Archive for the ‘Lyme’ Category

Irish Woman Shines Light on Lyme Disease

https://www.ireland-live.ie/news/kilkenny-live/1976105/brave-local-woman-shines-a-light-on-cruel-disease-kilkenny-live-highlights-2025

Brave local woman shines a light on cruel disease – Kilkenny Live Highlights 2025

Ann Maher has been battling ill-health since 1995

By Liam Kelly O’Rourke

27 Dec 2025 

A brave woman living in Kilkenny for the past 50 years is fighting for more to be done in all areas of the political to raise greater awareness and treatments for Lyme disease.

Ann Maher has battled the horrific toll the cruel disease can have, battling severe side-effects over the past 29 years.

Despite the immeasurable personal challenges she has faced since her health first began to decline in 1995, the Kilkenny resident has proven to be a continuing vocal champion for those inflicted with the condition.

The little-known disease is a bacterial infection that can be spread to humans by infected ticks and is usually easier to treat if it’s diagnosed early. Many people with Lyme disease can be treated by antibiotics by their GP but some may experience long-lasting, life debilitating effects.  (See link for article)

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**Comment**

Yet another example of a chronically ill patient with Lyme/MSIDS.

Lyme/MSIDS, because Lyme is rarely alone.  Most patients are coinfected with numerous pathogens complicating their disease and requiring many different drugs.

It’s nerve racking that despite the thousands upon thousands of similar patient testimonials, chronic Lyme is hotly contested with public health ‘authorities’ and most doctors proclaiming that 10 days of doxycycline will ‘cure’ most people.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

This dear woman suffered with memory loss, stroke-like symptoms, extreme fatigue, and numerous hospital visits.

She went undiagnosed EIGHT long years, after being thrown from doctor to doctor like a football, before doing finally her own research which revealed the real story behind the madness.

I’ve heard this so many times I can simply tell you the script.

Research will lead the patient to discover that Lyme is hotly contested and that doctors are simply too afraid to diagnose and treat it, so they hide behind antiquated and unscientific CDC guidelines that denies chronic Lyme and prohibits extended treatment because they are beholden to insurance companies that don’t want to pay for it.

Enter the Lyme literate doctor, who for whatever reason took the time to actually study the issue for himself/herself, learned about ILADS, and became part of a group that educates doctors on the complexity of it and that the entire paradigm is simply wrong.

Then, at great expense, the patient had to travel to another country to get help.

After going through her own personal hell, she now advocates for others……

And this, is our story as well as thousands of others.

If you go to the top link there is a picture of the patient with the very typical lop-sided smile (Bell’s Palsy) indicative of and common manifestation of neurological Lyme. 

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme

Is Lyme Gaslighting Over?

https://medicaldetective.substack.com/p/is-the-gaslighting-of-lyme-disease-patients-a-medical-political-debacle-of-the-past?

Is the Gaslighting of Lyme Disease Patients a Medical-Political Debacle of the Past?

Richard Horowitz
Dec 31, 2025

HHS Secretary of Health RFK Jr. convened an HHS roundtable on Lyme disease this past week. The focus was improved diagnostics, treatment and insurance coverage, letting chronic Lyme sufferers know that the issue was more than just a public health crisis. It was also a personal issue for him and his family.  (See link for article)

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Highlights:

  • Dr. Horowitz was one of the seven members of the HHS Tick-borne Disease Working Group (TBDWG) for six years, worked as co-chair of the HHS of Other Tick-borne infections and coinfections subcommittee where he convinced them to add Bartonella to the list of coinfections, whether transmitted by ticks or not, and then served on the HHS Babesia and Tick-borne Pathogens subcommittee several years later. He lists all the reports within the link.

Did 6 years of HHS subcommittees and all the hard work I and others put into these reports make any difference in the medical-political landscape? Absolutely not. ~ Dr. Richard Horowitz

So, you heard it straight from the horse’s mouth, folks.

