Note: I am neither a dietitian nor a doctor. I do not dispense medical advice nor do I offer any information on treatments nor cures for any medical condition. Always consult a physician before proceeding with any treatment. Our full disclaimer is at the bottom of this page.
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In June and July on the blog, we’re going to discuss gut health. Gut health is a hot topic in the traditional foods world because so many people are not healing despite a traditional foods diet. I became seriously ill and healed my gut before the currently fashionable diets came out. This is my story.
A very wise man in my life often tells me, “A problem well stated is half solved.” Five years ago, we knew all of the problems, but had none of the answers.
I was born 7 weeks early to an undernourished mother who was 95 pounds when I was conceived. My childhood was rather uneventful health wise, other than huge tonsils and repeat ear infections. I grew normally and had none of the digestive problems associated with celiac disease.
I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2001 and was told I’d never had kids. I changed my diet to traditional foods after seeing my cat, Blue, have an ‘incurable’ and life-shortening health problem healed by a species-appropriate diet. I was told he wouldn’t live long and would require expensive, difficult medication until his death.
It had worked for him why can’t it work for me?
While on a real foods diet, I had two miscarriages. The third time was the charm. The pregnancy and birth were uneventful and I suffered from a severe oversupply of milk while nursing my daughter.
I conceived my son after lactation amenorrhea ended, spacing them over two years apart. I carried him while suffering with hyperemesis gravidarum (literally ‘over-vomiting of the pregnant woman’) so severe that everyone was shocked that we both lived through it. I was only consuming traditional foods, complete with raw milk and soaked grains during this time, so we were completely shocked at how seriously ill I was. Most people in the traditional foods community insisted I must be doing something wrong to be so sick, it just wasn’t possible on such a good diet. After me listing a normal day of food and all of the details, they’d throw up their hands in frustration at how they couldn’t find a hole that they could pronounce as the magic bullet as to why I was puking so badly. No one had answers.
I threw up a minimum of 40 times a day for the first 22 weeks, then varying until his birth. I lost 12% of my body weight before I stabilized. He was a homebirth and nursed with gusto from the beginning and he appeared to be healthy. He was ten pounds at birth and thirty by his first birthday, complete with multiple chins. After his birth, my health went back to baseline and the nausea and vomiting were gone.
I had another miscarriage the Fall after his birth. I was unable to lose weight no matter how I tried, and was looking unhealthier by the day despite eating a traditional foods diet. I weighed 235 pounds. My daughter was covered head to toe in eczema and had digestive problems and cavities despite having been exclusively breastfed and never vaccinated. We were eating a traditional foods diet faithfully. She took her cod liver oil and butter oil and ate all the right foods, and I had done everything ‘right’ with her, yet she had problems. It turns out that she was allergic to gluten and dairy, as well as that egg yolk I had so faithfully spoon-fed her since she started solids. I naively believed that despite it being a highly allergenic food, it was the beginning of the route that would lead her to good health.
I remember being on vacation before I got sick. I was standing in the aisle at Whole Foods, holding coupons for Enjoy Life cereal bars, looking at the box prominently labeled “Gluten-Free” and thinking, “Anything but a digestive disease, Lord. I don’t think I could handle that.” The next day, I remember opening the box up and tasting a bar and thinking, “That’s not half bad. I might could live with eating that.” Truer words had never been spoken…
Six months after that vacation, we suffered through the devastating loss of twins. I kept struggling with why my children and I were in such poor health if we were only consuming God-made, traditional foods. Probiotics, even massive doses, weren’t fixing our gut problems and I just couldn’t get my daughter’s eczema go to away completely no matter what I did. I thought joint pain must be normal, but I wasn’t even 30 yet. Surely there was a big piece of the puzzle that I was missing.
My health began to rapidly deteriorate after the miscarriage. Months later, I was still not recovered. On July 4, 2006, I hit what I thought was rock bottom. We were out of town with my husband’s job and after a high-end restaurant meal, I was convinced that I was not going to live through the night. I was throwing up, having diarrhea, having severe belching and hiccups, my whole body was wracked with excruciating pain and I couldn’t move. Every nerve in my body was screaming. I was in a panic and I was sure that I was about to die, the pain was so severe. I just wanted to get to the roof of the hotel and throw myself off to stop the pain. But I couldn’t move. I remember finally passing out, laying on the bed, while fireworks went off overhead.
