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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Sat Sep 17th, 2005 01:52 |
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Infectious Triggers of Mental Illness
Jill Neimark wrote an article in the 25th Anniversary Issue of Discover Magazine (Frontiers of Science) on infectious triggers of mental illness. It is out on the news stands now and will soon be on the Discover website at http://www.discover.com/
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3540627/
Diseases of the Mind
Bacteria, viruses and parasites may cause mental illnesses like depression and perhaps even autism and anorexia
By Janet Ginsburg Newsweek International
Dec. 1 issue - Olga Skipko has had the good fortune to live most of her adult life in the Polish village of Gruszki, in the heart of the Puszcza Bialowieska, one of Europe's most beautiful forests and home to wolves, lynxes and the endangered European bison. Unfortunately, the forest is also a breeding ground for disease-carrying ticks. Skipko,
49, thinks she was bitten about 10 years ago, when she began having the classic symptoms of Lyme borreliosis, a tickborne nervous-system disease: headaches and aching joints. She didn't get treatment until 1998. "I was treated with antibiotics and felt a bit better," she says.
That was only the beginning of her troubles. A few years later, she began to forget things and her speaking grew labored. It got so bad that she had to quit her job in a nursery forest and check herself in to a psychiatric clinic. "I hope they will help me," she says. "I promised my children that when I come back home, I will be able to do my favorite crosswords again." Doctors ran a battery of tests and concluded that her mental problems were the advanced stage of the Lyme disease she had contracted years ago.
Scientists have long known that some diseases can cause behavioral problems. When penicillin was first used to treat syphilis, thousands of cured schizophrenics were released from mental asylums. Now, however, scientists have evidence that infections may play a far bigger role in mental illness than previously thought. They've linked cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia to a variety of infectious agents, and they're investigating autism, Tourette's and anorexia as well. They're beginning to suspect that bad bugs may cause a great many other mental disorders, too. "The irony is that people talked about syphilis as the 'great imitator'," says University of Louisville biologist Paul Ewald, "but it may be the 'great illustrator'-a model for understanding the causes of chronic diseases."
Mental illnesses constitute a large and growing portion of the world's health problems. According to the World Health Organization, depression is one of the most debilitating of diseases, on a par with paraplegia. Psychiatric illnesses make up more than 10 percent of the world's "disease burden" (a measure of how debilitating a disease is), and are expected to increase to 15 percent by 2020. Much of this may be the work of viruses, bacteria and parasites. Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Maryland, has found from studying historical asylum records that hot spots-higher-than-normal incidences-of mental illness can shift, much like infectious-disease outbreaks, which lends credence to the notion that infectious agents play a big role. "Mental disorders are the major chronic recurrent disorders of youth in all developed countries," says Harvard policy expert Ronald Kessler, who directs the WHO's mental-health surveys.
Perhaps the most well known disease that's been linked to mental disorders is Lyme disease, which is caused by the Borrelia burgdorferi germ. First identified in the mid-1970s among children near Lyme, Connecticut, the disease has long been known to cause nervous-system problems and achy joints if left untreated. Now scientists are finding that Lyme disease can also trigger a whole smorgasbord of psychiatric symptoms, including depression. One New York man (we'll call him Joe) found out firsthand how debilitating the disease can be. When he began having bouts of major depression back in 1992, he had forgotten all about the tick bite he had gotten four years earlier. He spent two years in a blur of antipsychotic drugs, mental institutions, jails and suicide attempts. On a hunch, a doctor at a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey had Joe tested for Lyme disease. After an intensive course of antibiotics, Joe's improvement was dramatic and immediate. "I started to have this fog lift," he recalls. Still, he will probably have to be on psychotropic drugs for the rest of his life.
Some psychiatrists fret that there may be thousands of people suffering from Lyme-induced depression without knowing why. Not only is Lyme disease tricky to diagnose-not everybody gets the circular rash, and lab tests still aren't wholly reliable-it can take a decade or more for mental disorders to set in. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says that nine out of 10 cases of Lyme diseases remain unreported. There are 15 species of borellias-making them the most common tickborne disease-producing bacteria in the world.
For its part, the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which can be found in undercooked meat and cat feces, can lead to full-blown psychotic episodes. Some studies suggest that the parasite stimulates the production of a chemical similar to LSD, producing hallucinations and psychosis. Even when the parasite lies dormant in muscle and brain tissue, it can affect attention span and reaction time in otherwise healthy people. Researchers at Charles University in Prague have discovered that people who test positive have slightly slower-than-average reaction times and-possibly as a result-are almost three times as likely to have car accidents. That's a disturbing prospect, considering that the disease is so widespread: billions of people are thought to be infected.
Even a simple sore throat can lead to psychiatric problems. Few children avoid coming down with a streptococcus infection, also known as strep. Scientists now think that one in 1,000 strep sufferers also develops abrupt-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in a matter of weeks. Strep bacteria trigger OCD by igniting an overzealous response from the immune system, which attacks certain types of brain cells, causing inflammation. Symptoms generally die down after a few months but can flare up again, especially if there's another bout of strep, says Susan Swedo, a childhood-disease expert at the National Institutes of Health. The most effective treatment, still experimental, is to filter out the misbehaving antibodies from the blood. Best is to treat strep early on.
The specter of a depression germ or contagious obsessive-compulsive disorder is unnerving, but it also opens up many more treatment options-antibiotics, vaccines, checking for ticks. Geneticists believe that diseases may trigger the onset of inherited mental illnesses by activating key genes. Avoiding and treating infection may be just as important as the genes you inherit, and a whole lot easier to do something about.
With Joanna Kowalska In Warsaw
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc. © 2005 MSNBC.com
-Much of the rise in "mental illness" can be attributed to the psychiatric profession medicalizing nearly every aspect of human behavior. This is currently being exposed in the US News and World Report regarding psychiatrists deciding the names and characteristics of "new" disorders having ties to the pharmaceutical industry. The DSM used to be a thin book--now you could hold down your coffee table with it. ~Cass A
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Sat Oct 8th, 2005 02:32 |
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(filelink)
Psychedelic dreams
Th1 diseases profoundly affect the psyche. Here is a paper we wrote in 2001 describing psychedelic dreams induced by the ARB Diovan (this was in the pre-Benicar era)
"Valsartan Dosing Regime Modulates Psychotic Events in Two Sarcoidosis Patients"
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Sat Oct 8th, 2005 02:53 |
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(filelink)
Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa
Anorexia and bulimia may be autoimmune diseases—and so may several other psychiatric illnesses
Psychiatric disorders and immunity
Molecular self-loathing
Sep 29th 2005
From The Economist print edition
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Sat Oct 15th, 2005 01:48 |
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(filelink)
Depression
Scientists find new link between depression and inflammation
1st September 2006
By Staff Writer
Pharmaceutical Business Online
Individuals with major depression have an exaggerated inflammatory response to psychological stress compared to those who do not suffer from depression, according to a study by researchers at Emory University School of Medicine.
