8 minute read
Magnetic Force
hen Kelly Downing first entered Janelle Elyse Salzman’s office in Nashua, New Hampshire, she could barely walk. Downing weighed under a hundred pounds. She was taking seventy different medications a day, including six powerful antibiotics, which if she stopped taking, resulted in her going into paralysis. Bright lights, loud noises or even something as unthreatening as riding an escalator readily sent her into a seizure. She couldn’t work, shower or even sit in the stands to watch her kids play soccer. Now, at the age of forty, Downing required near constant care; her body was as weak and fragile as someone twice her age. The root cause of her nightmare was a disease that’s confounded medical experts since it was first discovered in Connecticut nearly fifty years ago: Lyme. Many of Salzman’s clients arrive at her office for the first time in similar states of despair. Most have already gone the traditional route of treating their Lyme disease through powerful antibiotics, some going as far to have them administered by way of a PICC line pumping the fluids directly into their hearts. Others have sought the top Lyme-literate doctors in the world, undergone gut-wrenching treatments and spent their life savings trying to find reprieve from the ravages of Lyme. And yet despite these extraordinary efforts, their Lyme disease persists, becoming chronic and ultimately lifecrushing. That’s when they find Salzman. Janelle Elyse Salzman is one of only a few dozen practitioners in the world trained in what’s known as Lyme Magnetic Protocol. Placing high-powered magnets on strategic points of the body where Lyme disease can linger, Janelle is able to dislodge chronic infections. Once the infections are worked free by the magnets, the body’s own immune system is able to attack and destroy them. “The beauty of this is that the body does the healing, not the magnets,” Salzman explains. “A biological frequency is created by placing the magnets where the infections hide out, and the virus starts to change, the pH in the body starts to change and creates a homeostasis where the immune system can now figure out how to fight it.”
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Biomagnetic Pair Therapy was developed more than thirty years ago in Mexico by Dr. Isaac Goiz Durán to treat HIV. After showing promising results, the protocol branched off to address a number of other diseases, helping the body to fight off viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites. In the early 2000s, Joan Randall, a practitioner living in Woodstock, Vermont, developed the Magnetic Lyme Protocol. After curing her own Lyme disease, she began training other practitioners in this treatment modality. In 2015, Salzman became one of her first students.
“My roots are in Western medicine,” Salzman explains. “I was trained as an occupational therapist and worked in acute rehabilitation, pediatrics and hospice care.” During those early years, she began recognizing that Western medicine was only treating part of the problem when it came to disease. “We’re doing a lot of Band-Aid treatments; we’re not getting to the root of the cause.” To that end, Salzman dove into Eastern medicine, specifically studying the five-thousand-year-old Indian practice of Ayurveda at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health.
“Ayurveda is the science of life or the wisdom of longevity,” she says. “The beauty of Ayurveda is that when we address emotional needs and physical needs together
Diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2012, Kelly Downing suffered devastating symptoms, including paralysis. Before being treated by Janelle Elyse Salzman, Downing was taking seventy different medications.
we have better results with health and longevity.” Seeking to combine her hands-on Western medical background as an occupational therapist with her holistic approach as an Ayurveda practitioner, Salzman found biomagnetism.
“I never went into this venture to treat Lyme,” she says, “but my patients led me to it.” After learning the protocol from Randall, Salzman started to understand why Lyme is such a confounding disease to treat. “The reason I think why Lyme disease is so confusing is that we’re not just looking at Lyme disease, Borrelia and its co-infections,” she explains. “We’re looking at a whole pathogenic soup of all infection that’s gathered over a lifetime that needs to be addressed before a person can really feel in health again.”
According to Salzman, there are over five hundred variations of Lyme. On top of that, there can be more than seven hundred other infections that could potentially be lying dormant in the body, which the tick bite and subsequent Lyme enflamed. So while antibiotics might attack the Lyme, the root causes of disease continue to fester. Using kinesiology to pinpoint these variations and
“JANELLE IS MY MIRACLE WORKER... ALONG WITH MY HUSBAND, MY CHILDREN, MY PARENTS AND MY GOD—SHE GAVE infections, Salzman’s protocol resolves them ME MY LIFE BACK.” one by one until health is restored. Kelly Downing was diagnosed with Lyme — KELLY DOWNING disease in 2012, yet it wasn’t in response to an acute tick bite. Returning home from her work as a special needs teacher one day, Downing felt her right arm start to go numb until it was completely paralyzed. Her husband rushed her to the ER the next morning where over the course of a few hours both her arms became paralyzed. She was helicoptered to Boston where a neurologist conducted a scan but didn’t find anything to explain her symptoms. By the time she returned home, Downing’s legs started going into paralysis. Finally, her primary care physician suggested she get tested for Lyme. Downing went on powerful antibiotics for eight months, yet anytime she weaned off them, she became completely paralyzed. She was admitted into a rehabilitation treatment center, where she spent three months laboriously learning how to move her body again. But when she finally returned home, Downing started becoming riddled with seizures. She felt like her “mind had been kidnapped,” preventing her from engaging in even the most basic activities. “Taking a shower felt like I was being stung by a thousand bees at once,” she recalls. Downing and her husband sought out a top Lyme specialist who put her on another regimen of antibiotics. Once again, paralysis took hold of her body when she tried to wean off of them.
y the time Downing found her way into Salzman’s office with the help of a close friend— six years after her diagnosis— her body was utterly defeated. “I came in with a little bit of guardedness; my friend was practically carrying me in,” Downing says. “But within five seconds I felt this surreal connection with Janelle. She just got me.” Over the course of the next year and a half, Salzman pinpointed the many Lyme co-infections that were continuing to riddle Downing’s body.
As each co-infection was dislodged by the magnets, Downing’s immune system was finally able to attack them effectively. Soon she began tapering off her medications, eliminating nearly all seventy bottles until she was left with only the antibiotics. Through muscle testing, Salzman discovered that Downing’s dependence on the antibiotics didn’t have to do with Lyme, but rather a deeply buried strep infection that had probably afflicted her since childhood. Once Salzman targeted the strep, Downing was able to eliminate all the antibiotics.
“Janelle is my miracle worker,” Downing says. “Along with my husband, my children, my parents and my God—she gave me my life back.” After a year and a half of working with Salzman, Downing not only was able to live seizure-free and return to many of the family activities
Bthat Lyme had robbed her of, but she also studied to become an aerial yoga instructor. “My body and mind are now machines that I never thought they could be again,” she says. “By last summer, I was 85 percent back to health. Janelle will be the one to bring me across the finish line.” Operating out of New Hampshire Health and Wellness, which she founded in 2016 with four other practitioners, Salzman sees clients from all over the country, including doctors and other naturopaths. Combining her Western and Eastern medical expertise, she’s broadened her protocol beyond Lyme to treat a range of other ailments, from multiple sclerosis to thyroid disease. Many of her patients have similarly dramatic stories of healing, making Salzman one of the most sought-after practitioners in the country. “People find me mostly by word of mouth,” she says. And perhaps like the protocol itself, Salzman’s healing power has a magnetic pull for the many people who need it most. NEL
— KELLY DOWNING
Follow Janelle Elyse Salzman on social media @JanelleElyse and learn more about her practice at nhhealthwellness.com. New Hampshire Health and Wellness has fourteen providers, practicing everything from the Lyme Magnetic Protocol to Reiki.
