Thursday, March 28, 2024

How To Treat Chronic Lyme

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Natural Remedies To Tame The Fires

How to cure chronic Lyme Disease Naturally with herbs PANDAS

Eating a healthy diet, living in a clean environment, learning to live around stress, and staying active are all very important for keeping cells in your body healthy. However, the chemical substances in plants defined as herbs can take that protection to the next level. Taking herbs can give you the advantage that you need to overcome chronic inflammation and return to a normal life.

Plants must protect their cells from a wide range of stress factors: damaging free radicals, physical stress from harsh weather, toxic substances, harmful radiation, insects, invasive fungi, parasites, and, last but not least, every variety of microbe.

Plants do this with their own natural chemistry. In fact, plants are the most sophisticated chemists on the planet. The chemical substances that plants use to solve problems and protect cells are called phytochemicals.

Mushrooms, which are technically fungi, also have to deal with similar stress factors as plant. They also produce a wide range of protective substances that mirror the protective properties of phytochemicals found in plants.

When we consume plant phytochemicals, the benefits are transferred to us. The three primary things that phytochemicals do for us:

  • Reduce inflammation: By protecting our cells from harmful stress factors such as free radicals and toxic substances, cell turnover is reduced, along with the destructive inflammation that comes with it. This lessens the immune systems workload so it can better do its job.
  • Symptoms Of Post Treatment Lyme Disease

    • Include severe fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, & cognitive problems
    • Can significantly impact patients health and quality of life
    • Can be debilitating and prolonged

    Our research indicates the chronic symptom burden related to PTLD is significant. Although often invisible to others, the negative impact on quality of life and daily functioning is substantial for PTLD sufferers.

    The chronic symptom burden related to Lyme disease is considerable, as shown on the left side of the graph above, and statistically significantly greater than the aches and pains of daily living experienced by the control group, on the right.

    Crowdfunding For Lyme Disease

    Without the help of insurance to pay for expensive treatments, thousands have turned to crowdfunding to offset Lyme disease costs and pay for out of pocket medical expenses. Crowdfunding allows people to tap into their network for support during difficult times. By launching an online fundraiser, you begin finding financial relief right away.

    GoFundMes fundraising platform means you can keep more of the donations you receive, and its simple to withdraw your funds right when you need them. And if you need help getting started, our blog offers fundraising tips and a medical crowdfunding guide that offers advice specific to medical fundraising.

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    What Are The Symptoms Of Lyme Disease

    Early symptoms of Lyme disease start between 3 to 30 days after an infected tick bites you. The symptoms can include:

    • A red rash called erythema migrans . Most people with Lyme disease get this rash. It gets bigger over several days and may feel warm. It is usually not painful or itchy. As it starts to get better, parts of it may fade. Sometimes this makes the rash look like a “bull’s-eye.”
    • Fever
    • Muscle and joint aches
    • Swollen lymph nodes

    If the infection is not treated, it can spread to your joints, heart, and nervous system. The symptoms may include:

    • Severe headaches and neck stiffness
    • Additional EM rashes on other areas of your body
    • Facial palsy, which is a weakness in your facial muscles. It can cause drooping on one or both sides of your face.
    • Arthritis with severe joint pain and swelling, especially in your knees and other large joints
    • Pain that comes and goes in your tendons, muscles, joints, and bones
    • Heart palpitations, which are feelings that your heart is skipping a beat, fluttering, pounding, or beating too hard or too fast
    • Shooting pains, numbness, or tingling in the hands or feet

    Persistent Symptoms After Treatment For Lyme Disease

    Natural Strategies to Overcome Lyme Disease

    It is well-recognized that some patients experience prolonged symptoms during convalescence from Lyme disease, and a subset suffer significant functional impairment., The most common complaints among such patients are arthralgias, myalgias, headache, neck and backache, fatigue, irritability, and cognitive dysfunction .

    A working definition was developed to categorize patients with post-Lyme disease symptoms , those patients with persistent clinical symptoms after treatment for Lyme disease, but who lack objective evidence of treatment failure, reinfection, or relapse . PLDS is not strictly speaking a coherent clinical diagnosis its primary value has been to define a patient cohort for further study. Nonetheless, it is worth considering how it conceptually differs from CLD. To meet criteria for PLDS, patients must have unequivocal documentation of appropriately treated Lyme disease, lack objective manifestations of Lyme disease, and have persistent symptoms that cannot be explained by other medical illnesses. Thus, of patients with chronic symptoms that have been attributed to Lyme disease, those meeting criteria for PLDS are those for whom infection with B burgdorferi is most plausible. This makes the studies of PLDS paradigmatic for the understanding of CLD.

