If you’re familiar with integrative treatment for Lyme Disease at all, you’ve probably heard of the Buhner Protocols.

But, what are the Buhner protocols, and what makes them such a great option for treating late stage Lyme Disease and/or coinfections?

It’s a valid question, when there are so many types of integrative treatment to choose from.

Quite a few Lyme Literate physicians treat their patients with long term oral and IV antibiotic combinations, along with some nutritional and botanical supplements.

Some homeopaths prefer to use the DesBio Lyme and coinfection vials, or classical homeopathy.

There are lots of herbal protocols, too – Byron White, Cowden, BioPure CockTail, Vital Plan, and Results RNA, to name a few.

Each of these treatment options have helped people in recovery.

It’s not at all that I dislike or disapprove of these treatment methods.

In actuality, it’s what I LIKE about herbalist Stephen Buhner’s herbal treatment regimens that has won me over.

So, what sets his herbal protocols apart in the realm of integrative treatment for Lyme Disease and coinfections?

1. He empowers Lyme sufferers with the tools they need to help themselves heal –

“I have been told by a number of clinicians – herbal, naturopathic, and medical – that the majority of people with Lyme and/or its coinfections are too uneducated to understand this series of books, and that they are not intelligent enough to determine which herbs to use and which herbs not to use (and, in fact, that many herbs should only be discussed or dispensed by properly trained and credentialed herbalists – and yes, that means that most community herbalists and all those who are ill should not), that people with this group of diseases cannot in fact be trusted to be in charge of their own health and journey to wellness, and that I am remiss, even foolish (ie., stupid, silly, idiotic, witless, brainless, vacuous, mindless, unintelligent, thoughtless, half-baked, harebrained, imprudent, incautious, injudicious, unwise) in supporting members of the Lyme community in their self-empowerment.

My feelings about that kind of thinking (and the people who promulgate it – you know who you are and yes, I still know where you live) can be captured in a number of common one-syllable words usually unacceptable in polite company. (Please insert your own favorites here.) For those who strongly disagree with this, you can email me at stephendoesn’tcare@aol.com.

Thus, while it can help to have a sophisticated clinician to aid in the journey to wellness, it is not always necessary. Further, the truth is, for many people, finding such a person is sometimes impossible, hence taking charge of their own journey to wellness is the only option. That is most likely why the Lyme community is as potently informed as it is (much to the dismay of many physicians, paternalistic medical herbalists, and naturopaths).

I do not agree with those clinicians who think you are too stupid to orchestrate your own journey to wellness, that you are too unintelligent or uneducated to understand these books, that you should not be allowed to to engage in your own healing without some licensed person overseeing your regimen. In fact, I disagree with that kind of condescending attitude quite strongly. ” – Stephen Buhner, Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, pages 4& 5

“There is a reason so many Lyme sufferers seek out alternative treatments. It is not because they are insane, uneducated, overly hysterical, stupid, or gullible. It is because they are ill, they know they are ill, and conventional medical treatment has not worked for them. (Just because someone is ill does not mean that, as far too many physicians think, they have suddenly become stupid.) Too often, when they turn to their physicians for help after antibiotics fail, they are told it is all in their heads or that they will just have to live with their reduced functionality or that they actually are better – they just can’t tell. Too often they find themselves in the middle of the Lyme wars where the paradigm of treatment becomes more important than the health and happiness of the patients themselves.
Healing is possible in Lyme disease, we have seen it over and over again – even in the most intractable cases. There is hope, don’t give up.” – Stephen Buhner, Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, pages 18 & 19

2. But, he also realizes some Lyme patients may be too overwhelmed to treat themselves and as such need a practitioner’s guidance –

“If you do feel you need a health professional to help you, then by all means find one. If you do not feel that you need someone, or that your past efforts with professionals have been unsatisfactory, then again, trust yourself to find what works for you. In fact, even if you do work with a health professional, I highly recommend that you trust yourself to determine what you are willing to take as medicine and what you are not, to determine for yourself if something is working or if it is not, to engage in self-determination on your journey to wellness.” – Stephen Buhner, Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, page 5

3. He acknowledges that other herbs and therapies can help too, and that people will likely need to add to or subtract from his protocols –

“Also, a note: The herbs and supplements in this book are not the only ones in the world that will help. (Please don’t write me and ask why [fill in the blank] is not part of the protocol. Just re-read this paragraph.) Use the protocols outlined herein only as a starting place, a guideline. Add anything you feel will help you and delete anything that you feel is not useful. Microorganisms, when they enter a human body, find a very unique ecosystem in that particular person. Thus the disease is always slightly different every time it occurs. That means that a pharmaceutical or herb that works for one person may not work or work as well for another. There is no one-size-fits-all treatment for these particular organisms. Again…there is no one-size-fits-all treatment for Lyme or any of its coinfections.

Anyone who says there is, is either trying to sell you something or doesn’t really understand this group of infectious organisms. There is no one way to health such that in all times and all places and with all people it will always work. Life, and disease, and the journey to wellness are much more complex and sophisticated than that. So, trust your own feeling sense and pay attention to what your body is telling you. You are the best judge of whether something is working for you or not, whether you need to add something else or not, whether you are getting better…or not.” – Stephen Buhner, Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, page 3

4. He covers antibiotic treatment for Lyme –

“Please note: These protocols are designed to be used along with antibiotics if you wish to do so. I don’t think you necessarily have to give up either pharmaceuticals or natural medicines to find health. However, if you have tried antibiotics and they have failed to help you, the protocols in this book can be used, effectively, all by themselves…” – Stephen Buhner, Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, page 3

“Pharmaceutical Treament” (Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, pages 57-63)

“I admit to bias. In general I am not a fan of antibiotics, and I have written about their overuse and antibiotic-resistance problems in a number of my books, in most detail in Herbal Antibiotics, second edition, and The Lost Language of Plants. Antibiotics, like many pharmaceuticals, are terribly overused in the United States, and despite what advertisers say, our health as a nation is not the better for it. We are far down on the list of the industrialized nations in both life expectancy and our quality of life. Antibiotic resistance among some very dangerous organisms is a growing problem because of antibiotic overuse. And despite regular alerts from such organizations as the CDC, nothing seems to be able to slow that use in either hospitals or among physicians.

