Healing from Chronic Lyme Disease: Why the Nervous System Comes First
Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Format: Ask Dr. Tony / Deep Dive | Topic: Lyme Disease, Chronic Illness & Nervous System Healing
Key Takeaways
- Chronic Lyme disease rarely takes hold in a healthy nervous system. In nearly every severe secondary case Dr. Tony Ebel has reviewed, including his own, the patient’s nervous system was already exhausted and depleted before the infection took hold.
- Nervous system dysfunction progresses through three stages: stage one is the stressed, wound-up fight-or-flight (sympathetic) response; stage two is disorganization and dysregulation where other body systems crash; stage three is total exhaustion and depletion, the hallmark of chronic Lyme, marked by severe brain fog and “dead legs.”
- Healing from Lyme follows a non-negotiable sequence: first Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care to get the nervous system out of exhaustion, then physical body work to mobilize the circulatory and lymphatic systems and clear infections, and only then functional and integrative medicine (nutrition, supplementation, detox, and sometimes antibiotics).
- The most effective infection-fighting part of the body is neuro-circulatory movement, the lymphatics, bloodstream, and nerve flow. Chemistry alone (supplements, nutrition, herbs) cannot move pathogens out of the body if the nervous system is bottomed out.
- There is no universal protocol for Lyme. About 80–90% of the healing sequence is consistent, but the deepest layer of infection-clearing is highly individualized, patients often have to discover what does not work for them on the way to finding what does.
How Do You Actually Heal from Chronic Lyme Disease?
Healing from chronic Lyme disease requires restoring the nervous system before attacking the infection itself. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, Lyme disease does not first set up shop in the immune system, it bottoms out the nervous system, which is the master controller of sleep, digestion, immune function, movement, and emotional regulation. When the nervous system is stuck in sympathetic dominance and eventually slides into total exhaustion, the body loses the reserve capacity, resilience, and adaptability it needs to fight off the secondary and tertiary infections that Lyme spreads throughout the body.
This is why the healing sequence matters more than any single intervention. Dr. Tony’s recovery, and the recoveries he has witnessed in patients, followed a consistent hierarchy: Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care first to get the nervous system out of the “basement,” then physical body work that activates the neuro-circulatory and lymphatic systems to physically move infections out, and finally functional and integrative medicine (targeted nutrition, supplementation, detoxification, and in some cases antibiotics) to clear the deepest co-infections. Skipping the first two foundational layers is the single most common reason people stall out, no matter how good their supplements or protocols are.
The catch is that Lyme does not respond to a cookie-cutter playbook. While roughly 80–90% of the sequence is the same for everyone, the final layer of clearing entrenched infections is deeply individual. Dr. Tony is candid that this is not medical treatment or a cure but a set of drug-free action steps, and that finding the right practitioner who treats each case as unique is essential.
Why Dr. Tony Doesn’t Call Himself a Full Lyme Expert [0:45 – 8:08]
Dr. Tony Ebel: This Q&A episode about Lyme disease also qualifies as one of our deep dive episodes, because we’re really going to go deep. In the same breath, right out of the gates, I want to state that I don’t feel like I fully qualify as an expert in Lyme disease. If you know even a little bit about Lyme, it is a very complex, multifaceted set of disorders and challenges that goes deep into the nervous system, deep into the immune system, and deep into our entire physical, mental, and emotional health.
But I probably do qualify as an expert in a lot of ways, for two reasons. One, I have been through the ringer with it myself. I’ve alluded to that on a few past podcasts but never done a dedicated episode, until today. Two, from a doctor’s standpoint, you cannot get all the way better from Lyme without understanding why. We’ll focus on the immune part, but the nervous system is the boss.
The question that prompted this episode actually came in asking whether PANS and PANDAS can look like Lyme. There are some similarities, but PANS and PANDAS are pretty unique in that they create so much anxiety, anger, outbursts, OCD, and tics. We don’t see as much of that with Lyme. As a general rule, Lyme creates that exhaustion and depletion, though it can trigger emotional dysregulation, anxiety, tics, and even seizures.
“You cannot get full, complete, or even decent amounts of healing with Lyme disease without addressing the nervous system, because the nervous system is the boss.”
Here’s something I’ll say right out of the gates: in every case I’ve seen develop into more severe chronic secondary Lyme, mine included, I dug into the case history and could make a strong bet that the person’s nervous system was already exhausted before the infection got in.
The Three Stages of Nervous System Dysfunction [3:46 – 6:27]
Dr. Tony Ebel: When the nervous system goes through a state of dysfunction, we consider there to be three stages.
The first stage is where the nervous system fights back. It’s stressed out, the fight-or-flight sympathetic response. It’s wound up, tense, inflamed, in that gas-pedal state. That’s actually an acute, natural, normal response to stress of any kind.
