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Lyme and the use of Steroids

Hello everyone,

The past month I have somehow injured my left knee and had to see a doctor about surgery. Subsequently,, he gave me an injection of cortisone etc. to help relieve the pain until I can get in for surgery. However, as he was giving me the shot, I was remembering an article by Br. Burrascano, a well known Lyme literate doctor. The article had stated that steroids were absolutely not advised for Lyme patients. I didn't say anything, hoping the article was untrue. Sure enough, I have been miserable ever since the day of the shot. I have been achy all over, the fatigue is back and I feel terrible. Has anyone else had the same reaction to steroid shots for their back or their knees? Have you had to refuse these types of shots for pain control? I would be very interested for comments on any experience you might have with steroids? At this point, I would highly recommend that you not use steroids at all cost. I will keep you posted as to their continued effect on me.

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas and will have a great New Year. Thank you for visiting my blog!

Be well,
Richard

Sunday, December 20, 2009

"Under the Eightball"

Hi friends,
I found an article in the New York Times that I think all of you will find interesting. It concerns a new documentary movie. I hadn't heard about it prior to this article. I hope some of you will watch this movie and comment back to us so we can learn about it.

Be well,
Richard
Begin quote
December 16, 2009
MOVIE REVIEW | 'UNDER THE EIGHTBALL'
On the Nightmare Trail of Lyme Disease
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Defensible anger becomes indefensible incoherence in “Under the Eightball,” a heartfelt documentary that twists an emotional journey into an anti-establishment tirade.

Written and directed by Timothy Grey and Breanne Russell, the film chronicles their 18-month investigation into the diagnosis and treatment of Mr. Grey’s younger sister, Lori Hall-Steele, who died of Lyme disease in Michigan in 2008. As the filmmakers track the history and politics of the disease, test for environmental causes and watch over the patient’s decline, the first half of the film envelops us in a tender, visually compelling cocoon.

Then things fall apart, so fast and so furiously that it’s impossible to know where verifiable science leaves off, and conspiracy theory begins. Propelled by rage and a string of interviews — with doctors, scientists, authors — the film lurches from Project Paperclip (which welcomed German scientists, including bio-warfare specialists, to the United States after World War II) to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, from contaminated wells to Japanese germ-warfare experiments.

Taking aim against multiple villains — including Dow Chemical and the health and pharmaceutical industries — and appearing to parallel Ms. Steele’s lack of appropriate treatment with the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiments with black men and syphilis, the directors skid off the rails so extravagantly that there is no going back.

Unfolding like two very different films, “Under the Eightball” undergoes a midpoint conversion from fascinating bug hunt to nightmarish lecture. In the end, critical questions may remain unanswered, but Mr. Grey’s grief and frustration are incontestable.

UNDER THE EIGHTBALL

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Written, directed and edited by Timothy Grey and Breanne Russell; directors of photography, Mr. Grey and D C Hayden; music by Mr. Grey and Gabe Clark; produced by Justin Blake; released by Andalusian Dogs. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 2 hours. This film is not rated.
End Quote

Monday, November 23, 2009

Under Our Skin .. a possible Oscar!

Hello everyone,

I saw this on for and wanted to pass it along to you about the movie, "Under Our Skin" that I hope most of you have heard of and taken the opportunity to watch. It has made the short list of 15 for the Oscar nomination. I sincerely hope this film wins the Oscar. It will do wonders for the increase of knowledge around the country for Lyme disease.

Be well,

Richard

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that UNDER OUR SKIN was selected as one of the 15 finalists competing for “Best Documentary Feature” in the 82nd Academy Awards®.

Unfolding like a real-life thriller, UNDER OUR SKIN exposes the hidden epidemic of Lyme disease and reveals how our corrupt medical system is failing to address one of the most serious illnesses of our time. Open Eye Pictures is thrilled that the Academy has honored the courageous Lyme patients and physicians whose stories are told in this film. And we hope that this nomination will help spread awareness about this devastating disease and serve as a catalyst for fixing our country’s broken health care system.

The Documentary Branch Screening Academy Committee viewed all eighty-nine qualifying documentaries during the preliminary round of voting. Academy members will now select five nominees from among the 15 titles on the shortlist, and Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, February 2, 2010.


This was taken from the "Underourskin.com home page.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

A personal note to all who suffer from Lyme disease!

Hi everyone,

It has been a long time since I have made personal note to the Blog. I have been experiencing a flareup of My Lyme disease problems and it makes me realize even, even more, why we have to defeat this disease. It has been over 8 years since I was stricken with this awful disease. Since then I have gone through working at my business from putting in over 60 hours a week on the average to now having to stay at home. It is an adjustment not easily made. My attempts on this Blog and on the Internet to develop new businesses for me to do from home has been more than frustrating because of the small amounts of time I can work on them. Tasks which I used to do in a few hours, now take me several days of months to accomplish. As a result, a person ends up spending more money than they are taking in. As many of you know having Lyme disease is expensive and debt can be accumulated quickly. So the new business attempts, although starting to trickle in some income, are not doing what they need to do. Brain fog, insomnia, headache, extreme arthritic type pain, overwhelming fatigue, and many other symptoms don't make it easy to accomplish what you have planned in any given day. I am finding how important it is to focus on only one thing at a time, work when I can and then listen to what my body is telling me to do. Those who are experiencing these types of frustrations know and understand the urgency of finding doctors and specialists who ar qualified to treat Lyme disease. I don't know how many times I have heard doctors tell me that they know nothing about Lyme disease and how to treat it. It is if those of us who have this disease are supposed to go home and suffer the debilitating conditions it places on our lives. Why aren't doctors required to stay trained on diseases affecting their patients? This question remains as one of the many unanswered questions of the day. If we have Cancer, we can find specialists to help us. It is that way with most of the other diseases. But Lyme disease patients find little to choose from. Ironically, the ones who are trying to help us are embroiled in the CDC's failure to properly recognize treatments that are working for Lyme disease. Many are afraid of losing their license to practice medicine if they treat Lyme disease with working treatments. In the meantime, thousands of Lyme disease patients are stuck in the middle and continue to see their lives ruined. All in all, some days it becomes quite frustrating. Thank goodness most of us are fighters and we arise the next day ready to continue the battle. For those of you out there going through similar problems, I know how you feel and how much you want to get better. I will continue to try and continue my meager efforts to keep us informed about this brutal disease. I apologize that I have not posted more information in the past couple of years. I hope to do better in the future. If any of you have any concerns or you would like to comment, I urge you to do so. Your struggles are our struggles and hearing them from you makes us all feel better. The main purpose of this blog remains Lyme disease. Yes, I do post some products and services that I have found interesting over the past few years. I list the products only in the attempt to make a little money to pay my medical bills. You are under no obligation to purchase anything from me to visit this blog or to find Lyme disease information. The cure and successful treatment of Lyme disease is why this blog exists. As the holidays are approaching, may I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year!

Be well,
Richard

Saturday, October 24, 2009

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Friday, September 18, 2009

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New book concerning Chronic Lyme Disease Treatment

Hi My friends,
Here is some info about a great new book regarding Lyme disease. I am glad to see so many fine books coming out to inform us about this terrible disease. I thank Connie Strasheim @http://www.lymebytes.blogspot.com for the post. Check out Connie's blog for great information about Lyme disease.

Be well,

Richard

(Begin article)

Thirteen Lyme-Literate Health Care Practitioners Reveal Their Treatment Strategies for Chronic Lyme Disease in New Book

Thirteen Lyme-Literate Health Care Practitioners Reveal Their Treatment Strategies for Chronic Lyme Disease in New Book
Denver, CO, August 30, 2009 --(PR.com)-- A new book, Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment: Thirteen Lyme-Literate Health Care Practitioners Share Their Healing Strategies, provides people with Lyme disease and their physicians with current, cutting-edge information on the treatment of chronic Lyme disease and the corollary conditions that it causes.

It is a comprehensive resource, written from the perspective of thirteen Lyme disease experts, including eight Lyme-literate medical doctors (MD’s), two naturopathic doctors (ND’s), a “heilpraktiker” (or healing practitioner, as the German title translates into English) and one chiropractor and nutritionist. The training and education of the experts encompasses a broad range of disciplines, but most use a combination of allopathic, naturopathic, complementary and alternative medicine in their practices. Whatever their background, however, all are experienced in treating chronic Lyme disease.

The book includes each practitioner’s anti-microbial and detoxification protocols, as well as their recommended supportive treatments for the body. It also provides their perspectives on the challenges and roadblocks to healing.

According to the CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lyme disease is the fastest-growing infectious disease in the US, with more than 20,000 new cases reported each year. The CDC estimates, however, that only one in ten cases is reported, which means that there could be at least 200,000 new cases each year, and perhaps even many more than that.

Lyme disease can be treated successfully with antibiotics when - and if - it is caught early, while the Lyme spirochetes are still in the patient’s bloodstream and can be reached by antibiotics. If the disease goes undiagnosed, the spirochetes, (which are related to those that cause syphilis), can infiltrate the non-blood areas of the body, such as the nervous system, brain, heart, joints, and cartilage. The disease then becomes a multi-symptom, multi-system illness that wreaks havoc upon nearly all of the person’s tissues and organs.

