Medically reviewed and written by Izabella Wentz, PharmD, FASCP
Article Highlights:
Chronic infections are the Hashimoto’s triggers that get the least amount of attention, yet identifying and treating them can result in a complete remission.
The immune system remembers isolated protein sequences in a pathogen and then looks for similar looking proteins as targets. If the proteins on the thyroid match the proteins the immune system remembered, then the thyroid will be targeted for attack as well. It is a case of mistaken identity.
Gut infections such as Yersinia entercolitica, which can be acquired from pork, can trigger Hashimoto’s. Nineteen proteins in the pathogen look similar to proteins on the thyroid gland and treating it can result in complete remission. Treatments include doxycyline, berberine, oil of oregano and/or wormwood.
Most doctors don’t test for chronic infections, but functional medicine practitioners do.
Another trigger for Hashimoto’s is Lyme disease, which has 16 proteins that can cross-react with thyroid proteins. Lyme is progressive, leading to more and more symptoms and the longer you’ve had it the more damage it can do.
A Lyme patient writes the author and states many Hashimoto’s patients also have Lyme disease.
The author mentions Dr. Horowitz’sLyme quiz to see if you are at a high risk for Lyme, and recommends IGeneX or Ulta Lab Tests, as well as Ilads.org for more info on Lyme Literate Practitioners.
Dr. Izabella Wentz, PharmD with Brent Martin and Dana Walsh on Addressing Lyme
You can also download a free Thyroid Diet Guide, 10 Thyroid friendly recipes, and the Nutrient Depletions and Digestion chapter for free by going to www.thyroidpharmacist.com/gift. You will also receive occasional updates about new research, resources, giveaways and helpful information.
In their study, “Primary care clinical provider knowledge and experiences in the diagnosis and treatment of tick‑borne illness: a qualitative assessment from a Lyme disease endemic community,” Mattoon and colleagues examined frontline and primary care doctor’s knowledge and practices for identifying patients with tick-borne diseases.
They found that some physicians are frustrated with Lyme disease (LD) patients. “Providers described challenges and frustrations in counseling patients with strong preconceptions of LD diagnosis and treatment in the context of chronic infection,” the authors wrote.
The authors came to this conclusion after a series of focus groups with 14 clinicians from three primary care practices and a survey of 24 urgent and emergency care clinicians.
The diagnostic process contributed to some of the frustration.
“Clinicians had a self-professed lack of awareness of TBDs [tick-borne diseases] outside of Lyme disease, noting that they were unfamiliar with the signs, symptoms, and appropriate serologic testing needed to diagnose non-Lyme TBDs, as well as the prevalence of these TBDs in their local communities.”
More specifically, nearly 50% of clinicians reported feeling “not at all knowledgeable on anaplasmosis.”
Treatment approaches also led to frustration. Clinicians:
“appeared to have difficulty in identifying the appropriate treatment approach for patients with nonspecific symptoms and negative Lyme disease serology, with only 66.7% [of clinicians] providing the correct answer,” the authors wrote.
Problems presented by patients with chronic illness
Some doctors were frustrated when patients challenged their treatment plan. “This commonly came in the form of patients rejecting results of serologic testing, wanting a different length of antibiotic course than that prescribed, or seeking an alternative treatment modality.”
Some doctors were frustrated with the time and effort involved in taking care of these patients.
“Clinical encounters with these patients were described as time consuming and difficult.”
Finally, some doctors were frustrated by contradictory information by outside providers. “Two focus group discussions centered around differences in care plans between participants’ primary care offices and what they termed the ‘Lyme literate’ community.”
Need for more education and training
Clinicians felt additional training would be help avoid some of these problems. The authors cited an example:
“I ordered what I thought was sort of the standard Lyme titer. It came back negative and this kid continued to have a swollen knee…He went to the orthopedist. They couldn’t figure it out. He’s going up to the rheumatologist. And it’s just because I ordered the wrong test…I think [I] ordered the PCR, which was like, you know, the quick and easy one. But actually that wasn’t probably a good one to do.” [FG3, Pediatrics]
“The gaps in knowledge identified through the focus group and online survey data, coupled with the consistent necessity to provide point-of-care counseling and education to patients,” the authors concluded, “highlight a pressing need for resources and support for primary care and frontline providers treating patients for TBDs.”
