Varicose Vein Oedema Inclined Bed Therapy Study Alternative to Surgery

alun006
08/08/2009 19:24:08 »

Hi Andrew

Actually, interesting enough.

I have not had shorts on when going outside.

I am sure that this will happen more and more in time.

But does bring up the question, that the colour is not down to the sun.

Just wanted you to know this.........

Thanks alun

Alun is refering to the change in skin colour in his last photograph.

Maureen
09/08/2009 23:39:18 »

Hi Andrew,

I found out about you through your posts on EarthClinic and your link to YouTube. I read all nine pages on this site along with YouTube information.

Last night my husband and I started sleeping on about a 61/2” incline on an 80” long mattress (Queen Size). My main reason is to see if it removes the excess fluid in my ankles. The secondary reason is to see if it will eventually eliminate the pain in my thighs I get from pressure sitting or laying down too long. The pain is a new problem in the past two years. I have self-diagnosed myself as having primary lipeodema (as doctors ignore the problem). Here is where I got my information www.lymphoedema.org/lsn/lsn070.htm This may also help en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipedema I am not sure if the bed will help with that, maybe you can advise so I don’t have false hopes. I will still incline for the ankles regardless.

I slept well the first night on the incline. I did not have any problems slipping down the bed which I expected. I did not feel any different when I woke up this morning. I took photographs yesterday so I will check-out how to open a Flickr account and upload them. When I see a difference I will take more photos and submit them to this site.

More reports from people using Inclined Therapy: www.earthclinic.com/Remedies/incline-bed-therapy.html

Hi Maureen

Thanks for joining the study. Your condition should respond well based upon others with lymphoedema, admittedly not lipoedema but the principles behind the inclined bed should initiate an increase in urination initially over 4 weeks. Fingers crossed that this will be the case as you are the first person with lipoedema to test this.

Many times I have observed people with acute oedema problems and some times I have mentioned that it would be a good idea to research Inclined Therapy on the Internet to them without saying anything about myself or how it works in the hope that some of these people will find their way to trying this simple therapy.

It causes me grave concern that for the sake of setting up a controlled study and confirming the efficacy once and for all of this common sense approach to many medical conditions, the majority of the medical and nursing profession would rather maintain their ignorance indefinitely. How long will it take for this paradigm to become mainstream and help people with medical conditions that are never going to respond to the accepted models of treatment?

Perhaps only the people ignoring this can give us an answer.

Nevertheless, we must wait and see what happens now that you have tilted your bed.
If you could ask your doctor to take an interest in what you are doing he / she might be able to help monitor your condition more closely and record what happens or at least give us a comment in a few months time.

Initially there may be a shift of fluids down towards the ankles and some increase in swelling as the salty fluids migrate towards the lower limbs, but this should prove temporary while the lymphatic system begins to deal with the excess fluid more efficiently and moves it back into the blood stream where the kidneys will filter it and excrete it into the urine, hence the need to monitor urine output.

Sincerely

Andrew

Ely 12/08/2009 15:52:40
Hello Andrew!

While doing research on remedies for varicose veins, I came across your study. I am intrigued. I convinced my husband to put bricks under the head of our bed to incline it. It is currently up 5". I am 35 years old with three children (ages 10, 8 and 10 months) and I've had varicose veins for about 15 years. I've already had surgery (VNUS closure procedure)about 3 years ago and I've experienced new varicosities since then. I'm interested in your non-surgical approach. I am hoping I see an improvement. They are so unsightly and they've been aching as of late. I had my hubby take a pic of the worst offender that extends from the top of my inner left thigh down to my knee. After he took the picture, we slept inclined for the first time last night. My husband said he kept slipping down! LOL! I didn't experience that problem. It will take some getting used to sleeping like that, but it's worth a try. I've got nothing to lose, right? I will keep you informed of how it goes and if I notice any benefits. I plan on giving it at least 4 weeks and will post pictures of my leg before and after. Thanks!

