Archive for the ‘Treatment’ Category

Could An 80-Year-Old Drug Cure Alzheimer’s Disease?

https://newsblog.drexel.edu/2021/11/08/could-an-80-year-old-drug-cure-alzheimers-disease/

Could an 80-year-Old Drug Cure Alzheimer’s Disease?

by Greg Richter
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.

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Alzheimer's, Lyme, research, Treatment, Uncategorized

The Real Reason Behind Hospital “Fauci Death Protocol” & “Vax” Mandates For Healthcare Workers: Government Money

**UPDATE Jan. 21, 2022** Hospitals are still mistreating patients:

An unvaxxed COVID patient is being flown to Texas after being denied life-saving care in Minnesota. The hospital made a decision to turn off his life-support allegedly because he was unvaccinated. Texas doctors were shocked at his condition and one stated he was the most undernourished patient he had ever seen.  http://GiveSendGo.com/Anne The family is accepting prayers and donations.

Sadly, the patient, Scott Quiner has passed away.

And then there’s Patty Myers who created the documentary “Making a Killing” after her husband was killed in the hospital due to the COVID protocols. She reveals the ugliness of government pay-outs to hospitals for following the Fauci-death protocol that is explained in detail in the following article and which one nurse states were ‘brutal’ and another blames for 90% of hospital deaths.

Meanwhile, severely ill patients who are allowed ivermectin survive.

Investigative journalist Jon Rappoport just revealed why mega-corporations, run by “hard chargers and ruthless operators” all took a knee and whole-heartedly accepted ineffective lockdowns: they have deep connections with major hospitals. The three most powerful corporate bosses are Mortimer Buckley (CEO of Vanguard Group & board member of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia & past chairman of the hospital’s board of trustees), Joseph Hooley (CEO of State Street & serves on the president’s council of Massachusetts General Hospital), and Larry Fink (CEO of BlackRock & co-chair of the NYU Langone Medical Center board of trustees).  For this reason, those working for one of these companies won’t speak out because:

HIS CORPORATION IS OWNED BY THE BIG THREE, AND THE OWNERS OF THE BIG THREE ARE LOYAL MEMBERS OF THE MEDICAL COMPLEX…THE COMPLEX THAT FORMS THE CURRENT POLICE STATE THAT HAS SUBDUED THE WORLD, UNDER THE FALSE BANNER OF “SAVING HUMANITY FROM THE VIRUS.” Source

This is important to know to understand the following information:

https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/governments-bounty-on-your-life-hospitals-incentive-payments-for-covid-19-is-about-100k-per-covid-patient/

Government’s Bounty on Your Life: Hospitals’ Incentive Payments for COVID-19 are About $100K per COVID Patient

Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D. have just written a report documenting how much hospitals make when a patient is tested positive for COVID-19.

It is published on the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) website.

While the authors correctly report that most of this funding comes from The CARES Act, which was passed in early 2020 during the Trump administration, and which was also used to fund Operation Warp Speed, for some reason they chose to blame Biden for this in their headline.

For sure Biden has continued the policies and even made things worse by mandating the deadly COVID-19 shots, but I think it is counter-productive to make this a partisan issue.

These politicians are just puppets for the Corporate Globalists who are clearly making public policy now and calling the shots via these puppet politicians.

Real change will not happen in the U.S. simply by voting for someone different for public office and changing political parties.

Real change will only come when the criminals, such as anyone who is invested in Pfizer and owns stock in that company, is arrested and tried for Crimes Against Humanity, and if convicted by a jury of their peers, executed publicly.

The politicians are most certainly complicit, and should be tried, convicted, and executed also, but they are not the ones calling the shots.

Biden’s Bounty on Your Life: Hospitals’ Incentive Payments for COVID-19

By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D. – https://www.truthforhealth.org/
AAPSOnline.org

Upon admission to a once-trusted hospital, American patients with COVID-19 become virtual prisoners, subjected to a rigid treatment protocol with roots in Ezekiel Emanuel’s “Complete Lives System” for rationing medical care in those over age 50. They have a shockingly high mortality rate. How and why is this happening, and what can be done about it?

As exposed in audio recordings, hospital executives in Arizona admitted meeting several times a week to lower standards of care, with coordinated restrictions on visitation rights. Most COVID-19 patients’ families are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really being done to their loved ones.

