Part 1: Brain Fog, Fatigue & No Answers? This Doctor Found the Missing Link

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00:00:05:04 – 00:00:21:10
Synergee
Welcome Synergee listeners. It’s Lori and Kelly here as always. Today’s episode is a little bit different. We’ve been anticipating this for such a long time. This discussion brings both depth and the science and heart of healing into focus for functional medicine Ridgeland MS.

00:00:21:10 – 00:00:41:06
Synergee
We are so honored. Truly honored. Aren’t we? Yes. To welcome Doctor Richie Shoemaker to the Synergee podcast today. If you have been touched by chronic fatigue, brain fog, unexplained illness, or you’re a practitioner who feels overwhelmed navigating complex care plans, this episode is for you.

00:00:41:10 – 00:00:41:16
Synergee
Yeah.

00:00:41:16 – 00:00:56:04
Synergee
Yeah. Doctor Shoemaker has been a pioneer in the world of bio toxic illness, chronic inflammatory response syndrome for a long time, long before most of the medical community even had a language for these conditions.

00:00:56:06 – 00:01:13:02
Synergee
He didn’t just name the problem, he built a pathway out, and his protocol has helped providers like myself and Lori bring hope and answers to patients who felt unseen, unheard and unwell for far too long. Way too long.

00:01:13:02 – 00:01:36:20
Synergee
I want to invite you to listen to this episode with an open mind and a posture of respect. The content may feel dense. In fact, it’s going to feel dense. I’m just going to say it. But stay with us. Please stay with us. What you’re going to hear could completely change how you understand fatigue, mold, illness, and the root causes of many complex fatiguing conditions.

00:01:36:20 – 00:01:48:02
Synergee
Dr. Shoemaker continues to push forward, refining, researching and expanding the science behind what we know now as chronic inflammatory response syndrome or CIRS.

00:01:48:04 – 00:02:07:10
Synergee
His commitment to truth and healing is unmatched, and I know you’ll walk away with both insight and inspiration. So grab a notebook, take a deep breath. Join us for a long conversation that just might reframe everything you thought you knew about chronic illness and disease.

00:02:07:11 – 00:02:26:17
Synergee
So before digging into this podcast that you’re going to absolutely love, we felt like it was really, really important to kind of talk about some of the definitions around chronic inflammatory response syndrome and just give you a little bit of context and, and knowledge around that so that you’re prepared to listen.

00:02:26:17 – 00:02:44:07
Synergee
Yeah. The conversation with Dr. Shoemaker is very technical. And so we just thought it would be a good idea to talk about just globally, someone that’s showing up with or if you’re experiencing chronic fatigue illnesses or an illness that kind of comes and then you may relent and have a few good days and then you’re back where you are.

00:02:44:07 – 00:03:09:23
Synergee
You think you’re making progress. You’re not really sure. So complex chronic illnesses that just are not fully resolving, oftentimes that falls into a category of chronic inflammatory response syndrome, also known as CIRS. Yeah. It’s very similar to someone that’s in the ICU struggling with systemic inflammation, sepsis. It’s a very similar biochemistry that happens internally.

00:03:09:23 – 00:03:35:05
Synergee
It’s just in a slower motion. And so, it looks very similar on lab work. Although gene expression made it a lot more chronic. And so I give it the analogy. It’s like you’re standing in 65 mile an hour winds every day with inflammation being hit, hit, hit. And it really it’s your response to that hit that is going to be dictated by your foundation.

00:03:35:06 – 00:03:53:13
Synergee
How well have you built your foundation? How resilient are you? And then what else is driving inflammation in your body at that time? And then you may have times where you dip over or you jump over or whatever. So it’s like a waxing and waning condition for a lot of patients. And so oftentimes we do either think you’re sick or you’re well.

00:03:53:15 – 00:04:10:06
Synergee
And in this condition that’s not always the case. That can be really confusing for you. It can be confusing for your family because there are times where you’re you’re performing and you’re doing well and everything looks great. And then the very next day things are not so well. And it’s like, how do I explain that? Like, I don’t think anything changed overnight, right?

00:04:10:06 – 00:04:35:12
Synergee
Yeah. And so as we dig into this conversation with Dr. Shoemaker, we want you to have those things in mind. His work to validate this condition and to bring structured testing that we can do that’s reliable and reproducible is so important to giving validity to this diagnosis. And so even though the conversation gets really, really technical, it’s important that you hear it on functional medicine in Ridgeland MS.

00:04:35:14 – 00:04:55:19
Synergee
It’s important that your family hear it and have some understanding of where did this come from. Because for you, maybe you just heard about chronic inflammatory response today or yesterday or last week, but he’s been working on this case definition, as you’ll hear today for many, many decades. So this didn’t just happen out of nowhere,

00:04:55:18 – 00:05:03:13
Synerge
And so honestly, I think it’s really important for everyone to understand that it can’t just be put in a box.

00:05:03:13 – 00:05:33:06
Syenrgee
It is a very multi symptom, multi-system condition. So it’s complex. And most of the time if you’ve walked through this maybe you don’t know that you’ve walked through it yet. You have a myriad of symptoms that have led you to be dismissed. You’ve had, you know, multiple times that you’ve gone maybe to the ER or going to doctor’s offices and you didn’t get an answer and you were waiting for a diagnosis.

00:05:33:06 – 00:06:01:00
Synergee
And what we’re going to talk about today is that it’s not just waiting on the diagnosis necessarily. It’s understanding causation too, that because it’s complex, it’s difficult. And also most providers of care are not trained to do this. And so it wasn’t that they purposely dismissed you. It wasn’t because they wanted to not help you. They may not have the tools in their toolbox to help you.

00:06:01:02 – 00:06:27:12
Synergee
And so we want you to walk away from today’s podcast feeling hope, feeling encouraged, to know that these providers of care do exist. And that it’s been an evolution of, of knowledge building over time. We’re still learning, as each of us have experienced it ourselves. And we’ve walked out this condition and continue to walk this out and are learning every day.

00:06:27:17 – 00:06:29:09
Synergee
But as a result of that many providers of care have not necessarily been trained to, number one, recognize it and for sure treat it. Yeah. And we want you to leave today with some resources. Right. Dr. Shoemaker has a website that he developed called Survivingmold.com. There’s a lot of information on that website regarding chronic inflammatory response syndrome.

00:06:52:07 – 00:07:14:05
Synergee
You can find links to a lot of the research that’s been done that supports this diagnosis. And you can also find a map of providers that treat this diagnosis. And I think that’s really important. Depending on where you are, it’s always best to have someone in your community that you can see face to face, that practice because there aren’t always providers in your state that can treat this also remotely. This service is provided in functional medicine in Ridgeland, MS.

00:07:14:07 – 00:07:33:14
Synergee
So lean in. We are going to break this podcast up into segments, probably two segments, if I had to guess. And so just know there will be several parts, at least part one and part two to this podcast series. And the first part is going to be really technical. And so I want you prepared for that. I think it’s important, we did that for a reason.

