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The Best Lyme Treatment

You've just been diagnosed. Now what? The best course of treatment for Lyme may be the one your doctor prescribes. And it may be a combination of treatments that you devise or discover for yourself.

In another post, I asked readers if they had ever reached a crossroads in Lyme treatment. In comments and emails, the response was a resounding yes, people are doing quite a bit of experimenting with herbal and non-pharmaceutical remedies. Some work, some don't. What doesn't seem to change is the urgency that drives us to keep searching. A woman wrote me to say that she read about teasel on our blog. She decided to try it. A half a year later, she says that including a low dose of the herbal tincture of teasel is the single best move she's ever made in treating herself. She says it keeps her warm, which is a very good thing. An insidious side effect of Lyme infection is a lowering of the body's core temperature. The Big Lyme Chill. It's what makes some Lymies apprehensive about winter. We are already cold enough.

I'm trying teasel too. I began taking it in May 2010, a very low dose, which I had learned about through interviewing with Master Herbalist Matthew Wood. It is, so far, having a positive affect. But I'm a skeptic. I believe that it's not just one herbal tincture that is affecting my health, but a combination of factors. When I ask other people who have cured themselves of serious diseases to talk about how they did it, they seem to have a similar approach. I call it cross-training, and others have called it an Integral approach to healing. In a nutshell, my cross-training approach covers these four areas: experience, behavior, community, and the social systems where my resources can be found. Cross-training is a sports analogy. Getting healthy again after a terrible brush with death and a long illness takes the kind of commitment that pro athletes apply to achieving self-mastery, to winning, to beating the competition against all odds. It takes courage, and work. Not just teasel.

You may feel that you're not in charge of your own Lyme disease treatment. The medical community is certainly divided on the topic, as you probably are well aware. Just for the moment, let's turn away from the limitations of the government standards as we perceive them. Let's focus on the possible. Put it this way: What can you do to make yourself feel more in control of your progress? What small step can you take today? Maybe make a decision that you've been putting off, such as quitting sugar, or getting a second opinion from a nurse practitioner or a nutritionist, or starting a walking routine. Whatever it is, don't put it off. The best Lyme treatment is the one you can stick to, and ultimately of course, it's the one that works to restore your energy, your vitality, and your one precious human life.




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Wanted: YOU to live a healthy post-Lyme life

"You know you don't have chronic Lyme disease anymore when you're ready to plan a trip."

I honestly can't remember (Lyme-brain) who said it to me, but that casual remark has been rolling around in my head a lot lately. I'm not exactly planning a trip, but my professional workload has increased exponentially this fall, and I am multi-tasking like a brand-new BlackBerry.  I feel I actually COULD plan a trip, and that is almost just as good, if you know what I'm saying.

Chronic Lyme disease has been a way of life for five years, however, I got a wake-up call yesterday when I caught myself saying out loud, "I could never have multi-tasked like this when I had Lyme."

When I had Lyme.
When I HAD Lyme
.

Such a lovely phrase! I could sing.

Let me back up for a second though and tell you: I have no medical proof of this statement. In fact, in all the years I've been looking into the problem of Lyme disease treatment and diagnoses, what I have discovered is evidence to suggest that a healthy post-Lyme survivor will probably continue to play host to the Lyme bacterial complex throughout their life. 

So the question is, why do some people, regardless of their duration or methods of Lyme disease treatment, develop into healthy post-Lyme survivors -- and why do some people develop symptoms of chronic Lyme disease? It's a maddening situation.

I talk to many people involved in the medical and healing professions. When I first began conducting these interviews five years ago, I observed that many doctors had differing opinions about every aspect of Lyme, particularly when it came to Lyme disease treatment.  I assumed that I would soon begin to hear the same approach being used by the doctors I interviewed. But instead, over the years I have noticed that all the experts have their own perspectives, their own opinions, their own approaches to healing Lyme. And Lyme isn't simple. Nothing about it seems to be simple, though much about it has certainly been oversimplified.

The answer to that question, of why do some suffer from chronic Lyme symptoms, while others seem to drift back into a post-Lyme level of relatively good health, is a mystery to me. I will keep asking the questions, and knock on wood in the meantime.

I receive a lot of letters from readers of this blog, and you are all in my heart every single day. My wish is for all of you to experience that unique and buzzing wonder that is a healthy mind and body: ready, willing, and able, to work, love, and live a normal life again. To surprise yourself one day soon by hearing these words come out of your own mouth: When I HAD Lyme...

And maybe you'll plan a trip too!




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