The combination that enables this tragic and avoidable loss of hundreds of thousands of lives includes (1) The CARES Act, which provides hospitals with bonus incentive payments for all things related to COVID-19 (testing, diagnosing, admitting to hospital, use of remdesivir and ventilators, reporting COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinations) and (2) waivers of customary and long-standing patient rights by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

In 2020, the Texas Hospital Association submitted requests for waivers to CMS. According to Texas attorney Jerri Ward,

“CMS has granted ‘waivers’ of federal law regarding patient rights. Specifically, CMS purports to allow hospitals to violate the rights of patients or their surrogates with regard to medical record access, to have patient visitation, and to be free from seclusion.”

She notes that “rights do not come from the hospital or CMS and cannot be waived, as that is the antithesis of a ‘right.’ The purported waivers are meant to isolate and gain total control over the patient and to deny patient and patient’s decision-maker the ability to exercise informed consent.”

Creating a “National Pandemic Emergency” provided justification for such sweeping actions that override individual physician medical decision-making and patients’ rights.

The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments dictated solely by the federal government under the auspices of the NIH. These “bounties” must paid back if not “earned” by making the COVID-19 diagnosis and following the COVID-19 protocol.

The hospital payments include:

  • A “free” required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.
  • Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
  • Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.
  • A 20 percent “boost” bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as Ivermectin.
  • Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.
  • More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.
  • A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.

CMS implemented “value-based” payment programs that track data such as how many workers at a healthcare facility receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Now we see why many hospitals implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They are paid more.

Outside hospitals, physician MIPS quality metrics link doctors’ income to performance-based pay for treating patients with COVID-19 EUA drugs. Failure to report information to CMS can cost the physician 4% of reimbursement.

Because of obfuscation with medical coding and legal jargon, we cannot be certain of the actual amount each hospital receives per COVID-19 patient. But Attorney Thomas Renz and CMS whistleblowers have calculated a total payment of at least $100,000 per patient.

What does this mean for your health and safety as a patient in the hospital?

There are deaths from the government-directed COVID treatments. For remdesivir, studies show that 71–75 percent of patients suffer an adverse effect, and the drug often had to be stopped after five to ten days because of these effects, such as kidney and liver damage, and death.

Remdesivir trials during the 2018 West African Ebola outbreak had to be discontinued because death rate exceeded 50%. Yet, in 2020, Anthony Fauci directed that remdesivir was to be the drug hospitals use to treat COVID-19, even when the COVID clinical trials of remdesivir showed similar adverse effects.

In ventilated patients, the death toll is staggering. A National Library of Medicine January 2021 report of 69 studies involving more than 57,000 patients concluded that fatality rates were 45 percent in COVID-19 patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation, increasing to 84 percent in older patients.

Renz announced at a Truth for Health Foundation Press Conference that CMS data showed that in Texas hospitals, 84.9% percent of all patients died after more than 96 hours on a ventilator.

Then there are deaths from restrictions on effective treatments for hospitalized patients. Renz and a team of data analysts have estimated that more than 800,000 deaths in America’s hospitals, in COVID-19 and other patients, have been caused by approaches restricting fluids, nutrition, antibiotics, effective antivirals, anti-inflammatories, and therapeutic doses of anti-coagulants.

We now see government-dictated medical care at its worst in our history since the federal government mandated these ineffective and dangerous treatments for COVID-19, and then created financial incentives for hospitals and doctors to use only those “approved” (and paid for) approaches.

Our formerly trusted medical community of hospitals and hospital-employed medical staff have effectively become “bounty hunters” for your life. Patients need to now take unprecedented steps to avoid going into the hospital for COVID-19.

Patients need to take active steps to plan before getting sick to use early home-based treatment of COVID-19 that can help you save your life.

Related:  Medical Doctor: “Hospital Admission has Become Like Reporting to Prison”

For an excellent interview with Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet from Truth for Health Foundation lays bare what’s been happening inside America’s hospital system over the last two years, where treatment centers seem so intent on murdering their patients that they refuse court orders to treat with routine antiviral therapies like steroids as well specific treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Incentivized by high reimbursement payments by using potentially deadly treatments like ventilators and remdesivir, the doctors and hospitals have descended into unethical, corrupt medical practices.

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Category:

Activism, Treatment, vaccines, Viruses

Lyme Cured From Cows? The Monopolization of Medicine

November 19, 2021

By Alicia Cashman, MS

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.

His symptoms worsened.

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 government which bans and censors anything and anyone it deems a threat to its interests, drives out real cures.”

Bedell had a hard time believing that medicine doesn’t look at what others are doing to find out what they can learn.  He obviously doesn’t understand the following about the private, non-profit mob behind state medical boards which censors and persecutes independent thinking physicians and how science has been completely hijacked by Big Pharma, University research facilities, and the government:

  • the sordid backstory of the AMA which was founded by fraudsters who weren’t even trained in medicine and who were only interested in monopolizing medicine – which has continued to this day
  • 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 COVID injections 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 instructs doctors to deceive patients
  • the AMA coerces doctors through fear-tactics
  • 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 numerous problems 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 experiments for 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-hungry groups 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.

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Treatment

Mitral Valve Dysfunction from Lyme Carditis

https://danielcameronmd.com/mitral-valve-dysfunction-lyme-carditis/

Mitral valve dysfunction from Lyme carditis

Man being examined with stethescope for mitral valve problems from Lyme carditis.

Lyme carditis is an uncommon but important manifestation of Lyme disease. In their study, Malik and colleagues describe the case of a young man with Lyme carditis with left ventricular dysfunction and valvular involvement occurring one week after a tick bite. [1]

By

The 22-year-old man was admitted to the hospital with cardiac problems. He suffered from morbid obesity and  complained of chest pain and lightheadedness for several days. During his examination, he was sweaty with a fast pulse of 115. He also reported having an erythema migrans (EM) rash.

Clinicians initially suspected the patient had non-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and prescribed intravenous heparin, the authors explain in the case report, “Early Onset Lyme Myopericarditis With Left Ventricular Dysfunction and Mitral Regurgitation.”

“Echocardiogram was done which showed a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) of 49% with mild diffuse hypokinesis, and moderate to severe mitral regurgitation,” the authors wrote.

Test results were positive for Lyme disease and the man was treated with intravenous ceftriaxone.

“If left untreated, Lyme carditis can lead to acute heart failure and sudden cardiac death thus prompt diagnosis and treatment are essential in management.”

“A repeat echocardiogram was performed, which showed an improvement of the previously visualized mitral regurgitation and normalization of LVEF,” the authors wrote.

The patient had a marked improvement in his symptoms and resolution of his rash. He was discharged home with a 3-week course of oral doxycycline.

“On a 1-month follow-up, patient remains asymptomatic and is back to his previous baseline,” according to the authors.

Cardiac manifestations in Lyme disease typically occur 1 to 2 months after the onset of infection, the authors wrote.  “In our patient, however, Lyme carditis was seen a little over 1 week after known tick exposure.”

A growing number of cardiac manifestations due to Lyme disease have been described. “Clinical manifestations of Lyme carditis include arrhythmias, conduction abnormalities, myopericarditis, ventricular dysfunction, and acute heart failure,” the authors wrote.

“Left ventricular dysfunction, as seen in our patient, has been reported to have an incidence of 0.5%.”

Valvular dysfunction due to Lyme carditis is rare. “To date, about 7 cases of valvular involvement in Lyme carditis have been reported making this phenomenon exceedingly rare.”

“If there is a high suspicion for Lyme carditis, empiric treatment with antibiotics should be started while the initial evaluation is pending.”

Death from Lyme carditis is rare. “A case series published by the CDC reported 3 individual deaths that were attributed to Lyme disease by postmortem examination indicating that lack of treatment can lead to fatalities.”

Shen and colleagues described the death of a 25-year-old man with Lyme carditis. “He presented with syncope and second-degree Mobitz type 2 heart block, as well as disseminated erythema migrans rash.”²

The patient received a temporary pacemaker and was discharged after 4 days of intravenous ceftriaxone.

“The patient returned home to a different state and reportedly died at home about 1 week after discharge.” There was no autopsy report or records to determine the cause of death.

