Brain fog, dizziness, vision problems, head pressure, headache PLEASE HELP

After doing much research, and I mean loads, I believe that we have a very susceptible blood brain barrier. Or at least in my case I do. I've never had children so it can't be that reason for me. I distinctly remember it starting 1 week after my operation and never really going away, but definitely improving over two years until this November when firstly I took the morning after pill, started suffering from depression, got ill and took antibiotics, then started feeling very out of sorts, went on beta blockers which made me even worse and then hit again with a double dose of super strong antibiotics, specifically metronidazole and amoxocillin and that's when for me I started getting really really bad again. I have always been susceptible to side effects from all medication, I believe the anesthetic caused some brain damage, i was given antibiotics after my op, that's normal procedure, which are known to cause toxicity, specifically inner ear damage, its very common please do research (medical research, don't just read stuff on forums) it could be the answer for most of us, and was recovering and with the recent three set of antibiotics and beta blockers my health took a turn for the worse again and am now back on the path to recovery after coming off all meds and changing my diet completely. I have written a blog of my symptoms if anyones interested. https://jessicamartindale.wixsite.com/toxicantibiotic

I have a very susceptible brain to drugs and it effects me much harder then normal people, even sleeping pills, I believe my brain chemistry has been changed, and it can take many years to recover.

Hey Vanessa,

I don't think it's just antibiotics, I think the anesthetic really was the trigger, possibly combined with antibiotics and then the antibiotics and beta blockers made it return. For your c section you would have been given a variation of an anesthetic, maybe an epidural, you most probably would have been given antibiotics for your c section in an iv or a one off hit in an injection etc because that's normally routine with any surgery to prevent infection. I think for me at least, my brain and gut has been really damaged by things that are supposed to help. I'm now on the keto diet, full of high healthy fats and protein, no sugar or carbs, and since coming off the meds I am starting to see an improvement, very slow, but an improvement. Don't want to jinx it though. I have also had loads of tests, went to the ent, he told me my wars were fine, which is great but I can't unpop my ears ever, so something is damaged in the area. I think stress can definitely be a factor, of course, it's stressful to go through anything like that. But anxiety and depression shouldn't cause dizziness, or ear fullness, I also have memory loss after the beta blockers and antibiotics which is surprisingly common and horrible. I think once you start damaging your body with any meds, even ibuprofen or paracetamol which they're discovering are really damaging to us, then you take antibiotics etc, it takes two years of no medication at all! and no antibiotics for your gut mircobiome to even repair 80% and that's with no sugar and refined carbs, and that's only if the wall of you gut isn't damaged, which it most likely is. I think we are all programmed to believe that this stuff can help you, and of course it saves many many lives, it's saved my life more times then I can remember and for that I'm incredibly grateful and until a month a go I was eating painkillers every day, but I also think it has done alot of damage internally which is now causing mental damage. I so wish I could go back to my old life of drinking and partying and eating sugar and crap and able to take medication without thinking about it too much but I know now that I've got an up hill struggle to get my body back to peak physical health, if that's even possible for me any more. Which I don't think it is after reading medical research on our guts and mental health/medication ect.

Hi everyone, I can't believe how many people there are that suffer from the same combo of symptoms I do, and have also stumped their doctors. My latest comment was that I'm an enigma. Different from conundrum at least. I'm both happy and sad I found this site. a) I no longer feel so alone with this. b) I'm sad that there are so many suffering. I have pretty much all the symptoms mentioned here. I'm even surprised that the descriptions used are the same as mine. For me I guess the worst part is the brain fog when it gets real bad. It's more like brain dysfunction. Cognitive thinking talking, words, writing, is just not up to par. I feel like an idiot, and get overwhelmed at the drop of a hat. The dizzy whoozies kick in more at that time also. I've been fascinated by all the different things people have been coming up with as a reason for this. And I like that some are looking for a common denominator. My symptoms started after shoulder surgery 4-1/2 years ago. And 6 months after that, got worse, with some extra added odd symptoms, from having brain surgery. They found a benign tumor in my head after getting an MRI. Which i only got because, I blew up at the poor neurologist, cuz he was in the process of telling me I was just having anxiety and depression. He was doc #5. I was done hearing "anxiety" which by the way i told him, was not one sided.

Note for the person keeping track of med/antibiotic users: for my shoulder surgery, they did use a nerve blocker, so they could use less anesthesia. And a week later I found a deer tick embedded in my leg, so was on antibiotics, for 10 days. Also,

I was put on steroids after due to excessive swelling in my shoulder.

After the Brain surgery, I came home with the world of meds. Talk about a stressed out anxiety filled time. Pain and being told your "weird" feelings are just in your head. But I knew there was something else going on. Just didn't know what.

I can't hold "all" these symptoms to meds, poor diet, anxiety and stress. I've felt it has something to do with the neck misalignment thing. Has anyone got the Brain fog worse after/during sitting in certain chairs? Like doc waiting room chairs? Or has anyone got pins and needles on one side of their body after sitting in those same types of chairs? I do. The brain fog especially. If anyone has, and still does, could you do me a favor and try something? While sitting in said chair and experiencing the brain fog, lift one leg out in front of you. Make note of how you feel. Better, worse, or no change. Then do the same thing with the other leg. The only reason I'm asking is because I discovered that when I'm having brain fog while sitting in thst chair, lifting my left leg out in front of me, clears it up. Lifting my leg up makes a shift in my spine. That's what makes me think the neck alignment has something to do with this. Also throw in the eye and ear stuff too. My tumor was very close to my optic nerve, and I had an ear infection 2 years ago, and it hasn't been the same since.

