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15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

bostonglobe.com

101–110 of 175 posts

Re: 15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

#101
post #89

I didn’t discover that ticks were a problem until I was in my mid 20s, and had been rolling around in deer-filled brush for years. Either I got very lucky, or have a chronic tick-borne disease. I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s. I’ve had every blood test under the sun, numerous sleep studies and tried every vitamin. I’ve had no answers and no change. S…

> I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s. If it's not severe, it may be simply getting older.

That feels very defeatist, if life only gets worse then I might as well just end it. I prefer to think it's something unexplained and it just shows up more in older people because more things have happened to them so they're more likely to have encountered whatever the cause is.

Re: 15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

#102
My pet theory is that lyme disease coevolved to make mamals "addicted" to ticks. Every reinfection and the resulting fever-body pyrolysis, resets the infections malaise sideffects for a while. Thus, if you where outside all the time, you would be conditioned to expose yourselfs to ticks all the time, to feel "healthy" again. If those little bastards secreted fentanyl it would have a similar outcome.

Re: 15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have tired ADHD diagnosis?

I have one :) Unmedicated. Side-effects impacted me more than the meds helped.

What were the side effects? High blood pressure, feeling like a "zombie", sleep getting worse?

I'd try centanafadine and see a top ADHD specialist. There are a lot of variables: molecule, dose, release profile, melatonin timing.

What is worth checking:

* Comorbid anxiety or trauma symptoms (PTSD)

* Hormone imbalance

Just because your blood work is perfect, it doesn't mean all is good. I have hypomagnesemia - the tests were perfect, yet my body needs way more magnesium to function properly.

Re: 15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

#104
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the dutch public health institute, the longer the tick is in the body, the bigger the chance of transmission. Early removal also does not prevent lyme, it just reduces the chances. Next to that, in The Netherlands we have a site to report tick bites and if they had lyme disease or not. It’s good to know if you should be extra vigilant after a bite from a certain area. I think the self-test could be very…

A site to report tick bytes. Is there a similar site to report mosquito bites? They also carry many debilitation or fatal diseases. I live in prime tick country. During peak season (March through June and again September through November) I can get 3 or 4 tick bites a day. I don't always get them all because they're completely painless while they're embedded (although I react strongly after they've been removed) and…

That must do wonders for antibiotic resistance.

Re: 15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

#105

I didn’t discover that ticks were a problem until I was in my mid 20s, and had been rolling around in deer-filled brush for years. Either I got very lucky, or have a chronic tick-borne disease. I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s. I’ve had every blood test under the sun, numerous sleep studies and tried every vitamin. I’ve had no answers and no change. S…

Do you drink coffee?

I've had a reckoning with my caffeine metabolism recently. I fall asleep very easily, like head hits pillow and I'm zonked within a minute. But I often wake up at 3 or 4am and am unable to go back asleep.

What I've learned is that caffeine metabolism goes down with age and sleep gets lighter with age. Even if you can fall asleep easily, the residual caffeine in the middle of the night is enough to wake you out of light sleep. I made a tool to convince myself to cut back: http://jitterdone.com

Re: 15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

#106
We are giving our dog Fluralaner/Bravecto[1] against ticks which paralyzes and kills them when they bite, drastically reducing potential exposure to Lyme disease. Unfortunately not approved for humans and therefore an interesting inverse: humans can get vaccinated against TBEV but not against Lyme disease whereas dogs can get vaccinated against Lyme disease but not TBEV.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluralaner

Re: 15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

#107
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be careful doing this if you have cats as pets.

I don’t have cats but from what I’ve read, you just need to keep them away from it until it dries.

Ive seen conflicting reports regarding safety of permethrin and cats.

Some say "neurotoxin". Others say "neurotoxin till dried".

Frankly, I'll keep it away in any form. I dont want to harm my cats. Even if it means that I'm a human pincushion to mosquitoes and ticks.

Re: 15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

#109
post #89

I didn’t discover that ticks were a problem until I was in my mid 20s, and had been rolling around in deer-filled brush for years. Either I got very lucky, or have a chronic tick-borne disease. I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s. I’ve had every blood test under the sun, numerous sleep studies and tried every vitamin. I’ve had no answers and no change. S…

> I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s. If it's not severe, it may be simply getting older.

You do get more sensitive to bad lifestyle habits in your 30s, but none of those are normal symptoms attributable to "aging" in your 30s. Really weird when people around this age act like they're just on death's doorstop.

Re: 15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

#110
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one :) Unmedicated. Side-effects impacted me more than the meds helped.

What were the side effects? High blood pressure, feeling like a "zombie", sleep getting worse? I'd try centanafadine and see a top ADHD specialist. There are a lot of variables: molecule, dose, release profile, melatonin timing. What is worth checking: * Comorbid anxiety or trauma symptoms (PTSD) * Hormone imbalance Just because your blood work is perfect, it doesn't mean all is good. I have hypomagnesemia - the test…

BP (manageable), tinnitus (BP related), prostate discharge (due to muscular tension), sleep getting worse as the week would go on until I'd have to stop. Sleep wasn't restful at all, which was the main problem. I'd feel like I'd closed my eyes and become unconscious, rather than actually asleep. I'd wake up in the morning like I'd been kept awake as some kind of torture all night, but with no recollection of it.

I desperately wanted ADHD meds to help, but in the end the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze so I stopped. I tried all 3 or 4 different stims and 2 non-stims.

Thank you for the pointers, I will look into them.

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