Attacked by Lyme disease - When you become the Victim!
Before I get into the moment I knew something was terribly wrong, let me give you a brief overview of my background. From the time I was a kid growing up in Iowa I loved the outdoors, farms, ranches, camping out, hiking and playing in the woods. Being outside was the highlight of the day.
Then came Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and even camping out on family vacations. I was at peace outdoors. In high school and college I was a jock and among my passions was golf, so much so that I even worked at golf courses when I wasn't playing, yet more exposure to the outdoors.
Once I made it through early childhood I was a healthy kid suffering only injuries related to sports and being a kid. Only once in my life since I was a kid was I hospitalized, back in 1964 when I had an emergency appendectomy at the University of Arizona.
Since then I was only at an emergency room twice, for observation for exhaustion in the 1970's, and for straining my lower lumbar in the early 1980's when I landscaped my yard with 36 tons of Belgian block. For most of my life I have owned dogs, a carrier of ticks.
I continued to play golf, softball and basketball well into the 1980's and golf forever until today. Living in Iowa, Nebraska, California, Virginia, New Jersey, Kentucky and Maryland I always liked the outdoors, spent hours creating a natural landscape where ever I lived, and enjoying the sun. All of which exposed me to more and more ticks.
Medically, I started following the teaching of the traditional Hopi Indians in 1964 when I first visited their reservation in Arizona and spent much time ever since visiting and studying this unique nation of original Americans. By the 1980's I got to know an old Chinese herbalist in NYC's Chinatown and added this discipline to what I learned from the Hopi medicine people and elders.
I stopped taking vaccinations long ago, stopped taking antibiotics and pain killers, because of what I learned about how we are destroying our immune systems. Over the years my diet became rather good and my health was fine and I have not needed the service of a doctor in over 26 years. Fact is I never had a health insurance claim during that time though some jobs provided comprehensive health coverage.
I paid very close attention to my body and how it reacted to food, liquids, and life, meaning mastering stress in my life, and I had some very stressful jobs. To a nutritionist I had bad eating habits because I only ate once a day. To western medicine I had horrible sleeping habits as I never seemed to need more than about 3 hours sleep a night. Once I went to a sleep clinic but they could find no harmful effect from the lack of sleep.
This was how I functioned for 63 years until about four weeks ago.
The first signs of trouble. One morning in late April of this year I woke up and felt like I had twisted my hips during sleep and pinched a nerve. The pain was severe and I took it easy through the day. The next morning I woke up and felt the pinched nerve had caused a second pinched nerve at the base of my neck just between the shoulders. Within 48 hours I could barely move my arms, shoulders, lower back and legs from the severe pain.
In other words, there were none of the early detection signs of Lyme disease but several of the late stage or chronic stage signs of Lyme disease. This spring I had encountered ticks working on the yard and I had removed ticks from my dog almost every day. But there was no redness from any bites and they had never bothered me before.
My previous exposure to friends with Lyme disease and intense study I had made of it caused me to consider the possibility I might have it as I could barely walk within 48 hours. Then both hands went numb, as if frozen, and I lost all sense of touch from my wrists down. It felt like my hands were frozen, and I knew that feeling from winter blizzards on the Great Plains. No pain, just numbness.
By the third day I was still forcing myself, at great pain, to walk my dog for one mile early each morning but I noticed motor problems. When I first awoke I experienced extreme vertigo and when I tried to walk I felt my brain signals to my leg muscles were being interrupted and had a great deal of difficulty walking anything close to normal.
Fact was, probably because I have some background in theater and television production, I reminded myself at times of the Scarecrow character from the Wizard of Oz. My brain could not get my legs to do what I wanted. It was a disconnected feeling like when the Scarecrow tried to walk or dance. Once I started forcing myself to walk I became like the Tin Man and was very stiff and disjointed.
By the third day I felt little pain unless I moved but when I did move I became exhausted easily. The frozen feeling remained in my hands but my temperature remained normal and other people said my hands did not feel cold.
I began to think it might be Lyme disease except I had skipped all the early stage signs from the redness of a tick bite to fever, flu like symptoms, exhaustion, headaches, and other symptoms. If I had it I was exhibiting what I knew to be late stage symptoms which seemed quite strange to me.
Within a few days I was in for testing and though all my body measurements were normal, I had a serious problem because I could barely walk. Lab tests of blood and saliva indicated two markers for Lyme disease and from that moment on I focused on what to do next.
Because of the unexpected appearance of Lyme in my system I focused on the late stage symptoms and knew every thing I was experiencing fit the disease. Of course it also fit some of the many diseases I have discussed earlier as it mimics up to 300 infections. Caution about drawing a conclusion was eliminated when the testing showed the two Lyme markers.
