MtnBoi,
I thank you for your well wishes. I wish you and your wife the same!
I have mixed feelings about everything these days, and the more I learn the more I feel confident everyone is wrong, but also the less I feel confident about what is right (if anything).
Symptomatically, sauna, charcoal, cholestyramine did not help. And after about 6 months of these diligently, my urine mycotoxins results went up slightly (got a little worse; lab through Real Time Labs). On top of this, I had moved out, left behind pretty much everything except washable towels and clothes (got new beds, new shoes, dishes, etc.).
‘Refeeding’ with whatever I craved really helped for the first 3-6 months, but then I plateaued/regressed. I have since started taking a multivitamin which I think has helped. As I mentioned in my original post, I have a history of restrictive eating, most notably a 4-5 year stint with the low carb paleo thing, and I suspect I built up a few deficiencies during this time. Increased calories and carbs from refeeding precipitated the deficiency symptoms (this is common in, for instance, anorexics). Copper and thiamin (B1) and B6, in particular, tend to be lowish in the modern interpretation of the ‘paleo’ diet, and supplementing these has helped me substantially within hours. (Though it wasn’t the CURE or anything).
As for Shoemaker, I think the method is partially correct. But leaching was common in medieval medicine practices, too, and it often did more harm than good (in fact, the old english for ‘physician’ is best transliterated ‘leech’).
There’s a couple thing to keep in mind:
1) A proper ‘metabolism’ and the hormones that regulate it are also responsible to maintain excretory/detox pathways, without which junk will be accumulated. If someone becomes, for instance, hypothyroid, he/she will accumulate heavy metals, plastics, molds. These environmental toxins can worsen the health still further, but they are not the cause. Besides testing positive for mycotoxins, I also tested positive for urine arsenic. I have no known source of arsenic, so that’s when I began to think things were fishy.
2) Whether or not the initial cause of bad health is, let’s say, mold, if the result is both mold accumulation AND hypothyroidism (read: full body shutdown of any kind), then attempting to leech the mycotoxins via therapies that only encourage the body’s own excretory pathways (pathways which aren’t working well) will not work well. And in the meantime, the body’s nutrients will be leeched leading to increased likelihood of nutrient deficiencies and further metabolic shutdown.
3) Restrictive diets, in particular low carb diets, often feel great for those who have intestinal issues due to overall bad health (again, which may or may not be CAUSED by molds). But these restrictive practices may create further deficiencies and do further harm to the metabolism and body.
Take my advice with a grain of salt, but I would encourage your wife:
A) If she hasn’t already, to get official urine mycotoxins tests with Real Time Labs. A lot of symptoms ‘mimic’ mold toxicity, and I think ‘environmental mold illness’ is like ‘Lyme’ and ‘candida’, which are very serious diseases some people actually do have, but most are just thrown onto the pile because they have some odd compilation of symptoms that no doctor knows how to deal with.
http://www.realtimelab.com/healthcare-mold-and-mycotoxin-information
Real Time Labs are THE standard for this.
If the results come back negative, consider the fact that she does not have mold toxicity. If they come back ?positive?, consider the fact that she may or may not have mold toxicity as a primary issue. Either way, don’t let her leech herself too many months in a row. I think 3 months in a row should be considered a maximum, before at least 3 months of eating and NOT using cholestyramine and whatever else.
B) As for diet, I would beg your wife to NOT engage in restricting any whole classes of foods (such as ?carbs? or ‘starches?). I would make sure she eats plenty of calories and follows her apatite. The body is designed to inform us when we have a need for a certain type of nutrient, but only if it is introduced to enough foodstuffs to be able to ?know? from where each nutrient comes.
C) Consider supplementing with a decent, non-massive-dose multivitamin to see if she may have any long-standing nutrient deficiency. I like to combine a few things:
http://www.gnc.com/GNC-Calcium-Citrate-1000-mg/product.jsp?productId=16513286
These are just what I do and something to consider. Cholestryamine is known to leech nutrients, so she may find that it helps.
As for non-mold blood tests, I have been tested for many things at my own prerogative. Now that my insurance sucks due to the whole health care ordeal, I often use directlabs, walkin labs, and life extension blood tests. Many of my blood results have been very screwy since I got sick, and I would be glad to share with you if you ever wanted that.
This post is just a smattering of thoughts. I in no way mean to patronize you or anything. I think you should do what works. But it is good to know that many things seem to work for a while, before they then make you crash and burn. I think restrictive diets fit into this category.
I will keep this stream updated with my progress as time goes on, but at the moment I don’t seem to be worsening or improving.
Cheers.