Since I’ve returned from visiting my sister’s family during the middle of March, I’ve been focused on getting rid of Bartonella. I’ve been vacillating between feeling like I’ll never get to the end of coiling and realizing that I might actually beat the Bartonella infection in the next few months.

When I got back, I hadn’t coiled in 12 days. As soon as I started coiling for Bartonella again, I herxed. The herxes weren’t horrible–no kidney pain– but they were easy to detect. I had headaches, bad dreams, tingling in my limbs, constipation and acne. After about 10 days, the herx symptoms started to diminish; some even cleared up.

Around April 1, I started shifting around which body part I was doing at which time of the day. I ended up putting my shoulders in the nighttime coiling session. Until that day, I coiled the front of each shoulder for 1 minute and each shoulder blade for 1 minute. Out of laziness (I didn’t want to roll over onto my stomach to do my shoulder blades) I instead put the knob of my shoulder through the coil. I figured it was good enough for one night.

The next morning, my arms were tingling more intensely than ever. I was onto something. I permanently made the switch in position for coiling my shoulders. I realized I was hitting a spot that somehow wasn’t covered by my previous protocol. It turned out to be a spot with a high concentration of Bartonella bacteria. I coiled that way for two weeks. Then starting April 14, I began increasing the amount of time I was coiling my shoulder knobs. By April 19 (this past Saturday), I had increased the time I coiled my shoulders to 6 minutes on each side, once per day.

Coiling my shoulder knobs, which, incidentally, give better coverage to the sides of my neck, has triggered another round of classic Bartonella herxing and has gotten worse as I added more coiling time:

• kidney pain
• tingling in my arms (which has since resolved)
• acne (esp. on my butt)
• constipation
• abdominal pain
• bladder irritation
• headaches
• insomnia
• nightmares
• waking up hot with light nightsweats
• bouts of feeling terribly hopeless
• feeling spacey, restless, tired and unfocused

The only symptom that hasn’t happened yet is pain in my hands and feet when I wake up in the morning. That may still come… (Note from April 21: the pain in my hands and feet in the morning has begun.)

In the process of changing my coiling protocol, we had a warm spell. Warm weather means I can’t use a single coil for 20 consecutive minutes in one session at 832 Hz (the Bartonella frequency). I was limited to 18 minutes per coil per session, and I was doing 3 sessions per day.

The only way I could figure out how to get under the limit was to reduce the amount of time I coil the back of my head from 10 minutes to 8 minutes, three times per day. I still believe that the back of my head is a key location for the Bartonella infection, but I also think I’ve knocked down the infection enough that I can coil somewhat less and still make progress.

I’ll continue my current coiling protocol for the next few weeks, including the extra coiling on my shoulder knobs. Once the herxing stops, I’ll reevaluate what to change next. Besides modifying the coiling protocol, I’ll consider reducing the amount of detoxing I’m doing. I’m currently down to 2 Renavive capsules per day. I’d like to go down to one. On the days that I had kidney pain recently, I drank dandelion root tea to give my kidneys extra detoxing help. In any case, the goal is to coil and not herx without any detoxing. As long as I have no symptoms and no herxing when I coil, I’ll know the infection is almost gone.

Bartonella Coiling Protocol

(Draft 10)

Frequency: 832 Hz

Morning (total 36 minutes)

• Back of head – 8 minutes
• Spleen – 5 minutes
• Liver – 5 minutes
• Head: each side, top – 2 minutes per
• Each side of ribcage plus the adjacent arm – 2 minutes per
• Spine: upper, middle – 4 minutes per

Midday (total 36 minutes)

• Back of head – 8 minutes
• Each ilium back – 2 minutes per
• Each butt cheek (up towards the iliac crest, for the joint and muscles) – 2 minutes per
• Sitbones (bottom of butt) – 2 minutes
• Between legs: thighs, knees, calves – 2 minute per
• Feet through coil – 2 minutes
• Each ilium front – 2 minutes per
• Each hip bursa – 2 minutes per
• Lower abdomen – 2 minutes

Night (total 36 minutes)

• Back of head – 8 minutes
• Abdomen – 5 minutes
• Chest including heart – 5 minutes
• Each shoulder knob – 6 minutes per
• Sacrum – 6 minutes

Biofilms

I’ve wondered, as have several people who have contacted me, whether the frequencies emitted by the coil have any effect on biofilms. I can’t say for sure, but base on my recent experience coiling my shoulders, I think they do.

I used to imagine the bacteria from the tick-borne infections living singly, free floating in my bodily fluids: blood, cerebrospinal fluid, synovial fluid. I also thought it might be burrowing around my fat tissue, muscle tissue, cartilage,  in my organs and in the membranes that surround my nerves. The latter image is especially true of the Lyme spirochete, which is known to burrow through various tissues.

