At 6:29 PM -0500 7/29/11, Kristina Carlton wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>It's been a while since I posted. Some of you may remember me with digest
>issues, abdominal distention, food allergies, fatigue, POTS, and more and
>just not getting better. Well, it looks like I might have Lyme disease. I
>asked my doctor for a CD57 blood test which came back at 20 - apparently
>anything below 60 is a chronic infection and anything below 20 is serious
>illness. My doctor says it's a chronic bacterial infection but not
>necessarily Lyme. A search on the internet indicates a low CD57 is chronic
>Lyme.
>
>Anyway, my doctor ran a Western blot and co-infections panel with Igenex. He
>treats with abx which I would like to avoid. I searched the archives but
>couldn't find much on Lyme disease. Any suggestions how to address it in
>addition to staying Paleo?
>
>Thanks,
>Kristina

Hi Kristina,

The lyme bacteria feeds mostly on glucose.  A ketogenic diet will kill off most of it and likely push the rest into dormancy. Keeping your carbs below 20 grams per day should do it.  After you are stable you can then experiment to determine what level of carb you can tolerate, if you feel the need.

On the first round, with the massive die off, there will probably be substantial toxins released by the dying bacteria.  Take it easy on yourself.

An all pemican diet would be one of the easy ways to do it that would require no fasting.

My girlfriend has lyme and after 18 months, when a few rounds of antibiotics, herbal approaches, and anything else we could find, did not solve the problem, we started to do research.  Once we figured out that lyme needs glucose, she choose to take some time off and do a 10 day reduced caloric ketogenic fast, limiting caloric intake to 400 calories per day with no carbs.  The easiest way, for her, was to eat 5 eggs a day, water, and nothing else.  The die off kicked her butt.  Before starting the fast she had severe pain in most of her joints, and cloudy thinking.  There was noticeable improvement within a week.

I can put you in touch if you would like to speak to her.

Ben.