Episode #165: Bartonella with Dr. Brian Plante, ND
Last Updated: May 11 2022
Why You Should Listen
In this episode, you will learn about the vector-borne infection Bartonella.
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About My Guest
My guest for this episode is Dr. Brian Plante. Brian Plante, ND is a licensed naturopathic doctor with extensive training in integrative healthcare approaches. He specializes in working with patients suffering from complex immune dysfunction such as Lyme disease, chronic viral infections, environmental toxicity (such as from mold and heavy metals), autoimmune disease, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Additionally, Dr. Plante helps patients recover from functional gastrointestinal conditions, adrenal and thyroid disorders, and neuropsychiatric disorders. With each patient Dr. Plante meets, he conducts a comprehensive evaluation in order to get a complete picture and then creates individualized treatment plans to address that patient’s specific concerns. Dr. Plante is a graduate of the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, OR, as well as a member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). He believes that one integral step in helping patients heal from complex chronic illness is by empowering them with knowledge and understanding. He facilitates this by patiently taking however much time is needed to investigate a patient’s symptoms and concerns thoroughly. Through compassionate listening, thoughtful instruction, and a steadfast commitment to helping patients experience lasting, positive change, Dr. Plante can combat the frustration patients often experience in their struggle to find answers. His goal with every patient with whom he interacts is to provide support and guidance in their journey toward achieving optimal health.
Key Takeaways
What symptoms provide clues for the potential of Bartonella?
Could Bartonella be an explanation for many neuropsychiatric conditions?
Might Bartonella play a role in SIBO?
What are the vectors through which Bartonella may be acquired?
What labs are useful for exploring the potential presence of Bartonella?
How often does mold exposure play a role in Bartonella patients?
Can Bartonella be a trigger for MCAS?
Can Bartonella be a driver of autoimmunity and immune dysregulation?
Might Bartonella play a role in hypermobility syndromes and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome?
What role does Bartonella play in Morgellons?
What is the foundation for treating Bartonella?
What modalities can be helpful for terrain optimization?
What role do nutritional IVs play in Bartonella treatment?
Are antibiotics necessary in treating Bartonella?
What herbs may be helpful for addressing Bartonella?
How might oxidative therapies such as ozone, EBOO, and ozone plasmapheresis be used?
How often do biofilms need to be addressed?
What antimicrobial and immune-modulating peptides have a role?
Can Bartonella be fully eradicated?
Once a patient has recovered, can treatment be stopped? Or is there a maintenance strategy for longer-term support?
I provide a large part of the information in this article in A Lyme Disease Antibiotic Guide and in Kills Bartonella: A Brief Guide. I am including this information as a stand-alone article on persisters for those looking for information just on this topic and additional persister treatment options from those I lay out in the Lyme and Bartonella articles.
Marty Ross MD
About Persister Lyme & Bartonella
There are many reasons Lyme and Bartonella are hard to treat. One reason is persister Lyme and Bartonella germs ignore standard antibiotics. Based on numerous laboratory experiments since 2015, the Lyme germ is shown to have a growth state and a hibernating – non-growing state. These hibernators are called persisters. They do not respond to regular prescription antibiotics – although they do seem to respond to many herbal antibiotics that we use.
More recently – experiments starting in late 2019 from Ying Zhang, MD and his colleagues, show that Bartonella also has persister forms. (See link for article)
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SUMMARY of treatments Dr. Ross uses for Lyme and/or Bartonella persisters:
Disulfiram
Methylene Blue
Cefuroxime plus Clarithromycin plus Nitazonxanide
Oregano, Cinnamon, and Clove oils
Japanese knotweed
Cat’s claw
Azlocillin
I highly recommend reading Ross’ entire article as there are many nuances within it including Dr. Burrascano‘s use of cycling. He and numerous patients achieved remission using this approach and current research appears to support the practice. Not only is cycling effective, it gives the body, particularly the gut, a much needed break from harsh antibiotics.
Impact of the Gut Microbiome on Immunity and Inflammation
Description
The gut microbiome consists of a complex set of microbial communities that shape human physiology in multiple ways, both subtle and profound. Two-thirds of the body’s lymphocytes reside in gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) or traverse GALT and return home to other organs. Interaction between gut microbes and GALT creates a basal state of immune activation that starts at the mucosal surface and impacts the entire body. The composition and metabolic activity of intestinal microbes yields effects that promote inflammation and that help resolve inflammation. These effects result from the impact of structural components of microbial cells (e.g., lipopolysaccharides) and metabolites of microbial enzyme activity (e.g., butyrate, hydrogen sulfide).
