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Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

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21–30 of 31 posts

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#21

If you live in the Northeast or Midwest, unless you spend zero time in the woods (and you shouldn't, because the woods are great), you will get a deer tick on you at some point, and it might carry lyme. My strategy? Go online and illegally buy doxycycline intended for fish tanks. The pills are exactly the same color, shape, and size as what you'd get from a pharmacy. If you find a tick on yourself, remove the tick co…

At least one study [1] finds topical doxycycline to be useless for prophylactic treatment of lyme. Do you have any evidence supporting its use? 1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910720/

[deleted]

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#22

If you live in the Northeast or Midwest, unless you spend zero time in the woods (and you shouldn't, because the woods are great), you will get a deer tick on you at some point, and it might carry lyme. My strategy? Go online and illegally buy doxycycline intended for fish tanks. The pills are exactly the same color, shape, and size as what you'd get from a pharmacy. If you find a tick on yourself, remove the tick co…

In addition to my other comment, I think a warning is in order for anyone reading the parent comment:

This is a good demonstration of the risk of taking medical advice from random internet strangers. nickysielicki's advice is useless at best, and it can do harm if someone is relying on it to protect them from infection. In particular, if you have the doxycycline tablets, you'd be better off swallowing one rather than trying to make some kind of salve with it. Better yet, do some research and talk to a qualified medical professional about borreliosis prevention.

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#23
post #5

It's scary how hard it is to get quality diagnosis and how stubborn the medical establishment is in maintaining the current status quo. We have treatments for many diseases. We know the symptoms. But because your physician might not know about something, you might need to pinball between specialists (losing time and money) or even not properly get diagnosed at all. A free web-based expert system for medical diagnosti…

I will mention years ago Kaiser Permanente gave their members this very good book called the Healthwise Handbook. It described many many common conditions, what you could do, and under what conditions to contact your doctor.

They stopped giving it out.

It would be nice to have an expert system to guide you through things. I wouldn't mind if it "paused the dignosis" like:

"It could be A, B or C. Look for or try to narrow it down"

Now that I think of it, I have used basically one expert systems in my life. It was the windows diagnosis thing.. "did that fix your problem?" the only thing it fixed was a network problem, once.

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#24

If you live in the Northeast or Midwest, unless you spend zero time in the woods (and you shouldn't, because the woods are great), you will get a deer tick on you at some point, and it might carry lyme. My strategy? Go online and illegally buy doxycycline intended for fish tanks. The pills are exactly the same color, shape, and size as what you'd get from a pharmacy. If you find a tick on yourself, remove the tick co…

Besides the other warnings here, you should also be aware that oral ingestion of doxycycline makes many people photosensitive. So if you were an outdoorsy person in the first place, you may need to change your behavior by staying indoors -- or at least cover up -- if you're taking doxycycline.

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#25
post #9

> "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent," Gantry said. "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent." I can't tell if this is a subtle joke or an egregious editing failure.

It’s an entirely different kind of flying... altogether.

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#26
post #9

> "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent," Gantry said. "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent." I can't tell if this is a subtle joke or an egregious editing failure.

It’s an entirely different kind of flying... altogether.

"It’s an entirely different kind of flying"

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#27
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know my infectious disease doctor told me to take a one day oral dose as a prophylactic treatment after you pull off the tick.

That has nothing to do with its topical application. Drugs that perform well via one route are often ineffective via the other. According to the study I linked, that appears to be case here.

Right, pretty sure we agree on that one. I thought I was backing you up, suppose I should have replied to parent comment instead...

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#28
post #13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've got a case bad enough to cause mysterious problems, it's a very bad idea to "just nuke it". Firstly, die-off reactions are a concern. Secondly, the treatment can be very serious (i.v. antibiotics in many cases). Thirdly, antibiotics are not really healthy , though not horribly. However, with the growing body of research surrounding the issue of gut health and its impacts, I'm not sure I'd want to take antib…

"die-off" seems plausible, but why are all the web-search results for "die-off" showing minor blogs and snake-oil stores, and none of the big medical sites like mayo, webmd, healthline, or mainstream news sites?

Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_rea...

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#29
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has nothing to do with its topical application. Drugs that perform well via one route are often ineffective via the other. According to the study I linked, that appears to be case here.

Right, pretty sure we agree on that one. I thought I was backing you up, suppose I should have replied to parent comment instead...

My bad, I misread it as a bit of a counterpoint.

Re: Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

#30
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we have treatments and symptoms for many diseases. But many diseases present the same way. In fact many symptoms are a result of immune response, so naturally they are going to be difficult to differentiate. It's not because the physician doesn't know something. Further, a web based system would limit the amount of information a physician could get and be subject to the reporting of a lay person. Overtreatm…

>Further, a web based system would limit the amount of information a physician could get and be subject to the reporting of a lay person. I'm talking about an expert system. You enter symptoms. It asks you questions. Then it says something "there a high probability you have X and medium probability you have Y".

And a physical exam? Who's going to listen to your lungs and heart, check out your throat, ears, nose, eyes? Those are invaluable in diagnosing even the most common illnesses.
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