The next day, a friend told me she thought I had celiac disease and she talked to me about getting tested. Of course, I didn’t want to have celiac disease, so I stalled and delayed. But I did go gluten-free that day, to get a better idea of whether that was my problem or not. We ordered the tests from Enterolab. While we were waiting for the test results, my health got even worse. My true rock bottom had come, and it was after I went off the gluten.
For months I lived with violent nausea and vomiting and severe dizziness around the clock. The vomiting and diarrhea would wake me up all hours of the day and night from a dead sleep and I’d have a split second before I’d start throwing up. I slept on my back with a garbage can between my knees, hoping I’d have just enough time to make it to the toilet before the diarrhea would kick in, too.
Sometimes I’d black out if I stood up. My bones ached and I couldn’t stand up without assistance or move on my own easily, the muscle pain and fatigue was so severe. I was severely cold all the time. Despite it being July, I was living in winter clothes, buried under blankets. My hair was falling out. My sense of smell was so acute I could smell things that no one else could. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t function. And still it continued.
I spent time in the ER for dehydration. I had been trapped in my own house since getting home, unable to go anywhere except the ER. I dropped 60 pounds in ten weeks. I was so ill, I left my house only a handful of times in that first year, all but one trip to see a doctor. My family was called in as the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me. The doctors left me for dead. I was loosing weight so fast that my skin was hanging off of my body.
At my worst, I was so out of breath that I would have to crawl 20 feet from a mattress on my living room floor to the toilet and rest a while before crawling back to that bed. It went on for months.
The nausea would gradually fade, but any time I’d have an accidental exposure, I’d be back to square one. For nine months I woke up to severe vomiting and diarrhea every single morning. I had to give up gluten, dairy, soy, and eventually egg, cashew, corn and apple were also foods that would make me sick. I felt like anytime I ate, I was playing Russian roulette. It was easier to just not eat. I lost yet more weight.
The isolation was crushing. I only had two friends continue to have contact with me, both of whom kept up with me by phone because neither of them lived near-by. I was unable to leave the house and I had to care for the kids, alone, for the vast majority of the time. I went weeks not seeing another human being outside of my husband, my children, and my parents.
My thirtieth birthday and the twins’ due date came and went with no one except my husband, mom and two phone friends noticing. People whom I thought were good friends were no where to be found. I still wonder how we survived, living on a mattress on the living room floor, alone most of the time with two toddlers to care for. Without help. I spent a year on that mattress, trying to just keep myself and my kids alive while my husband held down a job out of town. I don’t remember most of that year.
I lost two-and-a-half inches off of my height.
The constant nausea gradually became half-day nausea once I was able to get some time to heal and found the right combination of supplements. Eventually it became morning-only nausea, then it disappeared, only to reappear when I would have a gluten exposure. If I got exposed, my immune system would go haywire and I’d have flu-like and digestive symptoms along with joint problems and screaming bone pain for weeks.
After a year, we found I could tolerate dairy cross-contamination and my recovery time from gluten had been greatly lessened. The only allergies that remained were gluten and dairy. I was still dizzy and weak, battling to keep weight on my body. I couldn’t drive due to the vertigo.
As it turns out, I wasn’t just dealing with celiac disease. I was deep in the throws of adrenal fatigue and heavy metal poisoning. All on top of the celiac. Not long before getting sick, I broke a thermometer by my bed and vacuumed it up, sending the particles airborne. I also had a large filling drilled out without protection not long before switching to real foods. I inhaled the vapors and swallowed some of the fragments. When I realized I had just swallowed several pieces of the filling, I thought, “surely they wouldn’t allow it if it wasn’t safe.” Right?
In 2007, we moved to the mountains. I loved the location, but it made the vertigo worse because we weren’t on flat land anymore. My vertigo wasn’t the type that would spin. It would wobble and ripple in a very weird way. Traveling anywhere by car was torture, and walking outside my house was a risky proposition thanks to the sloped ground. I’d stagger and sway or trip occasionally, much to my embarrassment. We couldn’t figure out what was going on.
Then a doctor diagnosed me with heavy metal problems. I had my fillings removed from my mouth and began chelation therapy immediately. I bottomed out at 105 pounds, a total of a 130 pound weight loss. I was a size zero. With every bite of food that I took, my body screamed rejection. I was struggling to hang on and not loose more weight. I would still vomit randomly with no connection to a gluten exposure.
