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Music by Ian Hildebrand
Thanks so much for listening!
For everything else 5 Star Wellbeing please head to the Evenstar Wellbeing website.
Please join me on socials as well:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIN
Music by Ian Hildebrand
Okay, hello, everyone, and welcome today to this episode. And I'm delighted to have Dr. Tenesha Wards as my guest today. Tenesha is a functional medicine doctor, there's so many words I know I'm going to stuff up. But, and a founder of the Infinity Wellness Center. Tenesha is a specialist in finding and correcting the core root cause of conditions, which can often be a bit of a mystery, like fatigue, chronic pain, fibromyalgia and other medical mysteries. So I'm really excited to have her on because this is a type of medical practice that I think everybody needs to be aware of. And certainly where I am in Australia, it's really not commonly known that functional medicine is a thing. So really exciting to have you along,Tenesha. I'd love for you to just tell us a bit about yourself what your your background is how you got to be where you are right now. And what led you especially into that, that functional medicine, side of medicine, that would be wonderful.
Tenesha Wards:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I think it's worth saying my big, big goal or legacy if I were to leave one is to absolutely what you just said, make functional medicine, not just people, people being aware of it, but a first line of defense. So essentially, the biggest difference between functional medicine is we're trying to get the body to function at its most optimal. And we're looking at things differently. And I found myself on this path for my own personal health journey. My first time, the first time that I'm just gonna say it, Western medicine failed me was when I was 15 years old. I woke up one day, pretty much unable to move any joint my body excruciating pain, the best way I could describe it, and I've said it a couple times, it felt like glass shards, scraping from the inside out of my joints. And along with it was chronic fatigue, headaches, brain fog. I mean, I was again 15 years old, barely able to get out of bed and went from doctor to doctor to doctor and nobody had a real solution or answer. They, they thought it was MS. It wasn't MS. They thought it was lupus. It wasn't lupus, you know, they ruled out a bunch of things. And then at some point, they just started trying to cover up the symptoms with medication. And that's where I was left. Until finally, my mom did her own research-this was 1994 - at a library and found a doctor that treated Lyme disease. And that's that's what it ended up being. So really, we had to advocate for ourselves, do a lot of the digging ourselves. And he was a more holistic minded doctor, that term wasn't really probably thrown around like it is now. Certainly the word functional medicine hadn't developed yet. But he found and fixed what was causing the actual bug the actual germ that was causing all the pain and the fatigue with me. For me, that was the first time after I had my daughter close to 40. I got really, really elegant and I thought, oh my gosh, the Lyme disease came back, it's a Lyme disease flare up. I've lived almost two decades over two decades without any symptoms. And it wasn't it happened to be Epstein Barr Virus and an autoimmune disorder of the thyroid called called Hashimotos, which has very similar and parallel symptoms to Lyme. Lyme is also called the Great mimicker because it looks like so many things. So at that point, I was in clinic already my own my own office for 12 years, I think so I was able to run a lot of my own labs and tests and figured it out and was able to pull out of it inside of a year that time. So that's essentially how I got here. Of course, there's a lot of twists and turns in between. But that's that's where my passion stems from. I have so much compassion for people who have spent, like our family did 10s of 1000s of dollars going from doctor to doctor with no answers. No answers, no solutions really gave up on us.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, yeah. It's It's such a pity isn't that it's, you know, it doesn't need to be that way. So did you before you were 15 and you have that experience, had you thought about getting into medicine yourself? Or was that really the prompt for you to do that?
Tenesha Wards:I wanted to be a vet. So, all growing up all through high school and even after I recovered from that I still wanted to be a veterinarian. I went and spent a day on the job at a veterinarian office and I said hard No, I can't do this. This is not just you know, petting puppies all day long. Because they let me go behind the doors and see all the stuff in the surgeries I said I can't I can't do this. I can't do that to animals. So I always wanted to be in the medical field and help. But I switched to humans.
Arwen Bardsley:Okay, interesting. And so did you do medicine? At college? Did you go straight into it after high school?
Unknown:I did. I did my undergrad in radiology, and then went on to medical school and started a focus with functional medicine, Chinese medicine. And that's really been where I've been since and focusing on people. What's interesting is, we see a lot of people come in with chronic fatigue diagnoses, fibromyalgia or something just hurts and like myself, they've been given, you know, steroids, antidepressants, the whole thing, pain medication, and none of that fixes it. And the more they started coming in, I don't know if I call it spidey senses, right, or medical intuition or just experience at this point. I'm like, This sounds a lot like Lyme disease. This sounds a lot like Epstein Barr Virus. And I just started running the right tests, and finally finding answers. So that's kind of where the practice went on its own from people coming in for just holistic natural relief, and we started digging in and finding the actual causes.
Arwen Bardsley:Okay. And yeah, I also wondered with your mom, when you were 15, do you think she had a bit of an intuition about Lyme disease for you, or was just luck?