The findings may open up new treatment avenues for patients suffering from inflammatory disorders and depression.
Because an overactive inflammatory response may contribute to a number of medical disorders as well as to depression, the findings suggest that increased inflammatory responses to stress in depressed patients may be a link between depression and other diseases, including heart disease, as well as contributing to depression itself.
Results of the study, led by Dr Andrew Miller, and Dr Christine Heim, of Emory's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, are published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
"Several examples of increased resting inflammation in depressed patients already exist in the literature, but this is the first time anyone has shown evidence to suggest that the inflammatory response to stress may be greater in depressed people," says Dr Miller.
The study included 28 medically healthy male participants, half of whom were diagnosed with major depression and half of whom were not depressed. The participants were exposed to two moderately stressful situations during a 20-minute time period.
Blood was collected every 15 minutes starting immediately before and then up to an hour and a half after the test to check for key indicators of inflammation. The researchers measured levels of a pro-inflammatory cytokine (a regulatory protein secreted by the immune system) called interleukin-6, and the activity of a pro-inflammatory signaling molecule in white blood cells called nuclear factor-kB.
While at rest (before the stress challenge), the depressed patients had increased inflammation relative to the control group. Both the depressed and the healthy groups showed an inflammatory response to the stress challenge, but people who were currently depressed exhibited the greatest increases of interleukin-6 and nuclear factor-kB.
"While inflammation is essential for us to fight bacterial and viral infections, too much inflammation can cause harm," says Dr Miller. "There's always some collateral damage when the immune system gets fired up, and we now believe that too much inflammation, either at rest or during stress, may predispose people to become depressed or stay depressed."
In addition, medical research over the last decade has shown that runaway inflammation may play a role in a number of disorders, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, all of which have been associated with depression.
IL-6 levels decrease with SSRI treatment in patients with major depression
Scientists build on case connecting inflammatory disease and depression
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-07/uoia-sbo072704.php
and
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040728084924.htm
Dr. Marshall's comment:
Give them a decade or two and they might be able to figure it all out 
Research: Commonly Used Antidepressants May Also Affect Human Immune System
01-24-2006
Source: Georgetown University Medical Center
Drugs that treat depression by manipulating the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain may also affect the user's immune system in ways that are not yet understood, say scientists from Georgetown University Medical Center and a Canadian research institute.
That's because the investigators found, for the first time, that serotonin is passed between key cells in the immune system, and that the chemical is specifically used to activate an immune response.
They do not know yet, however, whether these SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) drugs "including the brands Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and others" could have either a beneficial or a damaging effect on human immunity.
"The wider health implication is that commonly used SSRI antidepressants, which target the uptake of serotonin into neurons, may also impact the uptake in immune cells," said Gerard Ahern, Ph.D., assistant professor of Pharmacology at Georgetown and lead researcher on the study.
He said that while it may be possible that SSRI drugs may restore a healthy immune function in people who are depressed and prone to infections, it is possible that they might also bolster immunity to the point that they trigger autoimmune disease. "At this point we just don't know how these drugs might affect immunity, so we really need to clarify the normal role of serotonin in immune cell functioning," Ahern said.
The surprising finding that serotonin is rapidly passed between immune cells in a manner similar to its transmission between brain neurons was revealed in mid-October, when the research team published the findings in the journal Blood. In December, the discovery was highlighted for the general scientific audience by the journal Nature Reviews Immunology, and now the research team is working to produce an animal model that may help describe the precise nature of this interaction.
"The novelty is that we reveal a potential communication, involving the transmitter serotonin, between immune cells that is normally only found between neurons," Ahern said.
In addition to Ahern, Peta Connell, Ph.D., from the Robarts Research Institute in Canada, was also a co-lead researcher on the study. Scientists from the Robarts Research Institute also contributed to the work.
In the brain, serotonin transmission between neurons is associated with feelings of pleasure, mood, and appetite, and the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs keeps serotonin active within the synaptic spaces between neurons, enhancing the chemical's positive effects. Unlike in the brain, which uses chemical messengers to communicate between nerve cells, the immune system is believed to "converse" through physical contact -- one type of immune cell touches another, setting off a response.
Specifically, "antigen presenting cells" display their antigens (bits of a foreign invader) to T-cells, and a resulting physical coupling between the antigens and the T-cells will prompt the T-cells to divide and expand in population, triggering an immune response designed to destroy the invader. This process may take hours.
What the Georgetown researchers found, however, is that dendritic cells -- the most powerful of the antigen-presenting cells and the ones that can find invaders that have never infected the body and "educate" the immune system to fight them -- also use serotonin to quickly excite a T-cell response. They discovered that these dendritic cells can rapidly secrete serotonin, which activates serotonin receptors on certain types of T-cells.
"In addition to the physical contact, it surprised us to find that these immune cells also have machinery to take up serotonin and to secrete it in an excitatory manner," Ahern said. "The point behind this transmission is not entirely clear, but it appears to be an additional way of stimulating a T cell response."
Drugs that block serotonin reuptake "likely change some of the parameters of T-cell activation, but we don't know yet if it enhances or inhibits the total immune response," Ahern said. "But it is something that should be explored because we really have no idea what SSRIs are doing to people's immune systems."
From inflammation to sickness and depression: when the immune system subjugates the brain
When activation of the peripheral immune system continues unabated, such as during systemic infections, cancer or autoimmune diseases, the ensuing immune signalling to the brain can lead to an exacerbation of sickness and the development of symptoms of depression in vulnerable individuals.
PMID: 18073775
The immune-mediated alteration of serotonin and glutamate: towards an integrated view of depression.
An immune activation including increased production of proinflammatory cytokines has repeatedly been described in MD.
PMID: 17457312
See also:
How can I control my depression?
DEPRESSION thread
Won't avoiding the sun increase my depression?
Why do I feel better in the summer? And worse in the winter?
Last edited on Mon Mar 17th, 2008 17:27 by Meg Mangin R.N.
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Aussie Barb
Research Team
| Joined: | Thu Jul 22nd, 2004 |
| Location: | Australia |
| Posts: | 19401 |
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Posted: Sat Oct 22nd, 2005 22:49 |
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(filelink)
Anxiety and stress
"It is my opinion that early and prominent symptoms of Th1 disease are psychological which have been interpreted as anxiety, depression, insomnia, learning disabilities etc. These symptoms like physical ones are exacerbated during effective treatment of Th1.
