Lyme disease, which is caused by infection with Borrelia burgdorferi and related species, can lead to inflammatory pathologies affecting the joints, heart, and nervous systems including the central nervous system (CNS). Inbred laboratory mice have been used to define the kinetics of B. burgdorferi infection and host immune responses in joints and heart, however similar studies are lacking in the CNS of these animals. A tractable animal model for investigating host-Borrelia interactions in the CNS is key to understanding the mechanisms of CNS pathogenesis. Therefore, we characterized the kinetics of B. burgdorferi colonization and associated immune responses in the CNS of mice during early and subacute infection. Using fluorescence-immunohistochemistry, intravital microscopy, bacterial culture, and quantitative PCR, we found B. burgdorferi routinely colonized the dura mater of C3H mice, with peak spirochete burden at day 7 post-infection. Dura mater colonization was observed for several Lyme disease agents including B. burgdorferi, B. garinii, and B. mayonii. RNA-sequencing and quantitative RT-PCR showed that B. burgdorferi infection was associated with increased expression of inflammatory cytokines and a robust interferon (IFN) response in the dura mater. Histopathologic changes including leukocytic infiltrates and vascular changes were also observed in the meninges of infected animals. In contrast to the meninges, we did not detect B. burgdorferi, infiltrating leukocytes, or large-scale changes in cytokine profiles in the cerebral cortex or hippocampus during infection; however, both brain regions demonstrated similar changes in expression of IFN-stimulated genes as observed in peripheral tissues and meninges. Taken together, B. burgdorferi is capable of colonizing the meninges in laboratory mice, and induces localized inflammation similar to peripheral tissues. A sterile IFN response in the absence of B. burgdorferi or inflammatory cytokines is unique to the brain parenchyma, and provides insight into the potential mechanisms of CNS pathology associated with this important pathogen.
Author summary
Lyme disease is a result of inflammation-induced tissue pathology in response to infection with Borrelia burgdorferi. A major barrier to progress in understanding the neurologic manifestations of Lyme disease has been a lack of a tractable laboratory animal model to evaluate the mechanisms of central nervous system pathogenesis. Here we addressed this barrier by characterizing for the first time the kinetics of Borrelia burgdorferi colonization in the meninges of laboratory mice, and the resulting immune responses in both the meninges and brain. We demonstrate the presence and kinetics of live spirochetes in the meninges of infected mice, and show that meningeal infection is a general phenomenon shared by several Lyme disease Borrelia species. Meningeal colonization was associated with infiltrating leukocytes and local changes in immune response genes previously shown to be associated with Lyme disease pathology. Intriguingly, we show increased expression of immune response genes including those involved in antigen presentation in the brain, despite a lack of detectable infiltrating bacteria or leukocytes in this tissue. Overall, these findings characterize the central nervous system responses to Borrelia burgdorferi infection in a cost-effective and genetically robust animal model, and provide insights into the mechanisms of neuropathologies associated with Lyme disease.
__________________
**Comment**
Although this was in mice, patients the world over have experienced inflammation in the brain, including yours truly. I wondered if I’d ever have a day without head and neck pain that honestly felt like a horse kicked me. Thankfully, integrated, persistent treatment resolved this issue. I also have met numerous patients who ended up with a Chiari diagnosis due to the effects of undiagnosed Lyme/MSIDS, so the results of this inflammation can be severe: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/04/02/chiari/
Doctors debate, patients suffer: The fight over chronic Lyme disease in Wisconsin
Mainstream medicine says the tick-borne infection is a short-term ailment. But some patients insist they have Lyme-caused symptoms that last for years.
Maria Alice Lima Freitas is pictured at her home in Middleton, Wis., on Oct. 6, 2021. Freitas believes she has been suffering from Lyme disease since 2015. She has seen a large number of doctors, who she says have varying degrees of belief in her diagnosis. She is among thousands of patients in Wisconsin who believe they have a long-term version of the disease called chronic Lyme. Mainstream medicine considers Lyme a short-term illness that generally resolves quickly with antibiotics. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
Reading Time: 12minutes
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on government integrity and quality of life issues. Sign up for our newsletter for more stories straight to your inbox.
