Lyme & Candida

Hi, recently you provided us with 10 steps to which you battle candida and other diseases like babesiosis and Lyme, in which you then gained weight after treatment. Could you describe how you diagnosed and treated both babesiosis and Lyme? Thanks a bunch


You need to find a REALLY good lyme literate md. Unfortunately, these folks are hard to find, as to be frank, the establishment medical community has made it extremely hard for doctors to dx lyme.

I recieved names of doctors at lymenet.

Here's some essential things to know.

1) Babesia is a tick-borne protozoal infection that appears to basically ALWAYS come with a borrelia infection.... borrelia being the spirochete bacteria most considered the "cause" of lyme.

2) Lyme/babesiosis is generally considered a clinical dx. This is why you need extremely good lyme literate doctors. You simply wouldn't believe how many patients, while subscribers to natural medicine, get tested negative (by crappy labs) by their nd's, deemed lyme-negative, and go on believing they're in the clear. I was one of these patients, tested negative in 2000 (by a crappy lab), and waisted 4 years before realizing I had a TERRIBLE babesia infection and clinically dx'd with lyme.

2) Igenex is considered the BEST lab, but again, even Igenex fully admits false negatives are exceptionally common. IMMUNOSCIENCES LAB appears to also be good. Both of these labs do antibody tests, and personally I would NEVER stay with a doctor who insisted on using antibody tests from any other lab.

Bowen labs uses an alternative approach, and searches for evidence of the bugs directly. This test is very controversial, but I believe it's still quite helpful in the diagnosis.

3) The following protocols can go a long way at helping you dx lyme and babesia...

a) Lyme: salt/c protocol: take 1 g of each together daily for a week. If at any time you have a severe reaction, including significant increase in fatigue, back off, and coniser yourself a likely lyme patient. Increase dose to 1g of each for EVERY 10 pounds of body weight, taken over many doses daily. If you can increase to the max dose, handle it for 3 months, then you are not a serious lyme patient, and imo the probability you have lyme is low.... but of course nothing is definitive here.

b) babesia: PULSED artemisinin treatment: take 100 mg oral artemisinin with grapefruit juice for every 10 pounds of body weight. Do this for 3 days ONLY. It's a good idea to use at least SOME Allergy Research Group's artemisinin GEL here, as it apparently increases blood levels higher. Also, some doctors consider Dr. Zhang's artemisinin (http://hepapro.com) to be better quality than Allergy Resarch Group's oral product.

Start out slow with the artemisinin, perhaps with ONE 100 mg capsule. If at anytime you have a severe reaction, including but not limited to sweats, chills, headaches, nightmares, or insomnia, than you should find a good lyme literate md asap, as the liklihood of either babesia or malaria is probably high.

Babesia is an ugly bug. It has an amazing ability to develop resistant to antimalarial meds. Some doctors are experimenting with taking this 3 day mega-course of artemisinin every three months, to reduce artemisinin resistance, and taking other antimalarials including noni and neem in the interim.

Let me know if you need more info. I think it's a GREAT idea to investigate these issues... so sad it's so difficult though! Good luck.


Also, if you haven't cured any of those diseases you have, how have you gained all your weight back? After what treatment did you notice your weight stabilizing back to normal?


Improvements in weight and muscle tone seemed to be clearly correlated to a few distinct things.

1) First and foremost, the good quality parasite herbs I've mentioned a number of times. Bad quality herbs didn't do a thing for me. The good ones allowed me to gain 5 pounds in a little over a week as I recall. They were a miracle. Giardia was apparently the big problem addressed here.

2) Raw GRASS-FED eggs were amazing.
You simply wouldn't believe how much they helped initially. The herbs allowed me to gain "fat" gain well, but the eggs really kick started muscle tone improvements.

3) Treating babesia. I don't believe I'm cured of babesia, but I believe I have a mild infection now, compared to an absolutely MASSIVE infection prior to treatments. I couldn't handle 1/8th of a capsule of artemisinin gracefully when I started. That's approximately 1/120th the daily dose my Doctor recommends, taken over the 3 day course I mentioned.

4) Treating liver flukes. Salt/c, biltricide, and an Amish dewormer have helped here.

5) Eating fresh cultured veggies as much as possible, with every meal possible, and once daily on an empty stomach. I think the homemade yogurt has helped here too but the dieoff was really bad for YEARS with this stuff. Overdoing the yogurt or cultured veggies led to weight delclines if I progressed too quickly. Again, the belief here is that candida dieoff released organic mercury, which trashed my immune system, flared the gut infections and liver detox problems, and led to muscle wasting. Taken moderately though, my digestion improved and after weeks or months I'd notice weight gain.


your prior post says to do lots of liver flushing. i plan on doing that this summer hopefully.

did you do any bowel cleansing? what method did you use? i know the most popular types are the psyllium+bentonite shakes combined with herbs (cascarda, etc) while going on a fast, and then there are oxygen-based cleansers like oxypowder. did you use either of these? which one is the truly effective one? i dont know whether to believe in "mucoid plaque" or not, and if oxypowder would be able to eliminate it if there is.


thanks very much for the info. as massive and overwhelming as it is. i hope i don't have a lot of those diseases. is there any way i can email you if i have any questions just in case you disappear from this board?


