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00:00:00Okay, good evening everyone and thank you so much for joining us for season 4
00:00:06episode 9 of DocTalks with Dr. Forrest Tennant and friends. Our special guest
00:00:12tonight is Tio and Dr. Tennant has a lot ahead of us and we have Rhonda with us
00:00:19tonight and Dr. Ibsen should be showing up and we have a full boat so we're
00:00:24really looking forward to a great show. Thanks everyone who's here with us. We're
00:00:28looking forward. Thank you, Dr. Tennant. Thank you very much, Jamie. Let me say to
00:00:37start with this evening that in many ways I'm having, I'm regretting a little
00:00:43bit with teaching what I'm about to teach. What we have learned in our
00:00:51research is that the Epstein-Barr virus may be responsible for 95, 99% of those
00:01:02people who have severe intractable pain and we regret to say that because it
00:01:11was sort of comfortable not knowing why people developed it and it goes
00:01:20back over centuries but science does move on. The science behind what I'm
00:01:27going to be teaching you tonight in the next two or three sessions is profound.
00:01:31It is shocking. I don't even know quite how it's going to be accepted. I would
00:01:39love to resist it myself. I'm putting cataloging all our research together in
00:01:47the book that I was hoping it would be out by now but it's not and I
00:01:51will say this. If I am correct in my research, how people are going to be
00:01:59treated for their pain problems and a great deal of other aspects of medicine
00:02:04will change dramatically, okay? Will change a great deal. All of you who have
00:02:12pain and arachnoiditis, RSD, post strokes or whatever brings you here will need to
00:02:20learn almost a new vocabulary and some new concepts, okay? And so I'm going to
00:02:26get started tonight where we left off last week. For those of you who saw last
00:02:32week, you saw how the Epstein-Barr virus was discovered. It was discovered in
00:02:38tumors in children in Africa and a Dr. Epstein and a Dr. Barr found the virus
00:02:44in this cancer in the year 1964, okay? In 1964. It was a profound discovery and
00:02:54that was it wasn't just finding the Epstein-Barr virus. It was the first
00:02:59time that a virus was found in a cancer. In other words, it was a first discovery
00:03:06that an infection could cause cancer, okay? And in doing so, and I'll tell you a
00:03:12little bit more, it's actually the Epstein-Barr virus that is responsible
00:03:17for the techniques we use in laboratories to grow tumors, to do
00:03:22antibody tests, and so the Epstein-Barr virus has a history that's rather
00:03:28remarkable and in some ways I'm surprised it's not better known. At any
00:03:33rate, we're going to start tonight with a picture of a man, okay? Now, why don't you
00:03:39take a good look at this gentleman? Now, I don't expect anybody to know who he is,
00:03:43okay? But his name is Dr. Alvin Coburn. Now, Dr. Coburn, to people like me, of
00:03:52course, is a hero. In 1932, Dr. Coburn was the man who discovered that a strep
00:04:02throat could give you scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, glomerulonephritis, or
00:04:09rheumatic heart disease, okay? He was the man. Now, I graduated from medical school
00:04:16in 1966, and at that time, we didn't know anything about autoimmunity, we didn't
00:04:24know anything about all the things that I'm going to be teaching you about
00:04:28tonight. But we did know one thing. We knew what we didn't know, and what we
00:04:35didn't know and what we didn't understand, and neither did Dr. Coburn
00:04:39exactly, but he had some ideas, is he knew that you had strep throat, okay? Now,
00:04:46that's up here. Everybody knows where your throat is, right? All right, so why did six
00:04:51months later or a year later, why did you all of a sudden have rheumatic heart
00:04:56disease? The strep throat got cured a year ago, so why are you sick today? Okay,
00:05:02why are you breaking out in a rash three months after your strep throat's gone?
00:05:06Why is your kidney failing six months after your strep throat's healed? In other
00:05:12words, the mystery was, you have an infection, infection is cured and gone,
00:05:19but all of a sudden, you've got diseases several weeks or months after the
00:05:27infection cleared up. Now, that was the mystery. That was the mystery when I
00:05:32graduated from medical school, and in a few minutes, I'll tell you about a case
00:05:36that I published in 1969 that was related to this. So anyway, Dr. Coburn is
00:05:43the man who figured out that even though rheumatic fever or scarlet fever was
00:05:49delayed, it was due to the strep throat. Now, he didn't exactly know why, but
00:05:53theories started to crop up, and a lot of research was done starting in the
00:06:001940s and the 50s because that strep throat had to do something. Either the
00:06:06virus had to put off some kind of a toxin or create something inside the
00:06:12body that caused these diseases to occur after the infection was gone. Now,
00:06:19I'm going to skip a lot of steps, but I'm going to come to a term that every one
00:06:24of you out there who's got pain and who's trying to stay alive and recover,
00:06:29you now have a term you have to understand, and that's the term
00:06:32autoantibody. Autoantibody, okay? Now, in order to take care of yourself, what
00:06:41I see coming, autoantibody. Everybody knows what an antibody is. Antibody is
00:06:48one of these proteins or globulins in your blood that's going to attack the
00:06:53strep throat or going to attack your COVID or going to attack your flu or
00:06:58whatever disease you might come in contact with. That's an antibody. That's
00:07:03what a vaccine does. It makes antibodies so you can protect yourself. So, what's an
00:07:08autoantibody? Now, this concept you're going to need to know because before we
00:07:16turn to our guest today, you're going to find out that a diagnosis that I'm
00:07:21suggesting people better, that I'm starting to use right now, and that's the
00:07:25term Epstein-Barr reactivation and autoimmunity. So, what is an autoantibody?
00:07:32It turns out, and this is so terribly important, and it's a little scary,
00:07:38and it is a little mysterious even to this day, but it's a fact, and that is in
00:07:44the body, rather than making an antibody that attacks diseases outside,
00:07:50an antibody can be made that attacks your tissues inside your body, inside your body.