If life had gone as planned, Maria Alice Lima Freitas would be in medical school, inspired by the career of her father, a surgeon who practiced in Brazil. But instead of changing careers, the 49-year-old therapist retired from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Freitas says her undiagnosed Lyme disease has sapped her energy, fogged her thinking and caused pain in her neck, shoulders, hands and right knee. She has three times deferred her entrance into medical school while struggling with myriad symptoms that she attributes to Lyme.
Most of her doctors say she is mistaken, and that her symptoms, which began in 2015, are due to rheumatoid arthritis.
Maria Alice Lima Freitas is pictured at her home in Middleton, Wis., on Oct. 6, 2021, with her husband John Oppenheimer. Freitas’ life and career have been upended by a series of symptoms — including joint pain and brain fog — that she blames on chronic Lyme disease. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
Freitas is among thousands of Wisconsinites who say they are suffering from a chronic or long-term version of the disease. The infection comes from tiny ticks primarily found in the northeastern United States, including in Wisconsin — which is a hot spot for Lyme, ranking No. 5 among states for Lyme cases in 2019.
Nationally, Lyme disease infects an estimated 476,000 people a year. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reports the state had 3,076 estimated cases of Lyme disease in 2020 — a doubling in the past 15 years. But medical entomologists say Lyme cases in the state could be 10 times higher than reported.
The medical establishment calls Lyme a short-term disease that usually quickly resolves with antibiotics. Self-described “Lyme-literate” practitioners argue patients like Freitas suffer from a long-haul version of the disease, often called chronic Lyme disease.
The orthodox position held by most scientific experts and some professional associations — and endorsed by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — is that Lyme disease is an acute infectious disease. Clinical diagnosis is based on a “bull’s-eye” rash, other specific symptoms and two-tiered antibody tests. Treatment is by short courses of oral antibiotics. And persistent symptoms rarely occur.
The standard antibody testing for Lyme disease, cleared by the Food and Drug Administration and endorsed by insurance companies, has been criticized by patients and practitioners as inadequate to detect all cases of the disease. Some practitioners offer alternative tests and treatments, but insurance does not cover the cost of their care. And in extreme situations, such doctors risk disciplinary action.
For most people, Lyme disease is treatable and curable. Most patients report their symptoms cleared after a short course of antibiotics if the infection is recognized and treated early. Another 10-20% of patients develop more severe cases whose symptoms include debilitating pain, fatigue, brain fog, irritability and sleep disorders.
Dark-skinned patients face particular difficulties in getting a Lyme diagnosis. Identifying the red target symbol over light skin tone is easy for light-skinned people, but not so with dark skin tones. A recent UCLA study found that 34% of Black patients with Lyme disease had neurological complications compared to just 9% of whites, suggesting the disease may not have been recognized for many Black patients in earlier stages when it’s easier to treat.
Patients with persistent symptoms struggle to get a diagnosis. Wisconsin Watch has spoken with five people in addition to Freitas whose persistent, subjective symptoms fall outside of the mainstream definition of Lyme as an acute disease. Caught in the middle of the debate, they face emotional, physical, mental and financial exhaustion as they bounce between specialists in search of explanations for their pain.
“The best way I can explain…I’m going through hell, (and) keep on going,” Freitas said.
Diagnoses: Viral infection, arthritis
Freitas’ Lyme journey began in March 2019 as she battled monthly bouts of fever. She had trouble falling back to sleep late at night. Her hair rapidly fell out. And her body ached and her neck was stiff. She suffered from severe pain in her joints, bones and chest. She also felt tired. At first, Freitas attributed the exhaustion to the bladder surgery she had undergone in April. Fevers hit her in June and again in July.
