I think I have food poisoning, probably from Salmonella. (Don't order the hearts)

[Murph]

On the weekend my beloved suggested we go to a restaurant. A new and fairly ambitious one she'd had her eye on. I like restaurants, although navigating menus is often hard as I can't eat wheat or dairy. I like to choose a plain meat and veg dish.

Scanning the menu, I realise there were few meat and veg dishes on offer, and what they had was anything but plain. Duck hearts on sauerkraut. Hmm. Offal is supposed to be good for you right? I decided to be brave and order it.

The dish came out and was exactly as described. Perhaps eight little hearts , each one slightly larger than bite-size, on a pile of cabbage. It was a first for me and it tasted pretty good!

One thing I noticed was that the hearts were fairly pink in the middle. I tried not to worry. At a restaurant of this calibre, I assured myself, food quality standards were being met. I ate all the hearts, and sent text messages joking that I had consumed the hearts of my enemies and now had the strength of ten ducks.

That was Friday. Saturday passed without incident. Sunday started well. But by the end of the day I started to feel a bit odd.

Monday was a weird one. I was not hungry, and my morning coffee made me jittery, and then in the afternoon I experienced an acute and extremely rapid crash with fatigue and cramping.

Tuesday the gut symptoms began. Otherwise it was like Monday. A three-hour mid-arvo nap was necessary to keep me ticking and I completely lost control of my body temperature. I felt like I was freezing. I've probably never had a fever so intense. I took a lot of paracetamol.

I was struggling to figure out what was causing my symptoms. Was it a curry I ate on Sunday? A new supplement? Gut trouble and fatigue are hardly unprecedented reactions for me.

It was only on Tuesday night, which I spent mostly awake, shivering and transiting back and forth to the amenities, that I realised this was way beyond a regular PEM attack or gut problem. I needed an extraordinary explanation for this extraordinary set of symptoms. The duck hearts suddenly stood out.

The internet informs me that several days is a normal incubation period for Salmonella, that it casues fatigue cramping and diarrhea. I'm moderately confident this is what I have. I'm taking lots of liquids and panadol.

My one hope is that I fall into the group of people Ron Davis was recently discussing who recover entirely after a strong infection!

 

[Learner1]

I hope so too, and hope you feel better soon...

 

[RWP (Rest without Peace)]

@Murph

Sorry to hear about this. I've had something similar before.

RWP

 

[Judee]

I'm sorry to hear this. Hope you feel better soon and as you said the infection cures the ME/CFS.

I would seek medical treatment if you find things getting worse though.

 

[lafarfelue]

Oh no. I hope it's not salmonella. Please do get medical treatment if it sticks around for longer than a day or so without improving, or if it gets worse.

Hope you're feeling better from the food poisoning soon! And I hope you're not crashed out for too long afterwards either. Sending spoons!

 

[Murph]

Thanks everyone. Day three of symptoms is coming to a close and I've observed a fall in my heart rate on my fitbit HR tracker, which suggests to me that the worst may be past. Fingers crossed!

(According to the app, my 'resting HR' hit its highest level in over a year today. Which is another way I concluded this was a real infection of a severe kind)

 

[IThinkImTurningJapanese]

Here's the site to report this in Australia. They may be able to identify what you contracted.

Food Complaints

 

[boolybooly]

OK well I am not giving you medical advice but discussing perspectives. If you have food poisoning you may need to see a doctor (caveat).

What you say does ring a bell with me though because I have found duck meat is a difficult food even when well cooked due to what I understand to be fairly powerful stimulating "amines" in it which make it too stimulating for me i.e. it is too "rich". Duck is a nono for me.

From that perspective, after eating duck I would take the approach of supporting MAO activity and avoiding anything which can be a MAO inhibiter like onion or olive oil or nutmeg etc. I have found that B vits complex is the only thing which palpably helps with that, I use Kirkman "B-Complex with CoEnzymes Pro-Support - Hypoallergenic". FYI

 

[Wishful]

My ME initially looked like a type IV delayed food sensitivity. I had that for 2.5 years. Then I had some curry with coconut milk that had gone a bit yellow (I thought it was just a cheap Chinese brand) and had fairly immediate food poisoning. It flushed me out quite well, and that was the end of the type IV food sensitivity. It left me with the same baseline symptoms, but at least I didn't react to every meal. So, it is possible for food poisoning to remove at least some ME symptoms. Hope you get lucky with yours.

