Lyme Disease is a Tricky and Chronic Disease that is Hard to Diagnose and to Treat.

In this episode of The Paid Leave Podcast, host Nancy Barrow focuses on Lyme and tick-borne diseases. Lyme disease is the fastest growing vector borne infectious disease in the United States. The CDC says more people are infected with Lyme disease, than breast cancer. Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases come with a lot of unknowns. Before starting to treat symptoms, you must first get a proper diagnosis. Unfortunately, diagnosing Lyme disease can be complicated. Lyme disease can turn into a chronic health condition if it goes undiagnosed.
 Dr Myriah Hinchey is the medical director of Tao Center for Vitality in Hebron. Dr.  Hinchey is a naturopathic physician and Fellow of the Medical Academy of Pediatric Special Needs (MAPS), and she is recognized as an expert in the field of Lyme disease and other complex chronic inflammatory conditions, with over 17 years of specialized experience. She has helped thousands of people infected to get effective treatment and she says it is tough to get a diagnosis without getting more in depth and accurate testing done. Dr Hinchey says not all Lyme disease tests are created equal. The accuracy of Lyme disease tests can vary widely between testing methods, leaving many people without a reliable diagnosis, or misdiagnosis that can lead to many health complications. Dr. Hinchey also had Lyme disease and treated herself. She believes that prevention is the key and by doing tick checks every time you go outside, can save you years of agony.

For information about Dr. Myriah Hinchey visit Natural Lyme Disease Treatment Specialist - Specializing in natural herbal protocols - Dr Myriah Hinchey ND, Medical Director (taovitality.com)

For the 3rd annual  LymeBytes Symposium in CT: LymeBytes™ Lyme Disease Conference & Community Support – LymeBytes!™

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Transcript

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Nancy Barrow: 0:01

Hello Connecticut, and welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast. The title basically says it all. I'm Nancy Barrow, and I will be delving into this new state program and how it can help you and your family. This podcast will give you information you should know about Connecticut Paid Leave and maybe just a little bit more. Connecticut Paid Leave brings peace of mind to your home, family and workplace. Welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast. Lyme disease is the fastest growing vector borne infectious disease in the United States, and the CDC says more people are infected with Lyme disease than breast cancer. Justin Bieber was diagnosed with Lyme and had to cancel his tour before his diagnosis, he had some paralysis and they didn't really know what it was. Darryl Hall from Hall and Oates had Lyme and three other co infections, and he was really open about the scandal of not being diagnosed and that it was chronic Lyme. Avril Lavigne also had Lyme disease. Lyme disease can turn into a chronic health condition if it goes undiagnosed. And Connecticut Paid Leave can help with this by giving you income replacement while you take time away from work for appointments, treatments and flare ups. Joining me is Myriah Hinchey, a Physician and Medical Director of Tao Center for Vitality in Hebron. Dr.Hinchey will talk about Lyme disease, which is a serious health condition and often a controversial topic. Dr. Myriah Hinchey is a Naturopathic Physician, and Fellow of the Medical Academy of Pediatric Special Needs, and is considered an expert in the field of Lyme disease and other chronic inflammatory conditions, with over 17 years of specialized experience. As a Physician and the Medical Director at Tao Integrative Center for Healing, she's successfully guided 1000s of patients towards recovery from their complex chronic inflammatory conditions. And she's the founder and owner of LymeCore Botanicals. It's an herbal medicine company focused on providing effective solutions for healing vector borne diseases. Dr.Hinchey treats patients of all ages with a specialty in pediatrics, and focuses on educating healthcare professionals on the pathophysiology of vector borne diseases and how to successfully integrate functional, herbal and lifestyle medicine into their practices. That is such a mouthful, but welcome to the podcast Doctor Hinchey.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 2:28

Thank you so much. It's so nice to be here with you.

Nancy Barrow: 2:31

What made you so passionate about Lyme disease?

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 2:34

Well, I guess you know, being trained as a Naturopathic Physician, we are always taught to treat the underlying cause, you know, to identify and treat the underlying cause. So, you know, I think a lot of people think that natural medicine is using herbs instead of prescriptions to treat symptoms, and that can be done. It's not something that I recommend or that I do. So again, being trained to find the underlying cause because of the amount of immune dysfunction and inflammation that Lyme disease and its co-infections cause, in addition to the fact that it infects every single cell In the body, so it has the ability to affect every single cell, organ system of the body. It causes a lot of symptoms, you know? So when you have somebody come in and they have this array of symptoms, often Lyme and other infections are that underlying cause. So I simply cannot do my job as a Naturopathic Physician without being extremely well versed in Lyme disease and all of its co-infections.

