Has Any Lady Here Succeeded In Alleviating Her PMS By Increasing Her Salt Ingestion ?

amethyst

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Oct 27, 2016
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Cheers.

In general, do you feel your PMS got worse in the summer, and better during the winter ?
PMS is usually better in the summer due to the heat. Winter can be more painful due to the cold and all the associated pains of menstruation due to the constriction of muscles and such. Hope that helps.
 

Luann

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Mar 10, 2016
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(Old thread).
I had awful pain today, not cramps, but a hot laser feeling coming from my guts. My cycle had just started. Salt didn't seem to help but I had a hard feeling in my abs and read online that if something was stuck in there, which sort of felt like it might be the case, the acid in a glass of pop would cause the fibers to loosen or something and the mass could get out.
Within five minutes of downing some Dr. Thunder I was sleeping like a little kid and stayed that ways for hours, no more pain, woke up feeling good.
 

blob69

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Nov 6, 2015
Messages
362
Reversing the generalized inflammatory state is what is finally allowing me to have better periods, and I probably not hyponatremic anymore -I need to do bloodwork!-.

How did you manage to reverse the generalized inflammatory state, if you don't mind my asking?
 

Sheila

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Dear PakPik,

I suffered from slight hyponatremia the last few years -sodium levels at the very bottom of range-, and no matter how much salt I ate, my sodium levels wouldn't change. I believe that's why salt didn't touch my severe PMS. I believe I was very far there in the degenerative/inflammatory process, with probably high Vasopressin levels. What has dramatically improved my PMS has been Progest-E and Aspirin, but even with those I was getting bad PMS. Reversing the generalized inflammatory state is what is finally allowing me to have better periods, and I probably not hyponatremic anymore -I need to do bloodwork!-.

Thank you for reporting this. Your response reminds me of a post-menopausal lady who had seizures and was under medication (largely sedating in effect, plus a SSRI (!)). After a profound attack, her blood chemistry was regularly measured and she had hyponatremia that salt ingestion (largely to taste but likely 2+ tsp daily) would not shift until the whole system, some weeks later, came out of its heightened state of stress. Essentially She resolved herself, as we changed very little 'medically'. She had the oestrogenic bias that included constipation, PMS and migraines when she was younger that latterly progressed to seizures after viral meningitis. She was a very busy, hard-working, rake thin but good eater, and ran on a lot of adrenalin I surmise as a result. I always wondered back then why salt, to taste - I try not to go past this indicator - failed to improve her low salt levels, but now realise the fallacy of more of any one thing without regard for the whole. The body tends to know (!) and in this case the extra salt could not be utilised until another blockage was cleared, or indeed might have farged things up longer. Everything in the perfect time I guess. I would be interested in any other comments you have on this subject or if you know the mechanisms involved here.

Still considering your post on Aspirin! That was a corker, and I value your perspective. Thank you.

Kind regards
Sheila
 

PakPik

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Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
331
How did you manage to reverse the generalized inflammatory state, if you don't mind my asking?
Dear blob69,

That's like "the" question. The short answer to it is simple: I had to find out what exactly was fueling the chronicity of inflammation and deal with it. In my case, the main cause of chronicity was decades old infections that spread uncontrollably and damaged tissue so much due to the ongoing, never stopping injury both to the tissue and to the whole body. That chronic and heavy infectious burden generated within me two very important consequences: immunosuppression and oxidative stress state. Immunosuppression then invites in more infections and/or helps the existing ones to spread even more, whilst oxidative stress damages tissues/organs and tissues and becomes a problem of its own. In short, I had to target those three big root problems, the parent problem being the chronic and heavy infectious burden. I helped lessen symptoms and improve quality of life a little bit through hormonal intervention (progesterone), nutrients, etcetera, but those interventions were more like little band aids, that is, they didn't target the bottom, root problems. It is interesting that after those 3 big problems where brought under control -thanks God I managed to find a way to treat those-, whilst maintaining the best nutrition I could afford, hormones started to improve, metabolism improved, chronically damaged tissues started to heal, etc. It's the best hormonal, metabolic and energetic state I've ever had in this life, and little did I know that those heavy, life long infections and severely damaged tissues caused the hormonal, metabolic and organ problems that I started struggling with since early childhood -and I now understand why-.

