Debbie Gibson: Health improving since alternative treatment for Lyme disease

 

Updated September 28, 2014 11:58 PM
By FRANK LOVECE. Special to Newsday 

Debbie Gibson attends the "Celebrity Apprentice" live finale at the American Museum of Natural History on May 20, 2012 in Manhattan. (Credit: Getty Images / Brad Barket)

Singer Debbie Gibson, scheduled to be among the inductees into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame next month, says her health has improved dramatically since she began alternative treatments for her Lyme disease.

Gibson, 44, told People magazine Sunday that she has been seeing a chiropractic kinesiologist and no longer takes antibiotics. "I'm on zero medications and two supplements," she said. "Isn't that crazy? It's all about getting my own body back online. My food sensitivities have gone away -- I was able to eat airplane food Sunday and didn't have a major episode!"

The 1980s and '90s hitmaker, born in Brooklyn but raised in Merrick, revealed in April that since early last year she has struggled with belatedly diagnosed Lyme disease, the cause of what she termed the "skeletal" appearance that sparked public concern.

"My back kept going out," she told People Sunday. "I couldn't lift my head sometimes. My boyfriend said I was mixing up words in my texts. It really got into my cognitive skills. I took crazy amounts of antibiotics, including doxycycline. It killed so much stuff in my body that I became a shell of myself."

Now, calling this her "first pain-free month," she adds, "My strength has really come back. I've put back on about 12-15 lbs. Before, I couldn't ride my bike. I could hardly walk. Now I can. I went to yoga for the first time a month ago. I'm someone who has spent my life dancing and working out, and I wasn't able to do it with this disease."

She says she has discovered that "there are definitely solutions other than the traditional ones. But you have to figure out what works for yourself and your body. But the one thing I've learned is that there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel."