[HN Gopher] New studies offer insight into Lyme disease's treatm...
___________________________________________________________________
New studies offer insight into Lyme disease's treatment, lingering
symptoms
Author : gmays
Score : 213 points
Date : 2025-05-06 11:38 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.northwestern.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.northwestern.edu)
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| The studies mentioned (but not linked?):
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&cluster=179...
|
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&cluster=384...
| jadbox wrote:
| This is desperately needed. I have Midwest family who have
| suffered ten years due to persistent lyme disease from having a
| single tick bite.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Same. Family member who lived out around Utah and Colorado. She
| had been racked with pain for something like 15-20 years. She
| was going to doctors constantly, trying to figure out what was
| wrong. She was labeled as a "drug seeker" and got shoved around
| for years as a result.
|
| Later on, she came across a doctor who happened to used to live
| in the North East and recognized it as Lyme disease pretty much
| instantly. She still deals with pain on a constant on-going
| basis, but has been _slightly_ lessened with more targeted
| medications, etc. Hopefully something like this can offer her
| and others like her some sustainable, long-term relief.
| adregan wrote:
| Wasn't there a new Lyme's vaccine in the works due to come out
| soon? Anyone aware of how that's going?
| giantg2 wrote:
| The one I heard about is supposed to be an antibody injection.
| bluGill wrote:
| In clinical trials - the one I was able to find has the first
| report due end of 2026, with the final end of 2027. I assume 6
| months or a year after that to do paperwork before approval so
| I'm guessing late 2028 before we get it (assuming it passes
| trial, which isn't a given)
| colinwilyb wrote:
| Clinical trials still ongoing.
|
| https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
| giantg2 wrote:
| I thought that there are approved human vaccines, but they were
| voluntarily removed due to economic reasons and lack of adoption.
| bluGill wrote:
| There was, withdrawn in 2002. Protection wanes so even if you
| were one of the few who got it then you have no protection
| today. There are a couple new vaccines in the works, one in
| phase 3 testing so hopefully we get something in a few years.
| mplanchard wrote:
| Yeah there's what looks like a solid candidate going through
| a variety of worldwide trials right now.[0]
|
| Very hopeful for a meaningful means of prevention in the
| coming years.
|
| [0]: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-
| deta...
| giantg2 wrote:
| How is this really different from the previous Lymerix?
| Aren't they both 3 shot series and OspA based?
| giantg2 wrote:
| It was withdrawn, but the approval was never revoked.
| bluGill wrote:
| True, and I suppose the patent is expired by now so you
| could in theory start making it. Though the FDA has rules
| about how you can produce such things. Probably better for
| a company to risk/start a new vaccine which they can patent
| and thus get some benefit that way vs one out of patent.
| Also just because you can legally make it doesn't mean it
| is practical. It may require other things that are not
| longer made, or specific equipment that would be expensive
| to recreate. Still this is an opportunity for someone in
| India (where a lot of generic drugs are made already,
| though the country doesn't matter) if they want to.
|
| I don't hike as much in areas where Lyme is common as I
| used to, but I'd still take a vaccine if I could. (I didn't
| know the vaccine existed in 2001 or I would have)
| zzzeek wrote:
| the current FDA has no chance of allowing novel new vaccines
| to move forward
| ixtli wrote:
| iirc the vaccines stopped the tick from successfully
| transferring the bacteria. it didn't make the body able to
| better combat it. (and if you read the article linked it
| explains that its not actually the killing of the spirochete
| that is the problem its the remains of it and how the host body
| responds to those remains.)
| ghaff wrote:
| It's a complicated story. There were (almost certainly
| overstated by some) side effects and it just wasn't a super-
| effective vaccine. Still IMO shouldn't have been take off the
| market. Hopefully one of the vaccines under development pan out
| because Lyme is a real problem in some areas and increasingly
| spreading north.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| There are multiple human vaccines in the works at the moment,
| earliest might be available towards the end of 2027 as long as
| they're not defunded by the current administration
| dev_l1x_be wrote:
| It is kinda funny that humanity can kills entire species like the
| dodo while cannot eradicate a bacterium like Borrelia.
| quesera wrote:
| Big things are easier to eradicate, especially if they are
| slow, unaccustomed to being prey, and nutritious.
|
| Eradicating a bacterium with wild animal reservoir populations
| (deer, white-footed mice, black-legged ticks, all of which are
| endemic species) is ... a _much_ harder problem.
| monster_truck wrote:
| If I could hunt Borrelia with spears it would be over
| voidmain0001 wrote:
| I would like to kill more deer which are part of the Lyme
| cycle. There are so many in the rural area I live, they
| remind of big city rats.
| diamondfist25 wrote:
| Make wolves great again
| rarrrrrr wrote:
| Strangely enough, there's even some likelihood that killing off
| the passenger pigeon actually promoted Borrelia burgdorferi.
| The passenger pigeon's main food source was tree mast. Large
| flocks of pigeons would descend and clear the forest floor of
| food. After it went extinct, the population of small animals
| which also eat tree mast exploded, and these are reservoir
| species for Borrelia.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| A Passenger Pigeon relaunch is planned for 2032:
|
| https://reviverestore.org/projects/about-the-passenger-
| pigeo...
| nkrisc wrote:
| There were far fewer dodos than any given bacteria. You can
| also see a dodo.
| bregma wrote:
| Borellia bergdorfii does not taste like chicken.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Bypassing the clickbait we have this:
|
| _In two new studies led by bacteriologist Brandon L. Jutras,
| Northwestern scientists have identified an antibiotic that cures
| Lyme disease at a fraction of the dosage of the current "gold
| standard" treatment and discovered what may cause a treated
| infection to mimic chronic illness in patients. The studies were
| published in the journal Science Translational Medicine._
| bentt wrote:
| This is amazing and really needed in the northern US and Canada.
| It is also great they speak to the chronic lyme condition because
| many people get accused of it being psychosomatic or even false
| (similar with long Covid). Their theory of it being bacterial
| remnants in the liver is validating.
| ixtli wrote:
| Its sad that we needed to have a partially avoidable mass death
| due to COVID in order for people to start considering these
| chronic conditions more broadly in society. People have been
| having these issues for generations.
| bentt wrote:
| I mean, sure.
|
| But some things are just really complex and the root causes
| are very, very difficult to pin down. There was a lot sad
| about COVID, but like 4000th on the list is how it revealed
| the human dynamics that lead to chronic diseases being
| overlooked because science has no valid explanation for
| what's happening to patients. I say this as someone who
| suffered from Lyme Disease for a number of years.
| agos wrote:
| look at it the other way: we got a couple of unexpected
| silver linings from the COVID hell. one is attention to these
| chronic conditions (finally!)
