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There is Hope for Advanced Lyme Disease
In September, 2002, a 17-year old boy was brought to me for evaluation by his grandmother, Joan Vandergriff, N.D., herself having been a patient since 1990 with two potentially fatal “irreversible” conditions. This young man had experienced a severe emotional trauma a few months earlier, followed by a severe viral illness, and he had become profoundly fatigued and had lost the ability to remember, focus and concentrate. Over a couple month’s time he had dropped from being an “A” student to an “F” student.
He had been evaluated by a local neurologist and found to have advanced stage-3 Lyme disease with extensive neurological involvement. He had been placed on prescription antibiotics and was getting progressively worse. His grandmother already had him on quite a few herbs and vitamins. I made a few changes in his basic nutrient program and recommended that he add TOA-free Cat’s Claw (a naturally-occuring tetracyclic oxindole-alkaloid-free uncaria tomentosa). He stopped taking the prescription antibiotics on his own before adding the TOA-free Cat’s Claw (without telling me or his neurologist).
In less than two weeks after starting the TOA-free Cat’s Claw, he had a dramatic improvement. His grades came up to A’s and B’s again, and his energy returned. When the neurologist saw him again, he was so impressed that he started referring his other treatment failures with Lyme disease to Joan Vandergriff. Over three month’s time, 58 patients, who had not improved significantly on antibiotic therapy, were referred; all with stage-3 Lyme disease with significant neurological involvement. These patients all improved by between 25% to 50% in symptoms while on the natural treatment regimen, even though a few of them stopped taking prescription antibiotics. Dr. Vandergriff and I spoke about these results and decided that a pilot study would be in order to see if we could accomplish a greater degree of improvement with a uniform, comprehensive, natural program. The question we wanted to answer with the pilot study was, “Can we make a difference in patients with advanced 3rd-stage Lyme disease who are given no hope by conventional medicine?”
The neurologist kindly referred 14 additional Lyme disease patients to enter the “treatment” arm of the pilot study. He also provided 14 more Lyme case-matched disease patients with the same age, blood type, degree of illness, etc., to function as the “control” group. All 28 of these patients in the pilot study (14 in the “treatment” arm and 14 in the “control” group) were asked to quantitate, on a scale of 1-to-10, the degree of severity of their ten most problematic symptoms. Fatigue was present in all of the patients. Muscle aches, joint aches, digestive disorders, brain fog and impaired memory were present in almost all of them. These initial ten symptoms were quantitated in severity, on the one-to-ten scale, again on each visit by each patient. Each patient also filled out on each visit an SF-8 form (which is a validated, historical questionnaire developed by the Medical Outcomes Trust of Boston). Each patient had blood work done for Lyme antibodies at the beginning of the study, and the Lyme antibodies were repeated at the end of the study. Of the patients in the alternative treatment group, 13 completed the study. All 13 improved subjectively (averaging 35-90%) and objectively (46.2% changed from positive to negative Borrelia antibodies by CDC criteria for Lyme disease).
The 14 “control” patients continued to receive standard medical care with no other intervention. The 14 “treatment” patients were originally evaluated by autonomic reflex analysis, a form of kinesiology, and the nutrient program was designed in a somewhat individualized fashion based on the kinesiological findings. On the first evaluation, one of the patients in the “treatment” group demonstrated evidence of ovarian tumor, which she did not know that she had. She was advised to get imaging procedures to further evaluate this finding. Those studies verified that she had an eight-centimeter ovarian tumor that was subsequently removed surgically. Due to the length of time that she was in the hospital and unable to take the study nutrients, she was removed from the study. The other 13 “treatment” group patients each had dietary and nutritional supplement changes made to balance their saliva and urine pH, balance their urine mineral content, and balance their urine sugar, determined by refractometry. Each “treatment” patient had darkfield microscopy of their blood, before and during the study, evaluating for red cell clumping, excessive fibrin production, excessive microbes in the blood, etc. These issues were each addressed by specific nutritional supplements. In addition to their supplements, the 13 “treatment” patients did dry-skin brushing, mechanical and manual lymph drainage, KI therapy (a light-touch, energy balancing technique), laughter therapy, and emotional release therapy.
During the first 14 days of the study the 13 “treatment” patients who continued in the study received dietary changes compatible with their blood type and metabolic type, tissue pH balancing with green drinks and other supplements, enzymes in-between meals, enzymes with meals, herbal lymph drainage and kidney drainage, liver supporting natural remedies, Omega-3 EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), anti-oxidants, minerals, vitamins, homeopathics, and a few select organ-balancing herbs, but no TOA-free Cat’s Claw. All prescription antibiotics were stopped in the 13 “treatment” patients before the study started. Each of the 13 “treatment” patients had symptoms improve during this first 14 days. Previous experience with the other 58 patients had taught us that due to TOA-free Cat’s Claw being such a powerful antimicrobial, patients would get a severe Herxheimer (Healing Crisis) reaction if they were not detoxified and prepared to receive the
TOA-free Cat’s Claw before starting the first dose. The TOA-free Cat’s Claw dose was started on the 15th day of the study at one capsule three times a day in most patients, and built up to three capsules three times a day over a six-to-nine day period.
These 13 “treatment” patients were kept on nine capsules of TOA-free Cat’s Claw per day, plus the other vitamins, minerals, herbs and homeopathic support until the end of the tenth week. By that time, all 13 of the “treatment” patients had improved at least 35% in their symptoms; some of the patients had improved 90% in their symptoms. (By contrast, three of the “control” patients had a slight improvement over the study period while on the prescription antibiotics, three worsened, and eight remained unchanged.) After the tenth week, the TOA-free Cat’s Claw was continued at six-to-nine capsules per day in the “treatment” patients, and most of the other supportive remedies were discontinued. “Treatment” patients were followed for an additional eight weeks and continued to improve. Darkfield microscopy of the blood of “treatment” patients showed many Borrelia spirochetes at the beginning of the study and these were greatly reduced, and in most cases completely eliminated, after the tenth week of the study.
One 18-year old girl in the “treatment” group had been gravely ill since age three, and, until the beginning of the study, had been unable to get out of bed by herself, unable to dress herself, and unable to walk without tremendous assistance or the aid of a walker. She had been having anaphylactic and asthmatic episodes requiring frequent hospital visits before the study. By the sixth week of the study, she was able to get out of bed by herself, dress herself, walk unassisted, and was having no more life-threatening reactions. She was able to go out of her house on her first date without assistance and is planning to attend college.
Another “treatment” patient was a middle-age woman who was on massive amounts of methadone and other narcotics for the attempted control of the 8-to-10-out-of-10 continuous pain in both of her legs before the study started. The pain was secondary to advanced peripheral neuropathy, myalgias and joint involvement. By the tenth week of the study, her pain rated a 2-out-of-10, and rarely required any medication.
Another patient was a 36-year old man who had been evaluated by more than fifty other physicians, including Mayo Clinic twice, and was told that there was no help for him. He was on disability because of extreme fatigue, brain fog, digestive disorders and various aches and pains. All these symptoms improved more than 80% by the tenth week of the study.
Can alternative therapies make a difference in stage-3 Lyme disease? The pilot study has shown that we can make a dramatic improvement in patients with advanced stage-3 Lyme disease who are given little hope by conventional medicine. If funding allows it, we would next like to determine what are the most critical components of this comprehensive program we used to make a difference in the lives of these patients. We know from our observations in the 58 patients before the study that the TOA-free Cat’s Claw is a critical component in the treatment of these advanced Lyme disease patients.
--William Lee Cowden, M.D.
