I really hope it works well for you and hope your sister considers trying it. After all the chaos I have been going through with it all, it is hard to easily quantify what Huel has done for me, but I do know it is invaluable. It was not âtheâ solution, but it is part of âmyâ solution. I hope it will prove to be part of solutions for others, as it really seems to be the perfect tool for working through many diet related conditions. If your sister tries it, please do share the results. I think the more people who it successfully to correct issues via diet, the more it will catch on for that purpose.
I just passed two months on Huel and water and I cannot imagine going back now. After this long avoiding anything else, I have had some interesting experiences lately. One of the most interesting was just a few days ago. I happened to notice a Tony Romaâs restaurant in the area. We loved the Tony Romaâs restaurants in Niagara Falls, but had not had one near us where we lived before. A full rack of ribs there was one of the best meals I ever had. One would expect after two months of Huel, it would be hard to resist, but I had an unexpected reaction once I pictured a rack of barbecue ribs on a plateâŚI felt nauseous. I was a little surprised, but apparently although the thought of such foods is appealing on the surface, if I really imagine eating eat, I am not at all interested. I donât attribute the reaction to Huel, but simply due to abstaining from anything other than Huel for two months. I had noticed my taste adapting early on, but I swear my body is figuring out what is good and bad and adjusting its reactions. Although part of me thought it sounded a bit hard to imagine, I believe the science is there to support it. We already react to the thought of lots of things that could make us sick to eat. Part of it is instinctive and part is by drawing on memories of things that were harmful. In my case, I seem to have developed a severe sensitivity to something without knowing what, so I have mentally made an association of foods that are traditionally unhealthy as foods that make me worse. That may not even be true honestly, but the thought of most heavy and rich foods now makes me feel nauseous. I still have a little craving at the initial thought of some foods, but it goes away as soon as I think about the actual food and not the memory of it.
After the past two very crazy months, I am only able to understand what I have been going through objectively after getting further away from specific moments. To be blunt, the combination of the long battle with near constant torture, escalating stress due to declining health, and several other major stressors, my mind pretty much shattered for a bit. The closest analogy would be a dam bursting. I was trying to contain and control everything until it was just too much and the dam burst. The first week or so was euphoria and delusions, not really believing much of anything was real. Two months after such a significant mental break and I am finally feeling more in control again. The mission to fix myself didnât make it any easier to maintain mental stability, as almost everything I have been doing for two months has been related to trying to get better both mentally and physically. It is bad enough to focus on the physical challenges of figuring all of this out, but I had never expected it would cause me to struggle with a flood of emotions that left me unstable. Just like a dam bursting, it take a while for the water to drain completely. It slows down and eventually becomes a tickle in a rather linear fashion. I think the emotional overload has been fading in the same way. This past weekend was significant for me because I was actually able to focus on something else for a while. Although I have been much better on Huel, I still have a lot of issues that are very hard to put out of my mind.
On Saturday, I was feeling really good again, probably the best I have felt for a whole day since the first week or so on Huel. There are a few likely reasons for the changes. I have not posted the details for a while, so I will give a quick summary of what happened. After one month of Huel and water, avoiding medications or supplements as much as possible, I was stuck, not really getting any better, and felt like I was getting a bit worse. So, I did a stupid thing out of desperation. I did not expect it was stupid and thought I was proceeding intelligently at first, but I started supplementing again. I added a liver cleanse to the mix, thought it might be helping but could not be sure, then I stumbled on a supplement called d-Limonene that is supposed to help with bile flow, so I started taking that. The stress of it all was getting to me, so I researched and found an adrenal fatigue supplement. Before I knew it, a little over two weeks later and I was in rough shape.
I decided to stop taking all of those and settled on a more manageable approach. The gastroenterologist said it sounds like my remaining issues are likely due to constant spasms in my colon combined with visceral hypersensitivity. All previous treatments for that were not successful, but he is trying me on buspirone and zofran as somewhat atypical treatments that he thinks may be more successful. The buspirone is to calm the nerves in my intestines and the zofran will help with spasms. So, the buspirone may help with the pain, the zofran may control the spasms, and the Huel takes care of the food related issues. The main thing that was left in all of that was the way my body processes the Huel. It has been problematic compared to others in my family, and by my observations, it still seemed like I needed some help. The enzymes did nothing, and the liver supplements made me worse, so I went back to probiotics. The problem is that I have tried lots of probiotics; thousands of dollars worth over the years, with little to no effect. I even tried some at high doses. This time, I did some research on current knowledge. It seems the probiotics of years ago are jokes compared to some of the more advanced ones these days. The most powerful one I tried was VSL#3, and it worked a little, but was very limited. After some research, I found Garden of Life RAW Ultimate Probiotics. It has 100 billion CFU, 34 strains, prebiotics and enzymes. I bought a bottle and after one pill, I realized it was doing something. It was quite painful at first, but it was making obvious changes, and seemed to be breaking down the Huel much better, making it easier to get through my system.
