Archive for the ‘Inflammation’ Category

The Hidden Drivers of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Lyme Disease is One)

https://imahealth.substack.com/p/the-hidden-drivers-of-inflammatory? Video Here

The Hidden Drivers of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Crohn’s and colitis are called genetic, autoimmune, and idiopathic. What if all three labels are wrong? A new paper tests each against current evidence.

Independent Medical Alliance

Aug 02, 2026

Host: Dr. JP Saleeby | Guest: Josh Dech

What if Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are caused by more than genetics alone?

Dr. Yusuf “JP” Saleeby, IMA Senior Fellow in Functional and Integrative Medicine, and gut health specialist Josh Dech take a closer look at what may contribute to inflammatory bowel disease, also known as IBD. The two recently co-authored a new paper published in the Journal of Independent Medicine. Their conversation traces how genetics, diet, gut health, and the environment may work together to shape both diseases.

Inflammatory bowel disease affects more than 7 million people worldwide and ranks among the fastest-growing chronic diseases globally. Nearly everyone diagnosed with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis hears some version of the same three things: the disease is genetic, the immune system is attacking its own tissue, and the underlying cause is unknown. Those three explanations leave two treatments on the table, drugs and surgery, and they leave a patient nothing to investigate.

A new paper in the Journal of Independent Medicine argues that all three explanations fail against current evidence. Josh Dech and Dr. JP Saleeby, its co-authors, point out that each has been contested separately in the literature for two decades without anyone testing them as a set. Taken together, they conclude, the conventional model does not hold.

What replaces it is a disease that is partially heritable, environmentally activated, and immune-mediated, and the distinction is not academic for anyone living with one. If exposures determine whether susceptibility becomes disease, exposures can be found and changed. (See link for article, research paper and video)

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SUMMARY:

  • The authors found that genetics only explain about a quarter of disease risk for irritable bowel (IBD).
  • The authors argue that the autoimmune label, despite holding for decades, is based on the weakest evidence and that pathogenic transfer has never been demonstrated.
  • The serologic markers long cited as evidence for autoimmunity turn out to recognize microbial and fungal targets but are not autoantibodies in the classical sense.
  • A review of 53 meta-analyses across 71 risk factors shows the following exposures for IBD that are quantified and modifiable:
    • antibiotic exposure
    • oral contraceptives
    • breast-feeding was protective for Crohn’s and colitis
    • ultra-processed food
    • air pollution
    • psychological stress
    • mold
    • mycotoxins
  • The authors state current treatments complement but ignore the environmental exposures.
  • The authors give the following issues that should be questioned alongside a standard work-up:
    • Birth mode and feeding history
    • Early antibiotic courses, particularly before age 5
    • Water damage & mold exposure at home, work and in vehicles.
    • Adolescent diet, stressors, and infections

At this point in the article, they described a case report on a 14 year old whose Crohn’s progressed far enough that surgeons planned to remove most of his intestines & place a colostomy. Testing pointed to chronic Lyme disease and three months into treatment a repeated scope test found no lesions.

In short, they conclude the following answers for IBS: antibiotic stewardship, breastfeeding support, reducing ultra-processed food, and remediating indoor mold.

After reading the comments after the article, I would be remiss if I did not mention the ‘vaccine’ issue due to the fact they all introduce foreign substances the body recognizes as foe, priming it for later potential problems such as life-threatening allergies to many things including food, which many are also linking to Alpha Gal Syndrome (AGS), an allergy to animal products supposedly caused by ticks – with no solid proof, as well as the fact some get AGS without any known tick involvement. So while ticks play a part, they are obviously not the only ingredient required to get AGS.

Pathogenic priming was shown clearly with the COVID gene therapy injections.

