South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem vetoed a bill passed by the Republican legislature that would have centralized currency through central bank digital currency (CBDC), which Tucker Carlson pointed out is not currency, but is software. He also explained how CBDC can be used as a tool for control. The bill that she vetoed would have changed the definition of money in order to ban cryptocurrency, Bitcoin or other forms of digital currency, paving the way for government-led CBDC. She said the bill was 110 pages long and was sold as an update to guidelines to the Universal Commercial Code (UCC) and was backed by all the state’s financial institutions and banks. She said that the same language used in the bill has been given to 20 other states, sold as a UCC update, to pave the way for the federal government to control currency in order to control the people.Governor Noem shocked Tucker Carlson when she said that the South Dakota state legislature that passed this bill probably did not even read it!
In her book, “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons,” Kris Newby reviews the circumstantial evidence suggesting the organism that causes Lyme disease may originally have been developed as a biological weapon
An estimated 476,000 Americans are diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease each year, and prevalence is rising
Lyme disease is transmitted by ticks (and sometimes other biting insects) infected with the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. There are about two dozen species of B. burgdorferi with hundreds of strains worldwide, many of which are resistant to antibiotics
Ticks can also carry other pathogens, and coinfections are another reason why Lyme disease is so difficult to treat
A major challenge with Lyme disease is that its symptoms imitate so many other disorders, including multiple sclerosis (MS), arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and even Alzheimer’s disease, making proper identification difficult and time consuming
In a February 28, 2023, Substack article,1 investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker interviewed award-winning author Kris Newby about the U.S. government’s history of manipulating pathogens to make them deadlier, and the secretive federal research that may be responsible for the epidemic of Lyme disease.
Newby, who educates health care providers on vector-borne diseases, is the author of “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons.” She also produced the 2008 Lyme disease documentary “Under Our Skin,”2 which was nominated for an Academy Award the following year.3 A follow-up film, “Under Our Skin 2: Emergence” came out in 2014.
As is the case with many people who end up becoming experts at a particular disease, Newby and her husband contracted Lyme disease in 2002 during a vacation at Martha’s Vineyard. “We were desperately ill and undiagnosed for a year. I thought that was the end of my life as I knew it. It took us four or five years to fully recover,” she told Thacker.
Background on Lyme Disease
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 476,000 Americans are diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease each year.4 While exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, what is known is that the prevalence is rising, and this is true across the world. Outbreaks are also steadily creeping into northern areas with less temperate climates.5
Lyme disease is transmitted by ticks (and sometimes other biting insects) infected with the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. There are about two dozen species of B. burgdorferi with hundreds of strains worldwide,6 many of which are resistant to antibiotics. Research7 suggests one reason for this may be that B. burgdorferi form protective biofilms around themselves, which enhances antibiotic resistance.
Another feature that makes B. burgdorferi such a formidable foe is its ability to take on different forms in your body, depending on the conditions. This clever maneuvering helps it to hide and survive. Its corkscrew-shaped form also allows it to burrow into and hide in a variety of your body’s tissues, which is why it causes such wide-ranging multisystem involvement.
Ticks can also carry other pathogens, and coinfections are another reason why Lyme disease is so difficult to treat, as the symptomology can be all over the place. Coinfections in many cases also don’t respond to treatment for B. burgdorferi, so a multilayered approach is frequently required to get all of the infections under control.
Lyme Disease Is Often Debilitating
A “typical” case usually starts out with an expanding rash, fever, fatigue, chills and headache. As the disease progresses, additional symptoms such as muscle spasms, loss of motor coordination, arthritic pain, debilitating fatigue, heart problems, psychiatric symptoms, cognitive difficulties, and problems with vision and hearing can emerge.8
For more information on identifying a Lyme disease rash, see the American Lyme Disease Foundation’s (ALDF) website.9 Newby describes her personal experience:
“It’s sort of like having multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, chronic fatigue … joint pain, all at the same time. It’s primarily a neurological disease that creates hyper-inflammation in your body. And the symptoms commonly move around your body. You can be very debilitated, unable to perform the tasks of a normal adult …
There is a growing body of scientific evidence that shows that the Lyme disease bacterium is a trickster that is good at dodging your immune system.
