by Dr. Bill Rawls
Posted 11/24/21
Navigating chronic Lyme disease is difficult no matter what, but those challenges can be amplified when you encounter healthcare professionals who don’t understand your illness or the severity of your symptoms. Listen to Dr. Bill Rawls as he discusses the conventional medical system and what you can do when traditional doctors don’t take chronic Lyme seriously.
Read more about Dr. Rawls’ journey with chronic Lyme disease here.
Video Transcript
Question: How do We tell doctors that we have chronic Lyme and be taken seriously?
Tim Yarborough: How do we tell traditional MDs that we have chronic Lyme and get them to take it seriously, since they only believe in the acute stage? I was treated as though it was in my head, and they didn’t find anything. Although, I had severe chest pain that would not let up, and my heart felt like it was sometimes rolling over in crushing pain. They found only minor regurgitation with one valve.
Dr. Rawls: Seventeen years. Yeah. So what that is is the figure for the research to clinical medicine gap. It takes an average of 17 years between the time research is hitting the journals to the time that it actually reaches clinical medicine and becomes adopted by physicians. But with this issue, it may take even longer. I was speculating these kinds of things 10 years ago, so I was going on speculation quite a lot. It’s only been in the past two years that we’re documenting the autoimmune phenomenon associated with these microbes and the other potential microbes that can cause these symptoms directly.
So the big key, though, was documenting the autoimmune phenomenon. That’s only been in the past couple of years. It’s going to be at least 15 or 20 years before your mainstream doctors are looking at this thing. So I’m trying to get this information out there as hard as I can, but it’s really, really slow to get it out there. It’s slow to break through the establishment. But fortunately, we have a situation where there’s so many things, like herbal therapy, that are readily available that do work that you don’t have to have a prescription for or guidance by a physician for.
So, again, don’t ignore what conventional medicine has to offer. We do really well with acute conditions. If you have something that is unrecognized beyond chronic Lyme disease, an evaluation with a cardiologist can save your life. And sometimes the beta blockers and some of the drugs can prevent something catastrophic or ease your symptoms in the short-term.
But don’t necessarily expect them to understand these chronic microbial infections. Conventional medicine doesn’t understand chronic illness, and they certainly don’t understand chronic infections with microbes of any kind, Lyme disease or anything else. But where I’m sitting, I’m seeing hundreds of different species of microbes, and I’m starting to connect the dots to virtually every chronic illness. It’s going to be awhile, but it’s coming. It is coming. The literature is in the journals now. It’s getting harder and harder for them to ignore.
The problem is conventional drugs don’t work for this stuff. So because their tools are limited and they don’t have anything for it, they’d rather ignore it. It’s a balancing act. So we have to use a medical system, we have to accept the conventional medical system for what it is and how it can help us, but again, don’t ignore this wonderful thing called natural herbal therapy that can do such extraordinary things to restore your health.
Dr. Rawls is a physician who overcame Lyme disease through natural herbal therapy. You can learn more about Lyme disease in Dr. Rawls’ new best selling book, Unlocking Lyme.
You can also learn about Dr. Rawls’ personal journey in overcoming Lyme disease and fibromyalgia in his popular blog post, My Chronic Lyme Journey.