Mimi:
Welcome to the Lyme 360 podcast, for all things related to Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses. I'm Mimi MacLean, mom of five, founder of Lyme 360 and a fellow Lyme warrior. Tune in each week to hear from doctors, health practitioners and experts to learn about their treatments, struggles and triumphs, to help you on your healing journey. I'm here to heal with you.

Mimi:
Before we get started with the podcast, I wanted to talk to you about what is in your personal care products and cosmetics. What you put on your skin, which is your largest organ, is just as important as what you consume. Your body immediately absorbs what is on the skin, but did you know that there is limited regulation in the personal care industry and the last law that was passed was 1938? The chemicals and ingredients in your products have not been tested for human safety, so for those of you struggling with your health, it is super important to use clean products. Eight years ago, I started using Beautycounter for my cosmetics and personal care products. They are the leaders in clean, safer products that work. Beautycounter has done the research and taken the guesswork out of what is safe. Go to Lyme360.com/beautycounter to learn more. Reach out to me at Mimi@lyme360.com if you want to learn more, or find out what my favorite products are.

Mimi:
Hi, welcome back to the Lyme 360 Podcast. This is your host Mimi MacLean. And today we have on Amanda Dahl from Dahl Holistic Health. Amanda, as well as her husband, Christopher and their son, have had a very difficult Lyme journey. Because of this, Amanda and Christopher opened up their own energy and healing practice where they focus on Reiki, essential oils, herbs, and energy healing.

Mimi:
To get my detox for Lyme checklist, go to Lyme360.com/detoxchecklist.

Mimi:
Amanda, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it.

Amanda:
Yeah, thank you.

Mimi:
You have had Lyme, and I would love to just start out with talking about your journey with Lyme and your family's journey in a condensed, because I know all of us can go on forever about a long journey. But just your highlights of being diagnosed and then also what helped you and then what transpired for you to start your own healing practice?

Amanda:
Yeah. My husband and I were sick for 18 years, had no idea what was going on. The whole thing, going from doctor to doctor, to doctor. Finally received a diagnosis in 2018 because our son was diagnosed.

Mimi:
How old was he at the time?

Amanda:
He was nine at the time. Our health had been falling apart in different ways, for my husband and myself. And my son was diagnosed with autism and that was how we were able to get the diagnosis for him for Lyme disease because the place where we had him diagnosed with autism, they did a bunch of blood tests. They did an ELISA test and it actually lit up for him, which you know how difficult that can be to get even that test to test positive. Then when we started working with a doctor for him for Lyme, it was a naturopath and she said to and my husband and I, "Tell me about your health first." We had been trying to get a diagnosis for so long. So when she asked that, I started crying. I knew right away, oh, this is what's going on.

Amanda:
I couldn't start treatment right away because I was on the East Coast at the time and even naturopaths on the East Coast are very focused on antibiotics, or they were at the time, and I'm allergic to several of them. They weren't quite sure what to do with me in terms of treating the Lyme, so we started looking at sleep and hormones and different things like that. My husband and my son both went on antibiotic treatments, which ultimately did not really help and didn't work at all for them. That was in 2013. And then in 2014, we moved to the West Coast, to San Diego, and that was where everything started to change. We moved here and started working with a doctor here and was naturopathic. Eventually, we were able to get to remission primarily through the use of essential oils for treatment, internal essential oils, which I know we don't hear that one a lot, with some herbs, of course, mixed in there. Also, we were exposed to healing work, energy healing work, which ultimately led to my husband and I learning several modalities and now we run a healing practice.

Mimi:
That's great. A couple questions.

Amanda:
Sure.

Mimi:
Did you move to the West Coast because you were dealing with Lyme and you just wanted a change of pace or was there other reasons, personal reasons that?

Amanda:
There were other reasons, but one of the very attractive reasons was not being inundated with ticks every time we went outside. Because while there is absolutely ticks everywhere, Lyme disease everywhere, when you go outside in the Northeast, there are really ticks everywhere. Knock on wood, we've been in California now for eight years and I have not seen a tick here. Southern California, it's a little more desert and scrubby, but it was one of the very attractive reasons for us to move here.

Mimi:
Yeah. I do know that there are ticks in LA because my dog would walk up into the mountains and they'd come back with ticks. My Lyme doctor was like, I got Lyme here in LA. Your son, do they think he was born with gestational Lyme?

