Integrative Medicine for Lyme Disease

What is Lyme Disease?

Some deer ticks carry the bacteria borrelia burgdorferi.

Lyme disease is a bacterial illness transmitted through the bite of a deer tick that carries the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi.

According to the Center’s for Disease Control, Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne illness (illness transmitted through insects) diagnosed in the United States. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of people are affected by Lyme disease each year [1].

Not everyone who gets bitten by a deer tick develops Lyme disease because not all ticks carry the bacteria. The percentage of infected ticks ranges widely from zero to 50%, depending on where you live [2]. In addition to the confirmed presence of the Lyme-causing bacteria, additional factors that can predict the risk of infection are tick engorgement and the duration of its attachment [3].

Diagnosing Lyme Disease

Diagnosing Lyme can be tricky if you don’t have proof of a tick bite (i.e. if you didn’t physically see and/or remove the tick from your skin), or if you don’t get the tell-tale bullseye rash. Lyme symptoms may take several weeks to appear – long after a tick has fallen off – making it even harder for physicians to diagnose especially if you can’t remember if and when there was a potential exposure.

Symptoms of Lyme are similar to the symptoms of many other illnesses. If left undiagnosed and untreated, Lyme disease can have detrimental effects on the body’s musculoskeletal and nervous systems, causing symptoms such as chronic joint pain, headaches, fatigue, and depression that may be misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, or psychiatric illness.

For these reasons, it’s necessary to both carefully evaluate a patient’s physical symptoms and take a comprehensive history to assess their personal exposure risk.

Common Symptoms of Lyme Disease:

• fatigue
• joint pain and swelling
• muscle pain
• swollen lymph nodes
• sleep disturbance
• irritability and/or depression
• headaches
• fever and chills
• bull’s-eye rash (erythema migrans) or a simple red lesion (may appear at the site of the bite)

In many cases individuals who are accurately diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease recover quickly and completely, responding well to proper antibiotic treatment. When a patient’s symptoms persist for months or even years, this condition is referred to as chronic Lyme disease or Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS).