Hi y'all, When unbelievable pain hit me four weeks after my tick bite in late 1997, I attributed it, wrongly, to maldigestion due to an antibiotic, Cipro, that I was taking for a urinary tract infection. I could hardly get out of bed. The knees especially, then the hands and shoulder.
So, I began to take digestive aids and vitamins with each and every meal and found that I could reduce the pain by 2/3. This seemed to confirm my self-diagnosis of maldigestion and delayed my seeking information about Lyme disease. Since reading up on Lyme I have read opinions on the Internet written by physicians that recommend some of the supplements that I was taking as being effective to reduce the pain and discomfort of Lyme herxing. I suggest you read what Dr Joseph Burrascano has written on this subject of supplements useful for Lyme patients in his treatise, The New Lyme Disease, Diagnostic Hints and Treatment Guidelines, 12th edition, found on LymeNet.org. My pains would come on immediately after eating and last a few hours. Certain foods seemed to be worse than others. This told me that something was wrong in my gut. Here is what I took that reduced my pains by 2/3 and "kept me going" for a year without treating my Lyme disease with antibiotics. Understand that I do not suggest going without ABx. This is just to help reduce the pain and discomfort, maybe, for some Lymies while being treated for Lyme. I should mention that I am 68 years old. 1. Solgar's Digestive Aid -- an enzymatic aid in the digestion of proteins, starches, carbohydrates and fats. 2. Twin Labs B-50 Caps -- vitamin B complex -- or sometimes just B-6 tabs 3. Nature's Biotics -- soil based organisms 4. Wakunaga of America's Kyo-Dophilus -- acidophilus, bifidum and longum 5. Garlic tabs and Cat's Claw capsules 6. Twin Lab Daily Two Caps without iron -- a multi-vitamin I learned eventually that Cipro is utterly ineffective in the treatment of Lyme. Doxycycline, 200 mg/day, is what made my pains and joint stiffness diminish slowly over a period of five months, probably by killing off spirochetes. Each time I took the Doxy I would experience pain in the joints for a few hours. Herxing -- a sign that the Doxy was working. I mainly measured my progress by the diminishing stiffness of the joints or increased range of motion of joints such as my left shoulder. After 7 months on Doxy, when I found I had to double the Doxy dosage to 400 mg/day in order to experience any herxing (joint pain) -- now mainly confined to the right hand and wrist -- I decided it was maybe time to switch to something else. Some might say I should just increase the Doxy and keep going. Maybe so. Now I am about to try CS to try to stamp out the disease, by hopefully killing the Lyme cysts as well as the spirochetes in my body. Doxy doesn't seem to me to get the cysts -- perhaps because they are cell-wall deficient organisms. They say that the cysts are biologically active and keep on reproducing somehow. I should mention that pain periods also seemed to come in spurts, perhaps related to the life cycle of the Lyme bug. Maybe the pain peaks coincide with a new bunch of cysts bursting out with spirochetes. Warning -- as you can see above, I have been wrong before. Hoping for better health for all of us . . . Spiroflex =================END
