Beginning in September 2018, I have had daily nausea, loose stools, an upset stomach, and fatigue. I believe this to be IBS, although I haven't been diagnosed with this. I have had numerous blood tests, an endoscopy, a colonoscopy, seen a nutritionist, and have turned to alternative medicine. Nothing has helped and my General Practitioner says I have "situational anxiety" (that is NOT my issue here). Stool tests are all negative, no C Diff, no H Pylori, etc.
I'm seeing an allergist soon, but don't know what else to do. Here is my blog with more a little more information (plus poop pictures--you've been warned): mypoopplace.blogspot.com Any help is welcomed
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You could consider an Organic Acid Test. After nearly 15 years of IBS I finally have a positive result from this test, showing candida, amongst a number of other problems.
Candida can be "killed" by really paying close attention to diet, so it might be worth starting there anyway, lots of vegetables, learn meat & no sugar, alcohol or caffeine. If you think you may have candida then you can look into a SIBO based, or Low fodmap diet. Make sure to cook the veg though, as candida can live off uncooked veg (or so I'm told)
Your IBS sounds really similar to mine. I too suffer with nausea, loose stools (in the morning), an upset stomach, and fatigue. I take amitriptyline in the morning which significantly improves my levels nausea, fatigue & pain, and also helps my stools a little bit.
It is designed as an anti depressant at a high dosage (about 600mg), but it's not a very good anti depressant. Result have shown that a low dosage, can really help IBS symptoms (around 50mg dosage)
I've spoken to multiple gastros & the assure me that the low dosage has no affect on cognitive behavior / mood/ seretoin and so on, but what they think it does (that don't really understand it yet) is it cuts off the communication with the brain & the gut.
My point is, it just might be worth doing a little bit of research & speaking with your GP - It is very much only a plaster but could help you.
I also take Imodium before bed, and in the morning. I find it firms up my stools.
Thank you for this--I will absolutely look into Imodium and Amitriptyline at a low dosage, as it seems like it could really help. Absolutely looking an Organic Acid Test as we speak.
I've only recently taken the organic acid test - It's really hard to understand however & you would probably need a Functional Medicine Doctor to break it down for you though.
My test has come back with candida, malabsorption of fat, yeast, Fungai, parasites, vitamin deficiency & a host of other stuff. Tackling it isn't going to be easy though.
You'll need to pay for the OAT as well though, a GI-Map stool test might be worth looking into as well - Both are about £250 each.
Other tests you can ask the NHS for as well:
SehCHAT for Bile Acid Malabsorption
SIBO breath test
Lactose intolerance
MRI
Capsule Endoscopy
Abdominal Ultrasound
They might all come back negative though
If you do give Imodium and Amitriptyline a go, consider them both plasters & try and find the root cause.
Imodium is just designed to help Diarrhoea & loose stools. You can buy these from the supermarket & they work pretty quickly. No need to get a prescription. They might make you constipated though!
Thanks again. I've actually had some of those tests you've mentioned, and will look into the ones I haven't (with Organic Acid Test at the top of the list). I live in America, unfortunately, and can't ask for the test in the same way. Since I only poop once or twice a day, I think I'll stay away from Imodium now that I think of it.
Since I've had an endoscopy and colonoscopy, do you think my GI would've seen SIBO or any other bacterial overgrowth?
I don't think SIBO would ever show up from cameras. You could try a SIBO breath test, you can do that from home.
I tried VSL3 recently as a probiotic and that didn't help.
I've been taking a new probiotic recently - gut pro powder - It's not helping my gut yet, but is slowly clearing up a skin condition I have which is good news. I think my skin condition & IBS are linked, so it might be a case of pumping myself full of probiotics for a while!
During my camera tests, they took a couple of biopsy samples, but didn't show anything outside of the ordinary except for some gastritis. Ah well.
I really hope the gut pro powder works to clear the skin condition and heal you of your IBS! I'm starting PB8 tomorrow and hopefully it'll combat any bad bacteria I have and reduce my symptoms. Keeping my fingers crossed for both of us.
all I can say is that after almost 2 months of IBS hell (mostly loose stools and d* then to constipation etc) mine DID only start this bad after I took a tiny dose of flucloaxillin for a bad infection. The infection caused me horrible worry as Im a pianist and it was on my thumb and I hate to sound like every other person but I dont see it being anything other than some ongoing tension whats doing it to you as it is to me. Youre lucky, youve had all the tests, Ive had zero so its an extra worry (im scared of the tests) .
so! my belief is that when something pisses our tummies off, like REALLLLY pisses us off, it completely wreaks HAVOC on our bowels.. thats the only other option...Ive just been stood in the shower overthinking stuff and after weeks of constipation/normal/loose stools i realised that my bad flare from jan 2018-june 2018 was lots worse than the past 10 months after Id calmed down and it was around the time of a car crash and a bad breakup.
