I’m so sorry you went through all that suffering, Logi. I battled it for just a few years and that was painful enough. I can’t even imagine what you went through and I’m truly happy you are free from it now!
I got gaslit by doctors (a preview of the nonsense I go through as a COVID long-hauler) because they couldn’t figure out what was wrong...so of course, it must be in my head.
It wasn’t.
The thing is, I ate relatively healthy to begin with. Lots of fruits and vegetables, not a lot of snacks, no alcohol, but did get my caffeine through soda. I wasn’t pounding down ice cream and carbs. I kept my weight (5’8”, 120 lbs.) for years.
After my 3rd child, I started to gain the weight and my health issues increased.
There were days my entire body was racked with pain, where I would throw up anything I ate, where the migranes were blinding.
Unless folks go through it, they will not understand how awful it can be.
Likewise to you. I’ve always had an iron stomach. My problems manifested in overlapping manners and I’m just lucky that I had the ability to put all the pieces together.
Not necessarily in this order, but I began gaining nearly a pound a day with zero change in activity & diet, I became so deficient in key nutrients that multiple symptoms gradually began, including literally bouncing off the walls due to lack of balance, but the key to the whole thing was a lucky break:
I got rear-ended, and given everything the doctors told me, the cognitive degradation I’d suffered from what was labeled ‘post-concussive syndrome’ was to be permanent if it lasted more than 6 months (it did, and persisted for almost 5 years). The kicker: I was rear-ended at a mere 5 mph. Yeah.
Ultimately it led to me being laid off and I spent a year researching my health, becoming the epitome of autodidact, reversed all the symptoms after spending 2 years on my gut and just like that: Magically the cognitive issues evaporated nearly overnight with specific changes.
I now believe that it was my severe health decline (which was then in stealth) which permitted my severe head injury symptoms. Again, lucky: I truly believe that I’d be dead today had it not occurred. The effects of the virus is another story altogether.
But the tragedy revealed as a result of my attempts to help others:
We as humans are hardwired to ‘push the button’ and disregard sound health advice in the absence of physical symptoms, and still reject said advice unless the cause/effect is immediate...which is as irrational as people going to the hospital with a broken leg and expecting to be healed when they are discharged.
You and I are among the distinct minority who may avoid the cliche’ pitfalls of living in the heart of SAD under the inverse of medical meritocracy...a pathetic, profit-driven medical orthodoxy contributing almost nothing to human health but suffering.