Some self-anointed LLMD’s (Lyme-Literate Medical Doctors) have jumped on the bandwagon of “chronic Borrelia neurotoxins” and  are insisting on the need to “detoxify” them. Since there exists no solid evidence for the existence of such toxins, their treatment guidelines of even those I give the benefit of the doubt contain weasel words such as “it is supposed that”, “could be present”, “may be found”, “has been proposed” etc.

The myth started with patent application nr. 6667038 by Sam Donta and Mark Cartwright.

In it, they claim ownership to any diagnostic/treatment process based on their discovery of a coding sequence in the Bb genome for a toxin they say is similar to Botulin C2 toxin, calling it BbTox1, as if it really has been proven to exist. However, the long patent application never mentions any actual discovery of the alleged toxin, neither in vivo nor in vitro. The mere presence of genes is no guarantee in the slightest for the actual expression of those genes, so their patent is a great leap of faith, a gamble, an investment in the hope that who knows, perhaps some day someone will find significant levels of an actual toxin, expressed by the code discovered in the Bb cDNA. In fact, all the patent does is secure that the discoverers of the sequence will receive royalties if anyone ever does something pertaining to it. However not even after decades of searching, this elusive Borrelia toxin has never been found. Could it be that due to the winding ways of the Good Lord’s evolution, that there is all kinds of ancient unexpressed DNA in just about any genome more complex than a simple virus? Lyme neurotoxins are nothing but conjecture, but a veritable cottage industry has been built around it, with a few players raking in the big dough with their dubious “Lyme detoxing protocols”.

Until the existence of Lyme neurotoxins is proven (it shouldn’t be so hard to find them in a culture broth), we should not risk what remains of our health and spend time, effort and money on trying to “detox” them, because the “detoxifiers” and “toxin binders” such as Cholestyramine (Questran) have never proven their value in any randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed, reproducible trial but they do have very serious potential side effects, including cancer. Those binders bind important nutrients as well, weakening the immune system. “Detoxing” (AKA the ethereal “body cleansing”) distracts from the real issue: How to kill the Lyme spirochetes more effectively and how to prevent an extreme immune response to the Bb bacteria/dieoff damaging our tissues. Lymeland still has trouble being taken seriously and the last thing we need is more bunk  to muddy the waters. The big issues impeding a speedy resolution of symptoms under treatment are antibiotic resistance, bacterial persistence and excessive immune reactions to relatively low bacterial loads. We don’t need one more excuse to deny antibiotic treatment and blame persisting symptoms on “chronic neurotoxins”. Neuro-Lyme patients need open-ended antibiotic treatment with high doses of appropriate antibiotic combo’s. Any attempt to distract from this fact – especially in a wholly unscientific, vulgarly commercialized manner – is greatly detrimental to our cause. When LLMD’s continue to write books and spam websites, evangelizing their “Lyme detox protocols”, eventually, ordinary doctors will take the disease even less seriously and will focus less on long-term antibiotic treatment and more on unproven “detoxing”.

As to those elusive “fat soluble Lyme toxins” , I can’t put it more consise than this mother of a son with chronic Neuroborreliosis:

Fascinating…….but for the fact that B. burgdorferi does not produce any toxins.

No neurotoxins. No cytotoxins. No hemolysins. No enterotoxins. No endotoxins. No exotoxins. No exfoliative toxins.

No classical bacterial toxin. Period.

The closest anyone has come to seeing any toxin activity with B. burgdorferi was some test tube hemolysis back in 1992. And that turned out to be wrong as two guys at Wesleyan showed in 2000 (J Bacteriol. 2000 Dec;182(23):6791-7).

But why believe an online stranger. Ask Burrascano or Shoemaker. Ask them a couple of very fundamental questions such as….

What’s the molecular weight of this toxin?
Is it plasmid-encoded?
If it’s plasmid-encoded do all strains carry this plasmid and produce a toxin?
Is it a protein or a glycoprotein?
What’s its receptor?
Is it released or membrane-bound?
Has anyone produced commercial antibody to it?
Has it been sequenced (like the burgdorferi genome) and can I look it up in GenBank?
If it plays a role in pathogenesis, why hasn’t it been attenuated for use as a vaccine candidate?

And finally, “Are you an idiot or just a liar?”

Please let us know how either one of them responses to this last important question.

So are there really no neurotoxins to worry about?

Borrelia has never been proven to produce any kind of toxin, but Lyme infection may indirectly cause a harmful increase of certain brain chemistry products. Particularly QUIN, Quinolinic acid. A fellow Lyme sufferer and attorney named Anthony Murawski has done extensive medical literature research into this phenomenon, and has published a preliminary paper on this, which we mirrored here:

http://www.owndoc.com/pdf/Lyme-neurotoxins.pdf

Suffice to say that no currently peddled “Lyme detox regimen” addresses this possible issue. I’ll write a separate article about the possible implications of his findings. He remarks that Lyme patients have a severe Tryptophan deficiency in their brains, and so have MS sufferers and other folks with life-threatening CNS syndromes of officially unknown etiology.

