While I see many patients with acute Lyme disease and treat them successfully with natural therapies, I often wonder about the effectiveness of long-term oral and intravenous anti-biotic therapies. Patients on these therapies are often told to continue therapy for months or years and aggravations in symptoms or progression of disease is seen as confirmation of the Lyme diagnosis. This in spite of numerous negative lab tests and sometimes inadequate searches for other explanations for the illness.
Some people do seem to get better with protracted courses of antibiotic therapy, but my concern is that this therapy is much like blood letting; continued because it is assumed to be working instead of actually working in helping the patients get well. Bloodletting was practiced for centuries and has fallen out of favor because we now better understand diseases and the importance of blood to our health. Some patients were killed by bloodletting, but many survived. Perhaps our understanding of chronic diseases will change in the next few centuries and medicine will see the current long-term antibiotic therapies as silly and misinformed. Perhaps not.
Have you been diagnosed with Lyme disease by a Lyme doc? Have you been on long-term antibiotic therapies? Have you seen substantial improvement in your symptoms and an increase in health and vitality? I invite you to share your stories.
For more information on Lyme disease, please take a look at my articles on the subject.
Be Well,
Richard