I've recently started a new treatment protocol for chronic Lyme disease called Low Dose Immunotherapy (LDI).
The premise behind LDI is rather complicated and not all that well understood at this point but some people are having excellent results regardless. At lot of the success seems to depend on the skill of the practitioner though. Most people seem to have the best luck going straight to the one who has adapted this treatment, Dr Ty Vincent in Alaska. He does Skype consults (which are expensive at $500) but the treatment overall is one of the most affordable I've ever tried. His prices for the sublingual antigens (more on this later!) are very, very reasonable. Usually $100 for a shipment which can last up to 8 weeks, more or less, depending on response.
LDI is derived from Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization, developed in the UK by Dr Popper. He showed that when you mixed an antigen in with beta glucoronidase, an enzyme, it made the mixture immunologically active. Using minute amounts, he was able to train the immune system not to overreact to common antigens with a cytokine response that caused symptoms of many types of illness. Basically, he trained the immune system to tolerate the antigens the way a healthy person would respond instead of creating an overreactive sickness type of response.
The history is not all that important but basically the government regulators got involved and shut down EPA for no good reason. So it came to this country with another name, LDA, pioneered at that time by Dr Shrader. LDI is the next evolution of that treatment.
LDI can treat just about any condition that involves an over-active immune response. Some of those conditions include standard allergies like pollen, dogs, cats, etc, food allergies, Lyme disease and other bacterial infections, EBV and other viral infections, migraines, IBS/IBD, arthritis, fibromyalgia, cystitis, endometriosis...the list goes on and on.
In a nutshell, LDI creates an increased Treg response which shuts off the inappropriate response by your CD4/CD8/B cells to the antigen. The theory is that it restores your natural immune function so that your immune system acts correctly when in the presence of antigens, whether from self (autoimmune) or pathogen.
If this theory is true, it represents a MAJOR paradigm shift from the infection/pathogen model. People are concerned that LDI will turn off the immune response and let pathogens run amok, but that isn't how it works. The theory is that the body is responding as if pathogens are still there with an inappropriate immune response after the actual pathogen threat is gone. It's not turning off properly through the Treg response. LDI turns it off again.
When I took the
Neuroscience Advanced Cytokine profile and discovered my immune system was wildly overactive, it was a major turning point for me in my approach to treatment. Prior to that, it had been based on the stimulate and kill theory using antivirals/abx and immune stimulating herbs and meds. Now I'm trying to balance and tolerate instead and reduce inflammation.
It should be noted that this treatment is not for ACUTE Lyme; that needs antibiotics. This is for chronic Lyme (or other infections) when you have taken antibiotics for months or years and still have symptoms.
I'll include transcripts from a couple of interviews with Dr Ty for anyone who wants to learn more.
I have been working with Dr. ty Vincent for a few months. Am now starting to find my dose on the Lyme mix. Are there others out there since2016? I am hard pressed to find much of anything about experience, successes/failures. I would love to hear from any experience in LDI. Thanks
