Posted by bleauberry on January 28, 2012, at 10:30:47
So last year I decided I was exhausted from fighting Lyme or whatever and decided to just take an indefinite break and focus purely on symptom improvement regardless of underlying issues. That led me, after a few duds along the way, to Rhodiola Rosea. After a few weeks on it, I was telling people, "Well, it's not a cure or anything like that, but wow I do feel notable improvement and honestly if this is as good as it ever gets I'm ok with that because it's a lot better than I was."
Then something happened. It seemed to suddenly poop out without any warning. Worse than that, it was now making me really depressed. I tried different brands and all kinds of different dosing experiments, but they all told me the same thing....I feel better without it! What happened?
I've heard Stephan Buhner is adding to his original book Healing Lyme and in his updates he has added new things, one of them being Rhodiola. While this herb is typically used for depression, energy, fatigue, and anxiety, the purpose here is that it is specific for Bartonella....one of the Lyme bacteria very difficult to deal with.
So I'm wondering, did it actually do stuff to help my immune system fight Lyme, and did it actually begin to make a dent in Bartonella? Because if it did, then Herxheimer reaction explains it and makes sense.
Here's the weird catch....when it pooped out, it was only a day later I got a bad stomach/body flu that lasted over a week. Still haven't completely recovered and that was 2 weeks ago. But when I was over the hump and much improved and back to work, Rhodiola no longer worked. Made me worse actually. So something in the whole flu thing really messed something up.
Most people do not understand how the immune system can be tied to mood, and I honestly I don't know exactly how either, just that it is. For example during a flu it is not the actual bug making us feel bad....it is the body''s immune response that feels bad.
Anyway, I improved on rhodiola for a few months and now improved again without it! Go figure. Confusing stuff.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1008632
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20111229/msgs/1008632.html