Tag Archives: lymes

True cures for MS, Lyme Disease and others are covered up by Big Pharma

  By ironman45 | May 25, 2011 - 3:36 pm | crooked health care, Lymes Disease, MS
Leave a comment

Even in western medicine, the right antibiotics that penetrate the blood-brain barrier could be used somewhat successfully for the treatment of MS, but it is not the MDs protocol. Big Pharma doesn’t just ridicule pioneering physicians in the field of curing MS by means of disparaging articles in medical magazines and journals, they go as far as suing them for malpractice.
(more…)

A Naturopathic Doctor’s Treatment of Lyme Disease

  By ironman45 | May 16, 2011 - 6:20 am | Lymes Disease
Leave a comment

The following is an excerpt from the book Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment: 13 Lyme-Literate Health Care Practitioners Share Their Healing Strategies, by Connie Strasheim. The book is 443 pages and retails for $39.95; it is available from BioMed Publishing Group by calling 530-573-0190, or online at www.LymeBook.com.

This excerpt is Chapter 10, based on our interview with Nicola McFadzean, ND, of San Diego, California. The chapter contains Dr. McFadzean’s Lyme disease and coinfection treatment protocol. Dr. McFadzean also recently wrote a book titled The Lyme Diet: Nutritional Strategies for Healing from Lyme Disease (also available from www.LymeBook.com).

Nicola McFadzeanDr. Nicola McFadzean is a licensed naturopathic doctor, trained in both the US and her native Australia. She received her doctorate in naturopathic medicine from Bastyr University in Seattle, Washington, and her diploma in naturopathy and bachelor of health sciences from the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia. Her training included a two-year internship at the Bastyr Center for Natural Health, an internship in medical research at Columbia University as a Mountbatten Scholar, and four years at the Bastyr University Research Institute.

Dr. McFadzean is founder and medical director of RestorMedicine. Her areas of specialty include Lyme disease, autistic-spectrum disorders, preconception health care, hormone imbalance, and eating disorders. She is a referral doctor for Defeat Autism Now! and is an outreach physician for Great Plains Laboratory. She is a consultant for New Beginnings Nutritionals, and is on the scientific advisory board for Hyperbaric Oxygen Centers Inc. and the medical advisory board of the Institute for Integrative Medicine. She is a member of the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ILADS), the California Naturopathic Doctors Association (CNDA), and the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP). (more…)

From IDSA to ILADS: A Journey Toward Reconciliation

  By ironman45 | March 25, 2011 - 8:01 am | chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, Lymes Disease
Leave a comment

Many patients with chronic Lyme disease have had the experience of meeting doctors who did not believe that our illnesses were real. Many have been told that our conditions are manifestations of our minds. We have been denied adequate care as the result of the guidelines of the IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of America – the most influential organization related to infectious disease in the US). We often migrate towards doctors who hold a broader perspective, that of ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society), on our disease. As a result, over time many of us recover.

Sam Shore, MD, FACPSam Shor, MD, FACP, an internist in Reston, Virginia, had a practice with a focus on the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). His journey later introduced him to the significant overlap between CFS and chronic Lyme disease, and he began to think outside the box – way outside the box, in the eyes of many. Dr. Shor’s journey is one of hope. It is a journey that requires courage and a willingness to do what is right for suffering patients. It is a journey that we often wish more medical professionals would take. Dr. Shor’s journey is a journey from IDSA to ILADS.

Trained in primary care and internal medicine, Dr. Shor completed his residency in 1985 at George Washington University. He has been in private practice in Virginia since that time. Shortly after he started practicing, he became interested in people with a chronic fatiguing illness of unclear origin which subsequently became known as chronic fatigue syndrome. In the late 1980s, Dr. Shor referred several of his patients to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In the 1980s and 1990s, he took part in a number of NIH symposia in Bethesda, Maryland, and continued to solidify his interest in the illness. He later became a member of the International Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (IACFS).
(more…)

Dispatches from the Front Lines of Autism and Lyme Disease

  By ironman45 | March 25, 2011 - 7:33 am | Austism/ADD, Lymes Disease
Leave a comment

The thinking about autism and Lyme disease is moving so quickly, it can make your head spin.

Last year, and again this year, doctors at the Lyme-Induced Autism (LIA) Foundation’s annual conference shared perspectives from the front lines of a battle against mostly unseen, devastating pathogens that rob the afflicted of the promise of a healthy life.

