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Some things that have helped me

Messages
7
Hello,

I suffered from what I thought was chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM) for 9.5 years. Below is a list of things that have helped me. I wanted to pass them along in hopes that they may help someone else. I am not a medical practitioner. Always consult a physician before starting/stopping any medication, etc.

How It Started:
On Thursday, Sept. 27th, 2001, I went to bed feeling fine. The next morning, Friday, I woke up feeling like I hadn't slept. No matter how I tried, I could not get going. I went to bed very early that night and slept for 14-ish hours. The same thing happened the next morning. I awoke feeling like I hadn't slept. Later I learned the technical term for this is non-restorative sleep. This continued day after day. I was able to push through it but after three weeks I became very concerned and went and saw my doctor. He said I probably have a virus (mononucleosis) and it will eventually pass. He was wrong and it never did go away. It got worse and I developed other symptoms. From my research I learned that it can be common for CFS/FM to have "sudden onset" after a traumatic experience or illness.

My Symptoms:
Here are some of the symptoms I had in no particular order (or maybe what bothered me most):
1) Non-restorative sleep. I would sleep and sleep and sleep yet never feel rested. This was not only a physical tiredness but a mental and emotional tiredness.
2) Fatigue and post-exertion malaise. I was beyond exhausted. Everything was an effort. I did not bounce back after any kind of physical activity. I couldn't even mow my own lawn. I did only what I had to do like pay bills and work.
3) Insomnia. It was terrible. I was dead tired and could not fall asleep and, when I did fall asleep, it was hard staying asleep. The slightest noise would wake me up.
4) Pain (FM). I hurt all over all the time. Eventually this started to steal the joy from every moment. It felt like my muscles would clench uncontrollably especially when I would sleep. I got a mouth guard because I was grinding my teeth. I had to get both a top and bottom piece because I was slowly wearing through the top guard. It was pricey, $300, but better than fixing cracked teeth.
5) Brain fog. It was hard to think. I felt drunk most of the time. I wasn't able to read or learn anything new.
6) Static in the brain. This is very hard to describe. The only analogy I have been able to come up with is it's like listening to an AM radio station with lots of static. My brain was working but there was lots of interference. To this day I still have trouble listening to music. It just doesn't sound right.
7) Sensitivity to noises. The tiniest noise would bother me. My neighbor had dogs that would bark all day and it drove me insane.
8) Sensitivity to smells. Certain scents, especially perfumes and the like, made me feel dizzy and sick.
9) Sensitivity to touch. I didn't like being touched. I had to stop wearing jewelry (e.g. watch, ring, necklace).
10) My vision started going black-and-white-ish. I saw colors but they looked dull.
11) Intolerance to cold. I was always freezing even when I was in bed with the covers piled high and sweating.
12) Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). That's a euphemism for gas (both ends), bloating and loose, water stool. Worse, I always had this pain in my gut. Eating would make it worse. Sometimes I would be starving but I wouldn't eat because it would hurt so bad. When I did eat, food would travel through my in 5-6 hours.
13) Memory problems. It was hard to remember things.
14) Irritability.
15) Anxiety.
16) Depression but, and I want to make this clear, it was a symptom not the source problem. The doctors always wanted to give me anti-depressants. I always said no but my wife kept saying I should try them. I tried three different kinds and I will never take an SSRI again. I made my wife promise to never, ever let the doctors give me one even if my life depended on it. The first one, Effexor, was okay. I had lots of side effects all pretty minor except the big one. My equipment stopped working. That was unacceptable. I tried Welbutrin (sp?) next. That made me feel like I wanted to fight with everyone so I stopped that pretty quickly. The last one I tried was when I was feeling really bad. I took symbalta. I started having spasms and I lost voluntary motor control of my limbs. It happened for approximately five minutes every three hours over a span of about 18 hours. I figured it was because of the time release capsules. It was an extremely traumatic experience when I was at one of my lowest points. Never, ever again will I take SSRIs.
17) There are more symptoms but it's hard to remember them all and I try not to think back too much less the darkness return (like how Beren would not speak of his passage through the girdle of Melian).

