Why Some People Get More Sick Than Others with Bill Rawls, MD

This week on The Less Stressed Life, I’m so excited to welcome back Dr. Bill Rawls! In this episode, Bill dives deep into cellular wellness and shares powerful insights from his own health journey with chronic Lyme disease. We explore how the health of each cell affects our overall wellness, why chronic illness can often feel like a “perfect storm” of symptoms, and the best ways to fortify ourselves against stress and toxins. Bill breaks down his “five pillars of cellular health” and shares how nutrient-rich foods, herbs, and lifestyle choices can work together to strengthen our resilience. If you’re dealing with chronic illness or just want to up your health game, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways!

Check out Bill's other episode on the LSL here: #364 Antibiotics vs Herbs: Recovering from Lyme and Infections

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Cellular resilience’s role in chronic health
• How stress reactivates dormant microbes
• Why testing often falls short in chronic illness
• Dr. Rawls’ Five Essentials: sleep, nutrients, movement, environment, immune balance
• Focusing on resilience over perfection
• Tips for managing daily mold exposure

ABOUT GUEST:
For over 30 years, Dr. Bill Rawls dedicated his life to medicine. After a chronic Lyme disease diagnosis revealed the limits of modern medicine, he turned to holistic and herbal therapies, restoring his health and inspiring a focus on cellular wellness. Now, through his bestselling books, Unlocking Lyme and The Cellular Wellness Solution, and as the founder of Vital Plan, Dr. Rawls advocates for the power of herbal phytochemicals in defending against illness. His signature Restore Kit™ has helped thousands reclaim their health. As a bestselling author and speaker, Dr. Rawls makes complex science accessible to all. 

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://vitalplan.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vitalplan/
Website: https://rawlsmd.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rawlsmd/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: ****https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

• Over restriction is dead
• Whole food is soul food and fed is best
• Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
• You don’t have to figure it out alone
• Do your best and leave the rest

SPONSOR:  
Thanks to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode! Try their MagSoothe or MagSRT for better sleep and less stress. Use code LESSSTRESSED10 at JigsawHealth.com for 10% off—unlimited use!

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Bill Rawls, MD: all of those cells are constantly 24 7 sending distress signals to your brain. And what that does is it causes your brain to go into perpetual fight or flight mode that we call sympathetic overactivity. And when that happens, our cortisol is higher, our adrenaline is high, and that's a factor that's driving the sleep.

[00:00:23] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. Today on The Less Stressed Life, I have Dr. Bill Rawls back. He was here for episode

[00:00:32] Christa Biegler, RD: 364, Antibiotics vs. Herbs, Recovering from Lyme and Infections. That's a little bit of his story, a little piece of it. For over 30 years, he's really dedicated his life to medicine, but then when a health crisis with chronic Lyme really hit him, abrupted his quality of life, and honestly, he didn't know it was Lyme, as most people do not.

[00:00:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Initially, he came kind of face to face with these limitations of modern medicine, and then skeptically went to herbs, and I think never really looked back. I have one of Bill's books here called The Cellular Wellness Solution, and it's quite a beast of It's quite a resource. It is a really lovely resource.

[00:01:06] Christa Biegler, RD: So he's got a couple of books, Unlocking Lyme and the Cellular Wellness Solution. And I had such a good time talking to him last time about multiple co infections and of course, the overarching theme of antibiotics versus herbs. So if you're a nerd, you'll love this episode. And here we are back for round two.

[00:01:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Welcome back, Bill. 

[00:01:21] Bill Rawls, MD: Oh, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be back. And yeah, everybody refers to it as the beast. Now I wish I'd broken it up into four books, which is what it really is. It's 

[00:01:33] Christa Biegler, RD: What do you think they would have been? 

[00:01:34] Bill Rawls, MD: The first one is that cellular theory , that idea that our body is made of cells and our health is related to cells.

[00:01:42] Bill Rawls, MD: And the second is how herbs can really be beneficial for helping us maintain cellular health. The third part is. All the other things, diet and cleaning the environment and things we have to do to maintain ourselves. And then the fourth part is taking all of those concepts and applying them to specific situations.

[00:02:06] Bill Rawls, MD: Menopause diabetes, all of the different things that are out there that affect us. 

[00:02:12] Christa Biegler, RD: There's the podcast right there at the end. No, I'm just kidding. That, that's a beautiful thing. I want to talk about I know we're going to come back to cellular theory, which is something you and I really agree on, and we go about it with different ways.

[00:02:26] Christa Biegler, RD: But I want to chalk us up here I'm going to T us up for a concept. I was thinking about things that people present with, right? When I get a fair amount of emails and I'm like, my child is reacting to everything. And that's not the example I want to use.

[00:02:41] Christa Biegler, RD: You were talking before we hit record about our cells storing things. And I'm actually fascinated. I'm wondering if you've ever gotten into like emotional storage of cells, but something I see is that people may have an exposure to a toxic. thing like mold or an infection at some time, but it seems that when they have a major stressor, it becomes a problem.

[00:03:03] Christa Biegler, RD: Maybe they were doing fine before, but under stress and physiologically stress depletes nutrients. So that makes sense, but you have a lot more to add to this overall conversation you were just starting to share with me. So let's talk about how microbes become dormant until you get stressed. 