The unbearable pain made it hard for her to work. It felt like someone was scraping the inside of her right knee with a knife. By August of that year, Freitas took a medical leave, unable to work.
The black-legged tick, or deer tick, is the vector of the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Deer ticks are present everywhere in Wisconsin where there is forested habitat. Pictured clockwise from top left: nymph, larva, adult male, adult female. Deer ticks have three life stages, the larva becomes a nymph, which then becomes an adult. (Courtesy of UW-Madison Department of Entomology)
She checked into a Madison hospital for a couple of days. She said the doctor ordered a variety of tests — but not for Lyme. Freitas was diagnosed with a viral infection, which she said failed to explain her full slate of symptoms, including electric sensations on her face and arms and forgetfulness.
Four summers earlier, Freitas said she similarly felt eye pain, knuckle pain, fatigue, forgetfulness and headaches. She recalled a rash that had stayed on her leg for at least three weeks. Freitas saw a rheumatologist at St. Mary’s in early July 2015.
The doctor noticed a red spot on her leg, but it was not the classic Lyme sign of “bull’s-eye” rash. She recalls being tested for Lyme, but the two-step testing came back negative.
The doctor deemed the red spot a likely spider bite and diagnosed her with arthritis. After taking pain medication for a month, Freitas began to feel better. When more symptoms took hold in 2019, she sensed that viral infection alone did not explain them. Freitas started reading articles about Lyme disease.
Her husband, John Oppenheimer, recalled his wife devouring medical journal articles. Freitas has a bachelor’s degree in biology from UW-Madison and a master’s in marriage and family therapy from Edgewood College. In late 2018, a Florida-based medical school had admitted her to a pre-med program, but her declining health disrupted those plans.
Freitas floated the Lyme hypothesis to a rheumatologist, who felt the joint pain and hand swelling looked more like rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Test results also suggested Freitas may have RA.
Questions about testing
Freitas was not convinced.“I have other symptoms that can’t be explained by RA,” she said. She had read journal articles about the difficulty in Lyme diagnosis, finding the recommended tests are “pretty fallible.”
CDC recommends a two-step testing process for determining whether a person has Lyme disease. Both blood tests must come out positive — or at least indeterminate — for a Lyme diagnosis to be made, the agency recommends.
The two tests measure antibodies that can remain in a person’s system for months or even years and therefore may not indicate an ongoing infection.“It cannot tell when you got infected,” said Elitza Theel, who directs Mayo Clinic’s Infectious Diseases Serology Laboratory.
Maria Alice Lima Freitas is comforted by group leader Alicia Cashman during a meeting of the Madison Area Lyme Support Group at the East Madison Police Station in Madison, Wis., on Feb. 8, 2020. Freitas believes she suffers from chronic Lyme disease but has struggled to find doctors who agree. She wept frequently throughout the meeting — the first one she had attended— as other participants shared their personal experiences. She later said she became emotional after realizing she was not imagining her symptoms. She attended the meeting with her husband John Oppenheimer, left. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
And the testing has other drawbacks. “It cannot tell what disease severity (is), and it cannot tell whether or not you responded to treatment,” Theel said. “It’s important to remember that we’re not making a diagnosis based on a test result alone.”
She went on to say that the testing also cannot be used to detect other infections that may cause Lyme-like symptoms. “You would have to test for those other infections,” she said.
Freitas tested positive in the first stage of testing but not the second, showing three bands instead of the five that the CDC says are proof of Lyme disease.
She asked the rheumatologist to order a different type of test from IGeneX, a California-based commercial laboratory, hoping that the insurance company would at least cover some cost. It didn’t.
“It’s expensive. I don’t have the money. I’ve been out of my job since August,” Freitas recalled.
The results from that $2,600 test came in December 2019. It indicated she did have Lyme disease. However, the IGeneX testing is not conclusive, either, Theel said. “Their criteria are less stringent than the CDC,” she said, “which will lead to a higher number of false positive results.”
