Lyme Disease Diet: Do You Really Need to Make Changes? (with Andrea Love, PhD from @unbiasedscipod)

Are you wondering if your diet can really make a difference when it comes to Lyme disease? Today, we're here to unravel the mysteries surrounding the Lyme disease diet.

I'm joined by Andrea C. Love, PhD, an esteemed immunologist and microbiologist, to provide you with the scientific clarity you need. Dr. Love begins by explaining that Lyme disease is a bacterial infection you get from pesky tick bites, and guess what? It's mostly treated with antibiotics. We'll also dispel the myths surrounding tick bites, transmission, and the alleged need for dietary interventions.

But that's not all. We're going to dig into why misinformation can be a real health hazard and remind you why it's super important to trust reliable sources when it comes to your health. Stay tuned for a fact-based discussion that will empower you to make informed decisions about Lyme disease and your diet.

Connect with Dr. Andrea Love on Instagram

TOPICS COVERED 👇 

Overview of Lyme Disease and transmission [00:06:19] 

Preventing Lyme Disease [00:13:23]

Controversy surrounding chronic Lyme Disease [00:26:45]

Lyme literate specialists and fake tests [00:30:04]

Concerns about lack of treatment for Lyme Disease [00:35:01]

Addressing misinformation and eroding trust in science [00:36:03]

RESOURCES MENTIONED

American Lyme Disease Foundation website

Unbiased Science website

Autoimmune Paleo (AIP) Dietitian Review + Let's Talk Anti-Inflammatory Foods Episode

Unbiased Science's Autoimmune Protocol Episode


READ THE BLOG POST FOR MORE
TikTok's Mustard Girl Diet and the Lyme Disease Scam: Dietitian Review

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome back to Nourished and Free, the show where we discuss how you can live your life nourished and healthy while also being free from all of the ridiculous nutrition advice out there and the food guilt and the food shame that comes along with it. I'm your host, michelle Yates, a registered dietitian and disorder-dealing expert. This also makes me a professional nutrition myth buster. Today's episode is more of a nutrition myth busting episode and it was inspired by my TikTok around mustard girl's diet. If you don't know much about mustard girl, go look for the video on my TikTok. I also have it on my YouTube channel and I'll clue you in. That video in particular was mostly focused on the concerns I have around her promoting disordered eating through her mustard-fueled weight loss journey. The video generated a lot of eyeballs and with those eyeballs came a lot of comments, and with those comments came a lot of people quick to remind me that she only eats that way because of Lyme disease. Now, I purposely didn't talk about the claim to Lyme disease in my original video because I felt like it was too big of a can of worms to open at the time, but since so many people are convinced that we need to eat a different way just because of Lyme disease. I felt now like I had this obligation to talk more about it. So we're opening the can of worms.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Today's episode. We're going to answer the question does it make sense to change your diet for Lyme disease? And in order to do that, we do need to peel back a few layers and get deep into the scientific process of this and mostly just get some context around Lyme disease itself. To help me with this, I wanted to bring on an infectious disease doctor. One of my favorite pieces of content out there discussing Lyme disease is a two-part series on the Unbiased Science podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:33

This podcast is co-hosted by Dr Andrea Love, who's actually joining us today, and I'm so excited about it. Dr Love is an immunologist, a microbiologist and a specialist in infectious disease, immunology, cancer immunology and auto immunity, and on top of all that, she represents the American Lyme disease foundation. So could there be a better guess for this episode? I mean honestly no, and I did not expect her to reply to my request and to say yes, but she did, and I'm so glad she's here today. Dr Love is going to dig into the scientific method with me today as we seek to answer the question is altering your diet from Lyme disease necessary. All right, hello, dr Love, I'm so excited to have you here today.

Speaker 2: 2:15

Thanks so much for having me, Michelle. I'm very excited to be talking with you about another realm of misinformation.

Speaker 1: 2:23

There's so much, there's so much and it's yeah. So I feel like the more experts that can get together and kind of fight the misinformation, the better. So, as I was thinking about this episode and how I wanted to structure it with you, I thought it'd be kind of fun if we structured it like the scientific method in a way and we started off with, you know, like our observations around Lyme disease and what's happening in the media and everything, and then kind of worked through like all right, let's ask a question here, let's work through some research. And I personally have observed a lot of talk around people who were instructed to change their diet for Lyme disease and I have a lot of questions now.

Speaker 2: 3:06

So, yes, yes, your observation is correct. Among many other interventions purported to treat Lyme disease, substantial dietary changes often circulate on social media.

Speaker 1: 3:23

Yes, yes, and it's kind of maddening from my point of view as a registered dietitian. So I thought it'd be fun to combine both of our specialties and seek to answer the overarching question of is altering your diet for Lyme disease necessary? Is it actually necessary? So, to kick that off, I thought it'd be really good to understand Lyme disease, since that's a big part of this question.

Speaker 2: 3:52

Sure.

Speaker 1: 3:53

And Lyme disease are both big things here. So who better than to have you on and to talk through the misinformation we've got around there? So, yeah, absolutely. Why don't you take a second and actually introduce yourself to the listeners who don't know you and share with us anything that you think would be good to know about, why Lyme disease is something that you're particularly passionate about?

