Dr. Kyle Warren
Meghan Feir Walker
Have you felt like your life is doomed because of Lyme disease? Do you worry that you’ll never get over Lyme and co-infections and that you’ll feel sick forever? While chronic Lyme disease long-term effects are very real, devastating, and debilitating, we’re here to tell you that you can recover.
In this article, I’ll cover some of the questions I get asked most frequently from new patients, including questions about tick bites, timelines, long-term effects, and much more. But the main message I want to drive home is that at any stage of Lyme, you can get better.
What to know about Lyme disease beyond the bite
When you first get Lyme, it often produces symptoms that resemble a summer flu. You may also get a localized rash that can look like a bullseye. Unfortunately, not everyone gets the classic bullseye rash, which is a clear indication that you’ve been infected with Lyme.
For some people, the Lyme infection rapidly spreads throughout the body, and it can happen as early as about a month after getting infected. It may hit their nervous system, causing strange neurological symptoms like Bell's palsy, burning or tingling sensations, and any other kind of cranial nerve problem. Depending on which nerve it hits, it can give you different symptoms. These symptoms usually don’t develop until 2-12 months after getting infected, but in some cases, they can develop even sooner.
You may not even remember getting a flu-like illness when it was in the acute stage, and it may have only given you light symptoms that were barely noticeable. But when Lyme enters the chronic phase, your body develops harsher symptoms that often present like rheumatoid arthritis or another kind of inflammatory arthritis, chronic pain, lupus, and neurological disorders.
While the antibiotic protocol for Lyme disease is extremely effective if caught and treated early (within the first 30 days), many people don’t catch it in time. The longer you wait, the less effective the antibiotic protocol becomes for treating Lyme disease, and other protocols aimed toward chronic phases are necessary.
Once you get past one to two months, and definitely by three to six months, you're into the more chronic and more elusive phases of the disease. Pain/inflammation and neurological issues are the two most common long-term presentations that can develop months to years after exposure in certain individuals.
How long do Lyme disease symptoms last?
Because a certain percentage of people develop chronic Lyme disease, their symptoms will last in perpetuity until treated effectively.
As mentioned, in the acute stage, people with Lyme will often experience flu-like symptoms, headaches, and sometimes fevers that typically go away in the first one to two months. But then it can transform into many other symptoms.
Lyme bacteria can go on to affect every organ and area of the body. For example, Lyme can cause some heart-related symptoms, and Lyme patients often end up in the ER because the symptoms are so scary and often resemble heart attacks. However, the most common symptom presentations in Lyme patients are chronic inflammatory joint, muscle, and headache issues, along with neurological complications where your nervous system is behaving abnormally. These issues are often paired with intense fatigue.
One classic type of Lyme fatigue occurs when you push yourself too much one day and crash the next. The medical term for this is called “post-exertional malaise,” but I call it “push-crash fatigue.” You push yourself to do something, then you crash and have to recover.
For many people, some symptoms aren’t constant. They may have intense symptoms one week, but they lessen in intensity the next. Despite the up-and-down nature of these symptoms, they will last until treated effectively.
Why do symptoms continue for some people? Factors that may influence symptom duration
Why is it that a certain percentage of people develop worsening symptoms and continued infection? Why can’t their body defeat the Lyme bacteria right away?
There are many factors that influence the body’s ability to defeat infections.
One of the key things we first inquire about with new patients is their lifestyle and medical history. We want to see how many cofactors they have that make it harder for their immune system to defeat intruders.
It’s important to remember that the majority of the time, when a person develops chronic Lyme, they aren’t just fighting Lyme alone. Their body is bombarded with multiple enemy attacks. About 93% of chronic Lyme patients are also fighting at least one co-infection with it. When you combine co-infections with Lyme, they both become much more powerful and harder on your body. Lyme plus Babesia, or Lyme plus Bartonella, or Lyme plus Anaplasma, or Lyme plus Powassan virus will make it so much harder for your body to defeat these intruders on its own.
They are all trying to evade your immune system in slightly different ways, and they're able to successfully do that and cause chronic illness a certain percentage of the time.
If we throw other health challenges on top of Lyme and co-infections, like chemical exposures, toxin overload, abnormal or chronic stress, poor nutrition, poor sleep, etc., it can make getting better from Lyme more complicated. The more overloaded your body is, the harder it is to ward off attacks.
What are the long-term effects of Lyme disease?
As previously mentioned, for most people, the long-term effects of Lyme disease are felt in their joints and nervous system, but others experience heart-related symptoms.
What I want to stress is that when Lyme bacteria are hurting part of your body, we want to be able to get rid of the bugs, help your immune system calm down, and then repair the parts of your body that took the brunt of the damage so that you can live your healthiest life.
If you feel like you’re doomed and that you’ll never recover, I want to encourage you that you can get better. I've seen people who have had Lyme for months and people who have had it for decades heal and recover and go on to live healthy, robust lives.
