Introduction
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev, I will be your host for today’s show on lingering Lyme disease.
I apologize if I sound a little funky on audio today. I, yet again, need wisdom tooth surgery. If you’re wondering why does he say, “yet again”, what does that mean? Two years ago, when I went under to get my first impacted wisdom tooth removed, I was not smart enough to get all three removed. I’m not actually sure if intelligence is the main issue here so much as it is just plain fear.
I’m someone who goes back and forth with a lot of this stuff. I know on one end we have completely screwed ourselves over and we actually have made our jaws smaller based on what we’re doing without breastfeeding a lot of kids, and I was not breastfed. We have these high sugar diets, and we now know that affects jaw formation.
So, on one end I know that my wisdom teeth are going to have to be removed. On this other end I’m like, oh my gosh, this is super scary. I don’t want to do this. I know it’s not the worst surgery in the world, don’t get me wrong. But I just hate the idea of risking anything sinus wise or anything in terms of feeling in my lips and tongue.
Speaking to Youth – A Spiritual Experience
I don’t know if I make this clear to some of the people in my life sometimes. They’re always like, what are you scared about a wisdom tooth surgery for? Well, everything I do involves speaking for a living, right? Like everything I do, I speak, and I want to do this for as long as possible. So, the idea that I get the surgery and there’s a risk of that being affected, I think that’s where it comes from more than anything.
Plus, my gosh, man, I hear too many crazy stories about Western medicine on this show. I live in a bubble, right? We’re not against Western medicine by any means. But when you live in a bubble like this, unfortunately, I think it subconsciously creates an inaccurate picture of things that don’t go wrong nearly as often as it might seem when you listen to a show like this. Just something to keep in mind.
But with that said, in terms of speaking for a living, I actually have some really fun announcements on this show. It’s one of the main things that Brianne Gates, my guest today, and I will be talking about. I have been speaking to youth for about five, six years now. It has been one of the best things that has ever happened in my life. It is one of the things that took me from an atheist into being a believer because there is no other way to describe how I feel when I do that work other than it is a spiritual experience, and I will not be stopping it. I’m kind of able to manage basically once, maybe twice a week doing some things for myself and just really lessening the load.
Course Enrollment Advisor
But I did make a decision recently. There was an opportunity that came up at FDN. I won’t say that it was an easy decision, but I’m also someone who is very in tune with his intuition, and I pray. I’m able to kind of go into certain places and just get some clear answers, even if it doesn’t necessarily feel right emotionally in the moment. I can kind of know on this deeper level that something is correct. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I feel like to an audience that listens to this show it’ll make sense to more people than not probably on here or at least you’ll respect it.
So, good news for you guys. It’s kind of cool. What I decided to do is I did come on with FDN. So, now I will not only be doing this podcast for the foreseeable future, but I will also be one of the course enrollment advisors. That means at any time if you are interested in looking into the FDN course or you have more questions I am one of the people that’ll be available for you to talk to. It’s not guaranteed that you’re going to talk to me by any means if you’ve been listening to the show for a while. Unfortunately, again, that’s not a guarantee, but I will be one of the people on there.
It’s a great position. They are very fair about how they work this out. I have done something like this before for FDN, so I knew it’d be cool. And the biggest thing for me is just this ability to work wherever I want and then still have my business supported because we have this in-person business.
Weekly Instagram Lives
I have a few practitioners there for FDN, and so I do more of the sales stuff for the clients there. Then they’ll actually work with the clients, cause that’s their passion, they do that one-on-one. I have always felt more called to sharing the stories and I love these short little interactions that come from quote/unquote “sales calls”. I never really like looking at it like that just because I know how society views that. But I love that. That’s what gets me going.
I love to do these short interactions. It’s one of the reasons I love speaking. You know, you go in for 40 minutes, bam, done, and then there’s novelty from the next time that you go out and do it. I hope that makes sense. Maybe some of you are like that, maybe not. But yeah, I’m on the team now. I will be focused a lot more on FDN than ever before.
I’ll be doing podcasts as a guest for them. I’ll be doing weekly Instagram Lives once I get these last three wisdom teeth out. Yes, I was smart enough, I’m going to get the other three out this time rather than have to do another surgery in two years. That just sounds ridiculous.
Powerhouse Team of Go-Getters
Let us know, please, I’ll send you something if this is true for you, if you have genuinely and truthfully been listening since the last time this happened. We’ve been doing this podcast long enough that this happened before on this show. Shoot us a DM and let me know and I’ll send you something cool over. I’ll figure out something that’ll be interesting.
Outside of that, again, we’re talking to Brianne Gates today. She, at the time of recording this, is one of the other course enrollment advisors. Brianne is awesome. I have only recently gotten to actually interact with her. I already sensed we’d get along well. But when you get to interview someone and really feel their energy and know what they’re all about, I’m like, whoa, we got an awesome powerhouse team here that is the perfect mix of go-getters, but still very in tune with the needs of the other people.
We probably refer more people out half the time than we do take them on. We want to make sure that they are in the perfect program, course, or reading the perfect book, whatever it might be for them. We don’t want to bring people into FDN if we know it can’t help them in the immediate moment or serve a need that they might have today if they’re calling us. It’s just cool to see someone that shares that mix of passion but also empathy for other individuals. You guys are going to love her story today.
Health Space Unmasked – April 1st, 2023
My last announcement, this is big. Please don’t skip through this cause you guys are all going to want to hear this. If you have ever attended one of our Health Space Unmasked events, they are the first Saturday of every month. We bring on a guest lecturer and it is cool. They will stay on for a couple of hours.
Typically, they do a Live Q&A and they really throw down on a niche topic. In the beginning of March, we had Dr. Ruth Roberts. She was great because she talked all about functional medicine for pets. It was the first time we’ve ever even kind of touched on that subject in the Health Space Unmasked.
Then we just recently had her on the podcast as well to answer some different questions. This next guest for April is someone that you guys know very well, probably, if you are not new to this space. It is drum roll, please, Dr. Tom O’Brien. Dr. Tom O’Brien is a great friend of Reed Davis’s, founder of FDN.
He was an author of a book that I read very early on into this journey. I still remember so much of the information I was exposed to in that book because it was profound to me. When you are new to this space and you’re learning about what is actually scientifically available to us, and then you realize it’s not even shared in the mainstream, it’s kind of crazy.
Dr. Tom O’Brien – Gluten & Autoimmunity
So, I read his book, The Autoimmune Fix. I was down at the Jersey Shore, we were on vacation, and I looked like a total nerd. I mean, I usually look like a nerd. But I definitely looked like a nerd that time because everyone was at the beach, and I was reading The Autoimmune Fix by Dr. Tom O’Brien.
He’s just an amazing guy. If you somehow don’t know who he is, he is an expert in all things gluten and autoimmunity and the connections between the two. You will want to be on this one.
These are free events, by the way. They’re not paid events, so you get a ton of great information. You get the Live Q&A. It’s really just a fun place to hang out with other health minded folks. We usually have a hundred plus people hop on Live, let alone on the recording.
I believe Dr. Ruth Roberts set a record for us. I think there was 180 people on Live. She’s just cool. That’s a testament to her and her topic.
So, if you guys want to get involved in that, you can go to the show notes or you can type in your browser fdntraining.com/unmasked.
We are looking forward to seeing you guys on Saturday April 1st. And no, this is not an April Fool’s joke. We are doing this; it’s going to be cool. Without further ado, let us get to today’s episode.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Brianne’s Health Journey
Alright. Hello there, Brianne. Welcome to the Health Detective podcast. How are you?
Brianne Gates: Hi Evan. Thank you. I’m good.
Detective Ev: I’m glad to have you here.
This one’s actually a really cool one, guys, because Brianne and I are in unique positions right now, and we’ll talk about this more as we go down the podcast. But not only are we going to talk about her story today, we have a pretty cool announcement. Right now, as of the time of recording this, Brianne and I are the two course enrollment advisors.
So, if you book a call in the show notes below, like maybe you’ve been considering the course and you want to talk to people that you kind of feel like you know or have built some rapport with, even if they haven’t built it with you, you’ll get to know both of us today pretty well. Then you can book with us, and it’ll be basically like round robins. So, you’ll get one of us and we’re both friendly people; we don’t bite. You can talk to us about the FDN course and see if it is a good fit for you.
But today we’ll treat this just like any other podcast for the most part. Because Brianne is an FDN practitioner, she has a health story. I’ve only seen the very basics of this, so I’m like, whoa, this was a lot going on. You seem like you have a ton of energy now. Good to go. So, I’m excited to dive into your journey.
The first question that we always ask on this show is what were your health symptoms like and when did they start for you?
Lingering Lyme Disease: Antibiotics & More Antibiotics
[00:09:32] Brianne Gates: My health symptoms started at a very young age, like nine months old. I started having ear infections at that time, I’m 43 now.
At that time, antibiotics were the routine. I was given antibiotics at nine months old and then given antibiotics every time I had an ear infection, which then led to more upper respiratory issues, so, chronic sinus infections, strep throat, inflamed tonsils. It was just antibiotic after antibiotic for me for probably 18 years. I took around 30 rounds of antibiotics until I was 18 or 20. We all know now what that does.
My symptoms were like, I had major candida symptoms. I didn’t know at the time what that was, but I had massive sugar cravings. The biggest issue that became more and more prevalent was depression.
You know, what I have learned as a practitioner now, everyone manifests differently, the symptoms, right? Not everybody, if they get Lyme disease gets joint pain. Not everyone gets the same symptoms. My symptoms from a leaky gut and inflamed gut was depression and mood instability. I would be up and be able to do anything. So, I was diagnosed as bipolar in my early twenties because I had this constant up and down which we now know is from a lack of connection from our gut to our brain.
I was totally obsessed with food. I was obsessed with stimulants like diet pills and caffeine. So, I really shot my adrenals really young. I really burned the candle at both ends because I was just exhausted, and I couldn’t focus. I had all of these like, broken brain symptoms as Dr. Tom O’Brien would call them.
Lingering Lyme Disease: SIBO, Fibromyalgia, & Chronic Fatigue
It was really, really difficult to have a linear path to my day. I was constantly hungry, constantly craving something, not able to focus. And then started in hormonal issues, acne, then chronically getting sick. I got diagnosed with Epstein Bar when I was like 16.
When I was 22, that’s when like the bottom fell out. It was like I had no energy anymore. Literally, if I was driving somewhere, I’d have to pull over and sleep in the back of my car because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was always bloated, always looked like I was six months pregnant my entire life pretty much. It looked like I was carrying a child, which was really difficult as a lot of people know.
That was the downhill where it’s like nobody knew what to do. SIBO and fibromyalgia were just coming on the map. So, I was diagnosed with both SIBO, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome at around 23, and I changed my entire life then. Like it was gluten free in 2002 when nobody even knew what that was. I just changed my diet, did as much as I could, and a lot shifted. But the depression was something that I never had shift until about four years ago.
[00:12:54] Detective Ev: Wow. There’s more similarities here than there are differences. I actually am surprised by that. One, I know most people listen on the audio. I’ve been working for FDN a little bit. I had no idea you were 43. So, I think you’re a great testament to natural health. This is awesome.
Brianne Gates: Thank you.
Detective Ev: I hope I’m looking that good at my forties.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Getting Rid of the Bugs is Not Enough
So, with the depression though and the antibiotics specifically, I find that very interesting. I’ve never actually even heard someone else word, like, oh, by the age of 18 I was on this many antibiotics. On this show many times I’ve said by the age of 18 I was on like 20 courses. It sounds like it was a little more, but at a certain point, like you’re just frying the gut. I’m sure anyone over 10 courses has completely destroyed their gut, let alone, we’re talking 20, 30.
