Water Kefir, Die off, Sleep and Diet

I also wake up early as well. I am not sure about the die off and why kefir would cause a die off or herx. The PROBIOTICS in kefir are great to replenish your gut with good bacteria. I drink kefir as well. I also have insomnia which is common in lyme disease.

If you have a high load of Candida, yes something like kefir - or any very high count probiotic with that many strains - can most definitely cause a herx! I know that when I first started using kefir, I too went through a herx. You can still ease the herx with the basic detoxing that we recommend in our "New to Lyme? Start here!" thread that sits at the top of our forum.

When are you drinking the water kefir? Have you tried drinking it only in the mornings?

Drinking kefir alone is not enough to encourage a herx from the Lyme bacteria - it is much more likely that it's due to Candida die off.

Hi there...I'm drinking Kefir and I also took Diflucan on Saturday night. I instantly with the Diflucan (one pill lasts for days) I felt burning in certain areas of my body letting me know that is where the yeast is/was and since then I have seen the yeast come out through my urine and poop (sorry this is TMI). I'm assuming what you're feeling is Candida die off. What else are you taking for Candida?

Wow, thanks for all of the responses.

Yes, I am drinking water kefir soda from water kefir grains. I only tried it the once I haven't been taking it on a daily basis.

I am not taking anything else for candida. I am doing a gluten free, sugar free (reduced) and dairy free diet.

We got our water kefir grains from CulturesForHealth.com. They also have tons of how-to videos so it's a great resource. Basically you ferment the sugar water with the grains in the water for a couple of days and then remove the grains and add some juice (or other flavoring) and ferment in a sealed Grohlsch bottle for another couple of days.

Water kefir cured my son completely of Lyme Disease. But the herx reaction was terrible and frightening. We thought he was going to die honestly. He was 10 years old at the time. He had been suffering with Lyme for about 6 months after being bitten by a tick and getting the rash. He suffered a lot-some days not being able to even stand or walk. He had pain all the time. Our whole family had started drinking water kefir not even thinking it would have any effect on Lyme disease. We were just trying to be healthy. My son had been drinking water kefir about 3 weeks when the reaction happened. He suddenly started feeling extremely ill, running fever of 104, uncontrollable shaking/freezing while running high temp. His joints-especially legs became so painful and stiff we had to carry him to bed. He was screaming uncontrollably in pain. He told us he was going to die and started saying his goodbyes to his younger siblings. He then began rambling incoherently. We had no choice but to rush him to childrens' hospital. But on the way, he began vomiting profusely. When he was done vomiting he became completely normal instantly. It was as if all the Lyme had been vomited up. He was exhausted and wanted to sleep. We kept him awake for a couple hours but he was totally normal and felt good-just exhausted. The next morning was like a new life for him. He was completely pain free, refreshed and so happy. That was 5 years ago and he has never had any return or symptoms of the Lyme since then. It is a miracle.

Welcome to our community! We are glad that you found us!

Hi Elleinad -

Thank you so much for sharing your story. What a great recovery for your son - I hope he continues to be healthy and recovered.

I also want to suggest that people aren't "cured" of systemic bacterial infections like Lyme. The goal is to heal; the end result of treatment is generally a lowered microbial count along with a dominant immune response that can manage a healthier environment.

As you probably know 70% of our immune systems are in our GI. So it's quite possible that the water kefir had a profound effect on your son's GI response - either providing something it was missing or creating an environment that helped reduce inflammation that helped jump start his immune system's response to the infection or helped it leach pathogens from tissues or simply boosted his immune response in some other way. As you also know, most symptoms of illness is from the immune response, not a direct result from the microbe's infection. Perhaps this is what launched your son into his GI response and gave his immune more power and more control.

I've not tried water kefir - I have the exact opposite reactions to kefir and grains. But I have had strange and immediate reactions involve GI and immune functions that have helped make considerable progress in a short time.

Traveler has moderated this forum for years and years… I've only been around for about 3 yrs but that is a lot of cases of Lyme & coinfections and treatment modalities, specialists, research, successes and failures we have been exposed to and learned from.

There simply isn't a panacea for Lyme & Co. There are far too many pathogens involved and far too many complexities in the health landscape for people before infection that are heavily complicated by the infection, to broadly brush a cure. MOST people don't start out as healthy as your son was -even if water kefir was his best chance at recovery. Most other people will have the best chance with recovery by implementing a broader, holistic approach to healing.

But I'm glad you shared your experience and I'm so glad he had success and is still healthy - you're a good mom!

-p

Hi, I'm new to this forum, but not new to lyme.

Children react much faster and stronger with treatments for lyme. My own daughter got first infected by age 2, while I had been already chronically ill. She healed faster because she was acute (I thought).

I had been treated since my first bite, for acute lyme, and in spite of treatment, got severely ill.

She also got severely ill, and not just once, but several times with several new bites... We live in the countryside, fully endemic.

She ALWAYS reacted faster than myself. It is known that children react faster than adults. They have better immune systems. My lyme doctor always kept telling that: his own pediatric patients usually fared better with lyme treatment than adults.

I do not think Ellen is inventing the whole story. I have experienced SEVERE herxheimer reactions only by adding Kimchi to my diet. My husband, that does not have any chronic infection, reacted so strongly bad to kimchi he thinks it's an allergy.

