| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| holly |
Posted - 10/11/2007 : 16:14:31
In New Yorks L.I. Newsday about two days ago there was an huge interesting article about "no such thing as long term lyme disese." Many people infurated as the live on endless antibiotics and believe they have this. It REALLy was a article about TMS if you ask me but unknow by all the so-called sufferers. |
| 6 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| drziggles |
Posted - 05/21/2008 : 08:40:49
there are now several high quality randomized control trials looking at long-term IV antibiotic therapy in people with "chronic Lyme disease", all of which have shown no benefit over placebo. make of that what you will. |
| richedie |
Posted - 05/19/2008 : 14:29:37
That article is completely false. There was a faulty study study done that showed no improvement in Lyme patients after a period of time so they automatically stated that long term treatment was not necessary and 4-6 weeks was enough. That is BS. Anyone with half a brain (not you guys -I mean the mainstream medical community), knows that if a bacteria has a long life, this may take many months to full eradicate and maybe years. I had a friend go through this as well as a cousin and both are symptoms free, but only after months of treatment for my friend and almost two years for my cousin. I am sure the people of this board are open minded since TMS is not taken seriously by the mainstream medical community as well....but you have chosen to think on your own and read between the lines.
My cousin was difficult because they had a hard time finding the right antibiotics for her form fo the disease and then it just took a long time. Now she is fine.
Look at some of the symptoms of Lyme and how can they compare to TMS? I myself am going through something similar and trying to find the right doctor to treat me. What about hands and feet turning blue for no reason? Can the mind change skin color? maybe it can?
Blood testing for Lyme is also terrible. I know my cousins tests were all over the place. One month was positive, the next negative, the nect positice, so eventually they stopped taking blood and concentrated completely on symptoms. |
| Stryder |
Posted - 10/12/2007 : 17:07:30
As the article says, Lyme disease can be thwarted by 4-6 weeks of antibotics. What the atricle does NOT say is if you fail to get diagnosed and treated within the first weeks/months of the initial infection, then you will have a very very hard time getting rid of Lyme disease later.
You dont always get the tell tale rash. Since the other Lyme symptoms mimick the flu, CFS, yada yada yada, many people go on for years before they are diagnosed, then it may be too late for a short course of antibiotics to do anything about the infection.
Take care, -Stryder |
| shawnsmith |
Posted - 10/11/2007 : 19:25:54
Scientists say chronic Lyme disease doesn't exist
BY DELTHIA RICKS
delthia.ricks @ newsday.com
October 9, 2007
newsday.com/news/health/ny-hslyme095407157oct09,0,2821438.story
Newsday.com
In what is becoming one of the most heated debates in medicine, doctors, scientists and patients are lining up on two sides of a discourse about Lyme disease, an infectious condition whose incidence has risen sharply in recent years.
A prestigious group of physicians and scientists says there is no evidence that chronic Lyme disease exists, and that patients may be doing themselves more harm than good by undergoing prolonged antibiotic therapy.
The team wrote a report saying as much last week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Their analysis is of importance to New York, one of 10 states where Lyme is most often diagnosed.
Yet scores of people, told by their physicians that they have chronic Lyme disease, dismiss the report as biased and without merit.
Lyme disease is the most common of all vector-borne infections in the United States. Vectors include ticks, mosquitoes or fleas. In the case of Lyme disease, the vector is the Ixodes scapularis tick, or deer tick, which carries the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue and sometimes a skin rash. Left untreated, infection can spread to the joints, heart and nervous system.
Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 64,382 Lyme cases nationwide were reported between 2003 and 2005 and that 59,770 cases were reported in the 10 most affected states. Nearly 1,000 of those cases were reported on Long Island.
"This is very upsetting," said Eva Haughie of Manorville, adding that not only has she been bitten at least 45 times by ticks and their nymphs, or early-stage ticks, but that she has suffered with tick-borne infection since 1988.
However, a team of doctors who doubt "chronic Lyme" is genuine say using the term itself is a misnomer. Moreover, they say, prolonged use of antibiotics is expensive and dangerous.
The doctors cite drug resistance as one consequence and the destruction of the body's "good" bacteria as another.
Dr. Eugene Shapiro, lead author of the report and a professor of pediatrics and investigative medicine at Yale University, said more than 30 experts in infectious diseases participated in the research and support the conclusions. Co-authors include those from the CDC, Harvard Medical School and New York Medical College, home of Dr. Gary Wormser, who led a task force last year on development of new diagnostic and treatment guidelines.
