Archive for the ‘Activism’ Category

Panel Says TBI’s Have Reached Epidemic Levels

https://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-tick-borne-diseases-epidemic-panel.html

Tick-borne diseases reach epidemic levels, panel says

April 16, 2018
by Delthia Ricks, Newsday
Lyme disease
Adult deer tick, Ixodes scapularis. Credit: Scott Bauer/public domain

Tick-borne infections have reached epidemic proportions on Long Island, where children are disproportionately affected by Lyme disease and other infections transmitted by the eight-legged creatures, a panel of top scientists announced recently.

“Lyme disease is mostly a disease of children and curiously mostly a disease of boys,” Jorge Benach said at a recent symposium at Stony Brook University School of Medicine. Benach, who discovered the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, is a molecular geneticist at Stony Brook University School of Medicine.

His observation that Lyme disease is mostly an  of children was corroborated by Dr. Christy Beneri, a pediatrician at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. She said her institution encountered a wide range of tick-borne illnesses annually and that boys tended to outnumber girls in the number of infections. The most likely reason for the disparity, Beneri said, is the tendency among boys to play outdoors in wooded areas where ticks thrive.

In the extensive pediatric research Beneri presented at the symposium was evidence of some children developing Bell’s palsy, a temporary facial paralysis that occurs when the Lyme bacterium affects a cranial nerve. The paralysis resolves with antibiotic treatment, Beneri said.

Beyond the Lyme bacterium, ticks on Long Island have been found to harbor babesia and anaplasma.

Babesia are protozoa, or parasitic, infectious agents that hone in on red blood cells, similar to the way a malaria parasite invades the same cells.

Anaplasmosis is an infection caused by the bacterium Anaplasma phagocytophilum. It can trigger aches, fever, chills and confusion.

Beneri and Benach were among five leading Stony Brook experts, including university president Dr. Samuel Stanley, who addressed what they described as a mounting epidemic of infections caused by the ever-expanding range of ticks. Stanley, who was the first speaker, is a specialist in infectious diseases.

“New York bears a disproportionate impact from tick-borne diseases,” Stanley said at the symposium, which was held in a lecture hall in the university’s health sciences building. “This is a regional and state problem.”

New York has the highest number of confirmed Lyme  cases nationwide, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has cataloged more than 95,000 Lyme infections in the state since 1986. Suffolk County has long been ground zero for the ailment on Long Island, studies consistently have shown.

“Cases in Suffolk County hover between 500 and 700 and this is just for the reported cases,” Benach said, noting that Suffolk has among the highest rates of many tick-transmitted infections because of the dense infiltration of the insects in county.

Typical Lyme symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans, said Dr. Luis Marcos, a specialist in internal medicine and infectious diseases.

Marcos presented data showing the wide range of illnesses caused by ticks throughout the region, including Borrelia miyamotoi, a corkscrew-shaped bacterium identified in recent years as the cause of a relapsing fever.

Dr. Eric Spitzer, a pathologist, discussed the many laboratory tests that Stony Brook used to arrive at a diagnosis of a tick-transmitted illness. He said that for years, doctors nationwide sent specimens to the university for analysis because of its well-known precision. Testing of those specimens earned the university $32 million over a 20-year period, he said.

Panelists identified the most prevalent ticks on Long Island as the American dog tick; the invasive lone star tick, which migrated from Southern states; and the blacklegged tick, known as deer tick.

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For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/02/13/lyme-disease-treatment/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/01/16/babesia-treatment/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/03/08/anaplasmosis/

http://danielcameronmd.com/best-antibiotics-treat-borrelia-miyamotoi/ The study authors demonstrated that B. miyamotoi is susceptible to doxycycline, azithromycin, and ceftriaxone but resistant to amoxicillin in vitro. The next step would be to show whether these drugs work in patients.

 

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Category:

Activism, Anaplasmosis, Babesia, Borrelia Miyamotoi (Relapsing Fever Group), Lyme, Parasites, Ticks

Ticks From Hell Survived the Winter

The Asian tick which mysteriously ended up on a farm in New Jersey last year clones itself, lays thousands of eggs, and drains cattle of their blood.

http://www.nj.com/hunterdon/index.ssf/2018/04/a_swarming_exotic_tick_species_now_dwells_in_nj.html

A swarming, exotic tick species is now living year round in N.J.

