by Thomas Rau, M.D., Medical Director of the Paracelsus Clinic

We see so many Lyme disease patients because they feel they have nowhere else to turn. These patients mostly present as one of two types:

• The first type has been told they have advanced Lyme disease, and they come to us after years of treatment, usually regimens of intense antibiotics, without any lasting improvement – in many cases their symptoms have just gone from bad to worse. Most come with neurological symptoms, and some even arrive in wheelchairs.
• The second type has been told that their mysterious symptoms today are explained by an undetected Lyme infection years ago, and that if they had only been treated then with antibiotics they would never have their problems today. But treatment today yields no benefit.

Unfortunately for both types, the only treatment offered by conventional medicine is antibiotics, lots and lots of them, sometimes delivered in massive doses via intravenous ports. The truth is, this treatment is doomed to failure from the start, and will only worsen the patient’s symptoms over time. After all the body goes through the pain from this can be consuming and cause a lot of upset in patients. There are some who may turn to alternative medicines to help with that pain, like medical marijuana. The state which you live in depends if you are eligible to apply for one with the backing of your doctor, you can get a medical marijuana card missouri if you live there and qualify. Check with a medical professional first and make sure that this is the right treatment for you. Your wellbeing is important and living with chronic pain is life-changing.

How can this be? Because the “Lyme bacteria”, Borrelia, is not the cause of the diagnosis of “Lyme disease” – it is only a coincidental infection, which can be detected with a lab test. But this lab test, if positive, doesn’t correlate to the expression of the disease, which has totally different causes!

The perspective of biological medicine is so different that it shocks many of our Lyme patients. Let’s begin by noting that 90% of the forest workers in Switzerland test positive for Lyme disease. Logging is a major industry here and it involves hard physical work. Why do these men show no symptoms of Lyme disease, and continue to enjoy robust good health? We tell all our patients: the fact that you are positive for Lyme does not explain your condition.

At Paracelsus we frankly don’t view Lyme as a distinct disease. Instead, it is a syndrome of symptoms commonly associated with poor health, especially of the immune system. The test for Lyme disease only shows whether a patient was ever exposed to Lyme, which for a healthy person is just another minor infection. While a Lyme exposure may have added to the burden on the body, so may have other infectious agents. These infections are opportunistic, preying on the weak. Rather than focus on strengthening the body, as we do in biological medicine, conventional treatment adds to the problem. Massive doses of antibiotics compromise the immune system, and toxic bacteria then flourish, overwhelming neurological and organ function and eventually debilitating the patient. And that is usually when they come to us.

Our Stage 3 Lyme patients are always quite ill when they arrive. In every one of them we find significant toxic loads, mainly heavy metals, chronic viruses, and severe imbalance in their inner metabolic milieu, plus adrenal fatigue and even neurotoxic bacteria in their intestines – all due to antibiotics! Very often, as a significant co-factor, these patients have a serious impairment of their metabolic detoxification pathways as well insufficient essential fatty acids and trace elements – issues for which conventional doctors, even “Lyme specialists”, don’t even test!

Our treatment for Lyme patients is very successful but takes time to undo the damage from years of poor health and antibiotics. You simply can’t rebuild the body overnight. But we have countless cases considered incredible by the treating physician at home. Patients who had almost given up hope resume their normal lives. This is why our Lyme practice grows so dramatically – it isn’t really because of an epidemic of the disease. The epidemic is of treatment failure.