Symptoms Specific to Lyme? Differentiating Lyme from other types of ME/CFS

[leokitten]

Since standard Lyme lab tests are insensitive and inconclusive what I read is that LLMDs primarily use clinical information to diagnose, but to me this seems to not make a great deal of sense because wouldn't they then diagnose most if not all CFS sufferers with Lyme disease?

I read a few official Lyme symptom lists and they are pretty much 100% identical to CFS except the initial rash which doesn't occur in many Lyme cases anyway.

I think it's extremely important to know definitively whether you have Lyme or not if you are suffering from CFS. The reason is because if you do have Lyme then it's quite possible that Lyme was the root cause of your CFS (unless you got it well into your disease), and other co-infections you might have were brought on because Borrelia is weakening/suppressing your immune system therefore allowing things like latent viral infections reactivate.

Unlike most other subsets of CFS where we actually don't know what the root cause is, if you were infected with Lyme it's a plausible theory that it was the root cause and over time weakened your immune system then causing other infections, etc and bring on CFS. So if you treat the Lyme effectively (along with the co-infections) you will have a greater chance of full recovery. Otherwise if you treat everything else and test negative for Lyme but still have it then everything will come back and you will have wasted your time.

I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on any symptoms or clinical information that are specific to Lyme that differentiate it from other CFS types? There has to be some clear differences and for some reason I find it very hard to find answers to this on the web.

 

[Sushi]

Since standard Lyme testing can be inaccurate I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on any symptoms that are specific to Lyme to look for if you have CFS? Or is this very difficult to know? Very hard to find answers to this on the web.

It is hard to find such answers because the symptoms of Lyme (or more properly Borreliosis as there are over 100 strains of Borrelia) are common to many diseases including ME/CFS. I believe that @GcMAF Australia has a symptom list and maybe he could post it here on this thread--it is already on the forum somewhere.

Bartonella seems to be another of the zoonosis infections (same or similar vectors as Borreliosis) that are being commonly found in this patient group. Again it shares symptoms with other conditions but seems to have more neurological symptoms.

Sushi

 

[taniaaust1]

There is something somewhere which I found interesting which got me even more thinking I could have lyme, completely shocking me with just how well I fit it. A very easy to read chart which has on it lyme and all the other infections which commonly go with it and each one expressing its most common symptoms to help be able to tell which is probably which and compare those. I think the chart is online (I have a copy of it somewhere.. if I find the chart sometime and see exactly what the chart was called, I may be able to search for it again and find the link to it. Im sure you'd find this interesting.

 

[taniaaust1]

The one Im thinking of isnt the following, which isnt all that great if anyone sees my post and wonders http://lymedisease.org/pdf/coinfections.pdf . The one Im refering to also breaks the symptoms down to the types of symptoms too if Im remembering connectly (is nicely detailed but simple for comparision of various things).

 

[Firestormm]

@leokitten when all else fails have a read of this: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Lyme-disease/Pages/Introduction.aspx

 

[brenda]

I already had mild to moderate ME when I got bitten (but did not find out I had Lyme for years).

I suddenly became much worse with what seemed like meningitis, became seriously MCS, had neuralgia, lost my appetite and a lot of weight, and was very seriously sick, sensitive to just about everything. I gradually improved due to the borrelia 'cloaking' and my immune system calming down and have a pattern of relapsing. Flare ups of pain and inflammation in various joints is another sign.

 

[Helen]

http://www.lymeinfo.net/methylationblock.html

This makes sense to me as my labtest for methylation from HealthDiagnostics (former VitaminDiagnostics)
still showed abnormal low or high results after more than a year on a methylation protocol. I was then diagnosed with neuroborreliosis that could explain why my reduced glutathione still was low, though a little higher than in the first test.

I wish Rich´s theory would be studied scientifically as all but a few of PWME´s show genetic defects in the 23andme test in B12 and folate-metabolism which are crucial for a functioning methylation.

 

[Aerose91]

Do Lyme or it's co-infections carry the same PEM setbacks which can cause permenant disease progression?