Youre very fortunate, youve done all the tests but I know your pain. Only thing that works for me is Imodium but I only take it in extreme cases. Legend has it that it actually normalizes our bms* so thats a bit of light amidst the dark. Hope youre ok x
Mine ruled out C Diff, shiga toxins, campylobacter, salmonella/shigella, giardia, and parasites. Those are pretty basic labs, but always good to know it's not that stuff. Ever been concerned you have Candida (or any yeast/fungi)?
I, personally, have not. Only bad weeks since this all started. Some hours are better than others, though. Hopefully I can figure out what controls my constant flare-ups and go from there.
thats bad and petrifying, I thought mine would be over by now. if its any reasurance, during my baaad flare up last year it lasted a good 5 months and honestly for months after it was barely noticable , i agree tho, good moments do exist
This could be EPI (exocrine pancreatic insufficiency) where your pancreas is not making enough pancreatic enzymes. This is treated with creon (pancreatic enzymes).
Hello, this is my general response to help people find a baseline. First, go to the doctors and get yourself checked for intestinal infections, and whatever other tests they want to do. Most people find they are all clear, and that IBS is a condition brought on by our modern diet, freely accessible food, sedentary lifestyles and is usually initially set off by a GI infection or other trauma to the GI tract. The gut becomes hypersensitive to certain triggers, and the official description is that a physical brain-gut dysfunction develops which causes the gut to over-reacts to very mild stimuli. This leads to inflammation, worse gut performance that seems to spiral out of control. Be aware that in this state you can get new GI infections, or other GI issues that are not connected to IBS, so you need to be vigilant for this, and if concerned then visit your doctor again.
The good news is that this situation is reversible, and you need to be positive that with the correct understanding and behaviours you can get back in control of your life.
After 27 years of suffering with IBS I have found that the long-term solution that actually works for controlling it is about FIVE key topics: your vitamins, daily fasting periods, digestive enzymes, toxic food additives, and adrenalin control.
You are effectively the manager of a “food nutrient extraction factory”, I know that sounds obvious, but I have found that IBS is not about medicines, but about changing the way you run the factory, and learning how to get the best performance out of it. I don’t recommend any medicines for long term use, as so far in my experience they only work in the short-term and eventually become less effective. Equally, I just don’t want to be dependent on medicines until one day when I have no other choice.
So after your doctor’s tests, if IBS is the diagnosis, then the first thing to sort out is your vitamins and the timing of your eating and fasting periods. An incident of food poisoning or infection can start you on a cycle that you need to make a really concerted effort to break out of. IBS causes vitamin deficiencies which are practically impossible to overcome in most people’s diets, especially because you are probably eating selectively to manage your symptoms. Your vitamin levels affect the health of your intestines, and the health of your intestines affects your vitamin absorption and your production of digestive enzymes; and it is a vicious circle that you have to break.
So, get some really good, expensive, multi-vitamins (ideally constituted for your age) and take them without fail every day before your breakfast. Get a blood test for Vitamin D and get you doctor to judge your supplement level required in IU’s to get you well healthy for Vitamin D. Do not get vitamins with high calcium and magnesium content initially as certainly in large doses these minerals can mess you up as they consume your stomach acid, and magnesium particularly can give you diarrhoea. You should get enough of these minerals from your diet. If you are on the low FODMAP diet, go for all lactose free dairy products to boost your calcium, as unfortunately the diet tends to cut out almost all of the good calcium sources.
