15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/17/business/lyme-disease-tick-test/

by bookofjoe • 1 month ago

251 162 1 month ago

mgerdts2• 1 month ago

I’m not optimistic this will be all that helpful. Just because the tick you found is negative, that tells you nothing about those you did not find. Just because a tick is positive, that does not mean that it has infected whoever it was attached to.

My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged. None of the ticks shown were engorged.

_ink_• 1 month ago

I think it's super helpful. Sure it doesn't help with ticks, you don't find, but in my experience it starts to itch eventually even with the tick attached. If it's negative good, if it's positive go see a doctor.

kaikai• 1 month ago

My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged. None of the ticks shown were engorged.

I’ve hear stats as long as 24 hours and as short as 30 seconds. One nurse told me that removing ticks by grasping and pulling means they transmit immediately, because you squeeze their contents through their mouths. I no longer believe any of the stats; seems like it could be at any time.

mgerdts2• 1 month ago

you squeeze their contents through their mouths

Whenever someone recommends removal using tweezers, I wonder if the person offering this advice has ever removed a well attached tick. I’ve found tools like a Tick Tornado work better, but are still problematic with smaller ticks.

https://www.zenpetusa.com/tick-tornado

Georgelemental• 1 month ago

It depends on the disease. Lyme takes many hours, as it must migrate across the tick's gut, but there are others that can transmit in minutes.

yread• 1 month ago

I've removed several hundred ticks using soap on a wet cloth and doing one counter-clockwise rotation on the tick. No lyme, tick-borne encephalitis so far. Key thing is to check after every hike, keep checking their favorite places (where the skin gets thinner and softer) and check before you scratch something that itches.

Having an easy to use method which doesn't need special tools also helps by being able to immediately remove them.

micromacrofoot2• 1 month ago

there have been times in my life where this could have saved me a doctors visit, and that's good enough for me

lukan4• 1 month ago

You went to a doctor because you had a tick, or because you had symptoms? (like the red ring)

exogenousdata• 1 month ago

Unfortunately there are a number of tick-borne illnesses. Eg, Powassan virus is a viral infection that attacks the central nervous system (leading to encephalitis). It can be transmitted within hours or even just 15 minutes of tick attachment.

Another is Alpha Gal. It is a molecule carried in tick saliva that can cause serious allergies to red meat and even dairy. Because the molecule is in the saliva, it can be delivered immediately.

superjan• 1 month ago

I’m not sure we are talking about the same virus, but for the version prevalent in northern europe, there’s a vaccine.

Aurornis• 1 month ago

This is very helpful for determining if prophylactic treatment is necessary after discovering a tick.

If someone doesn’t notice a tick then they aren’t going to be considering prophylactic treatment anyway. It’s for the cases where ticks are discovered.

JimBlackwood• 1 month ago

According to the dutch public health institute, the longer the tick is in the body, the bigger the chance of transmission. Early removal also does not prevent lyme, it just reduces the chances.

Next to that, in The Netherlands we have a site to report tick bites and if they had lyme disease or not. It’s good to know if you should be extra vigilant after a bite from a certain area. I think the self-test could be very useful for such sites.

SyneRyder• 1 month ago

Upstate New York has a site for testing and reporting / tracking. Costs are $80 USD for a comprehensive test though. It looks like they'll test just for Lyme for $20, but if you found a tick on you I imagine you'll want to know all the diseases it has potentially given you. At least I did.

https://nyticks.org/

bregma• 1 month ago

A site to report tick bytes.

Is there a similar site to report mosquito bites? They also carry many debilitation or fatal diseases.

I live in prime tick country. During peak season (March through June and again September through November) I can get 3 or 4 tick bites a day. I don't always get them all because they're completely painless while they're embedded (although I react strongly after they've been removed) and I've been diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease twice after developing all the classic symptoms. I am not alone in my area. If there was a site where you report tick bites here it would need to be pretty robust to handle the load and it would serve no purpose.

The local authorities have acknowledged the rampant outbreak of Lyme in the region. You do not need to provide the tick to authorities for identification. All you need to do is go to any pharmacy and tell them you've been bitten by a tick and they'll write you a prescription for Doxycycline on the spot.

Fomite2• 1 month ago

This is one of the things that is oft repeated by my vector disease colleagues -- your infection may not be caused by the tick you found, but by the tick you didn't.

nkrisc4• 1 month ago

Do ticks commonly detach on their own before being noticed? Because from what I’ve seen of fully engorged ticks I don’t think I would fail to discover that. Or maybe an earlier stage where they’re smaller?

locallost• 1 month ago

I think you need to stop overthinking. Yes it can make you sick, but the only thing you can do is be on the lookout for it and be smart about avoiding it. I've had around 4-5 ticks in the last years, my kids and family probably around 15-20, one recently near my ankle that probably could've been avoided if I wasn't wearing short trousers. But anyway nobody ever got sick from it and we live in a region with a high prevalence of tick caused encephalitis. There's a vaccine for that so we're all vaccinated now.

