Brain Inflammation: The Hidden Driver of Depression, Lyme Disease, Alzheimer’s, and Other Chronic Illnesses

What if symptoms like depression, anxiety, cognitive decline, or behavioral changes aren’t simply psychiatric or neurological disorders—but signs of underlying brain inflammation?

In this episode of Your Health Reclaimed Podcast, Dr. Gary Kaplan explores the growing evidence connecting neuroinflammation, chronic infections, immune dysfunction, and gut health to conditions such as Lyme disease, PANDAS, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, and treatment-resistant depression.

Dr. Gary draws on his more than 40 years of clinical experience and shares patient stories, emerging research, and innovative treatment approaches that challenge conventional thinking and offer hope for those searching for answers.

In this episode:

→ Why 75% of your immune system lives in your gut — and why that changes everything
→ The leaky gut-brain connection behind most chronic illness
→ Why food allergy tests are wrong 97–98% of the time
→ The reason Crohn’s disease and celiac CAN be reversed (and has been)
→ How fixing the gut eliminated 60–80% of autism symptoms (University of Arizona research)
→ How celiac disease triggered suicidal depression with ZERO gut symptoms
→ Why high-dose fish oil may outperform SSRIs for bipolar depression
→ Why Lyme disease is really a “street gang” of co-infections — and most doctors only treat one
→ How Lyme-related diseases spread beyond ticks: saliva, breast milk, mosquitoes
→ What post-treatment Lyme syndrome actually means (and why most doctors miss it)
→ Therapeutic plasma exchange: the outpatient procedure that’s changing Alzheimer’s care
→ How Dr. Kaplan’s wife reversed Alzheimer’s decline after standard drugs caused dangerous side effects
→ Why insurance companies are dictating what your doctor can and cannot prescribe
→ The 2-hour intake history that reveals what $10,000 in labs never could