It's been over a year since I've given an update on where my health stands. When I last left you guys, I was experimenting with the Carnivore Diet, which I'll start with briefly and move into my health and current treatment as a whole.

Am I on the Carnivore Diet now? No.

However, I did attempt to try the Carnivore Diet one last time in November of 2020 for a little over 2 weeks. It was very easy to transition to since I've been in ketosis for about a year and a half.

While I seemed to do really well on eating just grass-fed ground beef, I definitely do a lot better with some carbohydrates added into the mix.

Despite this, I am still very reactive to many foods, as I continue to repair my gut. My current diet consists of:

• 80% Grass fed ground beef
• Beef liver
• Celery
• Romaine
• Cucumber
• Avocado
• Sea salt
• Water

Pretty damn good, at least before I started taking Thorne's SF722 for my gut in November of 2020. I'll explain more later.

In the last year, I've chipped away a lot of what has been keeping me from feeling 100%. Much of this revolved around my gut, with the start of my current diet making the biggest of impacts I've seen thus far.

From the diet, I then worked the possibility of having low stomach acid by adding in Pure Encapsulations' Betaine HCL with Pepsin.

The HCL really helped with digestion, allowed me to put on some healthy weight, and energy levels grew and were much more consistent with a normal person. So much so that I even ended up starting a business that requires a good amount of physical labor.

Despite this huge improvement, I still had a pain in the right side of my upper abdomen after eating, which I noted in my previous blog posts on the Carnivore Diet.

Back to the internets for research and what seemed most plausible was an aggravated gallbladder. It made sense since I was eating high fat on keto.

So how do you calm an aggravated gallbladder? Why with bile salts and digestive enzymes of course! So I did research on a good gallbladder support supplement and came across and started taking Dr. Mercola's Gallbladder Enzymes.

The pain in my right side of my upper abdomen seemed to improve, which had me thinking now. Why was my gallbladder so aggravated? I have heard of people with chronic Lyme having gallbladder issues, so much to the point of having them removed.

So I researched a little more and learned that if you don't have adequate levels of acid in your stomach, your gallbladder won't be trigger to release bile, nor will your pancreas be triggered to release digestive enzymes.

Was this my case? I don't know. I'm not a doctor nor did I have any labs done, but surely how I improved correlated to what I was researching.

But shouldn't the HCL have made the stomach acidic enough to trigger the gallbladder and pancreas? Yes, but I think my gallbladder needed additional support because my stomach acid had been so low for so long.

I suspect I developed gallbladder stones over time because of the low stomach acid and they caused obstructions that prevented bile from flowing into my stomach after eating, hence the pain in my upper right abdomen after eating.

Again, I don't know this to be the true explanation, but the body seems to say it is.

My current treatment protocol consists of just bentonite clay and Thorne's SF722. That's it!

In the past 10 years, in all of the research and experimenting I've done for my health, all roads always seem to lead back to my gut.

My first symptoms to indicate something was wrong came from the gut. This is now no surprise to me as I was a child living in the 1990s, where high sugar and artificial everything was the American diet.

So most likely excessive yeast is the result of that wonderful and nourshing diet from the 90s, but I do suspect that Lyme is still an issue for me, but not as much as the yeast.

When a full moon rolls around, I do tend to feel worse -- not all the time -- but enough to remember Dr. Joseph Burrascano, M.D. suggesting that a person still had an active Lyme infection is they feel worse every 4 weeks.

So, with that figured out, I am currently attempting to remove excessive yeast from my gut with Thorne's SF722 and it's doing a hell of a job. From there, I mop up the biotoxins from the yeast (i.e., glitoxins) with the bentonite clay.

A quick note on Thorne's SF722: I've taken this supplement before, but it never really did anything for me. I had high hopes for it, especially considering the reviews.

And it was the reviews that indicated that the supplement could be more effective if you broke them open with your teeth before swallowing. So I started doing this for the 5 capsules 2x a day dosage I was on. Big mistake.

Thorne's SF722 immediately became the yeast weapon I've been looking for, as I herxed pretty badly. So much so that I had to drop my dosage from 5 capsules 2x a day to just 3 capsules 1x a day.

On top of this, I noticed I didn't need to take the HCL anymore because the Undecylenic Acid of the SF722 capsules is, you guessed it, acidic.

Could it be that excessive yeast changes the pH of the stomach to more alkaline? Maybe, especially since H. Pylori can, but nonetheless, an acidic stomach seems to do me good. Go figure.

For now, I will continue to repair my gut and remove excessive yeast with Thorne's SF722, with the intent to graduate to Byron White's A-FNG, if needed.

I'll also continue to mop up yeast biotoxins with bentonite clay as instructed by Dr. Neil Nathan, M.D. in his book, "Toxic: Heal Your Body from Mold Toxicity, Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and Chronic Environmental Illness".