Recent studies have shown that T-lymphocyte function is especially sensitive to the bacterial composition of the microbiome. The structure and function of the gut microbiome is molded by personal genetics, diet, co-habitation, environmental toxins, hygiene, personal care products, psychosocial stress, intercurrent infections, vitamin D, tryptophan metabolites, nutritional status, medications, herbs, probiotics, and prebiotics. Disturbances in the ecology of the microbiome/host relationship create a condition called dysbiosis, which influences the development and the outcome of many different diseases. The ability to recognize and correct dysbiosis is a skill that can help clinicians improve the outcomes of infectious, allergic, and autoimmune disorders and may aid the immunotherapy of malignancy.
We hope you can join us live on May 18th at 4 PM MT. If not, don’t worry, signing up will still grant you access to the webinar recording.
Time
2022-05-18 16:00:00 MT
Speaker:
Leo Galland, M.D., is recognized as a world leader in functional and integrative medicine and a pioneer in the study of intestinal permeability and the gut microbiome as they impact immune function and systemic health. Educated at Harvard University and the NYU School of Medicine, he completed a residency in internal medicine at the N.Y.U.-Bellevue Medical Center and held faculty positions at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Stony Brook University and the University of Connecticut, where he also completed a fellowship in Behavioral Medicine. He subsequently served as Director of Clinical Research at the Gesell Institute of Human Development in New Haven, Connecticut. Since 1985, he has maintained a private consulting practice in New York City where he evaluates and treats patients with complex medical disorders, who visit him from all over the world. Board certified in internal medicine, he is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American College of Nutrition. Dr. Galland has received the Albert Norris Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award from Marquis Who’s Who for his contributions to medical innovation and the Linus Pauling Award from the Institute of Functional Medicine for developing basic principles of functional medicine. He is recognized in The Leading Physicians of the Worldand America’s Top Doctors. Dr. Galland has contributed to world medical literature with several dozen articles in scientific journals and chapters in medical textbooks. He created the section on Functional Foods for the Encyclopedia of Human Nutrition. An international best-selling author, Dr. Galland has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, on the Dr. Oz Show, The Today Show, and Good Morning America, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. His PBS Special, The Allergy Solution, aired over a thousand times. Since January 2020, he has studied the COVID-19 pandemic in depth, compiling his findings in an online, extensively referenced and free Coronavirus Guidebook, and has created educational videos on the long COVID syndrome.
A California bill is now threatening to strip doctors of their medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not agree with. California Assembly Bill 2098 designates “the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct” warranting “disciplinary action” that could result in the loss of their medical license
Misinformation related to SARS-CoV-2 includes “false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.” But as far as what might constitute “misinformation” or “disinformation” is unclear and basically left open for interpretation by the state
Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat each patient as an individual, and to ensure each patient receives the safest and best care. Bill 2098 will turn doctors into government agents, leaving no one to advocate for patients’ health
California has also introduced six other bills seeking to enshrine tyranny into law, including bills to criminalize “amplification of harmful content,” create a centralized vaccination registry, strip funding from law enforcement that refuses to follow public health orders, mandate COVID jabs for school children, authorize minors to consent to vaccination, and require school districts to conduct routine COVID testing
If you live in California, please review these bills and VOTE NO
One of the most stunning parts of this pandemic has been the denial of basic science, and one of the most shocking developments from that has been the attack on medical doctors who try to set the record straight.
As reported by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — professor of health policy at Stanford, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and coauthor of the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for focused protection of the most vulnerable1 — a California bill is now threatening to strip doctors of their medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not agree with.2
Bhattacharya’s Personal Battle
Bhattacharya has first-hand experience with this kind of witch hunt. He was one of the first to investigate the prevalence of COVID-19 in 2020, and found that by April, the infection was already too prevalent for lockdowns to have any possibility of stopping the spread.
Bhattacharya has called the COVID-19 lockdowns the “biggest public health mistake ever made,”3 stressing that the harms caused have been “absolutely catastrophically devastating,” especially for children and the working class, worldwide.4
After Bhattacharya co-sponsored the Great Barrington Declaration, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and his former boss, now retired National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins, colluded behind the scenes to quash the declaration from day 1.5
To that end, they set out to smear and destroy the reputations of Bhattacharya and the other coauthors of the declaration. In one email, Collins referred to the three highly credentialed and respected scientists as “fringe epidemiologists” and called for a press “takedown” of the trio.6,7,8,9 I detailed this treachery in “Authors of Barrington Declaration Speak Out.”
