Diagnosis: Lyme disease
In Germany an estimated 50,000–100,000 people contract an infection with Borrelia each year, also known as Lyme disease, making it one of the most common bacterial infectious diseases. Although standard antibiotic therapy is successful in about 80% of cases, there are still 10,000–20,000 treatment failures each year. Especially in these cases and particularly in advanced stages of the disease, homeopathy offers an important additional treatment option. Remedies should be chosen according to individual and characteristic symptoms, but there are some typical remedies and certain remedy families that are particularly often indicated. Numerous case examples in this issue will show how the various stages of Lyme disease can be treated homeopathically.
From the editor-in-chief’s editorial
With the topic of Lyme borreliosis we dedicate this issue of SPEKTRUM less to a specific disease than to a grey area of medical diagnostics. On one hand there is a wide variety of manifestations of a Borrelia infection; on the other hand there is often an overrated serology with limited informative value. The classic example is the patient with diffuse joint pains, chronic fatigue and IgG antibodies to Borrelia.
“Before therapy the gods placed diagnosis.” This classical postulate of conventional medicine does not apply to us homeopaths. For our choice of remedies the clinical diagnosis plays a subordinate role. The diagnosis that is far more decisive for therapy, however, is the homeopathic remedy capable of curing the disease. Our authors demonstrate how this works using the syndrome of arthralgia, exhaustion and positive Borrelia serology. Seven contributions deal with such cases, all of which presented to the homeopathic practice with the diagnosis of Lyme disease.
Notable are the many commonalities among these patients that go beyond the diagnosis of Lyme disease. From different homeopathic perspectives our authors have observed a very similar psychodynamic pattern in these patients. They tend to self-sacrifice, are easily exploited and thus become victims and outsiders. Ulrich Welte derives these themes of the order Ericales from Scholten’s plant theory and shows why Ledum and other heather-like plants make such good remedies for Lyme disease. Marco Riefer likewise finds the theme of victims being sucked dry and drained in remedies from quite different groups and natural kingdoms.
The nosode, alongside Ledum, is also an integral part of Christina Aris’s treatment concept. Her article, however, is not about the diagnostic grey area of chronic Lyme disease, but about the clear-cut skin manifestations in the early phase of the illness, which she treats homeopathically when patients refuse antibiotic therapy. According to Aris’s experience, susceptibility to contracting Lyme disease is often associated with unstable life circumstances that have thrown patients off balance.
This was also the case with Gerhard Bleul, who developed an erythema migrans during a period of upheaval in his life and then treated himself exclusively with homeopathy. He experienced firsthand how many faces this disease can have and how difficult it can be to attribute symptoms in the context of a long-term relapsing course.
In this issue two completely new remedies are also introduced. Heidi Brand successfully used the freshwater alga Chara intermedia, which she had tested, in a case of post-Lyme syndrome in which the typical victim theme recurred. Hans Eberle and Friedrich Ritzer likewise found the symptoms from their own remedy proving reflected in the clinical picture of a patient with Lyme disease. Thus, in this example we get to know Adalia bipunctata, the two-spot ladybird, as a new homeopathic remedy.
In the case of confirmed manifest Lyme disease, antibiotic therapy is medically indicated and only the patient can decide against it. In the increasingly frequent cases from the aforementioned grey area, however, we consider homeopathic treatment to be the better choice.
