I have been having dizzy spells for months. The Dr. found that I have PVCs. I also get short of breath occassionally and very tired. I've had all the heart disease tests, and everything comes out normal. My Dr. is no longer looking for a cause, just encouraging me to exercise and lose weight. I believe there is an underlying cause, possibly hormonal. What else can I ask my Dr. for?
Follow Ups:
Re: PVCs
Posted by Walt Stoll on December 01, 1998 at 10:52:36:
In Reply to: PVCs posted by J. Bradley on November 30, 1998 at 00:52:23:
Dear J.,
You are almost certainly suffering from a low intracellular magnesium for YOU.
Go to the archives and read everything you can find about ANY dysrrhythmia since they are all related to this same cause. Your doc has probably "never heard of this" (until you remind him since he was taught it in medical school).
He also probably doesn't know how to order it AND his local lab, where he is used to orderning tests, probably hasn't enough physicians in the community that have demanded intracellular magnesium tests for them to offer them. It is likely that serum magnesiums are still being done & they are worse than nothing since they are meaningless & the ignorant doc thinks a magnesium level has been done. This has only been known for about 40+ years.
If you still have questions after reading the archives, write again. When you see how easy this is to resolve, you are going to be angry.
Finally, the magnesium is just an easy part of this to resolve. It is NOT the only contriburting cause. If you stop when your symptoms are gone, you will eventually have recurrence even though your magnesium is OK.
When you are ready to learn about those causes, write again.
Walt
Follow Ups:
Re: PVCs
Posted by J. Bradley on December 01, 1998 at 12:58:14:
In Reply to: Re: PVCs posted by Walt Stoll on December 01, 1998 at 10:52:36:
Dr.-
I have searched the archives and am still confused about the difference between the two magnesium tests. What does the intracellular do that the serum test don't do? What is this "Chelation Therapy" that I read about? Also, you said I would eventually have recurrence even after stabilizing my magnesium. Why would this happen if the magnesium is the cause?
Follow Ups:
Re: PVCs
Posted by Walt Stoll on December 02, 1998 at 10:47:24:
In Reply to: Re: PVCs posted by J. Bradley on December 01, 1998 at 12:58:14:
Dear J.,
There are many compartments in the body. Different things happen from different things in different compartments. Just for starters, there is the space inside the blood vessels and the space outside the blood vessels. Both inside and outside there is the space inside the cells and the space between the cells. Then there is the cerebro-spinal fluid and the blood-brain barrier that protects the brain chemistry in essential ways. There are entire textbooks just about spaces, what they do and how they interrelate (or don't).
If you test the level of an essential nutrient in one space it does not nececessarily have anything to do with its function in any other space.
MOST blood tests are done on "serum" the space between the cells inside the blood vessels. This was developed mainly because that was the easiest thing to do 100 years ago when labs were first set up.
It has been known for more than 30 years that the level of magnesium in the serum has little, if anything, to do with how it works in the body. One must measure the level inside the cells to have ANY idea about magnesium. The easiest cells to get to are the white and red blood cells because they can be collected by drawing blood.
Unfortunately, it seems to take about a generation for physicians to catch on to anything the least bit different than they were taught in school. Since commercial labs offer only those tests they can make money with, they will not offer a new test until enough docs know about it to demand it of the lab. Until the test is available in local labs, the docs will not be able to use it. "Catch 22."
Anyhow, a normal serum magnesium is worse than nothing since the uninformed doc can fool him/herself into thinking that "they had tested THAT and it was OK".
If you have read about this in the archives of this BB, you are familiar with Tolstoy's Quote about this phenomenon.
Magnesium is but one important factor contributing to what you have. It just happens to be the easiest one to deal with BUT THERE ARE MANY OTHER ONES THAT YOU WILL EVENTUALLY NEED TO LEARN ABOUT & COPE WITH. It seems to me that doing the easy things first serve 2 purposes: A. You feel better with little effort on your part and B. Once you see that that this simple thing helped you more than your expensive "specialist" you may begin to realize that there is a whole world out there you doc knows little about because it does not make money for the profession. Surely it would take something meaningful to you to get you thinking something like that.
If you want to START with some of the harder things, get a copy of Dr Pelletier's classic (most recent edition) of "Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer".
My book has all of this stuff in convenient form (link on this page). Go to the archives about dysrrhythmias and you will see how to find a doc that knows how to order the right magnesium test and what to do about it. ALSO, there is a section about chelation in the archives AND on the home page of this 'site. In ALL of those places is the national (800) number to find out about chelation and the closest certified professional to you.
Everyone would like me to personally spell out their own program. The reason for this BB AND my book is that there are millions of you out there and only one of me.
Once you have gathered the above information I will be happy to answer questions here on this BB since most people have the same questions and everyone can learn with my inputting it only once.
Walt