My standard criteria for antibiotic use, very different than the majority of physicians, is that they should not be used except in instances where there is a very strong possibility of death or disability. Otherwise, as most bacterial researchers have stated, we will soon not have them as a treatment option at all. That has ramaficatons that few of us really wish to contemplate.

Nevertheless, the level of disability that can occur during Lyme infection makes the use of antibiotics warranted in this disease (even by my criteria). Again, antibiotics are spectacularly effective for many people. This does not mean they work for everyone or even a large majority of people who use them. It is, in part, that failure of effectiveness that drives the need for alternatives that are well considered and that can help in the treatment of the disease.” – Stephen Buhner, Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, page 18

5. His books are filled with evidence based research –

(From an article sharing an interview between The Trek and Stephen Buhner)

What are the most common misconceptions about Lyme disease?

Buhner: Pretty much everything. Up front I need to make clear that all the information I present in my updated second edition of Healing Lyme (Raven Press, 2015) about Lyme disease is cleverly concealed in open source peer reviewed journals easily found via the internet. For several reasons, I decided to focus the book through the lens of the research that hundreds of researchers and physicians around the world were conducting. Over the past 4 years or so, I have read some 10,000 journal articles on Lyme and its major coinfections. I then created a synthesis of all this information to give as complete a picture of what was happening as possible.

I had several goals in this:

[One] To give those with Lyme infections a clear picture of what was happening so that their fear level would lessen;

[Two] To give physicians a clear picture of what was going on so that they could begin to design more effective approaches and importantly, help them respond more compassionately to their patients;

[Three] To develop alternative protocols that could help people when pharmaceuticals failed them, as they do for around 40 percent of those infected; and finally;

[Four] Because I was walking into a war zone where there was a nearly complete disconnect between what the medical establishment was insisting was true about Lyme disease and what the people with the disease were experiencing. It was inevitable that my work would be attacked but it would make those attacks harder if I used the medical establishment’s own model and published studies.

6. He helps Lyme doctors and patients understand how the disease works –

“This book is written for very different readers, whose informational needs are also different: practitioners who treat Lyme and patients who have Lyme. Happily, he has organized this book into sections that will allow these readers to pick and choose which sections will most meet their needs. Despite the technical nature of some of these chapters, I would encourage all readers to plow into them anyway; it is not necessary to grasp the fine points to appreciate what these microbes are doing to us and with us.” – Dr. Neil Nathan, MD, Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, foreward

7. He cares about affordability of treatment for Lyme patients –

“I strongly suggest, if you have any inclination at all to do so, you make your own herbal medicines. There are a number of reasons for this; the most obvious is cost: making your own will lower your cost significantly.
Although herbal medicines are extremely inexpensive compared to pharmaceuticals (and often more effective), treating a long-term, chronic condition can be expensive, especially if you buy them already prepared. This has become especially true as the FDA has begun to exert more control over herbal medicines via the good manufacturing practices act, aka the GMP (not necessarily a good thing). Making it worse, the larger herbal companies are beginning to consolidate their control over the marketplace (very much not a good thing). Those shifts are causing price increases in nearly every area.” – Stephen Buhner, Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, page 334

No other Lyme treatment option involves common herbs you can forage or purchase dried, in bulk, and tincture yourself to save money.

8. His herbal protocols have good success rates –

(From a Q & A on the Buhner Healing Lyme blog)

“There have been no clinical studies on my protocol that I am aware of. In general the practitioners I have contact with report that 75% recover completely, 10-15% are relieved of most or all symptoms, 5-10% are relieved of some symptoms, 5% have no response.” – Stephen Buhner

9. He has NINE individual protocols to cover the major tick borne infections –

Buhner has written three extensive books covering tick borne infections, how they affect the body, and how to treat them based on the organs each one damages, the cytokine cascades each one activates, and the botanicals that have been shown to affect each one the most.

So, he covers not only specific treatment for Borrelia Burgdorferi, but also Tick Borne Relapsing Fever, tick borne Chlamydia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Bartonella, Babesia, Mycoplasma, Ehrlichia, and Anaplasma infections. No other Lyme Literate researcher, practitioner, author, or clinic has done this.

If you’d like to learn more about the Buhner protocols for Lyme and coinfection treatment, please feel free to peruse the links below.

I highly recommend purchasing the books to read for yourself. However, if that’s not a possibility, I have the summaries to each of his protocols with hyperlinks to the dried, powdered, tincture, and glycerin extract version of the herbs in each protocol as well.

Healing Lyme 2nd Edition, Stephen Harrod Buhner (Borreliosis, Chlamydia, and Spotted Fever Rickettsiosis)

Healing Lyme Disease Coinfections, Stephen Harrod Buhner (Bartonella and Mycoplasma)

Natural Treatments for Lyme Coinfections, Stephen Harrod Buhner (Anaplasma, Babesia, and Ehrlichia)

Protocol Summaries

Lyme Disease and Tick Borne Relapsing Fever

Chlamydia and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

Bartonella and Mycoplasma

Anaplasma, Babesia, and Ehrlichia

Disclaimer: I am not a licensed doctor and do not diagnose or treat disease. Please do not substitute the information in this educational blog post for the personalized advice of your health practitioner.

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