What Are The Signs & Symptoms Of Lyme Disease
Lyme disease can affect different body systems, such as the nervous system, joints, skin, and heart. The symptoms of Lyme disease are often described as happening in three stages. Not everyone with Lyme has all of these, though:
The rash sometimes has a “bull’s-eye” appearance, with a central red spot surrounded by clear skin that is ringed by an expanding red rash. It also can appear as an growing ring of solid redness. It’s usually flat and painless, but sometimes can be warm to the touch, itchy, scaly, burning, or prickling. The rash may look and feel very different from one person to the next. It can be harder to see on people with darker skin tones, where it can look like a bruise. It gets bigger for a few days to weeks, then goes away on its own. A person also may have flu-like symptoms such as fever, tiredness, headache, and muscle aches.
Penicillin Plus Azole Plus Lipsomal Cinnamon Clove & Oregano Oil
- amoxicillin 500 mg 4 pills 3 times a day
- tinidazole 500 mg 1 pill 2 or 3 times a day for 4 days on and 3 days off in 7-day cycles.
- liposomal cinnamon, clove, and oregano oil capsules 1 pill 2 times a day.
Key Points:
- This is a very high dose of amoxicillin, which is four times stronger than physicians prescribe for other infections like ear infections. I consider this dose to be nearly as effective as IV antibiotics.
- This is a pulse dose regimen of the tinidazole. It may be more effective than continuous regimens.
- The essential oils are added to treat persister Lyme.
Also Check: Sleep Inn East Lyme Ct
Is Lyme Disease In A Dog Permanent
A bacteria named Lyme spirochetes gets treated by antibiotics since they grow in animals. Choosing an antibiotic relies mostly on which antibiotic they take doxycycline, amoxicillin, or azithromycin. The treatment lasts for four weeks. As an alternative, a second tick could bite, which might re-inflate the original infection.
Also Check: How Long Does Lyme Disease Rash Last
Is It Possible To Eradicate Lyme Disease
It has been suggested that a chemical discovered as lethal to the bacteria involved in the cause of tick-borne diseases but harmless to animals will eventually prevent the spread of disease in the wild. Lewis is a professor at Northeastern University in Boston and author of Lyme Disease & Disease on the Edge of the World.I firmly believe there is a good possibility of killing it outright, states Lewis.
Recent Progress In Lyme Disease And Remaining Challenges
Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States with an estimated 476,000 cases per year. While historically, the long-term impact of Lyme disease on patients has been controversial, mounting evidence supports the idea that a substantial number of patients experience persistent symptoms following treatment. The research community has largely lacked the necessary funding to properly advance the scientific and clinical understanding of the disease, or to develop and evaluate innovative approaches for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Given the many outstanding questions raised into the diagnosis, clinical presentation and treatment of Lyme disease, and the underlying molecular mechanisms that trigger persistent disease, there is an urgent need for more support. This review article summarizes progress over the past 5 years in our understanding of Lyme and tick-borne diseases in the United States and highlights remaining challenges.
You May Like: Lyme Nephritis Symptoms In Dogs
What Are The Side Effects Of Lyme Disease Treatments
Antibiotics, like all medications, have the potential for side effects. Any antibiotic can cause skin rashes, and if an itchy red rash develops while on antibiotics, a patient should see their physician. Sometimes symptoms worsen for the first few days on an antibiotic. This is called a Herxheimer reaction and occurs when the antibiotics start to kill the bacteria. In the first 24 to 48 hours, dead bacterial products stimulate the immune system to release inflammatory cytokines and chemokines that can cause increased fever and achiness. This should be transient and last no more than a day or two after the initiation of antibiotics.
The most common side effect of the penicillin antibiotics is diarrhea, and occasionally even serious cases caused by the bacteria Clostridium difficile. This bacterial overgrowth condition occurs because antibiotics kill the good bacteria in our gut. It can be helpful to use probiotics to restore the good bacteria and microbiome balance.
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.
Read Also: Can Lyme Disease Cause Jaw Pain
Why This Is Important
The use and duration of antibiotics for chronic Lyme disease treatment is controversial because there is no biomarker that can determine whether the Lyme bacteria has been eradicated in CLD patients. Patients are often told that either chronic Lyme disease does not exist or that it is incurable. If this were true, we would not expect more well and substantially improved patients to be taking antibiotics. Instead, we might have expected the percentage of people using antibiotics to be roughly the same among the patient subgroups.
How To Treat Lyme Disease Naturally Without Antibiotics
Lyme disease, a complicated infection, is difficult to diagnose and treat if the doctors do not have experience and miss the early symptoms. This case often happens. Therefore its treatments are tricky and hard because most of the blood tests done by doctors miss 55 percent of Lyme disease risks. Most patients with Lyme disease have the symptoms like other ailments such as rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome and Alzheimers disease. While antibiotics are proven to be effective to cure Lyme disease, there are many ways on how to treat Lyme disease naturally without antibiotics you can try to get rid of this complicated infection.