Nancy Barrow: 3:57

So was it personal for you, though? I mean, you had Lyme, and when did you start saying, okay, I gotta really focus on Lyme disease?

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 4:06

So it's funny. It's personal, but it isn't so what I will tell you is that, and I'll try to make long stories pretty short. So in clinic, in school, I was fortunate enough to have a patient. She was young girl who had Lyme and Babesia, and she had failed about six months of IV antibiotics as well as other oral antibiotics and anti parasitics. And so, you know, I learned very early on in my career that Lyme is not what we're taught in school, you know? So we're taught that you're going to have flu like symptoms, a bullseye rash and joint pain, and then simply, you take a few weeks of doxycycline and miraculously, you're cured. And so that's not the case, because there's so many different presentations of Lyme disease, and co-infections, the testing, which I'm sure we'll get into, is not simple and straightforward, and neither is the treatment. And so I was fortunate enough to learn this in school, and I came out, and because I knew this, I started diagnosing Lyme on some of my patients that no one else had been able to figure out for some of them for decades, what was actually wrong with them. And, you know, Hebron is a small town, and word got around, and, you know, I quickly became that doctor where it was like, you know, if you can't figure out what's wrong with you, go see Dr Hinchey, she'll figure out what's wrong with you. You know, fast forward a few years into that, I started suffering with all of these crazy, intermittent, cyclical symptoms, and suspected that I had Lyme and other tick borne diseases as well. And it was actually one of my patients who had Lyme that I become very close to. And, you know, we were, we are friends outside. And she was like, you know, Mariah, I think you have Lyme disease. And I was like, my God, I think you're right. And so luckily, it was on my radar, because, you know, I went to my PCP, and she was like, Oh, sweetie, you're just climbing too many mountains and you're too stressed out, and, you know, you must be going through early menopause. Even though, you know, I was 35 and my periods were like clockwork every 28 days and had no other symptoms, you know, but that was the conclusion she came to. So luckily, I had a list of these Lyme Literate doctors that I was referring my patients to at the time, because I wasn't really treating Lyme. I was diagnosing it, and sending these patients out, you know, to this handful of Lyme Literate doctors that I had become aware of, and they were doing the treatment, and really I was doing a bunch of damage control. So trying to, you know, make sure that their guts weren't too severely damaged from doing this triple antibiotic therapy for months and months and months. And then so, you know, lo and behold, I went and saw one of them. And turns out I had Lyme disease, and Bebesia and Bartonella and Mycoplasma and Chlamydia pneumoniae, which is which is carried by ticks. And I went for 18 months doing triple antibiotic therapy, also taking a Atovaquone, which is the generic for Mepbron or Malarone, which is what is used to treat Babesia. All of my symptoms went away over those 18 months, but every time I tried to stop taking antibiotics, my symptoms would come back. Wow. And so, you know, I consider myself very lucky to have been Lyme Literate at that point in my life. Because honestly, I felt like I was developing dementia, like I was losing my mind. I was having panic attacks, like all of these crazy symptoms, debilitating headaches, body, pain, insomnia. Had I not known what I known? I honestly don't know where I would be right now, because it was dismissed.

Nancy Barrow: 8:12

Tell me about Lyme Literate doctors. I don't think a lot of people know what that means and that there are Lyme Literate doctors.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 8:21

So I would say your average physician no offense, and I truly mean no offense to anybody, but your average physician is taught exactly what I was taught, right? This is the presentation, this is the treatment, end of story. And since the CDC and the Infectious Disease Society of America claims that chronic tick borne illness doesn't exist. You know, the typical family physician is looking to them for guidance. You know, luckily, just last year, the CDC has put a statement out saying that Lyme can have chronic symptoms and chronic effects. You know, which is better than the stance of just saying simply chronic Lyme disease doesn't exist. So I would say there are doctors that understand that Lyme is not as simple as it is, you know, made out to be as far as diagnosing and treatment goes, you know. And there are doctors that are willing to kind of treat outside of the standard of care. And I would say, to some degree, they're Lyme Literate, right? Like they get it, yeah. Then there's another group of physicians who attend the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society Annual conferences, or our members. And so this is ILADS, I, L, A, D, s.org, they are a phenomenal organization, nonprofit, and really what they do is they research and they educate physicians and other medical practitioners on really the truth about Lyme and vector borne disease. And so, you know, everything that they do and talk about is really studied and backed up by, you know, by by scientific facts and studies and literature. And so they are, whom I would consider to be truly Lyme Literate, and they are at the forefront of vector borne diseases. And they're expanding now, you know, in light of COVID, into really, these chronic inflammatory conditions. So they are the, what I would consider to be the real Lyme Literate medical professional organization.

