Dendritic cell therapy uses your blood to produce an immune response to fight Lyme bacteria. If only it were that simple. A lot goes into applying dendritic cell therapy to Lyme disease treatment. The body was created to fight infections and heal itself. However, lifestyle and environmental factors make it difficult for some.
Heavy metals, toxins, poor eating habits, little exercise, and a lack of sleep hygiene make it harder for your immune system to do its job. Add on inflammatory diseases like diabetes, fibromyalgia, and arthritis, and the immune system is challenged even more.
When your body cannot function properly, diseases progress, and symptoms worsen. Lyme disease is an excellent example of a disease that does this. Your immune system is not strong enough to flush out Lyme bacteria. Dendritic cell therapy can make a difference. To fully understand dendritic cell therapy’s impact on Lyme disease, you must go back to the beginning, to the neuron.
What is a Neuron?
Nerve cells, or neurons, are tiny building blocks in the brain. They send messages from your brain to the rest of your body, telling it what to do. There are trillions of neurons in the body. Each neuron is made of a cell body, axion, and dendrite.
These three components aid the brain’s communication with the body. They act like telephone lines, passing on messages. Here are the steps that take place:
- Enough electricity is generated to send a message
- The electrical signal is sent away from the cell body and to the axion
- Electrical signal jump through nodes located on the axion until they reach the synaptic cleft
- Neurotransmitters are released when the electrical signal reaches the synapse
- Neurotransmitters travel toward the dendrites, which look like tree branches
- Dendrites then touch the next neuron that, starts this process all over again
- This pattern repeats until the message from the brain is delivered to the correct part of the body
Neurons are quick, making this process take less than a second.
What Are Dendrites?
Dendrites are like fingers or projections that reach and touch other neurons. Their goal is to pass along messages sent from the brain. The length of dendrites varies. If in the nervous system, the projections are long and can receive electrical signals or messages from thousands of other neurons.
What Are Dendritic Cells?
Dendrites are not the same as dendritic cells. However, they are connected. Dendritic cells are immune cells with dendrites attached, producing signals that help activate the immune system because they detect a foreign substance in the body.
Suppose the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme bacteria, enters your system. In that case, neurons will send out electrical signals, or messages, to warn the immune system that the body is under attack. When the dendrites of neurons (nerve cells) reach the dendrites of immune cells (dendritic cells), the message is received, and action is taken.
White blood cells, also referred to as monocytes, a type of leukocyte, are boosted to find the bacteria and destroy it.
How Dendritic Cell Therapy Works
The first step in receiving dendritic cell therapy is finding a Lyme-literate doctor with modern equipment to perform the procedure. It is a non-invasive procedure but requires expertise only held by Lyme specialists.
The procedure is simple and replicates what naturally occurs in the body when you have an infection or injury. First, your doctor will use equipment to separate your monocytes or white blood cells from your blood. Once removed, they will complete a process that turns the monocytes (white blood cells) into dendritic cells (immune cells) that initiate immune responses.
The dendritic cells are manipulated until they become inflamed and ready to destroy bacteria. It is like your doctor hacks your immune cells and then trains them on how to fight disease. Once your immune cells are processed, they are given artificial instructions on what to seek out and destroy. They are reintroduced back into your system to seek and eliminate harmful cells.
How Dendritic Cell Therapy Works on Lyme Disease
Lyme bacteria is not your ordinary bacteria. They are intelligent and have figured out more than one way to survive, even when your body is working hard to kill them. Examples of how they survive:
- Creating biofilms that act as tiny shields, preventing bacteria from being flushed out of the system and from being detected by inflammation
- Going dormant or inactive at random times, and when dormant, it is not detected by Lyme disease tests, leading to a false negative diagnosis. Also, when inactive, it is not detected by inflammation seeking to destroy it.
- Hiding in the lining of cells and tissues, especially those around joints, where they multiply and start spreading throughout the body
- Being able to travel against the flow of blood with their firm grasp
With dendritic cell therapy, some of your blood is extracted, and the white blood cells are separated from your red blood cells and platelets. The white blood cells are exposed to Lyme bacteria. They are given an inflammatory boost, then put back in your system where they work as they naturally would, protecting you from illness.
Who Is a Good Candidate for Dendritic Cell Therapy?
Dendritic cell therapy treats numerous cancers at all stages and autoimmune diseases like Lyme. Someone who may not benefit from treatment does not have enough or strong enough cells to produce an immune response. Also, neoantigens may exist. They are mutations of infected cells that may not be affected by immunotherapy.
If you are experiencing any of the three stages of Lyme disease and its related symptoms, you are likely a good candidate for dendritic cell therapy and other alternative treatments. Even if you live in the United States or Canada, it’s ideal to call a Lyme-literate doctor, like the ones at Lyme Mexico, today and find out more information. Being experts in dendritic cell therapy’s impact on Lyme disease, they can answer all your questions. They also have advanced equipment and an eagerness to help you heal.