00:07:58Now, exactly why these antibodies get formed that will all of a sudden attack
00:08:03your joints or your arachnoid or your glial cells or your muscles or your
00:08:10pudendal nerves is not 100% understood, but we know what happens and we know
00:08:16what doesn't. About 100 diseases have now been classified as autoimmune.
00:08:21Most of them are very rare and names are not there. However, I'm now going to give
00:08:26you a good argument that, for example, if you have adhesive arachnoiditis,
00:08:31you have an autoimmune disease, okay? And so, if you've got intractable pain,
00:08:38you've got severe pain, chances are you really have an autoimmune disease,
00:08:43meaning that you have something floating around in your blood right now that's
00:08:49attacking your tissues, including your brain, including your spinal cord, okay?
00:08:55And so, Dr. Coburn, he didn't know what it was, but he knew something that the
00:09:00streptococcus inside your body made something to attack those tissues that
00:09:07made you sick later, okay? So, by...
00:09:12Dr. Tanner, quick question.
00:09:13Sure.
00:09:15Are you saying that the autoimmune effects of a strep infection directly affected the
00:09:25kidney and the heart, or was it viral-mediated? Because you used the term
00:09:29virus, and I don't know if it's bacterial or viral.
00:09:33The streptococcus was bacterial, okay? And it turns out that both bacteria and
00:09:41virus, some bacteria, like Lyme, mycoplasma, those two in particular,
00:09:48and strep, will develop autoantibodies. Now, some viruses will develop
00:09:54autoantibodies, and therein lies our problem. It turns out we've got a fair
00:09:59number of people, and some probably watching this show, that had their
00:10:03autoantibodies created by a combination of maybe Lyme, mycoplasma, Epstein-Barr,
00:10:12okay? They kind of work together, unfortunately, unfortunately.
00:10:17Well, let me go on historical-wise for just a couple of minutes.
00:10:23Last week, we talked about the Burkitt's lymphoma. That's where they found the
00:10:28virus, the Epstein-Barr virus, which, incidentally, is a herpes virus.
00:10:32And that's a class of viruses that look to me like the bane of human existence
00:10:39these days, okay? The herpes class. There's about six or eight of them.
00:10:46Epstein-Barr virus is actually herpes number four. Anyway, to go on,
00:10:53in 1964, so we literally skipped from 1932 with Dr. Colburn to 1964,
00:11:04to when a couple by the name of Warner and Gertrude Henley took Dr. Epstein,
00:11:11asked them to duplicate his work. Now, they were virologists in Philadelphia,
00:11:18and they duplicated or backed up what Dr. Epstein and Dr. Barr discovered.
00:11:24They did that. Now, I want to say a couple of words about who the Henleys were.
00:11:30Warner Henley graduated from the University of Heidelberg in Germany in,
00:11:36I believe, 1934, 1935. His grandfather, and he was Jewish, was a famous anatomist
00:11:46a hundred years before, and Dr. Warner was Jewish, and the Germans and the Nazis
00:11:53were coming to power at the time and didn't let Jew doctors have jobs.
00:11:58So he couldn't get a job in Germany, so he migrated to the United States in 1936.
00:12:07It turned out he had a girlfriend in Germany by the name of Gertrude,
00:12:12who was also in medical school. She graduated in 1937, caught the first boat out,
00:12:18and made it to New York, where she was met by Warner, and they got married the next day.
00:12:27Now, the Henleys are really outstanding heroes. Hardly anybody knows who they were,
00:12:35but I wouldn't be giving this talk tonight if it wasn't for the Henleys.
00:12:39So the Henleys are, to people like myself, who have been in research particularly with viruses,
00:12:46the Henleys are who it's all about. They became known as the virologist couple,
00:12:52and they worked out of the Philadelphia Children's Hospital, and they became famous virologists,
00:12:58wrote some 300 papers, and did almost all the discoveries we're going to talk about tonight.
00:13:03Okay, they were a truly remarkable couple.
00:13:11Here's a picture of the Henleys. Okay, good-looking couple.
00:13:18They loved their work, they were workaholics, and she lived into her 90s, he lived to be about 76.
00:13:29But the papers that they wrote are really, it's sad in some ways that I'm going to be talking about tonight,
00:13:35things that were developed by the Henleys, were discovered by them, even before I graduated from medical school.
00:13:41At any rate, 1964, they duplicate Dr. Epstein's work.
00:13:46They find that the Epstein-Barr virus did cause cancer.
00:13:53But four years later, in 1968, they discovered that the Epstein-Barr virus caused infectious mononucleosis, 1968.
00:14:06Okay? Now, in 1968, I happened to be in Louisville, Kentucky,
00:14:13and I'm studying under a man by the name of Dr. Colonel Hoagland.
00:14:17He was the head of internal medicine at West Point, and I was just coming into the Army,
00:14:23and he was there to do some teaching. He was the world's expert on infectious mononucleosis, still is regarded that.
00:14:31But what I studied under him, and what I learned about him, we didn't know about the Epstein-Barr virus.
00:14:40However, we had a girl who was 19 years of age who had infectious mononucleosis,
00:14:46and lo and behold, six months later, she develops glomerulonephritis.
00:14:51I reported that case in the Texas Journal of Experimental Biology in 1969. Okay? 1969.
00:15:03So that gives you a little idea how far back all this goes, and how far back I go, I guess.
00:15:08Okay, but something else then happens in 1971.
00:15:16The Henleys, by this time, had developed tests to test antibodies for the Epstein-Barr virus.
00:15:26Guess what? That's still the same test we use today. Okay? 1971.
00:15:33So in 1971, they decided to take their antibody tests and to test some other diseases.
00:15:42And what they found out was, is that the Epstein-Barr virus caused Hodgkin's disease. Hodgkin's. Okay?
00:15:52And this was, it had the same antibody levels as Burkitt's lymphoma.
00:15:56So all of a sudden, we've got lymphomas that have the Epstein-Barr virus.
00:16:00Now we have Hodgkin's disease that has the Epstein-Barr virus.
00:16:05And Werner Henley didn't publish this yet.