Related Articles:

Podcast: Young man dies from Lyme carditis
Lyme carditis diagnosis: 18 cases
Patients can die when Lyme carditis is not treated

References:
  1. Malik MB, Baluch A, Adhikari S, Quraeshi S, Rao S. Early Onset Lyme Myopericarditis With Left Ventricular Dysfunction and Mitral Regurgitation. J Investig Med High Impact Case Rep. Jan-Dec 2021;9:23247096211045267. doi:10.1177/23247096211045267
  2. Shen RV, McCarthy CA, Smith RP. Lyme Carditis in Hospitalized Children and Adults, a Case Series. Open Forum Infect Dis. Jul 2021;8(7):ofab140. doi:10.1093/ofid/ofab140

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Category:

Heart Issues, Lyme, research, Treatment

How to Get Unstuck With the Lyme Recovery Roadmap

https://rawlsmd.com/health-articles/how-to-get-unstuck-with-the-lyme-recovery-roadmap

How to Get Unstuck with the Lyme Recovery Roadmap

by Dr. Bill Rawls
Updated 10/15/21

During your Lyme disease recovery, it’s not unusual to find yourself stuck from time to time, not knowing what to do to further heal and reduce undesirable symptoms. To overcome this all too common circumstance and experience progress again, you’ll want to pay careful attention to potential obstacles that can impede wellness and remove them.

While eliminating microbes and reducing symptoms are crucial pieces of the recovery puzzle, there’s always more to the story. The biggest reasons symptoms occur in the first place are because our bodies’ cells aren’t getting enough nutrients, oxygen, or water, and the waste and toxin removal mechanisms are compromised. Ultimately, getting well is a matter of minimizing the factors that are disrupting the health of your cells to the best of your ability.

Building a Strong Foundation of Natural Support

So then, what direction do you go in if you need to get unstuck? Start by building a strong foundation in your Lyme disease recovery.

key steps in building your foundation: suppress microbes, protect cells, inhibit inflammation, cellular connectivity, good flow

The bedrock of any comprehensive natural protocol should contain these three critical elements: antimicrobial herbs, immune-modulating herbs, and methylation and cellular support.

antimicrobial, immune-modulating, and methylation and cellular support

While many herbs have the potential to be of benefit to your recovery from chronic Lyme disease, certain ones rise to the top because they tackle the myriad of cellular stress factors you endure, helping to quell an environment where chronic illness flourishes.

My preferred herbs and supplements from the 3 categories above include:

1. Antimicrobial Herbs to Suppress Microbes

Many herbs have antimicrobial effects against borrelia, bartonella, babesia, mycoplasma, and more. In fact, recent research from Johns Hopkins University has shown that herbal therapy may be more effective at combating borrelia and babesia than medications. The following is a list of herbs to help form the basis of your Lyme protocol.

antimicrobial herbs andrographis, berberine, cats claw, sarsaparilla, garlic, and more

2. Immune-Modulating Herbs

Herbs with immune-modulating properties help to normalize the functions of the immune system, inhibiting dysfunctional chemical messengers called cytokines and restoring the immune system’s communication pathways.

Medicinal mushrooms, in particular, are a great way to modulate the immune system, but other herbs are helpful as well.

immune-modulating herbs reishi mushroom, cordyceps, rehmannia extract, and chinese skullcap

3. Methylation + Cellular Support

Finally, combining herbs with supplements that address methylation — the body’s biochemical process that switches on and off genes, regulates metabolism, mood, detoxification, and more — will amp up the cellular protection.

methylation and cellular support: activated b vitamins, glutathione, alpha lipoic acid, and more

Removing the Obstacles to Healing

When trying to remove obstacles to healing, it’s vital to understand this: It’s generally not one factor but multiple factors that set the stage for chronic immune dysfunction associated with stealth infections and chronic illness. Besides microbes, other stress factors compounding the problem include:

  • Unnatural diet
  • Toxic environment
  • Chronic Stress
  • Sedentary lifestyle

Let’s take a look at each of these obstacles, how they impact healing, and what we can do about them:

1. Poor Diet

The foods you eat equate to fuel for the body so that you have the energy you need to repair tissues and curb inflammation. Without sufficient nutrients, the opposite is true: your body is starved of the nourishment it needs to restore itself. And while the occasional slip-up might not be enough to through your recovery completely off track, repeatedly consuming foods devoid of nutrients presents significant challenges for the body.

excess carbohydrates leads to increased insulin levels, insulin resistance, immune suppression, and more

evaluate your diet with the self-assessment tool to determine if it's an obstacle to healing
answering no to one or more items in the diet assessment suggests diet is an obstacle to healing

General Diet Guidelines

To keep your diet as nutrient-dense as possible, consider the following guidelines.

general diet guidelines cook your vegetables, avoid fried foods, minimize carbohydrates, and chew your food

