This is a follow up letter from the man who wrote a letter to his friends about his withdrawal process from Zoloft and Lexapro. This letter contains updates about treatments he has tried and things he has learned including the possibility of candida being a factor.
At the end of this letter, he discovers that candida is likely playing a part, which has been true for many people I have worked with and something I have dealt with as well. Here is a post about the type of protein isolate which can help with withdrawal and candida.
Here is his letter:
I wanted to get back in touch with you and let you know what’s been going on with me and my health recovery saga. As you know from my previous email, it’s been quite a saga.
Since I decided to be open about what I’ve been dealing with since I had my hearing loss in September 2016, I’ve started to take copious notes in the hopes that, one day, when I “figure” this stuff out, that I’ll be able to use what I’ve learned and the information I’ve accumulated for good. I don’t know if that means writing another book or doing something else with the information. All I do know is that, while I haven’t “figured out yet” how to “beat” what I’m dealing with health wise, I have learned a lot of tricks along the way.
I know there are many people dealing with all different types of health issues. Now more than ever I empathize with their struggle and the stress of the uncertainty of what their journeys look like.
So, when I last wrote I had given you a summary of everything that had happened up until the end of March. Since then a lot has happened, in the short term for the bad, but for the long term for the good I hope.
Niacin research
Around the time I wrote my last email, I had had some success with using Vitamin B3 (Niacin) to help me with my withdrawals. There is a lot of research in the orthomolecular school of medicine about the use of Niacin (and also Vitamin C) to treat diseases ranging from arthritis, depression, schizophrenia, heart disease, etc. The main thing I noticed when I used the straight flush niacin was that it did relax me. Unfortunately, using high dose niacin was not without its side effects.
I noticed that as I was taking more niacin, it would make me extremely fatigued and feel very weak. While unfortunate, this was still the only thing that had given me relief from the akathisia, the chronic state of internal restlesssness, which I can only describe as the seventh circle of hell. Using Niacin in general is a bit confusing because there are four different types of niacin: 1) straight flush niacin (the stuff that makes you beet red), 2) Niacinamide (which doesn’t make you beet red), 3) nicotinamide riboside (very popular in anti-aging circles), and 4) inositol hexanicotinate (no flush delayed release niacin which, if taken in too large quantities, can affect your liver).
I was feeling better from the niacin in some ways, but feeling worse in other ways. Doing the copious research that I’m accustomed to, I stumbled upon the website of Dr. Todd Penberthy, a prominent medical journalist and expert on Vitamin B3. His phone number was listed on his website, so I just gave him a call to ask him I should use Niacin. Thankfully, Dr. Penberthy (who I call Todd) was incredible gracious and has been a regular contact of mine since then. He’s provided me with an invaluable amount of information about niacin, other vitamins, and other types of products that are great for general health from slowing tumor growth to improving nutrient and mineral absorption in the body.
One of Todd’s chief interests is in helping people recover from damage caused by anti-depressants, and most notably SSRIs. No one knows for sure how to do it, but Todd is very interested in researching this. As a result, I’ve kind of become a guinea pig. Todd told me that one of the major fallacies with the use of psychotropic medication is the idea that the problem with people who are depressed is an absence of serotonin in the brain. Interestingly, the vast majority of serotonin receptors in your body are actually in your gut. So, if one wants to help someone who is depressed or anxious or whatever, the key is to help the gut, so that the gut helps the brain. Unfortunately, SSRIs do a lot of damage to one’s digestive track as one of the side effects of taking the medication.
In my case, as I stated in my previous email, I was never depressed. I was experiencing side effects from treatment with large amounts of prednisone. When I asked for help from mainstream medicine, the only thing I received was a prescription for an anti-depressant. Thank you modern medicine!
Other experts
Todd had some interesting suggestions regarding my supplement regimen. In addition to speaking with Todd, I sought out the advice of two other experts, David Tomen of NootropicsExpert.com and Chaya Grossberg, who herself successfully recovered from having being polydrugged with over 7 different types of medication and today consults people trying to figure out how to reduce or come off their medication safely due to all the reasons I discussed in my previous email.
