Lyme disease.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.herbs
Subject: re: Lyme disease
From: sdelsignor.aol.com (SDelsignor)
Date: 13 May 1995 23:42:57 -0400

My sister was just diagnosed with Lyme disease about 3 weeks after the tick in question was removed. We were told that it was discovered early enough to head off any problems and now she's on heavy antibiotics. She would prefer to deal this through alternative medicine. Has anyone out there had experience with Lyme disease improvement through alternative medicine? Any input would be very much appreciated.

Sheila

From: tkeenan.uoguelph.ca (Timothy J Keenan)

: Has anyone out there had experience with Lyme disease improvement through alternative medicine?

Just my $0.02, of course, and it's your sister's own business, but the possible long term effects of Lyme disease make it a pretty scary proposal to treat on the basis of hearsay from a usenet newsgroup. The disease is related to and very similar in long-term prognosis to syphilis. It can cause massive organ, joint, and neurological damage. If you want to know ways to enhance the efficiency of the body's immune system, that's great, but I personally would stick with the antibiotics--the disease is no joke. I know of at least a couple of botanists whose lives have been very seriously affected by Lyme disease.

From: Wendy Bardsley <zignorp.hooked.net>

I had Lyme disease, and unfortunately wasn't diagnosed as early as your sister (the tick wasn't in my body) I was an herbalist at the time, and used a combination of treatments. I would urge your sister to take the oral antibiotics, which will almost always work in stage 1 of the disease. I got better after this stage, and forgot about it. 4 months later, I got facial paralysis for about a month, then that went away. (stage 2) 3 months later, I was waking up in the morning with different joints swollen, then returning to normal. After about a month of this(I was freaking out) My knees swelled up, filled with fluid, and stayed that way. I saw a great rhumitoligist(sp.), and he gave me a bunch of articles from the new england medical journal about the disease. Basically, if your sister takes the oral antibiotics now, she will probably get better (something like 95% of subjects treated in stage 1 did. When you get to the point where I was at, this doesn't work anymore. The next step for me was penicillin shots, 3x, so much that they made me pass out, and this didn't work. I was also getting my knees drained 2x a week, and they were filling right up again. I had to go into the hospital for i.v.penicillin, 3 weeks, and this finally did the trick (a month later) I couldn't walk for almost a year, without a cane, and not more than 1 block. During this time I was using heavy herbal blood purifiers, and all kinds of alternative stuff recommended by practitioners I really respect. I consider myself lucky- however, because the i.v.penicillin only works 60% of the time (shots only work a third of the time at this stage) and you can get meningitis, encephalitis, dementia, REALLY HORRIBLE STUFF from that little spirochete. I am never heavy with any kind of treatment, and I hate antibiotics, but I would strongly urge her to do it.