The Silent Epidemic: Tick-Borne Pathogens and Co-Infections

Emergency room (ER) visits for tick bites have reached their highest level of the past decade for this time of year (except in the south-central region), according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

We wrote about Lyme disease perplexities in April of 2025, in anticipation of May’s Lyme Disease Awareness month last year.

But this year appears set to top previous records, and new issues are popping up, such as the Alpha-Gal Syndrome meat allergy, which is now prevalent in places like Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

Adding to the concern, new life-threatening co-infections carried by ticks are still being identified. Lyme-related immune suppression may also make it harder for the body to fight off other co-existing pathogens.

The CDC says that 475,000 people per year are treated for Lyme disease. But Lyme expert Dr. Richard Horowitz thinks that might be the tip of the iceberg.

Due to these new threats, it’s especially important to know the signs and symptoms of Lyme and, most of all, to take prevention very seriously.

This special report will help you do exactly that.

Lyme Disease – No Longer Confined to Certain Regions

For decades, Lyme disease was considered an issue confined to the dense woods of Old Lyme, Connecticut, and parts of the upper Midwest.

Rocky Mountain spotted fever was seen as a rare, location-specific hazard, and exotic manifestations such as tick-induced meat allergies (Alpha-Gal) were virtually unheard of.

Today, that landscape has shifted dramatically. Tick-borne illnesses are no longer local issues; they’ve transformed into a rapidly expanding, highly complex public health crisis.

Recent assessments show a troubling escalation, with diagnosed cases of tick-borne disease jumping by an estimated 25% over the past year alone.

As ticks encroach further into suburban and exurban areas, they bring with them multiple pathogens that complicate clinical diagnoses, overwhelm standard laboratory methods, and leave patients frustrated.

Dr. Richard Horowitz – A Leader in Chronic Illness Care

To address the growing tick crisis, modern medicine needs a major shift in how it tests and treats complicated, long-term sicknesses.

Leading this charge is Dr. Richard Horowitz, an expert in internal medicine and the director of the Hudson Valley Healing Arts Center.

• A Lifelong Expert: Over his 41-year career, Dr. Horowitz has treated more than 13,000 patients suffering from long-term tick disorders.

• Creating a New Framework: His hands-on experience led him to develop a special 16-point checklist for testing and treatment called the Multiple Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome (MSIDS) model. It is designed to map out all the hidden, overlapping layers of a complex chronic illness.

• Reversing Other Brain Diseases: While this method was originally created to handle tough, long-term Lyme disease care, early research shows it works for other serious health problems, too, including Alzheimer's disease.

Why Tick-Borne Illnesses Are Exploding (Up 25%)

The large jump in tick diseases isn't a random spike.

It’s the result of years of changes in our weather, in addition to suburban and exurban development, that have created the perfect storm for ticks to survive and multiply.

• Warmer Weather: Ticks need the right temperature and humidity to live. Freezing cold winters used to kill off large groups of ticks and force the rest to sleep through the winter. Now, winters are milder, meaning ticks stay active almost all year long.

• Longer Seasons: Different types of ticks (such as the blacklegged tick and lone star tick) are surviving the winter in larger numbers. They wake up earlier in the spring and now keep feeding well into November and December due to warmer autumns.

• Chopped-Up Forests: As developments expand into rural areas, big continuous forests get broken up into smaller patches of woods. Large predators such as wolves, coyotes, and foxes disappear because they need deep wilderness to survive. They don't live in the smaller woodsy areas. 

• The Mouse Explosion: White-footed mice love these chopped-up woods. Without predators to hunt them, their populations are booming. These mice are the main animals that carry Lyme disease bacteria. One infected mouse can pass the disease to dozens of baby ticks that feed on it.

• The Role of Deer: An overabundance of white-tailed deer makes the problem even worse. While deer don't give ticks Lyme disease, they act as a massive mating ground. One deer can feed hundreds of adult ticks, which then drop them off into the leaves to lay thousands of eggs.

Because human neighborhoods keep expanding into these wooded edge environments, humans, deer, mice, and ticks are all living much closer together.
This has turned many suburban backyards into active hot spots for tick-borne diseases.

How a Tick Bite Causes a Meat Allergy

When a lone star tick -- named that because of the white spot on its back that resembles the state of Texas -- bites an animal like a deer or cow, it picks up a tiny sugar molecule from that animal's blood called alpha-gal (galactose--1,3-galactose).

