0:00 [Music] I guess you never know what someone's going through. >> Half a million Americans may be diagnosed and treated with Lyme disease. >> It's one of these unique situations in life where working harder does not fix it. >> Grasping for fresh air through the midst of black mold. >> And that was an unbelievably difficult pill to swallow. 0:39 Okay, let's talk about the last year. I was coming off the back of a very good year. The show had grown in the 18 months since I moved to America from 250,000 subscribers to nearly 2 million. And I was pretty much on top of the world, but I noticed some changes. My energy was getting lower. My brain wasn't working the same way. And my mood was getting pretty low. And I decided to start vlogging. Max, my videographer, came through. And the day that we were going to film our first vlog was the same day I got the diagnosis that I had Lyme disease. How are you feeling? >> Pretty shitty. >> Yeah, I tested positive for SIBO, H pylori, roundorm, liver fluke, plus Lyme disease, and we have no idea how long that's been going for. Uh, and I've 1:41 still just been like, "Oh, stop being such a pussy." Um, you know, like man up and get after it. Where's the gogggins inside of you? Um, you know, yeah, it's been it's like frustrating to not feel at full capacity. >> It's so hard with these autoimmune things, too, because it's like it's just it's just functional enough to where you can keep going. You can keep pushing through it and you're always like, "Oh, maybe this is just a low energy day or like maybe allergies or like it's just enough to where you keep excusing it until it's not >> correct." >> So, that's why again like it's it can be so hard to diagnose. >> To be honest, I wasn't that overwhelmed. I was just in shock. You're in so much shock. It felt like I'd been unmed from the world. And I was like floating in space. All of these things, all of these sort of dreams and goals and priorities that you have and that that I had just went out the window. [Music] This is now the number one problem in 2:41 your life. I didn't know how it was going to impact my life. if it was fixable. So, I figured let's keep tracking the journey. >> I'm trying. I'm I'm I promise you I'm trying to offload all of my worrying onto you. My my absolute best. >> I've acted as a consulting physician working alongside Chris's primary care team. It was clear early on that we were dealing with a multi-system dysregulation. >> He didn't just get news of lime. He got news of lime, round worm, and liver fluke and candida. There's a thing that I like to talk about about the 10 things that bother people. It's co COVID vaccines, bellia, bartnella, babesio. There's mold, yeast, GI problems, and then a handful of different viruses like Epstein bar and CMV. What's been going on with Chris is most of the top 10 were active. >> When you start off with this stuff, which is complex illness, your doctor team is probably going to give you 3:42 pretty global therapies. reducing inflammation, antimicrobials, maybe some antibiotics, red lights, ibu or ozone therapy, peptides. So that was why I started. I did a lot of the advanced but not insane biohacking stuff. That was a lot of IVs, phosphatilylcholine, glutathione, 25 gram IV bags of vitamin C, ozone therapy where they pull your blood out, put it into a bag, inject it with antimicrobial gas, and then put that blood back into you. So, I'm supposed to do this twice a week. All of this stuff is make my body as receptive as possible to being able to kill anything and get rid of it that's inside of it that it doesn't want in it. big difference I guess is that I can start doing things now that can help and make me better and move me in the 4:42 direction of progress. It made me think about how ruthless, uncertain medical diagnoses are. You know, someone knows there's something wrong and they haven't found out what it is. If you don't know what it is, you can't treat it. So, you're just in this weird limbo purgatory thing. So yeah, it's given me a new appreciation, I think, for some of the challenges people go through with medical stuff. >> It did feel like a lot. Takes a long time to do all of these IVs, all of these treatments, and they're stacked back to back. It's, you know, most of a day, including travel, and then you get back and you're wiped out. It felt very complex and all-encompassing at the time. But uh little did I know that was a mere appetizer to what was going to come next. On top of everything that I was dealing with, I got a toxin test back. My body was filled with environmental mold. 5:46 Turned out the house I was living in had very, very high levels of environmental mold. And this is unbelievably stressful and damaging to your immune system. >> Chris would walk into his house and within 15 minutes he was red from the neck up and with the layering of immune dysfunction. There was nothing for his body to do. He'd walk into an environment and there were micotoxins and VOCC's and things within the air regardless of the air filters that he was running. It took him out cognitively. Basically, when somebody's in a water damaged building, what happens is is the molds in the sheetrock that can get into bofilms in the gut or into the sinus and then you can get mold living