Ongoing gut issues after another bout of respiratory virus (reposted due to forum randomness)

hey Rainy - i think I'm getting there - thank you for asking

sleep still a bit off my best - but yesterday was a better day and the gut stuff does seem to be gradually settling

its an odd one as the people who got a cough with this virus are still coughing nearly 6 weeks later and the ones that got aches and pains are still achy 6 weeks later - so its seems drawn out even if you don't have Lyme etc

hope you are doing good also !

Hey Garzie,

I've been thinking about this thing you keep experiencing. I was going to post in the other thread but that one went off-topic a bit so I figured I'd post it here.

Let me start off by saying I'm probably a bit biased because I had success with anti-parasitics recently. I also want to say that I don't believe clearing parasites is the end all solution to Lyme.
You once called Lyme treatment a multi-pronged approach and I couldn't agree more.

That said, I was thinking about how Alan Macdonald was saying how parasites host Borrelia inside of them. It got me brainstorming with what's going on with you lately.

We both also are well aware now that biofilms/fibrin etc. can hold on to a whole host of bacteria etc.

So I have 2 thoughts about all of this:

1 ) What if parasites are holding on to that virus that keeps coming back in your body? Furthermore, what if parasites are causing your gut issues? Please don't think I'm downplaying all the research you've done about your gut. There's a good chance I'm wrong. However, I wanted to offer this idea to you, as something to consider. I know you take Ivermectin and it does treat a variety of parasites but not all of them. I found out myself when I didn't clear parasites with Ivermectin but did with others.

Alternatively:

2 ) What if you have biofilms that are holding on to the virus? This **might** correlate with your treatment where every time you break down biofilm, the virus comes out to "play", which might have been inside the biofilm.

So with that said, I also want to touch on something that's a bit "out there", but bear with me. Before I found HealingWell, several years ago, I used to read random Lyme blogs and related websites. One of the theories I found on several of those websites is that when you start healing from Lyme, that you get all the viruses/illnesses that you picked up along the way but never "processed". Now is this true? Could be, but I'm conflicted. It's also not the worst explanation I've seen of why people start getting sick when they are getting better from Lyme.

When you made this post I did some searching online for you and I found this website written by a student:

https://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2011/07/viruses-that-infect-parasites-that-infect-us-the-matryoshka-dolls-of-human-pathogens.html

My point with this is, what if Alan Macdonald's work can be extended from "Parasites carry Lyme" to "Parasites also carry viruses".

I would be extremely curious to see how you react to Alinia. However, I also know how you feel about pharmaceuticals so there's no pressure if you don't want to.

Hope my brainstorm rant helps a bit 🙂 🙏

RainyCloud said...
Hey Garzie,

I've been thinking about this thing you keep experiencing. I was going to post in the other thread but that one went off-topic a bit so I figured I'd post it here.

🙂 🙏

thanks for your thoughts on this Rainy - they are always welcome

on the topic of parasites - this is something i have looked into in some depth in the past
i dug into the available parasite tests at the time.
i had 2 separate stool analysis with parasitology - from 2 different labs - each taking 3 separate stool samples
some time after that i did a PCR based test that looked for the top 10 gut parasites ( included giardia. crypto, blasto and the various helminths ) via PCR of stool - which appeared to be the most sensitive test available
i also did extensive microscopy of stool samples for both my partner and i

all of these came back entirely clear for parasites - same for my partner - so i was fairly confident to eliminate this as a cause of my gut symptoms

whether these organisms - like worms -if they were present - could play host to COVID - i have no idea - i suspect they are too different at a cellular level an the receptors on those cells vs a bat for that to happen - but i doubt its been studied so who is to know.

i am not adverse to taking Alina or other drugs at some point - but experience has taught me not to add too much into the mix when things are a bit out of sorts already - as it seems to lead to more unpredictable results - so my preference is to get back into a flat and level place and then try them with less overlapping problems

as always appreciate the thoughts

🙂 🙏

thanks guys

i think it was Dr SP who says Alina has anti-spirochaetal effectiveness - i think from work by the lyme pathologist Dr Alan McDonald - so it makes me wonder if that is something to do with the benefits - as well as its anti-parasitic effects

thanks Vimzor!

i was not aware of that company -

i have however done a good deal of microbiome pcr testing and delved into that site and had some correspondence with the guy that runs it.

overall there are problems with his approach.

firstly - the PCR labs themselves do not agree with each other as to what is in the same sample
and i am not talking about small degrees of difference - but utterly opposite results at even the phylum level
this cannot be right / or accounted for by differences in databases - something is fundamentally wrong with some of them - or all of them - and we as users have no way of knowing which if any are good

so there are issues with the base data the website is trying to use to draw conclusions from and therefore to drive interventions from

secondly - i think the fundamental premise is barking up the wrong tree
the guys main theory is that chronically ill people with gut symptoms are being made ill by "a 1000 tiny cuts" of many different bacterial species being overgrown or under grown and this is the root cause of their problem - thus adjusting the microbiome back to what is regarded as normal will cure their symptoms

here more problems arise
the definition of normal is very much unclear - there is no one normal template for a normal microbiome - you can find apparently healthy people with a wide variety of microbiome patterns - so what is normal for any given person is so far unclear - and given the issues with the technologies/ companies measuring them also being unrepeatable from one to the next - this remains problematic.

but perhaps the largest problem is with the basic underlying premise itself

people who are chronically ill with say lyme and or bart typically do not get much colonisation of their gut by the so called beneficial bacteria when they supplement with them.
research shows that inflammation in the gut changes this microenvironment in ways that makes it less hospitable to these more fragile and fussy bacteria and towards more pathogenic ones and that this may be a more likely root cause for changes in the microbiota associated with these illnesses.

thus a more suitable premise may be that the gut is inflamed due to infection with an intracellular pathogen in the cells that line the gut changing its ability to support a beneficial mix of gut bacteria - and this is the root cause of the changes in the gut microbiota seem in chronic lyme / bart etc al patients

in this case changing foods that feed certain bacteria that are seen as lacking in the microbiome or introducing probiotics to try to supplement those that are seen as missing, may do little to impact the overall system. flowers will not grow in a garden that is too dry - or too wet - no matter how many you plant or what fertilizer you put down.

this has been my experience also - after 12 months of eating probiotic foods loaded with more live bacteria than you can get from supplements my levels were still barely registering on PCR stool tests - and my overall gut symptoms were more or less unchanged .

these are of course just my observations thoughts - but i have looked into it in some depth and tried many things along these lines.

Post Edited (Garzie) : 7/24/2022 6:13:26 AM (GMT-7)

“Recently I came across a website, wish I could find it again, aggregating all of the studies we have, most of which seem to show that leaky gut/dysbiosis is a symptom of, and not a cause of, autoimmune and chronic illness.”

DCD -Yeah what comes first the illness or the gut problems, we may never know. It amazes me that there is a few people here in the past that supposedly had no gut issues. I just don’t see how that’s possible.

You had a comment in one of these “gut” threads about the new “leaky gut and celiac” medication which is getting pretty close to passing whatever FDA loops meds go thru. I forget the name now.

Hopefully this works and makes it to the marketplace.

If so it’ll be very interesting to see what it does when tried and chronic illness where gut issues arise.

Post Edited (astroman) : 7/24/2022 10:35:02 PM (GMT-7)