Okay, what happened??? What could have done this to me ?
#202771 - 08/05/05 08:44 AM
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LtDanFan
Reged: 12/17/03
Posts: 588
Loc: Ohio
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Hopefully I can get some help, after posting that I had almost made it a month without an attack, I had one, well I had been stable for 2 days and had a horendous one last night/this am it was about 1:30 to 3:00 a.m., I love it when it happens at that time....... anyway her was yesterdays menu, my SFS am,pm 4 citrucel each time, oatmeal, about 8 soycrisps, 4 petzels for snack, a piece of country bakery bread, read the ingredients, safe, plain, a grape popsicle, for dinner, wasn't really hungry but I had a peanut butter, spread so thin you could hardly see it, I do eat PB, but no where near to serving size, with honey on toasted french bread, (bkaery), applesauce, (natural) with my low fat, natural granola that has all safe ingredients, mixed into the applesauce, it was very tasty, 1/2 an oatmeal cookie, not store bought, I get them at the place I get my bread. About 50 ounces of water and fennel/chamomille tea..........any guesses, I had a normal BM earlier that day and was so happy, than I started with the labor pains and gave birth for about 2 1/2 hours lol, normal BM followed by all D...........about 5 BM;s in all. I've not been eating a lot since my attack a few days ago and trying to stay with SF foods.
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IBS-D, extreme pain and cramping - GERD - lactose/dairy intolerant, OCD, Fibromyalgia
DX: w/ Multiple Sclerosis 3/10
I can do all things through Christ who strenghtens me. Phil 4:13
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I don't really see anything in what you've eaten that could possibly have caused it, except maybe the granola. Remember that attacks can be triggered by all kinds of things, not just food - not getting enough sleep, stress, anxiety, hot humid weather, hormones, and probably a few others I'm not thinking of at the moment. And on top of that, it IS possible to have completely random attacks that you just can't figure out a reason for.
Stick with the safest foods today, and hope you feel better soon!
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My guess would be the oatmeal cookie unless you're sure your bakery makes them without any dairy at all. And, as AtomicRose says, it could have been triggered by something non-food, also.
I hope you feel better soon.
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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]
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Thanks for the ideas, I had wondered about the cookies, but I do treat myself to half of one about once a week, so I don't know........I posted the list of ingredients to my granola, separately, just to be sure it's safe. Today, so far so good, getting hungry
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IBS-D, extreme pain and cramping - GERD - lactose/dairy intolerant, OCD, Fibromyalgia
DX: w/ Multiple Sclerosis 3/10
I can do all things through Christ who strenghtens me. Phil 4:13
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Quote:
I don't really see anything in what you've eaten that could possibly have caused it, except maybe the granola. Remember that attacks can be triggered by all kinds of things, not just food - not getting enough sleep, stress, anxiety, hot humid weather, hormones, and probably a few others I'm not thinking of at the moment. And on top of that, it IS possible to have completely random attacks that you just can't figure out a reason for.
Stick with the safest foods today, and hope you feel better soon!
Thanks so much for your post above. Here at Heather's site, I see almost what I could call a "state religion" that focuses so much on food, and while this is valid, it can be distorted.
I had a good month of July with weeks of "torpedo" stools, and I ate the same dull stuff every day. Then suddenly for no reason I started having gas one day really bad (uh oh) and then it lead to "D". I have no idea why. I took Immodium and it shut down, so now I am in the quiet zone, and hope the pendulum of the IBS-A is now going to swing back the other way (away from "D").
But I get really annoyed at people here (and I love them all but I still get annoyed) desperately trying to find THAT ONE TRUE TRIGGER (like the Holy Grail) that started their "D", and if they can just find it, they will never again have a "D" attack.
I love you all and want the same thing, but I just do not think life with IBS is that easy. We do not evevn know what causes it, and I simply do not believe it is controlled 100% purely by what you eat. The latest theories say it is a mind-gut communication dysfunction. So eat your little hearts out, all the most pure food in Eden, but I think there is still missing knowledge (maybe we need to follow Eve and seek the answer from the Tree of Knowledge?). I don't think we know enough about IBS to think we can "out eat" it. If you have an attack, it might be something you ate. True enough. But the reason can be totally oblivious to us!