Dr. Horowitz goes on to state:

  • Healthcare providers are still scared to diagnose and treat Lyme because state medical board are still attacking their licenses.
  • Globally, doctors are still uneducated and are confused about how to properly diagnose and treat chronic Lyme.
  • The CDC still denies that Lyme is a chronic infection, ignores published science, and still puts inaccurate information on their website.
  • Despite 10 Dapsone articles effectively treating chronic Lyme and associated coinfections, the CDC refuses to change.
  • The CDC refuses to post a validated HMQ Lyme questionnaire on their website which would help doctors clinically diagnose patients better and would include neuropsychiatric aspects which would help those with mental health issues and physical symptoms be better diagnosed.
  • It’s clear that the one germ, one disease, one drug paradigm does not work for Lyme/MSIDS and until that faulty assumption is dealt with, patients will continued to be kicked to the curb.
  • Horowitz states we are in an epidemic of Lyme and chronic illness and that real action must follow or it will be yet another HHS subcommittee and administration with ‘talk and no action.’

There’s a long and prolific history of ‘public health,’ infectious disease, and mainstream medicine gaslighting Lyme/MSIDS patients.  The entire paradigm requires an entire overhaul.

For more:

Category:

Activism, Lyme

2025: Pediatric Child Abuse Doctors Exposed

Sadly, many parents of children with Lyme/MSIDS have been through hell and back after being accused of child abuse or Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy due to the lack of education and understanding of this complex, life-altering illness. 

It’s now been proven that “shaken baby syndrome” is based on junk science, that children have been and continue to be medically kidnapped by the state in the middle of the night when police force their way into homes without a warrant due to a singular x-ray, and that many doctors are afraid to refer injured children for evaluations due to the tyranny of abuse specialists who often jump to the wrong conclusions, breaking up and destroying entire families.

Finally, some vindication……but more is needed

https://vaccineimpact.com/2025/2025-pediatric-child-abuse-doctors-exposed-for-medical-kidnapping-goes-mainstream/?

2025: Pediatric Child Abuse Doctors Exposed for Medical Kidnapping Goes Mainstream

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

Dec. 23, 2025

As we look back on a very troubled 2025, one of the few bright spots from the year is that many Child Abuse Pediatricians (CAP) were exposed for their roles in child medical kidnapping cases in the corporate media.

I am also happy to report that a couple of the most highly profiled CAP doctors are no longer practicing here at the end of 2025, due to media exposure and lawsuits from the parents of their victims who were wrongly removed from their families.

While these doctors should be behind bars for the families they destroyed, at least a couple of them now have resigned in disgrace and no longer have jobs as Child Abuse Pediatricians, a job with a single purpose, to find parents who allegedly abuse their children.

If they cannot find parents who abuse their children in their community, then the entire rationale and reason for them to collect their paychecks goes away.

And thank God, a couple of them now are no longer collecting paychecks to falsely accuse parents of abusing their children.  (See link for article)

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**Comment**

Unfortunately, one of these prominent CAP doctors made her harrowing mark right here in Wisconsin.  

Recently a federal lawsuit was filed against Dr. Nancy Harper by another pediatrician who served at the University of Minnesota for 17 years who accused the university of inflating child abuse diagnoses to secure lucrative grants by encouraging the manipulation of medical evidence that might have proved the innocence of parents.  

The accusing pediatrician was fired for stating the scheme was intended to maximize the identification and prosecution of child abuse cases to secure funding and increase the prestige of the university’s child abuse fellowship program.

This, my friends, is where ‘science’ has devolved to and it’s been going on for years.

Go here for a free ebook which is a compilation of over 5 years of research and publishing on MedicalKidnap.com, part of the Health Impact News network, covering the topic of Child Abuse Pediatricians, and their role in medical kidnapping. 