Things That Helped Me:
Here is a list of things that helped me. There are in order of most significant to least.
1) Submit to God. I always had plans for what I was going to do with *my* life. I got a B.S. in Computer Science and got a job programming. I planned to become a Chief Information Officer (CIO) and/or start my own company. I would acquire all the material wealth I would need to be comfortable including a nice house, car, etc. I would find a good wife. Raise a family. Maybe start a company. After I had established *my* kingdom I would then turn towards God.

I was/am Christian and I have always had pretty strong faith. Little did I realize how much my faith would be tested by my illness. As my illness progressed I was able to do less and less. Even fun things became a chore. My life was stripped away from me a little piece at a time. Towards the end I had only my job (teaching programming at a local community college) and my wife. Everything else was gone.

I have discovered that if I hurt bad enough for long enough that I have a breaking point. I found that breaking point. Had it not been for my faith and the grace of God I would have died. I was broken not once but about three different times (yes, I'm very stubborn). I started saying things like, "Lord, I give up" and "Lord, what do I do?", "Lord, take this burden from me or make it all stop, PLEASE."

I was flipping through the TV channels one day and I came across Joyce Meyer. I listened to her for a while and what she said resonated with me. I continued to watch her because I learned something helpful every time I saw her show. After a month or two I saw a show on submission. Something clicked. I started trying to submit to God. I began to *voluntarily* let go of all the things *I* wanted to do. After practicing this for a month or two I started to find the other items on this list. For me, the more I have learned to trust and rely on God, the better my life has become and not just in a physical sense. If I had to look back, I would say God used my illness to wake me up. I'm not saying He caused it but I think He used it as a teaching tool. Most importantly, it was His grace that let me find the other items on this list. At the end I'll explain the computer search techniques I used.

2) Hypothyroidism Type 2 (HT2). Most of the medical community doesn't know about HT2. They know only about plain hypothyroidism which Dr. Mark Starr calls Hypothyroidism Type 1 (HT1). HT1 is where your thyroid gland produces little or no hormone. This can easily be detected by a blood test. I have had the blood test at least three times and my results where always "normal."

HT2 is where your thyroid gland produces an amount of hormone in the "normal" range but your body needs more. There is no blood test for this. I came across a radio interview in MP3 format that Dr. Starr did. I listened and I knew I had found a huge piece of the puzzle. Most of my symptoms which I thought were for CFS and FM mirrored almost exactly the symptoms for hypothyroidism.

Dr. Starr says to check if you have a low basal temperature and/or myxedema combined with any other symptom (e.g. fatigue, pain, brain fog). If you have those, according to Dr. Starr you could be HT2. I have always been cold. I took my basal temperature anyway and I was in the 96's. I also had myxedema. I'll explain how to check both shortly. Dr. Starr said that his patients that took iodine for four weeks and then began taking desiccated thyroid had most of their symptoms resolve or get much better. In early 2011, I ordered both off of Amazon and started taking iodine as soon as it arrived. According to Dr. Starr, skipping the iodine can cause permanent damage to the adrenal glands due to adrenal burnout. Then I started taking the desiccated thyroid. That was in February of 2011. Wow, within a day I knew I was on to something because all of my symptoms moved. I felt different. I had terrible cravings for the iodine (according to wikipedia, iodine deficiency is the leading preventable cause of mental retardation. I'm not kidding. It's in the first or second paragraph.) After two weeks of 50 drops a day my cravings subsided. During the first two weeks of taking thyroid I would have terrible attacks of the sleepies. I would sleep hard for four or five hours but, and this is a big but, I would wake up somewhat refreshed. I was a little freaked out by how hard I would go down. I mean I was like a drugged elephant. Eventually I seemed to "catch up" with my rest. Also, my pain started to decrease. It's like waking up from a nightmare. After 10 months I can report that I have much more energy and much less pain. Life is pretty good now! All of my symptoms have greatly improved. I'm not 100% but I'm not struggling through each day anymore.

