WHAT IS BRAIN FOG, EXACTLY? WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE? WHAT CAN A PATIENT DO TO GET RID OF IT?
Writing a weekly blog post is a thrilling and rewarding process. I love connecting with readers like me over various aspects of living with tick-borne illness, and I’m grateful to be able to share my story. I’m also thankful to have the physical ability to write on a tight deadline, which I haven’t always been able to do. In my worst days of fighting Lyme disease and two of its co-infections babesia and Ehrlichia, I couldn’t write at all. This was in part due to the achiness of my joints, but mostly, it was due to brain fog.
So what is brain fog, exactly? What does it feel like? What can a patient do to get rid of it? Now that I have greater neurological clarity, I can offer some information and tips on what I’ve learned about this frustrating symptom.
What is brain fog?
Lyme is an inflammatory disease. When Lyme pathogens in the form of spirochetes cross the blood-brain barrier, inflammation occurs in the central nervous system. “Common neurocognitive problems include poor memory, slower speed of thinking, difficulty with retrieval of words, and impaired fine motor control,” writes Brian A. Fallon, MD and Jennifer Sotsky, MD, in their book Conquering Lyme Disease: Science Bridges the Great Divide. “The slower mental processing speed contributes to the patient’s experience of ‘brain fog,’”[i]
A Johns Hopkins study published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation showed that scans done on 12 patients with Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS) all showed a chemical marker for brain inflammation, compared with 19 healthy controls. In an article published by Hopkins Medicine, Dr. John Aucott, Director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center said: “What this study does is provide evidence that the brain fog in patients with [PTLDS] has a physiological basis and [that it] isn’t just psychosomatic or related to depression or anxiety.”[ii]
A patient with brain fog can experience delayed response times, making it difficult for them to write clearly or comprehend text or conversation. As Drs. Fallon and Sotsky explain, “Patients may have difficulty reading and find that when they move on to the next paragraph, they have forgotten what they [just]read before….Patients may have spatial disorientation such that familiar routes become suddenly difficult to navigate or appear unfamiliar… [Or] patients may have new on-set dyslexic changes, reversing numbers or letters when writing or words and phrases when speaking. They may confuse left and right and may find themselves making verbal errors that are uncharacteristic of them.…Other examples of cognitive errors might include placing the cereal box in the refrigerator or asking one’s spouse to please put the milk back in the radiator.”i
What does brain fog feel like?
During a relapse of my tick-borne illnesses, I had a brain scan done that showed this precise type of inflammation, which made for a lack of oxygen to the left side of my brain. What did those symptoms actually feel like inside my head? In my post, Living With Lyme Brain, I likened brain fog to thick molasses that slowly pours into all the crevices of your brain, until it feels so full that it might explode out of your skull. When I was at my sickest, I felt this fog all the time and wished I could open a spigot to relieve the pressure.
As I got better, my brain fog dissipated, but it still returns from time to time. It can come on slowly, like mist settling over a valley, and can then build into an impenetrable cloud. I get it when I’m neurologically over stimulated: after watching a fast-paced TV show, while hearing loud music, or after reading for too long. “Too long” is defined differently for every patient; at my lowest points, one sentence was hard to comprehend. Eventually, I could read a short article in a light entertainment magazine. Now I can read a whole book, but I still need to pace it out, chapter by chapter.
If I read for too long, I feel pressure start to build, beginning at the base of my cranium and then spreading up over my eyes. Once my head gets full, I struggle to find the right vocabulary, and sometimes I invert my word order. When the brain fog builds to this intense point, it causes me to be very tired. A graduate school professor once joked, “Sometimes, without warning, Jen runs out of steam.” He was right. Suddenly, my eyes would glaze over and I’d zone out.
Sometimes brain fog comes on not from neurological overstimulation but from physical fatigue. When I exercise for too long, or push myself too hard before an afternoon nap, I feel brain fog come on even if I haven’t been doing anything intellectual.
Once I hit this level of fatigue, it becomes hard for me to think clearly. This doesn’t just mean losing the ability to read a book or grade a student’s essay. I get recurring thoughts and feel sensitive and sad. I ask myself, am I actually feeling upset about a situation, or am I just experiencing brain fog?
What I do about brain fog
Once I’ve determined I’m experiencing brain fog, here’s what has helped the most to alleviate it:
Antibiotics: To alleviate the symptom of brain fog, you have to eliminate the cause: spirochetes. Lyme is a bacterial infection that needs to be treated with antibiotic therapy. My brain fog did not get better until I’d been on enough antibiotic therapy to really get at the spirochetes in my brain. Due to Herxheimer reactions, the brain fog actually got worse before it got better, but long-term antibiotic therapy eventually cleared up my infection enough to check the inflammation in my brain. The appropriate antibiotic protocol, and length of treatment, is different for every patient. What worked for me might not work for you, so it would not help you to learn about my specific protocol. Please discuss your symptoms and treatment with a Lyme Literate Medical Doctor (LLMD).