Unknown:You know, that's, I think that it was tenacity. I think she refused to accept that her 15 year old was going to be debilitated. And that she knew I was a happy, healthy athlete cheerleader months ago, and that it was so abrupt and so obvious that something happened. And kind of playing a little bit on what you do, to just kind of put reference around what was happening. And I think this is true, I think that we're most vulnerable and susceptible to be a good host to what we call stealth pathogens, or microbes or viruses sneaking in, we had just moved. And I was I just went through like my first heartbreak breakup. So I absolutely know Emotionally, I was weak, I was not in a good place, right? So here's what I know is hundreds and 1000s of people are being exposed to the same thing ticks with the same microbes. And not everybody gets infected. They, first of all, they're really smart bugs, they can read your genetics and your DNA and find out if you're a good host that we know to be true now. But also, I think that just my state of my immune system, my emotional health, everything was fragile, and I was a good target a good host right at the time. And I think that matters. I think when people are going through something really stressful or they're sick with something else, they you know, it's an opportunistic time for other things to either Express or attack or whatever. Same with after my pregnancy, I have a busy clinic, I was just I think exhausted and going through all the hormone changes. And it was just a good time for these opportunistic things that were probably hanging out underlying in my immune system, just waiting for a good time to express. That's what I've seen 99.999% of patients when I asked them, Okay, when did the symptoms start? Okay, let's back up 3, 6, 9 months before that what was happening? And it's always something stressful or traumatic.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let's perhaps take this opportunity to get into a bit more about Lyme disease and Epstein Barr, because I know the average person on the street hasn't necessarily even heard of these things. Yeah, yeah. So it would be great. I actually do have a good friend who has Lyme disease as well is still recovering from that. So I have heard of it but Epstein Barr as well. I am aware of that as well. And there's that guy, the Medical Medium. Have you heard? Yeah, so I know. A lot about Epstein Barr. But yeah, can you kind of give give people a bit of a 101 rundown on on what they are and yeah, how they're caused?
Tenesha Wards:Yeah, the illnesses. Yeah. So Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria called Borrelia Burgdorferi. Named after Dr. Burgdorferi, who named it. It was first discovered in Lyme, Connecticut in the late 80. No, sorry, late 70s, early 80s. Because all the kids in Lyme Connecticut got juvenile arthritis. They were like hundreds of kids were diagnosed with this arthritic condition and this doctor said that that doesn't sound right. And so did some digging figured out it was an actual bacteria Spirochaetaceae bacteria, which is the same type of bacteria as syphilis. Different, obviously hosting set of symptoms and transmission, but attacks your nervous system like that. And so he found this, this bacteria in all these kids, and they trace it back to a tick, a tick, tick bite spreads this disease. And so that's how it started. And then it's kind of moved through the country. And the major symptoms, they call it the great mimicker because it looks like so many other diseases. I would say the major symptoms that I see in almost every case is fatigue and joint pain. But I also see brain fog. I also see seizures, I've actually seen their only symptom be seizure activity. And I knew it was something else because this this person, she was only in her 20s did not had never responded to any seizure medication, epilepsy medication. So her family was saying, Well, I don't think it's epilepsy. There's something else going on with your nervous system. And that's how we found Lyme. But it can cause numbness, tingling, it can cause debilitation of joints, it can cause shutdown of organs, it can get really, really severe. So it looks like things like MSMon. And it looks like these other diseases that are neurological and it's often just it's caused from this tiny little bacteria. So that's Lyme disease. Epstein Barr Virus is a virus that here's a good analogy. In order it not the same viral strain, but in order for somebody to express shingles, they have to have had chickenpox. It comes from that same virus strain, right. For somebody to have Epstein Barr Virus they have to have had Mono. Mono can then re emerge as Epstein Barr Virus. Mono looks like the flu - fever, chills, aches, fatigue, you're in bed. What I tell people is mono is the week long flu or two weeks long. It's usually two weeks, but it often gets missed because people don't go get tested for it necessarily. They call it the kissing disease. Mono is very, very contagious. You see a lot in high schools, colleges, things like that. So a lot of people had mono didn't even know it. They just knew that they were sick. Oh, yeah. And we start talking about their health history. They're like, Oh, yeah, I had a flu for two whole weeks in college. And then what happens is this virus the mono virus lies dormant. And it can reemerge again, usually, I often see it after divorces, grad school, pregnancy, anything that stresses your system. I'm seeing Epstein Barr Virus Express significantly. I have not yet had one Post COVID Long Haul syndrome patient come in, who did not also have an active Epstein Barr Virus case. So what came first the chicken or the egg? Right? Did that person have Epstein Barr Virus that made them more susceptible to this long COVID syndrome? Or did their COVID infection trigger Epstein Barr Virus to express I don't know that answer. I just know that I've seen it in every single patient that's walked through our door. So when when EBV comes back, Epstein Barr Virus, the major symptom really is fatigue, brain fog, and some other things can go along with it. But I tell people because I've experienced it myself. It's not just a I stayed up too late watching Netflix last night fatigue, it is a full body, it hurts. It's too exhausting to lift my limbs, in my head, sometimes fatigue, mental and physical, mental of like, I can't even think today I can't make decisions. I'm just too exhausted fatigue. It's a different kind of fatigue. And after my daughter, I kind of wrote it off as well, I'm an older Mom, I'm running a business. We've got a busy life. It's mom tired. It's mom tired until it wasn't. So I really want to help educate women on what fatigue looks like. Because you're running and burning the candle right? And what something more serious could look like and how to, you know, as women, we're just going to go go go till we fall, right how to maybe get ahead of that before you crash and burn like I did.