And it’s interesting that you mentioned that depression was one of your biggest things, cause that’s a huge part of my story too, the acne. Now what I’m interested in, I don’t know how literally you meant this, but you said at 23, which is now, 20 years ago, you got, quote/unquote “diagnosed” with things like SIBO or whatever. Were those doctors actually looking at those conditions 20 years ago?
[00:13:51] Brianne Gates: You know, surprisingly, I went and saw Dr. Mark Pimentel at Cedars-Sinai who is now the leader in small intestinal bacterial overgrowth research. He did coin that phrase that long ago, and I was diagnosed with that. However, at the time, the remedy was antibiotics and I had known enough not to do that.
So, I went and did rounds and different rounds of antimicrobials, herbal antimicrobials, which would work for a time. Then it would come back because I really wasn’t getting to the root cause. You know, just getting rid of the bugs and like going after bugs is not the whole story as we know.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Abnormal Fatigue
[00:14:31] Detective Ev: Right. One other part I related to is funny. Sometimes healing can be slow and we don’t always necessarily recognize all these amazing changes that have happened. I have only met you a few times and we both know that we’re both high energy. That’s pretty clear.
That idea that you were driving and like having to sleep in the back of your car, I’m like thinking about it because we were discussing off air. Now, I never have that issue. Yet I remember before, like even visiting some of my friends in college, I always just planned, if I got like two hours into driving, I would always pull over to fall asleep or something. I never once at that age thought that that was abnormal.
I’m like, oh, well it’s a long drive, of course you’re tired. It’s like, dude. I mean, yeah, four or five hours of driving isn’t fun, but you slept last night. You shouldn’t be needing to do this. I mean, my eyes are like closing on the road. I have to pull over, otherwise it’s dangerous at that point.
Now, I always like to get into the mindset of people, especially those of us who have dealt with symptoms from a very young age. What was your thought process on what was going on with you, let’s say even like 18 through 23? I mean, you’re getting these diagnoses more and more getting added on, especially bipolar, that’s a relatively serious mental health condition to get diagnosed with at the time, and still to this day, right? What is your perspective? Did you think this made sense? Did you just think this is how you were? What was the viewpoint on it?
Lingering Lyme Disease: God Had a Different Plan
[00:15:42] Brianne Gates: You know, I knew deep down that this was not correct. Something was not right. I said, no, no, no. This can’t be my life sentence to have to take drugs.
I had already come from a background where my mom had gone to a chiropractor, had used natural substances. I always loved plants and natural medicine. It was already in me as a lover of nature and believer that God has a plan. So, I was like, you know what? I’m going to just work really hard at learning everything I can.
It was an interesting time because I was a theater major at UCLA. I was going to go and be an actress, and it was like God had a different plan. It was like I just had this huge inspiration to learn everything I could about natural medicine.
Luckily, I lived in Los Angeles because back in the day Erewhon was not the Erewhon that it is now. Erewhon is this grocery store in Los Angeles is this very high-end grocery store. But at the time, when I was in early 2000’s, Erewhon was still this like crunchy granola health food store, a place where people would gather to bring new products and to learn.
So, many days, I would just go into Erewhon and have conversations with people to learn about Chinese medicine. I mean, that was where I started making my own decoctions of Chinese herbs. I would just talk to people on the health food store floor. That is what really led me to having a passion.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Reading & Learning
Then I started working at Erewhon. I learned even more, and I was like, oh my gosh. I kind of melded my training and acting and being an orator and communicator with my knowledge that I was learning. So, I just began teaching people naturally on the floor at Erewhon.
[00:17:38] Detective Ev: That’s awesome.
Brianne Gates: It was just passionate.
Detective Ev: This all connects, I feel like, so much better now. I’m like, oh, okay. And you lived in California. I feel like they would’ve been a little more open to this stuff. I mean, actually part of my story is going out to California to learn from like the natural people. That’s how I found FDN. I went to California on a whim, and I saw Jenn Malecha speaking in a coffee shop about health stuff. Go figure, you know. That’s amazing.
So, at the very least when you were ready to kind of make this transition and say, I want to go this path, but God’s got me going this way, you kind of had those resources to start exploring pretty early on into the natural side and these more holistic modalities.
[00:18:10] Brianne Gates: Yeah. I didn’t let anything stop me. I just would read and learn. And working at Erewhon, you immerse yourself in a health food store on the floor in the natural supplement aisles.
I was like a rep from New Chapter, New Chapter is a big nutritional supplement company. She came in one day and she heard me speaking. She was like, hey, would you be interested in a job? At that time, New Chapter was like the biggest in the industry, like the darling. It had just come out with organic supplements, the first organic nutritional supplement company.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Restoring the Microbiome, Brain, & Energy Levels
To work for a company like that was literally a dream come true. It was the best thing ever. Then after that learning weekly training, and I was training with Paul Shulk, who is a master herbalist (he founded the company) I was then inspired daily to up my game and really understand what I was putting in my body. It was big.
Meditation was very big, and mindfulness was very big in our company at the time too. So, I was being a student of not only physical medicine, but energetic medicine, mind/body medicine. Yeah. I was with New Chapter for eight and a half years.
[00:19:26] Detective Ev: Very cool. So, alright, let’s get the timeline back.
What age did you start a New Chapter and where’s the health at at the time?
[00:19:30] Brianne Gates: I started at New Chapter when I was 27. So, from the time when I was diagnosed with bipolar, fibromyalgia, all of those things, I was at 23. Between 23 and 27 is really where I struggled probably the most with my health and just did random jobs.
I worked at Sony Pictures and did like supporting executive assistant. But it was really, really, really challenging to feel good. It took me probably at least four years to get my microbiome to a place where I wasn’t having so many physiological issues of being able to use my brain like a normal person, being able to have the energy levels of a normal person.
So, when I started with New Chapter when I was 27, I definitely had my energy back. I was much more what you say quote/unquote “normal”.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Finding a Way to Healing
[00:20:19] Detective Ev: Yeah, it’s nice when that finally happens. Especially with young people who deal with this, it’s tough, man.
