Learn more about Lyme Disease

Lyme Treatment

Treating Lyme is one of the most challenging endeavours to a medical practitioner.  It’s a complex illness where there is no universal, one-size-fits-all, treatment plan for every patient. Literally, every new Lyme patient will have his or her own unique path to recovery. This is why, professionally speaking, Dr. Marie has felt so rewarded to specialize in helping the Lyme community. It demands a special focus and constant learning to REALLY treat this illness. Undoubtedly, specializing in Lyme has made her a more functional naturopathic practitioner for all her patients.

Dr. Marie’s approach to treatment is a comprehensive one. It pulls from both traditional naturopathic therapy and western medicine. At a basic level, Dr. Marie’s treatments address the following axiom:

Type of infection + Individual “toxic load” = Severity of symptoms

If the situation is acute, meaning that a tick bite was very recent, then a course of antibiotics is recommended. It is worth noting that there is considerable debate in the medical community about whether long-term antibiotic regimens are required, helpful or even, safe. On this topic Dr. Marie is not opposed to the use of long-term antibiotic regimens. In fact, she works to support and manage these protocols for many of her patients, often working with patients’ original prescribing doctors.

Beyond the acute stage we get to a point where symptoms become recognizable and are
possibly even supported by test results. At this stage, treatment focus is best summed up
within a four-step process:

• Decreasing the toxic body burden
• Improving disturbed physiology
• Decreasing microbial count
• Immune modulation

It’s within this process that Dr. Marie’s naturopathic background really comes to bear in terms of how she can introduce and apply natural therapies for patient recovery such as by administering natural antimicrobials where possible, either in place of, or alongside, prescription antibiotics.

These therapies may also seek to support immune functions, detoxification pathways and gastro-intestinal health, a balancing of hormone levels, as well as focusing on toxicity removal relating to mold & fungus and parasites. She also addresses additional use of nutritional supplements, herbal medicines and homeopathy where required, counsels on lifestyle and dietary considerations.

In the appropriate case Dr. Marie may also suggest adjunct therapies such as LDA/LDI, Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy (PEMF), neurofeedback, Ionic foot baths, saunas and AN-DI Energy Corrector to optimize the health of her patients.

In some cases, Dr. Marie will treat exclusively with natural therapies. Here are scenarios in which formulating and treating with a naturopathic protocol is essential:

• The patient who has already had years of treatment and is no longer a candidate for
  aggressive antibiotic therapy and have experienced unwanted side effects.
• Individuals who have not responded well to antibiotic therapy
• A child for whom symptoms do not warrant the potential overuse of pharmaceuticals.
• The patient whose constitution cannot handle antibiotics and does better with naturopathic
  therapies.
• Severe fungal dysbiosis or a history of Clostridium Difficile infection.
• The patient who simply prefers naturopathic remedies.

Choices about the best therapeutic approach one should take are made on a case-by-case basis, with both Dr. Marie and the patient working together as a team.

Natural Treatment vs. Antibiotics

You have choices.

If you have a recent tick bite then you absolutely need antibiotics, and fast.

There is conjecture in the medical community about how long antibiotic treatment should last. Dr. Marie is not opposed to the use of long-term antibiotic regimens. It has become clear that for some patients they simply cannot get full recovery without the use of these pharmaceuticals. In these cases, she works to balance and manage the patient with naturopathic support when they opt for this modality of treatment. The use of herbs alone, or in conjunction with antibiotics, has emerged as the most important core strategy in the fight against Lyme disease.

On the other hand, Dr. Marie has successfully treated Lyme patients with amazing outcomes using only natural products. Each patient is different so there is no singular way to set a Lyme protocol. What we can say is that in treating over a thousand Lyme patients it is becoming very clear that antibiotics alone cannot heal you completely.  There will be a long phase where natural remedies will have to be used, but make no mistake, they are equally powerful. In the last decade, the potency and efficacy of specific, Lyme related, natural remedies has risen dramatically. Dr. Marie has the added ability to energetically test remedies and how they will react with your constitution and other prescriptions and regimens.

Testing for Lyme Disease

As previously written, relying on tests for the confirmation of Lyme disease really creates two distinct camps. The main medical community will embrace a negative result and refute a positive one. Whereas patients will accept a positive result with melancholy (as at least they know what they’re fighting now) and accept a negative result with skepticism because, in the end, all they really trust are the symptoms they are observing in themselves anyway. And this is the way it goes with Lyme tests.  A negative test isn’t always an accurate way of knowing if Lyme is what you’re fighting, as the infection may not have provoked a strong enough immune response yet.

In emergency rooms and local doctor offices, the go-to test is the Lyme ELISA.  But, this should be cold comfort, as the sensitivity of this test lags considerably behind.

Dr. Marie uses IGeneX Laboratory routinely, as they do all of the tests one needs, including:

• Babesia Tests: B duncani IgG/IgM antibody
• Bartonella Tests: including Bartonella henselae IgG/IgM Antibody
• Ehrlichiosis Tests:  Human Monocytic Ehrlichia (HME) IgG/IgM Ab, human monocytic ehrlichia (HME) PCR
• Mycoplasma Tests: PCR for strains of mycoplasma such as fermentans, pneumonia
• RickettsiaTests:  Rickettsia rickettsia/typhi IgG Ab