Otherwise just enjoy your life.

DANmode4• 1 month ago

My understanding is that the ticks only transmit disease after they have been attached long enough to become engorged

This understanding will age like milk.

1970-01-01• 1 month ago

As everyone is different, there is no "best" method to remove one however there's lots of wrong ways. The only thing everyone agrees with is sooner is always better. I'm surprised "laser tick remover" isn't a thing yet.

billfor• 1 month ago

I always keep doxycyline around take a couple whenever I find a deer tick on me.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545493/table/rc1121.ap...

holdenk• 1 month ago

And it's relatively easy to get a prescription for since it's a PEP drug for high -er risk sexual activities.

alfon• 1 month ago

You're the smart one.. Unfortunately I didn't find the tick on time and have been sick with persistent Lyme for over 10 years. Hoping for some kind of solution soon.

throwawaycan• 1 month ago

Did you ever see a tick?

any_throw7772• 1 month ago

Controlled hyperthermia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwtPtlcNXEs

viccis2• 1 month ago

How about loosening restrictions on deer hunting as part of the policy change to reduce deer populations and, consequently, tick populations, that Governor Healey grandstanded^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H spoke passionately about earlier this year

zzzeek2• 1 month ago

and the rabbits and chipmunks and mice and squirrels, as well as that you have to kill basically all deer to the point of about 8 deer per square mile, since one deer can carry 2000-3000 new ticks. which is basically impossible on mainland because new deer just wander over.

viccis2• 1 month ago

I wasn't making a scientific statement about whether depopulating the deer will help; the governor of Massachusetts already did. I'm saying that it's pathetic to blame it all on deer and then not eliminate the pointlessly onerous burden on culling their population.

But since you're being needlessly snarky about it (it's not productive to suggest killing "the rabbits and chipmunks and mice and squirrels"), here:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25118409/

After hunts were initiated, number and frequency of deer observations in the community were greatly reduced as were resident-reported cases of Lyme disease. Number of resident-reported cases of Lyme disease per 100 households was strongly correlated to deer density in the community. Reducing deer density to 5.1 deer per square kilometer resulted in a 76% reduction in tick abundance, 70% reduction in the entomological risk index, and 80% reduction in resident-reported cases of Lyme disease in the community from before to after a hunt was initiated.

Fomite2• 1 month ago

In many places, you need to add lizards to that list.

any_throw7772• 1 month ago

I'm thinking reverse gene drive? Keep the animals and destroy the pests. Also let's do that for screw worms.

inglor_cz• 1 month ago

In Czechia, one of the most infested places are city parks where people walk their dogs. Lots of people, too, so the chances of transmission are high. I don't think that a pet hunting season would pass the Parliament, though :)

Maybe some sort of biological control should be introduced instead. Guinea fowl on steroids.

If we allow ourselves a bit of science fiction, a drone flying over tall grass and burning every questing tick with laser would likely reduce the populations as well. A questing tick sits on the end of a blade of grass, waiting for a host; as such, it is necessarily visible.

daemonologist• 1 month ago

I like that it involves grinding up the tick. Just deserts.

AnimalMuppet• 1 month ago

I don't mind there being some selection pressure against biting humans.

nkrisc4• 1 month ago

At the same time no tick that I’ve ever removed from a person survived, even without testing it for anything.

I don’t think anyone removes a tick and sets it on its merry way.

hmmnxrye• 1 month ago

No, well the point was that noise, chorus, or feedback did not exist. There was no such thing. Therefore, the technical workaround was to place two amplifiers, face to face in order to "mimic" distortion.

This is the way that "Loveless" (1991) was recorded, sans anesthesia.

phyzome• 1 month ago

Wrong thread?

beaker5211• 1 month ago

I didn’t discover that ticks were a problem until I was in my mid 20s, and had been rolling around in deer-filled brush for years. Either I got very lucky, or have a chronic tick-borne disease.

I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s. I’ve had every blood test under the sun, numerous sleep studies and tried every vitamin. I’ve had no answers and no change.

Sometimes, I've believed that it impacts my performance at work. Sometimes I feel like I should be retiring, but I’m not even 40 yet. Sometimes, it's not so bad.