I remember (was it King George the Third?) who had a rare disease that caused madness and his urine to be blue! This is historical fact. Well, at the time, the way to evaluate a person's health in the 18th century was to see how firm their stools were. His stools were firm, so the best physicians of the period were stumped. But they assumed that since King George was Royalty, this explained why his urine was blue. Of course, now medical science has a name for his rare disease and knows all about the cause and why the urine was blue.
Sometimes as far as IBS goes, we are still in the 18th century and our physicians are just as clueless.
Perhaps in IBS this slang expression and rude bumpersticker is LITERALLY TRUE:
"S**T Happens".
Stop always trying to rationalize it or explain it. At times we can't! It reminds me a little of the New Age people who believe you create all your own reality. So if you have cancer, they make themselves feel secure against ever getting cancer themselves by insisting that YOU did something that gave you cancer, thereby creating a guilty party. You repressed your anger, you didn't have enough love as a child, you intentionally stepped on ants, or something. But the truth is that we still don't know why some folks get cancer. They just do. We also don't know why someone who follows all the rules gets a flare-up. TO me, it is just the way IBS is. I can do everything I can think of to minimize such problems, but they are going to happen, and I would better spend my time just detaching from guilt and emotional upset, drink some hot pepppermint tea, put on a good old fashioned movie I enjoy, cuddle up on the couch and nurture myself until it passes.
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Hey Anthem
#203059 - 08/05/05 09:47 PM
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Stephie
Reged: 03/10/04
Posts: 2696
Loc: Vancouver, Canada
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Hi there,
Just wondering, if you are getting frustrated by the focus on diet alone, have you checked out the other boards?
I know for ages I was sort of stuck on this board, but there are the Yoga boards, the fitness boards, the hypno boards...
Just a suggestion!
Also, do a search if you are interested in other treatments... for example, there are LOADS of posts about different medications people have been on.
The idea of a support board is that we are here to help each other, and most importantly to listen to each other. It is totally naturally to get frustrated, to search for answers, and to want something more. It's not always rational, but that isn't a prerequisite to post here. So long as people aren't being rude or offensive, I think it is best to let people vent here as they likely don't have any other outlets.
Cheers mate!
--Steph
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~~I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell-I know right now you can't tell~~Matchbox 20
IBS-D,pain.
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Quote:
Hi there,
Just wondering, if you are getting frustrated by the focus on diet alone, have you checked out the other boards?
I know for ages I was sort of stuck on this board, but there are the Yoga boards, the fitness boards, the hypno boards...
Just a suggestion!
Also, do a search if you are interested in other treatments... for example, there are LOADS of posts about different medications people have been on.
The idea of a support board is that we are here to help each other, and most importantly to listen to each other. It is totally naturally to get frustrated, to search for answers, and to want something more. It's not always rational, but that isn't a prerequisite to post here. So long as people aren't being rude or offensive, I think it is best to let people vent here as they likely don't have any other outlets.
Cheers mate!
--Steph
Thanks. I agree with you totally. I just hate to see people possibly beating themselves over the head wondering what they did wrong to bring on a flare-up, and the reason may be something we'd never guess. This represents my projection since I have reached a point where I can't tell why I have flare-ups. I just do not know. So I am coming to a point of view of trying more to just accept that they may happen and to emotionally disengage from it. But I will be more quiet, since I don't want to upset anyone here.
Alas, Dear Anthem, we knew him well......and rumor has it, in his youth, he's "known" a lot of people (in the Biblical sense). Take care, everyone.
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Re: Hey Anthem
#203078 - 08/06/05 12:38 AM
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imp
Reged: 02/19/05
Posts: 34
Loc: england
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don't go silent i like your posts anthem ,they are true to you,hope to bump into you on the boards some day. 