00:16:09But in his biography, he says that he thought that there was something called reactivation. Okay?
00:16:19Now, that's the other term besides autoantibody tonight that you've got to learn.
00:16:25You're going to have to do just like I've had to do, learn what that term reactivation means.
00:16:32He thought what had happened, and listen up, folks.
00:16:38He felt that the Epstein-Barr virus entered the body, stayed in the body as a parasite,
00:16:45and then at some time reactivated, formed autoantibodies, and caused Hodgkin's disease.
00:16:54At that time, it was a theory. He didn't have real hard proof.
00:17:00But he did come up with something that really everybody here has to know.
00:17:08And that is autoimmunity and reactivation can go on for months or years, and you're asymptomatic.
00:17:18You don't even know it's going on until one day you wake up with Hodgkin's disease.
00:17:24Or one day you wake up with arachnoiditis.
00:17:27Or one day you wake up with a spinal canal that's leaking.
00:17:31Or you wake up one day with fibromyalgia.
00:17:35So remember, it's like diabetes.
00:17:38You can run a real high blood sugar for months or years, and you're perfectly fine.
00:17:41You don't even know that your arteries are clogging up.
00:17:45You're about to get a leg ulcer and a heart attack, but you don't know it.
00:17:49In other words, one of the great discoveries is it's now clear that you can have autoimmunity
00:17:57and reactivation of these viruses for months or years, and it's totally asymptomatic.
00:18:02You don't even know that that autoimmune process is eating away your nerves like in your groin
00:18:12or in your muscles or in your brain.
00:18:15And until one day you wake up, and all of a sudden you've got a cancer or you've got a severe pain.
00:18:21Okay.
00:18:23And then, about three years after Dr. Werner thought that reactivation existed,
00:18:31he and some other researchers found that infectious mononucleosis would form autoantibodies.
00:18:40Okay, 1974.
00:18:421974.
00:18:44In 1975, the Henleys teamed up with a Dr. Samaya in the state of Louisiana.
00:18:52They tested about 110 people in rural areas, and they did some fancy antibody calculations
00:18:58and measures, much of what have you.
00:19:00They found out the reactivations were real, and that paper was published in 1977.
00:19:06Okay.
00:19:08So, by the time we go into the last 10 or 20 years or the last century,
00:19:14at least scientists on the inside are aware of autoantibodies and viral reactivation.
00:19:23Those of us who are practicing medicine, we didn't take any of it serious.
00:19:27We didn't even know about it.
00:19:29This was sort of a, it wasn't a secret.
00:19:32It was just known to viral researchers.
00:19:35And I get the feeling that they didn't think anybody cared.
00:19:40And maybe we didn't.
00:19:42But whatever, we didn't know about it.
00:19:45So, at any rate, that gives you some of the background.
00:19:50And I'll cover some more stuff later.
00:19:52But what I want to do now in the next few minutes is wrap this up.
00:19:56Because for next week, we're going to talk a little bit more about Epstein-Barr viral
00:20:01testing and treatment.
00:20:02But I want to close this out by giving you a real simple explanation on what really happens.
00:20:10What really happens, okay?
00:20:11Because a lot of you out there are going to say, oh, well, I don't have infectious
00:20:14mononucleosis, and I don't have Epstein-Barr.
00:20:17My doctor said I don't have it.
00:20:19I don't have to worry about it.
00:20:20Yes, you do.
00:20:22Why?
00:20:24We tested 110 people with attacks of arachnoiditis.
00:20:27110 people have Epstein-Barr autoimmunity.
00:20:32And 70% have active virus.
00:20:35Okay?
00:20:36So you've got it.
00:20:38And you've got constant pain.
00:20:42You can show me a test to show me you don't have it, but you have to show me a test.
00:20:46Because the tests are just now being developed.
00:20:49Doctors don't know how to interpret it.
00:20:51I've had to take some special tutorials and lessons myself to figure out how to interpret
00:20:56these tests.
00:20:57Okay?
00:20:57It's not all that simple.
00:20:59But it is once you learn about it.
00:21:01Anyway, let's talk about how this comes about.
00:21:06The Epstein-Barr virus is everywhere.
00:21:08And 95% of people on this planet carry it in their bodies.
00:21:13It's a normal parasite in the human body.
00:21:16Most of us are exposed to it by the time we're two years of age.
00:21:20And that's the cause of sniffles for a baby in the crib.
00:21:24And the mother does a few little things for the baby, and the sniffles go away.
00:21:30And the virus enters the body at an active stage.
00:21:33But it then, very shortly, goes into that baby's lymphocytes and remains there as a
00:21:40parasite until something happens later in life.
00:21:43Now, there's another group of people who, their first exposure a lot of times is they're
00:21:48a teenager or a young adult, and they catch infectious mononucleosis.
00:21:53Okay?
00:21:54Now, years ago, that age group caught a lot of infectious mononucleosis.
00:22:00And that's why the Army and the military was very interested because it happened.
00:22:04I treated lots and lots of infectious mononucleosis under Dr. Hogan's protocol when I was active
00:22:09duty Army.
00:22:10At any rate, young kids, teenagers and young college kids say they catch infectious mono
00:22:16all the time.
00:22:18Now, if you catch mono, it goes away.
00:22:21And just like with the babies, in most cases, the virus then goes into your lymphocytes,
00:22:27what they call the beta lymphocyte, or it goes into your throat membranes, and it lives
00:22:33there the rest of your life.
00:22:35So everybody hearing this is carrying the virus.
00:22:38It's a natural parasite.
00:22:40The human body carries about 200 parasites, okay?
00:22:44Most of it are in your intestine or some are in your membranes or in your lymphocytes.
00:22:50And so the Epstein-Barr virus is in your lymphocytes, and it's a harmless, dormant parasite
00:22:57until something happens.
00:23:00Now, what is that something happen?
00:23:04It will reactivate.
00:23:06In other words, it'll start regrowing and form autoantibodies and start attacking you.
00:23:13Now, what causes this?
00:23:16Now, let's get down to what's going to be confusing for doctors and patients.
