#Lyme treatment Baltimore
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jamesvince9898 · 2 months ago
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Comprehensive Healing and Wellness at Soma Health Center LLC
Introduction Soma Health Center LLC is a leading healthcare facility specializing in advanced treatments and therapies for chronic illnesses, with a focus on the Neurological Integration System (NIS) and comprehensive Lyme treatment in Baltimore. Our dedicated team is committed to providing personalized care for individuals struggling with complex health issues. As a trusted Lyme specialist in Maryland, we offer innovative solutions to address Lyme disease and other neurological challenges, ensuring our patients receive the highest level of care. Our mission is to help you achieve optimal health and well-being through our holistic and integrative approach to healing.
Understanding the Neurological Integration System (NIS) The Neurological Integration System (NIS) is a revolutionary healthcare approach that addresses the underlying causes of health issues by focusing on the body's neurological pathways. Developed to identify and correct imbalances in the nervous system, NIS helps the body regain its natural ability to heal and function properly. At Soma Health Center LLC, we use NIS to assess and treat various conditions, from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders to hormonal imbalances and stress-related issues. By targeting the root cause of these conditions, we aim to restore optimal health and well-being.
How NIS Works The Neurological Integration System operates on the principle that the brain controls and coordinates all functions of the body. When there is a disruption in the communication between the brain and the body, it can lead to various health issues. NIS involves assessing the body's neurological signals and identifying areas where these signals are compromised. Our practitioners use gentle, non-invasive techniques to correct these imbalances, allowing the body to restore its natural healing processes. This approach not only addresses the symptoms but also targets the source of the problem, resulting in long-lasting health improvements.
Benefits of NIS at Soma Health Center LLC By incorporating the Neurological Integration System into our treatment protocols, Soma Health Center LLC offers numerous benefits to our patients:
Holistic Healing: NIS addresses the entire body rather than focusing on individual symptoms, promoting overall wellness.
Non-Invasive Treatment: The NIS approach is gentle and does not involve medication or surgery, making it a safe option for individuals of all ages.
Personalized Care: Each treatment is tailored to the patient's unique needs, ensuring the most effective healing process.
Long-Term Results: By correcting the underlying neurological imbalances, NIS provides sustainable improvements in health and well-being.
Lyme Treatment in Baltimore – A Comprehensive Approach Lyme disease is a complex and often debilitating illness caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, transmitted through tick bites. If left untreated, Lyme disease can lead to severe health complications, affecting the joints, heart, and nervous system. At Soma Health Center LLC, we specialize in providing effective Lyme treatment in Baltimore, using a combination of advanced therapies and holistic approaches to help patients recover and regain their quality of life.
Recognizing the Symptoms of Lyme Disease The early symptoms of Lyme disease can vary, making it difficult to diagnose. Common symptoms include fatigue, joint pain, fever, headaches, and a characteristic "bullseye" rash. In more advanced stages, Lyme disease can cause neurological problems, heart palpitations, and severe joint inflammation. Early detection and treatment are crucial for preventing the disease from progressing and causing long-term damage. If you suspect you have been exposed to Lyme disease, seeking help from a qualified Lyme specialist in Maryland is essential for effective treatment.
Our Lyme Treatment Protocol At Soma Health Center LLC, we take a comprehensive and individualized approach to Lyme treatment in Baltimore. Our treatment protocol includes:
Accurate Diagnosis: We begin with a thorough evaluation and diagnostic testing to confirm the presence of Lyme disease and assess the extent of the infection.
Targeted Antibiotic Therapy: For early-stage Lyme disease, antibiotic therapy is often the most effective treatment. We tailor the dosage and duration of antibiotic use based on each patient's needs.
Nutritional Support: Proper nutrition is essential for boosting the immune system and aiding the body's recovery. We provide dietary recommendations and supplements to support healing.
Neurological Integration System (NIS) Therapy: NIS plays a vital role in our Lyme treatment approach by helping to restore the body's ability to fight the infection and repair damaged tissues.
Detoxification: Lyme disease can cause the accumulation of toxins in the body. We incorporate detoxification protocols to help eliminate these harmful substances, reducing symptoms and supporting recovery.
Why Choose Soma Health Center LLC as Your Lyme Specialist in Maryland? As a leading Lyme specialist in Maryland, Soma Health Center LLC stands out for our commitment to delivering personalized and effective treatment plans. Our team of experienced practitioners takes the time to understand each patient's unique condition, ensuring that every aspect of their health is addressed. We combine cutting-edge medical treatments with holistic therapies to provide a comprehensive solution for Lyme disease, helping patients achieve lasting relief from their symptoms.
The Importance of Early Intervention One of the key factors in successfully treating Lyme disease is early intervention. The sooner treatment begins, the better the chances of preventing the disease from spreading and causing more severe health complications. At Soma Health Center LLC, we encourage patients to seek immediate medical attention if they suspect they have been exposed to tick bites or exhibit symptoms of Lyme disease. Our Lyme treatment in Baltimore is designed to provide fast and effective relief, ensuring that patients receive the care they need without delay.
The Role of NIS in Treating Chronic Lyme Disease Chronic Lyme disease can be challenging to manage, as the symptoms may persist even after standard antibiotic treatment. In such cases, the Neurological Integration System offers a unique advantage by addressing the neurological aspects of the disease. By using NIS, our practitioners can help re-establish proper communication between the brain and body, enabling the immune system to function more effectively. This holistic approach significantly improves outcomes for patients dealing with chronic Lyme disease, reducing pain, fatigue, and other debilitating symptoms.
Supporting Your Journey to Health and Wellness At Soma Health Center LLC, we believe in empowering our patients to take control of their health and well-being. Our holistic approach ensures that every aspect of your health is addressed, from physical symptoms to emotional well-being. We provide ongoing support and education, helping patients understand their condition and the steps they can take to achieve optimal health. As a trusted Lyme specialist in Maryland, we are dedicated to guiding you on your journey to recovery.
Integrating NIS with Other Treatments One of the strengths of Soma Health Center LLC is our ability to integrate the Neurological Integration System with other treatment modalities. We recognize that every patient is unique, and a one-size-fits-all approach does not work when it comes to healthcare. By combining NIS with conventional treatments, nutritional support, and lifestyle modifications, we create a comprehensive and individualized treatment plan that addresses the root cause of your health issues.
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ahedderick · 5 years ago
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Tickborne illness
  I’ve mentioned chronic tickborne illness a couple of times here, and I’m going to do it again. My son has been fighting babesia for as long as five years, and because it was not diagnosed or treated in a timely manner*, it has gone chronic and become much harder to treat. We found a specialist near Baltimore who is very aggressive in her treatment, and that is a welcome change. Just two weeks ago he was started on yet another type of antibiotic. However, this illness has virtually stolen his entire teens. Affected his education, sports, and social life. It’s been miserable for him. And it could have been addressed much, much better. So, if you’re an outdoors person who is at risk for being bitten by ticks, please, please know the signs of the various diseases NOT JUST LYME and know how to advocate for yourself if you get bitten and end up sick.
   I screenshotted this info from the cdc webpage, and I’m sure there is a lot more info available out there for the different regions of the US.
* thanks to pediatricians who did Not Listen To Me when I told them about his lengthy, recurring fevers.
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sciencespies · 5 years ago
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Climate change is making us sicker, and we need to talk about it
https://sciencespies.com/environment/climate-change-is-making-us-sicker-and-we-need-to-talk-about-it/
Climate change is making us sicker, and we need to talk about it
The climate crisis is making people sicker – worsening illnesses ranging from seasonal allergies to heart and lung disease.
Children, pregnant people and the elderly are the most at risk from extreme weather and rising heat. But the impact of the climate crisis – for patients, doctors and researchers – is already being felt across every specialty of medicine, with worse feared to come.
“There’s research suggesting that our prescription medications may be causing harm because of changing heat patterns,” said Aaron Bernstein, a pediatric hospitalist who is the co-director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University.
“There’s evidence that extreme weather events are affecting critical medical supplies so we can’t do things as we normally would do because IV fluids aren’t available.
“And there’s evidence that extreme weather events are knocking out power more and more, and that is a huge issue for providing care in healthcare facilities.”
In a recent example, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that lung cancer patients undergoing radiation were less likely to survive when hurricane disasters disrupted their treatments.
An August article in the New England Journal of Medicine lays out dozens of similar studies to show how the climate crisis affects each practice of medicine.
Renee Salas, a co-author of the report, who teaches emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School said: “The climate crisis is impacting not only health for our patients but the way we deliver care and our ability to do our jobs. And that’s happening today.”
