Fighting Fatigue and Brain Fog

Your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life, right?
Well, mine haven’t been, but there’s still hope for my thirties. I’m 28 now, and I’ve lost most of the last nine years to chronic fatigue, brain fog, anxiety and depression.

It all began when I went vegan as a naïve, idealistic, and impressionable 19-year-old. Within six months I started falling apart. Digestive issues. Exhaustion. Dissociation. A smothering fog settled over my life and I felt the weight of my own existence. But because I’m stupid and stubborn, and because I was totally ignorant about gut health, I ignored the warning signs from my body. Instead I endured as a vegan zombie for four long years.

I’ve now been an ex-vegan for longer than I was vegan, but the same issues still plague me. Since quitting in 2020 I’ve explored every possible avenue to reclaim my health. I’ve seen over ten practitioners – GPs, naturopaths, nutritionists, a functional medicine doctor – and collected numerous diagnoses:

• Underactive thyroid
• Leaky gut
• Dysbiosis
• Pyroluria
• MTHFR mutation
• Nutrient deficiencies
• Hormonal imbalance
• Histamine intolerance
• Food sensitivities

I soon realised that the last two on that list: histamine and food reactivity were the two main culprits of my symptoms. Though my baseline was tidy and groggy – I never woke up feeling rested or refreshed, but it was after eating that I would feel my absolute worst. It didn’t seem to matter what I ate either, mealtimes would send me to the abyss. The fact that my fatigue and brain fog is often accompanied by scratchy eyes, sneezing and heart palpitations is indicative of both specific food intolerances, and general histamine reactivity. Testing confirmed high histamine levels and multiple ‘severe’ food sensitivities.

And yet… I didn’t do an elimination diet.

After four years of veganism, I was deeply psychologically resistant to further food restriction. Elimination diets are hard! Especially when food is a major comfort source (as it is for most of us) and when your list of eliminated foods is loooong. I convinced myself I could bypass the need for an elimination diet if I just addressed root cause in my gut. – In my case: Leaky gut and dysbiosis.

So I formulated the following recovery protocol:

• Glutamine for the leaky gut
• Collagen instead of whey
• Berberine to kill bad bacterial overgrowth
• Probiotics + kefir to repopulate with good bacteria
• Zinc for pyroluria + testosterone production
• DIM (diindolylmethane) for excess estrogen
• Beef liver for methylation issues

It helped. I went from zombie to semi-functional. But ‘semi-functional’ isn’t enough for me anymore, and I’m still riddled with food sensitivities. Each day is still a battle with the same exhaustion, fog, lethargy – and the frustration and depression that are a natural biproduct of feeling like shit all the time. It’s also incredibly isolating and embarrassing, because people can’t possibly understand how bad you feel if they haven’t experienced it first-hand – they just think you’re weak and dramatic.

So finally – for the hundredth time – I asked myself the obvious question:

What if I just do an elimination diet!?

Instead of trying to have my cake and eat it too, just take my medicine – in this case a 2-3 month period of total elimination. If you’ve got an infection you take a course of antibiotics for a prescribed period of time. If you’ve got food intolerances you need to take a course of elimination for a prescribed period of time. Even just one week could make a world of difference to your system, and your understanding.

I’m 5 days into eliminating the following:

• Dairy (80% reaction)

• Sugar (70%)
• Chocolate (70%)
• Eggs (60%)
• Coffee (60%) ***
• Wheat (60%)
• Histamine (50%)
• Additives

For simplicity and sustainability I’ve been eating the same thing everyday:

• A big pot of beef mince, white rice, carrot and onions cooked in olive oil (with salt, ginger, garlic and turmeric) – split in to 3 meals.
• Fruit: Bananas, watermelon
• One soy latte (I’m still in the process of tapering off caffeine – the final boss), one black tea
• A glass of red wine with dinner

And what’s the verdict thus far? Well surprise, surprise – I feel completely different. It’s not an overnight miracle. I don’t feel amazing yet. But I feel dramatically better. I don’t find the weight of my own existence so burdensome, that heavy drag is gone already. I have had pretty stable energy and far sharper mental clarity. For the first time in a long time – I have hope that this will all soon finally be behind me. Once the caffeine taper is done, I think I’ll have turned the final corner. Then it’s just a matter of sticking to this elimination diet for 2-3 months, and then very conservatively reintroducing foods.

I might finally get my life back soon. And if I do… I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.

Thanks for reading. More to come – this is only the beginning.

Cheers,
Remy.