Second, sort out your fasting periods immediately. This is normally overlooked by GP’s, but is an absolutely essential element for resolving IBS. Your small intestine should be practically sterile, and your stomach acid along with bowel cleaning contractions during fasting (called MMC) will usually do the cleaning. But, you need to fast for this to be effective, and by that I mean, ABSOLUTELY NO eating in between meals, ideally drinking only water. Imagine that you never washed your dinner plates and just kept putting food on them all the time!, they would be filthy and full of bacteria. In your guts, this results in SIBO (Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth), which is apparently responsible for 85% of IBS cases, but is only one of factors that you need to address. You need to give your small intestine plenty of time free of food for cleaning and maintaining the factory. The modern scenario of have cupboards full of rich foods permanently available day and night is a modern luxury outside of human evolution. Your stomach will sort itself out when you have got control of your small intestine (although if you've got gastritis you'll need to finish a course of omeprazole first), and then your large intestine will improve later as nutrients are more efficiently absorbed from your small intestine. Furthermore, you should be able to avoid future bouts of gastritis as during the fasting periods, your stomach acid is more neutral at nearly pH 4. As a basic program, eat a good breakfast at say 7am (porridge with 50% almond milk or lactose free milk) or what suits you and then a good lunch at 12 o'clock - absolutely no food in between. After lunch, no food at all for at least 5 hours, and eat well again for your evening meal because it has got to get you through the night. Ideally, no food after 7 pm, no supper or snacks, no food or milk at all until breakfast the next day. You will feel hunger in the fasting periods, but you will not starve, and this is doing you good!, You must NOT respond to the hunger - only with water or black tea. This is CRITICAL. Unless you are in a very healthy GI state, a mid-morning or afternoon snack interrupts your set meal digestion, causing acidity, SIBO, and driving premature advancement of food into your colon resulting in putrid fart gases mentioned below. Importantly, when you are feeling better, do not resort to your old ways, you are still recovering as you villi repair and become more efficient, and you need to make a life-style change to have this level of discipline in your eating and continue with it. It takes a few weeks at least, and you need to persevere with this. Failing on this will undermine all of your other good works. In a couple of weeks, you should be able to be getting off the low FODMAP diet, and begin mixing back in the higher FODMAPs. However, if you feel that this is not enough and symptoms are returning then just back off on the high FODMAPs for a while, and go for the wheat free options.
If your farts really stink like something died in your guts, then this is because partially undigested proteins are making it through to your large intestine and the amino acids lysine and arginine are being metabolized by bacteria into cadaverine and putrescine which are the compounds that give the smell to rotting flesh! – do not worry that you yourself are rotting, this is just temporary, but it shows that you really need to sort your digestion out.
The third aspect of IBS is enzyme insufficiency. In most cases, I would suggest to try some multi-component digestive enzyme supplements, and take these for as long as you need to while your small intestine repairs. You want them to contain amylases, proteases, lipases at least (for starches, proteins and fats respectively), but they can also contain other enzymes such as cellulose (for tough vegetables) and betaine HCl. Enzyme production can decrease as you get older, it is affected by stress/anxiety, and the health of your guts and you want to be sure that undigested food does not get to your large intestine where the bacteria will go to town on it. It could be that sporadic sufficiency of enzyme production may be one of the factors why IBS is so variable. These enzymes are massively complex molecules that take a lot of cellular effort to make and are then sacrificed in your food. Replenishment of them takes time, and well fed healthy cells. Using supplementary enzymes ensures that they can get this nutrition, and that your digestion goes to completion before the food gets to your large intestine. But it’s not just the enzymes, the following two factors are also as important as these first three.
The fourth aspect of IBS is that some food additives are quite simply toxic for you and cause direct inflammation of the colon, allergic reaction of the colon, or they are laxatives that give you diarrhoea that you didn’t realise you were eating. These are to be considered separate to the usual SIBO and mechanism that you are dealing with above:
1.) Try to seek out and eliminate “trans-fats”. These cause direct inflammation of the colon, and you will be more sensitive than most people and this confuses what is causing you trouble. Chips, hash browns, butter, doughnuts, popcorn and things cooked in cheap or old frying oil as you find in many restaurants and commercial products can give you colon pain directly through inflammation. It can take up to three or four days to recover from this inflammation, but trans-fats are bad for you in a miriad of ways (cardio-vascular and diabetes), not only by inflammation of the colon. There is evidence that as cooking oil is re-used that the trans-fats (and other compounds) increase. So, if you want fried food as a treat, do it at home with good oil at a low temperature, and use it only once. Ideally, starches should only be boiled, rather than fried.
2.) E407, or “Carrageenan” – is a food additive derived from a red seaweed, which is only present in small quantities as a thickener, but even at low levels it has been shown to be “highly inflammatory to the digestive tract” and associated with IBS, colitis and other GI diseases. There is loads of literature and objections to this substance on the internet. It is present in cheap Crème Caramels, and many other dairy and meat products. After weeks of good health, just one of these products knocks me out for 24 hours with colon bloating and pain. I have found this by trial and error several times. Food tests show that even the food grade carrageenan contains between 2 and 25% of the non-approved “degraded” carrageenan, which is colon damaging and carcinogenic. Some food agencies now prohibit this additive altogether, and it may be responsible for a lot of IBS cases. It might be found in chocolate milk, cottage cheese, cream, crème caramel, ice cream, almond milk, diary alternatives, such as vegan cheeses or non-dairy desserts, coconut milk, creamers, hemp milk, rice milk, soy milk, and particularly processed meat. It is used extensively in cheap meats and is even injected into beef joints – so always get organic or local butcher fresh good quality meat!). It may be labelled as E407 or Carrageenan, but if you’ve got IBS, consider it as highly toxic for you.