Amanda:
Yes, yes. And they think that he has Lyme induced autism. We consulted with three different doctors that specialize in Lyme in autism and they all said the same thing, that they felt that it was congenital Lyme and that his autism was induced by Lyme disease. It's been a very interesting set of challenges to navigate.

Mimi:
Yeah, and I was just actually out to dinner last night with a friend who has a son who also has autism from... She didn't say he has autism, but he definitely, I think, has special needs. He's 14 and can't be left alone.

Amanda:
Yes.

Mimi:
Anyway, they think it's gestational as well, which they don't want to talk about that. It's the taboo. We know it exists. I have had enough people on that they know it was from that. How is your son? Has he been able to reverse a lot of it or is it you're just stabilizing it so it doesn't get worse?

Amanda:
I don't know if reverse is quite the right word. But we've been able to really mitigate a lot of the symptoms or the traits that he was demonstrating. He had extremely high anxiety, definitely separation anxiety. He does have stims, but he used to tick all the time. He had a lot of vocal ticks and that has subsided a lot. He does have OCD, which is very indicative of this cluster of things going on, that he manages through medication and through therapy. He really enjoys energy work as well. He is very sensitive to that. People that are on the spectrum tend to be very sensitive to energy and he happens to enjoy it, thankfully.He did not in the beginning. We really had to work very slowly to get him used to what it was going to feel like.

Amanda:
But yeah, I don't think his symptoms are as challenging as they would've been, had he not had treatment. We're constantly monitoring and making sure that we're taking care of any flares that happen and things like that. I mean, it's an ongoing process, as so many families understand with this.

Mimi:
Yeah, I would love to talk, I looked into it, but I never really followed through with the essential oils. I think it was Young Living that had a whole protocol for Lyme. Did you follow a particular protocol? Did you have a doctor? How did you know what to do and which essential oils to use?

Amanda:
Yeah. I did do it under medical direction. In the United States, doctors are not trained at all in herbal medicine or how to use essential oils. In this country, in the United States, it's very much taboo in a lot of circles to take essential oils internally. In other countries, it's actually part of their medical training to use essential oils internally. It was a little bit on the down low when people were using it as an internal treatment at the time that we were back in 2013, '14. I did do a protocol that a doctor had developed. And as I was learning more about essential oils myself, I was learning like, "Oh, okay." There was suggested doses of course, but the beautiful thing about it was that you could modify the doses very easily because you were working with drops at a time.

Amanda:
It's like, "Okay, if I'm flaring and I'm on this amount for all the different oils I was using, oh, I could step it back and reduce the Herxing a little bit," and those sorts of things. Yeah, we started essential oils in March of 2014, and by May we were having more good days than we were bad days. It was a very amazing treatment type to use for us. And by the end of that year, we were only having one or two tricky days a month around moon usually.

Amanda:
But we stayed on the treatment for a while longer because it was the holidays when we were feeling really good and when we worked with a doctor, she said, "Don't go into a remission protocol right now. Just keep on treating because the holidays can be very stressful. You don't want to go off of everything too soon, go into another flare, da, da, da, da." So we didn't actually stop remission protocols and everything till September of 2016. So we treated for a while longer than maybe we needed to, but I feel like that has contributed to holding us into a decent remission.

Mimi:
I think anybody who is listening and wants like, "Oh, I need the science behind essential oils," I think John Hopkins did a great scientific study that they came out a couple years ago with about how essential oils do help, like Babesia and Bartonella.

Amanda:
Yeah. Yeah. We're finally starting to see different studies coming out about the usage of essential oils. And each oil has different properties to it and targets different things. What I like about essential oils is that they're so broad spectrum. Maybe it's really good for one particular thing, but it's also good for other things too. It's kind of like taking a broad spectrum antibiotic that actually works for all of the Lyme and all of these co-infections, it's a really beautiful thing. And for people that are wondering, we used doTERRA. But I think that Young Living and doTERRA are both fabulous companies. There are other oils out there that are fabulous companies, because some people don't want to do the MLM thing. And I completely understand that. But yeah, it worked really well for us. We continue to use oils for different things, like I'm sure a lot of people do. Supplements and things for support, for system support. I don't know that you ever just stopped taking everything forever.

