VERY SIMILAR SYMPTOMS but NO MIRENA - Vitex herb involved?? Re: Heart issues/numbness/weight gain/depression

Hullo all - that's amazing, my symptoms have been incredibly similar to yours and I'd been thinking it was metabolic and therefore diet-related. Like you, the doctors cant understand why I always get palpitations WITH neuropathy. Does anyone get very hot at the end of a cycle of symptoms - I get left arm tingling and pain first, then palpitations, then burning and pulsing up my carotids, then left brain fog, then get very hot (but I dont get "hot flushes" at any other time)- certainly seems to indicate hormones are involved!

I'd been having some tingling and burning in my right arm and foot for years, then also around the right side of my face and head in waves at night one year ago. When reading your posts, I intially thought of the vitex agnus castis (meant to be progestogenic) I was taking last year, that it may have set off the palpitations, hypertension and worse neuropathy that started about 6 months ago in my left arm and left side of my brain and around my head.

Reading what the progesterone has done to you, I suspect the Vitex was one factor making existing symptoms much worse, and also adding new symptoms.

My palpitations got very bad last week and I had a lot of very thorough heart investigations - have to see a cardiologist for more checks, but all is probably fine with my heart - talking through all my symptoms with someone, suddenly the idea came up that maybe it WASNT metabolic (MS, auto-immune) but actually resulting from my years-ago neck injury which I had long dismissed as only affecting my RIGHT side of my body - because the same nerves are involved in the heart as in parts of the left arm - in other words, while the classic heart attack sets off referred pain in the left arm, it's also possible the reverse can happen - firing of the left arm nerves (which causes the tingling, numbeness and burning) is setting off the heart!

That was a revelation because it occurred to me that the neuropathy had not only coincided with a "no-grain" diet (which I had blamed for everything), but also with my starting to run 3X/wk, and maybe the running had been affecting my spine. I HAD had 2 vertebral misalignments show up in my X-rays years ago - one in my neck and one in my lower back (which could be affecting my legs).

I had already stopped all vitex (progestogenic), all essential oils (rosemary is especially warned against if you have HT, but geranium and ylang-ylang and even lavender were upsetting me), clary sage oil and sage tea (estrogenic). I have been eating 5 stalks of celery/day (for HT), drinking 3X/day a herb tea of hibiscus (for HT) and hawthorn (for palpitations), and also eating grapes (for palpitations). All this has helped significantly with the palpitatiosn and HT.

I knew my recent dietary experiments had made no difference to my symptoms, so decided to start doing low-impact exercise, doing Dr. Bookspan's wonderful exercises 3X/day at once, and take the "Backreliefelite" tablets which had helped so much after I first injured my neck, also taking Silicea every day. I knew if all this made a difference, I could be fairly sure of what was the main cause, although I'm sure the no-grains diet, essential oils and hormone-like herbs had also contributed - I'm what the homeopaths call "hypersensitive"!

All of the above measures haVE helped over the last few days, which I think is a strong indication that it IS primarily a neck problem - I've been able to sleep at least 8-9 hours without being woken up by the symptoms, and the left arm symptoms have been much reduced (interestingly, some of the neuropathy in my RIGHT arm started to play up a bit, so perhaps there may have been some overcompensation occurring over years!)

It's also VERY interesting to note on the Hypertension forum, the post re research showing that neck maniuplautions can have a SIGNiFICANT effect in reducing HT!

I'm quite scared of chiropratic manipulations of my neck, and I'll stop the homeopathy for now to concentrate on one thing at a time, but I mentioned the neck injury for the first time to my Chinese therapist and he said he'd had a patient recently who'd had a neck injury and that WAS causing palpitations, which he'd fixed - he felt my neck and said there was a big problem on the left side of it around C3 (where the misalignment is and where it often cracks when I move my head forward or backward), he is going to start doing acupuncture and Chinese massge on my neck today - fingers crossed! I'll mention the lower back as well! Tweet