MRTS Interview Spotlight - Dr. Jeffrey Bone - Chronic Illness And The Male Identity

A normal prescription. A body that suddenly stops making sense. A long trail of appointments that leave you feeling demoralized instead of helped. We talk with chronic illness coach, author, and podcast host Dr. Jeffrey Bone about how quickly a health problem can turn into a full identity and meaning crisis, especially for men who were raised to push through pain and never slow down.

Dr. Bone shares his path from severe sinusitis to a wave of symptoms that didn’t fit neatly into one specialty, plus the turning point that revealed mold toxicity and mycotoxin exposure. From there, we unpack the reality of chronic inflammatory response syndrome and what it’s like to later discover an immune deficiency that requires immunoglobulin infusions. If you’ve felt stuck in the misdiagnosis cycle, you’ll appreciate his “accordion” approach: when to go wide with system-level specialists like immunology and rheumatology, and when to go narrow with focused experts, so you stop falling through the cracks.

We also go deeper than labs and labels. Chronic illness can hit freedom, isolation, fear of death, and the meaning of your life, and those are not problems a five minute visit can solve. We talk about men’s mental health, the pressure to perform, and why “fix it” thinking breaks down when the condition is chronic. The takeaway we keep coming back to is clear: ask for help, and when someone asks you, show up and listen.

If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs support, and leave a review so more people can find it. What part of your health story are you still trying to put into words?

Transcript

Welcome To The Men’s Round Table

SPEAKER_02 0:13

No man, no fight, just real man here. Talking about faith through the dial and the fit from the ground of the week to the left of the chair. Welcome to the men's round table, full of a chair. Men's round table, should be at the step in the dive. Real man, real faith where the truth can lie. Watch it at the table where the stories can share. Welcome to the men's round table, full of a chair.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Welcome back to the men's round table series interview spotlight. I'm your host, Mr. U. If you're watching us for the very first time, thanks again for making us part of your week. We're live on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube as we speak, and across all social media platforms and listening platforms as well. Thanks again for tuning into this. If you have a question for our special guest today or myself, drop it in the comment section where you're actually viewing this episode. We're happy to answer those relevant questions that pertain to the topics today in the uh chat, and we do it live on the air while we're in the episode. But thanks again for making us part of your day and your week. Special guests coming in today, chronic illness coach, author, and podcast host, Dr. Jeffrey Bone is here. Dr. Bone, how are you, sir? Good to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Pleasure is mine, man. Glad to have you in here, man. Well, so what we're doing uh with this, this is a fairly new show. We have it. I'm gonna reference it throughout because it's kind of a uh assistant to this show. We do what's called the men's roundtable series uh podcast. Every Thursday at 7 p.m., men get together from around the country, even around the world at some times, and we talk talk about issues of Jermaine and the men. It's a safe space. Yes. Live on the air, but it's a safe space for us to discuss men's issues. Sounds kind of hypocritical, but it is a safe space. The men view it as that, and they come in and they're very transparent about family, relationships, fatherhood, father wounds. You name it, we talk about it on the show. Uh, and this show just designed to kind of be an extension of that. Uh, have a one-on-one with people somebody who's a father, husband, brother, or son, kind of get into those kind of issues, plus what they do in life, and see how those

Jeffrey Bone’s Background And Mission

SPEAKER_01 2:20

uh those past kind of uh correlate and connect together. So absolutely makes a whole lot of sense to me. That's why you're here, man. I'm excited about the conversation. So Breason officer, if you can do that for us, where you're from, talk about your childhood a little bit, how you got from that place to where you're doing right now, and then we'll go ahead and get the more combo. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Well, I was born in New York City, Manhattan. And then uh yeah, yeah. And the uh the the building that we lived in uh briefly before we moved to New Jersey was the building that they showed at the end of the Jeffersons, you know, and at the end of like the intro and moving on up. That that's where I uh that's where I was uh brought into the world. That's where they took me home to, at least, uh until New Jersey and lived in North Carolina, South Carolina, lived in Ohio and right now Orange County, California. So I've I've been everywhere. So and through that, and just picking up education associated with mental health, um, and mental health is my focus, in particular, chronic illness. And about a decade ago, you know, I had to get my own chronic illness so I could really level up and could really understand it, and so I can bring my pain as a gift for other people, especially men. Uh, you know, and I and I talk to a lot of men through this process, through the process of identity and meaning, because the story changes. The story changes for men, for women, uh, but the story changes, and it's about being able to adapt to those difficult circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Yeah, that's something that as I uh through your story and kind of just uh did my own research on you. You're the pitch of adversity, man. You've you've been through some things and you're still here to not just talk about it and lament about it, but you're also here to help enlighten folks and give a hand up where needed, man. So I applaud you, brother.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

That's what it is, it's about solidarity. You know, 100% it's about solidarity. We have to be there for kind of one another. Uh, I love Albert Camus. He was an existential kind of writer, and he's the kind of guy that said everything's absurd, but in his book, The Plague, you know, he said we have to be looking after one another. So the guy that said everything's absurd, you know, his belief is we got to look after one another. And I think that's what we're trying to do right here is like we're just trying to have a conversation so other people in the world can, you know, hear this message and that they can help other people as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

I love that. Got some connective tissue there because I'm from New York originally, Brooklyn, to be specific, and I'm down in South Carolina now, so a little bit of connective tissue there. So I like that, I like that.

The Sinusitis That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_01 5:05

All right, so I know your work is definitely professional. That's why you have the uh letters in front of your name, but it's also pretty personal. You had uh several years ago, you kind of got uh exposed to a situation that kind of changed your life. Love for you to share about that if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Uh what it was is that I I developed this horrible sinusitis. It's just this headache wouldn't go away, go to the ENT. They give me prednisone, which they normally do. You get the flonase in pregnozone, kind of helps with the sinus stuff, but my body freaks out. My body just doesn't know what to do. And I it's something that I'm not familiar with. I have memory issues, I have a tremor, my feet are vibrating, my bladder hurts, uh, can't sleep, my body's just out of control. And I see all kinds of different doctors, and uh none of them are helpful. The neurologist, the internist, the podiatrist, the urologist, all of them. And it wasn't until I saw the functional medicine doctor that said, you know what, I think you have a mold issue. And so then I go and hire someone to test the you know, my HVAC and test the environment within my office. And there's two different species of black mold. Now I have the that the mycotoxins in my urine, we can measure that, and we can measure what's going on. And so I developed this chronic inflammatory response syndrome, which would later turn into a common variable uh immune deficiency. So I went from one sick to another sick because my body was just in that much distress. And basically, after a year of treating with the functional medicine doctor, uh I go to a toxicologist, and not even because I even know what a toxicologist does, I went to a toxicologist just because I felt toxic. I'm like, maybe he'll understand. He tests my IgG levels. So when people donate plasma, you know, they they donate plasma to people like me because I have to infuse immunogobulins because my body doesn't make it. So kind of half my immune system has to be kind of brought in by other people because I got so sick.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Wow. Now I I've heard one aspect of your story many times, and I'm just kind of just one, I just had a curiosity because I know you've been misdiagnosed multiple times, and I've heard stories in regard that you know you're going to see different people upset with different people, and nobody can figure something out, or they got the wrong idea about what you're dealing with. Is there any way, just generally speaking, to avoid that? Is there something there any way we can be not to insult to the audience, but be a little smarter about who we go to? So we is there does that make sense? Help me out with that.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because a lot of times when you go see the doctor, they're looking at you from a like a very, very narrow scope. It's kind of like, I just focus on the bladder, I just focus on the foot. Now, I was dealing with a systemic issue, so you want to think of it like an accordion, not like I've ever played an accordion before, is that you want to go really wide at times and you want to go narrow at times. And it's like you want to think about who are the doctors that are thinking, like, okay, system-wise, you know, like the immunologist, the neurologist, the rheumatologist, you know, looking at the larger systems. And then you're dealing with someone maybe who's like a joint special specialist or someone that just focuses on one kind of, oh, that guy just does like the kidney or or the lungs or something like that, you know, a nephrologist or a pulmonologist, a cardiologist. And that would be kind of narrowing things down. But as you think about going to doctors, think about I want to go narrow sometimes, and I need to go wide sometimes. And you need kind of both sides of that. And I just didn't, I was not directed to the big picture doctors as much as I should have been, which would have been the immunologist. And a lot of people um they don't think about immunology. Um, and and and and it doesn't, you know, I I didn't know what an immunologist was until I, you know, I needed one. So think of the accordion. When you start feeling falling through those cracks, go go narrow and specialized, but then go as wide as you can at sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Okay. So you call chronic illness uh existential experience, not just one that's considered medical. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 9:32