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    Diagnosis And Management Of Lyme Disease

    WILLIAM F. WRIGHT, DO, MPH DAVID J. RIEDEL, MD ROHIT TALWANI, MD and BRUCE L. GILLIAM, MD, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland

    Am Fam Physician. 2012 Jun 1 85:1086-1093.

    Patient information: See related handout on Lyme disease, written by the authors of this article.

    Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne illness in the United States. It is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, and is transmitted primarily by the deer tick . Following its discovery in children and adults in Lyme, Conn., in 1977,1 its incidence has increased steadily in the United States.2

    SORT: KEY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTICE

    Erythema migrans rash following a tick bite is the only clinical manifestation sufficient to make the diagnosis of Lyme disease in the absence of laboratory confirmation.

    A = consistent, good-quality patient-oriented evidence B = inconsistent or limited-quality patient-oriented evidence C = consensus, disease-oriented evidence, usual practice, expert opinion, or case series. For information about the SORT evidence rating system, go to .

    SORT: KEY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTICE

    Erythema migrans rash following a tick bite is the only clinical manifestation sufficient to make the diagnosis of Lyme disease in the absence of laboratory confirmation.

    Hunting For Alternative Drug

    Frustrated by the lack of treatment options for Lyme disease patients with lingering symptoms, Rajadas and his team began hunting for a better alternative in 2011. In 2016, they published a study in Drug Design, Development and Therapy that listed 20 chemical compounds, from about 4,000, that were most effective at killing the infection in mice. All 20 had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for various uses. One, for instance, is used to treat alcohol abuse disorder.

    Jayakumar Rajadas

    In this most recent study, azlocillin, one of the top-20 contenders, was shown to eclipse a total of 7,450 compounds because it is more effective in killing B. burgdorferi and causes fewer side effects. Lyme disease affects more than 300,000 people annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can affect various organs, including the brain, skin, heart, joints and nervous system, and cause heart problems and arthritis if untreated. Symptoms include fever, headaches, chills, and muscle and joint pain.

    Traditional antibiotics, such as doxycycline, are effective as an early course of treatment for the infection in the majority of patients, but it remains unclear why these drugs fail to treat 10% to 20% of patients, Rajadas said.

    Recommended Reading: How Do You Know If You Got Lyme Disease

    Solutions To Chronic Lyme Disease

    At LifeWorks Wellness Center, we believe that the best treatment for Lyme disease is ozone therapy.

    Ozone is a substance that is found at high atmospheric levels youve heard of the ozone layer. For medical purposes, ozone is created by sending oxygen through an electrical coil, causing it to have three atoms instead of two its no longer O2 its now O3. This third atom makes for oxygen that is supercharged, giving it superior medical properties.

    Ozone works by increasing the amount of oxygen in your body. This helps it to heal by:

    • Detoxifying your liver
    • Killing fungi, viruses and bacteria
    • Improving cellular metabolism
    • Enhancing your immune system

    When you consider the myriad ways in which ozone benefits your body, its easy to see how it helps to counteract the immunosuppressant effects of various diseases, including Lyme disease. Its believed that ozone therapy can prevent and control a variety of conditions.

    When treating Lyme disease we usually combine ozone therapy with one or more other modalities. Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy and Pulsed Magnetic Field Therapy are both offered to patients who have a lot of pain as part of their symptoms. IV therapy such as Myers Cocktails are very beneficial is boosting the immune system back up and Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant which potentiates the Myers Cocktail.

    Treatments For Chronic Lyme Disease

    How to treat resistant lyme disease and chronic disease with Dr. Richard Horowitz

    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.

    The continued symptoms are known as chronic Lyme disease, or post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome .

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    Some Chronic Lyme Disease Symptoms

    As mentioned, chronic Lyme disease consists of a broad cluster of physical, cognitive, and psychiatric symptoms. Some of these symptoms are much more common, while others almost never occur, but can be deadly. But even the less severe symptoms, such as chronic fatigue and pain, can lead to drastic changes in quality of life for chronic Lyme patients.

