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Lyme Disease might be actually a chronic infection, not just an autoimmune response, says new book “Chronic: The Hidden Cause of the Autoimmune Pandemic and How to Get Better Again,” by Dr @StevePhillipsMD, a Lyme practitioner & researcher & @danaparish. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/opinion/long-covid-lyme-disease.html
2) the spread of what the authors call Lyme+, an array of tick-borne pathogens that often infect patients simultaneously, is responsible not just for over 400,000 cases of Lyme disease diagnosed each year in US but also for an unknown number of chronic infections beyond that
3) Chronic is a great book. I’ve had many family who had such chronic conditions. It’s certainly an insightful look. https://nypost.com/article/best-new-book-releases-to-read-this-week/
4) @StevePhillipsMD and @danaparish further argue that most of these cases can be treated effectively. Many people who are told they have a condition that can only be managed, not eliminated — to say nothing of the people told “It’s all in your head” —
5) could claw back toward normalcy, if not always perfect health, with a long-term regimen of oral antibiotics and a doctor who’s willing to work with them to figure out which drug combination works.
In the specific (but in their view, quite broad) case of Lyme
In the specific (but in their view, quite broad) case of Lyme
6) Even if issues specific to individual immune systems help make some Lyme cases long-term and others not, the infection itself is usually still there, usually still treatable, and those with the worst symptoms don’t have to suffer in the same way forever.
7) there’s an “echo chamber in the medical community that defaults patients who develop chronic illness after an acute infection, to a ‘post-viral’ or ‘post-infectious’ syndrome. We fear that long-term Covid patients will be resigned to the same fate.”
8) @DouthatNYT worries about same thing. “Living through the coronavirus era after spending so many years in the world of Lyme disease is a strange experience because you can see all kinds of different pieces of the tick-borne epidemic refracted strangely in the Covid pandemic”
9) “disputes over testing, mysterious and shifting symptomatology, expert failures and medical populism, and controversies around what it means when the disease just hangs around indefinitely.”
10) “One thing we’re definitely doing better with long-haul Covid than with Lyme, chronic fatigue syndrome—is taking the lived experience of long-haul patients seriously—probably because we have so many of them all at once—instead of treating them as weaklings or hypochondriacs.”
11) “But I want to believe that we can do better still—that like the many people restored from Lyme with actual treatment, not just patience, there are people suffering from months and months of Covid misery who will eventually be lifted back to health.” https://www.amazon.com/dp/0358064716/
