Lyme Disease

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Lyme disease is one of the most difficult health conditions to diagnose and treat, and also one of the most dangerous, due to the wide range of health complications it can cause, including heart disease. Although mainstream, conventional health experts consider Lyme disease to be both rare and relatively new (it's officially said to have first been discovered near Lyme, Connecticut in 1977), they are wrong on both counts. In actuality, Lyme was first identified in 1883, in the town of Breslau, Germany. Holistic health practitioners recognize that the spread of Lyme disease has become epidemic, but is often un- or misdiagnosed because of how often its symptoms masquerade as other health conditions. For this reason, many health experts now refer to Lyme disease as the "great imposter," a term first used to describe syphilis, which similarly can be mistaken for a wide range of other health conditions. If left untreated, Lyme disease inevitably spreads into the joints and nervous system, where it can cause a wide variety of serious health problems.

Although Lyme disease is identified by conventional physicians as an initial rash, known as erythema migrans (EM), which affects the skin in a "bull's-eye" pattern, only 30 to 40 percent of adults with Lyme disease, and less than 10 percent of infected children, exhibit the rash. Moreover, in many cases, particularly among African Americans and others with dark skin, the EM rash may go unnoticed, due to its lightness, or it may be mistaken for a bruise. Further compounding the problem is the fact that, although the EM rash will typically manifest within a few days of infection, in other cases it may not appear for months, by which time Lyme disease can have spread throughout the body.

The majority of people with Lyme disease, because they do not exhibit the EM rash, typically are unaware that they have the illness. Instead, they, as well as their physicians, mistake it for other types of chronic, degenerative disease. Diseases that Lyme is often mistaken for include chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism and other thyroid problems, multiple sclerosis (MS), Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), and various types of environmental illness. It is not uncommon for Lyme disease to lead to depression, and in some cases, extreme emotional dysfunction and hopelessness.

Caution: Lyme disease, in order to be treated effectively, requires the attention of a professional health care practitioner who employs an integrative treatment protocol that combines the best of conventional medicine with natural cures. A list of such leading Lyme experts, as well as organizations dedicated to providing accurate information about Lyme disease, can be found at the end of this article. If you suspect you suffer from Lyme disease, seek immediate medical treatment.

Symptoms of Lyme disease occur over three stages: localized disease, disseminated early disease, and disseminated later disease. In the first, or localized disease stage, the only visible manifestation of Lyme disease, if any, is the EM rash without other symptoms. In the disseminated early disease stage, which is caused as the Bb spirochete starts to spread throughout the body, the primary symptom is widespread inflammation that is often accompanied by flu-like symptoms. In the final, or disseminated later disease stage, which typically occurs three months after a person first contracts Bb, but can sometimes not manifest until much longer than that (in some cases as long as 15 years or more), the primary symptoms are organ damage and impairment of other body systems. What follows is a more complete list of symptoms for each of the three stages of Lyme disease.

There are natural cures for Lyme Disease that do not involve the use of pharmaceutical drugs. Instead, these natural remedies involve restoring the biochemical balance of the body, and making dietary and lifestyle changes designed to improve one's general health.