| bentt wrote:
| Yes! It's vital that we continue to look for opportunities
| in the midst of such a crisis.
| almosthere wrote:
| Now everyone agrees, experts are just normal people that have
| built a bias towards one ideological thing or another.
|
| Long COVID? (looks up "party" stance)... that doesn't exist.
| Eat Apples.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It is also great they speak to the chronic lyme condition
| because many people get accused of it being psychosomatic or
| even false (similar with long Covid).
|
| I have a friend who worked in research for rare, chronic, and
| misunderstood diseases for a few years. Post Treatment Lyme
| Disease Syndrome (PTLDS or just PTLD) is well accept by now.
|
| The problem they encountered was that so many of the people who
| presented with "Chronic Lyme" diagnoses were either self-
| diagnosed from the internet or diagnosed by uninformed primary
| care doctors who used it as a catch-all for symptoms they
| couldn't diagnose. Many had never received positive test
| results, or they had received positive test results from cash-
| pay alternative medicine labs who used their own in-house
| alternate tests.
|
| It was really depressing to hear stories about people who had
| been misled into spending tens or hundreds of thousands of
| dollars on things like year-long courses of expensive, IV
| antibiotics for a condition they most likely did not have. Even
| the idea of a persistent infection hasn't held up to scrutiny.
| The current line of thinking is shown in this article, where
| persistent particles of past infection might cause ongoing
| immune-related symptoms. Those symptoms would not respond to
| the high-dose, long-term antibiotic therapy pushed by the
| alternative medicine Lyme treatment providers, obviously.
|
| So while it's a difficult topic, having some better mechanism
| to separate the verified Lyme cases from the self-diagnosed or
| those wrongly diagnosed is actually very important for
| improving acceptance of the condition. It's tragic that many
| with persistent symptoms of true Lyme infections have been
| dismissed, but it's also tragic that many with non-Lyme
| conditions have been misled into thinking that "Chronic Lyme"
| is the explanation for all of their problems contrary to the
| evidence. Getting the latter group out of the "Chronic Lyme"
| mindset and on to a path where their true underlying condition
| can be addressed, whatever it may be, is a win for them.
| Fomite wrote:
| This. It's been very hard to separate out "Chronic Lyme
| Disease" as an unfalsifiable self-diagnosis from "Lyme
| Disease That Which Has Chronic Sequelae", which is fairly
| well accepted by most infectious disease doctors I know.
| wyager wrote:
| I had an interesting run-in with chronic (-ish) illness. I got
| some random flu-like virus in late 2019 (I don't think it was
| covid, although I was living in HK at the time). Whatever it
| was, it really screwed me up and left me with a bunch of weird
| symptoms (e.g. dizziness/vertigo) that had me pretty
| incapacitated for a few months.
|
| Thankfully the symptoms abated eventually, but doctors couldn't
| really find anything and none of the diagnostic tests turned up
| anything that interesting. Ultimately they thought it was
| probably minor viral encephalitis, but the diagnostics for this
| are quite bad, so no confirmation either way.
|
| You can't really convince doctors that you're not the kind of
| person with a propensity for imagined symptoms (probably a lot
| of hypochondriacs tell them that), so there's not really
| anything you can say to argue when a doctor implies you're just
| imagining things.
|
| That and other experiences made me realize:
|
| A) diagnostic technology is really quite poor (e.g. at the
| time, only one lab (one of the UC schools, I forget which) was
| even theoretically capable of testing for encephalitic viruses
| outside of 2-3 very common ones, and all of the tests had
| ridiculous limitations on e.g. sensitivity window)
|
| B) most doctors really overestimate their own intelligence, and
| they act accordingly
|
| C) you and your friends/family are the only ones who (can
| afford to) actually care about and put serious effort into your
| medical outcomes. If you actually want to get good medical
| results, you basically just have to diagnose yourself and
| convince some doctor to go along with it without triggering
| their sense of superiority
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Earlier release that links the study:
| https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/04/the-antibiotic...
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43863980)
| netaustin wrote:
| I contracted Lyme disease while on vacation in Cape Cod last
| year. The first symptom was left-side facial paralysis, which my
| physician diagnosed as Bell's Palsy, so I spent two weeks on
| steroids before we figured out the real issue. Three weeks of
| doxycycline cured the Lyme but left feeling pretty wrecked for
| more than a month afterwards! I seem to have avoided the chronic
| symptoms some people experience, but a low-dose antibiotic would
| have been great.
| hentrep wrote:
| Disclaimer: Not a doctor.
|
| I think you're alluding to this in your last statement, but
| standard treatment for Lyme can absolutely wreck your natural
| gut microbiome. This could explain some of the lingering
| chronic effects post-treatment. Did you try supplementing with
| fermented foods or probiotics after completing dox?
| netaustin wrote:
| Oh yeah, it just took time. Pill-based probiotics didn't seem
| to work, but food (or time) did after a couple months.
| voidmain0001 wrote:
| I'm on a second round of Doxy. The first was 21 days and now I
| have a 60 day prescription. It doesn't knock me out. I take the
| first dose early in the morning with a lot of water. I don't
| eat until noon, but not before first taking a capsule of
| probiotics to replenish gut bacteria. I take the second Doxy in
| the evening with a meal. Then 3 hours later I take another
| probiotic capsule to restore gut bacteria overnight. Maybe that
| regime is helping or maybe I'm just fortunate.
| ToDougie wrote:
| Which probiotic?
| voidmain0001 wrote:
| Option+ 30B CFU. It was on sale at a pharmacy that was in a
| convenient area. I bought based on it being discounted and
| having average CFU.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Just to be pedantic, Bell's Palsy is the name of the condition
| not the cause. So it was Bell's Palsy caused by Lyme disease.
|
| I have noticed that the line between condition and cause is
| often overlooked, even by doctors. For example this leads to
| people thinking Pinkeye/conjunctivitis is highly contagious,
| when it is still conjunctivitis if it is caused by getting
| something in your eye. I think that holds for everything that
| ends in -itis too Sinusitis, Arthritis, Tendonitis, etc.
|
| I know that is a bit of a tangent, but you reminded me of
| someone who had bell's palsy telling me that it was actually
| shingles. I explained that just because it was caused by
| shingles doesn't mean it stops being Bell's Palsy, just like
| how it is still a cough if it's from the flu or from smoking.
| They ended up getting really angry at me about it, but I think
| hn might appreciate the semantics a bit more.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Do you have trouble reading other people's emotions?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| No, I could clearly tell they were angry. I just never
| understood why some people get angry about minor
| corrections.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Do you?
| brady8 wrote:
| Much of being a physician is pattern recognition - the vast
| majority of Bell's Palsy is idiopathic (generally viral), and
| thus that's how we usually treat it. If we tested everybody
| for everything everytime the health system(s) would collapse.
