CCM Approach to Lyme Disease
Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) herbs can handle Lyme regardless of how long a person has been infected. These herbal formulas are based on a strategy of building the immune system whilst attacking the pathogen. The main problem with Western antibiotics is that they are so strong and singular in purpose that their overuse damages the underlying immune system they're meant to protect.
Like Naturopathic Medicine, which was the mainstream medicine in the U.S. before the 1920s, CCM recognizes the importance of a person’s underlying constitutional health with respect to staying healthy.
Disease is always a tango between a pathogen and an individual’s immune system. Many people are infected with Lyme and have never shown any signs or symptoms. The long term key to healing from Lyme is building up a person’s immune system whilst killing the parasites.
Antibiotics are a miracle medicine that were a major player in making allopathic pharmaceutical medicine the norm of the 20th century. But over usage leaves a person’s immune system weak and vulnerable.
There is much a heated debate at present within the allopathic community about the prognosis of Lyme, and even whether or not to treat chronic Lyme with antibiotics. The National Institute of Health states that antibiotic therapy is not helpful, and can even be harmful in cases of PTLDS (post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome), a.k.a. chronic Lyme.
From a CCM perspective, antibiotics are to be used very, very cautiously for the following reasons:
- They weaken the immune system, increasing susceptibility to reinfection by Lyme or any other kind of pathogen.
- They drive the Lyme bacteria deeper into the body, promoting it’s capacity to hide out.
- This, furthermore, provokes a stronger attack the next time around.
- At the societal level, the overuse of antibiotics has been singled out by top scientist and some governments, including the U.K., as being one of the reasons that antibiotics are losing their effectiveness. Relatively simple surgeries such as caesareans or appendectomies will become far more risky without the help of antibiotics.
Most of us were raised with a bias that pharmaceutical medicine is stronger than plants. We forget that most pharmaceuticals are derived from plants. And that many plants will kill us if we eat them.
We also wonder how an herbal formula can remain consistent, like the highly regulated production of pharmaceuticals. Herbal medicine, at its finest, is also highly regulated. The most potent formulas are made from plants grown in locations and conditions that have been observed for hundreds of years with respect to the potency of the given herbs. Even the time of planting and harvesting is very specific. For example, the most Yang of plants, aconite, is sewn on the Winter Solstice and harvested on the Summer Solstice, because this half of the year is all about a building up of warmth and light, from the darkest to the lightest day.
Along with Classical Acupuncture protocols that strengthen the immune system, CCM herbal formulas are not only highly effective in treating infections such as Lyme; they also build up the immune system and hence protect people from further infections of any kind.