00:23:23For that virus to reactivate, you've got to have usually some predisposing condition
00:23:32to cause the stress to reactivate the virus.
00:23:37Now, let's cover those what I call the risk factors for Epstein-Barr reactivation and
00:23:44autoimmunity.
00:23:45Number one, if you've got a collagen disease or connective tissue disease, okay, you've
00:23:53got Epstein-Barr, you've got Marfan, you've got hypermobile spectrum disorder.
00:24:00If you've got one of those diseases, your immune system is already impaired genetically.
00:24:07And therefore, you catch a cold, you get stressed.
00:24:10Otherwise, you can reactivate those viruses very easy.
00:24:14Now, the other thing that really and particularly the men have a problem with this.
00:24:20If you have an accident, auto accident, you fall off a roof, it's domestic, you're
00:24:28playing football, you have trauma, you can reactivate that virus when you're 15 years
00:24:36of age.
00:24:37All of a sudden, when you're 40 years of age, you wake up with a spinal disease or
00:24:42Hodgkin's disease.
00:24:44In other words, 20, 25 years later, you pay the penalty.
00:24:50So trauma of any kind, that also may include an epidural injection, maybe even an
00:24:56epidural at birth, surgery, okay?
00:25:01In other words, trauma is trauma, okay?
00:25:03Whether that's in the medical suite of the hospital or whether it's on the football
00:25:07field, the battlefield, or when you're walking down steps, trauma is trauma.
00:25:14And it puts a stress on your biologic system that can activate the Epstein-Barr virus.
00:25:21Okay, now, if you have what's called an autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis
00:25:26or systemic lupus or Sjogren's syndrome, that will even make you more susceptible.
00:25:32Next is, if you're born with a spine abnormality, such as scoliosis, spondylolisthesis,
00:25:40syringomyelia, something like that, you're also at high risk.
00:25:44So what I'm getting at is that any undue stress, now, there are papers about this,
00:25:51quite a number.
00:25:52It can be psychological.
00:25:53Maybe you're going through a tremendous marital problem, financial problem of some
00:25:59kind.
00:25:59Yeah, you can get stressed.
00:26:01You can activate that virus, okay?
00:26:04Fatigue, you're just staying up all day, working too many hours, not getting enough
00:26:10sleep, not eating correctly.
00:26:12All of a sudden, you've got nutritional and fatigue, stress, bang, you can reactivate
00:26:17that virus, okay?
00:26:19So stress, plus some other condition, you put the two together, all of a sudden, that
00:26:28virus reactivates.
00:26:29Now, when it reactivates, it starts forming autoantibodies, okay?
00:26:36And then you've got a situation to where the virus can start invading your tissues or
00:26:42have an autoantibody that eats away your tissues.
00:26:46And therefore, you become a sitting duck to have your glial cells activated to develop
00:26:51fibromyalgia or potential neuropathy or some painful condition.
00:26:57And if you don't contain that virus, you just keep getting worse, worse, worse, and
00:27:03worse.
00:27:04I hate to bring it up.
00:27:06Some of you watching this, I know we're bedbound.
00:27:08I know some of you are paralyzed.
00:27:12That's because you probably have Epstein-Barr viral reactivation and autoimmunity that's
00:27:20gone on maybe for years, and you didn't know it.
00:27:22But we now know, and we now have the test for it.
00:27:26And even a brand new test has been developed in the last few weeks to detect this.
00:27:31So there are people that are very concerned about this.
00:27:35There are people who understand it.
00:27:38I think it may change how we deal with a lot of medical issues and pain dramatically.
00:27:43And anyway, today, I hope you...
00:27:47I know it's complex.
00:27:49I just want you to walk away knowing that you're to learn the terms autoantibody and
00:27:55the terms reactivation.
00:27:58And just remember that it's like diabetes.
00:28:01If you don't take a blood test and diagnose it early, you may not know you have this.
00:28:07The good news is that we've got the test to diagnose this early before it causes too much
00:28:12damage.
00:28:13And we've got some treatments, not just all antiviral drugs either, that we're going to
00:28:17cover next week on how to contain it.
00:28:19The other bit of good news is a lot of the stuff we've been recommending for
00:28:26infection, I mean for arachnoiditis and some of these diseases, we didn't know it at the
00:28:31time, but a lot of those things do help curtail or suppress the Epstein-Barr virus and its
00:28:36autoimmunity.
00:28:37So I know this is complex.
00:28:39I know it might not even be good news, but it's a major change.
00:28:44But anyway, you'll hear a lot more about it.
00:28:48Anyway, I want to go on here now and bring our guest on.
00:28:50Here we go.
00:28:51Oops, I think I pushed it.
00:28:52Hi, Teo.
00:28:54Good.
00:28:55Hello, Dr. Tennant.
00:28:57Okay.
00:28:58Teo, can you give us a little history on, first off, where do you live?
00:29:04How old you are?
00:29:05How you got sick?
00:29:06Tell us about your background.
00:29:09I live in the south part of the country.
00:29:11I came to the U.S. in 1994.
00:29:15I was just doing my group from church, a barbershop part-time, and then this pastor decided to
00:29:21offer us green cards, we pray about it, and we stay, and the rest is history.
00:29:28And I'm here, I'm really a quick college in my country that I come from, but then I was
00:29:35able to go to college here in the northeast part of the country.
00:29:40Massachusetts.
00:29:41So, here I am advocating for people after four years ago when this disease got me.
00:29:47But I'm here, I'm striving, I'm doing the best I can, and my hope is that with all the
00:29:51learning that you, as a doctor, and all of you guys are doing, I'm going to keep striving
00:29:59and get better and advocate for others and spread the awareness about what is going on
00:30:04with these, those kind of diseases.
00:30:06Very good.
00:30:07How did you get sick?
00:30:09How did you develop your arachnoiditis?
00:30:11Well, back in 2020, I was in a getaway weekend back home in Punta Cana, and suddenly I got
00:30:23a breathing stroke, it was kind of COVID time, and I got a hard time to get the right medical
00:30:30assistance.
