A new study has revealed alarming trends in chronic pain across America — prevalence jumped from 21% in 2019 to 24% in 2023, now affecting 60 million adults. While researchers attributed about 13% of this increase to long-COVID, a significant portion remains unexplained. As a physician specializing in tick-borne diseases, I believe we’re missing a […]
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Spinal Taps: A troubling trend I’ve noticed a troubling trend in Lyme disease care. Some patients are being told they need a spinal tap (lumbar puncture) to “rule out neurological Lyme disease.” While spinal taps are important in cases like suspected meningitis, their role in evaluating Lyme is much more limited. Too often, patients go
Spinal Taps for Lyme Disease: Do You Really Need One? Read More »
Why Lyme Rash Misdiagnosis Happens When most people hear “Lyme disease,” they imagine the classic bull’s-eye (erythema migrans) rash. In reality, that textbook image is the exception, not the rule. Fewer than half of patients develop the bull’s-eye pattern. Instead, the rash may appear as a simple red patch, multiple spots across the body, or
Lyme Rash Misdiagnosis: Not Always a Bull’s-Eye Read More »
Abandoning Lyme patients violates the core principles of medical ethics. A woman in her 40’s came to me after months of searching for answers. She had been a successful business executive, traveling weekly and leading a large team. Now, she could barely get through a video meeting without losing her train of thought. Fatigue left
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Why Lyme Disease and Exercise Deserve a Second Look In my clinical practice, I’ve worked with patients who could barely walk across the room—let alone exercise. But I’ve also seen those same patients regain strength, mobility, and hope when we introduced the right kind of movement at the right time. When Lyme disease is part
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What gender bias in Lyme disease can look like She first came to me after two exhausting years of symptoms that refused to show up on routine tests. Her knees and shoulders ached unpredictably. Her neck was stiff. The fatigue hit her like a wall every afternoon—“bone-deep,” she called it. Brain fog made it hard
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Some Lyme patients delay care for a few days. Others for decades. And it’s not always for the reasons doctors assume. In fact, the behavioral barriers to timely Lyme disease care — uncertainty, fear, dismissal, logistics, stigma are also seen in other serious but preventable conditions. Understanding why Lyme patients delay care is critical because
Why Lyme Patients Delay Care—and How It Hurts Recovery Read More »
The Reality of Working Sick with Lyme Disease Struggling with Lyme disease and working sick is an all-too-common scenario for patients who feel forced to push through fatigue, pain, and brain fog just to keep their jobs. Many describe it as a daily balancing act — choosing between financial survival, responsibility to family, and the
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Lyme disease is one of the few infections where patients are often diagnosed too late — not because they waited, but because testing could not detect the infection until later stages – if at all. A new Lyme blood test called LymeSeek could change that. It aims to revolutionize Lyme diagnostics by delivering significantly higher
New Lyme Blood Test LymeSeek Promises Earlier, More Accurate Diagnosis Read More »
In their article, “Unique Case of Gastroparesis in a Chronic Lyme Disease Patient,” Qasawa et al. discuss the case of a patient diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, who suffered from gastrointestinal complications including gastroparesis. Her symptoms were so severe that she required IV nutrition to maintain her weight. The case highlights a critical diagnostic oversight:
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