I saw a video on controlled hypothermia the other day, which seems like snake oil. I guess that’s next on my list to try. I feel desperate, but I’m just having to get used to the feeling of desperation, because there appears to be no answer or solution.

stevenjgarner• 1 month ago

That's rough. Same symptoms of low testosterone, which a blood test can measure. This can be caused (even in younger men) through daily exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) like BPA and phthalates, heavy metals, and pesticides. Poor lifestyle exposures such as chronic stress, lack of sleep, and high ambient air pollution also significantly suppress hormone production.

beaker5211• 1 month ago

Indeed. Thanks for the pointer. My testosterone level is in a happy range, as are most of my levels.

Chronic stress, now that's an interesting one. I've never regarded myself as stressed. Or, if I am stressed, I'm always stressed and it's just normal. But I see no reason to be stressed, but maybe I am. And I wonder, how much of stress is a cause, or a result. I've taken a year off work. Am I better for it? It's hard to say. I'm yet to find anything that I can say helps. I've only really found things that make it worse. Like alcohol, and sugar. Diabetes? Yeah, I've considered it. I've got 6 months of blood sugar monitoring data, with no discernible correlation between my levels and how I feel. Funny world <3

alistairSH• 1 month ago

Not just T. Low thyroid hormone levels as well. I just had that diagnosed, after a year or two of feeling “worn out”. I thought it might be T (I’m almost 50 now) but turns out my thyroid was under-active. Relatively easy diagnosis and fix.

thebruce87m• 1 month ago

The poor sleep might be the root cause. I’ve got some of the symptoms that you describe but I’ve always had nasal issues that I think are wrecking my sleep through snoring. That’s my theory anyway so I’m pursuing that.

beaker5211• 1 month ago

Easily proven or disproven with a sleep study. You can get home tests too. Wishing you the best!

contingencies• 1 month ago

When did you last (1) eat a proper salad with no sugary dressing (2) get up early to exercise (3) achieve a suntan (4) spend a week without caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol? (5) catch a sunrise? (6) wake up at an acceptable hour without an alarm? (7) eat a high fiber meal like a vegetable curry?

Other: Dark, cold, quiet bedroom. Sleep study. Vicious dietary improvement. If all else fails: move and change jobs. If that doesn't fix it, try one of those drug induced purges with ibogaine.

alpineman• 1 month ago

This

scotty792• 1 month ago

Do you drink coffee?

nchmy4• 1 month ago

This was my immediate thought. Very small amounts of daily coffee have caused me significant problems with fatigue etc... Takes 1-2 months to get back to feeling good. Strongly urge anyone who feels tired, lack of focus etc to stop all caffeine intake. As with any drug, you're just chasing the initial boost, and really only getting yourself back to baseline.

jere2• 1 month ago

I've had a reckoning with my caffeine metabolism recently. I fall asleep very easily, like head hits pillow and I'm zonked within a minute. But I often wake up at 3 or 4am and am unable to go back asleep.

What I've learned is that caffeine metabolism goes down with age and sleep gets lighter with age. Even if you can fall asleep easily, the residual caffeine in the middle of the night is enough to wake you out of light sleep. I made a tool to convince myself to cut back: http://jitterdone.com

perbu• 1 month ago

fwiw; I had unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline as a post-COVID induced histamine intolerance with a few bonus attributes. High amounts of histamine would accumulate in my mast cells then get released in 3-5am, undermining sleep and also inhibiting serotonin.

It took me about four years to fully understand my condition. Hope you figure out what is bothering you. The body is incredibly complex.

mlrtime• 1 month ago

What did you do about this? Is it at all related to allergy levels? How do you measure your histamine level on a daily basis?

boringg• 1 month ago

How did you figure this one out and how did you resolve it? Asking for a friend!

unsupp0rted2• 1 month ago

How did you figure this one out and how did you resolve it? Asking for ME!

Tistron• 1 month ago

My gf experiences some thing like this sometimes. Seems to correlate without exercise or excitement or eating histamine rich food. She takes pentatop to regulate it with some success. I'm also interested to head about your experience.

krackers• 1 month ago

You can't just make a post like this and not say what the condition was or what you did!!

wateralien• 1 month ago

Re: hypothermia, watch this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwtPtlcNXEs

beaker5211• 1 month ago

Yes, thank you! I am a subscriber to his channel, and I was surprised to watch his video. I have mixed feelings about the treatment. It is one of these "very expensive fix everyone is looking for, but results aren't guaranteed" things that makes me suspect of the whole thing. I've read several reports of people who had no results, and very few from people with positive results.

