Interview with Alicia White and Dr. Cathleen King: Why Lyme Disease Gets Missed in So Many Women

There are certain health stories we hear over and over from women, and they all sound painfully familiar. We are exhausted, foggy, inflamed, anxious, dismissed, and told it is probably stress, hormones, aging, or that dreaded phrase: it is all in your head.

But sometimes it is not “just stress.” Sometimes it is Lyme disease. Sometimes it is a tick-borne co-infection. Sometimes it is mold exposure. Sometimes it is a nervous system stuck in survival mode after months or years of chronic illness. And very often, it is some complicated combination of all of the above.

In this conversation, Dr. Thais Aliabadi and Mary Alice Haney sat down with Alicia White, founder of The Tick Chicks, and Dr. Cathleen King, founder of Primal Trust, to talk about what Lyme disease can actually look like in women, why it is so often missed, what to do after a tick bite, how chronic symptoms can spiral, and why nervous system regulation may be one of the most overlooked pieces of healing.

If you have ever felt like your body was sounding alarms nobody else could hear, this conversation is for you.

Table of Contents

• Meeting the Guests
• What Lyme Disease Can Look Like in Women
• Lyme Disease Is Often More Than Lyme
• What Chronic Lyme Can Feel Like
• The Mold Piece Many Women Miss
• Why So Many Women Get Told It Is “Just Anxiety”
• Nervous System Dysregulation and Chronic Illness
• The Most Useful Nervous System Question
• The Breath Practice Both Women Swear By
• Brain Retraining, Safety, and the Body’s Memory
• Finding “Glimmers” During Recovery
• Alpha-Gal Syndrome: The Tick-Borne Condition More People Are Suddenly Hearing About
• Prevention Matters More Than Ever
• Daily Practices That Can Help Right Now
• Hope, Without False Promises
• FAQ
• Resources Mentioned

Meeting the Guests

Mary Alice: Alicia, can we start with your story? How did Lyme disease enter your life?

Alicia’s story is, unfortunately, one that many women will recognize. She traveled to an area where Lyme disease is common, came home, and about a month later started developing neurological symptoms. At first, nobody connected the dots.

She was living in California, where Lyme-literate clinicians can be harder to find, and the specialists she saw never asked the question that might have changed everything much earlier: Where have you traveled?

What followed was six years of mystery symptoms and misdiagnosis, despite excellent insurance and access to care. She dealt with:

• Neurological symptoms
• Burning pain throughout the body
• Joint and muscle problems
• Debilitating fatigue
• Symptoms severe enough to disrupt daily life for years

Eventually, she was correctly diagnosed with Lyme disease and multiple co-infections. Then began another long chapter: the work of getting better. Alicia describes that part of her life as a lesson in being relentless, refusing to give up, and piecing together a healing path from conventional medicine, integrative care, and mind-body support.

Today, she says she feels 100 percent and has built The Tick Chicks to help others navigate what she wishes she had known sooner.

Mary Alice: Why are we hearing so much more about Lyme disease now?

Alicia explained that Lyme disease has become a growing national issue, and not just because more people are talking about it. The numbers are real. She cited hundreds of thousands of new cases annually in the United States, along with rising emergency room visits tied to tick exposure and tick-borne illness.

There are several reasons this is happening:

• Record-high tick populations
• Longer tick seasons, which many experts connect to climate change
• Human expansion into wooded and forested areas
• Greater public awareness, which means more people seek care quickly
• More aggressive tick variants and changing patterns of exposure

In other words, this is not just a niche health issue anymore. It is becoming something families across the country are actively worried about, especially in the spring and summer.

What Lyme Disease Can Look Like in Women

Mary Alice: What symptoms should women be paying attention to?

One of the hardest things about Lyme disease is that it can mimic other illnesses. It does not always present in one clean, obvious pattern.