Six months later, I woke up early one bright, April morning after coming off of a round. I grabbed the bed. I was laying on my back, staring at the ceiling. The room wasn’t moving. I laid there, gripping the bed knowing that I was just dreaming and would soon wake up to a spinning room. I don’t know how long I laid there, but I finally realized that I was not asleep. For the first time in years, the room wasn’t moving. I broke down and sobbed. That was my confirmation that the chelation was working and the metals really were what was keeping me sick. I walked down the hall without holding on to the walls. I picked up my little boy without being afraid I’d drop him. I ate my first meal in years without my body screaming rejection and telling me to stop.
I finally had a new lease on life.
It was a long climb out of the black hole. I had to finish chelation, gain some weight and regain my strength.
Today my joint pain and digestive problems are gone. My weight stabilized and now I’m a size 6/8. My tonsils, that had been huge my entire life, have shrunk to a normal size. I no longer have sciatica. My cycles are normal for the first time in my life and my PCOS symptoms (and PMS) are gone. Health problems I never knew could be related to gluten exposure have disappeared. I don’t live my life feeling like I’m constantly in a fog or I’m loosing IQ points. My rapidly encroaching dental problems have stopped and reversed themselves, and I have healed multiple cavities. I keep house, homeschool, take care of the kids and cook on top of running my full-time business.
My children’s eczema has disappeared. Their tooth problems have halted and even reversed. Their digestive problems are gone. Other problems I didn’t realize were connected, like sleep and behavior problems, only show back up if they get accidentally exposed. The only time my children wet the bed after going off of gluten and dairy was when they’d been exposed. They’re both growing normally.
I still avoid gluten like the plague because I don’t wish to risk setting off my immune system again. I’d rather live healthy with a food restriction than to die early of stomach or intestinal cancer or lymphoma, and leave the same terrible fate to my children. I don’t want my children to suffer like I have.
And what happened to Blue the cat? He died of old age after living a long, healthy life on real food. His ‘incurable’ problem never returned.
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Wow, that is so interesting and am happy to hear you got through it and are all better now! I have a friend that went through a pregnancy the same way as you~severe vomiting the whole time and she seemed to eat healthy??!?!
I have been into health for a looooong time and started out with big problems of my own. Nothing like what you went through, but I thankfully got in contact with some ppl that put me on the right track when I was about 18 or so. I got on distilled water first of all thinking that that was going to help keep bad stuff out. The guy showed me some dirty, crusty pipes and said that was going on inside my body. He scared me into buying his distiller. I did that for awhile but the good thing is that he introduced me to a vegetarian chiropractor that did colonics. I’m Very happy that he did now that I read your article! I think it really helped clean out my body of a LOT of junk back then. I got off all meat which included eggs and everything that contained them (cookies, mayonnaise, etc…) AND I cleaned out my intestines with the colonics. The chiro said that we have dead meat in our bodies from childhood if we don’t clean out properly and who does? My health soared and I was in excellent shape for years, got cured of all unhealthy eating habits. Then I met my husband, and it was all downhill from there….haha JK but I did start eating meat again for convenience and b/c he didn’t like my tofu casseroles. My health has gone down a bit after my 6th child and it makes me sad that I let myself go but am determined to get back into my old healthy ways. I totally agree, you have to start with the gut and get cleaned out first. I want to eat God given, traditional foods and be healthy again and help my family be healthy. Thank you for the inspiration!
Sorry, but your chiro needs to learn a bit more about human anatomy. Unless there is something *wrong* with you, your body digests protein very easily, and animal protein is the easiest of proteins to digest since it is not bound to cellulose. This is why you have to inject insulin if you’re diabetic; insulin is a peptide hormone (a peptide being part of a protein molecule) and your stomach just dissolves it right down.
If anything sits in your colon and putrefacts, it is *plant matter.* To be a little bit gross, I sometimes can identify plant bits from previous meals when I go number two… but I’ve never yet been able to identify bites of steak.
Now if you are short on stomach acid or for some reason are under-producing the enzymes you need to break down protein, that’s one thing. But again, that is *abnormal.* All evidence points to the probability that we are non-obligate carnivores (kind of like a dog–unlike cats, which are obligate), and certainly the structure of our digestive tract and the amount of acid a healthy human stomach produces would be testimony to that probability.
