"Insights into Lyme Disease Treatment: 13 Lyme-Literate Health Care Practitioners Share Their Healing Strategies," by Connie Strasheim, is now available for free reading on-line.

Here’s an excerpt from my review when the book was published in 2009:

Each chapter functions like the comprehensive preliminary interview you’d like to have with any doctor before you commit to becoming his or her patient. Asking questions like: What’s your background? What’s your Lyme treatment philosophy? What antibiotics (if any) can I expect you to use—and what alternative medical treatments (if any)? What do you do if treatment doesn’t seem to be working?

The doctors include: Steven J. Harris, MD (Redwood City, CA); Steven Bock, MD (Rhinebeck, NY); Susan Marra, MS, ND (Seattle, WA); Ginger Savely, DNP (San Francisco, CA); W. Lee Cowden, MD (Panama City, Panama); Ingo D.E. Woitzel, MD (Pforzheim, Germany); Ronald Whitmont, MD (Rhinebeck, NY); Deborah Metzger, Ph.D., MD (Los Altos, CA); Peter J Muran, MD, MBA (San Luis Obispo, CA); Nicola McFadzean, ND (San Diego, CA); Marlene Kunold, HCP (Hamburg, Germany); E. Hesse-Sheehan, DC, CCN (Kirkland, WA); Jeffrey Morrison, MD (New York City, NY).

The 13 practitioners selected for this book come at it from a wide span of medical viewpoints: allopathic, naturopathic, chiropractic, homeopathic and energy medicine. While most include at least some antibiotics in their treatment regimens, several use none at all. All thirteen incorporate some form of alternative medicine—some to a much greater extent than others.

Each doctor walks you through his or her approach to treating chronic Lyme—such as drugs, supplements, probiotics, and immune system issues. There are discussions about detoxification, healing the gut, the role of hormones. Lifestyle recommendations focus on diet, exercise, financial considerations and how friends and family can affect treatment outcomes. There are explanations of lesser-known treatments such as the Bionic 880 (a photon therapy device pioneered by Dr. Woitzel in Germany.)

Although commonalities exist among the doctors, each chapter presents a highly individualized approach. The book doesn’t single out any one of them as giving the final word in treatment. Instead, it portrays each one as offering important pieces to the complex puzzle of treating chronic Lyme disease.

Choosing the right doctor for you is one of the most important decisions a Lyme patient must make. True to its name, this book offers the reader valuable insight into different methods for treating chronic Lyme and suggests the questions you should be asking about your own care. Even if you never have an opportunity to be treated by the healers in this book, you can benefit from their wisdom and experience.

Click here to read the book on-line.

TOUCHED BY LYME is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, LymeDisease.org’s VP for Education and Outreach. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org.