tick-borne disease

My primary specialty, my primary focus of practice is hands-on osteopathic manipulation.

So I treat people with anything from fibromyalgia, chronic migraines, tick-borne illness, POTS, post COVID.

We see all these things that are difficult to treat.

So what is the tick-borne illness, I guess the rate of tick-borne illness in Maine?

High.

Give us a sense of that.

Yeah.

So we have testing now that... you know, we have like bedside testing that we can do that's just a snap ELISA test, right? So we can take three drops of blood and throw it in a snap test and get an answer in eight minutes on whether or not this dog has a tick-borne disease, right? Talking about Lyme in particular though, like, even I think 15 years ago, the area of Lyme has just spread.

It's not a disease that we used to have to deal with.

And even now, a lot of my older clients are just not used to thinking about that, right? And so as veterinarians, I think one of our primary jobs is education.

Hey, you know, We may need to manage this differently because now we've got skin lesions and things like that.

But for the most part, you're looking at one or two ticks jumped on when owner went on a hike.

The reason that that would be our number two pest would be simply because of our tick-borne diseases that are spread.

We talked already about Lyme a little bit, but...

It's really good to be here.

So a lot of people always wonder, how did you get into this space? And I know that you are not a tick-borne disease patient.

So can you share with our listeners by, start by telling our listeners how you got into this community and what put tick-borne illness on your radar?

Well, first I should say, how did I get into this space here? We just came from going out tick dragging.

And, you know, there's a lot of time, and unless it's a tiny nymph, you know, if you have any smarts around it and you're aware, you can get it off you hopefully before it bites.

But the Lone Star, you're up against a much harder foe, and that's why... alpha gal has been a big concern and the lone star also carries rocky mountain spotted fever tularemia it can not always it's it's not that likely but they can carry it

i think it's more i think it's more prevalent than we think tularemia because we're not testing for it dr sobriani told us earlier that it's not even part of the standard tick-borne disease panel but yet it's something that is carried by the lone star tick which is exploding across the globe so i think we need to test for it more and maybe it's not as prevalent as Lyme or alpha-gal, but I think it's more prevalent than we think it is when we're saying there's two or three cases on Long Island that we're hearing now.

So that's a different podcast and a different story, right? So the other piece of this I want to talk about is we're here today because we had you out shooting footage for your documentary.

because the other risk factors were fine.

And that's when I started finding patients with chronic viral illnesses and with tick-borne illness.

And we started treating them.

That's the reason I first came to the ILADS conference two years ago in Boston was to find out how to handle these

I think I think it's probably very high, but I don't know.

I don't have any data, any hard data.

But there's enough data in terms of my patients that I believe Lyme disease and the other tick-borne illnesses ought to be... seen as a legitimate risk factor for coronary artery disease and atherosclerosis.

So it does beg the question, should the standard of care for somebody who's suffering from arterial disease also include a tick disease panel just as a matter of course.

Teresa said also with this warmer fall, the tick populations still out there in pastures.

So monitoring for tick-borne illness and disease is still warranted.

I think what's happening is we're having outbreaks of Chitose, Tileria, the Chitose, the genetic variant.

And a couple farms have tested

Most patients assume mold is a simple fix, but it's rarely that straightforward.

In this episode, Dr. Eric Gordon and Dr. Nafisa Parpio walk through the four things they actually look for in every mold case and why so many patients get a Sears diagnosis that turns out to be something else entirely from gut imbalances to tick-borne disease.

This is a practical look at what's often missed and what's actually worth paying attention to.

Thank you for joining us.

A vector.

A vector and a hint that we should look harder because mold, being reactive, being sensitive to mold means that your immune system has been activated.

And I think that's one of the reasons that when people come with mold problems, I look hard for for tick-borne disease underneath that.

I mean, that's an area that, you know, I had debates, you know, 20, literally almost 20 years ago with Dr. Shoemaker around because he didn't quite understand the persistence of of these infections.

Yeah.

I think I have one patient in my practice that didn't have a tick-borne disease.

Everybody else had a tick-borne disease that was causing this chronic urinary tract infection feeling.

Wow.

I guess we probably should have addressed, where are you based and where is your practice based?

For someone listening today who feels overwhelmed, who deals with these symptoms, who has a child or a spouse, who feels, I don't know, discouraged, overwhelmed, frightened by the complex symptoms like the neurological issues, what do you want to leave them with? What message do you want to get across to them?

First of all, you have to get tested and you have to get tested through the proper lab.

The second thing you have to do is find a doctor who does understand tick-borne diseases.