Sometimes a treatment, perhaps especially one like that, you have to believe in. And I don't take paracetamol because every time I've taken it I don't really feel any better, than had I not taken any at all. So if the treatment needs me to believe in it, that THIS TIME, once and for all, that it's finally going to cure me, because I've ponied up 30,000 EUR, so it HAS to work, then I'm probably not the right candidate. Once I went to a spiritual healer who asked me to leave half way through because I wasn't playing along.

escape_key• 1 month ago

I think in that guys case its hypERthermia not hypOthermia since they elevate his temperature. Artificial fever basically.

jdswain• 1 month ago

I've been through similar, don't give up trying to find a solution. I've recently found what mine is, and am doing much better now. Everyone is different, be careful with advice on the internet, but at the least it gives you ideas for further investigation. For me it was elevated homocysteine, with a genetic origin. I could get an analysis by uploading my genome to Genetic Genie, but ultimately the homocysteine test was the proof.

unsupp0rted2• 1 month ago

I had elevated homocysteine, treated it (MTHFR gene, therefore methylated B12 / folate, etc), and that had zero effect on my sleep quality, unfortunately.

Tried B6, every variation of magnesium (including threonate), all the typical sleep hygiene stuff.. nothing mattered.

geekfeatures• 1 month ago

Signed up to post this. So I have been on this journey with my daughter for the last 7 years, she is now 25, but only got a Lyme diagnosis less than 2 years ago, has been suffering since she was 18. It’s not just ticks, mosquitos and spiders can apparently carry the bacteria (there is not a lot of consensus about the causes of Lyme, there is the bacterial school of thought and a viral theory). This if the fringe of science, theory’s matter but results matter more. My daughter had a range of symptoms, fatigue, body aches, circulation issues her feet would change colour blue, red, purple, brain fog. She had been 5 years on this path trying to deal with this, before the Lyme test was done (we live in nz which lyme is rare, and she likely caught it in Australia which doesn’t acknowledge its existence). Anyway we headed to Germany for hyperthermia treatment. It wasn’t cheap for us, and almost an act of faith in choosing this. I had reservations, at the frontier of medicine everything looks different. People are pursuing options that are unconventional, because the conventional options have been exhausted. At some point everything that is considered mainstream now, once looked unconventional. I know that could be used to justify anything. We spent 3 weeks at St George clinic in Germany.

The theory of Lyme is that is a really slowly replicating bacteria, once every 24 hours vs 20 minutes typical for most. It does respond to antibiotics but the slow replication rate means you would need antibiotics in your system for a much much longer period to have the same number of kill opportunities (it is during replication that bacteria will absorb antibiotics and be killed as I understand it). Roughly you would need antibiotics for 3x24 as long as a typical antibiotic treatment (over 2 years of antibiotics which would ruin the rest of your body). The hyperthermia treatment is intense, it is designed to mimic a fever. One of our bodies approaches to killing bacteria, is getting them hot enough to rupture their cells. It wasnt an easy or a quick fix after treatment, which was disheartening at times. But a year on she has just noticed she is feeling better, has little to no pain and just the other day took a run along the beach. Anyway I just wanted to endorse a plan you were already thinking about. I acknowledge that a chronic health issue is hard, hard in a way that those of us who a generally healthy can’t even comprehend. I wish you all the best

beaker5211• 1 month ago

Thank you for taking the time to sign up and write this. I'm glad your daughter is feeling better, and I wish her a continued recovery. I will consider this treatment more seriously, but the cost is significant, especially only to hope for results.

pipes• 1 month ago

Thanks for posting that. I'm constantly thinking about lymes disease when my two young daughters play in anything approaching long grass. I'll file this away in my mind for if worst ever did happen.

mannanj• 1 month ago

This is a great story, and your kindness shows to a random stranger on the internet so I want to commend you for that.

Adding to it, I want to share a bit of my story and some words that could help as well.

I haven't ever checked for Lyme diagnosis, but I've experienced symptoms that are diabetes adjacent and cured those through diet and other experimentation. Through the last 10 years of so I obsessed over and reversed various medical illnesses that were said to be incurable, since for that exact reason as you said "conventional options have been exhausted". In my journey I met one man who exhausted many treatment options for Lyme and his success strategy looked as follows: a) he took EMF seriously and rebuilt his home for EMF minimization (happy to share strategy and solutions for you more here, I follow a cheap mans version of his more expensive work), b) he would take particular vitamins and other nutrients, and c) Rife therapy. He had an expensive plasma machine that would send particular frequencies into his body through light plasma (more expensive Rife frequency modulation end of things) but many machines exist that are cheaper. Spooky sells these machines, some of the solutions include PEMF which I believe are electricity based. I've used their remote frequency machines and also a scalar version for overall health and haven't had to use them since. My experience with Rife is limited. My basic drivers for health now are grounding for inflammation reduction (feet on grass every so often, or grounding mats), EMF reduction, information management (try notification zero and how it affects your biology: no notifications on your phones or devices ever and that includes notification bubbles - Calls from loved ones OK), and diet/food/water/sleep. I'll also use a Schumann tuned set of tuning forks I have 2 sets one that use a weight vibration and another that uses just the sound. my sleep and stress improve considerably when I use the forks, and I believe they have an affect like grounding but on the frequency end only. When I was first starting this journey, I would do pure cold showers in winter months and kept the practice for years, it was the first time I noticed a big shift in my health and wellbeing that lasted and also kept my mood elevated for a while after. I have also used more expensive cold baths, cryotherapy, etc and I think they can all approach and work for the type of Hypothermia treatment that geekfeatures is mentioning. My intuition is experimentation with these first, 3-5x a week, would mimic a similar process in the body to the hypothermic heavy therapy and may even be triggering it at a similar level to the paid therapies.

