I knew I had a toxicity problem because I had had a heavy metal 24 hr. urine collection test done.  Not surprisingly I came back with an elevated level of mercury.  Unfortunately, after that my doctor convinced me to try doing intravenous chelation therapy to extract the metals.  I say unfortunately because after I did one round of the therapy I was so sick I pretty much stayed in bed for about two weeks after that.  I couldn’t understand why I was so wiped out by it then, but I understand it much better now.  The chelation treatment stirred up all the heavy metals that were hanging around buried in my cells, but my body then had no way of getting them out since my gut was so messed up and my nutrient levels were in the basement. 

Here’s the thing about detoxifying:  you have to have adequate nutrient levels in your body before you’re going to be able to get the junk out.  Why is that?  Because every molecule of every toxin which I had to detoxify needed to go through a chain reaction of chemical reactions to get transformed into something that my body could excrete.  In toxicology they talk about the “detox pathways” in the body.  (For more info on all of this see Detoxify or Die by Sherry Rogers.)  At every stage in the chain of reactions, all of the ingredients needed for the reaction to take place must be present or else it won’t happen.  And what are these ingredients?  Nutrients in your body, like B vitamins, antioxidants, amino acids, etc. 

So if a reaction can’t take place because you don’t have the right ingredients, the toxins have to just hang out and linger until the ingredients show up.  You get a bottleneck effect.  But bodies are smart.  They don’t let the toxins just hang out in the bloodstream where they can do more damage.  They sequester them away into cells to take them out of the blood stream.  That’s why the first step in detoxifying is to shake things up; to get the toxins dislodged from the cells.  The next step is for them to be changed into a form which you can excrete by the chemical reactions that use up nutrients.

Based on this you can probably guess why people become chemically sensitive.  They simply get overloaded with toxins because they don’t have the nutrients and right ingredients available to get rid of them.  Then when they’re exposed to some tiny whiff of fragrance they freak out because they just don’t have any place else to put any more chemicals.  (fragrances are just a bunch of chemicals, by the way, in case you didn’t know)  They are really and truly overloaded.  I was one of them.  I went for a long time not being able to sit around other people at church because the smell of them was truly overwhelming.  And the smells were not over the top perfumes, they were just shaving cream and deodorant kind of smells. 

When people get wound up around cigarette smoke or some other weird smell they claim they can smell that no one else can, they really are not making it up.  They really do smell it because the chemicals really are there.  They are like the canary in the mine shaft – they are so much more sensitive to the chemicals that they can tell when they are being exposed, unlike most of the rest of us.  (It’s nice to include myself in “the rest of us” now!  I don’t smell the weird smells no one else smells anymore, and sometimes even my husband picks up on cigarette smoke when we’re out before I do.)

 To get rid of the chemicals, you have to have adequate nutrients in your body.  But what if your gut is screwed up?  What if you’re not absorbing nutrients?  See my post about malabsorption for some thoughts about that.  A great test to find out your nutrient levels is done by Spectracell (http://www.spectracell.com/lab/FIA_testing.html)  and is called the Functional Intracellular Analysis.  Any doctor can order it for you and all you pay is a $75 copay.  (That is a bargain compared to the $600 I paid for my first nutrient analysis test).  It gives you a clear measure of how your nutrient levels are doing so you can do something about it.

So let’s summarize: 

• to heal chemical sensitivity and many other health problems, I needed to detoxify the junk I’d stored up in my body.
• Detoxification happens through a series of chemical reactions requiring specific ingredients at each stage.  These ingredients consist of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc.
• I, like all human beings, had to have adequate levels of nutrients in my body to detoxify anything.  If I didn’t, then I would stockpile the junk until I did. 
• Here’s the good news:  when a body gets what it needs it can start getting rid of what it doesn’t need.  A healthy diet alone will unlikely be enough to dig someone out of the hole of chronic fatigue or chemical sensitivity, as I discovered.  I had to figure out why I had such chronically low levels of nutrients….the plot thickens.   Check back for when I write about the scourge of ….malabsorption! (imagine some thunder and lightening in the background here, plus some eerie music maybe).

I was at the doctor’s office, and she said, “Here are the markers you have to have in order to be diagnosed with CFS:  1) the presence of Epstein Barr virus, 2) definite onset of fatigue, 3) fatigue not alleviated by rest, 4) post exertion fatigue lasting more than 24 hours, 5) memory and concentration problems, 6) tender lymph nodes.  You have all of these.”  I said, “I do not have chronic fatigue syndrome.”  She said, “Well, you have all the markers.” (actually I think the markers are a little different right now than they were then.  See this link:  http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/cfsdiagnosis.htm ) Me:  “Yes, but I don’t have that.”  We batted this back and forth a few more minutes before she gave up and said, “Okay, fine, you don’t have it.”   This felt like a small but significant victory at a time when there wasn’t much to celebrate about.  I’m glad she never flat out said, “You have chronic fatigue syndrome.”  That would have been harder to ignore.

