It's been almost two months now since I started the Artemisia and, I must say, the results have continued to be positive. In fact, I would maybe go so far as to say that it has been a game-changer for me. I have probably felt better for the past six weeks than I have in the ten months that I've been battling Lyme. Has the Artemisia been addressing the big piece of the puzzle that I've been trying to pinpoint (see last blog)? I don't want to jinx myself but I think I have, indeed, pinpointed one of the last pieces of the Lyme jigsaw puzzle. Perhaps that puzzle piece was Babesia all along. Or maybe it was an out-of-control parasite issue that was giving me bigger problems than I could ever imagine. Whatever the problem was, Artemisia seems to be addressing it.
I started out taking the Artemisia at a very low dose. One capsule. 500 mg. Actually, that wasn't even that low of a dose, but it was low compared to what my doctor "prescribed" me: a whopping 3,000mg! I stayed on one capsule for about two weeks and, for a week or so, I had pretty intense herx (die-off) reactions that, at times, were very uncomfortable. There was intense anxiety, stomach upset, fatigue, creepy-crawlie sensations on my skin etc. These symptoms got better after about a week.
Soon enough, I felt comfortable upping my dose to 1,000mg a day. Again, there was a noticeable herx reaction with similar symptoms as before but then they subsided and, after about another week, I felt comfortable taking 1500mg a day. Then, after another week or so, I took 2,000mg...
My goal of 3,000mg a day still seemed like a high dose to me so I double-checked with my doctor and he did reassure me that 3,000mg should be my goal. So I kept upping the dose.
Once I reached 2500mg, the die-off symptoms seemed to get a little more intense and it was also questionable whether these were die-off symptoms or perhaps I had finally exceeded a dose of the Artemisia that I could tolerate. I consequently scaled the dose back a bit and started taking 1500-2000mg a day.
Die-off symptoms notwithstanding, I generally felt a whole lot better. Overall, I felt like my body was in much less a state of struggle and I didn't have that heavy gross feeling anymore, or at least not as much of it. I think the Artemisia killed off a lot of crap and dumped it from my body.
Also, my head felt clearer -- there was much less brain fog -- and I had more physical energy. In fact, the Artemisia seemed to give me a constant feeling of giddiness, which I suppose might have been a high from the herb, but it was almost as though my soul or spirit was reawakening and I had the desire to do more things. This, of course, led me to try and do more things, like more walking and more errands and even some more socializing out in the world. Overall, I was able to do these activities without paying a price for it later on. However, I would be remiss if I didn't admit that my body was still unable to do everything that my spirit wanted to do. It was certainly still lacking in the energy and stamina department -- I'm still not the runner athlete I used to be -- but I felt there was also another issue at play. It seemed like whenever I amped up the physical activity, I would still get that "poisoned" feeling, as though toxins were being released into my blood, and then traveled up to my brain, making me feel foggy, confused and slower in the cognitive department.
I felt that the reason behind this "poisoned" feeling was that I still had an overwhelming amount of neurotoxins trapped in both my muscle tissues and lymph nodes. These neurotoxins were from Lyme die-off. That's right: Lyme doesn't just go away when you kill it off. It leaves a neurotoxin (technically called an endotoxin) behind in its place. It's kind of like one last FU before it dies. In fact, it's basically a defense mechanism: that is, it releases the neurotoxin while it's dying to deter the host from killing it in the first place. It may sound crazy, but Lyme seems to be smart in this manner. It is literally like an intelligent entity.
Anyway, physical activity got my lymphatic system going, which starts to move the aforementioned Lyme die-off neurotoxins out of my muscle tissues and into my blood to be processed by my liver and eliminated from my body. The problem was that my liver and other toxin-eliminating organs couldn't keep up with the flow, both because of the sheer amount of toxins but also because the toxins thicken blood, which obstructs pathways to the liver. Picture an assembly line where the conveyor belt keeps on going faster and faster and the tired factory worker (i.e. my liver) can't keep up with the workload. That's what was happening in my body, hence why I felt poisoned. It was toxicity of the blood.
Clearly these toxins were the next obstacle I had to address. The Artemisia was eliminating the source of this toxin creation (i.e. the Lyme itself, possible Babesia, parasites, candida etc.), but I still had to clean out the toxins that remained trapped in my muscle tissues and my lymph. I was already taking plenty of antioxidants (Vitamin C, molybdenum, Alpha Lipoic Acid, Tocotrienols, glutathione, even the Artemisia itself), but what good were all these antioxidants if the toxins were trapped in my muscles and lymph to begin with? The trick was to get the toxins released from these areas but I had to do it at a very slow and gradual pace. And there was only one way to do this:
Exercise!
