link: http://www.medicationsense.com/fluoroquinolone.html 

Excerpt:

Levaquin and Cipro Reactions

In 2001, Dr. Jay S. Cohen published a ground-breaking article* on the severe and often disabling reactions some people sustained while taking Levaquin, Cipro, or another FQ antibiotic. Dr. Cohen says, “It is difficult to describe the severity of these reactions. They are devastating. Many of the people in my study were healthy before their reactions. Some were high intensity athletes. Suddenly they were disabled, in terrible pain, unable to work, walk, or sleep.” 
The 45 subjects in Dr. Cohen’s study reported the following side effects*.

Peripheral Nervous System

: Tingling, numbness, prickling, burning pain, pins/needles sensation, electrical or shooting pain, skin crawling, sensation, hyperesthesia, hypoesthesia, allodynia (sensitivity to touch), numbness, weakness, twitching, tremors, spasms.

Central Nervous System:

 

Dizziness, malaise, weakness, impaired coordination, nightmares, insomnia, headaches, agitation, anxiety, panic attacks, disorientation, impaired concentration or memory, confusion, depersonalization, hallucinations, psychoses.

Link: http://www.bclocalnews.com/bc_thompson_nicola/salmonarmobserver/news/119329674.html#

Excerpt:

News March 30 that Victoria will fund a $2-million provincial clinic to provide for a clinical and research study to help patients with a variety of complex chronic diseases get screening, diagnosis and treatment is an answer to a prayer for Sheri Mahood and her husband Rory. 

“I was filled with so much emotion, I just had to cry,” says the woman whose health has been ravaged by Lyme disease following a 2009 tick bite. “They’re finally recognizing it and doing something.”

Excerpt:

A 54-year-old American woman presented with an episode of syncope. This had
occurred against a background of several days of dizziness and palpitations.
Her medical history included Bell’s palsy, which had been diagnosed three
weeks earlier. On examination, she had a resting bradycardia of 31 beats per
minute and her electrocardiogram demonstrated third-degree atrioventricular
(AV) block.
She was referred to cardiology for consideration of permanent pacemaker
implantation. Given her facial nerve palsy and AV block, a diagnosis of Lyme
borreliosis was suspected. Within 48 hours of initiation of ceftriaxone, she
reverted to sinus rhythm, albeit with a marked first-degree AV block.
Subsequent serology confirmed the diagnosis. Reversible causes of complete
AV block should always be considered and appropriate therapy may avoid the
need for permanent pacemaker insertion.

  Lethal and toxic levels of hydrogen sulfide, benzene, and methalene chloride are floating in the air over the oil spill. There’s a very high probability that residents exposed to the air surrounding the spill will suffer a direct hit to their health status such as debilitating diseases or various birth deformities and cancer as a long-term result. But first what these people will see is flu-like symptoms, which, like in the flu, are symptoms of intolerable amounts of foreign toxins, chemicals and heavy metals in the tissues dumping into the bloodstream.
 
     Even a small amount of benzene exposure can cause temporary nervous system disorders, immune system depression and anemia. Short-term affects include skin, eye, and respiratory tract irritation, headache, stomach irritation, drowsiness and dizziness. High levels of exposure can result in a rapid heart rate, excessive bleeding, tremors, vomiting, unconsciousness and death. Benzene can cause harmful effects on bone marrow and a decrease in red blood cells leading to myelofibrosis and myelodysplastic syndrome.
 
     That’s how it starts. Chemical exposure symptoms feel like a flu. Professor I.M. Trakhtenberg of Russia gives us a big hint when he says, “Chronic mercury exposure is also a threat to our health and makes us especially vulnerable to flu infections. It has been shown that “prolongedexposure of mammals (white mice) to low mercury concentrations (0.008 – 0.02mg/m3) leads to a significant increase in the susceptibility of mice topathological influenza virus strains.” For contemporary medicine to respond in an appropriate and humane way to the oil disaster it will have to leap out of the quagmire of its present paradigm an into one that understands the ‘terrain’ of human physiology and how that terrain is being overrun by chemical toxicity and heavy metals. WE DO NOT NEED TO BE ATTACKED BY AN INFLUENZA VIRUS STRAIN TO GET THE FLU. When we are attacked with nasty chemicals we are as likely to get the flu as when we are run over by viruses, which are more potent at driving health officials mad as at causing pandemics.
 
