Red Light Revelations: The Stoplight That Started My Surprising Health Journey
The Wake Up Call
I’m driving home, sitting at a stoplight. My eyelids are getting heavier, my blinks getting longer…and…longer…until finally, I’m out. Could’ve been 2 seconds or 2 minutes but as the sound of the horn behind me jolts me awake, although a little disoriented, I drive the rest of the way home without issue.
And all because of what I had consumed.
All because a few hours earlier, I had shredded cheese on my salad at lunch. –– I bet that’s exactly what you thought had happened, wasn’t it?!
This was the first time I had re-introduced cheese after two months of an elimination diet and was able to fully track the reaction:
- 30 minutes after dairy – panic attack
- 1.5 hours later – pass out (like at stoplights)
- Full-blown depression symptoms for 3 days
- Crippling anxiety for 3 days after that
Ice cream anyone?
That car’s horn did more than just wake me up to drive home, it opened my eyes to a whole new journey I would be going on.
Unraveling the Mystery
I never imagined what I ate would impact my body and mind so dramatically. Have you ever noticed how certain foods make you feel?
You never know how other people feel or what is normal, but I was sure, despite spending the previous 5 years having every blood, hormonal, allergy, sleep, and every other test you can think of say I was perfectly healthy, I wasn’t.
If I was perfectly healthy, then why in my early 30s could I, on one day, be training for a marathon, and then on another, barely be able to walk up a couple of flights of stairs without my heart exploding out of my chest and be completely out of breath?
If I was so healthy, then why if I sat on the couch after 5pm would I immediately fall asleep or why did I always fail at putting my then 3 year old daughter to sleep because she would want me to cuddle with her and I would be long asleep before her?
If I was so healthy, then why was I so completely disconnected from myself, my family, my friends, and the world around me?
…then why was I so miserable.
From the outside, I may have looked like a beacon of great health, but on the inside, my body was failing and shutting down.
A Journey of Discovery
The doctors at PALM Health changed my life.
As a part of the functional medicine program, the elimination diet helped me identify several major food triggers causing all sorts of mayhem in my system…which very surprising because I never had any stomach or GI issues.
Different foods, different triggers, but I ultimately I have cut out dairy, gluten, black beans, oats, canola oil, pork, beef, and alcohol. Yep you read that right; I haven’t had a drink in almost 5 years.
I paid very close attention to everything I put in my body for a couple years and did feel a little less horrible sometimes. Since I didn’t have any stomach symptoms, it was clear food was a trigger but not the root cause, so I went back to PALM health to try to get more clarity. Which is what I finally got.
Unveiling the Hidden Culprits
For years every single medical test came back clean, until this one. The toxicity panel came back lit up like a Christmas tree…one of those monochromatic ones with all red lights. Turns out I was a walking, talking, semi-functioning toxic dump with extremely high levels of lead, mercury, DDT, BPA, 4 types of mold, and a host of other things.
I won the genetic lottery in many ways, but not in this one. The Journal of Environmental Health reports that around 24% of people struggle with processing mold toxins due to a genetic predisposition. Turns out, my sister and I are part of this statistic. In our family, these aren’t just numbers; they’re our reality.
Environmental toxins aren’t good but fairly easy to get out of your system – think cleaning out the sludge at the bottom of a pond. Mold is a whole other level of bad, not only because of its impact on the body but also how it becomes the gift that keeps on giving as it colonizes inside your body continually spitting out a steady stream of mycotoxins…and when you fight back with meds to kill the mold, it spews out a last eff-you flood of die-off mycotoxins that will bring you to your knees.
Slow and steady is the name of the treatment game, which my doctor has to remind me every single time I meet with him and I have to remind myself every single time a toxicity reaction hijacks my soul with feelings of hopelessness, despair, and desperation.
Unveiling these hidden toxins was like finding missing pieces of a puzzle. It made me wonder how many of us are unknowingly affected by our unseen environment.
The Long Hard Journey
I am not fully healthy yet, but I’ve come a very long way. I can function at a semi-normal level without Herculean effort on more days than not, despite still fighting high levels of mold and BPA. There are still a lot of days where my body shuts down and just isn’t capable of doing what I wish/could really use it to do. The amount of energy necessary to just keep my head above water with all those toxins swirling through my system, leaves me with battery anxiety almost every day, not sure if I’ll have enough juice to make it through the day without becoming a shriveled shell of myself.
I am still not fully healthy, but I am getting healthier. I am making slow and steady progress with a demoralizing step backward before two steps forward.
This is my ongoing journey. These are my hard-discovered triggers. One thing I’ve learned is that everyone’s physical and emotional triggers are different and show up in different ways.
Seeing the Signs
Your body keeps score. Your body knows. Your body whispers quietly before it screams loudly. How often do you ignore the whispers? How often do you dismiss the signs as the joys of getting older?
Pay attention over the next two weeks when you’re feeling a little bit off, a little more frustrated, a little more stressed, not sleeping as well, a little bit more lethargic or apathetic, or just a little off your game. Then look back over the previous few hours, 12 hours, and 24 hours and take notice.
Start paying attention to your symptoms and writing down potential triggers. If you commit to just a month of this, I think you will be absolutely shocked by how many things quickly dismissed as “just getting older” have direct cause and effect not rooted in your age.
Everyone’s journey of self-discovery in health is unique. But what is universal is that we all must elevate our energy before we can elevate the energy of those around us; lead with your energy, lead with your health.
Lead With Energy,
Derek
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