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food poisoning/botulism?

xrayspex

Senior Member
Messages
1,111
Location
u.s.a.
Hi--a week ago I had an acute episode of vomiting, vertigo, ptosis, dizziness, left arm and shoulder pain and spasm etc I had seen my doctor the week before for some ongoing mild dizziness and nausea but it was nothing severe compared to the acute episode. When I called them the day I was sick they gave me a referral to ENT for vertigo assuming it was that. They werent listening to all of the symptoms I don't think in the acute episode.

It dawned on me since that I had a friend's home canned pickled beets the day before I got sick and I was reading that they are high risk for botulism. That seems to make more sense for setting off the acute episode than just vertigo in general. Since then I have been getting better with no more acute stuff but still some mild dizziness and nausea that comes and goes and is worse than before and also my left eyelid is still droopier (ptosis) and left shoulder still spazzy. I do have history of neck problems and at first last week when arm pain- which isnt usual for me- I thought maybe spinal problems were progressing but that has calmed down (arm).

I have had increasing pain in liver area before and since that day and my doctor did refer me also to have ultrasound to check liver --I had ultrasound 10 yrs ago showed non-alchie fatty liver and I have scar there with g.b. out years ago.

My question to you all is have any of you experience with botulism? I have had suspected food poisoning a couple times in life but didnt know you could have ongoing problems after it--I was never to point where they thought it was life threatening when had food poisoning, had to go to ER for that once but they werent sure what was going on and just gave me iv saline and antihistamines and antinausea, I dont think they did any tests for botulism.

If you have experience with food poisoning is there anything a week or 10 days out that the medical system could still do for someone? anything I should do besides my usual self care techniques I have figured out work over the years? I just want to minimize long term worsening from the episode of my immune system etc

thanks for any thoughts shared..........
 
Last edited:

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
while I think it's not at all impossible we could have bad reactions, because our immune systems partially set to "maximum overdrive" to something because of some bad intiail trigger and then any other lesser trigger flares it up
be it excess heat/cold, chemical vapours, medicines, infections, or INCREDIBLY small amounts of infectious agents in food that's gone off

But, botulism is an anaerobe and is killed by oxygen so in long preserved, tightly sealed things it can be an issue...
and frankly you'd be more likely to be in emergency ward or dead if it was botulism, that stuff is Mother Nature's hydrogen bomb in the poison stakes :/

botulism is the deadliest poison known to Humankind
only reason the military gave up idea of using it as a WMD was because it reacts extremely fast with water and so on release water vapour in the air would make most of it inert before it wiped out a city (though...nobody bet the "spooks" haven't been working on it as they almost certainly have been)

talking something that makes cyanide look like weak gnat's piss by comparison :p

Mouse LD50 g/kg (lethal dose in grams per kilogram of body weight in 50% of cases, baseline for estimating lethality of a poison)

Cyanide = 0.006
Nicotine = 0.006 (ingested, but MUCH worse when injected, yes it IS that deadly)
Strychnine = 0.001
Ricin = 0.00002 (injected) but 0.02 if eaten
Sarin nerve gas = 0.00002
VX nerve gas = 0.000002
Polonium = 0.00000001
Botulinum = 0.000000001

So say you take a big fat bloke like me :p around 100 kilos, so that's 0.0000001 of a gram to have a 50/50 chance of killing me, or 1/10 millionth of a gram
medicines are usually measured in milligrams, thousands of a gram for comparison

hence it doesn't take many bacteria at all to produce enough toxin to kill a Human, usually the amount of actual bugs are very tiny in such tragedies :/
thus it's NEVER a good idea to eat old, sealed food of certain types like pickles, you are unsure of
"Use by dates" and truly SAFE TO USE dates can vary very greatly, actually most things are packaged to err on side of caution by a very good margin to avoid harming customers and lawsuits, and way most food is *commercially* preserved nowadays does make such worries WAY less as they use microwave, x-rays and various other things to kill bugs
but eating 10 year old picked beetroot...not a good idea! :p

botulism poisoning is hell on wheels deadly
most food poisoning is with other things, because usually, botulism is *fatal*, unsurprisingly
you are vastly more likely to get a stomach bug form germs from people's hands, surfaces etc contaminating food than properly preserved food itself
not a question of folk being "dirty" etc usually nowadays, it's just fact bugs are EVERYWHERE, floating through the air etc, thus always a small risk

hope that helps :)
 

xrayspex

Senior Member
Messages
1,111
Location
u.s.a.
ha oops, thanks Silverblade
ok, scratch botulism then, I clearly didn't google enough, but perhaps some other milder food poisoning occurred the other week
I have come to conclusion that certain episodes, flares, what have you, are confluence of factors, ie some bad bacteria in food, combine with immune system irregularity, throw in some low b/p and cervical spine irritation and wah lah, something dramatic happens like vertigo and lose yer cookies for a day etc
trying to encapsulate those things under one thesis doesn't work I don't think


but hey back to issue at hand, possible mild food poisoning, is there anything one should do post-episode besides hydrate? just wondering if it could worsen m.e. or autoimmune stuff etc for long time and one wouldnt know the difference why

while I think it's not at all impossible we could have bad reactions, because our immune systems partially set to "maximum overdrive" to something because of some bad intiail trigger and then any other lesser trigger flares it up
be it excess heat/cold, chemical vapours, medicines, infections, or INCREDIBLY small amounts of infectious agents in food that's gone off

But, botulism is an anaerobe and is killed by oxygen so in long preserved, tightly sealed things it can be an issue...
and frankly you'd be more likely to be in emergency ward or dead if it was botulism, that stuff is Mother Nature's hydrogen bomb in the poison stakes :/

botulism is the deadliest poison known to Humankind
only reason the military gave up idea of using it as a WMD was because it reacts extremely fast with water and so on release water vapour in the air would make most of it inert before it wiped out a city (though...nobody bet the "spooks" haven't been working on it as they almost certainly have been)

talking something that makes cyanide look like weak gnat's piss by comparison :p

Mouse LD50 g/kg (lethal dose in grams per kilogram of body weight in 50% of cases, baseline for estimating lethality of a poison)

Cyanide = 0.006
Nicotine = 0.006 (ingested, but MUCH worse when injected, yes it IS that deadly)
Strychnine = 0.001
Ricin = 0.00002 (injected) but 0.02 if eaten
Sarin nerve gas = 0.00002
VX nerve gas = 0.000002
Polonium = 0.00000001
Botulinum = 0.000000001

So say you take a big fat bloke like me :p around 100 kilos, so that's 0.0000001 of a gram to have a 50/50 chance of killing me, or 1/10 millionth of a gram
medicines are usually measured in milligrams, thousands of a gram for comparison

hence it doesn't take many bacteria at all to produce enough toxin to kill a Human, usually the amount of actual bugs are very tiny in such tragedies :/
thus it's NEVER a good idea to eat old, sealed food of certain types like pickles, you are unsure of
"Use by dates" and truly SAFE TO USE dates can vary very greatly, actually most things are packaged to err on side of caution by a very good margin to avoid harming customers and lawsuits, and way most food is *commercially* preserved nowadays does make such worries WAY less as they use microwave, x-rays and various other things to kill bugs
but eating 10 year old picked beetroot...not a good idea! :p

botulism poisoning is hell on wheels deadly
most food poisoning is with other things, because usually, botulism is *fatal*, unsurprisingly
you are vastly more likely to get a stomach bug form germs from people's hands, surfaces etc contaminating food than properly preserved food itself
not a question of folk being "dirty" etc usually nowadays, it's just fact bugs are EVERYWHERE, floating through the air etc, thus always a small risk

hope that helps :)
 

IreneF

Senior Member
Messages
1,552
Location
San Francisco
ha oops, thanks Silverblade
ok, scratch botulism then, I clearly didn't google enough, but perhaps some other milder food poisoning occurred the other week
I have come to conclusion that certain episodes, flares, what have you, are confluence of factors, ie some bad bacteria in food, combine with immune system irregularity, throw in some low b/p and cervical spine irritation and wah lah, something dramatic happens like vertigo and lose yer cookies for a day etc
trying to encapsulate those things under one thesis doesn't work I don't think


but hey back to issue at hand, possible mild food poisoning, is there anything one should do post-episode besides hydrate? just wondering if it could worsen m.e. or autoimmune stuff etc for long time and one wouldnt know the difference why
Eaten seafood lately? Lots of interesting poisons there.
 

xrayspex

Senior Member
Messages
1,111
Location
u.s.a.
Eaten seafood lately? Lots of interesting poisons there.

oh good point, as the Pixies say, where is my mind---I forgot, my first suspect was some sushi that I had eaten as well the day before---it was pre-made and it was vegetable but I had wondered if they had cross contaminated it with the raw fish sushi because it tasted fishier and not quite right compared to usual...........! But I ate it anyway because I was hungry :)