Arwen Bardsley:So So what do you say to people about how to get ahead of it, like what to watch out for?
Tenesha Wards:A lot of it is listening to your body and really taking some time to yourself to listen to your body first of all, which is hard to do with new babies and things. And also knowing your baseline and I'm a big fan of labs, get some labs before pregnancy during pregnancy, you know, every year get some basic labs. And so when you have these underlying infections, they eat up a lot of your nutrients and micronutrients and things so everything will paint to so you can definitely look and say okay, everything looked good here and it didn't here, something's causing this. That's a big, I mean, that's hard data, but a lot of it's listening to your body and just knowing and I never discount somebody when they look me in the eye and say I'm not myself. I don't feel right. This isn't just I'm working too hard. You know, if I hear somebody say that they've been told, Go home and sleep and exercise and eat right one more time, like I'm going to scream because that's not going to fix these underlying things. Now if you do that you get significantly better that's different that that could just be that you are overdoing it.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah. And so with Lyme and epstein barr, is it easy to actually test and determine that somebody does have these conditions?
Unknown:It's not, at least for Lyme. Epstein Barr has a pretty black and white antibody test, you have it or you don't. And you can also tell from the antibodies if it's an IgM, which is a new first time you've ever had the infection, or an IgG antibody. Is this a recurrence or reemergence or a flare up of a previous infection. So we can figure that out pretty quick. I think anybody who's having fatigue should absolutely ask for an Epstein Barr Virus IgG and IgM antibody tests, we run both, that's pretty accurate, those are going to show up. Lyme disease is what we call a stealth pathogen, it can hide and the problem is it can get out of the blood these Spirochaetaceae - they actually look like spirals - can move out of the blood and they can hide in your cerebrospinal fluid, they can hide in your joints, they can hide in your lymph system. So they're a little harder to test for, you can get a lot of false negatives of a Lyme disease test. So I like to do a couple things, I like to do a urine test where the person goes for a lymphatic drainage massage before. So you're essentially flushing these bugs out of their hiding places. And if the person says that they feel like they were hit by a truck after that massage, I would almost bet my license there are going to be positive for Lyme, or there's some other underlying toxin in their their, you know, lymph that we need to dig into if they test negative. And that test is really only also 90 to 95% accurate, it's not 100% Because if it's hiding in your cerebrospinal fluid, it's not going to show up in the lymph necessarily. So they can hide. That's why they call them stealth pathogens. Some hospitals like the Mayo Clinic, they've they've actually pulled cerebral spinal fluid out to test and found and looked at it live under microscope and found Lyme that way I've had biological dentists tell me that they've done tests where they scrape a little bit like under the gum and they look at it under a live microscope. And they found Spirochaetaceae lime bacteria that way so these little tricky suckers can definitely it can be hard to get a diagnosis for Lyme. And that's part of the frustration.
Arwen Bardsley:Yes, yeah. Yeah, I know, my friend who finally got one. It was literally years. Yeah.
Tenesha Wards:Yeah, it's sad.
Arwen Bardsley:And we might be a bit more behind the eight ball in Australia as well. Maybe than over there. I'm not sure.
Tenesha Wards:We're not doing a good job here. We're not? Yes. I think it's an epidemic that nobody's looking at, that is bigger than some of the pandemics we're dealing with. Or the pandemic we're dealing with. I think there's more people with Lyme disease underlying Lyme disease than we have an idea about.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah. And with Lime then do does it tend to be the pathogen, the underlying bug, is that, you know, geographic specific or you know, the kind of warning signals, you know, things that people can be aware of that they may have been exposed to it.