That said, it was a long and hard road, so in the meantime I took different remedies/supplements/interventions that would lessen symptoms or buy me a little bit of "order" or antagonize the chaos/tissue damaging process a little bit. Taking serotonin antagonist (cyprohepyadine), increasing NAD+ for the sake of damaged mitochondria (niacinamide) , helping out nervous system and vascular system (progesterone, cyproheptadine, aspirin), counteracting imprinting/excess methylation (niacinamde) were extremely important. But again, they didn't solve my root problems by themselves. It wasn't until my treatment targeted the 3 roots that my generalized degenerative state started to seriously reverse.

So, I learned the important thing to do is to target and correct the root, most fundamental issues. Targeting secondary problems can be of help, but again, those are little band aids that probably won't exert big changes or exert lasting ones, just help symptomatically or maybe help lessen a little bit the speed of degeneration of the tissue/organ/system (which of course can be valuable).


Your response reminds me of a post-menopausal lady who had seizures and was under medication (largely sedating in effect, plus a SSRI (!)). After a profound attack, her blood chemistry was regularly measured and she had hyponatremia that salt ingestion (largely to taste but likely 2+ tsp daily) would not shift until the whole system, some weeks later, came out of its heightened state of stress.

latterly progressed to seizures after viral meningitis.
Dear Sheila,

That case has reminded me of my own health problems that I faced. I had brain edema caused by intracraneal infection, and since that's a state of electric chaos in the brain due to osmotic/ionic imbalance, I had neurological symptoms including tremors, seizures, etc... The headaches were beyond the maximum of pain I could bear. And yes, during all this ordeal had the chronic hyponatremia.
I'm mentioning this because you may be interested to know that intracraneal infections involving the central nervous system are an important and frequent cause of elevated vasopressin (aka Antidiuretic hormone [ADH]), which leads to hyponatremia. You can check out journal databases to read on that subject. I'm sharing this excerpt:

"Infections and syndrome of inappropriate ADH secretion (SIADH) Infections of the central nervous system (CNS) (meningitis, encephalitis, and abscess) can induce SIADH by releasing excess ADH. Hyponatremia due to SIADH is also a frequent complication of pulmonary infections." www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163445311004336

"In the majority of cases, the fall in serum sodium concentration is of multifactorial origin owing to increased secretion of the anti-diuretic hormone either appropriately or inappropriately." Hyponatremia in patients with infectious diseases. - PubMed - NCBI

When my intracraneal infection subsided and the damaged tissues healed enough, my hyponatremia subsided and neurologic symptoms mostly disappeared.
I also had parallel to that a pulmonary infection with pulmonary edema to complicate matters, so in my case the lungs where also feeding the hyponatremia.

I always wondered back then why salt, to taste - I try not to go past this indicator - failed to improve her low salt levels, but now realise the fallacy of more of any one thing without regard for the whole. The body tends to know (!) and in this case the extra salt could not be utilised until another blockage was cleared, or indeed might have farged things up longer. Everything in the perfect time I guess.

So, it sounds that the lady you describe perhaps had hyponatremia induced by ADH secretion induced by the meningitis/CNS injury, such as in the paper I shared above. And as in her case, no amount of salt improved my condition: problem was the infection and damaged tissue, not a lack of salt -and there even came a point where my body was rejecting the extra salt-. Not even progesterone helped the hyponatremia, which I thought it would.

Thanks for your kind words Sheila.

God bless you all.
 
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Sheila

Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2014
Messages
374
Dear PakPik,
Thank you so much for your response, it will take me a while to ponder the implications of your post, very, very interesting to me.
Vasopressin appears quite a bit on this forum and Dr Peat wrote a most interesting article on it, last year. If you do not have it, let me know.
There is a thread discussing it here https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/rays-latest-newsletter-vasopressin-adh-antagonists.7807/ also.
I am so pleased you have regained your health, thank you for taking the time to relate your specifics, observations and conclusions.
Kind regards
Sheila
 

blob69

Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2015
Messages
362
Dear blob69,

That's like "the" question. The short answer to it is simple: I had to find out what exactly was fueling the chronicity of inflammation and deal with it. In my case, the main cause of chronicity was decades old infections that spread uncontrollably and damaged tissue so much due to the ongoing, never stopping injury both to the tissue and to the whole body. That chronic and heavy infectious burden generated within me two very important consequences: immunosuppression and oxidative stress state. Immunosuppression then invites in more infections and/or helps the existing ones to spread even more, whilst oxidative stress damages tissues/organs and tissues and becomes a problem of its own. In short, I had to target those three big root problems, the parent problem being the chronic and heavy infectious burden. I helped lessen symptoms and improve quality of life a little bit through hormonal intervention (progesterone), nutrients, etcetera, but those interventions were more like little band aids, that is, they didn't target the bottom, root problems. It is interesting that after those 3 big problems where brought under control -thanks God I managed to find a way to treat those-, whilst maintaining the best nutrition I could afford, hormones started to improve, metabolism improved, chronically damaged tissues started to heal, etc. It's the best hormonal, metabolic and energetic state I've ever had in this life, and little did I know that those heavy, life long infections and severely damaged tissues caused the hormonal, metabolic and organ problems that I started struggling with since early childhood -and I now understand why-.