Speaker 2: 4:14

Sure, so I'm Dr Andrea Love. I'm an immunologist and microbiologist. I work full time in the biotech industry in the field of vaccine development and immunotherapy for both infectious diseases and cancer.

Speaker 2: 4:28

I am also the executive director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, which is a non profit that is specifically geared towards dispelling misinformation about Lyme disease, and the only people involved in our organization are experts in Lyme, whether they are healthcare providers or scientists like myself, so no patient advocates or people without a vested interest, or with a vested interest in Lyme disease or financial interest, and so on. I'm also the founder and co-host of unbiased science, which is a science communication hub that addresses misinformation and misconceptions about all sorts of science and health topics, and I have been immersed in the Lyme disease arena since I was a child. I grew up in a town adjacent to Lyme, connecticut, so Lyme disease is called such because the first group of cases were identified in Lyme Connecticut and I also did my doctoral dissertation research in the immunology of Lyme disease, so I've really been in the thick of it for many, many years.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Yeah, I mean, clearly you grew up next to the town, that it was yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:41

The epicenter of Lyme. I've lived in pretty much my entire life so and I have not ever personally gotten Lyme disease.

Speaker 1: 5:50

Oh, I'm sorry, Then we can't. We can't follow anything. You're saying that. No, you're right you don't have personal experience.

Speaker 2: 5:56

They, you know people who promote falsehoods. They they automatically try and discredit you, which is an interesting phenomenon.

Speaker 1: 6:04

Yeah, You're just. You're totally unqualified now at this point. Yeah oh no. But now that we know you're an actual badass, let's do some research on Lyme. So give us a quick overview of how Lyme develops and who is actually at risk.

Speaker 2: 6:19

Sure. So Lyme disease, and you know it's, it's kind of troubling because I feel like I feel like it was named to kind of characterize this disease state but as a result it's kind of been co-opted to insinuate that it's this persistent illness. So Lyme disease is a bacterial infection caused by a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi, which is a spirochetal bacteria, which means it shaped like a corkscrew and it moves in like a corkscrew fashion. These bacteria are only transmitted in the United States by two species of ticks the black legged tick, which lives mostly on the eastern part of the US, predominantly clustered in the northeast and the Midwest, although geographic range is expanding with climate change. And the western black legged tick, which lives primarily along the California coastline. It is not transmitted person to person, it is not inherited. It is not transmitted by other biting insects like mosquitoes or fleas. It is not transmitted by other species of ticks. It is also not transmitted by blood transfusions, bisexual contact or I'm trying to think of any other Diet or hugs.

Speaker 2: 7:43

Yes, it is not transmitted by diets certainly so. So it's caused by a bacteria, and the good thing about bacterial infections is that we have a lot of medications that can treat bacterial infections. These are called antibiotics, and these are medications that essentially interfere with how a bacteria survives and reproduces and, as a result, kills the bacteria and eliminates the infection. So it's a similar principle to taking antibiotics for strep throat. Strep throat is a bacterial infection caused by a different species of bacteria in the strep throat In the streptococcus family, or something like a staph infection on your skin, right Turf burn or something like that. You might take antibiotics for something like that. So the same principle holds true for Lyme disease. You take antibiotics Depending on the symptoms that you present with. There's a few different kind of clinical presentations. You would take antibiotics anywhere from between 10 and 28 days, and after that the bacteria are cleared from your system and you no longer have Lyme disease. Okay.

Speaker 1: 8:50

So I listened to your two-part series on this on unbiased science podcast, which, if anybody hasn't checked it out, it's fantastic, and I remember you saying something about how there's only about, was it like? 10 to 20% of ticks even carry Lyme. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 9:07

Yeah, so that is 10 to 20% of ticks within those two species. So there's actually close to 900 species of ticks in the world. In the US there are about 90 species, and a very small proportion of those species are actually concerned for humans. So there's this misconception that all ticks bite humans and all ticks carry all of these different pathogens and all of these pathogens are transmitted to humans. And it's way more complicated than that, because ticks, even species to species, have different chemicals and molecules in their bodies. They have a very different physiology. Their body temperature is much lower compared to mammals and humans. Of course, and in order for a pathogen and in this case we would talk about the lime bacteria to survive there and also survive the trip from the tick into the human and then survive in the human and then grow to the point where it caused illness, there's so many different checkpoints that that bacteria has to overcome and there's a lot of very complicated processes. It's changing how it metabolizes carbohydrates, because the sugar sources in a tick are different than the sugar sources in a human. The oxygen levels are different, and so you know, just because you got bitten by a tick, even if that tick had this bacteria, there's no guarantee that you're going to be successfully infected with it. The data demonstrate that only about one to five percent of tick bites of these species actually result in a lime infection. So the risk of lime disease. It's growing because populations of ticks are increasing, but the risk is actually quite low. You don't have to be terrified every time you go outside and you encounter a tick, even if it is the black-legged tick, because on top of that the tick has to actually feed on you for a minimum period of time before the bacteria can get into your body. And the reason for this is because within a tick and I wish I had my little stuffed animal tick near me but the tick has this region of the body called the mid-gut and you could kind of envision that like the stomach of a human. And when the tick hasn't taken in a blood meal, meaning it hasn't fed on an animal, the bacteria are kind of just hanging out in the mid-gut, kind of dormant, like they're not, because they don't have a sugar source from blood. They're just kind of hibernating, I suppose you could say.