I’m not making excuses; some people go through worse stuff. But like, one of the things that happens is, especially you and I, we’re obviously go-getter type of people, your heart wants to go do all these things. You have your dreams, I have mine. But when you’re sick, man, like I remember working odd jobs as well, like my parents’ restaurant, Uber, all these different types of things and I’m so fatigued doing them. You feel lazy. You’re like, why can’t I just get this going?
At the very least, if this makes you feel a little better, I really do feel different than other people. Like, I don’t feel necessarily as bad as they do when they only sleep for four hours. You know, they can take some caffeine and it works. If I take caffeine, I feel like heck, like, this isn’t actually working for me.
So, there’s nothing better than when you wake up the one day and finally start to realize, you know what? I’m not falling asleep behind the wheel at the car, or I actually can get through a whole work date. It’s pretty nice.
And for you, I feel like, man, there wasn’t clear structure. You were doing so much research, you had to figure a lot of this stuff out on your own. Four years is a long time, but still without the structure, it is nice that you did get there. That’s a lot of hard work that goes into that, especially when you’re sick.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Medicine, Flare Ups, & Symptoms
Now you had mentioned that the depression never really fully subsided until about four years ago. So, we’re talking about almost 27 to roughly 39 years old this is still one of those lingering things.
I think a lot of people have what I call, it’s not clinical for those listening, but I call them like primary symptoms. The primary symptoms are the ones, like you had almost alluded to in the beginning that when some people have a leaky gut, they get this or that, you just get this. For me it’s my skin. That’s the first thing that will always show, and depression second for me. So, I will break out before anything else.
I might still be in a great mood. If I keep pushing that wrong thing, shortly after, I noticed, ah, I don’t really want to get outta bed today, or, you know, I don’t have any motivation to do anything when normally I’m a freaking nut. That’s what happens.
So, what was going on in that almost 12-year span where like, you know a lot about this, but still this one symptom is kind of lingering?
[00:22:09] Brianne Gates: Exactly. It was really, really frustrating. You know, I did, I was on and off medication for depression, bipolar. I was diagnosed bipolar II. I wasn’t as extreme as bipolar I. But I did take medication pretty regularly on and off. I have to say healing is not linear. So, I did really, really good for a while and then I’d kind of have a flare up and have symptoms again and things like that.
Lingering Lyme Disease: A Lyme Diagnosis
It was the biggest blessing. People might say I’m crazy, but it was being diagnosed with Lyme disease. When I was diagnosed with Lyme in 2018, I’d eaten some fish in Florida that had ciguatera or mold. I got so sick that I had an episode of Bell’s Palsy on an airplane by myself. It was very short, but I knew what was happening. I was like, on the airplane, gosh, this is crazy. The whole side of my face is drooping and I’m here by myself on an airplane.
Then the week after, I had diarrhea for five days, had to go to the hospital. I just chalked it up to being a really bad case of food poisoning. Well, it was like a downhill decline from that point. I lost about a half a head of my hair, and if you can see, I’ve got a really full head of hair. So, losing half a head of my hair was a huge wake up, like, what’s going on with my body.
Again, the fatigue started coming in, depression started coming in. I was really bloated. At that point, I think the only reason I was diagnosed, I got very lucky. A functional doctor, he tested me regular blood test, which usually doesn’t come back with Lyme. We all know Lyme lives in the tissue; it doesn’t live in the bloodstream. It’s rare that you’re going to get a positive if you’re just looking in the blood without provoking.
At the time, I was using these patches called Life Wave. Are you familiar with Life Wave?
Detective Ev: I’m not familiar with Life Wave, no.
Brianne Gates: They are these like biophoton resonance patches. It’s very out there, but it really works.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Detoxification
I was using these biophoton patches. What it did is it irritated the Lyme bugs – the Borrelia – enough, that they started mounting an immune response and then going into my bloodstream. So, I was lucky enough to get a diagnosis even before Lyme was on my radar.
[00:24:22] Detective Ev: Well, it’s hard to say that it’s not working. I mean, that’s crazy.
[00:24:24] Brianne Gates: Yeah. I really attribute it to the Life Wave provoking the bugs out of their hiding place, it started making them uncomfortable. It was a glutathione patch that I used. So, from then that led me to a deep dive into obviously biofilm colonies and how these bugs can live in your body and evade your immune system for forever, like literally. That really, really helped me.
Also, I learned a lot about the different phases of detoxification and the absolute, so crucial role of bile. I am a bile like expert. I just think bile is so important that you need to clean the bile. I started focusing on what Dr. Kelly Halderman calls phase 2.5 detox, which is like in between phases two and three. Really cleaning up the bile so that those toxins that get stuck in the bile can be removed, and that my detox pathways can be open. So much of it, when you are chronically ill for so many years, your lymph is full, your bile is full, everything is just full up.
The Lyme world really opened me into understanding how to open those detox pathways, how to work so that we can get at these root infections that are causing the inflammation, causing the biotoxins that were in me. It was that cleaning up the body, cleaning up those infections.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Redirecting Neural Pathways
Also, after you do all that, I rewrote the neural pathways with doing DNRS, Annie Hopper’s DNRS program. And I also did a couple of rounds of psychedelics, specifically ayahuasca which then I felt retrained my brain. So, doing the DNRS, I did EMDR also.
I did these things to kind of put my brain, instead of going down the same neural pathways that they’ve gone down when I’m full of these bugs, because these neural pathways are kind of feeding the bugs. There are certain microorganisms that wait until our stress levels are high, and then they capitalize on that and create more inflammation and create the situation that’s right for them.
Imagine that so much of my neural pathways were being funneled towards these microbes. I feel that it’s important to retrain the brain. Now, anyone can do whatever they feel like, they don’t have to do psychedelics. But that was the path that I chose. I have not had any depression since.
[00:27:03] Detective Ev: Wow. What a story. To be clear then, the 2018 diagnosis of the Lyme implies that you had Lyme before this, it’s just saying that you finally got diagnosed.
Brianne Gates: Correct.