Allergies
Climate change makes allergies worse.
As temperatures increase, plants produce more pollen for longer periods of time, intensifying the allergy seasons. Increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can make plants grow more and cause more grass pollen, which causes allergies in about 20 percent of people. Carbon dioxide can also increase the allergy-causing effects of pollen.
Neelu Tummala, an ear, nose and throat specialist at the George Washington Medical Faculty Associates in Washington DC, said she sees many patients with allergic rhinitis, or inflammation of the nasal cavity, congestion and post-nasal drip.
“It used to be that tree pollens were only in spring, grasses were just in summer, ragweed was just in fall,” Tummala said. “But the timing of those is starting to overlap more.”
One of Tummala’s patients, Kelly Kenney, had minor seasonal allergies as a child but now suffers from year-round from sinus pains, ear pressure and congestion.
“The last four years, my symptoms have gotten increasingly worse,” Kenney said.
Pregnancy and newborn complications
Pregnant people are more vulnerable to heat and the air pollution that is being made worse by climate change.
Bruce Bekkar, a San Diego-based obstetrician gynaecologist who stopped practising six years ago to spend more time as a climate activist, has compiled 68 studies from the continental US on the association between heat, smog and the tiny particles of pollution that come from fossil fuels and how they are connected with premature birth, low birth weight and stillbirth.
More smog forms when it is hot, and some research suggests particulate matter also increases with the climate crisis, although the data is less robust.
Bekkar said he and his co-authors found a significant association in 58 of the 68 studies. The body of research covers 30 million births in the US.
Bekkar said doctors should talk to their patients about how heat waves could lead to premature births and how staying away from air pollution can help them keep their children healthy.
“We’re finding that we have increasing numbers of children born already in a weakened state from heat and air pollution. That’s a totally different story than thinking about climate change as the cause of hurricanes over Florida … It’s a much more pervasive and ongoing impact.”
In the developing world pregnant people can also suffer from food and water scarcity. Insect-borne illnesses – such as the Zika virus, which was spread by mosquitoes – are also a hazard to developing fetuses.
Heart and lung disease
Air pollution gets worse as temperatures rise, stressing both the heart and lungs. The fossil fuel pollution that causes the climate crisis also is linked with increased hospitalisations and deaths from cardiovascular disease, and it is connected with more asthma attacks and other breathing problems.
More intense wildfires spew dangerous smoke into the air, as documented in the western US this year. And hotter days make more smog, which the American Lung Association describes as acting “like a sunburn on your lungs which may trigger an asthma attack”.
Risks for children
Children under the age of five experience the majority of the health burden from climate change, according to Salas’ report.
Samantha Ahdoot, a paediatrician in Alexandria, Virginia, treated an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old who moved from Florida after a hurricane destroyed their community and their medical records at their doctor’s office.
One needed surgery for a heart condition and had to start from scratch with a new cardiologist. Both had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that was harder to treat amid the major life disruption and without records on adjustments to medication dosages.
Ahdoot, who also founded the group Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action, said she has seen an influx of families moving because of weather disasters.
Dehydration and kidney problems
Much hotter days make it harder to stay hydrated. They are linked with electrolyte imbalances, kidney stones and kidney failure. Patients who need dialysis as their kidneys fail can have trouble getting treatment during extreme weather events.
Skin disease
Higher temperatures and the depletion of the ozone layer increase the risk of skin cancer. The same refrigerants and gases that damage the ozone layer contribute to climate change.
Digestive illnesses
Heat is linked with higher risks for salmonella and campylobacter outbreaks. Extreme rains can contaminate drinking water. Harmful algae blooms that thrive in higher temperatures can cause gastrointestinal problems, too.
Infectious disease
Changing temperature and rainfall patterns allow some insects spread farther and transmit malaria, dengue, Lyme disease and West Nile virus. Waterborne cholera and cryptosporidiosis increase with drought and flooding.
Mental health conditions
The American Psychological Association created a 69-page guide on how climate change can induce stress, depression and anxiety. The group says “the connections with mental health are often not part” of the climate-health discussion.
People exposed to or displaced by extreme weather or violent conflict are at higher risk for mental health challenges. Extreme heat can also make some mental illnesses worse.
The University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found emergency calls relating to psychiatric conditions increased about 40 percent in Baltimore in summer 2018, when the heat index surged above 103 F (39 C), as reported on NPR.
And some psychotropic medications interfere with the body’s ability to regulate temperature – increasing vulnerability to heat.
Neurologic disease
Fossil fuel pollution can increase the risk of stroke. Coal combustion also produces mercury – a neurotoxin for fetuses. Diseases spread by mosquitoes and ticks increase the chance of neurological problems.
Extreme heat is also linked with cerebrovascular disease, a disorder that affects blood supply to the brain.
Nutrition
Carbon dioxide emissions are lowering the nutritional density of food crops, reducing plant levels of protein, zinc and iron and leading to more nutritional deficiencies. Food supplies are also disrupted by drought, societal instability and inequity linked with climate change.
Trauma
Extreme weather events, including hurricanes, floods and wildfires, often cause physical injuries. Doctors see minor fractures, crush injuries and smoke inhalation.
Extreme heat is also linked with aggression and violence, and the climate crisis globally is connected with violent conflict and forced migration.
This story was originally published by The Guardian, and is republished here as part of the Covering Climate Now partnership to strengthen the media’s focus on the climate crisis.
#Environment
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innateprosperity · 6 years ago
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Do Essential Oils Really Help With Stress, Sleep, and Lyme disease?
Essential oils are best known for their calming effect. And we all praise them for just how valuable they are for skincare. But are essential oils really the best stress relievers? Can they help you get more sleep? Are they good for Lyme diseases?
An article written for Care 2 by Michelle Schoffro Cook states that prescription drugs aren’t the only best solution to Lyme Diseases.
10 Essential Oils That Really Work Against Lyme Disease
Most people assume that drugs are our most potent weapon against disease but, when it comes to lyme disease, a recent study suggests otherwise. The study conducted by scientists at the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, found that certain essential oils were more powerful in the treatment of lyme disease than the standard antibiotic treatment.
Read Full Article Here
Essential oils, if used appropriately, can also help a great deal because they kill the bacteria responsible for the disease.
According to Wendy Strokes from the Frisky, different people have confirmed repeatedly that essential oils are good enough for relieving stress.
Essential Oils: The Best Stress Relievers
These essential oils are the best remedy for stress because they are all natural which are taken from flowers and other herbal plants. They are pure essential oils without any chemicals added, and this is one of the reasons why it gives more relief and somehow healing effect to some illness especially when dealing with anxiety and stress.
Read Full Article Here
So if you are going through what seems like a life-threatening moment and you are so stressed that you don’t know what to do, it might be best to try essential oils.
Caroline Muggia from Mind Body Green confirms that essential oils can help you get enough sleep. But you need to know when exactly to use them.
Here's Exactly When To Use Essential Oils For Your Best Night's Sleep
The circadian rhythms, otherwise known as the human body clock, regulates much more than our patterns of wakefulness and sleep. Scientists are rapidly discovering that these natural rhythms influence a wide variety of physiological processes with a far-reaching impact. Circadian rhythms affect hormonal production, mood, ability to concentrate, and many more critical aspects of our day-to-day lives. Even our senses are affected by these natural fluctuations linked to day and night.
Read Full Article Here
Once you get the timing right, you can use essential oils for sleep and get the most out of the brand that you choose to purchase.
Conclusion
If you have always been wondering whether essential oils can really do what they claim to do, this article has enough proof to clear your doubts.
Do Essential Oils Really Help With Stress, Sleep, and Lyme disease? was originally published on: InnateProsperity Your Health & Wellbeing Guide
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dailyaudiobible · 6 years ago
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10/27/2018 DAB Transcript
Jeremiah 51:1-53, Titus 2:1-15, Psalms 99:1-9, Proverbs 26:17
Today is the 27th day of October. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Welcome to the end of another week together. It's great to be here with you today and I'm excited to see what's in store for us in the Scriptures. And if you can believe it, next week, I mean, which starts tomorrow, we'll be moving into the 11th month of the year. So, we are indeed putting one step in front of the other and making progress as we move toward the end of the Bible. Today we'll be reading from the Christian Standard Bible. And in our Old Testament reading, Jeremiah 51:1-53.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word and its constant in our lives. The days go by and every single day of our lives is imprinted by Your word because every single day we spend time in it, allowing our hearts to open to it, allowing it to make an indelible mark on us. Allowing it to guide and direct our paths and steps. And we certainly ask forgiveness for the times that we willingly simply do not obey what has been shared with us by the scriptures. But Your word tells us Your mercies are new every morning. So, every day is a reset and every day is a restart. So, we ask, Holy Spirit, come, plant the word of God deeply into our lives, transforming us from within as we give ear to it and as we apply it into our behaviors and all of the issues of life. Come Holy Spirit, we pray. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
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Check out the resources that are available in the shop. Stay connected via social media if that's one of the things that you do. All of those links are in the community section at dailyaudiobible.com.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There's a link on the homepage. Thank you. Thank you for your partnership. If you're using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the give button in the upper right-hand corner. Or if you prefer, the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, Tennessee, 37174.