00:07:33:14 – 00:07:46:00
Synergee
I just feel like that needs validity here. We needed a space for that. And really to honor Dr. Shoemaker and all the work that he has done and continues to do for this community. So dig in and we can’t wait to hear what you think about this in regards to your wellness journey in Ridgeland, MS.

00:07:46:00 – 00:07:54:21
Synergee
Okay, before we get started, Lori is going to read Dr. Shoemaker’s bio, and we cannot possibly sum up his bio in 45 seconds, but Lori is going to do her best.

00:07:54:23 – 00:08:01:10
Synergee
We will put in the show notes his full bio, because I do think it’s important to understand everything that he’s been able to do.

00:08:01:10 – 00:08:29:05
Synergee
Dr. Richie Shoemaker is a nationally recognized physician and researcher known for pioneering work in the bio toxin related illness, particularly chronic inflammatory response syndrome. Since 1997, he’s helped uncover toxins from molds, bacteria and other environmental sources and sources that trigger these complex chronic conditions, often misdiagnosed as fatigue, fibromyalgia, or autoimmune disease.

00:08:29:05 – 00:08:48:09
Synergee
With a foundation in rigorous science and patient advocacy, Dr. Shoemaker has published extensively. He’s advised lawmakers, and he continues to lead in clinical care and education, transforming lives by revealing what others have overlooked. We welcome Dr. Richie Shoemaker, and we’re just so thrilled to have him. So if you’ve been struggling with chronic fatigue, a chronic illness that you just can’t figure out, or if you’re a healthcare provider who treats patients with chronic illness and are struggling to get to the root cause, this podcast is for you.

00:09:03:11 – 00:09:15:10
Synergee
I strongly recommend that you get a notebook and a pen, and maybe listen to this two our three times. I know I’m going to go back and listen again. But we’re just so honored, Dr. Shoemaker, to have you here.

00:09:15:10 – 00:09:21:16
Dr. Shoemaker
Well, it’s absolutely my pleasure to be speaking to these beautiful ladies. My goodness gracious, I am blessed. As for sure.

00:09:21:16 – 00:09:38:01
Synergee
so can you tell us what got you interested in chronic illness? I mean, I want to go into the history of chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And your role in kind of mapping this out in the way of diagnosis and treatment. But what got you interested in this?

00:09:38:01 – 00:09:45:07
Dr. Shoemaker
When I was in medical school at Duke and graduated in 1977.It seems like a long time ago, but it was a long time ago. I had wanted to be a rural primary care physician. And there’s one other freak like that name besides me, and I think back to school class. But when I got time to say the ACA faculty’s as Duke has a ceremony in the Duke chapel that I said, I’m not going to go there.

00:10:08:01 – 00:10:35:13
Dr. Shoemaker
Apollo. Yes. The guy that we say the, we’re Tiger Woods, too. So I went to Delfi to see my house in the temple of Apollo. I was kind of. It’s a cloudy, misty day on the ride up from Athens was, kinda rocky and queasy, and I was glad to have some motion sickness pills, but I got walked up on onto the floor of the temple and it was just cloudy.

00:10:35:13 – 00:10:58:00
Dr. Shoemaker
And then I said, well, this is not right. And I’m just a walking around. And so I see what’s the Oracle was supposed to be doing and where the games had been. And sometimes passed and just, you know, the bus was going back to Athens, leaving at 5:00 and 430. Nothing had happened. And, you know, I was sure that something was going to happen, some sign.

00:10:58:02 – 00:11:17:21
Dr. Shoemaker
So I went back down the hill and walked out onto the floor of the temple. And just then the clouds parted in a shaft of light came down. I’m not kidding. You came down from the sky, hit me right in the eyes. And I said, this is my sign. So I said my oath and it was goosebump day and still is good.

00:11:17:21 – 00:11:50:00
Dr. Shoemaker
Something for me. But, dedication to my craft was something that I wanted to be prepared for. And I thought, it’s the best musicians that were, graduating medical school should be in the areas of at least available care. So, I had done National Service Corps and was going to be in the underserved area. But this was really special to be, you know, this thing of a physician for 30 miles.

00:11:50:00 – 00:12:15:06
Dr. Shoemaker
And when things started getting a little funny about chronic fatigue syndrome, 1984, while training and Dan Peterson had made their discovery of being in the right place at the right time in 1985, CDC got involved and said, well, it’s it’s not Epstein-Barr virus, but we don’t know what it is. And, you know, I didn’t know what. Right? So I started looking at it and reading about it.

00:12:15:06 – 00:12:22:12
Dr. Shoemaker
Then tried creatine and did this and that, and it was like, oh, well, you know, I just a regular family practice doctor

00:12:22:12 – 00:12:40:04
Dr. Shoemaker
in 1995. Fast forward, something strange started happening coming out of Nags Head and Outer Banks that people were seeing fish kills and, what was killing the fish was a little algae like creature called hysteria.

00:12:40:06 – 00:12:50:20
Dr. Shoemaker
And the state was adamant nobody’s made sick by hysteria. Again, you kill the fish. I want Harvard physicians safe to eat, and it’s safe to come down and be a tourist. Don’t worry about it.

00:12:50:19 – 00:13:00:18
Dr. Shoemaker
Well, 1995, we started seeing the first inklings that we had hysteria. Just, you know, two hours by car from the north, from Nags Head.

00:13:00:20 – 00:13:23:16
Dr. Shoemaker
And sure enough, there are occasional fish kills and people that work on the water are called watermen because they catch crabs. And our oysters got to see oysters, right. It’s not oysters on foresters, but and, and fish. And they started saying, I think the fish looked funny. And I started looking and said, what’s strange? What’s going on?

00:13:23:16 – 00:13:47:04
Dr. Shoemaker
In 1996? People are getting sick and fish kills are getting more common. What’s going on? In 1997, it was really a big deal, and I started seeing some people who were sick and politically incorrect like I usually am. I just said, well, I got sick. People I know, you know, now, you know, you’re just some wacko and this hysteria, hysteria.

00:13:47:04 – 00:13:57:15
Dr. Shoemaker
And nobody believed. And everybody said the water was safe, and it’s just a little extra nutrient enrichment in the water. Well, the water nutrient measurements that were done were no different than the last 20 years. And this was not a nutrient enrichment. And what what could be going on? Well, about that time, there’s news that tobacco plants in North Carolina and tomato plantations along the Chesapeake Bay were having an outbreak of the new fungus called blue mold.

00:14:19:08 – 00:14:39:15
Dr. Shoemaker
And it was resistant to all standard fungicides. So we had two water events where we had fungicide use. We had hysteria, we had sick people. And I started looking at it and started doing autopsies on fish to see what I could figure out. And, you know, these are my friends. These are my patients.