Anyway I'll stop there to keep this limited in word count. Feel free to reach out here or personally via hello@mannan.is and good luck.

badpun• 1 month ago

I’ve been battling unexplained anxiety, fatigue, poor sleep and cognitive decline throughout my 30s.

If it's not severe, it may be simply getting older.

inigyou3• 1 month ago

That feels very defeatist, if life only gets worse then I might as well just end it. I prefer to think it's something unexplained and it just shows up more in older people because more things have happened to them so they're more likely to have encountered whatever the cause is.

jere2• 1 month ago

You do get more sensitive to bad lifestyle habits in your 30s, but none of those are normal symptoms attributable to "aging" in your 30s. Really weird when people around this age act like they're just on death's doorstop.

beaker5211• 1 month ago

It's possible. If this is how it is supposed to be, I was thoroughly miss sold my ticket into this life thing. No refunds though, I guess :)

hdndjsbbs• 1 month ago

Did your 30s coincide with the COVID pandemic? I've had a similar experience the last 6 years, and it feels like a combination of aging (I'm 35) and Long COVID. I am trying to get out of the software industry altogether because sitting and looking at a screen all day makes me feel like shit now

Unfortunately I haven't gotten a lot of answers about treatment but just putting it out there, if you don't have a characteristically tick-borne illness like alpha-gal it might be COVID-related.

inigyou3• 1 month ago

I had this starting around the beginning of COVID. Was it COVID? Did I get COVID at all? Plausibly, but not definitively. Did I get it at that time? Almost certainly not as I stayed isolated and got tested whenever I wasn't. It could be aging but I think a lot of people chalk things up to aging that are actually due to non-aging-related causes - you just accumulate more past as you age so you're more likely to have encountered whatever the cause is. I did go camping several times, once in a region known to have Lyme, without being vaccinated, but that was years after I started noticing chronic fatigue. Conclusion: I really don't know.

At least some of my cognitive decline is surely related to my attention span, which is not aging-related at all but more to do with the modern information-flood environment. A few minutes ago I misread "scripted" as "sculpted" in an HN comment and then stopped to reflect why I did that. It wasn't because I can't read, but rather because I was skimming over that comment really, really fast, because that way I can view more comments.

snarf213• 1 month ago

If you think you have long Covid, you should do some research about CIRS (Chronic Inflammation Response Syndrome). It is a condition caused by exposure to toxic mold from water damaged (inside or out) buildings. There is growing evidence that there isn't actually a separate condition for long Covid, but rather it is Covid-triggered CIRS. (Lyme can trigger it too). (Note: only about 25% of people are genetically susceptible to suffering from CIRS)

CIRS causes your body's call-and-response immune system to short circuit; meaning one part detects the problem and the part is supposed to fix it but the part that is supposed to fix it (remove the mycotoxins) doesn't see the problem and does nothing. CIRS causes a lot of side effects, including all the ones mentioned by the GP and many more. If you want to test for toxic mold, you need to test the dust in your space. Some amount of mold is naturally in the air at all times. The dust will show and accumulation of mold over time and show if there is a real problem.

Source: I thought I had long Covid for a long time, until I realized the real problem which was toxic white mold in my house. I threw everything in a dumpster and sold my house and am now on the long slow multi-year process of recovery. If you think you may have it, try pushing Mg, Zinc and Potassium really hard for a few weeks. Take things that naturally bind the bile in your gut (the mycotoxins attach to the bile which is recycled). There are heavier binders that bind everything but I wouldn't start there.

spprashant• 1 month ago

I am just offering a different point of view, not disagreeing with the other experiences on this thread.

I d like to think I have fully recovered from confirmed Lyme diagnosis with Doxycycline for 14 days. I had fever and weakness for a week and lowest HRV reading my Fitbit ever recorded (7ms v 50ms avg).

Interestingly, I have a lot of symptoms like anxiety, sleeplessness, and brain fog even today, but I know for a fact I had it even before Lyme. It had peaked during the COVID times when I sat at my desk working over 10 hours on the regular because there was literally nothing else to do.

