Preventing and Curing Lyme Disease
We deal with chronic lyme daily in my house so this morning I watched day 1 of the Best Of Chronic Lyme Disease Summit with interest. I was excited to see some of the strategies we've used in our family now being discussed by more doctors!
Our personal journey with Lyme started in the fall of 2011 when we had to evacuate my husband off a canoe trip because he could barely move. His temperature had shot up to 105, his body felt like lead, his brain felt like it was splitting open, he could barely move for the pain and he could barely see.
We bundled him into the canoe, brought him out and went straight to the hospital.
They did their evaluation, sent us home, and told us to keep watch.
We went back a few days later. His fever had come down but his migraine and joint pain were relentless - had been for 8 straight days.
They did their evaluation, sent us home, and told us to keep watch.
We put him on a train to Ottawa where our good doctor friend tried to help (bless her for helping us navigate the medical system!).
We came home to wait.
He started to feel better but the body pain, the brain fog, the exhaustion, the headache, the mental confusion were persisting.
About 3 weeks later we got a call from the hospital. A doctor somewhere along the line had run a Lyme test. And it had come back positive.
"We’re so sorry", she said on the phone, after setting us up with an infectious disease specialist. "Are you kidding?" we responded. "This is great! We’re so happy to know what the heck is going on! It's been such a mystery."
And thus started our journey.
To infectious disease, to the cardiologist, to the GPs, to the NDs, to the books, to the ILADS vs IDSA guidelines, to the lyme stories, to the antibiotics, to the herbs, tinctures & homeopathics, to the metals, microbes & nutrients, to genes and co-infections, to the questions and the controversy...
… this has been our journey into the mess that is chronic lyme disease.
Things have turned out well for us. We have been able to access the best conventional treatments and have had the resources to find all kinds of complementary treatment, and my husband is doing generally well.
But lyme is still top of my mind when my husband gets a headache or my kids go out to the forest to play.
I think knowledge is power with this one. Lyme is something we all need to know about so we know how to stay safe and how to talk to our doctors about it. This is why I've been spreading news about the Chronic Lyme Disease Summit.
I think knowledge is power with this one. Lyme is something we all need to know about so we know how to stay safe and how to talk to our doctors about it. This is why I've been spreading news about the Chronic Lyme Disease Summit.
Some highlights from the first day of talks....
Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, PhD, is probably the leader in diagnosis and treatment of bacterial infection and he discussed the pitfalls of lyme testing.
We were lucky in that my husband was in an acute stage of infection when he got tested for lyme so it came back positive and we were given prompt treatment. But that phase often gets missed and once it has passed these bacteria find sanctuary in the cells around the body where they are able to hide from the immune system. Unless they are first provoked out of the cells so they can interact with the immune system they won't show up in blood tests. This makes chronic lyme disease very difficult to diagnose using our current testing models.
Dr Klinghardt explained that when he uses ultrasound to push these bugs into the blood and then tests, he finds that chronic lyme disease is actually more common than breast cancer!
When asked why lyme is becoming such a big issue now he pointed the finger at aluminum which functions as a growth medium. He's finding in his patients that when he gets aluminum load down his treatment works better. Cilantro tincture is one of his favourite tools. You can learn more about the importance of detox for our kids in this interview with one of our lyme doctors.
The question of why lyme is now such a problem was also asked of Dr Amy Derksen ND (who opened her toolbox wide for us all to see and had some great ideas specifically for kids!).
Dr Derksen's point was that lyme has been around for centuries but that it is opportunistic. I jumped for joy when I heard her say that lyme treatment is not all about killing the bugs; it's also about raising the resilience of the body.
She confirmed what I've also suspected, which is that kids become susceptible to lyme and co-infections when their immune function is sluggish and is easily hijacked (learn more about boosting immune function in this post).
One of the best things you can do to protect your child is support their immune function, correct nutritional deficiencies and support their detoxification pathways (including dealing with that stubborn constipation!!).
I'm sure the rest of this lyme summit is going to be fantastic. We can talk about it over in our Raising Resilience Community here.
I look forward to hearing more about...
- the influence of diet
- the contribution of mould
- the variety of symptoms that could be related
- the impact of co-infections
- how parasites are connected
- how lyme effects the mitochondria
I think we'll get some good, solid strategy and knowledge from this. It runs from April 15-21, 2019 and you can sign up here.
If the viewing time has passed you can order the summit package here
