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Has anyone managed to fix their their gut?

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Almostme

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I am curious as to the strategies used by members to aid in digestion. It is a huge part of the equation in ptsd and fibromyalgia.Has anyone actually repaired their gut to virtually normal function?

There has been much written on the subject,and they say that if you fix your gut,you lose your depression and who knows how many other health problems are erased. It is a completely true statement,I know that because I did it,and it took me 4.5 years.I was hurt by drs not once,but twice in my life. So much for their hypocratic oath. When I was born 2 months premature (2lbs14oz), I apparently suffered emotional and physical trauma while in the incubator. The combination made my brain's emotional and stress responses develop very differently. It also stunted my growth, and I have had heath problems since childhood. They also likely gave me lots of antibiotics, and killed my fledgling microbiome. I had no breast milk for the first 2 months, again losing precious immune system bacteria and nutrients, nor touch, or see my mother while there.

Then in 1998,a general practitioner screwed up,and gave me 3 cocktails of antibiotics for a h pylori stomach infection. The idiot used an antibody blood test instead of a biopsy,or hydrogen breath test to retest after first treatment. He said I was resistant,not true. Antibodies last for 2 years or longer after treatment.

He basically killed my gut,and a year later I began 20 yrs of hell. Fibromyalgia, depression, hypothyroidism with goiter, 3 herniated discs,disc disease and compression of the spinal cord in my neck and just pain pain pain from head to toe, I stopped working in 2003 and lost everything. In 2007 I was present during a procedure that went badly, in the hospital with my mother after 57 days there, she passed 2 days after. It crashed my sympathetic nervous system, and I went into fight or flight and stayed there for 15 yrs. In my isolation, I have written 75% of a book in the last year and a bit. I am looking for a publisher, but it is much tougher than I thought. I am a nobody in this world, so I may put together the 2 k or so, to self publish by the summer's end if I get the money together. My other thought was to try a go fund me page. I just don't want someone to steal the credit, because it took me so many years of suffering, experimenting on myself, and I worked so hard reading (easily over 1000 hrs) to figure it out.

I lost almost all of my body hair,and 60% of my eyebrows since 2000. My endocrinologist held my hand,and we watched while my nodules grew and my hair fell out. I believed,in them and their knowledge. How stupid I feel for having believed in them. I don't really know why I still did,since they have messed me up since my first breath. I believe in science, but medicine today is really built on greed first, egos second, and science third.

I have now gotten my left eyebrow nearly fully regrown, the right is behind but has 1/16'' little sprouts, and should be complete in 2 or 3 months. I have also started to grow hair on my forearms and chest. In my entire life I never had chest hair, I believe my endocrine and immune systems have begun to function better than ever before. My 3 hernias have self repaired, both my shoulders and neck no longer hurt. It has completely blown me away. One way or another, all of it will be shared with the world, by the end of this year.
 
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Hello @Almostme text walls are too hard to read for me.

But I get the gist of what you are saying. I'm pleased you found a path back to good gut health. The medical profession is waking up to the benefits of promoting our microbiome health but I think it is still a long way off being as important a consideration as it should be.
 
I don't know what a text wall is, explain please.

I would have to say that I have lost all trust in drs and public policy. I was told for 20 yrs that I had plenty of iodine by my endocrinologist,yet he refused to ever test me. They say the rda is 150 micro grams, they are a joke! The truth is that iodine is a macro nutrient,NOT micro. I take 100 times the rda 15 mgs per day. Every gland in your body needs iodine including thyroid, breasts, prostate, etc. Chronic lack of iodine and vit d causes cancers in all of them.

It took me yrs to realize that drs have got no clue about nutrition,and how much the lack of vit/min affects immune health. I only got better when I stopped listening to them. I was on 3x3mgs per day of hydromorph contin for 15 yrs. Once I got the nutrition right,I finally decided to attempt stopping. I actually tapered down in 5 days to nothing, I was very shocked that it went so smoothly, it was nothing like what I expected. All I hear is how tough it is for people to stop, I just hit 15 months clean, and not one slip-up.I even have a full bottle left, and it does not tempt me at all. Every time I think about it, I feel lucky to have walked away.
 
