NEWS: Watch Dr. Phil Lyme episode here
The Dr. Phil show included a segment about Lyme on April 13.
Here is the Dr. Phil Lyme episode (broken into 3 parts for YouTube), followed by additional footage of Dr. Phil taken after the show.
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Dr. Phil – Deadly Consequences (Video 1 of 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-SqunhDL_p4
Dr. Phil – Deadly Consequences (Video 2 of 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6qCmjLylxjQ
Dr. Phil – Deadly Consequences (Video 3 of 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KXpXWfM65mo
Post show footage. Hear what Dr. Phil has to say about the CDC & the insurance industry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lClS8IEkvok
What do you think of the show? Share your response below. We’ll be forwarded all comments to Dr. Phil.
That doctor A needs some education.
nice show , I have two friends who have this it is so real . thanks for doing this show . people need to be informed.
Great job! I am so happy that the Dr. Phil show had the courage to speak up about this life destroying disease! For 9 years I have been sick with LYme, and only last year was I diagnosed. I was told by so many doctors that it was all in my head, meanwhile I was suffering. THANK YOU DR. PHIL!
I do not watch Dr. Phil a whole lot but when I heard that he was covering Lyme, I had to watch. I am so, so grateful that he decided to look into this and that it will get so much recognition because of it. I hope that he will continue to learn more and maybe feature it on his show again sometime. Thank you, Dr. Phil!!
Thank you for doing this important show about Lyme Disease.
My daughter has Lyme; it took twenty years (and at least $20,000) to get a correct diagnosis and treatment for her.
Politics, lack of proper diagnostic guidelines, and lack of physician education about this epidemic have cost many thousands of people quality of life, frustration with insurance carriers and the medical profession, and thousands of dollars in (out-of-pocket) care.
I had a lyme rash in 1972 but the docs treated me for ringworm and a spider bite. I was very sick with flulike symptoms,a stiff neck and very tired. In may after a seizure lasting 2 hours my neurologist treated me for lyme. Now,he is not allowed to treat for lyme and is closing his office. i have been off of the antibiotics for 2 months now and have been in bed all week so fatigued. ThNKS dR. pHIL FOR HELPING TO GET THE WORD OUT. i HOPE YOU DO ANOTHER SHOW TO LET PEOPLE KNOW WHY THOSE OF US WITH CHRONIC LYME CAN NOT GET THE TREATMENT WE NEED.
I am glad that Dr. Phil called more attention to the issue of chronic Lyme disease, and I think the ladies interviewed did a fine job. At the same time, I am unhappy with the emphasis on the possibility of patients having hypochondria or faking their illness to get attention, and wrote extensively about this in my blog:
http://campother.blogspot.com/2012/04/commentary-on-dr-phil-lyme-disease-and.html
One thing I would like to see the media do in general is start interviewing more men with chronic Lyme disease. Men suffer with this condition too and are not as visible in the media as women are. Jordan Fisher Smith and Daryl Hall are great guys and I appreciate hearing from them, but I’d like to see some less famous guys like some friends of mine who have Lyme and have not been able to work for years.
Thank you for doing this show. My daughters have gestational lyme (something you didn’t have time to talk about, that supposedly does not exist). Perhaps you could do a followup segment about the IDSA docs who testify for the insurance agencies. My family of four with Lyme have lost everything and live in my parents’ basement and still owe $50K in medical bills with treatment still incomplete. Insurance pays virtually nothing. My husband and I were rising attorneys whose lives stopped cold when the symptoms incapacitated the four of us. We would live in a homeless shelter without treatment if not for the generosity of my parents and some serious miracles and good guys (our LLMD included).
This should not be happening in the US and the rest of the world looks to us for guidance.
This was a wonderful show. I have chronic Lyme and the information presented was very validating of my experience. Thank you for helping to get the word out. Until this disease is recognized by the mainstream, many will go untreated. Thank you again.
Thank you for this show. The information presented was very validating of my experience with chronic Lyme Disease. Until mainstream medicine acknowledges this disease, many will go untreated and suffer needlessly. Thanks again.
Thank you for your attention to the Lyme Disease crisis. I have been involved in Lyme Disease/Tick-borne illness education and awareness for about 13 years. Unfortunately, not much has changed in these years. We are grateful that you scratched the surface with your Lyme Disease episode. I have heard hundreds of similar stories like the ones shared. Please consider future episodes exploring the political -scientific battle in the sphere of medicine regarding Lyme and TBI where it doesn’t belong. Please feel free to contact me for more information. Thank you again. Janice
I suffered from periodic large joint pain, some degree of Bell’s palsy and memory loss for more than 10 years before a Type III AV block and the simultaneous onset of bilateral tinnitus almost killed me. Living in the countryside I had a number of tick bites over time and some erythema migrans but never connected the symptoms to Lyme. A comment from a cardiologist friend of my sister finally got me to exit the IDSA controlled main stream of practitioners and find a Lyme literate doctor.