in your body and making spores. Mold spores are really irritating to the immune system and and then they're really irritating to the central nervous system and then when those mold spores go to the brain, they cause inflammation in different locations in the brain that are called nuclei. And so he had that, 6:48 he had the vectorbor infections, he had the viruses, and then he had the GI stuff, and then he had CO as a trigger. >> Well, I'm Chris's executive assistant. I run all of Chris's medical everything. When I came on with Chris, he had already figured out he had the lime, he had mold, and I just jumped in at that point. Mold protocol is really intense. >> It's a more common problem than you may realize. Texas has the highest mole counts in the country. >> Mold can be toxic. If that's left untreated, it could be deadly. >> When there's serious mold illness, experts say most belongings have to be either tossed out or thoroughly cleaned with a specific protocol. Mold spores build up on them and can continue to harm sufferers. >> I'm just going to say it. If you find mold in your house, remediation is unbelievably difficult to do well. High levels of mold are in everything. They are in the couch. They are in the lampshade. They are on the surface of your laptop. They are everywhere. >> Every single thing in Chris's life that 7:50 was able to be moved had to be individually cleaned multiple times. That was intense. But Chris's protocol at that time was super intense. >> There was specific treatments for the mold, specific prescriptions, binders, supplements to help repair the immune system to support his mitochondria, etc. >> Everything was fine-tuned. And it would be like 30 minutes from here. We have an hour later we do this, 30 minutes here, an hour later do this. And it was just through the day just super regimented with very strict diet, very strict restrictions. Plus, he's running his normal podcast life and a business and you know the New Tonic drink and he's got just so much on his plate. Uh, and he's just like like every single thing is coming at him. I was kind of stuck because I had a house with all of my possessions in my clothes, my bed, everything else, but I couldn't be in it. So, I moved to a hotel for the best part of 4 months. And I don't know if people noticed. I don't know if uh fans of the show 8:51 realized Chris is didn't seem to be in his normal studio. There seems to be a hotel backdrop a lot. Sometimes different hotels, but I was all over the place. The one place that I wasn't was my house. People go to hotels on holiday and it's enjoyable. And don't get me wrong, the fact that I was able to afford to move into a hotel uh was very fortunate, but there is a big difference between going camping and being homeless. There is a big difference between being in a hotel for a holiday and being in a hotel because your house is filled with mold. Mercifully, my landlords suspended the rent. Anybody who has mold in their house, you can immediately request your landlord to suspend your rent. And if they don't do it, it'll be pretty easy to take them to task for it. Um, they suspended my rent. Fantastic. Moved into a hotel. Sounds like fun. Got old quite quickly. So, I'm dealing with a bunch of other stuff alongside the mold. Antibiotics for roundorm, antibiotics for liver fluke. I'll do some stuff for the EBV. 9:51 I'll do some stuff for the heavy metals and the BPAs. I'm starting to cross off items from that big list. I'm like uh Sherlock Holmes trying to go through potential suspects. Is it the EBV? Is it the round one? Is it the liver fluke? Is it the mold? So, I've crossed some things off the list. And I would have hoped that I would have felt better, but to be honest, I I actually felt worse. So, you can't judge a book by its cover, right? I mean, he looks amazing on the outside, but on the inside, his body is struggling physiologically. He's dealing with a toxic burden, gut dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction. His energy is down. So, it's been both challenging and incredibly nuanced. There's so many various components, so many systems that can be affected. It's constant testing trying to get whatever is underlying everything show itself. It's really 10:52 really complex testing where he has to like get up in the middle of the night and breathe into a tube but he can't look at any light and it has to be to x time and he can't do this and it has to be 30 minutes later he can't do this and he can only have like 30 ounces of fluids in the entire day but not for 1 hour before you can't have 3 ounces and like 2 hours later you have to stop doing this and an hour later you have to do this and it's like really really hard and that's just like and it's like maybe six layers of those processes like on top of each other like you've got the supplements, you've got the diet, you've got the testing, there's all of these things that play into each other that are really, really hard to maintain. >> There's this saying that we all have a million problems until we have one health problem. And that takes front and center. >> It's impacted him a lot, but I don't think he's showing that face forward in his audience. You have no idea what people are struggling with, even the people you look up to