[00:03:18] Bill Rawls, MD: Yeah start with that or start with mold?

[00:03:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Maybe we'll start with mold. Go ahead. Whichever one you prefer. 

[00:03:24] Bill Rawls, MD: Okay. Yeah. That thing that I've seen in people living with other people that they are chronically ill there and they have some mold in the environment and they're sick and they can't get well because of the mold.

[00:03:38] Bill Rawls, MD: And they're living with people who aren't affected at all. And it's What's going on there? Why? And it really gets down to asking that question, why, over and over again. Asking, why do molds produce these things called mycotoxins? And molds produce mycotoxins to defend against their archenemy, which is bacteria.

[00:04:00] Bill Rawls, MD: So they're constantly producing mycotoxins that get out in the air and we breathe them in and they're really ubiquitous. They're everywhere. We're constantly breathing in some mycotoxins wherever we are, even in a really mold free environment. And here's a little out there and we get a little bit in our food.

[00:04:18] Bill Rawls, MD: So the mycotoxins work by damaging bacterial cells, but the mycotoxins damage any cells. So when we breathe them in, and especially at a significant quantity, they're damaging ourselves. They're weakening ourselves. They're causing cellular stress. If our cells are already stressed, then that is compounded.

[00:04:44] Bill Rawls, MD: So someone who is generally healthy, doesn't have chronic Lyme disease, doesn't have some of the issues going on that a lot of people do, they may be able to tolerate that extra mycotoxins, where somebody that has severe cellular stress, that there's chronically ill, they're just very susceptible to it.

[00:05:08] Bill Rawls, MD: Plus the immune system becomes activated. So that's a factor too. So it's all about cellular stress and the health of your stress of how resilient you are to different kinds of stresses that might be present in your environment. Yeah that's why. 

[00:05:25] Christa Biegler, RD: This is going to be beautiful because we will loop around to, that's something I definitely want to cover today is really fortifying and supporting those cells against stress.

[00:05:32] Christa Biegler, RD: But before we do, let's talk a little bit more about microbes really becoming dormant until you get stressed, which you just talked about. But what do you think about my concept of, hey, you have this in the past, it comes back up. But wouldn't you say. Another way to ask this or tee up this question is that sometimes when people have sickness, before you know it, they're diagnosed with everything.

[00:05:53] Christa Biegler, RD: And really your story probably isn't too different from that. It was like you started with whatever and then eventually someone gave you a Lyme diagnosis. So one really tricky thing is everyone wishes there was just like a test that they could take that would tell them what's exactly wrong with them, and I just find that's not actually the case in general.

[00:06:09] Christa Biegler, RD: Maybe you're going to get a Lyme response from a test, but maybe you're going to need a different test. So what would you say about why does it feel like people, when they have one thing, have everything? 

[00:06:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, 

[00:06:22] Christa Biegler, RD: it's actually 

[00:06:24] Bill Rawls, MD: pretty easy to answer logically. And that test you're looking for, the test I'm looking for is not what you're ill with or what the diagnosis is.

[00:06:34] Bill Rawls, MD: The test that I'm looking for is. Why are you ill? Because that is the key to getting well. And that's a mistake we make. I don't even use that concept of diagnosis in chronic illness very much anymore. It's really good for acute illness, you break your leg and we want to know where it's broken, so we need that diagnosis.

[00:06:54] Bill Rawls, MD: Or you have a blocked artery in your heart, we need to know which artery it is. We need to know the right diagnosis so we can acutely. intervene and fix that problem. But when you become chronically ill, it's not one thing or one spot in your body that's been acutely offended. It's everything that's breaking down.

[00:07:17] Bill Rawls, MD: And that's the nature of chronic illness compared to acute illness. If someone is healthy, it's because they're sick. All their cells are healthy. We're beings of cells. We're made of cells. Everything that happens in our body is a function of cells. And what sickness is when our cells become sick.

[00:07:37] Bill Rawls, MD: Our cells become sick because they become stressed. And we can get into the various different stress factors. But our cell, when our cells become sick, it's generally, it's not stress that's affecting one cell or one site type of cell, like an acute injury, like falling off a ladder and breaking your leg.

[00:07:57] Bill Rawls, MD: It's stress factors that are affecting every cell in your body. So it's not surprising that in chronic illness. You're going to have a lot of different kinds of symptoms and and we can get in a little bit deeper of why somebody might have certain symptoms over another time kind of symptom.

[00:08:16] Bill Rawls, MD: But that's why, basically the whole body, all the cells in the body are being affected by stress and are breaking down and their functions are being compromised so that we become basically sick all over. 

[00:08:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Let's talk a little bit about why people have some symptoms versus another, because in medicine, we do do this a little bit backward.

[00:08:36] Christa Biegler, RD: The only thing people care about is the thing that they have, and something I like to share with people is that sometimes because of our predispositions if I have an increase of toxic burden, it'll show up on my skin. If one of my colleagues has an increase in her toxic burden, it'll show up as anxiety or maybe even massive brain fog or things like that.

[00:08:54] Christa Biegler, RD: So let's talk about how symptoms Kind of similar root causes, but present differently in humans. 

[00:08:59] Bill Rawls, MD: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we'll go down the list and we will talk about two modifiers that are really super important that ultimately determine what kind of chronic illness or how someone will become chronically ill.

