Triathlete cured of her crippling Lyme disease
She tells of ‘transplant’ therapy
SHE is a three-time world champion triathlete who has enjoyed the thrill of competing since childhood.
But Scots sportswoman Lesley Paterson has revealed her health battle after being struck down with Lyme disease.
She was diagnosed with the condition – spread to humans by infected ticks – in 2011. Despite this, she was first in three world triathlon events over that year and the next.
Though determined to continue her 35-hour regime of running, cycling and weightlifting, her health worsened and she suffered problems including sickness and exhaustion.
Eventually she discovered that the treatment for Lyme disease – whose early symptoms include high temperature, headaches, muscle and joint pain and a loss of energy – had destroyed vital bacteria in her gut.
Desperate to recover, she researched possible therapies and decided to undergo a radical alternative treatment last year – faecal microbiotia transplant (FMT).
This involves receiving a sample implant from a healthy donor that has been screened for diseases, frozen and processed.
Miss Paterson, 37, from Stirling, who now lives in California, said: ‘It wasn’t daunting at all. I’d been through so much, I was excited to try something new, and I felt better within a week. I’d recommend it.’ She recalled how before the transplant she ‘couldn’t perform to the level I wanted’.
Miss Paterson explained: ‘Even if I was exhausted I would still train, but the quality of my training was less. I was seeing lots of doctors.’
She added: ‘I was told the bacteria in my gut was so compromised I needed a donor’s to be implanted in me to have a good chance of building back the bacteria I’d lost after years of abuse.’
Deciding that ‘the science behind the transplant made perfect sense’, Miss Paterson underwent FMT in February last year in the UK at the Taymount Clinic, in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, and had ten transplants over a twoweek period.
She said: ‘Within a month I was training to full capacity.’
Miss Paterson, who coaches athletes and has sold 25,000 copies of her sports psychology book, The Brave Athlete, hopes to return to the track this year.