According to Alicia, Lyme disease often affects people neurologically, but that is only part of the picture. Symptoms can involve the joints, muscles, brain, heart, and energy systems. Common red flags can include:

• Brain fog
• Burning or migrating pain
• Profound fatigue
• Joint and muscle pain
• Neurological symptoms
• Difficulty walking or sudden pain in the feet
• Flu-like illness after a bite
• Chest symptoms or shortness of breath

That overlap is part of why Lyme is so often confused with autoimmune conditions such as Hashimoto’s, lupus, or multiple sclerosis. If you have been dealing with unexplained symptoms, especially neurological or inflammatory ones, this is exactly why asking for the right workup matters.

That also ties into a larger issue women know all too well: being dismissed in clinical settings. We talk often about this pattern in women’s health, and it is one reason advocacy matters so much. If that resonates, our piece on advocating for yourself at the doctor is worth reading too.

Mary Alice: So how do we actually get the right diagnosis?

Alicia was very clear on this point: if Lyme disease is on your radar, you need a clinician who understands tick-borne illness and a lab that tests for it properly.

She named two labs she considers especially helpful:

• iGenex, which specializes in tick-borne illness and offers broad testing
• Vibrant Labs, which may be a more affordable option for common U.S.-based infections

The key point is that you want reputable blood testing that looks not only for Lyme but also for possible co-infections.

Alicia’s frustration was that when doctors were testing her for major autoimmune and neurological disorders, nobody included Lyme in the differential. That omission delayed her diagnosis by years.

She strongly urged women to be specific with their doctors and ask for Lyme testing when symptoms overlap with autoimmune disease, especially because there is so much symptom similarity between Lyme and conditions like MS.

Lyme Disease Is Often More Than Lyme

Mary Alice: What are co-infections, and why do they matter so much?

One of the most eye-opening parts of this conversation was Alicia’s reminder that a tick bite may not expose you to just one organism. A single bite can potentially introduce multiple infections, each with its own symptom pattern and treatment needs.

She explained that while Lyme disease itself can be profoundly disruptive, many people also deal with co-infections. Examples she mentioned included:

• Babesiosis, which can cause “air hunger” or shallow breathing
• Bartonella, which in her case affected her feet so severely she woke up unable to walk
• Ehrlichia, which can feel very much like a sudden flu or COVID-like illness within 24 to 48 hours
• Alpha-gal syndrome, which is different from Lyme but can also result from tick exposure

This matters because treatment may need to be broader or more targeted than many people realize. A patient can be “treating Lyme” and still not improving if a co-infection or another environmental trigger is driving symptoms.

Mary Alice: What should someone do immediately after finding a tick?

First, Alicia said, do not panic.

Seeing a tick crawling on you is not the same as being bitten. And even an embedded tick does not automatically mean it is carrying disease. But action matters, and timing matters even more.

Her recommendations were practical:

1. Remove the tick properly. Use a flat tweezer or tick-removal tool and pull straight up from the base where it is attached.
2. Save the tick. Put it in a sealed bag.
3. Send it for testing. She mentioned TickReport.com and iGenex as options for identifying what the tick may have been carrying.
4. Act quickly if needed. She said that if the bite seems suspicious, especially in an endemic area, it is important to seek medical guidance quickly and discuss doxycycline as soon as possible, ideally within 24 to 48 hours.

Her message was simple: if you wait too long, the pathogens may spread deeper into the body, affecting joints, muscles, the brain, and even the heart.

What Chronic Lyme Can Feel Like

Mary Alice: What happens when Lyme becomes chronic?

Alicia described chronic Lyme, or what she referred to as post-treatment Lyme disease, as a kind of systemic breakdown. By that point, the issue is no longer just the initial infection. The body is dysregulated. The nervous system is on high alert. The immune system is confused. Daily life becomes incredibly narrow.

Her description of chronic illness was striking because it was not just pain or fatigue. It was intolerance.

