Episode 30: Using Low-Dose Naltrexone For Lyme Disease Treatment
June 27, 2018
Cindy Kennedy, FNP, is joined by author Dr. Darin Ingels, who discusses his experience with using low-dose naltrexone as a treatment for Lyme disease.
Dr. Ingels is a respected leader in natural medicine, with more than 26 years experience in the healthcare field. He received his bachelor of science degree in medical technology from Perdue University and a doctorate of naturopathic medicine from Bastyr University. He has worked as a clinical microbiologist/immunologist and he is board certified in Integrated Pediatrics and a Fellow of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.
Dr. Ingels has been published extensively and is the author of “The Lyme Solution: A 5-Part Plan to Fight the Inflammatory Autoimmune Response and Beat Lyme Disease,” a comprehensive natural approach to treating Lyme disease. He specializes in Lyme disease, autism and chronic immune dysfunction. He uses diet, nutrients, herbs, homeopathy and immunotherapy to help his patients achieve better health. For more information, see his website.
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**Comment**
Please know that LDN will not “treat Lyme/MSIDS” in an anti-microbial sense. It will help with symptoms. We found it very effective but it will not kill pathogens. For more on LDN, please see second link below.
Autophagy Finally Considered for Disease Treatment
June 27, 2018
by Dr. Mercola
Story at-a-glance –
Autophagy refers to your body’s process of eliminating damaged cells by digesting them. It’s an essential cleaning-out process that encourages proliferation of new, healthy cells, and is a foundational aspect of cellular rejuvenation and longevity
Autophagy also destroys foreign invaders such as viruses, bacteria and other pathogens, and detoxifies the cell of harmful materials
Autophagy slows down with age, and autophagy defects are known to contribute to a wide variety of diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
By activating autophagy, or repairing the mechanism in cases where dysfunction has set in, researchers believe neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can be successfully treated
There are a number of ways to activate and increase autophagy, including fasting, exercise, eating autophagy-boosting foods and AMPK-activating supplements such as berberine and PQQ
Autophagy literally means “self-eating” and refers to your body’s process of eliminating damaged cells by digesting them. It’s an essential cleaning-out process that encourages the proliferation of new, healthy cells, and is a foundational aspect of cellular rejuvenation and longevity.
Autophagy also destroys foreign invaders such as viruses, bacteria and other pathogens, and detoxifies the cell of harmful materials. Autophagy slows down with age, and autophagy defects are known to contribute to a wide variety of diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The good news is there are a number of different ways to activate and increase this natural process, thereby preventing many health problems before they begin.
Autophagy Activation Is a Powerful Way to Treat Many Diseases
Researchers are now also latching on to autophagy as a viable way to treat disease.1 As explained in the 2012 paper, “Autophagy Modulation as a Potential Therapeutic Target for Diverse Diseases:”2
“Autophagy occurs at a basal rate in most cells, eliminating protein aggregates and damaged organelles in order to maintain cytoplasmic homeostasis. This includes the degradation of dysfunctional mitochondria via mitophagy, a cytoprotective process that limits both the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the release of toxic intramitochondrial proteins …
In addition to its vital homeostatic role, this degradation pathway is involved in various human disorders, including metabolic conditions, neurodegenerative diseases, cancers and infectious diseases … Autophagy may be dysregulated in several disorders, including metabolic diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, infectious diseases and cancer.
In some conditions, autophagy is inhibited and this can occur at different stages of the process to enhance disease, whereas in other cases autophagic activity may be permissive toward pathogenesis. In addition, the induction of autophagy has been shown to increase longevity in a large panel of species, thus raising the possibility that ageing and longevity may be therapeutic targets for autophagy induction.
Given these observations, pharmacological approaches to upregulate or inhibit this pathway are currently receiving considerable attention. For example, autophagy upregulation may be of therapeutic benefit in certain neurodegenerative diseases … whereas autophagy inhibition is being investigated as a strategy for treating some cancers.”
