9 Month Update

I've now been taking fly agaric mushroom for nine months. I've found that it makes a huge difference to the chronic fatigue, cognitive and memory troubles that result from my neuroborreliosis (chronic Lyme disease).

I initially ate small pieces of the mushroom, moving onto taking the tincture after a couple of weeks. Since the last update, I've gone back to eating small pieces of the mushroom again. These have been dried, since the mushrooms have been out of season.

Since I could find no real information on taking the mushrooms medicinally in this way, I tried different methods, probably focussing too much on the tincture. Luckily I had dried quite a few mushrooms, so was able to compare the different methods.

The effects of eating small pieces of mushroom seem stronger and longer lasting that the tincture, with a slower release. I've still made use of the tincture though, for external application and for a quick cognitive "shot" under the tongue.

Dried fly agaric is used to treat Lyme-like symptoms in sub-arctic areas where Lyme disease is endemic, for example in Pacific Siberia:

Fly agaric serves the neurological functions of the human body in alternative medicine. The mushroom has been used to treat varying nervous disorders, dementia, dizziness, and Parkinson’s disease.

(from http://www.helium.com/items/2112311-uses-of-fly-agaric-amanita-muscaria-in-alternative-medicine )

Fly agaric is still used in Siberia and Russia especially by elder people to reduce fatigue, to give more strength and to raise the spirit. They mostly make a tea, boiling either dried or fresh cap of mushroom in water for some time. They add honey to the tea and drink it by small portions. It is also considered that Amanita muscaria heal illnesses, connected with aging – sclerosis, insomnia, angiospasm etc. Some people believe that fly agaric has antitumor and immunostimulating properties.

(from http://www.helium.com/items/1732849-can-i-use-fly-agaric-for-healing )

Fly agaric is far and away the best treatment I have tried since finding out that I have chronic Lyme disease (neuroborreliosis). There are probably many facets to its action, but the most important one is the muscarine in the mushroom enabling nervous system signals to jump over the Lyme neurotoxins that clog up the neuroreceptors.

The amount of mushroom needed does vary, due to the differing amounts in individual mushrooms, and the current level of neurotoxin load. It is hard to estimate the size of a daily piece, as much depends on how much it has been dried, and how much of its water content it has lost. Starting with a piece the size of the top little finger joint is perhaps the best way to go. If nothing has happened in half an hour, another piece can be taken.

At no point have I felt even remotely "trippy" - only "normal". It is like awakening from an enchantment. Suddenly you can think again, you can move, you can remember. There's no need to lie around trying to summon the strength to do the slightest little thing. It's done almost before you've started to think about doing it. I have had regular blood tests to check liver function, and everything has been totally fine.

I feel the mushroom has restored enough of my cognition and memory for me to live, though I am not (quite) yet working again. It has also given me the energy to have a good country walk of a few miles every day. This exercise has been of immeasurable benefit to my lymphatic system and my general well-being, including happiness levels. Especially as for three and a half years I could barely walk, and thought I would be stuck in a wheelchair for life. This was before I found out that it was Lyme disease behind it all.

If you would like to discuss any of this further, please do not hesitate to contact me. I may not update this blog again, as I'm going to concentrate on Fighting Lyme Disease, showing how you can make herbal treatments to treat and beat the Lyme.

Three Month Summary

Three months ago, I started taking fly agaric to treat my neuroborreliosis, or advanced Lyme disease. Along the way I've found huge relief, and applications beyond treating just neuroborreliosis. So how am I using the fly agaric three months on?

Internal Application of Fly Agaric Tincture

I am still taking drops of the fly agaric tincture under my tongue, to treat the impaired cognition and memory of neuroborreliosis. In the very early days I was eating small pieces of fried and frozen mushroom, which worked just as well, as would eating small pieces of dried mushroom, the way they do it in Siberia. It is also possible to make tea from the dried mushroom, which they also do in Siberia, but I haven't tried this yet.

I've found that there is no specific dose, and that the amount required can vary day to day. The rule of thumb I've gravitated towards is three drops under the tongue roughly every half hour until I feel mentally alert, then as much as is required to keep me that way. It's not as easy as it sounds though, and can be a bit of a rollercoaster while you get used to it. I haven't felt that I was "tripping" at any time though, and haven't had any hallucinations or anything like that.

My memory and cognition are hugely improved, and I've been able to develop mobile phone apps again - namely Ogham (Druid prophecy and tree lore) and Hugin and Munin, a raven based memo program.

External Application of Fly Agaric Tincture

In countries including Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, there is still a tradition of using fly agaric in this way. A few drops are applied externally - rubbed gently into the skin - to relieve topical pain. It seems that this will work for any pain related to the central nervous system, and its effects are complete and immediate and last around 3-4 hours. It really seems to work like magic.

