Marla Miller 0:35

Welcome back to Open Minded Healing. My guest today, Dr. Pamela Cipriano, specializes in complex chronic illness and advanced root cause diagnostics. After working in critical care and internal medicine for years, she witnessed countless patients with complex illnesses being dismissed or misdiagnosed or told their illness was psychological. This fueled her passion to become relentless in her pursuit of finding the root causes of disease so that patients would not continue to suffer needlessly. Her work has earned her multiple awards and recognition as a pioneering clinician. Today we're going to be focusing specifically on the topic of parasites and how this contributes to chronic illness and how you can learn to detect it and how to resolve it. Welcome, Dr. Cipriano.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 1:35

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Marla Miller 1:38

We are going to dive into something very specific today, but just in general, it's very interesting that you had this career overseeing and witnessing what happens when patients go into the clinical setting and they're struggling with so many symptoms and different doctors are telling them different things or just can't figure it out. Was it in the clinical space based on what you were seeing, or was there something else that drove your passion to investigate deeply, you know, when someone came in with something complex?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 2:17

So there were a couple of reasons that led me to where I am right now. Um, my son was misdiagnosed for 10 years, uh, the whole time he had had Lyme disease, and he eventually got a it's all in your head diagnosis. And it took me 10 years to try and figure out what was going on with him. His symptoms started at 19 after hernia surgery. And by the time he was 25, he had to learn to self-catheterize himself because the inflammation in his body was so severe that he could no longer urinate by himself. And then by the time he was 29, I finally found one research article after researching for 10 years in the Journal of Urology, and it had his exact symptoms. And I contacted the researcher, it was a case study, and he referred me to the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society, and that's when I found Dr. Richard Horowitz. I precepted with him, I went through all of his training and all, and I became an ILADS member. What is ILADS? It's the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society. So it is an internationally recognized organization that concentrates on tick-borne diseases. So Lyme disease and all the other possible diseases that one tick can carry. Aside from that, I had had issues with my thyroid, which I didn't know it was my thyroid. And for two and a half years, I must have seen 10 different doctors, and nobody could figure out what was going on with me. My whole thing was, I kept saying I couldn't breathe. But every time I said that, I was pointing at my throat. And being a woman, what they heard was, oh, she's anxious. So she must have anxiety. And she's pointing at her neck saying, I can't breathe. But I felt like I was being strangled. And in certain symptoms, when you're really stressed out, you can feel like there's a band around your neck, and that is anxiety. This was different. I got to a point where I was telling people that what I'm coughing up looks like flesh is coming out into the tissue. Like it looked like a part of my body was being just disintegrated and coming up while I was coughing. And meanwhile, my mom had died young. She was only 59. I was in my 20s when she died of lung cancer. She never smoked a day in her life. There was no real reason for her to develop stage four lung cancer. And so that was my biggest concern because I had two small children at home. I didn't know what was going on with me. I was out of work at this point. I was home on disability. And um, I was totally misdiagnosed and just ignored pretty much until I finally passed out in the shower. I knew that day I was gonna end up in the hospital again and went to take a shower. And my 13-year-old son at the time found me and called 911. And that singable episode saved my life. So I was actually getting suffocated to death. My thyroid was growing into my trachea, and that's when I was coughing up. Like I was saying, I was literally coughing up pieces of my thyroid. And uh when they did the surgery, they said it was it was literally gelatinous, like there was nothing left to it. And so there was a tiny little cancer when they did the biopsy of the thyroid. It was only a two millimeters, but that tiny cancer actually took over the form of the thyroid. So my thyroid levels weren't horrible. You would expect a thyroid that was so diseased to not be able to create any thyroid hormone, but the thyroid cancer actually takes over the production of the thyroid hormone. So it was very strange. Nobody put their hands on my neck, nobody did an ultrasound. You know, nobody investigated when I'm saying I can't breathe, and I'm pointing at my throat why this is happening. Every one of them just assumed it was anxiety. So I really listen to people when they tell me something. I really listen to where they've been, you know, what's happened in their life, what got them to my office. Because by the time you get to my office, you've already seen countless doctors. And I feel like I'm like a last stop shop. I feel so badly for them because I know what it felt like for myself not to know what was going on with me. And for my son for 10 years, you know, no answers until I could finally figure out what was going on. So I treat every patient that comes in my door like they're my family member. And I did the same thing when I was an ICU nurse, you know, they were literally family to me, and that's how I cared for them.

Marla Miller 6:14

That's amazing. Well, thank goodness for people like you who go beyond, you know, go beyond the typical protocol. And sometimes it does take something personal happening to you to spur that on, you know, that drive. But that's incredible. The two situations you had.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 6:31

Yeah, it was it was scary in both ways. And you know, after my, I think it was my first or second conference at the International Alignment Associated Disease Society, I just started asking people around me how did they get involved? And it was always a family member that was just misdiagnosed for so long. And then they had to take matters into their own hands to try and figure out what was going on with them. And they realized that you know, tick-borne diseases was a real huge problem that is completely ignored in this country, completely ignored.