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Quote:
Stop always trying to rationalize it or explain it. At times we can't! It reminds me a little of the New Age people who believe you create all your own reality. So if you have cancer, they make themselves feel secure against ever getting cancer themselves by insisting that YOU did something that gave you cancer, thereby creating a guilty party. You repressed your anger, you didn't have enough love as a child, you intentionally stepped on ants, or something. But the truth is that we still don't know why some folks get cancer. They just do. We also don't know why someone who follows all the rules gets a flare-up. TO me, it is just the way IBS is. I can do everything I can think of to minimize such problems, but they are going to happen, and I would better spend my time just detaching from guilt and emotional upset, drink some hot pepppermint tea, put on a good old fashioned movie I enjoy, cuddle up on the couch and nurture myself until it passes.
I don't think the "figure out what's wrong" and the "accept it's going to happen sometimes" positions have to be contradictory. I think you do the first and then you do the second. That is, see if you can find some food choice that might have caused the attack. If so, resolve not to do it again, accept, and get through as gracefully as possible. If not, skip the resolve part and go right to the accept and get through as gracefully as possible portion of the program.
I think it's always worth doing at least a quick mental food check when an attack flares up - you never know when you'll have an "oh, look, I ate a Near East rice dish and by gosh, it's got autolyzed yeast protein in it" moment. And for people who are relatively new to Heather's approach, it can be reassuring to have someone else take a look at what they've been eating: maybe they're worried they've misunderstood something basic, maybe they're eating stuff they're unsure of. Once they've gotten a food checkup and possibly some encouraging words, they can take whatever advice they're given and decide how to use it or not.
It is, of course, possible to "hyper focus" on food and, if you took everyone's advice about personal triggers, you'd probably never eat anything, but I think that obsessive focus is normal for the first few weeks or maybe even months of following Heather's approach. I suspect most people are saved from getting stuck in that mode because it gets boring after a while.
And I absolutely agree that guilt is not an appropriate response to an IBS attack (whether it was caused by food choices or not). However, guilt over food, over not "sticking to a diet", just seems to be built into our culture. Years ago I read a book or article that pointed out, very cleverly, all the parallels between how our culture thinks about eating - particularly eating anything not considered 100% healthy - and how the Victorians thought about sex. It's very easy to think of Heather's approach as a "diet" and to transfer all that guilt over eating McDonalds to guilt over eating "wrong" for IBS.
I think your riff on New Age/cancer was both dead on and a good analogy. People want to feel they have control, especially over their own bodies and health. It's terribly difficult to just accept that sometimes you get blind-sided and there's not much you can do about it.
And I agree with Imp - please don't go silent. Your perspective is interesting, helpful, and funny.
Oh, and King George? Porphyria. Great movie.
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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]
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You keep us with the lighthearted side of IBS. It's very refreshing and to be honest I'd miss it! Steph didn't mean you should go away! Just that it's very frustrating on the diet board if the diet doesn't seem to help you much. A lot of the posts are people just complaining here as we are the only people who really understand and a lot of the questions are from newbies or us just trying to figure out our own trigger foods. Maybe you should come down to the living room and have a chat with us there. No diet questions are in the living room so you can chat to your hearts content about IBS and your life without having to worry about the food side of things. Hope you stick around 
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Amy
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Quote from Anthem: But I get really annoyed at people here (and I love them all but I still get annoyed) desperately trying to find THAT ONE TRUE TRIGGER (like the Holy Grail) that started their "D", and if they can just find it, they will never again have a "D" attack.
How long have you had IBS? I have had to live with it for 25 years as a child and now an adult and it still does NOT get any easier. I look to this board for advice on things that may have been a trigger, because a lot of them know more trigger foods than I do, and yes, if it may be a certain food I should not have eaten or tried, I'd try to stay away from that food. Yes, it is VERY frustrating to live my life always focused on food and what I eat and when. I'd love to go eat a pizza and have a big bowl of popcorn and wash it down with a couple of Dr. Peppers, but I know I can't. And it's also not fair to us IBSers, that stress plays a big role in an attack, how can you not have stress when people ask you out to eat and your wondering what is on the menu you can eat, or you have to bring most of you own food with you, and like me I'm all of 110 pounds and people think I'm on a "diet" and I get ridiculed, okay more stress. Just like you and I'm sure everyone else on here gets very, very frustrated having to explain our eating habits, people look at you like your an idiot. For each person that looks at me like that, I'd like them to experience one of my most horrid IBS-D attacks just ONCE and maybe they would change there tune. I don't wish IBS on anyone, but this board does help and if someone is having stress about something they might have eaten that could possibly be a trigger, it helps to vent and get suggestions, so hopefully it won't happen again. We all can pray, wish, hope that we never have an attack again, and this board does give us hope. Personally I don't appreciate anyone judging someone for something they may need help or just a little reassurance for, I think we are all here to try to help one another.
