Archive for the ‘Psychological Aspects’ Category

Are Lyme Disease & Anxiety Connected? Dr. Rawls

https://rawlsmd.com/health-articles/lyme-disease-anxiety-connected?

Are Lyme Disease and Anxiety Connected?

by Dr. Bill Rawls
Posted 6/21/19

Can Lyme disease cause anxiety? In this video, Dr. Bill Rawls explains how the stress of chronic illness impacts adrenaline levels and mood. Plus, he shares natural remedies for anxiety and lifestyle tips for short-circuiting an overactive flight-or-fight response. Read all about Dr. Rawls’ natural approach to overcoming Lyme disease here.

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Video Transcript

Question: Are Lyme disease and anxiety connected?

Hello, I’m Dr. Bill Rawls. A question: How is Lyme disease related to anxiety?

Most people are really struggling with anxiety and sleep disturbances who have chronic Lyme disease. And the reason is that Lyme disease — the stress of Lyme disease — makes you less resistant to any kind of stress. It lowers your reserves.

So your body is stressed, and whenever your body is stressed, you activate your sympathetic nervous system, your fight-or-flight nervous system. And that’s really designed to use intermittently when there’s a real emergency, like somebody breaking into your house at 3:00 in the morning. You want that surge of adrenalinethat wakes you up, gets you going, and helps you deal with that emergency.

But when your body is stressed, when the chronic illness is generating inflammation, and the microbes are disrupting everything in your body, your body becomes less stress-resistant, and it activates your fight-or-flight response chronically. If you’ve got adrenaline pushing through your system all the time, it makes your system very, very fragile.

Anything that would cause anxiety is very apt to generate that kind of response — you feel anxious, you feel revved up all the time. You’ve got that adrenaline surging through your system.

It affects your sleep, and then not getting sleep actually affects the immune disruption that would generate that. So the whole thing becomes this vicious cycle that’s never-ending.

Breaking that cycle: The first step is controlling those microbes, restoring normal immune system functions, but also bringing down your adrenaline levels, and I think that’s really, really important. When I was going through my recovery, something I became very conscious of is when my adrenaline levels were starting to raise.

I could feel the energy just building in the upper part of my body, and my body became tense. That anxiety response was very prevalent, especially as I went through the day of just dealing with stress factors. As you go through the day, it tends to make it worse. So you raise your adrenaline levels as you go through the day. That affects your cortisol, and it can really make you miserable.

Being aware of your adrenaline levels, being aware of tension is really important. When I was recovering from Lyme, I was really careful about any kind of input that was coming into my brain.

I didn’t listen to the radio. I was very careful about reading the newspaper or reading what was on the Internet. I tried to make my world small by not worrying about things in the outside world that maybe were significant, but were also things that I couldn’t really control.

You like to bring your world down to the things that you have control over, and you like to minimize that as much as you can. You’re looking to reduce factors that raise your adrenaline levels during the day.

Getting regular exercise of any kind, whether that’s just walking or doing qigong or yoga, can help diffuse that adrenaline surge that you have, that adrenaline buildup during the day. Just taking a meditation or what a lot of people call a power nap.

I used to call it touching sleep. I would take 15 to 30 minutes in the middle of the day at lunchtime and lie down, and I would try to relax myself to the point that I could just barely get to sleep, even if it was a minute or two.

If I reached that point, I know that I brought my adrenaline levels down to zero. And if you can do that once or twice during the day, that can short-circuit that adrenaline buildup and help you deal with that anxiety, that excessive overactive fight-or-flight response that’s driving this whole situation.

There are also plenty of calming herbs that can help. Ashwagandha, bacopa, passionflower — many of our calming and balancing herbs are very good for short-circuiting that sympathetic response.

So yes, Lyme disease is very, very much tied to anxiety. It does increase your propensity to become anxious, and decreases your stress resistance. The solution to that is reducing stress by using herbs to calm and normalize and balance your hormones, trying to move, trying to get exercise during the day.

Keep doing that and keep doing that and keep working at it until you become an expert at keeping those adrenaline levels down through the day.

