Lyme Disease Is on the Rise: How One Woman Cured Herself With Biomagnetic Therapy

“Lyme disease is an epidemic that is well recognized on the East Coast and less recognized across the rest of the country,” says Sunjya Schweig, MD, a Lyme expert in California and an advisory board member of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation. Indeed, infections have been found in every state, with cases doubling from 1990 to 2020. So how to treat Lyme disease? Antibiotics are the standard course of therapy, but for some, they don't provide relief. That's why many with chronic Lyme disease are turning to bio magnetic therapy. It worked for Rebecca Powers Tibball after eight years of suffering. Read on to learn more about the therapy and how it helped Rebecca heal.

What is Lyme disease?

Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected black-legged or deer ticks. It's typically treated with antibiotics as the standard course of therapy.

Despite the growing threat, “less than half of people even know they had a tick bite,” says Dr. Schweig. Symptoms to look out for include a rash, headache and stiff neck. Up to 20% of patients develop chronic Lyme, with symptoms like fatigue and brain fog. “Once it’s longer-term, it’s very difficult to cure,” says Dr. Schweig.

If you suspect Lyme, find a doctor versed in treating it. Experts advise getting the ELISA antibody test and the Western Blot. But the tests aren’t perfect, says Dr. Schweig. If you have a rash and think you were bitten by a tick, he advises taking antibiotics for two to three weeks, even if you test negative. “You want to be very aggressive to eradicate that bug.”

Related: Everything You Need to Know About Lyme Disease

How to treat Lyme disease with biomagnetic therapy

They’ve been used for decades to help ease pain, but experts who treat chronic Lyme disease use a different type of magnetic energy to help their patients. Biomagnetic therapy uses two magnets with opposite magnetic fields placed on body parts where some type of imbalance has been found, says Heather Tallman Ruhm, MD, of the N.H. Health & Wellness Center in Nashua, New Hampshire. The technique hasn’t been well-studied, but she says, “The magnets seem to balance and restore optimal pH levels, which supports the body’s innate capacity to heal from pathogens, emotional imbalances and other conditions.”

Lyme disease success story: How Rebecca found relief

For eight years, Rebecca Powers Tibball, 49, fought fatigue, fog and pain caused by Lyme disease. Then she found an unusual remedy that helped her heal.

“Another day, another thing stripped away from me,” Powers Tibball recalls of the day she quit the job she’d loved for 14 years as an elementary school teacher due to the debilitating effects of chronic Lyme disease.

“Soon after spinal surgery in January of 2015, I developed constant dizziness and migraines, joint pain, neuropathy, nausea and light sensitivity. I also started losing weight and feeling depressed and tired all the time.

Rebecca's Lyme disease diagnosis

“I saw 14 doctors in 10 months, including a neurology specialist at Yale-New Haven, an ear, nose and throat doctor and a thyroid doctor. I developed anxiety because I felt like I was losing my mind. No one could tell me anything. They were very nice, but very dismissive. No one had any idea what was causing this.

“At one visit, a chiropractor said, ‘Everything you’re saying sounds like Lyme disease.’ I was thrilled to hear this: Could I finally have an answer? And when I looked it up to investigate further, the list of symptoms was everything I had.

Searching for answers

“It took me four months to get an appointment with a physician specializing in the disease. He did extensive blood work that was analyzed at Stony Brook University’s Lyme Disease Laboratory. The results showed Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses, including babesiosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. I felt so validated that I wasn’t crazy.

“The doctor started me on antibiotics, but they made me so sick. I had dizziness, I couldn’t eat, the slightest sound overwhelmed me and my eyes and face swelled. I became bedridden. I felt worse than ever. I’d been on the antibiotics for two months when my husband said, ‘Enough, no more antibiotics.’

“Then I tried natural strategies, from the homeopathic remedies a naturopath recommended to bee venom therapy and Rifing, or healing with sound frequency. It sounds kooky, but I slowly started to feel a little better. I was able to return to teaching in September of 2018. I still felt sick, but I had to go back.

Related: “Bee Venom Therapy Helped Me Beat Lyme Disease!”

Discovering biomagnetic therapy

“One day, a friend told me about a friend of hers with Lyme disease who went to a magnetic therapy practitioner in New Hampshire. She said, ‘He’s all better. He’s exercising, he’s working.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, I need to go.’ I thought it sounded wacky, but when you’re as sick as I was, you’ll do anything.

“There was a two-year wait for an appointment, but in a stroke of luck, the practitioner, Janelle Salzman, got me in within four months, and in June of 2022 I had my first visit.

“Janelle uses the Lyme Magnetic Protocol Therapy, which means putting magnets on different parts of the body. It’s believed the magnets rebalance the body’s pH levels, which helps the immune system fight the disease.

Lyme disease relief at last

“I walked into her office with my mom and I broke down crying. Janelle was welcoming and warm and said, ‘You’re going to get better.’ I immediately stopped all of the other treatments and went to Janelle twice a month. The $200 treatments were an eligible expense for my insurance’s flexible spending account, and they were worth every penny.

“I would go in with brain fog and over the next week or two, notice that my thinking was clear. My appetite came back, my energy was restored. When you live with vague symptoms like I had, you feel crazy. Many practitioners make you feel like you’re nuts — that it’s all in your head.

“After six months, I was healed. Today, my blood work shows zero tick-borne diseases. I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through, so I became certified to perform this therapy on others. Now I see patients with Lyme disease and other ailments at my healing center in Berlin, Connecticut. I love helping others. I feel so blessed.”

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