Lyme disease is a bacterial infection caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected ticks. Lyme disease can affect multiple body systems, including the nervous system, and can cause various symptoms, including fever, fatigue, and joint pain. In some cases, the infection can lead to inflammation of the brain, a condition known as Lyme encephalitis or Lyme brain.
Symptoms of Lyme brain can include difficulty with memory and concentration, mood changes, and difficulty with movement and coordination. It is important to seek medical treatment as soon as possible if you suspect you may have been infected with Lyme disease. Early treatment can help prevent more serious complications, such as chronic Lyme disease.
Lyme Disease and the Nervous System
When Lyme disease progresses, it travels to new areas in the body. By the time it becomes chronic, all your body is affected, including your brain. Spirochetes will eventually cross the blood-brain barrier causing harm to your nervous system by impairing nerve cells, causing imbalance to brain chemicals, releasing neurotoxins, and triggering inflammatory responses.
These actions lead to frustrating symptoms, including the following:
- Memory loss
- Confusion
- Losing train of thought mid-sentence
- Anxiety and depression
- Sleep disturbances
- Song and word repetition
- Tip of the tongue episodes
- Mood swings
If you have one or more of these symptoms, there are steps you can take to improve neurological problems, like the ones below:
Accurate Diagnoses
The first step is a must-do step before taking any other actions. Work with a Lyme-literate doctor to get an accurate diagnosis. You want to find out if you have Lyme disease even if your test results were negative. Lyme-literate doctors can analyze your blood through a microscope and compare the results with their comprehensive assessment.
A Lyme-literate doctor will also test for coinfections like Babesia and Bartonella. The same ticks that harbor Lyme bacteria can carry numerous other bacteria, transmitting multiple bacteria into your bloodstream. If coinfections are not treated, your Lyme symptoms will persist and cause more damage to your physical and mental health.
Antibiotic Treatments for Lyme Brain
Antibiotics are typically the first line of defense to improve neurological problems due to Lyme disease or coinfections. Your doctor may prescribe multiple rounds of antibiotics. Lyme-literate doctors opt for intravenous infusions to ensure the entire dose of antibiotics gets into your bloodstream, where the bacteria live.
The best treatment method is to receive antibiotics that can cross the blood-brain barrier and reach the bacteria affecting the nervous system. Lyme disease and each coinfection may require a different medicine. If you do not treat all of them, your symptoms will not go away completely.
A study out of Tulane shows how spirochetes can persist in the brain even after many rounds of antibiotics. They also report about 15% of people with Lyme disease experience neuroborreliosis due to damage to their central and peripheral nervous systems.
If antibiotics do not always work, there is a great need for alternative, effective treatments.
Alternative Treatments for Lyme Brain
Lyme-literate doctors are those on the cutting edge of treatments for infectious diseases. They have the equipment, data, and knowledge to apply newer treatments to eliminate spirochetes from your body. Most treatments are natural and non-invasive and can be done on an outpatient basis. Treatments like the ones below can prevent and reverse Lyme Brain.
Neurofeedback
Neurofeedback is a way of retraining your brain to work at its best. There are various neurofeedback programs, some working on separate parts of the brain individually and others working on all components simultaneously. Your doctor will choose the right program based on your specific symptoms and needs. They will also conduct a neurofeedback assessment that gives them even more information on what is happening in your brain.
Lifestyle Changes
Researchers have discovered causes of Lyme brain and brain fog in general, which include
- Infections and underlying diseases
- Stress
- Lack of quality sleep
- Some prescription drugs
- Vitamin and mineral deficiencies
- Environmental toxins
- Lack of physical activity
- Toxins in foods you eat
The comprehensive assessment by your Lyme-literate doctor will tell them if one or more than one of these is causing your symptoms. Then, you will create a plan to change what you can. Many doctors will slowly eliminate sugar, gluten, and dairy from diets to see if that makes a difference. They will also recommend stress management activities, sleep hygiene, and exercise.
Oxidative Medicines
Oxidative medicine refers to the process of connecting spirochetes and ozone. When they come into contact with ozone, a spirochete’s chemical structure changes and becomes less destructive, ozone will convert back to oxygen once it is used. Applying ozone until the spirochete is destroyed effectively treats the Lyme brain.
Common treatments include ozone therapy, ozone suit or bagging, ozone ear, nasal, rectal, or vaginal insufflation, ozone joints, spine infiltration, and UV light blood irradiation.
IV Vitamin and Mineral Infusions
IV therapies are simple yet very effective. Getting medicine directly into the bloodstream means it can work faster, and you receive all the doses needed. Types of treatments include the vitamin C IV mega dose. It is used because vitamin C in the amounts provided through IV outperforms antivirals in some trials.
Other treatments include IV therapy silver, methylene blue, antimicrobials, sodium phenylbutyrate, gallium, and disulfiram hyperthermia.
Implementing Lyme Brain Treatments
A combination of treatments is often better than just one. Your doctor may recommend therapeutic apheresis, biofilm eradication, hyperthermia treatment, and detox therapy to help combat this disease. Because the therapies are not harmful, can be done quickly, and have evidence backing their effectiveness, they are worth a try.
You deserve to live a life free of Lyme brain. Reach out to a Lyme-literate doctor today who can help you get started.
