Our area-wide Lyme Support Group meets for the sake of those afflicted with Lyme’s Borrelia Burgdorferi (BB) and/or other tick borne Diseases (TBD). At our meetings we discuss and evaluate the measures we individually take to combat our afflictions. We welcome all interested persons to attend. Come to glean helpful information, or to share your thoughts and experiences about living with tick borne illnesses (TBI). Plan on attending  from 6:30-8 p.m. Oct. 25 at the meeting room of the Hillsboro Public Library, 819 High Ave., For more information, mail garycepek@yahoo.com, or phone 608-489-2725 (ask for Gary).

The Lyme bacteria Borrelia Burgdorferi (BB), like most bacteria, is one of the most adaptive creatures made by God. So are the other tick borne disease  (TBD) agents. What can a person, in addition to medical treatment, do at home to personally and daily fight BB / TBD and its debilitating effects on our bodies?

Here are some questions worth asking: How hospitable a home is my body to BB / TBD? How strong or weak is my immune system? What effect are antibiotics and medicines I take having on my body? How is my overall physical condition?

General answers to these general questions are found in: a) Foods I eat/don’t eat for the sake of my health; b) Herbs and pro-biotics which I regularly use; c) Making sure that that improving my physical condition is a priority, especially as the disease wears me down.

Do you keep physically busy as best you can, even with the limitations imposed by your pain? And, are you working to maintain, and even increase your physical conditioning, even if it is just seemingly little things, for just little amounts of time, with the goal of slowly but surely stretching out the efforts and time spent? Are you determined to personally fight back against BB, not just give in to it? Or are you sorely tempted, due to pain and ill feelings, to do little or nothing? This challenge faces every one of us who have had to struggle with Lyme. Some folks give in to BB / TBD and their lives sink further and further into misery, as if nothing can be done. They may simply wish the Dr. could fix it with medicines. But antibiotics alone cannot fix it.

Diet is also important. Nearly all the pre-packaged items available at the grocery store contain ingredients that assist BB and TBD’s to maximize their attack on the body. BB and TBD’s can trick your body into attacking itself. Various kinds of these self-destructive attacks are what is known in general terms as auto-immune disease. BB / TBD’s stimulate auto-immune destruction so as to feast on the residues loosed into your body’s system by the destruction of your body’s cells by your body’s own defense systems. One way, not the only way, is to alter your diet. Eliminate foods and additives which benefit BB / TBD’s. Rather put into your body foods, herbs, and pro-biotics which make your body toxic to BB / TBD’s. Diet won’t rid your body of these invaders, but it can and will greatly minimize their harmful work and improve your overall health. Such a change of life’s habits takes slow, careful, and wise planning.

It may be that BB / TBD are well established in a chronic sufferer’s body and will live there as long as the LORD God gives one life here on this present earth. Until then the questions and the more general assertions written in the preceding paragraphs reflect not only good practices to develop, but are beneficial practices reflected in the lives of many who continue to daily fight Lyme diseases destructive effects.

For more specific discussions, visit our monthly support group meeting.