My Story – Elusive Iron

My nails were regularly separating at the ends as well as cracking on the sides, to where I used superglue on occasion to keep them intact, and the vertical ridges of my nails became more pronounced. Eventually, my nails each independently started growing at an angle, either to the right or the left.

In 2015, I began a part-time job with a charity organization which involved a great deal of exercise, mostly outdoors. I gave 100% to the fundraising, but as the weeks and months went by, my health progressively declined, leaving me able to give less and less. Around sixty symptoms of several different varieties reared their ugly heads, a number of them coming and going without apparent rhyme or reason:

I quickly found myself exhausted all the time. I had all sorts of trouble sleeping; I had chronic fatigue, so it was hard for me to stay awake sometimes while other times I just couldn’t sleep. Or, once asleep, I couldn’t stay asleep. Brain fog made it difficult to concentrate and remember things and there were times I could barely hold a conversation. My mental health swung between anxiety with panic attacks and a side of PTSD to suicidal depression. Perhaps the worst was that it got to the point where I was in pain — on a few occasions severe fibromyalgia — nearly every day of my life there for a few years.

My blood pressure was all over the place, my hair was falling out, my nails were cracking and breaking, I was often either freezing cold or burning up hot and sweating like a pig, my muscles were weak and twitchy, my throat felt like a boot was pressing on it, my heart was doing funny things and skipping a beat, my sinuses were inflamed, and my allergies were amplified.

In addition to ocular rosacea and occasional eyelid inflammation (blepharitis), my allergies and sinus congestion were regularly off the charts, and allergy drugs weren’t always that helpful.

Having been on low carb diet for years, and having not changed my diet at all during this period, I suddenly gained 22 pounds in a week and a half. And there was nothing I could do dietarily to get the weight off; believe me, I tried. When I would make the mistake of commenting on my sudden, significant, concerning upsizing, I was invariably told one of two things, either “You’re skinny!” or “You’re just getting old.” So, I stopped mentioning it — yet I still had to continue to carry the extra weight around. One morning I woke up, and my vision was strangely somewhat blurry — and it remained that way. Sciatica would hit out of nowhere, and there were a few days I was unable to walk. Chest pain started to randomly hit, and my heart felt progressively more wobbly and was skipping multiple beats, leaving me to seriously think it would be the death of me.

This photo at a charity event was taken mid-way through the 10 days I gained the 22 pounds.

Ibuprofen, aspirin, acetaminophen, CBD oil, curcumin, palmitoylethanolamide, tart cherry extract, diphenhydramine, loratadine, cetirizine, fluticasone, hot baths, professional massage… you name it, it did relatively little for my pain or other symptoms. Alcohol only just took the edge off but allowed me to sleep for a couple of hours, as would a partial benzo, during which time I blessèdly wasn’t having to deal with the pain. Overall, my situation was miserable, and with no working treatment let alone explanation, it seemed like there might not be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Doctor after doctor, including an ophthalmologist, told me I seemed fine and there was no reason I should have any of the symptoms I described having. I was even told that gaining all that weight in such a short amount of time was ‘just a side-effect of getting older’. Three doctors told me my abnormal lab results were in fact normal. One doctor told me I simply had “allergies” and wanted to shuffle me off to a cardiologist despite my conviction that my heart issues were merely symptoms of a different problem. Another doctor tried intensely to pressure me into an multi-thousand-dollar scheme involving her examining my poop and teaching me to grocery shop for all sorts of plants — despite me making it clear I was not willing to change to a deleterious diet and that I had no lower GI symptoms to speak of.

The blurred & diplopic vision I woke up to one day.

After fighting with my second doctor just to get a thyroid ultrasound, I ruled out my thyroid as the problem.
After wearing a heart monitor at the request of one doctor, I was never given its results nor consulted by a cardiologist. (I was quite sure my heart issues were only symptoms of the problem anyway, but nevertheless.)
I ruled out hormonal issues.
I ruled out heavy metal toxicity.
I made sure the mold I had found in my home was cleaned up.

