by Dr. Bill Rawls
Posted 1/18/23
Research on long COVID and why symptoms continue to persist emerges on almost a weekly basis. And for people with Lyme disease, there’s a familiar story coming to the forefront: Similar to chronic Lyme, COVID is reactivating several dormant infections, including bartonella, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), and others.
Many are left wondering, is there a connection between these two infectious diseases? Listen as Dr. Rawls explains how COVID can be the tipping point for some people to experience a resurgence of various microbes. Read more about science-backed, natural therapies that may help long COVID here.
Video Transcript
Question: What is the connection between Lyme and COVID?
Jenny Buttaccio: What is the connection between Lyme and COVID, and why are some of the symptoms lingering for people?
Dr. Rawls: They’re both microbes, and they cause chronic infections. And, you know, that’s the big deal. One more time, acute infection and chronic infection are two very different things, whether you’re talking about acute COVID or chronic COVID.
So it’s not surprising that long COVID, we’re seeing a lot of the symptoms that we have with chronic Lyme disease, and there’s a lot of overlap. All right. So with acute COVID, that is brand new entry of the SARS virus into your system, and the war between your immune system and the microbe to keep that microbe from invading your tissues.
Long COVID has already done that, and it’s established inside your tissues. But if you’re not getting over long COVID, it means that you have chronic cellular distress. And at that point, it’s not just the SARS virus. If you’ve been exposed to borrelia, and it’s dormant in your tissues, and you know, it reactivates, or bartonella, or chlamydia, or mycoplasma, or Epstein-Barr virus.
In fact, there’s a lot of association, you know most of the people with long COVID, well they’re finding wow, they’ve got reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus. That’s what they’re checking for, you know. So it’s, it’s kind of that same thing. Interestingly, though, I did find an article recently that defined that some of the acute symptoms of acute COVID are actually reactivation of Epstein-Barr and other viruses. So even acute COVID isn’t pure COVID. Interesting.
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.
