My Health Story

Hello and welcome to my blog!

My name is Sarah. I’m 20 years old, living in South Jordan, Utah, and currently going through some health challenges that I wanted to document somewhere and maybe even help others who might be going through similar problems by sharing everything I’ve learned that has helped me along the way! I will also share any other tips and tricks I have for leading a happy, healthy life! The first thing I want to post about is my health story.. and it's really long, but maybe this will be helpful to those who have asked me what's been going on for the past year with my health, or maybe I'll just keep it as a journal so I can remember everything I've learned. Either way, here it is:

So my health story starts in January 2014. Before then, the only health problems I had were some food sensitivities and I guess being really skinny and never able to gain any weight no matter what I eat is also a concern because that could possibly be a result of malnourishment. Anyways, January 2014, my food sensitivities seemed to get worse.. I was feeling sick more often from things I would eat and I started getting anxiety attacks every once in a while at work because I wouldn’t feel very well from what I’d been eating and then I would get really anxious because I had to help customers but I felt so sick, so it would get a lot worse and I would end up sitting in the back room feeling like I was going to vomit any minute… but I never did.  

            One night in April, I suddenly got really sick.. my stomach was burning all night and the next few days I had NO appetite, felt very nauseous, dizzy, weak, and had heart burn. I just lay on our couch for days feeling too sick to even watch TV.

I’m one of those people who, the second I have any health problems or questions, I go straight to Google and spend the next 3 hours researching and trying to figure out what the problem is myself.. (which I thought was better than going to a doctor, but now 14 months later, I wish I had just gone straight to a naturopath from the start- more on that later) so the first thing I thought was maybe it’s a stomach ulcer?.. I seemed to have all the symptoms so I looked up the remedies, went to Hi Health and bought some supplements to take.. (I think I got a garlic supplement, and some kind of black licorice.. both for healing the stomach lining)

            However, I couldn’t have had a stomach ulcer because ulcers take weeks to heal and I felt a lot better after about 4 or 5 days.. so I thought, “well it must have just been some bad virus I caught from all the poop and vomit I cleaned up while I nannied for 6 days last week.)

            A week later, I was on a plane headed to Rexburg, Idaho for my second semester of college. I was really looking forward to going back to school.. I love BYU-Idaho and I love being in school and going to classes, learning new things, and meeting new people. Once I got there, I started getting these burning headaches almost every day and I remember not really even knowing how to describe my headaches to my dad because they weren’t like normal painful headaches, but I literally felt like someone started a little fire in my head and I felt weak, light headed and really tired. I just lived with the pain for a little while, until one day I was in my first class of the day and suddenly my head felt SO HEAVY! It was so weird, I couldn’t keep my head up and I felt so tired and weak.. I started getting really anxious for my next class because I had ballet and I knew I had to dance and move a lot, but I wasn’t feeling good. I went to ballet and felt awful the whole time.. I felt so weak and nauseous, but pushed through the class and thought afterwards, “if I can get through ballet feeling sick, I’ll be fine..” but I just kept getting worse. My next class, I was sitting at my desk and I felt like I was going to pass out sitting down.. It was my communications class where we all sit in a big circle and talk a lot, but I just kept quiet the whole class and sat through it trying not to faint. When class was over, I thought I would for sure faint once I stood up, but I managed to get up and walk home to my apartment.

            When I got home, I asked my roommate to drive me to the doctor. I went to the Madison Health Clinic and described my symptoms to the doctor, and told him how I ate a relatively healthy diet, slept 8-9 hours EVERY night even in school, exercised regularly, etc. and he decided that I was just stressed about school and had anxiety….  so he gave me bystollic beta blocker pills to slow my heart rate which was regularly 90bpm. He told me if I took the pill, all my symptoms would go away… but they didn’t.. I still got the burning headaches and had another night of burning stomach pain and wasn’t getting better. The pills did slow my heart rate and made me feel a little more calm, but they just covered up one SYMPTOM and I wish he would have helped me find the root of the problem instead of giving me a pill to help with the anxiety..  

