A personal Perspective: One of the unfortunate truths of current treatment practices in tick-born illness is the simple reality that many patients do not fully recover. In my practice, this occurs for many reasons, including such culprits as indoor mold toxin exposure, patient genetic limitations in removal of Lyme Disease biotoxins, and quite often, undiagnosed new Babesia and Bartonella strains.
As a practicing naturopath, I have the opportunity to observe firsthand the intricacies of Lyme Disease and its co-infections. I have found that Borrelia Burgdorferi is rarely the only active infection present. Tick pass on many infections which have the ability to quickly reach all body cavities and tissues – from the brain to the teeth and everywhere in between – and to release surface biotoxins that dysregulate numerous hormones including thyroid hormones, fertility hormones, testosterone, DHEA, and leptin. The latter is usually too high and is associated with treatment resistant obesity. These surface biotoxins hijack many lesser known hormones, proteins, and inflammatory chemicals, resulting in widespread pathology throughout body systems and organs.
Additionally, my experience is that 99% of Lyme Disease patients have psychiatric or subtle neurological findings, which are often missed by sincere health care workers. Clinical manifestations include diagnoses as varied as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, rages, schizophrenia, brain fog, memory loss, a profound decrease in reasoning abilities, poor insight, panic attacks, agitation, confusion, personality changes, manis, seizures, strokes, and many more.
These are just a few of the many obstacles facing modern health care practitioners who treat Lyme Disease. As a result of these complexities in tick-born illness, eradicating Lyme Disease is virtually never simply a matter of using high dose antibiotics for a month or a year. Successful treatment is far more involved. I make these comments because, in 2011, it is naïve to think that all new, important treatment information for Lyme Disease or its co-infections will come from a few infectious disease physicians or family doctors. We need as expanded approach, one that encompasses a wide array of treatment methodologies and options. The antibiotic-only approach, whether applied for a short time or a long time, is simplistic.
When perceived by naïve eyes, modern medicine gives no hint that something is amiss. The medical establishment has all the appearances of authority and proficiency. From new, opulent hospital buildings complete with gray-haired, confident doctors on whose walls hang official credentials, to medical web sites created by the best web designers, the statement is clear: Western medicine knows its stuff. Furthering this perception is, of course, the assurance form medical professionals that everything health can be measured and manipulated and made right.
Clearly, current medical practice has done much good for humankind. In our age-old battle to maintain and restore health, we have celebrated great victories in healing. Broken bones and crooked teeth yield quietly to modern medicine. Critical car accident victims enjoy incredibly optimistic odds as a result of helicopters and advanced emergency rooms. Most bacterial infections cause us no more trouble that the nuisance of a trip to the doctor’s office and then the pharmacy. I am grateful for, and I personally benefit from, modern medicine in its many forms. Despite progress in medicine, some modalities continue to plague us. Worse, some medical conditions are even wholly disregarded by the conventional medical community because they do not fit the prevailing paradigms of diagnosis and treatment.
When I discovered I had Lyme Disease and subsequently sought treatment, it became obvious that Lyme Disease is such a condition. The longer I was sick, the harder it became to ignore the many clues that Western medicine really didn’t have room for Lyme Disease. The complex diagnostic process and dynamic treatment procedures necessary to get well are too different from what doctors are taught in medical school to be widely recognized and applied. The disease simply doesn’t fit the system. Of course, ideally, the system should be flexible to fit the disease – but that doesn’t always happen. Most of the conventional-minded doctors I sought for help either denied the existence of the disease altogether, at least in its chronic form, or treated me with therapies, which I later discovered to be antiquated and wildly irrational.
Conventional medicine is not the only subsection of healthcare, which has difficulty diagnosing and treating Lyme Disease. Most of the arena of alternative medicine is also confused and misled. Although generally more open-minded, acupuncturists, herbalists, homeopaths, alternative MDs, and unconventional healers all tripped over each other and contradicted roughly the same approaches that conventional doctors recommended, but instead of dugs, they encouraged me to use herbs, oils, or homeopathic remedies. Some of the treatments of both conventional and alternative medicine helped me, but none gave back my health. Most of the health care practitioners I encountered lacked a solid understanding of Lyme Disease pathogenesis.