Before I run on too long with all the details, here is what I am observing about the current treatments.
Huel - I am making one gallon jugs of it at a time now, drinking a little more than one gallon a day. I have not had any issues with food related energy, and have found it increasingly easy to stick with. Unless you are someone who has made this kind of change, most will likely see it as impossibly difficult to imagine, but it has been remarkably easy. The only cheating I did at all was limited. I have had a piece of chocolate a few times in the past two months, but I have not completed the entire bar in this time. Other than that, and the green tea, I have been Huel only and loving it.
Buspirone - The doctor wants me to reach 30mg per day, but I have not been able to manage more than 10mg per day yet. I will keep trying to adjust, but the first two weeks left me almost bedridden. It takes the edge off of anxiety, which was nice, but it causes massive fatigue. I went from hiking in the mountains to having to pull myself up the stairs. I am supposed to take them morning and evening, but if I take it in the morning, I am done. I had to reduce the dosage and will see if I can adjust over time. I cannot see any difference in my digestive system based on what it is supposed to treat, but given the low dose I can take, I would not expect too much yet. I had been put on amitriptyline years ago but that proved impossible for me to adjust to and it never helped.
Zofran - This is normally prescribed for nausea. I canât say it helped with the limited amount of that I experience, but he prescribed it to reduce spasms. I donât really notice much difference at all with this medication yet.
RAW Ultimate Probiotics - I take one pill in the morning after my first Huel. The first week was pretty rough, as it hit the bad area by late afternoon or early evening. It basically felt like exactly what you might imagine . A bunch of microbes feasting on things that cause a lot of churning in there. After a couple of days of the usual rough mornings followed by painful afternoons, I felt like things were getting more ânormalâ. I wonât go into details, but things started looking closer to normal than I have seen in years with a bowel movement. This made me think about how the probiotic is likely affecting me and how to make it better. So I performed an experiment. I made a batch of Huel in the evening, opened a probiotic capsule and dumped the cotents into the jug of Huel. I knew being in the refrigerator, the microbes should stay mostly dormant, but was not sure what I would have in the morning. It did not ferment at all, and the taste was as expected. Drinking it all day with the Huel seems to work well, basically turning it into a probiotic drink. The capsules were not enteric coated anyway, so I would suspect there is little difference in the ability of the microbes to survive the stomach acid. Being mixed with the Huel might even improve it. Anyway, after a few days of that, I decided to add the one pill back in the morning to see how I would tolerate it and it is much less painful now. I donât know if I just adjusted or the mix was the key. The downside seems to be that the effect is not as strong as I adjust, but it is helpful, and I can just increase the probiotics over time to compensate.I do not know if these specific probiotics are really special, or if all the changes I have gone through have cleared issues to allow them to work. The physical and emotional effects of all of this have been dramatic, so all bets are off in trying to figure anything out conclusively, but here is my latest theory.
RAW Iron/B12/Folate Supplements - I have taken these off and on to combat lightheadedness. Supposedly, my anemia has cleared up, but I was taking these during the last blood panel, so that might be why. I am going to stop them and get an iron panel test done soon. I had unspecified anemia earlier this year, but it was presumed to be due to the general malnutrition.
I probably do have what is called IBS. I do not believe in IBS as a diagnosis unless they want to do the work to break it into appropriate subcategories. The diagnostic processes used in my case were flawed and an effective diagnosis was never made. As the gastroenterologist stated, he sees IBS as having three typical causes. It can be diet, immune or neurological. After he literally drew a picture making it clear, I think the reason I have struggled to get help for so long is because mine has been caused by all three, and fixing one any less than completely does not offset the other two enough to provide the motivation that the treatment was effective. So, let me break it down a bit.
Diet - Although I eliminated every type of food at one point or another, I never eliminated all unhealthy and potentially allergenic foods at one time. That left me with residual issues indicating no real improvement when factoring in the immune an neurological issues. After converting to Huel, I had noticeable physiological changes demonstrating long term inflammation had been present, and there was phenomenal improvement to my digestive system for about a week. The reason for the one week was being delusional about it all, so I had no stress, eliminating the neurological component for that time. I had also finished a course of Xifaxan just before switching to Huel, so if there were harmful microbes, many wee dead, so all three causes were eliminated for a week or so. My diet was really bad as a child, and off and on until my late thirties, so all bets are off on what damage that might have done. If I had to guess, it is either dairy, sugar, nuts, and/or some forms of protein. I used to eat half gallons of ice cream for dinner in my twentiesâŚAnyway, donât know and donât really care since Huel fixed that.