Unknown:So it is in more wooded areas, like highly dense wooded areas. And there's different strains in at least in the US in different parts of the country. However, that's old news. So people people say, Oh, you can only get it in the Northeast Lyme, Connecticut, upstate New York. Well, that's not true. They've since traveled on deer traveled on birds like it's all over. So definitely highly wooded areas. And even New York Central Park People think they've been bitten by a tick in Central Park. So you think you know, highly cemented area you wouldn't have ticks but anywhere you have animals that can carry them Absolutely. I've had a tick come in our house on our dog. I've seen it on a dog I've seen it drop just right where our dog was laying and we're in Central Texas people might think it's not too wooded but it's wooded enough we have deer in our front yard sometimes so so definitely anywhere wooded. And the precautions that you can take big things if you're hiking don't go off the trail so much they they hang out in a little bit higher grass, you can tuck your pants into your socks. Definitely you can do you know insecticide type. I'm a bigger fan of like essential oils and a natural insecticide then things like OFF and DEET and at the same time I've been with my family in places where I'm like, Okay, guys, we can we can detox our livers later. We need the real stuff because I know there's ticks and we're going in deep into these woods. So pick your poison pick your battle, right. I might also have a little PTSD around a tick being on me so I might take a couple chemicals and then detox that later over that but Those are the bigger things and then tick checks when I was a kid my parents did tick checks growing up in Michigan is where I grew up. Very highly wooded population popular area of woods and trails and we're outdoors a lot of you know, eventually I was able to do tick checks myself never found the tick that infected me It must have attached infected and dropped off but I did have the bullseye rash which is textbook for Lyme and again in 1994 nobody, nobody knew what nobody knew about that. They just thought that's a weird rash. And they they didn't know what it was until my mom did her own research, but now, it literally looks like a bull's eye. The problem with the bullseye rash is a lot of doctors will say, Oh, if you didn't have the bullseye rash, you you must not have Lyme and different statistics say different things. Some say half the Lyme cases, we'll get the bullseye rash. Some Some studies say only 30% of patients with Lyme disease get the rash. So I think that's a histamine reaction, how your body's handling the toxin in the bug. Not everybody gets it. So that is absolutely false information that sometimes people can't even get a Lyme test because they didn't have the the rash that only shows up 30 or 50% of the time. So it's a tough one to diagnose. And prevent.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, yeah. And with tick bites, will you always be aware that you've been bitten by a tick? No?
Tenesha Wards:No. Ticks, they put in an analgesic when they attach. You don't even feel the bite. How you have to do a tick check is strip down and have someone look over your body or do something like touching they like to hide out in warm spots. So it's really interesting under arms, groin, a lot of times they'll attach at or above the ankle because people are walking through high grass, but one common spot is the hairline. You may never feel the dang tick so like with our daughter I'll even if we're out in woods, I'll you know kind of just feel for something bumpy. That's how I found one of my dog is I we were hiking once and I came back and I brush him he's a Lab so he has pretty short hair, brush him and I felt I felt an engorged bump, a tick, and and had to take it out.
Arwen Bardsley:Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I do remember ticks when I was young and hiking with my parents as well. I remember my brother had one but it was on his back. Yeah, ew yuck, it makes you feel eeeww doesn't it!
Tenesha Wards:we all got the heebie jeebies now itching.
Arwen Bardsley:Yep, sure do! Okay, but the bull's eye rash, you'd be very aware that you had that rash, it wasn't wouldn't be something that you wouldn't notice.
Tenesha Wards:Correct. And it was so bizarre of a rash. We'd never seen anything like it. It literally had rings. And it was all over a leg that my mom took an actual photograph of it back when you had to go and get your pictures developed. I still have it it. Yeah.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah. Okay. Right. Okay. All right. So and then, you know, there's lots of things I'm sure that you use to help people who have those kinds of conditions. Can you tell us a bit about that as well?
Tenesha Wards:Yeah, so So sometimes going after the bug, or the microbe, or the virus isn't the right first step. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not, when someone comes to us, we have to take a step back and look at their whole body, their whole health. Sometimes we need to build them up before we break them down. Like we can't start killing these bugs and detoxing until we know that your gut is in a good place, we have to rule out things like leaky gut, or your immune system is strong enough or your liver can detox because when we start killing these bugs, they can have something called die off. So we we sometimes can't just go in for the kill. We have to make sure the body can handle it. So that's a first step of is the body strong enough to handle this. And then I use herbals. So herbal anti microbials that can be very specific for each infection, each bug and that matters. And we when people are local, we do muscle testing or kinesiology for that, too. When they're telehealth I just have to rely more on labs.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, okay. Yeah. All right. Fabulous. So thank you for telling us about those two conditions that Yeah, I think a lot of people need to be made aware of. But another one I wanted to talk to you about is just good old burnout because as you mentioned, you know, a lot of people will come in and say, you know, they're just exhausted. And they may you know, we don't want to scare everyone and make them think that they may have one of these more serious underlying causes but burnout, massive problem we're all you know, under this pressure of we've got to do do do all the time, and not enough stopping and being. So I guess I'd like to get your take on, you know, what you see in people with this and how you help them out, help them to recover.
