Lyme Protocols
Any practitioner or patient involved with Tick Borne Infections knows that here is no magic protocol that works for everyone. By the time people show up at my office, they have often been to multiple specialists and have suffered too many tests failed treatments and procedures.
Though this will not get rid of infections, you can get started by making sure your body has what it will need to heal. Set the foundations for a return to health by eating cleaner, making sure you have clean air clean water and that you are moving and stretching. Find ways to lower their stress reactions. Beyond lifestyle changes, many approaches can work and no single approach works fully for everyone. Treating long standing (over a year) Tick Borne Infections requires your patience and attention. Treatments that feel harsh or make you feel worse need to be reconsidered. People with chronic illness from tick bites can recover, but often require several rounds of trying and adjusting treatments.
Below are the protocols I know the most about and my comments on them:
The protocol I have found most useful in treating Tick Borne Infections was designed by a biologist named Will Wiegman who developed it to treat himself. One of my patients asked to be treated this way and I reluctantly agreed. Over time I have come to suggest using this protocol with most new Lyme patients. It uses lower doses of antibiotics and herbs in combination.
Like all effective treatments for long-standing Tick-Borne Infections, it has not been proven through clinical trials.
However, this protocol appeals to me to be intuitively and intellectually. It requires far fewer antibiotics than other approaches used by Lyme treating docs. This means it gives your system and your gut more time to recover between doses.
The protocol is stealth. Rather than blasting the Lyme spirochete with high doses of antibiotics, it attempts to provide a level of antibiotics high enough to inhibit the bacteria from reproduction but not high enough to encourage the bacteria to enter a dormancy. I’d estimate that it cures about 70% of my patients and helps even more than that.
3 phases of the Wiegman Protocol.
Phase 1 uses only vitamins and some nutrients. The purpose of this phase is to prepare the immune system’s ability to address bacteria
Phase 2 uses Minocycline and Tinidazole are taken together ONE DOSE of each one every OTHER day. Ivermectin is also taken every 10th day for 4 doses for 6-8 weeks depending on how you feel.
Phase 3 low doses of herbs target remaining infections.
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Disulfiram (Antabuse) is the newest kid on the block. It seems to be effective in killing Lyme in test tubes. Its use is based on a finding from 2016, when Dr Pothineni and colleagues at Stanford reported screening many substances looking effective killing of Borrelia burgdorferi. Disulfiram won the competition hands down. Studies are beginning on this treatment. It has already been approved as a medicine to deter alcohol consumption (it makes people very ill when they consume alcohol while it is in the bloodstream). This means that it can be used without further studies. I’m watching this one closely. So far I have several patients on it and have had several try it and stop because of side effects. I have not yet begun to recommend this as a starting point because I am not yet convinced. But optimistic. It requires slowly tapering up to a full dose and staying on that full dose for months.
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Bill Rawls has made a protocol for treating Lyme and has written a book about it. In addition to focusing on nutrition and lifestyle choices that move the body toward improved health, he uses herbs to target symptoms. While I have not used the protocol, I have patients who have found it remarkably effective. My concern is that in patients I have seen, the effects of the treatment ended when the treatment ended. And it is expensive.
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Cowden Protocol: This is an old treatment for Lyme and involves several months of herbal tinctures targeting both the symptoms and the underlying bugs. Many of my patients have found this to be quite effective. It is also complicated and expensive. Many bottles to open several times a day and take one at a time. And it is expensive. Dr Cowden’s tinctures are high quality and are often helpful combination with other protocols.
Dr Jemsek is a brave Lyme-treating Infectious Disease doctor who has been treating Lyme patients for longer than most of us. We have shared patients through the years. His office has a protocol he often uses on patients. It involves pulsed dosing of several antibiotics. Several of my patients have been seeing Dr Jemsek for many years. They rotate through taking several antibiotics and supplements several days a week and changing out the treatment regimen every week, with some weeks off of antibiotics entirely.