I like Phoenix Rising. People here seem willing to 1. look at the science.. and 2, REALLY WANT TO GET BETTER. Super motivated.
I think fatigue hits you like nothing else, it takes you completely out of life and at some point you get tired of being so tired you're willing to become a PhD just to figure out how the heck to feel better. So many people with CFS have gut issues.
I want to share pieces of my story before I tell you how fighting biofilms, supporting methylation and adrenals and attacking pathogens has helped me.
Ive been sick since child hood. Mainly stomach stuff, but I caught every cold that went around. My mom rarely took me to the Dr, but I still remember several courses of antibiotics over the years. We also at a very high carb, higly processed, sugar saturated, fat soaked diet. And my parents smoked in the house, in the car.. both of them. I was sedentary as a latch key kid from an early age and ate alot of convenience foods. When I was in my early 20s I started to eat better, but the damage was done.. I had 4 abdominal pain related surgeries by age 20. I had dxes of fibro, ibs-c, ibs-d and UC..
By 25 I was pretty unhealthy to be so young. Youth is wasted on the young. I didnt try going GF, DF, SF, everything pretty much free until I got so sick by 33 that I couldnt really function. I was beyond tired and nobody really did anything more then try to throw drugs at me or tell me to lose weight.
So, I was completely done with being sick and tired. I started earnestly researching.. Id been doing so for many years at that point but couldnt really bring everything together. I found the fodmaps diet, did some really unsuccessful cleanses and some good ones.. tried to kill unknown parasites. And slowly I started getting better. BUT, it was SO SLOW. Im lucky too because I have alot of support. Most people cant stay on a super strict diet for 18 months, shop at whole foods.. slave over recipes with nut flour and coconut oil... Then I hit a brick wall.
But I was just so tired. It was easier not to eat. So I didnt.. lol. I luckily had 70 lbs to lose. I was feeling so toxic. Lots of constipation, brain fog, I was having to do daily enemas just to try and move some of the toxicity out of my body of the die off.
So I went back to the drawing board. Decided to go see a Dark field practitioner. I think she was totally full of shit. But what that did was allow me to see that, holy crap. I could look at my own blood. Ive wasted so much money on supplements and tests, I thought.. what the heck is 400 bucks? So, I bought one. I spent weeks/months pouring over the blood images I could find trying to understand what was going on in my blood.
I bought a camera attachment so I could take pictures and kind of chronicle the changes I was seeing...
Anyway, I didnt really know what I was looking at until I looked at a sample of my husband's blood and saw this one cell that I had a few of and he seemed to have a lot of. I was looking at this blood because he had this horrible cough for a really long time and the abx didnt seem to do anything. Anyway.. turns out is was mycoplasma Pneumonia..
And that was my introduction to the world of stealth pathogens. That eventually led me here and to my doctor. He was able to lab verify mycoplasma pneumonia and lyme disease. He also hypothesized that I had a yeast issue.. but all we have been able to confirm is it is a saphrophye that they say isnt candida. Anyway, a yeast.. a mold.
He also told me I was compound MTHFR, which led me here and to read about Rich V. and Dr. Amy. I studied snps just as fiercely. But time and time again I kept coming back to the pathogens.
For me, God created the body pretty exquisitely and gave us multiple pathways to make up for any single problem.. But it just felt like the pathways were all overloaded and gunked up. It was the gunking that needed addressing. I could artificially help by taking support for my methylation (and that was HUGE), but wasnt going to be able to push it over the edge into wellness. I could eat a perfect diet, but still.. this was so deep rooted. I was no longer bed bound and exhausted, but I still wasnt well. You cant clean a drainpipe with plain water, It can be the cleanest, purest water.
So anyway..
Ill cut to the chase.. The doc was awesome, he told me to take b-12,L-MethylTetrahydrofolate, olive leaf, nac, sodium butyrate, triphala, serrazimes, interfase, digest gold and moly b. At first he started me with Pau D Arco, Black walut hulls and continued on my modifed diet, which was essentially paleo. I had rapid improvement, strong detox reaction. 6 weeks sucked. But then.. AHa. Im feeling better then Ive felt in over a decade.
