Author: gregg.kirk@gmail.com

Our body is designed to naturally eliminate toxic materials, and the two main types of toxins it encounters are water-soluble and fat-soluble. Toxins that are water-soluble, are relatively easy to flush from one’s body via the blood and kidneys by drinking about 3 quarts of water, evenly space throughout the day.

But fat-soluble toxins are more difficult for the body to remove. They tend to be the heavy metals, pesticides, preservatives, pollutants, plastics, and other environmental chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and they must be converted to water-soluble toxins before the body has the ability to eliminate them.

Greek physician Hippocrates, who is considered the “Father of Modern Medicine,” is famously quoted as saying, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” When it comes to treating chronic Lyme disease most patients find that paying strict attention to what they put into their body besides medicine and supplements can play a major role in their recovery. And beyond this, food can become a major factor in dictating whether a patient improves or declines based upon how their body reacts to their food intake.

When seeking treatment for Lyme disease, most chronic Lyme patients understand the need to take a number of supportive substances to help them repair damage from the bacteria, stave off further infection and to improve cellular function and protection. The bacteria attacks healthy cells and weakens one’s bodily defenses, and without some kind of supportive measures imbalances can occur.

We polled a number of chronic Lyme patients across the country and asked them to reveal the contents of their personal medicine cabinets.

Everything is connected, and we are all multifaceted beings. But as we go about our daily routine, we seldom think about it until some obstruction or jarring event comes into our lives to rattle our cages and make us look at ourselves more closely. Such is the case with chronic Lyme disease, and as I talk to more and more Lyme patients across the country, I’m finding that their experiences frequently match my own when it comes to moving through the illness to complete healing.

In 1969, author Elizabeth Kübler-Ross published her book “On Death & Dying,” and in it she presented a famous formulation of the stages of grief that dying people tend to go through as they come to terms with the realization that they will soon pass. Since the book’s publishing, her stages-of-grief system has become more popular than her book, and it is now a part of our modern cultural awareness. Her five stages include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Inspired by Kübler-Ross’ work, I have begun to notice similar but different stages of consciousness, experiences and emotions for chronic Lyme patients as they move to complete healing. One of the differences in the staging system I’ve developed is that a patient can get stuck in a stage and never progress to complete healing. Conversely in the stages of grief, a patient ultimately moves through the system and reaches the final conclusion of death whether they like it or not.

Like most Lyme patients, I went for a long period of time of being sick and undergoing tests before I received a definitive diagnosis. Like most patients, I was used to trusting my traditional medical doctor because whenever I had a cold or a fever, he would prescribe some antibiotics and I would get better. As simple as that.

However, when I came in with Lyme symptoms, my doctor didn’t have a clue. He ran his usual battery of tests, but because I didn’t have cancer, diabetes or heart disease, he literally said, “Oh well. I guess we’ll just have to chalk this up to being ‘just one of those things.'”

When I pressed him further on what exactly he meant by that, he said, “Your symptoms aren’t life threatening, so maybe you can learn to live with them.”

Rocephin (ceftriaxone) is a cephalosporin antibiotic commonly used to treat many kinds of bacterial infections, including severe or life-threatening forms such as meningitis. It’s a favorite go-to antibiotic in these cases because of its well-known ability to cross the blood-brain barrier (see study). For this reason may doctors and LLMDs have been prescribing rocephin to patients suffering from neuroborreliosis or Lyme infection that has entered the brain. In these cases, rocephin is administered intravenously through injection or PICC line.

I have to admit that if someone would have told me that the key to healing was forgiveness when I had just been diagnosed with Lyme disease more than a decade ago, I probably would have bounced a bottle of doxycycline off of their head.

It was the early days of Lyme for me and I was very focused on my physical symptoms. These symptoms were unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my otherwise very healthy life prior to the diagnosis. So as soon as I received confirmation after going at least 2 years without a definitive answer, I was ready to disinfect and get the damned bugs out of me.

Doxycycline has been commonly prescribed by physicians across the world as a first-line defense in fighting Lyme disease for decades. This is mainly because there is strong evidence that patients who take a 4-6 week round of this antibiotic within the first 60 days of infection onset can remove all signs and symptoms of Lyme disease and avoid going into the chronic phase of the illness. In fact, doxycycline (along with amoxycillin, cefuroxime and azithromycin) has become a part of International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) treatment standards.

The problem is, a 2003 study reported by the US National Library of Medicine warns that doxycyline has been shown to cause intracranial hypertension or pressure on the brain.

Turmeric is a ginger-like root that grows in southern Asia and up until recently was more well known as a food spice that you’ve probably experienced in your local Indian restaurant. It’s what gives curry powder its yellow color.

A few years ago, turmeric made its way into public awareness when a number of scientific studies showed its positive impact on a number of symptoms that have commonly bothered chronic Lyme patients. In fact, the list of potential benefits of turmeric practically line up with some of the more bothersome symptoms that pester Lymies.