Thursday, November 22, 2018

Thanksgiving 2018

It's Thanksgiving 2018. I have some things to be thankful for...

First of all, I've been able to do waaay more physical activity, especially compared to last Thanksgiving. In fact, last year, I still felt sick on pretty much a constant basis. At least now I don't really feel sick anymore, even though I still have a lot more recovery to do. I'm walking around feeling pretty good.

In the upcoming months, I want to try integrating some light jogging into my walks. I figure I'll walk around the block like I usually do, only (at first) add about five seconds of jogging into the walk, maybe from one telephone pole to the next. If that goes ok, I'll add another five seconds. And then another. Once I'm comfortable with three sets of five-second jogging, I'll probably stick with that for a while before I build up to more. The key is to get my body used to jogging again: my muscles, my lungs, my stamina, etc.

As I write this, I'm reminded of the Bruce Lee story DRAGON. It's a biopic movie that I watched when I first got sick in July 2017. Bruce's back gets broken in a fight that takes place halfway through the movie. Bruce thinks he'll never fight or even walk again. He's practically paralyzed. After a pep-talk from his wife, he takes the recovery one small step at a time and he's able to overcome the seemingly impossible. Am I comparing myself to Bruce Lee right now? Maybe.




I guess what I'm wondering is...can I pull this off? I mean, is my full recovery in my own hands? 

If I wisely take the necessary steps, I do think I can get to where I want to be, back to my former self -- well, not just who I was -- but an even better version of that person. It's not going to happen tomorrow. It will take much more work and persistence and, yes, a lot of divine guidance as well. But it's also going to take method, like I'm my own physical trainer. There is a calculated, step-by-step process to this recovery, kind of like I'm an architect and I'm plotting every single detail of reconstructing a building that was destroyed by an earthquake or hurricane. I can't just wave a magic wand and wa-lah, I have a new and improved body. I must be patient and methodical with the reconstruction of myself. If I do this, I can win. Hopefully.

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Heavy Metal Problems

The time had come to see my doctor again. My LLMD, that is. Lyme-literate doctor. Not my Primary Care Physician. You get it. Speaking of my PCP, though...

I'd just recently had an appointment with him at the beginning of October and it went well, not that we really did much of anything except check blood pressure and maybe weigh me, but we DID check my liver levels and I was happy to discover that my enzymes were back to normal. This was a good sign, I thought. Because I was worried my liver was screwed up in a major way. In fact, back in January, my PCP had suggested I get an ultrasound to check on the liver. I did not get the ultrasound, not because I didn't think I needed one, but because I didn't want to know if something was wrong (ignorance is bliss). Instead, I decided to just wait several months and then check on the liver enzymes again, which I did and, as I mentioned before, they were fine. Sorry to repeat myself.

Where was I?

Oh yes. The LLMD.

Although my liver enzymes were back to normal, at least according to the recent blood report, this didn't mean I was all back to normal. And I wasn't. I was still having problems, one of the biggest of which was (still) with exercise and physical activity. I must say that my tolerance for physical activity was improving, slowly but surely, on almost a daily basis, but, still...too much activity led to bad things. The dizziness and drunk feeling continued to be an issue (read about this in my WINK blog), but also anger and depression would often come maybe an hour or two after the exercise. Overall, I felt toxic after physical activity; poisoned even. When my liver enzymes were off, I thought that maybe a weak liver was to blame, that I wasn't detoxing properly during exercise. But now that the enzymes were normal, I didn't really know what to think. If my liver was healthy, then what the hell was the problem?

Well, this was the main question I posed when I went and saw my LLMD. I said (and I paraphrase), "What gives, doc? My liver is apparently back to normal, but I still feel poisoned after I do too much exercise and/or physical activity. I still can't walk more than about a half a mile or so at a time--maybe three quarters of a mile--but that's starting to push it."

My doctor seemed surprised to hear this.

Then I said, "Is it possible that I still have an excess of neurotoxins in my body from the Lyme die-off, and they all get squeezed out of my muscles and lymph when I exercise, then they seep into the bloodstream, travel up to my brain, and this explains the poisoned feeling?"

My doctor rubbed his chin in deep thought.

"I'm not so sure about that," he said, "But it IS very possible that heavy metals are to blame."

And he wasn't talking about Slayer, Megadeth or Iron Maiden.

It wasn't the first I'd heard of heavy metals. In doing Lyme research and talking on Lyme Facebook support groups and such, I had heard about heavy metals on countless occasions. I knew that a heavy metal issue was a problem that came along with Lyme. I just didn't know how.

So I had to look it up...


First of all, I wanted to learn what, exactly, heavy metals were. According to what I found on the web, the most common heavy metals are mercury, cadmium, arsenic, lead, copper, silver and aluminum. WE ALL apparently have these metals in our body, usually in very small and manageable amounts, because we're constantly exposed to them in our environment. Common sources of these metals are water (that contains the heavy metal lead and also contains fluoride, which is not a metal, but is a toxin that increases our bodies' uptake of aluminum, which is a metal (source)), vaccines (mercury), dental fillings (mercury), aluminum cookware/cans (aluminum), cigarette smoke (cadmium), antacids (aluminum), antiperspirants (aluminum), fish (mercury), paints (lead), fertilizers (arsenic), car/truck exhaust (aluminum), gasoline (lead) and even sometimes rice (arsenic).