That said, it was a long and hard road, so in the meantime I took different remedies/supplements/interventions that would lessen symptoms or buy me a little bit of "order" or antagonize the chaos/tissue damaging process a little bit. Taking serotonin antagonist (cyprohepyadine), increasing NAD+ for the sake of damaged mitochondria (niacinamide) , helping out nervous system and vascular system (progesterone, cyproheptadine, aspirin), counteracting imprinting/excess methylation (niacinamde) were extremely important. But again, they didn't solve my root problems by themselves. It wasn't until my treatment targeted the 3 roots that my generalized degenerative state started to seriously reverse.

So, I learned the important thing to do is to target and correct the root, most fundamental issues. Targeting secondary problems can be of help, but again, those are little band aids that probably won't exert big changes or exert lasting ones, just help symptomatically or maybe help lessen a little bit the speed of degeneration of the tissue/organ/system (which of course can be valuable).





Dear Sheila,

That case has reminded me of my own health problems that I faced. I had brain edema caused by intracraneal infection, and since that's a state of electric chaos in the brain due to osmotic/ionic imbalance, I had neurological symptoms including tremors, seizures, etc... The headaches were beyond the maximum of pain I could bear. And yes, during all this ordeal had the chronic hyponatremia.
I'm mentioning this because you may be interested to know that intracraneal infections involving the central nervous system are an important and frequent cause of elevated vasopressin (aka Antidiuretic hormone [ADH]), which leads to hyponatremia. You can check out journal databases to read on that subject. I'm sharing this excerpt:

"Infections and syndrome of inappropriate ADH secretion (SIADH) Infections of the central nervous system (CNS) (meningitis, encephalitis, and abscess) can induce SIADH by releasing excess ADH. Hyponatremia due to SIADH is also a frequent complication of pulmonary infections." www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163445311004336

"In the majority of cases, the fall in serum sodium concentration is of multifactorial origin owing to increased secretion of the anti-diuretic hormone either appropriately or inappropriately." Hyponatremia in patients with infectious diseases. - PubMed - NCBI

When my intracraneal infection subsided and the damaged tissues healed enough, my hyponatremia subsided and neurologic symptoms mostly disappeared.
I also had parallel to that a pulmonary infection with pulmonary edema to complicate matters, so in my case the lungs where also feeding the hyponatremia.



So, it sounds that the lady you describe perhaps had hyponatremia induced by ADH secretion induced by the meningitis/CNS injury, such as in the paper I shared above. And as in her case, no amount of salt improved my condition: problem was the infection and damaged tissue, not a lack of salt -and there even came a point where my body was rejecting the extra salt-. Not even progesterone helped the hyponatremia, which I thought it would.

Thanks for your kind words Sheila.

God bless you all.

Thanks so much, PakPik! Your issues remind me a bit of my own so this is all very interesting and valuable. It’s interesting that infections turned out to be the root cause of your problem - Peat seems to think the opposite, that infections are due to a low metabolic state, nutrient deficiencies etc. But in the end everything is interrelated, so I’m sure that getting rid of one big burden is huge, or can at least make other measures much more effective.

I figure that you had to use antibiotics to clear these infections? How did you find out which infections you had?
 

PakPik

Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2016
Messages
331
Vasopressin appears quite a bit on this forum and Dr Peat wrote a most interesting article on it, last year. If you do not have it, let me know.
There is a thread discussing it here Ray's Latest Newsletter - Vasopressin (ADH) Antagonists also.
Hello Sheila,

Yes, indeed, I have read that thread before. It was interesting, but I unfortunately don't have the full newsletter. Nevertheless, I think it was that thread or a similar one that help me put vasopressin under my radar.

I am so pleased you have regained your health, thank you for taking the time to relate your specifics, observations and conclusions.

