How I got here

Below is a not so brief history of how I got here. I realize it's long but I felt others with my same issue would appreciate the details...

My health issues began in early 2009.  At least that's when they became too obvious to ignore.  Looking back I realize my health had been slowly declining for a couple of years prior.  By January 2009 I was out of shape, 10+ lbs overweight, eating poorly and had been under chronic stress for most of the previous two years.  In the span of those two years I had purchased and remodeled my first home on my own, changed jobs, my nephew was born with major medical problems and I had a falling out with my stepmother.  The final straw was a knee injury in January of 2009.  My mobility and physical activity was severely limited for over a month and then I went through two months of rehab.

Shortly after my injury I caught a bad cold.  I was so congested I couldn't breathe and began taking Sudafed; the stuff behind the counter.  After 5 or so days I felt a little better and didn't take the Sudafed before bed that night.  I feel asleep as usual but woke up a short time later gasping for breath. The congestion made me stop breathing when I feel asleep.  This happened a second time and the third time my whole body was flooded with anxiety.  I got up and took a Sudafed which cleared up the congestion but the anxiety only got worse.  My cold seemed to linger on and on.  Finally after 10 days, I was full of anxiety and wasn't sleeping at all so I went to see Doctor #1, a PA at a local clinic.  He explained that anxiety is a common side effect of pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in Sudafed.  He prescribed Astelin for the congestion and hoped the antihistamine in it would help me fall asleep.  He also prescribed an antibiotic, Azithromycin, to help clear up the infection as I now had bronchitis.

I started feeling better after a couple days, but I was still having a lot of anxiety and not sleeping well.  I also developed a yeast infection a few days after finishing the antibiotics.  I'd never had one before and didn't know antibiotics could cause them.  I now believe that due to long term hormonal birth control use, chronic stress and a poor, heavily processed diet I most likely had Candida prior to this but taking the antibiotic pretty much cleared the path for it to take over.

Monistat cleared up the yeast infection but the insomnia and anxiety continued to grow worse.  So back to the clinic I went.  This time the PA prescribed Trazodone to help me sleep and at first it seemed to help a little.  However, I noticed that it made me extremely congested for a couple of hours every time I took it.  I called the doctor and he told me I could take the Trazodone and Astelin together.  This worked for a few nights, but the Trazadone gave me a hangover feeling and I was starting to develop other strange symptoms like low blood sugar and flu-like symptoms.  These only made the anxiety worse. I had it day and night and it was turning me into a complete basket case. I completely lost my appetite and began rapidly loosing weight. I tried Ambien from a friend and that put me to sleep for 5 hours and then I'd be awake and miserable again. So again I went back to the doctor.  Doctor #1 was off so I saw Doctor #2 and she thought the Trazodone could be causing my new symptoms.  She took me off it and gave me a prescription for Klonopin, a benzo similar to Xanax.  This finally helped to control the anxiety and allow me to sleep but my additional symptoms remained.  She was the first doctor to do any lab work all of which came back "normal".

At the end of February I went to see a recommended Chiropractor/Acupuncturist and Doctor of Chinese medicine (Doctor #3). I had been doing a lot of my own research at this point and wanted to try some alternative treatments I'd read about.  She began weekly acupuncture treatments, gave me an herbal Chinese tea for sleep and Formula 303 for the anxiety.  The Formula 303 and tea didn't really do much for me.  I loved the acupuncture and it helped the anxiety but its effects were only temporary and I was still having a lot of trouble sleeping.  This doctor suggested getting off birth control as I had continuously been on it for about eight years.  She thought my hormones could be causing my symptoms.  My Gynecologist had always assured me it was perfectly safe and even good for me to be on birth control.  I wish now I'd done my own research.  I firmly believe that long term use of any synthetic hormone is most definitely not "good for you".

Around this same time my pharmacist, who specializes in women's health and hormone replacement therapy, also suggested getting off birth control and having my hormones tested.  So after going off birth control I did a spit test and all of my hormones except for testosterone came back low. This was not surprising as I had just gone off birth control and it suppresses your own female hormone production.  The pharmacist suggested using over the counter bio-identical progesterone cream to get my body back on track. After two weeks on the cream I felt incredibly depressed and had almost debilitating fatigue.  It also was doing nothing to help my sleep or anxiety so I quit after my first cycle.  I have since discovered that it is not uncommon to have an adverse reaction to progesterone cream if you have Candida.  The Candida feeds on progesterone.

