Let's start by saying,
it's a Journey...
There is nothing fast, or easy about recovering from Lyme disease or healing any chronic illness, and it can feel impossible but I am hear to tell you, it is not. There are several very important methods to getting better. But there there is no one magic bullet, no one size fits all. For some it's fast and maybe easy for others it's not. For some it's about learning to live well and reducing symptoms.
I will share what has worked for me, I can share my tips and tricks and general approach, but please know, each person is different. I am not a doctor, I am not giving medical advice. I am sharing what I know because Lyme can be utterly devastating and I want to help where I can. Unfortunantely we currently live in a time and place where traditional medicine does not recognize chronic Lyme, therefore treatents and testing has to be paid for out of pocket. We're talking thousands if not ten of thousands of dollars for months if not years. Finding an online community, helping each other, finding local supports, local resources, researching online can be game changers on what can be a very lonely path. I have been there. But I can attest that it's is all possible, healing is possible even when you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
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I also want to add that for some people, they are suffering from Lyme disease and don't know it. The have POTS, MCAS and don't know that what they really have is long-Covid, or Bartonella, or Babesia. They have arthritis or chronic insomnia, or acute OCD or anxiety and don't know it's Lyme. Opening up to the fact that there could be underlying, hard to find, tick borne infection, at the root cause of an illness, is sometimes the first step to healing. I want to add that PANS/PANDAS can cause similar symptoms but can be caused by a host of other infections such as STREP or Mycoplasma to name a few.
My Healing Pillars
Medications
I was very resistant to any antibiotics for the first year. This was a mistake. I have always resisted ABX for any reason, so it took me along while to get onboard. After year of a rollar coaster, and not really getting anywhere, I did end up on zythromicin. I felt an instant improvement. I cannot say that ABX will actually cure Lyme, for some it can, but it usually takes a multi layered approach. I added Disulfuram end of 2023. Drugs have their place. It is the harsh reality of Lyme. It has to be hit with a hammer sometimes. I have also used symptom alleviating drugs like Ambien and Zanax as needed. Alot in the beginning.
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Here is the history, simplified into years:
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Year one: all holistic treatment. Up and down.
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Year two: Added zythro, along with alot holistic treatments. Tried Bactrim, tried SIBO ABX. this was a disaster and caused a massive here, I could not tolerate any of these.
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Year three: Added meth blue for BART. LDN.
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Year four: started disulfiram, stayed on zythro.
Herbals
I spent the first year on the ABART, ABAB tincture etc, along with all the other energy work I was doing. I had some ups and downs but it felt like they just were not strong enough. I had three tick borne infections - borellia, babesia and bartonella. This is total oveload to the immune system. It just can't get ahead with mild treatments. As I have said, there are a thousand Lyme recover stories and they are all different. In my experience, herbs were not enough to really knock back one or three of the inferctions.
Detoxification
Wow. I cannot say how important this is. I want to say this is a mission critical part of any healing, and it is also very confusing. There are the basics of detoxing, drink water, eliminate, exercise etc., all important but when your body is trying to detox lyme it is starting from a place of body burden, toxicity and inflammation. Your pathways are clogged by nature of the illness, you feel horrible, you lack energy, you are sluggish, and confused, you may be depressed. And sadly the basics are not enough. A constant detox protocol is vital.
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When you hear of people who are diagnosed by a traditional docter with Lyme, then they are thrown onto 2 or 3 ABX treatments right away. This sends their body into a massive state of herxing and killing, their body cannot possibly clear all of the toxins and the patient gets 5x worse. They say "the antibiotics made me worse" and they stop treatment. The treatment was working, the problem was they moved too fast and could not clear the toxins. Traditional DRs don't understand this, which is why it is always important to work with a Lyme literate MD or ND.
Gerenally speaking, you need to do more, you need to constantly ensure you are moving every system in your body. When you're killing lyme, there is an overwhelming amount of toxins that needto be eliminated. Some people detox better then others. I would say the better you detox the less sick you are with lyme in general and the easier to recover and the easier you tolerate aggressive treatments. I am not one of those people, I am a slow very detoxer and tend to have sluggish lymph.
Here is my protocol.
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Daily Basics:
- movement - at least 5x week as much as I can.
- water - adding cranberry for kidneys and lemon for liver
- chlorella daily
- activated charcoal daily
- dry skin brushing daily
- hot/cold showers
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Add - ons:
- colonics
- ion foot baths
- massage
- sauna (this can also be a trigger)
- glutathione
- Alka setlzer gold
- RIFE
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Note - there are times when the only way to get through a herx is to stop all treatments and give your body a chance to clear things out.
Movement for Circulation
I wrote a post on exercise that gets into more detail on how this has gone for me. The net-net is that even during my worst days and months in the beginning I prioritized movement, even if it was a tiny amount. I had a instinctive feeling that if I stopped moving my body and creating circulation, I would decline quickly. Sometimes it was just 5 min on the peloton, or light stretching. Today I can work out daily for at least 30. min. But it has taken me a long while to get here. For years my routine was 20-30 min light exercise 3-4 times a week. Mostly riding the Peloton or the eliptical. The idea is to do what you can but do something every day. Increasing blood flow and lymph movement when you move your body are both critical to healing.
Energy Work
Diet
I can confidently say I would not have healed without energy work. I tried a handful of things - polarity, reiki, flower essence - but by and far what has given me tremendous healing result and support is lyme bio-magnetic therapy. So much so that I underwent the training to be a practitioner. I found LMT early on thank goodness. This is fairly known in New England and there are many practitioners. I cannot say this enough - this was and still is vital to my healing. This therapy, using muscle work, can identify and treat all types of infections - virus, tick-borne, parasite etc. Read more about this here. I was so invested in this work and it was such a bit part of my healing that I trained to be a bio-magnetic practioner.
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It goes without saying that a clean diet is vital for healing any type of chronic illness. The basics are reducing inflammatory foods - gluten, sugar, dairy. The more extreme types of healing diets that do work for alot of people are Keto, Paleo, FAST TRACK, low-histamine, Autoimmune paleo, Wahls protocol. GAPS, to name a few. I stick a gluten free, dairy free, low sugar, no alcohol. I also eat 80/20 paleo, as organic as I can. I think it's worth noting that Lyme Lasers, a Lyme treatment center in Boston, promotes a very low carb, paleo diet over the course of their program. Suggesting that any type of sugar helps lyme bacteria build bio-film, so when you cut all types of sugar, you remove a key ingrediant in bio-film therefore making it alot easier to kill bacteria.
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