I relate. It’s difficult to preach co-existence. It requires effort to avoid oversimplifying and to argue for both sides in a nuanced way. It’s quite scary. Binary thinking is prevalent on both sides.

Yes,

I had a lot of unexplainable symptoms that appeared sporadically.

Consistent symptoms: Mental and physical fatigue, brain fog, GI issues like constipation and bloating, moodiness due to fluctuating physical and mental abilities, fluctuating levels of anxiety, avoidance of social situations or tasks that would cause anxiety/frustration due to mental and physical fatigue, unexplained nerve pain that quickly subsided.

Irregular issues: Joint pain, acid reflux, nausea, rashes, other intermittent allergies, depressive symptoms (in my case my depressive symptoms were frustration due to the fatigue and also the inability to meet my own needs (cook food due to cognitive fatigue) and preferences (I was too tired to do good quality work or keep my house tidy).

Cognitively: Fluctuating ADHD type symptoms such as difficulty concentrating, low frustration threshold for tasks that require immediate or short term memory, changes in mental sharpness. Sensitivity to sound and light.

As the untreated infection progressed I had increasing neurological issues.

Complex issues: After I caught covid my sensory issues went through the roof. I had trouble with muscle coordination. I had nerve pain behind my eye after covid which. The nerve pain coincided with my worsening coordination.

It can look different on different people since everyone has different “weak spots” that a bacteria can attack. I fortunately wasn’t susceptible to progressive joint pain or allergies. Neurological and GI issues were my main issue.

All these symptoms can be caused by a Lyme infection. I can only share my personal experience. But I do I feel comfortable sharing that Lyme was behind a lot of my symptoms that didn’t get better from medication or lifestyle changes. I feel much better and sharper after antibiotics. At this point it’s too soon to tell if I have any underlying health issue, but I suspect I have ADHD that will need to be managed with lifestyle and other interventions.

(Sorry for any writing errors I’m on the run)

This is a simplification and not all health issues are caused by a bacterial infection. my goal with sharing this is to illustrate that infections have a complex expression of symptoms that don’t get better with intervention unless you treat the infection.

Someone already pointed out, a single bacteria isn’t behind colorectal cancer. But after discovering a lot of my health problems were caused by an untreated bacterial infection this type of reasoning makes sense. I hope we find better ways of detecting and treating bacterial diseases.

Quote from the article: “But you don’t turn it on unless you’re in a potato.”

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