Hi forest_light,
It really pained me to hear about your daughter, that is truly horrible, i feel truly blessed that I haven’t been in a state that required hospitalisation since I was a very young kid, never mind multiple, i can’t imagine what that would have been like to go through, I wish you and your daughter the very best and I really hope your both doing better now.
I did previously known a little about Crohn's Disease although I was unaware of the association with EDS, so I will definitely have a deeper look.
As for keto, after my fast I just completely transitioned to a carnivore keto approach without any period of adjustment, I think the reason I did this was two fold, one was to avoid the stress that suddenly switching back into glycolysis might have placed on my body and the other was a product of my previous experience with keto, where I had found it quite difficult to slip into a consistent state of ketosis and thought the fast would provide enough momentum so to speak to overcome this. If I was to try going full keto again I would definitely take a more gradual approach.
Although I have no recollection of a tick bite, as a kid we lived for a couple of years in a densely forested part of England renowned for its deer population so ticks where definitely prolific. We were constantly removing them from our cat, often multiple at a time, sometimes multiple times a week, so it is definitely possible I had a bite at some point during those years.
Thankyou for your compassionate, generous thoughts and wishes Sebastian, I can feel how genuine and heartfelt your words are.
I'm sorry to have shared something so awful about our struggles, I know it can be confronting to hear other people's experiences. I tried very hard to give you the soft version, it was a lot worse than what I have described, but thankfully we have both survived our individual experiences and made progress, though we each chose very different ways of approaching our health issues.
I debated whether to share a broad outline of our experience, rather than just suggest you explore information about Crohn's - however the C's are repeatedly saying we should network and support one another; I felt that while not everyone has the same experience we have been through, I needed to make it very clear that if Crohn's remains undetected/untreated, the consequences have the potential to be utterly devastating in
every aspect of your life.
If you seek professional help and discover that you don't have Crohn's, then at least you can knock one more thing off the list. Autoimmune stuff certainly seems to be
multifaceted in terms of the way people are afflicted, we each have such unique responses to health issues, and many conditions have overlapping symptoms and factors that affect them, so I can see that this would make things challenging for professionals to diagnose; IMHO this makes it even more important to make sure the people who are supporting you are highly experienced. My daughter is the one who alerted me to
the link between Crohn's and EDS (and other things) as she had been online researching and on forums/social media talking with people who were all noticing the link and sharing information about their own experiences/diagnoses. I don't know how much that is actually being acknowledged in the medical profession. I lot of people who have EDS probably don't know they have Crohn's and vice versa, it seems that only now there seems to be a higher prevalence of EDS and more awareness about it.
In terms of Keto, I agree (from personal experience) a more gradual approach could support you better. I didn't do the 'Keto adapted' approach myself, because I was in such unbearable agony, totally beside myself from pain and decided after what I had read on the forum it was definitely worth a shot, so I can appreciate that sometimes we just have do what feels right on an instinctive level. I definitely struggled not doing the adapted approach, but it was nothing in comparison to the ways I had been suffering for decades, my pain levels reduced SO dramatically! Within
3 days of doing Keto, on a pain scale I went from 10/10 to 6/10. The relief was
astounding. I have been doing Keto for just over two years now... I have some terrible days / definitely some very mediocre ones partly due to other conditions, but there is a lot more
wonderful on every level in my life, and I have this incredible forum to thank for much of that. I pray that you will find a dietary pathway that works for you, one that brings you great relief and healing very very soon.
Something that helped me comprehend issues in connection with extreme pain and nasty symptoms was when I saw something Keyhole posted about
Oxalates. I noticed your recent comment about feeling as though you have been
poisoned, and like gottathink who mentioned oxalates in an earlier post, I also wondered if you are experiencing the effects of 'oxalate dumping'. There is info in different threads on the forum that you might feel to explore. Keyhole (Elliot) has great presentations on YouTube that are very easy to understand, he explains things really well, so you might want to check those out. Again, the key is to adapt
gradually.
I fully back up the wise words of Carl in the post above; the emotional and spiritual aspects of our psyche and spiritual body also need to be honoured, we are multifaceted and very complex beings. Personally, I have also noticed a huge difference in my healing and what is manifesting in my daily life since I moved house, got the internet and was able to become more actively involved in participating in the forum, as well as taking some time daily to speak more consciously and directly with the Universe, through prayer and through holding
conscious gratitude. Meditation and the EE breathing program has also made a huge difference.
Sounds like you had an idyllic life in the UK as a child... the forest is my favourite place to be. (Poor kitty, all those ticks!)
Looking forward to hearing how things unfold for you, Sebastian, I feel you
definitely have the intelligence and inner wisdom to find a way through this and come out shining.