Detective Ev: I mean, they can’t even guess then when you would’ve actually had this.
[00:27:16] Brianne Gates: Yeah, and I’ve never had a tick bite. I grew up in Southern California. People should know that you don’t need a tick bite to get Lyme disease.
[00:27:23] Detective Ev: Absolutely. I know that it doesn’t have to be a tick, but how common is it there? Because like here where I live in Pennsylvania, you won’t even believe this, this is nuts.
Lingering Lyme Disease: A Vector-Borne Illness
They do a map every year of all the counties in PA. We have so many ticks that they’ll actually show you what percentage of the deer tick out here have it? My county was the lowest and 25% of the deer tick was carrying Lyme. The highest county had like 48%.
So, when my girlfriend moved out here, and I actually got her dog sitting next to me right now. He’s a 90-pound big boy, great dog. When he ran through the field for the first time, I’m so used to it out here and just assuming people have the shots and stuff, but she came from Washington. So, when he ran through the field, he has like 20 ticks on him. She’s like, why are all these ticks on him?
I’m like, well, does he have his thing? She’s like, no, we don’t get shots for that where I live. And I’m like, he needs these shots, right? He needs these things, medications for preventing this stuff from sticking to him. My point is like, how common is it for someone that grows up in Southern California to get this from something else?
[00:28:17] Brianne Gates: You know, I don’t know how common it is. I think it’s becoming more and more common. I don’t want to scare anyone, but they call them vector-borne illnesses, which means anything that bites or literally draws blood can carry these. Even like having cats, like cat scratch illness is bartonella, that’s a co-infection that usually is seen with Lyme.
There are lots of different ways that we can be around these types of vectors, animals that could be carrying it. It’s more common than I think is being talked about.
Lingering Lyme Disease: How Common Is It?
[00:28:55] Detective Ev: Okay then from an anecdotal perspective, I’m kind of curious. When you lived in LA like if you went and talked to someone, I’m wondering what percentage of people would know about Lyme. I could walk down this town and talk to a hundred people and all 100 have heard of Lyme cause it’s that common around here. Now they don’t know about the chronic implications, but every single person, that’s just something that you learn about when you’re young here. I’m saying is it common enough that if you talk to a hundred random people in LA would there be anyone that hasn’t heard of this, do you think?
[00:29:18] Brianne Gates: Not anymore. It’s very common now. Yeah. At least they’ll know somebody that’s had it. I don’t hear, very often, stories of success with Lyme because you have to come at it in multiple different ways. Because of my training as an FDN, I have that foundation that has helped me deal with the Lyme. Also, I have a couple of mentors. You know, one mentor, he’s an FDN and his name is Scott Forsgren. Do you know Scott Forsgren?
[00:29:47] Detective Ev: I feel like I’ve seen his name, but I don’t know him well.
[00:29:49] Brianne Gates: He’s the better health guy. This guy, honestly, he has helped me so much with the people that he has on, and he’s an FDN. He was the one that I listened to so much. Then I also was like, what’s FDN? If this guy, so brilliant, is an FDN, I want to know what FDN is.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Helping People During the Pandemic
[00:30:06] Detective Ev: Nice. I actually don’t even know this, when did you go through FDN itself?
[00:30:10] Brianne Gates: 2019 and I graduated 2020, which was a good time for that cause we all know we were all just stuck inside.
[00:30:16] Detective Ev: Yeah, it was weird.
You and I talked before, it’s like I know that you have your practice, and we’ll talk about that. We are people that like to have some other variety in our life too. It’s not like 50 hours a week of clients. That was the one time I really fell back on that certification. I just started talking about it more online.
It was amazing how many people were willing to sign up with me on a fairly short notice basis just by sharing some things on Facebook and Instagram. I think it was a good time too because people hadn’t run outta money yet, you know what I mean? It was like 2020. Yeah, I’ll spend on some stuff, you know, only two more weeks to flatten the curve. Right? So, we’ll be good to go.
And then it’s like, all right, nice. I’m glad that they got to work with me cause we did help a lot of people out. That was a crazy time and could have given anyone depression, even if they don’t have anything else wrong with them. It’s enough to make the average person depressed. The last thing we need is you having all these other chronic issues going on that you don’t know about and then the whole world’s shutting down.
Lingering Lyme Disease: FDN Provided a Foundation & Structure
So, what did you gain from FDN? What I mean by that is like you’re one of the rare people that we bring on that was like fairly well versed prior to going through FDN. I mean, you’ve been in this for a while. You’ve clearly done a ton of research. You made great progress. So, what did FDN offer someone like you who already has a lot of knowledge?
[00:31:18] Brianne Gates: I mean, it is a game changer. It was such a game changer for me because I had all this auxiliary knowledge that came from all these different places.
I had done different workshops and I became a certified herbalist. It was almost two years of schooling for that. But I had never had this foundation, which gave me a structure from how to work, that was so important, and learning to be a really good health detective. So, asking the right questions, if you’re not asking the right questions, which has a lot to do with epigenetics. Like, where did you grow up?
When I ask them questions about what environment they grew up in, they’re like, no one has ever asked me that question. No one has ever asked me so many of these questions that are so pertinent. Were you breastfed? Were you vaginally delivered? You know, how many rounds of antibiotics have you taken? You would be shocked at how many people I’ve worked with in the Midwest where they grew up in farm areas with really big agriculture where it’s like intense spraying of these crops. Now they’re starting to have like neurological issues.
Lingering Lyme Disease: The Many Things FDN Teaches
So FDN brought me to have this perspective of, you need to be using these certain intake forms that really give us a roadmap as to where to go next. That was one thing. Another thing was being able to correlate. So, here’s symptoms and symptoms are so important, but how can we also have this reflection or mirror, like what’s going on in the labs that are going to correlate?
The more that I saw case studies with the program, the more I would get a reflex, oh, okay. That correlates to that symptom. It was that training of constantly seeing these case studies that helped me to be a better practitioner and be able to identify more quickly what these symptoms are correlated to.
