NEW IDEA - PRIMARILY a NECK PROBLEM!! Re: Neuropathy, High Blood Pressure, Palpitations

Thabnkyou very much for your experiences, the green tea and salt are clearly not a problem! Your observations about arms and spending long hours at a desk etc, are also very interesting, in light of what I'm writing here - I wa s also studying VERY intensively last year, bending forward constantly over a computer or desk(exactly what Dr Bookspan says CAUSE our problems!) when things got so much worse for me.

I was also reading that the progesterone in the Mirena IUD had caused symptoms very similar to mine, and I initially 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. 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!