We're fortunate if such warnings even appear on Echinacea supplement labels. Flareups of autoimmune skin disease have been reported in patients taking Echinacea. As lorna noted, this problem could potentially affect people with arthritis (i.e. the rheumatoid form), but would not be expected in the most common form of arthritis (osteoarthritis, a.k.a. wear-and-tear arthritis).

Thank you, Jess and Khalid for your comforting words. I went to the PA (physician assistant) on Jan 20. He checked my ears and found the right ear badly blocked, same with the left ear. When the cold virus attacks the body, it inflames the Eustachian tube. Some info. from Mayo clinic: "With plugged ears, your eustachian tubes — which run between the middle of your ears and the back of your nose — become obstructed. You may experience a feeling of fullness or pressure in your ears. You may also have ear pain, dizziness and muffled hearing. As swelling from the cold subsides, the obstruction usually resolves." My experience is very much like what the below doc. went through: http://www.healthxchange.com.sg/healthyliving/SpecialFocus/Pages/a-common-cold-can-cause-vertigo.aspx " Dr Young, 33, started an otherwise ordinary day with a mild sore throat and a runny nose – like he was coming down with a cold. However, by the third evening, he started to feel light-headed and awoke the following morning with severe vertigo. He felt as if the room was spinning around him. “For the first two days after the vertigo set in, I couldn’t eat, drink, turn my head or even move my eyes from side to side without vomiting or feeling the room spin around me,” he said. It turns out that Dr Young had labyrinthitis, a condition where the labyrinth (the inner ear) is inflamed and not functioning normally. Dr Young, an infectious disease specialist from Britain who works at a local hospital, self-medicated with vestibular suppressants and anti-emetics. These are prescription drugs to suppress dizziness and nausea. “But they had little effect." he said. “The acute vertigo usually lasts from a few days to two weeks. As it resolves, the patient experiences slight imbalance or unsteadiness while walking. This rehabilitation phase may last for one or two months. The hearing function may or may not fully recover. The recovery period is fastest during the first month but the patient may still recover up to six months after the onset of the disease,” said Dr Tan. Labyrinthitis is often spontaneous and idiopathic but can occur after a cold, flu or upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). “These infections don’t usually affect the inner ear. More often, in URTIs, the middle ear is affected when bacteria and nasal secretions pass through the eustachian tubes to the middle ear causing fluid accumulation. A bad middle ear infection can lead to the spread of infection to the brain, or in rare cases, labyrinthitis as well,” said Dr Tan. **** From Straw, the P.A. who examined my ears recommended an MRI of the brain (magnetic resonance imaging scan) to show the inflammation. The cost? $1,000. I said, "NO way, I'm going to rinse my ears with hydrogen peroxide". I went home, fill a glass-dropper with hydrogen peroxide, rinsed my left ear. That cleared out completely. The right ear which bled, I had to rinse it 3 times with hydroxide peroxide ... and my vertigo went away !! I was able to stretch my head backward in all directions. Hydrogen peroxide kills all three: bacteria, fungi, and virus.

Chisue, From what I understand, it’s pains, lack of energy or discomfort that draw people to suppliments but there are also a lot of valid reasons as to why people choose to use them or are even advised by their doctors to use them. Vitamin D and Iron are two examples that come to mind. There is an epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency (because people tend to avoid the sun) and women have iron issues all the time. I like to use L Theanine as an anti anxiety, and absolutely prefer it over addictive and contolled medications. My DH uses a suppliment that helps to keep him regular (because of the meds he’s on) and as well as a concentrated turkey tail mushroom for his immune system. The mushroom suppliment is an exotic mushroom and not readily available in our country. They are also so concentrated that it would be impossible to get the same nutritional benefit from using fresh. All of the suppliments we take have been prescribed by my DH’s doctor including the brand. I agree that there are a lot of bad players out there so it’s important to be careful about your choices, but there are also some very good suppliment providers and valid reasons for using them.

Sonos provides apps for free download that run in the I world (iPads and iPhones) and also in the Android world (phones and tablets). They easily and effortlessly control the Sonos software running on either a Mac or Win PC. The apps work great! I may be wrong but it seems like you're struggling to use the equipment in other than the normal way. There is no good reason to store and play music from an ipad when you have a PC available. To send the music across a distance and quality limited bluetooth connection instead of over Wifi also makes no sense. If this mode is how you experience music skipping, you've just identified the problem. You're right, the music shouldn't be skipping, but I suspect the problem is other than the Sonos stuff. It's pretty rock solid and doesn't usually cause such problems. Think about these things: -How old is your router? Is the signal from the PC to the router and separately from the router to your stereo strong? Do you experience music skipping when playing music stored on the PC? How about when using a streaming service like Pandora? You can measure Wifi signal strength with a smartphone app like Wifi Analyzer. -Are there many simultaneous users of your Wifi signal? - While you have Wifi Analyzer active, how many Wifi signals from other homes do you see. Are you using a channel many others are? Try changing the channel to a less crowded portion of the spectrum (in 2.4, channels are 1-11) -Is the router located near either the stereo or the PC such that you could run an ethernet wire and use that instead of a Wifi connection on that signal path? -Is the PC you're using not too old, in good shape and with enough memory to run a few programs at once? I think you should be able to easily resolve the performance issue by looking at the other components needed for the Sonos system to work. Another thing to do would be to uninstall the Sonos hardware and then re-install it, in case there's a problem. It really operates flawlessly in normal conditions. Post back what you find, I'm willing to help you work through this. Good luck.