Panic Attacks May Be An Indication of Lyme Disease

Panic Attacks May Be An Indication Of Lyme Disease

FROM NUTRITION HEALTH REVIEW

Special report:

LYME DISEASE, A SUBURBAN MENACE

During a 10-week period in 1999, Dr. Virginia T. Sherr, a practicing psychiatrist in Holland, Pennsylvania, saw three nurses who complained of racing pulse, breathlessness, overwhelming anxiety, impending doom, sweating, unique pains, headaches, chills, and confusion.

The nurses did not know one another. Their personal physicians eliminated other possible causes and concluded that the three had typical panic disorders.

Subsequent tests by the psychiatrist found the presence of tick borne diseases, specifically deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of Lyme spirochetes in the blood (two cases) or urine (one case), and positive single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) brain scans found brain abnormalities compatible with Lyme disease in all three cases.

Since the diagnosis of Lyme borreliosis, and treatment with high oral doses of antimicrobial medications, all three nurses have been free of panic attacks. Antianxiety medication became unnecessary in one case and was greatly reduced in the others. Two of the patients required pain medications for other symptoms of persistent Lyme disease.

Lyme disease is an infection caused by the corkscrew-shaped bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi (see Lyme disease: Questions and Answers) that is transmitted by the bite of deer ticks and western black-legged ticks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta.

Since this diagnosis, other cases from the same geographic and area have also been diagnosed via SPECT scans as Lyme encephalitis/vasculitis, including one man who tested negative and who experienced horrific rage, panic attacks, and headaches. He is recovering with antimicrobial treatment for previously unsuspected tick borne diseases.

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