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I don't know what a text wall is,explain please.I

^Sure I'll explain. It's when a person writes long pages of text without paragraphs thereby creating what essentially looks like a wall (of text). Makes it difficult to read. I know you didn't do it intentionally but if you want people to read your ideas it will help. Think about grouping and breaking up your thoughts into paragraphs. I suggest this in a friendly and genuine way. If you don't want to do this then ignore my suggestion and carry on. :)
 
I lost almost all of my body hair,and 60% of my eyebrows since 2000. My endocrinologist held my hand,and we watched while my nodules grew and my hair fell out. I believed,in them and their knowledge. How stupid I feel for having believed in them. I don't really know why I still did,since they have messed me up since my first breath. I believe in science, but medicine today is really built on greed first, egos second, and science third.
I believe this is a thought distortion. Doctors are humans too. There will be good ones who genuinely care, there will be bad ones who just wanted the prestige, and there will be ones who are good doctors who make mistakes and there will be bad doctors who manage to treat diseases correctly.

I understand where you're coming from, though. I was nearly killed in a psychiatric hospital when a nurse left me in solitary confinement for over 48 hours. I am still under 30 years old, so it does still scare me, especially because my mother was mad at me about it instead of sympathetic. In other words, I am hearing you and taking you seriously, but I don't believe it's accurate to say that all doctors are bad or are failing you because they are doctors.

I am in the United States, by the way, in case that matters for this discussion.

Anyway -- I've had a similar set of problems. I was born tiny, c-section (but my mother did breast feed), which made me have more gut problems than average (thank goodness for the breast feeding, though!). My mom made sure in my toddler years that I had a balanced diet with natural probiotics and fiber, which was enough to reset everything. Once you run low on bacteria once, you are not necessarily doomed. If you become too low to even function, there are special treatments for that.

For example: in high school, I no longer had a kitchen or regular meals. Food was often restaurant or fast food only, which really did a number on me. I likely already had IBS, but this made it into a full-blown disorder. My mother did not take me to a doctor for it.

A few years later I either was a carrier of strep or the nurses didn't consider false positives as an option. (I eventually had them test when I was non-symptomatic, just to see, but I absolutely did have strep repeatedly. The symptoms are hard to miss.) The options were to remove my tonsils (something that I was uncomfortable with, as research had just been coming out that people without tonsils often develop asthma or other breathing problems years later -- turns out the tonsils are a first stop for the immune system), or to begin a regime of antibiotics, which I would have to do either way, of course. The result, though, was that my IBS got MUCH worse, and I stopped being able to consume dairy (lactose intolerance exists in a lot of forms!).

The solution to this was for me to go see a nutritionist. To do that, I went to a primary care doctor and told her that I was having gut symptoms that were distressing. I was referred in the same visit and got to see the nutritionist in the same week. She was an air force veteran, and we weren't a PERFECT fit (personality-wise) but she had all the information i needed, and was extremely helpful! She helped me find a multivitamin (something you need if you have a malabsorption disorder) that wasn't a scam (most at least sort of are), and helped me locate a great probiotic (ended up being a similar one to the one my primary care recommended, so I had a couple of choices! and that increased as i asked my pharmacist about it too), which did WONDERS. I was able to consume milk again in small amounts, and larger amounts if I take a lastase supplement with it.

Today I rarely have problems unless I knowingly consume a triggering food. Antibiotic-treated foods and beverages are up there, along with pizza and soft drinks (the acidity in them -- sugar, carbon dioxide, tomato, etc). I changed up my diet to fit my nutritional requirements, using the cheat sheets my nutritionist gave me, and I can now have reduced fear of foods. I did (and sometimes it does still come up) have chronic pain syndrome over the IBD, but now I'm less afraid to eat in public settings, or at a friend's house. (That said, I do always eat before going anywhere, even if it's to a dinner.)

That is to say, try seeing a nutritionist with you concerns. These people don't go through the same training as doctors, but they do go through specialized training and know things that you do not. If the fit is VERY bad, request another nutritionist, as your insurance allows. I even did a special physical therapy -- biofeedback. It helped a lot!

I do not have fibromyalgia so I won't speak on that (ask your doctor to read scientific literature, though -- they have the training to not only find recent, reputable scientific journals, but also they're trained on how to read them over a course of years). PTSD did absolutely affect my gut health. It's a known fact that an upset gut will trigger anxiety, and anxiety/depression/etc will trigger an unhappy gut. This isn't the end of the world, though! You can learn coping mechanisms, get medical advice that include behavioral and diet changes, and more.

Hang in there!
 
I would like to firstly say, thanks for your thoughts, every person on this site is deeply affected by this issue, whether they know it or not.

I respectfully, and emphatically disagree! How many of your, or any other persons here, health problems have have been cured by big pharmas' toxic meds?! Yes there are some good meds. but many more are deeply misguided. The whole idea that you can solve a health problem by treating and stopping some symptoms, is not only flawed but stupid.

