by Arron on November 13th, 2002, 11:19 pm
OK, I have been doing more studying and "crunching numbers" so to speak on common denominators between people and the onset of BFS.
We all pretty much know that a lot of people say they had a bad viral infection before the symptoms started and from what I have been seeing, there is also a delayed reaction or "incubation time" between the time of the mystery illness and the start of the twitches. We all get sick from time to time and with diffent illnesses. Be them bacterial, Viral and so on. I want to start a small survey so I can crunch more numbers and see if there is a link between people taking antibiotics within 3 to 4 months of the onset of BFS.
I never considered "my" bad sinus infection to be part of my BFS because it happened like 3 months prior to my symptoms, BUT I was on 30 days worth of high doses of Amoxocillin as well. I have read many other posts where people took antibiotics just prior to their onset too.
Now, I know that many other people say they had no viral infection before their twitching started. What I want to narrow down is how accurate that really is. Maybe someone wasn't sick 2 or 3 weeks before their symptoms started, but 60 or 90 days prior, they might well have been sick and didn't relate the two because of the time span. We certainly can't allow too much time span between the illness and the start of the twitching because we ALL get sick once or twice a year (at least), so we need to make a small window or "incubation period" between the two incidences. I think 60 days should be good but I would like to start off with 90 days anyway.
It may not be the illness at all. It "might" be some kind of build-up or intolerance to a certain strain of antibiotic that stores in our fat cells or something and releases some kind of acid or cause or alters some type of protein or enzyme that triggers micro muscle spasms. This would be consistent with the slow start, then the frenzy of symptoms, then a gradual reduction as time goes on. If it was something being released into our blood stream causing an enzyme or protein to cause these symptoms, it would most likely have good days and bad days and inconsistencies causing big twitches and little twitches and waxing and wayning.
Now, I really think it's too early to say one way or the other. We all pretty much over do it on antibiotics and doctor's unfoundedly hand them out like they were candy when we really don't even need them because antibiotics do NOT, can NOT and will NOT fight viral infections. They are for bacterial infections only. Now, with that, we need some type of time frame between the time anyone took antibiotics and the time the BFS symptoms first started. Being that we all pretty much end up taking some kind of antibiotic at one time or another, I don't want this falling into the category of the Herpes theory or stress theories, where so many people have it or have had it some time in their life or another, that it would be too easy to jump to conclusions right away. I mean, we certainly can't say that because we all eat, breathe and sleep and since we all do that and have BFS, one of those must be the cause. See what I mean? So with a 3-4 month time span or "incubation period" between the antibiotic use and the start of BFS, we should be able to narrow it down a bit better.
I'm not 100% sold on this theory yet either... It is just something I would like to investigate a bit further. So, try to list if you had any type of antibiotics up to 90 days before your twitching started and we'll see where this goes.