Longhorn ticks found on the ear of a Hunterdon County sheep last year have survived the winter, according to authorities.
Longhorn ticks found on the ear of a Hunterdon County sheep last year have survived the winter, according to authorities. (Photo courtesy of Tadhgh Rainey)

By Chris Sheldon  NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

 

An exotic species of tick that mysteriously appeared in New Jersey last year is now here to stay.

The New Jersey Department of Agriculture announced Friday that the East Asian tick, also known as Longhorned tick or the bush tick,which was discovered on a Hunterdon County farm last year, has survived the winter.

“Ongoing surveillance continued during the winter and on April 17, 2018, the National Veterinary Services Laboratory confirmed the Longhorned tick successfully overwintered in New Jersey and has possibly become established in the state,” it was stated in a news release.

Last summer, a farmer walked into the Hunterdon County health office covered in thousands of the ticks after she was shearing a 12-year-old Icelandic sheep named Hannah. Experts were called in to identify the tick which was not previously known to exist in the United States. The Department of Agriculture says it still does not know how the tick made its way to New Jersey.

The sheep has never traveled internationally and has rarely left Hunterdon County, according to Andrea Egizi, a tick specialist at the Monmouth County Tick-borne Disease Lab.

The longhorn tick. The larval and nymphal stages are difficult to observe with the naked eye. Larvae can be found from late summer to early winter. (Photo courtesy New Jersey Department of Agriculture)

When the incident was first reported, steps were taken to eradicate the insect from the farm by using a chemical wash on the sheep and removing tall grass where the they are known to dwell. The exact location of the farm and the identity of the sheep farmer is being withheld by the New Jersey Department of Agriculture.

Although the ticks are known to carry diseases, such as spotted fever rickettsioses in other parts of the world, tests performed on the ticks and the farm animals were negative for diseases.

Local, state and federal animal health and wildlife officials, as well as Rutgers University – Center for Vector Biology, are working together to eliminate the ticks and stop them from spreading. Wildlife and livestock in the area will continue to be monitored throughout the year.

The ticks are known to swarm and infest deer and animals other than sheep, so the department is warning that it has the potential to infect other North American wildlife species. The ticks reproduce asexually by cloning themselves and just one of them is capable of laying thousands of eggs. 

State and federal Department of Agriculture employees will be working with the public to determine if the tick has spread and to educate the public about protecting their livestock and pets from the pest.

The nymphs of the ticks are very small, resemble small spiders and are easy to miss, according to the Department of Agriculture. They are dark brown, about the size of a pea when full grown and can be found in tall grasses.

Authorities are asking people to contact the state veterinarian at 609-671-6400 if they see any unusual ticks on their livestock.

Unusual ticks detected in wildlife should be reported to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Wildlife Management at 609-984-6295 or the Office of Fish and Wildlife Health and Forensics at 908-637-4173, ext. 120.

Any questions about tick-borne illness in humans should be directed to local health departments or the New Jersey Department of Health at 609-826-5964.

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For more:
They’ve now found ticks bite each other potentially spreading pathogens to each other: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/07/tick-bites-tick-hyperparasitism/

Category:

Activism, Ticks

New Co-chair Named to TBD Working Group Subcommittee

https://www.lymedisease.org/jones-tbdwg-subcommittee/

New co-chair named to TBD Working Group subcommittee

Paula-Jackson-Jones-300x297

Paula Jackson Jones, President of Midcoast Lyme Disease Support and Education, has been named a subcommittee co-chair for the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group.

Jones, who co-founded the Maine-based patient advocacy group in 2014, will serve as co-chair of the “Access to Care Services and Support to Patients” subcommittee.

She fills a slot left vacant after Karen Vanderhoof-Forschner resigned from the subcommittee on March 6.

The next meeting of the full Tick-Borne Disease Working Group will be May 10. This will be a virtual meeting that is held via webcast. Members of the public may attend the meeting via webcast.

Instructions for attending this virtual meeting will be posted one week prior to the meeting at: https://www.hhs.gov/​ash/​advisory-committees/​tickbornedisease/​index.html.

Click here for more information:  https://www.hhs.gov/ash/advisory-committees/tickbornedisease/index.html

 

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme

A Remedy for Lyme-related Insomnia

https://www.lymedisease.org/heres-remedy-lyme-related-insomnia/

Here’s my remedy for Lyme-related insomnia

By Shona Curley

I have had Lyme disease since 2014. I am slowly recovering, and a few weeks ago I decided I could handle an experiment. I had been reading about autophagy, and how intermittent fasting can increase it. Autophagy is a natural, cellular process of detoxification and renewal – and it increases our stamina. Maybe it would help eliminate my afternoon fatigue?

