Free and Inexpensive Tools for Healing Lyme
Last week I had a revelatory dream: I stood outside a white chapel with a big bronze bell in front of it and a sign that read “pain relief” alongside the name of an MD. People in the village revered the doctor for his power to heal any pain, but he very rarely opened the door. “He doesn’t see patients anymore,” someone said to me. “But when he does, he always treats them for free.”
I was so desperate, so consumed with my pain that I rang the bell with fervor. Just then the door opened and a man stood in the doorway. He waved to me, welcoming me in. Lying me down on a blue cot, he looked at me with compassion and said “You have been in pain so long,” and I wept.
He put his hands on my eyes and told me to take a big, deep breath. As I exhaled he pushed with great force into my eyes and I felt a big energetic release as my body. I saw all the years of pain flash before my eyes. The pain flushed out of my body and at once I felt at ease.
And then we sat in a meditation position and did a funny mischievous little dance!
But soon another bodyworker came into the room and began to work on me. After the session, he told me I owe him $400. I became overwhelmed with panic. How will I pay him? I thought this was free?
I left the chapel feeling sad and fearful. I felt tricked by the bodyworker, and the pain came flooding back.
—
This was a dream about free healthcare! The dream showed me just how much the enormous expense of treatment can inhibit healing. It’s hard to heal when the medicine only pressurizes your stress level.
Here’s a sad truth I think about everyday: treating chronic, complex illnesses like Lyme requires some serious cash. And if you don’t have the financial resources or if you face racial / class / accessibility barriers preventing you from seeing expensive specialists, paying for copious amounts of supplements and getting IV treatments at $250 a pop, the odds are against your recovery. I’ve never met a patient to have a Lyme appointment covered by insurance, and I’ve never met anyone who has healed without a hefty price tag.
And because Lyme can mimic any and all diseases, expressing itself with hundreds of symptoms, it’s often known as the “Great Imitator.” On average, it takes a patient seven years to get diagnosed and, once you have a confirmed treatment plan it’s only the beginning of big bills.
One of my passions is finding a way to help low-income people heal. I am receiving treatment at Holistic Healing Arts, a naturopathic clinic in Seattle specializing in Lyme. The treatment is outstanding, but it’s also treatment very few people will be able to afford. I’m only able to receive this treatment because of income coming from Nate’s partial ownership of his family business. As an organic farmer and a freelance writer, there’s no way Nate and I would be able to afford it on our income alone.
In the years before I had Nate’s support, I had to rely heavily on my parents to help with paying medical bills. And I had to find a way to support myself. I worked through the first eight years of my undiagnosed illness, piecing together a living with writing, coaching and teaching gigs, living in shitty cockroach-filled apartments, painfully emptying my checking account each month as I wrote checks to doctors who did nothing at all to help me. I’ve been on food stamps, I’ve had to fundraise money to see specialists and I’ve often opted out of therapies and tests because they were too expensive. In the last nine years, my family and I have easily spent over a hundred grand on treatment. It’s the same story with most late-stage chronic Lyme patients I meet.
In this post - and in light of my dream - I want to offer all the Lyme resources I know about that are free or inexpensive. It’s a shameful reality that people who are debilitatingly sick have to become debilitatingly broke to be well. I have tried dozens of different treatments and therapies and here are some of the tools I believe to be the best uses of your time and money.
FREE
Upcoming webinar! When I expressed this issue of treatment inaccessibility / class barriers to recovery to my Lyme specialist here in Seattle, he generously offered to donate his time to do a webinar sharing tools for recovery for people who can’t afford expensive therapies. Look out for that soon!! You will love him!
Insight Timer app. A wonderful free tool for mental health, breath work and nervous system regulation. I clocked over 400 sessions of meditation on this baby last year, and it helped me tremendously through really bad flare ups when all I could do was lie in bed for weeks. I love meditations from Jennifer Piercey (amazing yoga yidra meditations for sleep), Jack Kornfield, and Tara Brach.
Ask for a free consultation with your practitioner. Don’t fork out hundreds of dollars before you ask for the opportunity to gather more information about your doctor / herbalist / acupuncturist’s background, technique and experience treating your set of issues. If you are treating Lyme, make sure you see a “Lyme Literate MD or ND” instead of someone who has a basic understanding of Lyme. You will waste your money with anything less than an expert!
