"Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment" Provides A Rational Counter-Balance to Anecdotal Stories of Success in Healing

Brainstorming interview questions for the doctors who participated in my new Lyme disease book was an easy process. I just reminded myself of all of the things that I wish I had known about Lyme disease treatment when I first started out on my own healing journey-and then added to that the questions that I still had after four years of researching the disease and for which I hadn't been able to find answers.

There is so much Lyme disease treatment information out there on the Internet, but I felt compelled to write this book to supplement that information, because frankly, I have been getting fed up with anecdotal evidence from other Lyme disease sufferers about what works for healing. Because much of what is on the Internet is subjective.

Don't get me wrong-anecdotal evidence is helpful, but it has led some people with Lyme down less-than-profitable treatment roads.

And while there is no cookbook recipe for treating this disease, the health care professionals that have treated hundreds or thousands of Lyme disease patients know better than any of us lost in Lymeland what treatments tend to work for a majority, and which don't. Or rather, I should say, what combination of treatments work, because rarely is success in treating this thing about just throwing a few antibiotics at the patient.

I know some of you have been jaded by doctors who haven't been able to effectively treat your Lyme disease, but maybe what one doctor could not do for you, another can. Fortunately, this book provides a plethora of treatment approaches that can broaden that pool of options for you.

No doubt about it; this disease is the beast of all beasts in the infectious disease world. As one Lyme-literate doctor once said to me, "This thing is so freakin' serious. You can't treat it half-assed." Her words, along with what I have learned through researching this book, have led me to the conclusion that the treatment approach for Lyme needs to be comprehensive, and it needs to be aggressive. Many of the anecdotal stories of success have been based upon one type of treatment alone, which has led some Lyme disease sufferers into believing that they can be cured by a single remedy or bug-killing approach.

Yes, I have met the occasional soul who has been healed by the salt/C protocol or a year or two of oral antibiotics alone--but more often, I have witnessed people who get stuck or plateau in their healing progress because they aren't paying enough attention to their hormones, or their gut, or the detoxification aspect of healing. Or because they are simply using the wrong bug-killing strategy. Often, one or two herbs, or even a single antibiotic, just doesn't cut it when a person's disease state becomes chronic. A little andrographis here, a little doxycycline there...no my friends, I don't think it's enough. These treatments may beat back your infectious load a little, but these critters are tenacious. Adaptable. Wily. They may even become stronger because of such mild-mannered approaches to treatment. I have witnessed this happen to a good friend of mine, who became sicker because she played the on-again, off-again game with antibiotics, never took more than one remedy at a time, and was unable to address other aspects of her healing.

So part of the reason why I wrote this book was as a rational counter-balance to the anecdotal stories of success that float around on the Internet and in the Lyme disease community. Yes, we need to know about these stories, because they help us to discover potentially effecive treatments. But at the same time, we also need to know whether they represent what works for a majority, because sometimes, the anecdotal stories of success are only that-anecdotal.