(These are continued excerpts From the Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, Ph.D., Dr. Mercola, and Dr Scott Taylor. They are three of the most known researchers studying Lyme disease, presenting workshops and lectures around the world. They collectively have in excess of 45 years in Medical practice and 30 years Bb cognizant.)
Stealth Disease
The new stealth disease in the U.S. is Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), also known as Lyme disease (Ld). Doctors have looked at it for a long time as possibly being the bug that opens the door for other infections to enter the system.
Although the disease was named for the town in Connecticut, Lyme disease (borreliosis) actually has a long history taking it as far back as the 1800s. The first reported case of clinical Lyme disease was made in Germany by Dr. Alfred Buchwald in 1883. However, the term Lyme disease is commonly used to describe the infectious diseases that are caused by many Borrelia species.
Ld is caused by many pathogenic borrelia strains or species. Borrelia burgdorferi is not the only bacterium that causes Lyme disease; there are many which cause borreliosis (Lyme-like disease). When Bb was first discovered in 1982 it was thought that there was just one strain. Since then, about 100 U.S. and 300 worldwide strains of the bacterium have been discovered.
Ld is more common than we think. The true prevalence of Lyme disease is much higher than is being reported by health officials. It is difficult to know how many cases are unreported but estimations suggest that the prevalence is actually 10-15 times higher than what is actually being reported.
What are Lyme Spirochetes?
Lyme disease is a seriously complex multi-system inflammatory disease that is triggered by the bacterial lipoproteins (BLPs) produced by the spiral-shaped bacteria called Borrelia. Transmission of Borrelia occurs primarily through the bite of ticks. The disease affects every tissue and every major organ system in the body.
Borrelia species are placed in the spirochete family of bacteria. Spirochetes are long, thin, spiral-shaped bacteria that have flagella (tails). Borrelia’s slow growth partially explains its ability to cause chronic disease and the difficulty identifying it in the laboratory.
Spirochetes have a unique mode of motility that allows them to easily travel through tissues of the body. By rotating their axial filament, the flagellum rotates causing the spirochete to actually move in a cork-screw fashion. This mode of motility allows spirochetes to literally “screw” themselves into and through the tissues of the body. They can also contract like a spring and move through tissue as they uncoil. Spirochetes hide their flagella from the host’s immune defenses, which are normally antigenic and would trigger an immune response if detected.
We have recognized that today many Americans are carriers of the infection. Most infected people have symptoms, but the severity and type of the symptoms varies greatly. The microbes often invade tissues that had been injured: your chronic neck pain or sciatica really may be a Bb infection. The same may be true for your chronic TMJ problem, your adrenal fatigue, your thyroid dysfunction, your GERD and many other seemingly unrelated symptoms.
Antibiotics
Antibiotics have been disappointing in the treatment of Lyme disease as a single modality. Antibiotics alone will not help us to cope with the coming variations. It is often said that Lyme disease can be readily treated with standard regimens of antibiotics. While these reports are partially true, they are also critically erroneous and very misleading!
The standard therapy of 4 -6 weeks of antibiotic treatment is not sufficient to treat chronic Lyme disease. Chronic Lyme disease is often a life-long illness. Months, years, and often indefinite antibiotic therapy may be necessary to manage the disease. So, when the standard regimen of antibiotics is finished, the patients relapse with Lyme symptoms soon after the residual Borrelia re-emerges. (Our Bio-Film Enzymes recommendations dissolves the biofilms that encourages this.)
Another critical point that needs to be highlighted is that Lyme ignorant physicians often administer medication that often is the use of steroidal anti-inflammatories; usually the glucocorticosteroids (such as prednisone). Unfortunately, steroidal therapy is very deleterious to Lyme patients because it suppresses the patient’s immune system – causing it to tolerate the presence of Borrelia instead of attacking and killing it. This harmful treatment significantly diminishes the prognosis of Lyme patients. It prolongs the course of the disease and makes it more severe in the long run.
