Best exercise during lyme treatment?

I searched exercise and lyme and read previous threads, but I still have a couple questions.

My LLD says NO aerobic exercise while I have lyme...only "muscle toning" exercise. In her new patient package she gave me it actually says aerobic exercise can be "extremely dangerous" while I have lyme. Why is that? I assumed easy to moderate exercise like walking, swimming and jogging would be helpful in the healing process? I was a competitive college swimmer, and have run marathons so my cardiovascular system is in OK shape already.

She also says exercise is a very important part of healing from lyme.

But, if aerobic exercise is out, what do you guys do? I have been doing yoga which helps SO MUCH on so many levels. What about things like those "Barre" classes? Have you guys done those? I guess I'm not really sure what to consider "aerobic" since I'm not understanding where the danger comes from.

I also think there are benefits to mild aerobic exercise with this disease. Obviously not going for jogs and things like that, but a 30 minute walk is great not only for the body but for the mind. It gets your tissues moving when they would have been stagnant otherwise.

Hi JLM,

I believe your dr. Is going off of Burrascano's recommendations against aerobic exercise. I'm not an expert here, but I think the reason it can be dangerous is because when you heat up your body temperature you can kill off the lyme bugs. Same with taking in more oxygen. So if you do vigorous aerobic exercise where you get hot and are taking in more air into your muscles, you can kill off so many bugs that you are left with an overload of their toxins, which can make you very sick and be potentially dangerous. However, some of us (like me) find it is actually weight-bearing exercise that causes this to happen (instead of aerobic workouts).

Forum member Myeexy24 posted something about getting really tired from aerobic exercise & got many responses here:


www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=3394412

And here was my specific response to the question. Kinda long, but hope it helps:

Hi Myeezy24,

There have been quite a few posts on here about exercise. If you want to check them out, you can just use the search bar at the top right of the forum page.

It is very VERY common to feel totally wiped out after exercising when you have lyme. I read a description of a bartender who said he would sometimes lift a keg of beer at work (50 lbs.) and then be so exhausted from that ONE action that he could barely crawl to his car at the end of his shift. He wanted to curl up and sleep on the floor of the bar. I feel that way after doing heavy weights at the gym, as well as extremely nauseous for a couple of days like the worst hangover I've ever had.

For most lymies, the exercise-induced exhaustion kicks in 24-48 hours after the exercise and can take days to weeks to recover from. It's usually caused by die-off of the bacteria due to increased body temperature and higher oxygen intake during the exercise. You're not damaging your body, but damaging the bugs, so all the suggestions for detoxing their toxins out of your system after working out are right on.

Based on the many exercise convos on here the last few months, it seems like there are 2 major camps: some people can do weight-bearing/anaerobic exercise but no cardio and feel pretty good. Others do great with cardio/aerobic exercise but minimal or no weights. Then there are many who have to limit their exercise to stretching, light pilates, 10-minute workouts, or yoga for health.

The key, as several people mentioned, is finding the sweet spot for you. Personally, I would ask the doc if you could try something less strenuous than the bike to start, such as yoga or mild pilates. You will still sweat with these exercises but in a more gentle way. As you get stronger you could try the bike again or find other exercises that don't wipe you out so much.

Best of luck with it!

Post Edited (mauihawaii) : 7/18/2015 10:03:46 AM (GMT-6)

To me if you are creating die off from aerobic exercise that would seem like a good thing, so long as it wasn't too intense. But from what I understand Burrascano says that aerobic exercise lowers immune system function for close to a day which may give the pathogen a window to multiply relatively unchecked?

Hard to know what's best other than listen to your body and do what you can but not too much that it wipes you out for days. Walking is kind of my go to, I can still do that on days I don't feel well.

Thanks everyone. Yoga really has been a blessing for me, both mentally and physically. I was only taking the very easy "restorative" and "yin" classes, but yesterday I wanted to try something just a little harder. I thought it was going to be a 60 minute NON heated class, but it ended up being a 75 minute "gently" HEATED class! I freaked out at first, but decided to stay and just take it easy and listen to my body (which is fighting like a little warrior right now).

It ended up being amazing. All the sweating left me feeling kind of cleaned out if that makes any sense? I made sure to do extra detoxing and more water all day and so far I still feel good (I'm kind of waiting for the crash but crossing my fingers it doesn't come). My symptoms have been slowly decreasing since I started the new 3 abx and herbs last week so I felt like I could test myself just a teeny tiny bit.

Oh and the sweating is super important I think. I sweat a lot (I'm on babesia treatment) and I think that helps detoxify. But electrolytes need to be replaced afterward!

I can't imagine going back to my life without exercise (when I was too sick to do anything).

I love bodyweight and calisthenics training. I can't really exercise consistently right now but I really plan on getting back into that stuff, with the addition of new meds at the moment it's going to be a bit tricky managing herxing, as this is always an issue for me, so sigh, gotta put the fun exercise stuff on the backburner. But when I have a solid day I'll sneak in a bit of stuff for sure ;)