Autophagy May be Used to Treat Parkinson’s Disease
In 2016, the Nobel Prize in medicine was given to the Japanese biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi3 for his discovery of the actual mechanisms of autophagy, i.e., how cells recycle their contents. As reported by The Conversation:4
“Ohsumi identified key genes and molecules behind autophagy. In so doing, he shifted scientific paradigms about cellular quality control. He opened the gate for researchers … to understand how defects in autophagy are associated with neurological diseases …
In neurodegenerative diseases, toxic proteins accumulate within brain cells called neurons. Neurons are irreplaceable. They must continue to recycle proteins and break them down into small amino acids to avoid a toxic buildup of abnormally large proteins. That is what autophagy lets them do.
The process works by sequestering unwanted proteins into pipelines called ‘autophagosomes.’ Then they dump those proteins into a part of the cell called a ‘lysosome,’ where they are recycled. When this process doesn’t work properly, harmful proteins can accumulate.”
By activating autophagy, or repairing the mechanism in cases where dysfunction has set in, researchers believe neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can be successfully treated, as the autophagy process will naturally clear out harmful proteins.
Interestingly, researchers have demonstrated that certain cancer drugs can trigger autophagy by activating a protein called parkin. Parkin is involved in the autophagy process, and some cancer drugs specifically activate this protein. As reported by Charbel Moussa, assistant professor of neurology at Georgetown University:5
“Keep in mind that cancer drugs work by killing cancer cells and can also be toxic to other cells. So our first step was to find out how these drugs worked in cancer cells and neurons. Our initial observation in cell culture models was stunning: Cultured cancer cells died while cultured neurons survived after treatment with several autophagy-stimulating cancer drugs.
Next we introduced toxic proteins into cultured neuronal cells and treated them with several cancer drugs that activate autophagy and destroy tumors. The cells treated with these drugs survived and cleared their toxic proteins, while untreated cells died.
Activating autophagy is a double-edged sword. One the one hand, the process clears toxic or infectious materials from cells. On the other hand, if the autophagy process goes beyond ‘recycling’ and clearing out proteins, it can start to destroy the cell, leading to cell death. This means that autophagy must be carefully manipulated to avoid the death of nonrenewable and irreplaceable neurons.”
Cyclical Autophagy, the Natural Way to Improve Health and Longevity
Likely the safest way to achieve these benefits is simply to boost autophagy naturally, and there are many healthy lifestyle strategies that will do just that. Perhaps one of the most important and most effective is fasting. As explained in “Autophagy Modulation as a Potential Therapeutic Target for Diverse Diseases:”6
“Autophagy is stimulated during various pathological and physiological states, such as starvation … Starvation induced autophagy, an evolutionarily conserved response in eukaryotes, enables the degradation of proteins, carbohydrates and lipids, which allows the cell to adapt its metabolism and meet its energy needs.
Indeed, the induction of autophagy in newborn mice has a major role in maintaining energy levels in various tissues after the maternal nutrient supply via the placenta ceases. Moreover, starvation-induced autophagy has a cytoprotective effect by blocking the induction of apoptosis by mitochondria.”
Longer water-only fasts are a form of “starvation” that will induce autophagy. As little as 200 calories can thwart the process, and the starvation period needs to be at least 16 hours or 72 hours or even longer, so it’s important to be strict if autophagy induction is your chief aim. On the flip side, autophagy cannot remain continuously activated all the time. You also need to allow the cells to rebuild and rejuvenate, which occurs during the refeeding phase, which is why cyclical fasting and feeding is so important.
Fasting Is a Powerful Way to Activate Autophagy
Based on the research that has emerged in recent years, I’m now convinced that multiple day water fasting is one of the most profound metabolic interventions you can do to radically improve your health, as it allows your body to upregulate autophagy and mitophagy to remove damaged senescent cells, including premalignant cells. It’s also an extremely effective way to shed excess weight and extend your life span.
For a refresher on how to do water fasting safely, see my interview with Dr. Jason Fung, who wrote “The Complete Guide to Fasting.” Many have irrational fears about water fasting, even for a few days, and Fung expertly shreds many outdated myths about fasting.
