Posted by Hillary Thing
on September 18, 2026
After years of recurring Lyme disease, debilitating anxiety, joint pain, and profound fatigue, Mark had exhausted the conventional antibiotic route and was searching for a better path.
He worked with a practitioner-guided, multi-layered natural treatment protocol that centered around:
Spiro Upward Essential Oil Liposomal Remedy
and strategic biofilm support.
Over the course of treatment, he moved from a state of chronic nervous system dysregulation to feeling, in his own words, “entirely normal and clear. Better, in fact, than I have felt in years!”
Meet Mark, Who Spent A Decade Searching for a Way Back to Himself
Mark is a 62-year-old man living in New York's Hudson Valley - hiking trails, fresh air, and a deep connection to the natural world all part of his daily rhythm.
He eats clean, thinks carefully about what he puts in his body, and has long been someone who takes his health seriously.
But for the better part of a decade, something had been pulling the life force out of him.
Lyme disease had first entered Mark's life years earlier, likely accelerated by his move upstate and several acute tick-borne illness episodes.
He'd been treated with doxycycline twice (28-day courses), each time leaving him feeling saturated and sick, and neither resolving the underlying problem.
The antibiotics, he felt, didn't fully clear things and he didn't want to take them again.
He was looking for a solution that would treat the root cause safely, naturally, and for good.
How Lyme Disease Impacted Mark’s Life
The constellation of symptoms Mark was navigating was significant, and it was doing more than disrupting his days. It was reshaping his life.
Severe, persistent anxiety sat at the center of it all. His nervous system felt constantly revved. Tense at night, panicked in the early hours of the morning, always braced for something.
He had a diagnosed anxiety disorder, but he knew - intuitively, and increasingly through clinical investigation - that the anxiety was being driven by something biological.
The Lyme and co-infections caused his nervous system to feel dysregulated and out of control.
On top of the anxiety came:
- Crushing fatigue - the kind that made walking difficult, physical or mental work hard to sustain, and everything feel overwhelming
- Joint pain and stiffness - persistent shoulder, knee, and neck pain
- Brain fog and cognitive heaviness - difficulty focusing, forgetfulness, a sense of cloudiness he couldn’t find a way to break through
- General malaise - the persistent background sense of being unwell, of something always dragging him down
The picture was further complicated by co-infections discovered along the way, including evidence of Babesia, with its characteristic air hunger and night sweats.
His blood work reflected a positive Lyme IgG with all ten Borrelia-specific bands present, and a spinal tap later confirmed Lyme antibodies in cerebrospinal fluid, underscoring the depth of systemic involvement.
Ready to finally get to the bottom his health challenges, he began working with Traditional Chinese & Functional Medicine practitioner, Hillary Thing in the fall of 2023.
The Protocol That Finally Gave Mark His Life Back
The treatment protocol that Hillary developed together was not a single intervention.
It was a coordinated, multi-layered strategy that addressed the microbial drivers of illness, supported the body's detox and repair pathways, and gave his exhausted nervous system what it needed to begin to recalibrate.
Spiro Upward Essential Oil Liposomal Remedy formed the cornerstone of the protocol.
This advanced liposomal formulation uses nano-emulsion delivery to carry targeted antimicrobial essential oils (such as cinnamon bark, clove, oregano, cajeput, and myrrh) directly into cells, tissues, and biofilm environments where Borrelia and co-infections persist.
The liposomal delivery system is what makes this remedy genuinely different: it bypasses the absorption limitations of standard herbal preparations and reaches the hard-to-access areas that conventional treatments consistently miss.
Exterminator Herbal Formula was added (first as a brew, then later switched to tincture for ease of use) to deepen the antimicrobial work, bringing additional botanical compounds to bear against the microbial load driving Mark's systemic symptoms.
Astragalus Immune Shine Herbal Formula, an immune tonic and adaptogen-based blend, addressed the exhaustion and nervous system fragility that chronic infection had created.
Years of sustained immune activation had left his adrenals taxed and immune system compromised. Supporting adrenal and immune function was foundational to nervous system repair.
Biofilm support rounded out the protocol. Biofilms are protective matrices that Borrelia and other tick-borne pathogens form to evade both immune response and treatment.
Disrupting these structures through the use of lumbrokinase and other enzyme combinations allowed the antimicrobial components of the protocol to reach pathogens that would otherwise remain shielded.
Throughout treatment, Mark worked hard on his own behalf.
He walked daily when he could, ate a clean organic diet, pursued EMDR and somatic work to address the deep nervous system patterning that chronic illness and early-life stress had laid down, and remained closely engaged with his practitioner as the protocol was adjusted over time.
His commitment was real, and it was impactful.
A Great Transformation
The path forward was not without challenge.
Herxheimer reactions (the temporary worsening of symptoms as pathogens are eliminated and toxins released) surfaced at various points throughout treatment and required careful management, including detox practices, binder support and titration of remedies.
But as each wave passed, Mark found himself progressed further forward than before. Mark went from a man held hostage by anxiety - waking at 2am with his heart racing, unable to walk without becoming lightheaded, describing himself as feeling like something was pulling the life out of him - to someone who felt clear, energetic, uplifted, and even better than before his Lyme disease started.
Across the course of treatment, the changes accumulated steadily:
- Anxiety resolved substantially - his nervous system, no longer under constant microbial assault, found its way back to a regulated baseline
- Energy returned - he moved from needing afternoon naps and abandoning walks to completing 8-mile hikes
- Joint pain lifted - shoulder and neck pain that had persisted through two courses of antibiotics resolved; his knee, long a source of significant pain, gradually improved to 100% pain free
- Brain fog cleared - the cognitive heaviness that had made sustained work difficult gave way to a clear, focused mind
- Sleep normalized - the fractured, anxious nights became restful ones
His inflammatory markers which were previously elevated improved alongside his symptoms and ESR dropped from 8 to 2. His overall sense of vitality was, by his own account, the best it had been in over a decade.
Mark is a compelling example of what becomes possible when a multi-layered natural treatment approach is applied with consistency, clinical guidance, and the active participation of someone willing to do the work.
Mark's Story is Not an Outlier
It is a demonstration of what this kind of care can do when the right tools are applied in the right order, with the right support behind them.
Chronic Lyme disease, especially when anxiety dominates the clinical picture, can feel like a condition without a clear end point. The nervous system gets locked into a state of perpetual alarm. The body, exhausted by years of microbial burden, becomes stuck in a loop that prevents healing.
And the conventional treatment landscape offers little that feels sustainable.
What Mark found was a protocol rooted in intelligent plant medicine and delivered with a strategic clinical approach: Treat the infections and also support the body's own repair systems and detoxification requirements.
This approach gets to the root of the illness and helps symptoms improve faster.
All parts of the protocol work together to support whole body healing from complex chronic infection.
If you would like guidance creating a coordinated, layered approach to healing, reach out to the Nourishing Life Health Center to learn more about working with one of our expert practitioners (845-687-6211 / info@uprootinglyme.com).
