What Are The Symptoms Of Lyme Disease
Symptoms of acute, or short-term, Lyme disease vary and may develop in stages. Initially most people develop a red, circle rash around the site of the tick bite. This rash is referred to as erythema migrans and can develop 3-30 days after youve been bitten.
In addition to the rash, you may also develop a fever, chills, nausea, muscle aches, fatigue, or stiff neck during the early stages of your infection.
If left untreated, your Lyme disease can progress into chronic, or long-term, Lyme disease and may cause other symptoms, such as:
- Additional circle rashes
- Numbness or weakness in your limbs
- Paralysis of your face, also known as Bells palsy
Lyme disease may also cause fatigue, irregular heartbeat, or liver inflammation. If youre experiencing any of these symptoms, you need to schedule an appointment with Dr. Mirza for an evaluation and treatment plan.
Chronic Lyme disease can be misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons, lupus, ALS, or other conditions, so its important to get an accurate diagnosis.
Getting treatment early may prevent future health problems related to Lyme disease, such as chronic joint pain or memory issues.
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How Is Lyme Disease Treated
In its early stages, Lyme disease, an infection caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi , is most commonly treated with simple antibiotic regimens. However, at later stages, Lyme can disseminate to other parts of the body such as the brain, central nervous system, and heart and require more complex treatment programs. In addition, many of these patients are coinfected with other tick-borne pathogens, and this can affect treatment decisions. Unfortunately, diagnosing these coinfections is often very difficult and usually requires testing at a specialty laboratory that is dedicated to the detection of the ever-increasing list of pathogens associated with Lyme disease.
Currently there is no consensus among the medical and scientific communities regarding the best treatment for late-stage and chronic Lyme and associated coinfections. Uncertainties include the need for and effectiveness of long-term antibiotics and herbal remedies. Read on to learn more about the current outlook on Lyme disease treatment.
Disclaimer: IGeneX is a testing laboratory. IGeneX does not provide medical advice or endorse any particular Lyme disease treatment. If you have been diagnosed with Lyme, chronic Lyme, or another tick-borne infectious disease, it is important that you talk to a trusted physician or Lyme-literate doctor to come up with the best treatment plan for your condition and symptoms.
Two Standards Of Care For Lyme Disease Treatment
There is significant controversy in science, medicine, and public policy regarding Lyme disease. Two medical societies hold widely divergent views on the best approach to diagnosing and treating Lyme disease. The conflict makes it difficult for patients to be properly diagnosed and receive treatment.
One medical society, the Infectious Diseases Society of America , regards Lyme disease as hard to catch and easy to cure with a short course of antibiotics. IDSA claims that spirochetal infection cannot persist in the body after a short course of antibiotics. The group also denies the existence of chronic Lyme disease.
In contrast, the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society , regards Lyme disease as often difficult to diagnose and treat, resulting in persistent infection in many patients. ILADS recommends individualized treatment based on the severity of symptoms, the presence of tick-borne coinfections and patient response to treatment.
LDo believes that patients and their doctors should make Lyme disease treatment decisions together. This requires that patients be given sufficient information about the risks and benefits of different treatment options. Then, patient and health care provider can collaborate to reach an informed decision, based on the patients circumstances, beliefs and preferences.
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Illinois Clinicians Demonstrate Gaps In Understanding Of Tick
Carson and colleagues surveyed clinicians between August 2020 and February 2022 and reported their findings in the article Knowledge, attitudes, and practices of Illinois medical professionals related to ticks and tick-borne disease. ¹ The respondents included RNs , physicians , and APNs/PAs . The authors found that clinicians were best at identifying Lyme disease. Out of 346 respondents, 80% correctly identified Lyme disease as endemic to Illinois, while 95% were
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If You Are Becoming More Allergic With Treatment
Chronic infections can trigger excessive allergic reactions to food, prescription and natural medicines, and to the environment. If this is your problem, consider using supplements, diet, and medicines for Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. For more information, read Mast Cell Activation Syndrome & Lyme.
Toxic Metals And Lyme Disease
Toxic metals have a dangerous impact on those with Lyme disease. One reason is that the symptoms of heavy metal poisoning are similar to those of Lyme disease. This makes it hard for doctors to provide an accurate diagnosis, which leads to delayed or untreated symptoms.
Another reason is that toxic metals interfere with other medical treatments, even those for Lyme disease. When heavy metals do not exit your body, they start to build up. Not only does this buildup interfere with metabolic functions, but it also provides a barrier that protects Lyme bacteria.