________________

**Comment**

I never had anxiety, but my husband did. It would come and go like the wind – hitting him at the most unexpected times leaving him feeling completely helpless. Proper treatment completely ameliorated this symptom.

Here’s a story of patients misdiagnosed with anxiety when the culprit was Lyme:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/10/03/lyme-patient-misdiagnosed-with-anxiety-depression/

 

 

 

Category:

Herbs, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Treatment

On the Lyme War Path – Chick2Chick

 Approx. 14 Min

PennWatch

Published on Jun 30, 2019

Watch out!!! Carrie Perry from @Chick2Chick is on a warpath. She now has 2 daughters diagnosed with Lyme Disease, both missed by her primary care doctor.
Carrie and Flora Posteraro chirp about that and the many ways to protect you and your family against tick bites. #podcast #letschirp #realtalk #womensvoices
You can also listen to this as a podcast at your convenience through your favorite online podcast directory – iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, TuneIn, Podbean or Google Play.
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Wisconsin desperately needs FREE tick testing.  Call your reps and tell them.

You have to remember that tick testing isn’t perfect and can miss things but it’s a place to start & that it only follows that since ticks are filled with many pathogens, people will be too.

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Prevention, Psychological Aspects, Ticks

OPINION: How Many Cases of Lyme Disease Are We Missing?

https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/opinion-how-many-cases-of-lyme-disease-are-we-missing-327404/

OPINION: How many cases of Lyme disease are we missing?

Published: June 27, 2019

Black-legged, or deer ticks are not the only kind of tick that can transmit disease, dog ticks like the one shown here and have been found to carry a number of things, writes Donna Lugar. - 123RF
Black-legged, or deer ticks are not the only kind of tick that can transmit disease, dog ticks like the one shown here and have been found to carry a number of things, writes Donna Lugar. – 123RF

DONNA LUGAR

I participated in a “Tick Talk” in Bedford with Lisa Ali Learning of AtlanTick on June 25. One takeaway from that meeting, for me anyway, is that we are not doing enough to ensure Nova Scotians are adequately aware of the risks associated with tick bites. One family, new to the country, had never even heard of ticks before one recently attached to their child.

Although there has been a steady increase in awareness initiatives over the past few years, we need to continue to do more to reduce the number of new cases of Lyme and tick-borne diseases. One way to do this is through more “in your face” awareness, such as signage, print media and radio/TV alerts. Nova Scotians need to reach out to all three levels of government to request that more is done.

Nova Scotians need to know that any tick that bites them could potentially transmit an illness. Black-legged (deer) ticks are not the only kind of tick that can transmit disease, and Lyme is not the only thing we need to worry about. Dog (wood) ticks have been found to carry a number of things, and Lone Star ticks have been found sporadically within the province. As well, migratory birds could be dropping other types of ticks within the province that we haven’t even discovered yet. Any tick that bites a human could potentially be carrying disease — sometimes multiple illnesses.

Symptoms can vary from person to person, with some not showing any outward, visible signs, so medical professionals need to listen to their patients and start to put two and two together.

Please learn what preventative measures to take and how to properly remove attached ticks. This document, which I prepared, provides a lot of information, including how to remove a tick, what to do to prevent tick bites, as well as outlining a number of potential co-infections.

We also need to do more to ensure that those bitten receive a quick diagnosis and appropriate treatment. It’s time our doctors learn that, according to the Canadian Adverse Reaction Newsletter, Volume 22, Issue 4, October, 2012, there are at least three possible reasons for a false negative ELISA/Western Blot.

  • The fact that the test is performed too early (which most are aware of)
  • It could be a different strain of the Borrelia bacteria not picked up by the test (we also have Borrelia miyamotoi in the province, which can cause a Lyme-like illness and doesn’t generally present with a rash)
  • Antibiotic use. If you were put on antibiotics for something between the bite and the test, or only received a one-day prophylactic treatment upon the bite, you could always test false-negative.

According to Conquering Lyme Disease, a book by doctors at the Columbia University Medical Center, “false negative rates on the ELISA have been reported as high as 67 per cent in early Lyme disease and 21 per cent in early neurologic Lyme disease.” The potential for people to not form enough antibodies to be picked up by the test is also possible.

