Important New Findings on Lyme Disease/Chronic Lyme Disease and How it Affects You
If you’re like most of my patients, you’ve stumbled upon my practice because you’ve “been everywhere and tried everything”, yet are still feeling unwell.
And by “tried everything”, I mean you’ve likely tried the conventional medical route, popular diets, natural remedies, cure-all detox programs, and you may have even tried working with a Naturopath, functional medicine doctor, or holistic practitioner to little (or no) avail.
For many people, finding freedom from chronic disease is complicated and takes some serious root-cause investigation—beyond the “standards” in conventional and natural medicine.
That’s where BioEnergetic Assessment (AKA: BEA) shines, and why I use it as an assessment tool with every single patient.
And while every patient is unique, we often discover that Lyme Disease is a causal factor behind many mysterious illnesses (even if the patient doesn’t recall being bitten by a tick)
So, armed with this information we get to work with a custom detoxification program to get rid of those Lyme bugs. And it works…usually.
But, in the last couple years I began observing a trend which indicated something was missing in my approach.
Often, patients would get better and their follow-up BioEnergetic Assessment tests would come back clean. Yet they’d either not feel 100% better, or they’d get better then get a new set of symptoms a few months down the road.
This was frustrating for my patients and for me as a Lyme Literate Naturopathic Doctor
Many of them suspected Lyme Disease, as a culprit.
Yet, they did not test for Lyme again on the assessments or lab work. Everything indicated it was resolved, yet they insisted they were still experiencing symptoms.
And of course, I believed them. I just couldn’t figure out how to detect the infection
One theory I had, was these symptoms could be the result of damage by former Lyme microbes which just needed to be repaired.
Then it dawned on me: could this be the result of active Lyme microbes my current program wasn’t designed to detect?
I decided to test this theory immediately by re-programming my system to test for much more specific Lyme microbes. And there they were in plain sight!
As usual, my patients had a keen and accurate intuition about what was amiss with their own bodies.
From that point forward, I began testing every patient for these individual Lyme microbes regardless of their symptoms, something I hadn’t done previously.
And what I found blew me away.
Most all patients are testing positive for one, or more, of these Lyme microbes (whether they display typical Lyme symptoms or not).
How is This Possible? Especially if There was no Recollection of a Tick Bite or Classic Lyme Symptoms?
Here’s the thing.
When most of us think of Lyme Disease, we still think of either the typical bulls-eye rash or flu-like symptoms that pop up following a tick bite.
If we know we got a tick bite and don’t experience these symptoms, we presume there’s nothing to worry about. I used to think this way too!
Sadly, these beliefs are loaded with misconceptions, especially here in the Northeastern United States.
First off, many tick bites go unnoticed.
Immature ticks, known as Nymphs, for example, are responsible for the most tick bites in the US. And they are often so tiny they’re undetectable to the naked eye.
And some larger ticks can even latch on, feed, and detach without the host realizing it. Especially if you’re not bathing every day, like when camping.
Plus, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the bullseye rash (also known as erythema migrans or EM) can appear 3-30 days after a bite and only occurs in 70-80% of cases (although this is most likely grossly overestimated).
Further, while it was previously believed that a tick had to be attached for 24-36 hours to transmit Lyme, that theory has now come into question as Lyme rapidly spreads across the country
So, there are potentially millions of people who have been unknowingly bitten and infected by ticks.
My Personal Experience With a Nymph Bite/Sneaky Lyme Infection
I myself was bitten by a tiny tick a bit larger than a sesame seed, 8 years ago.
I only noticed it because when I brushed it off, it landed on the white couch on which I was sitting.
I even looked at a tick app at the time, which indicated I had nothing to worry about.
A year later, after an emotional trauma, my health began a steady decline.
At the time I only had the emotional trauma to attribute it to—that and my entrance in to my 40’s.
Each subsequent year, at around the same time, I had flares and worsening of physical health.
It was only this summer with my increased awareness of the possible contribution of Lyme microbes, and after a chiropractic cranial adjustment, that Lyme microbes presented on BioEnergetic testing.
Like I tell my patients, infections don’t always reveal themselves right away. Sometimes it takes weeks or months of specific detox and healing protocols to peel away the layers and reveal the true causal factor
Further, I have observed in practice, and within my own family, that Lyme does not always come from ticks.
That’s right.
I have confirmed through testing, personal experience, and extensive study, that Lyme can come from other disease-borne vectors and sources…which we’ll cover in our next article in this series.
What About the Symptoms?
This is the most puzzling part about Lyme disease, especially chronic Lyme; its symptoms run the gamut and it often exists with other co-infections.
We’ll discuss symptoms at-length in Part 2 of this Lyme series, but some little-known examples include:
- Autoimmune disease
- Depression
- Extreme fatigue
- Neurological issues
- And anxiety (to name but a few)
I share this information with you today because you or someone you know may be unknowingly suffering from the effects of Lyme. And I know from personal experience how distressing, exhausting, and frustrating that can be.
And I want you to know there is great hope for recovery when we know how to test for the right microbes.
I look forward to sharing more with you in this weekly series on Lyme, and welcome your questions and feedback!
Next week, we’ll do a deep dive into where Lyme Disease really comes from and a thorough look at its bizarre and confusing symptoms.
In hope and health,
-Dr. Joy