It comes out of the tick in a very mobile spirochetal form and, when it senses an antibiotic or killer cells, it goes into a dormant cyst form, hiding out for months to years. And when your immune system is stressed, it can start causing disease again.”
A major challenge with Lyme disease is that its symptoms imitate so many other disorders, including multiple sclerosis (MS), arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and even Alzheimer’s disease, making proper identification difficult and time consuming.10
What’s worse, many Lyme sufferers outwardly look quite healthy, and their blood work often raises no cause for concern, which is why Lyme disease has also been called “the invisible illness.”
In the past, Lyme sufferers were frequently told that their problem was psychiatric; in essence, the symptoms were “all in their head.” Today, Lyme is becoming more widely recognized as an actual disease, but sufferers are still often met with skepticism and resistance from the medical community and insurers.
The Lyme Disease Mimicker
Complicating matters further, there’s yet another tick-borne disease on the loose. Researchers have identified a tick-borne illness that is very similar to Lyme, caused by Borrelia miyamotoi.
The CDC11 describes B. miyamotoi as a distant relative to B. burgdorferi, being more closely related to bacteria that cause tick-borne relapsing fever. This disease is characterized by recurring episodes of fever, headache, nausea and muscle or joint aches.
This bacterium was first identified in Japanese ticks in 1995. Since then, it’s been found in several rodent species (and the ticks that feed on them) in the U.S., as well as in ticks feeding on European red deer, domestic ruminants and white-tailed deer.
Is Lyme Disease a Biological Weapon Gone Rogue?
According to Newby, there’s good reason to suspect that Lyme disease might be a biological weapon. There’s no smoking gun; just circumstantial evidence. But when taken together, it forms a highly suspect picture.
She describes being at a party where a former CIA agent bragged about a Cold War operation that involved dropping infected ticks on Cuba. “At that point, I knew I wasn’t done with the story,” she told Thacker. Her book, “Bitten,” is the result of her investigation into the military’s use of infectious bioweapons.
“When we started the film, Lyme disease was already too controversial to go down the bioweapons rabbit hole, so we focused on the human toll and the corruption in the medical system that allowed this epidemic to get so out of control,” Newby told Thacker.
“This CIA guy was a little bit in his cups, but what he said rang true. I started doing some research, interviewed him several times, and found that it was a verifiable story.”
Newby also got tipped off by Willy Burgdorfer during the filming of “Under Our Skin.” Burgdorfer, a Swiss medical zoologist, is credited with discovering Lyme disease. He worked at Rocky Mountain Labs — a National Institutes of Health-run biosafety level 4 (BSL4) facility in Montana — his whole career, and had contracts with Fort Detrick, which oversees the U.S. chemical and biological weapons programs.
While he made some important admissions during that interview, at the very end, he broke into an “evil little smile” and said, “I didn’t tell you everything.” Was he hinting that Lyme disease was a bioweapon?
“He started hinting at the unnatural origin of the outbreak to several people,” Newby told Thacker. “When I interviewed him for the book, he said, ‘Yes, I was in the biological weapons program. I was tasked with trying to mass produce ticks and mosquitoes.’
That’s also when he told me that he was called to investigate the outbreak of what was called ‘Lyme disease,’ but which could’ve been caused by one or more organisms. In Army documents, they said they were conducting early gain-of-function experiments by mixing pathogens — bacteria and viruses — inside ticks to create more effective bioweapons.”
The Official Story
As described by Newby, the official story is that Burgdorfer was sent to investigate a novel disease outbreak in Lyme, Connecticut, and Long Island. In 1980, he discovered the bacterium that now bears his name, Borrelia burgdorferi, and determined that this was what caused the disease.
He subsequently published an article stating the organism was easily killed off with penicillin. The notion that Lyme disease is easy to diagnose and treat has stuck ever since, even though the reality is often the opposite.
Newby agrees that, if caught early, many cases can indeed be cured with an inexpensive course of doxycycline. Two other antibiotics, ceftriaxone and vancomycin, have also been shown to clear the B. burgdorferi infection in cases where doxycycline fails.12 Unfortunately, Lyme disease patients often go undiagnosed for years, and by the time a diagnosis is made, the infection is well-established and very difficult to treat.
