It's taken root as climate changes and damage to the natural world have become more prominent. Considered the most common vector-borne disease in America, it's believed there are upwards of 420,000 new cases each year in the United States. It destroys lives and families, while decimating finances. Treatment can take years.
Yet, for sufferers of Chronic Lyme Disease, both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) claim it doesn't exist.
Anatomy of a Stealth Illness
Lyme is most widely known as a disease contracted from a tick bite that infects the host with Borrelia burgdorferi, a corkscrew-shaped bacterium that's a distant cousin to Treponema pallidum — a syphilis causing spirochete bacteria.
However, researchers are beginning to suspect Lyme disease isn't just a disease from ticks. Mounting evidence from leading authorities on Lyme believe the bacteria is also spread by other biting insects — such as spiders, fleas, mites and mosquitoes. There is also concern it's spread through bodily fluids and during pregnancy as well. It's common for entire families to test positive for Lyme.
Dr. Klinghardt, MD, one of the foremost Lyme literate physicians in the United States, notes that he's "never had a single patient with Alzheimer's, ALS, Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis who tested negative for Borrelia."
The classic "bull's eye" rash that occurs when bitten by an infected tick is only present in 50% of Lyme cases. Other symptoms can include:
- Persistant fatigue
- Cyclical fever
- Migraines and headaches
- Sore muscles and/or joints
To avoid the complications associated with intensive antibiotic treatment, several herbal protocols are available which have proven to be effective at healing Lyme infections. The Cowden Support Program (CSP) is a system created by William L. Cowden, MD, for the treatment of chronic Borrelia and Lyme co-infections. Likewise, herbalist Stephen Buhner has published several books on treating Lyme that include detailed instructions on how to use specific herbs to combat the disease. Further information can be found here. And Dr. Klinghardt, MD, offers this herbal and lifestyle plan.
A Political and Economic Firestorm
One of the biggest obstacles for those suffering from Lyme is to get the help they need. Case histories abound of patients seeing 30+ doctors in an attempt to receive a proper diagnosis. Many were told — with absolute certainty — that their disease was something entirely different than Lyme, or that they needed to see a psychiatrist because it was a psychosomatic illness. Sick children were thought to be only looking for attention. Insurance companies balked about the length of Lyme treatment and flat-out refused to to cover the disease beyond a short round of antibiotics.
Justifying their stance, health insurers would refer to the IDSA's guidelines published in 2006, which claim Lyme is an easily treated bacterial infection, only necessitating 4 weeks of antibiotic's. Any illness that persists beyond this standard protocol cannot be Lyme disease because chronic Lyme doesn't exist, according to the IDSA and the CDC.
Tell this to the tens of thousands who have suffered from the debilitating effects of Lyme disease for years.
It just so happens that 9 out of the 14 authors who created the IDSA Lyme Guidelines have direct conflicts of interest. As reported in "Lyme Disease: The CDC's Greatest Coverup and What They Don't Want You to Know":
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal investigated the IDSA panel members for possible violation of antitrust laws and conflicts of interest.One physician in the documentary Under Our Skin noted that the guidelines were written in legalese, almost as if it could be used in court cases against doctors treating Lyme or to help insurers deny care. And this is exactly what has happened. The guidelines have been misused by insurance companies to discredit doctors who are using long-term antibiotic treatment for chronic Lyme. In numerous cases against Lyme literate physicians, original complaints to state medical boards didn't come from patients or other physicians, but from insurance companies protesting about billing. It's a modern-day witch-hunt for doctors who are actually listening to (and healing) their Lyme patients, instead of turning a blind eye to the epidemic.
Of the 14 panel authors of the first edition guidelines: 6 of them or their universities held patents on Lyme or its co-infections, 4 received funding from Lyme or co-infection test kit manufacturers, 4 were paid by insurance companies to write Lyme policy guidelines or consult in Lyme legal cases, and 9 received money from Lyme disease vaccine manufacturers. Some of the authors were involved in more than one conflict of interest.
With all the political and financial wrangling behind the disease, at the end of the day, the most important focus should be on health and healing. If you've been suffering from hard-to-pin-down symptoms, Lyme could be the culprit and it may be time to find a Lyme literate physician.