Chronic Persistent Infection: It’s also important to remember that borellia can go dormant in the body for lengthy periods of time. Then Lingering Lyme can return to cause disease at any time. Some symptoms and signs of Lyme disease may not appear until weeks, months, or years after a tick bite. This stage typically involves intermittent episodes of joint pain or numerous neurological symptoms. These include meningitis, Bell’s palsy, dysfunction of cardiac rhythm, and migratory pain to joints, tendons, muscle and bone.
Arthritis is most likely to appear as brief bouts of pain and swelling, usually in one or more large joints, especially the knees. In some patients, the first and only sign of Lyme disease is arthritis. A basic treatment for chronic Lyme disease usually requires at least an 8 -16-month period of appropriate antibiotics.
Diagnosis
Many patients are suffering with chronic Lyme disease and continue to be misdiagnosed and mistreated. In many cases of Lyme disease, a correct diagnosis doesn’t occur until after several months, or more often, many years of suffering with the disease. By then it has caused severe illness, disability and permanent damage.
The diagnosis of Lyme disease is primary based upon clinical evidence. There is currently no laboratory test that is definitive for Lyme disease. (A new test since this article show promise.) In most places the diagnosis of an active Bb infection is made only if the symptoms are severe, persistent, obvious, and many non-specific and fruitless avenues of treatment have been exhausted. Acute new cases of Bb infection are rare. Symptoms tend to get stranger and more obscure every year.
Clinically, it can appear as a chronic arthalgia (joint pain), fibromyalgia (fibrous connective tissue and muscle pain), chronic fatigue, immune dysfunction and as neurological disease. Ld may even be fatal in severe cases.
It appears that many patients with MS, ALS, Parkinson’s disease, autism, joint arthritis, chronic fatigue, sarcoidosis, and even cancer, are infected with Borrelia burgdorferi. But is the infection causing the illness or is it an opportunistic infection simply occurring in people weakened by other illnesses?
Lyme-Wise Medical Doctors:
There are not too many MDs in the country that are knowledgeable about Lyme disease; they are often called Lyme literate MDs or (LLMDs) by the Lyme aware public and by their Lyme patients.
The disease is widespread and the prevalence is significantly higher than reported by health officials. Physicians frequently overlook cases of Lyme disease simply because they don’t understand that Lyme disease causes well over 100 different symptoms.
The bulls-eye skin rash that develops and joint pain are the Ld symptoms that most physicians are familiar with. However, they are only two of many symptoms caused by Lyme disease. Many Bb symptoms are often mistaken for problems of natural or premature aging.
A patient is fortunate to see a practitioner who is “Lyme cognizant”. There is no clinical laboratory test exists that can definitively diagnose Lyme disease. This is why a diagnosis of Lyme disease is heavily based upon clinical information such as history, symptoms, and response to therapy. There is an art to medicine when dealing with Lyme disease. Most MDs don’t know that borrelia produce a large variety of toxic bacterial lipoproteins (BLPs) and they aren’t familiar with the way these BLPs cause disease.
Lyme disease symptoms can mimic any other existing medical, psychological or psychiatric condition. The severity of symptoms is not related to the number of spirochetes in your system but rather to your individual immune response.
Other pre-existing conditions such as mercury toxicity and the ability of the body to excrete neurotoxins affect treatment.
Taking all of the above into account, we do not distinguish between people who have the Bb infection and those who don’t. Instead, we distinguish between people who have Lyme disease and those who do not.
a) Patients who are infected with any type of Borrelia and are symptomatic have “Lyme” disease
b) Healthy people who are not symptomatic often already have a spirochete infection as well – but they do not (yet) have Lyme “disease”.
The group suffering most is newborn babies and young children. They are rarely diagnosed correctly and therefore are not treated appropriately. They often carry the labels ADHD, autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), seizure disorder and others. Detoxifying these kids and treating the chronic infections is often curative.