Lyme disease a focus at upcoming Food Independence Summit

The fourth annual Seed to Spoon/Food Independence Summit will take place June 18-19 at Timbercrest Campground and RV Park, 5552 state Route 515, between Walnut Creek and Trail.

The event will focus on all types of homesteading tips including natural health tips, hands-on homesteading skills, kid-friendly fun, how to grow and market you own food, raising animals and more.

Co-founder Marcus Wengerd said this year the focus will be on showing how empowered health leads to living an empowered and fulfilling life.

While homesteading continues to be a major part of the event, this year organizers also have brought health and wellness to the forefront, mainly focusing on Lyme disease, which has become a major issue in the U.S. as this tick-borne disease can cause some severe issues.

Event co-founder John Miller has every reason to want to implore people to learn more about Lyme disease because it took hold of him in 2023 before an encounter with Julian Douwes, M.D., helped him overcome it.

Miller said he struggled horribly with Lyme disease, a sickness that at times left him with severe brain fog and moments of collapsing and fainting.

“I’m very passionate about this topic because it nearly got the best of me,” Miller said. “This is absolutely an epidemic right now in our country.”

Miller said his passion is to not only share information about Lyme disease, but also to create an opportunity to help others overcome it. His ultimate goal is to bring a sister clinic like the one he went to in Germany here to Northeast Ohio, but in the meantime, he is working toward creating a fund that will assist people in traveling abroad to receive treatment.

“It’s the only treatment I know that eradicates Lyme disease,” Miller said. “Douwes cured me of Lyme disease, and I have the tests to prove it. His treatment is the only thing I know that actually kills the bacteria.”

Douwes is the son of pioneer Dr. Friedrich Douwes, a leader in integrative medicine at St. Georg Clinic in Germany. The Douwes treatment for Lyme disease includes whole body hyperthermia, antibiotics, immune-boosting supplements and therapy, and it is something Miller said completely changed his life.

The Douwes method of treatment has thus far rebuilt the health in the lives of 18,000 patients over the past two decades, and Douwes has lectured about Lyme disease at Harvard Medical School and received an award for his work from the school’s Center for Tick Borne Illnesses.

Douwes will speak at the conference June 18 on Conquering Lyme Disease at 8:30 a.m., Lyme Disease: What You Can Do at Home at 3 p.m., and Overcoming Lyme Disease: At Home or at the Clinic at 7:30 p.m. and June 19 at 2 p.m.

Space is limited for each seminar session.

In addition, there is a lineup of speakers focusing on a variety of homesteading and wellness topics.

“We felt it was important to add the concept of how wellness and food relate to one another to our event,” Miller said. “We’ve got 40 workshops and a very exciting lineup of speakers who believe that homesteading and wellness are a community way of life worth pursuing.”

The lineup of speakers for the two-day event is a literal Who’s Who of nationally renowned speakers.

The lineup includes Christian libertarian environmentalist Joel Salatin; Calley Means, co-author of Good Energy and founder of TrueMed; Shawn and Beth Daughterty, farmers and authors of “The Independent Farmstead;” soil fertility specialist Neal Kinsey; Del Bigtree, founder of Informed Consent Action Network and host of the popular internet show “The HighWire’” David Stelzer, founder and CEO of Azure Farm and Azure Standard and leading producer in GMO foods; Douwes; homesteader and author John Moody; Maureen Diaz, outreach coordinator for Weston A. Price Foundation and founder of the website God’s Good Table; Max Kane, host of The FOODCAST and CEO of FarmMatch.com; Codi and Michelle Knox, creators of YouTube channel “More than Farmers;” and lifestyle and self-sufficiency expert Sarah Thrush.

On Wednesday, June 18 from 6-9 p.m., there will be a special event featuring Salatin, Means and Douwes.

“Having an evening session like this for folks to attend after work is a first for us,” Miller said. “We’re excited to be able to offer something this valuable.”

For more information visit www.foodindependence.life or call for tickets at 855-654-2002.