Once the excessive yeast is in control and my gut is good, I'll then consider if a Lyme treatment is still warranted.

If I am ever to restore my health to 100% -- which I am very confident in doing now than I have ever been -- I've toyed with the idea of writing a book or maybe just a blog post with the specifics of how I did it.

Regardless of the medium for which I would make this information available, it would be 100% free and available to anyone to use for their own benefit.

Losing my health just over 10 years ago has taught me so much and morphed me in ways that I don't think a normal life ever could have, for the better, surely.

If people with this condition are suffering any more than I have (I'm sure they are) -- and I've suffered quite a bit mentally and physically -- then I feel it is a duty as a human being to lessen the suffering of others if I can lessen, or better yet, completely dissolve, my own.

Clearly I'm not posting or commenting on Tired of Lyme as often as I used to, but this is a good thing. It's because I've been feeling so much better, with so much of a normal life returning.

With this said, I do still check in on Tired of Lyme, maintain and update its coding, and read comments and messages I receive from you all.

I hope that many of you have found a road to recovery or are at least mapping it out, like I am. If you're not, then I offer the following information to you for which I would have given to myself 10 years ago:

• ​Look into Dr. Neil Nathan, M.D.'s book "Toxic: Heal Your Body from Mold Toxicity, Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and Chronic Environmental Illness". The information in this book was simply not available even just 10 years ago because chronic Lyme was still so new on the scene. There are a lot of Lyme books out there, but the only one that ever seemed worth reading or explained what was going on with me was this one. Perhaps I'll consider doing a review on it.
• Check out Dr. Marty Ross, M.D.'s website TreatLyme.net (I think it's all free now). He explains the many facets and mechanisms of treating chronic Lyme in short and detailed articles and videos for you to use alone or with your doctor.
• And as always, the man who first got me feeling better and explained the complexity of my condition, master herbalist Stephen Buhner. I'd be completely lost if I didn't have his tireless research and information for treating chronic Lyme. This information is available for free on his website buhnerhealinglyme.com or in his book "Healing Lyme".

I do occasionally wonder what my life would have been like had I never lost my health 10 years ago. I think of the struggles I've been through since then, but all that I've accomplished and the good that has come because of it.

Clearly life throws challenges your way, with some challenges being harder to overcome than others and that's okay. You do your best and learn along the way, not only about how to better yourself, but what you're capable of under said challenge.

Your best ally is to not only never give up, but continue to learn and ask questions. Make sense of what is happening to you with every symptom as a clue. Eventually, you'll have all of the pieces of the puzzle and be able to place them all back together.

I currently aim to write a blog post at least once a month.  Those of you who have followed me from the start know that the rate at which I wrote was sometimes daily.  Well why has the rate dropped so drastically? Well, to be blunt.. I'm healing.

The other day I had visited the local health food store in search of a specific trace mineral known as Molybdenum.  If you've never heard of it, don't beat yourself up.  Molybdenum's popularity in the world of minerals is comparable to that of the white crayon in the crayon box.  It exists but people tend to avoid it as it only serves useful under the appropriate circumstances.  Today was different though as my circumstances warranted the use of the white crayon.

As I would later learn, I was herxing bad but not from Lyme Disease.  Oh no, this recent state of debilitation is credited entirely to candida die off.  For so long, I questioned the ineffectiveness of standard detox methods (e.g., epsom salt bath, sauna, burbur) I had been utilizing to reduce a suspected Lyme Disease die off.  These methods of detoxification took the edge off but for a reason that had since eluded me, their detrimental effects remained.

I had an incredibly vivid dream last night that has left me contemplating its reason well into the morning after.  Most of my dreams are intense and colorful much like the one I had last night, but the impression this one has left allows it to just linger in my mind as the day goes on.

I can't remember every exact detail of the dream but I specifically remember knocking on a childhood friend's door who lived around the block from me years ago.  Though my friend and his family no longer live in that house, I specifically remember thinking, while I waited for the door to be answered, how my friend has changed since I've last seen him.

The inner door was open, thus allowing a view into the house through the screen door.  I remember watching my friend approaching the door and wondering what has changed about him.

As he came to the door, I specifically remember telling him that I needed to talk with him.  I needed someone to hear me out because I was reeling from none other than the struggle with this plague.  The astounding thing is that I'm never one to reach out to another in real life but here in my dream, I was reaching out to an old childhood friend for solace.  I needed his compassion and understanding for what I have been enduring.

What happened directly after that is a blur to me but following this event, another childhood friend appeared at the house as well as an ex-girlfriend.  This new childhood friend was in a band, much like I used to be in real life but this child hood friend in real life has no musical experience.  In fact he is a hunter.  He was preparing the band for the singer, which was my ex-girlfriend and again, my ex-girlfriend is in no way a singer in real life.