That was almost 10 years ago. Three years of antibiotic treatment seems to have permanently eliminated the large joint pain attacks and my pacemaker happily takes care of making my left ventricle contact in proper synchronization with the atrial pulse.
If not Lyme then what is causing this epidemic? An AV block is not in your mind!
I found a tick on me in Spring of 2001, removed it, and became violently ill with a bullseye rash, flu like symotoms that would not resolve, blurry vision, stabbing headaches continually, and my back needing to realigned by a chiropracter constantly. That was just the beginning. I went to the county hospital and asked if it could be Lyme disease and was repeatedly told no. They gave me a skin cream and sent me home. My sixth visit was to the ER with bells palsy and I got a test which was positive. Amoxicilan 1000mg for 30 days did not cure it and I was not told it could return. I have been suffering undenialable long term lyme symptoms ever since. Herbs are the only help I’ve found and they are not enough. No income, no help, no hope.
I tried 4 years ago to interest Dr. Phil’s producers in doing a show on Lyme. I happened to be working a few days with Dr. Phil (I do teleprompter), and it was pretty easy to hand off a dossier re: Lyme to a mildly-interested producer. It did not get traction. I’m glad that it finally made it, and SO sorry that it had to be one of his producers’ suffering that was the catalyst. The young model… she made me cry– remembering my daughter’s partial seizures just like hers. This is real, people. There is nothing worse as a parent than to not be able to keep your child out of pain and to have the people that are supposed to be helping tell you that she’s “making it up.” It’s still the Dark Ages about Lyme, needlessly ruining lives.
As a social worker I have some familiarity with hysteria and hypochondria. None of the scores of chronic Lyme sufferers I have met and known has the slightest trace of mental illness. While you may have felt the justification of asking about “faking it” I find the question insulting.
A question I would like to see answered is why does IDSA defend its restrictive, outdated “treatment” guidelines so fiercely, so vociferously, so anti-competitively. And why do they attack alternative therapies and guidelines, such as those outlined by ILADS? It’s as if IDSA feels that they, and only they, have the truth, and anyone else with alternate realities have to be denigrated, maligned and, in some cases, driven from the medical field.
Syphilis, a similar spirochete to the Lyme spirochete, has long been shown to exist after lengthy antibiotic treatment, and to spontaneously reappear years after successful treatment. These unlucky patients unfortunately were ignored and dismissed, much as these so-called experts dismiss “Lymies” today.
Dig deeper, Dr. Phil, and find out how IDSA’s “experts” came to, and defend, their decades-old guidelines, how money and reputation influence their rigid, backward rules, and how they studiously ignore a majority of recent and contradicting studies.
I appreciate very much your paying attention to this emerging epidemic and hope that you will continue to follow up on a very good start at illuminating the very real tragedies of chronic Lyme.
Thanks for covering this, Dr. Phil. I have had active Lyme for ten years. My docs actually believe I was infected in 1971 when I had a land surveyor’s job in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Ten years ago I became very ill and have not improved much in the following ten years. My blog address, above, tells the whole story, with updates. My neurological Lyme has been very debilitating. I was a well-known book author (with 47 titles in print – you can check Amazon) until Lyme struck ten years ago. However, after that I could no longer type and could not produce books as a result. To try to reinvent myself, I went back to school at age 50 and earned a masters degree in psychotherapy. By the time I graduated, I could no long sit in a chair for 50 minutes at a time, which is how long a therapy session is. Doctors then said I had developed Parkinson’s disease, or Parkinsonism due to Lyme disease. I continue treatment with IV and oral antibiotics as well as Parkinson’s drugs. My serology shows ongoing infection by viral and bacterial microbes, including Borellia, HHV6, Ehrlichea, EBV, and protomyxzoa.
I have spent at least $100,000 out of pocket, even though I have a Blue Shield plan that costs me $850 per month in premiums. Blue Shield of CA will not pay for my Lyme doctor visits, nor for most of my medications (especially IV antibiotics). I am currently unable to work, have no income except SSDI (which I just received this year and pays $1800 per month). That’s about enough to pay my mortgage. All my medical, insurance, property taxes, food, and home maintenance have to be borrowed each month. I am single and have no other income.
