Seven top takeaways from the Integrative Practitioner Summit on environmental medicine

2. Lyme disease is often accompanied by a psychiatric illness, mood disorders, and physical symptoms.

According to Kinderlehrer, research has shown that Lyme disease is prevalent within psychiatric populations. In one psychiatric hospital alone, 33 percent of patients were serologically positive for Lyme disease according to a study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry.

In his presentation, Kinderlehrer said Lyme disease may play a role in the onset of mental illness. The microbes of tick-borne illnesses are not killed by a local inflammatory response, rather they attack software which causes systemic inflation.

“It's like too many soldiers on the field, but they're shooting,” he said. “They're disorganized. They're shooting at each other. They're certainly not a coherent attack on the enemy.”

As the body overreacts to the invasion of tick-borne illnesses, chaos ensues in the regulatory system resulting in a plethora of health concerns including neuroinflammation, a central contributor to psychiatric illness. In his review of literature on the subject, Kinderlehrer said he found Lyme disease was associated with many psychiatric disorders, such as depression, anxiety disorders, and bipolar disorder.

Bartonella, bacteria than can be spread through ticks, has also been linked to several psychiatric disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), psychosis, and personality disorders, Kinderlehrer said.

In addition, Kinderlehrer said psychiatric disorders caused by tick-borne illnesses are often accompanied by physical symptoms, commonly overlooked by doctors. For instance, patients with a tick-borne infection and a psychiatric disorder sometimes present bartonella striae, skin lesions that resemble stretch marks. These can be a tell-tale sign of a mental disorder caused by a tick-borne illness.

“As soon as a patient says, ‘I have anxiety and depression’, that's it, they’re given a DSM-5 [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] diagnosis,” said Kinderlehrer. “No one's paying attention to the physical symptoms, which are considered secondary.”