00:14:39:15 – 00:15:01:16
Dr. Shoemaker
But I’d see them in Walmart and. Hey, how are you doing? And, you know, see Jack Howard. What’s that rash that you’ve got and. Well, it’s just it’s, it’s all that hysteria. Well, nobody believed them, but I believed them and started looking around and, sure enough, I ended up having six patients, all coming in one day with the same story.

00:15:01:16 – 00:15:26:04
Dr. Shoemaker
And, the third patient had terrible secretory diarrhea, and she had the same memory problems and fatigue and cough and shortness of breath and muscle aches. Not real joint pain like she wasn’t arthritis, but her knees are. But I said, well, I can’t fix the rest of this, but I can fix the secretory diarrhea that’s having bowel movements without having had something to eat.

00:15:26:04 – 00:15:32:14
Dr. Shoemaker
And here’s your call list. I mean, we, and it was always known about stopping secretory diarrhea. And sure enough

00:15:32:14 – 00:15:46:03
Dr. Shoemaker
I had a good night’s sleep. I didn’t have to wake up going to the bathroom three, four times. And I said, well, that’s great. And she goes, you know, what was strange is my memory’s better.

00:15:46:05 – 00:16:06:00
Dr. Shoemaker
I said, what you remember is better. Yeah. Well, how’s your energy? Oh, I got up and I walked two miles this morning. I said, wait a minute. So I mean, Kelly, what would you do? Would you, would you start treating other patients without a database?

00:16:06:12 – 00:16:19:17
Synergee
Yeah. I mean, you think about, I mean, you’re a curious provider. You’re a compassionate provider. You’re seeing something happen that you haven’t seen happen before. And it was a tool that you used off label. That worked. Right. So yeah.

00:16:19:17 – 00:16:32:10
Dr. Shoemaker
Well I called around and nobody else was saying anything and just, you know, well, I’ll just try some single serving oh, five patients a row or better. I wrote them up later on for publication in the fall.

00:16:32:12 – 00:16:52:21
Dr. Shoemaker
But, you know, this was a big deal. The Baltimore media were here, the DC media were here. We had all kinds of people coming over. They wanted to know and, you know, the state of Maryland had, the secretary of health, Mary Washington’s, daughter had gone to Duke, and we hit it off for a little while. But he said, there’s nothing wrong.

00:16:52:21 – 00:16:58:14
Dr. Shoemaker
I’ll go swimming. And I said, I will, too. He goes, well, I forgot my bathing suit, but maybe next time.

00:16:58:14 – 00:17:09:14
Synergee
So, doctor, I want to stop right there, though, because you did bring up a good point about providers trying things that they really don’t know if it’s going to work. We know it’s not going to harm, but they’re going to help.

00:17:09:16 – 00:17:26:10
Synergee
But you took the time not only to do that, but also to write these cases up and to get attention to what was really going on, like what was causing the problem, not just quietly treating, hoping that things got better. Right? I mean, you’re you’re a hero for that, in my opinion.

00:17:26:10 – 00:17:31:14
Synergee
Because without you doing that, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

00:17:31:14 – 00:17:57:23
Dr. Shoemaker
Well, I actually, I think that’s true. Yeah. You know, it didn’t take too long for the state of Maryland said, we’lll hold a meeting to bring all of the stakeholders. You can tell their bureaucrats, stakeholders? How about people, you know, ready anyway. And we’ll put an end to all this nonsense that the fella from Pequannock, we’ll just let him go quietly out through the Western Front.

00:17:58:01 – 00:18:13:00
Dr. Shoemaker
Well, there was a big fish kill the day before, and I had one of my friends, Bob, who is photographer, and he took pictures of sick people and lesions and all this stuff and developed. And I had eight by ten colored glasses walking the meeting. And I tell you, I broke that meeting up

00:18:14:17 – 00:18:17:15
Dr. Shoemaker
There was a woman who was with the state.

00:18:17:15 – 00:18:19:22
Dr. Shoemaker
What’s this guy got? Oh, look at that. Look at that.

00:18:19:22 – 00:18:25:22
Synergee
Well, you know, disruption is necessary to make change, would you? I mean, we’d agree with that, right?

00:18:25:23 – 00:18:40:17
Dr. Shoemaker
Yeah, yeah. For sure. Anyway, sure enough, the state of Maryland decided they would, they would have their experts from Hopkins and University of Maryland to come down and show everybody that I was wrong, that there was nothing wrong at all.

00:18:40:19 – 00:19:05:15
Dr. Shoemaker
But as you can imagine, the politicians couldn’t agree which university is going to come from. So they decided they would do both. And I had written everything up and they came down the hill, the clinic and at the end of the day they go, Holy God, we see what he sees. All right. And that was, that was the little cow bouncing off.

00:19:05:15 – 00:19:26:21
Dr. Shoemaker
And it wasn’t too long for our 200 patients to go to college. Course. I mean it just with all that or some didn’t. And how come some people, though, would be recreating in the Williams Point area and out of ten people there swimming that day, all the same water, the same, same region fish, seven of them were snakes and three weren’t.

00:19:26:21 – 00:19:29:06
Synergee
So that comes in the HLA typing.

00:19:29:06 – 00:19:32:13
Dr. Shoemaker
Right. The genotype that makes people more story. That’s exactly right.

00:19:34:06 – 00:19:54:12
Dr. Showmaker
I had no biomarkers. I had nothing to go on, I had exposure, I had symptoms that turned to symptoms. It took a while to do a history of good gracious 20 some symptoms as an average. And I had for respond because, I mean, I had three things.

00:19:54:14 – 00:20:21:04
Dr. Shoemaker
Well, later on, here comes news of the fellas in North Carolina. And Kent Hartnell was a neuro toxicologist from the U.S.. EPA restores national Health environmental effects research lab. And he had done a test I never heard of called visual contrast sensitivity in, in, in, people from from North Carolina exposed to fish kills. And it showed an abnormality.

00:20:21:06 – 00:20:27:16
Dr. Shoemaker
And I said, oh, what is it? What is this sound? Debbie got his number. Good. Debbie. Such a good student working for me for 43 years can do that. And I want to. I love Debbie. Reach out to Debbie. Should take care of me. Yeah. We all need people like Debbie in our lives.

00:20:34:13 – 00:20:40:22
Dr. Shoemaker
Well, if I could clone her and then distribute her to the mold community, we would have a lot more.

00:20:40:22 – 00:20:46:00
Synergee
so you connected the dots with the visual contrast screening, and this was before the internet was a thing of.

00:20:46:02 – 00:21:00:06
Dr. Shoemaker
Yeah, that’s also part of the story that I think sometimes we miss because we’re so used to wanting to just do Google searches and PubMed searches. And, you know, we didn’t have any of those easy access tools. Yeah. To get to.