So when you think about existential, you think about these core pillars of how it impacts your freedom, the

Misdiagnosis And The Accordion Approach

SPEAKER_00 9:40

isolation and community, how it impacts your relationship with death, and how it impacts your relationship with the meaning and the story of your own existence. So those would be like the main core pillars of existentialism: freedom, isolation, death, and meaning. And those things, they're not going to be covered when you go see the doctor and they see you for five or 10 minutes. Uh, you know, they're looking for the refill. They're like, okay, this is the diagnosis. Okay, go to PT. Okay, you know, this, this, and this. And they're shipping you off. Um, and sometimes just like we said, we have to do the accordion. Well, we do need the refills, and we do need someone to just kind of come in and send us to PT. But sometimes we need to slow things down. Like you have a round table, it's like slow things down so we can have conversations so things aren't so forced. And it's like we need to slow things out. It's like because it's just not, you know, I have an illness within me, but there's also Jeff inside here, too. You know, Jeff has to live with this illness, and Jeff has to deal with how does this impact my freedom, my isolation, you know, my relationship with death, and the meaning of my own existence. That's the existentialism.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Oh, that makes sense to me. Um I hear this in some circles, uh, and we are talking to a male audience. Why is chronic illness so difficult for men, especially, especially from the emotional standpoint?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Because when we're young, we're we're told not to cry, you know, rub some dirt in it and just deal with it. Oh, you know, it's kind of like, hey, coach, you know, my knee hurts. And the coach says, Yeah, yeah, all of our knees hurt. You know, go in there and play. And we're we're designed to perform, we're designed to do. And it's like, it's not about the internal landscape, whether it's physical or emotional, we're designed to perform. We just get the job done, and that's what we're supposed to do. And we're not slowing things down and processing feelings and processing, you know, well, who am I and why am I doing this? And is this the purpose of my life or anything of that nature? Uh, we're just told to go do, you know, put on the boots and let's go.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yeah. If you could say anything that you hope would be a change in the uh trajectory of the conversation surrounding chronic illness and mental health, etc., what do you want to see change?

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Ask for help, ask for help all day long. And um, but ask for help by you know, you know, ask everyone for help. It can be a friend, it can be a pastor, it can be, you know, an old coach, you know, it can be some sort of mentor, it can be a therapist, it can be, you know, it doesn't have to be one particular thing. And if somebody's asking you for help and your friend is sick, just know you don't have to fix them, but you got to show up, you know, show up, care, and listen. You know, because men, it's like, ah, I'm the same way, like I want to fix things, you know, it's like you know, something's wrong. I want to fix it. But when it's you have that word chronic, you can't fix it. And the brain's a problem-solving machine, and it kind of opens up a loop that we want to close. We want to close the loop and fix it, but we can't because there is no fix because it's chronic. And so we need to be able to learn to live with that open loop that we can't close, whether we're living in ourselves or maybe a friend is going through it, and we're just showing up, not to fix them, but to humanize them. And a lot of what it is is slowing things down so we can humanize each other and appreciate who we are as humans.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

What did you rephrase that? All those times of having your situation misdiagnosed. I know at some point had to tap into your feelings about people from a human perspective and them not understanding you and you not feeling understood and not feeling known.

Chronic Illness As An Existential Shift

SPEAKER_01 13:55

What did you learn about trusting yourself, self-advocacy? What'd you learn about you in the midst of being misdiagnosed so many times?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

