Manganese is Lyme disease's double-edge sword
13 comments
·November 14, 2025ggm
And it's also a potent neurotoxin from a crude dr google lookup. Which is meaningless because they wouldnt bother exploring both sides of the deal if there wasn't a safe dose for humans which is bad for the bacteria, but it bears thinking about.
Aurornis
Nobody, in the article or otherwise, is suggesting that you can take manganese to fight Lyme. I don’t know where you got that, but I hope nobody thinks to try it.
The idea would be to look at all of the components that regulate manganese in B. burgdorferi and then look for drugs that might disrupt how they operate.
Any solution would act indirectly by disrupting manganese balance in a targeted manner directed at B. burgdorferi, not by flooding the whole body with manganese. The cells regulate their internal manganese anyway, so supplementing manganese wouldn’t force it to go into those cells anyway.
This is a PR release for some research that tries to stretch it into a promising treatment, but it's really more of an interesting discovery than a path to a new treatment.
canadiantim
Sounds like starving Lyme of manganese is likely the better option that trying to overdose manganese. I don't know how effective a low-manganese diet or lifestyle would be though but it is very interesting.
Aurornis
> I don't know how effective a low-manganese diet or lifestyle would be though but it is very interesting.
You cannot achieve what the paper is discussing through diet or supplements.
The paper is hypothesizing that if a drug could target the components of B. burgdorferi that regulate manganese then that would kill it.
You cannot deprive the cells of manganese or overwhelm them through supplementation or restrictive diet. You would damage your own body long before reaching levels that killed the Lyme infection.
I really hope the alternative medicine people don't start abusing this headline to push diets and supplements.
canadiantim
I really hope the anti-medicine people don't start grasping for a middleman to get in between people and self care.
safeimp
Trying to starve yourself of manganese would cause harm long before it affected Borrelia.
kragen
WP says that manganese deficiency causes skeletal deformity and inhibition of wound healing. So I'm guessing that you could survive weeks in a severe-manganese-deficiency situation before you noticed any ill effects.
donsupreme
It appears that the body cannot produce manganese on its own it is an essential trace mineral that must be obtained from the diet.
I wonder if a prolonged water fast would do the job.
kragen
Yes, obviously it can't produce manganese on its own. What, do you think the humans have nuclear reactors in their squeedlyspooches?
I'm seeing comments jumping to conclusions about taking manganese supplements or trying to starve yourself of manganese. These are dangerously wrong interpretations of the article.
Any interventions would have to be targeted directly at the B. burgdorferi to disrupt their internal regulation of manganese. It's a long shot used to make this research discovery sound more impressive, not an actual cure.
Your own body uses manganese for critical processes like your metabolism, critical brain functionality, and generating important antioxidants in your mitochondria (MnSOD, the same one mentioned inside of Lyme in the article).
Your body also regulates manganese absorption and excretion. Manganese deficiency is extremely rare outside of genetic conditions or other medical problems which interfere with this regulation. You can't really starve yourself of manganese by adjusting your diet or even by periods of fasting.
So if you're reading this and thinking you could defeat Lyme by starving yourself of manganese or overdosing on manganese, don't. That's not what this article is saying.