Public health reports contain limited information regarding the psychological and neurological symptoms of tick-borne diseases (TBDs). Employing a mixed-method approach, this analysis triangulates three sources of symptomology and provides a comparison of official public health information, case reports, medical literature, and the self-reported symptoms of patients with Lyme disease and other TBDs.
Out of the fifteen neuropsychiatric symptoms reported in the medical literature for common TBDs, headaches and fatigue and/or malaise are the only two symptoms fully recognized by public health officials. Of TBDs, Lyme disease is the least recognized by public health officials for presenting with neuropsychiatric symptoms; only headaches and fatigue are recognized as overlapping symptoms of Lyme disease. Comparisons from a patient symptoms survey indicate that self-reports of TBDs and the associated symptoms align with medical and case reports. Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, hallucinations, delusions, and pain—ranging from headaches to neck stiffness and arthritis—are common among patients who report a TBD diagnosis. Given the multitude of non-specific patient symptoms, and the number and range of neuropsychiatric presentations that do not align with public health guidance, this study indicates the need for a revised approach to TBD diagnosis and for improved communication from official public health sources regarding the wide range of associated symptoms.
Mass Monitoring: A Digital Dictatorship on the Horizon? Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked
October 19, 2022
Story at-a-glance
A little over a year ago President Biden proposed the establishment of a new biomedical research agency modeled after the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to propel cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other diseases That agency — the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) — is now well on its way to being and up and running, with a $1 billion budget from Congress ARPA-H appears to merge national security with health “security” in a way that could lead to the criminalization of illness and general “wrong-think” The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is now recommending that all U.S. adults aged 65 and younger should be screened for mental health issues The screening recommendation falls right in line with the original intent behind ARPA-H, which was to monitor Americans for neuropsychiatric warning signs by harvesting private data from consumer electronic devices and health care providers. AI would then be used to predict whether an individual might commit a crime, so that it could be stopped before it happens
A little over a year ago President Biden proposed a plan to set in place a new health agency to drive the U.S. down a futuristic road that would lead to cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other diseases.
At the time, investigative journalist Whitney Webb, author of “One Nation Under Blackmail,” warned that the new biomedical research agency — modeled after the nation’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — actually is a plan to merge national security with health “security” in a way that would “use both physical and mental health ‘warning signs’ to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur.”1
According to Webb, “Such a system is a recipe for a technocratic ‘pre-crime’ organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as ‘wrongthink.’”
ARPA-H — A ‘High-Risk’ Research Agency
That agency — formally named the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health2 (ARPA-H) — is now well on its way to being and up and running, with a $1 billion budget from Congress to start. Public law 117-103 was enacted March 15, 2022, which authorized its establishment within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), under the National Institutes of Health (NIH).3
Government officials only need to iron out details such as what programs and activities it will engage in, and (of course) what “appropriate” current and future funding will be needed to run it. ARPA-H seems to fit hand in glove with Biden’s September 12, 2022, “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy,”4 which essentially establishes a fast-tracked pipeline for transhumanist dream projects.
Specified in that order is the development of genetic engineering technologies and techniques “to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers,” as well as genetic technologies to “unlock the power of biological data” using “computing tools and artificial intelligence.”
Additionally, “obstacles for commercialization” will be reduced “so that innovative technologies and products can reach markets faster.” ARPA-H is a tailor-made vehicle for fast-tracked (read poorly tested and incredibly dangerous) biomedical research. Like DARPA, ARPA-H will focus on “high-risk, high-reward research.”
Task Force Calls for Psych Screening All Adults
In related news, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — an independent panel of experts appointed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services — is recommending that all U.S. adults aged 65 and younger should be screened for mental health issues.5
Is this a forerunner for Webb’s prediction of how the government will detect mental health “pre-crimes”? The task force is accepting public comments on the proposal until October 17, 2022.6
Health and Biowarfare Have Become Increasingly Entwined
While we often think of military defense and public health as two very different areas of concern, the two have over the years merged to a significant extent, which in some ways helps explain why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now acting in ways that can best be described as a covert war against the health of the American public.
In June 2002, President Bush signed the “Biodefense for the 21st Century”7 directive, the aim of which was to advance a “comprehensive framework” for U.S. biodefense, based on the assumption that America could be devastated by a bioweapons attack.
