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Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease

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Re: Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease

#51
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for Lyme disease: The actual infection can be treated with a standard course of antibiotics. The infection does not persist indefinitely, although some people experience long-lasting effects after the infection is gone. I don't think it's possible to make an absolute statement like this with 100% certainty given the current state of the art. Lyme is a spirochete, and there also seems to be real research suggesti…

> I don't think it's possible to make an absolute statement like this with 100% certainty 100% certainty is an impossibly high bar in any hard science This is the problem with chronic Lyme communities: They fixate on the "what if", no matter how small the probabilities. Many of these patients might very well have entirely treatable yet unrelated disorders, but their fixation on the chronic lyme infection theories kee…

Did you continue to rest positive for IgM? Did you eventually identify an actual cause?

Re: Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease

#52
post #20

The gold standard in microbiology for diagnosing an infectious disease has always been to culture the organism alive. Despite notorious difficulties in culturing Borrelia burgdorferi, in about 30 studies this organism has been cultured alive from patients despite at least standard antibiotic therapy, and in many cases after antibiotics far in excess of what is deemed curative by IDSA and CDC. If the pathogen that cau…

This should be the top comment.

I'm a bit disappointed in HN.

So many of the comments here are focused on doubting the victims and ridiculing them for their irrational beliefs.

The irony is that it's those very critics that aren't being rational.

They have the causality backwards and seem to be assuming that if antibiotics didn't eliminate the symptoms then that means the disease can't be real.

Wouldn't it be more rational to conclude that maybe the antibiotic isn't killing the pathogen?

Re: Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease

#53
post #25

I spent some time in the Lyme disease communities after I tested positive for Lyme disease under the official two-test CDC criteria. The pop-culture version of Lyme disease discussed on the Internet has almost no resemblance to the actual medical science. There are a lot of people genuinely suffering unexplained symptoms, real pain, who are drawn into the seductive explanations of the “chronic Lyme” communities onlin…

During a panel at this years LymeMIND conference a representative from the CDC named Susanna Visser said that she and her team absolutely believe in persistent Lyme, and that the CDC website now acknowledges it on a basic level. >Why some patients experience PTLDS is not known. Some experts believe that Borrelia burgdorferi can trigger an “auto-immune” response causing symptoms that last well after the infection itse…

> ...a representative from the CDC named Susanna Visser said that she and her team absolutely believe in persistent Lyme...

I see references to this online but they're all hearsay. I'd like to see a direct reference. The closest I can find is a quote from her in an article in The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/life-wi...) but it does not state an absolute belief in persistent Lyme.

Re: Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease

#55
post #19

I spent some time in the Lyme disease communities after I tested positive for Lyme disease under the official two-test CDC criteria. The pop-culture version of Lyme disease discussed on the Internet has almost no resemblance to the actual medical science. There are a lot of people genuinely suffering unexplained symptoms, real pain, who are drawn into the seductive explanations of the “chronic Lyme” communities onlin…

> There are a lot of people genuinely suffering unexplained symptoms, real pain, who are drawn into the seductive explanations of the “chronic Lyme” communities online. However, some of this is the fault of the modern medical establishment who want to stop looking and treating at 6-12 months if you don't have something mainstream diagnosable. And "Lyme" was the medical establishment dumping ground for a lot of those…

I have a friend who had his out and is in that roughly one-in-ten group of people who have to stick pretty close to a restroom, even years later. Due to that, when I landed in the hospital due to an infected and unhappy gallbladder, I decided against removal for myself and spent some time digging up actual studies on how to dissolve the gallstones. After all, I could always have it cut out later. Brought a treatment regimen and highlights of the primary sources to my physician, who gave me the green light for a course of treatment.

About a year after, I had to see a different physician for insurance purposes. He mentioned that he had, in twenty-eight years of practice, never seen anyone who had gone ahead and spent the time trying to dissolve the stones. I suspect, because removal is the "tonsillectomy of abdominal surgeries," they just all default to yanking it out.

Re: Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease

#56

r/medicine: "Chronic Lyme Disease doesn't exist" https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/cpji9c/chronic_ly...

Anyone in the medical profession who denies the existence of biofilms, and their capacity to harbor antibiotic resistant infections is an idiot.