David Tomen of NootropicsExpert.com basically suggested that when it comes to recovering from anti-depressant usage, there isn’t an exact science to it because no one really knows. He was of the opinion to basically throw everything I could add it in the hopes of improving. He suggested specific supplements called MindLabPro.com, ashawghanada, bacopa monieri, gotu kola, lemon balm, and L-Theanine (long known to be a relaxing amino acid). Chaya was less interested in supplements and more about lifestyle and day-to-day nutritional choices which influence the healing of one’s nervous systems and digestive tracks. Being someone who has already been off medication now for quite a while, there was less to “consult” on that front and more to discuss regarding moving forward.
At the end of the day, it’s true that “time heals all.” However, since I do believe in the concept of “medicine,” meaning you can put good things in your body to accelerate healing, I’ve been very determined to discover what exactly it is that can actually help.
Ayurvedic medicinal approach
Very shortly after writing my earlier email, I saw a video on a blog by Hardy Nutritionals featuring a doctor named Dr. Aruna, who has a joint practice in integrative psychiatry and ayurvedic medicine. She has an Indian background FYI and is based in Milwaukee. She discusses the challenges of withdrawal, the need for meditation, and the removal of toxins from our environment. Interested in her approach, I wrote her an email and spoke with her on the phone. She stated that yes, she does believe very strongly in the dangers of psychotropic medication and she said she would be wiling to work with me on natural methods to bring my body back into balance. To do that though, I’d need to visit her in Milwaukee and have an ayurvedic examination.
So, my Dad being from Milwaukee, we drove up to Milwaukee from Cincinnati for the meeting with this doctor. During the meeting, we went extensively over what happened to me historically. For the ayurvedic examination, an actual ayurvedic doctor examined my mouth, my pulse, blood pressure, etc. Ayurvedic medicine places a large emphasis on one’s ayurvedic constitution.
Not to get too focused on the details of ayurvedic medicine, but the main thing that kept on coming up during the meeting was my gut. Like Todd in Florida, Dr. Aruna said the root cause of a lot of the damage now is in my gut, which needs to be treated. She stated that the gut is really the most important organ in the body and that everything we eat and absorb influences our brain, nervous system and the rest of the body.
After my meeting with her she said I would receive from her a list of specific supplements, dietary, and lifestyle recommendations to implement. Unfortunately, one thing that was clear about Dr. Aruna is that she was a classically trained physician, who is basically educating herself about non-drug ways of treating people.
As you will see in the rest of the email, physicians that practice “non-drug” or “alternative” types of therapies are largely self-taught because medical schools only teach drugs and surgery for the most part. So, that means there’s a lot of guessing and trial and error.
NAD+ IV Therapy
Shortly before my visit to Milwaukee, I was reading the blog of a prominent integrative psychiatrist named Dr. Kelly Brogan. On this particular blog post, where Dr. Brogan was writing all about the dangers of SSRI discontinuation syndrome, there were lots of comments by people writing about how desperate they were to get their symptoms under control.
One blog post comment, however, was different. It was written by a woman named Tara who stated that she did 10 days of therapy called NAD+ IV therapy after having took anti-depressants for 20+ years. Now 5 months after the NAD IV therapy, she was feeling better than she had in years. Tara didn’t state where she did NAD IV therapy, so I knew it wasn’t a “fake comment” or a promotion for one particular treatment center.
NAD+ stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, and is a coenzyme found in all living cells, and it’s required for the fundamental biological processes that make life possible. You can learn more about NAD+ at Elysium Health. NAD+ is actually created in your body from things such as Niacin, which I already knew a lot about. Doing research NAD+ IV therapy, I saw that treatment centers offering it were touting it as a cure for SSRI discontinuation syndrome, as well as drug (primarily opiod) and alcohol addiction. I contacted a few centers to learn more and ended up speaking with 5 centres from around the country.
Each centre’s staff was extremely friendly and each person I spoke with had a personal story about how NAD IV therapy helped them. The owner of a treatment center in Lousiana got into it because NAD cured her daughter of alcoholism. The owner of a different center in Kentucky lost her son to a heroin overdose, which was induced by opiods he received as prescribed while he was in the military for a shoulder industry. She had then been taking anti-depressants and NAD cured her of those ills. The basic treatment plan was similar at each facility with minor differences.