Im still tired tho. And my joints hurt. My digestion is also almost completely better, but I still have constipation issues no matter how much water I drink, or how much fiber I try to take in via psyllium, chia, flax, avocados, greens...vegetables. Dr (He's from russia) tells me to try turkey rhubarb root and glauber's salts. Phew. So much more effective then the "cleanses" and fiber. Said not to do it more then 1 x every week. I ended up doing once, 2 weeks in a row and my chronic constipation was resolved. It was crazy. I had done so many cleanses, lost a ton of weight, enemas.. anyway. Now that I could actually get to the epithelium and biofilms things really started improving. I also started taking nystatin. Id been focused on the bacteria and candida was so cliche, lol.. that I hadnt really expected as much improvement. I had energy, my joints didnt hurt. It was awesome. I noticed during this period that my white blood cells were increasing in number, but they were often so SLOW. Sometimes they would have a pep in their step so it made me wonder what the denominator was. I decided to do some mitochondrial support, and jackpot. They now had some energy, the granules in the wbcs glowed more, were way more active.
I felt so good this summer I had a BLAST. Ive missed out on so many summers of fun because of chronic illness. It was probably the best summer of my adult life.
I was killing all the bacteria. But not the yeast. Yeast is an opportunistic mofo and it is the best biofilm maker. Chronic yeast issues from leaky gut allow it to go systemic. I would see asteroids of what some call yeast thallus when speaking about darkfield in my blood (Ive also seen it labelled as aspergillus but you have to take dark field with a grain of salt, so who knows..). I saw things I SWORE were worms but they never had any internal organs. I talked to heads of pathology.. professors at colleges all over the world, lol.. now I realize that was the hyphal yeast forms.
Anyway. All my fun in the sun and fun living
earned me a wicked infection in my ear. The infection was something I let go too long because well, Im used to chronic pain so it didnt seem like a big deal until I couldnt hear out of my ear any more. Even then we himhawed around with garlic oil, neem oil, tea tree oil, alcohol.vinegar... etc until my jaw and sinuses started becoming affected. So he gave me abx. decided that while I was taking them (I had to get a second course called in because the diflucan took so long to work) I might as well take them for a month. The infection ended up being outer ear only, lasting for almost 10 weeks by the time I had enough, poured peroxide in my ear, sat there till it stopped bubbling then syringed my ear out removing a chunk of disgustingness. The diflucan and zithro didnt really help it, but I did notice that the last of my nagging inflammation due to ibs/uc disappeared. I also had alot more energy and the acne that had been horrible on the side of my face that got the ear infection cleared up.
I took berberine for its synergy with diflucan, olive leaf, nac, b vitamins (b5,b6,b1,b2,b12,b9 in active forms.), co q 10,, biotin, lactoferrin, digest gold, interfase and additional serrapeptase. When I was done with the zithro, I started taking 500 billion cfu of custom probiotic's, I took 200billion while taking the probiotics. I also went back on the grain free diet.
Anyway, I feel pretty freaking fantastic these days. I can tolerate all foods now. It's crazy. I havent been able to eat cheese ever. I remember early childhood on, always reacting. Now, I dont react. I can eat gluten.. nothing. There was a time when if I ate gluten my body would let me know for multiple days. My gut appears good. Im not going to significantly diverge from a primarily paleo diet for a bit, but this is the most progress Ive ever made. Im no longer tired.. I almost want to knock on wood just because I cant believe Ive gotten this lucky.
I think methylation, attacking the biofilms/yeast/mold and pathogens and detoxing have been the key. I hope it holds. Ive never had such good results. God is good and the future feels very bright.
I wanted to post my story here because it is my hope that I dont have much time for the internet anymore. I spent so many years feeling unwell and being dependent on a screen to connect, to find my way out. Now it's time to live.
Have hope. It's a long road but I do think it's possible to get well. And I promise, when you are. You will appreciate it so much you will feel compelled to do great things ;-)
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I just posted the above in another thread but it seems more apropos here. Gesalt, how's your experiment going? Remember it takes time. Way more time then I ever thought. focus on the detox. Take molyb, nac and lactoferrin to help deal with some of the toxins. Take detox baths or sauna if possible. Excited to see your results.