Then lastly the D.R.E.S.S. protocol, which I know you’ve probably talked about so many times here, but really, that also we have to, as holistic practitioners, we have to address everything. I come from a background, I’m a nutritional supplement expert. I’ve spent definitely over 15,000 hours dealing with supplements, talking about supplements. That’s not the whole picture.
The whole picture is not just supplements or just diet. We have to address stress, we have to address trauma, we have to talk about all of those things. In functional medicine, a lot of them just want to throw supplements at you, which is great; supplements help. Trust me, like, thank God for them. But every letter in that acronym has its value.
[00:33:53] Detective Ev: That’s awesome. It is interesting to hear from someone again who had like a very well-versed background in this and still sees value from the course because it’s so fascinating.
Lingering Lyme Disease: FDN Pulled All the Learning Together
We get on the other side, there’s people that are coming from a job as an accountant. They know about health, but they’re like just getting into the natural side. They take FDN and they have a completely different experience where they get a ton of value in a different way.
It’s just always so cool that this course can somehow actually work for people that are brand new, but then also be very helpful. I mean, we have MDs that go through the course. It’s just always interesting to me that it can still serve these populations in very unique and genuine ways. They’ll say, this did work for me and did help me.
So, were you working with clients to some degree before this? I’m getting the timeline right. 27 started at that huge supplement thing. You did that for eight and a half years you said. So that takes us, roughly to 35, and then there’s a gap. What were you doing in the last couple of years?
[00:34:40] Brianne Gates: I worked for Life Extension, which is another nutritional supplement company.
[00:34:44] Detective Ev: Nice. So, you’ve been out there.
[00:34:46] Brianne Gates: Yeah, it’s driven, you know, a hundred thousand miles in my 13 years as an educator for nutritional supplements. So, I worked for Life Extension for three years, and then that’s when I really started taking seriously my certifications.
So, I did the 18 months as an herbalist certification and then did a Yoga and Ayurveda certification because I had that on my heart. I love Ayurveda as well, and I love Chinese medicine too, so I’ve done a deep dive on Chinese medicine. Then FDN was my pulling it all together. I have been working with clients since 2020.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Brianne’s Ideal Client
[00:35:22] Detective Ev: Nice. All right. Again, we’ll talk about this a little bit more at the very end. But I know that the client thing is not the full-time thing for you. There are other things going on, that again, the more you talk, the more I realize, this person’s very similar to me.
I get this, but you obviously serve a specific type of clientele probably more often than not. So, who is a person that if they’re listening today and they’re already liking this, like, wow, this woman’s really cool. I’m relating to her a lot. Who is the ideal client for you that comes and works with you? What might they be dealing with?
[00:35:47] Brianne Gates: Definitely someone who is fatigued, doesn’t know what is going on and why they’re feeling this way. I really have a heart for behavioral health and mood disorders because of my background and because I really understand how to reconnect those pathways from the brain to the gut.
It would be somebody who is dealing with mood issues and fatigue. I mean, I know exactly what to do in those cases. Usually, you know, chronic illness, mold illness, a lot of people don’t know that they were exposed to mold. Mold is very insidious. Fungal infections are really insidious. I think they are more common than we talk about.
Fungus is just really brilliant. You know, all of the microbes are brilliant because of how they replicate and how they communicate with each other. But fungus is another story I think, and we gotta understand how to knock fungus back so it’s not overgrown and really taking over your neural pathways and messing with your nervous system.
Lingering Lyme Disease: The Brevity of Life
[00:36:46] Detective Ev: Sure. That’s cool that you serve that population because you know our time here is very short. It’s strange, I don’t know what happened in the last two years. I’ve always kind of been, not always in a negative way, sometimes just a truly curious way, I’ve always been fascinated since five years old about this idea that we have this temporary experience on this planet.
I remember looking at the adults in my life, I’m like, how are you guys not preoccupied with this? I’m preoccupied with this idea that we just come here and then we leave. This last two years has been very interesting for me where I’m like, wow, this is really short.
One through 18, maybe it’s just because of school and school sucks, I felt like it dragged on. I’m like, okay. A hundred years or 80 years, 90 years, that’s a long time. Then the curse, I guess, of being involved in so many things that I do love, you’ve had this experience probably too, with, again, doing things that you’re passionate about, is yes, your days are amazing, but the time flies. I’m like 70, 80 years, that’s not as much as I thought it was at one time.
My point in mentioning that though, is chronic illness in general is not something we want to be dealing with in this short time that we have here, let alone depression and these other mood issues like thinking maybe that there’s no point to our life having that hopelessness or at worst suicidal ideation when our time here is already so short. We want to enjoy it to the best of our abilities. I just so appreciate and empathize you serving those communities. That’s amazing.
Lingering Lyme Disease: A Product Called Bravo
Can I ask then too, since it’s been two years and you are like super focused, I’m guessing that like you give your all to your clients just like you seem to do with other things. Is there like one or two really cool client testimonials that sticks out? Maybe just awesome stories to the degree that you’re able to share the information, I’m just curious if anything sticks out.
[00:38:16] Brianne Gates: So, I’ve actually worked with some children. I have a friend of mine who I met at Arewhon years and years ago. She’s now an acupuncturist in Louisiana and she’s just brilliant. Her name is Emily Keity. Together we have worked with some different types of population. One of them was a child.
Because of my knowledge with the microbiome and the gut-brain, I learned about a product called Bravo. Bravo is the GcMAF protein that is put into a yogurt substance, or you could take it in a freeze-dried capsule. But this is a miracle substance, created by Dr. Marco Ruggiero, can, I’m saying “can”, may, and I’m not making any claims here, but can help create these neural connections back between the brain and the gut.
Lingering Lyme Disease: Client Success Stories
One of them was a two-year-old little girl who had trouble speaking. She really hadn’t spoken much, and as we know, girls speak before boys. So, a little girl, she had been two years old and still wasn’t verbal, was a concern for her parents. As soon as we gave her that Bravo yogurt, within two days she started speaking. It was huge.