She explained that many people in the chronic phase develop intolerances to things they once handled easily, including:

• Exercise
• Heat and humidity
• Altitude
• Changing barometric pressure
• Chemicals in the home
• Even some therapies that are supposed to help

She said that during the worst periods, she could spend nearly an entire week in bed just to have enough energy to go out for a couple of hours on a Saturday night.

That is not laziness. That is not anxiety in the simplistic way women are often told. That is a body stuck in a state of deep sensitivity and overload.

Joint pain is one symptom women commonly try to normalize until it becomes impossible to ignore. If that is part of your picture, our article on why women have more joint pain offers a helpful look at how Lyme, autoimmune disease, and hormone shifts can all overlap.

Mary Alice: Is there a cure once you are in that chronic phase?

Alicia’s answer was honest and nuanced. She does not frame it as a simple cure. She frames it as a long, often holistic process of recovery.

For her, healing involved:

• Long courses of antibiotics early on
• Herbal protocols
• Integrative medicine
• IV vitamins
• Infrared therapy
• Frequency-based approaches such as light, sound, vibration, and magnets
• Ozone therapy
• SOT treatment
• Rest and symptom support
• Community and emotional support

But she also emphasized that at a certain point, especially in chronic illness, conventional medicine alone may not be enough. The body may need a much broader approach.

The Mold Piece Many Women Miss

Mary Alice: You also brought up mold. Why does that matter in this conversation?

Alicia said something a lot of women with chronic symptoms need to hear: if you are doing everything right and still not getting better, mold exposure may be worth investigating.

She sees mold illness as closely linked to Lyme and autoimmune problems. In some people, hidden mold exposure can keep the body stuck in an inflammatory state and make recovery nearly impossible.

She shared a personal example involving her daughter, whose apartment looked new and spotless. Still, testing revealed a large ring of mold hidden behind the drywall above her bed. Without environmental testing, they never would have known.

According to Alicia, mold can be assessed in two ways:

• Environmental testing of the home or workspace, including air sampling and thermal imaging
• Body testing, which she said may involve urine testing for mold illness

Her point was not that mold is the answer to every unexplained symptom. It was that women with chronic inflammatory issues should keep an open mind and look at the full terrain, not just one diagnosis.

Why So Many Women Get Told It Is “Just Anxiety”

Mary Alice: Dr. King, how did your own Lyme experience shape your work?

Dr. Cathleen King’s story echoed Alicia’s in a different way. She was also misdiagnosed. The first things she was offered were an antacid and an anti-anxiety medication.

Again, a familiar script for women.

She went from doctor to doctor, tried protocol after protocol, and eventually reached a point where she was so ill that even treatments designed to help were becoming intolerable. That is when she began to shift her attention toward the nervous system.

As a physical therapist with a background in chronic pain and mind-body work, she started asking a different question:

What if this wasn’t only about the pathogen? What if the nervous system and the brain were a much bigger part of the story than we had been taught?

That question changed everything for her and eventually became the foundation of her work through Primal Trust.

It also speaks to a broader problem we see across medicine: symptoms in women are too often minimized, psychologized, or dismissed. If you have lived that experience, our article on gender bias in healthcare may feel painfully familiar.

Nervous System Dysregulation and Chronic Illness

Mary Alice: What do you mean when you say the nervous system gets “scrambled”?

Dr. King explained that in chronic illness, the body can enter a kind of self-reinforcing loop:

• The pathogens and inflammation stimulate the nervous system
• The nervous system becomes more reactive and stays on high alert
• That ongoing stress response confuses the immune system further
• The body loses capacity to detoxify, regulate hormones, digest properly, and recover

In other words, the illness is real, but the body’s response to that illness can become another major driver of symptoms.

She believes healing often depends on building capacity in the nervous system. Capacity to feel safe. Capacity to process stress. Capacity to move between states instead of being locked in fight-or-flight all day.

That idea reframes the problem in a very hopeful way. It means that even when symptoms are severe, there may still be something inside the body that can be trained, supported, and strengthened.