Speaker 2: 11:47

And in order for them to stop hibernating and start reproducing, a tick has to get onto your body, climb to a place where it likes, usually a armpit or behind the ear or a place like that, and that can take up to two hours.

Speaker 2: 12:02

After a tick has climbed onto you to find a suitable place.

Speaker 2: 12:06

Then it has to bite you and it has a mouth part called a hypostome that it inserts Like it's like a barbed needle and then it secretes chemicals to kind of cement itself in and then it starts taking up blood and when it takes up the blood, the bacteria that are in that mid-gut compartment they get oxygen and they get sugar and they get all sorts of nutrients from that blood and they start to wake up and they start to reproduce.

Speaker 2: 12:32

So they don't actually like swim to the mouth in order to get into the mouth parts and get into the human. They actually wait in the mid-gut until they've reproduced so much that they're too crowded to fit in there and they physically get forced into the mouth and that process takes 48 hours. So you realistically can't get infected, even if that tick is infected, unless the tick has been feeding on you for 48 hours. Now we say 36 hours to be a little bit more conservative, but actually in my previous lab my collaborators, my colleagues actually did pull off experiments to look at the time course, the kinetics, and you know it really is. The risk is almost zero until you hit that 48 hour time point.

Speaker 1: 13:23

And most people I know if they're in. I mean, of course, this comes down to like your knowledge of even knowing that ticks are present in that area in the first place. But when people do know, hey, there's ticks in this area, make sure you check yourself for tick. Like I feel like I've heard that so many times when someone because I live in the Midwest and so it's like common practice to check yourself for ticks so it's like very rare that you're going to have a tick on you for 48 hours or even yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 13:48

I mean, you know so. So right now, cdc estimates that there's between 400,000 and 500,000 cases of Lyme every year. That's probably an overestimate because those estimates are based on the number of antibiotic prescriptions written and we know that antibiotics are over prescribed because people go in and are like I got bitten by a tick, I have Lyme disease and, and often clinicians will prescribe it to kind of pacify the patient. But even if you say, oh, it's 500,000 cases per year, there's over 330 million people in the country. So again, the proportion of people that are getting infected with Borrelia burgdorferi is very, very low.

Speaker 2: 14:28

And again, there's multiple layers. You have to live in an area where these ticks are prevalent. You have to be in environments where you'll encounter a tick. If you're, if you're in an urban apartment and you're not going out in the woods, like you're very unlikely to to encounter ticks on a regular basis. And then you have layers right so you can prevent tick bites using effective repellents like deep and picoride, and then you can use insecticides which will kill ticks on contact on your clothing, like permethrin. Then of course, you always want to do tick checks, and showering after you return from indoors is always a good practice within a couple of hours because that will catch any ticks that maybe you're crawling on you but haven't bitten. And then of course, if you find a tick, you remove it mechanically with tweezers promptly and you know you do that within 48 hours and you know pretty much you've eliminated that risk of Lyme disease.

Speaker 1: 15:18

Okay, awesome. And I just did the math on this really quick because I was like 500,000 to you said 330 million, million, right? Yeah is a point zero, zero, one percent. Yeah, chance yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:33

Yeah, it's very low and and again you can get infected with the bacteria multiple times. It's like getting strep throat. Every year there are different strains of Borrelia burgdorferi out there, so it's not like you get it and it's a one and done. But again, it's very, very densely concentrated in the northeast and the Midwest. It's 15 states in the US that account for 95% of Lyme disease cases. So you know places in like Texas and Arizona you're not going to see a lot of Lyme disease. You're going to see it in New England, the mid Atlantic, the Midwest states, because that's the geography, the climate that the tick species that transmit the bacteria, those black legged ticks, which are sometimes called deer ticks, like and that's where their preferred food lives and the preferred food of the early life cycle of the tick is the white footed mice and adult ticks like the white tailed deer. They don't really prefer humans, they don't really prefer your dogs. They'll bite us if they encounter us, but they're not actively seeking out people to bite.

Speaker 2: 16:35

That is so fascinating, like the amount of mind blown that this is like there's such a small amount of people who yeah, and it's not to say that it doesn't exist Absolutely it does exist and, and depending on the strain of bacteria, it can cause, you know, debilitating symptoms, and and again, that's why we have antibiotics that that are very effective at treating infection, if infection occurs.

Speaker 1: 17:01

So what are some of those symptoms that we see with Lyme disease?

Speaker 2: 17:04

So. So the challenge is, the symptoms can be quite generic. The stereotypical symptom that occurs in between 1680% of cases is this bullseye rash or erythema migrants. The challenges is that some people are not very observant, and so they might have the bullseye rash or the em, but they might not necessarily know it, or, if they have darker skin, it might not be as obvious, or they're expecting it to be a very discrete bullseye and it's more of like a reddish splotch On top of that.

