bad night..can anyone relate?

[Surruh]

Last night was horrible for me
I started getting my heart palpatations/fluttering back. I had this bad about 2 months ago and now it seems like its coming back. I could also feel my chest beating..although my pulse wasn't fast. It annoyed and scared me for a few hours then I finally fell asleep. I also had horrible twitching on my calves, feet, jaw line, back of legs, upper arms, etc. My neck was also cracking like crazy everytime I moved. I almost went into a panic attack but I clamed myself down before that happened. I experienced my fisrt panic attack at the onset of my symptoms and it really sucked!

Anyways, this was just a rant. I feel better today with only a few occurances of heart flutters. I can't wait to see my neuro in a week. I'm crossing my fingers that he tests me.

-Sarah

[JackieCalifornia]

Different books list different kinds of Mg supplement:  Rosner's book, The Top Ten Lyme Disease Treatments, that I am reading currently addresses the question and says that Mg chloride is most absorbable, but that Mg citrate, glycinate, taurinate, succinate, aspartate and others also are all right.  Separately, he mentions Mg oxide, peroxide, superoxide, and ozonide that he says have 'oxygen' attached to the Mg molecule -- not the most precise chemical description -- for some sort of benefit ....  But I'm no chemist, and Rosner's no doctor, so make your own judgments.

I was using Mg oxide, which is cheap and at the grocery store, but it was hard on my stomach, so I've gone to Epsom salt footbaths (as warm as I can stand) about every 2d or 3d day.  Some people take fullbody Epsom baths, but I don't find them necessary -- though earlier on before I started abx, perhaps they would have helped (the more skin area to absorb the Mg, the greater the intake).

I don't take the pills when I'm doing the footbaths.

Too much Mg intake results in diarrhea, and I've read that if you take so much that that happens, just back off on the dose.  

My LLMD thinks this whole Mg thing is silly (my word, not his), but it does help me.  Rosner comments that once your body gets up to a level of dosing where the symptoms have disappeared, then back off on the intake, to avoid overdosing.  If symptoms reappear, then take some more.  Common sense.

Good luck!  (You might ask your dr if there's a reason NOT to supplement/bathe... )

[skarey]

I get this often.  My heart beat is all over the place.  When I first started getting this it would be at night.  It would make me up out of a deep sleep.  My heart would be fluttering and it's almost like I could hear it.  It was really bad at first...the feeling would also throw me into a panic.   Then I thought maybe it was just anxiety that was causing it (maybe it was).  I don't know.  But the fact that it would come from nowhere (even if I wasn't anxious) was very strange..   I still get it sometimes and I just try to stay calm through it. Even if it is anxiety, I've heard that Lyme can cause anxity as well (especially if you can't find a cause for the attacks).  But yes I get the twitching as well.

Jackie california... that is interesting about the magnesium.  I did just buy some epson salt the other day and haven't tried it yet.   What is a good mag. supplement to use?  

[patsy10]

When symptoms get bad and I start getting anxious I try to remind myself that they almost always resolve.

[JackieCalifornia]

I too had very bad palpitations when I first got sick and ended up in the emergency room twice in a week.  Although lots of high priced doctors never figured it out, I am convinced from my reading and later experience that the problems were due to the Lyme bacteria using up the magnesium in my body in their little reproduction dance.  I was thirsty and my lips were papery dry, I felt shaky and confused, and my heart beat was very irregular.  

I am careful now to take magnesium supplements either as pills (but it's hard on my stomach) or as Epsom salt foot soaks (easy and relatively cheap, about $3 for a half gallon carton of salts at the grocery store -- you only need a half or so cup of the salts in a footbath).  I also try to get magnesium through food and drinking mineral water (there is a brand called Dasani that has magnesium in it).  If you google 'magnesium rich foods' there are lots of websites that give information, including this:

"Green vegetables such as spinach are good sources of magnesium because the center of the chlorophyll molecule (which gives green vegetables their color) contains magnesium. Some beans, peas, nuts, seeds, and whole, unrefined grains are also good sources of magnesium... Bread made from whole grain wheat flour provides more magnesium than bread made from white refined flour."

I don't know that many people on this site have the same problems I did and do when my magnesium levels drop -- I tend to be very sensitive to stuff like that, however.  To my understanding from things I have read, magnesium is necessary to ensure muscles can conduct electrical impulses from cell to cell in an orderly fashion, and both skeletal (arm, leg, face, etc.) muscles and cardiac (heart) muscles are all ... muscles.  Therefore if Lyme bacteria are utilizing large amounts of magnesium and your body falls below its minimum operating level of magnesium, muscle irregularities will result.

Magnesium deficiency also affects mood at some level:  after one of my footbaths, I am much happier, and it's not just the warm water.

One more point:  the vast majority of the body's store of magnesium resides inside cells, not in the blood stream, and it's not until the cellular stores of magnesium are depleted that you begin to get palpitations and twitching.  Therefore doctors normally don't test for magnesium levels, because they will almost always be 'normal' in the blood.  (I did find a place in Oregon that claims to have developed a test for intracellular magnesium, but it's not widely used, I don't think, and my LLMD wasn't interested.)  I have looked at the blood tests they did on me in the emergency rooms when I had palpitations and dehydration, and there were no tests run for magnesium levels, I believe for the reasons I just stated.

So you may not get much traction with the doctors you talk to on this point, so do yourself a favor and eat stuff with magnesium -- and look for mineral water with magnesium listed on the label.  It helps me a LOT.