By understanding this, one can lessen some of the impact of those symptoms, just as one can with the physical symptoms. Not knowing why one is 'suffering' increases the stress of the situation which then, actually intensifies the problem. By understanding, one can remain more relaxed which lessens the intensity and supports recovery. Also, by accepting the temporary limitations imposed, it is again less stressful and more beneficial for recovery."~Greg Blaney, MD
Angiotensin II is a stress hormone
This National Institutes of Health paper says ANGII is a stress hormone and ARBs could be proposed as a potentially useful therapy for stress-induced disorders.
Saabedra JM, Benicky J
Brain and peripheral angiotensin II play a major role in stress.
Stress. 2007 Jun;10(2):185-93. Review.
PMID: 17514587 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Related info:
Stress, Anxiety & Th1 inflammation
How can I control my anxiety and depression?
Last edited on Fri Sep 21st, 2007 16:02 by Meg Mangin R.N.
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Barb: Dx Inflammatory Disease Endocrine Imbalance 2003| 24+ years not Dx| ABCofMP
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 02:06 |
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| Neurological manifestations of borreliosis/Lyme disease thisfilelink
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Aussie Barb
Research Team
| Joined: | Thu Jul 22nd, 2004 |
| Location: | Australia |
| Posts: | 19401 |
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Posted: Fri Feb 24th, 2006 19:50 |
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(filelink)
OCD(Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
All In The Mind
Interview with Julia Grier - sarcoidosis, OCD
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Phobias and OCD help available in the UK
I think you've spoken to my twin sister Jean (also on the MP). I have been on the MP now for about 4 months. I developed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder last July after my doctor gave me three antibiotics for CFS. I could never have imagined the effect on my brain and the obsessive thoughts and handwashing rituals that resulted. I would never have understood the link between bacteria and the brain if it weren't for the MP and information from my doctor. It makes a lot of sense though.
I am still struggling with OCD but have much more perspective on it now so that I acknowledge its the bugs and that it will resolve if I carry on with the MP. I realise that this is a biological problem but decided to get some support from the National Phobic Society. They provided a counsellor who speaks to me over the phone on a weekly basis and is extremely helpful. He understands my position on the MP and provides a huge amount of encouragement as well as relaxation techniques and coping strategies to challenge the OCD.
I have just started the Modified Phase two and my OCD has become more exaggerated. However, I'm trying to stay focused and remain totally optimistic that the MP is the solution to this difficult situation I find myself in.
If you do take a break and I can understand why - please get back on the MP soon. Get in touch with the National Phobic Society and ask if you can get help from a counsellor. It's only £5 per session if you're on benefits and as well as providing help for OCD you'll get moral support in your fight for health. Their number is 0870 122 2325.
Stay strong and good luck. I can totally empathise with you and if you stay focused I know you'll get through.
Janet (kilt)
MPers report OCD symptom resolution
My 15 yr.old daughter who also like myself, has neuro-lyme disease, was significantly affected with OCD, incapacitated as a matter of fact. Treatment with minocycline has been a godsend for her, she is doing 80% better, and we expect the improvement to continue as she introduces more/differing abx to kill the occult bacteria. It was suspected that she contracted PANDAS (pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcal infection) the year after becoming ill with Borreliosis, and this is what led to the increasing significant neuro-psychological difficulties she began having, in addition to her Borrelia symptoms.
The Benicar has been found to help with neuroses, as stated in papers by Dr. Marshall.
Hrts4me
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Barb: Dx Inflammatory Disease Endocrine Imbalance 2003| 24+ years not Dx| ABCofMP
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Fri Mar 17th, 2006 15:15 |
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Treating mental illness with the MP
During MP, the symptoms experienced are due to Immunopathology. and ....
The aim or the key is for you to achieve and maintain tolerable symptoms (physically, mentally, and emotionally) by adjustment of your meds dosing and schedule as suited individually to you within the guidelines. The Staff here are here for you 24/7 to assist you in that process..
Acknowledging and posting openly re symptoms makes it easier for Staff to assist... Some tend to be less conscious of the mental emotional aspects of their immunopathology compared to the physical aspects.
It is helpful to you to know to follow the essential aspects and guidelines of MP as written for safety and efficacy of treatment.. to use the precautions re protecting from light and to adjust your meds as needed and to post for assistance as needed and to discuss with your Dr.. see the Information below also...
Rest is a very important part of managing and healing.. By being pushed to the limit of tolerable herxing our body is working to capacity. see Tools to check:
How can I control my anxiety and depression? to discuss with your Dr..
What is neurological immunopathology?
The effect of light on the brain (Amygdala)
Natural light > protect skin and eyes..
Artificial light > protect eyes / not skin..
If your Dr agrees: to minimise symptoms - you can take extra half tablet (20mg) Benicar any time during cycle, or adjust dosage to 40mg Q4H. see also in BenicarQuiklink many Members report chewing or sublingual gives faster absorption/relief..
Dr Marshall says, "I used to make sure that I was never more than 4 hours from my last Benicar whenever I had to go outdoors. Then, after the exposure, I needed to keep the 4 hour going for 12 hours after the final exposure. Beyond that I could slip back to normal dosing, as the 1,25-D had dissipated .... << to help keep symptoms minimal..
"To come back from the neurological phase of Th1 disease is tough, especially for folks like you who have been allowed to slip so far, over such a period of time.
Let's hope the neuro-drugs help you manage the symptoms until the bacterial load drops to a point where it is not so much of a struggle. I particularly hope they help in that struggle between your own mind and what conventional terminology would call "common sense." The MP is non-sensical, and I know it is tough to deal with a mindset of a curative therapy, rather than a palliative therapy. But at your age, you have so much left of life you could live. I regard the curative approach as the only sensible one."
..Trevor..
If you feel that you are in an emergency situation, do not hesitate to seek emergency assistance. Do not hesitate to contact your Dr.
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Members report improvement in psychological symptoms
Members have found their mental health symptoms resolving as they progress on MP.. re OCD eg.. see Julia
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Fri Mar 24th, 2006 22:18 |
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Schizophrenia tied to a range of autoimmune ills
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Results of a study suggest that schizophrenia may be associated with a larger range of autoimmune diseases than previously suspected.
Schizophrenia affects about 1 percent of the population and can trigger delusions, paranoia, and hallucinations. It is very difficult to treat. A few autoimmune disorders are thought to play some role in schizophrenia.
Dr. William W. Eaton, of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and colleagues examined the association between schizophrenia and a range of autoimmune diseases using three databases.
Included in the analysis were 7704 subjects diagnosed with schizophrenia between 1981 and 1998 and their parents, and age- and sex-matched controls and their parents.