For my experiment I finished dinner by 6 pm, had matcha tea blended with ghee for breakfast (sounds awful, but it was delicious), and waited till 11 am for lunch. Well, this backfired on me big time. My blood sugar plummeted, and Lyme insomnia came back with a vengeance.

I felt terrible for two weeks. This little relapse reminded me how debilitating and horrible Lyme insomnia is. Not only is it awful not to be able to sleep, but lack of sleep ruins the next day as well. I know you Lymies know what I mean! The lying awake while exhausted, the anxiety, the gruesome nightmares…what a mess.

I believe insomnia is one of the most crippling symptom of Lyme disease. Once we start sleeping, we start healing. Sleep’s restorative power beats intermittent fasting any day. Lesson learned.

I used my background in experiential anatomy and meditation to put my sleep cycle back in order over the course of two weeks. Now I am back to sleeping my usual ten hours a night. When I sleep this much, day by day I feel better. I have made sleeping my priority, and I truly hope the following tools help you as well.

Restorative, restful meditation

You can use meditation at night to train your body and your brain to sleep again. Lyme disrupts this basic rhythm, and it takes work to train ourselves back into healthy sleep patterns. With this training, you will avoid the trap of worrying about not sleeping – lying awake, exhausted and anxious, further patterning stress into your nights.

The brain is habit-based. Whatever we practice enough eventually becomes habit and sticks. With this meditation practice, you will bring your nervous system slowly back to its natural home in deep relaxation and comfort. Here are my suggestions for repatterning beautiful sleep.

Create parameters for your sleep, and honor them whether you are actually sleeping or not!

  • Go to bed at the same (early) time every night
  • Get up at the same time in the morning.
  • Create ritual around going to bed, such as giving yourself an oil massage or a bath beforehand.
  • Make your bed beautiful, welcoming, cozy – a respite from the world.
  • Use essential oils in a spray or diffuser to make your bedroom smell amazing.
  • When you settle in each night, it should feel like exactly where you want to be, even if you are just there to rest and meditate.
  • Set aside a solid ten hours to rest in bed, and let resting for ten hours be your only goal.
  • You control this – you don’t control sleep – so let go of expectations or goals around actually sleeping.
  • Remind yourself that meditation has been proven to be just as restorative as sleep, when we get into a deeply relaxed state.
  • As you lie in the dark, as comfortable as you can be, bring your attention to your breath. Feel your inhale, feel your exhale.
  • When you start thinking about something else (as you most assuredly will—such is the nature of the human mind), be kind to yourself. Simply withdraw your attention from the distracting thoughts, and gently return it to the feeling of your inhale and your exhale. Let your awareness drift through your body, bathing in your breath rhythm.
  • Feel your heart center. Feel your breath moving through your heart center. Bring the people or animals you love most into your mind, and let your love flow through your heart. Let your body release into the physical sensation of love, and of breath. This practice will restore you on many levels. You may drift off to sleep, and you may not. Either way, it is OK.
  • Just resting, feeling your breath, feeling your love – this is balm for the body and soul. You are bathing your brain in soothing chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin, and this stimulates the immune system to heal as well. (See the book “Molecules of Emotion”, by Candace B. Pert.) We may not be able to force sleep, but we can achieve meditative rest. This is something we control. Eventually, the practice of deep rest will lead to actually sleeping. It always has with me.

If you need help, try listening to guided meditations. You don’t have to take in all the words, just let them roll over you. You may fall asleep in the middle of listening, and that is terrific! Let listening remind your nervous system how to reset, and find restorative, peaceful rest. While I was struggling, I left my phone by my bed cued to a guided meditation, and whenever I needed help, I turned it on. (Editor’s note: We recommend having your phone in “airplane mode” to minimize EMF exposure.)

For me, a guiding voice works like magic, training my brain back to feelings of comfort and deep relaxation. After a week or so, I no longer needed the guide and could relax my mind and body by meditating. After two weeks, I was asleep all night.

When I get strong enough, perhaps I will revisit ghee and green tea. The benefits of autophagy still appeal to me! But if nothing else, Lyme teaches patience. For now, I’ll be focusing on dreamland, and wishing all you Lyme Warriors hours of meditative rest as well.

Shona Curley co-owns Hasti Pilates in San Francisco, which specializes in rehabilitation, conditioning, and pain management. A long-time meditator, she also owns Red Kite Meditations, which offers healing meditations that can be downloaded on your computer.

