Lyme Science Blog

Lyme Brain Fog and Anxiety: When Psychiatric Symptoms Have a Medical Cause After 37 years treating Lyme disease, I’ve seen brain fog and anxiety misdiagnosed as purely psychiatric disorders. She came to me after eight months of worsening psychiatric symptoms, including severe anxiety, episodes of rage, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and deepening depression. She had been diagnosed […]

Losing Friends Because of Chronic Illness: Why It Happens When You’re Sick Losing friends because of chronic illness is a question patients with Lyme disease ask me quietly, often with more pain than any physical symptom they describe. They are not angry. They are grieving. As illness persists, plans are canceled, energy fades, and life

Lyme Disease Digestion Problems: Why Symptoms Often Don’t Make Sense Lyme disease digestion problems are common, and many patients notice that digestion is one of the first systems to feel “off.” Meals that were once routine may now trigger nausea, bloating, abdominal discomfort, or unpredictable bowel changes. Some people feel full after only a few

Pain From Light Touch in Lyme Disease (Allodynia Explained) Touch-evoked pain is a symptom many Lyme disease patients struggle to describe—and even more struggle to have believed. When clothing brushing against skin, a gentle touch, or cool air causes pain, it reflects a documented neurologic change, not imagination. This abnormal pain response has a name:

Why Lyme Disease Persists and What Tuberculosis Teaches Us In the world of infectious disease, few organisms are as stubborn as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. But understanding why Lyme disease persists after treatment may require looking at what TB has taught us about bacterial survival. For more on latent TB, see the CDC’s tuberculosis overview. We call

Bad Signs After a Tick Bite: 7 Warnings You Shouldn’t Ignore Based on clinical experience caring for patients with tick-borne illness. It often begins with something easy to dismiss. A small rash that fades. A few days of fatigue. A headache that doesn’t quite make sense.These are the bad signs after a tick bite that

How to Test for Lyme Disease: Beyond CDC Guidelines When patients ask how to test for Lyme disease, they’re often surprised by the complexity—and the limitations—of the current testing system. While laboratory tests can be helpful, they do not tell the whole story. Clinical judgment is often just as important, especially when symptoms persist despite

Is It Too Late to Treat a Tick Bite? What Patients Need to Know Many patients worry that it may be too late to treat a tick bite, especially when symptoms appear months or even years after the initial exposure. This concern is understandable—but the answer is reassuring. It is never truly too late to

When One Side of Your Body Feels Different One-sided symptoms in Lyme disease can be alarming for patients, especially when weakness or numbness affects only one side of the body during flare-ups. Some patients report that an arm, a leg, the face, or even an entire side of the body feels weaker, numb, heavier, or