The directive outlined “essential pillars” of the U.S. biodefense program, including threat awareness and vulnerability assessment, prevention and protection, surveillance and detection, response and recovery.
In 2002, the Bush administration quintupled biodefense spending to $317 million, and the following year, that budget ballooned to $2 billion.8 Bush also earmarked another $6 billion for the development and stockpiling of vaccines over the next decade.
The man selected by Vice President Dick Cheney to oversee the spending of much of these vast amounts of cash was Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984.
In 2003, Fauci’s professional responsibilities were expanded to include all civilian biodefense research, both classified and unclassified, and the development of medical countermeasures against terrorist threats from infectious diseases9 — and all without oversight. For all these years, he’s had carte blanche to approve and run whatever biodefense research he wanted, without anyone telling him otherwise.
We now know Fauci has funded a wide array of risky gain-of-function research, including research that may have been instrumental in the creation of SARS-CoV-2. And while all of that is being justified in the name of biodefense, in reality, all biodefense research is biowarfare research. Everything has dual use.
Allegiance to the Highest Bidder
At the same time that he’s involved in the creation of lethal pathogens capable of devastating the global population, Fauci is also supposed to protect the American public against infectious diseases. In the case of COVID-19, he clearly failed, even though he confidently predicted10 that President Trump would have to face an infectious outbreak.
As it stands, ARPA-H is also housed under the umbrella of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), just like the NIAID. So, we basically have two biowarfare/defense agencies smack-dab in the middle of a public health agency.
Add to that the fact that “biodefense” has for the last nearly three years been used to strip Americans of their Constitutional rights and freedoms, and it’s starting to look as though our public health agencies have been turned into Department of Defense proxies.
The designated enemy is the American people, and the weapons of war are a combination of souped-up pathogens and gene-based technologies cooked up in Fauci-funded labs, and DOD-directed surveillance and social engineering technologies.
It makes sense to ask why the American defense department would turn its military might against its own people, the very ones it’s supposed to protect. The answer is that most nations have been infiltrated and basically taken over by globalist interests that want to erase national borders in favor of a centralized global governance board.
The United States is, unfortunately, no exception. So, the short answer is, the American government is not attacking Americans on their own accord. They’re merely doing the bidding of globalist interests.
Why? That’s a tougher question to answer. Some probably decided to sell out to the highest bidder. Others truly believe in the ideologies of technocracy and transhumanism that The Great Reset authors espouse.
Some might not realize why they’re doing what they’re doing. They’re just following orders and haven’t thought it through. Others may be psychopaths and just don’t care what happens, as long as they get theirs. Some are bonafide eugenicists and want to thin the herd, and all the more so if they can make a buck in the process.
ARPA-H’s Original Intention: Neuropsychiatric Monitoring
Focusing for a moment on the psychiatric monitoring issue mentioned earlier, Webb, in her article, explained how ARPA-H proponents, in 2019, wanted Trump to implement it for the prevention of mass shootings — not cancer. As explained by Webb:11
“ARPA-H is not a new and exclusive Biden administration idea; there was a previous attempt to create a ‘health DARPA’ during the Trump administration in late 2019 …
In 2019, the same foundation and individuals currently backing Biden’s ARPA-H had urged then president Trump to create ‘HARPA,’ not for the main purpose of researching treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s, but to stop mass shootings before they happen through the monitoring of Americans for ‘neuropsychiatric’ warning signs.
For the last few years, one man has been the driving force behind HARPA — former vice chair of General Electric and former president of NBC Universal, Robert Wright.
Through the Suzanne Wright Foundation (named for his late wife), Wright has spent years lobbying for an agency that ‘would develop biomedical capabilities — detection tools, treatments, medical devices, cures, etc.— for the millions of Americans who are not benefiting from the current system.’
While he, like Biden, has cloaked the agency’s actual purpose by claiming it will be mainly focused on treating cancer, Wright’s 2019 proposal to his personal friend Donald Trump revealed its underlying ambitions.
As first proposed by Wright in 2019, the flagship program of HARPA would be SAFE HOME, short for Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes.12
SAFE HOME would suck up masses of private data from ‘Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo, and Google Home’ and other consumer electronic devices, as well as information from health-care providers to determine if an individual might be likely to commit a crime. The data would be analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms ‘for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence.’
