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IMPORTANT: Please note that the following is not in any way shape or form intended to act as medical advice but purely as a recounting of my health experiences and the steps I took to overcome some serious issues I underwent on that front. If you happen to be experiencing any type of health complaint you must seek the counsel of a qualified health professional and not rely on this blog article and its contents for guidance.

Initial rumblings

For a few years in the mid-part of the last decade I was experiencing some, initially, mild problems with my health. I would find myself struggling with a lack of energy throughout most days. Sleep had always been a problem and I was not getting anywhere near enough. I was contracting a lot in and around London and the Southern region which meant I was always traveling and staying away from home.

At first I could handle this. I’d been dealing with a poor sleep pattern for the past two decades (that found its origins in the mid 90’s thanks to being unable to sleep courtesy of the immaturity and arrogance of University students in the halls of residence who just wanted to party as loud as possible throughout the early morning hours and then sleep during the day).

Over the next few years my health went from being an issue with lack of energy to experiencing sudden sensations with my head feeling like it was being pulled to the side and downwards to the ground. This was a bizarre and inexplicable sensation that occurred over a number of days resulting in my subsequent visit to the doctor and referral to a neurologist.

They ran their tests and couldn’t detect any abnormalities so I was given a clean bill of health on both occasions. This was a relief but, all the same, that didn’t help explain what might have been causing those episodes to occur.

A few months later I would find myself waking, on a number of occasions, in the middle of the night experiencing sharp stabbing chest pains leaving me fearing that I was in the midst of a sudden coronary episode.

A quickly arranged full ultrasound examination, blood work and cardiological work-up detected not one single issue. Once again I was given a clean bill of health.

My doctor theorised that it might be stress related and advised me to calm down and pursue my activities and interests at a gentler pace.

This was good advice and I followed that as best I could with my contracting commitments that demanded constant travel.

Staying active

Throughout this time I would train weights once a week, as I had done for many years previously, following the Heavy Duty system popularised by Mike Mentzer, and subsequently Dorian Yates, focussing on mostly compound exercises with heavy weights lifting to failure (but with as strict form as possible).

For a drug-free bodybuilder I was in pretty good shape in late 2015; 85kg with relatively low body fat and some decent lifts to back that up: 380kg leg press (for 6 repetitions), 180kg deadlift (1 repetition), 120kg single arm hammer machine rows (6 repetitions), 50kg parallel bar dips (2 repetitions), 30kg dumbbell curls each arm (2 repetitions), 40kg seated dumbbell shoulder press (1 repetition) and 180kg seated calf raises (2 repetitions).

Not Guinness book of record standards by any stretch but I could hold my own in the gym, particularly against the steroid users (and that was always a small pleasure for my ego to be gently amused by).

Now I had been training for over 2 decades. I had a solid foundation behind me and I knew what worked and what didn’t. I trained sensibly using warm-up sets and pyramid routines with strict form and tried to finish off every exercise with lower poundages and higher repetitions just to flush more blood into the muscle. Immediately after every training session I would consume a high protein shake to feed my body the nutrients that it needed for repairing my muscles and also take a multivitamin/mineral pill too, followed by a similar high-protein meal an hour afterwards.

Most importantly I was continuing to make gains with almost every training session - so things were looking good.…or so I thought.

The downward slope

Unfortunately the health issues I mentioned previously were starting, after a brief absence of a few months, to not only return but become more evident and I had to terminate some workouts early as I feared that I might be pushing my body into experiencing a coronary episode or a stroke.

I know how stupid this might sound but when you don’t know what’s going on with your body (as a result of experiencing persistent chest pains and episodes where you feel like you’re being pulled down to the ground) your mind can, and does, start looking for alternative explanations (not to mention fearing the worst).

I visited my wonderful GP (local doctor for non-English readers) at the time and he arranged for me to undergo an MRI scan (as my blood work had detected no abnormalities - the subsequent discovery of an existing low B12 issue would be quickly resolved and my prior cardiological workup returned no issues whatsoever) to determine if there were any neurological anomalies that may be causing these events.

As with previous tests the MRI scan detected no anomalies and I was given a clean bill of health on that front.

So, as my doctor believed was the case, these symptoms must have been due to persistent stress with work and travel. This too is what I suspected as they continued to persist even after resolving an issue with low blood levels of B12.

