Today I’m sharing my At Home Neurotransmitter Testing Before and After so you can see what changed and how I changed it!

If you followed along my journey with chronic EBV, Hashimotos, Lyme, breast implant illness, and living in mold, you know I did just about everything under the sun to treat these conditions. From acupuncture to supplements to meditation to antibiotics, I tried it all. And when I was living in mold most recently (2018-2019), I was on upwards of 40 supplements to help bind and detox the mycotoxins. Unfortunately, I was rarely able to leave my bed or house for long.

As you can imagine between bone and nerve pain, other myalgias, fatigue, dizziness, nervous system dysfunction, migraines, attention disruption, and weakness – I began to experience anxiety and depression as well. It’s not uncommon of course to have shifts in mental wellness when a person is ill (and vice versa). But my primary symptoms had been physical, and so I continued to try to treat them specifically.

After months of detoxing, sweating, earthing, binding, and trying to purge mold toxins from my system (all backed up with mycotoxin urine testing), I knew I had to be making progress but did not feel better. As a last ditch effort, I started researching how elevating endorphins and neurotransmitters might help with physical pain and other symptoms. That’s when I dug more deeply into meditation and revisited my neuroplasticity work. I had done DNRS in the past and picked it back up along with the Gupta Program. You can read about my experiences with those HERE.

But I was very ill and I suspected I’d need additional assistance. I decided to run my neurotransmitters to get a baseline of what I was dealing with’ and after seeing the results (down below), you can see I was in bad shape. 

Not great right?! I mean out of 9 readings, I had TWO come back in range. Woof. I had my work cut out for me. I decided I would indeed continue my meditation and Gupta work, but that I wanted to see if I could employ the help of an SSRI to help as well; at least temporarily. 

I decided on Zoloft as it is a long-trusted SSRI that has been in circulation for many years. I did not enter into a relationship with Zoloft easily, in fact I had a lot of hesitation after having tried Paxil in the past (almost 2 decades ago). But I knew something had to give and my regular tricks were not working. So I started on the lowest dose of Zoloft in April 2019 just before we prepared to make another military move. You can read about my experience with Zoloft HERE. You can read more about my experience with mold HERE.

So here we are over 2 years later. We moved, we settled, we definitely did not have a low-stress 2020 or 2021 Summer (or Fall for that matter), but I am physically and emotionally in a much better place than I was when I first ran my neurotransmitters. I finally got around to running my labs again through Neurogistics and I was really interested to see the results. You can see down below the first round compared to my second round. 

When I first saw all the red (again!) I thought, how could this be? I’m feeling so much better. I am higher functioning, I live a full and vibrant-ish life. What gives? So I looked closer. Six of the readings actually improved. That doesn’t mean they are all optimal or even in range, but they IMPROVED. GABA is closer to in-range, Histamine is in normal range, my Norepinephrine/Epinephrine ratio was brought into range, Norepinephrine is closer to in-range, and Serotonin is closer to in-range. Needless to say between the pandemic, moving, military retirement, the kids’ b’nai mitzvah, a close family loss to covid and now another gravely ill family member, stress has hardly disappeared. But I am in a place physically and emotionally that allows me to cope more effectively, even if life has not particularly gotten easier.

I have stayed on the lowest dose of Zoloft, 25mg, and have not needed to increase it. I’ve added in testosterone supplementation and increased my thyroid dosage as well. Piece by piece, I am working to optimize hormones as I fully *embrace* my mid-40s and all the gifts this age bracket brings. I will continue to work on this optimization but also am grateful that a combination of science (testing), science (lab-made medicine), and science (neuroplasticity) has gotten me to this place. The proof is tangible and I’m living it.