Posted by bleauberry on May 19, 2009, at 19:51:51
In reply to Infections and mental issues?, posted by odon on May 18, 2009, at 10:13:52
Following is quite opinionated, some it supported by science, some of it not, subjective, objective, factual, theoretical, guesses, pros, and cons. All wrapped up in one summary. One should consult with a very cooperative smart doctor before using any of this information for their own treatment.
In my case I am extremely fortunate to have such a doctor. It took some dedicated research and hunting. None of this is strange to him, except perhaps for the comments on mercury, which he doesn't seem to be well schooled on. In terms of bacterial or yeast causes of depression, anxiety, and schizo-affective disorders, he cures 95% of his patients of 95% of their symptoms with drugs that are not psychiatrict. Unlike 6 weeks with psychiatric drugs that rarely work 95%, these treatments are on the order of 26 to 104 weeks. The primary weapons of that success are very specific antibiotics and common antifungals. His common psych meds when he needs them include brand versions, no generics, of zoloft, celexa, neurontin, and prozac, and a couple un-specified generic versions of pain meds. Granted, his patient population is skewed since it is heavily biased towards people like you and me who have been down the psychiatric road for a decade or more and one day finally succumb to the idea that maybe, just maybe, there is something else going on.
"I have never had a patient's depression I couldn't cure". When was the last time any doctor could make that claim?
As has already been pointed out, autoimmune dysfunction can show up with mental illness. While the cause/effect hasn't been proven, it is obviously quite obvious. What is the primary result of an autoimmune reaction? Systemic inflammation, in which the brain and nervous system are particularly sensitive.
The brain and hormones and immune system and digetive system and detoxification systems are all interlinked. One cannot be changed without impacting the others.
From personal experience I know that the neurotoxins secreted by living and dying organisms related to Lyme and yeast feel like the same depression I felt when I lost my first longtime lover to another secret lover. No difference. The causes of depression vary significantly, but how it feels is what it is. It affects everything emotionally and physically. Bacterial or yeast do cause the exact same depression you and I talk about here every day.
How do they do that? First, we have to look at the medical profession. There are two types of doctors. One, what they learned in med school is the bible. No other medicine is valid and nothing else exists except what they learned there. Something new does not become valid until it is in all their favorite trade magazines and the FDA approves it. They go by the book, they go by insurance company guidelines, and they do very little outside of what is beauracratically standard. The other set of doctors sense that what they learned in med school is only the tip of the iceberg, that there is more we don't know than what we do know. These doctors will use the book as a guide but will often depart from the book when they see with their own eyes that other things not taught in med school have merit. They don't wait for something to be proven, as they use what works. They are the ones discovering the stuff that will be in the journals 5 years from now and proven in 10 years.
As an example, the Centers For Infectious Disease Control has a standard guideline treatment for someone recently bitten by a tick. Some people turn out fine, others still get Lyme disease. I asked my LLMD how he approaches this. His answer was it has to be approached case by case, that some people only need a single onetime dose of Doxycycline, while others need 6 weeks, and others need 6 months. This is not taught in med school and is not endorsed by the powers that be and is often denied payment from insurance companies because it isn't "standard" procedure. But, it is what it is. It is the realworld. Doctors who really care about their professions know what they see. They can't explain it, but they definitely take notice and use it in their decision making.
Most infectious organisms do not actually do damage by eating our tissues. The primary theory is that their toxins are what make us ill. These toxins are poison, strong poison, in the same family as formaldahyde, ammonia, and botulism. The toxins cause the inflammation, autoimmune dysfunctions, pains, hormonal changes, digestive problems, and assaults on the brain. Theories say these toxins are fat soluble, so that they become imbedded, hard to remove, and stay for a long time, thus explaining how people can remain ill even after Lyme has been eradicated. The toxins clog up receptors, and contaminate and deform our own pools of neurotransmitters. Contaminated serotonin. Are any of these things true? No one has proved it. I suspect they are all partially true to some degree. What is NOT true, is that they DON'T happen. Anyone that says that falls into the first category of doctors above.
My doctor feels that while the toxins cause much of the suffering, the primary bad feelings are caused the changes in our immune system. He has seen many of his patients become 95% well on two specific antibiotics, and yet they still have Lyme. Lab tests before and after showed that the immune system markers had changed from ABC to XYZ, and THAT was the factor that caused the healing, not the actual killing of organisms.
So who knows. Is it tissue damage? Is it neurotoxins? Is it an awry immune system throwing the brain and everything else out of whack? It is probably a little of all the above in my best judgement.
