What if some of the most powerful tools for controlling chronic bacterial infections are already living inside the human body?
In this episode of the Tick Boot Camp Podcast, hosts Matt Sabatello and Rich Johannesen sit down with Dr. David A. Jernigan, DNM, DC, founder of the Biologix Center for Optimum Health, for a deep exploration of Lyme disease, bacteriophages, chronic infection, biological medicine, and his development of Induced Native Phage Therapy (INPT).
Dr. Jernigan has worked with people experiencing Lyme disease and complex chronic illness since the 1990s. His journey into the Lyme world began unexpectedly when a mother and her twin sons came to his Kansas practice with Lyme disease. At a time when Lyme disease knowledge was far more limited, the experience pushed him into decades of clinical work, research, writing, and experimentation focused on understanding why some patients remain chronically ill.
Today, one of the central areas of his work is bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—and a therapeutic model he calls Induced Native Phage Therapy.
What Are Bacteriophages?
Bacteriophages, commonly called phages, are viruses that infect bacteria.
They exist throughout nature and are also found in enormous numbers within the human body. Unlike broad-spectrum approaches that may affect many different microorganisms, phages can have highly specific relationships with particular bacteria.
During the interview, Dr. Jernigan explains the relationship between bacteria and bacteriophages and introduces listeners to the phageome—the vast community of phages living in and around the human microbiome.
He describes how certain phages can enter a lytic cycle, ultimately destroying their bacterial host, while others can exist in a more dormant or lysogenic relationship with bacteria before environmental conditions trigger a change in their behavior.
This bacterial-phage relationship forms the foundation for Dr. Jernigan’s work with INPT.
What Is Induced Native Phage Therapy (INPT)?
One of the most important distinctions in this conversation is the difference between conventional phage therapy and Induced Native Phage Therapy.
Traditional phage therapy generally involves identifying phages capable of attacking a particular bacterium and introducing those phages into a patient.
Dr. Jernigan’s approach is fundamentally different.
Rather than administering externally sourced bacteriophages, INPT is designed around the idea of influencing native phages that are already present within the body.
Dr. Jernigan describes his approach as using electromagnetic or bioresonance-based information intended to influence phages associated with targeted microorganisms and encourage a shift toward bacterial destruction. He explains that development of the process took approximately five years and grew out of his earlier work with bioresonance and biological medicine.
Matt and Rich push Dr. Jernigan throughout the conversation to explain exactly what he believes is happening biologically, how targeted phages are distinguished from the enormous number of phages within the body, and how this approach differs from simply attempting to kill microorganisms directly.
Why Phages Could Matter in Lyme Disease
The discussion then turns specifically to Borrelia burgdorferi, other Borrelia species, and Lyme disease.
Dr. Jernigan argues that bacteria and their associated phages have coexisted for an extraordinarily long time and that bacteria entering the human body may already exist within complex relationships with bacteriophages.
Instead of searching externally for a single phage capable of targeting Borrelia, his research asks a different question:
Can the phages already present within a patient or associated with a microorganism be influenced to help control that organism?
That question sits at the center of INPT.
The conversation also explores monovalent versus polyvalent phages, bacterial specificity, intracellular microorganisms, and the potential ability of phages to interact with bacteria residing in difficult-to-reach environments.
Lyme Disease Is More Than One Infection
This episode extends far beyond phage therapy.
Dr. Jernigan explains how his understanding of Lyme disease has evolved dramatically since he began treating patients in the 1990s.
Early in his career, much of the Lyme community was focused primarily on finding and killing Borrelia burgdorferi. Over time, he became increasingly convinced that chronic illness could not be adequately explained by one microorganism alone.
He describes what he calls Multi-Microbial Activation Syndrome, a model in which Lyme disease may occur alongside or contribute to changes involving numerous microorganisms and physiological systems.
The conversation explores:
- Borrelia burgdorferi and other Borrelia species
- Bartonella and Babesia
- Other tick-borne infections
- Mold and environmental exposures
- Microbial interactions
- Toxins
- Metabolic dysfunction
- Immune dysregulation
- Mast cell activation
- Inflammation
- Individual biological terrain
This leads to one of the central themes of the episode: two people can carry similar microorganisms yet experience dramatically different levels of illness.
