EP 131: Inside the Cowden Support Program for Lyme Disease | Dr. Lee Cowden

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Lyman beyond with Tanya, where we talk all about Lyme and beyond because, as most of us know, Lyme rarely travels alone. I created this podcast to offer you hope and to remind you that healing is possible because I healed from my own 13 year journey. Although it was exhausting physically, emotionally and financially, it truly was a blessing as it reshaped my mind, body and soul. In this space, we share raw and real conversations with those who have made it to the other side of this journey, along with breaking down different topics and approaches with practitioners. My goal is to make you feel less alone, more empowered, and confident in being your own advocate. So thank you so much for tuning in today. If you're looking for more tips and resources, I share everything I learned along my journey on my website, lymanbeyondwithtanya.com so today's episode, we are going to talk all about something that I would think most of the community is very familiar with, but sometimes I hear that they've never even heard about it. So today we're going to dive deep into the Cowden Support Program, and who better to do that with than Dr. Lee Cowden himself? I'm so honored to have him join us today. Dr. Cowden is a physician who originally trained in internal medicine, cardiology, and critical care medicine, but he spent decades in the integrative medicine world helping those with Lyme disease and complex chronic illness. So I'm so excited he's joining me today. And Dr. Cowden, welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking time to join me. [00:01:38] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me on. [00:01:41] Speaker A: So before we dive into this program that you have, can you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are, your background, and what got you started into this community? [00:01:55] Speaker B: That's a long story. I'll tell you short. I was raised in the area of West Texas, and I got accepted to medical school in Houston and I went down there and I was not used to the grass and the weeds and the trees and the mold and the fungus and everything else that was in the air. So I developed allergic rhinitis and that progressed to allergic sinusitis, and that progressed to infective sinusitis, and that progressed to bronchitis, and that progressed to pneumonia. And I follow the advice from the chairman of the Allergen immunology department, the chairman of the ear, nose and throat department, the chairman of the pulmonary department, you know, followed the recommendation, took the drugs that they recommended, and got progressively worse. And my, my wife's grandmother came to visit us. Thank goodness she was A school teacher, a self taught nutritionist. She saw me struggling, had pity on me, took me to the health food store, got me on some vitamins, minerals and herbs and I got well in about a month and I thought, oh my goodness, I need to learn what this woman knows. And I need to take with a grain of salt everything I learned in the training institution after this. [00:02:57] Speaker A: Wow, that is quite the story. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:01] Speaker A: Sounds like because of your own journey, it got you curious, right? Thinking outside the box of traditional medicine, what are these natural remedies that, that can support our bodies? I love that. [00:03:13] Speaker B: Yeah, so. So whenever I had spare time in medical school and residency and fellowships, I spent quite a bit of that time studying integrative medicine. I read books on nutritional medicine, orthomolecular med, or, you know, eastern herbals, western herbals, you know, fixed magnetic therapies, electromagnetic therapies, emotional conflict resolution, muscle testing, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, by the time I finished my formal training nine years later, I was pretty skilled at integrative medicine. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Sounds like it. I love all those things you mentioned. Well, we certainly appreciate you getting curious and learning all of this to, to give back to the communities because so many of struggle, as you know. Right. It's a very frustrating journey. So I know that you have been a consultant with nutrimedics for many years. Can you tell us how that relationship started? [00:04:13] Speaker B: Yes. A friend of mine introduced me to the CEO of Nutrimedics, Tim Eaton. And when I met Tim, I said, what are you all doing here? He said, well, we harvest. We actually get the natives in the jungle to harvest herbs and we bring them into the United States and we extract them and we put them into bottles and we sell it to the, you know, people that want to buy it. And then we send most of the money that we get back into the jungle to take care of the orphans and the missionaries. I said, wow, I really would like to be part of that. He said, you would? I said, yes. He said, well, come join on. So I've been a consultant to the Nutrimetics company for 22 years, 23 years, something like that. Have really enjoyed the people there, the trips that we've made to the jungle over the years. And I feel like I'm doing something worthwhile when I know that half of all the money that they take in goes back out to take care of orphans and missionaries. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Oh, that is amazing. It really does give you that extra sense of why you're doing what you do. I love that story. And it sounds like the jungle's an amazing place, right? [00:05:30] Speaker B: It is indeed. [00:05:32] Speaker A: So for someone who may have never heard about the Calden support program for the first time, maybe they're learning about it today. Can you walk us through just kind of the basics? What is it, what they can, what can they expect from it, and just kind of how the program goes. I know that over the months things titrate up, titrate down. Different products rotate through each month. Could you just talk a little bit about what it is and, and why you developed it that way? [00:06:00] Speaker B: I didn't know anything about lyme disease in 2002, but a naturopathic friend of mine said my grandson got, well, taking Nutrimedic Cemento. I said, really? What did, what did he have? She said he had advanced Lyme disease that had failed antibiotic therapy. I said, that's interesting. So she said, I want to try to do a study. I want to do it where we can eventually publish it possibly. And I said, I don't have time to do a study. She said, no, I just want you to come to my office every other Saturday for a couple of hours to evaluate the patients. I said, I can do that. And so, so we did that. We started the patients on a combination of herbal therapies. These, these were 28 patients that had all failed antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease. And so we put them on an all natural treatment protocol, you know, cemento and other, other herbals and vitamins and minerals and so on. And we muscle tested every patient every, every week and also did Dartfield microscopy on, on the, on their blood every two weeks. And what