There are a few caveats, however. If you’re on medication, you need to work with your doctor to ensure safety, as some medications need to be taken with food and/or can become toxic when your body chemistry normalizes. Those taking hypoglycemic or antihypertensive medication are particularly at risk, as they may end up overdosing.
It’s also recommended to continue taking nutritional supplements during your fast. You also need to take a high-quality salt. Certain health conditions may also need more stringent medical supervision to ensure safety when fasting.
A gentler way that can still improve autophagy is intermittent fasting, provided you’re not eating for at least 16 hours at a stretch. This is the time needed to activate autophagy. That then means you need to eat all of your meals for the day within an eight-hour window, and not snack on anything during fasting hours.
If you want to try a water-only fast, I recommend starting out by intermittently fasting about 16 hours a day, and slowly working your way up to 20 hours a day. Once you’ve done that for a month, it will be a lot easier to do a water fast for five days.
Fasting Regenerates Your Pancreas
A powerful example of the regenerative power of fasting was demonstrated in a recent study7 that showed a fasting-mimicking diet — characterized by periods of feast and famine — can reverse diabetes and actually regenerate your pancreas. The experiment, conducted on mice, was led by Valter Longo, Ph.D., professor of gerontology and biological sciences and director of the USC Longevity Institute.
What they discovered was that by starving and refeeding the animals in cycles, insulin-producing beta cells were generated, resembling that observed during pancreatic development. Beta cells detect sugar in your blood and release insulin if blood sugar levels get too high. As a side effect of restoring pancreatic function, diabetic symptoms were also reversed. Insulin secretion and glucose homeostasis were restored in both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes models. According to Longo:
“Our conclusion is by pushing the mice into an extreme state and then bringing them back — by starving them and then feeding them again —the cells in the pancreas are triggered to use some kind of developmental reprogramming that rebuilds the part of the organ that’s no longer functioning …
Medically, these findings have the potential to be very important because we’ve shown — at least in mouse models — that you can use diet to reverse the symptoms of diabetes. Scientifically, the findings are perhaps even more important because we’ve shown you can use diet to reprogram cells without having to make any genetic alterations.”
The fasting-mimicking diet developed by Longo involves restricting your calories to 75 percent less than your normal calories per day for five days each month. This approach greatly improves compliance, as many find a five-day, water-only fast to be too difficult. During these five days of calorie restriction, it’s important to select foods low in carbohydrates, low in protein and high in healthy fats.
The rest of the month, you are free to eat whatever you want. The goal is to mimic periods of feast and famine. However, while it may sound simple enough, Longo is quick to suggest this particular diet is best undertaken with medical guidance, as it’s far more sophisticated than most people realize. You can learn more about the fasting-mimicking diet in my 2017 interview with Longo: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2017/07/23/fasting-mimicking-diet.aspx
Other Strategies That Will Activate Autophagy
Aside from fasting, there are several other ways to boost your autophagy process, including the following:
• Time your nutrient intake appropriately. In her book, “Glow 15: A Science-Based Plan to Lose Weight, Revitalize Your Skin, and Invigorate Your Life,” Naomi Whittel, former CEO of Twinlab, shares a number of different strategies specifically aimed at boosting autophagy. One of them involves the timing of nutrients. As a general rule, eat fats first and healthy carbohydrates last, whether you’re intermittently fasting or not. In a recent interview, embedded above for your convenience, she explained:
“On a low [protein] day, when you’ve done an intermittent fast, your first meal will be about fat, and fat first. Then at the end of the day, you’ll have carbohydrates, and we talk about the quality carbohydrates that we need for health. When you’re eating carbs … as your last meal, you’re getting all of the benefits, from recovery to helping you relax and get ready to go to sleep. So, fat first and carbs last is my second principle.”
• Cyclical exercise. Every other day, do 30 minutes of high-intensity interval training or resistance training. The acute stress of exercise triggers autophagy much in the same way as fasting.
• Eat autophagy-activating foods. In her book, Whittel includes 140 different types of foods that help activate autophagy — such as citrus bergamot tea, green tea and turmeric.
