Author of Seven Babesia Textbooks on Blood Smear Use and PCR
The diagnosis of Babesia is not as easy as many assume.
First, if you get through the womb, a transfusion or a tick bite the symptoms may not be significant and you feel better after a short time. The CDC says you might feel nothing. I agree. So why do I and a few thousand physicians make a big deal out of it? Right? I get that. We all tend to think that if no symptoms are present or it is cured in 10-14 days, why so much drama?
Babesia is tricky. It is harder to kill than malaria, and I have only known 20 infection doctors who know that. Usually, after reading my books, or a teacher who has read my past Babesia books.
It is also profoundly slow growing. So if you get 10 Babesia from a tick bite they are not going to 30,000 in a month like common well-known bacteria.
And time passes. A season, year, or decade. The better your diet, sleep, alcohol use, and useful exercise, the longer your immune system might keep symptoms and activity in some partial check.
Second, you start feeling symptoms. There are about 50 symptom lists, including the founding expert textbook of Babesia in 2006, that I wrote with crates of research papers over years for close to 1/2 million. It is still far ahead of 2026 infection medicine influencing a million physicians. And other books since that 2006 one, we have written continuous symptom lists.
In a moment, I will list some sample prominent symptoms most doctors would accept no matter their academic politics, grants, patient population, etc.
But one thing to mention about symptoms with a weirdly profoundly slow growing single parasite. If symptoms do occur, they can start about a week after infection and usually take a few weeks, months, years or decades to develop and be noticed. Is that hard to believe? It certainly was for me. Treating 35 year olds with zero exposure since family summer "natural" vacation place 20 years ago. It still sounds crazy. Even after seeing that perhaps 300x.
The CDC lists prominent symptoms that most agree are the more obvious and commonly quoted. So I use their list below.
- Fever
- Chills
- Sweats
- Headache
- Body aches
- Loss of appetite
- Nausea
- Fatigue
I am working on a book, WHEN YOU ARE TIRED OF BEING TIRED, which is not fluffy 101 clique knowledge. Do you know the number of causes of fatigue in advanced medicine?
I am still learning, but certainly 200 causes that I found years ago, and gave up. I started thinking Hinduism had merit, because it could never be done in my lifetime.
And any single-celled parasite infection symptoms and signs you eventually experience, may have to do with where Babesia lives primarily in your body that week or month. It lives inside your red blood cells. These cells give oxygen to the entire body over many miles of vessels. These vessels go to virtually every organ. My point? I agree these symptoms above are valid and vivid ones. But you can have signs and symptoms of 500 possible things--in any millimeter of the body needing blood.
Also, medical experts, and certainly trailblazers, tend to focus heavily on one thing over another when seeking leading expertise. You have heard the notion that 10,000 hours is required for a mastery of a skill. But I doubt anyone on earth has spent that amount of time mastering Babesia. I have seven books on Babesia which is six more than anyone else on earth, and I am learning more today as I write this.I did not have a Babesia decade and then turned to salmonella for all my free time for 5-10 years.
And we need to be patient with those that are only focused on Bartonella, or perhaps "Lyme disease." Or Mold, Hormones, Herbs, EBOO, Stem Cells, or HBOT. I respect those who master the 1500 varieties of hepatitis, and know nothing about Babesia, other than the same treatment for many years is highly effective and it is reliably diagnosed by large commercial labs not investing in any new technology to diagnose--like immunoblots. That is not new but it is to monster commercial labs, which I love, but know are very poor at detecting tick and flea infections that have amazing stealth in the human body.
The trouble with some MD or PhD kindly adding to our knowledge of Babesia, is they are then weak on highly common Bartonella, carried in the bites of 12 biting insects, pet scratches and bites, and lines 60,000 miles of body tubing. Bartonella now has 23 species, not the two discovered in 1990 and 1991 thirty-five years ago!. It has been in about 20% of the world for 1900 years. No worries. This will all be in my Bartonella book, that I doubt anyone will take the years and income to replace for many years. I learned about it in the 1980s for 45 seconds. And people who are very smart are not using treatments or doses that destroy Lyme and bartonella biofilm, nor the persistent form of Lyme (See 700 references on personalconsult.com)/ And does doxy and amoxy kill the Lyme bacteria nut form? Nope. And if it is treated with those rare treatments, it is often undertreated so not all the walnut-type cysts are killed--> think about relapse in a future time.
Did you see that? I did not take a tangent. I was making two simple points. Every Babesia popular symptom can be caused by Bartonella and Lyme bacteria, and other things. And I have never treated anyone who only had Babesia or only Lyme or only Bartonella. I think this exists, like rescue cat owners living in NYC. Bartonella is a risk. It is justy that as a treatment failure practice no one has ever had one of these alone. And it the "labs say that" even "good labs," I have explained elsewhere why that error constantly occurs.
