Know How To Remove A Tick
Lyme Symptoms: Days 1-30
Treating an infection within the first 3 weeks is critical to reducing the risk of chronic Lyme disease, which can last for the rest of your life. If the following symptoms appear , seek medical assistance right away.
Alternate Treatments Offer Relief
Freitas now takes Epsom salt baths Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and uses an infrared sauna for detoxification, saying it makes her body feel better.
And she now takes 30 pills each day, interspersing antibiotics with herbs and dietary supplements, which cost upwards of $1,200 a month.
Maria Alice Lima Freitas is pictured at her home in Middleton, Wis., on Oct. 6, 2021, with some of the treatments she takes for Lyme disease and other co-infections. She says she currently pays about $1,200 a month in medicines, vitamins, supplements and treatment costs. Coburn Dukehart/Wisconsin Watch
“For babesia Im taking liquid gold Mepron,” said Freitas. “It’s really expensive. Its 50 bucks for 80 milliliters, which lasts two weeks.”
She gave up dairy, gluten, and sugar to reduce inflammation.
And she meets with Shor monthly online from her house at a charge of $250 per visit, which insurance does not cover.
“It was to me the money is well paid. Im having peace of mind,” Freitas said. “I feel like Im getting better.”
Freitas said she started gaining back some weight in June. Her mind has become a bit clearer. Her long-term memory seems back a bit, too. “Im getting out of the graveyard,” she said.
Said Oppenheimer to his wife: “What Im seeing is youre better relative to the beginning of , because youre still not good.”
And she still holds out “a little flame of hope” of one day becoming a doctor just like her dad.
Nutritional And Mineral Deficiencies
When the body is unbalanced and not getting enough nutrients, the mitochondria begins to shut down which compromises your brain and muscles. Running a few blood, or even mineral taste tests, will help to determine what your body is specifically lacking.
Note: A number of people with chronic Lyme disease have developed HPU , which is a mineral deficiency. HPU affects the immune system by depleting it of zinc, manganese, arachidonic acid, taurine, and other vitamins and minerals. It is recommended to get certain tests to detect these deficiencies when treating HPU.
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What Is Your Real Risk Of Lyme Disease
Lyme is the most common vector-borne disease in America, dwarfing West Nile, Zika, and chikungunya. More than 40,000 cases of diagnosed Lyme disease are reported to the CDC each year, but the true number of new infections, the agency estimates, could be as high as 376,000.
Since it first appeared in Old Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975, where people started suffering from a mysterious outbreak of arthritis, the disease has spread along the Northeast coast, with other clusters in the Upper Midwest states of Wisconsin and Minnesota and along the coasts of California and Oregon.
I live in a wooded area in central Pennsylvania, where Lyme is common. Many of my friends and neighbors have gotten the disease. For most, it was straightforward: a tick bite, the classic bulls-eye rash, some joint pain and flu-like symptoms, and then two to four weeks of antibiotics until it went away.
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These are the sorts of cases envisioned under the treatment guidelines of the Infectious Diseases Society of America . But not every case fits into this shoebox.
Take, for example, Fred Long. Now an attorney in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Long was a 24-year-old just entering law school when he started to feel bad, with severe knee pain and a lack of energy. Then his jaw locked up, and some days he could barely get out of bed. Long eventually persuaded his doctor to test for Lyme. My test came back negative, he says.
The Cdc Reveals The Truth About Lyme Disease
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection caused by the bite of an infected black-legged tick, also known as a deer tick. Lyme and its numerous co-infections can mimic or cause virtually any medical, neurological, or psychiatric condition. It is called the great imitator and has been vastly underdiagnosed in the U.S. due to inadequate testing methods and general lack of acknowledgment by the medical community. A nasty relative of the STD syphilis, Lyme causes a multitude of medical, neurological, and psychiatric impairment issues, yet is much harder to cure.