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme

After Decades of Dismissal, Chronic Lyme Disease is Now Recognized

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/after-decades-of-dismissal-chronic-lyme-disease-is-now-getting-recognized

After Decades of Dismissal, Chronic Lyme Disease Is Now Recognized

Patients with persistent Lyme symptoms face medical limbo as federal officials and researchers debate causes, treatment, and what to call the condition.
Cara Michelle Miller
Updated:

“Like a human hockey puck”—that’s how Nikki Schultek describes a year spent ricocheting between specialists in Connecticut, each focused on one piece of her deteriorating health—bladder pain, neurological symptoms, joint pain—while missing the whole picture.

“I really don’t fault the clinicians,” she told The Epoch Times. “The training hones them to be experts in a domain.”

After her odyssey of misdiagnoses, Schultek finally received a correct diagnosis of Lyme disease. However, her experience navigating a fragmented health care system brought her to Washington on Dec. 15, where Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. convened a rare federal roundtable addressing what he called long-standing failures in how the disease is diagnosed, studied, and treated.

“Lyme disease is an example of a chronic disease that has long been dismissed, with patients receiving inadequate care,” Kennedy said at the event. “I want to announce that the gaslighting of Lyme patients is over.”

The Medical Divide

Schultek’s story echoes those of many patients whose months—or years—of fatigue, pain, neurological symptoms, and cognitive problems, after undergoing a battery of tests, are eventually traced back to that one tick bite that infected them with Lyme disease.

Persistent symptoms from Lyme disease are both difficult to diagnose and treat, in part because health agencies, mainstream medicine, researchers, and patients disagree about what is causing the debilitating constellation of symptoms.

The roundtable brought together patients, clinicians, researchers, and advocates to discuss what many describe as long-standing failures in how Lyme disease is diagnosed, studied, and treated. At stake is not just terminology, but access to care.
 
(See link for article)
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**Comment**
 
Two things, right off the bat: 
 
  1. It’s going to take a whole lot more than an accurate test to fix this beast.
  2. A simple pronouncement from Kennedy is not going to stop the deeply entrenched gas-lighting of patients.
  3. I do blame doctors, public health, and institutions that ignore the Hippocratic Oath – a vow to ‘do no harm,’ and would rather turn patients away entirely or diagnose them with anything but Lyme/MSIDS, furthering their misery. 
The entire paradigm is set against patient health.  
The article falsely regurgitates that only 10% go on to suffer lingering symptoms, when microbiologist Holly Ahern puts it between 40-60% – a far cry from 10%. It also falsely states that 90% are successfully treated with a few weeks of antibiotics when research demonstrates again and again treatment failures in nearly every antibiotic study done.
 
The article doesn’t even sniff at coinfections. Reality paints a starkly different picture from what the article paints.  Most patients are sicker than dogs and infected with multiple pathogens which require entirely different drugs.  Nary a word on pleomorphism either (Bb’s ability to shapeshift and lie dormant to reemerge later).  
These issues are relevant as they make patients infinitely sicker and more complex.
Sorry – not feeling too excited about this.  Reading through the comments didn’t help either.  I saw plenty of the “if you are healthy you won’t get this,” and “take ivermectin,” or take Japanese knotweed.”  
 
If only it was that simple!

To comment, you are limited to 1500 words.  I left this comment:

Far more than 10% go onto suffer persisting symptoms because they don’t include those who are diagnosed and treated late – which is most of us: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/02/25/medical-stalemate-what-causes-continuing-symptoms-after-lyme-treatment/.

For a bird’s eye view of the entire sordid, complicated affair: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/09/25/why-should-we-care-about-lyme-disease-a-colorful-tale-of-government-conflicts-of-interest-probable-bioweaponization-and-pathogen-complexity/

How Lyme/MSIDS (multi systemic infectious disease syndrome – because Lyme is just the tip of the spear) has been handled is palpably insane. It’s going to take a whole lot more than an accurate test to fix this juggernaut. Doctors are afraid to diagnose let alone treat it: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/12/15/everything-about-lyme-disease-is-steeped-in-controversy-now-some-doctors-are-too-afraid-to-treat-patients/

My husband and I only achieved our health back after FIVE years of intensely nuanced and expensive treatment and then retreating for a few months after relapsing 3-4 times.
Not sure I’d even be writing this if it weren’t for this life-saving treatment.
It’s sexually and congenitally transmitted.

