Blood labs question

I have an abnormal (high) DNA (DS) AntiBody which is currently 18. The normal range is less than 0-4. Does any one know what the high levels range to? My average has been as low as 12 and as high as 25. I cannot find any information which explains this? Thanks to any one who can add information.

[Nikodicreta]

Anti-double stranded DNA (dsDNA) reference ranges are simply not standardized as each lab has it's own reference range.
Your question can only be answered accurately by your testing lab and your doctor.

FYI, please search for: "Catalog numbers: 7096-18 (96 wells) and 7696-18 (576 wells)."
This information pertains to The Immuno Concepts RELISA® anti-dsDNA-ES Test System is an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) method that detects
serum antibodies to dsDNA ( this is for Professional use only).
Use your own discretion in regards to applying any information from this, in interpreting any results from your testing lab, as this is intended only to help illustrate the complexities and limitations in such tests, the findings as well as their interpretation in general (from Immuno Concepts).

You may want to re-post also at the Lupus Community, as your test is mostly SLE related, and you may get more members to respond.

Take care.
Niko

[ual068844]

Dearest,

Thank you for the response and your time invested in answering this post. I sincerely appreciate your time. I will again post this in the appropriate forum. Those with Lupus, which is indeed more in alignment with the original post. Your knowledge is most appreciated....I just feel so helpless and stuck in this ongoing whirlwind and I completely just considering stopping ALL of the medication I am on cold turkey as I do not feel any better and I have gained so much weight because of the type and dosage of all of these meds. Thank you again- Your most frustrated friend.

[Nikodicreta]

Hey "most frustrated friend"! (maybe I can help you change that)
Don't mention it. Anytime you need some info,support, or to vent,rant, chat, just drop a line or pm me directly.
You couldn't tell from your photo, all this "stuff" that you're experiencing.
It's hard to get off all your meds, not to mention that it may be too drastic
and potentially risky to do it cold turkey. Best, get your prescribing doctor to help you gradually wean off.

I have managed to turn my health around without meds, by becoming my own best healer and I mean this literally! It meant going back to school
(healing arts and holistic health) and never looked back.

Medications, unfortunately, besides having a limited therapeutic scope,
(after all the Pharma guys all they have to do basically, is to show that their drug is more effective than a sugar pill, and that it is "relatively" safe)
activate the JNK gene- known as the "junk" gene in the scientific circles-
Its prolonged activation leads to serious chronic disease!
What a paradox! You take meds to feel better, only to risk suffering later from Alzheimer's, Cancer, Parkinson's, Bi-Polar, Obesity, Fibromyalgia,
Diabetes... The list is endless.
Anyway, there are a lot of things YOU can do, on your own, to help
turn around your health and your life, for that matter.
So, if you want some simple and safe recommendations,
I'm just a couple clicks away. Include some details about your condition,
should you decide to do this.

I will leave you with this principle of manifestation:

"Honor You Worthiness to Receive...."
You may finish this, any way you like.
"I deserve to experience Divine abundance in.....( your choice again)
for I am part of the Divine".

Take care and stay strong!
Niko
P.S.
I'm not very religious, however, I'm definitely spiritual.

[ual068844]

Niko,
Thank you again. OK, I would definitely love to have your help. What questions do you have for me? I can and will share it all. I am 49 years old and in looking back on the last ten years my health has just gone down hill. I was injured in a turbulence incident on an airplane coming back from South America in 1993, herniated L-4, L-5. Eventually leading to two spinal surgeries. Micro-disectomy 2000, and fusion 2001. I began having severe migraine headaches immediately upon having a spinal epidural (blind injection) in 1995. The type of headache is a complete loss of one to three days. I am talking severe and disabling Usually ending up in hospital with demoral and compozine. However, over time I just learned to live with getting through them on my own with a lot of suffering. Having tried EVERYTHING, including feverfew, imitetrx injections and beta blockers etc. the list is endless. Then I began having hip pain and had a few rounds of steroid injections diagnosed with bursitis.Moving along into menopause and a new diagnoses of carpal tunnel in both hands (severe). I was then sent to a neurologist who ordered blood work and found an abnormal ANA. All the while I began to have these uncontrollable sweats 50 times at least daily. These are the ones that saturate every place on my body and continue today 4 years later. Literally, I pour out water even behind my knees. I had surgery on one hand and it did not work so I declined to have the other one done. In the interim I developed this phantom pain underneath my ribcage,excruciating. So, I was scanned, scoped, probed and everything comes back NORMAL. Now off to the rheumatolgist which takes 6 months to get in to see. More blood and again seemingly normal with exception of the ANA. So we know there is an auto-immune problem. Pills, pills and more pills to try. Yes, I do have the Lupus face when it's in it's flare, but the other pain never goes away and it's so exhausting and drains my quality of life. I am not a depressive person and I am not a chronic complainer, in fact just the opposite can be said. All of my life I have been the doer and the fixer. Now I can barely move, think straight, function on a normal basis. I have gained nearly 40 pounds and to date this is now affecting my ability to walk. I sleep 12 hours(interrupted, not restful) every day. When I awake, I can barely feel my feet through the pain. I have to gingerly walk until the feeling subsides and I am able to have some relief. New symptom is this pain in my feet and like the hands and arms it is constant. What am I to do or think as with every doctor I get a referral to, they do not listen or they simply refer me to yet another specialist. I do have my labs run every month and always the problem flagged is the ANA. Can you offer any suggestions? I would happily answer any of your questions or concerns and again, I thank you. Kindly- Mary Anne