During most dreams, there is an emotional attachment to it.  I specifically remember feeling like a failure at life after hearing my childhood friend mention he was in a band.

These were just the critical parts of the dream that continue to linger in my head as the morning progresses on this rainy day.

The fundamental emotions I gather from the dream are desperation and failure, but these weren't the factors that attracted me to the mystery of the dream.  Oh no, it was actually the presence of people I had been extremely close with long ago.  Forget the roles they were even playing in my dream, it was their presence alone that left me curious.  In a essence, I became nostalgic for the relationship I once I had with these profound people.

Well I didn't think I'd be herxing this bad almost 10 months into treatment but I am.  The healing process with Lyme Disease is very strange and unique.  I find that bad days will remain as debilitating as they will ever be no matter how far you've progressed with treatment.  In between the bad days are good days and they're a little different.  They seem to be more enjoyable as treatment progresses which has been my only indication through out all of this fight that I am exponentially getting better.

Today marks 2 months since I've been on Cumanda.  I have to say that I'm ambivalent about its effectiveness but only because I never had an obvious indication it was working.  The goal or instructions for Cumanda was to climb to 30 drops a day within 15 days and I did this without breaking a sweat.  Never once did I herx badly but I did have some strange and unusual symptoms while I increased the Cumanda to 30 drops a day.

The real herxing came when I added Samento on February 5, almost 2 months ago.  My intentions are to reach 20 drops of Samento a day total and I just can't seem to get over 17 at the moment.  It hasn't been an easy climb as I've had a lot of stagnant dosages.  I find myself staying at a certain amount of drops per day for almost a week or more with Samento.  Surely I will say that I completely understand why it is a huge factor in many holistic Lyme protocols. 

On a side note, there is a huge difference between Cat's Claw and Samento.  Despite both coming from the exact same plant (una de gato), Samento is a thousand times more powerful due to its deficiency of TOA, which remains in Cat's Claw.  Read more..

I am suppose to end my use of Cumanda today according to the Cowden protocol but I have different plans.  Being that I am herxing, which let me remind you is a good thing, I'm going to continue using it.  The reason is simply because I'm herxing.  I'm following the old adage here, "If it isn't broke, don't fix it."  If I happen to be on a protocol combination at the current moment that is effective, why would I discontinue it?   

As of lately, I've been wondering how long I've actually had Lyme Disease and (a) possible coinfection(s) for.  I'm 24 years old now. The prominence and true wrath of this plague took over when I was 21 years old.  I had major digestive and anxiety issues spawn out of the blue in high school when I was 17 years old.  I can even remember having strange neurological issues all the way back to middle school when I was 13 years old.  Never was Lyme Disease ever considered to be the possible cause for these unanticipated and never before had symptoms until everything got black in 2009 at 21 years of age.

I mean it makes sense that if you've had an illness plaguing your body for an extensive period of time, surely it won't be an overnight fix.  You also have to consider that some damage to the physical body will most likely have occurred.  Let's say hypothetically that I did contract Lyme Disease when all of these unusual symptoms began.  I would have been around 13 years old.  I'm 24 now.  That's a decade's worth of free reign over my body.  I can not even fathom how deep this bacteria may have embedded itself into my physical body.  I do have to give credit though to my immune system for doing what it could have and still does under such conditions.  For I know dealing with Lyme Disease on a biological level is a shot in the dark for it, but I am beyond grateful for the genetically obligated effort it put forth.

As we all know, battling Lyme Disease and its cronies is the ultimate test of patience.  I know a lot of people end up quitting their treatment protocols because they can't handle the herx.  Some people have more important issues and obligations in their lives to adhere to and simply can not dedicate their time to the commitment required to heal from Lyme Disease.

I know its not easy putting your life on hold.  I mean, in an essence, your life isn't really on hold as you're still aging while enduring Lyme Disease.  I feel it's more on the lines of perspective.  We feel that because we're unwillingly obligated to undertake Lyme Disease, we create the abstraction that our life is on hold.  It's not on hold.  It never was on hold and it never will be on hold.  Time doesn't stand still for those who are ailing.  It will portray zero mercy or compassion for those who feel these deserve it, simply because their life didn't go as planned.  

The clock will keep ticking and what becomes of that time will ultimately and entirely depend on the choices you make.  Any choice you make is perfectly fine as long as you approve of the consequences.  There is no right or wrong direction to head in but instead an internal satisfaction to please.  It's all a mind game.  If given the appropriate circumstances, your immune system and Lyme treatment protocol will take care of your physical body but what or who is going to mend or fix your mind?