Archive for the ‘Treatment’ Category

Superior Efficacy of Combination Antibiotics Therapy Versus Monotherapy For Lyme Disease in Mouse Model

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1293300/full

Front. Microbiol., 20 November 2023
Sec. Infectious Agents and Disease
Volume 14 – 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1293300
This article is part of the Research TopicInsights in Infectious Agents and Disease: 2023View all 11 articles

Superior efficacy of combination antibiotic therapy versus monotherapy in a mouse model of Lyme disease

Yasir Alruwaili1,2,3Mary B. Jacobs2Nicole R. Hasenkampf2Amanda C. Tardo2Celine E. McDaniel2Monica E. Embers2,3*

Lyme disease (LD) results from the most prevalent tick-borne infection in North America, with over 476,000 estimated cases annually. The disease is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) sensu lato which transmits through the bite of Ixodid ticks. Most cases treated soon after infection are resolved by a short course of oral antibiotics. However, 10–20% of patients experience chronic symptoms because of delayed or incomplete treatment, a condition called Post-Treatment Lyme Disease (PTLD). Some Bb persists in PTLD patients after the initial course of antibiotics and an effective treatment to eradicate the persistent Bb is needed. Other organisms that cause persistent infections, such as M. tuberculosis, are cleared using a combination of therapies rather than monotherapy. A group of Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs previously shown to be efficacious against Bb in vitro were used in monotherapy or in combination in mice infected with Bb. Different methods of detection were used to assess the efficacy of the treatments in the infected mice including culture, xenodiagnosis, and molecular techniques. None of the monotherapies eradicated persistent Bb. However,

  • 4 dual combinations (doxycycline + ceftriaxone, dapsone + rifampicin, dapsone + clofazimine, doxycycline + cefotaxime)
  • 3 triple combinations (doxycycline + ceftriaxone+ carbomycin, doxycycline + cefotaxime+ loratadine, dapsone+ rifampicin+ clofazimine) eradicated persistent Bb infections.

These results suggest that combination therapy should be investigated in preclinical studies for treating human Lyme disease.

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**Comment**

This research demonstrates clearly why many do not get better.  Mainstream doctors are still in the Dark Ages regarding all things Lyme/MSIDS and treat with the antiquated and unscientific IDSA Lyme Guidelines which have never worked and never will.

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Category:

Lyme, research, Testing, Treatment

Neurological & Cognitive Issues From Lyme Podcast

https://www.lymedisease.org/podcast-shelley-ball-neurological-lyme/

PODCAST: Neurological and cognitive issues from Lyme

By Fred Diamond

On this week’s Love, Hope, Lyme podcast, biologist and Lyme survivor Dr. Shelley Ball and I discussed neurological and cognitive issues that are common with persistent Lyme disease.

There’s a chapter on neurological issues in my book Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know. I wrote the book to understand what someone in my life with persistent Lyme was going through. Since the neurological issues concerning Lyme are so personal and potentially extreme, the chapter is intentionally light.

Shelley lives in Westport, Ontario, Canada, an area endemic for Lyme, Anaplasma and Babesia. A biologist by trade, she spent a lot of time outdoors doing field work around the world. In addition to Lyme and Bartonella, she also has Babesia odocoilei, which has been shown to be treatment resistant and contributes to “brain on fire” symptoms as well.

After she was diagnosed with Lyme, she dove into researching the disease to understand what was happening to her. She wrote her book Lyme Disease, Ticks and You: A Guide to Navigating Tick Bites, Lyme Disease and Other Tick-Borne Infections to make what she learned more accessible and less complex to the typical Lyme survivor.

Neurological and Cognitive Symptoms

“Neurological symptoms are very challenging,” she said. “I went for several months where I could barely read, which is hard when you must keep working. The brain issues were the biggest for me such as short-term memory loss. When I was in the thick of treatment, I’d be standing in front of somebody I’d known for years, and I couldn’t remember their name.”

She continued, “Executive functions such as just being able to pay your bills, plan your work, stay on schedule, is challenging. It forces you to try to find aids and little tricks and things that you can do to support yourself. They’re essentially like pre-dementia symptoms. Psychiatric issues, which are a huge part of this, can often lead to personality changes.”

She explained that these infections can cross the blood-brain barrier and cause massive inflammation, so you can end up with a permanently inflamed brain.

“We’re essentially suffering from a brain autoimmune issue where your own immune system essentially is attacking your own brain. It’s especially challenging because there are few good treatments for autoimmune conditions. Usually, it’s steroids and similar things. Those are some of the worst things that you can take if you’ve got chronic tick-borne infections.

“You feel this rage rise in you, and you have no control over it. Your brain is inflamed. This is not something that you’re doing. It is happening to you. You literally must find a way to almost step away and manage it when these things flare out.

