Lyme: The Quiet Epidemic

The Quiet Epidemic documentary poster image

At the behest of one of my Lyme patients, I recently watched The Quiet Epidemic, a documentary on chronic Lyme. I don’t watch a lot of these types of films because my viewpoint on Lyme can sometimes feel so radically different from even most of the LL, or, “lyme literate” doctors that it’s challenging for me to find resonant information that will contribute to my work with patients. The reason I agreed to watch this one was because my patient told me she cried the entire way through it.

I continually want to connect more deeply with my patients on an emotional level. I want to feel their struggle and find new ways to be an advocate for them. I want to help fight for them. There were times as a kid when I stood up for people going through something rough or getting picked on in school. There were times when I didn’t. As an adult I’m often guided by a missed opportunity in seventh grade when I didn’t befriend a lonely deaf kid who was in several of my classes. His strength facing 1990s public school still perplexes me. His struggle that I neglected to help shoulder motivates me to do better.

Watching The Quiet Epidemic, it was clear how it could move you to tears. You see and feel the pain that people have been suffering through for decades with this insidious infection. I got misty-eyed myself several times. There was also an exigent element to the film for me and it didn’t have anything to do with the film itself. The gnawing discomfort I felt stems from the cultural smog that the filmmakers breathe. We all breathe this smog. The smog that sustains a war on Nature. The smog that sees disease as only battle and not a becoming. The smog that is obsessed with clinical tests, pharmaceutical drugs, and biological prophylactics.

This smog evidences itself through the three waves of Lyme healthcare literacy that have emerged in the past several decades. They traverse time going forward and backward so I will refer to them as Wave 1, Wave 2, and Wave 0.

Wave 1 is all the old school doctors you see in The Quiet Epidemic with the exception of the LL doctors. These are the ones who worked lockstep with the CDC to ensure doctors were unified in their position that Lyme could never be chronic. Wave 1 is a division of the factory that creates the smog.

Wave 2 are the LL doctors themselves. They use a lot of blood tests to determine whether or not you have Lyme or any other co-infections but also recognize that the tests aren’t always accurate and believe you when you say you are sick even when you test negative for everything. Herbs that have shown promise in research scenarios are often in the mix and so are pharmaceuticals of various kinds. There is a somewhat substantial but not entirely unified push for biological prophylactics over building natural immunity in this community. Wave 2 are allies who are finding the right way in the midst of the smog that Wave 1 creates.

Then there’s Wave 0.

Wave 0 goes back in time to before Lyme even existed. This is the branch of medicine that was treating these types of chronic inflammatory conditions in China for generations using potent herbal remedies and various frequency medicines such as acupuncture and topical herbal application. Tragically, modern practitioners of Chinese Medicine are, for the most part, not trained in this tradition unless they are lucky.

I consider myself to be very lucky. On my first day as a senior intern while completing my doctoral degree in Chinese Medicine, I had two patients. I remember I was so nervous that day… I wanted to help these people so badly. It was just them, their health, and me. All in a little treatment room in Mission Valley, San Diego.

My second patient that day we’ll call Buck; because I like the name Buck and I liked this patient right away. Buck came in for some post-operative sequelae that he wanted to address with acupuncture & herbs. We worked on his current ailments and then he sort of casually mentioned having Lyme Disease which he’d been dealing with for over a decade.

No matter what you bring into my treatment room, I’m going to give it my all and research the hell out of it. But there was something in this patient’s reservation to even suggest there was anything I could do to help that spurred me on a quest like none other I’ve been on in my journey with helping people regain their health. I still remember the incredulity on Buck’s face when I suggested that I would do some research for him and see if I could help. Nothing could have motivated me more.

My first stop was to talk with Dr. Barry Xin. Dr. Xin worked in China for years specializing in internal herbal medicine treating chronic diseases. He is an incredible wealth of knowledge. He suggested a few herbs and a few acupuncture techniques. But really how he changed the course in my clinical practice was when he described Lyme as a form of Gu Syndrome.

I’ve known Gu Syndrome for quite some time as I initially began my healing practice with one of its other forms which is, believe it or not, spiritual possession. Spiritual possession can be exactly what it sounds like: ghosts, demons, exorcisms… sometimes scary, freaky stuff. Gu can be an actual ghost that you are coaxing out of a human and guiding to the afterlife. Truly exhilarating.

