Tick App Complete Flyer (2019)
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As people across the northeastern U.S. begin venturing back into the outdoors with the arrival of spring, they will make 1 billion fewer trips than they otherwise would have if Lyme disease didn’t exist, a new Yale study concludes.
In an analysis published in the journal Environmental and Resource Economics, researchers found that perceived risks of contracting Lyme disease on average cause a person in the Northeast to forego eight 73-minute outdoor trips per year, costing them about nine hours of outdoor time per year. Although the cost of individual lost trips is small — about $2.75 to $5 — the total cost roughly $2.8 billion to $5 billion annually due to the large number of people in the region.
“Lyme disease has been around for a few decades but it still has a big cost to society,” said Eli Fenichel, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and senior author of the paper. “But the cost is not what people spend on doctors, or medicine, or even bug spray. These are costs that everybody incurs because we’re all choosing second-choice activities to avoid getting Lyme disease.”
“It’s a lot of people making very small changes, but in such a densely populated region that has major impacts.”
Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected blacklegged tick, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Prevalent across the northeastern U.S. and the Great Lakes region, the disease causes fever, headaches, fatigue, and skin rash. It can be prevented by use of repellents and removing ticks, as well as costly steps to remove tick habitat.
Or, as the researchers illustrate, individuals can simply find alternative activities to avoid tick habitat altogether.
To evaluate how the risk of Lyme disease impacts human behavior, the researchers analyzed data from the American Time Use Survey — a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics-based project that provides nationally representative estimates on how, when, and with whom people spend their time — and CDC data from 2003 to 2012.
After comparing those datasets, they found that the average individual in the average county spent 1.54 fewer minutes outside per day in response to an average of 72.17 Lyme disease cases reported to the CDC. This amounts to about 9.41 hours annually.
The research team say that though it is difficult to put a monetary cost on these lost opportunities, they calculate welfare loss based on the amount individuals are willing to spend to travel to recreate outdoors relative to spending leisure time at home — the location of most indoor leisure.
“People are giving up trips, and it’s not just hiking and camping in the woods,” said Kevin Berry, a former postdoctoral scholar at F&ES and the lead author of the study. “It’s trips to the park, soccer games, or walks and bike rides in places where there are stands of trees and tall grasses… a wide variety of activities pretty much anywhere in this part of the Northeast that’s outdoors.”
The findings illustrate the importance of careful evaluation when evaluating the ecosystem services and, in some cases, ecosystem “disservices” of nature. Indeed, though the historical notion that forests are places for humans to fear has largely been replaced by recognition that these spaces provide important services — including recreational opportunities — there remain some risks that can undermine these potential benefits, including the threat of tick-borne Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is representative of many environmental problems, Fenichel said; environmental risks and harms can have seemingly minor impacts on individuals, but can impose profound costs on society.
“It’s an issue that affects all of us, but it’s one of those environmental challenges that are so difficult to handle as a society,” Fenichel said. “It’s a big issue in aggregate — up to $5 billion in this case — but to anyone of us it’s not a big issue. Everybody cares a little bit, but perhaps not enough to take action. Though, in aggregate we’d be much better off if we cooperate to deal with Lyme disease.”
The study was a collaboration between Fenichel and three former postdoctoral scholars at F&ES: Berry, who is now at the University of Alaska, Anchorage; Jude Bayham, who is now at California State University at Chico; and Spencer Meyer, a senior conservationist at the Highstead Foundation.
https://www.bustle.com/p/7-conditions-lyme-disease-gets-misdiagnosed-as-17041598
Lyme disease is a notoriously difficult condition to test for, and many doctors aren’t knowledgeable about it, which leads lots of Lyme patients to get misdiagnosed. The misdiagnoses of Lyme range from physical illnesses to psychological ones and often occur because Lyme can affect any organ system in the body in a multitude of ways, leading it to be labeled the “great imitator.”
What further compounds the confusion is that many people don’t notice contracting Lyme. “Infectious nymphal ticks are tiny — poppy seed sized — and tick bites can often go unnoticed. Most people never know they were bitten,” Sunjya K. Schweig, MD, scientific advisor to Bay Area Lyme Foundation, tells Bustle.
“The current ‘gold standard’ diagnostic for Lyme disease misses up to 60 percent of cases of early stage Lyme disease. If caught early, most cases of Lyme disease can be treated, but it is commonly misdiagnosed due to lack of awareness and unreliable diagnostic tests. If not treated promptly, Lyme may progress to a debilitating stage.”