we found is that by the end of the second week, there was a little bit less microbial growth in the blood than there was the, you know, at the start of the study. By four weeks, quite a bit less, by six weeks, almost none. And so we decided to get a paper clip and scrape the COVID slip on top of the microscopic slide. And that ruptured the red blood cells and allowed the bacteria that were inside the blood cells to get out into the serum. So we had swarms of bacteria again. And so two weeks after that we had known before you use the paperclip, but then after we use the paperclip, there was some, but not nearly as many as two weeks before. And by the 10th week when we used the paperclip, there was no bacteria inside the red blood cells. So we said, well, we know, we, we know something now that these natural herbals will get rid of the, the microbes in the blood cells in about 10 weeks. Okay. We don't know how much longer it takes to get rid of in the liver and the heart and the brain and other places, the joints. So I said, it's going to be longer than that. So anyway, we finished our 18 week study. In that study, we had 14 patients that were treated integratively and another 14 patients that were treated by the allopathic doctor with the best therapies he could come up with. And so we compared the two groups, and by the 18th week, we had 95% of our 95% improvements, actually, in our patients in the integrative group and a 5% improvement in the patients in the pharmaceutical group. And so don't need a thousand patients to figure out that that's significant, right? Yeah. And so we stopped the study. And in 2006, Dr. Horowitz, who had the largest Lyme practice the United States, called me and said, I've got 5,000 Lyme patients in the practice and 500 of them are doing very poorly. Do you have any ideas what we can do for those? And I said, have you tried the herbals? He said, herbal? Are you kidding me? That wouldn't. That wouldn't do anything if pharmaceuticals have failed. I said, well, you might be wrong. He said. He said, okay, well, send me a protocol by email and I'll get the herbals and we'll try it. So, so I sent him the protocol, and he got about 100 patients on the, you know, the protocol that I developed up to that point. He put him on it for six months, and at the end of six months, he found that 70% of them are markedly improved. And I said, well, that's really good for the 70%, but what are you going to do about the 30%? He said, I don't know. What do you suggest? I said, well, gather a dozen of them together and I'll come to your office and we'll evaluate them energetically and see if we can figure out why they're not getting better. So I did that, and we found that those that were not getting better were drinking sodas and coffee and calling that hydration, never drinking any water. They were eating gobs of sugar. They. Most of them had mold or fungus in their home that they were breathing all day long. Most of them had mercury amalgams in their teeth and poisoning their body with mercury all day long. Anyway, I went back to the. To the office and, and modified the protocol and said to Dr. Horowitz, why don't you try this? And I said, make sure. The top of every instruction page says drink water this way. Okay. If you don't drink water, you're not going to get better. So that's what it said. So, and so sometimes you gotta line [00:10:40] Speaker A: it out clearly, right? [00:10:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So. So, so he did that. He called me. No, his, his pa called me, I don't know, four or five months later and said that 80% of the patients were improving. I said, well, that means that probably the rest of them are still in the moldy environment with a mouthful of mercury, magnesiums and maybe still eating sugar. I said, but anyway, 80% is pretty good. And then Dr. Schwarzbach from Germany called and said, what can we do for patients that have failed antibiotic therapy? I said, well, we happen to know something that works for that because Dr. Horowitz proved it. And he said, well, send that to me and I'll try it. So he tried it on 20 patients that had failed antibiotic therapy and it worked in 80% of his patients as well. And actually 90% of the patients got better by laboratory testing. Wow. Okay. So anyway, that's how the CAL support program, the initial one was developed, was, I call it a little bit of trial and error. [00:11:43] Speaker A: I was just going to say it sounds like trial and error, but hey, you got Dr. Horowitz involved, Dr. Armand from Germany. That's pretty incredible. And I believe too what you just said, the moldy environments, the amalgams and the teeth, you know, these are those hidden stressors that oftentimes people miss as being part of the puzzle piece. [00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, those, those are really important pieces. And I'm convinced that because the electropollution has increased dramatically in the cities and towns across, across the globe and because we know from peer reviewed literature that the electropollution stimulates the rapid, more rapid growth of the mold and fung environment in the home and in the workplace. And because we know that the mold also produces more mycotoxins when it's exposed to the stress of electropollution. And because we know that the mycotoxins are immune suppressive, liver toxic, cancer causing and neurodegenerative, then you know, we're dealing with not just Lyme and co infections, we're dealing with Lyme co infections and mold and mycotoxins. And then we added to that the COVID in 20, 20, 19. So you know, it's become a lot more, a lot more challenging, a lot more complicated than it was back in those days. But you know, the initial protocol was, was not simple. It was four dosings per day. Okay. And most patients said, I can't do four dosings per day. So most of them did two or three and then it was 14 different products. So pretty, pretty complex. So about three, three or four years ago, the nutrimatic said, we're not getting as good a compliance as we'd like. Can you simplify the program? I said probably. And so, so anyway, I worked at it for a while and we came up with, with 10 products instead of 14, we came up with two dosings per day. Most people could do that and put a bunch of patients that had been on the, the longer program, the 14 product program, the four dosings per day, switch them over to the two to, you know, the new program, the two dosings per day. And actually they got better, faster. Okay. And that was probably mostly because of compliance, but it could have been because we had learned more things about the, the antimicrobials and how to combine them and all that stuff. So anyway, we have pretty, pretty good results now. I would say we get close to 90% of the patients improved because a lot of the herbal products are in the program also are antifungal. That's an important, important piece of the puzzle now. [00:14:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it sure is. Wow. So what an interesting journey that, that brought you to this, this, the whole program and then to cut it down from nine months to six months. And yes, if, if we're not compliant as patients, we