Low-dose naltrexone (LDN) is very useful in Lyme disease. This low-cost medicine can
improve nerve, muscle, and inflammation pain,
decrease autoimmune illness triggered by Lyme,
improve mast cell activation symptoms,
lower cytokine inflammation, and
improve immune system function by increasing TRegs to balance Th1 and Th2.
In this article, I review the science and method for how LDN works. I describe how to use it in Lyme disease, and I review potential side effects. (See link for article & video)
Our guest poster, Sally Norton, B.S., MPH, is an expert in oxalates, compounds found in many so-called healthy foods that can, in excessive amounts, cause chronic pain and create havoc with your health.
What is oxalate and how can it impact your health?
1. Oxalic acid: What is it?
A naturally occurring tiny molecule that is a toxic, corrosive acid
When it has minerals attached to it, it is called Oxalate. (chemically a salt)
(E.g. sodium oxalate, potassium oxalate, magnesium oxalate, calcium oxalate)
Oxalate likes to form crystals. Most kidney stones contain calcium oxalate.
Plants make it, possibly for mineral management, seed germination, or self-defense
You eat it, in many foods. It comes in many forms, both dissolved and as crystals, in a variety of shapes and sizes
Some foods have a lot of it, some have very little
Examples of High Oxalate Foods: beans, grains, bran, sesame and other seeds, peanuts, almonds, and other nuts, swiss chard, spinach, beets, potatoes, chocolate, rhubarb, figs, kiwi, blackberries, black pepper, cumin, turmeric.
Examples of Low Oxalate Foods:
meats, dairy, eggs, fats and oils, and other non-plant foods
arugula, avocado, Bok Choy, cabbage, cauliflower, cilantro, cucumber, garlic, kohlrabi, lettuce, mustard greens, mushrooms, green peas, watercress
Your body makes it. Oxalate is a metabolic waste product in mammals with no known function
Higher amounts are made when:
Deficient in B6, or
High doses of vitamin C are taken or injected
Some fungi make it, possibly for mineral management, especially in soil
Can be made by Aspergillus fungi living in the body
3. How can oxalate harm you?
The body has no way to disarm oxalate and must excrete it. When cells are required to handle oxalate they are moving it or “managing” it, not metabolizing it. This is dangerous work for a cell.
It steals minerals from your diet and your body and makes them useless (it is an “anti-nutrient”)
Soluble forms of oxalate (sodium oxalate and potassium oxalate) can be picked up by other minerals like magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc, copper, etc. This locks up the mineral. Oxalate may also bind with toxic metals such as lead, mercury, aluminum, or cadmium.
Mineral deficiency causes growth, reproductive, and other problems
It is corrosive to the lining of the digestive system, may cause leaky gut or other GI diseases. Some Oxalate crystals have a needle shape known to perforate mucus membrane cells.
Challenges the kidneys and can overwhelm their capacity to remove oxalates from the blood
Forms nanocrystals and microcrystals that can collect in the body and irritate tissues
Oxalate crystals can collect in any body tissue, even the plaque in your arteries
kidney stones usually contain oxalate crystals
Soluble forms of oxalate are absorbed from food and trigger inflammation, causing:
Membrane and mitochondria damage, and cell death (fatigue and energy issues)
Nerve cell damage, pain, and functional problems associated with the brain and nerves
Dysfunction of cells, organs, glands
Depletion of the antioxidant glutathione in cells. Low levels of glutathione can generate superoxide radicals, increasing toxic stress causing early cell death. Glutathione is especially important in the liver for the detoxification of chemicals. It is also important in preserving brain health.
Cell communication problems (autoimmunity, hormonal issues, neurological issues). For example: Oxalate can confuse and stress the immune system, creating auto-immune symptoms.
Destroys connective tissue’s key building block (hyaluronic acid)
makes it much harder to fully recover from injury, even surgery
can weaken or destabilize joints, bones, skin (skin may be thin or easily damaged)
can make you injury prone
May deplete the B-vitamins, B6 and biotin
Uses up vitamin B6, possibly initiating a vicious cycle. B6 deficiency increases internal production of oxalate, increases oxalate load, further depleting B6, and so on.
