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From healthy and happy to miserable and depressed. Accutane + Surgery.
Hello to everyone.
I discovered this website and forum recently and I'm shocked by almost everyone's history. I knew Accutane could be harmful to health, but didn't think it can be this severe.
Let me introduce myself.
I'm Carlos, 29 yo from Spain. Ive lived the last 28 years of my life to the fullest, surfing, spearfishing, traveling a lot, doing tons of excercise etc I'm a professional poker player, so I work online in a screen environment. This last 28 years I was 80% healthy but I had this minor health issues:
- Abdominal pain during digestion since I was a kid, experiencing it about 5 times per month, lasting 1-4 hours each time. The pain was located in the pit of the stomach, on the epigastric fossa. It felt like something grabbing and pressing this area, forcing me to lie down with weakness.
- Had acne and dermatitis
I treated my acne with almost every topic cream on the market and nothing helped, so as I found myself tired fighting this condition the worst decision I've ever made took place on April 2021. Been on Isotretinoin 10mg 1 pill a day from April 2021 till December 2021, and then 5mg 1 pill a day untill August when I decided to finish with it by myself. That was 1 year and 4 months of poisoning myselft. I remember the dermatologist who was a woman say: "Isotretinoin should be on the citys watterflow, as it's good for everything" lol.
On the other side I've been checked by doctors for the stomach pain multiple times in the last 15 years, and finally, they decided to take out my gallbladder as they found microstones that could be causing the pain. After a long waiting list, the surgery was finally done on 24th of Feb 2023. "Successfully".
So here is where I am right now. These are my symptoms nowadays:
- MGD: This is my biggest problem right now. As soon as I stopped Accutane my eyes returned to a decent shape, with no dry eyes symptoms for months untill Jan-Feb when I started experiencing dry eyes on the mornings. It advanced quickly until now that I have severe dryness. I can't work on screens as I have photophobia too.
- More frequent stomach pain: I'm not sure if this can be related to Accutane or not. Since the surgery, I have the same pain I was having all those years, but it's a little less painful and much more frequent. I experience this pain every day, and every 1 out of 4-5 days, it hits harder.
- Back pain: This started one year ago when I was on Accutane and Whey Protein combo while training on the gym. Its a lower back pain that hurts everyday. Ive worked constantly on it along the last year, went to doctors, physiotherapists etc Done yoga, strenght exercises, stretching everyday but nothing has shown results.
- Anxiety and depression: I've dealt with depression before, and I worked really hard on my mental health years ago. Thankfully, I learned a lot, and now I'm dealing with this again as best as I can. My biggest problem is the eye dryness; I can't work right now, and I'm spending hundreds of euros on specialists and treatments that don't show results. I went to the cinema to watch Oppenheimer, and I felt miserable as I couldn't even watch 30 minutes.
So this is my journy. I don't have a plan right now where I can start. I was reading the forum like a maniac, putting eye drops every 20 minutes to keep reading you. I think I'm going to start a low vA diet asap. I'm going next week to an Eye Clinic to check my eyes and make every kind of test avaibles (meibography, tbut, schirmer...) and send the results to one of the best specialist on Dry Eyes in Spain (Dry Eye induced by Accutane).
I will be active on the forum and updating this with the results.
Thank you for reading, and sorry for the misprints; English is not my native language.
I wish everyone the best of health!
It is possible your back pain is related to your gut problems. I know I had back pain until I quit eating all gluten. The Accutane may have damaged your intestinal lining. If you can heal your gut with a low vitamin A diet and no gluten your pains may lessen or go away. Beans will help your body remove toxins in bile and that will help your gut lining to heal, too.
There was a poster on this forum, Thomas, I think, who was young and was able to recover.
@carlos-2 We need more info. What was your diet before that you developed gallstones. Like @eio says it looks like you had issues with gluten and leaky gut from it could lead to acne. Do you have symptoms of estrogen dominance? How looks you physique? Anyway so you still have the same pain so obviously it was not gallbladder pain. So now you can't digest fats properly and bile from the liver is dripping constantly into your intestines. You have to eat soluble fiber to keep eliminating this bile out of the intestines..
Hi @eio , thanks for your answer. I will start learning about the gut asap. I'm beginning a gluten-free and low vitamin A diet right now. I searched for Thomas's posts in the forum and will keep researching to see what he did well to get healthy again.
Hello @jiri , thank you for your reply.
I've never stuck to a strict diet. I've been following the Mediterranean diet almost all my life, trying to be healthy. I never consumed bad sugars, avoided fast food, and precooked meals. However, I ate almost everything else.
I don't have too many estrogen dominance symptoms. Right now, I'm anxious and a bit depressed, which has led to lower energy levels and significantly decreased my sex drive. However, I am still sleeping well, can concentrate quite well, and experience no headaches or weight gain.