I know now that I never had CFS or FM. I have always been HT2. Dr. Starr says it's hereditary and usually passed on by the mother. I look at my mom and I can see she has a mild case of it. Same with my wife. Her mom is HT1 and my wife tests at the low end of the "normal" range. She started taking iodine and desiccated thyroid and had improvement.

Dr. Starr explains how to take your basal (resting) temperature. First thing in the morning put an old-school glass thermometer in your underarm for 10 minutes. The digital ones are too inaccurate. More than one degree below 98.6f could mean that your HT2. Men and post-menopausal woman can take their temperature any day. Pre-menopausal women can take their temperature only on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th days of bleeding. Dr. Starr recommends shaking down the thermometer over something soft like your bed so that when you drop it it doesn't shatter on the tile floor. BTW, if you sleep with tons of blankets and cloths, you'll need to take off everything but what a normal person would wear about an hour or two before taking your temperature.

Myxedema is a thickening of the skin. Pinch the skin on the back of your hand. Notice how thin it is. Now pinch the skin on your underarm slightly to the outside. If it's thick that's myxedema. Before I started taking desiccated thyroid my skin was thick on my underarm. Now, after 10 months, it's much more like the skin on the back of my hand.

Here are links to the radio interview with Dr. Starr. I apologize for referencing another web site.
http://curezone.com/upload/Audio/Iodine/Dr_Mark_Starr_ORN_pt_1.mp3
http://curezone.com/upload/Audio/Iodine/Dr_Mark_Starr_ORN_pt_2.mp3

3) Diet. It turns out I have strong food allergies to dairy, gluten and weak/mild food allergies to potatoes, coffee, tea and a few other foods. According to Dr. Starr most people with HT2 are dairy and gluten intolerant. In 2009, almost two years before taking thyroid, I discovered my dairy and gluten allergies on my own. Long story but suffice it to say that when I stopped eating cheese, ice-cream, bread, crackers and everything else except meat, fruit and veggies I felt much better. Many of my intestinal troubles subsided. It's hard at first but since I felt better I got used to it.

There were two other pieces to the puzzle which I will discuss below. It took me months and months to wean myself off of the foods I loved but to which I was allergic. Cheese and hot tea were the hardest. I started to treat breakfast like dinner. I found a good rice bread substitute. It's in the freezer of the health food section of Krogers (our big grocery store chain). It took about a week for my insides to calm down after totally stopping dairy. I tried to cheat with digestive enzymes and lactose-free stuff. No good. After being good for several months I can have pizza about once a month and hot tea or coffee about once or twice a week with problems. If I go more than that I start to get troubles again (gas, bloating, pain, loose stool).

I also had to give up sugar and artificial sweeteners. No fruit juice. No alcohol. I drink spring water as much as possible (no fluoride). Iodine displaces fluoride and now I can taste the fluoride in the tap water. Yuck, tiggers don't like fluoride.

4) Liver and gall stones. I always had intestinal pain even when I didn't eat. I could not figure it out. One day my searches revealed how to do a "liver flush." I found it on the CureZone website. Curezone has a bunch of forums for all kinds of conditions. I was able to do massive amounts of research by reading about the things people tried with symptoms similar to mine. When I read about liver flushing something clicked. This was after I had started to submit to God and I'm sure it was His grace that gave me the desire to go through with it. I did my first flush and I was stunned at what came out. Hundreds of small stones the size of the head of a pin and smaller. Also about 50 pea-size stones came out. BTW, the come out the back end not the front. It doesn't hurt but it is uncomfortable. I immediately felt the pain in my abdomen decrease. But, over the next few days, the pressure built back up again. I did another flush and it felt better again. I had tons more stones come out, too. I did a total of 11 flushes (8 of which were doubles) over a period of about eight months. The last one had almost no stones. Wow, was I happy and I felt so much better. No more constant intestinal pain.