[00:09:17] Bill Rawls, MD: When you look at our cells, You can think of them as little microscopic machines that do work. Every cell in the body has a job. Your thyroid cells are producing thyroid hormone. Your adrenal cells are producing adrenal hormone. Your heart cells are making that heart pump. Brain cells are firing impulses.

[00:09:38] Bill Rawls, MD: So every cell has a job. Those jobs are different, but the basic parts of the cell, how that little microscopic machine is constructed, it's basically the same for every cell. It's just the parts have been modified. So when you look at them as machines, all machines have certain operating requirements or qualifications to function properly.

[00:10:04] Bill Rawls, MD: And this gives you the root of how we become ill or what defines wellness. So all cells need basically five things. They need the right nutrients. Our cells need specific nutrients so they can function. So they have, you can generate energy, build proteins. All the functions of the cell require vitamins and minerals and different cells require different things like.

[00:10:34] Bill Rawls, MD: Thyroid, you need some iodine. Heart cells burn mainly fat. So it's varied, but if you're eating a whole food diet, your cells, you're feeding all of your cells the nutrients they need to function. Cells need a clean environment. We talked about mycotoxins, but think about all the other pollutants in our environment, in our air, in our water, in our food.

[00:10:54] Bill Rawls, MD: food more than ever before. And basically, these things compromise cellular functions. They basically, it's like throwing sand in the machinery of the cell. Cell keeps working, but it has to work harder to get the same job done, and it uses a lot more energy, and it burns out faster. So clean environment, really important.

[00:11:16] Bill Rawls, MD: Downtime. Our cells work hard. They get a lot of wear and tear. They have to repair that. That's one of the cool things about our cells. So repairing that wear and tear that comes from working is the foundation of healing. It's really important, but they need downtime to do that. Now, some cells like our heart cells rest in between beats and recover in between beats.

[00:11:41] Bill Rawls, MD: That's why our heart cells are so vulnerable, but most of our cells. need good downtime, very specifically, eight hours of sleep at night and intervals of rest during the day to recover. So if you're getting six hours of sleep in a night, all of your cells are starting with a deficit the next day. They haven't recovered from the day before and that's how we're built.

[00:12:06] Bill Rawls, MD: So it's really important. So that's number three. Number four. They need good blood flow and that comes from being physically active. So they need good blood flow to deliver nutrients and oxygen and wash away neutral, wash away toxic waste that's built out that the cells are trying to purge. But if you're too physically active or in that category trauma, that affects your cells adversely in a different way.

[00:12:36] Bill Rawls, MD: That's four factors. Those are the big ones right there. And the fifth one is the micro factor. And we can get into that a little bit deeper. And that's one of those variables that defines what illness we might get. 

[00:12:51] Christa Biegler, RD: All right, let's talk about that. The micro factor determining what illness we might get. 

[00:12:56] Bill Rawls, MD: Yeah, we're all aware of the big bad things that might come and get us like a Ebola virus. Things that are highly threatening because everybody that gets them becomes deathly ill. And the fact of the matter is the things that cause us the most stress and harm are the things that really fly under the radar that don't make us very sick.

[00:13:22] Bill Rawls, MD: And that's an observation that I made about tick-borne illnesses. chronic Lyme disease. If you talk to an average person with chronic Lyme disease and ask them, do you remember getting sick around the time of a tick bite? They'll say no. And a lot of them don't even remember a tick bite. And then what that tells you is that This is a low grade pathogen that doesn't win by aggression.

[00:13:46] Bill Rawls, MD: It wins by stealth. And this is true of all the tick borne microbes, but so many other things that we're exposed to. Mycoplasmas, Chlamydias, Epstein Bars, loads of different viruses. These things get in our system, and their mission isn't to overwhelm us and make us sick. Their mission is To have a presence, to become part of our body, become ill fitting residents of our body.

[00:14:16] Bill Rawls, MD: That's true of Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia, all these things we talk about and they do that in very sophisticated ways. So when they enter the body, a lot of times we don't even know they've entered or we have just what feels like a mild flu or something like that. And we think when the symptoms are resolved, it's We're not sick anymore.

[00:14:39] Bill Rawls, MD: That microbe's gone. The immune system is eliminated. So what my research over the past decade is just combing through all the studies that have been done has revealed is that's not how it happens. These things can bypass the immune system. Just a few of the microbes. All they need is a few to get through.

[00:14:59] Bill Rawls, MD: And when they do, they seed our body in various ways. They invade our cells. And if our cells are healthy, they can become dormant inside the cell. Basically just wall themselves off and hang out. And they can stay that way for weeks, months, years. Maybe many years. So this is happening throughout our lifetime.

[00:15:24] Bill Rawls, MD: Things invade our red blood cells our heart cells, our joint cells. And the accumulating evidence is really fascinating that this is happening with a lot of different kinds of microbes. Some researchers are calling it the dormant blood and tissue microbiome. And they're just there, and if you're healthy, if you've got health, good health habits, you're following those other parameters, you're eating a great diet, you're not exposed to toxic substances, you're getting plenty of sleep, you exercise regularly, your cells are healthy, these things can accumulate in your body and never give you any problems.

