[W]anting to start the new year off on a good foot, I took my kids ice-skating yesterday after lunch and skated with them for an hour and a half which did make them deliriously happy. The actual skating went very well considering I had not been in 6 to 9 months. I did not have any dizziness or unusual weakness and I felt pretty good physically. But when we got home, I crashed very hard and remained that way until bedtime. Physically and mentally I was just a puddle.
In my crashed state I realized that my hydrocortisone taper which I started in September had failed. I sensed that the difficulty I had with chelation in December was a consequence of tapering hydrocortisone too far too fast. It’s ironic because I was just bragging to someone that my switch in late November from Isocort to HC had gone without a hitch. Not!
One of the reasons I wanted to get off of Isocort is that the amount of hydrocortisone it contained was never certain. Some people claimed it was 1.5 mg and others said 2.5. I had been taking nine tablets so the range of possibilities would’ve been 13.5 mg to 22.5 mg. In September I began slowly reducing the number of tablets until in November I was down to five tablets. When I switched over to hydrocortisone I went with 12.5 mg.
Yesterday during my crash I added 5 mg of HC to bring me up to a total of 17.5 mg and I think I will stick with that for a while to see what happens. I’m extremely disappointed and worried that I may never get off hydrocortisone and may never fully recover my ability to exercise. How the adrenal glands respond to chelation and methylation protocols seems to be a cloudy area.
I have proposed the hypothesis that a chronic partial methylation cycle block is the fundamental biochemical abnormality in CFS, and that glutathione depletion is tied to it in a vicious circle mechanism. I’ve suggested that the HPA axis dysfunction results from improper synthesis of ACTH by the pituitary, owing to glutathione depletion in it.
We also know from reading Andy Cutler that mercury preferentially targets the endocrine glands and the hypothalamus and pituitary that govern them. So, I’m sure I still have reason to hope…