Speaker 2: 17:37

There are other things that can cause rashes. There are other insect bites or arthropod bites, like spider bites, that can kind of look like that. For me, for example, I have a very pronounced histamine response to mosquito bites and I get these really giant red welts when I get bitten by mosquitoes. And there's other dermatological conditions that can look like these sorts of rashes. But but again, this rash is present in 60 to 80% of cases and that rash appears typically starting at around seven days after the tick bite, because that rash is a sign of the immune response. Basically, those bacteria in the skin and I'll use my arm as an example the tick bit here, the bacteria in the skin, the immune cells, are like hey, that doesn't belong here and they're called to alarm there and they create these chemicals that create inflammation in the skin and that's where you get that redness and the rash spreads out over time, because it's this wave of immune cells that are coming into the skin.

Speaker 2: 18:34

So, that's symptom number one. The other symptoms are very nonspecific, things like fatigue, low-grade fever, headache, muscle aches, joint aches. Sometimes people can get swollen lymph nodes, which is called lymphadenopathy, and typically that's going to be kind of the bulk of it. The vast majority of infections with Borrelia redorafri will not spread from the tick bite location in the skin, even if you did not treat with antibiotics. There are certain strains of the bacteria that are able to kind of hide out or evade the immune response that would clear the bacteria or eliminate the bacteria. So the immune cells are producing chemicals that can kill bacteria and things like that. They have these professional eaters in the immune system that eat bacteria and digest them. But in some instances I'm saying 10% or fewer of infections the bacteria can hitch a ride within our bloodstream or lymphatic vessels and spread to other body sites and in those instances they will typically go to the large joints, most often the knees, the peripheral nerves, particularly like in the neck and in the face, and then sometimes other parts of the central nervous system. Very rarely the bacteria can get into the heart muscle. So in those instances we call that disseminated Lyme disease, meaning that the bacteria have moved from localized at the tick bite to other sites in the body. So if you had disseminated Lyme disease in the joints, that would present as Lyme arthritis and that is typically visible joint swelling and it's asymmetrical. So typically you're going to get swelling visibly on one side of the body and not the other, and sometimes it moves around. So, like one day your right knee might be swollen, the next day your left knee might be swollen.

Speaker 2: 20:33

When it presents in, like the face, you can get this Bell's palsy or this, this this facial drooping. Basically, what's happened is you have an inflammation in a nerve in the face and that leads to the nerve not properly innervating the muscle of the face and so you have this drooping sensation and it's involuntary. Occasionally, Lyme can also lead to like a meningitis, meaning an inflammation of the layering of the central nervous system. So that can include stiffness in the neck and neck pain and additional like higher grade fever, and that's something that you would get an IV antibiotic very quickly and that would eliminate. And then in very, very rare instances, like I said, it can lead to what we call Lyme carditis, which is an inflammation of the heart muscle. We've probably heard a lot about this with COVID. A lot of infections can cause inflammation of the heart muscle. In the case of Lyme, it's called Lyme carditis, so this would be like like a fluttering or an irregular heartbeat sensation and again, this happens in only about 1% of infections.

Speaker 1: 21:33

Yeah, scaring on the last, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 21:36

You know. So it's always, you know, important to be aware of these more serious symptoms. But again, these are treatable with antibiotics.

Speaker 1: 21:45

Yeah, you said that disseminated Lyme is not in all cases of Lyme. It's correct, correct.

Speaker 2: 21:50

Pretty rare, yeah, usually it's about 10% of infections that could could have the potential to spread to other body sites, and that's assuming that you didn't get treated promptly. But in reality, even if you didn't realize, you got bitten by a tick and you got infected. The majority of the time, your immune system does a really good job at getting rid of infections. You know that's what it does, right, that's it's profession. So even in those instances where you might have gotten infected, most of the time your body would clear it even without intervention.

Speaker 1: 22:25

Okay, we'll be right back after this quick break.

Speaker 1: 22:29

If you find yourself sneaking into the kitchen or pantry to binge or emotionally overeat on the foods that you swore you would never eat again, then keep listening. Did you know that your relationship with food actually plays a huge part in why you eat the way that you eat? And, just like any relationship, if you don't take care of it, then things typically don't go well. If you've tried every diet under the sun, but you just feel even more lost than before and wishing that you could just eat like a normal person, then visit my website to learn more about how you can conquer this food guilt and finally be in control of it once and for all. Visit YatesNutritioncom to check out my free mini course on how to conquer binge eating once and for all, or to check out the many other resources I have that can help you with healing your relationship with food.

Speaker 1: 23:11

Today. Let's get back to the show. So for those who have this Mlime arthritis, like you said, that's kind of where I can see maybe some rationale for people jumping to some dietary intervention because they're thinking like my joints are.

Speaker 1: 23:28

I'm inflamed, I need to go on an anti-inflammatory diet Now. Anti-inflammatory diet. That's a whole other podcast episode in terms of misinformation, which I already have. If anybody wants to listen to it, we have one too.

