A recent article published in Harvard Magazine discusses an extensive study done by top researchers into the genetic diversity of Borellia burdorferi, the bacteria which causes Lyme Disease. The researchers expected that study, like similar studies before it, to take about six months. It took closer to six years, revealing a great deal about this convoluted and complicated pathogen.

The findings of this research go a long way toward explaining why some people get seriously ill, some cannot ever clear the pathogen, and some areas of the world are higher in chronic and complicated cases.

Says key researcher Jacob Lemieux, “It turned out that the genetic diversity of Lyme disease is orders of magnitude harder to handle than any other pathogen.”

The facts about the genetic nature of Borrelia may also, in part, explain why the medical community, from the top down, has been in denial about Lyme for decades. They are trying to pin down a disease that can manifest in a myriad of ways, can mimic dozens of other diseases, and may look completely different from one person to the next. Instead of accepting the fact that all of a certain patient’s apparently disconnected symptoms may indeed have one cause, the tendency is to compartmentalize and treat the symptoms rather than the disease.

When I first began to suspect that my own “apparently disconnected” problems might trace back to that tick bite, I dove into the research rabbit hole. I found dozens and dozens of studies, dating from the current day to findings that were ten, twenty, thirty years old. I tried to present this information to my doctor to be told, “Yes, but there’s a lot of bad research out there.”

The studies I had in hand were from Harvard, Tulane, John’s Hopkins, University of Toronto…. There wasn’t a single study in my collection done by any organization that was doing “bad research.” It all came from the most highly respected people in the field.

Since then, a lot of that research has been made more visible, and new studies are being done that confirm what Chronic Lyme sufferers have been trying to tell our doctors for two generations.

We’re not crazy. We’re sick.

Strangely enough, we Lyme victims, as well as those who struggle with diseases like Epstein Barr virus, ME/CFS, and more, owe a lot of our thanks to COVID-19. It was the stark reality of “Long COVID” that began to open the mainstream medical community’s eyes to chronic disease of infectious origin.

And here, from Harvard, is yet another groundbreaking study that reveals some shocking (though not really surprising to those of us who deal with them every day) truths.

Borrelia burdorferi is resilient, diverse, and downright intelligent (in a genetic sense).

And all of the various complaints doctors hear from their “Lyme Loony” patients are real.

Article Link: Deciphering Lyme Disease by Jonathan Shaw