When Lyme disease leaves you crippled in the prime of life...

The most interesting question from this month's Fundamentals of Wellness Q&A

What would you do if you were a young woman (late 20's, early 30's) and had lost critical bodily functions (like the ability to walk and urinate)? Add in severe, intractable pain, and you've got the case that I was presented with this past weekend on a group coaching call in our Fundamentals of Wellness course.

I think some people get the wrong idea about the value of group coaching with me. If you show up and ask questions, you will get the benefit of my decades of research summed up in just a few minutes. I can tell you exactly what I would do if I were you or your loved on. I don't offer diagnosis and treatment on coaching calls, but I do offer education and insight into how natural and integrative medicine can help in different illnesses.

I started group coaching because I was over-booked with one-on-one's and I was pricing the majority of people out of working with me. I didn't like that, because I don't like the idea of living in a country where good medicine and good coaching are unaffordable.

This is why I created the Fundamentals of Wellness with Jim Laird. We didn't want to just serve high-income patients/clients. We wanted to have something for everyone.

This is also why I created my annual programs at my medical practice. We're going to increase the price of the annual programs in August, by the way, so you really should book now. You can find out more about them here or book a meet and greet with me to learn more about them.

Back to the case...

First, what is the true diagnosis or disease process? Lyme disease keeps very, very close company with multiple sclerosis (MS). In most cases of straight-forward Lyme disease, antibiotics are curative and patients resolve quickly. There are plenty of people out there who will say otherwise, but that's a story for another day. In this case, antibiotics failed, suggesting that perhaps another diagnosis or disease entity is at work. Not surprisingly, her medical team had already thought of the possibility of MS.

Second, what are the most important steps for her to take to recover her health? When you examine the literature on autoimmune diseases (MS) and infectious diseases (Lyme), you'll find that they keep very, very close company. This has to do with a mechanism known as molecular mimicry. In the end, chronic infections and chronic autoimmune conditions have both been linked to poor nutrition, poor sleep and altered circadian rhythms, unresolved emotions, heavy metal toxicity, and more. In the Fundamentals of Wellness, Jim and I show people how to live to protect themselves from these things so that they are as resilient as possible. We also talk people through simple things they can do to recover their health even if they're extremely sick. That's what our group coaching calls are all about.

In this case, the patient was 1) working a high-stress job (physician-in-training), 2) not eating the best of diets, 3) working at night (much of the time), and 4) getting very little sunlight.

This is a perfect recipe for chronic disease.

Jim and I walked through why all the fundamentals we hammer home in the Fundamentals of Wellness are so valuable in a case like this.

Then I shared a few more pearls from studying problems like this for the past few decades...

Back in the 1930's and '40's a physician named Frederick Klenner (MD) started using high-dose vitamin C to treat the rampant polio in his practice. He had remarkable results, particularly when he combined it with thiamine (vitamin B-1).

Klenner viewed viral illness as a disease of vitamin C deficiency, because he never found a case that didn't respond to vitamin C in high enough doses.

There are many reasons for this. As Suzzanne Humphries, MD, details in her book, "Dissolving Illusions," vitamin C is the "anti-toxin, anti-viral" vitamin. This makes it invaluable in treating autoimmune or infectious illnesses, since both are linked to excessive toxin exposure in our modern world.

High-dose vitamin D is also incredibly important in a case like this. This is why I check vitamin D levels yearly or quarterly in my practice, and it's why I set up my annual plans to include quarterly check-ins with a nurse practitioner. This makes it easy to check vitamin D levels until we've truly normalized them. Many, many people think that their vitamin D level is normal when in fact it is not. Checking levels quarterly helps hold people accountable and prevent them from slipping into outright deficiency.

There's a lot more that I shared on the call - if you want access to it, join our coaching program and find out what you're missing. We have a 30-day money-back guarantee if you don't like your first group-coaching call. Sign up here. You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Until next time, be well,

Dr. Stillman