“Big tech outlets like Facebook and Google followed suit, suppressing our ideas, falsely deeming them ‘misinformation,’” Bhattacharya writes.10“I started getting calls from reporters asking me why I wanted to ‘let the virus rip,’ when I had proposed nothing of the sort. I was the target of racist attacks and death threats.
Despite the false, defamatory and sometimes frightening attacks, we stood firm. And today many of our positions have been amply vindicated. Yet the soul searching this episode should have caused among public health officials has largely failed to occur. Instead, the lesson seems to be: Dissent at your own risk.
I do not practice medicine — I am a professor specializing in epidemiology and health policy at Stanford Medical School. But many friends who do practice have told me how they have censored their thoughts about COVID lockdowns, vaccines, and recommended treatment to avoid the mob …
This forced scientific groupthink — and the fear and self-censorship they produce — are bad enough. So far, though, the risk has been social and reputational. Now it could become literally career-ending.”
Do You Want Your Doctor To Be Muzzled by the State?
California Assembly Bill 209811 — introduced by Assemblyman Evan Low, a Silicon Valley Democrat, and coauthored by Assembly members Aguiar-Curry, Akilah Weber and Wicks, and Sens. Pan and Wiener — designates “the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct” warranting “disciplinary action” that could result in the loss of their medical license.
Misinformation or disinformation related to SARS-CoV-2 includes “false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.” But as far as what might constitute “misinformation” or “disinformation” is unclear and basically left open for interpretation — by the state. As noted by Bhattacharya:12
“Doctors, fearing loss of their livelihoods, will need to hew closely to the government line on COVID science and policy, even if that line does not track the scientific evidence.
After all, until recently, top government science bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci claimed that the idea that COVID came from a Wuhan laboratory was a conspiracy theory, rather than a valid hypothesis that should be open to discussion. The government’s track record on discerning COVID truths is poor.
The bill claims that the spread of misinformation by physicians about the COVID vaccines ‘has weakened public confidence and placed lives at serious risk.’ But how significant is this problem in reality? Over 83% of Californians over the age of 50 are fully vaccinated (including the booster) …
What is abundantly clear is that this bill represents a chilling interference with the practice of medicine. The bill itself is full of misinformation and a demonstration of what a disaster it would be to have the legislature dictate the practice of medicine.”
The Shanghai Model
We don’t have to guess at what life might look like if this and other bills like it are implemented, Bhattacharya warns. The drama currently playing out in Shanghai offers a clear look into what can happen when public health is dictated by the state rather than by qualified medical professionals rooted in sound science.
“Shanghai is the model for the terrifying dangers of giving dictatorial powers to public health officials,” Bhattacharya writes.13“The harrowing situation unfolding there is a testament to the folly of a virus containment strategy that relies on lockdown.
For two weeks, the Chinese government has locked nearly 25 million people in their homes, forcibly separated children from their parents, killed family pets, and limited access to food and life-saving medical care — all to no avail. COVID cases are still rising, yet the delusion of suppressing COVID persists.
In America, many of our officials still have not abandoned their delusions about COVID and the exercise of power this crisis has allowed. As the Shanghai debacle demonstrates, of all the many terrible consequences of our public health response to COVID, the stifling of dissenting scientific viewpoints by the state might be the most dangerous.”
The Science Deniers Are in Power
As stressed by Bhattacharya, the California bill includes a number falsehoods and fails to acknowledge basic science, starting with natural immunity. High-quality studies have repeatedly shown that natural immunity is equivalent or superior to the COVID shots. Were this bill to pass, a California doctor could lose his license for taking a patient’s COVID history into account when recommending the shot.
It also negates doctors’ ability to prescribe off-label drugs for the treatment of COVID, even though this has been a common and uncontroversial medical practice for many decades. It’s not uncommon for a drug intended for one condition to be used off-label for another. But for some reason, when it comes to COVID, this practice is now deemed hazardous and unprofessional.
The bill also falsely asserts that the “safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines have been confirmed through evaluation by the federal Food and Drug Administration.” Anyone who has followed this circus over the past year realizes that the FDA has completely ignored loud and clear warning bells showing the shots are far from safe and nowhere near as effective as initially claimed.
