I still have days (like yesterday) where I'm herky jerky and have to hold on to railings on stairs.

I fell a couple of times like a drunk too. One time I was truck shopping with my teen age son. We were looking at manly-man trucks and I stepped on nothing, but I dropped like a fly right between to huge trucks. I bounced up so fast, like I was made of rubber. Looking around hoping no one saw me. Probably the guys in the showroom were laughing thier heads off. It was movie material.

Disequilibrium -- which is what I think you are talking about -- is different from vertigo, which is when the whole room seems to be spinning and there is no sense of which way is up.

My mom has some kind of brain/neck nerve involvement, so when she turns her head while walking, she gets "lost" and staggers for a step or two. She swears it is not vertigo. It's just one of her weird Lyme things, we guess.

The body maintains its balance by subtle adjustments of muscles in the torso and legs, and when these have atrophied due to lots of bedrest, thar she blows! I think that happens to a lot of us.

I have had tenderness in my feet, and brain twinges, which combined make me lose balance momentarily, which is not too bad except when it's happened while I was standing on a balance beam...

My balance is heavily dependent on visual cues. For example, if I close my eyes to rinse my hair in the shower, I immediately lose my balance. If I try to read something in a book while walking, I immediately lose my balance. If I am in the grocery store, something catches my eye, and I turn my head to focus on a specific thing, I lose my visual cues. If I even pick something up to read a label, I lose the surrounding cues I need to stay upright.

Treatment has helped some, but I don't have much hope that I will ever recover completely from this. Good, stable shoes with good support are very important. I only wear any type of heel when absolutely necessary, as I feel even more off balance. It's quite a weird sensation to feel like I am very high about to lose my balance. A heel also reduces the surface area between my foot and the floor, which further causes my foot to have fewer nerve impulses to my brain to help me remain upright.

quote:

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Originally posted by betsy:
Is it your understanding that you recovered due to the antibiotics killing the bacteria in the brain section that controls balance? Betsy

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In my case, there is actual nerve damage to the nerves in the feet and legs. That's called peripheral neuropathy. The nerves don't detect the full sensation that my feet are on the floor to help my body detect where it is in space without visual cues.

That is why I am so heavily dependent on the visual cues. The body has an amazing ability to compensate. As I lost my nerve function in my feet, my brain switched to using more visial cues to keep my balance. I wasn't necessarily aware of what was happening as I lost function over time. Eventually a doctor detected this by doing the neurological testing I described in my first post.

I have advanced neurolyme, and this is not to say my brain itself doesn't have some sort of impact on all this. Just a piece of the puzzle.

Balance problems can also originate in the brain itself.

My problems with balance fluctuate alot depending on treatment, my general well-being, etc. Only thing it really does is prevents me from climbing ladders, getting up on chairs, etc to do things like changing a lightbulb, and things like that. As my body and brain compensates, I have "learned" not to do things like read while walking. All it takes is for a stumble to whip me back in shape. I rarely fall anymore.

I am not that consciously aware of the numbess in my feet, but nevertheless, it is there.

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Originally posted by kare:
Does anyone out there have the "drunk walking" thing and if so have you found anything to help? ( ie. specific shoes etc)

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I get this. The more tired I am the worse it is. I use a cane if I know I am going to be on my feet for any length of time.

The technical term for this is ataxia. From http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/ataxia.html
"Ataxia is incoordination caused by dysfunction to sensory nerve inputs, motor nerve outputs or the processing of them. It is not the result of muscular weakness. Ataxia is most often applied to unsteadiness in walking but it also refers to upper body incoordination and dysfunction in eye movements and speech.

Ataxia is common in multiple sclerosis but is also seen in several other conditions including diabetic polyneuropathy, acute transverse myelitis, vacuolar myelopathy, tumor or cord compression and hereditary forms of ataxia."

It may be worth considering. Look it up on a search engine.

It impacts our ears and MANY other things!

Here's a link providing CLUES (even IF you are not on those particular abxs.):

Aminoglycoside antibiotics interact with polyphosphoinositides in the hair cell membranes. The aminoglycosides increase the permeability of the membranes, causing the cells to ***lose magnesium, which are normally present in high concentration in the mitochondria.

***It is believed that the loss of magnesium ions blocks enzymatic reactions, especially oxidative phosphorylation, in which magnesium is utilized as a cofactor and leads to cell death.

Studies on aminoglycoside toxicity in animals showed that giving a loop diuretic followed by an aminoglycoside does not affect cochlear toxicity any more than any drug singly. However, if the order is reversed with an aminoglycoside antibiotic first and then a loop diuretic, the drugs act synergistically to produce toxicity and the organ of Corti is severely damaged.3
http://www.ivertigo.net/ototoxicity/otcochlear.html

Please note the above website discusses vertigo stemming from an ear problem ..this is what you seem to be suffering from.

We have to shut down the glycolysis pathway AND the cholesterol pathway at the same time. Magnesium does this, believe it or not.

P.S. Photons are positive charges ;-) so is Mg. One treatment/other mineral can "sub" for another...ONLY TO A DEGREE. Yes, this all comes down to us...and the pathogens being "electromagnetic" to make energy.

EMG tests I have had did not show any muscular or nerve damage, so I am hopeful this will go away with abx.

Besides the balance issues, my right leg is usually taut and the joint pain in my right knee unbearable so that doesn't make it any easier for me to walk.