By Dr. Lindsley | There is a disease that has swept across the nation and then been quietly swept under the rug. It has quietly and insidiously crept into the lives of tens of thousands of people living in Wisconsin and surrounding states especially. Lyme disease has become a household name in this neck of the woods, but with this familiarity, our understanding of the disease is surprisingly still quite limited.
Einstein once said (paraphrasing here) that if we were to solve a tougher problem, we better change our thinking or will get the same answer. If we’re going to solve the problem of Lyme disease in this country, we need to put down the bottle of antibiotics, put on our thinking caps, and figure it out for real. After all, future generations are depending on this.
Lyme disease masquerades as a lot of other incurable diseases so, including: MS, ALS, depression, Bells Palsy, Cancer, and Alzheimer’s, all of which have no known cause or cure. Want to keep going? I just described about $200 billion worth of incurables. Interestingly, we have no idea what causes the diseases I just listed and yet the world of modern medicine is spending billions on methods that treat symptoms only – they can’t touch the cause of any of these disease processes. These diseases are a mix of inflammatory and immune deficiency diseases. I have also seen every one of these involved with a patient suffering from Lyme disease.
Did you know between 250,000 and 350,000 cases of MS have been diagnosed in the United States, and the illness is five times more prevalent in northern climates? In fact, in Wisconsin, one in five hundred people are now said to have Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We have yet to tally the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) patients that I have seen coming through my office that may or may not have been given a diagnosis. With 30,000 cases of ALS diagnosed and 5,000 new cases per year, it is becoming evident that while diagnoses are increasing, our ability to put a stop to these diseases is not.
Many people mistakenly believe that Lyme disease is a single bacterial infection that enters our immune system. A round or two of doxycycline or similar antibiotic should whip it into submission and we can go on our way and enjoy our lives again, right? The reality of this disease process is this: I have yet to see any antibiotic completely wipe it from an individual who was has been exposed to Lyme. Lyme disease is not usually a single bacteria entering our system, but several co-infections arriving on the scene adding chaos to the immune system. In fact, as many as seven different bacteria and parasites at one time can result from a single bite. Many times, the labs running Lyme disease tests are only running the single bacteria of Borellia Burgdorferi (Lyme bacteria) while leaving out the possibility of Babesia, Erlichia, Bartonella, Mycoplasma, Rickettsia Rickettsi (Rocky Mountain spotted fever) and a few other variants. Truth be told, most individuals who are exposed to this disease process will have at least two of these bacteria-parasite combinations to fight off at one time, and antibiotics are simply not going to remove all combinations from the musculoskeletal system and the central nervous system completely.
The best antibiotic might remove 75% of the infection, leaving the immune system the remaining 25% to deal with. Without some type of immune support for the body, it can manifest again months or years later in the brain and spinal cord as a neurological disease. Most of what is going to attack us is either parasitic or bacteria and will be swallowed and enter our digestive tract. This is where the majority of our immune system lives (roughly 80-85%); the rest is spread out in various tissues of our body. The idea of treatment is to stop the invader before it gets outside our digestive tube and enters into our organ and central nervous systems.
While a tick is attached to our skin, it releases several bacteria and parasites in our tissues that very quickly work their way into our blood stream and then very quickly try to leave the blood stream and head for the hills. Why? It is a strategic move by the parasites and bacteria to move away from the immune system and enter areas of the body where it can quickly overcome the localized immune system and set up shop. It sounds like a really smart military strategy: attack a weaker opponent, take the territory, and raise the flag. That is exactly what Lyme disease will do: it takes over your body one organ system at a time, going after the communication systems first.
Our main computer system involves the brain and spinal cord. It’s our central nervous system because all information from our body flows up through our nerves to our brain, where the brain (our CPU) makes a decision on how to handle the situation. Then it sends the best known correct action back down through our nerves to our organs and muscles. We make the “fight or flight” decision hundreds of times a day without even knowing what is happening, while our 50 trillion cells communicate and run the show. Our autonomic nervous system is tasked with defending our tissues from all known invaders into our bodys’ tissues.
What gets commonly missed, though, when the bacteria and parasites take hold of the nervous system, are the toxins they secrete. Ammonia, lactic acid, and phenol are the big three. Bacteria are parasites entering our central nervous system (CNS), which secrete ammonia at high levels. Local immune cells and detoxification cells cannot handle the load allowing the ammonia to accumulate in the CNS. The accumulation eventually causes enough inflammation in the brain and spinal cord that we begin to see neurological changes in the body’s movements, moods, and thought processes. Neurotransmitters are blocked from working and the inflamed tissues begin to degenerate, leaving us with memory loss, depression, and decreased motor function to arms and legs. Short term memory loss, fatigue, and depression are simply precursors to the larger categorical diagnosis.
As much as big pharmaceutical companies want us to believe that petroleum-based products (drugs) used to treat symptoms will cure our diseases, this unfortunately is just not the case. Our bodies are incredibly strong, smart and well-functioning systems. Gumming up the systems with oils and petroleum is eventually going to stop working.
Now that you know a lot more about Lyme disease and how it functions in the body, stay tuned next issue to find out what your natural alternatives are when it comes to healing your body of Lyme disease. There is hope, and actually, great success!
Dr. Lindsley is a former Lyme Disease sufferer that has been studying natural approaches to help patients remove the source of the toxins from invading bacteria and parasites while naturally boosting their immune systems. He is currently working on a book to help others educate themselves on effective natural approaches to heal themselves from Lyme Disease.