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Day 2 Sunday, February 7th
5:00 PM Introduction with Tom Moorcroft, DO & David Dornfeld, DO
Richard Horowitz, MD
Dr. Richard Horowitz is a board certified internist in private practice in Hyde Park, N.Y. He is medical director of the Hudson Valley Healing Arts Center, an integrative medical center which combines both classical and complementary approaches in the treatment of Lyme Disease and other tick-borne disorders. He has treated over 12,000 Chronic Lyme disease patients in the last 29 years, with patients coming from all over the US, Canada, and Europe to his clinic.
Updates on Novel Diagnostic and Treatment Protocols for Lyme and TBDs
Kenneth Liegner, MD
Kenneth B. Liegner, M.D., is a board certified internist with additional training in pathology and critical care medicine. He is a member of ILADS and has served as a director. His practice in Pawling, New York, focuses on tick-borne disease.
3+ Years Experience with use of Disulfiram in the Treatment of Lyme disease in One Medical Practice
David Dornfeld, DO
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Role of Hyperbarics in Healing from Chronic Illness
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Lyme Disease Isnt Passed The Moment A Tick Bites Your Pet
One of the biggest misconceptions about tick-borne diseases, including Lyme disease, is that the moment your pet is bitten, they become infected with the illness. However, this is not true. Studies have shown that typically, at least 36 to 48 hours of feeding is required for the Lyme disease bacteria to be transmitted to the host. This means that prompt removal of a tick could prevent your pet from being infected.
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What Are The Symptoms Of Lyme Disease
Many people who are bitten by a tick are unaware of the bite, and they may not notice any initial symptoms of Lyme disease. However, here are the most common symptoms of Lyme disease, when broken down by stages.
Early localized symptoms
- A bullseye-like rash, known as erythema migrans . This may burn or itch and appears in the place where the tick bite occurred, in about 80 percent of people. This rash may start small and then expand over the course of days or weeks.
- Flu-like symptoms such as fatigue, appetite decrease, headache, neck stiffness, joint pain, muscle pain, or fever.
Early systemic symptoms
- Multiple EM lesions
- Neurologic symptoms such as nerve palsies , nerve pain, numbness, difficulty walking
- Heart palpitations, lightheadedness, or irregular heartbeat due to cardiac inflammation
- Eye symptoms, such as inflammation, pain, or visual changes
Late-stage Lyme disease
- Joint pain from Lyme arthritis
- Subtle cognitive changes from brain inflammation known as Lyme encephalopathy
- Skin rashes
Misdiagnosis And Delayed Treatment
The fortunate ones are able to catch Lyme within the first few weeks when the appropriate antibiotics have a much better chance of working. Unfortunately, Lyme disease is often missed and the infection is allowed to take hold, disrupting the immune system and causing a cascade of inflammatory responses.
Even when Lyme is suspected and a blood test is ordered, the common Western Blot test often results in false negatives while Lymes co-infection antibodies are rarely even looked for, although they may even be more common than Lyme itself! Its not uncommon for someone with Lyme to receive multiple negative test results before achieving a proper diagnosis. This leaves thousands of undiagnosed patients sick and confused, spending months, years, or even decades wandering around from doctor to doctor, trying to find out what is wrong with them. Ineffective testing methods combined with inadequate insurance coverage mean that people with Lyme often encounter financial ruin before a cure.
After 3-6 months in the body, Lyme has taken hold of the immune system and becomes difficult to eradicate with antibiotics alone. A study published in 2012 showed that Lyme disease has tenacious survival skills. Inside the body, the Borrelia organism forms a biofilm, which allows it to constantly rearrange its structure, hide, and resist environmental conditions such as antibiotics.
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Two Camps Two Approaches
Freitas saw a long string of mainstream physicians for a diagnosis rheumatologists, an infectious-disease specialist, family medicine doctors and emergency room physicians. Then, in the spring of 2020, she began seeing out-of-network doctors in and outside of Wisconsin, and many of them didnt take insurance.
