C. Diff Test Results

So this is funny in a “lol at Mikhaila’s life” kind of way.

I wrote the following on Feb 25, 2019, last week. Then I got results back for something else that completely scratches this theory. I’ll write about what that is this week, Sunday hopefully, and make a video too. I don’t want to get into it on this post.

I thought I’d put this post from last week up anyway. Trying to figure out what is making you ill is a lengthy, frustrating process. And, as I’ve unfortunately learned, usually it’s not a “one thing is wrong” problem. Not for me anyway. But, everything you search and cross off a list is a step closer, and more information is better. This was my C. Difficile theory. It’s kind of wrong, and now I know I was reading too much into it, but I did have it, it was making me ill, and now it’s probably gone.

Here’s the original post:

“Anybody who has been following this blog for long enough knows that I’ve been searching for answers for years trying to figure out why I can’t tolerate anything, why I have an autoimmune disorder, why it’s triggered by food, why the symptoms are so random, what causes flares, etc. Literally everything. Every rabbit hole. It’s exhausting sometimes.

I did a bunch of testing in December. Not all of it has come back yet but the C. Difficile test did come back positive, which you guys already know about.

(C. Diff is explained HERE. But it’s basically a bacterial infection that can cause diarrhea, bloating, and in severe cases, death. It hits people who have taken antibiotics for long periods of time or have stayed in the hospital, neither of which I had done recently, just prior to my symptoms… Who knows how long I’ve had this. I’ve had symptoms for a year about.)

Here are my results. I found out I had C. Diff in December, blog post HERE.

I re-tested before I went off to the Taymount Clinic just so I could have a before and after of my gut. This test was after 2 weeks on a pretty high dose of antibiotics too, just so everyone has all the information.

My zonulin levels are sky high and so are my IgA levels. I have a brief description of zonulin and gluten HERE but it’s basically a protein that modulates the tight junctions between cells in the gut. If your zonulin levels are high, there’s a very good chance that the cells in your gut aren’t staying stuck together and that is basically what increased intestinal permeability is. Leaky gut. My zonulin levels are ridiculously high right now which can be caused mainly by gluten and bacteria. IgA’s are a type of immune system protein that are secreted to fight infections. So no wonder those levels are high.

Basically, the C. Difficile toxins are increasing my zonulin levels. On this meat diet my zonulin levels should be basically zero, as I’m not eating anything that’s irritating my gut. The doctors using this high fat meat diet in Hungary, (Paleomedicina, I’ll still be writing about them, promise), have shown that it only really takes about a month to stop leaky gut. Sometimes up to 8 months if you’re dealing with something like Crohn’s disease which is massively destructive to the gut. I’ve been on this diet for 14 months and my zonulin levels are ridiculous, and it’s probably because of this C. Diff infection. This pretty much explains why I’m reacting to everything that isn’t beef. The plant proteins are probably going straight into my blood.

I also tested for a number of other viruses, parasites, and bacteria. I haven’t received the results for the Lyme disease test but everything else came back negative so far. I’m currently at the Taymount clinic in the Bahamas doing 10 FMT treatments to combat the C. Diff and potentially help with the food sensitivities. (FMT = fecal microbiome transplant – used to treat C. Diff).

I’ve had a number of theories over the years and many were wrong, but many weren’t. None explained the whole story though, and neither does this one, but it’s a good guess.

I had my IgG theory and my Candida theory as well. I still believe both of those had a part to play and that this is a very complex problem (otherwise autoimmune disorders wouldn’t be an issue anymore, right?)

So:

1. I started getting symptoms of C. Difficile when I switched over to the meat diet. Most people who drop all carbs and go straight to meat experience about 2 weeks of diarrhea but my digestion never really got back to normal. It was still a huge improvement over autoimmune symptoms and depression, but it wasn’t great.
2. It took me almost a year to figure out it was C. Diff. Why? Well I never “contracted” it. I wasn’t on antibiotics, I didn’t have any hospital stays, I didn’t get food poisoning, there was no contraction period, symptoms just started when I switched my diet.
3. Maybe I’ve had this problem for a long time. Like decades with no symptoms. I’ve been searching for the “underlying problem” for a while and suspected something like Lyme. It’s possible to have C. Diff without the usual digestive symptoms.
4. There are pediatric cases of children with reactive arthritis (which is what I have) caused by C. Diff. Not many, but they’re there.

So here is my newest guess. Maybe I’ve had C. Diff since I was a baby. Maybe I was one of those pediatric cases where a bacterial infection causes reactive arthritis. Maybe the reason I can’t eat anything is because my zonulin levels are high because of the combination of the celiac gene and a bacterial infection. Maybe when I eat something wrong, the C. Diff toxins get into my blood and that’s what I’m reacting to. This would explain why the reactions are so horrible and always basically the same depending on the quantity of food I eat.

I obviously had a candida problem as well (but that was resolved going lower carb – shown through stool testing), and there were clearly food proteins getting into my blood (shown through IgG testing). I would have reacted to both of those as well but maybe the C. Diff is the underlying problem.

Or maybe I’m just being hopeful.”

Turns out I was just being hopeful. More to come next week on the ridiculously unnecessarily dramatic life of Mikhaila Peterson 🙂