Indeed, the writing was on the wall that the next step in my recovery process was adopting some sort of exercise regimen. I had already been walking every day, pretty much since the beginning of my Lyme recovery process, but I knew I needed to do something more. Don't get me wrong: walking was great for me and I'm so glad I kept walking even during the worst of my Lyme days because, if I hadn't, my body probably would have atrophied completely. Walking definitely helped eliminate many toxins but the problem was that it only worked certain muscles...like, mostly my leg muscles. What about my upper-body? I needed to drain those muscles of toxins as well.
So what could I do? Push-ups? Well, in late February, I tried to do push-ups (only about three of them, mind you) but that didn't go over so well. Push-ups consist of intense muscle contraction. It is considered "high-impact" exercise. The muscle contraction was so intense that it seemed to push waaaaaaaay too many toxins out into my blood at a time. I would get very dizzy. Confused. Depressed. Even angry, and I'm not talking irritable; I'm talking borderline-insane angry, or maybe 'insane' is going too far so I would maybe say 'irrational' angry, kind of like roid rage. These were all typical signs that the neurotoxin level in my bloodstream was way too high.
I needed to get these toxins out of my body, but it was imperative that I do it in much smaller amounts. I needed to come up with an exercise regimen that triggered less muscle contraction. I needed a "low-impact" workout.
So, at first, I thought I should do yoga. I found some yoga videos on YouTube but, after watching a couple, I realized it wasn't my thing. I felt I needed something else.
Then, a friend turned me on to Tai Chi videos. At first, I thought these videos would be right up my alley, but then I thought the arm and hand movements were a liiittle too complex for me. I wanted something that was maybe more straight-forward.
This was when the idea popped into my head: "Why don't I look up basic exercise videos for senior citizens?" And that's when I found a YouTube video that seemed to offer me exactly what I was looking for. It was a 15-minute, low-impact exercise video for seniors made by a company named "Hasfit". The video is hosted by a gentleman, maybe somewhere in his 30s, rather pleasant I must say, and, most notably, there is a poster in the background of the video that says BEAST MODE: ON, meaning "beast mode" has officially been switched to the 'on' position, which is basically encouraging you to open a can of whoop-ass and work out like a beast.
As for me? Well, I didn't quite work out like a beast...at least not at first. Let's say I was halfway between normal-human-mode and beast-mode. Maybe I was in minotaur-mode. Something like that.
This is the 15 minute low impact exercise video for seniors.
Initially, I could only do about the first six minutes of the video and I did it at an extremely slow pace, probably only doing a third of the exercise moves that the instructor did. In the video, he does most of the upper-arm exercises with dumbbells but he also says you don't have to use any weights and, trust me, folks, I didn't use any. Also, in the part where he jogs in place and does curls? Well, I did the curling parts (sans dumbbells) but did no running in place.
So, yes, I did only six minutes of the video. Only a half or third of the exercises. No dumbbells. No running in place. And...
I still felt it afterwards. That is, I felt the toxins oozing into my bloodstream afterwards. My brain got foggy and I felt a little confused. Cognitive function not so good...some dizziness...vertigo...the usual deal. I drank a lot of water and, after a few hours or so, I felt like the toxins had more or less passed. This was okay, though. This was what was supposed to happen. I would only start to worry if the same thing happened every day, at the same intensity. If my theory was correct -- that I had to gradually work the toxins out of my muscle tissues and out of my lymph -- then I should feel less and less of this reaction every day that I did the exercises and, eventually, I wouldn't feel much of a toxic reaction at all because I will have completely drained out the nasty sludge.
So I put my theory to the test and, the next day, I tried the exercises all over again. Same deal. Six minutes. No dumbbells. No running in place. Maybe I did a few more of the exercises but not many more of them. And???
Eureka! I didn't feel like I did the day before. Not much confusion. Not much dizziness. BUT...
I experienced something different. Depression. Anger. Sadness. At points, I felt terror. I knew it was the neurotoxins affecting me in a different manner than the day before. I kept telling myself that what I felt wasn't real. The toxins were messing with my mind, tricking it into feeling fear and sadness and loathing. I just needed to drink a lot of water and let everything pass. And that's what happened.
