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Dear Dr. Stoll,
First of all, I have read many articles and archives on your website. It has been most informative, and I think I've pieced together the puzzle of what's happened to me, but I'd like to see what you think - especially because my husband is seriously starting to question my mental health. He's deeply ingrained in the allopathic mindset and his insinuations that it's all in my head are making me start to question if maybe he's right.
It said in the "Before you post" that you are an excellent speed reader and don't mind too many details in a post - I am about to put that assertion to the test. :) I will try to stick to the medical facts as much as possible, but the personal always seems to creep in...
I am 33, female, married for 14 years, 4 daughters age 8 and younger. In fall of 2005 we moved across the country (we are Canadian) for my husband to take on a new, and actually much more stressful job. While we were on our house-hunting trip my mom's ovarian cancer which had been in remission for about a year came back with a vengeance. So I moved only to have to come back for 2 extended visits with my then 2 girls and then for a third for her funeral in Feb 2006. Very difficult time, missing home plus losing my mom. I got pregnant Aug 06, gave birth in Apr 07, breastfed until found out I was pregnant again in Feb 08, gave birth in Oct 08. Meanwhile my husband was diagnosed with a sleep disorder which keeps him up most of the night and then he sleeps until about noon. It is better for us all if he does this, but that means keeping the kids as quiet as possible in the mornings - not an easy task. I also have homeschooled our eldest for the past 3 years. On top of all this, I have several responsibilities at our church including nursery co-ordinator and director of our midweek children's program. I was doing pretty much okay until the birth of our 4th daughter in Oct. For the first time, we had a colicky baby - what a nightmare! I was getting next to no sleep, trying to manage all the children throughout the day with the almost continuous background noise of a baby screaming, and trying to give my eldest a decent Grade 2 education, keep up with my church commitments and still be a supportive wife to a man in a high-stress position. My husband helped the best he could - especially during the night when he was up.
In summary, I was stressed out. I battled depression off and on (blamed it on lack of sleep), muscle pain that I've had off and on for years got REALLY bad - especially TMJ, my right shoulder and right on down to my arm, hand and fingers going numb a lot. This could be explained by carrying my babies around, strollers, baby carseat, diaper bag, etc. Sometimes I couldn't sleep even when the baby was actually sleeping, but this I blamed on the fact that my shoulder hurt almost all the time, as well as really tight hamstring muscles. Well, I made it through the winter, the baby was getting over her colic and sleeping more at night, and I felt like I was finally on the upswing. My husband had to take a work-related trip to Alabama at the end of May, and we had arranged for someone to watch the 3 older kids so I and the baby could come with him - I was still breastfeeding. But on Mother's Day something new to me happened. It was a rather stressful day, I was missing my mom who never got to meet my last 2 babies, my husband was even more stressed than usual that day for reasons unimportant to this, we got takeout on the way home from church so I wouldn't have to cook on Mother's Day, but the place we went was having trouble with their credit card/debit machine so after waiting 20 minutes (starving, by the way) we finally got it paid for. My husband picked up chocolate milk for me since he knows it's a special treat (I normally don't eat sugar) and after a crummy morning, I indulged!! Well, I spent most of that afternoon on the toilet. Stress-induced IBS, I guess - never happened before. Starting using lactose-digesting aids, looking forward to our trip at the end of the month. But the week before the trip my paternal grandmother died. The funeral was scheduled for the day before we were to leave for Alabama. My husband really thought I should go home for the funeral, but because of his job and his trip, he couldn't come or look after the kids, so I would have to bring all 4 kids. With my sore shoulder and the thought of the flights, lugging luggage through airports, AND missing my getaway trip, I opted to pass on the funeral and go to Alabama instead. We had a great time away (3 days) and the kids did fine without us.