Years ago, shortly before I started using the coil machine, I learned about biofilms. Immediately, my sacrum came to mind. Given all the trouble I’d had with my hips, legs and lower back, it was an obvious place to look for bacterial colonies. When I’d had the very painful and ultimately inconclusive EMG test, we could “hear” static in the nerves coming out of my sacrum and lower lumbar disks. (The medical intern was very impressed by how loud the signal was. I was too busy trying to hold still while sobbing from pain to find the experience remarkable.) Furthermore, in my first few months of using the coil machine, coiling my sacrum for Lyme gave me a much bigger herx than coiling my abdomen.  I assumed that I was killing the bacteria in biofilms in my sacrum as I coiled it.

In the years since, however, I have been less sure, only because there isn’t any research available to look at the effect of coiling on biofilms.

Now, coiling my shoulders after coiling the rest of my body for almost 2 years and getting such a big reaction, makes me thing I’ve touched upon an undisturbed biofilm colony. It is the only way I can make sense of such a minor change in coiling position making such a big difference.

As a result, I’ve switched my Lyme coiling protocol to accommodate a new coiling position for my shoulders, one that matches the Bartonella protocol. I had a reaction after only one Lyme coiling session. Both my shoulders popped, loudly and painfully, two mornings after the coiling session. They’ve been sore and loud ever since. I feel like I’ve hit upon the last bastion of Lyme and Bartonella in my body, the area that has been able to escape coiling. I might be on my way fully eradicating both infections from my body.

Meanwhile, I’ve got my own insurance plan, just in case the coil machine is not fully successful in killing the bacteria that live in biofilms. When all the symptoms are gone, I’ll try taking enzymes orally, the kind that break up biofilms, to see if that generates flare or herx symptoms of any of the infections. Until then, based on my recent experiences, I’m assuming that coiling tackles biofilms.

Lyme Update

I’ve been feeling more tired than I did earlier this winter. I’ve been feeling like the Lyme infection is active again, ever since I took the rabies vaccine doses. The low level symptoms haven’t gone away, even with coiling, as though the cysts continue to wake up a little at a time. I think the vaccines got the process started and my diet has allowed the cysts to continue activating.

I’ve been too tired to do concentrated activities (like blogging or writing the coiling for lyme book). Instead, I’ve been forcing myself to do light exercise, mostly walking, and some housework, and otherwise taking it easy. Every day, I get really tired at 1 pm and stay that way until about 4 pm. I’m not quite sleepy, but I’m not able to do much other than listen to the radio and crochet. I get some energy back in time to make something for dinner. But by 6 or 7 pm, I’m done for the day. I’m sleeping 10+ hours a night (except the few nights when Bartonella insomnia keeps me up from 3 am to 6 am, after which I end up sleeping till about 9 am). I feel the Lyme kind of tired, which is not as horrible as the Babesia tired that forces me to lie down all day, but it is still rather taxing.

Last night, I took the last of the vaccines I need for my summer vacation: TdaP (tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis). This is the one adults are supposed to get ever 10 years, unless they are housebound with Lyme or CFIDS or Fibromyalgia. In those cases, the likelihood of catching one of the illnesses is small, but the increase in symptoms after vaccination is a high risk of increased disability. I’m not sure exactly when I had my last tetanus vaccine; most likely it was 1997 or earlier. I’m no longer housebound, and I’d like to travel a bit this summer. The TdaP is on the list of vaccines highly recommended for the trip. Since I’m on the vaccine wagon right now, I’m okay with a symptom flare. Even though it will make me feel worse for the next several weeks, I want to get the Lyme active so I can kill it off. And I want to be safe when I travel.

Miscellaneous

In the past week, on my new diet, I’ve had more sweet cravings and some cheating with chocolate. I haven’t gained weight, despite eating things that would have assisted in my weight gain back when I was on Vitex. The main thing I’ve noticed is that I no longer feel full. I feel like I don’t need to eat anymore after a meal, but I don’t feel quite satisfied. This is what it was like on my super restrictive diet. I guess it’s okay. But I miss the feeling of being super satisfied after I eat. The flip side is that I don’t feel overfull (except after the hot fudge sundae at the Ghirardelli’s shop in Monterey). That’s a good thing. I rarely get reflux now. My stomach doesn’t get upset as often. Generally, the diet is assisting my goals in healing.

My period was late this month. Or rather it was in range based on the past 7 years, but at 34 days, it was late compared to the last three months of 28-30 days. The good news is that I had no PMS, except for very mild cramping that could easily have been abdominal pain from Bartonella. During my period, I was extra tired, had sacrum pain, and had moderate cramps the first day. Otherwise, it was about as close to a healthy menstrual cycle as I’ve had since I was in my early 20s. For the next few months, while I’m doing things to trigger the Lyme infection, I expect my hormones to go a little haywire. Maybe by September or October I’ll finally have a normal cycle again.

One last thing. I’ve had a sinus infection since March 21. It turned into a raging upper respiratory infection. Then it seemed to be getting better. But try as I may, I can’t shake the sinus infection, which keeps threatening to descend into my chest again. I bet I’ll feel like a new person once it’s finally gone.

Disclaimer

• Thought for Food
• Exercising Restraint

Categories: healing process, Herx reactions, using the coil machine

Tags: bartonella, biofilms, food, lyme, menstruation

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.