If your test is negative, it doesn’t mean you do not have Lyme!

There is a proviso in Guidance for Primary Care and Emergency Medicine Providers in the Management of Lyme Disease in Nova Scotia that states, on page five, No: 3, under IDEG Recommends: “Patients presenting with a non-specific febrile illness, but no EM–like rash, AND a recent, clear exposure in an area at moderate or higher risk for Lyme disease (https://novascotia.ca/dhw/CDPC/lyme.asp) should be tested and monitored for other symptoms suggestive of Lyme disease. Repeat testing in 4-6 weeks is suggested if there are still concerns that the patient has Lyme disease.” I have only heard from a few people who received repeat testing and that was usually at their own insistence.

Also very important to note is that Lyme is supposed to be a clinical diagnosis, with testing supplementary. Unfortunately, doctors may recognize the better-known bull’s-eye rash, but that is only seen in 20-30 per cent of cases (if that). Other types of erythema migrans rashes are more common. About 20 per cent do not get any rash (Borrelia miyamotoi, perhaps?), while many that do don’t see it because it is tucked away somewhere not easily visible, just like the ticks like to be.

Symptoms can vary from person to person, with some not showing any outward, visible signs (such as an erythema migrans rash, Bell’s palsy, or swollen, hot knees), so medical professionals need to listen to their patients and start to put two and two together. That includes changes in mental health, new digestive issues, new sensitivities to scents, sounds, light and food, migrating pain, more frequent headaches, changes to heartbeats, and so much more that can be suggestive of Lyme and tick-borne diseases.

Rather than immediately dismissing Lyme and tick-borne diseases, as many doctors are still doing to this day, they need to realize that this issue is not rare, hard to get or easy to treat.

In other words, it is very hard to get a diagnosis if you do not see the tick, get the bull’s eye rash version of the erythema migrans rash, and/or test positive on both the ELISA and confirmatory Western Blot.

How many are we missing?

Donna Lugar is Nova Scotia representative of the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation and founder of the N.S. Lyme Support Group. She lives in Bedford.

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Testing, Ticks, Transmission

What to Do When a Loved One is in Denial About Needing Help

https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/what-to-do-when-a-loved-one-is-in-denial-about-needing-help/

what-to-do-when-a-loved-one-is-in-denial-about-needing-help

WHAT TO DO WHEN A LOVED ONE IS IN DENIAL ABOUT NEEDING HELP

Posted: February 2, 2017

When someone close to you is struggling it can be incredibly heartbreaking. Not only is it tough, but it can be even harder when that person is in denial. Unfortunately, there is a stigma associated with psychiatric illness. Your friend or loved ones could be worried that people may call them negative words or treat them differently. This prevents them from seeking help.

Treat all Problems Differently

Not all people suffering from being in denial have to do with drugs and alcohol. For instance, Dr. Daniel Amen knew a couple who had marital problems from the beginning of their marriage. The problems consisted of continuous toxic arguments and threatening to leave one another. When counseling was discussed, thoughts of embarrassment and financial excuses came to the surface from the husband. Eventually, the refusal and denial for counseling began affecting the children too.

Steps for Encouragement

Here are some suggestions to help people who are unaware of a problem or unwilling to get the help they need:

TRY USING A STRAIGHTFORWARD APPROACH:

Tell the person why their actions are concerning you.

GIVE THE LOVED ONE INFORMATION:

Good information can be very persuasive, especially if it is presented in a life-enhancing way.

PLANT CONTINUOUS SEEDS OF INFORMATION:

Remind them of good information and new articles from time-to-time. This spikes conversation and, when done in a non-abrasive way, can be beneficial.

PROTECT YOUR RELATIONSHIP TOGETHER:

Work on gaining that person’s trust and they will learn to be more receptive to your thoughts. Talk about life outside of their medical issues.

GIVE YOUR LOVED ONE NEW HOPE:

Many people who are struggling have already tried to get help and it either didn’t work or ended up making them worse. Inform your loved one of new brain technology where new treatment options could be more effective.

