Results for: chronic lyme

Jarisch-Herxheimer and Lyme disease

When patients diagnosed with chronic Lyme are treated, no matter what happens as a response to the treatment is considered by believers to be evidence in support of the diagnosis. If they get better, then that is evidence that the treatment is working. If they get worse, then that is evidence that the treatment is working and they are experiencing the JHR...

/ October 25, 2017
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Florida revokes medical license of “Lyme literate” doctor

Florida finally revoked the medical license of “Lyme literate” doctor John Lentz, who honed his diagnostic skills and treatments in ILADS seminars and treated “chronic Lyme” for almost a decade. Why does the system allow this?

/ December 22, 2016

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease Speculcation

My wife and I are entering an age where our aches and pains are becoming a major ongoing topic of conversations. The pain of raising kids has transitioned into the pains of growing older. These aches and pains are, in the scheme of things, minor and intermittent. At work I get to see real suffering and it keeps my own in perspective....

/ September 16, 2016

Science-Based Politics: Lyme, Zika, and the Green Party.

I don’t have much to write about this week. Yeah, yeah, I know. How is that different than the last 50 blog entries? And I will have even less to say next time. But nothing of real interest has crossed my screen the past two weeks, not that I have really been looking. One of my favorite stories as a kid was...

/ August 5, 2016

Lyme Testing

I hate those oh hell moments. I was up way too late last night, but who can pass up the opportunity to see Patti Smith playing Horses (and more) for the 40th anniversary of the album. Only 44? Behind the Eagles? No way. I would nudge it up a few more spaces. Hard to believe I was 18 when that album came...

/ January 8, 2016

More Lyme ‘Guidelines’

I noted with understanding that the Doubtful News can’t take it anymore. The relentless tsunami sewage slurry of pseudo-science (who says I can’t alliterate?) has worn her down. She is: currently experiencing a phase in which I can’t seem to bring myself to promote another ridiculous story in the media about a haunted location, scary sounds from the sky, or the latest...

/ October 2, 2015

Lyme Testimony

As the saying goes, when you do not have the facts, argue the law. This tried and (?) true approach was successful in New York where a law was passed protecting those who are, shall we say, creative in treating patients with Lyme and ‘chronic’ Lyme. The bill protects those from investigation of misconduct: based solely on treatment that is not universally...

/ May 15, 2015

Lyme: Two Worlds Compared and Contrasted

The practice of infectious disease (ID) is both easy and difficult. If you read my ID blog on Medscape you are aware of my trials and tribulations in diagnosing and treating infections. ID is easy since, at least in theory, diseases have patterns and an infecting organism has a predictable epidemiology and life cycle. So if you can recognize the pattern and...

/ March 20, 2015

Lemons and Lyme: Bogus tests and dangerous treatments of the Lyme-literati

It’s that time of year when every day I can expect to see at least one patient with a concern about Lyme disease. In Lyme-endemic regions such as Western Massachusetts, where I practice pediatrics, summer brings a steady stream of children to my office with either the classic Lyme rash (erythema chronicum migrans, or ECM), an embedded tick, a history of a...

/ July 18, 2014

XMRV Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Update

Sometimes science works the way it’s supposed to. Scientists make hypotheses, test them by gathering preliminary evidence, and then argue about the inevitable conflicting results. Eventually better and better evidence is gathered until a consensus is achieved. Actually, I think that is how science usually works, it’s just that most questions in science are narrow and technical and don’t command media or...

/ September 26, 2012