     “Blood elements such as WBCs, RBCs, hemoglobin, and bone marrow are adversely affected. With tissue proteins there is alteration of biological properties and protein synthesis. Enzyme; hormone; and endocrine functions of pituitary, adrenal, thyroid, ovaries, and testes are altered. There are pathological effects on the heart, liver, immune system, central nervous system, lungs, kidneys, and spleen.” continues Dr. Trakhtenberg.
 
     Thiol poisons react with SH groups of proteins, which leads to lowering the activity of various enzymes containing these proteins. This produces a series of disruptionsin the functional activity of many organs and tissues and this is the mechanism and pathological pathway of poisons that run us right into the ground. A toxic storm is gathering in the Gulf of Mexico and it contains devastating chemicals that can and will poison and destroy proteins with sulfur bonds.
 
Associated Illnesses
 
     According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, between 175,000 and 210,000 – or about 25 percent – of the living veterans of the 1991 Gulf War are currently afflicted by a debilitating, chronic, multi-symptom, multi-system disease commonly known as Gulf War Illness or Gulf War Syndrome. The Environmental Illness Resource , (http://imva.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=25b08cc8b5ebaf472984d04d0&id=f7a015aaa4&e=a053e43583) tells us that more than 110,000 cases had been reported by 1999, according to official government sources. There is even a report relating to military personnel in Kansas developing flu-like symptoms and chemical sensitivities after handling archived documents returned from the Gulf. In the UK, veterans of the 2003 conflict began reporting symptoms identical to those reported by the first war shortly after they returned from duty.
 
     The symptoms reported by veterans include:
 
Fatigue
Persistent Headaches
Muscle Aches/Pains
Neurological Symptoms, e.g. tingling and numbness in limbs
Cognitive Dysfunction – short-term memory loss, poor concentration, inability to take in information
Mood and Sleep Disturbances – Depression, Anxiety, Insomnia
Dermatological Symptoms – Skin Rashes, Unusual Hair Loss
Respiratory Symptoms – Persistent Coughing, Bronchitis, Asthma
Chemical Sensitivities
Gastrointestinal Symptoms – Diarrhea, Constipation, Nausea, Bloating
Cardiovascular Symptoms
Menstrual Symptoms
 
     These symptoms are similar to those attributed to chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivities and other environmental illnesses. This similarity hasn’t gone unnoticed, which is why many people, including healthcare professionals and researchers, are coming to the conclusion that all these illnesses share common causes and etiologies. Gulf War vets have developed ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, at twice the rate of vets who did not serve in the Gulf War. Some veterans returned seemingly well, yet developed severe illnesses months or years later. The lag time between cause and effect makes understanding these illnesses more difficult.
 
     Coalition troops were constantly exposed to chemicals (and vaccines) whose use is considered safe by people and organizations that do not know a safe substance from a dangerous one. The retreating Iraqi army ignited approximately 600 oil wells in February 1991, which burned for about nine months. These fires produced massive amounts of thick smoke that sometimes drifted to ground level causing increased exposure to ground troops. When this occurred the air pollution was far greater than would be experienced in the average traffic congested western city.
 
     Questionnaires filled in by US troops indicated higher rates of eye and upper respiratory tract irritation, shortness of breath, cough, rashes, and fatigue than unexposed troops. The smoke from oil well fires contained a cocktail of chemicals, notably benzene, hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide as well as quantities of particulate matter.
 
Read The Full Article
Mark Sircus Ac., OMD
Director International Medical Veritas Association
http://publications.imva.info
http://blog.imva.info
 

Full article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/03/AR2010010302110_pf.html

Excerpt:

Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States — from
flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners — nearly 20 percent
are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their
names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all
public officials under a little-known federal provision.