Mimi:
No. Yeah, you have to maintain something.

Amanda:
You do.

Mimi:
Yeah. And when did you decide to open up your own holistic health practice?

Amanda:
Yeah, almost as soon as we were finally diagnosed with Lyme. I was talking to a lot of other people who were going through this. I've been a patient all my life for various things. I was born with a hole in my heart, had my first open heart surgery at four years old. I could explain, at four years old, what a ventricular septal defect was and what an arrhythmia was because I was in the hospital all the time. So I've always been very medically minded. And when I was diagnosed, I really reached out and started talking to other people that were going through this because like so many of us when we're diagnosed with Lyme, we go down that rabbit hole of trying to get information, trying to connect with people.

Amanda:
I wasn't big on the support groups like on Facebook. I just found them to be, for the kind of support I needed, it felt a little bit toxic for me. So I kind of shied away from that. And I really just went within for a while and just talked to certain people. So I was learning almost all those ins and outs. And then really started my practice, it was probably about 2014 that I really I got into the oils and I was starting to help other people who were using the oils. And then at the same time I learned Reiki. I became a Reiki master. I learned biomagnetic therapy because we were using these things at home. And then eventually, the doctor that I worked with, I actually worked out of her office and I was working with patients out of her office. And her patients would come over to me for help and for guidance. That was the early phases of what I was doing was just trying to help people who were going through this because it's brutal.

Mimi:
It's so hard.

Amanda:
Yeah. We need people to support each other.

Mimi:
Yeah. What percentage of your clients or your patients are Lyme patients?

Amanda:
Oh gosh, probably 80 to 90%, I would say.

Mimi:
Wow.

Amanda:
If I had to guess. Yeah, a lot. I do work with people, I'm a trauma informed provider. So I work with some people, they're working with a therapist and maybe they need just some energy work, but they need that energy healer to be trauma informed because it's kind of a different layer when you're working with trauma. Mostly women in my practice that I work with, mostly Lyme disease. A couple of other long term chronic health conditions that I work with people, but for the most part, Lyme.

Mimi:
And then what do you do, is it mostly people who are in San Diego or can you do virtual?

Amanda:
I actually only work virtually with people. We had a healing practice that we eventually had our own brick and mortar healing practice. And we were working with people and it was a thriving practice. And then when we had to quarantine and everything started to happen, all of the modalities that we can do can be done virtually. And I've always had clients that worked virtually. But with the pandemic, we went fully virtual and we don't have plans to go back. Our practice actually really grew quite a bit because all of a sudden, we were able to share all of this knowledge and all of these modalities with people all over the country. And I think that one of the good parts of the pandemic has been that it has showed us how many things that we can do virtually.

Amanda:
I've always felt baffled that people had to go to a doctor's office to get blood test results. And I think that finally, it's showing the world how many resources we have available with technology that we have out there now. And it's really opened up a new world for people who are bedbound and for people who have, like agoraphobia who can't go out. It can be a big world out there. So I think it's opened up a lot for people and it certainly has opened up my practice. And so at this point, we only work virtually with no plans to go back.

Mimi:
Now, if you had put on your friend cap, not your health practitioner cap.

Amanda:
Sure.

Mimi:
And a friend were to call you and say, "Okay, I have Lyme. I was just diagnosed. What are the things I can do right away from home?" Because I feel like a lot of people are either waiting for their Lyme doctor and that has a three month wait, or they don't have the finances to go see that Lyme doctor because they're not covered by insurance and they're super expensive, or they've already been doing everything and it's like, what do you do? The reason why I'm asking this because I do feel like having gone through my seven years of doing this, there is a lot you can do from home without seeing a doctor. It took me a while to realize that, because I felt like, oh my God, I have to see that Lyme doctor to get myself better. And you were relying on that treatment or that doctor to get yourself better. And there's so much you can start to do at home with limited resources.

Amanda:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the things that people can do is really, and I think this is important, is to start writing down what your day is like. And I don't mean every little detail. But I mean what are the things that are different about your day than they were before you got sick, quote unquote. Right? Because I feel that was one of the things, the first doctor that we worked with, that was one of the things that was most helpful to that doctor because I was raised, my parents were wonderful and my mother was a nurse. And like I mentioned, I've always been a patient. And one of the things that my mother always taught me to do was to track how I was feeling. Because when you go to the doctor, they can look at that and it gives them actual data for what you are going through.