It was all well and good to rule out things it wasn’t, but I still couldn’t figure out what it was. Moreover, I was tired of being fat, I was tired of losing a small pile of hair every day, I was tired of feeling tired, and most definitely I was tired of feeling horrible in so many ways. I lived day to day waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering when the next “episode” would occur and if it would land me in the ER again or if it would outright kill me, and that would be that, and nobody would ever know what happened. I needed answers.

I thought maybe the mold I had found on one wall in my home was the cause of my problems. It turns out it was only exacerbating my allergies.

I knew that all of my myriad symptoms along with my not-quite-right-but-don’t-know-why blood test results had to add up to something worthwhile. So, utilizing my extensive background in the sciences and in independent research, in the spare time I had, and with the barest hint of energy and ability to focus I still possessed, I scoured PubMed reading every peer-reviewed study and analytical synopsis I could find regarding each of my symptoms in order to try to pin down exactly what was going wrong.

It was in following up with a friend whose hyperferritinemia I had helped discover that I stumbled across the answer to my own problems hidden in a single published paper overseas, and from there I was able to put all the pieces together. I started treating myself, and literally, miraculously, overnight — in the span of just a couple of hours, truly — I felt like I’d gone from 20% to 85%. All my pain, brain fog, depression, lethargy, throat pressure, heart issues, tired eyes, temperature and blood pressure fluctuations, and dozens of other symptoms evaporated! I felt like a whole person once again, like someone who would not only manage to get through life but who would be able to handle everyday life just fine from thereon out.

My remaining symptoms one day after treatment: memory loss, anxiety, hair loss, dry skin, easy bruising, muscle twitching, the extra weight, sleep disturbances, and blurred vision.
My remaining symptoms six months into treatment: hair loss, easy bruising, the extra weight, and blurred vision.
My remaining symptoms after one year of treatment: blurred vision.

Since that harrowing adventure, I have uncovered a great deal more information and have become proficient at reading and interpreting bloodwork and correlating seemingly disparate, little-appreciated, and poorly-understood symptoms in order to improve other people’s lives in the same way. It was especially enlightening to find out that so many people have essentially the same problem but show it in various ways! While it’s true that sussing out dietary issues in the majority of people is important, there are some cases, such as mine, where the issue is primarily genetic and must be balanced out with either supplementation or infusion. Because everyone is different, I can’t guarantee the same level of drastic, overnight improvement for everyone else as I experienced, but if you are one of those who are suffering and would like to see if I could give it a shot, I would be happy to do my best to get you back on track with your health!

I started out with a significant interest in medicine as a child, later taking and teacher-assisting biology, anatomy, and physiology in high school. In college I went a somewhat different route, and after graduation, when I got my first dog, I became interested in becoming a veterinarian. But I learned that if one is extremely allergic to cats, a vet degree in the U.S. isn’t really a possibility, so I instead chose to independently and thoroughly educate myself in the subjects of canine health, nutrition, and genetics.

Little did I know at the time how beneficial a decision that would turn out to be — in multiple ways. My allergies continued to worsen, so I was saved from dealing with that, but more usefully, I was exposed to sensical and critically important dietary information and ideas that would have never shown up on my radar had I gone into debt slugging my way through the government-sanctioned, commercial training that barely touches on nutrition and certainly doesn’t address the history of natural and industry companion animal nutrition and how the latter has impacted pets over the decades. Drawing from this host of lost knowledge has allowed me to not only help return health to many dogs but to start many puppies’ lives out in the best possible metabolic state.

After studying canine health for a handful of years, I decided it was time to see to my own health, not because I thought I had anything wrong with me but because I wanted to try to ensure a good quality healthspan and lifespan. My approach to understanding human health through optimal nutrition was the same as it had been for dogs. This training was instrumental in allowing me to eventually uncover my iron deficiency and, from there, allowing me to improve the lives of others suffering from the same extraordinarily common but widely unaddressed problem.