Posted 4/5/2016 10:00 AM (GMT -5)
(Here is the last one from day one. Doing the best I can at pulling the main points of the discussion. Hope this will be helpful now and in the future! tb)
Q: Is lyme increasing in numbers in the US
A: Yes, the CDC said in August 2015 there was a 320% increase in cases in the past 20 years. Most pts diagnosed with CFS and FIBRO that come to me actually have lyme undiagnosed, Another article a week ago stated over half the counties in the US now have the black legged tick. The birds are carrying the ticks which is why we are seeing it spreading everywhere, Europe and China, too.
Q: what else can you get from the ticks?
A:Many different bacteria, parasite and viruses found. Borrellia miamotoi (sp?) a new form that is a relapsing fever bacteria which is spreading in the NE and California. Erlichiosis, Babs, anaplasmosis, bart (17 strains) tularemia, rocky mountain, heartland virus, berber virus, powassan virus. Most people don't just have lyme they have some of these other co-infections as well
Q: Transmission during pregnancy
A: It's a problem, they are having miscarriages and testing the fetuses showed lyme disease. We discuss the risks now with all the pregnant women in our practice. It's a big problem in women and gynocologists aren't set up to find this. There is possible sexual transmission although it requires large amount of organisms in the semen or vaginal fluid and we haven't seen that yet.
Q: numbers of women with lyme that would have a miscarriage?
A: no one has done the study yet buy I think it would be significant.
Q:Lyme is called the great imitator which syphilis used to be called, but what's get mis-diagnosed when it's lyme
A: CFS, Fibromyalgia are the usual ones which there are no test for at this time. Anything with chronic fatigue, muscle and joint pain, cognitive issues, sleep dysfunction. Lots of these had an elisa which isn't sensitive enough to pick up many of the Lyme case.
Also, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, MS, psychiatric disorders like alzheimers, depression, anxiety, OCD, schizophrenic pt.s that get doxy get better but unfortunately relapse when the AB is stopped.
Anyone with chronic fatigue muscle skeletal illness with good and bad days where pain migrates around the body, you have to think of a lyme diagnosis.
We have a questionnaire on the website that we've shown is very good as screening for lyme disease. CANGETBETTER.COM or link here:
http://lymeontario.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Horowitz-Questionnaire.pdf
Q: When you spoke about MS, MS is a demylinating disease, mercury causes demylination, lyme is a demylinating disease and I've found in the literature, people with a reverse cervical curvature have been linked with demylinating, too
What has happened in medicine is that they give you a diagnosis and say let's throw a pill at it instead of how medicine started out which is see if you can figure out why people are ill. Hardly anyone has one thing wrong with them.
The hallmark of all these disease we mentioned is Inflammation. What's not being done in medicine is to evaluate where the inflamm. is coming from.
Inflammation is caused by:
several chronic infections (lyme babs, bart)
gut dysbiosis
leaky gut
insomnia
heavy metals and toxins
nutritional deficiency
When we get to the source of the inflamm., many pts get better.
Q: Elisa, what's the problem with lab testing?
A: Lyme is a clinical dx although MD's rely on testing. CDC website says the elisa and western blot was screening for health departments. The dx is supposed to be clinical. Migratory pain is the biggest hallmark for lyme.
Over 100 strains of lyme in the US and 300 worldwide, elisa will miss half of these.
We do C6 Elisa which looks at some european strains which are showing up in the US. CDC is looking at changing their info to reflect this.
If elisa is neg, MD won't do western blot but it should be done because it looks at specific bands or proteins that will show if you've been exposed but again most labs only use one strain and there are 100 strains in the US. We use Igenex. They use 2 strains many more bands show up in the results.
We are looking for at least 5 specific bands from the western blot: 23(ospC), 31 (ospA), 34(ospB), 39 and 83/93 bands. If you have any one of those bands you've been exposed and with the symptoms mentioned you should have a dx of lyme disease.
31 could be present due to the lymerx vaccine but it's been so many years now that if you had it, you shouldn't be getting much of a response for that reason. Igenex has a specific 31 test to see if it's lyme or epstein barr virus which can cause a false positive.
Q: Why do some people never get well?
A: What I've found after treating people for 30 years is that the lyme does persist, the AB we use only hit one form of the lyme. The lyme bug has different forms and you need to use different drugs for the different forms. If you don't hit all these different forms and open up the biofilms you won't get better because the bugs hide in the biofilms. Also, you have to treat the co-infections like babesia. This parasite will stop you from getting better if you don't treat it. Also the immune system has to be balanced, inflammation has to be addressed, toxins have to be gotten out of the body, food allergies, drive inflammation, neuro issues, mitochondrial dysfunction.
POTS dysautonomina, low blood pressure, if you don't treat it they won't get better no matter how many
abs you throw at it.
Talks about his book coming out with revised protocols "How can I get Better". Also refers to screening test on his website as mentioned above.
Q: What do you address first or do you go after all at once?
A: I go after all at once, which I discuss in the book "How can I get Better". If you only go after one, you can't get down the inflammation that the others are driving and you have to get the inflammation and I've found going after all of it at once is the best way to go at it.
Q: Are you irritated that chronic lyme is questioned that it exists?
A: Makes me more sad. Then talks about how he's sending updated info about the bad tests and new info to all kinds of countries so they can update their protocols. Says lyme is a persister bacteria like many others are and that is why chronic lyme exists. You can get other illnesses that persist and lyme is no different. He's looks at treatment for other persister bacteria and finding it's working with lyme pts. Leprosy is a persister illness.
Dapsone is a leprosy drug which is anti-malarial that has unbelievable persister activity against borrellia and no one has used it. It has no activity against the gut microbiome but does cause anemia which needs folic acid in high doses.
Says persister regimine is helping many people that couldn't get better no matter what.
They've found lyme dna in the blood of people that had the standard course of ABs and it was not dead dna, the rna was making new proteins. There is no doubt the bugs persist. I'm not irritated just am trying hard to get people to look at the new information and science instead of following the CDC guidelines which doesn't work.
Q: What stopping progress with lyme?
A: this is a political problem where doctors have taken sides against each other. IDSA and ILADS have two completely different guidelines. IDSA will not update it's information based on the new information. And people are suffering. Congressman Gibson introduced a lyme bill for funding and hope Obama will sign it. Everyone needs to come together and address it as the number one illness that it is. Have to get rid of the politics.
Q: Boil it down to one thing we can focus on
A: Most important underlying common denominator for all these different chronic diseases is inflammation. Anything that is driving the inflammatory process in the body has to be addressed.
working on 2 apps for looking at chronic disease and underlying inflammation.
Inflammation is like having a fire in your body where you have free radicals and oxidative stress. Inflammatory cytokines and prostaglandins cause the fire in the body and underlie the fatigue, muscle aches, memory, cognition, psych problems, sleep disorder, all of these are linked to the inflamm cytokines.
antioxidants, broccoli seed extract, curcurmin, resveratrol, zinc, many different foods you can eat that will affect some of this inflammatory response. That where the research is going and that's what my book is about.
Q: Is your success in treating your pts because you go after inflammation.
A: yes, you have to treat all forms of lyme and co-infections, adrenal issues, food deficiencies, sleep issues.. etc. He follows 16 pt. MSIDS model link here (which has more than 16 questions so ?):
http://lymeontario.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Horowitz-Questionnaire.pdf