Inclined Bed Therapy

[marja]

Hi Andrew,

Thank you very much for the nice and simple idea.

I've been diagnosed RR MS in 2002.

I've been sleeping on an incline since August last year, and it really seemed to help my symptoms right after the first night using approximately 3 degree incline. After a couple of weeks I doubled the incline and did not experience any difference to the smaller incline. During last autumn I had more energy, and also my legs felt stronger. I think also my nails were stronger than usual, but not any more.

I have suffered from two quite bad flareups lately, one in November and now currently another. Fortunately the current one seems to be getting better, too. Are you aware of people getting MS flareups when sleeping on an inclined bed?

It just occurred to me that maybe my bed is a little bit more than 5 degrees inclined for practical reasons. Do you know whether the five degree angle is THE ANGLE to be aimed at and not to be exceeded? I'm wondering whether I should revert back to the less than 3 degree angle I started with? I'm not thinking of sleeping flat at least at this point, the incline feels so natural and comfortable, nevertheless.

Thank you

-Marja

[AndrewKFletcher]

Hi Ozi and welcome onboard I.T.

Your improvements are beginning earlier than most who have reported in.

People think, because this is free and simple it will not be of much use and could not compare with a surgical approach.

This is a grave error on their part and I am convinced we will be hearing much more from you in the coming weeks.

You are right about the urine colour change and the huge detox affect of I.T. This was something my wife and I confirmed using a simple hydrometer to measure the density / mineral content of our urine. Inclined Therapy showed a huge difference over sleeping flat or daily urine production.

Horizontal produced urine much lighter in colour and significantly less dense than I.T.

But sleeping head down clinched it for us both. The urine produced head down sleeping was colourless and had a near water density, indicating that salts, metals and acids were remaining in the blood and renal function was put on hold during HDT. We also ended up with serious diarrhoea and rapid weight loss. Now before anyone get’s the idea of a simple weightloss tool, just remember there are many published papers showing H.D.T to be very harmful to all bodily functions, bone loss, heart muscle degeneration, muscular atrophy and some neurological degeneration have been attributed to this method of sleeping.

Besides we felt bloody awful, with pressure headaches, balance problems, feeling cold in bed, all happened in just a few days. I didn’t measure heart rate or respiration rate using HDT, but someone probably has in a published paper.

[AndrewKFletcher]

Hi Andrew,

Thank you very much for the nice and simple idea.

I've been diagnosed RR MS in 2002.

I've been sleeping on an incline since August last year, and it really seemed to help my symptoms right after the first night using approximately 3 degree incline. After a couple of weeks I doubled the incline and did not experience any difference to the smaller incline. During last autumn I had more energy, and also my legs felt stronger. I think also my nails were stronger than usual, but not any more.

I have suffered from two quite bad flareups lately, one in November and now currently another. Fortunately the current one seems to be getting better, too. Are you aware of people getting MS flareups when sleeping on an inclined bed?

It just occurred to me that maybe my bed is a little bit more than 5 degrees inclined for practical reasons. Do you know whether the five degree angle is THE ANGLE to be aimed at and not to be exceeded? I'm wondering whether I should revert back to the less than 3 degree angle I started with? I'm not thinking of sleeping flat at least at this point, the incline feels so natural and comfortable, nevertheless.

Thank you

-Marja

Hi Marja

Yes flare ups have occurred for some though not many and not generally the same as sleeping on a flat bed produces. If we are seeing a reversal of ms symptoms, it could be that to go back through ms we may see a pattern of old symptoms returning and ebbing away, but generally an overall improvement following flare-ups.

There are also diet related and environment related causes for flare-ups. One being higher humidity, this can be cold and damp weather or warm and humid weather. Drying washing indoors, moving to a valley or coastal area, even a change of home, so could I ask you to backtrack over the time you began to notice a flare? This will be very useful.

Andrew


We know there are environmental factors that trigger flareups, high humidity, damp wet conditions

[AndrewKFletcher]

Oh no! Silly me. Only went and fell asleep on the sofa last night for a couple of hours and today my balance/dizziness and optic neuritis have been pretty bad. Won't be doing that again!

Started IBT at the beginning of this year and have been steadily improving: hardly ever need to visit the loo in the night, no morning headaches (which were terrible), dizziness/balance getting better, remembering dreams, can taste food better, can have breakfast before leaving the house (even the thought of it before made me want to vomit), more energy, waking up alert....
all slowly yet slight getting better. I seem to get better overall for a couple of days, then have a day where I feel very tired, but all other symptoms still better than before I started when I felt terrible every day.

I really hope that today's problems are purely because of falling asleep on the sofa for a while.

Oh, btw, the only thing that doesn't really seem to be improving is the optic neuritis, but it's only been about 6 weeks so maybe needs more time.

Thank you for posting this. It is very useful to see a report from someone who has identified a possible cause for a downturn in progress.

Let's hope the morning will reveal weather it was sleeping flat for a few hours that did it.

Your optic neuritis should resolve soon.