Late-stage Lyme symptoms include paralysis, arthritis, neurological problems, headaches, cognitive impairment, memory problems, hearing and vision problems, inflammation of the brain (meningitis), and inflammation of the heart (carditis or pericarditis), Dr. Schweig says. But when people present with these symptoms, doctors don’t usually think to test for Lyme.
“It is important to recognize that Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the US, and the diagnosis should always be part of an appropriate differential diagnosis,” Dr. Schweig says. “There are about 329,000 new cases of Lyme disease each year.”
Here are some conditions that Lyme is commonly mistaken for, according to experts.
“The symptoms reported by patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia are almost identical to those associated with chronic Lyme disease,” Bill Rawls, MD, an integrative health expert on Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses, tells Bustle. These include joint pain, stiffness, fatigue, and brain fog. It’s unknown what exactly causes fibromyalgia, but Dr. Rawls believes it’s likely that it is usually caused by Lyme and/or other microbes.
Multiple Sclerosis is a central nervous system disease that affects myelin, the substance surrounding nerve fibers, causing symptoms like numbness, weakness, poor coordination, and vision problems. It has been linked to a variety of microbes including Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria known to cause Lyme, as well as chlamydia and the Espstein-Barr virus, Dr. Rawls says.
Lyme can cause pain, swelling, stiffness, and loss of function in the joints — similar symptoms to osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, Timothy J. Sellati, Ph.D., the Global Lyme Alliance’s chief scientific officer, tells Bustle. You can sometimes distinguish these conditions because Lyme is more likely to affect the large joints of the legs and occasionally the wrists, while other types of arthritis are more often in the hands, wrists, shoulders, knees, and feet. But the distinction isn’t always that clear-cut, so they’re often confused.
One common byproduct of Lyme’s effect on the brain is impaired concentration and memory, which can be confused with disorders like ADHD, Daniel Cameron, MD, MPH, an internist and epidemiologist who specializes in treating Lyme, tells Bustle. The brain fog and sleep disturbances that many people with Lyme experience compounds these issues.
In older people, these symptoms can sometimes be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease — and in fact, some research has linked Alzheimer’s to Borrelia burgdorferi. Research has also suggested that lipopeptides, the fatty acids created by Lyme bacteria, could interfere with communication between neurons, which may explain the memory and concentration difficulties.
People with chronic illnesses, especially women, often face the misconception that the root of their symptoms is psychological. This is especially true for Lyme. Lyme can cause a range of mental health symptoms including anxiety, depression, and rage, leading many Lyme patients to be diagnosed with mental illness, Dr. Cameron says.
It’s difficult to tell whether a psychiatric illness is caused by Lyme, but a sudden onset of psychiatric symptoms with no apparent cause, especially in conjunction with a tick bite or other Lyme symptoms, could point toward it.
Dr. Rawls believes anyone diagnosed with the most common Lyme misdiagnoses should look into the possibility that their condition is being caused by Lyme, co-infections, or similar microbes. But treatment doesn’t mean taking a round of antibiotics, which are often ineffective for chronic infections. Most people with Lyme have many different microbes that are very antibiotic-resistant, he explains, so the key is not to go after them in isolation but to strengthen the gut and immune system in order to keep them at bay.
“Restoration of normal immune system functions with natural therapy and suppression of stealth microbes with herbal therapy is often highly effective for restoring a normal state of health in affected individuals,” he says. “This approach is safe, nontoxic, and not dependent on a diagnosis. It should be the foundation for therapy for every one of these chronic illnesses.”
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**Comment**
This idea that antibiotics don’t work is a bit premature. The studies have numerous flaws and have only been on a certain subset of patients. All I know is I’d more than likely be dead without them (my husband as well), with many other patients stating the same. Whenever you read someone’s opinion on Lyme treatment, always take into account what they are selling. Dr. Rawls is selling herbs, plain and simple. It’s a business for him. Just keep that in mind. While a patient himself, he has a vested interest in getting you to buy his products.