and admire. As much as he carries with the show, how 11:53 consistently he shows up, there's a whole universe that's happening behind the scenes of how much he's trying to carry just to show up. Feeling like you're not in control of your health, like you don't get to say how you function is a special type of helplessness. Doing all of the things and not making progress is very disheartening. >> Chris is very hard on himself. He is very Taipe, very overachiever. He has high expectations for himself and for others. >> When he misses someone, his job is to be a voice of a generation. The stress of number one the feeling of what he was going through and the stress of understanding that he was having cognitive problems which he was and to understand that his job and his responsibility was to show up and be witty and smart and intelligent and ask the right questions. >> And so when he feels like he is not able 12:54 to deliver to that level, it really weighs on him. the way the mold and the brain fog hit him, like he's thinking in layers. Like he even can't even pull words from his brain and it's just really taxing. It fatigues him to a whole another level of like knowing you have to be on point, but his brain is running at a level that he really is having a hard time keeping it going. [Music] 13:35 struggling. Yeah. The last week, five episodes in 3 days in New York, two episodes in two days in Florida, plus traveling, plus a bunch of meetings. It's felt like my brain is trying to fall out of my ears the entire time. Memory is really rough. Thoughts are very muddy, like confused, getting confused in the middle of sentences. So, it's probably the worst that my mind's been, which is disheartening because I've been working on trying to get out of all of this mold, EBV, lime, whatever it is stuff for 6 months more. And um yeah, it's disheartening. I have no idea how far along I am. It feels like I'm going backward. >> That's why they call it the art of medicine. It is not. Here's your medication. We're going to remove you from the mold and you're going to feel great. None of that happens. It's you're going to take two steps forward and five steps back. And not only are you going to feel it, but perhaps your brain is also inflamed. Perhaps you're going to be dealing with not being able to sleep, 14:36 which is going to create this burden of extra stress. And it becomes a very challenging and vicious cycle. >> There is this odd sense of, oh, you deserve this. If only you'd tried harder, been better. be more diligent or whatever. >> I get the sense it's one of those >> unique challenges in life where trying harder doesn't fix it. >> How's it going? 15:17 >> Come on, keep it moving. You have a genuine fear that your brain power is not going to come back >> kind of. It's irrational, I know, but >> but it's understandable. >> It's such a central part of my daily experience, like my access to my own thoughts. >> Yeah. >> My ability to use words and how agile I feel when I'm moving through them. And it gives me a pride, gives me a sense of accomplishment. You know, it's something that I love about myself. I love the texture of my own mind. I love what I built. I imagine when you look in the mirror when you ready to step on stage at the Olympia it's something that gives you pride >> that's the equivalent whatever >> feel inside your mind >> architecture that I have and the texture of my mind and to have that taken away >> is scary >> for sure has anyone ever even like have you noticed anyone notice that you >> I can play it off I can dial it off and >> like have like any of your podcast anyone been like he's not as sharp as it used to be or it's just in your mind you just feel it >> it's definitely there the quality of my thoughts from And this mold autoimmune 16:19 stuff is like really really >> it's it hurts. It hurts. It's not good. >> Yeah. It's funny when you're talking about the like the small but like the personal victories that no one else cares about. Like in 2018, the year I lost and I looked worse than the year before. I looked incredible early on the year and look like [ __ ] on stage. I found so much pride in just in myself and just in knowing what I had gone through. And even last year, it wasn't my best physique, but I tore my lattice like eight weeks out with whatever the [ __ ] it was, the Olympia. I thought I was going to drop out. So, me getting there before I got there, that like victory of just knowing I wasn't at my best, but I still overcame this obstacle that no one even knew about. Like, you might not be your sharpest, but the fact you're being sharp with a setback >> is like personal private victory, you know, >> boring successes and private victories. >> Yeah. I feel like there's a blessing in the fear of like you're not losing your intelligence. It'll come back. But the blessing in that is like, well, what else do you have to offer that will always be there? Unless you have like 17:19 absolute dementia and you're 80 years old and you don't know who you are, then like then you don't care anyways. >> Yes. Exactly. >> But like regardless of your ability to recall words and stuff, like I said yesterday, like your ability to like see people, care about your friends and [ __ ] doesn't go away. >> But that's the