Learn more about the hard-to-detect symptoms of Lyme disease that doctors and blood tests often miss.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.rd.com
Cholesterol does not cause heart disease in the elderly and trying to reduce it with drugs like statins is a waste of time, an international group of experts has claimed.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.telegraph.co.uk
Statins have some pretty nasty side effects so why would you take them if they don’t work?
Cholersterol levels are something that fluctuate as the body sees fit and when it is in recovery, cholesterol levels may be higher than the “so-called” safe limit but they are high to compensate for other problems so taking statins is going to interfere with the body trying to do its own job.
The real cause of heart disease is inflammation not cholesterol but I can’t find the reference just now. I am sure it is bookmarked in Evernote somewhere.
Borrelial infections can be one cause of inflammation so that if this was the cause in you, then you should be taking antibiotics not statins!!!!
New research shows a dramatic drop in painkiller prescriptions after medical marijuana laws are passed.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.washingtonpost.com
I could have told you this but you can read it for yourself.
This is a repost, not mine but the way my legs have been behaving lately and because of my mobility fears it seems appropriate to hear about how it is [not] going to be treated if it happens to me.
I’m dictating this to Google lying down so the grammar Mike be a bit off. that is an example of what I mean which I’ll leave in for the comedy value, comedy is probably much needed…………..I’m thinking about Whitney Defoe and those of you who have put up with this level of incapacity for years. Is this me now? I have no idea how to process that prospect………
At some point a pretty young woman in a green top comes over. At last it’s a doctor. I’ve lost track of time but I think six hours since the paralysis came on.
6 hours paralysis before I see a doctor
Read More: Paralysis and PACE
Thalamocortical dysrhythmia lies at the heart of many chronic pain disorders.
Too many questions now.
Was the fibromyalgia caused by a Lyme-like Borreliosis that I tested positive for?
Was I born with a lyme-like illness that caused the formation of an arachnoid cyst and or a scoliosis?
Can I blame my Mum for breathing in paint-fumes while she was pregnant with me?
Does it explain all the aching legs and poor posture I had as a child? If so, no wonder 7 years of ballet did not work.
Has it or the fibromyalgia got progressively worse over my lifetime or both?
Can I live on pain killers for the rest of my life?
Would a thoracic cyst that is slightly compressing the spinal cord and displacing it to the right cause “rhubarb” which is something I used to call the phenomenon of a not so nice sensation when I touched myself sometimes as a kid and which has been so bad lately that a bra is out of question and a light cotton dress hurts as it touches my skin? Is that Allodynia? I called it “rhubarb” because of the sour first hit you get from eating stewed rhubarb – a sensation that seemed to effect me all over. So this young girl used to complain about rhubarb and Laking eggs and no-one took me seriously so I just thought everyone got around like that. Anyway Mum said it was growing pains.
The MRI also shows so much widespread osteo-arthritis and a cervical, lumbar and mid-spine focus as well as a the same evidence on a bone scan so how can I tell which pain is from that and which pain is from the cyst? The bone scan shows up all the osteo too but apparently even with narrowing in the cervical foramina, it supposedly does not account for these light sensitive, nausea promoting cracking headaches that are caused by using my arms if I have not woken up out of bed like it. Apparetly fibromyalgia can cause migraines and Lyme disease can but I have always maintained my headaches are coming from somewhere between my shoulder blades and neck as well. The neurosurgeon said the pain in the back there would be from the cyst but not the referred headache. I get enough other types of referred pain – even stings above the heart and elsewhere but to me it does actually feel like I am scraping bone on bone when I have one of these headaches and I press on my head or put it on a pillow. I have got bone spurs cervically but once again they say it is not causing problems. So how come I have so many problems?
The neurosurgeon seemed to confirm the feeling like walking through a sprinkler and my legs feeling like they are getting wet could be part of it but I forgot to ask about the burning feet and the insect bites that aren’t there. What about things crawling in my hair that aren’t there? These things don’t happen so often but they have been happening for many decades. The first time I got “sprinkler legs” driving in the car, it turned out I was below normal in B12 so we blamed that. What about this burning mouth syndrome, I’m not low in B12 any more? But Lyme disease can account for all those things too.
I don’t think I am ever going to know what pain is from what unless I find someone that believes I need surgery to drain/remove the cyst and that is not likely to happen in the public system and the private neurosurgeon I saw said it was not going to hurt if I waited for a repeat MRI in 12 months and he seemed quite pleased when he knew he had scared me after saying 1 in 5000 end up paraplegic. I don’t show my pain and I did not even mention all the symptoms I have talked about here before it was decided to shelve it for now. But these days I’m a narcotics patient. My pain doctor started me on Targin. In order to get enough pain relief I seem to be stoned almost all day so if I want to go out, it means forgoing the pain relief anyway. Is that dumb or what?