“Your personality changes,” she continued, “Not only do the people around you see it, but you see it in yourself. You go through a grief period where you grieve for the person that you were, both mentally and in your personality, but also physically, because you’re just not capable of doing the activities that you used to do. These are very tough issues to deal with and sometimes it drives people away.”

Challenges to Treating Neurological Symptoms

Most chronic Lyme survivors struggle with pain, but the neurological issues can be the most challenging.

Shelley said, “There are so many aspects to it. There’s the direct impact on brain tissue, there’s the inflammation, there’s the autoimmunity and the immune component of it. You’re trying to deal with all these things. One of the keys is to try to get that inflammation down.”

“I’ve had some fascinating conversations with other Lyme patients about treatment, because we’ll often have flare-ups, and a lot of people will turn back to antibiotics to manage those flare-ups. They think that maybe those insistent Lyme bacteria have flared up and turned back into spirochetes and we’re back into an active infection.”

Shelley said, “There are other challenges to treatment. One is the isolation of the disease. Lyme patients especially experience this because we are gaslighted by the medical system that we reach out to, to try to regain our health. There is some initial empathy, compassion, and support, but that dwindles. Then you realize that you are very much on your own suffering in silence.”

She said that if you read the science, when the body becomes inflamed, that inflammation overstimulates your brain and puts you into permanent fight or flight mode. This is known as sympathetic dominance or sympathetic overdrive. Interestingly, it stimulates more inflammation. Then you get stuck in this positive feedback loop of inflammation. What it comes down to is trying to break that cycle of inflammation.

On the podcast, she discusses botanicals and neuro-retraining techniques that might be helpful.

Final Thoughts

I asked for her recommendations for how to live a higher quality life while still dealing with Lyme.

“Try to find ways to find joy. Lyme patients do a lot of grieving. We’ve lost our physical capabilities; we’ve lost our cognitive abilities. We’ve lost our old personality. Sometimes we lose people in our life who just can’t stay there to support us. I don’t believe in toxic positivity, but gratitude is important to focus on what we do have.”

She offered, “I empathize because this really is a shared disease in the sense that even if our loved ones don’t understand what we’re going through, it impacts them. Stay the course. It’s hellish, to be honest. It’s also an iceberg effect where you will probably only see the tip of the suffering that people are going through with these diseases.”

Click here to listen to all episodes of the Love, Hope, Lyme Podcast or on YouTube.

Fred Diamond is based in Fairfax, Virginia and can be contacted via Facebook. His book Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know is available on Amazon. The e-version of the book is always free to Lyme survivors. Send Fred a private message on Facebook for your copy.

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**Comment**

Great information.

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Category:

Activism, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Treatment

The Science of Fasting Podcast: Monday March 11, 2024

You can watch live in the WCH Newsroom or watch later when it is most convenient for you.

⏰ Please note: Daylight Saving Time begins in the US, Canada, some parts of Mexico, etc. this weekend, making Monday’s show one hour later than previously.

Time zone guide: 11 am PDT, 1 pm CDT, 2 pm EDT, 6 pm UTC / GMT, 8 pm CAT, 3 am JST (12 March), 5 am AEDT (12 March), 7 am NZDT (12 March)

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Category:

Activism, Detoxing, diet and nutrition, Lyme, Treatment

The ‘New Norm:’ Authors Rewrite Positive Ivermectin Findings To Make Them Appear Negative

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/people-who-received-ivermectin-were-better-off-study-finds-

People Who Received Ivermectin Were Better Off, Study Finds

Ivermectin recipients recovered faster than others.
3/7/2024

People who tested positive for COVID-19 and took ivermectin as a treatment recovered faster than a comparison group, a new study found.

The time to self-reported recovery was a median of two days faster among the ivermectin recipients, according to the large UK study.

The quicker recovery period was statistically significant.

People who received ivermectin were also less likely to be hospitalized or die, with 1.6 percent of ivermectin recipients being hospitalized or dying versus 4 percent of the comparison group, which received typical care, which in the UK is largely focused on managing symptoms.

Ivermectin recipients also enjoyed a reduction of severe symptoms and sustained recovery, according to the study.