fear, right? The fear is there is this one thing. I'm I know that the world says that they like me because I'm honest and I'm truthful and I create this content, but really it's because of the body. It's because of the Olympia championships. I'm sure that people say it's good that I curious and I care and I do all the rest of this stuff, but really it's because of coming up with interesting ideas or writing cool words or whatever. >> And uh >> it's feared. It's feared. You know, >> you know, when you were dealing with the Autoimmune. >> Yeah. >> Did you ever get tinitus? >> My ears. Is that your ears? >> Tinitis? >> Yeah. >> Tinitis. Tinitus. I called it tinus. Call it what you want. Okay. >> Do you? >> Mine's [ __ ] ruthless. >> Really? >> Yeah. like a ringing in your ears or 18:30 it felt like this very personal curse that had been thrown at me. this unique cocktail of challenges that were built to hit me in all of the places that I really wanted to be good. It was all the places that I took my confidence from that I had finally felt like the world gave me validation for being good at. It was the coping mechanisms that I used typically to get past them. No, any any dude bro going through a time like this will just grip the bar harder. I'll just outwork it. I'll just fix it. But the more that I did that, the more exhausted I became because my energy levels were so low and my reserves were so low. The harder I worked, the worse it got. It's one of these unique situations in life where working harder does not fix it. And that 19:30 was an unbelievably difficult pill to swallow. I like feeling like I'm in control. I like working so hard that I know I can reach escape velocity to get out of whatever the [ __ ] is that I'm dealing with. And this felt like someone had designed a cocktail that limited all of the things that I take value in and then stopped me from being able to use any of the ways that I know how to fix problems. Some people are people that get mad like when their backs up against the wall. And some people are people that get sad. Like mad people turn anger outward and sad people turn anger inward. And I'm I get sad, not mad. Uh it's my fault. I should have been better. I deserve this. But there is this little [ __ ] thing, this little 20:31 bit inside of me that is not like part of the rest of my construction. And it's 20:53 it whispers, "Fuck you." I know. It's like a like a little flower or something that grows through concrete. Like more concrete just gets piled on top of it and it just I don't know. Doesn't stop. And that's a part of me that I'm not superbly familiar with. I made a note of all of the things that I struggled to do. What did I struggle to do? Stay awake after 7:00 p.m. Have energy ever, no matter how long I slept? Deal with the smell of cut grass? Deal with the smell of standing water. Deal with the smell of other people, including girls. Hear loud noises, especially metal on metal. For some reason, I got agitated at random people on the internet. I got agitated at my friends. I got agitated at music. I got agitated at my friends 21:54 playing music. I also got agitated at silence. I had the loudest ringing in my ears permanently, which got louder as I laid down to sleep. I went from being able to multitask to barely being able to half task. I made typo errors constantly. I made spelling errors constantly. I misordered words in a sentence. My libido went through the floor. I couldn't recall words. I couldn't recall names. I couldn't recall why I'd walked into rooms. I couldn't recall the thing that I just thought. I struggled to be happy at music. I struggled to be happy at a job well done. I struggled to be forgiving at a job fallen short. Uh, in fact, being able to feel gratitude for anything or actually being able to feel emotions at all really. Happiness and fulfillment and excitement and encouragement were all nerfed out of existence. Worst of all, there was a day where I forgot how to tie my shoes. I looked down at the shoes 22:58 on my feet. the laces were undone and I couldn't remember what order to move the laces in in order to tie my shoes. Essentially, with all of these things, you're looking at inflammation in the central nervous system, especially in the area that controls the emotional part of how we interact with the world, which is the lyic system. especially in complex illness is that usually there's three or four or five or seven diagnosis that are coming together to create an insult that's creating a constellation of symptoms. Those can cause inflammation in general to the brain which could disrupt and make you confused about how to tie your shoes. And then they can also cause can emotional stress and that emotional stress can be so significant that it it it's almost crippling. You've got discrete areas of inflammation, you've got global inflammation and then you've got loss of regulating ability and the 24:00 constellation of all of those causes this diverse set of nervous system symptoms. >> He's a warrior. like he's been through so much and he's still fighting and you know we're getting there but it just takes time and it's it's hard to see the ups and downs all the time. You know, >> it can get very heavy at times. I've seen him tear up. I've seen him like break