IBS Tales

OK – the Save the IBS Hedgehogs (and Save the Sophie) campaign has got off to a rather rocky start, because I’ve had the cough from hell over the past two weeks. It was really quite impressive, resulting in some spectacular and lengthy coughing fits. On several occasions I was quite disappointed to find that I had not, in fact, managed to cough up a lung.

So, this meant that I couldn’t really hold down a conversation without choking, and so I haven’t yet made my appointment to see the nutritionist. But first thing Monday, I’m doing it.

The nutritionist I’m seeing treats IBS on the basis that many cases are due to a combination of factors – food intolerance, an imbalance of good/bad bacteria or parasites, and an overgrowth of yeast. In each patient, one or more of these causes may be found, and they all need to be treated to achieve relief.

I have decided that this is the approach I want to try first for a number of reasons. Mainly, it just seems so sensible and logical that it has to be worth a try – I sometimes think that researchers into IBS over-complicate matters when they try to look for deep and hidden meanings and obscure physical causes.

After all, one day I was fine, the next day I had awful food poisoning (caused by some bad bacteria in my digestive system), and from then on I wasn’t fine. And there are some docs who seem to think that the food poisoning was almost irrelevant, but that seems a bit crazy to me.

Isn’t it possible that the bad bacteria wiped out some of the good ones, or lived on to keep causing more havoc? Seems logical to me, and there are certainly some bacteria that can live in the body for years. Apart from anything else, the discovery that most stomach ulcers are actually caused by a bacteria leads me to think that this is a useful way of thinking.

Like all aspects of IBS, the research in this area is not conclusive, but there have been some studies which show that probiotics can help IBS symptoms (as long as they’re strong enough and contain the right strains), so it’s not as if it’s a completely unscientific theory.

Anyway – that’s the kind of therapist I’m talking to first. Once I’m well enough.