Can alter biotin metabolism, depleting biotin
Can lead to a wide range of problems, throughout the body
Kidney damage
Damage to intestines, may contribute to the development of celiac disease and “leaky gut”
Breathing problems, mucus production, and congestion
Contributes to aging, and can make you feel old prematurely
These problems don’t always cause obvious symptoms. Onset may include a generalized malaise, poor concentration, some sort of “-itis” (gastroenteritis, tendonitis), joint stiffness, swelling, muscle pain or weakness.
Oxalate damage is not a sensitivity or allergy. It is a toxicity problem.
Reversal of oxalate toxicity is an avoidance and excretion issue. It is not a matter of boosting liver function as is typically addressed in “detox” regimens.
Sally K. Norton is an expert in oxalates. She has a Bachelor of Science in Nutrtion from Cornell University and a Master of Publich Health Degree from the University of North Carolina. She has been doing health education and research in nutrition for 35 years and provides virtual nutritional coaching and consulting. She became interested in oxalates due to her own personal experience. Her book, Toxic Superfoods: How Oxalate Overload is Making You Sick and How to Get Better was recently published by Rodale Books. Learn more at https://sallyknorton.com/
While I have not used it personally, my husband has had success with prolotherapy which is explained in the video called “Pain Revealed” within this article.
Tormented by severe facial pain, Hugh Spencer invented a nonsurgical way to relieve his trigeminal neuralgia. He found the remedy—capsaicin—inside a canister of pepper spray.
Nineteen years ago, in a distant corner of northeast Australia, a scientist named Hugh Spencer started suffering horrible attacks of pain on the left side of his head. It felt as if someone were striking him with an axe. A neurobiologist by training, Spencer—in his 50s at the time—feared that he was experiencing the first foreboding glimmers of an agonizing ailment called trigeminal neuralgia.
It’s a neurological disorder that happens when the trigeminal nerve—a major cranial nerve that affects facial sensations and chewing—goes haywire, often for unknown reasons. It then floods the spinal cord and brain with ferocious pain signals. Typically described as electrical or stabbing, the facial pain can be so unbearable that trigeminal neuralgia has been dubbed “the suicide disease.” And indeed, Spencer—unable to control his escalating pain with medications alone—eventually found himself nearly pushed to the brink.
If his medical ordeal weren’t challenging enough, he also had to deal with one other obstacle: geographic remoteness rivaling that of Gilligan’s Island. Spencer runs an environmental research station at Cape Tribulation. There, scientists from around the world study everything from flying foxes to invasive weed species. Located along a coastline teeming with crocodiles, pythons, and ostrichlike cassowaries, his research station is actually closer to Papua New Guinea than to any major city in Australia. In fact, his nearest neighbor is the oldest tropical rainforest on earth.
When you’re that far off the beaten track, you’re forced to be self-reliant. So Spencer got to work. And through some daunting experiments in which he cast himself in the role of guinea pig, he came up with his own treatment for trigeminal neuralgia that permanently eliminated his pain. What’s more, his treatment is low-tech. It’s low-cost. It’s do-it-yourself. And anatomically, it makes sense, though it hasn’t gone through clinical trials.Hundreds of people with trigeminal neuralgia have now tried his method, and for about half of them, says Spencer, it’s worked. And it involves no pharmaceuticals, no surgery, and—he insists—no long-term side effects.
Conventional treatments for trigeminal neuralgia can’t make that same claim. The problem with medications, aside from possible side effects, is that they may fail to prevent the pain from intensifying over time. And various surgical procedures don’t always work but can lead to scary complications. For example, microvascular decompression surgery (MVD)—a type of brain surgery—is designed to relieve the pain without harming the trigeminal nerve. But here’s the bad news: the procedure involves cutting open the skull and tinkering with what’s inside, which poses a risk of complications, including hearing loss, cerebrospinal-fluid leakage, stroke, and even death.
By contrast, other less-invasive surgical options intentionally damage the trigeminal nerve in hopes of disrupting its ability to transmit pain signals. For example, radiosurgery (a.k.a. Gamma Knife or CyberKnife) uses radiation to do it. Balloon compression rhizotomy uses pressure. Glycerol injection uses a corrosive chemical. And radiofrequency thermal lesioning uses heat.
The problem is, the trigeminal nerve doesn’t just register pain. It also allows you to feel normal facial sensations—everything from the wind on your cheek to a kiss on the lips. So by messing with that nerve, these procedures can sometimes cause troubling facial numbness. What’s more, they aren’t always successful at stopping the pain or preventing it from coming back.
