Principles of Lyme disease therapy

How to treat Lyme disease

Chronic Lyme disease treatment is long-term and incorporates the use of oral, injectable or intravenous antibiotics, herbal remedies, food supplements as well as corrective therapies focused on particular Lyme-disease-associated symptoms. Similarly to other chronic infections (tuberculosis, hepatitis C, mycoplasma infection etc), complete eradication of Borrelia is not likely. The practical goal in the therapy of chronic Lyme disease is inducing a dormant state of the disease, where the persisting microorganism is metabolically inactive and does not cause clinically significant symptoms.

The optimal route of antibiotic administration depends on the severity of Lyme disease symptoms. In general, patients with more severe manifestations of Lyme disease require more aggressive therapy with intravenous antibiotics. In addition, patients with various gastrointestinal problems tolerate intravenous antibiotics better than the oral ones. In our clinic, majority of the Lyme patients end up on hybrid protocols combining oral an injectable or intravenous antibiotics plus food supplements and anti-microbial herbs.

What is the “feed and kill” protocol?
When we are dealing with chronic infectious processes some are active and some are dormant. Antibiotics are only effective on active forms when the infection is replicating. Because dormant ones have a very slow metabolic rate they do not intake antibiotics from the surrounding environment and are ineffective. Because of this, we designed protocols specifically for individual infectious agents accelerating their transition from dormant into active state thus making them more susceptible to antibiotics. In general, this approach is commonly used in oncology to make tumor cells more susceptible to chemotherapy.

Preparing for Treatment:
The goal is to eliminate interfering environmental factors such as; heavy metals, Immunogenic foods (gluten, dairy products, soy, eggs, corn etc), and reduce carb consumption.

Address other issues that may be contributing to the symptoms and/or interfere in treatment including; thyroid function, adrenal function and impaired intestinal permeability.

Treatment:
The therapeutic response in Lyme is a step-wise one.

Initially, the therapy results in improvement of brain fog, followed by the improvement of fatigue and then neurological symptoms and joint pain.

Even after successful therapy and induction of the dormant state, a portion of people with chronic Lyme disease deal with asthenia (abnormal physical weakness), which presents in the form of postexertional muscle weakness and fatigue.

The nature of asthenia is typically based on several metabolic abnormalities such as excessive accumulation of lactic acid, depletion of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) the body’s energy source, deviations in urea cycle and accumulation of ammonia, suboptimal production of adrenal hormones, etc.

In addition, the central component of asthenia is based on reduction of the nerve-based motor command to working muscles that result in a decline in the force output.

Frequently, Lyme disease is associated with other tick-born infections such as babesiosis, bartonellosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever etc. Therefore, the successful therapy of Lyme disease ideally should incorporate overlapping approaches targeting co-infections as well.

Chronic Lyme disease is a treatable disease that requires a multidisciplinary approach, compliance with therapy, and a positive attitude.

Things to keep in mind:
Therapy for chronic Lyme disease is not an easy one
It is a journey through good days and bad days, and even miserable days
In most cases, therapy does not follow a textbook protocol and quite often requires frequent adjustments
Be patient and keep a positive attitude and you will be back to a normal life