Marla Miller 6:59

Well, now Lyme is it's becoming much more prevalent and also more recognized than it was in the past. I'll say, I mean, it still has, I think, a long way to go. But the topic today that we're gonna be diving into, which also causes complex issues with people and health situations that are difficult to diagnose, is parasites. So this is something I think that doesn't get talked about a lot and it's hard to diagnose. I think partially because people just don't want to feel like they have something weird in their body like a parasite. So they don't want to even acknowledge it, but it is very prevalent as well, right? As a concern for health.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 7:52

It's uh very prevalent, and it's another thing that's very misunderstood and ignored. So in the United States, doctors are under the impression that unless you leave the country, you're not going to get parasites. And that statement is actually in the guidelines. And I am not a big person to follow guidelines. I will use them literally as a guideline, but that is not the Bible for me. It's literally a guideline. And so when I have a patient who has all of these very nuanced symptoms, they're passing parasites, they're bringing them into my office along with pictures of what it looked like when it first came out of them, vomiting roundworms, you know, scabs on their head from parasites. And these people have been to so many doctors. And as soon as they're asked if you left the country, and they say no, they're completely ignored. It can't be a parasite. Well, guess what? There is no border control in the United States to prevent parasites from crossing our borders. It just doesn't exist. And so, yeah, we are the United States, and yes, we do have parasites in this country. So it can come from anything from undercooked meat, it can be from uh fruits and vegetables, it can be contracted from our animals, our pets. I mean, there's a lot of different reasons why people end up with parasites. I've had people who've gotten bitten by ticks and ended up with round worms. The vast majority of people who do get a tick bite and they do end up with parasites is going to be a round worm. Dr. Beroscano is one of the founding members of the International Lyman Associated Disease Society. And he said something really interesting. He and I had done a program together in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and he had said that getting bitten by a tick is like getting jabbed by the dirtiest needle on earth. I told him I was going to steal that because that was so telling of what happens when you get bit by a tick. They're not an insect that bites you and dies like other insects do. They're external parasites. They feed off of people, they feed off of animals, they feed off of carcasses, they feed off of anything that might still have a blood supply. And so think about anything on earth that can possibly have parasites. You know what I mean? So I don't know if they're withdrawing ovum from the animal or person they bit last and then injecting it into you. But I do know is that a lot of people with tick-borne diseases that have come to my office end up with brown worms.

Marla Miller 10:20

Yeah, it's interesting. The tick, what'd you call it? An outside parasite, an external parasite. External parasite. So there are so many different types of parasites, right? And there's so many. And to identify them, I know they can give a stool test, right? And they have a certain number of parasites that that will identify, but that's very limited.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 10:44

It's very limited, and the vast majority of the time, you're going to get a false negative. I I have never gotten a positive result on a parasite test unless it was sent out to a specialty lab. Because our local labs, Lab Corp, Quest, hospital labs, they don't employ parasitologists. And unless you're really trained in parasites, you really don't know what they look like. And so I have sent in tape arms, I've sent in liver flukes. I had a nurse practitioner student who was with me during one of her semesters. And her major in her undergraduate degree was parasites for parasitology. And as soon as she saw the pictures of the parasites, she knew exactly what they were. When the patient brought the parasites in, I sent them right off to, I don't know if it was Quest or Lab Corp, but all they could tell me was it was a biologic, and they couldn't, they couldn't say it was a parasite or not. I mean, I don't, I have not studied parasites, and it was clear as day that these were parasites. So that was very discouraging for me because, you know, I used to be this person who really trusted our government, never thought our government would do anything terrible to us at all. And once I opened up my own practice, I really learned the dark side of all governments, including our own. And I don't know why things happen the way they do. I have no explanation for that at all. But the amount of people who have a disease process and are just ignored, or there's no way to really identify it is very scary. It's a very scary time we're we're living in right now. It really is. Yeah, I agree.

Marla Miller 12:19

So as far as parasites go, let's talk about maybe some of the symptoms that come with parasites. And do people even, would they even know that something was off?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 12:31

So intestinal parasites, it's going to be a lot of bloating, explosive diarrhea, sometimes vomiting. Sounds like the stomach bug, sounds like the flu. It sounds like IBS. It sounds like so many other things that it could possibly be. And this is how people are misdiagnosed with these other things because they're giving a stool sample. The sample's getting sunk off to the lab. The lab is saying they can't find anything wrong with this person. There's no overparasites identified. And so the person is treated for something that they don't have, and they're not being treated for what they actually do have. And so now what I do is I'll send the stool sample off to other labs. Unfortunately, the patient has to pay for out of pocket. I tend to use there's doctor's data, there's mosaic. I have so many labs that I use that are outside of the normal laboratories that you would normally think of, but they're much better at identifying things, even like you know, tick-borne diseases, mold, and mycotoxins than the local labs are. And so once I get a diagnosis, I can treat the patient. If the patient isn't able to give me a really good stool sample or they can't afford any more money for the laboratories, sometimes I'll do a test dose of either albendazole or ivermectin. And nine out of 10 patients will see the parasites come out. If they don't have a very large parasite burden, um, they won't really see the parasites because the medication is designed to literally disintegrate the parasite before it even comes out of the body. But if you're really infiltrated with a lot of intestinal parasites or parasites in other areas of your body, a lot of times you will see it in the stool. And I've had people bring in, I mean, jars and jars. I'm I'm not even exaggerating of parasites that came out of either their eyes or their nose or their rectum while they were, you know, defecating. Believe it or not, it really isn't as unusual as it may sound. Because again, you know, most medical professionals in this country don't realize that there are parasites. A lot of times, you know, we even we carry parasites in our body and don't even realize it. Some of them are going to make us exceptionally sick, some of them are not going to really cause too much harm. But at the same time, it's good to get them out of your system because if they're not out of your system, they're feeding on the nutrients that you should be getting and you're not getting.