[00:16:02] Bill Rawls, MD: But chronically eat a bad diet or do like I did and take night call and not sleep every second to third night for 20 years and, just push that stress button over and over again, you cause cellular weakness throughout the body. And that allows these microbes to reactivate. When they do, they basically consume that cell, emerge, they blow that cell open, and they emerge and start invading other cells in the body.

[00:16:31] Bill Rawls, MD: At that point, the immune system sees this and goes, Oh my, we can't have this happen. And it starts attacking the cells that they're emerging from. Which is that autoimmune component. We all have some autoimmunity. This is going on at a low level in everybody. I liken it to a pot boiling on the stove.

[00:16:49] Bill Rawls, MD: It's like we're all at a really low simmer. So we have some of this going on. And but if our health habits are good, we stay at a low simmer. But throw on a little bit of heat with a bad diet and not sleeping and other kinds of just stress factors you're not expecting. And that thing starts boiling more and more until it reaches the point that I call the boiling point that you've got enough microbe reactivation going on in your body that it's fueling tissue destruction that's causing more microbe reactivation and it becomes a vicious cycle.

[00:17:24] Bill Rawls, MD: That's what chronic Lyme is. But that's what every chronic illness is, and we have differences because different microbes have preference for invading different cells in the body. So it's like Borrelia likes likes nerve cells cells that that harbor myelin, the substance that insulates our nerves.

[00:17:49] Bill Rawls, MD: And It likes collagen, so it's affecting our joints and our joint produce our joint cells, called chondrocytes. Bartonella, another one you hear about, it's invading cells that bind blood vessels. Different cell, different microbes. A little bit of it is What kind of microbes you pick up in your lifetime?

[00:18:10] Bill Rawls, MD: So that completes the five main causes And you can trace any chronic illness multiple sclerosis I've done it with virtually everything out there and you'll find a microbe component That's potential and you'll find all those other stress factors that are contributing So the other factor is genetics.

[00:18:31] Bill Rawls, MD: So I don't put it at genetics as a cause of illness. It can be in rare conditions where people have, a lethal a lethal mutation. and they can't survive it. But most people, we all have genes that are off, that we have mutations. But what these things do are define how well we tolerate various kinds of stress factors.

[00:18:55] Bill Rawls, MD: So you mentioned, one person may become diabetic. Another person may get really bad anxiety, and it's how our genes define how we tolerate different stress factors as we go through life. So that's the genetic component. So genetics and which microbes you pick up are the two wild cards that define.

[00:19:16] Bill Rawls, MD: Which way things are going to go but it's pretty fascinating when you look at that as a pretty compact explanation for chronic illness because it gives you pretty direct solutions. You've got to find out some way to put a cap on these microbes and we'll talk about that. Eat a better diet, get sleep, clean environment, these five factors.

[00:19:38] Bill Rawls, MD: Everything comes down to those five factors. 

[00:19:41] Christa Biegler, RD: So what people are going to wonder is. And you're talking about these co infections for Lyme and we talked about this before, there's the Western blot for Lyme, and then sometimes that's not gonna, I think this is right, I'm not sure, pick up the very historical Lyme, or there's testing incongruencies in general, and I think you and I agree, it's you care about Yeah.

[00:20:03] Christa Biegler, RD: What the infection is for a while and then after a while, you don't care about it because you just want the symptoms to go away. So the first part of the question is, does it matter which microbes you pick up exactly? Because sometimes, I feel that there's a lot of things I could not figure out for a client.

[00:20:20] Christa Biegler, RD: But, and I've seen, as you have, all types of weird things. In the last few weeks, I've had, I've seen three people waking up in the middle of the night in a dead, very spot from taking anti parasiticals. Now. It's funny because I don't really remember. I know lots of sleep disturbances can happen because of toxic burden and microbe imbalances, et cetera, and the downstream effects of that.

[00:20:48] Christa Biegler, RD: But it's just so funny sometimes when it's no, when on this particular This herbal product. They are wide awake at 3 a. m. And I'm like, I'm sure there's a common denominator here that I cannot put a finger on. So the question is, does it matter which microbes you pick up or how you're treating it?

[00:21:06] Christa Biegler, RD: And how are you addressing this in practice if you, you're going to the root of the cell, so you're not necessarily, I'm just making assumptions. I'm assuming you're not, and I know you don't see clients anymore, but we'll just talk hypothetically. Yeah. I assume you wouldn't go testing for all these different organisms because, and that's what people want to do, right?

[00:21:24] Christa Biegler, RD: Like they want to know what thing is causing their exact problem. And so I know you just unraveled that, but I want to make sure I address that question. Does it matter which microbe it is? 

[00:21:37] Bill Rawls, MD: Yeah, this is always a tough one because we do want to know as much as we can know. The problem is what we can know is not enough to completely solve the problem and where we may be with microbe testing 10 years or 20 years from now may be very different than where we are now.

[00:21:56] Bill Rawls, MD: You have to think about. microbe testing specifically, it's designed for acute infection. So when the bacteria, virus, protozoa, whatever, first enters your body, there's an acute reaction by the immune system and that's what And the strategy of the microbe includes growth. It's trying to grow as much as it can while it has that opportunity so it can seed the body as quickly as it can with as many microbes as possible.