Nancy Barrow: 10:36

How did you treat yourself like and how did you find a way to get yourself better, because you weren't getting better with all the protocol that you were doing with antibiotics.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 10:47

So one of my biggest symptoms was insomnia. I would wake up at 3am with anxiety so bad that like, I couldn't get back to sleep. And one of these nights, I woke up literally thinking about this girl that I had treated in medical school, and it was like, okay, she was doing really good on the herbs that we were doing. Like, what were those herbs? What we're using? And I got up and got out of bed, and I started searching for natural treatments for Lyme disease. Okay, after all, I am a naturopathic doctor, and you know, I think everything that I had learned about Lyme disease and everything that I had seen up to that point was just so scary. And then being a member of ILADS and having, you know, gone to their conferences for several years, and you know, seeing a lot of patients get better on this triple antibiotic therapy, but a lot of people still sick after years or even decades on, you know, triple antibiotic therapy. And then, you know, seeing myself failing it, you know, I had to, like, realize and go back to my roots, right? So I started searching for natural cures for a Lyme disease, and they came across Master Herbalist, Steven Bunner. And he just happened to be doing a one day seminar in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, which is like an hour from my house. And he's from, like, New Mexico. And I literally signed up for his conference and ordered his books and started reading his protocols and started using them on myself. And then I went there, you know, listen to all of his immense knowledge and understanding, not just of the herbal medicine that he was using, but the pathophysiology of what these infections do to our bodies, and really understanding them, right? So then, for about six months, I used the herbs on myself. I started incorporating them into the treatment that I was doing with these patients who were also undergoing this long term antibiotic therapy. And for several years I ended up doing this integrative approach where I had an a Lyme Literate MD, doing the triple antibiotic therapy, and I was doing the herbs. Then after I had kind of this aha moment of, you know, the crucial piece of the immune system, as well as a lot of these Lyme Literate physicians, had very, very long wait lists. And so I would put my patients on these herbs, because it was like do something, you know, to try to get them out of the debilitating, you know, pain and dysfunction that they were in, and we as a practice started seeing that, like a lot of these patients, just in three months, had somewhere around a 25% minimum decrease in the severity and frequency of all of their symptoms. And then a lot of them would go on to get on the triple antibiotic therapy, stay on their herbs, and continue to get better and better and better, where some of them would just kind of plateau, or some of them couldn't handle the antibiotics. Then Steven Bunner put my name in his book as being, you know, proficient in his protocols, and I had all these patients seeking me out that refused to do the antibiotic piece. They only wanted to do the herbs. And so it's kind of like the universe gave me these two different groups of patients that were doing triple antibiotic therapy with herbs, and then a group of patients who were just doing all of the lifestyle medicine that I do, along with the herbs. And it seemed as though, over, you know, the next, like year or two, the patients who are doing the herbs only had a more steady resolution of their symptoms without being interrupted, you know, and having like these other issues, and were able to be weaned off of their protocols and not relapse, whereas almost every single patient that was coming off this integrative approach had to give up the antibiotics first, and then they're just on herbs, and then staying on just the herbs for several months to then finally be able to be weaned off the herbs. And I was like, wow, what's going on here? Like, even I would have thought the people integrating the antibiotics would have had the better outcomes. But it honestly wasn't that way.

Nancy Barrow: 15:16

It was an interesting clinical trial for yourself.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 15:18

Right? That I didn't even know that I was doing and that, you know, these patients were almost like self selecting themselves, because there's a lot of improper treatment of acute Lyme tick borne disease, and that is part of the reason why we have so many cases of chronic tick borne disease.