Subjects with a history of one or more autoimmune diseases had a 45 percent higher risk of schizophrenia, according to the authors. Schizophrenia patients had a higher prevalence of nine autoimmune disorders compared with comparison subjects.
Compared with the parents of controls, the parents of schizophrenic patients had a higher prevalence of 12 autoimmune diseases.
The autoimmune disorders -- thyrotoxicosis, celiac disease, acquired hemolytic anemia, interstitial cystitis, and Sjogren's syndrome -- occurred more often in schizophrenic patients and their parents compared with the controls and their parents.
"In future clinical studies, it may be interesting to search for a family history of autoimmune diseases ... in patients with schizophrenia," Eaton's team suggests. "Eventually, individual or family disease comorbidity may help to elucidate shared etiologic pathways."
SOURCE: American Journal of Psychiatry March 2006.
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Researchers discover a possible link to an infectious agent in the human genome.
From Newsday March 20, 2007
MELVILLE, N.Y. — A team of Long Island scientists has scanned the entire human genome for evidence of genes that play a role in schizophrenia and has discovered a hot spot near two genes that regulate the immune system.
Dr. Anil Malhotra and Todd Lencz of the Zucker Hillside Hospital campus of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Glen Oaks, N.Y., found that certain markers within these genes were more common in patients with schizophrenia than in those without a history of the mental illness. Their study will appear today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
A small group of scientists has long proposed that infectious agents might play a role in schizophrenia.
A finding supported by multiple studies is that toxoplasma, a cat parasite, is two times more common among patients than normal volunteers. One percent of the population suffers from schizophrenia, a serious mental illness that can cause hallucinations, delusions, apathy, dulled emotion and cognitive problems.
The Hillside study looked at genes from 178 chronic schizophrenia patients and 144 volunteers. For computer analysis, they put the DNA from each individual onto a gene chip that has 500,000 markers, numbers along the entire stretch of the human genome.
When they found markers overrepresented in the patient population studied, they looked for genes at or near the marker. The two closest genes they identified are both involved with immune function and are activated when the body is responding to an infection.
The genes are on the male Y chromosome and the female X chromosome, although the genes don't have a specific sex-linked role, Malhotra said. Some of the markers were seen in as many as 30% of the schizophrenia patients, compared with 10% of healthy controls.
The scientists studied another group of 71 schizophrenia patients, and the markers pointed to the same two genes.
"There are a number of common and rare polymorphisms [varieties] that are overrepresented in patients with schizophrenia," Malhotra said.
He suspects that cytokines, substances produced by the immune system, might play a role as a genetic switch that puts certain people at risk.
"It's interesting work," said Dr. Robert Yolken, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Stanley Laboratory of Developmental Neurovirology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "It fits with the prediction that Dr. [E.] Fuller Torrey and I made that genes discovered in schizophrenia will be associated with an immune response.
"It would make sense that some of the genes are determinants of the response to infection."
Last edited on Mon Apr 23rd, 2007 19:40 by Meg Mangin R.N.
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Aussie Barb
Research Team
| Joined: | Thu Jul 22nd, 2004 |
| Location: | Australia |
| Posts: | 19401 |
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Online
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Posted: Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 01:22 |
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(filelink)
Bipolar disorder (manic-depression)
Lithium
Lithium is commonly used to treat bipolar disorder. If you have been taking it, it is fine to continue.
Due to slow renal clearing, lithium toxicity may occur when taking Benicar (or verapamil). Lithium blood levels should be monitored very closely by your Dr (perhaps weekly when Benicar is started) and then regularly as long as you are on the MP. We recommend Members not lower their Lithium dose without the consent and supervision of their doctor. You may need this medication or a suitable substitute. Please discuss this with your doctor.
Lithium is also reported to decrease urine potassium excretion and increase serum potassium. If you are taking lithium on the MP, ask your Dr to assess your potassium level occasionally to be sure the immunopathology (renal inflammation) associated with treating Th1 inflammation has not caused an elevation.
My potassium is elevated. What should I do?
Here is an interesting paper by a Harvard/Mass General Hospital group implicating lithium, Calcium, Chromium and Mercuric salts as a pleomorphic factor for some of these L-form organisms:
"The Significance of Pleomorphism in Bacteroides Strains"
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Members experiences with lithium
A low-salt diet increases the risk of lithium toxicity, but if you've not made any changes in your diet or medications, the likely reason for your increased serum Lithium level is a hormonal shift related to your diligent avoidance of Vitamin D. Your psychiatrist may be interested to know how 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin-D affects many other hormones in the body. Please show him this diagram.
It's a good thing that you tested your lithium level after you made this lifestyle change. Please remind your doctor that Lithium toxicity may occur when on the MP (due to immunopathology) and blood levels should be monitored very closely.
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The problem with compliance with medication in Bipolar Disorder is that the meds, often lithium, reduce the feeling of euphoria that accompanies the "manic" phase. Sufferers feel enormously energetic, feel happy, and often seem to lose insight into the nature of their illness in this phase, and lose objectivity.
If your friend could be helped to understand that the MP meds do not act as lithium does, she may be more compliant. On the other hand, there also tends to be a general reduction in responsible behaviour, with more impulsivity. The ability to assess her level of herx and make good decisions about reducing or increasing meds is likely to be compromised. Also, as you say, it's difficult to predict how herx may manifest itself. Wouldn't it be wonderful if in a case like this the MP could be administered in a hospital setting. We can dream.
Personal experiences on the MP
I am Bipolar-I, the strongest form of Manic/Depression. I am off all meds for this now, no Lithium, no Depakote, since beginning the MP, and I am doing fine on the MP. My manic episodes have decreased very significantly, and the very deep depression of BP-I, has not manifested at all. I am operating much closer to "norm" on the protocol.
Please do get your lithium levels checked very often while on the protocol. Benicar does come with a strong safety warning that lithium toxicity can occur due to a slowing of renal clearance.
I chose to wean off lithium going from 900mgs, to 600mgs, then 300mgs., to none, prior to beginning the MP, thinking that if I found I needed to restart it again it wouldn't be a problem. So far--so good. I am not suggesting this for you at all, as you need to follow your own doctors instructions, just relaying that I have found that Benicar seems to have greatly helped many of my symptoms.
It's very interesting to me that your dosage of lithium has been reduced to 300 mgs. by adapting the MP lifestyle of light and D avoidance, alone. I will be interested to see what results you have when you introduce the Benicar. How wonderful that your psychiatrist can be privy to all this research going on, with you as a patient.
I see that your BP Disorder predates your CFIDS Dx by a few years. I have been BP-I since early childhood, and was dxed with FM and CFS in my 40's, then 2 years later with Chronic Late Stage Disseminated Borreliosis (Lyme) and Babesia, a co-infection.
