Lyme Disease

Lyme Disease is a potentially serious medical condition, and it is most commonly passed by ticks in Northeastern America. Unlike the common cold or flu, Lyme Disease requires the attention of a doctor and treatment in order to be handled in a way that leaves no permanent damage.

What is Lyme Disease?

Lyme Disease is a bacterial infection, similar to the common flu, though its symptoms and severity range wildly. It is most commonly spread by the deer tick, and it can be difficult to detect during the early stages.

Symptoms and Treatment

For many, the initial symptoms of Lyme Disease may appear quite common, similar to the flu or as simple as a rash. However, it is important that you diagnose and treat the disease early. The earlier you start taking antibiotics, the less likely you are to experience severe symptoms.

Early symptoms include: rash, fever, fatigue, sore throat, headache, joint pains, heart palpitations (yikes!), and internal pain, most common in the kidneys, though this side effect is extremely rare.

These symptoms may not seem too nasty, and for this reason Lyme Disease is often ignored as the flu or disregarded. However, the disease can manifest itself over time, with the severity of the symptoms steadily increasing.

Late stage symptoms of Lyme Disease include: fatigue, severe joint pain, arthritis, muscle twitching/involuntary activity, vision and balance problems, depression, panic attacks, hallucinations, and short-term memory loss.

The list above is only a partial one, as it could easily spread over 50 symptoms long. As mentioned earlier, the key to effective treatment of Lyme Disease is early diagnosis and treatment. Lyme Disease, being a bacterial infection, is countered with antibiotics.

Though antibiotics almost always clear up the disease and any symptoms within a short while, there are rare occurrences of symptoms manifesting themselves for weeks (even months) after treatment had concluded. It is not currently known why this occurs, though many prominent doctors suspect the body is reacting to the infection after it has cleared - this condition is called an auto immune response.

What You Need To Know

The reality is that you don’t want Lyme Disease. It has the potential to become much more severe than the flu quite quickly, even though it maintains flu-like symptoms in most cases during the initial stages of the infection.

There is more much information about Lyme Disease available, but you only need to know a few key things:

• Detect it early. If you suspect that you have been bitten by a tick and begin to experience any kind of abnormal symptoms, get to a doctor and get diagnosed as soon as possible. Doing so will help keep any kind of condition, including Lyme Disease, in its infancy (and less harmful stages).
• Follow basic safety procedures. This is more common sense than anything. Don’t go for a walk in the brush with no clothes on, and do keep as much skin covered up as possible. If there is a tick on you, do not expose more of yourself to it needlessly. Take the time to remove the tick properly, in a way that limits any more contamination.