05/21/2026
As a Lyme, Mold and Chronic Illness Specialist, I cannot help but ask myself the question, why are so many people sick and are these things getting harder to treat!?
And honestly, I think many experienced clinicians in Lyme/mold medicine are quietly noticing the same thing.
The patients now are not the same patients from 10–15 years ago.
We are no longer just treating Borrelia.
We are treating:
* damaged immune tolerance
* mitochondrial collapse
* limbic overload
* microplastic/pesticide burden
* chronic sympathetic activation
* mast cell instability
* circadian disruption
* endocrine disruption
* mold-injured bioterrain
* microbiome devastation
* hyperconnected inflammatory signaling
* chronic viral reactivation
* poor metabolic flexibility
* collagen and connective tissue fragility
* increasingly impaired detox pathways
And the infectious burden is often layered on top of a biologic system that has already lost resilience before the tick bite even occurred.
A few things I think are happening simultaneously:
The toxic load is dramatically higher
Patients are marinating in:
* glyphosate
* atrazine
* plastics
* BPA analogs
* PFAS
* flame retardants
* moldy buildings
* chronic indoor air exposure
* processed oils
* sleep disruption
* blue light
* chronic stress chemistry
People’s inflammatory thresholds are lower now. Their nervous systems are less adaptive. Their mitochondria are less resilient.
Mold changes the entire game.
I think mold/mycotoxin illness is one of the largest reasons Lyme became “harder.”
They don’t herx the way old-school Lyme patients used to.
Now they crash.
They destabilize neurologically.
They become chemically intolerant.
They lose autonomic regulation.
The nervous system piece is real — but incomplete alone.
A dysregulated nervous system absolutely worsens illness:
* poorer vagal tone
* impaired lymphatics
* altered immune signaling
* increased mast cell activation
* cortisol dysfunction
* reduced detoxification
* amplified pain perception
But many patients were biologically wrecked first.
The nervous system often becomes the amplifier — not always the original cause.
The infections themselves may also be changing
I strongly suspect:
* more coinfections
* more immune-resistant biofilm behavior
* more vector complexity
* altered microbiologic ecosystems
* repeated exposures
* climate-driven expansion
Bartonella especially feels more aggressive clinically than it did years ago.
And many patients now arrive after:
* multiple antibiotics
* steroids
* SSRIs
* sleep meds
* mold exposure
* COVID
* vaccine inflammatory events in some cases
* profound stress trauma
* severe gut disruption
They are metabolically brittle before treatment even starts.
COVID changed the baseline immune landscape.
Even in patients without obvious long COVID, I think we are seeing:
* endothelial dysfunction
* persistent coagulation abnormalities
* altered T-cell signaling
* viral reactivation
* mast cell activation
* microglial priming
And then Lyme/Bartonella/Babesia/EBV/mold stack on top of that.
The result is a much more reactive patient population.
Patients are arriving later and sicker
Years ago, many Lyme patients were:
* outdoorsy
* previously healthy
* one major trigger event
Now many are:
* chronically inflamed since childhood
* neuroimmune complicated
* toxin loaded
* hypermobile
* autistic-spectrum traits or sensory hypersensitivity
* already carrying EBV/MCAS/POTS/EDS/gut dysfunction
The “resilience reserve” is tiny.
Which changes treatment response entirely.
It just takes:
* longer stabilization phases
* more nervous system pacing
* slower detox
* more mitochondrial support
* less aggressive killing
* better sequencing
* environmental remediation
* autonomic repair
* rebuilding tolerance before warfare
Honestly, I think the era of “kill protocols” dominating outcomes is fading.
The future probably belongs to clinicians who can and are integrating:
* immunology
* environmental medicine
* nervous system regulation
* metabolism
* connective tissue biology
* stealth infection
* circadian biology
* toxin science
* genomics/epigenetics
…all at the same time.
This is exactly why we are here constantly trying to learn more, support patients better and give people their lives back.