5) Parasites. Again by the grace of God I was researching and something clicked. I thought, maybe I have parasites. I had been out of the country on scuba trips before I got sick. I had been tested several times but the results were always negative/normal. I was still having intestinal troubles but I was being good with my diet and I had done a bunch of flushes. I had done a parasite cleanse years before and it had helped. I thought maybe I got them again or maybe I never got rid of them all the first time.

After researching on Curezone I found several things to try. One of those was food-grade quality diatomaceous earth (DE). From what I understand, DE is the fossilized remains of diatoms (hard-shelled algae). It's harmless to humans (except if you breath it) but it's deadly to bugs. It's like broken glass to them. I found them for a good price on the internet and ordered some. I made a mixture of this with a few other things (walnut/wormwood extract, clove oil, oregano oil, grapefruit seed extract) and drank it. Wow, it tastes awful. Within a few hours I felt something different in my intestines. It didn't hurt so much. This is gross but I examined my stool. I was horrified to see dead worms. After taking the mixture once or twice a day for over a month my innards feel better than they have in a long, long time.

Search Techniques:
Here is how I was able to research my illness. It used to be Google had a cool search feature. If you put a plus sign (+) in front of a word or phrase it would require that word or phrase to be in the result page. A minus sign would exclude pages with that word or phrase.

Some example searches I used were:
+"chronic fatigue syndrome" +forum +"I take"
which would usually find result pages on a forum where someone with CFS would discuss how taking a particular drug/whatever would help/not help.
+"fibromyalgia" +forum +"I feel"
which would usually find result pages on a forum where someone with FM would discuss how they felt.

Sadly, Google removed the plus and minus features sometime in Sept/Oct of 2011. I think the "advanced search" still works but I haven't tried it.
I found it on Google /advanced_search. It appears you can require certain words and exclude others. Phrases should be enclosed in double quotes.

By reading other people's stories I learned the common terms used to describe my symptoms. From there I was able to read all kinds of stories about what people tried. That's how I found the link to the radio interview with Dr. Starr about HT2 on CureZone.

I also found AskAPatient. People post their experiences taking different medications. Now I always read the reviews for a medication before I take it.

Some Other Things I tried:
-I took colloidal silver for a long time. I think it helped. I experienced flu-like symptoms during use that eventually went away. I consumed about 4oz a week at 30ppm for 1.5 years. I stopped taking it went I didn't feel anything different when I took it.
-I went into a hyperbaric chamber. I didn't feel any different.
-I tried massage and acupuncture. Massage initially felt good but with a few hours I would usually experience horrible secondary fatigue/flu-like symptoms that would last days or, one time, two weeks.
-I tried a bunch of different vitamins and minerals in both pill and liquid form. Never really noticed anything except for Vit D. I still take that every day and I notice a slight improvement.
-I tried several types of magnesium even the oil that you rub on. It just made my IBS worse or did nothing.
-I tried that mona via stuff. Tasted good but didn't do anything.
-I took Vitalzym SEB for a while. It helped with my pain and my muscle burning feelings but I always felt it was treating the symptoms and not the source.
-I tried light therapy with a Verilux light. My wife thought I had seasonal affect disorder (SAD). Turns out the cold of winter made my hypothyroidism worse.
-I had my mercury fillings replace with ceramics and I did a detox. That helped me feel better but it wasn't related to my CFS/FM problems.
-I had a bunch of blood tests. All negative normal.
-I saw a CFS/FM specialist who took a bunch of my money and didn't do anything for me. He wasn't even a good listener.
-I saw a gastroenterologist who put me on Protinix. Ugh, vile stuff. Never again.
-I'm sure I've left some things out but that's all the comes to mind right now.

Summary:
I'm not 100% and I'm definitely not the person I was but I'm doing okay. Discovering that I have HT2 made life so much better. I read that it takes 12-18 months to fully recover and it's been only 10 months for me. I can't wait to see how much more I improve over the next 8 months.

God Bless.