The second stage is where chronic illness starts to get its first hooks in. The nervous system becomes disorganized and dysregulated. Because the nervous system controls all the other systems of the body, sleep, movement, sensory, digestion, immune function, endocrine, bowel and bladder control, social-emotional, those systems start to crash out.
The third stage is the story of Lyme. This is absolute exhaustion. The brain fog becomes severe. Getting your body out of bed and moving your legs feels like the hardest workout ever, like running a marathon you never signed up for. The entire body no longer has any reserve capacity, resilience, or adaptability left.
“The third stage of nervous system dysfunction is flat-out depletion and exhaustion. The entire body no longer has any reserve capacity, resilience, or adaptability left.”
When we dig into the case histories of patients who succumbed to chronic Lyme, their nervous system was likely already depleted before the infections got in and made things worse. That’s a bad place to be, if you’re already stressed, dysregulated, and exhausted, and then you get these multi-site infections, now your system is fighting two big battles at once while fully depleted.
Dr. Tony’s Story: The Tick Bite and Acute Lyme Infection [8:48 – 17:03]
Dr. Tony Ebel: This story goes back over ten years. My wife Christina was pregnant with our fourth, Amelia Jean, who’s 11 now. At the time, I was full speed ahead, seeing tons of patients four days a week, traveling all over the world teaching the Perfect Storm and our clinical protocols, running a practice with multiple associate doctors and a staff of 12 to 14.
I was in my early 30s, doing CrossFit, eating paleo, getting adjusted once a week, taking all my supplements. So I thought I was keeping up. But here’s the question a lot of you can relate to: was the pace and demand of my life outpacing what was honestly a pretty thin health plan? Christina got hit hard with morning sickness during this pregnancy, so I was picking up everything around the house too.
One weekend we were playing in the backyard. My kids, Addison and Oliver, looked at me and said, “Dad, you’ve got a bug on you.” I looked down, thought it was a fly, flicked it off, kept playing. About 24 to 48 hours later, I noticed a red bullseye rash right at that same spot. The doctor in me knew right away: that was a tick, and this was about to develop into acute Lyme.
Here’s where my faith went with my thoughts: I’m healthy, I get adjusted, I eat clean, I don’t take medications, my immune system will handle this. Within four to six hours I had the most raging fever of my life. My body recognized the bacteria and went into a five-star alarm, fever, rash, exactly how it was designed to. I ended up flat in bed, sweating, with a brutal headache, unable to go serve my patients.
“Healthy people respond to even emergency, crisis intervention better, faster, and more completely, with fewer side effects.”
I finally broke down and asked my in-laws to bring me some Tylenol, I hadn’t taken any over-the-counter medication in about ten years. When it kicked in, I felt like a million dollars, fell asleep, and had the most insane dream involving a clown-filled EDM rave. I leaned over the banister and yelled to Christina, “This stuff is amazing, no wonder people don’t go to the chiropractor!” I was completely loopy and not making sense of real life. That’s the entertaining part of the acute story. The secondary part has more value for those battling this as a chronic illness.
The Antibiotic Decision and Beating the Acute Infection [17:03 – 20:48]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Here’s what I did. I called all my best friends in functional medicine, naturopathic, and chiropractic care, and they overnighted me homeopathic, herbal, and supplement remedies, some of it dry-iced. I did 48 hours of everything natural because I didn’t want to take antibiotics.
But I also knew enough about Lyme even back then to know it’s complicated. Some experts say take antibiotics; others say don’t. That’s still a debate within the Lyme community today. For me it became a no-brainer, because by the third day I couldn’t break the acute infection. My wife literally couldn’t get off the couch, I had an intern carrying hundreds of patients, and I needed to get back to work.
So I went to urgent care. It was a black-and-white case, acute Lyme infection with a bullseye rash. But they tried to upsell me a tetanus shot, a DTaP, extra tests, and Zofran I never asked for. I declined the BS, got the antibiotics, and took the full course while also staying on all my homeopathic, herbal, and supplement remedies with my nutrition on point. The combination got me through. Literally after 24 hours of antibiotics, I was back to me. I went back into practice and thought I was past the challenge.
Here’s where it turns chronic, and where a lot of your stories will sound similar. Life was so busy that I don’t think I thought about Lyme again for two to three years.
Meeting Dr. Ben: “You Have Lyme, and I Can See It in Your Eyes” [20:48 – 27:04]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Two or three years later I was up in Wisconsin at the Kalahari, teaching the Perfect Storm work to other chiropractors for eight hours. After I finished, I was walking through the expo hall when a dear friend who would become a lifesaver found me, Dr. Ben Erlandson, who had himself battled a terrible case of chronic Lyme, including depression so deep he barely wanted to be here. He’d gotten better through a protocol called Lyme Stop (all one word).