00:30:31All the doctors, some of them were hiding, but then I couldn't fly back home, as I call
00:30:38us now home too.
00:30:40This is my, really, I'm proud of being in the US and being a US citizen already.
00:30:45So, I couldn't fly back.
00:30:47They say, if you fly, you're going to get in trouble with the altitude and the pressure,
00:30:53so I got stuck there.
00:30:55But online, three months later, after I started, like, moving my, my paralyzed side, I started
00:31:03these burning sensations and all these weird stuff, and it was really crazy.
00:31:08So, here I am with all those labels that all my PCPs, PCPs from the past and current PCPs
00:31:16have given to me, and here I am fighting, and I'm fighting, and I'm fighting, and I'm
00:31:23here I am fighting, and ready to do the best I can and being positive about all of this.
00:31:31Yeah, now, do you have a, just one doctor, or do you have several doctors?
00:31:37Tell us about your medical care.
00:31:39Well, right now, it's interesting because my, my PCP got retired, and two weeks ago,
00:31:46I called my coronerologist about doing something with this burn sensation and all this craziness.
00:31:58He hasn't called me back yet.
00:32:00I have been calling him twice, and because right now, they, there is nothing else they can do
00:32:07because they used to have me on all this,
00:32:10uh, Neurontin, Lyrica, Carbamazepine, you name it.
00:32:16I even was able to get, um, fentanyl patch back home, but here they have denied that,
00:32:24and then, you know, I've been trying to tell them maybe if we try Tramadol or things like that,
00:32:29but they threw me off Tramadol.
00:32:31They don't want to give it to me, even Tramadol, and here I am talking during the best I can,
00:32:37and I just decided to call my doctor back again, just doing the best I can and learning from you guys.
00:32:46So, Tio, not to interrupt, excuse me, um, did I understand you correctly when you said that
00:32:51back home in the Dominican Republic that you were able to be prescribed a fentanyl patch,
00:32:59but here they have denied that to you?
00:33:02Yes, I went, the last time I went to a pain management place,
00:33:08uh, the guy said that they are not doing that anymore, and I was very naive.
00:33:14I didn't know what was going on about the operation, so I just said, okay, I understand.
00:33:19That's fine, and since then, I have been trying my best to get some of those medications that
00:33:25could really help me out to keep going because I remember I was in the fentanyl patch even though
00:33:31I got a hard time sometimes, but I was doing too much better, and Tramadol in the beginning,
00:33:35back home, was also helping along with the Gabapentine. That combo, that combination
00:33:43helped me a lot, but here I am stuck doing the best I can, and I'm not even taking anything.
00:33:48I'm just doing my best, doing mindfulness, exercising, and doing a lot of stuff, and
00:33:54uh, taking supplements, and doing the best I can, but I'm just sure that if I'm here,
00:34:00I'm here for a reason, right? I'm here because God wanted me to be around, and
00:34:05I also really, it was really a joy for me to find you guys online, and being,
00:34:13feeling supported, and being that, why not me? I got people who understands me,
00:34:19and people that could be, and stand beside me because they know what I'm going through.
00:34:28So, you're not able to get any opioids at all?
00:34:32No, right now, I'm just using supplements. I'm using magnesium at night time. I'm using
00:34:38some kind of Reviratrol, Boswellia, that kind of stuff. That's going to be laying on right now,
00:34:46and walking when the pain allows me to, from listening to music, listening to
00:34:56to sermons, and also a good thing is that I'm on this, that I got approved by this,
00:35:02by the secretary of my state to, to begin a foundation, because I really think that
00:35:12there is a lot of people there who need to learn about this, because in the beginning,
00:35:17I was thinking about like preaching and stuff, and you know, spreading the gospel, but now I
00:35:23found out that talking about Jesus, talking about prayer, and hope is not enough. It's not enough.
00:35:31It's so injustice that is taking place, and I want to just be part of the solution, be proactive,
00:35:37and education, and advocacy. I want my lawmakers here in my state to know that they are wrong.
00:35:46Something has to be done for people like me, because I told you what I mean, but it's a lot
00:35:51of people with the same situation. Yes. What, what are your plans now?
00:36:00My plans? In regards to my health? Yes. Well, I think we are all protected here. I'm just going
00:36:12to say that I just sent you last Monday, I think, or last Friday, I sent you all my labs,
00:36:22and eventually you're going to reply to me, and I just saw very high numbers for that
00:36:31Epstein virus, really high in those biomarkers. So, I'm just waiting for your ideas
00:36:41and education about what's going to be my next step.
00:36:47Will your doctor prescribe for you, or if you take information to him, will he work with you?
00:36:53No, he just take me, like, really, like, soft, because he doesn't know better. I mean,
00:37:00I'm talking about my former PCP who got retired. I wanted, Mark has got a lot of new information on
00:37:09cases he's working on, and knows some of the advocacy stuff going on in the country. Mark,
00:37:16are you there to give us your update? Yeah. Oh, good. Okay.
00:37:24I wanted to, I'm happy to stop just as soon as Teo comes back. I wanted to give the good news
00:37:34about what you have been talking about with the viral activation and that sort of thing. It's
00:37:39terrifying. It seems like there's a viral monster under the bed, and it's not going to go away if
00:37:44we turn the lights on or not. The particular difficulty is because of the latency of these
00:37:52infections, you can't tell what's causing the mysterious symptoms that you have as a patient
00:38:00that's in our situation. Now, that sounds like bad news. The good news about it that I'm seeing
00:38:06right now is that every patient with mysterious symptoms should be taken seriously and not
00:38:17categorized as nuts, okay? This is the kind of shit that'll make you crazy, but what we want to
00:38:24know, we want everybody in this phone call to know, is that we're not crazy. We just haven't
00:38:31had the medical system catch up to what we got, and part of what we're doing, like Teo was saying,
00:38:38was you're advocating for yourself and for others, but the other thing to do is to keep in mind that
00:38:46it may be mysterious what's happening, and we're going to track down this mystery,
00:38:54and you know, I sent in the comments earlier, Dr. Tennant, you get this out there,
00:38:59this is Nobel Prize kind of stuff, you know, this is revolutionary, and that's the good news.