Recently, an article came out stating there’s an “untreatable” form of Lyme. Read my rebuttal here: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/04/29/is-the-sky-truly-going-to-fall-for-patients-with-the-untreatable-form-of-lyme-disease/
This IS treatable. It very well may not be curable, but then this is nothing new. The chicken pox virus isn’t truly curable in that it lies around in our spine – same with EBV. It’s only when our bodies become weak and out of balance that these things rear their little, ugly heads. So immune regulation IS important, but never, ever buy the line that antibiotics don’t work for this. (Of course there’s always exceptions to each and every rule).
Many advocates believe the Newsweek article is part of an orchestrated ploy to sell an upcoming Lyme vaccine. Authorities refuse to do transmission studies, drug effectiveness studies (on chronic patients), and so many other important issues needing resolution, but they keep coming back to the vaccine issue like buzzards drawn to dead bodies for the simple reason they smell a lot of money and many through the years have patents on the vaccine itself as well as Lyme test kits and other metabolomics: ConflictReport (Patents start on page 80) Conflicts of interest abound in every aspect of this.
As to the Lyme vaccine, please, please, do your reading: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/07/22/why-we-care-so-strongly-about-a-potential-lyme-vaccine/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/07/01/lyme-vaccine-fail-safety-ignored/
The black-legged tick, also known as the deer tick, can carry a variety of pathogens, including the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
Syracuse, N.Y. — Bryon Backenson has taken ticks head-on since 1992, walking the woods and fields of New York and Connecticut to find, gather and test disease-carrying ticks.
“We go to 150 sites in spring and fall to collect ticks,” said Backenson, New York’s deputy director of communicable disease control. “In the years we’ve been doing this with staff and students, we’ve never had anybody who has gotten a tick-borne disease.”
Ticks, particularly the black-legged or deer tick, carry a variety of diseases. The most common and well-known is Lyme disease, caused by a bacteria carried in the tick’s gut.
Backenson said he and his fellow researchers are living proof that prevention works.
“We practice what we preach,” he said.
Upstate NY tick expert: How to protect yourself from Lyme disease
Ticks have been increasing as the climate warms, SUNY ESF researcher says.
He recommends that if you’re going to be in an area likely to have ticks, you do what researchers do:
— Wear light-colored clothes so you can see the dark ticks climbing on you.
— Tuck the bottoms of your pant legs into your socks to make it harder for ticks to reach your skin.
–Check your entire body at least every 24 hours, and remove any ticks you find on your skin.
— Consider using bug repellents that contain DEET for skin and permethrin for clothes. (Researchers in the field have one disadvantage here: They can’t wear bug repellent because they’re trying to catch ticks, not scare them away.)
“As long as people take the proper precautions and end up removing ticks, there’s a really good likelihood you’re not going to get some tick-borne disease,” Backenson said. “If you happen to get the rash from Lyme, or flu-like symptoms that make you suspect Lyme, early doses of antibiotics can cure relatively quickly the majority of cases we see.”
Backenson also said that most tick bites likely don’t lead to disease because the ticks are pulled off before they can ingest blood and inject the bacteria. He said New York has about 8,000 new cases of Lyme disease every year, but he estimates that New Yorkers get 40,000 to 50,000 tick bites every year.
“I firmly believe there are lots and lots of tick bites out there that don’t necessarily lead to disease,” Backenson said.
The health department has several videos on its website about how to keep ticks away, and how to pull them off when they bite.
The peak season for Lyme disease, late spring and summer, is approaching. That’s when the tick nymphs are feeding, and they account for the vast majority of Lyme disease cases. While nymphal ticks are less likely to carry the bacteria than adult ticks, nymphs are much smaller, so people don’t see them to remove in time. Nymphs also tend to be most active in summer, when more people are out in woods and fields.
In much of Upstate, about 25 percent of nymphs carry the Lyme bacteria. That jumps to about 50 percent in adults, which have fed more often than nymphs and have had more chances to get the bacteria from the blood of deer, rodents and other animals.
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**Comment**
A few points:
Ticks are marvelous ecoadaptors and are impervious to the climate as shown by independent Canadian tick researcher John Scott: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/13/study-shows-lyme-not-propelled-by-climate-change/
“For blacklegged ticks, climate change is an apocryphal issue.” – John Scott
Again, researchers are about statistical significance – not individual significance. If you are the ONE sorry sucker who gets infected, all the statistics in the world become irrelevant. Why they state such things is beyond me. Treat each and EVERY tick bite seriously. https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/12/07/igenex-presentation/ In this link we learn about a little girl that within 4-6 hours has facial palsy, and couldn’t walk or talk. Some cases escalate quickly.