You go in and 10 days of intravenous NAD, where it takes about 6-8 hours a day to complete a bag. From each center, I asked for references from real people. Many of the centres gave me numerous people to speak with from all different walks of life and with all different types of issues. I spoke to over a dozen references about their experiences with NAD.
Every single person attested that it really changed their life. The reason for the miraculous turn around in people is because it accelerates and healing and normal brain function, effectively undoing the damage to the brain caused by dependency on substances.
Naturally, being someone who really wants to find a solution to heal my body, I decided to move forward. I chose to go to Brainspark Health just outside Philadelphia.
I was at Brainspark from April 9-19. It’s a small clinic where they treat up to 6 people at a time, though they’re expanding. They have a full-time staff of 5 people. It’s a very expensive out-of-pocket treatment, so the other people there were not exactly folks you might see wandering the streets late at night in a dark alley.
The day I arrived I had all my vitals taken and was given an explanation for what I would be going through. Essentially, each day I’d receive a Myers Cocktail of vitamins and intravenous NAD mixed in with various amino acids. On some days they would use a “stronger” proportion of NAD called “red” to correct lingering SSRI damage and other days they’d use “blue” or “green” NAD to focus on promoting feelings of wellness.
The clinic itself is run by Ciara, a trained psychiatric nurse and is the brainchild of an advertising technology millionaire. The chief nurse, Mike, is a former college football star who was actually the one administering everything.
I was one of 6 people getting NAD treatment during the time I was there. The other folks include:
– A clearly very well-off 30 year old woman who made a fortune in Bitcoin who was trying to come off of Xanax and heroin.
– A guy I didn’t talk too much trying to come off of heroin
– The wife of a famous TV star trying to come off of 20+ years of anti-depressant use
– A loan executive trying to come off opiods
– A former hedge fund manager coming off anti-depressants and ADHD medication
The first few days of treatment I was by far in the “best” shape. I wasn’t directly coming off of anything for the first time, like the others were. I had simply suffered on my own for long before that. That meant I was going to experience the same terrible withdrawals. Receiving the Myers Cocktail each day felt fine. Receiving the NAD though was definitely a rush to the system.
When it starts pumping in your veins, you can feel it throughout your body and it is very uncomfortable. You get this very heavy feeling in your gut and in your head and you basically really can’t stand up or walk around much. After the treatment each day, you don’t feel that way anymore, but it certainly wipes you out.
The treatment also comes with regular massage therapy too, which was nice.
Ear Pain and Naproxen
Unfortunately, about 5 days before I went to Philadelphia for my NAD therapy, I started getting really uncomfortable tinnitus in my left ear, the same ear that caused everything to start to begin with. Since having my sudden sensoneural hearing loss in 2016, I really haven’t had many issues with my ear. I might get some tinnitus every now and then, but it was usually for a very short period of time and not that severe.
This time though, the tinnitus was very loud and accompanied by pain. I was very hesitant about getting checked out by a medical professional because, when all this originally happened, all they did was throw antibiotics and steroids at me without trying to get to the cause of the root issue. And there was no way I was going to take a steroid again in my entire life under any circumstances. I react too badly to them.
While getting the NAD IV therapy, my ear was really bugging me a lot. It made me very agitated and anxious and very difficult to relax. The Brainspark staff, seeing that I was in a lot of discomfort, encouraged me to go to Urgent Care across the street to make sure I don’t have an ear infection. This was because I wasn’t experiencing only ringing but also pain.
I relented and decided to go to Urgent Care. The nurse that saw me checked up on my ears and verified that no, I did not have an ear infection. However, doing a thorough examination, she speculated that what was causing my ear pain was TMJ, basically a problem with my jaw, and theorized that that was what had caused my hearing issue to begin with. She encouraged me to arrange an appointment with a dentist and advised me to take an anti-inflammatory medication called Naproxen 500mg 2X/day.
I left the appointment really excited at the prospect of having an explanation for my ear troubles.