Just having the wherewithal to be able to say, hey, why don’t we try this? Why don’t we try to get that intelligence back into the gut? That was a huge one, and it was something that I didn’t have to work that hard to get to happen. It was just a suggestion that I made based on my own personal experience with Bravo and my research. That was a great one.
Then I had another friend who has overcome breast cancer and I supported her during that. It was funny because I just kind of started my journey as an FDN, so I was a little unsure. I was like, okay, I want to make sure I’m giving her all of the correct support. She also saw a functional holistic MD, which is really rare, like an oncologist MD who was holistic minded. My suggestions really were almost exactly what the MD had suggested. That made me feel really good and helped her have the confidence to do a more holistic route with the breast cancer. Now she’s thriving.
[00:40:28] Detective Ev: This is so cool. Especially with the two-year-old man. I mean, not that the cancer thing isn’t amazing.
Where to Find Brianne Gates
It’s probably biased because we went through things as young people. I have like this extreme sympathy and empathy for kids. I’m like, dude, they didn’t ask for this. They come into this world and then we give them all these toxins and all this crazy stuff’s going on. You know, that’s supposed to be like these innocent years where you haven’t really made any choices to lead to the bad outcomes that you’re getting yet.
So, to help them rewrite their childhood and even their entire life, honestly that’s amazing. Of all the client testimonials I’ve asked for on here, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a story like that from a non-verbal two-year-old not only becoming verbal but becoming verbal in a matter of a couple days because of something very specific. That’s just very interesting.
[00:41:06] Brianne Gates: I’m saying this cause that GcMAF protein in the form of Bravo is just a miracle.
[00:41:12] Detective Ev: Okay. Check it out. I might have some myself.
I’m going to transition after this into more core stuff for 10 minutes and it actually might be an audio we might be able to use with some of our people that we talk to in the future.
So, where can people find you? Again, it’s not like you want to take an abundance of clients, but if someone really feels called and like, hey, I love this woman. I think she’d relate to me a lot and can help me. Where could they find you in your practice?
Well, I have a website and it’s my name, briannegates.com.
[00:41:41] Brianne Gates: Well, I have a website and it’s my name, briannegates.com. You can go on there. And I’m also on Instagram @vibe_engineer.
Business Tips: How Do I Make FDN a Career?
[00:41:47] Detective Ev: Excellent. We’ll have that in the show notes for you guys, of course. Then for the last 10 minutes here, while I have you on, I think we have to take the opportunity to really talk about some of the course stuff.
So, Brianne, I had done course enrollment stuff before, and during the podcast left for a little bit, came back recently. Now you’ve been here for at least several months doing this and killing it, right? Just having so many people join us. What I love about our current way of doing this now is we are so focused on discerning whether or not our program really is a good fit for someone at a given time so the people that we’re bringing in are really meant to be doing this at a given time. We might give recommendations for something else if we believe that’s better, or maybe they just have to pause something in their life first before they could come and do this.
What are some like really common questions that you’re finding, you’re getting asked that you wish they kind of knew maybe before they came on some of these calls? Because again, we could repurpose this audio, we could do a whole separate podcast too, but I think this might be useful today to talk about some of this.
[00:42:41] Brianne Gates: Yeah. Great. You know, I think something that people want to know is like, how do I make a career of this? I think a lot of people are new into being an entrepreneur. I was, I’d always been an employee. So, having my own business, how did I navigate that?
Business Tips: Tell Your Story
One thing that I found that was really crucial in making this my own, making this a career that was viable, was telling my story, number one in a place where people could identify with me.
On my website is a great place for just to make your bio. What have you gone through? Most people that we talk to have a story, have a healing journey. That is what other people are drawn to. It’s not your accolades, it’s not where you went to school. It’s so much about what you have overcome yourself so that people can identify with you. I think that is a calling card.
I think, putting on there also your services, like what do you like to do, what kind of tests do you offer, your services. Then what I did is I made a PowerPoint presentation, very short one that I converted into a PDF. I would attach it to emails and send it out to doctors because I wanted to work in a clinic setting.
Nobody told me to do this. Nobody was like, well, this is how you get a job, and this is how you do this. It was more like, I looked at different doctors in my area or where I wanted to work, and I would just email their office and see if they needed my services.
Interestingly enough, I really got my feet wet working with an allopathic physician. He was not a functional medicine physician. He was like, hey, I really want to get into functional medicine and I’m going to bring you on. I’m going to bring you on to do all my functional medicine. I’m going to bring you on, we will work together and create some programs for the clients.
Business Tips: There are Options, Be Innovative
So that’s a great way for people, if they feel like, hmm, you know, I’m going to do the entrepreneurial thing. I’m going to have my own clients, but why not reach out and work like two days a week in a clinic and offer your services to a doctor that’s probably overwhelmed, probably wants to get into functional medicine and literally doesn’t have the time, doesn’t have the knowledge yet.
I did that two different times. I worked in clinics. You know, people don’t really realize that that’s an option. Working in a compounding pharmacy, just helping them sell supplements and then maybe doing some testing. There are so many different ways if you’re creative and have the gusto to put yourself out there.
[00:45:07] Detective Ev: Very cool. You just seem like you’re very innovative with this stuff. Like yeah, no one has to tell you to do it. What can they say? No. And it turned out very well for you.
Brianne Gates: Exactly like, oh, well.
Detective Ev: Yeah. This is like sales stuff 101. Right? And it applies for entrepreneurship. Cause entrepreneurship, you’re going to have to sell something at some point. If you never ask, the answer is already no. The worst thing that can happen when you ask is you get a no. Well, you already had that. So, it can only be a yes or something that you already had. You gotta get into that mindset.
FDN Job Opportunities
The person that I actually ended up on the call with after our meeting today was a chiropractor. I didn’t even realize, but I’d already talked to the other individual. She works in his practice, and he wants to send to her through FDN because he can do adjustments, right? It would take him the same amount of time to go through FDN as her. But the difference is it would take her seven, eight years to go through chiropractic school versus eight months roughly on average to go through FDN.