A survey of more than 2,400 U.S. patients found 50 percent of the respondents reported seeing at least seven physicians before a Lyme diagnosis, and more than half continued to suffer symptoms for at least six months after the recommended short course of antibiotics.
In January 2021, Freitas borrowed $4,000 from her mother-in-law and flew to Washington, D.C., to receive intravenous antibiotic therapy. The treatments failed to help in fact she dropped 30 pounds in a matter of weeks. “I thought I was gonna die because I couldnt eat,” Freitas said.
Maria Alice Lima Freitas pays about $1,200 a month for medicine, vitamins and treatment for her chronic Lyme disease. She is pictured at her home in Middleton, Wis., on Oct. 6, 2021, with her husband John Oppenheimer. Freitas is now being treated by Dr. Samuel Shor of the Tick-Borne Illness Center of Excellence in Woodruff, Wisconsin. She says her brain is still sometimes foggy but emotionally she is much better and feels optimistic that a doctor is finally taking her symptoms seriously. Coburn Dukehart/Wisconsin Watch
“Signs and symptoms may wax, wane and migrate,” they wrote.
What Causes Lyme Disease
When an infected tick bites a human and remains latched for a lengthy period , it can pass along infectious particles that get into a persons bloodstream and cause disease. Lyme disease is not thought to be spread via other means, such as human-to-human contact, or consumption of host animals infected with the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria.
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Explore The September 2019 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
I began to do research, and discovered other patients like me, with troubling joint pain and neurological problems. To keep symptoms at bay, some of them had been taking oral and intravenous antibiotics for years, which can be dangerous one acquaintance of mine was on her fifth or sixth course of IV drugs, because that was the only treatment shed found that kept her cognitive faculties functioning. I read posts by people who experienced debilitating exhaustion and memory impairment. Some were so disoriented that they had trouble finding their own home. Others were severely depressed. Along the way, nearly all had navigated a medical system that had discredited their testimony and struggled to give them a diagnosis. Many had been shunted by internists to psychiatrists. The stories were not encouraging.
After a decade and a half in the dark, I at last had a possible name for my problems. Yet instead of feeling relief, I felt I had woken into a nightmare. I wasnt sure whether the disease I had really was untreated Lyme. Even if I did have Lyme, there was little agreement about how to treat a patient like mewhose test results were equivocal and who had been diagnosed very late in the course of the diseaseand no guarantee that I would get better if I tried antibiotics.
Why? he said.
Its raining!
What Are The Stages Of Lyme Infection
There are three stages:
- Early localized Lyme: Flu-like symptoms like fever, chills, headache, swollen lymph nodes, sore throat, and a rash that looks like a bull’s-eye or is round and red and at least 2 inches long
- Early disseminated Lyme: Flu-like symptoms like pain, weakness, or numbness in your arms and legs, changes in your vision, heart palpitations and chest pain, a rash , and a type of facial paralysis known as Bellâs palsy
- Late disseminated Lyme: This can happen weeks, months, or years after the tick bite. Symptoms might include arthritis, severe fatigue and headaches, dizziness, trouble sleeping, and confusion.
About 10% of people treated for Lyme infection donât shake the disease. They may go on to have three core symptoms: joint or muscle pain, fatigue, and short-term memory loss or confusion. This is called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. It can be hard to diagnose because it has the same symptoms as other diseases. Plus, there isn’t a blood test to confirm it.
Experts arenât sure why Lyme symptoms donât always go away. One theory is that your body keeps fighting the infection even after the bacteria are gone, like an autoimmune disorder.
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The Heartbreaking Truth About Lyme Disease
Senator Patty Ritchie
Recently, Robin Phillips, the mother of a high school student in Oswego County called my office, upset with the fact that the new New York State budget eliminated $1 million in important funding to fight Lyme and other tick-borne diseases. As someone who has fought for years for support that has helped fight Lyme disease and raise awareness, I share her frustration.
