Episode 17: Lyme Disease, Being Gaslit, and Getting Your Mojo Back - Amy Down's Four-Year Fight to Be Believed 🩺 Amy Down spent four years being told there was nothing wrong with her. Exhausted, foggy, gut in revolt, running on adrenaline while raising two small children and working full time in wellness. Test after test came back normal. Doctor after doctor suggested it was probably just stress. This week Amy joins Lee and Irene in the cabin to tell the story of what it actually was, and what four years in the medical maze taught her about being a woman who knows something is wrong and cannot get anyone to listen. Amy is a certified nutrition, health and life coach, a master hypnotherapist, and an EFT and NLP practitioner who spent over a decade at Australia’s biggest natural healthcare company before founding Living Mojo. She is also one of Lee’s closest friends, so this is less a polished interview and more two people who have walked a long road together finally telling the whole thing out loud. Her diagnosis, when it finally came, was a tick-borne illness. In Australia that opens a genuinely contested conversation, and Lee and Irene handle it the way the show always does: warmly, honestly, and without pretending the science is settled. Irene, who went in convinced Lyme was something you only caught in the Hamptons, asks the questions everyone at home is thinking. Then Justin arrives with a Womansplain for the ages (froyo versus gelato versus ice cream, with receipts), and Lee closes with a rave about the most underrated wellness tool there is. Not a supplement. A boundary. ✨ In this episode we chat about: ● Why four years of normal test results does not always mean nothing is wrong ● What a tick bite can actually do, and why Lyme is so contested here in Australia ● The MOJO framework Amy built to climb out: Mindset, Oxygenation, Optimisation, Joy ● How to advocate for yourself when you know something is wrong and you are not being heard ● Justin’s three-day froyo bender and the great gelato-versus-ice-cream-versus-froyo shootout ● Lee’s rave on boundaries, and the difference between a wall and an instruction manual 🎙 What’s Popping: Amy Down on Lyme, Being Heard, and Getting Your Mojo Back Ten Years, and a Friendship That Started With Gut Health ● How They Met: Lee found Amy before Amy found Lee. Amy took Lee on as a gut-health writer at Blackmores, then started feeling unwell herself and came to Lee for coaching. Lee helped her feel seen and heard. Roughly ten years later, they are still at it. ● An Unusual CV: Fitness instructor and marketer in Sydney, then PR and comms in London (with a stint in India studying yoga and a meeting with the Dalai Lama), then nearly twelve years at Blackmores while she qualified in what she does now. ● From Mummy Mojo to Living Mojo: Amy started Mummy Mojo in 2014 with her Mother’s Group friend Debs, running detox programs and helping overloaded mums find some rest. When Debs moved to Queensland, the business was reborn as Living Mojo, because the one word Amy could never let go of was mojo. The Superwoman Complex, and the Silent Thief ● The Plates Kept Spinning: Two kids under five, a full-time corporate career, study on the side, the household, community groups. Amy wore the Superwoman cape with pride and kept every plate polished on the outside while she was quietly falling apart inside. ● A Silent Thief: In Amy’s words, the illness stole her vitality, her joy, her clarity, and eventually her health. Her body was whispering long before it started shouting. ● The Line That Landed: Tired, foggy, gut playing up, running on empty, still spinning the plates. As Irene put it, that list is basically every woman over 40, which is exactly why this story travels well beyond ticks. Four Years of Being Told It Was Just Stress ● The Medical Maze: Four years, specialist after specialist, bloods, MRIs, colonoscopies, screenings. For the most part everything came back fine while Amy was visibly falling apart. ● The Punch in the Stomach: Some doctors landed on ‘you have two young kids and a busy life, maybe it’s just stress.’ For someone genuinely unwell, not being believed is its own kind of injury. ● The Great Imitator: Along the way she was handed different labels, including chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and mast cell activation, because so many of the symptoms cut across so many conditions. Part of her also did not want to admit she was sick in her mid-thirties, so pushing through felt easier than stopping. Getting to the Diagnosis ● Where It Started: Late 2010. Amy was bitten by around forty tiny grass ticks after being in the ocean (they were so small the family first assumed sea lice), developed a bullseye rash and flu-like symptoms, and was told at the time that it could not be what she thought it was. ● Finding a Lyme-Literate Doctor: It took relentless persistence to find a doctor willing to