From Fatigued to Fantastic!
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Ashwagandha root extract, 250 to 500 milligrams a day
Siberian ginseng extract, 150 to 300 milligrams a day
Ginkgo biloba extract 50 to 240 milligrams a day
Diindolymethane (DIM), 100 to 200 milligrams a day
Macuna pruriens extract, (15 percent L-dopa), 100 to 200 milligrams a day
These can be tried individually or many of these can be found in combination in Desire by Ultraceuticals or Hot Plants for Her by Enzymatic Therapy.
For men, I recommend:
Maca root extract, 400 to 800 milligrams a day
Rhodiola rosea extract, 150 to 300 milligrams a day
Epimedium extract, 100 to 200 milligrams a day
Longjack extract, 50 to 100 milligrams a day
Panax ginseng, 100 to 200 milligrams a day
Ginkgo biloba extract, 50 to 240 milligrams a day
Diindolymethane (DIM), 100 to 200 milligrams a day
Macuna pruriens extract (15 percent L-dopa), 50 to 200 milligrams a day
Tribulus terrestris extract, 100 to 200 milligrams a day
These can be tried individually or many of these can be found in combination in Potency Plus by Ultraceuticals or Hot Plants for Him by Enzymatic Therapy.
For Osteoporosis
Because of hormonal deficiencies and inability to exercise, we often see loss of bone density (osteoporosis and osteopenia) in CFS/FMS. Fortunately, natural remedies can be more effective than prescription medications for these problems. I recommend:
Vitamin D, 2,000 to 3,000 IU a day
Vitamin K, 500 to 600 micrograms a day
Calcium, 1,000 milligrams a day
Magnesium, 200 to 400+ milligrams a day
Boron, 2 to 3 milligrams a day
Silica, 200 micrograms a day
Strontium, 170 to 640 milligrams a day
Strontium deserves special mention. This mineral is highly effective at improving bone density. I am not speaking about strontium–90, the very dangerous radioactive compound released during nuclear testing. The strontium available in health food stores is nonradioactive and safe—even in high doses. Studies using strontium in the treatment of 353 osteoporosis patients showed a dramatic 15 percent increase in spine bone mineral density (BMD) over two years in patients using 680 milligrams of strontium (2,000 milligrams of strontium ranelate) a day.12 A placebo-controlled study with 1, 649 osteoporotic women showed that new fractures decreased by 49 percent in the first year of treatment, and bone mineral density in the lumbar spine increased by an average of 14.4 percent after three years. There was an 8.3 percent increase in hip BMD as well.13 Other forms of strontium have shown similar benefits, and 170 to 680 milligrams of elemental strontium daily appears to be a good dose. (I suspect the 680-milligram dose used in the studies is higher than is needed.) Early data suggest that strontium may also be helpful in the treatment of osteoarthritis. Although it took three to thirty-six months of therapy, taking strontium was associated with a marked reduction in bone pain in osteoporosis patients.14
All of the above can be found individually or can be found in combination in Bone Health from Ultraceuticals. In addition, be sure to optimize estrogen, testosterone, and DHEA-S levels as discussed in Chapter 4 and to increase the amount you walk as able.
A Word of Caution
While herbs are generally safe when used correctly, there are several that can cause liver inflammation, and chaparral has even caused liver failure. Some other herbs that may cause liver disease include germander, comfrey, mistletoe, margosa oil, maté tea, gordolobo, yerba tea, Jin Bu Huan, and pennyroyal. And there are many more. Always follow label instructions and talk to your holistic doctor about what herbal supplements you are taking. If you have unexplained mild elevation of your liver blood tests (SGOT and SGPT [ALT and AST]), stay off herbs for three months and then repeat the test to be sure levels have returned to normal.
If you are interested in learning more about herbs in general, two excellent resources are the American Botanical Council and the Quarterly Review of Natural Medicine (see Appendix E: Resources). I also invite you to sign up for my free e-mail newsletter at www.vitality101.com, which keeps you up to date on the newest research and developments in maintaining overall health. It also reviews a different illness each issue—explaining how to use the best of natural and prescription therapies.
In addition, don’t forget how helpful yoga and other forms of bodywork, energy work, and other structural therapies can be for anxiety, pain, depression, and overall well-being. We have placed an article by qigong master Ken Cohen in the From Fatigued to Fantastic! site notes at www.vitality101.com, in which he explains how to use qigong to treat CFS/FMS.
Important Points
Hundreds of natural remedies are available to help treat medical problems and maintain optimal health. These are often more effective, and almost always safer and cheaper, than prescription medications.
An outstanding natural remedy for both anxiety and insomnia is L-theanine from green tea. Use only the Suntheanine form, which is
the only one most reliable companies will add to their products.
Excellent natural remedies are available for osteoporosis, anxiety, depression, high cholesterol, loss of libido, pain, and many other problems.
Strontium can be more effective than many medications for osteoporosis.