The next day, after having taken the Naproxen twice, I started experiencing horrific effects. It gave me really severe gastrointestinal discomfort and I was vomited a number of times, including at the Brainspark offices. In addition, the Naproxen also gave me very uncharacteristic chemical depression. It gave me the feeling that an extremely tight rubber band was being tight around my head and it was extraordinarily painful. It made it very difficult just to converse with other people.
I literally felt like I was dying. I started to become very down about the prospect that I was someone who NAD was not necessarily going to work for.
But my ear pain did decrease a bit.
Elimination diet and supplements
Based on my reaction to the Naproxen, Ciara, who runs Brainspark, told me that she also thinks that my violent reaction is a sign that my gut is having severe issues and is extremely sensitive. Around the same time I received instructions from Dr. aruna.
Dr. Aruna encouraged me to switch out a number of supplements I was taking (ironically the ones that were helping the most) and add in L-methylfolate (a variation of folic acid) and N-acetylcysteine, which provides liver support. She also encouraged me to do a very extreme elimination diet and then to add in the foods back gradually over time.
For 30 days, I was advised to eliminate raw vegetables, gluten, dairy, sugar, corn, and soy and for 90 days to eliminate gluten and all dairy. She also encouraged me to drink a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and drink beef bone broth each day (both of which taste super nasty).
Based on how horrible I was feeling from the Naproxen, I mean truly horrible like death, I was enthusiastic to jump to any solution possible. With Dr. Aruna’s instructions, I began to do as she said.
The last few days of NAD treatment, I felt a bit better than I had during the Naproxen debacle (thank you Urgent Care!), but I felt far from “cured.” Needless to say, this was all confusing for the NAD folks who really did believe I should have been cured. Their only explanation was that I needed to do a special diet and heal my gut.
I started doing the diet when I was in Philadelphia and I found out very quickly that removing all sugar, gluten, dairy, soy, corn, and raw vegetables from one’s diet is incredibly difficult. And incredibly stressful.
There was very little I could eat besides Chipotle (even though I love Chipotle). At the Philadelphia airport, all I could find to eat was some sushi and fruit. I would scan the menu of restaurants and realize there was quite literally nothing available to eat.
Nevertheless, if this diet and supplementation would help me get well, I was committed to doing it.
L-methylfolate disaster
I got back to Cincinnati on April 20. As soon as I arrived, I started taking L-methylfolate, a derivative of folic acid, that I received in the mail. Dr. Aruna recommended taking 7.5mg of L-methylfolate because I have a heterozygous mutation in one of my MTHFR genes. I have one heterozygous mutation of one of the three MTHFR genes. Some doctors advocate taking additional methylfolate because people with a severe MTHFR gene mutation have trouble using folic acid.
I started taking the 7.5mg as soon as I came back from Cincinnati. After a few days on it, I felt some really bizarre personality changes. I was irritable, angry, stressed out, and felt a really severe surge of rage.
I did my own research and realized that suddenly taking a large dose of a folic acid derivative can have that effect on people. Those who recommend taking L-methylfolate recommend taking a much smaller dose, around 500-800mcgs, not 7.5mgs. Needless to say, this added insult to injury. I immediately stopped taking the L-methylfolate but it took me another few days to really come down from the intense agitation it caused.
When I told Dr. Aruna about what happened to me, she basically said something along the lines of “oops.” Unfortunately, while I appreciate that not all things work for all people, this was especially negligent because I actually had a negative reaction to a folic acid supplement a year ago. I told her that, but she insisted I take it.
Needless to say, I felt compelled to fire my doctor.
Lost weight and frustration
After I decided to stop working with Dr. Aruna, I still followed the rest of her recommendations until a few days ago because I figured it couldn’t hurt to do her dietary recommendations at least. After doing extensive research, I realized there are a million and one different opinions about healing the gut and what works and what doesn’t. I followed Dr. Aruna’s guidelines because they were fairly close to other guidelines I found online.
Unfortunately, my health was starting to get very poor. I was getting extremely fatigued, was not able to exercise, felt a lot of discomfort below my abdomen, and was losing weight. I lost about 6 lbs throughout the last month. And I’m a skinny guy without much weight to lose.