Speaker 2: 23:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:42

So I'll link that in the show notes. I'll also link yours in the show notes. That's good to know. So there's a lot of misinformation around that. But even if we are talking a correct, accurate, anti-inflammatory diet, I think what I'm hearing from you is we can still reduce the inflammation just through antibiotics, right?

Speaker 2: 24:01

Yeah, absolutely so. You know I mean this inflammation in the joint, the arthritis. So arthritis is just a word that means inflammation of the joint, right, that word itis just means inflammation. And you know, unfortunately, and I'm sure you know, michelle, that the word inflammation has really gotten co-opted to, kind of it's a buzzword. Yeah, it's a buzzword. You know diagnosis, everything it's. You know you can cure it all through diet and in reality you need inflammation to survive. And inflammation is a natural process that's constantly occurring in your body and it's constantly balanced by anti-inflammatory processes. And if you try to stop it or halt it or delay it, you know you could mess up a lot of things Technically. Every single time you exercise or digest anything, you're creating inflammation because you're breaking things down.

Speaker 2: 24:47

And when you break things down, you release energy and technically, that you know, creates inflammation. But yeah, absolutely so. The arthritis that has caused as a result of disseminated Lyme disease is a result of the immune response in the joint. And you know, when you consume food, even if you know someone wants to call them anti-inflammatory and we know that that's really a misnomer, because you know, we know that there are foods that are more nutritious, more nutrient dense, but nothing that you're eating is actually reducing inflammation or promoting inflammation. It's all about the proportions of food, the density of various nutrients, macromolecules and so on. But even if that were the case, you know what you're digesting is not getting deposited into your joint. It's the same logic that people use when they talk about, you know collagen supplements to improve joint function. You know it's not getting shuttled to your joint tissue to help alleviate this temporary swelling as a result of a bacterial infection. What is going to help is taking antibiotics.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Now, in some cases, some of these symptoms of disseminated Lyme disease can last after the antibiotics have been concluded, and it doesn't mean that there's still bacteria hanging around or you have this latent infection or it's dormant or things like that. It's just a consequence of your immune system. It needs time to reset to baseline and in most people that happens pretty quickly. But in a small proportion of people who have disseminated Lyme disease it's less than 10% they may have these persistent symptoms that last for a period of months after treatment and this has been called chronic Lyme disease. It's not a chronic infection. You know people who have been infected. They may have taken these long term treatments because they're not effective not even antibiotics long term. But it's really it's post infection Sepplite, right, it's post treatment symptoms that are not an indication that you're still infected.

Speaker 2: 26:45

And not an indication that you're still needing intervention Correct exactly and there's actually been a lot of clinical trials that have looked at extended duration of antibiotic treatment benefit and there can be harm to taking antibiotics long term because some of them can kill off the good bacteria that you need for digestion and metabolism and bodily functions.

Speaker 1: 27:06

Right, right, which is damaging in its own way, exactly, exactly. So I can imagine there's a lot of listeners that may be confused because we're talking about how Lyme is basically totally curable by antibiotic and yet there are a lot of providers, doctors et cetera who are saying it isn't, and we need these long-term treatments, long-term interventions of all kinds of nature. So fill us in on why there's that tension there and that confusion and why there might be some controversies around the Lyme specialists and the alternative therapies they prescribe.

Speaker 2: 27:44

It is extraordinarily controversial and I still don't quite understand why Lyme disease really got the front of this, because in the world of infectious diseases, yes, it can be not pleasant, but it's not fatal, it doesn't lead to disfigurement, disability, like there are a lot of other nastier things out there so. But this all kind of started back in the 80s and the 90s when Lyme was kind of first being understood. And it started because a parent, her kid, wasn't diagnosed initially because we were still learning about Lyme disease, and she became kind of an advocate and that led to a lot of really important findings on Lyme disease. But then that advocacy kind of got co-opted by the new generation of Lyme advocates, which basically now discredit actual experts, including the Infectious Disease Society of America, who are the experts on infectious diseases, and they basically say that, well, they're all wrong, because I have these symptoms and my alternative health practitioner told me that it's chronic Lyme.

Speaker 2: 29:00

So what happened in the past couple of decades is that these groups that are patient advocacy groups, not scientific organizations, have essentially come out and they have a faction of clinicians, some of which have medical degrees, many of which are chiropractors or naturopaths or people who are very unqualified, but many of the MDs are not infectious disease specialists, so they might have started as a psychiatrist or something, but they have an MD at the end of their name and they created this coalition alongside private labs that create fake tests to diagnose Lyme disease Biggie and yeah, it's very complicated and they all make a ton of money when these advocacy organizations send referrals to them. So these clinicians call themselves Lyme literate specialists or Lyme literate physicians. So if you hear that word, it's just a red flag.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Nobody else is literate.

Speaker 2: 30:06

That's exactly what they insinuate.

Speaker 2: 30:07

They say that true infectious disease specialists these are ones who did clinical fellowships in infectious disease don't know what they're talking about.

Speaker 2: 30:15

They're hiding the truth and you have to go to a Lyme literate specialist and these Lyme literate specialists basically prescribe these fake tests for Lyme disease that are not validated or standardized and actually just report false information.