And as always if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.
And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Dear sister Paula from Albuquerque, this is Mary K, and since I found myself in a similar situation I want to offer up a prayer to the Lord for you. Dearest Lord Jesus, in second Timothy 3:12 your apostle Paul reminds us that in living a godly life for you we will be persecuted. We pray now for your strength and power to fill Paula’s Spirit. Today, this world scrutinizes us for perfection but there is no perfection in this world. Remember our sister Paula, a kind woman and sincere Christian and lift her up as she is humbled. Let her through away vanity and pride like an unwanted coat. Guide her down a new path full of your blessing. Walk with her step by step as she finishes gracefully this chapter of her life. In You Lord we are much more than our careers. You Lord showed us in Job how to live with faith against all worldly pressures. You who told the fishermen catching nothing all night to fish on the other side of the boat, be with Paula as she updates her resume and show her how you have blessed her. Be with Paula as she needs to quietly remove her personal things from the workplace, all except your word which will remain to encourage her. Be with her as she delights herself in her home, family, friends and You Lord. Paula, the Lord loves you. May He bless you and keep you. Amen.
Hello precious Daily Audio Bible family, this is Candace from Oregon. Let’s join together around this campfire and say prayers over one another as we have been and continue to do. Lord, we bring to You each of these individuals who are calling in. We bring to You Dave, who, after a successful large-scale business was failing. On top of it they were dealing with the trauma of his wife having been sexually abused by her dad, by being arrested, by huge turmoil at church where he had been protected. Lord, we lift up Dave and his wife. And we know Lord that You’re there. You’re there to defend people in the worst of all situations. That’s where You show up. We thank You Lord for that and we ask You to just do things to bring redemption and healing to everyone concerned and especially Dave and his wife. Lord, I pray for Christine who got her creativity from You, heavenly father. As she deals with her leukemia please let her be allowed out of the hospital by Thanksgiving. Thank You for showing up for her again and again. Please comfort and protect and uphold her and her husband, her son and her daughter. I pray Lord for Joe the Protector and I know that You’re going to bless him in ways that are beyond his wildest dreams. In Jesus’ name we pray. I’ve got to tell you a story Joe, about a really special child I know that’s in our family who came into the world that…
Hello fellow DABbers, this is Daniel in the Lion’s Den. I’m a longtime listener and first-time caller. Thank you, Brian for your consistent wisdom on the Scriptures. I’ve been listening to you talk about the constant disobedience of Israel and their idolatries throughout the Old Testament all year. You’ve also been talking about calls advice to Timothy in the last days of his life about staying true and fighting the good fight that Paul himself had been fighting. I’m calling in today because you said that what was going on then is still going on with us as Christians. We all often seek guidance to do for us what we should be depending on the Lord to do. And I realized that I am one of those what I thought that I was doing okay. You see, my wife has Lyme disease and five other coal infections. She’s been ill for over five years. We spent over $50,000 in medical bills not covered by our insurance. I’m still working to try and pay off the debt. I would prefer to retire and serve Jesus in ministry. We are also needing more money to pay for her treatment. I want to see her stop suffering so badly. So, you’ve probably all heard about the $1.6 billion mega-million lottery prize going today. Well, despite the many times the Lord has already provided for me and my family, I bought a couple of lottery tickets. Well, guess what, I didn’t win. But even before I read the winning numbers I was convicted by the Holy Spirit in my sin of idolatry. It was idol worship for depending on chance that I would win money that would defeat the lion of financial depression is here in this lion’s den with me now. I had forgotten about the man and the quail, that the Lord has provided for me in the past and I know He will also do the same for us in the future if we wait on Him. Please pray for my wife’s healing and for me to trust the Lord with taking care of our debt. He has already delivered me from other lions in this den and I have been blessed to know Him and His healing in my own life. Thank you, family. Praying for you.
Hi, this is Tracy from Baltimore. I was calling with a quick message for Joe the Protector. Joe, I think we all had our hearts break a little bit we heard about your daughter, your 15-year-old daughter becoming a mother. And I just wanted to share with you as a former teenage mother myself my experience. One, I would like you to know is that her life is not ruined. Her life is not over. I have gone on to graduate high school, graduate college. I have multiple college degrees. My daughter also now has multiple college degrees. I’ve been married for 26 years. I have three more children and we live a good beautiful life and I’m not done yet. So, her life is not ruined, my life was not ruined. People told me I did, I ruined my life, but I’m telling you now, her life is not ruined. That was one thing. Please encourage her with that. The other thing is, I wanted to share with you my experience with my own father who was quite ashamed of having a teenage daughter be pregnant. And I feel like our relationship never fully healed from that. He continued to let me know how ashamed of me he was even after I was grown and married with, you know, kids and living a good life. And I don’t want that to happen between you and your daughter. So, the Bible tells us, for there is no condemnation in those who are in Christ Jesus. We all make mistakes and God is a good Father and He does not put shame on us. So, I just want to make sure that you guard your words and you don’t put any shame on her. And that you be Joe the Protector for her and protect her heart and protect her mind and protect your new grand-baby. That would be my best advice and please know that I am praying for you and your family and everyone that calls into the Daily Audio Bible. Thank you.
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ongames · 7 years ago
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Unproven Treatments For 'Chronic Lyme Disease' Lead To Severe Infections
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In a small number but growing number of cases, people in the U.S. have suffered severe bacterial infections, bone damage or a life-threatening condition called septic shock — all because of treatments they received for a condition called “chronic Lyme disease.”
But there is no test for “chronic Lyme disease,” and no treatments have been proven to be effective in treating the illness, according to a new report on some of these cases. In fact, experts in treating infectious diseases don’t support using the term “chronic Lyme,” Dr. Christina Nelson, a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a co-author of that new report, wrote in an email to Live Science.
Patients may be given a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease by health care providers at complementary and alternative medicine clinics, after seeing conventional medical doctors who have not been able to treat their symptoms, the report said. Fatigue, pain and neurological problems are all symptoms reported by people who have gotten a diagnosis of chronic Lyme. [27 Devastating Infectious Diseases]
The health care providers who diagnose these patients typically treat them with prolonged courses of antibiotics, lasting months or even years, the report said. That happens even though at least five well-done studies have shown that such courses of antibiotics do not help people who have this diagnosis, according to the report. Moreover, taking antibiotics for that long can result in serious harm, including death.
“Incorrect diagnosis of Lyme disease and treatment with long-term antibiotics can have devastating effects,” Nelson said. People who have been diagnosed with or treated for chronic Lyme disease should consider getting a second opinion to be evaluated for other conditions, she said.
Lyme disease vs. “chronic Lyme disease”
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that is spread by tick bites. About 30,000 cases in the U.S. are reported to the CDC yearly, the agency says. The test for the disease is a blood test that looks for antibodies to the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that cause the infection. [10 Important Ways to Avoid Summer Tick Bites]
But health care providers — some of whom label themselves as “Lyme literate,” according to the report — may diagnose people with chronic Lyme based solely on the provider’s clinical judgment. The patients may not have any positive test for B. burgdorferi infection, nor any of the typical signs of Lyme infection.
“Chronic Lyme is very controversial,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. The term “chronic” implies that the bacteria that cause Lyme disease may persist in these patients’ bodies after the individuals have been treated for the disease, “but that’s not the case,” and there’s no evidence that the bacteria remain in the body, said Adalja, who was not involved in the new report.
There are indeed people with Lyme disease who experience lingering symptoms after completing the standard course of antibiotics used to treat the condition; these patients are said to have a condition called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. But people often use that term interchangeably with “chronic Lyme,” and that’s not helpful, Adalja said. There is no evidence that people with post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome have bacteria lingering in their systems, and although the cause of this condition remains a mystery, some experts think the condition may be due to a reaction of the immune system.
