Dr. Aaron Hartman breaks down five mystery illnesses often missed by standard testing, starting with chronic Lyme. Standard CDC screening misses cases because it only catches certain antibody bands on the Western blot. Commercial labs like Igenex and Vibrant test more thoroughly but insurance rarely covers them.
Questions this episode answers
"Half of all people who have Lyme disease, their first screening test is negative."
"Every year there are more new cases of Lyme disease in our country than breast cancer."
Every year there are more new cases of Lyme disease in our country than breast cancer. According to the cdc, half of all people who have Lyme disease, their first screening test is negative. Every year there are more new cases of Lyme disease in our country than breast cancer. Mystery illnesses are on the rise. What are these and what am I even talking about? Mystery illnesses are those kind of illnesses that no one can quite figure out. You go to multiple doctors or specialists and they don't quite know what's going on. Now historically these have been around for quite some time. Actually the original great imitators was the old term we used to use for them originally was syphilis. Back in the day you could get it in your 20s, early 30s and not have symptoms for decades. And when you had symptoms, they're weird. Joint aches and pains, cognitive issues, but it could turn into heart issues, it could turn into heart failure, it could turn into dementia, lots of strange things. Tuberculosis or consumption, another mystery illness. The consumption was the term when you basically like almost just kind of withered away, your body consumed itself. That was a chronic infection actually of tuberculosis. And we knew what these things were. They had like a recognition of them. It wasn't until, you know, modern times, with antibiotics, we've been able to eliminate these. And we have a whole host of new mystery illnesses that are being overlooked. But the nuance is these are multi system, multisymptom illnesses. What I mean by that is the, they involve different body parts. You know, brain fog, confusion, cardiovascular, shortness of breath, blood pressure issues, gut issues, energy levels, aches and pains. A whole lot of different things are included in these mystery illnesses. So what I'll do is talk briefly, do these little short 10 minute mini episodes and talk about some of the big mystery illnesses, do an overview here, talk about what they are and actually give you some information that can be helpful to figure out if you or a loved one are dealing with this and how to approach those. If this information is helpful, please, like share. Subscribe. This is something that patients have put forward to us and asks about and I want to share about that. The five. There's, there's several big mystery illnesses that are multi symptom, multi system. They look kind of weird and they all look about 80% the same, which makes it confusing. So what am I talking about? There's your chronic Lyme disease or post Lyme syndrome. There's your mold related illness or chronic inflammatory response syndrome. There's dysautonomia, which is a neurological condition. There's Mast cell activation syndrome and then autoimmune diseases in general. These are five of the mystery illnesses that we're dealing with in our culture, in our country today. So we'll walk through these five, over five different, these 10 minute talks to give you some information about these so you can kind of know what we're talking about. The first one I want to talk about is chronic Lyme disease or post Lyme syndrome. It's interesting because Lyme disease is actually a spirochete which is a similar shape. Spirochete just describes the shape of the infection particle intracellular organism is what syphilis is actually. So that's kind of interesting that the modern day great imitator actually is in a similar family as the old day syphilis. And it can be treated with antibiotics, but it's a little difficult to cure with simple antibiotics if it's been around for a while.
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Now. So what are some of the symptoms of chronic Lyme disease? It can be joint aches and pains, migrating pain, neurological symptoms. You can have brain fog, headaches, nerve pain. It can result in autoimmune issues. Getting chronic infection can give you autoimmune issues. So you can see these can combine with the autoimmune as one of the great imitators. Gut problems, gut issues, a whole host of other symptoms. And now of a sudden you can kind of appreciate how this can look like many different things and be quite unusual. How do you diagnose this particular chronic infection? This is where it gets a little interesting because the current CDC guidelines recommend it's just a regular Igg test. And the issue with that is that according to the cdc, half of all people who have Lyme disease, their first screening test is negative. So that makes it a horrible screening test. So then you go on to a western blot if you have suspicion, which is a next level testing. The thing about western blot is the typical standard lab Western Blot Test 1, it's not as sensitive. It takes a stronger signal to become positive, which many people with dysfunctional immune systems don't have. And the second thing is two of the bands in the testing have been removed because of, if some of you may remember, there was a, actually a Lyme disease vaccine years ago. And that's been that. That actually when that came out, they removed those particular bands from the Lyme testing. And so all of a sudden now we've lost the ability to have as accurate testing. Now there are better tests like Igenics, Vibrant Labs, Galaxy Labs. These are places that use higher technology, higher resolution test for more parts of. More parts of the actual organism. But unfortunately, insurance does not cover those for the mass population. Most people were limited to the standard, you know, insurance covered labs, which the initial screening will miss. 50% of people that have it. And then the other testing gets kind of tricky because you have one band versus five bands and gets a little. Almost requires you to have like a certain skill set on being able to figure out what symptoms go with it. And then each and certain bands are actually more specific than other ones. So like 41, for example, you can see in people with a positive ANA or early lupus or Epstein Barr or herpes reactivation. So it's not specific for Lyme. And other bands, like a 58 or 23 can be more specific for Lyme. So Lyme disease is one of the great imitators. So if you're having a typical presentation, you've been to multiple people. Have you even checked for Lyme disease? Is the first question, the second question? They say, yes, what test did you have? Did you get a western blot that put all these bands out there? Or did you get a simple antibody test that said negative or positive for Lyme? And if it just said negative and they didn't move on, then you didn't get the best test. You should get kind of curious how many people out there have experienced issues with their diagnosis being overlooked, being missed, and later found to be Lyme. It's a lot of people. According to the center of disease is controlled. Every year, there are more new cases of Lyme disease in our country than breast cancer. So this is obviously a big thing and something we should have on the radar and we should be aware of the more advanced testing and things to think about. So that's one of the five. Next time around, we'll talk about the next of the mystery illnesses and some nuances about that. Take care and we'll talk to you soon.
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