The most striking difference was that last year, the doctors flashed on the big screen lots of patients’ slides revealing genetic testing and lab results. This year, there were almost none. The doctors who had “been there, done that” found that the tests didn’t really help that much.

The Tyranny of Tests
“Our testing is not that great,” offered Dr. Jeff Wulfman of Vermont. “We must rely on the patient’s history. That more often leads to the diagnosis. There often is no gold standard to measure.” He cited several studies, including a 2002 study of 80 internal medicine outpatients that found that history led to the final diagnosis 76% of the time, whereas the physical examination and laboratory investigation led to the final diagnosis 12% and 11% of the time, respectively.1 (more…)

Nutrition and Lyme Disease

  By ironman45 | March 25, 2011 - 6:55 am | Lymes Disease
Leave a comment

Navigating the most appropriate diet for a Lyme disease patient can be difficult, but good nutrition is such a crucial part of any treatment regimen that it is well worth addressing. Lyme disease is an illness caused by bacteria that is typically transmitted via ticks, but may also be spread via lice, fleas, mosquitos, and other insects. Many Lyme-literate physicians and researchers also believe that Lyme disease can be transmitted sexually, and from mother to baby in utero. (more…)

In Vitro Effectiveness of Samento and Banderol Herbal Extracts on the Different Morphological Forms of Borrelia Burgdorferi

  By ironman45 | March 24, 2011 - 6:18 am | Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Abstract
A tick-borne, multisystemic disease, Lyme borreliosis caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi has grown into a major public health problem during the last 10 years. The primary treatment for chronic Lyme disease is administration of various antibiotics. However, relapse often occurs when antibiotic treatment is discontinued. One possible explanation for this is that B. burgdorferi become resistant to antibiotic treatment, by converting from their vegetative spirochete form into different round bodies and/or into biofilmlike colonies. There is an urgent need to find novel therapeutic agents that can eliminate all these different morphologies of B. burgdorferi. In this study, two herbal extracts, Samento and Banderol, as well as doxycycline (one of the primary antibiotics for Lyme disease treatment) were tested for their in vitro effectiveness on several of the different morphological forms of B. burgdorferi (spirochetes, round bodies, and biofilmlike colonies) using fluorescent, darkfield microscopic, and BacLight viability staining methods. Our results demonstrated that both herbal agents, but not doxycycline, had very significant effects on all forms of B. burgdorferi, especially when used in combination, suggesting that herbal agents could provide an effective therapeutic approach for Lyme disease patients. (more…)

Borrelia Defeats Antibiotics

  By ironman45 | March 24, 2011 - 6:13 am | Lymes Disease
Leave a comment

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) asserts that Borrelia burgdorferi (the tick-transmitted spirochete that causes Lyme disease) readily succumbs to antibiotic treatment. Microbiologists who have studied the organism disagree. It survives assaults from drugs and the immune system by hiding in biofilms and by changing form (See Townsend Letter, July 2009; 312:30–31). Norwegian researchers øystein Brorson and Sverre-Henning Brorson say: “B.burgdorferi has the ability to convert (and reconvert) to cystic forms both in vivo and in vitro” when exposed to the antibiotics ceftriaxone, doxycyclin, ciprofloxacin, and vancomycin. When the environment is safe for growth, the bacteria returns to its motile form.

Recent studies involving the use of the new antibiotic tigecycline show the difficulty of finding a treatment for Borrelia. In vitrolaboratory tests found that tigecycline inhibited and destroyed the cyst and motile forms of B. burgdorferi. Unfortunately, in vitroresearch does not always match the results of in vivo research. Researchers at University of California-Davis tested this antibiotic on mice with different stages of Borrelia infection (1 week, 3 weeks, or 4 months) in a controlled study. Three months after treatment, infection status was evaluated by culture, quantitative OspA (outer surface protein A) real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and subcutaneous transplantation of joint and heart tissue into other mice. Not surprisingly, tissue from the saline-treated control mice were culture- and PCR-positive for Borrelia. Some tissues from the antibiotic-treated mice were also PCR-positive, although the DNA markers were greatly reduced compared with the controls. Antibiotic treatment at the 1-week stage appeared to be more effective than treatment that began at the later stages.