Marla Miller 14:49

That's a very good point that they're taking away your own nutrition. So even if they're not causing you pain or gut issues or something you can recognize and feel it's still an issue.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 15:02

So a really interesting case recently, it was a whole family that was infected with parasites. It started off with one person in the family. He and his sister worked together, and then she ended up getting them, and then kind of went from there. And her primary care referred her to a psychiatrist because he really did not think she had parasites. Whether they were tested, I have no idea. So I got a call from a psych APRN to find out about this and ask me if um she was having delusions. He said, because what she's what she's describing is so rare. And I said, it may be rare in your world. I said, but in my world, this is very common knowledge. I said, there's nothing rare about what she's experiencing. And I was explaining to him that her brother, who started this whole process, he had come to me first. And prior to being treated for parasites, when I did the physical examination, his left pupil was completely white out. It was a pacified. So there was no pupil there at all. When I tried to do the ophthalmological examination, I couldn't get a light reflex. I wasn't able to see the optic nerve. It was completely dead. I was referring him out to ophthalmologist. Um, I put him on the parasite cleanse, and I want to say two or three weeks later, he came back in for an evaluation. His pupil was back. The opacification had moved, and now it was on the iris rather than right over the pupil area itself. And so I'm I'm trying to explain this to him, and he was so uninterested. He just said, Well, I was calling for my patient, not the brother, but thanks for the information. And he hung up. That was the end of the conversation. I mean, if if I had called somebody to find out, is this real or is this imaginary? And I have the provider on the other end of the phone explaining something as amazing as what I just explained, I would want to know everything about it. I would be keeping that person on the phone for a good hour, just picking their brain. But that's the problem. If it's not in your specialty area or, you know, because we have decompartmentalized the entire body at this point in this country. It's like, well, we don't really care about that. I just wanted to know if she was delusional and if she happened to have parasites. So that was really interesting. But that patient was exceptionally interesting. He came back in and I actually did the uh smelling chart eye examination with him the first time. And the only thing he could see on the chart was the largest E was a black blob. He couldn't make it out at all. And then when he came back after he was on the parasite cleanse and his pupil was back, he said he was able to make out the E. It wasn't as clear as it was with the other eye, but he was actually able to make out the largest E. So there's something going on in his body, you know, that the parasite medication is actually helping. So he was on albendazole and he'll end up going back on it because now we have to treat for any ovum that are about to start hatching so that we can get rid of the next round of parasites. But I've had patients who they had a number of parasites in their body and just completely ignored from the mainstream provider because these are not things that are taught in school, unfortunately.

Marla Miller 18:12

Well, what's interesting is years ago, people used to take something for parasites. What was it they took? I can't remember what it was.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 18:20

My mom had said, no, this is when I was probably nine or 10 years old. She had said that when she was in school, in grade school, every year they were treated for parasites. Like every year they were. So why that stopped, I really don't know. But it really should definitely be something that we're still doing because parasites are going to cause a host of problems. If you think about, you know, we know about the tapeworms, how it can infect the intestines, undercooked meat, things like that. We're not getting all the nutrition that we need. Some people will be like they're just ravenous, they're starving, they're not gaining any weight. Well, that's a parasite problem that's really obvious, really in your face. But I'm talking about parasites that you don't even realize that you have. Like this gentleman that I saw with the pupil problem, he had like very spongy kind of skin. It's the best way for me to describe it. Almost like too much fluid on board, but not a demetis. It's like his appearance, his physical exam, there were things that were off, but very difficult to document because it wasn't so obvious that it was a parasite problem. Even the pupil, I just documented what I saw, you know, the first time and then the second time I had seen him. But he didn't have the average GI problems with the bloating, the gassiness, the constant belching and flatulence and explosive diarrhea. He didn't have any of those common things that you would see in parasites. So he was just a little bit more difficult to identify. So he did the albendazole, like I said, we'll be doing that again. And he'll most likely do ivermectin because ivermectin will pick up other types of parasites throughout the body. But I had one patient who, I mean, she was the one who was vomiting roundworms. She was passing in her stool tapeworms and liver flukes. And she had a provider get up and walk out of the office because he thought she was just crazy. I mean, he really did. He said that he said, if you haven't left this country, you do not have parasites.