Amanda:
Because I find that when I'm working with a client and I say to them, "So how have you been?" And they're not looking at their symptom tracker. And the answer is always hinged on how they're feeling on the day that I'm talking to them. So if they're having a good day, they'll be like, "Oh, things have been really good." And I'll be like, "Okay." And then I'll say, "Well, let's take a look at your symptom tracker." And the way that I do it, I have them rate their day on a scale from one to 10 and I'll say, "So how many days did you have above five?" And they're like, "Oh, I actually only had one day above five." And they're telling me that things have been great.

Mimi:
Yeah.

Mimi:
Cause you just realize when you have that one good day, you kind of instantly forget about those bad days for some reason, because you're so excited to feel better.

Amanda:
Of course, because that's the goal. We don't want to have those bad days. So I find that just kind of getting a grip on what are your symptoms and what are you actually dealing with, so that way you can give your doctor some data. My doctor was able to say, "Oh, I can tell that there's something hormonal going on for you," because things were happening more cyclical. She could tell that the moon was affecting me, so she knew there was probably a parasite component. It gave my doctor so much data because you wait so long to get in, that it was like, okay, I kind of see what I think might be going on here. And then it could help them to make more educated decisions for you when you get in the door. But also I think as a friend, just letting that friend know first and foremost that I'm not going anywhere as their friend. And I know that not everybody gets that, because healing can be a lonely business. It's hard for me to speak only as a friend when it comes to Lyme because of what I know.

Amanda:
But just maybe letting people know that there are some good support groups out there that are not based on and just misery loves company. It's productive, they give you tools. I think it's important to talk to other people that are going through this. I think it's important too, to read about the different types of treatments that are out there because I find that so often people will work with a Lyme doctor based on geographic location, not realizing that, that might be the absolute wrong doctor for you. If you want to treat with all herbals and you live next to say Dr. Jemsek in DC, it's probably not going to be the best doctor for you to work with. Right? But maybe Dr. Klinghardt is better to work with, or something like that, a doctor who you want to have an idea of what treatment modality feels comfortable for you. So those are the kinds of things that you can kind of get a grip on before you step in the door at the doctor's office, if I have to pick just a couple things, right?

Mimi:
Exactly. But I do think that also just tapping into your expertise that I feel like a lot of people don't deal with the energy or emotional component until the end.

Amanda:
Absolutely.

Mimi:
Until they're desperate. Until they're like, "Okay, I've tried everything else. What else could it be?" Right? And at that point, you're so desperate and in such a dark place that you're like, "I'll do anything. I'll talk to an angel. I'll go back to my past life. I don't care what it is, just get me better." I would love for you to touch on that too, about how it's important to integrate the emotion and the energy component right off the bat. Because I do think, just to add on one more thing, as you're going through this process, you're going to be gaslit the whole way. Right? Everyone's going to tell you that you're crazy and you need to go see a psychiatrist. So then you're like, "Wait, am I crazy or am I actually just going to see a psychiatrist just to talk about the trauma that was in my life? So it's just dealing with that, but not realizing that you're actually not crazy. It does exist, that pain is real. But that pain could be caused by some emotional trigger.

Amanda:
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And this is a great question that I don't think I've ever been asked before. So I love it. I think that one of the things in the beginning of somebody's healing journey, it's so important to meet people where they're at. Right? So putting my expertise hat back on, when somebody comes to me, the only reason why we don't always go to energy healing first is because it's a tall order for people in the beginning because they're still trying to grapple with the physical part. And in our society, while we're growing up, we are taught if you're sick, which usually in our country is physical, if you're sick, you go to the doctor and they'll give you something to help you to heal with that. So in the beginning, there's some mind shifting that needs to go on with that and some education, to let people know, yes, absolutely this physical component is real and your pain is real.

Amanda:
And sharing with them that there is also this emotional component and this energetic component and kind of letting them start to lean into that a little bit. Because the thing about energy healing is it's very new for a lot of people. And if they go into it without some sort of understanding, it's not going to work quite as well, because there's going to be that doubt, because they don't have that buy-in yet. They don't have that comfort with it yet. Usually, it's a conversation that we have in the first or second session that we're having, like we'll address some physical things and give some things to look at and to work on. And then we start to talk about well, let's talk about some energy.