Holes in the Official Storyline
While researching for the book, Newby produced an animation of the original outbreak, which supposedly began at the mouth of the Connecticut River, near Long Island. This turned out to be rather revealing. She told Thacker:
“When I drew a 50-mile radius around that point, there were three new, highly virulent tick-borne diseases that showed up at that same time, in the late ’60s. This was 13 years before the Lyme bacterium was declared the cause of ‘Lyme disease’ in 1981.
I started looking through military records to see if the outbreak could be tied to any bioweapons accidents. And that’s when I discovered this massive bug-borne weapons program, as well as a program where germs were sprayed from airplanes over large areas, called Project 112.
Some of those germs were tick-borne diseases that they freeze-dried and aerosolized for spraying … Whatever happened in Lyme, Connecticut, we don’t have all the details. But I put together a solid circumstantial case, based on available evidence …
Burgdorfer … had worked with Q fever and ticks, experience that was needed at Rocky Mountain Labs for their bioweapons work. As soon as he got a security clearance, he started putting plague in fleas; deadly yellow fever in mosquitoes; and then mixing and matching viruses and bacteria in ticks to increase the virulence of these living weapons.
The Detrick weapons designers were looking for ticks that could be dropped on an enemy without arousing suspicion, filled with agents for which the target population wouldn’t have natural immunity … Ticks were the perfect stealth weapon, untraceable and long-acting …
I went as far as I could as a journalist to put together the circumstantial evidence that says Lyme disease is not the big problem — meaning the bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi.
It’s what Burgdorfer said that they’re covering up: 1) that a different bacteria, perhaps a rickettsia related to Rocky Mountain spotted fever, was developed as a bioweapon in the Cold War; 2) that it might be a combination of bugs inside the ticks that is making people sick.”
Mice and Rats Are the Most Problematic Hosts
Since the late 1970s, the spread of Lyme disease has primarily been blamed on deer. However, more recent evidence suggests rodents like mice and rats are a far more serious threat.13 Ticks are not born with the Lyme spirochetes. They pick up the bacteria when feeding on an infected host.14
Research indicates that white-footed mice infect 75% to 95% of larval ticks that feed on them, while deer only infect about 1%. According to a 1996 study,15 rats are even more infectious than mice, noting that “the capacity of rats to serve as reservoir hosts for the Lyme disease spirochete, therefore, increases risk of infection among visitors to … urban parks.”
Another study16 published the following year also found that Norway rats and black rats were exceptionally effective hosts, infecting nearly all ticks that fed on them.
The main predators of small rodents like mice and rats are foxes, birds of prey, skunks and snakes.17 Agricultural and urban sprawl have decimated the habitats of these natural predators of mice and rats, allowing disease-carrying rodent populations to rise unabated.
Better Diagnostics for Lyme Are Sorely Needed
A big problem facing Lyme patients and their treating doctors is the difficulty of reaching a proper diagnosis.18 Conventional lab tests are unreliable, and one reason for this is because the spirochete can infect your white blood cells.19
Lab tests rely on the normal function of white blood cells to produce the antibodies they measure. If your white cells are infected, they don’t respond to infection appropriately. So, for blood tests to be truly useful, you need to be treated first.
Once your immune system begins to respond normally, only then will the antibodies show up. This is called the “Lyme Paradox.” You have to be treated before a proper diagnosis can be made.
That said, I recommend the specialized lab called IGeneX20 because they offer highly sensitive tests for more outer surface proteins (bands), and can often detect Lyme while standard blood tests cannot. IGeneX also tests for a few strains of coinfections such as Babesia and Ehrlichia.
Patients and Doctors Fight for Recognition of Chronic Lyme
As if the difficulties of getting a proper diagnosis and treatment were not enough, Lyme sufferers face additional hurdles when they don’t fully recuperate after the initial treatment. Whether “chronic” Lyme disease is possible or not has been the subject of controversy for many years.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), which publishes guidelines for a number of infectious diseases, including Lyme disease, has long opposed the idea chronic Lyme exists, and doesn’t include long-term treatment guidance for chronic Lyme in its clinical guidelines.21,22
This is important, as insurance companies frequently restrict coverage for long-term treatment based on IDSA’s guidelines. Physicians’ treatment decisions are also guided by its recommendations. Opposing IDSA is the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), the members of which argue that many patients suffer long-term consequences and require far longer treatment than recommended by IDSA.23
Prevention Tips
Considering the difficulty of diagnosing and treating Lyme disease, taking preventive measures should be at the top of your list:
Avoid tick-infested areas, such as leaf piles around trees. Walk in the middle of trails and avoid brushing against long grasses and path edgings. Don’t sit on logs or wooden stumps and take extra precautions if you’re in an area where rats have been sighted.