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IBS-D, extreme pain and cramping - GERD - lactose/dairy intolerant, OCD, Fibromyalgia
DX: w/ Multiple Sclerosis 3/10
I can do all things through Christ who strenghtens me. Phil 4:13
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When you said "The idea of a support board is that we are here to help each other, and most importantly to listen to each other. It is totally naturally to get frustrated, to search for answers, and to want something more", I totally agree.
If the posts irritate you, it is better not to read them and to let someone else respond who can offer some support, advice, or just some sympathy. IBS is very hard on us physically and emotionally...especially when you haven't found relief. You seem to be doing pretty well. But others, myself included, still struggle with horrific pain and symptoms every single day. This is very tiring...and these boards literally save lives when you have no place else to turn and all you want to do is cry because the pain won't stop and you are racking your brain to figure out how to feel just a little better, so that you don't want to just jump off a cliff! 
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~ Beth
Constipation, pain prodominent,cramps, spasms and bloat!
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I'm glad you're feeling better - and getting hungry is a great sign. I agree with AtomicRose - stick to really safe stuff for a day or two, then ease back into your usual diet.
One thing I found for myself, that might be encouraging to you, is that the longer I followed Heather's guidelines and the more SFS I got into me, the fewer attacks I had. I've said this before: I know I won't "get over" IBS, but I do believe that the more time my gut has when it's not in an uproar, the better it's able to regulate itself.
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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]
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Post deleted by Jeano
Edited by Shelby Jean (08/06/05 02:33 PM)
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~ Beth
Constipation, pain prodominent,cramps, spasms and bloat!
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I agree totally. I am not a male prima dona who needs to be conjuled to hang around or told bluntly to leave. Instead, I am a guy who wants to be supportive of others, since I also need that support from time to time and know how loving it can feel to get it. However, I am wary that perhaps I am at this point in time not helping, even though my overall intent is to help. When someone gives a long diary entry of their food intake and meds, and then plaintively asks "What did I do wrong?" I tend to feel that in addition to giving them a hug, maybe they need a wee tiny brotherly shake! I don't think they did anything wrong, and I don't like the overt philosophy that implies they did wrong. We all know we can eat something bad that will cause a flare-up, but I just don't think every flare-up is due to the wrong food, especially if that person has been eating that food for months WITHOUT a flare-up. So that sense of "what did I do wrong?" does exasperate me, while I think I MUST leave it to more experienced people to respond rather than me. If others feel the most loving response is to "play the game" and suggest that the person ate one banana too many, or had half a teaspoon too much soy milk, or something else, that must be the correct approach, since this area is about diet. So I may have been speaking outside "the box" when this area is for people who truly need to talk about that particular box.
God Bless everyone. I'll still be hannging around, putting my 10 cents in once in a while (are there any states where that is enough to make a phone booth call?).
Best wishes,
Anthem
P.S. I see the same almost superstitious trend in myself. I had a D flare up recently, and wonder "Is it the graham crackers? I've been eating them after dinner as a desert for 2 months but maybe that is it?" At times I think this type of thinking can drive me nuts, which is probably why I am on both Paxil and Lorazepam to round out the edges a bit.
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Anthem,
#203148 - 08/06/05 11:41 AM
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_Willow
Reged: 04/06/05
Posts: 2090
Loc: Canada.
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I saw your post as a frustrated way to make us feel better as wel. You are truly a wnderful guy and your posts are just great! I often get mad at myself too for beating myself up. Once again, truth is, we know just the tip of the iceberg as far as IBS goes, and maybe we can learn from one anothera few things to make this ride less bumpy.