When suffering the agonies that will sometimes hit as a result of my neuroborreliosis, I've applied the fly agaric tincture very liberally, even 10-20ml at a time if the pain is over a wide area. I'm not aware of any dangers using the tincture in this way. Relief is always complete and immediate. It even works for the pain of migraine, but unfortunately doesn't touch the concussion-like hangover of a bad migraine.

External Application to overcome Chronic Fatigue - as part of the process of making the tincture, I run it through coffee filters. This leaves me with coffee filters wet with tincture. On a whim I tried rubbing these over my muscles, covering as much of my body as possible. I almost immediately felt raring to go, and walked without any trouble up a very steep hill nearby, to the castle at the top. I hadn't even been able to make it up the hill before.

As I understand it, the muscarine in the mushroom tincture is enabling the body's electrical signals to reach the muscles, whereas before they couldn't make it over the neurotoxins. I believe that this is probably how the Viking berserkers used to apply the fly agaric mushroom to themselves before battle. It gives noticeably more energy than ingesting the mushroom.

I also apply the tincture externally to any area - usually the back of my knees - that has been over-exerted and is seizing up. Instead of leading to tendinitis and a couple of weeks of enforced rest, the area is generally absolutely fine the next day.

I have also been applying the tincture externally to areas of my lymphatic system that are blocked, sluggish or painful. I can feel and hear the lymph cracking and crunching and breaking down. The improvements there also help counteract the negative effects of the neurotoxins of neuroborreliosis (advanced Lyme disease). I should add, the species of Lyme disease I have are Borrelia afzelii and Borrelia garinii, the two most common European kinds. I would be interested to hear if anyone is doing anything similar to counteract other species, perhaps most notably Borrelia burgdorferi, the most common North American species.

Cauldron of Rebirth

The ancient Celts would take wounded warriors and soak them in a cauldron that restored them so they could return to the battlefield. It has been theorised that the Cauldron of Rebirth contained fly agaric mushrooms with the active ingredient (again probably muscarine rather than muscimol) dissolved in some liquid.

I've been making very diluted cauldrons of rebirth by adding 5-10ml of fly agaric tincture to the bath. It really does take the pain and aches away.

So to summarise this summary, fly agaric has changed my life. It's taken me from being an exhausted cripple with severe dementia-like symptoms to being pretty much a "normal" person again. I can walk for miles, I am reading voraciously, I can string a thought together long enough to write it down, I can engage in conversation, I don't just lie around all day feeling like death any more, and my mood is greatly enhanced.

Fly Agaric Tincture and the Lymphatic System

I have recently found out that my lymphatic system is almost totally blocked in some areas, and has been for many years. This can happen as a result of a bacterial infestation such as Lyme disease. It can also happen as a result of parasitic infestation, which is not uncommon as a co-infection of Lyme disease. People mostly get infected with Lyme disease by ticks, which are characterised as "nature's dirty needle" because they carry so many vile things.

Edit 2/2/12: I don't know if it's physically possible to have such a blocked lymphatic system. It could be crystallised neurotoxins along the muscles near the lymphatic system. Whatever it is, it's breaking down, and my pain is decreasing as it does so.

Before my LLMD (Lyme Literate Medical Doctor) informed me that I was engaging in lymphatic drainage, I had thought that I was massaging calcarised tendons or muscles, as they were so solid. Over the last few weeks, I've been rubbing fly agaric tincture onto the skin above these blocked areas of my lymphatic system. I've also been blasting them with a portable ultrasound machine I have, which has really helped, but here we're concerned about the effects, if any, of the fly agaric tincture.

I have noticed that since applying the fly agaric tincture, the hard and sharp stuff in my lymphatic system has been breaking up much more easily. Apparently the lymphatic system is not far under the skin, so the muscarine in the fly agaric tincture should be able to get to it pretty easily.

I don't pretend to understand the mechanisms of any of this, but I have found that:

All five muscarinic subtypes have been detected in human lymphocytes; however, receptor subtype expression appears to vary by individual.

(from Muscarinic Receptors By Allison D. Fryer, Arthur Christopoulos, Neil M. Nathanson, Springer 2012. P408)

The fly agaric tincture will not be enough by itself to normalise the lymphatic system. Supporting treatments include Manual Lymphatic Drainage, self massage, exercise and herbal support.

