78. Dr. Bill Rawls: Chronic Infections Don't Go Away—They Go Quiet (Here's How to Reverse Them)

Fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, blood pressure that won't budge, these aren't isolated symptoms. They're your cells signaling that something's off. In this episode of Extend, I sit down with Dr. Bill Rawls, a board-certified OB/GYN who now focuses entirely on cellular health. We explore why most chronic illness isn't about your diagnosis, it's about what's happening inside your cells. We share the five things every cell needs to function, and what happens when they don't get them. We also dig into stealth infections like Lyme and Epstein-Barr, and how they stay dormant for years until your body breaks down. Most importantly, we talk solutions: why herbs work when antibiotics don't, how to support your immune system without overstimulating it, and what real healing looks like. Dr. Bill Rawls is a board-certified physician and author of The Cellular Wellness Solution. His personal health crisis with chronic Lyme led him to develop Restore180, a protocol that's helped thousands recover from chronic illness by restoring cellular function. We Also Discuss: Why Chronic Illness Keeps Coming Back (And What We're Getting Wrong) The 5 Things Every Cell Needs to Heal (You're Missing at Least One) Lyme, EBV, Mold: How Hidden Infections Hijack Your Cells Sick Cells, Silent Symptoms: The Real Root of Chronic Disease Herbs vs. Antibiotics: Why One Heals and the Other Harms Thank You To Our Sponsors: Timeline: Upgrade your energy from within! MitoPure by Timeline helps power up your cells, supporting muscle strength, mental clarity, and overall vitality. Stay active, sharp, and strong at any age! Claim 10% off your first order now at timeline.com/DrShah http://timeline.com/DrShah Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn more about Dr. Bill Rawls: Website: https://rawlsmd.com/ Program: restore180.com https://restore180.comInstagram: @rawlsmd https://instagram.com/rawlsmd

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dr. Rawls, thank you so much for joining me today on Extend, and I was so excited to have you for this podcast that I just didn't want to wait for you to come up to LA. I thought we needed to do this, and I need to get this information out there sooner rather than later. The way you think about health and chronic disease is such an important perspective that really opens the door to just a brand-new conversation, I feel, around health and chronic disease, and I'm really looking forward to this. So, thank you for joining me.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  My pleasure. Yeah, it is about changing the conversation, and I think we're in a time where a lot of people are asking questions and looking at the conventional medical system and going, is that really serving our needs? So, yeah, it's a good time. Thank you.

• 1:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, and so, let's start with that. You know, I'm a big believer that we've created this current Western medical system that we're in, not by accident. We needed this system, right? We needed a system where we could diagnose disease, and you know, people used to die of infections that were acute infections all the time, and thank God, we developed things like antibiotics to help a lot of people live, right? But this system was never meant to manage or treat or reverse chronic disease, and that's where the big disconnect is. And I know you share this view, right, Dr. Rawls?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, you know, and here's my perspective.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  I am fourth generation physician in eastern North Carolina. So I've been watching this my whole lifetime. I used to go on house calls with my grandfather, a long time ago, back in the sixties.

• 2:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  And he had his black bag and he had injections of narcotics and antibiotics and things for acute illness. But we would come upon people that were just sickly, that were not well. And he didn't really have much for them and they didn't have a diagnosis. So, you know, so what was happening at that time were vaccines and antibiotics and all of these things for acute therapy. And it's become apparent to me over the years and part of my profession, you know, the first half of my medical career was obstetrics and gynecology. And it was almost exclusively acute intervention. You know, somebody had

• 3:12Speaker 01

  a problem that could potentially threaten their life and you come in and fix that problem and they get well. But this idea of chronic illness, we treat chronic illness acutely over and over, you know, it's like high blood pressure. We don't solve the vascular problem. We just push down the blood pressure every single day with drugs and people inevitably get worse. And yeah, so, so this, so the disconnect is we're asking the system to do something it really isn't designed for. And we're using the same tools that we built for acute intervention for chronic treatment and it just doesn't work. And I think that's

• 3:55Speaker 01

  where the disconnect and the real loss is.

