Lyme Disease Treatments – Been There, Done That, Got the T-Shirt

As many of you know, I healed myself from Lyme Disease a few years ago, and I’m really passionate about helping others do the same. Each week I get questions from all over the world about different Lyme treatment options, so today’s blog is all about my experience and opinions.

I’ll go over different treatment options in the order that I tried them, and at the end I’ll give you a summary of what I wished I had known right from the start.

My journey began with joint pain, headaches, severe adrenal fatigue, gallbladder attacks, hormonal imbalances & chronic MRSA infections. At the same time, I was under a lot of emotional stress, was angry all the time & basically needed to learn to chill out!

Adrenal Fatigue, Hormonal Imbalances, Gallbladder Attacks

For adrenal fatigue & hormonal imbalances, I began taking HUGE amounts of supplements and a natural progesterone cream. What I learned along the way is that our bodies can’t make certain hormones if we aren’t digesting our foods properly, so I took a series of digestive health seminars and used high quality (and expensive!) digestive enzymes for nearly 4 years as I sorted out what else was going on with my health. While all of the supplements helped hold me steady, none of them “cured” my health issues. But boy did I spend a TON of money! Sound familiar???

While learning more about digestion and hormones, I tried some food elimination diets. Sure enough, grains and dairy were not helping me. I removed them from my diet, ate more plant-based foods, and immediately noticed more energy, better mental clarity, and my gallbladder attacks became less severe.

Super Fun MRSA Infections

I had developed chronic MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) infections after my son brought this fun stuff home after having his appendix removed. He cleared his infection with antibiotics, but I just couldn’t shake this nasty stuff, and one round of antibiotics left me unable to tolerate antibiotics in general. The MRSA infections were easier for me to deal with than what the antibiotics did to me. To hold the MRSA infections steady (but not clear them) I tried high doses of real garlic (totally fun :/), and essential oils. I found Young Living’s RC blend to be the most effective, but their Thieves and Tea Tree oil were also helpful. My chronic MRSA infections didn’t totally clear up until I used DesBio’s Lyme treatments (more on that later!). Since then, I’ve spoken with several other people who also have MRSA in addition to Lyme. Since Lyme bacteria never travel alone, it makes sense that they would travel with another known super bug like MRSA.

The Nocebo Effect — Negative Expectations

When I found out I had Lyme Disease, I was told by 2 different doctors that there was nothing I could do. They wished me luck and just sadly shook their heads and looked at me with pity. Really? Since then I’ve realized that this is a common experience for people who get a diagnosis of Lyme Disease, cancer, or ANY autoimmune disease. Sorry, there’s nothing you can do but just learn to live with it. Are you kidding me??? I didn’t like that answer and I didn’t believe that answer. I was NOT going to just live with this. I was going to figure this out for myself and then share what I learned with others. But how many others out there have bought into the negative outlook that their doctor handed to them???

I now think that part of this attitude centers around our western medical philosophy of only using pharmaceutical drugs. We are told that anything natural is quackery, and that pharmaceuticals are the only safe and effective form of treatment for anything. And while pharmaceuticals are really good with crisis management, they do not and cannot cure anything.

I’ve had several doctors tell me that while in med school, they were actually taught that diet and nutrition, and anything else that was not drugs and surgery, had no bearing on health…so when doctors are asked about natural treatment options, most have no knowledge of anything else that might help.

Antibiotics

Many people with Lyme Disease take antibiotics. And while antibiotics will kill the “top layer” of bacteria, the Lyme bacteria are much smarter than these drugs. They easily form capsules around themselves, mutate, and just wait until the antibiotic is out of your system – then they come out even stronger. This is why many Lyme patients remain on long-term antibiotics – to keep the bugs in hiding. But the price these patients pay with other aspects of their health is high. And because antibiotics will never “cure” Lyme Disease, many who only use antibiotics strongly believe that Lyme Disease is incurable.

Herbs

The first books I read about Lyme Disease were written by master herbalist Stephen Buhner. I followed his protocol of herbs and supplements. What I found was that I spent a TON of money and couldn’t tolerate the herbs and supplements because my digestive system was a complete train wreck.

Then I found a doc in Wisconsin that was making herbal concoctions to treat Lyme. I found these to be OK. They were expensive, and I wasn’t sure that they were working or not but I tried them for a few months.

Rife Machine

My next money pit was to invest in a Rife machine. The technology sounded great! It was all frequency-based, and that seemed to be the best way to reach these super bugs. I tried a few different machines at different offices around the Midwest, and settled on one that cost $2,500. Most machines you purchase will come with a list of pre-set frequencies, but the trick is how to know which frequencies are best for you, and how often to use them. I used muscle testing (another form of frequency testing) to determine this for myself and my patients.  What I found was that the rife machine worked great for yeast, parasites, viruses & chemical toxins…but not so great for the Lyme bacteria. My theory is that maybe the Lyme bacteria mutated sufficiently and the frequencies were no longer valid. Who knows…

Herx Reactions

There is a very strong belief within the Lyme community that you need to be “Herxing” so that you know if a treatment is working or not. The term Herx refers to your body’s detoxing reaction to the die-off of the bugs. As pathogens die, they can release toxins that your body must then clear. If too much of these toxins are released at once, and your body is unable to keep up with the detoxification process, you will feel like death warmed over. My personal opinion is that this belief is just plain bullshit. Why on earth would you want to jam up your detoxification pathways intentionally? It’s like taking 2 steps forward with your health, then taking 5 steps back. It just never made any sense to me.