The Department of Justice’s pre-crime approach known as DEEP13 was activated just months before Trump left office; it was also justified as a way to ‘stop mass shootings before they happen.’ Soon after Biden’s inauguration, the new administration began using information from social media to make pre-crime arrests14 as part of its approach toward combatting ‘domestic terror.’
Given the history of Silicon Valley companies collaborating with the government on matters of warrantless surveillance,15 it appears that aspects of SAFE HOME may already be covertly active under Biden, only waiting for the formalization of ARPA-H/HARPA to be legitimized as public policy.”
Total Information Awareness
According to Webb, ARPA-H’s connections to DARPA suggests the new agency is a new version of DARPA’s failed Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, a biosurveillance project launched in the aftermath of 9/11.
The goal was to develop information technologies capable of automatically detecting the release of a pathogen by “monitoring nontraditional data sources,” including “prediagnostic medical data” and “behavioral indicators.”
Put plainly, they were trying to identify bioterrorist threats by spying on the public. “Now, under the guise of the proposed ARPA-H, DARPA’s original TIA would essentially be making a comeback for all intents and purposes as its own spin-off,” Webb writes.
Into this mix we also have to add Big Tech. The list of tech companies with DOD contracts is a long one, so many technologies have dual purposes. Facebook is but one example of that. This dual purpose also goes the other way. For example, the U.S. military is developing biometric wearables to detect COVID-19, ostensibly to allow Americans to “return to work safely.” As noted by Webb:16
“While of interest to the military, these wearables are primarily intended for mass use — a big step toward the infrastructure needed for the resurrection of a bio-surveillance program to be run by the national-security state.”
We also now know the U.S. government illegally instructs tech platforms to censor information and people on its behalf. So, Big Tech is also best viewed as a weapon, wielded by the U.S. government for the benefit of the technocratic cabal that wants to do away with nations and run the whole world.
The Era of Digital Dictatorship Is Upon Us
There can be little doubt today that “biosecurity” is the favored justification for the need of a digital dictatorship. Stripping you of your freedom is “for your own safety,” and you’re supposed to be thankful. If you’re not, the biosecurity state labels you a homicidal bioterrorist.
It’s easy to see, actually, why biosecurity is such an alluring ploy. It’s easy to make people afraid of something they can’t see. It’s easy to fake an outbreak. It’s easy to get rid of anyone you want simply by labeling them a biothreat and tossing them into a quarantine camp, never to be heard of again. It’s easy to get people to comply with surveillance, as most are scared of getting sick.
It’s easy to get people to turn on each other, again because they’re afraid of getting sick. All you have to do is declare people who don’t mask up or won’t get the latest gene therapy a threat to public health, and people around them do the harassing. We’ve even discovered it’s easy to get people to commit voluntary suicide by taking a poisonous, experimental injection they know nothing about — again because they’re afraid of getting sick.
It’s a good plan. Just look at how easily these maniacs eliminated more than 5.9 million people worldwide with SARS-CoV-2 (many of which were killed by intentionally improper treatment protocols), and how easily they’re eliminating millions more in excess deaths from the COVID jab. All without firing a single bullet or lighting up a single gas chamber. It’s amazing, really. As noted by Webb:17
“In the merging of ‘national security’ and ‘health security,’ any decision or mandate promulgated as a public health measure could be justified as necessary for ‘national security,’ much in the same way that the mass abuses and war crimes that occurred during the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ were similarly justified by ‘national security’ with little to no oversight.
Yet, in this case, instead of only losing our civil liberties and control over our external lives, we stand to lose sovereignty over our individual bodies … The … NIH’s BRAIN initiative … was launched, among other things, to ‘develop tools to record, mark, and manipulate precisely defined neurons in the living brain’ that are determined to be linked to an ‘abnormal’ function or a neurological disease …
Biden’s newly announced agency … would integrate those past Obama-era initiatives with Orwellian applications under one roof, but with even less oversight than before. It would also seek to expand and mainstream the uses of these technologies and potentially move toward developing policies that would mandate their use …
ARPA-H … will be used to resurrect dangerous and long-standing agendas of the national-security state and its Silicon Valley contractors, creating a ‘digital dictatorship’ that threatens human freedom, human society, and potentially the very definition of what it means to be human.”
