Could an effective and safe Lyme Disease Vaccine be one step closer to a reality? Lyme disease is a brutal illness and anyone that suffers from it wouldn’t wish it on their worst enemy. Â Many patients have to go through multiple Doctors and years of medical run-around to finally be correctly diagnosed with Lyme Disease. Â Could a vaccine help spare others the same fate? A research paper published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases reported promising phase 1/2 clinical trial results on an investigational Lyme Disease vaccine. Â The study, run by scientists from Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Baxter International Inc. analyzed the safety and immune response potential of the vaccine. Â The 300 volunteers received three primary immunizations and then one booster. Â All types and doses of the vaccine, some of which had an adjuvent (an additive that triggers an immune response to the vaccine) resulted in significant antibodies against all species of Borr...
I did not have it in me to see one… more… Doctor. Not one. You could have told me Dr. Seuss himself (a childhood favorite) wanted to see me and I would have said: I would not see you here or there, I would not see you anywhere. I would not, could not, in the rain, Not in the dark. not on a train. Not in a room. not in a tree. I don’t like Doctors, as you see.  << You do not like Doctors of any kind? of any type? of any mind? >> That is correct, just so you know, There are no Doctors to whom I’ll go. I’m all burnt out, fed up and such, So I’ll not see them, nor stay in touch. They are no help, this much I know I see no need, so on I go! One day I went in for a general med check with my Dr and she instantly began to lecture me before she even sat down about how she would no longer order my pain meds.  As of that moment, she would no longer refill the prescription she fully agreed I needed because she didn’t want to fill out...
The general public often holds the bias that disability is only present when you can immediately see that a person is impaired. However, anyone with an invisible illness will tell you that this isn’t the case. Many conditions can cause serious symptoms that aren’t easily visible to outsiders. Conditions like these can affect an individual’s entire life—particularly their ability to hold a job and earn a living. Unfortunately, the specialty treatment, medical care, and assistive technology used to treat many illnesses can be quite expensive. The Social Security Administration (SSA) recognizes this and provides assistance to qualified individuals in the form of Social Security Disability Benefits. If you or a loved one can no longer work due to a health complication, you may find that it becomes necessary to look into applying for Social Security Disability benefits. Below, we have provided tips and advice that you may find helpful during the application process: 1. Under...
Getting sick is like fighting a Marvel Comics super villain every day of your life. You are the underdog, the unlikely hero going up against the evil Inflammation Man. You battle it with everything inside of you so passionately it can be all consuming.  The hero’s life always goes to hell at first in those movies: there’s always that scene where all you see is the wreckage the villain caused with little effort & the hero now has to figure out how to put it all back together again & keep fighting.  That’s how I felt. I looked around & saw wreckage, I was sad & depressed & frustrated about the life I wished I had (oh & I was a teenager too, so that definitely didn’t help).  The villain had picked me up & dropped me into an emotional pit of quicksand. The harder I tried to fight it, the faster I sunk. Then one day, I stopped fighting & one simple act started to release me from the quicksand’s grip… When I was a kid, the...
Years ago, back when I rocked just one diagnosis (what I like to call the Little House on the Prairie simpler days) I marveled at the patients I saw that had a long list of diagnoses. I used to wonder how someone could have that many different conditions? Didn’t one or maybe two of the illnesses cover their symptoms? What are the odds you got so unlucky as to get Lupus, Fibromyalgia, Raynauds & RA? Then, in one Dr’s appointment I received my second, third & fourth diagnosis & by the end of the year I had a list so long I could use it as a tent. I was ripped away from Little House & plunked down in an Autoimmune frat house. Apparently, autoimmune illnesses are cheaper by the dozen and once you get one, you have a good chance of getting another. Disorders of an autoimmune nature are known to occur with increased frequency in patients with another autoimmune disease. About 25 percent of patients with autoimmune diseases have a tendency to de...
