The Chronic Lyme Disease Summit runs from April 4th to 11th so I’m sharing some additional information for you.
The response to this summit, hosted by Dr. Jay Davidson, is out of this world already. Lyme disease is much more talked about than most realize and more people are affected by Lyme disease each year than breast cancer!
Many people with chronic Lyme disease have chronic anxiety too and the focus of my interview is how to use targeted individual amino acids GABA and tryptophan to top up low levels of GABA and serotonin while the Lyme is being addressed.
This gives Lyme sufferers resolution from much of the anxiety (if not all) right away and they don’t need to resort to meds like benzodiazepines or anti-depressants (like the women in the study below). There is also a big connection between Lyme disease and pyroluria and I cover this too.
Here is one study that shows that Lyme-anxiety is very real and that panic attacks may actually be trigged by the Lyme disease:
A paper published in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice in 2000: Panic attacks may reveal previously unsuspected chronic disseminated lyme disease
describes the histories of three patients with panic-like episodes that turned out to be related to underlying, previously unsuspected tick-borne diseases.
Each woman experienced symptoms that are not usual in panic disorder but are typical of neurological Lyme disease, including exquisite sensitivity to light, touch, and sounds, joint pain often in combination with cognitive changes including mental fogginess and loss of recent memory, and some degree of bizarre, shifting, and often excruciating neurological pain. Because these symptoms are atypical of primary panic disorder, they were very helpful in alerting the clinician to suspect an underlying physical illness.
In each case, the results of testing revealed positive hallmarks of disseminated Lyme and other tick-borne diseases [ including Lyme borreliosis caused by the spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi, babesiosis, and ehrlichiosis.] Since beginning treatment with intensive doses of appropriate antimicrobial medications for their tick-borne infections, all three patients have become free of panic attacks.
Treatment of their infections by a specialist in Lyme disease allowed one of the women to discontinue anti-anxiety medication completely and another to reduce the dose of medication to occasional use only. The third patient is no longer anxious but her depression is resolving more slowly despite the ongoing use of an antidepressant. Two of the patients have also needed ongoing medication for pain and other symptoms of late-stage, neurological Lyme disease
One of my favorite presentations at the 2015 IMMH/Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference was Dr. Suruchi Chandra’s Neuropsychiatric Lyme Disease talk. She shared that:
Lyme disease is one of the fastest growing infectious diseases in the United States. It can remain dormant for years and then later mimic a number of psychiatric illnesses, including anxiety disorders, mood disturbances, psychosis, and autism-like behaviors. It can be further complicated by the presence of co-infections.
Tune in to the summit to hear more about Lyme and anxiety and the amino acids GABA and tryptophan (and the Lyme-pyroluria connection).
(Please note: I’m not a Lyme disease expert – people seek me out for help with their anxiety and many of them also happen to have Lyme disease. The information we covered in the interview is very powerful for anxiety whether or not Lyme disease is a factor.)
Here are a selection of the many excellent Lyme interviews you’ll hear:
- Dr. Jay Davidson, DC, PScD: Heavy Metal Detox and Lyme Disease
- Connie Strasheim: Lyme Disease and Cancer
- Jack Tips, PhD, CCN: The Gut Microbiome and Lyme disease
- Shayne Morris, PhD: Biofilm, Bugs and Bacteriophage
- Bradley Bush, ND: A Lab Test that Actually Works for Detecting Lyme Disease
When you register you get access to 3 talks right away – mine is one of the 3 talks! You can register here:
https://qt247.isrefer.com/go/LYME16reg/trudyscottcn
