posted
I've had Lyme's for 2 yrs, diagnosed in July 2008, currently finishing 11 of 12 weeks of 2 grams 1x/day Rocephin, prior 6 weeks of Doxy. Lyem's is in my spinal fluid.
I bike ride a lot. I use to be able to average 17-20mph for 40-50 miles. Two days ago I tried to ride faster, best I could do was 14mph for 7 miles and then I was only averaging 11-12mph which is where my riding is. I started riding 3 years ago and when I started I was riding faster. I'm slower now than when I started riding and I have better bike fitness now. A few months ago I was failing cycling at 25 miles, now I can go 50 miles where last year I could 100 miles.
Also my HR heart rate is higher biking. The maximum I could get my HR going up a hill was 152, now it's in the 170s.
Can Lyme's affect my heart? Should I ask the doctor for an EKG or a stress test?
I'm concerned about my lack of cardio in cycling. Is this temporary or will it come back?
Though almost all my symptoms have disappeared, nightly sweats, shaking left hand, no strength in right hand, lightning flashes in eye, floaters, exhaustion, numb feet and legs, I still have numbness in my right hand.
Posts: 14 | From Trenton, New Jersey | Registered: Jul 2008
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posted
Lyme definitely affects my heart, but nothing ever showed up on doctor's tests - they kept telling me everything was fine.
You may also be getting cardio effects and fatigue simply because the medication is causing spitochete die-off and your body is stressed from successful treatment. There are days when it is better to rest than push it.
ESG
Posts: 424 | From Connecticut, USA | Registered: Nov 2003
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Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
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Considering the fact that you have an advanced neurotoxic infection, I am concerned that ride a bike 7 miles, trying to go faster can put your heart at risk.
You are only in the 3 month of treatment. This takes a while.
Are you being treated by an ILADS educated LLMD? If so, are you cleared for this level of aerobic activity yet?
seekhelp
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 15067
posted
PLEASE be careful doing that intense exercise with Lyme. I'm shocked you can do what you do anyways with a TBD, but I recall you said you are in excellent physical condition. I just feat that level of activity can really hurt an ill person!
Posts: 7545 | From The 5th Dimension - The Twilight Zone | Registered: Mar 2008
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sutherngrl
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 16270
posted
My heart went crazy in the beginning of this illness. I had to take some meds for it, but it lowered my blood pressure so much that after a few months I went off of it. It did help though and my heart is better than it was. I still get palpitations but not as crazy as before.
I think you should do whatever you feel like doing physically as long as you don't push yourself. I am impressed that you can ride a bike at all. I have had such horrendous fatigue that I could barely walk around and I was in good shape before this illness.
My LLMD just always says do whatever you feel like doing. But I think he is thinking along the lines of walking, going to the store, etc. Those are big things to me.
Posts: 4035 | From Mississippi | Registered: Jul 2008
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Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
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YES. Lyme can affect the heart. Very much so. There are many articles about that. You can check out the Medical Abstracts link here - in the menu to the left. PubMed also has some abstracts and the literature at ILADS is good. www.ilads.org
The LDA also has literature and you can purchase DVDs of past ILADS seminars. Your local lyme support group may have some to borrow.
I've voiced this before but I certainly hope you have an excellent doctor. I have some concerns from some of the things you write, though.
You might want to check out Dr. Burrascano's P.T. / Rehabilitation guidelines - it is a very specific and graded plan -
Exercise is strongly encouraged - but not everyday - and in measured increments.
However, aerobic exercise is not allowed until the patient is nearly better. And - then - little by little.
Rehabilitation section is 7/8 of the way down the page
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Many lyme patients also have a variety of infections beyond the typical tick-borne diseases (which I hope you were checked for).
One of the others that can be present is a range of Coxsackie B viruses.
I posted more on this at another current thread of yours. However, to be sure you see it, I'll double up here.
You also might want to check out - Coxsackie B3 virus testing -- it can cause inflammation of the heart muscle caused by the virus. If this is present, aerobic exercise can severely damage the heart. Other infections can, too.
[Post-polio expert] Dr. [Richard] Bruno points out that physical over-activity is the biggest cause of post-polio symptoms. [3] (See Dr. Bruno's "Fainting and Fatigue" in the Spring 1996 CFIDS Chronicle, page 37.)
EXCERPT:
when mice infected with Coxsackie B3 were forced to swim in a warm pool, the virulence of the virus was drastically augmented.