In the same category is carboxy methyl cellulose (CMC) which is more widely used in the food industry, but has similar toxicology in animal studies, giving inflammation of the colon. However, the jury is still out on CMC to its impact on humans.
I’ll also mention here mono-sodium glutamate (MSG). Clinical trials and several scientific articles connect MSG with IBS, so given the option to avoid it you should avoid it.
Also, NICE advises against the use of Aloe Vera for IBS - although I would say for the hydration of skin burns it is miraculous, so get a tube of the pure plant gel for your medicine cabinet for minor burns.
3.) E338, E339, E340, E341, E450, E451 and E452, are phosphates, diphosphates or polyphosphates as different salts. Natural phosphates are essential for life, and your body is full of organically bound phosphates, however, free ionic phosphates have several problems. Firstly, they are laxatives and will give you diarrhoea (sodium phosphate was once used to prepare patients for colonoscopies!). Secondly, they are associated with cardiovascular disease and accelerated aging. Since the 1990’s we are now exposed to twice the amount of added phosphate in foods, and this is bad. There are calls to have added phosphate labelled on products as a health warning. Particular culprits are mass produced sausages and processed ham and chicken slices (and other meats), some cheeses, and cola (both diet and normal). Always buy ham “on the bone”, which usually has no phosphate added. Personally, all phosphate additives make me ill.
4.) Aspartame and other sweeteners definitely have a negative role to play in IBS for many people. As with the other toxins above, your ability to cope with them varies on a spectrum. If you look at some of the work of K.J. Mielke, many of these additives can be allergens or “pseudoallergens” and with time you can develop a reaction to them. The best sweetener for IBS is normal table sugar (sucrose), but it will rot your teeth in tea / coffee all day unless you do extra teeth cleaning. Otherwise, it’s “Stevia” which is quite a new plant based sweetener and seems to be safe for IBS. Ideally, general advice is to cut down on tea/coffee stimulants, no more than 3 cups a day is the NICE guidance.
You must remember that there are many different causes of IBS, and one person’s solution may not be another’s - because of the allergies that you may or may not have developed, plus all other factors in play.
The fifth major topic in treating IBS, is adrenalin control. The GI tract is very sensitive to adrenalin. A friend of mine says that “adrenalin not used by your muscles goes to your guts” and there may be some truth to this. If you have a busy life, you are probably not coasting along on a bed of feathers, and you probably not aware of your almost constantly high adrenalin levels – that is until you start actively lowering them. Crucially, what does work, is hard exercise to burn up your adrenalin and stop it interfering with the nervous system of your guts – and this is a powerful effect. My advice is to do something every day, whatever you can manage in your busy life, it will all help. It will improve your gut motility, general health, bone strength, relieve tiredness, help you sleep better, improve your mental agility and help get your anxiety under control. To many people, exercise may seem like a waste of time, but it is equivalent to spending a bit of time sharpening an axe – it is not wasted time, but time very well spent in servicing your whole body and mind.
Closely related to this (and maybe actually more important is serotonin), which is a controlling hormone for your bowel, and is the target of low-dose anti-depressants used for IBS treatment that are used to raise your levels of it by inhibiting its destruction. Exercise increases your serotonin levels, but there are also two other surprising ways to do this: 1.) avoid hostility and increase your agreeableness!, 2.) bright light, i.e. get outside in the daylight as much as possible and avoid dim lighting indoors.
Other points...
Red meats generally take a long time to digest, and also contain some trans-fats, but are usually tolerable. Only have them once a day, ideally for lunch, and just a light salad to go with them, not a load of starchy food or grains, as they have long digestion times. You don’t want carbohydrates being held up in transit because of heavy meat digestion late in the day. However, if you are taking digestive enzymes you can over-rule this advice.
There is a lot of support for L-glutamine to help with repair of your small-intestinal lining; this means buying 500g of the bodybuilder powder type and having a couple of tea-spoons of this a day - one before breakfast and one just before you go to bed, and you can have this in a light cordial drink. I don’t think this is a permanent requirement, but I think can help you recover more quickly from long term issues.
