lyme disease
Dr. Neil Spector, author of Gone in a Heartbeat: A Physician's Search for True Healing, is the Sandra Coates Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University School of Medicine. At the Duke Cancer Institutes, he is Director of Developmental Therapeutics and a leader in, "applying translational research to the clinical development of molecularly targeted personalized cancer therapies". He also has Lyme Disease and due to it long being undiagnosed, his heart failed and he ended up having a heart transplant.

The doctor began having symptoms in 1993 and were mostly cardiac arrhythmias, which would resolve before they could be diagnosed, until an episode of brain fog- which lasted for 3 weeks- came on and also spontaneously resolved, just like the cardiac issues. It wasn't until he suddenly developed arthritis in his wrist that he thought of Lyme. At the time his arrhythmias were worse and more complex, he was extremely fatigued, had burning in his heels, and night terrors. Even with these symptoms, that seemed classic in nature, none of his physicians tested for it (one rheumatologist ran a an auto-immune panel: Lupus, and Sjogren's, yet didn't include Lyme).

All of this has lead the Dr. to some strong feelings about Lyme Disease and its treatment.

From the article at Huffington Post,
"To me, Lyme is the infectious disease equivalent of cancer. We don't talk about cancer as just one disease anymore, and we should stop talking about Lyme this way. There are so many strains and co-infections. When you're bitten by a tick, you can get five or ten different infections at the same time. I also find it ludicrous to call all tick-borne disease, Lyme Disease. In breast cancer, we don't just say, 'You have breast cancer,' because that simply doesn't mean anything anymore. The language is important because it has a bearing on treatment. With cancer, we know that administering one algorithmic form of treatment doesn't work. You have to understand the wiring that drives those tumors - the nuances, the mutations - and target them specifically. I think we need to start thinking this way about Lyme."
Because Lyme is a bacterial infection that looks very much like an auto-immune disorder, and because it is more than one infection, the Dr. feels that Lyme should be ruled out FIRST, when diagnosing someone with an auto-immune disease like MS, Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid Arthritis and even Alzheimer's. "Something has to trigger an autoimmune disease. It doesn't matter if this occurs in one percent or seventy-eight percent of the patient population - to allow people to go down a path of progressive neurodegeneration when they could be treated is unconscionable", reports Huffington.

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© Dr. Neil Spector
Spector would alsolike for researchers to begin to think outside the box when it comes to study and treatment (there is too much reliance on antibiotics, he says); he feels we haven't given enough thought to the resistance issue, yet with cancer, it's been known for decades. Tumor cells love to evade the immune system or resist chemotherapy, and it seems plausible that Lyme bacteria would behave the same way. The Dr., "We need to understand the molecular biology of the bacteria, too. Part of the whole metastatic infectious nature of Lyme is the changing of shapes - the classic screwdriver verses the cystic form - and cancer cells are the same way. They change shapes and become less sensitive to chemo; they become more aggressive, mobile, and invasive. And so in cancer, we aim to target the new shape to our therapeutic advantage."

Morefrom the article:
"I would start with cancer biologists and basic immunologists. They figured out the immune system is not recognizing tumor cells and killing them because these cells have hijacked and usurped a normal response in the body that shuts down the immune system to their advantage. Once this was discovered, we saw a transformational change in the treatment of cancer where people with metastatic melanoma are now going into remission and living years cancer-free, whereas it was a death sentence 5 years ago. You have to ask yourself, if you have this persistent inflammation from Lyme that isn't eradicated, is this putting the brakes on the immune system."
The takeaway? We've only begun to fight this disease and while it seems hard to believe, when you are struggling and suffering, that better is coming- believe it. Speaking from personal experience with Lyme Disease, you can feel better. Click here to learn about how I was cured of Lyme and so much more.


Comment: Chronic Lyme Disease: A silent epidemic the government chooses to ignore
A silent epidemic is spreading across every continent on the planet, one that is difficult to diagnose and mimics a spectrum of diseases. It's mistaken for chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, autism, Crohn's disease, attention deficit disorder (ADD), Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), colitis, thyroid disease, chronic inflammation, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Food sensitivities, insomnia, depression, anxiety and a host of other psychological disorders may accompany the affliction.

Source

Huffington Post