Difficulty speaking

[retty]

I was wondering if you could give me your opinion on something. I
do not know what has caused something and i was wondering what
you would guess has caused this whether it was a reaction to
psychiatric meds or due to infection, I am guessing it was the
psychiatric meds however, it has lasted so long and i have not been
on psych meds so i am starting to think, maybe it is infection. I
i have seen neurologists,
psychiatrists, gasteroenterologists (sp?). it is just a "out of
curiousity" question.

well, you see everything turned into a mess. basically i had been on
prozac 13 years for an eating disorder (it didnt help but i just kept
taking it) at the 10 year mark i got very bad intestinal candida ("diagnosed" through blood tests measuring gut fermentation products, as well as reacting positively to antifungal drugs in the past) due to
misprescription of antibiotics which got worse whenever i took any
future antibiotics. anyway i tried to stop taking prozac and had
SEVERE withdrawals so i was given more prozac to try to see if my symptoms would stop, i can
only assume that then i had side effects of starting the prozac again
after 6 months of withdrawals. (in the meantime, i was struggling
with the candida and it was measured as 6 times the normal amount of
yeast according to blood tests of fermentation products, although this is not a concrete test of yeast in the intestines, knowing i had a history of it in the past, i believe it to be true, it may not be)

anyway, i seemed to develop these weird neurological episodes
where i couldnt speak though i wasnt sure if it was withdrawals or
going on the medication again (for some reason after taking
citalopram i had episodes where i couldnt speak 4 hours after taking it). anyway, i ended
up in hospital where they took away my digestive specialist's candida medicine- antifungals and antiallergy injections (I also had several food intolerances which gave levels of IgG reactions to specific foods via blood tests) despite a
letter i had from the private doctor) and was no longer able to treat
myself with it in hospital. anyway, to make a long story short(er) they
kept trying to get me to take antidepressants which i couldnt handle the side effects of. After 13 years of prozac, they tried reinstating prozac but i couldnt handle the side effects after 10 days each time, then i was put on citalopram and removed from it after about a month, after that they gave me 5 different antidepressants and 3 different antipsychotics within a month.
(the antipsychotics to get over my "delusion" i had digestive problems or candida..)

I am not exactly sure when this happened, but it felt like a "screen"
was going across my brain and it was getting harder and harder to
"visualise" something in my head, like a TV screen that got smaller
and smaller then into a dot, and then everything was black when this
"dot" disappeared (i dont mean i "blacked out" i mean i couldnt
visualise anything in my head anymore. (for example, if someone
says "visualise a house" you usually can picture something in your
head, but the only thing is blackness now). Basically I was no longer able to "see" anything in my "minds eye" anymore. It has been like this for at
least a year, and i have been off all meds for about 7 months, I
accept that it is gone forever. Furthermore, my body's motion is
getting more restricted.

However, I was wondering if you could take a wild stab at what
caused this, not the exact thing of course but whether it was candida infection of the intestine
related or whether it was due to the psych meds. Presumably my
body's motion could be more restricted due to candida, and the
"blackness" could be due to the psych meds, however, i have been
off all meds for 7 months now so i am perplexed at how it could be
the psych meds, unless of course, it was due to the fact that i had
been on prozac 13 years and having stopped it my neurons dont fire
properly, could that be it? (on the otherhand i seem to recall with
taking a single prozac (or any meds) my head would "black out"
more)..

I have had an MRI and it showed that my brain is abnormal because
there is "more spaces" (not sure of the scientific term) between all of the brain (ie it is not localised)
however, i have no idea if it has been like that since (premature birth by 2 months)
birth since i have had not had an mri before this. and the neurologist
did not know what caused these larger spaces and he said it could
basically be anything including a premature birth so they werent worried about it or were going to investigate it further. I was also tested for that weird build
up of copper disease that causes you to have rings in your eyes but
that tested negative. apparently my urine tested as complex bacteria
but i think it was at normal levels, i dont know if they tested for
yeast, or if you can, i do not have an active thrush infection.

when i told the psychiatrist about the blackness and "visualisation"
problems he went off on the idea of hallucinations (ie visualising
things, even though what i am experiencing is the exact opposite)
and he was going to force me back in hospital and give me
antipsychotics. so i hence i hung up on him.

However, I guess that is neither here nor there. As I am simply
asking you to give your opinion as to whether this was caused by the
psych meds, infection (candida related), or perhaps a metabolic problem from my
digestion after being so messed up on antibiotics.

er, also, could it be that the candida got to my head? I know candida does not usually become systemic but i was just wondering) this occurred
roughly 8 months after i had the candida test that tested to be 6
times the normal amount of yeast, and i was unable to treat the
candida properly due to confiscation of meds and i was staying with
people that made it so i was unable to access the appropriate meds
so the candida was left to grow during this time. Therefore, currently
my yeast levels will be a lot over 6 times the amount.

Further clues, even when i was still on the prozac (before i tried to
give it up) i was getting quite ill and said i didnt feel right and the
only thing that helped was digestive enzymes for me to feel normal
again or i could only eat fruit that was "simple" or had natural
enzymes in it (ie melon, or papaya or mango), i guess thats what
made me think that it could possibly be metabolic too.

anyway, i would be grateful if you could give me your opinion what
could cause this, i have never heard of such a thing nor any searches
i looked for did not give any indication that this has happened to
anyone before, though of course, this may be because i searched
incorrectly. (basically, i felt in hospital that my brain just completely blacked out (ie my minds eye as people call it unscientifically) however, it has not returned. I also had very strange reactions to meds (like i could not control my eye movements, or would hear my heart beat in my ears, those specific symptoms have gone away)

anybody elses guesses are welcome too. many thanks.

