Welcome Digitalx.

This is in the category of "for what it's worth."

I strongly suspect that my gut may have been involved (or be involved) with my idiopathic SNF. In August of 2013, I horribly insulted my gut with iron supplements I was taking due to single digit ferritin levels. I'm not exaggerating when I sway it felt like I had burning kerosene in my gut. I stopped the supplements immediately, but my symptoms persisted.

At the same time while this was happening, I developed horrible neurological symptoms in my head. I had them once before in the 80s, but a neuro workup never revealed the cause of them. I can only say that it felt like my brains were trying to explode out of my head. It was a sickening pressure-like feeling that was very uncomfortable, but not painful. I also had brain fog. Slowly, but surely, that subsided over several weeks just as it had back in the 80s. On Nov. 10, 2013, I woke up with full-body neuropathy. It was REALLY bad initially, and I was panic-stricken, which did nothing to help the situation.

To make a long story short, the cause of all this remains unknown. The only abnormal result in all my testing is an area of "subtle hypersensitivity/signal abnormality" in my brain.


I can't help but wonder if the toxic insult to my gut with the iron supplements, perhaps coupled with a genetic tendency to have issues with iron processing, caused damage. The good news is that over the course of the past five years, my symptoms have improved. They're definitely not gone, but they're improved.