Lyme Disease

The Anxiety Summit – How We Used GABA for Lyme Anxiety

June 15, 2016 By Trudy Scott 15 Comments

Tricia Soderstrom of Abounding in Hope With Lyme was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

How We Used GABA for Lyme Anxiety

Lyme disease can mimic a number of psychiatric illnesses, including anxiety disorders
Our journey with Lyme Disease
Essential oil for ticks and having pets
My daughter’s symptoms; Lyme pain, OCD, Anxiety, Panic Attacks
Protocols; antibiotics, herbs, supplements, anxiety meds and anti-depressant meds
Used GABA Calm sublinguals with good results and the Lyme pyroluria connection

Tricia shares this about her daughter’s Lyme anxiety:

When she was about seven my husband and I started noticing that she was washing her hands a lot, to the point where her hands would be just so raw and they would bleed a little bit. And we noticed just some repetitive things that she was doing. She started having like facial tics and motor tics and just really certain things would just kind of scare her more than usual. I kept taking her to the pediatrician and everything and then we started noticing more symptoms. She just began having anxiety, and it started out just kind of like little spurts here and there, but it became so overwhelming and so controlling over her life that she did not want to leave the house and she did not want me to leave her. Part of her anxiety was that something was going to happen to me. So she would just try to protect me with everything in her to keep me home with her or that I would take her with me everywhere I went. I could not leave her for a second. And if I did you could just tell she was so afraid and it was so heartbreaking, but it was so exhausting as a mom because it was 24 hours a day, it was not wanting to go to sleep at night; waking up in the middle of the night. If she read something for school it would set her off. If she saw something on TV that would set her off. And it just became a life consuming problem. And we were desperate, just desperate for answers.

Tricia shares how Source Naturals GABA Calm was so helpful for her daughter’s anxiety and for her too:

when your child is in this full-blown panic attack they’re not going to swallow a pill so the sublingual was great because I would put it in her mouth under her tongue and just tell her to suck on it. And you could just tell it would start to work and start to calm her down and really help her out.

They would take the edge off of her anxiety; they would help her to go back to sleep at night. And they helped me because I started taking GABA when I was so stressed out trying to interact with her and trying to help her.

And it’s nice to be able to just carry it in my purse if I need to, if anybody needs one

According to Dr. Klinghart, pyroluria needs to be addressed in order for the Lyme treatment to be successful. Here is the pyroluria questionnaire

Here are some resources from Tricia:

Pet Flea & Tick Collar

Essential Oils Repellent

Lyme Links & Resources

If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here: www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

The Anxiety Summit – A functional medicine approach to eliminate Lyme disease and the anxiety it often causes

June 13, 2016 By Trudy Scott 13 Comments

Dr. Jay Davidson D.C., PSc.D., host of the Chronic Lyme Disease Summit, is interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

A functional medicine approach to eliminate Lyme disease and the anxiety it often causes

The incidence of anxiety in Lyme disease
Lyme bacteria and methyl group depletion
A functional medicine approach to eliminate the Lyme disease infection
Balancing minerals and methyl donors
Healing the gut and detoxing heavy metals

Here is the initial study I shared: Panic Attacks May Reveal Previously Unsuspected Chronic Disseminated Lyme Disease

The author 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.

Here are some gems from our interview:

So when you look at anxiety I look at it from an integrative standpoint – like the brain, nervous system has a huge piece in that, the neurotransmitters, and obviously the gut. So there’s multiple pieces of the body that seem to have a link with it. But if you have something that’s actually affecting the brain, which is the organ that’s running everything in the body, which Lyme disease or the bacteria borellia is one of those factors I really think that that in itself can cause anxiety – just due to the bacteria. And what’s interesting about the bacteria of Lyme is it’s not uniform – it can change forms and the main form that it’s known for is called the spirochete where it basically looks like a corkscrew, a spiraling shape. And so Lyme doesn’t like to just really float around in the bloodstream. It loves tissues. It loves joints and that’s where some of the symptoms are, like joint pain, and especially moves around the body. But it loves the brain too and it loves to be in those tissues.