00:21:00:06 – 00:21:18:06
Dr. Shoemaker
to know, sure enough. And Ken told me how to use it. And I bought the device and talked to stereo optical media and I said, well, this is fun, because I could show that the people who had this, this illness, this, this bio toxin, all this is all I knew to call it neurotoxin media.

00:21:18:06 – 00:21:38:03
Dr. Shoemaker
The illness, if I came close to I mean, the defect in VCRs went away and this was normal. Who? People who, if they are normal, most of them were employees of the Department of Environment, State of Maryland. They would go back in, they had a job to do. They get sick again. And this contrast test got bad again.

00:21:38:05 – 00:21:44:15
Dr. Shoemaker
And I came close to having it and it got better again. This oh this is Coke specialist. My goodness this is great.

00:21:44:15 – 00:21:51:09
Synergee
So Doctor Shoemaker can you go into the visual contrast screening. A lot of our audience won’t know what that is and how to access that test.

00:21:51:09 – 00:21:53:00
Synergee
And that’s something that you can do from home

00:21:53:00 – 00:21:59:15
Dr. Shoemaker
If you think about an edge in vision, contrast is the ability to see an edge.

00:21:59:15 – 00:22:37:15
Dr. Shoemaker
So you could have a white background against the black, symbol in the front. Well, that’s the extreme contrast we use for measuring visual acuity. There’s no interest. Back then, there was a big to do worldwide. U.S. fighter planes had flown low over a ski resort in Italy and clipped the cables of the gondola, and people were killed, and, you know, they came in, there was court martial and everything, but they were let off because of the grazed light and the gray cattle grazed, cable could not be distinguished.

00:22:37:16 – 00:23:03:01
Dr. Shoemaker
You couldn’t see the contrast was zero. And what would her nails test start? And it’s so, in contrast and in, in row in row one and, then ABC all the way down through, through nine gradations, they decrease the contrast by 0.3 log units as you went from left to right, or the near frequency to into higher frequencies.

00:23:07:15 – 00:23:25:05
Dr. Shoemaker
And we could come up with a, with a point, we could see the point of extinction where you couldn’t see contrast anymore. And that was the endpoint. So that was fun. And this is a little card. You put it in front of 18in in front of your eyes, and you cover one eye and takes five minutes to do.

00:23:25:06 – 00:23:47:09
Dr. Shoemaker
And it’s not a fancy technology thing, but it turns out to be very sophisticated, in what it is. And the people from Cerebral Optical said, we’ve talked to the Heidelberg engineering folks, and you can borrow their dual laser Doppler for about six weeks and see what you can find about people with visual contrast that’s abnormal. And in visual contrast, it’s normal.

00:23:47:11 – 00:23:53:01
Dr. Shoemaker
Well, I mean, in computers, if you listen, Debbie can do this stuff for me, right?

00:23:55:03 – 00:24:13:11
Dr. Shoemaker
But anyway, they sent down an expert to show me how to do it, and I could focus in on the red. Now, just these pretty pictures you see on the retina. But there was the optic nerve head coming out of the brain, and the neural rim was this thin little area there.

00:24:13:11 – 00:24:35:22
Dr. Shoemaker
I was looking at the brain. Oh yeah. It was that cool. So anyway, the velocity is slow and red blood cells were reduced markedly in the retina, in the neural rim. The optic nerve is in people who are sick. It improved when they were better. It took a day to see improvement, a week to see resolution. And this.

00:24:36:01 – 00:24:57:23
Dr. Shoemaker
And then in Connell with the big wheel with EPA. He wrote it off. Yeah. Well come on I get credit for it. He says you will on your own time anyway. So by this time it’s February and 1998. So I wrote up, I already wrote the illness diagnosis, the route of treatment in the sun and started going nuts.

00:24:57:23 – 00:25:22:04
Dr. Shoemaker
And here are people from the Saint Lucie River in Florida. They had an outbreak of lesion fish. And I went down there and crypto parodied in the offices. I still remember how to pronounce the word. And what happened, you said with Lake Okeechobee with 28 miles in diameter level rose was Hurricane water. And all this other stuff is the dam is what it is.

00:25:22:04 – 00:25:38:11
Dr. Shoemaker
And, they were worried that if they don’t vent some of the water to, to, the Saint Lucie, that there will be a problem with flooding and dam break and all that. But as soon as the water hit lock 73 and 74 coming all the way from Okeechobee. And you know about Okeechobee, probably been on vacation there.

00:25:42:02 – 00:26:05:04
Dr. Shoemaker
But here’s this this very wealthy community is steward and in Saint Lucie sort of getting sick and fish got lesions and all this stuff. And I said visual contrast. I had symptoms, I had exposure, I lost the Army, but I didn’t have this act. I now had to drive Flagler species and darn, this is a cell from Woods Hole on Anderson calls home.

00:26:05:04 – 00:26:23:22
Dr. Shoemaker
He goes, I’ve got people who will say good care of this. Still sick. See what you can do with them. Well, if you had acute secretion. So you get from eating, eating fish with lesions and, they grow on the reef and all this other stuff, you can get a diet flatulent illness and get all the same things. Symptoms, VCs, response to treatment.

00:26:23:23 – 00:26:52:11
Dr. Shoemaker
But the chronic people didn’t get better and go to how acute is different from chronic. And meanwhile I got a call from someone with blue green algae problems. And like Eustace and Dora and Harris and Griffin and, Apopka, I mean, the chain of lakes, all the water flows north and into the, into the Saint Johns River and then out into the Atlantic Ocean and Jacksonville.

00:26:52:13 – 00:27:15:01
Dr. Shoemaker
But this is all the same things. And you could see people driving on the bridges over the Saint Johns River, in Jacksonville. And the water. Look, look at the muddy blue green. What I’m driving over is this is going to make me sick. Anything exposed to this? Well, it turned out we published a paper later on that it did make people sick.

00:27:15:01 – 00:27:38:06
Dr. Shoemaker
And that was very unpopular in Florida. They kept a lid on, on red tide pretty well, but they couldn’t keep it rid of blue green algae. So anyway. But so I’m still in Kent, I just like you said, I was worried about it. I couldn’t figure out why that it was eating at me. And there’s something about this that said, you know, I, I can read more.

00:27:38:06 – 00:28:24:05
Dr. Shoemaker
And I was reading about, where Will bloom and we started doing, g-p-s data points and doing sampling of poor water improves that. Yeah. And is where the where the fish kills were in the emergent vegetation, of the marshes and all this stuff in the estuary. We could predict where the outbreak was going to be, and the copper was there, and the number one EPA biocide and the copper was used and put it into chicken feed and chicken feed would run off the fat, the farms and into the river, and the copper would precipitate into poor water.

00:28:24:06 – 00:28:49:20
Dr. Shoemaker
If you were a kid and you had a mud pie, you squeezed it. All this water comes out. That’s poor. That’s water between the particles of the mud pie. Well, in that was copper. And when you get stirred up in a rain event, that’s when you get sick kills. That’s when we would have problems with hysteria changing as life forms because of crypto monads.

