#ibs help

Hiya! IBS absolutely sucks--it’s a chronic disorder that not many people know much about, and is often dismissed by the medical community. There is a wealth of information out there online about ways of treating it, but it’s all over the place and you never know what’s true or not. SO, Imma share some tips and stuff I’ve found throughout my health journey that works for me.

NOTE: this is primarily focused on IBS-C, though some stuff might help for any type of IBS.

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COMFORT: 

- Get yourself a hot pad of some kind! That sucker is a lifesaver for cramps and stuff. If you can’t buy one, make your own by filling a big ol’ sock with rice and heating it in the microwave.

- If you have reflux and you need to sleep, try lying on your left side rather than your right or your back. Because of the way most people’s stomachs are made, this prevents acid from leaking out into your throat as much.

- Try not to crunch your stomach (i.e. slouch over too much) if it’s bugging you, as the extra pressure can make it feel worse. Try sitting up straight, or using a wedge pillow.

- If you wear a bra, loosening it up can help with discomfort as well. 

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MEDICINE (make sure you consult a doctor/naturopath before trying anything new, I am not an expert):

- If you know that the meds you’re on or are going to be taking have constipation as a side effect, stock up on extra laxatives and things beforehand so you don’t get backed up as much. 

- DGL tablets (deglycyrrhizinated licorice root), help your intestines and esophagus to produce more mucus, which allows the lining to heal and be protected from acid and other irritants. They can be really helpful for upset stomachs, too!

- Diovol is also magical for stomach issues as well, and some of them even come with gas relief stuff as well! Not sure if this is sold in the US or other countries, however.

- Ginger tablets are good for stomach upset/nausea as well.

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FOOD (consult professionals before trying a restrictive diet):

- If you have just discovered you have IBS, you may want to try an elimination diet to heal inflammation and work out food sensitivities. Make sure you do your research, though!

- Low-FODMAP is a common choice for IBS sufferers. It eliminates specific sugars that cause problems for a lot of people. 

- Another option is Autoimmune Paleo, or AIP. This works on eliminating common foods that cause problems for a certain period of time, and then gradually reintroducing foods to see which ones cause problems.

- A lot of people have problems with dairy and gluten (there are a suprisingly large amount of people in the world that are actually lactose/milk protein intolerant), so you may want to start by just eliminating those. 

- If you are on a diet, try to relax about food in general if you can, because your emotional state actually affects your immune system and how you digest food. In fact, if you stress out too much, you can actually cause a reaction! So if you have anxiety/mood issues, try to treat those as well as your IBS symptoms, or they’ll feed into each other. 

- Your body may have a harder time digesting food than most people, so make sure you chew your food enough (some people say about 20 chews, but it’ll be different for each person/food). This gives your saliva time to break down the food so it’s easier for your stomach to digest. 

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THE NITTY GRITTY (be careful with meds and supplements):

- Make sure you know which kind of laxative you’re on and how it works. Some of them should not be used often because they can actually make IBS-C worse by causing your body to rely on them in order to poop. 

- Osmotic laxatives such as Miralax and polyethylene glycol are safer for long-term use.

- Senna (either in tea or tablet form such as Sennakot) can be helpful for stimulating the muscles in your colon. 

- Both Vitamin C and Magnesium supplements can actually help you to poop, as well. Gradually build up your dosage over a few days until you get loose stools, then go backwards a bit. Don’t worry about taking too much (unless it’s an excessively large amount), because your body clears out the excess vitamins through your waste.

- If you are using an osmotic laxative and it’s not working, make sure you’re drinking enough water. These laxatives work by drawing water into your stools to make them easier to pass, so if the only water you drink with them is the stuff you mixed it in to, you aren’t going to get much results. I find the laxatives work better if you drink a lot of water right around the same time you take them.

- Prune juice is another thing I’ve found to work. It is high-FODMAP, however, so if you’re on that diet, you may want to avoid it. Otherwise, I drink about 4-8 oz in the morning once a day.

- Make sure you drink lots and lots of water throughout the day! Your stool will be drier if you are dehydrated.

