Lyme Disease

At Sunridge, we know all about Lyme Disease

• Lyme Disease Often Missed as Cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Lyme Disease - The Cause of 1/3 of psychiatric disorders

Lyme Disease is caused by an infection by a spiral-shaped bacteria called Borrelia Burgdorferi. This infection can be transmitted by ticks, but also mosquitos. When a person is infected with this bacteria, symptoms produced can mimic virtually any disease making it difficult to diagnose and is the reason why people are often misdiagnosed with a different condition and don't receive appropriate treatment. Anyone with a chronic illness and especially those diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia or immune dysfunction need to consider Lyme disease as the cause.

At Sunridge, our physicians are experts in dealing with chronic disease and are educated about Lyme disease and other chronic infections. The most advanced diagnostics are utilized and testing from laboratories that specialize in testing tick-borne illness exclusively are used.

Once a diagnosis is made, a individualized program is created using a integrative approach. Using Lyme-specific natural supplements, immune building and antimicrobial IV's, as well as conventional medications, most patients are back on track to a full quality of life.

Lyme Disease is often misdiagnosed as:

Common symptoms of associated with Lyme Disease include:

Two educational Lyme Disease videos

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For answers to your questions or to make an appointment, call us toll-free at (800) 923-7878 to speak with a Patient Care Representative. Let us help you get your life back.

Lyme Disease Often Missed as Cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Anyone with a chronic illness, whether it be chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia or an autoimmune illness, needs to consider Lyme disease as the cause. Lyme disease can mimic virtually any disease and as such has been called the “great imitator”.

Patients with chronic Lyme disease usually have symptoms of fatigue, sleep problems, joint and/or muscle pain as well as brain fog. Infection with Lyme can be even more serious causing low-grade encephalopathy (infection of the brain) which can results in psychiatric symptoms such as depression, bipolar disorder, panic attacks or anxiety, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease as well as many other neurological diseases and psychiatric illnesses.

Since the symptoms can so variable and can manifest in over 100 different symptoms with no two people being the same, Lyme disease is usually not even considered. Even if testing is performed, standard testing misses over 90% of the cases of chronic Lyme disease. This is because the standard methods of testing were designed to test for Acute Lyme Disease and not Chronic Lyme. The standard testing method is an immunoassay test of IgG and IgM antibodies followed by Western blot for confirmation. In addition, most doctors use the CDC (Center for Disease Control) criteria to define identify a positive test. The problem with this is that the the CDC criteria was never meant for diagnosis, it was meant for epidemiological surveillance (tracking). At Sunridge Medical our physcians use an expanded Western blot with revised requirement criteria for diagnosis. This allows for improved sensitivity for detection as well as a low false-positive rate. Our tests are run at Igenex Labs in California. Igenex is a laboratory the specializes in the testing of tick-borne illness exclusively and is considered the top laboratory for Lyme testing.

If one is diagnosed with Lyme disease, the treatment is not as simple as the FDA claims. Since infection with Lyme can transform itself into various forms - the standard, cell walled form, the non-cell walled form L-form as well the cyst form treatment with antibiotics alone is often ineffective as the antibiotic treatment is only effective against the standard, cell-walled form of Lyme. With this being said, even using antibiotics for extended periods such as months or even years can be of little benefit. In our opinion, it is important to have a multi-factorial, multi-system, integrative approach to be effective against Lyme Disease.

At Sunridge Medical, our physicians use combination antibiotics to treat the various forms of Lyme and at the same time use other combination medications to increase immune function, modulate hormones, treat coagulation disorders as well as detoxify the body of the infection. This dramatically increases the success of treatment for Lyme Disease.

Lyme Disease the cause of 1/3 of psychiatric disorders?

For answers to your questions or to make an appointment, call us toll-free at (800) 923-7878 to speak with a Patient Care Representative. Let us help you get your life back.