Speaker 2: 30:32

And they use bodily fluids that you would never actually be able to use to diagnose an infection like this, like you're in.

Speaker 2: 30:39

Then they diagnose people with Lyme disease who have no epidemiological evidence that they were infected, meaning they weren't in nature. They don't have evidence that they were in a geography where these ticks live. They don't have a recollection of being bitten by a tick and so on and so forth, but maybe they feel tired and they feel a little depressed, and so on. So they get diagnosed with Lyme disease by these Lyme literate specialists. And then these Lyme literate specialists put them on all of these out of pocket treatments, none of which have any evidence to support them, including everything from colloidal silver and other chelation therapies to all sorts of supplements, long-term IV antibiotics which is very, very dangerous All sorts of other things like hormone therapy and ozone and urine ingestion and enemas and all sorts of things that not only are completely disproven but can be very, very dangerous. So it's this very concerted, organized and tactical strategy it's really spearheaded by many high-profile organizations to claim to be the experts in Lyme and they talk about being the voice of the patient which makes people feel empowered.

Speaker 1: 31:57

And they also. I'm sure they want to be listened to and heard Exactly.

Speaker 2: 32:01

And they often claim that, well, you don't have multiple sclerosis, you have Lyme, when in reality the converse is very possibly true. Lyme in this sphere, is used as this catch-all diagnosis, and another harm is that these people are getting these unproven and harmful treatments that are not going to cure Lyme, even if they had Lyme. But now you're ignoring potentially other real medical issues that could be addressed, like autoimmune disorders, like depression, like rheumatoid arthritis and so on and so forth. So it's very multifactorial and it's compounded by the fact that these organizations get a lot of money from high-profile celebrities like the Hadid family, who supposedly the whole family has had Lyme disease for decades.

Speaker 1: 32:52

The whole family is genetic. No, no.

Speaker 2: 32:55

The mother, the daughter, the son. They all have Lyme disease, apparently, but they're high-profile. They have millions and millions and millions of followers. The media catches on their every word and so it legitimizes this when there's zero evidence to support it. And it's really. It's very frustrating and disheartening. And when we try to address a lot of these misconceptions and be like, hey, you probably haven't had a bacterial infection for years because if you did, you would likely be hospitalized and seriously ill, maybe we're not addressing another medical issue for why you feel the way you feel, why you have lethargy, why you have fatigue, why you have body aches, maybe there's something else that needs to be explored, like depression.

Speaker 1: 33:47

And I think that's pointing to an interesting. You said they call themselves patient advocates and when we think about that, if we're ignoring what the real causes are, how is that advocating for the patient at all? Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 34:01

Absolutely, and I think it's really important to remember that the medical industry is imperfect.

Speaker 1: 34:09

Right.

Speaker 2: 34:10

You know, I mean the healthcare infrastructure is imperfect and that trickles down to impacting how physicians, MDs, are able to treat patients. But it's very often like healthcare infrastructure is often conflated with science and medicine and I think people forget that these organizations, these advocacy organizations or these people promoting supplements or unfounded treatments, like these things, are not covered by insurance because there's no evidence to support them. So you're paying tons of money. I mean, these companies are breaking in millions of dollars. Not only are they not doing anything to help people, but they're actively harming people and in doing so, which is scary.

Speaker 1: 34:55

Yeah, it's very scary and I know I brought up like the mustard girl to talk with you before we started recording. I have seen so many people comment either on her videos or even on one of my videos that was in response to it about how they have Lyme and they've been in treatment for years and years and I just like my heart breaks because I wonder what harm is being done and what help they actually need that they're not getting.

Speaker 2: 35:21

Yeah, absolutely, and it's you know it's really hard because you know you try to walk this balance about like being assertive with the information that you're sharing, to try and address these, because you know the line misinformation has been going on for decades. It's really accelerated with social media and celebrities platforming it more and more, but it's not something new. It's, you know, decades and decades old and the evidence changed. If we had evidence that you know antibiotics weren't clearing infections, you know that would that would be updated in the infectious disease Society of America's clinical guidance. But you know we've done decades of research and the story hasn't changed.

Speaker 2: 36:04

But but these individuals who kind of propagate this, they, they basically try to erode trust and science. People don't believe these people who say they actually are doing research in Lyme disease because they're just like, they're just in on the conspiracy, they're just hiding and it's like why would we subject ourselves to the abuse and the vitriol of trying to address this? Because, like these organizations, they have sued the American Lyme disease Foundation and my board members routinely because we we are not profit, we don't, we don't make a profit, like we have enough money in our bank accounts to keep the website going. We do this volunteer. But these organizations, like they fundraise a ton, they make tons of money, so they have legal resources. You know so. So why would we subject ourselves to legal challenges? I mean doxing, you know violent, you know hate mail.

