Lyme Disease Treatment: 2 Herbal Compounds May Beat Antibiotics
Lyme disease transmitted via tick bite affects thousands of people in the United States and around the world. Currently, doctors use antibiotics to treat it, but could plant-based remedies be more effective?
Lyme disease is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi .
The disease spreads to humans through the bite of a tick that carries the bacterium, and it affects an estimated each year in the U.S. alone.
Currently, healthcare professionals choose between three antibiotics in the treatment of Lyme disease. These are doxycycline, cefuroxime, and amoxicillin.
Sometimes, however, antibiotics are not effective in eradicating all traces of B. burgdorferi from the system, which means that the disease can persist.
When this happens, bacterial cells that have developed antibiotic resistance can continue to proliferate. These are known as persister cells .
Because of this, researchers have been looking into alternative modes of fighting the bacterium, and their first line of inquiry has focused on natural remedies.
In 2018, an in vitro study suggested that 10 plant-derived essential oils could help fight off B. burgdorferi.
Now, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD, and from the California Center for Functional Medicine and Focus Health in Berkeley, have conducted a new study that has led them to believe that two specific plants may lead to more effective therapies against Lyme disease.
Going Down Rabbit Holes
Often, chronic Lyme patients present multiple symptoms that make their diagnosis challenging. They bounce from one specialist to another to tackle each problem, but each diagnosis cannot explain all of the symptoms they are experiencing.
Cashman underwent an MRI because of her severe pelvic pain, and the results found two deflating ovarian cysts which can cause severe pain in the lower abdomen. But that diagnosis did not explain the unbearable pain that gravitated to her knees and to her head. She recalled that the swollen knee got red hot to touch, and she developed a fever.Cashman began to look for causes. Not everything is Lyme, but everything can be , she said. Its a weird thing, but you got to go down these rabbit holes.
Croteau saw specialists, including emergency physicians, a cardiologist, a kidney specialist and an immunologist. All the tests she took were negative for Lyme disease. She was told the problems may be related to psychological issues.
So basically, its been a timeline of two years of not being taken seriously, just pushed away either told I cant do anything for you theres nothing really wrong with you, Croteau said.
A medical provider suggested that she seek counseling and increase her dose of anti-anxiety medicine. But the pain in her joints and wrists were real, and her knuckles often got swollen. The brain fog made it hard for her to punch in a phone number correctly.
What Does All This Mean
Conventional treatment options remain limited to antibiotics and are frequently prescribed for too short a course. Other inadequacies of traditional therapy include antibiotic-mediated disruption of gut flora, and the failure to address the various forms that the spirochete can morph into when it is under immune system attack. This ultimately allows the disease to further proliferate, despite completing course after course of antibiotic.
In order for Borrelia to survive, it requires collagen. To obtain this, it will activate the immune systems cytokine response. This in turn, creates tissue inflammation, leading ultimately to a collagen rich environment that can promote the life cycle of the disease. This is why chronic Lyme disease symptoms are frequently associated with collagen rich regions of the body: joints, brain, muscles, eyes, and skin. Therefore, the goal of treatment is to calm down the bodys inflammatory response that is to say, to calm down cytokine activity.
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Other Natural Treatments For Lyme Disease
The treatments discussed above are only some of the natural treatments that claim to treat Lyme disease. According to a 2015 study looking at the alternative treatments found during an Internet search, other natural treatments people use for Lyme disease include:
- saunas and steam rooms
The investigators noted that theres no research backing up these treatments, any many dont have a logical rationale behind them.
Regulate Imbalances In Hormones Neurological Function
Methyl B12 is often given for neurological support and methylation support. In my experience, B12 in very high doses can help with some of the fatigue and brain fog experienced by chronic lyme patients. The methyl form of B12 also may help with the methylation process in the body, which is intricately involved with detoxification and glutathione production in the cell . Care must be taken, as rarely some may aggravate with methyl donors, such as methyl B12, methyl folate, SAMe. Often, we can get hints from methylation by assessing 24 hour levels of hormones and their metabolites as well.
Fish oil and systemic enzymes are then often used for cellular membranes and blood fluidity. Nutrient delivery is key in my experience, and is the main thing that improves the symptoms of brain fog and fatigue in the chronic lyme patient.
Assessment of hormones, especially thyroid and adrenal insufficiencies, is profoundly useful. There is some information on this page on bioidentical hormones, but in essence, we look often for cases of borderline or suboptimal adrenal hormones. This usually contributes to fatigue, for which supportive measures on stress, optimizing nutrition (diet as well as cellular nutrition, and helping to ensure that factors for hormone balance are in place can be useful.
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Are There Alternative Treatments For Lyme Disease
There are a variety of alternative treatments aimed at patients who believe they may have Lyme disease. But the effectiveness of these treatments is not supported by scientific evidence, and in many cases they are potentially harmful.
Bismacine, also known as chromacine, is an alternative-medicine drug that some people use to treat their Lyme disease.