Next (and here's where it gets interesting) we got a guinea pig for my daughter's 8th birthday in the middle of June. I have allergies to cats and we could never agree on what type of dog to get, so the poor child who's desparately wanted a pet for forever got her wish. A couple of weeks later I started getting REALLY hungry, very often - even more than usual. I was getting up early enough in the mornings that I could shower before the kids got up and I started not even being able to shower before eating I was so shaky, getting dizzy, etc. After some searching online I discovered hypoglycemia. I've had some symptoms that matched over the years, so I started reading up on that (library books, etc). Changing my diet and eating very often helped, but then I started getting really anxious - thought at first it was just the adrenaline rush from being hungry and my body trying to stabilize my blood sugar. But it got super bad to the point where I had to go outside for fresh air, my heart was pounding really fast in my chest. I was already eating every 2 hours, but it was getting worse. Then I starting getting a really itchy roof of my mouth and throat after eating some things - almonds was the first, but then more foods. Also my husband's cologne would send me outside with the same kind of attack - same cologne he's always worn. It took about 3 weeks of this getting worse and worse before it occurred to me it might be the guinea pig. This was only because I'd been out of the house for a few hours - felt great, then came home and went in the room with the cage and immediately had an "attack". After a few days of trying different things (putting it in the basement, hay only in the garage) we decided he had to go. Add the stress of a brokenhearted 8 year old saying goodbye to her new best friend. I did improve within a few days of that, but not completely. More food allergies were showing up and I was still really exhausted all the time. One of my books on Hypoglycemia referred to the Atkins Center. We had an Atkins book in the basement for some reason, so I read it, thought it made sense and started doing Induction - desparate to fix what I thought was just a really bad case of hypoglycemia induced by the guinea pig allergy. I did Induction (just meat and salad) for several days before I felt ridiculously bad - flu-like (sound familiar? :). I did more searching online and discovered candida overgrowth. All the symptoms fit - I even remembered a big, long mucous string on the toilet paper once during the worst of my hypoglycemia. So I cut out mushrooms, vinegar, etc - typical yeast diet. I also had to wean the baby then, even though I had really wanted to continue. I didn't want to risk her health during induction and candida die-off, and I figured my body needed every break I could give it. After a couple of days of feeling extremely ill, I got over that, but I was absolutely starving all the time, no matter how much fatty meat I ate. Then my sister's friend told us about a book called Metabolic Typing. I got it from the library, devoured it, and started eating for the Protein type - which fit perfectly!! I felt great for a few days - better than in a long time - eating a lot of beef, eggs, chicken, pork, plus moderate portions of cauliflower, green beans, carrots, peas and spinach. This seemed to completely cure the hypoglycemia - I even went 12 hours between meals Monday night!! But the allergy symptoms got even worse. Almost everytime I ate I got an itchy mouth, sometimes really itchy skin, headache, etc. Tuesday morning (after the 12 hour fast) I had ground beef, eggs, 1/2 green apple and added fresh mushrooms for the first time in a few weeks (because of the yeast thing). Within half an hour I was a MESS - crying, shaking, itchy all over, angry, exhausted. I got online again and found a link to Robert McFerran's book. I immediately connected the joint pain he was talking about to my shoulder pain and understood why it had been so much worse lately. Meanwhile I had an extremely mucousy bowel movement and found a piece of undigested carrot in it. I immediately decided to go on the elimination diet. I knew it would be bad for a few days, but would be worth it. I had some cod in the freezer, bought some lamb and even had zucchini and parsnip in the fridge and steamed some sweet potato. I also ate some salmon because I had taken it out of the freezer to defrost on Monday and I haven't eaten that in months (probably only twice in my life - I hate fish!). I don't care for the lamb at all either, but I keep reminding myself that my food is my medicine right now and I'm surviving. Yesterday I had of-and-on dizziness, extreme muscle pain alternating with feeling better than ever, etc. Although lastnight (Wednesday) I was starving and all that was ready were a couple of chicken drumsticks left from my Protein Metabolic Typing diet and I ate those with some sweet potato. Right near the end of the meal my lips got really itchy and my legs which had been killing me all evening felt really warm and strange. I really didn't expect chicken to be a problem so I strayed from the elimination for that - big mistake, lesson learned! I hardly slept lastnight (not sure if allergic reaction to the chicken or withdrawal from everything else - I strongly suspect beef, especially since I forgot to mention that I'd had a bad reaction to milk a few weeks ago - also eggs too).