• Activate adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) through proper diet and nutritional supplements. AMPK is an enzyme that stimulates mitochondrial autophagy (mitophagy) and mitochondrial biogenesis, as well as five other critically important pathways: insulin, leptin, mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), insulin-like growth factor 1 and proliferator-activated receptor gamma co-activator 1-alpha.
(It also increases nerve growth factor and helps protect against the type of oxidative stress that leads to Parkinson’s disease.)
With age, your AMPK levels naturally decline. Certain dietary habits, such as eating too much unhealthy fat and not enough of healthy fats and getting insufficient amounts of flavonoids (antioxidants) also inhibit AMPK activity. Insulin resistance is also a powerful inhibitor of AMPK. So, keeping this enzyme activated through proper diet is another important factor for maintaining healthy autophagy.
Two dietary supplements known to activate AMPK — thereby triggering mitophagy and mitochondrial biogenesis — are pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) and berberine. Both of these supplements also benefit your mitochondrial function and health.
Activating Autophagy — A Simple Way to Boost Health and Prevent Disease
Considering your health is dependent on well-functioning cells, addressing autophagy is of significant importance and can go a long way toward preventing disease, including neurodegenerative disorders and cancer. Without autophagy, your cells will eventually become gunked up with toxins and debris, and once they start to malfunction and/or die, your body will be unable to efficiently clear those cells out, which will further exacerbate the problem.
The good news, it’s not very difficult to optimize autophagy. Fasting appears to be the most efficient way, but exercise and adding certain foods and supplements are also helpful strategies. If you’re truly dedicated, you’d do your best to incorporate all of these strategies.
+ Sources and References
1 STAT News June 14, 2018
2, 6 Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2012 Sep; 11(9): 709–730
3 Nobelprize.org, Yoshinori Ohsumi
4, 5 The Conversation October 10, 2016
7 Cell February 23, 2017; 168(5): 775-788
The Role of Retroviruses in Chronic Illness- Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, PhD
The role of retroviruses in chronic illness is greatly disputed in academic circles. However, at the Sophia Health Institute Dr DIETRICH KLINGHARDT, MD, PhD, reports seeing significant improvement in treatment outcomes – in the most severely affected patients with chronic illness – when anti- retroviral strategies are included.
The results we are seeing at the Sophia Health Institute at our locations in Seattle and Marin County would not have been possible without the brilliant work of Judy Mikovits, PhD.
What is published and what illnesses are potentially caused by, or have as a contributing factor, activated retroviruses?
To that I am adding a list of other illnesses that have responded under my care to retroviral interventions: intractable Lyme disease, mold illness, insomnia, brain fog and all stages of a deteriorating brain, most childhood illnesses including ADHD and behavioural problems, asthma, breast cancer, lung cancer and many more.
Working backwards
What are retroviruses? The more familiar DNA viruses such as those from the “herpes family” – and many others – work their way from DNA over to RNA and from there to the manufacture of viral proteins. Retroviruses work their way backwards – from the RNA to the DNA – and then forward again from there.
Retroviruses are subdivided into different- lettered classes – Beta Retroviruses: HERV-K. Gamma Retroviruses: HERV-H and HERV-W.
The generally accepted key contributors to chronic illness are inflammation, oxidative stress and microbial infection. All of these are known triggers for retroviral activity, and in turn are also caused by retroviral activity.
Both human and animal retroviruses can infect the central nervous system (CNS). These are associated with many diseases of the CNS and cause neurological disease by several mechanisms:
1. Directly through infection of immune cells which traffic to the brain;
2. Indirectly through increases in proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines, or
3. In the absence of detectable brain inflammation indirect effects known as “bystander effects”- causing chronic retroviral replication of immune cells.
A retrovirus works via the enzyme “reverse transcriptase”. Once inside the cell, it uses the enzyme to force the cell to create viral DNA. This viral DNA becomes integrated into the host cell DNA. A retrovirus integrated into our genome may be passed from mother to child during pregnancy (Sakuma et al, 2012).
Only 2% of our DNA is protein-coding, but 6-8% of our DNA is retroviral DNA – passed down to us from our ancestors as scars from our constant encounter with an often hostile microbial and virus-rich environment (Stoyle, 2006, Mayer et al, 2011; Li et al, 2001). These viruses are referred to as Human Endogenous Retroviruses or HERVs.