For more:

Category:

Candida, diet and nutrition, Inflammation, Lyme, research, Treatment

Self-Reported Observations of Unusual White Fibrous Structures in Embalmed Corpses: Multi-Year Survey Results

https://ijirms.in/index.php/ijirms/article/view/2201

Self-Reported Observations of Unusual White Fibrous Structures in Embalmed Corpses: Multi-Year Survey Results from Embalmers in Five Countries, 2022–2025

Thomas F. Haviland*·Laura Kasner·Daniel SantiagoiD

DOI:10.23958/ijirms/vol11-i07/2201· Pages: 204 – 208· Vol. 11, No. 07, (2026)· Published: July 1, 2026

PDFCitationShare

Views: 22,752 PDF downloads: 6,044

Abstract

Background: Beginning in 2020–2021, embalmers in multiple countries reported observing large, tough, rubbery white or off-white fibrous structures in the veins and arteries of embalmed corpses, which they described as distinct from classic postmortem clots.

Methods: We conducted four annual cross-sectional surveys (2022–2025) of active embalmers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand using SurveyMonkey. A dual distribution strategy (professional associations and direct emails to funeral homes) was used. Core questions assessed observation of unusual white fibrous structures and estimated percentage of corpses affected.

Results: Across 808 total responses, the proportion of embalmers reporting observation of these structures ranged from 66% to 83%. Weighted average prevalence in affected corpses ranged from 19% to 27%. The 2022 survey showed a marked increase in first observations beginning in 2020 and accelerating in 2021.

Conclusions: Multiple years of surveys document consistent self-reported observations by experienced embalmers of unusual white fibrous structures in a substantial fraction of corpses, with a clear increase noted around 2020–2021. These findings constitute a potential safety signal that warrants independent investigation by forensic pathologists and biomedical researchers to characterize the structures and determine their etiology.

(Click on top link for full article and pictures)

New White Fibrous Clots Publication

Dr. John Campbell

July 23, 2026

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**Comment**

For the ‘science’ skeptics out there, this is what research looks like when no ‘external’ funding or grants are received. Hence the use of SurveyMonkey.

Researchers know that when they study a topic that doesn’t fit the narrative, they are entirely on their own. No large NIH grants should be expected because our government is completely in bed with Big Pharma, who literally couldn’t care less if you live or die.

Lymeland has been in this lovely parallel universe for nigh on 40 years. Any research that moves the needle forward at all is independently funded and since research has become so incredibly expensive, cheap tools like SurveyMonkey are utilized.

In the case of Lyme/MSIDS, it is often called “Big Data,’ and relies on patient surveys. If you haven’t done it already, make sure to fill out the MyLymeData Project which allows patients to pool their health information through a secure website. “Big data” projects use advanced technology to gather and analyze huge amounts of patient data, which can assist researchers in studying disease patterns and answering important questions such as why do some people recover from Lyme disease, while others remain ill?

For more on the clots found in the COVID injected:

Category:

Activism, Heart Issues, Inflammation, research, vaccines

Autism Affects 1 in 31: One Doctor’s Search for Answers

https://imahealth.substack.com/p/autism-affects-1-in-31-one-doctors?

Autism Affects 1 in 31: One Doctor’s Search for Answers

Dr. Elizabeth Mumper’s 46-year pediatric career, spanning 600+ patients across 20 states, reveals what medical schools still aren’t teaching about autism.
Independent Medical Alliance
Apr 10, 2026

In 1979, a medical student at the Medical College of Virginia was told to make sure she saw the patient with autism at the children’s treatment center. At the time, the condition was so rare it might be the only case she’d encounter in her entire career. Prevalence was 1 in 5,000.

That student was Elizabeth Mumper. Over the next 46 years, she diagnosed and treated more than 600 children with autism from 20 different states and lectured on their medical conditions in 21 countries. Today she is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance. And autism prevalence has reached 1 in 31 children.

In a new article published in the Journal of Independent Medicine, Dr. Mumper traces what changed and what the medical establishment has been slow to recognize: that autism is not just a psychiatric diagnosis. Children with autism often have treatable medical conditions, including gut inflammation, immune dysregulation, metabolic abnormalities, and mitochondrial dysfunction. When those conditions are identified and addressed, the improvements can be dramatic. Some children no longer meet the diagnostic criteria at all.

