My depression... and what I have learned

Hello all,

I hope you don't mind if I leave a long post here. I just want to share my experience and what I have learned from it so others may not have to loss 10 years of their lives like I did.

I won't go into the whole history (that would takes months of typing!). 2001 I started with muscle pain, it increased over the years. Started having extreme difficulty dealing with life, fatigue, complete loss of libido. All the standard signs of depression, but there was more as well. Was diagnosed with hypothyroidism in 2004. No matter what they put me on, I never felt normal again. Prozac did nothing for me at all except make me gain even more weight.

All the symptoms kept getting worse, in addition to having to deal with massive career changes, family moving away, loss of a relationship, death of a loved one and then moving myself across the country. I didn't think I was depressed, but it would come and go. For about 2 years I didn't want to live. I only got out of bed each day because my 2 cats insisted on being fed. Plus Marcos would only let me sleep so long in the bed :)

Since 2007, in addition to the hypothyroidism, I was told I have fibromyalgia, athritis and rheumatoid athritis. they wanted to put my on a medication that I would take once a week and it would make me sick for 2 days at a time. That seemed like a really extreme answer to having moderate levels of inflamation in my system and no other symptoms.

Last Christmas, my doctor recommended using Cymbalta. As much as I prefer not to take drugs, I was at my wits end and couldn't even function. I was sleeping 40 hours out of 48 each weekend, crying constantly. You probably know the drill. I immediately started feeling better, and in control of my mind for the first time in 8 years. I felt like I wanted to live and finally had some motivation again.

It was what I needed to help me take charge of my health again. I am using the cymbalta for now, it is helping me stay in a place where I can "fix" all the other issues. I have since found a fantastic integrative medicine MD and we spent 2 hours talking.

Turns out, food allergies have the same symptoms as fibromyalgia and can actually create degenerative athritis in your body, IBS symptoms, migraines, lack of libido, as well as severe depression. She ran a bunch of blood work for me - doing IGE tests in addition to the standard IGG tests. I have off the chart allergies to the foods I eat all the time!

I wanted to be sure, so I went to an "allergist" and had them run the same tests and it was confirmed. Since then I have removed almost off of the offending foods from my diet (still have a hard time because it is so many items!) but I wanted to tell you that I feel so much better.

No more dibilitating fatigue! No more migraine headaches, no more crying, no more sleeping 18 hours a day. Physically the aches and pains have been going away as well as a myriad of other symptoms. In just 2 months I have already been able to reduce the cymbalta dosage and am looking forward to not having to use it by years end.


So, long story short here... look at all angles to help with your quest, we aren't limited to just being a diagnoisis on a medical chart and prescription pad. I never would have thought that the foods I was putting into my body each day were actually causing me to want to stop living! I would like to recommed a book that has been helping me tremdously. It is called Prescription for Nutritional Healing and it covers a vast array of issues and how to help yourself using food, herbs and supplements.

I wish you all the best in your quest for answers and better health.

Catmom117