5 ms·

And it's also a potent neurotoxin from a crude dr google lookup. Which is meaningless because they wouldnt bother exploring both sides of the deal if there wasn

by ggm 1y ago

And it's also a potent neurotoxin from a crude dr google lookup. Which is meaningless because they wouldnt bother exploring both sides of the deal if there wasn't a safe dose for humans which is bad for the bacteria, but it bears thinking about.

canadiantim 1y ago
Sounds like starving Lyme of manganese is likely the better option that trying to overdose manganese. I don't know how effective a low-manganese diet or lifestyle would be though but it is very interesting.
- bitexploder 1y ago
  Take antibiotics. They generally just work.
  - DANmode 1y ago
    Assuming you've tested for, identified, targeted, and then retested for, all of your coinfections. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem ubiquitous.
  - kukkeliskuu 1y ago
    The problem with antibiotics at least in some countries is that official guidelines take the position that chronic Lyme does not exist, and thus doctors are forbidden to write long-term prescription to antibiotics for Lyme. Short-term may not work, as research suggests that antibiotics works only on some phases of the life-cycle of borreliosis and only for some co-infections.
    - bitexploder 1y ago
      Chronic Lyme where the bacteria persists does not exist. There is no evidence the primary bacterial infection persists as far as I have been able to discover. So, that is a faulty starting point in terms of your framing. Now, what is chronic lyme, does the bacteria injure the nervous system, does it leave "debris" behind that maybe antibiotics somehow help the immune system attack and clear? That is way less clear and not validated medical science.
- donsupreme 1y ago
  It appears that the body cannot produce manganese on its own it is an essential trace mineral that must be obtained from the diet. I wonder if a prolonged water fast would do the job.
  - kragen 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - bregma 1y ago
      If you believe really hard and really try you can transmutate lead into manganese. Of course, eating all that lead will probably kill you first. At least your Lyme won't be a problem any more.
      - dylan604 1y ago
        And all those years alchemists were wasting their time trying to change lead into gold when they could have been going for manganese to eliminate Lyme disease! Greed has no bounds
      - lazide 1y ago
        Sounds like the old timey syphilis cure of massive amounts of liquid mercury!
        kragen 1y ago
        No, mercury salts. Liquid mercury won't cure you of anything but constipation.
        lazide 1y ago
        Mercuric chloride and liquid elemental mercury were both commonly prescribed treatments for syphilis. Neither did much.
- safeimp 1y ago
  Trying to starve yourself of manganese would cause harm long before it affected Borrelia.
  - kragen 1y ago
    WP says that manganese deficiency causes skeletal deformity and inhibition of wound healing. So I'm guessing that you could survive weeks in a severe-manganese-deficiency situation before you noticed any ill effects.
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      > So I'm guessing that you could survive weeks in a severe-manganese-deficiency situation before you noticed any ill effects. Your guess would be wrong. Your body needs manganese for similar reasons that Lyme disease needs it. You also produce MnSOD. If you starved your body of manganese sufficiently (which I doubt you could do without eating a completely synthetic diet for months) then you'd be killing yourself in parallel with the Lyme disease.
      - kragen 1y ago
        You could probably add enough phosphate to all your food to prevent you from absorbing any manganese, then inject iron, calcium, and magnesium? Just guessing here. How long would it take you to die on a zero-manganese diet? If it's longer than it takes Borrelia, you still win!
        btilly 1y ago
        As noted in my sibling comment, the standard of care for eliminating manganese is para-Aminosalicylic acid (PAS). Plenty of other treatments can remove manganese. But they all are biologically active in other unwanted ways.
        butvacuum 1y ago
        You would die. Immediately, and screaming in agony.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > I don't know how effective a low-manganese diet or lifestyle would be though but it is very interesting. You cannot achieve what the paper is discussing through diet or supplements. The paper is hypothesizing that if a drug could target the components of B. burgdorferi that regulate manganese then that would kill it. You cannot deprive the cells of manganese or overwhelm them through supplementation or restrictive diet. You would damage your own body long before reaching levels that killed the Lyme infection. I really hope the alternative medicine people don't start abusing this headline to push diets and supplements.
  - canadiantim 1y ago
    I really hope the anti-medicine people don't start grasping for a middleman to get in between people and self care.
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      > self care. Deliberately inducing manganese deficiency (which I doubt you could pull off while still eating food) isn't "self care". It's a misunderstanding of what this article is saying. Your body needs manganese and MnSOD (one of the target enzymes mentioned in the article) just as much as Lyme disease does. You could theoretically kill the Lyme by killing the host body, like that classic XKCD about destroying anything in a petri dish if you don't care about collateral damage. The key to making a successful treatment is finding a way to kill the infection without killing the host. Calling anything you're suggesting "self care" is dangerous and wrong.
Aurornis 1y ago
Nobody, in the article or otherwise, is suggesting that you can take manganese to fight Lyme. I don’t know where you got that, but I hope nobody thinks to try it. The idea would be to look at all of the components that regulate manganese in B. burgdorferi and then look for drugs that might disrupt how they operate. Any solution would act indirectly by disrupting manganese balance in a targeted manner directed at B. burgdorferi, not by flooding the whole body with manganese. The cells regulate their internal manganese anyway, so supplementing manganese wouldn’t force it to go into those cells anyway. This is a PR release for some research that tries to stretch it into a promising treatment, but it's really more of an interesting discovery than a path to a new treatment.
- Pet_Ant 1y ago
  > or otherwise That's where you would be wrong. By the time you posted your comment there are already people hawking manganese bracelets on FaceBook as a cure for Lyme disease.