• 3:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. I completely agree with you. And so my perspective is, thank goodness, we have this Western medical system. If we get hit by a bus, we get a heart attack, it's great for those things, but it's probably not the right place to be if you've been diagnosed, and I'm doing that in quotes, with a chronic illness and you're trying to just get healthy and not sickly anymore. And I think we need a new system where we are able to have practitioners like yourself really getting to maybe the root causes of why we have these chronic Chronic diseases, right? Whether it's Lyme disease, or high blood pressure, or diabetes, or what have you, really, these are all chronic diseases. And if you understand how to treat one of them, you're probably going to be, have the tools to treat all of them. And you probably

• 4:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  end up just becoming a healthier human by doing the same protocol overall, right?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  It's true. I mean, you know, we, I, I, I think it's almost heresy to say this in a conventional medical setting, but yeah, there is a universal formula for chronic illness. And that's what I've been working on and basing everything that I do over the past 20 years and really building it out. And when you get to a different way of thinking, it's very, very logical, and it's actually quite, quite simple.

• 5:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Could you take us through that? Because I do want to touch on Lyme disease a little bit later, but I think it's important to talk about this model of chronic disease and cellular health that you've come up with. And would you take us through that a little bit?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty simple. I mean, you know, sometimes it took me 20 years to get to this, and sometimes it almost shocks me at how simple. And I'm sure some conventional systems would say, well, what you're saying is overly simplistic, but it works and you can back it up with the science. So it boils down to this, you know, we tend to make the body overly complicated. We divide it up into systems. We have neurological system and cardiovascular, and we have specialists and diseases in each of those systems. But everything is connected. And the reason it's connected, because our body is made exclusively of cells. Our entire body is made of cells.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  And every one of our cells is an independent functioning unit. So you can think of them almost like little biological machines, nano robots. So they're all independent, but they're all networked together. And that's what's happening with all of our Signaling agents and hormones and everything else that those things are connecting our cells. So for our cells, for our body to function as a unit, all of our cells have to be in constant communication all the time. And our brain senses what's going on inside and outside and uses nerves and hormones to coordinate cellular functions. But each one of those cells is working independently.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  So if you can think of a cell as being an independent unit, a little microscopic machine, it has very specific operating requirements. Now, even though we have different kinds of cells in the body, they're all structurally similar. I mean, think about it, all of our cells came from one cell. That one cell that we started with was modified into all the cells that make up our body.

• 7:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  So like any machine, they have operating requirements and it's honestly five things that they need and that's it. So every cell in the body needs the right nutrients. They can't function without certain things. You know, they need oxygen, they need water, but they need carbohydrates and fats to generate energy. Some cells, like our heart cells, generate a lot of energy. They need other resources, vitamins, minerals, certain cells like our thyroid cells need iodine to make thyroid hormone. So if you're eating a whole food diet, which is a whole cell diet, it's a diverse selection

• 8:12Speaker 01

  of plants and animal of all, you know, as much diversity as we can get, then there's a pretty good chance that you're going to give all of your cells everything they need. So nourishment, that's really important. Without it, nutritional stress, they, you know, they can't function right. The second is a clean environment. So if they don't have that toxic stress. So when we take in food and water and breathe, we take in substances that are harmful to our cells. And in our world today, we do that more than ever before in in human history. And so organic compounds from petroleum and plastics and other things, basically they're

• 8:57Speaker 01

  absorbed very readily because they're organic compounds that used to be plant matter millions of years ago. But they get stuck. They basically inhibit cellular functions, so our cells don't work as well. They have to work harder. They burn, they burn more energy when they work harder. They burn out their mitochondria faster and they don't last as long. So clean environment is really important. Toxic stress if they don't get that. The third is cells need downtime to recover. And I found out this one the hard way. So our cells work hard and they burn out their parts.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  And what the most remarkable thing about our cells is they're constantly replacing themselves using a process called autophagy. Constantly taking out worn out parts, recirculating them and rebuilding. They need downtime to do that. Now, certain cells like our heart cells have to rest and do that in between beats. That's one of the reasons why our heart is so vulnerable, but most of our cells need a good eight hours of sleep a night. So if you're sleeping an average of six and a half hours, like most people in America, you're starting your next day that your cells haven't recovered from the day before. So you've got a deficit. You do that over and over like I did and you're in real trouble.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  So cells need downtime to recover and repair. The fourth thing is cells need good blood flow. So they produce a lot of metabolic waste and they're purging toxic substances. And you know, if, if you're not, if you're not taking care of your cells, then cells die and that creates debris and congestion that clogs up the little in the very fine spaces between your cells. And that, when that gets clogged up, cells are basically, they can't breathe. They can't get the stuff they need. That needs to be flushed away and the best way to do that is being physically active.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  When we move, we increase our heart rate, we dilate our blood vessels, which helps our vascular system normalize. And we blow out all the congestion and junk between our cells. And if we're not getting that regularly throughout The day, every day we suffer. We've got a very sedentary population.

