Many of you know that the battle against Lyme disease is a personal and professional issue for me. Every patient has a different story to tell. Some have relatively mild short-term issues and others have long-term persistent and debilitating issues. Unfortunately, I fall into the second category with a longstanding infection including a few co-infections.
A nemesis of mine is Babesia. During the summer and early fall last year I had some of the worst symptoms that I have had in a very long time. Testing revealed that the Babesia had come back to haunt me. With the magnificent support of my clinic colleagues and staff I returned to intensive Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) treatments completing 60 sessions at 2.75 times normal atmospheric pressure.
To understand how intense the pressure is one should imagine being about 60 feet under the ocean’s surface. The bactericidal effect is very strong, especially with the right antibiotic therapy and naturopathic IV therapies. Around the 17th HBOT treatment I had an intense herx reaction that was profoundly debilitating. I received a lot of support to push through it and keep up treatments. This naturopathic treatment protocol broke the hold that the Babesia developed over me.
I feel significantly better. I continue to use HBOT weekly to avoid a relapse while I monitor this infection and my immune systems ability to manage it on its own. I am sharing my personal experience as a testimony that the worst of Lyme can be overcome and managed. Somehow the use of HBOT to treat Babesia infections has developed a bad reputation on the Internet. There is no basis for this. It works. Blanco et al (2008) found that hyperbaric oxygen therapy significantly decreased the parasite load in Malaria infected mice, and protected the neurological system from the infection. Both science and clinical results support the use of HBOT for Babesia.