|
| It definitely helps as a patient to advocate, and add
| anything that a physician like myself maybe wouldn't always
| ask, like if you've been a tick-infested area and/or
| discovered a tick attached to yourself recently.
| netaustin wrote:
| Yeah I agree that's what happened to me. Alas, no tick, no
| rash, and I'm not sure my PCP in New York City sees a ton
| of Lyme. Still, I'm glad he caught it when he did!
| cco wrote:
| > If we tested everybody for everything everytime the
| health system(s) would collapse.
|
| Looks like Labcorp made over 3 billion dollars last year,
| so I think probably that number would go up instead of
| collapsing?
| refurb wrote:
| Labcorp is one of several labs and most hospitals have
| their own labs and only send out specialized tests.
|
| It is true - you can't test every patient for everything.
| There is an estimated 1B primary care visits in the US
| each year. Assume every patient get 5 tests at $50 a test
| and you just spent a quarter of a trillion just on tests.
| fsagx wrote:
| The test itself for lyme must be inexpensive - The vet
| did a test for my dog as part of routine yearly office
| visit. I don't know if it's just in my area, or if it's
| common now.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I don't know why you're being down voted, of course you
| can't test for everything, and you're going to start with
| the most likely causes.
|
| The frustrating part for me is when people think of the
| symptom as the cause. Like they understand that multiple
| things can cause a fever, but they don't understand that
| multiple things can cause bronchitis.
|
| When I was a kid I had "sinusitis" multiple times a year,
| but my doctor never explained to me that it could be the
| same or different causes. When I learned that '-itis' just
| meant inflammation, it blew my mind. I have done my best to
| spread that knowledge ever since.
| netaustin wrote:
| Not a tangent! I certainly appreciate the semantics, and
| there seems to be some academic interest in the semantics
| alone! Some Lyme researchers would like to call it "Lyme
| Disease Facial Palsy" or LDFP to encourage practitioners to
| differentiate early. Not sure that would've helped me, I had
| no bullseye rash and no fever, just horrible fatigue and
| facial paralysis. The idea would be to encourage
| practitioners in Lyme-prone locations to see Bell's, test for
| Lyme, which I think your point about overlooking the link
| between condition and the cause supports. Lyme showed up on a
| blood test my PCP ordered only after I completed a course of
| prednisone with no improvement and much misery. He didn't
| even tell me he added a Lyme test, but I'm glad he did!
|
| Here's one paper on the topic I remember reading at the time:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8791801/
| mikepurvis wrote:
| My kid contracted it from a tick bite while camping in Ontario;
| it showed as joint pain in the legs that would come and go for
| like a week at a time. Made it tough to explain to the doctors
| as by the time we'd get there, he'd be fine again.
|
| In the end it was four weeks of doxycycline-- that was several
| months ago and it doesn't seem to have recurred, thankfully.
| serial_dev wrote:
| A couple of years ago I had about 10 tick bites and one of them
| resulted in the signature bull's-eye rash. Thankfully, I was
| aware of the ticks and I was checking for the bull's-eye rash
| to appear and it got treated with doxycycline.
|
| Many people face symptoms months after the bite or they might
| not remember getting bitten by a tick so it's common that it is
| misdiagnosed and they get all kinds of ineffective and / or
| unnecessary meds, so I added it to my "list of illnesses to
| check" in case I ever get unexplainable neurological issues,
| fatigue and joint problems.
| tasuki wrote:
| > was checking for the bull's-eye rash to appear
|
| Note that the absence of that wouldn't mean you didn't get
| lyme disease.
|
| Where I live, most of the ticks carry lyme disease, yet not
| that many people get infected: if you pull it out quickly,
| you greatly reduce the chance of getting infected. Of the
| people I know, perhaps 20% had lyme disease (and knew about
| it, I must add).
| hattmall wrote:
| 1 in 5 people had Lyme disease where you live? Where is
| that??
| tasuki wrote:
| Central Europe. Maybe 1 in 10. I know at least 10 people
| who did, anyway. And I have not talked about this with
| all the people I know.
|
| Some have no lingering issues, others have lingering
| issues seemingly for life, and yet others have issues for
| a couple of years and then they're ok.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Doxycycline is my favorite antibiotic and the most effective
| against chronic sinusitis and chronic prostatitis for me. I
| only take it maybe once a year, but it does wonders for a good
| long time.
|
| It also cured my nearly lifelong IBS-D about a decade ago. I
| had a small re-occurrence of IBS-D last year after so many
| years without it. I was able to convince the doc that it fixed
| it for me in the past, so he prescribed me doxycycline again.
| Boom! All fixed just like before.
|
| I have no idea why that particular antibiotic does the trick,
| but I've taken so many others from amoxicillin line, bactrim,
| even cipro, flagyl (gross) etc. and only doxy is the silver
| bullet for me it seems.
| Klonoar wrote:
| That's wild that it had that effect for you with any form of
| IBS. I know two people with Crohns where it set off and
| irritated their systemd for months.
| speed_spread wrote:
| > irritated their systemd
|
| Ouch
| Klonoar wrote:
| Ha! I blame autocorrect, but I'm keeping it.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| That's gotta hurt.
|
| Then again if it irritates you, maybe it deserves a
| little disruption itself.
| e40 wrote:
| I had a co-worker that had a Bell's Palsy diagnosis and it
| turned out to be Lyme disease. Don't know which antibiotic they
| took, but he did get clear of it in a few months.
| binary132 wrote:
| And here I thought "long Lyme" had been proven fake.
| gavin-1 wrote:
| "long Lyme" isn't well defined, but you're probably thinking of
| chronic lyme [1]. This article refers to PTLD.
|
| The distinction matters. Chronic lyme is quackery that
| encourages people to pursue aggressive long-term antibiotic
| treatment for a non-existent persistent bacterial infection.
| Often these are people who have never been infected with
| Borrelia in the first place.
|
| The article directly contradicts the persistent (undetectable)
| bacterial infection "chronic lyme" theory.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_Lyme_disease
| voidmain0001 wrote:
| Agreed. Long Lyme certainly exists. I appear to have it as do
| numerous acquaintances. I wrote "appear to have it" because a
| blood test for Borrelia returns negative. However, just two
| weeks ago a doctor told me that Borrelia can evade a blood
| test by infecting the nervous system. That was news to me so
| I found this from NIH in the USA.