This response to food poisoning (and its drastic effect on the microbiome) is why I believe that the microbiome can have an effect on ME symptoms. The lack of other effects of diet, antibiotics and probiotics are why I don't believe it's a core cause of ME.

 

[Murph]

OK well I am not giving you medical advice but discussing perspectives. If you have food poisoning you may need to see a doctor (caveat).

What you say does ring a bell with me though because I have found duck meat is a difficult food even when well cooked due to what I understand to be fairly powerful stimulating "amines" in it which make it too stimulating for me i.e. it is too "rich". Duck is a nono for me.

From that perspective, after eating duck I would take the approach of supporting MAO activity and avoiding anything which can be a MAO inhibiter like onion or olive oil or nutmeg etc. I have found that B vits complex is the only thing which palpably helps with that, I use Kirkman "B-Complex with CoEnzymes Pro-Support - Hypoallergenic". FYI

I will see a doctor if it doesn't get better, but I think I'm past the worst now. Also, I've eaten duck many times. I have a lot of intolerances and this is very easy to distinguish from any reaction I ever get to any food.

I've also had food poisoning before, including being involved in an outbreak so bad that a government investigative team contacted me to ask whether I had been sick. (I had been! They got my number off the booking sheet at the restaurant.)

Hospitals must compulsorily report outbreaks to the government, so after a few people showed up at emergency departments, basically dying of food poisoning, the investigators sprang into action and were working to trace back the source. The investigator I spoke to was fairly tight-lipped but the suspicion fell on either a food supplier that supplied the place I went to, or to the restaurant itself.

What's weird is that this current food poisoning is giving me much worse symptoms than the one where I got caught up in the investigation.

 

[Wolfcub]

So sorry for your poor belly @Murph I hope very much you will feel much better soon.

(trying not to give medical advice and hope this is ok ?)

Have you tried the fasting with just water, then next day plain boiled rice thing -which we do for doggies when they get very bad bellies? If ever I got a terrible belly like that I took myrrh tincture in water and it knocked out those bad guys. And ginger root.
But that might not be suitable for you....

Doctor I suppose, if things don't start to get better for you, and I hope they do

If what I said above is against the rules, I am sorry, and understand if my post is deleted.

I very much like your new dog picture, Murph!

p.s. add a little salt to the rice.

 

[Murph]

So sorry for your poor belly @Murph I hope very much you will feel much better soon.

(trying not to give medical advice and hope this is ok ?)

Have you tried the fasting with just water, then next day plain boiled rice thing

I couldn't barely yesterday at all so it was mostly just clear liquids. This morning I tried half a banana. White rice is a good idea - Might make some a bit later.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Good luck! I got probable salmonella from contaminated chicken some years ago and felt awful for around a week. After the worst passed, it took me at least a few months to get back to my baseline. I always react really badly to bacterial infections however, so I hope you bounce back quickly.

 

[Moof]

Hope you're starting to feel better, @Murph. It's nasty – I've had it three times over the years, and my GP says that once you've had it once you can be more prone to it in future, which doesn't seem fair! Two of my doses were from eating egg yolks cooked soft, but I'm not sure where I got the first one. The GP always says clear liquid only for the first 24 hours (with electrolytes if possible), then small amounts of easy to digest food for the next.

 

[boolybooly]

I see, sorry to hear it.

When I want to give bugs in my gut a harder time than they are giving me I eat garlic, maybe a swig of colloidal silver. Its all I got. Hope you feel better soon.

 

[Mary]

@Murph, sorry to hear about this - hope you are continuing to recover! I second @boolybooly 's idea of colloidal silver. I recently suffered from a nearly 8-week infection of some sort - believe it was strep. I tried everything in my regular arsenal (andrographis, echinacea/goldenseal) and finally went to the doctor and got z-pack, though he thought it was allergies - right, allergies that totally wiped me out and gave me night sweats.. The z-pack helped a little, but after I stopped it, everything returned within a few days. I don't get severe symptoms but get very very tired - it felt like my immune system was spinning its tires in sand, trying futilely to get some traction.

Anyways after almost 7 weeks of this I remembered colloidal silver, I'd used it years ago for something similar, and sure enough within a few days of starting it I started to feel better, and I began to realize how sick I'd been for so long. The bottle said to take a teaspoon a few times a day but I increased it to a tablespoon dose. I'm now going to keep it on hand!