Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
I just saw my father for the first time in several months and I was stunned by his recent downward spiral as a result of Lyme Disease. He lives in Massachusetts and has had Lyme for four or five years but his symptoms have suddenly become much worse. In the past year Parkinson's-like symptoms, fatigue, and inflammation in the cervical vertebrae have nearly incapacitated him. His hands shake to such a degree he can barely feed himself. He also needed an emergency gall bladder removal last summer. In any case, he is overly reliant on Western medicine and has been letting doctors treat all his issues as if they have nothing to do with each other. I see that many alternative treatments are available but none of them sound particularly effective. I'm afraid that without an intervention on my part he will get beyond the point where recovery is possible, but I'm not sure where to direct him other than improving his mediocre diet. Would love to hear any suggestions/stories. Thank you and peace.
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
we live in an area of deepening understanding of lyme disease and its treatment. check out eric gordon at gordon medical center.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by katelands:
I just saw my father for the first time in several months and I was stunned by his recent downward spiral as a result of Lyme Disease. He lives in Massachusetts and has had Lyme for four or five years but his symptoms have suddenly become much worse. In the past year Parkinson's-like symptoms, fatigue, and inflammation in the cervical vertebrae have nearly incapacitated him. His hands shake to such a degree he can barely feed himself. He also needed an emergency gall bladder removal last summer. In any case, he is overly reliant on Western medicine and has been letting doctors treat all his issues as if they have nothing to do with each other. I see that many alternative treatments are available but none of them sound particularly effective. I'm afraid that without an intervention on my part he will get beyond the point where recovery is possible, but I'm not sure where to direct him other than improving his mediocre diet. Would love to hear any suggestions/stories. Thank you and peace.
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
Lyme Disease Information Links
www.lymedisease.org –the website of LymeDisease.org (formerly the California Lyme Disease Association) gives info about ticks, Lyme disease, co-infections, prevention, the Lyme Times, risk maps, downloadable brochures, blogs, news and events. Lymedisease.org is also on Facebook and on Twitter. There is also a listing of in-person support groups (California only).
Dr. Burrascano’s Lyme treatment guidelines. Print out this 37-page document and highlight the parts that pertain to you. Take a copy to your doctor.
CaliforniaLyme–on-line Lyme discussion group for Californians. (Find similar groups in other states by clicking here)
Lymenet–Discussion groups, doctor recommendations. Listings of in-person support groups by state.
ILADS–International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. Make special note of their downloadable brochures.
Gastrointestinal manifestations of Lyme.
Psychiatric manifestations of Lyme.
Lyme and multiple sclerosis
Public Health Alert–monthly newspaper on Lyme and related issues. Read it free on-line.
Lyme and autism
Recommended books and films:
The Lyme Disease Solution, by Dr. Kenneth Singleton
The Lyme Diet, by Dr. Nicola McFadzean. What to eat while healing from Lyme.
Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic, by Pamela Weintraub. Excellent explanation of the scientific, medical and political turmoil surrounding Lyme disease.
Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment: 13 Lyme-Literate Health Care Practitioners Share Their Healing Strategies by Connie Strasheim. This book can be read on-line for free.
Under Our Skin, award-winning Lyme documentary film. Available for free viewing at Hulu.com.
Putting Lyme Behind You, 2-DVD set. Dr. Burrascano lecture, along with a panel of other Lyme-treating doctors. Available for purchase here.
Other resources:
LymeTAP.com–Lyme Testing Access Program. Financial assistance for Lyme diagnostic testing.
Info about how to save money on medical lab tests.
Needymeds.com–Financial assistance for obtaining medications
Prescriptionhope.com–a service that helps you obtain low-cost medications.
Free on-line book, Infusing for Lymies, lots of information about PICC lines and IV drugs.
Filing for disability benefits when you have Lyme.
https://lymedisease.org/news/touchedbylyme/ssdi.html
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
Hi Kate, I thought I should reply to the suggestion below, because it is not Eric Gordon but Wayne Anderson at Gordon Medical Associates (575-5180) who is the Lyme disease specialist. Some years ago I went to him, with the financial help of a friend because Gordon Assoc.is very expensive. Wayne is really a good guy, and knows a lot about Lyme disease. But his course of antibiotic treatment, given decades after my initial infection, accomplished nothing. Then he wanted me to try a new, experimental, non-antibiotic course of treatment that was very elaborate and struck me as just too "New Age" and woo-woo, so I declined. So that was my experience. Your father's case has the further disadvantage that Wayne is all the way across the country. Maybe there have been solid medical developments for treatment since I saw Wayne, but I would think I would have heard something about it by now.