[00:22:27] Bill Rawls, MD: And the immune system is trying to stop that from happening. So that's an acute infection. And during that, so the two types of testing that we have are testing directly for either DNA testing or RNA testing, looking for evidence of the microbe specifically, remnants, parts of the microbe whether you're looking for the whole microbe under a microscope or looking for parts of it using chemical analysis, that's one way to test, and a lot of the testing is moving more toward that or our antibody, our immune system reaction to that, but all of that is present in the bloodstream.

[00:23:08] Bill Rawls, MD: Think about it differently. That has long passed. Your opportunity, and you probably didn't get sick, that happened a long time ago. So now these things have been present in your body, and they're not coursing through the bloodstream. The immune system isn't reacting in the same way. They've invaded your cells, they're dormant inside your cells, and they're reactivating in waves.

[00:23:34] Bill Rawls, MD: And, you're here just whenever they can. So the immune system reaction is different and the presence of micro particles or microbes in the bloodstream is different. It's not as great. So that's one factor, just testing for a chronic situation is very different than a testing for an acute infection.

[00:23:56] Bill Rawls, MD: The other thing is, think about it this way. 50 years ago, nobody had ever heard of Borrelia. We didn't know about it. A few experts around the world knew about this thing called Borrelia, but the average person, we didn't know anything about Borrelia. There weren't any labs testing for Borrelia.

[00:24:15] Bill Rawls, MD: Nobody had heard of Lyme disease. And so we found this one bacteria, but interestingly, even Dr. Bergdorfer, who isolated Borrelia, even though he was confident that it caused the EM rash, the bullseye rash, he also was finding Rickettsia species in the original Lyme serums from the people in Lyme, Connecticut.

[00:24:38] Bill Rawls, MD: And speculation in his later notes was he was thinking that the Rickettsia species was actually what caused a lot of the symptoms. So I think that's fascinating. So even back then, it's maybe it's not just one microbe. Maybe it's a lot of them working together. So when I wrote my book, Unlocking Lyme in 2017, we had identified 12 species of Borrelia worldwide.

[00:25:02] Bill Rawls, MD: That's up to 21 now. Every so many years. And first it was. A couple, three species of Bartonella, that we knew about. Wait a minute, Bartonella is present in virtually every mammal species on Earth and a lot of them endemically, and now we know there are dozens and dozens, and we're finding more and more in people who are chronically ill.

[00:25:25] Bill Rawls, MD: Okay, and then there's all the Rickettsias and all these things, and my list is well over a hundred species of things that can cause these kind of chronic symptoms. So do we test for all of them? Hundreds of microbes that we test for? Possibilities? And then there are tests that have been done around the world.

[00:25:51] Bill Rawls, MD: There are about a half a dozen tests where they took blood from healthy people. And they did special RNA testing to look for sequences of bacteria that could be dormant inside red blood cells. And at every single test, every single person, they found hundreds of species of bacteria inside red blood cells.

[00:26:14] Bill Rawls, MD: Other tests, autopsies of the brains have found hundreds of species of bacteria inside brains of people. And So you start looking at that and a lot of them actually come from the gut, the skin. So it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and it's like, how do you target all that? You target it with herbs because herbs have such a wide spectrum

[00:26:40] Bill Rawls, MD: that's really important. 

[00:26:42] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, and I love herbs but I think this brings up a question that we encounter every once in a while in practice. I think it's just with the wave up and down sometimes. So I see a lot of mold and the question is like, why is this such a problem? Is it because of our awareness of it?

[00:26:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Is it because of building materials? They talked about mold in the Bible. So the real question is avoidance versus living with it. And I think you've already answered we are already living with things. The thing that I. Have not fully come to grips with is I I have fully come to terms with this.

[00:27:16] Christa Biegler, RD: We don't want to run and be stressed by something because that anything that causes stress. It works against us. But that is, that can be an immediate thing because there's a lot of scary stuff on the internet. And so I always try to be the chill person, helping people clear out their cells and fortify and provide nutrition, but do you have any comments about avoidance versus living with it?

[00:27:38] Christa Biegler, RD: And then we'll get into the good stuff, which is fortifying those cells. You've just been telling us that basically the health of the cell is the most important part. And I. Okay. completely agree with you. If you, this is like resilience 101. And I think we're not looking for perfection.

[00:27:52] Christa Biegler, RD: We're looking for resilience ultimately. So I want to talk about resilience with herbs and how you fortify and support the cells. 

[00:28:00] Bill Rawls, MD: It is you Creating an environment inside the body that promotes cellular health also helps suppress the microbes, but once you've crossed that boiling point I talked about, there's enough cellular destruction, and that vicious cycle is going on.

[00:28:16] Bill Rawls, MD: You do need something to really keep it going. tamp down that microbe stress to allow the body to get a handle on it again. But you have to have something that you can use really for months, years that doesn't threaten cellular integrity and preferably will help restore cellular integrity. So the only thing that can really do that is herbs.

[00:28:41] Bill Rawls, MD: But environment, living with things, living around things, we've all had to do that. I became ill because of 20 years of high stress, high call, not sleeping had to give up practicing obstetrics which kind of left me with, okay, I've still got to have, something to generate revenue.

