Posted by bleauberry on December 30, 2008, at 18:52:33
In reply to Chronic Lymes Increase Dep/ Anxiety and Fibromyalg, posted by Phillipa on December 29, 2008, at 19:49:26
I have studied a lot about this topic. Among all the symptoms of Lyme, psychiatric ones are prominent, along with pains and fatigue. Cases of CFS, MS, and FM are often misdiagnosed when they are actually Lyme. Those names don't even mean anything, except a title to some mysterious cluster of symptoms. Lyme on the other hands means something.
The disease often goes undiagnosed, or missed in a faulty diagnosis, and treated as a generic form of depression/anxiety/whatever. Even if the treatment helps, the disease continues to grow, eventually overwhelming anything a psych drug can do. Maybe that is one form of poopout?
Lyme can be spread by mosquitos, mites, and horseflies, and even semen, not just ticks. One not need know they got bit by a tick. Not everyone will have the telltale rash. The time the person contracted Lyme may be a mystery.
My opinion is there are hundreds of thousands of undiagnosed or misdiagnosed cases in the USA, chalked up instead as some other mysterious disease. Lyme is after all "The Great Imitator". It is a genius at deception and hiding.
If someone has been treated and then later relapse, they need to be treated again, and sometimes for life. Treatment less than 6 months is destined for failure. Most require 1 to 2 years. Lyme lives in 3 forms. Three different antibiotics are needed to address each, usually starting with one for the primary organism, adding a second for the cyst form, and adding a third for the cell-less wall form hiding in your own cells where other antibiotics and your own immune system can't see them. Only a couple antibiotics can get them. The growth cycle is so slow, that it takes long term treatment to get all stages, since antibiotics don't actually kill anything, they just stop growth.
A great place for info is www.lymenet.org. Probably the most important thing is to have a doctor who is a LLMD. That is, Lyme Literate MD. Unlike so-called Infectious Disease specialists, LLMDs are not constrained by the Association's rigid methods of diagnosis and treatment, which, long story, are full of flaws. LLMDs are also up on the other co-infections that come with Lyme.
In any case, yeah, Lyme is a devastating cause of psychiatric problems. Meds can help symptoms, but won't stop the progression of the invasion. The person's depression and anxiety will ultimately be cured by a drug they never considered. Among all the SSRIs, SNRIs, MAOIs, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, benzos, stimulants, years and years, they never considered...antibiotics.
poster:bleauberry
thread:871341
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081223/msgs/871479.html