If that same tick later bites a human, it injects those animal sugars directly into the human's skin.

The tick's spit confuses the human immune system, causing it to overreact and creating a severe allergy to the sugar found in red meat.

Once this allergy (called Alpha-gal Syndrome, or AGS) is triggered, eating animal products can cause dangerous reactions. It behaves differently from normal food allergies, which makes it vexing for doctors to diagnose.

Here’s why:

• Delayed Symptoms: Most food allergies (i.e., peanut allergy) happen within minutes. An alpha-gal reaction takes 3 to 6 hours to appear because the sugar takes a long time to digest and enter your blood.

• Changing Symptoms: A reaction can cause terrible stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, hives, and trouble breathing. Because it happens many hours after eating, often striking in the middle of the night, patients and doctors rarely connect the sickness to a dinner eaten 4 or 6 hours earlier. Or connect it to a tick bite, for that matter.

• Hidden Triggers: People with this allergy can’t eat regular cuts of meat, but they also must avoid hidden animal ingredients, including gelatin (found in jellied candies and medicine capsules), lard, dairy products (milk, cheese, butter), and certain ingredients used in everyday household goods.

Why Lyme Disease is So Hard to Diagnose

Lyme disease—which is caused by a spiral-shaped bacteria that allows it to burrow deep into the body in unique ways—is an ongoing puzzle for doctors.

It’s frequently missed, undertreated, or confused with other health conditions.

• Problems with Standard Tests: The basic two-step blood test recommended by health agencies does not actually look for Lyme bacteria. It just measures your body’s immune response (antibodies) to the bacteria.

• Timing Flaws: During the first few weeks after a tick bite, your immune system doesn’t create enough antibodies for a test to detect. Thus, the standard test is wrong more than half the time early on. Even if you have severe symptoms and joint pain, your test might come back "negative," causing doctors to mistakenly rule out Lyme.

• Immune System Shutdown: To make things worse, Lyme bacteria and any co-existing mold toxins can turn off your immune system. They exhaust your body's defender cells and stop them from making antibodies, which hides the infection from blood tests.

• The Lyme "Bingo" Test: To get a better answer, Lyme-literate doctors look for specific lines on advanced blood tests (like an IGeneX test). If five specific numbers light up positive on this test, it proves you've been exposed to Lyme.

• One Bite, Many Pathogens: A single tick bite can inject many different bacteria, viruses, and parasites into your body at the exact same moment. These extra infections can change your symptoms, weaken your immune system, and make standard single-drug treatments fail.

• Mixed Symptoms: Lyme disease can show up as a classic bullseye rash, but only about half the time. Other common signs include joint pain that moves around, a droopy face (facial palsy), heart inflammation (carditis), extreme tiredness, trouble finding the right words, and other brain-fog issues dubbed "Lyme brain." Some variants can even present with malaria-like symptoms.

Chronic Persistence vs. The Biofilm Persister Model

For years, traditional medicine asserted that Lyme disease was easy to catch and a cinch to cure with a simple 14-to-30-day course of antibiotics.

People who stayed sick past this window were dismissed as having "aches and pains of daily living," or labeled with Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS).

Fortunately, that consensus has shifted.

Research from prominent institutions like Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and the University of New Haven now shows that the Borrelia burgdorferi forms a highly resilient biofilm-persister bacteria.

Similar to the “slime shield” of persister cells found in tuberculosis, leprosy, or dental plaque, these bacterial communities lock themselves inside a protective shield, effectively hiding themselves from antibiotics.

To combat this shielding problem, Dr. Horowitz pioneered the use of dapsone combination therapy, repurposing old tuberculosis treatments to fight tough infections.

By combining medicines like doxycycline, rifampicin, and dapsone, they can reach deep into the nervous system and break down stubborn bacterial shields without needing an IV line.

A New Way to Look at Long-Term Illness

A major flaw in modern medicine is that doctors often group symptoms together, give them a disease name, and try to fix them with a single drug.

Instead, the MSIDS framework looks at complex chronic illness using the idea of "16 nails in the foot." If your foot hurts because you stepped on 16 nails, taking out just one or two won't stop the pain.

Doctors need to find and remove every single nail. To do this, Dr. Horowitz looks at six main things that cause internal inflammation and the health problems they leave behind.

The 6 Main Causes of Inflammation

1. Infections: Multiple pathogens invading the body at the same time, including Lyme, other pathogens contained in the bite, and sleeping viruses that suddenly wake back up.

