The Born Free Protocol

[Kitty]

List of what this protocol “treats” absolutely wild:

Oh that's made my day. Functional glycogen storage disease...

 

[MrMagoo]

List of what this protocol “treats” absolutely wild(pulled from the website borne free today):


Really got every base covered don’t we!

​

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)	Long COVID, Post-Vaccine Syndrome	Viral / Post-Viral Chronic Fatigue
Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM)	“Floxed”	Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS)
Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS)	Breathlessness	Hypoxia
Acidosis / Alkalosis / pH Dysregulation	Dysregulated Cortisol	Dyslipidemia
Post Finasteride Syndrome (PFS)	Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD)	Post Accutane Syndrome
Small Fibre Peripheral Neuropathy (SFPN)	Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)	Diamine Oxidase (DAO) Deficiency
Stiff Person Syndrome	Gut Fermentation Syndrome	Glycogen Storage Disease (functional)
Histamine intolerance	Brain Fog	Sleep disorders
Anxiety	Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)	Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
Fibromyalgia	Dysautonomia	Frequent Urination
GI Disorders	“Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth” (SIBO)	Vitamin B6 Toxicity
Vitamin A Toxicity	Candidiasis	Aspergillosis
Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS)	Joint Pain	Connective Tissue Disorders
Macular Degeneration	Multiple Sclerosis (MS)	Parkinson's Disease (PD)
Tinnitus	Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)	Erectile Dysfunction
Elevated Cholesterols / Fasting Glucose / D-Dimer	Hashimotos	Alopecia
Major and other types of Depression	Cataracts	Migraines

I personally was excited to have one treatment to cure my hEDS, FMS, Audhd and ME/CFS. I’m long sighted too. /sarcasm

 

[Arnie Pye]

A first for me... I've never read about "Vitamin A toxicity" in connection with ME before.

 

[ChronicallyOverIt]

If it even worked 1/10th of his claims he would be nobel prize winner.

hair loss alone would be a multi million dollar, really just had to throw that in there too lol

Interesting seems like every disease has a grifter selling a potion but instead let’s try to capture the entire market.

The thing I don’t get, what is he gaining from this? Most of these guys sell classes, supplements, etc. I’m still trying to find the true grift? Influence?

 

[MrMagoo]

hair loss alone would be a multi million dollar, really just had to throw that in there too lol

Interesting seems like every disease has a grifter selling a potion but instead let’s try to capture the entire market.

The thing I don’t get, what is he gaining from this? Most of these guys sell classes, supplements, etc. I’m still trying to find the true grift? Influence?

I think it might be ego/biohacking bragging rights.
Apparently he is a tech millionaire who retired early so this is his pet project.
He’s obviously quite clever but that’s doesn’t make him right. Stockton Rush was very clever and rich and died when his submersible imploded.

 

[Verity]

Given the enormous range of backgrounds of these evangelical recoverees, and the equally large variation in their ‘treatment’ protocols, are the only commonalities between them are that they had sufficient activity levels to invest in their preferred approach and they experience recovery?

I suspect so. Raelan Agle was able to do exercise that many moderate and severe patients couldn’t dream of when she was still sick, for example. I suspect the fact that she could do those exercises has a lot more to do with her recovery than the exercises themselves.

 

[mariovitali]

Tweet from Renegade Research :

We have partnered with @joshual_tm to develop a platform for clinician trainingOur Medical Coaching Program also provides guidance in executing the Born Free Protocol if you and your clinician are interested in this path

 

[Covidivici]

1. Gets flu
2. Days pass
3. Puts potato in socks at night to treat ongoing flu-that-won't-go-away
4. More days pass
5. No longer has flu
6. Sock potato works!

Vallee!!! You were supposed to wait until we patented the sock potato protocol before the reveal! How are we to make our fortune now? (Notice how I inserted myself in your discovery. As self-declared, co-founding member of Sock Potato Power Pill Supplements Inc. I hereby demand that you cease and desist all mention of socks and potatoes in perpetuity.... am I doing it right?)

The thing I don’t get, what is he gaining from this? Most of these guys sell classes, supplements, etc. I’m still trying to find the true grift? Influence?

Not just influence: Purpose.

It's what makes casual bigots form active clubs, lonely men moderate incel blogs and fundamentalists proselytize. Purpose is the one thing missing in many people's humdrum lives. And an intractable, nebulous disease with desperate patients and a vast array of unproven treatments carries an immense force of attraction.