I kept doing the exercises, pretty much every day. And it seemed like my theory was being proven correct, because each day that went by, the toxic reaction seemed to get less and less. Some days were worse than others. Sometimes I would hardly have any symptoms of toxicity and other times I would feel like there was an earthquake beneath my feet from toxic vertigo. However, there seemed to be a consistent decline in toxicity the more I did the exercising.
Over time, I started doing more of the exercises in the video and even did the running in place. As I write this, I still only do six minutes and no dumbbells. I would probably be more intense about it if I didn't walk every day but, since I walk every day, I can only do so much of the exercise video right now. In time, I will probably be doing the whole 15 minute video with dumbbells and all.
My hope is that, maybe a few months from now, I will graduate from these videos or maybe I'll be able to do more of them or slightly more advanced ones. The Hasfit videos are supposed to be for seniors but the truth is that they would have been a good workout for me even when I was healthy without Lyme. In other words, they're nothing to sneeze at. If I'm doing these videos well, I'm doing pretty good for myself, Lyme or no Lyme.
My ultimate goal is to run again, both because I like to run but also because that would mean I'm more normal again. If I can run, that basically means I'm back to being "normal". And when I mean 'run', I mean run a respectable distance without feeling like I'm going to die afterwards. I'm not sure when that day will come. If you had asked me that question about six weeks ago, I would've said I don't see it in my foreseeable future. I probably would have said it could be years down the road. But now, after feeling more like myself from the Artemisia and after starting my structured exercise regimen, it's possible it could be months down the road. Who knows?
The bottom line is that there is more hope now. At the end of March, I was severely lacking in the hope department. My future seemed dark and grim. Many months had passed and it seemed like I had hardly made any progress. I had no idea where to turn or where to look for help. I was hoping like hell that addressing a potential "parasite" problem with the Artemisia would be a game-changer for me and, so far, it looks like it WAS. As I write this, I feel MUCH better.
Now all I need is more time. More patience. More exercising, little by little. And, yes, some more Artemisia as well. And, oh, wait, one more thing! I know: there's always one more thing. Oh, Matt, you didn't think you would get off that easy, did you?
Upon doing more research for this article, I discovered that there was one more thing I should be doing:
Taking a "binder".
A what?
A binder.
See, when the toxins are excreted from the muscles and lymph (via exercise, antioxidants etc.), they end up in the small intestine but they may not be fully emitted from the body via waste unless they are bound together by some sort of binding substance. Otherwise, the toxins get reabsorbed into the bloodstream and redistributed throughout the body all over again. This recycling of toxins can happen repeatedly*. In other words, you can get poisoned by the same toxins in an endless cycle unless something is done to bind them, thus preventing them from being reabsorbed. Some people think they have chronic Lyme disease but what's really making them sick is this endless cycle of toxicity. And, oh yes, I realize how frigging confusing this all sounds. Just when you think you have gotten a grip on Lyme disease, another facet of the disease presents itself and you end up falling down another rabbit hole learning all about this new aspect of the disease. It's very frustrating because the complexity of Lyme never seems to end. It's like an endless, tangled web. This complexity -- not to mention the intelligence of the disease -- is almost unworldly. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Lyme had extraterrestrial origins, meaning it was created by a malevolent extraterrestrial race. Perhaps I've taken a little too much Artemisia and I'm getting a little loopy in the head or perhaps I might be onto something...
Anyway, most of the articles I stumbled upon recommended taking chlorella, which is a "superfood" supplement that you can take in capsule form. It's essentially algae but it binds the toxins and helps eliminate them from your body once and for all. As I write this, I have started taking some chlorella that is found in a superfood powder from Whole Foods. This powder is something I've taken in the past, before Lyme, just as a general health supplement. You put a tablespoon of the powder in water and it detoxes you and makes you have more energy. It's lemon-lime flavored and it's quite tasty. The powder, however, probably doesn't have too much chlorella in it so I will probably end up taking capsules down the road. I saw that the NOW vitamin company has a bottle of 120 capsules for about ten dollars. I'll probably get something like that.
So Artemisia? Check. Light exercise? Check. AND a binder? I'm working on that. With all these things combined, I will officially be in BEAST MODE.
*Many people recovering from Lyme lack the genes necessary to detox properly, thus making it more imperative that they use a binder. Read more about this issue in the first article listed below.
For more information about Lyme die-off neurotoxins and binders, read these articles:
http://www.nothing-is-incurable.com/2011/04/how-to-quickly-clear-out-lyme-disease.html
www.tiredoflyme.com/detox-methods.html
http://www.publichealthalert.org/neurotoxin-overload-full-body-detox-guide.html
https://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=804