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8870494/ Borrelia
| can cross over to the CNS. Lovely.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| What symptoms? How can you say your symptoms are from long
| Lyme, and not something else, or just getting old?
| voidmain0001 wrote:
| My symptoms are spot on with Acrodermatitis chronica
| atrophicans.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrodermatitis_chronica_atr
| oph... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK563289/
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I wrote "appear to have it" because a blood test for
| Borrelia returns negative. However, just two weeks ago a
| doctor told me that Borrelia can evade a blood test by
| infecting the nervous system.
|
| The theory of persistent infection hasn't really held up.
| There were a few researchers who claimed to have some
| evidence, but it hasn't really been replicated. It's
| largely been dismissed from mainstream research.
|
| Sadly, it's still a favored theory in many alternative
| medicine communities. It's also a really contentious topic.
| There's a long history, including Lyme researchers leaving
| the field after receiving death threats following
| publication of research that didn't agree with the
| alternative medicine theories.
|
| > That was news to me so I found this from NIH in the USA.
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8870494/ Borrelia
| can cross over to the CNS. Lovely.
|
| To be clear, that article is about CNS penetration of the
| infection, not _persistence_ of the infection.
| voidmain0001 wrote:
| Is there a reason you refer to alternative medical
| communities in response to my comment? Considering I made
| no reference to using alternative medicine, what does it
| have to do with my comment? Do you have an agenda? I know
| that I don't have one and neither did my comment.
| diamondfist25 wrote:
| This is the bias that people have
|
| They only trust the small sample of evidence that science
| provides, and dismisses the vastly unknown space that
| their science cannot comprehend
| seattle_spring wrote:
| "Science" is simply a structured methodology that uses
| tangible evidence to substantiate hypothesis. How exactly
| would that framework be unable to "comprehend" something
| like Lyme?
|
| This quote seems apt here: "You know what they call
| alternative medicine that's been proved to work? -
| Medicine."
| loeg wrote:
| > Northwestern scientists identified that piperacillin, an
| antibiotic in the same class as penicillin, effectively cured
| mice of Lyme disease at 100-times less than the effective dose of
| doxycycline.
|
| Would be nice if it translates to humans.
|
| > The authors argue that piperacillin, which has already been
| FDA-approved as a safe treatment for pneumonia, could also be a
| candidate for preemptive interventions for those potentially
| exposed to Lyme (with a known deer tick bite).
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| As someone allergic to doxycycline (was given it as a kid, had
| a huge rash all over my body), that sounds helpful if I ever
| need it.
| elric wrote:
| Not allergic myself, but tetracyclines basically turn me into
| a vampire, the slighest bit of sun exposure burns me to a
| crisp. Very unpleasant.
| dcchambers wrote:
| This is fantastic news. I live in Wisconsin - a tick and Lyme
| Disease hot spot. Ticks are one of the few bugs that really freak
| me out due to Lyme Disease, especially for my kids who spend a
| lot of time out playing in the grass.
|
| Any news on the development of the fight against Lyme Disease is
| great news.
|
| One key thing I've learned is that ticks are very unlikely to
| spread disease-causing bacteria within the first few hours of
| biting. So just do regular checks whenever you've been outside in
| tick-prone areas and get them off right away if found. If removed
| promptly the chance of infection is basically zero.
| charlangas wrote:
| Both of my sisters (currently mid-30s) have had their lives on
| pause for over 10 years due to chronic Lyme disease because
| doctors in Mexico hadn't ever even heard of it. It took 4 years
| of pain for the first of them to be diagnosed. Not sure when, if
| ever, they'll be cured because when you don't treat Lyme disease
| within a few months of infection, it digs in and is incredibly
| difficult to kill.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Not sure when, if ever, they'll be cured because when you
| don't treat Lyme disease within a few months of infection, it
| digs in and is incredibly difficult to kill
|
| FYI, the idea that active infection continues to exist in
| hiding within the body is a fringe theory.
|
| The linked article talks about one of the current theories for
| why some patients have persistent symptoms after the infection
| is treated. The theory involves certain components of the past
| infection lodging themselves in the liver where they persist
| and can cause symptoms.
|
| This is a difficult topic because some alternative Lyme
| treatment providers will tell patients they have a persistent
| infection and then subject them to years of high-dose
| antibiotics with no scientific basis, which can create a
| separate set of problems without addressing anything.
| thedougd wrote:
| Yes, and they use non-specific testing that will produce a
| positive result in most people.
|
| There's a massive scam industry around Lyme and it's a shame
| because it interferes with legitimate suffers' ability to get
| honest treatment. Or worse, sends those who don't have Lyme
| down a rabbit hole where their actual condition is never
| treated.
| elric wrote:
| > This is a difficult topic because some alternative Lyme
| treatment providers will tell patients they have a persistent
| infection and then subject them to years of high-dose
| antibiotics with no scientific basis, which can create a
| separate set of problems without addressing anything.
|
| I know someone who has been suffering from what they call
| "chronic lyme" for years. These people are painfully well
| aware of the unlikeliness of antibiotics fixing them, and
| they're very much aware of the problems being caused by
| antibiotics. But the alternative ("doing nothing") isn't
| helping them either, so they cling to the hope that the
| antibiotics will do "something".
|
| It doesn't help that they're stigmatised. They're "lazy".
| They're "faking it". It isn't a "real disease". None of that
| helps them. Maybe the antibiotics don't help them either, but
| at least they have a chance of doing something.
| pembrook wrote:
| Sorry to be so blunt, but it's extremely unlikely both your
| sisters would have a rare chronic condition related to Lyme
| that wouldn't respond to the standard course of antibiotics.
| The hysteria around Lyme on the internet is ridiculous.
|
| Unfortunately nobody wants to say it to your face, but among
| females, you can never rule out social contagion when
| confronted with extremely coincidental outcomes like this.
|
| Or, it could be a genetic condition they both have being
| misdiagnosed as chronic Lyme via internet research.
| e40 wrote:
| I read an account here years ago of someone that tried
| everything and as a last resort did a 2-3 week fast under
| doctors supervision and it cured it. I always thought I would
| try this if I got LD.
| formerphotoj wrote:
| For more info on Lyme and related difficult to identify diseases,
| NYT columnist Ross Douhat wrote a book about his experience w/
| Lyme and his ongoing adaptations. It's called...
|
| The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| On a related note, the Trump administration frozen more than $790
| million in federal funding for NU because of "ongoing federal
| antisemitism investigations":
| https://dailynorthwestern.com/2025/05/05/lateststories/by-th...
| boplicity wrote:
| This is what the "fight" with "elite" universities is _really_
| about: No longer funding research.
|
| That's the most important aspect of this thing. Every other
| aspect of this is a sideshow to the main event. And the main
| event very much is the de-funding of scientific research.
|
| No longer funding this research is a _huge_ change. And one
| that will eventually have far-reaching consequences for
| _everyone._
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| I think it is even broader than that. It is removing any
| potential opposition. That opposition is independent
| institutions, such as universities, but also the truth
| itself. If there's no one to research things, then how will
| you know if something is "true" or not? If there's no one to
| communicate those findings, how will anyone find out? Etc.
