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Pyrotherapy - is it worth trying?

Y

yurybx

Messages
92
I sometimes notice that my psycho-emotional state improves when I have the flu: I become self-confident, it becomes easier for me to communicate with people. I also learned that there is a treatment called pyrotherapy, which uses pyrogenal in particular. Is it worth trying pyrotherapy in the hope of achieving a positive effect as with the flu? Has any of the members of the forum tried pyrotherapy?
 
Hip

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,852
yurybx said:
I sometimes notice that my psycho-emotional state improves when I have the flu: I become self-confident, it becomes easier for me to communicate with people.
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As a short-term effect, what you experience could be a result of the fever effect.



yurybx said:
I also learned that there is a treatment called pyrotherapy, which uses pyrogenal in particular.
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I often get my midday nap by falling asleep for 45 minutes or so in a hot bath. Afterwards, the combination of heat plus a short sleep tends to revive my flagging brain fogged mind.

I've never actually measured the body temperature I achieve in this bath; I think I will check this in my next hot bath.

This 1936 paper says:
Five hours of fever of 40 degrees centigrade (104 degrees Fahrenheit) is regarded as one treatment. This is repeated weekly for ten weeks, a course of fever consisting in fifty hours of temperature at 40 degrees centigrade (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
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That paper says pyrotherapy was used to treat neurosyphilis (brain infection with the syphilis spirochete bacterium). Since Borrelia is also a spirochete, pyrotherapy might be useful for Lyme disease.

And a quick Google search finds this article about hyperthermia therapy for Lyme, where a patient lies down in a chamber heated to 41.6° Celsius (or 107° Fahrenheit) for two hours. The article says:
n the study, the researchers proved that Borrelia was “thermolabile,” or susceptible to destruction by heat, and could not tolerate high temperatures. At 39° C (or 102.2° F), they found that the spirochetes became immobile, and at 40° C (or 104° F) they shed their outer membrane, but when they were exposed to a temperature of 41.6° C (or 106.9° F) for two hours, 100 percent of the bacteria died.
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junkcrap50

junkcrap50

Senior Member
Messages
1,333
I've never heard of this and got it confused with prolotherapy when reading the title.

Sounds kind of dangerous, purposely giving yourself an infection of LPS. Many CFS/ME researchers who have focused on the gut as the root or significant cause of CFS hypothesize that low grade LPS leakage from the gut is causing CFS. So, perhaps adding more LPS would make things worse? I don't know.

EDIT: Above I used "infection of LPS" poorly. It's not an infection of LPS, because LPS is just an endotoxin. So yes, no infection would be present. However, my point on LPS leaking from the gut still stands.
 
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Y

yurybx

Messages
92
@junkcrap50, nowadays, you do not need to infect yourself to get a fever. It is enough to take a drug that increases body temperature, for example, pyrogenal or sulforaphane. But I do not know if it is safe. Is it worth the risk?
 
M

Markus83

Senior Member
Messages
277
I looked a bit into this as a treatment option for my chronic infection (in addition to abx). It's used as a complex protocol in some german alternative hospitals for treatment of cancer.

Your immunesystem gets massively activated, it's not just an increase of temperature like you have in the case of passive hyperthermia. Given that hardly anyone knows the immunological background of his CFS, I find it highly experimental and dangerous. Anyway, this treatment seems to be a big burden even for cancer patients, who normally have much more energy compared to a CFS patient. I find it an interesting treatment option, but until know it seems to dangerous for me to try it, although I found a doctor who would try it with me.

In Germany they use picibanil (probably comparable to pyrogenal ?) and some vaccines together (which potentiates the effect), given intravenously over 30 minutes. Then the fever comes and stays for 8-12 hours. This procedure is normally done 3 times a week. If you are interested I could look for the research paper which describes the procedure for cancer treatment. They are explaining the protocol in detail in it.
 
junkcrap50

junkcrap50

Senior Member
Messages
1,333
yurybx said:
@junkcrap50, nowadays, you do not need to infect yourself to get a fever. It is enough to take a drug that increases body temperature, for example, pyrogenal or sulforaphane. But I do not know if it is safe. Is it worth the risk?
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I was wrong to use the word "infection", as you're correct. No infection is present. However, LPS is an endotoxin and toxic. If the theories of LPS from the gut causing CFS is correct, then it could be harmful. It seems counter-intuitive to stress the CFS immune system when it already is stressed enough. But perhaps it could cause a reset of some sort. Still, it would be far too dangerous in my opinion.

Also, how is sulforaphane used in pyrotherapy? I thought it was an antioxidant from broccoli? I take it sometimes as a supplement.
 
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