Mary Alice: So how do we “hack” the nervous system?

Dr. King made this very practical. She said nervous system work should not be reserved for people with Lyme disease. It is lifestyle medicine for all of us.

Her first tool is what she calls an awareness pattern interrupt.

The idea is simple: throughout the day, stop and notice.

• What am I thinking?
• Am I ruminating?
• Am I clenching?
• Am I breathing?
• Am I rushing?
• What is happening in my body right now?

Then, take a conscious breath and come back to the present moment. Even 10 to 30 seconds of awareness can interrupt an unconscious stress loop.

This is not about perfection or pretending life is calm when it is not. It is about noticing when the body is spiraling into resistance and giving it a signal of safety.

The Most Useful Nervous System Question

Mary Alice: What does that actually look like in a busy, real-life moment?

Mary Alice gave a perfect example: a packed morning, nonstop emails, work calls, family logistics, beauty prep, tech glitches, and the rising internal monologue of “I’m so stressed. I can’t keep doing this.”

Dr. King’s response was one of the most powerful takeaways from the whole conversation. She said the nervous system is fundamentally asking one question:

Am I okay?

Not “Do I have a full schedule?” Not “Is everything perfect?” But “Am I okay?”

She explained that two people can be equally busy, but one feels internally resourced and the other feels trapped in panic. The difference is the relationship to what is happening.

Her practical suggestions included:

• Notice when you are resisting the reality of the moment
• Shift from “I can’t do this” to “I am choosing this and I have a plan”
• Identify when you will rest and nourish yourself later
• Let every part of your system know there is an end point and care is coming

That shift from resistance to alignment can calm the body faster than we realize.

The Breath Practice Both Women Swear By

Mary Alice: What is one practice almost anyone can do right away?

Dr. King’s answer was breath.

She specifically recommended the physiological sigh, a simple breathing pattern she said is one of the quickest ways to help shift the body into a more parasympathetic, rest-and-digest state.

It works like this:

1. Take one deep breath in
2. Take a second smaller breath in on top of it
3. Exhale fully

Repeat that for a couple of rounds.

She also recommended quick coherence breathing from the HeartMath Institute, which combines heart-centered breathing with a feeling of gratitude, appreciation, or love.

Her message was reassuring: you do not need an hour-long ritual to start shifting your nervous system. Sometimes three conscious breaths between calls can be enough to interrupt the momentum of stress.

Brain Retraining, Safety, and the Body’s Memory

Mary Alice: How does brain retraining actually work?

Dr. King said brain retraining begins with a new understanding of the body. Many chronically ill patients become experts in diagnoses but never receive education about the nervous system, the vagus nerve, and the body’s ability to shift internal states.

Her approach includes several layers:

1. Education
   Patients learn how the nervous system, immune system, hormones, and stress physiology interact.
2. Pattern interrupts
   People begin catching their habitual loops of fear, worry, and tension during the day.
3. Vagus nerve support
   Before deeper emotional work, the body needs more capacity to feel safe in calmer states.
4. Positive memory rehearsal
   Patients practice recalling and visualizing past positive experiences.
5. Positive future rehearsal
   They also practice imagining a future that is not defined by fear and illness.

The logic here is fascinating. The brain often rehearses danger by replaying painful memories and anticipating painful futures. That loop can keep the amygdala and stress systems on alert. Brain retraining helps introduce a different set of signals: safety, possibility, and hope.

Dr. King emphasized that this is not fake positivity. It is active neural training.

Mary Alice: Why is trauma processing a separate step?

Dr. King was careful to distinguish brain retraining from trauma processing.

Trauma processing is more somatic, meaning it focuses on sensations and emotions in the body rather than just thoughts. She described trauma as something that gets lodged physically. To process it, a person has to be able to feel sensations like grief, fear, anger, or sadness without immediately being thrown back into a mental story loop.

That is why she likes to calm the limbic system first. If the system is still in red-alert mode, deeper emotional work can feel overwhelming or even unsafe.