Immune - The Xifaxan treatment had no effect that I could tell, but may have provided a window for the Huel to have more dramatic effect, due to the timing. The antifungal my doctor had prescribed proved useless too, and had no effect on my tongue or any other symptoms, but it should have eliminated any candida issues. I have also had numerous autoimmune panels over the years, so I should not have an immune disorder, according to modern medicine. Perhaps all the clearing of microbes, then putting only Huel in there allowed for the probiotics to work this time. All I know is I started taking them and for once, I can see at least some positive effects. I did some research on the upper limits of what you can take, and it seems to be somewhat untested. I did read of one person taking as many as 1 trillion CFU in a day, and said it was a bit too much. I am not going to ramp it up any for now, but it is always good to know that you can use more of something that works. One way or another, I will find a recipe that works for me with it.
Neurological - From what I am told, the digestive system nervous system functions mostly independently from the CNS. The theory is the buspirone will act as a tranquilizer for my digestive system. That sounds great, other than it also acts as a tranquilizer for everything else. The Zofran is supposed to keep it from being in constant spasms. I would be the first to admit I have had issues with anxiety a lot in my life anyway, but with the stresses of modern life, it is hard to know when you are just stressed as anyone would be, or have a disorder. Until recently, I would have said it was only stress, but the only thing I know for sure, is that I know nothing for sure. I want to get evaluated by a psychologist, as I cannot objectively determine if my stress levels are reasonable or not. From my perspective, I think my reactions have been more than reasonable under the circumstances, but I want to be objective about it all. I do know that deep breathing helps ease the suffering, and stress makes it much worse, so one way or another, I will need to learn how to control it better and not just ignore it like I always did before. So, the only time the neurological issues have been out of the way was the initial recovery from the Huel. After that, I started worrying because it was getting worse, so the stress of getting worse compounded the issue of getting past the initial flood of benefits the Huel gave me, I am not going to discount anxiety as the source of everything, for all I really know. I think I would accept the diagnosis of sun spots or something, if there was a definitive solution, so I am not sensitive about the potential causes.
So, over the years, I tried several diets, due to my own research and ideas. Doctors only recommended low FODMAP, which is most likely not the cause. The doctors gave me loads of antispasmodics, laxatives and such. I was also put on a number a medications to try to treat neurological issues. I believe nothing was effective in my case because I need combination therapy to notice the effects of any therapy. Now that I am hitting all of the angles, I think I have a chance of really beating this. Worst case, I think I will have it much more manageable, but I want to beat this damned thing, not just manage it. I am going to keep at it until I exhaust all options or figure this out.
I have gone on way too long with this, but I am trying to provide whatever information I can, to help others. I do not see Huel as a cure for me, but at a minimum, it is the key part in the diagnostic process that is allowing my to sort this out finally. I am pretty sure the combination of things required to help me is not going to work for most, but I would urge anyone with almost any health condition to try Huel and water for one week. Anyone at risk for dietary complications should be careful, but for most, it is just food, so all you have to do is put forth effort for one week to see if it may help, and potentially allow you to figure out the next step you need to take to feel better. I think anyone truly suffering from chronic problems would be willing to go on Huel and water for one week to at least see if it helps. Then again, the human condition is pretty crazy. My Mother has stopped her Huel routine because my Father was upset because she would not eat with him. My Father took one sip of Huel and hated it without considering it might help improve his quality of life with all of his health issues. They are both in their eighties, so I canât judge them for not prioritizing their health at this point, but it shows that some people are not willing to make hard choices to solve their health problems. If nothing else, I really hope my story will inspire those who are as far gone as I was to try. My story will be better once I can post a message that I have unlocked the final mysteries and have a sustained period of no issues.
I have said this sort of thing before, but as wordy as I get, I think it is important to note it again. I am not suggesting my plan is cure, but it is an invaluable diagnostic step that can allow many people to find a way to their own answers. I would highly recommend keeping a daily journal of how many calories you are taking in, whether you ingest anything other than Huel, how you feel each day in general, how you feel about the condition you are trying to fix, anything you can about exercise or activities you believe could affect things, and whatever else comes to mind. Being able to look back and review the early data has had two positive benefits; I can see patterns I would not have seen, and it allowed me to really understand how much the pain has improved, in spite of still dealing with it. The difference in the overall severity is very large when problems last hours at a time instead of weeks. When you feel bad for a while on most days, you get lost in it, and lose your perspective. Sometimes it is more important to focus on the fact you are getting better and be less focused on whether you are better.
Apologies for the extremely lengthy post, but hopefully someone finds some value. I spent a ridiculous amount of time searching forums for answers all these years, so it is good to be able to be on the other side now and try to help anyone who is searching right now.
The remainder of your order is scheduled to arrive on Thursday 9/13. I will private message you with your tracking number.
