Posted by bleauberry on April 13, 2018, at 9:01:30
In reply to Re: Why is alcohol the only thing that helps me? » bleauberry, posted by Prefect on April 9, 2018, at 20:13:00
I understand your surprise and curiosity. It happened to me too after 20+ of psychiatric meds, a dozen psychiatrists, multiple diagnosis and all of them bad, failed ECT, failed backpacks full of prescriptions, total cost wasted estimated in the $120,000 range.
Then a Nurse Practitioner one day said that she has seen Lyme disease patients mistaken as psychiatric and she wondered if that had happened with me.
That was the beginning of a 3 year journey to REMISSION! After all that, remission was possible? Absolutely. You just have to hit the right target.
It is my opinion that most of us here a babble, and most psych patients in general, we are hitting the wrong targets. We are attempting to use psychiatric meds as long-term disease cures. They don't cure any diseases. They are excellent for acute manifestations and short term goals.
There are a ton of myths about Lyme. And antibiotics. I don't know where you got the '6 month' thing but that is one of the myths, one of many, many, many. There is a fair consensus that if you treat Lyme in the early stages - like perhaps within the first 6 months - then you can cure it, but that later Lyme is harder to treat. That is true. Not a myth. The deeper the bacteria dig into cartilage, done marrow, brain tissue, glands, the harder it is to reach them with the immune system or antibiotics.
But late Lyme can be cured. It is just harder. And when remission is reached, it can relapse requiring another round of treatment. Catching it early is definitely a better way to go.
But that often doesn't happen. Many people aren't even aware they had exposure to a tick. Nymph ticks are so small you might not even see it - smaller than a freckle. Half the time a bullseye rash does not happen. Half the time the lab test is wrong - the reason I was sick for 20+ years, including a stay in the psych ward.
If a doctor tests you and says, "I am happy to inform you that your test came back negative and it appears you don't have Lyme" - that is the same thing as sentencing an innocent prisoner to a lifetime in a dungeon with ever-increasing torture with time.
Both of my M.D.s and one N.P. are experts on Lyme. They all told me the same thing - that for every 1 person correctly diagnosed, there are an estimated 9 wrongly diagnosed - they got labelled as Fibromyalgia, Depression, Bipolar, Chronic Fatigue, Anxiety, and sometimes even Lupus and MS. They said nearly every new patient comes to them on psychiatric meds and poorly managed by previous doctors. And that when treatment is done, the psychiatric meds are either at much lower doses or eliminated completely.
In the lyme world, psychiatric meds are useful for short-term assistance. Sometimes they are needed permanently depending on longterm brain damage. For example in my case I know there has been some sort of long term impact in the dopamine system and Ritalin overcomes that. Nothing else could do that for me.
I did not experience any pscyhatric relief from antiobiotics until 1 year in. Remission didn't happen until year 3. The whole time I was on 2-4 antibiotics at a time, rotating every couple of months. There are reasons for that but I don't want to get into all that here.
You asked how would antibiotics work for 20+ years of suffering? Good question! My case is only one of millions and shows that it does work, can work. But how it works is more complicated.
In a nutshell - a stealth unsuspected infection - such as Borellia, Bartonella, Babesia, Mycoplasma (all from ticks and sometimes from cats, mosquitoes, flies, mice) - is going to produce toxins - poop, pee, enzymes, dead body parts, etc - in addition to the systemic inflammation damage to the body, and all of that debris floating around.
THAT stuff is what is jamming up our mood center in the brain. Get rid of that stuff. Antibiotics cause that to happen. When the population levels of pathogenic creatures are brought down to low levels (I think eradication is impossible) you no longer have symptoms. No more debris in the brain. Minimal anyway. Co-exist.
So longterm antibiotics work by two hypothesis:
1. Stop the source of the debris hitting the brain, the debris that is squashing out good mood chemicals or contaminating them....
2.Re-setting the immune system. My first LLMD had his own theory that antibiotics work by allowing the immune system to rest for some time. During that rest it can recover and reset. The immune system is intricately tied to mood. As anyone has noticed whenever they catch a flu or virus...It all is quite profound the first time you hear of this. I get that. Been there done that.
> I'm not sure I understand this lyme angle. I've been suffering from various form of this for 20 years. My understanding is antibiotics onlt work for lyme in the first 6 months of infection. You're proposing I go on antibiotics for a possible lyme infection after 20 years? Would it even work now?!
poster:bleauberry
thread:1098005
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20180331/msgs/1098120.html