@pone - It works! The baking soda helped a lot with my latest crash. I am just amazed that after 16 years of crashing this is the first time I've heard of this. I took 1/2 tsp. in about 4 oz. of water on an empty stomach 3 times yesterday plus a couple of times today and it made a huge difference in the duration and intensity of my crash as you had predicated - whew!
RUN DO NOT WALK to Amazon and buy a conductivity meter:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0038QTQZ8
And at that price you might want to buy a second one for the car to have on trips.
The reason this is important is it is doing an implicit measurement of electrolyte levels in your urine, which you then use as a guide to how much water you drink, and how much sodium bicarb and potassium bicarb you take.
The risk you now run is that you will start taking too much sodium and you will end up with very high electrolyte levels, possibly dehydrated. Aim on the conductivity meter to stay between 4000 and 5000. Above 5000 you need to dilute your electrolytes and drink water (that is the signal for dehydration). Below 4000 you need to start taking more electrolyte.
The body should self-regulate these things, but part of my disease was that it did NOT! The conductivity meter is a true life saver in helping me to see when I am extremely dehydrated.
Also buy some pH paper and test your urine and saliva every time you pee:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ZYVU4O
I have frequently found acidity before I feel symptoms and I can pretreat it now.
Be sure to take the bicarb at least one hour BEFORE meals or TWO hours AFTER meals. NEVER mix with food. It will get neutralized by stomach acid and make your stomach produce a lot more acid to digest food.
Once you get things dialed in, consider buying some potassium bicarb and take up to about 300 mg of elemental potassium per drink. Potassium and sodium should be in a balance, but too much potassium at once is quite dangerous, so keep the doses low. As a nice side effect, there is very good research literature suggesting that potassium bicarb will spare bone and help to fight osteoporosis. To fight the acidity in your blood, your body has been eating its bone in order to get the bicarb on the bone!!
I may experiment with it to use it BEFORE I have to do an activity that may lead to a crash to see if it helps prevent one. I've been reading it helps athletes with their performance. I've long known that lactic acid was a factor in a crashing but didn't know there was anything that could be done about it.
In my experience that does work well. Post your experience about this when you have more data.
I cannot tell you how much time and reflection was required for me to discover that bicarb would clear my symptoms. It took me MANY MONTHS of agony with my symptoms to finally deduce that the sensation I was feeling in my muscles was in fact the result of an acidity. I had some important clues, but I just wasn't smart enough to put it all together quickly. I went through months of taking just salt, then taking a mixed electrolyte, then taking alkaline solutions like sodium bicarb mixed with lemon or vinegar. Those all helped but ultimately experimentation showed me that nothing cleared the symptom as rapidly as bicarb.
Spread the word to others. I think anyone who suffers from true CFS and gets the hallmark "post-exertional malaise" should benefit from this.
Please understand that my treatment is NOT a cure for anything. We are treating a symptom, not a cause.
The reason CFS sufferers have this issue is that their aerobic metabolism is broken. They are not using oxygen with fat or glucose to create energy, but instead they are strongly favoring glycolysis. Glycolysis is what creates intense acidity in the muscle, even with low levels of exertion. You should be using glycolysis only during intense exercise, like during the 10 seconds of a sprint. I believe I was using glycolysis even during a brisk walk.
I did additional testing in my case that established clearly that my body was converting to glycolysis at low exercise thresholds. I went to Dr Frank Shallenberger's exercise physiology lab in Nevada and found that I went to full on glycolysis at only 120 beats per minute. That's a very LOW level of activity at which to convert to glycolysis, and I'm an athletic person my whole life. That to me gave a clear test result indicating something was very broken in my metabolism.
I had additional testing that suggested my body was in a highly reduced state and that my NAD+/NADH ratio was very low. I found a famous research scientist who gave me formulas for approximating these values from measurable metabolites. I worked with a local biochemist to reason out that the probable cause of the NAD+/NADH ratio was an inefficient electron transport chain. We suspected from this that something was attacking the cell membranes of my mitochondria.
Once I knew my electron transport chain was probably limping, I started looking for diseases that would affect the mitochondria. That's when I started to get high mercury test results back, and everything began to come together at that point. Mercury may or may not be the cause of my disease, but it is the only hypothesis I could find that literally explains every major symptom associated with classical CFS.
Mercury explains most strongly the damaging of the cell membrane and functions that take place there like the electron transport chain. It explains the derangement of enzymes and proteins that then result in huge numbers of secondary effects on metabolism. It explains the huge levels of oxidative stress, which together with getting older and losing your antioxidant levels inside the cell, results in tremendous amounts of oxidative damage.
And - the key thing - is I did take actions during the month I came down this disease that would affect mercury. I took ALA in very high doses, irregularly spaced. That may have moved mercury into the brain, explaining my neurological symptoms, and into the heart tissue, explaining my cardiac rhythm disturbances.
I'm running with that diagnosis: CFS by mercury toxicity. The sodium bicarb keeps me functioning until I get the mercury cleared. I'm on a boatload of supplements that are basically life support against mercury.
