#gastrointestinal

Every small thing you do for yourself health adds up. The grief is heavy and it comes from a place of love. The grief knows the pain is wronging you.

I’m proud of you. I hope on the good days you can be proud of yourself.

because i HAVE to. not because food ingredients like sugar, soy, and fat are evil and dangerous. but because i have DISABILITIES that prevent my stomach from DIGESTING them when it is SUPPOSED to.

with yall** it is the complete fucking opposite. because you CAN eat it. you just dont to because you think what - those ingredients are evil and dangerous and not eating them makes you a healthier better person than everyone else?? you're so fucking annoying.

we are not the same. stop treating our disabilities like a lifestyle and spreading misinformation that just ends up with people thinking real disabled people are lying or conspiracy theorists.

P.S: veganism and vegetarianism are morally neutral. so is eating a lot of sugar and high fat foods. because guess what. food is fucking morally neutral. companies? are not. they are lying to you about so much and yet you wanna play pretend disabled instead. pathetic.

if you're gonna change your diet based on your morals, do it in a way that actually improves your community and health. look at how other countries regulate their food. look at real, unbiased science. learn how to tell if a research paper is credible or has conflicts of interest. share what you learn with others. go advocate for access to nutritious food.

but at least you're so easy to market to that i have better accessibility on Walmart dot Com. if the filters even fucking work that is.

I've had chronic constipation for a few years now (unsure if it's caused by another condition or if it's its own thing) and I've always felt really gross talking about it and how it effects me. In most disability spaces I'm scared to mention my experiences due to fear of being called "gross".

I've noticed some other blogs talking about gi issues, and it really means a lot to me. I really do appreciate this blog talking about it without calling peoples' experiences gross

The stigma attached to GI disabilities is physisensory ableism.

We have a GI disability, specifically connected to our pelvic disability. People act really rude or weird about it ever coming up in discussions.

Defecating, urinating, and menstruating deserve to be treated as normal bodily functions - because they are. People need to stop attaching the concept of disgust to it.*

(*I don't blame people if they have specific phobias over it, thats entirely different. I'm specifically referring to the societal stigma built around it.)

I am not gross for being unable to defecate properly, and for having to get my fingers involved to get it out.

I am not gross for urinating against my will sometimes.

I am not gross for menstruating.

51% of food left in my stomach after 4 hours.

Your friend who always refuses to go anywhere new, won't try anything new, always insists that everyone in the group only go to one food spot or else they'll throw a tantrum or a pity party, which makes everyone in the group upset but still follow through to avoid the tantrum, and their excuse for avoiding certain foods is "I don't like them" but they've never tasted them or anything similar, and refuse to even try - yes, that's annoying as shit, you have the right to be annoyed by that. That is being a picky eater and acting like a little kid.

Your friend who has a very strict diet due to gastrointestinal issues, where if they stray away from their safe foods, will cause extreme stomach pain, horrible nausea, painful constipation/diarrhea, vomiting, exacerbated symptoms, etc - asking you to settle for a resturant where the one thing they CAN actually eat without physical turmoil is avaliable - that's not being a picky eater.

"I don't want to eat this because I don't want to try a new food, because I just have a feeling that I PROBABLY won't LIKE it." - picky eater.

"I can't eat this because it will cause me severe physical pain later or even minutes after consuming it." - NOT a picky eater.

On top of that, the individual with medical issues will always take priority over the picky eater in the group. Picky eater wants to go to a burger food truck and refuses to go anywhere else, where grease and red meat will make my stomach feel like it's exploding and leave me vomiting for days?? Enjoy starving for a night, picky eater. I'm not putting myself through extreme physical turmoil because you want to act like a fucking three year old.

Edit: Of course, since posting this, the "what about autism" crowd has jumped on the bandwagon. Autism, just like ARFID, is disabling. It is a condition. If eating certain foods causes you physical symptoms, it's medical, and as I clearly stated above, medical issues take priority over picky eaters. Why are YOU correlating picky eaters to autistic folk and people with ARFID when they AREN'T picky eaters but instead abiding by their condition?

Nearly 53,000 Americans expected to die from colorectal cancer this year

Rates of colorectal and other gastrointestinal cancers are rising in Americans under the age of 50, researchers said Tuesday.

They may know why. An increased risk of early-onset gastrointestinal cancers is associated with obesity, which is also rising in the U.S. That’s what scientists say is a “leading theory” for the surge - noting a 2019 study that found women who were considered obese had nearly double the risk of developing early-onset colorectal cancer. Close to half of all U.S. adults are predicted to be obese by 2030, according to research released the same year.

The chronic condition can cause inflammation and higher levels of insulin that increases peoples’ risk of getting cancer, including several types of gastrointestinal cancers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other risk factors include smoking, drinking alcohol, eating a Western-style diet and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.