Yes, I have thought that also. I stopped eating canned salmon for the past 2 years because I believed I saw a symptom increase. Lately, I have gone back to eating it on occasion. As well as fresh salmon. Symptoms increase every time, but not for more than a week or so now. And not at as uncomfortable a level. I live in Minnesota and with the winter wearing on, I wanted a more natural alternative to vitamin D3 supplements. Less sun exposure, you know. And I know that D3 is abundant in salmon (as well as egg yolks, by the way) and is essential for mental health and strong immune function. I never tried the supplements more than once after my withdrawal, due to the extreme reaction (I understand that many folks report this, also). And I used to take a wide range of supplements, including D3, for years before the Benzos (had 2 bouts of Lyme disease back then). Just too uncomfortable now. So my current thinking is that the natural D3 in salmon may actually be helping me heal, just at maybe too intense a level yet to be real comfortable with, and the vitamin D3 supplement may just be too harsh or incomplete enough to be tolerated at the moment. I have wondered about the mercury content (and mercury affects the CNS, as I understand it) that may be in the salmon, but wild-caught is supposed to be the better salmon choice, so I'm not sure what to think about that angle. Hence, I don't eat salmon often.
I can't really understand where to draw the line with my choices during this recovery hell. Do I force healing a little more over time, with more exercise and/or adding foods? Do I avoid anything that makes me feel worse? In other words, is feeling worse always bad? How does one know the difference between prolonging the damage and assisting the healing? My conclusion is that anything that is natural/nutrition-based and not drug/synthetic-based is bound to be good; anything that naturally prompts the body to do what it was designed to do is good; anything that you introduce into your body that mimics or tries to take the place of a natural part of the body eco system (as in drugs) is unsustainable and bound to be unhelpful.
Symptoms are a given in the healing process. Some symptoms may indicate that healing is being delayed, as in the case of messing around with trying to artificially manipulate body functions with lab chemicals, and some symptoms are the body actually healing more efficiently, as in the case of eating salmon, maybe(?). Supporting the body as it does its own thing is the best way to go. Our puny human brains can't compete with the perfect, intricately connected, miraculous, mysterious system that our bodies have perfected over all this time. We always get into trouble when we interfere with that perfection. At least that's my current, two-cent's worth:)
Keep up the fight. Try to stay positive. Trust in your body to know how to get there. Be a friend to yourself. Don't rush perfection. And know that you are not alone and that YOU WILL HEAL!!