When we're healthy, we're able to ingest these heavy metals and process/excrete them no problemo, or at least with not much of a problemo. However, when we have a disease like Lyme compromising our immune system, a buildup of heavy metals can easily occur. According to an article I found on the web, this buildup is called a "bioaccumulation", which is when you begin to "absorb a substance at a rate faster than your body can metabolize and excrete the substance" (source). A normal body is able to process and excrete the metals quicker than they're entering the body but Lyme hinders the metabolization of these heavy metals and, before you know it, you find yourself head-banging to a fierce heavy metal issue. 


Complicating things further, an excess of heavy metals in your system helps form biofilms that block the immune system from fighting off Lyme. A biofilm is a thick, mucusy shield of bacteria that Lyme spirochetes ultimately create (if they're not killed soon after infecting their host) to protect themselves from the immune system and antibiotics. Heavy metals help to make these biofilms strong and difficult to penetrate. 

In fact, "chronic" Lyme is essentially defined by the presence of these heavy-metal biofilms that make Lyme spirochetes so difficult to kill. You can't kill the Lyme until you destroy the biofilms, but how do you destroy the biofilms? Good question; I thought you'd ask that. According to one article I found, you can do it through natural means, like enzymes (Serrapeptase, Lumbrokinase, Nattokinase) or through conventional drugs (Tindamax) (source).


However, you must be careful about destroying the biofilm (in fact, some experts like renowned Lyme specialist Stephen Buhner argue it's not even a wise thing to do). Because once the biofilm is destroyed, everything that was used to construct the biofilm now gets released into your body, the most intense of which are all the heavy metals. So you suddenly find yourself with a major heavy metals issue after the breaking of a biofilm, not to mention the fact that you must now also deal with the bacteria that created the biofilm to begin with: i.e. Lyme. Yikes! Just when you thought things couldn't get any more complicated, right?


Anyway, after reading all this, I started to think, hmmm, this whole "breaking of the biofilm" phenomenon sounds a lot like how I felt after I took the drug Levaquin where it felt as though a bomb had detonated in my body (read about my Levaquin experience in my blog LEVAQUIN WITH A TWIST OF LYME). Did the Levaquin that I took three weeks prior to being diagnosed with Lyme break open a biofilm within me and this is why it felt like all hell had broken loose in my body after just two pills of the powerful drug? 


Some amateur forums on the web have suggested that this is possible but there doesn't seem to be any professional corroboration that I can find. There are also forums on Facebook where people have suggested that Levaquin can definitely activate dormant Lyme but nobody really knows how, exactly, whether it's via breaking the biofilm or some other way. However, one person in the Facebook group speculated that, since Levaquin and other fluoroquinolones destroy cells in our bodies (because they're literally cell-destroying chemotherapy drugs (source)), wouldn't it make sense that whatever bacteria or viruses or parasites or, yes, heavy metals that lie latent within these cells get released into the body once they are destroyed?


Who knows: maybe Levaquin is to blame for opening up this entire Pandora's box and all I had pre-Levaquin was a nasty, lingering flu virus while the Lyme existed as nothing more than a stealth microbe causing minimal problems. I guess blaming Levaquin for unleashing Lyme and/or heavy metals into my body is just another theory to add to the pile of theories that make my head spin on almost a daily basis. Why did I get sick...how did I get sick...was it the Levaquin...Lyme...something else? Yeesh.


As far as the heavy metals go, at this point, it doesn't really matter HOW I got a heavy metal issue. The point is that I have a heavy metal issue and now the question is how the hell do I get rid of these fiends?


Well, my LLMD "prescribed" activated charcoal for me, which is a binding agent. I discussed binders in a previous blog but it's basically a detoxing agent that binds itself to toxins like heavy metals and pulls them out of your body. Charcoal is a powder. You put it in water, drink, it binds to toxins and then the bound toxins go to the colon where you eventually excrete everything when you pay tribute to the toilet god.


My LLMD also "prescribed" zinc, NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine) and taurine to assist with the removal of the metals. The zinc helps with the detoxification of metals and the NAC is another chelator that binds to the heavy metals (much like charcoal) and gradually removes them from the body over a slow amount of time. While all that is happening, the taurine fortifies the body's cells and further protects them from "free radical oxidative stress," which is a fancy way of saying "protects cells from destructive heavy metals".


Nothing like a nice, tall 
glass of activated charcoal.
As of the writing of this, the zinc, NAC and taurine seem to be going well but the charcoal is still a work in progress. Sorry for the TMI but charcoal can apparently make you mucho constipated if you take too much of it. Plus, I've noticed that my temperament has become even more unstable since I started dabbling with the charcoal. In fact, I've had a few episodes where I've gotten so agitated that I've gotten into my car and screamed "Fuck!" over and over again, at least five or six times. I know that sounds crazy, and it is, but I think the charcoal has stirred up the metals in my system (mercury, for example, has been known to make people insane in the membrane). I was hoping it would be easier eliminating the metals from my system but that doesn't seem to be the case. Perhaps taking the zinc, NAC and taurine is all I can handle for right now and, over time, they will slowly (and GENTLY) eliminate the metals from my body. Maybe that's the best I can do right now.

We shall see.


Sources


https://www.tiredoflyme.com/biofilm.html


https://trinahammack.com/lyme-disease-heavy-metal-toxicity/


http://whatislyme.com/heavy-metals/


https://drjaydavidson.com/heavy-metals-shield-lyme/


http://lymewarrior.us/heavy-metals-lyme-disease


http://www.ppt-health.com/biofilms-fibrin-and-cysts/heavy-metals-in-biofilms/


https://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/10/15/fda-allows-chemo-drugs-prescribed-antibiotics/


https://www.dailymedicaldiscoveries.com/become-superman-resisting-heavy-metals/