| ToDougie wrote:
| Independent institutions is an oxymoron.
| e40 wrote:
| Independent from POTUS is what was meant.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > This is what the "fight" with "elite" universities is
| really about: No longer funding research.
|
| No, sorry, the fight with the universities is quite clearly
| to crush criticism of Israel and all forms of identity
| politics. The stops in funding for research are a means to
| achieve this plainly declared objective.
| roody15 wrote:
| My mother got a tick bite and felt off and the doctor told her
| she had allergies and sinus infection due to high pollen. Luckily
| my younger brother is a physician and told her to go back and ask
| for a Lyme disease test. They said okay but said Lyme disease is
| really rare and wasn't necessary. Long story short she was
| positive but was caught early enough that 30 days Doxy was all
| she needed.
|
| That same year I was bitten and had a super itchy spot near my
| private regions. It was crazy itch and made a bullseye rash. I
| went to a clinic and they said they had never seen the bullseye
| rash and it was textbook Lyme disease (or one other common tick
| disease). Same was treated with Doxy and was fine. It's an
| strange disease because if caught early super cheap antibiotics
| work well... but if has spread through your body it can take
| years to recover and be quite serious!
| The5thElephant wrote:
| Why have I heard so many stories of doctors not wanting to
| diagnose something as Lyme disease?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I literally used to get laughed out of the clinic, told I was
| a healthy young male and just needed to exercise more. After
| a decade of this, I was finally diagnosed with gout,
| something doctors had just been lying about testing for. No
| one could believe someone could have gout in their 20s (It's
| been developing since my late teens and I've generally had
| arthritis my entire life, since I was a child).
|
| It took a _physician 's assistant_, who happened to see me
| one day when _both_ of my doctors were on their third
| extended vacation of the quarter, to hear my plight, take my
| suggestion of gout seriously, and do the leg work, also
| revealing to me that "full test panels" don't include uric
| acid by default and that my doctors had been lying to me
| about their thoroughness.
|
| The assistant was also massively more knowledgeable about the
| disease, its history, the history of treatment, etc., and
| disease in general, than either of the two doctors running
| the clinic. Really opened my eyes.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| Funny enough I also got diagnosed with gout once in my 20s.
| I have always had somewhat bad toes/bunions (probably
| partially genetic, and partially wearing only tight soccer
| shoes as a kid) and I went to a wedding wearing some new
| leather shoes that I hadn't broken in yet. The next day I
| woke up with a fever and horrific pain in the sides of my
| toes. Went to doctor and they did some tests and were also
| seemingly surprised at the results indicating gout. They
| asked me to come back in a week to double check, and by
| then my symptoms were gone and the tests no longer
| indicated gout.
|
| Our bodies are such strange mechanisms.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| > They asked me to come back in a week to double check,
| and by then my symptoms were gone and the tests no longer
| indicated gout.
|
| Ha. Do you still have symptoms? If not, yea just a bad
| initial diagnosis. If you do still have symptoms
| sometimes though, it should be noted that gout is hard to
| test for when you're actively experiencing aggravated
| symptoms, as the uric acid crystals are lodged into your
| tissue and not freely available in the blood stream /
| urine. This exacerbated everything quite a lot, as when I
| was much younger I definitely got uric acid tests done
| when my symptoms were at their worst.
| anitil wrote:
| I have seen young men get diagnosed with gout, but they
| were Islanders (Samoans and Maori in my case), who I
| believe are at a higher risk so doctors are more aware of
| it
| AdamN wrote:
| This is why, although I know there will be problems with
| it, we should get AI and blood tests more accessible for
| individuals. Accessing the healthcare system for "I know
| I'm not 100% but ... I don't have anything specific wrong
| like a broken bone" is basically a crapshoot - and a
| totally stupid one.
| jerlam wrote:
| I wonder if the medical textbooks only mention gout as a
| historical curiosity and not as a modern day disease. I
| have an older relative with gout, have met someone in their
| 30s with gout, and yesterday heard a story about an
| acquaintance with gout, so it's not that rare anymore.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I think it's just typically seen in older men. In fact,
| only something like 5% of gout sufferers are women. But a
| 2023 study says [0]:
|
| > The global gout prevalent cases in individuals aged
| 15-39 years was 5.21 million in 2019, with the annual
| incidence substantially increasing from 38.71 to 45.94
| per 100 000 population during 1990-2019
|
| So while marginal, it is either getting more prevalent
| for younger men over the last 30 years, or we are getting
| better at catching it.
|
| What's interesting is all of the older men I've met with
| gout describe moderately uncomfortable pains, I was
| surprised to learn that my case is exceptionally intense,
| debilitating enough to be a physical handicap at times
| (along with sciatica, fused discs, flat feet, some other
| little things and possible fibromyalgia) which has
| plagued my life since I was in my teens.
|
| It's been a horrendous disease that has greatly impacted
| my ability to be as active as I'd like, and sometimes
| during a flare-up it's extremely difficult just to walk
| to my bathroom. Flare ups sometimes happen constantly and
| sometimes I get a month or two of reduced symptoms.
|
| Another thing is that I don't eat meat, and I rarely
| drink, which are the two biggest aggravators of symptoms.
| When the doc told me I needed to cut those things out I
| laughed, and they said they were very surprised that my
| symptoms were so bad given that I already avoid the most
| offensive foods.
|
| I'm also currently trying to pin down another autoimmune
| disease. From what I know, I don't speak to him, but my
| father has been in and out of the hospital his whole life
| and it took decades to pin it down as lupus. I am
| wondering if he lacked the butterfly rash because I don't
| have one, but otherwise have basically every symptom of
| lupus, but it also could be fibromyalgia or even MS.
| Combined with the gout though, I feel 40 years older than
| I am, almost every little tissue and bone and muscle
| hurts from head to toe (literally toe, gout keeps one of
| my toes at a constant level of pain).
|
| [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10152042/
| dessimus wrote:
| Lyme Disease : PCPs :: Lupus : Dr. House?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Doctors are trained to be arrogant, dismissive of unknown
| unknowns, and with a terrible understanding of statistics.
|
| Add to that: - They have a lot of patients
| and not enough sleep. - They need to pay back a huge
| student loan. - They hold terrible responsibilities
| and risk being sued. - They don't have much time for
| themselves, let alone update their knowledge. - Most
| patients are overreacting idiots, so it's a winning strategy
| to ignore what they tell you most of the time. - They
| are not trained nor selected for empathy or open-mindedness.
|
| And you get so many medical errors.