In fact, viral replication was augmented 530 times. This did horrendous things to the animals' hearts. We all know that to play squash with the flu can lead to heart attacks. Much the same danger can be courted by undertaking hard exercise with M.E.
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( Poster's note: ME is the European term for CFS - which can have undetected infections as the cause.)
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[ 03. December 2008, 05:26 PM: Message edited by: Keebler ]
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
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Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
The 3-hour video - which you can watch free on the web - focuses on cardiac problems with CFS patients.
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While some (many?) cases of CFS might be undiagnosed lyme, this information may be helpful to patients across the board.
Even if from lyme - and even if getting treatment - it helps us understand how better to take care of ourselves while seeking treatment/resolution.
One of the things that strikes me is that fatigue can actually be a mechanism to prevent us from doing too much that can damage our heart. It is fascinating to learn more about all that goes on - and it helps us be kinder in our thoughts about ourselves in this state.
In addition to adequately treating infections, attention to MITOCHRONDRIA is vital for recovery. All this is an intricate dance.
He argues that a prominent subset of the disease is a prolonged, chronic mononucleosis following infection with Epstein Barr virus (EBV), Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV), or both, and/or possibly Human Herpes Virus 6 (HHV-6).
Viral infection persists in the heart, causing left-ventricular dysfunction, producing exercise intolerance.
Exercise, in turn, worsens the cardiac dysfunction. He has also postulated that the disease is an early dilated cardiomyopathy that in later stages might result in progressive, end-stage dilated cardiomyopathy, a type of heart failure.
Dilated cardiomyopathy is sometimes viewed as "idiopathic," or "Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy" (IDC). In an editorial response titled "Microbial Persistence and Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy," Dr. Lerner has postulated that these viruses may be the etiological link.
- Full article at link above. And the section, New Research on Cardiac Insufficiency, offers many wonderful articles on what can help. Always, there is something that can help. Always.
VIDEO: A three-hour talk by Dr. Cheney on diastolic cardiomyopathy and ME/CFS.
CFS and Diastolic Cardiomyopathy - Paul Cheney, M.D., Ph.D.
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New Research on Cardiac Insufficiency
several articles
There is new research from a New Jersey team, authored by Doctors Arnold Peckerman, Benjamin Natelson et al., which found left-ventricular dysfunction following exertion and orthostatic stress in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.
The WedMD article and the press release are available at the link below. In an NIH-funded study on impedance cardiography also linked below, Peckerman and Natelson found that low cardiac output correlated with symptom severity in ME/CFS.
Dr. A. Martin Lerner . . . Viral infection persists in the heart, causing left-ventricular dysfunction, producing exercise intolerance. Exercise, in turn, worsens the cardiac dysfunction. . . .
More recently, physicist, physician, long-time ME/CFS researcher and clinician, and heart-transplant recipient Paul Cheney, M.D., Ph.D., has offered an alternative theory that a subset of ME/CFS patients suffer from a diastolic cardiomyopathy, a problem with ventricular filling resulting from mitochondrial dysfunction and low ATP energy in the heart.
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Again, presented not to sadden, but if there is a dysfunction, treatment for underlying infections and employing support measures can make a difference.
the link to the Hawthorn research above holds hope. I feel so much better when I take that.
Also check out article from www.vrp.com -- Upper right hand, pull down from "products" to "articles" and search "cardiac" or "hawthorn" or "CoQ10" - and MITOCHRONDRIA, too.
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[ 03. December 2008, 05:23 PM: Message edited by: Keebler ]
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
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tdtid
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 10276
posted
My first symptom that I went to the doctor for that turned out to be lyme 5 years later was chest pain. They ran me through the usual heart testing and I guess something was crazy enough that they even did a heart catherization.
It turned out that they said my heart was fine, but I know that even now, I've had two different LLMD's over the course of 2 plus years and they both have asked for an EKG just to check things out.
So I would say that yes, lyme can effect every or any organ in our entire body.
When I was put on IV meds, I was told no strenous exercising of any kind since it's taking a major toll on our systems and we need to give our body rest to heal.
Obviously I don't know your particular case and I'm surely not a doctor, but you may want to run all this past your LLMD just to be on the safe side. As they say, "better safe than sorry". Good luck.
Cathy
-------------------- "To Dream The Impossible Dream" Man of La Mancha Posts: 2638 | From New Hampshire | Registered: Oct 2006
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