Dr. Phil, you keep saying that some people say “Lyme disease doesn’t exist.” That is incorrect. Actually, some argue that CHRONIC Lyme doesn’t exist. They call it Post-Lyme-disease Syndrome, and argue that there is no evidence that continuation of antibiotics after 28 days is effective. They suggest palliative care, treating the symptoms: antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, MS drugs (steroids), pain meds, etc. I personally know people who were cured of chronic late-stage Lyme by taking as much as five years of daily IV Rocephin. LLMD’s have hundreds of cases to verify this claim. Ask the top LLMDs such as Stricker, Burrascano, Horowitz, Green, or Harris (and there are many others), and they will attest to this.
Thanks again for running this segment. I hope you will do a followup, as people really do need to know that this is a hidden epidemic and folks do need to know how to protect themselves from infection, and how to treat it if they do become infected.
You go Brooke. We are so lucky to have you in SD.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this program segment. I sincerely hope you will follow up with a complete, in-depth show on this devastating disease. Education about the disease, the epidemic growth of it and the iron grip the health insurance industry has on the denial of long term treatment is what it will take to motivate the CDC and the health industry to recognize CHRONIC Lyme Disease as the insidious epidemic it is.
THANK YOU DR PHIL!!! We need a stud like you bringing awareness and going to bat for us sick lymies! XOXOXOOX
What else can we do to end this suffering?
Thank you thank you thank you for doing this show. My best friend of ten years got diagnosed with Lyme Disease two years ago. She went from a bright, energetic, funny, full of life person to a person who slept 16 hours a day.
Her hands and feet were going numb.
She threw everything up that she ate.
She couldn’t finish a sentence because she would forget what she was talking about.
Her skin changed from being pink and healthy to grey and waxy.
A simple walk around the block was too much for her joints and muscles.
You could see it in her eyes that her brain was cloudy and she couldn’t understand basic questions.
I really thought she was going to die. I was slowly watching her waste away.
BUT she has been on antibiotic for TWO years now and, happy to say, she’s BACK!!! 🙂
Thank you thank you thank you for bringing awareness to this horrible disease. We need more people like you who have the courage to do so.
My son, age 51 has suffered from Lyme for more than ten years. He is in constant pain, memory loss, no adrenal function and many other issues. Mentally he is beginning to lose hope. His wonderful doctor has been notified she can no longer treat him with long term antibiotics or she will lose her license. His insurance company refuses to pay for the meds, even though they paid to implant the catheter to infuse them! He has been unable to work for years, his disability income is $1,000. and his meds are almost $2,000. Ignoring this disease is causing suffering and financial ruin to so many families! It is a much worse diagnosis than cancer!
THANK YOU DR. PHIL!!!!!
Thanks Dr. Phil for doing this. Many. many are suffering needlessly..And the segment where you started to discuss the insurance issues was most important. It’s one of the reasons why this disease is ruining the lives of so many.
How do I begin? I would rather have cancer, because I know I go through treatment, and I am either successful or I die. With this, there is not a treatment. The answer lies somewhere between the two extremes of the controversy. This bacteria is killing me very slowly, and the pain cannot be described. When my husband asks, “Where does it hurt?”, I don’t know how to answer him. My best answer is, sometimes, you cannot feel what the other person feels until you experience it.
Some people wish harm on the doctors who believe there is a better way than antibiotics, and I do not wish harm on those doctors. I do not even wish for them to get this sick. I wish this illness for no one.
There is a key element missing, and it is what opens up the immune system to allow the spirochete to take over. Because this spirochete is slow growing, a healthy immune system should be able to knock it out with the help of antibiotics. Somewhere, the immune system is faulty, and it is not autoimmune. It is more of a vitamin deficiency, or the immune systems was blunted with steroids, and this allowed the bacteria to grow.
I don’t know.
Here is a good Texan way to look at the two controversies; One one side, someone is bringing a knife to a gun fight. On the other side, someone is bringing a cannon to a gun fight. Of course, a gun trumps a knife. A cannon? How many times do you have to fire the cannon to hit the target and kill it? Especially if it is a moving target. There is a way, undiscovered as of yet, to take the gun away from the target and kill the target. To me, we should quit trying to prove who is right, and start looking at the bio-film, and how this bacteria is so smart, it can create the bio-film with genetic encoding, and no, it is not molecular mimicry. I have read far too many journals. I just know we are approaching this all wrong. And, supposedly, there is a lizard who can completely kill this spirochete. How? I use to pull the tails off of lizards just to watch them grow back. No, I did not wet the bed or start fires when I was young. I always wondered why humans could not grow back our extremities. How did this particular lizard develop the immunity? I am not a doctor or even a technician. I want for us to get past the controversy and find the true solution.