The Food and Drug Administration warns that people should not use this injectable product, which has reportedly caused hospitalization and at least one death. 70563-1.pdf” rel=”nofollow”> 6)
In addition, the FDA notes that bismacine contains high levels of bismuth, which can cause heart and kidney failure.
Other alternative treatments include oxygen therapy, light therapy, and a variety of nutritional or herbal supplements. But there is no evidence that these treatments are clinically effective in the treatment of Lyme disease.
Azlocillin Comes Out On Top
The drug, which is not on the market, was tested in mouse models of Lyme disease at seven-day, 14-day and 21-day intervals and found to eliminate the infection. For the first time, azlocillin was also shown to be effective in killing drug-tolerant forms of B. burgdorferi in lab dishes, indicating that it may work as a therapy for lingering symptoms of Lyme disease.
Pothineni and Rajadas have patented the compound for the treatment of Lyme disease and are working with a company to develop an oral form of the drug. Researchers plan to conduct a clinical trial.
Rajadas is also a professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences at the University of California-San Francisco.
Other Stanford co-authors are Hari-Hara S. K. Potula, PhD, senior research scientist postdoctoral scholars Aditya Ambati, PhD, and Venkata Mallajosyula, PhD senior research scientist Mohammed Inayathullah, PhD and intern Mohamed Sohail Ahmed.
A researcher at Loyola College in India also contributed to the work.
The study was funded by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation and Laurel STEM Fund.
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Working With A Lyme Literate Medical Doctor Is Best
Based on the October 3 study, patients did best if they worked with a physician who specializes in treating Lyme disease. These types of physicians are known as Lyme Literate Medical Doctors . Although family physicians, pediatricians, internist, and naturopathic physicians may try to treat Lyme without specific training or practice focus, they tend not to help patients as much as LLMDs.
My Final Thoughts: What Works Best
In my experience, the best way to recover from chronic Lyme disease and the coinfections is using prolonged herbal or prescription antibiotics. As I mention above, this can include disulfiram. This usually means using herbal or prescription antibiotics for a year or more. The MyLymeData study supports this point. The 2020 study did not specifically address if herbal antibiotics give good benefit. But the 2019 study does suggest 68% of people find herbal antibiotic protocols helpful. In addition, it helps to work with a practitioner who focuses their practice on treating chronic Lyme disease.
If you are considering using alternative therapies to heal from chronic Lyme, I suggest you use them as accessory treatments while using herbal or prescription antibiotics. In addition to these alternative therapies, recovery from Lyme may require
- repairing damaged cell energy factories called mitochondria .
As a starting point to determine when and how to address these various issues see the Ross Lyme Support Protocol.
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How Lyme Disease Spreads
Lyme bacteria are parasitic organisms, as many bacteria are. They need a host to live in. And because they cant make all the nutrients they need themselves, they scavenge them from their hosts. Most of what they need can be found in collagen tissues. So, once they enter the animal host, they begin breaking down collagen tissues into a kind of soup in order to feed. Its where they break down those tissues that important.
- Joints = Lyme arthritis
- Heart = Lyme carditis
- Central nervous system = neurological Lyme with associated brain fog, difficulty thinking and remembering, tremors, facial paralysis, loss of limb function and so on.
This is the secret to understanding the disease and how to treat it.
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Treatments For Chronic Lyme Disease
A bite from a bacteria-infected tick causes Lyme disease. If you get the disease, you might have lingering symptoms. Some people have ongoing pain and fatigue, says Afton Hassett, PsyD, principal investigator at the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at University of Michigan.
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Idsa Publishes New Lyme Disease Treatment Guidelines
The following is a press release from the Infectious Disease Society of America. Analysis from LymeDisease.org will be forthcoming.
New evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of Lyme diseasehave been developed by a multidisciplinary panel led by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Academy of Neurology, and the American College of Rheumatology. Representatives from an additional 12 medical specialties and patients also served on the panel.
The guidelines provide practical recommendations for clinicians treating patients with Lyme disease, including, but not limited to, primary care physicians, infectious diseases specialists, emergency physicians, internists, pediatricians, family physicians, neurologists, rheumatologists, cardiologists, and dermatologists.
These recommendations aim to serve as a meaningful resource for the safe, effective, evidence-based care of people with Lyme disease. They address clinical questions related to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of Lyme disease complications from neurologic, cardiac, and rheumatic symptoms disease expression commonly seen in Eurasia and complications from coinfection with other tick-borne pathogens.
The guidelines include 43 recommendations related to diagnostic testing, including testing scenarios detailed recommendations about Lyme carditis and a discussion of chronic Lyme disease.
About Other Alternative Therapies
There are two other alternative therapies that some are currently using for Lyme disease treatment. The newest is Supportive Oligonucleotide Therapy and the other is Low Dose Immunotherapy . Generally, I am very skeptical about both of these treatments and do not suggest my patients do them. For more information see SOT Treatment for Lyme Disease and LDI: Bring on The Regulators.
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What To Expect At Your Provider’s Office
Lyme disease can be hard to diagnose because many of its symptoms look like those of other illnesses, and there is no definitive lab test for Lyme disease. About 20% of people with Lyme disease do not get a rash. Tell your doctor if you think you may have been bitten by a tick. Your doctor may order these tests:
- ELISA test, which detects antibodies to the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. This test may result in false positives.