Your other improvements are no minor turn around so let's hope there are more around the corner for you and everyone on I.T.

Pretty sure there will be lots

Andrew

[AndrewKFletcher]

Thank you Esta

The extra incline might cause you to develop a few more aches and pains but stay with it, we should see those feet improving within a few days.

Andrew

[AndrewKFletcher]

What we need here now is an easy read for people who want just the facts about what is happening to each and every person with ms. These long threads are undoubtedly fascinating but a lot of people will be missing the developments over the coming months.

We need a sticky thread Titled: Inclined Therapy Tracking and have everyone create their own editable diary by copying their earlier posts minus anything that does not relate directly to experience using I.T. along with an EDSS and FSS scores etc.

Radeck has produced a brilliant template that works for surgery for CCSVI and therefore will undoubtedly prove to be a useful tool for Inclined Therapy (non surgical approach to ms and CCSVI) Thank you Radeck.
http://www.thisisms.com/ftopict-8346.html

My old template has some useful guidance too so we could work on achieving the correct format for accurate data analysis later.

But first of all we need to have all reports from people using I.T in order so they can be followed by everyone. This is going to be very useful for people looking for answers and we undoubtedly have already seen some pretty amazing reports from people with RR, PP and SP ms. Something not observed yet in the surgical approach.

I look forward to input from all concerned and am always open to suggestions. If this cannot be accomplished on this forum, I will set up another forum to get the job done.

Andrew

[LisaAnn]

Andrew,
I have primary progressive MS for 15 years. I started sleeping incline about five weeks ago. I have a hospital bed so I just raise the top between three and 6 inches. After three weeks I noticed a dramatic decrease in headaches. I would say in six weeks I have had two bad headaches, one was premenstrual, and one was related to riding in a very bumpy van. I normally have one bad headache a week and several when I wake up in the morning. All of the morning headaches are gone. I also sleep much more soundly and rarely wake up in the middle of the night. In the past two weeks I started getting a tickle in my throat and coughing at night in bed and in the morning. Now I feel like it may be developing into something more serious. If it was a cold I'm sure would've developed by now. It just seems more like a nuisance than anything else. I don't know if this is related to the inclined sleeping. I will see my doctor this week as I had pneumonia last summer and I don't want to go through that again.
I would like to try to incline my bed instead of just raising the head.
My bed is on wheels and my attendants are always leaning against the bed in order to turn me or transfer me. It would not be safe to just put blocks under the legs. I was thinking of something that would go across the width of the bed with several extra inches on each side so that the bed would not slip off the wood. I also have to consider whether this incline would be hard on my attendants back when turning me.

Do you have any suggestions?

I have a hole cut out of my mattress where my tailbone lies to prevent any skin breakdown. I understand why you shouldn't just raise the head of the bed but it may be my best option.
Thank you

[shye]

Andrew-
Your idea of a sticky for inclined bed therapy tracking is excellent--it can be interesting to read the accts as they are now, but becomes time cosuming, and sometimes hard to correlate a current post to a previous post --as it is now, you get a good idea that it is worth trying, but a sticky would show the progression, even if erratic, and I suspect would get many more people trying it.

[AndrewKFletcher]

LisaAnn

The very fact that you have a hole cut out of the mattress to prevent pressure sores identifies the folly in sleeping sitting up / legs flat or raised and upper body elevated.. The people that have advised obviously recognise the pressure points that I have mentioned previously. Also compressing the spine over 6-8 hours during the night is going to cause some additional problems.

The tickle in your throat might be a result of not drinking enough water. I.T. does cause a detox and this removes more water. That said you are sitting rather than having the whole bed tilted so this could be as you say another cause like a virus or strep infection.

For either, juice a fresh lime, add warm water and some honey and sip regularly evey 5 -10 minutes. Far better than any medication for a suspected mouth throat infection and certainly worth a try.

The other thing is cold symptoms are nothing like the same as when sleeping flat The body puts up a better fight, and I.T. definately boosts the immune system, so where does this leave the immune response theory for ms?

Best sollution is to remove the weels from the bed, this will lower the bed so when you use bed raisers the overall height increase will be less.

On an inclined bed there is less chance of developing pressure sores, your body is supported differently.

People with spinal cord injuries that normally required turning on a flat bed found they slept soundly through the night and awakened with no signs of the skin becoming comprimised, in fact the skin colour looked healthier and pinker than when sleeping flat.

This was confirmed by the pressure test, where a finger is pressed frimly against the skin and the return to normal colour when the pressure is removed is timed. On an inclined bed there was a huge difference to pressure response in the skin.

Andrew

[OK77]

Hi Ozi and welcome onboard I.T.

Your improvements are beginning earlier than most who have reported in.

People think, because this is free and simple it will not be of much use and could not compare with a surgical approach.

This is a grave error on their part and I am convinced we will be hearing much more from you in the coming weeks.

You are right about the urine colour change and the huge detox affect of I.T. This was something my wife and I confirmed using a simple hydrometer to measure the density / mineral content of our urine. Inclined Therapy showed a huge difference over sleeping flat or daily urine production.