Dr. Ben had been a student of mine in student clinic back at Palmer College of Chiropractic. We hadn’t really talked since school. He walked right up, no “how are you?”, and asked: if you saw an infant or toddler who’d been through the Perfect Storm, could you look into their eyes and know whether they were on a track to autism? I said yes, every time, I can read a child’s level of disconnect, dysregulation, and exhaustion in their eyes, their ocular-motor and vestibular function.
Then he said, “Well, you have Lyme, and I can see it in your eyes.” He asked if I was tired all the time, if my stress levels were higher than I could manage. And I broke down.
“I had been a terrible chiropractic patient. One time a week, when you’re charging hard, just isn’t enough, a lot of your kids need to be adjusted two to three times a week for the rest of their life.”
What I hadn’t told anybody, because I was in my young 30s, paleo-eating, CrossFitting, and supposed to get other people healthy, was how bad it had gotten. Over half the time when I read a book to put my kids down for a nap, I’d fall asleep, and Christina would have to come wake me to go back to the practice. I was dead tired all the time. My three major symptoms were brain fog (my brain just wouldn’t work), dead legs (I could barely step up onto a box), and constant pain in my traps, shoulder, and suboccipital region where I carry my scoliosis and subluxations. I’d chalked it all up to stress.
Why the Nervous System Has to Be Fixed First [27:04 – 35:13]
Dr. Tony Ebel: What Dr. Ben taught me is that I was already doing the foundational things right. Because I’d ramped up to getting adjusted three to five times per week, I was getting my head above water. The brain fog, dead legs, and pain weren’t gone, but they were so much more manageable. I needed a higher dosage of chiropractic to keep up with how hard I burn out my nervous system.
“You can’t use chemistry only to get the bad guys out of the body. You have to activate the circulatory, lymphatic, and nerve-flow systems first.”
Here’s the science. The number one most effective infection-fighting part of the body is neuro-circulatory movement. The first phase of detoxification, eliminating toxins, parasites, viruses, bacteria, and candida, depends on the part of the immune system that physically moves things through circulation: the lymphatics, the bloodstream, nerve flow, the energy of the body. You have to activate that layer first. Getting my neurospinal system adjusted through the neuro-tonal techniques we use did me a lot of good and put me in a “ready state.”
I’d go up to Wisconsin and do two-week intensives near Dr. Ben’s clinic, twice a day, three times a week. And I responded to Lyme Stop like a boss. My brain fog and shoulder/neck pain cleared within the first couple of treatments. That is not a normal response, I want to be clear. It only happened because I’d already gotten my healing to “second or third base” by getting my nervous system out of the basement first. A lot of people haven’t even started the job.
Dr. Ben did a lot of body work, tapping, contact to find the secondary and tertiary infections. The worst of mine traced all the way back to growing up on a farm: co-infections in my lungs, plus exposure to flooding, Roundup, and GMOs. The Lyme was sitting on top of all of that. On the table, I’d finally be able to take a deep breath, and I had the biggest emotional release of my life, crying like a baby. Two big emotional releases later, my brain fog lifted and my neck and shoulder pain was gone.
The Last Symptom to Heal: Dead Legs and Box Jumps [35:13 – 39:52]
Dr. Tony Ebel: My brain got better. My neck and shoulders got better. No more physical pain, no more brain fog or general fatigue, because if your brain is exhausted, you’re exhausted. But my legs were stubborn.
About six weeks later, continuing the Lyme Stop, the tapping and body work on my own, staying adherent to the diet and supplements, and never pulling back from my neurospinal chiropractic adjustments, things changed. I’d stopped going to my CrossFit gym because so many movements I loved I just couldn’t do. Christina, a saint, had set up a whole Rogue gym in our garage. One sunny day, garage door open, I went to do box jumps, and I could do them. Rapid fire, up and down, fast.
I pulled out my phone, crying again, and sent a selfie video to Dr. Ben just to say thank you, because that was the last thing I’d been waiting for to heal. Those box jumps matter to me because that’s how I maintain the energy and purpose that let me be a rockstar dad, husband, and pediatric chiropractor. If I can’t take care of me at the level I want, I can’t take care of others.
To this day, ten years later, I still go up twice a year for a session or two with Dr. Ben, a proactive wellness plan, not “maintenance,” a word I despise.
The Healing Sequence: Get the Order Right [39:52 – 43:20]
Dr. Tony Ebel: If you’re battling Lyme and what you’re working on primarily is nutrition, supplementation, and detoxification as the first foundation, that’s not where these diseases set up shop. Lyme, PANS, and PANDAS don’t first layer their dysfunction into the gut. They bottom out the nervous system first.
Here’s the order that worked for me and the patients I’ve seen recover:
- Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care first, get the nervous system out of exhaustion through neurospinal, neuro-tonal adjustments.
