Eight Months of Hell

My colon stopped working in November. If you've been reading my blog, you already know this has not been a fun time for me. Experimenting with laxatives of all kinds has been challenging especially since some of them are chemical-based and create side effects I'd rather do without. However...

MY COLON IS NOW WORKING!!!!!!

Unbelievable. Oddly enough, I had asked some Hashimoto's people about non-working colons and quite a few said they have experienced the same thing with no doctors who knew what to do and no relief, BUT one said her issues also lasted about seven to eight months and then miraculously started working again. No one knows anything.

Here's what I know: My colon stopped abruptly after spending a weekend gorging on lectins. I repeat, gorging. I am an overeater and have been all my life. Even when I'm full, I want to eat. I'm sure the lectins compromised my colon's ability to work and with Hashimoto's slowed to a full stop.

Miralax was the only thing that worked for me and I was thankful when my eighth doctor informed me Miralax is not addictive. All it does is add water which helps keeping fecal matter moving in one's colon. Because everything has slowed to a crawl, it spends too much time in the colon and all water is sucked out created painfully dry and hard stools. I started doing four caps of Miralax a day, reduced down to 2 caps. One can tell if one is taking too much Miralax as stools appear like skinny, mushy snakes or worms. (Sorry so graphic. This is for people who need this information. Be thankful I didn't include photos. hehehe)

SO...I put this information together:

First, stop eating so much. Less food means there is less to move. This is difficult for me, but easier if I prepare "fixed" one portion meals. Anytime I make a pot of anything whether it be soup, casserole or stew, I want to eat the whole thing. So fixed meals and lots of willpower not to fix another fixed meal.

Second, water. Now I know we are supposed to drink copious amounts of water and every morning I lay out my eight glasses of water on the counter and attempt to drink all before bedtime. There are days I am so busy I forget to drink anything! I also know Hashimoto's people have an aversion to water. The chemically sensitive should drink a lot of water, too. It helps with detoxification and dehydration makes one susceptible to EMF sensitivities.

I also have bad water history after living on a farm with a well that got contaminated and sent relatives to the hospital. I've lived in cities with bad drinking water that smelled to high heaven or came out of the tap brown. Consequently, I've lived off of distilled (dead) bottled water most of my life. I have a life-long physical, emotional, and mental aversion to water. Still, I must drink water if I want this colon to work.

Eight months ago I started trying to drink lots of water. Somedays I succeeded. Most days I did not. Lately I've been very diligent and it helps to be getting my water supply from an artesian well so knowing it's fresh, clean, and filled with nutrients makes me feel better. And free! In the last month or so I've been religious about water.

Soon I noticed I was taking too much Miralax. I cut it down to one cap a day, then a half a cap a day. I was still taking too much. Whoa! I went without for a couple days but panicked. In past months I had tried to stop Miralax only to have my colon turn to cement within twelve hours. I resumed the Miralax only to find fecal snakes swimming in the toilet. Then I stopped completely. It's been two weeks without Miralax. As long as I don't overeat and drink copious amounts of water, everything seems to be working.  (Knock on wood!) Not perfectly, but at least I don't need Miralax.

How much to drink? The standard is eight glasses a day which is what we've been told for centuries, however, this complies only with the lab rat theory that we are all alike. I've used this argument to justify my lack of water proclaiming I'M NOT EXACTLY LIKE EVERYONE ELSE! Now I confess I probably am like everyone else, however, I am gravitationally gifted (fat) so I need more than the typical lab rat.

There is a math formula according to one's weight:

(Your weight) x .67 = ounces of daily water intake

Adjust for strenuous activity or hot weather. So a person who is 175 lbs would need 117 ounces of water per day for optimum health. That's a lot!

I should be drinking 107 ounces which is a challenge. So far I'm up to about 72 ounces and working on it. This is a huge accomplishment for someone who wouldn't drink any water! I get up, drink twelve ounces immediately, go for a walk, drink another twelve ounces. An hour after breakfast drink another twelve ounces, etc. At first it was really difficult and I felt like I was drowning.  Not only did drinking all this water make me choke, but I kept inhaling the water down my windpipe. If I drink it too soon after a meal I burp it up if I move wrong. Gross.  Who has time to constantly stop and drink water ALL DAY LONG? What about people who don't have as much access to clean water? Obviously I'm still trying to overcome my mental block.

Besides the awesome working colon, I also notice the veins on my arms are bulging and I'm sleeping better without the Miralax side effects. I do notice I don't have to pee every ten minutes which was a hassle for a while and I try to stop drinking water after 5:00pm. I'm still getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but actually not as often as my body at night was busy trying to flush out the Miralax poison and now it's just processing water. I'm sweating way more than I used to, but I know a symptom of Hashimoto's is very little if any sweating. We probably all need to drink more water!

HOORAY!