It can also be far more mundane and involve exorcising thought patterns. For example: let’s say you are five years old and your dad spanks you for taking a cookie out of the cookie jar when you weren’t supposed to even though you are sure your mom said you could. This experience left you feeling like the people you were supposed to trust most in the world have lied to you, betrayed you, and committed a gross injustice by then physically punishing you for it.

Why didn’t mom stand up for me? Why didn’t dad believe me?

You then go through life with this fractured piece of your childhood that has been left unresolved for decades. You make decisions—all sorts of decisions—based on this one instance where clearly mom and dad made some bad judgment calls. You are possessed by this experience and go on for years not even knowing it. The healing process involves releasing the thought pattern by giving the fractured part of your personality what it needs to reintegrate into your psyche in a healthy manner.

With Lyme, Gu isn’t all that different. It lives insidiously within you, often going undetected for years, concealed within the recesses of your joints, musculature, organs, nervous system, thoughts, and emotions. It takes over your life. It affects every decision you make.

Lyme possesses you.

The commonality in all Gu is that it is something that is hidden and significantly harms your mental and physical wellbeing. The filmmakers of The Quiet Epidemic used a great name. Gu by its very nature hides quietly in the dark.

Dr. Heiner Fruehauf brings inspiration from the ancient Chinese oracle the I Ching to describe Gu:

It represents darkness, rottenness, slithering vermin, poisonous snakes, betrayal, black magic, backstabbing murder and in medical terms, progressive organ decay accompanied by torturous pain and insanity.

I don’t think anybody with firsthand experience with Lyme could read that and not agree. Dr. Fruehauf also draws comparisons to the “Dementors” in Harry Potter. He’s not wrong there either.

Another description of Gu from Master Su’s I Ching Commentary is also telling:

Gu is if a cooking vessel remains unused for a long time and worms start to grow in it.

Chinese Medicine views the body through various metaphors and one is a cooking vessel. Modern medical practice has denied this cooking vessel its capacity for doing its own work by overprescribing antibiotics and excessive use of biological prophylactics. By usurping the immune system instead of supporting it, the vessel has been left to fester. Worms start to grow.

This process leads to what is seen as a “hollowed out” immune system wherein the body can no longer handle infections on its own. More and more harsh pharmaceutical interventions are necessary until they stop working too.

It is in this state where we are susceptible to Lyme and other chronic infections. This is why the robust woodsman who grew up taking herbal remedies and drinking raw milk may not get Lyme, and someone else with a more modern upbringing of regular antibiotics and an overload of vaccines could more likely develop chronic infection.

Our initial pharmaceutically driven answer to Lyme upon admitting it was actually a thing was the same methodology that made us susceptible to it in the first place. Our medical establishment didn’t know any better than to try to dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools. It wasn’t so much hubris that led us to not recognize the role pharmaceuticals played in creating the conditions for Lyme, but unawareness. The smog is thick for all of us.

Injurious pharmaceuticals aren’t the only elements to blame though. The toxicity of our entire civilization’s effluence weakens our immune systems. We’ve all taken part in and suffered from the consequences of the war on Nature.

So the answer is not more antibiotics, more vaccines, more pesticides, more chemical interventions, more control of Nature. It’s the opposite. The answer is a surrender to Nature and to the awareness of our cosmic connection to all things. We must trust Nature and return to it. My version of the Wave 0 approach for treating chronic Lyme Gu Syndrome prescribes a holistic reset of the body and mind in order to reclaim sovereignty of life.

The first step with any of my potential Lyme patients is diagnosis. I’m not so worried about blood tests but I’m happy to look at them. What I’m concerned with is signs and symptoms. If you come in with a chronic condition affecting multiple organ systems such as digestive, nervous, or epithelial; if you feel like your life is no longer your own; if you have inexplicable symptoms like a bizarre eye twitch; I’m treating you for Gu Syndrome.

Our next move after diagnosis is energetic bodywork. This means acupuncture, medical massage, spirit releasement, reiki, frequency resonance, and anything else that is going to balance you energetically. My Lyme patients who see me regularly for these types of hands-on treatments are entirely different people than when they neglect to give themselves the care they need. They are with far less pain, more balanced, and happier. This type of treatment is highly personalized and varies from patient to patient depending on how they present. In general though I use a lot of mint oil, pine gum spirits, garlic moxibustion, teishin work, and gentle acupuncture… the treatments themselves are a wonderful experience from what patients report to me. If you can’t afford a holistic practitioner you want to see regularly, ask about a discount rate or a sliding scale. People get into healing arts because they care. Let the Universe show you how it is conspiring for you even through this trial of ultimate suck.