Things were not improving so Doctor #3 recommended a new M.D. (Doctor #4) who specialized in women's health.  Doctor #4 ran a complete panel of labs including all of my hormones again now that I'd been off birth control for a few months.  Once again all of the tests came back "normal" including my hormone levels.  She concluded that all of my symptoms were anxiety related and recommended I try Prozac and therapy.  By now it was July and I had lost 25 lbs since February.  I was extremely sleep deprived, anxious, depressed and willing to try anything to feel better. I had a laundry list of symptoms many of which could be attributed to anxiety so I gave the Prozac a shot and found a good therapist.  After 10 days the Prozac seemed to be helping the anxiety but my insomnia got worse, so I was switched to Lexapro.  It took a while to kick in but the Lexapro combined with therapy finally relieved the anxiety and depression and I began to sleep better.  However, their were several things that did not improve; random flu-like symptoms, poor short-term memory, hypoglycemia, fatigue and unrefreshing sleep regardless of how long I slept.  The Lexapro also came with side effects.  I rapidly gained 20+ lbs that I could not loose no matter how much I worked out or what I ate.  I also developed chronic canker sores.  In the end I feel like it mostly just made me feel better mentally about the fact I felt bad physically. I believe antidepressants have a place and at the time I needed something to pull me off the ledge.  What I have a problem with is simply treating the symptoms and not attempting to figure out what is causing them in the first place.  With the exception of my Chiropractor/Acupuncturist, anytime I brought up something I'd read at an appointment I got that look that says "oh great another patient who thinks they have a medical degree from google".  Then they would refer to the lab work and tell me it must all be anxiety because the labs are "normal". It made me want to scream "yeah, I know I have anxiety but why suddenly at 31 and what about all my other symptoms that didn't go away with the Lexapro!"

In February 2010 I began to wean myself off Lexapro. It took ten weeks and I was completely off by April. Within a month the weight started to come off and the canker sores were gone but the anxiety and insomnia started to creep back in. I decided to try something more natural as I didn't want to go back on Lexapro. Through my own research I read about 5HTP so I tried it and it worked well for me.  I took 200 mg per day in time release tablets for about 18 months. For awhile things seemed to be okay, especially considering how bad they had been. I sort of just began to accept feeling mediocre and not sleeping as well as I used to. But in the back of my mind I still wondered why my mom seemed to have twice the energy at 50 as I did at 32.

Not long after I got of Lexapro my periods became very irregular.  They ranged from 25 - 45 day cycles and came with terrible PMS.  I started developing other new symptoms as well.  I was losing handfuls of hair when I washed it, my hypoglycemia seemed worse and I was always either constipated or had diarrhea. By December 2010 it had become bad enough that I was referred to an Endocrinologist (Doctor #5). He ran another barrage of labs which came back normal with the exception of high testosterone.  Based on those results he diagnosed me with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and anxiety. Mind you that at this point I was taking 5HTP and not feeling much anxiety at all. His solution was more drugs: Metformin to control the PCOS and Buspar for anxiety. I tried the Buspar once and about an hour after taking it I woke up with the worst anxiety I'd ever had.

According to the Endocrinologist, PCOS is the most common cause of irregular menstrual cycles. Based on what I've read it's true; however, he wasn't interested in finding out what was causing the PCOS. He just wanted to hand me more pills. PCOS is thought to be caused by a hormone imbalance which again begs the question: what is causing the hormone imbalance?  Metformin is a diabetic drug used to control insulin levels. Insulin is a hormone and when one hormone is out of whack it can affect all the other hormones.  Women diagnosed with PCOS commonly have high testosterone, low progesterone and insulin issues. Metformin is prescribed to normalize insulin levels and hopefully thereby normalize the levels of other hormones. That is simplifying things a lot but you get the idea. I tried the Metformin for 3 days but couldn't take the side effects. Plus I felt like once again I was simply treating a symptom.

After doing my own research I found many women control PCOS with diet, exercise and a few supplements. One of those supplements is Inositol which sparked my memory. I had been taking a Choline-Inositol supplement when I stopped taking birth control because I read it helped insomnia. I quit taking it around the same time I stopped taking Lexapro because I didn't think I needed it anymore.  Sure enough when I added in the Inositol the regularity of my cycles almost immediately improved to 29-32 day cycles.

