So it's no secret I've been sick for a while.
Today I went to a Nutritionist in a last ditch effort to try to get some answers...
This was a visit I was dreading because I figured it would be the same drivel I always hear from doctors, "Oh you need to lose weight and you'll be fine.."
Turns out the visit was quite the opposite.
So I get there and I sit down with her. She's a woman probably around my age. Thin as a rail, I had a good idea I could probably throw her over my shoulder if the need arose.
She started asking questions about how I was eating, what my symptoms were, and wondered how I was doing on the FODMAP diet.
Truthfully I haven't been any better on the FODMAP diet the Gastroenterologist put me on. I'm still sick every morning. There is no change in how I'm feeling at all.
I explained to her how my intestines get so riled up I have no desire to eat, how I force myself to eat something - anything just to take my medications. The look of alarm on her face was something I wish I could have caught on camera.
She asked me if I was having trouble losing weight and I said yes, even on the small amounts of food I manage to ingest.
Well plain as day she looks at me and says, "You're not losing weight because you are malnourished. You're not eating enough and your intestines are not properly absorbing the food you eat. You have what I call a porous intestine, and some folks get this as we age. You see your intestine is like a giant membrane with pores in it, these pores let through sugars, amino acids, and vitamins and minerals, the building blocks your body needs. However in your case these pores have become enlarged, meaning whole proteins are slipping through. These proteins enter your bloodstream and your body says, 'hey wait you aren't supposed to be here!' and it illicits an immune response from your body, which triggers inflammation, irritation, and makes he condition worse. It triggers diahrea, upset stomach, and can cause a whole host of problems because essentially it's almost like an auto immune disease."
I sat there a moment absorbing what she said. It made sense. Why? That last several times I have had blood drawn the doctors were all commenting that my white cell count was slightly elevated. This had even been noted by a couple doctors back east. White blood cells will be elevated if the body is trying to fight off an infection - in this case whole proteins entering my bloodstream.
But what really impressed me is she said she had a possible solution. She has placed me on some expensive probiotics that you have to refrigerate. Along with that she has me getting some digestive enzyme pills as well (Which I never knew existed till today!) and I am to take those along with some prescription medical diet - it's a food replacement for people with digestive tract problems and you mix it up into a shake form and drink it twice a day.
I joked with Peter that I was now finally on the "Nutritious paste" he keeps joking with me about that I would end up eating as my body apparently hates food.
The Nutritionist put me on these three things because she said the only way to reverse the problem is to get my insides to heal. The way to do that is to restore the natural balance inside my intestines. I asked her what could trigger such an inbalance to start and she said, "Stress, age, prolonged illness..A host of things can trigger an inbalance in your body."
I told her that in the past over-the-counter probiotics have made me sick and she told me that, "I hear that frequently, don't get the stuff you find at pharmacies and grocery stores, it's not as good as the stuff I'm giving you because they don't always have the correct bacteria in them to solve a problem like yours."
So let's hope we finally have a solution. I want to be able to work again.