By contrast, Spencer argues that his approach poses no lasting complications. And it uses a chemical so ubiquitous that you probably ate it the last time you dined at a Mexican, Thai, or Indian restaurant. That chemical—called capsaicin—is what gives chili peppers their heat.
For years, a growing body of research has found that capsaicin—when applied topically—can ease certain types of pain, including difficult-to-treat neuropathic pain. But nobody’s used it in the daring way that Spencer advocates for treating trigeminal neuralgia. For starters, he didn’t put the capsaicin on his skin. He put it inside his mouth.
And Spencer didn’t get his first batch of capsaicin from a tangy little jalapeño pepper. He got it from an old canister of pepper spray, like the kind police officers use. Just imagine the burn you’d feel by holding a spoonful of Sriracha sauce in your mouth for 20 minutes. Now multiply that heat by a factor of 300, and you’ll have some inkling of what Spencer’s fiery treatment involves.
But what does superintense spiciness have to do with relieving nerve pain?
Listen to the full podcast interview HERE in which Spencer talks about:
• His desperate battle with trigeminal pain
• Why he refused to consider surgery
• His trial-and-error search for a noninvasive remedy
• The unlikely technique that quickly vanquished his suffering
• The science behind why capsaicin appears uniquely able to reduce facial pain without hindering normal facial sensations
• The reason capsaicin works for some patients but not others
• Why he believes that his approach has important advantages as a first-line treatment over more invasive alternatives.
In this video, Hugh Spencer demonstrates how he used capsaicin to vanquish his trigeminal neuralgia and explains the science behind capsaicin’s ability to dial down the pain:
Straight from the Lab:
What’s the evidence for capsaicin’s ability to relieve trigeminal neuralgia and other types of neuropathic pain? And how effective are conventional treatments? Scientists have been asking those same questions. Explore this sampling of their research to date:
Can’t sleep because of chronic pain? (And wondering if weed might help?) Get David Sharp’s new book, Cannabis Lullaby: A Painsomniac’s Quest for a Good Night’s Sleep. Available in print, ebook, and audiobook, it’s brimming with real-world, evidence-based answers. The author is Painopolis co-host David Sharp, an award-winning health journalist who nipped his pain-fueled insomnia in the bud. Buy a copy today at: painopolis.com/cannabis-lullaby/
This article originally appeared on Painopolis.com and is being reprinted with the permission of its author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: David Sharp is an award-winning journalist, author, and podcaster in Portland, Oregon. He’s a co-host and editor of Painopolis, a podcast for people with chronic pain. His career includes 10 years as a contributing editor at Health and Hippocrates magazines. He’s worked on the editorial staffs of Consumer Reports on Health and Health Digest. His articles have appeared in many national publications, including Sports Illustrated, Publishers Weekly, Redbook, Eating Well, Reader’s Digest, and USA Today. He coauthored an earlier book, Six Months Off: How to Plan, Negotiate, & Take the Break You Need Without Burning Bridges or Going Broke. Read more of his blogs at Painopolis.com
LYME ARTHRITIS WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS LEADS TO POOR QUALITY OF LIFE
Lyme Arthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis can greatly impair a person’s quality of life. A recent study examines survey results from 90 patients to assess the levels of impairment for patients with both these conditions.
Nearly 50% of the patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis also tested positive for Lyme disease.
Survey results indicated, “The presence of Borrelia burgdorferi [the causative agent of Lyme disease] in patients with arthritis not only significantly reduced the motor activity of patients, but also complicated the mental adaptation to their own disease.”
The patients had high and moderate disease activity, significantly reduced physical activity, and body pain.
The quality of life of patients with Lyme arthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis was worse due to severe joint pain and a greater degree of functional disorders compared to the patients with only Rheumatoid Arthritis.
The authors considered depression as a cause of the problem with Rheumatoid Arthritis. “Depression imposes a significant burden on the health-related quality of life, disability, and mortality of individuals with arthritis,” wrote the authors.
“Patients with [Lyme arthritis] have significantly lower MCS (mental component score) values, which is explained by the patients’ severe psychological adaptation to their own disease, given the prevalence of [Lyme disease] at the present and its tendency towards chronicity.”
The authors suggested that an active infection might be the cause of the mental health issues in individuals with these conditions. “We can speculate that the conscious that joints disease may be connected with infection not with the autoimmune disease caused a more depressive reaction.”