I have been diagnosed with Masters Disease, Dr Phil thank you for doing this show it is important to get the word out. I pray that you do more exposing the criminal behavor of CDC and IDSA. It would also be wonderful if you could talk to some of the other talk show producers to see if they could get the word out also. The more exposure the better. There are so many of us that are suffering at great expense physically, emotionally and financially. Thank you very much for your show on this matter.
The Dr. Phil show was the best “Lyme show” so far that I know of because it was human and it alerted viewers about Lyme. It was an accurate slice of Lyme life and that’s very rare on TV or in the press.
In the post show footage he actually mentioned the phrase, “Vested interest.” He could do ten shows just on that concerning the devastation of Lyme mentally, emotionally, physically, financially of children and adults. In addition, that begs the question viewers will wonder about: Is this vested interest true for my disease, too?
It must be shown on another show that with chronic Lyme, a child’s development is affected in every way.
In addition, on yet another show, can he legally show what happens to the typical patient in a doctor’s office as they go from doc … to doc … to doc … to doc … asking, “What’s wrong with me? I can hardly work … take care of my kids … I can hardly use my brain to think. What will become of us?”
For example, his video cam would easily see: The doc making light of a patient’s very long typed list of signs and symptoms; the doctor insinuating that the patient is literally nuts (or has depression) to think they have chronic Lyme (“It’s all in your head”;) The doc standing up and walking out of the room without a word to get rid of a patient.
Can Dr. Phil also document drug salespeople at the doctors door?
Whatever show host eventually does this will be immediately more famous!
Does he know about active military people with Lyme … even when they were in Afghanistan?
my sister in law has lyme and suffers terribly after years of trying to get treatment. she has been insulted and passed around from doc to doc until this last year when she found one who was treating another member of her church. one of her joints (ankle) is literally destroyed from the lack of treatment. She has no recourse!
A woman I know is fighting daily for her life because there is currently no definitive test to accurately determine what is going on with her. Mainstream doctor disagree, some diagnosing MS, others Parkinsonism, or both. A Lyme-literate MD is convinced that this woman has Lyme disease despite the inconclusive test results, and is treating her with antibiotics, taken by mouth because she cannot afford IV treatment. According to the LLMD, taking the meds orally is not aggressive enough treatment, and that is why this woman’s symptoms remain the same or are getting worse.
The medical world needs to provide real answers for the people who are suffering with no sign of hope or relief. Instead of standing on one side of the Chronic Lyme disease controversy, these doctors and researchers should be pooling their efforts in order to come up with the truth about Lyme disease, so that those suffering can get the treatment they need.
When there is controversy, it means that neither side can definitively prove their case. It doesn’t matter who is right. What matters is to find the truth, so that effective treatment can be provided, and covered by insurance.
My column at Examiner.com is dedicated to helping spread the word about these devastating symptoms that many are calling chronic Lyme disease. Let’s work together to find the answers. Please visit my column at http://www.examiner.com/lyme-disease-in-national/phyllis-pascazio and add your comments. You are welcome and encouraged to give voice to your opinion, no matter which side of the line you currently stand on.
Wow, I have been so sick for almost two years and so many of my symptoms are explained by chronic Lymes disease. The severe migraines and headaches, pain, fatigue, weight loss, fainting, seizures, numbness, mental confusion.
I know I was bit by ticks a few times growing up. I remember being scared and pulling them out of my body then worrying later if I had left their heads in like my parents had warned. (grew up in the foothills of the mountains where deer where prevailant) I haven’t seen a tick bite on me in probably 18 years though so could this be? I have a neurologist who is treating me at this time who has gone as far as yelling at me trying to say i’m lying and faking everything. I was working two jobs, loving life when this all hit me like a truck.
Some days I can’t get out of bed. This is the last thing I would fake. I am 33 and have never had any mental illness history not even a day of depression. My life was thriving. I have a beautiful 5 year old to live for, to take care of. Because my 2 jobs let me go for not being able to come back to work once disability was over I am on Medi-cal goverment insurance and it is HORENDOUS. Talk about being treated poorly. I had seizures and was in the hospital for 4 nights and never saw a neurologist. They botched my spinal tap giving me a spinal headache as well just saying that happens sometimes when someone is thin when i screamed in pain from them hitting something wrong during it.
I am thankful for Dr. Phil for putting this show on. A lady at my Mom’s work mentioned Lymes disease to her as a possible thing for me to look in to but this show gave me hope of a diagnosis. Maybe someday I will feel well again!