[00:29:03] Bill Rawls, MD: So I started a practice that didn't require the night call just a primary care practice by myself. The only place in town was a building that I had to buy, and it was just, there was a shortage of real estate at that time. So I bought this old building, moved in, started this practice with the idea of creating a wellness practice, and and I'm in the middle of this and trying to recover myself and realize this whole building is full of mold, and I lived in that building and practiced in that building for a decade, and I got my health back in that building going to work every day.

[00:29:44] Bill Rawls, MD: And I couldn't afford to really do a mold remediation. So I did the things that I could do. We, we periodically did ozone on the weekends when nobody was there to cut down on the mold spores. And we ran defumidifiers in the crawl space and I ran essential oils and all different kinds of filters just to filter the air. And I learned to live around the mold problem and actually recovered my health while I was there. Because I was doing all the other things right. I was on a great diet. I gradually was able to restore reasonable sleep. That's it. That was that took a long time.

[00:30:23] Bill Rawls, MD: I really lost the ability to sleep. I took the herbs. I did all the right things that I could do. And that's what I tell people, it's I've had people come to me and say they've told me, unless I get these amalgam fillings out of my mouth, I'm never going to get well. And I know that's going to be a major expense, major work and a certain amount of risk.

[00:30:45] Bill Rawls, MD: And it's Okay. Let's do all the other things first. Let's get you on a decent diet. Let's get you sleeping. Let's get you on some herbs. Let's do all these things that are obvious to do and get you headed in the right direction. And if you regain your health completely, great.

[00:31:04] Bill Rawls, MD: You may not have to cross that bridge, but if you don't, then you're going to be better prepared to tolerate the stress that's associated with that. So I think that's important is. do the obvious things. I've had so many people come in and say, I've been diagnosed with Lyme disease.

[00:31:24] Bill Rawls, MD: I've got all these terrible symptoms. Should I do antibiotics? Should I do ozone? Should I fly to Germany and get hyperbaric hyperthermia and all of these things? And it's and we go through the thing and it's But you're only sleeping five hours a night and you're never going to get well until you get your sleep back.

[00:31:44] Bill Rawls, MD: Let's work on your sleep first before you do all that other stuff, because that's the most important thing. And so I think that's really important, an important message for anyone out there. is do these obvious things first. They're the most important. So often people are chasing labs and chasing therapies and they end up in just this vicious cycle of chasing one thing, getting transient benefits, chasing something else, and it just goes on and on and it's build your body.

[00:32:17] Bill Rawls, MD: back better. Do the things that are required to restore cellular health and you're going to spend a lot more money and you're going to have a higher probability of getting well. 

[00:32:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Let's talk about things that support cellular health. But because a very significant portion of the population struggles with sleep tell us two or three things that were really important for you to regain your sleep because it took you a while.

[00:32:44] Christa Biegler, RD: You had to do a lot of trial and error. 

[00:32:46] Bill Rawls, MD: There were things and I was in a pretty desperate situation that I, when I was still working I made the mistake, even though I, I had been very cautious in my practice about prescribing sleep medications, I was desperate because I was still having to take call and I wasn't sleeping when I wasn't on call.

[00:33:06] Bill Rawls, MD: And a neurologist wrote me a prescription for a sleep medication which at first was a charm. I didn't use it when I wasn't on call, but when I was on call, but I used it when I was off call so I could sleep and recover. Quickly became habituated with it. Within six months, it stopped working completely, and I was in a very desperate place.

[00:33:28] Bill Rawls, MD: position. That's when I had to stop doing obstetrics. Because of those medications, I truly lost the ability to sleep. And getting, four to six hours of broken sleep a night was a chore. But at the same time, I had all these symptoms that I related to what I defined as chronic Lyme disease.

[00:33:49] Bill Rawls, MD: And there's another variable that I think is really important. When we look at Symptoms. There are two components to symptoms, and they're all related to cells. So when cells are stressed or injured, they release substances that activate nerves. that tell the brain something's wrong. We feel it as discomfort or pain.

[00:34:13] Bill Rawls, MD: The other thing is you lose that function. Those cells can't work as well. You lose whatever or that function is compromised in the body. But think about that. You've got You know this frenzy of microbes inside your body invading cells throughout your body, just massive cellular distress throughout your whole body.

[00:34:34] Bill Rawls, MD: All of those cells are constantly 24 7 sending distress signals to your brain. And what that does is it causes your brain to go into perpetual fight or flight mode that we call sympathetic overactivity. And when that happens, our cortisol is higher, our adrenaline is high, and that's a factor that's driving the sleep.

[00:34:58] Bill Rawls, MD: When you look at solutions, the only thing that's going to really block that symptom is a strong drug. But the problem with them is everybody becomes quickly habituated and then they stop working. When you look for natural therapy supplements, that sort of thing. They're just not strong enough to interrupt that really strong response.

[00:35:20] Bill Rawls, MD: And I was in the middle of that, so the thing that ultimately helped my sleep the very, very most was taking the antimicrobial herbs because they were stopping the micro frenzy and allowing my cells to recover. And when my cells started recovering, they stopped sending those distress signals and I was able to calm my brain.

[00:35:42] Bill Rawls, MD: Now, in the meantime, I practiced meditation. I did qigong yoga. I had all kinds. I had a device called a muse to help me learn how to meditate. And those things helped. I've also heard reports that anything that really is a calming cellular distress, calming inflammation, red light therapy PMF therapy, all of these things can help sleep because they're indirectly helping cells in some way.