Drug Intolerance...An Epiphany!

This thyroid medication has some interesting and not so interesting side effects. First, biting bugs all of a sudden love me. I haven't had any bug bites for years and now it's every day. A few months ago I came across an article that explained it's hormones that mosquitoes et al. are attracted to which is why adults get bitten more than children. I always thought they were attracted to sugar. Bugs biting made berry picking this year a bit uncomfortable.

Second, I've been getting less adrenaline rushes and hot flashes at night. For a while I was getting them once an hour all night long, now it's down to two or three. Hooray! I'm not quite sure if it's connected to the higher levels of thyroid, but I think so and this is a good thing. My new and wonderful doctor is thinking I should take a pill in the late afternoon and see if it helps even more.

Third, I have found every few days the nausea starts creeping up and the headaches begin and it lasts all day until 5pm. As I mentioned before, I start getting tired around 5pm and I've been assuming this is when the drug wears off so this makes sense. It stands to reason my liver is not liking the drugs. Most holistic thyroid doctors recommend you do a liver cleanse before starting the medication to help it work efficiently. So every few days I drink a glass of freshly juiced beet juice. Blah.

Blah Juice

One way to get the beet juice down is to mix it with other fresh juices. I mix mine with a little apple juice, but the best recipe is to mix beet juice, carrot juice and apple juice. There was a raw food restaurant in San Francisco that included this drink on their menu and called it "Blood". Aptly named as it looks just like blood.

I'm also trying to eat more cilantro, another liver detox food, and drink lemon juice in water, a kidney cleanser.

Of course, nausea makes me want to revert back to by childhood comfort food: cereal and milk. It reminds me of getting the flu at my grandparents' house and my grandmother telling me cereal is what one should eat for breakfast after having the flu as it is easier to digest than eggs. I associate cereal and milk with love. Comfort food. Every time I eat it I think of her and those are good memories. I caved to temptation and bought gluten-free corn flakes, milk, and bananas, all three are NOT on my diet, but do I care? It seems to help with the nausea, or maybe it just tastes heavenly. Or maybe there is something else at work here....

So...I'm laying in bed thinking I'll probably have to be on these drugs for the rest of my life if I want to be able to function with any amount of energy, but do I really want to drink that much beet juice in my life? First, fresh juices are high in sugar and not on my diet, and second, beet juice is blah. Not gross, just blah. What can I do? There must be a simple, or, not so simple solution.

There is...WATER.

 

WATER??? What an epiphany! The best way to clean out your body and detox your organs is water. Everyone knows that so why have I refused to acknowledge this? I know I don't drink enough water. It's all I can do to get four cups down in a day, and believe me, I've tried. I've justified my lack of water with not everyone needs eight glasses of water a day, a comment I made eons ago when I wrote a blog post on water. Or maybe they do? If you are eating sugary, salty, junky or unhealthy foods, I'm sure you need lots of water to wash it all out. I failed to realize I might not be eating unhealthy foods, but I'm certainly ingesting weird substances in the name of health. Maybe I need to increase my water intake and see what happens? Can it be that easy? And if it is that easy, why has no doctor I've seen in the past ten years made this simple connection when I tell them I'm drug intolerant? They all ask me how much water I drink. Even that last naturopathic quack asked this, but made no comment. (She didn't really talk at all so I guess I shouldn't be so surprised.) Cereal and milk craving? Is it the milk adding to my hydration which is why it makes me feel better? Hmmm...

I love a good experiment! For the last two weeks I've been gulping down eight to ten glasses of water a day which is like drowning to me. I pour them all out in the morning so I can keep track and set goals. The first four glasses have to be gone by noon and it all needs to be done by 5pm. The first few days were not fun. The water retention was uncomfortable and I felt bloated and sluggish. The first few nights I was up and in the bathroom nearly every hour! What a pain! Literally! Driving anywhere for more than a half an hour and my bladder would feel like it was about to burst. But I persevered. Two weeks later and this improved a just a little so I have hope perhaps my body will continue to adjust. BUT the nausea and headaches went away immediately! Then by the second week, any time I did something strenuous or even got warm, sweat would drip from every pore. Profusely. Even my knees were sweating! This is a strange phenomenon as I've never perspired in my life! The nausea creeps in ever so slightly if I drink under eight glasses a day or with an empty stomach and I now start to crave water if I don't drink it. This is somewhat of a breakthrough for me.

It kind of makes me wonder if my life-long dehydration contributed to my chemical sensitivity? The premise, or so I've been told, is I don't detox fast enough or at all. If I've been constantly dehydrated, how could anything possibly be flushing out so that would make perfect sense. Why has no doctor ever made this kind of connection? That, however, is no excuse because I've always known humans are supposed to drink eight glasses of water a day. I am the person to blame. I am stubborn.

Excellent epiphany!

How many glasses of water do you drink?