7 Strategies to Tackle Lyme Disease

Hi.

This is Dr. Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. And this week's question is, Dr. Hyman, I have Lyme disease. And is there anything I can do to treat it naturally? Well, Lyme disease is a big problem. And it's more and more prevalent. In fact, it's probably one of the most difficult, challenging conditions that I see in my practice. because it's not just one thing, it's many things. It's really a chronic multi-system immune dysfunction that happens because of a tick infection or a tick-borne infection. And it can be Lyme, it can be other weird infections called Babesia or Bartonella or Rickettsia and all kinds of different strains of those. And there's even more that we're finding every day. And what these do is they disturb a person's immune system. They kind of hijack it. Sort of like AIDS in a way, it sort of hijacks your immune system. and people get muscle pain and fatigue and cognitive problems, brain fog, headaches, they get digestive issues and they just can't function very well. And it's really a terrible, terrible illness. And you know what? There are many people who are going around with all sorts of chronic symptoms that just don't get diagnosed. In fact, even my own dentist had actually a chronic inflammatory problem that no one could figure out and by digging deep, we found out he had a tick-borne infection and we treated him aggressively and he was able to get better. And the problem with the testing is that it's it's not accurate. So you might have Lyme or a Lyme related infection, but the conventional test may show it's negative. So we look at a lot of different kinds of testing using various biomarkers and sort of functional advanced testing to identify whether or not you have Lyme disease. And we use that combined with a clinical assessment. So it's really more of a clinical assessment plus the sort of a modified laboratory assessment that allows us to figure out what's really wrong. And there's a great book written about this which is why Can't I Get Better? By Dr. Richard Horowitz. I encourage you to read it if you have Lyme disease. It's very comprehensive if you're a practitioner. I encourage you to check it out because he's got a whole appendix for practitioners and you know he's written I think 700 pages on it. I'm just going to cover this in a few minutes so just going to touch on the surface. The key with Lyme disease is getting the diagnosis right and then treating it. So if you have a confirmed case you do need antibiotics. I really do believe that most people need antibiotics. Now there are some biological practitioners that don't and use other methods that may be effective, but I haven't really seen that to be effective. And you need to use the right combination, but you also need to support the system. See, this is where most doctors go wrong. They don't support the system where the disease occurs. And that's your biological terrain. It's like your inner garden, like the soil. You know, I always say functional medicine is like being a soil farmer rather than an industrial agriculturalist, which is putting chemicals and toxins on the plant. we're actually taking care of the soil so disease doesn't have a place to rest. So that means fixing your gut, optimizing your nutritional status by eating real whole fresh food, getting rid of processed food, getting rid of sugar, getting rid of alcohol, really giving yourself a clean diet, getting rid of common allergens like gluten and dairy. It also is very helpful to tend your inner garden by getting probiotics and fixing your gut. Really critical in Lyme disease. But also looking at your toxic load. Many people have low levels of environmental toxins like heavy metals and pesticides. Those have to be dealt with. We do removal processes and detoxification for heavy metals that can be very effective. We also help support the immune system with herbs and nutritional things like vitamin D and vitamin C and other really supportive nutrients that help the body function better. So it's a combination of treating the soil, optimizing nutrition, releasing toxins from the body, as well as treating the infection directly. Then we often use a lot of herbs. We use a lot of herbs to help balance the body. So I've seen over and over again people struggle for years with undiagnosed symptoms and the doctor just misses it. So I encourage you to check out Dr. Richard Horowitz's book, to check out the link that actually has on his site to the questionnaire that we actually can identify if you're likely to have Lyme or Lyme related illness and realize that it's not something as simple as just giving the antibiotics. You have to treat the whole system and you have to do it in an integrated way and that's the beauty of functional medicine. We treat the system not just the symptoms. We treat the organism, not just the organs. And I'm encouraging you to stay with it, stick with it, and find the cure and the answer for your problem because there is a way out for most people with chronic Lyme disease. It takes time, it takes deliberate effort, it takes focus, it takes the right practitioner, but you can get there. So I encourage you, if you enjoyed this video, to share it with your friends and family, to share it on Facebook and Twitter. I encourage if you like it, Maybe you can sign up for the weekly newsletter so you can get this every week. And also I've got a great recipe newsletter so you can get a recipe newsletter as well every Wednesday, Mark's Kitchen. And if you really are interested in having your question answered, submit it at drhyman.com so next week I may make a house call to you.