Read Also: Do All Ticks Cause Lyme Disease
Is Lyme Disease A Death Sentence For Dogs
People can have significant problems with Lyme disease. It is uncommon for dogs to have this type of virus, but it can be deadly in severe cases in fact, it causes kidneys failure. When arthritis starts to occur, a dog often begins to experience sudden lameness, a pain in one or more joints, and swelling.
How Long Do Lyme Antibodies Persist
Patients who experienced Lyme arthritis responded to immune dysfunction 94% of the time. They were also able to respond to the spirochete 63% of the time despite having an IgM response of 15%. The type of B antibodies antibodies that react to IgM or IgG may be an example of an IgM or IgG response. It is not a strong indication for active infection that these reactions do not last long.
Recommended Reading: Old Lyme Beach House Rentals
Does Lyme Disease Stay Dormant In Your Body
It has been estimated that Lyme disease goes cold for several months, or even for years, but the disease stays dormant. A patient can suffer severe symptoms as a result of developing symptoms, and the need for aggressive treatment is prevalent. Antibiotics that treat infectious diseases at late stage require an IV treatment. The late stage of the treatment can last several months if other infections are similar.
What Is Neurologic Lyme Disease
Neurologic symptoms of Lyme disease occur when the Lyme disease bacteria affect the peripheral or central nervous systems.
- Cranial nerve involvement: When the cranial nerves are affected, facial palsy can occur on one or both sides of the face.
- Peripheral nerve involvement: When the peripheral nerves are affected, patients can develop radiculoneuropathy which can cause numbness, tingling, shooting pain, or weakness in the arms or legs.
- Central nervous system involvement: When the central nervous system is affected, Lyme meningitis can cause fever, headache, sensitivity to light, and stiff neck.
Out of every 100 patients whose cases are reported to CDC, 9 have facial palsy, 4 have radiculopathy, and 3 have meningitis or encephalitis. Because of reporting practices, this statistic may overestimate how often these manifestations are seen by clinicians.
You May Like: Epstein Barr Virus And Lyme Disease
Lowering Of Microbial Burden
Antibiotics may be recommended for this arm of treatment. If a patient has failed or not responded to antibiotic therapy for chronic lyme in the past, in my experience they still may respond if the other three arms of treatment are added in. Herbal options, and especially ozone therapy, are excellent first choices if not an acute case.
When using these options, risks such as allergy and upper gut irritation with the herbs is a discussion. With antibiotics, the risk of resistance, lower GI issues including serious cases of diarrhea, allergy, are concerns to be discussed. Because of such risks, and the fact that my own experiences been that herbal options are often just as effective although somewhat slower to have clear changes, herbal options are often considered first.
The herbal options that I prefer include much of the newer research that has been published on especially japanese knotweed, cryptolepsis, as well as various essential oils. The classic formulas such as cats claw, Buhner herbs are useful. I do find favorable results with the formulas from Beyond balance as well.
Occasionally though, in my experience, even though the chronic lyme patient is getting full detoxification support, Herxheimer like reactions still occur. In these cases there are many in the office treatments that can help to calm the inflammation based on the individual assessment.
Is Lyme Disease Curable
The tick-borne illness can be treated with antibiotics, and most people make a full recovery within weeks or months. So why is there so much confusion?
In much of the country, spring and summer mean warmer weather and spending more time outdoors. Unfortunately, it also means that the ticks that carry Lyme disease bacteria may be out in full force, especially in wooded or grassy areas.
About 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported each year to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although experts estimate that 10 times that amount may actually be infected. Thats concerning, because if left untreated, Lyme disease can cause nerve damage, memory loss, dangerous inflammation around the heart, and other permanent health problems.
But the good news is that Lyme disease is also very treatableespecially when its diagnosed soon after symptoms begin. Lyme disease is always curable, Daniel Kuritzkes, MD, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, tells Health. The medications we have are very effective at getting rid of the infection. Heres what else you need to know.
RELATED: How Do You Get Lyme Disease?
Also Check: Lyme Disease Breakthrough At Mayo Clinic
What Happens At Your Appointment
The GP will ask about your symptoms and consider any rash or recent tick bites you know about.
Lyme disease can be difficult to diagnose. It has similar symptoms to other conditions and theres not always an obvious rash.
2 types of blood test are available to help confirm or rule out Lyme disease. But these tests are not always accurate in the early stages of the disease.
You may need to be retested if you still have Lyme disease symptoms after a negative result.
Dont Miss: Symptoms Of Untreated Lyme Disease
Possible Alternative Treatment For Lyme Disease
- Date:
- University of Oklahoma
- Summary:
- Researchers have described a new antibiotic that appears to have the potential to cure Lyme disease.