Let me give you a simple metaphor for this. Would you keep going to a garage with a slow leak in a tire, and the mechanic just fills the tire, and tells you to come back when it gets low again? Why not look at why the symptom of the leak shows itself,and fix that,not the symptom of a low tire?
The first rule, their Hypocratic oath is do NO HARM! If you think swallowing their antibiotics or others for every issue are benign, you are naive. I am not only growing back my eyebrows, hair on my forearms and chest, but they stopped and fell out over a decade ago. My three herniated discs, degenerative disc disease and compression of the spinal cord in the base of my neck, with horrible shoulder pain have healed, and I only feel a little discomfort occasionally with minimal crunching when I turn my head. The constant pain has disappeared, not only there but from head to toe.I was almost convinced that my destiny was to suffer till my last breath. I wake up every morning now with a feeling that is almost unrecognisable, nothing hurts and I have hope again.
I have been kicked off a fibromyalgia site for my thoughts, not because they are wrong, but because they refused to be open minded. The second Hypocratic rule has been ignored totally till recently by the so called experts that you believe in. That is, that ALL disease begins in the GUT! He only had his observational skills to rely on, no scans, blood tests, etc, etc. The fact is all my neurological, so called autoimmune diseases and all the rest of it are melting away one by one.

How did I do it, you say?
Aug 14 of 2017 would be a date that changed everything for me. Over the next 2 yrs, I would do experimental treatments that would have cost approximately about $18,000 US. It cost me $40 plus $10 for gas! I am the ultimate do it yourselfer. No dr will do it in Canada but for one, and he is under investigation by the college of physicians in BC. How dare he cure someone!

The mighty FDA makes it illegal, they are so full of it! It can cripple big pharma, their friends, and so it is illegal. They have this cozy relationships, just like Boeing and the FAA, it is all about the benjamins! Can you guess,anyone,what it is? Sorry to say but, Americans have been sucked in by big insurance, medical policy, and greed rules. That is why you pay double the price for any medical services and meds. Oh, and get kicked off your insurance if you get sick, or lose your job. And y'all still think your system for taking care of your own is better, and the rest of us are socialists. God are you blind. Sorry to be blunt, but it is true.
How many people got off of 13 yrs of taking dilaudid (opiates),and tapered down to none, in only five days, I did. It has been 16 months and no slip ups, I rarely even think about it. I don't bother with trying to discuss it with my drs, all they have to offer is their prescription pads. Why keep doing something over and over, and expect it to give you a different result? That to me is a lack of critical thinking, or sense. I would have used common in front of it, but it's no longer common.

I hope I did not step on anyone's toes, but it should be said. Stop believing everything they say, inform yourself and then make the right decisions. You won't regret it!
 
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every person on this site is deeply affected by this issue,whether they know it or not.
There is no possible way for you to know what is affecting every person on this site, much less how much effect any person here is experiencing.

Just as one example amongst many? It is not only stupidly easy in nearly all cases to repopulate the beneficial bacteria in one’s gut, on purpose, if your diet doesn’t do it for you automatically... but a great many doctors have been advising people both to do so, and how, since at least the 1930s (although there are texts going back to the 1600s that I’m aware of that advise the consumption of foods we now know to be rich in active cultures to people with certain GI issues, clearly antibiotics were not a going concern); whilst my own experience begins with every doctor I’ve ever had since the 80s, second hand from my mother in the 50s and her parents from the turn of the century. I’m sorry your doctors didn’t check your diet, or instruct you on how to repopulate your flora, or refer you to a nutritionist, or that if any of them did you didn’t understand the instruction or long term implications. However, to assume that just because your doctors didn’t that no one on the planet has had competent medical care? Or consumes a diet rich in active cultures? (From yogurt & cheeses in the western world, to kimchee and quick pickles in the East, along with the huge number of plants which contain those yeasts and other microbes straight from the field all over the world) Is at best self centered in the extreme and at worst flat out crazy.

I truly am glad that you’ve found the source of what’s been plaguing you for decades, and I do understand the excitement of discovering something so simple & effective one wants to shout it to the world. It would be a good thing to keep in mind, though, that this isn’t new information for many -if not most- people. So the many and varied problems that stem from not having hearty gut flora? Are hardly going to be universal.
 
Just as I thought, the moderators come out to spank me verbally. The fact is that I did 8 oral treatments (10 to 15 caps) and 4 enemas over 2 yrs of fecal microbiota transplants. They saved my life, they gave me back my health. You can go read it for yourself what the FDA's policy is on it. It has not budged one bit in decades. They keep saying that it is dangerous and that you can get an infection from it. That is a joke, have they ever felt the side effects of their meds, so many say that you can get serious infections using their medicine. I got NO side effects from transplants. It took 2 years after my treatments stopped. They won't even give it to people with c-dificille as a first treatment from a hospital acquired infection, even though it is proven to CURE them.