Marla Miller 20:17

So we dismissed what was coming out of her.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 20:20

Yeah. Yeah. I actually called the parasitologist at Yale before I was actually treating parasites myself because it was my first patient and she brought me in the actual parasites, plus, she should show me the pictures and everything. And she was very good about it. I mean, I couldn't believe how calm she was because I would have been a hot mess. She actually put it next to like a Q tip to show how large it was. I mean, the things she did were just amazing. When she vomited the parasite, the uh round worms, you knew she wasn't making this up because exactly how she described it is exactly what would happen. She just got back from having lunch with her friend. She had had an espresso martini. She got in her house, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, no nausea, no nothing. She had a vomit and she couldn't make it to the toilet. So she made it to the sink in the bathroom. And she said she just knew she vomited, but this little tiny head poked out of the sink. And so when you pass around worms, whether you vomit them or they're going out in your stool, they're still alive. They die shortly afterwards, but they're still alive when they leave your body. And the fact that this actually happened to her, and she had the ability to take the plunger out of the sink and unwrap these worms that wrap themselves around the plunger and measure them.

Marla Miller 21:38

Oh my gosh.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 21:39

I don't even know where she got her courage from because I, first of all, I'd be passed out on the floor if I saw that come out of my body. Never mind getting a ruler out and actually measuring them. I mean, she's literally my hero. Every time I see her, I just still can't believe what she went through. And so she had already had the tapeworms, she already had the liver flukes, and I had already treated her for those, and then this happened. So I had to do so much research to figure out how to help her because she didn't leave the country. These were not parasites.

Marla Miller 22:09

Oh my gosh. It's one thing to have something go into the stool, but something coming out of your mouth like that.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 22:17

Didn't clean. Yep. Absolutely. And she said one was six inches, one was nine inches long. And I still can't believe that she was actually able to do that. So, like I actually had to put a schedule together for different medications at different times of the month for so many months in a row to be able to make sure that not only did we kill the parasites. That were in her body now, but also the parasites that would grow to be in her body. And so we had to get through all of those cycles. And very interestingly, she had what looked like arthritic hands. That went away, believe it or not. The bony deformities actually went away. The deformities, I had actually gotten an x-ray on her hands, and there was only one digit on her, her fifth digit actually showed that she looked like she might have had some arthritis there in the first joint. And when we got through the whole parasite cleanse, that was the only finger that was still deformed. Everything else was back to normal.

Marla Miller 23:11

Wow, that's incredible.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 23:12

Yeah, I the things I've seen are absolutely amazing. They really are.

Marla Miller 23:18

What happened with the sister? So the brother had the eye issue with the sister.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 23:23

She still she still had to come in. So anybody who comes to my office and has parasites also gets checked for any tick-borne diseases. And so we were waiting for her results to come back before I can treat her for everything. So she did have tick-borne diseases as well as the parasite. So, you know, whether she got everything from her brother or if she got something from a tick bite as well, I really don't have the answer to that. But either way, they both have to get treated for parasites now.

Marla Miller 23:46

So you're still treating I'm still treating them.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 23:49

That recently happened. Yeah. And the other sister who lives north in a different state is a vet tech. And so she actually came to the appointment because she was so afraid I was going to be like every other doctor and be so dismissive. And she just said, This is what we see in animals. Like the exact symptoms, exactly what we see in animals. And in animals, we treat parasites and people, we just don't treat them because it's the United States. Because it was literally the husband, the wife, the brother, the sister in my office at the same time. And like I said, when somebody tells me something, I personally feel like I have to prove that they're wrong rather than just think that they're wrong. You know, and I am not going to prove anybody wrong when they have all of this documented incidents that they're going through. You know, if anything, I'm going to be testing them and then treating them. So it's it's unfortunate what people have to go through.

Marla Miller 24:50

Well, it is interesting what you say about the vet and how they'll treat animals, but not people with parasites. There is that galaxy lab that was started by vets. They knew how to test for it. And so they turned it into testing for humans as well. And so that's one of the top places you can get a true diagnosis of tick-borne illnesses, right?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 25:13

I use galaxy labs for Bartonella. I use Igenics for Borelia, which is Lyme disease, tick-borne relapsing fever, which is all the other borellias, babisiosis. They have a panel, so it includes Bartonella. So I use Igenics for everything. But if the Bartonella comes back negative and the patient has all the symptoms of Bartonella, then I'll send the blood work out to Galaxy. Galaxy is much more accurate when it comes to Bartonella.