I’d never really stood up to a doctor like that before and just totally disagreed.  She was right, of course, but somehow I had a gut sense that I needed to refuse this thing that had happened to me rather than accept and embrace it.  I didn’t want to join a CFS support group.  I figured it would be all too easy for me to start to identify myself as a CFS sufferer rather than as someone who had some health problems that she was going to get rid of one way or another.  Support groups give me the willies.  I’ve never actually been to one, but just the thought of connecting with other people around an illness strikes me as something that is not healthy.  Let’s connect with other people around positive, life giving things.  Sharing information is helpful, but I can get loads more information doing one good google search than I can talking to someone else who’s as foggy headed and memory compromised as I was. 

I also didn’t want to admit to having a chronic problem with no treatment protocol.  I figured there had to be some underlying problem that was at the root of all these symptoms I was experiencing, and that giving the symptoms names was not going to help or change anything.  What I need was real, profound change, not a set of words describing what was wrong with me. 

So what did I do to get rid of the chronic fatigue?  In general, I’d say it went away, just like many of my other symptoms, as I started to address the most fundamental health problems I was facing:  malabsorption, nutritional deficiencies, toxicity, and bad bugs.  Personally, I believe that those are the three underlying factors of all disease, and there’s plenty of research out there that would support that statement.   I hope to be doing some posts on each of those things.

 So the best thing I can say about CFS is that it will go away when the rest of your body is cleaned out and getting the nutrient it needs.  That sounds simple and ultimately it is.  The question then becomes how do you do it for your body.  What do you need to be able to detoxify without making yourself feel horrible?  I have lots of thoughts about that which I’ll write more about at some time. 

My chronic fatigue didn’t go away overnight, but it has gone away.  I am still amazed each day that I don’t even think about taking a nap.  I have more energy right now than I’ve had in years.  It is a wonderful gift to get your life back.  You can get yours back, too.  Persist to the end.  Fight the good fight.  You’re in a battle for your life.  The quality of your life from here on out is in your hands and depends on the choices you will make day to day, hour by hour.  Tackle one piece of the problem at a time and never give up until you are as healthy as you want to be. 

Here are some of the health problems which I’ve overcome by the grace of God:

• Chronic fatigue syndrome
• Multiple chemical sensitivity
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Frequent anaphalactic reactions
• Multiple food allergies
• Acne
• Hair loss
• Muscle spasms
• Tightness in chest
• Brain fog
• Candida infection
• Parasite infection
• Sensitivity to heat and cold
• Low white blood cell count
• Compromised immune system
• PMS
• Easy bruising
• Extremely dry skin and hair
• Recurring mouth sores
• Heartburn
• Malabsorption of nutrients
• Low blood pressure
• Hypoglycemia, feeling hungry all the time.
• Adrenal problems
• Screwed up cortisol levels
• Easily injured by physical activity
• Low exercise tolerance
• Dizziness
• Insomnia
• Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, etc.

If I can beat these problems, then you can too.  There is nothing special about my body that it has been able to get rid of all of this junk.  I was a mess, plain and simple.  So if I, who was a mess, can be healthy and energetic then anyone can.  One thing that I feel sure of after living through these past few years is that anything and everything can be healed.  Don’t let anyone tell you differently. 

My aim is to provide as much information as I can for other people who may be suffering from similar symptoms that I had.  I have people that I’ve never met calling me up regularly now asking me how I recovered from all of these maladies.  I want to have a place to which I can point them where they can read as much as they like about my journey.  I can’t tell anyone else what they need to do since every body is unique and has it’s own set of unique problems.  But I can tell you what I did and how I went about tackling each problem one by one.  Maybe my process of thinking things through and exploration may help you along on your own process of discovery and healing.  May God bless you in your search for true health!

I had also become highly chemically sensitive.  All kinds of chemicals bothered me.  I couldn’t go in stores or offices.  Even the car bothered me.  So I mainly stayed home except for absolutely necessary trips. 

My gut was shot and I had constant diarrhea.  My skin had broken out.  I was cold all the time.  I only had a handful of foods I could eat and which I wouldn’t react to. 

Through a process of prayer, study, exploration and trial and error, I am now substantially healed of all these things.  There are many, many things I’ve tried along the way.  Some have been helpful and some have been a waste of time and money for me.  There hasn’t been one magic bullet that’s healed me – there’s been more like twenty. 

I still have some issues that I am working on to resolve, namely a condition called eosinophillic fasciitis which was just diagnosed in April, 2008.  I am confident, however, that this is going to eventually be on my list of items healed.  I’ll keep you posted on the progress.