Cistus Icannus Tea Revisited — A Post for Those with Lyme and Co-Infections

A year ago I wrote about drinking cistus icanus tea in order to rid my body of a form of bartonella, one of the co-infections that often show up in people with Lyme Disease.  Every morning for three months I drank most of a cup of this tea.  I say most because some mornings, drinking it made me too nauseous to get all of it down.  Other days I had no problems at all.

Where I live there is a health professional who will take a drop of blood, put it on a slide for magnification on a huge video monitor and identify the various shapes and types of wriggling bacteria, plus the numbers of each that he sees.  He doesn’t diagnose.  Instead he gives his client a record of his findings and a memory stick of the video to take to a doctor, who might use the information as a diagnostic aid.  This was one of many tools my physician used to diagnose my illness.

After three months of drinking cistus icanus tea, I returned to have my blood checked, and no bartonella was found.  In addition, all those nasty symptoms that accompany the bacteria — tremors, high anxiety, depression, mania, pain around the ear and neck, other problems that affect my work and driving — had disappeared a month or more earlier.  Since the bartonella did not show up in my drop of blood, I assumed it was gone for good and traded the tea for hot water with lemon.

Now a year, later the bartonella is back.  The form that I have is known as “cat-scratch fever” because transmission involves a tck, a cat and a human.  It is possible I have been re-infected.  Or that it was still lingering, hiding somewhere. As I write this post, I await a delivery of a bag of cistus incanus which I believe did a good job of breaking down biofilms so the homepathic medications could kill off the various bacterias.  So, those of you who are searching the internet wanting to know if this tea works?  I have to say, yes, for me, it did.  But what I have also learned is that I may need to incorporate this into my regular diet as not only a treatment (1 cup a day) but as a preventive measure (1/2 c. a day) in conjunction with other supplements that support my liver during the bacteria die-off. 

Many people ask how to make the tea.  I followed the directions that came with the bag:  Pour not-quite-boiling water over one teaspoon of tea leaves and steep for 8-10 minutes.  Also, reuse the tea three times.  The benefits increase with brewing.

This is all I have to offer for now, but, please, remember this is my experience and my opinion.  I’m not a physician or a nurse, just a seeker of alternative remedies. All of our bodies and ailments are different, and we need to remember that.  I don’t believe there is one sure cure for Lyme and all that comes with it.  As of now, I don’t know if I believe there is a cure at all.  Maybe the best we can do is to manage well.

By the way, another topic making the rounds of LD forums are the skin conditons showing up, ones that are unfamiliar to many dermatologists.  I have three types.  One is a round keloid scarring with a depressed center that originally started a a white pimple.  I think this is bartonella related.  More on the skin stuff later.  Photographs, too. 

Sometimes I Just Need a Break from the Lyme Regimen.

During the holidays I gave up drinking my morning cup of cistus icannus tea, an aid to breaking up biofilms caused by Lyme Disease, because I couldn’t take another day of feeling nauseous.  I also cut back on my Noni Microbial Defense but continued with reishi extract for extra autoimmune support during the day and added black cumin oil capsules at night.

My nausea and fatigue eased.  My sleep improved, and the purple striations and nodes on my fingers caused by the bartonella bacteria began to disappear.  I attribute the last two changes to black cumin oil.

After New Year’s I started up my Noni again without any herxing, and three days ago I returned to drinking cistus icannus.  I haven’t experience any nausea at all. Again, I suspect that the black cumin oil is working wonders in conjunction with the low-dose naltrexone (LDN) I started last May when my doctor steered me toward building up my autoimmune system.  Within four months of taking LDN, many of my symptoms associated with MS had disappeared.

Although all of us who have Lyme Disease have much in common, we also differ in how the disease expresses itself in our bodies, and many of us, with our health care professionals, are feeling our way through this process, the ever-changing treaments.

Because I grew tired of reading about the disease often rebounding in patients who’d taken antibiotics, I chose a LLD physician who’s a functional medicine advocate and honors my desire to take a homeopathic and bio-energetic approach.  We work as a team, and when I come up with ancillary treatments, such as the tea, the Reiki and the black cumin oil, he goes along with me and tracks my progress.  Or lack thereof.  When he thinks I will benefit from various other treatments, I read about them and most often take his advice.  For example, I hope to undergo electroaudiagnosis by Voll (EAV) in the next few months.  When the time comes, I’ll write about that.

Also, in an earlier post, I mentioned a blog by a courageous young woman who has taken the opposite approach to what I have chosen.  A couple of days ago, a friend told me that blog was no longer at the address I had listed. ( To tell the truth, I probably misremembered, which happens often with a Lyme mind.)  To read about her day-to-day struggle, go to fightlymes.com.  (Yes, it’s really there.  I wrote down the address this time.)

For those of you who do not suffer from Lyme’s Disease and came here expecting a story, thank you for staying with me.  Despite what you read in the media, many people believe that Lyme Disease is seldom cured with a month or two of antibiotics, except in cases of those freshly bitten.  In fact, the jury is still out on whether it can be cured at all.  But you do need to know that this is a disease with a stealth bacteria and a neurological component.  Everyday people who were originally diagnosed as having MS, ALS, and Parkinson’s are learning that, instead, they actually have Lyme’s.