"Take These Steps in The Beginning and Throughout a Chronic Lyme Disease Treatment" Marty Ross MD
(You can take these two herbal medicines together or use in combination with the prescription medicines, if needed.)
For more information about these items or for additional options about sleep hygiene, see Sleep in Lyme Disease: The Basic Steps. For information about sleep herbs and supplements, see Sleep: The Natural Medicines. For more information and sleep prescriptions options, see Sleep: The Prescription Medicines.
Sleep is often disturbed in chronic Lyme disease. Lack of adequate sleep worsens pain, increases fatigue, and suppresses the immune system. It appears that in response to infection, the excess inflammatory cytokines produced by the immune system decrease the output of sleep inducing hormones to the sleep centers of the brain. And lack of sleep increases cytokines. A restorative amount of sleep is seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Sleep in the few hours before midnight is most restorative.
Eat a Paleo-based diet rich in organic foods, healthy fats, proteins, and vitamin rich vegetables. For more detailed information about the diet, see The Best Brain, Inflammation, Pain, Energy & Detox Diet Ever.
An elimination diet is another diet to consider starting. For detailed information, see Elimination Diet to Find Food Problems.
A Paleo diet is low in simple sugars, which decreases the chances of developing intestinal yeast. It also promotes brain health and supports the energy factories—called mitochondria—found in every cell. Because it is low in sugar, it may decrease inflammation.
An elimination diet helps a person find which foods that trigger allergies or inflammation reactions. If you are reacting to foods, consider trying an elimination diet first. Removing allergic and inflammatory foods from your diet leads to decreased pain and improved energy.
There are no effective and safe options.
Cytokines are inflammatory chemicals made by the immune system in chronic Lyme disease. Nutritional supports like curcumin, resveratrol, black tea extract, NAC, and antioxidants found in a good multivitamin (see Part 6.) may lower cytokines. This can
On the one hand, cytokines are good because they turn on the immune system. They perform a number of functions that include:
On the other hand, in chronic Lyme disease the immune system makes too many cytokines, which is bad. Too many cytokines
At the beginning of treatment or when antibiotics are changed, the cytokines are made in even greater amounts, which causes a person to feel much worse. This is called a Herxheimer dieoff reaction.
See Control Cytokines: A Guide to Fix Lyme Symptoms & The Immune System for more information and additional herbal medicine options to use in a Lyme disease treatment.
An adaptogen is a substance that helps the body deal with the harmful medical and emotional stress of being ill. Adaptogens have been used for centuries in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine with greatly observed benefits. Based on animal experiments, ashwagandha may improve energy, immune function, and adrenal and thyroid function. It likely has additional beneficial effects that have not been researched.
Start with the natural medicine or prescription medicine. It is possible to use both together if the symptoms of low adrenals persist.
In my practice, I rarely used this because there is a very small risk of immune suppression using prescription hydrocortisone. However, the doses I recommend are the normal amounts the adrenal glands should make. I prefer ashwagandha because it is a supportive herb that does not suppress the immune system.
For more information about why and hot to manage the adrenals in chronic Lyme disease see Heat Up, Speed Up: Thyroid & Adrenals in Lyme.
Use these natural medicines first for one to two months before adding or trying the prescription medicine option below. Often, working with these supplements corrects the thyroid so you do not need to take thyroid prescription medicines.
For more information about how to manage thyroid, even if your tests are normal, read my comprehensive article: Hypothyroidism. The Best Tests, Meds, & Vitamins.
Fixing low adrenals and/or low thyroid can help the immune system work better and possibly improves energy. A person could have normal range testing for each of the hormones, but still have clinically low hormones. Because of the unreliability of testing, treatment for low hormones should occur if there are clinical symptoms of low hormones as long as treatment does not increase hormone levels above the upper end of normal.
If you have a number of these symptoms, consider using the natural medicine approaches for each respective problem.
Adrenal Insufficiency: fatigue, recurrent infections, poor recovery from infections, low blood sugar with shakiness and irritability relieved by eating, low blood pressure and dizziness on standing, afternoon crashing, and sugar cravings.
Low thyroid: fatigue, achiness, dry skin, cold intolerance, weight gain, constipation, and changes in menstrual periods.
In my opinion, to heal and feel better requires a multivitamin with an essential set of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and antioxidants. A good multivitamin can improve functioning of the immune system, muscles, brain and nerves, hormones, organs including the kidney and liver, and detoxification, in addition to decreasing inflammation. It also may protect the body from the toxic effect of prescriptive antibiotics.
Ultimately to get rid of fatigue, you have to get rid of your infections.
If energy and fatigue do not greatly improve by six to nine months, it is time to fix the energy factories found in every cell. These are called mitochondria.
The ideas and recommendations on this website and in this guideline are for informational purposes only. For more information about this, see the sitewide Terms & Conditions.
See the references sections for The Best Brain, Inflammation, Pain, Energy & Detox Diet Ever and Elimination Diet to Find Food Problems.
Marty Ross, MD is a passionate Lyme disease educator and clinical expert. He helps Lyme sufferers and their physicians see what really works based on his review of the science and extensive real-world experience. Dr. Ross is licensed to practice medicine in Washington State (License: MD00033296) where he has treated thousands of Lyme disease patients in his Seattle practice.
Marty Ross, MD is a graduate of Indiana University School of Medicine and Georgetown University Family Medicine Residency. He is a member of the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ILADS) and The Institute for Functional Medicine.
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