down. I've seen him like just really really like visibly see him kind of fall apart. So, I'd done all these things and I thought there was no way that I could apply this much effort and not be fixed by the end of the year. The year had ended and now it was 2025 and I still wasn't fixed. you should be able to do. >> I think one of the scariest things was that the challenges of my health were a 25:01 moving target over time. So things that previously I could rely on would fall away and new challenges would come in. So when I first started dealing with this, I was sleeping a lot and I wasn't recovered on a morning, but it I was sleeping, which in some ways was nice because it gave me restbite from feeling like [ __ ] But at the start of 2025, my nervous system had been under stress for so long that my cortisol and melatonin had been flipped. And I only found this out later with blood tests, but I could feel it already. I couldn't sleep. I was wired but tired. And if I did sleep, I would wake up at 2 in the morning and be wide awake staring at the ceiling with ruminating thoughts. It It felt like someone had shot me with adrenaline. >> Chronic infections, they affect the adrenal glands because of everything that he's been exposed to. His adrenals are affected. His cortisol daily cycle will be imbalanced and that can keep him up at night, not be able to sleep at 26:02 night. Almost all people who are in this category, you start to get an imbalance between the fight or flight part of the nervous system and the rest and relax part of the nervous system. I found out about a treatment that cleans your blood. It was emergency use authorized during CO. It was also given to the worst case of bird flu in the US earlier this year. It cleans 99.9% of mold, EBV, microbes, spike proteins, all of this stuff. And I'm thinking, this is it. This is it. I'm going to I'm going to get all of the stuff that's causing these issues out of my blood. But it's in Mexico and it's going to be an intrajugular line. Not intravenous, intrajugular, straight basically into your heart. It was scary thinking about going to a foreign country, living in a hospital for 4 days. But I was excited. I was because this is a silver bullet, 27:05 one-stop shop, holy grail treatment. This is it. This is going to fix me. This scariest thing about fear is the fear bit. It's not the thing. >> It's your thoughts about the thing. Especially your thoughts in advance of the thing. The anticipation is so much worse. [Music] >> You will it will be enough. So you not going to feel when I put in the the cap. >> You just going to feel some pull. That's all. If you feel any pain, let me know so I can put something else. >> Okay. >> And that's all. >> But I'm going to be under sedation for this too, right? >> I'm going to give you some tequila shot so you relax, calm when I do the process. >> Okay. Okay. >> Yeah. I'm a little nervous. But >> why? >> I don't know. It's scary. >> Can you sign here? I give you something sugar before. >> So what? What? >> That's your shot of tequilas. The tequila shot. Real magical tequila. >> I don't think that was tequila. 28:05 >> Tasted like a banana. It's Mexican tequila. Hey guys, it's a [ __ ] medical procedure, okay? I don't need I don't need your [ __ ] nationalist [ __ ] fancy dress cultural appropriation going on. Come in and tell me, "Oh, we got a taco for your neck." [ __ ] yourself, okay? It's a serious deal with the crocs. 28:53 These illnesses, these complex illnesses or these exposures are very common and they're underdiagnosed. And part of the reason is is traditional alipathic medicine hasn't caught up. I I want people to feel recognized that it's not in their head. Of course, mental health is a priority, but it could be something physiologically happening that needs to be looked for and dealt with. >> That is like the that's like this phenomenal conversation. So, chronic immune stress cells or viruses that are living inside your cells, they steal energy from the mitochondria. And so then they're just stealing energy. And so then what's the name of the syndrome that people have when they have chronic viral infections? Chronic fatigue syndrome. And this is super physiological and not psychological. You have the best attitude in the world and basically 29:56 you're Chris Williams. And still when you have that, you can't fight you can't fight your way out of that fight with just good attitude. 30:17 >> Basically, I'm out of shot. >> Okay. Thank you. 30:26 Complex illness is a catch all term that doctors use that says there's lots wrong with you, but we don't know specifically what's wrong with you. We've done some tests and there's loads of [ __ ] wrong. We think they're probably working together in some sort of a way. We're not quite sure how. We're not quite sure who the major culprit is here. We know that typically people with complex illness feel tired, brain fog, low mood, slippery brain. Complex illness is a simple way to describe a war zone that's going on inside of somebody's body. The problem of complex illness is like the problem of trying to find a serial killer. you know that there is something out there that is causing damage and you have no idea what it is or where it is or how to find it. So, you just go through this