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.
Mom-on-the-Run Erin: The Challenges of Postpartum Depression
"Pregnancy is no joke," Erin tells us in this body odyssey that's both deeply personal and all-too-common. Having been on bed rest with preeclampsia, Erin confides, “I wasn’t good at being pregnant.” Weight gain and postpartum depression --a condition affecting 1 in 8 new moms-- made matters worse.
But when a close friend and fellow high school teacher tells Erin that running might help her behavioral and physical challenges, she (begrudgingly) starts training for a marathon.
“Each person needs a plan that is well suited for that personality and for their functioning level,” advises Dr. “Shosh” Bennett, a clinical psychologist who has personally struggled with postpartum. “The take-home message shouldn't be: I have to run a marathon in order to beat postpartum depression. It should be: Find something that's going to give them great satisfaction.”
Does Mom-on-the-Run Erin find that satisfaction in a 26.2-mile run? Listen in to see how putting in extra miles helps her kids, her partner and herself.
Doc Sarah: Mysterious Condition, Miraculous Race
How do we know when to push through pain to pursue the activities we love? And when should we suspect that injuries are part of a disease process?
In this episode we meet Doc Sarah, a pediatrician, mother of four, and avid runner bedeviled by these questions.
“I had gone for 30 years with no injuries,” Sarah recalls. “Then all of a sudden I've got IT band, plantar fasciitis, I’m tearing my hamstrings.”
This odyssey highlights the challenge of diagnosis even for an experienced Doc like Sarah and confirmed by Divya Muthappa, a General Practitioner in Texas.
“There are patients that I am just 99% sure that I know what their diagnosis is,” confides Dr. Muthappa. “And it ends up being something else.”
While Dr. Jeffrey Sparks, a rheumatologist at Mass General Brigham, notes that Sarah’s ordeal is by no means atypical.
Tune in for an odyssey of self-diagnosis and self-discovery as Doc Sarah emerges a better listener to her patients and to her own body’s aches and pains.