00:39:08Yeah, well, thanks. To go along with what you just said, Mark, I decided to look up in
00:39:17current therapy and current diagnosis and treatment. Now, for those of you out there,
00:39:21Mark knows this, but each year there are two desktop books or sort of encyclopedias for
00:39:27doctors. One's called Current Therapy. It was founded by a man by the name of Dr. Robert Kahn,
00:39:33and then there's a second book called Current Diagnosis and Treatment, and the doctors have
00:39:38those as a quick reference book to sit on their desk. I looked up the 2024 in both of them.
00:39:45In one of them, they don't even mention Epstein-Barr viral autoimmunity or reactivation.
00:39:52In the other one, it says reactivation occurs rarely, but only in immunocompromised people.
00:40:00Well, at least we got a one sentence in there.
00:40:05Well, it's the reactivation that makes them immunocompromised, duh.
00:40:09Well, that's right. It is somewhat revolutionary, and I tell you some good news about it.
00:40:17Before you do, I should let you know that Tao is back.
00:40:19Oh, good. Tao? Oh, good.
00:40:22Yes, yes.
00:40:23Okay, good.
00:40:25I'm sorry.
00:40:27In fact, maybe you can answer the question, but also somebody else may want answers.
00:40:33Yes, I could answer. I'm sorry. I cut off. I'm sorry.
00:40:38A lot of doctors are retiring today, and people are losing their PCPs all over the place.
00:40:43What do we do about this? Yeah, Jamie, anybody, what do we do now?
00:40:50It has been a huge struggle. I did find just today, I don't know if this would help anyone.
00:40:55I hope it helps someone. Amazon is offering healthcare. Prime members,
00:41:02they offer it for $9 per month, and for non-Prime members, I believe it's a different price.
00:41:08It's higher, but they do offer primary care, and I looked into whether or not what they're
00:41:14allowed to prescribe and what they cannot, and it looks a lot more promising than most places
00:41:23that I've seen online. Just want to throw that out there for someone that has no primary care at all.
00:41:28Amazon does have licensed physicians on telehealth.
00:41:36One thing about the virus is that it's good news.
00:41:41Ever since I started writing and talking about this, I mean, I'm hearing from a doctor,
00:41:46if not every day, every other day, and one of the things that the doctors are liking about this is,
00:41:51God, this gives me something to do, and I'm not just treating a pain patient.
00:41:56I've got a disease now to treat, because the doctors have gotten to these areas, you know,
00:42:01scared to death, and rightfully so. Mark, I'd like for you to address on this. Are we making
00:42:08any headway? But the doctors need a disease to treat. Well, they're going to have one now,
00:42:15because these tests that they're coming out with are really, like Tao just said, his is off the
00:42:20map. I mean, these new tests they have for the Epstein-Barr virus are right on, and it's like
00:42:27anything else. They sound complicated until you get into it, learn a little bit, piece of cake.
00:42:33I mean, anybody can learn about this, including, you don't have to be a doctor or a laboratorian.
00:42:38I can teach a fifth grader how to read these tests. Yeah, okay, then they are new, and there's
00:42:44a brand new one just coming out. It's even going to be better, but at any rate, so what do we do
00:42:50about that? I mean, I'm glad to hear about Amazon. That's good news. Mark, you got any thoughts about,
00:42:55what are we, I know you're trying to help a lot of people who've lost their doctors.
00:43:01What thoughts or advice you got?
00:43:03This is a variation on, I don't know if it's Shakespeare that said, physician, heal thyself.
00:43:09I think it's basically patient, heal thyself, and I think the difference between
00:43:19a patient is the expert in their own disease, and it's like the difference between a renter
00:43:25and an owner. If you own your house, you're going to take care of it. If you're renting your house,
00:43:30you're going to find somebody else to take care of it, and the person that you're sitting across
00:43:33from you at the doctor's office is a renter of your information, probably about 20 minutes.
00:43:40That's the length of their interest in your problem, and your interest in your problem is 24-7,
00:43:45so you're never going to find someone who's going to know as much as you do about your disease,
00:43:50particularly if you keep attending this course, so I think it's our responsibility to invent the
00:43:56protocols. Now that we're seeing that there's something possible, let's us write the protocols
00:44:02and provide them, and if it's an assembly line medicine system that we're stuck with,
00:44:06then let's write some damn good protocols so that people can get treated, and maybe there's
00:44:11some hope in that. Grassroots movements, like AA. AA is a grassroots movement. It works well,
00:44:21and only cures 10% of people with alcoholism, but it's a grassroots movement, and the people
00:44:28who have the illness are the ones who are in charge, and I think grassroots movements are
00:44:33going to be the way that we resolve these issues, and you know, like I said, this information,
00:44:40I mean, it might be frightening. It's not frightening to me. I'm 69 years old,
00:44:44and I've been seeing patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma my whole career, and I didn't know it
00:44:48was from EBV. Are you fucking kidding me? Let me tell you, I'm glad you brought this up.
