Newbie looking for support!

[Lucy]

Don't forget to take Vit D with the calcium! My Vit D was once soooo low that my endochrinologist and bone metabolism specialist put me on 4000 of vit D for a short course, reducing it back down to 2000 before my return visit for rechecking. My level had gotten so low that it was off the scale of the lab test, so we'll never know just how low it went.

I have osteoporosis and might be better by now, were I not so bad about remember to take my supplements. I've had the tests that show my body's able to do the right conversions, but it's got to keep up with the supplementation. Can't get much from the foods I eat, and don't get out in our wonderful sunshine here all that much, so can't get the free vit D very outdoors. I do drink fortified OJ when I can remember to do that.

Some people think that the higher amounts of Vit D are what's needed rather than that the recent thinking that large amounts of Calcium are required as once thought. It may be proven one day that a smaller amount of calcium would be adequate were we out in the son getting many more thousand calories of Vit D, or the smaller amounts we could get from diet. Still, we don't know that for a fact, so I really need to raise the amounts of both to the recommended levels, particularly since I'm dairy casein sensitive.

I have so many autoimmune symptoms that I just refer to myself as having autoimmune disease or an overactive immune system, for short. When the overall condition accompanying the M.C. came to a crisis, my thyroid went out, I had a tumor removed, constant migraines, and couldn't walk for the swelling in my feet (not where they swell for high BP or overweight, but inTRAcellular fluid) which was diagnosed as arthritis. The later had been for one SOLID year without a day off, so when after three days of just eliminating the obvious sources of gluten (not the hidden gluten or, as it turned out, a few other allergens), the swelling, pain, and instability went away in just three days, but I was strickly off what I knew contained gluten. It didn't stop the diarrhea, but greatly reduced it, and thus motivated me to continue my study of where this nasty gluten stuff could be lerking. I continued to get better as I approached 100 percent elimination of gluten and over all body pain from a multiplicity of symptoms because better in about three days.

The little bits of diarrhea that remained made me suspicious of milk, so once I'd collected a stool and sent it in for stool testing the gluten (obviously that would be positive) as confirmation, I immediately took myself off the dairy casein to see if my experience of leaving it off would match the results of the casein test that I would get back later with my gluten test. Sure enough my elimination test matched the results that came back positive, so that really increased my faith in the testing.

Still was having breakthrough diarrhea a couple of times a week, mostly, and that exactly matched the frequency of when I'd have eggs for a meal. Sooo, in goes another poop specimen, immediately followed by elimination of eggs. The twice a week diarrhea did, in fact, stop immediately after that, and that was verified by the egg results when they came back. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the egg test AND the dietary YEAST test always done with the egg test also came back positive.

I wasn't getting all that much yeast anyway, and I don't eat anything processed with yeast in the ingredients, but it's inevitable to get it as it's naturally occurring on fruits and vegetables. As long as I don't over do it on those, I don't have any problem. I don't eat baked goods anyway, or drink alcoholic beverages, so it's pretty easy to do. It just might be that some people are more sensitive to the yeast than I, but then, if they are, could it be that it's because they are not avoiding one or more other allergens as well, and it's the total load that's getting them the bigger reactions?

Finally, I was so much better in a few months, that I just wanted to know if a rare breakthrough (not related to any known contamination from the other allergens -- especially gluten) wasn't related to soy.
Sure enough, when the soy test finally came out of hiding in the research lab, my positive results matched my experience.

By the way, once off gluten, it took maybe 6 months to get rid of the fatigue (which was frustrating) after decades of physical and mental pain, pretty much in all types of tissues, including muscle and bone,which had taken only three days after strictly removing the sources of gluten that were obvious to me early on. I know now that this is how long it takes for the surface layer inside the lumen of the gut to heal once the reactions there have finally stopped from lack of the antigen. A person my age doesn't really heal quite all the way, but you couldn't prove it by me as it seemed like a 180 to me then and now.
I still had trouble with malabsorption and had an B-12 level below 400 with neurological signs, so that improved with taking sublingually dissolving B-12 that I found at Whole Foods. Name of the special line of this companies goes by Biochem. I don't even have to take the stuff every day now to keep normal...well, on that anyway! Ha! I had both small bowel damage (fat soluble vits malabsorb) and MC damage in the large intestine which meant water soluble vits were also malabsorbing.

In other words, I was a wreck!!! Now I do laps at a neighborhood pool whenever I can. Couldn't have done THAT before, that's for sure! I'm still way behind on re-conditioning, but one of these days I'm going to get there. By the way, there are still some records waiting to be set in the 95 yr old and up category. I have more than thirty years to get ready for setting that record. Ya gotta have goals in this world!!!

I have rambled enough.
Yours, Luce

[MaggieRedwings]

Welcome Babsey. Have been away and missed greeting you. Sorry to see you hear but glad you found the best informational family for this disease on the internet.

Maggie