So at-least in my case it seems COVID was the trigger and Lyme didn't seem to move the needle much either way.

javier2• 1 month ago

I think I may have had long covid or something like that as well. for something like 12-18 months in 2023-2024 I would only go to work, come home sleep 2 hours and that was all I could manage. I felt so fatigued and tired. I started doing better at the beginning of 2025, and am doing better now. I think it may have been caused by partly illness, and partly the psychological shift to doing nothing social at all for most of covid pandemic.

kathysgeek2• 1 month ago

You owe it to yourself to learn about Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). It can be caused by lyme but is more often due to exposure to water damaged buildings.

It is treatable and the science is backed by peer-reviewed academic papers. https://www.survivingmold.com/legal-resources/publications/p...

Reasonably priced lab testing can be obtained without jumping through insurance hoops: https://www.moldco.com/

I have personally suffered from CIRS-wdb (water damaged building) for decades. By 2012 (age 44) I was so chronically sick with severe neurological, endocrine and digestive symptoms that I could not work and barely slept 3 hours a night for months. Brain fog, "ice pick" pains in the gut, muscular weakness and balance problems were among the many symptoms. It was so bad that I was preparing for the end within a year and was spending my limited time with my wife and young children. Years of medical tests and consults (Cleveland Clinic) found nothing.

Fortunately, lots of googling found medical articles by Dr Ritchie Shoemaker listing many of the same multi-system symptoms. From the late 1990s he identified cohorts of patients with such symptoms and developed effective treatments. I drove out to Maryland and was treated by him from 2012-2013 following the Shoemaker protocol. We spent a substantial amount remediating the water damage in our home. My health improved incrementally to the point where I now work productively and actively mountain bike daily at age 59. I am about 91% recovered and have no doubt that I would have died without treatment. I take maintanence doses of Welchol and Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP) and avoid water damaged buildings.

I have no financial interest in Moldco or Dr Shoemaker but feel compelled to share my experience with those who seem to be suffering similarly.

I almost did not write this post. Nearly every afflicted person I have shared CIRS info with has ignored it and continued their health decline. I hope that you or someone reading this will take the steps and improve their health.

trehalose• 1 month ago

Nearly every person you have shared CIRS info with was formally diagnosed with CIRS by a doctor? Or were you the one diagnosing them?

thinkthatover• 1 month ago

My friend was diagnosed with lyme disease in his mid-20s after years of symptoms similar to your own (brain fog, extreme fatigue, etc.). The hard thing is that even lyme disease itself is a constellation of illnesses, he had to work with mulitple specialists for years to confirm what the issue was and get the proper treatment.

In his case, he is mostly back to normal, albeit gluten intolerant, which will cause his symptoms to redevelop, namely spinal inflammation.

Its hard not to engender helplessness when hearing or dealing with types of issues, but I wish you perserverance in your search for answers, and grace when dealing with your problems.

rsyring2• 1 month ago

I'm somewhat hesitant to post this publicly but I'm empathetic with where you are at and maybe it will be helpful to you or others so here goes:

I’ve been chasing a similar symptom cluster: low-grade depression, anhedonia, "burnout", fatigue, poor sleep, stress intolerance, low motivation / executive function, loss of positive emotions including the ability to be "attracted" to things or feel affectionate, and low libido.

For years, I thought this was a mental/emotional health issue. But nothing I did seemed to impact it, including less stress and a sabbatical, and I finally started to wonder if it was more physiological than psychological. My symptoms were psychological (ish) but I started to wonder if there were underlying biological causes that amounted to more than "not handling life well, not trying hard enough, etc."

I eventually ran into a functional medicine practitioner who, for the first time ever, described a process that can happen in our bodies that fit my symptoms to a T. I don't have a good summary of it to post but, essentially, inflammation can cause the brain to become chronically fatigued (in the sense of not having the energy it needs), which can lead to hormone problems, which then recursively cause additional brain health issues. I'm doing a poor job describing it but, when it's described to me, it fit what I experienced almost exactly.

FWIW, it was incredibly liberating when I finally had a reason to think maybe this whole thing was something happening to me instead of being caused by me. A hormone specialist described it as: complex hormonal dysfunction secondary to chronic stress and inflammation.

A functional medicine workup found a mix of hormone-utilization issues, thyroid conversion issues, low-ish usable testosterone despite decent total testosterone, low iron availability despite elevated ferritin, and some inflammation markers. I also have a couple genetic variants that may matter in this context: MTHFR and APOE 3/4.

Mold/mycotoxin exposure is another possible contributor in my case. I’m not convinced it’s “the answer,” but testing suggested past exposure and possible ochratoxin involvement, so it’s now part of the differential rather than something I’d dismiss.

