As I mentioned in my previous post, I am full of mold, which is not good. Mold does not want to leave the body by itself, so it needs help in the form of medication that binds and removes it.
If you tolerate the medication, it’s a good process that leads to positive results. If you don’t tolerate the medication, it’s a heinous process that leads to less than positive results.
If you’ve been reading for a while, you will have already guessed I fall into the latter category.
Ugh.
So, here’s how it went for me.
The first photo is cholestyramine, which is actually a cholesterol lowering medication. However, it also binds toxins, and is regularly used for that purpose. The recommended dose for mold binding is about a tablespoon twice per day. The amount that makes me incredibly sick is in my hand above. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
Why does it make me sick?
That’s a good question. Either I’m reacting to the cholstyramine itself, or the medication is pulling toxins out of my body faster than my body can process them. Either way, it’s bad. When I’m sick from cholestyramine I experience the follwing: flu like symptoms (body aches, general malaise), fatigue, headache, severe fatigue behind my eyes, difficulty with word finding, slowed speech, a general lack of a will to live, and I feel like I’m being poisoned (I’ve never been poisoned and have no idea what it feels like, but that’s the thought that always comes to me when the medicine makes me sick). Sounds like a picnic, right?
I was actually willing to tolerate all of that if it would lead to feeling better, but I got done in by another side effect: diarrhea. Sorry, getting personal now. I’m talking get-up-and-run-to-the-bathroom-diarrhea. So, that was game over for cholestyramine. Not to mention, my doctor wasn’t sure I was even accomplishing much with the micro, micro dose I was taking.
Enter Welchol. Different drug, same purpose. Bind mold. Well, this had the exact opposite effect on my GI tract. Total shut down. I’m talking no trains running at all, which is a very bad side effect, because once the mold is bound, it’s supposed to leave in the stool. So, game over for Welchol too.
Enter Okra Pepsin from Standard Process (third photo). This a non-pharmaceutical mold binding agent. It does not give me any unwanted GI issues, however, if I take too much I get many of the same side effects as I did from cholestyramine, so I need to be very careful. I slowly worked up to three caps per day, but every now and then I get sick and need to back off.
The downside is Okra is not nearly as effective as Cholestyramine or Welchol, so it’s going to be a slow process. Very slow.
In fact, some days I wonder if I’m making any progress at all. But here are my options. Take something more effective that basically debilitates me, or take something less effective and still have the opportunity to function. I’ll take door B. It’s not ideal, but nothing about chronic illness is.
This is my life, at least for now. So, I will continue to take it one day at a time, one dose of Okra at a time, and I will continue to hope and pray for the best.
Swimupstream 