So my oldest son has had some health issues for years, and the symptoms and issues related to them also keep coming and going in very weird cycles, again for years. So on more than one occasion we had his blood checked and it keeps coming back that he's got a low immune system. Same old same old, just watch out for him getting sick and stay on top of it.
FIRST PANDAS - BAD STUFF WITH STREP BACTERIA
Then he started to get some unusual symptoms, so we were put in touch with a specialist who said he's got "PANDAS" which is Pediatric Auto-immune Neuro-Psychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal Infection. This is scary stuff, they now believe that in the right situation, strep (think Strep throat) can affect the brain. That's a gross over-simplification, but that's the general idea.
THEN OTHER BACTERIA - INCLUDING LYME DISEASE (BORRELIA BURGDORFERI)
Long story short, the immunologist that we've been seeing suggested that we look for chronic infections through a blood-draw and see what comes up. Turns out there was a LOT of stuff that has been overlooked for basically his entire life! Including Lyme disease, which technically is Borrella Burgdorfrei. We're treating him now with long-term antibiotics and other protocols, everything except for the Borrella infection, because that's just about illegal to treat in Texas.
THE WHOLE FAMILY IS SHOWING CURRENT AND/OR PAST ANTIBODIES FOR LYME
The immunologist said that the entire family should be checked, and we ran our labs against Lyme Disease ... looks like we're all showing that we've got the antibodies for it! My labs came back very strong for an active infection, from what I understand it's because I had just recently taken a short-course of antibiotics, so that probably "provoked" the bacteria to come out of hiding.
WHY THE *@#* IS LYME DISEASE SO CONTROVERSIAL?
So, why the controversy? Turns out there's two schools of thought on this and one school is steeped in academic bureaucracy and that includes the quasi-military CDC (Center for Disease Control), which takes it's scientific queues from the IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of America - which is NOT a governmental group) on Lyme Disease and there are some fishy characters inside of that group who may have conflicts-of-interest that bias their view.
ISDA VIEW ON LYME
Anyhow, the IDSA states that there is no evidence for long-term or "Chronic Lyme Disease". However, much of this decision was based upon one or two people inside the Lyme Disease panel in the IDSA and one member of the panel in the IDSA said that the guidelines were railroaded quickly with little or no discussion and no follow-up discussion.
Their view is that a Lyme Disease infection can be treated with a short-course of antibiotics and any lingering effects from the infection probably represent permanent damage. They also state publicly that a Lyme Disease infection is almost always associated with the bite of a certain type of deer tick and that the tick must be attaches for 36 hours and only in a few isolated parts of the country.
ILADS VIEW ON LYME
However, according to a wide range of physicians, researchers, clinicians, medical school professors and more, there are a lot of people who say this is nonsense. They grouped together to form ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society).
The people at ILADS say that deer ticks are being spread all over the country (studies show that to be true) and there was only one study that showed it took that many hours for bacteria to be transmitted from the tick to the host. Many researches believe that the bacteria can be transmitted in just a couple of hours, not a day and a half. Not only that, but they've found the Borrelia bacteria in the blood bank supply and they also have proven that it can be spread sexually (it's a cousin to Syphilis after all) and trans-placentaly as well, so babies can be born with congenital Lyme Disease. How about that?
BIOFILM - CUTE NAME, NOT SO CUTE REALITY
So, who's right? Well, in just the past few years a new understanding of how Bacteria try to beat anti-biotics and the immune system has emerged and the key to that is something called a biofilm. I won't get into great detail here, but essentially bacteria are just like soldiers in a fight. They can either try to go off on their own, or they can group together and try to fortify their position to push back the invaders.
Bacteria grouping together is called a biofilm and it's incredibly complex. When they do this they have a communication system, tunnels to eliminate waste products and they can extrude an outer protein to cover themselves up all in an attempt to evade both the human immune system and also antibiotics.
ABOUT US
So, we're just now started down the path for therapy. But, in my case I was a very good student up until about the 3rd grade. I pulled a tick out of my scalp that could have been there up to a few days and later that year I started to have significant issues cognitive issues ever since.
My wife's mother said that my wife got a significant major rash and that she was almost lifeless for a period of a week or ten days back when she was a little girl. She's also had a lot of medical issues in her life and a lot of them line up directly with the specific issues that she's had.
My boys are all different and one has a lot of medical issues, one just has frequent headaches and the last one shows some of the PANDAS symptoms ... really hate to think that we could have passed them something either through birth or through breast milk.