[00:36:15] Bill Rawls, MD: So the solution to all symptoms. is calming the cellular distress. So when you start doing that, then the symptoms gradually resolve, no matter what they are. But that can take months, so sometimes drugs, sometimes all of these other practices can be beneficial just to live with the symptom enough that you can get to the point where you can really get that healing process going. 

[00:36:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Let's talk about really loving on these cells. To me, when people come in and they are reacting to everything, I absolutely agree with you that there's microbe frenzy that needs to be corrected, and also there's a lot of depletion going on. And so sometimes I really feel like I've got to do nourishment of the cells with nutrients.

[00:37:09] Christa Biegler, RD: I often am using nutrients and herbs can be sources of nutrients. If we're talking about really supporting a cell that's freaking out and just wants a lot of nourishment, what are some of the things you would start with? 

[00:37:23] Christa Biegler, RD: So a while back my college aged daughter shared with me that she was tossing and turning and waking up several times per night after a period of stress. We started her on magnesium and her sleep immediately improved. I personally think magnesium should be your first thing to try if you're having trouble sleeping or staying asleep, especially tossing and turning, and it's a no brainer if you have any restless leg issues.

[00:37:48] Christa Biegler, RD: The thing about magnesium is that there's a lot of types of magnesium that will give you symptomatic relief, but I like to steer my clients and loved ones to a more absorbable form of magnesium, because most big box magnesium is magcitrate, and that will push bowels, but it can be damaging to your teeth if it's used daily and it's not the most absorbable.

[00:38:07] Christa Biegler, RD: Rather, Jigsaw Health makes one of my favorite great tasting magnesium powders +called++ MagSue that has magnesium glycinate, my favorite calming and absorbable type of magnesium. It's available in both a great tasting powder and to go packets, and they also make a product that's great for slow release, especially if you have restless legs, called MagSRT.

[00:38:29] Christa Biegler, RD: So, If you are not falling asleep easily or if you have disrupted sleep, you can try at least 200 milligrams of great magnesium like MagSoothe or MagSRT, especially if you have restless legs. It works better to take this at least 20 minutes before you go to bed to allow it to kick in and you can get a on All of Jigsaw's amazing products, including MagSooth at Jigsaw Health with the code LESSSTRESS10.

[00:38:54] Christa Biegler, RD: Now you can use LESSSTRESS10 as many times as you want with every order at Jigsaw Health, which is honestly pretty unheard of with coupon codes. So enjoy the magnesium from Jigsaw with my code LESSSTRESS10.

[00:39:09] Bill Rawls, MD: Yeah. To mildly correct you, herbs are a really poor source of nutrients.

[00:39:15] Bill Rawls, MD: That's not what we're getting from the herb. And I think it's important for people to recognize the value of an herbal remedy or therapy and when, and the value of nutrients. Our cells need things to function. They need carbohydrates, fats, amino acids, vitamins, minerals. Different cells need a slightly different spectrum of those things.

[00:39:39] Bill Rawls, MD: They need those things to do their job, to do their functions. And a part of that is generating energy. Part of it is generating new parts constantly as things wear out. So they're turning over things and that is, done by a process called autophagy that the cell is very frugally pulling those worn out parts, saving the parts of the molecules that can be reused.

[00:40:08] Bill Rawls, MD: bringing in new molecules as needed to constantly rebuild and refresh the inside of the cell so the cell can work properly. So nutrients are what does that. So the first place to get your nutrients are from diet because a broad spectrum whole food diet, whole foods are whole cells. So it's like an apple has a lot of carbohydrate.

[00:40:35] Bill Rawls, MD: But all that carbohydrate is inside cells. And when you eat it, you're breaking down all of those cells. So you're getting the cell walls and all the other nutrients inside those cells. So if you're eating a wide spectrum, a diverse whole food diet, that's weighted heavily toward vegetables, You're getting a lot of nutrients that are supplying your cells with exactly what they need.

[00:41:02] Bill Rawls, MD: But when someone's who's chronically ill, especially if they have digestive dysfunction, they may not be getting all those things. So nutrients like specific vitamins, especially your B vitamins minerals, those kinds of things can be. beneficial just to supplement that diet, to make sure that your cells are getting what they need.

[00:41:25] Bill Rawls, MD: So I think that's super valuable. What the herbs are doing is not supplying nutrients as much as the phytochemistry of the plant. What these chemicals, when we take an herb, we're basically taking the plant's chemical defense and regulatory systems. So these are chemicals that are designed to protect cells from not only microbes, a wide variety of microbes, but also free radicals, toxic substances, radiation, the whole list of stress factors.

[00:41:59] Bill Rawls, MD: Most herbs actually have substances that protect ourselves from carbohydrate overload. It's amazing what kind of protection you get, but we also are getting the regulatory chemicals of the herb that the herb is the plant is basically using chemicals to coordinate all the cellular functions within the plant.

[00:42:24] Bill Rawls, MD: And nature uses, reuses a lot of things, so some of, many of those chemical messengers are very much like what we have in our body, the same kind of hormones and other chemical messengers that we use, so it tends to have a balancing effect, but it can have a stimulating effect, so you mentioned that Okay.

