General Symptom Guidelines to Lyme + Co-Infections Bartonella and Babesia
Introduction
Lyme represents more than the infection, Borellia Burgdorferi, which causes it. We know that the tick-gut, which transmits Lyme, carries with it a variety of infectious diseases. Although these are known as “co-infections”, they should by no means be considered secondary to infection with Borellia Burgdorferi. One of the most crucial aspects of managing complex chronic illness is to identify what the primary offender is, and focus on treating what the body considers “public enemy number one”. When dealing with multiple infections at once, all of which overlap in many of their symptom presentations, which are characterized by global bodily disregulation, you can imagine the difficulty. Nevertheless, our task is not insurmountable - and the better we become at identifying an illness, or co-infection, the more targeted we can become in finding the most appropriate treatments for it.
Trying to treat multiple infections or toxicities at once is hard. It is much harder to try to treat them while shooting in the dark.
This quick and handy guide is not meant to diagnose or attempt to convey the final verdict of a possible complex illness such as Lyme. The purpose of this is to provide some general guidelines that might be useful in determining and identifying a possible cause of one’s unique constellation of symptoms.
If testing for these infections was much easier and acceptable to standards, then guides such as this would probably not be needed. Unfortunately, the state of testing for Lyme and Co-infections is dismal, to say the least. However, testing for these illnesses with my clients is always generally encouraged. Right now, IGenX seems to be the best in the industry, and although it’s not exactly cheap, testing will save a lot of potential error along the way, which has its own cost on health, time and money.
Although there are very many “co-infections” that a tick bite can transmit to an individual, I will focus on the three most well known, beginning with “Lyme” - Borrelia Burgdorferi, followed by Bartonella, and Babesia.
With all that said, here are some of the key symptoms to watch out for the aforementioned tick-borne infections.
Borrelia Burgdorferi
Bull’s-eye rash
Unexplained neuropathies
A diagnosis with “atypical” MS, ALS, Alzeimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease or rheumatoid arthritis
Global headache
Joint / muscle pain (it has been reported that up to 80% of individuals with Lyme develop this, while 50% go on to develop arthritis)
Cardiac symptoms, such as carditis (heart inflammation), arrhythmias (palpitations), chest pain, shortness of breath and dizziness. Individuals with Borrelia are more likely to have cardio symptoms than the other co-infections I will be discussing.
Neuroborreliosis — “Nero-Lyme”
According to experts, up to a quarter of individuals infected with Borellia Burgderferi have neurological symptoms, which reflect inflammation in the central nervous system. However, most of my clients with chronic Lyme have neurological symptoms resulting from Lyme.
The following symptoms are noteworthy in Lyme infection in the central nervous system, and their presence should alert physicians to the possibility of Lyme disease:
Meningitis (inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and the spinal cord.)
Localised nerve pain (from inflammation of the root tips of nerves.)
Peripheral neuropathy
Bell's palsy (cranial inflammation)
Double vision (cranial inflammation)
Headache / neck pain
Vertigo
Encephalitis (brain inflammation)
Bartonella
Bartonella is an opportunistic infection which is often transmitted through a tick bite or a cat scratch, but it can also be transmitted through fleas, mosquitoes and biting flies. It has the ability to “burrow” inside the cells, where it becomes difficult to eradicate. Many people with robust immune systems can ward it off, without exhibiting any serious compilations. However, when the body encounters a serious infection such as Lyme disease, the Bartonella organisms will often take advantage of the weakened immunity, and come out of dormancy to accelerate infection within the host.
Bartonella, as with many chronic infections, can present as fatigue, lymph node swelling, sore throat and brain fog. These are important symptoms to consider, but do not necessarily prompt practitioners to look in the direction of Bartonella when considering what co-infections may be present with complex chronic illness. The following symptoms represent the more unique features of Bartonella that may be present with Lyme. Anyone experiencing a constellation of the following features should consider the presence of Bartonella. Items in bold are high indicators of Bartonella infection.
Anxiety with panic attacks
Depression accompanied with despair and hopelessness
Depersonalization / Derealization
Pain on the soles of feet when walking
Migraine-like visual disturbances
Headaches (back of the head)
Sensitivity to light, touch, sound, food, chemicals or EMFs
A sensation of internal vibration
Pseudo-seizures
Uncontrollable muscle contraction
Muscle twitching
Bladder / pelvic pain
Babesia
Like the other tick-borne infections Borellia and Bartonella, Babesia can be present long after a tick bite, and begin to manifest as soon as the host immunity weakens. Babesia is a parasite that infects red blood cells. So far, only two species of Babesia can be tested for using the standard PCR blood testing, although there are up to one hundred species that can infect humans. Since testing is not very accurate to begin with, a negative test does not rule out the possibility of infection. Unfortunately, this puts practitioners in the position to treat for infection on empirical data alone. As with Lyme and Bartonella, Babesa can present the following notable symptoms. However, taken together, these symptoms are pathognomonic (highly specific) for Babesia, indicating its presence:
Night sweats
Air hunger / difficulty breathing
Frontal head pressure / headaches
Cognitive impairment
Derealization / hallucinations / severe psychological symptoms
A disconnect between an intention to perform an action and the ability to do so, making it difficult in performing simple, everyday actions.
Final Remarks
In conclusion, making general observations on symptom presentation can be useful, but is fraught with issues of attempting to make reliable diagnoses. Lyme is known as the “great imitator”, after all, in its ability to mimic many other known diseases. The online journal The Conversation, for example, published a piece on how Lyme disease symptoms can be mistaken for CoVid-19.
Bearing in mind that confirming a diagnosis with Lyme and it’s coinfections can be quite difficult, knowing the patterns of what could indicate which infection the body is fighting is our next best option. Treating empirically, in lieu of firm backing of laboratory data, is not ideal, but it is better to start treating for a suspected diagnosis of a complex chronic illness, than to not treat at all when testing has gone out the window. Let it be a message of hope that we can still work with individuals struggling with illnesses that evade the testing methodologies that are needed to make reliable diagnoses. This is what makes Lyme literate practice an art as much as a science, requiring keen attention to detail and nuance. What I have outlined is simply a sketch that is rooted in the context of working with a knowledgeable practitioner on the path to healing complex chronic illness.
My hope is that this general outline will be useful for practitioners and individuals with complex illnesses alike, and that it is not representative of the final word on this extremely complicated issue.