It was one of those things where at first you're so excited for the doctor's appointment because it's like you're crisp. Oh, this person's gonna get it. I'm gonna get better, I'm gonna get back to my old self. This is gonna be the answer. And then you're coming out, and the compass that's in your hand is just spinning around. There's no true north. You don't know what direction to go in. And really, like the word I like is demoralized. I just feel demoralized. I feel like all the air has been taken out from under me. I don't know what direction to go in. And I learned that in the midst of that storm, I had to stay curious. It's not that I had to stay positive and I just had to have some sort of toxic positivity and everything's gonna be all right. I had to be curious for what's next. Because what's next is going to take me to the next doctor, the next day, and to keep me on my feet and to keep me kind of going. Because there's lots of times where I want to just give up. This is too overwhelming. No one has any answers. It's like basically I'm a freak of nature to all these different doctors. They all think it's in my head. I know darn well it's not. But it's that curiosity that I found within me. And that's where I got into the creative work that I do, whether it's writing books or the poetry or the podcast, is that curiosity of like, I wonder if I can do this. I wonder if I can express myself this way. And that's where I kind of learned to have more control and agency over my own voice in life by finding those creative outlets. But it needed to start with curiosity.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Yeah, I really feel like that kind of journey, especially on the creative with the creative bend, uh, writing books, podcasting, poetry, blog, et cetera, there'd been a voice for a lot of people, myself included. This show wouldn't be here if it was not for our flagship show. Started in 2020 in one of the worst times in our world's history. I found a light in some real dark stuff. And that's kind of what's going on all four of the shows that we have right now. So I get that part of it for sure. In regards to yourself, and well, it's a two-part question, really. For you, do you believe that those areas became a purpose for you? And then the second part of the question is how do you help somebody rebuild their purpose when it when uh chronic illness kind of uh interrupts their plans in life?

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Yes, you know, I think I out of the pain, I

Why Men Struggle Emotionally With Illness

SPEAKER_00 16:35

was able to create something significant of something of value. And knowing that I have this pain and being able to sit with it and listen to it, I know darn well other people have it as well. And so it's kind of like, and and and basically, do I implode or do I send a signal? And my my option, my decision was I need to send a signal so other people can find me, so other people can talk with me, so I can engage with other people, so I can help them along on their story and be that mentor to be that guide as they are kind of going through their dark night of the soul. You know, things are collapsing around them. They're lost, their compass doesn't work anymore. They don't, they're not sure what their values are, they're not sure, you know, what to do next. And that's where we slow it down, and then that's where we listen. And one of the things I always try to approach is that I don't have like the cure. I don't have like, well, here's the answer. It's like, but I have time, I have space, and I can help edit stories. I can help edit somebody's story because they're parts of themselves that they may not see. And a lot of times it's, you know, we want much more of a balance than because most people are coming in, they're sick, they have problems, you know, a lot of negativity, a lot of negative thoughts. And a lot of times people say, I need to get rid of these negative thoughts. I'm like, no, no, no, no, we're not gonna get rid of these negative thoughts. That's completely human. What we want to do is we want to balance that out with some other thoughts so there's more cognitive flexibility. And we want a nervous system that's more adaptable to what you're going through. And yeah, sometimes you have to push and sometimes you have to break. There's a reason why cars have accelerators and brakes. We need both, and we need both as human beings so we can find our unique individual story. If someone's working with me, it's not like I'm gonna hand them over their story. Well, here, here's your script. This is your story, but we slow it down to figure it out. We slow it down to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yep, slow down to speed up. I like it. Uh, we got time for a few more questions. I want to ask you this from a uh perspective of something you said earlier in the show. If you guys might have missed