[00:42:45] Bill Rawls, MD: Some people don't tolerate certain or certain herbs. They act they make them more anxious or hyper, or they affect sleep. And that's true. And something that I found with many herbal companies, when they're creating formulas, they recognize that people have associated.

[00:43:06] Bill Rawls, MD: performance, whether something is working or not, of whether they get a drug like effect. So a lot of herbal companies put herbs in formulas that have a stimulating effect, or lately what I've seen is herbs that are slightly poisonous that give people What they think is a hurt time reaction. It's actually a reaction to the herb.

[00:43:27] Bill Rawls, MD: So that's something that I've done in my work is delineate the herbs that really have a low potential to have drug like effects, and there are a lot of good ones out there. So what I'm looking for is an. herb that is either mildly sedating or neutral, doesn't have drug like effects, isn't going to have any poisonous effects that mainly is protective.

[00:43:51] Bill Rawls, MD: It's protecting cells. And a lot of that is our adaptogens. Many of our adaptogens But there are stimulating adaptogens like ginseng. I don't use it very much because it keeps people from sleeping. Eleuthera, Siberian ginseng is another one. So I don't use very much of that herb. So I think you have to be careful about the choices that you make, recognizing that plants are using different strategies for solving problems or regulating their cellular functions.

[00:44:22] Bill Rawls, MD: So it's really important to be careful. Be careful about which herb you're doing 

[00:44:27] Christa Biegler, RD: for sure. I actually agree with you. But because you're the herb guy, I was treading lightly. I actually think that we need nutrients next to herbs and we agree on that too. And I tend to think nutrients go first.

[00:44:38] Christa Biegler, RD: I always think nutrients go first ahead of herbs. So if I'm trying to support the adrenals, I'm putting the nutrients and the minerals back before I'm ever using rhodiola or ashwagandha personally, I might be using them in tandem. But I might, I'm usually doing nutrients first because a very stressed cell usually doesn't have appropriate nutrients overall. 

[00:44:57] Bill Rawls, MD: Correct. 

[00:44:58] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. Is there any thought someone listened to this podcast and they learned that their health depends on their cellular health? I think that they could do a simple checklist, checking in on their own self care systems, but is there anything else you would want to tell someone if they were wondering, how do I know if my cells are compromised? 

[00:45:21] Bill Rawls, MD: Why do you have symptoms? That's really easy. I was doing an event for a group the other night, and it's how do I know if I'm getting well? What tests do I do to know if I'm getting well? It's you don't have to do that. Your cells are constantly talking to you, and if you have symptoms, it means your cells are stressed.

[00:45:39] Bill Rawls, MD: And if your symptoms are decreasing, and you feel well, and you're sleeping normally, and you wake up normally, and everything is working right, that tells you your cells are working. Your cells are always talking to you. Symptoms are how they communicate. So if you have symptoms, your cells are stressed.

[00:45:57] Bill Rawls, MD: And so working on regaining that cellular stress, your symptoms will gradually so when I look at this whole thing, symptoms are really a better guide of someone's health than any test on the planet. Much more accurate. 

[00:46:16] Christa Biegler, RD: I agree completely. I think it's just arriving at that and I'm sure when you started practicing, you didn't feel that way whatsoever. 

[00:46:24] Bill Rawls, MD: Oh, no. I'm, 

[00:46:25] Bill Rawls, MD: yeah. Yeah. I went through a phase of doing functional medicine where I was testing everything under the sun and, I just found the testing didn't help me that much and it cost a lot of money and I found the more I talked to the individual, the more I understood how they became ill, what factors came together, what factors were going on in their life to hold that illness in place, I didn't really need very much lab work.

[00:46:56] Bill Rawls, MD: I can't tell you the number of consults I've done where I have access to no labs and by the end of an hour and a half, someone says, you've told me more about my illness and I understand it better now than the 20 other doctors I've seen who spent no time with me. And I realized going through that process is hard, really.

[00:47:23] Bill Rawls, MD: getting down to the details. So healthcare providers have defaulted to using labs and other diagnostic modalities as a shortcut, as a scapegoat, for not actually talking to people. It's a real shame. We have a whole culture, a whole system that's built on labs and it's ridiculously expensive.

[00:47:48] Bill Rawls, MD: Right now in the world, the United States ranks at the very bottom of all developed countries. As far as the health of our citizens, we spend twice as much. on healthcare as any country on earth. That right there says we have this huge problem that we're not doing this thing right. 

[00:48:10] Christa Biegler, RD: And we have so many answers in nature as you have discovered for yourself and are endlessly excited about it.

[00:48:18] Christa Biegler, RD: Dr. Bill Rawls, where can people find you online? 

[00:48:22] Bill Rawls, MD: Probably the easiest place is VitalPlan. com. But I also have a website called RawlsMD. com. That is a good place to find me. There's lots of great information over there for about chronic illness and Lyme disease and other kinds of things there too. 

[00:48:39] Christa Biegler, RD: Cool. I'm glad to know your curiosity has not stopped. You are still learning and researching. 

[00:48:44] Bill Rawls, MD: I'll be learning 

[00:48:45] Bill Rawls, MD: until I can't learn anymore. 

[00:48:46] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I love it. And thank you for letting us learn from you. A pleasure to have you back. 

[00:48:52] Bill Rawls, MD: Thank you.