Chronic Lyme Disease and Glutathione

No one ever likes finding a tick on their body, but most frightening of all is that some carry one of at least three species of bacteria  that lead to Lyme Disease.

This tick bite is a serious matter and starts with fever and headache, very often a rash. The ‘bulls-eye’ is the often talked about indicator that it could be a lyme disease tick bite, but don’t’ be fooled it doesn’t ALWAYS present with the bullseye.

First and foremost if you SUSPECT you might have been bitten by a tick and are concerned about lyme disease, you need to immediately seek medical attention. If you catch it early you can usually treat it with antibiotics.

Delaying treatment can lead to serious and debilitating symptoms that are difficult to deal with.

Major Lyme Effects

After some time untreated lyme disease can leave individuals with severe and chronic symptoms. Though the words “chronic lyme disease” are not necessarily recognized and medically controversial, if you talk to anyone living with lyme disease the controversy is moot because the symptoms are very real, and can be absolutely debilitating.

What is acknowledged is “Post Lyme Disease Syndrome”. Lyme spirochetes can spread and ‘hide’ within your body leaving you susceptible to a seemingly random onset of problems. Symptoms can include:

• Chronic arthritis
• Fatigue
• Headaches
• Joint inflammation in the knees and other large joints
• Memory loss
• Mood changes
• Sleep disorders
• Abnormal sensitivity to light
• Confusion
• Decreased consciousness
• Numbness and tingling

Conventional Treatment

Lyme disease if caught early is typically treated with antibiotics with a good success rate. Unfortunately depending upon how rapidly the bacteria spread and what damage it caused it can lead to requiring a second round of antibiotics often administered by IV.

Later or second stage Lyme symptoms come months after initial infection, and third stage can take years to show up. Because of the delayed onset antibiotic treatments are still used but there is great debate on how long to administer them and how effective they can be. These later stage symptoms can leave people with debilitating arthritis pain, joint pain, some suffer cranial neuritis, facial palsy, cardiac problems.

Unfortunate is the delay in onset leads to many debates over the intensity, and lasting nature of symptoms.

Glutathione and Lyme Disease

Glutathione is your body’s master antioxidant that supports both phase 1 and phase 2 liver detox.  But can it help as an alternative treatment for Lyme?

In the death throes of Lyme germs, they release toxins and free radicals that can trigger production of inflammatory cytokines. This is known as the Herxheimer die-off reaction. Glutathione acts as an antioxidant to help offset this reaction.

Lyme disease infections and some antibiotics even can inflame the liver, and deplete glutathione. Keeping your liver healthy and producing enzymes your body needs is critical when managing any disease, and glutathione helps support phase 1 and 2 detox and protect liver cells through antioxidant function, and limiting inflammatory cytokines.

Because glutathione is found throughout every cell in your body, it can help protect the brain, nervous system, liver, lungs, heart, joints and muscles, everything. When an inflammatory conditions like Lyme depletes the GSH levels it causes problems and limits your body’s ability to deal with even regular oxidative stress from simply creating cellular energy. Keeping GSH levels optimized may assist your body in keeping up normal functions while you are managing Lyme, and allowing your body to repair damage that has been caused by the invading disease.

Raise Glutathione Levels

If you are managing lyme disease than you are in regular contact with your doctor and it’s absolutely worth discussing an intravenous or IV glutathione regimen to help relieve your symptoms. Though it is more work, and can potentially be expensive, it’s good to have your doctor onside and helping you through any treatment plan. IV GSH will go directly into the bloodstream and could provide immediate health benefits.

By consuming good quality non denatured whey protein, the number one food to increase glutathione, your body is given the precursors to help produce glutathione itself.

You can always supplement your GSH. Find a quality brand you trust that uses acetyl-glutathione, or liposomal glutathione.

We would also recommend some complexes that use L-glutathione but combine it with other nutrients that can potentially enhance the function. Lyme disease works it’s way throughout your body leaving damage and inflammation on all levels.

Glutathione works on every cell in the body to help protect and mitigate damage. It seems intuitive that supporting your body’s primary protector might just help in your living with lyme.