I detailed about this in my forum intro post and elsewhere but I got CFS suddenly in September 2015 during / just after an unusual viral infection, there was no obvious cause e.g. big changes in lifestyle or environment apart from me having a period of panic attacks and constant high anxiety and paranoia ( general anxiety disorder ) earlier that year, which was new for me. My CFS started mild then got suddenly worse around 7 to 9 months in, turning severe then very severe for no apparent reason, though I did notice strange burn like marks on side of fingers ( viral activity / autoimmunity ? ) appearing just before this began, and when it got bad a rash of dots / red rings appeared on the back of my knuckles / hands, I then experienced what felt like arthritis ( arthralgia ), had extreme light sensitivity and considerable sudden onset food sensitivity, but not allergy. Recovered to moderate after a few months and stayed that way fairly stable albeit with many repeating phases of symptoms e.g. Orthostatic Intolerance, brain fog, for 3 to 4 years.
Well since 2020 things have changed, I was in a bad stressful environment in 2020, possibly mold / bacteria exposure and worse quality food / other immune challenges . I had a sore throat that I was having trouble getting over ( seems to be a trend, whereas I rarely get/ got viral infections ), and I took antibiotics. At some point in that year buts its hard to pin down, things began to change. In 2019 I was not bad at drawing and I was improving fairly rapidly, but by 2021 this stagnated and began to feel like it was getting harder, I was getting worse. I was learning multiple skills in the period 2016 through 2019 but again in 2021 I noticed it was harder, I was struggling to improve just one skill, I didn't know why, I was unhappy. My libido and response to ( visual ) sexual stimuli seemed reduced and I was less interested in the opposite sex especially foreign women that I was previously interested in. I also had another strange symptom in late 2020 ( when I returned home ), not only was I a little more sensitive to our carpets, but I would get these episodes of extreme stomach gas production with no obvious cause, and when it happened I always felt more 'crashy' and severe-like. It wasn't uncommon for me to have a bad week where i'd dip into a psuedo severe state, have to slow things right down and recover again, but it never happened this frequently.
I was reasonably physically health in 2021, I was spending a lot of time outdoors, alone, far from populated areas, avoiding actual aerobic exercise but still quite active, I had a bad virus in late 2021 that wasn't covid, but it gave me a 40C fever, was ill for around a month. Not long after this, a month maybe, is when I started to notice more serious new issues, I sprained my wrist falling on invisible ice in the dark, and the injury seemed worse than I could explain, as if my wrist was weaker than it should have been, and slow at healing. It felt weak and sensitive for months after, then when I tried to lift something very heavy with just my left hand, a similar strain injury happened to that wrist. That spring my brother lived here and his noise stressed me out, I became suddenly hypersensitive to my bedroom and had to leave it. This had only happened to me once before, in a wooden building in my garden, and that time it seemed to be due to water damage / sudden mold growth. I developed periods of dehydration that reliably correlated with one type of PEM, and other neurological issues, strange sensations. Later last summer I had covid for the first time, but the impact seemed mild. I also had a stressful period though and it lead to me having high blood pressure and generally feeling very unwell, I suspected re-activation of parvovirus or something like that, I got over this after a few weeks and doctors did an ECG and couldn't find anything unusual going on.
I also had strange changes to my smell in 2022, with Chlorine particularly becoming unpleasant and unrecognisable.
Going into winter 2022 I was still physically doing ok, but the dehydration made travelling hard sometimes as I had to carry lots more water. Around nov / dec I started to become more sensitive to Air Fresheners / other highly perfumed strong household cleaning chems and then our laundry detergent, I could smell it from the tumble dryer downstairs and it started to keep me away with a brain that felt inflammed. My brothers tumble dryer broke down and he started bring stuff here, which made the situation worse. I became hypersensitive to the other bedroom over a few days, and had to move downstairs to the sofa. After this point I developed MCS, food intolerance / allergy like reactions, and my ( relatively good ) exercise tolerance quickly and steadily dropped to almost none. I had no clue what was going on, but after a couple of months I started researching mold, after trying to rule out MCAS. Things got really bad with my MCS and food reactions in Jan / Feb and I became reactive to the sofa I was sleeping on, old fabrics in the room, the big Samsung smart TV, my desktop PC, I removed what I could from the large room and slept on the laminate wooden flooring on a simple blanket with a new duvet that I was just about tolerant to ( but some I tried were no good, I would react a little even to polyester ). I kept the window and nearby sliding door open as much as possible so I had at least some clean air from outdoors, I basically slept right next to it. My function continued to decline into March and it was getting harder to leave the house, eating cereals seemed to give me terrible brain fog, bad enough that I started to make silly driving ( cycling ) mistakes.
I'd done the VCS test last summer and failed it, but that went no further, I read a bit of the book 'toxic'. Anyway fast forward to may / june this year, i'm living in a tent to try mold avoidance, minor to moderate improvement but nothing amazing, its not enough. I started wondering if I needed to 'detox' mycotoxins that may have built up in my body, but Dr Andrew Campbell says this is unscientific and doesn't occur ( I don't necessarily believe what he says but I thought it was important to consider ).