I am not a fan of pro-biotics, I have never found that they actually do anything, although some people may disagree. However, I have had more success with pre-biotics, which is basically food for your large intestine good bacteria. This helps to strengthen the lining of your colon, and further improve your resilience to potential trigger foods and inflammation. Again, I would only use these periodically for a few weeks to help you back to a good state which you can then manage with the other good behaviours. Not that they do you any harm, just another thing to buy and take. The pre-biotics can give a noticeable improvement in your GI comfort and performance, but don’t depend on them alone. You cannot get away with having poorly digested food in your large intestine.
I should add that although I eat bread and milk now in moderation, I am still cautious about high FODMAP fruits and tend to avoid them. The FODMAP fruit list is complicated, but an easy way to remember it is like this: "fleshy", juicy fruits are bad, i.e. (nectarines, peaches, apricots, pears, apples, plums, dates etc), but segmented fruits (oranges, mandarins etc.) and all berries are generally OK, as you are not likely to eat lots of them. Best of all is bananas which you can eat loads of. (Microwave three of them until they are mushy and put a couple of fried eggs and cheese on them is my favourite weekend breakfast!). For efficient fructose adsorption, you need glucose to be present with it in a 1:1 ratio. No enzyme will help you with your fructose adsorption from fruits with excess fructose, but what can help is eating a banana with it. This is because bananas, figs, kiwis and pineapples have got an excess of glucose over fructose, and so you can balance fruits with excess fructose, by those with excess glucose, hence avoiding excess fructose. If you try pure glucose powder, this will not travel slowly in your guts and you’ll still be left with excess fructose later on, so it is better to use bananas for the slow release of glucose to accompany the fructose. So you can experiment with this by making a fruit salad mainly composed of bananas, and small amounts of other fruits. However, be aware, that the problem with the “fleshy” fruits (e.g. nectarines) is nothing to do with fructose ratio, but rather the polyols that they contain, which can still make you ill.
I should also mention hormone changes in women can be connected with IBS, affecting the brain-gut nervous system, but I have no personal experience in this. Similarly, hypnosis is actually recommended by NICE as the best alternative therapy, again trying to get a grip on the nervous dysfunction. I have tried this, but for me I was just very relaxed with my eyes shut for half an hour, and I didn’t have the heart to tell the woman that I wasn’t really hypnotised! However, like other therapies it concentrates on repeatedly putting lots of positive thoughts in your mind, and strategies for dealing with negativity, so I’d say it is a good complement for your psychology and anxiety, although it will not address organic issues like SIBO. But, as an example of your sub-conscious on your guts, try taking yourself off camping for a few days in a “proper” tent. The change of living environment will slow down your digestion into emergency mode as your mind tells your body to get everything it can from the food you eat in case you don’t have any in the future. Camping also removes you from your usual daily anxieties, and gets you more active.
Dealing with Flare-ups
First thing is, fix your SIBO as described above. If you still have SIBO symptoms, oregano oil capsules are very good, it is bactericidal, anti-inflammatory and can help with acute SIBO problems. It is not “gassy” as you may find with peppermint oil. Take some digestive enzymes, to ensure your digestion is complete. Fixing your SIBO has got to be your priority.
If you are on top of your SIBO, then a bowel toxin such might hit you 5 to 8 hours later as the food gets to your large intestine. The first line of attack in this case is ibuprofen which is far more effective than paracetamol for bowel pain, and I find that 200 mg alone is enough. Second, a couple of 10 mg Buscopan will stop the cramps. If you have IBS, have available in advance some linseed (seeds) and natural aniseed (Star Anise), and when you are bad make the following tea: in a saucepan, add 1 teaspoon of linseed, ½ to 1 anise star, 1 teaspoon of sugar, a squirt of lemon juice (bottled is fine), and one mug full of water. Boil to simmer, with stirring, for 3 to 5 minutes, then sieve off the hot liquid back into the mug. This is a very effective remedy that I have used countless times, and it really does help. The reason that it helps (anecdotally) is that the “gooey” linseed extract coats the intestinal lining. There may be some truth to this, as some propose that the mechanism of bowel inflammation is a chemical attack on the mucus lining of the intestine which then allows food particles be exposed to the more delicate tissues underneath, causing inflammation. The linseed goo would provide a temporary replacement to the mucus lining, preventing further inflammation. In fact, NICE recommends oats and linseed for daily consumption for IBS patients.
A few references…
“Treatment and Management of SIBO — Taking a Dietary Approach Can Control Intestinal Fermentation and Inflammation, by Aglaée Jacob, MS, RD; Today’s Dietitian; December 2012, Vol. 14 No. 12 P. 16”.
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