[Closed] Anyone else cursed with IBS?

I have it, used to be a lot worse - as you say it's a vicious circle in terms of stress. You can try and work out if certain foods trigger it but I never really did. Booze and coffee are generally not good in my experience though.

For me it was dealing with my stress/anxiety issues that helped alleviate it - Valerian root and meditation/relaxation techniques are good for me.

Poor chap, sounds horrible. My mum gets it if she eats any kind of salad leaves other than Spinach or rocket. Took her a while to work that out.

Hmm working the food thing out is hard, the only things that i know for sure trigger it are Peppers and Coffee Mate! I can eat one meal and be fine but a week later i can eat the same meal again and it'll trigger it off.
Going out for meals is a nightmare for me, i love food, i love eating, but i just dread being out and it all kicking off in my stomach.
It's hard trying to explain it to others too, working/business lunches are my idea of hell

Thanks for the tags but MTFU doesn't stop your bowels wanting to explode 🙁

My Mrs suffered terribly a few years ago, and was almost housebound for months on end, because when she had an attack of cramps, she would be frozen rigid to the spot, no matter where she was. And if we were going to go shopping or cinema or for a meal etc, worrying about it happening would set it off. Hers was stress-related, due to her work, and only when she changed jobs did it calm down.

In the short-term, try to avoid trigger foods, if you know what they are. Hers were tomatoes, and melted cheese. You can get gel-packs of fibre to help you be 'a bit more solid', if you know what I mean. I think they were called 'Fibro-gel', or something like that, and they did help a lot. Ask your chemist. And make sure that you drink 2-3 litres of water a day, on top of everything else, because this really helps the digestive system, and alleviated her symptoms.

Good luck!

I suffered a couple of years ago but things seem to have calmed down now. I was drinking a bit more back then, mid week and I've cut down on spice intake. I found chilis were particularly bad for me. It only takes minutes after eating before a purge was required. Very uncomfortable and quite awkward when eating out as you say. I'd never thouht about linking it with stress but I was very busy with work at the time and not getting any decent excercise or eating balanced meals. Maybe just try to increase your healthy intake a bit.

Thanks TenMen. Yes i definitely need to up my fibre intake, something i have noticed that my diet has been missing. I have used that stuff before and i actually liked the taste of it.
Glad your Mrs is ok, i can totally empathise with what she went through

houns...I had this really bad about 12 yrs ago.
Have you got any history? I had my appendix out, but at the same time had a kidney infection. I was given a suppository antibiotic! (Nice!!)
A few weeks later I has some dodgy coronation chicken and it all kicked off from there. I am sure that the suppository killed off all the good bacteria in my gut. I can really sympathise...life was hell for about a year. My worst ever episode was when I was at Mum's, R and C were there and I'd had my worst trigger, cauliflower! I was too mortified to leave the bathroom for about 30 minutes. Not the pleasantest of things to post about... 😉

Anyway, I got pregnant and it all cleared up...not what you want to hear I know... 8)

I have a friend who had such bad cramps she fainted with the pain and fell through a glass door and cut her arms to shreds.

I don't suffer anymore, but I still have a very "anxious" tummy. Stress/too much alcohol are my only triggers now.

The Mrs also tried taking 'Colpermin' which contains peppermint oil, which is also meant to help. But long-term, as I'm sure you know, you need to identify the triggers. We did a lot of research at the time, as this did affect her for years, and most of the triggers are stress and food. You can do specific diets to identify trigger foods, but they can be extreme. One she considered was eating just boiled chicken and rice for a few weeks, and then add in a food type one-by-one, and see how you are affected. Obvious down-side is that this takes months and is anti-social and not entirely practical. She decided instead to keep a food-diary, as it's easy to forget what you really eat on a day-to-day basis, and this worked really well. There are loads of books like this on Amazon, worth having a look.

But as I said before, it was stress that started it off for her, namely bullying at work. She had a few Reiki sessions to try and relax. Now, whether or not you believe in New Age Hippy Nonsense (you can guess which camp I'm in), I can testify that after her 1st relaxation session - and at this point she had not had a poo for 2 weeks previously - she promptly spent the next hour filling the bowl, and was fine for a few weeks afterwards. So if you decide to do anything like that, make sure you have no plans for the rest of the day and plenty of Andrex to hand.

ibs and ulcerative colitis (which i believe are similar) are common place in my family. my dads colitis was terrible a few years ago.

they started taking [url= http://www.aloehealthuk.com/ ]aloe vera gel[/url] and it has all but stopped.

My dad used to see the specialist every 6 months have all sorts of horrible foams and creams to apply - i won't explain how you apply a foam to your colon but i'm sure you can guess! 😯

since taking the aloe the colitis is so controlled that the specialist signed him off and told him to come back when he needed to. that was over 5 years ago.

the thing with the aloe is you need to take it as it says (with an empty stomach or summit) it's not tasty but it's not that bad. and you need to take it every day - not when it feels bad. i recomended it to a guy from work who did this and kept complaining it didn't work!

try it.