Wear light-colored long pants and long sleeves, to make it easier to see the ticks.
Tuck your pants into socks, and wear closed shoes and a hat, especially if venturing out into wooded areas. Also tuck your shirt into your pants.
Ticks are very tiny. You want to find and remove them before they bite, so do a thorough tick check upon returning inside, and keep checking for several days following exposure. Also check your bedding for several days following exposure.
As for using chemical repellents, I do not recommend using them directly on your skin as this will introduce toxins directly into your body. If you use them, spray them on the outside of your clothes and avoid inhaling the spray fumes. The Environmental Protection Agency has a list24 indicating the hourly protection limits for various repellents.
If you find that a tick has latched onto you, it’s very important to remove it properly. For detailed instructions, please see lymedisease.org’s tick removal page.25 Once removed, make sure you save the tick so that it can be tested for presence of pathogenic organisms.
It’s Time to Ban Gain-of-Function Research
In closing, the Lyme disease epidemic and COVID-19 both appear to be the result of bioweapons development, and the real-world ramifications clearly demonstrate the risks involved. They can’t guarantee containment of the created pathogens, and sometimes, they don’t even try to contain them. In the case of Lyme disease, it’s possible that live testing is what led to the epidemic.
And while we don’t know whether SARS-CoV-2 was intentionally released or simply escaped, the end result is the same. The virus spread worldwide. If the world doesn’t wise up and realize just how suicidal these biological weapons programs are, humanity may eventually be wiped out by one of our own creations.
I spoke with “Tea Time,” a program by Children’s Health Defense, about the dangers of fake meat products to help raise awareness about this latest assault on human health
Fake food — including lab-grown meat, animal-free dairy and plant-based meat — is the globalists’ latest attempt to control the food supply
The globalists are trying to replace animal husbandry with lab-grown meat, which will allow private companies to effectively control the human population
The idea that animals must be removed from agriculture to save the planet is flawed; animals are an integral, and necessary, part of the restorative process
Fake meat is an ultraprocessed mixture of chemicals, GE ingredients, pesticides and toxic linoleic acid that will promote chronic disease
At face value, fake meat sounds like the perfect solution to end world hunger, protect animal welfare and save the planet from environmental destruction. Even a brief look below the surface reveals a much more nefarious reality, however.
To help raise awareness about this latest assault on human health, I recently spoke with host Polly Tommey on “Tea Time,” a program by Children’s Health Defense, about the dangers of fake meat products.1
Fake Meat Is All About Controlling the Food Supply
Fake food — including lab-grown meat, animal-free dairy and plant-based meat — is the globalists’ latest attempt to control the food supply. Former U.S. Secretary of State and national security adviser Henry Kissinger once said, “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control people.”2 Controlling people is their whole agenda.
The globalists have long held a monopoly on the grain industry with their patented genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In the early 2010s, not many people knew about GMOs. In 2011, we started to educate the public about their dangers, as they posed a major threat to public health and the environment.
In 2012, a ballot initiative was launched in California to require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods and food ingredients. The initiative was narrowly defeated due to massive donations from multinational corporations, but we won in the long term because awareness of GMOs in the food supply significantly increased. Now, most health-conscious people avoid GE/GMOs.
A similar trend is now occurring with fake food. The globalists are trying to replace animal husbandry with lab-grown meat, which will allow private companies to effectively control the entire food supply.
Fake Meat Is Even Worse Than CAFOs
Many people are aware of the pitfalls of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) — unnatural diets of GMO grains, crowded conditions, inhumane treatment, excessive pollution and rampant spread of disease. CAFOs are bad — but the new fake food era is going to be even worse.
With their patented fake meat products, the globalists will have unprecedented control over people’s health.3 It sounds noble to try to provide for the entire world’s population using animal-free methods, but it’s a deception.