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OTHER STUFF:

- If you aren’t getting help from a doctor, try going to a naturopath. Some people are suspicious of natural products for healing, but a lot of it really works, and a good naturopath knows a lot about more obscure conditions and how your body works. 

- I mentioned this before, but the mind and gut are very connected. This is part of why for women, being on their period often makes IBS worse. If you struggle with anxiety or depression, it’s important to treat both that and the IBS, otherwise they’ll feed each other and you won’t make progress.

 IBS is really hard, and besides the physical part of it, it can be very depressing as well. Foods you used to enjoy are now your enemy, and you feel like a burden wherever you go because you can’t enjoy the same things other people can without pain. And to top it all off, we’re told that it’s a chronic condition with no cure.

A Wimps Guide To IBS

I’m A Wimp

I’m a wimp, through and through. I can’t handle any sort of physical pain unless I willingly put myself in that situation. Funnily enough, I don’t even flinch during tattoo’s, piercings, waxing, anything like that. As soon as it’s involuntary pain, my brain shuts down and I can’t handle it.

So when it was discovered I had IBS, it wasn’t the best news. I had been really suffering with…

So as of late, I've been having some pretty pressing health issues. All of it revolving around my IBS. It's been causing some sever anxiety, panic attacks, and gastrointestinal distress.

Now I'm not asking for money or items or anything. I'm just asking for advise. I've looked everywhere for how to manage it, but everything is just "manage your stress" and "change your diet." I need something MORE. I need direction because this shit is ruining me. I feel like I'm going crazy. I couldn't even stand up today.

I’ve had IBS-d for about 6 years, and last week, for the first time, I was able to avoid a flare-up as it was developing. 

This is a HUGE fucking deal. 

When I have a flare-up, my intestines go into spasms for days, sometimes weeks. It takes months to recover from the lack of nutrients and dehydration due to malabsorption while I heal. The spasms will usually be triggered by something like food poisoning or stress. Right now I’m working 40 hours a week while doing a full-time MFA, and apparently ate something that had gone bad. My boyfriend had the runs once because of it -- I had them 5 times in 2 days. Everything I ate went wrong. 

After years of flare ups and being lucky enough to find a couple of helpful doctors (and a really, horribly, painfully lousy one), I was able to have the knowledge and resources I needed to fight off a flare-up. A week ago I was terrified at how the next six months of my life might look. Right now I feel balanced, comfortable, and like maybe I’ll have a burrito for lunch tomorrow. Because it’s so hard to find helpful information on IBS-d, I wanted to share my tactics in case it can help someone else. 

- First of all, probiotics. Probiotics have always helped me, whether in pill form, or food form. I try to have some kefir daily, which seems to take to my gut the best. I swear by kefir, but know that not everyone can handle dairy. When I was recovering from my first massive bout of IBS (2+ years to diagnose as SBBO), I noticed a massive difference between easier kefirs like coconut milk or goat milk (which didn’t have a significant effect), and regular kefir (LIFESAVER). Like, the next day things were calmer and came out of me better. So if you can tolerate dairy, I highly recommend it (even if you’re lactose intolerant, you may be able to process it because of its high probiotic count - it practically digests itself and leaves probiotics in your gut). It’s been the most powerful way to balance my gut that I’ve found.

- Speaking of probiotics, they’re super useful in pill form. If your count is low, this is a great way to bulk up your colonies and diversify them. Make sure you get a pill with several strains, and that they include several types of lactobacilli and bifido bacteria. 

- Bifido bacteria is really important if you’re facing and IBS-d flare-up. This is a type of probiotic bacteria that specifically helps to solidify your bowel movements. I prefer to take a mixed probiotic pill alongside a bifido specific one (I recommend Jarrow’s Saccharomyces Boulardii). 