Chronic Lyme is also often used to describe symptoms in people who have no evidence of a current or past infection with Lyme disease, Nelson said.
Taking antibiotics for a long time is dangerous, Adalja said. Such antibiotics may be given intravenously, and the catheters that are used to deliver the drugs into the bloodstream can becomes sites of bacterial infection. [6 Superbugs to Watch Out For]
Severe infections, damaged bones
In the new report, the researchers presented details from five cases that they said illustrate what can happen to patients diagnosed with chronic Lyme. The cases came from reports that the CDC receives periodically, from state health departments and doctors who have treated patients with serious bacterial infections that the individuals got from treatments for chronic Lyme, Nelson said. Most of these patients likely didn’t have Lyme disease.
“We have heard of many more cases, but limited the report to five examples,” she said. Studies have shown that this is a growing problem, she added. [10 Deadly Diseases That Hopped Across Species]
In one case, a teen girl who had muscle and joint pain, backaches, headaches, and lethargy for years was diagnosed with chronic Lyme at an alternative medicine clinic. She was given antibiotics both orally an intravenously for five months, but did not improve. The antibiotics were stopped, but the catheter that doctors used to deliver the drugs was left in. The girl developed a bacterial infection that spread in her blood and caused a life-threatening complication called septic shock. In this condition, a person’s blood pressure drops dangerously. She recovered after being hospitalized for several weeks.
In another case, a woman in her late 30s was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, along with other infections, after she went to a local doctor because she felt fatigue and joint pain. She was given multiple courses of oral antibiotics, but got worse. She was then given antibiotics intravenously through a catheter for three weeks, but her joint pain continued, and other problems developed. She was hospitalized in an intensive care unit and given many treatments. But the patient continued to worsen and eventually died. Her death was attributed to septic shock related to a bacterial infection from her catheter. 
No use of a catheter was warranted in the woman’s case, Nelson said.
The patients in the other three cases in the report had symptoms such as fatigue, cognitive difficulties, progressive weakness, swelling and tingling in the extremities. All were given either antibiotics or a treatment called immunoglobulin therapy, which is an infusion of fluid that contains antibodies, and all patients developed severe infections and needed to be hospitalized. Two of them eventually improved, while the third died from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease), which she had previously been diagnosed with.
In January 2015, researchers reported in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine the cases of three patients who had cancer but whose cancer diagnoses were delayed because the individuals had initially been diagnosed with chronic Lyme. Two of those patients showed no evidence of ever having Lyme disease, the researchers wrote in their report. And although the third patient had tested positive for Lyme disease, he had been treated appropriately with antibiotics, and his “subsequent symptoms were incorrectly attributed to persistent infection,” the researchers wrote.
“Chronic Lyme disease is a misleading term that should be avoided,” those researchers wrote in their conclusion.
So far, there have not been systematic efforts to collect data about how often people diagnosed with chronic Lyme experience severe health problems, Nelson said. The researchers said they hope that cases can be more systematically studied in the future.
Patients who have been diagnosed with chronic Lyme should know that “infectious disease physicians don’t discount their symptoms and are trying to do right by them,” Adalja said. Doctors want to use treatments that are evidence-based, he said.
Originally published on Live Science.
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Unproven Treatments For 'Chronic Lyme Disease' Lead To Severe Infections
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In a small number but growing number of cases, people in the U.S. have suffered severe bacterial infections, bone damage or a life-threatening condition called septic shock — all because of treatments they received for a condition called “chronic Lyme disease.”
But there is no test for “chronic Lyme disease,” and no treatments have been proven to be effective in treating the illness, according to a new report on some of these cases. In fact, experts in treating infectious diseases don’t support using the term “chronic Lyme,” Dr. Christina Nelson, a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a co-author of that new report, wrote in an email to Live Science.
Patients may be given a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease by health care providers at complementary and alternative medicine clinics, after seeing conventional medical doctors who have not been able to treat their symptoms, the report said. Fatigue, pain and neurological problems are all symptoms reported by people who have gotten a diagnosis of chronic Lyme. [27 Devastating Infectious Diseases]
The health care providers who diagnose these patients typically treat them with prolonged courses of antibiotics, lasting months or even years, the report said. That happens even though at least five well-done studies have shown that such courses of antibiotics do not help people who have this diagnosis, according to the report. Moreover, taking antibiotics for that long can result in serious harm, including death.
“Incorrect diagnosis of Lyme disease and treatment with long-term antibiotics can have devastating effects,” Nelson said. People who have been diagnosed with or treated for chronic Lyme disease should consider getting a second opinion to be evaluated for other conditions, she said.
Lyme disease vs. “chronic Lyme disease”
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that is spread by tick bites. About 30,000 cases in the U.S. are reported to the CDC yearly, the agency says. The test for the disease is a blood test that looks for antibodies to the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that cause the infection. [10 Important Ways to Avoid Summer Tick Bites]
But health care providers — some of whom label themselves as “Lyme literate,” according to the report — may diagnose people with chronic Lyme based solely on the provider’s clinical judgment. The patients may not have any positive test for B. burgdorferi infection, nor any of the typical signs of Lyme infection.
“Chronic Lyme is very controversial,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. The term “chronic” implies that the bacteria that cause Lyme disease may persist in these patients’ bodies after the individuals have been treated for the disease, “but that’s not the case,” and there’s no evidence that the bacteria remain in the body, said Adalja, who was not involved in the new report.
There are indeed people with Lyme disease who experience lingering symptoms after completing the standard course of antibiotics used to treat the condition; these patients are said to have a condition called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. But people often use that term interchangeably with “chronic Lyme,” and that’s not helpful, Adalja said. There is no evidence that people with post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome have bacteria lingering in their systems, and although the cause of this condition remains a mystery, some experts think the condition may be due to a reaction of the immune system.
Chronic Lyme is also often used to describe symptoms in people who have no evidence of a current or past infection with Lyme disease, Nelson said.
Taking antibiotics for a long time is dangerous, Adalja said. Such antibiotics may be given intravenously, and the catheters that are used to deliver the drugs into the bloodstream can becomes sites of bacterial infection. [6 Superbugs to Watch Out For]
Severe infections, damaged bones
In the new report, the researchers presented details from five cases that they said illustrate what can happen to patients diagnosed with chronic Lyme. The cases came from reports that the CDC receives periodically, from state health departments and doctors who have treated patients with serious bacterial infections that the individuals got from treatments for chronic Lyme, Nelson said. Most of these patients likely didn’t have Lyme disease.
“We have heard of many more cases, but limited the report to five examples,” she said. Studies have shown that this is a growing problem, she added. [10 Deadly Diseases That Hopped Across Species]
In one case, a teen girl who had muscle and joint pain, backaches, headaches, and lethargy for years was diagnosed with chronic Lyme at an alternative medicine clinic. She was given antibiotics both orally an intravenously for five months, but did not improve. The antibiotics were stopped, but the catheter that doctors used to deliver the drugs was left in. The girl developed a bacterial infection that spread in her blood and caused a life-threatening complication called septic shock. In this condition, a person’s blood pressure drops dangerously. She recovered after being hospitalized for several weeks.
In another case, a woman in her late 30s was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, along with other infections, after she went to a local doctor because she felt fatigue and joint pain. She was given multiple courses of oral antibiotics, but got worse. She was then given antibiotics intravenously through a catheter for three weeks, but her joint pain continued, and other problems developed. She was hospitalized in an intensive care unit and given many treatments. But the patient continued to worsen and eventually died. Her death was attributed to septic shock related to a bacterial infection from her catheter. 
No use of a catheter was warranted in the woman’s case, Nelson said.
The patients in the other three cases in the report had symptoms such as fatigue, cognitive difficulties, progressive weakness, swelling and tingling in the extremities. All were given either antibiotics or a treatment called immunoglobulin therapy, which is an infusion of fluid that contains antibodies, and all patients developed severe infections and needed to be hospitalized. Two of them eventually improved, while the third died from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease), which she had previously been diagnosed with.
In January 2015, researchers reported in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine the cases of three patients who had cancer but whose cancer diagnoses were delayed because the individuals had initially been diagnosed with chronic Lyme. Two of those patients showed no evidence of ever having Lyme disease, the researchers wrote in their report. And although the third patient had tested positive for Lyme disease, he had been treated appropriately with antibiotics, and his “subsequent symptoms were incorrectly attributed to persistent infection,” the researchers wrote.
“Chronic Lyme disease is a misleading term that should be avoided,” those researchers wrote in their conclusion.
So far, there have not been systematic efforts to collect data about how often people diagnosed with chronic Lyme experience severe health problems, Nelson said. The researchers said they hope that cases can be more systematically studied in the future.
Patients who have been diagnosed with chronic Lyme should know that “infectious disease physicians don’t discount their symptoms and are trying to do right by them,” Adalja said. Doctors want to use treatments that are evidence-based, he said.
Originally published on Live Science.
Editor’s Recommendations
10 Bizarre Diseases You Can Get Outdoors
5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health
7 Strange Facts about the ‘Mind-Control’ Parasite Toxoplasma Gondii
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Unproven Treatments For 'Chronic Lyme Disease' Lead To Severe Infections
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In a small number but growing number of cases, people in the U.S. have suffered severe bacterial infections, bone damage or a life-threatening condition called septic shock — all because of treatments they received for a condition called “chronic Lyme disease.”
But there is no test for “chronic Lyme disease,” and no treatments have been proven to be effective in treating the illness, according to a new report on some of these cases. In fact, experts in treating infectious diseases don’t support using the term “chronic Lyme,” Dr. Christina Nelson, a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a co-author of that new report, wrote in an email to Live Science.
Patients may be given a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease by health care providers at complementary and alternative medicine clinics, after seeing conventional medical doctors who have not been able to treat their symptoms, the report said. Fatigue, pain and neurological problems are all symptoms reported by people who have gotten a diagnosis of chronic Lyme. [27 Devastating Infectious Diseases]
The health care providers who diagnose these patients typically treat them with prolonged courses of antibiotics, lasting months or even years, the report said. That happens even though at least five well-done studies have shown that such courses of antibiotics do not help people who have this diagnosis, according to the report. Moreover, taking antibiotics for that long can result in serious harm, including death.
“Incorrect diagnosis of Lyme disease and treatment with long-term antibiotics can have devastating effects,” Nelson said. People who have been diagnosed with or treated for chronic Lyme disease should consider getting a second opinion to be evaluated for other conditions, she said.
Lyme disease vs. “chronic Lyme disease”
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that is spread by tick bites. About 30,000 cases in the U.S. are reported to the CDC yearly, the agency says. The test for the disease is a blood test that looks for antibodies to the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that cause the infection. [10 Important Ways to Avoid Summer Tick Bites]
But health care providers — some of whom label themselves as “Lyme literate,” according to the report — may diagnose people with chronic Lyme based solely on the provider’s clinical judgment. The patients may not have any positive test for B. burgdorferi infection, nor any of the typical signs of Lyme infection.
“Chronic Lyme is very controversial,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. The term “chronic” implies that the bacteria that cause Lyme disease may persist in these patients’ bodies after the individuals have been treated for the disease, “but that’s not the case,” and there’s no evidence that the bacteria remain in the body, said Adalja, who was not involved in the new report.
There are indeed people with Lyme disease who experience lingering symptoms after completing the standard course of antibiotics used to treat the condition; these patients are said to have a condition called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. But people often use that term interchangeably with “chronic Lyme,” and that’s not helpful, Adalja said. There is no evidence that people with post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome have bacteria lingering in their systems, and although the cause of this condition remains a mystery, some experts think the condition may be due to a reaction of the immune system.
Chronic Lyme is also often used to describe symptoms in people who have no evidence of a current or past infection with Lyme disease, Nelson said.
Taking antibiotics for a long time is dangerous, Adalja said. Such antibiotics may be given intravenously, and the catheters that are used to deliver the drugs into the bloodstream can becomes sites of bacterial infection. [6 Superbugs to Watch Out For]
Severe infections, damaged bones
In the new report, the researchers presented details from five cases that they said illustrate what can happen to patients diagnosed with chronic Lyme. The cases came from reports that the CDC receives periodically, from state health departments and doctors who have treated patients with serious bacterial infections that the individuals got from treatments for chronic Lyme, Nelson said. Most of these patients likely didn’t have Lyme disease.
“We have heard of many more cases, but limited the report to five examples,” she said. Studies have shown that this is a growing problem, she added. [10 Deadly Diseases That Hopped Across Species]
In one case, a teen girl who had muscle and joint pain, backaches, headaches, and lethargy for years was diagnosed with chronic Lyme at an alternative medicine clinic. She was given antibiotics both orally an intravenously for five months, but did not improve. The antibiotics were stopped, but the catheter that doctors used to deliver the drugs was left in. The girl developed a bacterial infection that spread in her blood and caused a life-threatening complication called septic shock. In this condition, a person’s blood pressure drops dangerously. She recovered after being hospitalized for several weeks.
In another case, a woman in her late 30s was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, along with other infections, after she went to a local doctor because she felt fatigue and joint pain. She was given multiple courses of oral antibiotics, but got worse. She was then given antibiotics intravenously through a catheter for three weeks, but her joint pain continued, and other problems developed. She was hospitalized in an intensive care unit and given many treatments. But the patient continued to worsen and eventually died. Her death was attributed to septic shock related to a bacterial infection from her catheter. 
No use of a catheter was warranted in the woman’s case, Nelson said.
The patients in the other three cases in the report had symptoms such as fatigue, cognitive difficulties, progressive weakness, swelling and tingling in the extremities. All were given either antibiotics or a treatment called immunoglobulin therapy, which is an infusion of fluid that contains antibodies, and all patients developed severe infections and needed to be hospitalized. Two of them eventually improved, while the third died from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease), which she had previously been diagnosed with.
In January 2015, researchers reported in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine the cases of three patients who had cancer but whose cancer diagnoses were delayed because the individuals had initially been diagnosed with chronic Lyme. Two of those patients showed no evidence of ever having Lyme disease, the researchers wrote in their report. And although the third patient had tested positive for Lyme disease, he had been treated appropriately with antibiotics, and his “subsequent symptoms were incorrectly attributed to persistent infection,” the researchers wrote.
“Chronic Lyme disease is a misleading term that should be avoided,” those researchers wrote in their conclusion.
So far, there have not been systematic efforts to collect data about how often people diagnosed with chronic Lyme experience severe health problems, Nelson said. The researchers said they hope that cases can be more systematically studied in the future.
Patients who have been diagnosed with chronic Lyme should know that “infectious disease physicians don’t discount their symptoms and are trying to do right by them,” Adalja said. Doctors want to use treatments that are evidence-based, he said.
Originally published on Live Science.
Editor’s Recommendations
10 Bizarre Diseases You Can Get Outdoors
5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health
7 Strange Facts about the ‘Mind-Control’ Parasite Toxoplasma Gondii
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Huffington Post: Climate Change Could Be Increasing The Footprint Of Lyme Disease
Dr. John Aucott loves to let his dog go off-trail when he hikes. But as the director of the Johns Hopkins Rheumatology Lyme Disease Research Center in Baltimore, he knows better than to do it in June and July — the height of Lyme Disease season, when tiny nymph-stage ticks can move, undetected, from wild host (a mouse or deer) to a dog or human. While dogs can’t directly transmit Lyme disease to their owners, they can harbor ticks capable of doing the job.
People who get Lyme disease suffer from unpleasant symptoms like a rash, facial paralysis and swollen knees. But it isn’t always easy to detect and if left untreated, can progress to complications like memory problems, heart rhythm irregularities and chronic arthritis. A small minority of people with Lyme disease may even suffer symptoms like fatigue and joint pain for months after treatment.
This year, because of the East Coast’s unusually warm winter, ticks seem to be making an earlier appearance, which could make people unknowingly vulnerable to getting Lyme disease. Aucott says he is already finding ticks on his dog.
“I just pulled an engorged tick off [the dog] in February, which would be very unusual if the ground was snow-covered and it was 30 degrees,” he said. “But there’s no snow, and it’s been 60 and 70 degrees for some reason this winter.” 
bina01 via Getty Images
One implication of the warm weather is that it attracts mice, which also harbor the ticks and bacteria that cause Lyme disease: 2017 is expected to be a very risky Lyme disease season, based on the surge of mice in New York measured in 2016, experts Felicia Keesing of Bard College and Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies told NPR this week. Aucott wasn’t surprised to hear this.
Local health departments, state university researchers and local doctors in other high-risk areas are also sounding the alarm in their respective communities about the rise of Lyme disease and tick sightings in their area this year.
“The mice of the previous year are important because they’re the ones infecting the larvae, and [they turn into] the nymphs that are feeding the following spring,” Aucott explained. “So it make intuitive sense — more mice, more infected larvae, more Lyme disease.”
