Health Discoveries

At the end of this past January, I met with the functional health doctor and decided to move forward with another blood screening and a fecal test. Her name is Dr. Rachel. She was absolutely wonderful in explaining what might be happening to me and why western doctors have missed it. A large reason is due to pharma companies. I am sure that most who are reading this know exactly what I mean by that, but in case you are unfamiliar, pharma companies basically sponsor health professionals to sell their medicine. In their sales model, they have doctors at their front end acting as salespeople.

Another reason she mentioned is that medical professionals have created a scale to determine who is healthy or not. Their scale however just determines that you’re not terribly ill. Rather than focusing on a smaller range to determine prime health, they have a wider range that suggests you’re ‘healthy enough’. Dr. Rachel also shared the term ‘leaky gut’ with me. This is a syndrome caused by one’s gut lining being broken down due to diet, stress, trauma, or injuries. Learning of this syndrome gave me a little glimmer of hope going into having to collect my waste for the next few days.

About a month after this initial meeting, Dr. Lydia ran an energy test on my back. I scored 61/100 on this test. If I am being honest, that is the worst I have ever scored on a test! I got 61 out of an average of three different scores. The three scores are on an adaptability reserve, postural energy, and temperature balance. I got a 72, 37, and 74 in these categories.

The 72 relates to my response system. Diet, trauma, and injuries cause the nervous system to fall out of balance. Your body not being able to turn on “rest and recovery mode” can lead to even more stress and inflammation. The 37 suggests that my body is operating in an inefficiency. 26% efficiency to be exact. This amount of neuromuscular activity can exhaust someone leading to fatigue, distracted behaviors, and ongoing spinal problems. The 74 points to 9 out of 25 measurements that are outside of the normal range. This means that those 9 points are not regulating themselves leading to even MORE fatigue.

I got the results back about a month later, and they were very telling. The fecal tests showed that I had slight inflammation and major dysbiosis. Dysbiosis occurs when there is a large imbalance of bacteria in the digestive system. It also showed that I likely have small intestine bacteria overgrowth. After discussing these results with Dr. Rachel, we determined this dysbiosis could have been caused by all the antibiotics that I have been on throughout my life.

My blood tests suggested I am pre-diabetic (how did the medical professionals miss that?!), have a severe lack of vitamin D and other minerals, and have Hashimoto’s. The marker that suggested I am pre-diabetic was my Hemoglobin A1C. It was very high. Hemoglobin A1C is a marker that measures the average of one’s blood sugar over the course of the last three months. There were additional markers in my blood that also pointed to my dysbiosis and overall toxicity.

Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disorder that causes hypothyroidism. This disorder forms antibodies that attack the thyroid. This disorder can affect a body’s metabolism and energy as well as hormones (oftentimes affecting fertility) and even the way one’s heart beats. It often causes weight gain, fatigue, muscle tightness, and muscle soreness. People who suffer from Hashimoto’s are also 10 times more likely to getting lupus.

Finding out all of this has led me to do some deep dives into what could have caused this. Lots of this can be traced to different chemicals and preservatives that are used in America’s food. Eating a gluten-based diet in a different country say Italy (because who doesn’t want that) can actually cause Americans to lose weight. This is due to all of the crap that is put into food here. If you recall it is these sorts of things that can also lead to leaky gut syndrome.

The next steps for me include continuing chiropractic care and physical therapy. In physical therapy, I have been getting cupped, dry needled and they hook me up to an electric stim machine to help my back pain. So far I have not had too much improvement, but I feel we are close to a breakthrough on finally improving my pain. As far as my Hashimoto's, I am trying an anti-inflammatory diet this month to improve those symptoms. My main goals are to increase my energy and decrease how sore and stiff I feel ever morning. I would appreciate all the prayers that this leads to the results I am hoping for.

I would encourage all my readers to look into this debate and see for themselves. The things I was most baffled by included information on the woman who invented the food pyramid and how her work was sold to the highest bidder by the company she worked for, the different ingredients that Mcdonald’s (and other companies) put in their foods in America vs other countries (due to the lack of restrictions the FDA has in America), and the big pharma debate I referenced earlier.

I share this with everyone publicly because I hope it leads others to seek this information that I have been learning for themselves. I hope that by sharing, it encourages someone else to continue their health journey leading them to answers. Lastly, I share to inform you. Hashimoto’s is not something I was familiar with, but had I known the symptoms of it perhaps I had discovered I had it sooner. Thank you for reading along and supporting me in my own journey.