Herbs & Dietary changes most effective & Safest

https://rawlsmd.com/treatment-guide

This treatment guide is great. I wish I had something like it available when I was beginning treatment. Not everyone will agree with Rawls's rankings, just like there's debate about every prominent Lyme doctor's opinions, but I like that so many varied approaches are included and described succinctly. People can do their own research but have this as a place to start.

He does sell his brand of supplements - so of course he’s going to be pro herbal.

Lol

Lymie24 said...
I like Dr. Rawls. His book is a simple book perfect for a layman looking for practical advice.

However, this list is baloney. Disulfiram: 1 star for safety. This makes no sense. There are issues with DSF, but it has been approved and publicly used for 70 years. That's not to say there aren't risks to taking it, but it's not as severe, common, or dire as he claims for most people.

i think there are safety concerns with disulfiram - that is not to say it hasn't worked amazingly well for some - but the side effect profile tends to be pretty severe for many people by all accounts - a good proportion cannot take full dose and - following the facebook groups - it seems another significant proportion get worsened neuropathy that seems to be persistent for some of those - that's a pretty major impact to life quality. Frank psychosis crops up quite a bit too.
perhaps he is including the strong side effect profile - under the "safety" heading?

also - its clear from Dr Rajedas and his co-workers reports that disulfiram does something to lyme patients that is a lot different than is experienced by the average patient taking it for alcohol abuse disorders.

the latter population does not tend to get neuropathies, massive fatigue / herx etc - as this seems to be linked to lyme - rather than a general effect of the drug.

i do agree Rawls is a bit naturopath in his particular leanings though - perhaps because he feels this is the proper stance to take if advising self treatment on a public website - or perhaps - as Girlie points out - because he stands to gain from his own brand supplement sales ....

RainyCloud said...
I tried Rehmannia, it didn't do much, gave me maybe a tiny bit more energy but not much.
It was concentrated so relatively large dose.

thanks Rainy - good to know - how long did you take it for - any sign of helping with the immune regulation?

Garzie said...

Lymie24 said...
I like Dr. Rawls. His book is a simple book perfect for a layman looking for practical advice.

However, this list is baloney. Disulfiram: 1 star for safety. This makes no sense. There are issues with DSF, but it has been approved and publicly used for 70 years. That's not to say there aren't risks to taking it, but it's not as severe, common, or dire as he claims for most people.

i think there are safety concerns with disulfiram - that is not to say it hasn't worked amazingly well for some - but the side effect profile tends to be pretty severe for many people by all accounts - a good proportion cannot take full dose and - following the facebook groups - it seems another significant proportion get worsened neuropathy that seems to be persistent for some of those - that's a pretty major impact to life quality. Frank psychosis crops up quite a bit too.
perhaps he is including the strong side effect profile - under the "safety" heading?

also - its clear from Dr Rajedas and his co-workers reports that disulfiram does something to lyme patients that is a lot different than is experienced by the average patient taking it for alcohol abuse disorders.

the latter population does not tend to get neuropathies, massive fatigue / herx etc - as this seems to be linked to lyme - rather than a general effect of the drug.

i do agree Rawls is a bit naturopath in his particular leanings though - perhaps because he feels this is the proper stance to take if advising self treatment on a public website - or perhaps - as Girlie points out - because he stands to gain from his own brand supplement sales ....

I think there is some bias when perusing that Facebook group. The bad experiences are the ones that tend to stick in people's minds. I agree with you. DSF is not a sparkling safe drug, however, it has been used for decades upon decades. There is risk, but if it was significantly harmful tot he majority we would know about it by now. I agree that it can give scary herx reactions. I was probably one of the first people in the Lyme world outside of those being treated by Dr. Liegner to start DSF after he released his case reports. There were less than 100 people in that FB group when i started DSF summer 2019. I started at 500mg right off the bat and got destroyed. Doctors have since figured out "low and slow" is the way.

It's not an easy drug to take. You have to get regular labs, watch out for signs of neuropathy, be very careful with your diet, can get hit with severe herxes, and the drug has a long half life. But, but, but, but, lol, the low cost and effectiveness of it, in some, cannot be denied. It's a good option for somebody really suffering long term with limited funds.

I mean he gives hyperthermia, and BVT higher safety profiles. DSF 3 and half stars efficacy. Diet and herbs 5 out of 5. Again, I like Dr. Rawls. I refer to his book often. It's cool that he put a list like this together. This is very useful for those looking at all treatment options. I question his assessments and impartiality.

RainyCloud said...

Garzie said...
thanks Rainy - good to know - how long did you take it for - any sign of helping with the immune regulation?

Hi Garzie!
I took it for 1-2 months.
I didn't have any immune related benefits that I am aware of unfortunetaly.

It reminded me a lot of schizandra, in which I had to keep taking more for just a tiny boost in energy.
In that regard schizandra was a bit better but not by much.

I've suggested schizandra for other people before though, hoping that they might get more out of it. It was in fact one of the few supplements I noticed something from.

But in terms of rhemania, in the end I was taking huge doses of it with no real benefit.

I was using rhemania for its adrenal/cortisol benefits, since I didn't want to take licorice as its been shown to lower testosterone.

perfect - thanks Rainy = haven't tried schizandra either - but it was always on my radar as an adaptogen - of all of the adaptogens eleuthero seems to work the best for me

hard to judge what others are actually doing, deep sleep - as for most its just not practical to put it all in a forum post.

i for one fully agree that the lifestyle, sleep, diet and stress management parts are important -

but my experience, and from what i can gather from reading many many personal accounts here and on other platforms is that doing all of those things definitely helps - but for me - and i suspect many others - on its own it has just not been enough.

on the other hand - some people do seem to be able to get well from herbs alone or particularly from abx alone without getting deeply into the lifestyle aspects - i think most people start out with the mindset of "i just need to take antibiotics to kill these bugs" so its the kind of default starting point - and only if that doesn't work do people, on the whole seem to get more deeply into alternative or supportive therapies.

so to some extent i think there is a justification for the bias towards anti-microbial therapies - but i think for many the supporting lifestyle changes will be just as important in the long run.

yep - i think we are of much the same opinion

i also think you elude to a very important point

the majority of us would not have become sick with Lyme disease if our overall health was optimal.

we could all therefore benefit from bit of a self audit to understand which things were present in our lifestyle, diet, environment and habits that lead to our overall health / immune system becoming vulnerable in teh first place. the odds are that these are still playing a part in our illness.

in my case it was mainly chronic stress and chronic sleep depravation

i actually slept fine when i did go to bed - but i had a very challenging job with long hours and lots of international travel and something in me was rebelling to the unnatural cycle of work-eat-sleep-repeat that you have to do to manage 12-16hrs work days continuously.

so, in order to wind down and feel like i had some kind of life outside work - i did stuff for myself when i should have been sleeping - result i slept only 5hrs a night for a long time.

i could function at this - and even play squash for 2hrs and mountain bike for 4hrs - but it obviously wasn't good for me in the long run. add in escalating work politics and probably sub optimal diet and it was a recipe for something breaking sooner or later.

i have had to work hard to undo all these habits in order to start to improve on my journey with lyme disease. i have had to recognise that for me sleep, stress management and diet are all critical to recovery.