Lyme Disease in Dogs
Lyme Diseases in Dogs
from Dogs Naturally Magazine
Lyme disease in dogs is caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. This is a spirochete, a spiral shaped bacterium.
A dog can get Lyme disease when a small deer tick or wood tick carrying the bacteria bites him.
Lyme disease can appear as:
- Arthritis
- Heart disease
- Severe neurological problems
- Gastrointestinal problems
- Partial facial paralysis
- Limb atrophy
Because the disease itself often seems unintelligible, this has made diagnosis extremely difficult for both vets and physicians.
As a result, in dogs Lyme can easily be misdiagnosed. But it turns out that the Lyme bacteria are pretty easy to understand once you really spend some time with them and begin to understand what they do in the body – and why.
How Lyme Disease Spreads
Lyme bacteria are parasitic organisms, as many bacteria are. They need a host to live in.
And because they can’t make all the nutrients they need themselves, they scavenge them from their hosts.
Most of what they need can be found in collagen tissues.
So, once they enter the animal host, they begin breaking down collagen tissues into a kind of soup in order to feed.
It’s where they break down those tissues that’ important.
- Joints = Lyme arthritis
- Heart = Lyme carditis
- Central nervous system = neurological Lyme with associated brain fog, difficulty thinking and remembering, tremors, facial paralysis, loss of limb function and so on.
This is the secret to understanding the disease and how to treat it.
So, in order to successfully treat the disease, three things need to occur:
- Reduce the inflammation the spirochetal bacteria causes
- Support the collagen in the body
- Increase immune function
One more important thing you need to do is to treat any specific symptoms that might arise. For example, neurological Lyme can often cause extreme anxiety, so treating that specific symptom is highly important.
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Click here to read about Homeopathic Treatment of Lyme