Candida. A common yeast we all have, kept in small numbers by our own good bacteria. In an environment of stress, sugary diets, anti-good bacteria diets, illness, or chemicals (as in frequent medicines), this yeast can grow to high numbers. Doctors in category one above look for things like thrush (white tongue), jock itch, vaginal infections, and such obvious yeast things. If those don't exist, they don't have an overgrowth of yeast, right? If there are no outward symptoms, they are not under the onslaught of a flood of toxins, right? Wrong.
A great diagnostic tool doesn't involve any lab tests. Most lab tests are quite faulty anyway. Test for parasites, they'll miss most of them. Maybe the parasites are further up the bowel than was looked at. Maybe the parasites are in the brain or the heart and not the stool. The best test we have for Lyme was not intended for concrete diagnosis. Its flaws were known. Its purpose was to survey outbreaks of Lyme in different regions. Even with the errors in the testing, when large numbers of suspected cases are tested, one can still see a pattern or epidemic or not. But it was never intended to be or claimed to be or proven to be a definitive diagnosis. And yet most doctors view it as the bible. If your test is negative, you don't have Lyme, despite the fact you have 31 of 31 symptoms and there is nothing else to explain them that makes better sense.
How would one know if they have a yeast problem if there is a good possibility testing would say there isn't? This is where the Herxheimer reaction comes into play. When mass amounts of bad organisms are killed, there is a flood of toxins from their bodies as well as pieces of dead corpses all of the place. Too much to be cleaned, filtered, and excreted all at once. The immune system freaks out. Inflammation goes haywire. Detox systems are in overdrive and backed up. A Herx reaction feels very bad. Worse depression, worse anxiety, worse pains, worse fatigue. Some people Herx so bad they are in bed for a week as if it was a serious case of the flu. It feels like that.
A good diagnostic test for yeast is the antifungal pill Nystatin. Starting in small doses and working up, pay notice to what happens. If yeast numbers are normal or low, there shouldn't be much of a reaction. If they are abnormal high, there will be an expected Herx. Diagnosis is made, not by the Herx alone, but in context with history and symptoms. The Herx merely says, yeah, our hunch looks to be correct. A stool test may miss the location of the yeast. New technology measures a specific chemical in urine that comes from abnormal populations of yeast in the body. How accurate or helpful that is, no one knows. But for sure, a Herx reaction speaks loud and clear.
The same with Lyme or any number of bacteria when the antibiotic Tetracycline is tried. I mentioin Tetra because it is my doctor's favorite, and also the famed Dr Donta of Boston, but there are a small number of other potent choices. If someone has a case of acne or urinary infection or something, there should be little or no reaction. If they are ill with something hidden, the Herx could be quite stunning.
Sometimes offering confusion though is that sometimes people feel better almost immediately when starting an antibiotic, as happened with me. The Herx came later. It was that immediate improvement that my doctor feels was the change in the immune system markers. I didn't kill much in the first 24 hours, but I sure felt almost cured. The drug did something else besides just kill stuff. Later the Herx kicked in and totally swamped the good stuff, but was an obvious indications I was doing some serious warfare against something.
While I have talked about Lyme and yeast, there are at least a couple dozen others, not to mention parasites.
These critters can be smart. Lyme for example has three forms. The spiral form. The cell-less wall form that lives inside our own cells where most drugs and even our own immune system can't see them, all the while they spill out their toxins. There are other bad guys that do this also, not just Lyme. They have no cell walls and are quite deceptive yet destructive. And the cyst form, a layered protective covering that hides them. They can remain dormant for long periods of time, thus requiring longterm treatment, sometimes not killing at all during treatment until they decide to come out, and then wham.
Other challenge diagnostic substances include Doxycyline, Monocycline, Clindamycin, and a few others. In natural choices, the tea of Pau D'ARco can produce quite a bad Herx if yeast is overgrown. Also Grapefruit Seed extract. And a few others. High doses of garlic (8 cloves a day, or equivalent doses of Allimax) kill lots of bugs. A tincture of black walnut hull, wormwood, and cloves kills lots of stuff but primary parasites of all kinds.
To make matters worse, some of these bugs like mercury. The rather benign form of mercury from amalgam fillings is churned into dangerous mercury by these bugs. There are theories that they sequester mercury in their own defense, so as to weaken the host's immune system and detox system from eradicating them. Self survival, with mercury as a shield. Thus small minute amounts of normal daily exposure to mercury accumulate, rather than being detoxed and excreted. Over time it becomes a high enough contamination to cause illness above and beyone the bugs themselves. Or, is it the other way around? Was there something wrong with the detox system in the first place that caused mercury to accumulate, and then the bugs got the upper hand to cause illness? Some people have amalgams all their lives and never get ill, while others become ill within months or a few years. Does it have something to do with the bacteria living within them? Who knows. It is worth knowing I believe.