            My dad called one day and told me to try going off of gluten because I might have celiac disease. So I did. And let me tell you, you would not realize how many products have gluten in them until you have to check every label… it’s messed up. So anyways, I didn’t feel any better for a couple weeks, but after that I seemed to improve a ton and the burning headaches went away for a while. I thought I finally found what was wrong with me and if I stayed on a gluten-free diet I would be all better.

            Fast forward a couple months and I started feeling sick all the time again! I would be sick- nauseous, weak, chest pain, burning headaches, fatigue, etc. for a few days, and then I would be totally fine for a few days. And I would get the weirdest head feeling like I was spaced out all the time. You know when you make your eyes focus on something really close and that makes your head feel kind of weird? Well I had that out-of-focus, spaced out feeling in my head that wouldn’t go away and it drove me CRAZY. I thought, maybe I’m just messing up on my diet and I keep eating gluten somehow.. but I researched a ton and knew all about the cross contamination and the whole.. don’t use the toaster that touches regular bread, and watch out for the other 10 things on food labels that could be gluten in disguise like caramel color, artificial flavors, malt barley powder, etc. so I didn’t know why I still felt sick, but I just lived with it and figured that healing a leaky gut from celiac disease takes time so that’s why I’m still sick all the time.

            So in September, my family went on a trip to Europe that we had been planning for about 2 years. I went to another primary care doctor right before the trip because I was so nervous about being sick the whole time, and she did a food allergy blood test and told me that I have food allergies for wheat, soy, corn, potato, pea, tomato, and peanuts.. cool. She also told me I didn’t test positive for celiacs disease and that I should just not worry or be anxious and have fun on our trip… Oh it’s a miracle!! I’m suddenly feeling ALL better because she told me to JUST NOT feel this way…. I was so annoyed with her because I honestly don’t think she even knew what celiacs disease is.. she seemed really confused when I asked her about it.

I was sick on and off in Europe.. I brought my own gf granola bars (the Kind brand nut bars.. very healthy and yummy!) and some gf beef jerky, and welch’s fruit snacks, and I ate those snacks plus eggs for breakfast, salads or fruit for lunch, and I can’t even remember what I ate for dinner because I think I just snacked then too most of the time.. while the rest of my family ate out every single meal and got to try the most delicious European food. (The most frustrating thing on this trip was the fact that I was eating gluten free and mostly whole foods the whole time so that I WOULDN’T get sick, but I was still sick all the time so it was pointless and I just wanted to eat what everyone else was eating!!)

The worst of my sickness was when I was in Norway. My sister Ashley and I went to Norway alone to visit Ashley’s friend Kristine and stay with her family for a week. This was such a cool experience and we love Kristine and her family.. they were so awesome. But it was pretty hard for me. When we got there, Kristine’s mom told me she had talked to a friend about gluten-free so she was going to make all our meals gluten-free for everyone. (This made me so anxious because she was making everyone eat gluten free FOR ME so of course I have to eat every meal she made and at first I thought she really did understand it and was aware of cross-contamination, but I saw cross contamination happening a lot with used cheese, bread knives, cutting boards, etc. and her food made me sick the whole trip. L and I felt SO BAD because she was soo nice for making such a huge effort for me, someone she doesn’t even know, but it was making me so sick and I had to just pretend like I felt fine a lot on that trip.. it was pretty exhausting.

After Europe, it was the same cycle.. sick a few days, fine a few days. I went to another primary care doctor who didn’t help me at all either, but I really appreciated his honesty when he said, “I honestly don’t know what that could be exactly, but I think you should see a gastrointestinologist because it definitely sounds like gastrointestinal problems.” So he recommended me a couple good GI doctors in the Phoenix area, but I never made an appointment because we were in the middle of moving our lives to Utah!

My dad had just gotten offered a job in Salt Lake, so all of a sudden, we had to move in a MONTH! So I just focused on helping pack up the house and getting ready for the big move. I remember the week before we moved, I was feeling especially sick..  and I just remember laying on a mat on the floor for a few days feeling so weak and sick. My dad promised me that once we got to Utah, he would finally let me see a GI specialist. So I kind of just hung in there.. and something I’m really feeling bad about still is I didn’t really get to say goodbye to anyone because I was sick every day. One of the hardest parts of this whole thing has been feeling so sick, but looking fine on the outside and people not understanding why I don’t want to hang out or why I can’t come see them or say goodbye.. it was bad communication on my part, but I just didn’t want to tell anyone I was feeling sick or have anyone feeling sorry for me! I wanted to be normal and accepted and not so sick all the time.. so I had to leave without saying goodbye to a lot of people, and I think I really hurt a few… like the 3 little girls I nannied for the past 5 years.. they seriously became my little sisters and I told them I’d never leave for too long and then I left without even saying goodbye… I’m so sorry.

