AF turned out to be candida

I haven't been on the AF forum in years now but I've been reading recent posts and thought it important to share my personal experience.

Back in '07, I began having increasing fatigue, sedation, and mental problems. It became extremely severe to the point that I lost most of my memory and was stuck in a kind of sleepy dementia state. When it was at its worst, I was bedbound and sleeping 18 hours a day. I initially thought I had adrenal fatigue and began taking natural adrenal supplements. I soon made an appointment with an endocrinologist and he told me to immediately halt the adrenal supplements. He told me that unless I had Addison's disease, which is very rare, I didn't need adrenal supp's and they would actually put my adrenal glands to sleep. I had my cortisol and all hormone levels tested and they were normal. So my first bit of advice is to stop any hormone supplements you're on unless you've been diagnosed by an M.D. because they can be very dangerous.

In my case, it turned out that I had candida and not adrenal fatigue. The way I discovered this was as follows. When I was at my worst and bed bound, I had my sister get me some grapefruit seed extract from the health food store. I had read that chronic fatigue syndrome, which is what I then suspected I had, could be caused by a virus and wanted to try a bround-spectrum anti-microbial like GSE. Within 5 minutes of taking the GSE, I woke up completely and my symptoms disappeared by at least 50%.

At that time I also tried probiotics for the first time and had a die-off reaction to them (increased wakefulness to the point of insomnia, along with restlessness and anxiety). This pointed me in the direction of candida as the cause of my fatigue, and I tried out caprylic acid to confirm. Caprylic acid is a natural anti-fungal. I ended up having a severe die-off reaction to the caprylic acid and so it confirmed I had candida. I later tried eliminating all Sugar from my diet as recommended for candida and had an even more severe die-off effect.

My candida experience is somewhat unique in that I can't really maintain an anti-fungal or no-sugar regimen for very long because of the severity of my die-off reaction. At its worst it ends up affecting my breathing so I've had to avoid it.

Where I'm at now in my treatment plan is a better place. Somewhat strangely, I found that both blue cheese and a 10-strain probiotic (vitamin shoppe's "ultimate 10") gradually reverse my die-off symptoms. I'm taking the probiotic daily now and hoping that it will gradually bring my back to normal.

The reason I'm sharing all this is because I had very similar symptoms to what I've seen in many of the recent posts here. My brain fog was severe, comparable to Alzheimers, I had muscle twitches, sensitivity to light, and a laundry list of other symptoms. At least be sure to try out some supplements beyond AF, and make sure that what you're taking is actually safe. Messing with your hormone levels can be very dangerous if you're not under a doctor's supervision.

Take care,
tpno2005