Once this happens, Lyme disease becomes chronic and difficult to diagnose. It may masquerade as a variety of other illnesses. Many physicians do not know how to effectively treat it. It devastates nearly every aspect of a person’s existence. ILADS, the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, estimates that most chronic Lyme disease sufferers experience a level of disability equivalent to that of a person who has suffered from a recent heart attack. As chronicled in the recently released documentary, "Under Our Skin: There's No Medicine For Someone Like You," those with chronic Lyme experience so much neurological and cognitive dysfunction that they end up losing their jobs, homes, mobility, and, in some cases, their lives.

For those who have been recently diagnosed with Lyme disease or who haven’t received adequate treatment help through the means that have been available to them, Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment provides a comprehensive variety of effective, in-depth solutions. For the practitioner, it provides cutting-edge information on treatments that has not been published elsewhere.

The information in this book was obtained through interviews with the following thirteen health care practitioners:

Steve Harris, MD
Steven Bock, MD
Susan Marra, ND, MS
Ginger Savely, DNP
Lee Cowden, MD, MD (H)
Ingo Woitzel, MD
Ronald Whitmont, MD
Deborah Metzger, MD, PhD
Pete Muran, MD, MBA
Nicola McFadzean, ND
Marlene Kunold, “Heilpraktiker” (Healing Practitioner, Germany)
Elizabeth Hesse-Sheehan, DC, CCN
Jeffrey Morrison, MD

These practitioners were chosen on the basis of their expertise and experience in treating chronic Lyme disease. After the interviews, Ms. Strasheim wrote the book’s chapters, collaborating with the practitioners in the editing process, to make sure that all of the information from the interviews was accurately represented. Each chapter is devoted to the treatment approach of a particular practitioner, and covers, to a greater or lesser degree, the following:

1) Anti-microbial treatments for Lyme disease and associated infections, including antibiotics, herbs, homeopathic remedies, plant stem cells and biophotons

2) Information on how to support the body’s systems, which is an integral component to healing from chronic Lyme disease. Particular attention is given to the immune, endocrine, neurological, digestive and musculoskeletal systems

3) Treatments for symptomatic relief. Solutions for fatigue, pain, brain fog, depression, anxiety and insomnia are offered, as well as others

4) Detoxifying Lyme biotoxins, mold, candida, heavy metals and other environmental toxins

5) Treating food and environmental allergies

6) Lifestyle and dietary recommendations for faster healing

7) Strategies for healing emotional trauma

8) Patient and practitioner challenges to healing

9) Factors that influence healing

10) Suggestions for how family and friends can help the sick

11) Which anti-microbial treatments work and which don’t

12) How to discern whether Lyme disease is primary in patients’ overall symptom picture

The Author

"Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment" was written by Connie Strasheim, a Lyme disease sufferer and health care researcher. She is the author of "The Lyme Disease Survival Guide: Physical, Lifestyle and Emotional Strategies for Healing," a book that describes Lyme disease treatment strategies, as well as practical solutions for coping with the difficulties of chronic illness. Ms. Strasheim wrote "Insights Into Lyme Disease Treatment" when she realized that more information on how to treat chronic Lyme was sorely needed from the experts who treat Lyme patients. Prior to becoming ill from chronic Lyme disease, Ms. Strasheim worked as a Spanish instructor, medical interpreter and flight attendant. Ms. Strasheim lives in Denver, Colorado and is available for phone, on-line, and in-person interviews. She can be reached at: 303-949-3347 or via email at: connie9824@msn.com

(End Article)

Availability

The book retails for USD $39.95 and is available at: http://www.lymebook.com/insights-book-connie, or via Ms. Strasheim’s blog at: http://www.lymebytes.blogspot.com. It is published by BioMed Publishing Group.

###
Contact Information
Connie Strasheim
303-949-3347
connie9824@msn.com
http://www.lymebytes.blogspot.com

Thursday, September 17, 2009

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Monday, September 14, 2009

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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

New tick disease moves into La Crosse area (WI)

I found this article about a new tick disease. I thought you would appreciate learning something about this disease. This is an area in Wisconsin, but we should all be aware of it if we see symptoms of it. As always, we appreciate the Lacrosse Tribune for great reporting. Here is the link for the full article:http://www.lacrossetribune.com/news/article_ded7b774-9b65-11de-9e68-001cc4c002e0.html


Be well!

Richard





By TERRY RINDFLEISCH | trindfleisch@lacrossetribune.com | Posted: Monday, September 7, 2009 12:05 am |



What is it? Anaplasmosis is a tick-borne disease caused by a species of bacteria called Anaplasma phagocytophilum. It was previously known as human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE) and later as human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA).

How do people get it? Anaplasmosis is transmitted to humans by tick bites primarily from the blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis) in the eastern United States and the western blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus) in the western United States. Of the four distinct phases in the tick life-cycle (egg, larvae, nymph, adult), nymphal and adult ticks are most frequently associated with transmission of anaplasmosis to humans.

Where do most cases occur? About 600 to 800 cases of anaplasmosis are reported to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention each year. States reporting the highest incidence of anaplasmosis in 2006 were Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.



La Crosse area health officials are seeing more cases of a new tick-borne infection carried by the same deer tick that causes Lyme disease.

Gundersen Lutheran researchers have been monitoring anaplasmosis the last three years and report 50 human cases in the La Crosse area.

The researchers have developed a test for the disease and have been testing blood samples in Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation's microbiology laboratories at the La Crosse Health Science Center.

"It is an emerging infection in this area," said Dean Jobe, researcher and supervisor of Gundersen Lutheran's laboratories. "In collecting ticks, we have found it in 10 to 15 percent of the ticks."

Only a few years ago, the disease was rare in the La Crosse area, he said.

"It is mimicking early Lyme," Jobe said. "We used to say we couldn't find ticks with Lyme south of I-90, and now we see plenty of ticks, and the same is happening with anaplasmosis."

Unlike Lyme, anaplasmosis is an infection of the white blood cells, he said. Lyme disease is primarily a skin infection that gets

into the bloodstream and spreads into the joints, Jobe said.

"We've seen an increase in anaplasmosis over the last couple years, but particularly more this year," said Dr. Todd Kowalski, a Gundersen Lutheran physician specializing in infectious diseases. "It's been on our radar for 15 years or more with cases in northern Wisconsin, but the last few years it has been emerging in our area."

Kowalski said symptoms are similar to Lyme such as fever, headache and body aches, but people don't get a rash with anaplasmosis.

"It's not a subtle disease," Kowalski said. "Most people feel worse, and it's a little bit more abrupt than Lyme with perhaps a higher fever and more severe headache and body aches.

"With anaplasmosis, patients don't wait as long to see their physician or go to urgent care or the ER," he said. "But it is a very treatable disease. "

Kowalski said anaplasmosis is treated the same way as Lyme with a tetracycline antibiotic.

"What's rewarding is when patients are put on antibiotics, within 24 to 36 hours they feel a lot better," he said.

He also said prevention measures and the tick season from early spring to late fall are the same for both diseases. Kowalski said the same person can get the two infections at the same time.

He said most La Crosse area primary care, urgent care and emergency medicine physicians are aware of anaplasmosis.

Gundersen Lutheran has conducted research on the disease and developed an accurate molecular test which detects a gene unique to the organism and it can be done rapidly, Jobe said.

He said Gundersen Lutheran also is studying the best time to use the test in the course of the disease.

Jobe said the number of Lyme cases has continued to rise every year due to a bigger deer population and mild winters.

"We have a huge deer population that supports ticks, and I think anaplasmosis has established itself in the area," Jobe said.

"It's a little too early to say if anaplasmosis will be as common as Lyme, but there is a growing concern it could become problematic," he said.

Posted in News, Local, Govt-and-politics, State-and-regional on Monday, September 7, 2009 12:05 am Updated: 11:56 pm. | Tags: Ticks

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Saturday, August 29, 2009

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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

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Monday, August 17, 2009

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Saturday, August 15, 2009

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Sunday, August 9, 2009

A Classic Case of Lyme disease

Hi everyone,

What a great weekend for good articles concerning Lyme disease. This is a story that is familiar with many who are battling this disease. This one one comes from California. Pamela O'Kane knows what it is like to have Lyme disease. Enjoy this story of courage and perserverence.

Be well,

Richard




(Begin Article)

Triumph of her will
smcmanis@sacbee.com
Published Sunday, Aug. 09, 2009


She wouldn't use the wheelchair. Anything but that. The bulky walker was bad enough, but at least she could retain a semblance of her former mobility.

Yeah, Pamela O'Kane was determined – stubbornly so – to get back to normal life after another stay at the hospital. This one lasted 10 days in the late summer of 2007, and doctors still had no definitive diagnosis to explain and treat the uncontrolled, episodic spasms in her legs and arms, the partial facial paralysis, the weakening of her reflexes and the troubling 35-pound weight loss.

O'Kane, a 48-year-old instructor at California State University, Sacramento, suspected that she had somehow contracted Lyme disease – a potentially debilitating infection transmitted by ticks – at some point in 2006. All the symptoms were there, and her Lyme disease specialist detected two co-infections that usually accompany the disease. But three times the test for Lyme disease came back negative.

Which frustrated O'Kane to no end. Here was this perfectly healthy woman – a national-qualifying age-group triathlete, no less – rendered nearly an invalid who could barely stand up to conduct her teacher education classes without succumbing to fatigue, breathing problems and spasms.

