Episode 199
Bill Rawls:The Green Zone Herbs That Protect Your Cells
Bill Rawls:
The Green Zone Herbs That Protect Your Cells
Join me in an enlightening conversation with Dr. Bill Rawls as we explore the transformative world of herbal therapy! Discover how he shifted from traditional medicine to harness the power of herbs for healing chronic illnesses like Lyme disease. Could these natural remedies be the key to your wellness? Tune in to find out!
First Aired on: Jul 7, 2025
Episode 199
Bill Rawls:The Green Zone Herbs That Protect Your Cells
Bill Rawls:
The Green Zone Herbs That Protect Your Cells
Join me in an enlightening conversation with Dr. Bill Rawls as we explore the transformative world of herbal therapy! Discover how he shifted from traditional medicine to harness the power of herbs for healing chronic illnesses like Lyme disease. Could these natural remedies be the key to your wellness? Tune in to find out!
First Aired on: Jul 7, 2025
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
In this episode:
Introduction
In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Bill Rawls, a physician with over 40 years of medical experience, who has turned his focus to herbal therapy after his personal battle with chronic illness. We dive into the world of herbal medicine, discussing how certain herbs can protect cells and promote healing, particularly in the context of chronic diseases like Lyme disease.
Episode Highlights
Dr. Rawls' Wellness Journey
Bill shares his transition from conventional medicine to a wellness-focused approach and the trials he faced with chronic illness.
- Spent 20 years practicing traditional medicine before embracing holistic methods.
- Felt trapped in a cycle of drugs that only masked his chronic illness symptoms.
- Ultimately discovered herbal protocols that transformed his health.
The Five Stress Factors for Cellular Health
Dr. Rawls breaks down the five essential stress factors that affect cellular function and overall wellness.
- Nutritional stress: A lack of essential nutrients can hinder cell function.
- Toxic stress: Environmental toxins disrupt cell operations.
- Downtime: Rest is crucial for cellular recovery.
- Physical stress: Regular movement supports blood flow and cellular health.
- Microbial stress: Understanding the impact of microbes is vital in managing health.
Herbs as a Healing Solution
We explore the potential of herbs as a more effective approach to treating chronic conditions compared to traditional pharmaceuticals.
- Herbs act as cell protectants, supporting recovery without the side effects of drugs.
- Many herbs have natural antimicrobial properties, aiding in the fight against chronic infections.
- Herbal therapy can safely coexist with other lifestyle changes to enhance wellness.
The Role of Microbes in Chronic Illness
Dr. Rawls discusses the importance of understanding microbes and their connection to chronic conditions.
- Many microbes are not harmful until they invade our cells, complicating health further.
- We often have stealth pathogens in our bodies that can remain dormant yet impactful.
- Understanding this dynamic is key in targeting treatments.
Identifying Quality Herbal Products
We talk about how to choose high-quality herbal products and what to look out for.
- Standardized extracts provide more precise dosing compared to whole herb powders.
- A reputable product will list each herb, its scientific name, and active compounds.
- Brands that focus on quality and transparency are essential for effective herbal therapy.
Notable Quotes from this Episode
"Herbs are the one thing that can help the most with chronic illness."
Bill Rawls
"If you want to heal from a chronic illness, you have to focus on protecting your cells."
Bill Rawls
Other Resources:
Other Resources:
Connect with Bill Rawls
Connect with Bill Rawls
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Watch this interview:
Episode Transcript
Julie Michelson: Dr. Rawls, welcome to the podcast.
Bill Rawls: Oh, thank you. Yeah, pleasure to be here.
Julie Michelson: I'm so excited for this conversation, but I would love for you to share with listeners a little bit of, of your journey, um, of, you know, how does somebody start focusing on the potential of herbs and healing when they've spent all this time practicing as an md.
So
Bill Rawls: yeah,
Julie Michelson: share, share a bit of your, your wellness journey with us.
Bill Rawls: It's been a curious journey, no doubt about it. Um, interestingly, some milestones for me, this is, uh, this year is 40 years since I graduated from medical school. Wow. Congrats. And 20 years since my turning point where I felt like I was really crawling out of the hole from chronic illness and moving forward.
And ultimately. Got better. Um, so I've kind of been in two camps that conventional camp in the beginning and then a totally different space for the past 20 years. And I, when I graduated from medical school, during medical school, I just wasn't. Captivated by, um, medical management of chronic illnesses with drugs.
So I chose obstetrics and gynecology, which was dealing with young, healthy people, acute interventions that really mattered. And I did a lot of good in my career, but back then it was small groups. I was. On call for the hospital, labor and delivery and emergency room every second to third night, every second to third weekend.
And I was one of those people that if I had somebody with something going on in the hospital and labor or whatever, I just didn't sleep. So I went 20 years sleep deprived. And by the end of that, um, when I was in my late forties, my body started just basically falling apart. And conventional colleagues really couldn't understand what was going on.
Um, testing, you know, borderline thyroid, borderline this symptoms of MS. Ended up with a cardiac cath because of all the heart symptoms, but nobody could really offer anything but drugs to cover it up. I kept thinking. There's gotta be a reason. I shifted to and became certified in holistic medicine. Just looking at things, stopped doing obstetrics.
I just couldn't do the call. Started a primary care practice with this idea of I'm going to create a wellness practice. And that was really before, that was a thing and. Changed my diet, changed my lifestyle, gradually clawed my way back to better sleep, but wasn't getting a hundred percent better or anywhere close to it.
Kept asking that question. Could it be something like a microbe and kept hearing about Lyme disease? Knew I had had ticks all when I was during my childhood, but not an acute tick bite, especially. Um. So I finally got the test that said, yes, that's a possibility. Talked to some colleagues in the loading me up with antibiotics and it just made me sicker instead of better, and I.
Knew that I was going to have to figure out other options, and was looking out at the world of, you know, all these crazy therapies, ozone and, and IV antibiotics for months on end. And talking to people that were, did, were not held by that and ended up, uh, finding an herbal protocol for Lyme disease. Went in with low expectations because.
You know, I, I had, I, I knew about herbal therapy. I had patients that were using it and I, I didn't have any problem with it. I just didn't think it would do much. Sure. But it did. Um, I was using high grade extracts, not stuff you would find in a basic health food store. I was ordering these specific extracts.
High concentrations. Um, and I assumed if it was actually going to make me, well, it was going to also wreck my gut, like the antibiotics. Oh sure. It didn't, my gut got better and I got better and, you know, it was, uh, it was definitely, uh, a start and stop kind of thing that it took me about five years to.
Grid myself of all the symptoms, but that included horrible neurological symptoms. Uh, heart palpitations, you know, skipping my heart, skipping beats, PVCs every second to third. Beat chest pain chronically. I. And all of that went away and my joints got better. My joints were a wreck. Um, you know, at that time, by age 50, I assumed I would probably have joint replacements by the time I was 60, 67.
My joints are great. I. You know,
Julie Michelson: I didn't think I'd live to see 50 and at 56 I feel amazing. So
Bill Rawls: yeah,
Julie Michelson: the body is, yeah. So it was just a
Bill Rawls: big eyeopener and, and left some huge question marks about how we treat chronic illness. Mm-hmm. But also question marks about. What is this thing we call Lyme disease? And my journey over the past 20 years has been understanding these microbes and realizing that if you really understand what's going on with someone with chronic Lyme, you have a pretty good understanding of anybody going on what's going on with anybody suffering from any chronic illness.
And looking at. Herbs as a really important solution for that. That is being ignored mostly.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Well, you didn't learn about herbs in medical school. Did you like it? Deep dive.
Bill Rawls: I. No, no, no. Yeah, no nothing about nutrition, nothing about, you know, environmental stresses other than you shouldn't smoke. Right.
That's about it. Yeah. Um, you know, and I, you know, I, I, I, and I've come around to this conclusion, we. Are asking to do our conventional, our conventional medical system to do something that it's not really, uh, designed to do. Yeah. It is exceptionally good for acute intervention.
Julie Michelson: Absolutely. That's it's great.
Yep.
Bill Rawls: Um, but management of chronic illness, we are not addressing the underlying causes. And we're not even paying attention to the potential that there are causes, right. We're just acutely treating the symptoms every single day. Yes. And it just doesn't work. Um, and it's put me in a very, very different place.
Julie Michelson: Share with us that, that direct connect between, okay. If you can understand what's going on with chronic Lyme, you understand chronic illness. Can you expand on that a little bit? 'cause I'm sure all listeners are leaning in. Like, wait, what?
Bill Rawls: Well, uh, let, let's. Let's start with where I am now. That took me 20 years to get here, and it seems so ridiculously simple.
And you know, I, I've, I've heard people say, oh, that's overly simplistic. It can't be that simple. It really is that simple. So just a concept of what wellness is. Yes. Um, so we. You and I are made up of cells, right?
Julie Michelson: Yes.
Bill Rawls: Our whole body is built of cells. We're about 90% cells and the rest of it is connecting stick connective tissue, holding that together and minerals in our bones, and about two or three pounds of it is microbes that share the ride.
But we're mostly cells and everything that happens in our body is due to the actions of cells. Whether that's your thyroid hormone being produced, your heart beating, it's all cellular. All of it. Absolutely cellular. Yeah. And the mistake we make is we look at the body as a whole, made up of parts, compartments.
Uh, we have a liver, we have an, uh, a heart, you know, and, and we divide these compartments up and specialize in each compartment. Mm-hmm. So. You know, we have cardiologists and pulmonologists and all these different people who specialize in diseases in that particular compartment, but it doesn't work that way.
It really doesn't.
Julie Michelson: We're whole integrated humans. What?
Bill Rawls: Well, our body is made up of individual cells and you know, if you want to simplify something, take it down to its smallest functional unit, and that's a living cell. All of our cells came from one cell. Every one of our cells diversified from that original cell that became us.
So all of our cells are structurally similar. Um, they all basically have the same parts. Now those parts have been modified to do different jobs, but every one of our cells is an independently functioning unit, a little mechanical machine that does work, a biological machine. So they're all that way now.
