Lyme Facts - What is Lyme disease?

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Lyme disease is a global epidemic, spread at an alarming rate. It is caused by a spirochete, a corkscrew shaped bacterium called Borrelia Burgorferi, primarily transmitted to humans by infected ticks, and even by fleas and mosquitos. If infected you are likely harboring multiple tick-borne infections that may include Lyme disease and its popular co-infection friends, bartonella, babesiosis, anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, relapsing fever, tularemia and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, that all need to be treated uniquely.

If not diagnosed and treated immediately tick-borne infections become chronic and more difficult to treat as infection and toxins invade the brain.

Lyme was first acknowledged in the 1970s, when an epidemic of arthritis, mainly in children, spread throughout rural communities around Old Lyme, Connecticut. The symptoms included swollen knees, paralyis, skin rashes, headaches, and chronic fatigue.

These families were left undiagnosed and untreated for years. It was the persistence of two mothers from this group in Connecticut, that finally brought attention to the symptoms and the recognition of these symptoms as a disease. They called it Lyme, but still did not know what caused it.

In 1981, a scientist who was studying Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (also caused by a tick bite) began to study Lyme disease. This scientist, Willy Burgdorfer, found the connection between the deer tick and the disease. He discovered that a bacterium called a spirochete, carried by ticks, was causing Lyme. In 1982 based on his discovery the spirochete was named Borrelia Burgorferi.