Then probably the biggest component of successful Lyme treatment is herbal medicine. I’m talking everything from healing mushrooms to coffee enemas to complex ancient Chinese herbal formulations for Gu Syndrome. My suggestion for anyone reading this who is not my patient is to get a referral for a great, qualified herbalist who can address your root causes as well as your symptomology. You want a great herbalist because successful treatment involves staying the course and you’ll need someone you can trust and have faith in to get the job done with you. When the going gets tough, my patients need to know that the herbal formula I have given them is the best one for them. Additionally, there are stages to treating chronic inflammatory infectious diseases with herbal medicine and your herbalist needs to be your guide through them.

Once I’ve worked physically on patients and prescribed them herbs, I want to look at what else they are taking into their bodies. Lyme patients are going to want to start to eat clean. This is out of love and care for yourself but also we need to free up your liver to be able to focus on the toxins already inside your body instead of constantly fighting against the Chic-fil-A sauce you keep feeding it. A fantastic place to begin with diet would be with Sally Fallon’s indispensable cookbook, Nourishing Traditions. Sally will teach you how to eat like your great-grandparents had the opportunity to eat. You’ll be delighted when she encourages you to eat lots of raw butter and Celtic sea salt and she has some not-so-toxic dessert tricks up her sleeve too. Not eating refined sugar and processed foods alone will change your life. You will notice a difference, no matter how big or small.

Next I’m just going to come right out and say that both my hippie childhood best friend and Jesus were right all along: love is the way. Step into love in every facet of your life when working with illness. Fill every nook and cranny you can find with love and light. Lyme is a disease of the darkness. When you fall away from this practice of love, forgive yourself quickly and come back to it. Go back through your life and visualize the experience of giving every hurt past version of yourself the hug that you needed at that time but didn’t get. Forgive people. Let go of grudges. Be of service to your own healing and the healing of others in any and every way you can muster. The little bit you can give when you’re down is what lights up the Universe.

Chronic inflammation such as Lyme is going to tax you mentally and emotionally on a scale most non-Lyme mere mortals couldn’t imagine. I ask all my patients to pray, meditate, and visualize. I also suggest they read books like Healing Ourselves, Be Here Now, Plant Spirit Medicine, Never Finished, and others that will inspire you. Do qi gong or tai chi if you can—it can be done with very little energy output if needed. Probably most importantly, ask yourself why you want to heal from Lyme and focus on that feeling as if your life depends on it.

There is nothing without purpose in this existence. You are part of a generation of humans living in a time of change and awakening. Lyme is a beacon to all of us to return to Nature. Nobody deserves to suffer. But, if you are going through Lyme, with your journey may the next generation listen more closely to the long-suffering call of Nature. Oftentimes a big part of the experience of healing is falling into faith and trust that there is order and purpose and an underlying current of benevolent regeneration in the Universe.

Because not everyone reading this is my patient, please consult with your medical doctor or qualified healthcare practitioner of choice before embarking on any new therapeutic practice. The above is by no means an exhaustive list of possibilities for successful Lyme treatment and each person is a unique constellation of humanness requiring a unique constellation of therapies. Become fully informed and make decisions as an educated patient. If you’ve tried all these ideas already and not seen the changes you would like to see, get new cornermen. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that you are your own advocate for your health and also have great professionals in your corner. The best decisions I see patients make are when they are fully informed by their team and then make the call on their own. Have great people with you in your foxhole, trust yourself.

Lyme is indeed a quiet epidemic that needs more light shining on it. That is my underlying treatment principle with these chronic, recalcitrant infections: shine healing light on every last cell in your body. Lyme is about immune system vibrancy, not ticks. It’s about bringing people back into harmony with all of Nature. German New Medicine sees Lyme as an existence conflict in which everything has been lost. As we lose more and more species and wild spaces, it does sometimes feel as if we are losing everything. Perhaps those with Lyme are the sensitive ones, the harbingers, the canaries in the coal mine. Maybe those who were denied for years by the medical establishment are the ones we all need to listen to right now.

See you at your next appointment.

—Jaime