They're integrated by hormones and nerves and messaging. All the cells have to talk to one another for the body to be coordinated, but they're still independent functioning units. So a heart isn't a unit, it's a, it's a something that's made up of billions of cells, and every one of those cells are working in synergy, but they're all independent.
So if you break it down to that smallest functional unit. You ask, what are the stress factors or what are the things that influence the function of those little machines? I mean, everything has operating requirements, right? So you get down to five things. I. And it's that simple. And that's the formula for wellness.
So the first is cells need nutrients, ah, to produce energy, to replace parts, to do their jobs. Like thyroid hormone or thyroid need. Thyroid cells need iodine. Mm-hmm. Heart cells burn mostly fat for that slow continual burn. So cells need nutrients. And if you're eating a modern processed food diet, you're not getting the selective nutrients that your cells need.
Um, so if you're eating a whole, a diverse whole food diet, which is a whole cell diet, you're getting everything that all of your cells need when they need it all at once. So the right nutrients. And if they don't get that nutritional stress. Sure. Second to that is toxic stress.
Julie Michelson: Mm-hmm.
Bill Rawls: In our environment, all the chemicals and everything that we're exposed to are mostly petroleum or fossil fuel.
I. Derived. Yeah. And these are organic chemicals that used to be plant matter, but they were changed by all that pressure in the earth to be chemical distortions that aren't compatible with biological life. So we absorb these things really quickly, but they basically clog our cells up and act like our hormones and disrupt our system.
So toxic stress, that's a huge one that's affecting everybody a lot more than people appreciate. And then you can have, uh, unnatural, uh, natural toxic substances like, um, mycotoxins and things.
Julie Michelson: Sure.
Bill Rawls: Third thing is cells need downtime. So you work all day,
Julie Michelson: what now?
Bill Rawls: You stress your parts. You get wear and tear.
So our cells using a process of autophagy are continually replacing worn out parts, but they need downtime. Now, some cells like our heart cells. They need to rest in between beats, and that's one reason our cell heart cells are so vulnerable. But most of our cells need a good eight hours every night of downtime to restructure and recover from the day before.
So if you're sleeping an average of six and a half hours, which is true for most people, yeah, you're not enough. You're starting your next day with a deficit from the day before. So that's number three, downtime, number four, I. This is where exercise comes in. I call it physical stress, which can be trauma, which has obvious concerns to your cells.
But the other side of physical stress is we don't move enough. And what movement does, the biggest thing that exercise does for us is it increases blood flow and that flushes away congestion and, and buildup of toxic substances that, that in those little fine spaces between cells. We really need that to clear that out so cells can breathe.
So if we're not moving regularly, our cells get congested, we become stagnant. And so that's number four. And the fifth one is microbes. And that's where we can get into an interesting topic. So we don't think about it this way, but the harm that microbes do to us is they need our cells to reproduce. They need them for food and nutrients, that they also commandeer the parts of our cells.
So how microbes do harm is by destroying ourselves. So that kind of opens us up into thinking about chronic Lyme disease. But that's a formula for wellness. It's basically as simple as that.
Julie Michelson: Which is I love, and I did, I, I wasn't sure what all five were gonna be. Um, and so, you know, it's back to nothing in isolation, right?
So you can't just manage microbes and be living on an ultra processed food diet and not wa you know, not sleeping right? Not doing the other things, the moving, the, the detox. Um, and, and so I, I love that you include that. Those key tenets to wellness. Yeah. And I wanted, I wanna talk about the role or like, are all microbes bad?
Do we all have, you know what I mean? Because I, I, I think there's this tendency to, even when people are looking for answers, which is so understandable, I've been there of, you know, you're looking for that thing and just because that thing is present doesn't necessarily mean that's driving. You know, fully your chronic illness.
So let's educate us a little bit on, on microbes.
Bill Rawls: We tend to think of them as good or bad, but they're not. They're just trying to survive and. Microbes are a threat to us because the ones that, you know, the, the ones that are a threat to us are a threat because they need us, our cells to survive. It's like there are lots of bacteria.
I mean, there are viruses all over the surfaces of where you and I are sitting. There are bacteria on the floor. They're not a threat to us because they haven't adapted to invade a host. They don't need a host. They all need organic matter. Uh, you know, everything living is food for something else. So all microbes are living on organic matter that came from some living thing.
Now, soil bacteria, it's dead organic matter. Um, but all microbes need organic matter to survive every living thing does. So what we're talking about here are host dependent microbes. Yes, they need a host to get the nutrients and things that they need to survive. And they can get that in different ways.
Um, so we have microbes that live in our body, right, that we know we're full of microbes in our gut. And, and, um, then we have microbes on our skin. And, but I consider these as isolated. They're outside of our tissues, so we want to protect our cells. So we allow these microbes, we just kind of have to have them.
Julie Michelson: Mm-hmm.
Bill Rawls: Um, but they're isolated from our tissues. So the gut, and we have the gut lining that's, that keeps the food and everything contained. We have our skin, which keeps. Moisture in and microbes out. So that's our first level of defense is barriers. Barrier. Yeah. And you know, our sinuses, the lining of our sinuses, the lining of our gums, those are all barriers to keep microbes out.
So the things that live on the surface are picking up food that we don't use. I call it free food. So the things in our gut are living off the food that we don't use. Microbes on our skin are living off of oils on our skin. Um, so a lot lower concentration because there's how much food. So, um, so those, so there's free food.
Now what? There's free food and protected food. No. Now what I call our tissues is protected food. So we don't really want microbes in our tissues. So. We constantly are exposed to things that are trying to get in from the outside, and they have a lot of interesting ways of doing that. And we tend to label a microbe, by the way, an enter wants to enter into the body.
So we have respiratory infections, sexually transmitted infections, tickborne or insect related. So what they're all trying to do though, is get across that barrier. And get into our bloodstream. So all microbes, all invasive microbes are trying to get to the bloodstream. 'cause a bloodstream is the highway to all the tissues in the in the body.
So even a respiratory infections, I. You know, we, we have symptoms when that microbe is trying to break through those barriers, but that's not its primary goal. Its primary goal is to get to the blood screen, and that's why pretty quickly when we're having a respiratory infection, we also start having systemic symptoms, some of which is the immune system's reaction, but also some microbes that have gotten through and gotten to the bloodstream.
So crafty when you look at ticks and that sort of thing, oh boy did they have a good deal because the tick just injects them right into the bloodstream where they want to go. And so our second level of defense is our immune system. That's the backup plan and how good the immune system is in. Taking care of a microbe threat really depends on our past history.
Yeah. Our ancient history. So the immune system was built over millions and millions of years of giving, give and take between different kinds of microbes. So the more exposure our ancestors had to something, the more familiar our immune system, the more built in immunity we have. Uh huh. Ebola virus is bad because humans have never been exposed to it, right?
So it's very, very threatening. Um, AIDS jumped over from a primate in the 1980s. Um, even our thing, things that we consider some of our ancient diseases like smallpox and, and, and the plague, and things like that. Or a couple of thousand years old, but they have been able to trace, trace them back to a relative, relative to in all of human history, it was pretty recent.
So when you look at TIG borne microbes, Borrelia, the Lyme bacteria, it's millions of years old and tib been biting humans since the beginning of humans. So for a lot of things we have built in immunity. We have built-in immunity to, uh, Borrelia, the, uh, the, the Lyme bacteria, other co-infections like Bartonella and Babesia.
And a lot of times, most of the time when we get an infection with these microbes, they don't cause us to be acutely ill. And this is also true, you're probably well aware of this as the association between mycoplasmas and rheumatoid arthritis, um, chlamydia and multiple sclerosis. So the list of these things just goes on and on and on.
I. And we're exposed to them a lot from the time we are born on. You know, when we start putting things in our mouths, we pick up Epstein-Barr, we pick up viruses, we pick up mycoplasmas, we pick up all of these things, and I think we all have the idea that, you know, sometimes we get an infection, we feel it, the symptoms go away, and the immune system has eliminated that microbe.
Or what my journey has taught me is, yeah, that's not true. Yeah. It's not the case that these things have sophisticated ways of bypassing the immune system. So they enter the body, they're getting through the bloodstream as quickly as they can and invading cells, and once they invade cells, they're protected from the immune system.
So that is a big goal. So not only are cells a resource resource for reproduction, their protection. So this concept of microbes invading cells, and this is true of viruses and protozoan bacteria and all lots of things that we're exposed to. But our third level of defense is our immune cells are, our cells are not defenseless.
So this was really interesting, that process of autophagy that cells use to rebuild themselves. They also can use it to destroy microbes. So our cells. Can actually have defense mechanisms. But with this give and take of millions of years, hundreds of thousands of years, microbes in the immune system have this kind of give and take tug of war.
So a defense mechanism that many of these low grade, what we call stealth pathogen Jews, is they slow their growth and they can even go dormant. So this concept of intracellular dormancy has fascinated me in that. It appears that we collect things through our whole life and some things may be worse than others, but these things collect in our tissues and so we can be perfectly healthy and be harboring a wide range of pathogens in our tissues.
So this is kind of where I am now with the whole thing,
Julie Michelson: which I love. It is I do think it is so important for for people to understand because again, back to that. There's this tendency when you're searching for answers and, and then you get, uh, you know, a test you haven't had before, or it's a better one, or it's just a different time and something's showing that's been hiding or dormant and we think, oh, this particular thing.
That's the answer I've been looking for. Like, all my problems are this bug. Right? And, and so, um, I, I, I just, so, I love that in. Your evolution is like, okay. And it makes so much sense when we think of, you know, my, I have like. If Lyme has been around, because that's a whole, that's a different topic. We won't even get onto like the, um, but you said Borrelia is, is is old.
It's not new. Why does it seem like Lyme is rampant? Why is, I know a lot of chronic illness also those first four categories. Are creating a big impact on wellness, right? With the food system and the toxins and the lack of sleep and all the things. Um, but it, it just seems like, well, the, the problems aren't new.
