Chronic: The Hidden Cause of the Autoimmune Epidemic and How to Get Healthy Again

by Steven Phillips, Dana Parish, Kristin Loberg

Overview

Autoimmune disease and chronic illness is a global pandemic. What is fueling it?

In this timely book, Steven Phillips, MD, and his former patient, Sony singer-songwriter Dana Parish, reveal striking evidence that a broad range of common infections, from COVID-19 to Lyme and many others, cause a variety of autoimmune, psychiatric, and chronic conditions. Chronic explores the science behind what makes them difficult to diagnose and treat, debunks widely held beliefs by doctors and patients alike, and provides solutions that empower sufferers to reclaim their lives.
 
Dr. Phillips was already an internationally renowned physician specializing in complex, chronic diseases when he became a patient himself. After nearly dying from his own mystery illness, he experienced firsthand the medical community’s ignorance about the pathogens that underlie a deep spectrum of serious conditions—from fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus, to depression, anxiety, OCD and neurodegenerative disorders. Parish, too, watched her health spiral after twelve top doctors missed an underlying infection that caused heart failure and other sudden debilitating physical and psychiatric symptoms. Now, they’ve come together with a mission: to change the current model of simply treating symptoms—often with dangerous, lifelong drugs—and shift the focus to finding and curing root causes of chronic diseases that affect millions around the world.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780358066699
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/11/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	293
Sales rank:	103,252
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Steven Phillips, MD, is a renowned, Yale-trained physician and researcher who lectures internationally. He regularly appears in the media as an expert on Lyme and other chronic infections. In private practice since 1996, he has treated over 20,000 patients from nearly twenty countries. His practice is located in Wilton, Connecticut.
Dana Parish developed Lyme-induced heart failure as a result of being improperly diagnosed by some of the best doctors in the country—and had her life saved by Dr. Phillips. An award-winning singer/songwriter for Sony/ATV, she has become a powerful voice for change in the field of Lyme disease. She lives in New York City.
 
STEVEN PHILLIPS, MD, is a renowned, Yale-trained physician and researcher who lectures internationally. He regularly appears in the media as an expert on Lyme and other chronic infections. In private practice since 1996, he has treated over 20,000 patients from nearly twenty countries. His practice is located in Wilton, Connecticut.
DANA PARISH developed Lyme-induced heart failure as a result of being improperly diagnosed by some of the best doctors in the country—and had her life saved by Dr. Phillips. An award-winning singer/songwriter for Sony/ATV, she has become a powerful voice for change in the field of Lyme disease. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Foreword viii

