Most cases of acute Bb infections are treated by conventional allopathic medicine with antibiotics. Antibiotics can suppress many patients’ symptoms, but cannot completely eradicate the infectious agent, causing many cases to become chronic. Chronic LD is an extremely complex and recurrent illness that is still poorly understood. Its symptoms may include fatigue, fibromyalgia, CNS symptoms, and malaise. It is a disease involving damage to multiple body systems, including arthritis, neurological abnormalities such as aseptic meningitis and Bell’s Palsy, as well as cardiac conduction abnormalities.

The results of conventional treatment also vary widely. Antibiotics can often help ease the joint pain and the brain problems, but not always. “ Relapses following use of potent antibiotics and detection of the Lyme organism or its DNA following treatment likewise demonstrates an inability  to completely eradicate the pathogen and permanently halt the pathologic process with current methods of treatment in some patients. This is a problematic situation because intensive antibiotic treatment is costly, is inconvenient, and carries associated risk for the patient. Such antibiotic usage may foster the emergence of strains of other types of bacteria resistant to the antibiotics employed and thus has public health implications. For some patients however, this may be the only presently available alternative to progressive neurologic deterioration. In view of this dilemma , the international biomedical research community must give high priority to the development of improved and /or alternate methods of treatment that can definitively cure persisting Bb infections responsible for neurologic and other manifestations of chronic Lyme disease.” (Kenneth B. Liegner et al., Lyme disease and the Clinical Spectrum of Antibiotic Responsive Chronic Meningoencephalomyelitides, Proceedings of Lyme & Other Tick-borne Disease: A 21^st Century View, Nov 10,2001, p.72)

What is the cause of this dilemma? Why is conventional allopathic medicine unable to cure this seemingly simple bacteria infection? I think that the fundamental difficulty is in western medicine’s philosophy and way of thinking. It looks at an infectious disease, such as LD, only as a pathogen. Therefore its treatment is only antibiotics. The human body’s role in this complicated disease is overlooked. In reality, an infectious disease consists of two sides, the invading pathogen and the body’s reaction to the invasion. To only use anti-pathogen treatment is insufficient; adjusting the body’s reaction to the invasion of the pathogen is a more important aspect. To only rely on antibiotics to eradicate the bacteria without enhancing the body’s immunity and repairing the damaged tissue is an incomplete strategy of treatment. Therefore the conventional allopathic medical approach has only partial efficacy. The eventual eradication of the pathogens is the role of the body; antibiotics can only be a help to the body in accomplishing this task.