How Do You Know if Its Lyme Disease

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Summary

What is Lyme disease?

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection you go from the seize with teeth of an infected tick. At outset, Lyme disease usually causes symptoms such equally a rash, fever, headache, and fatigue. Only if it is not treated early, the infection can spread to your joints, center, and nervous arrangement. Prompt treatment can help you recover quickly.

What causes Lyme disease?

Lyme disease is acquired by bacteria. In the United States, this is unremarkably a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi. It spreads to humans through the bite of an infected tick. The ticks that spread information technology are blacklegged ticks (or deer ticks). They are usually found in the:

• Northeast
• Mid-Atlantic
• Upper Midwest
• Pacific coast, especially northern California

These ticks can adhere to any part your body. But they are often establish in hard-to-see areas such every bit your groin, armpits, and scalp. Usually the tick must be attached to yous for 36 to 48 hours or more than to spread the bacterium to y'all.

Who is at gamble for Lyme affliction?

Anyone can get a tick bite. But people who spend lots of time outdoors in wooded, grassy areas are at a college risk. This includes campers, hikers, and people who piece of work in gardens and parks.

Virtually tick bites happen in the summertime months when ticks are most agile and people spend more time outdoors. Simply you can get bitten in the warmer months of early fall, or even belatedly winter if temperatures are unusually high. And if there is a balmy winter, ticks may come out before than usual.

What are the symptoms of Lyme disease?

Early symptoms of Lyme disease first between 3 to 30 days later an infected tick bites you. The symptoms tin include:

• A red rash called erythema migrans (EM). Most people with Lyme affliction go this rash. It gets bigger over several days and may feel warm. Information technology is commonly not painful or itchy. As information technology starts to get amend, parts of it may fade. Sometimes this makes the rash expect like a "balderdash's-eye."
• Fever
• Chills
• Headache
• Fatigue
• Musculus and articulation aches
• Swollen lymph nodes

If the infection is not treated, it can spread to your joints, heart, and nervous system. The symptoms may include:

• Astringent headaches and neck stiffness
• Additional EM rashes on other areas of your body
• Facial palsy, which is a weakness in your facial muscles. It tin can cause drooping on 1 or both sides of your face.
• Arthritis with severe joint hurting and swelling, especially in your knees and other big joints
• Hurting that comes and goes in your tendons, muscles, joints, and bones
• Middle palpitations, which are feelings that your heart is skipping a crush, fluttering, pounding, or beating also hard or too fast
• An irregular heart beat (Lyme carditis)
• Episodes of dizziness or shortness of breath
• Inflammation of the brain and spinal string
• Nerve pain
• Shooting pains, numbness, or tingling in the hands or feet

How is Lyme illness diagnosed?

To brand a diagnosis, your health care provider will consider:

• Your symptoms
• How likely it is that you lot were exposed to infected blacklegged ticks
• The possibility that other illnesses may cause similar symptoms
• Results of whatsoever lab tests

Most Lyme disease tests check for antibodies made by the torso in response to infection. These antibodies can take several weeks to develop. If you are tested right away, it may non prove that you have Lyme disease, fifty-fifty if you accept it. So you may need to have some other exam subsequently.

What are the treatments for Lyme disease?

Lyme illness is treated with antibiotics. The earlier you are treated, the better; it gives you lot the best gamble of fully recovering quickly.

Afterwards treatment, some patients may still accept pain, fatigue, or difficulty thinking that lasts more than 6 months. This is called post-treatment Lyme illness syndrome (PTLDS). Researchers don't know why some people accept PTLDS. There is no proven handling for PTLDS; long-term antibiotics take not been shown to assist. However, at that place are ways to help with the symptoms of PTLDS. If yous have been treated for Lyme illness and still feel unwell, contact your health care provider about how to manage your symptoms. Most people do become ameliorate with time. But it tin take several months earlier you feel all meliorate.

Can Lyme disease be prevented?

To prevent Lyme affliction, y'all should lower your run a risk of getting a tick bite:

• Avoid areas where ticks live, such equally grassy, brushy, or wooded areas. If you are hiking, walk in the center of the trail to avoid brush and grass.
• Use an insect repellent with DEET
• Treat your clothing and gear with a repellant containing 0.v% permethrin
• Article of clothing light-colored protective wearable, so you can easily meet any ticks that get on you lot
• Wear a long-sleeve shirt and long pants. Also tuck your shirt into your pants and your pant legs into your socks.
• Check yourself, your children, and your pets daily for ticks. Carefully remove whatsoever ticks you notice.
• Take a shower and wash and dry your clothes at loftier temperatures after beingness outdoors

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• Signs and Symptoms of Untreated Lyme Disease (Centers for Affliction Control and Prevention) Also in Castilian

• Lyme Affliction Tests (National Library of Medicine) Too in Spanish

• Lyme Disease Transmission (Centers for Illness Control and Prevention)
• Neurological Complications of Lyme Illness (National Constitute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke)

• Chronic Lyme Disease (National Found of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
• Postal service-Treatment Lyme Illness Syndrome (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

• Lyme Illness: Fact or Fiction? (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

• Lyme Disease Data (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• Scientists Piece of work Toward a Rapid Bespeak-of-Intendance Diagnostic Test for Lyme Affliction (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
• Tickborne Diseases Are Likely to Increase, Say NIAID Officials (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

• Lyme Affliction (Nemours Foundation)
• Lyme Illness (VisualDX)

How Do You Know if Its Lyme Disease

Source: https://medlineplus.gov/lymedisease.html

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