lthomas521

The purpose of cognitive behavior therapy is to correct irrational thinking patterns that lead to emotional distress. For example, a person might ignore positive things and dwell on negative things, or overgeneralize a single bad thing into an all-consuming pattern. Learning not to think irrationally is probably quite helpful, in general. However, some of the claims made for CBT are a bit overblown. For example, the research was done on mildly depressed "worried well" patients, but then some people claimed that it was beneficial for people with severe, biochemical depression. Also, there have been claims that CBT is beneficial for people with CFS. Again, the problem is that the research that showed some benefit from CBT for people with CFS included people who didn't really fit the rigorous definition for CFS. My take on it is that CBT is very useful for people whose brain chemistry is fairly normal. I have known people with severe bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and their thought processes were so disturbed that CBT would have been pointless, at least until their medication kicked in. If you have a severe form of depression, especially if other people in your family also have it, don't expect that CBT will enable you to rid your life of antidepressant medication. Also, if you have a physical illness, such as POTS or CFS, the CBT may help you achieve some sort of adjustment to the fact of your illness, but it won't make the illness go away. In short, I think that CBT can be useful, but it is important to have realistic expectations for what it can achieve. I'm glad to hear that it has been beneficial to Persephone.

Poor man's tilt table: http://www.pediatricnetwork.org/medical/CF...stprocedure.htm

How about learning a new language?

Whole milk has 8 grams of fat (5 grams of saturated fat), and somewhat less sodium per cup, than skim milk. http://www.royalcrestdairy.com/products/nu.../milk_whole.htm.

My doctors said waist high is best for me. I wear them every day. I've even done a tilt-table test with and without them. They really help, and I feel better with them on. Of course, they are expensive, hard to put on, and hot in the summer.

The sugar supposedly helps you absorb the salt. If that is the reason, then stevia wouldn't do the trick. I think that stevia is probably good for people with type 2 diabetes, although there needs to be more research on that. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum If your husband has problems with sugar, he might consider trying the vegan diet, which outperformed the American Diabetes Association's regular diet in a head-to-head clinical trial involving people with type 2 diabetes. I went on it for several weeks after this study's results were first announced. I lost a few pounds and felt great. My husband lost some weight, too. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/repri...ourcetype=HWCIT I have a water filter that supposedly removes the VOCs (volatile organic compounds) from our tap water. There was a gas station in our town whose underground gasoline tanks leaked into our water supply. Two of the people on my street have had leukemia, which is linked to benzene in the water, although I don't know whether those cases have anything to do with the darn gas station. Of course, much of the time I forget to use the filter. We have a reverse osmosis filter from when we used to keep tropical fish. However, I don't think that filtering the minerals out of your water would help. Someone mentioned phenylalanine, because of the warning on products containing aspartame. Phenylalanine is a naturally occurring amino acid. Some people are born without the enzyme that you need in order to break down phenylalanine. Years ago, before this disorder (phenylketonuria) was discovered, people with the disorder became profoundly mentally retarded because they couldn't break down the high amounts of phenylalanine in normal foods, including breast milk. (That's what happened to Pearl S. Buck's daughter.) After the nature of the disorder was discovered, it became routine to test children for this disorder at birth. Infants with the disorder were then maintained on a restrictive, low-phenylalanine diet (no breast milk!), thus preventing the brain damage. Unless you have phenylketonuria, you don't need to worry about phenylalanine.

The steroids you mention are considered "topical" because they are being applied to the surface that they need to go to: namely, the esophagus and the nasal passages. So you get more bang for a smaller dose than if you had to take a pill or shot. Thus, smaller doses are used, which improves the safety profile. If you are going to be taking steroids for a long time, you might want to monitor your bone density. I don't know whether the steroids have anything to do with your muscle pain. My question is whether they have considered giving you a mast cell stabilizer, like cromolyn sodium (Gastrocrom or Nasalcrom). You can take these along with the steroids, I think.

Yes. Twice. Then I had a 24-hour urine test that tested for aldosterone metabolites. They were 8 times the upper limit of normal, which suggested that my adrenals are definitely not underactive.

I've given up Gatorade. Instead, I use the following: 1/2 t salt 1/2 t potassium chloride (salt substitute) 1/2 t baking soda 1/2 t sugar 1 liter water several drops of licorice extract (with glycyrrhizin) This is an adaptation of a recipe that someone else's autonomic doctor recommended. I cut the sugar way down and added licorice extract. (Licorice makes you retain salt.) I drink a liter of this first thing every morning. Sometimes I drink another in the early evening. It really seems to help.

Don't even cut the pills in half without first asking if it's okay. For example, you can cut a Toprol-XL tablet in half as long as you don't chew or crush it. But you have to swallow a DynaCirc tablet whole. Both are timed-release medications for high blood pressure.

You might be able to raise your HDLs through dietary measures: eat more nuts (unless you are allergic to them). http://heartdisease.about.com/cs/cholesterol/a/raiseHDL.htm You might also consider taking inositol hexaniacinate: http://healthlibrary.epnet.com/GetContent....;chunkiid=21769 However, you have to do this under a doctor's supervision, because the doctor has to monitor your liver enzymes to make sure that it isn't causing liver inflammation.