Anti-inflammatory medication: My LLMD put me on an anti-inflammatory medication that worked in conjunction with my antibiotic to get across the blood-brain barrier. This was a prescription medication, different than over-the-counter anti-inflammatory pills.
Herbal/nutritional supplements: Certain supplements such as essential fatty acids can help reduce inflammation in the brain. Talk with your LLMD about which supplements would be best for you.
Anti-inflammatory diet: For me, it helped to eliminate sugar and gluten from my diet. For others, it also helps to eliminate dairy. Some foods like certain green vegetables, nuts, lemon, ginger, and blueberries are known to have anti-inflammatory properties.
Water: The more you can flush your system, the faster you will eliminate live and dead Lyme bacteria (just be sure to keep your electrolytes balanced; I do so with electrolyte-infused water).
Time limits: To stop my brain fog before it starts, I impose time limits on my screen and reading time. Even if I’m feeling okay after an hour of watching TV, I make myself take a break, so that the fog doesn’t suddenly come rolling in.
Rest: These days, the very best thing I can do when my brain fog flares is rest, rest, rest. This means sleep, but it also means just having some quiet down time lying on the couch or going for a short walk. Many people think of reading or watching TV as resting, but for a patient with neurological Lyme disease, that is not the case. We need quiet, calm activities like coloring, baths, or soft instrumental music. The idea is to shut your brain off—to get away from screens, noises, and other stimuli.
Brain fog can be overwhelming. When you’re experiencing it, you might feel like the pressure in your head will never go away. With time, rest, and proper treatment, though, the fog eventually lifts so you can enjoy clearer skies.
[i] Fallon, Brian A. and Sotsky, Jennifer. Conquering Lyme Disease: Science Bridges the Great Divide. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018 (52, 314).
Jennifer Crystal is a writer and educator in Boston. Her memoir about her medical journey is forthcoming. Contact her at lymewarriorjennifercrystal@gmail.com.
[#MeAgain] Escaping the Diagnosis Merry-Go-Round: How Jennifer Casstevens Got on the Right Path to Lyme Recovery
By Jenny Lelwica Buttaccio
Posted 10/30/19
“I know the exact date it happened,” says Jennifer Casstevens, a mother of two and group travel agent in Oak Island, North Carolina. “It was October 12th, 2016. I woke up that day, and I thought I had the flu again.”
During the year prior, Jennifer had experienced a couple of episodes where she thought she had the flu, but after four of five days of just feeling bad, she recovered. “This time, it didn’t get better; the symptoms started piling on each other.”
The days leading up to Jennifer’s epic flu-like symptoms were nothing noteworthy. In fact, the day before, she and her husband had driven a couple of hours to pick up a car, and they returned home later that evening without incidence.
By the following morning, however, Jennifer says, “For whatever reason, I just couldn’t get out of bed. My family started to worry, and they wanted me to go to the doctor. It was scary.”
Growing up, Jennifer lived in Virginia and spent a significant amount of time outdoors. She’d always been an avid sports enthusiast, playing softball from the time she was 8 years old through her college years at Virginia Tech and beyond.
“I was always outside; that’s just how it was. We rode bikes around the neighborhood and all that kind of stuff.” Jennifer recalls being bitten by a tick when she was in elementary school and her mother removing it. “I never had anything happen; I never got a rash.” Aside from an occasional sinus infection, she was a healthy kid and rarely got sick.
The first hints that something wasn’t quite right with her health came in her early to mid-20s. She describes those initial symptoms as ringing in her ears, carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), and temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunction. “They would just come and go. They happened one at a time over spans of time, so I didn’t put them together until I got really sick,” she says.
And so, on that pivotal day in 2016, Jennifer sought help at her local urgent care. There, the doctor diagnosed her with a bladder infection. “I’ve never had one in my life,” she explains. “I don’t know how they came up with it, but I went along with it because I had a little bit of back pain.”
She was put on antibiotics, but they failed to offer her any relief. Instead, her conditioned worsened as she experienced unrelenting fatigue, severe tailbone pain, and extreme numbness on her torso, including her hips and stomach. “There was no feeling there,” she describes. “Just numbness.”
“When the doctor allotted an hour for our first appointment and let me talk and askedme questions, it was like having someone finally look at me as a whole person.”
