Dr. Joe Burrascano: A Masterclass on Tick-Borne Illness

Dr Joe Burrascano
By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this episode of Ticktective™, host Dana Parish interviews Joe Burrascano, MD. Dr. Burrascano is a pioneer in the field of Lyme disease, having treated patients since the early days of the illness in the 1980s and 1990s. He co-founded the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) to help train clinicians in treating Lyme and associated tick-borne diseases. Dr. Burrascano discusses the challenges in diagnosing and treating Lyme, including issues with the limited testing criteria and the chronic, multisystemic nature of the disease. He outlines his approach to treating early Lyme with a “hybrid” antibiotic regimen, as well as the use of pulsed and cycling antibiotic therapies for chronic cases. He also highlights the importance of addressing underlying health factors like immune dysfunction, toxin buildup, and co-infections like Bartonella and mold toxicity in chronic Lyme patients. Dr. Burrascano emphasizes the need for a holistic, patient-centered approach to managing complex, persistent tick-borne illnesses.

“If you have something that’s every part of your body is bothering you, and it comes and goes and it moves around, of course, you’re going to be labeled as a little bit cuckoo. It’s not. It’s Lyme disease.”

– Joe Burrascano, MD

Dana Parish: Welcome to the Ticktective Podcast, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. I’m your host, Dana Parish, and I’m the co-author of the book Chronic, and I sit on the advisory board of Bay Area Lyme Foundation. This program offers insightful interviews with scientists, clinicians, patients, and other interesting people. We’re a nonprofit based in Silicon Valley, and thanks to a generous grant that covers a hundred percent of our overhead, all of your donations go directly to our research and prevention programs. For more information about Lyme disease, please visit us@bayarealyme.org.

Pathogens and Persistence: The Chronic Disease Drivers

Dr Steven Phillips Ticktective
By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL “Quick Bites” Series

 

“I’ve always said that the FDA has been captured by the pharmaceutical industry. They don’t have our best interests at heart. You shouldn’t be funded by the people you’re supposed to be regulating.”

– Steven Phillips, MD

ChronicTicktective host, Dana Parish, talks with her longtime collaborator and co-author of Chronic, Dr. Steven Phillips, a Yale-trained internal medicine doctor who specializes in treating patients with complex, chronic illnesses, often driven by underlying infections like Lyme, Bartonella, Babesia, and now, COVID. In this podcast episode, Phillips discusses the importance of getting to the root cause of mystery autoimmune illnesses, rather than just suppressing symptoms. He states that many chronic infections can drive autoimmune conditions, including Lyme disease, and that Lyme tests are often inaccurate, with a sensitivity of around 50%. Phillips discusses how he recommends treating suspected tick bites to prevent the development of chronic Lyme disease and his use of a multi-antibiotic approach and pulsed antibiotic therapy to target persistent infections. He also discusses his experiences treating COVID-19, using a multi-modal approach including doxycycline, Paxlovid, Metformin, and other drugs and supplements, and the reactivation of infections like Bartonella in Long COVID patients. They also discuss how the chemical and pharmaceutical industries’ interests do not necessarily align with patients trying to get well. The interview highlights Dr. Phillips’s expertise in treating complex chronic infections and his holistic, evidence-based approach to patient care.