From normality.....
to the brink of suicide.

In my early 20s I was a capable and confident woman with a responsible job in London. Inexplicably, I began to have panic attacks and also to gain weight. Doctors treated the two problems as unrelated.

(Click here for a description of panic attacks.)

For the first few years, the panic attacks were occasional. I'd be in a supermarket or theatre, for example, and suddenly a huge wave of terror would engulf me, and I'd rush outside, terrified. Knowing they could strike at any moment kept me in a constant state of tension. After an attack in an aircraft in 1983, I ceased flying.

Doctors said it was a psychiatric condition. Their only cure was medication, which I repeatedly declined. I was already in a state of anxiety and the thought of being drugged up and unable to function, of losing my job and ending up unemployed and drug-dependent scared the living daylights out of me.

When I told them about my weight increase, doctors and dieticians advised a high carbohydrate diet. This made me heavier. I tried the Cambridge Diet, which involves drinking three milk-shakes a day. I felt dizzy and had heart palpitations, and the panic attacks became more frequent. I lost some weight, then put it all back on - plus more. I was told to exercise for weight loss, so I took up badminton, playing for 2 hours almost every day for 18 months. It didn't work.

In 17 years of dieting my weight increased by 100 pounds.

Over 17 years of illness, I was treated by 12 medical experts, under whose care my panic attacks became progressively worse and more frequent.

By 1999 the attacks came daily. Even between attacks, I felt emotionally unstable and anxious. Several times a day I felt strange, 'whooshing' sensations in my whole body, as though I were riding a roller coaster. There was always 'something' wrong with me, every day - feeling weepy, irritable, exhausted, nervous, anxious, depressed. Every moment was a struggle to feel and act normal at work and in social life, despite how I felt inside.

I felt very embarrassed at the frequency of my visits to the doctor. All consulations resulted in him/her offering, and me declining, drugs. Over the years I was sent to various psychiatrists, who offered the same pills.

In mid-1998 I cut short a two-week holiday because I was convinced that my guest-house landlady was trying to poison me: after every meal I felt agitated, my heart palpitated, and I felt nauseous.

From then I was scared to be away from home. I had panic attacks anywhere, every day and every night. I tried herbal and homeopathic substances: Bach Rescue Remedy and Aconite. These quelled panic attacks temporarily, then an hour later another would terrorise me. My doctor said these were "just sugar pills" with no active ingredient. He insisted I needed drugs.

By the spring of 2000, my life was a nightmare: I was preoccupied 24/7 with managing my panic attacks (now happening every hour or two, day and night), the horrendous mood swings, indigestion, memory loss, irritability, loss of concentration, and terrifying bouts of blurred vision. I'd wake every night around 2-3am, shaking uncontrollably from head to toe, my body cold, and my head very hot, feeling frightened and agitated. I swigged from a bottle of sweet wine kept by my bed. The panic ebbed away, only to return with a vengeance an hour later. I was bewildered and terrified. I also had overwhelming cravings for sweet things which, "experts" told me, was because sugary foods are comfort foods: my need for them was purely psychological.

Some panic attacks were more severe than others.Twice I called an ambulance in the middle of the night, because I appeared to be having a heart attack. They found 'nothing' wrong with me. One time, with blurred vision, heart palpitations and severe migraine, I rushed, terribly agitated and distressed, to my doctor's surgery. She said it was 'just' a panic attack.

I tried desperately to keep my illness a secret at work, but that became impossible. I was dismissed in April 2000. By June 2000 my life was not worth living. There was no choice but to submit to medication. In a two-minute consulation a locum doctor prescribed Paroxetine. After taking just one I became uncontrollably agitated for 14 hours, then slept from 2am to 5am and awoke floating in a zombie-state. I felt utterly suicidal. I could not live without the drugs; I could not live with the drugs. I rang the Samaritans. I told the man who answered that my friends had long been suggesting that I see a kinesiologist but, as two complementary therapists had failed to cure me, I had repeatedly declined. The Samaritan urged me to see her, just in case she had something new to say.

I went to see her that day and within five minutes she announced that I was hypoglycaemic.

I had never heard of this. She explained that my pancreas malfunctioned. It produced too much insulin in response to sugar, white flour, white rice or caffeine. An overproduction of insulin drives the blood glucose level down very fast, adrenaline surges, causing feelings of intense panic. As the brain cannot store blood glucose it is the first organ to malfunction, hence mental confusion, blurred vision, etc. A rapid drop in blood glucose was also the cause of my trembling fits, palpitations, mood swings - well, in fact, everything that had been tormenting me for 17 years.

My pancreas malfunctioned because it had been damaged by overgrowth of an intestinal yeast called candida. This overgrowth was caused by antibiotics, which kill beneficial bacteria which normally keep candida under control. She said I must have taken some recently. I had - just four months before.