Yoga with Adriene - free yoga videos to do when exercise feels daunting. I love her attitude about yoga. Approachable movements for any body
Change your diet! I have experimented with several diets and I am feeling best on a ketogenic diet - high fat, moderate protein, low carb. Absolutely no sugar, guys! Not even fruit. Bread, grains, potatoes, root veggies all behave like sugar in the body.
Cold therapy. Dip in a natural cold water source or take daily cold showers - excellent for lymph and immune support. Hot / cold contrast showers are a good way to build up to 3-5 minutes of straight cold.
Ground. Walk barefoot on grass. I learned recently that autoimmune symptoms improve by ten percent by simply connecting to the earth.
Learn about the dirty dozen and the clean fifteen. While organic food is always better for the environment, some conventionally grown foods are safe and much less expensive.
Affirmations - wake up everyday and tell yourself an affirmation that inspires you: “I am healing everyday.” “My body is healing.”
Check out these financial assistance programs for Lyme patients.
Use GoodRX when your insurance won’t cover a prescription drug - or if it will only cover a ridiculously small portion. I have saved thousands with GoodRX.
Educate your doctor about Lyme! Check out ILADS for physician training resources.
LESS THAN $50
Curable app. $15/month. Designed for chronic pain suffers, Curable is a research-based app that guides its users with a Smart Coach through various exercises (mediation, visualization, brain training, writing exercises.) I’ve seen a big reduction in fear around pain and I sleep better after doing the Curable exercises..
Epsom salt and baking soda baths for detox. Buy in bulk to save. Do it everyday, people! 4 cups of baking soda. 1 cup of epsom salt. Make it hot so you break a sweat. .
Skin brushing. Another daily detox must. Moves the lymph, helps immune system. Learn about the correct way to skin brush here.
Castor oil packs for detox. I fill a hot water bottle with very hot water, cover my liver (upper right ribs) in about 1tbs of castor oil, cover that spot with an old pillowcase and place hot water bottle on top until skin absorbs oil. Do it every night.
Coffee enemas for detox. Use only green organic coffee. Instructions here. More info here.
Mini trampoline for detox. Moves the lymph. Look on Craigslist, FB Marketplace for a used mini trampoline
Wifi timer. After learning about the dangerous effects of electromagnetic fields for people trying to repair their immune systems (or really anyone!), Nate and I decided to turn our wifi off every night. When we enter into a parasympathetic response during sleep, our bodies are more vulnerable to the EMFs emitted by routers. When the unplugging-replugging system became tedious for us, we found a simple fix in plugging our router into a timer that shuts it off at 10pm and back on at 7am. Easy. Super important video on this subject from Dr. Klinghardt here.
Cistus Tea. A core part of my anti-microbial protocol. I drink two cups everyday. Kills biofilm, the filmy barrier bubble that protects pathogens from the immune system. Dr. Klinghardt talks about the power of Cistus tea here. Easily one of the most potent and effective herbs I’ve ever taken. Add organic stevia to sweeten.
Avoid toxins. Only use products on your skin that have a high rating from the Environmental Working Group. You can look up any product on the market here. Shop at Bissoma! I trust my health with every product they sell.
AROUND $200ish
Dynamic Neural Retraining System. I did this brain retraining program for nine months and believe it supported the healing that allowed me to feel awesome on my wedding day. It helped me disassociate from illness, break negative cycles of thinking and calm my nervous system. It’s a tool I will use the rest of my life, especially when gearing up for events, trips or plans that are out of my zone.
Home sauna. I’ve used mine hundreds of times. Some say these cheaper saunas emit a lot of electromagnetic frequencies, but when I asked my Lyme specialist about that he said the detox benefits outweigh the EMF risks. You don’t need to stay in the sauna very long to sweat, only about ten minutes. If you want to get the best option on the market, look into Sunlight saunas.
I’ve never tried it myself, but I hear great things about the Rawls protocol. Dr Rawls recovered from a debilitating case of Lyme and now has created an herbal protocol.
If you’d like to add to this list, please reach out to me! LindsayEWolff@gmail.com
