Tick-borne infections, Lyme borreliosis and autism spectrum

[Originally posted to FACT forum on Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:15 pm]

What should you focus on to help the most patients? Putting good things in, or getting bad things out, or killing some of the infections we all have? The answer is beginning to be clear; it is NOT EITHER/ OR but EVERYTHING!

The front cover of Time June 6 2008 has a picture of a baby and the key article is The Truth About Vaccines. For once it admits there is a problem and that many are going to opt out of vaccinating their children. There are other useful comments in their article but I draw your attention to their conclusion that GENETICS and ENVIROMENTAL exposures must be behind the increase in AUTISM.

That is a major point for meaningful discussion when you learn about toxins causing epigenetic changes in genes almost overnight that affect all offspring from Duke University and Randy Jirtle’s work. You can begin to piece together a more effective and broadly based treatment plan that will help many more patients with the complex degenerative and neurological conditions.

Methylation support begins to be as critical as detoxification, chelation and lowering pathogens. Looking at the potential exposures in the maternal diet, like BISPHENYL A that lead to all the mice offspring having yellow not brown fur and all developing obesity and diabetes, means that we have to go back to looking at the parents and their diet to tease out some of these epigenetic changes that set the stage for the inability to deal with things like Mercury in air from coal burning, or the mercury coming from the mothers diet and teeth, or the mothers intake of other challenging substances, which are too numerous to count.

But we should always expect that all of us are blind men examining an elephant and some of us are sure it is a wall while other are sure it is a rope or some think it is a tree; bottom line it is all MULTIFACTORIAL. With that said, then anything we do should help, as all of what we believe in is relevant. Yes, get off the reactive foods, and with the new information out about GM food, rely only on organic food. Yes, everyone will be better the lower we get their levels of heavy metals with chelation or their other toxins with a combination of things that I call my Power Drink (BioEn’R-G’y C, MACA, Green Powder, and Beyond Fiber), which can be amplified with various other herbs and homeopathics and sweating in Saunas and soaking in EDTA bath (Beyond Clean).

But, since everyone today has a serious PATHOGEN LEVEL in their body that are poorly responsive to standard antibiotics, antiviral and antifungal, the benefits all too often seem to be short lived. So the infectious disease specialists simply go stronger, go to parenteral administration, and take the therapy longer and longer.

There are a few of us who understand the importance of advanced Methylation support. Some will rely primarily on B12 using injections, which with Beyond B12 are really no longer needed when you use it with BioEn’R-G’y C for added methylation support. This is partly because Beyond B12 (and H.R. T. Plus) has the ACTIVE form of natural Folic Acid, 5’MTHF. This form is vital for a full functioning methylation cycle that is critical to so many vital functions in the body particularly for older or sick patients.

It seems that whatever we look for, we will find. If we send blood to Mt Sinai School Of Medicine ALL will have Neurotoxins and Carcinogens in their blood stream at all times.

If we look hard with the best tests for CMV, Mycoplasma, Chlamydia we will find some or all of these and multiple other pathogens and even parasites, when we look enough.

When we look for genetic disturbances that contribute to the patient’s health issues, they will be there.

If we look for nutritional deficiencies, they are always present particularly with functional tests or intracellular analysis of things like Magnesium and there are always amino acid and fatty acid and mineral deficiencies present.

So this is like those who specialize in antique car restoring, there is work to be done wherever we look.

The good news is that some of those fully restored cars have value above what it cost to restore them and the same is true about the patients that you restore, when you provide full tail light to bumper restorative care to almost any patient with chronic degenerative condition no matter what it is called. Even if it is thought to be all a genetic problem, they too will have all of the above issues that are always present if tested for. Yet we are afraid to help such patients and abandon them to some “expert” on rare genetic diseases that has never given anyone orthomolecular levels of nutrients nor lowered anyone’s levels of toxins or pathogens!!

Garry F. Gordon MD,DO,MD(H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
www.gordonresearch.com

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Antibiotics that treat Lyme disease may help some people with autism.

This article was written to describe the possibility that autism is made worse by Lyme disease. Many doctors and parents have noticed that mothers who had Lyme disease were more likely to give birth to children with autism. Also many adults who get Lyme disease have symptoms that are like autism. The authors believe that 20-30% of autism may be caused by the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. They believe that another infectious agent (Mycoplasma) may be a factor in 58% of cases of autism.

Scientific Abstract
http://autism.healingthresholds.com/research/the-association-between-tick-bor

Med Hypotheses. 2008;70(5):967-74. Epub 2007 Nov 5

The association between tick-borne infections, Lyme borreliosis and autism spectrum disorders.
Bransfield RC, Wulfman JS, Harvey WT, Usman AI.
Department of Psychiatry, Riverview Medical Center, 225 State Route 35, Red Bank, NJ, United States. bransfield@comcast.net
Chronic infectious diseases, including tick-borne infections such as Borrelia burgdorferi may have direct effects, promote other infections and create a weakened, sensitized and immunologically vulnerable state during fetal development and infancy leading to increased vulnerability for developing autism spectrum disorders. A dysfunctional synergism with other predisposing and contributing factors may contribute to autism spectrum disorders by provoking innate and adaptive immune reactions to cause and perpetuate effects in susceptible individuals that result in inflammation, molecular mimicry, kynurenine pathway changes, increased quinolinic acid and decreased serotonin, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and excitotoxicity that impair the development of the amygdala and other neural structures and neural networks resulting in a partial Klüver-Bucy Syndrome and other deficits resulting in autism spectrum disorders and/or exacerbating autism spectrum disorders from other causes throughout life. Support for this hypothesis includes multiple cases of mothers with Lyme disease and children with autism spectrum disorders; fetal neurological abnormalities associated with tick-borne diseases; similarities between tick-borne diseases and autism spectrum disorder regarding symptoms, pathophysiology, immune reactivity, temporal lobe pathology, and brain imaging data; positive reactivity in several studies with autistic spectrum disorder patients for Borrelia burgdorferi (22%, 26% and 20-30%) and 58% for mycoplasma; similar geographic distribution and improvement in autistic symptoms from antibiotic treatment. It is imperative to research these and all possible causes of autism spectrum disorders in order to prevent every preventable case and treat every treatable case until this disease has been eliminated from humanity.
PMID: 17980971 [PubMed – in process]