Tenesha Wards:Yeah. So burnout I think is also an epidemic, right? We're trying to do it all, especially the last couple years, I think so many people's adrenal glands are taxed from being in fight or flight, hitting walls of exhaustion. Having to pivot so many times, I am sick of hearing that word, having to Okay, now we're doing this now we're doing that. I mean, even but even before the last two years of being in a pandemic, I think that we're burning the candle at both ends. And what I see in traditional Western medicine, when somebody is hitting a point of fatigue, and doing too much. Often the only really organ or gland that's looked at is the thyroid. And it's not the thyroid, sometimes it's the thyroid, but the thyroid is often a symptom of the adrenal glands. So our adrenal glands are two tiny little quarter sized glands that sit on top of the kidneys, and they pump out adrenaline and cortisol, and DHEA and other things. But in times of stress, they pump out adrenaline and cortisol specifically. And so what happens when you're in this adrenaline cortisol fight or flight, the thyroid comes in and says, slow it down. And in everything's about homeostasis, everything's about bringing you back to balance. So it's telling you to slow it down. And sometimes the thyroid then has to go so slow that the to bring the adrenals out of the stress state, that we do have hypothyroidism. Which oftentimes, people get a prescription for a medication for but it doesn't fix the adrenals that are burnt out. And so they feel a little bit better for a while. And then they realize they're tired again. And so they need a stronger thyroid medication and a stronger one, every six months, they're on the highest, they're getting up to the highest dose, and they're still tired. So I think the biggest thing we're missing with burnout is looking at the adrenal glands. Again, looking at the core cause. Now rebuilding the adrenal glands, we use things like adaptogenic herbs and animal extract glandulars, that's sometimes not enough, we have to talk to people about lifestyle change, food changes, slowing down, taking things off their plate, because if you're going to just continue running red, there's only enough herbs to keep you upright for so long. You know, eventually it's going to, we can't even the best protocols can't trump stress. So we have to, we can get your body to manage it better and to adapt a little bit better. But sometimes we really have to make some serious life changes and have some serious conversations in order for someone to heal. And at the same time, we're here in Austin and the tech world is is here in Austin, it can be very stressful. And sometimes people are like, Look, I'm just in this position for another two years, just keep me upright, I can move or, you know, so I've worked with people on that level as well.
Arwen Bardsley:But really, yeah, for everyone, you've got to, as you said, take some things off your plate. It's it's about lifestyle, but life changes as well. You know, you've actually got to change your behavior, which is really hard for us as humans 96% of what we do is, is habits every day, which you know, and we're not designed to to change easily where our brains are frightened of change. So, yes, it's a big deal. But that's good that, you know, people can be made aware of that, and also can be helped to get through some tough times until they can change their behavior. Okay, and you did mention before the COVID, long haul thing, I would love to hear from you about that. And just in general, the pandemic, you know, what your your thoughts are, where you think it's going to go from here after Omicron? Are we done? Please tell us we are! What are your thoughts?
Tenesha Wards:Who the heck knows? Yeah. I will say that it is getting, you know, the infection seem to be getting less severe. Right. So that I think is good news, as it's mutating. It's getting less and less fatal. So I think that's really good. Nor do I want it again. We had it through our household. So I think COVID Long Haul syndrome is not being spoke about enough. Unfortunately, what how we came across it is in the same week to two weeks, we had multiple new patients come in and say, Hey, I tested positive for COVID, three months ago, six months ago, and I'm still sick. And my doctor doesn't know what to do with me because I'm not testing positive for COVID anymore, like the actual acute symptoms are gone. I'm left with things like brain fog to the point that people can't some people can't hold jobs. Fatigue debilitating to in bed and some are more severe than others. Some have had GI issues for three or six months. From it, and they're in there certain It all happened after COVID. Like, I've never been the same I can't focus. Potts is a really interesting syndrome. It's a postural problem where you stand up and your blood pressure tanks and to the point where you could or it goes up really high, where you could pass out. This is something that we've seen a lot with long COVID. Yeah. So really, really interesting, bizarre things that just they can't shake and they can't function sometimes. And so finally, after, I think, a good year and a half a year, year and a half, the medical community came out with post COVID Long Haul syndrome as a potential reason for this. And what we found is, every time somebody had an underlying infection of Epstein Barr Virus, I found Lyme disease in a couple of them. I don't know if that's what was triggered or not, I found a couple auto immunities, I've definitely always found something else, a layer deeper with everybody. And the things that have pulled people out of it is immune restore. We've started basic basic, so difficult, but basic of Oh, another one. I'm going to come back to the gut repair. Another one is histamine. Food intolerances. Again, very bizarre people found out they could not tolerate foods that had a high histamine production. tomatoes, spinach, avocados, healthy foods, right healthy foods unless your body can't break them down. So we started basic basic with like gut repair, putting them on low inflammatory diets, and then an anti viral herb of some sore antioxidants like vitamin d, Zinc, we'd run all this and find out what they're deficient in. So we just really started rebuilding them back up addressing any other underlying syndromes, viruses, autoimmunity, a lot of autoimmunity has expressed post COVID. And that came out in the vaccine studies, the people that had a lot of the vaccine intolerances or response to them had autoimmune disorders, which makes sense, it's an immune response, right? COVID is making your immune system work really hard a vaccine turns your immune system onto COVID. So anything that's going to stress out your immune system, if you're an auto immune person is going to cause a flare, most likely. But we've seen severe autoimmune flares, and people who didn't have it before show up after having COVID. So it's, it's an interesting syndrome. I don't think it's all just COVID still in their system. I think it's triggering other stuff. And that's what I think really needs to happen to heal is figure out what it is. And what's your starting point, because everybody's a little different. Maybe not everybody needs a gut repair. But finding your right starting point moving forward from there.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, yeah. And that's really the beauty of functional medicine. That is the whole goal isn't it, to get to that underlying cause and then treat the whole body and whole person. Yeah. So. Yeah. So as far as where the pandemic is going to go from here? We don't don't really know.
