Could Lyme Disease Be Why You’re Still Sick? Symptoms, Testing, and What May Be Overlooked | E179

The problem is half of people later diagnosed to have Lyme disease have a normal antibody test. So I always go straight to the Western blot test with Quest over LabCorp. But even that's not the best test. The best testing in that field is probably an immunoblot with someplace like IGeneX. Why aren't you getting better? Your body's stuck. You're not healing. You're sensitive to a whole bunch of things, chemicals, perfumes, supplements, whatnot. Foods, you can't eat a lot of things. What else could be going on? What could be overlooked that your body— why aren't you getting better? And I want to talk about the next thing in our series as we talk about this, which is Lyme disease. That's finally getting some headway in our country. I said actually for our podcast, I'm not sure when it'll be aired, but this past week had a great conversation with Richard Horowitz, who's the top Lyme expert in the country, has a new book coming out. Really interesting conversation, but potentially 7 million Americans Getting Lyme disease every year—that is a crazy number to think about. The most recent number I looked at before having a conversation with him—he's a top researcher in this field in the country—was that from the CDC, maybe there are 30 or 40 thousand new cases a year, but there are about 400 thousand undiagnosed cases. So more new cases of Lyme disease in our country than breast cancer. Interesting statistic. Talking with Dr. Horowitz. And it's interesting, like, how do you diagnose Lyme disease? Because if you diagnose it only based on standard testing, then you're— yeah, it makes sense. You're going to underestimate, you know, the cases. If you get more advanced testing, you'll pick up more. But according to, you know, Infectious Disease Society of America, IDSA, Lyme disease is a clinical diagnosis, meaning you diagnose it based on symptoms, not based on lab testing. And all of a sudden, oh, okay, the infectious disease experts in America. Hmm. Not ILADS, which is international, but they say, hmm, it's clinically diagnosed. Okay, got that. You know, what could that mean? That means it's the summertime and you get the flu without respiratory symptoms, fever, body aches, pains, joint aches and pains. Summer flu in my book is Lyme until proven otherwise. You have migrating pain. There's only like 6 things that cause migrating pain: lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, gonorrhea, syphilis, and Lyme disease. So, I don't see a whole lot of syphilis in my clinic. I do see a— I don't see a lot of gonorrhea. I do see a fair amount of lupus. And a fair amount of rheumatoid arthritis, but Lyme disease is what I see way more of. Every fall, the schedule tightens and most of our attention goes to getting the kids ready. Almost none of it goes to the person holding the whole thing together. So I put together these 3 things just for that: a daily multivitamin in the active forms your body can actually use, quercetin and nettles to support your immune and respiratory health without the drowsiness, and NAC and acetylcysteine to help your body rebuild its own Antioxidant Reserve. This is what I take every fall. That's Aaron Hartman MD dot com slash back to school. So all of a sudden, you know what's being overlooked that's making to these specialty doctors that's being overlooked, and that could be Lyme. And so when I see new patients with chronic fatigue, fibro, migrating pain, or just not getting better body aches, you know it's it's interesting how many of my fibro pain, my chronic fatigue fibro patients are diagnosed with Lyme disease. But it's something if you're having weird autoimmune diseases, you know, I'm one of my patients who's a veterinarian came to me one day with like really bad sciatica, foot drop. She'd already seen an orthopedic surgeon and she was scheduled to get a disc surgery like six, six or eight weeks later. And for some reason, we have an interesting conversation because I can't—I don't know why I did Lyme testing on her, to be honest with you. There's something about it that just felt off. Something she said that I don't recall triggered me to do this testing, which is you know why having clinical having a A good clinical expertise, a good a good guesser maybe you know intuition. Dr. Jensky calls it his Spidey sense, but the ability to pick up something that you know in your gut or your subconscious that you don't necessarily know why you did it. But I did that testing, and she had horrible Lyme disease, and her sciatic and foot drop went away after four to six weeks of doxycycline. Crazy! I remember early in my career seeing a patient with Bell's palsy, which is you know it's a little nerve thing. Your face looks kind of like you have a stroke, but it's not. And she actually had Lyme disease, and it got better with with doxycycline again. So it's interesting how many weird. Weird things could be Lyme disease, and the testing we never do just antibody testing, which you're supposed to do the antibody testing. If it's positive, then it reflexes to the Western blot. The problem is half of people later diagnosed have Lyme disease have a normal antibody test. So I always go straight to the Western blot test with Quest over LabCorp. But even that's not the best test. The best testing in that field is probably immunoblot with someplace like Igenix. And that that is telling you did your immune system get exposed to respond to Lyme? Doesn't mean you have Lyme per se, but the reality is if someone comes to my body with a lot of weird things. lot of weird symptoms and the testing is positive, it's probably Lyme disease. And then, using Dr. Horowitz's IMSIDS, it's actually a validated questionnaire that if you have over a certain score on it, that means based on symptoms, which is again what the Infectious Disease Society of America says, then you have Lyme disease. Every fall, the schedule tightens and most of our attention goes to getting the kids ready. Almost none of it goes to the person holding the whole thing together, So I put together these 3 things just for that. A daily multivitamin in the active forms your body can actually use, quercetin and nettles to support your immune and respiratory health without the drowsiness, and NAC, N-acetylcysteine, to help your body rebuild its own antioxidant reserve. This is what I take every fall. That's aaronhartmanmd.com/backtoschool. So again, you know, what are things that are often overlooked that could be the cause of lots of weird things? Why are you stuck? Why are you still sick? Think Lyme disease. Don't overlook it. It's getting more, becoming more commonly known about these days, but, um, it's been around forever. It's been around, you know, I'll, you know, tell patients how long has Lyme disease been around? You know, I think it's Ötzi. It was, um, like the cave Iceman they found in, I think it was the Swiss Alps, frozen there from 5,000 BC, had the DNA of Lyme, Borrelia in his body. So it's been around for 7,000 years, but it's getting worse. It's getting more common, getting more aggressive. That's a different conversation altogether. But if you're stuck, you're not getting better, why are you still sick? It could be Lyme disease. Get checked out. And this— and the basic testing can be done by any provider in the country through your basic labs. But even if that's negative, you still— you really probably should take a deeper dive and do, do an Igenex or a better quality test because the typical labs overlook it. And on a side note, recently I was working with a patient who comes to me from out of state and saw me, had Igenex done by someone, another provider. Blatantly positive, came to see me to start treating it. Wasn't getting better because other things were going on, hence the purpose of our podcast series. She wanted she got second opinion from a different Lyme specialist who ordered a standard Quest lab on her. Not standard, the white Western blot came back 100% negative. So I saw them back. I'm like, this is kind of weird. Like blatantly positive, blatantly negative. So I repeated the iGenx testing and still had you know seven or eight bands for Lyme. Point being is the standard testing. Trust is providers trust your gut providers doctors nurse practitioners PAs watching this right now trust your gut intuition if it doesn't feel quite right do the MCIDS questionnaire if they have the symptoms that make them high risk again Lyme disease is a clinical diagnosis do the more advanced testing don't ignore it because that's how we overlook and miss a lot of stuff yes it is does cost money yes it's not covered by insurance but you just got to use the right tools the best tools available hopefully this information is helpful and we'll keep on going through. Why are you not getting better? Why are you stuck? What else might be going on? We'll talk about the what else next.