You know, six years ago when I went through the course, I mean, you could have created it for yourself, but I wouldn’t necessarily have said there was an abundance of opportunities to work with other people. But now in AFDNP, which is our professionals’ group post-graduation, there are weekly job opportunities for individuals, and this is increasing. It’s tough to say that it won’t become more than weekly soon enough where these chiropractors, acupuncturists, even MDs, are seeing the value of having someone functionally oriented in their clinic. They’re like, okay, we’ll go hire FDNs.
And these are not $15 an hour job, guys. I saw someone listing for $130. Now don’t get your hopes up, that’s not all the time. But I was like, the fact that someone values this certification enough that they are saying we will hire one of your grads and we’re going to pay them $130 an hour. I was like, That’s amazing. What a testament to what we’re doing, you know?
You Have to Demonstrate You Know the FDN Course Material
[00:46:47] Brianne Gates: Absolutely.
You know every single day I get a call from someone who has been referred to us by a practitioner. So usually, these people are being referred by doctors who’ve heard about us. And one thing I always tell people is that FDNs are held to a higher standard.
You don’t just pass FDN with a 70% or better and like, oh, we hope that you learned the material. It’s like, no, no, no. You have to demonstrate that you know this material. And you demonstrate that three times, as you know, during the course.
People are starting to hear more and more about the level of efficacy that these FDNs have, and they want that for themselves.
[00:47:30] Detective Ev: Yeah. I think one of the other things too that people come and talk about a lot is like, how feasible is this to actually go work online and do my own thing? The truth is, yes, there are many characteristics and factors that go into an individual succeeding in that type of thing. But what FDN now has gotten so good at when we offer the business school, and this is something that you can incorporate now when you enroll. I mean, this wasn’t even around when Brianne went through. Now you can incorporate this into your monthly payments when you purchase the course. It’s amazing and they discount it greatly.
So, you can literally have no business experience, no health experience, and go through FDN, you have the tools necessary to help a ton of people. And if you need to take advanced courses to help even crazier, rare cases, you’re more than welcome to do that. But FDN will get you pretty darn far.
FDN Business School is Business in a Box
On top of that, no business experience, no problem. We created something business oriented just for FDNs. That covers the taxes, the emails, the lead stuff online, the websites. I mean, it’s literally everything. It’s kind of amazing to see that we’re this one-stop shop now.
This is always tough cause, of course, we’re the course enrollment people. But I think a lot of people listen regularly to the show, it seems like that with our stats. I know that they, hopefully, trust me when I say this. When I see that the course with the business school added in is only $10 grand, I honestly think one of our biggest problems is that we undersell this. We should literally be charging more. I mean, you can go out and start a whole career with this and charge significant money.
[00:48:53] Brianne Gates: That’s true. It’s really like a business in a box in a way. It’s something that you can be so proud of that you feel like you’re making a huge contribution to society.
Covid was a great thing as much as it was detrimental to so many different aspects of our lives. It really opened people’s eyes to alternative choices in medicine. More and more people are like, hey, I’m going to try this.
I want to make this point. Yes, you do pay out of pocket. That is how it is. But so many people aren’t getting any help from insurance-based healthcare. And they’re like, why am I paying all this money monthly, yearly to go nowhere? People are willing to pay now for their health. This is not, you know, 10 years ago or even three years ago. Things are absolutely changing and rapidly. People want real healthcare that’s holistic like FDN provides.
FDN Isn’t Going Out of Business
[00:49:49] Detective Ev: Yeah. It’s an amazing time. It sucks that people are so sick. But there’s no shortage of business is the way to say it.
The best thing that could ever happen is we do go out of business and the reason we would is because there’s just no sick people. Guys, unfortunately we got a long time before that’s going to happen. You know what I mean? I don’t even know if that’s going to be in our lifetime the way things are going.
I really thought the pandemic would be the time. We’re like, oh, everyone’s at home. They’re going to be eating better. The stats show the opposite. Like literally people got more unhealthy than they were before. I get it cause like it’s easier to make excuses, I guess, and we’re stressed. Everyone was stressed out, so fair enough. But I was like, oh, this is it. This is the time. No people need us now more than ever.
We got about one or two minutes left in the show. Again, I think it actually, we’ll talk to our team, but Brianne it might be cool if we got on together to do a shorter episode just focused on stuff that we’re getting together as course enrollment. Like what are the top questions? And then when we have people reaching out to us, we have the course tour of course, but we can send this to people from like an enrollment advisor’s perspective.
Brianne Gates: That would be great.
Detective Ev: We’ll definitely humor that and talk about that in another time. We want to finish up though, with the signature question. I still want to include you in this, of course.
Signature Podcast Question
If you guys want to book with us by the way to talk, one of the links in the show notes will be fdntraining.com/call. It will take you to the page where you can book either Brianne or I, or again, it might have some round robin system. I promise we’re both cool. Even though you sound really cool after today. She got to talk more though, that’s not fair. No, I’m kidding.
But the signature question I want to ask you today is, if we could give you a magic wand and you could wave it and get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, so you could choose for them to do one thing or you could get them to stop doing one thing, what is the one thing that Brianne would get them to do?
[00:51:33] Brianne Gates: I would get them to love themselves more. What I mean by that, cause that could take a lot of different paths, but to love themselves in the way where they manage their stress response. They understand where these triggers are coming from so that they take a pause. They take time out of their day to pray, to meditate, to love themselves and feel their feelings so that they can show up less reactive and really show up in their lives with intention coming from a place of, not an old behavior pattern, coming from a place of love.
[00:52:10] Detective Ev: 20 years of health experience, guys. Obviously, she knows a lot and that’s still the answer. I hope people actually think about that one and take that to heart.
Conclusion
Thank you so much for coming on today. I’m excited to hopefully have you on again soon and we’ll talk about some course stuff.
Brianne Gates: Awesome. Thanks Evan.
You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.
For more podcasts with great info like this, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/health-detective-podcast/.
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