• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of, and finding treatments for, complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

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Search results

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    "Scientists Offer a New Explanation for Long Covid"

    The News A team of scientists is proposing a new explanation for some cases of long Covid, based on their findings that serotonin levels were lower in people with the complex condition. In their study, published on Monday in the journal Cell, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania...
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    "Scientists Offer a New Explanation for Long Covid"

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/health/long-covid-serotonin.html
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    From the NIH -- severe COVID & long-term immune changes

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/severe-covid-19-may-lead-long-term-innate-immune-system-changes
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    Gene Linked to Long Covid

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02269-2
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    Stanford Study Blows Up due to Unmasking

    See if you can search online by the title...it was published by DAILY BEAST.
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    Stanford Study Blows Up due to Unmasking

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/stanford-medicine-long-covid-study-blows-up-because-of-unmasked-staff
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    Echinacea, ME and Allergies

    This one goes way back! https://www.jacionline.org/article/0091-6749(88)90933-5/pdf
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    Echinacea, ME and Allergies

    If the majority of ME sufferers have pre-morbid allergies, including seasonal inhalant allergies... ...and it is common for the seasonal inhalant allergies to disappear, sometimes for years, with the onset of ME... What's going on? Is that just an energy steal from other metabolic functions...
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    Seasonal allergies, MCAS

    Sure, my wife is my control group. She's never had allergies either. But a warming planet and stressed plantlife are dumping tons of tree and (right now in the NE U.S.) grass pollens into the air, and people are developing allergies for the first time, like my wife in her 40s. It goes to the...
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    Seasonal allergies, MCAS

    Has anyone followed this pattern...or can anyone tell me what my immune system is doing? I've had ragweed allergies every fall since I was a kid. Fast fwd 50 years to onset of ME after a viral trigger in 2013. That fall I noticed...allergies GONE! I've read that's not uncommon. After 6...
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    CNN 7/5/22 Dr. Al-Aly Washington U. + Veterans Admin. data -- Incipient ME?

    Serious stuff...suggests general populations at risk of developing incipient ME from repeat assaults to the immune from COVID variant reinfections this summer and fall. COVID WILL NOT be like the winter flu, contradicting public health messaging. I've wondered since 2020 how many repeat...
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    Anybody tried kefir?

    No discomfort for me initially, but then I did a couple years of coffee enemas before I tried Kefir and that brings systemic inflammation WAY down over time. A lifetime of yogurt probably helped, but yogurt is pretty benign and doesn't have the beneficial yeasts in live-culture kefir which...
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    Anybody tried kefir?

    Timing is everything! All the building blocks of my (80% ?) recovery were stumbling blocks when incorporated too soon or in the wrong order...
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    "The Secrets of COVID `Brain Fog' are Starting to LIft" WIRED Jul 1, 2022

    https://www.wired.com/story/the-secrets-of-covid-brain-fog-are-starting-to-lift/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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    What has helped you with sleep/insomnia - post links

    Fabulous quality.... https://groundgreentea.com/
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    What has helped you with sleep/insomnia - post links

    I get fabulous organic green tea DECAF sencha...I wouldn't dare try caffeine....funny, a year before the onset of CFS some years ago (triggered by a virus) I found myself drinking coffee for the first time in my life and amping up a sweet tooth...but I never would have guessed what was coming...
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    What has helped you with sleep/insomnia - post links

    I've always found "therapeutic doses" problematic, and food doses easily tolerated, with their synergists and cofactors. Ditto the discussion of Quercetin...Theanine is fantastic stuff, a precursor of serotonin, a methyl donor, with anti-histamine properties...but capsule doses start at 100mg...
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    What has helped you with sleep/insomnia - post links

    Yup, thanks, the only drug I take is Benadryl! ;)
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    What has helped you with sleep/insomnia - post links

    Certainly elevated histamines, but at least I stopped itching years ago by watching my diet during the onset years of CFS. Funny, but natural anti-histamines like C, Magnesium, Quercetin and Theanine clobbered my blood pressure at the large therapeutic doses in pills. BP I gather is already...
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    Minczuk et al / Mitochondria research reported in Guardian 6.26.22

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/26/can-our-mitochondria-help-to-beat-long-covid
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    What has helped you with sleep/insomnia - post links

    No side effects for me whatsoever. Benadryl is the ONLY thing that gets me back to sleep after waking to pee at 3 or 4am during my shallowing sleep cycle while histamines are elevated. To do this it must be taken before going to bed...it has no effect for me taken at 3am. BTW don't need it to...
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    Covid vaccine. Anyone not having it?

    You are a concerned and compassionate guy, Bill. Whatever you do, keep wearing a mask indoors...
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    Covid vaccine. Anyone not having it?

    Clearly, vaccines keep a lot more people from dying than they kill outright. But those of us with CFS know the choices are not so simple, and many human immune systems may not appreciate being experimented upon if there are alternatives.
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    Covid vaccine. Anyone not having it?

    You can still acquire and carry a substantial viral load even if you are vaccinated but not masked. The vaccine does not protect you from getting infected, it is only palliative. Effective? If it were effective they wouldn't be arguing over mandating boosters now. Safe? A safe vaccine...
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    Covid vaccine. Anyone not having it?

    STILL waiting for Novavax, the first conventional vaxx scheduled to become available. Pressure to comply here in the U.S. is peaking now, and I suspect will gave way to the confusion over: -- antibodies (which cannot be informatively tested) and waning protection -- CDC vs FDA vs Biden vs...
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    Covid vaccine. Anyone not having it?

    BEAT THE VIRUS!? That's what they said about India, last year several strains ago. This is quite possibly a gain of function virus that has been tweaked to survive and spread and spread. Here in the U.S. where the CDC pronounces "guidance" based on very small studies, some people are paying...
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    Covid vaccine. Anyone not having it?

    Uh huh...natural immunity (from infection) appears to last only 3 plus months...and vaccinated immunity about 6 plus months (differs from person to person) So it doesn't last long folks.
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    Anybody tried kefir?

    Histamines are definitely an issue...but I found there were fewer histamine producing bacteria in my Kefir than in Kimchee, for example, which makes me itchy in minutes. For those trying Kefir, the store bought powdered grains kind is pretty weak, and does not have the beneficial yeasts of the...
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    Covid vaccine. Anyone not having it?

    If one is in a safe bubble and not under imminent threat, isn't it better to wait until the fall for a newer vaccine that better matches new, more lethal mutations? My concern is not whether to take this one or not, but to take as few as possible over time, especially if annual or bi-annual...
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    High-Dose Selenium Significantly Improves My Fatigue and Brain Fog

    Selenium is definitely a co-factor for iodine supplementation. Why don't you take a low maintenance dose of both, say 200-250 mcg of each daily, and then give them time to balance out function while you work on other pieces of the puzzle? Sometimes, as is often said here, clearing one...