00:28:49:20 – 00:29:17:16
Dr. Shoemaker
It’s hysteria. I like to eat. We’re being killed by copper in a runoff. So. And then I said, wait a minute. What is hysteria? Changes into a life form for feeding and breeding. It’s moving fast. How quickly? How can we get blues? Well, you know, the the issue is that this hysteria lifeform was being eaten in the, in the, in the feeding, breeding fast buying by rotifers.

00:29:17:18 – 00:29:45:07
Dr. Shoemaker
So we had a bloom situation set up with A12 punch. And what killed the rotifers were dry carbonates. The fungicide is 25 years old. Were never used. Who worked on vermin. So suddenly I had the causative agents that I could measure. And here comes Florida. Florida with the Southwestern Water Management District. Top quality science. Good gracious. They measure diethyl carbonates.

00:29:45:07 – 00:29:58:13
Dr. Shoemaker
They measure fungicides in the Saint Lucie River. I said, oh, here it is. So I came up with a copper theory. And boy, I really got criticized for that. I used to say my back couldn’t blame me. More has been carved up so many times. It’s all scar tissue and no blood.

00:30:00:22 – 00:30:08:01
Synergee
You didn’t know you’re going to need to become a marine biologist as your as a physician, right. Trying to piece all this together as you go.

00:30:08:01 – 00:30:24:20
Dr. Shoemaker
When I was, I was saying that the other experts were wrong. Yeah I said the politicians are wrong. I said, well look at all the piles of chicken manure. That’s the problem. It’s nutrients, the same as the Gulf of Mexico. Well, then in those circumstances, the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah. But then I got a call.

00:30:24:20 – 00:30:43:00
Dr. Shoemaker
The guy was sick. He had symptoms. Yeah. He did visual contrast sensitivity. That was positive. But he hadn’t been to Florida. He wasn’t in the Saint Lucia River. It wasn’t the river. All he had was his black stuff growing in a mold. And the roof leaked. And I said, well, let me just see what I can find.

00:30:43:00 – 00:30:59:13
Dr. Shoemaker
So I did the tape lift and got a sticky black trace and said, whoa, look at this. Well, I said, let’s try you. Well, he got better, but when he went back into his house, he got sick again. Well, he’s got to have all these other things coming back again. But he didn’t get better as well. The second time.

00:30:59:13 – 00:31:23:12
Dr. Shoemaker
Well, something’s going on. And meanwhile I’m reading about MSH melanocytes stimulating hormones. It’s a regulatory neuropeptide. I got HLA the immune response genes. He had the right hla. I’m looking at MSH called up the FDA and said look I’ve got all these people in Syria. Can’t, can’t, can’t we use MSH with them because in the U.S. was going to use MSH.

00:31:23:12 – 00:31:35:16
Dr. Shoemaker
And so this battles with Saddam, you know, any entry into AA because it’s a, it’s an anti-inflammatory neuropeptide, which it treats inflammation, treats circadian rhythms and all this good stuff.

00:31:35:16 – 00:31:41:02
Synergee
So Doctor Shoemaker, what year was that when MSH was a thing as far as using MSH as a peptide it would be given to you was in the process.

00:31:44:10 – 00:32:02:13
Dr. Shoemaker
DARPA, the Defense Research Program Association, was ready to use MSH with the FDA next to it. They said, you haven’t done the toxicology studies. You haven’t done the rat studies, you haven’t done primate studies. When you do that, after you spend $5 million and we’ll talk to you

00:32:02:12 – 00:32:06:04
Dr. Shoemaker
I didn’t just have $5 million to spend on on MSH.

00:32:06:04 – 00:32:12:11
Dr. Shoemaker
And so, James Lipton called me up and he was asking the master of MSH, he and Anna Catania, they were going private. He says, do you want my DARPA grant? I said, oh, yeah, yeah, the Darfur grant. And the Darfur people just kind of laughed and said, sure, you do have a nice day. Bye bye.

00:32:25:19 – 00:32:46:08
Dr. Shoemaker
But I had no more problems. And now I started getting phone calls with people at Old right in gay cold, starving, and found out that some people didn’t get better. And meanwhile, reading about what will grow and the situation where Marka is moving about acquiring Craigslist negative staff and I said, well, let’s see if we can find those.

00:32:46:09 – 00:33:15:03
Dr. Shoemaker
And bingo, we came up with that case and I figured out how to kill the Americans, and we killed him with thanks. We couldn’t use that anymore later on because there’s other folks that use pesticides and fungicides in Rwanda. The danger of the ability to shoot. We’re killing Americans. Yes, it was, but anyway, we found more cons could be eradicated with a spray with nasal spray.

00:33:15:05 – 00:33:37:18
Dr. Shoemaker
And that helped fix the people who weren’t much better. So that was good. Let us go find more people that were still sick and they had the same things. And meanwhile, and finding other, other markers and, MMP nine was a cytokines, a measure of all the other cytokines or pro-inflammatory compounds. And MMP nine was the marker.

00:33:37:18 – 00:34:06:17
Dr. Shoemaker
And I said, I really like it. Fix that with coolest I mean and MMP nine was the next marker that Jeff was the next marker. And I’m suddenly getting this whole pattern, this systemic illness with multiple symptoms is being driven by inflammation. And that information was not just you. You scratch your knee and you got a little red line in the middle of the swelling.

00:34:06:22 – 00:34:27:22
Dr. Shoemaker
That’s inflammation. We learned about this from the innate immune responses in TNF, which we discovered in 1985. And this is now, you know, 2000. Is TNF a role in this? Yes, TNF had a role in this. this was just really exciting. So I started trying to put it together and people would come for a visit and I had nice table paper.

00:34:27:22 – 00:34:52:09
Dr. Shoemaker
I was drawing out all the lines and arrows. Well this does this and this does this. And finally one guy was with sophisticated computers because you need something better than you scribbles on, on a piece of paper. Yes. So he made me a little card of Botox. He passed away in 2004, and the boy was out of hand because it had everything all there and all these other things.

00:34:52:11 – 00:35:23:23
Dr. Shoemaker
And meanwhile other people call me and try to do things that Dale and I were writing papers like crazy. We had one paper that was made, a grand round of environmental medicine that the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and, AHP, Environmental Report was, which was I got I got to be the, the main guy for it for grand rounds and then they had their meeting because we had done a double blind, placebo controlled trial.

00:35:23:23 – 00:35:46:00
Dr. Shoemaker
I mean, you got to do things right, right. You then got published, but this was held in Stone mountain and they had, you know, a nice dinner set up in a bus line for people. And they had a big pile of grouper and looked beautiful. I said, I’m not eating them till I said, why aren’t you eating the grouper?

