First Week Summary

It's now a week since I started taking very small pieces of fly agaric mushroom for my Lyme disease. I have to say, it's proving successful beyond my wildest dreams. I spoke with my LLMD (Lyme Literate Medical Doctor) at the weekend, and she expressed great interest and explained to me how it's working. And it is undoubtedly working.

The fly agaric won't actually kill any borrelia bacteria. You'll still need something else for that. But what it is doing is alleviating the symptoms that make this disease so horrible. For me, this is mostly chronic fatigue and dementia symptoms.

Up until last week, my days largely consisted of lying around feeling like death, too mentally confused to do pretty much anything. I'd stopped going out and seeing people, because I couldn't keep up with conversations, and I would sometimes say things that offended people, without realising what I was doing. Plus I had absolutely no energy.

Since starting the fly agaric experiment, it's been like breaking an enchantment. I've been describing it as a miracle, and that's exactly how it feels. Within half an hour of taking the first piece I could feel the difference.

I've been incredibly active every day. My cognition is so improved. There's no way I would have been able to string my thoughts together in a blog like this before. Friends and family have mentioned how much better I am, and that I have a sparkle back in my eyes. I really feel like myself again. I haven't been able to work for four years (I was a computing lecturer), but I feel now that I could certainly do something, and I don't feel hugely far off lecturing again, once I get my stamina and full mental ability back.

Fly agaric is still used in this way - ingesting small daily pieces to treat psycho-physical fatigue and more - in remote areas of Siberia. I haven't found anything new, just something that has been forgotten by our culture. Not a cure, but a treatment for chronic fatigue, dementia and more (possibly Parkinsons, schizophrenia and more). It's also great as a painkiller, and I no longer use my previous method of pain control. The mushroom is enough.

Here's a bit of science, but I don't pretend to understand it, so if I've made an error - or if you can explain it better - please let me know via email or comments. It seems that neurotoxins (from the bacteria dying off) clog up the muscarinic receptors (which are acetylcholine receptors), and messages contained in neurotransmitters can't get across. A chemical in the fly agaric mushroom forces these messages across, and hey presto, suddenly you can move and think again.

Of course, just because this treatment is working for me doesn't mean it will work for everyone. Lyme disease can present very differently in different people. And there are dangers involved, either through picking the wrong mushroom or taking too much.

Once my tincture is ready, in another week or two, I'll be moving onto that, but until then I'll continue harvesting (the season end is drawing near) and eating a little cooked and frozen mushroom every day. Someone very dear to me has early stage dementia, and I intend trying to get them to take it. And a good friend has bad back pain, and I'll try her with the tincture drops once they're ready. For back pain, apparently you can just put a few drops on the site of pain - no need to ingest it - so it'll be interesting to see what happens there.

The images on this post are from sxc.hu, a free photo site.