I feel my life is not my own anymore. I don't feel like I'm the same person anymore. I have a therapist and psychiatrist. I journal, color, do puzzles, gather positive affirmation quotes and try to stay positive when nothing is going right. This helps with the stress and anxiety. But only some of the symptoms. I have a personal neck traction machine I got 8 years ago after i had a landscaping fall. I think I will try using it to see how it works on my current dizzies, brain fog, and over all feeling of discomfort.

I didn't get to much into my story, (way to long and complicated) and my symptoms have already been written here, in better ways than I could.

I hope everyone feels better soon.

Elise93 I hope you got some answers and ways to make you feel better.

Look forward to see if anyone understands my "chair thing" 🙂

OK so this is getting interesting. So far 4 of us, and I know that's not many in the grand scheme of things, but it is very interesting, have one thing in common and that is that our symptoms started after and anesthetic of sorts. Either c section, or general anesthetic. So what we know is that general anesthetic essentially puts you in to a coma, you would die if it weren't for someone breathing for you. There is also increasing evidence that anesthesia can cause brain damage, either the deeper they put you under, or the longer you are put under, it can cause brain damage if they do not get the levels right and you are limited of oxygen even for seconds. With c sections, dizziness is a common symptom afterwards. If you had an epidural that is injected in to your spine which if connected to your brain stem obviously. Or really any brain barrier crossing drug, I'm pretty sure stays within your spinal fluid. So what I have learnt from doing extensive research is that dizziness is common after drugs that affect the blood brain barrier, so that's certain antibiotics (which also cause ototoxicicity and damage the inner ear, you don't have to be on them along time, or on high doses, just some antibiotics and many other medicines unfortunately cause that symptom and it is permanent damage. So not being able to pop your ears isn't because you have dirty ears etc, or it's nothing external, an ent won't be able to help because your eustachian tubes, which connect the middle ear, to your external ear are either stuck closed and you can no longer equalise pressure between the two environments or have been damaged by which ever medication and exacerbated by illness, like a cold etc. Again please do your own research. It is vital in you deciding if any of the symptoms ring true with your own, just type in ototoxicty) also antidepressants, betablockers, anything that effects the chemicals within your brain can cause these symptoms. What I have also learnt, is that many of the symptoms only occur after the drugs. They have delayed reactions, so many weeks or months after the drug has been stopped do the symptoms begin, the reason for this is that drugs are hard to metabolise. Some peoples bodies deal with them quickly, and flush them out, for others the drug builds up because the liver can't process it as quickly, which is why some people do not get side effects and others suffer terribly, its also why some people only need one pill and others need more. It also depeneds on how easily your blood brain barrier is crossed, for some its very easy, others it's very hard. The body treats any medicine able to cross the blood brain barrier as a toxin and can retain it in your fat cells. This can then be released in to your blood stream long after taking the drugs. So for me, I stopped taking beta blockers and antibiotics this time and I felt OK, but three weeks later the dizziness began, so for three weeks there was still enough of the drug in my system for my brain not to notice a difference and then slowly the withdrawal effects came, the dizziness, blurred vision, mental confusion. My eyesight is very poor now, I struggle to focus and I always had amazing vision, its one of the things I'm most devastated about.

Well the optic nerve is housed along with the auditory nerve in the cranial nerve nuclei which is situated in the brain stem, which is of course connected to your spine. One of my symptoms is that I can no longer regulate my breathing, it does its own thing these days, so obviously in me the nerve that regulates breathing also got messed up.

I feel that depression and anxiety are a symptom of this type of brain damage, many medications cause temporary lesions on the back of the brain which cause insomnia and extreme anxiety, depression etc, although they do tend to repair over time. I do not believe that anyone here, that feels these symptoms has what I would consider 'normal' anxiety and depression. It doesn't explain blurred vision, being unable to pop your ears etc. They are physical symptoms that something in the brain is not firing correctly anymore.

I am not a doctor, but I have always had a keen interest in medicine, I am also on a path to finding out why this happened. Of course I would love a cure but I don't think it's that simple unfortunately. I think, in most of the things I've read, that time is a healer, that diet/water/exercise is the most important thing in our journeys to recovery. I have seen therapists, it didn't work, I've been given medication, which made it ten times worse, I have tried meditation etc, and nothing seemed to work as well as healthy diet (which means No sugar OR Refined carbs and only organic food, especially meat and fish) and time.

I will add scientific/medical links to this post. Please read them, educated yourselves, see if it has any truth to you, specifically for all of us, the neurotoxicity link. Remember these symptoms take along time to manifest, they don't happen over night, the damage takes time to happen which is why most doctors fob it off as anxiety etc even if you've never suffered before.

Also Vanessa, I live in England! 😊

Links:

http://vestibular.org/ototoxicity

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.news-medical.net/amp/health/What-is-Neurotoxicity.aspx

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175508/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4963700/

Also I haven't tried this leg theory. But I shall and let you know.