However, just because there are a lot of mice in New York, doesn’t mean there are a lot of mice in other areas where Lyme disease is present. 
“It’s really highly unlikely that the same variables in play in New York are in play in Virginia, Nova Scotia or Maryland,” Aucott said. “In other words, predicting one area doesn’t do a good job of predicting what’s going on in an adjacent region.”
Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector-borne infection in the U.S., and is concentrated mostly in the northeast and upper midwest regions of the country. There were about 28,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease in 2015, but the actual number could be as much as ten times higher, as not all cases are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, CDC researchers estimate that the true number of Lyme disease infections is at around 300,000 cases every year, and occur mostly in the 14 states that make up over 96 percent of all reported cases: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. 
Mice aren’t the problem ― climate change is
Despite regional variation, it is generally true that climbing temperatures encourage the reproduction of mice, which are both natural reservoirs for the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that cause Lyme disease and carriers of the ticks that spread the infection to humans. Keesing and Ostfeld also point out that when people cut down trees and set their homes up in increasingly fragmented forests, that creates even better conditions for mice to multiply. 
What’s more, warm weather generally means more time spent outdoors. 
“If the weather’s nice, then people are out working in yard, or hiking,” Aucott said. “But if the weather’s terrible, people don’t go out and hike on the weekends.”
This isn’t the first attempt to study how Lyme disease season might change as a result of warming weather, associated with climate change. A 2015 analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Center for Atmospheric Research predicts that the start of Lyme disease season, which ranges from about mid-April to the end of June (week 16 to week 26 of the calendar year) depending on the region, could shift an average of half a week earlier as soon as 2025, and two weeks earlier by 2065.
High-risk Lyme disease regions are growing
It’s also clear that Lyme disease risk is expanding regionally. From 1993 to 1997, there were 43 counties in the northeastern U.S. with a high incidence of Lyme disease. The number of high-incidence counties increased more than three-fold to 182 counties by 2008 to 2012. And in north-central states during the same time period, the number of high-incidence counties increased 2.5-fold, from 22 to 78, according to a 2015 analysis by the CDC.
CDC
A map from the 2015 CDC analysis reveals the spread of high-incidence Lyme disease regions over time. 
“The disease is clearly expanding north, south and west off the Eastern seaboard,” Aucott said. But whether that’s significantly influenced by climate change isn’t settled, says Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine. Shapiro does think it’s clear that warmer temperatures play some kind role in incrementally increasing Lyme disease in areas where it was once rare.  
“None of this is hard science yet,” Shapiro said. “What we do know is that the incidence is increasing in areas where there didn’t used to be Lyme disease. I’m not sure it’s attributable only to climate change, but it seems likely that it has at least a partial role.”
While Lyme disease risk is on the rise, the average person’s response to it shouldn’t change
While trying to predict the spread and severity of Lyme disease by region is an interesting question for researchers, Aucott believes that it doesn’t make much of a difference for people who are trying to avoid an infection. In the 14 states where Lyme disease is endemic, risk is always higher than the national average, and people should act accordingly no matter what regional predictions are made for any given year. 
“There’s always a huge risk,” Aucott said. “It’s not like a risk of a tornado, where the tornado is either there or not.”
Here are some pointers on how to avoid tick bites and spot the symptoms of Lyme disease:
How To Cut Your Risk Of Lyme Disease
1. During Lyme disease season, stick to the middle of the trails while hiking
If you love the great outdoors, be sure to stick to well-established paths — especially in the summertime, when tiny nymph-stage ticks spread the disease more easily because they’re so small and difficult to see.
When gardening, stay on the manicured parts of the lawn. Summer isn’t a good time to clear brush from the edges of your property either.
FredFroese via Getty Images
This reporting is brought to you by HuffPost’s health and science platform, The Scope. Like us on Facebook and Twitter and tell us your story: [email protected]
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newstwitter-blog · 8 years ago
Text
New Post has been published on News Twitter
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Huffington Post: Climate Change Could Be Increasing The Footprint Of Lyme Disease
Dr. John Aucott loves to let his dog go off-trail when he hikes. But as the director of the Johns Hopkins Rheumatology Lyme Disease Research Center in Baltimore, he knows better than to do it in June and July — the height of Lyme Disease season, when tiny nymph-stage ticks can move, undetected, from wild host (a mouse or deer) to a dog or human. While dogs can’t directly transmit Lyme disease to their owners, they can harbor ticks capable of doing the job.
People who get Lyme disease suffer from unpleasant symptoms like a rash, facial paralysis and swollen knees. But it isn’t always easy to detect and if left untreated, can progress to complications like memory problems, heart rhythm irregularities and chronic arthritis. A small minority of people with Lyme disease may even suffer symptoms like fatigue and joint pain for months after treatment.
This year, because of the East Coast’s unusually warm winter, ticks seem to be making an earlier appearance, which could make people unknowingly vulnerable to getting Lyme disease. Aucott says he is already finding ticks on his dog.
“I just pulled an engorged tick off [the dog] in February, which would be very unusual if the ground was snow-covered and it was 30 degrees,” he said. “But there’s no snow, and it’s been 60 and 70 degrees for some reason this winter.” 
bina01 via Getty Images
One implication of the warm weather is that it attracts mice, which also harbor the ticks and bacteria that cause Lyme disease: 2017 is expected to be a very risky Lyme disease season, based on the surge of mice in New York measured in 2016, experts Felicia Keesing of Bard College and Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies told NPR this week. Aucott wasn’t surprised to hear this.
Local health departments, state university researchers and local doctors in other high-risk areas are also sounding the alarm in their respective communities about the rise of Lyme disease and tick sightings in their area this year.
“The mice of the previous year are important because they’re the ones infecting the larvae, and [they turn into] the nymphs that are feeding the following spring,” Aucott explained. “So it make intuitive sense — more mice, more infected larvae, more Lyme disease.”
However, just because there are a lot of mice in New York, doesn’t mean there are a lot of mice in other areas where Lyme disease is present. 
“It’s really highly unlikely that the same variables in play in New York are in play in Virginia, Nova Scotia or Maryland,” Aucott said. “In other words, predicting one area doesn’t do a good job of predicting what’s going on in an adjacent region.”
Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector-borne infection in the U.S., and is concentrated mostly in the northeast and upper midwest regions of the country. There were about 28,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease in 2015, but the actual number could be as much as ten times higher, as not all cases are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, CDC researchers estimate that the true number of Lyme disease infections is at around 300,000 cases every year, and occur mostly in the 14 states that make up over 96 percent of all reported cases: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. 
Mice aren’t the problem ― climate change is
Despite regional variation, it is generally true that climbing temperatures encourage the reproduction of mice, which are both natural reservoirs for the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that cause Lyme disease and carriers of the ticks that spread the infection to humans. Keesing and Ostfeld also point out that when people cut down trees and set their homes up in increasingly fragmented forests, that creates even better conditions for mice to multiply. 
What’s more, warm weather generally means more time spent outdoors. 
“If the weather’s nice, then people are out working in yard, or hiking,” Aucott said. “But if the weather’s terrible, people don’t go out and hike on the weekends.”
This isn’t the first attempt to study how Lyme disease season might change as a result of warming weather, associated with climate change. A 2015 analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Center for Atmospheric Research predicts that the start of Lyme disease season, which ranges from about mid-April to the end of June (week 16 to week 26 of the calendar year) depending on the region, could shift an average of half a week earlier as soon as 2025, and two weeks earlier by 2065.
High-risk Lyme disease regions are growing
It’s also clear that Lyme disease risk is expanding regionally. From 1993 to 1997, there were 43 counties in the northeastern U.S. with a high incidence of Lyme disease. The number of high-incidence counties increased more than three-fold to 182 counties by 2008 to 2012. And in north-central states during the same time period, the number of high-incidence counties increased 2.5-fold, from 22 to 78, according to a 2015 analysis by the CDC.
CDC
A map from the 2015 CDC analysis reveals the spread of high-incidence Lyme disease regions over time. 
“The disease is clearly expanding north, south and west off the Eastern seaboard,” Aucott said. But whether that’s significantly influenced by climate change isn’t settled, says Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine. Shapiro does think it’s clear that warmer temperatures play some kind role in incrementally increasing Lyme disease in areas where it was once rare.  
“None of this is hard science yet,” Shapiro said. “What we do know is that the incidence is increasing in areas where there didn’t used to be Lyme disease. I’m not sure it’s attributable only to climate change, but it seems likely that it has at least a partial role.”