Why is chronic illness so, so much more rampant now? No,
Bill Rawls: than. I, you know, I, I think there are multiple things that contribute to this. Um, part of it is awareness and perception. Yeah. So I, um, I'm fourth generation physician. My grandfather was a country doctor. I used to go on house calls with him. He had his black bag and he had antibiotics and various kinds of injections to help with symptoms.
Um, but wherever we went, you know, he would call on people that were sickly and they didn't have a diagnosis. Right. Um, because we didn't really start. Diagnosing things until after the seventies. We were just, you know, we had all these new tools, vaccines, antibiotics, new kinds of drugs to relieve symptoms during that time.
And this was back in the sixties. But, um, we, you know, it only went so far and. You know that for people that were chronically ill, he'd give them a B12 shot. And that perception, and it probably did make them feel a little bit better 'cause people with chronic illness are typically low in B12, but never none of those people had a diagnosis.
I. Right. And so we are so diagnosis oriented in our day and time and, and personally I find a lot of flaws with the concept of diagnosis and chronic illness and I don't really use it very much because I think it can be very misleading. But, so I think thats part, I think it can hinder.
Julie Michelson: Healing too. I, I, I really do.
When people, you know, it's human tendency then to identify with that diagnosis and then you're, you know, you're stuck in this place. Um, so I wanna shift. I think that that's a really amazing understanding. That's probably a new perspective for a lot of listeners on. That this process and these microbes.
Yeah. And, and the role that, that they're playing. Um, I wanna talk about herbs though, because I think so, so many of us, and even just listening to your journey, right? Like you, okay. You know, you identified lime was, was at least part of the problem with, with your own struggles. And, but yet the antibiotics, which were supposed to be the cure, made you feel worse.
Right. Um, and we, I tend to, at least I have, I'll own it, histor, you know, think of herbs as this, almost like a step down from prescriptions or medications. So I wanna talk about the, the kind of misconception of, you know, the herbs versus, you know, I, people think like, oh, well if it really worked, it would be a prescription.
Bill Rawls: Yeah. Yeah. You know, well, I, I wanted to finish up where we left off. Yeah. Sorry. Just very quickly, I didn't want to leave people with the impression that. Uh, that it was just awareness that, that, that we, you know, we weren't actually seeing more chronic illness. Right. My perception is we are seeing a lot more chronic illness because we are not, you know, we are ignoring cellular health.
Um, we're eating horrible diets worse than ever before in humans. Yeah. We are exposed to higher concentrations of toxic substances than we ever have been. We're all running from the tiger with stress 24 7, and we're not sleeping, we're not exercising. And the micro, we're doing it all wrong. That's always there, but there's always that thing of we're more mobile than we have ever been to and we probably are exposed to more microbes.
So yeah, I think we are seeing more chronic illness and I think the way that we're using drug therapies. Is a really, really poor solution, you know? Yeah. So the purpose of a diagnosis is to define the medical therapy. And the medical therapy is designed to block, or in some way inhibit the underlying manifestations of the illness.
So we don't feel it, we don't feel the symptoms, but it's not doing anything to reverse cellular stress, which is the root cause. In fact, often it's adding to it. So peo typically get worse. Yeah. And they get more drugs than they get more drugs, than they just get worse and worse. So what we're doing what with a drug, is blocking the manifestation of the chronic illness.
That's all. Yeah, we're not doing anything for the root causes. Um, and when you look at antibiotics, antibiotics are a really poor choice for this because antibiotics are really good for a fast growing acute infections. Mm. Like a pneumococcal pneumonia, those bacteria turning over every 20 minutes.
Somebody can get sick really fast, they need an antibiotic. But antibiotics have a problem with of within 10 days, they start disrupting your gut flora in a really bad way. And we talk about those good and bad. You know, our friendly microbes in their gut, they're not friendly. What they want is to keep the food for themselves.
Yep. So they secrete substances that suppress their competition, which happened to be pathogens. And we let them do that because it works for us,
Julie Michelson: right?
Bill Rawls: So when you kill them off, the pathogens start to flourish. And also within 10 days you start generating antibiotic resistant pathogens. Mm-hmm. And the third thing is, it's toxic to cells in mitochondria.
Right? So you're, you know, 10 days. Great. If you can't solve it in 10 days, you got a problem because you're going to, to really generate some real other problems. Antibiotic resistant pathogens now kill a million people every single year, and we haven't made any new antibiotics since the eighties when I was in medical school.
Julie Michelson: Wow.
Bill Rawls: So for these kinds of things, the chronic things that I'm talking about, antibiotics are not a good choice.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Bill Rawls: So looking at herbs, everybody thinks, eh, it's a weak, just a weak version of the drug. Right. In some cases that's true because some plants have drug-like properties, and many of our drugs actually come from plants.
Julie Michelson: Mm-hmm.
Bill Rawls: But those aren't the herbs that most herbalists use and I don't use. So what I'm using is herbs that. Have a low potential to have drug-like side effects or well tolerated can be taken for long durations. So what we're getting from an herb is we're basically borrowing the plant's defense system.
Julie Michelson: Mm-hmm.
Bill Rawls: So plants are multi-cellular organisms. And they deal with the same stress factors that we do. So plants, instead of having a cellular immune system like we do, they have a chemical immune system. And that chemical immune system is very sophisticated. Um, so it is selective for pathogens, but doesn't kill normal flora.
It has a wide range of coverage of bacteria, protozoa, yeast, viruses, and. It's, it's, it has this intelligence about it that is really interesting. So when we take, so every herb, every herb. Every herb has antimicrobial properties, every single one, some more than others though. And it really depends on the microbe stress in that plant's native environment.
Julie Michelson: Makes sense.
Bill Rawls: So like a warm mor place like the Amazon, lots of microbe stress. Really good antimicrobials. An herb like Rhodiola and adaptogen from, that's a native to Siberia. Not a lot of microbe stress there, but it's really good for helping us adapt to physical stresses. So sometimes the native environment and the stresses that the plant is having to, to tolerate.
We'll give you some clues of what that, that herb, that plant might be useful for. So a lot of herbs have really good antimicrobial properties, but because the risk of side effects of taking them is so low and they don't cause antibiotic resistant pathogens, they don't disrupt normal flora. They're not toxic to ourselves.
You can take 'em for a long time. For me, five years straight, high doses, and I've now been taking herbs continually for 20 years.
Julie Michelson: Amazing. I've
Bill Rawls: experienced some of the best health in my life over the past 10
Julie Michelson: years. Yeah. Amazing change. It's changing the story right? Of expected decline and, and this is kind of one directional living that people are experiencing.
Yeah. Are there, is there anybody who. Shouldn't take herbs, like just right off the, you know, is it a. Contraindicated for very
Bill Rawls: few. Very few. Okay. I mean, with the herbs that I'm using now, you know, there's a pretty wide spectrum of what we define as an herb, all the way from food plants and culinary herbs, which do have medicinal properties.
Mm-hmm. All the way to those herbs that I talked about that can have some drug-like properties. And I tend to stay away from that end of the spectrum. So I'm using a lot of adaptogens or what I call antimicrobial adaptogens. Herbs that mainly have the effect of, uh, protecting our health. And they do that by protecting our cells.
So not only do they protect our cells from, from microbes, but also from free radicals. Toxic substances, all those stress factors that I talked about. The herb has a built in system for doing that. So when we take an herb, we're, we're, we're taking in those defenses. So also, plants use chemicals that are similar to our hormones and chemical messengers for regulating cellular functions.
So herbs like adaptogens actually have chemicals that help balance our stress hormones or help our communication system work more smoothly. So we're getting all these robust qualities from the plant that are basically cell protectants. So that's a difference. Drugs are artificially blocking manifestations of illness and doing nothing to protect cells.
I. Herbs are protecting cells. And that's really important because if you want to heal from a chronic illness, that's what you have to do. So one of the more fascinating things about our cells is they have the ability to recover from stress, and that is the cornerstone of the healing process, is the ability of cells to recover and regenerate.
So. Drugs, do nothing to help with that process. Herbs by definition, by protecting cells, actually promotes the healing and recovery process. It takes time. It took me years to get rid of all the symptoms where, you know, a blood, a drug will block it in an hour, right? But the difference is. The herbs are actually promoting healing and promoting wellness at the cellular level.
There is no drug that has that capability,
Julie Michelson: which is so important to understand. Um, and, and I was thinking about, I was glad you used the word intelligence. Um, I think like anybody who's ever gardened. The, the, I'm like totally simplifying the, the conversation, but you know, we garden all the time and it is the season here in Colorado right now.
And yeah, I, I'm always, it always is astounding to me how, and I have raised guard, I've raised, not raised all kinds of different garden beds, but even in the raised beds, the weeds. Are always right in with the roots of the, the, the good thing I planted. Yeah. You know, and so the, it's almost like there, there is this innate intelligence of protection of Yeah.
You know, if I pull out a weed and I'm not being really careful, I'm gonna pull out what I planted. Like it, it is. It's just fascinating there, there's just so much we haven't considered about this plant intelligence. Um, not to get like too woo woo, but just even seeing that on a, on a simple level is like, okay.
You know, and, and when you think of, like you mentioned, so many of our prescription medications or even over the counter medications are, are made from an extract of a plant, but they're not taking. That complex compounds that plants have, you know, humans are really good at like, oh, this one thing must be good.
You know, we'll use that.
Bill Rawls: Well, there, there is a little bit of a story around, around that and you know, all of our antibiotics come from natural sources, either a bacteria, a fungus, or a plant. And it's um, and it's. Because we're not smart enough. You know, I used to think antibiotics. It was some scientist, brilliant scientist who was dreaming up chemicals in a lab to, to fight, uh, bacteria.
It's like we're not that smart. We pull from nature. Um, ivermectin that you've heard so much about lately, lately came from a bacteria in a swampy area and a golf course in Japan. You know? Right. And, and so they get an organism and pull something out of it, um, pull chemicals and then kinda randomly see what might work, what, where, you know, throw it against the wall and see what sticks.
Right. Yeah. And then they take that one chemical and potentiate it so that they can get a patent on it. 'cause you can't patent anything natural. Right. But we don't duplicate the organism's defense system. It's one random chemical. Right. So, and, but we do that with a lot of our drugs. Half our drugs came from, from plants.