Enough is enough

If the person resists, you have to be able to give yourself a break and say enough is enough. If the relationship becomes negative and continuously toxic you should separate yourself. Separating yourself gets you away from the toxicity in the relationship. Also, by removing yourself from the situation, it can motivate people to change. Threatening to leave is not the first approach you should ever take. But eventually, it can definitely turn into the best approach.

Using Force Doesn’t Help

If your loved one doesn’t realize they need to change their habits, then don’t force them into a situation they are constantly resisting. The only time you can force people into treatment is when they are causing harm to themselves, others, or cannot care for themselves.

When is SPECT Brain Imaging the Answer?

At the Amen Clinics we order SPECT brain imaging studies on most of our patients when:

• We are considered someone’s “last hope”.

• We need to look into the details and see if there is something that can be identified that may have been overlooked by another professional.

• Your case is complicated, and you have not gotten better with previous treatments or providers. (In this case, a scan could be life-saving).

Keep in mind, a SPECT brain imaging study alone will not give an accurate diagnosis. However, it helps the clinicians understand the way your brain specifically functions. There are many factors that contribute to a diagnosis with a SPECT brain scan. These are a combination of clinical history, personal interviews, information from families, diagnostic checklists, SPECT studies, and other neuropsychological tests.

If your loved one is struggling and showing signs of being in denial, try planting a seed of information about breakthrough brain imaging. Contact Amen Clinics to schedule a visit, or call our Care Center at 855-474-1347.

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**Comment**

Although this article was written with only mental health in mind, many of the suggestions are also helpful for those you suspect are infected with Lyme/MSIDS, which can also have a psychological component to it.

I’m certainly no expert on any of this but I can tell you our experience:

I watched my husband languish for years. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on that would help explain his exhaustion, insomnia, pain, and personality changes. We considered chronic fatigue, diet, and things I can’t even remember. It wasn’t until I complained to a friend that I started to have hope.  After listening to my husband’s symptoms, she said,

“That sounds like a page out of my book. I was just diagnosed with Lyme.”

Then I read everything I could on Lyme and even contacted local support groups, which ended up giving me the facts I needed to proceed.

Unfortunately, my husband would have none of it.

I remember trying to get him to a doctor.  Nope.  Wasn’t happening.

So, while I was convinced my husband had Lyme disease, he looked at me like I’d lost my mind, argued with me, and refused to do a thing.

What it took was falling down the steps.

You see he had secretly been crawling up and down the steps due to severe pain. When the entire family was out he decided to try walking normally down the steps which ended up with him flat on his back staring up at the ceiling trying to figure out if he had broken bones.

He finally accepted the fact he needed help.

I will say that people that get to this level need help from someone who is able to think logically and advocate for them. His mind was impaired, which is common with late-stage Lyme/MSIDS. He would have been fodder for mainstream doctors who are dismissing people left and right as having MUS (medically unexplained symptoms), and handing them an anti-depressant. https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/06/11/dr-eugene-shapiro-medically-unexplained-symptoms/ (Video of Dr. Shapiro urging the medical community to develop ways to prevent “healthcare-seeking behaviors” by parents who believed their children may have Lyme disease.)

On top of this is a very real connection between parasites and mental health:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2015/10/18/psychiatric-lymemsids/

http://newswithviews.com/Howenstine/james16.htm

https://www.alternativementalhealth.com/the-role-of-infections-in-mental-illness/

Each of these articles demonstrates Lyme/MSIDS’s ability to change behavior.

My husband was more aggressive, given to outbursts, couldn’t handle any amount of stress, cried all the time, struggled with insecurity, had hallucinations & nightmares he couldn’t distinguish from reality, and continually worried and accused me of infidelity. At the time I took it all personally as I was uneducated about infectiously-driven psychiatric issues.

We were one of the fortunate ones in that we purposely went to an “out of the box” practitioner with an open mind. She still tested him with the abysmal 2-tiered CDC testing but when that came back negative, did an inflammation marker test which showed severe wide-spread inflammation. I’ll never forget her words:

“The CDC says you don’t have Lyme. I say you do.”