In addition, heavy metals can cause inflammation, comprising your immune system and preventing full recovery from any ailment.
Finally, if you have heavy toxin overload and Lyme disease, you deal with a double dose of the same symptoms. Feeling tired, sick, and unable to function become daily issues.
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Herbs For Lyme Disease Treatment
Herbs have been used as a medicinal treatment for thousands of years. Many people have turned to herbal remedies to help provide relief from Lyme disease when antibiotics didn’t completely help eliminate symptoms.
One research study found that a combination of doxycycline and baicalein provides additional healing benefits. According to a 2020 laboratory study, seven herbal medicines have been shown to kill B. burgdorferi in test tubes:
- Cryptolepis sanguinolenta
- Scutellaria baicalensis
Garlic has antibacterial effects and may help prevent tick bites. One study determined that people who took garlic supplements reported fewer tick bites than the placebo group. Garlic essential oil has been shown to eliminate the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
Garlic can interact with certain medications, so speak with your healthcare provider before using it to prevent or treat Lyme disease.
Steviaa natural sweetener and sugar substitute derived from the leaves of the Stevia rebaudiana plantmay be effective in treating Lyme disease. A study published in the European Journal of Microbiology and Immunology discovered that stevia extracts are more effective in killing Lyme disease bacterium in the lab than the standard antibiotics.
Make Sure It Is Not Mold Toxin Illness
Mold toxin illness can look just like Lyme disease. Both trigger a reaction in the immune system that produces too many inflammation chemicals called cytokines, which cause most of the problems seen in both illnesses.
If your illness began while you were living or working in a building with obvious mold, I suggest treating for mold toxin illness first. To clarify this point, if you were in good health, then you had an obvious mold exposure, and got sicktreat mold toxicity first. I find correcting this issue may prevent the need to treat Lyme disease, even if you test positive for Lyme infection. Once the mold toxins are removed, the immune system can keep Lyme under control.
If it is not clear if Lyme infection or mold toxins are the cause of your illness, then you can treat both problems at the same time.
For more information, read Mold and Lyme Toxin Illness and Positive Lyme Test, No Symptoms, Don’t Treat.
Very Allergic? Treat Mast Cell Activation Syndrome
Chronic infections can trigger excessive allergic reactions to food, prescription and natural medicines, and the environment. If this is your problem, consider using supplements, diet, and medicines for Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. For more information, read Mast Cell Activation Syndrome & Lyme.
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Chronic Lyme Disease Treatment In Naples Fl
Lyme disease develops when the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria is transmitted by the bite of a deer tick and spreads throughout the body. Proper diagnosis and prompt treatment are essential in preventing serious complications of Lyme disease. Several weeks of antibiotic treatment in the early stages of Lyme disease can result in complete, rapid recovery for most patients. However, in some cases, symptoms persist in spite of treatmenteither because the window of time has elapsed for early treatment or because the patient simply did not respond to antibiotic treatment.
Cases of Lyme disease that do not respond to antibiotic treatment are referred to in Western medicine as post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. If the disease is not diagnosed or treated early, spirochetes can spread into different parts of the body and remain dormant, with symptoms not emerging until days, months or years later. When Lyme disease persists for longer than six monthswhether undiagnosed or post-treatmentit is commonly referred to as chronic Lyme disease and can be difficult to treat.
Can Lyme Disease Be Mistaken For Herpes
In their article Disseminated Lyme disease with a herpetiform center, Zhang et al.¹ described a patient who presented with a Lyme disease rash that could have been mistaken for herpes. The woman in her 30s developed a herpetiform rash, which resembles herpes lesions. Initially, the patient developed a small red bump and surrounding swelling on her back, along with a rash in her left armpit and left ipsilateral swollen lymph
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Treatment Of Lyme Disease
Early diagnosis and proper antibiotic treatment of Lyme disease is important and can help prevent late Lyme disease. The following treatment regimens reflect CDCs interpretation of the most current data for four important manifestations of Lyme disease. These regimens are consistent with guidanceexternal icon published by the by the Infectious Disease Society of America, American Academy of Neurology, and American College of Rheumatology.
Some patients report persistent symptoms of pain, fatigue, or difficulty thinking even after treatment for Lyme disease. The state of the science relating to persistent symptoms associated with Lyme disease is limited, emerging, and unsettled.
Additional researchexternal icon is needed to better understand how to treat, manage, and support people with persistent symptoms associated with Lyme disease. In light of these research gaps, recommendations for treatment of persistent symptoms in people previously treated for Lyme disease are not provided here.
If you are interested in information on chronic Lyme diseaseexternal icon, see NIHs website.