And I used to think, well, you know, they're getting these drugs from the herbs that we've been using. No, they're not. And you know, I used to, I was reading stories about them going into the Amazon to look for new plants in the rainforest and thinking, why are you looking for new stuff? You know, we've got all these herbs there.
That's not what they want. They want poisonous plants. So all of our drugs come from plants that have poisons in them, and we pull out that poison and use it at a therapeutic dose to inhibit or block a reaction in the body. And everybody knows, you know, you take more than the recommended dose of any drug, even something over the counter like ibuprofen, you can get in real trouble with that.
Julie Michelson: Sure.
Bill Rawls: So, yeah, it's very, very different from plants. Maybe.
Julie Michelson: Maybe we got it wrong. Yeah, well it's, well, I would, you
Bill Rawls: know, I would say that there is a place and purpose for every drug maker of course. And I think that's extremely important. I'm not anti-drug, it's just we are using them irrationally and indiscriminately.
Um, and we're. Ignoring one of the most important forces of healing on the planet, um, and often discounting it. And, you know, I'm, uh, I, I think that needs to change. Wow.
Julie Michelson: How do people find, other than you know, your book, which people should definitely. You know, just start their journey, uh, you know, get the book and, and get some understanding of it is in a way, a, a, it's a new old perspective, right?
Like herbal, we know herbal medicine is not new. Right. Um, but I, I feel like, you know, there's all of this. Effective old wisdom that kind of got tossed aside in modern times thinking we could do it better. Um, that, that the more we can get back to the, the more true wellness, even at the cellular level, we can, we can achieve and maintain.
Um, but how, how do you, how does somebody know, you know, who to trust when it, when it comes to, to herbs?
Bill Rawls: Sure. Um, yeah, that's not always an easy question to answer. I know, and that's one of the reasons I wrote the book, is to help nav help people navigate that space and, you know, start out with what I call green zone herbs, the things that you really can't get in trouble with.
Um, so a good place to start from a lot of people is things that are well known like turmeric. Um, that one is, uh, you know, that is a wonderful anti-inflammatory. The adaptogens that you're hearing about. Yeah. And that includes, includes both herbs and medicinal mushrooms. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, you know, it, so, uh, turmeric is a really nice herb for people to start out with.
Um. We do a product that has bowell, another herb that is just, has wonderful anti-inflammatory properties. The two work synergistically, um, adaptogens like ashwagandha people are hearing about. That's really nice for stress. Um, getting a good grade extract is really important. Um, some of the medicinal mushroom adaptogens like Rishi Cordyceps, lions mane, there are lots.
Of them. Rishi has been evaluated by, uh, uh, the Japanese and has been found to have some of the most potent anti-cancer substances on earth. Um, and all herbs. I haven't researched an herb yet that doesn't have anti-cancer properties. And, and that's because it's protecting ourselves. Makes sense. That's where, where cancer comes from.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Bill Rawls: So, yeah, all of these things are really important for us to do. Um, for recovering from chronic illness. There are many, many herbs that have been, you know, we, we, we know a lot about 'em, quite frankly, because of Lyme disease. Mm-hmm. And, you know, uh, Johns Hopkins took a notice of, uh, this a couple years ago, a researcher was looking at.
Herbs that would might kill Borrelia. And they found that certain herbs, um, that had been used in chronic Lyme disease, uh, including Japanese knotweed, Chinese skull clap, uh, crypto, several others. Actually worked as well as doxycycline for killing the bacteria. Yeah. Um, which without the
Julie Michelson: downside,
Bill Rawls: without the downsides, without disrupting the got flora, without generating antibiotic resistant pathogens.
And, you know, it's definitely something to take notice on here. You've got this thing that's not expensive. Has a low potential to harm you and wow. It, it, it, it, it really can do wonderful things. I think the big deal though is people don't get good quality products. Um, yes. And a lot of people are getting whole herb powders, which they basically take, you know, if you get a bottle and it's cost, you know, 10 or $15 and it's got capsules in it, and you take the capsules out and it's got powder, basically what they've done is they've taken the plant, dried it.
And crushed it up into a powder. Mm-hmm. And you're getting a lot of fiber and not much of the chemistry of the actual plant. Um, next to that is tincture. Tinctures are very good. Um, and most of your tinctures are, are, uh, worth taking. A lot of times you have to take a lot because they're not very concentrated.
There's a pretty bitter taste. Um, what I use utilize most in my practice, in my life. Um. And, and, uh, and the company that I have is standardized extracts, so a standardized extract. It looks just like a whole herb powder. It's a capsule with powder in it, but it's different in that what they've done is they've taken a a, a tincture, which is pulling the chemicals out of the plant.
They dry off the water and alcohol and. Put that into a capsule, the powder that's left over. So it's often 10 times or more concentrated than a whole herb powder. And the way to know that is if you look on a bottle and it just gives the name of the, the, uh, the, the herb, or even worse, a proprietary blend of a bunch of herbs.
But that's all you get. Mm-hmm. It's. Probably not a very good quality product. So a good quality product is going to list each herb in the product. It's going to give the scientific name, it's going to say standardized to X phytochemical, and it's going to give the milligram quantity of that specific herb.
There you're talking about something that, that might make a difference. And then if you can look for the quality standards of the company, um, our company, we do a lot of testing to make sure that, and this is a vital plan. The company is exactly what it's supposed to be. And you know, it's about 50 50 half of companies out there are doing that same level.
Um, half of 'em aren't. Um, and you really just have to pay attention more. Yeah, it's, it's really easy to caught up, get caught up in the marketing hype, um, sure. And start asking questions, looking for ingredients. You know, that'ss really important.
Julie Michelson: Well, and I love, it's the same whether it's food or any other product as turn it around, read the, don't fall for the marketing, or how pretty the label is, or what it says it is.
Turn it around and really see what's, what's in it. Um, I always love, you know, when, when people start companies because they want to get the quality product. To, to help others. Um, you know, those are the companies that, that are stay trustworthy and, and, um, I, I think that that's always, I get excited when it's like, well, I couldn't find this thing, so I started a company to right, like.
You know, to, to bring what you needed and what we need out to market. Um, yeah, this was,
Bill Rawls: for me, that was 15 years ago and I was in this little office that I'd built into a wellness practice and people were really liking it and I was getting my health back. And I wanted them to have the same quality of herbs, and I was having a really hard time finding products that met my specifications, so I was able to do something that is impossible to do now.
I wrote and, and got involved in correspondence with a large supplement manufacturer, and they agreed to build products to my specifications. And so I learned the supply chain. I, I researched where I could get specific grade extracts and, and you know, where I could get the highest quality. And I was shipping, having that shipped to the company and they were.
Doing small runs, like couple hundred bottles for me. Wow. Just for my patients in my office. Nobody will do that anymore. You know, you have to have thousands of bottles. Um, but, but, um, gradually my daughter and I built that into a company to serve people with, uh, all of these kinds of needs. And it's, uh, it's been an interesting journey.
Julie Michelson: It's amazing. And, and what a, what a resource for people. Um, and I, I just wanna highlight when you, even when you were talking about your own healing, you know, it took five years of. We're all, and of course we all want relief and we all wanna feel better as quick as possible, but I always tell people, you know, when we're, we're addressing chronic illness, it didn't happen overnight.
So always be wary of anybody that promises you, you know, that this quick hit, whether it's a 10 day course of antibiotic, whatever it is, um, you know, the, the, it's, it's going to take. And, and the, but the beauty is like the cells that are making up this, but my body right now are not the same cells that made up my body 20 years ago when I was sick, so, right.
You know, it, it is, it, if we understand that, um, and understand I love your, you know, self-care is cell care. We really get down to Okay. You know, I, I think most of us with chronic illness. Can understand cellular health and mitochondrial health and you know, because we know what it feels like to, to not feel well.
Right. Um, and so it makes sense that, well, that's the level at which we need to address healing.
Bill Rawls: Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, it, it's, um, you know, your body is made of cells and if you are chronically ill, every aspect of that chronic illness can be, um, rooted in cellular stress. Inflammation is cellular stress hormone and de dysfunction is cellular stress.
Every symptom, all your abnormal labs are cellular stress. So when you start focusing on. Getting one cell healthy. Yeah. By doing the things that you need. That's the key to actually getting well, that's what's going to help you more than any other single thing. And the micro factor, you know, that's a big factor.
I think what I'm finding is connections to virtually every chronic illness, to these low grade stealth microbes, rheumatoid arthritis, everything Autoimmune. Yeah. Chronic multiple sclerosis, absolutely everything. And so herbs ought to be a really, uh, central part of the recovery process, um, because you can suppress those microbes without disrupting your gut flora, without generating antibiotic resistant pathogens.
So you can do it for a long time, as long as it takes.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Which is amazing. What a, what a gift. Um, you, you won't. Mm-hmm. You know, I, I look at it as, again, as like, what's the downside to, you know, and I actually think there's relief for people in that approach of One cell, you know, just. Just one. Every change you make to support one cell is going to move the needle.
Like we heal one step at a time. And, and not that there is this no ma there isn't a magic bullet. Um, and, and yeah, I know. I, I really appreciate you taking not only your. Training and your personal experience and your wisdom, but then, you know, to to, to have the book and, and create a guide for people where, and, and a company where they can access the quality of, of the herbs that they need, um, is, is really, really amazing work.
Oh,
Bill Rawls: well, thank you. Yeah, it, it, it's been an interesting journey. I wouldn't, yeah. Probably
Julie Michelson: not what you planned on right. When you first went to medical school. It's not
Bill Rawls: at all. But I wouldn't trade it, you know? Yeah, of course. I just couldn't trade it.
Julie Michelson: Well, we're at that point in the conversation where I ask you a trick question, which is, what is one step listeners can take starting today to improve their health?
Bill Rawls: Just start, start learning about herbal therapy, you know? 'cause I imagine a lot of your listeners are already trying to change their diet and get better sleep. Yep. And you know, get moving again and all of those things. But it's the micro factor that I think people are missing and the herbs. Are the one thing that can help that the very, very most, but the end that what you're doing is creating an environment inside your body that promotes cellular recovery and that is the key to wellness.
Julie Michelson: Ah, amazing. There you have it. Cellular recovery and, and, and doable in pe You know, I, I love that you're like, it doesn't need to be these crazy. Outta the box therapeutics, you know, or strange things that you have to leave the country to go get addressed as these are things we can, we can be doing in our own homes to support our cellular health.
Bill Rawls: You know, sometimes those things are indicated, but what I find is if people focus on the basics first and do those things very intently, yeah. Most people don't need those other things.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, absolutely. Or you know, if you are gonna do, just do it in synergy and, and that's great too, if you can For sure. So amazing for people that are listening on the go and aren't gonna check the notes, where's the best place to find more about you and to find the book.
Bill Rawls: Our, our company is vital plan.com. Um, but I also have a, uh, just an information, uh, page or website, uh, raws md.com and put slash resources that will get you a lot of great information. Nice. Um, the, those are the best places to find me.
Julie Michelson: Amazing. I so, so appreciate your, your time, your wisdom, um, and, and just the education that you're bringing to everybody.
Bill Rawls: Always a pleasure. Thank you
Julie Michelson: for everyone listening. Remember, you can get those show notes and transcripts by visiting Inspired Living Show. Hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week
Bill Rawls: Oh, thank you. Yeah, pleasure to be here.
Julie Michelson: I'm so excited for this conversation, but I would love for you to share with listeners a little bit of, of your journey, um, of, you know, how does somebody start focusing on the potential of herbs and healing when they've spent all this time practicing as an md.
So
Bill Rawls: yeah,
Julie Michelson: share, share a bit of your, your wellness journey with us.
Bill Rawls: It's been a curious journey, no doubt about it. Um, interestingly, some milestones for me, this is, uh, this year is 40 years since I graduated from medical school. Wow. Congrats. And 20 years since my turning point where I felt like I was really crawling out of the hole from chronic illness and moving forward.
And ultimately. Got better. Um, so I've kind of been in two camps that conventional camp in the beginning and then a totally different space for the past 20 years. And I, when I graduated from medical school, during medical school, I just wasn't. Captivated by, um, medical management of chronic illnesses with drugs.
So I chose obstetrics and gynecology, which was dealing with young, healthy people, acute interventions that really mattered. And I did a lot of good in my career, but back then it was small groups. I was. On call for the hospital, labor and delivery and emergency room every second to third night, every second to third weekend.
And I was one of those people that if I had somebody with something going on in the hospital and labor or whatever, I just didn't sleep. So I went 20 years sleep deprived. And by the end of that, um, when I was in my late forties, my body started just basically falling apart. And conventional colleagues really couldn't understand what was going on.
Um, testing, you know, borderline thyroid, borderline this symptoms of MS. Ended up with a cardiac cath because of all the heart symptoms, but nobody could really offer anything but drugs to cover it up. I kept thinking. There's gotta be a reason. I shifted to and became certified in holistic medicine. Just looking at things, stopped doing obstetrics.
I just couldn't do the call. Started a primary care practice with this idea of I'm going to create a wellness practice. And that was really before, that was a thing and. Changed my diet, changed my lifestyle, gradually clawed my way back to better sleep, but wasn't getting a hundred percent better or anywhere close to it.
Kept asking that question. Could it be something like a microbe and kept hearing about Lyme disease? Knew I had had ticks all when I was during my childhood, but not an acute tick bite, especially. Um. So I finally got the test that said, yes, that's a possibility. Talked to some colleagues in the loading me up with antibiotics and it just made me sicker instead of better, and I.
Knew that I was going to have to figure out other options, and was looking out at the world of, you know, all these crazy therapies, ozone and, and IV antibiotics for months on end. And talking to people that were, did, were not held by that and ended up, uh, finding an herbal protocol for Lyme disease. Went in with low expectations because.
You know, I, I had, I, I knew about herbal therapy. I had patients that were using it and I, I didn't have any problem with it. I just didn't think it would do much. Sure. But it did. Um, I was using high grade extracts, not stuff you would find in a basic health food store. I was ordering these specific extracts.
High concentrations. Um, and I assumed if it was actually going to make me, well, it was going to also wreck my gut, like the antibiotics. Oh sure. It didn't, my gut got better and I got better and, you know, it was, uh, it was definitely, uh, a start and stop kind of thing that it took me about five years to.
Grid myself of all the symptoms, but that included horrible neurological symptoms. Uh, heart palpitations, you know, skipping my heart, skipping beats, PVCs every second to third. Beat chest pain chronically. I. And all of that went away and my joints got better. My joints were a wreck. Um, you know, at that time, by age 50, I assumed I would probably have joint replacements by the time I was 60, 67.
My joints are great. I. You know,
Julie Michelson: I didn't think I'd live to see 50 and at 56 I feel amazing. So
Bill Rawls: yeah,
Julie Michelson: the body is, yeah. So it was just a
Bill Rawls: big eyeopener and, and left some huge question marks about how we treat chronic illness. Mm-hmm. But also question marks about. What is this thing we call Lyme disease? And my journey over the past 20 years has been understanding these microbes and realizing that if you really understand what's going on with someone with chronic Lyme, you have a pretty good understanding of anybody going on what's going on with anybody suffering from any chronic illness.
And looking at. Herbs as a really important solution for that. That is being ignored mostly.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Well, you didn't learn about herbs in medical school. Did you like it? Deep dive.
Bill Rawls: I. No, no, no. Yeah, no nothing about nutrition, nothing about, you know, environmental stresses other than you shouldn't smoke. Right.
That's about it. Yeah. Um, you know, and I, you know, I, I, I, and I've come around to this conclusion, we. Are asking to do our conventional, our conventional medical system to do something that it's not really, uh, designed to do. Yeah. It is exceptionally good for acute intervention.
Julie Michelson: Absolutely. That's it's great.
Yep.
Bill Rawls: Um, but management of chronic illness, we are not addressing the underlying causes. And we're not even paying attention to the potential that there are causes, right. We're just acutely treating the symptoms every single day. Yes. And it just doesn't work. Um, and it's put me in a very, very different place.
Julie Michelson: Share with us that, that direct connect between, okay. If you can understand what's going on with chronic Lyme, you understand chronic illness. Can you expand on that a little bit? 'cause I'm sure all listeners are leaning in. Like, wait, what?
Bill Rawls: Well, uh, let, let's. Let's start with where I am now. That took me 20 years to get here, and it seems so ridiculously simple.
And you know, I, I've, I've heard people say, oh, that's overly simplistic. It can't be that simple. It really is that simple. So just a concept of what wellness is. Yes. Um, so we. You and I are made up of cells, right?
Julie Michelson: Yes.
Bill Rawls: Our whole body is built of cells. We're about 90% cells and the rest of it is connecting stick connective tissue, holding that together and minerals in our bones, and about two or three pounds of it is microbes that share the ride.
But we're mostly cells and everything that happens in our body is due to the actions of cells. Whether that's your thyroid hormone being produced, your heart beating, it's all cellular. All of it. Absolutely cellular. Yeah. And the mistake we make is we look at the body as a whole, made up of parts, compartments.
Uh, we have a liver, we have an, uh, a heart, you know, and, and we divide these compartments up and specialize in each compartment. Mm-hmm. So. You know, we have cardiologists and pulmonologists and all these different people who specialize in diseases in that particular compartment, but it doesn't work that way.
It really doesn't.
Julie Michelson: We're whole integrated humans. What?
Bill Rawls: Well, our body is made up of individual cells and you know, if you want to simplify something, take it down to its smallest functional unit, and that's a living cell. All of our cells came from one cell. Every one of our cells diversified from that original cell that became us.
So all of our cells are structurally similar. Um, they all basically have the same parts. Now those parts have been modified to do different jobs, but every one of our cells is an independently functioning unit, a little mechanical machine that does work, a biological machine. So they're all that way now.
They're integrated by hormones and nerves and messaging. All the cells have to talk to one another for the body to be coordinated, but they're still independent functioning units. So a heart isn't a unit, it's a, it's a something that's made up of billions of cells, and every one of those cells are working in synergy, but they're all independent.
So if you break it down to that smallest functional unit. You ask, what are the stress factors or what are the things that influence the function of those little machines? I mean, everything has operating requirements, right? So you get down to five things. I. And it's that simple. And that's the formula for wellness.
So the first is cells need nutrients, ah, to produce energy, to replace parts, to do their jobs. Like thyroid hormone or thyroid need. Thyroid cells need iodine. Mm-hmm. Heart cells burn mostly fat for that slow continual burn. So cells need nutrients. And if you're eating a modern processed food diet, you're not getting the selective nutrients that your cells need.
Um, so if you're eating a whole, a diverse whole food diet, which is a whole cell diet, you're getting everything that all of your cells need when they need it all at once. So the right nutrients. And if they don't get that nutritional stress. Sure. Second to that is toxic stress.
Julie Michelson: Mm-hmm.
Bill Rawls: In our environment, all the chemicals and everything that we're exposed to are mostly petroleum or fossil fuel.
I. Derived. Yeah. And these are organic chemicals that used to be plant matter, but they were changed by all that pressure in the earth to be chemical distortions that aren't compatible with biological life. So we absorb these things really quickly, but they basically clog our cells up and act like our hormones and disrupt our system.
So toxic stress, that's a huge one that's affecting everybody a lot more than people appreciate. And then you can have, uh, unnatural, uh, natural toxic substances like, um, mycotoxins and things.
Julie Michelson: Sure.
Bill Rawls: Third thing is cells need downtime. So you work all day,
Julie Michelson: what now?
Bill Rawls: You stress your parts. You get wear and tear.
So our cells using a process of autophagy are continually replacing worn out parts, but they need downtime. Now, some cells like our heart cells. They need to rest in between beats, and that's one reason our cell heart cells are so vulnerable. But most of our cells need a good eight hours every night of downtime to restructure and recover from the day before.
