Lyme Disease Nerve Pain Relief

Testing And Antibiotic Treatment

Diagnosis of LD usually is confirmed by serologic testing. Once LD is diagnosed, treatment of the infection requires antibiotics. There is some controversy surrounding diagnostic testing and antibiotic therapy. Ideally, antibiotic management of LD should be supervised by a physician with expertise or specialization in LD. Antibiotics commonly used for oral treatment include doxycycline , amoxicillin, and cefuroxime axetil.17 Patients with certain neurologic or cardiac forms of illness may require intravenous treatment with drugs such as ceftriaxone or penicillin.17 . If a specialist is not available and the treating pain clinician tests and treats, we recommend you consult Clinical Practice Guidelines or another up-to-date manual.17

How Is Lyme Disease Contracted

Individuals with Lyme Disease have been bitten by a blacklegged tick “that is infected with Borrelia burgdorferi” . Not all ticks are infected however, if you happen to get bitten, or notice symptoms like a rash, fever, or headaches after being outdoors, it is important to inform your doctor so you can get the right diagnosis.

Why Choose Hope Brain & Body Recovery Center For Treatment

When seeking treatment for neurological conditions, you shouldnt settle for anything but the most premium treatment. Dr. Joseph Schneider has over 30 years of clinical experience and has attended to over 11,000 patients with a wide array of neurological conditions.

Dr. Schneider has firsthand experience with neurological treatment, having suffered a stroke in 2017. Thanks to his incredibly talented associates and personal knowledge of treatment methods, has made a miraculous recovery. He has devoted his life to the neurological health of his patients and uses his firsthand experience of the recovery process to improve the treatment methods used at Hope Brain & Body Recovery Center.

Choosing Hope Brain & Body Recovery Center gives you access to some of the most modern technical treatment equipment available. We utilize a wide range of modern diagnostic equipment that helps our specialists build some of the most comprehensive neurological profiles for our patients. This means we are able to offer more accurate diagnoses, discover underlying conditions, as well as use the information to create therapy plans that are uniquely designed for each patient.

Recommended Reading: Symptoms Of Lyme Flare Up

What Kinds Of Neurological Problems Can Be Caused By Lyme Disease

Dr. John J. Halperin responds:

The typical starting point of Lyme disease is a bite by a small hard-shelled tick. The wound often goes unnoticed because ticks are small and inject local anesthesia when they bite. The hallmark sign of the disease is a red skin rash called erythema migrans. The rash can appear any time within the first 30 days after the bite. When an infected tick bites, it can inject Lyme bacteria into the skin. As the bacteria spread from that primary site, they may cause flu-like symptoms, including a low-grade fever, aches and pains, and a .

What happens next depends on where in your body the bacteria go and how you react to them. About 10 percent of infected people will get meningitis, which can include a severe headache with flu-like symptoms. If left untreated, this bacterial infection can cause loss of muscle tone on one or both sides of the face . Between 5 and 10 percent of people will experience pain in the distribution of a nerve root either in a limb or in the chest and abdomen. This feels similar to when you get a in your neck or back, except with Lyme disease, the pain is due to inflammation instead of pinching. Also, patients with a Lyme infection that has been left untreated for many months or even years can get arthritis.

Treatment For Chronic Lyme Disease

Sometimes, people go through treatment for Lyme disease but their symptoms donât go away. If this lasts over 6 months, itâs known as chronic Lyme disease or âpost-treatment Lyme disease syndromeâ .

Doctors still arenât sure why some people get PTLDS. Some believe that getting Lyme disease may cause damage to your tissues or immune system. Others believe itâs because the bacteria that causes Lyme hasnât completely gone away.

There is little evidence that taking more antibiotics at this stage will help. They may actually be harmful. Instead, your doctor will focus on treating the symptoms youâre still having. This will be different for everyone. Some people could benefit from a medicine that relieves fatigue, while others may need a drug that can help with headaches or very sensitive skin.

Your doctor could also have you try a treatment that helps people with chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia.