             

            We got to Salt Lake safe and sound in my new car. (I invested in a nice car thinking I would use it to drive to work every day.. not knowing that 4 months later, I’m unable to work and running out of money that I need for car payments every month… woops). We stayed at my grandma Springer’s house for a couple weeks when we first got here. I was feeling better and only had a couple sick days. I finally decided to eliminate all my food allergens from my diet (My diet at this time was a lot of unhealthy gluten-free packaged products.. especially corn products) so I decided to finally eliminate all my food allergens from my diet, especially focusing on eliminating corn. (I read a great article that I found after typing “gluten free and still sick” into google.. it talked about 6 reasons you could be eating gluten-free and still sick.

 http://www.theceliacdiva.com/im-gluten-free-and-still-sick/

 I also read another even greater article called, “The gluten free lie: Why most celiacs are slowly dying” talking about how unhealthy a gluten-free diet is because most people on the gluten-free diet, like me, go straight for all the packaged gf products full of sugar and crap that are even more unhealthy for you than regular products. (side note: when you find a good health article, not only should you read the article, but sometimes the comments can be even more helpful than the article itself.. at least I thought so. People’s comments gave me lots of new ideas all the time.)

Anyways, here’s that article: http://scdlifestyle.com/2012/03/the-gluten-free-lie-why-most-celiacs-are-slowly-dying/

So what was I saying? Oh yes, I eliminated corn and that seemed to help a lot. I thought that would finally be the end of this constant sickness, but a few weeks later, I was still feeling really crappy and just not 100%. So I found a website.. scdlifestyle.com and read all about this Specific Carbohydrate Diet which is a very restrictive diet that eliminates all grains, starches, sugars, etc. and is said to completely CURE celiac disease. So I bought the book “Breaking the Vicious Cycle” by Elaine Gottschal and decided to try the diet.

The first couple weeks on this diet were AWFUL! When you eliminate sugars, starches, grains, etc. from your diet, you get this die-off reaction because you’re starving the yeast and bacteria in your body until they die which causes them to release toxins into your body which make you feel sick, weak, and have very strong cravings. (I realized this must be why it’s so hard for people to go on diets or eliminate sugar from their diet! Because that first week or so is SO miserable, but once you get through that rough patch, the cravings go away and it’s not so bad). But yeah, I was seriously so miserable at first. I would wake up every day and my first thought of the day was, “I can’t eat anything.. I’m going to starve again today.” It was so depressing and I was just so unhappy and craving sugar so bad!!

The die-off reaction was supposed to last 3-7 days, but after 14 days of feeling really sick, I decided it must be something else because I should definitely have been feeling a little better by then, but I was getting way worse than before I even started the diet.

More research later, I decided I had candida, not celiacs.

“Candida Albicans is an opportunistic fungus (or form of yeast) that is the cause of many undesirable symptoms ranging from fatigue and weight gain, to joint pain and gas.

The Candida Albicans yeast is a part of the gut flora, a group of microorganisms that live in your mouth and intestine. When the Candida Albicans population starts getting out of control it weakens the intestinal wall, penetrating through into the bloodstream and releasing its toxic byproducts throughout the body.”

I had never heard of this before until my nana suggested it to us, so I looked it up and took an online quiz, which said I had a very high chance of having candida overgrowth. So I bought another book from Barnes and Noble called “Complete Candida Yeast Guidebook” by Jeanne Marie Martin. This book is very informative and interesting.. I read the whole thing in one sitting.. I really seemed to fit all the symptoms, especially, “whole body sickness.” All the other diets and disease’s symptoms I had read about never mentioned a symptom of whole body sickness, but this is one of the main things I had been feeling for months…. like my whole body was sick and weak all over.