We may be all greatly surprised to learn that some or many psychiatric disorders are caused by CWD bacterial infections, in the future. Much research has gone on in the way of genetic predisposition to BiPolar Disorder, I was involved in a clinical study of such, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that we are passing infections, possibly in utero from one generation to another. So I hope that it may be possible to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, on the MP.
Please feel free to PM me, if you need any support on your journey to wellness
Hrts4me
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The problem with compliance with medication in Bipolar Disorder is that the meds, often lithium, reduce the feeling of euphoria that accompanies the "manic" phase. Sufferers feel enormously energetic, feel happy, and often seem to lose insight into the nature of their illness in this phase, and lose objectivity.
If your friend could be helped to understand that the MP meds do not act as lithium does, she may be more compliant. On the other hand, there also tends to be a general reduction in responsible behaviour, with more impulsivity. The ability to assess her level of herx and make good decisions about reducing or increasing meds is likely to be compromised. Also, as you say, it's difficult to predict how herx may manifest itself. Wouldn't it be wonderful if in a case like this the MP could be administered in a hospital setting. We can dream.
Tobi
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i was diagnosed with bipolar 10 yrs ago and was put on so many drugs life depekote and tegtitol and lithium. and also some antipsychotics which i could not tolerate. they made me sleepy and have extrapyramidal anxiety symptoms. although i canstantly felt depressed and anxious wth very minimal manic episodes, the side effects of the drugs were awful. finally i found a dr that prescribed an antideppressant only. with the theory that the body goes into a manic state in a faulty overdrive way of trying to get out of the depression mode. Lithium made me gain a lot of weight i felt more unhealthy than normal.
finally i found out i had gestational chronic lyme and i found the mp. while on this trt i have definetly had an exasberation of neuro(psych) symptoms. i continue to take celexa, but i had a terrible manic episode of my brain speeding up and being unable to sleep for 36 hrs. i was a reck but my mp dr was familiar with hmeopathic medicine and put me on natural lithium. this is wonderful without side effects.
i use ambiem and valium for sleep and anxiety issues that always arise, but i also can have days to a week without the need for either, also gabitrol for pms anxiety is really helpful.i dont know if your friends judgement is impaired but i was able to manage the neuro herx without any help for anyone in my house. i dont know your friend well enough. but i have always been proactive and have not had too much trouble recognizing when i was switching from one state to the next. hope this helps. she has to do the mp for any hope of having a normal mental state. at least that is what keeps me going. but the herxing has definetly made me have huge depression, anxiety and hyper times, so it will be difficult going thru the trt for her. plus you are so sick and have light and sensory and lifestyle deprivation which increases psych symptoms especially the first year. good luck deb
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I developed Lithium Toxicity, due to slowing of renal clearance. I had to completely come off all meds. Will be returning to abx, tomorrow.
VERY IMPORTANT TO PATIENTS on Psychiatric drugs requiring Therapeutic Blood Level Monitoring:
I have learned that not only does Benicar, but Verapamil, which is an antihypertensive, used for angina, arrythmias, and tachycardia, also slows renal clearance of Lithium.
Please---If you are taking any mood stabilizers, antipsychotic drugs, have your blood levels checked within a few days, and again weekly, when beginning Benicar. Especially if you are taking another drug which slows renal clearance. Dosage adjustments of psych meds may be needed, and much sooner than one month which is a norm in testing for therapeutic blood levels.
Research all your meds to see if they affect renal clearance. This was my mistake. I had successfully taken Lithium and Benicar together before while on the MP.
However, Verapamil was prescribed for angina,arrythmia, and tachcardia. I did not know that it, like Benicar reduced renal clearance of Lithium. My verapamil was filled by a different pharmacy than that which dispenses my RX of Benicar and Lithium.
Carry all your meds to all appointments. My heart med, verapamil came from a different doctor than the Lithium and Benicar. I had mistakenly forgotten to tell about the addition of Verapamil. The connection was not made. I am very aware now that I am not as cognitively able as I once was, and I need to allow others assistance to safeguard my less than apt mind. I hate admitting this, but I am so much less competent.
I became severely ill, projectile vomiting, bowel and urine incontinence, stupor, inability to ambulate due to incoordination (constant falls, stumbling) incoherent, semi-concious, tremors, inability to write, inability to talk, could not be understood at all by others.
The most frightening thing was that I did not know what was happening due to incoherance, and kept taking meds which were worsening the situation.....
Please if you are on any mood stabilizers or antipsychotics---check all your meds.
The good news---I don't believe any permanent damage occurred, I have within a months time improved. I also am out of the manic phase, and have not had to add a mood stabilizer and antipsychotic back to my meds. I have gradually begun all my meds, and am now ready to get back to abx tx.
Hrts
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Barb: Dx Inflammatory Disease Endocrine Imbalance 2003| 24+ years not Dx| ABCofMP
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Tue Oct 10th, 2006 22:20 |
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(filelink)
Recognizing neuro-psychiatric symptoms
A good overview of neuro-psychiatric Th1 disease symptoms can be found at this link. Remember, it's not just Lyme disease, but all Th1 illness that can result in these disturbances. The problem, as I see it, is that reading even multi-syllable clinical descriptions are a far cry from actually experiencing them, which is a whole lot more complex.
As Dr. Marshall said, it's almost impossible for the person who is ill to recognize these - until they leave them behind in recovery.
Th1 illness itself produces the neuroses and psychoses. We have a number of folk here recovering from bipolar disorder, and a couple from obsessive compulsive disorder. Paranoia is a very common symptom among patients who are ill with Th1, especially in online environments where the moderators allow the most seriously affected to plant silly ideas in the heads of those who are easily led.
I am not aware that there is any official recognition of the link between psychological and immune phenomena. I have seen a few papers come through, but they seem to be ignored by the mainstream. Additionally, those patients who are affected don't seem to realize it, unless their families are still well enough to bring them back to reality.
Indeed, the psychological symptoms are really only easily recognizable when you no longer have them. Recovery gives 20:20 hindsight ~Belinda Fenter
Members experiences
The Free Ticket idea is a great one. This is an area that this family will shine. MCS has strong neuro reactions so we are totally accustomed to one of us flying off the handle with anger, tears, hysteria. The best ones are where you can't stop laughing. That's a lovely reaction to a chemical.
Sarah is so skilled at dealing with her reactions, I didn't even notice that she'd had a rage attack. She looked understandably irritated and frustrated. When she's well, she should work in the UN or as a hostage negotiator. In this family you can feel and talk about anything.