Sincerely,
Pat
 

aquariusgirl

Senior Member
Messages
1,732
Hi
thank you for your thoughts. I am glad you are so much better.
You say you took 50 drops of iodine. that sounds like a lot of iodine. What kind of iodine are we talking? Lugols, atomic iodine..??
TIA
 

Wayne

Senior Member
Messages
4,298
Location
Ashland, Oregon
Fantastic post Pat, and welcome to the forum! I'm looking forward to reading your post again; it contains so much good information. I'm not familiar with Type 2 Hypothyroidism, but intend to look into it because of my own situation. Congratulations on your major improvements (and your relentless search for answers for yourself).

Regards, Wayne

P.S. LordUgh? Is there a story behind that one? :Retro smile:
 

Charles555nc

Senior Member
Messages
572
I have advanced cfs, and have had extreme mental issues and other advanced problems, and I too started to see improvement but with Lugol's Iodine and other vitamins. I over dosed slightly recently with the iodine (wet nose and an extreme pain at the bottom of the neck area). So I advise people be careful with iodine. I dont know if technically I have cfs, chronic lyme disease, but I did test positive for XMRV in the blood and by antibody.

I will look into the dessicated thyroid. What dosage/brand do you recemmend?

I only started getting success with vitamins when a friend started talking to me about healing prayers. Something inside of me finds it hard to discuss God/to pray sometimes. But I believe.

Seeing much improvement myself:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/show...d-Coordination-on-regimen&p=228451#post228451
 
Messages
7
Iodine

Hi
thank you for your thoughts. I am glad you are so much better.
You say you took 50 drops of iodine. that sounds like a lot of iodine. What kind of iodine are we talking? Lugols, atomic iodine..??
TIA

I take Lugols 2%. Yes, I was worried I was taking too much so I did some research. Each drop is like 3 mg if I recall correctly. Fifty drops would be around 150mg a day. I couldn't help it. I had terrible cravings. It was like when you're hungry for salty potato chips or something. I still take 15-30 drops a day. I've been doing it for 10 months without any side-effects other than my nose runs a lot. I have read that this has happened to other people.

You have to be careful with both iodine and thyroid. There's a condition called hashimoto's disease. The iodine and desiccated thyroid treatment recommend by Dr. Starr will make that condition worse. He says so in the radio interview and his book. I'm not a medical practitioner. Always check with a doctor before taking/stopping any medication.
 

Calathea

Senior Member
Messages
1,261
Welcome! It sounds like you've had a rotten time of it, and I really am glad that you've managed to get this illness so well under control.

I'm not religious myself, but I think a lot of us, religious or not, can relate to what you said about a profound shift in mindset being necessary in order to live with this condition. I spent years trying to do far more than I really could, and it just left me frustrated and even more ill.

Interesting news about the thyroid. I'm always hearing that conventional testing is patchy at best. It's a rather unconventional suggestion for how to take your basal temperature, though, and do you happen to know why Dr Starr is recommending the second through fourth days of the menstrual cycle? It's quite common for the basal temperature to change dramatically during that time, which I'd have thought would confuse matters. Wouldn't a little later in the follicular phase be more useful? My GP is going to be testing my thyroid again soon, as I've been rather chilly lately, although I've been losing weight and low body temperature is normal in dieters, so it could just be that. It was quite noticeable, my basal temps dropped way below what they've ever been shortly after I started losing weight, and when I started taking ginger supplements to keep myself warm, they went back up to my normal range (which is also the normal range in general, I don't typically have the low basal temps you see in hypothyroidism). I'm planning to finish losing weight before she runs the blood tests, we may as well let things settle down first. My mother does have low thyroid, which as I recall showed up during conventional testing but hasn't responded particularly well to treatment.

Sympathy on the gallstones, I've got them myself and an attack of biliary colic is no joke. Were they diagnosed by a doctor, and what did the ultrasound show? I wouldn't advise anyone to follow the "liver flush" routine, however. Unfortunately it's been well proven to be a scam, a rather clever one since the body will saponify the olive oil and produce little pellets which people mistake for gallstones, plus they get an endorphin high from the diarrhoea. This has been found through before-and-after ultrasounds, through doctors analysing the "stones" brought to them by patients after a flush, and through the simple facts that people always seem to be reporting far more "stones" than the gall bladder can actually hold, as well as "stones" far too big to pass through the 3mm wide bile duct. There's quite a good analysis of the whole thing by a surgeon which you can find if you google "liver flush" + "scam".
 