It was a good job that I was now entering the final week of my contract and could look forward to taking the next few months off once I’d finished.

Antibiotics and a drastic turn for the worse

Around early 2016 I contracted a stubborn urinary tract infection which resulted in a 10 day course of antibiotics to rid that from my system.

This is when things took a dramatic turn for the worse.

Within a week of finishing the course of antibiotics I began to experience allergic and anaphylactic shock reactions to foods that I had previously been fine with.

I can honestly say that there’s nothing more frightening than feeling your breathing suddenly stop accompanied by a massive drop in heart rate the moment you put particular foods in your mouth. Such experiences leave psychological weights that are very hard to overcome afterwards.

Similarly feeling the inside of your mouth starting to go numb and your tongue beginning to itch and swell when consuming certain foods is not a phenomenon I would wish upon anyone.

Such experiences are especially troubling when you live on your own and have no way to get medical help when you suddenly find yourself unable to breathe nor speak. Knowing (and believing at the time) that I could have died alone in my apartment and nobody would have discovered my body for weeks, or possibly even months, is a pretty sobering thought that puts a lot of things into clear perspective.

Taking a backseat

This, as it turned out, was only the start of an interesting (but not enjoyable…definitely not enjoyable) 2 year journey spent trying to figure out what the hell was going on with my health.

I went through various cardiological, neurological, endocrinological, auditory and specialised blood testing procedures courtesy of the NHS (and the wonderful people who work there really are amazing in light of the ridiculous challenges they face on a day-to-day basis) and consistently came back with a clean bill of health. I would also visit my GP on a regular basis and go through all manner of different tests and recommendations to try and determine where the source of the problem lay (although disturbingly my request for referral to an allergy specialist clinic was rejected as they didn’t think I merited investigation - this was one avenue I really wanted to explore given some of the symptoms I had begun experiencing since completing the course of antibiotics).

This was quite perplexing as even though I was passing all their tests with flying colours and seemingly in optimal health (according to the results they came back with) the situation was, unfortunately, getting progressively worse.

Within the few months after finishing the course of antibiotics I began experiencing very sudden and intense panic attacks. Fortunately these were able to be overcome by switching to more gentle nasal breathing but many other issues were emerging instead.

During this period almost any food that I put into my mouth would trigger any, and sometimes all, of the following reactions:  persistent light-headedness, mental “fog”, feeling “spaced out”, a consistent sensation of being unsteady on my feet, strange neurological tingling, persistent need to urinate, bizarre ‘tingling’ sensations in my mouth, lingering fatigue, a sense of being constantly drained and succumbing quickly and easily to tiredness.

By this point I became so reduced in my dietary choices, having eliminated food items that caused those symptoms, that I could only consume corn chips and water.

This is what my diet had come to.

No word of a lie, my previously varied diet of nutrient rich foods accompanied by selected sports supplements was now reduced solely to salted corn chips and water.

I was no longer able to tolerate exercise (as any activity that demanded an increase in heart rate left me feeling fatigued and ‘impacted’ on many levels that I can’t even begin to articulate) so my once athletic frame had dropped from around 85kg to 66kg. I felt and looked like a walking skeleton.

I couldn’t lift weights. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t stretch. My face was sunken. My ribs were showing. My clothes no longer fit. I could barely even manage walking for too long without feeling hammered.

I was not in a good place.

To make matters worse I couldn’t get the nutrition that I so desperately needed as my body would react aggressively whenever I tried to consume foods that would provide those vitamins, minerals, proteins, fibre and other essential nutrients. Was it any wonder I was losing weight?

What the hell was going on?

A glimmer of hope

I had spent two years out of work by this point, living off my savings trying to get healthy again. I figured that the previous years of constant stress of travel and work (and any havoc that may have caused with stress on my system) could be worked through and resolved with sufficient rest but the opposite was happening. My system was feeling increasingly more stressed and, to make matters worse, I couldn’t eat properly, I couldn’t exercise, I was rapidly losing weight and my symptoms were escalating not disappearing.

Things were getting worse not better and my health was starting to quickly deteriorate as I entered into 2018. I was starting to develop night blindness which was extremely disturbing as I could see nothing but a black disc in front of my eyes, with very limited perception around the periphery of my vision, whenever I would wake during the early morning hours.