As far as the bull’s eye rash goes, anywhere from 27-80% get it – hardly a sure thing. IF you have the rash, you HAVE LYME DISEASE. Period. If you don’t get the rash, it means nothing. The rash criteria has kept people from diagnosis and treatment for decades. Don’t let this happen to you. The “wait and see” if you develop symptoms approach has not and will not ever work. If you are bit by a tick, go in immediately and demand treatment. This could very well save your life and prevent you from chronic life-long symptoms.
https://globallymealliance.org/time-warp-tick-borne-illness/?
by Jennifer Crystal
I’d already lost three years of my life to illness. Then I got a taste of resumed independence and health, only to have those intimations of well-being quashed once more. The rush to get back on track and catch up to my friends felt even more pressing when I relapsed. Time seemed to be moving too fast.
Time is a funny thing. As children we hope for time to pass quickly, so we can get to the next big milestone: a birthday, Christmas, middle school graduation, a driver’s license. When we turned 21, my friends and I were excited when we didn’t get carded in a bar, because that meant we looked our age. We always wanted to look and be older than we were.
When we turned 30 we hoped we would be carded, because that meant we looked younger than we were. As we aged, we were no longer hoping for time to pass quickly; we wanted it to slow down. We missed the good old days of college, when life was simpler. Now we couldn’t believe how fast time moved. In the blink of an eye friends were getting married, having babies, buying houses. Then we were forty and people were practically shouting, “Slow time down! We’re already at mid-life!”
As a patient of chronic tick-borne illness, I was having a different sort of mid-life crisis.
I had missed the latter half of my twenties to illness, and didn’t earn my graduate degree until my late thirties. At 40 I was just starting to look for the serious relationship and the serious job and the life plan that my contemporaries had figured out a decade earlier. Now, I still feel like I have a lot of catching up to do. It’s hard but I try to accept that I’m moving at my own pace and will achieve my goals in my own time, the same way I achieved remission over many years.
During the first five years that I battled tick-borne illness, I had one major relapse that set me back to square one. I was 28 years old. I’d already lost three years of my life to illness. Then I got a taste of resumed independence and health, only to have those intimations of well-being quashed once more. The rush to get back on track and catch up to my friends felt even more pressing when I relapsed. Time seemed to be moving too fast.
It also moved very slowly. I was all too quickly reminded how days drag on when you’re bedridden. It can be hard for healthy people to understand this, but now that I’ve stood on both sides of the time divide, I understand why it’s difficult for each side to understand the other.
When you’re healthy, you’re out living your life. In a day’s time you might work, take care of your kids, go grocery shopping, do laundry, run errands, put out small fires, and fall into bed at night realizing you never called so-and-so back or returned an email, because the busyness of daily life got in the way.
When you’re sick, you’re waiting all day for that phone call or email, because you have nothing else to do. You can’t work or even leave the house, and most days you’re too tired, and your brain fog is too wearying, to do “restful” activities like watch TV or read. You just sit there listening to the tick of the clock, waiting to get well, waiting for someone to call, waiting for something to happen. It’s excruciating.
The divide between healthy time and sick time can feel like a glass wall. You can see in to the other, healthierperson’s world, but you can’t step through the barrier and rejoin it. Sick people can envy healthy people because they’re able to do everyday things. But we don’t always understand that those things can be draining and overwhelming to the point that the healthy person can’t keep up with everything, including checking in on asick person.
On the flip side, healthy people can envy sick people because they think it sounds nice to have so much “free” time. They’d like to lounge around, to read or watch TV, but they don’t realize that the sick person doesn’t feel well enough to enjoy those basic activities. Living with chronic tick-borne illness is like having the flu and a hangover every single day, sometimes for years on end.
Being sick is not a vacation, and being healthy is not a walk in the park.
Sick people may eventually get well enough to cross the wall into the world of the healthy. Healthy people could take sick at any time. We can’t control when we will break through the glass wall dividing those two worlds. We can, however, peer closely through the glass, seeing more clearly what life looks like on the other side.
Opinions expressed by contributors are their own.
Jennifer Crystal is a writer and educator in Boston. She has written a memoir about her journey with chronic tick-borne illness, for which she is seeking representation. Contact her at: lymewarriorjennifercrystal@gmail.com.
