Lyme Disease Treatment
A large part of my practice is devoted to the care of patients with Lyme disease. Proper diagnosis is essential; for which I rely on the Lyme specific testing provided by the IGeneX Laboratory in California, and Advanced Laboratory Services. What makes these laboratories excel beyond the standard CDC lab used by Canadian clinicians, is that their antibody testing is more comprehensive and catches more positive cases of Lyme disease and co-infections, then would be otherwise possible.
My approach to treatment follows the recommendations and protocols set forth by:
- ILADS
- Dr. Murakami, MD
- Dr. Burascano, MD
- Dr. Zhang, MD, OMD
- Dr Klinghardt, MD
- Ty Vincent, MD
In addition to these guidelines which include both conventional (antibiotic based treatments) as well as integrative treatments, I provide further naturopathic and chinese medical approaches in addressing Lyme, including IV therapies, Bee Venom Therapy, and more recently Low Dose Immunotherapy (LDI) Therapy.
For more information, please see our Lyme Disease page.
Low Dose Immunotherapy
One of the most recent paradigm shifts in the treatment of Lyme Disease has come in a growing recognition that while the condition has been treated as though it were an infection, it does not in fact behave as such. The real problem, and cause of illness symptoms in Lyme disease, is not the presence of these bacteria in the patient’s body, but rather the chronic immune activation against those organisms. As that is what makes the person ill.
People will become infected with these organisms (Borellia, Bartonella, Babesia, and possibly others) often long before chronic symptoms develop. It is only after the immune system decides to attack the bacteria that the symptoms and inflammation begin. There is often some inciting event that agitates the immune system and sets off this reaction; common examples include pregnancy and delivery, injury, illness, or great psychosocial stress.
LDI for Lyme disease offers an extremely effective, nontoxic, safe, inexpensive, and user-friendly means of treating this condition. The change in thinking involves switching from an “infection” model of Lyme disease to an “autoimmune disease” model. Through the use of LDI in this context, we are stopping the immune system from making auto antibodies against the tissues of the body and causing chronic Lyme symptoms.
While it is much more typical if dosing is accurate and appropriate for an individual, that symptoms will begin to improve the next day, or possibly several days or weeks after the treatment, clinicians have had also observed improvements literally within minutes. Nerve pain, tremors, and limb dysfunction have objectively improved before patients left the office.
If the dose given is too strong, the symptoms (whatever the individual symptoms of Lyme disease are) will typically flare up within 24-48 hours. These flares sometimes last just a few days, followed by dramatic improvement from their baseline or possibly just a return to their baseline. In other cases they have persisted greater than two weeks. Flare-ups are managed with anti-inflammatories and an adjustment of the subsequent dose to a lower concentration.