One more thing turned up incidentally while I was being assessed for pain. They discovered some lung changes on a plain x-ray and a nodule in my upper right lung on a Hi Res CT scan (HRCT). It could be infection, it could be cancer but again they are just leaving it and waiting till my next repeat CT scan. I reckon it is a mycoplasma pneumonia flare-up but doctors here don’t believe you can have repeat infections that don’t show up on IgM or sputum culture. All I’ve got is IgG (Gone). But all the coughing has aggravated my chest and back pain that’s for sure and I have never heard myself wheeze like I have in the past few months and I don’t even get asthma although even that is being suggested now rather than a stealth mycoplasma. I need glycolipid mycoplasma testing but it is only available in Japan and would not even be known of here although I did notice that nowdays the mycoplasma P blood tests do warn that a negative IgM does not rule out a current infection not that the doctors ever do the recommended retest.
A bit more personal update on my life over the time I have been mostly away from this blog for:
I firstly wrote about it here: http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?p=875538&posted=1#post875538
Yes, I still have fibro flares.
ME/CFS improved when I was treated for Lyme Borreliosis with a year’s worth of antibiotics. During which time unusual psychiatric problems arose. But I was physically so much better. Not home-bound. I had my bad runs but they were short.
I went from being 53kg to 82kg between the end of the agitated activity (psychiatric herx) phase and this new obese phase of my life but I was still able to schedule in walks with my friend. I was taking Effexor and I went from worrying about everything to not even being nervous to go to the dentist. You might say those pills work! You could say the effect might have been a bit extreme because I don’t worry about the housework enough.
Health started to deteriorate very, very slowly but not so often in that fluey feeling kind of way.
And then I turned 60
At first it was hives for two months which turned out to be an allergy to egg white
My holiday medical in a strange shopping centre unveiled high blood pressure and high blood sugar. The beta blocker helped with the blood pressure but it went away again by itself. But I could see that my heart rate (HR) was too high. Other’s noticed too but not my doctor. I had monitored HR for at least a year when I had an HR monitor back when I was really sick and breathless. It was often very low but would go high, as in too high, when I stood up. I assumed it was POTS and the beta blocker back then helped it. Somewhere between then and now something has changed. My tachycardia is consistent even throughout the night in bed. I’m sure nobody cares. And now, my blood pressure can be lowered by simply lying down for 20 mins. Standing up, even sitting upright elevates it by enough Hg to consider another form of orthostatic intolerance. But it is not top priority.
I was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type 2 fairly recently but I knew the diagnosis was coming because of many blood tests by now and I altered my diet as I guessed it should be. I gave up sugar in my drinks and finding it hard I added cream to coffee as a substitute. I swapped a cereal breakfast for a cooked meat and egg breakfast and I had already given up bread to try to lose weight. That surely did not work but it saved a lot of heartburn and reflux. I was eating a lot more fat. It seemed to be going fine and I even started losing the craving for sugar even with my naughty relapses into the biscuit and cake world. I think I had started to lose weight until I had to stuff myself full of carbs for 4 days in preparation for a glucose tolerance test. I would have gone back to that diet if you can call it that; instead I started having stomach and bowel problems which made eating pretty difficult. I reckon I am losing weight again now because of it. I have also cut back on the anti-depressant a little but I am strongly affected by withdrawal syndrome so it is a very long process.
So I am leaving you at the current point in time where I am learning to use a glucose machine and prick my finger while trying to discover if the current month-long run of stomach problems which seem like gastroparesis and bowel problems which seem like Crohn’s are going to be diagnosed. Just don’t go to Caloundra Hospital if you are in so much pain that you think you will pass out. They will take away your ambulance trolley, send you back into the public waiting room and make you use the public toilets until the blood comes which was 4 hours and then they will give you a buscopan and I must not forget the lecture about not being able to be treated in Emergency because Crohn’s disease (although pronounced cured or a phantam of someone’s imagination) in me has been long-standing and therefore something every day and she reminded me (the doctor on duty who did not even send anyone to check on me during my prolonged stays in the bathrooms) that in fact, I did not pass out. I assume they mean that I can only go to hospital during a bowel attack if I actually do pass out. I asked to go home in the end. Being cold in the hospital trying to lie down across several seats was adding hell to torture. My home was not hell. I had blankets and a bed. And a clean toilet with softer toilet paper. I thought Emergency Departments were supposed to have most of those things and accept people who are nearly in another dimension because of painful spasms.
When I was in private health insurance, the private hospital I went to a over a couple of decades ago insisted that I should go to hospital to get something strong like pethadine for the pain. Caloundra Public hospital obviously does not treat bowel cramps (that leave you sore for a week after, and that make you wonder if you might die).
Anyway, my doctor told me to go to hospital next time and I did.
Now I am being tested for all sorts of things. I wonder if I will get a diagnosis this time. Last time one doctor suggested gall stones and the other suggested gastro. So I leave you without any results and a totally messed up diabetes diet.
I have also been diagnosed with Chronic or Late Stage Lyme Disease which is often a cause of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Sarcoidosis, Multiple Sclerosis and on and on. Lyme disease is called “the great imitator” because it does mimic so many other chronic diseases.
I am currently undergoing antibiotic treatment but it is too early for me to tell for sure whether the treatment is working. However, despite a lot of reactions to being on the antibiotics, I am finding that the post-exertion malaise I have suffered with is markedly reduced right now.
I am not the lady in the video. The video owner believes that her Fibromyalgia and CFS are mis-diagnoses whereas I tend to believe that they are conditions that can be triggered by long-term Lyme Disease or one of its co-infections.