- Physical body work second, an intervention like Lyme Stop that activates the neuro-circulatory and lymphatic systems to physically move parasites, co-infections, bacteria, viruses, and toxins out: sweat, poop, clear.
- Functional and integrative medicine third, targeted nutrition, supplementation, detoxification, and microbiome, adrenal, liver, and kidney support.
“These chronic illnesses bottom out the nervous system first. If your nervous system is in the basement, it can’t take your supplements, nutrition, and protocols and do good things with them.”
Some people will still need antibiotics because the infections got so deep, knowing all the side effects, and then working intentionally with a practitioner to rebuild afterward. Sometimes you’ve got to drop the bombs and kill off the bad guys first. I have other patients who handled their secondary chronic Lyme with no antibiotics at all. When I did Lyme Stop, I didn’t use antibiotics, I’d only taken them for the original acute infection because of my life circumstances at that moment.
Do I look back and wish I hadn’t taken the antibiotics that first time? I was aware of the argument that they let the infection go deeper. But I had a life situation at that moment where it was the right protocol for me, and it created this healing story.
There Is No Universal Playbook for Lyme [43:20 – 48:30]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Your path to Lyme and chronic illness is unique to you. Your current life situation, or your child’s, is unique to you. So I don’t want you to rely on one Facebook group, one podcast, or one practitioner. I want you to have a lot of experts, a lot of stories, and a lot of different protocols at your disposal, and make sure your practitioners aren’t just telling you to do the same thing that works for everyone, because Lyme doesn’t work that way, just like autism doesn’t.
“The journey to get better from Lyme does not have a playbook. It does have foundations, and it does have that three-step sequence.”
When you get to the third step especially, there is so much nuance. A lot of you are unfortunately going to have to find out what does not work for your individualized care on the way to finding what does. Just don’t give up. Don’t stop moving forward. Don’t lose hope. The protocol or practitioner that turns the corner for you may be right around the corner.
For some of you, the missing piece will be Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, maybe you already have a “Dr. Ben” with the right protocols and supplements, but you skipped the first two foundational layers. For others, you’ve got the foundation and just need to stay the course with more adjustments, body work, supplementation, and detox.
And if you have a practitioner who fits this blueprint and helped you or your child heal from Lyme, please email support@pxdocs.com with their information so we can add them to the network we share with other families searching for answers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Lyme disease be cured without antibiotics?
Some people recover from chronic Lyme without antibiotics, and some need them. Dr. Tony Ebel handled his secondary chronic Lyme with no antibiotics, using Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, body work, and functional medicine instead. He took antibiotics only for his original acute infection. Whether antibiotics are needed depends on how deep the infections have spread, and this remains an active debate within the Lyme community.
What are the symptoms of chronic Lyme disease?
Chronic Lyme typically produces exhaustion and depletion rather than the anxiety, OCD, and tics seen with PANS and PANDAS. Dr. Tony Ebel’s three major symptoms were severe brain fog, “dead legs” (overwhelming muscular fatigue), and constant pain in the traps, shoulders, and neck. Lyme can also trigger emotional dysregulation, anxiety, tics, and even seizures.
Why does the nervous system need to be treated first when healing from Lyme?
Because the nervous system controls every other system, sleep, digestion, immune function, and the neuro-circulatory movement that physically clears infections. If the nervous system is in stage-three exhaustion, the body can’t make use of supplements, nutrition, or antibiotics. Dr. Tony Ebel teaches that Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care must come first to get the nervous system into a “ready state” to heal.
Can Lyme disease look like PANS or PANDAS in children?
There is some overlap, but they differ. PANS and PANDAS are marked by sudden anxiety, anger, outbursts, OCD, and tics. Lyme more typically causes exhaustion and depletion, though it can flare anxiety, tics, and seizures. Both are chronic illnesses that, according to Dr. Tony Ebel, first bottom out the nervous system rather than the gut.
What is the correct sequence for healing from Lyme disease?
Dr. Tony Ebel recommends a three-step order: first Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care to restore the nervous system; second physical body work to activate the circulatory and lymphatic systems and move infections out; and third functional and integrative medicine (nutrition, supplementation, detox, and sometimes antibiotics). Skipping the first two foundational steps is the most common reason people fail to recover.
How do I find a chiropractor who treats the nervous system for chronic illness?
You can find a trained Neurologically-Focused Chiropractor through the PX Docs Directory. Dr. Tony Ebel emphasizes finding a practitioner who treats your case as unique rather than applying a cookie-cutter protocol, since Lyme requires personalized, customized care.
Resources & Related Content
- The “Perfect Storm”, Dr. Tony Ebel’s framework for how stress and trauma deplete a child’s nervous system
- PANS & PANDAS, How these conditions overlap with and differ from Lyme
- Find a PX Docs Office Near You, PX Docs Directory of Neurologically-Focused Chiropractors