I’ve been going through old journals, copying and pasting into a new word processor so I can update my operating system. For reasons I don’t fully understand I can’t do the whole document, but must copy 3 or 4 pages at a time. This means I’ve had to look at a lot of old entries from the 70’s and 80’s. What strikes me is how much pain I’ve been in for most of my life, how I struggled against the symptoms of PTSD without any idea of what was going on. I had been diagnosed with Candida – systemic yeast – in 1984. The candida program (strict diet, Nystatin to kill the yeast in my intestinal tract) brought about considerable improvement, but I still had a feeling there was farther to go. My discussion of how the sensory system operates was quite accurate, what’s missing is the information that what’s happening is because my brain function has been distorted by past experience of trauma.
(Written in March 1986)
Today was a quiet day at home. It was very warm out and I felt that odd sadness at the change of season and also the fear that’s been a part of the last few years because of the noise of the airplanes. As I watch the snow melt I feel as though a comforting muffling blanket is disappearing and soon I will have no protection, will be again exposed to that appalling noise. I know I didn’t always hear the sound of every airplane the way I do now. I think what the candida does is interfere with the ability of the brain to select which sensory information gets through to our attention. Normally, though all sights enter our eyes and all sounds enter our ears, we perceive only a small part of it because some part of our brain censors it, “This is not important for you right now” and damps it down. But the toxins prevent this protective function from operating and we are forced to perceive everything in our environment, which can quickly be overwhelming. Without this power of censorship, one is easily distracted, which accounts for the loss of the ability to concentrate and the loss of short-term memory, and the ease with which candida victims are subject to sensory overload. Well, I’m much better now, no longer hear every vehicle on the superhighway, and it’s been a long time since I heard the BRRRRT of a car going over the bridge at the bottom of the road.