Treating Lyme Disease by Dr. Marina Yanover, N.D., Gonzalez Guardian Doctor
Lyme disease could be a devastating illness.
Caused by a tiny spirochetal bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, it is transmitted to humans though bites of the infected ticks. Lyme disease was identified in 1976 in Lyme, Connecticut, where a lot of children were thought to have juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. It then became apparent that Lyme arthritis was a late manifestation of a tick-transmitted disease.
Since its identification, Lyme disease continued to spread, affecting now most of the United States, especially northeastern, and upper midwestern states and its rapidly spreading worldwide.
After transmission of the bacterium, Lyme disease generally occurs in stages, with remissions and exacerbations and different clinical manifestations at each stage. Early infection consists of localized infection of the skin. If treated timely and properly at this stage, it could be completely irradiated from the human body. The problem is that most of the times the infection is missed and not treated timely. In order to treat Lyme disease at this stage, one needs to correctly identify it, which ideally would show up as a rash on the skin with a typical clearing at the center, called “bull’s eye rash.” Unfortunately, most of the time, the rash is not identified, either because there is no strong immune response to produce a reaction in a particular patient, or because a patient simply missed the rash due to its location where it cannot be easily seen. If left untreated for more than 48 hours, the disease may progress to the next stage, disseminated infection, where it becomes systemic, and affects various organs and systems. Even then, a patient may not develop any apparent symptoms and so the infection goes untreated even further. Finally, months to years later these patients develop persistent or chronic infection.
Patients who come to see me usually have chronic infection and multiple symptoms associated with it. It could present differently for everyone but general symptoms are chronic fatigue, joint and muscle pain, frequent infections, digestive disorders, brain fog, depression, neuropathy (tingling, numbness, burning), headaches, memory loss, palpitations, adrenal fatigue, dizziness, insomnia.
Patients may develop symptoms resembling autoimmune diseases, and could be diagnosed as such because their blood tests may show markers associated with various autoimmune diseases: ANA for lupus, RA for rheumatoid arthritis, etc.
Just like an autoimmune disease, this infection causes immune dysfunction, and that invites other infections: bacterial, viral, parasitic, and fungal. Most patients have several of these infections at once. Bacterial infections include Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections like Bartonella, Mycoplasma, Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Viral infections often manifest as reactivation of the mononucleosis, or /and herpes viruses. The parasitic infections, like babesia, can suppress the immune system’s ability to eliminate intestinal parasites, so there is more burden on the immune system.
Because of frequent infections and the need for antibiotic use, often these patients have fungal infections or Candida. The antibiotics get rid of beneficial bacteria in the gut and that promotes growth of yeast and fungal infections.
It is often difficult to diagnose Lyme disease as many available commercial tests are not reliable, and mostly turn out to be false negative. Patients may go undiagnosed for years, and when finally get diagnosed either clinically or via specialized tests, try many kinds of therapies including long term antibiotic use. Often, they develop side effects from the antibiotics or resistance towards them, and either unable to continue their treatments or the treatments do not work for them.
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