Looking back on some of my recent posts, I suppose I should let you know what the hell they found wrong with me, so you can ask smarter/better questions with your doctors.

Brace yourself. I’m f’d up…

So one more time, in case you didn’t read previous posts or need a refresher. I went to a new hip, functional medicine practice where they do a ton of lab work to benchmark you to against normal healthy people, instead of sick ones like they do at normal doctor’s offices and labs. They did a 24 hour saliva test (spit into vials at 4 different points throughout the day), a 28 day saliva test (spit 1X a day into vials for the 28 days of your cycle -females only duh), a urine test, a traumatizing stool specimen, and a crap ton of blood work.

After all that, here are my blood tests’ results. I’ll post the other ones separately. And most importantly, below are the reasons why I’m doing all this diet and taking so many botanicals. I have:

1. Reactive Hypoglycemia (aka too low of blood sugar).                                         Which is hilarious if you knew how many bags of Skittles I used to consume in a week.  Low blood sugar is a HUGE trigger of migraines. There are 2 organs running your blood sugar: Your adrenal glands, which produce cortisol hormone and your Liver, which breaks down store glucose in your body. My doc explains this WAY better than me. HERE

Ways to help blood sugar levels:

• Eat every 2-3 hours – no problemo
• Never eat carbs by themselves
• Eat LOTS of proteins and fats. Even though Coconut Oil has way more fat than Olive Oil I only cook with Coconut now. And I eat probably 2-3 times more meat than I used to
• Snack before bed. This was a surprise to me, being the person who was religious about not eating 3-4 hours before I went to bed hearing horror stories of acid re-flux and fat storage in the belly. Little did I know that’s why I would wake up with a headache each day

2. Hypochlorhydria (aka too little stomach acid)                                                          Your stomach should be so acidic that if you could somehow put your finger in there it would disintegrate. Why? Because it’s job is to break down your food and make you not fat. If you don’t have enough acid in your belly, 1 of 2 things happens. 1 it goes through not fully broken down, which causes gut inflammation and triggers an internal freak out OR it comes back up in the form of Acid Re-flux, which I suffered from for years. This can lead to SEVERE malabsorption and nutritional deficiencies. (which we’ll get into later, but I was basically taking vitamins for years, and they were doing nothing for my body because I can’t activate them)

Ways to help with hypochlorhydria (it’s gross but works):

• Gag yourself. You heard me – I told you this man is a loon but it works. If you use a tongue depresser or something similar – gently pressing it against your uvula until your eyes begin to water (don’t fully gag yourself), it will trigger a reaction for your stomach to produce acid. Werd.
• Gargle. Just like your grandma told you to when you were sick, but without the warm nasty salt water. Just the act of gargling when brushing your teeth twice a day will help
• Hum. No clue why there but this singer’s got it.
• Betaine Plus HP – botanical pills you take in the middle of meals to encourage stomach acid production – remember NO prescription pills again

3. Genetic Mutation of the C677T Gene. hehe.                                                                This one’s my favorite. Not just because I can finally relate to the teenage mutant ninja turtles, but because that gene just happens to be the gene that makes MTHFR in your body. Yes, we all have a “MTHFR” in us. Don’t believe me? Google it and Dr. Kendal Stewart

So this MTHFR (hehe – it never gets old) activates B6,9&12 in your body. And it just so happens that these 3 vitamins are used in over 250 processes in your body and brain – so that explains why I’ve been taking B Complex vitamins for 10 years and still getting migraines. That MTHFR won’t activate! 🙂

PS. if someone could please buy me this t-shirt, I would love you forever.

Ways to help a MTHFR mutation:

Unfortunately, while most of the other things listed above and below are fixable, you can’t really fix a genetic mutation, so I will be on the following for lyfe:

• NeuroImmune Stabilizer –  cream MTHFR activator
• 5-MTHFR botanical pills – to help trick my MTHFR into activating shit.

Have I said MTHFR enough? I kind of want to say it again. MTHFR.

4. Food Insensitivities                                                                                               

• Gluten
• Dairy
• Rice
• Quinoa
• Eggs

Well fahk. Will I die if I eat them? No. But my blood reacted so poorly to them in panels that they came up in the “danger” zone. So I won’t be eating them any time soon.

I had 3 more things we went over but we aren’t working on them yet in the program and I don’t really remember the significance, so I’ll post that stuff later.

Once again, the reason I love functional medicine is that it’s 100% customized to YOU, YOUR BODY,and YOUR DISEASES. So I don’t recommend buying these supplements until you’ve had the blood work done yourself and have confirmed you have these issues. First, they are expensive as hell and second, I don’t want you to hurt your body.

Here are the labs used for the tests – I actually called Great Plains Lab to refer me to Dr. Beyer – so if you don’t know of a functional practitioner near you, call the labs up!

1. Great Plains Laboratory – the dreaded poop test
2. Diagnos-Techs, Inc – the 1 day and 28 day saliva test
3. Cyrex Laboratories – Food Insensitivity panel
4. LabCorp– crapton of bloodwork (the blood sugar, genetic mutation, etc)
5. Still waiting on the urine test. I’ll let you know

Until tomorrow!