As many of you know, controversey rages over the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. The two sides in this debate are represented by ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society) and the IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of America). The IDSA's position is that Lyme disease is easily treated with 1 month or less of antibiotics and that there is no such entity as Chronic Lyme disease. They feel that the current Lyme testing is accurate and if you have the same symptoms after the last day of a 1 month course of antibiotics....you no longer have Lyme disease but somehow magically it has now changed into depression or a vague autoimmune condition.
ILADS on the other hand realizes that there are certain mechanisms which the Lyme spirochete(Borrelia burgdorferi) utilizes to hide from testing, the immune system and even from antibiotics. The Lyme microbe is pleomorphic(changes form) and it has fairly recently been discovered that this pathogen forms protective biofilm communities. These properties make it possible for Lyme disease to become a chronic relapsing infection.The link below shows a video of a biofilm formation...along with an explanation. If your doctor is hesitant to treat for persistent symptoms of Lyme, perhaps sharing information with him/her concerning these stealth pathogen properties, would cause the doctor to look further into this debate. If the doctor really cares about the patient, he will investigate further.
One of the areas of research is to find natural and or drug treatments which break down this biofilm, which would then release the colonies of borrelia and leave them vulnerable to other agents which would destroy the different forms of this germ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4uNDWdChM8
HERBS FOR LYME DISEASE AND GENERAL HEALTH
http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=1097153
"If the doctor really cares about the patient, he will investigate further"
ReplyDeleteAhh, there's the rub. Most(not all) have learned not to care, we have become diagnosis codes and are treated with one size fits all medicine.
It is only a few brave practitioners willing to stick their necks out to help those of us so sick yet told we are not sick at all.
You are right Renee. I was kind of using psychology to hopefully make any doctors reading this to see what they SHOULD be doing. You are right...they ARE trained not to care and they are intentionally trained not to know how to treat Lyme or to try and find the real causes of many diseases. The drug companies teach them to use just symptomatic treatments...which aloows the underlying disease to progress and also creates more symptoms for the drug companies to treat. Does that sound right?
ReplyDeleteI worked closely with physicians for 35 years as a respected RN.
ReplyDeleteThose same practitioners now look at me as "nuts" instead of listening to what I say about Lyme....don't want to hear a thing about it.
Don't think anyone can shame them into opening their minds
It must be very frustrating. Check out the comments at this link on my blog
ReplyDeletehttp://lymesentinel.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-lyme-movie-under-eightball.html
From experience I kind of know that the person posting the doubting posts is probably someone who is paid to do what he is doing