Do You Suffer from Lyme Disease Symptoms?
2021 COMPLETE GUIDE for understanding Lyme disease, finding the right Lyme disease doctor, and restoring normalcy to your life!
2021 Lyme Disease Guide
How To Find A Lyme Disease Doctor?
All your Lyme disease physician, symptoms, and treatment questions answered.
Updated: April, 2021
Suffering from Lyme disease symptoms? Learn how to find the right Lyme disease specialist.
What Is Lyme Disease and How Is it Spread?
Lyme disease is a prevalent tick-borne illness spread to humans through the bite of black-legged ticks, which typically pick up an infectious bacterium by biting diseased deer or mice. Chronic symptoms of Lyme disease usually begin between three days and several months after the initial tick bite. Untreated Lyme disease can spread to the nervous system, heart, and joints and may cause permanent damage.
The deer tick, Ixodes scapularis, spreads Lyme disease in the mid-Atlantic, northeastern, and north-central United States. On the Pacific Coast, western black-legged ticks, Ixodes pacificus, spread the disease. Most transmission of Lyme disease to humans occurs through the bite of infected immature ticks, or nymphs, which are so tiny that they are challenging to see. Nymphs are most commonly active during the spring and summer months. Larger adult ticks are most active during the autumn and winter months; they are more likely to be seen and removed by human hosts before bacteria transmission occurs because of their size. Ticks often hide in difficult-to-see parts of the human body, including the scalp, groin, and armpits. Generally speaking, a tick must be attached to the human body for at least 36 to 48 hours before the bacterium that causes Lyme disease is transmitted.
Who Gets Lyme Disease?
Adults and children of any age can get infected with Lyme disease. People who camp, hike, golf, play in grassy or wooded areas, and engage in similar outdoor activities are at increased risk of exposure. Living in an area where there are ticks puts you at risk of being bitten by a tick infected with Lyme disease. Located in Hudson Valley, NY, Bock Integrative Medicine is at the heart of the tick-borne illness epidemic. As such, the Lyme disease doctors at Bock Integrative has accrued years of experience diagnosing and treating Lyme disease, making them trusted leaders in the field. Kenneth A. Bock, M.D. is a Lyme-literate doctor who has successfully cared for patients with multi-symptom, multisystem medical problems, including tick-borne illnesses, for over three decades. Jennifer Petkos has trained with Dr. Bock and has acquired comprehensive experience caring for children and adults with difficult-to-diagnose tick-borne disorders, including neuropsychiatric Lyme disease.
How long can you have Lyme disease without knowing?
There are three stages to Lyme disease progression (early localized, early disseminated, and late disseminated). However, symptoms can overlap, and some people have reached late-stage disease without ever having earlier-stage symptoms. Symptoms can vary between individuals and may occur soon after Lyme disease transmission or months later, making it difficult to diagnose and frustrating for people experiencing chronic symptoms without a clear idea of the cause
How Do I Know If I Have Lyme Disease?
Each person infected with Lyme disease can have a unique combination of symptoms and body system involvement
Does Lyme Disease Shorten Your Life?
Patients can often avoid late-stage Lyme disease through early diagnosis and proper treatment. Delayed treatment can result in frustrating chronic symptoms of increased severity. Lyme disease is rarely life-threatening, but delaying treatment can result in joint, nerve, or heart damage
When You May Need to Be Tested
Some of the more common symptoms of Lyme disease are listed below. If you have experienced any of these symptoms or have chronic, non-specific symptoms that have been difficult for doctors to diagnose and treat, it’s prudent to seek evaluation for Lyme disease.
- A red oval or bull’s-eye rash that appears anywhere on your body
- Joint swelling and pain
- Fatigue
- Muscle aches
- Fever
- Headache
- Dizziness
- Shortness of Breath
- Swollen lymph nodes
- Difficulty concentrating
- Difficulty sleeping
The most common symptoms of Lyme disease in children are fatigue, fever, joint and muscle pain, and other flu-like symptoms
What are the Neurological Symptoms of Lyme Disease?
Some neurological symptoms of Lyme disease that some individuals experience are:
Numbness in the Hands or Feet
- Pain
- Weakness
- Facial Palsy (loss of muscle tone in the face)
- Visual Disturbances
- Fever, Stiff Neck, and Severe Headache
- Nerve Pain (including shooting pain or tingling in the hands or feet)
Lyme Disease Diagnosis and Treatment
How Is Lyme Disease Diagnosed?