Her rheumatologist refused to accept the result, Freitas and Oppenheimer said, calling it a “shit test.”
Health woes lead to self-doubt
Oppenheimer said Freitas, once wildly independent, increasingly depends on him as she struggles with her health. The two met when she was a single mom driving a Madison Metro bus and juggling classes at the UW-Madison. Oppenheimer had overheard her speaking in Portuguese, and he tried to put together a phrase that he could speak in the same language. That led to a first date — and in 2011, marriage.
But these days, Oppenheimer said, his wife is “very drained.”
And even friends and family members question whether the symptoms Freitas describes are real.
Maria Alice Lima Freitas is pictured at her home in Middleton, Wis., on Oct. 6, 2021, with her husband John Oppenheimer. “The best way I can explain … I’m going through hell, (and) keep on going,” Freitas says. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
“When everybody is saying that it is not Lyme,” Freitas said, “you start to question yourself.”
She tried a four-week course of doxycycline, the first-line antibiotics therapy for treating Lyme disease, prescribed by another rheumatologist. She began to feel better, with less pain and less brain fog. However, the symptoms returned once she completed the treatment. She even found herself starting to stutter.
Oppenheimer himself was diagnosed with Lyme disease as a 19-year-old. At the time, he was living less than 50 miles from Lyme, Connecticut, the community for which the disease was named.
He described an “arrogant unwillingness” by the medical establishment to recognize what he believes are his wife’s ongoing symptoms of Lyme disease.
“(I’m) just trying to be there with her and seemingly nothing to be able to do, and it’s horrible to watch,” he said.
Lyme controversial from the start
In autumn 1975, Polly Murray, an artist and mother of four in Lyme, reported to the state health department that she and her children were suffering from mysterious maladies, including stiff and swollen knees and rashes. And neighboring children were having similar hard-to-explain symptoms.
Physicians diagnosed the children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Another mother from the area, Judith Mensch, also contacted the state health department. Finally, the cluster aroused the attention of the Connecticut public health authorities. Yale University’s Dr. Allen Steere, who was still a rheumatologist-in-training, began searching for a cause.
Robert A. Aronowitz, a medical historian at the University of Pennsylvania, said the divide between mainstream medicine and Lyme patient advocates started early — with Patty Murray herself. He noted that Murray created local Lyme support groups starting in the 1980s that began to position themselves “in opposition to the leading Lyme disease physicians and scientists and their view of the disease.”
In her 1996 book, The Widening Circle, Murray warned of long-term cases of the disease. “To me, the fact that some cases seemed to be chronic, lasting for many years, meant that somehow the infection smoldered in some patients and was set off by an immune reaction, perhaps patients were being repeatedly re-infected by the organism,” she wrote.
Two camps, two approaches
Freitas saw a long string of mainstream physicians for a diagnosis — rheumatologists, an infectious-disease specialist, family medicine doctors and emergency room physicians.Then, in the spring of 2020, she began seeing out-of-network doctors in and outside of Wisconsin, and many of them didn’t take insurance.
A survey of more than 2,400 U.S. patients found that 50% of the respondents reported seeing at least seven physicians before a Lyme diagnosis, and more than half continued to suffer symptoms for at least six months after the recommended short course of antibiotics.
Maria Alice Lima Freitas pays about $1,200 a month for medicine, vitamins and treatment for her chronic Lyme disease. She is pictured at her home in Middleton, Wis., on Oct. 6, 2021, with her husband John Oppenheimer. Freitas is now being treated by Dr. Samuel Shor of the Tick-Borne Illness Center of Excellence in Woodruff, Wisconsin. She says her brain is still sometimes foggy but emotionally she is much better and feels optimistic that a doctor is finally taking her symptoms seriously. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
In January 2021, Freitas borrowed $4,000 from her mother-in-law and flew to Washington, D.C., to receive intravenous antibiotic therapy. The treatments failed to help; in fact she dropped 30 pounds in a matter of weeks. “I thought I was gonna die because I couldn’t eat,” Freitas said.