Instead they (big pharma and those that control policy) demand several rounds of expensive and powerful antibiotics first. Even though they know that transplants are the gold standard for treating c-diff. Even after having their biomes decimated by several rounds of antibiotics, the transplants are only occasionally used after the person has left the hospital in private clinics. I have seen drs tell patients that they may have to remove their large intestines to stop the diarrhea, and never bring up transplants. That is malpractice and shameful

I was 137 lbs when I graduated high school in 1981, when I started the transplants (aug 2017) I weighed 139 lbs. When I got everything right, I was blown away by suddenly putting on 32 lbs in 2 months, my depression gone completely, IBS pain gone, pain gone, no more stomach aches, I could go on and on.

As far as my treatments working for everyone, bloody right they would, I would bet my life on it. ALL the so called autoimmune illnesses were simply caused by a lack of nutrients. Give your body the right tools, and it is self healing period! Malabsorption caused by a damaged gut, an unbalanced microbiome and in our case (those with ptsd), having our digestion somewhat turned off by our hypothalamus/pituitary/adrenals axis staying in fight or flight response. The different medical problems between us, are different because we all have a different mix of organisms in each person's gut. They are as original as dna, or a fingerprint. They not only control immune response, they are the the ones who keep you healthy or make you sick. The medical community, and big pharma has not come out publicly with one single study ever, they either are protecting their cash cow, are purposely blind, or are incompetent.

How many "medicines" for autoimmune disorders, or pain would become useless. They have not, because they are all trying to find something to patent in the contents of our guts. Only mother nature knows amongst the huge variety of organisms, what the perfect combination is. I blame the usual suspect: greed, greed, greed!

I ask you this simple question, why have those whose job it is to make good public health policy, continue to ignore, and even legislate against any dr who knows the truth, and says something. There are several other strategies to make this REAL treatment complete, in which I only scratched the surface of, such as how to dampen the fight/flight response and to improve digestion. You can have a perfect diet, but if you do not absorb the nutrients, it does not make a difference. Prebiotics are gold, while probiotics are a waste of money, unless it helps your ibs pain. But it will not heal your gut, that is guaranteed. It took years of experimenting on myself, take one part out, and it is less effective. You can look online, there are clinics in other countries, but they are expensive for those of us who live on low income because of illness.

I got better without drs, or I should really say,"in spite of them." I knew it was up to me. The funny thing is, I have for my entire life always had to deal with taking crap from my family and society, because of being of a smaller stature. Who could have imagined that I should have eaten crap to get better, and that all the drs (about 15) in my entire suffering life, failed me!! I am for the first time in my life, walking TALL with my head in the clouds. It is so overwhelming, and really, do you think I would actually talk about it, if it was not true? What is in it for me? Ridicule, embarrassment, I don't lie or cheat for any reason. That includes for money. I bet they cannot say the same thing.
 
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I am going to be honest, I really struggle to read text walls. I think even an uninjured brain gets that way.

However, I’m getting a “everyone HATES ME because they are TOO CLOSED MINDED to listen when i speak the TRUTH........ no i will not listen to anything you have to say, f*ck you” vibe. So I’m not going to. If you don’t want a discussion, it might be wise to stop discussing.

I am telling you because I assume you came to this website for guidance.

Very glad your gut is well.

Have a great day
 
Just as I thought,the moderators come out to spank me verbally.
First off.. I wasn’t writing to you in my capacity as a Mod. If I were? You’d know it. All Staff are members, first, and we reply as such.
I am for the first time in my life,walking TALL with my head in the clouds.It is so overwhelming,and really,do you think I would actually talk about it,if it was not true?What is in it for me?
I would suggest you go back and actually read what I wrote.

Because if this ranting reductive diatribe is any indication of how well you usually listen to others? I suspect you’ve been suffering needlessly for decades. You completely ignored what I DID challenge, and elected instead to blather on about water being wet.

What I DID challenge was your assertions that every person on this world wide site is deeply affected by this issue, whether they know it or not; & that all doctors/scientists are clearly as craptastic as yours &/or liars, &/or only out for the money, &/or every other generalization you’ve been flinging against a wall. As self important narrow minded myopic nonsense. At best.
 
I did write it in paragraphs,the site did it when I posted it,sorry.As far as cursing at me!! If your drs did so much for you,why the f*ck do you need guidance here?I am done with this site,help your f*cking selves!
 
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