by Magda D. Healey

Created on: August 29, 2008   Last Updated: January 11, 2011

Vitamin C, or vitamin C combined with salt, CANNOT cure Lyme disease. Lyme disease is caused by bacteria and the only viable, recognized and tested treatment for sufferers of Lyme is antibiotics.

The notion that vitamin C can "cure" Lyme disease is pure, unabashed quackery, belonging with the worst snake-oil remedies.

== Lyme disease causes and symptoms

Lyme disease, or borreliosis, is an infectious disease caused by bacteria belonging to the genus Borrelia. It is the most common tick-borne disease in the Northern Hemisphere as it is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected hard ticks belonging to several species of the genus Ixodes.

Early symptoms of infection may include fever, headache, fatigue, depression, and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans. If no treatment is used, the joints, heart, and nervous system can be attacked. Symptoms can be eliminated with antibiotics in most cases, although some cases are asymptomatic and diagnosis (even with tests) can be difficult.

Vitamin C has no antibiotic (bacteria-stopping) effect. It does, however, play part in healthy functioning of the immune system and is also an anti-inflammatory agent. Thus, supplementing with vitamin C may potentially contribute to both the natural body systems fighting off the disease as well as possibly alleviate some symptoms, though again, there is no trails to support this idea.

However, and emphatically, vitamin C it will NOT cure Lyme.

== Late Lyme

Late Lyme can occasionally become antibiotic-resistant and various treatment options exist for those symptoms, depending on the type of symptoms (arthritis, neuropathies). Alternative therapies are popular, especially for late-stage antibiotic-resistant Lyme disease, but none of them have been evaluated in reliable trials. It is likely that any effects and especially alleviation of symptoms, is due to either natural remission or placebo effects which, as we all know, can be quite powerful.

== Vitamin C as treatment for Lyme

The suggestion of treatment with vitamin C stems from the (completely unproven) idea that Lyme (and particularly so-called "post-Lyme syndrome" and "chronic Lyme disease") is not caused by bacteria, or rather, that a bacterial infection is accompanied by a parasitic infection. Allegedly, microfilarial worms (a type of a nematode) are suppose to live symbiotically with the bacteria and protect the bacteria from being exterminated by the antibiotics.

There is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case. Even if it was the case (and it is not), the treatment for such an infestation would be an appropriate helminthic (worm-killing drug) rather than the suggested huge doses of Vitamin C combined with large doses of salt. Incidentally, such large doses of salt (up to 20g a day) could be dangerous for people with slat-sensitive hypertension.

In fact, the whole concept of "chronic Lyme disease" is very controversial and there is no evidence that symptoms often attributed to Lyme (especially by alternative practitioners) are at all connected to the initial Lyme infection.

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