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PEM vs. detoxing

hunter1899

Senior Member
Messages
152
@Rufous - this sounds like PEM to me. It's a response to exertion, albeit mental exertion. One night I watched a fascinating video about cancer and pancreatic enzymes. I concentrated very hard for 3 hours straight - it was hard work - and I crashed the next day.

PEM stands for post-exertional malaise (I hate the word malaise here!) Anyways, it occurs in response to exertion, whether physical, mental or even emotional. Too much talking on the phone can do me in. Many people here get brain fog etc with PEM and digestive problems. My PEM is primarily physical, though I don't dare try to tackle mental activity during PEM. It would just make me worse.

Detoxing is different. It is caused by a release of toxins in the body or being exposed to toxins. I once did a far infrared sauna for 20 minutes - it wiped me out for 3 days with detoxing. I did a detox footbath once, which likewise wiped me out for 3 days. Glutamine caused a detox reaction once. Glycine caused a very severe detox reaction. All these reactions were not in response to exertion - they were in response to something I ate or was exposed to. I had a new vinyl bathroom floor put in 4 years ago and again had a detox reaction, obviously reacting to some chemical in the floor. Chlorella is known for helping to chelate heavy metals - well, it caused a very strong detox reaction for me - I couldn't tolerate it.

And glycine is what apparently has taken care of almost all my detoxing. I think it got my detox pathways working properly so I no longer react to so many things at the drop of a hat.

So you're right - PEM can feel like detoxing in some ways and you just have to know your body and know how it reacts to various things. If you've done extra exertion and afterwards feel like shit (however it manifests!), 10 to 1 it's PEM. If you a try a new supplement and start to feel awful, it's possible you're detoxing. There are a lot of other possibilities with that one of course. I think you have to be a detective with this illness!


Can you please describe what you did for liver detoxing?
 
Messages
19
What I understand about detoxing comes from Neil Nathan's book toxic. If you're getting symptoms from it, you're probably taking too much of something and setting yourself back. I was taking too many binders a year or two ago for mold, and it made my fatigue and brain fog much worse. When I took a break, they both got much better. Now I'm taking binders very slowly and am not having issues with them. It's the same idea of pacing that gets talked about here, which is new to me since ME is new to me.

Also I am convinced the lymphatic system is also involved- mine is very stagnent and anythign that moves lymph typically causes a PEM type crash for me, with the poisoned feeling.

I listened to this interview recently with a guy named Perrin, who's discussed on this forum. He thinks that the lymph draining from the brain gets messed up in ME and can go backwards, causing more issues. I don't understand why. In that interview he says moving the lymph can cause problems for people because it's also going back up into the brain, instead of draining only. I think they call the brain draining glymphatics.
 

Abrin

Senior Member
Messages
329
I'd come across the concept of the herxheimer reaction in literature in the past and was able to understood it from an academic standpoint but it was only after I found myself recovering from black mold poisoning that I really understood I had read about from a physical sensation standpoint.

I totally agree with what @Mary said, I can completely understand how it one could mistake it for PEM since there is a lot of symptoms that overlap but when I was detoxing from the black mold the sensation was definitely in a world of its own.

I know that it is probably different for everyone but for me, the best way I could describe it is that I looked and felt like every movie I'd ever seen where an addicted character was coming off drugs. I was sweating profusely with my hair stuck to my face and I was shivering. Every muscle in my body hurt, but they hurt differently then the way they do when I get PEM.

PEM makes me feel like someone turned the gravity way up but when I was detoxing it felt more like that weird pain you get after someone has pushed a needle deep into your muscle. That strange dull aching.

I have no idea if anything I said makes any sense at all because it is so hard to describe subjective experiences but I figured I'd give it a shot. :)
 

hunter1899

Senior Member
Messages
152
What I’m trying to figure out is am I feeling bad for two days after doing something outside because the sweat is releasing toxins or because I’m exerting myself. It seems like I’ve had times where just sitting on the porch in the heat and sweating caused me to feel like crap the next day. Other times it seems like if I take a shower right after sweating and I take charcoal I don’t feel bad. Then again other times I wonder if it’s the exertion alone that’s causing it. I tested positive for ochratoxin and my doctor says sweating makes me feel worse because I’m releasing the toxins in my body.
 

Mary

Moderator Resource
Messages
17,334
Location
Southern California
Can you please describe what you did for liver detoxing?
I took what my chiropractor told me to - this was back in 2003 I think, or thereabouts. Muscle testing indicated a toxic buildup in my liver from a job I'd had years before where I had heavy exposure to acetone. As I recall, he had me take Parotid PMG and Cholacol II from Standard Process. I don't know why the Parotid PMG was recommended - if I was doing it today, I would ask, but at the time I just did what he said -he'd helped me several times before. And I think the Cholacol II had betonite clay in it, as well as collinsonia root and a couple of other things. But I don't see Cholacol II any more on the SP website - only Cholacol - and don't know why they no longer make the Cholacol II.

I had to take these for a month, I don't remember the dose, I know I felt like crap for a month, very tired and rather awful feeling, but after it was over my digestion was much better. I could tolerate a glass of wine without getting sick, etc. And I did start taking betaine HCL with pepsin - found I needed it for my digestion, as well as milk thistle. And overall my digestion has been quite good since - I still take the betaine HCL with pepsin.

Other things that helped my liver are lemon juice (added to water) and dandelion tea.

But this cleanse didn't stop my detox reactions. I think it helped my liver a lot, but I still reacted for several years to lots of things and looking back, I'm guessing that I had a load of toxins stored in my cells which would get released periodically by something I ate or a supplement I took, which overloaded my system.

In 2014 (I think)I reacted VERY strongly to glycine - I took gelatin (very high in glycine) at night for sleep and had a severe detox reaction - got very spacey, very tired, etc. But muscle testing indicated glycine was good for me, though in much smaller doses. Inositol and glutamine also caused detox reactions for me. So based on the muscle testing, instead of immediately stopping the glycine which hit me like a truck, I started taking a very small dose. And also small doses of inositol and glutamine, which both caused a much milder detox reaction.
Over 6 months I very gradually increased my dose as I could tolerate it and by the end of 6 months I no longer reacted to the glycine (or the inositol or glutamine). And also, I stopped reacting to a ton of other things as well. I believe the glycine primarily got my detox pathways working properly. Also a mercury tri-test I had done by Quicksilver Scientific around this time showed that my mercury load was low AND that my body's detox capabilities were good. I would bet money that if I had done this test 6 months earlier I would have gotten much different results.