The gratitude is real (if undeserved). The success is documented (if only by highly suspect sources which rely entirely on anecdotal evidence).

I get it. I hate it, but I get it.

 

[Sean]

Renegade Research

How appropriate.

---------

Sock potato. Pfft.

Just wait until you see the clear benefit demonstrated in my experiment on polar bear repelling rocks. No a single polar bear has been seen here since we started using them.

The fact I live in the tropics and no polar bears have ever been seen here has no relevance at all to the results.

 

[MrMagoo]

Tweet from Renegade Research :

What an amazing Co-incidence!

 

[ChronicallyOverIt]

Interesting looking at Reddit he is the creator of the "Mr.happy Stack" this is wild hadn’t heard about that in a long time, probably one of the most prolific nootropic stacks. Guess this has been a passion for a while, I read about that in 2014ish, I think it goes back to 2011. Interesting all around, weird when two small corners of the internet intersect

 

[Holinger]

I think just on the basis of including both
“autism” and “GI disorders” (all of them!?) you can tell its absolute BS ahah.

If it even worked 1/10th of his claims he would be nobel prize winner.

It is amazing this person has gained any traction at all. He is a dude that wears a lab coat and ‘consults’ in endocrinology. Fine if no damage was done but people that have a profile in the community and are recommending the protocol should know better. It was a bit of a heart sink moment when I clicked on reddit yesterday. For the record I was only half as severe as some people who were not able to speak and have tried a significant amount of the substances in the protocol in an actual university clinical trial. It did nothing for me and the others.

 

[mariovitali]

A first for me... I've never read about "Vitamin A toxicity" in connection with ME before.

Related to Vitamin A toxicity, there may be a connection which I have also seen during my research. We will have to investigate whether ME patients have been taking the drug Accutane.

https://meassociation.org.uk/2013/0...ty-assessments-of-roaccutane-21-january-2013/

The Born Free protocol (or Joshua himself ?) suggested that Whitney rubs into his nostrils Tretinoin (A vitamin A derivative) cream for better absorption. The result :

I put a dab into each nostril (absorbs best in mucosal tissue) and rubbed it all around twice and the next day, that exact area in my nostrils were "chapped" feeling (like when you were a kid and got a cold and rubbed your nose with too many tissues) and I've also felt like I have a cold on top of ME/CFS, I've just been miserable. And it seems to be affecting my whole body system wide, my BM's have even been messed up since.

I hypothesize that doing this he got systemic exposure of this derivative which is not good for the liver :

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548568/

Source :

https://x.com/DafoeWhitney/status/1973764912254984350https://x.com/DafoeWhitney/status/1973764912254984350

 

[butter.]

It is amazing this person has gained any traction at all. He is a dude that wears a lab coat and ‘consults’ in endocrinology. Fine if no damage was done but people that have a profile in the community and are recommending the protocol should know better. It was a bit of a heart sink moment when I clicked on reddit yesterday. For the record I was only half as severe as some people who were not able to speak and have tried a significant amount of the substances in the protocol in an actual university clinical trial. It did nothing for me and the others.

The lab coat. It would be funny if it were not so sad. There is no shortage of vulnerable people who will take this seriously and act on it.

 

[Dude]

Renegade Research claims to be a nonprofit, yet it is also listed as one of Joshua’s projects on his personal website. The organization offers paid coaching; however, the reported prices — $3,600 for 90 days of coaching and $5,200 for more complex cases — appear to come from Reddit discussions and are not publicly listed on Renegade Research’s official website.

Bro what?
A pretty good article on this topic:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cfs/s/bUXFT74PQS

 

[Braganca]

Born Free protocol (or Joshua himself ?) suggested that Whitney rubs into his nostrils Tretinoin (A vitamin A derivative) cream for better absorption. The result :

Omg.. any skin care obsessed woman could tell you how damaging this would be. Tretinoin is an extremely potent prescription only form of retinol. It should never ever be applied to mucosal linings as delicate as in your nostrils. It can cause chapping just of your regular skin. This is easily available obvious information to anyone with some basic sense, access to google or indeed the product insert.

 

[Trish]

Tweet from Renegade Research :

That is shocking. How can they justify training clinicians in a potentially harmful program of treatment that has no clinical trial evidence. Surely cinicians should be sued or struck off for this.

Renegade research seem to be out of control dangerous.