Edit 17/2/12 - Since writing this post I've seen a lymphatic drainage massage specialist, who has confirmed that my lymphatic system is blocked in places. Even after just one session I've felt incredible benefit. I've had a clear head and not suffered the harsher "dementia symptoms" of neuroborreliosis since that first treatment. I had a lot of lymph build-up at the back of my head, which must have been keeping the neurotoxins in the back of my head, where they caused the dementia-like symptoms and problems with my autonomic nervous system, such as hypocapnoea.

Edit 23/1/13 - It now seems likely that the hardness and pain from my lymphatic system may have come about as a result of infestation by a lymphatic nematode or roundworm. These are apparently common even in temperate areas, but aren't normally a problem. When combined with a lack of movement and/or other infection, they can become problematic. I've found ultrasound to be best at breaking down these hard areas, although I always get an increase in neurotoxin symptoms when I do this. Almost constant movement really helps as well, as does keeping warm and hydrated. Cleavers/goose grass/sticky willy is great to help clean out the lymphatics. I'm still not quite done getting rid of it all, but I'm ever closer.

Borrelia: infecting people since prehistory

A few months ago I surmised that what we call Lyme disease must have been endemic in hunter gatherer communities. With much of their time being spent in and around forests, grasslands and moors, people must have been perpetually exposed to ticks. They must also have been exposed to the diseases that ticks carry, including the borrelia bacteria of Lyme disease.

Indeed, it has recently been shown that Otzi the iceman, the 5300 year old Neolithic mummy found in the Alps, was infected with Borrelia burgdorferii. I am not aware of any similar tests having been carried out on bog bodies or other mummies yet, but Borrelia burgdorferi DNA has been isolated from 13 of 1,036 mite museum samples in the United States (Persing D, Telford Sr, Rys P, Dodge DE, White TJ, Malawista SE, et al. Detection of Borrelia burgdorferi DNA in museum specimens of Ixodes dammini ticks. Science 1990;249:1420-3). Mites are also known to carry borrelia bacteria, though most human infestation is thought to come from ticks.

It was the belief that our forebears must have somehow learned to cope with borrelia infestation that led me to search for a readily available natural treatment. I had previously read Wolf Storl's Healing Lyme Disease Naturally, and, though the teasel tincture didn't work for me, it did help to set me in the right direction. Similarly MM Drymon's Disguised as the Devil, or it's much cheaper on Kindle, in which she links the Salem witch trials to Lyme disease. Lyme disease seemed to me to be unavoidable in a society with a close relationship to nature, especially along the edges of woodland.

I was very lucky that the first plant I tried (Amanita muscaria) grows in abundance where I was living at the time, and that it was the growing season (late August to early December) during the time I was looking for a treatment. I cannot imagine life without it now. I have since researched its history and uses, and it does seem that humankind has long enjoyed a close relationship with this plant.

• Amanita muscaria has been posited as the Soma of the Vedic scriptures in Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality by R. Gordon Wasson.
• It has also been suggested that it lies behind pretty much every religion on the planet, in John Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.
• It is even implicated widely in the emergence of Santa Claus and our Christmas celebrations.
• I've just finished reading Ploughing the Clouds by Peter Lamborn Wilson, which convincingly searches Irish myth for encoded references to Amanita muscaria.

Where people do still live a life similar to that of our prehistoric ancestors, for example the pastoral nomads in northern Sweden, Finland and remote areas of Siberia, the ticks that harbour the disease live in abundance, and infestation with borrelia bacteria is endemic. These are the areas where fly agaric is still traditionally used, and not just for shamanic journeying. It is given in small daily amounts to treat physical fatigue, and poor memory and cognition. The elderly receive it as a matter of course. Is it treating the symptoms of chronic Lyme disease? I do believe so.

External Use of Fly Agaric Tincture on Sciatica, Back Pain etc

When I first started investigating the medicinal use of fly agaric tincture, pretty much the only information I could find was on the external application of it to treat sciatica etc, on Henriette's Herbal:

How to use this then? It's 2-3 drops of tincture on the spine, when sciatica hits. Relief is pretty much instant.

I expect the tincture relaxes the muscles around the spine, where the hurt comes from, and when those muscles are finally allowed to relax they stop clamping bone all over the pinched nerve, which means the nerve can finally relax and no longer scream to the brain that "this hurts, cramp down on this, fast and hard!". And the pain goes away. Bliss.

I learned this from an old Finnish lady years ago - she came up to tell me about it after a lecture. I've told it onwards pretty much every time I remember to, and get very good feedback: "Remember the fly agaric tincture you told us about? Well, we made some in fall, and it helped, and after that the bottle has been in pretty much every house in the village, thanks heaps!". And such.

A friend of mine has been trialling this for as long as I've been on the tincture, seven and a half weeks now. Since she's applying it externally, I was happy there would be no risk for her to give it a go.

