You have Lyme disease. You want to stay active despite having a disease that can be debilitating. Your mind says, “go have fun” but your body says, “I am in too much pain to do anything.”
Some days you can barely make it out of bed. You long for the days where you body feels well enough to spend time with family or enjoy a hobby.
You are not alone, there are 300,000 new cases of Lyme reported each year. Millions of people diagnosed with Lyme are searching for answers on how to stay active, just like you.
The truth is, there may not be just one answer. Maybe the solution involves an approach that helps you fight the individual symptoms, separately, rather than trying to cure Lyme as a whole.
To do this, break down your symptoms into categories and then learn how to treat each one with both prevention and intervention methods.
Below are tips for doing this so that you can remain active with Lyme disease.
Know Your Stage
There are three stages of Lyme disease, each bringing its own set of symptoms. Early localized disease you may experience fatigue, muscle and joint soreness, swollen glands, and headaches. This is also a period when misdiagnosis can happen because the symptoms mimic so many other disorders.
Even so, there are things you can do to ease these symptoms.
The early disseminated disease phase is when the disease begins to spread to your heart, central nervous system, and joints. The pain you felt before can increase and start to limit your activity.
In late disease stage, you have inflammation in the cardiac muscle and can cause abnormal rhythm. You may have moments where you are out of balance and struggle with coordination. In severe cases, facial paralysis can happen. Headaches, confusion, arthritis, inflammation, stiffness and pain in the joints may appear.
One major complaint by those with Lyme disease in any stage is chronic fatigue. So, let’s start with a tip on how to combat chronic fatigue.
Cope with Chronic Fatigue
Your Lyme doctor will have a variety of treatments to combat chronic fatigue. One way is the use of supplements or medicines specifically designed for those with chronic fatigue. There are also specific lifestyle changes you can implement.
Eliminating sugar has been shown to help ease the symptoms of chronic fatigue. In addition, discontinuing the use of opioids can offer relief from fatigue. With your doctor, you can create a plan of action that helps you slowly make changes like this.
If you are worried about withdrawal symptoms, don’t be. Your Lyme specialist will have a protocol to help ease these, so you don’t have to suffer.
Fight Depression
Depression caused by Lyme disease may be linked to low glutathione levels in the body. You may even be taking an anti-depressant already to fight the symptoms of feeling sad, or crying for no reason, or wanting to stay in bed or in your house all day.
To fight depression, you can get an IV Glutathione infusion. You could take supplements of glutathione, but they must travel from your mouth through your stomach and then to your body. The stomach acid will prevent some of the supplement ingredients from going to your body.
IV infusions get the right amount of glutathione to your blood within seconds.
Fight Pain
Not all pain is the same. You know this because you have probably experienced the difference between Lyme pain and injuries or other types.
With Lyme disease, you can feel pain in your joints, head, and muscles. Some people develop fibromyalgia and feel pain throughout the body.
Many times, the pain is caused by damage to the nerves. Some doctors will administer neural therapy, or an injection of Novocain to specific spots on the body can relieve pain.
Eliminate Toxins
Toxins and heavy metals in your body make it very hard for your body to fight off bacteria, like the bacteria in your blood that is causing Lyme disease to thrive.
Detox therapies can help you eliminate these toxins so your immune system can fight bacteria and infections and better protect you.
Homotoxicology, Chelation, and the Vodder method of lymphatic massage are a few methods that can strengthen your body so it can get rid of toxins and heavy metals. Your Lyme doctor can establish a routine body purification protocol with you to help you continue benefitting outside of the clinic.
Improve Neurological Responses
Therapeutic apheresis is the process of taking out infected blood cells and replacing those with healthy blood cells. This procedure is offered when symptoms seem to be getting worse, for some this is in the late stages of Lyme disease.
Some doctors try to clean your blood and reuse your own blood. However, the procedure is more effective when using blood from a donor that has been screened and proven to be disease free.
Other treatments like this are plasmapheresis, plateletpheresis, and red cell exchange. Some patients have felt better after just one treatment.
Before any of this can be done, however, your doctor will complete a strict screening process with you and the donor, to make sure you are a perfect match.
Use Your Own Stem Cells
Regenerative stem cell therapy is recommended after Lyme disease treatments. Stem cells, once in your body, can split and duplicate to replenish other cells in the body.
Recommended for those in remission from Lyme (yes, this is possible), your Lyme doctor will create a specific treatment for you based on the specific cells you need. They can even put healthy cells in your brain and spinal cord, which will then send messages to areas in need of repair to promote healing.
You can start fighting the negative symptoms of Lyme disease today. Reach out to a Lyme literate physician to create your plan for winning the fight again Lyme disease. You can have an active life again.