Posted by bleauberry on November 11, 2012, at 10:53:34
In reply to Re: Depression is Infectious Inflammation, posted by jono_in_adelaide on November 11, 2012, at 3:18:53
> How does your LLMD explain the existance of psychiatric illness in places where there is no lymes disease (sweden, England, Australia)
That's an excellent question. I can't speak for my doctor because he isn't here to answer for himself but I can share my thoughts on that topic.
Lyme disease has been found virtually everywhere on the planet. Ticks have been found in places and regions where they were supposedly nonexistent. The same bacteria carried by ticks have also been found in dust mites, mosquitos, and some flies. That's just what is known, so you'll have to fill in the blanks for what isn't yet known.
Sweden, England, and Australia do have ticks. They've even been found in snow. And Alaska. This highlights the difficulties in treating lyme....there are too many myths floating around. When we get right down to hardcore nuts and bolts, what actually happens in the doctor's practice, that's where we learn. They see it first hand.
One patient got a bad reaction that looked like lyme, except it was from a barnacle scrape while swimming in the ocean. The symptoms were unexplained depression, weakness, and tiredness. It responded to Lyme treatment even though it wasn't Lyme. That is key to understand.
There are about a dozen infectious organisms that I am familiar with, and several times more I am not familiar with, that all pretty much look the same in terms of symptom presentation. Depending on the doctor seen, they all look like one of or a mixture of these, and are commonly misdiagnosed as one of these:
Depression and all psychiatric symptoms.
Fibromyalgia
Lupus
Arthritis
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
And moreIt's really hard because tests do not exist to accurately test for any of the suspects. Instead what has to be done arechallenge trials to see what happens....the results of a trial tells a lot, one way or the other. All we know for sure, and it is mostly anecdotal since there isn't any money in it for anyone to research it, is that patients in those categories who have tried antibiotics often improve or go into remission. At this point in history each of us sort of have to fill in the blanks as to why and how on our own. That's when I prefer to hear what someone says on the topic who actually sees it 8 hours a day every day as their work. LLMDs for example understand they are potentially treating a lot more than just one simple bacteria, and when the patient gets better they may never know for sure what the bug was or what the cause of the inflammation was, only that they got better on antimicrobial strategies but not other strategies.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1030987
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20121029/msgs/1031072.html