Empowered Health: Learn to be your own advocate

Kim Pemberton, Vancouver Sun 



For years, Gwen Barlee suffered from crushing headaches, fatigue, arthritis and memory problems so severe she needed to have her business card with her just to recall her job title.

As the policy director for the Wilderness Committee, the Vancouver-based, non-profit organization that works to safeguard wildlands, Barlee was used to living an outdoorsy, active, lifestyle. That was more than six years ago.

"I was young, worked out, didn't drink or do drugs, and I couldn't understand why I was falling apart. I felt I was dying," said Barlee, now 48.

In her search for answers, Barlee was told by a friend her symptoms indicated she might have contracted Lyme disease, an often overlooked, underdiagnosed disease spread by ticks. She believes she contracted the disease as a child and it had been overlooked by health care professionals for years.

Even a local blood test didn't reveal the disease. Wanting to confirm what she suspected Barlee asked that a sample be sent to an accredited United States laboratory; the results that came back were quite different from the local tests. Barlee had 58 of the 75 known symptoms for the disease. One of the most obvious symptoms of Lyme disease is a bull's-eye rash, which Barlee recalled having had years earlier.

Surprisingly, Barlee said, in Canada there are only 30-50 cases of Lyme disease diagnosed each year. But she believes the number is much higher, with doctors not recognizing the symptoms and our testing procedures not as stringent as those in the U.S. She pointed out that there are 30,000 new cases each year in the U.S., most of them in the northern states, beside Canada's border. Given that Canada has 10 per cent of the U.S. population, she speculates a conservative estimate of new Lyme disease cases in Canada is 3,000; it could be as high as 30,000 given that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control believes the under-reporting of Lyme disease in that country could be 12-fold.

If Lyme disease is detected within four weeks of infection, a treatment of antibiotics can stop the lifelong effects, said Barlee. But in her own case, since the disease was well established, that traditional course of treatment wouldn't work. The stubborn infection already would have disseminated rapidly out of her blood stream and into her tissues.

"This is a disease you want to treat robustly and aggressively at the first signs of the disease," she said.

"I grew up in the Okanagan, where ticks are common. I believe I was likely bitten 20 years ago, then again, up north [in British Columbia]."

It was the second bite that triggered the distinctive bull's-eye rash, which appears in about 40 per cent of all cases. Because it was too late for traditional treatment after she was finally diagnosed, Barlee was forced to explore alternative ways to promote healing.

She radically changed her diet and began using anti-bacterial herbs suggested by a naturopath, such as golden seal. Before the diagnosis, Barlee admits her diet mostly consisted of junk food and lots of sugar. But immediately she radically changed how she ate, eating digestible raw foods, dropping all refined carbohydrates and sugar from her diet as well as alcohol. For the past six years she has been drinking a healthy juice concoction she makes of fruits and vegetables as well as hemp hearts, flax seed and fresh ginger every morning and sometimes in the afternoon.

Before consulting the naturopath and changing her diet she had been spending hundreds of dollars on supplements that hadn't been making much of a difference.

These days, Barlee's energy level has returned and the headaches are gone. While Barlee's diet isn't as stringent as the early days, whenever she starts to feel a bit off she'll go back on the disciplined raw foods diet for a few weeks till she's feeling better. "I'll probably always have Lyme disease, but I think my immune system keeps it in check," she said. "You need to become your own health care advocate to know the best route to take for you."


