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EDIT: Is there a "wrap text" option for the text to eliminate the now-present horizontal scroll of this entry? Today I was thinking about my back pain during when waking up in the mornings and decided to do some research in the internet. I bumped into diseases like scoliosis, lordosis and kyphosis. I decided to take a look in the mirror and saw that I my back is actually bent, my head hanging far in front of my torso - a clear sign of kyphosis. Now it also struck me that my mother also has some kind of congetial spine curvature (she even had to too some stretching exercices in her youth because of that), and she also like me can only sleep on her side (not on back or on front). And that my karate couch (who's a medical student) noticed during the stretching exercises that my back bends "irregularly". Image of kyphosis: https://www.google.ee/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&celiac disease=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=%2Furl%3Fsa%3Di%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dimages%26cd%3D%26cad%3Drja%26uact%3D8%26ved%3D0CAcQjRw%26url%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.hudsonvalleyscoliosis.com%2Fkyphosis-treatment%26ei%3D-pZzVKvcAo3oaMajgdgL%26bvm%3Dbv.80185997%2Cd.d2s%26psig%3DAFQjCNEO9me8IrQj81LWGL_2YiwRt0T1zw%26ust%3D1416947794510696&ei=-pZzVKvcAo3oaMajgdgL&bvm=bv.80185997,d.d2s&psig=AFQjCNEO9me8IrQj81LWGL_2YiwRt0T1zw&ust=1416947794510696 Okay, I have a kyphosis. But can it somehow be connected to my unsolved digestive problem? What I know about my digestion: Problems started in the summer of 2008 (age 14), right after my big growth spurt, gradually worsening, culminating in 2010. Symptoms: constant diarrhea, severe brain fog, muscle weakness and constant fatigue In 2010 celiac disease was excluded (blood test negative), although I'm extremely sensitive to gluten (few grains of wheat can cause 10 days of fatigue, especially at mealtimes). But still, another antibody tests for food intolerances was positive (for wheat, rye, yeast...some vegetables). From my trial-and-error diet I quickly found out that these results were true. 4 year diet on allowed foods has revealed that I'm mildly intolerant to everything - there is no single food that I could eat as much as I want with returning of symptoms (brain fog, exhaustion, diarrhea). E.g. allowed quantity for certain rice species is 200 grams and rotation period ca 20 days. For some rice species it's much less (e.g. 30g with 20d rotation). And some brain fog is present even when I follow the rotation. The fifth point and my special rotation is what I've never found in the internet before. I know immune system must be involved here, because it's the only thing that explains "the memory" - something in my body remembers how much I've eaten different foods. And this memory has an IQ of 160 - it knows exactly how much during past 20 days I've eaten this carnarroli rice grown in Italia and how much basmati rice grown in India. It even differenciates between carnarroli rice grown in different parts of Italia (different products by different companies). The only thing that remains a mystery is the type of immune system: it can't be the allergic part (IgE), because that one is not so specific (it only differentiates between food families, that's where the common 4-day rotation diet comes from) and I don't have a "fast-reacting life threatening allergic reaction" to anything, nor have ever had a skin rash of any kind. Perhaps then the widely debated and contoversial IgG?, I've also eliminated other explanations like Gradually running out of specific enzymes for different species of rice over time that need 20 days to be reproduced by pancreas Counterargument: there are very few enzymes responsible for digestion, far not enough to "have an enzyme for each species", [there are just general enzyme labels like protease, amylase and they have don't have many subenzymes]) Specific species of harmful candida/bacteria thrive on specific species of rice, consuming too much of that product will cause this candida/bacteria species to multiply and cause my symptoms Counterargument: there is just candida albicans that everyone is talking about, that can overgrow, not thousands of species for covering each product of food. I also took a month of anticandida herbs + Itraconazol, nothing changed. Also, I become intolerant to probiotics over time - it's not likely that there are bacteria/candida who eat other bacteria. So, it's my immune system. Immune system's memory cells remember the half-digested particles of carnarolli rice, and the more I eat it the more the immune system detects these potenitally harmful invader particles and the more it tries to fight back by releasing chemicals that damage my nerve cells and muscle cells (causing brain fog and muscle fatigue respectively). The involvment of the immune system means that undigested food particles have to be in my blood stream (immune system doesn't reach to the bowel), thus my bowel has to be leaking every food I eat (I become intolerant to everything). Leaky gut syndrome. Now, I've tried to heal my leaky gut with treatments like SCDiet and taking supplements like L-Glutamine (15g per day), quercetine (2x300mg), deglycorized licorice root, fish oil. SCDiet doesn't work (I'm too intolerant to nuts, homemade yoghurt, lentils, veggies, fish and the food that is left [meat, fruits] with its rotation periods isn't enough to feed me). No notable improvement on the supplements (although I've taken them only 3 weeks, they could still have an effect in the future). Actually, all I've achieved with my 4 year diet is that I know the rotation periods of foods and selected 40 products of rice, buckwheat, millet (out of 150, wheew, that was an arduous 2 year project!) that have long rotation and cause FEW (but still some) symptoms AND strictly following these periods hasn't prolonged them even a bit. Meaning the intolerances haven't been healing at all and that with all my effort the leaky gut hasn't improved even a bit. Isn't this odd? Now, today an idea stroke me. I read that sometimes kyphosis can pincing or stretching of the spinal nerves. >Kyphosis:While most cases of kyphosis are mild and only require routine monitoring, serious cases can be debilitating. High degrees of kyphosis can cause severe pain and discomfort, breathing and digestion difficulties. I am quite sure that I have some kind of nerve damage, because I have very little or no knee jerk reflex. I'm very tolerable to pain. That was noticed for example by a masseur who struck my toes with needles. My arms and legs fall asleep often (although this is pretty common symptom). So, here is my new theory: Kyphosis -> spinal nerve pinching/stretching -> impaired nerve impulses. Now what would be unique in my is that my kyphosis isn't very severe (otherwise my doctors would have noticed it a long time ago) AND incidently the impaired nerves are the ones that control the digestion part. >Nerve Regulators:Two types of nerves help to control the action of the digestive system. Extrinsic (outside) nerves come to the digestive organs from the unconscious part of the brain or from the spinal cord . They release a chemical called acetylcholine and another called adrenaline. Acetylcholine causes the muscle of the digestive organs to squeeze with more force and increase the "push" of food and juice through the digestive tract. Acetylcholine also causes the stomach and pancreas to produce more digestive juice. Adrenaline relaxes the muscle of the stomach and intestine and decreases the flow of blood to these organs. Even more important, though, are the intrinsic (inside) nerves, which make up a very dense network embedded in the walls of the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and colon. The intrinsic nerves are triggered to act when the walls of the hollow organs are stretched by food. They release many different substances that speed up or delay the movement of food and the production of juices by the digestive organs. If the problem is in these nerves, then from the quote above we know that it can cause lack of digestive juice with all its enzymes can cause all my symptoms: lack of enzymes->undigested food. Undigested food causes all other symptoms like candida overgrowth, and some of this food surely gets into bloodstream (even if there aren't any holes in my gut (typical to "leaky gut" that could be present in case of celiac disease)). Stuff like veggies and nuts cause diarrhea because I just lack the enzymes to digest its fiber and no wonder gluten is the worst thing I can eat, because it's one of the most difficulty digestable proteins. The theory isn't perfect. I have taken a lot of different enzyme supplements and they had absolutely no effect. So there maybe other factors that I can't perceive. Or also my kyphosis->indigestion theory could be entirely wrong (maybe despite the all I am celiac and my blood test was false negative, despite the kyphosis being geneological I actually have so severe vitamin D deficiency caused by celiac that accounted for the formation of crooked spine,although I have no other obvious malnutrition symptoms, and my celiac case is just "special" with my leaky gut not healing and with all its rotations; doesn't make sense, does it?). But hey, what are you gonna do if whatever you do your symptoms still persist and make your life intolerable. I'm definitely going to present my theory to my GP and hope that she will at least consider my claims, and besides recommending me exercises to straighten my back she would also send me to some cool nerve tests (EMG, NCV,SSEP) that will determine if my kyphosis has anything to do with my nerves and digestive problems. EDIT (Nov 26): The theory above is wrong. My kyphosis is really small. And I found out that the text I quoted saying "high degrees kyphosis can cause...,..., digestion difficulties" obviously meant that they have difficulty swollowing the food or acid reflux coming up the throat due to the curvature upper body. Pinched nerve usually also causes pain/numbness. So my pinched nerve causing a little numbness in the rest of my body but "big numbness digestive system" is just delusional. Also, I read that "enteric nervous system can and does operate independently of the brain and the spinal cord", so this makes my theory pointless. Also, my mother actually had scoliosis, thus this is not heredetary. I think I have celiac+Hashimoto, I'm going to talk about this in my next post.