HOW TO GET TREATED?

Lyme disease, like most tick-borne diseases can be cured with an early dose of inexpensive antimicrobial drugs. However, delays in diagnosis and treatment can result to chronic conditions.

Acute Lyme Disease

Lyme disease is most easily cured at the acute stage or at its early stage - a few days or a few weeks after the tick bite, when the infection has not yet spread throughout the body.

From Bay Area Lyme

Antibiotics

The most common treatment for early-stage Lyme disease is antibiotics, prescribed by your doctor. The specific type of antibiotic varies for each patient, and by the stage and severity of the infection and any co-infections. Antibiotic treatment is also different for children and pregnant women.

Typically, oral antibiotics are prescribed but in some more severe cases intravenous or intramuscular treatment will be necessary. Standard oral antibiotics include doxycycline for adults, and amoxicillin or cefuroxime axetil for younger children and pregnant or nursing women. Prescriptions are typically for a 14-21 day course of treatment. Intravenous antibiotics are used less often except in extreme cases because of the risk of side effects.

Naturopathic Treatment

In addition to antibiotics, many health experts recommend natural holistic or homeopathic treatments. These treatments can strengthen the body’s ability to repair itself, particularly once it has been weakened by antibiotics, and to flush toxins from its system. Herbal antimicrobials and immune support including supplements such as B12, coenzyme Q10, chromium, folate, omega-3 fatty acids, and other herbs have been shown to improve energy and help with cellular repair. Other common treatments include dietary and nutritional realignment and acupuncture.

There are also studies showing certain plant-derived compounds and micronutrients could eliminate Lyme bactera - borrelia.

Dr. Richard Horowitz, author of “How Can I Get Better? : An Action Plan for Treating Resistant Lyme & Chronic Disease”, and “Why Can’t I Get Better?: Solving the Mystery of Lyme and Chronic Disease”, is currently conducting research on Stevia (as a bio-film buster) and found that if taken in combination with antibiotics, its anti-borrelia efficacy is remarkable.

Monolaurin (component of coconut oil) has also been found to kill Lyme bacteria.

Chronic Lyme Disease

In some cases, symptoms might persist even after antibiotic treatment. This is a likely situation if the diagnosis is delayed and the symptoms deteriorate. This condition is known as “post-treatment Lyme disease” or PTLD, and sometimes “chronic Lyme”. Its exact cause is not yet known.

From Bay Area Lyme

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or “CDC”) estimates that “approximately 10 to 20% of patients treated for Lyme disease with a recommended 2–4 week course of antibiotics will have lingering symptoms of fatigue, pain, or joint and muscle aches.” These symptoms can last months or even years. 

Dr. Yin Zhang from John Hopkins studies the treatment of chronic Lyme or persistent infections. His claim is that antibiotics are effective on growing bacteria but fail to eliminate persistent bacteria which results to chronic Lyme. Zhang, during their recent experiments, discovered that a combination of drugs are more effective for treating Lyme disease. The triple-drug combination daptomycin/doxycycline/cefuroxime without pulse dosing, was identified as the most effective way to kill all forms of Borrelia burgdorferi. 

Unproven Treatments

In 2017, CDC employees and several IDSA doctors published an article about five patients who had “adverse effects” after undergoing “unproven” treatments for Lyme disease. The Washington Post was quick to agree with CDC by publishing “Dangerous unproven treatments for ‘chronic Lyme disease’ are on the rise”.

However, LymeDisease.org claims that the study is based on questionable research.

From Lyme Disease.org

This is how CDC employees conduct research into Lyme disease treatment? They solicit input from only one side of a highly contentious medical debate, they dangle the incentive of a prestigious co-authorship to anyone who comes across with the goods, and all the while totally ignore the consequences of failing to treat desperately ill people who face serious disability and perhaps death?

The optimal treatment regimen for the management of known tick bites, EM rashes and persistent disease has not yet been determined. Accordingly, it is too early to standardize restrictive protocols. However, ILADS does make recommendations for each of these clinical situations:

  • ILADS recommends against the use of a single 200 mg dose of doxycycline for the prevention of Lyme disease. Not only is it unlikely to be highly efficacious, in the human trial failed therapy led to a seronegative disease state.  
  • Based on animal studies, ILADS recommends that known blacklegged tick bites be treated with 20 days of doxycycline (barring any contraindications).
  • Given the low success rates in trials treating EM rashes for 20 or fewer days, ILADS recommends that patients receive 4-6 weeks of doxycycline, amoxicillin or cefuroxime. A minimum of 21 days of azithromycin is also acceptable, especially in Europe. All patients should be reassessed at the end of their initial therapy and, when necessary, antibiotic therapy should be extended.
  • ILADS recommends that patients with persistent symptoms and signs of Lyme disease be evaluated for other potential causes before instituting additional antibiotic therapy.
  • ILADS recommends antibiotic retreatment when a chronic Lyme infection is judged to be a possible cause of the ongoing manifestations and the patient has an impaired quality of life.

The International and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) recommends the following guidelines for managing tick bites.

You may download ILADS’ 2014 Evidence-Based Treatment Guidelines HERE.