Some foods are problematic for many people because they contribute to food allergies, sensitivities, digestive issues, or increase the body’s toxic burden. Foods to consider nixing from your diet altogether are as follows:

foods to eliminate include lectins, dairy, alcohol, artificial preservatives, and artificial sweeteners

2. Toxins

Toxins are present in the foods you eat, the air you breathe, personal care products, household cleaners, and more. Toxins can have a profound influence on the body.

toxins compromise cellular energy production, disrupt hormones, promote inflammation, and more

evaluate your environment with the self-assessment tool to determine if it's an obstacle to healing
answering no to one or more items in the toxin assessment suggests toxins are an obstacle to healing

Although toxins can come from a variety of sources, you’re probably most familiar with mold and its mycotoxins. Unfortunately, mold exposure can curtail your efforts to get well — regardless of whether it’s “toxic” or even whether you’re allergic to mold. More than 50% of homes and more than 85% of commercial buildings in the U.S. have water damage and mold, even if you can’t see or smell it outright. Symptoms can range from mildly disruptive to serious and truly life-threatening. To clean up mold and your environment, put these tips into action:

eliminate mold by removing visible signs of it and cleaning heating units and air conditioners
eat organic food, filter your water, replace HVAC filters, and quit smoking to minimize other toxins

3. Stress

Chronic stress is very pervasive in modern life. Often people suffering from stress don’t realize that their symptoms are stress-related. Stress has the potential to disrupt all normal functions of the body and mind.

stress disrupts functions of the body like digestion, immune system, daily maintenance, and tissue repair

evaluate your stress levels with the self-assessment tool to determine if it is an obstacle to healing
answering no to one or more items in the stress assessment suggests stress is an obstacle to healing

Stress sends the sympathetic nervous system — the part of the nervous system associated with the “fight or flight” response — into overdrive, leading to issues like poor sleep, feelings of irritability or anxiousness, increased pain levels, among others. Since you can’t outrun stress, learning to manage it is one of the best steps you can take for your health.

dedicate time to stress relief by mediating, gardening, walking, or using herbs to support the stress response

dedicate time to improving sleep by taking a hot bath, blocking out excess light, and sleeping in a cool room

4. Inactivity

If you’re highly symptomatic or experiencing a relapse, moving your body might be the last thing you want to do. But even gentle, restorative exercise (restorative yoga, qigong, taking a stroll, doing leisurely laps in the pool) can help counter the pitfalls of being too sedentary.

inactivity decreases blood flow, increases toxin retention, disrupts immune function, and zaps energy

evaluate your activity level with the self-assessment tool to determine if it's an obstacle to healing
answering no to one or more items in the activity assessment suggests inactivity is an obstacle to healing

if you have limited activity levels, consider gentle exercises like restorative yoga, pilates, or qigong

if you are bedridden, avoid exercise until you feel ready or consider using an infrared sauna

What if Symptoms Persist?

Sometimes, you can do all the right things and still wind up perplexed as to what’s going on or what to do next. The good news, however, is there are still several options to consider.

First, do you need to add additional herbal support to combat coinfections? Some herbs to think about include:

if symptoms persist, try additional herbal support like cryptolepis, black walnut, neem, or red root

Second, do you need the assistance of a heroic therapy — more potent interventions for when you feel like nothing else is moving the needle? For Lyme disease, the ones you’re most apt to be prescribed or recommended are:

heroic therapies are more potent interventions like antibiotics, rife machines, ozone, and hyperthermia therapy

Wellness is Within Reach

Treating Lyme disease requires persistence as you slowly chip away at layers of dysfunction and cellular stress factors. While it can be overwhelming, whenever you get stuck, go back to the basics and look for the areas where you might have gotten off track.

self check-ins are crucial each week to make sure you're staying on track toward your goal of healing

Review this recovery roadmap, and do weekly self check-ins. Remain consistent with your protocol and celebrate all of your healing milestones — no matter how big or small they are. Soon, you’ll find yourself turning the corner.

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.

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**Comment**

If you are a newbie, or even an “advanced” patient, this article may really stress you out as there’s so much to learn, consider, and address.  The intent is never to overwhelm, but to enlighten as this is probably the toughest thing to treat and encompasses every bodily system.  Please, just learn what you can and take one thing at a time.  Most things cost money and time and patients are typically short on both so don’t beat up on yourself. 

Category:

Detoxing, diet and nutrition, Gut Health, Herbs, Inflammation, Lyme, Supplements, Treatment