Does Chronic Lyme Disease Exist?

According to Health Canada, the Centre for Disease Control in the USA, and most physicians, chronic Lyme does not exist.

If true, why do so many people attribute symptoms to Lyme bacteria?

Reasons why mainstream medicine does not recognize chronic Lyme disease

There are many reasons why mainstream medicine does not recognize chronic Lyme disease, including:

1. The Lyme bacteria is difficult to find once it has been in the body for some time, making testing difficult.
2. Many people with acute Lyme disease do not exhibit symptoms and may get ill months or sometimes years later.
3. If you exhibit acute symptoms and treat them with antibiotics, you may or may not get ill again.

Many people I see in my clinic who have Lyme disease do not recall getting a tick bite.

These people are often chronically ill with a whole spectrum of symptoms, and at some point, they experience some symptom that makes them or their doctor suspect they carry the Lyme infection.

Typically these people also carry other microbes known as Lyme co-infections.

So, looking at somebody with Lyme is essential to look for co-infections presence.

So, the thing that causes the most confusion among doctors is that when they look at microbial illnesses, they expect to treat and cure them with antibiotics.

This approach originates from more virulent microbes like the bacteria that would cause pneumonia.

In such cases, you would test for the bacterium, treat it with antibiotics, and test for it again, the infection has gone, and the patient’s symptoms have gone.

The Lyme bacteria, however, are different.

The microbes that cause pneumonia, for example, are extracellular bacteria.

Extracellular means they reside outside the cells.

These bacteria colonize the lungs or skin and have an invasive infection.

In contrast, the bacteria are intracellular with Lyme disease, which is challenging to treat because it does not respond well to antibiotics.

Often people can have a positive test for Lyme in the beginning and later not have one because detection is very challenging once they get into the tissue and not in the bloodstream.

So, the infection can be there but not visible.

For this reason, doctors often refer to the Lyme bacteria as a stealth infection.

An older research study took a group of people who had all the symptoms of Lyme, had a negative test in the beginning and were given antibiotics for six to nine months.

These people were again tested, this time using tiny tissue samples.

The results showed that one-third of the people had the presence of Borrelia, the Lyme bacteria.

The results of this study suggest that our testing is not very accurate.

Furthermore, the bacteria can be in the body, not respond to antibiotics and still cause symptoms.

So, yes, I believe chronic Lyme disease does occur, and an increasing number of holistically minded doctors are beginning to agree.

Also, numerous recent studies have the words “Chronic Lyme Disease” in the title.

Unfortunately, it will take several years for this research to come into the consciousness of mainstream medical doctors.

Disclaimer

This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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