    Chronic Lyme survivors have reported experiencing the following symptoms for months to years after infection:

    • Intermittent fevers, chills, and sweats
    • Chronic inflammation
    • Numbness and tingling in the limbs
    • Dizziness and shortness of breath
    • Tremors
    • Heart palpitations and irregular heartbeat
    • Anxiety and paranoia
    • Multiple-chemical sensitivities
    • Seizures

    Chronic Lyme disease can be linked to deadly symptoms, such as Lyme carditis .

    According to Lymedisease.org, studies consistently show that chronic Lyme disease patients have poorer quality of life than those with other chronic diseases. One of their own studies showed that 75% of surveyed patients reported at least one symptom as severe or very severe.

    What Are The Treatments For Lyme Disease

    Lyme disease is treated with antibiotics. The earlier you are treated, the better it gives you the best chance of fully recovering quickly.

    After treatment, some patients may still have pain, fatigue, or difficulty thinking that lasts more than 6 months. This is called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome . Researchers don’t know why some people have PTLDS. There is no proven treatment for PTLDS long-term antibiotics have not been shown to help. However, there are ways to help with the symptoms of PTLDS. If you have been treated for Lyme disease and still feel unwell, contact your health care provider about how to manage your symptoms. Most people do get better with time. But it can take several months before you feel all better.

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    Has Niaid Looked At The Potential Benefits Of Long

    Yes. NIAID has funded three placebo-controlled clinical trials on the efficacy of prolonged antibiotic therapy for treating PTLDS. The published results were subjected to rigorous statistical, editorial, and scientific peer review.

    These trials were designed to ensure that several key parameters were addressed:

    • The susceptibility of B.burgdorferi to the antibiotics used
    • The ability of the antibiotics to both cross the blood-brain barrier and access the central nervous system and to persist at effective levels throughout the course of therapy
    • The ability of the antibiotics to kill bacteria living both outside and inside mammalian cells
    • The safety and welfare of patients enrolled in the trials

    The first clinical trial, which included two multicenter studies, provided no evidence that extended antibiotic treatment is beneficial. In those studies, physicians examined long-term antibiotic therapy in patients with a well-documented history of previous Lyme disease but who reported persistent pain, fatigue, impaired cognitive function, or unexplained numbness. Those symptoms are common among people reporting PTLDS. Patients were treated with 30 days of an intravenous antibiotic followed by 60 days of an oral antibiotic.

    In 2016, a clinical trial conducted in the Netherlands also concluded that in patients with persistent symptoms attributed to Lyme disease, longer term treatment with antibiotics did not provide additional benefits compared with shorter term regimens.

    Who Gets Lyme Disease

    Chronic Lyme Disease

    Anyone bitten by an infected deer tick can get Lyme disease. Most U.S. cases of Lyme disease happen in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. But Lyme disease is found in other parts of the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia too.

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    Antibiotics Should Compliment Not Replace The Body’s Self

    We shouldn’t disregard antibiotics as powerful tools for modulating Lyme bacteria. However, they are not enough to get rid of chronic Lyme and we don’t want patients to continue with this low grade infection without treatment.

    The key is really to use antibiotics in tandem with the body’s own natural healing mechanisms This means supporting the immune system, eating a nutrient-dense, whole foods diet, strategic dieting or fasting that boost autophagy, and activating the parasympathetic nervous system.

    Microbiologic Investigations Into Chronic Lyme Disease

    There is very little microbiologic evidence that supports persistent B burgdorferi infection in patients who lack objective manifestations of Lyme disease, such as erythema migrans, arthritis, meningitis, and neuropathies. Advocates for CLD contend that our ability to detectB burgdorferi is hampered by current technology and an incomplete scientific understanding of B burgdorferi, and that conventional diagnostic testing misses patients with CLD., Naturally, this raises the question of why we should assume that chronic B burgdorferi infection exists at all if we are so ill-equipped to detect it. Even when chronically symptomatic patients have a well-documented history of treated Lyme disease, investigators have been unable to document persistent infection. A recent study in which ticks were allowed to feed on persistently symptomatic posttreatment patients yielded molecular evidence of B burgdorferi in 1 of 16 patients and no patient had cultivatable organisms.