Next, Jennifer saw a gastroenterologist and a neurologist. She underwent a battery of tests, including a colonoscopy and an MRI. In an all-too-familiar story, her tests came back normal. By the end of 2016, Jennifer had maxed out her health insurance benefits with no clue as to what was wrong with her.
In January 2017, Jennifer decided to pay her primary care physician (PCP) a visit and request an ELISA test to check for Lyme disease. She had an aunt who had dealt with chronic Lyme disease, and since her doctors kept coming up empty-handed with helpful diagnoses or solutions, Jennifer wondered if perhaps that’s what was causing her to feel so unwell. She recounts the resistance she encountered when broaching the subject of a tick-borne disease as a possible cause of her symptoms.
“The doctor basically told me that I didn’t look like a Lyme patient and said, ‘But we can just test for it if you want to,’” Jennifer says. “Of course, the results were negative, and it was kind of like an ‘I told you so’ reply to the test. So I wrote Lyme off.”
Jennifer’s next stop was with a spine specialist due to her persistent tailbone pain, and her husband accompanied her to the appointment. After the spine specialist had reviewed her files, he told her, “You probably have something that they don’t teach us about in medical school. If it were my wife, I would look for tertiary care.”
In other words, she and her husband needed to seek answers at one of the country’s highly specialized medical institutions. They soldiered on, and Jennifer made an appointment for the following month at a well-known, out-of-state clinic. There, she received a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, a recommendation to attend the clinic’s chronic pain program, and suggestions for two medications.
Jennifer returned to North Carolina and took the medications for fibromyalgia regularly, but they weren’t providing her with any relief. So, after 45 days, she stopped taking them and pursued yet another avenue — a urogynecologist.
He diagnosed her with pelvic floor dysfunction, and for a short time, Jennifer thought she might be on the right track. But her hope was short-lived. “I paid an obscene amount of money for treatment, and I still didn’t feel better,” she says.
Fortunately, a breakthrough was just around the corner. In August 2017, Jennifer received a recommendation from a family member for an integrative health practice in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This appointment was unusual compared to all others, because the doctor allotted an hour time slot for her first appointment.
“He let me talk for an hour; he asked me questions,” Jennifer recalls. “That was probably the most I’d talked to anybody. Most of the time, I was in and out in 15 minutes with every doctor that I saw, and I probably saw 18 doctors before I saw him!”
“That was shocking: I had pretty much dismissed Lyme because of the ELISA test and the comment my PCP had made,” says Jennifer. “It was like having someone finally look at me as a whole person.
The doctor suggested she begin a 75-day course of antibiotics. Once the antibiotic therapy was finished, she switched to experimenting with herbal protocols.
“Basically, I was self-dosing on the herbal protocol,” says Jennifer. “I spent most of 2018 trying to find the right combinations, because some herbs would make me nauseous, so I would stop taking them. I knew that wasn’t the best path. I never could get that combination right.”
To help ease her symptoms, Jennifer began acupuncture, which she found extremely helpful. She also explored neuromuscular massage therapy, a type of soft tissue manipulation that works on the muscular and nervous systems, which was key to improving her long-standing tailbone pain.
In December 2018, Jennifer returned to her doctor for a follow-up appointment, but blood tests were still showing markers for Lyme. At that point, her doctor suggested she try Dr. Bill Rawls’ herbal protocol. When Jennifer looked into it, she was shocked by how simple the plan was.
“Remember that once you come out on the other side, you’re going to feel better. You think it’s a setback, but actually, it’s a breakthrough.”“I told my husband, ‘I think it’s herbs for dummies, because it looks easy,’ recalls Jennifer. “It’s all there in four bottles, and this is what I take, and it didn’t make me nauseous. I was like, I can handle this!” Dr. Rawls’ combination of herbs quelled her nausea, allowing her to feel significantly better, and it worked well in combination with the additional herbs and medications she was taking.
In addition to Dr. Rawls’ protocol, Jennifer has found his blog to be a valuable source of information for her. “That’s my go-to now — I just a word in the Search box, and an article will pop up that gives me my explanation,” she says.
For example, in June of this year, Jennifer was having a couple of horrible weeks. “I thought I was relapsing, and I didn’t know why.” She hopped on the website and landed on an article about the common causes of Lyme flare-ups, which helped her understand that her increasing symptoms were likely due to a flare-up and not a Herxheimer reaction.
Armed with this new information, Jennifer made an appointment with her doctor, where she learned that what she was experiencing was probably the result of a Bartonella flare. They adjusted her treatment to target the Lyme coinfection more aggressively.
While many people would be discouraged by a setback, Jennifer realized she could glean some valuable insights from what was going on in her body. She began to view bad days not as setbacks but as progress.
“Your body is trying to do something good,” says Jennifer. “Remember that once you come out on the other side, you’re going to feel better. You think it’s a setback, but actually, it’s a breakthrough.”
