Kate's Health Log

This has been a long thread so I'll end it here! I'll try to not let it be 3.5 weeks before the next time I post here :)

(I'm idly considering starting a pinned thread of weekly wins and changes or something)

Anyway as always please don't hesitate to ask questions if any of this is of interest

(so it's more difficult for them to find nutrients to live), and

- when the bart are left now more free-roaming in your blood *and* your cytokines are being expressed more normally (bart changes them in order to "hide"), your immune system starts better "seeing" them and destroying them itself

now that I've put together a full suite of things that hit all the cytokines the book says you need to hit (there's a dozen or so), the bartonella may die off for two reasons:

- w/o certain cytokines it is difficult or impossible for them to continue to gain entry to new RBCs or endothelial cells

even though I've been off the houttuynia for 2-3 weeks now, in the past few days I've been having the same weird smelling armpits like I've had when I'm on an obvious antimicrobial cycle (like the alinia for babesia or houttuynia for bart).

My guess is perhaps the book is right--

One of the things the Buhner book on bartonella talks about is that a lot of bart infections can be cleared simply with an appropriate anti cytokine blockade, and you only sometimes need explicit antimicrobials (like houttuynia, or rx antibiotics).

What I've noticed is--

Other than all those things, I think the only other change I've made in the past few weeks since I've posted here is pausing the houttuynia. My body was *not* handling it well. I hope to go back on it sometime soon, but we're gonna focus on treating a couple intestinal parasites first.

- I've also recently swapped out my ursodiol (UDCA) for TUDCA bc of pharmacy fuckery and me being so damn tired of going without prescriptions bc pharmacies can't keep it together (TUDCA is readily available as a dietary supplement)

- and I've added hawthorn for my heart :) aka Lil Pumpy

- EGCG (anti cytokines that are relevant to bartonella)

- pomegranate powder (same reason as previous; the juice is too sweet for my current gut situation so I found some de-sugared powder)

- beet powder (to help w/ healthy NO production and downregulate iNOS), as well as other high nitrate foods

I am ecstatic!, I've been wanting to kick it to the curb for months. Even though it was a small dose and it was necessary, I worried about long-term use implications.

Again, who knows if it was the skullcap or if it was a combination of the things I've added recently, which includes:

And skipping that one dose of ativan went so well I just decided to stop it altogether (for those unfamiliar, 0.25mg is a comically small dose; I knew I would probs be able to hop off it fine when my body didn't need it anymore)

I was taking 0.25 mg BID and we figured it must be helping stabilize my mast cells and somehow reducing inflammatory mediators in my lungs, but we were mostly just rolling with it bc it worked (mostly ish).

But I didn't want to take ativan with skullcap so I decided to skip a dose and see

The other absolutely wild thing that's either due to the skullcap or a variety of changes I've made recently is I've been able to stop the low-dose ativan I've been on for over a year, since my serious worsening in Sept 2024

It was the only thing that managed my then-onset shortness of breath

More on that here:

I started the Chinese skullcap last week bc I needed something to manage the *severe* MCAS doom I was being woken up with nightly and was even experiencing throughout the day, too.

It helped right away at 1/5th the usual dosing and I'm slowly increasing the dose.

I didn't find any drugs that I take around the same time as the skullcap that will be a major issue; the ones that use CYP34A at all don't use it primarily anyway

(except for amlexanox, which I wasn't able to find CYP info for; please chime in if you happen to know!)

I was googling CYP substrates bc a recent addition (Chinese skullcap) is an inhibitor of a specific CYP enzyme, and I wanted to check for interactions with rx drugs that may be problematic if metabolized more slowly

The good news is --

Hey! I'm sorry for my slow reply, I sometimes go several days between posting/checking on this account. :)

I'll DM ya!

Previously my physical health/capacity was much too fragile for sauna-ing; I tried it once back in 2024 and my body wasn't having it then. But I've also heard from a number of recovered Lyme patients, plus doctors who know what they're talking about, that once you can tolerate it, sweating helps

One symptom that I've come to suspect is "we're killing the bad guys off sir!" 🫡 is my armpits smell very weird, akin to overused/old fryer oil. (🤢)

(sorry if TMI but this is a health log account, so I'm logging the health data)

I'm wondering if maybe I'm nearing "time to give sauna a try" time 🤔

This actually worked pretty well! I was able to stay at 3 total daily drops, then increased to 4 for a few days, and today I'm cranking it up to 5 😎

(As: 2 drops in the morning, 1 drop mid-day, 2 drops in the evening)

very! 🤓

Gonna have to start doing a gentle nightly massage on these puppies or something, owie

So, perhaps a coincidence but also perhaps not a coincidence that my knees and especially my feet are killing me rn 😅

When I had the residential mold exposure that probably released these assholes from the cage my immune system had previously been keeping them in (via dysregulation of my immune system--mold is some nasty stuff y'all),

I was training for and running a half marathon lol

to gain entry into cells/tissues and set up residence there. So whatever parts of your body were most experiencing inflammation when you were first infected (or when the latent infections were revived) are going to be the most impacted.

What's particularly interesting is some parts of my body are starting to feel better but my knees and especially feet are still ridiculously achey and sore

One of the things that Buhner emphasizes in his books is that lyme and related fuckers like bartonella use the body's inflammatory processes--

(although, my microbiome consultant says I don't have an overgrowth of histamine-producing species--she thinks my histamine intolerance is more related to general gut inflammation = pissed mast cells. so I wonder if maybe for me it's more about how much exogenous histamine is already in the food 🧐)

also one of these days I want to test a hypothesis about oysters--since you (ideally) shuck and eat them right away, are they low histamine? like there's not really time for them to start to go bad?

or is it like, say, strawberries and they're naturally high in histidine and that's the problem

the next things I have my eyes on trying to add back in are:

- wild-caught and *frozen on the boat* salmon

- chickpeas

I want more proteins so I can reduce my meat intake bc after almost 5 years of being forced to eat meat I'm really getting tired of it!! (I'm pescatarian :( )

I've finally got a use for that meloxicam rx a long ago doctor wanted me to have on hand instead of ibuprofen for "Kate's gut is very inflamed and every bit of gentleness we can give it is a win" reasons

I've barely used it til now, but now I'm like oh damn, this is gonna be a lifesaver 😅