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Dont Let Ticks Get To You
It is not yet possible to prevent Lyme disease. Tick bites should be avoided from the outset also in view of the fact that the insects can transmit other diseases as well, such as tick-borne encephalitis , for example.
This means that anyone who is out and about in meadows or forests should wear clothing that is as long as possible, especially on the legs. Putting on long socks also makes life a little more difficult for the little parasitic arachnids, especially if they are pulled up over the bottom of the pant legs.
Ticks are more visible on light-colored clothing. Anti-tick sprays keep ticks away, at least for a limited time, but not all products are equally reliable.
After returning home from an outing in the wild, you should thoroughly check for ticks. If you find one, you should remove it immediately . The sooner, the better!
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Why These Actions May Help
Sleep is often disturbed in chronic Lyme disease. Lack of adequate sleep worsens pain, increases fatigue, and suppresses the immune system. It appears that in response to infection, the excess inflammatory cytokines produced by the immune system decrease the output of sleep-inducing hormones to the sleep centers of the brain. Since lack of sleep increases cytokines, a restorative amount of sleep should ideally be 7-9 hours of sleep per night. Sleep in the few hours before midnight is most restorative.
Extracorporeal Blood Oxygenation Ozonation And Filtration Faqs
Q. Is the EBOO /F the same as plasmapheresis?
A. There are numerous forms of Apheresis depending on what exactly is being filtered out of the blood. Plasmapheresis is one of these forms.
Q. How much blood is filtered through the EBOO /F device?
A. The procedure takes approximately an hour. In that time between 4 5 liters of blood are filtered.
The typical adult has on average 4.5-5.5 liters of blood.
Q. What does the EBOO /F filter out of the blood?
A. Physical debris left over from chronic infections and systemic inflammation.
This includes:
Our kidneys and liver, which are extremely efficient in cleaning our blood from chemical toxins, are not good at cleaning the physical debris listed above.
Q. Why do some people do chelation before the EBOO /F and some dont?
A. As mentioned, the human body is not good at filtering the blood to get rid of toxic debris from chronic infections . But to leave these toxic materials in the blood can make a person quite sick, and unable to function.
Q. Is this a cure?
A. Yes.
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From The Frying Pan To The Fire: Alternative Lyme Disease Treatments Thatll Make You Worse Off
Whether you were once diagnosed with Lyme Disease and continue to suffer its devastating effects in the form of post-treatment Lyme Disease syndrome or are suffering from so-called signs of chronic Lyme Disease without a previous diagnosis, the following treatments spell danger rather than healing .
1. Prolonged antibiotics for those who have symptoms of chronic Lyme Disease or post-treatment Lyme Disease syndrome have been found not to work while some who have taken this route may report improved symptoms, scientific studies have found that this is not the norm, time and time again. Whats more, prolonged courses of often intravenous antibiotics can lead to opportunistic bacterial infections as the antibiotics destroy your microbial flora, and can even be fatal.
2. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is the one treatment that has been shown to be able to fight some strains of Borrelia burgdorferi . Despite that, its pricey, extremely time-consuming, and prone to causing ear and eye complications . No scientifically-supported human trials investigating whether hyperbaric oxygen therapy is effective in people suffering from Lyme Disease have taken place, either, making this something you do not want to experiment with. Similar therapies with hydrogen peroxide and ozone have no scientific backing at all, on the other hand.
Dangerous Unproven Treatments For Chronic Lyme Disease Are On The Rise
An increasing number of Americans with medically ambiguous symptoms are being misdiagnosed with chronic Lyme disease and prescribed dangerous and often expensive treatments that do not work, according to a new report.
In some instances, patients have died after receiving intensive, long-term and inappropriate courses of intravenous antibiotics that led to septic shock. In other cases, misdiagnosis caused dangerous delays in treatment of a patients actual underlying condition.
These incorrect diagnoses have existed for years. But public health officials and clinicians say they are alarmed because of the increasing severity and scope of some treatments in recent years, said Christina Nelson, a medical epidemiologist and author of a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Many of the various treatments, including courses of intravenous antibiotics lasting months and years, have no evidence of effectiveness. Studies have shown that prolonged courses of intravenous antibiotics can often result in serious harm, including death.
Unorthodox alternative therapies include intravenous infusions of hydrogen peroxide, electromagnetic frequency treatments, garlic supplements, even stem cell transplants.
Chronic Lyme disease is a diagnosis that some health-care providers use to describe patients with a variety of symptoms such as fatigue, generalized pain, and neurological symptoms.
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