My parents were very against this diet. However, being so desperate to feel better, I persisted. If there’s one thing I know how to do well, it’s follow instructions.
Still, the events over the past month took a major toll on my faith that I was going to get well again. From the pain in my ear, to the NAD, to Naproxen, to the L-methylfolate, to the elimination diet, it felt like literally the universe was trying to kill me. And I was sad and feeling alone that I didn’t have one reliable healthcare professional to work with who seemed to understand what to do to help me.
I felt extremely lost and had some very dark moments – in particular because I had worked so hard to educate myself and “beat this” and I felt like everything I was doing was just really causing my harm.
I’d spoken with people dealing with SSRI discontinuation syndrome and many of them refuse to take any types of supplements, modify their diets, go to doctors, or any type of naturopath because they’ve just been burned too much. They’ve given up, resigned to the discomfort of their faith, with hope that maybe one day they’ll heal naturally.
And to be honest, I understand them. Most people I’ve spoken to describe getting real relief and recovery after 2-3 years. I’ve been off of drugs for 10 months now. And I’ve had times where I really felt like giving up.
I don’t know what that means exactly to give up. It wasn’t like I would all of a sudden start drinking myself silly and live on a diet of cheetos. But give up in the sense of just accepting the fact that I’m really sick and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I had a couple of mornings where I really didn’t want to get out of bed. No, I wasn’t depressed in the chemical, clinical way. I was just so uncomfortable physically. I was achy, my stomach hurt, and I was fearful for what the day would bring.
I didn’t know what was going to give me severe pain, discomfort, and misery. In my entire life, I’d never felt like I’d failed so much at something that I worked so hard at.
I had had such a beautiful, wonderful life for so many years. No, that’s not accurate. I have a beautiful life. I have a wonderful family, amazing friends, professional opportunities, and financial resources to pay for these adventures
And yet, due to my health, very little of it felt like it mattered because I was still in hell.
And the worst part was that my ear started really bugging me again. I really felt like I couldn’t get a break and I was becoming very cynical about ability to recover.
Voodoo medicine that works?
I reached out to Ciara from Brainspark about my misadventures with the diet, L-methylfolate, etc. She had an interesting suggestion. She suggested in get in touch with Dr. John Humiston, one of the pioneers of NAD+ IV therapy who actually worked directly with one of the major pioneers of NAD and now trains clinics around the world on it.
She told me that, ironically, he just moved to the Indianapolis area from San Diego a couple of months ago and was setting up a new practice. Indy is only 2 hours away from Cincinnati.
She told him I’d be calling and gave me his phone number. I called every day for 3 days before I was able to reach him. But when I did, Dr. Humiston spent a lot of time with me on the phone.
Dr. Humiston is known as the CandidaMD. He attributes a lot of modern disease to candida, essentially fungal overgrowth in our bodies that can wreak havoc on our guts, nervous systems, and brains. I knew from the outset that he would attribute my problems to candida, but I figured it was worth talking to him. I did see before my eyes as other patients got well from NAD therapy.
Ciara surmised that the main reason I didn’t is because I have candida.
Dr. Humiston is a “real” doctor, a former Navy surgeon, who told me over the phone that he first learned about this stuff because one of his patients diagnosed him (the doctor) with it over 15 years ago. Since then, he’s treated over 1500 patients and has trained other physicians on his candida protocol. He told me that before he did the candida protocol, he suffered from severe ADHD and his wife had severe asthma. He said he had a stretch where the candida in his body was so bad, leading his patient to diagnose him, that he threw plates from being irritable all the time.
Essentially, over the phone, Dr. Humiston stated that his theory is that my ear issue started because of a fungal infection that takes years to build up. The use of prednisone and anti-biotics on me to treat my ear make a fungal infection go totally out of control. Anti-depressants can mask some of those symptoms for awhile and create a whole host of new complications. And since I’ve already done NAD therapy to take care of SSRI-related damage, then it must be candida.