The policy was designed 33 years ago to protect trade secrets in a
highly competitive industry. But critics — including the Obama
administration — say the secrecy has grown out of control, making it
impossible for regulators to control potential dangers or for consumers
to know which toxic substances they might be exposed to.

At a time of increasing public demand for more information about
chemical exposure, pressure is building on lawmakers to make it more
difficult for manufacturers to cloak their products in secrecy. Congress
is set to rewrite chemical regulations this year for the first time in a
generation.

Cardiac involvement occurring early in Borrelia burgdorferi infection is a clinical manifestation of human Lyme disease. Therefore, two patients with acute complete atrioventricular heart blocks and unexplained recurrent dizziness were studied. Both patients had significantly elevated serum titers of IgM and IgG antibodies to B. burgdorferi. Right ventricular subendocardial biopsies showed dense infiltrates consisting of lymphocytes and plasma cells. Silver staining revealed spirochetes characteristic of B. burgdorferi near and in the infiltrates, between the muscle fibers, and in the endocardium. One patient responded to penicillin; the other did not, necessitating installation of a pacemaker. Thus, permanent heart damage may result from cardiac involvement in Lyme disease.

PMID: 2732509

J Infect Dis. 1989 Jul;160(1):150-3. Links
Demonstration of spirochetes in cardiac biopsies of patients with Lyme disease. de Koning J, Hoogkamp-Korstanje JA, van der Linde MR, Crijns HJ.
Department of Pathology, Laboratory for Public Health, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.

Over the past nine years, we have treated over three hundred children for Lyme Disease in the hospital because they had significant neurologic manifestations of Lyme Disease or, in the minority of cases, an arthritis necessitating hospitalization for intravenous antibiotics.

It is impossible to know how many children have Lyme Disease in our area. One pediatrician with a very large practice sees at least three ECM rashes a day and places the children on either Amoxicillin or penicillin for twenty-one days. Obviously, the majority of the children who are seen early on who manifest the rash do not go on to have chronic problems, but a small percentage do.

In some of our communities with populations of 20,000-25,000 people, as many as sixty percent of the ticks are carrying the Borrelia spirochete so the chance for an infection is very high.

Since 1982, I have seen a large number of children who have had neurologic symptoms due to Lyme Disease. Many of these children are not diagnosed initially because their complaints are vague and thought to be all functional. I have treated a patient who has been sick for five years. Others were sick three and four years before being diagnosed. Recently, we have become more concerned about children with, what are considered, vague symptoms and are becoming more aggressive in diagnosing and treating.

I have seen children develop neurologic symptoms within a few weeks after a tick bite. Others will not develop the symptoms for one year or more.

Less than fifty percent of the children even remember being bitten by a tick and even a smaller percentage than that remember any ECM rash.

The parents recall the children having a flu-like illness that preceded their developing these rather persistent symptoms and usually that flu-like illness will occur six weeks or more after the tick bite or the exposure to the ticks. Many parents claim that after this “flu-like illness,” the child never was well again. The majority, over ninety percent, of the children that we have treated complain of headache. The headache, in a few cases, has been very acute accompanied by papilledema but in the majority of cases the headache comes on gradually, becomes quite persistent and does not respond to over-the-counter analgesics.

In addition to the headache, the children complain of photophobia, dizziness, a stiff neck, backache, somnolence and, those that are in school, have problems with memory and difficulty concentrating. Some patients have developed progressive weakness.

The parents complain that preschoolers develop mood swings and become very irritable and they see a personality change.

Among the children that are school-age and those who are in adolescence, chest pain is a very frequent complaint. At least seventy percent have complained of chest pain. About fifty percent have complained of abdominal pain. More than half the children have arthralgia usually involving the knee and sometimes the wrist.

Other complaints include palpitations, tingling, numbness, rashes that come and go, usually malar rashes, and sore throats that are excruciatingly painful.

It is easy to see how this long list can be very non-specific and many of these children are thought to have functional problems.

Children present with central or peripheral nervous system manifestations frequently. The central nervous system manifestations include an encephalopathy. These children have difficulty with memory, concentration and learning new material in school. They have an excessive amount of fatigue and have a wake-sleep disturbance, either becoming hypersomniac or insomniac.

