Artesunate now
Hi, R1234; sorry, I have been neglecting this thread for a while, but I will try to answer your questions. My condition when I started artemisinin was not too good--I had been put on a heavy dose of Cozaar by a cardio, who tried to control my periodic very high blood pressure spikes that way, and after some months I really went down hill. Never bedridden, but I quit driving, could not walk more than about 8-10 mins, felt pretty lousy, and found it hard to do any serious reading or thinking (I am a retired prof, so this hits me hard). I used artemisinin at first because it was available in Canada; I was responding to news from Cheney, and was particularly interested in his notes on how it was helping his patients with diastolic dysfunction, since that was part of my syndrome.
Then I discovered his source for Artesunate, and risked ordering it from the US--it came through safely. I seemed to be improving slowly but noticeably the first few months, following his 3 times a week schedule, until about Jan of this year, when I had a crash--nasty gut sensations, and vicious BP spikes and pain, and feeling of more than usual instability walking and distance more limited than before--went to Emergency a couple of times, but of course they found nothing, though were sympathetic, and did confirm the very high BP readings. But ECG showed nothing, and there was clearly no heart attack. I had an echo, which showed more or less normal functioning, though the diameter of my left ventricle had diminished since the last echo; the E/A ratio, one sign of diastolic function, was slightly improved over the previous echo.
So overall I think Artesunate did improve my status, though not in a major way; but I felt better and was able to be more active --until the crash. I looked again at the research on side effects, and figured that maybe it had killed enough good bugs in my gut to allow the bad ones to thrive, and that maybe there had been some cumulative damage to the brain stem that caused the increase in instability in walking and other symptoms that I interpreted as autonomic nervous or CNS symptoms, some of which seemed to correlate with some of the symptoms that had been recorded for long term or intensive use of Artesunate in animals; most of the human experience has been short term.
So I decided to quit at least for the time being. In its place I have been trying Stem-Kine and AOR's Immune Support, with the aim of both general cleaning up and repair and immune modulation--I assumed that Immune Support would have some of the same effects on NK functionality as AHCC, since the basic ingredients seemed so similar ( the same stuff is also in Stem-Kine). I have now got some AHCC, and am trying that. I would say that after 10 weeks or so on this new regime I am back to more or less where I was at my best on Artesunate, though I am now having a minor crash--the result of feeling well enough to do too much --you know how it goes. I did experience noticeably more stability in walking--better than for a longish time. This last mini crash--almost over in two days--suggests to me that maybe slightly increased exercise (my morning walk got up to a pretty fast 16 mins or so) and general activity reactivated my viruses (whatever they may be--have not had any testing!), and so I took a couple of Artesunate capsules again. I am really unsure whether this is wise or not--the stuff has proven antiviral activity, but I do not know if taking it from time to time will merely help the things to adapt, or will keep them in check a bit. I wish I knew more!
I can say that there was no evidence in Jan-Feb of any liver damage--my enzymes were tested when I went to Emerg, and it is liver damage that Cheney appears to fear, though he has also said somewhere that at his earlier dose of 2 x 50 mg per week no monitoring was probably necessary.
At the moment I am following his advice on using alkaline water as one way to reset the redox point, part of what he think Artesunate is doing, and I am using the SK and mushroom extracts as immune modulators, hoping that they will raise my NK and general immune function enough to begin to deal with viruses. I think I will keep following that routine and give it some more time--and try to slow my desire to do as much as I can as I begin to feel better and capable of more activity. But apart from this most recent crash the last weeks have been fairly good ones- I am still very limited, but have been able to do enough to mostly enjoy life in a modest way.
One last word. As I mentioned before, I was taking a bit of olive leaf as well as the Artesunate before my Jan-Feb crash, and I just don't know how much if any this contributed to what happened. I may try Artesunate again on a regular basis, perhaps 2 a week, if anyone else reports good results. Along with the SK and AHHC / Immune Support stuff.
I am sorry that this gets a bit long winded, and remains unsure and tentative--I just don't know exactly what did what to cause the changes in my symptoms. But I am a bit wary of using Artesunate long term as a result of my experience, though I also think it does have some pretty powerful action against viruses and other bugs. Feel free to PM if you wish, though I am not sure I can really tell you much more. Best, Chris
