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Monday, June 2, 2008

What is Morgellons?

Nobody knows. I have a patient with it. I know it is real. If I had not seen it with my own eyes I would be skeptical too. It occurred in a patient I had been treating for Lyme. It was truly bizarre. Strands or thread like structures squirmed there way out of open sores on her skin. They were multi-colored. They came in black, white, yellow and blue. The patient told me that if I looked at them they would go back in. Perhaps this is a coincidence, but that is exactly what I observed on one occasion. This patient experienced a variety of bizarre things coming out of her skin. Patients experience the sensation of something literally crawling under their skin. It sounds like something out of the X-files, but it is real. Current thinking is that Morgellons may be a mutated plant parasite which has acquired the ability to affect humans. Apparently it only occurs when the immune system has been weakened by a condition like chronic Lyme disease. It drives people crazy. It is associated with all the same symptoms as neuroborreliosis, so it is hard to know if the fatigue and cognitive dysfunction are from Lyme, Morgellons, or both. The physican with the most experience treating it is Dr. Sticker in San Francisco, along with Nurse Practitioner, Ginger Savely. He has found that a cocktail of antibiotics, antifungals and anti-worm medicines can be effective. For example, patients may be treated with Rocephin, the antifungal Diflucan, and Ivermectin, a medicine for small worms called Micro-fillaria. The Ivermectin may need to taken at high doses for a prolonged period of time. My patient is now seeing Dr. Sticker and I am hoping she will finally get some relief. Morgellons is one of the strangest phenomenon to be associated with the Lyme epidemic. We really do not yet know what it is, but treatment protocols are being developed and many patients helped. This disease remains outside the purview of all but the most intrepid Lyme doctors.

5 comments:

Michele said...

I have read that as many as 97% of these people are positive for Lyme. Also that the people who get this do a lot of gardening or are in the dust a lot. Maybe that salt and Vitimin C treatment would help. What part of the country has the most people with this disease?

Lyme report: Montgomery County, MD said...

Lyme is hard to diagnose for most doctors. A 97% positivity rate probably means that all patients are Lyme infected. The source of infection is not clear to me. Salt and Vitamin C appear to have a de-worming effect. When patients use this and a large number of worms appear in the stool then it might indicate that those individuals will respond to Ivermectin. My patient tried this treatment; it was minimally effective. Initially a cluster was described in Texas. This where Ginger Savely practiced. Now a large number of patients are reported in San Francisco. I suspect it is because that is where Stricker and Savely practice. They have seen at least 400 patients in their clinic, but they travel from all over the country. Any area with a lot of Lyme is also likely to have Morgellons.

glytzhkof said...

I was told by a Lyme literate doctor that the newest theory on this is that the fibers are created by opportunistic infection with agrobacterium made possible by wrecked skin immunity due to Lyme. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrobacterium

Shelldoll said...

If you do some quick tests with Qtip swabs, you will find the GMO bt cotton fibers are actually living parasites now due to genetically combining BT bacteria with the plants. Take a swab and loosen a few ends and put it under a microscope...now simply put sugar water, sweat, saliva, vaginal secretions JUST IN NEAR PROXIMITY and watch the fibers become animated and stretching and wreathing themselves free of the tangle to get to the "food". Now try volatile essential oils etc and put them in near proximity of the fibers and watch them pull back quickly, but curiously test their boundaries inquisitively getting closer and once too close retracting again. Now take a few of those fibers and put them in a couple drops of sugar or honey water and leave them for 24 to 48 hours and VIOLA....the drops will be overrun with fibers! Due to lobbyist protecting corporate interest in deceptive "organic" labelling and the Farm Act protecting Monsanto it's hard to find true non-gmo cotton. SO go to Grandma's house to find pre 1996 cotton items to compare the once inert cotton fibers to the now living GMO fibers. Even the ends are different with GMO bt cotton having a slightly snake like head in comparison to the non-gmo fibers. Non-gmo fibers will NOT ever move when just in proximity to sugar water or bodily fluids...they will only shift a bit upon actual absorption of fluids and nothing more. Whereas the BT fibers will become more active after absorbing these fluids...oh, and the more heat the better! They get really busy when you steam them with a clothes steamer! Steam of that temperature for prolong periods would kill most any bacteria...but NOT GMO BT COTTON. Patience in microscopic observation of the fibers in the presence of sustenance such as sugar water will soon show you they multiple asexually like bacteria through binary fission and you will see the some point the fiber looks like it's getting a split end or split in the middle. This is another reason Morgellon's suffers complain of salt like sandy chunks coming from their skin. Bacillus thuringiensis forms a solid protein crystal, the parasporal body, next to their endospores during spore formation. This is the pesticide constituent that shuts down the gut in insects. It also explains why there are so many digestive issues now in humans because every household is infiltrated with this parasite and it is against our bodies in clothing, bedding, towels, feminine hygiene products. It's no wonder responsible companies have switched to rayon tampons as most Morgellons suffers are women who've been using tampons since bt cotton became mainstream in 1996! I feel the contraction of Lyme's disease knocks the body down enough for the fibers to make patients symptomatic. My symptoms started within days after extensive plastic surgery from an abdominplasty/breast lift combo.

Icenibird said...

I became extremely ill 3 years ago with symptoms of severe persistent lower abdominal pain concentrated over my appendix, severe mental fog, severe insomnia, diarrhea, pain upon eating, and then, what looked like colored threads or worms coming out of my pores. These did not move or retract, and had a squishy texture, and were in several colors, including black, brown, orange, blue, and white. My toes and hands turned white, and threads came out of my toes, wrists, arms, thighs, face, and especially my fingertips and toetips. My eyeballs swelled and I could see swirls in the whites of my eyes, at the time terrifying me into thinking I had worms in my eyes. I saw Dr. Reifsnyder outside of Tampa, FL, who explained that once one has has the chickenpox, and becomes infected with Lyme, the Lyme can suppress the immune system to the point that the body can no longer keep the chickenpox virus under control in the body where it resides, in the spinal cord, and it then infects the nerve along the area of the abdomen where the appendix lies. It also causes the body to produce a lot of pus, in multiple colors, which is what I was experiencing coming out of my skin. This was remedied by large doses of Acyclovir for several years, and in retropect, the pus that came out of my pores did look somewhat like pus, but some of it had a tendency to be stringy, giving it the appearance of worms or threads. I continue to get tiny threads of black pus on the bottom of my feet when I get a Lyme flare up, and occasionally get white or blue pus coming out of my toes or between them if I happen to catch the flu. A very scary experience, nonetheless.