There's plenty of research to explain how late stage Lyme disease can evade antibiotics, and cause a longterm chronic infection.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6287027/

https://rawlsmd.com/health-articles/understanding-biofilm

The science is clear that the spirochetes that cause Lyme disease can and do hide within biofilms and evade antibiotics.

As someone who has Lyme disease, and who has undergone multiple therapies to overcome it I can tell you that biofilms and persister cells are the reason for chronic Lyme disease. It is very real, perfectly logical, and the science on how Lyme disease becomes chronic is overwhelming and supported by medical research.

Re: Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease

#57
post #53
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During a panel at this years LymeMIND conference a representative from the CDC named Susanna Visser said that she and her team absolutely believe in persistent Lyme, and that the CDC website now acknowledges it on a basic level. >Why some patients experience PTLDS is not known. Some experts believe that Borrelia burgdorferi can trigger an “auto-immune” response causing symptoms that last well after the infection itse…

> ...a representative from the CDC named Susanna Visser said that she and her team absolutely believe in persistent Lyme... I see references to this online but they're all hearsay. I'd like to see a direct reference. The closest I can find is a quote from her in an article in The Atlantic ( https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/life-wi... ) but it does not state an absolute belief in persistent Lyme.

The CDC has denied the existence of persistent Lyme for years. They fact that they are now mentioning it as one possible theory is significant in itself.

The old page from last year https://web.archive.org/web/20180921231605/https://www.cdc.g...

Re: Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease

#58
post #21

I spent some time in the Lyme disease communities after I tested positive for Lyme disease under the official two-test CDC criteria. The pop-culture version of Lyme disease discussed on the Internet has almost no resemblance to the actual medical science. There are a lot of people genuinely suffering unexplained symptoms, real pain, who are drawn into the seductive explanations of the “chronic Lyme” communities onlin…

> As for Lyme disease: The actual infection can be treated with a standard course of antibiotics. The infection does not persist indefinitely, although some people experience long-lasting effects after the infection is gone. I don't think it's possible to make an absolute statement like this with 100% certainty given the current state of the art. Lyme is a spirochete, and there also seems to be real research suggesti…

Biofilms and persister cells are the problem with chronic Lyme disease.

https://rawlsmd.com/health-articles/understanding-biofilm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6287027/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6521364/

It's pretty simple, if the disease is able to enter the form where it starts producing biofilms it can use them to evade antibiotics. A patient then must explore treatments to break up biofilms, and eradicate whatever infections or co-infections are present within them. There's medications that do this and more functional methods such as hyperbaric oxygen chambers.

The people who have symptoms after antibiotic treatment and the people who relapse after antibiotic treatment still likely contain Lyme disease biofilms and persister cells which are capable of causing a full relapse given enough time and the right conditions.

Those who receive early treatment and success with a single round of antibiotics are the lucky ones, and not the standard patient experience.

Even people who have been bitten by a tick, immediately started antibiotics, and caught it immediately can still get chronic Lyme disease, especially if their initial round of antibiotics was for too short a duration.

There is a lot of shit on the Internet, and what's happening to the people who have Lyme disease is an absolute travesty and crime against humanity due to our corrupt and failing medical system. The actually science and research on this is clear though: biofilms exist, Lyme disease can become chronic due to biofilms and persister cells which can evade antibiotics.

Everyone talks about how theres super bugs and infections that evade antibiotics, well Lyme disease is literally a super bug that evades antibiotics and is probably one of the most successful super bugs of our lifetimes and yet people try to deny its capabilities despite countless medical research studies proving otherwise. It's baffling really.

Re: Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease

#59

I spent some time in the Lyme disease communities after I tested positive for Lyme disease under the official two-test CDC criteria. The pop-culture version of Lyme disease discussed on the Internet has almost no resemblance to the actual medical science. There are a lot of people genuinely suffering unexplained symptoms, real pain, who are drawn into the seductive explanations of the “chronic Lyme” communities onlin…

"One common theme in the chronic Lyme communities is that people who go into remission tend to attribute their response to whatever technique, supplement, or medication they were trying at the time."

This is spot on. People probably have always been doing this - but now they also publish their theories to everyone on the Internet where all the outrageous claims live and prosper, because nobody writes a blog post that a given supplement did not work. This is https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood Law again.

For some time I have been thinking what is the rational thing to do when you are seriously sick in the internet era: https://medium.com/@zby/rational-patient-community-6d3617dff...

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