I'd started collecting up and trying supplements for a general purpose 'detox', i'd tried activated charcoal in March and got a big response initially, going into what felt like a 'detox' but sustained, for the first time ( liposomal glutathione only briefly caused this feeling ), I had a lot more function for a few days, but my stomach function was poor, it slowed down to the point where I was only going to the toilet once a week after taking 2 different laxatives. I was trying to get my stomach to move with forceful physical activity and I overdid it and a couple of days later I had an unpleasant food reaction to chicken, which I was previously fine with, so I stopped eating that food. I had a constant level of fatigue that felt like 'CIRS' inflammation, it was so bad that I couldn't even generate PEM because I had no peaks in my energy. I started to feel like I no longer had ME/CFS.
Anyway its been nearly 2 months since I moved into the tent in the garden and about 10 to 14 days ago I discovered some very interesting information on the internet, for whatever reason ( I cant remember ) I did a search about Candida again, which is something I always dismissed because I never had any external symptoms, i'd checked for a white tongue in recent months for example. I knew what the common symptom list was, and it wasn't enough to diagnose Candida. I did have 'bloating' ( episodes of extreme stomach gas production ), 'severe seasonal allergies' in summer 2020, and a similar reaction to traffic pollution in autumn 2022. I did sometimes have strong cravings for sugar or energy heavy / carb laiden foods but I assumed this was due to my ME/CFS. Some of my more strange issues could potentially be 'autoimmune' - I had strange stomach pains in 2021/ 2022, 2 cysts that appeared last year, weak wrists / sensitive neck etc, and a blood disorder called MGUS. I had no obvious signs of skin, nail or other fungal infections though, and no recent UTIs. One of my main issues post 2021 is dehydration, which isn't on any of these symptom lists.
Anyway, i'd spent a bunch on tests and air purifiers and supplements already and I couldn't wait for test results, doctors had been near useless so far so I ignored them. I did the 'spit test' and it seemed to show a strong presence of candida. The first one I did had many clearly obvious vertical 'strings', and the next one I did, first thing in the morning, created a cloud of opaque debris that sank to the bottom. I looked at a bunch of stuff online and started buying lots of herbs and stuff ( I already had a few ), its been around a week since I started taking them and I had to build up slowly, but im roughly at full doses of most of these products now, and my symptoms seem to have receded noticeably, I have more energy when im not in a 'herx' and my muscles are less sore, i'm able to go to the toilet every day now like a normal person, whereas a week ago it was every 3 to 4 days. If you search deeply on the internet you'll find that Candida can cause multiple chemical sensitivity, food allergies, and sensitivity to airborne mold / mycotoxins, it also produces Gliotoxin, which was one of the 3 found elevated on my GPL urine mycotoxin test.
Well since 2020 things have changed, I was in a bad stressful environment in 2020, possibly mold / bacteria exposure and worse quality food / other immune challenges . I had a sore throat that I was having trouble getting over ( seems to be a trend, whereas I rarely get/ got viral infections ), and I took antibiotics. At some point in that year buts its hard to pin down, things began to change. In 2019 I was not bad at drawing and I was improving fairly rapidly, but by 2021 this stagnated and began to feel like it was getting harder, I was getting worse. I was learning multiple skills in the period 2016 through 2019 but again in 2021 I noticed it was harder, I was struggling to improve just one skill, I didn't know why, I was unhappy. My libido and response to ( visual ) sexual stimuli seemed reduced and I was less interested in the opposite sex especially foreign women that I was previously interested in. I also had another strange symptom in late 2020 ( when I returned home ), not only was I a little more sensitive to our carpets, but I would get these episodes of extreme stomach gas production with no obvious cause, and when it happened I always felt more 'crashy' and severe-like. It wasn't uncommon for me to have a bad week where i'd dip into a psuedo severe state, have to slow things right down and recover again, but it never happened this frequently.
I was reasonably physically health in 2021, I was spending a lot of time outdoors, alone, far from populated areas, avoiding actual aerobic exercise but still quite active, I had a bad virus in late 2021 that wasn't covid, but it gave me a 40C fever, was ill for around a month. Not long after this, a month maybe, is when I started to notice more serious new issues, I sprained my wrist falling on invisible ice in the dark, and the injury seemed worse than I could explain, as if my wrist was weaker than it should have been, and slow at healing. It felt weak and sensitive for months after, then when I tried to lift something very heavy with just my left hand, a similar strain injury happened to that wrist. That spring my brother lived here and his noise stressed me out, I became suddenly hypersensitive to my bedroom and had to leave it. This had only happened to me once before, in a wooden building in my garden, and that time it seemed to be due to water damage / sudden mold growth. I developed periods of dehydration that reliably correlated with one type of PEM, and other neurological issues, strange sensations. Later last summer I had covid for the first time, but the impact seemed mild. I also had a stressful period though and it lead to me having high blood pressure and generally feeling very unwell, I suspected re-activation of parvovirus or something like that, I got over this after a few weeks and doctors did an ECG and couldn't find anything unusual going on.