Speaker 2: 37:03

I don't want to subject myself to that, but I feel an obligation because this is doing harm to people. They're not getting treated for real medical issues. I want them to get treated for real medical issues and I also want them to stop believing or being afraid to go outside, because it's not that scary to go outside. There's a lot of things you can do to, like I said, I've never gotten Lyme disease. I've been bitten by probably 100 ticks in my life. I used to collect ticks for experiments, literally intentionally dragging sheets through tall grass to grab ticks and use them for experiments, which means they're also climbing on my body. And because of all of those things that you can do to prevent Lyme disease, I have never gotten Lyme disease, which really underscores how difficult it really is to kind of get Lyme disease. And the likelihood that the one to 5% of tick bites that result in Lyme disease are so heavily concentrated among these celebrities is very, very suspicious.

Speaker 1: 38:01

Yes, and I think you made such a fantastic point and I was laughing because I just am thinking of all of the trolls. I'm sure you guys get this on social media that are like, oh, you guys are just a part of. For me it's like I'm a big part of big food or I'm a part of you guys probably get big pharma, whatever it is. And you just kind of have to laugh at one point because it's like do you really think that we like? What about big supplement? What about big? What about big natural path? What?

Speaker 2: 38:28

about big wellness industry. I mean look at when, if Poucher, she makes billions of dollars.

Speaker 1: 38:34

Don't even get me started.

Speaker 2: 38:36

And you know, and they're like, and these, you know, on top of it, these treatments for chronic Lyme, you're taking them for months, right? So every month it's thousands more dollars, and thousands more dollars, and thousands more dollars. And there've been Lyme literate clinicians that have had their licenses revoked. They've, you know. They've been shown to do real harms. You know this one, there's very notorious ones who have led to the deaths of people because of these harmful treatments. You know why are we not talking about those? You know why are we?

Speaker 2: 39:06

It's just a very interesting case of cognitive dissonance and you know I hate that. There are these people who are like. You know, these symptoms resonate with me. I must have chronic Lyme, and I think that underscores issues with social media, to begin with, and self diagnosis. But with Lyme in particular, it's legitimized because you can go to CVS and buy a urine test for Lyme, which is completely fraudulent, and it will give you a false positive. And then you're like well, I have Lyme and in reality you don't, and now you're neglecting treatment for something else that you very likely maybe suffering with.

Speaker 1: 39:39

Yeah, yeah, but we just love hearing from people how wrong we are, which is why we decide to talk about it. It's so much fun for us. Yes, yeah, yeah. You bring amazing points into this conversation, and so, if we're kind of circling back to that overarching question of is altering your diet really necessary for Lyme disease, so far, what we know is okay. The chances of having Lyme are so slim because only, as you say, is 1 to 5% of ticks 1 to 5% of ticks.

Speaker 2: 40:11

Bites of the species actually result in infection. And if you collected ticks all over the place and surveilled them for the presence of that particular bacteria. Depending on where you live, it's between 10 to 30% of ticks even would have the bacteria in them, and of course they have to bite you and feed on you for a certain period of time, and then your immune system has to not notice it for long enough for the bacteria to survive the trip from the tick into your body. And so, yeah, many, many layers.

Speaker 1: 40:45

The likelihood is very low, so low, and another way to put that is that only about 500,000 people are supposed to have this per year and in the span, or in the context of our entire country, that's about 0.001%. And even that is overestimated because we think there's a lot of antibiotics that aren't needing to be prescribed due to false positives. So getting Lyme in the first place, contracting it, suffering from it, having symptoms, even of it, is very rare, and having these symptoms of inflammation is even rare.

Speaker 2: 41:22

Yes, the Lyme arthritis, you know. Again I would say that's you know, of the disseminated presentations, that's the most common, more common than like, a facial drooping situation or a heart complication, and you know that sounds scary for sure. But even that, the Lyme arthritis really only occurs in about 10% of successful infections when they've been left untreated. So again, more layers there.

Speaker 1: 41:48

Yeah, okay, all very good to know. We also know that it's curable with an antibiotic. A quick round of antibiotics, yeah, and these antibiotics are.

Speaker 2: 41:58

There's multiple options, so if you do have allergies to certain antibiotics, there's other ones you can take. They're very effective at killing these bacteria, the Borrelia redoriferi and they are very well tolerated by people. So, yeah, you don't need to take any of the other long term unproven, disproven, potentially harmful. You don't need to remove your dental amalgam. You don't need to take colloidal silver. You don't need to change your diet. Changing your diet is not going to help you with your symptoms of Lyme disease, even if you have an active infection, just like it really isn't going to help for if you have stripped throat or another type of bacterial infection.

Speaker 1: 42:43

Yeah, so good. So there we have it. I mean, when we're looking at dietary involvement with Lyme disease, there's none right. There's no factor of diet with the origination of Lyme disease, no influence of diet on the symptoms of Lyme disease. No, it's all curable by antibiotic. So We've got our answer, I think, to our question here. Is it necessary to alter your diet for Lyme disease?

Speaker 1: 43:10

Absolutely not and absolutely not the capper to this or the. The cherry on top is that I Tried to find if there was any research at all on and you already know the answer, this, I'm sure on changing your diet, dietary interventions for Lyme disease, and there was a grand total of zero studies. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, even if it was possible, there's no research to show us that it's necessary. We only have the Hypothesis and the. Well, it's reasonable to think that Maybe changing your diet to be a little more anti-inflammatory which is a whole topic on its own Potentially help with that's. All we have is just the best guesses of people who are quote-unquote Lyme literate and Are known for providing other unnecessary interventions.

