OT: Health information from Lyme and Rife

[Guest guest]

A post from Lyme and Rife. Thought you guys might benefit somehow

from the info. The natural cortisol she mentions is Iscocort which I

haven't tried yet. Come to think of it I haven't tried anything to

help my adrenals other than licorice root. Thinking of trying

something though as my sleep is ba'ad..

B

Hi all,

I know that a lot of Lymies deal with poor sleep issues. I am no

exception. This is what my experience has been. I realized how bad

the problem was when for birthdays and Christmas, etc. I was asking

for help in buying pain relief stuff like my sleep-number bed with

the cushy pillow top and then the 1 " of memory foam on top of

that...and then the 4 " memory foam topper I got to put on top of THAT

(great buy from Ebay). Then there was the menagerie of pillows I've

tried to get rid of the neck pain and headaches. The result, I was

really comfortable WHILE I was laying awake at night wondering why my

body wouldn't sleep. The truth was that I couldn't get comfortable

from the inside out. I felt as if I was shrink-wrapped and had

extreme dural tightness as well as muscle and nerve pain. I would

twitch every time I was just about asleep and would have random body

parts go numb and tingle or become INTENSLY painful if I spent too

much time in the wrong position. Most Lyme patients can relate.

After a lot of trouble shooting, this is what my doctor, who has

treated me for just over a year now and almost completely without

drugs or synthetics, did to help me overcome this. The first thing

he did was to check and monitor my pH. When rifing, it's as if each

spirochete is a tiny water balloon filled with neurotoxins that

bursts and pollutes your body when you kill it. One result is that

while your body is mounting an immune response to this, your pH

becomes very acidic. It's very important to maintain an alkaline

state as it not only makes it harder for certain bacteria to live but

also helps to lower pain. Maintaining an alkaline pH can be done by

taking oral magnesium (or bathing in it), apple cider vinegar tablets

(be careful of these if you have candida as they become sugar in your

GI tract and can be harmful), and eating an alkaline diet of certain

veggies, etc. I like the supplement, " Alka-balance " by Source

Naturals, which you can get off of vitacost.com. This has helped me

TREMENDOUSLY. When checking pH, you can buy test strips at your

local health food store that you can use in the morning before eating

and drinking to measure the pH of your saliva. It's pretty simple.

The second thing that causes a lot of pain which has kept me from

sleeping was mercury toxicity. I can always tell when my body is

shedding mercury when I get arthritis-like pain in the vertebraes of

my spine--especially in my neck and upper thoracic area. Initially,

when I first started seeing my doctor, he did a very in-depth

chelation program for about 4 1/2 months, after which I was testing

mercury-free and was also symptom free. Important to note, 4 1/2

months is really not a very long time to go through mercury

chelation, so we expected for mercury to show up again. I still have

times when my body " floats " mercury and have to do shorter courses of

chelation until it clears. Currently, my doctor monitors me every

week or two to see if there is mercury present in my system. There

is an acute stage of mercury toxicity and a chronic stage. The acute

stage is when the body is at it's highest level of toxicity and dumps

the most readily in response to chelation. At some point, it will

stop dumping. Then you are in the chronic stage. At this stage, the

body will dump mercury at various times, usually when under stress,

etc. The chronic stage can last indefinitely and should be addressed

as often as symptoms occur. If you're mercury toxic, or have been in

the past, a good thing to check if you're having sleep or pain issues

is for floating mercury. Correcting this can be very helpful.

The third and probably most productive thing that I've done to get my

sleep back has been to support my adrenals. Lyme disease (or any

other serious infectious disease for that matter) is VERY hard on the

body's adrenal system. Border-line adrenal function is pretty common

and can have everything to do with your ability to function and sleep

normally. My doctor put me on a natural cortisol at a prescription

strength to help balance my circadian clock so that I am able to

produce adequate levels of adrenaline at the times of day that my

body most needs it. I've been using a coil machine for Lyme and

bartonella, etc. since the end of December last year and was pretty

much symptom-free by April or May, though my energy was still so poor

that I could do nothing more than warm a couch. But when my doc put

me on cortisol, I literally got my life back. I started sleeping

again on my own and my energy level has come up considerably during

the daytime. I've supplemented with Tryptophan, Gaba, Taurine, and

homeopathics with some improvement, but boosting my adrenals has been

what has made the difference for me. In my opinion, EVERY doctor who

is treating Lyme patients should be checking adrenal function. If

your adrenals are not functioning correctly, your body will be UNABLE

to heal itself from even minor infections, injuries, etc. You can

only imagine what effect it can have on something as serious as

Lyme. The drawback to using cortisol is that if it is used

incorrectly, it can suppress immune function somewhat. So it's

important to consult a doctor before starting on a cortisol regimen.

Fourthly, finding out what your body's deficiencies are will help you

to balance your body's biochemistry so that it works more

efficiently. If you have Lyme disease, you are feeding a small army

and can bet that they are getting nourished before your own body is.

Spirochetes, by the way, love magnesium--and because magnesium does

over 350 different things in the body, a deficiency in it can cause

everything from nerve and muscle pain, neuropathy and radiculopathy,

heart pain and irregular heart rhythm, poor muscle contraction,

muscle spasms, ect. Deficiencies in magnesium, trace minerals, and

amino acids can result in increased overall body pain and a resulting

inability to relax to sleep normally. Be careful of prescription

drugs that can also deplete your body's nutrients! Certain blood

tests can detect these deficiencies. I've had a really good panel

done by Metametrix labs that has been a WORLD of help. I found out

that I was low in Tryptophan, tyrosine, and a few other things, that

once corrected, greatly reduced my sleepless nights!

I hope this is helpful advice. These things have worked GREAT for me

and the best part is that they are pretty much drug-free solutions.

Good luck!