Next Up in our Lyme Journey: The Cowden Protocol

As many of you know my girls and I were diagnosed with Lyme disease over 3 years ago. So many pieces of our health puzzle fell into place when we got that diagnosis. Unfortunately being diagnosed with Lyme and curing Lyme are not at all the same thing. If we had caught it early, there is a good chance that a fairly short course of antibiotics would have cleared it right up and we would have returned to health. But it was not caught early at all. While we will never know for sure, we are fairly confident that I was infected many years ago and my children were both infected before they were born. Lyme passes through the placenta and can infect babies in utero. They never had a chance.

When we were diagnosed we had been on GAPS for about 9 months. Lucky for us a diet like GAPS is ideal for anyone suffering from Lyme so that part of treating our Lyme was already in place. Over the past 3 years we have attacked the Lyme in many different ways with different herbal regimens, homeopathics and nutritional support as well as some Rx medications to support the various body systems that Lyme taxes like our thyroids and adrenals. We are so much better than we were! I have also tacked my dental issues getting my cavitations cleaned out and my mercury amalgam fillings removed. After the cavitation surgery I felt so much better that I had hope that my body would then heal itself! We were all doing really well and improving in our health all the time. I wasn’t even addressing Lyme directly and yet felt like we were winning! Then in February of this year two very stressful events happened in rapid succession. The weight of them was terrible and once I had recovered from them I realized that my health was not what it had been. I tried various approaches to return us to that former spot but I wasn’t getting anywhere. Finally in desperation I decided to put my family back on the GAPS intro again. We have seen some progress from that and I have been able to release some stored emotions from the stressful events in Feb thanks to Craniosacral Therapy and that has also improved my health. All of that is great but I’m still not back to where I was and I blame Lyme.

In early October a friend who knows of our struggles sent me a link to a story about a man who had struggled with Lyme for many years. There are many stories like his out there on the internet to read but something struck me about this story. This man had been bitten many years before and had mild Lyme symptoms for years although he did not know the cause. Then one day while at work he was suddenly extremely ill and had to be taken to the hospital. What followed was several years of Dr after Dr misdiagnosing him and even when he was correctly diagnosed the treatments (high dose antibiotics which he took for years) did not help. He was barely functional, lost his job, spent 20 hours a day asleep, plus lots of other Lyme symptoms that made life miserable when he was awake. Then he finally got on an herbal treatment that worked for him. He lost 10 years of his life but now he is back working, back living life, back doing all the things that he loved and that Lyme took away from him. His wife also got sick with Lyme and was also cured with the same herbal treatment.

At the same time I had encountered some information about the herb Banderol being effective for Lyme and ordered a bottle of it. We took some the first night after it arrived. I gave myself and my children each one drop. Within an hour I started a herx (this means a resurgence of symptoms indicative of the Lyme bacteria dying) with lots of joint and muscle pain and both girls got very grumpy and difficult. We had just returned from a trip so I knew that their behavior could have just been from being tired so I waited to see what would happen next. I kept giving us one drop morning and afternoon and within an hour of each dose my joint pains would get worse and the girls would be really out of control. I moved the afternoon dose to bedtime to make it easier on all of us. We stayed at one drop. Then the nausea started. It hit my 9 year old the worst. My 5 year old deals with stomach pain every day so I’m not sure if the Banderol increased it or not. After 1 week I cried uncle and quit the herb. If we were going to be using this herb we needed some more supports in place and I needed to understand it better.

It turns out that this is one of the main herbs used in the Cowden Protocol. This was developed by Dr Lee Cowden and has significantly helped about 85% of the people who have used it. That is a pretty impressive statistic! In one of the first study studies it helped 80%. The protocol has been improved based on what was learned. Those were all people who had already tried antibiotic therapies and failed them for one reason or another. (didn’t work, couldn’t tolerate it etc). So this isn’t just people who would have gotten better on their own.

I have been reading and watching videos done by Dr Cowden and very quickly became convinced that we needed to give the whole protocol a try. When I first heard of this protocol 3 years ago I though that it looked complicated and expensive and I was far too overwhelmed by it to even consider it. Well now, after 3+ years of being sick and doing lots of complicated and expensive things trying to get better, this doesn’t look so bad.

I figured out how to get about 60% off retail for my first month of products for the Cowden protocol. If you would like to get that big a discount too follow the link below to learn how. I will receive points to use on a future purchase if you purchase through my link. Thank you!

If you already know what to do here is the link to follow to get the discount

Cowden 25% discount Code TAF13

If you would like to learn more about this protocol here is a video of Dr Cowden talking about it. It is about an hour long and full of great information.

If you want to see a copy of the dosage instructions for the protocol go here Cowden Dosage Instructions. When I purchased the first month’s herbs I also got this schedule printed out with it.

Companies that are selling herbal products aren’t allowed to make any claims about them being beneficial on the same website as where they are sold in the US. However, Nutramedix has a presence in South America and has a website based there that explains about the studies that have been done on the herbs used in this protocol. You can find that site here Nutramedix.ec

If you are working with a Dr doing the Cowden Protocol and have financial difficulties you can often apply to receive the products for just $100 a month. Those of you who are not able to find a Dr to work with however don’t have that option. For you there are some other ways to get discounts. Go see this page of mine to learn more. Cowden Protocol Deep Discount