Hi All,
After I did an intense anti-parasite protocol this spring, my health collapsed. I had terrible brain fog, fatigue and IBS-D along with the fevers, chills and sweats. In the first time of 18+ years with CFS, I was housebound, alone and nearly helpless.
But now I think I know what went wrong. When parasites die off, especially intestinal ones, they release a lot of toxins and through off the gut environment and flora balance. They get the toxins from our diet, our metabolities, and the metabolites of pathogens hidden inside of them. The also produce large quantities of ammonia, and may themselves be toxic inside.
Since I had a severe infestation, I think the parasites (small roundworms that looked like Trichuria) stored a lot of mercury from my fillings going back 20 or 30 years. That mercury would have been methylated by the bacteria, making it even more dangerous. So that's probably why I got the temperature instability: from mercury poisoning as the mercury got re-released into my gut. And that's probably also why the Mercuris solubilis 200C was so amazingly effective for my fevers.
But besides that, I think I just figured out a whole different piece. My lower abdomen, especially along the bottom colon, has always been cold, and more so whenever I get an attack of IBS-D. Well, anaerobic bacteria flourish when the aerobic bacteria count goes down and they ferment at lower temperatures than anaerobic bacteria. Bifidobacteria counts are low in people with ME/CFS, as well as Lactobacteria which support the growth of the Bifido. And when you don't have enough strains of Bifido and Lacto, you can't absorb many of the same nutrients that PWME are known to lack. Just have a look at your fingernails - do you see ridges? These can be a sign of malabsorption.
[Note that these include the B vitamins that are required for methylation. Doing Rich Van K's simplified methylation protocol made a huge difference for me from the very first day I took a quarter dose of the NHF multivitamin with TMG. I had so much energy I had to radically cut back my cortisol, thyroid and aldosterone prescriptions in order to sleep.]
I think it makes sense to take high-dose Bifido and Lactobacteria to replace what is lost as long as you avoid the D-Lactate producing strains (see the last link below). And by high dose, I don't mean the usual 1, 5 or even 50 billion cfu doses, but 100 to 800 billion cfus per day. These are available from
www.customprobiotics.com. The owner's name is Harry and he's a chemist who knows gut cultures and developed his products to help people with gut problems after healing himself of them. Look for his D-Lactate Free product, or ask for a custom 9-strain mix that is D-Lactate free.
I'll post again after I try this myself, but from what I've been reading, I think this should heal up gut issues, food sensitivities, anxiety and brain fog. And I've noticed that when my gut is happy, my energy is better, too.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC252320/?tool=pmcentrez - Bifido metabolism of specific sugars
http://www.cfids-cab.org/cfs-inform/Hypotheses/logan.etal03.pdf - lacto and bifido and CFS
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964729/?tool=pmcentrez - survey, includes ref below
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19567398 - Dr. Kenny D. Meirleir coauthored this one
Love, Mimi