Chronic Lyme Disease And Cockroaches

When you suspect your home is infected with cockroaches, what do you do?

You may be wondering what in the world this question has to do with Lyme disease, but it is a perfect analogy (as far as I am concerned) to the ridiculous methodology currently employed by most medical doctors with respect to diagnosing chronic Lyme disease – especially neurological Lyme disease.

If you follow this analogy, the pest control specialist will evaluate your home and determine if there is an infestation or if the cockroach is an isolated problem. Perhaps the insect hitched a ride in a box or bag – never having the opportunity to reproduce and easily exterminated. Or perhaps there are hundreds of colonies, in which case the symptoms of infestation would be clearly obvious.

However, even if the infestation is obvious in the kitchen and pantry where there is a steady food supply, the pest control expert will completely miss the problem if he/she only checks the bedrooms and open hallways.

This is the same problem with diagnosing Lyme disease under the current IDSA guidelines.

First, the currently accepted tests to diagnose Lyme based upon antibodies, is a lot like relying on the presence of insect droppings to determine a cockroach infestation.

Yes, the body’s immune system creates antibodies to fight a Lyme infection, but depending upon the length of infection and the condition of the immune system, antibodies may not be found in obvious places, and if the antibodies are not detected en masse in your blood stream you will have a negative test even though your brain, ligaments, joints and organs could be loaded with Lyme colonies.

Dr. Luft from Stony Brook University is frustrated with his colleagues reliance on spinal taps for DNA confirmation to diagnose an infection. In “Cure Unknown” Pamela Weintrab interviewed Dr. Luft about this very issue:

“For years, he (Dr. Luft) says his colleagues have asked irrelevant questions and looked at Lyme disease out of context.

For instance, despite the known fact that few actively infected neuroborreliosis patients have spirochetal DNA in their spinal fluids, scientists are constantly looking for DNA in spinal fluid as proof or disproof of infection.

It’s an approach born of prejudice because people know, in advance, that it will support their point of view.”

So, we have doctors who are very outspoken in their refusal to accept chronic Lyme disease as possibility, let alone a real condition. And rather than risk being outcast from the mainstream opinion, doctors are leaving their suffering patients out in the cold.

It is a crime when you listen to the hundreds of testimonials of active healthy people – and in some cases entire families – who are suffering with excruciating pain, profound fatigue, depression, intense joint and body aches, insomnia, and even psychotic breakdowns, to know that these patients are being given ant-depressants and ibuprofen and being sent home with a pat on the back.

I believe science will prevail.

Although medical mainstream is still rejecting the mounting evidence and proof of chronic Lyme disease, it is hopeful that our elected officials will speak out on behalf of their disabled and angry constituents and to protect those who can’t protect themselves

It is hopeful that more champions will rise up to speak for the disenfranchised and suffering victims of chronic Lyme disease.

It is hopeful that the mainstream medical community will open the cupboard doors and shine light into the dark corners and hiding places of the virulent Borrelia burgdorferi and find a method to crush this spreading plague.

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Posted on August 23rd, 2009 under Chronic Lyme Disease, Coping with Lyme Disease, Lyme News, Research and Development • Tags: Chronic Lyme disease, Lyme diagnosis, Lyme research and development. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback

Will @ eczema relief

(1 comments):
August 24th, 2009 at 3:00 am

Lyme disease is a familiar name to most people, but their knowledge of it is very limited. Unfortunately, this is also true for most professionals in the medical community. There have been numerous reports in the media about it in the United States over the past 25 years.