2. Environmental Toxins: Toxins such as heavy metals and mold can build up inside your cells. Mold toxicity is found in about 90% of long-term patients.

3. The Gut Microbiome: An unhealthy balance of gut bacteria and loss of protective germs wrecks the communication between your gut and brain.

4. Leaky Gut & Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS): Occurs when a damaged gut lining lets food particles and bacterial toxins escape, traveling through the body and crossing into the brain.

5. Nutritional Deficiencies: Missing critical vitamins and minerals, which causes the body's natural processes to stall out.

6. Sleep Disorders: Major disruptions to your internal body clock and deep sleep stages stop the brain from washing away toxins at night (glymphatic brain detoxification).

The Lasting Damage Left Behind

All this ongoing inflammation eventually causes other systems in the body to break down:

• Cellular Energy Problems (Mitochondrial Dysfunction): Cells lose their ability to make energy, causing exhaustion.

• Hormone Imbalances: The brain and hormone glands stop talking to each other properly, lowering your body's energy reserves and stopping hormone production (for example, causing young men to have a major drop in testosterone).

• Autonomic Nervous System Dysfunction (POTS): Blood pressure and heart rate can get too low, causing dizziness.

• Immune Dysfunction & Neurological Symptoms: A confused immune system attacks its own healthy tissues. Simultaneous brain swelling can trigger depression, anxiety, and fuzzy thinking.

Pulling out the "16 nails" of chronic Lyme often requires calming the massive systemic inflammation triggered by Lyme, and protecting the brain.

For this reason, clinicians are increasingly turning to advanced, highly bioavailable compounds such as curcumin to help support the nervous system and break complex chronic cycles.

If you or your healthcare team is looking for a bioavailable plant-based adjunctive to support a broader Lyme protocol, ProtiSorb UltraCur® Curcumin or UltraCur Pro™may be worth exploring.

They may serve as ideal partners to other treatment modalities as part of a comprehensive plan.

The Surprising Link Between Lyme Disease and Alzheimer's

When scientists examine the brain tissue of people who died with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, they consistently find hidden bacterial shields, brain plaques, and damaged proteins.

These abnormalities are frequently located right alongside Borrelia, the spiral-shaped bacteria that cause Lyme disease.

Strangely, when you’re diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, doctors don’t tell you to get checked for Lyme disease. But you should, according to Dr. Horowitz.

• How Pathogens Damage the Brain: Because the Lyme bacteria are a spirochete, it makes perfect biological sense that they can cause long-term brain swelling and lead to progressive memory loss (dementia).

• The Brain's Defense Sticky Trap: The plaques commonly blamed for Alzheimer's might be a protective cage built by the brain to trap and lock away these stubborn pathogens. By using precise medicine to find and peel back layers of hidden infections, heavy metals, and mold toxins, doctors can treat the actual root cause of memory decline instead of just masking the symptoms.

• Reversing Alzheimer's Markers: This discovery changes how we look at brain care. In a published medical study, Dr. Horowitz showed for the first time that a living patient's primary Alzheimer's brain marker (a damaged protein called p-tau 217) could be reversed using targeted germ-killing treatments and the multi-step MSIDS method.

• A Comparison of Treatments: Standard, popular memory medications take a long six years to lower these harmful brain proteins by only 23%. By contrast, treating the underlying Borrelia bacterial infection dropped those exact same harmful brain proteins by 63% in just nine weeks.

Staying Safe Outdoors... How to Avoid Tick Bites

Because tick-borne diseases are hard to diagnose and can cause serious, long-term damage to the brain and nervous system, preventing tick bites in the first place is your best defense.

To protect yourself, you need to use scientifically proven strategies before, during, and after you go outside.

Bug Sprays: Skin vs. Clothing

Bug sprays for your skin and bug sprays for your clothes do two entirely different, complementary jobs.

Skin repellents confuse a tick’s senses, so it doesn't recognize you as a human, while clothing treatments are designed to stop them physically.

Only you can decide whether to use harsh chemicals such as the following, which can have their own set of risks. But don't minimize the hazards of tick bites. 

1. The Best Options for Your Skin

• DEET: A strength of 20% to 30% gives you reliable protection for several hours. Buying higher strengths won't block ticks any better; it just makes the protection last longer.

• Picaridin: Made from a chemical cousin of black pepper, this is completely odorless. It effectively drives away ticks and biting flies, and won't damage plastic gear or synthetic fabrics.

• Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus (OLE) / PMD: PMD is the active chemical part of the eucalyptus tree that keeps bugs away. Sprays with PMD are proven to work for about 4 hours. It is considered safer and less toxic than DEET, but never use it on children under 3 years old. PMD burns badly if it gets in the eyes, and since toddlers frequently rub their eyes, it should be avoided.

2. The Best Option for Your Clothes

The gold standard for gear is permethrin, a powerful man-made insect killer.

• Safety Rule: Permethrin must never be sprayed directly on your skin.

• How to Use It: Spray it on your clothes, hiking boots, socks, and outdoor gear where it locks tightly onto the fabric fibers.

• How it Works: When a tick crawls onto treated fabric, permethrin acts as a nerve poison. It causes a "hot-foot" effect that makes the tick drop off, or it knocks the tick out completely. Treating your clothing drastically reduces the chance of a tick climbing onto your body.

Landscape Tactics and Behavior Modification

When outdoors, adjusting your behavior can further reduce exposure.

Ticks don’t jump, fly, or drop from trees; they rely on a behavior called "questing." They climb to the tips of grasses and low shrubs, extending their front legs to latch onto any host that brushes past.

Walking in the center of cleared trails and avoiding tall grass or dense leaf litter minimizes contact with questing ticks.

Wearing white or light-colored clothing makes it easier to spot tiny ticks. Wear long sleeves, long pants, and tuck the pants into socks.

After Your Outdoor Ventures

Follow a strict decontamination protocol after returning from outdoors. Here’s your action plan!

• High Dryer Heat: Ticks are highly sensitive to dry heat. Placed in a standard washing machine, they often survive the wash cycle. Instead, place dry outdoor clothing directly into a clothes dryer on high heat for 10 to 20 minutes to dehydrate and kill any hidden ticks.

• Shower Immediately: Showering within two hours (preferably within 15 minutes, due to newer, faster-acting strains) helps wash away unattached ticks and gives a golden opportunity for a thorough tick check.

• Do a Thorough Tick Check: Ticks love warm, hidden, thin-skinned areas on the human body. A comprehensive tick check should focus on the backs of the knees, the groin, the armpits, the waistband, inside the belly button, between the toes, around the ears, and all over the scalp.

Safe Tick Removal Protocol

If you discover an embedded tick, remove it immediately using proper technique.

Improper removal methods—such as heating with a match, smothering it with petroleum jelly, or using dish soap—can irritate the tick.

This may cause it to regurgitate its stomach contents and salivary pathogens directly into your bloodstream.

The One Right Way to Remove Ticks

Step-by-Step Mechanical Extraction:

1. Use fine-tipped, pointed tweezers to grasp the tick as close to the skin's surface as possible, targeting the mouthparts (not the body).

2. Pull upward with steady, even pressure. Don’t twist, jerk, or rock the tick, as this can break off the mouthparts, leaving them embedded to cause secondary infections.

3. Once removed, disinfect the bite site thoroughly with rubbing alcohol or iodine solution. Wash your hands with soap and water.

4. Don’t discard the tick. Place it in a sealed plastic bag or vial with a damp cotton ball. Send it to a special lab (such as TickReport or TickCheck) for PCR testing to determine if it carries specific pathogens, which provides valuable information for your doctor.

Finding the Right Medical Help for Tick-borne Illnesses

When a tick bite makes you sick, finding the right healthcare can be challenging. Standard healthcare practitioners often act like Lyme disease is "all in your head."

Doctors often overlook patients who don't have the classic bullseye rash or those who suffer from complicated, long-term symptoms.

To beat these challenges, look for a "Lyme-literate medical doctor" (LLMD).

These physicians have undergone advanced, special training to understand complex tick illnesses, read highly detailed lab tests, and manage both sudden infections and long-term recovery.

How Lyme-Literate Doctors Are Different

Lyme-literate doctors differ from conventional doctors in some key ways:

• Focus on Symptoms, Not Just Lab Tests: LLMDs regard blood tests as helpful clues, not final proof. If you have clear symptoms—like moving joint pain, brain and nerve changes, and a known tick bite—they won't ignore your illness just because a standard blood test comes back negative.

• Check for Multiple Pathogens: Because ticks often carry more than one disease at a time, LLMDs routinely test for other hidden pathogens (such as Bartonella, Babesia, Anaplasma, and others) during your very first visit.

• Use Advanced Labs: LLMDs send your blood to specialized laboratories (such as IGeneX, Vibrant Wellness, or ArminLabs) that use cutting-edge testing methods to spot hidden infections that normal tests miss.