US Military Spends Millions Spying on Americans
In related news, Vice recently reported the U.S. military has purchased a mass monitoring tool called “Augury,” which is said to capture everything “except the smell of electricity”:18
“Multiple branches of the U.S. military have bought access to a powerful internet monitoring tool that claims to cover over 90 percent of the world’s internet traffic, and which in some cases provides access to people’s email data, browsing history, and other information such as their sensitive internet cookies, according to contracting data and other documents …
Additionally, Sen. Ron Wyden says that a whistleblower has contacted his office concerning the alleged warrantless use19 and purchase of this data by NCIS, a civilian law enforcement agency that’s part of the Navy …
The tool, called Augury … bundles a massive amount of data together and makes it available to government and corporate customers as a paid service … agencies that deal with criminal investigations have also purchased the capability. The military agencies did not describe their use cases for the tool.”
According to Vice, the U.S. Navy, Army, Cyber Command and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency have spent at least $3.5 million to access this tool. The question is why. As noted by Vice, rather than getting a proper warrant, U.S. agencies frequently simply purchase the desired data, be it cell phone data or internet use data, from private companies.
In the case of Augury, it harvests an estimated 93% of all internet traffic, including browser history, URLs visited, cookie usage, email data, and most importantly, packet capture data (PCAP) related to email, remote desktop and file sharing protocols.
Google is also a frontrunner and expert in artificial intelligence, required for effective social engineering, and both are crucial components of The Great Reset’s social credit system.
In all, it’s an insane amount of data being captured without our knowledge, which is then sold for a hefty profit by a private company (and this is just one of many) to government agencies that use our tax dollars to spy on us.
Google — The Biggest Spy Machine of All
A key player in this digital prison being built around us, on the taxpayers’ dime, is Google. Not only is it a massive spy machine, capturing “every word of every email sent through Gmail and every click made on a Chrome browser,”20 it’s also a key censoring tool. Sure, it’s private and “can do what it wants,” but it’s actually doing the government’s bidding, so it’s not independent in any serious definition of the word.
Google is also a frontrunner and expert in artificial intelligence, required for effective social engineering, and both are crucial components of The Great Reset’s social credit system. Google’s interference in your life is only going to increase, and if you’re still using Gmail, understand that they are censoring your inbox. While about 50% of our subscribers are using Gmail accounts, the delivery rate for Gmail accounts is HALF of all the email providers like ProtonMail.
So, if you are using Gmail to receive our newsletter please change immediately. ProtonMail is an excellent alternative. It provides end-to-end encryption to protect your content and other user data. Proton also provides an encrypted calendar, encrypted cloud storage and free VPN.
Stop Feeding the Beast
Next, start weeding out any and all other Google products. All Google products are interconnected, and the data from all their different products and services are collected to build your personality profile.
That profile is then sold to third parties. It’s also used by Google to influence your thoughts, beliefs and behaviors using AI analytics. AI analytics also bring us back to where we started, with Biden’s new “pre-crime,” predictive policing agency, ARPA-H — or what could become such an agency.
While predictive policing may still sound like pure sci-fi, a January 2020 Intercept article21 cited a 2018 document22 by the data storage firm Western Digital and the consulting company Accenture, which predicted smart surveillance networks will eventually be used for that very purpose.
At present, law enforcement uses CCTV networks to investigate crimes after they’ve occurred. Western Digital and Accenture predict that by 2025, municipalities will be transformed into fully connected smart cities where the cameras of businesses and public institutions are all plugged into a government-run AI-enabled analytics system, and by 2035, that system will have predictive capabilities. As reported by The Intercept:23
“A ‘public safety ecosystem’ will centralize data ‘pulled from disparate databases such as social media, driver’s licenses, police databases, and dark data.’ An AI-enabled analytics unit will let police assess ‘anomalies in real time and interrupt a crime before it is committed.’ That is to say, to catch pre-crime.”
Looking at ARPA-H with a jaundiced eye, it does seem tailor-made for what Webb calls “a technocratic ‘pre-crime’ organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as ‘wrongthink.’”
Privacy Is Freedom, Freedom Is Privacy
It’s time to realize that you cannot have freedom without privacy — especially data privacy. We simply must have data privacy because our data is being used to manipulate, control, deceive and hurt us. It’s being used as a weapon against us.