investigate. Testing was done through Australian Biologics here, with further samples sent to a specialist lab overseas to build a fuller picture. ● More Than One Passenger: The results pointed to a strain of Borrelia plus co-infections. A thorough workup also picked up a reactivated Epstein-Barr virus (from a bout of glandular fever at twelve), a dormant cytomegalovirus that had switched back on, and a parasite. These opportunistic infections often ride along in complex chronic illness. Why Lyme Is So Contested in Australia ● Not Formally Recognised: Classic Lyme is well known overseas but poorly understood here, and doctors who diagnose and treat it can face professional scrutiny, which keeps the number of willing practitioners low. ● The Official Term: Authorities describe this patient group as having DSCATT, Debilitating Symptom Complexes Attributed to Ticks. Amy notes there can be around seventy-seven symptoms attributed to this kind of illness, which is why it is nicknamed the great imitator. ● The Cost Barrier: Because much of the specialist testing has to be sent overseas, with no Medicare rebate, it can run to several thousand dollars, precisely when many sufferers have had to give up work. The full clinical picture and current Australian position are in the Nerd Notes below. Ticks 101: What Every Australian Should Know ● Not Every Tick Carries Infection: Most tick bites, including the grass ticks that come off children, carry no infection at all. Amy’s situation was partly a numbers game: out of forty bites, it may have taken only one infected tick. ● Time Matters: It takes roughly thirty-six hours for an infection to take hold, so prompt, safe removal counts. ● Removal: Keep proper tweezers or a tick-freezing product at home if you live near the bush, or go straight to a GP to have it removed safely. Amy’s own first attempt (fully clothed in the bath, husband on tweezers) is not the recommended method. ● Alpha-Gal Is Different: A tick bite can also trigger alpha-gal syndrome, also called mammalian meat allergy, a serious allergic reaction to red meat. Unlike DSCATT, alpha-gal is well recognised and can be tested for on standard pathology. Amy’s Recovery and the MOJO Framework ● Antibiotics Were a Start, Not the Whole Story: Early on, a few brave doctors prescribed milder antibiotics such as doxycycline based on the clinical picture; after formal diagnosis she was able to access IV antibiotics. But killing the infection begged a bigger question: why did it take hold in the first place? ● It Was the Terrain: Amy traces it to the ground the illness grew in: a mouldy house plus a genetic sensitivity to mould, chronic unadmitted stress, a sick child, and years of broken sleep. Around twenty to thirty percent of people go on to develop chronic Lyme, and terrain is a big part of why. ● The MOJO Framework: Out of all of it came four pillars. Mindset (nervous-system work through hypnotherapy and EFT). Oxygenation (gentle detox, movement, clean products, reducing EMF load, her Oura Ring for feedback). Optimisation (good food, a healthy gut microbiome, the foundations Lee lives and breathes). And Joy, which when you are bedbound can be as small as the dog and a good friend. The magic, she says, is stacking them: a walk by the ocean with the dog covers several at once. ● Drainage Before Detox: A cautionary tale. Amy once threw herself into a big detox program in Cyprus and ended up in hospital, because she had not opened her drainage and lymphatic pathways first. Detoxing too hard, too fast can flood a body that is not ready. Order matters. Advocating for Yourself, and Parenting Through It ● Trust the Intuition: Amy’s first step is listening to that inner signal that something is off, and refusing to override it. ● Bring Receipts: Keep a written record of symptoms and timings. You are far less likely to be waved away when you arrive with facts in hand. ● Get More Opinions, and Be Relentless: If an opinion does not sit right, seek another. As Amy puts it, no one will advocate for your body better than you will. Lee’s take: every woman should get a pre-printed fortieth-birthday card that reads ‘advocate for yourself and get multiple opinions.’ ● Present, Not Perfect: On mothering through an invisible illness, Amy’s message to guilt-ridden mums is that there is no such thing as a perfect mother, only a present one. Prioritising yourself teaches your children that they matter too. Her own kids came out of it more empathetic, more tuned in to their bodies, and better at honest conversation. Where to Find Amy ● Living Mojo: livingmojo.com.au, with coaching programs, a newsletter full of free recipes, and a free three-day Mojo Reboot that works for anyone wanting a reset, not just those managing chronic illness. ● The Book: Amy’s first book, Back from the Brink: How to Get Your Mojo Back, is a memoir and self-help guide in one. It shares her Mojo Method recovery blueprint (w
