Our area-wide Lyme Support Group is scheduled to meet Nov. 29 for the sake of those afflicted with any Tick Borne Disease (TBD), which include the infections Lyme Disease, Bartonella, Babesia, Ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Tularemia, and others.
Plan on attending from 6:30-8 p.m. in the meeting room of the Hillsboro Public Library, 819 High Ave., Hillsboro.
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 Diseases.
Address physical conditioning, diet
The following paragraphs are from a personal correspondence between two Lyme Disease sufferers. Those afflicted with TBD’s face a difficult struggle. Could this letter reflect your struggle or your encouragement for those so struggling?
It is used with permission and has been altered to guard anonymity.
The question that needs to be asked is: How hospitable a home to TBD infection has your body become? Is your immune system being built up, or are you getting run down even more due to the disease? You mentioned ongoing joint pain keeps worsening; that suggests that your immune system needs more attention. I suggest two things that you can start to study how to do, immediately: Address your physical conditioning and your diet.
Ask yourself: “Do I keep physically busy as best I can, even with the limitations imposed by my pain? Am I working to maintain, and even increase my stamina, even if it is just doing seemingly little things, for just little amounts of time, with the goal of slowly but surely stretching out my efforts and the time I spend doing things that take effort? Am I determined to personally fight back against TBD, not just give in to it? Or am I sorely tempted, due to the constant pain, to do little or nothing but sit and feel sorry for myself?”
Every one of us afflicted with TBD has to answer these kinds of questions more often than it might seem. We each have bad days, some better days, and some even worse days. Some give in, a little at a time, to this kind of roller coaster existence; then their lives slowly sink away. They simply want the doctor to fix it all. But doctors and antibiotics and medicines alone cannot fix it. Your active participation as I mention above is critical.
Diet = food we should eat, or food we should not eat. Pain calls out for taking it easy in diet. Convenient foods bought at the store are easy. You know already that nearly all pre-packages items we can purchase at the grocery store contain too many little ingredients which make a body more hospitable to the invaders which cause TBD. Foods can help these agents maximize their attacks on the body. Foods can reduce their ability to attack your body by making your body a less hospitable place for the disease to live. A couple poor food choices, with poor physical conditioning, and the disease agents call your body a happy home - that is, until they kill you off.
TBD’s agents are clever. They have ways of tricking your body into attacking itself. Your joint pain is a response to their healthy presence. TBD’s agents feed off of the ingredients loosed into your body’s system when the agents get your body’s own defense systems to attack your body’s cells and destroy them. When you eat what is good for them, you are assisting them in this auto-immune response. The same is true of poor physical conditioning which can reduces your body’s ability to fight back in natural and healthy ways.
Diet won’t rid your body of these invaders; neither will exercise. But these changes in your life will help to minimize TBD’s harm. The Lord God, who provides divine care for all creatures in this world ruined by sin gives you these natural tools I mentioned. I ask that He also lead you to be willing to take the steps needed in the areas of diet and exercise.
You may have been carrying TBD for a long time before your latest tick bite put your body into greater distress and a positive diagnosis was finally able to be made. God alone knows. For too many of us, that’s been the case. I, personally, am convinced that the invaders will live in my body as long as the Lord God gives me life here on this present earth. Until then, what I have described above, in the questions and in the more general assertions, reflects not only my practice of this part of my life, but also that of many others who daily fight Lyme disease. To God in Christ alone be the glory.
Any questions or comments? Email us at garycepek@yahoo.com, or phone 608/489-2725 (ask for Gary).