can't expect to get well. Right. And it truly is like a full time job sometimes with our alarms going off and you got to take these, these herbs at this time and don't take it with food and take these, you know, it overwhelming, especially when we're struggling on so many different levels. So I love that you were able to simplify it, make it on two doses. Right. That's much more doable. That's 50% better than the four doses. For sure. [00:15:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know that patients were misnamed because I don't think I've ever met a patient patient. They all want to get well. They all want to get well. Yesterday. [00:15:20] Speaker A: We do. Well, you know, unfortunately, we kind of live in a world of instant gratification. Right, right. And that certainly isn't those words don't go with Lyme disease by any means at all. [00:15:33] Speaker B: No. It takes many months to clear the Lyme microbes from the, from the interior of the cells. I, I've done some, as I said, when we, especially when we did the research, some, some dark field microscopy of the Bugs in the blood. And so it's quite fascinating to watch a red blood cell that's just completely filled with spirochetes rupture and then the, the spiral shaped bacteria coming out of that, going through the, the serum and bumping into another red blood cell. And then it goes just like a corkscrew through the cell membrane, straight into the cell in one to two seconds. It's amazing to watch that process. They infect other cells fairly easily. So they, they grow and divide inside the what? Inside the red blood cell where they're protected from the white blood cells. Okay. They're not. The white blood cells can't kill the bugs inside the red blood cells. And so until the red blood cell ruptures, the white blood cells can't do anything about those that are growing in there. [00:16:43] Speaker A: Wow, it really is fascinating to watch this dark field microscopy because that was what I got introduced to at the begin journey and I could see the cells and the spirochetes and going in and out of the cells like was fascinating, but also a little scary looking back on it. Right? [00:17:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you know, borrelia has other mechanisms to make sure that it survives. You know, for example, it has what we call a pleomorphic nature. Leo is mini and morph is shaped, so it has many shapes that it can go through. When you expose a borrelia to an antibiotic, within about two hours, you'll see little blebs coming out of the side of the spirochete. And those little blebs contain all the genetic material necessary to make an entire new spirochete. But those little blebs break off the spirochete and stay inside the red blood cell until the antibiotics are stopped. Whether that's a day, a week, a month or a year. Okay. And then when the antibiotics are finally stopped, those little blebs containing the, the DNA of the, of the borrelia produce another spirochet that can go corkscrew through the cell membranes into another cell. The other mechanism that the borrelia has to make sure that it survives is called the biofilm. Now biofilm is like, is a snot like substance that these guys produce and hide inside of. And so the white blood cells cannot penetrate the biofilm. So the borrelia and all the other co infections that are in there with the borrelia inside the biofilm, divide, multiply, thrive until there's some kind of treatment that's given to break up the biofilm. Well, we didn't know this in the beginning when we were doing our pilot study back in Dallas in 2003, but it turns out that Dr. Evasapi has proven that the herbs that we used to kill the spirochete also penetrate the biofilm and kill the microbes inside the biofilm. Okay. And antibiotics don't do that. You know, she. She did a comparison with doxycycline and a couple of other antibiotics and showed that they don't penetrate the biofilm. You know, herbal tinctures and alcohol do penetrate the biofilm. [00:19:07] Speaker A: And so biofilm is important to get rid of, to break it down, right? [00:19:10] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. [00:19:11] Speaker A: If you don't. [00:19:12] Speaker B: If you don't get rid of the biofilm and you stop treatment, whoever treatment you're giving, pretty soon, the biofilm, the bugs in the biofilm come out of the biofilm and start invading other cells. It's a smart bug, you know, it sure is. [00:19:28] Speaker A: But it sounds like you're a little bit smarter. You got all this figured out again by trial and error, kind of, right? You. You learned a little bit more, and then you figure out these sneaky things that these spirochetes can do and figure out a resolution to that. [00:19:42] Speaker B: Yeah. The Borrelia is also quite capable of mutating genetically. I had a friend, a physician over in Amsterdam, who figured this out about 25 years ago, that when Borrelia bumps into another bacteria of a different species inside the body, the Borrelia shares its genetic material with that other bug. And so the offspring of that fusion is not Borrelian, it's not the other bug. It's a third bug that has the genetic material of the Borrelia and the other bug in it. Okay. And if that third bug bumps into another bug of a different species, then it shares its genetic material with that fourth bug. And that the bug that comes out of that, the fifth bug, is not the third. The first, second, third, or fourth bug. It's a bug that has three different pieces of genetic material in it. So. So my friend called those triples. You know, when. When it's just Borrelia and one other bug, it's called a double. Double the genetics. And triples the genetics, the genes of three different species. [00:20:58] Speaker A: But anyway, that is just crazy to think. No. No wonder. It can be such a complicated thing to. To maneuver through. Right? [00:21:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. The antibiotics are fairly narrow in spectrum, the pharmaceutical antibiotics. And so they might kill the Borrelia, but if the Borrelia shares its genetic material with another bug, then that same antibiotic might not kill the bug that comes out of that genetic fusion. [00:21:29] Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. [00:21:30] Speaker B: Yeah. But. But because the herbals are not a single antimicrobial agent inside the herbals, Most of the herbals have three or four or five or six different antimicrobial microbial agents naturally occurring inside of each herb. Then it's really hard for the bugs to develop resistance. [00:21:49] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. And, you know, for those that haven't done herbals. Right. That they're not familiar with, a lot of times they think, oh, they're herbals. You know, they. They can't be too hard. I can't overdose. They can't, you know, make me hercs or do anything. And I can tell you if I. If you don't mind me sharing a short little story, but one of the first times I got introduced to herbals, it was nutrimedics cemento. And I started with, I think, just one drop or two drops. And I thought, what is this gonna do for me? Right? I don't have the patience to be patient with. With