• 11:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  And the fifth is protection from microbes. Microbe stress is a big deal. So our arch, our cells arch enemy is microbes, bacteria, viruses, protozoa, yeast. And things are constantly getting in, trying to get inside of our body because basically our cells are food. Everything living is food for something else. And we are food for bacteria and other microbes. And they are a constant threat. And we have a relationship with a lot of microbes. Stuff lives in our gut, stuff lives on our skin. But I consider, I divide the food up into free food and protected food.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  So the free food is in our gut and on our skin and oils and places that it's, it's stuff that bacteria can live on, but we don't really need it. You know, it's not hurting us from them to be there. But they're behind barriers. They're behind, you know, the, the gut is contained by the intestinal lining. We have skin, we have the lining of our sinuses in our gums. And so those barriers protect our cells, which are very vulnerable. And, you know, so that's, that's a big part of illness is this interaction that we have with microbes and that crosses into chronic Lyme and everything else.

• 12:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, that's an incredible model. Just thinking through it, you're right. I mean, absolutely those, if you just kind of take it down to those basics, you can virtually eliminate the root causes of all chronic diseases. I think the one part of your model that, that is really interesting to me that kind of came to the forefront of my attention over the last five years is this protection from microbes and indolent infections. And I think the more I saw patients struggling with chronic illness and not making any headway despite getting everything else right, the more my mind went as a physician towards, could there be some indolent infection really kind of being contrary to what we're doing here? May help in hindering our progress, basically. And you spend a big part of your career, I think through your personal experience with Lyme,

• 13:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  also educating other practitioners on this. I'd love to kind of hear your perspective about why we need to bring this more towards the forefront of our knowledge as physicians in general, because I think, you know, also being trained in Western medicine, this was never talked about Epstein-Barr, Lyme disease, mold, all these things are basically almost poo-pooed as like not even being a real disease process. And we'd love to hear some of your thoughts around these indolent infections.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Well, it's poo-pooed by the conventional medical system because they don't have any tools to fix it, and they know that, and they're insecure about it. That's basically the problem right there. But, but yeah, this is where it really gets interesting. And it goes back to the question I kept asking myself. I didn't get sick when I got bitten by ticks when I was a child. I could never remember having an illness around the time of a tick bite, and I got bitten by ticks all the time. How could these microbes, if this was really what it was, and I think this is why conventional physicians discount it, how could they have stayed in my body that whole time and then come back and been a problem?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  And that has been, that's been a really big focus of my study and digging through research to figure this out. And it's, it's really, everything is logical when you, when you really think about it. So when we think about an infection, we always think of getting an infection with a virus or a bacteria, whatever, that thing comes into our body, it makes us sick, and either we get well or we don't. Sometimes we can help that with antibiotics, symptoms go away, microbes gone, right?

• 15:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. That's a traditional way of thinking about it.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Wrong, yeah, it just doesn't work that way. And so. Barriers are our first level of defense. And that keeps out a lot of things, but the barriers aren't good. And in fact, you know, we tend to define infections by the barrier crossed.

• 15:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Like tick-borne microbes, you know, what, what the tick is doing is injecting the microbe into the bloodstream. All microbes want to get to the bloodstream. That's the highway to get to the food. And so, you know, if you get a respiratory infection, they're coming in through the respiratory tract. But what they want to do is get to your bloodstream. And what you're feeling is the, the war between your immune system and the microbes with them trying to break through and get to your system. But virtually everything we get goes systemic pretty fast.

• 16:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  We don't realize that. The malaise and discomfort we feel and those lingering symptoms are because a lot of those things do get across and they get in our system. And some things make us very symptomatic. It really depends on our exposure. It's like a bowl of virus is very bad because humans have never been exposed to it. So you get that, there's nothing to stop it. It ravages all the cells in your body and you die. Or you have a very high risk of doing that.