00:35:46:00 – 00:35:49:07
Dr. Shoemaker
I said, are you kidding me? As secretary carrier?

00:35:51:23 – 00:36:07:23
Dr. Shoemaker
You know, what are you talking about? He said, well, I don’t think too much of you, and I’m going to have less of my grouper and bunch more and their grouper too. And the next day I had all these people stopping me in a hallway. How do you fix a seagull chair, by the way? Don’t tell anybody you’re asking.

00:36:07:23 – 00:36:15:16
Dr. Shoemaker
And I’m asking you. But you know, we know you’re a cook. And, I said, well, I’m not going to tell you

00:36:15:16 – 00:36:20:12
Synergee
How ironic, right? That they would serve a grouper at an event like that. That’s crazy.

00:36:22:15 – 00:36:26:23
Synergee
Fortunately, acuity on this was Secretary gets better real quickly, but, I just I kind of want to just stop for a minute and go back and just,

00:36:31:08 – 00:37:08:07
Synergee
First of all, thank you for the just obviously a relentless amount of opposition in your journey to and and your just dedication, ongoing persistence to keep going, looking at data, hearing and listening and modifying and looking for answers. And like we just lack that. Overall, I believe in our medical community, and you have been such a pioneer and a beacon of light for those that definitely need to continue this on.

00:37:08:07 – 00:37:25:12
Synergee
Right. But just listening to you, I can only imagine the opposition. I can only imagine what you faced in criticism. I mean, you make light of it, but I love, you know, what you said about your back, right? Like that was such a true story. But I can only imagine what you endured through all of that.

00:37:25:12 – 00:37:47:08
Dr. Shoemaker
Well, it wasn’t all games. That was the key issue. Is it? I knew I was wrong. People are criticizing me. You couldn’t even spell cat twice, right? You know, I said I’m not going to give up on that. Yeah.

00:37:47:08 – 00:38:09:03
Dr. Shoemaker
My wife is supportive. And in 2002 I had enough of a practice and I said I’m going to stop being a failing practice doctor. I’m going to be an action doctor. And my wife has breast cancer and passed away, bless her heart. But, she said, are you sure you’re going to make a living like this?

00:38:09:05 – 00:38:29:17
Dr. Shoemaker
I said, oh, yeah, it’ll work. You know, it did. But that’s when I would kind of work in the morning and look to see one. The computer is and spat out as far as laughs from the night before, because he was HLA was one of the first ones in MSH and MMP nine and half and C3 and C4 and all the stuff.

00:38:29:19 – 00:39:01:02
Dr. Shoemaker
We started with no biomarkers. And then at the conference, the series X conference, where I talked about your case a little bit because she had give me permission, one of the slides, this actually didn’t sit on one slide. We now have 64 reproducibly reliable biomarkers for serious illness. 64. You know, looking at chronic fatigue syndrome, one of the things that kind of got me started thinking this way, how many biomarker markers should we have for chronic fatigue?

00:39:01:02 – 00:39:09:09
Dr. Shoemaker
None. How about fibromyalgia? I had great fun with them. None. I got 64. How many y’all got

00:39:09:09 – 00:39:22:04
Synergee
Let’s go back. I want to really dig into the HLA because you brought it up a couple of times. How seven people can be in the water, or ten people can be in the water and you know, only 3 or 4 get sick. Right. So what is that about?

00:39:22:04 – 00:39:29:23
Synergee
And you, you kind of stumbled upon the HLA typing. When did that come about? And then let’s go through the types not individually but just kind of globally.

00:39:30:00 – 00:39:38:03
Dr. Shoemaker
Well I read a lot and I never heard of HLA, I saw a paper on HLA, I said, oh what’s this immune response genes on chromosome six.

00:39:38:03 – 00:39:52:07
Dr. Shoemaker
And you know, you learn about ankylosing spondylitis. This with HLA b 27 and HLA got some things in HLA CS got some things in HLA doctors got some things. Oh my Dr. B one

00:39:52:07 – 00:40:03:13
Dr. Shoemaker
You know I started seeing that the people who had a given HLA were the sick ones and they weren’t the same. The old patients weren’t the same as the dinoflagellates patients.

00:40:03:13 – 00:40:23:03
Dr. Shoemaker
They weren’t the same as the blue green algae patients. They sure are the same as a lot of patients. And, you know, like that was another story because I thought, well, if I’ve got the biomarkers all positive and I give this, I mean we can put up with the constipation. I mean, that’s how I discovered its use of it.

00:40:23:05 – 00:40:46:03
Dr. Shoemaker
But, you know, nausea and vomiting and all this other stuff was the end of the line. People, when they took it, they got slammed. Their visual contrast sensitivity. I said, well, what is that show? Maybe that’s got something to show that showed a fall in column E, followed by a fall and column D, like clockwork, a day to day when they fall.

00:40:46:03 – 00:40:54:15
Dr. Shoemaker
And indeed, and then P9 was released, I was, I was bringing on this, this, this cytokine storm

00:40:54:20 – 00:41:01:23
Synergee
So you’re saying CoA in the Lyme positive patient untreated line colostomy made them worse. Is that what you’re saying?

00:41:01:22 – 00:41:09:22
Dr. Shoemaker
Yeah. And I call it intensification. It is. It’s not a hoax here. It’s intensifying. But I was able to show it was coming from a toxin.

00:41:10:00 – 00:41:35:02
Dr. Shoemaker
Right. And I said, well, if it’s coming from a toxin, I should be able to prevent the intensification by stabilizing the pool of cytokines. Before we can, we give them, of course. I mean, so I use actos, which is a fabulous drug. It was given a bad reputation and then that was proved to be bogus. And you can get actos to use it, but we use omega threes now without arguing about the politics.

00:41:35:04 – 00:41:49:19
Dr. Shoemaker
But I said this should work. So I took five days of actos problem. I know Adelstein and I used to do weight loss, and the diet book was, I must have sold 100 copies, so I thought I could retire on that. The term low amylose diet is fantastic. Yes. Oh, you didn’t. Yeah.

00:41:58:02 – 00:42:05:08
Dr. Shoemaker
The issue was that I could give them a drug safely with, like, the intensification and velocity intensification.

00:42:05:08 – 00:42:36:00
Dr. Shoemaker
He was blocking cytokines. So working backwards, did I block cytokines? Yes. I stabilize MMP nine and people with Lyme could take that in and sail through. Well, I was pretty controversial. And you know, and I got tired of some of the people that I met in ileus and just said, do something different. I had gotten contacted by GlaxoSmithKline, and they wanted me to look at people with that line of, of Asia co-infection.

00:42:36:02 – 00:42:59:10
Dr. Shoemaker
And so I said, well, that’s that’s good. I got plenty of patients from Line of Asia. Well, it took 300 patients for me to find 30 that actually did have the BCA. So people were doing different things. And, you know, Andy Spielman was my colleague. He was the chairman of tropical medicine at Harvard. He says, you know, do the six things, the right stains.

