Free Symptom Analysis Program for CFS/Fibro and Lyme

Hi everyone!

I don't usually pass information along unless I think it's REALLY useful, but I really wanted to share this with you all!

I was reading some information on Dr. Teitelbaum's website (he specializes in CFS and Fibro) and came across this FREE Symptom analysis program.


It takes a while - probably about 30 minutes to fill out all the questions and you have to have your lab reports handy to answer questions about your WBC count for example or what your blood test lab results were.

But if you can get through all of that - I was rewarded with an 80 PAGE ANALYSIS of all my symptoms and recommendations of both prescription and naturopathic remedies.

Anyway - even though it is geared towards CFIDS/Fibro - the symptoms are VERY similar to LYME and he even ADDRESSES LYME briefly in the questionaire.

I found it VERY helpful and I wanted to share it with anyone who is interested.

(Also - you have to create a login name and password and use the "Shopping Cart" feature to "Check Out" to use the program but it is all FREE.

You just SKIP the part that asks for Credit Card info. I know it's a bit time consuming but I promise you IT IS WORTH IT!!

Let me know if you try it - would love to hear your feedback!

The site is: http://www.endfatigue.com/treatment_options/ Online_program.html

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CFS/FMS Symptom Analysis Program

The CFS/FMS Symptom Analysis Program is a computer program that can create a treatment plan tailored to your specific CFS/FM symptoms (and lab results if available).

It asks a series of questions about your symptoms and analyzes your answers to determine the likely cause of your illness — using the very same evaluation criteria that Dr. Teitelbaum uses with his patients (see what it looks like).

Upon completion, it creates a "treatment protocol" to specifically address your case (a list of treatments designed to address the underlying cause of your illness).

The program is accessed by logging in to our website.

After you've completed the list of questions, it will instantly create your custom treatment protocol. This is provided to you as list of all potential treatments, with check marks placed next to those that apply to you.

There are two versions of the program — a free version (recommended for most people), and a paid version for those working with a physician who need a complete medical record.

I hope you find this as useful as I did!

SpiroChicks: The Perfectly Abnormal Condo

SpiroChicks: The Perfectly Abnormal Condo

I found this on the SpiroChicks website which has become one of my favorites! I absolutely love this blog! This is just SO perfectly true! Candice from SpiroChicks - I hope you don't mind me sharing this here! Her site is: http://www.spirochicks.com/2011/03/perfectly-abnormal-condo.html

15 Reasons Why Two Late Stage Lyme Patients Make Fabulously Strange Roommates

1. Most average roommates have designated cupboards for alcohol, or for easy-to-prepare foods like hamburger helper or macaroni and cheese. Instead, you and your roommate each have entire shelves sectioned off for pills, potions, and medication. Your easy to prepare “go-to food” cabinet consists of cans of organic white beans and jars of raw sesame seed butter.

2. Lyme patients often have to set alarms in order to wake up on time, remember to take pills, or to assure they eat enough throughout the day. When two patients live together though, you can double as both roommates and walking, talking alarm clocks. You typically know when it’s getting to be late and your roommate hasn’t taken her adrenal medication yet, and she also knows that it’s time to eat again when she starts to smell your brussel sprouts steaming from two rooms away.

3. With all of the cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and brussel sprouts that you both typically steam, the average person might walk into your house and think it smells like the dog has some pretty gnarly gas. But when your roommate comes home from the grocery store and gets a whiff of a cruciferous veggie steaming, she drops everything and starts cooking too, because beef and cabbage sounds like its going to hit the spot.

4. You and your roommate both know “the face”. You know, that face that you get when your brain starts to feel like it’s full of hot wax and cotton balls. When you have company over and one of you starts to glaze over and zone out, the other picks up on it pronto and takes over the conversation. Typically, “the face” goes unnoticed by guests and “normal” folks. They just think you’re just quite an intent listener.

5. Your roommate doesn’t think it’s weird that you constantly feel motivated to go lay flat on the front lawn. In fact, she encourages it, and will lay out there with you despite the status of the weather reports. There’s even a name for it: Earthing. Your neighbors probably half expect you both to start hugging trees, but it’s all good.

6. You both sort of instinctively know what might be helpful to one another. When your roommate throws out her back, you know how long her hot rice pack takes to heat in the microwave. When you're packing to head out to the doctor, you know what to throw in your snack bag for her in case she gets hungry too. When she's got somewhere to be and she's running short on time, you know how to cook the lunch she was hoping to pack. Whereas asking just anyone to do such things might be a little overwhelming if they aren't fluent in "lyme patient".

7. Your roommate knows that when she catches you lathering up your arms and legs with the same coconut oil you just cooked your veggies in, you’re not planning to roast yourself too. To the both of you, cooking oil doubles as a perfectly acceptable organic body lotion.

