Jesse Colin Young “got brain back” after Lyme treatment
The singer/songwriter/founding member of the band “The Youngbloods” talks about his experience with Lyme disease.
Anyone who was around during the late 1960s is sure to remember these words:
“Come on people now…Smile on your brother…Everybody get together…Try to love one another…Right now.”
Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods were not the first to record the song “Get Together,” but their version became a huge hit and helped propel the group to stardom. In 1972, the band broke up, and Young continued on with a successful solo career.
In 1995, his house near Point Reyes, California burned down, and he and his wife moved to Hawaii. According to a recent interview on the website Classic Rock Here and Now, his life then changed in significant ways.
“So when I started to get kind of crazy and have anxiety and depression in that first year in Hawaii, my therapist said maybe you’d better take some medication… so they put me on some antidepressants.”
As is unfortunately quite common, neither his therapist nor anyone else thought to have Young evaluated for Lyme disease—even though the Pt. Reyes area is known to have Lyme-infected ticks and Lyme disease is known to cause psychiatric symptoms, including anxiety and depression.
Years later, Young and his wife moved to her home state of South Carolina, and somebody happened to give her a brochure from ILADS. (I assume it was the one entitled Psychiatric Lyme Disease, but the article doesn’t clarify that.) Young says he read it and immediately thought, “Good God, this sounds like my biography…maybe I have Lyme disease?”
He flew to New York to see Lyme expert Dr. Richard Horowitz, who diagnosed him and started him on heavy antibiotics. Young says he “began to get my brain back, my thinking, and a lessening of all those anxiety and panic attacks. It was like getting my life back.”
Young hopes his story will help bring attention to the disease.
“Infectious disease doctors in the United States have taken the position that there is no chronic Lyme disease and that the treatment is three weeks of doxycycline…and that’s it! There are those of us who have had it for years or even decades….Lyme disease sufferers are not getting the treatment they need. Like me, they may need a year of antibiotics and not three weeks.”
I highly recommend you read the entire interview, where Young shares more about his Lyme experience, as well as insights into his music and personal history. Click below to listen to “Get Together.”
TOUCHED BY LYME is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, LymeDisease.org’s VP for Education and Outreach. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org.
Thanks for this post, Dorothy. I am so glad that Jesse Colin Young became aware of the problem and received proper treatment. As more celebrities and rock stars come out about having tick-borne diseases others may also start to question whether all of their symptoms are something more than “the aches and pains of daily living” or “getting old”. As with any public health measure, preventing people from being exposed to any tick-borne disease is important but we also must address the long term consequences of being infected. Public health authorities have abdicated responsibility for this. People with this illness have to to what they won’t. As Jess Colin Young sang, “Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together…..”
Yeah..! John Hopkins has proven that 90% plus of alzheimer’s and dementia can be cured with antibiotics like minocycline (blood/brain barrier). Those in he medical monopoly that are Racketeering off the suffering of the human race need to be sent to Hell or sent to prison for their crimes..! Or the people will eventually bring back public flogging if the system does not fix this injustice. The people can and will do it in a legal process. So be afraid..! BE VERY AFRAID..!
Arnold, I wish you could share what research that is at John’s Hopkins. We need to be spreading that word with specific information about what people need to know, so maybe they can even look it up! Thanks, Jan atwill
I feel the same way you do Arnold, but until this group bands together and fights like the AIDS group did, we will NEVER see change. Those people were outraged as you and I are. They weren’t complacent with phony groups and useless Lyme bills being put in place. They were FIGHTERS fighting for their lives, and their voices were heard! What is being done is criminal, and everyone involved should be held accountable. I don’t know so much about them being afraid. Corruption is rampant! They seem to be winning, and they have been for YEARS!!!
John, totally agree. We can’t keep having rallies where no one shows up. We ned to band together and put faces on this disease. Even with the website 300,000 where people were asked to upload photos of themselves didn’t have too much success. In NYC, we had a rally last year, and none came but a few. I would even be willing to contact the AIDS activists to figure out how to get things going.
Arnold, I wonder if was true Alzheimer’s & dementia. We had an outbreak of seniors all with Alzheimer’s symptoms in Westchester county, NY. They were all diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.Then they decided to test them for Lyme, and that’s what it was. They wound up opening a Lyme ER in Westchester hospital & bussed in the elderly with dementia symptoms. If those people were cured with minocycline, it could have been Lyme & not Alzheimer’s.