Specialists had tested her for a medical dictionary's worth of maladies. The spinal tap for Lou Gehrig's disease came back negative, as did the scan for multiple sclerosis. She saw her gynecologist for a cervical cancer test, a pulmonary specialist for a lung cancer screening, neurologists for all types of central nervous system disorders.

Negative, negative, negative.

One doctor even suggested anti-depressants, thinking O'Kane was suffering from psychological problems. O'Kane, however, knew the problem was in her central nervous system, not "all in my head."

Still, just before this latest hospital discharge, the neurologist at the hospital told O'Kane's mother, Virginia Wilbur, and her older sister Denise Wilbur DeTrano that O'Kane's condition would only worsen, and a wheelchair was advisable.

"They told me I was going to be disabled," O'Kane recalls. "They said it would get progressively worse."

O'Kane had other ideas. During the hospital stay, she had read a story in The Bee about women climbing Half Dome, that 2,000-foot-high granite monolith in Yosemite, and she vowed to do it herself within a year.

"Pamela, you can't even walk across the hallway," Denise told her. "What makes you think you can climb Half Dome?"

"I will," O'Kane said tersely.

A year later, she and Denise had reached the goal, arms raised atop the granite slab. Just for good measure, the pair ascended Half Dome again this summer.

But O'Kane says it took more than dedication and grit to get her body back close to pre-illness shape.

Rather, she had to put aside her skepticism and commit fully to a controversial Lyme disease treatment plan that she had hesitated to enter because she technically had never been diagnosed.

It involved long-term antibiotic treatment – open-ended, depending on her response to it – through an IV line implanted in her left arm. This goes against standard treatment recommended by three medical organizations: the Infectious Disease Society of America, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Academy of Neurology.

In a 2007 study published in the journal Neurology, researchers found that for patients with neuroborreliosis (Lyme disease that affects the nervous system), the treatment was effective only during a 14- to 28-day window. Long-term use of antibiotics has been linked to side effects such as blood clots, bloodstream infections and diarrhea.

Yet many Lyme patients (and those, like O'Kane, who exhibited symptoms but were not officially diagnosed) report that a six- to eight-month regimen of antibiotics helped them. And San Francisco physician Raphael Stricker, who has treated 1,800 Lyme disease patients, says he's seen patients cured by long-term antibiotic use.

"For patients with persistent symptoms based on persistent infection, unless they're treated long-term with antibiotics, they aren't going to get better," says Stricker, who did not treat O'Kane. "There is a lot of evidence from animal and human studies that there is persistence in infection (with Lyme), and the only way to get rid of it is long-term antibiotics."

O'Kane knew that prolonged use of antibiotics could be harmful, but she also knew that it was effective.

She underwent six months of treatment from January to July 2007. While taking the drug, she still had hand and facial tremors and had yet to gain back weight, but the severity was greatly diminished, and O'Kane could go about teaching and participating in triathlons.

What gnawed at her, though, was the fact that she'd never been diagnosed with Lyme. All those negative tests couldn't be wrong, could they?

That summer, she says, "I decided to take myself off it and detox. I wanted to try this on my own. Everyone told me, no, no, no. But I said, 'This is it.' "

About two weeks off the medication, she called her sister.

"She said that her feet were turning in – foot drop like people with cerebral palsy have," DeTrano recalls. "Fifteen minutes later, she calls me and says, 'I can't walk.' I had to go and carry her into the ER."

After that prolonged hospital stay, the one in which neurologists said she might be permanently disabled, O'Kane was eager to go back on antibiotics. She recalls being in the Lyme specialist's office, and her feet were spastically moving so much "it was like I was tap-dancing on the floor."

Even with just the initial dose of antibiotics coursing through her system, O'Kane said she felt better. She tossed aside the walker and never used it again. Not long thereafter, she was running, swimming and biking.

She regained her strength and stamina, if not all the weight she lost. Still, through rehab with a personal trainer that includes weight training, O'Kane has 12 pounds of muscle mass, according to her latest hydrostatic weight test.

Ironically, after feeling better, O'Kane finally tested positive for Lyme in January 2008.

"She's a classic case," Stricker says. "The commercial testing for Lyme is, in a word, terrible. They miss more than half the cases. Compare that to the sensitivity of AIDS testing, which is 99.5 percent (accurate). The tendency is for doctors to say, 'I guess you don't have Lyme disease. It must be something else.' "

O'Kane just seems happy to have finally cleared the major health hurdle. Now back to running seven-minute miles and churning on the bike, O'Kane believes exercise has hastened her recovery. But she admits that she still has problems, episodic tremors mostly.

"It's like somebody who suffers a stroke and recovers, but only to a certain point," she says.

She's learned to deal with the new normal.

"I seem to have a high sensitivity for odors," she says, explaining her current state of health. "If somebody's mowing their lawn, I'll start to moan.

"It's strange, I know. And changes in temperature, going from really hot to really cold will set off facial tics and moaning.

"When I first started getting back to triathlon, getting in the water, I'd start to tremor. Every morning, just putting my hands under the water to wash blueberries, it'll set off the shakes. It's embarrassing, but I've learned to cope."


MORE INFO

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California's Lyme disease cases amounted in 2007 to only 0.2 per 100,000 residents. The disease is most prevalent on the East Coast but has been detected in 56 of California's 58 counties.

• What causes Lyme disease: It is transmitted by infected ticks carrying the bacterium spirochete. The ticks attach to human skin and feed on the blood supply.

• Early symptoms: Mild flu-like symptoms, usually accompanied by a red, expanding skin rash. Turns into chills, fever, headaches, swollen lymph nodes, muscle and joint pain, fatigue and heart irregularities. The rash can appear up to 30 days after the bite. Some patients report never finding a rash.

• Long-term symptoms: Arthritis and central nervous system disruption that can result in tremors and spasms, chronic fatigue, facial paralysis, numbness and tingling in the limbs, inability to concentrate.

• How to avoid Lyme disease: Stay in the middle of trails, avoiding grassy areas and contact with logs, tree trunks and fallen branches in forests. Tuck your pants into boots or socks and your shirt into pants. Use a repellent, such as DEET, made to combat ticks. Check yourself thoroughly immediately after hiking and up to three days afterward.

• How to remove ticks: Using tweezers, grasp the tick's mouthparts as close to the skin as possible and gently pull the tick straight out. Wash your hands and the bite site with soap and water. Apply antiseptic to the site.

Source: California Department of Public Health, Division of Communicable Disease Control

(End Article)

Thanks to the Sacramento Bee Newspaper for this article!

It's Those Deer Ticks Again!!

Hi friends,
I found this article in the Centre View-Southern Edition Newspaper in Centreville, Va. As always I have included the full text so you can see how this community is dealing with ticks and Lyme disease. More and more communities have become involved in teaching and training their citizens about taking precautions when it comes to tick bites. The author Reed S. Albers does a great job in telling the story. I hope you will find it informative and enjoyable to read as I did.

Be well,
Richard




(Begin Article)

Victims Share Stories on Lyme Disease Effects
Panel of experts recommends precautions.

By Reed S. Albers
Friday, August 07, 2009

Mosquito and tick bites are common nuisances for those who enjoy outdoor activities in the summer, but as Manassas resident Becky Pannenton, 52, learned earlier this year, those annoying bug bites can lead to severe health problems.

"I just found out on March 6 this year that I had [Lyme disease]," she said. "I’ve had it for more than 18 years without even knowing. "

Pannenton and other Lyme disease sufferers listened as elected officials, county scientists and representatives of Lyme disease advocacy groups held a town hall meeting on July 22 in the Centreville High School auditorium to educate citizens about the disease.

LYME DISEASE historically hasn’t been a major issue for the Fairfax County area and is most commonly experienced in the northeastern United States. With approximately 400 new cases reported in Fairfax County last two years, panelists agreed it is time to take preventative action.

"One of the steps I’ve taken to raising awareness is scheduling multiple meetings about this issue," said Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield). "There’s been a doubling of Lyme disease cases in the county. My wife [was bitten by a tick] but we treated it. Not everyone is as lucky."

Another panelist, Fairfax County Health Department Supervisor Jorge Arias, who has a doctorate in entomology, said that in 2008, 13.56 percent of black-legged ticks in the county tested positive for the bacterium that produces Lyme disease compared with 4.48 percent in 2007.

The bacterium that causes Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi, is carried by black- legged ticks, also known as deer ticks, and transferred to humans through a bite contracted while outdoors.

"[Ticks] wait in the grass for someone to pass by and then crawl up their legs," Arias said. "They don’t jump and it’s hard to tell they are on you. They’re very sneaky."

Early symptoms of Lyme disease include headaches, flu-like symptoms and nausea, but in later stages severe psychological, neurological and sensory ailments can develop such as depression, blurred vision and memory loss.

Deer are the most common culprit for bringing ticks into the neighborhood, Arias said. "There are deer everywhere in this area, deer are the ‘Metro’ system for ticks," he said.

Besides offering Lyme disease information, panelists also discussed preventative measures. Vicki Monroe, Fairfax County wildlife biologist, offered tips for combating ticks.

"Keep your grass short and free of leaf litter, and keep playground equipment away from the yard’s edge and trees," she said. "Always wear insect repellent, dress in long clothing when traveling through the woods and stick to the main trails."

