What causes Lyme disease?
Lyme disease is a vector-borne, bacterial infection caused by the Borrelia burgdorferi (most commonly) and Borrelia mayonii bacteria. The bacteria is transmitted to humans from the bite of the blacklegged tick (Ixodes spp.). The blacklegged tick is an insect commonly found in heavily wooded areas or in areas where there is abundant shade and moisture. Most of the time, ticks must be attached to a person’s skin for between 36-48 hours before the Borrelia bacteria can be transmitted, so proper attention to the removal of ticks is usually considered a first line of defense against getting Lyme disease. Most ticks attach themselves to areas like the groin, armpits, scalp, or other well-protected, dark areas of the body.
Lyme disease is not spread from person-to-person; contact with a person who has Lyme disease will not spread the bacteria to others. The Borrelia bacteria does live in the blood, however, so blood transfusions from people with Lyme disease should be avoided. Pets also are unlikely to transmit Lyme disease to humans. Other insects and even other species of ticks are also unlikely to transmit Lyme disease to humans or other species.
When Lyme disease is treated early, it’s more likely that antibiotics will be able to eradicate it from the body, however a fairly large percentage of people will have lingering symptoms even after taking antibiotics. If the infection is left untreated, it can lead to late Lyme disease, which is considered more serious and “incurable” by conventional medicine though there are alternative therapies that are able to treat this disease. Chronic Lyme disease is more common than the conventional medicine establishment would have you believe.
What are the symptoms of Lyme disease?
The classic symptoms and onsets of different Lyme disease symptoms are:- Early symptoms (these occur within 3-30 days after infection):
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- Fever and chills
- Headache
- Muscle/joint aches
- Swollen lymph nodes
- Erythema migrans rash at the site of the tick bite (the rash may expand over the course of a few days)
- Later symptoms (these usually occur months after infection, but may occur as soon as within a few days after infection):
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- Severe headaches
- Stiff neck
- Other Erythema migrans rashes
- Development of neurological Lyme disease, Lyme carditis, and/or Lyme arthritis symptoms (discussed more below)
- Erythema migrans rash
- This rash is one of the earliest indicators of Lyme disease, and usually resembles a kind of bulls-eye or bordered circle. It may develop a crust or not.
- Neurologic Lyme disease
- Neurologic Lyme disease occurs when the Borrelia bacteria affect the nervous system. It may involve the cranial nerves, peripheral nerves, or the central nervous system. This manifestation of Lyme disease includes symptoms like:
- Numbness
- Pain
- Weakness
- Facial palsy
- Fever
- Stiff neck
- Severe headache
- Visual disturbances
- Neurologic Lyme disease occurs when the Borrelia bacteria affect the nervous system. It may involve the cranial nerves, peripheral nerves, or the central nervous system. This manifestation of Lyme disease includes symptoms like:
- Lyme carditis
- Lyme carditis manifests when the Borrelia bacteria infects the heart tissues. It is a rare manifestation of Lyme disease. The infection in this case interferes with the heart’s normal electrical signals and can cause symptoms like:
- Fainting
- Shortness of breath
- Heart palpitations
- Chest pain
- Fever
- Body aches
- Light-headedness
- Lyme carditis manifests when the Borrelia bacteria infects the heart tissues. It is a rare manifestation of Lyme disease. The infection in this case interferes with the heart’s normal electrical signals and can cause symptoms like:
- Lyme arthritis
- Lyme arthritis occurs in approximately 25% of diagnosed Lyme disease cases, and develops when the Borrelia bacteria enters the joint tissues. The onset of Lyme arthritis typically occurs within a few months of infection. If not treated early, joint damage can develop as a result of Lyme arthritis. Pure turpentine oil is the recommended treatment that can regrow cartilage and joint tissues in arthritis sufferers. Symptoms of this manifestation of Lyme disease include:
- Joint swelling (most commonly in the knees, though other joints can also be affected)
- Warm joints
- Pain when moving joints
- Lyme arthritis occurs in approximately 25% of diagnosed Lyme disease cases, and develops when the Borrelia bacteria enters the joint tissues. The onset of Lyme arthritis typically occurs within a few months of infection. If not treated early, joint damage can develop as a result of Lyme arthritis. Pure turpentine oil is the recommended treatment that can regrow cartilage and joint tissues in arthritis sufferers. Symptoms of this manifestation of Lyme disease include:
Everyone is different, and Lyme disease may look one way in one person and it may look completely different in someone else. This is an infection that can imitate many other diseases, and so the way that it manifests is highly variable. But Lyme is not the only spiral-shaped bacteria that has been dubbed A Great Imitator. Syphilis is caused by a spiral-shaped bacteria and it also causes a wide range of symptoms resembling other diseases. And though Helicobacter pylori, another spiral-shaped bacteria, has not been titled as A Great Imitator, H. pylori is one of few bacteria that scientists have observed changing shapes (pleomorphism) under the microscope. And like H. pylori, the Lyme disease bacteria, Borrelia, has also been shown to exhibit the property of pleomorphism (which is sometimes referred to as polymorphism in the scientific literature). The ability to change shape confers protection to a bacteria who possesses this property. Antibiotics that a doctor prescribes to kill the spirochete-shape aren’t likely to work against the bacteria when it takes another, different form like a rod or a spherical shape. And doctors aren’t schooled in the idea of pleomorphism as a characteristic of bacteria that’s worthy of study or understanding because shape-changing bacteria conflict directly with Germ Theory through another theory known as Terrain Theory that was developed many years ago by Antoine BeChamp. Embracing the idea of pleomorphism and studying this concept would be like opening a Pandora’s box for doctors.
