My Personal Story
I will try to make this as brief as possible, but there is a lot to tell.
In 1998, I took tetracycline for 1.5 years to treat acne. I think that this may have been the basis for all of the problems that were to follow. Antibiotics should be prescribed responsibly! They should be prescribed along with probiotics!
In 2000, I began to notice that whenever I ate anything with gluten in it, I would experience terrible heartburn and breakout in this humiliating rash across my face (similar in appearance to rosacea). I began to follow a very strict gluten-free diet and these symptoms completely disappeared. For the following two years, I did not have any significant health problems.
In late 2002, I (as well as others) began to notice a significant change in my underarm odour. And I do not mean that my armpits stunk “a little”. No, this was much more than that. I’d shower, but the smell would still be there. It was a vinegary smell, kind of acidy. This was an extremely humiliating period for me and I visited doctors frantically to find the cause. However, I noticed that it got a lot worse when I consumed larger amounts of sugar and diminished when I lowered my sugar intake. I drastically changed my diet to avoid all processed sugars and this cleared the problem up for a few months.
During the same period of time, I began to experience occasional mental spells of confusion and foggy brain function. As much as I tried to ignore it, it persisted. I honestly began to think that I was going insane.
Throughout the year of 2003, all of these symptoms intensified. By the end of 2003, I knew something was very wrong. The brain fogginess was incredible. I approached my doctor about it who referred me to a gastroenterologist. By Christmas of 2003, I could not eat even small amounts of carbohydrates without experiencing this brain fogginess and confusion. I resorted to an all protein diet, similar to the induction phase of Atkins. This actually made me feel pretty good (despite the incredible constipation). My brain was not nearly as foggy. By this time, I had come across a conditions in medical textbooks such as ‘dysbiosis’ or ‘yeast-imbalance’ or ‘candida’. I was pretty convinced that this was my problem and tried all the anti-fungal pills, etc. but without much success.
I, like many, came across Karen Tripp's website and of course wanted to try the program that worked so well for her. I purchased a few bottles of the SF-722 formula and diligently stayed with the diet (which was not difficult as I was only eating protein and fats) as well as the probiotics. Unfortunately, this only helped mildly. Had I followed the EXACT program she did (including her copper supplementation) I would have had more success. Perhaps copper was key to Karen's recovery, also.
2004 was a year of seeing doctor after doctor after doctor for multiple blood tests.
The thing that was perplexing through all of this was the consistency of my abnormal blood tests - revealing low white blood cell counts, low red blood cells counts (and anemia, once), elevated liver enzymes (a sign the liver is trying to repair itself) and low HDL cholesterol. I became convinced that all of this was caused by the candida infection and never stopped to think that perhaps the infection was a symptom of something else.
In later 2004, I started a doctor-supervised program of probiotics, vitamin supplements, digestive enzymes and anti-fungal pills and began to feel modestly better by late 2004. But this progress hit a plateau and would always fall back if I stopped the treatment.
In early 2005 (by this point I had read A LOT concerning the condition of dysbiosis and various causes/concerns), I approached a doctor and requested a hair mineral analysis, which I had done. They are relatively inexpensive and return what I feel to be very accurate results (for instance, all of the supplements I was taking rated high on the mineral scale but the supplements that I was not taking came back low). Of the low minerals were copper and selenium. As I read more and more about copper and selenium and their connection to the immune system, the picture became clearer. I started to take a copper supplement. The first night, I took 2 mg and felt absolutely horrible the next day. It felt as if I had ingested poison. My mind was an absolute wreck, worse than before. I waited a week before taking another 2 mg with the same results. I continued this protocol for a few weeks and eventually was able to take more, more often. I added to this a selenium supplement, with no adverse effects upon introducing it to my diet. As time went on, my mental clarity grew. The white clumps in my mouth DISAPPEARED! The odour in my armpits after consuming even small amounts of carbohydrates lessened and then VANISHED!
|
Some doctors began treating me for candida and some denied it existed. My mental confusion reached a new height – I began to get these feelings of being ‘disconnected’ or ‘unreal’ (better term to describe it) from everything. It is hard to explain – kind of like everything you see through your eyes is on a TV and you are watching your own life occur. The best comparison that I have been able to make is that it is like looking through binoculars backwards, all the time. One of my doctors became convinced that this was all due to a psychosomatic condition called ‘dissociation’ which is basically your brain playing tricks on you – i.e. you are imagining everything. I tried my best to believe him and with his advice, began practicing yoga to reconnect my mind and body but this did not help at all (although yoga is very relaxing).
The night sweats which used to occur if I ate anything before bed also disappeared. I was (am) elated by this progress and have concluded that this entire chapter of my life descended from my gluten intolerance, which caused a decreased ability for my body to absorb copper, leading to the depression of my immune system and ultimate infection by candida and Epstein-Barr Virus (a virus that 95% of the population gets, but if your immune system is depressed, will not go away).