Another preventative measure is to check your body daily for ticks. "Whenever you go out, check your body for ticks," Arias said. "You’re either looking for a new freckle, or a new one with legs."

If there is a tick on one’s body, remove by gently pulling it out with tweezers. "There’s old wives tales about using lighters, cigarettes and alcohol [to remove ticks]," Arias said. "They aren’t true. Just use the tweezers."

The local health department or veterinarian can test the tick for Lyme disease for free, panelists said.

EVEN ONE’S FOUR-LEGGED friends are at risk, panelists said. Pets should be equipped with flea collars and have their fur checked regularly for ticks.

For those who do contract Lyme disease, the experience can be painful and frustrating. Lyme disease is a controversial topic as some physicians do not believe that it is the cause of extreme symptoms.

"No other disease has ever caused such a divide in the medical community," said panelist Debbie McCabe, director of pediatric and family wellness at the National Integrated Health Associates in Washington, D.C. "It is the great imitator and can cause multiple symptoms that baffle physicians."

Even the circular bite mark that is left behind by a tick can be misleading. "Some think they have ringworm, but it turns out to be Lyme," McCabe said.

Adding to the confusion is that Lyme disease screening is not accurate. The most common test, the enzyme-linked immunoassay test (ELISA), misses 35 percent of cases in the screening process, McCabe said.

For some, the effects of misdiagnosis can lead to years of unnecessary suffering.

"In the early ‘80s no one knew about [Lyme disease]," said Pannenton, whose 18-year misdiagnosis led to severe medical problems. "It started out with flu-like symptoms and then fatigue, then the headaches and dizziness came in," she said. "I suggested I had Lyme disease to my rheumatologist but he wouldn’t discuss it with me."

Loudoun County resident Sharon Payne, 43, has suffered from chronic Lyme disease since 2005, and has found few treatments that help with her chronic body aches.

"In 2005, I was on an antibiotic treatment [for Lyme disease] that made me lose 35 pounds," she said. "I decided that wasn’t the best treatment for me. I now use cold laser therapy. It’s the same treatment that was used to treat [cyclist] Lance Armstrong [for cancer]."

Lyme disease can be treated, but there isn’t a universal treatment method for those who did not detect the disease in its early stages, McCabe said.

VARIOUS OUTREACH groups also are available for those dealing with chronic Lyme disease.

Panelist Monte Skall, executive director of the National Capital Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Association in McLean (www.natcapLyme.org), shared Information for those seeking help.

"I’ve had Lyme for 18 years and it gets harder and harder to deal with," she said. "I started this group because there was nothing out there for people with this infection. We now how five chapters in Virginia."

Support for those infected with Lyme disease isn’t just coming from advocacy groups but also on Capitol Hill.

Dan Scandling, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-10), delivered some hopeful news that lobbying efforts are paying off.

"A $6 million increase for the Centers for Disease Control budget will increase Lyme disease research," he said.

What To Do If Bitten?
Step 1: Don't panic.
Step 2: Gently pull the tick straight out by grabbing the tick as close to the skin as possible with tweezers.
Step 3: Place the tick in a bottle or bag labeled with the patient's name, address and date the tick was removed.
Step 4: Have the tick identified and tested by a lab, health department or veterinarian.
Step 5: Seek immediate treatment if tick tests positive for Lyme disease.
Sources: The National Capital Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Association, Fairfax County Health Department
(End Article)

©2009 Connection Newspapers. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy
1606 King Street ♦ Alexandria, VA 22314 ♦ 703-821-5050

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

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Saturday, August 1, 2009

Lyme "rage", is it real?

Hello friends,

Lyme rage has been a topic much discussed in the media the last few months. For those of us who have Lyme disease I think we can understand how Lyme disease has affected our personality at times. Some of us are more affected than others. However, Lyme "rage" can be a real symptom and all should know about it. This article from ABC News is a good glimpse into the problem. I hope you learn from it.

Be well,

Richard





'Lyme Rage': Can Lyme Disease Affect Your Personality?
Roaming Ticks Can Carry Disease Linked to Physical Problems, Mental Madness
By ELISABETH LEAMY, JOSH GAYNOR and LEE FERRAN

July 30, 2009 —

They're tiny insects that can cause big problems. A rise in the number of ticks this year has infectious disease experts focused on the best way to treat the Lyme disease that the little buggers can spread.

Some 20,000 Americans are infected and treated every year, but countless others go undiagnosed. The illness has symptoms that include fever, fatigue and headaches, but if left untreated, Lyme disease can be more serious.

While there are physical symptoms of the disease that can include severe headaches, severe joint pain and even numbness in the hands or feet, many experts believe Lyme disease can rewire the human brain and affect personality.

"I'm convinced that Lyme in a chronic form can affect psychiatric issues, neurological issues and you can have neurological problems," New York epidemiologist Dr. Daniel Cameron said.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention notes that up to 5 percent of patients "may develop chronic neurological complaints months to years after infection."

Lyme disease patient Kelly Kulesz told "Good Morning America" she saw herself change overnight because of her infection.

"They put me on stage fright medications," Kulesz said. "Doctors thought it was obsessive compulsive disorder, but it's just not."

When Terry Jo Sedlacek went to trial for allegedly gunning down the Rev. Fred Winters in March, the defense cited his Lyme disease infection and it's contribution to what many call "lyme rage."

But not all experts believe Lyme disease causes such " target="_blank">radical changes in personality.

"The example I like to cite is if I have Lyme disease and I get run over by a truck, the Lyme disease didn't cause my broken leg," Halperin, said Dr. John Halperin, lead author on the new American Academy of Neurology Guideline on Lyme Disease Treatment.

ABC News medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard, who had lyme disease, said that the possibility of personality changes should at least be taken into consideration.

"It does affect the central nervous system. You can have behavior changes, personality changes," she said. "We have to listen and pay attention."

More Information on Lyme Disease

For more information on how to prevent, diagnose and treat Lyme disease, vist the Web sites below.

American Academy of Neurology for Lyme Disease Treatment

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Infectious Diseases Society of America

National Institute of Health

National Institute of Health

www.LymeDiseaseAssociation.org

Lyme Disease Foundation: www.lyme.org



Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Are there any Keith Urban Fans out there?

What about Ticks?

Hi my friends,

We haven't talked about the culprit of our disease very much, ticks! This is an article from the New York Times that discusses these horrible little creatures. I thought the article was interesting so here it is. Thomas Mather is the author.

Be well,

Richard



Yes, There Are More Ticks
Thomas Mather

Thomas Mather is a professor of public health entomology at the University of Rhode Island. He directs the TickEncounter Resource Center, a leading source on tick-bite protection and disease prevention.

Ticks definitely are a bigger problem than 25 years ago. In the northeastern U.S., black-legged (deer) ticks have spread well beyond former coastal haunts; in the southeast, Lone Star ticks are seemingly everywhere. The only good news is that dog ticks are far less common in domestic environments, probably due to wider-spread use of pet spot-on products.

Deer are the most important reproductive hosts for deer ticks.

The observed tick increase relates directly to deer populations, which are exploding in suburban and even semi-urban areas. Deer are the most important reproductive hosts for deer and Lone Star ticks. In Rhode Island, each deer produces about 450,000 larval deer ticks every year. Add a few deer and it’s no wonder that tick populations skyrocket. While the level of deer reduction needed is logistically and politically challenging, one potential solution we are working on is an anti-tick vaccine — to make humans or deer inhospitable tick hosts.
deerDeirdre Brennan for The New York Times Deer on Shelter Island.

As disease-carrying ticks become more common in the domestic environment, tick bite protection and disease prevention becomes a critical everyday need (at least during spring and summer). Effective everyday tick-bite protection strategies do exist but few people use them regularly.

Until effective broad-spectrum vaccines are found, social marketing may prove most effective at encouraging anti-tick actions. For example, changing the way people dress in summer — wearing clothing with permethrin tick repellent built in — can make protection easy, but this strategy is still not mainstream. Maybe just a few of the thousands of celebrities living within 25 miles of the Route 95 corridor from Washington to Maine could step forward and help out.

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Friday, July 24, 2009

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Thursday, July 23, 2009

What is Ehrlichiosis?

Hello again,
There are many other diseases that can be associated with the dreadful tick bite. Most are very serious and need to be given much attention. Ehrilichiosis is one of these diseases. This is an article from the Glasgow Daily Times by Lisa Strange and it explains the plight of one young mother and her child with this disease. I hope you pay close attention to the symptoms.

