common cold causing relief?

[Anonymous]

Hi Friends,

I know this sounds odd.  My wife got a serious cold last week and somehow found that her pain and stiffness improved significantly since.  The only other variable we can identify is her use of some stuff called “Airborne” at the onset of the cold.  This is kind of like a flavored alka-selzer and appears to be mostly vitamins, minerals and a few herbs.  Now that the cold is gone she is continuing to use the Airborne and still gets relief.  Do you think this is coincidence or did we stumble into some kind of vitamin/mineral deficiency that is now being met?  In any case, the improvement is welcomed!  Thoughts?

We appreciate this board and hope you are all doing better each and every day!

W

[Maz]

Hi W,

It's possible you stumbled on something, although not to be a damper on this…but I've heard of others commenting that when they've been sick with a cold or intestinal bug that their rheumatic symptoms temporarily remit, as well. Could it be that the immune system is temporarily diverted to fight the acute infection?

Thanks for your kind thoughts for us all, W. So glad your wife is having some relief…I hope it means she's turned a corner and will continue to experience better days!

Peace, Maz

[Jo]

 

[Susan LymeRA]

This is interesting.  Keep us posted.  It is well known that a virus can trigger RA.  Could it also knock it back into remission?

[John McDonald]

I have heard of things like this. The weirdest I have heard is from a woman with RA who lives near me. She and her daughter and a number of other women all got nasty food poisoning from tainted chicken at a bridal or baby shower. All suffered from upset and vomiting. But my friend also got remission from her RA for about a month.

One possible explanation is that her immune system stopped attacking the joint mycoplasmas in order to turn to a more urgent crisis from the food borne bacteria. True? Who knows?

We take probiotics to prevent yeast infection because we believe we have depleted our intestinal fauna with antibiotics. But the probiotics are widely sold not for that use, but because they are alledged to enhance immune response somehow. Some scientists speculate that the supposed “health advantages” from probiotics work the same way as the toxic chicken may have, that people feel better on probiotics because their macrophages are all diverted to attack the probiotics and therefore cannot cause inflammation elsewhere. It sounds plausible.

[Author]

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