Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Lyme Often Comes With Other Infections #shorts

1 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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0:43

In this YouTube short, Dr. Aaron Hartman recounts his personal experience encountering his first Lyme disease case despite extensive training at a major East Coast hospital and three years of military service in Florida, where Lyme is rare. He describes contacting a local infectious disease specialist who refused to take consults, claiming they don’t see Lyme cases in Richmond. Hartman highlights a circular problem: because specialists don’t accept consults, clinicians rarely see Lyme cases and thus assume the disease doesn’t exist in the area. He argues this systemic under‑recognition is embedded in the healthcare system, forcing physicians to seek education about Lyme disease outside traditional medical channels.

Chapters

What did we do? I called the infectious disease doctor locally and their response was, we don't take consults, there's none in Richmond, and we don't see it. And so I left my training at one of the top places on the East Coast, super busy hospital where two interstates cross, 64 and 81, never having seen a case of Lyme. Was in the military for 3 years in Florida where there's actually not a lot of Lyme disease, never saw a case. Came back up here and all of a sudden my first case, I'm in, I was like, okay, this is very circular. You don't take consults and you don't see it, so it doesn't exist, but you don't take consults, so you don't see it and you think it doesn't exist. And so it's almost kind of embedded in the system. You have to look for education outside of your traditional educational system.