Chuck Bryant

Not even specific to that one, but a bacterial infection.

Right.

The problem is it takes days, if not maybe a week or two, before your body mounts an effective immune response against this infection.

So if you find a tick and they give you a test, say, within the first couple days, it's going to come back negative.

Even though you very much have a Bergdorferi infection, it's going to come back negative because the antibodies haven't been created yet.

The other part of the problem is even if you take a blood test that tests directly for the Bergdorferi bacterium, it moves out of the bloodstream really easily and within several days.

So there's a very brief window of time where you can directly test for the Bergdorferi bacteria and find it in a simple blood test.

Yeah, you can also get false positives, and they're advocating now for two-tiered testing for confirmation of the diagnosis.

So if you get that first positive test, sometimes now you'll get a different test, a Western blot test.

Right.

That's going to really get more specific to that antibody, not just the general antibodies.

Right.

So part of the other problem is—

The reason a lot of patient activists and patient advocate groups say, no, doctors, you're wrong, like this is not good enough, is that there's a sneaking suspicion among people who have what's called chronic Lyme or post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.

is that the round of antibiotics, the two to four week round of antibiotics that seemingly cured the Lyme disease symptoms that you had, actually failed to fully knock out the bacteria that created this infection, that created this Lyme disease in the first place, that it just burrowed further into your body.

And because the medical establishment said, we got it, it's fine, these antibiotics cured it, and didn't go deeper,

that bacterial infection is allowed to fester and then present in worse ways later.

Yeah, and it's a really big deal because, you know, what will happen is they'll say, you're cured.

We gave these antibiotics.

They worked.