Voice Problems, poor digestion, allergies, liver function, adrenal fatigue

(Stay away from aspartame and MSG)

by Micki Nellis

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. This is only a report on my personal experience. It is in chronological order, so read to the end.

When my voice first started sounding strange, I had a constant thick postnasal drip. I went to an ENT/allergist who examined my vocal cords and larynx with a camera down my nose He said everything looked normal and my vocal cords
were moving normally. He gave me the normal tests for grass, trees, etc. I showed only mildly allergic to molds and dust mites. He gave me a "cave man diet" taking away common food allergens, and told me to do this for a week and see if there was a difference. There wasn't. Nutrasweet was on the list but MSG and sulfites were not. He prescribed Phenylpropanolamine (since removed from the market) and a steroid nasal spray for allergies. I couldn't tell if the nasal spray helped, but the PPA sent my blood pressure sky high and I lost my voice totally for a few days.

When it first started, I had been drinking a lot of flavored water sweetened with aspartame. I had started feeling lousy, getting colds and flu a lot, and my vision was deteriorating. I then started having the severe, thick postnasal drip. Oh for 20-20 hindsight!

About a year later I read on the internet that nutrasweet had to be eliminated for one to two months for a fair test. When I did this, my postnasal drip stopped. My voice was still bad, and frequently my esophagus would lock up while eating and I couldn't swallow until it passed. My throat and tongue were frequently swollen. I couldn't correlate the lockups with any food except consistently french fries and hash browns at restaurants (but not baked potatoes), and at random with other foods. I couldn't correlate the swelling with any particular food.

I finally linked the esophageal lockups mainly to MSG and sulfites. When I ate them (like only 3 bites), my throat would lock up. It was like my throat muscles got hard and stiff and wouldn't move. If I tried to swallow before it released, it prolonged the time it was locked up. This had happened off and on for a few years, even before the voice problems developed.

I had been off nutrasweet for 6 months when I went for my yearly eye exam. Both eyes had improved by 75 points. The optometrist asked what I had been doing, so I told him I had gotten off nutrasweet. He said his wife had had severe headaches and been to many doctors. Finally one told her to get off nutrasweet and her headaches disappeared.
Now after being off nutrasweet for more time, I have had to get weaker and weaker prescriptions.

Once, to test the nutrasweet reaction, I deliberately drank half a glass of diet root beer. Immediately I got bad postnasal drip which lasted a few days.

I discovered the MSG and sulfite problem by accident. One Sunday afternoon we had been to a play and I was very relaxed. We went to Golden Corral restaurant for dinner. I was eating roast beef with no problem, and I took a bite of
steamed brussel sprouts. I noticed they were spicy and then my esophagus locked up worse than it had in a long time. I went to the restroom for privacy while I tried to recover. I thought my throat would never release. I stayed so long my husband sent the waitress in to see about me. When I finally got composed again, my husband asked the waitress what was in the brussel sprouts. She checked and reported that it was "Vegetable Seasoning" with MSG and dried onions, etc. Then I researched MSG and found all the foods it can be in, like almost everything in restaurants. (I have found in our part of
the country, central Texas, that the Mexican restaurants apparently don't use it. They use peppers instead.}

In researching MSG, I learned that many people who are allergic to MSG are also allergic to sulfites. Sulfites are added to all fresh cut potatoes (as in sold to restaurants for french fries) and also in instant potatoes, and many other things like dried fruit, anything they want to preserve the color in, etc. That suddenly explained why my throat locked up while eating
french fries.

I avoidied MSG as much as possible (eating at home a lot), and the esophageal lockups got further and further apart. But one Wednesday night I had a half a steak at the new Outback nearby. The tip of my tongue started burning, then my whole
tongue, and then my throat locked up. Within 12 hours my throat was sore and swollen and all I could do was whisper. It took about 5 days for all this to go away. The throat swelling was the last thing to go. They probably marinate their steaks in sauce with MSG. I believe that anything that affects me that much has to be a cause or aggravation to the voice problem.

I also think that once I get a good dose of MSG, it sensitized my throat to foods that have only a trace amount. I think it takes a while to eliminate the toxins and for the body to calm down.

Both MSG and Nutrasweet (aspartame) act as toxic excitatory neurotransmitters, overstimulating the taste buds and brain cells and can even cause death of cells, according to the literature.

There are a couple of good sites on MSG and Nutrasweet. They are among those listed on my page at http://www.spasmodicdysphonia.us/sd/sdlinks.htm

During this time I was doing a lot of work at a customer site where there was a lot of cigarette smoke. I kept getting sick from the smoke. The customer agreed not to smoke while I was there.

My voice problem was bad, and again from internet research, I found that I had the symptoms of Spasmodic Dysphonia adductor type. I saw a voice specialist, who said I had spasmodic dysphonia adductor type. I was injected with botox.
After 3 weeks of breathiness, my voice was near perfect - for a week. Then it got rough and choppy.