Chris Kessler at the Healthy Skeptic blog has a great series there about how to deal with insufficient stomach acid and bacterial overgrowth–which is actually a very common problem in industrialized nations. It’s worth a look. He is very traditional-foods friendly, too.
Dana: Wow you make a great point about digestion. I always see corn, okra, and other veggies in the toilet. Have never seen meat or fish! But had a naturopath to tell me that we should NOT eat meat and if we do to eat it before noon because the body has such a hard time digesting it. I didn’t take his advice – we all the grass fed we can find and afford.
Will also look up Chris Kessler’s blog.
It’s Chris Kresser, not Kessler. Otherwise Dana is right. Your intestines don’t need to be “cleaned out.” I fell for that line a long time ago. Meat is a normal and natural food for humans. If you’ve been vegetarian for a long time your body probably produces less stomach acid, so it can be helpful to take betaine hydrochloride (hcl) capsules when re-introducing meat to the diet. You also need enough salt to make your own stomach acid in sufficient quantities, so don’t be afraid to use sea salt as needed. Good luck!
Jeanmarie, I’ve never been a vegetarian and I haven’t been low salt in over a decade. I can’t go without meat two r three meals a day and feel healthy. But there are other ways to cleanse that don’t involve going off of meat.
Wow, what a scary and amazing story. Thanks for sharing the bad and the good and the hope. It is wonderful to hear how far you have come! I’m sorry your friends disappeared when you were sick. I am striving to heal some (seemingly minor so far) problems, but it will be slow going as I am currently nursing.
Did you do heavy metal chelation with supplements or with IV chelation?
I did the Cutler Protocol. I decided against IV chelation because it goes too high, too fast and gives a higher chance for more damage on the way out due to inconsistent levels. If it doesn’t go well you’re stuck because you’ve already been injected and there’s nothing you can do to mitigate the effects. With the Cutler protocol, it’s lower, slower and if you’re having intolerable side effects, you can choose to go off round or reduce your dosage for the rest of the round. In my book, it’s a safer option.
The mercury is so toxic! Early on, I’m curious if you supplemented iodine and threw yourself into Hashimotos? I keep seeing women with thyroid issues supplement iodine and are unaware of the risks of displacing the mercury from the thyroid receptors. And they dump mercury into their blood circulation (and breastmilk) without adequate nutrients. It is so difficult to find the nutrient balance with malabsorption issues due to unrecognized Celiac. I know you’ve had a long, hard journey to healing!
Pat
Pat Robinson recently posted..1 Saving Seeds
I did not supplement with iodine until I was past the adrenal fatigue and coming out of it all, so that was about three years into the journey, after I was well into chelation. I didn’t notice any difference on it, so I discontinued using it. But I was only using two drops of Lugols a day. I don’t think anything else I took had iodine in it, either. I think I’m fortunate in that I didn’t take it, knowing what I know now.
OH no! I take iodine (iodoral). I had radioactive iodine to shut down my thyroid when i wad younger, so i take it to supplement armour thyroid. I am currently breastfeeding. I’ve never heard this before! Where can i find out more?
Thank you for sharing your harrowing and inspiring story.
We are so blessed to have you share your time, wisdom and a dose of reality that is often lacking in the TF community.
~Claire
Wow, KerryAnn, I had no idea how bad it was! So much of your story rings true for me…. It’s so good to know you really DO understand where I’ve been coming from in all of my struggles lately. This pregnancy has been difficult to stay on target with eating traditionally, and I’m not even really sure why– I’ve been eating out a LOT and all crap white flour and pasta. 🙁 On a happy note though, I am feeling better than I have in a really really long time, so the work I put in over the last year must be paying off.
Thank you for sharing your story, and praise God that He is faithful and Jehovah Rapha– our Healer!!
Wow, what an incredible experience! Thank you so much for sharing.
I have mercury fillings (that I didn’t even need!) and I kick myself for just blindly following the dentist’s recommendations (I was 19). When I’m done nursing, I would love to have them removed.
Thank you very much for sharing your journey 🙂 I’m so sorry you had to go through such difficult times, but our Lord is so good, and He brought you through! I went through a low spot with adrenal fatigue, and parts of your story remind me of what I went through while also caring for 2 small children. Now I don’t feel so alone!