Denise
13/08/2009 10:17:57 »

I've now been sleeping inclined for 22 nights. The vein on my calf is flat when I wake in the morning so much so that you can't really even see the vein which looks faint and thin. As soon as I stand up, the vein bulges but instead of it taking until late afternoon to flatten, it seems to flatten again at about 8am and stays that way all day with possibly a small area of very slight bulge (much less than before) when I am exercising and it is under pressure.

On Monday evening, it was flat and I went for a hike. It took a lot longer of me walking fast and hard on uneven ground with hills in the heat before it started to bulge as before but then when I have cooled down it goes flat again.

I'm hoping eventually that I will wake with it flat and it will stay that way when I get up and start moving around in the morning.

Does this sound like IBT is working?

Indeed it does Denise.

Thank you for updating your progress so far.

17/08/2009 09:01:01 »

Rainbowdaby said...
VERY WELL DONE Andrew!

I have been using his Inclined bed therapy for the last NINE years and I would never go back to sleeping on a flat bed. When I left the oil and gas industry in Aberdeen I had major problems in my spine, sciatica varicous viens, circulating problems etc. etc. I was taking a bucket full of pain killers. That was EIGHT years ago.

Now at 72 years young. I have not taken any drugs (of any description) in the last SEVEN years. I genuinly feel I have taken total responsiblity of my health. No need to buy expensive health insurance. You have saved me a lot of money and given me a lot of long term happiness Andrew.

I am extremely grateful to you. Keep up the good work!

8:17 AM


A reply from my blog.

carreerslut
17/08/2009 10:48:16 »

Not sure what this is all about, too tired to read it all, but inclining the bed is NOT a permanent solution to varicose veins. Elevating the legs above the heart will of course make the journey of blood to the legs more difficult, and the veins will shrink. Result. Then what? Either you leave the legs permanently raised, lose the veins, but also lose the blood supply, leading to excrutiating pain and loss of oxygenation to surrounding tissue ultimately, such that the limb deteriorates and deteriorates until gangrene sets in.... Or you do the obvious thing and put it down again. Leg saved, varicose veins back.

Your legs need a blood supply to function. The weak valves in the veins are a problem, but cutting off the blood supply to the whole leg is like using a hammer to crack a nut. The more common approach is to cut off the blood supply to one or two of the most troublesome veins, as long as the blood has somewhere else to go. Not a great solution, and ultimately if you have a genetic tendency to weak and bulging veins not a permanent one, but is the tradditional method.

Best home remedies? Keep feet elevated for SHORT periods, definitely not overnight. Hours of blood supply being cut off is not good. They used to recommend raising the base of the mattress. Now it is seen to only make the pain worse as the blood can't reach the feet - particularly if there is PAD. Do not squash your veins eg. by sitting with legs crossed. Keep off your feet i.e. don't stand excessively, which causes blood to pool in the legs. Get your IGm blood levels checked for 'stickiness' - may be you need to take a blood thinner. Watch out for clots in the veins which cause localised pain, swelling and fever - known as phlebitis. Or live in outer space where there is not the gravity we have here.

Please though let your legs have their share of blood, they deserve it as much as the rest of you.
Alun 17/08/2009 14:11:02 »
Carreerslut

Thankyou for cheering me up this afternoon.

You may find it helpful to actually read the threads including the description of INCLINED NOT ELEVIATED THERAPY.
I have nothing else to say.....

Over to you Andrew K Fletcher

Thankyou alun
Denise

17/08/2009 20:28:38 »

I'm with you, Alun. What was that all about elevating the legs and your legs dropping off? We aren't elevating the legs; we are LOWERING them hence INCLINED BED THERAPY and not ELEVATED BED THERAPY!!!!

Anyway, I've been sleeping INCLINED for 4 weeks tomorrow and when I went running tonight according to my hubby who was cycling along behind me, my calf vein was down the whole time until I got home and stopped running when it bulged again. Some days it stays up longer than others and I have noticed it is worse in really warm weather. It does stay flat for long periods of time. It is always flat when I wake in bed in the morning but as soon as I get up it bulges for about an hour or so before lying flat. Did you find that too? Will it ultimately lie flat when I get up and stay flat all the time?

