Lyme Disease Crash Course - Everything You Need to Know in 5 Minutes

I want to raise awareness of this. I feel like I NEED to raise awareness. I am one of those people who never even knew I was bitten by a tick and never had the "tell tale bullseye rash." Doctors suspect I had the disease for close to 10 years before I tested positive and was diagnosed. Most, if not all, of my health issues stem from this. WE NEED TO RAISE AWARENESS!!

Lyme disease gets its name from the town of Lyme, Connecticut, where the illness was first identified in the United States in 1975.

Lyme is caused by a corkscrew-shaped bacterium, or spirochete, called Borrelia burgdorferi. Ticks infected with the bacterium spread the disease to humans.

*This was me. I didn't even know I was bitten by a tick. I never got the "bulls-eye rash." No doctor ever thought to test me for the disease since I lived in Idaho and Utah (even though I had traveled to the east and south quite a bit). I knew I had health problems, but I NEVER would have suspected Lyme Disease. Not until I had a doctor "just check" for it a couple of years ago. And lo and behold the blood test came back positive. It had sat in my system for years.

*These symptoms, if caught early, can be erradicated. However, if the disease lays in your system for years (like mine did) without being diagnosed, they can wreak complete and utter havoc on your body. Some "issues" of mine that can most likely be traced back to Lyme Disease are Arthritis, Fibromyalgia and Infertility. There are 72 things listed here and I have had 51 of them happen to me since doctors think I was bitten by a tick in 1999. (I wasn't tested positive and diagnosed until 2007 - that's a span of 8 years that it sat in my body just wreaking havoc!) Before I was bitten, I only had experienced 5 things on this list!! There's a huge difference between 5 and 51! That right there tells you how crazy the effects of a tiny little tick can be on a human body!!

Lyme disease is a rapidly emerging infectious disease. Since it was first recognized in the United States in 1975, reports of Lyme disease have increased substantially. Factors contributing to the rise in Lyme disease in humans is a thriving tick population and the expansion of suburbs into formerly wooded areas, which increases people's exposure to infected ticks.

The tick has a 2-year life cycle, and can infect you in any of its life stages-- larvae, nymph, and adult. In the tick's larvae stage, it is tan, the size of a pinhead, and feeds on small animals like mice. During the nymph stage, the tick is the size of a poppy seed, beige or partially transparent, and feeds on larger animals such as cats, dogs, and humans. Adult ticks are black and/or reddish and feed on large mammals such as deer, dogs, and humans.

Tick appearance/size

*I put this image on here because you can be bitten by a larva and get Lyme Disease. It's not always the adult - the kind of tick that you typically SEE on you.

More than 20,000 cases of Lyme were reported in the United States in 2006. However, because of considerable under-reporting and misdiagnosis, the Centers for Disease Control along with many Lyme disease experts speculate that the actual number of cases is at least 10 times higher--Making Lyme disease more prevalent than both West Nile Virus and HIV/AIDS.