Ticks as Teachers: Lyme Prevention Protocol

“The plants have enough spirit to transform our limited vision.”  Rosemary Gladstar

The woods were my playground as a child. My friends and I would find ticks latched onto us occasionally, but it was never a real concern, perhaps we were just really fortunate. It wasn’t until a couple decades later, after forgetting the cycles of nature and straying far from my center, that I started to sense in my body that something was not right. Rather than re-calibrating, I pushed on, tearing through the boundaries of my own body, inevitably leading to a diagnosis of chronic Lyme.

From my personal experience + my practice, I have seen that although most of us carry tick borne pathogens, we are not affected by these pathogens unless the strain on our bodies due to stress, emotional dysregulation, malnutrition, gut dysbiosis, or environmental toxins, creates an opening for the illness to take hold.  The tick bite is just a trigger for something that’s already brewing, if there is even a tick bite at all. There are many other routes of transmission and underlying causes for the constellation of symptoms known as Lyme Disease. The one thing that is certain with Lyme is its medicine of deep transformation.

After I went to harvest Mugwort last month for a dieta, I emerged from the gorgeous meadow and looked down to find my dress covered in ticks. This powerful herb ruled by the Moon gives us the vision to see our problems or false stories, so that they can be cleared. Ticks are parasites that feed on our blood, alerting us to something we are not seeing or not paying attention to that is draining our vitality, sucking the life out of us. They are also boundary holders for Mother Earth, doling out the consequences of not paying attention. So, I knew these themes would be illuminated for me by Mugwort.

During the dieta, I was confronted pretty hard with the fears that remain stored in my body, the stories I entertain that hold me back from my power + joy, the habits that I need to change to be in greater devotion to my values.  It is easy for us humans to accept some external threat of illness, but it is our internal environment and energies—including emotional energy—that ultimately either cause or protect us from illness.  Lyme and its coinfections take advantage of areas and organ systems that already have some weakness so my wish is that this post motivates you to start building resilience and adaptability now.

Whatever happened to us that created this disharmony in our minds/bodies/spirits is not our fault, but we are still responsible for healing them. If we allow a fear of ticks to keep us away from nature, we will only experience further disconnection and devastation. Instead, we can invite them to be our teacher, showing us the importance of repairing any auric tears, and strengthening our boundaries. This can be as simple as letting our bodies tell us what they need and being so fully ourselves that we don’t leave room for outside energies to take hold.  One practical way to embody our own power in this way is to take immediate action to prevent tick borne illness using herbs.

You may have noticed that the ticks have been extremely aggressive this year. I’ve heard wild stories from people finding multiple ticks inside their home, to being bit and overcoming Lyme-like symptoms only to relapse even harder with fever and exhaustion a few weeks later. This is a reflection of the moment we are in and what is being asked of us—to see where changes are needed in the way our lives are operating and transform anything that is holding us back from embodying a deeper level of love and compassion.

Next level healing requires deep listening to our bodies and taking responsibility for our health rather than blaming something outside of ourselves. My first foray into herbal medicine was initiated by my chronic Lyme diagnosis in 2015 through Stephen Buhner’s book, Healing Lyme. Mainstream medicine still denies the existence of chronic Lyme so although necessity was the driving force for becoming my own healer, it empowered to begin to consciously create my life rather than passively observing it blow by. Given the generous, cyclical nature of herbs, working with them reveals the importance of preparation, how to realign with seasonal rhythms, and how the abundance + unconditional love of the Earth can open us to our own hearts.

Although herbs, supplements, and other holistic therapies have been a crucial part of my recovery, they would not have worked without also transforming the way I operated in the world. This is why in my practice, I create space for full-on enduring healing by combining herbs + supplements with coaching into deep self-reflection, meditation and movement practices, and energy work.

Through my healing journey, I was forced to rest, care for myself, and find ways to reduce my stress levels dramatically by making changes both within and without. But healing is not linear and in my many attempts to bypass the necessary changes, I was continually brought back to the exhaustion, mental fog, insomnia, and despair so prevalent with Lyme. This unrelenting teacher led me to uncover layer after layer of the unresolved emotional issues until I actually allowed my life to be transformed and the knots constricting my vitality finally started to loosen their grip.  