Considering how massive the monitoring, surveillance and data harvesting is already, it’s going to take a while to extricate ourselves. Ultimately, we’ll need stringent laws and enforcement agencies that penalize companies that harvest and sell user data.
In the meantime, we need to educate each other about the control grid being set up, and on an individual level begin to “starve the beast.” Stop giving away your data. Every single data point you give them is another data point that will be used to educate AI on how to better control people.
Ditching Google products — all of them — will take a big chunk out of the data harvesting effort. So, don’t delay. Start today. Several of the most commonly-used Google traps are listed in the list:
If you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts.
Switch to a secure document sharing service — Ditch Google Docs and use another alternative such as Zoho Office, Etherpad, CryptPad, OnlyOffice or Nuclino, all of which are recommended by NordVPN.24 Digital Trends has also published a number of alternatives.25
Delete all Google apps from your phone and purge Google hardware.
Avoid websites that use Google Analytics — To do that, you’ll need to check the website’s privacy policy and search for “Google.” Websites are required to disclose if they use a third-party surveillance tool. If they use Google Analytics, ask them to switch!
Don’t use Google Home devices in your house or apartment — These devices record everything that occurs in your home, both speech and sounds such as brushing your teeth and boiling water, even when they appear to be inactive, and send that information back to Google. The same goes for Google’s home thermostat Nest and Amazon’s Alexa.
Don’t use an Android cellphone, as it’s owned by Google.
Ditch Siri, which draws all its answers from Google.
Don’t use Fitbit, as it was recently purchased by Google and will provide them with all your physiological information and activity levels, in addition to everything else that Google already has on you.
Stop using Gmail — Use a privacy based encryption service like ProtonMail.
Stop using Chrome browser and Google Search — Brave is the browser of choice and while you are there, you can use the new Brave search engine.
Sources and References
1, 11, 16, 17 Unlimited Hangout May 5, 2021
2 Congressional Research Service ARPA-H: Congressional Action and Selected Policy Issues, August 12, 2022
3 NIH ARPA-H
4 Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy
5 Koam News Now September 21, 2022
6 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Public Comment Portal
7 State.gov Biodefense for the 21st Century Fact Sheet
8 Unherd August 29, 2022
9 NIAID Biodefense
10 Christianity Daily May 2021
12 Washington Post August 22, 2019
13 Mint Press News October 25, 2019
14 Reason February 16, 2021
15 Daily Mail June 8, 2013
18 Vice September 21, 2022
19 Letter from Sen Ron Wyden to Inspector General September 21, 2022
20 Gawker October 6, 2015
21, 23 The Intercept January 27, 2020
22 Western Digital, Accenture, Value of Data: Seeing What Matters — A New Paradigm for Public Safety Powered by Responsible AI (PDF)
24 NordVPN February 5, 2019
25 Digital Trends April 28, 2017
________________
**Comment**
This should frighten everyone, but particularly Lyme/MSIDS patients who are affected cognitively/psychologically by infections that love the brain, and can cause all manner of mental issues including paranoia, anger/rage, anxiety, depersonalization, PTSD, OCD, depression, suicidal ideation, and much more. The CDC does not recognize most neuropsychiatric symptoms of tick-borne illness, which means if a patient is having trouble in this area, and law enforcement, mainstream medicine, or even public education gets involved, the mental health aspect of TBIs won’t even be considered or factored into the equation.
I personally know someone who had trouble with the law due to the affects of Lyme/MSIDS on her mental health. My husband struggled with severe anxiety while in treatment as well as rage, inability to handle stress, and paranoia (heard voices and became distrustful). I struggled with depression at times. I personally went bonkers on disulfiram (a new Lyme treatment) and spent a week in the hospital with psychosis. I know that of which I speak. Lyme/MSIDS can bring you to a place where you and your own family and friends don’t even recognize you and certainly not your actions/thoughts.
Imagine the hey-day a psych screening would yield when done on infected Lyme/MSIDS patients who are struggling with psychiatric manifestations.
The following is taken from the above website and translated by a Lyme/MSIDS patient.
