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15 Essential Facts about Lyme Disease

May 4, 2017

15 Essential Facts about Lyme DiseaseIn researching on Lyme disease, it becomes immediately obvious that understanding Lyme re-quires embracing complexity. Many people—patients and practitioners alike, shy away from a delving into Lyme because it feels overwhelming – and it can be.

Here are 15 overlooked, but essential facts in understanding Lyme disease

  1. Lyme Disease is a bacterial infection caused by Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) that can be trans-mitted to humans and pets by the bite of an infected tick. Not all ticks are infected, and even if they are, that doesn’t mean they will infect you if they bite you.
  2. Lyme disease can lead to severe illness and disability in some people. It can affect any sys-tem of the body. It can cause, but is not limited to: extreme fatigue, arthritis, neurological prob-lems, psychiatric problems, cognitive impairment, persistent headaches, muscle pain, heart ir-regularities, and vision/hearing problems. No two cases of Lyme disease are the same, making the disease difficult to diagnose. Left untreated, or under-treated, Lyme disease can persist for years, even a lifetime.
  3. The diagnosis of Lyme disease is based on clinical presentation, because diagnostic testing for Lyme has been proven to be unreliable. In the absence of the characteristic “bullseye rash”, there is currently no way to reliably and consistently diagnose Lyme disease. Routine serologi-cal testing (testing the blood) for Lyme (ELISA screening test) has up to a 60% false negativity for both acute and chronic Lyme cases. Tests for co-infections (other tick-borne diseases) also have a high rate of false negativity. Overall, the medical literature on diagnostic testing highlight the need for both the improvement and standardization in blood tests for Lyme disease and co-infections.
  4. Co-infections: other tick-borne diseases that can be transmitted with Lyme include Babesia, Bartonella and Ehrlichia. You can have Lyme Disease and not have any of the co-infections, but many people diagnosed with Lyme have at least one co-infection. Because some of these other diseases can be caused by protozoans or viruses, not bacteria, antibiotics will not help. All in-fections must be treated for you to get well.
  5. The Lyme Disease pathogen is a spirochete; a particular type of bacteria. The word spiro-chete means “coiled hair” and describes the shape of this bacteria. Spirochetes have been around for millions of years longer than humans.
  6. Upon attaching to a host, the tick releases a series of anti-inflammatory chemicals and anti-histamines to numb the skin, and secretes a glue-like compound called cementum which helps it stay stuck to the host. After inserting its mouthparts into the host to feed, an infected tick can inject borrelia, and other pathogens, into the bloodstream. Most people do not feel the bite.
  7. The best documented route of Bb transmission is by a tick bite, and usually it’s the bite of a black-legged tick of the Ixodes genus (Ixodes scapularis and Ixodes pacificus are the most common). The nymph form of the black-legged tick is the most likely to transmit Lyme disease. The nymph is about the size of a poppy seed. That means when you check your body or some-one else’s body for ticks, turn on the lights, look closely, and wear your glasses if you need them!
  8. Many people claim that if the tick has been attached for less than 2 days, then there is no need to worry about infection. Those people, including doctors, are wrong. Research shows that many factors affect transmission time and transmission of bacteria can occur with tick attach-ment anywhere between 10 minutes and 72 hours. (Cook MJ. Lyme borreliosis: A review of da-ta on transmission time after tick attachment. Intern J Gen Med. 2015; 8:1-8.)
  9. After being bitten by an infected tick, some people develop a distinctive bulls-eye rash (ery-thema migrans, often referred to as EM). However, studies show that the bulls-eye rash oc-curs in less than half of infected people. A bulls-eye rash is diagnostic of Lyme disease. Pe-riod. Blood testing, in this case, is not required for diagnosis. If you have a bulls-eye rash, any-where on your body, you have Lyme disease. Treatment should start immediately.

    Sometimes the rash is atypical in appearance. An atypical rash will usually occur around the place you were bitten and will often expand over time. Know that the rash, bulls-eye or atypical, if you get one, may be in an area on your body that you can’t see.
  10. As many as half of people who get Lyme disease do not recall being bitten by a tick and do not recall a rash.

    If you are infected, initial symptoms appear anywhere from 2 to 30 days after you were bitten. Early symptoms are flu-like (fatigue, aches, fever, etc.)
  11. In the U.S., Lyme has been reported in all 50 states, though it’s most prevalent in the North-east, Northwest, and Great Lakes area. If a person or doctor tells you that you can’t have Lyme because of the location that you are in, they are wrong. Also, deer ticks are active even during the winter. Blacklegged ticks decrease activity only when the temperature drops below 35 de-grees, or when the ground is snow-covered. For freezing temperatures to actually kill ticks, there must be a sustained number of days below 10 degrees F.
  12. Pets can bring infected ticks into the home. They can also get Lyme disease.
  13. If you find a tick on your body, or on someone else, remove it properly and save the tick. A natural reaction of disgust is to toss it to the ground with the desire to squash it into oblivion. Don’t do that. When it comes to removal – think of a tick as a little germ-filled sack. Squeeze it too hard on its swollen back end, and all the germs get pushed out the mouthpart, which is em-bedded in your body (by the way, the part that is buried in your skin is not technically a head – ticks don’t actually have heads – what’s embedded is a barbed feeding tube). Using really pointy tweezers, grab the tick as close to your skin/tick’s mouthpart as you can, then pull directly out with steady pressure. Don’t use a hot match or Vaseline. Put the tick in a sealed plastic bag with a lightly water-dampened cotton ball. Testing the tick is way easier (and way more accurate) than testing your blood for signs of infection. One example is a product called TIC-KIT (www.tic-kit.com) – it’s affordable and easy to use. You should test any tick you find on yourself or your family members.
  14. A good recommendation is to carry a small, portable tick first-aid kit with you. Included in this kit: pointy tweezers, a small plastic bag, a few Band-Aids, a little container of green clay, and tincture of Andrographis paniculata. After removing the tick properly and placing in a plastic bag, apply a few drops of andrographis tincture at the site of the bite. Wet a small amount of green clay or bentonite clay with water and apply this paste to the bite. Wrap to hold in place. Keep in place for 12-24 hours. There is a decent amount of anecdotal evidence that this may decrease chances of becoming infected. When you get home, deposit the tick in the TIC-KIT and send in. Results are typically back in about 7 days. If you test positive for Lyme or a common co-infection, seek out a Lyme-literate practitioner.
  15. Inform yourself about Lyme before seeing any practitioner. Advocate for yourself and your loved ones to get the best treatment.

Lauren Breau, MAcOM, L.Ac, specializes in Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Herbal Medi-cine at the Wildwood Health Center in Portland, Maine. She believes that the practice of (good) medicine involves acknowledging inequity and fighting for social justice, and her desire to in-crease accessibility to acupuncture and herbal medicine lead her to help open Wildwood Com-munity Acupuncture. For more information, visit: www.wildwoodmedicine.com