Lyme disease is caused by the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria transmitted from deer ticks to humans. The bacterial infection enters the bloodstream and begins to multiply and spread throughout the body. The infection triggers the body’s immune response, inflammation to fight the disease. Lyme disease chest pain can become a new concern.
As the infection spreads to joints, muscles, tendons, and tissues, those areas become inflamed, leaving you with a lot of pain and soreness. The body stays in a constant state of inflammation until the Lyme bacteria become inactive or are eliminated from your body using antibiotics and other advanced treatments.
On a rare occasion, a cardiac manifestation occurs, or carditis, when the infection spreads to the heart. As the Lyme infection enters your heart tissue, inflammation follows. Inflamed heart tissue can disrupt electrical signals sent from the upper chambers to the heart’s lower chambers. Lyme infection can also spread to membranes, muscles, blood vessels, and valves.
Lyme bacteria in the heart tissue, or any other part of the heart, can lead to painful symptoms.
Symptoms of Lyme Disease Affecting the Heart
The symptoms of Lyme carditis can appear at the same time as other Lyme symptoms or separately. You may feel fever, headaches, stiff neck, and fatigue. Specific Lyme carditis symptoms include heart palpitations, chest pains, shortness of breath, fainting, dizziness, or feeling light-headed.
Types of Lyme Carditis
The way Lyme disease affects the heart determines the type of carditis. Below are the different types and functions that a Lyme infection can cause.
Dysrhythmias
Dysrhythmias occur when the electrical system of the body is inflamed. Results may include slower or faster heartbeats, palpitations, chest pain, trouble breathing, fainting, and other symptoms that mimic a heart attack.
Myocarditis
Myocarditis occurs when the heart muscle becomes inflamed due to Lyme disease. Inflammation makes it hard for the heart muscle to pump blood. Symptoms can include fatigue, chest pains, difficulty breathing, and irregular heartbeats.
Endocarditis
Endocarditis is the inflammation of the valves and inner lining of the heart valves. Damaged valves are more susceptible to infections, which may be one reason Lyme bacteria can spread to the valves. Symptoms of endocarditis are the same as other forms of carditis but may also include weight loss and night sweats.
Pericarditis
Pericarditis is when the outer sac of the heart is inflamed. Fluid fills up between the layers of the pericardium and produces stabbing pain, especially when taking a deep breath or coughing.
Pancarditis
Pancarditis is when Lyme disease affects all the heart layers at once.
Misdiagnosis of Lyme Disease Chest Pain
When doctors examine a person with heart-related symptoms, their first thought is not often Lyme disease. If they do not test for Lyme disease, symptoms are often misdiagnosed. Chest pain is associated with many other medication conditions, like strained chest muscles, broken ribs, ulcers, and heartburn.
Other conditions with Lyme disease chest pain symptoms include:
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- Asthmas
- Collapsed lung
- Spasms in the esophagus
- Ruptures in the esophagus
- Hiatal hernia
- Tuberculosis
- Mitral valve prolapse
- Panic attack
- Pleurisy
- Pneumonia
- Angina
- High blood pressure
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The list doesn’t end there. Doctors may misdiagnose Lyme disease chest pain for symptoms related to diabetes, gastritis, hyperthyroid, lupus, shingles, scleroderma, aortic dissection or stenosis, and pulmonary embolism.
Getting the Right Diagnosis
If you have Lyme disease, you must find a doctor specializing in successfully treating Lyme disease. General practitioners are limited in their knowledge about Lyme disease and the advanced diagnostic and treatment methods.
A Lyme literate doctor has other ways to test and confirm a Lyme disease diagnosis. They have the tools and equipment not only to test you but treat your symptoms in their office.
Most importantly, Lyme literate doctors can develop the right treatment plan with your input to ease your symptoms.
Advanced Lyme Disease Options
Hyperthermia utilizes your body’s temperature to fight infection. When you have fevers, that is when your body goes to work fighting off bacteria that can make you ill. Uncontrolled fevers can be risky if the temperature rises too high. However, controlled hyperthermia is medically supervised to help your body reach a high temperature slowly and boost your immune system.
Chelation is a detoxifying process that removes toxins from the body.
Oxygen therapies use extra oxygen as a medical process to treat over 100 diseases, including Lyme disease.
Apheresis can be used to replace your infected blood and plasma with clean, healthy, and usually donated blood and plasma.
Nutraceuticals are products created from foods and herbs that offer antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that can help boost your immune system so you can fight off infections.
Biofilm eradication protocols, parasite inactivation, and immune modulation are additional treatments. You may even opt for IV therapies in which your doctor can give your immune system great strength by sending Vitamin C, Silver, and other antioxidant properties straight into your bloodstream.
The apheresis process is based on a simple theory: remove the bad, replace the bad with the good.
When treating neurologic Lyme disease, this means removing your infected blood and replacing it with donated, healthy blood that is free of infection.
Believe it or not, these processes can happen in just a few hours at your Lyme doctor’s office.
Where to Seek Treatment
When dealing with chest pains and the heart, you want to seek treatment from a Lyme literate doctor who has a proven reputation within the infectious diseases industry, even if they are outside the United States. For example, Lyme Mexico Clinic. The cost is less than you think, especially when you compare it to the numerous referrals to various doctors and specialists within the states.
Not only can they treat Lyme disease, but they can also treat co-infections that may be causing chest pains. They have state-of-the-art equipment and technologies in sterile, hospital-like environments.
They also collaborate with American doctors once you reach the maintenance phase of treatment, so you don’t have to travel out of the country forever. For many, you can see huge improvements after your first treatment.
Don’t wait any longer to get the treatment you deserve.