Edema with cough and air hunger

by | Mar 14, 2013 | Columns, Healing Lyme, heart/lung, skin/tissues/veins, Symptoms | 0 comments

Dear Stephen,
I’m wondering if edema has to be a kidney or heart problem. Can it be herxing? A reaction to herbs? Something else? I can’t see doctor for a while and what I’m reading is scaring me. Have had edema issues mostly in legs on and off throughout the years, but now, since I started the herbs I have developed a cough and the edema has been difficult. I have also had “air hunger” for years. I think I’m looking for reassurance more than anything but if the edema is just part of the lyme process or could be from the herbs I would like to know that. On the websites, people talk about having it but not what causes it. Thank you so much for your help to all of us lymies!


Stephen’s response:
Lyme can affect the heart muscle, lyme carditis. Normally the symptoms include: • Sharp, piercing chest pain over the center or left side of your chest • Shortness of breath when reclining • Low-grade fever • An overall sense of weakness, fatigue or feeling sick • Dry cough • Abdominal or leg swelling. Sometimes edema can occur from lyme in the absence of carditis, but since you have air hunger, dry cough, and edema, I think it is a good assumption that you do have heart involvement. In this instance I would alter the herbs/supplements you are taking and go to:

Knotweed root, cat’s claw, dandelion leaf tea AND tincture (several cups per day plus 1 tsp tincture 3x daily – once the edema is resolved, then go to whatever maintenance dose is necessary to keep it from building up again), hawthorn berry (900 mg 3x daily), motherwort tincture (1/4 tsp 3x daily), COQ10 (keep on doing this),

The motherwort and hawthorn and COQ10 will help heart function, the dandelion, as you know, the edema, the cordyceps some of the inflammation problems from the lyme,

and specifically for the air hunger:

Cordyceps capsules 2000 mg 3x daily (1st Chinese herbs.com Plum Flower brand)

Skunk cabbage tincture

Ailanthus tincture NOTE: 4 ounce minimum purchase. They are at present the only supplier I know of.

Mix the tinctures, half and half, and take ten drops every hour or as needed.

Stephen

Author

  • Stephen Harrod Buhner

    Stephen Harrod Buhner was an Earth poet and an award-winning author of twenty-four books on nature, indigenous cultures, the environment, and herbal medicine including the acclaimed book Healing Lyme: Natural Healing & Prevention of Lyme Borreliosis & Its Co-infections.

    Stephen came from a long line of healers including Leroy Burney, Surgeon General of the United States under Eisenhower and Kennedy, and Elizabeth Lusterheide, a midwife and herbalist who worked in rural Indiana in the early nineteenth century. The greatest influence on his work, however, was his great-grandfather C.G. Harrod who primarily used botanical medicines, also in rural Indiana, when he began his work as a physician in 1911.

    Stephen’s work has appeared or been profiled in publications throughout North America and Europe including Common Boundary, Apotheosis, Shaman’s Drum, The New York Times, CNN, and Good Morning America. Stephen lectured yearly throughout the United States on herbal medicine, the sacredness of plants, the intelligence of Nature, and the states of mind necessary for successful habitation of Earth.

    He was a tireless advocate for the reincorporation of the exploratory artist, independent scholar, amateur naturalist, and citizen scientist in American society – especially as a counterweight to the influence of corporate science and technology.

    View all posts

This protocol was incredible. After only a few weeks most of my symptoms were gone. After six months all my symptoms were gone… it has given me my life back.

– Amazon review by Joseph

Please note:

Stephen Buhner is no longer living and this Q + A column on Planet Thrive is closed to new questions. It will be kept on our website so readers can access vital information in the archives, communicate with each other in the comments section, and find herbs, books + lyme adjuncts in our directory. If you want to read more of Stephen’s writings, please see his website at: stephenharrodbuhner.com.



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