That sure sounds like a lot... I'll keep it in mind if all else fails. To be honest, I don't know what I have. I know I have oral thrush, which indicates candida. I've done stool and saliva tests that indicated my iGA (gut immunity) is way below normal. It seems there are so many things that it could be. I'm 6'0 and weigh about 125 pounds, and I may even be dropping in weight recently.


Andy,

How's your digestion? Do you have food allergies? If so, how bad?


i wouldn't know how to gauge how well my digestion is. nothing i eat really bothers me. i have been having relatively frequent bowel movements since eating a little better and not eating the bad stuff. however, sometimes, and today, they will not be formed enough, as in one piece and will break off easily. my doctor says this is IBS. food-allergy-wise, i don't know if i have them, i don't really get extreme reactions to anything. but to be safe i've pretty much limited a lot of foods. i really don't know why i'm so underweight and it's been this way all of my life. at 18, i was 6'0 and 114 lbs. i then wanted to bulk up so i started eating at least 2k calories a day, mostly junk food, and went up to 130 lbs. then i started working out and taking protein shakes and shot up to 150. however, i've stopped all of that and now am plumetting.


This is complicated, and I'm still treating, but seemingly making tremendous progress.

Lyme is VERY complicated, and subscribe to much of what Dr. Klinghardt outlines here http://neuraltherapy.com/LymeALookBeyond6.pdf

I have a core program. I susbscribe Dr. Klinghardt's premise that some "large" parasites can harbor lyme or other infections such as giardia, which in turn can continue to reinfect you. Thus you need to treat infections in a given order, killing off the large bugs such as tape worms, other worms, liver flukes, etc. first.

However, borrelia is the assumed the primary initiator of immune suppression, so you should go after borrelia throughout the entire protocol, starting EARLY.

Unfortunately, borrelia is stagey, taking at least 3 different forms, each of which succumbs to different antimicrobials. Many folks believe salt/c is cabaple of killing off all 3 forms. Further, it's clear that salt/c does indeed kill off MANY worms, and in my case when I ramped up salt/c for the first time I started passing HUGE numbers of liver flukes, which I didn't even know I had at the time. Therefore, starting the protocol is salt/ is HIGHLY recommended.

As mentioned, borrelia is highly immunosuppressive, so lymies succumb to a wide variety of co-infections, candida perhaps the MOST common, which is also immunosuppressive. The virus HHV-6 is also VERY COMMON, which apparently causes neutropenia (immune suppression again.) Finally, giardia is incredibly common in lymies, particularly folks with considerable gut problems including food allergies.

Therefore, you need to attack lyme with a "broad spectrum antimicrobial approach." The supplements Seagate olive leaf extract, garlic, and argentyn 23 colloidal silver combined with salt/c go after a HUGE number of bugs, including all of the above mentioned bugs, at least to some degree.

I take all of them.

I've also taken the allinia, biltricide, and mebendazole in intermittant courses to kill off the bigger bugs. I still have courses of each ahead.

Regarding borrelia specific approaches, I've taken different herbs in succession. I started with Zhang's HH for 6 months. Then I moved to samento, and now doing a samento/cumanda combined therapy. The preferred approach here is the following: 20 drops of either, twice daily. Do samento for 12.5 days, then cumanda for 12.5 days, then take 3 days off, to complete a 4 week cyle.

The 3 day off period is important for the following reason. When you attack the spirochete is apparently turns into a bud-like cyst form which is very hard to kill. However, the theory here is that during the 3 day off period much of the cysts turn back to spirochetes and are quite vulnerable to the samento/cumanda once again. My experience seems to bear this out.

Now, there's much more I'm doing for borrelia. Over the past few months Dr. K has had me introduce andrographis tincture, eye-bright tincture, stephaniae root tincture, and japanese knot weed tincture.

Further (believe it or not) borrelia can also take on a cell wall deficient (wd) form, which obviously goes intracellular into a number of our cells... the bastards even get into our white blood cells. Dr. K believes noni can treat these bugs intracellularly, and he has me taking 20 drops noni tincuture form nutramedix twice daily. Im taking all of these antimicrobials on the 25 day on, 3 day off schedule.

Note that babesia is also an intracellular bug - it actually reproduces within our red blood cells, similar to malaria - and Dr. K believes noni is effective against babesia as well, although recommends a 1 year course minimum.

Dr. K is going to have me take a 5 week mega-course of Teasel root tincture, but he fears cross reactions, so I'll stop all of the other herbs during this period.

Finally, there are known borrelia cyst "busters." Allinia mentioned above is apparently one, and flagyl is another. The herb coptis appears to be a HIGHLY effective borrelia cyst buster. Unfortunately, coptis gives me heart pains, very bad pains indeed, so I stay away from it. I'd love to take it combined with everything above, to address cyts, spirochetes, AND cwd forms simultaneously. Perhaps the salt/c is enough to address all forms, but at the least I suspect it would take a lot longer, although some folks seem to have cured themselves with salt/c alone.

Regarding Babesia, the best answer I have is the following:

The 3 day mega-pulses of artemisinin every 3 months. Nutramedix noni tincture, neem, and quassia in the interim. There are other antibabs meds, but they are quite toxic and/or expensive, so I'd consider doing those after the above failed.

I realize this is more info than you wanted to recieve, but unfortunately lyme is a hard problem, but all too common. Please don't let this get in the way.

Also, don't forget all of the info in the post you referenced... the HEAVY mineral supplementation, HEAVY enzyme supplementation, whole food, low carb, nearly no sugar diet, etc. is also incredibly important to defeat babs/lyme.