“When you find a problem that is treatable, it’s very, very rewarding to see the children feel better, and the families are very grateful.” — Elizabeth Mumper

The gap between published research and clinical training, Dr. Mumper writes, remains wide. Most pediatric residents still learn the behavioral model. Her article lays out the medical comorbidities, the evidence behind targeted interventions, and the opportunity for clinicians willing to look deeper.

📖 Read and Download the Full Paper

How Autism Changed Throughout My Career (JIM Vol. 2, No. 2, 2026)
Author: Elizabeth Mumper

👉 Visit the Journal of Independent Medicine to create a free account and download the full article.

Related Reading

For more:

Category:

Autism, Inflammation, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, vaccines

Why Lyme Disease Can Feel Like PTSD

https://danielcameronmd.com/why-lyme-disease-can-feel-like-ptsd/

Why Lyme Disease Can Feel Like PTSD

Posted By: Dr. Daniel Cameron
11/25

A growing number of my patients tell me something they struggle to say out loud: “Why Lyme disease can feel like PTSD.” They describe a body that reacts like it’s in danger even when nothing is happening, a nervous system that fires alarms without a trigger, and symptoms that feel more like trauma physiology than traditional Lyme disease. This experience is real, biologically driven, and far more common than most clinicians recognize.

1. Why Lyme Disease Can Feel Like PTSD: When the Nervous System Misreads Signals

Lyme disease affects the brain regions responsible for threat detection — especially the amygdala, hippocampus, and autonomic fight-or-flight centers. When inflammation touches these circuits, the system can confuse normal sensations with danger, firing “protective” responses too early or too intensely.

Patients describe sudden adrenaline surges, waves of dread that appear without warning, air hunger, trembling, and nights filled with cortisol spikes. These trauma-pattern sensations occur not because of a traumatic event but because Lyme disrupts the same circuitry involved in PTSD-like responses. This is one of the main reasons why Lyme disease can feel like PTSD to so many patients.

2. PTSD-Like Lyme Symptoms Driven by Unpredictability

Lyme symptoms rarely follow a predictable path. Good days collapse without warning, flares strike suddenly, and stability feels fragile. Over time, the nervous system learns to anticipate danger even when nothing is happening.

One patient said, “The good days scare me the most because I don’t trust them,” and that captures how trauma physiology develops — not from one dramatic event, but from repeated internal unpredictability and the loss of safety in one’s own body.

3. Medical Dismissal Reinforces PTSD-Like Lyme Reactions

Invalidation intensifies trauma-like reactivity. Patients repeatedly hear:

  1. “Your tests are negative.”

  2. “This sounds like anxiety.”

  3. “You’re overthinking it.”

When someone already feels unsafe inside their own body, medical dismissal becomes another threat.
A patient once said, “The dismissal was more traumatizing than the illness,” and unfortunately this is a common experience. This medical trauma is part of why Lyme disease can feel like PTSD and why patients carry both physical and emotional wounds.

4. Trauma Without a Trauma Event: A Hallmark of PTSD-Like Lyme Symptoms

Lyme can create trauma physiology even without a traditional trauma event. No accident, no assault, no dramatic storyline — just:

  1. inflammation affecting the brain’s alarm system

  2. symptoms that appear and disappear without warning

  3. the nervous system learning from each flare

  4. loss of trust in one’s own body

  5. dismissal during the most vulnerable moments

Patients say, “My body remembers being sick,” or “My system reacts before I can think,” and these are accurate descriptions of a trauma-pattern nervous system responding to infection-driven disruption.

The Core Truth: Why Lyme Disease Can Feel Like PTSD

Lyme activates the same circuits trauma uses, disrupts the same autonomic pathways, and creates the same hypervigilance and internal alarms. The body braces for danger because the systems designed to sense danger have been altered by illness.

Patients are not imagining danger — their nervous system is responding to inflammation, unpredictability, and lived experience.

When we finally recognize this pattern, patients feel understood, and the nervous system can begin to settle after years of being on guard.