- Western blot test, which detects antibodies to proteins of the bacteria
- Polymerase chain reaction , which detects bacteria in joint fluid and is used for people who may have Lyme arthritis.
Treatment Round #: Antibiotics
My initial Lyme treatment looked like a whole lot of antibioticsdoxycycline, plus two others that were supposedly beneficial for combating common Lyme co-infections. And this was fine with me. Given the severity of my symptoms, I was willing to try anything. Plus, at the time, I didn’t really know I had any other options.
Because I’d likely had Lyme for years by the time I began treatment, it took some time for me to notice any results. But soon, there was no question the drugs were working. After three months, I had less pain after six months, I could walk around the block and after nine months, I could go on a 2-mile hike. All told, I was on this combination of antibiotics for about two years , after which I felt completely symptom-freesomething I never, ever expected.
And I felt pretty great for about a year. But then I’d start to feel a bit more achy than usual after walking my ankles and knees would get red, hot, and painful I started to notice that old tingling sensation in my arms and legs and eventually, I was struggling to walk again. My Lyme was re-emerging even after lengthy antibiotic treatmentand apparently, that’s not uncommon. This, I’ve since learned, is partially due to the spirochete shape of the bacteria that causes Lyme disease , which allows some forms of the bacteria to essentially burrow deep into your tissue and lay dormant only to re-emerge later when conditions are more favorable.
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Review Of The Medical Literature
Scientific studies supporting the efficacy of any of the treatments discussed above could not be found on review of the medical literature. Most of the cited treatments were never evaluated with any scientific study, although we did find that a few treatments were evaluated in studies that either were poorly designed or had unclear relevance to human disease.
Two studies are worth mentioning in more detail. A study of combination therapy with cholestyramine-atovaquone enrolled 25 patients with persistent symptoms after being diagnosed with and treated for babesiosis-Lyme disease coinfection . In this study, however, all patients received cholestyramine for the entirety of the trial, so no inferences could be made about its therapeutic efficacy.
The effect of hyperbaric oxygen on strains of B. burgdorferi was assessed both in vitro and in experimentally infected mice in one study . The investigators found that growth of the organism in vitro was inhibited by hyperbaric oxygen in 14 of 17 cultures. In addition, the organism was cultivable from the bladders of only 20% of mice treated with hyperbaric oxygen, compared with 90% of untreated mice. No study of this therapy in humans with Lyme disease has ever been published.
Treatment For Other Forms Of Lyme Disease
People with other forms of disseminated Lyme disease may require longer courses of antibiotics or intravenous treatment with antibiotics such as ceftriaxone. For more information about treating other forms of Lyme disease, see:
The National Institutes of Health has funded several studies on the treatment of Lyme disease that show most people recover within a few weeks of completing a course of oral antibiotics when treated soon after symptom onset. In a small percentage of cases, symptoms such as fatigue and myalgia can last for more than 6 months. This condition is known as post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome , although it is also sometimes called chronic Lyme disease. For details on research into chronic Lyme disease and long-term treatment trials sponsored by NIH, visit the visit the National Institutes of Health Lyme Disease web siteexternal icon.
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Alternative Therapies For Lyme Disease To Consider
by Lyme Mexico | Nov 4, 2020 | News |
The first and most common go-to treatment for Lyme Disease is antibiotics, lots of antibiotics. For many, a round or two of antibiotics works, especially when caught early in the disease stages.
For others, however, antibiotics alone are not enough.
Fortunately, there are many alternative therapies for Lyme disease that you can consider. If your family doctor is not familiar with alternative treatments, you must locate a Lyme literate doctor who not only knows about them but can provide them in their clinic.
Below are a few of the alternative therapies working to heal Lyme disease in many people worldwide.
Using Antibiotics To Treat Lyme Disease
Lyme disease is typically treated with antibiotics, although the type of antibiotic used depends on what stage of the disease you have.
After you remove a deer tick that has been attached to you for at least 36 hours the amount of time it takes for the tick to transmit the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi theres a 72-hour window during which your doctor may give you a single dose of the antibiotic doxycycline to prevent the development of Lyme disease.
Doxycycline is prescribed to patients age 8 and older, except for pregnant women. Not everyone in this situation will receive doxycycline the deer tick bite needs to have occurred in a highly endemic area .
If you have localized Lyme disease with the telltale bulls-eye rash, also known as erythema migrans, but no other significant symptoms, your doctor will most likely treat you with oral doxycycline, amoxicillin, or cefuroxime for 10 to 14 days. If you have early disseminated Lyme disease, which may include the characteristic rash along with cardiac or neurologic symptoms, the treatment duration is lengthened to 14 to 21 days.
But if you have severe neurologic disease, such as meningitis, encephalitis, or nerve issues, or serious cardiac symptoms, your treatment will require taking intravenous ceftriaxone for 14 days.
Late disseminated Lyme disease is also treated with various antibiotics:
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