Lyme Disease In Humans
Hi everyone. Welcome back to our channel.
What is Lyme disease and
What are some common symptoms?
How is it diagnosed and treated?
What are some foods and supplements that might be beneficial for Lyme disease?
And how is Lyme disease related to gut health?
These are the questions I'll be answering in today's video.
[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]
Hi, I'm Katie Bailey. I'm a gut health dietitian at Oswald Digestive Clinic, where we help individuals improve and resolve their bothersome gut issues.
If you're interested in learning more about gut health, I'll link our guide 5 Five Ways to Improve Your Gut Health Below here.
All right, let's get started. on today's topic.
Lyme Disease In Humans:
What is Lyme disease? And what are some of the common symptoms?
Well, Lyme disease is a potentially debilitating illness that is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and transmitted through the bite of an infected blacklegged tick, the tick-borne illness.
This tick-borne illness has been getting significant attention over the past few years due to its increasing prevalence as well as the challenges associated with diagnosis and treatment.
Lyme disease is a complex condition that can manifest in many different ways and affect multiple different organ systems in the human body.
Lyme disease is often considered acute or chronic, although this is controversial due to the unclear mechanisms behind persistent symptoms in individuals.
Acute Lyme disease refers to the early onset of infection and symptoms are generally flu-like, and they can also present with a bullseye rash, which is one of the hallmark symptoms of Lyme disease. If Lyme disease is left untreated or symptoms persist after the initial treatment, it's said to progress to chronic Lyme disease, and this is also called post-treatment.
Lyme disease syndrome symptoms associated with chronic Lyme include joint pain, severe fatigue, as well as cognitive problems. Some other symptoms that are associated with Lyme disease include irregular heartbeats and myocarditis memory or cognition problems and numbness and tingling in the extremities.
It's important to remember that symptoms of Lyme are going to vary from person to person in severity as well as in duration.
How is Lyme Disease diagnosed and treated?
Diagnosing Lyme disease can be challenging as the symptoms are sometimes nonspecific and can mimic other conditions.
Blood tests are commonly used to diagnose Lyme as they can detect specific antibodies that are produced by the body in response to the bore bacterium, and it is often advised that people have two positive tests in order to confirm diagnosis.
Conventionally Lyme treatment is usually the combination between antibiotics to help treat the infection and supportive care like pain, medications and drugs to reduce inflammation.
The specific treatment is going to be dependent on the stage of the disease as well as the presence of any complications.
What foods and supplements might be beneficial for Lyme disease?
While antibiotics are typically the primary treatment for Lyme disease, there are foods and supplements that can also be very supportive.
A well-balanced Whole Foods nutrient dense diet is not only good for our overall health, but it can be really supportive in the healing process for Lyme as it's providing you with essential vitamins and minerals and antioxidants.
Now, Lyme disease also triggers a lot of inflammation in the body, so incorporating more anti-inflammatory foods like fatty fish and walnuts and flax seed, which are all very high in omega 3s, can also be very helpful.
And it's also important to remember to limit those highly processed and refined foods as these contribute to inflammation as well as they can make symptoms worse for individuals.
Another thing that we can do is to choose probiotic rich foods like yogurts and sauerkraut or supplement probiotics, as well as these are going to help replenish that healthy bacteria in our gut, which is going to improve the function of our immune system.
Lactobacillus and bifido bacterium strains in particular help to modulate our immune response, and as we know, our gut microbiome is compromised with Lyme disease as well as with antibiotic treatment.
Vitamin C rich foods like found in citrus fruits can also be beneficial as they help to improve immune cell function and can potentially shorten the length of infection. Vitamin C also assists in the formation of our white blood cells, which are going to be vital in combating infections.
How is Lyme disease related to gut health?
Well, there's a growing body of research suggesting that there's a strong connection between our gut health and Lyme disease.
The gut is home to our gut microbiome, which plays a crucial role in our immune function nutrient absorption, as well as our overall health and Lyme disease can have a significant impact on our gut health as well as an imbalance in our gut microbiome may contribute to the development and persistence of Lyme disease symptoms.
Antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease can disrupt the balance of the healthy bacteria in our gut leading to gut dysbiosis, which is that imbalance of good and back bacteria in the gut.
This imbalance can compromise our immune function as well as lead to things like digestive issues and fatigue and brain fog.
The gut microbiome plays a huge role in modulating our immune system and it can, an imbalance in our gut can lead to an underactive or overactive immune response, potentially contributing to the development or persistence of Lyme disease symptoms.
And then lastly, a healthy gut is essential for nutrient absorption, so an imbalance gut can really impair the body's ability to absorb nutrients well, and this can make our symptoms worse as well as slow the recovery process for Lyme to support gut health and to potentially aid in the recovery of Lyme disease.
It's important to consider certain strategies like incorporating more probiotic rich foods and prebiotics, which are going to feed that beneficial bacteria, as well as follow a nutrient dense anti-inflammatory diet, and by addressing gut health, individuals with Lyme disease may experience improved symptom management as well as enhanced immune function.
Wrap-Up
To wrap up our topic for today, Lyme disease is a complex and often misunderstood condition that can have far reaching impacts on human health.
It requires a multifaceted approach to diagnosis, treatment, and management.
It's important to eat a well-balanced, nutrient dense whole foods diet while trying to really decrease those inflammatory foods.
Vitamin C, Omega 3s as well as probiotics may also be beneficial. Knowing that our gut health significantly can impact Lyme disease. Doing what we can to support it is going to be essential.
That's it for today's video. If you like this video, please hit the like button and subscribe for more nutrition videos.
If you're interested in working with our clinic, you could click the link here to schedule an appointment.
We do take insurance and you can find more information about that on our website.
Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye.
If you'd like to explore any of this information further or obtain an individualized nutrition plan, you can schedule an initial appointment at our clinic. We also take insurance and some of our clients get full coverage, which is great.
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