Aww, thank you Sheila. I appreciate your kind words. :)

Peat seems to think the opposite, that infections are due to a low metabolic state, nutrient deficiencies etc. But in the end everything is interrelated, so I’m sure that getting rid of one big burden is huge, or can at least make other measures much more effective.

Dr. Peat has made good points, but what he claims doesn't cover all people. In other words, it's not the complete picture. I don't agree with ascribing virtually most health problems to hypothyroidsm and/or nutrient deficiencies. Of course, those can be huge problems, but for many people those aren't the main problems or even a problem; moreover, certain disease/chronic damaging processes lead to hypometabolism/hypothyroidsm, which can be adaptive or maladaptive. Or even a combination of adaptive+maladaptive. Many antigens and virulence factors from pathogens directly destroy cellular organelles (including the very metabolically important mitochondria), and also, chronic immune processes can lead to purposeful (read: useful, beneficial and/or required) inactivation of thyroid/lowering of metabolic rate (for example, certain cytokines can inactivate thyroid hormones such T3, increase ReverseT3, decrease the production of T3, and/or block the thyroid receptor). I won't go into details, but as an example, neutrophils are able to inactivate the T3 hormone which increases their bacterial killing capacity, and if that inactivation of T3 doesn't take place, there's "impaired killing upon infection" (I'm sharing the paper below). Finally, with chronic tissue damage there's also the inhibition of oxidative/cell energization processes at certain steps that don't concern the functioning of thyroid, so that the respiration/energization problem wouldn't be a problem of lack of thyroid nor it would be fixed by increasing thyroid.

My conclusion is that every person has a unique set of problems and aggravating factors, and treatment decisions have to be tailored to them. Many people have a metabolic problem not because primarily a thyroid defect, but because of chronic tissue exposure to insults such as heavy metals, infectious material, pesticides/solvents, etc... all of which and the immune responses elicited by them having the capacity to damage the respiratory apparatus and/or directly inactivate thyroid function. Giving thyroid to a person that doesn't have a primarily thyroid problem can either: 1) Make them feel a lot or a little better, 2) Exert no appreciable effect, or 3) Be very detrimental, simply because they have a problem that doesn't have to do (primarily) with thyroid that needs to be targeted and that may even be generating adaptive downregulation of thyroid/metabolic rate. Of course, when a person has a real thyroid problem, thyroid can make a huge difference in their life and their health.

The Thyroid Hormone Inactivating Enzyme Type 3 Deiodinase is Present in Bactericidal Granules and the Cytoplasm of Human Neutrophils. - PubMed - NCBI

"Neutrophils are important effector cells of the innate immune system. Thyroid hormone (TH) is thought to play an important role in their function. Intracellular TH levels are regulated by the deiodinating enzymes. The TH-inactivating type 3 deiodinase (D3) is expressed in infiltrating murine neutrophils, and D3 knockout mice show impaired bacterial killing upon infection. This suggests that D3 plays an important role in the bacterial killing capacity of neutrophils. The mechanism behind this effect is unknown. We aimed to assess the presence of D3 in human neutrophils, and determine its subcellular localization using confocal and electron microscopy, because this could give important clues about its function in these cells. D3 appeared to be present in the cytoplasm and in myeloperoxidase containing azurophilic granules and as well as lactoferrin containing specific granules within human neutrophils. This subcellular localization did not change upon activation of the cells. D3 is observed intracellularly during neutrophil extracellular trap formation, followed by a reduction of D3 staining after release of the neutrophil extracellular traps into the extracellular space. At the transcriptional level, human neutrophils expressed additional essential elements of TH metabolism, including TH transporters and TH receptors. Here, we demonstrate the presence and subcellular location of D3 in human neutrophils for the first time and propose a model, in which D3 plays a role in the bacterial killing capacity of neutrophils either through generation of iodide for the myeloperoxidase system or through modulation of intracellular TH bioavailability."

A paper overviewing the subject of regulation of thyroid deiodinases

Physiological role and regulation of iodothyronine deiodinases: a 2011 update

I figure that you had to use antibiotics to clear these infections?
I didn't use antibiotics because they seem to frequently problems with organs (organ damage), etc, when used for lengthy periods of time. They also can quickly become ineffective due to the pathogens building resistance, and antibiotics are largely unable to work against established biofilms, which are a common if not a prevalent problem when dealing with chronically established infections. Viral and fungal pathogens aren't generally targeted by commercial antibiotics either.

Warm greetings.
 
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