trying to titrate up so slowly. And so I think it was like, on my third or fourth day, I did, I don't know, maybe a half a dropper full. I wished I was dead. How's that? I'll just leave it at that. Yeah. So lesson learned very quickly that herbs can be very, very powerful. [00:22:49] Speaker B: Yeah. We don't see very many side effects from the. From the all natural herbal protocol. The. By the way, I didn't name the protocol. The CALD support program. The nutrimatics company did that. [00:23:01] Speaker A: Oh, they did. Okay. Well, that was kind of quite the honor. [00:23:05] Speaker B: Yeah, they. They. They did that because of the pilot study that. That I helped with back in Dallas in 2002 and 3. We learned very early on about the only side effect you see from the treatment with those herbal products is the HERXHEIMER reaction. Now, Dr. Carl Herxheimer described probably 100 years ago that if you. If you kill off bugs and the carcasses those bugs pile up in the tissues, it can make the tissues very sick. So you can get nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, joint aches, headaches, fatigue, brain fog, et cetera. And most allopathic doctors, when they. When they see that, just stop whatever treatment that they're giving and wait a few days and then restart the treatment. Well, we figured out that's not a good plan because it gives the bugs a chance to get ahead again. And so. So one of the earlier products that we developed for the account support program was the was the Berber and pinella. The Berber is extract of a Desmodium species that's been used by the Peruvians for about 100 years for detoxification of. Of the organs of the body, especially the liver. And then the pinella is an extract of the. Of anise, which is used as a spice in cooking sometimes. But it, but it has really beneficial effects on the brain. And so that both of those herbals were quantum imprinted with a variety of frequencies that help them to work like homeopathics as well as herbals at the same time. [00:24:40] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:24:41] Speaker B: And so, so if you take the Berber pinella, which is now in a single bottle, I take about 15 drops of that and 2 ounces of water and do that every 15 minutes. Usually the Herxon reaction is gone in one to two hours. Not, not, not two, not three or four days. [00:24:58] Speaker A: Wow, that's amazing. [00:25:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And it doesn't matter whether it's the Nutrimetics Cal support program that caused the Herxheimer reaction in the first place or whether it was a pharmaceutical antibiotic that caused the Herxheim reaction. The bourbon vanilla works for both. [00:25:15] Speaker A: That is great to know. I know years ago many people talked about Alka Selts or gold would help a lot of people with the Hercs, but someone got wind of that, I guess. I don't know because they don't make it anymore. So Berber pinella might be the answer. [00:25:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, burp the helix. Also, gold is a pretty good treatment for allergy reactions to foods, but. But not a terribly effective treatment for Herxheimer reaction. [00:25:39] Speaker A: Okay, well, good to know. So I definitely want to break down each of these individual products, but I do have a question before we div to that. So we've already discussed that this is a six month protocol. You took it down from nine month to six months, which is great. And then twice a day. So a typical person and. And we're all so different. Right? And it all depends on what we have going on within our bodies individually. But a typical person, if they go through the six month protocol or program, is that usually kind of the end or do sometimes people go through it all over again or do they just repeat maybe some the 5th and 6th month or what have you seen in the community surrounding that time frame? [00:26:24] Speaker B: Well, that varies a whole lot. Yeah, Depending on their genetics, their emotions, the toxic load that they have in their body, the amount of mold and fungus they're breathing on a regular basis. You know, we have a few patients that go through just the first three months. And basically say, I'm finished, I'm, well, I don't need to do anything else. That's not a large percentage. That's maybe 5% or 10%. But it's possible to get well with the Count support program in just three months. We usually suggest is that you continue it for at least one month, preferably two months after the last symptoms. Okay. So, so if it takes you to the fourth month to get rid of the last symptoms, then you want to do it till the end of the sixth month, ideally so that the, so the bugs don't regrow and the symptoms don't recur. Each person can, can figure that out for themselves. Sometimes they run out of money before they run out of treatment, you know, so they, they, you know, have to figure out something else. I've been amazed at what the Nutrimetics company has done for people in the line community that sometimes a personal call Ninja Max and say, this is my financial situation, can you help me out? And very, very often they give them a discount. Okay. And sometimes, sometimes it's a really deep discount. I don't, you know, I know that somebody else basically is paying for that, you know, but wow. [00:27:54] Speaker A: And listeners, just a little heads up, stay tuned to the end because I do have an announcement, announcement to share along those lines. Dr. Cowden. So I'm excited to shout that out. Nutramedics is pretty amazing, but I love that, that tip is great. So after your last symptom, wherever that may be for you in your journey, go an additional two months. So can you maybe give an example if somebody finished the fifth month or even the sixth month when they go two more months, how did they know which months to repeat or to continue on just the last one that they did or. [00:28:32] Speaker B: Well, no, typically you do 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1-2-3. So you just keep going through the cycle. Now if, if you notice that you got a Herxheim reaction only with month three, then maybe you don't go back through month one and two. Maybe just go from three to three again. [00:28:51] Speaker A: Oh, okay. That's a great tip. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah, you, so you might be able to skip one, one or two months, depending on what your symptoms were when you went through the previous three, three month cycle. [00:29:04] Speaker A: Okay. And again, like you said, it's kind of a loaded question because we're all so different and it all depends on our genetics, what's going on in our body, the hidden stressors, all of that stuff. And, and even our mindset, right? You got to be in it to win it when you're going to go through a journey like this. So. All right, well, if you don't mind, can we just kind of walk through the herbs, the tinctures that are within this program and just, just let us know what it is and what it's designed to support. So let's go ahead and start with. I have them written down here so I don't miss one. But let's go ahead and start with the Nutra brl. So what is it and what is it designed to support? [00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the NutriBRL is a combination of cemento, which is a special type of Peruvian cat's claw. You know, and a lot of people hear the word cat's claw, they think, oh, my goodness, you're inhumane to cats. I don't want to have anything to do with it. No. The cat's claw is a vine that grows 100, 200ft up into the canopy of the forest, and it has little hooks on it that look like the claw of a cat. Okay. [00:30:15] Speaker A: That's where it got its name. [00:30:17] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, yeah. So that, yeah, the natives, you know, gave it that name, you know, the cat's claw. Now, some of the ankaria has straight, straight hooks, not, you know, curved hooks, but the, but the uncariotomatosa, the ones that used for the product, it has a curved spine. But anyway, it has the cemento and also has banderal. Bandrol is the bark of a Peruvian tree that has kind of a lavender flower. Beautiful tree. Usually grows more down in the lowlands. And then also the leaf of the stevia. Now, the stevia is called sweet leaf in South America because it has a very sweet taste, but there's no sugar in it. Okay. So the nutrimetic stevia is unique in that they pay attention to what time of the year they harvest the leaves to make the stevia. That's important. They pay attention to the extraction process, the, you know, the other materials that they use to, to bring the entire product together. But stevia is so sweet that for the average person, five drops of the Nutrimax stevia is equivalent to one teaspoon of sugar as far as sweet sweetness. Okay. So you can use it, you know, as a, as a sweetener for your coffee, your tea, your other things that you want to sweeten. Now, Dr. Eva Sapi did some amazing research at the University of New Haven, Connecticut, and found that the combination of those three herbs together will eliminate all forms of borrelia. [00:31:59] Speaker A: Okay, wow. [00:32:00] Speaker B: The spirochetal form, the cyst form, the little round body form, the little bleb that I was talking about, as well as the biofilm form. And when she compared that to doxycycline. Doxycycline killed the spirochetyl form, but not the other two forms. [00:32:17] Speaker A: Wow, that is a powerful one for sure. [00:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, so, but, but it probably kills a variety of other microbes in the body. Besides, just Borrelia has some benefit against Streptococcus, staphylococcus, some of the fungi, et cetera. That's done in month one. And you know, we learned, I guess the hard way with Dr. Horwit's study that they needed to build up really slowly so that they would, so, so they wouldn't get overwhelming Herxheim reactions. Some people get so ill with a Herxheimer reaction that they feel like they need to be hospitalized. And so it's not, not a trivial thing. But, but if you start with one drop or two drops and add one or two drops every dose, you can get up to a reasonable dose in a reasonable period of time without having massive Herxheim reactions. And so that's what we, that's what's in the written protocol and that's what we strongly urge people to do. [00:33:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. That's, that's a great tip. Slow and steady. [00:33:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Slow and steady wins the race. Lyman co infections is not a 50 yard dash. It's a marathon. A marathon is 28 miles. That's a long, a long way to run. Okay, so, so anyway, second month has in it Nutra brt. This is a combination of Kumanda, which is the bark off of a beautiful tree with bright red flowers. Usually grows on riverbanks in the Amazon. I'll tell you a little story about Command in a moment. Anyway, the other component of the BRT is Houtuna. Now Houtuna has good research in the peer reviewed literature as an antimicrobial and we found that it's, it's a pretty decent anti Bartonella treatment. Command is an excellent Bartonella treatment. When I got the first box of 12 bottles of Commander from the Nutrimatics company, their first, their first batch, I thought, I want to see what this works against. And so I had a patient with multi drug resistant Staph aureus that had failed antibiotic therapy. And so I put the patient on the Commander and retested the patient after six weeks, something like that, and couldn't find any evidence that the staph was still there. Okay, wow. So it got Rid of the staff. And then I had a patient that had multi drug resistant candida albicans. You know, bad leaky gut, profound fatigue, swollen belly, gaseousness, bloating had failed. Two pharmaceutical drugs and three or four different herbals. Okay. Couldn't get rid of it. So anyway, put the patient commander and a ketogenic diet. And the patient had already been on the ketogenic diet, by the way. Saw that patient back after two months and couldn't find any evidence of candida in her. The next patient was a patient that had had parasites. And I'd tried one or two pharmaceuticals and several herbals and patients still had parasites in the gut. So I said, well, try this commander. You know, it seems to be pretty effective for other things. So anyway, she started the commando and she called me, I think it's the fourth day. She said, you gotta see what. What just came out in the toilet. And she sent me a picture of it. It was a whole toilet full of worms. Okay. Toilet. A toilet full of worms. So I said, I'm going to rename the commander. My personal name for command is keep K E E P Kills everything except people. [00:36:04] Speaker A: That's a great one. Wow. Yeah. And so that is in the brt [00:36:10] Speaker B: and send the brt. And then the. The third month is the primary antimicrobial is the. Is the bbs. Bbs. So BBS is pretty sure it's four different antimicrobial herbs. It has in it elegant pain root. Jalapa alapa is used a lot in Central America, not found commonly in Peru. It has in it artemisia annua. The. What's called sweet Annie Sweet artemisia from China. And it has elegant pain which comes out of Africa. Okay. So we're a three continent product there. The reason that that one was developed was because it seemed that a lot of patients were able to get over the borrelia and the bartonella. But they were still struggling with the babesia. And so. Okay, let's see if we can find a combination of things that'll be effective against most of the babesia. And seems to be working pretty well. It's not 100%, but it's a lot higher percentage than the old count support program for babesia. [00:37:22] Speaker A: All right, good to know. And nothing is 100% right. And we can just get as close as we can get. [00:37:29] Speaker B: Yeah. But you'll notice also in month two and three that there's nutriumatics, glucomatics. And you say, what's that doing in there? Well, glucomatics is a combination of stevia and cemento. And it was actually studied in humans and in animals and found to be effective in resolving what's called the metabolic syndrome or syndrome X. The metabolic syndrome is a syndrome where you have increased blood sugar, usually increased blood pressure, usually increased blood cholesterol and blood triglycerides, increased truncal