8. When you open up the gnarly bottle of pills that makes your kitchen smell like stinky feet, your roommate doesn’t cringe and check to see if something curled up and died in your garbage disposal. Instead, she hurries to the cupboard because the pungent smell reminds her that it’s time to take her afternoon dose of pills too.

9. When you send out a friend or a family member to pick up some groceries for you at Whole Foods, you typically have to set aside 15 minutes to explain things like what swiss chard looks like, how to pronounce “quinoa”, and which aisle you might find gluten free oats. But when you hand your roommate your grocery list, she glances at it, then merely asks, “Rainbow chard or red? I like rainbow, myself.”

10. Instead of rolling her eyes every time some off-the-wall thing makes you sick, your roommate can often warn you before it even happens. If you’re on a walk and she breathes a whiff of gasoline before you do, she responds with a “quick, cover your nose!”. If she’d been two seconds later, she’d probably would have had to peel you off of the sidewalk. But if that had indeed happened, she wouldn’t have griped about that either.

11. While most of the population believes that a scoop of vanilla ice cream is the ingredient that completes a fruit smoothie, you and your roommate think that a beverage isn’t perfectly blended until you’ve added an avocado. Most might scoff at adding anything green to their milkshake (unless it were mint chip ice cream), but you both don’t consider it to be complete if you haven’t.

12. While alternative healing therapies and the notion of “detox” seem outlandish to others, you both fully embrace them. At this rate, between her unconventional use of organic coffee and your use of a neti pot, you two are bound to make Roto Rooter jealous.

13. When the guy who's installing your new furnace comes in to test it out, he ends up sticking around for a while and chatting with you both, because he thinks you're intriguing. He then proceeds to ask what the lime green awareness bracelets that are sitting on your dining room table are for, and when you tell him, he asks if he can buy a few. He informs you that you both have a "righteous positive energy".

14. You and your roommate are oddly able to laugh during occurrences that most of the general public would find quite unnerving. When your heart starts going into strings of irregular heartbeats and your blood pressure cuff starts flashing all sorts of different abnormal codes and symbols, she doesn't get frustrated or anxious as she drives you to the doctor. Instead, you find things to laugh about on the way there, and you both even manage a giggle when you're forced to inch out of the car as though you're 112 years old.

15. When you wake up and tell you're having a bad morning, you roommate can actually fathom what that might mean. She doesn't think that "bad" might equate to feeling tired, achey, or sick to your stomach. She knows what this kind of sick feels like, because she understands what it's like to have every organ in your body affected by an infectious disease. And when she nods and tells you that she's sorry, she really, truly means it.

My life is challenging, unique, odd, timultuous, fascinating, and completely out of the ordinary. Yet I've come to discover that though I don't have a choice in what my life may look like right now, I can choose whether or not I'm going to accept it, and it's up to me to decide if I'm going to love it or hate it. Despite the hardship and lack of normalcy, I've chosen to love it. Living with another patient who has made the same commitment makes that choice a whole lot easier. Ashley and I live in a perfectly abnormal condo, and I've loved (almost) every minute of it.

Is your household perfectly abnormal too? Well then, rock on.

A Quick Guide to Mini Trampolines Reviewed

Mini trampolines are held in high regard among the most respected of health professionals. As Dr James White put it...
"Rebounding is the closest thing to the fountain of youth that science has found."James R. White, Ph.D., author of Jump for Joy

If you're thinking of buying a piece of exercise equipment for the home or a rehab facility you'd do well to consider a mini trampoline. This buyer's guide highlights the key benefits of rebounding and then offers some advice on what to look out for in a good quality trampoline.

Dr Paul Cheney, one of the leading doctors in the research and treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, recommends rebounding to his patients. Why? He believes that rebounding is the most effective way to stimulate the autonomic nervous system. And he's not alone.

NASA use these as part of their program to rehabilitate astronauts after they've spent weeks in weightlessness. Established cancer expert Al Carter is also an advocate of rebounding and it's healing properties. Renowned for his Healthy Cell Theory described in his book "The Cancer Answer", Al has had his work verified by NASA, the US Air Force and the University of Hong Kong.

Perhaps one explanation for why rebounding is so beneficial can be taken from examining the immune system's response to exercise...

The immune system is essentially made up monocytes, neutrophils, macrophages and lymphocytes (collectively referred to as white blood cells). It's the job of white blood cells to fight infection and neutralize malignant cells. Most white blood cells can be located in the lymph nodes and traverse through the body via the lymphatic system. However, unlike the cardiovascular system, the lymphatic system does not have a pump...

Movement has been shown to increase lymphatic flow by up to 30 times when compared to rest. The rebounding action is considered to be one of the most effective ways to increase the flow of lymph fluid throughout the body. In essence if you want an efficient immune system, move around, and do lots of it.

