nbcnews.com
Lyme disease and other infections spread by ticks hit record high
The number of individuals with tick-borne diseases has hit record highs in the United States according to the CDC. According to the report: "Nearly 60,000 people were diagnosed with a tickborne infection, mostly Lyme disease, in 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. And that’s almost certainly just a fraction of the true count. “The true number of cases is probably 10 times that,” said Dr. John Aucott, director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center and chair of the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group"...."Lyme disease infected 42,743 people in 2017, the CDC said. That compares to 36,000 cases in 2016".
These figures imply that somewhere between 427,000 and almost 600,000 new cases of Lyme disease are happening every year, and that is not accounting for those with "medically unexplained symptoms (MUS)", or those diagnosed with other diseases that mimic Lyme disease. These include Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and/or Fibromyalgia (5% of the US population), autoimmune illness (23 million Americans) or dementia (46.5 million Americans have been diagnosed with pre-clinical dementia). Infections and environmental toxins have been linked to these different disease manifestations. A paradigm shift is needed in the way we look at chronic disease, and prevention practices are no longer a good idea, but essential as Lyme disease and tick-borne infections continue to spread.