Tenesha Wards:I know, we don't really know. But what I do know is people seem to be less sick with this one, not everybody. And it seems to not last as long. And I think all that's a good thing.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, yeah. But we're gonna build up to that. Herd immunity, as they like to say,
Tenesha Wards:I sure hope so. I sure hope so. But this Omicron is all bets off. Right? Vaccinated people are getting it. People who have natural antibodies are getting it. And it makes sense. It's a different strain completely like the flu every year, you're you're not going to not get the flu this year, because you didn't get it last year. Yeah. Or because you got it last year, rather, and you still have the antibodies. That's not how that works. So different infections, essentially. Yeah, I think everybody is at risk. And I said this from the beginning. I don't think it's a matter of if you get exposed, I think it's a matter of when, and how well have you been working on your immune system and your own stress levels and your own, you know, diet and keeping inflammation down? Because it's an inflammatory process. It's an inflammatory disease COVID as a whole. And I think the more inflamed somebody is, the harder they are going to have a hard time getting over it. And the harder it's going to hit them symptom wise, is what we've seen.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So true. Yeah. My son has just had it. So the week before this week, he we had to have a seven day isolation period because he tested positive. He was, it was like he had a bad cold and he's 16 and absolutely superfit. He's an athlete. You know, and he got over pretty quickly. And I chose to not isolate myself from him because it was just the two of us and you know, I didn't think it would be good for his healing process for me to just be delivering trays to the bedroom door. So but I touch wood seemed to avoid getting ill and I have done a lot of work on my immune system, and it's interesting that you mentioned the adrenals. And the thyroid before, because that's what I've been working on for the last year or so because I had some problems myself. And you know, you know, take vitamins and minerals eat a very clean, very whole food space diet. We, you know, we just had all the windows open, got lots of fresh air. Luckily, the weather was really nice. So we could just have fresh air flying through the house the whole time. And I just think all of that stuff, you know, really helped him to recover quickly and helped me to avoid becoming ill. So it's really important.
Tenesha Wards:It's basic stuff that we're not being taught to do. As a as a country as a human race. I mean, all of that, I think really could be mainstream media. All of it. All of everything you just said eating clean, letting the fresh air in all of that stuff is so basic. And we're doing the opposite.
Arwen Bardsley:Yep. And, and also, the other thing is the, you know, we talked a bit before we started about surroundings and toxins. And that's the other thing for me, like, I absolutely avoid using all those hand sanitizers that are going to kill my microbiome. I will wash my hands with soap and water, if that's an option at any, you know, time or place. And, you know, just not go for all this stuff that's killing all the good bugs that help us to fight infection. So that's another big thing for me. And just also, as well as a clean diet, I just have a really clean everything, you know, I totally avoid nasty chemicals that are going interfere with my immune system and everything else, or my hormones. So I think that's a big thing for people to be aware of. And I know we have to use hand sanitizers in certain situations, but like, you know, just try and minimize it if you don't, and I have my own, which is a non toxic one that I'll use instead. You know,
Tenesha Wards:I see all you're essential oil bottles back there, so I assumed you probably have what is it? DoTerra? Yep. All of those clean companies. Oh, and Bach flowers. Oh, love
Arwen Bardsley:Yep. Yep, that's right. It's like, yeah, we've it. Yeah, they, they make natural ones. Right? That's again, so simple and basic. Let's not put chemicals on our in our body. But but that's not even being talked about. Right. It's just not all of that stresses our immune system. I mean, all of that. Does again, so such basic stuff that we're just not, we're just not even looking at or being told to do. And I really think our kids today need to eat more dirt. Versus use more sanitizers, right, yeah, I say eat more dirt. Because I'm talking about being exposed to the natural bugs and build up their immune system. That's what we need to do. And it's just, it's not mainstream knowledge, common knowledge. And that is a big goal of mine is just spreading like your body can heal. And it's going to get over things like Lyme disease, and EBV and COVID quicker when you're not bogging it down with chemicals in processed foods, and all the stuff that's so convenient that we just do everyday all day, including medications, right? There's food dyes in medications, there's fillers, there's all these things in our system that congests our liver, stresses on our body. All of that makes us sicker and sicker and sicker. And then we get hit with an infection. And we wonder why we can't get well. just emptying the the bucket of our body's capacity by giving it all these things to deal with that it's not designed to deal with Yeah, absolutely.
Tenesha Wards:Right. Yeah.
Arwen Bardsley:And you mentioned as well, before we started talking about surroundings and things that are in our environments that are difficult for us to deal with. We did just want to touch on mold as well, because that is a really big one that again, so many people are not aware of. And then it's like nearly 25% of the population have the gene that means they can't deal with it, so.