Thankfully, she began treatment on him, which helped him immediately but stopped working after about 10 weeks. I knew we needed to find a different doctor when she asked me to stop sending her Lyme patients. She was afraid of being singled out by the State Medical Board, which is also happening across the globe:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/12/15/everything-about-lyme-disease-is-steeped-in-controversy-now-some-doctors-are-too-afraid-to-treat-patients/

By that point I had learned the horrific details of the way this has been handled by “authorities” and that we needed a practitioner trained by ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society). By that time I had full-blown symptoms as well.

And yes, Martha, I believe I got this from my husband as a STD:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/02/24/pcos-lyme-my-story/

Over 7 years later, we are in remission and so thankful for the help we’ve been given by those who have trod this weary, pot-holed path before us.

 

One thing’s for sure  – mainstream medicine & psychiatry are truly in the Dark Ages when it comes to tick-borne illness and they need to wake up fast.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/02/22/why-mainstream-lyme-msids-research-remains-in-the-dark-ages/

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Psychological Aspects

Dementia From Illness

https://www.dementia.org/dementia-from-infection

Dementia From Illness

Milder, degenerative forms of dementia that are treatable and even reversible, include cases of dementia that develop from a brain infection or immune disorder.

The development of dementia is not limited to the elderly. There are a number of infections that affect the brain, as well as immune disorders that incite reactions in the body leading to complicated forms of cerebral damage.

These damages can have a number of lingering effects, even after the initial infections have been eliminated, including the onset of dementia. Fortunately, this is one of the milder forms of dementia, and in most cases is almost fully reversible.

What Is Dementia From Illness?

Dementia can sometimes develop as a result of your body’s natural reaction to fighting off a traditional infection.

This could be any kind of brain-related infection, such as meningitis, encephalitis, cases of syphilis that have gone untreated, Lyme disease and other conditions that completely compromise an individual’s immune system, like Leukemia.

Some conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, which is incited by the body attacking its own nerve cells, can also be a primary cause of this kind of dementia.

Risk Factors

If you are at risk for developing, or already have any of the following conditions, you may have a greater chance of eventually developing dementia from infections:

  • Meningitis (all varieties)
  • Malaria
  • Brain Abscesses
  • Encephalitis
  • Lyme Disease
  • Syphilis
  • Any bacterial or viral infection that affects the brain

The risk increases with age, and is much more of a danger if any of the infections go untreated.

Signs And Symptoms

As with many other forms of dementia, dementia resulting from illness can cause memory loss as well as difficulty understanding, recalling or transmitting language; difficulty concentrating on simple tasks, inability to coordinate or perform previously easy tasks, changes of personality traits or strange and sometimes inappropriate behavior.

If you have recently had an infection or immune disorder that has affected the brain, and you are currently experiencing symptoms of dementia, there may be a strong correlation. Even if the infection has disappeared or been completely treated, the damage it could have caused to your central nervous system may still be present.

Treatments

Fortunately, forms of dementia that have originated from an illness or an infection are, for the most part, reversible. Unlike Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of degenerative dementia that are incapable of reversing, the nature of an illness-borne case of dementia allows for its effects to be eliminated.

The cerebral impact, due in large part to complications from the body’s response to the infection, can be restored to its original state.

Treat Illnesses Promptly To Protect Cognitive Function

If you currently have an infection that affects the brain or any kind of immune disorder that complicates the way your body reacts, you should be aware of the possibility of developing this kind of dementia.

The longer these infections go untreated, the higher the risk of development and the more severe the symptoms could be. Fortunately, even if you do develop dementia from your illness, in most cases of this kind of dementia, it is possible to fully restore cognitive function.

_______________________

**Comment**

Although this article was written in 2015 it’s a good reminder that dementia can be caused by infections.