Will Harris is a regenerative farming pioneer who runs White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia. He produces high-quality grass fed products, including beef and other animal products, in a way that’s good for consumers, the environment and the financial health of his business. While the globalists are spinning the idea that animal foods are destroying the planet, when raised regeneratively the way Harris does, this is far from the truth.
It’s the fake foods that will ultimately jeopardize the environment. “We are sequestering 3.5 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent for every pound of grass fed beef we sell. Ironically, the same environmental engineers did an analysis on Impossible Burgers,” Harris said on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “They’re emitting 3.5 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent.”4
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Regenerative Farming Beats Fake Foods
Impossible Foods, along with Beyond Meat, is a major player in the fake meat marketplace. It claimed to have a better carbon footprint than live animal farms and hired Quantis, a group of scientists and strategists, to prove its point. According to the executive summary, its product reduced environmental impact between 87% and 96% in the categories studied, including land occupation and water consumption.5
This, however, compares fake meat to meat from CAFOs, which are notoriously destructive to the environment and nothing like Harris’ farm. Harris commissioned the same analysis by Quantis for White Oaks and published a 33-page study showing comparisons of White Oaks Pastures’ emissions against conventional beef production.6
While the manufactured fake meat reduced its carbon footprint up to 96% in some categories, White Oaks had a net total emission in the negative numbers as compared to CAFO-produced meat.
Further, grass fed beef from White Oak Pastures had a carbon footprint that was 111% lower than a typical U.S. CAFO, and its regenerative system effectively captured soil carbon, which offset the majority of emissions related to beef production.7
“The WOP [White Oak Pastures] system effectively captures soil carbon, offsetting a majority of the emissions related to beef production,” the report stated. “In the best case, the WOP beef production may have a net positive effect on climate. The results show great potential.”8
So, the idea that animals must be removed from agriculture to save the planet is entirely flawed. In fact, animals are an integral, and necessary, part of the restorative process.
What Is Fake Meat?
Fake meat is marketed as a health food, but it’s nothing more than a highly ultraprocessed mixture of chemicals. Impossible Foods, for instance, uses genetic engineering to insert the DNA from soy plants into yeast, creating GE yeast with the gene for soy leghemoglobin.9
Impossible Foods refers to this compound as “heme,” but technically plants produce non-heme iron, and this is GE yeast-derived soy leghemoglobin.10 Heme iron only occurs in meat and seafood. Impossible Foods’ GE heme is used in their fake meat burgers as a color additive that makes the product appear to “bleed” like real meat.
The health effects of GE heme are unknown, but this didn’t stop the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from approving soy leghemoglobin in 2019. The Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a lawsuit challenging the approval, which they called “unusually rapid”11 and risky for public health.
In their lawsuit, CFS points out that soy leghemoglobin is produced using synthetic biology, or “genetic engineering on steroids,” which does not shuffle DNA pieces between species but instead constructs new biological parts, devices and systems that do not exist in the natural world:12
The reason why Impossible Foods turned to synthetic biology to produce GE soy leghemoglobin is because it couldn’t extract enough of the substance directly from soybean roots to produce its fake meat products on an industrial, mass-produced scale. The FDA GRAS for soy leghemoglobin is 526 pages long, if that gives you any idea of the industrialized complexity of this so-called GRAS “health” food.13
Beyond Meat is similarly industrially processed. Beyond Burger patties contain 22 ingredients. Among them are expeller-pressed canola oil, pea protein isolate, cellulose from bamboo, modified food starch and methylcellulose14 — hardly “health” foods. To morph these ingredients into a patty that resembles meat require further processing.
It’s revealing, too, that while truly natural foods cannot be patented, Impossible Foods holds at least 14 patents, with about 100 more pending.15
Impossible Foods’ Fake Meat Is Loaded With Glyphosate, LA
Considering that many ingredients in fake meat products are made from GE soy,16 it’s not surprising that they’re also contaminated with the herbicide glyphosate. Consumer advocacy group Moms Across America (MAA) commissioned Health Research Institute Labs (HRI Labs), an independent laboratory that tests both micronutrients and toxins found in food, to determine how much glyphosate is in the Impossible Burger and its competitor, the Beyond Burger.