Editor’s perspective
Neither the authors nor the participating clinicians questioned the accuracy of the diagnostic testing and treatment plans they administer.
Mattoon, S., Baumhart, C., Barsallo Cochez, A.C. et al. Primary care clinical provider knowledge and experiences in the diagnosis and treatment of tick-borne illness: a qualitative assessment from a Lyme disease endemic community. BMC Infect Dis 21, 894 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-021-06622-6
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**Comment**
A cringe-worthy article for sure. I couldn’t help but think that if doctors think they are frustrated, try being a severely sick patient, perhaps who’s spouse is just as ill, whose life is spiraling down a vortex of doom in every way possible and your doctor, the person who is supposed to have the answers, is completely and hopelessly in the dark.
Talk about frustration!
My advice: bypass these doctors at all costs and get straight to an educated, Lyme literate doctor with experience. It will save you time, money, and heartache in the end.
What will it take to develop new drugs for Lyme disease?
Dr. Raphael Stricker, a San Francisco internist and hematologist, is an internationally recognized leader in tick-borne disease diagnosis and treatment.
He is also a board member of LymeDisease.org.
Dr. Stricker recently delivered a recorded overview of tick-borne diseases to the European Society of Medicine Congress 2021. The title of his talk was “Lyme Disease: The New Pharma Frontier.”
As he notes in his introduction,
“Over the past year, there have been at least four novel antiviral drugs for Covid-19 that have been developed. It’s disappointing that we haven’t seen the same kind of drug development for Lyme disease over the years. [In this presentation], I’d like to focus on that type of drug development.”
Click below to view his talk.
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To answer the question: we, the sick, must do it ourselves.
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/10/15/disulfiram-psychosis-update/ While not fun, I’m glad I used it and went through this so I can serve as a warning to others – particularly single patients. I would not recommend this drug unless you have family/friends around you. When you go nuts, you don’t know it. The psychosis is very real. Since disulfiram has such a long half-life, it stays in your body for a long time. The anti-psychotics to reverse the effects are riddled with side-effects. I spent $20K in the UW hospital with the most severe toxic reaction to disulfiram they have ever seen. “Mad as a hatter” doesn’t even describe it. I’ve spoken with local Lyme literate doctors whom have all had patients go South on it, so it wasn’t just me.
Analysis of Alzheimer’s disease in hospital, conceptual image
Unlike diseases that impair the body in a myriad of physical ways, dementia can rob mental faculties and identity, as patients struggle to remember memories from previous days. As the disease progresses, victims may also forget friends or relatives and the functional skills to perform a daily routine.
The most common form of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, is a disorder in which brain cells shrink and die. There is no cure, although some medicines, support groups and other programs may help patients manage the disease.
Considering this void, the search for better treatments presses on. More than $3 billion in National Institutes of Health funding is dedicated to Alzheimer’s research, although progress seems painfully slow for the roughly 5.8 million Americans currently suffering from the disease. Some existing drugs are controversial, such as Aduhelm, which was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for patients with mild cognitive impairment or early onset Alzheimer’s. Among the many questions about the drug is whether it is worth its $56,000 a year cost and side effects risk.
The glaring limitations of available therapeutics led one College of Medicine professor to consider whether the solution is not an expensive drug, but one that has been around since World War II. This is the question posited by Herbert B. Allen, MD a professor and chair emeritus in the College of Medicine, who offers a bold challenge to colleagues: consider whether penicillin could help prevent Alzheimer’s, and when combined with a disperser, whether penicillin may slow progression of the disease — or maybe even stop it altogether.
Allen’s hypothesis paper, recently published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, expands beyond penicillin’s current role in treatment of infections, like syphilis and gonorrhea, and introduces the possibility that there could be similar effectiveness when applied to Alzheimer’s.