The allopathic approach when dealing with infection is to eradicate the bacteria. But bacteria are highly intelligent – they are tricksters and know how to evade antibiotics making relapse a common occurrence. Tick borne pathogens initiate highly complex processes to overwhelm our defenses. Herbs are much better equipped to deal with this given the complexity of compounds the herbs have developed over hundreds of thousands of years of creating their own chemicals to evade predators. The bacteria can’t survive if they are not able to trigger the type of inflammation that creates their ideal habitat for living and scavenging food.

So rather than focus solely on killing, the key in treating Lyme is to reduce the inflammatory process the bacteria initiate, strengthen our immune system and tissues, and open up our detox pathways. We need to restore our whole being so that Lyme can’t thrive in us.  

Below is a holistic protocol I use when an embedded tick is found that addresses Lyme prevention:

1. Prevention truly is the best medicine

• Immune Tonics: During tick season (pretty much anytime you’re going to be spending a time outside), you can take 1 tsp of Astragalus root powder daily for protection. Astragalus strengthens wei chi, which is the energy that circulates between the skin and the muscles and functions as a sort of shield, protecting against external invasion of pathogens. On a microcosmic level, it also strengthens the cell walls against viral intrusion. But you don’t want to take this in acute illness because pathogens will not be able to leave! Astragalus strengthens immunity by intensifying the activity of white blood cells, stimulating pituitary-adrenal cortical activity and restoring depleted red blood cell formation in bone marrow. It is also a key herb for strengthening digestion and absorption, helping to reverse nutrient deficiency which contributes to low energy + immunity. In the case of an acute bite, the dosage can be increased to 3 tsp per day.

• ·Repel Ticks: In addition to paying attention to your bodily sensations and asking it to give you cues if a tick is crawling on you, always check yourself for ticks as soon as you get home from a hike, spending time in tall grass, or other nature immersion activities. You can make it enjoyable by making it a time for abhyanga, self-massage with oil, before taking a shower or bath. Cistus Incanus, aka Rockrose, tea is also touted by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt for making ticks not like you. From a Vitalist perspective, Cistus is an astringent, which tightens and tonifies the tissues. Whenever we strengthen the tissues, we are strengthening our boundaries. This makes sense as ticks will usually embed where we have holes in our aura from past or ancestral trauma. Studies also show demonstrate that Cistus has powerful antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, and biofilm-breaking qualities.

2. If you get a bite, here’s where to start

• Remove with tweezers by gripping as close to the skin as possible and with quick + steady force pulling up in a perpendicular angle from your body

• Clean site of the bite well with soap + warm water

• Make a mask of clay + essential oil and keep it applied to the area of the bite as much as possible for the first 72 hours after removal. Most essential oils are antimicrobial, so feel free to use what you have. Lavender and Tea Tree are ones that most people have and are perfect for this. Just a few drops per mask is plenty. Use caution with oregano, thyme, clove, and other super hot oils on sensitive areas as they can burn.

• Start a holistic prevention protocol as outlined below.
  

Cat’s Claw (uncaria tomentosa)

3. Herbs + Other Holistic Remedies (roughly in order of importance) – when experimenting on your own with herbs, it’s important to start with very low doses of 5 drops and work your way up slowly to the recommended dose.

• Support Detox Pathways: The beneficial herbs vary depending on your individual energetics + constitution, so I’ve included one recommendation for each constitution. But aside from the herbs + practices, drinking loads of water is going to work wonders!

  • {Liver} The liver can be thought of as our alchemical furnace which separates, purifies and recombines the various biochemical elements of the body. If the metabolic fire of the liver is deficient, it burns too low and foods are not properly metabolized and processed, creating stagnation of this crucial organ. This in turn impacts the blood, lymph, spleen, digestion, skin and pretty much every other part of the body.

    •   Dandelion (kapha)

    •   Burdock (vata)

    • Yarrow (pitta)

  • {Lymph} The lymph is filled with lymphocytes (B-cells + T-cells), the main cellular components of the immune system. The lymph is constantly under surveillance from the immune system to make sure to blood stays pure and that pathogens do not invade the body. When lymphocytes are being actively manufactured and multiplied, this can be an extra stress on the system causing cellular debris and dead bacteria/viruses to stagnate within the system and secrete exotoxins.

