Autoimmune disorders. I don't remember ever hearing about them when I was younger. I remember my mother and her friends when they were in their thirties. They seems strong, healthy, they ran around and had fun, worked, went to parties. I never heard anything about them having anything other than a stomach bug or cold. Now they are on the rise, especially in women. Why? Have you wondered what is happening and why everyone seems to be sick? Out of all the women I know, I'd say a good 85% of them have at least one autoimmune disease. Food allergies. I don't remember those either. We had one child in my Kindergarten class who was allergic to peanuts, and we all though it was really weird. When it was my mother's turn to make snack for my class, she read the list of how many children we had, then saw a note about one of them having a peanut allergy. She had never heard of such a thing. Now it is so common, and not just with peanuts. Wheat, dairy, soy, eggs, animals protein, tomatoes...you name it, someone is allergic to it. And usually a person is allergic/intolerant to more than one food. Why? To give you some of my background, I was a vegan for about 10 years. Before that, I had horrible IBS, so bad my family doctor thought I had Crohn's Disease. They put me on a horrible medication that almost gave me a heat stroke. I took myself off the medication, and then my mother wondered what would happen if I cut all dairy prodects from my diet. I figured it would be worth a try. It was then that I realized that dairy, in some form, is in everything! I was able to finally cut it all out, and I felt better than I had felt in years. So I cut more, and eventually became a vegan. My stomach issues were better, but not totally gone. As I continued to struggle with occasional IBS flare-ups and acne (my acne actually worsened in my 20s), I researched and decided to give up soy. That seemed to help a great deal, and my skin started looking better too, but I was beginning to feel very restricted in my diet. During this time, my mother was also having stomach issues. She worked an office job, and she said if she hadn't been able to go the the bathroom several times a day, she would have had to quit her job. She later found out that she can't eat wheat or gluten. Once to found that out, I began experimenting with gluten free diets, but it was difficult to be gluten free and vegan and soy free. What happened while I was experimenting with gluten free was that I realized that I actually did feel better off it. It didn't seem to bother my stomach, but I noticed a reduction in headaches and other body pains. At times when I ate gluten, those pains would flare back up. My husband and I eventually decided to have a baby. I had been working out really hard with a program called p90x, and my body felt very taxed. I began eating fish, then meat again. I was mostly gluten free at this point, but I did have it occasionally. I also added eggs back in, but continued to avoid dairy and soy. I went on this way for five years. About a year and a half ago I fell down some steps and broke my ankle. It was not a bad break, but I was told to eat calcium rich foods. I had been experimenting some with goat dairy, and the small amounts I had had didn't seem to bother me, so I full into it, eating tons of goat cheese and eating cow yogurt, thinking I'd be ok. I had gotten my own chickens, so we were eating tons of eggs as well, and I was eating oatmeal. I had a total stomach blow-out, worse than I had had in year. I had cramps, I woke up with bad stomach aches, I had diarrhea throughout the day. Then I got a new job, a very stressful one, and my little dog died. I was stressed, having stomach issues, very sad and depressed, and I felt guilty because I chose to have my dog put down, and that was a decision I didn't want to have to make. It was keeping me up at night. I was crying, feeling so tired I couldn't move, just pulling myself through each day. I noticed at my new job that I just wasn't feeling good, not my normal not good, but different. I felt shakey, strangly hyper, like I could stand to sit at the desk, but exhausted at the same time. I was also hoping that people didn't notice how often I had to use the restroom. Then Spring came, and it was unusually hot. The building had a big glass front to it (where my desk was located), and no air conditioning. I felt like I was dying. Everyone else was hot, I was sick. I had to go open the door and just stand there trying to breathe. It was a temporary job, and I was glad when it was finally over. Soon after I was done there, I continued to notice the strange hyper/nervous feeling. It was very persistant. Then, I became unable to sleep. I couldn't lay still or rest. I eventually became aware of my heart palpitation. My heart felt like it was dancing and jumping in my chest, and pounding in my ears, even at rest. It hurt it was pounding so hard. I tried to ignore it, thinking I'm too young for heart problems, maybe it was just anxiety. But it just kept going on, never letting up. On a day when I was supposed to go out of town to play music at a festival, I woke up and felt awful. I took my pulse, and it was not good. I ended up in the ER. They did bloodwork (not the right bloodwork), chest xrays, and EKGs. Everything was pretty normal, except my pulse was way too high and my heart was skipping beats. They gave me a beta blocker and some anti-anxiety medication and told me I was having a panic attack. I didn't believe it. I eventually ended up seeing a cardiologist who decided to do a thyroid test. He found out I was hyperthyroid and had Graves Disease antibodies, as well as Hashimotos antibodies. I was shocked. I was always the kind of person who tried to eat plenty of vegetables, I hardly ever ate out, I cooked most of my own food, and I didn't eat much sugar. I had done several rounds of P90X when I was younger. I wondered why, why was this happening? Wasn't I too young? This all happened over my 36th birthday. The weird thing about my case was that, when I first found out, my numbers were very high. I cut out every food that I thought could be bothering me: Gluten, dairy, and eggs. I tried the medicine the doctor gave me, and I didn't like how it made me feel, so I quit and waited to see a specialist. I waited about a month to see the specialist, and by that time, my thyroid number had dropped by half. They were still high, but much better, and I wasn't taking any medicine. The specialist saw nothing good about it, and told me I must take the medication. So I did, for about two weeks, then I began have dizzy spells and feeling very faint. My doctor reluctantly did my bloodwork again (the medicine usually takes longer to work),and my number were then too low. She wanted to see me again, and said now that my numbers were low, I could wither radiate my thyroid and kill it, or have surgery to remove it. I asked about remission, staying with the medication if I needed to and just watch and wait. She reluctantly agreed to that path, but from researching, many doctos try that first. At this point, a very dear friend of mine told me he knew of a Naturopathic doctor, and he would help me get down to where he lived to see this doctor. But this had become a long post, so that will be my part two, for tomorrow night.