Amanda:
And usually, how I start with energy healing for people that have never experienced before is that I'll ask them, "How are you sleeping?" Most people with some kind of chronic health condition have a terrible time with sleep. So I'll say, "I'm going to give you a tool to help you so that when you wake up and you can't sleep and it's two o'clock in the morning, this is going to help you to slow your mind down a little bit." And I'll give them a couple of tools. So an example for anybody that's listening, I'll tell them, put one hand over your forehead, like you do when you're feeling to see if you have a temperature, and then put the other hand on the back of your neck but in your occiput, where your skull kind of curves. Put a hand on each one of those, because what that is doing is it's kind of blocking out your third eye energy center for people who understand chakras, that's one of your energy centers. But that's where we take in information all the time, right?

Amanda:
We're not just seeing with our two eyes, we're also seeing with that third eye. That's why cell phones, the blue light from a cell phone can bother us because your pituitary and pineal glands are in these areas of the brain. So when you're putting your hands over them, it's slowing everything down. And that's a form of using energy healing to help to calm the system and to slow the body down a little bit. And then I tell them, "Okay, now just take a few deep breaths and this will help to slow your mind. And then it will help you to relax your system a little bit so that you can get back to sleep."

Amanda:
So maybe I teach them a little technique like that. And then I ask them, just kind of write down in your tracker, how that feels. Try it for a week until our next session, see how that feels for you, see how it affects you. See, I start teaching them some techniques to help them. And then when I'm asking them, "How do you feel about trying Reiki?" they're more open to it because they're starting to stand how that energy is working and how they have the ability to do these things for themselves. They don't have to take a class and become a Reiki master in order to relax themselves with energy that they have right within them.

Mimi:
It's very true. So as far as what tools can you give to somebody who's in pain like. Is it like meditating or just kind of helping them get to a place where comfort? Because the pain sometimes is so unreal that I'm sure there's some tricks that you give for people to help them.

Amanda:
Yeah. I don't tend to suggest meditation right off the bat because people have so many hangups about meditation, like, "Well, I don't know how to meditate" or "I can't slow my brain down." Also, for people who have trauma, meditation can be very activating. It can put them back into a trauma state. It's the same thing with breath work. I tend to be very cautious with breath work for that same reason, it can be very activating. So what I do for clients who are having a lot of pain and it's identifying where is that pain coming from? Because a lot of times when we have pain, the pain actually scrambles our brain and it makes it hard to identify where the pain is. So we just feel pain all over the place. So it's like, okay, let's go through the body and let's actually identify where the pain is.

Amanda:
And I'll take them through an exercise while we're on our call to help them to learn to do this. And usually, going through the energy centers of the body. So we'll start up in the crown, which is at the top of the head. Are you feeling pain in the top of your head? No. Okay, that's a pain-free zone, right? Okay. Now let's go down to the third eye. Is the pain in your head? And we'll identify where are the pain-free zones? Okay, where is the pain? Sometimes times being able to isolate where the pain is coming from helps to reduce it because all of a sudden we're like, you know what, it's not in my legs and it's not in my arms. And then we're realizing, okay, the pain is smaller than I thought, and then it makes it easier to manage it.

Amanda:
And then once we've kind of figured out where pain is coming from, then I can give them tools and techniques of things that they can do themselves that don't require necessarily taking a pill or doing anything special, just some energy healing techniques that can help them drain that pain out a little bit. And then it tends to help the brain to relax and then they can figure out, okay, well, is there a supplement that I should take or do I need to take an epsom salt bath, or is this a detox issue? We can kind of figure out what needs to happen from there.

Mimi:
Yeah. It's amazing how, when you're in pain and then you're lying in bed and you're like, oh, you put on a funny TV show, the pain goes away. But then as soon as that show's over, you start hurting again.