Nancy Barrow: 15:37

Does every tick carry Lyme? Or do some not carry any kind of disease.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 15:43

So no, all ticks do not carry Lyme disease. They all have the potential to carry a multitude of tick borne diseases. Right? Everything from you know, we have rickettsia species, which causes Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. For example, we have Anaplasma, we have Ehrlichia, we have Lyme, right? And the organism that causes Lyme is called Borrelia. But there are a multitude of different species of Borrelia that cause good old Lyme disease, or cause another form of Lyme disease called tick borne relapsing fever. Then we have Babesia, which is the cousin to malaria, which is a parasite which isn't treated with antibiotics, because antibiotics kill bacteria, not parasites. And we also have Bartonella, which, you know, is famous for Cat Scratch Fever. But there are other species of Bartonella that that aren't detectable by the same test, right? So there's all of these different bacteria and parasites, and then there's also viruses, like the Powassan virus, right? So no, not every single tick is going to carry all of those, but every single tick carries some array of them. Dog ticks typically do not carry Borrelia. It's like, you know, I think the statistic is 99.6 and I'm like, Okay, well, what about that other point 4% you know what I mean? Like, that's an odd number, but that's the real statistic. Dog ticks can carry things like as Anaplasma and other viruses and other things that you know we do need to worry about. Now here's the big scary thing, is that nymph ticks can carry all of this stuff. And nymph ticks are smaller than a poppy seed. And if, and they're they're delicate, they're not hard, like a normal tick is, you know. So you feel something on your head and all this hair, and you go and you scratch it, and it comes off like you have no idea, but the mouthpieces are still in there, and, you know, that's going to be basically depositing, regurgitating, whatever you want to call it, that tick soup. You know that that dirty needle, Dr Joseph Burrascanno he calls ticks nature's dirty needles, and that's what they are. You know, whatever that deer or that chipmunk or that rodent had inside of it, which have 1000s of ticks on them, a lot of times that one bite of that tick from that animal that's sucking out of the blood now they come and bite you. You're going to get everything from that animal. So you're more likely to get 2,3,4,5 things at once, then you are just to get one infection.

Nancy Barrow: 18:44

So many. I can't believe how many things that what you need to know to educate yourself about ticks, especially in Connecticut.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 18:52

Yes, my very good friend and colleague, Dr Alexis Chesney, actually just started this course called, Preventing Lyme and Tick Borne Diseases. And it's a whole course, really, on how to protect yourself and your family from tick borne disease.

Nancy Barrow: 19:14

And you know, it's funny, because, like May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month. So what can we do to protect ourselves from these ticks, since there's so many of them?

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 19:25

Oh, so I hate chemicals and I hate toxins, but I think depending on your risk of exposure, you know, you might want to look into getting pyrethrum and treating the soles of your shoes. There are wonderful companies like Insect Shield, I think is the name of it. Where you can, if you're a hunter, you can send your hunting jacket out, and they will dip it for you, and then, you know, it will last you through at least a season or two. Um, you can buy socks that have been treated. I would always recommend wearing another sock underneath, so that you're kind of protecting, you know, your skin. Obviously there are a ton of, you know, essential oil sprays and and I would love to pretend that those, you know, work to the extent that we need them to. I think if you're being diligent about applying them like every single hour. You know what I mean? They are effective. Personally, I have my yard treated with pyrethrum at the beginning of the year, once in the middle of the summer, and then once in the end of the year, or like the end of fall, and then we do organic cedar spray in between. Doing tick checks, anytime that you come in, even from being in your yard, just do a quick tick check. Preventing that bite will save you, seriously, a lifetime of agony. So tick checks my son, he's going to be eight in the summer, and that poor kid has had a tick check, no joke, every single night of his life. You know, almost every day when he gets back from school. You know, if we go hiking or go fishing or do anything, you know, where he is, not like in a groomed area, and we live in Lebanon, Connecticut, right? So like we are in the woods, we have tons of animals, and I think that tick checks are really key to preventing a lot of this.

Nancy Barrow: 21:29

Yeah, Lyme disease is one of the most undiagnosed and misdiagnosed diseases, and testing is the problem. So let's talk about the testing aspect of it. So if you go to your you know your physician, they're going to do a certain type of blood test, and that really isn't effective, right? That's not the most effective way to find out if you've been infected.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 21:52