These days, Jennifer estimates that she’s about 60% healed. She credits Dr. Rawls’ herbal protocol for her increased energy, reduction in brain fog, and better concentration, problems that had troubled her for at least two years. She also adopted Dr. Rawls’ gut-restoring diet, cut out gluten, dairy, and refined carbohydrates, removed foods she was allergic to, and dove into the pages of his book, Unlocking Lyme.
In September, Jennifer played nine holes of golf with her husband, an activity which she hadn’t been able to do in three years. “I’ve golfed a couple of times since then, too. That was probably my number one goal, activity-wise,” says Jennifer. “It’s one of those things that makes me feel like this is me. I’ve finally gotten to that point.”
What’s her advice to other people who are seeking relief from Lyme disease and Lyme coinfections? “Be patient: Know that it’s not going to happen overnight,” says Jennifer. “I’ve made a lot of progress, and I feel like I can do a lot more now than I have in the past three years. I’m definitely on the right path now.”
Welcome to the #MeAgain Story Series. Our aim is to share stories from people who have recovered, or are recovering, from chronic disease in order to give you hope that healing is within your reach. This series will highlight their struggles and triumphs to inspire you to take action and reclaim your life. Enjoy!
I didn’t post this article to push Dr. Rawl’s herbal treatment – although both my husband and I tried it and relapsed on it. I post it to show people respond differently to treatments and it’s important to keep an open mind and to never give up. This story once again highlights the need to be as persistent as the organism itself as mainstream medicine is in a complete coma regarding tick-borne illness and is not to be trusted with your health.
All you will do is waste valuable time and money to be disbelieved and sent home with an anti-depressant.
If you or a loved one suspect tick-borne illness, get to an ILADS-trained professional, asap. The best place to find reputable practitioners is by contacting your local support groups. These people have a lot of experience and can help you. You can find a link by scrolling down the website to “find a Lyme support group.” You can also contact ILADS directly, also by scrolling down to “ILADS.”
Cindy Kennedy, FNP, is joined by Debbie Jodoin, an essential oil educator, who describes the history and use of essential oils. She discusses a healing technique called “The Raindrop Technique” that she uses with Lyme sufferers.
Debbie was an energetic, twenty-something wife and mother with a bright future when she was diagnosed with a debilitating, chronic digestive illness. When nothing seemed to work as it should she researched and then turned to essential oils.Debbie believes that essential oil therapy can help to activate an innate healing response and return your mind and body to its natural state of wholeness.
She believes that emotional and physical wellbeing are inextricably bound, and that the amazing benefits of pure essential oils and human touch can be a powerful means to achieving the lasting, overall wellness you were meant to have.
What are essential oils?
Where do they come from?
How long have they been used?
Important facts about purity and safety
Use of oils-body-ingestion-personal recipes
Frequency of oils’ usage
Can oils work as detox bodywork?
Where do you help people? Detox spa
5 Effects of Stress on the Mind and Body + 10 Tips to Reduce Stress
by Holtorf Medical Group
5 Effects of Stress on the Mind and Body & 10 Tips to Reduce Stress
We all hear about stress these days and how bad it is for our health. Many people consider stress a part of modern life and learn to live with it, but stress is not normal and it can be overcome! You just need to learn how.
Originally Posted November 2016
Updated October 2019
Knowing the far-reaching effects of stress, not only on our psychological well-being, but also on our entire bodies, can help us remember to prioritize stress management and other self-care practices.
Stress, Cortisol, and Adrenals
You may have heard these terms used together, but are not sure how they are connected. Stress is any kind of outside factor that our body perceives as a threat to our safety or well-being. Many people think this only refers to emotional stress or trauma, but it also includes physiological stress on the body, such as infection, traumatic injury, or a poor diet. Stress can also include environmental factors like exposure to chemicals and other toxins.
Cortisol is one of the hormones that our body releases in response to stress. It is probably the one most commonly associated with stress, even though there are others involved.
While this can be a very useful and sometimes life-saving response to a threat, problems can begin to occur if stress becomes frequent or chronic. As the adrenal glands become over-worked, they eventually can’t keep up with the body’s demands for the various hormones they’re responsible for.
How Stress Affects the Body
Here are a few of the major ways the mind and body are affected by chronic stress.
Mood
The adrenal glands produce more than just cortisol. They also produce neurotransmitters such as adrenaline (epinephrine), norepinephrine, and dopamine. Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that help regulate things like mood, performance, weight, pain perception, and sleep. Depending on the degree to which the adrenals have been affected, the neurotransmitters become unbalanced in various ways.