Be well,

Richard




Boy overcomes tick-borne illness

By LISA SIMPSON STRANGE
Glasgow Daily Times

GLASGOW July 22, 2009 10:44 am

— One local mother hopes she can help keep other parents and their children from going through what she and her son faced recently.
Valerie Lewis found a tick on her son, Parker, 2, on Father’s Day. She removed it and didn’t really think anything else about it.
Three days later, Parker had developed a high fever and was lethargic.
Valerie took her son to her local family physician, Dr. David German, who checked Parker’s tonsils and ears, but couldn’t find an immediate source of infection. He told her to wait a day and see if there were any changes.
Parker’s high fever and lethargy continued the next day and he had a febrile seizure, which consists of convulsions brought on by a fever in infants and small children.
Valerie took Parker to the emergency room at T.J. Samson Community Hos-pital and he was admitted.
Parker was given Doxocycline, an antibiotic, but his white blood cell count kept dropping and Dr. German realized there was “something different about this one.”
Parker was diagnosed with Ehrlichiosis, an illness carried by the Lone Star tick that is found in the southeastern United States.
He was treated at the local hospital for two days, but was not showing improvement.
The boy’s white cell count continued to decrease from 3,500 to 2,000 to 800, according to German, so the decision was made to send Parker to Vanderbilt Hospital, the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital, in Nashville.
After Parker arrived at Vandy, he began to bounce back and was released after two more days of treatment there.
“It took four days to get as bad as he was going to get,” Valerie said. “After that he started bouncing back.”
Parker has now completely recovered with no lasting ill effects or organ damage.
“The doctors at Vanderbilt told me that Ehrlichiosis is especially bad this year in Tennessee and Kentucky, up 100-fold from last year,” Valerie said. “ The disease is potentially deadly (two children died from it while Parker was at Vanderbilt). It's important that parents think about tick bites if their child has an unexplained high fever in the summer with low white blood cell counts.
Valerie said doctors in Tennessee attributed German with quick thinking that helped Parker’s case be resolved with a positive outcome.
“He is the reason. They said Dr. German did everything exactly right,” Valerie said.
“I was just doing my job,” German said.
The thing to take away from all this, he said, is in the summertime, if a child 8 or younger has an unexplained fever of 104 degrees or higher that is not going away and a white cell count that keeps dropping, parents and physicians need to think about tick bites as a possible cause of the illness.
Other than that, German was humble about his discovery of the right diagnosis in Parker’s case.
“Praise the Lord he got better,” he said. “God puts those ideas in your mind at the right time.”

What is Ehrlichiosis?
Ehrlichiosis is the general name used to describe several bacterial diseases that affect animals and humans. These diseases are caused by the organisms in the genus Ehrlichia. In the United States, there are currently two ehrlichial species that are known to cause disease in humans: Ehrlichia chaffeensis and Ehrlichia ewingii. Ehrlichia chaffeensis causes human ehrlichiosis also described as human monocytic ehrlichiosis (HME). In addition, human infections with Ehrlichia ewingii have also been documented.
How do people get ehrlichiosis?
In the United States, ehrlichiae are transmitted by the bite of an infected tick. The lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum) is the primary vector of both Ehrlichia chaffeensis and Ehrlichia ewingii in the United States.
What are the symptoms of ehrlichiosis?
The symptoms of ehrlichiosis may resemble symptoms of various other infectious and non-infectious diseases. The initial signs and symptoms generally include:

* fever
* headache
* fatigue
* muscle aches

Other signs and symptoms may include:

* nausea
* vomiting
* diarrhea
* cough
* joint pains
* confusion
* occasionally rash

Symptoms typically appear after an incubation period of 5-10 days following the tick bite. It is possible that many individuals who become infected with ehrlichiae do not become ill or they develop only very mild symptoms.

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

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Sick from a tick.....another story about Lyme disease

Hi again everyone.

It is time to talk about Lyme disease. Below is a fabulous article from a woman who struggled being diagnosed with Lyme disease. She was forced to do a lot of research on her own and took charge of her medical care. She was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease and Bartonella. Please take time and read her personal struggle. She is another victim of this terrible disease and her story mimics the story of hundreds of Lyme patients.

Be Well,
Rich Bowman


Cover Story - Friday, July 17, 2009from the Dannville Weekly.com

So sick from a tick
'Lyme disease could happen to you,' warns Diablo woman

by Sue Savod

It comes from a tick and it's on the East coast - isn't that what most people know about Lyme disease? And what's that got to do with us here in California? A lot. Because the fact is that Northern California is one of the most Lyme-infected areas in the U.S.A. I want to scream it from the rooftops! Be careful! We have Lyme disease right here!

In January 2008, I was exhausted and just plain felt sick. I went to my family doctor whom I'd seen maybe five or six times during the previous five years. He's a good doctor. He even asks me what I think is wrong before he checks me out. This time I didn't have a clue. He mentioned "virus" and did blood tests. I even asked to be tested for Lyme - I must have read it somewhere. There were lots of reasons for me to be run down as I had been very busy the fall before with my daughter's wedding and finishing a new house. Christmas did me in.

The tests came back - all normal, no Lyme, but an unusually high ANA, which tests protein, specifically antinuclear antibodies, in your blood. The doctor suspected an autoimmune disease, lupus to be exact, and sent me to a rheumatologist. He was also a good doctor, taught and did research, and he listened. He did some more blood, lungs, heart testing and diagnosed me with a "very rare autoimmune disease" called Mixed Connective Tissue disease. Made sense. Except I didn't have all the symptoms. In fact I only had a couple. He said I'd develop more symptoms in the next 10 years. What?! Something inside me said: "That's not what you have."

I also had had knee problems in the summer of 2006. A swollen sore knee. Doctors said it was my crooked kneecap. One wanted to remove it. Hobbled to another who said, "We have to clip the ligaments and that will do the trick." This one was a good doctor., so I had the operation. Didn't work. Had gel injected behind the kneecap along with a cortisone shot (the worst thing for Lyme). That didn't work either. Said I would need a knee replacement eventually. The swelling came and went.

Lower back ache. Went to the doctor. Recommended physical therapy. Went. Didn't work.

I came home and got on the computer. Thank God for the Internet. Lyme disease. It frequently came up when I put in my symptoms. I read more. And more. Blogs, Web sites. The light slowly went on as I saw myself described. Things I didn't even know were symptoms. Brain fog. No energy. Some joint pains. Swollen ankle. Heel pain. Sore neck. Weight gain. Ribs sore. Lower back pain. Ocular migraines (you get the sparklies without the pain). Calf leg cramps.

Did I have all that? Yes, some were infrequent symptoms I hadn't really even thought about until they were pointed out, and they had appeared slowly over time. I wasn't reading the signals. I didn't know the language of Lyme back then. I had ignored almost everything except the fatigue and the knee. In fact I push through most pain and discomfort without awareness. This new information made me finally stop and take stock.

My dear boyfriend bought me two books on Lyme and their information just about convinced me. I was sure I had Lyme. But where did I get it? When did I get it? I sent for my records from my doctor to see if I could track anything down. I never saw a tick and never had a rash that I could remember. Then I saw that in January 2003, I had gone to my doctor with a flu-like illness and a swollen knee.

Bingo! Those are classic Lyme symptoms. I had begun hiking in the Las Trampas hills right behind my home in Alamo where I lived at the time. And ticks like to cling to grasses and shrubs, so they can jump on any carbon dioxide-emitting creature that comes by. Who knows how many creatures carry Lyme. In California, Lyme is carried by the deer tick, Ixodes pacificus, the Western black legged tick that starts out the size of the period at the end of this sentence. As they mature they grow to about the size of a sesame seed. Deer, squirrels and rats and mice are carriers. They don't get Lyme symptoms. The rest of us do. Tick jumps on carrier, tick bites carrier, tick jumps off. If the carrier is a person, Lyme is transmitted. And new evidence says it only takes four hours of tick attachment for you to get Lyme. If you pull off that tick five hours later, you could have Lyme disease.

One San Francisco doctor's name kept coming up in the blogs and on some Lyme Web sites. I made an appointment and had to wait two months, until August 2008. I was nervous. Was it all in my head? I wasn't that sick. Told him what I thought and, without missing a beat, he agreed and suspected, from my descriptions, that I might have another tick-borne disease as well. I asked to be put on antibiotics right then. Sent my blood to a Lyme-sensitive lab in Palo Alto. Normal lab testing rarely catches Lyme, which is difficult to catch with a blood test anyway. One month later - yes, I had Lyme disease and Bartonella, one of the many co-infections common with Lyme. I was almost relieved. At least it had a name. I had no idea the severity of this disease. I was beginning the journey I am on now.

What they test isn't the Lyme bacteria in your blood, but the antibodies your system creates against it. As you are treated and your immune system gets stronger, you put out more antibodies. So if a test doesn't show Lyme right away, that doesn't mean you don't have it. It may just mean your immune system hasn't produced measurable antibodies. Doctors have to go on what patients describe for now. It's called clinical evidence. Eventually it shows up in the tests.

Met a lady from San Ramon the last time I went to my doctor. She had it - hers was manifested in stomach symptoms - as did her college age daughter, who had two co-infections as well. Hers was nuero-borrealis - she couldn't retain anything she was learning. San Ramon! Alamo! It's right here. In fact my doctor currently treats hundreds - that's HUNDREDS - of Lyme patents, most from here in the Bay Area.

Every parent should be aware of ticks and Lyme; 25 percent of Lyme patients are kids. If you live where deer and squirrels live, then you can get Lyme. Kids should be checked after playing outside. One author described her two sons' bouts with Lyme, both now cured. One was ill for seven years. Couldn't even go to school. They thought he had all kinds of diseases - childhood arthritis, mental problems, eye problems, flu. We need to know! If I got it, you can get it.

Centers for Disease Control says one has to have a bulls eye rash, but more than 50 percent of Lyme patients never see one. This disease is the No. 1 vector-borne disease in the U.S.; we have five times the number of Lyme sufferers as AIDS patients. Why don't we know about it? And why didn't my doctors know about it?