Rarely, we have seen children present with an encephalitic picture.

There have been reports of individuals having stroke from Lyme. We have one child who presented with the sudden onset of a hemiplegia and aphasia.

Patients may have involvement of the optic nerve with an optic neuritis or a papillitis, resultant vision loss.

Peripheral neuropathy with distal parasthesias, subtle weakness, diminished deep tendon reflexes have also been seen.

The laboratory work-up is rather unrevealing. CBC’s are almost always normal. Sed Rates of greater than 30 have occurred in only ten percent of the patients and we have had only two patients who have Sed Rates of 100 or more. EEG’s have been abnormal in one-third of the patients showing bilateral sharp waves and some slowing. The CAT Scans have been normal but a number of MRI’s have been abnormal showing evidence of increased signal in the white matter.

The decision to do a spinal tap on a patient with Lyme Disease is based on the physical findings. Obviously, if a patient has papilledema, they will be tapped after a CAT Scan or MRI shows no mass lesion. But in other cases, the decision to do the tap is based primarily on the need for additional diagnostic information or where there is a question as to whether the diagnosis is something other than Lyme. We have tapped about twenty-five [sic] patients so far. The majority have had normal spinal fluid findings. Usually, they have no elevation of their white cells. Protein and sugars are normal. Cultures are negative. Interestingly, however, at least fifty percent of them show increased pressure with opening pressures greater than 200, sometimes as high as 400. Every patient with papilledema has had a pressure of at least 300 or more except for one girl whose opening pressure was 260 but she had obvious papilledema and also loss of vision in her left eye. Eight of the patients had a pleocytosis with cells ranging from 60 to 700, predominantly lymphocytes. Only two patients showed a positive CSF titer.

The diagnosis of Lyme Disease is a clinical one. The serology, if positive, is helpful. We consider a positive serology as a 1:128 IFA; ELISA that is greater than .79. Urine antigens can also be measured. The tests on urine antigens are still considered investigational.

We will treat patients with negative serologies without hesitation if they truly have a number of the symptoms and are incapacitated by them. We have had children who have been out of school for an entire year because they have been too sick to leave the house.

Other children have had to give up all extracurricular activities, sports, etc. because they are too sick and too weak to participate. Every patient we have treated with the diagnosis of Neurologic Lyme Disease has had persistent complaints. These children have a headache and frequently chest pain. Many of them have seen numerous doctors without any specific diagnosis being made and many of them have had antibiotics for various reasons along the way, sore throats, otitis media, rash and, therefore, never developed an antibody response to their spirochetal infection.

The diagnosis of Neurologic Lyme Disease is a clinical one, not a laboratory one. If the patient’s symptoms are compatible with the diagnosis, the patient is ill, the disease is having a significant effect on the person’s ability to function, then they deserve treatment. I believe it is safer to be aggressive and treat someone under those circumstances than to allow them to continue suffering indefinitely.

Treatment consists of intravenous antibiotics, ceftriaxone, cefotaxime, ampicillin given for as long as is necessary, minimum of four-six weeks initially. Many patients are treated for months if they continue to be clinically ill.

Patients can take Benadryl if they develop pruritis. I encourage them to eat yogurt to try to prevent diarrhea while they are on the antibiotics. Aspirin is the best medication to relieve the pain but, because of the reluctance in the past of physicians to prescribe aspirin in children, many of them are given other NSAIDS.

During treatment and even afterward, they need to rest. They cannot resume full activity as soon as they have been treated. About twenty-five percent of the patients we have treated have had to be re-treated and of these re-treated, the vast majority then do well. Usually, if I treat them initially with ceftriaxone, I will re-treat them with either ceftriaxone or cefotaxime or ampicillin.

Many of the children I have seen with these complaints have been given the benefit of antibiotics by mouth to no avail. Once the patients have these neurologic complaints and, in some cases the positive neurologic findings, they truly deserve a course of aggressive intravenous antibiotic treatment, perhaps more than one time.