5 ms·

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 lifesty

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 11mo ago
Take antibiotics. They generally just work.
- DANmode 11mo ago
  Assuming you've tested for, identified, targeted, and then retested for, all of your coinfections. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem ubiquitous.
- kukkeliskuu 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - bregma 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
      Sounds like the old timey syphilis cure of massive amounts of liquid mercury!
      - kragen 11mo ago
        No, mercury salts. Liquid mercury won't cure you of anything but constipation.
        lazide 11mo ago
        Mercuric chloride and liquid elemental mercury were both commonly prescribed treatments for syphilis. Neither did much.
        kragen 11mo ago
        The 01880 edition of Cooley (https://archive.org/details/cooleyscyclopaed02cool https://archive.org/details/cooleyscyclopaed02cool) says of mercury: > In its metallic state it appears to be inert when swallowed, unless it meets with much acidity in the alimentary canal, or is in a state of minute division ; its compounds are, however, all of them more or less poisonous. > Mercury has been employed in one or other of its forms in almost all diseases ; but each of its numerous preparations is supposed to have some peculiarity of action of its own, combined with that common to all the compounds of this metal. The mercurials form, indeed, one of the most important classes of the materia medica. He goes on to explain that mercuric acetate is the basis of Keyser's antivenereal pills (according to Robiquet), that mercuric chloride (which is probably what you meant by "mercuric chlorine") is "employed as an alterative, diaphoretic, and resolvent, in the chronic forms of secondary syphilis, rheumatism, scrofula, cancer, old dropsies, numerous skin diseases, &c." He also devotes a lot of space to emphasizing how important it is to be careful of it, describing the symptoms of poisoning with it, and explaining how to analyze "animal tissue" to detect mercury salts in it. He also discusses the use of mercuric nitrate in syphilis. But never in all the pages he devotes to the uses of mercury and its compounds does he suggest that anyone ever used metallic mercury for syphilis. I've also never seen a suggestion that mercuric chloride was ineffective against syphilis. Wikipedia says, "Once used as a first line treatment for syphilis, it has been replaced by the more effective and less toxic procaine penicillin since at least 1948."
safeimp 11mo ago
Trying to starve yourself of manganese would cause harm long before it affected Borrelia.
- kragen 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
        You would die. Immediately, and screaming in agony.
Aurornis 11mo 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 11mo ago
  I really hope the anti-medicine people don't start grasping for a middleman to get in between people and self care.
  - Aurornis 11mo 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.

bitexploder 11mo ago

Take antibiotics. They generally just work.

DANmode 11mo ago
Assuming you've tested for, identified, targeted, and then retested for, all of your coinfections. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem ubiquitous.
kukkeliskuu 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
[flagged]
- bregma 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
    Sounds like the old timey syphilis cure of massive amounts of liquid mercury!
    - kragen 11mo ago
      No, mercury salts. Liquid mercury won't cure you of anything but constipation.
      - lazide 11mo ago
        Mercuric chloride and liquid elemental mercury were both commonly prescribed treatments for syphilis. Neither did much.
        kragen 11mo ago
        The 01880 edition of Cooley (https://archive.org/details/cooleyscyclopaed02cool https://archive.org/details/cooleyscyclopaed02cool) says of mercury: > In its metallic state it appears to be inert when swallowed, unless it meets with much acidity in the alimentary canal, or is in a state of minute division ; its compounds are, however, all of them more or less poisonous. > Mercury has been employed in one or other of its forms in almost all diseases ; but each of its numerous preparations is supposed to have some peculiarity of action of its own, combined with that common to all the compounds of this metal. The mercurials form, indeed, one of the most important classes of the materia medica. He goes on to explain that mercuric acetate is the basis of Keyser's antivenereal pills (according to Robiquet), that mercuric chloride (which is probably what you meant by "mercuric chlorine") is "employed as an alterative, diaphoretic, and resolvent, in the chronic forms of secondary syphilis, rheumatism, scrofula, cancer, old dropsies, numerous skin diseases, &c." He also devotes a lot of space to emphasizing how important it is to be careful of it, describing the symptoms of poisoning with it, and explaining how to analyze "animal tissue" to detect mercury salts in it. He also discusses the use of mercuric nitrate in syphilis. But never in all the pages he devotes to the uses of mercury and its compounds does he suggest that anyone ever used metallic mercury for syphilis. I've also never seen a suggestion that mercuric chloride was ineffective against syphilis. Wikipedia says, "Once used as a first line treatment for syphilis, it has been replaced by the more effective and less toxic procaine penicillin since at least 1948."

safeimp 11mo ago

Trying to starve yourself of manganese would cause harm long before it affected Borrelia.

kragen 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
      You would die. Immediately, and screaming in agony.

Aurornis 11mo 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 11mo ago
I really hope the anti-medicine people don't start grasping for a middleman to get in between people and self care.
- Aurornis 11mo 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.