00:44:58In doing, getting into this thing, and what happened about three years ago when I found
00:45:03out that the Epstein-Barr virus caused the glial cells to activate, and I've known about this for
00:45:0920 years. It was originally discovered by Dr. Linda Watchkin at the University of Colorado,
00:45:15and we've had all kind of brain scans about the loss of tissue and brain,
00:45:19and I saw this research on that the EBV activated glial cells, and I've, you know, what I've got,
00:45:27I was given lots of antivirals, written papers about viral treatment, what have you, but once
00:45:35I saw this, I says, well, I better start getting back into this, and I learned one thing about
00:45:41doing this research on this Epstein-Barr. Most of the really good papers have not been done in
00:45:47the United States. They're being done in Japan, France, Italy. I've even got a couple of good
00:45:54papers from Iran, of all places. We've gotten inquiries into our foundation on adhesive
00:46:01arachnoid dynast from something like 48 countries, including North Korea, China, Russia, Iran,
00:46:08even our nation's enemies, because people are people, and they want help, but I've learned one
00:46:14thing. I'm really starting to get this feeling that COVID, or the university politics, or what
00:46:22have you, that the research is not being done much in the United States, except by pharmaceutical
00:46:29companies, but they've got a vested interest. They want one drug for one treatment. They're
00:46:34not going to try to treat a disease for you, and the insurance companies sure aren't, and it looks
00:46:39to me like the universities are MIA, so we're sort of on our own, like you said, but we can
00:46:47read the scientific studies as good as anybody else and go from there, but I've come to
00:46:53realize that the United States has lost its cutting edge in medical research. I mean, I don't think
00:47:00there's any question about that, you know. In fact, you get the idea they're trying to take us
00:47:05backwards, not forward at half the time. Yeah, we're in the dark ages. The patients I've
00:47:12been advocating for, you know, some are still getting their medicines, and some are not.
00:47:18I've spent the last three days talking to pharmacists at Express Scripts to try to get a
00:47:26prescription for a patient who's about to be cut off, and, you know, this patient is essentially,
00:47:32kind of has like a death row sentence. Essentially, I'm appealing to the governor of the state,
00:47:41like this person's got a death sentence, and you know how death row cases go.
00:47:47They go up and down, you know. There's a stay, there's a possible pardon, you know. You
00:47:53advocate for this person who, you know, whether you believe in the death penalty or not, many of us
00:47:58are experiencing that death penalty, and I believe that politically speaking or from a
00:48:04human rights standpoint, we might be able to develop this more to, you know, up the interest
00:48:11or up the drama of it in terms of just how do you keep, how do you, you know, how can we
00:48:20advocate for Hurricane Carter, who was found to be innocent, and then we're going to
00:48:27advocate for Brandy Stokes, and she's not, she didn't even commit a crime, but she's guilty of having
00:48:33every illness that you've mentioned today, and the suspicion and fear out there is so great
00:48:42that you can't, that she might die because someone's uncomfortable. So the prescription
00:48:48guy I was talking about was essentially saying, well, you're too far away from the patient, and I
00:48:54said to him, well, you know, she's being treated by a nurse practitioner. Guess what? The nurse
00:48:57practitioner sees her on a video call. So in her town, the nurse practitioner's using a video. I'm
00:49:042,500 miles away talking to her on video. What is the bloody difference? Why is that a red flag,
00:49:10and why can't we say that red flags are cautions and a reason for us to be particularly present
00:49:18to what's going on, but not to just say, well, I can't do that for you because there's a red flag.
00:49:23Well, you know, I'm a Taurus. I see a red flag, and I charge at it, and so, you know, we have to start
00:49:31reformatting the language that we're using in our healthcare system because
00:49:39just being mindful doesn't mean we can't treat the patient in front of us who might have something
00:49:45that's rare and unusual, and we just have to keep telling the truth about that,
00:49:50and these cases are exemplary in terms of teaching the rest of us about it.
00:49:55Mark, along that line, you just reminded me, I understand that there's an election coming up,
00:50:01and this is the political season, but I don't want to get into that, but what I do want to get into
00:50:07is this. What I hear everybody in Washington saying is the health system is just fine.
00:50:12Everybody's getting wonderful care. The system is great. I mean, to hear them talk during these
00:50:21campaigns, we have no health problem in this country. That's what I'm hearing. How do these
00:50:28people get by with saying these things when we know too many people who are suffering can't get
00:50:35help? I don't get it. I mean, how do you stand up there in front of the public and say that
00:50:42there is no pain and suffering going on in America? We have a perfect health system.
00:50:47Yeah, Kenneth just wrote gaslighting, and I think that's true. I think denial is a major part of it,
00:50:54and that we are, you know, and I'm in a program for dealing with denial, and my theory on denial
00:50:59is that denial is very useful. Everybody who's on this phone call has a strong denial system,
00:51:06or they would not be alive. So, denial helps us to survive things, but those of us who deny
00:51:13things to the last minute, I mean, basically, if you deny your chest pain as a cardiac event,
00:51:17then you're going to die. So, at some point, someone has to sort of shine a light on it,
00:51:21and that's what you're doing, Dr. Tennant, and we just have to get louder, more amplified,
00:51:26recruit more, you know, eventually get into the media, and, you know, one hopeful thing is that
00:51:34the stepdaughter of one of the candidates had a tethered cord and had it released, and she grew
00:51:42like a foot and a half after the tethered cord was released, and that's Kamala Harris's stepdaughter,
00:51:49and she's got chronic pain. So, it could be topical really soon, and the other thing is
00:51:58that, you know, we have to be a voting block eventually, and we just aren't, we're not
00:52:04anywhere near that yet in terms of numbers. You know, right now, we're pleading for,
00:52:08you know, we have orphan status in terms of our healthcare system, and, you know, we're going to
00:52:15have to just keep advocating, keep as many of us alive as we can so that we can advocate,
00:52:21and, you know, thank God for Tao, who's advocating right where he is with whatever he's got,
00:52:26and that's the way to stay alive, is to stay engaged. You bet. Yeah, you bet. Well,
00:52:35Tao, thank you so much for being here, and let's hang in there, and stay with us on this program.