ALMOST EVERY SYMPTOM OF BABESIA CAN BE FOUND IN LYME AND BARTONELLA.
ONE REASON I HAVE PUBLISHED 12+ BOOKS ON ALL THREE. FOCUS ON ONE IS AN ERROR!
One thing the CDC mentions deserves a comment. They say, "Since the [Babesia] parasites attack red blood cells, babesiosis can lead to a type of anemia called hemolytic anemia."
This is true but in the last two years I have been surprised by something. Emergency department doctors refuse to look and send blood to be examined for hemolytic anemia. It is dangerous to miss this. I assume they have a reasonable reason. I thought it was easy to see. You see fragments of a ripped donut (red blood cell). Then I had a patient seeing a hematologist I needed because during her 60 labs, and we found some results quite concerning, and the patient had already failed 25-30 physicians, so I was not going to just repeat what every second year med student knows, over and over and over, like I see so often. Forever in a useless and frustrating way doing the same simple tests to "help" the suffering patient.
As you may know hematologists are quite good at complex blood issues. So during about three or four sessions, she said she was "unsure" if the patient had hemolytic anemia. Maybe it is on and off with Babesia, and it was an "off day." I pondered.
But then I looked at 30-40 pathology blood slides "showing" hemolytic anemia.
I could not be sure I was seeing it. I was a bit startled. And that was what the hematologist expert said and perhaps why the ER is not looking or sending to be examined. It can be very hard to see. So is it a useful comment about Babesia? Absolutely. It can kill you, and that is one way. Can we use a blood smear looking for broken up red blood cells all the time? No. This was never true.
Diagnosis by Blood Smear
Years ago, four infection doctors that knew merely simplistic trivial things about Babesia and other infections I have studied for decades, helped remove forever a physician's licence in multiple states, after her 25 years of study and practice. Why? the fact he did not have a blood smear proving that the patient had Babesia.
I have the #1 book in the world showing approximately 80 forms of Babesia images [Hematology or Blood images of infected red blood cells],.because after buying $2, 500 in parasite books, the only image of Babesia in all of them was the same X or tetrad shape (four babies connected). Since we had already been working on high numbers of Babesia slides, we knew this was a sign no one writing those books knew much about Babesia. And I think I know most of the ones who do in the USA.
These doctors lied about what they knew about Babesia. And politically appointed doctors did not realize this physician had actually studied and read quite a bit about Babesia. But they seemed to think two years in infection training made you infinitely knowledgeable about all things infectious.
We found that expert veteran blood smear expert doctors occasionally required 20 minutes to 5 hours to find Babesia on a blood smear. The CDC training course taught that about 60-120 seconds was enough and posting one slide was enough. A drop of blood from thousands in a single tube from a man with 12 pints of blood. Done. Flawless. And years later, I noticed the testing changed. After this great doctor was destroyed. They said you might not see it in the initial slide. Huh? What? Where did the certainty go?
In the last 25 years, I have found it is very difficult to find any expert in microbiology, pathology, or infectious disease who is good at looking for Babesia in a "thin" smear or any smear, with a variety of stains, including patented newer stains.
Is it worth doing? Yes. They might see so many infected red blood cells that you need a new blood exchange immediately. Rare but it has happened.
Diagnosis by “PCR” (DNA) at Large Commercial Labs Your Insurance Likes
In 2026 there will be some innovative PCR testing for Babesia that only a small number know is coming. Only those involved in emerging medicine know, because the lab knows others do not care. Yet.
The ability of a typical insurance-covered lab to find Babesia DNA by PCR is incredibly hard. Frankly, I know of two companies that are not 99.999% negative. But you have to study tick and flea-borne infections at least ten years of conferences and study to know them. Meaning, you have to move and pass on 95% of free time "fun" and "diversion" because the idea you can learn new medicine, doubling every 24 months, by reading a few journals and a yearly conference, is simply not what will allow a physician to even keep up, and rarely to excel.
I am often asked to train physicians. I ask for a small amount of time to sacrifice to learn. And to pay for my time. It is fine that these criteria are not seductive. I do respect that they even asked. But are you starting to realize almost everything I have posted and written in vast years is unknown to brilliant and skilled infection doctors?
It is not that they are bad doctors. They are not gods. Just some think they are. Don't we all do things we are good at? Even for a minute? Forgive when they hurt your feelings, and are disrespectful and have empathic failure. They studied hard to know much. They really did. And it is hard to handle a sociology major who has read 20x what they have on Babesia, Bartonella, Lyme disease and related emerging infections that I got 150 seconds on in my training. At the only school I loved and applied.