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Lyme Disease Cases Expected to Spike

  • May 04, 2017

If you thought previous years were bad for ticks and Lyme disease, then you haven’t seen anything yet, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This year will see another huge spike in tick-borne diseases that ultimately will result in Lyme disease cases, CBS News reports. Experts say part of the problem lies in a prolific mouse population this year.

An estimated 300,000 Americans are diagnosed with Lyme disease each year, and the prevalence is rising. The majority of Lyme disease is spread through tick bites. Ticks pick up the disease bacteria when feeding on an infected host. 

White-footed mice infect 75 to 95 percent of larval ticks; while deer — which are often blamed for the disease — infect only about 1 percent. A huge reason the mice are to blame is due to urban sprawl and hunting, which have eliminated many of the mice's natural predators. 

Lyme disease is often difficult to diagnose, and when it is, antibiotics are usually the chosen course of treatment — a prescription I personally do not believe in. I recommend exhausting every natural alternative before resorting to long-term antibiotics as antibiotics seriously impair your gut microbiome. They also leave you open to yeast or fungal co-infections, which are already common in the disease. 

Eliminating the beneficial bacteria in your gut with antibiotics will also seriously impair your natural immune function, and may raise your risk of antibiotic-resistant infection, which could be life-threatening. A gentler solution to conventional antibiotics is the Nutramedix line of herbal antimicrobials. Other nutritional supplements that may be beneficial include probiotics, astaxanthin (to neutralize toxins), curcumin, quercetin (to reduce histamine) and resveratrol (which may treat Bartonella, a co-infection that often appears with Lyme).