She continued to search for doctors.
On May 19, Oppenheimer and Freitas drove from their house in a quiet neighborhood in Middleton to northern Wisconsin.
They were on their way to a virtual visit with Dr. Samuel Shor. The Virginia-based internist works for the Tick-Borne Illness Center of Excellence in Woodruff, Wisconsin. Shor, who also is a clinical associate professor at George Washington University, sees patients in Wisconsin via telemedicine, charging $490 for an initial consultation.
As the former president of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), Shor adheres to diagnoses and treatments that the mainstream Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) generally rejects. Dr. Paul Auwaerter of Johns Hopkins Medicine, a former president of IDSA, calls physicians who treat patients for chronic Lyme “antiscience” and a danger to patients and the medical profession.
“It is disappointing to me that people resort to name-calling from either side,”
said Dr. Elizabeth Maloney, a family physician from Minnesota who helped write the latest guidelines on Lyme disease treatment. “It’s not helpful, and it does undermine patients’ confidence in our profession as a whole.”
The guidelines issued by IDSA maintain the group’s recommendations against antibiotic treatment for patients with persistent symptoms. It has also removed a previously endorsed term — Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS) — for defining patients with persistent symptoms after short courses of antibiotic therapies.
“They don’t even want to go into that quagmire anymore,” said Maloney, who leads the Partnership for Tick-Borne Diseases Education. “They do not really talk about what to do with patients who do not fully recover. It’s kind of a black box.”
The disease is complex. If untreated, Lyme can have wide-ranging effects on skin, joints, nervous system or the heart. The infectious agents attack connective tissue and can move around and “find their own way to … various parts of the body,” said Dean Nardelli, an associate professor who studies later-stage Lyme disease at the UW-Milwaukee’s Biomedical Sciences Lab Programs.
In a 2019 article in the journal Antibiotics, Shor said chronic Lyme is “often dismissed as a fictitious entity.” He and his co-authors consulted more than 250 peer-reviewed articles pointing to “a multisystem illness with a wide range of symptoms,” either continuously or intermittently, lasting at least six months.
“Signs and symptoms may wax, wane and migrate,” they wrote.
Other pathogens to blame?
Shor and his co-authors, including Maloney, propose that the lingering symptoms are caused by several pathogens from the Borrelia burgdorferi family or other tick-borne pathogens.
Nardelli said there’s a variety of symptoms and severity in Lyme disease patients, and those symptoms can be caused by the inflammatory responses against the microbes.
“Inflammation is a huge part of the immune response. It’s one of the frontline defenses we have, and it has this negative connotation, but it is intended for good,” he said. “Your immune response (is) trying to kill the bug … and in doing so, can cause damage, essentially.”
Maria Alice Lima Freitas is pictured at her home in Middleton, Wis., on Oct. 6, 2021, with some of the treatments she takes for Lyme disease and other co-infections. She says she currently pays about $1,200 a month in medicines, vitamins, supplements and treatment costs.(Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
Some theories suggest that variants of the Lyme bacteria are resistant to antibiotics. Others argue that chronic Lyme is caused by a powerful immune reaction — or it may even trigger an autoimmune disease. The central neural networks may be altered, having a significant impact on symptoms — or a combination of these factors.
Nardelli is investigating Lyme-related arthritis that persists after treatment with antibiotics. He said science can be a slow process of acquiring new knowledge, and it’s “tough” for patients who are suffering with no clear answers.
That can lead them to seek out untrustworthy practitioners or fall for costly treatments that don’t work. “You go out and find doctors that diagnose everything as Lyme disease,” Nardelli said.
For complicated cases, Maloney said physicians should approach patients as a detective would, whittling away other possibilities until getting to a diagnosis.
“The whole goal is to get people the right diagnosis so they can get the therapy that they need,” she said.
