- Messages
- 73
So I've been searching for years for solutions to my problems, as most of us have. Here is a detailed overview of my problem, what I've tried, my labs, and what is working for me.
Up until now I've tried giving my brain everything it could ever need and after about 3 years of this and getting only mediocre success (though still amazing in some regards but nowhere near remission) I began to understand that I might not need that magical supplement that just kick starts my system and was the missing mineral or co-factor to relieve my deficiency and that maybe instead I need to remove something that shouldn't be there instead. So I started looking at infections and viruses, and the gut.
On a whim, as I'm not too knowledgeable in this area, I decided to try out some stuff for leaky gut; not knowing if this is actually a real thing or if it's just a working theory/title for anecdotal but successful experiments without any real explanation. I decided I'd try some DGL, L-Glutamine, and Enzymetica Digest Gold +Probiotics digestive enzymes. I was excited to try this new route of treatment after pushing so hard in another area.
So with L-Glutamine I haven't experimented properly with so it's not worth discussing, and DGL I just took for precautionary reasons as I don't have GERD, it wasn't too expensive. But something very interesting happened with the Digest Gold enzymes. I noticed that I would actually typically feel better after eating (if it was a clean / healthy meal) rather than the normal guaranteed foggy and then 5-6 hours after eating I would start to get incredibly physically calm. I still had some mental haze but the physical calm that I experienced helped me understand that my physical tension and discomfort, almost to the point of feeling poisoned / toxic, was leading to an inability to mentally relax, which I now see is separate from the haze. The haze is much less an issue when I can actually be calm. Then a few times, if I didn't eat / drink anything for hours after a meal, I would even start to see the haze dissipate a bit. I find that eating kind of fogs me back up / stops this progression. Not to the point it used to before taking these but it brings me back to that baseline that I would be at before clearing up.
Prior to this I had no indications of GI issues in terms of bloating, cramping, diarrhea, nausea, GERD, constipation or anything. I think my only tell in this area is that as a child I would only have a bowel movement every 2 or 3 days. It's hard to say now since I eat a lot more intentionally to try to bulk up with weight lifting. I'd say I'm usually every day, but sometimes every other day.
Does this make sense to anyone out there in PR land? I'm leaning towards having slow gut motility and the enzymes preventing rot from happening before it gets all the way through? I never have anything undigested in my stool so I think it's all working, perhaps just too slowly to keep things in balance such as pH and bacteria. Maybe I was being poisoned by my food in some way?
I'm going to add in Betaine HCL as soon as that makes its way here. I don't feel as if my food sits in my stomach for longer than appropriate but this seems to be the next thing on the list to try.
I've read quite a lot about Xifaxan and metronidazole (Flagyl) successfully curing people from gut related bugs and I do have some Flagyl on hand that I've never used but am extremely hesitant to use it unless I have some sort of diagnostic confirmation or if I continue going down this path and it looks inevitable that it needs to be used.
So basically I just wanted to hear the thoughts of some of the users more well versed in the area of gut health and see if they could point me in the right direction.
I know the organic acids test can be diagnostic for SIBO, are there any other tests that might be valuable to check out? I've been thinking of a stool health test of some sort but I have no idea which one I would want.
Thanks!
Up until now I've tried giving my brain everything it could ever need and after about 3 years of this and getting only mediocre success (though still amazing in some regards but nowhere near remission) I began to understand that I might not need that magical supplement that just kick starts my system and was the missing mineral or co-factor to relieve my deficiency and that maybe instead I need to remove something that shouldn't be there instead. So I started looking at infections and viruses, and the gut.
On a whim, as I'm not too knowledgeable in this area, I decided to try out some stuff for leaky gut; not knowing if this is actually a real thing or if it's just a working theory/title for anecdotal but successful experiments without any real explanation. I decided I'd try some DGL, L-Glutamine, and Enzymetica Digest Gold +Probiotics digestive enzymes. I was excited to try this new route of treatment after pushing so hard in another area.
So with L-Glutamine I haven't experimented properly with so it's not worth discussing, and DGL I just took for precautionary reasons as I don't have GERD, it wasn't too expensive. But something very interesting happened with the Digest Gold enzymes. I noticed that I would actually typically feel better after eating (if it was a clean / healthy meal) rather than the normal guaranteed foggy and then 5-6 hours after eating I would start to get incredibly physically calm. I still had some mental haze but the physical calm that I experienced helped me understand that my physical tension and discomfort, almost to the point of feeling poisoned / toxic, was leading to an inability to mentally relax, which I now see is separate from the haze. The haze is much less an issue when I can actually be calm. Then a few times, if I didn't eat / drink anything for hours after a meal, I would even start to see the haze dissipate a bit. I find that eating kind of fogs me back up / stops this progression. Not to the point it used to before taking these but it brings me back to that baseline that I would be at before clearing up.
Prior to this I had no indications of GI issues in terms of bloating, cramping, diarrhea, nausea, GERD, constipation or anything. I think my only tell in this area is that as a child I would only have a bowel movement every 2 or 3 days. It's hard to say now since I eat a lot more intentionally to try to bulk up with weight lifting. I'd say I'm usually every day, but sometimes every other day.
Does this make sense to anyone out there in PR land? I'm leaning towards having slow gut motility and the enzymes preventing rot from happening before it gets all the way through? I never have anything undigested in my stool so I think it's all working, perhaps just too slowly to keep things in balance such as pH and bacteria. Maybe I was being poisoned by my food in some way?
I'm going to add in Betaine HCL as soon as that makes its way here. I don't feel as if my food sits in my stomach for longer than appropriate but this seems to be the next thing on the list to try.
I've read quite a lot about Xifaxan and metronidazole (Flagyl) successfully curing people from gut related bugs and I do have some Flagyl on hand that I've never used but am extremely hesitant to use it unless I have some sort of diagnostic confirmation or if I continue going down this path and it looks inevitable that it needs to be used.
So basically I just wanted to hear the thoughts of some of the users more well versed in the area of gut health and see if they could point me in the right direction.
I know the organic acids test can be diagnostic for SIBO, are there any other tests that might be valuable to check out? I've been thinking of a stool health test of some sort but I have no idea which one I would want.
Thanks!