OUR JOURNEY
So, we're just a few weeks into this journey and we're doing anti-biotics and some other stuff we're thinking about like the Cowden Support Protocol. Either way it's been a long time getting where we are at, so it might be years before my wife and I get recovered from this nasty bacterial infection.
FIRST PANDAS - BAD STUFF WITH STREP BACTERIA
Then he started to get some unusual symptoms, so we were put in touch with a specialist who said he's got "PANDAS" which is Pediatric Auto-immune Neuro-Psychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal Infection. This is scary stuff, they now believe that in the right situation, strep (think Strep throat) can affect the brain. That's a gross over-simplification, but that's the general idea.
THEN OTHER BACTERIA - INCLUDING LYME DISEASE (BORRELIA BURGDORFERI)
Long story short, the immunologist that we've been seeing suggested that we look for chronic infections through a blood-draw and see what comes up. Turns out there was a LOT of stuff that has been overlooked for basically his entire life! Including Lyme disease, which technically is Borrella Burgdorfrei. We're treating him now with long-term antibiotics and other protocols, everything except for the Borrella infection, because that's just about illegal to treat in Texas.
THE WHOLE FAMILY IS SHOWING CURRENT AND/OR PAST ANTIBODIES FOR LYME
The immunologist said that the entire family should be checked, and we ran our labs against Lyme Disease ... looks like we're all showing that we've got the antibodies for it! My labs came back very strong for an active infection, from what I understand it's because I had just recently taken a short-course of antibiotics, so that probably "provoked" the bacteria to come out of hiding.
WHY THE *@#* IS LYME DISEASE SO CONTROVERSIAL?
So, why the controversy? Turns out there's two schools of thought on this and one school is steeped in academic bureaucracy and that includes the quasi-military CDC (Center for Disease Control), which takes it's scientific queues from the IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of America - which is NOT a governmental group) on Lyme Disease and there are some fishy characters inside of that group who may have conflicts-of-interest that bias their view.
ISDA VIEW ON LYME
Anyhow, the IDSA states that there is no evidence for long-term or "Chronic Lyme Disease". However, much of this decision was based upon one or two people inside the Lyme Disease panel in the IDSA and one member of the panel in the IDSA said that the guidelines were railroaded quickly with little or no discussion and no follow-up discussion.
Their view is that a Lyme Disease infection can be treated with a short-course of antibiotics and any lingering effects from the infection probably represent permanent damage. They also state publicly that a Lyme Disease infection is almost always associated with the bite of a certain type of deer tick and that the tick must be attaches for 36 hours and only in a few isolated parts of the country.
ILADS VIEW ON LYME
However, according to a wide range of physicians, researchers, clinicians, medical school professors and more, there are a lot of people who say this is nonsense. They grouped together to form ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society).
The people at ILADS say that deer ticks are being spread all over the country (studies show that to be true) and there was only one study that showed it took that many hours for bacteria to be transmitted from the tick to the host. Many researches believe that the bacteria can be transmitted in just a couple of hours, not a day and a half. Not only that, but they've found the Borrelia bacteria in the blood bank supply and they also have proven that it can be spread sexually (it's a cousin to Syphilis after all) and trans-placentaly as well, so babies can be born with congenital Lyme Disease. How about that?
BIOFILM - CUTE NAME, NOT SO CUTE REALITY
So, who's right? Well, in just the past few years a new understanding of how Bacteria try to beat anti-biotics and the immune system has emerged and the key to that is something called a biofilm. I won't get into great detail here, but essentially bacteria are just like soldiers in a fight. They can either try to go off on their own, or they can group together and try to fortify their position to push back the invaders.
Bacteria grouping together is called a biofilm and it's incredibly complex. When they do this they have a communication system, tunnels to eliminate waste products and they can extrude an outer protein to cover themselves up all in an attempt to evade both the human immune system and also antibiotics.
ABOUT US
So, we're just now started down the path for therapy. But, in my case I was a very good student up until about the 3rd grade. I pulled a tick out of my scalp that could have been there up to a few days and later that year I started to have significant issues cognitive issues ever since.
My wife's mother said that my wife got a significant major rash and that she was almost lifeless for a period of a week or ten days back when she was a little girl. She's also had a lot of medical issues in her life and a lot of them line up directly with the specific issues that she's had.
My boys are all different and one has a lot of medical issues, one just has frequent headaches and the last one shows some of the PANDAS symptoms ... really hate to think that we could have passed them something either through birth or through breast milk.
OUR JOURNEY
So, we're just a few weeks into this journey and we're doing anti-biotics and some other stuff we're thinking about like the Cowden Support Protocol. Either way it's been a long time getting where we are at, so it might be years before my wife and I get recovered from this nasty bacterial infection.
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