She told me to keep to an anti-candida diet for a few weeks, then to a hypoglycaemic diet. Above all, no sugar.

It seemed quite ridiculous to me that food could possibly cause my horrendous nervous and mental symptoms. However, in desperation I tried the diet she suggested.

On the Net I found many sites, support groups, and diets for the hypoglycaemic. When I saw the list of symptoms associated with hypoglycaemia I became angry - I had told 12 doctors of my symptoms yet none diagnosed hypoglycaemia. My belief in doctors was shattered.

As I researched, everything began to make sense. One of my doctors had dismissed Aconite as "mere sugar pills". Homeopathic pillules are made of sucrose - that's why they worked. And it wasn't the alcohol in the sweet wine that quelled my panic - but the sugar. And Bach Rescue Remedy contains - brandy! And I realised that my body craved chocolate and cola not because of psychological comfort but because it was instinctively leading me to sugar, which could raise my blood glucose. The trouble is...

1 - eating sugar swiftly raises the blood glucose level, so you feel good again... BUT

2 - eating sugar also stimulates the pancreas to overproduce insulin...

3 - insulin drives down the blood glucose again...

4 - plummeting blood glucose causes panic attacks ...

1 - eating sugar swifly raises the blood glucose... (the cycle re-starts)

For years I'd been on a kind of sugar-induced internal roller-coaster ride.

As soon as I eliminated caffeine, sugar and white flour/rice, the panic attacks disappeared in days. I proved by experiment that sugar both caused, and quelled, all my panic attacks. In a few weeks, all the other symptoms decreased and disappeared. When I proved to myself that I was NOT mentally ill I wept tears of relief and happiness.

The kinesiologist told me I must convalesce: my internal organs had undergone terrible stress for many years. As well as many websites I found several books about hypoglycaemia. Everything I read confirmed what the kinesiologist had said. I learned that overweight was caused by my inability to metabolise carbohydrates over many years, which caused me to store them as fat. This was the first link I'd read between panic attacks and overweight.

The dietary advice given by doctors and dieticians had made my condition worse. For example, their diet sheets included breakfast cereals, baked beans, low-fat spreads, and white breads, all of which contain sugar.

The Cambridge Diet was a total disaster for me: by removing all "proper" foods and replacing them with liquid sugar-drinks I was damaging my pancreas further.

My doctor denied that the condition exists. When asked to explain why my panic symptoms disappeared after I eliminated certain foods, she simply said she was glad I was 'feeling a bit better.'

I re-visited places where I always had panic attacks, but none came. I could for the first time sit in a theatre, trapped in every direction by crowds of people. This would usually have terrified me, but I felt totally calm. I knew my nightmare was truly over.

More research taught me that my condition, which is incurable, is known as hyperinsulinism - in other words, the over-production of insulin in response to carbohydrates. Insulin is also known as "the fat-prducing hormone". Therefore, anyone who is over-producing it is bound to store fat.

How insulin works.

About insulin and obesity

For 17 years I'd been too terrified ever to consider entering an aeroplane, yet just 4 months after seeing the kinesiologist I flew to Holland, then, 8 weeks after that, I took a holiday which involved another ten flights, four of which exceeded 11 hours' duration, and one of which was in a tiny Cessna Seaplane. I could not recognise myself as the same person who, just six months before, had panic attacks on the local bus!

In the UK employers often ask for applicants' medical records. Mine wrongly indicate that I suffered from a psychiatric illness for 17 years and so it it hardly surprising that I was rejected for every job I applied for. Luckily, I found another way to spend my life.

The only problem left now is that I cannot shift this weight, which is more than double what it should be. Seventeen years of damage to my metabolism, my pancreas, my insulin mechanism, and years of yo-yo dieting, have messed me up so much that nothing works.

I now keep to the Atkins Diet -- 70% fat, no sugar or alcohol, no wheat or white carbs, which means no potatoes, pasta, rice, milk. Although I have failed to lose an ounce, it has had a very good effect on stabilising my blood-glucose levels and I never have panic attack episodes. I eat meat, fish, eggs, cheese and vegetables (mainly salad).

Friends and family have no understanding of my illness, yet they presume to know better than I do -- they repeatedly criticise me for not eating a low-fat diet, the very diet that causes people with hyperinsulinaemia to gain weight! Others keep on at me to eat less and less, the very thing that makes the metabolism go into 'starvation' mode, and, worse than that, if I don't eat enough at one go, or frequently enough, I have dizzy spells and "funny turns" that are very frightening because when my blood sugar drops I get "spikes" of adrenaline shooting through my body, heart palpitations and blurred vision.

Page updated June 2008

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor; I am someone who has been through this nightmare and now has to manage the condition without medical help.