Her phrase for this was memorable: feel the feels, not the story.

That means noticing the tightness, heat, ache, grief, or trembling in the body without immediately spiraling into the narrative of what happened, who caused it, or what it means about the future.

Finding “Glimmers” During Recovery

Mary Alice: What helped you personally when you were bedbound?

Dr. King shared that she was effectively bedbound for about ten years. What began to shift things for her was not one magical intervention, but a change in orientation.

She stopped asking only, “How do I fix this?” and started asking, “How do I live my values even here?”

For her, one of those values was nature. So she would lie in the grass with her children, look for four-leaf clovers, and let that count as life. Not a consolation prize. Life.

She now teaches people to actively look for what she calls glimmers, small moments of beauty, calm, connection, awe, or meaning that signal safety to the nervous system.

Examples might include:

• A short walk outside
• A few quiet breaths
• Birdsong
• Art
• Journaling
• A loving memory
• A moment of genuine connection with someone you love

It sounds small, and she knows many people doubt that these things can matter in the face of very real illness. But her point is that glimmers build capacity. Capacity changes physiology. And over time, physiology can change symptoms.

Alpha-Gal Syndrome: The Tick-Borne Condition More People Are Suddenly Hearing About

Mary Alice: You came back to talk more about alpha-gal syndrome. What is it?

Alicia returned later in the conversation to expand on a condition that has been making headlines: alpha-gal syndrome.

This is not Lyme disease. It is a different tick-triggered condition, often associated with the lone star tick rather than the deer tick, and it can make people severely allergic to red meat and other mammalian products.

Alicia explained it this way: alpha-gal is a sugar molecule found in mammals but not in humans. If a tick feeds on a mammal and then bites a human, it may transfer that molecule, triggering an allergic reaction.

That reaction can be serious. Symptoms may involve:

• Vomiting
• Severe allergic reactions hours after eating meat
• Reactions to dairy or mammalian ingredients in supplements or gelatin
• Anaphylaxis in severe cases
• Reactions even to meat fumes in extreme cases

Because the reaction can occur hours after exposure, people often do not immediately connect it to what they ate, let alone to an earlier tick bite.

Alicia described cases where simply driving past a barbecue restaurant could trigger a dangerous reaction in someone with severe alpha-gal syndrome.

Mary Alice: Is there a cure for alpha-gal syndrome?

At this point, Alicia said there is no cure. There may be promising treatments in development, but right now, the best strategy is prevention and strict avoidance once someone has it.

For many people, that means eliminating mammalian products entirely and carrying emergency medication like an EpiPen.

Prevention Matters More Than Ever

Mary Alice: If prevention is the biggest tool we have, what should families actually be doing?

Alicia broke prevention down into clear, practical areas.

Start with your environment.

• Treat your yard
• Pay attention to woodpiles, grass, and garden areas
• Be mindful in areas where ticks commonly live

Protect your pets.

• Ticks can come into the home on animals
• Wipe pets down after they have been outside
• Use tools like tick mitts or other grooming methods

Remember that ticks can live indoors.

• She said ticks can survive in the home for weeks
• That includes carpets, bedding, and soft surfaces

Stay aware of your exposure.

• Do body checks
• Check children carefully
• Be especially vigilant during peak tick season
• Take bites seriously and act quickly

Support your body overall.

• Give your system rest where you can
• Reduce overload
• Build a team if you are dealing with illness
• Do not rely on one person to solve a complex problem

Her view of healing was deeply practical. The answer was not one doctor, one protocol, or one miracle treatment. It was education, prevention, self-advocacy, and assembling the right support.

Daily Practices That Can Help Right Now

Mary Alice: What is one daily practice you would never skip for your nervous system?

Dr. King came back again to breathwork.

Her reason was simple: breath is one of the fastest and most direct ways to communicate with the nervous system. It creates an immediate feedback loop between body and brain.