Tenesha Wards:Yeah, yes. Yeah. So we just actually recently went through a mold remediation in our home. Oh, I found a little half wall in our bathroom that the paint had bubbled up. And I touched it and the drywall just crumbled. And so I found out that there was a leak going behind the wall from our bathtub, which we use we do a lot of like Epsom salt baths and we use our bathtub a lot. Some people don't. So every time we turn the bathtub on, it was leaking into this wall. And fortunately, in Austin, I know a lot of people and I brought in a mold inspector that is very aware about mold toxicity illness and has a story of his own wife and children moving into an apartment and all getting very ill. So I brought him out. And sure enough, ran an air quality test. And it was one level one point above inhabitable. So I think it was a matter I think it was a God thing that I found this wall, I think it was probably a matter of months before we started showing symptoms. And symptoms can look like mostly they start with headaches, and then it moves to chronic fatigue, again, looks like so many other things, right? Can be respiratory can be joint pain, nerve pain, mold, can it again, and my daughter and I both have some methylation defects, which is your detox pathways. And her and I had it in our system, I ran a mold urine test. And so I've learned way more than I ever wanted to about mold. I have walked many patients through a house remediation through detoxing it from their body. And I will never again, lightly tell somebody to check their house. Because I know what an overhaul if they have it in their home, it's going to be and at the same time. I think we're seeing a huge influx in mold toxicity here in Central Texas, because so many people have been spending so much time in their house. And I think they're simply I think that the mold may have already been there. And it's very humid here. No, we're not on the coast. But it just is very humid here. So mold can grow quickly and humid places you hear about it a lot in Florida and Seattle in these places that are known humid, but I think it's a it's emerging here in Texas, because people are being becoming aware of it. But yeah, people have for two years now been working from home, you know, entertaining themselves in their home, keeping everything shut and locked up, and they're getting sicker and sicker. And so people are starting to come into the office and and when we start running these tests, we find first I kind of look for some liver congestion. And I'm like, okay, liver congestion, something's going on. And then I just kind of go through the process. Do they have heavy metals. I've worked with like hairdressers, somebody move who grew up on a farm, do they have like, you know, pesticides, chemicals? Like oh, phospholipases we look at all that. And mold is coming up more and more than I've ever seen. And I think it's because of being stuck indoors. I think this is a theory with what I'm seeing. But yeah, it will never roll off my tongue lightly of you need to remediate your house because it is a very long, expensive process. So best case scenario, when we find somebody with mold in their body, they live in a crappy apartment in college, and they've since moved on. And it just never left their body because they're a poor detoxer. That's the best case scenario, I tell them. Worst case scenario is it's in your environment. And the sad part is they're never going to get well. It's like putting gasoline on a fire that you're also putting a couple of water drops on, if we're trying to detox and how we detox is using things like binders like charcoal and bentonite clay and things that will bind to this mold and pull it out. Again, though the liver and the gut has to be able to process all that out. So we have to fix that first. Yeah, long story short, we can go through this process. But if you're ingesting it, breathing it in the environment still, as we're trying to get it out, you're just never going to get well. And it's just a vicious cycle that is really, really sad. And it can cost people 1000s and 1000s of dollars to fix their homes. It's really sad. And insurance doesn't cover it unless you have a rider policy. I learned that the hard way. So if there's one thing people could take away if they live in a humid area, even if they don't, you could have a water leak and it grows mold that on your homeowners insurance could pay itself back tenfold if there's ever a problem.
Arwen Bardsley:Interesting. Yeah, and I don't I don't know about the how that is in Australia as well. Maybe a bit different but still a big thing to check on your insurance but yeah, the great for people to be aware of just opening the windows and doors again that comes up, that's a great way to try and avoid mold. Dehumidifiers I'm sure that's something that you talk to people about as well can be you know, really
Tenesha Wards:even air purifiers. Yeah, air purifiers. The big thing is the HEPA filter and that does most of those do help with mold spores again, though, if if you're constantly just having to be in the environment, it's only going to help so much but all that definitely matters.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, yeah. And I think the problem is as well the way that modern buildings are made, you know, they're built to be absolutely airtight and watertight and then when something gets in there then it can't get out. So yeah, it's a big problem. And yeah, because there's a huge percentage I can't remember what it is off the top of my head now that have buildings that are water damaged as well and you might you might never realize
Tenesha Wards:I don't know if this statistic is true everywhere. But the mold inspector I work because I was ready to move, burn the place down and move we're gonna go We're moving. He said, Tenesha that take a step back, I can be a bit of an extremist sometimes. He said, 50 or what did he say, 80% of buildings, Houses included, that are five years or older have had some sort of water damage? Yeah, 50% of those will have mold. Because it wasn't, it wasn't, maybe the leak was fixed. But they didn't bring in the big air scrubbers or they didn't leave the wall underneath the sink the cabinet's open and they shut it and it grew. So 50% of those buildings that are 80%. So he's like, unless you're getting a new build, you don't know what you're walking into, you're gonna have to test every single house. And the market here in Austin is crazy. So you know, are you gonna do that? If you get a new build? I don't know, if you're aware of like off gassing, which is, yeah, all the toxins coming from the new carpet and the new paint. He's like, I don't know, what's the worst evil. So I told my husband when we finished this, we eventually want to buy land in Texas and move out of the city at some some point. I said, we are we're building a metal barn. We're building a metal barn, no arguments, not up for discussion. I'm never going through this again.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, yeah, no, it's a big thing. But yeah, thank you for talking about that. And then just wanted to briefly touch on emotional and spiritual health as well, because obviously that's, you know, part of the, the whole person and holistic health. And it's obviously a big, big thing that I work with, in my practice as an energy healer. So I just wanted to get your you know, how you integrate that into the work that you do at Infinity Wellness as well?