So I tried the candida diet and some symptoms went away, but then I got new symptoms too… like this upper stomach pain after I would eat ANYTHING.. even bananas, and piercing normal headaches every night.

We finally set up an appointment with a gastrointestinal doctor. I researched for weeks looking for the right doctor with the best reviews and found one in Draper. The earliest available appointment was in 4 weeks though, so I waited and suffered until then, but I was so excited to finally see a specialist!!! Unfortunately, I got my hopes up and ended up being SO disappointed and upset about that appointment… I seriously did not appreciate this woman. I wrote down everything I wanted to tell her like my different symptoms over the past year and things I had tried already that didn’t work, etc.  I had edited and practiced what I was going to say for days because I wanted it to be clear and concise and make perfect sense. I even read it for Ashley the night before and she said it was great and not too long.. about 7 minutes.

After reading for about a minute, the doctor stopped me and said, “Ok I think I get the gist of what you’re saying.” …. SERIOUSLY?! I’m not even done yet! I had just finished telling her about when we thought it might be celiacs.. and she was like, “yeah that sounds like celiacs” and told me I was probably getting gluten in my diet somewhere.. um lady I’ve been eating WHOLE FOODS only for WEEKS, no more gluten-free packaged crap and I’m sicker than ever so I obviously don’t have celiacs disease. But I was polite and asked her,

“ok so what should I do now?”

“I want to do a biopsy to see if you have celiacs”

“That test is inaccurate though because you have to be eating gluten for a minimum of 3-4 weeks in order for any damage of the stomach lining to show up and I’ve been off of gluten for about 8 months now so it’s not even going to show so what’s the point of spending 1200 dollars on an inaccurate test that won’t show anything?”

“Yeah it most likely will not show, but I just want to do it anyways to rule out celiacs.” (Dude, you can't RULE something out that won't even show up in the first place)

…….and then she gave me ANTIBIOTICS… which every online forum I read said that most doctors will just try to give you drugs to cover up symptoms, which will only make the problem worse. Oh and I asked her about candida, and she seriously had NO idea what I was talking about…

So anyways, I was so ticked after this appointment that I went straight to Walmart, bought 2 large bags of chocolate and sat on the couch devouring chocolate for hours while watching TV …and then I spent the rest of the night in the bathroom…. I wish I hadn’t caved on the diet, but at this point I seriously felt like WHAT IS THE POINT anymore?! I’m trying SO hard to get better by eating so well, but I’m only getting worse, NO ONE is helping me, and if I can just have chocolate I can be happy again! Hahaha temporary happiness I know.. so yeah, January 2015 was a very hard month for me.

It wasn’t until February when I finally found a good doctor. Carly was the one who found him for me actually..  I kind of blew up on her one morning and was saying “None of you even care about me getting better! I’m so sick and NO ONE cares!! If you cared, you guys would help me find someone who can help me get better!” I felt bad after getting so mad at her, but hey, right after I said that, she got to work and found this amazing naturopath in Draper who I’ve been seeing for the past 2 months!

"Naturopathy or naturopathic medicine is a form of alternative medicine employing a wide array of "natural" treatments, including homeopathy, herbalism, and acupuncture, as well as diet and lifestyle counseling."

I wish I had gone to a naturopath from the start. These people are SO smart and really help you get to the root of your problem instead of just giving you drugs to cover up your symptoms.

Dr. Jacobs actually answered a lot of my questions over email before I even set up an appointment with him which was AWESOME.. I mean this specialist I was waiting weeks to see didn’t even listen to me for 5 minutes when I was PAYING her money, but Dr. Jacobs spent time talking to me before I even paid a cent which really made me feel like he cared. I told him all my symptoms and that I thought I had candida and he agreed so he suggested I try betaine capsules which give you more stomach acid or something. I took one and it gave me this burning sensation in my chest and made me feel really sick that night.. I felt hot all over, my chest was burning, and I couldn’t fall  asleep for hours which is really abnormal for me.... so I emailed him the next day and he said “It is highly likely you have gastritis and the extra acid has irritated an already inflamed stomach.”