The bill also ignores the fact that the safety depends on the individual patient’s medical history and current state of health. “For example, there is an elevated risk of myocarditis in young mentaking the vaccine, especially with the booster,” Bhattacharya notes.14
Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat each patient as an individual, and to ensure each patient receives the safest and best care. Bill 2098 will turn doctors into government agents, leaving no one to advocate for patients’ health.
“The false medical consensus enforced by AB 2098 will lead doctors to censor themselves to avoid government sanction. And it will be their patients, above all, who will be harmed by their silence,” Bhattacharya warns.
Californians, Vote NO on COVID Tyranny Bills
California Bill 2098 isn’t the only bill seeking to enshrine tyranny into law. Other pending California bills include:15
Senate Bill 1390,16 introduced by Sen. Pan, which seeks to criminalize “amplification of harmful content” on social media platforms.
Assembly Bill 1797,17 introduced by Assembly member Weber, which calls for the creation of a centralized vaccination registry.
Senate Bill 1464,18 introduced by Pan, which would strip state funding from any law enforcement agency that “publicly announces that they will not follow, or adopts a policy stating that they will not follow, a public health order.”
Those funds would instead be reallocated to the county public health department. Essentially, this bill would coerce sheriffs and police officers to violate their conscience or the law, or both, in the name of “public health policy.”
Senate Bill 871,19 introduced by Pan, which would mandate all school children, ages 5 and older, be “fully vaccinated” against COVID-19. The bill would also repeal exceptions to mandatory hepatitis B vaccination to attend school, and would remove the personal belief exemption against vaccination.
Senate Bill 866,20 introduced by Wiener and Pan, which would authorize minors, 12 years and older, to consent to vaccines without the consent of a parent or guardian.
Senate Bill 1479,21 introduced by Pan, which would expand “contagious, infectious, or communicable disease testing and other public health mitigation efforts to include prekindergarten, onsite after school programs, and child care centers,” and require each school district, county office of education, and charter school to create a COVID-19 testing plan, and report testing data to State Department of Public Health.
If you live in California, please review these bills and VOTE NO.In a Substack article, Margaret Anna Alice, offers the following guidance to Californians:22
“If you are a resident of California, please consider taking the additional step of contacting your respective senators and assembly members in addition to filling out the online portal. See Californians for Medical Freedom for step-by-step instructions on how to contact your local legislators as well as what to say if you decide to call (which is recommended).
The PERK website is also a very helpful way to track the hearing dates and status of these bills. In the comments, Donald Tipon has provided additional links for opposing AB2098 and AB1797 from A Voice for Choice Advocacy.”
Front Groups Marshal the Ignorant
Regulating the medical views a doctor can and cannot have is dangerous in the extreme, and hopefully the Californians who are left to vote in that state will quash such efforts. On the national level, we must also stay vigilant against similar legislative proposals, and push back against phony front groups that promote this kind of medical tyranny.
This includes the No License for Disinformation23 (NLFD)group, which promotes the false information disseminated by the dark-money group known as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
As most now know, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a medical doctor in his own right, has been the primary challenger of Fauci’s lies, and the NLFD has been instructing individuals to report him to the Kentucky Medical Board, with the aim of getting his medical license revoked.24
Just who are the NLFD?25 In November 2021, I wrote about the NLFD, pointing out that the bottom of their website declared, “Created & Developed by EverydayAmericanJoe.”26 At the time, I took a screenshot of it, in case they’d wise up and change it. Good thing, because that notice has since been deleted.
And, no wonder, because it leads right back to the Biden White House. EverydayAmericanJoe, created by a marketing strategist named Chris Gilroy, was a website dedicated to supporting Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. (That website has since been disabled.27)
According to his LinkedIn profile,28 Gilroy created EverydayAmericanJoe.com — “the largest Biden-Harris grassroots website online” — as a freelance senior marketing consultant and designer for the Biden campaign. Since 2007, he’s been the president of The Microtechs LLC, an online marketing, web development and digital advertising firm that produces custom websites and apps “that our clients can manage themselves.”
Aside from the EverydayAmericanJoe clue, there’s no indication of who is actually running the NLFD. It simply claims to be a “nonpartisan grassroots coalition of Americans” whose goal it is to get state medical boards to “protect the public” from medical professionals “who spread medical disinformation.” In all likelihood, the NLFD is run by a coalition of one — Gilroy himself — who is far from nonpartisan.
