Anyone heard of stevia curing Lyme?

Now I'm reading that it has only worked in lab environments and that it would only work in humans if our intestines absorb stevia or if we took it intravenously, and neither case works apparently. (Sigh.) I'm so anxious to find something new that I'm jumping on everything.

I'm so sick of being sick... I'm sure you all understand.

dacarte3, thanks for the response. That makes sense. I'm just still chipping away after so many years and seem to get worse and worse. It's rainy here today, and I always feel worse on wet days, so that probably has me a little more down than usual. I'm just ready to find a new treatment that I haven't tried, and there aren't many more out there. I'm very interested in the hyperthermia therapies in Europe, but I can't find any research on long term effects of it. It's a lot of money and time to spend away from my teenagers if it's only a short term treatment. I'm just wishing for a quick fix so I can be productive again!

Girlie said...
Some LLMD's are having patients take Stevia for biofilm busting but I've not heard of it being used as a stand alone treatment.

Do you happen to know how they're using it? I feel like I've hit a plateau and can hardly participate in life at the moment.

I've recently gone off abx and am being treated with fluconazole for candida. My doc wants me to start using samento and continue with ozone chamber sessions.

I figure I already have stevia for my tea...

My llmd( who I am already quite iffy about trusting... as you may know...) recently added liquid stevia into my treatment.

She never mentioned that it was a nutrimedix product. Just said any liquid stevia would do...I did manage to find one without any weird additives, so at least that's something. Next time I'll order nutrimedix - if I decide to stay on it...

She didn't specify if it was as a biofilm buster, but I assumed that's what she was intending...

She said 6 drops 2x a day. Yuck.

I used to enjoy it occasionally as a sweetener in hot chocolate or tea etc. -now it's a struggle to get it down. Which is ok by me- if it works...

I've only been using it ( alongside many other things...) for a few weeks, so I'm not sure if I think it's working or not. I've had a lot of other changes going on too, so maybe the stevia could be contributing, but I kinda doubt it considering it's probably not the quality required for this type of application...


Girlie, what is this online treatment book thing? Sounds like it's got good info...

Alyeska said...
dacarte3, thanks for the response. That makes sense. I'm just still chipping away after so many years and seem to get worse and worse. It's rainy here today, and I always feel worse on wet days, so that probably has me a little more down than usual. I'm just ready to find a new treatment that I haven't tried, and there aren't many more out there. I'm very interested in the hyperthermia therapies in Europe, but I can't find any research on long term effects of it. It's a lot of money and time to spend away from my teenagers if it's only a short term treatment. I'm just wishing for a quick fix so I can be productive again!

Wet dreary days make my symptoms worse too. I wonder why?

1000Daisies said...
This is a common topic that comes up from time to time.

Here is a copy/paste of my response on another stevia thread:
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Generally, there are a lot of posts here on this board that it's not effective/helping.

Ironically, my functional medicine MD uses it in his practice, and he repeatedly says he sees good progress with it. I did a trial with it for several weeks for me and the kids, and we noticed absolutely nothing (good or bad) with it. I stopped using it then, but I do use it occasionally in my herbals to take the edge off the bad taste of the tinctures (ironically, my kids all think it makes the tinctures taste worse LOL).

I do know of a person IRL who reacted severely to just one drop of it (she has very severe lyme/etc).

So, I've seen both scenarios of it.
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Here is a thread:
www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=3869513

Here is a copy paste from my post from that thread. As I said in that, our functional medicine uses it in his practice for lyme and says he sees good results from it.

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We have posts about Stevia from time to time here about this.

Buhner's view on Stevia:
www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=3869137

Recent thread:
www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=3868001

Here was our experience (copied from above thread). We noticed nothing from using stevia for several weeks (nothing good or bad). Here is the copy:
Having said that, we did several weeks of stevia per recommended by our functional medicine LLMD. None of us saw any effect from it (good or bad). We stopped using it. (I use the tincture sometimes to take the edge off the bad taste of all of my combined tinctures.) I talked to my doctor about his experience, and he says that he sees positive results from people. I believe him. I mean - why would he lie? He certainly isn't going to make money off a $10 bottle of stevia over time compared to the other treatments. (I trust him and don't believe he would lie anyways.)
I honestly respect doctors who think outside the box and are willing to try things that are low-risk because this disease(s) are very complicated to treat. I am grateful that my doctor is open minded. Unfortunately, stevia did not help us (doesn't mean it couldn't help others though). On to the next idea for us, as always...
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Thanks so much for this! I might as well try it since I like stevia anyway to take the place of sugar in my drinks. I've never noticed any difference in the way I feel when I use it. I have soooo much reading to do. I feel like I'm just drowning in information sometimes.

Alyeska said...
A friend just sent me this about stevia curing Lyme.

Stevia does NOT cure lyme! I have been using 70+ drops of stevia per day for the last 2.5 years (since the original research paper by Eva Sapi about stevia and lyme was published). I since had to switch back to antibiotics because i relapsed badly. Please stop advertising stevia as a "cure". It may be useful as an adjunct treatment, like take your antibiotics or herbals and as an extra thing put this stevia in your tea to get it sweet. It is relatively harmless and it may help with the lyme a bit. But it is NOT a cure, it does not even cause a herx in most people.

The problem with stevia is it is not systemic, it does not go throughout your body and especially in the brain, or at least there is no evidence it does. And if it would have been so effective, you would see people have horrific herxes with it, just like with minocycline or ceftriaxone. We certainly don't see that.

Eva sapi's study was in vitro, you need to know there are MANY drugs tested in vitro that do not work in vivo (on human subjects). Many things can go wrong when u ingest a drug, that would make the drug ineffective
- the drug is interacting with the gastric juices and digestion process which inactivates the drug
- it is not absorbed so it does not go to the blood stream
- it is absorbed but rapidly metabolized by liver and removed too quickly. lyme is a slow growing but, u need the drugs to stay in your blood for some time to get it dying
- it is absorbed but will not cross the blood brain barrier (BBB), thus does not get to the brian, where most serious lyme symptoms emerge and a refuge for the bacteria. Many many drugs get to blood stream but very few get to the brian, because there is a filter at the brain level that does not allow many of the chemicals to pass in the brain, thus removing most antibiotics and other substances (called the BBB).

so take your regular lyme meds, if your LLMD has also prescribed stevia, take stevia, but only as an extra, not as main treatment and please do not expect stevia miracles, you will be dissapointed.

Casa11 said...


Girlie, what is this online treatment book thing? Sounds like it's got good info...

It's an online book by LLMD MR:

www.treatlyme.net

I can't remember the monthly cost - something like $4.99 per month. Lots of information.