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One of the biggest questions Lyme disease sufferers face is whether Lyme and other tick-borne co-infections are primary in their illness, secondary, or just a shadow of their symptoms.
I tentatively believe that those who heal quickly (relatively speaking, say, within one to four years) with antibiotics or other Lyme treatments such as herbs and Rife machines, tend to have Lyme as their primary problem. For the rest of us, other issues complicate healing.
These issues are discussed in Lyme circles and the big ones are evident:
1) Mold
2) Candida
3) Fungal infections
4) Viruses such as EBV, Herpes
5) Mycoplasma
6) Heavy Metal Toxicity
7) Compromised Detoxification
8) EMF’s, pesticides and other toxins
9) Other random bacterial infections
Many of us know whether any or all of the above are problems for us, and most of us have treated for them at some point.
So why aren’t we better?
Do you ever feel like Lyme disease is a checklist of dysfunctions to fix, but even after you go through your checklist, you still aren’t better?
Are you tempted to fall into the trap of thinking, “If I just fix this one thing, I’ll be fine!” Whether that thing be metals, mold, or mycoplasma?
True, treating your babesia or blastocystis hominis may significantly diminish your symptoms, but if you feel that you have hit many bases and still aren’t better, the “next” thing might not really be the “it” you are looking for.
My subject for this post, although I have written about it before from a different angle, was inspired by my recent perusal through a few people’s experiences with the Bionic 880 machine.
This fascinating device from Germany seems to be healing people by leaps and bounds from Lyme disease. If Lyme is all that they have.
For others, it has brought them closer to health, but so far hasn’t been “it”, just like most other therapies that are out there.
That a few from the United States have experienced extraordinary health as a result of the Bionic 880, and a few others, only mild to moderate improvements in their symptom picture, confirms to me once again that this disease isn’t just about Lyme for many people.
It’s about a checklist of infections and toxins and dysfunctions; a puzzle that has more than a thousand pieces which never seem to fit together properly. We manage to get parts of the puzzle together, but not the whole thing.
So is trying to fix every dysfunction profitable? Certainly, addressing every fungi and bacteria (that you are aware of) may be worthwhile for reducing symptoms, but does it ever seem to you that attempting to complete the checklist is inadequate for restoring total health?
I’m starting to think so. I mean, you can attack the “biggies” for awhile; the candida, the metals and your bartonella, but what if those biggies really aren’t the biggies? Just because you test positive on some test for them, doesn’t mean they are the main attraction in your symptom show. Emotional trauma, or some other problem, might be.
And even if they are, and you manage to treat them, if your immune and other systems have been trashed by illness, you still might not be well because your body doesn’t remember how to function properly, or worse, it may not have the resources to do so.
I don’t have a good answer for what I perceive to be an important problem in the treatment of “Lyme.” (Maybe we shouldn’t even call it Lyme; maybe we should call it the PTI, pathogen-toxin-immune dysfunction complex, or something of the like).
I simply write this to share a perspective with you that, at some point, may be valuable.
I don’t think it’s good to hyper-focus on Lyme, or any one infection or toxin, especially if many are thought to be present. Consider that healing may not be found by simply targeting the next pathogen. Indeed, it may be found under a totally different rock.
Targeting pathogens and environmental toxins is beneficial, but so is considering why the body got sick in the first place, beyond these things. As I once read someplace, “Pathogens don’t cause disease; disease causes pathogens.”
Treating the body at the level of cause–that is, looking at why the body was susceptible to illness in the first place–may be just as helpful, or more so, than targeting some bugs or heavy metals.
Issues such as past emotional trauma, discord with family members, an unhealthy lifestyle and lack of a spiritual life may be part of the “first” cause behind your disease, and are worth addressing.
Yes, it’s also beneficial to treat the bugs, but I think that some of us need to stay away from the temptation to acquire tunnel vision, to pigeonhole, and to categorize the common toxins and infections we deal with, as if these were the whole reason we are sick.
Traditional Chinese medicine, for example, treats disease by looking more at dysfunction within the body, instead of specific infections, and heals foremost by correcting those dysfunctions. It generally views illness as caused by lifestyle, climate and emotional factors, with these setting the stage for pathogens to enter the body. While few of us would doubt that lifestyle and emotional factors contribute to illness, many of us would be reticent to say that these were what caused us to get Lyme disease! And climate? (Well, you might want to read a book on Chinese medicine for an explanation of that one! You will see that its arguments for the impact of climate upon health actually make good sense). In any case, Chinese medicine advocates addressing dysfunction and that which weakened the immune system in the first place, so that the body might better deal with the bugs and toxins.
Indeed, I think this is wise. Once you take this approach, you may find yourself not having to identify every little creepy-crawly and pesticide in your body in order to get well.
That said, trying to fix the root causes of disease isn’t easy. If I knew how to do it myself, I would be 100% healed and I could offer you better advice in this area. Hopefully, however, the information I offer here will provide some good food for thought as you work out a plan for your healing.