Avoid Trigger Symptoms of Chronic Lyme to Improve Quality of Life and Reinstill Credible Hope

​There’s no denying that chronic Lyme disease gets an A+ in its extraordinary ability to produce bizarre and unusual symptoms many have never experienced before, but it really pushes the grade level and excels when it comes to finding solutions to ameliorate these strange and enigmatic symptoms.

​While many symptoms people with chronic Lyme experience are beyond their control and caused by just the natural existence and progression of the condition, believe it or not, and you may already have made this observation if you’re a veteran of the condition, some symptoms or bad days can be avoided entirely. How? By consistently and unwaveringly avoiding the triggers that cause them, and by making this effort, enduring the condition will become that much more bearable and allow you to feel your relative best.

​What Are Chronic Lyme Triggers?

​Symptoms of chronic Lyme disease are unofficially (Tired of Lyme observed) categorized into one of two main categories: natural symptoms and trigger symptoms. Natural symptoms are chronic Lyme symptoms that manifest and come about simply by having chronic Lyme disease. No external stimuli is needed for these symptoms to be experienced, though certain external stimuli can surely aggravate and make them worse.

​Some common natural symptoms a person with chronic Lyme disease may experience include joint pain, fatigue, brain fog, muscle pain, and light sensitivity, just to name an extreme few and be on the less bizarre side of the symptom spectrum of the many and more bizarre symptoms Lyme can cause.

​Trigger symptoms are chronic Lyme disease symptoms caused by external events and experiences (i.e., chronic Lyme triggers) that can cause new symptoms or aggravate natural symptoms. For example, a trigger for one person with chronic Lyme may be exercise, and by overdoing it just a little bit on the treadmill today, this person is feeling relatively worse. And because this person already experiences a natural symptom of shortness of breath, breathing has become a little more difficult for the next few hours, as the trigger has also aggravated a natural symptom.

​Some triggers can’t be avoided, such as the full moon, or being forced to sit in an enclosed environment by social norms with a person who was a little too liberal with the cologne today (i.e., chemical sensitivity). Though, some with chronic Lyme, who understand the nature of their consistent and debilitating suffering enough, will leave even the most important of events, and ignore and brush off the greatest of embarrassments, for that fresh, non-cologne diffused air, but we digress.

​To quickly recap, chronic Lyme symptoms are caused either internally by the natural progression of the disease, or externally by triggers. Triggers can sometimes be in a person’s control and cause new symptoms or can aggravate natural symptoms.

​Why Avoid Triggers?

​A question that doesn’t need to be answered as much as it does, with an answer so obvious, yet not considered enough for the long term psychological effects it has: to avoid feeling bad, duh!

​Yes, the obvious answer to why triggers should be avoided is to not feel bad or worse, because a person who already feels bad, or worse, doesn’t want to feel worse, if that’s even possible -- yes, with chronic Lyme, it is. There also seems to be a never ending bottom for how bad a person with chronic Lyme can feel, but this is for another article.

​How can this answer be explained or extended anymore? Well, even though it’s an obvious innate reaction for hedonistic creatures, such as humans, to not only seek out pleasure, but avoid making ourselves feel bad or worse, the problem is that we don’t always avoid controllable Lyme triggers, nor do we always realize the long term effects this has on our psychological ability to deal with and endure chronic Lyme disease.

​Yes, the physical symptoms of chronic Lyme disease are unprecedented and debilitating on a scale so great, no person could have ever prepared to deal with them, but some would argue that the psychological symptoms far surpass the physical ones.

​Having a chronic disease or condition weighs heavy, and is very challenging to the human mind, due to its complex and highly intellectual ability to merely observe its very difficult and trying existence. So there’s no arguing that part of dealing with chronic Lyme disease means dealing and improving your quality of life to the best of your ability.

