Chronic: The Hidden Cause of the Autoimmune Pandemic and How to Get Healthy Again by Dr. Steven Philips, MD & Dana Parish.
Dr. Steven Phillips, the expert guest on our upcoming Season 2 Episode 1 launching this week, has not only witnessed the agony and frustration of the many thousands of chronic Lyme and Lyme-related patients he’s diagnosed and treated over several decades. He’s experienced these agonies himself, as has his Chronic co-author, the science writer Dana Parish.
Dr. Phillips recalls the low point in his own battle when he was “confined to my memory-foam mattress prison for a full year, ultimately requiring twenty-four hour care, unable to turn over in bed or sit up on my own….”
From this nadir he persevered on his own path to wellness and toward a better understanding of the complexities of tick-borne Lyme infections triggering chronic illnesses affecting tens of thousands of North Americans each year.
Phillips argues these illnesses are more accurately called “Lyme Plus” to reflect other pathogens at work alongside Lyme bacteria. Yet current testing methods for Lyme and Lyme plus are woefully inadequate, in Phillips experience. This leads to high rates of misdiagnosis and mistreatment for up to 40% of infected individuals not cured by a typical course of antibiotics.
Chronic is both unusually an unusually powerful memoir and a science-based wake-up call to the mainstream medical community which has yet to fully recognize the ravages of chronic Lyme and Lyme plus conditions.
Episodes
Stories of everyday athletes facing physical and behavioral obstacles, and the rewards & challenges of an active lifestyle. With input from doctors, researchers, and other wellness experts.
Rowing Through Cancer, Injury & Trauma: Three Body Odysseys at 2022 Head of the Charles
“I want to row with my last breath.”
That’s a pretty strong endorsement for any sport. And we heard this deep love of rowing several times from committed rowers at the 2022 Head of the Charles Regatta (HOCR), the rowing world’s premier event, with 11,000 rowers competing and hundreds of thousands watching from the banks of the Charles River in Boston.
This episode features three body odysseys of competitors at the 2022 HOCR.
Cyclist for Life Howie: Riding the Ups & Downs of Cancer
Howie, a recently retired software engineer, has been an avid cyclist most of his adult life, with a total mileage equivalent to a few laps around the planet. But more remarkable is the fact that Howie has done a good bit of that cycling with cancer – not one, but six cases of lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph nodes.
Consider one of Howie’s favorite charity rides, The Pan Mass Challenge, which benefits cancer research through the Jimmy Fund. It’s a two-day, 200 mile ride across Massachusetts that Howie has done 24 times. “I’ve ridden it with pneumonia,” he tells us. “I’ve ridden it with cancer.”
Howie credits his oncologists and cancer therapy for surviving this decades-long odyssey, but he’s quick to add that cycling has contributed as well. “Because of all the riding I do,” he says, “they’re able to hit me harder with chemo, with radiation when they have to.”