So I went to the desert because I was experimenting with the mold/chemical sensitivity hypothesis of cfs/me. Well, about 5 days in I started getting really bad tinnitus (ringing in ears). Then, I started to get racing thoughts and deep anxiety and depression. Then my digestion stopped. Then, I flew back home to seattle.
Its been 19 days since this happened and it seems as though the changes are permanent, no rest or anything changes it. I have bad ringing in the ears and racing thoughts all day. My fatigue and crash tolerance came down to nil. I can't walk or do anything without bad fatigue and depression overcoming me.
I asked this mold group I was in and they said I "unmasked" where my body was actually acclimated to a certain amount of toxins and set its baseline there, but when I went to the desert my body shifted homeostasis and tried to detox, and that is what is causing my symptoms. Personally, I think that my body is just more relaxed in forest places like seattle or hawaii, and that the desert was hard on my body.
I have no choice but to try to take antiseizure/bipolar meds to calm my brain down (nmda overactivity) so that the anxiety and depression calm down. I have been taking 300mg gabapentin at night for a week without much results. I think I am going to try out lamictal as I heard that is supposed to be more antidepressive.
I also found a hypothesis for why I can't meditate without getting bad depression and anxiety later from it. Meditation activates the nmda receptors in the brain somewhat. If the baseline excitotoxicity (sensitivity) of the brain is too high, then meditating will cause the brain to cross the threshold into excitotoxicity. This totally makes sense, as I remember meditating a year ago and getting bad depression, so I upped my magnesium (nmda antagonist, calms excitotoxicty) and the depression disappeared. However, magnesium is nowhere close to strong enough anymore, my brain activity is severe. I feel like my brain is in a constant state of electrocution.
The only ways I can think of to calm excitotoxicity are through anticonvulsant medications and protocols to heal the gut. I got some threelac to try out. My digestion shut down for 2 weeks completely. The only way I got it back online was by taking massive amounts betaine hcl.
The weirdest part about all this is I have a shift of symptoms from extreme brain fog and no emotions to very clear headed and very depressed and anxious. 100% matches with nmda receptor overstimulation.
I am really sorry to hear of your recent experience.
I am not an authority on adrenal fatigue. Unfortunately I have had extensive experience with psyc meds as I was on them for over 14 years. The last meds I ever took was a combination of lamictal and wellbutrin. It was at this time that I suffered from the worst suicidal ideation, depression and brutal anxiety I had ever had.
Four years ago I decided to stop the medication nightmare that I had been on. I could not take this intense suffering any longer. I felt that it was not possible to suffer any deeper. I knew that I had to try going med free. I could always go back to drugs that didn't work. Within 6 months of being med free ALL suicidal thoughts stopped as well as all depression and 70% of the anxiety. I completely stopped eating gluten, dairy and had my Amalgam fillings removed.
I don't know if you are on any meds now but most ssri's cause depression and anxiety. These meds only add more toxins to an already toxic body. Maybe the trip added extra stress for you. Ringing in the ears is a frequent detox symptom for me off and on also.
You can click on my avatar to see what all I have done in the last 4 years to heal myself about 80%. This last 20% is mainly a lingering excercise intolerance. I can excercise for about 2 months and then crash.
I no longer have bipolar, migraines, anxiety or a chronic parasite problem. Mineral analysis shows low levels in several minerals. I have not been able to raise these levels with diet alone. This is why I hang out here sometimes.
My heart goes out to you and I hope you will be feeling better soon. It is such a horrific suffering.
I was not on any meds when the suicidal ideation and severe depression and anxiety started. I have been doing mostly natural means for recovering and low dose antidepressants. The low dose antidepressants helped me more than anything, but then I went to the desert and my brain started freaking out, and I now my brain and body are hypersensitive to everything.
That sucks that lamictal was no good for you. I have read it can be good for cfs/me sufferers, especially the agitated/depressed type that I am.
I can do stretching. Meditation definitely causes big time problems for me. Ever since I have been going downhill, whenever I try it I get severe depression and anxiety later that night. This has happened too many times to count. When I was doing better I meditated 30 minutes every day.
I stopped taking a lot of supplements that were helping me, stopped meditating, and slowly went downhill. Then, when I tried to start up the supplements they didn't do anything anymore, and then I tried to meditate and it made me feel terrible. Whoops, shouldn't have stopped all those things.
Meditation definitely causes big time problems for me. Ever since I have been going downhill, whenever I try it I get severe depression and anxiety later that night.
That sucks. Especially since you were doing so well with the meditation previously.
Definitely keep up the stretching. Maybe do yoga. Calming your brain by retraining it is a major need. Walking is also good.
I've been thinking about a couple different kinds of meditation and how they work and I think I may be able to devise a very brief meditation method that could get similar benefits to mindfulness meditation. If you're interested in trying it out, I'll flesh it out further.
I've not studied much about these, but I know when I read about glutamate toxicity (which I used to get with bone broths - when I tried to eat them), there was good anecdote about taurine and B6 for stopping the excitotoxin headaches from accidental MSG exposure.
How much taurine crosses the BBB is the subject of debate, I suppose.
I am familiar with taurine, I used it in high dosages for a few months that lead me to get so severe, it covered up the wired state I was in but didn't stop the inflammatory processes. It also made me feel really depressed.
i don't know if you still have fillings in or not, but you might want to try something like a single dose of 10mg of lipoic acid some time. don't take much more than this and make it only a single dose, just to see what will happen if you suck up some metals from your brain.
'electrocution of the brain' sounds very much like metal poisoning.
there may also be dehydration going on, though i'm not sure how bad the desert is this time of year. people dehydrate very easily in those areas without realizing it. lemonade is very good for dehydration, not sure why. those rbti people are onto something with their lemon fetish.
if you are dehydrated, then once you rectify it, try some extreme sweating in a sweat lodge, fir sauna, regular sauna, etc.
also turkey or milk are very good sources for tryptophan which can calm down your brain chemistry. boil the milk for 5 minutes to break down the proteins, and cook the turkey low and slow for a long time to break down the proteins.
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