Here's What You Can Do To Prevent Lyme Disease and Other Tick-Born Illnesses From Spreading If You've Been Bitten By A Tick.

Jump to article highlights:

1. Proper Tick Removal

2. Sending Your Tick For Testing

3. Supplements To Take After A Tick Bite

As we increase our outdoor activities every year, it is easy to forget about the need to protect ourselves and our families from a common but serious health threat: Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

As discussed in the previous article “Lyme Disease Prevention Part 1: How to Avoid Getting Bit”, there are practical and simple ways to reduce the chances of getting bit and subsequently contracting Lyme disease and other co-infections that can have damaging long-term effects.

If you haven't yet heard of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, or HBOT, don't worry, you're not alone.  This cutting-edge technology isn't widely understood or made accessible in our conventional health care system, so most people aren't aware of its profound applications and endless benefits. Not just yet, that is. Imagine being able to address numer...

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COVID-19 continues to impact our local and global economy, health, and way of life as we know it. While it is easy to respond from fear, there is an opportunity to be proactive towards better health. There are measures we can take for increased resilience against coronavirus, not only in the interim but for long-term wellbeing. According to the WHO...

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Whether you’re a frontline worker or working from home while trying to homeschool three kids, it is more important than ever to stay healthy and operating on all cylinders. Botton line: your life needs you healthy. While there is no magic pill to ward off illness, there are a few tried-and-true ways to keep your immune system humming:

Eat More Fruits & Veggies

Your mother has been telling you to eat more fruits and veggies since you were too short to ride rollercoasters. As it turns out, there might have been some science behind all of mom’s nagging.

Whole foods like fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and beans are nutrient-dense and rich in antioxidants. Antioxidants help decrease inflammation which has been linked to a myriad of chronic health conditions including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and obesity.⁵

We all envision living a long and healthy life, symptom and disease-free. Yet the reality is that most of us suffer from some pervasive health issues or chronic illnesses. There is a solution, however. If you are like many people who are not seeing results using conventional medicine alone, consider naturopathic medicine.

How Are Naturopathic Doctors Different From Traditional Doctors?

Naturopaths are trained in all of the basic medical sciences that standard medical doctors are trained in. However, naturopathic physicians artfully blend modern, cutting-edge diagnostic, and therapeutic procedures with ancient methods.  They design individualized treatment plans integrating both traditional health care wisdom and the latest evidence-based research in order to restore, maintain, and optimize health naturally using a whole-person approach.

Parents are used to juggling it all -- personal commitments, work schedules, their kid’s school, and social schedules, helping with homework and preparing meals that hopefully support their children’s learning.

Although it’s a different world now with hybrid learning, limited social engagements to manage, parents are feeling a different kind of stress in having to navigate safety precautions and manage their child’s education in a new way (especially if they have to go back to work this fall).  

Spring is finally here!

While we all enjoy the warmth, sunshine, and blossoming trees and flowers, springtime also means allergy season is upon us. Especially in the wake of COVID-19, we may be extra cautious about symptoms of immune reactivity, as seen in allergic responses to environmental pollens. Thankfully, there are multiple ways to decrease inflammation at the root cause of bothersome seasonal allergies. Using simple, natural strategies can have a positive impact on your immune response overall for greater protection against viruses and other pathogenic infections, and for reducing allergies so many of us suffer from this time of year.

Immune System Health relies on Gut Health

All health begins in the gut — even that relating to allergies. Supporting proper GI function is essential to all inflammatory conditions, for boosting immune function, and decreasing reactive symptoms such as seasonal allergies. In fact, more than 70% of our immune system lies in our digestive tract.

How can we support our GI health?

Eliminating inflammatory and reactive foods, determining individual food sensitivities, allergies, and intolerances, including healing anti-inflammatory foods, supporting proper digestion and absorption, reducing environmental toxins from water, food, personal and home products, chemicals, etc., identifying hidden infections and pathogens, rebalancing a dysbiotic (unbalanced) microbiome, repairing the integrity, healing, and regeneration of the gut lining, and cultivating a healthy mindset and nervous system rebalancing to support our rest and digest function will all work synergistically to improve our gut health — and overall health, including resilience against things such as environmental pollens and other allergy-related factors.

Patients with severe COVID-19 infection can develop fatal lung damage from a cytokine storm, a marked increase in pro-inflammatory cytokines such as Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), Interleukin-1 beta (ILB1), Interleukin-6 (IL6), Interleukin-8 (IL8) and other cytokines 

The following supplements can help to suppress the multiple pro-inflammatory cytokines that cause severe lung damage (ARDS) in patients with COVID-19 infection caused by coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2.