|
| Basically, you have to double-check everything they do, and
| endure their cynical rebuttal when you make suggestions, ask
| questions or try things they didn't request.
|
| I had to face many such errors myself, two almost lethal.
|
| When you can, shop for one that is both good and is open to
| discussion. But even then, there is a limit. At some point,
| your doctor WILL fail you, so you have to take
| responsibility, usually when you're weak and at a low point
| in your life.
|
| And if you are wrong, people will tell you you should have
| listened to your doctor, but if the doctor is wrong, well,
| shit happens.
|
| One of my practitioners is a friend of 15 years, I literally
| lived with him, he is considered top in his specialty. I'm
| surrounded by people working at the hospital.
|
| He saved my life once.
|
| Even that is not enough. I still have to double check stuff
| every time.
| caycep wrote:
| I would say, it depends. I also have a lot of colleagues
| who overtest out of paranoia and risk avoidance.
| newyankee wrote:
| Makes you question, how bad could an all encompassing AI be
| at diagnosing given enough multimodal data
| adventured wrote:
| One can debate its merit right now, the upside / downside
| equation. In 10-20 years? Game over. Doctors will largely
| be the physical space touch point. AI will in effect use
| meatbags to interact with the patients.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I think I'm feeling the effects of Gell-Mann amnesia
| here. The same is said about software engineers, but I'm
| not as confident as you that there won't be a need for
| the profession in 10-20 years.
| Retric wrote:
| I suspect AI chosen by an organization trying to maximize
| profits could be _really_ bad.
|
| This is an industry that places people's lives as vastly
| less important than minor scheduling issues as someone
| working 12+ hours is seen as perfectly normal.
| mec31 wrote:
| Another perspective on the underlying issue--do you
| suppose that MDs will be more easily replaceable with AI
| than nurses will be?
| dev1ycan wrote:
| "Doctors are trained to be arrogant"
|
| Says the programmer who is giving an opinion on a field
| that is not his...
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I'm not trained to be arrogant, I'm born that way.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| It's purely anecdotal but does have some provenance going
| back at least to the 19th century, with one of the early
| liver specialists.
|
| He was reportedly at a cocktail party one evening when a
| messenger burst in and informed the esteemed doctor that
| one of his patients appeared to be dying from a heart
| attack.
|
| "My good man," he replied, "that can't possibly be true.
| When I treat a patient for liver disease he _dies_ of
| liver disease. "
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| > At some point, your doctor WILL fail you, so you have to
| take responsibility, usually when you're weak and at a low
| point in your life.
|
| The two times I've been hospitalized in my adult life, I've
| been incredibly thankful for my parents stepping in to act
| as my patient advocates, including pushing back on doctors
| when necessary. (The first hospitalization was guilliane-
| barre and the other a rare hemotological condition, so i
| wasn't in a great place in either scenario to advocate for
| myself).
|
| A pediatrician in my family has said that patients get
| significantly better outcomes when they have a patient
| advocate, because even if they are directly related to you
| (i.e. parents or sibling), they are going to be far better
| at being objective on the situation than you, the person
| being affected by it, is
| refurb wrote:
| It makes more sense when you realize most of the time it's
| not <disease>. Doctors see thousands of patients per year
| and 99% of them have common conditions with straightforward
| diagnosis.
|
| Add on top vague symptoms that can't actually be measured
| and are subjective and you end up with challenging
| diagnoses.
|
| I do agree that patients should educate themselves and
| advocate for themselves. Doctors aren't perfect and they
| don't know everything.
|
| But it helps to have some perspective of what doctors deal
| with on a day to day basis.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" Basically, you have to double-check everything they do,
| and endure their cynical rebuttal when you make
| suggestions, ask questions or try things they didn't
| request."_
|
| I had frequent headaches and the student health service
| referred me to a well-known and very respected hospital for
| tests as an outpatient. The doctor to whom I was referred
| was a well-known neurologist with papers to his name--
| probably the most eminent neurologist in the country at the
| time (even now, some decades after his death, his name
| appears on Wiki as someone of eminence).
|
| He then sent me for a series of tests at the hospital and
| they extended over a number of days although not
| consecutive (which was inconvenient). Those tests were
| rather exhaustive and included amongst others neurological
| tests, brain x-rays, electroencephalographs and testing my
| eyes including injecting fluorescein into my veins to
| improve the contrast of the photos they took of my
| eyes/retina--afterwards I was pissing out that brilliant
| florescent yellow dye for the better part of a day.
|
| Keep in mind that those tests involved other doctors and
| clinicians who would have examined the neurologists report,
| so decisions weren't taken in isolation.
|
| After all that and multiple visits to the hospital he said
| that they could find nothing wrong with me and suggested
| that I be admitted for at least three days for further
| tests! I declined as I was about to have uni exams and
| never did return to be admitted.
|
| Several months later I visited a local GP practitioner
| because I'd had a bad dose of the flu and after he'd dealt
| with that I mentioned my ordeal at the hospital.
|
| He was palpably furious and mumbled quietly under his
| breath which was just audible enough for me to hear
| "fucking idiots". Within a split second he went on to say
| "presumably during all this testing no one actually
| suggested that you might have migraine?" to which I replied
| "no". That made him even more annoyed.
|
| He then prescribed a common Parke Davis formulation called
| Ergodryl, which, back then, was a common go-to drug for
| migraine, it's a formulation of egotamine tartrate,
| caffeine and diphenhydramine (a well-known antihistamine).
|
| Problem solved, that drug completely killed my headaches.
| I've never forgotten that incident and although I've
| experienced similar inept performances I've never
| experienced one on that scale again. Ever since I've never
| fully trusted a medical diagnosis unless confirmed by
| second options and backed up with tests. It pays to be not
| only cautions but also to do one's own independent
| investigations.
|
| From my experience, not all doctors are mediocre to the
| extent that I'd wished I'd seen another, some I've visited
| are quite exceptional and have an innate ability to cut to
| the core of a problem immediately, or at least start
| investigations on the right footing. Unfortunately, from my
| experience, they seem few and far between in numbers.
|
| I was once introduced to a state director of health (the
| State's top medical officer) through a common interest
| outside of medicine and I got to know him relatively well.
| Some time later I mentioned that incident and he said to me
| without hesitation that he would not trust 90% of his
| profession to make a competent diagnosis, and he went on to
| say that if I were ever to be stricken by some dangerous
| life-threatening disease that I was to give him a call and
| he'd provide me with a short list of the competent ones who
| he'd trust--one's that he would go to if he became sick.
| Fortunately, to date I've never had need to take up his
| offer.
|
| Frankly, for the lay person this has to be a significant
| worry. How on earth does one know who is competent and who
| is not, especially if it's at short notice?