While Lyme disease risk is on the rise, the average person’s response to it shouldn’t change
While trying to predict the spread and severity of Lyme disease by region is an interesting question for researchers, Aucott believes that it doesn’t make much of a difference for people who are trying to avoid an infection. In the 14 states where Lyme disease is endemic, risk is always higher than the national average, and people should act accordingly no matter what regional predictions are made for any given year. 
“There’s always a huge risk,” Aucott said. “It’s not like a risk of a tornado, where the tornado is either there or not.”
Here are some pointers on how to avoid tick bites and spot the symptoms of Lyme disease:
How To Cut Your Risk Of Lyme Disease
1. During Lyme disease season, stick to the middle of the trails while hiking
If you love the great outdoors, be sure to stick to well-established paths — especially in the summertime, when tiny nymph-stage ticks spread the disease more easily because they’re so small and difficult to see.
When gardening, stay on the manicured parts of the lawn. Summer isn’t a good time to clear brush from the edges of your property either.
FredFroese via Getty Images
This reporting is brought to you by HuffPost’s health and science platform, The Scope. Like us on Facebook and Twitter and tell us your story: [email protected]
This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link
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ongames · 8 years ago
Text
Climate Change Could Be Increasing The Footprint Of Lyme Disease
Dr. John Aucott loves to let his dog go off-trail when he hikes. But as the director of the Johns Hopkins Rheumatology Lyme Disease Research Center in Baltimore, he knows better than to do it in June and July — the height of Lyme Disease season, when tiny nymph-stage ticks can move, undetected, from wild host (a mouse or deer) to a dog or human. While dogs can’t directly transmit Lyme disease to their owners, they can harbor ticks capable of doing the job.
People who get Lyme disease suffer from unpleasant symptoms like a rash, facial paralysis and swollen knees. But it isn’t always easy to detect and if left untreated, can progress to complications like memory problems, heart rhythm irregularities and chronic arthritis. A small minority of people with Lyme disease may even suffer symptoms like fatigue and joint pain for months after treatment.
This year, because of the East Coast’s unusually warm winter, ticks seem to be making an earlier appearance, which could make people unknowingly vulnerable to getting Lyme disease. Aucott says he is already finding ticks on his dog.
“I just pulled an engorged tick off [the dog] in February, which would be very unusual if the ground was snow-covered and it was 30 degrees,” he said. “But there’s no snow, and it’s been 60 and 70 degrees for some reason this winter.” 
One implication of the warm weather is that it attracts mice, which also harbor the ticks and bacteria that cause Lyme disease: 2017 is expected to be a very risky Lyme disease season, based on the surge of mice in New York measured in 2016, experts Felicia Keesing of Bard College and Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies told NPR this week. Aucott wasn’t surprised to hear this.
Local health departments, state university researchers and local doctors in other high-risk areas are also sounding the alarm in their respective communities about the rise of Lyme disease and tick sightings in their area this year.
“The mice of the previous year are important because they’re the ones infecting the larvae, and [they turn into] the nymphs that are feeding the following spring,” Aucott explained. “So it make intuitive sense — more mice, more infected larvae, more Lyme disease.”
However, just because there are a lot of mice in New York, doesn’t mean there are a lot of mice in other areas where Lyme disease is present. 
“It’s really highly unlikely that the same variables in play in New York are in play in Virginia, Nova Scotia or Maryland,” Aucott said. “In other words, predicting one area doesn’t do a good job of predicting what’s going on in an adjacent region.”
Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector-borne infection in the U.S., and is concentrated mostly in the northeast and upper midwest regions of the country. There were about 28,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease in 2015, but the actual number could be as much as ten times higher, as not all cases are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, CDC researchers estimate that the true number of Lyme disease infections is at around 300,000 cases every year, and occur mostly in the 14 states that make up over 96 percent of all reported cases: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. 
Mice aren’t the problem ― climate change is
Despite regional variation, it is generally true that climbing temperatures encourage the reproduction of mice, which are both natural reservoirs for the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that cause Lyme disease and carriers of the ticks that spread the infection to humans. Keesing and Ostfeld also point out that when people cut down trees and set their homes up in increasingly fragmented forests, that creates even better conditions for mice to multiply. 
What’s more, warm weather generally means more time spent outdoors. 
“If the weather’s nice, then people are out working in yard, or hiking,” Aucott said. “But if the weather’s terrible, people don’t go out and hike on the weekends.”
This isn’t the first attempt to study how Lyme disease season might change as a result of warming weather, associated with climate change. A 2015 analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Center for Atmospheric Research predicts that the start of Lyme disease season, which ranges from about mid-April to the end of June (week 16 to week 26 of the calendar year) depending on the region, could shift an average of half a week earlier as soon as 2025, and two weeks earlier by 2065.
High-risk Lyme disease regions are growing
It’s also clear that Lyme disease risk is expanding regionally. From 1993 to 1997, there were 43 counties in the northeastern U.S. with a high incidence of Lyme disease. The number of high-incidence counties increased more than three-fold to 182 counties by 2008 to 2012. And in north-central states during the same time period, the number of high-incidence counties increased 2.5-fold, from 22 to 78, according to a 2015 analysis by the CDC.
“The disease is clearly expanding north, south and west off the Eastern seaboard,” Aucott said. But whether that’s significantly influenced by climate change isn’t settled, says Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine. Shapiro does think it’s clear that warmer temperatures play some kind role in incrementally increasing Lyme disease in areas where it was once rare.  
“None of this is hard science yet,” Shapiro said. “What we do know is that the incidence is increasing in areas where there didn’t used to be Lyme disease. I’m not sure it’s attributable only to climate change, but it seems likely that it has at least a partial role.”
While Lyme disease risk is on the rise, the average person’s response to it shouldn’t change
While trying to predict the spread and severity of Lyme disease by region is an interesting question for researchers, Aucott believes that it doesn’t make much of a difference for people who are trying to avoid an infection. In the 14 states where Lyme disease is endemic, risk is always higher than the national average, and people should act accordingly no matter what regional predictions are made for any given year. 
“There’s always a huge risk,” Aucott said. “It’s not like a risk of a tornado, where the tornado is either there or not.”
Here are some pointers on how to avoid tick bites and spot the symptoms of Lyme disease:
  This reporting is brought to you by HuffPost’s health and science platform, The Scope. Like us on Facebook and Twitter and tell us your story: [email protected]
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Climate Change Could Be Increasing The Footprint Of Lyme Disease published first on http://ift.tt/2lnpciY
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yes-dal456 · 8 years ago
Text
Climate Change Could Be Increasing The Footprint Of Lyme Disease
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Dr. John Aucott loves to let his dog go off-trail when he hikes. But as the director of the Johns Hopkins Rheumatology Lyme Disease Research Center in Baltimore, he knows better than to do it in June and July — the height of Lyme Disease season, when tiny nymph-stage ticks can move, undetected, from wild host (a mouse or deer) to a dog or human. While dogs can’t directly transmit Lyme disease to their owners, they can harbor ticks capable of doing the job.
People who get Lyme disease suffer from unpleasant symptoms like a rash, facial paralysis and swollen knees. But it isn’t always easy to detect and if left untreated, can progress to complications like memory problems, heart rhythm irregularities and chronic arthritis. A small minority of people with Lyme disease may even suffer symptoms like fatigue and joint pain for months after treatment.
This year, because of the East Coast’s unusually warm winter, ticks seem to be making an earlier appearance, which could make people unknowingly vulnerable to getting Lyme disease. Aucott says he is already finding ticks on his dog.
“I just pulled an engorged tick off [the dog] in February, which would be very unusual if the ground was snow-covered and it was 30 degrees,” he said. “But there’s no snow, and it’s been 60 and 70 degrees for some reason this winter.” 
One implication of the warm weather is that it attracts mice, which also harbor the ticks and bacteria that cause Lyme disease: 2017 is expected to be a very risky Lyme disease season, based on the surge of mice in New York measured in 2016, experts Felicia Keesing of Bard College and Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies told NPR this week. Aucott wasn’t surprised to hear this.
Local health departments, state university researchers and local doctors in other high-risk areas are also sounding the alarm in their respective communities about the rise of Lyme disease and tick sightings in their area this year.
“The mice of the previous year are important because they’re the ones infecting the larvae, and [they turn into] the nymphs that are feeding the following spring,” Aucott explained. “So it make intuitive sense — more mice, more infected larvae, more Lyme disease.”