Dr. Jay shares that chronic Lyme disease does exist and discusses testing issues:

…the standard testing that’s still done today, the ELISA and Western blot, they call it the two tier method. So if one shows up positive then they’ll run the other one. That methodology was actually designed and recommended as an observational population method for Lyme. It was never intended for a clinical diagnosis. And somehow it became the clinical diagnosis tool that if you run the test and if you come up negative there’s no way you could have Lyme.

Rresearch has shown that 40 to 60 percent of those tests are wrong which means you could almost flip a coin and get a better result. So you definitely want to find a practitioner that knows Lyme disease, that understands it.

My favorite test right now is from a lab called Pharmasan Labs … a test called iSpot. So instead of B cell antibodies which traditional tests uses it’s using T cells and it’s a lot more accurate. And studies basically show that this test is not 100 percent by any means either. But it’s 86 percent sensitive and 94 percent specific. And basically all that means is if you get a positive result on an iSpot Lyme test there’s a six percent chance that it’s wrong. If you get a negative on the iSpot Lyme test there’s a 16 percent chance that it is wrong.

Here information on the Chronic Lyme Disease Summit he hosted earlier this year. It was excellent!

Here is Dr. Jay’s book: 5 Steps to Restoring Health Protocol: Helping those who haven’t been helped with Lyme Disease, Thyroid Problems, Adrenal Fatigue, Heavy Metal Toxicity, Digestive Issues, and More!

Here are the gifts from Dr. Jay:

5 Steps to Restoring Health Protocol” audio book
Lyme Disease: Why an Antibiotic Bug Bomb is Not the Answer eBook
Heavy Metal Toxicity: A Modern Day Epidemic Not Being Addressed eBook

If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here: www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

Heavy metal detox on Chronic Lyme Disease Summit – starts Monday

April 3, 2016 By Trudy Scott 4 Comments

Just a quick reminder that the Chronic Lyme Disease Summit starts tomorrow Monday April 4^th and runs through April 11^th.

Here are the speakers for day 1. And you can register here:
https://qt247.isrefer.com/go/LYME16reg/trudyscottcn

Dr. Jay Davidson is the fabulous host of the summit and he covers Heavy Metal Detoxification and Lyme Disease and why he is so passionate about this topic and getting the message out there. He shares the story of his wife’s Lyme disease and how she didn’t have the classic bulls eye rash and how they didn’t even find a tick. It was when his wife gave birth to their daughter that she got really sick and almost died.

He shares the role heavy metals (lead, mercury and aluminum) play and where they are found:

High fructose corn syrup contains mercury
Contact lenses cleaners in the 80s or even early 90s contained thimerosal
Red lipstick contains lead
And many more sources of these metals!

Dr. Davidson goes into great depth into heavy metal chelation in this interview:

I’m not really a big fan of the cilantro and the chlorella. Even though those are talked about a lot in the heavy metal world. It seems as if those stir things up more than they actually are able to pull things out.

For instance, when you’re looking at studies with chlorella and cilantro a lot of the studies will be in vitro or they’re looking at the chlorella binding to mercury, or the cilantro binding to mercury in a petri dish. But I think it’s a whole different set of circumstances in the science world. And you look at in vivo of in the body, being able to grab onto it in the body and pull it out.

He shares that he is a fan of glutathione:

I know there’s definitely a lot of disagreement in this world of “Well, should we raise glutathione or shouldn’t we? Are we causing other issues?” But I really love glutathione because glutathione is one of those things that helps to neutralize mercury in the body

Dr. Davidson goes into great depth on heavy metal detox and the hard lessons he has learned. It is an intense interview full of very specific information (probably the most detailed heavy metal interview I’ve listened to!) He ends with this connection to Lyme disease:

I don’t know if anybody can ever truly get well from Lyme disease if there’s mercury and lead in the body if you’re not detoxing that. Because essentially what happened with my wife is as we started detoxing the mercury and lead, which she was also high levels of mercury and lead in her body, toxic levels of it, it started releasing the biofilm, which allowed her body and her immune system to say “Hey, there’s bugs underneath these blankets of biofilms.”