Hi Thomas, there’s hope & you’re not alone. ILADS can pointyou in the direction of a good LLMD. http://www.ilads.org
Thank you to Dr. Phil and his team for beginning to bring light to this national tragedy, and to the courageous patients who shared their stories.
I am horrified that this blatent lack of humanity and care by the majority of mainstream medical practitioners continues with little hope for positive change in this country. Unfortunately this scenario is not new, nor is it surprising. I have known several people who struggle with the physical, financial, and political ramifications of Lyme Disease, and each with a similar story of a vibrant, healthy life struck down with little or no help available. The story revealed on Dr. Phil is an important one, and one that has many more elements that need to be uncovered, and I hope which Dr. Phil or others will tackle in its entirety. However, there is a much larger, pervasive, and insidious problem at work here of which the Lyme Disease story is only a fragment. There is not enough space here to relay my own struggle to obtain adequate health care, or the battle that my mother waged and thousands like here wage daily in their futile attempt to get access to modern treatment. Those with the resources and time must go out of the country, where many successful treatments are available, and because the medical establishment in the U.S. brands them “quackery” because it threatens the financial machinery that keeps everyone fat and happy. Our medical system is so profoundly broken that countless people are suffering and dying unneccessarily. At its root is a fundamental detachment from patients as real people with real lives. It is about greed and preserving one’s ego at all costs – even at the cost of the patients well-being or their very life. It is about a system of training physicians that is antiquated, and which has not bothered to get up to speed with what the general population is turning to in startling numbers – including integrative, alternative, and functional medicine, and cutting-edge treatment where mainstream medicine fails – and it fails with alarming frequency. It is about politics and the FDA, CDC, and other regulatory organizations and the toxic relationship to pharmaceutical companies and the American Medical Association. No, it is not about finances, though the critics will fall upon this easy argument. As one of many examples, when traditional chemotherapy and radiation treatment is successful (remission of disease, not even a cure) in something between 1-3% of cases for the majority of cancers, and yet the standard of care for cancer patients in America is chemotherapy; where many hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient are spent with no real hope for success, this is about greed. The money is there, it’s just not being used in ways that actually help the patient, but definitely line the pockets of hospitals, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies. Greed, ego, politics – who has the courage, the wisdom, the compassion and the persistence to take on the real story, and the whole story? I hope someone does, because our loved ones are suffering and dying unneccesarily, and because this shouldn’t happen in America.
Dr. Phil,
Thank you for the attention you gave Lyme Disease and those who suffer during your 2012 episode on this topic. Please consider doing another show. We need people to be educated, to understand how this disease is affecting so many individuals. People are suffering terribly, while those who don’t understand roll their eyes at them, refusing to treat them with dignity. It is heartbreaking. I believe you want to make a difference for good. Thank you for making a difference with so many who suffer with Lyme.
I’m sorry I was not able to view your segent on Lyme disease and other tick born infections. However, I was able to see the after show tape on this lyme site. As an RN for over 30 years and a consumer of healthcare at the hospital I worked in at the time my symptoms began I can relay this…you are right about the cut off of 30 days. I constantly battled with the infection disease MD that was unknowledgable on tick infections. Ironic people with the illness want to talk about it and warn others and the medical and insurances want to down play the seriousness of health effects from the tick born infections. Currently under tick literate MD care for Lyme, Bartonella, Babesia, and EBV. Prior active disease free full time RN. Thank everyone of you for making a huge contribution to the healthcare awareness of people.
After visit 24 hospitals from CA to Minnesota, with not 1 hospital doing a thing, the hospital here in my home town of truckee ca filed charge because I kept going 2 the emergency room. Seeking medical treatment turned into 3.5 months in jail a ndcdk-4627720142@job.craigslist.org a felony stalking charge. More and more people r getting this terrible disease and CDC, IDSA, and the medical community r pretending it doesn’t exist. Why? $ hospitals r making money, the courts, prisons systems, etc. Unless u have Lyme disease, u just can’t comprehend how bad it is. All these new diseases? It’s Lyme disease. If there really is a cure, it’s not being released
Thank God people are talking about Lyme. Diagnosed only 5 weeks ago with positive on bands #39 and #41 but only given the standard 28 days of oral antibiotic. Can’t afford Lyme treatment but trying the cheaper Herb Stephen Burher Protocol for as long as we can afford it. 5 weeks and hasn’t done ANYTHING to help yet. Lost ability to walk weeks ago and TERRIFIED. 67 years old and this is how my life ends?
Information sources: https://www.lymedisease.org/quick-lyme-intro/