Let’s take dopamine, for example. If dopamine is too high, someone may experience anxiety, hyperactivity, or paranoia. If someone has low dopamine, it can lead to addiction, cravings, or depression.
Hormones
In addition to neurotransmitters and cortisol, the adrenals also produce small amounts of the sex hormones, estrogen and testosterone (and their precursors). Along with balancing out hormones based on a person’s gender, sex hormones also help keep the negative effects of too much cortisol in check, acting as an antioxidant. But once the adrenals become chronically over-worked, more and more of the precursor materials (used to make sex hormones) get diverted to make cortisol, resulting in a decrease in sex hormones.
This results in lowered libido and other symptoms related to hormonal imbalances, such as premenstrual syndrome in women or erectile dysfunction in men.
Blood Sugar Regulation
When cortisol is released, the hormone glucagon is signaled and insulin is suppressed. Glucagon controls glucose storage in the liver so that glucose can be released into the blood. Insulin is the hormone that regulates the amount of glucose being taken from the bloodstream into the cells.
During chronic stress, the cells start to become resistant to insulin, leaving blood glucose levels elevated. This is why insulin resistance is the precursor to type II diabetes.
A few symptoms of insulin resistance include inability to lose weight, high cholesterol and triglycerides, cognitive dysfunction, and elevated blood glucose or insulin levels.
The adrenal glands are part of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal-thyroid-axis (HPAT), sometimes just referred to as the HPA-axis. Here’s where the thyroid comes into play.
The adrenals are regulated by the hypothalamus and pituitary glands. When cortisol is released under stress, the hypothalamus and pituitary, which work in a feedback loop with cortisol, slow down their production of hormones. Unfortunately, this also slows down thyroid function since the hypothalamus and pituitary regulate thyroid hormones as well.
Stress can also negatively affect the enzyme that converts inactive thyroid hormone (T4) to active thyroid hormone (T3). There are a few other mechanisms involved in the stress/thyroid dysfunction connection as well. Hypothyroid symptoms such as cold extremities, dry skin, depression, and constipation often indicate sub-optimal adrenal function. Most likely, thyroid treatment will be less effective if the adrenals are not addressed as well.
Stress triggers inflammation. Our body knows that chronic inflammation is damaging, so it compensates by slowing down the immune system in order to keep the inflammation in check. The immune system is also directly suppressed during stress since it is one of those “unnecessary” functions when we’re in “fight or flight” mode. This also affects thyroid health since a suppressed immune system can activate viruses capable of attacking and damaging the thyroid.
As you can see, so many functions in the body are interconnected and related back to adrenal function and the stress response.
10 Tips to Reduce Stress and Improve Your Health
This is only a brief overview of the effects of stress on the body. Chronic stress has also been linked to cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer. It is estimated that as much of 80% of the population has weakened adrenal function.
Since there are different stages of adrenal dysfunction that require different treatments, it is a good idea to seek out a knowledgeable health care provider who can test your adrenal function and related hormones. Since many doctors only recognize adrenal disorders such as Cushing’s and Addison’s disease, you may need to search someone out who takes a more in-depth look at adrenal function using functional tests such as a salivary cortisol test.
There are some things you can do to help reduce stress which include:
Take Control of Your Thoughts
Many people have tons of negative thoughts in their head on a daily basis, without even being aware of it. This creates a stressful state and anxiety that keeps fueling your hormonal imbalances. A technique known as “thought‐stopping” can help you halt negative, obsessive thoughts.
The first step is to literally call a halt to this train of thought (like saying the word “Stop!” out loud or to yourself). Next, choose a positive thought on which you’ll focus instead. This way you’re swapping a negative, stress‐inducing thought for a positive one. To increase emotional comfort, it’s imperative to practice reassuring and realistic self‐talk (saying something along the lines of, “I am feeling anxious / irritable now, but I have the power to calm myself down.”).
Apply Self-Soothing Techniques
There are many physiological changes that are triggered, when we are faced with a stressful situation. Our breathing quickens, adrenaline is secreted, and our heart begins to race. This is called the fight or flight response – a natural survival mechanism intended to help us escape danger. However, when the threat is imagined, the fight/flight response is unnecessary and damaging to your health. Many people with chronic stress remain blocked in this state of alert, without being able to snap out of it.
Luckily, there are techniques you can learn to reduce your response to stress, like deep breathing techniques, muscle relaxation exercises and meditation. Deep breathing can help with a rapid heart beat. The most commonly utilized strategy is breathing by contracting the diaphragm, a horizontal muscle in the chest located just above the stomach cavity.
Using muscle relaxation exercises you can induce a relaxed state and physical comfort, by tightening and releasing muscles, beginning with the largest muscle group. Meditation is also a powerful way to bring back a peaceful state to your body and clearing up your mind from erratic and negative thoughts.
