For quite a long time I had my constipation entirely under control using just Betaine HCL and Digestive Enzymes but after far too much stress from working nonstop my fatigue and constipation came back with a vengeance. As this state of illness returned so too did the constipation as well as the undigested particles in my stool. Not only that but the stools all became lighter in color which I suspect may have something to do with lack of bile output based on various test results (high biliruben/high copper with copper being something excreted in the bile).

It has been 14 months since I had to quit work and I've spent the vast majority of that time sitting in my room very low on energy. About 11 months ago I decided to test out DGL, probiotics, vitamin D/C/E, and glutamine all around the same time; I came to the conclusion that these medicines might do something for me based on the fact that the authors who recommended them also asserted the effectiveness of either HCL or Enzymes as a medicine somewhere in their book, I figured that if they had found something I knew to be true to be true themselves then they most likely were on the right track and weren't just cons. So I read many books and tested many medicines (As a note, a list of the medicines that did nothing for me can be found at the end of this writeup)

To my amazement I started having regular sized bowel movements every day beginning about two days after adding the five medicines mentioned above into my daily routine. I made a mistake after about ten days of testing and assumed that my improved bowel function was entirely the result of the probiotics and cut the glutamine, DGL, and Buffered Vitamin C out. The bowel function returned to the terrible state it was in and I didn't even think about how my bowels had worked so perfectly during that week and a half until around six months ago when memory of the event returned and it hit me that one of those three meds I cut must have been a worthy treatment for aspects of my illness. It's fortunate that I've been keeping a journal starting right before that event otherwise I might not have remembered which meds I was using or just how effective they(really only the DGL) had been.

I started by testing out the Buffered Vitamin C first since it contained a good deal of magnesium which is known to cause increased bowel motility but nothing came of it so I moved on to try glutamine. After the glutamine failed to show any response I finally turned to the one I least suspected, DGL; well, low and behold, the DGL worked like a charm, just as it had during those ten days in my journal entries. My energy has been better since I started using the DGL routinely and the gut pain I have experienced is minimized.

Before DGL was added I was having bowel movements every three days or so and the bowel movements were typically thin, small, and covered in undigested particles. Now the bowel movements come almost everyday, are rather thick, and are of good size. There are still undigested bits of good size visible on the stool AND the movements are still often of a sickly light color. The outside of each movement is covered in what appears to be mucus but may be thin/stringy undigested fibers; not sure how long the mucus(?) has been on my stools but I know it's at least the last 14 months.

Why would the DGL be working though? Almost all the drugs that have helped me have been focused on the gut(again Betaine HCL(supplementary stomach acid), Digestive Enzymes, and DGL) the only exceptions have been NAC which gave me energy in an unpredictable way for something like several weeks then stopped working entirely. Now, the other exception is smoking medical cannabis which saved me after I had been stuck in bed for 4 months or so with no energy and a Depression that was at times suicidal. Yeah, weed has been a miracle drug for my chronic fatigue but it isn't really a lead that might help me find new drugs since it is so unique and works for so many things in a way that is so difficult to understand so I can't really say if it is helping me by reducing inflammation or simply because of the mood lift.

Brain fog is and has been horrible even back when I was working and my bowels were functioning well. Another oddity is my nails suddenly forming vertical ridges right as I became too sick to work. Something else strange is that alcohol makes me paranoid and has lead to health crashes, for this reason I never drink anymore at all. I've got to urinate frequently to the point that I'm waking up several times per night. Each time I urinate I immediately feel dehydrated and need to gulp down a rather large amount of water to feel normal; the amount of water I need to drink per day is obscene. I've run tests for Diabetes but all the results show that I'm fine.

The only books I've read that mention DGL, out of the 15+ alternative med books I have read, are(checking digital notes...copy and paste:
DGL - (Why stomach acid is good for you by jonathan wright p145-7: For best results, DGL tablets should be chewed then swallowed with as little water as possible, since it helps to heal through direct contact with the cells of the gastrointestinal lining. For this reason, DGL is best taken on an empty stomach. I usually recommend chewing and swallowing 2 DGL tablets 3-4x/day one hour before or after a meal. It can be used even more often if it is helpful to do so.)(Digestive Wellness by elizabeth lipski: chew 2 tablets before meals up to 4x/day for LGS p49/ rec chewing 2 tablets 5x/day for ulcers p228)

Really each of the two books have a page or so dedicated to DGL, what I pasted are just the instruction they give for use of the drug. Note that DGL is a special kind of licorice, regular licorice can have serious side effects if used the way I'm using it. These days I take 1 tablet on an empty stomach 4 times per day, I've taken different types of DGL at different concentratinos and it hasn't seemed to affect the results; each product I've bought has worked just as well as one another.

I think probiotics might be doing something good for me but it's hard to tell, I used to get this sensation on days when I would use them like I could really taste things on a higher level to the point where I was tasting even when I wasn't eating anything but I don't get that anymore.

Perhaps the meaning of all these clues is obvious to one of you but I'm still in the dark.

These are the medicines I tested within these last 14 months that have done nothing for me: Vitamin B12[even at extremely high doses], Pregnenolone, glutamine, Vitamin A/E, Buffered Vitamin C[which also contained magnesium/potassium/calcium in appreciable amounts], hydrocolon therapy[not a supplement but it was something I tried and it wore me out], Laminine, Ox Bile[with each meal], D-Ribose, Manganese[an amino acid test indicated that I neede this element], Methionine[amino acid test indicated I was marginally low], Branched Chain Amino Acids[amino acid test showed I was rather low in Leucine and IsoLeucine but not Valine], Vitamin D[never showed obvious results but test results show that I'm low whenever I don't take it and that I'm within range when I do take it so I take it to be on the safe side], melatonin[tried it for sleep, didn't work but it did entirely inhibit bowel movements for some reason], GABA, Zinc Picolinate.