How Do You Know If You Have Lyme Disease? Inside the Conversation With Dr. Joseph Murphy, DC — "The Lyme Doc"

Most people who eventually get diagnosed with Lyme disease didn't go looking for it. They went to a doctor for something else entirely — crushing fatigue, brain fog, joint pain that moves around, a fibromyalgia label that never quite fit. That's the pattern Dr. Joseph Murphy, DC — known to his patients, and to the license plate on his car, as "The Lyme Doc" — described to Mark Anthony on this episode of Great Minds of Today. Murphy runs Newport Mesa Wellness in Southern California, where he treats chronic, complex illness with a toolkit that goes well beyond a typical chiropractic office.

His path into functional medicine wasn't planned around Lyme disease at all. Murphy started as a traditional chiropractor handling personal injury and workers'-compensation cases — work he said he "absolutely hated." Changes to California's workers'-comp system in the mid-2000s left him owed a large sum for cases he'd already completed, and the financial crisis and shifting insurance landscape that followed pushed him to retrain. He began studying with a small group of functional neurology and functional medicine practitioners, and by 2012 had his first two Lyme disease patients — referred to him almost by accident, before "functional medicine" was even a widely used term.

How Do You Know If You Have Lyme Disease?

Murphy was direct that Lyme disease is largely a symptom-based diagnosis, not something confirmed by a single decisive test. Patients rarely walk in asking about Lyme specifically — instead, he sees people chasing an unexplained cluster of symptoms: brain fog, chronic gut issues, joint pain, skin rashes, and, in more advanced cases, symptoms that mimic early multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, or even ALS. He drew a direct line between gut and brain: since roughly 87% of the body's neurotransmitters — dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine among them — are produced in the gut lining, chronic gut inflammation from Lyme can show up as anxiety, depression, and low mood as much as digestive trouble.

One recurring theme in his practice: doctors telling patients Lyme "doesn't exist" in their region. Murphy described a patient whose physician insisted there was no Lyme disease in Monterey, California — when Murphy tested him, the patient came back CDC-positive. He said the geographic assumptions many doctors still rely on are increasingly outdated, since ticks — and infected people — now travel widely. His advice for anyone with an unresolved cluster of these symptoms was simple: get tested rather than assume, and don't accept "there's no Lyme here" as a final answer. He mentioned using a lower-cost specialty lab option, priced in the few-hundred-dollar range with a roughly one-week turnaround, alongside a couple of larger, pricier national labs that also handle Lyme testing.

On prevention, Murphy said timing matters most: if you've been in tick territory — tall grass, pine trees, overhead brush — or find a tick that's been attached, a short course of doxycycline started within the first few weeks generally works well. Waiting, he said, is what turns a manageable exposure into a long, difficult case.

Inside the Toolkit: PEMF, Hyperbaric Oxygen, and SoftWave Therapy

Newport Mesa Wellness leans heavily on physical and electromagnetic modalities rather than long-term pharmaceuticals. Murphy walked through several:

• PEMF (Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy): three full-body units patients lie on, paired with supplemental oxygen delivered during the session. Murphy has used the same PEMF technology since 2014 and calls it his "fix-it machine" — he described it helping with sports injuries, back and neck pain, autoimmune conditions, and, during the height of the pandemic, long-COVID patients whose dormant Lyme infections had flared back up. A transcranial version of the same technology is also used for chronic insomnia; Murphy said it stimulates GABA activity in the brain, which in turn supports melatonin production and deeper sleep.
• Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT): patients breathe concentrated oxygen inside a pressurized chamber, which Murphy said allows oxygen to reach tissue — including parts of the brain — that it normally can't. He connected this directly to Lyme biology: the Borrelia bacteria that causes Lyme disease is anaerobic, meaning it thrives in low-oxygen environments, so flooding tissue with oxygen works against it. He drew a similar contrast with cancer cells, which he said generally prefer low-oxygen, high-glucose, acidic conditions — while being careful to frame HBOT as supportive rather than a cancer treatment.
• SoftWave TRT: a German-engineered electro-hydraulic shockwave device that sends a physical pulse deep into injured tissue. Murphy said it disperses inflammation, softens scar tissue, and effectively "fakes an injury" to trigger a localized stem cell response — something he's seen help partially torn menisci, shoulder labrum tears, frozen shoulder, plantar fasciitis, and slow-healing wounds over a course of roughly seven to ten weekly sessions. It's personal for him, too: after a double knee replacement in February 2021, Murphy developed blood clots that sidelined him for roughly nine months and left significant scar tissue in his legs. He now uses SoftWave on himself and is back to surfing on weekends.
• Class IV laser: a lower-level laser option for cases that call for a slower approach — Murphy described it as producing similar healing benefits to SoftWave through photobiomodulation, just over a longer course of treatment.

The Rife Frequency Program and What Recovery Actually Looks Like

For most Lyme patients, treatment centers on a nightly frequency device — technology Murphy first began using in 2012 with his first two patients. The device runs while patients sleep, typically eight to nine hours a night, with a program Murphy builds around the Borrelia bacteria and common co-infections. He said it's safe to run around family members and pets and that patients can travel with it.

Recovery timelines, he was careful to note, vary enormously. His first patients improved in six to eight months, which he initially assumed was typical — but patients since then have taken 12, 18, even 24 months, depending on how long the infection went untreated and how severe it became. He estimated that patients who follow the full program see roughly 80–90% of their symptoms resolve and stay resolved, though he was clear this reflects his own patient population rather than a controlled clinical trial. As one memorable example, he described a patient's dog with an inoperable jaw tumor that slept alongside its owner during the nightly frequency sessions; the tumor reportedly regressed over about 90 days. Murphy was quick to add that he doesn't claim the device treats cancer — only that, in his experience, it can support the body's own healing.

He was also candid about the toll chronic illness takes before patients find him, estimating that his average patient has already spent tens of thousands of dollars on treatments that didn't work by the time they reach his office. More recently, he's added a newer option he calls native phase therapy — a twice-daily electromagnetic frequency drink aimed at dormant viral co-infections like Epstein-Barr, Bartonella, and Babesia, as well as mold-related illness — which he began incorporating into his program in the past year.

Who This Conversation Is For

This episode is aimed at anyone who's been collecting diagnoses — fibromyalgia, "it's just stress," unexplained joint pain — without ever getting a clear answer, especially if a doctor has dismissed Lyme disease as unlikely based on geography alone. It's also a useful primer for anyone curious what a modern, technology-heavy functional medicine practice actually looks like in-office, beyond supplements and diet advice.