Dr. Jernigan therefore argues that treating a diagnosis alone can miss the larger biological picture of the person experiencing the disease.
Treating the Infection vs. Repairing the Damage
Dr. Jernigan uses a memorable termite analogy to explain chronic Lyme disease.
If termites are discovered before they have caused significant structural damage, eliminating them may largely solve the problem.
But if termites have been damaging a house for years, killing the termites does not rebuild the house.
The same concept, he argues, may apply to chronic illness.
Reducing microbial burden may be important, but a person may still be dealing with neurological, metabolic, inflammatory, structural, immune, or other dysfunction that developed during years of illness.
That distinction becomes particularly important when evaluating whether a treatment has worked. A reduction in infection does not necessarily mean that years of physiological damage or dysregulation immediately disappear.
Why Every Lyme Patient May Require a Different Approach
Matt and Rich discuss Tick Boot Camp’s view of Lyme disease as a polymicrobial, multisystemic, chronic infectious or post-infectious illness, and Dr. Jernigan explains why his clinical experience has led him toward a similarly individualized model.
Every patient enters illness with a different history, microbiome, microbial exposures, environmental exposures, physiology, and accumulated biological stress.
For that reason, Dr. Jernigan challenges what he describes as "cookbook" medicine—the idea that every patient carrying the same diagnosis should receive essentially the same protocol.
Instead, his model attempts to identify what is dysfunctional in the individual patient while simultaneously reducing infectious burden and supporting the body’s ability to repair itself.
Phages, Biofilms, and Intracellular Bacteria
Another major portion of the interview explores two difficult problems in chronic infection: biofilms and intracellular bacteria.
Dr. Jernigan discusses research showing that certain bacteriophages can interact with or penetrate bacterial biofilms, potentially giving phage-based approaches characteristics that differ from conventional antimicrobial strategies.
The discussion also examines whether phages can reach bacteria residing inside cells.
These questions are particularly relevant to Lyme disease because persistence, bacterial morphology, biofilms, tissue environments, and intracellular localization are frequently discussed as possible contributors to treatment difficulty.
Dr. Jernigan explains why he believes native phages may be capable of reaching microorganisms in environments that can present challenges for other therapeutic approaches.
Herxheimer Reactions: Does Feeling Worse Mean Treatment Is Working?
The episode also challenges one of the most familiar ideas in the Lyme community:
Do patients have to feel worse before they feel better?
Many Lyme patients are familiar with the Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction, often shortened to "Herxing," in which symptoms can temporarily intensify during antimicrobial treatment.
Dr. Jernigan discusses his belief that effective treatment should not necessarily require significant suffering.
He connects this idea to his model of phage-mediated bacterial destruction and explains why he believes INPT may behave differently from therapies that produce large amounts of inflammatory bacterial debris.
Matt and Rich dig into this distinction and the potential relationship between microbial die-off, cytokines, inflammation, mast cells, and worsening symptoms.
MCAS, Immune Activation, and Treatment Sensitivity
The conversation also addresses why some people with chronic Lyme disease become extraordinarily sensitive to medications, supplements, foods, environmental exposures, and other treatments.
Dr. Jernigan discusses macrophages, inflammatory cytokines, histamine, mast cell degranulation, and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) as part of the larger chronic illness picture.
Rather than viewing these problems as completely separate diagnoses, he encourages looking for the biological processes that may be driving multiple downstream symptoms.
This reflects another recurring theme throughout the episode: identifying and addressing upstream contributors rather than continually treating individual symptoms in isolation.
Antibiotics, Resistance, and the Search for New Approaches
Matt, Rich, and Dr. Jernigan also have an extended discussion about antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance.
Dr. Jernigan is strongly critical of long-term reliance on antibiotics and argues that bacterial adaptation and antibiotic resistance make alternative antimicrobial strategies increasingly important.
