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April, 2014- HELLO ALL! I am no longer posting to this blog. For the latest on me and my work, I invite you to subscribe to my NEW blog: www.conniestrasheim.blogspot.com where I share my latest findings on how to heal from chronic illness involving Lyme and other conditions. Thanks!

Greetings and welcome to my Lyme disease blog, a comfy cozy (and sometimes crazy!) place for cutting-edge information, encouragement and insight into the fastest-growing epidemic disease in the United States. In this blog you will find everything from bug-killing strategies to immune system and hormone help, as well as lifestyle and spiritual suggestions for healing from chronic illness involving Lyme disease. The information contained within this blog is based upon my own healing journey and what I have learned over the past eight years as I have been diligently digging and researching my way back to a better state of health. May you find it to be a source of hope, inspiration and wisdom in your own journey towards wellness.

About "Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment"

About the book:

443 Pages - $39.95
Published August, 2009
Written by Connie Strasheim
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Thursday, July 03, 2008

New Conclusions About Lyme Disease...Based On One Amateur's Opinion

Do you ever ask yourself, "Will this Lyme disease journey EVER end?"

I know this blog is supposed to be a site of encouragement and hope but...today I'm going to give you a dose of reality. My dear Lyme friends, I don't think this journey is ever going to be over, for most of us. I mean, I don't think that we will ever get rid of all the bugs, and as long as we have them, we will need to periodically perform Lyme disease treatments.

I don't know why the reality of this hasn't sunk in before; I guess I thought that "remission" from Lyme meant now and forever, and that a fair number of people actually get to that place and stay there.

Silly me.

Being at a Lyme disease conference this past week for the first time in my Lyme life, gave me a spectacular bird's eye view of what this disease is about, and even more, what to expect in the healing process.

Plenty of coffee during the day alternated with benzos at night enabled me to remain just alert enough to receive the volumes of information presented at the conference. But it was only later, as I sat by the hotel pool in a sweltering 110-degree heat, waiting for the sauna-like effect of the sun to spill sweat-induced toxins all over my beach towel, that I really began to digest this information and formulate conclusions about healing, such as the one I mention above.

Since things quickly change in the world of Lyme, bear in mind, the hairball of hypotheses which I am now choking down like a wheezing cat, are subject to revision. I suspect I will have a different opinion a year from now, but for now, at the center of my hypotheses is the belief that we won't ever get rid of all of the infections.
(Unless God decides to work some holy magic in the body, which is entirely possible).

What's more, I think that for most of us, ongoing, open-ended treatment regimens will be necessary in order to maintain the gains we have made.

The bugs just don't go away that easily. They may retreat for awhile, until an antibiotic is removed or a stressful life event occurs, but there will always be a few of 'em, on the ready, for whenever the proliferation ground looks promising again.

The reasons for this are multiple. First, not only are Borrelia and its cronies adept at immune and antibiotic evasion, they are fond of morphing within themselves, and with other infections, too, creating new and improved little cross-breed critters that may require separate treatments. Add to that suspicions that they cloak themselves in protective blankies of biofilm, and getting rid of all the bugs becomes an implausible proposition. Other reasons exist and I will discuss these more in-depth in future blog posts.

Being that the critters have such superb survival mechanisms, my next hypothesis is that the strategies that will work best in the long run, are those found in energy medicine and homeopathy, because these harness the power of the brain and the immune system to recognize and destroy pathogens, and can directly repel ALL pathogens of a particular variety, without leaving any borrelia crumbs behind. That's not to say that energy medicine is currently more efficient than antibiotics or herbs at ridding the body of Lyme disease; indeed, energy medicine is still in its infancy in the western world, and I believe we have a long ways to go before we can fully harness its power, but some applications in the treatment of Lyme disease show great promise. At the same time, antibiotic-like interventions are beneficial for quickly ridding the body of huge layers of bugs, but my experience with those whom I met at the conference--those who have done years and years of antibiotics--is that these drugs don't get all of the critters and wherever antibiotics are used, the immune system also becomes weakened. And nobody can predict exactly how detrimental this will be to a Lyme sufferer, down the road.

I'm sorry for the sobering information, but I wouldn't be doing you any favors if I left you in la la land with false promises of total healing. Of course, people DO attain remission from symptoms--just be prepared for the fact that healing from Lyme disease may be a life-long endeavor, no matter which strategy you use. And there are more reasons for this than simply the presence and intelligence and morph-o-rama tactics of pathogens. Shutting off auto-immune processes induced by Lyme is also difficult, and being exposed to ever-increasing amounts of environmental toxins further complicates healing (But these are topics that I will save for another post).

In the meantime, take my reality with a grain of salt, and press on with the journey. Indeed, like many things in life, healing from Lyme may be more about the journey, not a final destination.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome and very insightful post. This is why from the outset I always gravitated toward treatments that are "sustainable" meaning you can use them for a long time without permanent damage to your wallet, body, or weekly schedule. The expensive, toxic, inconvenient treatments would be worth it if they knocked out the disease forever, but given the "long runway," they just can't be justified.

Bryan Rosner

monkey girl said...

Sometimes I need to remind myself that I "managed" this disease for 8+ years on my own, before any doctor could tell me what it was... Now that we (me and my team of docs) know what the problem is, doesn't mean it's going to magically go away. You have to remind yourself that NO ONE, I mean NO ONE knows your body like you do, always trust your instincts. Every time I ran up against a doctor who didn't want to admit that they had no idea what was wrong w/me, but wanted me to take an anti-depressant, I wanted to scream.
If only it were that easy.

Connie Strasheim said...

Bryan,

Thanks for your insightful comments. What a wise way to look at the issue!

Hi Monkey Girl,

I agree, nobody knows our bodies as well as we do, and our bodies give us much wisdom in healing! I wish you well in your journey. Thanks for stopping by.