    Because validated testing methods fail to support the connection between B burgdorferi and clinically diagnosed CLD, physicians who specialize in CLD often turn to alternative tests. This has included the use of novel culture techniques, detection of B burgdorferi DNA in urine specimens, and enumeration of CD57-positive lymphocytes. Independent investigations, however, have repudiated the validity of these tests.

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    How To Spot Covert Lyme Infections

    A warning sign to look for in children is acute behavioral changes . Many tick borne infections can trigger an autoimmune encephalitis, particularly in children. The infection triggers our body to start attacking itself, leading to inflammation of the brain. And what we commonly see as an outcome of that, especially in children, is acute behavioral changes.

    Another tell-tale sign is migratory joint pain or migratory numbness and tingling called neuropathy. Nothing does that except tick borne infections.

    Still there are several symptoms from Lyme like the sweats, irregular heartbeat, chronic fatigue that are not unique to Lyme, so lab testing is essential when these symptoms show up and you suspect Lyme.

    Chronic Lyme Disease Vs Acute And Late Stage Lyme

    Treating Chronic Lyme with IV Antibiotics for 30 Bucks a Day.

    One reason chronic Lyme disease is harder to detect and treat than Lyme at earlier stages is that chronic Lyme disease symptoms are more wide-ranging and varied. Chronic Lyme disease can cause symptoms of early Lyme disease such as fatigue and muscle aches to recur, but it can also cause new symptoms that affect different parts of the body.

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    The Truth About Antibiotic Treatments

    Until recently, many doctors in Canada tended to prescribe only one round of antibiotics, irrespective of the stage of infection. However, current research suggests that a single course of antibiotics is often insufficient for treating Lyme disease, especially if the infection has been untreated for several months.

    What Is The Treatment For Lyme Disease

    The first-line standard of care treatment for adults with Lyme disease is doxycycline, a tetracycline antibiotic. Other antibiotics that have activity against borrelia include the penicillin-like antibiotic, amoxicillin, and the second generation cephalosporin, Ceftin. The mainstay of treatment is with oral antibiotics, but intravenous antibiotics are sometimes indicated for more difficult to treat cases of neurologic-Lyme disease, such as meningitis, and cases of late Lyme arthritis.

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    Defining Patient Subgroups: Post

    Patients with persistent symptoms related to Lyme disease likely represent a heterogeneous population, which includes previously untreated patients, as well as those treated patients who remain symptomatic. As a result, some will manifest primarily patient-reported symptoms while others will present with symptoms in conjunction with objective, physical findings. This heterogeneity is further complicated by variation in terminology and the definitions used by different groups in the field.

    Figure 3. A schematic of clinical- and research-defined patient subgroups among those with persistent symptoms associated with Lyme disease . The size of each patient subgroup is not meant to represent actual population frequency, as prevalence data is extremely limited. IDSA, Infectious Diseases Society of America ILADS, International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society CLD-PT, Chronic Lyme Disease-Previously Treated CLD-U, Chronic Lyme Disease-Untreated IgG, Immunoglobulin G CFS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome FM, Fibromyalgia.

    Evaluation According To Protocol

    LYME DISEASE TREATMENT: PROPHYLAXIS, EARLY LYME, ...

    Patients were required to have pretreatment serological testing, lumbar puncture, neuro-psychological testing, and brain MRI. The antibody response to B. burgdorferi in serum was determined by indirect ELISA and Western blotting , and positive results were interpreted according to the CDC/ASTPHLD criteria . Spinal fluid was tested for total cells and protein, and concomitant serum and CSF samples were tested for intrathecal IgM, IgG, and IgA antibody production to B. burgdorferi by antibody capture enzyme assay, as previously described . A response in CSF that was> 1 times that in serum was defined as local synthesis of specific antibody in CSF. B. burgdorferi DNA was detected in CSF by PCR by use of 2 different primer-probe sets that target different regions of the plasmid DNA encoding outer-surface protein A of the spirochete, as previously described .

    Routine brain MRI, without gadolinium enhancement, was performed in all patients. After August 1992, it became possible to perform quantitative single photon emission computed tomography of the brain, newly reported in one study to be of use in evaluation of Lyme encephalopathy . SPECT was not available when the study began, and only the last 7 patients entered into the study underwent SPECT imaging.

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