As if COVID and RSV weren’t bad enough, incidents of Lyme disease — a potentially serious disease caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi and transmitted following a bite of an infected deer tick — also are on the rise in the United States.
Lyme disease affects an estimated 300,000 people in the United States alone. Humans and animals can be infected with B. burgdorferi following the bite of an infected deer tick, also known as the black-legged tick. About 80% of those who contract the disease will develop a bulls-eye rash around or near the site of the bite anywhere from three to 30 days following the bite.
Although early antibiotic treatment is effective for most patients, some 10-20% of patients continue to suffer from symptoms that may include fatigue, muscle pain and cognitive impairment for over six months after therapy. The significance of this debilitating disease has been recently brought into focus by a set of very similar symptoms in patients with “Long COVID.”
The antibiotics currently used to treat Lyme disease are broad-spectrum with significant effects on the human gut microbiome and the potential for increasing resistance in non-target bacteria, Zgurskaya explained, adding that the team sought to identify a compound acting with a narrower spectrum of activity against B. burgdorferi.
Story Source:
Recommended Reading: Walk In Clinic East Lyme Ct
How Long Does Lyme Disease Last
Lyme disease symptoms can begin anywhere from three to 30 days after transmission of the infection from a tick. If treated early on with antibiotics, most people feel better within a few weeks, says Dr. Zemel.
According to the CDC, its not uncommon for people to experience lingering symptoms like fatigue and joint or muscle pain for a few weeks or months after treatment. Additional antibiotics wont help these symptoms, however, and most people improve on their own over time.
In a small percentage of cases, people continue to experience symptoms for more than six months after their recommended course of antibiotics is completed. This is sometimes referred to as chronic Lyme diseasebut that name is misleading, says Dr. Kuritzkes, because there is no evidence that the bacteria that causes Lyme disease is still present in the body. Instead, the CDC refers to this condition as post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome .
As with many other kinds of infectious diseases, some people are left with some debilitating symptoms that dont go away, says Dr. Kuritzkes. I like to compare it to polio: Some people who had polio are left paralyzed, but that doesnt mean they have chronic polio they have permanent damage from the infection, even after its gone away.
Its possible that Lyme infection leads to some damage that we dont fully understand yet, Dr. Kuritzkes adds. But we do know that long-term or repeated courses of antibiotics have no benefit in these cases.
Chronic Lyme Dos And Don’ts
Chronic Lyme disease is an ongoing Borrelia burgdorferi infection that can involve any body system or tissue. The infection produces a wide range of symptoms and signs, which can be debilitating for some patients. Common symptoms include severe fatigue, migratory musculoskeletal pain, headaches, and impaired memory. Unfortunately, chronic Lyme disease is complex and often misunderstood, which means that many patients will struggle to obtain the care they need to regain their health. Every patient concerned about Lyme disease and tick-borne illness should know the following.
Also Check: The Side Effects Of Lyme Disease
How Is Lyme Disease Treated
With early-stage Lyme disease, youâll take antibiotics for about 10 days to 3 weeks. The most common ones are amoxicillin, cefuroxime, and doxycycline. The antibiotics will almost always cure your infection. If they donât, you might get other antibiotics either by mouth or as a shot.
If you donât treat your Lyme infection, you might need oral antibiotics for symptoms like weakened face muscles and irregular heartbeat. You may need antibiotics if you have meningitis, inflammation in your brain and spinal cord, or more severe heart problems.
If your Lyme is late stage, the doctor might give you antibiotics either by mouth or as a shot. If it causes arthritis, youâll get arthritis treatment.
Thereâs no therapy for post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.
Natural Remedies For Lyme Disease
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. It is spread through the bite of infected ticks.
Ticks are very small, and their biteswhich can occur anywhere on the bodyare usually painless, so you may not immediately be aware that you have been bitten. In most cases, the tick must be attached to the body for 24 hours before Lyme disease is transmitted.
The signs and symptoms of Lyme disease usually start within three to 30 days after youve been bitten by an infected tick. Many people experience flu-like symptoms after being bitten, while more serious symptoms show up weeks after the bite. Early signs and symptoms of Lyme disease include:
- Chills
- Rash
- Swollen lymph nodes
If left untreated, symptoms can worsen to include Bells palsy , severe headaches, muscle, joint, and tendon pain, cardiac problems, and neurological disorders.
Most cases of Lyme disease can be managed and treated with two to three weeks of antibiotics. Depending on the severity of your symptoms and how long after the bite you were diagnosed, you may need a longer course of antibiotics to clear up the infection. Many people turn to natural remedies to help treat Lyme disease.
Recommended Reading: Tick Bite Lyme Disease Symptoms