Under Our Skin — Trailer
There is widespread consensus among the mainstream medical community that relatively short-term courses of antibiotics can eliminate objective signs of Lyme borreliosis in patients, with the assumption that patients have been cured of infection. This has been articulated in the IDSA Guidelines in 2006 and reaffirmed by an expert Lyme disease review panel in 2010. The IDSA Guidelines are in
agreement with position statements of other medical and scientific organizations, including the European Federation of Neurological Societies, The European Union of Concerted Action on Lyme Borreliosis, the American Academy of Neurology, the Canadian Public Health Network, the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology, several expert panels in various different countries, the American Lyme Disease Foundation, the CDC and NIH. An Ad Hoc International Lyme Disease Group has also affirmed this position.
This consensus is based upon clinically objective criteria, in keeping with sound medical practice. However, it is well established that patients with objective criteria of Lyme borreliosis may also have widely varied and subjective manifestations that do not necessarily fit objective clinical criteria. There is agreement that when objective clinical signs are persistent, a rare patient may have chronic Lyme disease, and when objective clinical signs return in a treated patient, a rare patient may have recurrent Lyme disease. Under both
circumstances, repeated antibiotic treatment is advised. A principal area of continuing but unresolved debate involves patients who experience disabling subjective symptoms following completion of appropriate antibiotic therapy. This has been recognized by the term “post-Lyme disease syndrome” (PLDS). IDSA Guidelines state that there is “no well-accepted definition of the PLDS”, and that “there is no convincing biologic evidence for the existence of systemic chronic B. burgdorferi infection among patients after receipt of recommended treatment regimens for Lyme disease.” In the absence of objective clinical and diagnostic criteria, PLDS can never be proven to be, or not to be, associated with persistent infection with B. burgdorferi. Nevertheless, the vagaries of PLDS have promulgated a culture of “Lyme-literate physicians” (some literate, others not), emotionally charged lay support groups (well-intentioned, but often ill-informed), and speculative treatments, including scientifically unfounded and medically ill-advised long-term antibiotic regimens with outcomes that cannot be objectively proven. Therein lies the basis of what has been euphemistically termed the “Lyme Wars”: a contentious debate that can never be won simply on strongly held conviction. What is needed is research on the basic biology of B. burgdorferi biology, including outcome after antibiotic treatment under controlled conditions in animal models. Animals are indeed different from humans, but knowledge gained with animal models lends credence to valid hypotheses that can then be rationally approached in human trials.
A basic feature of Lyme borreliosis (without antibiotics) is that persistent infection is the rule, not the norm. This occurs in B. burgdorferi’s many reservoir hosts, and has been proven experimentally in Peromyscus mice, laboratory mice, rats, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, dogs, and non-human primates. Humans appear to be no different, as there are a number of documented case
reports of persistent infection based on culture and PCR. Borrelia burgdorferi has evolved to persist in immunologically competent hosts as a survival strategy for maintaining its natural host-vector life cycle. Natural reservoir hosts and small laboratory animals are generally rodents. In such hosts, infection is generalized and persistent, including in the skin, wherein spirochetes can most efficiently interface with the vector tick. THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT BORRELIA BURGDORFERI CAN BE TRANSMITTED INTO NAIVE HOST BY ANY OTHER VECTORS, EXCEPT TICKS. Dissemination is also facilitated by bacteremia during early infection, which is generally cleared during the immune persistent phase of infection, and intermittent thereafter. Because humans are
much larger, they experience localized infections, as evidenced by erythema migrans (EM), and sometimes disseminated, but randomly multifocal infection through bacteremia, which may result in pauciarticular arthritis, secondary EM, carditis, peripheral neuropathy, meningitis, and other objective clinical signs. It should be emphasized that Lyme disease in untreated humans (and experimental animals) is ephemeral, with “spontaneous” resolution (without antibiotic treatment) of EM, carditis, arthritis, and other signs. Studies in animal models have shown that resolution of arthritis and carditis is mediated by the acquired humoral immune response of the host. Under these conditions, anatomically defined inflammation resolves, but infection persists. Indeed, even during the pre-immune phase of infection, spirochetes populate many tissues with no evidence of inflammation (thus inflammation does not necessarily correlate with spirochete presence). The random, multifocal nature of human infection, the ephemeral clinical signs, the
myriad subjective symptoms, the clinical impracticality of culture or PCR, the insensitivity of culture, and the retrospective nature of serology all make objective diagnostic criteria for testing outcome of treatment in humans simply impossible.
The article by Carolanne Wright is misleading, with unsubstantiated facts that don't have any scientific merit.