Questionnaire
1. Do you have high cholesterol? If yes, check off #75A.
2. Do you have anxiety? If yes, check off #7.
3. Do you have depression? If yes, check off #58.
4. Do you have loss of bone density (osteoporosis or osteopenia)? If yes, check off #69.
5. Do you have loss of libido? If yes, check off #60.
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Other Areas to Explore
Most CFS/FMS patients obtain full resolution of, or at least substantial improvement in, their symptoms with the approaches I have discussed so far. However, some patients still suffer significant persistent disabilities. Several physicians have found success with other treatments, and many of these are worth exploring. And, most importantly, there are three critical areas that although not “high tech” are important to repeat and stress. These are:
Keep your attention on what feels good and makes you happy.
Exercise (once you are on treatment).
Be gentle with yourself.
Let’s begin by exploring other treatments, in order of priority, that can be very helpful in a subset of patients.
Overcoming Food and Environmental Sensitivities
Although many of my patients’ food and other sensitivities resolve when we treat their underlying yeast overgrowth, parasitic infections, and underactive adrenal glands, problems sometimes persist and need to be treated. These kinds of sensitivities can be hard to isolate because of the many different reactions that they can cause. In addition, some reactions are subtle, while others can be confused with other medical conditions. To further complicate matters, many people are sensitive to food additives that they do not even know are present. Two important examples of these are monosodium glutamate (MSG) and aspartame (the artificial sweetener).
Unfortunately, most food allergy blood tests are simply not reliable. They are expensive and often leave people with the incorrect belief that they are allergic to everything. I find that most food allergy tests are better at making people crazy than at distinguishing true allergies. This was confirmed by a study done at Bastyr University.1 They found that when an individual’s blood was sent to a number of laboratories doing food allergy testing, each lab gave markedly different results from the same blood sample. The same individual patient was found to be allergic to anywhere from 22 to 76 percent of foods tested, depending on which lab did the test. Even when several vials of blood from one person—but labeled with different names—were sent to a single lab, they still gave different results. Because of this, I consider most food allergy blood testing to be unreliable; however, there are a few laboratories t
hat may be helpful. For example, ELISA/ ACT Biotechnologies Laboratories (previously known as Serammune Physicians Laboratories) may be more reliable, as duplicate tests on the same person have been consistent in the past.2
The best approaches that I have found for determining what allergies/ sensitivities, if any, are present are:
Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET). When done by a gifted practitioner, NAET is a remarkably powerful and easy way to not just test for sensitivities, but to also quickly eliminate them.
An elimination diet. In an elimination diet, the most common problem foods are eliminated from the diet for two weeks. The foods that seem to cause the most problems are milk, wheat, eggs, soy, citrus, monosodium glutamate (MSG), aspartame, sugar, alcohol, chocolate, and coffee. People with food allergies usually go through withdrawal when they cut out the foods to which they are allergic, and they may feel worse for the first seven to ten days. But once they get over the hump, they often feel dramatically better. The eliminated food groups are then reintroduced, adding one every few days, to isolate the specific problem foods. These problem foods are left out of the diet for a few months and then are slowly reintroduced, since the sensitivity will often have decreased. Once reintroduced, the problem foods are initially eaten every three to seven days to see how they are tolerated.
Sublingual neutralization. Many physicians who practice what is called environmental medicine use sublingual neutralization, among other approaches, and are very skilled at treating food allergies. In sublingual neutralization, dilutions of the allergic substance placed under the tongue will reproduce and later eliminate the allergic symptoms. Although I don’t use these approaches, and although they are controversial, I have seen them work wonders for many people.
I prefer to use the first two of these approaches, especially NAET, which I find to be the simplest and most effective way to look for and eliminate food and environmental sensitivities, and food allergy elimination diets to be the least expensive. Let’s review both of these a bit further.
NAET was developed by Devi S. Nambudripad, M. D., Ph. D., R. N., chiropractor, and acupuncturist. She developed a system that combines acupressure and applied kinesiology (AK muscle testing) to look for and eliminate underlying sensitivities. When your body is allergic or sensitive to something, and a practitioner tests, using many different vials (each containing the homeopathic signatures of a specific substance), the energy in your acupuncture/meridian system weakens when you hold the offending substance. When that happens, your muscles may also weaken, and this weakness can be tested for using AK, thereby determining to what things your body is sensitive. Stimulating certain acupuncture points while you hold the vial can then desensitize your body to that substance, eliminating that allergy (see www.NAET.com for more information).
I highly recommend NAET in my practice, and am myself a true convert to its effectiveness. As a (slightly) younger man, I had horrible ragweed allergies (hay fever). A friend and NAET practitioner in Annapolis kept saying that she could help. But, being a typical arrogant doctor, I of course told her that there was “no way that voodoo would help”—a response that reflected the cynicism a lot of people feel toward alternative therapies. One day, however, when I was especially miserable, she said, “Stop being a nitwit and let me treat you.” A single twenty-minute treatment later, I felt as though someone had turned off a faucet in my nose. My severe lifelong hay fever was gone. That was nine years ago, and my hay fever has never returned. I was so impressed that I flew to Los Angeles to meet Dr. Devi and later married the woman in Annapolis who treated me.