Once again, sorry I don't have anything more hopeful to say!
--Richard
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by katelands:
I just saw my father for the first time in several months and I was stunned by his recent downward spiral as a result of Lyme Disease. He lives in Massachusetts and has had Lyme for four or five years but his symptoms have suddenly become much worse. In the past year Parkinson's-like symptoms, fatigue, and inflammation in the cervical vertebrae have nearly incapacitated him. His hands shake to such a degree he can barely feed himself. He also needed an emergency gall bladder removal last summer. In any case, he is overly reliant on Western medicine and has been letting doctors treat all his issues as if they have nothing to do with each other. I see that many alternative treatments are available but none of them sound particularly effective. I'm afraid that without an intervention on my part he will get beyond the point where recovery is possible, but I'm not sure where to direct him other than improving his mediocre diet. Would love to hear any suggestions/stories. Thank you and peace.
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
There is an education and support group for `tick-borne syndromes' that I think meets every other wednesday in Santa Rosa or Sebastopol. I'm sure people in the group can give you some advice re: how to best approach your father with any suggestions/concern. As someone who's had a similar health condition for 30 years, how you first approach him is soooo important. If you want the group info, please email me: [email protected].
Good luck! Hari (Harry)
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
I am so grateful for the responses posted and emailed to me. Though it does seem to be an uphill battle, what I've learned has given me new insights and the energy to continue working with and encouraging my father so that he doesn't give up. I moved to this area from the east coast not long ago. Having this forum available and the experience of receiving so many really thoughtful messages is heartening and heart warming and makes me very glad to be here! Thank you!
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
During the course of my treatment for Lyme I tried many docs and healers, even traveling as far as Australia to see a doc that was recommended to me. But in the end I returned to dr Wayne Anderson who set me straight. Contrary to an earlier post, he doesn't just use experimental herbal protocols or woo woo nonsense, but relies on both western and naturopathic remedies. I was treated with antibiotics, as well as with powerful herbal formulae, nutritional supplements, and even a colloidal silver IV at one point. The CS was nothing short of miraculous, as the first time I went into his office with what I called brain fire-I literally felt like someone had poured lighter fluid in my skull and lit it- within 10 minutes of CS IV I felt much much better and knew in that instant that I would eventually get well. It was quite dramatic.
Dr Wayne listens, I mean he really listens and develops a treatment program tailored to a particular patients needs. There are often co-infections associated with Lyme and they must be treated before or concurrently to actually cure the illness.this was the case for me and i only got better after dealing with babeosis. Anderson believes chronic Lyme is a multi cause disease with possible infections by bacteria besides Lyme, viruses etc, not to mention toxic molds, heavy metals, chemicals and other environmental factors. Each toxin must be identified and dealt with in order to effect a complete cure. I have a pretty remarkable story to tell, but it will have to wait for now.
Suffice it to say that I was very impressed with Dr Anderson and would highly recommend him to anyone who seeks to get well from this troubling and tricky condition. I would also highly recommend distinguished science journalist Pamela Weintraubs definitive book on the subject entitled, Cure Unknown. Also the film Under Our Skin is certainly worth a look and is finally rentable on netflix.
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
Hey, I didn't say Wayne just used woo-woo nonsense, I said he used the usual antibiotics, and only when that didn't work he proposed a treatment that struck me as too woo-woo!
So how long has it been since you had the colloidal silver treatment that seemed to make you feel better, and how do you feel now?
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by broadbandersnatch:
During the course of my treatment for Lyme I tried many docs and healers, even traveling as far as Australia to see a doc that was recommended to me. But in the end I returned to dr Wayne Anderson who set me straight. Contrary to an earlier post, he doesn't just use experimental herbal protocols or woo woo nonsense, but relies on both western and naturopathic remedies. I was treated with antibiotics, as well as with powerful herbal formulae, nutritional supplements, and even a colloidal silver IV at one point. The CS was nothing short of miraculous, as the first time I went into his office with what I called brain fire-I literally felt like someone had poured lighter fluid in my skull and lit it- within 10 minutes of CS IV I felt much much better and knew in that instant that I would eventually get well. It was quite dramatic.