More research is needed to figure out how best to treat PTLDS. Itâs something that can be frustrating. Just remember: Many people who have this condition do start feeling like their old selves after a few months.

Also Check: What Is Lyme Disease And What Are The Symptoms

Understanding The Acute Inflammatory Response

Suppose youre walking barefoot in the yard one summer day and accidentally step on a sharp piece of glass hidden in the grass. Pain alerts you to the injury and you stop to assess the situation. If the wound isnt deep, youre up to date on your tetanus vaccination, and a rinse in the sink reveals no foreign objects in the wound, you place a bandage over the area, and youre back on your way.

Swelling occurs because blood vessels dilate to allow an influx of WBCs and flush the area with fluid. Macrophages and arriving WBCs engulf debris, foreign matter, and microbes that have entered through the open wound, and destroy the material with potent free radicals and hypochlorous acid. Its a noxious process that causes collateral damage to normal cells, but its part of the healing process.

Once the injury is contained and the mess is cleaned up, WBCs migrate out of the area. Surviving cells repair damage from the injury and the inflammatory process itself. Gradually evidence of the injury disappears like nothing had ever happened.

When Inflammation Becomes Chronic

Imagine if the acute inflammatory process was going on in tissues throughout your body and it never resolved. Thats exactly what happens with the chronic inflammation associated with chronic Lyme disease.

The driving force is bacteria invading cells. Its not an all-out invasion like you would find with an acute infection, such as pneumonia, however. Its an insidious migration of bacteria into tissues throughout the body in the brain, heart, joints, muscles, kidneys, intestines, everywhere.

When Lyme bacteria enter the bloodstream from a tick bite, WBCs gobble up the bacteria in an attempt to get rid of them. The bacteria, however, have sophisticated ways of staying alive inside the WBCs. Instead of eradicating the bacteria, the WBCs unintentionally become transport vehicles to distribute bacteria to tissues throughout the body.

On arrival, the bacteria surface and infect other cells. Its not as much a deluge of invasion as it is a random sprinkling. Tissues throughout the body become peppered with cells that have been infected with bacteria.

The Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, are intracellular, which means they infect and live inside cells. The cells provide nutrients to make new bacteria as well as protection from the immune system. Once the bacteria have used up the resources a cell has to offer, they surface and infect other cells.

Recommended Reading: What Kind Of Ticks Have Lyme Disease

Facts About Lyme Disease In Pa

Ticks thrive in the countryside of Pennsylvania in particular, and according to a study published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , Lyme has a greater likelihood of occurring where suburban developments encroach on existing forest. This is thought to be because the white-footed mouse that is the most important animal in the Lyme disease transmission cycle can live without too many predators under these circumstances.

Notable statistics of Lyme disease in PA include:

• Fatigue
• Swollen lymph nodes

For some people, a telltale sign of the disease is the red bulls eye-shaped skin rash that presents in some, but not all sufferers, within three to 30 days after being bitten by a tick.

Often, these first signs are missed when youre infected with Lyme disease and are dismissed as the flu or some other virus. This is very worrying because if antibiotic treatment isnt begun when the first signs of the disease present, your condition can become more serious.

Joint pain is another issue that can occur with Lyme disease. In the worst cases, over several weeks, nervous system and heart issues can develop. If left untreated, you may suffer from arthritis and neurological issues. In fact, according to the Arthritis Foundation, when Lyme disease is untreated, more than half of all sufferers will develop sporadic arthritis bouts.

How Herbal Supplements Can Help

The best way to gain the level of phytochemical protection you need to help your immune system win the internal battle against invasive microbes is to take herbal supplements specifically, standardized botanical extracts.

Standardized botanical extracts take herbal supplements to the next level. Theyre made with wild plants or plants that have been cultivated to enhance their phytochemical content and are grown in an environment that doesnt introduce unwanted chemical toxins. The extraction process also yields the greatest concentration and the widest spectrum of phytochemicals in the plant. And the final product is standardized to a concentration of one or several key phytochemicals in the plant, so you know what youre getting.