The following article is a specific example of how dementia can actually be undiagnosed Lyme disease.

https://www.inquisitr.com/3234154/kris-kristofferson-diagnosed-dementia-was-actually-lyme-disease/

Kris Kristofferson: Diagnosed ‘Dementia’ Was Actually Lyme Disease

CELEBRITIES

Many people deal with at least some degree of memory loss as they age. So when singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who turned 80 on June 22, began having trouble remembering things, he and his doctors chalked it up to the relentless march of time along with the effects of head injuries he received as a youthful athlete.

In November 2013, The Daily Mail reported that the then-77-year old Kristofferson was able to remember his own songs but not much else, and that other areas of his life were being adversely affected by dementia.

“I wish my memory weren’t so bad. They tell me it’s from all the football and boxing and the concussions that I got. A couple of years ago my memory just started going. I can remember my songs so I can perform, but other than that…”

Around the time that Kristofferson was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2014, doctors told the man who wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” that his memory deficit was indicative of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease or could be a form of dementia known as pugilistica. Now we know that Kris Kristofferson has Lyme disease.

On June 6, Rolling Stone magazine revealed that recent test results prove Kristofferson’s so-called ‘dementia’ was in fact caused by Lyme disease. Kristofferson’s wife, Lisa, told Rolling Stone that her husband had been taking prescription drugs to treat Alzheimer’s and depression for a number of years but stopped once Lyme was correctly diagnosed. She said that Kris “suddenly came back” after three weeks of treatment for Lyme disease.

“There are still bad days, but some days he’s perfectly normal and it’s easy to forget that he is even battling anything.”

When Kris Kristofferson presented symptoms of memory loss in his late 70s, it was easy for physicians to believe that he was suffering some sort of dementia. For one thing, Kristofferson has homes in Hawaii and California, where deer ticks are uncommon. Secondly, Kris Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer and also has a history of playing contact sports such as college football.

Lisa Kristofferson stated that she believes her husband was infected by a deer tick whilst filming the 2006 movie Disappearances on location in Vermont. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains that 96 percent of Lyme disease cases reported in 2014 originated from tick bites in Vermont and 13 other northeast and upper Midwest states. The CDC notes that although Lyme disease affects 30,000 people annually and is the fifth most common Nationally Notable disease, it does not occur nationwide.

In the United States, Lyme is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia mayonii bacteria that is transmitted to humans and other mammals by the bite of the black-legged deer tick. The tick is most commonly hosted by deer, although squirrels, raccoons and opossums may carry the disease vector, too.

Mayo Clinic describes the first sign of early onset Lyme as a bulls-eye shaped rash at the bite site. Called erythema migrans, the rash generally appears three to 30 days after an infected tick bite. The rash, which is neither painful nor itchy, may spread to other parts of the body. Additional early signs of Lyme disease include fever, chills, body aches, joint and muscle pain, swollen lymph nodes, and other flu-like symptoms. Mayo Clinic notes that not all persons infected with Lyme develop the rash, and that the disease can be difficult to diagnose.

Columbia University Medical Center states that a number of diagnostic tests may be used to determine whether or not a patient is infected with Lyme disease, and that it is not uncommon for an infected person to test negative even though they have the disease. When a patient does test positive for Lyme, early intervention with strong antibiotics may prevent the disease from becoming chronic and unmanageable.

Kristofferson looked back on his long musical career at his personal website.

“I always try to be as honest as I can in the songwriting, otherwise there’s no point in doing it. I might as well be doing an advertising job or something. And what I’m finding, to my pleasant surprise at this age, is that I’m more inclined to laughter than tears. I hope I’ll feel this creative and this grateful until they throw dirt over me.”

Of the future, Kris Kristofferson told Rolling Stone the following.

“I really have no anxiety about controlling my own life. Somehow I just slipped into it and it’s worked. It’s not up to me – or you. I feel very lucky that my life has lasted so long, because I’ve done so many things that could have knocked me out of it. But somehow I just always have the feeling that He knows what He’s doing. It’s been good so far, and it’ll probably continue to be.”

__________________

**Comment**

Please remember, getting the EM rash is highly variable and certainly not a sure thing:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/03/26/formally-challenging-cdc-advice-on-lyme-disease-rashes/

Category:

Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Treatment