Freitas said she trusts Shor, who has embraced her IGeneX test results for Lyme and has also diagnosed her as having several afflictions: babesiosis, which has some of the same symptoms as Lyme and can come from the same ticks; bartonella, also known as cat scratch fever; and chronic fatigue syndrome.
Alternate treatments offer relief
Freitas now takes Epsom salt baths on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and uses an infrared sauna for “detoxification,” saying it makes her body feel better.
And she now takes 30 pills each day, interspersing antibiotics with herbs and dietary supplements, which cost upwards of $1,200 a month.
Maria Alice Lima Freitas says since starting treatment for chronic Lyme disease, she has begun to regain weight and her mind has become a bit clearer. “I’m getting out of the graveyard,” she says. She is seen at her home in Middleton, Wis., on Oct. 6, 2021. S. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
“For babesia … I’m taking liquid gold … Mepron,” said Freitas. “It’s really expensive. It’s 50 bucks for 80 milliliters, which lasts two weeks.”
She gave up dairy, gluten, and sugar to reduce inflammation.
And she meets with Shor monthly online from her house at a charge of $250 per visit, which insurance does not cover.
“It was to me (that) the money is well paid. I’m having peace of mind,” Freitas said. “I feel like I’m getting better.”
Freitas said she started gaining back some weight in June. Her mind has become a bit clearer. Her long-term memory seems back a bit, too. “I’m getting out of the graveyard,” she said.
Said Oppenheimer to his wife: “What I’m seeing is you’re better relative to the beginning of (2021), because you’re still not good.”
For Freitas, the struggle for recognition — and relief from her symptoms — continues. She and her husband remodeled their home over the summer, refurbishing their two-story house with a plan to rent out one level to pay for Freitas’ ongoing treatments.
And she still holds out “a little flame of hope” of one day becoming a doctor — just like her dad.
Former WPR/Wisconsin Watch reporter Bram Sable-Smith contributed to this story. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
_________________
**Comment**
Probably one of the most thorough, well-researched articles I’ve read to date. Please share with others and drop Ms. Wang a “Thank you” note. She has cut through the Chronic Lyme debate with a sharp knife, revealing the human suffering it causes. Also, a big “Thank you” to Maria who was willing to share her story in the hopes of helping others bypass the pain she’s had to go through.
And a quick reminder that in my experience, people get help due to the efforts of other patients willing to take the time to educate others. You are truly needed and important in this war.
Lyme disease: An underdiagnosed cause of mono-arthritis?
Welcome to another Inside Lyme Podcast with your host Dr. Daniel Cameron. In this episode, Dr. Cameron will be discussing the case of a 26-year-old man who was diagnosed with mono-arthritis after his clinical evaluation overlooked the possibility of Lyme disease.
A 26-year-old man presented with acute knee pain.He recalled having similar knee pain occurring one year prior when he began walking for extended periods of time.
A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the knee revealed a large joint effusion. He was not diagnosed or treated for Lyme disease.
Four months later, he had a follow-up MRI, which showed again a persistent joint effusion with diffuse enhancement, thickening of the synovium, enlarged lymph nodes in the popliteal fossa and enhancement of the soleus muscle.
He was subsequently evaluated again for acute knee pain that had been present for several days. On further questioning, the 26-year-old man recalled a history of serologically confirmed Lyme disease.
“The combination of synovitis, lymphadenopathy in the popliteal fossa, and serology led to the diagnosis of Lyme mono-arthritis,” wrote the authors.
“Mono- and oligoarthritis is one of the most common manifestations [of Lyme disease], mostly affecting the knee, although the hip, ankle, elbow, and wrist may be affected.”
There was no evidence of septic arthritis. The authors highlighted the need for a careful clinical history to avoid overlooking Lyme disease.
The following questions are addressed in this Podcast episode:
What is synovitis?
What is Lyme arthritis?
What is septic arthritis?
What manifestations of Lyme disease are there?