The conversation examines doxycycline, broad-spectrum antibiotics, environmental antibiotic exposure, bacterial adaptation, and why phage research has regained scientific interest as antimicrobial resistance becomes an increasingly important global challenge.
Dr. Jernigan also makes an important distinction between his approach and conventional phage therapy, which itself is an active area of scientific research.
Dr. Jernigan’s Published INPT Research
Dr. Jernigan discusses several publications related to his work, including his 2021 retrospective review of Induced Native Phage Therapy for Lyme disease and relapsing fever and subsequent work expanding the concept into treatment-resistant illnesses involving multiple microorganisms.
He intentionally made his peer-reviewed publications open access so patients, practitioners, and researchers could review the work without encountering a paywall.
During the interview, he also acknowledges the importance of additional independent research and the challenges involved in funding and validating emerging therapeutic approaches.
INPT remains an emerging and unconventional approach. The mechanisms and clinical claims discussed in this episode should therefore be understood as Dr. Jernigan’s research, hypotheses, clinical observations, and interpretations rather than established standards of Lyme disease treatment.
From "Chasing Bugs" to Biological Medicine
Perhaps the most important evolution in Dr. Jernigan’s career is his movement away from simply "chasing bugs."
His earliest Lyme work focused heavily on identifying and addressing microorganisms.
After decades of treating complex patients, his philosophy expanded toward simultaneously considering two questions:
What microorganisms are creating a burden, and what is preventing this particular person’s body from returning to healthy function?
That means considering infections alongside neurological function, metabolism, immune regulation, inflammation, environmental exposures, structural problems, the microbiome, and other biological systems.
For patients who have spent years moving from treatment to treatment, that broader question may be one of the most valuable takeaways from this conversation.
Topics Discussed
- Dr. David Jernigan’s introduction to Lyme disease in the 1990s
- Congenital and persistent Lyme disease
- Early Lyme disease testing
- Natural and biological medicine
- Borrelia burgdorferi
- Bartonella, Babesia, and other tick-borne infections
- Polymicrobial illness
- Multi-Microbial Activation Syndrome
- Bacteriophages and the human phageome
- How bacteriophages infect bacteria
- Lytic and lysogenic phage cycles
- Conventional phage therapy
- Induced Native Phage Therapy (INPT)
- Native versus externally administered phages
- Monovalent and polyvalent phages
- Bioresonance and electromagnetic signaling
- Phages and bacterial biofilms
- Intracellular bacteria
- Antibiotic resistance
- Doxycycline and antimicrobial treatment
- Jarisch-Herxheimer reactions
- Cytokines and inflammation
- Macrophages and immune dysfunction
- MCAS and treatment sensitivity
- Mold and environmental illness
- Microbial terrain
- Personalized Lyme disease treatment
- Treating infection versus repairing physiological damage
- Biological and bioregulatory medicine
- Emerging research into phage-based therapies
About Dr. David Jernigan
Dr. David A. Jernigan, DNM, DC, is an author, researcher, clinician, and founder of the Biologix Center for Optimum Health in Franklin, Tennessee.
He has worked with people experiencing Lyme disease and complex chronic illness for decades and has written extensively about Lyme disease, biological medicine, natural approaches to chronic illness, bacteriophages, and related topics.
His more recent research has focused on Induced Native Phage Therapy, an approach designed to influence naturally occurring bacteriophages within the body rather than administering externally sourced phages.
Learn more about Dr. David Jernigan, INPT, his Lyme disease work, publications, and the Biologix Center.
Work With Dr. David Jernigan
Patients interested in learning more about Dr. Jernigan, the Biologix Center for Optimum Health, and opportunities to work with him can visit: Biologix Center for Optimum Health – Dr. David Jernigan
INPT Information for Doctors and Healthcare Providers
Healthcare professionals interested in learning more about Induced Native Phage Therapy or becoming an INPT provider can visit PhaGenCorp: PhaGenCorp – Induced Native Phage Therapy
Learn More About Lyme Disease
Explore more Tick Boot Camp conversations with physicians working with Lyme disease and complex tick-borne illness: Tick Boot Camp Doctors