Below are a few of my favorite herbs for mitigating the systemic chronic inflammation associated with chronic Lyme disease. Though all of the herbs have value in suppressing microbes and reducing inflammation, three of the herbs mentioned below Japanese knotweed, cats claw, and Chinese skullcap were found in a 2020 study from Johns Hopkins University to have greater activity against Borrelia burgdorferi than the antibiotics, doxycycline and azithromycin.

Don’t Miss: What Does Lyme Disease Do To Your Body

Setting The Stage For Chronic Inflammation

Though the immune system plays a key role in protecting cells of the body from microbe invasion, the health of cells is also a major player. When cells become chronically stressed, they are more susceptible to being invaded by intracellular bacteria and other microbes. There are five primary categories of factors that weaken cells and set the stage for the chronic inflammation associated with Lyme disease.

#1. Poor diet

When cells arent fed properly, they cant function properly. Processed foods sourced from grains, beans, and grain-fed meat are overloaded with raw carbohydrates and refined fats that disrupt cellular functions. On the other hand, theyre deficient in the nutrients that cells need to function properly. Poorly nourished cells cant properly defend themselves against microbes.

#2. A toxic environment

In the modern world, chronic exposure to low levels of toxic substances and free radicals in food, water, and air is hard to avoid. The list includes man-made toxins associated with petroleum products, free-radicals in processed food, and natural toxins such as mold. In addition, the acid and free radicals associated with inflammation are highly toxic to cells. Toxic substances disrupt cellular processes, damage internal working parts of the cells, and weaken cell membranes. Weakened cells are more vulnerable to microbe invasion.

#3. Chronic stress

#4. Physical stress

#5. Microbes

Pots Constipation And Lyme Disease

POTS stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome which means the heart rate will increase when someone changes position, from laying or sitting to standing. POTS is very common in late-stage Lyme disease since the autonomic nervous system does not maintain tone in blood vessels causing a drop in blood pressure. When the blood pressure drops, the heart rate has to increase to stabilize blood pressure. Mast cell activation syndrome is another common cause of POTS and MCAS is frequently seen as a consequence of Lyme disease.

Another common symptom associated with autonomic nervous system dysfunction is constipation. Termed gastroparesis, constipation can happen when the nerve that signals intestinal muscular contraction become damaged by the bacteria and the resulting immune response.

Don’t Miss: Where To Buy Lyme Vaccine For Dogs

The 5 False Facts Your Doctor Mistakenly Promotes Lyme Disease Nerve Pain Relief

The medical community is largely responsible for this misinformation being passed on to the suffering patient. In my view it is the job and responsibility of the family doctor to teach the patient about their neuropathy problem. It is also the doctors job to train the patient in what they can do to improve and manage their neuropathy case successfully.

===> How To End Peripheral Neuropathy < < <

Many neuropathy patients, suffering with foot or hand pain, tingling, numbness, burning, and other evasive and hard to describe neuropathy symptoms, dont even know the name of their condition! And while others do, that is essentially all they know. With this in mind I want to address some of the most commonly INCORRECT facts that suffering neuropathy patients have been told, or come to understand, due to the lack of patient education by the medical community.

1. Neuropathy comes with age, and there is nothing you can do about it.This statement is only partially correct, inasmuch as aging can contribute to the increased onset and intensity of the neuropathy condition. There are however, many simple techniques and procedures that any person can learn which will offset many of these effects of aging as they relate to peripheral neuropathy.

4. Neuropathy just gets worse with time, and you have to accept that you are stuck with it.

Lyme The Nervous System And Neuropathy

Unfortunately, once the infection begins to spread throughout the body, many people will develop Lyme neuroborreliosis . This is neurological Lyme disease, which affects and inflames the central and peripheral nervous systems.

Research suggests the neurologic manifestations of Lyme disease may be present in approximately 15% of the patient population. However, the exact incidence of LNB isnt well known. A brief stint in an online Lyme patient forum will quickly reveal that most individuals report experiencing at least some amount of neurological involvement on a routine basis.