Chlamydia Trachomatis
Today on the blog about Lyme disease, a text about another co-infection to Lyme disease – chlamydia trachomatis. From the experience of our Center, it appears more and more often among our clients as “accompanying” Lyme disease. Its symptoms cause a number of female ailments, but the male gender is also not free from them. All the time on our blog, readers may notice that the catalog of symptoms that may indicate Lyme disease is growing dynamically and at the same time the catalog of symptoms that may indicate specific co-infections to Lyme disease is also growing dynamically. A natural question may arise: Is it possible to realistically have so many different symptoms? Answer: yes, it is possible.
Chlamydia trachomatis (bacteria), like other co-infections to Lyme disease, which we wrote about earlier on the blog, can be transmitted, among others, by a tick. Infection can also occur through intimate contact.
At the initial stage, such an infection does not show any clinical symptoms, which does not mean that such an infection does not develop in the body. At this point, our common belief bows – no symptoms, e.g. no pain – no disease. In many cases, then we are dealing with an asymptomatic infection.
The characteristic symptoms of an infection – chlamydia trachomatis – mainly concern the genitourinary system, including:
urethritis
epididymitis
prostatitis
In contrast, the symptoms that affect women are increased
vaginal discharge
vaginal bleeding
bleeding after intercourse
cervical erosion
cyst formation
secondary infertility
The occurrence of the infection in question and its symptoms causes a significant decrease in the comfort of life, including the comfort of intimate contacts. That is why it is so important to recognize it properly and early. Then there is a chance to use the right therapy – about which we will write on our blog.
An important point worth mentioning here is that the occurrence of chlamydia trachomatis with Lyme disease is not an “absolute relationship”. This means that the presence of this infection is not an automatic indication that we are also dealing with a Lyme infection.
Intimate infections in men and women related to specific pathogens are a wide issue that goes far beyond the scope of the blog. By presenting the problem of tick-borne disease – Lyme disease, or rather the problem of tick-borne diseases – Lyme Disease – on our blog, we want to draw the attention of natemat.pl readers that you need to look at specific symptoms and disease states in a much wider perspective. Only in this way are we able to more effectively counteract infections that attack us and our loved ones.
Finally, I would like to point out one more symptom that, based on the experience of our Center, can and does cause chlamydia trachomatis – eye problems:
burning
itching
tearing
feeling of sand in the eyes
These symptoms can last for months and no drops can solve the problem.
Co-infecting agents can be transmitted together with Borrelia burgdorferi by tick bite resulting in multiple infections but a fraction of co-infections occur independently of tick bite. Clinically relevant co-infections are caused by Bartonella species, Yersinia enterocolitica, Chlamydophila pneumoniae, Chlamydia trachomatis, and Mycoplasma pneumoniae…..Chlamydia trachomatis primarily causes polyarthritis. Chlamydophila pneumoniae not only causes arthritis but also affects the nervous system and the heart, which renders the differential diagnosis difficult.
Fluorescent immunohistochemical and in situ hybridization methods demonstrated the presence of Chlamydia antigen and DNA in 84% of Borrelia biofilms. Confocal microscopy revealed that Chlamydia locates in the center of Borrelia biofilms, and together, they form a well-organized mixed patho-
“She got interested in sexual health field in her first year as a doctor when one of her patient’s joint problems were a complication from chlamydia.
‘I had no idea – until that point – that was a thing,’ she said. ‘There’s the slightly nerdy bit of seeing something interesting and fascinating. But also the shame that young person had, that really touched me.’”
Why Chronic Lyme Treatment Fails – A Review with Strategies
By Dr. Marty Ross
About Fifteen Percent of People with Chronic Lyme
This article is about the reasons people remain ill with chronic Lyme disease even after taking one to two or even more years of herbal or prescription antibiotics. In my experience, this seems to be about 15 percent of people with chronic Lyme disease. The other 85 percent of people do have various degrees of recovery – most getting very well.
Lyme literate medical doctors (LLMDs) have very limited science to guide us about why treatment works or fails – and what the best treatment options are. The last United States National Institutes of Health funded human trials looking at treating Lyme were nearly 20 years ago. We do know from a study conducted by the MyLymeData project of LymeDisease.org that the best chance of recovery is provided by a year or more of antibiotics and working with an LLMD. You can read more about the MyLymeData studies, including those on alternative medicine outcomes versus antibiotic outcomes in What Works? Navigating Prescription & Alternative Medicine Lyme Treatments.
