Diseases can spread in many ways. Some of them due to being unhygienic while others can be transmitted through bugs or insects.
The most common one is Dengue spread by mosquitoes. However, today’s topic is about a lesser-known disease known as Lyme disease and how it affects the gastrointestinal tract and to see through the symptoms.
What Is Lyme Disease?
Lyme disease is usually spread by bacteria like Borrelia Burgerdoffi and Mayonii. But how does it enter our body you’d imagine?
It usually is spread when the person is bitten by certain bugs that act as carriers for them. Some of these insects could be black-legged ticks or deer ticks.
What Are The Stages?
Doctors classify diseases in three stages depending on the rate of their progression.
◼ Initial Stage – This is between the first two weeks after being bitten. Some of the symptoms include pain in the head, high body temperature, vomiting tendencies, fatigue, and rheumatic pain.
◼ The Secondary Stage – It marks the early dissemination of the bacteria throughout our body. It can have symptoms like facial paralysis, severe headache, nerve pain, and arrhythmia.
◼ The Last Stage – This is the last stage as bacterias gain complete dominance over the body. It is attributed to all the symptoms above in a heightened manner as well as extreme arthritis.
Other Symptoms
It includes a rash on the body. Typically it is not characterized by redness, itchiness, and pain but its appearance is similar to a target board.
You can find it anywhere on the body and is just the source of much worse physical symptoms.
Gastrointestinal Lyme Disease
If the bite is on the skin how does it affect your gut you may wonder? So basically, the bacteria put your whole body at risk and can manifest itself anywhere.
Since our digestive tract is sensitive, it gets affected dangerously.
Many patients have complained of experiencing leaky gut syndrome where bacterias wiggle through small intestines, and gastroparesis, where the food doesn’t move to the small intestine to assimilate, causing a lack of energy.
SIBO stops the small intestine from reaching its full potential and also puts the GI tract at greater risk.
What Are The Symptoms?
The symptoms can be these but not limited to-
◼ Abdominal Pain – The pain is unbearable and mimics one that we might get when affected by IBS.
◼ Tendency To Vomit – It also causes the patient an inability to keep their food in.
◼ Loose Motions – Due to the ineffective performance of the gastro system, patients pass loose stools leading to dehydration.
◼ Frequent Acid Reflux – This creates a burning sensation in the food pipe and even leads to loss of appetite altogether.
◼ Defecating Or Urinating Blood – In some cases where the bacteria has complete dominance over the digestive system, patients also compromise their excretory system and often excrete blood as well. Though not painful it is of much concern.
Treatment
The treatment mostly relies on antibiotics given orally or intravenously.
Dosage and kind can be decided by your health worker as per your progress on the timeline.
When it starts affecting the other parts of the body, the treatment can be concentrated on the most serious symptom.
How To Prevent It?
Since not going camping in summer is not an option, we can do the next best thing that can save us a lot of trouble.
◼ Wear long pants and long-sleeved tops – Cover all parts of your body twice.
◼ Carry an insect prevention cream – In the market, plenty of repellents can be used to save you from the bite.
◼ Never forget to bring an insect killer – If you are going deep into the forests where the ticks reside, you can move along by first spraying the insecticide first. This may kill any or all pesticides in the way.
◼ Remove the tick as soon as you spot it – In case you are bitten by one, make sure you use tissue paper to remove the tick carefully without leaving its sting inside. Additionally, wash the area with disinfectant.
◼ Try to avoid the tick-infested area – There are some areas that are more conducive to the ticks than others so stay away from those.