Category one of doctors above will look for mercury in the blood, not knowing that it embeds in the nervous system rather quickly and won't be found in the blood except on very recent exposure. Category two of doctors above realize you have to measure some clean urine first, take something like DMSA that pulls mercury out of tissues, and then measure urine again, to see what mercury is hiding within, or not. People can test negative in blood and hair and yet be highly toxic with mercury, because it isn't in the blood or hair when toxicity is reached.
In any case, depression looks a lot like Lyme looks a lot like yeast looks a lot like mercury toxicity looks a lot like other bad bacteria and viruses. They are actually hard to distinguish when viewing outward presentation of psychiatric symptoms. You've got the depression, hopelessness, lack of joy, tiredness, sleep problems, appetite or weight problems, maybe aches and pains, you just feel, well, depressed, and every symptom you have is in the diagnostic checklist of depression. So you are given antidepressants to increase serotonin, when your ill feelings have nothing at all to do with serotonin.
Which reminds me of another diagnostic challenge test. Suppose someone tries SSRIs, not much good. SNRIs, not much good. TCAs, not much good. All kinds of augmentors, not much good. MAOIs, some good but not enough. On and on. To me that is diagnostic that their problem is NOT serotonin, norepinephrine, or dopamine, or glutamate, or gaba. It is SOMETHING else. And in my thinking, nothing qualifies more than a deceptive infection that your doctor is not going to find. It has to be probed for, not proven beforehand, not seen, and not suspected. Only a doctor with a really good view of the entire symptomology and history and other areas of medicine will see the pattern.
Diagnosis and treatment is so difficult under the constrained politics of modern medicine and insurance that I would say, based on rough observation, that perhaps 30% of patients at other forums achieve substantial healing through their own self directed healtcare, research, and medication supplies from the internet. The FDA and med schools would not like to admit their efforts are trounced by mere layman individuals, but it is quite common, sadly, unfortunately, or fortunately for the many of them that got better when doctors couldn't or wouldn't do it.
Some are very forutnate to find that rare doctor who is extremely passionate about their work. They love it so much they would still do it if it only paid $10 an hour. The ones who take great pride in healing. The ones who love chess games, obsess to win chess games, and each patient is a chess game. Many of the LLMDs fall in that category. Nurse practitioners and hometown MDs can be like that too. Not many, but I do believe their numbers are increasing. The advances of technology and communication allow interested ones in the medical community to advance far faster than med schools or med journals could keep up with. We just need a lot more of them who are in it for the win and not for the job.
So can things like Lyme, parasites, yeast, or any number of Lyme-like organisms cause the mental illness we deal with everyday? Absolutely no question about it. Anyone who disagrees is unknowingly closing the windows with black drapes.
My story. I feel like I need an antidepressant. Lots of anhedonia, fatigue, pains, brain fog, severe weight loss, but I sleep good. You name the psych med, I've probably been on it. I started coming here over 10 years ago and I've seen a lot here. I failed ECT. The past 3 years I have had very short trials of psych meds, but always bad. Except for Milnacipran. Something special about that drug. Urinary side effects for me much too scary. I have a few really bad days, mostly not-so-good days, and a random pretty good day. All without any psych meds. Three years running now. I think I need one and wish I could, but geez, I know that road. Anyway, I have experienced pronounced remission a few times. DMSA, a heavy metal chelator, several times. Tetracycline, once. Doxycycline, once. Even as good as Prozac+Zyprexa+Modafinil was at one time, nowhere near as good as what I felt on antibiotics. Milnacipran, pretty promising, but nothing compared to ABs. Hydrocortisone for low cortisol, stunning one day miracle. Anti-inflammatory was how my then-doctor explained it. What stands in my way of making rapid progress is the Herx. It gets real bad. I have to do some killing, take a rest, kill some more, take a rest, on and on. Yeast, Lyme, back and forth. Diet is extremely well chosen. Everyone comments how they've never seen anyone eat as healthy as I do. But I tell ya, this road of infectious disease is really really hard. You think the psych world is hard, you aint seen nothin yet. But, I have felt the goodness just enough to know, it is there, it is real, and once I get past the Herx's, I'm there! Would I still maybe need a little Zoloft+Nortriptyline, a little Milnacipran, or something? Could be. Who knows what permanent damage is done.
I am just here to say yes, this topic of organisms causing mental illness, is as real as a nuclear bomb. If one is not making significant progress in their treatment, they need to revisit the diagnosis. To try to prove one has a specific bug or illness is a road to prolonged progressive misery. Many patients who have been healed by creative MDs or LLMDs may in fact never know exactly what bugs they had, only that they got their lives back. And hopefully somewhere in this long winded summary someone somewhere will find some new hope.
poster:bleauberry
thread:896418
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090515/msgs/896669.html