In the instances when I found a treatment that did help, results were so slow to manifest (due to the hardiness of the infection) that I could never tell if I was using the best available treatment or wasting time with marginally effective approaches. Either way, inevitably, any help I received from a treatment would dissipate and be replaced by increasing and resurgent symptoms.
The truth, the disturbing truth, is that none of the more than 40 conventional and alternative practitioners I saw really knew what to do. They all wanted to help, but the resources just weren’t there. Months of research let me to the discovery that Lyme Disease occupies a dark corner of humankind’s medical knowledge base, denied adequate research and funding and even acknowledgment. As a result, Lyme Disease to this day remains a mysterious illness. This is why most Lyme doctors are persecuted as fringe renegades and most of the best books on the subject are written by lay people who were forced to educate themselves by exhaustively searching the annals of medical research and patient experiences.
The therapies and strategies on which my practice focuses on are intended for the treatment of late stage, chronic Lyme Disease. It is important to recognize that treatment of newly acquired, early-stage Lyme Disease is entirely different endeavor.
Treating late Lyme Disease is accomplished by carefully analyzing and balancing various treatments as part of a comprehensive, long-term treatment plan. Developing such a treatment plan is the focus of my practice as a Holistic Health Practitioner.
In contrast, treatment of early-stage, acute Lyme Disease requires immediate, aggressive antibiotic therapy. The probability that acute, early-stage Lyme Disease will progress into chronic Lyme Disease increases dramatically the longer antibiotic therapy is postponed. Therefore, if you were just recently bitten by a tick and you are in the early stages of Lyme Disease, it is critical that you find a Lyme Literate Medical Doctor (LLMD) immediately to initiate antibiotic therapy. LLMDs are much more qualified to treat Lyme Disease that are general practitioners of infectious disease doctors.
You can get a referral to an LLMD at www.lymenet.org and also at www.lymediseaseassociation.org. The “LLMD” title is not an official credential or designation, but instead indicates that a given physician is willing and qualified to work with Lyme suffers. To that end, if the mainstream medical community is unwilling to provide assistance with the treatment of chronic Lyme Disease, we have no choice but to seek treatment elsewhere, on our own. Of course, it is still a valuable use of time to petition the government for a change in treatment policies. Due to the mounting evidence supporting the existence of chronic Lyme Disease, it is probable that the government will change its position eventually. However, in the meantime, sick people want to get well. Given the desperate, debilitated condition that many chronic Lyme Disease sufferers are in and the constriction of medical freedoms currently taking place, their needs to be an immediate solution that is not depended on changing government policies. Lyme suffers must be made aware of both sides of the debate and educated about the full range of treatment options available.
In my practice at Think Healing, the treatments I have chosen to use in the protocols for my patients were selected because of their effectiveness, established by reports from patients using them, and available scientific research. However, a consideration of no less importance was the extent to which they allow patients to remain independent and make their own decisions. Most of the treatments I use in my practice can be used autonomously, without a prescription from a physician, and without the government’s permission. They are affordable with or without insurance. They are convenient and can be used whenever they are needed without advanced planning. The therapies can be done at home, and the time and money required to make long trips to treatment clinics and doctors offices is spared. These treatment characteristics allow some sick with Lyme Disease to still live a relatively normal life during the recovery process, without becoming a slave to doctors appointments, waiting rooms, and large medical bills.
Most importantly, the treatments I practice to treat chroming Lyme Disease at Think Healing allow you to circumvent the immutable decrees passed down from the medical powers to be. In short, my practice presents therapies that you control.
In addition, most therapies presented at think Healing are relatively non-toxic. Although they are on the cutting edge of Lyme Disease research, the known side effects associated with their use are minimal. In fact, in comparison with most pharmaceutical drugs, the treatments in my practice have a relatively low level of inherent risk. Many of the approaches presented do no use drugs at all. In the instances where drugs are presented as treatment option, drug doses are kept to a minimum, and breaks are recommended between courses of drugs.
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