“Gastritis is an inflammation, irritation, or erosion of the lining of the stomach. It can occur suddenly(acute) or gradually (chronic)” So this actually makes a lot of sense because remember when I was eating whole foods but still feeling sick all the time? That’s because my stomach lining is damaged and until I heal the damage, I won’t feel much better, no matter what I eat. So I have a combination of problems: Gastritis which occurred suddenly, candida overgrowth from a high sugar diet, and food allergies caused by the candida? I don’t know if I’m 100% right about that, but all 3 are kind of caused by each other.. I think.

So anyways, I stopped taking the betaine capsules and Dr. Jacobs had me buy some Aloe Vera juice… This stuff is the BEST. I’ve tried SO many natural supplements over the past year, but this one has by far made the most difference in my health. Aloe Vera has SO many health benefits that I'll have to talk about in a post another day.

I buy the quart sized glass bottles from whole foods (they’re preservative free and organic) and drink 4oz, 4 times a day.. I think it tastes kind of gross so I plug my nose every time I drink it. He also had me order some Acid Block Rx vitamins which, when you chew 2 after a meal, they create this kind of barrier in your esophagus, and make it so that no acid from your food can come up into your esophagus. Those definitely seemed to help too.. I don’t take them much anymore because I haven’t really needed them, which is great. But one of my main symptoms was nausea for months and those vitamins prevent any nausea after meals. (BTW I order most of my supplements/vitamins from amazon.com because they have the best prices, and I like to read all the reviews on each product- they’re very helpful in finding the best one)

So once I actually had my appointment with Dr. Jacobs, he wrote me up a bunch of other things to get that I’ve been trying as well like peppermint and oregano capsules before meals, Swedish bitters (this stuff is awesome as well- I pour 1tsp in a cup of water and drink it 5-15 min before every meal to aid in digestion), fluconazole (a drug that kills yeast instantly that I had to take for 10 days which made me feel pretty sick but made me feel a lot better once I was done!)

 So on top of the supplements I’m taking, I also have to be on a VERY restrictive diet. Dr. Jacobs has me on a “Gut-Reset” diet which is a low-fermentation diet. It’s similar to an anti-candida diet, but a little more restrictive (if that’s even possible). So I’ll share the recipes for what I eat daily in another post, but the main foods I eat right now are: eggs, minimal fruit, salads (still need to find a dressing without vinegar or sugar), chicken, tilapia, turkey, carrots, oats, smoothies, cheese.. that’s about it! He told me depending on how damaged my stomach is, I might have to follow this diet for only a few weeks- up to a few months.. hopefully just a few weeks though..

 So everything I’ve talked about so far was the past up until now. So let’s talk about the present for a minute. Right now this very minute, I feel pretty good. I’m on a record of 5 days straight feeling great. I went hiking a couple days ago, I’ve been out and about running errands every day, and hanging out with people again. I finally feel like what I'm doing is working thanks to Dr. Jacobs and I feel a lot more hopeful for my future. 

I feel happy and that’s because this trial has really humbled me. I was so depressed for months. I didn’t want to live anymore, I saw no purpose in life, and I was so angry that I felt this way when everyone else felt fine. I can’t remember a specific day, but there was definitely a point of this journey where I remember thinking, “If this is my life and I’m going to be sick like this with no explanation forever, then if there’s one thing I will do in my life, it will be being kind to my family, loving and serving them in any way I can, and being the best latter day saint I can be by really studying my scriptures every day, praying sincerely and with more gratitude, and just doing my best every day. And that change of mind-set is what has made me feel so much happier lately. I’m still sick. I’m still struggling and worried about my future every day. I still have anxiety and get nervous anytime I have to go somewhere because I’m afraid I’ll be sick again like I have so many times in the past, and I’m stressed about money because I haven’t been able to work and I’m running out of savings.. but I really am happy because I have a wonderful family, I’m part of an amazing church that pushes me to focus less on myself and focus more on others and I have a savior who lives and loves me. Everything will be ok.

            Thank you for reading! I know it’s insanely long, but I had to write it down somewhere so I won’t forget this crazy journey I’ve been on in my life that has changed me so much and made me a better person. If you have any questions, feel free to comment or email me at sarah_laurel94@yahoo.com and ask!

xoxo

Sarah Laurel