To make matters worse my finances were almost depleted and, even though I didn’t feel I was up to it, I had no choice but to apply for my first contracting job in two years (which I was accepted for and due to commence work in a little under a month’s time).

I had gone through the medical system visiting neurologists, cardiologists, endocrinologists, dieticians, audiologists and general practitioners undergoing a variety of specialised tests and found no answers nor solutions there and I was, by this point, starting to feel very, very desperate indeed.

To cut a long story short I got in touch with an amazing nutritionist by the name of Maxine Shiels who, based on the background history and events that I supplied, theorised that this sounded like it could be an issue with depleted gut bacteria (courtesy of the antibiotics and years of prolonged stress) as well as potential adrenal fatigue (a contentious term and debatable with many experts in the medical community). This was exactly in line with my own thinking (but I hadn’t got a clue as to how to begin to even start tackling those) and, with Maxine’s help, a specialised dietary plan was formulated and subsequently followed that finally started to swing the situation back in my favour.

It’s all about the gut bacteria

The single breakthrough element?

Symprove - a liquid probiotic supplement.

Within a few days of taking this supplement I was able to start experiencing daily bowel movements again (after close to a fortnight of being constipated the relief that came with experiencing that first bowel movement was almost otherworldly) as well as being able to introduce and consume some varied, nutrient rich foods in my diet.

The first phase of the plan involved a limited selection of very specific foods (chosen to avoid any potential allergens as my digestive system was very, very weak after 2 years of increasingly reduced nutrient and caloric intake) that were rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids (amongst other nutrients, including key vitamins and minerals).

Amazingly I was able to put 14 pounds of solid muscle tissue back onto my frame in the space of two months - purely through following this diet alone.

More than anything though it was the probiotics that allowed my system to start the long process of recovery. Without the addition of that healthy gut bacteria I really would have been on an even more perilous downward trajectory as far as my health is concerned.

I really can’t overstate the impact that probiotics had on setting my health straight. I honestly believe that, in all seriousness (and without any hint of melodrama intended), probiotics saved not only my health but helped to give me my life back.

Conclusion

After introducing probiotics into my diet and seeing the dramatic improvements in health that resulted from their inclusion here’s what I think happened to cause my health to go into a downward spiral.

Over the course of the past decade I believe that my gut bacteria was being gradually depleted with constant travel, consistently poor sleep and stress related to contract work (as well as various relationship and societal stressors that were also playing their part).

Added to these I also believe that intense training, with weights as well as other forms of exercise, also served to place additional stress onto my system (that was already experiencing significant overload with other stressors).

This resulted in various health complaints including chest pains and neurological symptoms which I ultimately believe were manifestations of my body experiencing chronic stress.

The knockout punch came with the antibiotics which, although I cannot prove this to be true, I honestly believe wiped out, or, at the very least, seriously reduced my remaining healthy gut bacteria and caused a whole slew of very challenging health issues to arise as a result.

From anaphylactic shock and allergy type reactions when attempting to ingest certain foods to panic attacks, encroaching night blindness, persistent fatigue and consistently negative reactions to foods causing a severe restriction in my dietary choices I cannot see any causal factor outside of depleted healthy gut bacteria.

Given that all of these symptoms disappeared, or started to be reversed, upon taking high-strength probiotics (and subsequently being able to consume nutrient rich, health boosting foods again) what else could have caused this?

I had passed, with flying colours, every single neurological, auditory, cardiological, blood and other medical tests that I undertook through the NHS over the course of 5 - 6 years so the usual culprits had been safely eliminated.

No tumours. No brain diseases. No neurological damage. No cardiac related issues. No inner ear balance related problems. No disease markers of any kind detected in my blood work. No endocrine related issues.

In short, no issues that would normally be expected with such health complaints.

All that’s left, excluding psychiatric related causes (and there has never been any history of issues in that area), has to be reduced to the gut level as the antibiotics caused a whole cascade of health issues to arise after their usage.

How else can a previously fit and healthy (okay, minus the initial stress related issues) male who had been in great physical shape experience such a serious and prolonged decline in their health?

Simple: the absence of significantly healthy gut bacteria.

Want to improve your health? Get your gut health right and everything else will follow.

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