Because various bacterial organisms can cause tick-borne illnesses, they can affect multiple body systems and have symptoms that vary widely between infected individuals. This makes Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses challenging to diagnose, especially among children. As such, a large number of cases of tick-borne illness are misdiagnosed. For an accurate diagnosis of your frustrating symptoms, it’s crucial to consult a tick-borne illness expert like Dr. Kenneth Bock, who has decades of experience diagnosing the root cause of chronic illnesses and restoring balance to his patients’ immune systems
Do I need to see an infectious disease specialist to get tested for Lyme disease?
An experienced and knowledgeable practitioner like Dr. Kenneth Bock dedicates himself to the accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of Lyme disease. Dr. Bock has over 35 years of experience diagnosing and treating Lyme disease in adults and children. He and his experienced team of medical professionals at Bock Integrative Medicine have a thorough understanding of Lyme disease’s complexity and take a comprehensive approach to diagnosing and treating Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases
How is Lyme Disease Treated?
Lyme disease is a condition that requires a comprehensive approach to treatment that goes beyond the treatment of symptoms to determine the actual cause of illness. It is the perfect example of a condition that requires comprehensive physiologic balance (immune, hormonal, metabolic, nutritional and psychosocial) in addition to antimicrobial therapy
What kind of doctor tests for Lyme disease?
The complexities surrounding accurate diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses make it crucial for you to consult an experienced practitioner who takes a comprehensive approach to evaluating chronic medical conditions. Dr. Kenneth Bock is a board-certified family physician and a well-respected leader in integrative medicine who has accumulated more than 35 years of experience diagnosing the root cause of chronic illnesses and restoring balance to his patients’ immune systems. Dr. Bock takes a unique “whole body” approach to diagnose and treat chronic diseases like Lyme disease and integrates alternate modalities with conventional medicine into his comprehensive integrative medicine practice
Who is the best doctor for Lyme disease?
At Bock Integrative, one of the few practices in the U.S. that focuses on integrative pediatric Lyme disease, Dr. Kenneth Bock and his team go beyond the conventional “one-size-fits-all” treatment approach. For over three decades, Kenneth A. Bock, M.D. has successfully cared for patients with multi-symptom, multisystem medical problems, including tick-borne illnesses. Jennifer Petkos has trained with Dr. Bock and has acquired comprehensive experience caring for children and adults with difficult-to-diagnose tick-borne disorders, including neuropsychiatric Lyme disease. The Bock Integrative team considers symptoms, physical findings, and laboratory results in designing and implementing an individualized comprehensive Lyme disease treatment protocol that maximizes the chances for a positive clinical response that can restore your child’s health. Their inclusive diagnostic approach is in line with the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). The compassionate Lyme disease experts at Bock Integrative understand how frustrating it can be when you or your child face chronic, often debilitating symptoms and have been unable to obtain a clear diagnosis or treatment plan. The Bock Integrative team is committed to helping alleviate that anxiety and frustration, taking the time to listen to your story to discover essential pieces of information that could help uncover the root cause of your illness
Can You Ever Be Cured of Lyme Disease?
At Bock Integrative Medicine, we’ve designed a comprehensive model of individualized care that maximizes the chances for a positive clinical response that can restore your health. We use the most recent breakthroughs in medical science and technology to create an evidence-based treatment regimen highly personalized to your needs, including individualized combination therapy treatments that are supported by research. We prioritize your safety, avoiding the use of medications when possible, and combining them with supplements, herbs, and dietary modification to protect your liver and digestive tract when pharmaceuticals, such as antibiotics, are necessary to treat infections. If you want highly trained, experienced and compassionate medical providers dedicated to determining the root cause of your illness, depend on the tick-borne illness experts at Bock Integrative.
Contact the Medical Detectives at Bock Integrative Medicine
…and take the first step in restoring normalcy to your or your loved one’s life.
Bock Integrative has helped restore normalcy to patients’ lives worldwide and locally, including New York, New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.
Find out how the board-certified experts at Bock Integrative Medicine can help determine the true cause of your chronic symptoms. Call (845) 758-0001 or email to set up an appointment for a consultation.