healingways


Don’t Get Ticked Off Natural Ways to Avoid and Treat Lyme Disease by Linda Sechrist


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n 1977, two Yale School of Medicine scientists identified the infected black- legged deer tick carrying the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi as the disease-trans- mitting organism of Lyme disease. Since 1982, this most commonly reported vec- tor-borne disease in the U.S. has gained notoriety, with its own resource book, Disease Update: Science, Policy & Law; research center (Columbia-Lyme.org/ index.html); International Lyme and Asso- ciated Diseases Society website, ilads.org; Lyme Times print journal (LymeDisease. org); and national informational organi- zation, the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance (TBDAlliance.org). The surge of activity appears justifi-


able. According to scientists at the Cen- ters for Disease Control, approximately


300,000 cases are diagnosed annually in this country alone. Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck


Club, is a post-treatment Lyme disease patient and co-founder of LymeAid 4Kids (Tinyurl.com/LymeAid4Kids) that funds the diagnosis and treatment of un- insured children with Lyme. She disagrees with physicians that downplay late-stage cases and insist that the disease is cured with a simple round of antibiotics, as does Katina Makris, a classical homeo- path from New Hampshire and host of Lyme Light Radio.


After experiencing mysterious symptoms, Makris spent five years suffer- ing from debilitating symptoms familiar to individuals with Lyme—undiagnosed, relapsing fevers, lingering fatigue, joint


pain, headaches, neurological symptoms and cognitive impairment. “Then I final- ly began my 10-year healing journey,” she says. Her book Out of the Woods: Healing from Lyme Disease for Body, Mind, and Spirit, is a recovery memoir and resource guide for alternative medi- cal, emotional and spiritual support. Lyme evades detection by standard blood tests for bacterial antigens and antibodies. “The ELISA [enzyme-linked immuno assay] test is only accurate be- tween two weeks and two months after the bite,” says Makris, who notes that the Western Blot test is somewhat more accurate, while the IGeneX Laboratory test is superior. She believes the best lab- oratories for testing are Clongen Labora- tories and IGeneX Laboratory Services. Dr. Richard Horowitz has treated more than 12,000 Lyme disease patients as medical director of the Hudson Valley Healing Arts Center, in Hyde Park, New York. The author of Why Can’t I Get Better? Solving the Mystery of Lyme and Chronic Disease raises another red flag regarding detection. Testing for coin- fections frequently transmitted along with Lyme is unreliable. Horowitz, who will conduct a workshop with Makris at New York’s Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, in Rhinebeck, and online, from June 26 to 28, counsels that antibiotics are not effective because they don’t ad- dress all of the infecting organisms now frequently found in ticks. Stephen Harrod Buhner, of Silver


City, New Mexico, an independent scholar and citizen scientist and author of Healing Lyme Disease Coinfections, says that the bacteria have jumped species and found new hosts that live in habitats formerly occupied by wild animals: “They


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