Wormser told Newsday when the new guidelines were announced that 95 percent of Lyme disease cases are cured within 10 to 28 days with oral antibiotics. Long-term antibiotic therapy, he said, has not proven effective, and may be dangerous. The new research picked up the mantle from there.
"People who say they have chronic Lyme have symptoms, such as fatigue and aches and pains. The epidemiology is very similar to chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromylagia," Shapiro said yesterday. "It's also very similar to chronic Epstein-Barr infection, which people no longer believe in," he said of an infectious disorder that was commonly diagnosed in the 1980s.
Rather than calling the condition chronic Lyme disease, Shapiro and colleagues advocate referring to symptoms that persist for six or more months as post-Lyme disease syndrome.
Haughie wonders how doctors could be so callous.
She said tick-transmitted bacteria caused her to endure cognitive impairments similar to Alzheimer's disease and weakened her ability to walk and talk. Long-term antibiotic therapy, she said, helped her regain her strength and memory. She said doctors have prescribed antibiotics on-and-off since 1988.
Rosemary Markowsky, a patient in Manhattan, said she was apparently bitten in 1994 but it took more than a decade to get the correct diagnosis. "I was misdiagnosed for 12 years [and] now after 11 months of antibiotic therapy I am 90 percent better," she said.
Dr. Len Horowitz, an attending physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, said prolonged antibiotic therapy may be warranted for patients with advanced symptoms. "In the later stages, patients may even need intravenous [antibiotic] therapy because Lyme can progress from a simple infection to cardiac disease. The organism at this stage is more difficult to eradicate," he said.
In Wilton Conn., Dr. Steven Phillips, past president of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, said he's dismayed that Shapiro's report appeared in such an influential journal. "It was biased and without merit," he said.
But even though Phillips said chronic Lyme disease is real, he acknowledged that no one knows how many patients are affected. "Everybody defines chronic Lyme differently," he said. "I define it as people who keep relapsing."
Finding a vaccine
1975 First cases of Lyme disease reported.
1981 Microbe identified.
1988 Lyme Disease Foundation founded.
1989 The outer surface protein, OspA, found and cloned.
Early 1990s Antibodies to OspA found in many chronic Lyme disease patients.
1990-1992 Vaccinations with rOspA found to protect mice against Lyme disease infection.
1992-1995 Vaccinations with rOspA tested in other animals.
1995 Lyme vaccine found safe and effective in people with Lyme disease.
1995-1998 Vaccine found safe and effective in people without Lyme disease.
1998 FDA approves Lyme vaccine.
SOURCES: National Institutes of Health; Brown University
Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc.
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Sarno-ize it!
Read chapter 4 of Dr. Sarno's "The Divided Mind." Also chapers 3, 4 and 5 in Dr. Scott Brady's "Pain Free For Life" are very important. |
| Stryder |
Posted - 10/11/2007 : 18:21:32
I had lyme disease 18 months ago. I got real sick. Fortunately I caught it early and RX treatment was successful. Also fortunately my TMS was under control at the time, so I was not faced with both at the same time.
Take care, -Stryder |
| lidge |
Posted - 10/11/2007 : 16:57:05
I was told by a SHRINK that I have lyme or possibly some other chronic low grade infection. I posted to previous post on this. Is it any wonder I'm in this state? Who in the world can we believe anymore?
The pain and weird spiral of mental and physical symptoms made his diagnosis appealing. In my heart I never believed it because I didn't recall tick bite and the tests all negative except one positive Elisa which could be other immune response. He actually thought it went back 10 years! This guy, like Sarno, is very well respected by people who believe he diagnosed their "chronic Lyme" after years of
misdiagnosis.
One of my fears is that TMS is as murky as chronic Lyme, with special practitioners making money off it and then "blame the patient' when the therapy doesn't work. For many Lyme doctors, their response is
"if the shoe fits, wear it". If you think you have chronic Lyme, give the antibiotics a try. Similar to TMS, though TMS more benign than antibiotics.
For me, both of them seem to "fit". But the antibiotics didn't make me better and the stress of being shunted from doctor to doctor has made it all worse.
I am so skeptical of everything at this point. The ONLY thing that
makes me want to give TMS a chance is reading the testimonials here
by some very intelligent people. The piercing radiating pain in my
back and and MRI tell me otherwise. But I wonder why I have become
such a difficult case and why I have one symptom after another.
I'm praying one day I can look back and smile like so many of you. |
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