saraeli said...
Hi, Sarah! Welcome to the forum. Given your results, it sounds very reasonable to assume that a tick-borne infection is an underlying cause of your headache, and to find a good LLMD to help you navigate treatment.
Awful headaches were my first glaring symptom of tick-borne disease. I do have multiple infections (Borrelia bergdorferi, Borrelia hermsii, Bartonella bacilliformis, Babesia divergens, EBV, Mycoplasma....) but I think many of those can cause over-reactive nerves, neurological and tissue inflammation, and so many other symptoms, so honestly I have no idea which of my infections was responsible for my symptoms specifically.
Symptoms you describe that I experienced are: constant headache that moves around and affects whole head, feeling of fullness in my head, tingling or tickling (although mine was more often toward the back of my head, and sometimes felt like burning and crawling), brain fog, zaps and stabs, pressure, tension, soreness, tenderness to the touch, buzzing. I also experienced sensitivity to sound, multiple types of dizziness, nausea, appetite loss, pain at the base of the skull, fatigue, irritability, hopelessness, occasional hallucinations in my peripheral vision, worsening with barometric pressure drops, and other symptoms related to the headaches. I was diagnosed with "atypical migraine," which is total garbage and just meant no one knew what was wrong after I was cleared by various neurologists. No meds helped at all, including benzos like Valium and klonopin, and all the migraine meds.
A combination of things helped me. In terms of antimicrobial treatment, I used the Buhner protocol and Byron White Formulas. That helped modestly, but many other things were necessary for me to get rid of the headaches. Stretches and essential oils helped with symptoms. Magnesium, vitamin B2, dietary restrictions (gluten, sugar, fermented foods), hydration, curcumin, quercetin, and ashwagandha helped lessen the severity considerably. Craniosacral therapy and acupuncture made a big difference. Limbic system retraining was enormously helpful for me overall in undoing the nervous system damage caused by these infections. We're all different, so it may take a while for you to find what addresses these symptoms best for you, but I thought I'd share what helped me to give you a few more ideas.
Good luck! I know relief can't come fast enough.
i left some questions below - thans