| wyager wrote:
| The majority of doctors I've interacted with, with a low-
| single-digit number of notable exceptions, seemed to estimate
| their own intelligence at about 1 or 2 stddev higher than it
| actually was. Combine this with (I imagine) a large number of
| legitimately stupid and/or hypochondriac patients, and you
| have a recipe for really shitty diagnostics.
| fma wrote:
| American doctors are also reluctant to do rabies shot. Yeah
| they are expensive, the risk is low and there are ways to
| rule it out, but I'd rather not die. Other countries can get
| them anywhere for cheap. Here...thousands of dollars in the
| ER. One reason could be its just not administered enough. The
| other is, for profit American medical system because no one
| wants to die.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" Other countries can get them anywhere for cheap."_
|
| Those of us outside the US understand the US health care
| system is more profit orientated than many other countries
| but we cannot understand the huge price differentials,
| they're often huge in comparison with many others. Surely
| figures that high are nothing other than price-gouging.
| (Even if demand is low and the stuff has to be imported the
| additional costs can't be that costly. Surely not?)
|
| So why doesn't consumer and or monopoly law kick in to stop
| it (as it does in many other places)?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Certain things are way under-diagnosed, especially anything
| relating to a chronic condition that does not have an easy
| biomarker. Doctors get cynical about their patients.
|
| A particularly nasty one is endometriosis.
| treis wrote:
| Chronic Lyme Disease is a popular choice for hypochondriacs
| (or maybe they're actually right, who knows?) so it gets
| raised eyebrows when people think they have it.
| jtbayly wrote:
| My wife got a tick bite in Indiana. Went to Wisconsin shortly
| after, and developed bullseye rash. Went to clinic and they
| told her she couldn't get Lyme's in Indiana. She insisted on a
| test. Positive. Doxy cleared it.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| always have to argue with a doctor to get a lyme test. i'm like
| come on please i spend a lot of time in the woods idgaf what
| you think i'm paying for it
| n8henrie wrote:
| Why don't you order one through labcorp in that case? Can't
| one just order and pay for bloodwork directly through a lab
| without a physician visit?
|
| I am a physician in the US and have done this before (prior
| to medical school), so I had always thought it was (still)
| possible.
| jerlam wrote:
| Labcorp doesn't appear to have a lyme test easily available
| to the public, but Quest does:
|
| https://www.questhealth.com/product/lyme-disease-test-
| with-c...
| greenie_beans wrote:
| have no idea, never heard of that. i'm an idiot when it
| comes to my health care. i've only ever been to the doctor
| when i have a problem. have been in and out of health
| insurance so to me going to the doctor is an extremely
| expensive thing to avoid. especially when doctors are
| dismissive about whatever issue i come with. i've never
| been for preventative care, don't even know what i would
| say when they ask what i'm there for.
| jpadkins wrote:
| Good time to remind people that right next to the town of Lyme CT
| is Plum Island Animal Disease Center, who happened to be
| researching tick based disease transmission when Lyme disease was
| first discovered (named after the town that had the first case).
| Crazy coincidence.
|
| https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2019/07/did-us-invent-lym...
| goda90 wrote:
| Evidence of bacterium that causes Lyme disease was also found
| in the 5000+ year old "Iceman" mummy found in the alps. People
| have described the disease in the 1700s, 1800s and in the 1900s
| prior to the outbreak in Lyme. Ticks preserved alongside their
| animal hosts in 1800s biologic samples also are found to have
| it. Genetic sequencing of different bacteria samples suggests a
| much older evolutionary tree than a few decades existence.
| jpadkins wrote:
| Bioweapon researchers use existing bacteria and virus to
| enhance them for weapon usage (I.e. coronavius gain of
| function research). So the fact that the bacterium previously
| existed in nature does not disprove that a version engineered
| to be spread via ticks was released.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Not really. Isn't the best place to open a center that
| "researches tick based disease transmission" somewhere that's
| close proximity to a hot-spot for ticks that transmit diseases?
| diamondfist25 wrote:
| Hmm reminds me of the lab in Wuhan's that's doing weapons
| level bio research, and yet the virus came from a wet market
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Yes, very similar situation. Opening a Coronavirus research
| lab next to an area historically active for natural virus
| harbors and transmission makes perfect sense. However, that
| situation also empowered the uninformed to come out of the
| woodwork and repeat the nonsense they heard from people
| like Bret Weinstein, using the correlation with a perfectly
| reasonable explanation as some kind of "gotcha".
| boplicity wrote:
| How strange that scientific research just like this has become
| extremely political.
|
| Case in point: The Trump administration has cut Northwestern off
| from over a quarter billion dollars in funding because of "anti-
| semitism." Note, that the vast majority of this money is for
| research just like the one linked in this article.
|
| Of course, people seem to be arguing about anti-semitism more
| than cutting off funding for research. But make no mistake:
| cutting off research funding is _exactly_ what is happening. And
| that has practically _nothing_ to do with antisemitism.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I was listening to an interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky the
| writer and his theory was conservatives have a love/hate
| relationship with sciences (and arts and academia).
| Paraphrasing from memory - if some thing or someone reinforces
| their belief system they love it, and they despise it when it
| contradicts them, this effort against science is to get a
| reality (scientific results) to agree with their preconceived
| notions. The bonus is suffocating dissent of any kind against
| those in power. The context was this was about his book about
| exobiology and authoritarian governments, Alien Clay.
|
| Anti-semitism is just the convenient cover, likewise pro
| Palestinian protesters are judged to be interfering with USA
| international relations (wrt Israel) by the Secretary of State
| under one clause of Immigration and Nationality Act that they
| use to justify legal immigrants to be kidnapped and deported.
| Quinner wrote:
| Yet the people that were apoplectic about Facebook voluntarily
| working with the government to combat covid misinformation are
| mysteriously silent.
| throw310822 wrote:
| The government is cutting funding to universities to crush
| opposition to Israel, which they call derogatorily
| "antisemitism". It is plainly stated. The objective is
| shielding from criticism a foreign country. Damn deal with it
| instead of second and third guessing the motives of the
| government.
| whyenot wrote:
| Lyme disease does exist on the west coast, including in the Bay
| Area. A friend in Los Altos got Lyme disease from a tick in her
| yard. This is the worst time of year for ticks in the Bay Area.
| I've picked off over 100 ticks while doing field work in Henry
| Coe State Park. The one advantage we have on the west coast is
| that our ticks are larger and you usually notice when one starts
| crawling on your skin and especially when one bites you.
| ToDougie wrote:
| A friend from Sacramento visited me in SoCal and brought his
| dog along. We hung out for a few days, and eventually I found a
| bullseye rash on my leg but no tick anywhere on my body. I went
| to urgent care and they recommended I see an infectious disease
| specialist, pronto -- and to start doxy that evening. My
| bloodwork came back with too few markers for them to call it a
| case of Lyme disease, but the specialist felt strongly that we
| made the right decision to use the antibiotics.