Wow, I had no idea that a gluten allergy as well as the heavy metal poisoning could do so much. Incredible – I am so thankful to God that you are healed of those issues. I guess I also ought to be thankful that I don’t seem to have those issues at all. Mine is just needing to not let food rule my life. You know those cravings you get when addicted to the world’s food… crappy white flour and refined sugar. I am breaking those addictions and slowly but surely have been making changes over the years. Your story and this blog and the forum are helping me to make more changes a little quicker now. Now that I have been “approved” for the forums I will be posting my story soon. Thanks so much for sharing – will definitely give me more compassion when/if I see someone struggling as you did and now I will perhaps have an answer for them as well.
KerryAnn – Did you opt out of having the standard celiac panel done (plus the small intestine biopsy)? At the time, what influenced your decision to use Enterolab? Looking back, with more knowledge and experience under your belt, would you make the same decisions (now) for which lab test(s) you used?
I did opt out of the biopsy. When I got the Enterolab results back, I found a Gastro in the nearest big city that was the advisor to the celiac group there. I went to him, he looked at the results and found out about my history and what had happened. He looked at my genetic testing. He diagnosed me officially as celiac and told me I didn’t need the biopsy. He believes that Enterolab’s results and the gene tests are accurate, moreso than the biopsy.
I would do it over again, yes. If I had known sooner, I would have had the biopsy done prior to going off of gluten. But once I was off and we saw how overwhelming my reaction was, there was no way I was going back on gluten just to get a positive test.
Isn’t it amazing how so many doctors don’t think to test for celiac disease? I’m glad you finally found your answers and are doing so much better. We have been through just a fraction of the sort of things you went through, and even that was hard enough. My son is 11 now but last year he finally had a crisis that brought his life-long problems to a head. ( http://theliberatedkitchenpdx.com/meet-the-liberators/our-story/ )
He had joint pains and muscle cramps all the time and people thought he was making it up to get out of walking places. He’d been hospitalized for dehydration, diarrhea, and suspected appendicitis in past years, but always sent home with a “virus.” He’d been in to the doctors for “seasonal allergies” been given shots and daily medication, yet still had chronic symptoms. He had severe dyslexia and could not read at age ten. He had focus problems. He’d had asthma and had to have breathing treatments regularly as a baby. I tried rotation diets, elimination diets, whole foods… and finally had given up on finding the answers, I am sad to say.
But when he had his crisis, my partner put the pieces together. Unfortunately we went gluten-free before testing him for celiac. But he does have the genetics and he gets sick from the slightest cross contamination from gluten. We have our answers.
Looking back, (and after going gluten-free and then on GAPS for nearly a year, myself) I started to see all these patterns in my own health that point in the same direction. Now I am in the process of a gluten challenge so that I can be tested. It is miserable, but not nearly what you went through. Much worse and I’d have to call it off.
I’m currently writing a series on Celiac Testing Myths. The one with test information is here http://theliberatedkitchenpdx.com/physical-health/celiac-testing-myth4-doctor-knows-best/
Thanks for sharing your experience. I hope others can be spared the pain you and your family have been through.
-Joy
Joy at The Liberated Kitchen recently posted..Jupiter Speaks on Celiac Cross-Contamination
I remember when I first going on the Cooking TF forums in 2009 and you made reference to some of these things going on, so it’s interesting for me to hear the full tale of what was happening. So glad you were able to overcome all these issues. Bless.
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What am amazing story! Thank you for putting this all out there. By the way, maybe I did a poor job of reading this, but I didn’t quite understand, in the end, what fixed your children’s problems? Are they just off gluten and dairy permanently? Did you do chelation on them?
I too am very interested in what helped your children. My four year old DD has bad eczema and some behavior problems.
KerryAnn-
Thank you for sharing your story! I’m sure it must have been difficult to look back at those memories in order to write this, but I’m so thankful you did! I have been dealing with a health issue that, at one point, had me wondering if I was going to live through it. For about a year, I had no idea what the problems were, and certainly no solutions. I have discovered the GAPS program and I have have significant improvement since then (although the journey continues).
I’m wondering if you can speak a little more about the chelation therapy you had. I have often wondered if I have a heavy metal issue, however I have no idea how to go about finding out if I do. What type of doctor did you see for the chelation therapy? What type of chelation therapy did your doctor use?
