Could It Be Lyme Disease? Discussion between an MD and a naturopathic doctor.
Doctors Making A Difference
This week’s episode features naturopathic physician Dr. Susan Marra. She presents a compelling discussion about vector borne illnesses and the importance they play in many patients.
When Dr. Marra graduated from naturopathic school, she expected to treat the usual mix of fatigue, hormone imbalance, and stress. Instead, she walked into a wave of patients with strange, multisystem illnesses no textbook had prepared her for. Migrating joint pain. Seven-day migraines. Brain fog. Dysbiosis. Symptoms crossing multiple organ systems.
Her instinct told her something bigger was happening — and she was right.
That intuition led her to Dr. Bernard Raxlen, one of the earliest clinicians to recognize chronic Lyme disease. She went on to train with world experts Dr. Richard Horowitz and Dr. Charles Ray Jones, immersing herself in complex tick-borne illness long before mainstream medicine acknowledged it.
And then she got infected herself.
A tick — likely carried in by her yellow lab — transmitted Lyme and Bartonella. She lost vision in her right eye for six months and required IV antibiotics, steroids, and years of recovery. That lived experience, combined with decades of clinical immersion, transformed her into one of the most respected Lyme specialists in the country.
Today, after treating 9,000+ patients, Dr. Marra joins Dr. Peter Crane to dismantle the myths surrounding Lyme, the limitations of standard testing, the rise of co-infections, and why so many patients with “mystery symptoms” are actually living with chronic vector-borne illness.
This is an eye-opening conversation every physician should hear.
Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doctors-making-a-difference/id1753613285?i=1000739624041
Full Transcript
Vision Loss and Intensive Treatment 0:00
And I lost the vision in my right eye for six months and I had to go on IV antibiotics and oral high dose prednisone because the pressure in the eye was so high they were afraid it was going to burst. They did these therapies and then I came off the prednisone. I went on to oral antibiotics and I got much, much better. My vision returned. It's not as good as my left eye, but it's fine with glasses. I would say that it is not cured in me.
Remission and Stress-Triggered Relapse 0:34
I am in remission. And what I mean by that is if I have a really big stress, like a move or a death of a parent or death a sibling or anything like that, I will relapse and symptoms will slowly creep back in. But I know what they are, so I right away, okay, we've got to get this under control. This is very typical of tick-borne illness. And it's most likely because in a stressful situation, and I mean like high stress, like losing your job, moving, you know. The body becomes acidic.
Tick-Borne Illness, Brain Involvement, and Cognitive Symptoms 1:12
It's largely in an acidic state. And those organisms flourish in acid and sugar. They love sugar, Bartonel loves sugar and spearketes, Raleigh burgdorferi, they like fats. That's one of the reasons why there is neuro Lyme and neuro BART is because they cross the blood brain barrier and get into the brain and cause encephalopathy and caused a myriad of different cognitive issues like poor memory, brain fog, inability to make decisions, impaired executive function, emotional ability, things like that.
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