My physique is skinny-muscular, 177 cm tall, and weighs 64 kg.
Indeed, my gallbladder was "healthy" and had no relation to my pain at all. However, the surgery changed the frequency of these pains significantly. Perhaps, because the bile is directly delivered to the intestines, it causes irritation/inflammation more often. The pain has always been in the same place, on the pit of the stomach, and it encompasses the space of a tennis ball, feeling compressed with a bit of acidity.
I will eliminate gluten completely, begin a low vitamin A diet, and add tons of soluble fiber. Let's see if this shows some results.
@carlos-2 It is so unfortunate that doctors are so quick to cut you open.. Because it is money for them.. Btw I am 177cm as well. But can't imagine having 64. I would be so fast on my bike. 🙂 I have around 90kg.. Not excess of fat, but muscles from bodybuilding I was doing.. Anyway do you have some skin issues now or digestive issues like gas, bloating and also how looks your poop. TO some people it can be weird talking about poop, but it is important. To know how it looks what is the color and if it floats in the toilet or sinks to the bottom?
@jiri yep, that's true. I obviously regret the surgery decision, but my father and my brother were both operated by cholecystectomy too, and they did well after it. I'm the unlucky one of the family :/
Haha, I surf a lot, so I need to be skinny. I used to weigh 73 kg when I was doing strength training, but I broke a lot of boards, lol.
My skin changed a lot since Accutane. No acne anymore, just a bit of dermatitis in the folds of the arms and legs sometimes, but right now I'm free of it. If the sun hits my skin, it turns really fast to an orange tan. And very dry skin for sure, no matter how much water I drink (usually 2-3 liters per day).
I have no digestive problems beyond my typical pain. If I eat and my pain doesn't show up, I'm perfect.
I do analyze my poop, don't worry 😀
It's 50% sausage-shaped with cracks on the surface, and the color is brown, brilliant, or greasy (maybe due to issues digesting fats).
And the other 50% is separate soft blobs with clear-cut edges (due to the lack of fiber?). Same color but not greasy.
Both sinks.
@carlos-2 drinking more just plain water will not make you hydrated. But because you are in the salted water all the time I assume you drink some from time to time unintentionally so you have good sodium levels? Or at least when I was swimming in the sea I was unintentionally drinking some water all the time hehe so my sodium/chloride intake was much higher and maybe that was improving my digestion as well. Because chloride is needed for stomach acid production.. I would love to live in Spain or ideally in Mallorca. But I am not so smart at least for now to work on line. But I would work any job that could pay for place to stay and food and in free time just ride bike and be on the beach. That would be dream for me.. 🙂
Hi @jiri
Where are you from?
Maybe I can help you with your dreams. My best friend has been working in Mallorca for 2 years now. She's working in a hotel, and I think there's plenty of work available.
Btw, I found a topic on this forum created by Michele, who tried a fruit-based diet, and she said she healed from MGD (the first time I've seen anyone healing from this). What do you think about it?
My thoughts are that it can be much faster to test if that diet works compared to a low vA diet. So, I think it's logical to start with the fastest diet as I would like to have some relief asap.
Here is the topic: https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/documenting-my-experience/
@carlos-2 I think that fruit based diet is horrible.. It is crazy unbalanced.. Diet based on lean meats and starches is much better.. You need animal protein to make enzymes and systemic proteins like RBP, ferritin, ceruloplasmin, glutathion etc... Btw I am from Czech Republic.. Now I will try ivermectin because I think I have some virus, parasites issues and if my health gets better I will move somewhere for sure..
The Michele thread has been up for discussion in other threads, and I personally find it intriguing. We do not know how she is doing today though, as she isn't responding to pings. I personally believe it was the fibre in the fruits that helped her but probably other factors as well. That she healed from vA poisoning by eating high carotene fruits is a bit of an oxymoron and it proves we do not have the whole picture. But long term fruitarian is more than likely shit for basically everyone, especially is not taking b12. Not everyone does well on high meat either, just like not everyone does well on a vegetarian diet. But some thrive on either the one or the other so one has to find their path. Since your gallbladder is missing and you're leaking bile, I'd say try less fibre more often, instead of more fibre a few times a day and see if it helps you. I carry soluble fibre in a PET bottle and have a mouthfull regularly throughout the day (or I did, I no longer need to as often). 2 tbsp husk in 1/2 litre bottle is what I did, and I had 2 of those a day, sometimes more, taking a mouthful every 20-30 minutes or as remembered. Try it out and see if it helps with your cramps. It should mop up the bile pretty well, if it is the bile causing your issues. You might have to adjust the dose after your needs...
Also, how very sweet of you offering to help Jiri. He has been talking of wanting to escape to the sun for quite some time now. It would be great if you could help him make that possible 😍