How can Naturopathic Medicine help in the treatment of Lyme disease? I thought that antibiotics were the only treatment that worked?
I do consider antibiotics the first treatment of choice for Lyme disease, especially in the acute phases. The literature shows that the effectiveness rates for antibiotics run anywhere from 70%-95% depending upon the study. Rarely included in these statistics, however is the fact that there is often as much as a 35% relapse rate. Research has also shown that live spirochetes (the Lyme bacteria) are regularly found in people who have been on antibiotic therapy for years. We are finding that the Lyme organism is highly adaptable and is able, on a large majority of instances, to evade antibiotic regimens, even those of long duration. Continual antibiotic dosing can and does keep the organisms at lower levels in the body, but studies regularly show that it does not eradicate them in 40% of those treated. The longer a Lyme infection is untreated, the greater the chance that it will not respond to antibiotic therapy. I routinely refer patients out to Lyme specialists for antibiotic therapy a
