Although it is difficult to know exactly how many people have Lyme disease, approximately 476,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with the condition each year.
This disease is caused by a bacterium that a tick carries, and it can lead to a variety of health issues. From joint pain to rashes, Lyme disease can affect your health, but most people don’t realize it can also impact your brain.
What Is Lyme Disease? Symptoms and Stages
The Borrelia bacteria causes Lyme disease, and you can get it if you get bitten by a deer tick (black-legged tick).
Early-stage Lyme disease can have symptoms like:
- Lesions or rash
- Headaches
- Stiff neck
- Fever
- Fatigue
- Body and joint aches
- Swollen lymph nodes
Once the disease progresses into the second stage, some common symptoms are:
- Paralysis of facial muscles
- Neuropathy
- Interruption to the heart’s electrical system
You may also experience pain that starts at your back and spreads to your legs and swelling to the tissues of the eye. Neurologic symptoms can appear during this stage, called the early disseminated stage of Lyme disease.
Late Lyme disease can cause symptoms months or even a year after the bite and can include difficulty concentrating (brain fog), swollen joints, and damage to nerves all over your body.
How Lyme Disease Affects the Brain
When the Lyme disease bacteria reaches the central or peripheral nervous systems, you can start experiencing neurological symptoms.
A facial droop (Bell’s Palsy) occurs if the bacteria affect the cranial nerve. The facial droop can be present on both sides or one side of the face.
If the bacteria affect the peripheral nerves, you may experience radiculoneuropathy, causing numbness, tingling, shooting pains, and weakness in the arms and legs.
When there is central nervous system damage, you can experience Lyme meningitis, which causes fever, sensitivity to light, stiff neck, and headaches. You may also experience visual disturbances.
Treating Lyme Disease
Symptoms like Bell’s Palsy require oral antibiotics, while Lyme meningitis symptoms can be treated with oral or intravenous antibiotics, depending on how severe the disease is.
Not receiving prompt treatment in the early stages of the disease can cause some lasting nervous system damage, but most people who get the right antibiotics fully recover.
Getting Help for Lasting Symptoms
If you continue having symptoms of Lyme disease, especially issues with your central or peripheral nervous systems, you may not be sure if healing is possible.
These days, with regenerative medicine leading the way in treating chronic and neurodegenerative diseases, you can improve the damage the bacteria caused.
The potential use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in Lyme disease is based on their immunomodulatory and regenerative properties. MSCs have the ability to modulate the immune response, reduce inflammation, and promote tissue repair, which could potentially be beneficial in Lyme disease where there is an inflammatory response and tissue damage.
Stem cell therapies that harness the body’s healing power can offer the chance to improve the symptoms that impact your quality of life.
This post was written by a medical professional at Stemedix Inc. At Stemedix we provide access to Regenerative Medicine for ALS, also known as Stem Cell for Fibromyalgia. Regenerative medicine has the natural potential to help improve symptoms sometimes lost from the progression of many conditions.