Her feedback is extremely positive. She has suffered from backache, diagnosed with scoliosis, for many years, and is in constant pain. The fly agaric tincture has really helped her. One liberal application of the tincture on her back will give her a good six hours of relief at a time.

Spurred on by her success, I've tried applying the tincture onto my painful ear/jaw/neck/shoulder/back/pelvis/rib areas. It's definitely helped with the pain. Furthermore, it's really helping with reclaiming these areas from borrelia colonisation, turning them back from stone (a hard substance, but of course not literally stone) into soft flesh again.

As I understand it, there are muscarinic receptors where the central nervous system meets the muscles, and the muscarine in the fly agaric tincture is acting on these, giving immediate and fairly long-lasting relief. It really is substantially better than ibuprofen gel, deep heat or anything else I've tried. Definitely worth giving it a go if you suffer from sciatica.

Migraine and Fly Agaric Tincture

I was plagued with migraines during the time when I was completely disabled with tendon trouble, but had no idea that it was late stage Lyme that was the cause. The migraines would generally appear the day after I'd had a session stretching my neck. Again, I didn't realise it at the time, but the borrelia bacteria had colonised my neck, and the stretching and manipulation were breaking some of these colonies up, releasing large numbers of bacteria or associated neurotoxin detritus. I assume it was this that caused the migraines.

I did a whole diet exclusion course to be sure that it wasn't anything I was eating that was causing the migraines. I excluded everything that had ever been believed to have even only possibly caused a migraine, yet the migraines continued. They would be worse if I hadn't had one for a while, but not so bad if they were more regular. They would be preceded by the aura of lights in the eye, and continue for three days as a general rule. During this time I wouldn't be able to read, watch TV, listen to the radio or music, have the curtains open or anything. Just lie in the dark.

A large area in my shoulder became free in the early hours of Boxing Day, and I think this was the cause of the massive migraine that started several hours later. At least it gave me an opportunity to try the fly agaric tincture on a migraine. Since the muscarine in the tincture affects the central nervous system, I was confident that I might get some relief.

I rubbed fly agaric tincture into my head and neck and did experience a great deal of relief from the pain of the headache and stiff neck. I was able to sleep through the worst of it, which is rarely the case for me. The migraine itself (it's a neurological thing, not just a headache) dragged on for nearly a week though. I went for a country walk but had difficulty with hypocapnoea (lack of carbon dioxide), which according to my LLMD is also due to borrelia neurotoxins in my brain stem.

In short I'd definitely recommend trying fly agaric tincture for the pain of migraine, though it didn't seem to lessen the duration any.

I took the image in this post from anthonypeake.com, where I found an interesting discussion about the aura and migraines in general.

Week Seven Summary: External Application of the Tincture

I unfortunately missed the Week Six Summary, due to Christmas and a killer migraine that took the better part of a week to clear. I eased up my militant no alcohol, no dairy, no gluten diet in the run-up to Christmas. I've a lot to celebrate this year (found out what had wrecked my life, found a doctor to treat it, despite the usual nightmares with the NHS and Lyme), and felt like cutting loose a bit. Plus I've felt like death for most of the year, so feeling substantially better on the mushrooms, I thought I'd celebrate that too. My boils and impetigo all came back, but have largely gone now since giving up the dairy, alcohol and gluten again.

I'm actually halfway through Week Eight now, and settling into a good routine. Since the amount of fly agaric required seems to vary so much, probably due to the varying amount of bacteria and neurotoxins, I've changed my attitude to dosage. Instead of trying to find my perfect dosage, I now just take three drops under the tongue when I feel my cognition waning, which is generally every couple of hours.

I've had a lot more bacteria die-off, due to being on antibiotics now, and also freeing up the areas in my jaw/neck/shoulder/back/pelvis that are stuck together with what I believe are borrelia colonies. They crack and crunch and spike you like crazy, but bit by bit become softer and more free. Sometimes there's a big movement, and suddenly I can move a part of my body again. I actually wiggle when I walk again now, instead of moving like a robot.

As well as stretching, movement, deep tissue massage and ultrasound, I've now found something else that really helps the pain and discomfort in areas colonised by the borrelia bacteria ... the external application of fly agaric tincture!

I've a lot to say about both migraine and general external application of the tincture, so I'll break this post up into one covering migraine, and another covering external application of fly agaric tincture for sciatica and similar pain.

I should add, my experiences on fly agaric tincture may be closely related to the species of borrelia I have. According to a Melisa LTT test, I am infected with Borrelia afzelii and Borrelia garinii. Afzelii tends to affect the nervous system the most, and garinii tends to favour connective tissue, especially tendons.