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For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/04/02/cant-sleep-18-plants-herbs-can-help/

http://www.tiredoflyme.com/insomnia.html  A whole list of things to try.

http://www.tiredoflyme.com/motherwort-and-lyme-disease-fatigue-and-insomnia-reducer-and-mitochondria-and-heart-protector.html

On a personal note…..

Insomnia is a hallmark symptom of tick borne illness.  The things that helped me:

I remember talking to my elderly mother about insomnia and was surprised to hear she suffered with it too, although she was completely healthy.  Hearing how she didn’t get upset about it helped me to calm down and realize that, “This too shall pass.”  Dropping the anxiety about not sleeping helped tremendously.  

I found two tricks seemed to work for me:  1)  I would get up and read about TBI (tickborne illness).  This groundwork of spending hours reading in the wee hours of the night is the backbone of my knowledge base.  I read articles & studies off the internet as well as books – basically anything I could get my hands on.  2)  I used a form of imagery when the pain took over.  I visualized my “happy place,” and slowed my breathing down, and purposely & meticulously looked around my chosen environment in my mind.  This place needs to be a place that evokes a strong sense of peace for you where you feel safe & at rest.  See if you can even “hear” and “smell” the sounds and smells in this place.  This technique, once down, can be repeated at will and will help you in untold ways.  Try and focus on details.  Don’t rush it.  The whole purpose of this exercise is to force you and your body to slow down and relax.

Things that worked for my husband:

  • Gabapentin
  • 5-HTP

And lastly, you may want to learn more about binaural beats:  http://www.amadeux.net/sublimen/documenti/G.OsterAuditoryBeatsintheBrain.pdf

Binaural beats were discovered in 1839 by physicist Heinrich Wilhelm Dove.  With a pair of ear phones on, your left earpiece plays one tone at a set frequency and your right earpiece plays another.  Your brain creates a third tone called a binaural beat.

https://sleepsugar.com/binaural-beats-for-sleep/   The frequency of the binaural beat is the difference between the frequency of the two tones that your ears hear, so if your left hear hears a frequency of 200 Hz and your right ear hears a frequency of 210 Hz. That gives the binaural beat a frequency of 10 Hz.  Since different frequencies of brainwaves are associated with different behaviors and feelings, it is theorized that you can use binaural beats to guide your brainwaves into stimulating certain mental states, such as sleep.

Your Brain Waves
  1. Delta Waves (0.1 – 4 Hz)  deep dreamless sleep.
  2. Theta Waves (4 – 8 Hz) REM sleep (dreams), & deep meditation.
  3. Alpha Waves (8 – 14 Hz)  conscious and relaxed
  4. Beta Waves (14 – 30 Hz) focused attention
The theory of Binaural Beats and Brainwaves

You can use binaural beats to cause your brainwaves to run at a frequency related to your current activity. A higher frequency binaural beat can be used to help improve focus and concentration. A lower frequency binaural beat can be used to help calm and relax your mind.

The best frequency of binaural beats for falling asleep would be 4 Hz or less. This frequency will cause your brainwaves to mimic Delta waves, the same brainwaves that you experience during deep dreamless sleep.

Whether binaural beats can actually help you fall asleep is up for debate.

In one study, 15 young soccer players used binaural beats as they fell asleep over a period of 8 weeks. Another 15 sports students replicated the process without binaural beats. When surveyed, all 15 people who used binaural beats reported improved sleep quality.

Another study took a look at how binaural beats impacted anxiety prior to a medical operation. A triple blind study showed that binaural beats significantly decreased anxiety levels in patients suffering from chronic anxiety.

For some examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1PsrqDIp-E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNmnHG53EhU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmyWcVrxlK4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiNne25uMK8  Tone only for pain relief/relaxation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5OSRpRyl6g

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme

Rage, Extreme Irritability & LD – Dr. Cameron

 

April 10, 2018 Approx. 41 Min

Rage, Extreme Irritability and Lyme disease

Dr. Daniel Cameron, a leading Lyme disease expert, discusses the impact Lyme disease has on a patient’s emotions. The tick-borne infection can trigger extreme irritability, anger and even episodes of rage.

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For more Lyme Hangouts with Dr. Cameron:

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/02/28/lyme-hang-out-with-dr-cameron-3-children-contract-babesia-from-blood-transfusion/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/15/lyme-hangout-with-dr-cameron-ptlds/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/28/dementia-and-lyme-disease-with-dr-cameron/

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Psychological Aspects