Signing up for the event is worth it just for this interview!

And a reminder that the price increases once the summit starts so make your purchase now if you are wanting to keep this valuable information for your learning library
https://qt247.isrefer.com/go/LYME16order/trudyscottcn/

Enjoy!

Chronic Lyme Disease Summit – anxiety, pyroluria & more

March 21, 2016 By Trudy Scott 6 Comments

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

Neuropsychiatric Lyme Disease by Dr. Suruchi Chandra

September 25, 2015 By Trudy Scott 28 Comments

One of my favorite presentations at the recent IMMH/Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference was Dr. Suruchi Chandra’s Neuropsychiatric Lyme Disease talk.

Here is the description of her presentation:

“Neuropsychiatric Lyme Disease and Associated Co-infections: Clinical Presentations, Diagnostic Challenges, and Treatment Options”

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. Both the diagnosis and treatment of these infections in the chronic stage can be challenging. We will review both standard treatment recommendations and integrative and holistic approaches, including dietary changes, herbal medicines, and nutritional supplements.

Dr. Chandra started by sharing the late stage neuropsychiatric symptoms of Lyme disease:

Depression
Mood swings
Anxiety, panic attacks, OCD
Psychosis
Violent behaviors and irritability
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Fibromyalgia
ADHD and autism like behaviors
Seizures
Sleep disorders

Here are some of the many very interesting facts she shared:

Lyme disease is one of the fastest growing infectious diseases in the USA (and it doesn’t seem to be only an issue in the USA)
Not everyone recalls a tick bite or bulls-eye rash
Lyme disease is not only isolated to the Northeast – a year ago a Stanford study found the bacterium Borrelia miyamotoi, as well as burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, in ticks they sampled throughout the San Francisco Bay area
Lyme disease may be due to tick borne complex i.e. it is hypothesized that there are multiple co-infections
Purple rashes that look like stretch marks are common with Bartonella
There can be maternal-fetal transmission of the disease
The involvement of the gut is under-rated with Lyme disease and cognitive decline is a big issue
Lyme and co-infections affects serotonin levels, due to IDO being increased
Low zinc (and high copper) and low manganese levels are often factors

Dr. Chandra is very unique in that she uses no antibiotics, “provokes” before testing and has some very interesting herbal protocols (many that are used with malaria). She stated that Lyme disease is worth treating even if there are no symptoms, simply because of the higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

She uses a wonderfully integrative approach with her patients who have chronic tick borne diseases:

integrative-approach-chronic-tick-borne-illnesses

Here is the last slide of her presentation: Consider Lyme disease and the associated co-infections when there is any severe or atypical psychiatric disease, and use a holistic and individualized approach.

Chandra-conclusion

Excellent presentation! This really is the top integrative mental health conference to attend!

Here are a few of my other favorite presentations include:

Julie Matthews’ talk on “Oxalates, Phenols, and FODMAPs: Food Substances and Diets that Impact Mental Health Conditions”
James Greenblatt’s talk “New Information on Nutritional Lithium for ADHD, Mood Disorders and Prevention of Cognitive Decline”
Andrea Gruszecki’s talk on “The Effects of Stress on the Gut-Brain Microbiome”
Dr Kurt Woeller’s talk on “Oxytocin and Cholesterol – Their Interactions and Effects on Mental Health and Autism Spectrum Disorders”

I’ll share some highlights from these in a future blog post.

All the presentations were recorded and I’ll let you know when the recordings are available for purchase. These presentations are not to be missed.

Please share what you know about Lyme disease or if you have been diagnosed with one of the co-infections. Feel free to ask questions too.