Gut problems are getting quite common these days. I too had it a few years back, but I followed certain things that kept all those problems away.
As I had food allergies, I had to cut out gluten, dairy, yeast, corn, soy, and eggs for a week.
Congrats on the recovery, I kind of envy you...
I don't know the extent of your problems but it looks like they were not that serious. Cutting gluten, dairy, etc. only for a week... I wish this had worked for me so fast when I tried it. But it didn't, in fact, nothing seemed to work.
Only after years and years of trial and error was I able to figure out why a particular supplement (or method of treatment) works for me.
I had to learn about each and every solution the hard way. It's strange how things that are seemingly not associated with each other actually affect you - and in a bad way.
Back in 2002, when these problems started, I only had a dial-up Internet connection. It was a mess and it cost a ton. I wasn't able to get an ADSL connection until 2005 because the phone company messed up. Had I known that this will delay my treatment a few years, I would have bought a much more expensive mobile connection. It cost a ridiculous amount of money but it would be still cheaper than the doctors that I had to go to because I didn't know what to do, and the doctors... more on them in a second.
Then, after I got a broadband connection, I found that there are no resources on the Internet at all, maybe except for research papers, so I started to study them but then I found that I don't understand many of them. It took a few years and in 2012 I finally started an elimination diet and fasting. But the funny thing was that my elimination diet lead me to eat rice only - because who would be allergic to rice? Yep, you guessed it, I was.
Going to doctors was pointless most of the time from the very beginning. I had food allergies so severe that it caused erosion in the stomach wall, they prescribed antacids. After all, these helped 99% of the patients, who would care about poor Mick? These food allergies caused joint pain, rheumos didn't even deem it possible.
Only after several years had I found out that one of them actually started believing in treatment with a vegan diet and prescribing it to patients. Of course, they made her leave the faculty or maybe she left on her own, either way, now you have to pay for the visit so much that it's beyond my capabilities. Especially that I still know much more than her. And visiting her back then still wouldn't have had any benefits because there was one basic problem with me that nobody could solve, even me (though I'm still considering visiting her in the near future, maybe).
I had a severe CoQ10 deficiency which I couldn't detect because even taking CoQ10 didn't help. The problem was a dose that was too small and not absorbable enough. Seems like I'm repeating myself because I think I wrote about it already.
Now that this deficiency has been taken care of, many of my allergies are finally gone - and this is because my gut wall healed and there is no direct contact between gut (or rather blood) and food allergens. So after a few years of staying on a healthy vegan diet, I could switch to bread and cheese. And this was just in time because it just so happened that I became severely allergic to many vegetables and spices and this made it extremely difficult for me to stay on this vegan diet. I could only eat broccoli, carrots, beets, potatoes and a few others. But no tomatoes, no spices: pepper, oregano, paprika, rosemary, mushroom, olives, etc. And basically all of the pre-packaged vegan dishes contain spices, and why wouldn't they? It was good and tasty while it tasted but not anymore...
So, after solving this problem with CoQ10 deficiency, it looks like many, if not all, of the supplements that I used to take, finally started working. And so I take ribose, MCT oil, L-carnitine, green tea, green coffee, and many more. As long as I rotate them frequently - they work and they don't cause side effects. Take MCT oil for example - it may serve as a temporary stamina boost for like two hours (which are sometimes crucial) but if taken every day it loses its ability to boost stamina and it starts to bother my stomach and sometimes it gets really ugly. Ribose behaves similarly...
But the best recent development is Candex which basically made my joints pain-free, despite me ingesting bread and cheese all the time which are very good nourishment for Candida. So, another obstacle out of the way.
Now, the obstacle that I need to overcome, is muscle pain/DOMS otherwise known as PEM. Well, actually maybe these are not the same thing but who cares.
That muscle pain may be caused by some kind of deficiency or a structural muscle/tendon change that was caused by a deficiency (we may imagine that CoQ10 deficiency might have stopped collagen production and that causes structural disintegrity and thus my tendons and joints and muscles hurt) or by another problem that I have ie. it's probably neuromyotonia.
So now my approach is two-fold. I'm trying to heal my muscles by whatever method I can find (recently I started taking dibecozide) and I'm trying to get to a doctor who would diagnose me correctly. But the problem is that symptoms come and go, the doctors are not knowledgeable, etc. And I'm waiting for some of the test results for the third month already and I don't understand why it has to take so long...
So, all is left for me to do now is to take another supplement, hoping that it might help heal the muscles. Because it's not the cramps that are the worst, it's PEM/DOMS that follows. For many years I suffered through cramps and I could go on quite normally and without PEM but not anymore. Or maybe it's just because prolonged cramps cause permanent damage to the muscle tissue, who knows... (actually this permanent damage is also reversible but you have to stop the cramps and start taking steroids and this requires the doctor's attention, unfortunately).
The conversation in this thread nudged me in the right direction, either directly (by telling me what to take) or indirectly (by reminding me of some issues and I figured out to take on my own what to take).
So people, thank you, and keep up the good work!
Ie. keep giving me further advice... maybe we will find the solution...