Lyme disease and chronic infections

Vector-borne illnesses including lyme disease and associated infections are an emerging global pandemic accelerated by climate change and human encroachment into natural environments. It is increasingly recognized as an underlying cause of many chronic health issues, including fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, pain syndromes, mental illness, neurodegenerative conditions, and other complex chronic illnesses, that have long gone unexplained. Lyme is known as the great imitator as it’s symtoms can be confusing, diverse, affect many body systems and mimic other diseases.

My personal interest in this area deepened when several members of my close family members—after years of living with chronic pain and fatigue, that eluded main stream medical diagnosis and treatment—were finally diagnosed with multiple vector-borne infections. Since then I have persued extensive education into treatment options and diagnosis. I work with herbal medicines and antibiotics to taylor protocols to an individual’s preferences and comfort levels.

I’ve made it a priority to test all of my patients with chronic pain, autoimmune conditions, fibromyalgia, long COVID, and other “mystery illness” presentations. What I’m finding is frequent and extensive infections in this population, often presenting as, or overlapping with long COVID, complicating recovery and prolonging symptoms. It is now widely accepted that COVID can reactivate dormant infections, such as epstein bar and mycoplasma pneumoniae, and it appears that it is doing the same for vector borne infections such as lyme, bartonella and babesia.

If you’re struggling with unexplained chronic illness, chronic vector-borne infection needs to be considered—even if you don’t remember a tick bite or live in a region traditionally labeled as Lyme endemic. These organisms can be also be transmitted by ticks, fleas, lice, spiders, flies, and other insect vectors. They can remain dormant for years, triggered later by stress, trauma, or viral illness.

If you have ever been diagnosed with and/or treated for lyme by a conventional doctor, with a short course of antibiotics such a 1 month or less of doxycycline or a single IV antibiotic for neurolyme and still have symtoms it is very likely that you were incompletely treated and that co-infections such as babesia and bartonella were not tested for, diagnosed and eradicated. These can cause lifelong debilitating illness that may be written off as post lyme disease treatment syndrome, when in fact you may have an ongoing active infection with lyme that was incompletely treated or co-infections with other bugs that were never identified.

Lyme complex illness is a chronic polymicrobial infection including multiple pathogenic organisms: Borrelia (Lyme disease), Bartonella, Babesia, tick borne relapsing fever, Anaplasma, Rickettsia, Brucella, and others. Lyme disease is almost never found alone in a sick person and chronic cases do not usually present with classic acute illness symtoms. Standard testing often fails to detect them, which is why a deeper investigation is necessary using specialized testing and/or clinical diagnosis. These are treatable conditions-but only if we know to look for them. I am a current ILADS member and continually educating myself on the latest research, testing and treatment protocols in this field.