Rebecca July 24th Update

I promise these updates won’t always be about my health, but that’s what is taking a lot of my time and energy lately and it is nice to just type it all out and not have to explain it to every person individually.

Ironically, the main reason I started going to the diet place was to help with my “crashing” problem (I will explain what that is later) but the longer I was on the diet the worse the problem got. It got so bad I could barely function and decided to go off the diet but keep doing the shots and pills and just change to the whole-food, plant-based diet I was trying to do before I started going there but which I was not doing a very good job at all at sticking to. But that didn’t help at all so then finally after 20 years or so *I think* ended up finding a name to my “crashing” problem.

So, in the end, I’m going to have to go off the whole diet program, stop trying to lose weight, and just focus on healing my “crashing” problem. But I’m feeling so grateful I went through the whole diet because it helped me figure out a whole lot of things that don’t work for my body, I did lose about eight pounds in the end that I’m hoping I can keep off, but I’m hoping it can be the first step toward finally feeling better more consistently.

Now more about my “crashing” problem. I’ve had it for about 20 years. The only person I’ve ever heard of that anything like it is my mother and her symptoms are pretty different from mine but similar enough that we have been able to help each other quite a bit. Basically, sometimes after eating, I feel a combination of what feels like low blood sugar and a panic attack.

About half an hour after I eat I slowly start getting shaky, jittering, a headache, sometimes a stomach ache, lots of energy but tired at the same time, tight muscles, racing heart, emotional, starving, weak, and probably a few other things I’m forgetting. It peaks about four hours after I eat and if I do nothing about it it takes 2-3 days to start feeling good again.

One of the worst parts of it is that I can’t sleep because my body is feeling all tight and panicked. Luckily, years ago my mother told me about Klonopin, which is an anxiety medication, and if I take that about two hours after I eat then it slowly starts stopping the symptoms so I feel fine the next day.

I used to only have the problem about once a week on average, sometimes as little as once a month. I ruled out a lot of causes and found a lot of things that helped. Some of the main things that help are eating fewer meals so there is less of a chance of it happening, eating pretty good size meals when I do eat so I feel satisfied, and having a good balance of protein and carbs.

I also knew it had something to do with my adrenal system since it felt like I was just burning through tons of cortisol when it was happening and I knew it had something to do with my stomach since it would hurt sometimes and since it only happens after eating.

I’ve told many doctors about it and spent hours searching Google. My blood tests usually came up normal until about two years ago my blood work said I had really low testosterone, low iron, and low morning cortisol.

I go to a good functional medicine doctor and she was smart enough to know that meant something was going on with my HPA-axis system (adrenals). She put me on a supplement with adaptogens (they are supposed to adapt to your body and give you energy or calm you down, depending on what you need at the time) and adrenal cortex to help my adrenal system plus recommended some other supplements.

I started feeling better in some ways, but looking back, that’s about when my “crashing” problem started getting worse. By the time I started with MD Diet I was “crashing” after dinner every single night and sometimes for lunch. The diet just made me feel worse and worse. I eventually was crashing five times a day since that’s how many times a day I was eating. I was a wreck.

I finally put something in Google that led me to find out about a condition that doctors are just starting to learn about, document, and name. It’s called “Postprandial Adrenergic Syndrome” or “Idiopathic Postprandial Syndrome” or “Post-Meal Anxiety.”

I actually don’t know for sure that I have it but I have all the symptoms and my blood work even matches what they said is common. I couldn’t find very much out about it since not that many doctors know about it and not very much research has been done about it.

But I did find out it’s normal to feel like you have low blood sugar but when you test it’s perfectly normal, it’s not usually caused by food sensitivities and it’s not an allergic reaction. One doctor said the two common things he has been able to find out so far are low cortisol, especially in the evening, and an unbalanced microbiome, which he thinks is not a cause but a side effect. I still suspect there is a neurological component to it and probably something else.

There isn’t a magic cure that I can find and I don’t even know if I will be able to find a doctor that can help me with it for now. But I was able to find out that at least one of the ingredients in the adaptogens I have been taking only is stimulating, which is the exact opposite of what I need.

I shouldn’t take anything that is stimulating, so basically all these things I’ve been doing I thought were helping me were actually making it worse – the adrenal fatigue pills, the vitamin B shots, a low-carb diet, diet pills that are supposed to give you energy, etc.

So I’m going to stop taking anything that is supposed to give my energy because that stresses out my HPA-axis system and stimulates it and makes my already low cortisol get used up going into a fight-or-flight response all the time.

Instead, I can take things to calm my system and do things to lower the stress in my life (so funny . . .). Right now I’m still not feeling great but feeling a little better every day and waiting for the shots and pills to wear off and hoping I have this all figured out correctly.

Until I start feeling better consistently, I’m going back to eating twice a day and eating what I used to eat for lunch because at least that didn’t make me “crash” (unfortunately it still has been the last few days) and I’m hoping I can do a whole-foods, plant-based meal for dinner long-term.

I’m taking some doTERRA calming pills when I eat and they seem to help my Post-Meal Anxiety not be so bad so between only eating twice and hopefully getting a little better every day, I can take Klonopin once a day and feel great and have a fun time at Youth Conference this week!

That’s right! Megan, Kayla, and I are going to Youth Conference this Wed. to Sat. It’s about two hours away at a boy scout camp and is camping but there is a real kitchen and dining hall for eating and I think real bathrooms. Megan is one of the youth leaders and it sounds like they have planned lots of fun activities. I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do about eating but I’m sure it will all work out.

I know I will be blessed for going to Youth Conference and even though I’m in the middle of all this and don’t have it figured out all the way, I know it will all work out for the best and there is a reason for it and I have hope that sooner than later I will feel a lot better!