Bed Wetting and Self Love

       

   

Before I start this post, I just want to say that I don't in any way post this stuff in order for anyone to feel sorry for me.   Some of it is pretty sad.  I post this for two reasons:  1.  By putting it on my blog, I somehow process and release the information, which is very healing.  2.  That maybe someone else will read it and find another piece to their puzzle.  

I recently read an article by the AMAZING Dr. Ben Lynch, about bedwetting being connected with the MTHFR mutation.  Needless to say, it blew my mind and really brought me a sense of peace.  I was a bedwetter.  This is a stigma I have carried around my whole life.  I wet the bed until I was somewhere between 7 and 10 years old.  It was embarrassing and a huge pain in the ass.  My mom never made me feel bad about it or anything, but I knew it was crappy to have to clean it up every day.  I just absolutely had no control over it.    I had a plastic mattress protector.  Staying at friends' houses just didn't happen at that age.  I can remember one time, staying at my cousin's house and basically being awake all night because of worrying about wetting the bed.  This was another thing in my life that separated me from everyone else.  I never, until a few days ago had any idea why this happened to me and not everyone else.  I speculated that maybe I was molested as a child but just didn't remember it, because bed wetting is a way that children protect themselves from getting molested.  I even went through therapy to dig down and see if anything ever came up.  Nothing ever did.  I also speculated that maybe because I am sensitive to wheat that eating wheat when I was a kid made my bladder more sensitive.  I do think that is true, but I think it has more to do with my homozygous MTHFR A1298C mutation.

So Dr. Ben Lynch wrote this about how bedwetting is related to MTHFR.  He said that the Central Nervous Systems of people with the MTHFR mutation (and I'm sure especially with someone who has double mutated copies of the gene) does not develop at the same rate as it usually would.  Slow methylation has affected my development since birth, and probably even before!  And holding your pee all night is controlled by your Central Nervous System.  So if your Central Nervous System isn't fully developed, you won't be able to hold your pee all night.  When I read this a giant light went off in my head.  Oh!  I get that!!  And what followed, which I totally wasn't expecting, was this wave of such gigantic, immense compassion and love...........for myself.  I suddenly felt myself totally protective over myself, like a loving parent.  It was the most awesome feeling.  It was another one of those things that explained so much and put everything into perspective.  It was sort of like if I had no thumbs, and struggled throughout life trying to pick things up like everyone else does without concern.  And suddenly I realized, OH! I DONT HAVE ANY THUMBS!! I have struggles a lot throughout my life and every single thing seems to be linked to my mutation(s).  When everyone else is skipping through life with smiles on their faces, I am sitting over here with some weird ailment, trying to look like nothing is wrong.  Trying to act normal.  At the beginning of my health journey I had a couple of dreams about this.  One was where I went to the doctor because I had a giant hole in my chest and the doctor was like, "oh, that's not that big of a deal.  You will just have to live with it."  And basically, quit being such a baby about it!  In the other dream I was frying my own heart in a frying pan, thinking to myself, "well, I can't put it back now, it is half cooked!  And how am I even functioning with no heart?"  Weird dreams.  But they were about trying to be normal, like everyone else, even though some very large things were going wrong.  

