Spring is here, and with it comes the threat of exposure to ticks and Lyme disease. Treatment of this tick-borne disease is a challenge, as the antibiotic option available from the medical community is controversial and may even be harmful. That’s why some people are opting to treat Lyme disease naturally.
Conventional treatment of early localized Lyme disease (isolated butterfly rash [erythema migrans] and fever, no neurological symptoms) often consists of 14 to 21 days of antibiotics, including amoxicillin, cefuroxime axetil, or doxycycline. This approach can be successful for some patients.
Other people, however, are not so fortunate. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), up to 20 percent of patients who are treated for Lyme disease with antibiotics continue to have lingering symptoms that can last for more than six months.
This condition is commonly referred to as chronic Lyme disease, although the CDC says it is more properly known as post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS). Lyme disease expert Richard Horowitz, MD, past president of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society and author of Why Can’t I Get Better?
The cause of the persistent symptoms is unclear, although experts have several theories. One is that the symptoms are the result of damage that occurred to the immune system and tissues during the infection. Others suggest that the infectious bacterial organism carried by the ticks, Borrelia burgdorferi, was not completely eliminated and thus causes a persistent infection.
Failure of antibiotics to eliminate the disease may lie with the fact that B. burgdorferi is an intracellular spirochete bacterium, which means it can enter cells and thus escape from antibiotics. These bacteria also can hide in the nervous system and other areas of the body where antibiotics cannot reach them.