With the lack of human studies, most of the science I use to guide my treatment decisions comes from laboratory, non-human experiments. Fortunately, these experiments provide insights about herbal and prescription treatment options that can work in many. These experiments also provide a number of theories about what can work for treatment and why people do not recover even with long-term antibiotics.
How to Avoid Chronic Lyme Treatment Failure
Before I review the treatment failure theories, let’s discuss what steps you should take to have a successful Lyme recovery.
Kill Germs AND Correct All Body Wide Imbalances
Treating Lyme is complicated. The infection triggers an immune system cytokine reaction that affects most organs and systems of the body. In my experience, the great majority of people can recover if they address each of the steps in The Ross Lyme Support Protocol. This protocol is designed to kill Lyme and coinfection germs and to correct all of the sleep, immune system, detoxification, inflammation and hormonal imbalances created by Lyme. If your treatment did not work, but you only took herbal or prescription antibiotics alone, look at The Ross Lyme Support Protocol to see all of the areas you should have addressed that provide the best chance of recovery.
Find and Treat Mold Toxicity
Chronic mold toxicity looks just like chronic Lyme disease. Make sure you do not have this problem. And if you do – correct it. See Mold and Lyme Toxin Illness for more information.
Theories & Strategies About Lyme Treatment Failure
There are a number of theories why people remain ill even after getting rid of mold toxins and treating with a comprehensive regimen that kills germs and addresses all imbalances identified in The Ross Lyme Support Protocol. The reasons include:
Borrelia (Lyme) persisters
autoimmune disease triggered by the Lyme infection
disruption of a healthy gut microbiome
germ debris
limbic system brain holding of the illness
tissue damage from the infection
chronic inflammation and immune dysfunction
learned illness behavior and/or somatic disorder
Persisters
The Borrelia persisters theory is an in-vogue and relatively new idea about why treatments do not work. The idea is: under assault from antibiotics (RX or herbal) some of the Lyme germs go into a persister hibernation state. These persisters do not respond to regular antibiotics. We will have to see in time if addressing persisters does help to prevent or correct treatment failures. In my practice, all of my current treatments include antimicrobial approaches to address persisters.
Through a process known as molecular mimicry, the immune system may attack tissues with protein and molecular parts that look just like parts of Lyme. At this time there is not a Lyme specific way to address this. But for some – using Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) can regulate or reverse the autoimmune attack.
Treating Lyme with herbal or prescription antibiotics disturbs the healthy balance of good germs and microbes in the gut. The germs that live in the intestines are called the gut microbiome. These include healthy bacteria, viruses, parasites, yeasts and fungae. To put the amount of microbes in perspective, over 90 percent of the genetic material in human bodies come from the microbes in the gut!
We allow these germs to live in us because they serve a purpose. Studies show these microbes regulate the immune system, signal healthy brain function, digest food, remove toxins and things we are allergic to and provide many other healthy body regulating functions.
The theory is antibiotics disturb the healthy gut microbiome leading to ongoing body-wide illness. It is not clear yet how best to address this issue or if the gut disruption really does cause ongoing illness.
One treatment option is to create a healthy gut microbiome using probiotics. Another one is to replace the dysfunctional microbiome through a stool transplant – also called fecal microbiota transplant (FMT). However, FMT is regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). At present it is only allowed for treatment of C. difficile bacteria overgrowth in the intestines. And there has not been any research done about whether it could change the outcome of those with chronic Lyme disease.
Treating Lyme is about balancing risks and benefits. The benefit of using herbal and prescription antibiotics is decreasing or eliminating the Lyme or coinfection (like Bartonella or Babesia) germs leading to improved health. But the risk of doing so is disturbing the gut microbiome.
The immune system is supposed to break down and get rid of dead germs and their parts including DNA, RNA, proteins and fats. One theory why people remain ill is that the immune system does not get rid of all the borrelia germ debris. The debris triggers an ongoing immune inflammatory response. At this time there is not a treatment I am aware of for this possible problem.
Limbic System Brain Holding of The Illness
The limbic system is a part of the brain that regulates our emotional responses and behaviors. This includes fight-or-flight responses, fear, and survival behaviors like feeding the young and reproduction.
For some in Lyme the limbic system becomes overly reactive leading to a brain holding of illness. This causes some of the ongoing symptoms like pain or even fatigue. Much of this is unconscious.
