Lyme Disease Treatment

One of our specialisations at my clinic and mine as a doctor is diagnosing & treating Lyme Disease naturally. We are one of the leading clinics in treating lyme disease in German, having treated and diagnosed hundreds of patients. But it all started with my son in 2008 who was diagnosed with chronic fatigue and depression by many doctors. I decided to do multiple alternative examinations and diagnostics at my clinic to find the root cause for his problems and we found out he had lyme disease. After this I tested all my patients for lyme disease and was shocked at how many people suffered from it. 

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in Europe and North America. It is caused by four main species of borrelia bacteria. Exactly saying they are spirochete: Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia mayonii cause Lyme disease in the United States, while Borrelia afzelii and Borrelia garinii are the leading causes in Europe and Asia. 

At Praxis Lemm we provide a combination of different treatment methods for lyme disease tailored for our patients individual needs.

Lyme disease causes neurological, neurocognitive and orthopaedic problems like arthritis. They are relatively easily treated but the co-infections which are very often next to borrelia are more difficult to treat. 

 It should be pointed out that the literature published by universities as well as the official statements of the RKI and the guidelines e.g. of the German Society for Neurology are to be regarded as out of date from today’s perspective and thus both the diagnostic and the therapeutic strategies are subject to considerable modifications.

We are using the following tests in Praxis Lemm: different antibodies tests,  ltt borrelien in lymphocyte and dark field microscopy. We combine the tests with medical history and symptoms. In unclear cases, ideally, we use two different types of tests. 

Very often are found  negative results and sometimes  also false positive results.  We like to take different types of tests and if there are two positive results together with symptoms and medical history we make a diagnosis. 

It is necessary to first apply Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA better western  blot ) to Bb IgG and IgM, in case of suspected Lyme disease, based on symptoms and signs of the disease. Determination of rheumatic factor (RF) and VDRL in the blood eliminates the most common false-positive results.

 If the ELISA is positive, confirmation (due to the possibility of false positives) is also required with Western Blot analysis which proves the specificity of the previous finding, which, if not confirmed by this second method, may be incidental (false negative finding). False positive and / or misinterpreted laboratory findings are a common cause of these patients wandering from one doctor to another without adequate help.

Liquid inflammatory syndrome is most commonly present in patients with meningitis and / or encephalitis within the LNB. In LNB, antibodies to Bb in blood and in CSF are required in parallel. Although some groups of authors consider inflammatory syndrome in CSF a mandatory criterion in the diagnosis of LNB, the experience of other authors shows that this is not always mandatory.

Non-specific changes in white mass on magnetic resonance may be found in some patients with brain involvement. These changes in white mass are not specific to LNB and can occur in various diseases and even in healthy ones. The patient should be treated, not the magnet.

Antibodies can be negative for the first 6 weeks. Only spirochete cultures in CSL and PCR can be positive at this stage, which is nowhere near standard procedure, nor reliable enough.

It is always necessary to rule out other causes of current interference, as errors in diagnosis are common. IgM has no diagnostic significance in late LNB and, if isolated, is generally a false positive and is caused by some other disease. IgM class antibodies have been emerging since the third week, and IgG antibodies from the sixth week since the infection of the infected tick.

IgG antibodies most often remain positive for life after successful treatment of Lyme disease. Some people did not even survive the evident Lyme disease, but they still had a positive antibody titer to contact with Bb and this did not require any treatment.

Re-determination of the antibody titre has no clinical significance in the treated. In rare cases, positive and specific IgM antibodies remain paradoxically. IgG and IgM antibodies can persist in the cerebrospinal fluid long after adequate therapy and without any evidence of active neurological disease.

Repeated serological testing is not indicated as it does not show the effectiveness of therapy (persistence of IgM and IgG; changes in titer do not reflect the success of therapy). IgG has been maintained for years and is not a marker of disease activity unless the titer grows again significantly, which will only be done if one has new disorders.

Only about 30% of ticks are infected with Bb and transmit the infection, but the tick needs to remain on the skin for at least 24 hours. That is why it is of great importance that after every stay in nature, even if it is a city park, a thorough examination of the skin should be made for the possible presence of ticks.

