Re: DRAMATIC Onset of Symptoms

Have just been looking at enterobacter species on wiki.
It's interesting that many of them ferment sugars and therefore release lactic acid...which could explain the shift in your metabolism.
I too have a high lactic acid problem and can fatigue easily muscularly if i do too much. However it's got better over the past couple of years, not sure why, i haven't addressed the issue directly, i get bouts of Gout - only rarely. Perhaps repopulating the gut has helped to kill off some bad guys that were over-taking?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterobacteriaceae

"Members of the Enterobacteriaceae are rod-shaped, and are typically 1-5 μm in length. They appear as small grey colonies on blood agar. Like other proteobacteria, enterobacteria have Gram-negative stains,[4] and they are facultative anaerobes, fermenting sugars to produce lactic acid and various other end products. Most also reduce nitrate to nitrite, although exceptions exist (e.g. Photorhabdus). Unlike most similar bacteria, enterobacteria generally lack cytochrome C oxidase, although there are exceptions (e.g. Plesiomonas shigelloides). Most have many flagella used to move about, but a few genera are nonmotile. They are not spore-forming. Catalase reactions vary among Enterobacteriaceae."

So that's probably why low carb/low Sugar diet was suggested to you - to literally starve the enterobacter overgrowth you have of their Sugar fuel source.

Your dream about alcohol could tie in with this! Sugars fermented = alcohol, and perhaps the spacey state in your dream reflects the spacey state you experience in real life.

Some people with candida overgrowth get a blood alcohol reading due to the candida fermenting sugars, turning into alcohol, which then turns into ACETALDEHYDE.

Acetaldehyde levels, when high, is what we get after a night of drinking, and induces the well known 'hangover' effect.

Acetaldehyde toxicity has awful symptoms so i wonder if the enterobacter also can induce higher acetaldehyde levels in you?

If gut health is compromised, pretty much all systems of the body eventually become compromised too due to this.
I remember reading years ago - good health begins in the gut. I disagreed at one time with that statement, then agreed, disagreed...lol...now i think i agree with that more and more.
Immune function, neurotransmitter synthesis, nutritional absorption all is based in the gut - so if it can't do those jobs well, even for a few weeks, we're going to feel the effects. If ignored for years, chronic health issues tend to show up.

Keep us updated how you progress on your journey :-)