obesity and increased risk of stroke, heart attack, arthritis, and cancer. Other than that, it's not a problem. But, but, but it, it affects about 60% of the American public. They. Because it addresses the blood sugar and because blood sugar causes more inflammation, the glucometics helps to get rid of some of the inflammation that they would otherwise be dealing with in months two and three. [00:38:43] Speaker A: That is stevia and cemento. [00:38:47] Speaker B: Stevia and cemento is glucomedics. [00:38:50] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:38:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And then the other thing that was added to the new CAL support program was nutrient standalone. Now a lot of people say, well, I'll just get my dandelion from someplace else and I won't have to pay for the one from nutritics. Well, that's a major mistake because. Because the nutrimetics dandelion is quantum imprinted to get out of the body. The spike protein, spike rna, spike DNA, and no other dandelion line on the world market is able to do that. Wow. Okay. Now the, the spike protein in the body causes inflammation, which causes pain to be worse. And so if you don't do something about the spike protein, you're not going to have as complete resolution of symptoms or as quick a resolution of symptoms. [00:39:40] Speaker A: Wow. And truly, like, not all supplements are created equally. Right. It is quality for sure. And a lot of things that we need to really look into. [00:39:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, the Nutrimetics analyzes every herbal product that they produce for microbial contamination, for heavy metals, for other toxins, and also every, every batch of product that the, the, that the Nutrimax produces is sent to me to be energetically tested. And I don't approve anything unless it comes out at least 98% out of a hundred. [00:40:22] Speaker A: Wow. Wow. That's incredible. [00:40:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And so a lot of energetic practitioners say, I've never seen a lineup of products that all test energetically. Well, like your products. Well, that's because they. [00:40:41] Speaker A: Now we know why. Right. [00:40:43] Speaker B: They spend time making sure that they only sell the best. [00:40:47] Speaker A: Yes. Now I'm so, so grateful for Nutrimedics. They were. Many of their products were a huge part of my healing journey. And I didn't know back in the day that there was a cowden support program. I'm learning about it now. [00:41:03] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we've had patients before say, well, I took that counsel program and it didn't help me at all. And I say, well, tell me what you took. He said, I took the cemento. I said, what else do you take besides cemento? No, just cemento. I said, that's not the cow support program. That's a tiny piece of the calendar support program. Did you want to get well or do you want to stay ill? I said, if you want to get well, then take the entire calendar support program or find an energetic practitioner that can tell you which pieces you can safely remove. [00:41:36] Speaker A: There you go. Yeah, no, it's definitely a program, and all the pieces fit together quite well as you've done all the research on it. Okay, so now let's talk about, and I'm probably going to pronounce this wrong, Takuna. [00:41:50] Speaker B: Yeah, Takuna has been in the program a long time. I'll tell you a little anecdote about that. The Zakuna comes from the bark of a. Of a tree that grows up at about 10,000ft elevation in the Andes. You can actually spot it from Google Earth. [00:42:07] Speaker A: Oh, that's funny. [00:42:09] Speaker B: Okay. This Takuna is, is a very effective antiviral. It's effective against most viruses actually, including retroviruses. Most people only know what retroviruses are, but retroviruses are the viruses that we inherit from our parents and that they inherited from their parents. And retroviruses are immune, suppressive. A retrovirus that you would know if I said it is hiv, the virus that's thought to be the cause of aids. Retroviruses are in pretty much everybody that's chronically ill. Because the borrelia produces a biotoxin that suppresses the immune system. The suppression of the immune system allows the retroviruses to overgrowth. Retroviruses then further suppress the immune system. Okay, so, you know, you got insult on top of injury, I guess you say. But anyway, if you take the Takuna, you. You get rid of a lot of the, of the viral load on the body. Most people that are chronically ill have Epstein Barr virus overgrown in their body. Most people that are chronically ill have it overgrowth of either cytomegalovirus, human herpes virus, type 6, herpes simplex 1 or 2, you know, coxackie virus, Echo virus, et cetera. So if you can lower the, the viral load, then the, the cells start functioning better. And when the cells start functioning better, that includes white blood cells, then you get rid of the illness. Faster. [00:43:43] Speaker A: And that is from that Takuna? [00:43:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So the first box of Takuna that the Nutrimax ever produced and sent to me, I was. I received it. And then I went immediately over to my son's house because my son said my middle grandson had a severe flu. I said, well, this cocoon is supposed to be good for that. Let's see if, you know, see how he tests. So I muscle test him for it. He tested great. [00:44:05] Speaker A: You used your grandson as a guinea pig? [00:44:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was. He was the first person in. In the United States to take that product. Yeah, no, I took it first, but. But I survived, so I figured he could survive. When I got there, he had a fever of 103. He had nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, joint headaches. Was laying in bed, didn't want to get out of bed. He was usually up and around playing, but that day in bed. And so I said, ty, I want you to take some of this in a little bit of water. So I gave him an ounce of water with 15 drops of the Takuna in it. He said, that's not bad, grandpa. You know, as far as the taste, you could barely taste it. And so I went into the living room to talk with my son. And after about 30, 40 minutes, my. My grandson came out there and started playing just like nothing had ever happened. I put my hand on his forehead. No fever. I said, tired. Do you have. Do you have nausea? No. Do you have muscle aches, joint aches, headaches? No. So one dose got rid of flu. Wow. [00:45:14] Speaker A: Wow, that is amazing. Needs to be in my medicine cabinet, right? [00:45:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So what I learned after that is that. But it takes longer for adults to get over the flu than it does for a 3 year old or whatever. Whatever age he was. So for adults, we do a dropper full every hour until the symptoms go away. Then every two hours for a day, then every four hours for a day, then every eight hours for a day, then stop. That's a taper down. And if people do that, usually the flu doesn't come back. But usually the flu is gone within six or eight hours. If they do it that