Ok, I may be WAY behind here and this may have allready been looked at but I've never heard anything like it before. Tonight I was watching and episode of HouseMd where one of the doctors had an infection of unknown origin and it was killing him quickly. They tested him for everything under the sun and could come up with nothing. All results, negative. So how House explained it waas and I hope this makes sense.
The immune system is not recognizing the infection so it doesn't fight it and the body doesn't make any antbodies for it and therefor can't be detected on a test and it is then allowed run rampant in the body making the person sick even though there is a negative test result.
When a new infection is introduced the immune system recognizes it and begins to fight it creating antibodies. When treatment for the new infection is introduced the original undetectable infection then slows down because the meds are helping the new infection as well as the old one. Once the meds are withdrawn the old undetectable infection is still there, the person is still sick and you're back to square one because it still cant be detected on a test and thats when the Md's think it's all in your head..
Ofcourse it isn't, It's still the same original infection making you sick that they couldn't find in the first place.. COULD this be what happens with Chronic Lyme Disease?!?!
I could be WAY off here but it's just a thought.. I hope this all made sense.
Posted by ShangSD (Member # 9899) on :
Hi
As a newbie I am not going to comment on the scientifics but I am going to say that House is a great show! It is so unrealistic it must have the medics annoyed because more people will want to be treated just like one of House's patients.
Although he is arrogant and doesnt trust people etc, when he gets interested in a case then he really does his best to solve the problem.
He does not follow "guidelines" and he thinks outside the box. He tries to get an accurate case History and does not give up until there is an answer. Sounds a little bit like some of the doctors we work with?
I think we can all relate to this show, I became somewhat addicted to it!
Shangs
Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
I'm no brain when it comes to the technical stuff, but I think some of that is true for Lyme because the spirochetes continually morph into other forms, such as the bleb and cyst forms.
They will do anything to keep from being detected by our immune systems. [they're doing a pretty good job, huh?!]
The other problem is that spirochetes burry into the TISSUES, and do not stay in the blood where they can be detected.
Posted by Aniek (Member # 5374) on :
It could explain why Lyme is covered up by coinfenctions, and then appears when the coinfection is treated.
Posted by rinne (Member # 10025) on :
I have learned just a little and perhaps just enough to be dangerous LOL but I wonder if the initial years of Lyme are occurring in the body on a metabolic level and that all the tests that our current system uses are on the immunological level and therefore do not detect the damage that Lyme is doing until it tips into the immunological realm. The more I learn about the testing for diseases that is done the clearer it seems to me that what is called disease in many cases is really damage.
I'm not sure I really understood the 'scientificness' of your post about House, but if you were saying you can have simultaneous infections and cure one without the other being taken care of that makes sense to me. I like House but I think it is a clear case of propaganda, he has come out on the side of vaccinations very strongly, told a young mother her child would die. You believe he is on your side because he is so difficult and he insists on discovering what is wrong but at the same time he is supporting a very conventional view of medicine.
I have recently retrieved a bodily memory of when I was first bitten and beneath all the disorientation, feverishness, night sweats, and anxiety is a feeling of pure panic. It is my deepest feeling that on a metabollic level the bodies' first response to being attacked is panic and because we do not relate it to the truth of our bodies we attach the panic/anxiety to the circumstances of our life.
Posted by Aniek (Member # 5374) on :
rinne,
What basically happened on House (assuming we are talking about the same episode - there was a marathon yesterday) was that a patient had two infections at once. They were able to diagnose and treat one of the infections.
After treating one infection, the other infection began to progress much more rapidly. Dr. House's theory was that the treated infection was somehow covering the first infection.
My thought is that the same thing happens with coinfections and Lyme. People often don't test positive for Lyme until a coinfection is treated. Then the Lyme symptoms may increase as well.