lyme disease symptoms: The most reliable way is clinically. If there is a history of tick adhesion followed by the “target” skin lesion, then you have Lyme disease at an early stage, and antibiotic treatment will be successful. Most symptoms of Lyme disease are non specific and in those cases, serology will be important in the diagnosis. Serology for Lyme disease requires expert interpretation, as it is fraught with problems. The target skin lesions do not occur in all cases.
Because of difficulty with definitive diagnosis, some people with chronic symptoms of any cause, will self diagnose as having Lyme disease, and insist for years that they have chronic Lyme disease. There are significant neurological and cardiac problems that can occur as a result of Lyme disease, but these disorders usually follow typical patterns for the disease. There are some quack doctors out there that profess to be Lyme disease experts, who diagnose Lyme disease in nearly every patient they see and prescribe unorthodox treatments (usually prolonged courses of antibiotics) that have no scientific validity), so beware!
What organs does Lyme disease affect?
Borrelia can penetrate the body’s cells. With that, tissues are affected, and organs being composed of tissues, there are few organs, if any, that are not affected by the infection. Results will vary among individuals.
Some organs are affected much more strongly than others during an infection. One of the first is the skin, if and when those characteristic lesions appear.
Most noticeably for the patient is when the brain is affected, with symptoms depending on which parts of the brain are under attack. Think of the functions of different brain parts. The effects are very much like deletions of those functions as the infection inhibits their activity.
Likewise, the rest of the nervous system is affected, resulting in bizarre sensations and muscular twitches, frequent headaches, and intermittant pain that can be sharp or dull, and arise anywhere.
It affects the eyes, causing blurry vision that comes and goes.
The joints are affected, resulting in pain, and often some swelling.
The muscles are affected with inhibited strength, pain, and involuntary contractions, sometimes locked into prolonged cramps.
The heart is affected, sometimes bringing on arrythmias.
One of the most disabling symptoms is the unremitting, overwhelming fatigue, but I can’t reduce that one to any particular organ being affected.
When it gets into the brain it gets very difficult to advocate for oneself among doctors and the people in one’s life, due to memory problems, thought scrambling, trouble finding words, and emotional lability.
It is possible to experience strange synesthesias of thoughts, inner visions, sensations, and pains, which can seem like out of this world, indescribable experiences of some kind of hell, like an LSD journey through pain. Avoid that one if you can.
Other people have difficulty perceiving and understanding what it is like for someone whose brain is infected, and tend to be less than helpful to such a person. Infection in the brain is socially isolating, and puts the patient at risk of suicide.
Are there any effects of Lyme disease that can last your entire life?
If Lyme goes comnpletely untreated for a long time, as in several years or even decades, then it is possible some of the damage done to the joints or nerves may be near permanent… but this is very rare. Most of the symptoms will vanish, so there is no reason to fear for lifelong symptoms. Best to think positive.
Lyme is 100% curable with a short course of antibiotics, killing every single Lyme bacteria in the body [one Quora answer claim the drugs put the bacteria “in remission,” which is utter bullshit that I will get to later…], but the damage done by the bacteria sometimes needs more time to recover. Post-treatment lyme disease syndrome is a very well known and very well understood condition where symptoms of Lyme persist for months or even a year after Lyme treatment. There is little to do with that [although some studies show that exercise helps], and, if the Lyme was untreated for so many years that the damage is permanent, then there may be nothing to do… but what is important to remember is that Lyme is not “chronic.” You may have symptoms, but you are not infected and do not require further antibiotics or other treatment: those who claim that you do are either selling you these unnecessary treatments and profit off your ignorance, or have been sold these treatments and are now part of the cult of “chronic Lyme,” unable to see or admit that they have been defrauded. You can easily spot a scammer if they try to defame the scientific community: that is a telltale sign of somebody who spread conspiracy theory instead of actual knowledge or facts. Many if not most people who think they have decades-long Lyme symptoms actually never had Lyme at all. There is a very large community of people with delusional borrelliosis, who may have real, life-threatening diseases like MS or cancer, but instead insist that they have Lyme.
Where is Lyme disease found and who should be most cautious of it?
Lyme is predominantly found in the northeastern and northcentral USA and neighboring parts of Canada, though it also exists in northern California and parts of Europe. The only way to get Lyme is the bite of an infected deer tick, so anyone who goes hiking or works outside in these areas is at risk. It takes about 30 hours between when a tick first attaches on you to when it actually transmits Lyme, so it is important to do a “tick check” after hiking, perhaps in the shower, to find and remove any ticks immediately. Use tweezers to pull them off: no special tools are necessary.
There is a LOT of misinformation about Lyme online, due to a combination of medical scams and delusional infestations. Lyme is not an issue in Asia, Australia, Africa, or Latin America (where mosquito vectored diseases are a bigger issue), or the southwestern USA (though different tick species spread other diseases there). Lyme is not sexually transmitted or transmitted from mother to fetus. Lyme is easily cured with antibiotics, and in no way, shape, or form becomes “chronic.” The myth of “chronic Lyme,” like the myth that vaccines cause autism, is nonsensical and rejected by all the worlds medical authorities and experts, but is still perpetuated by quacks and internet activists.