It's not an allergy, because he eats ALL individual components of home made kimchi and does not react. His over reaction was purely a sort of herxheimer of some bacterial or candidal colonies in his gut (I believe).

Ginger and garlic are also parasite killers, so they could have caused the reaction.

Anyway, good probiotics can cause sometimes severe reactions in people, with severe herxes.

When you think that about 70% of the immune system is in the gut, I do think that fixing it could cause the immune system to kick in and fight chronic conditions such as lyme or chronic candida.

And besides, children react better to treatments most adults only slightly react.

So don't disregard the information Ellen is giving, in my opinion.

And people DO HEAL FROM LYME DISEASE. I fully disagree with people saying it does not happen.

Lyme remission is no different than remission of mononucleosis, Hepatitis C, herpeses viruses.

All these sufferers become eventually symptom free, and treatment free. Meaning, HEALED!

Even if they ALL harbor the viruses and pathogens somewhere.

Same as chronic candida: when dormant, candida makes zero symptoms and requires zero treatment.

So whatever you call, remission is like healed because you go from the status of patient (requiring treatment due to symptoms), to the status of a healthy person (who does NOT require treatment because you have no more symptoms).

you wouldn't tell a person, who healed from Hepatitis C long ago, that he or she is still ill.

I say to people I am healed from chronic lyme, multiple acute lyme after multiple tick bites, and so is my daughter because for the last 8 years, we haven't got lyme symptoms nor lyme treatment.

If you guys affirm there is no cure for lyme, so there is no cure for any other disease that goes dormant, like all the different types of herpes, candida, hepatitis, mononucleosis... I'm sure the list is enormous.

Hi all,

As I am taking a quick break from packing (yes, I'm moving!) this thread caught my eye.

I think it's possible that Elleninad's son's fever could have killed off much of his lyme bacteria (I know it is said that fever has to be between 106F to 107F to do this). I hope people don't try to induce a fever as fevers are dangerous and a person could die from a high fever.

I personally don't believe the water kefir did it. Just my non-medical opinion.

Denise

Hi Jinna and welcome!

I totally understand what you are saying and good for you for being cured! I am 11 years healed, cured, whatever word one wants to use. Because I followed Dr. Jernigan's protocol (he had chronic lyme himself) I still read his blogs because of my curious mind. One of his blogs says this:

"Seventh in our series of tips on Lyme disease is a completion to the question, "Can Lyme disease be cured?"

It would appear that everyone agrees that a “Cure” is a condition of the body returning to health. If it is true that “Cure” is a restoration of health and thereby the absence of symptoms, then “Disease” is a loss of health with the onset of symptoms.

We are really discussing the role of the bugs versus the role of the body in creating disease, and the role of the absence of bugs versus the role of the body restoring health.

Do we suppose that bacteria and viruses are somehow stronger during the winter months? After all, winter is the time of year that people typically get sick the most with infections. Of course not!

The bacteria and viruses don’t somehow get stronger in wintertime. The human body is weakened by the extreme cold and inactivity, low vit. D from lack of sunshine, not to mention the mental and emotional fear that has been ingrained in us by the media that “We are entering flu season!”

So we see that whether we are talking about Lyme bacteria or the flu, when the body is optimally healthy we enjoy a symptom-free life. When the body is weakened we experience dis-ease.

When a person gets over strep throat they are cured and the symptoms go away with or without antibiotics within 10 days. Are ALL the strep bacteria gone? No, and none of the doctors seem too concerned as long as your symptoms go away.

Does the fact that you still have some Strep bacteria mean you will get strep throat again? Are you a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off? No! If you go to a rock concert and yell and scream, while drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and smoke, then the mucus membranes in the throat will be damaged and the Strep bacteria, which were always there even in the healthy throat, create the “strep throat” illness symptoms again.

“But this is Lyme disease!” I can hear people saying. “But I was completely healthy before I got bitten by a tick!” Of course the bacteria do matter once it has gotten out of control in a person’s body. And no, you were not optimally healthy before you got bitten, even if you were a tri-athlete. No bacteria can thrive out of control in an optimally healthy human.

In medical “science” it is convenient in a disease like Lyme disease, where the laboratory tests have such a high rate of false-negative tests, that after a course of antibiotics a person is often proclaimed cured, when the follow-up lab tests come back negative. The person with the Lyme disease is left in a perplexing position because often none of their symptoms are gone and their health has definitely not been restored.

This is not good science.

Every flu/cold, infection you ever had in your life is likely still in your body. Kind of makes one go, "Hmmmm!"

Do I believe that Lyme disease is curable? Yes absolutely, to the degree that your body can be repaired. If your body has been damaged beyond repair by the medicines, by accidents, by surgeries, by radiation, by trauma by any means, it will be limited to that degree.

The restoration of health, “CURE” is the result of facilitating the restoration of the integrity and function of every aspect of the body, mind, and spirit. Every organ, system, tissue, and cell must be restored to optimum integrity all at the same time.

This is the goal of American Biological Medicine, to use the best scientific understanding and to push the natural science as we understand it, beyond the simplistic blood tests, and yes, it is simplistic to base health on the presence or absence of bacteria or antibodies present in the blood, to work with the perspective that at no time can or should a doctor harm one part of the body in order to correct another.

When through whatever methods, natural or otherwise, a person experiences a restoration of health, by definition they are cured."

Makes sense to me! Denise