Why is timely treatment of Lyme disease important?
Thanks for listening to another Inside Lyme Podcast. Please remember that the advice given is general and not intended as specific advice to any particular patient. If you require specific advice, please seek that advice from an experienced professional.
Inside Lyme Podcast Series
This Inside Lyme case series will be discussed on my Facebook page and made available on podcast and YouTube. As always, it is your likes, comments, and shares that help spread the word about this series and our work. If you can, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts.
References:
Marcelis S, Vanhoenacker F. Lyme Disease: A Probably Underdiagnosed Cause of Mono-Arthritis. J Belg Soc Radiol. 2021;105(1):80. doi:10.5334/jbsr.2625
___________________
**Comment**
I fully intend to write an article on Lyme arthritis and various helpful treatments in the future but for now I’ll share what I’m personally doing and learning (briefly, it’s always conplicated!).
I’ve been dealing with a Baker’s Cyst for 9 months and have found the niacinamide (B3) and vitamin C protocol to be helpful with pain and mobility.
I too have discovered that dosing more frequently makes a difference as it keeps the blood levels more consistent (similarly to herbs): http://www.doctoryourself.com/kaufman3.html
Don’t forget about MSM and DMSO – they are truly miraculous in what they can do for pain and inflammation.
Various laser therapies can also help. I’ve had patients report in that a cheap, cold laser they bought on Amazon was nearly miraculous in alleviating pain. I’m sorry I don’t remember which one in particular they used.
Chronic and neurological symptoms of Lyme disease can be downright debilitating. Is it truly possible to overcome them? Watch as Dr. Bill Rawls discusses what it means to cure or heal chronic or neurological Lyme disease, plus he shares important stress factors to consider in your recovery. Learn more about neurological Lyme disease here.
Subscribe to our Facebook and YouTube to get updates when new episodes are posted.
Video Transcript
Question: Will we ever cure chronic or neurological Lyme?
Tim Yarborough: One from Laura here asking if we’re ever able to cure chronic and neurological Lyme? Or, is it most likely that we’ll be fighting chronic Lyme forever?
Dr. Rawls: Hmm. Depends on how you consider fighting. So, I guess technically I’m still fighting it. I probably still have these microbes dormant in my tissues. I still take herbs every day, but my neurological symptoms have been gone for about seven years, I guess. It’s been a while.
I had brain fog. I had burning feet. I had paresthesia. I had these weird shaking things at night. I had all kinds of weird neurological system symptoms. It does take time. So, healing takes time. What healing is, this is very important, you know, you hear that word a lot, but a lot of people don’t understand what it is.
What healing is, is the ability of cells in the body to recover from being stressed. So that not only includes a cell being able to repair itself, it also includes other cells being able to regenerate, to divide, to make cells, to replace cells that have been damaged beyond repair. So when you look at the capacity of the different cells in the body to do that, it’s different for different cells. So we make new skin cells every day. So you cut your skin; pretty easy to have that repaired. That’s going to take maybe a week.
Your brain cells? They are the very slowest. So you may not know it’s very slow to regenerate brain cells. They take a long time to repair. Some neurological symptoms are the very slowest to get better. Second to that, muscle and heart tissue just takes a long time.
It takes a long time for the healing process to occur. So what this is all about is setting up an environment that promotes healing, that allows cells to recover from stress. So that includes really good nourishment. You want to eat the right foods to give all your cells what they need to repair. Low toxin environment, you know. Clean out the toxins: filtered water, good clean food, clean air, low stress. Stress disrupts hormones. That disrupts communications. Cells don’t talk to one another and work together, and everything starts breaking down, and you don’t sleep.
So especially for neurological symptoms, you have a glymphatic drainage system in the brain; it’s clearing out all the debris and junk that collects in the brain. The glymphatic system works at night. Also, nighttime is when your cells have downtime to repair.
