Thanks for the response. Wellll, as far as symptoms go which have been going on for years and years would be awful insomnia(I have an easier time sleeping during the day unfortunately but even then its just ruthless. It's easily the worst symptom aside from losing a lot of muscle which has left me feeling incredibly insecure and super self concious.), I've lost at least 15-20 pounds of muscle, skin issues like eczema all over my face, very dry skin behind my ears, scalp...if I let it go and don't gently rub it off in a warm hot shower every day or other day it builds up and starts to itch and burn not to mention it looks awful as it progresses left untouched... It's like rubbing off yellow gunky dry skin, pretty gross!
Aside from that, bloating, digestive problems galore, bad constipation, fatigue, muscle weakness, even my nails look unhealthy. My knees are dry. I'm just a total mess. Looking back at the youthful age of almost 22, I felt and looked fantastic right before this happened and was at one of the happiest points in my life and had none of these issues. Yet i woke up one day during the beginning of my college years and I felt like utter garbage. My skin didn't look right, there was a noticable drop in muscle mass, my muscles felt weak, brain fog ect....I just didn't feel right. And it gradually got worse from there.
As for my diet I eat real whole foods 95% of the time and drink about 8 glasses of water a day. This includes fruit, veggies, meat, fish, eggs, nuts and seeds...while I typically stay away from grains and legumes. I make sure I get at least 2000 calories a day, 140 grams of protein, and healthy fats from avacado, coconut ect. I'm 5'9 and currently my weight is around 135-140pounds and i'm 34 years old. I'm at a higher body fat percentage than I'd like to be but I have to compensate for the muscle loss. Sigh.
I know there are people far worse off but I've let this entire ordeal road block most of my life. Leaving the house like this has been a giant obstacle mainly because of how much mass ive lost. The quality of life has gone down the tubes and I yern for the day it finally gets fixed where I can feel tired and go to sleep, for my muscle and skin to go back to normal ect ect. I just wish I had a template or diagnosis so I know for sure what to do, but I'm going in blind at this point and I'm stuck in limbo with it all.
As for blood work, there have been abnormalities throughout the doctor prodding ..my free T4 thyroid hormone has come back overactive (but my tsh is normal so I don't have hyperthyroid), my pituitary gland results have come back high and low, slightly high adrenal, ANA was positive with a high titre (but the speckle test came back normal), and now my fasting glucose is a little high. Mind you those thyroid and other test results have come back normal recently which is a little strange. t's left mainstream Dr's and specialists scratching their heads which has caused me to take the naturopath route but it's mostly been a miss.
I just want to know if it's leaky gut or not. And by doing that test and an antibody blood zonulin test I'll know for sure. The latter isn't neccasary if the first test comes back negative.