Check Your Diet
What does stress have to do with eating? A whole lot! What we eat and drink largely impacts our emotional state. Stimulating foods and drinks like coffee, sodas, chocolate, and alcohol can cause anxiety, trigger panic attacks, and increase feelings of nervousness and irritability, as well as trembling and shaking. Deciding to go “cold turkey” by abruptly eliminating caffeine is not always recommended since it can lead to withdrawal symptoms. You might experience headaches, restlessness, and irritability. So it’s better to decrease caffeine consumption gradually by replacing it with tea for example.
Regular alcohol consumption can also generate a lot of biochemical imbalances in your body, like blood sugar dysregulation, liver problems and dehydration, which add to the stress burden your body needs to handle.
Get Moving
By choosing your appropriate exercise routine you can reduce stress, improve mood, enhance self-esteem, and increase energy levels. Be careful not to over exercise, which can actually contribute to your stress level.
It’s a known fact that during exercise, the body releases chemicals called endorphins and norepinephrine, which interact with receptors in the brain. These chemicals determine euphoric feelings, reduction in physical pain and the ability to deal with stress more efficiently.
Get More Sleep
Losing just a few hours of sleep increases feelings of stress, anger, sadness, and exhaustion. It’s a vicious cycle since because of stress you might not be able to fall and stay asleep, but lack of sleep is also generating stress.
So try to get a solid seven to eight hours of sleep a night, and don’t feel bad about also adding a nap in the afternoon on days when you’re feeling especially drained. Go to sleep before 10 – 11 PM and don’t use the computer or watch TV before it, since these can interfere with your melatonin production and make it harder to fall and stay asleep.
Listen to Music
By choosing a type of relaxing music which you prefer, you can help the body and mind dissipate stress. Research has shown that classical music may help you unwind and improve your mood. You can also experience therapeutic CDs of “binaural beats,” which are meant to calm the mind and body and where different frequencies call forth different moods.
Begin and End the Day Right
In the morning, in order to make intelligent use of your energy for the day, take some time to reflect, meditate, read or better yet take a nature walk, away from computer and TV. You could do the same in the evening, or just simply delight in the rare pleasure of doing nothing. These can ease the stress of too much computer or office time, counteract overstimulation and boost your mood.
Doing Something Fun
Doing something fun always gets postponed due to the avalanche of responsibilities we have during the day. But without a balance in your life, frustration and so stress might arise. It’s been found that creating artwork, crafts or making time for a hobby helps to relax, can be very stress-reducing and takes your focus away from your own thoughts and worries.
Get a Massage
Massage is a great way to loosen the muscles that are habitually affected by stress. Think about all the frowning and scrunching of your face muscles and how relaxing it is to work on these! Essential oils can calm, center, and energize you by reducing the effects of stress and mental fatigue. You can give yourself a massage, while taking small breaks from your work, or you could have a professional massage to benefit your whole body.
Include Adaptogens
A class of herbs called adaptogens help your body to cope more effectively with the demands and stress of everyday life. They provide a sustained sense of calm, and while they increase energy, with the exception of Chinese ginseng, they are non-stimulating. Some of the most used adaptogens are: ashwagandha, rhodiola, holy basil, schisandra, shatavari, eleuthero.
Because of the great impact stress can have on overall health and well-being, it’s important to implement stress-reducing habits. Additionally, partnering with a knowledgeable physician to help address any underlying adrenal fatigue can prove very beneficial. Your mood, hormones, thyroid, blood sugar, and immune system (among other things) will be much healthier for it!
At Holtorf Medical Group, our physicians are trained to utilize cutting-edge testing innovative treatments to design a treatment protocol that is personalized to you. If you are experiencing symptoms of adrenal fatigue, give us a call at 877-508-1177 to see how we can help you!
References
1. NIH. “5 Things You Should Know About Stress.” National Institute of Mental Health.
2. Mayo Clinic Staff “Chronic stress puts your health at risk.” Mayo Clinic.
3. APA Staff. “Stress effects on the body.” American Psychological Association.
4. Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science. “The Physiology of stress: Cortisol and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.”https://sites.dartmouth.edu/dujs/2011/02/03/the-physiology-of-stress-cortisol-and-the-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis/
5. Harvard Health. “Understanding the stress response.” Harvard Health Publishing – Harvard Medical School.
6. Mayo Clinic Staff. “Stress symptoms: Effects on your body and behavior.” Mayo Clinic.
7. Josh Axe, DC, DMN, CNS. “7 Adaptogenic Herbs or Adaptogens that Help Reduce Stress.” Dr. Axe.
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**Comment**
This article is one of the best articles I’ve read on how stress affects the body and what you can do about it.