All my initial symptoms were gynecological. Remember, it’s a cousin to syphilis: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2024/12/18/letter-breaking-down-timeline-deception-of-lyme-disease-no-studies-have-ruled-out-sexual-transmission/

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If you have the time, comment after the article here:   https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/after-decades-of-dismissal-chronic-lyme-disease-is-now-getting-recognized-5960441?

 
 

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Testing, Ticks

The Morning I Couldn’t Walk and What Finally Healed Me

While reading this, please note this patient finally got to a Lyme literate doctor and started anti-microbial treatment – including antibiotics and herbs.  Her progress went from wheelchair to walker to cane to walking on her own.  That is progress; however, there is more to this than killing pathogens, for sure, but never, ever underestimate the power of killing pathogens!  For some that alone is enough but for many, more is required…..

Further complicating the picture is borrelia complexity, the involvement of coinfections requiring different medications, and environmental toxins.  Then, there’s the inevitable blowback from harsh treatment and imbalances within the body that need to be corrected.

IMO, treating pathogens AND the whole person is a requirement with Lyme/MSIDS and for many, this treatment will take YEARS.   Many make the mistake of only taking one track or giving the final thing they used all the credit.  This is short-sighted.  This will be unlike anything else you’ve ever been treated before, and frustratingly confusing.

https://www.lymedisease.org/morning-i-couldnt-walk/

The morning I couldn’t walk–and what finally healed me

by Dr. Melanie Stein

Nov. 12, 2025

The morning my legs wouldn’t move changed everything I thought I knew about health. Full-body tremors tore through me. I couldn’t stand, let alone walk. I was admitted to the hospital, frightened, searching for answers.

A long list of tests returned “normal,” and the doctors’ search for answers stopped there. I was given a label, conversion disorder, and asked why I might be “choosing to live this way.” [Editor’s Note: Conversion disorder refers to physical symptoms that have no obvious medical explanation.]

While I was still inpatient at the hospital, an unmistakable bull’s-eye rash appeared. I knew what it meant and expected treatment. Instead, I was told, “Lyme disease doesn’t exist in Oregon,” and I was discharged without care.

Still not believed

The dismissal kept going. During one exam, a neurologist let me fall and said, “Get up.” I couldn’t. I was then sent to inpatient rehab, not to find out why I was so ill, but to learn how to live in a wheelchair. Soon after, my spinal fluid showed signs of infection. It still wasn’t enough to be believed, but it was enough for me to keep looking until I found someone who would listen.

I eventually found a Lyme-literate physician. What followed were years of steady, dedicated work—oral and IV antibiotics, herbal protocols, and constant reassessment and new treatments. Progress returned in pieces: wheelchair → walker → cane → walking.

Through it all, I finished medical school. I attended lectures in a wheelchair, studied between infusions, and arranged rotations around treatment. I promised myself I would never become a provider who stops at “normal” labs.

When I completed my training, I opened my practice at Restorative Health Clinic, focusing on complex chronic illness, vector-borne disease, and caring for patients who too often hear the same “nothing is wrong” I once did.

What finally moved the needle

Then COVID-19 hit. After I contracted COVID-19, I developed seizures, 20 or more a day. Retesting showed my tick-borne infections had reactivated. We tried multiple antimicrobial regimens, different combinations and intervals, without a meaningful response. I had done what I ask my patients to do: pursue treatment, show up to appointments, and adjust therapies as needed. The results didn’t match the effort.

This is when I changed the question from “Which pathogen remains?” to “Why isn’t my body recovering the way it should?”