I know, I know. Not terribly scientific. Then again, nothing the “conventional” doctors did for me was scientific as well. You can’t exactly measure how many neurotransmitters you have. I asked him if he’s able to test for any of these things. He said unfortunately he’s not. It’s mostly based on symptoms and that the extent of candida overgrowth doesn’t show up in blood, urine, or fecal tests.
Cynical, but desperate for a line of hope, I arranged an appointment to meet him in Indy. My Dad and I met with Dr. Humiston this past Monday. Dr. Humiston is the cleanest cut looking dude I’ve seen in my life. He is the straightest back I’ve ever witnessed. If he wasn’t a doctor, I’d swear he was a Mormon missionary.
Very personable, he did some check ups on me, we went through my history again in greater detail. He explained that candida can come about due to swimming in chlorine pools, overeating of certain foods, or you can even be predisposed to it based on your mother’s health when you were born.
He advised me to do his candida program. Essentially, he told me Dr. Aruna was on the right track when it comes to curing my digestive health, but that she did it in a boneheaded way that made me feel awful. He said apple cider vinegar is the worst possible thing you can take if you suffer from candida. According to Dr. Humiston, the problem isn’t gluten or dairy per se, but rather anything that promotes the growth of yeast. So on his program, I can eat whole wheat tortillas and mozzarella cheese, but no fruit besides lemons, no baked goods, no corn, no soy, no alcohol, etc.
Also, with regards to the methylfolate, he said that fungus loves B-vitamins. So when I took a large dose of folic acid, it was feeding the fungus inside my body.
With regards to supplements, there are specific supplements you can buy on Amazon that make up his program. The good news, he said, is that it doesn’t take long to feel results. He said I should be feeling better within a week or two.
Considering the fact that this doctor was promising me concrete results within a week or two, and the fact that this program really wasn’t that expensive, I figured why not give it a shot.
Regarding my ongoing ear issue, he suggested I use colloidal silver and hydrogen peroxide.
With regards to all the supplements I was taking, he literally did the craziest voodoo I’ve ever seen before in my life. I stood up straight, I held a bottle of one of my supplements in my left hand, and I extended my right arm horizontally. If Dr. Humiston was able to push down on my arm, it meant that I didn’t need the supplement in question. If I was able to show resistance, then that meant I should continue taking it.
Apparently, it’s a practice used by those who do kinesiology. The idea is that your body can detect what it needs, even through a plastic bottle. Since we are interconnected beings, our body tells us what it needs.
The ironic thing was that the 3 supplements that his arm test showed I should still take are Vitamin C, Niacin, and a supplement for promoting immune health. I have long said that Vitamin C and Niacin are the two things that have helped me most. There you have it.
I recreated what he did like 5 more times with my Dad and each time the results were the same. I can’t explain it. I’m not saying it’s real. But that’s just what happened.
I started Dr. Humiston’s candida program on Monday night. To be honest, a bunch of physical symptoms he said would happen have not happened. He predicted I would get flu-like, achy, tired, and calm. I haven’t really felt those things. However, I can say that I do feel better now than I did a few days ago. Perhaps it’s a placebo effect, but perhaps not.
The Chiropractor and The Poop
The mother of one of my friends from Cincinnati told me about a clinic called Sycamore Chiropractic which does much more than chiropractic medicine. It’s basically a functional medicine clinic where they try to help you where all other doctors have failed. I filled out their contact form on the “what the heck” basis.
One morning last week, I slept in, really not feeling like facing the day. What was the point? And then literally as I’m lying in bed I get a phone called from Sycamore Chiropractic about setting up an appointment.
I didn’t really believe anything would come of this appointment. How would a chiropractor be able to help me?
Nevertheless, I sent over my 5 page document of what’s happened to me and I showed up for my appointment. The first thing the chiropractor Dr. David Boynton said after evaluating me physically and going over my symptoms was: This is a problem with your gut and I think you have candida.
How weird is that? He basically said the same thing as Dr. Humiston in Indianapolis. Dr. Boynton essentially told me you can classify him as “last chance doctor,” the person you go to when everything else has failed. Yup!
After going through my background, he also said there is likely a problem with my gut. I likely do have a fungus issue and other parasites (because parasites beget parasites). He also said that since SSRIs ruin your gut, my body right now is not able to create its own neurotransmitters.
