Morgellons Disease - A New Autoimmune Disease?

(NaturalNews) What is Morgellons Disease? There are several answers to this question. Ask the CDC or far too many conventional doctors and they will tell you Morgellons disease doesn't exist, that it is a psychosomatic disorder, most likely a combination of delusional parasitosis and obsessive picking of the skin. In other words, it's all in the patient's head, except for the skin lesions caused from self abuse.

Ask a Morgellons sufferer or the rare doctor who believes this disease is real, and you will hear a far different story. Morgellons is a systemic disorder that involves many symptoms common to auto-immune sufferers including:

• chronic, severe fatigue
• joint pain
• neurological problems
• memory and cognitive disruptions (including brain fog)
• mood changes

It also involves bizarre symptoms particular to this disease:

• crawling sensations on and under the skin
• the sensation of itching or biting
• skin eruptions or lesions with little black specks on or under the skin
• filaments or threads under the skin and erupting from the skin

Morgellons is currently in the news due to the emergency hospitalization of iconic singer /songwriter Joni Mitchell, who suffers from this disease. In 2010, she told the Los Angeles Times, "Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable or mineral."

Doctors and researchers who do not believe Morgellons to be real think the fibers are lint, though all sufferers tell them the fibers are growing out of their skin- that they pull them out as if they were pulling out a hair.

Who Has Morgellons Disease?

While most studies of Morgellons report the majority of patients were middle age white females, the University of Oklahoma says adults and children are equally affected. And while individuals within a family may have this disease, they have also witnessed families where multiple members have the disease. Therefore, it is not known whether the disease is inherited or contagious.

What Causes Morgellons?

There appear to be three major hypotheses as to the cause of this disease (by those who believe the disease is real:

• It is believed to be a parasite.
• It is believed to be caused by Borrelia spirochetes (the bacteria associated with Lyme disease.
• It is believed to be a parasitic fungus. The threads or filaments are hyphae and the black and while specs are sporangia.

Unfortunately, it is far too common for conventional medical doctors to dismiss any patient when the diagnosis is unclear. Twenty years ago, is was common for someone suffering from an autoimmune disease to be summarily dismissed, especially since the cognitive and mood disturbances so inherent in the syndromes provided an easy dismissal due to mental health. Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are still laughable diagnoses to many doctors. The truth is, both of these diseases are more likely sets of symptoms related to a more complex systemic problem, but nonetheless, the debilitating symptoms are not psychosomatic.

More research is needed to determine the definitive cause or causes of Morgellons. It may have one cause, but it is quite likely to be a combination of a fungal disease and a bacterial or parasitic condition. When the immune system is compromised, multiple, simultaneous infections are common.

Morgellons Treatment

Doctors who believe the disease is caused by a parasite are treating patients with anti-parasitic pharmaceuticals. Those who believe the cause to be bacterial are treating with antibiotics. And those who believe the problem to be fungal are treating with anti-fungal medications.

Alternative treatments range from colloidal silver to strange concoctions of borax and dishwashing soap.

Recovery of health, regardless of the manifestation of disease, begins by flooding the body with the nutrients it needs to heal while detoxing. A truly healthy diet with lots of raw, organic produce will help the body to detoxify and eliminate parasites while regenerating the immune system. Disease starts in the gut. Balancing the ecosystem inside the gut heals the body. See How To Kill Candida And Balance Your Inner Ecosystem, and (what kills Candida kills other fungi as well), and check out Herbs and a Protocol that Eliminates Parasites. See the first source below for more on diet.

Sources:

http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com

http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com

http://www.morgellons-research.org

http://www.parasitetesting.com

http://www.healthsciences.okstate.edu

http://www.cbsnews.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.mayoclinic.org

About the author:
Allene Edwards first became interested in alternative medicine and holistic treatment modalities when she successfully used diet therapy to manage her children�s ADHD. Later when she became chronically ill with an auto-immune disease that multiple doctors could not identify, much less cure, she successfully treated both the symptoms and the cause through naturopathic treatment and nutrition. She is the Managing Editor of Organic Lifestyle Magzine and a regular contributor.