The paper was published by the Journal of Infection on Feb. 29.  (See link for article)
_________________
SUMMARY:
  • Only in the topsy-turvy world of COVID do study authors rewrite positive findings into negative ones
  • The PRINCIPLE trial came up with an unneeded specified hazard ratio to make the findings appear insignificant. In the real world, if a HR is >1.0, and is statistically significant, it is a robust finding.
  • Further, the findings should be interpreted in the context of
    • recipients only receive ONE dose per day across three days
    • recipients were directed to refrain from eating food 2 hours before and after administration when previous research found that taking it with food increases plasma concentration
    • recipients received ivermectin a median of 5 days after symptom onset, a time some consider to be too late since the drug works best within 24 hours according to a meta-regression
  • There have been additional studies that found ivermectin works against COVID-19.
  • Dr. David Boulware who helped run the trial argued that faster recovery with ivermectin was similar to the open-trial findings of molnupiravir; however, according to James Lyons-Weiler, the FDA dropped the ball completely on this supposed ‘game changer’ which gave people higher live SARS-CoV-2 viral titers and more viral evolution two weeks after start of treatment, but was still FDA approved.
  • Go here for a quick review of costs between FDA approved and FDA unapproved COVID treatments.  This says it all.

https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/news/statements/principle-trial/

PRINCIPLE Trial Fails to Refute Evidence of Ivermectin’s Efficacy in Covid-19

By World Council for Health

Results from the Oxford-managed PRINCIPLE trial of ivermectin in out-patient Covid-19 were published in the Journal of Infection on 29 February 2024, over a year and half after the trial’s closure in July 2022, and over 2 years since the originally planned termination. The unexpected pause in January 2022 (said to be due to supply problems, denied by the supplier) remains unexplained. PRINCIPLE is funded by the NIHR, i.e. by the British taxpayer.

The trial design was criticised by FLCCC and BiRD International on 1 July 2021, because of enrollment up to 14 days of symptoms. The comprehensive summary of clinical evidence at c19ivm.org thus categorises this as a “Late Treatment” RCT. The protocol treatment, with weak dosing, short duration, fasting administration minimising serum concentrations, confined to a monotherapy with disregard of ubiquitous adjuncts, and of the concurrent corticosteroids indicated at later disease stages, did not correspond to any treatments adopted by clinicians using ivermectin with success. Overall the majority of patients were low-risk, after enrollment criteria were changed in July 2021 to accommodate all adults.

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In spite of the low-risk population, under-dosing, and late treatment, statistically significant improvements in times to recovery on various metrics are found, Fig. S6(b) opposite, though not graphed in the main paper. The authors’ summary rejects these as not clinically significant, based on an arbitrary, pre-defined, metric:  –  “Ivermectin for COVID-19 is unlikely to provide clinically meaningful improvement in recovery, hospital admissions, or longer-term outcomes. Further trials of ivermectin for SARSCov-2 infection in vaccinated community populations appear unwarranted.” This does not follow from the evidence. A rational response to statistically significant improvement in recovery time, demonstrating a positive quantified effect, would be to seek to optimise the protocol. Also the alleviation of Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-Cov-2 (PASC) i.e. “Long Covid”, as detailed here from data in the Supplementaries, is clear, and at variance with the negative conclusion on “longer term outcomes”.

BiRD International and the World Council for Health agree however that further trials of ivermectin alone are unwarranted, the weight of evidence summarised at covid19.org being so overwhelming that the remaining issues concern dosage, adjuncts, and mechanism, rather than further empirical evidence of clinical effect. The paper’s opening statement “The evidence … is contested” does not survive scrutiny of all available evidence, even after this report. Multiple critiques of design and implementation remain unanswered, data sharing is only offered subject to contracts, and an undeclared conflict of interest is Prof Chris Butler’s parallel PANORAMIC trial of molnupiravir, a proprietary drug.

We find the results unsurprising in view of the poor trial design; they do little or nothing to refute the accumulated worldwide evidence on the efficacy of ivermectin in Covid-19.

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**Comment**

And there you have it.  Yet another manipulated study for a pre-determined outcome by an author with a vested interest in a treatment that competes with ivermectin.  Case closed.

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Category:

Activism, research, Treatment, Viruses

Somatic Tracking for Pain

**DISCLAIMER**

Sorry for the monologue, but it’s important.

As anyone in Lymeland knows, ‘what works for one, doesn’t work for another.’  Please keep this in mind as you read the following information that I hope will help someone.  Further, I am in complete disagreement with any statements that Lyme/MSIDS can not be a persistent/chronic infection(s).  The doctor in the documentary, Dr. Howard Schubiner, admits there is controversy in the medical community over chronic Lyme/MSIDS, and that he has had the experience of seeing patients ‘overtreated’ with antibiotics for weeks, months, and years. While he states he is very happy for those who are doing well with long-term of treatment, he states patients should rethink their diagnosis if they are on a merry-go-round of costly and invasive treatments that aren’t working. To this doctor I would state: while you have had the unfortunate experience of helping ‘overtreated’ patients, there are thousands upon thousands in the real world who are dying from undertreatment.  Tread lightly.

While rethinking a diagnosis appears to be logically sane thinking, it’s imperative to understand treating Lyme/MSIDS is fraught with confusion, mystery, set backs, and pain. To my knowledge the only other diseases with Jarisch-Herxheimer reactions besides Lyme disease are syphilis, leptospirosis, and relapsing fever – which means unless you have had one of those diseases before, you have never experienced how confusing and relentless herxes are. They truly make you think you are losing your mind.