Thanks for sharing your story!
Hi – we are going to embark on the Cutler protocol soon with our son and kids. I had 14 amalgams , some leaking, while pregnant with my kids, four c sections, and all the wrong sorts of foods – that is what destroyed our health. Esp Matt’s. It is all so overwhelming. Where to even begin!? Matt is almost six now…and he seems just like you describe yourself in your bio/blog. I make all our meals from scratch and have them be healthy. They need to be gluten and probably casein free too for some time. My kids’ teeth are not that great tthough bc they are not getting dairy – I am scared of it.
It is all so overwhelming! Joy
Your story is very inspiring! Although I have had two relatively normal pregnancies and ate primarily organic, whole foods throughout both my children are suffering with severe allergies, eczema, behavior problems and digestive issues. This completely baffles me and the medical professionals… so much so, in fact, that we have all but given up on Western medicine. I, myself have had digestive problems all my life (I actually had 12″ of my colon removed 20 yrs ago) and experience more joint pain, gum erosion and sensory issues (noise, lights, textures, smells are overwhelming) when I have eaten gluten-containing products repeatedly. I hate to cut yet another thing out of my children’s diets. However, I am giving a gluten-free diet a try since my last major illness (this weekend) and will be slowly phasing out gluten for our entire family’s health.
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Wow! I had no idea you had been through so much. You must be so strong to have survived all of that and come out the other end still fighting. Bless you!
Emma – Craving Fresh recently posted..The hard days
Wow! I can’t imagine living through all of that! I am so glad you are on the other side of that dark valley and you made it through stronger! Awesome testimony, so glad you shared it ~ I am sure it will be of benefit to others!
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Hi Kerry.
Thank you so much for sharing your truly inspiring story. I am going through a similar ordeal for many years now. I have mercury poisoning, celiac and non celiac gluten intolerance genes, candida, thyroid and adrenal issues and have been horribly ill. I would like to know where I can find the Cutler protocol for chelating? I have his book somewhere and tried to do it years ago and found I could not. I think I may have still have had some fillings (15 of them) that I had not had out at the time and my body was still to weak to even detox. I appreciate any and all help that you can offer me. You are a blessing for having this site up and for helping others to get well.
Monica
I hate to cut yet another thing out of my children’s diets. Now that I have been “approved” for the forums I will be posting my story soon. I keep seeing women with thyroid issues supplement iodine and are unaware of the risks of displacing the mercury from the thyroid receptors. Now if you are short on stomach acid or for some reason are under-producing the enzymes you need to break down protein, that’s one thing.
Wow KerryAnn, this is a really frightening story! I don’t know how I would endure something like that, but you’re amazing! Glad you’re all better now!
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Kerry Anne
I was in tears reading what you have been through. I am so sorry you suffered so much. Thank you for sharing your story so that others have a chance to heal too.
What an amazing story! Thank you for sharing it with others. I am a Chapter Leader for Weston A. Price and have followed protocol for pregnancy and nursing and now feeding my 9 mo. old according to GAPS protocol introduction of solids. All my kids have reflux issues from birth and he has bad gas and bloating it seems still now and before introducing solids. He will not sleep longer than 2-3 hours at night. I am puzzled….I am interested if you have an opinion on what causes baby’s fussiness. Can it be gluten through me to him? Metals? I have no fillings, no thermometer stories? I also have over-supply that seems to bother him. Any theories on that? Don’t worry if you don’t want to take the time, but sometimes people have the best theories on this stuff that I could never find through google!
Tanja, I’ll e-mail you.
KerryAnn Foster recently posted..Egg Puffs with Ginger Sauce
Wow. You’ve gone through so very much. Thank you for sharing your journey and reaching out to others to share your knowledge.
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Don’t let anyone bully you around.. after what you have been through you are tough!!
Your opinion is yours and I like it when you share.. It is called Freedom! keep it up!!
That is an amazing story. Thank you so much for sharing it with us, and for all you do through your blog. I am relatively new to healthy anything, and I need all the help I can get. Traditional eating was foreign to me even as a thought as of 3 years ago, and I have only been trying for the past 4 months or so. So glad you were able to figure out what was making you sick, and to overcome it. Thank you.
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Mercury is in all immunizations and flu shots. This metal makes you sterile and we are injecting our kids with it regularly. I never get the flu shot and never get the flu. Glad you are better. Great story
Wow, you have survived so much. Your story is incredibly inspirational. Thank you for sharing it!