Marla Miller 25:39

Yeah, that's good for people to know. So, what other things have you seen when it comes to parasites as far as symptoms? Because, like you said, not everyone has this explosive diarrhea and the obvious bloating. What are some other symptoms that go under the radar?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 25:58

Well, like I said, with this one woman, she had what looked like arthritic hands and it wasn't arthritis. And the x-ray came back completely normal that she just had that one finger that it did have arthritic changes in it, but nothing else, which was I almost thought it was red wrong. And so I had gone online to look at the films myself, and you really couldn't see any overgrowth of bone, which is what arthritis is, except for that one finger. She had a lot of scabs on her head. She had so many different symptoms. It was amazing what this poor woman had gone through. Her main issue was the GI problems. The other man, like I talked about with the pupil issue, or trying to think what else I've seen when it comes to parasites, they're all so different. The vast majority are weight loss. As soon as you eat something, the food goes right through you. That's another sign of parasites. Pretty much everything I've seen so far.

Marla Miller 26:52

So are parasites, are they mistaken for Crohn's?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 26:55

Crohn's disease is more they're doing biopsy samples to see if you have Crohn's disease. Now, whether that's related to parasites or not, I don't have the information for that. If the inflammation causes the Crohn's disease, just like Crohn's and ultra colitis, they'll actually do biopsies while they're doing an endoscopy and a colonoscopy to get a better diagnosis. But I think what I find very funny is when a person is complaining that they feel like they have parasites and then they have a colonoscopy, and the GI doctor says, Well, no parasites were seen. Or you're not going to see the parasites when you're doing a colonoscopy. I don't know if you've ever seen one done, but I used to assist with them quite often when I was an ICU nurse. But you're looking at a TV screen and you're inserting not only air but water as well. So you really wouldn't see a parasite. If you did, you would think it was a mucus strand. You would think it was something else. It's not like you're taking it out and you're examining it. So I always find that to be a little bit strange that they would say there were no parasites seen, especially since the majority of parasites are microscopic as well, you know. So that's another piece of the pie.

Marla Miller 27:59

Yeah. Well, and also what about cravings? Like if someone is craving sugar all the time, suddenly, is that a that's usually some kind of an infection.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 28:09

So whether it's a tick-borne disease, the bacteria, the parasites, you know, whatever it is. There was a research study done by a nurse practitioner. I can't remember her name right now, and it was about free will. And I thought it was such an interesting study because we all feel like we have free will. We we make our own decisions, we make our own fate. And she was saying that the parasites in our body, meaning bacterias, viruses, anything like that, will trigger you to eat sugar, like you're craving sugar to the point where you'll get out of bed and go to the store if you don't have any sugar in your house. And it is the parasite itself that's getting into your nervous system to make you crave those things so they can stay alive. Because a lot of these bacterias, if there's no sugar, there's no life for them. Like they'll just die. So you eat regular food, you're gonna have a small amount of sugar in any food that you're eating. A little bit of it is gonna go into the glucose category. We're talking simple sugars, we're talking skittles, we're talking licorice, we're talking things that are gonna really increase your blood sugar very quickly. Things just shouldn't be in your diet anyway, because they're so bad for you. But that's what's actually keeping these parasites alive and very happy.

Marla Miller 29:24

Is there any other symptom that someone should look for or be like, oh, maybe this is related to parasites? When should someone get tested for parasites?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 29:35

I feel like anybody who has any confusion, that was another thing with this one gentleman, a lot of confusion. He wasn't able to carry on a conversation because his memory span was very short term. You would forget what he was saying very, very frequently. Even when he filled out forms, it was as if he couldn't read or he couldn't write, you know. So it was like these great big letters. And so I had him redo the forms because initially I couldn't tell if he really couldn't fill out the form or if he was just angry that his family made him come see me because they felt like he really had parasites and he wasn't buying into it. So he was just being belligerent and just not wanting to participate in my care. So I had him do it again because I told him that it seemed like his brain was disorganized and he did not like that comment. And so he did do it again, he did it better. But when I did treat him for the parasites and he came back, and again, the opacity over his pupil was gone, and he filled out the form perfectly. So there was a big part of this, I think, that with the parasites were actually affecting his brain, whether they were in his brain or his nervous system or his gut, and this is what's causing a problem with the brain. I can't tell you that part of it. I have no idea. But it was a big turnaround for him, and his family noticed such a big change, too.

Marla Miller 30:54

Yeah, so interesting. So, what are some other outcomes you've seen once you've treated someone like before and afters or success stories?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 31:04

So the profound fatigue, the constantly hungry, those all go away. You see somebody who can finally like live their life again. They're more energized, they have more ability to think, there's no more confusion, they're not constantly worried about having to find a toilet if they're out. Because a lot of times when you have parasites, you have no notice that you have to have a bowel movement. It just starts coming out. I don't know if anybody has ever had like uh food poisoning. That would be parasites as well. Anything that's undercooked food or food that's spoiled or something like that, all those bacteria are all we call them parasites. So those tend to be a little bit easier to find in a laboratory in a local lab. So something like Jardia or C. difficile or something like that, those are all parasites. Those are easier to see. And they give pretty much the same type of symptoms with the diarrhea, the bloating, the confusion, exhaustion, all those things.