Tenesha Wards:Yeah, I think it's a huge part of it. Here in the US, we really separate mind and body, we just do. And I don't know if that is true?
Arwen Bardsley:Absolutely the same here.
Tenesha Wards:And we can't! We can't heal the physical without the emotional and mental. And like I alluded to earlier, most major illnesses come after some stressful trauma or something. And sometimes we can heal them physically without having to have them go back and do some trauma work, but not always. Some people have come to us processed, what was going on? Some not. So I'm a big believer that if you don't heal the mental and emotional, the physical can't heal, or you're only going to get so far. So I'm a big believer in it, we have people that we refer to all over the country, and specifically locally. And some of it's clinical experience, like we've gotten you so far, your labs are looking so much better, you're this much better. And there's still something missing. It's usually mental, emotional work, or spiritual. It usually is. So I think that is a huge missing piece when looking at the whole person that we are missing in our traditional medical model 100%. I mean, most medical doctor visits aren't even going to ask, you know, what's going on in your life. And if somebody is going through a divorce, and they're having anxiety, that that makes perfect sense. They need something more than an anti anxiety medication. Right. They need some other type of support.
Arwen Bardsley:Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And totally, yeah, so yeah, good. All right. And so I'm assuming that you're - Infinity Wellness, you work with people remotely?
Tenesha Wards:We do we do. That is one good thing that's come out of COVID is that we, we have really done a lot more telehealth, and we're able to help people all over, really all over the world, if they if they have access to run some of the labs we need to see and, and, and things like that. So we have patients all over, which is amazing.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, because that was I was just gonna ask you about that as far as the testing that needs to be done. You know, do you know whether people in Australia if you know, because I'm sure a number of a good good portion of my listeners are in Australia as well? Are they going to be able to do the testing, the labs that you need them to do down here? Do you know?
Tenesha Wards:if they have a practitioner that will run them for them? Yeah. Yep. Which is hit or miss. We've found. Yeah, sometimes people have to find another practitioner. Here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give this a little tip. If you go into your doctor's office, and you're suffering from fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, all the stuff and they they run just a tiniest bit of lab work, and you've requested and we give them what to request. And they say, you know, no, this is what I counsel or coach people to say, say, okay, great. You're not going to run those labs for me, please place that in my chart that you refuse lab testing. For me who's suffering from chronic fatigue. I hate to have to counsel or coach people to do that. I loathe it. It's not how it should be. And at the same time, that is how we see sometimes get the labs that we need some sometimes, right? It's a hard it's sometimes it's a hard conversation. But I always remind people, those practitioners work for you. However they're being paid, right? Insurance companies, national health care, like however they're being paid, they're still you're still the customer, you're still the client. And if they're refusing lab basic lab tests, because we're not running anything too, too crazy, basic lab tests, if they won't run them, there's there's a problem either. It's not a good fit for a practitioner, they're not willing to work hand in hand with you. Yeah, if you can't, if you can't get what you need, it's time to find somebody who will help you.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, and I think I mean, I think here a lot of the, they'll say no, because Medicare, our national health cover doesn't cover it. But you can pay for it yourself. But but I've even found with that still, like I had to go to a naturopathic doctor to get the tests that I wanted done even just on my thyroid. And I had to pay for them myself. They came out of my pocket rather than the government paying for them. That's okay. I mean, if you know, if you're determined to get to the bottom of something, look, I'm in a privileged position I can afford to pay for them. It is such a pity that there isn't more universal cover for us these things. But yeah, so that's, that's a really good tip. Thank you for that. So do you have anything that you wanted to tell people about infinity wellness, any special programs or whatever that you have at the moment that you wanted to share with us before we finish?
Tenesha Wards:Yeah, we work with most patients in a three or seven month program to figure out after we figured out what's going on with the first visit we typically determined and run the labs needed and then we place people are in different three or seven month programs based on what's going on with them how deep we think the healing needs to happen and, and then we go from there.
Arwen Bardsley:Yeah, okay. Wonderful.
Tenesha Wards:And it's called the Infinity way. I should say that the Infinity way program
Arwen Bardsley:is the program. Okay. And your website, do you want to just rattle that off for people.
Tenesha Wards:Yeah, it's Dr. Tenesha Wards dot com, D-R-T-E-N-E-S-H-A-WARDs (with an s) dot com and then all of our handles are Infinity Wellness ATEX, which is short for Austin, Texas.
Arwen Bardsley:Ah okay. So if people are looking for you on socials, then that's how they'd find you. I will have all the links in the show notes. rate. So yeah, but it's been great. I've really learned a lot and I really appreciate your time, Tenesha thank you so much for coming on.
Tenesha Wards:Thanks for having me. It's been great.