Day one of medical training teaches this: healing begins at the cellular level. Every thought, heartbeat, step, and immune decision depends on cells that can take in what they need, send out what they don’t, and interpret messages accurately.

The cell membrane is the gatekeeper; the mitochondria make energy. When those are damaged, signals scramble, energy falters, and even smart treatments become unpredictable or short-lived. The body can get stuck in a protective “danger” mode instead of repair.

So I shifted from targeting infections first to strengthening the body’s foundation with a terrain-first model I call Cell Membrane Therapy. That means helping the outer layer of each cell (the cell membrane) work well again and boosting the cell’s “energy makers” (mitochondria).

When we rebuilt that foundation—and supported the body’s natural cleanup system and immune response—other treatments started to work better. Progress wasn’t overnight, but it lasted: my energy and focus returned, and the daily seizures stopped.

Why I Wrote Breaking Through Chronic Illness

Seeing outcomes shift when we rebuilt the cellular foundation—repairing membranes, restoring mitochondrial function, and strengthening the terrain—convinced me we needed a new playbook. Cell Membrane Therapy became the backbone of my practice, yet it’s still under-taught and often overlooked.

I wrote Breaking Through Chronic Illness to share this framework and to shift the question from “what else should we treat?” to “what’s blocking recovery despite the right therapies?” It’s for those who have done everything right and still don’t feel better—offering clear steps to rebuild the foundation so progress becomes durable.

I did everything I was told, and my body still wasn’t recovering the way it should. Week after week, my patients tell me the same. We’ve been asking the wrong question: it’s not just what’s left to treat, but why recovery isn’t happening despite the right treatments.

The signs were there—I knew what that rash meant—yet I wasn’t taken seriously and was taught how to use a wheelchair before anyone could explain why I needed one. That experience—and a clear purpose to make sure no patient goes unheard—carried me through school, through illness, and into this work.

Beyond the revolving door

This book looks beyond the revolving door of standard antibiotic protocols to an overlooked reason progress slips away and recovery doesn’t last: damage to cell membranes and mitochondria undermines the body’s ability to heal. When we repair the cellular foundation, the body can finally use the treatments we give it to restore health, not just suppress symptoms.

I keep the science readable and the steps practical: why good treatments fail when cellular repair is missing, how a stuck Cell Danger Response keeps the body in a defensive, inflamed mode (and what helps it switch off), and a clear roadmap to rebuild resilience—restoring energy, calming neuroinflammation, and resetting immune balance.

I translate this into everyday choices—nutrition, key supplements, detox support, nervous-system regulation, and environmental strategies—so you know where to start, what to look for, and what matters most.

The book weaves in patient stories of people with “normal” labs and very abnormal days who moved from temporary relief to durable progress. That’s the goal: hope with a plan.

If you’ve been told “everything is normal” while your life is anything but, you’re not alone, and you’re not broken. There is a path forward when we begin — where healing begins — at the cellular level. If you’re tired of improvements that don’t last, Breaking Through Chronic Illness offers a way back. Your symptoms are real, and so is the science that can explain them.

Dr. Melanie Stein is a naturopathic doctor specializing in complex chronic illness and vector-borne disease. After overcoming her own battle with Lyme disease, she founded Restorative Health Clinic in Portland, Oregon. Click here to order Breaking Through Chronic Illness.

For more:

Bob Giguere of IGeneX states a case by Dr. Jones of a little girl who went outside to play about   8:30a.m. and came inside at 10:30 with an attached tick above her right eye.  By 2 o’clock, she had developed the facial palsy.  At the hospital she was told it couldn’t be Lyme as the tick hadn’t been attached long enough.  They offered a neuro-consult…..

By 4pm she couldn’t walk or talk.

Dr. Jones met the family in his office on a Saturday, gave her an intramuscular injection of antibiotics and within 2 hours the palsy was gone.  He continued her treatment for approximately 4 weeks.

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Treatment