It is not uncommon at all for patients to hit plateaus in Lyme/MSIDS treatment. They might go through a period where they feel great only to have the dreaded symptoms, or even worse ones appear over night.  This is why Lyme literate doctors describe treating this similarly to peeling back the layers of an onion.  When one infection gets under control another one suddenly becomes visible.

This coinfection involvement never gets any air-play, but is crucial in understanding this beast. These infections require different medications entirely, but mainstream medicine doesn’t even consider them, so when a short course of doxy doesn’t make a person well, they simply fold up shop and declare, “you don’t have Lyme,” which could very well be true; however, they could also have Babesia, Bartonella, Relapsing Fever, or a whole host of other infections that look and act just like Lyme disease. Please go here to learn of the many issues surrounding why patients don’t get well.

So, once again, none of this is simple.  Keep an open mind.

One final note: I ended up using many aspects of this technique out of desperation, completely on my own.  I had no idea it was a ‘thing,’ but as they say, ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’

https://careclinic.io/somatic-tracking-pain/

Somatic Tracking for Pain: Unveiling Effective Techniques

somatic tracking pain

Living with pain can be a daunting and overwhelming experience. It can drastically affect our quality of life and prevent us from fully enjoying the activities we love. However, there is a technique called somatic tracking that can help us better understand and manage our pain. In this article, we will delve into the intricacies of somatic tracking, explore its benefits, and discuss how it can be implemented in our daily lives.

Understanding Somatic Tracking

Somatic tracking is a mindfulness-based technique that involves bringing awareness to our bodily sensations and learning to interpret them. By paying attention to our physical experiences, we can develop a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of our pain and explore ways to alleviate it.

When we talk about somatic tracking, we are referring to the practice of tuning in to the sensations and signals that our bodies send us. It’s like becoming fluent in the language of our own physical experiences. Just as we can learn to interpret words and phrases in a foreign language, we can learn to interpret the messages that our bodies are constantly sending us.

Imagine this: you wake up one morning with a dull ache in your lower back. Instead of dismissing it as just another discomfort, you decide to practice somatic tracking. You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and bring your attention to the area of your back that is bothering you. As you focus on the sensation, you start to notice subtle nuances – a tightness, a twinge, a warmth. These sensations become the building blocks of your understanding.  (See link for article)

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https://www.curablehealth.com/podcast/what-is-somatic-tracking  Podcast Here

A Podcast Where Real Chronic Pain Sufferers Meet Science-Backed Solutions 💫

Join us as our expert hosts help listeners overcome obstacles to healing through evidence-based techniques.

Go here for a Somatic Tracking exercise, and here for 10 best exercises

And here for an excerpt from The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv, the speakers from the podcast above.

And here for one person’s successful experience with Somatic Tracking without using drugs or getting surgery.

It is described as physical therapy for the brain.

https://www.thismighthurtfilm.com/

This Might Hurt

A Film about a radical treatment for chronic pain

THE PROBLEM: CHRONIC PAIN

One in seven people around the world suffer from chronic pain, and nearly 80% of us will experience it at some point in our lives. The symptoms show up as back pain, neck pain, fibromyalgia, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and a dozen others. The standard treatments are often ineffective, and one of the main remedies, opioids, has made the problem worse. What’s going on here?

THE FILM

This Might Hurt is a documentary that offers solutions to reduce and unlearn chronic pain. The film follows three chronic pain patients who have spent years searching for answers. Desperate for relief, they enter a new medical program — run by Dr. Howard Schubiner — that focuses on uncovering hidden causes of pain, and retraining their brains to switch the pain off.

This new paradigm for diagnosis and treatment was found to be effective in several randomized trials, and was listed as a “best practice” by the HHS’s task force to combat the opioid epidemic. This Might Hurt provides an intimate exploration and suggests a path to healing for millions.

Here are just some of the conditions that can be caused by “primary pain,” also know as brain-generated pain:

Brain Induced Conditions.gif

*These treatments are generally not recommended for people dealing with “secondary pain,” that is, pain that derives from cancer, fractures, muscle diseases, or infections.

NOT SURE IF THESE IDEAS APPLY TO YOUR SYMPTOMS?

HowardLecture3.jpg

5 STEPS TO UNLEARNING CHRONIC PRIMARY PAIN EXPLORED IN THIS MIGHT HURT

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There are published studies demonstrating the effectiveness of mind-body treatment for people who have a similar collection of symptoms, but who were labeled as having fibromyalgia, not chronic Lyme. But there has not been a study of the mind-body treatment for people labeled as chronic Lyme disease, to our knowledge.

Category:

Lyme, Pain Management, Treatment