They work all day. They need to get some rest, too. So getting eight hours of sleep is really important for recovery. And then, just protecting those cells from free radicals and radiation and all the stress factors. That’s what herbs do. They’re really good, and they protect your cells against microbes. Really important to do that. There’s nothing out there that does a better job than herbs. So that’s kind of it in a nutshell what you got to do.
Dr. Rawls is a physician who overcame Lyme disease through natural herbal therapy. You can learn more about Lyme disease in Dr. Rawls’ new best selling book, Unlocking Lyme. You can also learn about Dr. Rawls’ personal journey in overcoming Lyme disease and fibromyalgia in his popular blog post, My Chronic Lyme Journey.
Once again, corrupt public health ‘authorities’, bought out – government grant obtaining researchers, and a complicit media only acknowledge Lyme/MSIDS is devastating when there’s a lucrative vaccine in the pipeline. To date there has never been a full-throttle effort made at creating effective tests or treatments. Those things just don’t pull the money in like the cash-cow of vaccines.
Case review: 80-year-old with Lyme encephalopathy instead of dementia
“An 80-year-old patient was admitted to the hospital after a fall, and subsequently developed an acute confused state requiring transfer to a neuropsychiatric unit,” writes Karrasch and colleagues in the journal Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases. [1]
“While mostly vigilant and awake, he intermittently lacked full orientation, had reduced attention, concentration, short-term memory function, increased motor activity, mild formal thought disorder (incl. some tangential thinking), but no frank psychotic symptoms,” the authors explain.
The man was diagnosed with delirium, potentially related to dementia. An abnormal F18-FDG-PET scan was interpreted as consistent with early Alzheimer’s disease. And memantine was prescribed.
However, the patient remained confused, despite receiving the antipsychotic medication risperidon and pipamperone for sleep disturbances. “The patient lacked orientation, had recurrent pervasive disturbances of sleep-wake-cycles, was intermittently restless, and also incontinent,” states Karrasch.
The patient’s spinal tap revealed an increased protein, lymphocytic pleocytosis of 260 leucocytes/μl, intrathecal IgM-synthesis, and elevated lactate. “The lymphocytic pleocytosis with signs of activation together with the dominance of intrathecal IgM-synthesis raised the differential diagnosis of neuroborreliosis,” writes Karrasch.
He also had an elevation of the chemokine CXCL13. And while this is not yet validated as a routine diagnostic tool, CSF [cerebrospinal fluid] CXCL13 may be another option to increase sensitivity and accuracy in diagnosing Neuroborreliosis, next to CSF lymphocytic pleocytosis, explains Karrasch.
The patient was given a 21-day course of ceftriaxone. As a result, his confusion and delirious symptoms resolved.
The man was “dismissed from the hospital in a clearly improved clinical status,” writes Karrasch, “despite an additional complication of aspiration pneumonia.”
The authors point out their case report demonstrates the possibility that confusion or acute encephalopathy can be a presenting feature of neuroborreliosis and that CXCL13 may be useful as a biomarker in central nervous system manifestations of Lyme borreliosis.
It is fortunate the doctors were able to recognize neuroborreliosis and successfully treat the 80-year-old man, or he might have been misdiagnosed with dementia.
References:
Matthias Karrasch, Volker Fingerle, Katharina Boden, Andreas Darr, Michael Baier, Eberhard Straube, Igor Nenadic, Neuroborreliosis and acute encephalopathy: The use of CXCL13 as a biomarker in CNS manifestations of Lyme borreliosis, Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases, Volume 9, Issue 2, 2018, Pages 415-417, ISSN 1877-959X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ttbdis.2017.12.008.
___________________
**Comment**
It is highly likely this man will relapse and need further treatment; however, this topic is purposely avoided by the ‘powers that be’ as that would put direct salvos through their accepted narrative that a few weeks of antibiotics cures this.
How many more are walking around diagnosed with dementia, Alzheimer’s, MS, and other neurological labels when they have undiagnosed Lyme/MSIDS?
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 