Aerowallah
Senior Member
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- 142
Want to share my case--which touches on themes I read here--should it prove useful.
Had mild adrenal fatigue after a bad virus in spring 2012. Took about three months for symptoms to resolve.
More severe AF after another bad flu in spring of 2013. Coming up on two years and only now is fatigue and exercise tolerance resolving.
AF diagnosed in 2013 when saliva test showed moderately low cortisol, low GABA, epi, norepi, and serotonin. Was prescribed nightly Kavinace and the usual precursors/supps. Slept brilliantly with wonderful deep dreams for three months and then insomnia turned on like a switch.
Spent three more months journalling for causes and effect w/o success. Insomnia had its own relentless irregular pattern--3-6 days on, 3-10 days off, sometimes all night and sometimes from 3-4am on. Hard to recover from AF and anxiety when sleep is no longer something you take for granted.
A neuro retest in Dec. 2013 showed depressed histamine, elevated GABA/glutamate, and taurine at 100% of reference range (actual taurine drawn to scale took the bar graph some 18 inches to the right of the test booklet!) Naturopath said nothing to worry about and tried to give me cocktails all of the usual sleep aids one reads here as well as increased Kavinace. Like many I threw everything at insomnia w/o knowing its underlying cause or realizing I was simply giving my unbalanced brain more to rebalance. I was also getting acid indigestion after every meal from increased HCL due to taurine excess.
So no sleep aid or herb worked, though sometimes it seemed like something would work when it actually depended on where I was in my insomnia cycle. After a few days everything stopped working.
In frustration I stopped everything. Insomnia quietened down some 20-30%, and all-nighters became less frequent, but overall I still felt oppressed by insomnia. I read taurine was present in many formulations and can have a glutamergic reaction, but I refused to take NAC for glutamate or try to game my brain's attempt to rebalance itself with any more protocols. Also histamine drop (and the absence for the first time in 40 years of ragweed allergy) suggested some detox was going on, possibly copper. Also noticed (as my fatigue S L O W L Y improved despite irregular sleep) I paradoxically became more reactive to a growing list of foods--precisely, high glutamate foods, high histamine foods, high copper foods, and high sulphur foods.
As I recovered secondary symptoms increased--itchiness, brain fog, skin breakouts, tinnitus, aches and pains in hands and feet (which disappeared within minutes of drinking 4 or 5 glasses of water). It dawned on me that this may be the detox that recovering AF'ers talk about--as the metabolism improves so does energy for detox. And one may be detoxing a lifetime of toxins and metals thanks to improved diet and rest, not just the sequestration at the onset of AF when detox and other metabolic functions power down.
Then came my dramatic improvement. I had read many anecdotes about reducing detox symptoms with glutathione, but did not like the bad experiences of some who supplemented NAC. So after a lot of resistance I began daily coffee enemas. 18 months of insomnia suddenly switched off by the end of the first week as suddenly as it began. I am now having the best sleep in my life. (Although the dreams are not as good as on Kavinace!)
I follow Gerson and use the SA Wilson specially formulated blonde roast. For those who might try CEs, there is inexcusable confusion about the position for CEs--it is only on the right side, as I know direct from Gerson patients. Although sensitive to coffee I feel no stimulation or jitteriness. Some talk about crashing from loss of electrolytes or B12, but after three months I have experienced none of this and believe it to be a flare in cleansing as glutathione levels increase. Vegetarians or those after chemotherapy may need to be attentive to electrolytes. I simply drink some coconut water, lime and ionic minerals after and feel fine.
Check my thinking on this, but I believe a lot of my adrenal weakness was a lifetime of undermethylation and poor liver clearance, and my symptoms caused by pulling toxins and reversing the optimal order of cleanse, i.e. tissue cleansing before lymph and liver cleansing. Without adequate liver clearance toxins circulate the body every, what, 15 minutes? causing oxidative damage and the body's immune response--sleep-robbing histamine, adrenaline, cortisol and glutamate production until toxins and metals can be cleared or re-distributed in the tissues. After 18 months of sleeplessness I got so I could tell elevated adrenaline from glutamate. Today I fall asleep faster than I ever did as a kid. Will start exercising soon. The only lingering symptom is milder fatigue which I believe to be a part of detox, and comes and goes as the insomnia used to.
Regards
PS For completeness' sake, I should say the only exception to my approach to doing this w/o pills--just low and slow on targeted organic foods--is magnesium malate.