For the first part of 2011 I was back to just dealing with feeling crappy. I was in a new relationship which made my physical ailments easier to ignore. I took a host of vitamins and supplements and worked out regularly just to get by.  I had read about Candida at this point and suspected it could be the underlying cause of most of my health issues. I had read about the diet which seemed completely overwhelming and impossible. I also read about a myriad of supplements and herbs that claimed to kill Candida. The first one I tried was Threelac, but I could never take more than one packet a day without becoming horribly constipated and I didn't notice any difference while taking it. Threelac is coated with canola oil to help the probiotics survive the stomach acid. I believe my digestive system was in such poor shape at this point it could not break down the coating so I wasn't benefiting from the probiotics.

About mid-March I got another yeast infection and an itchy rash. I was prescribed Diflucan and it cleared up. In April it happened again and I took two more rounds of Difulcan. This monthly cycle went on until June when I made an appointment with a Naturopathic Doctor (Doctor #6). Once again more tests with inconclusive results. She at least listened to me and believed that systemic Candida was a real health issue. She put me on an anti-candida diet for a month, some supplements and a suppository called Yeast Away.  The Yeast Away cleared up my yeast infection better than Monistat or Diflucan ever had. I followed the diet strictly and took the supplements (caprylic acid and probiotics) for 30 days and didn't feel a noticeable difference. I began to question if Candida was really my problem.

By October 2011 I was miserable and desperate. I had a list of symptoms a mile long: anxiety, insomnia, unrefreshing sleep, fatigue, hypoglycemia, food allergies to everything, indigestion, constipation, bloating/gas, daily stomach aches, tinnitus, flu-like symptoms, dull headaches, daily dizzy spells, poor memory, foggy thinking, acne, itching, PMS, irregular menstrual cycles, yeast infections, coated tongue, thinning hair and was even starting to have some fibromyalgia-like pain.  I knew I had to try something new and for me conventional medicine was out and I didn't feel like the Naturopath I had seen really grasped the seriousness of what I was facing.

My sister-in-law has rheumatoid arthritis and when it got really bad she found a Chiropractor/ Nutritionist that helped her control it without drugs. So I made an appointment (Doctor #7). Finally someone who really listened and didn't look at me like I had a horn growing out of my head when I explained my symptoms. He put me on a 10 day liquid cleanse followed by an extremely restricted diet (basically the anti-Candida diet). I was taking vitamins and a high quality probiotic but I was not taking any anti-fungals or herbs for the Candida. I followed this diet perfectly for over two months. But by Christmas I actually felt worse than ever. I still had all my same symptoms and my energy was at an all time low. I knew about die-off and feeling worse before you feel better but I also knew in my gut (literally and figuratively) that I was still missing something.  After three months I should have noticed some improvement and definitely not felt worse.  I suspected food allergies. Several months prior I had read about a supposed food allergy cure called NAET. At the time I was intrigued but it sounded expensive, tedious and who knew if it really worked so I didn't pursue it. While on my diet I found out a friend was having success with NAET and I decided to try it.

My first NAET appointment was fascinating. To break it down very simple, they use kinesiology (muscle testing) to determine your allergies and acupressure to treat them. I was tested for over 130 items and tested weak/allergic to about 50 of those. They included eggs, calcium, vitamin C, vitamin B complex, iron, vegetable oils, several vegetables, nuts, dairy, garlic, all meats and even my own hormones to name a few. He also told me I had Epstein Bar, the virus that causes Mono, and of course confirmed my Candida using muscle testing. All the allergies to eggs, vitamins, garlic and vegetables helped to explain why my ultra-healthy diet wasn't making me feel better. They can only treat one item at a time for the most part so for the first two months I had two treatments per week.  Slowly many of my symptoms began to get better and some disappeared altogether. After being treated for vegetable oils my daily stomach aches disappeared. Eventually the dizzy spells and tinnitus went away; my hair stopped falling out in clumps, and the headaches and fatigue significantly diminished.  Most importantly my anxiety largely disappeared. It took several months to complete the treatments. He treated me for Candida and even taught me to self-treat it at home; however my yeast infection never completely went away and there were other lingering symptoms. It seemed like no matter how long I slept I would still feel unrefreshed in the mornings and although my energy improved, I still felt like I was stuck at about 65-70% of normal. I still had issues with short-term memory and what I refer to as brain fog. I knew I still had a systemic Candida problem which the NAET Practitioner confirmed with muscle testing. Unfortunately NAET is not magic. He suggested using caprilyc acid again with a low sugar/carb diet.

I tried the caprilyc acid again with Candadex, a high quality probiotic and cutting out sugar and white flour completely.  During this time I read everything I could find on Candida and the difficulty people had getting rid of it completely. I had a gut feeling that what I was doing may help to control it but would not be enough to get rid of it for good. That brought me to The Candida Yeast Answer and the reason I started this blog.