Hello,

I have Chronic Lyme Disease, and my doc has started me on Cholestyramine for eliminating the biotoxins. Since he's found that I have a certain gene that makes it especially difficult for my body to eliminate the toxins he stresses that the Cholestyramine is extremely important for me.

However, I've had a very hard time tolerating it, even at very small doses (1/4 packet per day). It seems to stay in my system and build up, and after a few days I begin to feel so very stopped up that it becomes unbearable. It's not really a constipation thing. There's constipation involved, but even when that's relieved the whole rest of my body still feels like it's in knots under the stress of this...this...\"body constipation,\" if you will. It feels as if the flow of some key element has been stopped and that pressure has built up throughout my body. It's really awful. When I stop the Cholestyramine it takes several days to go away.

From what I've read, I imagine that this could be because I have a really high biotoxin load that is producing a \"die off\" reaction. My concern, though, is that I understand that one really needs to take quite a bit of Cholestyramine for the whole concept to really work. If I can't even tolerate 1/4 of a packet per day it seems that I'm sunk.

Here are my questions:

What can I do to help my body tolerate more of this?

It sometimes feels as if I need something to stimulate my digestive process to kick into more of a high gear to process this stuff out. ...on a more functional level than by just taking laxatives. As I said, they don't seem to address the underlying functional issue that's making me feel so plugged up and in knots.

If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it. I feel that my overcoming Lyme Disease may hang on getting these questions answered.

Thanks for your help.

Nancy

Hi Nancy,

Sorry to hear you're currently having such a horrible time.

I don't have any experience taking Cholestyramine for Chronic Lyme but I've had a similar experience with Candida/yeast die-off which could possibly help you.

I'm sure you have investigated various ways to improve your detoxification processes such as various fibre supplements, enemas etc. There is another way to approach this problem however and that is to look at your hormone levels, and specifically adrenal hormones.

I was extremely frustrated for years because I knew I had a severe intestinal overgrowth of yeast that I needed to get rid of....but I couldn't tolerate any antifungal agents, whether they were drugs or natural alternatives. Every time I took anything that was remotely antifungal I would begin to experience severe worsening of my digestive symptoms as well as mood related symptoms. After only a couple of weeks this became unbearable and I had to stop taking whatever it was. I tried every detox treatment going from enemas and colonic irrigation to herbs and nutritional supplements but nothing helped a bit.

After a number of years I stumbled onto the solution almost by accident. I had had an adrenal stress index (ASI) test a few years back which had showed borderline low DHEA levels. I finally got around to trying DHEA supplements and found that amongst a long list of benefits they also cancelled out the die-off symptoms I experienced on antifungals.....completely!

DHEA is an adrenal hormone involved in the stress response. It is thought that it helps the body deal with stress and has a general calming and balancing effect. I can only say from my personal experience that this is exactly what it does. It improved my mood and ability to deal with stress hugely and corrected many of my digestive problems as a result.

Hormones have very powerful effects on our ability to handle stress and tend to be out of whack in chronic illnesses such as Chronic Lyme Disease. I would suggest you talk to your doctor about testing levels of adrenal, thyroid, and sex hormones to see if they are low. Correcting any deficiencies here may well enable you to tolerate the Cholestyramine therapy.

I hope this helps and please let us know how you go on <br /><br />Post edited by: Maff, at: 2007/10/22 18:14