Had mild adrenal fatigue after a bad virus in spring 2012. Took about three months for symptoms to resolve.
More severe AF after another bad flu in spring of 2013. Coming up on two years and only now is fatigue and exercise tolerance resolving.
AF diagnosed in 2013 when saliva test showed moderately low cortisol, low GABA, epi, norepi, and serotonin. Was prescribed nightly Kavinace and the usual precursors/supps. Slept brilliantly with wonderful deep dreams for three months and then insomnia turned on like a switch.
Spent three more months journalling for causes and effect w/o success. Insomnia had its own relentless irregular pattern--3-6 days on, 3-10 days off, sometimes all night and sometimes from 3-4am on. Hard to recover from AF and anxiety when sleep is no longer something you take for granted.
A neuro retest in Dec. 2013 showed depressed histamine, elevated GABA/glutamate, and taurine at 100% of reference range (actual taurine drawn to scale took the bar graph some 18 inches to the right of the test booklet!) Naturopath said nothing to worry about and tried to give me cocktails all of the usual sleep aids one reads here as well as increased Kavinace. Like many I threw everything at insomnia w/o knowing its underlying cause or realizing I was simply giving my unbalanced brain more to rebalance. I was also getting acid indigestion after every meal from increased HCL due to taurine excess.
So no sleep aid or herb worked, though sometimes it seemed like something would work when it actually depended on where I was in my insomnia cycle. After a few days everything stopped working.
In frustration I stopped everything. Insomnia quietened down some 20-30%, and all-nighters became less frequent, but overall I still felt oppressed by insomnia. I read taurine was present in many formulations and can have a glutamergic reaction, but I refused to take NAC for glutamate or try to game my brain's attempt to rebalance itself with any more protocols. Also histamine drop (and the absence for the first time in 40 years of ragweed allergy) suggested some detox was going on, possibly copper. Also noticed (as my fatigue S L O W L Y improved despite irregular sleep) I paradoxically became more reactive to a growing list of foods--precisely, high glutamate foods, high histamine foods, high copper foods, and high sulphur foods.
As I recovered secondary symptoms increased--itchiness, brain fog, skin breakouts, tinnitus, aches and pains in hands and feet (which disappeared within minutes of drinking 4 or 5 glasses of water). It dawned on me that this may be the detox that recovering AF'ers talk about--as the metabolism improves so does energy for detox. And one may be detoxing a lifetime of toxins and metals thanks to improved diet and rest, not just the sequestration at the onset of AF when detox and other metabolic functions power down.
Then came my dramatic improvement. I had read many anecdotes about reducing detox symptoms with glutathione, but did not like the bad experiences of some who supplemented NAC. So after a lot of resistance I began daily coffee enemas. 18 months of insomnia suddenly switched off by the end of the first week as suddenly as it began. I am now having the best sleep in my life. (Although the dreams are not as good as on Kavinace!)
I follow Gerson and use the SA Wilson specially formulated blonde roast. For those who might try CEs, there is inexcusable confusion about the position for CEs--it is only on the right side, as I know direct from Gerson patients. Although sensitive to coffee I feel no stimulation or jitteriness. Some talk about crashing from loss of electrolytes or B12, but after three months I have experienced none of this and believe it to be a flare in cleansing as glutathione levels increase. Vegetarians or those after chemotherapy may need to be attentive to electrolytes. I simply drink some coconut water, lime and ionic minerals after and feel fine.
Check my thinking on this, but I believe a lot of my adrenal weakness was a lifetime of undermethylation and poor liver clearance, and my symptoms caused by pulling toxins and reversing the optimal order of cleanse, i.e. tissue cleansing before lymph and liver cleansing. Without adequate liver clearance toxins circulate the body every, what, 15 minutes? causing oxidative damage and the body's immune response--sleep-robbing histamine, adrenaline, cortisol and glutamate production until toxins and metals can be cleared or re-distributed in the tissues. After 18 months of sleeplessness I got so I could tell elevated adrenaline from glutamate. Today I fall asleep faster than I ever did as a kid. Will start exercising soon. The only lingering symptom is milder fatigue which I believe to be a part of detox, and comes and goes as the insomnia used to.
Regards
PS For completeness' sake, I should say the only exception to my approach to doing this w/o pills--just low and slow on targeted organic foods--is magnesium malate.
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Now addicted but have every intention of stopping once I can get to feeling a bit better.