-Peppermint oil capsules. If someone had told me about these 6 years ago, my life may literally be different. Doctors in the U.S. have a ridiculous aversion to anything naturopathic, but I’m living in the U.K. right now, where the IBS medication on the drugstore shelf is literally just peppermint oil capsules. Most invasive gut bacteria don’t do well with peppermint oil, but it doesn’t hurt your probiotic bacteria. A gel capsule will dissolve in your small intestine and not only help get rid of bad bacteria, such as the ones that get carried in with food poisoning (or streptococcus, which it helped me get rid of), but also help calm your spasms. Just make sure not to take too many in a short period of time, because peppermint can also trigger an increased production of stomach acid, which can lead to all sorts of other horrible problems. Make sure you take it on an empty stomach and don’t eat for 20 minutes, to give the peppermint oil a chance to do its thing. It’s pretty much good for everything! Add a few drops to water, spray your wall cracks and roaches, mice, and ants will leave you the hell alone. Peppermint oil is the best. 

- Raspberries. You heard me. An amazing gastroenterologist once told me that raspberries have some kind of magical fiber that’s perfectly balanced, so that if you eat a handful or two a couple of times a day when you’re having IBS-d symptoms, the berries will help balance things out. This is possibly one of the most important things I’ve ever learned. I have always noticed a significant difference in my stool within a day of incorporating raspberries into my diet. 

- Ground flaxseed. If your flare-up is really bad, another way to calm things down is to take ground flaxseed daily. Make sure you grind it fresh, it goes bad within a couple of days. Even the pre-ground stuff in the special bag. Don’t trust it. Just get a coffee grinder and grind up a Tablespoon each morning. I like to mix it in kefir and drink it before breakfast, but you can just dump it in water. Tbh it’s gross no matter what, so fuck it. It’ll regulate you within a few days, but once you feel like you’re good, you don’t have to keep up with it. It can make you too regular sometimes, like when I spent a month waking up to a fresh log ready to roam free and having me sprint to the toilet before I realized I can stop doing the flaxseed thing (but at least it was a solid log, amirite?). 

- Heating pad! I fucking love my heating pad. It’s my best friend. Heat on my guts has calmed them so so much, so so many times. You can get a pad with an auto switch-off, so you can fall asleep with it and not be afraid of causing a fire. 

- Finally, for the horrible dizziness and disorientation that comes with dehydration and lack of absorption, Ultima Replenisher has saved my fucking sanity. You can get it at Whole Foods or order it off Amazon. It’s full of electrolytes and minerals and I think it’s meant for people who do sportsball, but someone once recommended it to me at a Whole Foods when I was having a nightmarish flare-up, and I’ve always had some on hand since. I keep a container of it in the kitchen, and always have a few to-go packets on me in case I’m out and about. It helps bring my blood pressure back up when it drops, and to feel less disoriented when I have diarrhoea. It’s allowed me to keep from cancelling appointments and to keep my life together. It has also helped me keep my nutrients up during and after a flare-up, so that recovery doesn’t take forever. Also useful is coconut water, because electrolytes and magnesium are important. 

So I’m a vegetarian coeliac who has IBS-D - my trigger foods for IBS seem to be onions, garlic (or any relation to those two just as chives, spring onions etc), too much fibre, too much spice and beans/lentils.

But!

I recently was in the middle of a horrible IBS attack brought on by a bad reaction to antibiotics; I was frantically searching the internet for something to help with the pain when i came across some very helpful products. And i mean very helpful products.

1. Peppermint Oil Capsules - can be bought at most health food stores, pretty cheap (and thats saying a lot as i live in Canada). You can take 2 of these 3 times a day and the peppermint oil releases in the colon, numbing the walls and reliving the pain of contractions. 

2. Fennel Capsules - Again, health food stores and also decently priced. These are literally pill cases packed full of fennel. you can take 1 pill 3 times a day and the fennel helps calm the muscles in the colon.

3. Soluble Fibre - I bought the Renew Life brand - Organic Clear Fibre, again from local health food store, again decently priced. There are other brands out there but the key thing you need to check is that on the list of ingredients it reads “ Gum Acacia (Acacia Senegal)” and nothing else. Any extra stuff will probably be insoluble fibre which you DO NOT WANT. I find it works best if you pour the serving amount in a glass of water before bed, stir it, let it dissolve and then chug it. it has no taste so yey! This stuff is amazing, it cuts the attack time in half and i recommend making this a daily thing. The soluble fibre creates a smooth gum coating on the colon walls, allowing for any fecal matter to slide more easily through the bowels during an attack of contractions and convulsions. 

Hope people find this helpful.