Two regimens proposed by the hypothesis: prevention using penicillin via a once a year shot, or pills for two weeks, or treatment of early-onset Alzheimer’s using penicillin and a drug such as rifampin to break the biofilms so the penicillin can break through into the body.
Allen says the path of Alzheimer’s in the tissues of patients starts with two types of spiral-shaped bacteria, known as spirochetes, known as Borrelia burgdorferi (which also causes Lyme disease) and Treponema denticola. These dangerous bacteria enter the brain via nerve cells and brain circuits and create biofilms that are responsible for the tangles and the attack on brain cells that cause Alzheimer’s, Allen said.
“Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic infection,” said Allen. “Up until to this point in time, no one has been able to find these biofilms that cause disease hidden in live tissue.”
After reading that a colleague at the International Alzheimer Research Center in Switzerland, Judith Miklossy, MD, PhD, grew Lyme organisms from the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, Allen got an idea.
“I thought maybe there’s something to this, because Lyme is a skin disease first, so I put the same staining procedure together for tissue samples from our tissue bank here and it showed that the organisms made biofilms and the hypothesis grew from there.”
Allen explains that it’s these spiral-shaped bacteria that make the biofilms and make the beta-amyloid located inside and outside of cells and attack normal, healthy Tau protein and cause the breakdown of nerve cells.
Miklossy is credited with the discovery that the pathology of syphilis and Alzheimer’s are the same, Allen said.
Allen points to penicillin’s success in preventing syphilis and psoriasis as possible reason why it may have success in Alzheimer’s and possibly other neurodegenerative diseases. Despite this, Allen says research funding prioritizes new drug development over study of existing drugs like penicillin. Following the money to see part of the reason why, Allen points to billions of dollars in revenue for drugs like Humira, with billions of dollars in sales each year to psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis patients.
The first data showing that spiral-shaped bacteria played a role in Alzheimer’s was discovered by Alan MacDonald, MD, back in the 1980s when MacDonald was working as a pathologist at Southhampton Hospital in New York. This latest hypothesis from Allen follows his decades of research in dermatology, including a 2014 JAMA Dermatology paper showing that eczema is also an infection.
Those over age 65 and/or with a family history of Alzheimer’s, are at greater risk of the disease. There are also specific genes implicated in Alzheimer’s risk, such as the risk gene APOE-e4. Estimates suggest that roughly 40 to 65 percent of those diagnosed with the disease have this gene. There are very rare deterministic genes in about one out of every hundred cases that guarantee an individual with the gene will develop Alzheimer’s.
Rewind to the 80’s when Congressman Berkley Bedell was bitten by a tick while fishing in Virginia. He had to ask another Congressman who happened to be a doctor to take a look at a strange rash on his leg. Bedell thought he’d gotten poison ivy, but the doctor said it looked like a tick bite which sometimes leaves a rash in the shape of a bull’s eye.
Bedell was diagnosed with Lyme disease and took three doses of antibiotics and would feel a little better but then would be right back where he started. He still felt achy and extremely tired. His heart was giving him issues too. Unable to keep up with the demands of his job in politics he quit.
A constituent told him about Herb Sanders in Minnesota. A farmer by trade, Sanders borrowed a veterinary medicine concept using colostrum from a cow to treat human disease. Sanders had also felt the effects of Lyme acutely when he lost a herd to it. Many don’t know that animals like cows and horses can be severely affected by Lyme and can go blind, lame, have still births, and even die from it. This concept appears to be entirely lost on mainstream medicine and researchers who deal with humans.
The “medicine” is made by injecting killed Lyme disease (Borrelia burgdorferi) germs into the udder of a pregnant cow, much like the first human vaccines. After birth, the whey from the colostrum is then given to the patient. Bedell was told to take a tablespoon every hour and a half during the day. It wasn’t long and Bedell’s symptoms completely disappeared, never to return. Others reported similar success for numerous diseases.
Sanders trouble; however, was just beginning. He was arrested and charged with cruelty to animals, fraud, and practicing medicine without a license. He had no money for an attorney so Bedell helped him out. Interestingly, when the attorney went to interview expert witnesses, the prosecuting attorney attended as well and learned of the great success many had using this treatment.
