with chronic forms of the infection, leading to multi-systemic illness and disabilities that are devastating to the individuals and families suffering from it. Vermont has one of the highest rates of Lyme disease in the U.S.
While many individuals are exposed to Lyme disease, not everyone contracts Lyme. Those who do contract Lyme are often dealing with a major toxicity problem - a high toxicity level within the body, and damaged or limited pathways for toxins to get out. Imagine your body as a bucket filled mostly with water, which represents the toxicity you already have. Then add more water for stress and a chronic infection like Lyme disease, and suddenly your bucket is overflowing, and inflammation is out of control. Your doctor gives you antibiotics to treat the Lyme, and this only adds more water to your already overflowing bucket.
​
On its own, Lyme is a challenging infection due to its widespread effect on the body. Learning how to outsmart the bacteria can be an uphill battle. Increased toxicity weakens our immune system and damages the nervous system, making it harder for you to fight infection, and leaving you susceptible to other co-morbidities like mold illness, chronic viral infection, mitochondrial dysfunction, mast cell activation syndrome, and so much more. With continued antibiotic use, Lyme spirochetes will become dormant in a cyst state, waiting to strike when the threat of antibiotics has left the body. Lyme bacteria also hide within biofilms, making them that much harder to track down and eliminate.
​
Detoxing is an essential part of your fight against Lyme Disease. Our Lyme Disease protocol addresses not only the bacteria causing infection, but the elements within your body that are helping them thrive. We’ll work to open and repair your detox pathways, remove toxin barriers to your health, address the bacteria you already have, and support your immune system to fight the remaining infection naturally. Cold Laser Detox™ helps your body work better so that you can get well and stay well.
​
Mold & Mycotoxin Illness
Mold is an insidious and often invisible culprit in chronic illness. Mold hides within our walls, in our basements, in our air vents, and everywhere in between. Just because you can’t see mold in your environment, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Mold feeds other dysfunction like chronic infection, creating what can be a vicious cycle of disease.
Mold thrives in dark, damp places in the natural world, and the same is true for your body - mold tends to attack the respiratory system, the gut, and the brain. Symptoms of mold illness can include cardiac issues like heart disease, respiratory issues like asthma, sinus inflammation, severe allergies, neurological issues like brain fog, memory loss, ADHD, depression, and anxiety, flu-like symptoms, liver damage, and skin rashes.
Mold releases mycotoxins as a byproduct, which create a feast for bacteria and can fuel other long term infections. Mycotoxins also suppress the immune system, which allows mold to hide from your body’s defenses and leave the door open for other microbes to enter and create further dysfunction. Within the gut, mycotoxins create the perfect environment for candida overgrowth. In the brain, mycotoxins can break down the blood-brain barrier, your brain’s protective layer against pathogens, leaving you vulnerable for severe brain inflammation. Mycotoxins are also known to be carcinogenic, and long term exposure can damage your central nervous system and DNA.
Mold can play a major role in perpetuating chronic illness. Mold and mycotoxins add to your body burden, and perpetuate vicious cycles of inflammation and infection, suppressing your ability to truly heal. While limiting mold exposure is vital, it’s not enough to stop the damage of mycotoxins already present. Targeting mold at its source and removing mycotoxins are necessary to overcoming mold illness.
Addressing mold illness allows your body to restore immune and gut function, improve brain inflammation, returning your body back to a state of balance. Detoxing mold toxicity is essential to overcoming chronic illness. Our protocols are some of the most comprehensive mold and mycotoxin release protocols that focus on opening and repairing your detox pathways, removing toxin barriers to your health, while supporting your immune system. Cold Laser Detox™ helps your body work better so that you can get well and stay well.
Long Covid
When we catch a virus, your immune system turns on and takes out the threat. However, that virus doesn’t leave your body. Every virus you’ve been exposed to is still living within you, kept in check by your immune system. But when our immune systems become compromised from stress, toxicity and disease, viruses are able to reactivate and re-attack.
Viruses feed off of the heavy metals and neurotoxins within your body, creating greater dysfunction and inflammation to an already overwhelming toxic load. Long term, this means severe damage to your liver, kidneys, spleen, lungs and nervous system.
​
Viruses are still poorly understood by modern science - they aren’t “alive” in a traditional sense, as they don’t have cells, but they do have their own DNA and drive to replicate. Viruses thrive by injecting their DNA into your cells, essentially killing off healthy cells in the process. This makes them harder to treat, harder for your immune system to track down, and destructive to your cellular health.
​
As we learn more about viruses, science has now recognized the connection between long term viral infections and chronic disease, the most well known being HIV and AIDS. Epstein-Barr virus, the infection which causes mono, has been linked to Multiple Sclerosis and the degeneration of the myelin tissue that protects the neurons of the brain. Covid-19 has shown lingering, detrimental effects on the nervous system, as well as the heart and lungs, and we’ve yet to see what that means long term.
​
Protecting your body from viruses starts with strengthening your immune system, as well as increasing lymphatic flow and removing heavy metal toxicity. Our goal is to build your body up and lower your viral load to keep you healthy long term.