Thanks for the tips. I've started taking Aloe tablets about a month ago, they have eased the bloating and the farting (well slightly!)
I'm not adverse to trying alternatives, i'm currently looking into hypnotherapy to help with the anxiety side of it.
I know 80% of it is psychological, the fear of a sudden bout of it makes me feel anxious, the more i feel anxious the more my IBS plays up, the more it plays up the more anxious i feel etc etc, need to break that cycle.
FC i've had plenty of experiences like you've had, it is embarrassing yes, the last thing i want to happen is to be stuck on a plane when taking off/landing, sat on a coach or sat in a car and suddenly get the cramp, gurgle and well you know what comes next!

Have you seen a specialist?

Without wanting to scare you, I was told I had IBS from my GP and went through various crap treatments for about 6 months with no change in condition (apart from major weight loss to the point where everyone I knew thought I was drug addict)

When I had dropped to about 9 stone (from 13) he finally decided I should see a specialist. 2 weeks later I had had 3 ft of my intestines removed, been diagnosed with Crohns disease and after a few months of getting my weight up have been right as rain since.

my bowel movements aren't exactly what I'd call normal though, and I have to careful after spicy\fast food but it's easy enough to manage as long as I'm not stupid.

I suffer from fatigue syndrome, which in turn makes me very frustrated and a little stressed, which in turn brings on mild IBS. I bloat and get really bad wind pains, well you know the rest.
So my only advice to to get the stress levels down.
It's really annoying when something like this starts to interfer with your life. People don'r always take it seriously.

I have no health issues that affect either my social life of work..

Neither of which i have

I suffered from it about 5 or so years ago - it was pretty bad and interfered constantly with one's daily life. Like you I could not easily pinpoint specific food types as being a contributing factor.

In the end I started a very restrictive diet - cutting out pretty much everything and lived off fish, chicken, brown rice, salad fruit, nuts seeds for couple of years. I would eat almost nothing that I had not prepared myself from raw/fresh ingredients.

By and large this sorted things out fairly quickly or at least the cured the main of symptons. After a few years I gradually started introducing other foods like pasta, potatoes, prepared sandwiches and chocolate etc. At first i found I was OK as long as it I didn't do it too many days in succession - but now it all seem normal.

I suspect now that stress if that was the cause has found other ways of screwing me up and I have since being diagnosed as bipolar but all in all it seems preferable to IBS

Seriously look up and try some basic meditation techniques. Might not work for you but it helped me. Stress is generally the key to it I think.

I also have had problems with it and agree with stress being a major factor.
I have been visiting a Chinese herbalist who practices acupuncture. He has suggested diet changes, increase how much sleep I am getting, how I eat, breathe and some weird tasting teas.
There have been improvements and I have dropped a waist size, I am not so bloated any more.
I don't know if the improvements are due to the changes I've made, the herbal teas, the needles or all, but there are definite improvements. I have also made a concious effort to reduce stress. I have even started to have things I would always regret having like milk, coffee, eggs, some salads and garlic.

Not really helpful I know but it can get resolved and will get better if you keep at it.

houns, email me mate re:this thread

generally if I overdo too much of one food type it will 'set me off'
I try and be careful and vary my diet as much as I can.

Saying that, I still got caught out the odd time, on my way home from a restaurant.... not nice

Bacon/sausages kick off my guts bigtime amd I swell up allover. This is IBS though.

Feeling worse - Tablets i got from the Dr's the other day are giving me really bad nausea and vomiting - Feeling pretty miserable now 🙁

I love you still houns. that is surely all you need to cure anything! come up and visit egglandia. we have foods that will make you forget IBS and let you enjoy coronary disease and brain embolisms instead. HTH as always.

Genks x x x

:love:

🙁
crappy (literally)
go back to GP

9.05 am tomorrow I'm back there.

Grrr

do a fluffy dump on his desk and rub his face in it till he comes up with better treatment

Heh

mine sounds very similar to those above. Took me a while to figure out what was causing it. I was getting serious stomach cramps during the day, having to run for the big on a regular basis. Going camping was horrible, stopped doing it which was a pity. I would also get serious cramps during 24 hour races, ended up having to lie down on my stomach on the course a few times until they'd passed which sometimes got some of the marshalls worried. Started cutting out a whole list of things based on a list from my doctor.

Coffee. If I have more than one cup a day or have any of that strong stuff, it comes right back.

Used to suffer with it - in a bad way, but controlling stress levels, eating next to no processed wheat products (only wholemeal or brown) seems to help stop it rearing it's ugly head.

Laugh all you want, but was taught meditation techniques to relax myself when I felt it start, and that was better than any of the pain killers they had me on, which resulted in me walking around in a completely drugged up state.

Not sure if it's any use but when I have problems I take Yakult - may be totally in the mind (or elsewhere) but a good gut flora seems to help.

Got a mild form myself - occasional cramps mid afternoon, but generally bathroom sloppiness otherwise..and avoid loos that don't have a decent supply of bog roll and running water 😮 Had occasional cramps for some years, but the latter only became significant when were were looking to move house 4-5 years ago and has stayed the same. Not enough to be a major problem, but enough to put me off going to music festivals 🙁

A guy here at work has had a rougher time with his, after doing an elimination diet he's tracked it down to dairy/lactose, caffein intolerance. He's managed to work out he can now have one coffee mid-afternoon without upsetting himself, but not any other time..

sorry to hear that Houns 🙁 I read something a while ago about rice krispies being v good for aleviating IBS. no idea why, but worth a try?

xx