The total result of glyphosate and AMPA, the main metabolite of glyphosate, in the burgers was 11.3 parts per billion (ppb) in the Impossible Burger and 1 ppb in the Beyond Burger.17
When the concerning results were revealed, Impossible Foods engaged in a smear campaign to try and discredit MAA, labeling the group of moms “an anti-GMO, anti-vaccine, anti-science, fundamentalist group that cynically peddles a toxic brew of medical misinformation and completely unregulated, untested, potentially toxic quack ‘supplements’ …”18
The glyphosate in fake meat is one issue. The excess amounts of omega-6 fat in the form of linoleic acid (LA) are another. In my opinion, this metabolic poison is the primary contributor to rising rates of chronic disease. It’s important to realize that fake meat alternatives do not contain healthy animal fats. All the fat comes from industrial seed oils like soy and canola oil, which are top sources of LA.
Eliminating ultraprocessed foods from your diet is essential to keeping your LA intake low, and this includes fake meat.
‘Precision Fermentation’ Isn’t Natural Either
Fake food companies want you to believe their products are natural because they’re made with components of plants, even though nothing like them exists in nature. Precision fermentation is another term used by the biotech industry to piggyback off the popularity of truly health-promoting natural fermentation.
Precision fermentation, however, is nothing like its natural counterpart. What is perhaps most disturbing about the use of precision fermentation is that companies are allowed to claim that it’s natural.
Metabolic engineering is a major subset of precision fermentation, which involves methods such as next-generation sequencing, high-throughput library screening, molecular cloning and multiomics “to optimize microbial strains, metabolic pathways, product yields, and bioprocess scale-up.”19 It sounds just like something down on the farm, doesn’t it?
Whether it’s called precision fermentation, gene editing, GMO or something else, don’t fall for the hype that it’s good for you or the planet.
Where Should You Get Your Meat?
If fake meat isn’t healthy, and CAFO meat isn’t a good choice either, a reasonable question is where can you find meat that’s beneficial for your health and the planet? The answer is to get to know a farmer in your area. Visit the farm and view how the animals are being raised.
Get to know the resources available to you within your local community. The community will naturally validate the vendors who are raising food the right way. If you can’t find a local farm for ruminant animals like cows, buffalo or lamb, look for certified organic options at your local grocery store. However, it’s best to stay local and find a source of real, whole food near you.
As much as you can, plant a garden for vegetables, grow fruit trees and even raise chickens if it’s allowed in your area. For the food you can’t source on your own, lean on your community to fill in the gaps.
Just as was the case with GMOs, raising awareness about the dangers of fake meat is also important, especially in this early and aggressively expanding phase. Tell your social circle that to save the planet and support your health, it’s necessary to skip all the fake meat alternatives and opt for real food instead.
When you shop for food, know your farmer and look for regenerative, biodynamic and/or grass fed farming methods, which are what we need to support a healthy, autonomous population.
There’s a growing trend to label long COVID and injuries from COVID-19 shots “functional neurological disorders” (FND), making some patients feel like the medical community thinks their symptoms are “all in their head”
Half of people with long COVID symptoms fit the criteria to be diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which often flares up after viral infection
There’s a lack of consensus and definitions when it comes to FND and its potential treatments, even among those who are considered experts in the field
FND has also been used as a diagnosis to explain away adverse reactions to COVID-19 shots
Long COVID symptoms share many similarities with post-jab injuries, and it’s likely both are rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction; improving your mitochondrial function will help reverse the problems caused by the jab or the virus
Long COVID continues to debilitate a significant number of U.S. adults — 7.5%, or 1 in 13,1 are struggling with a range of symptoms that make up this complex condition. Among those who have had COVID-19, 11% say they currently have long COVID,2 which often includes unrelenting fatigue, respiratory symptoms, neurological difficulties and joint or muscle pain, all of which may become worse after physical or mental exertion.3
Long COVID symptoms share many similarities with post-jab injuries, and it’s likely both are rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction. Now, however, there’s a growing trend to label long COVID and injuries from COVID-19 shots “functional neurological disorders” (FND), making some patients feel like the medical community thinks their symptoms are “all in their head.”
Is Long COVID Akin to ‘Hysteria’?
In an article for TNR, journalist Natalie Shure writes, “The most direct precursor to FND is something you’ve probably heard of: hysteria.”4 For centuries, women were diagnosed with “hysteria” to describe a mental disorder that could give rise to physical and other symptoms ranging from seizures and anxiety to pain and paralysis.