Lyme/MSIDS patients are in a war of epic proportions where nearly every single thing in their bodies is haywire. We need to do all within out power to reduce that stress.
The next step is precisely what this article recommends – partnering with an experienced practitioner who will help you uncover your specificimbalances. This looks differently on everyone but typically involves the thyroid and other hormone and mineral imbalances. I know of one patient who felt nearly well just by addressing the thyroid. People often don’t understand that the thyroid is the body’s thermostat and that if you have hypothyroidism (low amounts of thyroid hormone) your body’s temperature will be low allowing infections to proliferate. Address the thyroid and you’ve effectively made it tougher for pathogens to survive.
Taking appropriate supplements. Patients often complain about their Lyme literate doctor requiring them to take copious amounts of supplements. Unfortunately, they are usually right because of damage & imbalances caused by the infection(s). The goal; however, is to only take what is required.
Diet is key. This too is very individual, with some only improving by eliminating gluten, dairy, and all sugars. https://draxe.com/nutrition/elimination-diet/ This step often turns patients around entirely. Remember – food is medicine.
All the ideas in the article are very helpful and include listening to calming music.The first thing I do in the morning is turn on a relaxing music channel on Pandora. An example would be the George Winston channel. For more on binaural beats: https://www.binauralbeatsmeditation.com/the-science/
Binaural Beat demonstration. You need ear phones to listen.
If you prefer music:
Regarding essential oil diffusing: https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/diffusing-essential-oils/ After I turn Pandora on, I set up my essential oil diffuser with whatever blend I’m in the mood for. For a relaxing bedtime blend called “Counting Sheep”: 9 drops lavender, 4 chamomile, 2 frankincense, 2 bergamot. This would be for a large room. Divide in half for a small bedroom. For a grounding smell try “Peace & Harmony”: 4 drops patchouli, 4 vanilla, 3 orange.
Doing something fun seems frivolous to many patients but is so important. Unfortunately with Lyme/MSIDS, we tend to revolve around our illness. Doing something to break away from this is so important for our mental health. Whether you enroll in an art class or just buy Play dough to mess around with at home – do it. I’ve found plants relax me. My house has turned into a literal green house through the years. I love dirt! Another thing you could simply incorporate into your habits is coloring: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/modern-mentality/201803/are-adult-coloring-books-actually-helpful
Word of warning: It is often the case that when initially starting Lyme/MSIDS treatment patients are extremely sensitive to everything including light, sound, and smells. It’s always important you listen to YOUR body and although the suggestions in this article are good, they may not be good for you at the moment. If you are sensitive it’s a sure sign your body is seriously fighting a war and you need to assist it in anyway you can and often that means sunglasses even in the daytime, and eliminating ALL smells and sounds. The goal is to move past and heal from sensitivities so you can enjoy the suggestions listed here.
Final note and the best advice I was given: “Don’t be depressed about feeling depressed.” I heard this from someone I contacted online who reached the other side of health who was willing to advise me in my desperation upon starting treatment and feeling so incredibly lousy. This advice helped me more than many things as there are some seriously dark days in treatment where you think dying would just be easier. Treating for this monster is unlike anything you’ve ever done before and will require serious dedication on your part. I encourage you to find a local support group for support and ideas on your journey.
Some of the best help through the years for me has come directly from patients.
Summary: Understanding how parasites ‘hack’ the brains of their hosts may provide new insights into decision making and behavior.
Source: Frontiers
Imagine a parasite that makes an animal change its habits, guard the parasite’s offspring or even commit suicide. While mind-control may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, the phenomenon is very real — and has spawned a new field, neuro-parasitology. As outlined in an article published in Frontiers in Psychology, understanding how parasites “hack” their host’s nervous system to achieve a particular goal could provide new insights into how animals control their own behavior and make decisions.
“Parasites have evolved, through years of co-evolution with their host, a significant ‘understanding’ of their hosts’ neuro-chemical systems,” explains one of the article’s authors, Professor Frederic Libersat from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. “Exploring these highly specific mechanisms could reveal more about neural control of animal behavior.”
The article describes some of the sophisticated, cunning and gruesome ways that various parasites outwit and exploit their insect hosts.
One method is to affect how an insect navigates. The spores of one parasitic fungus, for example, invade an ant’s body, where the fungus grows and consumes the ant’s organs while leaving the vital organs intact. The fungus then releases chemicals that cause the ant to climb a tree and grip a leaf with its mouthparts. After emerging from the ant’s body, the fungus releases spore-filled capsules that explode during their fall, spreading the infectious spores over the ground below. By forcing the ant to climb a tree, the fungus increases the dispersal of the falling spores and the chance of infecting another ant.
Similarly, a parasitic hairworm causes infected crickets to seek out water — where they drown. The cricket’s suicide enables the worms to enter an aquatic environment for reproduction.
In another type of interaction, called “bodyguard manipulation,” the parasite forces the infected insect to guard its young. One such parasite is a wasp, which injects its eggs into a caterpillar by stinging it. Inside the live caterpillar, the eggs hatch into larvae, which feed on the caterpillar’s blood. Eventually, as many as 80 larvae emerge from the caterpillar’s body before forming cocoons to complete their growth into adult wasps.
However, wasp larvae are vulnerable to predators in their cocoons. To scare potential predators away, one or two larvae remain in the caterpillar and control its behavior through an unknown mechanism, so that it acts aggressively towards predators — thereby protecting the cocoons.
These examples shed light on the very old and highly specific relationship between parasites and hosts. But how exactly do these parasites affect their host’s behavior?
Neuro-parasitology is still a young field, and in most cases, researchers do not yet fully understand the mechanisms involved. However, many such parasites produce their effects by releasing compounds that act on the neural circuitry of the host. Identifying and using these compounds in the lab could help scientists to work out how neural circuits control behavior.
“Because neurotoxins are the outcome of one animal’s evolutionary strategy to incapacitate another, they are usually highly effective and specific,” says Libersat.
“Chemical engineers can generate hundreds of potential neurotoxins in the lab, but these are random and often useless, whereas any natural neurotoxin has already passed the ultimate screening test, over millions of years of co-evolution.”
ABOUT THIS NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLE
Source: Frontiers Media Contacts:
Conn Hastings – Frontiers Image Source:
The image is adapted from the Frontiers news release.
Mind Control: How Parasites Manipulate Cognitive Functions in Their Insect Hosts
Neuro-parasitology is an emerging branch of science that deals with parasites that can control the nervous system of the host. It offers the possibility of discovering how one species (the parasite) modifies a particular neural network, and thus particular behaviors, of another species (the host). Such parasite–host interactions, developed over millions of years of evolution, provide unique tools by which one can determine how neuromodulation up-or-down regulates specific behaviors. In some of the most fascinating manipulations, the parasite taps into the host brain neuronal circuities to manipulate hosts cognitive functions. To name just a few examples, some worms induce crickets and other terrestrial insects to commit suicide in water, enabling the exit of the parasite into an aquatic environment favorable to its reproduction. In another example of behavioral manipulation, ants that consumed the secretions of a caterpillar containing dopamine are less likely to move away from the caterpillar and more likely to be aggressive. This benefits the caterpillar for without its ant bodyguards, it is more likely to be predated upon or attacked by parasitic insects that would lay eggs inside its body. Another example is the parasitic wasp, which induces a guarding behavior in its ladybug host in collaboration with a viral mutualist. To exert long-term behavioral manipulation of the host, parasite must secrete compounds that act through secondary messengers and/or directly on genes often modifying gene expression to produce long-lasting effects.
Parasite patients often express the psyche of the parasites – sticky, clingy, impossible to tolerate – but a wonderful human being is behind all of that.
We are all a composite of many personalities. Chronic infections outnumber our own cells by 10:1. We are 90% “other” and 10% “us”. Our consciousness is a composite of 90% microbes and 10% us.
Our thinking, feeling, creativity, and expression are 90% from the microbes within us. Patients often think, crave, and behave as if they are the parasite.
Our thinking is shaded by the microbes thinking through us. The food choices, behavioral choices, and who we like is the thinking of the microbes within us expressing themselves.
Patients will reject all treatments that affect the issue that requires treating.
Patients will not guide themselves to health when the microbes have taken over.
And, as mentioned in this article: the fungus Cordyceps hijacks the ant to propitiate itself but here again, many Lyme patients use Cordyceps to fight microbes, lower inflammation, and increase energy and oxygen: https://rawlsmd.com/herbs/cordyceps
![[#MeAgain] Escaping the Diagnosis Merry-Go-Round: How Jennifer Casstevens Got on the Right Path to Lyme Recovery](https://rawlsmd.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Jennifer-Casstevens-Escaped-the-Lyme-Diagnosis-Merry-Go-Round.jpg)
Growing up, Jennifer lived in Virginia and spent a significant amount of time outdoors. She’d always been an avid sports enthusiast, playing softball from the time she was 8 years old through her college years at Virginia Tech and beyond.
Jennifer returned to North Carolina and took the medications for fibromyalgia regularly, but they weren’t providing her with any relief. So, after 45 days, she stopped taking them and pursued yet another avenue — a urogynecologist.
NEUROSCIENCE NEWS
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 