Messages
7
I know of two ways to get thyroid. One way is to get a prescription from a doctor. Doctors prescribe the synthetic (Synthroid/Levothyroxine Sodium) or the natural stuff (Armour). Dr. Starr says in his book that people on the synthetic stuff have good blood test results but their symptoms do not improve. He recommends the real stuff.

The other way to get thyroid is the non-prescription route where it is sold as a supplement. I was tired of going to doctors and they never helped. I had tried so many things that thyroid was just another experiment. I didn't know it was going to help. I know my body really well and I can tell very quickly how a medication reacts with me. I decided to take a risk and buy it online. There are two brands that I found: Solaray and Ultra Glandulars (UG). I started with the Solaray and it did help. I went to re-order and they were out. I saw the UG in the "People who bought this also bought" section. I decided to try the UG because it was 100% pure. The Solarary contains iodine and a few other vitamins. Not bad but since I was taking iodine I didn't want to take it again. I have stayed with the UG since. It's also in pill form so it's easy to take 1/2 a pill. The Solaray is in capsules. Be careful if you order UG. They have a raw thyroid and a thymus product that look very similar. I purchased from Amazon and Vitacost. One bottle of 90 capsules is about $23. I take 1/2 pill four times a day. So one bottle lasts me a 45 days.

Dr. Starr says it is very important to take iodine for a month prior to taking thyroid. He says that when you're low on thyroid your body tries to compensate. Apparently the adrenal glands go into overdrive. He says that you can have adrenal burnout or something and that you can have permanent damage to your adrenals if you don't give them a chance to recover. He says that it's important to get checked out first because there's a condition called Hashimoto's disease that can be made worse by taking iodine and/or thyroid. Listen to the radio interview. He covers most of the same ground as in his book. His book takes about the history of the research by another man Dr. Broda Barnes.

I think I can confirm the adrenal glands trying to compensate. I used to have a lot of nervous energy and I was always eating lots of sugar. I would crash a lot too. After being on thyroid for a while I don't have sugar cravings like I used to. I don't have to eat all the time. I have more energy but it's not a nervous energy. I'm not as anxious as I used to be.

I give a brief summary (1 minute) of my story to each class I teach every term. One lady approached me after class and I gave her the full download. She tried taking the thyroid without first taking the iodine. She said she felt like she was going to jump out of her skin. She did take the iodine. She told her mom who I think was on Synthroid. Her mom started taking iodine and switched to the real stuff. A few weeks later my student came back and told me her mom felt the best she had ever felt. My student was also feeling better taking the iodine. But that's not the end. After a month or two my student tried the thyroid again and she said it was like magic. She started to tear up and told me how all her life she had struggled with low energy. She feels so much better. She and her mom are so thankful they found out about thyroid and she gives the credit to God for signing up for my class.

I am not a medical practitioner so always check with a doctor before starting/stopping any treatment.
 
Messages
7
Welcome! It sounds like you've had a rotten time of it, and I really am glad that you've managed to get this illness so well under control.

Sympathy on the gallstones, I've got them myself and an attack of biliary colic is no joke. Were they diagnosed by a doctor, and what did the ultrasound show? I wouldn't advise anyone to follow the "liver flush" routine, however. Unfortunately it's been well proven to be a scam, a rather clever one since the body will saponify the olive oil and produce little pellets which people mistake for gallstones, plus they get an endorphin high from the diarrhoea. This has been found through before-and-after ultrasounds, through doctors analysing the "stones" brought to them by patients after a flush, and through the simple facts that people always seem to be reporting far more "stones" than the gall bladder can actually hold, as well as "stones" far too big to pass through the 3mm wide bile duct. There's quite a good analysis of the whole thing by a surgeon which you can find if you google "liver flush" + "scam".

I've read that some people think the liver flush is a scam. I can report that before I did the flushes I was in a lot of pain and each time I did a flush the pain lessened. I know this is gross but I examined the stones that came out (with gloves on). I don't believe that the oil saponified but I have read that people think that's what happened. From what I understand the stones can be in the liver too. My experience felt like the first flush got out everything that was in the front. When that moved out the stuff in the middle and back came forward. The stones had a huge range of color and texture. In my last flush I hardly had any stones compared to my first and second flush. It appeared to me the same amount of oil came out every time. Again, this was my experience. Your mileage may vary.

I'm pretty sure that if I had not been in pain for as long as I was that I would not have tried it. The fasting is challenging especially when I was so tired to begin with. And the epsom salts are absolutely vile. In fact, I can't use epsom salts anymore. I switched to organic apple juice.
 

Calathea

Senior Member
Messages
1,261
Thanks for going into detail about the thyroid. Any idea about the temperature thing? I'm rather wary of following advice given by any doctor who talks about basal temperature so inaccurately, to be honest. For starters, axillary temps (not a reliable place to temp anyway - standard recommendation is to try oral temping first, and switch to vaginal or anal temping if oral temping is giving wildly fluctuating results) are about 1 degree F lower than oral temps, so that while 97.6 is a good general cut-off point for oral temps as a predictor for low thyroid, it's not so good for axillary temps, it'll give you false positives.

And digital thermometers are absolutely reliable enough! Trust me, I've been temping for years and you can tell when a thermometer is wonky, as your temps suddenly start going crazy or staying on the same number repeatedly. You just need to make sure you've bought a basal thermometer rather than a standard fever thermometer. Ear thermometers and forehead thermometers are the ones which are dicey, but they're generally used to give a quick reading to indicate fever rather than the finer accuracy needed for basal temping, and they're handy for use with children. When I had my first gallstone attack in the middle of the night and we had a doctor come out to visit, he stuck a thermometer in my ear and somehow managed to decide that my temperature was normal, despite the fact that I was under every blanket in the place with my teeth chattering, and we'd taken my temperature (on my trusty basal thermometer) five minutes earlier and got 34.5C/94.1F i.e. hypothermia. Of course, it's entirely possible that he didn't even glance at it, considering that he also failed to palpate my abdomen. Some doctors stop paying attention the moment they realise the patient has ME, sadly.

Going back to taking basal temps, it's so common for them to jump around during menstruation that many women who temp for Fertility Awareness Method charting simply skip taking their temps during their period in order not to end up with peculiar numbers, and this is frequently advised by classes or books on FAM. Temps always rise straight after ovulation, but when they come back down for menstruation varies: with some women they drop before the period starts, and with others the drop won't happen until a few days into the period or even well after it. (Oddly, mine have changed over the years from dropping before my period to dropping during it, and similarly my menstrual migraines have changed from being before my period to during it.) And then there are various important things about basal temping, such as taking the temperature at the same time each day, before getting out of bed, having anything to eat or drink, or even talking.

Random tidbit about mono/glandular fever: apparently almost everyone has the marker for it in their bloodstream, as it stays active even after you've stopped being ill from it, and as a result it's wildly over-diagnosed. I was unhelpfully told that I had a "glandular-fever type virus" when I was 15, and we still have no idea what it actually was.

What do you teach?
 

Charles555nc

Senior Member
Messages
572
I have done at least 14 "liver/gallbladder" flushes, before I got sick, and I can tell you they arent a scam. The stones are usually neon green and like stiff play dough. I lost some weight after flushing and on my 6th flush I actually threw up old bile into a trash can.

Everyone should be required to do them imo. But also take some time between flushes.
 

Calathea

Senior Member
Messages
1,261
Good page on how liver flushes work.

Nice analysis by a surgeon (bit on the sarky side, but medically sound).

Another blog post by a surgeon on the topic.

If anyone is getting the excruciating pain in the upper right abdomen typical of a gallsone attack, then please see a doctor immediately. It's not something you want to mess around with.