People who use rife machines are encouraged to use them for hours at a time in order to generate a big Herx reaction. This was never my belief. For any and all treatments, I believe that if you feel worse then it is time to slow down and support the body…not run it over with a mack truck and congratulate yourself on how much worse you just made yourself feel.

DesBio

The next phase of my Lyme journey occurred during an acupuncture seminar. A doc from the east coast was treating a lot of Lyme patients with homeopathic products from a company called Deseret Biologicals, or DesBio for short. Homeopathic remedies are frequency-based as well, so this made logical sense to me. If the rife machines were effective, then these homeopathic remedies had great potential…and at a fraction of the cost of a rife machine.

I then followed the basic Lyme protocol from DesBio. I used their Borrelia-Babesia series therapy kit, Smart Silver and Comprehensive Detox products. It took me about 3 months to finish the products. I found them to be gentle, yet very effective. At the end of the 3 months, I realized that my hormones were back in balance, my MRSA infections disappeared for good, and my chronic gallbladder attacks were nearly gone. I was in awe! Who knew that the Lyme bugs and their “friends” had been affecting so much within my body!

DesBio has specific homeopathic series therapies for most of the major super bugs: Borrelia, Babesia, Bartonella, Candida Albicans, Epstein Barr, C Diff, H Pylori, Herpes Simplex, Mycoplasma, etc. Because of the specific protocols needed in taking these products, only healthcare professionals can purchase them.  In my humble opinion, DesBio products are top notch, and I have still not found any other product that works as effectively for Lyme as the DesBio line of products.

Emotional Stress

But wait! My journey wasn’t over! By the time I finished the DesBio products, I had been meditating consistently for about 9 months. During my meditations, if I asked how I could help others, I received a ton of insights. I started receiving insights on how our emotions effect (yes, effect) our health. Emotions like fear, anger, grief, worry, resentment, etc, shut down our digestive & immune systems, thereby leaving us susceptible to illness. It’s one thing to kill some bugs that are harming our bodies, but you still have to go back and heal your digestive & immune systems.

This mindset work, I found, was most people’s HUGE gap – if they only took some products to kill some bugs, then they still had a compromised immune system. They would need to go deeper to make a full and complete recovery…and there’s no magic pill for this! It is work that each individual must do on their own.  They can get help to do this, but they are ultimately responsible for this piece of the puzzle.

I learned that healing from any illness must include looking at our thoughts in a different way. I started searching for people’s stories of recovery on YouTube. I listened to other experts on holistic health – each had their own “wake up call” where they had to dig deep in order to heal themselves. Everyone’s story, including mine, involved cleaning up their diet, detoxing their body, and some form of meditation where they were led to forgive and let go of toxic thoughts & emotions.

If I had it to do over again

So, here is my advice in a nutshell:

• All illness is mental illness. ACIM. This means that all illness begins with your thoughts and emotions (mindset). Starting here will save you a ton of time and money.
• If you haven’t already done so, clean up your diet. Eat more plant-based foods (veggies, fruits, nuts & seeds). Reduce or eliminate your consumption of chemically-laden, processed foods. Do a food elimination diet to test for yourself which food groups you are sensitive to.
• In my humble opinion, knowing what I know right now, DesBio offers great products to naturally kill bugs and to detox your body in a gentle, yet effective & economical way.
• Detox your body regularly. Exercising to the point of sweating and taking Epsom salt baths are 2 simple things you can do yourself at home.
• Trust your gut instincts. If someone tells you what to do and it doesn’t feel right to you, keep searching. Know that ALL of your answers can be found within your mind through meditation, but it will take some practice to get past all of the negative mental chatter.
• Stop focusing on Lyme Disease. Stop engaging in Lyme chat rooms online, especially if everyone is negative. Just focusing on your problems just keeps them active in your awareness.

So there you have it. This blog has been all about MY experience, MY observations, and MY opinions.

In my humble opinion, if you focus on cleaning up your mind, you can heal yourself from anything!

Need some help with your mindset?

Ways I can help you with your mindset

1. If this resonates with you and you are ready to move through all of this, I would love to help you! I'll teach you my best tools in my next online workshop series, Mastering Your Mindset - Introductory Workshop Series.
2. If you need to gather some more information on "the basics" of how you can use your mind to heal your body, your emotional stress & your relationships, click here to check out my selection of Free and Low-Cost Mini-Courses.
3. You can also set up a $30, 30-minute chat with me to discover your #1 Roadblock to Well-Being and options that would be a good fit for you. Click here to schedule.
    

Many Blessings,

Dr JoAnn Tully, Mind-Body Doctor & Mindset Coach

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