by ggm 1y ago

canadiantim 1y ago

Sounds like starving Lyme of manganese is likely the better option that trying to overdose manganese. I don't know how effective a low-manganese diet or lifestyle would be though but it is very interesting.

bitexploder 1y ago
Take antibiotics. They generally just work.
- DANmode 1y ago
  Assuming you've tested for, identified, targeted, and then retested for, all of your coinfections. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem ubiquitous.
- kukkeliskuu 1y ago
  The problem with antibiotics at least in some countries is that official guidelines take the position that chronic Lyme does not exist, and thus doctors are forbidden to write long-term prescription to antibiotics for Lyme. Short-term may not work, as research suggests that antibiotics works only on some phases of the life-cycle of borreliosis and only for some co-infections.
  - bitexploder 1y ago
    Chronic Lyme where the bacteria persists does not exist. There is no evidence the primary bacterial infection persists as far as I have been able to discover. So, that is a faulty starting point in terms of your framing. Now, what is chronic lyme, does the bacteria injure the nervous system, does it leave "debris" behind that maybe antibiotics somehow help the immune system attack and clear? That is way less clear and not validated medical science.
donsupreme 1y ago
It appears that the body cannot produce manganese on its own it is an essential trace mineral that must be obtained from the diet. I wonder if a prolonged water fast would do the job.
- kragen 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bregma 1y ago
    If you believe really hard and really try you can transmutate lead into manganese. Of course, eating all that lead will probably kill you first. At least your Lyme won't be a problem any more.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      And all those years alchemists were wasting their time trying to change lead into gold when they could have been going for manganese to eliminate Lyme disease! Greed has no bounds
    - lazide 1y ago
      Sounds like the old timey syphilis cure of massive amounts of liquid mercury!
      - kragen 1y ago
        No, mercury salts. Liquid mercury won't cure you of anything but constipation.
        lazide 1y ago
        Mercuric chloride and liquid elemental mercury were both commonly prescribed treatments for syphilis. Neither did much.
safeimp 1y ago
Trying to starve yourself of manganese would cause harm long before it affected Borrelia.
- kragen 1y ago
  WP says that manganese deficiency causes skeletal deformity and inhibition of wound healing. So I'm guessing that you could survive weeks in a severe-manganese-deficiency situation before you noticed any ill effects.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > So I'm guessing that you could survive weeks in a severe-manganese-deficiency situation before you noticed any ill effects. Your guess would be wrong. Your body needs manganese for similar reasons that Lyme disease needs it. You also produce MnSOD. If you starved your body of manganese sufficiently (which I doubt you could do without eating a completely synthetic diet for months) then you'd be killing yourself in parallel with the Lyme disease.
    - kragen 1y ago
      You could probably add enough phosphate to all your food to prevent you from absorbing any manganese, then inject iron, calcium, and magnesium? Just guessing here. How long would it take you to die on a zero-manganese diet? If it's longer than it takes Borrelia, you still win!
      - btilly 1y ago
        As noted in my sibling comment, the standard of care for eliminating manganese is para-Aminosalicylic acid (PAS). Plenty of other treatments can remove manganese. But they all are biologically active in other unwanted ways.
      - butvacuum 1y ago
        You would die. Immediately, and screaming in agony.
Aurornis 1y ago
> I don't know how effective a low-manganese diet or lifestyle would be though but it is very interesting. You cannot achieve what the paper is discussing through diet or supplements. The paper is hypothesizing that if a drug could target the components of B. burgdorferi that regulate manganese then that would kill it. You cannot deprive the cells of manganese or overwhelm them through supplementation or restrictive diet. You would damage your own body long before reaching levels that killed the Lyme infection. I really hope the alternative medicine people don't start abusing this headline to push diets and supplements.
- canadiantim 1y ago
  I really hope the anti-medicine people don't start grasping for a middleman to get in between people and self care.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > self care. Deliberately inducing manganese deficiency (which I doubt you could pull off while still eating food) isn't "self care". It's a misunderstanding of what this article is saying. Your body needs manganese and MnSOD (one of the target enzymes mentioned in the article) just as much as Lyme disease does. You could theoretically kill the Lyme by killing the host body, like that classic XKCD about destroying anything in a petri dish if you don't care about collateral damage. The key to making a successful treatment is finding a way to kill the infection without killing the host. Calling anything you're suggesting "self care" is dangerous and wrong.

Aurornis 1y ago

Nobody, in the article or otherwise, is suggesting that you can take manganese to fight Lyme. I don’t know where you got that, but I hope nobody thinks to try it. The idea would be to look at all of the components that regulate manganese in B. burgdorferi and then look for drugs that might disrupt how they operate. Any solution would act indirectly by disrupting manganese balance in a targeted manner directed at B. burgdorferi, not by flooding the whole body with manganese. The cells regulate their internal manganese anyway, so supplementing manganese wouldn’t force it to go into those cells anyway. This is a PR release for some research that tries to stretch it into a promising treatment, but it's really more of an interesting discovery than a path to a new treatment.

Pet_Ant 1y ago
> or otherwise That's where you would be wrong. By the time you posted your comment there are already people hawking manganese bracelets on FaceBook as a cure for Lyme disease.