However, not all embedded retroviral DNA is bad. Some sections have become a functional part of our genome because they have given us an evolutionary advantage, such as the formation of the p53 gene regulatory network (Shin et al, 2013; Barbusecu et al, 2001). Other retroviruses have to be silenced throughout life, mainly through DNA methylation and acetylation.
The transcription of retroviral DNA makes the infected person susceptible to numerous de-novo genetic mutations, including MTHFR, DNMT and other genes which control methylation. Many other illness-producing effects are known, implicating HERV-K in the pathogenesis of neuroinflammatory and autoimmune illnesses. For a patient to get well today, it is rarely enough to just interpret the genomic testing and to substitute accordingly.
Acquiring infection
How do we become infected? Retroviruses can be acquired (inhalation, blood-based products, physical contact) or the viruses already present in our DNA can be activated through influences such as a viral infection or chronic inflammation (Manghera and Douville, 2013).
For example, the Epstein Barr virus induces expression of the HERV-K envelope gene and the transactivation of MSRV, the Multiple Sclerosis retrovirus (Mameli et al, 2007; Sutkowski et al, 2001). Herpes simplex type-2 activates members of the HERV-W family. These and other mechanisms are likely responsible for the activation of HERVs seen in rheumatoid arthritis, SLE, Sjorgens disease, schizophrenia, autism, MS and cancer. Cell phone radiation has disabled many of our protective proteins (Fragopoulou et al, 2012) and so have many of the food-based toxins such as glyphosate (Seneff et al, 2017) and air-based inhalants (aluminium etc). An unintended source of retroviruses are some vaccines as reported in Frontiers in Microbiology in January 2011).
Diagnosis
Currently PCR testing is only available to
the research community. We have to rely on indirect parameters:
decrease of CD56 NK cells (CD56 is involved in adhesion, migration, growth, differentiation and other cellular functions); down regulation of IL-13, IL-2, IFN gamma, TH-1 cytokines (J. Mikovits et al, 1998)
upregulated levels of TH-2 cytokines: IL-4, IL-10 and pro-inflammatory cytokines: IL-1, IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-alpha.
elevated levels of TGF beta-1: has profound effects on innate and adaptive immunity through stimulation of mast cells (often mistaken as mould-related). This may be the true cause of mastocytosis.
Other practical markers from my experience: low wbc (white blood count below 4500), low CD 56. I always include the CD 57 to rule out an active Borrelia burgdorferi infection as compounding factor.
Treatment
When the retroviruses are effectively addressed early in the treatment of chronic illness, other issues such as bacterial infections (Borrelia, Mycoplasma, Bartonella etc), mould illness, EBV, CMV, HHV-6, silent inflammation, parasites, heavy metal toxicity and many other problems become less symptomatic and often undetectable – and respond much better to treatment, even to interventions that have failed before.
Plants have been exposed to the same retroviruses as us, but for 300 million years longer – and many have developed potent adaptogens. Even though drugs like Truvada and AZT can be successfully used, I prefer the use of plant-based products that have unique anti-retroviral properties. A few examples with the key references:
Scutalaria root (Ruscetti et al: “Inhibition of HIV infection by baicalin – a flavonoid compound purified from Chinese herbal medicine”, Cellular & Molecular Biology Research 39, 2 (1993): 119-124).
Cistus incanus (Rebensburg et al: “Potent in vitro antiviral activity of Cistus incanus extract against HIV and Filoviruses targets viral envelope proteins”. Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 20394).
Broccoli sprouts (Furuya et al: “Sulforaphane inhibits HIV infection of macrophages through Nrf2.” PLoS Pathogens, 12.4 (2016): e1005581)
St John’s Wort (Meruelo, Lavie and Lavie: “Therapeutic agents with dramatic anti- retroviral activity and little toxicity at effective doses: aromatic polycyclic diones hypericin and pseudohypericin.” Proc Nal Acad Sci 85.14 (1988): 5230-5234).