00:42:59:12 – 00:43:22:23
Dr. Shoemaker
You know, you can see the BCA, Perry meritorious showing and bright red in red blood cells and every red blood cell that’s that that you have a weakness. Well hemoglobin. So the afterglow events will rise and find the hemoglobin. So I had to go. I was below and free urinary hemoglobin will be in the marker. We had those three markers of, of Asia.

00:43:23:01 – 00:43:38:04
Dr. Shoemaker
We got our 30 patients and we use coho salmon and of the drugs and GlaxoSmithKline was making and we were able to show and BCA makes a GPI toxin, glycerol fast for nano to acetone and malaria makes it other AP complexly has make it toxoplasmosis makes it I marry and anxious is of the BCA and little chickens and pigs and then surfaces this in in birds.

00:43:52:15 – 00:44:24:10
Dr. Shoemaker
And so if you do, if you think you’ve got the BCA and you do a test with an Elisa aspect to it, all you’re going to look at is false positives coming from SA persistence and toxoplasmosis and malaria and all of that. And I’m area I marry is fascinating. It will kill little chickens. And here on the eastern shore while chicken farming is a big, big industry and you know more in the center of the country there are a lot bigger chicken farms.

00:44:24:12 – 00:44:48:11
Dr. Shoemaker
But if you’ve got in the area, it’ll kill the chicken. So if you’ve got an area you need to worry about, you can kill the IV area with a it’s a, probably cyclic you through toxin components and, and every ton of chicken feed had 100mg of medicine in it. So all these people word was worry about chicken and worried about beef and cholesterol.

00:44:48:13 – 00:45:11:11
Dr. Shoemaker
And these are an all you chicken and I’ll eat pork knowing they’re eating my area first then they’re eating Monessen. Monessen will take sugar coming out from three and glucose transfer proteins one and four. And then in getting into the endosome and fuzed with the endosome and then endosome if it’s acidified will release glucose in the gluten in the insulin receptor and insulin in and then into the cytoplasm.

00:45:17:19 – 00:45:45:23
Dr. Shoemaker
And then insulin will be recycled back to the cell membrane, all that. But if you didn’t acidify the endosome, you didn’t get release of insulin and glucose and all this other stuff. You functionally were developing insulin resistance by keeping it in the endosome. The cell snake. Oh my. So now we know that’s one of the big deals because I had forgotten that this was 1986.

00:45:45:23 – 00:46:20:17
Dr. Shoemaker
We were doing that work on medicine slipping forward to 2016. Jimmy Ryan, who’s absolutely brilliant, a cell biologist to beat. Also biologists. We were doing next generation sequencing of human genome, trying to see what genes were going on. And, you know, here we we come along and we find out that the genes that are involved most with this illness are ones that are variable or mRNA that detect ribosomes.

00:46:20:18 – 00:46:48:16
Dr. Shoemaker
And if ribosome protein production is compromised and it is then people are not making proteins at all. And then there’s 37 genes left in the, in the, in the mitochondria. And there’s mitochondrial genes. They could be doing good things. Well, they weren’t and it turns out we were able to show that pyruvate was blocked from entering into mitochondria.

00:46:48:18 – 00:47:15:10
Dr. Shoemaker
If pyruvate was not blocked and the entry didn’t go across the, the outer membrane is sequestered in the and in the right side. It didn’t get into the mitochondrial matrix, ATPase and cyclooxygenase didn’t make ATP out of this and people would be tired. But it took six. Gene took 20 years before Jimmy discovered this is Gene.

00:47:15:10 – 00:47:34:06
Dr. Shoemaker
Basis was one thing I have been working on for 20 years and didn’t find the Holy, Holy Grail. And Jimmy found it and we started looking at a smaller number of genes. 50,000 genes, was too much, is too expensive. Nobody would pay for a test. We couldn’t handle that much. We didn’t have the computer capacity to do that.

00:47:34:08 – 00:48:15:01
Dr. Shoemaker
So we found 2000 genes that were upregulated that looked like they were inflammatory, metabolic, in nature. Take 200 out of there. And we have now what we have geni. But the beginnings of geni started with an observation of a polycyclic ether of the dinoflagellates toxin. So what goes around comes around. And all that reading I’ve done a multidisciplinary reading now is is paid off because now we can see that there are drugs that will work for people with these, these, mitochondrial gene problems and ribosome gene problems.

00:48:15:03 – 00:48:22:15
Synergee
And if we gave them VIP, we’d get them better unless they couldn’t take VIP

00:48:22:15 – 00:48:42:03
Dr. Shoemaker
Yes. That that’s where my story is, is, is hindered. Right. And the reason why we need ongoing research and ongoing efforts and why I’m so armored by the persistence that you have exhibited over the course of, you know, your career in pursuit of that, right?

00:48:42:03 – 00:48:44:09
Synergee
VP’s amazing VP works,

00:48:44:08 – 00:48:48:09
Dr. Shoemaker
But there are people and you see this talk.

00:48:48:09 – 00:48:51:07
Synergee
Yes. Sure. Yes.

00:48:51:07 – 00:49:12:11
Dr. Shoemaker
Yeah. That’s you. Yeah. And I presented your case and I wanted people I’ve had 10,000 patients on VIP. It’s the last step in my 12 step protocol. And I had six dropouts. And. You mean you made seven? The other lady, other people that were dropouts.

00:49:12:11 – 00:49:17:07
Dr. Shoemaker
I had them take the gallbladder out, and they. They did fine. And you still got your gallbladder and know, I had my gallbladder out. I did all the things. You know? You got everything right. Did anybody smile from that conference just to just get started? I went to reach out and we’re connecting and we’re going to pursue other things. And so I can’t wait to have that consultation with him.

00:49:34:08 – 00:49:56:02
Synergee
I have not, have not had it yet. But to back up, you’ve said a few things that I want to make sure our audience really understands. Number one, we have a community called source X, and that’s an ongoing community of providers treating service. And it encompasses remediation. So part of Doctor Shoemaker’s protocol step one is removing from exposure whatever that exposure is.

00:49:56:02 – 00:50:27:14
Synergee
Right. So our mediators are extremely important in creating a safe environment for people to have an opportunity to recover and repair from water damage. And chronic inflammatory response syndrome. The second part is we have providers there and all multi-disciplinary providers and physicians. We have nurse practitioners, police, psychologists, psychiatrists, you know, the gamut of people really walking alongside patients because oftentimes it does take a village to heal and repair.

00:50:27:18 – 00:50:51:01
Synergee
This is a chronic condition where there is hope for recovery. And I live a very full life. I mean, despite the challenges that I’ve had, I am living a very full life. And I owe that to you guys because without the work that you’ve done, my wellness journey in Ridgeland, MS, that would not be possible for me. I think I would be in a wheelchair today if it weren’t for the work that you’ve done, because at the onset of my diagnosis, I was very neurologically impaired.