I continued to research and found that GABA (the amino acid gamma amino butyric acid) was a major inhibitory neurotransmitter, whereas both MSG and nutrasweet acted as excitatory neurotransmitters. I thought maybe GABA would counter the bad effects of these two drugs. I bought a bottle for about $10 at the health food store and started
taking 350 mg morning and night. Immediately the tight feeling in my ribcage disappeared, and my mood became more calm and optimistic. My voice smoothed out.

Before I started taking GABA, when I woke up and my brain engaged, my stomach and ribcage became clenched. If I consciously relaxed, they would be clenched again within seconds. The first morning after taking the GABA, when I woke up and my brain engaged, I noticed that my stomach and ribcage were not clenched. This was the case as long as I took GABA.

First I tried 750 mg of GABA, and it made me depressed immediately. Then I decided to take a cue from those that take Neurontin and take small doses more frequently. The GABA also caused me to dream more, but they were just playful dreams, not nightmares.

I had been taking GABA for 3 months when I noticed that my hair, which was mostly gray, had started coming in brown again. The difference was noticeable to family and friends. I don't know how to interpret this, except that GABA was something that this "body" needed.

The botox wore off after 4 months. I believe the GABA helped the voice, and I know it helped the breathing., Three other people on the NSDA SD bulletin board told me the GABA helped their voice, and one said she went for 7 months between botox injections.

The NSDA Bulletin Board Moderators notified me that any future posts about GABA, enzymes, etc. would be immediately removed. They removed a link to research done by Indiana State University, and also a link to Dr. Carl Stough's breathing page. This really surprised me, because one of the presenters at the NSDA conference in North Carolina, Speech Pathologist Linda Hube, said she has found techniques of Dr. Carl Stough helpful with her own case of SD. (There has never been a full-scale study of applying Dr. Stough's breathing techniques with SD patients.) The moderators said there was absolutely no proof of anything I was saying.

I continued to research, and found references to validate what I already knew was my own experience:

From the Washington University School of Medicine:

BASAL GANGLIA AND CEREBELLUM

The basal ganglia and cerebellum are large collections of nuclei that modify movement on a minute-to-minute basis. Motor cortex sends information to both, and both structures send information right back to cortex via the thalamus. (Remember, to get to cortex you must go through thalamus.) The output of the cerebellum is excitatory, while the basal ganglia are inhibitory. The balance between these two systems allows for smooth, coordinated movement, and a disturbance in either system will show up as movement disorders.

The full paper can be read at http://thalamus.wustl.edu/course/cerebell.html

Also, this research by Dr. Koufman at Wake Forest Voice Center describes the allergic and hypersensitive reaction of the larynx to various substances, including food additives. Reactions include anaphalactic shock and/or edema.

http://www.bgsm.edu/voice/immune_disorders.html

After about 3 1/2 months, the botox had worn off. I had to decide whether to try to help myself or get on botox for the rest of my life. I decided to try to help myself and forego botox so I could tell if my efforts were having any effect on my voice.

My next venture was into the world of physical fitness. I realized that this was the one big gaping hole in my health maintenance. My job dictates that I sit at a computer all day. I had never gone in for sports, so got very little exercise. I decided ignoring exercise was like "straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel." I joined a fitness center. At my first
session with the trainer, we discovered that my muscles were highly unbalanced in strength. On some weight machines, I could manage only 10 pounds of weight. On others I could manage as much as 80 pounds. Particularly weak were muscles used to lift weights upward from the chest while lying down. I also had trouble just holding my arms straight out from my sides while standing. I began to exercise - water aerobics, yoga, or treadmill.

After the first session, my voice seemed better. I thought it had to do with getting more oxygen into the body.

After I noticed improvement, I ran across a link on the Alexander technique and singing. (See the page at http://www.spasmodicdysphonia.us/sd/sdlinks.htm ) It explains that the voice box is slung in a cats cradle of muscles that attach to the bottom of your skull, your shoulder bones, your ribcage, and to other muscles that attach as far down as your pelvis. Since my career has required me to sit at a typesetting machine or computer for the past 25 years, it was logical to me that my muscles were unbalanced. My chiropracter in 1995 had also told me that the muscles I used to hold myself upright while sitting were much stronger than other muscles. The Alexander technique explanation shed new light on how this could cause a voice problem.

In summary, I had a variety of general health problems which would not be uncommon to the general population. I was allergic to nutrasweet (caused severe postnasal drip, decreased immunity and deteriorating vision). I was allergic to MSG and sulfites (caused throat lockups, swollen throat and tongue). Cigarette smoke made me sick. I found through experimentation that GABA relaxed my clenched ribcage and makes me feel calm and optimistic. I believe that it smoothed out my voice and prolonged the effects of the botox.

I found that weight training and other physical fitness exercises like treadmill, bicycling, and yoga made my head more free on my shoulders and my ribcage more free. Breathing exercises helped.