It’s worth noting, however, that a person with Lyme disease may exhibit a wide variety of physical symptoms. The symptoms listed above are just a general overview of symptoms that a patient with Lyme disease might experience.
Where Lyme Disease Lives in the Body and How it Travels in the Bloodstream
The Borrelia bacteria travels throughout the body via the bloodstream. It attaches and detaches (and reattaches) itself to the endothelium, the walls of the blood vessels, to allow itself to move through the bloodstream without being carried away by the flow of blood. Some scientists have noted that this method of movement resembles the way that white blood cells move through the bloodstream. The flagella of the Borrelia bacteria allow the bacteria to be able to exit the endothelium and enter tissues whenever they choose, even in opposition to the flow of blood, meaning that the Lyme disease bacteria can quite literally end up anywhere in the body.This fact, of course, is a concern for anyone with Lyme disease who is using only conventional medicine to treat the disease. The antibiotics that your doctor prescribes have serious limitations. Prescription antibiotics generally break down inside the liver meaning that the medicinal action of these drugs don’t actually reach the liver. That’s a serious issue because the liver and the gallbladder then become a target for colonization by Borrelia burgdorferi.
Many autoimmune diseases and Lyme disease are caused by this colonization of the liver and gallbladder which is why we wrote a whole book about how to take care of your gallbladder (and liver). Many of our autoimmune disease clients have a weakness in their liver/gallbladder that has to be remedied over time to achieve baseline health.
Lyme Disease: The Great Imitator
Borrelia burgdorferi (as well as the other Borrelia species) is a spirochete bacteria, meaning that it has a spiral-like shape. The bacteria is composed of an inner membrane and an outer membrane, with a layer of peptidoglycan in between (note that partially digested peptidoglycan pieces are often responsible for psoriasis symptoms as well as other autoimmune skin conditions). Though not actually a parasite, Borrelia is still somewhat parasitic in nature in that it rotates between being hosted by a tick to being hosted by a human or another vertebrate, similar to the way that parasites survive.Other spiral shaped bacteria include Helicobacter pylori, Treponema pallidum (the bacteria that causes syphilis), and Leptospira species. One unique characteristic of the spirochete bacteria is their ability to firmly embed themselves in body tissues, making them particularly difficult to target with medicines such as prescription antibiotics.
The Problem with Chlorine Dioxide Solution / Miracle Mineral Supplement and Other Reactive Oxygen Species medicines as a Cure for Lyme Disease
The Borrelia bacteria requires little oxygen in order to survive, and in fact does better in environments where there is very little oxygen available. Thus, unlike other pathogens, like the bacteria that causes flesh-eating bacteria disease known as necrotizing fasciitis, Lyme disease can theoretically be treated by therapies that increase the oxygenation of the blood and body or treatments that use oxygen in a therapeutic way. These treatments include Chlorine Dioxide Solution / Miracle Mineral Supplement (CDS / MMS), food grade hydrogen peroxide 3%, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. But the reason why we say that these treatments will work “theoretically” is because the Borrelia bacteria releases an enzyme called superoxide dismutase that can break down the superoxide anion that’s produced naturally by white blood cells in response to infection and that is also released by Chlorine Dioxide Solution / Miracle Mineral Supplement as a powerful, broad-spectrum antibiotic as well as a signaling molecule in cells.