NOTE: Sambucus Nigra (Elderberry):

There is evidence that elderberry inhibits replication and viral attachment of Human coronavirus NL63 (HCoV-NL63), different than COVID-19, but a member of the coronavirus family. (1). Sambucus appears most effective in the prevention or early stage of coronavirus infections. Sambucus significantly increases inflammatory cytokines, including IL-B1 so it should be discontinued with symptoms of infection (or a positive test) despite its ability to decrease TNF-alpha.

When Traditional Doctors Can't Find A Solution

It’s an all-too-common scenario. You’ve been suffering from a cocktail of vague and seemingly unrelated symptoms for months, even years now…fatigue, brain fog, aches and pains, memory loss, poor sleep, low libido, weight gain, food cravings, mood issues like anxiety or depression, skin rashes, hormone imbalances, headaches, or digestive problems. You finally make an appointment with your doctor to get some answers (that Dr. Google can’t provide), only to be given a mere 15 minutes to rattle off your laundry list of complaints, desperate for some validation. You’re given a prescription or two and sent home with the discomforting assessment that what you’re experiencing is “just a part of normal life” due to genetics or aging. You leave feeling defeated, hopeless, and frustrated. Perhaps you then go from doctor to doctor, only to be told that you’re fine, there’s nothing wrong, and even worse…it’s all in your head.

Or, perhaps you have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, IBS, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes, a reproductive issue, or an autoimmune disease. You are told the unsettling news that you can’t reverse the condition -- you simply have to take medication to manage it for the rest of your life and hope it doesn’t get worse.

NOW WHAT? What to do if you feel like you are out of options

While these kinds of predicaments are common, they don’t have to be “normal”. The good news is that while suffering from health issues seems isolating, you’re not alone. The better news is that there are solutions to identify and address the reasons why you’re suffering – because there are actual reasons.

Stress is simply part of being human. We all know what stress feels like -- but do we really understand what it does to our body? Or what to do about it?

Chances are, most of us are in denial, internalizing the cultural mantra to “just deal with it” or “push through”. While this does a lot to help our to-do list, it also does a lot to hurt our health. Statistics show that up to 80% of all doctor visits and 50% of all illnesses are stress-related.

In regard to health concerns amidst a pandemic, reducing stress and managing our perception of stress are powerful factors in immune resilience and influence how our body handles a viral threat. Hormones released during stress increase inflammation and suppress the immune system, leaving us more vulnerable to pathogens.

Viruses, bacteria, bugs, oh my…. pathogens that wreak havoc on our lives seems to be the topic on everyone’s mind these days. While we’re so busy dealing with COVID, it’s easy to forget about a major silent pandemic – tick-borne illnesses – that are having an increasing impact on our health.

Lyme disease, the most recognized and common tick-related infection caused by the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, is acknowledged in the mainstream health conversation as a pervasive threat with nearly 30,000 reported cases annually and an incidence higher than breast cancer (5). Unfortunately, new findings indicated that not only do we have to worry about Lyme, we have to consider the other multiple co-infections can be transmitted alone or in addition to borrelia, which are also on the rise. Especially as people spend more time outdoors amidst months of quarantine, Lyme and various tick-related diseases have increased as well, also complicating coronavirus pandemic detection issues in some areas such as NY state and Michigan (5).

Is it COVID…or Lyme?

Lyme disease is a multisystem illness referred to as “the great imitator”, many times with a classic bullseye rash, flu-like symptoms, and myriad symptoms replicating conditions associated with numerous other diseases and health-impaired states, ranging from cardiac to neurological to rheumatic illnesses (5).  As if we don’t have enough to worry about with COVID, more less-known tick-associated diseases are not only confusing proper diagnoses related to vector-borne illnesses, they are actually mimicking COVID symptoms in many areas. Residents in various parts of the country (such as Michigan) are seeing a growing number of anaplasmosis infection cases increase, with flu-like symptoms that easily cause COVID concern.

Most people don't think about sunshine or gut health when they are considering how to stay safe from contracting viral threats. As a lot continues to change in the health world, it’s also time to adapt our ways of thinking about how to optimize immune resilience.

 Surprisingly enough, our body internally manufactures one of the main nutrients to bolster our immune system -- Vitamin D.

With a new wave of Coronavirus cases and increased concerns for our safety as winter approaches, new research is indicating that supplementing with vitamin D may be a key factor in keeping us resilient and healthy.

"Elderberry is one of the most used, and most trusted immune support botanicals in the integrative medicine repertoire. But there has been a lot of discussion within online clinician forums on whether elderberry could or would induce a cytokine storm if used during an infection where that is the risk. I'd like to share my perspective based on the r...

 We're Here For You As the owner and Medical Director of TAO, I just wanted to reassure you that we are here for you in whatever capacity you need us. From keeping up to date with the latest information regarding COVID-19 to providing you with simple at-home techniques to reduce stress and boost your immune system, to general vitamin/herbal su...