Horizontal produced urine much lighter in colour and significantly less dense than I.T.

But sleeping head down clinched it for us both. The urine produced head down sleeping was colourless and had a near water density, indicating that salts, metals and acids were remaining in the blood and renal function was put on hold during HDT. We also ended up with serious diarrhoea and rapid weight loss. Now before anyone get’s the idea of a simple weightloss tool, just remember there are many published papers showing H.D.T to be very harmful to all bodily functions, bone loss, heart muscle degeneration, muscular atrophy and some neurological degeneration have been attributed to this method of sleeping.

Besides we felt bloody awful, with pressure headaches, balance problems, feeling cold in bed, all happened in just a few days. I didn’t measure heart rate or respiration rate using HDT, but someone probably has in a published paper.

Hi Andrew,

I forgot to mention that my legs are feeling stiffer than they usually are but this morning whilst shaving, i noticed that my left eye seemed to 'see' slightly better than it has done since i had a relapse with it in february 2008 when it stopped moving altogether. i did recover from the relapse but have had slightly blurred vision when looking to the left ever since.

Very welcome surprise this morning!

Ozi

[Algis]

OK77: you make me remember: my wife also noticed that she now can wear her contact lenses almost all day; whereas before she had to relieve the eyes about 20:30 => Sorry that one's important.

[happy_canuck]

Hi all,

2+ months on IBT:

- Blood pressure 107/77; pulse 61 on awaking
- Back pain was slightly less this morning. My back feels like it exercises all night long and most mornings I wake with spinal discomfort that rapidly goes when I sit up or get up. Today, almost nothing though. Bear in mind I broke my back 3 years ago, so my back has a lot of damage needing repair!

[colapesce]

Oh no! Silly me. Only went and fell asleep on the sofa last night for a couple of hours and today my balance/dizziness and optic neuritis have been pretty bad. Won't be doing that again!

Started IBT at the beginning of this year and have been steadily improving: hardly ever need to visit the loo in the night, no morning headaches (which were terrible), dizziness/balance getting better, remembering dreams, can taste food better, can have breakfast before leaving the house (even the thought of it before made me want to vomit), more energy, waking up alert....
all slowly yet slight getting better. I seem to get better overall for a couple of days, then have a day where I feel very tired, but all other symptoms still better than before I started when I felt terrible every day.

I really hope that today's problems are purely because of falling asleep on the sofa for a while.

Oh, btw, the only thing that doesn't really seem to be improving is the optic neuritis, but it's only been about 6 weeks so maybe needs more time.

Thank you for posting this. It is very useful to see a report from someone who has identified a possible cause for a downturn in progress.

Let's hope the morning will reveal weather it was sleeping flat for a few hours that did it.

Your optic neuritis should resolve soon.

Your other improvements are no minor turn around so let's hope there are more around the corner for you and everyone on I.T.

Pretty sure there will be lots

Andrew

hi Andrew,

Am back on track today! Another thing I've noticed is my colour - I was a bit grey-looking before for years, but over the last few days I've noticed that I look much healthier/ a much warmer colour and I like it!

[kathryn6112]

Hey Andrew,

I have been sleeping inclined for about 2.5 months now, and I really haven't really seen much difference. I have a bad case of optic neuritis right now, that started last August and is simply not getting any better. I am about 90% blind in my left eye. I keep thinking the bed will help but it hasn't so...

Let me describe what I am doing and make sure I'm not making some mistake. I inclined a twin bed about 6" higher at the head using lumber and books. I usually sleep on my left side, but sometimes on my right or my back. I use a head pillow instead of sleeping with my head flat on the bed (could this be the problem?) The only other thing I can think of that might be a problem is that I am often bent at the waist when I sleep (my legs aren't straight but bent up in front of me with my knees often above my waist level, when I sleep on my side.)

If you have any suggestions, or can think of anything else that might help the optic neuritis, I would appreciate your help. Thanks!

Kathryn

[AndrewKFletcher]

Kathryn

Please try to stretch out down the bed and get into the habit of sleeping this way.

Having your knees up as you have described is the same a being in a sitting postition as far as gravity assistance is concerned, although you do not have the same soft tissure pressure as you would experience sitting it is by no means as good as using the full length of the bed with your legs stretched out.

I am surprised you do not tend to stretch out. Although my wife often has her knees pressed into my back causing me to awaken

This could be why your progress is slower than everyone else and is interesting, thanks for posting.

Also, while around the home, you could raise your seat up by adding an additional cushion placed under a gell cushion, or a folded blanket perhaps. This should only be done on a stationary seat or a wheelchair seat around the home, not outdoors where an injury could be sustained.

But most of all remember, not all people respond at the same rate, but according to results, given long enough all people with ms should respond well to Inclined Therapy!

Patience and using the full length of the bed will produce those results!

If you manage to sleep stretched out, or even lay awake stretched out over night, please come back and tell us if you feel a difference over the next 4 weeks.



Andrew