Hello Duncan, The_Inflammator, and others that are experimenting with Rife:
- I am wondering if the Rife machine is having an undeniable, significant effect.
- The_Inflammator, you said that you are hoping that Rife would help with the inflammation in your hands and feet. Can you describe your symptoms there?
I am asking for your description of your hand and feet symptoms because I have been on the fence about what the heck I have. A doctor might say to me, "I can't tell which disease you have and the tests are not reliable." I would reply, "I am allowed to have them all. So don't test, just treat."
Sometimes I am convinced that I have AS (began at age 45, shortly after August 2013.) Sometimes I am convinced that it is Cat Scratch Disease/CSD (began at the same time as the "AS." Sometimes I suspect that an infection from seawater is the culprit (started at the same time as AS and CSD.) Sometimes I am convinced that some combination of the previously mentioned incidents are contributing but that I really added major insult to minor injury in early 2015 from ibuprofen use. Perhaps I have them all. My family doctor just wants me to go away. He referred me to a internest that also told me not to come back after three visits. The only doctors happy to help me are experts in Lyme disease.
THE BACKGROUND STORY (AGAIN)Since October 2017 I started to get tingling in the bottom of my feet. Over time sensations of stinging, burning and aching were added to the tingling in the feet. As that evolved, the symptoms moved up my shins. Similar happened in the hands (moved from fingers, to palms to forearms and elbows), sacrum (to hips, to buttocks and up the flanks) and neck/jaw (down to the shoulder blades and shoulders, then to upper arms). It has my whole body now. What is strange is that the sharpness (as in stabbing) and intensity of the pain has reduced as the months and years have passed by, but the symptoms spread during that time, yet became less intense but more chronic. The development of the symptoms has been exponential: they were isolated to the skeletal axis and gut from late 2013 to the end of 2016, then began to spread to the tendons, skin, and muscles. These days I am so stiff and tender, stinging and burning. I even have mild carpel tunnel that comes and goes. In 2018 I had strong, recurring, symptoms of sjogren's syndrome which would only last for a couple of days. Even right now my tongue is stinging. I suspect this is an immune response to something I had for breakfast.
I've had a number of rapid changes in health at different ages -- 25, 35, & 45. The ones at ages 25 and 45 both hit me like a ringing bell in which symptoms were multi-systemic and petered out to a new, somewhat stable, but lower health level; except the the one at age 45 continued to decline and evolve after the "ringing bell" of symptoms smoothed out. I suspect that those two were caused by rather annoying stealth infections. The one at age 35 was also microbial but due to drinking well water contaminated with black mold for a period of a few months.
The first symptoms of the one at age 45 began just a month after a scuba diving accident in August 2013. They were in the nasal turbinates, then throat, then the back of my legs, then brain and then base of my skull and behind my eyes. From then until December 2017 I suspected that I had an infection from the scuba accident, which was compounded by damaging my gut with ibuprofen in early 2015. Finally when the tingling and burning went into the arms and legs someone told me in December 2017 that I have Lyme disease. I believed that was absurd since I had not seen a wood tick in 15 years, but out of desperation I was open to the idea and so I learned about it and discovered that Cat Scratch Disease is also carried by wood ticks -- Lyme disease, like rabies, leprosy and many other infections, can lie dormant for decades. That is when I remembered the ear mite infested kitten I babysat for a week and played rough with (allowing it to scratch me). I began babysitting that kitten just five days after the scuba accident, which was just a few weeks before the onset of the most serious symptoms I had at age 45.
Prior to the scuba accident, I struggled with body pain and fatigue for 20 years. It began around 1992 - 1993. At that beginning, for one and one-half years I suffered from "migraines", oxygen craving, burning sensation in connective tissue, sinusitis, anxiety, IBS, seizures at night, neurological visual issues,... After 1.5 years of my GP sending me to specialists, all which found nothing wrong, my GP gave up and by 1995 said that I have "fibromyalgia." By that time the symptoms were "stabilizing" in that the IBS, migraines, neurological visual issues and tendonitis went away but the oxygen craving, night time seizures and (food induced) anxiety never went away; i.e. my body learned to mostly suppress borrelia but not babesia. The full body pain and fatigue would only come in the late evening after having spent my energy. But back pain right between the shoulder blades was a constant minor problem.
In late 2015 I found KickAS suspecting that I had AS. Even a rheumatologist after that time briefly suspected that I had AS until an MRI of the sacrum showed no degeneration. Anyway, after suspecting AS for over two years, having decent success with the non-starch diet since that time, and then getting tipped off to the idea of Lyme/CSD, in August 2018 I had my blood sent to Armin Labs in Germany to be tested for tick-borne infections and the results came back positive for a few, all of which could explain my symptoms going back to 1992-1993. Upon learning about Lyme disease, having experienced a progression of symptoms since 2015 that mimicked symptoms I had in 1992-1993, I hypothesize that I caught Lyme disease with babesia in the spring of 1992. The ?CSD? experience in the past six years is so reminiscent of the experience from 1992, but much more powerful now due to age and having a higher infection burden in me, that I strongly suspect infection was set in back in 1992 when I had a three week fever in a spring. I never saw a doctor about it and don't think they would have known what it was.
TREATMENT ATTEMPTS AND IDEASIn February 2019 I tried three weeks of one antibiotic and it has improved my skin circulation and neurological symptoms. I did a more recent round of abx treatment and there was no noticeable effect. Starting around November 2018, by the advice of an ND, I've taken herbals that are supposed to kill the CSD but it isn't helping. My gut is in ruins and infection of pevotelli corpii was detected using DNA test and my ND says that it is probably a major contributor to arthritis-like symptoms. He has no doubt that I have CSD and I also have no doubt since I have seen some hallmark sings on my skin.
Many people with Lyme disease are highly recommending that I treat with "
10 pass ozone therapy". A treatment is $500 CAD and takes a few hours. But then a person needs at least ten treatments to feel much improvement, and then ongoing maintenance treatments probably for the rest of their life.
Rife is also on my "want to try" list. So that is why I am on this thread.
Since most of us suspect tissue infections combined with gut dysbiosis, and some kind of loss of microbiome tolerance by the immune system as the main causes of our disease, I blabberd on a lot about lyme and cat scratch disease just to suggest that it isn't just klebsiella bacteria along with our genes causing these diseases. Also, if you had a diagnosis of "fibromyalgia" in your your young years and finally developed AS, or some other autoimmune disease, then perhaps using many different tools -- rife, ozone, herbs, electricity -- can lower the infectious burden.
IT'S NOT JUST INFLAMMATIONWe try so hard to reduce inflammation, and in some cases suppress the immune system with powerful drugs, but doctors will avoid treating stealth infections like the plague due to fear of creating super bugs. So Rife, ozone therapy and electricity are our best bets to treat stealth infections.
Dr Richard Horowitz emphasizes the three 'I's -- infection (lower it), inflammation (lower it) and immune system (balance it).
Just my 500 gold coins.
Robin
P.S. I need to just provide a link to my story but as time goes on it changes with added hypothesis as I learn. Hindsight is adding more confusion.