[Nikodicreta]

Hi Mary Anne.
Wow, you've been going through some real challenges, i see.
Nonetheless, your overall attitude is great, despite all this!
I will attempt to offer you some specific suggestions, but for now as I'm at work, I'll just send you some info that I have handy on meditation, which I have used personally and suggested to many people over the years-addressing many different issues, including severe and chronic pain, successfully.
You may want to search for meditation videos with binaural beats on
YouTube, to help you with this.

Here's some info on meditation (source: CNN)

"You don't have to be a Buddhist monk to experience the health benefits of meditation. According to a new study, even a brief crash course in meditative techniques can sharply reduce a person's sensitivity to pain.

In the study, researchers mildly burned 15 men and women in a lab on two separate occasions, before and after the volunteers attended four 20-minute meditation training sessions over the course of four days.

During the second go-round, when the participants were instructed to meditate, they rated the exact same pain stimulus -- a 120-degree heat on their calves -- as being 57 percent less unpleasant and 40 percent less intense, on average.

"That's pretty dramatic," says Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The reduction in pain ratings was substantially greater than those seen in similar studies involving placebo pills, hypnosis, and even morphine and other painkilling drugs, he adds.

The findings, which appear in the April 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, aren't entirely surprising. Past research has found that Buddhist-style meditation -- also known as mindfulness meditation -- can help people cope with pain, anxiety, and a number of other physical and mental health problems. But in most cases the training takes weeks, not days.

The fact that Zeidan and his colleagues achieved these results after just 80 minutes of training is "spectacular," says Robert Bonakdar, M.D., the director of pain management at the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine, in San Diego.

"Although the full benefits of meditation can be realized after long-term training, our study suggests that some of the effects can be realized just for your average Joe," Zeidan says.

The type of meditation used in the study is known as Shamatha, or "focused attention." Like other forms of mindfulness meditation, it entails learning how to observe what's going on in one's mind and body without judging, and while maintaining focus on one's breathing or a chanted mantra.

Brain scans conducted during the pain experiments showed that this technique appeared to cause a number of changes in how the participants' brains responded to pain.

The researchers looked, for instance, at a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex, which contains a kind of map of the body. Before meditation training, the area corresponding to the right calf was quite active when the heat was applied to the volunteers. But there was little activity in this region when they were meditating, which suggests that "meditation reduces pain by reducing the actual sensation," Zeidan says.

Areas of the brain responsible for maintaining focus and processing emotions were also more active during meditation, and the activity was highest in the volunteers who reported the greatest reductions in pain. "There's not just one thing happening," Zeidan says. "Mindfulness meditation incorporates multiple mechanisms, multiple avenues for pain relief."

The conventional wisdom has been that meditation relieves pain not by diminishing sensation but by helping people consciously control their perception of pain, says Katharine MacLean, Ph.D., a meditation researcher and postdoctoral fellow in psychology at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore.

However, she says, the brain scans make it clear that both processes take place: Mediation changes the nature of pain before it's perceived and also allows people to better handle it. "Meditation is really kind of retuning your brain," MacLean says.

An important question raised by the study is whether meditation might have the same effect on "real-life pain," Bonakdar says. Pain -- especially chronic pain -- is much more complex in the real world than in a laboratory, he points out, and it can involve trauma, depression, and other physical and mental processes.

"Sometimes pain is more about suffering than it is about pain," he says. "Sometimes that's the hardest part of pain to treat. Maybe mindfulness meditation is just the right medicine for that problem."

More-  hopefully helpful- suggestions to come later this week.
You may pm me anytime.

Have a Great Day!!
Niko