An interesting article read

[mojogal]

I read an article where they asked if Lyme was a co-infection of Bart's. My Lyme brain doesn't let me remember where I read it but they also mentioned babs too. That is a different way to look at things. There is no real question but just to bring the awareness of this new way of thinking by some.

[mojogal]

That is really interesting about the neuro psych link. Since , when I got so sick I was in a city with no LLMD and prior to that my illness for around 18 years, was more CFS like but then it became Bart's and that knocked me on my butt with multiple neuro symptoms, later finding out with my LLMD that it was barts.

[Ricobord]

Yeah, I almost feel sorry for the mice. They definitely get sick, usually in the brain, nerves, bladder, and the heart, as well as arthritis. Unfortunately for us, it doesn't kill them before there is time to get bit by another tick, which transfers it yet again.

[Stargazer_Lilies]

Indeed , chicken or eggs! I was reading about tick don't carry borrelias and such unless they feed on mice and such that were infected with it. But, mice and such don't get infected unless they were bitten by tick infected with it.

[JackieCalifornia]

Your comments line up with my suspicion that there are so many variables at work in the bugs and in ourselves that it confuses the docs, on top of the roadblocks the anti-LLMD types are hiding behind.

Once the politics are out of the way, the medical types will go great guns in unraveling all this ... look how far they have come against AIDS!  Once the politics of AIDS were blown out of the way, things began to move quickly.  

Faster, please!

[Ricobord]

I am also curious about how these diseases interact and wonder why they are so bad when they are together.  Like why Babesia is rarely a problem when it is the only disease present, but mix it up with Lyme and both are much worse.

I saw a study done where they infected mice with two species of Borrelia. I think it was b.burgdorferi and b.garinii.  They found that those mice were sicker than the other mice with just one or the other, even though the overall spirochete load was actually lower in the dual infected mice. They were theorizing that there might be some kind of competition between the two variations that somehow made their affect on the body worse. Maybe that's what happens between Lyme and coinfections, too.

I also read a paper from a psychiatrist who became aware of Bartonella and its neuropsychiatric effects.  He started testing some of his patients for it, people who suddenly developed psychiatric problems but had no history of them.  He was surprised at how many of them came back positive for Bartonella.  He now thinks it is horribly underdiagnosed. He has even had difficulty curing it, learning through trial and error that different people need different lengths of treatment, with 2-4 months being typical.  And that is without Lyme!

I think these are some truly great mysteries that will someday be solved.

[mojogal]

I believe my Lyme was not as bad as when the Bart's hit. You are right the chicken egg thing may never really be answered.

[JackieCalifornia]

Yeah, I don't think we will ever really know which disease is the chicken and which is the egg (meaning which one comes first), but in the final analysis, I don't know that it really matters.

I suspect I got a low level Lyme infection and then a year or two later got re-infected, this time with (Lyme and)  babesiosis, which pushed my immune system over the edge.  The interplay of the different infections with our different immune systems and existing ailments of other kinds is the real puzzle box, and I agree:  finding new ways to turn the Rubik's cube is definitely important.