Some non-standard labs that they have started looking at in my case: free+total T, SHBG, estradiol, pregnenolone/DHEA-S, free T3/free T4/reverse T3, iron/TIBC/ferritin/transferrin saturation, B12/folate/homocysteine, inflammatory markers, and mold/home-environment testing if the history fits.

At a recent visit with my provider, she mentioned that just the low free T, thyroid, and iron would be enough to knock someone down and feel terrible. And I have other things going on besides that.

I work with Ashley Giles from Origin Medical in Georgetown, Indiana (USA). I believe she can work with people who aren't local. What I appreciate most about Ashley is that she's willing to look at the whole pattern — endocrine, nutrition, inflammation, sleep, stress physiology, and environment together. And she really knows her stuff.

I'm about 10 months into treatment and expect this to be a 2-3 year process to get back to normal. I'm better than I was...I'm at least mostly functional now on a day to day basis. But a lot of my symptoms are still present in one degree or another. So, no magic bullets here.

If anyone wants to discuss: randy@syrings.us

rsyring2• 1 month ago

I accidentally posted this top level, but intended it to be a reply to your post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48620008

slicktux• 1 month ago

Interesting enough; Lyme disease come from ticks that fed on infected mice. Like deer-mice or white footed mice. Rodents are the problem.

kortex• 1 month ago

Did you mean hyperthermia? This whole thread sent me down a rabbit hole (I have several close folks afflicted by Lyme) and while at first glance hyperthermia might seem woo-ish, there is real research being done, particularly on hyperthermia + antibiotics. The chief drawbacks are cost (I'm seeing $30k and up and not usually covered) and strain on the body. Friedrich Douwes pioneered much of this.

Douwes F. Komplextherapie der chronischen Borreliose (Lyme disease) - Ein neuer Therapieansatz: die Antibiotika augmentierte Thermoeradikation (AAT). OM & Ernährung. 2018;164:F10.

Douwes F. The successful antibiotic augmented thermal eradication of chronic lyme disease. Paper presented at the 32nd ESHO Meeting, Berlin, 16–19 May 2018.

wurf234• 1 month ago

Posting with a fresh account for obvious reasons.

After serious issues piling up for a very long time and an equally long journey to get to the root what was bothering me medically I presented to Dr. Douwes a couple years back in his clinic in Bad Aibling.

The experience was a bit frightening, to say the least. Their methodology to get a diagnosis was basically just examining my medical history followed by a dark field microscopy (i.e. visually checking a blood sample for spirochetes). After that I was diagnosed with late stage lyme and offered two options: a very handwritten prescription (pencil on notepad, w/o doctors signature, not rubberstamped, looking very shady) for herbal ingredients (basically artemisia annua leaves and some roots to brew a tea) - without any tips where to get that from and not really exact dosages given. Option 2: ambulant Hyperthermia + painkillers (to supress pain from the hyperthermia) + a combination of antibiotics (parenteral) for 2 or 3 weeks. Extracting a fortune (20k ballpark)

They also offer hyperthermia treatment for cancer and long covid & me/cfs if I am not mistaken.

The visit really had a smell to it and left me with unease. Look up the group's company network in the Handelsregister and decide for yourself, I got some PE vibes from it. I chickened out and went to someone else, luckily Germany has quite a few private MDs specializing on lyme and other tickborne diseases. What I got in general: most treatments are not evidence based and theres lots of snake oil around, some of the patients are very desparate, me included back then. PS: I made good progress, but am still on meds since. Apparently there's no eradication for late stage lyme. Maybe there are lucky cases, but the slow growth of borrelia spirochetes makes treatment very tedious, much like or even worse than with tuberculosis. I am sure that their treatment actually does help, but it is kind of a hail mary (combo of broad spectrum antibiotics is basically applying blunt force).

gentlewater2• 1 month ago

Recognizable. I try to increase how much of my wage I save, in case I can’t continue working for ever.

My best answer for my own sake is just burnout, exasperated by some underlying depression. I can have good periods when job stress is low and I make good life choices. Incidentally, I had a blood test show borreliosis randomly 10 years ago, but doubt that’s relevant.

Loughla• 1 month ago

If your job is impacting your health, literally do something else. I know it's seemingly flippant but it's real advice.

I left a very high stress job for one that pays less, but has zero stress. Within 1 week I had to come off the blood pressure medicine. Within 2 months I started weaning off the anxiety meds.

It's like I've been looking at life through frosted glass, and it's suddenly clear. I wish I had done this sooner.

The loss of income isn't the end of the world. You can make it work. I did.

gaiagraphia• 1 month ago

Growing up in the UK, I never thought about ticks, ever. I then moved to Poland, and remember thinking the Poles were crazy for worrying about tall grass all the time. It was a huge 'wtf are you doing lol?' moment... Then a friend of a friend got fucked over by Lyme disease.