Right. So in an acute case, what happens is, is our bodies take several weeks to make antibodies to the organisms that that tick puts into our body. So we make two different antibodies in response to an infection. We make IGMs, which are the first line of defense, and then we make IGGs which are the second line or the more chronic line of defense. So IGMs, it takes three weeks to make the amount that is going to be really detectable to earn you, like a reactive or like a positive on your test. IGGs take four to six weeks for peak production. So in an acute case, the scenario is if you saw the bite or you get the EM rash, which, by the way, the EM rash can take three to 30 days to develop, and it is seen in less than 40% of patients with Lyme disease. So we cannot rely on that tell tale sign. Okay, number one, I just want to make that clear. So when you go, when you see the tick bite, or you get that em rash, and you go to your doctor, and they test you, and it's only been a week, or 10 days or two weeks, guess what, whether you got Lyme or not, you're going to test negative because the tests are what are called indirect meaning they aren't looking for the presence of the organism like they're not looking for its DNA. They are looking at your immune system's response or your antibody production to the presence of that organism. And so if you test too soon, you're going to test negative. And that's kind of the start of this, because it's like, well, you know, you go back in a month, well, I'm having headaches, I'm having neck pain, I'm having light sensitivity, I'm having muscle pain, joint pain, I'm having digestive issues, I'm having anxiety. And it's like, well, we tested you for Lyme, and you were negative, you know? So it's definitely, I don't know what it is, but it's definitely not Lyme like if I had a penny for every time I've heard that, you know, I'd never need to work again. So that's one of the issues, is testing too soon. The second issue, like I said earlier, there's all these different species of Borrelia that exists now. There's about 20 that are testable when you get tested with the for example, the test used by quest diagnosis you're looking for, Borrelia Burgdifori. Okay, that's like me telling you I'm going to test you for a crayon. I've got this box of 20 colors of crayons. I want you to reach in and pull out a crayon, and let's say for the record, you pull out a green one. And I'm going to come along with my test that only tests for a red crayon. And I'm going to have you hold up your crayon, and I'm going to say, nope, you don't have a crayon. And you're going to say, What are you talking about I have a crayon, I have a green crayon. I'm going to say, nope. Your crayons not red. Therefore it's not a crayon, right? That is what this lime testing is doing. It's looking at Borrelia burgdifori. And if it's not there, it's saying, Nope, you don't have Lyme. We're generalizing. And it's like, well, what if you have Borrelia alphazelli, or Borrelia spillmani, or Borrelia mayoni? I mean, there's just, there's all of these different species. Now, to make matters worse, that's just Lyme. What if you have Anaplasma? Yeah, What if you have Ehrlichia? What if you have Babesia? What if you have Bartonella? Obviously, a line test is not going to test for any of those other things. That's like using a crayon test to look for a paintbrush or a marker, and you can get a very good test for Barbelia, Babesia, Bartonella, and then the Borrelia that causes tick borne relapsing fever through Hygenics covered by Medicare. I think it's like a $40 or $60 copay, if that. Going back to where I said it infects every cell of the of your body. It infects your brain cells. It causes a lot of central nervous system damage, and so, you know, the depression and the anxiety that comes along with it, t's two fold. Like obviously, when you have been sick for months or years and you don't know what's wrong with you, and no doctor can figure out what's wrong with you, and words like ALS and MS are getting thrown around in the diagnosis. That's going to cause a lot of situational anxiety and depression. But on top of it, these organisms literally inflame your brain, and when they inflame your limbic system, right and other parts of the brain that dictate our emotional response to things, your anxiety goes through the roof. You end up with depression. Some people have extreme irritability, bipolar. They develop schizophrenic, like, symptoms. Then throw on top of that, where, like, cognitively, you can't function anymore. You like you have dementia, like I did all of a sudden, you can't remember why you went into a room, names of people, places, things. I have patients that literally can't remember what they were doing or what they were saying in the middle of it. That was one of my things, too, that I had. And, you know, we know, like with, have you heard the term Pans or Pandas?

Nancy Barrow: 27:33

No.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 27:34

So these are conditions that we're seeing in the pediatric population where it is like it's a neuropsychiatric presentation in response to these infections causing an autoimmune response to the brain, and it causes something called basal ganglia encephalitis. And so it can cause OCD, panic, anxiety, separation anxiety from parents, ritualistic behavior, and it can come on overnight. And I think this is such an important point for your listeners to hear any sort of psychiatric illness in an adult or in a child that was not there on Tuesday and is there on Friday, right? Or even any sort of severe cognitive decline. That is not how these diseases progress, if they're, you know, if they're just the regular disease. If you see a change in personality or a change in psychiatric behavior in days that is infection driven, and it should be considered infection driven and worked up as infection driven, until proven otherwise.