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Keep on keepin' on...
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Anthem,
I didn't mean to suggest AT ALL that you should stop posting here...
Maybe I worded the post I wrote to you in the wrong way, I even checked it over to make sure that it wouldn't offend you but next time I will be more careful!
What sort of double standard would I be endorsing if I spouted off about this being a support board, and in doing so made someone feel they couldn't come here anymore?
If I offended you, or made you feel unwanted, than I'm really sorry - I truly didn't mean to do anything of the sort.
I laughed out loud when you mentioned that saying something not about diet was thinking outside the box... I don't understand why people that come to this website think that we're like diet dictators. In my responses I almost ALWAYS include something about medications, other lifestyle changes (ie. exercise, yoga, etc) or alternative therapies. By mentioning that it might not be food certainly isn't a new idea, especially to this website.
Don't worry about rocking the boat here, it's pretty much all been said before. And mentioning stress or other factors certainly won't even sway the boat, so you're in the clear.
Good luck!
Cheers!
--Steph
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~~I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell-I know right now you can't tell~~Matchbox 20
IBS-D,pain.
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What did I do right????? Yesterday I ate all kinds of junk. I had 1/2 container of hummis w/garlic on corn chips in the afternoon and some slightly moldy (okay, I DID cut off the bad part) cream cheese with the rest of the chips last night. This morning was the best BM I have had in years. I won't go into detail, but it was like the old days before the IBS monster crawled up and died inside me. I couldn't wait to brag to my neighbor, who also has stomach problems.
Keep posting. I love your sense of humor. A good laugh is the best medicine, and we all need that. 
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Carol
nós somos o que nós somos e o descanso é merda
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You make some real good points! Especially when you said "but I just don't think every flare-up is due to the wrong food".
I tend to blame all symptoms on food alone and study my diet with a microscope when it probably isn't so much a particular food as it is my anxiety over eating because I fear the pain the will result.
I guess we all need to be reminded of this as we tend to get consumed in the diet and food and tend to forget about other factors, or even the fact that IBS is not a perfect science....Staying away from all possible "triggers" does not ensure a symptom free life, unfortunatly.
Thanks for reminding me of this. I need to hear it often as I find myself getting rapped up in the foods and forget the anxiety issue. That's why I'm on Lexapro and Klonopin....but need to see if there might be a better choice for me...and I think it's about time I invest in the hypno tapes, which I've been saying for months. I just need to get the money! 
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~ Beth
Constipation, pain prodominent,cramps, spasms and bloat!
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I don't want to lecture, but you'll never get stable if you eat like that all the time. Cream Cheese? Junk food?
I'd die eating junk food and cream cheese. Unless maybe you do only have celiac disease and then as long as the junk food was gluten free, you would be okay anyhow! 
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~ Beth
Constipation, pain prodominent,cramps, spasms and bloat!
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I agree, but it was nice to think that so called "junk food" was the magic cure. Actually it wasn't too junky. They were GF tortilla chips and hummus. Probably more nourishing than some of what I eat.  Maybe the cream cheese wasn't the greatest choice but, it was such a bad night. Over 90 degrees and we lost power for 6 hot hours. I needed to cheat to keep from going nuts. BTW, I did get a bad case of the bloats.
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Carol
nós somos o que nós somos e o descanso é merda
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Well, yummy
#203223 - 08/06/05 06:33 PM
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Augie
Reged: 10/27/04
Posts: 5807
Loc: Illinois
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I wouldn't call corn chips junk food! I imagined you eating twinkies, ice cream, chocolate bars....
Did you make sure they were low fat baked chips? That's important. The hummus might have helped you go...beans can do that to you...and it could also have been the cause of your bloat if you ate a lot of hummus which is beans! Or the cream cheese...or most likely both!
Oh, how I miss cream cheese on a toasted bagel! Full fat of course. I can't tolerate the soy cream cheese. Now I want to cheat too! One good thing about living alone is that I don't ever have temptations in my reach...so the temptation always passes!
Hope you feel better today Carol!
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~ Beth
Constipation, pain prodominent,cramps, spasms and bloat!
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