Maine Legislature Passes Landmark Bill on Alternative Lyme Disease Treatments

Good news comes to Lyme disease patients living in New England -- the legislature of Maine has passed a bill that gives way more options to patients suffering from the disease. As The Global Dispatch reports:

A Lyme disease bill, which would require the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to link to alternative treatments for the bacterial disease, passed both houses of the Maine legislature this week and now goes to the desk of Gov. Paul LePage.

The bill, LD 597, directs the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention to include on its publicly accessible website information about different alternatives for the treatment of Lyme disease. The bill also requires the center to include information about treatment guidelines recommended by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, which represents physicians, scientists and other health care professionals who specialize in infectious diseases.

The Maine CDC currently only links to the IDSA website, an organization where many physicians go to for treatment guidelines, which don’t recognize chronic Lyme as a condition or support long-term antibiotic treatment for the disease.

The original bill sponsored by Rep. Sheryl Briggs, D-Mexico went a step further saying:  A negative result for a Lyme disease test does not necessarily mean that Lyme disease is not present and if symptoms continue, the patient should contact a health care provider and inquire about the appropriateness of retesting or additional treatment. However, Briggs amended bill ended up requiring the health care provider to give a patient a copy of the results of a Lyme disease test.

Read more here.

Long-Term Benefits of Fitness Fight Cancer

Get off your butt! It could
just save your life!

According to a new report by NBC, fitness is vital to your long-term health. Great, we already knew that. But the protection from cancer that you receive can last up to 20 years down the road, just like we at Envita Medical Clinics have been saying for a long time. Need more reasons to get off the couch? Check out an excerpt of the article below:

Fitness can protect you from cancer -- even 20 or more years down the road, researchers report. And men who were the most fit in middle age were the least likely to die a quarter century later even if they were unlucky enough to get cancer, a new study finds.

Men who were the most fit at age 50 back in the 1970s were the least likely to develop lung or colon cancer 20 to 25 years later, the study, which will be presented next month at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, found. And among the men who did get lung, colon or prostate cancer, the fitter they were in their early 50s, the less likely they were to die of it.

This is good news for people who want to lower their risk of not only heart disease but cancer, says Dr. Susan Lakoski of the University of Vermont, who led the study. She’s a cardiologist who studies fitness and its effect on disease.

“Two things you can’t change are your genes and your age,’ she said. “But you can get more fit.”

Lakoski studied data on more than 17,000 men who attended the Cooper Institute in Dallas. Dr. Kenneth Cooper, who coined the word “aerobics”, founded the research institute in 1970. The men all took fitness tests on their first visits to the institute, and the institute later acquired their medical records.

Read more here.

BBC Agrees with Envita Medical Center -- Nutrition is Incredibly Important in Cancer Treatment

Nutrition: The Overlooked Ingredient in Cancer Treatment

The BBC is reporting what we at Envita Medical Center have been saying for decades -- nutrition is one of the most important aspects of fighting cancer and winning. If more people only knew this important aspect, then maybe this fight against cancer would be even more winnable. Read an excerpt below:

Thousands of scientific papers have been published on the link between diet and the treatment and prevention of cancer. But in practice food is still considered a marginal aspect of cancer care.

I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma (MM), a cancer of the bone marrow, in December 2011.

At every chemo session I was offered a white bread sandwich, a fizzy drink, and a chocolate bar or packet of biscuits.

Nurses told me that there was no point in worrying about what I ate. "Worrying" is not what I or any other patient wants to do. 

We want to know what will help us get through treatment in the best way possible, and what, if anything, might keep a recurrence at bay - and that includes how diet may help. 

We do not want to feel like a helpless pawn in a big and overwhelming system. 

But unless you are very lucky, you will not be told about any of the latest food-related research when you enter the parallel universe that is cancer treatment. 

Read more here.

Difficulties Experienced with Lyme Disease

CBC.CA has an excellent article explaining some of the difficulties one experiences with Lyme disease, often without even knowing it. Here's an excerpt:

"Can't figure out why you're coming down with conditions you'd expect to feel in the winter?

Could be you're in the early stages of Lyme disease — a condition first identified in the mid-1970s. The disease was named after the town where the first cases were diagnosed — Lyme, Conn. The illness is caused by the bite of two species of ticks — blacklegged ticks (sometimes called deer ticks) and western blacklegged ticks.

Since then, Lyme disease has become established from Nova Scotia to B.C., except for Alberta and Saskatchewan.Lyme disease was unknown in Canada up until the 1980s. Initially, it was identified only at Long Point and Point Pelee, Ont. — which is the farthest south you can get in Canada.

In January 2011, the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg discovered 24 people were wrongly told they didn't have Lyme disease when they in fact have the illness. The mistake was found during a quality control review at the lab.

If Lyme disease is not treated with antibiotics soon after infection, patients can suffer arthritis and neurologic problems."

Read more here.

Young Lyme Disease Patient Robbed of Treatment Funds

In news that will break your heart, NGNews.ca reports that a young girl was robbed of approximately $3,000 dollars that was going toward her Lyme disease treatment. The report says: 

A thief who stole cards full of money meant to help Chelsey Livingston-Rector battle Lyme disease, may have robbed her of the opportunity for treatment.

With only two weeks left to go before her appointment to see a specialist in the United States, Chelsey’s mother, Angela Rector, said they are still $3,000 short of what they need. A big reason she believes they are short is because someone stole a portion of the proceeds from a benefit held at the North End Rec Centre on May 25.

“We had a wonderful turnout and at the end of the night when the money was taken to be counted the girls noticed that there weren't cards there,” Rector said. “Only two cards were in the box and the girls knew there were more cards there.”

She found out that at the beginning of the night the box for donations was late getting there so they had improvised and put the money and cards in a basket. The cards were moved out of the basket and set aside as they were taking a lot of room up. When the box got to the benefit the money was taken from the basket and put in the box. But nobody remembers where the cards went.

Read more here: http://www.ngnews.ca/News/Local/2013-06-03/article-3268876/Money-stolen%3A-girl%26rsquos-treatment-for-Lyme-disease-in-jeopardy/1