If you’re 60 years old, I can't make you 20 again, but we can make you healthier from this point forward. I've seen people of all ages, from children to adults up to 90, who were disabled from Lyme recover (I haven’t had a patient yet who's older than 90), and you can, too.
What are the symptoms of Lyme disease after a few months?
Why do symptoms become chronic for some people, but other people just get better from Lyme disease?
In 2022, the CDC made notable changes to their website, where the CDC finally acknowledged that chronic Lyme is real, even if they dubbed it post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. While I’m not a fan of the name, for various reasons, that was groundbreaking for everyone in the Lyme community who had been fighting for so many decades for acknowledgement. Before that, it was considered pseudoscience and pseudo-medicine.
One of the big arguments is, what's the failure rate? There are estimates that anywhere between about 5-30% of people who get Lyme go on to develop chronic, long-term symptoms and do not recover and return to their previous level of health (without getting proper treatment).
How bad can Lyme disease get?
A big misunderstanding with Lyme is that everyone who gets it becomes disabled.
While Lyme can absolutely disable some individuals because of the havoc it wreaks on every part of the body, most people are still able to hold a job, walk, and do some activities, even though it takes every ounce of strength they have.
20-25% of the people who come to my clinic are so sick, they are disabled...
About 20-25% of the people who come to my clinic are so sick, they are disabled and can’t work, go to school, or function normally at all. But 75-80% of the Lyme patients I meet are pushing through it the best they can. It still totally affects their ability to work and function, and drains their motivation. They don’t have the energy to do social things or to be the kind of spouse, parent, friend, and family member they want to be. But they are still doing as much as they can.
It’s amazing what people push through for their family and for those whom they love, and how they try to make the best of life. It's very inspiring for me to see what people do in the face of some of these health challenges. But there's definitely a subset of people who have developed such an intense array of symptoms that they just can’t push through it anymore.
We want you to be healthy again so you can live life. The funnest part of my job is when people come back and report how much better they’re doing. Recently, one of my patients was telling me all the things she’s able to do now that she wasn’t able to a year ago. She's able to help her daughter with things she couldn’t before. Her marriage has significantly improved. She even picked up a part-time job, which she definitely could not do before. I love seeing people heal and be able to engage in life again. That's the most rewarding part of the job.
Can you ever fully recover from Lyme disease?
Another question I frequently get asked is, “Can you ever fully recover from Lyme disease?”
Hidden in this question is fear. People are worried they may never recover. But I can’t say it strongly enough: YES. Absolutely, yes, you can get better from Lyme disease, even if you’ve had it for months to decades.
When people are so sick, they often feel hopeless, especially if they’ve had it for years or decades. They’ve tried so many things, like antibiotics, spent so much money, invested so much time, and nothing has helped. This is why we’ve started recording testimonials. We want you to know that there is hope, and you can be healthy again.
When is it too late to respond to a tick bite?
In the acute phase, the antibiotics work best by 30 days after getting bitten, but they start becoming extremely resistant to the standard antibiotics by 60 days (as found in a study by Tulane).
By 60 days, you’ll have to start doing much more than the standard protocol to get results.
However, there is no “too late” when it comes to treating Lyme, whether you’ve had it for six months, six years, or six decades. I have seen people of all stages heal, recover, and go on to live healthy lives.
Supporting your body after a tick bite
It's important during spring, summer, and fall months—any time when the temperature is above about 28 degrees—to be tick aware. The ticks can be active, so if you know you've been bitten, take immediate action. You don’t want it turning into a chronic form of Lyme because it gets much more complicated. The standard protocol of taking antibiotics for two to four weeks is 90% effective if administered immediately.
If you get a bite, we recommend talking to your doctor and asking to go on the antibiotic protocol.
Since one tick bite can carry many other diseases and infections besides Lyme, we also recommend taking our acute bundle for a month, along with the standard antibiotic protocol.
Our acute Lyme bundle includes garlic, neem, and a probiotic that has the immune nutritional support necessary to handle a myriad of tick infections. In the acute setting, there isn’t enough time to run a thorough test (because of the time it takes to test, get results back, etc.) and see exactly what you contracted. However, garlic and neem are excellent at helping your body ward off around 10 different tick-borne illnesses that can come through.
Healing is not one-size-fits-all: Schedule your free 15-minute consultation
Healing is not a one-size-fits-all approach. At our office, if you are struggling with Lyme disease and/or co-infections, we want to look at your history and symptoms and run a thorough tick-borne illness panel to accurately uncover which infections you’re up against.
We believe in the body’s ability to heal. If you are struggling with your health and want help, please contact our clinic. At Restorative Health Solutions, we offer individualized care and can help create a plan tailored to your symptoms and health issues.
Schedule a free 15-minute consultation with Dr. Paul or Dr. Warren to explore a personalized approach for a helpful and effective path to recovery.
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