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Under certain conditions the superoxide-anion-antibiotic may be able to kill the Lyme bacteria, particularly if the body has been starved of manganese, the chemical element that Borrelia uses to build superoxide dismutase enzyme that breaks down the superoxide anion. But manganese “starvation” is decidedly not a recommended course of action because it can lead to problems such as bone demineralization or poor growth in children, skin rashes, hair depigmentation, decreases in serum cholesterol, mood problems, and premenstrual pain in women. And basically, the Borrelia bacteria will take in whatever manganese you accidentally consume in your diet.
The same problem exists with using food grade hydrogen peroxide 3% and hyperbaric oxygen therapy against Lyme disease, unfortunately. These Reactive Oxygen Species medicines may work under certain conditions, but the key mediating factor has to do with whether or not the Lyme bacteria are able to produce superoxide dismutase, the enzyme that destroys the superoxide anion and other Reactive Oxygen Species that would be able to kill the pathogen.
Nonetheless, we still talk about the use of Chlorine Dioxide Solution / Miracle Mineral Supplement as a theoretical cure for Lyme disease because if the superoxide dismutase enzyme is able to be deactivated somehow, this medicine as well as food grade hydrogen peroxide would be extremely effective as a treatment.
But don’t lose hope! There are a number of other Lyme disease cures that work through slightly different mechanisms of action against the Borrelia bacteria. Methylene Blue functions as a Reactive Oxygen Species medicine, for example, but it’s mechanism of action and release of Reactive Oxygen Species is slightly different from that of Chlorine Dioxide Solution / Miracle Mineral Supplement.
And medicinal turpentine essential oil, which is derived from the Pinus palustris or Pinus elliottii tree is another important cure for Lyme disease as well as autoimmune diseases. In this article, we discuss the use of tree medicines including Pinus strobus from which Suramin, the autism cure, has been derived as well as the use of Dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), another miraculous tree medicine. Suramin is a component of the Pinus strobus tree and Dr. Metharem Haresh, a collaborating expert at AlivenHealthy.com has used prescription suramin on Long COVID patients as well as on patients with Post-COVID vaccine syndrome, both of which have been compared to autism and autoimmune disease at the cellular level. This is a complex topic and we work with several different models of medicine by zooming in on this cellular response (termed the Cell Danger Response by Dr. Naviaux) or by looking at the macro-response that Dr. Stephen Porges has described as the Parasympathetic “Play-Dead” response to extreme stress (which can be caused by anything from getting divorced to being infected with a pathogen). We like to give people a lot of options to work with in gaining control over autoimmunity or Lyme disease or whatever afflicts them and some people are better able to work with their bodies by thinking about and treating their cells while others would prefer to do cranial bone repositioning exercises to reset their autonomic nervous system. Both methods are viable as alternative methods to treat Lyme disease.
One final important point to keep in mind when treating Lyme disease and other Borrelia infections is that this bacteria can actually change its exposed surface proteins during or after an attack from a person’s immune system, therefore making the bacteria invisible to the immune system in the future. This makes it difficult for a person’s immune system to fight the infection effectively, and ultimately makes it possible for the Borrelia bacteria to hide out in the infected person’s body for years. Despite this it is possible to cure this disease using alternative medicines for Lyme disease.
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Lyme Disease During Pregnancy
Women of child-bearing age who have Lyme disease should be aware that untreated Lyme disease during pregnancy can, in some cases, lead to infection of the placenta and fetus. This is a relatively rare occurrence, but it’s still important to know. Lyme disease can be treated during pregnancy with the right medicines (conventional medicine uses antibiotics, but some of the medicines that we recommend at this site are also safe for use during pregnancy.
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Resources:
• Maderis, Todd (2022). Methylene Blue for Lyme Disease and Bartonella. Retrieved July 15, 2022 from: https://drtoddmaderis.com/methylene-blue-for-lyme-disease-and-bartonella
• Ross, Marty (2021). Herbal & Prescription Lyme Disease Antibiotics. Retrieved July 15, 2022 from: https://www.treatlyme.net/guide/lyme-disease-antibiotic-guide
• Murray, Thomas S., et. al. (2013). Lyme Disease. Retrieved July 15, 2022 from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3652387/#:~:text=The%20differential%20diagnosis%20of%20Lyme,annulare%2C%20ringworm%2C%20and%20cellulitis.
• Parry, M. Nicola (2016). How Lyme Disease Bacteria Migrate Through Blood Vessels. Retrieved July 15, 2022 from: https://www.contagionlive.com/view/how-lyme-disease-bacteria-migrate-through-blood-vessels
• Wikipedia (2022). Lyme Disease Microbiology. Retrieved July 18, 2022 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease_microbiology
• Jie, Z. et al. (2022). Detection strategies for superoxide anion: A review. Retrieved July 22, 2022 from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039914021008134