So what's my point? My husband thinks I'm crazy! He cannot for the life of him understand how a guinea pig could have caused hypoglycemia, systemic yeast overgrowth, leaky gut syndrome, increased joint and muscle pain, flu-like symptoms. If it wasn't so horrible, it would be funny. Someday I think I'm going to write a book about all this called "How a Guinea Pig Almost Killed Me". I know I was going down a slippery slope already with all the stress in my life, but I think the guinea pig allergy being constantly in my house gave me a really big push. Do you think this is plausable? My husband told me the other night that he thinks I'm just really stressed out (mostly from all these kids) and since I've been reading so much that my brain is tricking my body into experiencing these physiological symptoms that I'm reading about. He said he believes that if I could go alone to the Bahamas for a couple of weeks I'd be fine and be able to eat whatever I wanted. I don't think that's the case since the damage has been done to my intestines because of all the various sources of my stress and if I don't eliminate the allergens that have been created by this, it will never heal.
To make matters worse, we have a couple coming to town this weekend who's applied to be my husband's assistant - which he desparately needs. They're eating with us the whole weekend - here Friday, at another family's Saturday and at a restaurant Sunday. Since I'm restricted to eating lamb, cod, mackeral, trout, white fish, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, sweet potatoes, yams and zucchini (all the rest I've eaten very routinely lately) that's going to be tricky, but doable. They're also staying here Friday night and I've been letting the housework go in order to try to figure out what's happening with me. So I have to get things caught up, while going through the withdrawal symptoms from the elimination diet. Fun.
I'm considering putting my 2 older girls in school this fall (which I never thought I would do) in order to try to reduce my stress some. But mostly I need my husband to not think I'm insane. He really is a great guy, and a wonderful, normally very understanding husband, but he's never been open to the "hippie" ideas of people other than doctors. And with all the times I've thought I've had it figured out in the past few weeks, no wonder he's questioning my sanity.
My biggest question to you is, as a trained medical doctor, do you think it is possible that the guinea pig allergy caused all of these other things to happen?
Some other questions I have are:
1) Since this has been a fairly recent development, does that mean I may heal from it quickly?
2) Is it possible that my metabolic type could have become more extreme since my last pregnancy? Before this pregnancy I was eating 30% protein, 30% fat and 40% carbs and felt really good. Now I can't get away with that many carbs!
3) As an extreme hunter-gatherer metabolic type, I'm eating lamb with every meal and that's turned back into about every 2 hours now. Isn't that going to increase the risk that I become hyper-sensitive to lamb as well? Are there any other high purine, low allergy proteins that I could add? Should I keep eating salmon?
4) I strongly suspect I'm deficient in calcium - partly because of what I read about my typein The Metabolic Typing Diet book, and partly because for the past 3 years I've either been pregnant or breastfeeding. Is it safe to take a calcium supplement during the elimination diet? Which form would you recommend?
Thank you so much for reading all of this. I'm so desparate to feel good again and be able to look after my family and end this nightmare. And I'm a little afraid that my husband might institutionalize me, since I'm pretty sure he's not going to send me to the Bahamas for 3 weeks. ;)
Thanks again,
Heather
PS - It's important to me that you know I've handled stress pretty well before. I graduated with great marks through my Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. We also had a tough year in 2003 when my father-in-law got a brain tumour and died from it, we miscarried a pregnancy, I was maid of honour and co-MC at my sister's wedding, my mom was diagnosed with cancer and had surgery which she almost died from, we had trouble conceiving and I had 4 recurrent bladder infections - yep, antibiotics each time. I'm not normally the type to "crack up", but I feel like I'm getting close now!!