~Jada's Cure~
Finding Treatment for a Beautiful Little Lady!

Here is a good explanation of Lyme.

To find and fight Lyme you have to understand how the testing works and how Lyme behaves in the body. First the standard doctors office test (ELISA) has a 35-50% false negative rate. This test is deplorably inaccurate. As a result of a failed attempt at a Lyme vaccine that used bands 31 and 34, the CDC removed these Lyme specific bands from being counted in test results. This vaccine was used for a short period of time in the early 1990’s on the east coast only. If you test positive on these two bands then you may be told you don't have Lyme when you do, regardless of age or the area you live. The CDC guidelines were never meant for diagnostic purposes, but they have become standard for most doctors that are untrained in Lyme.

Blood PCR testing: I recently talked to a bacterial researcher who told me that PCR testing for stealth pathogens, (Lyme and Bartonella are both stealth bacteria they spend very little time in the blood before burrowing into your cells) is like dropping a bucket into the ocean to find jellyfish. You know the ocean has jellyfish, but the odds of pulling them up in your bucket are very low. The bucket is your blood draw for the test.

Antibody Testing: It was explained to me that antibody testing is like a round dinner table with chairs all around it. The chairs attract antibodies. If you're testing for an active Lyme infection the plan is that you have more of these antibodies than any other. Trouble is if you have any co infections or have had any recent viral infections you will have those antibodies also. Tests, like from Quest, have thresholds that are required to be met to be positive. If the chairs fill up with the other antibodies, the number of Lyme antibodies being counted gets diluted. It doesn't make the threshold and your result is negative. Even for someone who is only infected with Lyme the test can give a false negative because of how Lyme behaves in the body. Testing too soon after a bite can cause a false negative because the body hasn't had enough time to make enough antibodies. Even perfect timing doesn't help for some.

When you are bit you are basically injected with bacteria. The reason some people get the round bite sight reaction is because the Lyme are swimming out in a circle from the bite site. As the body sees the bacteria, it starts to make antibodies to fight. In response to this attack Lyme evades the immune system by regularly changing its surface protein to prevent recognition and attack, it also surrounds itself with our own lymphocyte cell membrane to prevent the immune system from seeing it at all. Lyme will also actively attack our Lymphocytes, Macrophages, natural killer cells.

It also converts its form to the round bodies we call cysts. These are hard shells that protect the Lyme inside from antibiotics like Doxycycline. When you take only Doxy it causes the Lyme to convert to cysts at a much higher rate. Yes, your symptoms go away, but the Lyme is in you hiding. Doctors who know Lyme believe these cysts may be why so many people have relapses. The cysts convert back to active Lyme once treatment is slowed down or stopped. Lyme can also take it's self apart into components that the immune system can't see, then later reassemble.

Researchers also think Lyme creates biofilm inside us. Biofilm is sort of like a fort that protects a Lyme colony inside. Antibiotics can't get into the biofilm either. Biofilm is what they think causes some of us to cycle with our symptoms. On a schedule the biofilm releases new batches of bacteria.

So with all that Lyme is doing to stay hidden from the immune system, it's basically turned off your bodies immune response to it, there just aren't enough antibodies being made to count them in numbers that will meet the thresholds of standard tests for some of us. One thing we can do if we have been infected any length of time is to take a Lyme cyst buster and release a bunch of unprotected Lyme from the round bodies. Our bodies see it and make new antibodies again.

To have any hope of killing this beast we must use a multi pronged attack. Destroy the biofilm, bust the cysts, and outright kill the spirochetes. No one antibiotic does all this and no antibiotic kills 100%. The hope is what is left behind will be mopped up by our immune systems. We need to support our immune systems and detox, detox, detox while killing these. It is important to couple antibiotics with natural treatment and rotate treatment protocols to attack the tricky Lyme bacteria. Most of your immune system is in your gut. Healthy gut is so important. Finding a balance with antibiotics and gut health is tough.

All this being said, not all tests test for all strains of Borellia. There have been many people infected while in Europe come home to the US and test negative, because our test only tested for Borrelia burgdorferi. We also now have a new strain in the US called borrellia miyamotoi. The only test for this right now is DNA (PCR) test I believe. IgeneX lab in California is the only lab in the US that reports all bands; whether negative, positive or indeterminate. Some Lyme literate doctors will actually treat when there are indeterminate Lyme specific bands.

Lyme treatment is often lengthy and quite costly. We must have a determination to fight and defeat this to fully heal. Ticks are also not the only vector known to carry the Lyme bacteria. Lyme has been found on every continent except Antarctica.