In addition, I like to put my patients on a high dose of seleno-cysteine (commonly 800mcg, a dose that has been established as safe (Yang, G.; Zhou, R. (1994) “Further Observations on the Human Maximum Safe Dietary Selenium Intake in a Seleniferous Area of China”. Journal of Trace Elements and Electrolytes in Health and Disease. 8 (3–4): 159–165. Baum et al. “High risk of HIV- related mortality is associated with selenium deficiency.” JAIDS 15.5 (1997): 370-374).
Suramin, an old anti-parasitic, has turned out to be one of the most effective anti- retroviral agents. Retroviruses activate the “cell danger response” and the P2 purinergic receptor on each cell. Suramin downregulates this receptor and inhibits the binding of growth factors TGF-beta, EGF, PDGF to their receptors and thus antagonises the ability of these factors to stimulate growth of tumour cells. It can be given iv every six weeks.
I prefer giving daily homeopathic doses (Mitsuya et al: “Suramin protection of T cells in vitro against infectivity and cytopathic effect of HTLV-III.” Science 226.4671 (1984): 172-174).
When we use suitable liposomal extracts of plants in proper dose and frequency, together with selenium and “energetic copies” of immune modulators like suramin, olmetarsan (vitamin D receptor), rapamycin (mTOR), significant results can be achieved in the treatment of chronic illness that were not possible before. This new therapeutic approach should always be combined with the synergistic use of EMR protection, treatment of Lyme and co-infections, mould and metal detox.
• On June 10, Dr Klinghardt will present a one-day seminar on the correct and effective use of anti-retroviral interventions in chronic illness. For more information and to book see news story on page 9 and visit www. Klinghardtinstitute.com.
About the author
Dr DIETRICH KLINGHARDT studied medicine and psychology in Freiburg, Germany, completing his PhD on the involvement of the autonomic nervous system in autoimmune disorders. Early in his career he became interested in the sequelae of chronic toxicity (especially lead, mercury, environmental pollutants & electromagnetic fields) in the course of illness.
While working in India he encountered Eastern concepts of disease aetiology and blended them with his Western training. This laid the foundation for his 5-level system of Integrative Medicine. In the US he spent three years as a full-time emergency physician before becoming Medical Director of the Santa Fe Pain Centre.
Increasingly aware of the limitations of conventional medicine when dealing with chronic conditions, he trained in Ericksonian hypnotherapy and began to include body-oriented psychotherapeutic and counselling approaches in his work, along with neural therapy, mesotherapy injection techniques and applied psychoneurobiology. Dr Klinghardt has contributed significantly to the understanding of metal toxicity and its connection with chronic infections, illness and pain. He has been instrumental in advancing various fields within biological medicine – non-invasive pain management, injection techniques for pain and orthopaedic dysfunction, anti-ageing medicine, toxicology, paediatrics (neuro-developmental disorders), energy psychology, biological dentistry and others. He has also developed Autonomic Response Testing, a comprehensive diagnostic system that has helped many practitioners to become accomplished holistic physicians. He founded Sophia Health Institute in 2012, and is actively involved in patient care at his clinic.
The Sacred Plant: Healing Secrets Examined is a groundbreaking 7-part documentary series centered on the most powerful and potent healing plant on earth. This series will be available to you absolutely FREE online from June 20-27, 2018.
What is The Sacred Plant? Cannabis sativa. Its natural and non-toxic healing powers have been used for 5,000+ years to prevent, treat, and even beat hundreds of medical conditions and disorders. Including Cancer, PTSD, Autism, Seizures, Dementia, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Pain, Anxiety, and hundreds more with no harmful side effects, which are common with pharmaceutical drugs.
Through the stories and expert advice of global health leaders, doctors, scientists, patients, and survivors…you’ll discover The Sacred Plant’s miracles and misunderstandings. The stories you’ll witness will inspire and move you. If you or a loved one is suffering right now from a debilitating disease or chronic condition, it’s important that you get educated and empowered on The Sacred Plant. It could change and even save your life and the life of a loved one.
