Weird joint issues

I honestly feel like I'm going crazy with joint issues. I don't have joint pain or swelling but they all crack. Curiously enough, each joint becomes problematic only after I get a minor strain/injury at the gym. For example I do lunges, I feel like I overloaded my knees, then I stop. But the knees don't heal completely, they start cracking as if something became loose inside the joint. When it comes to ankles, they started popping after I did some calf raises. I get loud cracks as I squat coming from knees, ankles and hips. The same for my shoulders - I did bench press, I overdid it because I had some pain, then after three days the strained shoulder started clicking, the opposite one as well! When I wasn't suspected to have lyme, I visited physical therapists and I complained of issues with all of the joints, spine etc. - well, we did some rehab targetting these areas but it seemed to only irritate them. Also I had a weird episode with my neck when I thought I injured it at the gym as I heard a suspicious "click" and next day I woke up with arm numbness - cervical mri was clean. Did anyone have lyme mask itself as random injuries?

hello and welcome to the forum

yes indeed - borrelia ( the lyme disease causing organism ) can cause many different muscular skeletal issues

the acutely swollen joints and especially knees you read about are generally only common in early stages of the disease - and in chronic disease ( after the first 6 month or so ) more generalised inflammation, aching and rheumatic type symptoms are more common.

ongoing susceptibility to various mild sprains and strains from seemingly innocuous activities is also something that affects some patients - probably due to the ongoing inflammation the disease causes

there are also other associated infections that are associated with diffuse rheumatologic symptoms - for example bartonella

however there are many other potential causes of this - various non infectious rheumatic diseases for instance - including post viral syndromes - and even leaky gut and the generalised inflammation it causes.

it's unlikely to be possible to definitively self diagnose based on symptoms alone

did you have a known tick bite?

what tests have you had done to rule out other issues ?

ok

ref teh western blot -
Lyme testing is fraught with difficulties -
one of the main issues is it turns out that, until recently, all commercially available blood tests used a strain of borrelia ( B31 strain) - that was easy to grow in the lab - and to make things like western blots from - but was never found in a human.
These tests seem to work more or less OK for what is thought to be the most common strain in the USA - borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto - but as a result the tests have poor detection rates for other species and strains

and in europe and the UK - borrelia garinii and borrelia alfzelii make up the majority of cases (approx 70% of cases ) - but these strains and others are also present in the USA

there are a bunch of other issues with test reliability - but the upshot is that test sensitivity is generally low - especially in chronic cases - and there are mentions in the literature that some people never make the antibodies that the test looks for.

the general practice is also to ignore IgM antibody results unless its in the first 4 weeks of symptoms - and after that period to only rely on IgM results - but we have plenty of evidence that people with lyme continue to have elevated IgM antibodies through their infection and their are newer tests that use IgM results at later stages.

so on the face of it - positive IgM antibodies - lyme like symptoms - and having ruled out the most obvious auto-immune and other non-infections courses - it could be argued that lyme is the most likely cause

however - there are only 2 documented cases of lyme being transmitted by horse fly. unlike other blood born organisms, the lyme causing organism is highly co-evolved with the ticks that normally transmit it - and is in fact even specific to only a few species of tick. There is a substance in the ticks saliva the borrelia normally need to enable infection - it also normally needs long tick attachment times for dormant borrelia in the tick gut to remobilise and infect the host. so you can see that its very unlikely( though not impossible) that a horse fly transmits lyme.
of course - many people who have lyme never recall any tick bite or rash - so this doesn't rule out lyme.
many people also very likely have lyme in their bodies but kept in check by their immune system, as with many childhood disease we all still carry, until some other event suppresses or unbalances their immune system and active infection occurs

bartonella on the other hand is known to be transmitted by just about anything that bites - fleas, biting flies like horse flies, sand flies, fleas, lice - animal bites or scratches - even spiders - as well as ticks.

its also associated with generalised musculoskeletal issues and neurological issues (incl clonus ) - which fits in your case

in fact, my fiance and i both became ill in 2015 with a lyme like illness after being bitten by around a dozen super aggressive horse flies while on a picnic on farmland near our home in the Cotswolds, UK.
this turned out to be Bartonella - see the definitive images of my blood in the link in my signature.

most UK GP's know nothing about it. Even less than they know about lyme disease - and the NHS withdrew its serologic testing for it a couple of years ago due to lack of efficacy / accuracy ( serologic tests are generally v poor for chronic infections).

it can be present with Lyme as a co-infection - or on its own

in your place is would have it at the top of my list

i hope its of some help

When it comes to horsefly I was surprised that the doctor I visited had a lot of patients who came down with lyme/or sth else after getting bitten - that's why he took me seriously. So maybe it's actually bartonella that is transmitted. Would the treatment be different than for lyme? In Poland there seems to be one antibiotic treatment against all of coinfections and hoping it's going to clear them up. And my blood report reads that borrelia afzelii was detected - makes sense, I guess.

@dcd I have some joints that make noise just with every flexion/extension - e.g wri
st, shoulder and some need time to "load" a louder crackle. But I don't get flare ups per se or remissions.

Treatment for bartonella can be a bit different than for borrelia. There is some overlap, but bartonella tends to be more susceptible to antimalarials, and borrelia tends to be more susceptible to inhibitors of the DNA polymerase.