I have been to BS twice and saw Dr M. Have to say I wasn't impressed. It was at my suggestion that I be tested for viruses and CPn which they did do. She didn't ever suggest that Lyme might be good to test for. I went away with a ton of supplements for the mitochondria, all at very high doses and guess what I couldn't tolerate them and within a month or so I was back to my normal supplements to support the mito. The supplements from BS were very expensive but I only ever was only to take a few of them because of extreme reactions. The doses were way too high for me, I just don't need those sort of doses.
One year later I had another appointment with her and this time I had the cheaper Autonomic Testing done. This was well worth it for me because it really showed up a problem with the lack of oxygen in my cells and also too high CO2. I had gone for a very short swim that morning at the hotel where I was staying and didn't have any time to rest really so when I had the test I was feeling probably way worse than I would normally be. (I cannot really swim these days because it nearly kills me after. I used to swim 32 lengths, 3 times weekly up to 2000 when I crashed).
During the test I had less than 50% of the oxygen in my cells when they were stressed by me taking 6 deep breaths in one minute. It had taken ages for Dr Juli to get a proper reading to start off cos everything was so poor. Dr M was quite shocked by my results and said that this was very bad for me and that I should start breathing oxygen from a concentrator for 3 times daily up to an hour at a time. She said it would make a big difference to me and I am very grateful to her for this because she was right. I have hugely benefitted from having my own oxygen concentrator, (only from EBay), its been 3 years now and I don't need to use it for an hour at a time, only half an hour and some days I could miss the lunchtime session without any problems. I still find I crave it first thing in the morning after breakfast to get me going and also after my evening meal when I feel everything is used up. ( I am now doing between 7000-8500 steps daily and can definitely feel it from 6.30 pm every evening.)
Referring back to my appointment with Dr M when it came to why I might be so lacking in oxygen in my cells, Dr M said that my brainstem was irritable and when I asked why might that be she said it was probably I was allergic to many things and should undergo her famous desensitisation treatment.
I didn't believe her for a minute that this was the reason because as I am on daily steroids for adrenal insufficiency I don't tend to react to things apart from MSG and alcohol so I have not gone down that route and haven't been back. Of course last year after reading of so many people on PR testing positive for borrelia and co-infections I sent my blood off to Infectolab and it came back with strong positives for borrelia and its various subtypes plus a probable positive on Ehrlichia and this also fits in with my history of annual visits to the New Forest with my dogs over more than 25 years and often getting unexplained bites which would come up in massive lumps.
Since last August I have been going through a sort of modified Cowden protocol and have had good benefits in exercise tolerance and the only downside has been this past month when I came out with a severe throat infection which was caused by 6 weeks of unrelenting stress which was hard to avoid because I run the local Fibromyalgia support group and had some major problems with a couple of committee members who very obviously have mental health issues. I left it too long in getting antibiotics and then stupidly took the one my GP gave me which was Penicillin, forgetting that the bugs I have are resistant to it and I was getting worse. Thankfully I remembered I had got some Azithromycin from last year that I had ordered on-line and finally after 5 days of that I started to feel well again and unexpectedly the Azithromycin seems to have been excellent for me because I seem better than I was before getting the virus and then the throat infection.
Sorry that I have gone on a bit but I wanted to be fair about BS and I am extremely grateful to them for helping me over the lack of oxygen issue because I can lead a much better life just because of my oxygen concentrator. Maybe as I continue to strengthen my immune system with the Cowden herbs plus others, I will continue to need less of it.
On a final point, there is no question that BS is very expensive.
Pam