Aside from the exercising and movement components of rebounding, some experts believe they have an additional therapeutic value. According to Bounceforjoy.com..

"Rebounding is an advanced exercise science in that it is a cellular exercise; all cells will become stronger. This includes all muscles, bones, skin, connective tissue, vital organs, and the muscles of digestion and elimination. How?

The common denominator of all exercise is opposition to gravity. What's more, with rebound exercise, you also utilize two other natural dynamic forces:

Acceleration.
Deceleration.

When your body stops its downward movement at the bottom of the bounce, the force of deceleration is added to the force of gravity. Einstein proved that the physical body couldn’t distinguish between acceleration, deceleration and gravity. So the body interprets the combined force as an increase in gravity.

So that's why all the cells have to adjust to what is perceived by them as a more demanding internal environment by becoming individually and collectively stronger."

An estimated 24 million Americans (90% women) do aerobic dance exercise. An estimated 43% sustain injuries. It's no secret that high impact aerobic exercise, including jogging, places an extraordinary amount of stress on the joints. Rebounding on a mini trampoline is virtually stress free making it an ideal form of activity for people with arthritis or overuse injuries.

To sum up, it appears that at worst mini trampolines offer a convenient and effective form of aerobic exercise. At best they could be one of the most healthful forms of activity discovered. With that in mind let's have a look at some mini trampolines...

Are All Mini Trampolines Created Equal?
Mini trampolines range anywhere from $30 to $250. Although all trampolines offer the same healthful benefits outlined above, Below are some in different price brackets. If you search online for mini trampolines you'll find two types of merchants selling them...

Firstly there are the specialist stores that are geared to selling one brand of mini trampoline. Needak and ReboundAir are examples. These are the highest quality mini trampolines you'll find and will last you a lifetime. The general fitness stores sell more "commercialized" brands.

Another good site for more information is:

http://www.improving-health-and-energy.com/mini-trampoline-exercise.html

Day 6 of Low Dose Alpha Interferon

Well it's Day 6 of the treatment. I haven't really had a bad herx (compared to previous herxes where I felt like I was DYING!) so i don't know if that's bad or good! I did get an unusual fever spike up to 100 (usually my fevers tend to waver between 99.2 and 99.8) and I also had my rash reappear on my hands for a few days then go away.

But other than that, I've continued to have the same icky Lyme symptoms (achy joints, insomnia, brain fog, muscle weakness in my legs, blah blah blah). I think I remember hearing something about around Day 8 I might notice a difference so we'll see.

Tomorrow (actually in 21 minutes!) is my birthday so it would be nice if my Lyme doesn't flare up and I can actually enjoy it. My daughter is going to make me some sugar free cupcakes (I can't eat sugar right now) so she's going to surprise me with something. Mmmmm.

Also I told my mom about the rebounder trampolines and the health benefits for people with chronic illnesses and she said she would buy me one for my bday! yay! So right now I'm researching them to make sure I get the best one. I found a great article about it and wanted to share it with you so I'll include it in separate post.

Hope all my Lyme buddies are well and I think of you guys all the time hoping that your treatments are helping.

Day One of a new Lyme Treatment

Tonight is my first dose of a new treatment. It is called ViraPress and is low dose alpha interferon. (See www.virapress.com for more details) At last months Lyme Meeting, we had 2 gentlemen speak about its uses in all sorts of diseases and conditions - mostly focused on autoimmune and viral, however, it has proven to work with bacterial pathogens as well. In a nutshell, it is designed to boost your immune system up to the level where it can fight off the invaders inside your body - in my case that would be the Lyme spirochetes. I am keeping a journal for 30 days as part of a Health Benefit Study for the company and am crossing my fingers that I see some symptom relief. Right now my biggest problems are neurological, joint pain and fatigue. For some reason my fevers have gone down for the last 3 days which is a good sign, but it's done that before, so I won't get excited just yet.

I hope to have some kind of improvement within the next week and if so, I'll post more info on the low dose interferon. If you're curious about it in the meantime, just do a Google search and there are hundreds of articles and clinical trials about low and high dose (that's the kind you would receive by IV in a hospital) interferon.

Have had continuing muscle weakness in my legs and feel them "giving out slightly" pretty much every day (which is why I use a cane)

I've also had problems with some sort of sinus infection for a week (have also been REALLY dizzy all the time) and I never had a single allergy before I had Lyme. Last night I tried a version of the Neti Pot saline solution wash which is VERY weird if you've never done it before! You shoot the solution into your nostril and it comes out THE OTHER NOSTRIL! I have issues with putting things in my nose so I had to really get the courage up to do this! :) It still hasn't completely cleared up the sinus congestion so i may have to also use something stronger like a sinus decongestent? This is all so new to me since I've never had issues with my sinuses. I don't even know what products to get!