Good question, and figuring it out can be more miserable than watching a cat trying to hack up a hairball.
The cat is down on its haunches, convulsing as it coughs, and you, afraid that the poor animal might die from all those peculiar movements, think, “Just hurry up and cough it up, would you?”
Don’t you wish someone would just cough up the solution for your symptoms?
Yeah, me too.
Maybe you’ve treated Lyme disease for two or three or ten years, and you and your doctor don’t believe that your symptoms are a result of infections anymore.
You’re at that place where you need to go deeper in order to discover what you need to do to fully heal.
Lest you fear that treating for infections is insufficient, it is true that many Lyme sufferers heal once their infections are eradicated. I am writing this for the sake of those for whom this might not be true.
If you’ve been sick for many years, it’s possible that Lyme disease has damaged, to a greater or lesser degree, your tissues and organs. Symptoms continue because the bugs have had quite the fiesta in your body and left behind such a mess, that your place needs more than just a vacuum cleaner and trash removal services; it needs repair. Some Lyme disease physicians believe that this is one reason for the continued existence of symptoms in Lyme disease sufferers, even after infections have been treated. They call it “post Lyme syndrome”, and as far as I know, its existence is debatable.
Fortunately, physicians are researching ways to re-build the body after the boogey-bug fest, which includes the possible use of stem cells from different
sources, including plants. Personally, I think that nutritional supplementation may be another way to achieve this, depending upon the severity and type of damage done. I know of one woman who lost three-quarters of her liver in a motorcycle accident, and it re-generated itself within a year. The body can do wonders if supplied with the proper nutrition.
Other LLMD’s, including one prominent Lyme doc with whom I spoke recently, believe that symptoms can continue when infection load is too low to be on the testing radar but not so low that the immune system doesn’t recognize the infection(s). Even very low-grade infections can cause symptoms, and I don’t think it’s far-fetched to believe that a little infection can sometimes cause a lot of inflammation, and hence, severe symptoms.
So the obvious answer to this one would be to continue treating for infections; that is, if you can somehow discern whether or not they are still there, and devise a strategy to get rid of them, if your last protocol didn’t do it.
Another reason symptoms may continue, even after the infections are mostly history may have to do with the body getting “stuck” in a chronic inflammatory, auto-immune state, especially if the bug-killing battle has been going on for a long time. Personally, I wonder if it’s possible for the body to grow so accustomed to fighting infection that it forgets how to shift out of its hyper-immune response. Or perhaps the auto-immune state continues for other reasons, such as emotional trauma. If you frequently attack yourself on an emotional level, for example, this may also result in an attack upon the body. If deep in your gut, you don’t believe you deserve to be well; if you despise your body or believe that your body cannot heal itself, then such destructive beliefs may create thoughts that maintain such auto-immune processes.
Then some would say that healing doesn’t happen because the body is yet overloaded with toxins. Metals, pesticides, you name it.
Or candida. That pervasive, tenacious yeast that feeds on any and every little wee carbohydrate that you send its way.
Hairballs. Hairballs galore. You hack one up, but then there’s always another one.
When will you get to the end of the garbage in your body?
Take heart; we are learning more and more every day about Lyme disease. And if you keep seeking, if you are tenacious and don’t give up, I believe you will eventually stumble upon the solution(s) for your symptoms.