way. Wow. [00:45:53] Speaker A: Okay. Such a good tip. Wow. I love it. Okay, so let's move on to serrapeptase. [00:45:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Serrapeptase is an enzyme produced by the serratia bacteria. It has a variety of beneficial effects. It'll break up biofilm, you know. Dr. Sopi proved that it will break up fibrin inside the blood vessels. When you have a chronic infection in your body, you produce Excessive fibrinogens. The fibrin that plasters itself up against the capillary wall restricts the delivery of oxygen and nutrients into the tissues and restricts the delivery of toxins out of the tissues into the bloodstream to be carried away. So the serrapeptase takes care of that. But we now know that serrapeptase also digest amyloid. And amyloid is the protein clot that is found in people that died suddenly after a COVID injection. [00:46:50] Speaker A: Okay, repeat that. [00:46:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:54] Speaker A: Wow. [00:46:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And so. So when. When the counts, the. The new account support program is being put together, I decided that I wanted to have, you know, more horsepower as far as getting rid of the amyloid. So we added nutriumatics bomelaine to the program because the bromelain is not terribly expensive. That wouldn't, you know, increase the cost of the program a whole lot. But Nutrimax also produced at the same time the nattokinase to act as a backup for people that develop an allergy to pineapple. Okay. [00:47:30] Speaker A: Okay. [00:47:30] Speaker B: So bromelain is made from pineapple stem. So if you develop an allergy to the bromelain, then you just switch over to the nattokinase and continue on to keep breaking down the fibrin and the amyloid in your blood vessels. And breaking it. It also breaks up the biofilm that I talked about earlier. [00:47:49] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. I'm taking all sorts of notes. You are just a wealth of information and doing such a great job breaking all of these down. I love it. Berber Pinella, you talked about that a little bit earlier in the show. So if you can just give us another quick rundown on. On that. [00:48:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Whether you're going to take the count support program or whether you're going to do anything that would kill Lyme related creatures. You want to have Berber Pinella on hand before you ever start that treatment, whatever that treatment is. Okay. Because what a lot of people do is they say, oh, I'll just order that when I get sick. Well, you want to be sick for two or three days until it finally shows up, or do you want to go ahead and have it on hand? I think proactive. [00:48:32] Speaker A: Right? Proactive, not reactive. [00:48:34] Speaker B: I think a wise person would have it on hand. But anyway, Nutrimax also makes a liposomal glutathione capsule. And so usually if you take one capsule of Nutrimax Liposomal Glutathione and 15 drops of Berber Vanilla and 2 ounces of water and drink that down, oftentimes just that one dose will decrease the herxheim reaction. Sometimes it'll completely eliminate the Horxheimer reaction. But. But I don't think I've ever seen a Hircheimer reaction that it would not resolve within two hours time. Using Bermuda Pinella every 15 minutes and liposomal glutathione every 15 minutes. Wow. [00:49:17] Speaker A: And that's very important to us because many of us go through those bad hoaxes. So the last one on here, and, and this kind of surprises me. And so I'm really curious about why this is incorporated. Is the magnesium malate. I mean, magnesium. So where does that play a role? [00:49:34] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the US government did research and improved that 58% of the American public are deficient in magnesium. Okay, now 57. Sorry. So if they said it's 57, then we know that it's at least. Yeah, at least 87. Because they always underestimate nutritional deficiencies by at least that amount. Now, why are people deficient in magnesium? Well, that's because there's calcium fortification in a lot of juices and other foods that you consume. A lot of people consume a lot of dairy products which are loaded with calcium. Calcium competes for absorption against magnesium in the gut. Okay. And so if you're consuming a lot of dairy products and consuming a lot of orange juice with calcium fortification in it, then you're going to be profoundly deficient in magnesium just because of the diet alone. Whenever you're under stress. And nobody with Lyme disease is under stress, right? So. So whenever you're under stress, the hormones that are produced under stress cause the. The magnesium that goes through your kidneys to go through the kidney tubules into the toilet. Okay. [00:50:56] Speaker A: Okay. [00:50:56] Speaker B: So you're wasting magnesium profusely because of the stress. [00:51:01] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:51:02] Speaker B: Not a. Not a good plan. Now, here's the other thing that most people don't know about magnesium. We live in a, in an electropolluted environment. Dr. Martin Paul, P, A L L, PhD in 2013, figured out the way that electropollution causes harm to the body is by opening the voltage gated calcium channels in the cell membrane of every cell of the body. Okay. So when you get electropolluted, the channels in the cell membrane open up and allow calcium to flood into the cell. Calcium that floods into the cell stimulates the production of nitric oxide, superoxide and peroxy nitrite. Those are three very powerful free radicals that damage the mitochondria of your cel organelle of your cells. The Golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum, the nucleus of the cell, the DNA inside the nucleus of the cell and the interior wall of the cell membrane. Okay. When the interior wall of the cell membrane degrades, then you lose electrical potential across the cell membrane and you become much more susceptible to cell death. Oh, just that little thing, cell death. So the most effective protection, other than avoiding electropollution, that you can get from preventing, for preventing the calc, the flooding of calcium into the cells through the voltage gated calcium channel is magnesium. Wow. Okay, so if you get your magnesium levels up, you're going to reduce the amount of free radical damage inside your cells. By the way, the other thing that happens when calcium flows into the cells is that it stimulates production of NF kappa B. NF kappa B is the most inflammatory substance that the body produces. Okay, so do people with Lyme disease have inflammation? [00:53:07] Speaker A: Yes, just a little bit. [00:53:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And they're making it worse with electropollution. Okay. [00:53:14] Speaker A: Which we can't avoid. Right. [00:53:15] Speaker B: And by, and by, and by being magnesium deficient. Wow. Okay. [00:53:22] Speaker A: Wow. [00:53:23] Speaker B: Other than that, magnesium's not very important. Magnesium is necessary for the contraction of every muscle in the body. Every skeletal muscle, every heart, heart muscle, every muscle in the walls of the