sequence of steps. Here's a bunch of suspects and I'm going to do all of this work to try and get rid of 31:27 each different one. If you have the most perfect health in the world and you're watching this right now and I ran the battery of tests that were done on me on you, you would have loads of stuff in the red, but you feel fine. So, you don't need to fix them. But if you don't feel fine, you have to fix every single one before you actually get to the culprit. Who is the serial killer that's causing all of these issues around your body? And that is expensive and timeconuming and demotivating. And you need special contacts in order to be able to find the right treatments. And it's effortful. And that is the problem. People will just grit their teeth and go to work and and live their lives in silent suffering, like quiet misery. Life has gone from color to grayscale for them, but they'll keep going and they don't know that something's wrong, even though they feel like they're not themselves. There needs to be more treatments that are cheaper, easier 32:30 to do, less time consuming. and uh simpler for people to follow because at the moment I have applied every ounce of effort, every minute of the day outside of when I've had to do the other stuff for the show to trying to fix my health. I have had two jobs for nearly 2 years now. One has been running the podcast and the other has been trying to fix my health. And I've applied everything that I can. So, what [ __ ] hope does some normal person have of being able to even even be able to begin on this sort of a journey? It's not good enough. And it's not just not good enough for me. It is not good enough regardless of whether you've got Andrew Hubman's phone number or not. The lowest point I saw, she goes after Mexico. you you have to hope that on the back end of that you're going to hear the word better just even just a little 33:31 better and to catch up with him and to to feel the frustration of like this didn't help. I think the hardest part was seeing very little progress, tangible progress with all of the strenuous taxing protocols that have been in place and to see Chris really not turning a corner in a like bigger way and really understanding the pain that not only does it take to deliver on all these protocols, but just how his body has been wrecked through it all. like how he doesn't have much to give, but he gives anyway. Um, and just that constant we're going, you know, this is the thing. This is going to be the thing. And um, and just real seeing that struggle become like more of a posture. I I my hopes were so high going into Mexico, but I I had this thing in the 34:32 back of my mind and this is a story that I just kept telling myself which is you are broken that there is so much wrong with you that this is your new reality that you're you're you're never going to have the energy or the vitality that you used to have. And rather than fighting this, rather than spending all of this time and money and being in pain and and getting your hopes up, rather than feeling the pain of getting your hopes up and being disappointed, it is going to be easier for you to just accept this and 35:20 submit to this new mode of being. And it's going to be slower and it's going to be darker and it's going to be sadder and it's going to be more lonely, but you are going to at least not have to deal with the pain of hoping to be fixed. Maybe the pain of hoping and trying to fix it. Maybe life would be better if you didn't feel on top of all of the things that you're dealing with if you didn't have to feel disappointment, too. I've been doing this for a really long time now, and I wouldn't be doing it if people weren't getting to the other side. It requires grace, grit, resilience, patience, and time to be 36:21 able to overcome chronic illness. I'm hopeful that he is going to get to the other side because of his diligence, his courage, his grit, his resilience to continue the treatment protocols and get to the other side. >> Chris has show shown up and executed to the highest level while feeling this way. And if that doesn't show you true strength, then I don't know what does. And if he can keep going while he is getting treatment, which he is and has, then it is possible for everybody. It truly is possible. And number one, people don't have to suffer in silence. And number two, there are answers. We don't go through life just feeling terrible and not doing anything about it. There is real opportunity here. And there are real providers and real communities that care about these things and they can be solved. 37:28 There is a part of me that does not want to give up and there is a part of me that I don't even choose to is just like still going. But [Music] the worst thing of like everything, all the treatments, the money, the time, the demotivation, all of that, the worst thing is disappointment. It is the feeling of hope being dashed. And uh I don't know, man. I'm glad that I've tracked this thing. I'm glad that I've followed the journey because I have forgotten half of it and uh I've done more IVs and taken more pills and [ __ ] shot myself up with more peptides than I can remember. I also kind of wouldn't believe it. Uh 38:32 but I also know I refuse to settle. So we go on.