Marla Miller 32:02

So have you seen someone come in thinking they had one thing and it turned out it was parasites and they were able to heal from it? I mean, like, is fibromyalgia something that gets confused with parasites?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 32:14

Fibromyalgia, interestingly, that diagnosis came out somewhere in the 90s where it really was publicized. It also came out around the same time that Lyme disease really took an uptick. So Lyme disease was first identified in the 1970s, was actually 1975 in Lyme, Connecticut. There was, whether you want to believe it or not, research being done on Plum Island, which is right off the coast of Lyme, Connecticut, and a whole neighborhood of children developed arthritic symptoms. And so the CDC got involved and came out to do some testing and found that it was actually a tick bite that was causing this bacteria. That's how Lyme disease got its name, was from Lyme, Connecticut. So the actual bacteria is Borelia Burgdorferi, after the scientist who found the uh bacteria, and that was Willie Burgdorferi. So that's different. But in the 1990s is when whether from global warming or I'm not really sure what else really brought up such an enormous amount of tick bites. But my sister, especially in the 80s and early 90s, who was always outside. I mean, she was backpacking all the time with her friends, they were always camping. She did everything outdoors. And there's always a trigger that will set you off if you have a chronic form of either Lyme disease or something else like that. And her trigger was our mom's death. So our mom died at 59. My sister was, I think she was 23, and I was 27. And that triggered everything in her body with the joint pain, the headaches, the swelling. Her whole life changed after that. And everyone thought she was depressed because her mother died, which of course we were all depressed because our mother died. But hers was profound. Her depression was literally profound. Her suffering was not normal. And especially physically, you know, she was in so much pain all the time. And so now she's getting put on medications to suppress the immune system to decrease the symptoms. But now it's actually allowing this tick-borne disease to take control of her body even more. So anybody who has a chronic form of Lyme disease or other tick-borne infections, it could survive in your body for an enormously long amount of time until your immune system drops. And then all of a sudden, all the symptoms of it come out. And so it could be a death in the family, it could be an illness, it could be a car accident, it could be anything that just isn't enough to rock your world to drop your immune system, and then all your symptoms come out. And that's really what happened with my son, too. His was surgery. He had gotten bitten by a tick at six years old. He had the bullseye rash. His pediatrician, if I had a guest, put him on 10 to 14 days worth of antibiotics. And he had no symptoms at all. If he didn't have that bullseye rash, it would not have even known he was bitten by a tick. And at the time, I knew nothing about tick-borne diseases. So you're talking about 32 years ago. And so when he was now 19, we went scuba diving. He had a lot of pain in his lower pelvic area. Um, I found the tiniest hernia I could find, brought him to his pediatrician who said the same thing. I mean, it just seemed so tiny for him to be in this much pain, but referred him to surgery. And the surgeon actually left him on the operating room table to come talk to me to find out that he had a connective tissue disorder that I forgot to tell him about. And I was like, no, my son was very healthy. He was a musician, you know, when he was working, he had a life. There was nothing that was going on with him. But he described his entire abdominal wall. He said it looked like Swiss cheese, like something from the inside was just eating away at him. And it turned out to be it was uh tit boring disease, it was Lyme disease. And so it was after the surgery that all his symptoms came out because during that surgery is enough to drop your immune system. And it was an absolute nightmare because we weren't expecting anything like this at all. And nobody knew what was going on with him. I mean, for 10 years, this poor kid, I don't even know how many doctors he saw. Now I knew it was Lyme disease because I had talked to the researcher, I read the case report, I sent his blood work off, tested it locally, it was negative. I sent it off to Armin Labs in Germany, it was negative. I sent it to hygenics in California, it was negative. But it was like I knew this had to be Lyme disease because it's the only thing that made sense because of the bullseye rash from so many years before. And it was the tick-borne disease that was causing this entire problem. And it was because it was in his system for such a long period of time. And so once I was a member of iLads, I was allowed to review for a price previous previous conferences. And so I was going through all the conferences trying to find something to suggest like why would a test be negative if it's really positive? And it was Dr. again, Joseph Beroscano, who was talking about the human natural killer cells. And that if that number is below normal, normal is 60 to 360. If that number is below normal, there's a good possibility you're going to get a false negative result, even if you're using the higher-end laboratories like Armin and Lygenics and Galaxy as well. And so I started treating him for Lyme disease. And I think he was on antibiotics for about three years. When I started the antibiotics and he got worse, I knew we were on the right track because that's what happens with tick-boring diseases. And so I think he was on antibiotics for about two to three years at that point. And I kept checking his HNK one, which is a human natural killer cell test. It wasn't until that number reached 59 that his tests were coming back indeterminate. So then I was like, okay, now I know I did the right thing. So once his HNK one was above 60, it started coming back positive. So that was an amazing thing for me to know. Was that test cemented that I was doing the right thing for my son?