Have your Lyme symptoms ever felt like PTSD? Share your experience below — your story may help someone else feel less alone.

Resources

  1. National Institute of Mental Health. Traumatic Events and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
  2. Pubmed. Post-traumatic stress disorder: clinical and translational neuroscience from cells to circuits
  3. Dr. Daniel Cameron: Lyme Science Blog. PTSD-Like Symptoms After Medical Gaslighting in Lyme Disease
  4. Dr. Daniel Cameron: Lyme Science Blog. What PTSD Research Reveals About Chronic Lyme Disease

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**Comment**

Great article.  Thankfully, those days are long gone from me, but I remember them.

Lyme/MSIDS has a lot of unpredictability.  Patients often relapse.  This can set you up for holding your breath waiting for the shoe to drop!  This is no way to live but it takes time and experience to learn how to cope with this beast.

I’ve written this before, but it bares repeating – early on in my journey I found a patient online who had obtained their health back.  Please understand, I was desperate for hope!  Fighting the notion I would be sick forever, struggling with excruciating pain, I sent off an email asking their advice.  They got back to me immediately.  They ‘got it’ and understood my fear.  First, they told me I Could Get Well.  I can’t even begin to express the relief I felt.  But second, they told me to not get depressed about being depressed – that there were going to be hard days ahead, so just embrace the suck and know tomorrow could be much better.

I’m telling you, I would hug this person if they stood before me today.  They gave me hope and that is a medicine that is in short supply!

For more:

Lastly, I found I felt the worst mentally in tandem with feeling my worst physically.  This makes complete sense when you understand the systemic, widespread assault your body is battling.

Category:

Inflammation, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, research

The Often Overlooked Link Between Oral Health and Lyme Disease

https://www.lymedisease.org/oral-health-lyme-disease/

The often overlooked link between oral health and Lyme disease

By Terri McCormick

1/19/26

Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses are often discussed in terms of joints, nerves, and immune dysfunction. One critical area is frequently overlooked: the mouth.

That gap was the focus of a recent clinical lecture on oral–systemic health and its relevance to tick‑borne disease, presented by Dr. Alexander Volchonok, a board‑certified periodontist with advanced training in biologic dentistry. He collaborated with Dr. Susan Marra, a physician who treats complex chronic illness, including Lyme disease and co‑infections.

Their central message was clear: oral health extends beyond the teeth and gums. From a whole-body perspective, the mouth plays an active role in immune regulation, inflammation, and systemic signaling. In some patients with tick-borne disease, unresolved oral inflammation may contribute to ongoing immune activation and stalled recovery.

This is especially relevant for the Lyme community, where many patients hit treatment plateaus despite appropriate antimicrobial and supportive care. Identifying hidden sources of persistent inflammation may help explain why progress sometimes slows.

How the mouth connects to the rest of the body

The mouth is a primary gateway between the outside world and the immune system. Microbes, nutrients, toxins, and inflammatory signals pass through the oral cavity and can influence immune activity throughout the body.

The oral cavity hosts one of the body’s most active microbiomes, made up of hundreds of bacterial species along with fungi and viruses. When balanced, this ecosystem helps regulate immune function, support digestion, contribute to healthy blood flow through nitric oxide production, and protect the body’s natural barriers.

The gums are an important part of the body’s defense system. When they’re healthy, they help keep germs and irritants from entering the bloodstream. But if that balance is disrupted, inflammation in the mouth can worsen and send signals that affect the immune system throughout the body.

Oral microbiome dysbiosis and chronic inflammation

Oral disease develops when the microbiome shifts from a healthy balance (symbiosis) to an imbalanced state (dysbiosis). In dysbiosis, protective bacteria decline, harmful species expand, inflammatory biofilms form, and the immune system remains chronically activated.

This shift can be accelerated by factors commonly seen in people with Lyme disease and other complex chronic illnesses, including immune dysregulation, medication effects, reduced saliva flow, nutrient deficiencies, chronic stress, and autonomic dysfunction.