Dr Wayne listens, I mean he really listens and develops a treatment program tailored to a particular patients needs. There are often co-infections associated with Lyme and they must be treated before or concurrently to actually cure the illness.this was the case for me and i only got better after dealing with babeosis. Anderson believes chronic Lyme is a multi cause disease with possible infections by bacteria besides Lyme, viruses etc, not to mention toxic molds, heavy metals, chemicals and other environmental factors. Each toxin must be identified and dealt with in order to effect a complete cure. I have a pretty remarkable story to tell, but it will have to wait for now.
Suffice it to say that I was very impressed with Dr Anderson and would highly recommend him to anyone who seeks to get well from this troubling and tricky condition. I would also highly recommend distinguished science journalist Pamela Weintraubs definitive book on the subject entitled, Cure Unknown. Also the film Under Our Skin is certainly worth a look and is finally rentable on netflix.
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by occihoff:
Hey, I didn't say Wayne just used woo-woo nonsense, I said he used the usual antibiotics, and only when that didn't work he proposed a treatment that struck me as too woo-woo!
So how long has it been since you had the colloidal silver treatment that seemed to make you feel better, and how do you feel now?
Well, CS treatment was only for the early parts of my treatment. It's a long, long story as i had an apparent relapse 4 yeasrs later, but the upshot is that now I generally feel well.That is, at 60 I'm not without the usual aches and pains and it's easy to wonder if Lyme is returning, but no, I think I got thru it pretty well. The herbal formulas dr Wayne prescribed from Byron White seemed to really help. Also I bought a far infrared sauna and that has made a huge difference in my overall health. I also radically altered my diet and got heavily into exercise. So it's been a lifestyle change- difficult to pinpoint what did the trick. Anyway, I hear you about the woo woo. Wayne is on the cutting edge and occasionally his theories didn't jibe for me either and I didn't go down several roads he recommended.
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
Please check out this post made today about a new Lyme Disease treatment center: https://www.waccobb.net/forums/showt...431#post149431
Re: Best treatment for Lyme Disease?
Like you, my LD symptoms have settled down to a liveable level, with chronic soreness in various muscles and tendons, and occasional acute outbreaks of sprain-like swelling, generally in wrists and feet. In the course of my 32 years with this disease, I have often been in considerably worse shape. But about six years ago I had to undergo many months of extremely debilitating chemotherapy for hepatitis c (fortunately successful!). The side effects of this treatment include extreme anemia of both red and white blood cells, and a greatly weakened immune system for the duration of the chemotherapy, and my LD symptoms resurged with a vengeance. But I took this as an opportunity to get a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test on the fluid in my very swollen knee, which had been the first symptom 32 years ago that heralded the onset of my LD. The PCR test is the only test that can detect actual Borrelia bacteria DNA; the other tests only check for a pattern of elevated immune system chemicals characteristic or suggestive of LD. My PCR test came out positive, thus finally proving incontrovertably that I really had LD all those years, despite the doubts of various doctors that thought their antibiotic treatments would surely have cured me by now, and maybe I just had "post-LD" hangover symptoms.
So at this point it seems that I'm holding my own against this persistent disease. I'm glad to hear you are exercising intensively; I have done that all my life, and I do believe that I would have been a lot worse off if I had ceased to work out my body to the greatest extent possible given whatever the symptom of the day may be. Borrelia hate oxygen; they like to hide out in low oxygen tissues like connective tissue and nerve cells. So I continue to run and hike and bicycle and do calisthenics and dance, saying "Take that, you little bastards!" I also do intensive self massage of chronic sore spots, and a lot of emotional release work in my trusty therapy room. Keep on fighting, broadbandersnatch and all you other victims of LD or whatever else ails you!! Keep in the best shape possible and have all the fun you can, while we hope for bacteriophage researchers to at last discover a phage that eats Borrelia bacteria!
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by broadbandersnatch:
Well, CS treatment was only for the early parts of my treatment. It's a long, long story as i had an apparent relapse 4 yeasrs later, but the upshot is that now I generally feel well.That is, at 60 I'm not without the usual aches and pains and it's easy to wonder if Lyme is returning, but no, I think I got thru it pretty well. The herbal formulas dr Wayne prescribed from Byron White seemed to really help. Also I bought a far infrared sauna and that has made a huge difference in my overall health. I also radically altered my diet and got heavily into exercise. So it's been a lifestyle change- difficult to pinpoint what did the trick. Anyway, I hear you about the woo woo. Wayne is on the cutting edge and occasionally his theories didn't jibe for me either and I didn't go down several roads he recommended.