There are a number of programs that can help reprogram the limbic system brain holding of the illness. Two of the more popular programs are the Gupta Program and Annie Hopper Dynamic Neural Retraining System. Many of my patients have found benefit from these practices. Short of doing these programs, developing a meditative mindfulness practice can help too. Counseling may also help to decrease emotional reactivity.
Tissue Damage
Another theory is Lyme and the immune reaction to it lead to ongoing tissue damage and injury even when the infection is gone or under control. This leads to pain, neurologic and brain dysfunction, mitochondria cell energy factory dysfunction and even immune dysfunction.
Under this theory, Lyme infection sets off an ongoing immune inflammation reaction that takes on a life of its own – causing more inflammation and immune dysfunction. One reason this could happen is due to an imbalance between what is known as Th1 and Th2/Th17 parts of the immune system. Th1 is made up of immune cells that attack germs like T white blood cells and macrophages. Th1 is the immune system offense squad. Th2/Th17 is made up of B white blood cells that make antibodies, mast cells involved in allergies and histamine production, and immune barrier cells that line the mucous and skin membranes designed to keep germs out. Think of Th2/Th17 as the immune system defensive squad. If Th2 and Th17 get too active they release inflammatory cytokines that lead to many ongoing Lyme type symptoms and they can suppress Th1 and its germ fighting abilities.
These are two psychological conditions. I list them here to be thorough, but I am concerned that many non-LLMDs use these diagnoses to say Lyme disease is in a person’s head instead of acknowledging and treating them for a physical illness. In my experience, it is a rare person with chronic Lyme that has one of these conditions contributing to their illness. Counseling is helpful if one of these occurs.
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References
Bobe JR, Jutras BL, Horn EJ, et al. Recent Progress in Lyme Disease and Remaining Challenges. Front Med (Lausanne). 2021;8:666554. Published 2021 Aug 18. doi:10.3389/fmed.2021.666554 (View)
Cabello FC, Embers ME, Newman SA, Godfrey HP. Borreliella burgdorferi Antimicrobial-Tolerant Persistence in Lyme Disease and Posttreatment Lyme Disease Syndromes. mBio. 2022;13(3):e0344021. doi:10.1128/mbio.03440-21 (View)
Fallon BA, Sotsky J. Conquering Lyme Disease: Science Bridges the Great Divide. New York: Columbia University Press; 2018.
Sanabria-Mazo JP, Montero-Marin J, Feliu-Soler A, et al. Mindfulness-Based Program Plus Amygdala and Insula Retraining (MAIR) for the Treatment of Women with Fibromyalgia: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial. J Clin Med. 2020;9(10):3246. Published 2020 Oct 11. doi:10.3390/jcm9103246 (View)
About the Author
Marty Ross, MD is a passionate Lyme disease educator and clinical expert. He helps Lyme sufferers and their physicians see what really works based on his review of the science and extensive real-world experience. Dr. Ross is licensed to practice medicine in Washington State (License: MD00033296) where he has treated thousands of Lyme disease patients in his Seattle practice.
Marty Ross, MD is a graduate of Indiana University School of Medicine and Georgetown University Family Medicine Residency. He is a member of the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ILADS) and The Institute for Functional Medicine.
Studies show that the incidence of Lyme disease in the USA has nearly doubled since 1991. While the disease is associated with many physical symptoms, there is a correlation between Lyme disease and depression. In fact, Lyme can have a significant psychological affect as much as physical ones on infected individuals. Axiom Medical’s Communication Director, Autumn Brennan, had a rough experience with Lyme. In this blog, we share her heart-felt story as well as tips and tricks to manage Lyme’s physical and mental challenges.
Lyme Disease and Depression – Autumn’s Story
It was a gorgeous fall day in Southwest Wisconsin, warm and sunny with a gentle breeze. I packed up my daughters and headed to a local organic apple orchard, where we had harvested apples every year for over a decade. (See link for article)
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Great excerpt:
There is no magical one-size-fits-all cure for chronic pain, mental health challenges, or substance use. But there is pure magic in our human connection. If you see someone struggling:
approach them kindly with your care, concerns, and a listening ear
if they are open to support, offer professional resources for assistance
schedule regular time to check in on their progress and catch up on hugs
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 