Fasting away Lyme disease

Michelle Slater's Lyme disease was so debilitating that she couldn't get out of bed, until she discovered a remarkable therapydry fasting that's been practiced in Russia for years. Her symptoms disappeared within months and haven't returned in over five years

I'd like to tell you about a place called 1 Bed Avenue. It's where I used to live-sometimes for months at a time. Diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2012, I received outstanding care from the specialists I saw. All the same, I didn't get better. 

I lived in Connecticut just miles from the town of Lyme, where the disease was first diagnosed in 1977. Ticks are now ubiquitous in Connecticut and Massachusetts, my stomping grounds for long walks in the woods.

Over the years, Lyme had sucked the marrow out of me and spat me out like an enervated double of my old self. I could no longer endure the Sisyphean battle of waking up feeling dep ed, hardly able to struggle through the most basic tasks, only to have to repeat the cycle the next day.

I had read every health study, every health book, every medical journal. I had experimented on my own body as if I were a laboratory animal. I had exhausted every known and unknown treatment. I had no options left to try, except one.

I had heard about Russian physician Sergey Filonov and his dry fasting therapy-refraining from eating or drinking anything, including water-for a period of time. His website said he cured diseases with extended dry fasts of nine days or more, and he described an elaborate preparatory protocol that should take place over a period of months, involving progressively longer water fasts. I didn't have a month, though.

Through my husband Dimitri, who was born in Russia and fluent in Russian, we contacted Dr Filonov, who said I needed to come to his clinic in Siberia as soon as possible, while it was still summer. By mid-August, my husband and I made the trip to Russia and eventually to Siberia.

Dr Filonov listened to my heart and murmured his approval, then started to give me a "liver massage." He said the massages would be used to support the liver throughout the extreme detoxification process that dry fasting would activate.