All of the antibiotic-treated mice were culture-negative. Even though the spirochetes could not be cultured, mice that received transplants from the antibiotic-treated mice developed spirochetal DNA in multiple tissues. Moreover, ticks that fed on the antibiotic-treated mice acquired Borrelia and were then able to transmit the infection to other mice. Clearly, negative cultures do not mean that Borrelia is absent. The researchers conclude: “… antibiotic treatment [with tigecycline] is unable to clear persisting spirochetes, which remain viable and infectious, but are nondividing or slowly dividing.”

Unfortunately, tigecycline is not the only failure. The UC-Davis researchers state: “Treatment failures have been documented with nearly every type of antimicrobial drug, based upon clinical relapse, culture, or PCR.” Studies such as this one support the view that the IDSA’s treatment  guidelines are inadequate. They also show how challenging this infection is.

Barthold SW, Hodzic E, Imai DM, Feng S, et al. Ineffectiveness of tigecycline against persistent Borrelia burgdorferi [abstract]. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. February 2010;54(2):643–651.Available at: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19995919.
Brorson ø, Brorson S-H. An in vitro study of the susceptibility of mobile and cystic forms of Borrelia burgdorferi to tinidazole. Int Microbiol. 2004;7:139–142. Available at www.im.microbios.org. Accessed April 21, 2010.
Brorson ø, Brorson SH, Scythes J, MacAllister J, et al. Destruction of spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi round-body propagules (RBs) by the antibiotic tigecycline [abstract]. Proc Natl Acad Sci U.S.A. November 3, 2009;106(44):18656-61. Available at: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19843691. Accessed April 21, 2010.
Johnson L. LYMEPOLICYWONK: Barthold and Luft – persistence and integrity in science [blog]. December 15, 2009. www.lymedisease.org/news/lymepolicywonk/290.html. Accessed April 27, 2010.

Lyme Disease: An American Problem or Worldwide Plague?

  By ironman45 | March 24, 2011 - 6:10 am | Lymes Disease
Leave a comment

For some reason, Americans tend to assume that Lyme Disease is isolated to the United States. It is understood that other diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, and hepatitis, are prevalent throughout the world – but Lyme Disease is perceived to be an exclusively American disease. The reality is that Lyme Disease is a major problem all around the globe.  (more…)

Saving Our Children: Evaluation and Management of Pediatric Tick-Borne Diseases

  By ironman45 | March 24, 2011 - 6:08 am | Lymes Disease
Leave a comment

Dr. Ann Corson had nearly 20 years of experience as a primary care doctor when she was faced with one of her most complex and challenging medical cases: her only child was literally dying from an unidentified illness without clear answers. It took three years for her to more fully understand the illness that was ravaging her son’s body. It was then that Dr. Corson realized “how totally inadequate my ‘ivory-tower’ medical education had been regarding tick-borne diseases.” As a result of her own son’s personal struggles with Lyme disease, Dr. Corson has emerged as one of the most respected Lyme-literate medical doctors in the field.

After discovering the etiology of her child’s mysterious illness, Dr. Corson feverishly read the scientific literature and studied with respected Lyme clinicians Joseph Burrascano, MD, and Charles Ray Jones, MD. She started her own practice devoted solely to the treatment of tick-borne diseases (TBDs). Her mission has become to help “those mothers who otherwise would have to watch their children slowly decay without knowledgeable doctors.”

Dr. Corson quickly recognized that the clinical challenges presented by chronic tick-borne disease patients are incredibly complex and require a multidisciplinary, holistic approach. Over the years, it became apparent that allopathic medicine did not offer a complete solution. As a result, she has incorporated treatment strategies into her practice from many different healing disciplines. Helping patients attain the improvements they are striving for requires a willingness to think beyond the boundaries of that which is understood today. Consideration must be given to those things that will only be more widely accepted in the future.

In her presentation at the LIA Foundation “From Roadblocks to Recovery” event in June 2009, Dr. Corson shared her approach to the evaluation and management of pediatric tick-borne diseases.

“Ticks are cesspools of disease,” she noted. Besides Borrelia burgdorferi, ticks harbor numerous other organisms that are pathogenic and result in considerable health challenges in humans. Some of these include other Borrelia species, Babesia microti, Babesia duncani, Ehrlichia chaffeensis, Anaplasma phago­cytophilum, Bartonella henselae, Bartonella quintana, Mycoplasma fermentans and other Mycoplasma species, Rickettsia rickettsii, Coxiella burnetii, Francisella tularensis, viruses such as HHV-6,nematodes, and possibly many other organisms. These are just the ones that are known today; in reality, the list may be much longer. (more…)