CDC's official line on Lyme long has been controlled by a group of doctors, Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA). They have a narrow definition of Lyme - just rashes and joint problems - completely ignoring the brain symptoms, the stomach problems, the rest of the Lyme symptoms that masquerade as other diseases. Lyme is a very difficult disease to diagnose, but if I could diagnose myself off the Internet, then why isn't my doctor getting the information he needs? Doctors now doing research are too few and far between, and are mostly doing it without financial help. I've found that these doctors had Lyme at one time and that's how they became interested.

One M.D. was diagnosed with advanced multiple sclerosis. He read about Lyme, went to a Lyme-literate doctor and is now cured and doing research. Lyme mimics a lot of diseases - multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, Lou Gherig's disease, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, lupus - my doctor said I would be surprised at the number of cases of "lupus" he has cured. There was even a test of cadaver brains from the Alzheimer's Association and seven out of 10 had the Lyme bacteria. Mine masqueraded as an autoimmune disease.

How many other "diseases" are Lyme? Without informed doctors and better tests we will never know. This is a huge problem that keeps thousands of Americans ill and out of work. Insurance companies won't pay for Lyme, but go along with doctors who deny that chronic Lyme exists. Lyme disease doesn't go away. It grows and debilitates. And it can kill. I was lucky to find mine after only five years. Most patients go seven years and to scores of doctors before they are diagnosed - if they are diagnosed at all. Lyme caught right away takes only about two months of antibiotics to cure. But most Lyme is misdiagnosed. So chronic Lyme can take years to treat. Why don't the insurance companies realize this?

Because Lyme is a bacteria, albeit a virulent one, antibiotics work against it. You start treatment, you get worse, you get better, you get worse - the bacteria's cycle seems to be every four weeks. It's a nasty bug. Some people, not knowing, start the antibiotics and get really sick within a few days - it's called the Herxheimer effect - so they stop their antibiotics. Big mistake. Because Lyme is intracellular and extracellular, it is often treated with two different antibiotics. Some people who don't have a good immune system are critically ill right away. They may require intravenous antibiotics and medical support. And if you have a co-infection, it has to be killed before the Lyme can be treated effectively.

If I got another tick bite, I would find myself a doctor who would treat me immediately, THAT DAY. I fully intend to be cured. After I started treatment, I was fairly sick for a time but just recently I have had the best three weeks in several years. This reminded me how I can feel again. I was lucky to find a doctor who is a member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). These wonderful, true scientists are a growing group of Lyme-literate doctors who keep in touch with each other to combine their acquired knowledge gained through experience to recommend treatment for Lyme.

I know way more than I ever wanted to about Lyme and this is just the short version. I have been researching and reading and learning. I know this: If we don't start paying attention to this disease, it can become an epidemic - or has it already?

Sue Savod is now living in Diablo and taking her antibiotics. She is focusing on her career in animal portraits while regaining her health. Contact her at susavod@comcast.net.

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Thursday, May 21, 2009

What We don't know about Lyme.

Hello again,

This is a great article from Pamela Weintraub. It is quite long, but well worth taking the time to read. There is a lot of great information. This last week, I had a couple of appointments with my regular doctors and I was again disheartened at their lack of knowledge of Lyme disease. It was as though they didn't care that I was still suffering from Lyme disease, but that because they didn't know anything about it, it excused them from trying to treat me. They would address my diabetes(brought on by the Lyme disease)but that was all they could do for me. They made the comment that they would let whoever is working with me on Lyme, if anyone, treat me for that. It was infuriating and I resolved again to work harder on being a Lyme disease activist. The work that Pamela Weintraub has done for Lyme disease patients is second to none. For those of you who haven't read any of her books, I encourage to do so.

More resolved than ever,
Richard







What We Don't Know About Lyme

When a mysterious and debilitating illness overtook her and her family, the author struggled to find some answers. What she discovered about Lyme disease - and how little is actually known or agreed upon by the medical experts - is something everyone who goes outdoors should learn.
What We Don't Know About Lyme

By Pamela Weintraub


Features,
June 2009

Lume 101
Slipping Through the Cracks
Lyme on the Brain
The Treatment Controversy
Tick Menagerie
A New Lyme Science
Last Dance With Lyme
How to Protect Yourself Against Lyme Disease
Finding a Provider
Web Resources

After we moved from the city to a wooded property in the suburban hamlet of Chappaqua, N.Y., in 1993, our family began to get sick. At first, the vague headaches, joint pains and bone weariness were so subtle they barely merited note. But as years passed, these symptoms intensified into frank signs of disease.

My arms and legs buzzed so palpably I felt like I was wired to a power grid. A relentless migraine became so intense I spent hours each day in a darkened room, in bed. My husband, Mark, an avid tennis player, began stumbling and bumping into walls. He was an award-winning journalist, but slowly he began struggling with memory and groping for words. Our youngest son, David, began to sleep — first, so long that he could not do his homework or see his friends; eventually, so much (15 or more hours a day) that he could not get to class.

Hardest hit was Jason, our oldest, who suffered fatigue and shooting pains starting at age 9, the year we moved to our little house in the woods. The doctors called these “growing pains” normal, but by February 2000, Jason, then 16, was essentially disabled. An honor student, he now had trouble reading even simple paragraphs. His joints and muscles hurt so much it was difficult for him to walk. And he couldn’t tolerate sound and light. On medical leave from high school, he spent his days in the tub in our darkened main-floor bathroom as hot water and steam eased his pain.

As his condition worsened, and as all sorts of lab tests came back negative, a raft of specialists at New York City’s top teaching hospitals suggested diagnoses ranging from migraine aura (migraine without the pain) to Fifth’s disease (caused by parvovirus). Each diagnosis elicited a treatment, but none of them worked.

“What about Lyme disease?” I asked from time to time, since we lived in an area where the infection was endemic; our backyard was a haven for deer, and Jason spent summers playing in a fort in the woods behind our house.

“There are too many symptoms here, and he’s way too sick for Lyme disease,” replied the pediatrician, who declined to even test for it. But with answers still eluding us, the pediatrician finally drew blood for a Western blot, a diagnostic test that matched antibodies produced by the patient against the proteins of the invading organism — in this case the bacterium known to cause Lyme.

When the labs came back, Jason had so many “bands” — with each band considered an antibody-protein match — that the result was off-the-charts positive. By the summer of that year, the rest of us had been diagnosed as well.

The news was a relief. With a solid diagnosis, we were told by doctors, we could get treated for this easily curable infection, and move on. We felt a flush of optimism, but it turned out that our struggle had just begun. I would spend the next nine years trying to make sense of our misdiagnoses and seeking effective treatment for my children.

Lyme 101 (Back to Top)
What I didn’t know about Lyme disease back then could have filled a book — one that, as a longtime science and medical journalist, I eventually wrote. My book, Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic (St. Martin’s Press, 2008), explores the complex science and disturbing political war over the illness. But a few facts can be served up straight: Lyme disease is caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, a spiral-shaped bacterium, and is generally transmitted to people through the bite of a deer tick.

The disease arrived in the Northeast United States, northwest California and the Great Lakes region in force in the 1970s, as the continent was being reforested and new suburban housing was increasingly built adjacent to woods. The spirochete lived in the blood of rodents and other small mammals inhabiting those woods. When ticks bit these mammals they became infected. When those same ticks bit human hosts, they transmitted Lyme disease to them.

Pushing the disease to epidemic proportions, however, required something else: large mammals, like deer, are each able to provide nourishment for hundreds of large adult ticks, enabling them to reproduce en masse. As the deer population exploded across the forested regions of the country, the Lyme epidemic followed suit. Ultimately, infected ticks traversed the continental flyways on the backs of migrating birds, bringing Lyme to every state. Today, 12 to 40 percent of deer ticks are infected in the most endemic areas of the Northeast, and between 3 and 40 percent in endemic areas of the West Coast. With more than 200,000 CDC-acknowledged cases a year in the United States (the tip of the iceberg, many believe), Lyme has become one of country’s fastest-spreading diseases.

Slipping Through the Cracks (Back to Top)
When diagnosed with a Lyme rash and treated early, most infected patients are easily cured. But this upbeat message has little meaning for those diagnosed late. Show up at the doctor without a rash, and diagnosing Lyme disease becomes an elaborate, labyrinthine affair.

The standard guidelines, published by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), call for early diagnosis exclusively through the presence of that telltale rash — mistakenly thought of by many practitioners as a classic “bull’s-eye” shape. Yet the spreading red rash with areas of white clearing, called an erythema migrans, might not be round or oval — let alone a bull’s eye. (Jason’s rash, which I later recognized in a medical textbook, was dismissed by our medical group because it covered his torso in a swath.) According to some studies and estimates, fewer than 60 percent of Lyme patients ever exhibit or notice a rash of any sort.

Those without this early sign may roam the diagnostic desert for years seeking answers. Yet, IDSA guidelines require that, to qualify for diagnosis, patients without the rash must present with one of a small group of quantifiable disease signs, from measurable nerve damage to grossly swollen knees. Though many experts say a significant percentage of Lyme patients experience only “symptoms” — headache, memory loss or fatigue — IDSA calls these problems just too vague to consider a diagnosis of Lyme. But, even with objective signs like swollen knees, patients must pass a series of tests before a diagnosis can be made.

