Hi Chris, I hope I'm posting in the right way. I'm very new to this. About what you said, I think we have a lot in common. I was diagnosed with CFIDS in 1988 -- I was among the group of people who first came down with it in the Lake Tahoe, CA area -- back then they called it Epstein Barr and Yuppie Flu because we were all pretty healthy athletic people in our 30's. I could barely get out of bed for a year among many other dismal symptoms you're aware of. I had a cool TV production job (live shows on location) that I had to take a one year leave of absence from and finally just quit. I finally got over the CFID's after a few years but it changed my life in a lot of ways.
Cut to now. Fifteen years later. I'd just finished an amazing huge job in September 03 and and it left me totally burned out -- nothing new. (I guess I 've not been able to "lose" that part of my goal oriented personality -- work hard and play hard.) Anyway, the day after the job was completed I started throwing up blood and having intense pain like food poisoning. Emergency room put me on tubes because my stomach canal was blocked and no air, water or food could get down. I had morphine every 2 hours for five days while they tried to figure out how to fix me. Lots of tests and a surgery too. The hospital in San Francisco gave me a couple courses of antibiotics and then when I left the hospital my doctors gave me two more courses of big broad spectrum antibiotics to kill the Helicobacter Pylori bacteria that they found in an endoscopy right after I was released. Turns out I'd had a gastric ulcer with complications. Needless to say, my digestive sysyem was completely thrashed. I didn't know a thing about all those live microorganisms we need to do what a body need to do to make energy from food. I didn't know about"balance". I just followed my doctors' very stupid advice. Now I've learned they were not only very wrong in their treatment of my situation but they made me terribly sick as well. So far, I've fixed all the subsequent problems on my own (through extensive research.) My latest "win" was overcoming bacterial overgrowth in my small intestine. I'm afraid I had to take an antibiotic again. It was only 6 months after taking that huge dose of the things but I was desperate and getting sicker by the day. I couldn't eat a thing and was losing weight quickly. It was very scary! I also figured I was armed and ready this time to hit the bad guys hard with killer drugs and no provisions (a three week fast) and then repopulate like carzy with good guys -- give them a leg up so to speak.) So I took Cipro twelve days and simultaneously ate nothing but a powdered elemental drink called called Vivonex. The reason for the fast with Vivonex was to simultaneously starve the bad bacteria while giving my poor guts a chance to heal. I didn't want to lose any more weight so I used Vivonex. Its calories are in the form of amino acids -- it's predigested so your digestive system gets a total break. (Unfortunately the FlavorPaks you have to add to make it palatable contain Aspartame (!) Regardless, that program repaired my leaky gut problem. I was releived to find that within a day of taking the Cipro, the painful welts I'd suddenly developed all over my body had lost their pain and itch. (Within a week you couldn't even tell I'd had any infected skin!) Anyway, things seemed to be going great after two weeks of the Vivonex fast -- and no bloating, gas, or bowel problems -- then out of nowhere, boom! I woke up one morning suddenly paralyzed with exhaustion. And depression! This new tack was so out of left field I didn't know what hit me! I got back to my research and learned that I'd neglected to factor in a third element: Candida had filled the void left by the bad bacteria. The Cipro killed the bad (and good) bacteria but doesn't touch Candida as you know. So even though I was ingesting teaspoon-fulls of assorted Natren probiotics, the good bacteria just couldn't grow back fast enough to keep the third element, the Candida yeast, from morphing into its amazing fungal form and invading my bloodstream. Wow. What a way to learn. So here I am now, getting back on track (again!)I'm on the strict Candida diet and taking a lot of probiotics. At least for once I have a doctor I trust helping me. And he agreed with all the ways I used to treat the problems I just mentioned and he approved of the vitamins I'm taking like C, E and magnesium and some of the supplements. (He wasn't thrilled about the Vivinex but I need to ask what he's recommend to do the same thing -- I know the M.D.'s at Cedars-Sinai use it for their Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth patients. He's running a bunch of tests so I'll know more next week. So at this minute, I'm ten days into the "die-off" and I'm starting to feel a little better than I did last week which was awful! Serious bloating and gas and fatigue but since those are the symptoms of die-off, I'm happy -- Atleast I feel like I'm on the right track. My head feels better. I plan to stay on the diet for months and months. After what I've been through though, I don't mind giving up anything anymore -- I just want my life back.
By the way, the thing that helped me most through all my problems was colon hydrotherapy -- especially during the fasting parts. It kept things moving out of there -- I could see the poisons coming out and I always felt better after -- the colonics kept the bad stuff from being reabsorbed into my system. A book that helped me was "Digestive Wellness" by Lipski (make sure its her latest edition) and the other one was "I Was Poisoned By My Body". Both, especially the latter, recommend supplements that I used with success. I'm still using the BioGenesis product called Bioinflammatory Plus. I thought it was great for Leaky Gut as it has tons of Glutamine. The probiotics I used throughout were by Natren although my new doctor, Jeffrey Aron M.D. in San Francisco, told me about vsl3 by questcor for establishing good bacteria. He also recommended FloraStor which is a friendly yeast that "eats" Candida. Well, my reply's gotten so long I hardly remember what you mentioned...
okay, now I see -- the Chinese medicine doctor sounds good and I'm afraid I haven't heard of the E-live which doesn't mean anything. I'll check out all the stuff you mentioned when I get a minute. I'm in the same boat as you and still want to learn as much as I can. I must say that that I'm afraid of taking the Primal Defense product because I don't trust Jordan Rubin who runs Garden of Life company that makes it. He's strikes me as a bit quackish. More importantly, I bought a book (The IBD Remission Diet) that included a later inserted page by the author who retracted her recommendation of Primal Defense. It apparantly works great but maybe causes bad and irreversable damage in the long run. Maybe I'll cut and paste it into a second post so you can read for yourself?
Personally, I've found that diet is the most important part of any of these recoveries. I'm glad now I did the 3 week fast because I feel my Leaky Gut problem is history. Although I still have the symptoms of Candida I've at least eliminated the problem of repeatedly "poisoning" myself with perfectly good food. (My messed up cell walls were letting through particles of food that were too big and so my body assumed these were invaders and activated my immune system and all hell would break lose.) I also bought a Green Power juicer and make juice from things like kale, chard or other dark leafy greens and celery and then I blend it all together in a Vita Mixer with a half an avocado. I sip this throughout the day. At meals I eat mainly vegetables but started including more meat especially rare cooked organ meats like chicken or calves liver (no hormones or other bad stuff..) After all my experimenting with raw foods and macrobiotics and so on and on, it turns out the thing that works the best for me (Anglo - fast oxidizer - type O blood) is tons of vegs and meat proteins -- saturated fats and all. 80% of what I eat now is vegetables (raw or lightly steamed) and the other 20% is meat and fish.
By the way, it just occured to me -- back to the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: my new good M.D. is guessing that all this digestive stuff I've been going through lately is totally related to the CFID's of 15 years ago. And since you asked me about algae and stuff like that, I used to take it but this new doc suggests not doing that kind of thing right now. That might apply to you too.) He says one of the things we're trying to help is what he thinks is my over-active immune system. He says I should be doing calming and building things. He says that blue green algae and other intense good energy makers are inappropriate right now. He said it's simply pouring gasoline on the fire which makes sense to me. Well, I could go on and on as I've never taken the time to write any of this down until this afternoon......... Take care! ~Robin Ps. Do you know if you're allergic to milk and wheat? I am.