So if you're sleeping an average of six and a half hours, which is true for most people, yeah, you're not enough. You're starting your next day with a deficit from the day before. So that's number three, downtime, number four, I. This is where exercise comes in. I call it physical stress, which can be trauma, which has obvious concerns to your cells.
But the other side of physical stress is we don't move enough. And what movement does, the biggest thing that exercise does for us is it increases blood flow and that flushes away congestion and, and buildup of toxic substances that, that in those little fine spaces between cells. We really need that to clear that out so cells can breathe.
So if we're not moving regularly, our cells get congested, we become stagnant. And so that's number four. And the fifth one is microbes. And that's where we can get into an interesting topic. So we don't think about it this way, but the harm that microbes do to us is they need our cells to reproduce. They need them for food and nutrients, that they also commandeer the parts of our cells.
So how microbes do harm is by destroying ourselves. So that kind of opens us up into thinking about chronic Lyme disease. But that's a formula for wellness. It's basically as simple as that.
Julie Michelson: Which is I love, and I did, I, I wasn't sure what all five were gonna be. Um, and so, you know, it's back to nothing in isolation, right?
So you can't just manage microbes and be living on an ultra processed food diet and not wa you know, not sleeping right? Not doing the other things, the moving, the, the detox. Um, and, and so I, I love that you include that. Those key tenets to wellness. Yeah. And I wanted, I wanna talk about the role or like, are all microbes bad?
Do we all have, you know what I mean? Because I, I, I think there's this tendency to, even when people are looking for answers, which is so understandable, I've been there of, you know, you're looking for that thing and just because that thing is present doesn't necessarily mean that's driving. You know, fully your chronic illness.
So let's educate us a little bit on, on microbes.
Bill Rawls: We tend to think of them as good or bad, but they're not. They're just trying to survive and. Microbes are a threat to us because the ones that, you know, the, the ones that are a threat to us are a threat because they need us, our cells to survive. It's like there are lots of bacteria.
I mean, there are viruses all over the surfaces of where you and I are sitting. There are bacteria on the floor. They're not a threat to us because they haven't adapted to invade a host. They don't need a host. They all need organic matter. Uh, you know, everything living is food for something else. So all microbes are living on organic matter that came from some living thing.
Now, soil bacteria, it's dead organic matter. Um, but all microbes need organic matter to survive every living thing does. So what we're talking about here are host dependent microbes. Yes, they need a host to get the nutrients and things that they need to survive. And they can get that in different ways.
Um, so we have microbes that live in our body, right, that we know we're full of microbes in our gut. And, and, um, then we have microbes on our skin. And, but I consider these as isolated. They're outside of our tissues, so we want to protect our cells. So we allow these microbes, we just kind of have to have them.
Julie Michelson: Mm-hmm.
Bill Rawls: Um, but they're isolated from our tissues. So the gut, and we have the gut lining that's, that keeps the food and everything contained. We have our skin, which keeps. Moisture in and microbes out. So that's our first level of defense is barriers. Barrier. Yeah. And you know, our sinuses, the lining of our sinuses, the lining of our gums, those are all barriers to keep microbes out.
So the things that live on the surface are picking up food that we don't use. I call it free food. So the things in our gut are living off the food that we don't use. Microbes on our skin are living off of oils on our skin. Um, so a lot lower concentration because there's how much food. So, um, so those, so there's free food.
Now what? There's free food and protected food. No. Now what I call our tissues is protected food. So we don't really want microbes in our tissues. So. We constantly are exposed to things that are trying to get in from the outside, and they have a lot of interesting ways of doing that. And we tend to label a microbe, by the way, an enter wants to enter into the body.
So we have respiratory infections, sexually transmitted infections, tickborne or insect related. So what they're all trying to do though, is get across that barrier. And get into our bloodstream. So all microbes, all invasive microbes are trying to get to the bloodstream. 'cause a bloodstream is the highway to all the tissues in the in the body.
So even a respiratory infections, I. You know, we, we have symptoms when that microbe is trying to break through those barriers, but that's not its primary goal. Its primary goal is to get to the blood screen, and that's why pretty quickly when we're having a respiratory infection, we also start having systemic symptoms, some of which is the immune system's reaction, but also some microbes that have gotten through and gotten to the bloodstream.
So crafty when you look at ticks and that sort of thing, oh boy did they have a good deal because the tick just injects them right into the bloodstream where they want to go. And so our second level of defense is our immune system. That's the backup plan and how good the immune system is in. Taking care of a microbe threat really depends on our past history.
Yeah. Our ancient history. So the immune system was built over millions and millions of years of giving, give and take between different kinds of microbes. So the more exposure our ancestors had to something, the more familiar our immune system, the more built in immunity we have. Uh huh. Ebola virus is bad because humans have never been exposed to it, right?
So it's very, very threatening. Um, AIDS jumped over from a primate in the 1980s. Um, even our thing, things that we consider some of our ancient diseases like smallpox and, and, and the plague, and things like that. Or a couple of thousand years old, but they have been able to trace, trace them back to a relative, relative to in all of human history, it was pretty recent.
So when you look at TIG borne microbes, Borrelia, the Lyme bacteria, it's millions of years old and tib been biting humans since the beginning of humans. So for a lot of things we have built in immunity. We have built-in immunity to, uh, Borrelia, the, uh, the, the Lyme bacteria, other co-infections like Bartonella and Babesia.
And a lot of times, most of the time when we get an infection with these microbes, they don't cause us to be acutely ill. And this is also true, you're probably well aware of this as the association between mycoplasmas and rheumatoid arthritis, um, chlamydia and multiple sclerosis. So the list of these things just goes on and on and on.
I. And we're exposed to them a lot from the time we are born on. You know, when we start putting things in our mouths, we pick up Epstein-Barr, we pick up viruses, we pick up mycoplasmas, we pick up all of these things, and I think we all have the idea that, you know, sometimes we get an infection, we feel it, the symptoms go away, and the immune system has eliminated that microbe.
Or what my journey has taught me is, yeah, that's not true. Yeah. It's not the case that these things have sophisticated ways of bypassing the immune system. So they enter the body, they're getting through the bloodstream as quickly as they can and invading cells, and once they invade cells, they're protected from the immune system.
So that is a big goal. So not only are cells a resource resource for reproduction, their protection. So this concept of microbes invading cells, and this is true of viruses and protozoan bacteria and all lots of things that we're exposed to. But our third level of defense is our immune cells are, our cells are not defenseless.
So this was really interesting, that process of autophagy that cells use to rebuild themselves. They also can use it to destroy microbes. So our cells. Can actually have defense mechanisms. But with this give and take of millions of years, hundreds of thousands of years, microbes in the immune system have this kind of give and take tug of war.
So a defense mechanism that many of these low grade, what we call stealth pathogen Jews, is they slow their growth and they can even go dormant. So this concept of intracellular dormancy has fascinated me in that. It appears that we collect things through our whole life and some things may be worse than others, but these things collect in our tissues and so we can be perfectly healthy and be harboring a wide range of pathogens in our tissues.
So this is kind of where I am now with the whole thing,
Julie Michelson: which I love. It is I do think it is so important for for people to understand because again, back to that. There's this tendency when you're searching for answers and, and then you get, uh, you know, a test you haven't had before, or it's a better one, or it's just a different time and something's showing that's been hiding or dormant and we think, oh, this particular thing.
That's the answer I've been looking for. Like, all my problems are this bug. Right? And, and so, um, I, I, I just, so, I love that in. Your evolution is like, okay. And it makes so much sense when we think of, you know, my, I have like. If Lyme has been around, because that's a whole, that's a different topic. We won't even get onto like the, um, but you said Borrelia is, is is old.
It's not new. Why does it seem like Lyme is rampant? Why is, I know a lot of chronic illness also those first four categories. Are creating a big impact on wellness, right? With the food system and the toxins and the lack of sleep and all the things. Um, but it, it just seems like, well, the, the problems aren't new.
Why is chronic illness so, so much more rampant now? No,
Bill Rawls: than. I, you know, I, I think there are multiple things that contribute to this. Um, part of it is awareness and perception. Yeah. So I, um, I'm fourth generation physician. My grandfather was a country doctor. I used to go on house calls with him. He had his black bag and he had antibiotics and various kinds of injections to help with symptoms.
Um, but wherever we went, you know, he would call on people that were sickly and they didn't have a diagnosis. Right. Um, because we didn't really start. Diagnosing things until after the seventies. We were just, you know, we had all these new tools, vaccines, antibiotics, new kinds of drugs to relieve symptoms during that time.
And this was back in the sixties. But, um, we, you know, it only went so far and. You know that for people that were chronically ill, he'd give them a B12 shot. And that perception, and it probably did make them feel a little bit better 'cause people with chronic illness are typically low in B12, but never none of those people had a diagnosis.
I. Right. And so we are so diagnosis oriented in our day and time and, and personally I find a lot of flaws with the concept of diagnosis and chronic illness and I don't really use it very much because I think it can be very misleading. But, so I think thats part, I think it can hinder.
Julie Michelson: Healing too. I, I, I really do.
When people, you know, it's human tendency then to identify with that diagnosis and then you're, you know, you're stuck in this place. Um, so I wanna shift. I think that that's a really amazing understanding. That's probably a new perspective for a lot of listeners on. That this process and these microbes.
Yeah. And, and the role that, that they're playing. Um, I wanna talk about herbs though, because I think so, so many of us, and even just listening to your journey, right? Like you, okay. You know, you identified lime was, was at least part of the problem with, with your own struggles. And, but yet the antibiotics, which were supposed to be the cure, made you feel worse.
Right. Um, and we, I tend to, at least I have, I'll own it, histor, you know, think of herbs as this, almost like a step down from prescriptions or medications. So I wanna talk about the, the kind of misconception of, you know, the herbs versus, you know, I, people think like, oh, well if it really worked, it would be a prescription.
Bill Rawls: Yeah. Yeah. You know, well, I, I wanted to finish up where we left off. Yeah. Sorry. Just very quickly, I didn't want to leave people with the impression that. Uh, that it was just awareness that, that, that we, you know, we weren't actually seeing more chronic illness. Right. My perception is we are seeing a lot more chronic illness because we are not, you know, we are ignoring cellular health.