Tonight, while looking for something on Facebook, the search ironically brought up my ex best friend. To know what an unprovoked emotional attack this was by FB you need to know she & I were never FB friends & share no friends in common. So like I said, very uncool Facebook! Suddenly there she was: standing on the beach smiling at me, all happy with a baby in her arms, her handsome husband smiling with a toddler in his arms. One of those “everyone randomly wore white to the beach tonight” impromptu looking photos. I saw it & thought: How do you now have that life & I am not part of it? I don’t get to see you happy? I am the one you called at 2am when the biker guy broke your heart. I am the one who was on the other end of that sofa eating the entire bag of Doritos with you when you were upset you had to break up with the emo guy because he cried in front of you (& now you didn’t love him anymore). I am the one that tal...
Lyme testing is one of the most confusing, divisive topics you’ll ever face in our community.  Killer combo.  Interpreting your Igenex Western Blot bands may not guarantee a clear answer, but will guarantee a migraine. The reason behind this?  No one appears to be right.  PCRs only detect the infection 6% to 15% of the time (5.) The fatally inaccurate ELISA was the lightning rod for this whole lyme controversy since the CDC said it’s the gold standard.  For awhile it seemed like the Western Blot, especially by Igenex, might fill the void, but there is controversy both about its false-positive rate (specificity) and its ability to correctly detect the infection (sensitivity.)  Then we woke up from the dream and saw estimates for Western Blot false-positives range from 23% to 30% (4) which is high as a kite if true, and estimates of 50% to 70% sensitivity (2.)  Both of those estimates show a test that produces equally many false-negatives as false-negatives. Â...
Fluge and Mella of the Rituximab clinical trials are now recruiting for a trial on Enbrel (Etanercept), a TNF-alpha inhibitor, for ME/CFS patients that didn’t respond to b-cell depletion therapy:Â http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT01730495 In the big picture, I like where Fluge and Mella are going. Â They seem to me like men on a mission that won’t be stopped. Â I will now shove my face with crow for positing earlier that their choice of medication was ego and theory-driven. Â They’re clearly not stopping with their B-cell theory, and this bodes well for all of us. TNF-alpha is one of the main pro-inflammatory cytokines, and its dysregulation is being implicated in a wide variety of illnesses. Â It’s also associated with just about any type of stressor whether infectious, injury, or psychological (1.) Let’s Look at TNF-Alpha in ME/CFS ME/CFS Studies: TNF-alpha has been known to factor in ME/CFS for at least 14 years (2.) Â Recently, a 2011 australian s...
I pushed the dinner plate still half full of food, backwards across the table & lay my head down on the worn wood right then & there.  I felt like I was poisoned.  Somewhere mid meal something went wrong & now I felt awful.  I had cut out as many foods as I knew bothered me, so why did I feel so sick?  Inflammation. Prostaglandins are hormone-like substances that affect the body in variety of ways, also regulating inflammatory mediation. An anti-flammatory diet includes less foods that create inflammation-causing prostaglandins (PGE2) in the body, and more foods that create anti-flammatory prostaglandins (PGE1 and PGE3). Inflammation plagues auto & neuro immune patients in many forms & food is one of them.  Eating the wrong foods or too much food in one sitting can trigger inflammation.  Tip: Try eating smaller amounts of food, more often throughout the day & adding more anti-inflammatory foods to your diet. Note: always consult your Doctor first,...
Treg / TH17: The New TH1 / TH2 Imbalance? For years we’ve been hearing that TH1/TH2 balance is a big key (if not the key) to disorders such as lyme disease, ME/CFS, fibromyalgia.  But treatments aimed at restoring TH1/TH2 balance have largely produced mixed results.  Studies on Crohn’s disease suggest that overexpressed TH1, often thought to be deficient in our illnesses,  might actually be responsible for some inflammatory diseases, suggesting that broadly raising TH1 may not be the answer to our prayers. These diseases have begun to look more to autoimmune research for clues, and TH17, which is distinct from TH1 and TH2, might be the biggest clue yet in the quest to treat autoimmune diseases without broad immune suppression.  Now we’ve stumbled upon an equally impressive finding: Tregs (T-regulatory cells) might be the anti-inflammatory yin to TH17′s autoimmune yang. Depletion and Infusion with Tregs Both Show Stunning Results A few studies clearly...