Nancy Barrow: 28:53

Do you encourage people to go get therapy? Because Connecticut Paid Leave also covers mental health visits if it's considered to be a serious health condition, which depression and anxiety can be serious health conditions, so we can help in that matter. But do you encourage people to go seek therapy if they're having difficulty with a diagnosis?

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 29:12

So much so that we brought psychotherapy in as the modality in my practice.

Nancy Barrow: 29:19

Wow, wow. Yes, if they do have that chronic aspect, Connecticut Paid Leave can help them with that. How important is a program like this to your patients?

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 29:29

Oh my gosh, so important. Because I would say, really the worst part of treatment is in the beginning. So a lot of times 12 weeks. You know, that's three months. Most of the patients, like I said, in three months, were like 25% better as far as the severity and their frequency of their symptoms. And so, you know, this can take someone from almost like a debilitated state, you know, into a state where they're functional in daily life again. And something that's so important is like we have to understand how much stress suppresses the immune system. And so for patients that have chronic tick borne disease, that are really ill, like for my debilitated group of patients, just going to work, even if it isn't stressful and controversial, and you know, all the things that the workplace can be. Just having to get out of bed and go to work, and having that stress of the logistics is enough to keep them sick. So having, you know, a concentrated eight to 12 weeks where their full time job is literally taking care of themselves and nourishing themselves and resting and rebuilding could be huge for so many patients,.

Nancy Barrow: 30:54

And I know that you kind of focus on pediatrics, and so our caregiver leave will let parents take time away from work to help with the treatment of their kids, and that's really important, too. And you know, you can do the intermittent leave, the reduced schedule leave, it doesn't have to be 12 weeks at a time. So I think that it gives them a little bit of freedom to be able to get treated and let their kids get treated.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 31:21

Yeah, absolutely. And especially, you know, for parents of kids that have PANS or PANDAS, which is that pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder. PANDAS is associated with strep, PANS is associated with any infection. A lot of these kids. I mean, you can't bring them to school. You cannot bring them to daycare, because their separation anxiety and or their panic or their fears or their OCD is so severe. I mean, in so severe, like the look in these kids, it's like sheer terror sometimes, right? It's like the mom can't leave the kids.

Nancy Barrow: 32:06

Yeah, so hopefully Connecticut Paid Leave could help them with that. Can you give listeners to this podcast three things that they should be doing if they feel they have Lyme disease?

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 32:20

Sure. I would say number one, go to the international Lyme and associated Disease Society, or ILADS, and it's ILADS.org, I L, A, D, S, dot org. Because they have a database, they will work with you to find a Lyme literate doctor in your area, and then, you know, you kind of don't have to worry about what the definition of Lyme literacy is, okay, because at least they are getting real, true information from this organization. That would be number one, number two, I think, to answer your question, I would say, get the full tick borne disease panel through either Igenics or Vibrant America. And number three, just start working with with a Lyme literate physician. And also have hope.

Nancy Barrow: 33:16

Yeah, and I really hope that we can work together, because I do think Connecticut Paid Leave can really help people who have Lyme disease and and that you're helping. And so if we can be of any assistance and get anything to you and to your patients, we would really like to do that. We really want to help people who are going through a struggle, which is definitely what Lyme disease is.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 33:39

Yes, and thank you so much, because I'm embarrassed to say, like, I wasn't even aware that this was an option for a lot of my patients, you know, I thought you had to be like, you know, quote, unquote disabled, right? I didn't realize. And especially for the caretakers, I thought you had to be taking care of somebody that was, you know, diagnosed with a disability. So you know, a lot of times taking care of yourself when you're this ill can be a full time job, and it's just amazing to know that the residents of Connecticut are able to get that time to really focus on themselves and their health and recovery, or that of a loved one. This is, this is amazing news. So I would love to help you share the word.

Nancy Barrow: 34:28

Dr Myriah Hinchey a physician and Medical Director at Tao Vitality Center in Hebron. Thank you so much for being such a champion to help people with Lyme and chronic Lyme disease. It's, it's really amazing.

Dr. Myriah Hinchey: 34:40

Thank you again for having me.

Nancy Barrow: 34:42

For more information or to apply for benefits, please go to ct paid leave dot org. This has been another edition of The Paid Leave Podcast. Please like and subscribe so you'll be notified about new podcasts that become available Connecticut Paid Leave is a public act with a personal purpose. I'm Nancy Barrow, and thanks for listening.