• 16:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Tick-borne microbes, they've been, ticks have been biting humans since the beginning of time. And most of the time that, you know, one of my observations of all the thousands of chronic Lyme patients that I've seen is most people, 90% of people don't remember getting sick around the time of a tick bite. Which means that acute Lyme disease, most people don't even know they have it. And a lot of people, because it's little sea ticks, they don't even know they've been bitten.

• 17:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  So they find out this bacteria later and they think, oh, that's the answer. Take antibiotics, get well, kind of like me. But interestingly, what I found through studying all the research is that Borrelia, the Lyme bacteria, is very stealthy and its motive is not to make us sick, its motive is to have a presence in the body. That works. It doesn't want us sick. It needs us to be out there in the woods again, getting other tick bites, so it can travel to other hosts. Needs a platform to spread to other hosts. That's what they want from us. So they don't need to make us sick. So when it's going through the bloodstream, right after a tick

• 17:52Speaker 01

  bite, that's when it's most vulnerable to antibiotics and things like that. But it doesn't stay there very long. It's trying to get past the immune system. The immune system is mopping up as many of the bacteria, the little spirochetes, as it can, but some get through. And when they do, they invade cells. And different microbes invade different cells in the body. So Borrelia, you know, it invades brain cells and collagen cells and heart cells. And if we are healthy at the time of the infection, it invades the cell because it gets protection from the immune system. But if that cell is healthy,

• 18:34Speaker 01

  it can do something very interesting. It can slow its growth or go dormant. And the cell keeps right on working, like it wasn't there. This is a survival mechanism. So I started exploring this for other microbes. So it's true with Borrelia, another bacteria we find in Lyme disease, Bartonella, which is a protozoa, something different completely, does the same thing. Viruses like Epstein Barr, things we pick up as kids, like Mycoplasma or Chlamydia pneumoniae, we pick these things up and they can invade cells and become dormant. Anaplasma rickettsia, the list of the microbes, even Streptococcus, you know, we hear about

• 19:19Speaker 01

  pandas. And I started researching pandas and I found that the Streptococcus associated with pandas. Actually has the ability to invade cells and go dormant for periods of time. And do another thing, all of these microbes invade white blood cells. Oh. And they can stay in there and it, and so the white blood cell interestingly becomes what they call a Trojan horse. It is a mechanism for the bacteria to travel across the blood brain barrier into the brain. And so they're kind of, you know, so the microbes are constantly manipulating the immune system now, you know,

• 20:00Speaker 01

  if we're healthy, the immune system gets the upper hand and, you know, and everything is calmed down and these things quiet down. And we don't hear from them for a long time, but it's not just Tig born microbes. We're picking up stuff all through our lifetimes from the time that we start putting stuff in our mouths when our, when we're kids. And possibly even before that, there's evidence that the mother's microbiome is actually being transferred in utero. So some of these things are really fascinating research. And we know, you know, there's still a lot we don't know, but it's pretty big like things right now.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  While we're talking, things are bacteria coming across from our gut, from our sinuses, from our gums, getting in our bloodstream and trying to invade our cells. So this is, it's more like our bloodstream is like a highway than a sterile space. And these things can, they add up, they're there, they can be there. And which ones you pick up in life that may influence your various risk of chronic illnesses. They might be the wild, of why some person would get one illness and another person would get it differently. But you're fine until your cells get stressed. Yeah. Chronic exposure to toxic substance, eating the wrong food, bombarding your cells with carbohydrate, not sleeping for 20 years.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  All these things add up, cells are stressed. And when they are stressed to a certain point, the microbes reactivate, break down the cell, emerge and start invading other cells. And they start turning your tissues into a food supply. Hmm. To grow more microbes. Well, that's what chronic Lyme disease is. But interestingly, you find those same microbes in multiple sclerosis and a lot of other chronic illnesses. And when you look at the co-infections and start looking at the connections, it just gets bigger and bigger. And you look at this as a fundamental model, it truly explains all of chronic illness. So it puts us at a very, very different

• 22:09Speaker 01

  place than where we are in the conventional world as far as our understanding.