    •  Dry brushing

    • Castor oil packs

    • Deep breathing and movement like yoga, walking or rebounding

    • Sauna, hot/cold showers, Epsom salt baths

    • Herbs: Red Root (kapha), Red Clover (vata), Echinacea (pitta)

  •  Support Collagen Structures: Once tick borne pathogens start to proliferate in the body, they find the tissues they like best (usually where there is already a weakness), and cause inflammation in those areas to break apart those tissues so that they can get the nutrients to feed and survive. If your tissues are strong, they will not succeed.

    • The main support here is {Vitamin C} I prefer whole food forms like rosehip or camu camu powder. Some others to implement might be bone broth or grass-fed gelatin powder, horsetail and oatstraw infusions, selenium, and bee products.   

  •  Enhance Immune Function

    • {Cat’s Claw} A rain forest herb from Central and South America, it is a potent blood-cleanser and expeller of darkness. Through removal of darkness and energetic protection, it supports us in overcoming depressive states that are a strain on our immune system. This herb is also an anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-parasitic, anti-cancer immune stimulant. Exercise caution if you have autoimmune disorders. The recommended dose is 1 dropper 2-3x/day, but start with no more than 5 drops.

    • {Ashwagandha} A highly prized herb in Ayurveda for building the blood, bones & marrow.  Ashwaganda is amazing at building resilience and immunity throughout the body, and helps fight chronic wasting and debilitating conditions. It acts to tonify, strengthen, and restore the proper structure and function of the nervous system to heal from shock, prolonged periods of stress or sleep deficit, anxiety, panic attacks, tension, or excessive use of stimulants. Since low immunity is really a sign of lowered vitality as a whole, Ashwaganda builds core vitality it builds our core immunity. I like this as a powder – ¼-½ tsp in the morning and ½-1 tsp at night.

  •   Shut Down Inflammatory Pathways

    •  {Japanese Knotweed} This invasive herb is the bane of many naturalists’ existence. But its spread along roadsides, riversides, and yards has followed precisely the spread of ticks that carry Lyme and it is one of the most broad-spectrum medicines for treating Lyme—this is a good example of how limited our understanding is compared to the infinite intelligence of nature.  According to Stephen Buhner, “the neat thing about Japanese knotweed root is that it literally shuts down the exact pathways that the spirochetes initiate. It’s really pretty dramatic.” Its high resveratrol content inhibits the cytokine cascade (the inflammatory process discussed above), strongly mitigating symptoms.

      JK crosses the blood-brain barrier where it acts on the central nervous system, specifically protecting the brain from inflammatory damage, microbial endotoxins and bacterial infections. It can enhance blood flow especially to the eye, heart, skin and joints, making it especially helpful in Lyme disease as it facilitates blood flow in hard-to-reach areas to kill the spirochetes. It also decreases Herxheimer, aka die-off, reactions by blocking endotoxins and supporting the liver and detox pathways. You can work up slowly to 1-3 droppers 2-3x/day.

      • If you start feeling dried out, bring in marshmallow or licorice and if you start feeling cold/depressed digestion, add warming herbal carminatives like ginger, rosemary, oregano, thyme to your food or teas

    • Eat a nourishing, anti-inflammatory diet and avoid physical and emotional stressors. Some priorities are avoiding gluten, processed sugar and processed food in general, and alcohol. Plenty of cooked veggies, protein, healthy fats, and probiotics are a good call! Add medicinal edible mushrooms + raw garlic if you tolerate it <3

  • Homeopathic: I use Joette Calebrese’s protocol which is to dissolve one pellet Ledum Palustre homeopathic (200c) under tongue every 3 hours first day, 2x/day for 1 week, 2x/week for 1 month, 1x/week for 1 month.

  • Treat symptoms: Lyme Disease is a complex multisystem inflammatory disorder so there are a wide range of symptoms that can emerge after a tick bite particularly when our immune systems are imbalanced. I recommend working with a practitioner if symptoms start to present.

  •   Kill spirochetes  

    • {Andrographis} This supremely bitter herb directly attacks the microbes where they reside, including hard-to-reach areas like the brain and heart. It is also directly anti-parasitic and has been shown to have success in the treatment of coronaviruses. Bitter herbs stimulate bile production which is our body’s innate antimicrobial and digestive aid. Not to be used for more than a few weeks at a time. Dosage is 1-20 drops 1-3x/day.

Several of the herbs + supplements discussed in this article are available via my virtual dispensary at 15% off:

Japanese Knotweed in the Spring

*This article is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.