HouseCall: Dark Times, Meniere’s Disease, Children’s Health, Tea Sensitivity, Always Catching Colds

Welcome back to the weekend Cabral HouseCalls!

It’s great to have you and I can’t wait to get into today’s community questions – Let’s get started!

Anonymous: Hi Dr Cabral, Long-time listener (and asker of questions). Here’s my entire health history, in a TINY nutshell: – Lifelong history of terrible nutrition: I was raised on sugar and have craved (and consumed) sugary, fatty, terrible food for as long as I can remember. Despite this poor diet, I have always been athletic and obsessed with strength and fitness. – For my entire adult life (I am 37) I have experienced recurring fungal skin infections, all over body, and bloating. – 5-6 years ago, I started suffering from persistent anxiety attacks. I did nothing to treat the anxiety, other than learn not to freak out during an attack. Overtime (6-7 months) the attacks, pretty much disappeared. – 9 months ago, out of nowhere, I developed a nasty wheezing cough, that would come and go, and which was, eventually, diagnosed as LPR. I started to rely on an albuterol inhaler for my asthma. I have tried many approaches to treating this, including eliminating stress, taking melatonin at night, and drastically changing my diet, all to limited success. SO…anxiety, fungal infections with bloating, LPR. I am, now, one month into your candida and bacterial overgrowth protocol. Without doubt, this has made a difference: I’ve lost fat, I don’t tend to need my inhaler, my fungal skin infections seem to be pretty much non-existent, and (this is a little embarrassing) my wife no longer suffers a yeast infection EVERY time we have sex: this was the case for years. (Is this a definite sign of candida?) I work out 6 days a week (weights 3 times, cardio 3 times), practice intermittent fasting (16/8), and am allowing myself 1 (healthy) cheat meal per week, including a small dessert. (I do, also, have 1 cup of black coffee every morning…I hope this is okay?!) Anyway, all in all, I am doing much better than I was. However, I do find that these symptoms persist: tension in diaphragm (anxiety?), lump in throat, excessive burping, and tightness in lungs. But, here’s the interesting thing that I hope you can shed some light on: my symptoms seem to be (and this has always been the case) manifesting as part of a cycle. What happens is, I’ll go about a week with virtually no symptoms, and then the symptoms start to kick in, and gradually worsen, over the course of about 7-10 days. Typically, it’ll start with the tension in the diaphragm, then burping and throat issues, then some asthma-like symptoms of tightness in the lungs (although I don’t seem to get the wheeziness that used to be there), and anxiety is always accompanying these. After this 7-10 day period, the symptoms start to slowly go away, and I have a decent week or so. I don’t change my diet or lifestyle, in any way. It feels like as soon as I start to think “hey, maybe I’m starting to heal,” the symptoms return. It’s incredibly frustrating and demoralizing. With all of that being said, I wondered if this persistent cycle of symptoms is something you’re familiar with, and/or if my description tells you something that I haven’t considered. Also, how much of a role do thoughts (both negative and positive) play in this? Is it possible that ALL of my symptoms are caused by stress/negativity? I ask because I have tended toward negative, depressed, thoughts for as long as I can remember, and I definitely feel physically worse when I’m depressed/stressed. At this stage, I feel that my best course of action is to continue the candida/bacterial overgrowth protocol, work on stress-reduction, and hope that the symptoms start to become less and less over time. Thanks so much for doing what you do. Your podcast has been an absolute life-saver and continues to help me through some very dark times.

LaSandra: Hello, Dr. Cabral! Thank you so much for your commitment to helping everyone you possibly can. Your health recovery story is such an inspiration to me! I’m writing to get your advice about Meniere’s Disease. For an entire year, I suffered from daily migraines and vertigo. I saw a naturopath who suspected that the root cause was extreme adrenal fatigue as I had undergone a 10 month span of extreme stress just before the vertigo started. I have since been able to manage my migraines better through stress reduction, dietary changes, and acupuncture. However, I have occasional bouts of vertigo that seem more Meniere’s in nature. I get debilitating vertigo with hearing loss and tinnitus in my right area. The episode lasts a day or so, and then I recover completely which is very different from the ongoing milder vertigo I experienced with migraines. It seems that western medicine doesn’t have much to offer when it comes to vestibular issues. I would love any advice you have as the general attitude about Meniere’s seems to be that you can’t treat it or control it (aside from reducing sodium intake) and just have to hope for the best, but you’ll likely go completely deaf. I should also mention that I have Celiac and have had chronic IBS for many, many years. I just finished doing your Food Sensitivities/Candida test and am looking forward to healing my gut with the help of your team. I do believe that my gut health is related and possibly is the key to fixing this. Your story and podcasts give me hope that I can affect change and be healthy. Thank you so much for your help!

Cara:  Hi Dr. Stephen Cabral, I have a 21 month old daughter who I am still nursing (during the day only) and she eats a nutrient-dense diet. She typically starts off with a scrambled egg, avocado and fruit. Lunch is usually leftovers. Dinner is wild salmon, grassfed bison/beef, free-range chicken and broccoli, and sweet potatoes. I give her Klaire labs infant probiotic mixed with a dash of camu camu and some drops of Herb Pharm kids echinacea daily. I got into the habit of giving her echinacea when I was boosting her immune system before traveling on a plane. I also give her the Herb Pharm Kids elderberry occasionally. Is this ok? Can the echinacea be overdone? Additionally, she was born at 36 weeks 2 days albeit a life saving crash cesarean …we had major blood loss, she received two blood transfusions, she was incubated and taken via ambulance to a children’s hospital where she was cooled to 91 degrees for 72 hours. Which prevented stroke, seizure, cerebral palsy etc. She is perfect but she was low in iron at 10 months – I fixed that with food – combining iron-rich foods, grass-fed liver, beef, bison with camu camu, molasses, and at the end flora vital. We raised it from 8.6 to 13.3 in 3 months and without medicine! Does she also need a multi Vitamin soon? THANK YOU for your work and house calls!!

Jamie: Hey Dr. Cabral! For a while now I’ve been having issues drinking tea(green, black, and Mate). Even when drinking it after a meal I still get bloating, heartburn, belching, and brain fog. But Coffee I have no issues with. Although I used to never have an issue with tea I found out after testing that I have Sibo and H. Pylori. I’m on the CBO protocol for it and although I took a break from drinking tea, I read that black and green tea have compounds that are good against fighting H. Pylori but when I tried to re-introduce them the symptoms came right back. Also, I’m pretty sure that from all these gut issues I have developed a histamine intolerance. Will I be able to drink tea again? If so, how long should I wait before I re-introduce. Thanks!!!!

Sara: Hello, I’m hoping to tap into your wealth of health knowledge to help my son. He is a commercial airline pilot. He gets sick with cold-like symptoms quite often. What is a good health kit he could travel with so he’s armed when he begins to feel the sinus, ear and nasal congestion creeping upon him? He usually comes down with strep once a year as well as the cold symptoms I listed above even more often. Maybe a daily immune boosting protocol would be in order too. Thanks so much! God bless you. Anonymous