You can get Lyme from a lot more than ticks. There aren't supposed to be any Lyme-carrying ticks at all in Alaska, yet my doctor says their clinic has treated many people with Lyme who have never even left the state. I'm not one of them though. I've spent a lot of time in Oregon.
http://www.samento.com.ec/sciencelib/sarticles/thegreatimpostor.html"Researchers and doctors I’ve spoken with have now found live spirochetes of Lyme in fleas, mites, and mosquitoes. And although it was first thought the disease couldn’t be transmitted directly from human to human, the live spirochetes have now also been found in blood, urine, tears, semen, breast milk, cord blood, and vaginal secretions.
Doctors who specialize in treating the disease are convinced it can be passed from one infected person to another by several means, particularly through repeated sexual contact and passage through the placenta in the womb. (Rheum Dis Clin North Am 89;15(4):657-77) Given Lyme’s syphilis-like nature, this shouldn’t be such a surprise.
Even the CDC has now admitted what researchers found years ago, that Bb bacteria survive the purification process of donated blood and could be passed through blood transfusions. (J Infect Dis 90;162(2):557-9) (Transfusion 89:29(7)646-5) And, as if that weren’t alarming enough, there’s even a possibility that our food supply could be a source of the spirochete. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have found dairy cattle infected with the Bb bacterium, which raises the question of whether milk or other products in our food chain may be a danger. (Am J Vet Res 94;55(9):1228-31) (Int J Food Microbiol 91;14(3-4):247-60)"
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I'm not too keen on antibiotics. I've been on so many in the last 20 years for recurrent ear, sinus, bladder/kidney, vaginal, and other infections. Doxycycline is one of the preferred drugs for Lyme, but it to me it had less effect than any other antibiotic I've been on. Flagyl, interestingly enough, has made me feel the best in general, and I recently found it's used for treating late-stage Lyme. When I told that to my regular doctor a couple days ago, he looked at me like I had two heads. "Flagyl isn't used for Lyme!" :eyeroll:
http://remedyfind.com/rem.asp?ID=9557My sister contracted Lyme over ten years ago, and she took doxycycline for over a year recently and is sicker than ever. Before that she'd been on a wide array of antibiotics and became resistant to each one. The doctor also had her take a Diflucan (the "single dose cure" kind) every day for a month, in a desperate attempt to kill the candida. Didn't work. She originally had a circular rash on her arm that they called ringworm, years before she was diagnosed with Lyme.
I already don't like the Samento as much as the Saventaro. I felt different every time I took the latter, but I don't see much difference from the former, yet. I'm also looking into Vitamin C/Salt tablets and Rife machines, which seem to be a big favorite amongst Lyme patients. The (hourly) Vit. C/Salt combination sounded too easy, cheap, and crazy to be true, but it's listed first in the success rate of alternative treatments for Lyme (above Cat's Claw) in the handout my doctor gave me. And after I read the 5-page explanation, it made sense.
I just ordered a book on Rife, so I don't know too much about it yet, but its history is fascinating. In the 30's doctors had these machines that delivered electrical impulses to kill bacteria, then when penicillin came along the drug pushers effectively killed that method. What a different world we would live in if popping antibiotics and genuflecting to drug companies wasn't the norm.
On testing -- the Bowen test acutally measures the number of bugs in your system, and they take a picture of what they find under the microscope. There's no guesswork about "antibodies" like with conventional testing.
http://www.samento.com.ec/sciencelib/sarticles/thegreatimpostor.htmlFinally, a Test that Works
The conventional tests for the disease involve the Western Blot, which has the problems I mentioned earlier, and another called ELISA, which many doctors still use even though it is very unreliable and may miss as many as 75 percent of Lyme infections. Doctors specializing in the treatment of Lyme, however, utilize a combination of Western Blot testing, physical examination, tests for other related pathogens, and often a new test developed by researchers Dr. Joanne Whitaker and Eleanor Fort. The test, which checks various body fluids for the presence of the Bb pathogen, is highly accurate and can provide results within 20 minutes.
This new test is called Q-RIBb, and is available only by a doctor’s request through the Bowen Research and Training Institute at 727- 937-9077. You can get more information on their Web site at
www.bowen.org. (The test costs $150 or $250, depending on the sample used.)
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It sounds steep, but I got a letter in the mail a few days later from Bowen saying that the $250 is tax deductible. They call the fee for the test a "donation" as they are a research institute.