It was, in short, a catch-all diagnosis used to categorize symptoms that weren’t otherwise understood or solvable using the mainstream medical treatments of the time. Eventually, much controversy and research suggested it was the hysteria diagnosis that was the delusion.
The medical community was then left to go back where it started from — a range of troubling symptoms, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), with no obvious solution still existed. “In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was becoming clear that illnesses previously known as hysteria hadn’t simply vanished,” Shure wrote:5
“[Researchers, including neuropsychiatrist Alan Carson,] began to study the symptoms with a neurological lens, conceiving of them as misfiring brain signals rather than a Freudian cry for help.
Rebranding hysteria as FND was to reject the notion that the best way to understand functional paralysis was as a subconscious repression of childhood memories. Rather, it was an interruption in the brain processing that facilitates the executive function of your legs — a blip that could be triggered by all sorts of things.”
It’s now being suggested that “some post-COVID symptoms may be produced by the brain,” Shure notes. “Does that make them any less real?” For instance, half of people with long COVID symptoms fit the criteria to be diagnosed with ME/CFS and some in the community have suggested the symptoms could be due to ME/CFS, which often flares up after viral infection.6
But it’s far from that simple, as symptoms of long COVID include everything from shortness of breath and pounding heart to dizziness, brain fog and depression. Even the CDC states:7
“People with post-COVID conditions may develop or continue to have symptoms that are hard to explain and manage. Clinical evaluations and results of routine blood tests, chest x-rays, and electrocardiograms may be normal.
The symptoms are similar to those reported by people with ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) and other poorly understood chronic illnesses that may occur after other infections. People with these unexplained symptoms may be misunderstood by their healthcare providers, which can result in a long time for them to get a diagnosis and receive appropriate care or treatment.”
Can FND Explain Long COVID?
Shure cites several examples of individuals recovering from long COVID using “a biopsychosocial framework.” This includes Paul Garner, professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who says he recovered from severe long COVID symptoms using techniques from those in the ME/CFS community:8
“I learnt that our primitive and unconscious defense mechanisms against injury and infection in the brain and other parts of the body sometimes get disturbed, giving false fatigue alarms. A vicious cycle is set up, of dysfunctional autonomic responses being stimulated by our subconscious. These neural tracks become established like tire tracks in mud.
I learnt that I could change the symptoms I was experiencing with my brain, by retraining the bodily reactions with my conscious thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Over the following weeks, with support, I learnt how to do this. I suddenly believed I would recover completely.
… I write this to my fellow covid-19 long haulers whose tissues have healed. I have recovered. I did this by listening to people that have recovered from CFS/ME, not people that are still unwell; and by understanding that our unconscious normal thoughts and feelings influence the symptoms we experience.”
Still, there’s a lack of consensus and definitions when it comes to FND and its potential treatments, even among those who are considered experts in the field. Meanwhile, since stress is also a key component in FND, it’s possible long COVID could be triggered by pandemic trauma along with the viral infection. According to Shure:9
“In other words, stress could exacerbate FND, and someone with FND could overfocus on symptoms and essentially turn up their volume, requiring brain processing for actions that should be automatic. As Carson put it to me, the term ‘functional neurological disorder’ should be reserved for neurological symptoms like weakness, seizures, memory loss, or cognitive issues.
‘Functional symptoms’ and ‘functional disorders’ are largely used interchangeably about other parts of the body. Irritable bowel syndrome, for example, is widely theorized to be a functional disorder.
Meanwhile, conditions like depression and anxiety frequently include symptoms most people would describe as physical. It’s even possible to have functional and nonfunctional symptoms at the same time. ‘We wonder why people get confused!’ Carson quipped.”
There are also many additional theories as to what may be causing long COVID, many of them rooted in biological causes. Research presented by Dr. Bruce Patterson at the International COVID Summit in Rome, in September 2021, for instance, suggests monocytes, shown to cause lung damage in patients with acute COVID, are involved in long COVID.10,11
Another theory, put forth by Harald Prüss, a neurologist at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, suggests antibodies targeting the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein might be causing the damage.12
Many Experience Post-Jab Long COVID
It’s interesting to note that, in one study from early in the pandemic, more than two-thirds of those reporting long COVID symptoms had negative antibody tests, suggesting at least some of them didn’t even have COVID-19.13 Meanwhile, many COVID jab recipients report long COVID-like symptoms.
