In this episode of the Functional Medicine Research podcast, I interview Dr. Scott Antoine in a discussion about overcoming PANDAS.  Dr. Antoine shares a personal story about PANDAS and his daughter which sparked a deep interest in this disorder that is misunderstood by conventional medicine.  We discuss PANDAS, PANS, IVIG, OCD, and Dr. Antoine's Fully Functional practice model.  You'll also learn how to find a practitioner who is well-versed in PANDAS and the associated disorders discussed in this interview.

Below is a full transcript on Overcoming PANDAS with Dr. Scott Antoine

Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome everyone to "Functional Medicine Research". I'm Dr. Hedberg and I'm really looking forward to my conversation today with Dr. Scott Antoine. We're gonna be talking about PANDAS today. And Dr. Antoine is an osteopathic physician and after medical school, he completed an emergency medicine residency and emergency medical services fellowship at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. He also has completed a fellowship in metabolic, nutritional and functional medicine through the Metabolic Medical Institute. And he was 1 of only 121 physicians nationwide to achieve board certification in integrative medicine through the newly formed American Board of Integrative Medicine. And he also holds a certification in functional medicine through the Institute for Functional Medicine.

He and his wife currently run a busy functional and integrative medicine practice in Carmel, Indiana where they focus on helping patients who are hopeless and overwhelmed, find the root causes of illness and recover their lives and vitality.

Dr. Antoine, welcome to the show.

Dr. Antoine: Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.

Dr. Hedberg: Great. So this is a topic I haven't covered previously and you have a particular interest in also not just PANDAS but also mycotoxin illnesses and mold exposure and you have a personal story about that with your daughter who had developed PANDAS in 2013. And it sounds like that's what kind of propelled you into functional medicine. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about that background?

Dr. Antoine: Sure. That's certainly true. So I have a daughter. Her name is Emma. She's 18 now. But five or six years ago, she came to my wife and I one day and said, "I don't think God is happy with me. I think I'm a bad person." And she was having some intrusive thoughts. Shortly thereafter she developed some compulsive handwashing. She had issues with terrible insomnia and bladder control. And we weren't really sure what was going on. At the time, we were both physicians. My wife and I had been physicians for years and so we hit the books to try and figure this out. And one night at about 10 p.m. my wife Ellen came to me and she said, "I think I know what's wrong with Emma. I think she has PANDAS."

I wasn't really sure what that was but I hit the books and said, "Sure enough. That sounds exactly like what she's got going on." PANDAS is pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with strep infection. So these kids get a run of the mill infection, maybe a sore throat or a cold, something that involves the strep bacteria, and the antibodies they make to fight it which is what your body's supposed to do, cross the blood-brain barrier and then cause inflammation in the brain and produce all of these characteristic symptoms. These kids become very defiant. They can develop facial tics which my daughter had as well.

So once we figured that out, I figured now we have a direction to go in. So I called the infectious disease...head of infectious disease at our local children's hospital and he got on the phone with me and said, "Well,