Now I've developed a case of Polish paranoia and tuck my trousers in socks, even if it's 35 degs :/

ed_balls2• 1 month ago

We stopped burning grass and got ticks infestation. I used work and play in tall grass as a 7 year old in my grapa farm. Never got a tick. 30 years later I found 7 ticks on my cloths after 2 hours walk on the same farm.

skirge• 1 month ago

it's good to have test for Lyme in case of strange symptoms (joint pain etc.) but check for alpha-tryptasemia which is more probable (5% people have it).

royosherove• 1 month ago

TLDR: A startup called LymeAlert is launching a $40 at-home test (August 2026) that tells you in 15 minutes whether a tick carries Lyme disease. You grind the tick in a container, insert a chemical strip, and it changes color if Lyme bacteria are present. Founded by an MIT Sloan MBA / physician assistant who wanted to save people the $50–$450 and week-long wait of lab testing. Caveat: it only detects Lyme (not other tick-borne infections like Alpha-gal), though a multi-pathogen version is planned for next year. They're also building a smartphone app to crowdsource infected-tick locations.

bilsbie• 1 month ago

The problem is the ticks you don’t find.

warumdarum• 1 month ago

My pet theory is that lyme disease coevolved to make mamals "addicted" to ticks. Every reinfection and the resulting fever-body pyrolysis, resets the infections malaise sideffects for a while. Thus, if you where outside all the time, you would be conditioned to expose yourselfs to ticks all the time, to feel "healthy" again. If those little bastards secreted fentanyl it would have a similar outcome.

josters• 1 month ago

We are giving our dog Fluralaner/Bravecto[1] against ticks which paralyzes and kills them when they bite, drastically reducing potential exposure to Lyme disease. Unfortunately not approved for humans and therefore an interesting inverse: humans can get vaccinated against TBEV but not against Lyme disease whereas dogs can get vaccinated against Lyme disease but not TBEV.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluralaner

jaeckel• 1 month ago

Fancy! One can buy a pack of 3 for 30€ in Germany, which detect multiple types of borrelia bacteria ...

shinobi-apps• 1 month ago

Anyone tried ivermectin?

poszlem• 1 month ago

"LymeAlert seeks to help people avoid the cost and the wait of going to the emergency room after being bitten by a tick"

I might be mistaken, but I don't think you should go to the emergency room with a tick bite..? Do people really do that?

mfi• 1 month ago

Pfizer recently released that they’re planning to send in their new Lyme vaccine to regulatory authorities after their phase 3 study: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

rkagerer• 1 month ago

How effective do you think this test will be?

Is the reactive strip used in the kit an existing, well-proven product?

cheesecakegood• 1 month ago

It might be irrational but ticks terrify me (grew up in the Northwest where they aren’t so much a thing) and make me want to avoid moving to the East entirely

miiiiiike• 1 month ago

Start thinking about α-gal syndrome, even if you're in The North. I just pulled an adult Lone Star tick off my back last night. I had no idea that they had made it to Northern Illinois. Now I get to spend the summer waiting to see if a burger is going to kill me.

https://radiolab.org/podcast/alpha-gal

eggy• 1 month ago

For me, vigorous exercise, riding my bike, running, jumping rope, has always made me feel better mentally and physically whether it was a pathogen funk or just life and feeling down or symptomatic as some describe below. I always check my kids and myself after hikes, especially in tall grass or shrubs. I've found ticks here and there over the years. The cathartic effect of high-intensity exercise where you push yourself to what you think is your limit is amazing for your physical and mental well being. The old Sufi saying, "Movement is life; stillness is death" is my mantra. I have friends who avoid hiking for fear of ticks and Lyme disease. It's a shame, since being outdoors in the sun, smelling the woods, and taking in the views while walking are priceless. Movement over pharmaceuticals.

dilfred• 1 month ago

While this at-home test kit is neat, there already are solutions to this problem which are likely more beneficial to the overall awareness of tick-borne illness. In the US, one can send a tick (alive, dead, in shreds) to Penn State’s tick research lab via usps and get results in just a few days. Customers can select what results they’re looking for, as ticks don’t solely carry one “lyme disease” marker.

I would feel better sending a tick that i pulled off of myself or my pets to a dedicated research lab rather than buy some one-off test kits which don’t contribute to the overall incidence rate of tick-borne illness.

I even sent a tick that I found in a potted plant from home depot (never attached to me) which turned out to carry rocky mountain spotted fever. I only sent that random tick in just to see if it carried anything, and since seeing the report from Penn State Ive wondered if i had contracted RMSF what my medical journey would have looked like, since i live on the opposite side of the continent from those ticks and i had found it mid-December. That would have required a Gregory House differential diagnosis where I live.

15-minute at-home Lyme disease tick test

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