​
Vagus Nerve
The Vagus Nerve is the largest nerve in your body. It’s the primary information pathway for your autonomic nervous system, which controls all unconscious functions in your body like maintaining heart rate, digestive function and regulating your immune system.
Our autonomic nervous system plays a major role in our total body health. The ANS has two modes - sympathetic and parasympathetic- or respectively, fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest. In fight or flight, your body is taking energy away from digestion, immune function and detoxification, instead putting that energy towards muscle function and increasing your heart rate to get you out of danger. In rest-and-digest, the body returns energy to those basic functions, and starts to focus on maintaining homeostasis and repair.
​
Your sympathetic nervous system turns on when your body senses a threat. This threat can come from outside your body, like a wild animal in the woods, but that same trigger can come from inside the body. High toxicity and chronic infection create stress and cause your ANS to get stuck in fight-or-flight mode. Staying in fight-or-flight reduces your metabolism, decreases liver function, suppresses your immune system, and limits your body’s natural detoxification, leaving you vulnerable to long term infection and complex illness down the line.
Stress is not the only threat to your nervous system - there’s also the looming threat of inflammation from toxins and chronic infection. Viruses often attack the vagus nerve, disrupting your brain’s ability to communicate with the rest of your body. When chronic inflammation spreads to the vagus nerve, we see symptoms like vertigo, anxiety, nausea, numbness, muscle weakness and more. Cold Laser Detox™ works to not only remove the toxins that cause vagus nerve inflammation, but also gently simulates the vagus nerve to reset your autonomic nervous system. We restore balance by switching back to rest-and-digest and re-engaging the natural healing functions of the body.
​
AutoImmune Disorders
The immune system is your body’s primary defense, protecting you from pathogens and external invaders. But what happens when your immune system thinks you are the invader? Your genetics provide the instructions for every function of your body; a predisposition to autoimmune disorders means your immune system has faulty instructions on where and when to attack.
However, genetics aren’t the only factor. Autoimmune issues can be latent, hiding within your DNA. It’s not until your body is faced with a major stressor – a debilitating infection, a major life change, a traumatic event, or reaching a state of toxic overload – that your autoimmune condition becomes active. Suddenly, your immune system is attacking healthy tissue, and you’re experiencing widespread inflammation. And while your immune system is busy, the door is left wide open for further infection to take hold, leading to a vicious cycle of chronic inflammation. When a high toxin burden meets a confused immune system, a cycle of chronic inflammation, and the stress of everyday living, you’re left with serious long term illness. Autoimmune disorders can often be the base layer to complex chronic issues, and can set into motion a challenging chain reaction. Cold Laser therapy modulates your immune response, retraining your defense system to react properly, while reducing inflammation at its source. Break the cycle of chronic inflammation and get back to life.
Heavy Metal Toxicity
Heavy Metals may be the greatest hidden instigator to chronic illness. This group of toxins includes mercury, arsenic, lead, aluminum, cadmium, thallium, copper, nickel, and more – all of which pose a serious threat to your health. Heavy Metal exposures come from a wide variety of sources – industrial dumping in water supplies, pesticides and runoff, car exhausts, aviation, factory smoke stacks, cigarette use, cookware, cosmetics, and old paint, just to name a few. Heavy metals are unfortunately everywhere in the modern world.
On top of exposure being hard to avoid, the body has little to no ability to remove metals once they’ve been absorbed. Heavy metals slowly collect over time, creating a lifetime supply of heavy metal toxicity. Some metals are even passed down from mother to child, inherited from generation to generation. And the longer these metals sit within your body, the greater threat they pose.
While all toxins are poisonous to the body, heavy metals are also a neurotoxin, which cause inflammation within the brain and nervous system and disrupt the immune system, creating symptoms like memory loss, brain fog and irritability. Inflammation within the nervous system severely impacts the brain’s ability to communicate with the rest of the body. This disruption of information can set the stage for potential disaster.
Heavy Metals also act as the primary food source for viruses, bacteria and other pathogens. Higher levels of heavy metal toxicity allow these microbes to thrive and cause further inflammation, creating symptoms like tingling, numbness, fatigue, anxiety, pain, vertigo, and autonomic issues. These microbes also release their own neurotoxins as a waste product, creating yet another vicious cycle within an already overwhelmed system.
When addressing heavy metal toxicity, reducing exposure is always the first step. Being aware of the products you use in your home and on your body, especially the water you drink, can help to slow the buildup of heavy metals. However, as many of these metals are transmitted through the air, we unfortunately can’t avoid all exposure.
While avoiding the daily onslaught of heavy metals and other toxins is tough, protecting your body from these threats is not. Cold Laser Detox™ is one of the most comprehensive heavy metal and neurotoxin release protocols. It’s important to learn the signs of heavy metal toxicity and understand the threat heavy metals and neurotoxins pose to your health. You have the power to make better choices and take control of heavy metal toxicity.
