Milk thistle - detox reaction or just allergic? Headaches.

[Wombat140]

PLEASE READ - Important: please read this posting before replying to anything I post: http://latitudes.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=24834#entry186170

 

I've been taking milk thistle - or trying to - as part of a Lyme disease protocol, or rather as a precatuin against the possible effects of a Lyme disease rotocal. I took it for a week and within a few days I started having headaches all the time, ending with what was unmistakably one of my old familiar migraines, feeling sick and everything, though I fell asleep before I got as far as actually being sick. I didn't take the milk thistle that evening (not becaude I was suspicious but jsut because I couldn't face taking it!) Headache had gone by nect day. I didn't start the milk thistle again, and the headache didn't come back. Since then, I've tried it twice, leaving a few days in between, and each time the headache has come back within a few hours.

 

My question is, is this some kind of detoxification reaction and will go, or am I just allergic to milk thistle?

 

I didn't think milk thistle was supposed to have a=an effct over such a short time anyway, I swa eome say that it took about a month for the liver enzmye readings to get back t narmol if they'd been up before you started taking it.

 

The annyoing thing is that it did seem a bit better, OCD wise, while I was taking it.

 

I'm not allericg to ragowrt pollen.

 

I do have CBS +/-.

[bws1565]

I have read up on milk thistle, and although some do say its great for liver, I have seen otherwise. Milk thistle is a liver protector. It protects the liver. Your liver is supposed to protect you from toxins. Now, since your liver will be protected your OCD might get better, but headaches is definitely a liver symptom. So I think milk thistle is not a good idea for you.

 

I have used a product called "liver balance" from the company Pure Body Institute of Ventura, with excellent results. You can also read up on his products on the website www.pbiv.com

[Wombat140]

But if that does the opposite of what milk thistle does (at least, you seem to think taht milk thistle does the opposite of what I should be doing), then would that make my OCD worse? The trouble is, I'd sooner have migraines than OCD!

 

Anyone else - is there anything else that might do the same job as mlik thistle without being it?

[Wombat140]

Hmm. I could really do with some advice, if anyone has any.

 

The latest is: In desperation, on April 10th I started taking the milk thistle again - but I didn't get a headache and the OCD didn't budge. I'm still taking it but nothing's happening.

 

What should I do? Can anyone think what's going on? If it was indeed that it did work the first time, why isn't it working now?

 

I suppose it's possible that it wasd a delayed reaction to another thing, not the milk thistle at all. But then, I'm still taking all the other things I was taking at that point, plus a few new ones, so why the change?

 

An intriguing thing is that the milk thistle seeds aren't meant to do anything for the Lyme disease directly; the point of them is to help with herx reactions caused by other things, by helping to get rid of the gunk released by killing off bacteria. So if it really was the milk thistle that helped, that seems to suggest that some of the other things WERE doins something. (The other things I was taking at the time were Echinacea angustifolia, selenium and green tea extract. I'm aware that these aren't usually considered first priority herbs, by the way. there are resons for that - my OCD won't let me take a lot of the "main" ones, so I'm just taking whatever relevant herbs IO can. And I haven't dared take any directly antibacterial ones yet because I'm in such a bad way I didn't dare take the risk of a herx.)

 

Any help would be much appreciated. I really am despearate for help for help, and the milk thistle is the only thing that I've treid since I started with the herbal things in early March that does seem to have actually made things better! In general, it's just gone slowly downhill since Istarted on the herbal treatments.

[Wombat140]

Incidentally, how do I tell if I'm a "5 drops only" person? The book mentiones that about 1% of people with Lyme disease are hypersensitive to all outside substances and can't tolerate more than 1-5 drops of a rememdy. How do I tell if I'm one of them?

I was rather suspicious as I have a history pf bad reactions to things, so I started with 5 drops (echinacea), then as nothing mucn seems to be happening, IO went up to a full odse of 1 tsp, but there didn't seem to be any difference.

I later went down to 5 drops again, because things had been rallly dire, but things contiuniued much the same i.e. bad.

How do I know which is right? What is "being unable to tolerate higher doses" supposed to consist of?