• 22:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow. Such a beautiful way of explaining the, the, basically the entire disease pathway of these chronic pathogens is due to the, is due to the pathogen being inside of your cell, going dormant, sitting there until your cell gets stressed. Like you and I were both stressed through our residency programs and taking call and not sleeping. And these pathogens is reactivated at that point in time and start actively breaking down cells. And that's what leads to an acceleration of disease over time. And which makes it incredibly important to also keep your cells as healthy as possible through all the five factors that you mentioned, because the longer your cells are healthy, they don't allow those to reactivate.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it is really an interesting topic and interesting to think about, but it really explodes our, you know, 50-year, how we look at chronic illness and puts it in a totally different place. But it challenges the system because conventional tools, other than stabilizing people when they're sick, aren't going to fix this.

• 23:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. So let's talk about fixing it.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  You can just think about, it's those five factors, you know, what am I eating? What kind of toxic substances am I supposed to, am I overly stressed and not getting sleep, you know, is my, is my fight or flight out of whack? And I've got autonomic dysfunction. Am I moving enough to get good blood flowing? And kind of microbes have I picked up and what's reactivated in my system? So that alone gives you a lot of information right there. And that can, you can, you can start. Working on that, you know, right immediately. And also looking at some broader things like we borrow from nature a lot.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  We always have. So all of our antibiotics come from nature. Right. They either come from a plant, a bacteria, or a fungus. Sure. So plants have to defend themselves against a wide range of bacteria, viruses, protozoa, certainly funguses. And so they're producing this really robust, sophisticated chemical defense system. But it's not just against microbes. They're protecting the plant cells against free radicals, toxic substances, radiation. So when we take in herbs, we're getting all of that. We're basically borrowing that system from the plant. But it has an intelligence that antibiotics don't.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  So unlike antibiotics that cause, that disrupt our gut flora, generate antibiotic resistant pathogens and are toxic to our cells and mitochondria, the herb actually has that intelligence. And I actually found studies to support this. It was an observation for years and I actually found somebody studied it. But they actually target pathogens and don't disrupt the normal flora in our gut. So that's why I could take these robust quantities of herbs and it actually helped my gut instead of hurting it because it was suppressing pathogens in my gut too.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  But it's ideal for these low grade stealthy pathogens that are inside our cells and emerging and, you know, creating all this havoc because you can take them for a prolonged period of time because you don't have the side effects. So you can just constantly keep the pressure on these things and keep the pressure. And whether you ever get rid of them or not, I don't know. But you keep the pressure on them so your cells can recover. And you're protecting your cells from free radicals and all these other things. So it's a cell protection system. So different plants have different characteristics. And it depends on the stress factors and the microbe stress in the plant's environment.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  So when you combine different plants, you get a wide range of coverage. So typically, most of the formulas we use can be five or more herbs that people are taking at one time. So we get this really broad coverage that's affecting a lot of things in the body. But beyond the chemical defense system, you're also getting regulatory chemicals. Plants, you know, plants are multicellular organisms and the environment is changing. So they use chemicals to change cellular functions that are very much like our hormones and other signaling agents. And so some of those can be excitatory, like caffeine is one of those chemicals.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Or it can affect certain receptors, like pain receptors with narcotics, opium. But a lot of them, the, most of the herbs that I use don't really have drug-like effects. They have calming effects, so they can help balance our stress hormones. And so they have what we call adaptogenic properties. And you know that word, adaptogens are really wonderful. So the ones that I'm looking for that use predominantly are what I call antimicrobial adaptogens. They have stronger antimicrobial properties, but they're adaptogenic. They don't have drug-like properties.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  So you can take them for a long time and you just keep that pressure on and keep, you know, supporting cellular health and your cells. The cool thing about our cells is that ability to repair. When you relieve the stress, cells can recover from being stressed. And that's what healing is. So the healing process is the ability of cells to regenerate and repair. But to do that, you have to take the stress off.

• 28:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I think we all think of medicines as a pill that comes in a pharmaceutical, like in a little bottle, and you take one pill and it has one specific effect, right? And that's why the whole pharma system has developed is because you can patent those drugs and make a lot of money off of them.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 28:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right? And but just like you said, these, most of these come from plants to begin with, and we're just tripping one piece out of the entire puzzle that nature has put together for