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR: BE WARY OF WHERE YOU BUY YOUR SUPPLEMENTS!
by Jennifer Crystal
APRIL 20, 2018
MANY PEOPLE TURN TO THE INTERNET FOR SUPPLEMENTS, WHERE THEY CAN FIND PRODUCTS AT DISCOUNTED RATES. BUT SAVING A FEW DOLLARS CAN BE A BIG GAMBLE THAT CAN PUT A PATIENT’S HEALTH IN JEOPARDY.
Tick-borne illness is expensive. The toll it takes on your body notwithstanding, the financial cost can bankrupt even the most successful people. Patients suddenly unable to work are often swamped by medical bills. Some don’t have insurance. Those that do often still have to pay out-of-pocket for their appointments and then fight for reimbursement. Many insurance companies deny long-term treatment coverage, at least until the weary patient puts up a long battle. To make matters worse, non-traditional therapies that help Lyme patients, such as specialized diets, neurofeedback, integrative manual therapy, and nutritional and homeopathic supplements, are generally not covered by insurance.
So what is a patient to do? For supplements, many people turn to the internet, where they can find products at discounted rates compared to retail stores. I’ve certainly done this, wanting to save as much money as possible since my illnesses, a combination of Lyme and two tick-borne co-infections could easily cost $1,000 per month out of pocket. But saving a few dollars can be a big gamble that puts a patient’s health in jeopardy.
Why? Because a good deal of what we order from the internet is fake.
In her article “The Fake Supplement Issue No One is Talking About—Beware of Amazon”, Jill Carnahan, M.D., says, “Amazon has been making headlines lately due to surges in counterfeits, imitation merchants, and elaborate fake review scams.” She cautions that this is especially an issue for supplements, a $112 billion market that has almost no regulation. A Forbes article noted in Dr. Carnahan’s post revealed that 25% of Amazon’s marketplace are Chinese knockoffs.
I learned this the hard way recently, when I ordered a supplement off of Amazon. It was a basic vitamin that I usually get at the pharmacy, but I didn’t have time to go to the store that week, so I opted for the convenient click of Amazon Prime. Two days later, a green bottle arrived that looked exactly like the one I buy at the pharmacy—with the same label, sealed in plastic packaging—but when I opened it, I found red capsules instead of white. Were they real? They might have been. But I wasn’t going to risk my health to find out. In the end, I wound up paying double the money—the sunk cost of the discarded bottle from Amazon, plus the replacement bottle from the pharmacy—and still had to take the time to go to the store.
I was shocked to learn from Dr. Carnahan’s article that even major stores can’t always be trusted either. She cites a 2015 New York State attorney general’s office report which found that GNC supplements contained ingredients that were not listed on their labels. A Walgreens ginseng supplement turned out to be rice and garlic, and six supplements from Target contained beans, rice, peas, and carrots instead of the main ingredients listed.
With this frightening information, now I really ask, what is a patient to do? Dr. Carnahan recommends buying straight from the producer. There are a number of reputable online stores that sell brand name supplements. I personally use Emerson Ecologics, Researched Nutritionals, and Wellness Pharmacy. A good Lyme Literate Medical Doctor (LLMD) will refer you to his or her trusted pharmacy or retailer.
Moreover, beware those doctors who, instead of making these referrals will try to sell you supplements directly from their office. They often charge a steep mark up, for this service, which begs the question, is the doctor running a retail concern or a medical practice? Some doctors certainly have the patient’s convenience in mind, but be sure you trust that your doctor is acting in your best medical interests rather than his or her own financial interests. I’ve had naturopathic and traditional physicians sell me expensive supplements that they swear will make me better, but they haven’t. When I called one physician’s office, the automated prompt listed the apothecary before scheduling; this told me exactly where this doctor’s priorities lay.
The bottom line is to be vigilant and well-informed, and to always make sure both you and your practitioners are putting your health first. Be sure you trust your doctor and your pharmacy and retailers, and remember the old adage, “You get what you pay for.”
Opinions expressed by contributors are their own.
Jennifer Crystal is a writer and educator in Boston. She is working on a memoir about her journey with chronic tick-borne illness. Contact her at jennifercrystalwriter@gmail.com
Opinions expressed by contributors are their own.
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 