At the beginning of this school year, Robins son, Rob was as healthy as a 17 year-old track athlete could be. He was training and gearing up for his senior season and qualifying for sectionals. However, just a few days into the year, he began to feel tired. Unfortunately, no one knew what was happening to Rob. It was not until a month later, when he experienced Bells palsy on the right side of his face, did doctors do a test that confirmed Rob had Lyme disease.
No one knows where or when a tick bit Rob. He, nor his family ever saw the insect or the rash it typically leaves behind. Within a matter of days, Robin Phillips son went from running eight miles a day to being physically unable to get out of bed. Not only is Robs dream of a sectional championship gone, he is struggling to pass the very classes he had success with all his life.
Other Pathogens To Blame
Shor and his co-authors, including Maloney, propose that the lingering symptoms are caused by several pathogens from the Borrelia burgdorferi family or other tick-borne pathogens.
Nardelli said theres a variety of symptoms and severity in Lyme disease patients, and those symptoms can be caused by the inflammatory responses against the microbes.
“Inflammation is a huge part of the immune response. Its one of the frontline defenses we have, and it has this negative connotation, but it is intended for good,” he said. “Your immune response trying to kill the bug and in doing so, can cause damage, essentially.”
Some theories suggest that variants of the Lyme bacteria are resistant to antibiotics. Others argue that chronic Lyme is caused by a powerful immune reaction or it may even trigger an autoimmune disease. The central neural networks may be altered, having a significant impact on symptoms or a combination of these factors.
Nardelli is investigating Lyme-related arthritis that persists after treatment with antibiotics. He said science can be a slow process of acquiring new knowledge, and its tough for patients who are suffering with no clear answers.
That can lead them to seek out untrustworthy practitioners or fall for costly treatments that dont work. “You go out and find doctors that diagnose everything as Lyme disease,” Nardelli said.
“The whole goal is to get people the right diagnosis so they can get the therapy that they need,” she said.
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Five Myths And Misconceptions About Lyme Disease
The medical community has long subscribed to the portrayal of Lyme disease as an uncommon condition, easily diagnosed and treated with drugs, and unworthy of significant attention. However, the latest scientific evidence paints a very different picture, thoroughly debunking five of the most harmful Lyme disease myths.
Lyme Disease Symptoms Are Different In Dogs
In humans, Lyme disease can be diagnosed early by recognizing the distinctive, circular rash that usually appears between a week and a month after being bitten. In dogs, the symptoms are much more subtle, including joint pain, lethargy and fever, and may be easily misinterpreted by owners as a minor injury or fatigue.
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How To Get Help For Chronic Lyme Disease
If your ELISA and western blots come back negative but you still suspect Lyme disease, an IGeneX test may be worthwhile. IGeneX offers a panel of Lyme disease tests, including the ImmunoBlot, for detecting B. burgdorferi at all stages of the disease process. The ImmunoBlot, designed to be used in place of the western blot, has superior sensitivity for a broad range of Borrelia-specific antigens.
Another company offering innovative alternatives to the ELISA and western blot is ArminLabs, located in Germany. While the ELISA and western blot test for the presence of antibodies to B. burgdorferi, ArminLabs EliSpot test assesses the T-cell immune response it thus reflects current Lyme disease activity and becomes negative when B. burgdorferi is no longer active, making it useful for detecting persistent chronic Lyme disease infection and monitoring treatment. ArminLabs also offers tests of NK cell function, an indicator of immune suppression caused by chronic Lyme disease, and more sensitive alternatives to the standard ELISA test.
Another option is to work directly with a health team thats prepared to deal with a chronic condition like Lyme diseaseand thats where the California Center for Functional Health comes in. We offer a membership-based health transformation service, and our care team is ready to provide you with the tools and support you need to reclaim your health. Find out how we can help you.
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