00:52:43Next week, we're going to talk about the testing and the treatments for Epstein-Barr,
00:52:48and we'll, we hope that's going to help some, but in the meantime, I wish I had a concrete
00:52:58suggestion, but when you start losing your doctor, you got to do what Mark says,
00:53:02start figuring out what you can do on your own, whether it's getting some creatine or some poppy
00:53:08seeds, whatever you can do to get some opioid effects, internet, what have you. It's very,
00:53:16very frustrating, but don't give up. I think in the past, there's too many people who've just
00:53:22said they just can't do it. The suicide rate, as you know, in our business has been, it's just
00:53:28pathetic. It's been awful, so let's not go there unless you just have to, and anybody who's got
00:53:35any ideas on finding doctors, that's great. Jamie, follow up this thing on Amazon. I don't care who
00:53:43brings it. If it's, if Amazon can bring us medical care as good as they bring us books,
00:53:49let's go for it. Okay, whatever we can do. Thank you for having me, and I'm doing my best to
00:53:57survive, and let me tell you, I'm not giving up. I got a lot to give. I really have a lot to do,
00:54:06and I'm going to keep striving and growing and positive, and I'm doing my stuff the best I can,
00:54:13and sometimes the supplements doesn't help, but sometimes do not help, but sometimes they do a
00:54:18little bit, but I'm hanging in there until next week, and hopefully I'm going to be able to
00:54:24manage my pain. I'm going to tell my story to those lawmakers here in the capital of my state,
00:54:29because it's too much. It's too much what is going on everywhere. What state?
00:54:37Okay, North Carolina. Yeah, good luck. Okay, well, you know, I mean,
00:54:45here's what I need to say to you, Teo, and everybody who's on here.
00:54:49Pain is an effing terrorist, and being terrorized makes us isolate, and isolation is what kills us,
00:54:56and we have to stay together. We have to connect with people, whether they believe us or not. We
00:55:01have to stay out there and in conversation, and your advocacy is the key way to do it. It'll heal
00:55:07you by being an advocate in North Carolina, and that's one of the toughest places,
00:55:14but miracles can still happen, and it's up to us to create them. I believe in miracles,
00:55:20and I believe that being proactive and getting united with people like you all, and getting all
00:55:26those pain counselors that I've seen online, and pushing all over the place is going to take me
00:55:32somewhere, and I don't mind what may happen. I'm not afraid because I have 12, 14 years suffering,
00:55:39and it seems like some doctors care, but they don't know better. They haven't been trained
00:55:44the right way, so I understand that. I'm in fact with doctors too, so I could be my own advocate,
00:55:53and advocate for a bunch of people, because my former job, I used to be really a community
00:56:00activist, very, very, very hard here, and that's what I love, and now that I have an idea about
00:56:08what is going on with all of us, oh, they're gonna get it from me. I'm not giving up, for sure.
00:56:12Good, good. Thank you. Thank you. And before we go, Dr. Norm, I see you've been patiently
00:56:19having your hand up, and I'd like to hear what you would like to say as quickly as possible.
00:56:26Thank you so much, doc. My question is for Dr. Tennant here. You know, when I was, I was,
00:56:33you know, very, very intrigued by your discussion. I have been very, very intrigued by your discussion
00:56:39of the Epstein-Barr virus, and its expression, and its variety of expressions around in the
00:56:48human body, and something made me just, while you were talking, look in to see whether this
00:56:58Epstein-Barr is a positive factor, or has some sort of mischief behavior in the expression of
00:57:10ALS. And when I looked at this, these articles, you know, it indicates that there is a high level
00:57:20of the EBV hemoglobin, immunoglobin, in, you know, mulsclerosis, and collagen diseases,
00:57:37and it also, particularly, there's one study I saw was done in 2010 that talked about ALS,
00:57:44and then some of the triggering mechanisms, injury. We see a lot of high incidence of ALS
00:57:51in people who have had injuries on the track, soccer, those sort of things. So, I'm just
00:57:58wondering, have you ever drawn or known of anyone drawing a correlation between ALS and the Epstein-Barr
00:58:09virus? As I would know, I had, my mom died of ALS, and my brother died of ALS, and my aunt died
00:58:21of ALS, my mother's sister died of ALS. So, I'm just kind of curious as to, you know, what's...
00:58:28Norm, just in closing, let me say this. The Epstein-Barr virus has a great predilection
00:58:36for the spinal canal, and one of the things that got me involved in this was the connection between
00:58:44multiple sclerosis and arachnoiditis, and those people who have ALS, who have developed
00:58:53sphingomyelia, transverse myelitis, in my opinion, the first thing that should happen, those people
00:58:59should have a full battery of those Epstein-Barr tests. It would be hard to say, but if you get
00:59:06something strange about the spinal canal or the spinal cord, you want to be thinking Epstein-Barr,
00:59:12okay? That virus seems to love the spinal cord, okay? So...
00:59:17All right, thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Tim. I really appreciate it.
00:59:22We're going to be calling on you some more on this, because I'm going to ask some old-timers
00:59:26like you and Mark to think back about some of your experiences.
00:59:29I'm an old-timer? Come on!
00:59:31Yeah, well, I'm sorry I brought that up.
00:59:33You've aged me all along.
00:59:36Forget I said it.
00:59:41But anyway, now that I look back and see some of my clinical experiences,
00:59:45gee, I wish I'd have known this. Anyway, it's been great. Mark, your words of wisdom on how
00:59:51we've got to stick together and where we go from here is a little bit of a mystery to me,
00:59:55but let's hang together. Let's not hang separately. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week.
01:00:02Thank you so much. And might I add, Dr. Norm, anyone who has had the honor of living past
01:00:09any years, that is what my 96-year-old grandmother calls trophies. So she has earned 96 trophies,
01:00:17and that's not a bad thing. So I hope that encourages you. You all, thank you so much
01:00:23for being here, and I hope to see you next week.
01:00:26Okay.
01:00:27Thanks so much. You are not alone.
01:00:30God save the painkillers.
01:00:33You're not alone.
01:00:34Amen.
01:00:35Good to see you, Mark. Good to see you.
01:00:37Thank you, everybody. God bless you all. Thank you.
01:00:41I owe you a phone call, Norm. I'll get to it.
01:00:43Okay, you bet.
01:00:47Good night, everyone.
01:00:48I'm here for you.
01:00:49You're not alone.
01:00:52Good night, everyone. Love y'all.
01:00:54Good night, everyone. God bless you.
01:00:57Love my pain warriors.
01:00:58Bye-bye.
01:00:59God bless you, too. We love you guys.
01:01:02Love you.
01:01:05God bless y'all.