Or better yet, find a doc that will just give you the drugs to nuke lyme without tests. The tests are only good roughly 50% of the time. False positive/negatives suck, esp if the doctor clings to those tests.
Or better yet, find a doc that will just give you the drugs to nuke lyme without tests. The tests are only good roughly 50% of the time. False positive/negatives suck, esp if the doctor clings to those tests.
With respect to false positives/negatives, use the igenex test. If you get a good doctor, he'll know how to interpret the results better; you can have high results in certain bands which the CDC does not usually consider relevant but which can still be indicative.
All that aside, no responsible doc "just gives you the drugs". Let's not forget there are a thousand things it could be; just giving the drugs for all would probably kill you. Also, that's how we end up with resistant bacteria.
I got rocky mountain spotted fever, and was treated for that. It's easy to see cause your body gets spots along with pretty nasty illness. During that course, I was also treated for Lyme as well.
The key here: I was bitten by the primary carriers of lyme and spotted fever, and had one of those diseases. I'm not recommending everybody be given lyme antiparasiticals - but use some critical thought here. We can tell when we've upped our risk significantly. And some doc that talks for 5 min sure doesn't really have much vested interest.
1) There are different strains of Lyme disease (and other tick-borne diseases) and certain antibiotics are more effective than others.
2) Using antibiotics where it turns out they might not be needed only contributes to growing antibiotic ineffectiveness.