Chronic Disease Group discussion
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Why Can't I Get Better? Solving the Mystery of Lyme and Chronic Disease
Dr. Horowitz's Wisdom
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Chapter 3: Discussion and Summary
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I wonder why my LLMD is not giving me one for the cyst form? I definitely have to ask him! This was a great chapter!
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Discussion Questions:
1. Based on Dr. Horowitz’s table on page 92, “Designing Combination Treatment Therapies,” do you feel your current treatment plan is covering all forms of Lyme disease? If not, do you feel that you are armed with enough knowledge to talk to your provider about your treatment plan?
2. Pregnancy and sexual transmission of Lyme are difficult topics to address with our family, especially since there are still few guarantees. How have you handled this subject, if at all?
3. Do you sometimes feel like your case is overly complicated, like what we saw with the case study on patient Chris?
Summary:
• Once it’s clear that Lyme disease is contributing to a patient’s illness, Dr. Horowitz focuses on appropriate treatment options to cover all forms or locations of Borrelia burgdorferi including the cell wall, cystic and intracellular locations.
• Cell Wall Form — This is how the spirochete first enters the body in the classic corkscrew shape. It has bidirectional mobility and can move anywhere in the body.
• Cysts are formed when the Borrelia finds itself in a hostile environment and changes from the cell wall form into a circular structure or cyst. This cyst state allows the organism to become dormant and hide from the immune system only to reactivate when conditions are more favorable to its survival.
• When a physician only prescribes antibiotics that treat the cell wall form, studies prove this approach to be ineffective in some cases because it lacks a response to the cyst form. There are four treatment options to kill the cyst form: Plaquenile, Flagyl, Tindamax and nutraceutical grapefruit seed extract.
• Borrelia can also hide from the immune system by penetrating various cells at the intracellular level.
• Although the organism can move anywhere in the body it tends to favor “the eye, brain tissue and glial cells, the heart, collagen and skeletal muscle fibers, and the synovial membrane that surrounds the joints.” This explains why the most common symptoms occur in those areas.
• Pulse Therapy is when you use a drug for several days in a row and then take a break for several days. This is done when there is a strong Herxheimer reaction to keep flares down and the worsening of symptoms. Dr. Horowitz also mentions using high doses of B vitamins to also minimize side effects.
• You can treat the three forms of Lyme disease simultaneously or by rotating among different drugs. Typically a patient is started on oral antibiotics and moved to IV antibiotics if central nervous system symptoms continue despite oral treatment. Look to page 92 for Dr. Horowitz’s Combination Treatment Therapy options.
• “Biofilms are aggregates of bacteria [including Borrelia] in which the cells adhere to each other and are frequently embedded in a slimy substance that protects them from antibiotics.” To prevent the formation of Borrelia biofilms and allow for their destruction Dr. Horowitz looks to “doxycycline, as well as natural enzymes such as nattokinase, lumbrokinase and serrapeptase.”
• Disseminated Lyme happens when Borrelia has spread throughout the body and typically needs more than a two-month treatment plan.
• Sleep is a crucial component for Lyme patients especially when it becomes hard to differentiate symptoms between chronic sleep deprivation and the spirochete itself. Every patient is different, but Dr. Horowitz recommends sleep aids for patients with insomnia.
• We look at pregnancy and Lyme through the case study of patient Mary who desperately wants to have a baby. Mary had already finished the antibiotic treatment and was doing fine. Sadly, after two devastating miscarriages where the fetus and placenta both tested positive for Borrelia using a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, it was clear that Mary was still infected and passing Borrelia to her baby. On Mary’s third pregnancy attempt, Dr. Horowitz prescribed IV Rocephin (cyst forms) and Zithromax (intracellular forms) during the first trimester and then switched to oral antibiotics. Mary gave birth to a healthy baby boy!
• Dr. Horowitz then dives into why Borrelia can persist after years of antibiotics. Why did Mary still have Lyme after all those years of treatment? He began studying the use of Flagyl to treat the cyst form of Lyme with astonishing results. Mary had been treated with Plaquenil, which does affect the cystic form, but was apparently not strong enough to destroy the dormant forms. Dr. Brorson, a Norwegian researcher, reported that Flagyl would cause Borrelia cysts to actually rupture, introducing a much more effective option.
• Dr. Horowitz has since treated 100 pregnant women with active Lyme symptoms with antibiotics. And although a few babies still tested positive for Borrelia in the placenta or cord blood, they were all healthy at birth.
• In the end of the chapter, Dr. Horowitz discusses his treatment of patient Chris who benefited from the MSIDS approach. “The keys to getting Chris better were aggressive treatment for the Lyme disease and babesiosis, getting him to sleep, treating his low adrenal function, avoiding the food allergens, stopping blood sugar swings with a hypoglycemic diet, chelating his heavy metals, mitochondrial support, detoxing him properly and shutting down the production of inflammatory cytokines responsible for the Jarisch-Herxheimer flares.”