 

[Chandelier]

From

I was permanently harmed by the protocol - specifically by the biofilm busters and NMN. The former seemed to unleash some infections (what I suspect is some spirochete) that it has been unable to rid itself of since; the latter made my PEM much worse, the level of activity that triggered it much lower, and time course much longer. It sent me back from moderate to bedbound. Other things like riboflavin gave me serious though reversible inflammation and bleeding, or thiamine that flared my candida and made me feel like my nervous system was exploding. The probiotics gave me dangerous (actual) herxheimer reactions even at tiny doses. The antimicrobials and immunomodifiers are obviously not fit for purpose. Both are weak - we should have already learned from both the HIV and COVID pandemics that people hawking herbals as antimicrobials are scammers (looking at the order of magnitude difference in IC50/EC50 between, e.g., herbals and pharmaceutical antivirals alone should be enough to clear that up), and the full extent and root causes of the immune dysfunction are not even fully or firmly understood. Not to mention immune profiles often differ widely between individuals with even just this disease, let alone all the diseases the protocol claims to treat. Taking immune modifiers willy-nilly, when I was early into this illness and desperate enough to dive into this protocol, is perhaps the most profoundly negative thing I did to entrench this disease state in my body.

The protocol - which is barely legible - is obviously psuedoscientofic nonsense that can’t even accomplish any of the wide range of lofty goals it promises. But this is also a population that in many cases is frighteningly sensitive to tiny doses of supplements that for anyone else - even other people with the illness - would be completely innocuous.

Needless to say, none of it is getting at sufficiently upstream causes of dysfunction, but merely tinkering with downstream dysfunction, much of which could be compensatory and protective. Claims that this is all “complex systems biology” that is meant to magically click together in the body, but not be understood by mere mortals, are a profound and disingenuous arrogance that prey on people’s overwhelm, desperation, and abandonment.

It’s dangerous and there is no one warning vulnerable and desperate people about the dangers. Every bad reaction is explained away as a “herx”, which is a very specific pathology and not some catch-all bad reaction that can be diagnosed via strangers on a discord server. (Not dissimilar to explaining away every bad supplement reaction as merely a result of MCAS). Not to mention the two high profile deaths (that we know of) associated with what is plainly a cult figure, who massively overplays his expertise, and his ever-shifting “protocol” (currently only $690 for a monthly kit, $800 if you want iron with it too!). Neither deaths were ever properly investigated or discussed in the context of this protocol and how it may have contributed. If this were to have occurred in the context of a real, regulated, well-run clinical trial, it would be considered profoundly unethical, disqualifying, and career-destroying, as it should be.

I very viscerally understand the desperation that drives people to view this protocol as a Hail Mary. But this is not a remotely serious way to treat any illness. And it concerns me that medical and research professionals might see the community engaging with this clear grift and conclude that the community - patients, researchers, and specialist clinicians - and much of the very valuable knowledge we have otherwise is pseudoscience and not worth engaging with. We need REAL research and REAL treatments, and we need a community focus on advocacy for funding well-run studies to get us there. What we don’t need are any more pseudoscience grifting cults where the deaths linked to the protocol - or perhaps more importantly, to the figure at the heart of it all - are downplayed and left completely unquestioned.

 

[MrMagoo]

Related to Vitamin A toxicity, there may be a connection which I have also seen during my research. We will have to investigate whether ME patients have been taking the drug Accutane.

https://meassociation.org.uk/2013/0...ty-assessments-of-roaccutane-21-january-2013/

The Born Free protocol (or Joshua himself ?) suggested that Whitney rubs into his nostrils Tretinoin (A vitamin A derivative) cream for better absorption. The result :



I hypothesize that doing this he got systemic exposure of this derivative which is not good for the liver :

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548568/

Source :

https://x.com/DafoeWhitney/status/1973764912254984350https://x.com/DafoeWhitney/status/1973764912254984350

Oh Tret is what all the 40+ skincare gurus are using.
I see this was already mentioned.
This kind of reminds me of Bryan Johnson, known as the “don’t die” guy. He is a retired tech millionaire as well, although he’s mainly experimenting on himself and Co-incidentally sells the supplements he claims are helping him. It’s definitely a “thing” in the US of A.
Of course, they have virtually no free healthcare, so you can see why this, and the likes of Herbalife gain traction.

 

[MrMagoo]

I wonder whether this is the “big news coming next year” that caused our concerned brain training visitor (Paul Garners colleague or friend) to be worried about us all when it came out!?