I also had strange changes to my smell in 2022, with Chlorine particularly becoming unpleasant and unrecognisable.
Going into winter 2022 I was still physically doing ok, but the dehydration made travelling hard sometimes as I had to carry lots more water. Around nov / dec I started to become more sensitive to Air Fresheners / other highly perfumed strong household cleaning chems and then our laundry detergent, I could smell it from the tumble dryer downstairs and it started to keep me away with a brain that felt inflammed. My brothers tumble dryer broke down and he started bring stuff here, which made the situation worse. I became hypersensitive to the other bedroom over a few days, and had to move downstairs to the sofa. After this point I developed MCS, food intolerance / allergy like reactions, and my ( relatively good ) exercise tolerance quickly and steadily dropped to almost none. I had no clue what was going on, but after a couple of months I started researching mold, after trying to rule out MCAS. Things got really bad with my MCS and food reactions in Jan / Feb and I became reactive to the sofa I was sleeping on, old fabrics in the room, the big Samsung smart TV, my desktop PC, I removed what I could from the large room and slept on the laminate wooden flooring on a simple blanket with a new duvet that I was just about tolerant to ( but some I tried were no good, I would react a little even to polyester ). I kept the window and nearby sliding door open as much as possible so I had at least some clean air from outdoors, I basically slept right next to it. My function continued to decline into March and it was getting harder to leave the house, eating cereals seemed to give me terrible brain fog, bad enough that I started to make silly driving ( cycling ) mistakes.
I'd done the VCS test last summer and failed it, but that went no further, I read a bit of the book 'toxic'. Anyway fast forward to may / june this year, i'm living in a tent to try mold avoidance, minor to moderate improvement but nothing amazing, its not enough. I started wondering if I needed to 'detox' mycotoxins that may have built up in my body, but Dr Andrew Campbell says this is unscientific and doesn't occur ( I don't necessarily believe what he says but I thought it was important to consider ).
I'd started collecting up and trying supplements for a general purpose 'detox', i'd tried activated charcoal in March and got a big response initially, going into what felt like a 'detox' but sustained, for the first time ( liposomal glutathione only briefly caused this feeling ), I had a lot more function for a few days, but my stomach function was poor, it slowed down to the point where I was only going to the toilet once a week after taking 2 different laxatives. I was trying to get my stomach to move with forceful physical activity and I overdid it and a couple of days later I had an unpleasant food reaction to chicken, which I was previously fine with, so I stopped eating that food. I had a constant level of fatigue that felt like 'CIRS' inflammation, it was so bad that I couldn't even generate PEM because I had no peaks in my energy. I started to feel like I no longer had ME/CFS.
Anyway its been nearly 2 months since I moved into the tent in the garden and about 10 to 14 days ago I discovered some very interesting information on the internet, for whatever reason ( I cant remember ) I did a search about Candida again, which is something I always dismissed because I never had any external symptoms, i'd checked for a white tongue in recent months for example. I knew what the common symptom list was, and it wasn't enough to diagnose Candida. I did have 'bloating' ( episodes of extreme stomach gas production ), 'severe seasonal allergies' in summer 2020, and a similar reaction to traffic pollution in autumn 2022. I did sometimes have strong cravings for sugar or energy heavy / carb laiden foods but I assumed this was due to my ME/CFS. Some of my more strange issues could potentially be 'autoimmune' - I had strange stomach pains in 2021/ 2022, 2 cysts that appeared last year, weak wrists / sensitive neck etc, and a blood disorder called MGUS. I had no obvious signs of skin, nail or other fungal infections though, and no recent UTIs. One of my main issues post 2021 is dehydration, which isn't on any of these symptom lists.
Anyway, i'd spent a bunch on tests and air purifiers and supplements already and I couldn't wait for test results, doctors had been near useless so far so I ignored them. I did the 'spit test' and it seemed to show a strong presence of candida. The first one I did had many clearly obvious vertical 'strings', and the next one I did, first thing in the morning, created a cloud of opaque debris that sank to the bottom. I looked at a bunch of stuff online and started buying lots of herbs and stuff ( I already had a few ), its been around a week since I started taking them and I had to build up slowly, but im roughly at full doses of most of these products now, and my symptoms seem to have receded noticeably, I have more energy when im not in a 'herx' and my muscles are less sore, i'm able to go to the toilet every day now like a normal person, whereas a week ago it was every 3 to 4 days. If you search deeply on the internet you'll find that Candida can cause multiple chemical sensitivity, food allergies, and sensitivity to airborne mold / mycotoxins, it also produces Gliotoxin, which was one of the 3 found elevated on my GPL urine mycotoxin test.