Well, my nervous system has always been compromised.  When I was a little kid, my grandpa told me I used to just shake all the time.  I can sort of remember it.  I had insomnia as a child.  I worried all the time.  I can remember at about 11 years old feeling depressed.  It just got worse over the years.  If something stressful happened my whole system was wrecked for days.  And then I put myself into stressful situations like working in a Psychiatric hospital!  What was I thinking??!  Then at around 45 years old things started getting bad enough that I really was losing my grip.  You might wonder why I waited so long to get help and address these things.  Truth is, I went to a lot of doctors and had a lot of tests, that all came out normal.  I went to the doctor about being dizzy all the time.  I went to the doctor about being tired all the time.  I went to the doctor about being depressed and having anxiety, and about having such bad menstrual cramps that I thought I would die.  About having cold hands all the time, about having heartburn, about having allergies.  I thought someone would link all these things together and realize they were all somehow connected.  Never happened.  Western medicine has done nothing for me.  Seriously, nothing.  The minute I started getting anything close to better was when I started seeing a Naturopathic doctor.  And addressing my issues from the roots, not just trying to fix the symptoms.  It is a long road and I'm not nearly done, but I am definitely on the right track.  I just want to throw out there that the things I have talked about on this blog are NOT NORMAL and nobody should have to just try to live with them or feel like they are being a baby by complaining.  Yes, you will probably have to pay for a Naturopathic doctor out of your own pocket if you decide to go that route.  And there will be supplements you have to buy also.  And you will feel guilty for spending the money on yourself.  But each of those things have been so important in this journey, and have contributed to my foundation of self love that I am building.  

                        

Stomach Stuff and Kurt Cobain

                         

One of the things that happened when things started really going downhill for me, was that my stomach got all jacked up.  I started getting this really bad heartburn after I ate........EVERY TIME.  It got to the point where my entire esophagus, like all the way from my throat to my stomach, just hurt most of the time.  I would feel it in the middle of my upper back too, and at the top of my stomach.  And it really didn't matter what I ate either.  It was far past annoying.  

That's when I decided to get an upper and lower G.I.  (neither of which are as bad as you think they would be)  The results told me I had G.E.R.D., Gastritis and a Hiatal Hernia.  My G.I. doctor's brilliant plan was to give me Omeprazole.  And I was like, "Ok, so you want to give me a medication that is supposed to turn off some of my acid makers in my stomach and that is supposed to make me better?  And then what? I take them for the rest of my life?  How will I digest my food if my acid is turned off?"  It just made no sense to me.  And I read things like how your stomach learns to make more acid makers if you take those medications.  So then you have to increase your medication, and so on.  I took the Omeprazole for a while, but it never made any sense to me.  I knew the answer was not to stop the acid, but to discover why my esophagus and stomach were hurting and fix that.  

Right around that same time, I came across this youtube video that explained that what a lot of people have is actually chronically LOW stomach acid, which causes the sphinctors at the top and bottom of your stomach to go haywire and open and close at the wrong time.  The video explained how if you drink some apple cider vinegar before you eat, it will fix this.  So I tried it, and it worked!!  My Naturopathic Doctor also recommended this.  

Fast forward to now, I recently started drinking lemon water first thing in the morning, to help my liver detox.  Well, I started noticing my heartburn returning, for what I thought was no apparent reason.  I was thinking that the alkaline result of drinking lemon water would be a good thing for my stomach.  But it turns out that your stomach NEEDS to be a certain amount of acid (on the ph scale) in order to work right!  So I was throwing my ph off just enough to get the heartburn again.  I stopped the lemon water and presto!  My heartburn disappeared.  I also learned that with MTHFR, in the general breakdown of the body that happens from undermethylation, the stomach is the first organ to be affected by this.  And as things decline, you become less and less able to absorb nutrients from your food because your gut is getting more and more not ok. 

G.E.R.D. (Gastroesophageal  Reflux Disease) is like some kind of epidemic!  So many people have it.  I recently watched "Montage of Heck", the documentary about Kurt Cobain, and through the whole thing, I just kept thinking he must have had G.E.R.D.  He constantly had this chronic stomach pain that he couldn't get rid of.  I know from personal experience how that can affect you, and how getting rid of the pain, any way possible is all you think about.  And the dark places you go when you cant make it stop.  Kurt turned to drugs and eventually suicide.  And I was wondering about his MTHFR status.  My theory is that he had the MTHFR mutation.  I was speculating that maybe if Kurt Cobain had discovered drinking apple cider vinegar before he ate, he might still be around today.  If you are having trouble with G.E.R.D., go to Youtube right now and type in "gerd apple cider vinegar" and lots of videos will pop up.  I can't remember the name of the lady who did the video I saw, but I'm sure there are others that are just as good.  Peace.