Um, we're eating horrible diets worse than ever before in humans. Yeah. We are exposed to higher concentrations of toxic substances than we ever have been. We're all running from the tiger with stress 24 7, and we're not sleeping, we're not exercising. And the micro, we're doing it all wrong. That's always there, but there's always that thing of we're more mobile than we have ever been to and we probably are exposed to more microbes.
So yeah, I think we are seeing more chronic illness and I think the way that we're using drug therapies. Is a really, really poor solution, you know? Yeah. So the purpose of a diagnosis is to define the medical therapy. And the medical therapy is designed to block, or in some way inhibit the underlying manifestations of the illness.
So we don't feel it, we don't feel the symptoms, but it's not doing anything to reverse cellular stress, which is the root cause. In fact, often it's adding to it. So peo typically get worse. Yeah. And they get more drugs than they get more drugs, than they just get worse and worse. So what we're doing what with a drug, is blocking the manifestation of the chronic illness.
That's all. Yeah, we're not doing anything for the root causes. Um, and when you look at antibiotics, antibiotics are a really poor choice for this because antibiotics are really good for a fast growing acute infections. Mm. Like a pneumococcal pneumonia, those bacteria turning over every 20 minutes.
Somebody can get sick really fast, they need an antibiotic. But antibiotics have a problem with of within 10 days, they start disrupting your gut flora in a really bad way. And we talk about those good and bad. You know, our friendly microbes in their gut, they're not friendly. What they want is to keep the food for themselves.
Yep. So they secrete substances that suppress their competition, which happened to be pathogens. And we let them do that because it works for us,
Julie Michelson: right?
Bill Rawls: So when you kill them off, the pathogens start to flourish. And also within 10 days you start generating antibiotic resistant pathogens. Mm-hmm. And the third thing is, it's toxic to cells in mitochondria.
Right? So you're, you know, 10 days. Great. If you can't solve it in 10 days, you got a problem because you're going to, to really generate some real other problems. Antibiotic resistant pathogens now kill a million people every single year, and we haven't made any new antibiotics since the eighties when I was in medical school.
Julie Michelson: Wow.
Bill Rawls: So for these kinds of things, the chronic things that I'm talking about, antibiotics are not a good choice.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Bill Rawls: So looking at herbs, everybody thinks, eh, it's a weak, just a weak version of the drug. Right. In some cases that's true because some plants have drug-like properties, and many of our drugs actually come from plants.
Julie Michelson: Mm-hmm.
Bill Rawls: But those aren't the herbs that most herbalists use and I don't use. So what I'm using is herbs that. Have a low potential to have drug-like side effects or well tolerated can be taken for long durations. So what we're getting from an herb is we're basically borrowing the plant's defense system.
Julie Michelson: Mm-hmm.
Bill Rawls: So plants are multi-cellular organisms. And they deal with the same stress factors that we do. So plants, instead of having a cellular immune system like we do, they have a chemical immune system. And that chemical immune system is very sophisticated. Um, so it is selective for pathogens, but doesn't kill normal flora.
It has a wide range of coverage of bacteria, protozoa, yeast, viruses, and. It's, it's, it has this intelligence about it that is really interesting. So when we take, so every herb, every herb. Every herb has antimicrobial properties, every single one, some more than others though. And it really depends on the microbe stress in that plant's native environment.
Julie Michelson: Makes sense.
Bill Rawls: So like a warm mor place like the Amazon, lots of microbe stress. Really good antimicrobials. An herb like Rhodiola and adaptogen from, that's a native to Siberia. Not a lot of microbe stress there, but it's really good for helping us adapt to physical stresses. So sometimes the native environment and the stresses that the plant is having to, to tolerate.
We'll give you some clues of what that, that herb, that plant might be useful for. So a lot of herbs have really good antimicrobial properties, but because the risk of side effects of taking them is so low and they don't cause antibiotic resistant pathogens, they don't disrupt normal flora. They're not toxic to ourselves.
You can take 'em for a long time. For me, five years straight, high doses, and I've now been taking herbs continually for 20 years.
Julie Michelson: Amazing. I've
Bill Rawls: experienced some of the best health in my life over the past 10
Julie Michelson: years. Yeah. Amazing change. It's changing the story right? Of expected decline and, and this is kind of one directional living that people are experiencing.
Yeah. Are there, is there anybody who. Shouldn't take herbs, like just right off the, you know, is it a. Contraindicated for very
Bill Rawls: few. Very few. Okay. I mean, with the herbs that I'm using now, you know, there's a pretty wide spectrum of what we define as an herb, all the way from food plants and culinary herbs, which do have medicinal properties.
Mm-hmm. All the way to those herbs that I talked about that can have some drug-like properties. And I tend to stay away from that end of the spectrum. So I'm using a lot of adaptogens or what I call antimicrobial adaptogens. Herbs that mainly have the effect of, uh, protecting our health. And they do that by protecting our cells.
So not only do they protect our cells from, from microbes, but also from free radicals. Toxic substances, all those stress factors that I talked about. The herb has a built in system for doing that. So when we take an herb, we're, we're, we're taking in those defenses. So also, plants use chemicals that are similar to our hormones and chemical messengers for regulating cellular functions.
So herbs like adaptogens actually have chemicals that help balance our stress hormones or help our communication system work more smoothly. So we're getting all these robust qualities from the plant that are basically cell protectants. So that's a difference. Drugs are artificially blocking manifestations of illness and doing nothing to protect cells.
I. Herbs are protecting cells. And that's really important because if you want to heal from a chronic illness, that's what you have to do. So one of the more fascinating things about our cells is they have the ability to recover from stress, and that is the cornerstone of the healing process, is the ability of cells to recover and regenerate.
So. Drugs, do nothing to help with that process. Herbs by definition, by protecting cells, actually promotes the healing and recovery process. It takes time. It took me years to get rid of all the symptoms where, you know, a blood, a drug will block it in an hour, right? But the difference is. The herbs are actually promoting healing and promoting wellness at the cellular level.
There is no drug that has that capability,
Julie Michelson: which is so important to understand. Um, and, and I was thinking about, I was glad you used the word intelligence. Um, I think like anybody who's ever gardened. The, the, I'm like totally simplifying the, the conversation, but you know, we garden all the time and it is the season here in Colorado right now.
And yeah, I, I'm always, it always is astounding to me how, and I have raised guard, I've raised, not raised all kinds of different garden beds, but even in the raised beds, the weeds. Are always right in with the roots of the, the, the good thing I planted. Yeah. You know, and so the, it's almost like there, there is this innate intelligence of protection of Yeah.
You know, if I pull out a weed and I'm not being really careful, I'm gonna pull out what I planted. Like it, it is. It's just fascinating there, there's just so much we haven't considered about this plant intelligence. Um, not to get like too woo woo, but just even seeing that on a, on a simple level is like, okay.
You know, and, and when you think of, like you mentioned, so many of our prescription medications or even over the counter medications are, are made from an extract of a plant, but they're not taking. That complex compounds that plants have, you know, humans are really good at like, oh, this one thing must be good.
You know, we'll use that.
Bill Rawls: Well, there, there is a little bit of a story around, around that and you know, all of our antibiotics come from natural sources, either a bacteria, a fungus, or a plant. And it's um, and it's. Because we're not smart enough. You know, I used to think antibiotics. It was some scientist, brilliant scientist who was dreaming up chemicals in a lab to, to fight, uh, bacteria.
It's like we're not that smart. We pull from nature. Um, ivermectin that you've heard so much about lately, lately came from a bacteria in a swampy area and a golf course in Japan. You know? Right. And, and so they get an organism and pull something out of it, um, pull chemicals and then kinda randomly see what might work, what, where, you know, throw it against the wall and see what sticks.
Right. Yeah. And then they take that one chemical and potentiate it so that they can get a patent on it. 'cause you can't patent anything natural. Right. But we don't duplicate the organism's defense system. It's one random chemical. Right. So, and, but we do that with a lot of our drugs. Half our drugs came from, from plants.
And I used to think, well, you know, they're getting these drugs from the herbs that we've been using. No, they're not. And you know, I used to, I was reading stories about them going into the Amazon to look for new plants in the rainforest and thinking, why are you looking for new stuff? You know, we've got all these herbs there.
That's not what they want. They want poisonous plants. So all of our drugs come from plants that have poisons in them, and we pull out that poison and use it at a therapeutic dose to inhibit or block a reaction in the body. And everybody knows, you know, you take more than the recommended dose of any drug, even something over the counter like ibuprofen, you can get in real trouble with that.
Julie Michelson: Sure.
Bill Rawls: So, yeah, it's very, very different from plants. Maybe.
Julie Michelson: Maybe we got it wrong. Yeah, well it's, well, I would, you
Bill Rawls: know, I would say that there is a place and purpose for every drug maker of course. And I think that's extremely important. I'm not anti-drug, it's just we are using them irrationally and indiscriminately.
Um, and we're. Ignoring one of the most important forces of healing on the planet, um, and often discounting it. And, you know, I'm, uh, I, I think that needs to change. Wow.
Julie Michelson: How do people find, other than you know, your book, which people should definitely. You know, just start their journey, uh, you know, get the book and, and get some understanding of it is in a way, a, a, it's a new old perspective, right?
Like herbal, we know herbal medicine is not new. Right. Um, but I, I feel like, you know, there's all of this. Effective old wisdom that kind of got tossed aside in modern times thinking we could do it better. Um, that, that the more we can get back to the, the more true wellness, even at the cellular level, we can, we can achieve and maintain.
Um, but how, how do you, how does somebody know, you know, who to trust when it, when it comes to, to herbs?
Bill Rawls: Sure. Um, yeah, that's not always an easy question to answer. I know, and that's one of the reasons I wrote the book, is to help nav help people navigate that space and, you know, start out with what I call green zone herbs, the things that you really can't get in trouble with.
