Re: Saliva test results. What should I do? Please help
Hmm... This makes a lot of sense to me because my symptoms did change since I lowered Xanax under that critical dosage.
Since I came out of the hospital my absolute worst problem was constant low blood
Sugar and I was very skinny but since I've been dealing with benzo WD my blood
Sugar is perfect - I took it as a sign of healing because I started Lam's protocol around the same time. Now it seems like I have more salt wasting issues than before though. It coud be that I used to have more cortisol-related symptoms and now more aldosterone symptoms.
I think what happens is that the benzo stress creates constant demand for more cortisol and since the body favors its production over all the other hormones - aldosterone, DHEA, progesterone - it creates pregnenolone steal/cortisol shunt just like Lam described. I revisited Lam's book yesterday and according to him DHEA falls so low only in the presence of a severe ongoing stress.
I might be watching Harry Potter movies all day but as far as the body's physiological response goes it reacts as if I'm being chased by a lion - that's what benzo WD does - and it shunts all the resources fueled by 5000 mg lipo C(!!!!) per day towards making cortisol. The body won't make any DHEA or aldosterone because from its perspective they are not even relevant. I wish there was a saliva aldosterone test - I have to wait another month or so till I see a doc:)
If I look at it this way it explains everything to me and it also shows that Lam's protocol would have been working on me really well if not for the benzo problem. It's actually a good sign then - I just pray it's going to stay this way until I'm benzo-free.
How is your progress by the way?