One debilitating symptom that may be present among those with LNB is peripheral neuropathy . This is a disease process that impacts the nerves located outside of the brain and spinal cord. Neuropathy occurs when there is damage or dysfunction of neurons in one or more nerves.

The damage results in interference among the neurons, and they begin to have difficulty communicating with each other and the brain.

To make matters worse, co-infections like Babesia and Bartonella can contribute to neuropathy as well, according to a study in the International Journal of General Medicine.

So how do you know if the symptoms youre facing are neuropathy, and what can you do to find some relief? Read on to learn about the symptoms, diagnosis, and ideas on how to manage the pain and discomfort associated with neuropathy more effectively.

Read Also: Ozone Therapy For Chronic Lyme

Pain Treatment Of Active Disease

Pain may be severe enough to require specific analgesic therapy at any stage of LD. The first line of pain treatment is anti-inflammatory agents, because inflammation is always present with LD.4-6 The agents can be delivered topically or systemically. Topical anesthetics such as lidocaine also are helpful for managing joint pain . In addition to anti-inflammatory agents, standard, step-wise multimodal pain treatment is recommendedstarting with agents such as acetaminophen, muscle relaxants , various neuropathic drugs, and complementary therapies. Opioid analgesics may be required for severe pain if non-opioid measures are ineffective. Hypnotic agents may be necessary for insomnia, and anxiolytics often are required as well.

How Can You Prevent Lyme Disease

The best way you can avoid Lyme disease in central PA, and indeed, anywhere there is a risk to human health, is to avoid walking in brushy, wooded areas with long grass. Other precautions you should take include:

• Tick-proof your yard. Clear leaves and brush on a regular basis and ensure you mow your lawn regularly.

• Cover up. When youre in grassy or wooded areas, wear long pants tucked into your socks, shoes, a long-sleeved shirt, a hat and gloves. Wear light-colored clothing to make it easier to see ticks.

• Stay on trails. Try not to veer off from trails and avoid taking any routes through long grass or bushes. In addition, always keep your dog on a leash, as dogs are prone to tick bites, too.

• Wear insect repellent. An insect repellent with at least 20 percent or higher concentration of DEET will help protect your skin from tick bites. If youre a parent of young children, you should always apply repellent to your kids rather than letting them do it themselves and take care to avoid their eyes, mouth and hands. Chemical repellents can be toxic, so always use them with care and be sure to read the label.

Its also good practice to apply permethrin-containing products to your clothing for extra protection.

When its caught and treated as early as possible, Lyme disease can be fully treated, saving you from potential complications like arthritis and joint pain. You and your family can be tick aware while still enjoying the great outdoors and protecting your health.

You May Like: What Kind Of Doctor Should I See For Lyme Disease

Sciatic Nerve Pain Is A Symptom Of A Cause

Sciatic nerve pain is often characterized by a tingling sensation, sharp pain or numbness down the leg or in one area of the leg, often only on one side. It is also often a pain that is very difficult to get rid of as it is a result of sciatica, which can be caused by many different things. However sciatica pain can be crippling.

The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the body, running from the bottom of the back, through the hip, knee and to the ankle. When this nerve is damaged or has pressure exerted on it, it can cause intense sciatic nerve pain deep inside the leg. This is called sciatica. Sciatica can be caused by a number of things. If the piriformis muscle which is located deep in the hip joint, chokes the nerve this can cause sciatica. Herniated or slipped disks can put enormous pressure on the sciatic nerve, resulting in pain. More serious conditions such as cancer can result in sciatica as well, if a tumor is putting pressure on the nerve. Peripheral Neuropathy From Lyme Disease

Sciatic nerve pain is very difficult to treat as it is a symptom of a cause. Thus it is very important to identify the cause so that it can be targeted, resulting in permanent pain alleviation. What may work in relieving pain for one cause, may not work for another cause.

The last resort for sciatica if it continues is surgery. Surgery is either a microdiscectomy or a lumbar laminectomy, designed to take away the piece of disk that is damaging or putting pressure on the nerve.