Since then, I have learned more about how powerful NAET can be, even seeing autism improve with the treatment. Our foundation funded a recently completed study using NAET for autism. After one year of fifty treatments, twenty-three of the thirty autistic children were improved and back in regular schools as opposed to zero of thirty in the untreated control group. The results were so impressive that a second study may move forward in the future through the Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) section of the NIH.
If you find yourself sensitive to many foods or other substances, I recommend going to www.naet.com to get more information and to find a practitioner near you (there are more than eight thousand worldwide). Each treatment can eliminate one allergy, and I recommend you allow the practitioner to treat for the ten most common allergen groups before going after specific allergens. It usually takes ten to fifteen visits to begin seeing the benefits, as most people usually have multiple sensitivities, and twenty-five to fifty treatments to complete the treatment course. If you have only a single allergen (e. g., hay fever or cat dander), then, like me, you may only need one to three treatments.
Multiple Food Elimination Diet
An elimination diet can be difficult but is inexpensive and can help isolate the foods to which you have sensitivities. The diet I prefer only eliminates the more common offending foods. For detailed information on how to do this kind of diet, see the From Fatigued to Fantastic! notes at www.vitality101.com.
Some people, however, prefer to do a more limited elimination diet in which they eat and drink nothing but rice, lamb, and distilled water for ten to fifteen days. This is a very restrictive diet, and I recommend that it be done only under the supervision of a health-care practitioner (such as a naturopath). Should you decide to try this extreme elimination diet, you’ll want to be sure that you are still maintaining good nutrition. Jeffrey Bland, a well-known nutritional biochemist, has developed a powder that supplies necessary nutrients from low-allergy sources, such as rice. During the initial seven to ten days of the elimination diet, it allows you to avoid all allergic foods. If your symptoms resolve during this time span, you are justified in suspecting that you have food allergies. You can then begin reintroducing the different foods as described on Chapter 7 to determine exactly which ones are causing problems for you. Although Dr. Bland’s food product costs about three hundred dollars, it can help determine food sensitivities. However, you should not use this approach if you have very severe CFS—for example, if you are bedridden—because you need to strengthen your body as much as possible before you go through the withdrawal phase of treating food allergies. For more information on Dr. Bland’s powder, contact Metagenics (see Appendix E: Resources).
Neurotoxins—Biotoxin-Induced Illnesses
Neurotoxin-induced illness is a concept developed by Ritchie Shoemaker, a physician and researcher who practices in Pocomoke, Maryland. Dr. Shoemaker theorizes that the production of toxins can be caused by many different processes, including Lyme infections; exposure to water-damaged buildings (sick building syndrome), ciguatera (fish toxin), and marine algae; injuries; and even certain genetic illnesses. These toxic chemicals (called ionophores because they can move from cell to cell) can stay in your body even after the initial infection or trigger is gone. Normally, the body is able to excrete most toxins through the liver and kidneys to eliminate them from the body. What makes these toxins unique is that they are small enough to be easily reabsorbed in the gut, and are excreted only by the liver. The liver excretes the toxins into the bowel so that they can be eliminated from the body with your stool. Unfortunately, these toxins are then reabsorbed from the bowel and therefore cannot be eliminated (they continue to recirculate to the liver and then back to the blood).
These toxins can cause or be associated with multiple hormonal and immune changes. Dr. Shoemaker finds that most CFS/FMS patients have hypothalamic dysfunction associated with low melanocyte-stimulating hormone (MSH) and VEGF levels, as well as multiple other hormonal problems (including those I discussed earlier in Chapter 4). In addition, numerous changes are seen in immune-system molecules such as Complement 4A (C4A) elevation, which he uses to monitor therapy. Although he uses literally dozens of tests to diagnose patients and monitor the effectiveness of treatment, and the science behind what he does is complex (and reasonable), I discuss a simplified overview of his treatment protocol, which many
patients find helpful. For those who would like more detail, I refer you to his recent study,3 described at www.vitality101.com, and Dr. Shoemaker’s Web site at www.chronicneurotoxins.com.
What Tests Should You Start With?
Although no blood tests are currently available to directly measure these toxins, there are numerous tests that can look for their effects and help you and your physician monitor therapy. There is an extensive set of baseline tests that Dr. Shoemaker recommends. If one would like to begin with a markedly simplified approach (my recommendation, not his) that focuses more on how to get well than on understanding the detailed biochemistry, one should begin with the following tests (although much of the information below, except for the VCS vision test, is more for your physician than for you, so feel free to skip over the complex parts):
VCS vision test. Dr. Shoemaker feels that your nervous system is sensitive to these toxins. The retina in the back of the eye is part of the nervous system, and he uses a test that examines the body’s ability to discern different shades of black and gray. This VCS vision test can be done on his Web site for about ten dollars. Although it may be positive in some healthy people, and negative in 8 percent of CFS/FMS patients (it is positive in 92 percent), it is a helpful test to monitor his treatment.
Do a special culture of your nose. Using a sterile cotton swab, the doctor gets a sample from deep inside your nose (at least 2 inches). This has to be cultured using an API-STEP culture technique done in some hospital microbiology labs. If the culture shows colonization with a coagulation-negative staph bacteria resistant to at least two antibiotics, see the treatment on Chapter 8.