Carreerslut,

You have addressed Inclined therapy as a person would reading from the literature rather than from the thread. Inclined Therapy is the opposite way around to what you have suggested and I would agree that serious complications can follow prolonged head down tilt. in fact, the first post addresses this and referes to NASA paying youngsters handsmoely for remaining on a bed sloping head down.

If you find time, the thread does contain some interesting observations from people sleeping head up rather than head down.

Andrew

Maureen
17/08/2009 23:44:28 »

Hi Andrew,

I have slept on the bed for 9 nights so far. I am very happy to say that I do see a slight reduction in fluid in my ankles. It is not something that others would notice, but I do. The fluid I am referring to is actually accumulated from beside the ankle bone on the inside of my legs down to almost the bottom (heel) of my feet. My ankles are more puffy than fluid like although I am pretty sure it is fluid also. I took “After” photographs today although there is not really anything to see….so far! I took a very short video with my digital camera to try and show the fluid as it does not show up too well in photographs. The video is not very clear but you will see the fluid that I move around with my finger.

The temperature has been around 30 degrees Celsius and 62 % humidity for the past week or so. I am mentioning this because you commented on this to Alun in a previous post. It seems to have a bearing on varicose veins; I am not sure if it affects fluid?

I have not been to a doctor for many years so I can not be monitored. No doctor is interested in this problem as they just ignore it because they do not know anything about it. I have been to Naturopathic Doctors over time and I do take care of my health. I will eventually go to a regular doctor someday. I have gone to the walk-in clinics for massage and compression stocking prescriptions only.

I am having problems registering an account with Yahoo so I can register with Flickr. I am hoping the website is having problems and I can get through tomorrow. I should have two accounts with them by now.

I decided to post this while waiting for the photos to be uploaded so you know what is happening.

Maureen

18/08/2009 20:29:15 »

Hi Andrew,

I created my third account with Yahoo today and it finally took! So I have set-up an account with Flickr and uploaded photos and video. I redid the bad video I took yesterday in better lighting and I was not holding the camera as I was taping myself so it was not too close which made for better video.

I am now trying to figure out how to upload to this site even though you will not see a difference yet, just getting ready for the future happy

If nothing turns up, you will know I had a problem. I will keep trying.

Maureen

Thanks Maureen.

If you click the preview tab below in between post and spell check it opens up the tools to add photographs and video

The best way to show a video is to upload it to Youtube and copy the link to it into your post, this way people can view it. Pictures is a little easier. You grab the direct link from Flicker or Photobucket etc and paste it into the post between these two boxes and providing your link is clean and does not already contain these boxes it should work fine. You can check your post in preview mode.

This will be a great help for everyone, thank you.

Andrew

Maureen
24/08/2009 03:23:29 »

Hi Andrew, Daryl, Alun006 and anyone that can help me with uploading photos!

I have spent days on Flickr and it seems that to view a photo the person has to have a Yahoo account. Then I opened up an account with Photobucket. I saw Andrew's and Alun006's photos there. It seems that when I invite someone to see a photo, the whole album is shown. I then created a separate album with two photos and it looks like a link to Photobucket is always shown. When you guys upload a photo, that is all we see. That is how I want to do it. Can anyone help me? I am ready to forget about the photos. I wonder if this is the reason we have not seen Denise's photos yet?

Maureen

Using the Image link from a photobucket account to show pictures in your post:

Choose the code that has the [ img ][ /img ] boxes either side from photobucket in the drop down box, click on this link titled img code in photobucket highlite it and right click while on the image code / link and click copy. Go to your post and right click in the window that contains your text, click paste. Job done

Maureen
25/08/2009 20:24:49 »

Hi Andrew,

I followed your instructions and also varied them because I could not get it to work! However, my husband told me how it works in an e-mail is different than in a post to a website. So I tried what you said and it worked!

Denise, you were probably trying to send your photos in an e-mail to test it like I was and had the same problems.

Alun006, Thank you for offering to help me.

Here are two photos of my ankles. There is not much difference in the photos yet but I can see the difference. When a photo shows a significant difference, I will post again.
V Shape of fluid goes down past ankle bone to almost bottom of heel (both feet).

Maureen