by Dr. Alan Lindsley
Many people suffer from a chronic health condition at some point in their life. Often these chronic conditions go undiagnosed for years, and when a diagnosis is finally reached, there seems to be no true identifying factor that triggered the disease process or a true cure. Some of these disease processes carry a genetic factor that, once triggered, can mean a fairly swift decline of health with death following close behind. ALS would be a good example of an inherited genetic problem that once triggered is often fatal within a couple of years. Alzheimer’s would be an example of a disease process that can take up to thirty years before a diagnosis is rendered. The real question that needs to be asked is simply this: Was the disease process started by an exposure to a pathogen (bacteria, parasite, virus) in our tissue that went undetected for years or decades or was it simply due to poor genetics?
Working with patients over the past several years, I have begun to see a direct correlation between chronic cases of undiagnosed or misdiagnosed Lyme disease and the triggering of a chronic disease process that our standard health care model has no answer for at this time. The single most important job of our body is to make energy—enough energy that we can wake up feeling rested and revived, exercise, work, play, digest, repair, and feel well all day long. I often tell my patients that if they are making energy properly, they are not in my office. It is not until we are unable to detoxify, digest, repair, and revive ourselves properly after a full day and a good night of rest that we begin to be concerned. When they seek help, thousands of dollars of testing commonly shows they fall within the standard functioning limits of the tests that were performed or the tests come back negative, and they are often told it is simply in their head and after all “you are not twenty any more”. The molecule used for energy in our body is called adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and when we are making energy properly, we make our body weight in ATP every day. When we begin to have problems converting our food to energy, we begin to see inflammation and eventually degeneration in these cells. Eventually the inflammation and degeneration spread from a few cells to the whole tissue or organ involved. The degeneration process may take years to reach a point of deterioration in our body to develop a diagnosable disease, but when a diagnosis is reached it is often difficult to regain full health and normal tissue function. Often at this point a pharmaceutical intervention is used to suppress cell function or the immune system because of an autoimmune condition that has developed. If this fails to control the symptoms, the individual may have the organ or tissue removed permanently. If necessary, a transplant of human or animal tissue may be used to replace the diseased tissue in order to stay alive.
The onset of Lyme disease in the human body is often the starting point for a deeper chronic condition to develop unless it is quickly identified and removed from all tissues of the body. A tick bite is really an injection of several bacteria and parasites into our bodies that we have never seen or dealt with, leaving a lag in our immune system to cope with the onslaught of toxins that they secrete into our tissues. The result is that within a few days we begin to feel symptoms (fatigue, sweats, painful and swollen joints, mental confusion, headaches, to name just a few). What just happened to all of our energy? When these symptoms overtake us, we are really dealing with something blocking our ability to make energy and toxins building up in our tissues faster than we can remove them.
The main toxin secreted from bacteria and parasites associated with Lyme is ammonia. Ammonia has a pH of 11.46, making it 46,000 times more alkaline than our normal human tissue. This deadly neurotoxin not only causes blocks in the energy system, it also causes damage to tissue where it accumulates. The first symptoms of ammonia increasing in the brain tissue are headaches and pressure, along with behavioral changes such as anxiety, depression, and short-term memory interference and word search. Sleep patterns also shift to awakening four to five hours into a night sleep with little restful sleep past 3:00 a.m. The twitching of tissue that is not muscle cramping is also common with high levels of ammonia affecting neurological tissue. These pockets of ammonia toxin will not be seen in a blood test for ammonia because they are held at high levels only in the brain tissue due to the blood-brain barrier and synovial fluids of the joints. The ammonia toxin interferes with energy production due to an increase in pH of the tissue slowing normal enzyme functions, making it incredibly hard for normal tissue repair. Inflammation begins to increase in these tissues, and the functional levels of the all tissues exposed begin to decrease to the point of permanent degeneration over time.
When these early symptoms are treated with prescriptions instead of being identified as an energy deficiency in the tissue, we begin to see permanent neurological changes take place in the central nervous system (CNS) that can now be seen on MRI or other types of imaging devices. The sclerosis of these tissues in the CNS often creates a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s.
Muscle tissue that is painful and fibrous due to the inability to make energy can also be thrown into this disease category. Fibromyalgia (FM) is simply fibrous muscle pain. Any time muscle tissue does not make enough energy, it simply begins to create a fibrous feel. Calcium causes contraction of muscle tissue and magnesium causes relaxation of muscle tissue. Muscle tissue that is fibrous and painful is not making enough energy to completely remove the toxins and for all fibers in the tissue to reach a relaxed length could be diagnosed as FM. There are no drugs that will fix this problem, but they are often prescribed to decrease the symptoms. Restless leg syndrome or a chronic fatigue diagnosis may be rendered if the muscle pain or fatigue last longer than six months or if the muscle itself begins to move uncontrollably. The same is often done for joint tissue. Inflammation followed by the inability to repair the joint tissue is called arthritis. Arthritis simply means “joint inflammation”. Pick your type of arthritis: juvenile, rheumatoid, infective, or osteo. All four end up destroying the joint tissue and eventually are followed by a joint replacement. We now commonly see ALS diagnosis in patients in their thirties, joint replacement candidates in their thirties, and people suffering from forms of dementia in their forties. These diseases used to be diseases of people nearing the end of their life not in the prime of their life!
A hidden case of Lyme disease will create many of the diagnosable diseases listed above. In fact someone with Lyme disease can have several of these diagnoses at one time. The common factor that is overlooked time after time is simply understanding why the tissue is not making energy, finding the blockage of energy, and removing it, allowing the tissue to begin to repair and resume normal function. Simply diagnosing the end stage disease is a degenerative-sickness care model not a health care model.
Muscle testing and kinesiology are two methods of functional testing to detect the problems earlier.
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 immume systems. He is currently working on a book to help others educate themselves on effective natural approaches to heal themselves from Lyme disease.