Not surprisingly, the NLFD has promoted and relied on the CCDH’s fabricated “Disinformation Dozen” report, which has even been denounced as biased and flawed in the extreme by Facebook.29
It’s quite clear that the CCDH exists to fabricate “evidence” that is then used to destroy the opposition in order to control the information, and the NLFD uses the CCDH’s fabrications as justification to suppress First Amendment rights.30 Indeed, Biden himself has publicly promoted and relied on this dark money CCDH report.31
The point of all this is that the censorship is being authorized and directed from the very highest level of our government, and there’s only one reason for that. Democracy flourishes under free speech and dies under censorship, and anyone who claims differently has an ulterior motive for trying to confuse these simple truths.
In my view, the war against “misinformation” and “disinformation” is nothing less than a covert war against the citizens of planet Earth. It’s an attempt to seize power by controlling what people can know, and a number of high-profile world leaders, past and present, have shown their true colors.
Among them, former president Obama, who in April 2022 gave lectures at the University of Chicago and Stanford, arguing for the regulation of information — what people can and cannot view on social media and elsewhere — “to protect democracy.”32
However, as noted by nonresident senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), Mark Jamison, “Such controls have done the opposite throughout history and would this time too.”33
An Open War on the Public
We find ourselves in a situation where asking valid questions about public health measures are equated to acts of domestic terrorism. It’s unbelievable, yet here we are. Over the past two years, the rhetoric used against those who question the sanity of using unscientific pandemic countermeasures, such as face masks and lockdowns, or share data showing that COVID-19 gene therapies are really bad public health policy, has become increasingly violent.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a virologist who for years has been at the forefront of promoting vaccines of all kinds, for example, has publicly called for cyberwarfare assaults on American citizens who disagree with official COVID narratives, and this vile rhetoric was published in the prestigious science journal Nature, of all places.34
Doctors and nurses are now facing the untenable position of having to choose between doing right by their patients and toeing the line of totalitarianism. This simply cannot go on. It’s profoundly unhealthy and dangerous in a multitude of ways.
While frustrating and intimidating, we must all be relentless in our pursuit and sharing of the truth, and we must relentlessly demand our elected representatives stand up for freedom of speech and other Constitutional rights, including, and especially, the rights of medical doctors to express their medical opinions.
The Connecticut Department of Public Health announced the state’s first reported Powassan virus infection of the year this past Wednesday. Powassan virus is a rare disease spread by the same tick that causes Lyme disease, according to a recent press release.
“The identification of a Connecticut resident with Powassan virus associated illness emphasizes the need to take actions to prevent tick bites from now through the late fall,” said Dr. Manisha Juthani, who is the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Health.
“Using insect repellent, avoiding areas where ticks are likely, and checking carefully for ticks after being outside can reduce the chance of you or your children being infected with this virus.”
Powassan virus, first discovered in Powassan, Ontario in 1958, is usually spread through the bite of an infected black-legged or deer tick, officially known as Ixodes scapularis, and can be transmitted in as little as 15 minutes after a tick bite, but it can take a week up to one month to develop symptoms, per the release. (See link for article)
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SUMMARY:
The article regurgitates the myth that it takes 36-48 hours for a tick to transmit Lyme, when minimum transmission times have never been established. Treat each and every tick bite as seriously as a heart attack.
They state infections secondary to Powassan have been recognized. In fact, there are 19 and counting different infections ticks transmit – and they can transmit them simultaneously.
They falsely state that Powassan infections are rare. What is rare, is they are rarely reported. Big difference.
While those who work outdoors are perhaps at greater risk, you can become infected right in your own back yard.
The infected Connecticut man had central nervous system symptoms and was hospitalized and diagnosed, but is now recovering at home.
Early symptoms look like every other tick-borne illness (headache, flu-like symptoms, and even no symptoms at all) but can rapidly progress to confusion, loss of coordination, difficulty speaking and seizures.
1 in 10 cases are fatal, with half of survivors experiencing long-term complications.
The article falsely states touts the EM or bulls-eye rash as an “early symptom”. This rash is highly variable and many never get it at all. To be clear, IF you get the rash you have Lyme disease and should immediately start treatment. To wait is foolish and irresponsible.
The article ends as every single article on TBIs ends – with tick prevention. It’s sad that I can almost state what these articles say without even reading them.Same old, same old – nothing new here.
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 