[SanjpatelMD]

Please could you clarify what exactly you mean by

anyway, i seemed to develop these weird neurological episodes
where i couldnt speak

...did you forget words or could you just not muster the motivation to speak.

Have you had an EEG?

[retty]

no, i could remember words and it wasnt because i was not motivated to speak.

well with the "epsiodes" were as described below with citalopram i would have these "episodes" 4 hours after taking it where i literally could not speak, i would sit there making normal conversation and then it just stopped and i would sit there saying "I... I...I...I... caaaant... speeeak...!" so i would choke the words out. I desperately wanted to and tried to speak. I dont know if it was like an extended stutter. perhaps as sometimes I would end up repeating myself like a stutterer would. it was like something got "stuck". no, i did not have an EEG. I do not believe it was seizures (epileptic ones anyway) perhaps it has something to do with Toxic-Metabolic encephalopathy but i have no idea about that. I did have MRIs and CAT scans though it clearly had something to do with withdrawals of medication or going back on it. (going on the medication problems as exampled by the episodes exactly 4 hours after taking citalopram, if i missed a dose i would not have such an episode, or when i stopped taking it.I have read that citalopram can cause stuttering but this was rather extreme). However, I am not sure if these episodes started with withdrawals or not, because i would have certain type of episodes while i was withdrawing prozac (electric shock like sensations that felt like they were flowing out of my body, and my head, and again it was like i couldnt form words, like all the muscles were frozen but i was never convulsing) however, as i was on other medication at the time of prozac withdrawals (birth control) I was not sure whether these episodes occurred with taking that medicine (bc)(i know it shouldnt but by that time i was getting IgG reactions to all types of food etc) or withdrawals of the prozac. with the withdrawals it was like electric shocks were flowing out of my body in waves, whereas with the intake of prozac it was like electric shocks flowing in the opposite direction like i was getting charged by a bolt of lightening through me. my face would just seize up like there was no expression, i could no longer control my muscle movements in my face very well, I could smile etc. but it was an effort and things felt solid and frozen. to be honest i still feel like that now.

anyway, i am not sure why the title of my post was difficulty speaking because i tried to change the title to "general strange symptoms" but it would not let me. however, i am not on any medication and i am able to speak so im not worried about that, however i am concerned about the "blackness" in my head (ie like completely wiping out my minds eye) and i was wondering what you thought that could be due to (whether coming off prozac abruptly after 13 years, or trying to go on a variety of meds which i know seemed to cause the black out more. I can no longer visualise things in my head any more its like going "internally blind" .

have you ever heard of this happening before? its like my brain completely chemically shut down, i know i must be thinking as i can speak and write but i am no longer access the internal dialogue very well. or basically i was wondering if it could be due to infection or some toxic metabolic build up. something is chemically and neurologically wrong and i dont know what it is. it has something to do with either coming on and off the meds or my digestive problems or both and i just dont know.

[Dr_prakesh]

This is a frequent complaint, ans while it may indeed reflect a temporary lack of function in the language areas of the brain, it may also be a result of a multitude of psycholgical factors.

Did you mention these symptoms to your psychologist / psychiatrist and if so what did they say?
Also how was your psychological state at the time that the episodes happened?

[retty]

thank you for your reply, yes i did mention it to my psych and they said it sounded neurological, and they ran an MRI which they did not know how to interpret the results as they said it could be anything.
i am not terribly concerned with the not being able to speak episodes as they passed when i no longer took the psych meds, i am most concerned (or should i say "scientifically interested" in the "blackness" of my "minds eye" that has ceased to enable me to visualise things in my head, most importantly i am interested in the neural mechanisms of
mental imagery and episodic memory, and the neural correlates underlying imagery generated from short- and
long-term memory. I understand that there are people that study HEALTHY systems of imagery in this respect recently (ie 2006 onwards), however could you let me know if there is a neuroscientist or specialist neurologist that has studied UNhealthy systems, if this is not an area that is well known to neurologists? Or is this area too "new" to have been studied in unhealthy systems?
Does anyone know/ can identify the neurotransmittors that enable "visualisation" in the "minds eye" ? (for example if someone asks one to visualise a brick house in one's head people are usually able to imagine a brick house, etc.)

[clinicalguru3]

There are many Neurotransmitters involved in this process...\\

Serotonin
Acetylcholine
Noradrenaline
Dopamine
GABA
Glutamate

and probably a few more!

Why is it important to you to know which NT's are involed?

[retty]

thank you very much for your answer.

why is it important for me to know? because i want to know what went wrong? whats not working? maybe if it is known what went wrong it might be easier to figure out how to fix it?

if it is the meds which obviously messes with these chemicals, for example serotonin, would it be reasonable to think that going back on the prozac that i had been on for 13 years might fix the problem? or would it be the rest of the meds they gave me that messed it up? what would be more likely? thank you so much for your time and consideration in this matter.

[clinicalguru3]

I do not think it is possible to know for sure...if you did change any meds in the future then you rresponse to this would give an indication.

hope that helps

[10Selection10]

Please could you clarify what exactly you mean by

anyway, i seemed to develop these weird neurological episodes
where i couldnt speak

...did you forget words or could you just not muster the motivation to speak.

Have you had an EEG?

I wanted to ask a question about this. I have problems with forgetting words, and when I am asked something I feel like I can't open my mouth to express what I have to say... like I have no 'motivation' in my body. It is definitely not depression as I am a pretty happy guy.

What could cause forgetting words / inability to find the 'right' word & loss of 'motivation' to open mouth and speak.

Thanks