We've found that keeping things out in the open helps folks know you are in trouble and to not take your behavior to heart. You are responsible for your actions, but your feelings sometimes are pure brain. ~Juanita
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Wed Dec 13th, 2006 21:59 |
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(filelink)
Coughs and sneezes spread mind diseases
06 November 2004, Janet Ginsburg, Newscientist.com, Magazine issue 2472
IT WAS hell on earth. "I was in a concentration camp. I could smell the burning bodies," recalls Stephanie Diers. But it was 1975, the second world war was long over, and Diers was in Martinez, California, thousands of miles from Auschwitz. The 19-year-old was locked up, but in a mental ward.
Diers's psychotic break was just the latest in a string of illnesses that had plagued her and puzzled her parents for the better part of a decade. No one could figure out what had happened to the bright little girl who loved riding horses and playing in the woods. Her list of ailments was as baffling as it was extensive: headaches, dizziness, fatigue, pain in her teeth, tingling in her toes, sore throats, flu-like illnesses, chest pains, pains in her spleen and liver, poor balance, sensitivity to light and sound, memory lapses. And now psychosis.
After six months in hospital, Diers was released and struggled on with her life, eventually earning a college degree and working as a teacher. But it would take another 14 years of serial illness before any of her doctors thought to test for Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness identified in the late 1970s.
Like its distant cousin syphilis, Lyme is caused by corkscrew-shaped bacteria called spirochaetes that are able to burrow into tissue, including the brain. There they can lie dormant and harmless for months, even years. But once active, they can stir up a devil's brew of symptoms, including conditions that match the clinical diagnoses for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.
Diers, of course, tested positive, and was put on a long course of antibiotics. "I had so many psychiatrists and psychologists tell me it was all in my head," she says. They just didn't know how right they were.
Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme bacterium, is now widely accepted as a cause of psychiatric disease. And in recent years several other bugs have come to light that are able to trigger symptoms of mental illness, ranging from behavioural problems to depression and full-blown psychosis. In fact, so many potential "mind germs" have now been unearthed that some researchers are ready to challenge the conventional wisdom about the principal causes of mental illness.
When it comes to causes, genes have always been the prime suspects, with environmental triggers poorly understood and infectious disease an afterthought. Infectious disease is "maybe 5 per cent as important as genes", claims Richard Straub of the Genes, Cognition, and Psychosis Program at the US National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Straub, who has identified several genes tentatively associated with schizophrenia, thinks that among environmental causes, peer groups, drug experiences and other social factors are far more significant targets for research.
But according to evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald of the University of Louisville in Kentucky, that ignores some obvious facts. "The biggest breakthrough in the history of psychiatry was recognising that syphilis causes insanity and that it can be prevented with antibiotics," he says. The same mistake is being repeated today with Lyme disease and other infectious agents, Ewald believes.
If diagnosed quickly, before the bacterium gets a foothold, Lyme disease can be cured with a round of antibiotics. But spotting it can be tricky. Not everyone gets the telltale "bull's eye" rash and antibody tests can be unreliable, especially early on. That presents a dilemma for doctors concerned about overprescribing antibiotics. If they wait too long - as little as a few months after infection - the spirochaetes begin to attack the central nervous system with devastating consequences. This "late stage" Lyme is very hard to cure, often requiring months or years of antibiotics.
At Columbia University in New York, neuropsychiatrist Brian Fallon is in the middle of a series of studies designed to see what actually goes on inside the brains of chronic Lyme patients. One finding so far is that patients show significant reduction in blood flow in brain regions associated with memory and visuospatial organisation. Fallon has also looked at children, who are especially at risk because they tend to play outside, where the ticks are. He found significant cognitive and psychiatric problems in children who had been diagnosed late, on average a year after infection. They scored low on memory and perception tests and were also depressed, with some having suicidal thoughts.
In 2003, more than 21,000 cases of Lyme disease were reported to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, making it the most common vector-borne disease in the US. Yet as few as 1 in 10 cases are documented, so the true tally might be more than 200,000. And in 1996, another bacterium, Borrelia lonestari, which is carried by the lone star tick common throughout the American south, was linked to Lyme-like symptoms. So far there are no tests for it, so no case statistics.
Lyme isn't just a problem in the US. "You really have a pandemic," says Raphael Stricker, a San Francisco physician specialising in chronic Lyme. "It's all over the US. It's all over Europe. It's in parts of Asia. It's everywhere."
Beyond Lyme disease, the evidence linking infections to psychiatric disorders becomes a little more hazy. Ironically, though, some of the most tantalising clues are found in the very same data used to prove the case for genetic links: twin studies.
Identical twins, who have 100 per cent of their genes in common, are much more likely to both develop schizophrenia than are fraternal twins or full siblings, who share just 50 per cent of their genes. Clearly, then, genes are important. But the data is more complicated, explains Ewald. "People saw these associations without thinking about alternative explanations," he says. For example, when one identical twin develops schizophrenia, half the time the other does not. If schizophrenia were strictly genetic, concordance (meaning both twins get sick) should be 100 per cent. This holds true even if many genes are involved in the disorder, as geneticists now believe.
But when the environment inside the womb is taken into account, the story begins to shift. Fetuses develop inside two porous sacs, the inner chorion and the outer amnion. Nearly 70 per cent of identical twins share a chorion, a feature that can be determined after birth by the presence of subtle physical traits such as mirror-image fingerprints. Those twin pairs are nearly six times as likely to be concordant for schizophrenia as identical twins with separate chorions.
Meanwhile, the concordance rate for non-identical twins is nearly twice that of full siblings, even though the genetic relationship is the same: 50 per cent. Fraternal twins rarely share sacs, but they do share a womb. That, says Ewald, points to an environmental factor - though not necessarily an infection.
Influenza's legacy
To look for evidence that a prenatal infection could be linked to the development of schizophrenia years later, a team of Columbia University epidemiologists led by Ezra Susser and Alan Brown sifted through the medical records of 20,000 women who were pregnant in Alameda county, California, between 1959 and 1966. The women, all patients at Kaiser-Permanente, the largest healthcare provider in the region, were part of a massive child health and development study. But the real stroke of luck was that most of their children have remained in the Kaiser-Permanente system. "We could follow them right up to age 40," says Susser.
The researchers first determined which children had been diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Then they tested their mothers' blood samples for antibodies to the strains of influenza virus that had been circulating during their pregnancies, and compared the results with blood tests from a set of matched controls - the mothers of mentally healthy children from the same Kaiser-Permanente group.
The results, which are published in the Archives of General Psychiatry (vol 61, p 774), are dramatic. Maternal exposure to flu during the first half of pregnancy tripled the child's risk of developing a schizophrenia spectrum disorder. "It's far higher than any single gene in terms of what we call relative risk," says Brown.