Marla Miller 38:01

Well, Lyme is a whole another conversation. I really want to have you on again and really specifically talk about Lyme because I know so many people suffering with that. But as far as parasites go, is there anything you want to tell people about, you know, when they go to the doctor, what would be a question to ask? Or when should they even bring up parasites?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 38:26

That is such a difficult question because I just know what my patients have been through. I mean, one got sent to a psychiatrist because the primary care doctor thought she was crazy to think that she had parasites. That's how bad it is. So if I had to give somebody advice, I would say, go see somebody who does practice functional medicine because they're more likely to be open to parasites. I did go back to school for functional medicine after I received my doctorate degree. And so we learn a lot more about how the body actually works, much more so than in medical school where you're just really taught how to treat the disease process, but not really how to prevent it. So I think seeing somebody who does practice functional medicine would be the best course. And if that doesn't work, I do see people all over the country. I have two people right now internationally. I would need to see the person once a year in my office in Connecticut to be able to prescribe for them. But then everything else is done telehealth.

Marla Miller 39:23

Well, that's great. That you're able to help so many people by employing the remote process once they see you in your office.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 39:32

That's been a godsend for so many people because they don't know where to turn. It's so unfortunate that the education just isn't there between tick-borne diseases and parasites. And there's a lot of medical doctors who are disenchanted with their medical education when they learn more about functional medicine and go back to school. And all the pieces that were missed, there's a huge piece of information that is not taught. Whether that's intentional or not intentional, I honestly don't know. But it's very unfortunate because a lot of people are getting the wrong information or they're getting put on medication to suppress their symptoms, which is actually making the disease worse.

Marla Miller 40:09

So, as far as the parasites and recovery, how long does that process take people generally when you put them on something like ivermectin or not long?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 40:21

So that one patient I had that had several parasites in her body, you know, the liver fluke, the tapeworm, she had the round worms, she had a form of scabies that was really affecting her scalp. I want to say it was three months of rotating these antiparasitics, trying to time them when the ovum would just start to open up so we can kill those off before they become a parasite. I want to say it was about three months, and she has been doing magnificent. So it's not an enormous amount of time. Tick-borne diseases, if you've had it for a long period of time, that's a long time. That does take sometimes years to get rid of. Because these bacteria multiply, multiply, multiply. There's some information to suggest that two different species, so like Bartonella and Borelia, can commingle and now change the playing field of how to actually correct the disease process. So there's a lot that we don't know because it is completely ignored. Completely, completely ignored. And if I can say one thing while we're on the subject of Lyme disease and tick-borne diseases, there is a vaccine that's coming to market for Lyme disease. It's coming out by Pfizer. Right now, it's not promising at this point. I believe it's still in the animal study trial, but I could be wrong on that. But my biggest concern is for people to understand when you get bit by a tick, Lyme disease is only one disease that you can get from that tick. There are 14 to 18 different diseases that one tick can carry. So I don't want people to think that you get this vaccination and you get bit by a tick and you'll be fine. You won't be fine because you still have so many other diseases that one tick can carry. So whether you get the vaccine or not, you still have to be treated and tested and things like that. And I mean, I'm not taking anything away from people who suffer from Lyme disease, but that is not the most dangerous disease that goes along with a tick bite. I mean, there are other diseases that will kill you. Relichiosis shuts down your bone marrow, Bartonella attacks your nervous system. We issued with Parkinson's and ALS. You know, Lyme disease is bad, but like babisiosis can cause DIC, which is when all the blood in your body clots. It can cause ITP where all the blood in your body can't clot. So there are other diseases that a tick can carry that are far more dangerous than Lyme disease. Lyme disease will debilitate you. Lyme disease will put you in bed. You can't work, but you'll die from Bartonella. You'll die from vabisiosis. You know, most people die from Lyme disease by suicide because they've just gone to so many different doctors and they're all told that they have nothing wrong with them. It's all in their head, just like my son was told. You know, that's where honestly it was a nightmare when I lived through it with my son.

Marla Miller 43:00

Well, I would say you're putting all the information you learned through your own family health issues to very good use, helping other people.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 43:08

Yeah. Thank God I can do what I do. Thank God I have the degrees that I have. And thank God I'm as passionate as I am. I never thought I'd be a nurse practitioner. Things in life sometimes just fall in your lap and you don't even know why. But I think it's when you put it out in the universe of what your intentions are, something comes back and you end up doing what you should be doing.

Marla Miller 43:27

Yeah. Well, that's really amazing. So the place that you have there, do you want to tell people a little bit about that in Connecticut? Sure.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 43:36

Absolutely. We're in Thomaston, Connecticut. The name of my practice is the practice of health and wellness. I'm Pamela M. Cipriana. There's another Pamela Cypriana who's also, she has her PhD. She's a registered nurse of her PhD. So we get each other's emails and podcasts and things like that. It's all confusing. So it's Pamela M. Cipriana. I'm a doctor of nursing practice. I was actually the first nurse practitioner in the state of Connecticut to open a practice, a solo practice when the law was passed. And that is a story in itself because being the first in anything is not easy. We have everything here. If you do live nearby, we have IVs that we give to people, all vitamins and minerals. We do vitamin and mineral shots. We have an infrared sauna with red light therapy. We have halo therapy here. So all these things will help to boost the immune system, reverse the disease process, and prevent certain diseases that can cause problems in the body. So everything we do here, we try and do more holistically. Do I prescribe meds? Absolutely. If I have to prescribe medication, It's under the understanding that we'll get you off the medication once we get rid of the disease process or once you follow the diet I'm giving you or something like that. There are certain medications you should never come off of. So those are the ones that I encourage you to stick with your regular medical doctor and continue to get tested for.