And that’s the other part of the problem. Should the patient present those frank signs of disease and qualify for the test, the bar for passing is set perilously high for some. According to the peer-reviewed journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, “The tests are prone to false-negative and false-positive results and can be misleading, especially early in the course of the disease. . . . Because serologic [blood] testing is not 100 percent sensitive or specific, some people with Lyme disease will not have confirmatory laboratory results.”

The most comprehensive review of the standard Lyme tests comes from Johns Hopkins University. Working with patients from Pennsylvania and Maryland, the Hopkins scientists studied state-of-the-art serology and DNA tests for Lyme and found serious flaws: Most tellingly, when the standard two-step method recommended by the CDC was used on patients with other laboratory evidence of Lyme disease, it was positive between 45 percent and 77 percent of the time. As for DNA tests, the Hopkins researchers reported these rarely pick up otherwise-confirmed Lyme disease at all.

It is made all the more complicated because there are hundreds of strains of the Lyme disease spirochete throughout the world, says Benjamin Luft, MD, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Each strain has its own combination of proteins, evoking a variety of bands on diagnostic tests; some will match the pattern the CDC has approved for a positive on the Western blot (the second of two tests in the series), but others may not. Each Lyme strain evokes a unique antibody pattern and its own flavor of disease.

In short, Mayo Clinic researchers note, diagnosis should be clinical — based not on the tests but on the patient and the patient’s situation as a whole. With so many strains of Lyme disease and a unique immune system for each new patient, this only makes sense. Yet with Lyme disease so controversial, most primary-care doctors end up deferring to the tests, leaving those who fail them out in the cold.

“I’ve been scraping Lyme patients off the sidewalk for years,” says Kenneth Liegner, MD, who practices in Armonk, N.Y., not far from where my family got sick. “By the time some of these people get to me, they are so disabled they can barely think or walk.”

Lyme on the Brain (Back to Top)
Given the barriers to diagnosis, many patients slide ever deeper into illness, where disability can be profound. Lyme invades not just our skin and our joints, but our hearts, nervous systems and eyes. Lyme is commonly considered a knee disease, an impediment in tennis, but the Lyme spirochete, like the syphilis spirochete, also invades the brain.

Testing hundreds of such patients, New York University neuropsychologist Leo J. Shea III, PhD, found specific deficits in concentration, short-term memory and processing speed. Patients can be so impaired they have trouble driving around their neighborhoods and can no longer perform their jobs.

Psychiatrist Brian Fallon, MD, director of the Lyme and Tick Borne Diseases Research Center at Columbia University Medical Center, found that brain infection could trigger a host of psychiatric problems, ranging from bipolar disorder and depression to panic and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Time and again, Fallon has seen Lyme disease “misdiagnosed as a primary psychiatric problem,” while the root issue — infection with the spirochete B. burgdorferi — was never addressed. This is especially damaging, he says, since a delay in treatment could turn an acute and easily curable infection into a chronic disease highly resistant to treatment.

The Treatment Controversy (Back to Top)
Patients diagnosed in the earliest stage of the disease through a classic rash can usually look forward to full recovery after a monthlong regimen of the oral antibiotics doxycycline or amoxicillin. Those with neurological or arthritic symptoms may be offered intravenous ceftriaxone for a month or two. But experts like Luft and Liegner have found that some 20 percent of those infected for over a year before the start of treatment will fail these protocols and stay sick.

Without further options from the IDSA team, these late-diagnosed patients have sought help from controversial doctors known as Lyme-Literate MDs (LLMDs), who argue that longer courses, higher doses and multidrug antibiotic regimens provide a viable option for many of the “incurable” 20 percent. As ever more patients flock to LLMDs like Liegner, the controversy has mounted, with IDSA pitted against another, newer group: the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). IDSA says the short-term treatment always stamps out infection and argues that overexposure to antibiotics can generate treatment-resistant bugs. Competing guidelines from ILADS hold that patients already have a hard-to-treat infection (chronic, persistent Lyme disease) and that more aggressive treatment is thus warranted.

The debate has recently come closer to resolution with surprising research from veterinary scientist Stephen Barthold, DVM, PhD, who spent 25 years investigating Lyme disease at Yale before setting up shop as director of the Center for Comparative Medicine at the University of California at Davis. Barthold reports that if he allows the infection to remain untreated for months across a range of mammal species in the lab, he can always recover living spirochetes, generally sequestered in tissues that are rich in collagen. When laboratory mice infected with these spirochetes are treated with what should be effective doses of various antibiotics, the spirochetes cannot be cultured from tissues by conventional means, but they are alive and can be transmitted by ticks to other mice.

The finding resonates with what late-diagnosed patients report: If surviving spirochetes are so sluggish they cannot replicate, they may be impervious to antibiotics that work by targeting bacterial cells as they divide. The persisting spirochetes could be the presumptive source of the constitutional symptoms like pain and fatigue that often follow treatment; they may be provoking the production of symptom-causing cytokines (immune molecules), yet still be too low in number to cause the gross inflammation or provoke the antibody response that many mainstream experts call the sine qua non of the disease. Infection might be suppressed but not eradicated by treatment, as so many relapsing patients report.

Spurred by the findings, university-based researchers are attacking the infection on several fronts. Scientists like Luft and Barthold are actively testing antibiotics designed to purge these dormant, resistant spirochetes. Some researchers are trying to destroy them with nanotechnology and heat. And a California company called Viral Genetics, with research headed by M. Karen Newell, PhD, and aided by Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier, discoverer of the HIV virus, is trying to modulate the immune system so it can clean out infection on its own. Still others suggest that the low-level infection might be benign if the immune response could be contained.

Tick Menagerie (Back to Top)
Improved treatments for Lyme disease alone may not solve the problem. There are other infections inhabiting the ticks that spread Lyme, and they are factors as well. The malaria-like parasite Babesia infects our red blood cells and results in fever, exhaustion and drenching sweats. Babesiosis combined with Lyme disease can be especially protracted and difficult to treat. Tick-borne bacteria like Anaplasma and Ehrlichia, which live in human cells, are rife throughout regions where Lyme has reared its head. These organisms don’t necessarily respond to all common treatment for Lyme disease and may cause serious illness even when Lyme is not involved.

Added to this are other microbes as well; though still controversial, these, too, are now considered possible agents of the disease complex broadly referred to as “Lyme.” One of the most notable is the rod-shaped bacterium Bartonella henselae, known as a cause of “cat scratch” disease and commonly transmitted by cats. More recently, forms of bartonella have been discovered in abundance in deer ticks. Some doctors cite Bartonella as a culprit when symptoms are particularly neuropsychiatric, and when treatment for Lyme does not work.

Another tick-borne suspect, Mycoplasma, has been discovered in deer ticks in Connecticut and New Jersey. “This could be the missing link,” says Eva Sapi, PhD, associate professor of biology at the University of New Haven, who also hypothesizes that nematodes play a role in tick-borne disease. It would explain why some patients don’t get well when treated for Lyme disease alone. Other researchers have found Tularemia, often an agent of bio-terrorism, in Lyme ticks.

A host of other spirochetes, some not yet identified, complete the scene. Yale researchers found that 20 percent of the spirochetes thought to be Borrelia burgdorferi in the Northeast are really another species, a relapsing fever spirochete never seen in North America before. There’s a still-unidentified spirochete in Montana, this time transmitted by the wood tick. And then there’s the lonestar tick, which has recently spread from the South throughout the Midwest and up the East Coast, as far north as Maine. The lonestar carries an unidentified spirochete, the cause of a Lymelike disease that the CDC has recently recognized.

“We are just starting to understand the full range of infections that we might get,” says David H. Persing, MD, PhD, chief medical and technology officer for Cepheid, a California biotech firm and a world expert in molecular diagnostics. “I don’t think we know half of the agents that are potentially transmissible by ticks.”

Add to this the morphing quality of the various microbes implicated in these Lymelike diseases. Through constant shifting of plasmid DNA among the microbes, ticks facilitate a rapid form of evolution and drive the creation of novel strains and microbes, virtually nonstop. Indeed, in the universe of emerging infectious disease, the tick is the final frontier. The ultimate germ generator, it is the ideal wet lab for microorganisms to mix and remix in infinite formats, spewing a kaleidoscopic oeuvre of novel bacteria and viruses, some of them pathogens the world has never seen.

A New Lyme Science (Back to Top)
I wish I had understood Lyme as an emerging infectious disease and political hot potato when my family first got sick. Exposed to the noxious debate, the naive patient sees two polarized factions and feels pressured to choose one. But interview the workbench researchers and you will find a complex, nuanced reality emerging from the science itself. Sadly, the vicious political fight over Lyme disease has dumbed down the dialogue and prevented the best science from being heard.

In 2009, the pace of scientific progress is great. Instead of testing for a mere 10 antibodies to a limited number of spirochetal proteins — the procedure still being used in most of today’s commercial labs — new diagnostics that Luft and his Stony Brook colleagues have developed will use proteomics (study of proteins) to tap 1,800 B. burgdorferi proteins found across the range of strains. “We want to test against the entire array of borrelia proteins in all their variability,” says Luft. “So if I look at a patient over time, over the course of their disease I can see whether new proteins, ones we’ve never noticed, might emerge.”