However, just because there are a lot of mice in New York, doesn’t mean there are a lot of mice in other areas where Lyme disease is present. 
“It’s really highly unlikely that the same variables in play in New York are in play in Virginia, Nova Scotia or Maryland,” Aucott said. “In other words, predicting one area doesn’t do a good job of predicting what’s going on in an adjacent region.”
Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector-borne infection in the U.S., and is concentrated mostly in the northeast and upper midwest regions of the country. There were about 28,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease in 2015, but the actual number could be as much as ten times higher, as not all cases are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, CDC researchers estimate that the true number of Lyme disease infections is at around 300,000 cases every year, and occur mostly in the 14 states that make up over 96 percent of all reported cases: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. 
Mice aren’t the problem ― climate change is
Despite regional variation, it is generally true that climbing temperatures encourage the reproduction of mice, which are both natural reservoirs for the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that cause Lyme disease and carriers of the ticks that spread the infection to humans. Keesing and Ostfeld also point out that when people cut down trees and set their homes up in increasingly fragmented forests, that creates even better conditions for mice to multiply. 
What’s more, warm weather generally means more time spent outdoors. 
“If the weather’s nice, then people are out working in yard, or hiking,” Aucott said. “But if the weather’s terrible, people don’t go out and hike on the weekends.”
This isn’t the first attempt to study how Lyme disease season might change as a result of warming weather, associated with climate change. A 2015 analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Center for Atmospheric Research predicts that the start of Lyme disease season, which ranges from about mid-April to the end of June (week 16 to week 26 of the calendar year) depending on the region, could shift an average of half a week earlier as soon as 2025, and two weeks earlier by 2065.
High-risk Lyme disease regions are growing
It’s also clear that Lyme disease risk is expanding regionally. From 1993 to 1997, there were 43 counties in the northeastern U.S. with a high incidence of Lyme disease. The number of high-incidence counties increased more than three-fold to 182 counties by 2008 to 2012. And in north-central states during the same time period, the number of high-incidence counties increased 2.5-fold, from 22 to 78, according to a 2015 analysis by the CDC.
“The disease is clearly expanding north, south and west off the Eastern seaboard,” Aucott said. But whether that’s significantly influenced by climate change isn’t settled, says Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine. Shapiro does think it’s clear that warmer temperatures play some kind role in incrementally increasing Lyme disease in areas where it was once rare.  
“None of this is hard science yet,” Shapiro said. “What we do know is that the incidence is increasing in areas where there didn’t used to be Lyme disease. I’m not sure it’s attributable only to climate change, but it seems likely that it has at least a partial role.”
While Lyme disease risk is on the rise, the average person’s response to it shouldn’t change
While trying to predict the spread and severity of Lyme disease by region is an interesting question for researchers, Aucott believes that it doesn’t make much of a difference for people who are trying to avoid an infection. In the 14 states where Lyme disease is endemic, risk is always higher than the national average, and people should act accordingly no matter what regional predictions are made for any given year. 
“There’s always a huge risk,” Aucott said. “It’s not like a risk of a tornado, where the tornado is either there or not.”
Here are some pointers on how to avoid tick bites and spot the symptoms of Lyme disease:
  This reporting is brought to you by HuffPost’s health and science platform, The Scope. Like us on Facebook and Twitter and tell us your story: [email protected]
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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imreviewblog · 8 years ago
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Climate Change Could Be Increasing The Footprint Of Lyme Disease
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Dr. John Aucott loves to let his dog go off-trail when he hikes. But as the director of the Johns Hopkins Rheumatology Lyme Disease Research Center in Baltimore, he knows better than to do it in June and July — the height of Lyme Disease season, when tiny nymph-stage ticks can move, undetected, from wild host (a mouse or deer) to a dog or human. While dogs can’t directly transmit Lyme disease to their owners, they can harbor ticks capable of doing the job.
People who get Lyme disease suffer from unpleasant symptoms like a rash, facial paralysis and swollen knees. But it isn’t always easy to detect and if left untreated, can progress to complications like memory problems, heart rhythm irregularities and chronic arthritis. A small minority of people with Lyme disease may even suffer symptoms like fatigue and joint pain for months after treatment.
This year, because of the East Coast’s unusually warm winter, ticks seem to be making an earlier appearance, which could make people unknowingly vulnerable to getting Lyme disease. Aucott says he is already finding ticks on his dog.
“I just pulled an engorged tick off [the dog] in February, which would be very unusual if the ground was snow-covered and it was 30 degrees,” he said. “But there’s no snow, and it’s been 60 and 70 degrees for some reason this winter.” 
One implication of the warm weather is that it attracts mice, which also harbor the ticks and bacteria that cause Lyme disease: 2017 is expected to be a very risky Lyme disease season, based on the surge of mice in New York measured in 2016, experts Felicia Keesing of Bard College and Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies told NPR this week. Aucott wasn’t surprised to hear this.
Local health departments, state university researchers and local doctors in other high-risk areas are also sounding the alarm in their respective communities about the rise of Lyme disease and tick sightings in their area this year.
“The mice of the previous year are important because they’re the ones infecting the larvae, and [they turn into] the nymphs that are feeding the following spring,” Aucott explained. “So it make intuitive sense — more mice, more infected larvae, more Lyme disease.”
However, just because there are a lot of mice in New York, doesn’t mean there are a lot of mice in other areas where Lyme disease is present. 
“It’s really highly unlikely that the same variables in play in New York are in play in Virginia, Nova Scotia or Maryland,” Aucott said. “In other words, predicting one area doesn’t do a good job of predicting what’s going on in an adjacent region.”
Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector-borne infection in the U.S., and is concentrated mostly in the northeast and upper midwest regions of the country. There were about 28,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease in 2015, but the actual number could be as much as ten times higher, as not all cases are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, CDC researchers estimate that the true number of Lyme disease infections is at around 300,000 cases every year, and occur mostly in the 14 states that make up over 96 percent of all reported cases: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. 
Mice aren’t the problem ― climate change is
Despite regional variation, it is generally true that climbing temperatures encourage the reproduction of mice, which are both natural reservoirs for the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that cause Lyme disease and carriers of the ticks that spread the infection to humans. Keesing and Ostfeld also point out that when people cut down trees and set their homes up in increasingly fragmented forests, that creates even better conditions for mice to multiply. 
What’s more, warm weather generally means more time spent outdoors. 
“If the weather’s nice, then people are out working in yard, or hiking,” Aucott said. “But if the weather’s terrible, people don’t go out and hike on the weekends.”
This isn’t the first attempt to study how Lyme disease season might change as a result of warming weather, associated with climate change. A 2015 analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Center for Atmospheric Research predicts that the start of Lyme disease season, which ranges from about mid-April to the end of June (week 16 to week 26 of the calendar year) depending on the region, could shift an average of half a week earlier as soon as 2025, and two weeks earlier by 2065.
High-risk Lyme disease regions are growing
It’s also clear that Lyme disease risk is expanding regionally. From 1993 to 1997, there were 43 counties in the northeastern U.S. with a high incidence of Lyme disease. The number of high-incidence counties increased more than three-fold to 182 counties by 2008 to 2012. And in north-central states during the same time period, the number of high-incidence counties increased 2.5-fold, from 22 to 78, according to a 2015 analysis by the CDC.
“The disease is clearly expanding north, south and west off the Eastern seaboard,” Aucott said. But whether that’s significantly influenced by climate change isn’t settled, says Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine. Shapiro does think it’s clear that warmer temperatures play some kind role in incrementally increasing Lyme disease in areas where it was once rare.  
“None of this is hard science yet,” Shapiro said. “What we do know is that the incidence is increasing in areas where there didn’t used to be Lyme disease. I’m not sure it’s attributable only to climate change, but it seems likely that it has at least a partial role.”
While Lyme disease risk is on the rise, the average person’s response to it shouldn’t change
While trying to predict the spread and severity of Lyme disease by region is an interesting question for researchers, Aucott believes that it doesn’t make much of a difference for people who are trying to avoid an infection. In the 14 states where Lyme disease is endemic, risk is always higher than the national average, and people should act accordingly no matter what regional predictions are made for any given year. 
“There’s always a huge risk,” Aucott said. “It’s not like a risk of a tornado, where the tornado is either there or not.”
Here are some pointers on how to avoid tick bites and spot the symptoms of Lyme disease:
  This reporting is brought to you by HuffPost’s health and science platform, The Scope. Like us on Facebook and Twitter and tell us your story: [email protected]
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://huff.to/2muNvPk
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