|
| Everyone always told me there is no Lyme disease in NorCal.
| Reading your comment helped me feel vindicated.
| heelix wrote:
| Our kid got bit by a tick. Was lucky enough that it had the bulls
| eye pattern and was able to look it up. She got a crazy high
| temperature. Was crazy. A strong antibiotic cleared it up.
|
| I really wish there still was a vaccine available (for humans). I
| treat my pant legs and jacket sleeves with permethrin, which
| slowly kills the ticks - but does so usually before they would
| attempt to bite. One of the better camping tricks that I've
| applied to everyday life.
| Loughla wrote:
| Duct tape inside out at the top of your socks under your pants
| does wonders as well. We couldn't find permethrin during COVID,
| so we did that. It worked mostly. The big bastards didn't get
| stuck, but they're easy to see. It was the little deer and seed
| ticks that got stuck. So that's a win.
| chasil wrote:
| "...doxycycline (and other generic antibiotics) wreak havoc on
| the microbiome, killing beneficial bacteria in the gut and
| causing troubling side effects..."
|
| Doxycycline is used as prophylaxis for a wide variety of
| pathogens; either the risk is tolerable with them, or the alarm
| is needlessly elevated.
|
| https://www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk/advice/malaria/doxycycline
| Loughla wrote:
| Troubling side effects, from my experience being treated for
| Lyme with doxy is diarrhea for a while.
|
| I'll fucking take that all day long to get rid of Lyme. It
| sucks out loud. Every one of my joints was killing me. Even the
| useless little joints in my pinky toe.
| fdudjnr wrote:
| I had a tick bite years about with bullseye and didn't get
| treated. I've had Lyme disease-related symptoms ever since, but
| and assume from what I've read it's too late to do anything about
| it. Would this treatment still help or am I still fucked?
| e40 wrote:
| It is purely anecdotal but I read a post here years ago about
| someone that had a 10 year battle with Lyme disease, had gone
| through rounds of antibiotics and it always came back. He
| finally heard that maybe long fasts (2 weeks) might help, tried
| it and his symptoms went away. Just mentioning it because it
| seems relevant. I always thought should it happen to me, I
| would give a 2 week fast a try, under a doctor's supervision.
| stinos wrote:
| _The authors argue that piperacillin, which has already been FDA-
| approved as a safe treatment for pneumonia, could also be a
| candidate for preemptive interventions for those potentially
| exposed to Lyme (with a known deer tick bite)._
|
| This strikes me as somehwat odd: as far as I'm aware there are
| worldwide issues with overuse of anitbiotics leading to various
| bacteria becoming resistent (and a quick serach seems to indicate
| this is also the case for piperacillin), but here they're saying
| that it would be ok for a probabaly large amount of people (as
| in: millions annualy?) to get antibiotics preemptively? Or is the
| reasoning that the does is low enough that it's fine?
|
| I mean, it's not uncommon for me and people I know to get a bite
| multiple times a year. It's better when taking precautions and
| know what to avoid, but still, sometimes you just have to be in
| tick-ridden areas and it's impractical to check yourself every
| hour.
| bflesch wrote:
| The main problem with antibiotic resistance is meat industry
| where thousands of pigs or cows or chicken are stuck in the
| same place and all get administered high dose antibiotics for
| duration of their life until some weeks before they get
| slaughtered and sold.
| diamondfist25 wrote:
| Years ago I suddenly had a swollen knee. So painful that I barely
| can walk. I dragged myself to Kaiser thinking that I torn
| something in my knee. Later on, it was diagnosed as arthritis
|
| Doctor said it was incurable, and gave me a list of meds where
| the side effects looked worse than the disease.
|
| I rejected it, and started examining every piece of data known to
| mankind.
|
| This led to me to variety of things. First was biological, a new
| tech drug that's super expensive and I had to be on it for life.
| I was only 30, and no way I'm taking a drug for life at this age.
| What if I get laid off (or go travel) and can't afford the 5k
| price tag per dose for my entire life?
|
| I then found other treatments, ones more natural but scorned on
| by the medical elite professionals. I went to Eastern Europe to
| do oxygen therapy.
|
| I came back home, and was well. I told the clinic that I'm healed
| now and don't need to come back for the biologic anymore. The
| staff at the clinic were appalled -- they never heard of a case
| of someone getting healed and weaning off their meds
|
| The medical system is here to squeeze everything from you. You
| are the top of the line revenue stream. Your health and wellbeing
| is in direct conflict of their objective function -- make more
| money
|
| Never forget this
| qiine wrote:
| > _oxygen therapy._
|
| Like hyperbaric or just with a mask and a tank of o2 ?
| drooopy wrote:
| I've recently became friends with an individual who suffers from
| lingering chronic effects from Lyme disease. I'm never walking
| out in the countryside again without knee-high boots, jeans
| tugged in my socks and the strongest bug repellent spray that
| money can buy.
| PetriCasserole wrote:
| Simple way to detect if you're in an area with ticks: tape a
| white washcloth to a long stick and swish it back and forth
| around the ground. Check the cloth for ticks every so often and
| you'll find the tick "hotspots" and can avoid them. Permethrin-
| treated clothing is also fantastic for protecting against ticks -
| it's just highly toxic to water life and cats in liquid form.
| James_bread wrote:
| I found this break down helpful from the study:
| https://danielcameronmd.com/could-piperacillin-be-the-lyme-d...
|
| 1. The Study Was in Mice, Not Humans 2. Mice Don't Develop
| Chronic Symptoms 3. No Co-Infections 4. IV-Only Formulation
|
| Another promising and more tested treatment is that of doctor
| Richard I. Horowitz:
| https://sciprofiles.com/publication/view/834d15f5acf0268c9bc...
|
| I have been suffering from Lyme disease for over 15 years but I
| just discovered it was Lyme 2 years ago. I had a negative test
| first but did not trust it and did a test at a specialised lab in
| Germany and that came back positive. From what I hear is that the
| normal antibodies test only works for 50%.
|
| Suffering from Lyme is brutal, and you look fine from the outside
| so it's hard for others to relate too, it attacks your whole
| system and if it's in your brain and nerve system it can make you
| feel heavily depressed and anxious like you have PTSD, this makes
| social events feel like a warzone.
|
| For a period of time I could bairly talk, I just could not find
| the words anymore. If friends or family of my get a tick bit I
| always suggest them to get antibotics even if you did not have a
| bullseye, better safe than sorry and the risk is of getting it is
| way greater than what the antibiotics will do to your body.
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