​Think about it -- if the human mind was not so observing, critical, and logical, we would probably wither away -- still aware to some extent -- as the condition would be allowed to progress without an intervention, challenge, or provocation from its non-intellectual host. But that’s not how it is. The human mind is everything that it is not, and because of this, chronic Lyme is consistently challenged by its host.

​But sometimes during this campaign, the mind within that host concludes, through its own observations, that the quality of its own existence, is really hard. How do we change this? How do we improve quality of life with chronic Lyme disease? What do we do and where do we go now?

​Improving Quality of Life and Instilling Credible Hope

​What can an individual dealing with chronic Lyme disease immediately do, or not do, to improve their quality of life? Firstly, on a side note, it’s important to acknowledge your brain’s phenomenal, but inherent ability, to improve the conditions the body it's contained within, lives within, by an audacious and valiant effort not found in any other species on Earth.

​Our highly persistent ability and insatiable nature to not only keep trying to improve ourselves (and others, as well) no matter the cost, but to uniquely exploit and invent resources and tools to do so, is definitely, what astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson says, “Got us out of the caves.”

​The secret to improving quality of life with chronic Lyme disease isn’t to just avoid one specific trigger every 4 rounds. No, the objective -- the goal -- is to avoid triggers at all costs and at all times, and by doing this, you, an individual who suffers day in and day out, will physically and psychologically suffer that much less, and in turn, drastically improve the mind’s outlook and consistent observation of its own suffering, restoring quality of life.

​Each person dealing with chronic Lyme disease has triggers that are unique to them. A trigger that makes one person with chronic Lyme feel absolutely horrible, is a normal, painless, and everyday experience for another. It’s important to identify -- which shouldn’t be hard -- what you control that makes you feel worse or causes a bad day.

​And when your quality of life is improved for not just a short period of time, but consistently, you suffer less and feel that much more normal. The chemistry within the mind begins to changes for a better outlook on the grim situation.

​When a person deals with chronic Lyme night after night after night, hope appears to slip away like sand through your hands, but by making the effort to keep a consistently good quality of life by consistently, religiously, and always avoiding triggers, hope not only returns, it is nothing but convincing. When you feel relatively better physically, you feel better mentally (and sometimes vice versa), and it becomes clear to you, that it is damn well possible to get better from chronic Lyme disease.

​Not Knowing How to Get Better Doesn’t Mean You Can’t

​As a person suffering from chronic Lyme disease, what would you take away, or give yourself, to lessen the rocky and rainy highway with no exits? Now, how would you go about doing that? If you don’t have an answer for the second question, you are absolutely not alone!

​There are so many books, movies, websites, and opinions on how to get better from chronic Lyme disease, it can all just becomes so overwhelming, and at times, makes you questions the credibility of it all. But none of that matters, because even in your confusion and frustration in trying to find a solution, you’re trying to find a solution -- and that is what matters most.

​It’s so easy, after years of finding no answers, to stop finding answers or explanations for why you can’t overcome your chronic Lyme disease. But that’s the thing, you can never stop looking for answers. It’s not and never was about “not letting the bacteria win”, or “Lyme can kiss my %@$”. It’s about, and should always be about, trying to find the answers, because the moment you stop looking, you drastically decrease your odds of getting better and finding your specific remedy or roadblock.

​The best way that you can ensure that you’ll want to keep looking for answers is to keep your quality of life, while dealing with chronic Lyme disease, as good and high as possible. It’s the symptoms that reduce quality of life -- and while that’s no secret, it may not be accepted or acknowledged as much as it should be.

​For you, your specific body, make every effort that you can to avoid the triggers, unique to you, that make you feel bad or aggravate your natural symptoms. By doing this, as mentioned before, because it bears repeating, you reduce the debilitation you experience from having chronic Lyme disease that much more, and in turn, not only increase your quality of life that much more, but keep that quality of life surplus present -- don’t let it go away!

​It is the improvement in how you see yourself with chronic Lyme disease that reinstates the credible hope, that every person with the condition can and needs to feel, to remind themselves, and make themselves more so inclined, to just keep trying.