A Holistic Practitioner’s Quest for Clarity in the Treatment of Lyme Disease

Chaos and confusion benefits the stealth infections, not the patient.

One of the greatest challenges we face as health practitioners in the treatment of Lyme and similar complex chronic diseases is lack of clarity.  

Our patients often lack a clear diagnosis, thanks to the many short-comings associated with lab testing of stealth pathogen infections  (such as Lyme-Borreliosis, Bartonella, and Babesia).  

Confusing symptoms also characterize these types of infections.  Patients often wonder, (when lab tests don’t provide definitive answers) “are my symptoms caused by Lyme disease – or am I just getting old?”  And most doctors will tell you, “you’re just getting old.”  But inside a person knows that something isn’t right.

I often see patients who come to our clinic after having been to many other doctors and practitioners in search of effective treatment.  Along the way they have accumulated a supplement, herb, and medication list a mile long.  They often have no idea what is helping or hindering them at this point – all they know is that their body seems to have stopped healing.  Or worse, they are back-sliding and deteriorating.

How to cut a path through the jungle of confusion (what’s really going on here?) – and chaos (the inflammation, pain, immune system dysfunction, anxiety, poor digestion, and so on) – that leads to substantial improvement?

The number of factors influencing the patient’s health and course of disease is overwhelming for most patients and practitioners.

What’s more, Lyme patients often have unexpected responses to treatments, be they acupuncture, herbal, supplements, or even the gentlest homeopathy.  

Many practitioners have the experience that what they learned in school – be it functional medicine, naturopathic, or Chinese medicine school – does not work like it should for the treatment of Lyme and stealth pathogens.

That’s because the treatment of Lyme and stealth pathogens doesn’t follow the same rules as a typical infection; it requires a whole different type of approach.  But until you plug into what’s needed to solve stubborn, unpredictable cases of Lyme disease, the confusion and lack of effective treatment continues, despite your best intentions.

This lack of clarity keeps both patient and practitioner disempowered and uncertain what to do to get health back on track.  If one herb doesn’t work you try another, or perhaps a different drug, or different supplement.  Your treatment plan becomes a guessing game, throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

How To Cut Through The Confusion:

#1 Get Oriented

There are certain characteristics of Lyme and stealth pathogen infections that we as practitioners should learn to expect:

• Expect non-sensical or unexplainable symptoms – they are a hallmark characteristic of these diseases.

• Expect immune, hormonal, and nutritional deficiencies – plugging the holes can in fact prevent the ship from sinking.

• Expect conventional diagnostics to reveal “nothing,” everything looks fine; you have to know where and how to look for evidence of these under-the-radar microbes.

• Expect a high toxin burden, as well as the inflammation, immune dysfunction, and tissue damage to go with it.

• Expect virtually any set of symptoms, in any combination to be caused by Lyme and co-infections, because they can infect and damage any part of the body-mind.

When you see these potential sources of confusion as characteristics of the disease, your clinical clarity will greatly improve.

#2 Get Organized

Now that you feel more oriented, the next phase of clinical mastery is to adopt an organized approach to working with such complicated cases.

Without a grounded system, a map to follow as you guide your patients along in their journey towards health, it is very easy to get lost.

Without a solid and clear systems model to anchor us, most practitioners tend to default into reacting to what the patient is complaining about in the moment.

Yet with Lyme and complex chronic disease patients, there are many ups and downs along the path to health.  If every time a patient reports an exacerbation of symptoms you fear you are doing something wrong and try something different, then you will not draw your patient forward.

Of course we respond and take in what is happening with the patient at every consultation, the point is to not lose connection to the larger strategy that you are committed to.

And where does that strategy come from?  From what you and your patient believe is the safest and most effective route to treatment – the principles of natural medicine!  

I will be sharing the unique Uprooting Lyme treatment approach, which applies the best of holistic healing principles to the challenges of stealth infection treatment, in a special free training for practitioners.  If you are interested, PLEASE REGISTER HERE.

#3 Embrace the Complexity – this is advanced!

Having a solid approach that is both holistic AND specialized for the treatment of Lyme and complex chronic disease is very necessary for creating clarity and organized, strategic, confident thinking throughout a course of treatment.  This is the focus of YEAR 1 of our Practitioner Mentorship Training.

YET, it is not an ideology or a fixed, rote path that looks the same from patient to patient or from phase to phase of healing for an individual.  Nor will it eliminate the inevitable ups and downs of recovery from this type of disease.

Instead, I’ve grown to realize that the complexity of Lyme and stealth pathogen infections is something to be embraced.

There will always be the surprise reactions to a new treatment, the unexpected illness or life event that throws a solid treatment plan (and the patient) back into chaos and distress.

Rather than see the unexpected crises, the unforeseen ups and downs as problems, we adopt a different motto:  NEVER WASTE A GOOD CRISIS.

Both healing and disease crises are vital opportunities to learn, evolve and leap forward based on the need to do things differently.

Devoting my career to holistic Lyme disease treatment has pushed my edge in many ways, and I know it does the same with most patients and practitioners.  

Knowing this, let’s step out of the box of conventional thinking together, and discover what kinds of healing power we are really made of.

Got comments?  I would love to hear from you!

---

Interested in becoming a Holistic Lyme Specialist?  Find out more about our year-long professional training, the Holistic Lyme Practitioner Mentorship.