I won't pretend I understand much of this

[Hopeny]

http://www.ilads.org/ilads_news/2012/robert-c-bransfield-md-the-psychoimmunology-of-lymetick-borne-diseases-and-its-association-with-neuropsychiatric-symptoms/

Robert C. Bransfield, MD – The Psychoimmunology of Lyme/Tick-Borne Diseases and its Association with Neuropsychiatric Symptoms

Edited October 21, 2012 by Hopeny

[rowingmom]

Thanks for the link. I need to read through a couple of more times, but this struck a cord:

 

"Interferon treatment for Hepatitis C and other conditions is a good model for demonstrating inflammation mediated mental symptoms. Symptoms seen with interferon treatment include cognitive impairments, depression, anxiety, mania, irritability, impulsiveness, hostility, relapse of substance abuse and lassitude [19,20]."

 

Funny thing is that one of the herbs that Stephen Buhner suggests for boosting the immune system against first time lyme infection in an endemic area is astragalus. He mentions in his book Healing Lyme that it boosts the body's production of interferon. He also cautions not to take astragalus if you are currently dealing with a lyme infection as it will increase your Th1 response, increasing cytokines and causing more fatigue, muscle pain and brain fog.

 

On his blog a couple of people have written in asking if they could start astragalus while they are in lyme remission. He said, yes, that if you had not experienced symptoms for some time that it was OK to give it a try.

 

As I was feeling pretty well this spring I thought I would try boosting my immune system with astragalus, and that if I did have low level lyme astragalus might help to get rid of it. The first 3 days of 3 capsules per day were wonderful, thinking was very clear. I was literally doing cartwheels in the back yard (hope the neighbours weren't looking), but after that I started developing fatigue and flu-like muscle soreness (I ended up quitting the herb after about a week) that has only now really resolved, and that was after taking aleve (anti-inflammatory) every other day all summer long. I also experienced over-all body soreness after bicycle riding (25 miles @ 20mph) which is weird for me, I usually only have soreness in my quads - exercise boosts the immune system as well and this seemed to be sending me over the edge into overall inflammation. The anti-inflammatories were not helping my cartilage renewal and for most of the summer my knees felt weak as well.

 

I had a feeling that this was what was going on because of astragalus. The same thing happened when I experimented on myself with Virapress, the bovine immunoglobulin supplement, but the symptoms did not last for that long.

 

I am just an experiment of N=1.

Edited October 22, 2012 by rowingmom