Speaker 2: 44:08

So usually they're gonna be recommending some named dietary protocol that they're selling alongside some dietary supplements that they're also selling, and We've talked at length about the lack of regulation and efficacy data on supplements. But again, you know they're. They're very often promoting this in order to make money off of misleading people, and my logic is I mean everything in moderation. You know you want to balance and diverse diet, no matter whether you're sick or healthy. Lots of fiber, lots of produce. Those things are very nutrient dense. They have all the macromolecules you need.

Speaker 2: 44:44

You want your immune system to be functioning well and those are the things that you know get your immune system functioning well or ensure they're functioning. But it's not anything that's gonna like boost it or, you know, improve it or make it more targeted to to Addressing Lyme disease. And for me personally, like if I'm feeling crummy because I'm sick, you know, if you want a bowl of ice cream because you feel crummy and that's comforting to you, go for it. It's not gonna be hurting your Lyme disease as long as you're taking your antibiotics. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 45:14

I love that. That's like the takeaway moment.

Speaker 2: 45:17

You know, like if I have a fever and my joints ache and I feel fatigued I mean, whether it's Lyme or the flu or govid, like if I want a big bowl of ice cream because that's gonna make my Psyche feel better, I'm having a big bowl of important mind-body connection, man, something there.

Speaker 1: 45:36

Well, any other thoughts that you want to share on this topic?

Speaker 2: 45:39

Oh, I think you know I get it. I get that it's frustrating when you aren't feeling great and the world of social media is rife with misinformation and filled with people claiming to be experts. But just like with all Nutrition misinformation topics, before you bite into something, just take a beat, think about whether it even makes sense in the first place. Try to seek out credible Sources to cross reference that information, and by credible I don't mean like another tick tock or I mean like a, a medical or scientific authority Organization, etc. Simply doing a search online is not doing your research. Even if you find something on PubMed, that's just a repository. It doesn't mean that the papers there are all good.

Speaker 2: 46:33

So, yeah, it's very. I get it. It's very difficult to discern facts from fiction, but a good rule of thumb is everyone has expertise in different things, and a celebrity is probably not an expert in infectious diseases or Nutrition sciences, so so I would recommend seeking out credible experts in whatever topic you you happen to want information on.

Speaker 1: 46:56

I love that. So here we have it. Is altering your diet for lung disease necessary? No, why? Because number one, context is important. One may think they have Lyme just from a false diagnosis, a false positive. So if you don't even have Lyme to begin with, changing your diet is really unnecessary, if that even made sense, which it doesn't, because the infection of Lyme is completely Unrelated to diet. It's contracted from a tick to begin with, yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:26

Lyme, as long as it's properly diagnosed, can be treated by antibiotics, thereby reading the symptoms completely at some point, even though some people might have them for a little bit longer. Yeah, and there's no studies proving that a dietary pattern for Lyme Makes any sense, including an anti-inflammatory diet. Which Is it? Don't think so. I'm gonna say that every time. No, I love it.

Speaker 2: 47:50

I love it you such such a good, concise summary of it all. And you know, I know, I know you talk about this at length, but you know, all of these rigid dietary things, they just, you know, are psychologically and potentially physically harmful. They often promote disordered eating. They can make you malnourished. You know, again, you know, everything in moderation. You need certain nutrients to be healthy and fuel your immune system. But again, your, your diet is not going to be curing or eliminating infection.

Speaker 1: 48:20

Yeah, so good, so good. Thank you so much for your time, dr Love. This was awesome having me.

Speaker 2: 48:26

This was so fun. You know, I mean, the world of food science and nutrition science is is a messy and complex one, and so we need more people like you getting out there and Dispelling the misconceptions.

Speaker 1: 48:41

Oh, right, back at you. Anybody that is interested in just misinformation, combating the misinformation period, definitely look up unbiased science and if you like, podcasts which I'm guessing you do if you're listening to this- one check out their podcast. It's incredible and you cover a lot of hot topics. And, yeah, is there anything else that you think the listeners Could be pointed to that would be helpful for them?

Speaker 2: 49:04

Yeah, so I mean, if you're interested in Lyme disease specifically, you can check out the American Lyme disease foundation website. It's um wwwaldfcom. And then, of course, unbiased science. We do have a searchable database on our website, um. You can find that through our social media handle, which is at unbiased Psi pod I highly recommend the follow-through that was.

Speaker 1: 49:26

You guys have a lot of really good infographics about Lyme disease.

Speaker 2: 49:29

Yes, I, um, I'm working on some new ones and I'm I actually just started an instagram for ALDF too, although it's a lot managing that many social media pages, so yeah, yeah, that's a lot.

Speaker 1: 49:42

I have one and I even hire out too, much so.

Speaker 2: 49:46

Someday, someday yeah.

Speaker 1: 49:48

Yeah, well, thank you so much for your time and this was fantastic. I appreciate you.

Speaker 2: 49:53

Thanks. Thanks so much, michelle, really enjoyed our chat.