Trypanosomas and Iron
I have a "note to self" in a previous post to expand on something I said there. I am still having trouble remembering exactly what symptoms I had when I concluded I was suddenly experiencing iron poisoning after years of iron deficiency, so this post may not look exactly like you expect it to look from my previous note.
After being diagnosed with atypical cystic fibrosis, one day I was talking to my CF Specialist, a pulmonologist in Sacramento, California, and I talked about taking supplements and that I felt they were safe or something. I don't remember EXACTLY what I said, but he said something like "Except for iron. If you have a parasitic infection, they scavenge iron. It can make your infection worse by feeding them."
So fast forward a few years. I'm a divorced, single mom with a corporate job living in Georgia and we got SNOW. Kind of a LOT of snow for the area and I got sent home early from work and a lot of stores closed early or whatever.
Georgia is semi-tropical and I was living without a car. I would walk to the store and if there was a dead racoon or something on the side of the road, you could watch it rot and visibly shrink and disappear over the course of a FEW DAYS if you walked past that same spot every single day.
There was a dead animal on the side of the road after the snow and it didn't rot. It looked preserved for maybe a week or more before it began rotting.
It seems like the snow and cold spell killed a lot of the microbes responsible for rotting. This is a thing I refer to as regional die off and it can also be caused by extreme heat waves.
In reaction to the regional die-off, my condition changed. Trypanosomas feed on other infections and cold treatments are one means to kill them and I was underdressed and walking around in cold weather and there was regional die-off providing generally LESS in the way for them to feed on in the environment.
I suddenly felt really bad and I was on a chelation list at that time which no longer exists and I don't remember if I looked stuff up or asked around or just what, but I concluded that I was suddenly iron toxic -- I had TOO MUCH iron in my system -- after years of being iron deficient and just never able to get ENOUGH iron.
I have a genetic disorder and the mechanism for that disorder is well known and my initial thought was that the bottleneck in the system had been addressed in some way and somehow my body had hidden iron it had been unable to use or something.
And I couldn't mentally model that. Like I couldn't sort out "Where on earth was it hiding in my body? And why couldn't my body use it or access it before?" and then I concluded the excess iron was due to trypanosoma die-off.
They scavenge iron. They had been stealing my iron for years, keeping me anemic no matter how much I took, and they were dying and my body was reclaiming the iron from their corpses.
One of the things iron toxicity causes is shock. This is a circulation issue and hydration helps.
If you have reason to believe you are suddenly iron toxic, discontinue consumption of iron-rich foods like beef.
If you take supplements, make sure you STOP taking iron.
Increasing your consumption of B vitamins may help your body convert the excess iron to red blood cells more rapidly so you stop being iron toxic faster.
If you are concerned the iron toxicity is bad enough to be potentially life threatening, you may wish to see a doctor to treat it and/or SLOW DOWN whatever you are doing to KILL trypanosomas.
When I had Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) really badly, I read an article that said this could be due to B vitamin deficiency and/or iron deficiency. When I couldn't sleep from my terrible RLS, I would take B vitamins and wait about 20 or 30 minutes to see if that fixed it.For years, I was prone to anemia. I didn't think too much about it. I'm a woman and I generally have health issues.
If that didn't fix it, I then took iron. I did it in that order because B vitamins cannot be overdosed on but iron can be overdosed on. You can get iron poisoning.
After being diagnosed with atypical cystic fibrosis, one day I was talking to my CF Specialist, a pulmonologist in Sacramento, California, and I talked about taking supplements and that I felt they were safe or something. I don't remember EXACTLY what I said, but he said something like "Except for iron. If you have a parasitic infection, they scavenge iron. It can make your infection worse by feeding them."
So fast forward a few years. I'm a divorced, single mom with a corporate job living in Georgia and we got SNOW. Kind of a LOT of snow for the area and I got sent home early from work and a lot of stores closed early or whatever.
Georgia is semi-tropical and I was living without a car. I would walk to the store and if there was a dead racoon or something on the side of the road, you could watch it rot and visibly shrink and disappear over the course of a FEW DAYS if you walked past that same spot every single day.
There was a dead animal on the side of the road after the snow and it didn't rot. It looked preserved for maybe a week or more before it began rotting.
It seems like the snow and cold spell killed a lot of the microbes responsible for rotting. This is a thing I refer to as regional die off and it can also be caused by extreme heat waves.
In reaction to the regional die-off, my condition changed. Trypanosomas feed on other infections and cold treatments are one means to kill them and I was underdressed and walking around in cold weather and there was regional die-off providing generally LESS in the way for them to feed on in the environment.
I suddenly felt really bad and I was on a chelation list at that time which no longer exists and I don't remember if I looked stuff up or asked around or just what, but I concluded that I was suddenly iron toxic -- I had TOO MUCH iron in my system -- after years of being iron deficient and just never able to get ENOUGH iron.
I have a genetic disorder and the mechanism for that disorder is well known and my initial thought was that the bottleneck in the system had been addressed in some way and somehow my body had hidden iron it had been unable to use or something.
And I couldn't mentally model that. Like I couldn't sort out "Where on earth was it hiding in my body? And why couldn't my body use it or access it before?" and then I concluded the excess iron was due to trypanosoma die-off.
They scavenge iron. They had been stealing my iron for years, keeping me anemic no matter how much I took, and they were dying and my body was reclaiming the iron from their corpses.
One of the things iron toxicity causes is shock. This is a circulation issue and hydration helps.
If you have reason to believe you are suddenly iron toxic, discontinue consumption of iron-rich foods like beef.
If you take supplements, make sure you STOP taking iron.
Increasing your consumption of B vitamins may help your body convert the excess iron to red blood cells more rapidly so you stop being iron toxic faster.
If you are concerned the iron toxicity is bad enough to be potentially life threatening, you may wish to see a doctor to treat it and/or SLOW DOWN whatever you are doing to KILL trypanosomas.
