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Pregnancy and lyme

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Posted 9/13/2022 9:22 PM (GMT -5)
Has anyone ever felt better during pregnancy?! I know it must sound insane but i swear I've only even gained weight and actually had a little more normal range thyroid hormones while pregnant, that I almost forgot how sick I've been for 25 years from the lyme and bart. Can this be because our hormones level out or are raised during pregnancy? Anyone know which hormones these would be that make us tolerate the lyme better?
Posted 9/14/2022 12:05 AM (GMT -5)
I know this isn’t exactly an answer to your question but if I remember correctly pregnancy increases the production of interferon and antibodies which protect the baby from infection. I know of others that pregnancy put their Lyme symptoms in remission
Posted 9/14/2022 12:42 PM (GMT -5)
i had read the opposite explanation

elements of the mothers immune system are suppressed during pregnancy to avoid her body reacting to and rejecting the foetus as "non-self" tissue - and this reduction in immune activity was the explanation for symptoms of various auto-immune conditions improving during pregnancy

i think lyme may well have many associated auto-immune type reactions going on - or at least your immune system working overtime to try to clear the Lyme - but mainly just driving more inflammation

don't take this as an authoritive source though - just something i read a long time ago

its likely both explanations are some kind of over simplification as the immune system is a very complex beast - and not like the volume knob on your hi-fi that you simply turn up or down
Posted 9/14/2022 1:02 PM (GMT -5)
Pregnancy was absolute paradise for me. Wish I could have stayed pregnant forever. I felt like I had superpowers. Never felt so happy and alive. But of course this varies a great deal from person to person and even from pregnancy to pregnancy! I have not been able to get a convincing answer about what chemically makes one pregnancy wonderful and another miserable, but I'm very curious!

It's worth noting that I wasn't sick before I got pregnant. I was actually quite healthy and happy in pretty much every way. Pregnancy just made me feel even better (once a few weeks of morning sickness passed). After a traumatic birth, though, I never quite felt all the way healthy again, and then had a couple of miscarriages and became chronically ill when my child was 5yo.
Posted 9/14/2022 9:06 PM (GMT -5)

Garzie said...
i had read the opposite explanation

elements of the mothers immune system are suppressed during pregnancy to avoid her body reacting to and rejecting the foetus as "non-self" tissue - and this reduction in immune activity was the explanation for symptoms of various auto-immune conditions improving during pregnancy

i think lyme may well have many associated auto-immune type reactions going on - or at least your immune system working overtime to try to clear the Lyme - but mainly just driving more inflammation

don't take this as an authoritive source though - just something i read a long time ago

its likely both explanations are some kind of over simplification as the immune system is a very complex beast - and not like the volume knob on your hi-fi that you simply turn up or down

When you said autoimmune I immediately thought about lupus. My thyroid levels increased while pregnant which they're supposed to. My thyroid levels are so low and that's why I felt better while pregnant because my thyroid levels raised a little. That's just an idea though.
Posted 9/14/2022 9:12 PM (GMT -5)

saraeli said...
Pregnancy was absolute paradise for me. Wish I could have stayed pregnant forever. I felt like I had superpowers. Never felt so happy and alive. But of course this varies a great deal from person to person and even from pregnancy to pregnancy! I have not been able to get a convincing answer about what chemically makes one pregnancy wonderful and another miserable, but I'm very curious!

It's worth noting that I wasn't sick before I got pregnant. I was actually quite healthy and happy in pretty much every way. Pregnancy just made me feel even better (once a few weeks of morning sickness passed). After a traumatic birth, though, I never quite felt all the way healthy again, and then had a couple of miscarriages and became chronically ill when my child was 5yo.

Sorry to hear all that. Hopefully you and the kids are healthy now or shall I say functioning as I call it. I was golden when I was pregnant with my 1st son. When I got to my 2nd son, it was like awful sick all the time, that my baby even came out sick, vomiting his formula always, late diagnosed autism (suspect it can be lyme from my womb) I also didn't gain too much weight ( with my 1st son I looked like a house 180 pounds lol) . My 3rd pregnancy with my son I didn't gain barely any weight I think only 20 pounds which I was so concerned and my doc was too. Also had low tsh levels even during pregnancy. 180 pounds to 108 pound is such a difference its quite scary!
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