by Dr. Bill Rawls
Posted 4/21/17

 
If you have all the symptoms of chronic Lyme disease, then you probably have chronic Lyme disease – regardless of what your test results show.

In my own struggle against Lyme disease, it took a long time to figure out what my diagnosis was. It took even longer to figure out how to get better.

Having spent the last 15 years intensely researching every treatment option for Lyme disease, I’ve discovered what works – and what doesn’t.

Here’s what you don’t need to do to overcome Lyme disease:

• Prove that you have Borrelia
• Take antibiotics for months or years
• Fly across the country to see a Lyme specialist
• Check into a clinic for a month
• Spend thousands upon thousands of dollars

Accurate testing for Borrelia, the microbe commonly associated with Lyme disease, is mostly useful for diagnosing acute infection. However, because acute symptoms of Lyme disease are mild and often go unnoticed, people generally don’t seek testing until they’ve become chronically ill.

You can’t rely on current testing for an absolute diagnosis of Borrelia in chronic illness — it’s better to just assume that it’s there.

In addition, chronic Lyme disease isn’t typically an infection with just one microbe. Ticks carry a variety of microbes and Borrelia is one of many possibilities. Stealth is a characteristic that all of these microbes all share — therefore, finding microbes and eradicating them individually is often an exercise in futility.

The stealth microbes commonly associated with Lyme disease live inside cells, grow very slowly, and are widely distributed in low concentrations throughout tissues of the body.

This makes them very resistant to conventional antibiotics.

The problem with prolonged antibiotic use, which is commonly used to treat chronic Lyme disease, is that it disrupts normal flora of the body long before it eradicates the stealth microbes.

Disruption of normal flora allows for emergence of pathogens in the gut and skin, which ultimately disrupts immune function. It rarely (possibly never) eliminates stealth microbes completely. When the antibiotics are discontinued, stealth microbes return with a vengeance — a vicious cycle that never ends.

Though views are gradually changing, many Lyme specialists still deeply adhere to this “identify, target, and destroy” approach. They advocate extensive microbial testing, even though it is well known that present testing has significant limitations. They also commonly prescribe prolonged use of potent intravenous antibiotics, even though there is little evidence to support this practice.

The cost of all this can be quite extravagant. Sometimes it works, but when all efforts are focused solely on eradicating microbes, the chances of success are greatly diminished.

Interestingly, when future improvements in testing are able to reliably detect any microbe present, it will likely reveal that most healthy people harbor a variety of stealth microbes and many people carry Borrelia without knowing it. People only become chronically ill when a perfect storm of factors comes together to severely disrupt immune function.

This is the key to understanding chronic Lyme disease. It’s not so much an infection with an illness-causing microbe as it is a case of chronic immune dysfunction that enables a variety of pre-existing stealth microbes to flourish. The resulting tug-of-war between the microbes and the immune system can cause misery for a lifetime.

To get well, microbes must be suppressed, but restoring normal immune function is equally important. No synthetic drug on earth can accomplish that dual goal, but herbal therapy can.

The spectrum of biochemical substances present in herbs offer the unique properties of suppressing a wide spectrum of microbes and restoring immune function at the same time. Because herbal therapy is nontoxic and doesn’t disrupt normal flora, herbs can be used for extended durations without concern — even for a lifetime.

Herbs are also very cost effective when compared to antibiotics and most other therapies.

Complete recovery requires more than herbs alone, however. In other words, it’s never just one main thing. Instead, it’s lots of little things done together to reverse the factors that disrupted immune function in the first place.

To make this happen, you must take charge of your own destiny. Dietary and lifestyle modifications are central to the equation; it’s a matter of adopting a different approach to life.

You could check into an expensive clinic for several months, but that’s not really necessary for success with all the resources that are available. With the right guidance, you can do it on your own without squandering a fortune.

I actually wrote a new book for this exact purpose. Unlocking Lyme is a compilation of everything I have learned about treating Lyme disease and getting your life back – without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. This book contains all the information that anyone would need for a successful recovery.

For even more support, the herbal protocol that I patterned after my own recovery has taken countless others across the finish line — at a fraction of the cost of many alternatives. It also includes a 6-month email course where I walk you through the different phases of recovery.

You owe it to yourself to take the first step toward getting your life back. You deserve to be well.

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.