Days before the trial all charges were dropped except for practicing medicine without a license. Sanders refused to pay the fine so the trial lingered on resulting in a hung jury which led to a second trial, which also resulted in a hung jury. Finally the state gave up.
The old farmer eventually died, but the experience made a lasting impression on the former Congressman who got help from a Senator to establish an office of alternative medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The new group, founded in 1988, was called the National Foundation for Alternative Medicine, which has since been renamed The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Its goal was to send researchers out into the field to determine the success of alternative clinics and practitioners, and to set up trials to confirm or refute the findings. Interestingly, the NIH officials insisted on working through research universities. This is most unfortunate as there is major corruption and regulatory capture between Big Pharma, NIH, and Universities – with all owning patents on nearly every aspect of disease. A lot of money is gained, making impartiality a complete myth.
One of the things the group studied while Bedell was involved was electromagnetics and applying frequencies to the body. This technology, originally created by Raymond Rife, also has a lurid backstory. In short, Rife successfully treated cancer in over 400 experimental rats and other animals in his laboratory and then treated 27 people with terminal cancer with all but one, a very advanced case, recovering. Then another sixteen were treated, and within three months, fourteen were declared cured by a team of five medical doctors and a pathologist. Again, the two that succumbed had advanced stages of cancer. While initially celebrated at dinner parties as a hero, others without using the powerful microscope he created and his carefully developed protocols, weren’t able to replicate his results so they labeled him a fraud. U.S. medical authorities put him on trial which caused Rife to suffer a complete breakdown. He became an alcoholic and died of a heart attack in 1971 at age 83. Source
the AMA was found guilty of colluding against the chiropractic profession, and has continually come after homeopathy, and anything else deemed a threat
the AMA has currently turned to attacking doctors who dare to treat COVID-19 with anything but the accepted “consensus” based treatments – mainly remdesivir, also known as the deadly “Fauci protocol“, and the COVIDinjections which aren’t even vaccines, as they don’t stop transmission or infection, and have caused more adverse events than for all 70+ vaccines combined since they started tracking adverse events 30 years ago, and are also causing the pandemic to drag out
the AMA pushes “consensus” based medicine based solely upon the ABEM board, disregarding a doctor’s personal choice, experience, and knowledge
the AMA perpetuates a dangerous arrogance best explained in an article written by a AMA Kool-aid drinking doctor for Medpage titled, “How Do We Handle Compassion Fatigue Toward the Unvaccinated? — Healthcare workers are facing a conundrum … caring for those who won’t care for themselves”. This powerful testimony by a molecular biologist explains that highly educated people and blacks are often the ones forgoing the COVID injections because they are all “based on faulty assumptions.” These groups don’t trust the government and are vividly aware of the numerousproblems with the injections which aren’t vaccines, including the unacceptable adverse reactions including death
While ‘the powers that be’ accused a farmer of cruelty to animals, Dr. Fauci, head of NIAID for 7 presidencies has been funding cruel and inhuman experimentsfor decades – and not just on animals. He funded HIV research that force fed healthy children via feeding tubes, dangerous, toxic, chemotherapy drugs. There seems to be a glaring double-standard
It’s not about health, it’s about maintaining power over others, and the AMA will do anything to keep it
Bedell also states that he doesn’t dislike traditional medicine, and that they are doing the best they can with what they have, but he has some ‘real questions about the Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical drug industry.‘ BINGO! The FDA and Big Pharma have a lot to answer for, as well as power-hungrygroups who seemingly attack anything they don’t understand or threatens their vested interests.
Fast forward to today.
Not much has changed in Lyme-land in the few decades that have passed, and medicine still doesn’t look at what others are doing to find out what they can learn.The potential cow colostrum treatment was lost under a few inches of dust with only old gray-hairs like me digging it out of the archives. I had the privilege of speaking to a long-time Lyme sufferer who actually took the colostrum treatment and knew Sanders personally. She called him a “genius.”
Geniuses like Raymond Rife and Herb Sanders help the few they can while they can, until the bullies show up.