The work on strains could alter how we diagnose and treat the disease in the years to come, says Alan Barbour, director of the Pacific-Southwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of California Irvine and one of the world’s foremost spirochete experts. “If some strains are more likely than others to spread in the blood, and by that route to other tissues, then identification of the strain a person is infected with could help guide therapy,” Barbour explains. “Some strains may call for a longer course of antibiotics. The problem is isolating the microbe out of the patient to see what strain it is. This could be done by a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test of the blood or a skin biopsy, when there is a rash. Isolating the microbe is harder when the illness has been going on for longer than a few weeks, but any isolate of Borrelia burgdorferi from a patient would mean a diagnosis of Lyme disease.”

Also shedding light on treatment is genomics (the study of genes). The Luft team has recently found that Lyme spirochetes have genes for pumping out the first-line antibiotic doxycycline. This means that even as doxycycline enters the Lyme bacterium, it is being ejected, much like a sump pump might eject water from a basement floor. As a result, the dose might not climb high enough to kill the infection, and the patient won’t get well.

Based on this finding, Luft is now studying another drug — tigecycline, an intravenous antibiotic currently used for infections of the abdominal organs and skin. Its mechanism is much like that of doxycycline — except that its chemical structure inhibits the spirochetes’ “pump,” keeping the antibiotic from being ejected by the cells. “It’s a hundred times more active against the spirochete than doxycycline. Instead of just inhibiting the spirochetes, like doxy, it kills them dead,” says Luft.

“We’re at a critical point,” he adds. “We have powerful new tools and a fundamental understanding of the biology of the Borrelia. We know every gene in that organism. We know all the variations of those genes. We know what’s in the human genome. So, when someone gets sick, we’ve got to put this together, in context, and ask what’s going on.”

Indeed, work like this will explain why prognosis varies so widely from one patient to the next. With so many strains, so many co-infections and so many immune systems, Lyme — in the broad sense of the word — will never be one-size-fits-all.

“Some researchers have thrown down their gloves and retreated to their corners, leaving patients out in the cold,” says Luft. “But despite what they say, the patients are still sick. It’s a question of doing right by them — it’s not a question of whether you might have to eat crow. We’ve got to go in and do the right experiments, and then we can look truth in the eye.”

Last Dance With Lyme (Back to Top)
My family has come a long way since our Lyme diagnoses almost a decade ago. We’ve left the Lymelands for safer ground — the concrete expanse of Brooklyn. I’ve been off antibiotics since 2004 and am back at a full-time job. Mark continues to relapse when he stops his antibiotic, but with it, he works his day job, plays tennis and seems fine. Jason has recovered. He graduated from Brown University in spring 2008 and leaves for film school in the fall.

But Lyme still clouds our lives because our younger son, David, was re-infected in Westchester County a couple of years back and remains ill.

In all my years of research, I never doubted that IDSA was right about early Lyme: Treat the rash and a cure would be guaranteed. So in the summer of 2007, when David called to tell me that friends in his college dorm had recognized a classic bull’s-eye rash on his arm, I was actually relieved: For once, we’d caught it early. A month of antibiotics, I told myself, and David would be cured.

We took a 40-minute drive to Dr. Daniel Cameron’s office in downtown Mount Kisco, N.Y., and his physician assistant easily diagnosed a bull’s-eye-shaped erythema migrans that was an archetype of the form. She prescribed a few weeks of amoxicillin and sent us home.

“When you get a rash so classic that everyone at college tells you it’s Lyme disease, it’s a beautiful thing,” Dan Cameron, now president of ILADS, said at the time.

But by spring 2008, David’s fatigue was so profound, his memory and focus so poor, that he had to drop his classes at Vassar College and come home. Back in New York, doctors discovered gross damage to David’s cranial nerves — irrefutable, IDSA-style proof of inflammatory disease and hardcore evidence of Lyme. Ordering more tests, Cameron found not just Lyme disease but a co-infection — babesiosis — known to complicate the picture and make Lyme harder to treat.

I completed work on my book about this mysterious disease more than a year ago, but I know now that our journey is far from over. Our family, along with many others, continues to deal with the fallout at the frontlines of an epidemic, in that unforgiving land called Lyme.

Pamela Weintraub is a senior editor at Discover Magazine and author of Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic (St. Martin’s Press, 2008). She writes a blog on emerging disease for Psychology Today.

How to Protect Yourself Against Lyme Disease (Back to Top)
For those who live and work in Lyme endemic areas, a little protection goes a long way. You can enjoy nature, according to Pat Smith, president of the Lyme Disease Association, as long as you take some precautions:

* Walk in the middle of trails. Avoid sitting on logs or leaning on trees.
* Wear a hat. Tuck your hair in, if possible.

* Wear a long-sleeved shirt, fitted at the waist.
* Wear boots or shoes, not sandals. No bare feet.
* Wear long pants tucked into high socks, or duct tape around pant bottoms.
* Consider applying Deet for skin and permethrin for clothes (use your own best judgment in weighing exposure to these toxins against risk of tick bites).
* Wear white or light-colored clothing so ticks stand out.
* Check yourself and your children for ticks immediately after outdoor exposure. Repeat the tick check again, three days later. Remember that nymphal (adolescent) ticks can look like freckles. They are the size of poppy seeds.
* If you find an attached tick, remove it carefully with tweezers placed as close to the skin as possible. Pull the tick upward with steady, even pressure, making sure that mouth parts are cleanly removed. Apply antiseptic and call a doctor. Save the tick in a sealed container with a moist cotton ball. Call your state health department to inquire about testing. (Ticks do fall off on their own eventually, so even if you don’t see a tick, it is possible that you may have been exposed to disease.)
* Consult your doctor about treating the tick bite with oral antibiotics. Though the number of days required for this treatment remains controversial, new findings from CDC research suggest that the single dose of treatment generally recommended for this scenario may be inadequate and that a doxycycline sustained release protocol (19 days) the CDC is developing might be more effective.


Finding a Provider (Back to Top)
How to find a doctor to treat your tick-borne disease.

Lyme disease is never pleasant, but if you are exposed in endemic areas of the Northeast, the Midwest or the West Coast and develop the spreading red Lyme rash known as erythema migrans, the best person to consult is your family doctor. The classic Lyme disease rash is considered diagnostic for the disease in these areas, according to the standard guidelines from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). Physicians following these widely accepted guidelines will not even have to order a blood test to make a bulletproof diagnosis. For most people without other complications, including other infections from the same tick bite, a month of treatment with oral antibiotics like doxycycline or amoxicillin should cure the disease.

Finding a doctor able to make the diagnosis and treat you adequately becomes far more challenging if you do not see or develop a rash, or if you live outside areas considered most endemic for the disease. Given the debate in the medical community over the classic signs and symptoms for Lyme, the inaccuracy of the tests, and the presence of complicating co-infections, patients in this circumstance can advance into later, harder-to-treat disease before they are ever diagnosed.

In this instance, it may be appropriate to consult a neurologist, rheumatologist or infectious disease doctor in your community for specialized but mainstream care. Following the IDSA guidelines, these physicians will treat these sicker patients with specialized antimicrobials aimed at co-infections, or with a month or two of intravenous Rocephin, which crosses the blood brain barrier and better penetrates the joints, often resolving Lyme disease.

But about 20 percent of patients diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease report that they fail even this more aggressive treatment; others report that their co-infections are missed. Still sick, they find themselves navigating the tortuous backroads of the Lyme wars. Those seeking clinical evaluation of the range of tick-borne infections or continued treatment for Lyme disease itself — as I did with my own family — may decide to cross the line, leaving the restrictions of the mainstream viewpoint for the alternative world of Lyme doctors, referred to by patients as Lyme-Literate Medical Doctors, or LLMDs. These physicians will test patients for a range of co-infections and treat Lyme disease longer, using antibiotics in combination (as is done with tuberculosis cases) for months and sometimes years.

Many patients report recovery on such protocols — but many do not, and for them, the search for treatment goes on. Some patients consult trained naturopaths, who help them boost their immune systems. One new trend used by neurologists at New York University and Yale involves treatment with IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin), a blood product rich in immune molecules that can heal damaged nerves.

For reference to a doctor skilled in mainstream protocols, contact the Infectious Diseases Society of America. For reference to a doctor willing to treat tick-borne infection beyond the standard guidelines, contact the Lyme Disease Association or the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. (See Web Resources, below.)

Web Resources (Back to Top)

* Infectious Diseases Society of America: www.idsociety.org
* Lyme Disease Association: www.lymediseaseassociation.org
* International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society: www.ilads.or




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Pueblo, Colorado, United States
I am a Chronic Lyme disease patient. I was bitten by a tick in 2001 and have been very sick ever since. Subsequently, you could say I am a Lyme disease junkie.I thirst for any information about it,any treatments, research etc. It has been a life altering experience, which has kept me away from our business and at home most of the time. I use to own A-1 Barricade and Sign Inc. here in Pueblo, Co, but because of the Lyme disease, my sons are running the business for the most part with my wife. I have been married for 48 years to a wonderful woman who is also my best friend. We have five children, all grown. Four boys live here in Pueblo and my only daughter lives in Bonney Lake, Washington. We miss her a lot. I have 7 grandchildren, which are the greatest of all. They are all exceptionally beautiful! The last thing you need to know about me is that I am proud to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Because of this I have the knowledge that life is eternal and that it does not end here, but it will go on after death because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. This truth I bear witness of!