Brown points out, however, that some of the healthy children's mothers were exposed to flu during the first half of pregnancy, too, so exposure doesn't guarantee schizophrenia. What's more, schizophrenia is rare, affecting just 1 per cent of the population. Still, if the results of the Columbia study can be duplicated, a significant number of cases - perhaps as many as 14 per cent, according to Brown - may turn out to be preventable.
So how might a virus cause schizophrenia? According to Paul Patterson at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the virus may not be doing the damage directly. He injected pregnant mice with a molecular mimic of the flu virus, which generates an immune response without causing infection. Nevertheless, offspring mice developed behavioural abnormalities reminiscent of schizophrenia, suggesting that the stress of a maternal immune response alone may be enough to affect neurodevelopment.
More information on how viruses attack the brain is coming from work on Borna virus, which was first seen in horses in the late 1800s. Borna affects a number of bird and mammal species, including non-human primates, causing a broad range of movement and behaviour disorders. There are also tentative links to human psychiatric illnesses, most notably schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression, based largely on the presence of Borna virus antibodies in some patients' blood.
In rats infected with Borna in the lab, symptoms resemble autism, with delayed growth, learning disabilities and repetitive behaviours. And there are now some clues as to what the infection is doing to the brain. When rats are infected shortly after birth (the neurodevelopmental equivalent of a human prenatal infection), neurons critical for cognitive, emotional and motor development either die off or miss key developmental cues. If rats are infected during adolescence, when their brains are more developed, Borna appears to kill neurons both directly and through an overzealous immune response.
Yet another pathogen that has been linked to psychiatric conditions is the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii. It infects everything from cats and cattle to sea otters and people. Human infection rates range from 15 per cent in the US to more than 80 per cent in some countries. Hundreds of millions of people have it, usually having caught it from undercooked meat or contact with cat faeces. Most of the time, toxo causes no more than a mild flu-like illness, but, like Lyme spirochaetes, the parasites can burrow into tissue and lie dormant for long periods of time.
LSD link
Some studies have found that people with schizophrenia are three times as likely as the general population to be infected with toxo (New Scientist, 26 October 2002, p 41). Meanwhile, using the same Kaiser-Permanente data as in the influenza study, Susser and Brown have found a correlation between high maternal levels of anti-toxo antibodies and schizophrenia in the corresponding children. According to their calculations, toxo more than doubles the risk.
In the pantheon of mind-altering microbes, toxo is unique in its mission: it must alter the behaviour of its intermediate host, usually a rodent, to get itself back inside its reproductive host, a cat. In a series of experiments, Joanne Webster at the University of Oxford discovered that toxo-addled wild rats not only lost their natural fear of wandering into open spaces, but were actually attracted to cat smells. They practically delivered themselves for dinner.
Infected humans don't end up as cat food, but acute toxo can cause hallucinations and other psychotic behaviours. In fact, both rats and people may be tripping: studies from the 1950s and 60s suggest that toxo can trigger the production of LSD-like substances in the brain.
The most insidious mind germ of all could be an inside operator: a germ that behaves like a gene. Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) infect egg and sperm cells. Like genes, they are then copied into all the cells of the body, although they only become active under specific circumstances.
Virologist Robert Yolken at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has discovered one called HERV-W reproducing in the cerebrospinal fluid of some people with schizophrenia, but not in healthy controls. He suspects that a second, conventional pathogen, possibly a herpesvirus or Toxoplasma, may trigger HERV-W to switch on, and the combination somehow triggers symptoms. In a study published last year in The American Journal of Psychiatry (vol 160, p 2234), Yolken's team reported improvement in the symptoms of people with schizophrenia who were treated for cytomegalovirus, a common herpesvirus.
The idea that you can catch a mental illness from something as innocuous as a bug bite or a sneeze may seem the stuff of nightmares, but it also holds hope for new ways to fight back. For one thing, it suggests that treating mental illness can sometimes be as simple as tackling an underlying infection.
That's exactly what Borna researchers Liv Bode of the Robert Koch Institute and Hans Ludwig at the Free University, both in Berlin, Germany, found in clinical trials of the antiviral drug amantadine. A majority of Borna-positive patients diagnosed with major depression or bipolar disorder showed significant improvement in as little as seven weeks on the drug.
There are also hints that some existing psychiatric drugs work because they eradicate infections. For example, Yolken reports that the antipsychotic haloperidol and the mood stabiliser valproic acid appear to inhibit the growth of Toxoplasma, at least in cell culture.
And for those of us lucky enough to be free from mental illness, there's a lesson to be learned, too. Good mental health may be as basic - and as cheap - as avoiding cat litter and undercooked meat, and checking for ticks.
Obsessive-compulsive sore throat?
It's not always infectious agents themselves that do the damage. More than a century ago doctors made the link between "strep throat" - a sore throat caused by the common bacterium Streptococcus - and the development of the heart condition rheumatic fever a few weeks later. The immune system gets confused, mistakes heart cells for bacteria, and attacks.
A similar autoimmune response seems to be causing behavioural problems ranging from Tourette-like tics and obsessive-compulsive disorder to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and anorexia. The syndrome, called PANDAS (Paediatric Autoimmune Neuropyschiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcus), strikes about once in 1000 cases of strep infection.
PANDAS is a strep-induced autoimmune attack on an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, which helps control numerous behaviours. High levels of anti-strep antibodies have been linked to enlargement of the basal ganglia in PANDAS patients. As the levels go down, the brain recovers and symptoms fade away.
In an experiment at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, researcher Susan Swedo removed antibodies from the blood plasma of 30 children with PANDAS. More than a year later, 80 per cent remained symptom-free.
Though PANDAS is technically a childhood condition, there are reports of adults with similar abrupt-onset behavioural problems. And a team from the UK's Institute of Child Health in London found that a PANDAS-like condition may be behind the mystery of von Economo's disease, the "sleepy sickness" that devastated thousands around the time of the 1918 flu pandemic (New Scientist, 18 October 2003, p 34). Of 20 contemporary patients with a similar illness, more than half had had a sore throat before developing the sickness, and 95 per cent tested positive for antibodies reactive against the basal ganglia.
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Fri Jan 12th, 2007 22:14 |
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(filelink)
Seizure disorder (epilepsy)
In the majority of seizure disorders, no cause is ever found. It wouldn't be surprising if one of the causes of the disturbance in the brain's electrical activity that causes a seizure is Th1 inflammation.
Treatment depends on whether the underlying cause can be determined and how many seizures the person has had. It is fine to continue taking the seizure medications ordered by your doctor. As you progress on the MP, you can discuss the possibility of weaning from the anti-seizure drugs.