00:50:51:03 – 00:51:13:09
Synergee
And so I lead a very, I would say, normal life in spite of a chronic condition because of that. And so these guys are true warriors out there doing the work, listening to patients, you know, really hearing what they’re saying. And, you know, I didn’t get dismissed because I’m one of the six patients that can’t tolerate VIP on your list.

00:51:13:09 – 00:51:15:07
Synergee
It’s just more to come. Right?

00:51:15:08 – 00:51:35:04
Synerge
And it’s also raising the standard of care to like collectively, it requires a village to train to bring back what we’re seeing in clinical practice. Because to your point, you know what? What we read in the books isn’t typically what is happening in clinical practice, right? There has to be that collective place where people can come together.

00:51:35:17 – 00:51:56:14
Synergee
So yeah, and I want to tell a story too. It’s not a very flattering story, but I think it’s a story that other providers need to hear. When I was first introduced to the HLA genotype, responsible for the chronic inflammatory response syndrome, it was through a forum they hosted a genetic course that Lori and I took in Vegas.

00:51:56:16 – 00:52:16:09
Synergee
And it was a long, long, tedious, if you can imagine, going through all of the different genotypes courses. And we had had a full morning, we had had a break, we had an afternoon session and then another break, and we came back from that break. And there were some other providers sitting there talking about what was to come in the next talk, and I don’t remember who was presenting the next talk.

00:52:16:09 – 00:52:35:15
Synergee
I really don’t remember, but they were telling us about the dreaded gene and how these patients were just the walking dead, that you would never, ever be able to get them better. And I looked at Lori and I said, I’m never going to see this. I don’t want to know about this. This sounds terrible. She did. Let’s peace out, well, let’s we’re done for the day.

00:52:35:17 – 00:52:55:13
Synergee
So we missed the lecture. Missed the lecture. I mean, I regret that as a provider, I’m like, why did you leave? Right. So fast forward two years later, we were in the process of repeating all of our modules with a forum because they updated them. Thank goodness they update content constantly. And Andy Hayman was speaking. It was in 2016.

00:52:55:13 – 00:53:13:02
Synergee
October. Yeah. And I always you know, we are in the practice of medicine. You have patients that you treat that get better right away. You have patients that you treat. They get better. But you know they’re not well and you still need some work. And then there are those patients that just don’t get well right.

00:53:13:02 – 00:53:32:20
Synergee
And so I would always go to a conference with a list of patients that I wanted to pursue, asking questions about bringing their labs, getting the ear of mentors while I was there to really dig into. And so we’re sitting in a conference and she nudges me, and I was having neuro flares, like I would flare, be really sick for 3 or 4 days, and then I would be okay.

00:53:32:20 – 00:53:43:21
Synergee
You know, I would kind of come out of it and be the better. And then all of a sudden those sounds were getting closer and closer together, and that was becoming my norm. And I was losing the ability to walk at times.

00:53:43:22 – 00:53:46:09
Synergee
And I will never forget this moment in my wellness journey in Ridgeland, MS.

00:53:46:09 – 00:53:50:06
Synergee
Yeah. So she looks like she punches me and she says, I think that’s you.

00:53:50:06 – 00:54:04:00
Synergee
I think you need to be on the list. And I said, no, that’s not me. She did nothing, and that’s, that’s on me. That’s not me. And, I really think that she looked at me at the end of the lecture and she said, promise me when you get home that you’re going to do the testing.

00:54:04:02 – 00:54:26:20
Synergee
Just do the testing. What can that hurt? So I tested my office, I tested myself, and then December, we were coming back to campus. I didn’t know what any of that meant. Doctor Shoemaker. I had no idea what any of those numbers meant. I took my labs, and I took my office report. My army, at the time, as what we were doing took it to Doctor Hayman.

00:54:26:22 – 00:54:47:22
Synergee
And he looked at it and he looked at me. He said, who is this? And I said, well, that would be me. And he said, follow me. And I was like, where are we going? He took me up to his hotel room. I was with her. He she went with me, put Colostyromine in my hand and said, start on this immediately and do not go back in that building.

00:54:48:00 – 00:55:03:09
Synergee
And that began my journey of just exploring. A later did the proficiency partner course with you and then ongoing work. I did the George Washington course. So do they still offer that George Washington course through the George Washington University School of

00:55:03:08 – 00:55:06:23
Synergee
Is. And he has worked with them. Okay. So

00:55:06:23 – 00:55:14:22
Synergee
I think providers need to know that’s available because it’s a hard core, nose to the grindstone course on answers. course that any I taught had had two different phases of the year. Yes, yes, yes. That’s good. Now as incorporated into the graduate program at GW, certainly the only medical school that it’s got serves education in in Florida. Where was we starting of courses in the fall.

00:55:34:16 – 00:55:54:11
Synergee
Well it’s not it’s the first but hopefully it won’t be the only because, you know, back to the HLA 25%, 24 point something percent of the US population, Carrie and Jean and I believe and I’m going to rename your Jean. Do you mind if I rename Gene Doctor Shoemaker, the dreaded gene? Can I rename it?

00:55:54:11 – 00:55:56:04
Dr. Shoemaker
We call a Billie Jean.

00:55:56:04 – 00:56:18:18
Synergee
No, I’m going to call. I’m going to call it the Garden of Eden. Eden, gene. Because I think I should be living in the Garden of Eden. And those genes are made for the Garden of Eden. They’re made for pristine, everything. And that’s not the world we live in today. You know, we live in a very toxic world with indoor air quality being poor, with our lakes and our rivers being contaminated.

00:56:18:20 – 00:56:33:12
Synergee
You know, we just don’t live the way that our genes need to be living. Right? And so I’m joking about renaming your genes, but I think of it in that way. I try to think of it in a positive way, you know, instead of dreaded it like, oh no, this is the worst case scenario.

00:56:33:12 – 00:56:47:12
Dr. Shoemaker
I think it’s a lovely idea. I urge you to write it up. It’s just a client list. When it really gets you better, it’s not going to be long. Yeah. And you. Right?

00:56:47:12 – 00:56:52:15
Synergee
Right. Write off your paper. Okay. That’s good. That’s going to be great. That’s great. But,
wow, that was incredible. We just had an amazing conversation with Doctor Shoemaker, and we hope that you were able to learn something that your paper is full of notes that you took. We’re definitely going to have a part two.

00:57:05:22 – 00:57:24:01
Synergee
This part one was so deep and wide and rich. But it was very technical. In our second part that we want to invite you back to. It’s going to be heartfelt. We really get into the heart of why Richie Shoemaker does what he does, the things that he’s contributed to the service community. Just profound. And I can’t wait to see you back for part two.

00:57:26:02 – 00:57:43:06
Synergee
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00:57:43:05 – 00:57:52:11
Synergee
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