As reported by Science magazine, “In rare cases, coronavirus vaccines may cause long COVID-like symptoms,”14 which can include (but is not limited to) brain fog, memory problems, headaches, blurred vision, loss of smell, nerve pain, heart rate fluctuations, dramatic blood pressure swings and muscle weakness. The feeling of “internal electric shocks” are also reported.
The primary difference15 between post-jab long COVID and long COVID symptoms after infection is that in people who get it from the infection, early treatment was withheld and the resulting infection severe. Post-jab long COVID, on the other hand, can occur either after very mild breakthrough infection or no breakthrough infection at all.
The Dark Side of FND for COVID Jab Injuries
With many of the symptoms of COVID shot injuries mirroring those of long COVID, we’re now also seeing the use of FND as a diagnosis to explain away adverse reactions to COVID-19 shots.
One case involves Maddie de Garay, who was a healthy 12-year-old when she signed up for Pfizer’s COVID-19 trial for 12- to 15-year-olds. She suffered a severe systemic adverse reaction to her second dose of the shot, however, and struggled through 11 ER visits and four hospital admissions in the year and a half that followed.
Injuries from the shot have left her unable to walk or eat — she receives her nutrition via a feeding tube — and suffering from constant pain, vision problems, tinnitus, allergic reactions and lack of neck control.16
As though the physical trauma wasn’t enough, Maddie and her family were continually dismissed by the medical professionals put in place to help, ignored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and denied the care needed to help Maddie.
In Pfizer’s April 2021 disclosure of Maddie’s case to the FDA, it’s stated only that she had “functional abdominal pain.”17 Then, a day before Pfizer submitted their request for emergency approval of the COVID-19 shot for 12- to 15-year-olds to the FDA, they added functional neurological disorder as a diagnosis in Maddie’s chart,18 blaming the side effects from the shot on FND.
Further, once this assessment was made, her physician, Dr. Amal Assa’ad at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, went so far as to advise against any further investigation, even though Maddie was a participant in a clinical trial:19
“My assessment is that Madeline has a functional impairment that is not organic in nature … I also discourage further work up since this is usually detrimental in functional disorders because it drives the patient to thinking that there must be something wrong that is indicating all this work up. It also delays the necessary psychologic intervention that is needed to help resolve the functional disorder.”
The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group’s (FLCCC) I-RECOVER20 protocol can be downloaded in full,21 giving you step-by-step instructions on how to treat long COVID22 and/or reactions from COVID-19 injections.23 I also recently summarized strategies to optimize mitochondrial health if you’re suffering from long COVID, with a focus on boosting mitochondrial health.
For starters, to allow your body to heal you’ll want to minimize EMF exposure as much as possible. Your diet also matters, as the cristae of the inner membrane of the mitochondria contains a fat called cardiolipin, the function of which is dependent on the type of fat you get from your diet.
The type of dietary fat that promotes healthy cardiolipin is omega-3 fat, and the type that destroys it is omega-6, especially linoleic acid (LA), which is highly susceptible to oxidation. So, to optimize your mitochondrial function, you want to avoid LA as much as possible, and increase your intake of omega-3s.
Primary sources of LA include seed oils used in cooking, processed foods and restaurant foods made with seed oils, condiments, seeds and nuts, most olive oils and avocado oils (due to the high prevalence of adulteration with cheaper seed oils), and animal foods raised on grains such as conventional chicken and pork.
Another major culprit that destroys mitochondrial function is excess iron — and almost everyone has too much iron. Copper is also important for energy metabolism, detoxification and mitochondrial function, and copper deficiency is common. Other strategies include sun exposure and near-infrared light therapy, time-restricted eating, NAD+ optimizers and methylene blue, which can be a valuable rescue remedy.
Whether long COVID has a functional element to it or not, each individual suffering deserves access to the full range of potential treatments. Unfortunately, this often isn’t the case, especially if symptoms are dismissed as purely psychological in nature. If you improve your mitochondrial function and restore the energy supply to your cells, you’ll significantly increase your odds of reversing the problems caused by the jab or the virus.
