Why my doctors’ treatments led me on a journey of health discovery

I’m 28 years old.

For most of life, I’m what I consider to be healthy. I exercise a lot, I eat “well” and I sleep 8 hours a day. I don’t have any illnesses apart from the standard cold or flu.

It was not until 3.5 years ago that my situation started to change for the worse. It started off when I was prescribed antibiotics by a doctor for what turned out to be a common “cold”. A couple of weeks later, I developed symptoms for “hand, foot and mouth” disease, a disease that is highly contagious with children but less heard of in adults. The doctor that I saw at the time prescribed me with antibiotics again and low and behold, I was through another course of antibiotics.

A couple of months later, I had a bout of food poisoning and from here this is where things went south. Normally, when I get sick (and with most people), I am able to recover from the illness within a week or two. This time was different though. I remember going to work and having to rush to the toilet with a stomach ache in between meetings. The pain persisted for more than a week and I started feeling fatigued and nauseous. I knew something was wrong and went back to my doctor for help. The doctor on hearing my symptoms believed I had reflux and prescribed me with Nexium, which is a stronger version of an antacid. I took these but it made me feel worse so I decided to stop taking it after a week. Going back to the doctor, he decided it was best that I see a specialist and so he referred me to a gastroenterologist. Throughout all this time, I was so fatigued and nauseous every day that I felt scared and started having panic attacks at work (which I attribute now to the strong dosage of PPIs I was taking). I remember thinking that I was dying (google doesn’t help). I would go home and start running on the treadmill because that was the only way my symptoms were alleviated.

When the time came to see the gastroenterologist, I explained my symptoms and a set of comprehensive tests were performed in order to determine what my problem was. The diagnosis was that I had low grade inflammation in my gut and that the treatment plan was that I take PPIs for a month until my symptoms improved. The difference this time between taking the PPIs last time was that I had a much lower dosage and so the side effects of the PPIs did not affect me as much.

1 month later, I weaned off the PPIs and was back to being myself..or at least I thought. Eating healthy and exercising regularly, I still found myself fatigued every day (especially after lunch). At first, I thought this was normal and that it must be the post lunch 3:30itis blood sugar. However, almost 1 year of persisting through these symptoms thinking it was the norm, I started to realise that my symptoms were not normal. After lunch, I would constantly yawn and not be able to function both physically and mentally. It was so bad that I could not work even if I was pushing myself to do so.

I decided that this was a problem and went to a doctor. He referred me to a sleep specialist, who then put me on a CPAP machine after finding out from my sleep study that I had mild sleep apnea (this also explained my loud snoring). At my age, being put on a CPAP machine is inhibiting. On my backpacking holiday to Europe, I had to carry my CPAP machine around with me whilst living in hostels as I knew that if I did not, I would wake up tired and also wake everyone up with my loud snoring.

Fast forward another 6 months, I remember speaking to a friend about my sleep apnea issue and telling her how determined I was to fix the problem and not just the underlying symptoms. Out of luck, she knew somebody who was a sleep specialist and had a more “natural” approach to curing sleep apnea. At this point, I really wanted to treat the problem and was more determined than ever to fix my problem from the inside out. I decided to give this sleep specialist a go. He was a dentist who asked a set of detailed questions and performed a comprehensive scan of my facial features in order to help me determine what the underlying problem was. The scans showed that I had a narrowed breathing airway and low grade inflammation, which was caused by the following:

1. My tongue position being too low and dropping back into the throat.
2. Breathing with my mouth instead of my nose when I sleep.
3. My diet.
4. Stress.

I was given two options, the first being surgery and the second being “natural”. I of course decided to take the “natural” option first. I was asked to eat a very clean diet of whole foods for the next couple of weeks. Furthermore, I had a splint made (which is a device like a retainer used to prevent your tongue from falling back whilst you sleep).

To be more certain of what foods were causing my inflammation, I did an “IGE” test. An “IGE” test is used to test for food intolerances and will test your immune response to the list of foods tested. It is a simple test that involves pricking your finger for a little bit of blood, which then gets sent to the laboratory. The findings were that I had elevated IGE levels i.e. an elevated immune response reaction to many foods I was eating. The highest levels were for foods that contain cows milk, soybean and egg white. At first, I was sceptical about the findings (if you read articles about the accuracy of IGE tests, you may be too). However, upon talking to the sleep specialist, I decided to avoid these foods to see how my body would respond.

A couple of months of strict dieting and also sleeping with the splint, my body started to improve and I started to feel the effects of reducing the inflammation in my body. I was waking up more refreshed and was less fatigued after lunch. The test results of my sleep study reflected this as well. Fast forward to now, if you were to ask me how much I feel my health has improved, I would say I am feeling 80% better than I used to be. I have my energy and am happy again. I have started doing buteyko breathing and also sleeping with my mouth taped up to address cause #2 and that has improved my energy levels even more. I’m also taking Ashwagandha and L-theanine at times to deal with my stress.

I share with you below my key takeaways from this journey so far:

1. I firmly believe that chronic low grade inflammation is the precursor to all disease. What you eat is extremely important and most of the foods that we eat in modern society is causing chronic low grade inflammation. Learn to read a food label and learn to understand what food ingredients are good for you and which ones are not. Foods are marketed to you, so be careful of “healthy” foods which are not actually healthy. Stay in the fruits and vegetables section of a grocery store.
2. “All diseases begin in the gut” — Hippocrates. Improving our gut microbiome is critical to our health and wellbeing. To improve your gut microbiome, eat a variety of fermented foods regularly (for e.g. yoghurt and saeurkraut) and take a a spoonful of high quality manuka honey with a UMF rating of 10+ instead of antibiotics.
3. Not every doctor is a “good” doctor. I trusted the medical industry when I was younger but I have learnt that some doctors don’t care enough to diagnose properly. Some doctors only care only about getting people in and out of their rooms within 5 minutes. Some doctors don’t take a holistic approach to health and treat symptoms instead of the underlying cause. In my case, I had antibiotics when I didn’t need it and I spent $2k+ on CPAP machine equipment when there was a better alternative. Learn to independently question what your doctor is saying.
4. Chronic stress is a silent killer. Stress is when we are in “fight and flight” mode, when our adrenal glands are releasing cortisol and adrenaline. Healthy stress is when we occassionally trigger “fight and flight” mode. However, in today’s day and age, stress can persist for days or weeks on end, for example, if you have an urgent deadline at work, you may be suffering from stress all day every day until that deadline is met. Furthermore, stress can creep up in our lives without us realising it, for example, the noise of cars when we are sleeping. This may mean your body is suffering from low grade inflammation all day every day. The effects of such stress are not immediate but cumulative.
5. You are in control of your own health. Never give up on finding a solution to the problem. This is perhaps the most important take-way. On reflection, if I did not have the grit and persistence to figure out for myself the underlying cause of all my health issues, I would not have been able to improve my health in the way I have now. I could have easily accepted my fate with the CPAP machine but I chose to deny that it was the only solution. I am grateful that I kept my faith in believing that there was an alternative solution. I think you should too.