July 1, 2002

I was getting better, but still had a bad voice problem. Two friends recommended their local chiropractor/kinesiologist. I saw him first on July 1, 2002.

After he first examined me, I asked him his first gut reaction. He said his gut reaction was that it was a viral infection in the throat area. Because the liver was dealing with so many other issues, it could not detox and my body could not overcome the infection.

Allergies, low immunity, indigestion, all fit with this theory.

When we got back from vacation on July 16 he started me on a liver detox program. After 3 weeks on the detox, I had lost 6-8 pounds without dieting, my nails had quit splitting, the large white area on throat was smaller, sinuses were better except when I drank milk, no extreme hunger or shakiness, my resting pulse had dropped from 90. My blood pressure was still good.

After my first visit, I quit taking everything except a multivitamin, calcium and magnesium, plus the supplements he recommended, so as not to interfere with his program. Previously when I had experemented with stopping GABA, I became nervous and tense. This time my body didn't even miss it.

The chiropractor/kinesiologist started work on the digestive system and progressed through the liver, kidney, immune system, and general support for the adrenal system, thyroid and hypothalamus. I got better. My speech was not "good" but I could speak in sentences. My volume was low. I started the Gary Catona exercises to build up the voice muscles. This does build vocal strength. When I miss for a few days, my voice gets weak and it gets harder to get the words out.

The scenario was this: My stomach acid was low, causing incomplete digestion. Incompletely digested food is an allergen. The liver is supposed to detoxify allergens, but due to its being overloaded and/or not functioning up to par, it can't detox. I take pills to increase stomach acid and digestion, strengthen the liver, detox my system, and take organic minerals to provide iodine and other minerals. I eat sulfur-containing foods or eggs each day, eat high fiber foods, and exercise several times a week. I do yoga and swimming. When I started, I was doing two visits per week. Then I tapered off to one visit per month plus supplements. I began to look better, feel better, be able to eat anything, and my voice slowly got better, then hit a plateau.

Then I had an Adrenal Stress Index test. This is a saliva test, taken at four specific times during the day. It measures cortisol, DHEA and some other things. It came back that I had adrenal fatigue. The doctor recommended Licorice Extract for 3 months and Korean Ginseng every other day for a few weeks. I gained energy, became more social, the voice started improving again, and wonder of wonders, my hair started coming in brown instead of gray! This phenomenom I had also noticed with GABA.

In order to maintain a halfway decent voice, I have to do voice exercises every day. I do Gary Catona's exercises every morning, sometimes Roger Love's while I am driving, and I work at my computer using the Sing and See software that lets you see your pitch in real time. (http://www.singandsee.com). I have had no musical training and couldn't tell which pitch I was hitting. With this software I could see that not only could I not hit a pitch, but my voice went up and down through several pitches when I was trying to hold a note. I discovered that by using my throat muscles to depress my larynx that I could stabilize on one pitch. After I do depressed larynx exercises for a while, my normal speaking voice is much easier and stable. Then I discovered that I can hold down my larynx without making noise and it also helps my speaking voice. I can also feel the muscles pull all the way from the back of my neck to the lower back.

Then I discovered HearFones (http://www.hearfones.com). They are headsets with a half-cylinder plastic thing that goes from each ear to the mouth area. They allow you to hear your own voice like others do. When I first put them on, I could hear my voice very well and my brain began to adjust it automatically. I was able to tell that I was not giving it enough air, and that I was stopping it in my throat instead of using the articulators to shape the sound. If I slumped, I could hear it in my voice immediately. If I didn't push the air out from the belly, my throat tried to take over. As I practiced, my neck muscles began to relax, to much so that they became sore a couple of days later from being clenched for so long.

I got out my word lists and started practicing.

So this is where I stand now. It seems it takes it all - good nutrition, supplements, and daily voice exercises, in order to maintain a halfway decent voice. I'm still working on it, but I am so much healthier than when I started, and my voice improved a lot with my health. I believe that I developed bad voice habits that still linger, and the voice problems will not magically disappear without concentrated voice work, even after the original problems are cured.

One valuable thing I learned is that a pulse drop means less allergies. A classic test for allergies is to take your resting pulse, eat the food, wait 10 minutes, and take the pulse again. A rise of 10 points or more means you are allergic to the food. Since my digestion was incomplete, my body was in a constant allergic state, and my high pulse reflected that.

If you can find a chiropractor/kinesiologist or a naturopath to help you get your system in balance, I highly recommend it. (If you are in central Texas, contact me for a recommendation). We know that traditional medicine only offers botox or surgery. I had been to several MDs. The only thing they had in their toolkit was drugs, which always made me worse. To me it makes sense to begin with getting your body healthy. I was unable to do that without expert guidance.

Micki Nellis
July 30, 2004

micki@spasmodicdysphonia.us

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