I moved to Massachusetts from Oregon for a correct diagnosis & treatment – Just moved back to Oregon this past February doctors immediately started taking me off of everything I had been in to remain able to work because of the lasting symptoms after a year in IV antibiotics (mostly physical, but fatigue & memory stuff as well). I actually happened to meet a woman who knew 2 women who had put themselves in remission, if not cured themselves, in around 4 months using therapeutic grade essential oils. I’ve since started in this treatment myself & my symptoms, outside of the pain) have all been greatly reduced. I’m only 2-3 months in at the moment, but am already far more hopeful just because of my most recent improvements than I have been in years! I have the video link (it’s on vmeo, not a download) on my computer of the first woman who identified that she was able to cure herself – Please email me if you are interested. Because I am now a consultant because I know this has worked for me & will work for others, I can walk you through the entire enrollment should you choose to try it out (my website is http://www.mydoterra.com/lisadillman, though you won’t find the Lyme protocol through this link). Just email me at westcoastlyme@gmail.com & say anything as simply as “I want to see the video” & I will send it right now…I would have given anything to have known about this prior to losing/sacrificing everything to move back east 3 years ago!
Lisa
I and my Daughter have had Lyme for years transmitted from a blood transfusion I strongly believe which I had 27 years ago after having my Son-Lyme showed some years later on after terrible flu and being prescribed Penicilline and a severe car injury. We have tried everything possible. We live in the UK. nobody knows anything about Lyme over here at all although we did have the t esting at Breakspear Hospital with some treatment over here. There is no protocol to follow for a definite outcome of a successful cure? Everybody needs to be connected and we will try what has been suggested, although I had a terrible reaction with Minocycline myself. Also tried IV antibiotics for a month and then my liver could not cope. Find Keflex quite remarkable now-Italian antibiotic. But as you know it is all very very complex. Any information gratefully received: jb-59@hotmail.com There is a strong connection with teeth, and the de-scaling and any filling repairs are a real problem, changing the PH of the body to acidic overload hence the Keflex! I have to take x1 500 mg just before any treatment or failing that a week’s course x3 a day along side fluconazole-it always lands up in my bladder- then there’s recovery to stabelize! Something called a DreamSpa from the Sates is very supportive. At the minute taking Core Olive and Olive capsules with Chlorella. Will try ASEA again.
I think I had it for decades. They said I had Hypoglycemia, Hypothyroid, Epstein Barr, Cytomegalovirus, Chronic Fatigue, etc. Memory went. I became allergic to antibiotics, steroids and other things. I found my symptoms in NEJM and sure enough, I had Lyme. My brain was in and out, depression, my vision would strobe in and out. Started treatment with Samento, Banderol and Serrapetase. Rife for detox. It took over a year but It worked!
They said Hypoglycemia, Hypothyroid, Epstein Barr, Cytomegalovirus, Chronic Fatigue, etc. Memory went. Allergic to antibiotics, steroids, etc. I found my symptoms in NEJM. I had Lyme. My brain was in and out, depression, my vision would strobe in and out. Started treatment with Samento, Banderol and Serrapetase & Rife
GB-4000 Frequency Generator/Rife Machine folks! It is curing me, my daughter and several friends! Tried everything else (including 1 & 1/2 years of antibiotics), but it didn’t kick it. Get off sugar, gluten, and exercise often, take Lauricidin & plenty of good probiotics & you will be a new person. I spent $50,000 out of pocket to get here & potentially saved you a small fortune. Look it up for yourself. God bless & happy health to all!!!
I have been under the care of a Ll physician since Sept. 2010. Took antibiotics until Apr 2013. At the suggestion of his nurse I checked into the Essential Oils handout he had given me at the first visit, and my brain was so foggy, I could not get everything read. I started taking Thieve Essential Oil, an antiviral and antibacterial fighter. When I need to, I sniff my lungs full and then hold my breath in for a few seconds. Most of the time, I feel fine.
Check out how the Thieve Oil got its name.
Naoma Coffman
I was recently diagnosed with Lyme Disease here in Connecticut. Unfortunately, the first time I went in for testing, the PA refused to test me saying, “you don’t have it”. I finally found someone who was willing to test me a good two months later, and the results were positive!! Meanwhile, I have had a rough two months. No sure why the PA wouldn’t allow testing – perhaps it was because he thought the insurance company wouldn’t pay for it. Either way, he was entirely unethical and I’m worried for others. This disease won’t leave your system if you don’t treat it within a reasonable time-frame.
May, seems like filing a complaint with your state’s medical board on the PA who would not test your for Lyme might prevent him from harming others, and wake him up so that he will test people who suspect they have it.
Otherwise, how else will health providers change?