• Personalized Treatment Plans: LLMD treatment goes far beyond standard, short-course antibiotics. Depending on your health history and specific infections, a LLMD might combine special antibiotics that shatter bacterial shields, anti-parasite medicines, and routines meant to lower inflammation. You can also ask them if UltraCur® Curcumin is appropriate for your situation. And you should most certainly eat a very anti-inflammatory diet (whole foods only... no sugar, processed foods, or seed oils).

Trustworthy Ways to Find a Lyme-Literate Doctor

When seeking a qualified Lyme-literate medical doctor (LLMD), skip unverified internet chat forums. Rely on established support and research groups such as:

• ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society): The top international group of medical professionals working to improve care for tick illnesses. Their website has a safe "Doctor Search" tool that connects patients with licensed doctors, nurse practitioners, and specialists who use advanced, science-backed treatments.

• LDA (Lyme Disease Association): A national non-profit that funds research, teaches the public, and helps patients find experienced medical care across the United States. They offer a helpful referral system that finds expert doctors closest to you.

• LymeDisease.org: A leading advocacy and research group that features an interactive doctor directory alongside its patient registry, MyLymeData. Their search tool lets you find specialists by location, doctor type, and real patient reviews. They also provide guides on how to handle health insurance and understand disability rights.

FAQs

1. What is Alpha-gal Syndrome (AGS) and how do you get it?

Alpha-gal Syndrome (AGS) is a severe, tick-borne meat allergy that causes a dangerous reaction to red meat and mammalian products. It is caused by the bite of a lone star tick.

When the tick feeds on wildlife such as deer or cattle, it picks up a tiny sugar molecule called alpha-gal. If that tick later bites a human, it injects these sugars and specialized proteins into the skin.

This confuses the human immune system, triggering an allergic reaction to red meat.

2. Why are tick populations and tick-borne diseases exploding?

Tick populations are rapidly increasing due to climate changes and suburban ecological shifts.

Milder, shorter winters allow ticks to remain active almost year-round, extending their feeding season into late autumn and early spring.

Plus, the fragmentation of large forests into smaller patches of woods has driven away large predators while causing a population explosion of white-footed mice and deer.

These animals act as primary reservoirs and feeding grounds for ticks, transforming suburban backyards into active hotspots for tick-borne diseases.

3. Why is Lyme disease so frequently misdiagnosed by doctors?

Lyme disease is difficult to diagnose because standard medical tests—like the two-tiered ELISA and Western Blot—don’t look for the actual Borrelia bacteria; they only measure your antibody response.

During the first few weeks of infection, the immune system hasn't produced enough antibodies, which means the test is wrong more than 50% of the time.

Furthermore, Lyme bacteria and mold toxins can actively suppress the immune system, hiding the infection from blood tests and leading doctors to mistakenly rule Lyme out.

4. What is the MSIDS framework for treating complex chronic illness?

Developed by 41-year tick-borne disease expert Dr. Richard Horowitz, the MSIDS (Multiple Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome) framework uses a "16 nails in the foot" analogy to evaluate complex chronic illness.

If a patient has 16 factors causing pain, removing just one or two won't resolve the suffering.

The MSIDS model systematically un-layers six primary drivers of inflammation: systemic infections, environmental toxins (such as mold), gut microbiome dysbiosis, leaky gut/MCAS, nutritional deficiencies, and sleep disorders.

5.  Is there a proven biological link between Lyme disease and Alzheimer's?

Yes, autopsy studies consistently reveal Borrelia spirochetes (Lyme bacteria) sitting directly alongside amyloid plaques and tau proteins in the brain tissue of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients.

Research published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports found that targeting the underlying bacterial infection with precision medicine and MSIDS protocols can significantly lower harmful brain markers such as p-tau 217.

In one study, levels dropped by 63% in just nine weeks, compared to the years often required for standard memory drugs.

6. What are the best tick prevention strategies for skin and clothing?

Effective tick prevention requires distinct chemical interventions for skin and clothing.

For skin, use scientifically validated repellents such as DEET (20% to 30%), Picaridin, or Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus/PMD (but do not use PMD on children under 3) to disrupt a tick's receptors.

For clothing and footwear, treat gear with permethrin, a powerful insecticide that bonds to fabric fibers and induces a "hot-foot" effect that neutralizes ticks on contact. Never apply permethrin directly to the skin.