Being in the woods may bring you into contact with ticks, which transmit Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium called a spirochete, which is transmitted through deer tick bites. Before the disease was identified, it was often mistaken for rheumatoid arthritis. In addition to joint pain, the disease can cause abnormalities in the skin, heart and nervous system. Symptoms often seem to vary with the seasons.
Definition
Lyme disease is a chronic disease that occurs in three distinct phases. The first occurs when a person is bitten by a tick carrying the disease, which causes localized inflammation. The second phase is called "early disseminated disease" and includes heart and nervous system involvement. The third phase, called "late disease," includes sensory nerve damage and arthritis.
Misconceptions
Lyme disease is often contracted in the spring or summer, when deer tick populations swell. The months between May and August are often referred to as tick season or Lyme disease season. Because the condition progresses slowly in three phases, people who contract the condition may correlate their changing symptoms with the changing seasons. For instance, a person may contract Lyme disease from a tick bite in May and experience redness and swelling at the infection site. Then, as the bacteria moves through the body over several months, the person may think that the next set of symptoms correlate with the fall season.
Considerations
In some parts of the country--the Northeast especially--ticks that carry Lyme disease do not die in the winter. Thus, people who mistakenly associate symptoms related to certain stages of the disease with certain times of the year may not link their symptoms to Lyme disease. This may make them less likely to seek treatment for the condition, because they simply do not equate their symptoms with the disease.
Actual Effect
Anyone who suffers from joint inflammation and arthritis will tell you that symptoms can feel worse during cold or rainy weather. Because the third phase of the disease includes inflammation and arthritis, these individuals may experience a worsening of their symptoms during the winter.
Treatment
Lyme disease is often treatable with a three- to four-week course of antibiotics if caught early. However, damage from Lyme disease that has had a long time to affect the body's major systems is usually irreversible. This means a person with late disease may have to simply deal with chronic inflammation that gets worse every winter.
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