Valium is sometimes used to prevent seizures. In our experience, it is important to use brand name Valium rather than a generic. See When and why should I use Valium?
Keep in mind that seizure activity could be caused by an immune system reaction at any time while on the MP. To be sure that you are safe, take the usual seizure precautions and work with the study site moderators and your doctor to achieve tolerable immunopathology by the adjustment of meds dosing and schedule while diligently avoiding sun/lights and Vitamin D.
Seizure disorders are common in Th1 diseases
In my opinion, seizure disorders are very common in Th1 diseases including borrelia. However, frank grand mal seizures are the least common. Variants of petit mal, 'spacing out', loss of train of thought, muscle twitches, restless leg syndrome etc are all seizure disorders.
The 'blacking out' that I have described and which are not uncommon as Herx reactions, are seizures, IMO. Also, emotional outbursts, again common in Th1 diseases, may be temporal lobe seizures. ~Greg Blaney, MD
Monitor serum depokote closely
Meds, such as depakote, whose doses are determined by blood levels need more frequent serum measurements to monitor possible changing needs as inflammation resolves and biochemistry changes.
Members experiences with seizures while on the MP
At least one member of the MP cohort has epilepsy, and the epileptic activity seems to modulated by immunopathology. Epilepsy is probably a Th1 disease.
..Trevor..
I have myoclonic seizures, fewer now since I have been on antibiotics, actually TREATING the disease, instead of pallative measures. I believe they are due to the disease, as the onset of seizure activity coincided with the onset of my illness.
We know bacteria reside in the CNS, and that neurotransmitters, hormones, regulatory functions are all disrupted by these infections. I am fortunate, in that they are not sudden onset, I feel them coming on, and can take medication. As the critters croak---the manifestations of the disease will lessen. ~hrts4me
I had a seizure 6 weeks ago, first ever in my life. I got up early, started down the stairs and fell. I was unconscious when my husband went to pick me up but then had the seizure. I saw a neurologist today who is pretty sure it's from neuro-sarc.
I guess I'm just surprised that I had a seizure after being on the MP for this long, my life is so much better for being on the MP I wouldn't have imagined anything going awry. ~Sue K
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Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team
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Posted: Thu Mar 27th, 2008 17:57 |
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[filelink]
Treating bipolar disorder with the MP
I thought I would write some thoughts on my experience with mental illness and you could place it where you think it should be. I have suffered over 20+ years with symptoms of bipolar 2 Mental Illness. Since the psych meds didn't help with the depression and fatigue and myalgia, I have been searching for the last 15 years and having found the MP site I have no choice but to try it. I like the curative possibilities, instead of palliatiion. I've always thought it was toxicity of some sort and that it was sickness behavior similar to serious flu or infection where you can have symptoms of mailase which can escalate to delirium with higher titers of infection, but couldn't find an answer. When someone has the flu and has depression, lethargy and delirium it is understood that the are sick and not mentally ill. I found the sight after finding that I had a positive ANA test and a positive ASO titer. I found information on Dr. Browns treatment of RA and various other treatment protocols where after antibiotic therapy, the ANA and ASO titers disappeared. The benicar and small dose and pulsing of the abx made the most sense to me, instead of the high mega dose IV regimens. I am cautiously hopeful.
I believe that it is the cytokines irritation of the limbic system that causes much of the symptoms of bipolar II, at least the treatment resistant (don't respond to psychiatric medications) patients which are at least 30% of all bipolar depressions and I suspect much more. I believe that since there is Neuropsychiatric Lupus and NeuroSarc that there is tissue destruction going on in the brain especially in the limbic system. Depending on the level of irritation, different nuclei and structures will respond to this irritation which eventually leads to tissue destruction with the exact opposite reaction, fear or rage, fatigue or hypomania, anorexia or increased appetite. In my Guyton's physiology book it described experiments on Monkeys where they electrically stimulated many different areas of the limbic system and found all the symptoms of mental illness with a lighter level of stimulation causing one symptom and a higher level of electrical stimulation to the same area the exact opposite symptom response. So a bipolar will have one behavior at a lighter level of tissue irritation lets say hypomania and as the level of irritation increases from the cytokine storm increases the severe depression, fatigue, apathy and eventually the catatonia or possibly alzheimer's or dementia. I do know that the course of bipolar is usually that as they age it usually matures to more depression and fatigue and lethargy which may have to do with aging but I suspect has to do with increased levels of CWDB.
I look forward to seeing what happens as I continue to ramp up and progress into PH2 and 3. If both the hypomania and depressive cycles are caused by the IP of the CWDB then as I decrease the cytokine levels and other byproducts of immune response such as the LPS (Lipopolysaccirides), then the irritation of the tissues stops and there will be a decrease and eventually elimination of the fatigue, depression and the hypomania together. Also the immune system will balance out as well as the hormonal systems and heavy metals elimination will proceed as well as many other functions. I have always believed that the truth is usually simple and this explanation is simple and far reaching in many illnesses. Thank goodness for Dr Marshall's challenge with his own health and his ability to have the knowledge base and experience to put this all together. I know that if it works for me then it will work for the many other treatment resistant mentally ill patients that are wasting there potential while taking medications that are proven in many studies to be inaffective on the depression of bipolar 2. Being hung with the stigma of mental illness when what you really have is an infection is a trajedy. Many mentally ill patients are physically ill similar to the flu only the bugs are treatment resistant not the patient and much harder to kill without help from benicar and lowering the Vit D levels.
I hope my condition responds to the Marshall Protocol and will be a good test case that can help others. I know if it does work I will spend a good part of the rest of the time God gives me on this earth trying to spread the news that we finally have a curative therapy that really restores one to the life he remembers or maybe never really had, instead of the mindnumbing psych meds that are now forced on the mentally ill with the numerous side effects because their doctors don't know of an alternative approach to treat them. Unfortunately, it will take a long time for mainstream medicine to accept this treatment protocol, but because of the power of the Internet those lucky enough to find it can get educate themselves and get help. The problem with treating the mentally ill is that the neuro immunopathology can be very dangerous, without proper supervision and if there is a history or suicide attempts or extreme psychosis it would be best administered in a hospital setting, where the patient could be carefully monitored.
I admire the open-nindedness of all the doctors on this site who are willing to look for alternative therapies for those whom they treat when what they have been taught does not work. I also admire all of the patients who are willing to voluntarily submit themselves to a sometimes painful curative approach to therapy for the chance to have their health restored and not just palliated. No pain, no gain is true in this case, but the way out of pain is through it and not around it with pallitive medications.
Dr Mo
see also
DrMo: Mike: Bipolar ME: Life is great when you are not depressed and fatigued.
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