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If you are a Lyme Disease patient in the middle of progressing through the illness, you’ve probably been through a variation of the following scenario.

Some time ago, you started experiencing a range of non-specific, hard-to-explain symptoms that caused you to seek help from your regular doctor. He or she put you through a battery of tests that didn’t reach any clear diagnosis, so you continued testing for years or even decades. At some point, almost by accident, you were diagnosed by a doctor who was more versed in Lyme Disease, and you heaved a sigh of relief. Now you knew what you’re dealing with, so now you could treat it and get it over with. The problem is, you’ve been on a range of treatments and your doctor only seems to be trained in antibiotics, pharmaceutical pain relievers and mood enhancers. Most of these things have only brought about short-term improvement or haven’t worked at all; and some of them have caused symptoms of their own. Your symptomology is either plateauing or getting worse, which is causing you to feel upset. Your doctor notices this and suggests you see a psychiatrist.

Now what do you do?

Whether you call it Stone Breaker, Phyllanthus niruri or Phyllanthus amarus, the herb best known as Chanca Piedra has been traditionally used throughout Latin America for centuries to naturally support the kidneys and urinary tract.

However, because it grows in tropical regions all over the world — from China to India to Peru — it has also been an herbal staple in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine for thousands of years.

What follows is a short list of nine of the more important benefits from this ancient herbal treatment:

Glutathione is an antioxidant that is made by the liver. It is best known for its ability to remove hormones, medications, and toxic chemicals from the body and deal with oxidative stress. It does this by taking substances that are fat-soluble and “stuck” in our tissues and making them water-soluble, which is much easier for the body to eliminate.

Glutathione also helps the body make important enzymes, hormones, new genetic material, and supplies a neurotransmitter called glutamate, which is important for mood, learning, and memory.

Besides treating symptoms and the disease itself, most chronic Lyme patients understand the importance of ridding the body of toxins generated from killing bacteria. Other toxins may also be present in the body from heavy metals, mycotoxins (from mold), normal metabolism or from the environment itself. The point is, in order to give your body a chance to heal properly, these toxins must be removed in a way that doesn’t disrupt your system.

This is where toxin binders can be helpful. A toxin binder is a supplement that can attach itself to a toxic substance and render it harmless while escorting it out of the body through the digestive or urinary tract. Many of these binders are so effective they can actually render various poisonous substances harmless.

Back in 2007, I was in the first phase of my Lyme treatment struggle. I had been on straight antibiotics and pharmaceuticals for two years and I was beginning to feel these treatments were causing me more harm than good. I experienced a CDIFF infection from a PICC line treatment, and I found that certain oral antibiotics either made me suicidal (minocycline) or started causing tendon damage, muscle twitching and heart palpitations (Levaquin and Azythromycin). None of my doctors recommended any detox tips when I complained of herxing and these ancillary symptoms, but I had an intuitive feeling that I needed to do something to get these toxins and cytokines out of me. Thank god for intuition!

When it comes to Lyme disease and exposure to the biting bugs that carry the disease… i.e. ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, horseflies, etc. … your dog may be your “canary in a coalmine.” In other words, because your furry friend is rambling through areas of higher exposure to these bugs than you, it may get exposed to Lyme disease before you do.

Consequently, you may notice your dog exhibiting the following symptoms, and if you do, you should contact your vet to have your pet tested for Lyme disease… Stiff joints, Sudden lameness & limb atrophy, Partial facial paralysis, Fatigue & sluggishness, Depression, and Gastrointestinal problems

There seems to be a debate that rages every day on whether it is a good idea to take antibiotics when treating Lyme disease and co-infections. While there is strong evidence that 4-6 weeks of antibiotics taken within the first 60 days of infection has the potential to completely eradicate persistent infection, there is also evidence that taking them for any length of time after this period can have wildly different effects on patients and the infections themselves.

The purpose of this article is not to debate these facts. Instead, it is to inform any patient or doctor considering prescribing any of the following antibiotics that they can have potentially dangerous side effects on patients with the following pre-existing conditions. Both patient and doctor should be well informed of these facts before embarking on these treatments for any length of time.

In the United States, the land of supposed freedom of choice, many Lyme patients spend more time researching their car mechanics than their doctors. Sometimes it’s out of their hands. In many cases their insurance companies dictate which doctors are covered, and patients are punished with “out of network” fees if they visit a doctor outside their prescribed insurance roster.

Even within this network, things can get dicey. In my situation I lived in New England, the well-known “high-risk” area of Lyme disease, when I began consulting my doctors on a set of mysterious symptoms that would ultimately be diagnosed as chronic Lyme after two years of intensive testing.

Mimosa Pudica is a flowering, creeping perennial that is native to South and Central America. It’s nicknamed “Sensitive Plant,” “Touch-Me-Not” and “Bashful Plant” because of its unique reaction to being handled or disturbed. When touched, the plant’s leaves fold up and recoil almost immediately and then re-open a few minutes later.

The plant itself has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for centuries to treat skin disorders, jaundice, cough, and indigestion, and it has also been used as an antidepressant and antivenom agent. But more recently, it has been discovered that the plant’s seeds are a powerful antiparasitic, antimicrobial and intestinal cleanser.

Since its emergence and “discovery” in the late 1970s-early 1980s, Lyme disease and related tick-borne or biting-insect illnesses have become a pandemic and have set themselves apart from the typical widespread infectious diseases that we’ve seen in the past.

Never before have we seen a disease spread so quickly yet be ignored or denied by the official medical community, federal & state governments, health insurance companies and traditional media.