Editor’s note: I often see patients with both a rheumatologic condition and Lyme disease. I have had patients with Lyme disease whose symptoms were initially thought to be from a flare-up of the rheumatologic condition.
Yuskevych VV, Zhulkevych IV, Makhovska OS, Smiyan SI. Assessment of quality of life in patients with Lyme arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Reumatologia. 2022;60(1):35-41. doi:10.5114/reum.2022.114352
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2022/03/10/lyme-disease-an-underdiagnosed-cause-of-mono-arthritis/ In the comment section of this article I give treatments that have helped me with this. I would also like to add a few things here: DIET for me has been huge. Eliminating gluten, sugar, alcohol, and some dairy (I seemingly can eat aged cheeses that are hard, as well as fatty 4% cottage cheese and whipping cream for coffee). This has been the most important change I’ve made. This change alone dropped my inflammation that was causing the pain and truthfully – getting to the core problem of inflammation should be our #1 goal as it drives all of these issues. I will also add this form of curcumin to try (I am not affiliated and receive no monies from this company but have simply noticed radical improvement in pain reduction): https://www.amazon.com/Integrative-Therapeutics-Theracurmin-Supplement-Bioavailable/dp Each cap is 300 mg. I took 1 cap twice a day spread out. I noticed immediate improvement. Lastly, I also purchased a TENS unit that packs a punch. Be careful! This thing made me scream the first time I used it and I only went up to level 3 when there’s a total of 8! I can make my muscle contract at 3 so I can’t imagine what 8 would do: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NCRE4GO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I got the TENS unit for muscle pain in my trapezius muscles; however, this shows it can also benefit arthritis. Please read this article for more on using a TENS unit for arthritis.This also explains more for electrode placement for arthritis, specifically in this video, and this goes into depth on the subject. Since these units are typically under $50, it’s a cheap experiment that may really help. Obviously, this is not curative but for symptoms. Again, in my book, dealing with the underlying inflammation is key.
In their article “A Tick-borne Cause of Hyponatremia: SIADH Due to Lyme Meningitis,” Windpessl and colleagues describe a patient who was initially treated for sudden onset of shoulder pain associated with hyponatremia but later diagnosed with Lyme meningitis. [1]
By Dr. Daniel Cameron
There are many causes of hyponatremia. Any disorder of the central nervous system, including infections, can trigger it. However, only a few case reports of Lyme meningitis or Lyme neuroborreliosis have been published with a focus on hyponatremia, according to the authors.
Hyponatremia is a condition that occurs when the level of sodium in the blood is too low. With this condition, the body holds onto too much water. This dilutes the amount of sodium in the blood and causes levels to be low.²
One month prior to being admitted to the hospital, the 83-year-old woman had presented to the emergency department because of stabbing back pain, localized to the left shoulder.
“The shoulder pain gradually subsided but lower back pain ensued, worsening at night,” wrote the authors. “In parallel, she noticed difficulties in concentrating, unsteadiness, and poor appetite.”
The woman was admitted for an evaluation of unspecific gastrointestinal symptoms and weight loss.
Her sodium was low (hyponatremia (125 mmol/L) consistent with Syndrome of Inappropriate Antidiuretic Hormone (SIADH) secretion.
The doctors could not find a cause. Drug-related hyponatremia was suspected in the absence of another diagnosis. And her blood pressure medication was changed.
The antihypertensive held. As sodium levels were slightly higher when controlled 5 days later, amlodipine was prescribed instead.
However, a month later, her sodium levels were still low (126 mmol/L).
“In view of the history, nocturnal back pain and obscure hyponatremia, she was admitted for a lumbar puncture,” wrote the authors.
Her spinal tap was diagnostic for Lyme meningitis.
SIADS resolved after a 3-week course of antibiotics.
“In hindsight, the lancinating shoulder pain prompting the patient’s first hospital visit likely represented Bannwarth syndrome, a radiculoneuritis occurring early in the course of Lyme disease,” the authors pointed out.
References:
Windpessl M, Oel D, Muller P. A Tick-Borne Cause of Hyponatremia: SIADH Due to Lyme Meningitis. Am J Med. May 27 2022;doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2022.05.013
author, and podcaster in Portland, Oregon. He’s a co-host and editor of 
