Lyme, Dementia, and the Tests Nobody Thinks to Run
Sept. 2026
Dr. Hartman and Dr. Horowitz walk through the 16 factor MSIDS model, why chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia sit at the top of the list of diagnoses worth reconsidering, and the brain markers Dr. Horowitz now asks physicians to run before and after treatment. They also cover how Lyme testing differs across labs, the dapsone protocol he developed over a decade, and why he believes the same handful of factors keeps surfacing in dementia, autism, ADHD and long COVID. That argument sits at the center of Ending Chronic Illness, his new book from Simon & Schuster, and this conversation is for patients who have seen many doctors without getting answers as well as clinicians willing to widen what they measure before deciding what a patient has. —
Dr. Horowitz developed an empirically validated questionnaire for Lyme-MSIDS which is more accurate than current testing. He also wrote: “Why We Can’t Get Better,” an excellent resource for both patients and practitioners. He states that it’s easier to obtain medically assisted death than treatment for chronic Lyme disease, and wrote a thoroughly sourced article showing that the debate about chronic Lyme is entirely political and not based on science.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — Why Lyme may sit under the dementia numbers
02:24 — The scale of the epidemic and why case counts diverge
06:57 — Reading a Lyme test differently
11:53 — Sixteen nails in the foot
12:44 — The first live human case linking Lyme and Alzheimer’s
16:03 — Why the same 16 factors keep appearing
21:26 — How the dapsone protocol was discovered
24:03 — Brain markers, and amyloid as a defense
27:04 — Autism, ADHD, and measuring inflammation first
36:30 — Which diagnoses should prompt a tick-borne workup
41:14 — Dapsone: side effects, risk, and benefit
50:27 — Which tests to order, and Ending Chronic Illness