I think most high-profile, top-dollar “LLMD’s” are charlatans. The more they talk about dozens of highly complex issues surrounding Lyme disease, the more they’re deliberately obfuscating the issue, making you think the problem is so difficult that you really need to be under their expensive long-term guidance. Lyme is caused by an antibiotic-resistant, immune system-evading bacterium that causes a hell of an inflammatory immune response. That’s all there is to it. It does not produce neurotoxins or form biofilms. Lyme-induced autoimmunity is a chimera. And as long as you lead a healthy lifestyle, you do not need to be on a cornucopia of supplements to recover. All you need to do is live healthily and be on the proper long-term antibiotic combination/pulse therapy – including cyst-busters, if they ever find one that actually works in vivo. That’s all you can do to slowly improve. Minocycline with hydroxychloroquine or just plain Doxy alternated with a week of Amoxi on bad encephalitis days, that’s about all there is to it. For as many years as it takes. No outlandish, complex “protocols” such as the Marshall protocol have shown credible merit. The MP in fact promotes antibiotic resistance, although there seems to be little danger for that, with Bb. The little buggers are resistant enough to begin with, mind you. No miracle mineral supplement, “detoxer” or “zapper” helps one iota against Lyme disease, whatever patients, practitioners or pushers may preach. Neither does colloidal silver do much – Tom Grier did extensive research into that.

High-profile “LLMD’s” promoting the idea of neurotoxins:

James Schaller

From http://townsendletter.com/July2009/ed_lyme0709.html

Mr. Schaller believes that commercially available “Rife machines” kill Bb spirochetes, albeit not sufficiently. He is on the record for claiming, in writing, on his own website, that Lyme patients need no more than 8 hours of sleep, even when they are desperate to get more. He even prescribes stimulants to keep them awake! He claims that no adult – sick or healthy – needs more than eight hours of sleep, and that sleeping more “just makes one prone to get fired”. Of course, few things are more damaging to the immune system than to deprive a sick person of necessary sleep.. He endorses the books of the notorious “Lyme-cure” scam artist and obnoxious forum spammer Bryan Rosner. Schaller exclaimed in an outrageous, all-caps, expletive-filled rant that a reader who gave his Lyme-treatment book a well-argued negative review on Amazon must be mentally impaired due to Bartonella infection. Nota bene: He promises Lyme treatments leading to a “full cure”. He minimizes the neurological effects of Neuroborreliosis and blames them on Bartonella – a relatively minor infection with mild symptoms that usually resolve without treatment – instead. Schaller sells “full cures” for a variety of other serious illnesses such as depression on his sites. However, his books do not offer any concrete help, according to several reviewers.

Dr. Schaller is alleged to charge 575 dollars for a phone consultation of 20 minutes. Reportedly, he routinely lets patients sign non-disclosure and non-litigation agreements.

Ritchie Shoemaker

Dr. Shoemaker believes you can have living Borrelia bacteria in your central nervous system that “do no harm whatsoever” and should “just be ignored”!

(after the 3-minute mark)

This outrageous statement alone is the highest form of treason to Lyme patients. When even the “LLMD’s” say that active infection with living, multiplying, T-cell-invading, Myelin-eating spirochetes is often “harmless”, what hope do Lymies have to receive long-term antibiotic treatment?  Mr. Shoemaker claims that if he diagnoses you with blurry vision on his VCS test (“Visual Contrast Sensitivity”), that this is almost always caused by “chronic neurotoxins caused by infection”, and that his “detoxing” can in 90% of cases greatly help you. Shoemaker further says that when his Lyme treatments don’t work, that it must be due to “mold exposure”, and that “almost everyone with Lyme is exposed to mold”. My advice as a self-treating, 90% recovered chronic Lyme neuroborreliosis patient to Dr. Shoemaker is to lay off the cookies and cigarettes and take a very long hike – perhaps that’ll detoxify him.

Not even Joe Burrascano is beyond medical criticism.

Dr. Burrascano kept recommending using Probenecid in conjunction with Amoxicillin, even after a Lancet article stated that Probenecid competed with Amoxicillin for entry through the blood-brain barrier. That article specifically mentioned treatment failure in all Lyme neuroborreliosis cases where Probenecid was used in conjunction with Amoxicillin. Burrascano was repeatedly made aware of that article but he never updated his Lyme treatment guidelines. Burrascano preferred to ally himself with the loudest mouths in Lymeland, jumping on the “neurotoxins” circlejerk bandwagon instead of keeping up-to-date with medical literature.

There are numerous Internet marketers posing as “Lyme experts” poised to take a piece of the “Lyme neurotoxin” pie, selling eBooks packed with incredible nonsense and quackery, targeted towards the naive reader. One of the most active is Connie Strasheim AKA Conniekillbug AKA Connie Killabugger, peddling eBooks with no answers. Such books make a mockery of Lyme disease and us Lyme sufferers. Schaller, Rosner and Strasheim work as a team, incestuously glorifying eachother’s bogus “Lyme protocols”. It would be good if they spend more on medical literature research and less on refined psychological sales tricks.