gallbladder and the bile ducts, the walls of the bowel, all of those require magnesium for contraction, relaxation. In order for a nerve impulse to go from the brain to the spinal cord, from the spinal cord to the peripheral nerves, you have to have magnesium for that to work. If you don't have enough magnesium, you don't get electrical conduction down your nerves. Okay. [00:54:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:02] Speaker B: Magnesium is necessary for the, for the function of about half of all the metabolic enzymes that make energy for your cell. Half, Half. [00:54:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's important for sure. I just, I guess I didn't relate, relate it to, you know, going into kind of an herbal protocol program. I'm like, well, that's interesting that he chose. And, and then, you know, there's many different, I don't even know if you can call them types of magnesium, but you specifically list magnesium malate. So that just had kind of. [00:54:37] Speaker B: Well, yeah. Well, so it turns out that malic acid is probably the rate limiting step for the Krebs cycle, the tricarboxylic acid cycle inside of our mitochondria that makes energy for our cells. And so if the cell is, is missing enough malate to produce ATP energy, then it makes sense to give the magnesium as a malate so that you take care of two birds with one stone. [00:55:07] Speaker A: It sure does. You, it sounds like You've thought of it all. You've thought of it all. And you know, one of the things I really appreciate the COW and Support program is that it's designed to, to help those, you know, many in the community. This can be a financially draining journey to go through and many people, for whatever reason do not have a practitioner. Right. Whether it's costs or whatever, the barrier is stopping them from being able to do that. They, they lose hope because they feel like there's nothing that they can do. And your program has, is really designed to break it down step by step, to basically spoon feed them the information. Right. You mentioned earlier you wrote on top of one of the pages, drink water. Right. Like literally you're spoon feeding this. And I just think that it's an incredible opportunity for those out there that are really struggling to figure out a way to kind of support their body through this journey. And so truly I'm so grateful for, for you Nutramedics and, and just creating this, this program. So Dr. Cowden, for someone listening today that maybe is considering trying the Cowden protocol, whether they've been seeing it around, you know, for years or not, or just learning about it today for the first time, what would you like to leave them with? [00:56:24] Speaker B: Yes, I think that pharmaceuticals need to be the last choice for chronic Lyme disease. Not the first choice, because in my, in my computer, I think either 10 or 12 articles from the peer reviewed literature from 1989 up through 2019 that show that pharmaceutical antibiotics don't work for chronic Lyme disease. Well, you know, Dr. Horowitz admitted that 500 of his patients that are on pharmaceuticals weren't getting better. You know, doctor, Dr. Schwarzbach in Germany said, I've got a whole bunch of patients in my practice that are on pharmaceutical antibiotics and not getting better. Why would you start with a pharmaceutical antibiotic which can kill off the friendly bacteria in your gut, impair your immune function, cause leaky gut, cause food allergy reactions, when you could instead use an herbal tincture that won't do all of that, that has, has more effectiveness than the pharmaceutical, most of the pharmaceutical antibiotics, you know. So, you know, just try to first do no harm. Okay. That's the first, first day of medical school. They said, if you don't learn anything else today, learn this statement first, do no harm to your patients. Okay. We know that the herbals are very, very, very unlikely to cause harm. We know that the pharmaceuticals unfortunately are fairly likely to cause harm. [00:57:47] Speaker A: So yeah, no, that was a perfect final piece because not saying that there's not a time and place for them. But when we're dealing with chronic Lyme, I think that many people, they don't know anything outside of just doctors put them on antibiotics. So I appreciate that tip. [00:58:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, there's, there's 4, 450, 000 new cases of Lyme disease in the United States every year, according to the cdc. That means it's the number one epidemic in the United States. You know, far oxygen far exceeds the other epidemics that are out there. Unfortunately, most doctors don't think about Lyme disease. On the Nutraumatics EC website, there's 425 different illnesses that are caused by Borrelia. 425 different illnesses. And most doctors, you know, don't think about Lyme as being one of those 425 causes. And so a lot of patients don't get appropriately tested for Lyme disease and they end up getting into the chronic Lyme category greater than six months of duration. And before, before somebody finally says, oh, you might have Lyme disease, maybe we should test you for that. And then, unfortunately, the blood tests are pretty poor. My estimate is that the, that the blood test missed the diagnosis half the time. Okay. Unless you do some type of provocation. If you do a provocation, you can increase your batting average maybe up to 90 or 95%. Dr. Klinghardt and Ruggieri wrote an article about how you do a provocation Lyme test. So anybody that's listening can look that up. Wow. [00:59:45] Speaker A: So much good information, Dr. Cowden. Truly, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join me and share with me and the listeners. Just a true breakdown of all the products that are in this Cowden support program. And I just appreciate what you do for the community and for putting the, this program together for all of us. Truly, a special thanks to Nutra Medics because they offered me an exclusive affiliate link and they're allowing me to pass along to my community an exclusive offer of $150 a month for any month of the Cowden support Protocol program that they would like. And so truly is that you, you mentioned it earlier in the show, Dr. Cowden, how generous they are. Everything that they do, the money that goes back to the jungle, like, truly so thankful for them. So listeners, as always, you can find all the information about this exclusive discount in the description of this episode as well as on my website. So thank you Nutramedics and thank you, Dr. Cowden. I, I appreciate you. [01:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah, appreciate you appreciate what you're doing. Trying to get the people educated about the Lyme problems. And now they'll know a little bit more about other problems that go along with that. Like the electropollution, the mold and fungus, the mercury fillings in their teeth, et cetera. [01:01:08] Speaker A: Exactly. Hence the title of my podcast, Lyme and Beyond. It's not just Lyme. It's. There's so many things that go along with it. So thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us. I truly appreciate you. [01:01:22] Speaker B: You're very welcome.