Re: Tagamet,

[Guest guest]

Try aloe vera juice three times a day and plain yoghurt a couple times a day

From: " Tony " tony23@...

Date: Sat May 20, 2006 8:53am(PDT)

Subject: Re: Tagamet,

Once I came down with cfs, I couldn't tolerate Tagamet, Zantac, Pepsid or

Axid. One Pharmacist said it was due to an interaction. My doctor had no

idea. Since I still have an inflammed intestinal tract, I just use Tums,

chamomille and peppermint tea.

mjh

" The Basil Book "

http://foxhillfarm.us/FireBasil/

[Guest guest]

Hi, Tony.

I think this is very interesting.

Did you have a viral onset to your CFS, such as with Epstein--Barr

virus?

What sort of symptoms did you have in response to taking these drugs

after your CFS onset?

As you may know, Tagamet and the others you mentioned are histamine

H2 receptor blockers. According to an article some time ago in the

Life Extension magazine, Tagamet (cimetidine) can help the immune

system to respond to Epstein--Barr viral infection. Apparently the

Epstein--Barr virus makes use of the histamine H2 receptors on the

cytotoxic T cells (also known as killer T cells or CD8 lymphocytes)

to " fool " them into not responding to kill the virally infected

cells. When these receptors are blocked, the killer T cells are

able to respond.

I'm very interested in this, because I think that in CFS the killer

T cells are unable to respond for other reasons (low glutathione and

perhaps problems in the folate metabolism that make it difficult to

make new DNA to clone or proliferate lymphocytes), and I've been

wondering whether the Tagamet treatment would work in CFS.

In regard to your case, do you know what the status of your stomach

acid is (too high or too low)? If not, you might want to try the

baking soda burp test: On an empty stomach, drink 8 ounces of water

into which you have mixed one-quarter teaspoon of baking soda

(sodium bicarbonate). After drinking it, time how long it is before

you burp. If you don't burp within 2 minutes, you are low in

stomach acid. You can stop timing at 5 minutes if you haven't

burped by then.

If your stomach acid is actually low, you might want to consider

trying betaine-HCl pills, increasing the dosage by one pill with

each meal until you feel a warm feeling in your stomach, and then

backing off one pill and maintaining that dose with each meal.

Taking a multimineral with meals as well may help to restore your

mineral levels and improve your stomach acid production. If and as

it improves, you may need to back off on the betaine-HCl dose.

Another possibility is that you have plenty of stomach acid, but

your duodenum may not be secreting the hormone secretin, which is

the signal to the pancreas to send digestive juices to the duodenum

to digest food coming in from the stomach. These juices normally

contain sodium bicarbonate, which neutralizes the stomach acid and

prevents it from damaging the intestine. In autism, some of the

kids have this problem, and the acid " fries " their intestines. I

think the only remedy available for this problem at the moment is

the pig duodenum powder supplied by Dr. Gregg at

http://www.krysalis.net.

Rich

>

> Once I came down with cfs, I couldn't tolerate Tagamet, Zantac,

Pepsid or

> Axid. One Pharmacist said it was due to an interaction. My doctor

had no

> idea. Since I still have an inflammed intestinal tract, I just

use Tums,

> chamomille and peppermint tea.

>