Last year, my erstwhile apprentice, Kim, gave me a print-out of a chapter of Matthew Wood's SPLENDID book, "The Book Of Herbal Wisdom: Using Plants as Medicines", about using Teasel Root tincture for Lyme Disease. I read it with some interest, as Matt is a wonderful writer, but also, as herbalists go, I must say, this man really does GET IT. In a big way. He sees not only the 'active ingredients' as many scientific types do, but Matt sees and hears what the plants have to tell us, to teach us, and truly how they interract with us. And that's as it should be.
I have to admit I was a little wary of taking it. Out of the five cases he 'treated' (four being clinically diagnosed as chronic Lyme and one not specifically called such) he got five COMPLETE CURES, but two of those cases manifested in screeching genital rashes before totally leaving the patient's system. That'll make you stop and think. One of the interesting things that Matt brings up about Lyme is that it is often called 'Deer Syphilis'. I've often heard the spirochete that causes Lyme compared to the organism that causes syphilis.
Since the article in the book had been written in 1997, I called Matt to see how things had progressed since then. He says he, the herbalists AND the Docs are getting pretty much a 75% CURE rate with 'normal' cases and about a 25% CURE rate on the most severe, utterly bed-ridden cases. And, he added, the two cases in the book were the ONLY ones he was aware of which manifested with the horrifying genital rashes. Go figure.
So, getting a splendid, high-quality tincture from Jean Argus at Jean's Greens, I began to take it, VERY cautiously. Matt's dosages are often far tinier than other herbalists might recommend, and for this he was suggesting only 1-3 DROPS 1-3x a day.
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