If you are not sure where to start, her recommendation was refreshingly doable:

• Take three conscious breaths between tasks
• Use the physiological sigh when you feel activated
• Try a five-minute HeartMath coherence practice online
• Bring your attention to something you love or appreciate while breathing

She also emphasized one final point that ties this whole conversation together: whether the root issue is Lyme, mold, autoimmune disease, trauma, burnout, or a confusing combination of symptoms, supporting the nervous system is never wasted effort.

If you cannot yet tell what is driving your symptoms, you can still begin there.

Hope, Without False Promises

Mary Alice: What is the best advice for someone newly diagnosed?

Alicia’s answer was beautifully simple. She encouraged anyone facing Lyme disease to keep their brain forward-focused, remember that they are safe, trust that the body can remember how to heal, and hold onto the belief that recovery is possible.

That perspective matters because so much of chronic illness is fear. Fear after the bite. Fear during the diagnosis hunt. Fear when symptoms spread. Fear when treatments do not work immediately. Fear when the body no longer feels familiar.

Both Alicia and Dr. King offered a version of the same truth: healing is rarely linear, but women are far more capable than they have been taught to believe.

FAQs

Why does Lyme disease get missed in so many women?

Because its symptoms often overlap with autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, anxiety, pain disorders, and neurological conditions. Women are also more likely to be dismissed or told their symptoms are stress-related instead of being fully evaluated.

What are common Lyme disease symptoms?

Common symptoms can include brain fog, profound fatigue, burning pain, joint and muscle pain, neurological symptoms, walking difficulties, and flu-like illness. Symptoms vary widely and may shift over time.

What should I do if I find a tick on me?

Remove it carefully with a proper tick-removal tool or fine tweezer, pulling straight up at the base. Save the tick in a sealed bag for testing, and contact a healthcare provider promptly if the bite seems suspicious or you are in a high-risk area.

Can a single tick bite cause more than Lyme disease?

Yes. A single bite may expose someone to multiple co-infections such as babesiosis, bartonella, or ehrlichia. Some tick bites may also trigger alpha-gal syndrome, which is different from Lyme disease.

What is alpha-gal syndrome?

Alpha-gal syndrome is a tick-triggered allergic condition that can make people react to red meat and other mammalian products. In severe cases, it can cause anaphylaxis and may even be triggered by fumes from cooking meat.

How does the nervous system affect chronic illness?

According to Dr. Cathleen King, chronic illness can keep the nervous system stuck in a heightened stress response. That ongoing dysregulation can affect immune function, hormone balance, digestion, detoxification, and symptom severity.

What is a simple nervous system regulation practice to start with?

Start with breathwork. The physiological sigh, one deep inhale, a second shorter inhale, then a long exhale, is a quick and simple way to help calm the nervous system.

Can people recover from chronic Lyme symptoms?

Alicia White shared that she does feel fully recovered after a 12-year journey. Both she and Dr. King emphasized that healing may require a combination of medical care, environmental awareness, nervous system support, and long-term self-advocacy.

Resources Mentioned

• The Tick Chicks for education, prevention tools, and Alicia White’s podcast LimeTime
• Primal Trust for Dr. Cathleen King’s nervous system and brain retraining work
• How Healing Happens, Dr. King’s free downloadable resource available through Primal Trust

The biggest takeaway from this conversation is not panic. It is awareness.

Know what Lyme disease can look like. Know that co-infections exist. Know that alpha-gal syndrome is real. Know that mold may matter. Know that women are too often dismissed. Know that your nervous system may be carrying more of the burden than anyone has explained to you. And most of all, know that prevention, advocacy, and small daily regulation practices can make a meaningful difference.

Your body is not failing you. It may be asking for support in a language medicine has not always been quick enough to understand.

This article was created from the video Why Lyme Disease Gets Missed in So Many Women ft. Ali White & Dr. Cathleen King | SHE MD for Dr. Thais Aliabadi’s website.