Amanda:
Yeah. That's why I think it's important to go within and identify where is this pain coming from? Because if we don't isolate it, it is, it's just going to creep right back the minute we stop watching. Because believe me, I love numbing out to TV. But it's important to identify that and have a tool that they can use was. With my clients, I like to constantly be adding things to their toolbox so that they can be empowered to feel better and to really heal from all of this. And I think that, that's sometimes that missing piece, right? It's like, well, take this pill or do this thing. But it's like, no, you can feel empowered to do this yourself, especially like we talked about in the beginning, where people are so gaslit by different providers. It's like, I want to give you your intuition back. I want you to be able to lean into yourself again and know that you have the power within you to do the healing.

Mimi:
I was going to actually end by asking you the question about mindset, because I do feel like when I talk to people who have Lyme, if they're super negative and they have negative energy and they're like, "Why this happened to me" and they're angry about it, I'm like, "Ooh, they're not going to get better," because they're not at a place where they're listening to their body because they're just so angry. So I would love for you to just talk about a little bit about how important mindset is right off the bat as you get this disease, or maybe you just found out you were diagnosed and you've been sick your whole life. And so you're really angry because your whole life has been... So can you just a little bit about mindset and how important that is?

Amanda:
Yeah. Mindset is absolutely the key to healing. And not like you don't have to be toxically positive about it, right? Like, oh good vibes, high vibe, I'm only going to think positive. No, that doesn't work either. But I think that acknowledging, okay, this is what happened, and being able to say this really stinks and I know that I've got a lot of work to do. But I find that a lot of the best healing from Lyme isn't when we're actually addressing the Lyme. A lot of times it's when we're starting to dig into, was there a trauma that you went through? Do you have trapped emotions? Do you have stagnant energy? Were you validated in your life? Were you hugged? Were you told that you were loved?

Amanda:
A lot of times those are the core issues that could potentially be holding us in this place of illness. And those are things that I think are absolutely worth exploring. Usually, there is some kind of energetic or emotional component that is going on. Every person has been through trauma. Every person has had things happen that they wish didn't. No human being is immune from that. And just being able to have a compassionate witness while somebody is working through that, it's huge, and it helps to shift that mind set so they can heal.

Mimi:
And also make it so that yeah, the disease that you're going through, the process you're going through, you're supposed to be learning something. What is this teaching me? Instead of being like, "Why did I get this?" It's like, why did my body not, not that it failed, but why is my body not able to heal itself? There's something it's telling me do. Right? Change a job, change your relationship, look at past traumas in a different way. I have done a lot of that, going through this whole process and just being like, you can't hold on to anger. And maybe it helps that like with us, with Lyme, that you don't have much of a memory anymore. So I don't remember who I'm angry at or past situations because my memory's gone anyway, which is good. So it's let a lot of that go.

Amanda:
Yeah. Well the thing is, emotions are held in our organs. Your anger is held in your liver. And if you think about one of the key things that people with Lyme have to do is to be able to detox. And your liver is your organ of detox. So it's like, okay, let's detox, not just from a physical aspect, bile and toxins and all of that kind of stuff, but also let's detox anger. I always thought that was interesting when people say, "Oh, they're a mean drunk." No, well think about what your liver is having to go through when you process alcohol. Right?

Mimi:
Yeah.

Amanda:
There's so many interesting ties to emotions when it comes to different organs of the body. And I love helping people decode all of that and figure out, okay, what do we need to do to map your healing capability? Because I believe that anybody can heal. It's just a matter of figuring out what order things need to happen in, working through the different things that need to be worked through and helping people with that mindset so that they know that at some point they're going to get there.

Mimi:
That's true. Amanda, thank you so much. This has been amazing. I really appreciate it.

Amanda:
Thank you.

Mimi:
And all your work that you're doing and helping people. So thank you very much.

Amanda:
All right. Thank you so much.

Mimi:
And just for anybody who's listening, to learn more about you, your website is dahlholistichealth.com, and I'll also have it in the notes as well below. So you can find Amanda, and her husband too is also a practitioner there.

Amanda:
Yes. Thank you so much.

Mimi:
Thank you so much.

Mimi:
Each week, I will bring you different voices from the wellness community so that they can share how they help their clients heal. You will come away with tips and strategies to help you get your life back. Thank you so much for coming on and I am so happy you are here. Subscribe now and tune in next week. If you want to learn how I detox and you want to check out my detox for Lyme checklist, go to Lyme360.com/detoxchecklist. You can also join our community at Lyme 360 Warriors on Facebook and let's heal together. Thank you.