Um, so a good place to start from a lot of people is things that are well known like turmeric. Um, that one is, uh, you know, that is a wonderful anti-inflammatory. The adaptogens that you're hearing about. Yeah. And that includes, includes both herbs and medicinal mushrooms. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, you know, it, so, uh, turmeric is a really nice herb for people to start out with.
Um. We do a product that has bowell, another herb that is just, has wonderful anti-inflammatory properties. The two work synergistically, um, adaptogens like ashwagandha people are hearing about. That's really nice for stress. Um, getting a good grade extract is really important. Um, some of the medicinal mushroom adaptogens like Rishi Cordyceps, lions mane, there are lots.
Of them. Rishi has been evaluated by, uh, uh, the Japanese and has been found to have some of the most potent anti-cancer substances on earth. Um, and all herbs. I haven't researched an herb yet that doesn't have anti-cancer properties. And, and that's because it's protecting ourselves. Makes sense. That's where, where cancer comes from.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Bill Rawls: So, yeah, all of these things are really important for us to do. Um, for recovering from chronic illness. There are many, many herbs that have been, you know, we, we, we know a lot about 'em, quite frankly, because of Lyme disease. Mm-hmm. And, you know, uh, Johns Hopkins took a notice of, uh, this a couple years ago, a researcher was looking at.
Herbs that would might kill Borrelia. And they found that certain herbs, um, that had been used in chronic Lyme disease, uh, including Japanese knotweed, Chinese skull clap, uh, crypto, several others. Actually worked as well as doxycycline for killing the bacteria. Yeah. Um, which without the
Julie Michelson: downside,
Bill Rawls: without the downsides, without disrupting the got flora, without generating antibiotic resistant pathogens.
And, you know, it's definitely something to take notice on here. You've got this thing that's not expensive. Has a low potential to harm you and wow. It, it, it, it, it really can do wonderful things. I think the big deal though is people don't get good quality products. Um, yes. And a lot of people are getting whole herb powders, which they basically take, you know, if you get a bottle and it's cost, you know, 10 or $15 and it's got capsules in it, and you take the capsules out and it's got powder, basically what they've done is they've taken the plant, dried it.
And crushed it up into a powder. Mm-hmm. And you're getting a lot of fiber and not much of the chemistry of the actual plant. Um, next to that is tincture. Tinctures are very good. Um, and most of your tinctures are, are, uh, worth taking. A lot of times you have to take a lot because they're not very concentrated.
There's a pretty bitter taste. Um, what I use utilize most in my practice, in my life. Um. And, and, uh, and the company that I have is standardized extracts, so a standardized extract. It looks just like a whole herb powder. It's a capsule with powder in it, but it's different in that what they've done is they've taken a a, a tincture, which is pulling the chemicals out of the plant.
They dry off the water and alcohol and. Put that into a capsule, the powder that's left over. So it's often 10 times or more concentrated than a whole herb powder. And the way to know that is if you look on a bottle and it just gives the name of the, the, uh, the, the herb, or even worse, a proprietary blend of a bunch of herbs.
But that's all you get. Mm-hmm. It's. Probably not a very good quality product. So a good quality product is going to list each herb in the product. It's going to give the scientific name, it's going to say standardized to X phytochemical, and it's going to give the milligram quantity of that specific herb.
There you're talking about something that, that might make a difference. And then if you can look for the quality standards of the company, um, our company, we do a lot of testing to make sure that, and this is a vital plan. The company is exactly what it's supposed to be. And you know, it's about 50 50 half of companies out there are doing that same level.
Um, half of 'em aren't. Um, and you really just have to pay attention more. Yeah, it's, it's really easy to caught up, get caught up in the marketing hype, um, sure. And start asking questions, looking for ingredients. You know, that'ss really important.
Julie Michelson: Well, and I love, it's the same whether it's food or any other product as turn it around, read the, don't fall for the marketing, or how pretty the label is, or what it says it is.
Turn it around and really see what's, what's in it. Um, I always love, you know, when, when people start companies because they want to get the quality product. To, to help others. Um, you know, those are the companies that, that are stay trustworthy and, and, um, I, I think that that's always, I get excited when it's like, well, I couldn't find this thing, so I started a company to right, like.
You know, to, to bring what you needed and what we need out to market. Um, yeah, this was,
Bill Rawls: for me, that was 15 years ago and I was in this little office that I'd built into a wellness practice and people were really liking it and I was getting my health back. And I wanted them to have the same quality of herbs, and I was having a really hard time finding products that met my specifications, so I was able to do something that is impossible to do now.
I wrote and, and got involved in correspondence with a large supplement manufacturer, and they agreed to build products to my specifications. And so I learned the supply chain. I, I researched where I could get specific grade extracts and, and you know, where I could get the highest quality. And I was shipping, having that shipped to the company and they were.
Doing small runs, like couple hundred bottles for me. Wow. Just for my patients in my office. Nobody will do that anymore. You know, you have to have thousands of bottles. Um, but, but, um, gradually my daughter and I built that into a company to serve people with, uh, all of these kinds of needs. And it's, uh, it's been an interesting journey.
Julie Michelson: It's amazing. And, and what a, what a resource for people. Um, and I, I just wanna highlight when you, even when you were talking about your own healing, you know, it took five years of. We're all, and of course we all want relief and we all wanna feel better as quick as possible, but I always tell people, you know, when we're, we're addressing chronic illness, it didn't happen overnight.
So always be wary of anybody that promises you, you know, that this quick hit, whether it's a 10 day course of antibiotic, whatever it is, um, you know, the, the, it's, it's going to take. And, and the, but the beauty is like the cells that are making up this, but my body right now are not the same cells that made up my body 20 years ago when I was sick, so, right.
You know, it, it is, it, if we understand that, um, and understand I love your, you know, self-care is cell care. We really get down to Okay. You know, I, I think most of us with chronic illness. Can understand cellular health and mitochondrial health and you know, because we know what it feels like to, to not feel well.
Right. Um, and so it makes sense that, well, that's the level at which we need to address healing.
Bill Rawls: Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, it, it's, um, you know, your body is made of cells and if you are chronically ill, every aspect of that chronic illness can be, um, rooted in cellular stress. Inflammation is cellular stress hormone and de dysfunction is cellular stress.
Every symptom, all your abnormal labs are cellular stress. So when you start focusing on. Getting one cell healthy. Yeah. By doing the things that you need. That's the key to actually getting well, that's what's going to help you more than any other single thing. And the micro factor, you know, that's a big factor.
I think what I'm finding is connections to virtually every chronic illness, to these low grade stealth microbes, rheumatoid arthritis, everything Autoimmune. Yeah. Chronic multiple sclerosis, absolutely everything. And so herbs ought to be a really, uh, central part of the recovery process, um, because you can suppress those microbes without disrupting your gut flora, without generating antibiotic resistant pathogens.
So you can do it for a long time, as long as it takes.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Which is amazing. What a, what a gift. Um, you, you won't. Mm-hmm. You know, I, I look at it as, again, as like, what's the downside to, you know, and I actually think there's relief for people in that approach of One cell, you know, just. Just one. Every change you make to support one cell is going to move the needle.
Like we heal one step at a time. And, and not that there is this no ma there isn't a magic bullet. Um, and, and yeah, I know. I, I really appreciate you taking not only your. Training and your personal experience and your wisdom, but then, you know, to to, to have the book and, and create a guide for people where, and, and a company where they can access the quality of, of the herbs that they need, um, is, is really, really amazing work.
Oh,
Bill Rawls: well, thank you. Yeah, it, it, it's been an interesting journey. I wouldn't, yeah. Probably
Julie Michelson: not what you planned on right. When you first went to medical school. It's not
Bill Rawls: at all. But I wouldn't trade it, you know? Yeah, of course. I just couldn't trade it.
Julie Michelson: Well, we're at that point in the conversation where I ask you a trick question, which is, what is one step listeners can take starting today to improve their health?
Bill Rawls: Just start, start learning about herbal therapy, you know? 'cause I imagine a lot of your listeners are already trying to change their diet and get better sleep. Yep. And you know, get moving again and all of those things. But it's the micro factor that I think people are missing and the herbs. Are the one thing that can help that the very, very most, but the end that what you're doing is creating an environment inside your body that promotes cellular recovery and that is the key to wellness.
Julie Michelson: Ah, amazing. There you have it. Cellular recovery and, and, and doable in pe You know, I, I love that you're like, it doesn't need to be these crazy. Outta the box therapeutics, you know, or strange things that you have to leave the country to go get addressed as these are things we can, we can be doing in our own homes to support our cellular health.
Bill Rawls: You know, sometimes those things are indicated, but what I find is if people focus on the basics first and do those things very intently, yeah. Most people don't need those other things.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, absolutely. Or you know, if you are gonna do, just do it in synergy and, and that's great too, if you can For sure. So amazing for people that are listening on the go and aren't gonna check the notes, where's the best place to find more about you and to find the book.
Bill Rawls: Our, our company is vital plan.com. Um, but I also have a, uh, just an information, uh, page or website, uh, raws md.com and put slash resources that will get you a lot of great information. Nice. Um, the, those are the best places to find me.
Julie Michelson: Amazing. I so, so appreciate your, your time, your wisdom, um, and, and just the education that you're bringing to everybody.
Bill Rawls: Always a pleasure. Thank you
Julie Michelson: for everyone listening. Remember, you can get those show notes and transcripts by visiting Inspired Living Show. Hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week
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Bill Rawls
For over 30 years, Dr. Bill Rawls has dedicated his life to medicine. When a health crisis with chronic Lyme disease abruptly changed his quality of life, he came face to face with the limitations of modern medicine and began to explore the vast possibilities of alternative treatments. Restoring his health through holistic and herbal therapies inspired him to share his revelations on the importance of cellular wellness for defending against microbes and other root causes of illness. Today, he works to bring life and vitality to others as he helps them establish their own paths to wellness through modern herbology.
Through his bestselling books, Unlocking Lyme and The Cellular Wellness Solution, Dr. Rawls demonstrates why crucial herbal phytochemicals are key to protecting cellular health and strengthening the body's defense against illness. Dr. Rawls is also the founder of holstic health company, Vital Plan.
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