Have you ever been bitten by a tick and wondered if it’s caused long-term health consequences for you?
Do you suffer from a complex health condition that seems impossible to diagnose?
Do you struggle with chronic fatigue?
These are just a few reasons that we might consider testing you for chronic infections. This can be a difficult realm to navigate but with a little expertise, an extremely reputable lab and a toolkit to provide solutions, this can offer a light for those struggling with these long-standing complex symptoms.
The lab we most commonly use is called Armin Labs and has its headquarters in Germany. Via elispot testing it is able to give us a more quantifiable picture of viral or bacterial activity as well as numerous markers of immune function. Lyme disease, Epstein Barr, Cytomegalovirus and Coxsackie virus are among our most commonly tested, though many more are applicable for different health histories and symptoms.
Armin Labs describes the Lyme disease Elispot test in this way: “The [Elispot] test reflects the actual Borrelia burgdorferi activity of chronic and recent Borrelia burgdorferi infections. It is highly sensitive and can detect even one single Borrelia burgdorferi-reactive T-cell in the sample. With detection levels that can be as low as one cell in 100,000, this test is one of the most sensitive cellular assays available. The EliSpot is between 20 and 200 times more sensitive than a conventional ELISA. It displays a similar sensitivity as a RT-PCR (Real Time PCR) analysis but detects the secreted protein instead of the mRNA (messenger RNA).”
Living with a chronic infection can be slowly crippling and leave you wondering what the heck is wrong with you. Most commonly by the time we test patients for chronic infections, they have been hunting for answers for years.
Chronic infections do not present the same way acute infections do. Their symptoms can be much more nebulous, and can include fatigue, muscle and/or joint pain, mood changes, digestive issues, tingling sensations, recurrent infections, poor immune response, sore throat, chronic cough, night sweats, autoimmune diseases, and so much more.
If testing shows the presence of one or more infections, we select treatments that are specific for those microbes. This isn’t generally a quick fix, like a quick round of antibiotics, as by this point the bugs have dug pretty deep into our systems, but with time and the right tools relief is at hand.
Armin is a lab that is also a great choice for an acute tick bite whether to test the tick itself or the person bitten. It’s always best not to wait for these bugs to bury themselves in.
If any of this sounds like you, we are here to help!