Sometimes they use an antidepressant to deal with shingles-related pain. If they offer you an antidepressant, don't dismiss it just because you aren't depressed. It's really important to manage the pain and inflammation of shingles aggressively, so you reduce the chance of postherpetic neuralgia, an agonizingly painful condition that can persist for a long time. By the way, never chop a pill in half unless you have asked your pharmacist if it is okay to do so. (And of course, you should check with the doctor to see if the dosage reduction is okay.) More and more drugs these days have a time-release formulation or special coating. If you mess with that, you will release your entire day's dose in one fell swoop and can make yourself very sick. For example, there are some time-release once-a-day morphine pills that could give you an overdose if you chew them.

Yale University School of Medicine Heart Book http://www.med.yale.edu/library/heartbk/

All of these reference ranges are for people who have a normal blood volume. Some people with dysautonomia have abnormally low blood volume. If you have a low plasma volume and a low red blood cell mass, might you have an iron deficit that doesn't show up on routine blood tests?

Sara, the brain fog might be related to poor circulation in the brain. Have you done everything possible to expand your blood volume (salt and water loading, plus Florinef or licorice)? Do you wear waist-high pressure stockings?

Hi Maxine: You still didn't specify what the problem was.

What do you mean by "bothered by"? If it's chewable, I'm guessing that it's not a problem with swallowing the pill. Here's a link to the ingredients in Centrum Chewables http://www.centrum.com/products/labeling_chew.asp

I'd never seen the acronym "LLMD" before, and I had to look it up. It stands for Lyme-literate MD? Sounds like BS (and I don't mean bachelor of science).

I take midodrine once a day, first thing in the morning, because that's when I have the most trouble. Then I drink a liter of water with 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp potassium chloride (salt substitute), 1/2 tsp sugar, and some licorice extract (with glycyrrhizin) that I got from the health-food store. I drink another liter of that mixture at night.

According to an article by Brian Deer in the Sunday Times (London), Wakefield had been paid ?55,000 by lawyers who wanted him to come up with some scientific-sounding evidence that they could use in a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. He did not reveal this conflict of interest to the editors of the Lancet. http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-deer-1.htm Also, Brian Deer reported that Wakefield and his colleagues had filed a patent for a new vaccine that would become valuable only if the MMR's reputation was damaged. http://briandeer.com/wakefield/wakefield-patents.htm "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."

Some vaccines have contained thiomersal in the past, and a few vaccines still contain it; but MMR vaccine has never contained thiomersal. According to the World Health Organization, the MMR vaccines do not contain thiomersal--not even trace amounts--because the thiomersal would make the vaccine less effective. http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/t...l/questions/en/ The confusion probably arose because people were talking about several different vaccines in the same conversation. It's important to pay close attention to which vaccine they are talking about.

Could be psoriasis.

Hi Dave: Sorry to hear that you have POTS and type 2 diabetes. The POTS might be the result of the diabetes, because of damage to the autonomic nervous system. Two useful bits of advice: Go to www.pubmed.com and enter diabetes AND thiamine. Don't take my word for it that thiamine is the wonder drug for type 2 diabetes. The ADA just tested a totally vegan diet against the standard ADA diet, and the totally vegan diet won hands down. More weight loss, better A1C, better kidney function, decreased need for prescription meds, and --wonder of wonders -- better compliance with the diet.

In general, it's probably impolite for people to offer unsolicited opinions on other people's appearance. The exception would be something like "wow, that color looks great on you"!

No brand of MMR vaccine has ever contained thiomersal. Calling me a totalitarian will not change that. Plus, name-calling is impolite and counterproductive. There is evidence that autism is partly genetic, because of higher rates of concordance in identical twins (who share all of the same DNA) than in fraternal twins (who are no more genetically similar than full siblings from separate pregnancies). Concordance means that both members of the twin pair have the same diagnosis with regard to the condition of interest. Exactly how high the concordance in identical twins is depends on how broad your definition of the autism spectrum is. But the concordance is not 100% (the highest published report I've seen is about 95%), so there is some room for an environmental factor. Ironically, one possible environmental factor is rubella (German measles), which the MMR vaccine prevents. By frightening people away from having MMR vaccinations, the antivaccination activists might actually increase the risk that a pregnant woman will catch rubella and consequently have an autistic child. Here's a link to a discussion of the relationship between congenital rubella (in other words, the mother had rubella while she was pregnant with that child) and autism: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum. Of course, a lot of the children they talk about in this article were not only autistic, some were blind, deaf, and mentally retarded, too. Congenital rubella is a very, very bad thing. If the antivaccination activists are successful in their crusade to frighten people into avoiding the MMR vaccine, there will be more cases of rubella in the population, and inevitably more pregnant women who get rubella, and probably more cases of autism (and miscarriages, mental retardation, blindness, and deafness) as a result. That's my concern, and there's actual scientific evidence to support it. There is exactly zero scientific evidence that the MMR vaccine plays any role in causing autism. The other interesting thing I've seen lately about autism is that it is detectable very early in life, long before children are exposed to the MMR vaccine. (Causes have to precede effects, so this finding, if substantiated, would definitively rule out MMR vaccination as a cause of autism.) Here's an article in a very prestigious scientific journal about movement disorders in very young infants who were later found to have autism. The abnormalities are very subtle, so you wouldn't notice them unless you had been trained to look for them. The researchers looked at old videotapes but didn't know whether or not the child went on to be diagnosed with autism. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum By the way, there's plenty of research on autism, including some genetic studies. http://www.cureautismnow.org/site/c.bhLOK2...newsletter2.asp