The prevention of Lyme disease begins with the control of the transmission-reservoir of Bb infection. The simplest measures are weed pruning, densities, piles of leaves and branches, protecting pets, and combating small rodents.

Personal protection measures are appropriate clothing (long sleeves and socks, hat, etc.) and repellents that repel ticks. A thorough examination of the skin after a stay in nature is mandatory.

Early intensive treatment of EM and “flu like disease” and early LNB is important in preventing the onset of later Lyme disease. Early professional removal of ticks from the skin is very important so as not to “inject” the blood into the blood by inadvertently pressing the body of the tick.

It is necessary to grasp the tick by the rill rather than the body and remove it with a simple bow movement.

The place is wiped with an antiseptic (alcohol, etc.).

Antibiotic therapy is a tool for the etiological (causal) treatment of Lyme disease and LNB. Although in most cases Lyme disease and within it LNB is a good prognosis that goes away spontaneously (without treatment) and without consequences, and especially with the administration of specific antibiotics.

A proper diagnostic procedure should be performed beforehand to prevent long-term therapy with non-LNB diseases. This can lead to unnecessary complications.

In the earlier stages, the efficacy of oral doxycycline 200 milligrams per day for 14 days was demonstrated.

If the conditions for safe LNB are met and therapy is no longer effective after more than 6 months, the condition is called post Lyme syndrome. In this syndrome, antibiotic therapy has no effect.

Doxycycline is contra-indicated in children under 9 years of age.

Mechanisms of the direct action of spirochetes and / or immune-mediated mechanisms and / or action of cytokines and other inflammatory mediators are hypothesized.

Ticks live for several years and go through four stages: eggs, larva, nymph and adult. Larvae, nymphs and adults feed on the blood of animals and humans.

Each stage lasts about one year and the tick is fed at each stage only once, increasing a couple of hundred times. The reservoir of Bb infection are animals, most often small rodents.

The ticks are active from spring, and when vegetation is established, until late fall when the leaves fall. The ticks reside on vegetation: grass, fallen leaves, shrubs, lower trees up to 1.5 meters above the ground. The ticks can remain on the skin for several hours looking for a suitable place to stab the host. When the introduction comes, the host does not feel it because there is a natural anesthetic in saliva ticks.

The tick can thus go unnoticed, suck up blood and leave the host. It then rests until the next season when it moves into the senior stage. Adult ticks lay their eggs, thus ending their life cycle. The following spring, the larvae are laid from the eggs and thus a new cycle is established. The larvae are at least 1 mm in diameter and are rarely spotted. Nymphs are larger and adults are the largest, like pepper grains when they are sucked into the blood.

Lyme neuroborreliosis is a disease of the central (brain and spinal cord) and peripheral nervous system (nerves), accounting for 10-15% of all Lyme disease cases and has potentially the most serious consequences. This patient needs the most support in all directions. Depression almost always emerges from borrelia  and, therefore, requires intensive treatments on all levels. However, one of the most important ones is to increase motivation and will to live. In Praxis Lemm, we seek to give realistic hope that symptoms have a big chance to decrease.

Often misdiagnosis of Lyme disease is based on the wrong criteria and patients receive unnecessarily high doses of antibiotics with potential side effects that are potentially very dangerous.Less common, though, are the inverse errors of not recognizing Lyme disease. Consideration is given to a large number of diseases.These are: painful conditions (spondylosis, discopathies, metastases, herpes radiculitis, gastric ulcer, myocardial infarction, renal and gall bladder calculosis), chronic non-pyogenic infections of the central nervous system (fungal and viral infections, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, and other diseases) polyradiculoneuritis, tick encephalitis, multiple sclerosis, second cause dementia, second cause hypersomnia, stroke, brain tumor and pseudotumor, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, second cause epilepsy, psychiatric diseases, endo myelitis, collagenopathy , chronic fatigue syndrome, vitamin deficiencies and more.Not recognizing these diseases and misdiagnosing them as Lyme Disease can have serious consequences.