Mary
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It seems too good to be true but after 16 -1/2 years of faithful crashing, I seem to have stopped crashing as of a few weeks ago. My stamina has increased. I don’t know what my limits are now, whether or not I will still crash if I do enough, as I’ve been fighting a sinus infection now for almost 5 weeks so that is limiting my activities - exertion seems to cause me to relapse with the infection, but I’m not crashing like I did before. So I’m able to do more than my prior limit of 3-1/2 hours of very light activity a day. I’m walking faster, basically don’t have to count my steps when I go to the store, just have more energy in general, but then the sinus infection will flare up often in the afternoon and I have to rest, just as before. But then I will get some energy back after resting, which never used to happen and instead would be on a downward spiral into a full-blown crash.
I think branched chain amino acids and l-glutamine are primarily responsible for this. Here are some links about this:
http://www.ncf-net.org/forum/Fword.htm
http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=41341
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/2/544S.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11310928
http://www.sportsci.org/jour/9901/rbk.html
I’m working on boosting my immune system with AHCC, inosine, Echinacea and vitamin C. The inosine has boosted my energy. Dr. Chia told me to take it after equilibrant did nothing for me. When I first tried inosine maybe a year ago, it did nothing for me, but I retried about 2 weeks ago and was very pleasantly surprised by the energy boost.
However, I’ve just had a bout of diarrhea and subsequent fatigue and feeling sick after about a week of taking two 500 mg caps of AHCC a day, so am cutting that out for a few days and maybe will restart with one cap a day.
I think the BCCAs and glutamine may be very important for at least a subset of people with CFS (SEID). I first started the BCAAs (which had glutamine added) last November, and crashed a few days later, but my recovery from the crash was maybe 30% or 40% quicker than usual - I had never recovered that quickly before, so I’ve taken them ever since and also take l-glutamine. And it seems to have been a gradual but definite road to improvement ever since.
Very very briefly, other things I’ve done (and some of which I still do) which I think were very important are:
Drenatrophin PMG for very weak adrenals (initially had to take a high dose - about 4 x the amount on the bottle, I don’t think a smaller dose would have helped at the time)
Pantothenic acid for adrenals
Armour thyroid or equivalent
Methylcobalamin and methylfolate
Potassium - 1000 mg. a day
B6 - P-5-P - 125 mg. a day in divided doses
I take a ton of other supplements too, including magnesium of course, but the above ones seem to have made the most difference for me.
I did a major liver detox in 2003 - one glass of wine would make sick for an entire day, 2 glasses would make me sick for 2-3 days. My chiropractor who does muscle testing helped me with the detox, it seemed I had a build-up of toxins from a job I’d had when I was 19 and had heavy exposure to chemical solvents. After the detox my alcohol intolerance disappeared and my digestion in general improved by a huge amount. I also have taken milk thistle ever since to support my liver.
The chiropractor also gave me AF Betafood for my gallbladder when it was inflamed (magic stuff! Really really good for the gallbladder), and I eventually learned I had to take HCL with meals and this helped my liver and gallbladder too. My liver and gallbladder problems seemed related and both resolved around the same time.
I eat almost no wheat or dairy or sugar, haven’t for many years. My diet has been very good for a very long time, but it wasn’t enough.
So I’m hoping I can get my immune system functioning better, am just very curious to see exactly what my limits would be if I weren’t sick so much. Also, I know I am extremely deconditioned from all these years of inactivity and am aware it will take time to strengthen my muscles and build up stamina.
One more thing - I used to have a terrible time with detoxing (even after the liver detox). I believe it was from mercury (I had around 8 or 9 mercury fillings removed in the late 1990's). Anyways, up until just recently several things would cause often severe detox symptoms (spaciness, fatigue, trouble concentrating, appetite off), including glutamine, insositol, and glycine, all of which are involved in phase II liver detoxification. Also chlorella, far infrared sauna, foot detox bath, apple cider vinegar, cayenne, I’ve lost track of everything that made me detox, but it didn’t take much and my detox symptoms were very strong. And now the detoxing has stopped. I’m tolerating those amino acids now.
I recently had the Quicksilver mercury tri test done and it said my detox systems are working great - but I know they weren’t until relatively recently and I don’t know if the BCAAs affected that as well. I did do Andy Cutler’s protocol for several months a couple of years ago but it got too hard to do. Perhaps the BCAAs, in addition to helping shift my metabolic pathway to the Krebs cycle (which I am assuming is what has happened), are also helping to shift my immune system away from Th2 dominance which may help with detoxing, I’m not sure. I thought I read this recently but can’t find it.
This is not as brief as I meant to make it, but it’s been a very long, complicated journey and I know I’m leaving out things.
So I don’t know if the BCAAs and glutamine would have been as beneficial if I hadn’t addressed my weak adrenals, thyroid, toxic liver, poor digestion and taken all the other stuff above. No way to tell actually. I do know I would have been much worse off without my chiro who sorted out several digestion issues (there were even more than I listed) and helped my adrenals.
I think branched chain amino acids and l-glutamine are primarily responsible for this. Here are some links about this:
http://www.ncf-net.org/forum/Fword.htm
http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=41341
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/2/544S.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11310928
http://www.sportsci.org/jour/9901/rbk.html
I’m working on boosting my immune system with AHCC, inosine, Echinacea and vitamin C. The inosine has boosted my energy. Dr. Chia told me to take it after equilibrant did nothing for me. When I first tried inosine maybe a year ago, it did nothing for me, but I retried about 2 weeks ago and was very pleasantly surprised by the energy boost.
However, I’ve just had a bout of diarrhea and subsequent fatigue and feeling sick after about a week of taking two 500 mg caps of AHCC a day, so am cutting that out for a few days and maybe will restart with one cap a day.
I think the BCCAs and glutamine may be very important for at least a subset of people with CFS (SEID). I first started the BCAAs (which had glutamine added) last November, and crashed a few days later, but my recovery from the crash was maybe 30% or 40% quicker than usual - I had never recovered that quickly before, so I’ve taken them ever since and also take l-glutamine. And it seems to have been a gradual but definite road to improvement ever since.
Very very briefly, other things I’ve done (and some of which I still do) which I think were very important are:
Drenatrophin PMG for very weak adrenals (initially had to take a high dose - about 4 x the amount on the bottle, I don’t think a smaller dose would have helped at the time)
Pantothenic acid for adrenals
Armour thyroid or equivalent
Methylcobalamin and methylfolate
Potassium - 1000 mg. a day
B6 - P-5-P - 125 mg. a day in divided doses
I take a ton of other supplements too, including magnesium of course, but the above ones seem to have made the most difference for me.
I did a major liver detox in 2003 - one glass of wine would make sick for an entire day, 2 glasses would make me sick for 2-3 days. My chiropractor who does muscle testing helped me with the detox, it seemed I had a build-up of toxins from a job I’d had when I was 19 and had heavy exposure to chemical solvents. After the detox my alcohol intolerance disappeared and my digestion in general improved by a huge amount. I also have taken milk thistle ever since to support my liver.
The chiropractor also gave me AF Betafood for my gallbladder when it was inflamed (magic stuff! Really really good for the gallbladder), and I eventually learned I had to take HCL with meals and this helped my liver and gallbladder too. My liver and gallbladder problems seemed related and both resolved around the same time.
I eat almost no wheat or dairy or sugar, haven’t for many years. My diet has been very good for a very long time, but it wasn’t enough.
So I’m hoping I can get my immune system functioning better, am just very curious to see exactly what my limits would be if I weren’t sick so much. Also, I know I am extremely deconditioned from all these years of inactivity and am aware it will take time to strengthen my muscles and build up stamina.
One more thing - I used to have a terrible time with detoxing (even after the liver detox). I believe it was from mercury (I had around 8 or 9 mercury fillings removed in the late 1990's). Anyways, up until just recently several things would cause often severe detox symptoms (spaciness, fatigue, trouble concentrating, appetite off), including glutamine, insositol, and glycine, all of which are involved in phase II liver detoxification. Also chlorella, far infrared sauna, foot detox bath, apple cider vinegar, cayenne, I’ve lost track of everything that made me detox, but it didn’t take much and my detox symptoms were very strong. And now the detoxing has stopped. I’m tolerating those amino acids now.
I recently had the Quicksilver mercury tri test done and it said my detox systems are working great - but I know they weren’t until relatively recently and I don’t know if the BCAAs affected that as well. I did do Andy Cutler’s protocol for several months a couple of years ago but it got too hard to do. Perhaps the BCAAs, in addition to helping shift my metabolic pathway to the Krebs cycle (which I am assuming is what has happened), are also helping to shift my immune system away from Th2 dominance which may help with detoxing, I’m not sure. I thought I read this recently but can’t find it.
This is not as brief as I meant to make it, but it’s been a very long, complicated journey and I know I’m leaving out things.
So I don’t know if the BCAAs and glutamine would have been as beneficial if I hadn’t addressed my weak adrenals, thyroid, toxic liver, poor digestion and taken all the other stuff above. No way to tell actually. I do know I would have been much worse off without my chiro who sorted out several digestion issues (there were even more than I listed) and helped my adrenals.