Introduction xi

Part I The Root

1 A Wild Family of Infections 3

2 The Myths That Get in the Way 20

3 Bitten and Broken 55

4 How the Medical World Got It So Wrong 88

5 Modern Plagues Caused by Underlying Infection 109

Part II The Remedy

6 The Difficulty in Diagnosis 141

7 The Road to Recovery 162

8 Mending Your Mind 185

9 COVID 213

Conclusion: Hope Around the Globe 229

Bibliography 240

Notes 262

Acknowledgments 274

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

This book shines an alarming light on emerging infections that cause chronic illnesses. Brimming with bulletproof science, Chronic is an insightful clarion call for more attention to this plague of the 21st century.” —Sanjay Gupta, MD “History will reflect back upon this book as a revelation for millions living with chronic illness. It’s a fascinating, superbly researched dive into the mysteries of autoimmune diseases and provides critical insights to patients and clinicians. Chronic is bold, iconoclastic, and addresses one of the most important and challenging problems facing modern medicine with compassion, love, and hope.” —Ying Zhang, MD, PhD, Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Johns Hopkins University “This trailblazing book should serve to galvanize efforts to solve the autoimmune crisis in the same way And the Band Played On did for HIV.” —George Church, PhD, Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School and Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology “Phillips and Parish take us on a personal, illuminating journey of scientific discovery. Their brilliant work could not have come at a more urgent time. Chronic is both thoughtful and thought-provoking, but perhaps most of all, it’s intellectually and emotionally honest. A must-read for everyone, but even more so for physicians of all specialties.” —Haideh Hirmand, MD, MPA, FACS, Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery, Weill-Cornell Medical College “Speaking truth to power is hard. Speaking truth to established medical and scientific institutions is nearly impossible . . . and extraordinarily rare. But this book does exactly that—it is an act of bravery in its purest form, and it’s for all of us, as none of us are immune.” —Kristen T. Honey, PhD, PMP, Policy Advisor, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (2015–2017); Senior Research Scholar, Stanford University “A powerfully informative guide for patient and practitioner from a misinformed past toward a future of recovery and health.” —David Perlmutter, MD, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Grain Brain and Brain Wash “A clarion call to start reversing the enormous human cost of autoimmune and chronic disease by finally addressing actual root causes.” —Michael VanElzakker, PhD, neuroscientist, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School “With fascinating case studies and the latest science, Chronic offers hope for achieving a better future for the millions suffering with complex and severe symptoms.” —Terry Wahls, MD, author of The Wahls Protocol “Phillips and Parish show us where and how the medical paradigm for chronic illness has failed us all and exposes the truth. It’s a modern-day version of The Emperor’s New Clothes.” —Holly Ahern, Associate Professor of Microbiology, SUNY “An informative guide to ‘the pandemic in plain sight,’ urgent without undue alarmism.” —Kirkus Reviews —

From the Publisher

07/01/2020

Physician researcher Philips and his patient Parish observe that conditions such as Lyme Disease mirror the "spreading pandemic" of chronic, inflammatory, autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, fibromyalgia, and others (Lyme+), in which pathogens may play a causative role. Their book is based on Philips's long experience in treating vector-borne diseases (those caused by parasites, viruses, or bacteria that are transmitted by arthropods such as mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas), and Parish's experience living with Lyme disease. Lyme disease is still not easy to diagnose as lab tests are not completely reliable and current treatment, such as two to four weeks of antibiotic therapy, often leaves patients with lingering infection that creates chronic, sometimes severe, problems. And most patients who present symptoms with the other Lyme+ diseases seldom even get tested for parasites, viruses, or bacteria. Philips recommends broader testing and longer-term use of antibiotics (as much as a year or two), with occasional breaks when needed. VERDICT Not the mainstream approach endorsed by the American College of Physicians and other medical groups but a glint of hope to the many people living with Lyme+ diseases and those who treat them.—Marcia G. Welsh, Dartmouth Coll. Lib., Hanover, NH

Library Journal

2020-04-27
A doctor and his former patient explore what they posit is the pathogen-spread rise of autoimmune illnesses, with millions of victims.

Diseases such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia are not single illnesses as such but instead clusters of symptoms with many points in common. Because their etiology is hard to pin down, many sufferers are often dismissed with the simple notation that the illness is psychosomatic. Yet, writes Phillips, who suffers from a parasitic illness wrought by a spider bite, “maybe you were referred to a psychiatrist or prescribed an antidepressant by your general practitioner.” For various reasons, he and Parish write, pathogens are on the rise and ever more ubiquitous as a result of climate change; these pathogens include viruses, parasites such as protozoa, and bacteria. By 2050, they project, 12% of the U.S. population will be affected by a kind of “Lyme+” disease, costing billions annually in medical expenses and lost productivity. The list of vector-borne ailments is long, and too often our understanding of them is incomplete. The authors write, for instance, that Lyme is not strictly a tick-borne disease but can be transmitted by fleas, lice, and even ants, “along with its stereotypical transmission via a cat scratch or bite.” Apart from the fact that a spirochete is involved, everything else about Lyme is “bitterly debated,” with no agreed-upon treatment regimen. What’s worse, the range of illnesses that may be hidden by Lyme-like symptoms can include cancer, hepatitis, and tuberculosis. Phillips and Parish suggest a range of treatments, from anxiety-reducing exercises to herbal remedies such as oregano oil, cinnamon bark, and cumin seeds that have been shown to have “strong killing activity against ‘persister’ forms of the Lyme bacterium”—though none of those proposed treatments is definitive.

An informative guide to what the authors call “the pandemic in plain sight,” urgent without undue alarmism.

Kirkus Reviews