Thursday, November 21, 2013

Wherein 23&me helps me fix things.

I am somewhat hopeful that a few rather disturbing issues I've had for the past few months are cleared up. In the summer I went to the hospital, pretty sure I had appendicitis, but all the test came back clean of everything, so they said I had irritable bowel syndrome. It seems there are a growing number of these sorts of syndromes, which are actually synonymous with doctors saying they don't know what to do.

So, I chased around various fixes on the internet, the largest one being FODMAPS. FODMAPS are a bunch of carbohydrates that are osmotic and can cause havoc in the gut. So, sometimes I felt better, sometimes I didn't. But there are more things on the internet- how to improve your gut health, war stories about candida, various issues about histamines, etc...

Well, I had signed up for 23&me last year, and there was this interesting little thread in their forums about problems with various forms of sulfur.
I had a few of the polymorphisms (I think that's the right word), and I already knew I had problems with sulfur medications, so I tried some molybdenum, which is a vital part of the sulfur oxidase enzyme in the body.

It made things much, much better.

So, I have dropped a lot of foods, supplements, and drinks that have sulfur- except for coffee. I am hoping I'll be able to eat many of these foods again, and that I just need to heal up a little. I think it was ultimately a few of the supplements that pushed the sulfur up to the point where my body just couldn't take it. I still have to focus on gut health, but now that can be done in the context of a stable environment.

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