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  eons and eons in these perfect organisms that grow and have lived with us on this earth since the beginning of time. And obviously, when you look at it with that perspective in that lens, you realize that plant medicine and herbs can be extremely powerful because these are soup, super complicated, basically, biological factories of medicines that have been put together over time to keep that plant alive. So why wouldn't they work for us?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's really wonderful. And, you know, it's, it's interesting, you know, when I say that word herb, it extends all the way from our food plants and culinary herbs, all the way down to the other end of the spectrum where there are herbs that are actually poisonous, that I don't really use very much, that have drug-like effects. That's actually where half our drugs come from. So we get a lot of our drugs from plants. And, you know, when you hear about explorers that are going down in the Amazon, they're not looking for things that people have used as herbs. They're looking for poisons. They're looking for things that poison reactions, that if we could do it in a therapeutic dose, we can just cut out a symptom. So that's where our drugs are actually coming from.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  And again, every drug has a use, but you really have to pay attention to and respect the toxicity of those things.

• 30:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right.

• 30:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 30:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

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• 31:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, you mentioned adaptogens. Ashwagandha is one that people talk about a lot. People use curcumin a lot, turmeric as well. These are all, I think, people are pretty familiar with these. Are there some, maybe you can give us three or four examples of some herbs that you've found to be particularly powerful that many people should consider if they're suffering from chronic disease or indolent infection?

• 31:37Speaker 01

  We use turmeric a lot and ashwagandha is one of my favorites, but some of their more antimicrobial adaptogens. Japanese knotweed is well-known and it's, interestingly, it's a great source of resveratrol, which you find in grapes, actually a better source and it has the form that our body utilizes more. So it has some anti-aging properties. It helps our mitochondria, along with having some really robust antimicrobial properties. The big one that people hear about for Lyme is cat's claw from the Amazon, which was actually used traditionally for Brain health and reducing dementia. What fascinating because when you start looking at the microbe connection.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you see that Andrographis from India. It's not as good for Borrelia, but it's great for viruses and things like Babesia. And it has some wonderful adaptogenic properties and wonderful antiviral properties, really good antiviral. Chinese skullcalf is probably one of my favorite herbs of all of them. Just has these great antimicrobial properties, but like the other herbs, an even better um immune modulating, it balances immune system functions, which is really important for any kind of chronic illness. And then beyond the uh beyond the uh herbs, we have medicinal mushrooms.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  So Rishi, which is a shelf mushroom, you can find it anywhere in the world. It grows all over, but the Asian variety has been studied in Japan and found to have some of the most potent anti-cancer properties known. Cordyceps, another adaptogenic medicinal mushroom is a really nice antiviral and has some other antimicrobial properties and balances immune function, system functions. So they're all good. There are many, many more, but those are kind of my favorites.

• 33:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So the average person doesn't really have access to some of these and you know, I mean, they do now. You can go to Amazon probably and click a button and get a herb delivered to your house. But no one really wants to do that because you don't know what the quality is. You don't know what is really going to be used for, what the dosage is. And I I feel that, you know, most people, they'll hear this podcast, but they don't know where to go or what to do next. If they want to look at herbal and mushrooms and this plants as as part of their overall wellness routine or if they're suffering from a chronic disease or an indolent infection. And then finally, what is your personal movement, exercise routine that you like to use to keep yourself in optimal physical shape?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  You know, I've, um, I've always had kind of a hang up for wave type things. And for 20 some years I've been kite surfing and that's my favorite thing. And I've, you know, pretty fortunate, I thought 20 years ago that I wasn't going to be doing that at this point in life, if I was even here and still kite surfing. Lately, I've been doing the wing foiling thing, which is kind of fun and do a bit of kayaking and other kinds of things too.

• 34:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow. Well, when you come out here to visit me, there's a beautiful kite surfing beach right outside my home here in Malibu and I'll have to take you up there. It's a, it's

• 34:56Speaker 01

  How often do you get good wind?

• 34:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, it's, it's at least, I would say at least once or twice a week, I see people out there kite surfing. They're, they're super, uh, and they're going fast.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  I've got to come out in October. I might bring my stuff.

• 35:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. October's a good month actually for it. Yeah. Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Oh, nice. Well, yeah, I've been, uh, kite surfing a number of places in California, Widel Beach, kind of the classic place, but, uh, water is cold.

• 35:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It is. It is definitely cold. Yeah. We'll, we'll have a wet suit out here for you to use.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  All right. Sounds good.

• 35:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, great. Well, thank you so much again and, uh, look forward to seeing you in October.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  My pleasure. Thank you.

• 35:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Take care, Dr. Rolls.

• 35:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance.