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Lactic Acid Pain

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
Ugh, thought I´d got rid of it...I haven´t had any for a while, but suddenly it´s all come back. Most (if not all) my symptoms worsen when I stray from the FODMAP diet, and I did have a bad diet day a couple of days ago, but I wasn´t expecting a full ´lactic acid attack´. By this I don´t mean that I just have that heavy feeling in my limbs, as I always have that to varying degrees, but that I have the heavy feeling along with what feels like pinpricks in the muscles. I asked my doc and he said these are due to lactic acid (although apparently it´s actually the hydrogen ion that is released when lactic acid is produced that is to blame, but it sounds even crazier to blame hydrogen for all my problems!). This makes sense to me as I notice that these pinpricks increase in a particular muscle if I use it a lot.

Anyway, has anyone worked out a.) what exactly brings these ´attacks´ on, and b.) how to make them go away again?
 

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
Hmm, I think it´s definitely linked to the gut (TMI?). The odd thing is that I didn´t eat any ´trigger foods´ this time - the only thing I can think of is that I ate too many carbs in one sitting.
 

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
Maybe. The odd thing is, I can actually handle quite a lot of carbs without getting this symptom (and without that much heavy-leggedness either). Rice makes up most of my diet.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
If the problem is acid some patients use sodium bicarbonate, but I am not sure this is always desirable.

It may or may not be due to lactic acid. Its clear that we have a huge buildup of lactate in muscle even from minimal activity, compared to most people. However I am not sure this causes issues, I think it solves them. Lactate promotes oxygen dumping, at least in time frames of only hours. Its a response to problems and associated with them, but its usually not a cause.

The exception is lactic acidosis which is life threatening, and very rare in our community (I have never heard of even one case). You would know if you had that, as either you went to a hospital and survived or you ... well, we would not be reading this.

Lactic acid is a response to underlying problems, problems we are still trying to understand. Its clear that there is mitochondrial involvement, but what kind of involvement and whether or not its central is still unknown.

Asking people about what treatments have helped for those symptoms might be more fruitful. As a community we have tried a huge range of things for a huge range of symptoms. Sometimes you can get ideas about what you might try from that, but there are no guarantees.

The issue of what is happening in the gut in ME or CFS is severely under-researched. Much of it is speculative. We know something is happening, but we still don't understand it. If the several microbiome studies underway are completed we might know a bit more.
 

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
Wouldn´t a ´huge buildup of lactic acid´ be expected to cause some pain? Anyway, I´m not saying it´s 100% certain that it´s lactic acid that´s causing it, just that it´s the most likely candidate.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Wouldn´t a ´huge buildup of lactic acid´ be expected to cause some pain? Anyway, I´m not saying it´s 100% certain that it´s lactic acid that´s causing it, just that it´s the most likely candidate.
Conventional explanations say no. Its not clear that is correct in CFS. Typically, at least in exercising muscle, that huge buildup of lactic acid is totally dwarfed by a buildup of carbonic acid. What we do not know due to lack of research is if this is in any way connected with our problem.

I prefer to say we do not know what is the cause, and look for what has worked for other patients as a clue.
 

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
Anyway, I´m not going to change the title of the post to Pain I Get in My Muscles When I Use Them Too Much, it´s too long-winded.
 

5150

Senior Member
Messages
360
Maybe. The odd thing is, I can actually handle quite a lot of carbs without getting this symptom (and without that much heavy-leggedness either). Rice makes up most of my diet.

I was just reading a few days ago about Rice having a lot of arsenic in it naturally. You can read about this just by searching "arsenic in rice". Who knows if this is your condition, but it is good info.

Hope you can get back to a better place.
 

Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
Wouldn´t a ´huge buildup of lactic acid´ be expected to cause some pain? Anyway, I´m not saying it´s 100% certain that it´s lactic acid that´s causing it, just that it´s the most likely candidate.
I used to cycle a lot, and I even raced bikes at one point, about 10 years ago. Lactic acid pain (when your muscles are screaming) to me is not a horrible pain, like when you burn your finger on the stove.

I also get what you'd describe as lactic acid pain. I get it much sooner as I am walking when I am sicker and it is predominantly in my quads more than anywhere else. I haven't found anything that helps, other than resting as much as I can and avoiding crashes.

A muscle biopsy from a few years back returned essentially normal except for slow twitch muscle that were atrophied.

i can't wait until we all get figured out.
 

roller

wiggle jiggle
Messages
775
may sound simple, i thought it has to do with oxygene supply.
perhaps, if someone is up for testing, you may try diamox (its for high altitude sickness)
 

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
I used to cycle a lot, and I even raced bikes at one point, about 10 years ago. Lactic acid pain (when your muscles are screaming) to me is not a horrible pain, like when you burn your finger on the stove.

I also get what you'd describe as lactic acid pain. I get it much sooner as I am walking when I am sicker and it is predominantly in my quads more than anywhere else. I haven't found anything that helps, other than resting as much as I can and avoiding crashes.

A muscle biopsy from a few years back returned essentially normal except for slow twitch muscle that were atrophied.

i can't wait until we all get figured out.

I know, but I could affect people with ME differently. Anyway, it´s starting to go again now that I´ve gone back to my usual diet.
 

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
I was just reading a few days ago about Rice having a lot of arsenic in it naturally. You can read about this just by searching "arsenic in rice". Who knows if this is your condition, but it is good info.

Hope you can get back to a better place.

Yes, I´ve read that, and that´s why I wash the rice in warm water. My condition (as in the thing that made me ill) has nothing to do with this, but it´s something to watch out for, especially because high levels of arsenic (in the water supply anyway) increases bacterial resistance to antibiotics exponentially.
 

msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
Thanks for the suggestion, but I was overreacting, at least for the moment. I wasn´t sure if it was a result of diet, but it seems to be, so I will just make sure I eat right.
 
Messages
38
Location
Germany
My muscles got sour pretty fast, after only a minute of brushing teeth or just hanging up the laundry… just for example. Potassium and benfotiamine together with riboflavin helped me to overcome this but it didn't address the right cause, so it came back after a few months.
Then I've found a vid which I want to share and which explains why the cell actually produces lactic acid. It has a purpose and is quite an intelligent mechanism because the cell sacrifices pyruvate to build lactic acid, because this reaction can regenerate NAD+ from NADH for the complex I. This is much more important for the cell than deliver pyruvate into the krebs-cycle and has to happen when there is a blockage in the respiratory chain and problems with regenerating NAD+ occur.



Personally for me this was a very very good hint because I was so copper deficient that Cytochrome-c-oxidase was not working well and the respiratory chain was blocked. So NAD+ had to be regenerated by the cell by turning pyruvate into lactic acid. But this can be different with each person.

Thanks to this forum and Interviews with Morley Robbins on youtube I got well by increasing ceruloplasmin (with retinol from cod liver oil) which transported more copper and iron into the respiratory chain and got cytochrome-c-oxidase to work again and less lactic acid production.

I sometimes just wonder how much of our conditions are caused by retinol-deficiency, since this is a pretty rare and unspoken nutrient. I have just this feeling that it is much more important and missing than we might know and maybe therefor many other protocols don't work in the longterm… maybe, I don't know.
 
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msf

Senior Member
Messages
3,650
Thanks so much for this! The videos actually made chemistry interesting!

I am really curious about the copper deficiency you talked about. I have tested borderline low for ceruloplasmin, so I wonder if taking cod liver oil would work for me? I remember that my father, who also had ME, used to take it - perhaps it was helping him in this manner?

Anyway, I´m going to go buy some tomorrow!

P.S. Could you please explain for the chemistry-ignorant why copper is important for cytochrome-c-oxidase? Does the ´c´ stand for copper, or is it not that simple?

Oh, and when you say you ´got well´ - how well?
 
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Messages
38
Location
Germany
Hi msf,
You're welcome! To be honest all I know about copper I got from this forum. I'm from germany and I used to do my research in german communities, but they consider copper to be only toxic since it is in amalgam and in the water pipe lines and very rarely to be deficient in. (Sorry if my english is wrong). But I had a RBC-test with minus 22% copper and I had already for years this lactic acid pain in my muscles and I sometimes passed out for no reason and there was a visible aging of my bone marrow during one mri-scan diagnosis and finally I had a neutropenia and anemia and loss of memory. I took half a year copper-citrate with minimal benefits and I tested ceruloplasmin which was at the lower border while I head still minus 11% copper in RBC-testing. So I assume a low ceruloplasmin can still be a severe copper deficiency. O I forgott to mention: I took boron too but it didn't helped with ceruloplasmin. Then after one more year of taking copper and boron my ceruloplasmin was still low and lactic acid in my muscels came back and I looked into this forum and somebody here in the 'copper deficiency' thread wrote about this guy Morley Robbins on youtube who thinks that many people have copper disregulation instead of copper deficiency or toxicity. But I want to make clear this is just one possibility for mitochondrial respiratory blockage. But since Cytochrome-c-oxidase is to important it all made sence to me and i gave up all my supporting B-Vitamins and things like Carnitine and Lipoic Acid which stabilized me in some way, and focused instead to adress my copper + ceruloplasmin + cytochrome-c-oxidase to get my mitochondria working better. as far as I know ceruloplasmin carries about 6 copper atoms/ions(?) which is much and cytochrome-c-ocidase can not funktion without copper. But I don't know what happens to this proteincomplex without copper? If it stays there just disfunctional or gets removed? So somebody here wrote that retinol can increase ceruloplasmin and cardiolipin which holds cytochrome-c-ox. bound to the membrane. I'm not sure about all of this, because I recently read this myself, but it makes pretty much sense to me.
I don't have cfs/me so by getting well I mean i had more energy, less fatigue and less joint pain and other stuff which is copper related. I had some time when i was inable to leave the bed but it was because of my copper deficiensy and very high nitric stess after a destabelized neckbone. So I had no infection and no cfs, just mitochondrial disfunction.
I hope this is understandable since my english is not so advanced.
 
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