Wow! Thanks for sharing that amazing story. I’m so glad you are still here to share it! I have personally been blessed by reading this- I have had similar symptoms, although much milder. I think I will be looking into the celiacs possibility. Thank you again.
KerryAnn, I’m curious if you have regained any height.
I lost an inch five years ago also, and no amount of D3, K2 and minerals seems to have made a difference there.
On the bright side, I haven’t lost any more height either.
No, I have not regained any height and I do not expect to. 🙁
What a fascinating read and how horrifying it must have been for you to be so ill and not know what was causing it. And did you ever get ‘it’s all in your mind’?
I discovered I was coeliac at 53 after going on a low carb diet. After a lifetime of at least 2 migraines a week, my partner said to me on day 10 ‘you haven’t had a migraine since you started eating that weird food’. Didn’t that pull me up short. Also disappearing and not missed were the windy pains, bowel problems, dermatitis herpetiformis (DH), painful joints and a whole raft of other problems.
I am now pretty much grain free and follow the Primal lifestyle plan.
If only people would realise the (detrimental) power of grains, with gluten beiung the worst offender, of course. I too opted out of going back to eating gluten just to have the biopsy – I had every symptom except weight loss.
Now I have more energy than I have ever had in my life, I feel better than I did at 18 (I am 59) and I swim 3-6 days a week for exercise.
Odille Esmonde-Morgan recently posted..Are We Over Medicated?
Well, I did have docs offer my anti-depressants when they didn’t have any answers. It’s unfortunate that doctors can’t admit when they don’t know the answer and instead turn it around and blame the patient for mental problems!
What an amazing story, especially going through all this and having to tend to little ones! how thankful you must be! Thank you for sharing your story. You have inspired me to get back on the wagon. I discovered WAPF three years ago and it changed our lives but recently I’ve been taking a little more advantage of the conveniences out there. I too have been bothered about my oldest son’s teeth. And then my second son has very large tonsils… So I’ve been a bit discouraged and not knowing what road to take now. I noticed you mentioned these same issues with your little ones. Did you get them off all dairy, including fermented as well as gluten? Would you say what you did was similar to GAPS? I know you’re busy so I want bombard you with more questions but I’d love to talk more about your story one day ;). Thanks!
Blessings,
Megan
Megan Harris recently posted..* 8 Week Workout Plan* Are You In?
Megan, my kids did go off of all dairy, including fermented, and all gluten. What I did wasn’t similar to GAPS, as I only excluded the foods we were intolerant to. Instead, I used supplements specifically meant to heal the gut lining. You can read the articles I’ve written about gut health here- https://www.onevibrantmama.com/category/series/gut-health/
Your story sounds very similar to mine. It is very scary to feel like your body is so out of control and you don’t know what to do about it. What brought about my final melt down was taking care of my dying mother of cancer, caring for my four children, and my husband was also gone much of the time with work, trucking.
At the time I was on a raw food kick and started eating raw cacao, which threw my adrenals way out of wack on top of all of this stress I was under. I started having major panic attacks, vertigo, could’nt eat or function. I figured I was having a nervous breakdown, which I guess I was.
After a couple weeks I went to see a Naturopath to hopefully find some relief. She put me on an adrenal support product and Chinese herbs, Tang Qui and Peony. With prayer and those herbs I was soon able to function again and was pretty much symptom free in 3 months.
I am still obese and am currently having issues with my left ovary and hip, so I began taking Iodine in kelp form and Vitex. I have been reading from others now not to take Iodine so I am thoroughly confused. It has seemed to help me. Can you share the downside to the Iodine?
I also just had all of my 16 mercury fillings removed, last ones yesterday! So I am hoping that no symptoms appear. I did have them safely removed, but I am concerned about the lingering mercury that is probably in my body and how to safely remove it.
Thank you for sharing your story, I felt your pain while reading it, and it breaks my heart that anyone has to endure such torture. I hope we can help prevent others from experiencing the same.
Kerryann,
Here’s a new curve to your healing journey…… 23&me. Self-educate through Amy yasko. While her focus now is autism, her origins were in “nerve inflamation” disorders. Trust me, it will change your healing path as you learn why your body handled the toxins as it did….. I am just going through it all now….