Fatigue, IBS, Impossible Diets, What Next???

I haven't posted in so long. Partly because I still feel like I'm sleepless in Greensboro!! If it's not one child it's been another to wake up with nightmares and climb in bed (usually it's Jacob). Although the Lord has taught me through this that I can be thankful, it still does not make for a good night's sleep.

More recently, like this morning, I've been motivated to write about my experience with my physical body. A year ago this past Nov. I started to feel terrible: nauseated, bloated, gassy, and extremely exhausted. I went to my Dr., we checked on my gall bladder, kidneys and all that. Then through lengthy conversations my Dr. diagnosed me with Fructose Mal absorption. I researched it to death and found a diet: FOD MAPS to follow. It was depressing because I had to give up everything with gluten and many fruits and veggies that I loved. But I did and lost 10 pounds right off the bat (note: I was only eating veggies and fruit the diet allowed, no grains, when I lost the weight).

I started to feel better for a while. But some things were still bothering me and it was hard to figure out what it was. I would still have gas every now and then, my bowels still not 100%. I had to guess what it was that bothering me. My husband would say, "oh no, what did you eat?" My answer was usually, "I don't know what's bothering me!!!" I still stuck to the diet as faithfully as I could, even making my own bread. I added coffee back into my diet because it is one thing that I truly enjoy and I had to give up so much already. I added in some very dark chocolate too and mozzarella cheese. What is life without cheese? My problems started to get worse again and I still had the fatigue and gained the weight back that I had lost. Aargh!!!

So, fast forward to this January, more than a year on this FODMAPS diet. A friend told me about a friend of hers that was blogging about her struggles with Candida. Her symptoms seemed similar to mine. Sooo, I went home and looked it up and proceeded to research it. I was floored by how much it seemed to relate to me! Soon it became overwhelming because so many people have different theories and ways of getting rid of it. Some views were so hopeful and some depressing. I did a simple spit test you can do at home and took a quiz that some Dr.s came up with to figure out at what level you might have this yeast overgrowth. My score came out to be the moderate to severe category, so I decided to give it a try.

I took notes of different herbs and detox diets that I could do. I found some really helpful websites. WholeApproach.com has a helpful diet to follow. I gave up bread, caffeine, coffee, anything with sugar, Greek yogurt, mozzarella cheese, chips and many fruits. I was able to add onions and garlic back into my diet, so at least my food could have some flavor. I stopped taking my multi-vitamins (one website said this can hinder the "die-off" of the yeast because it feeds the yeast in some way-major paraphrase). I started taking a good pro-biotic called Threelac that I found on a website: candidasupport.org. This website suggests you only need to take these probiotics and will be good to go. That wasn't my complete experience. I chose to also do the diet in order to really "starve" the yeast and therefore have it out of my system quicker.

I had been trying to exercise regularly when all of this was happening. Talk about torture, though. When you are so fatigued, thinking about exercising is the last thing on one's mind. But I made myself do it, thanks to my dog who needed the exercise as well (he was my main motivation). And Jilian Michaels can be quite persuasive on her work out videos, too. Between the diet, regular exercise, probiotics, anti-fungals and liver support natural herbs, I've been doing really well. I'm still a bit fatigued, but can tell a big difference from before I started (I've only been doing this 5 weeks). I have less gas and bowel issues (some, I believe, is experienced through the "die-off" of the yeast, from what I've read). The diet is rather restrictive and expensive, but seems worth it.

These are just the physical details of my experience. There is so much more to it that God has taught me through this whole experience. I would love to share it all with you, but not in this one post. So keep checking and I will share my experience with you!