Once dysbiosis takes hold, oral inflammation may become self-sustaining, contributing not only to local problems in the mouth but also adding to the body’s overall inflammatory load.

Periodontal disease as a chronic inflammatory driver

A major focus of the lecture was periodontal disease, an infection-driven inflammatory condition affecting the tissues that support the teeth. It can progress from mild gum inflammation to deep pockets, bone loss, and eventual tooth loss.

Importantly, periodontal disease often advances quietly. Pain is not always present, especially in early or moderate stages. Chronic inflammation at the gum line creates a persistent wound with direct access to the bloodstream, allowing inflammatory mediators and microbial byproducts to influence the body’s wider immune response.

In patients with tick-borne disease, where immune regulation is already impaired, this ongoing inflammatory input may compound symptoms and hinder recovery.

Dental and jawbone pathology that may go unrecognized

The lecture also addressed dental and jawbone problems that may not be immediately apparent during routine dental exams. These include infections associated with teeth that have lost their blood supply (sometimes called necrotic teeth) and areas of impaired bone healing following dental procedures.

One example was jawbone that fails to heal properly after extractions, wisdom tooth removal, or other dental trauma. Reduced blood flow and low oxygen levels in these areas can limit the body’s ability to detect and resolve inflammation.

Because these issues are often silent, patients may have no symptoms even while underlying problems persist and add to the body’s overall immune load.

Why antibiotics alone may not resolve the issue

In tick‑borne disease, some tissue environments are notoriously difficult for systemic treatments to reach. The lecture noted that the oral cavity can share these same challenges—such as biofilm formation, low‑oxygen pockets, and reduced blood flow in diseased areas.

As a result, antimicrobial therapy may reduce symptoms without fully resolving underlying inflammatory drivers if oral disease remains unaddressed. This does not suggest antibiotics are ineffective, but rather that persistent oral inflammation may continue to stimulate immune responses even when systemic treatment is appropriate.

How oral health fits into Lyme disease care

From a whole-body perspective, oral health is not a stand-alone issue. It’s part of an interconnected network involving the immune system, nervous system, vascular system, and inflammatory signaling pathways.

Addressing oral disease is not a replacement for medical treatment of Lyme disease. Instead, it may serve as an important adjunct within an integrated care model, particularly for patients who struggle to make lasting progress despite appropriate treatment.

Why this information matters to the Lyme community

This lecture did not claim that oral disease causes Lyme disease. Rather, it highlighted how unresolved oral inflammation and hidden dental pathology may contribute to ongoing immune activation and complicate recovery in some individuals.

For people living with Lyme disease and associated co-infections, the mouth may be an overlooked source of inflammatory stress. Integrating oral health into a whole-body evaluation may help clinicians and patients identify contributors to illness that would otherwise remain hidden.

The key takeaway is not to assume dental issues are the root of chronic illness, but to recognize that oral health may be an important piece of the puzzle when healing stalls.

About the speakers

This discussion on oral–systemic health and its relevance to tick-borne disease was led by Dr. Alexander Volchonok and Dr. Susan Marra, two clinicians working at the intersection of complex chronic illness and whole-body care.

Dr. Volchonok is a board-certified periodontist with advanced training in biologic dentistry. His clinical work focuses on the relationship between oral health, inflammation, and systemic disease, with particular attention to dental and jawbone conditions that may go unrecognized during routine care. During the presentation, Dr. Marra noted that his combination of specialty training and biologic dentistry expertise is rare in the United States.

Dr. Marra is a physician who treats patients with complex chronic illness, including Lyme disease and associated co-infections. Her work centers on immune dysregulation, chronic inflammation, and integrative care approaches for patients who struggle to achieve sustained improvement.

Terri McCormick is a writer and advocate with LymeDisease.org. She is author of the forthcoming book Being Misdiagnosed: Stories That Reveal the Hidden Epidemic of Lyme Disease.

For more:

Category:

Dentistry, Inflammation, Lyme