As I said earlier, long ago I gave up antibiotics and pain killers because of the damage they do to our immune system. Other than providing short term relief from the bacteria, I had my doubts about the long term value of treatment with drugs anyway.
I was committed to finding the best treatment using natural products that built up the immune system rather than destroying it like antibodies can do. Because of the seemingly advanced stage of the disease, which I could not explain at the time, and the danger that a failure to address the problems quickly might leave me with permanent damage, I focused on two possible paths of treatment.
One was a new treatment I learned about in the past year that can be found at http://www.lymephotos.com based on the research by a Lyme disease victim who exhausted all conventional treatments over a 13 year period with no improvement in wiping out the disease. His research identified a heretofore unknown aspect to Lyme disease, that the bacteria seemed to work with a variety of parasites in your body. If both the bacteria and parasites were not treated together you might never fully recover from the disease.
After all his years of trial and error only one treatment seemed to attack both the bacteria and parasites and that was a combination of pure sea salt and Vitamin C taken in large quantities that attacked both bacteria and parasites by restoring your immune system. The instruction was to work up to 1 gram of salt and 1 gram of Vitamin C for every 10 pounds of body weight up to a maximum of 18 grams of each per day. Since I weighed slightly over 200 pounds I had to consume the 18 gram maximum at full strength.
I turned to my nutritionist and he said the best form of unprocessed salt, without any additives like aluminum, silica or iodine, was Celtic salt because it retained the most natural minerals. I was to take 18 grams per day, slightly more than three tablespoons per day.
For Vitamin C at the high levels required he recommended BIO-C which provides the Vitamin C through a proprietary blend of fruits, herbs, sprouts, and extracts whose diversity would be more amenable to the body at such high levels. I would need to take about 10 capsules a day.
However, because I was at the advanced stage I decided I also wanted to use another natural compound that also had recently achieved remarkable results in treating Lyme. Because the clinical work was done in Equator it was not recognized by the US which raises all sorts of questions about just how bad the CDC and FDA want to attack the problem.
Using Cat's Claw, a vine that grows in the Peru rainforest, there have been stunning results supplementing your damaged immune system. Cats Claw (Uncaria tomentosa) is a South American vine that works its way up the jungle canopy using sharp thorns on its stems. Many varieties of this plant are harvested by the Ashaninka people of central Peru, but there is one variety in particular called Samento that they value above all the rest.
This incredible plant, which has been used medicinally for more than 2,000 years by the indigenous people of the region, is now the subject of intensive investigation by scientists all around the world. Clinical evidence has shown that Samento is of great benefit for inflammatory and auto-immune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and asthma. The plant is also showing great promise as a breakthrough treatment for Lyme disease, chronic fatigue syndrome and other degenerative illnesses. In addition, it is an ideal herb for strengthening the immune system.
I ordered Samento through the Internet and as soon as it arrives I will be using it along with the salt and Vitamin C treatment already underway. So there you have it, the two types of natural treatment I am using and intend to use to attack the advanced stage of the disease. The combination attacks all the flaws I found in current treatment of Lyme disease from the failure to recognize the parasites to the use of antibiotics which destroys the immune system, the very thing that could have protected us from the bacteria in the first place.
After my first week on the salt and Vitamin C the feeling has returned to two fingers on each hand though the freezing cold sensation still remains. I have noticed a slight improvement in the nerves in my lower back as walking has become somewhat easier but I expect the Samento to attack the inflamed nerves much more aggressively when I start it next week.
The nerves at the base of my neck have relaxed a bit as well and the shoulders have loosened up although it is expected there will be some problems when the parasites, which are being driven out of the body by the salt and Vitamin C, start counter-attacking before they will be forced to flee. Right now the muscles in my upper arms are sore for no reason other than a parasite attack.
Much of the feeling of vertigo has gone although when I walk the morning mile by the end my fatigue level is such that I can feel the vertigo start to return. Too much continuous walking or too much continuous sitting seems to have the same impact.
There is no problem with my diet and digestion though I am trying to eat fresh and balanced foods and to eat at least two meals a day. Sleep is normal without pain. Throughout the whole ordeal I have felt no headaches, had no problem keeping my mind functioning normally, and do not feel any fatigue as long as I do not engage in excessive physical activity.
The big problems are the pain in the arm muscles which is constant, difficulty standing initially, and the numb fingers. When I pick things up I cannot feel pressure so I drop them often. Don't use the good china. And when I type the lack of feeling results in hitting a lot of double letters which I try to catch in edits so I apologize for any mistakes in the text. Finally, the lack of feeling is so complete that you can touch hot things and not know it or have the shower way too hot for the rest of your body. You just have to be careful.
The salt saturation in my body has resulted in some interesting changes, almost as if you are spending a lot of time swimming in the salty ocean. Dead skin peels off faster, your complexion clears up, and you have the feeling of salt in your eyes as if swimming.
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