I told him about my meeting with Dr. Humiston and he agreed with everything Dr. Humiston said. The only difference that Dr. Boynton was less dogmatic about candida. He did say that there was a lot that could be measured by a poop test and that would tell him what direction to go in. I liked the fact that there was going to be some type of scientific measurement of my body.
But I was also pretty incredulous about the fact that of all the dozens of doctors I’ve seen in recent years, it was a chiropractor that said we should analyze my stool? How is that even possible?
Dr. Boynton, a chiropractor who employs nutritionists, said he got into this “functional medicine” world because his wife had two incurable autoimmune issues. My friend’s mother told me that he did significantly help her friend’s husband. He also did a full chiropractic work up on me. He concluded there isn’t an issue with my jaw as the nurse at Urgent Care in Philadelphia surmised. He was also of the opinion that my ear issue is being caused by fungus.
I guess I’ll find out in another week or so when I get the results back.
I can’t say if he’ll be able to uncover anything, but I sure hope he does.
Today
I know, I know. All this stuff I’m doing must sound totally crazy to you. I’ve gone from very traditional western medical practice to as alternative as alternative gets. Why? Because I’m trying to get better. Because I want to heal and return to my beautiful life that I am very appreciative of. I tell myself every day that there has to be a reason why all this is happening. I just hope I can make progress and use what I’ve learned to help others.
I did, on my Mom’s urging, go to her family doctor to talk about my ear. He was also able to see I don’t have an ear infection. What was he able to offer? Tylenol. Thanks, I thought to myself.
When the tylenol of the mainstream medical world doesn’t work for you, it basically becomes imperative to look for other ways of treating yourself.
It’s been therapeutic for me to write about this and to share it with you. It feels good to talk about it. Even though this is something I’m going through alone, it doesn’t mean I have to be lonely going through it.
Since I revamped my diet yet again and adjusted my supplements in accordance with Dr. Humiston’s program, I have actually been feeling a little better. Is that definitive proof that what he recommends is the “truth?” No, it doesn’t. But, then again, I’m also starting to realize there is no real truth. There is no real medicine or snake oil.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from my story is that all of us really biochemically unique and we react very differently to different things that go into or are taken out of our bodies. The idea of looking at an individual’s health in an individual way has got to be the way forward with medicine.
I hope you’ve found this email insightful. Unfortunately, it is unlikely, given what I’ve gone through this past month and what I’m still going through, that I’ll be coming back to Israel in the next few weeks. It will take more time. In order to come back, I really need a benchmark of feeling better and progress to give me the confidence that I’m “on my way.” Don’t get my wrong. I’m coming back for sure. While it’s nice being with my family for awhile, being sick makes you really stir crazy and it’s a challenge to manage that.
Note from Chaya:
Here are a few things that can help with candida overgrowth recommended by my doctor:
echinacea, goldenseal- 1 dropper 2x per day
astragalus, uva ursi, barberry, oregon grape. These are classified as berberines and you can buy a capsule that has several of them and take it after meals.
Anti fungals: olive leaf, pau d’arco, grapefruit seed extract, lauric acid, caprylic acid.
She suggested alternating 1 week berberines and the next week one of the anti fungals and to do the protocol for about a month.
Other things helpful for candida: black tea, turmeric, thyme, oregano, coconut oil, olive oil
I would go into it slowly and see how you react because a lot of these herbs can cause die off reactions when the fungus dies. You might also do your own research about these classes of herbs.
My doctor insisted I stop cold turkey off Zoloft and immediately begin Effexor XR. She said that the dosages that I’m dealing with, it would be fine to do that. Two days after stopping the Zoloft and continuing on with the Effexor, I am now dealing with pretty bad withdrawals. I basically feel like I have the flu, including a fever….all the classic flu symptoms except add in the brain zaps. Since I’ve also been following a keto diet, I really have no idea what to eat. I’ve been in bed all day because any time I stand up I feel dizzy and the brain zaps come on full force.
I appreciate the depth of information shared in this post about Zoloft and Lexapro withdrawal. The authors journey including the insights from various experts adds credibility to the content.
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