Ask For Help And Show Up

SPEAKER_01 18:55

it, it's on the on the replay or we wander back to the top of the uh podcast and you hear that question. Uh you said the one thing you want people to do, do as a takeaway in the uh conversation across illness and mental health is to ask for help. Something we talk about on all of our manly broadcasts, we discuss it uh tech literally. I know that that's not as easier as it is to just say that. I know that there's a lot of voices and challenges that we hear. From your experience, what are some of the things that represent alternative voices or challenges that we hear when we know we're in a place that we need to ask for help? What have you been hearing that people have been challenged with that hinder them or slow down that opportunity for them to go and do that? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Yeah, because there are a lot of people that they they need to walk with a cane. They need to walk with a with a walker, and they refuse to. They don't want to because they don't want to look sick. They don't want to look like they need a cane or a walker, they don't want to be judged by other people. And you have to remember, it's kind of like before, you know, we're men, we're human first, and we're all humans. We all have an emotional brain, we all have that limbic system, the amygdala, and all the different kinds of components. And, you know, we cry just like anybody else. We're sad, we're anxious just like anybody else. And I would go to, you know, any professional athlete's retirement press conference, watch them cry. You know, these are idols, these are the tough guys, these are badasses, but here they are, they're crying. It's kind of like, hey, if they can cry, we can cry, we can all cry, and we can all cry together. And so, you know, part of it's like the cultural archetypes. And that's why we need those storytellers and we need those people talking about tears, you know, to create that permission and that allowance that tears are not a weakness, tears are just part of the story of life. And, you know, a lot of times we get, you know, embedded with, you know, what society wants from us, which is be productive, make money, pay taxes, and all the rest. But that's not always what's best for us as an individual. So is it society telling us that we need to be a certain way? Or are we in control of our own authorship? Because society can be toxic, and society is not going to be your friend. And that's where you need to find other people that you can look to and that you can look in the eyes and to be able to start having that conversation. And just because maybe your grandfather or father, you know, had different relationships with emotions, there are a lot of people and a lot of storytellers out there that speak to those emotions.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Okay, let's flip it a little bit and make it a little bit more personal regarding your own health journey. Yes. You see suffering and you've seen opportunities for resilience. How have do you believe how you believe you evolve from a male perspective? What you've gone through in your health journey.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

From a male perspective,

Curiosity Self Advocacy And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 22:05

I understand that a lot of my self-worth and identity was kind of like tied up in like one career kind of you know idea that I needed, like I had to, I have to be this particular thing. And it was overly rigid and it was unforgiving. And any deviation to that, any kind of movement away from that was shame and blame, you know, and and uh I'm weak and I'm failing. And it does, it's you know, and that doesn't give me the permission to be able to adapt, to be able to evolve. So I needed to be much more uh gentle with myself, showing myself compassion, self-compassion, grace, forgiveness, you know, all those things to me, so that I could be the best man within my world for myself and for the people around me. Because otherwise, I just kind of internalize the shame and blame, and I get angry, and then I'm just, you know, the raging, angry person to everyone else around me. And, you know, that's just poison to myself, and that's poison to the people around me.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Sure. So your podcast is to the bone conversations on pain, illness, and meaning. Are there some conversations you've had that have kind of impacted you the most that kind of stand out? You're mind sharing?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Well, the thing is, right now, I've done about uh 53 episodes, they're all solo episodes, you know. So it, you know, and so and then I it's looking at philosophers, looking at different books from chronic illness books to self-help books, and so there's a whole diversity there. And the thing that stands out is there is no one way to do this, there's no yellow brick road to follow, you know, there is basically your own path. There are people that take it in radical directions, you know, and and so part of that is that there's a freedom, you know, to tell your own story the way you want to tell the story, because you don't have to fit your story into a certain narrative or a certain belief that may just not fit, you know, everyone has their own way. Some people will find it in the gym, some people will find it in church, some people will be doing things for themselves, some people will be doing things for other people. But, you know, it it's the beauty of it is that we all can have our unique our unique healing journey. Uh, I usually say that, you know, at the end of the day, for me, self-help should always result in helping other people. Because I believe that you should find something that you're good at and something that you enjoy that helps other people. And so I'm a big believer that like the end of the sentence of life here should always be about helping other people. I like what Ram Doss his quote, we're all just walking each other home.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Yeah, no please serve. Thanks again for make being a part of this conversation. We're gonna have you in

Finding Dr. Bone And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 25:25

the inspiration station, man, so you can share your entire story and dedicate the whole episode to that, man. So I'm excited about that conversation as well, man. But let folks know where they can find you and your work, and then we'll go ahead and close out. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Oh, drbone. D-r-b-o-n e dot live. That's how to find me, you know, hold of me. If you want to talk with me, you know, and you need some uh editing with that story of yours uh in you're in a tough spot, give me a call.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Drbone.live is on the screen for those that are watching, those that are listening, listen to the sound of my voice. Dr.bone.live. You can find him and his work there. Dr. Bone, thanks again for making us part of your day today and for sharing some of your story with us. Looking forward to uh further conversation down the line, sir. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

All right, thank you very much. I enjoyed being here.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Pleasure's mine. For you men watching, husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons, we got your back. We understand, and you're not by yourself. Have a good day.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Men's round table, series, step inside. Real men, real faith where the truth can lie, voices at the table where the stories get shared. Welcome to the men's round table, pull up a chair.