Marla Miller 44:51

I just want to go over again the top ways you treat parasite infections would be you said ivermectin.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 44:59

Ivermectin is one, albendazole. There's probably two or three others that I've used, but they're so infrequent. But those are the two major ones that I do use. My husband and I do a parasite cleanse every six months. We don't purposely rescue animals. Somehow they find us. And so at one point we had seven dogs and four cats, and of course, they all slept on bed with us. And the research shows that if the animals sleep in bed with you, and if they have parasites, then you most likely do too. And so we're always having our animals checked for parasites and it always comes back negative. But it's a good idea just to do a parasite cleanse. And there's several out there on the market, they could be all natural ones, like red walnut hull, there's black walnut hull. There's like so many different ones that you can use. The medications I definitely think work probably the best, though, to kill the parasite and get it out of your system.

Marla Miller 45:51

Yeah. And then you'll add in tinctures and things like that.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 45:55

I always add in the tinctures. So when I do do a parasite cleanse, I always follow it up with tinctures. When I treat somebody with Lyme disease, I always follow it up with tinctures and supplements.

Marla Miller 46:05

And what would those be? What would the supplements and tinctures be?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 46:10

So there's a number of them that I would use, but I use Full Script, which is like a warehouse for providers who are either naturopaths or treat a lot of diseases more naturally. And I have my favorite nutraceutical companies that I use. And so depending on the type of parasite I found would be a specific tincture that'd be more individualized. So it's not something I could just say, oh, if you buy this tincture, you can get rid of parasites. It doesn't really work like that.

Marla Miller 46:38

Well, that's good. Do you treat people individually and really get to the root of it and don't give up on people?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 46:46

No, I don't. You know, no, I don't do that at all. I just seen people who presented like they had a mental illness walk out of the office without one. And it was because of the disease process that they were going through. And that could be from a tick bite, it could be from a parasite, it could be from so many different things.

Marla Miller 47:03

And what would that look like when you talk about neurological or where it comes across as they need to see a psychiatrist? What are some of those symptoms?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 47:12

I've had patients who ended up in behavioral health several times. I've had people diagnosed with schizophrenia with bipolar disorder. And for them, it was a tick-borne disease. So Bartonella will affect your brain. Bartonella will cause more like a schizoaffective disorder where you're having hallucinations, audible and visual hallucinations or delusions. You're thinking things are happening when they're really not. I've seen so much. So that's usually related to Bartonella or babisiosis. That's what I've seen with those two things. I tried to give a talk to the psychiatrists in the area just to try and educate them because they're the ones that are seeing these people in behavioral health in the inpatient setting. And it's unfortunate that the only ones that showed up were the psychologists, which was great, but they don't prescribe medications and they're more doing the counseling and the therapy. And so the people that I really wanted to educate didn't show up. And that's a whole nother issue. You know, a lot of people don't want to be associated with tick-borne diseases. They don't want their colleagues to think that they've gone off the crazy train, so to speak, because these things really don't exist all that much. And if they do, they're so easily treated. So there's a huge misconception about how to actually treat these things. I have a patient who came to me recently from Massachusetts. Her mom had brought her to Tufts University, like all the best medical centers in Boston that you could find. And they say that they're Lyme specialists. I can guarantee you they're not Lyme specialists because it takes more than 10 days or 14 days of antibiotics to get rid of a tick-borne disease. It is multi-layered to get rid of these things. It's not only antibiotics, it's changing your diet, it's your lifestyle. Talk about misinformation, terrible, terrible misinformation.

Marla Miller 49:16

Well, I appreciate you coming on and spreading the truth and what you've seen in your practice and within your own family. I think that's what we need to do is really educate people, like you said, and clear up any myths out there. So where can people find you? Do you have a website? Where else?

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 49:37

It the easiest place to find me is on my website. It's thepracticeofhealth and wellness.com. It's all spelled out. On there, you'll find everything about me, everything about my practice. My YouTube channel is on there, my peer-reviewed publications are on there, and my podcasts are also listed on there.

Marla Miller 49:57

Okay, that's awesome.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 49:59

Yep. And if you always find me on Facebook and Instagram as well, but those are the two that that one stop shop is really good, the website. Okay, great.

Marla Miller 50:08

Well, I hope to have you on again so we could really, like I said, dive into Lyme. I mean, you touched upon it for sure, but I know there's so much more to talk about. But I appreciate you delving into parasites, something that may sound kind of creepy or gross or whatever, but it's something that we have and we gotta face it if we want to heal it. So thank you so much for all the information.

Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano 50:35

Thank you so much for having me. I really, really enjoyed talking to you.