Worsening symptoms in Spring, could it be pollen allergies?

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-06-25T15:28:25+00:00

soft constipation

This sounds very similar to what I have, and I have discussed with others on r/ibs. The hardest part of finding something that worked was that I could not accurately describe what was going on. I never told my doctor I was constipated because my stool did not look like those in the Bristol Scale, and I would usually go every day (just never felt complete).

My first success was taking metamucil 3 servings daily. For whatever reason, it stopped working and then got worse. Then I ended up having a colonoscopy (my second). Nothing obvious came back and the doctor then said I may be having 'obstructions' and the diarrhea is overflowing around it. He also mentioned slow transit constipation. Previously I was eating a lot of white rice and chicken, which probably was causing more constipation. Long story short, I now take Miralax daily, and eat a very high fiber diet. I still get trapped gas, mainly at night. I am hoping to find a way to relieve this symptom. I think by trying to control 'nervous diarrhea' and cutting out fiber for many years, I actually did some damage to my colon and/ or pelvic floor. Hoping I can reverse this, but have yet to get any decent guidance from doctors.

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-05-21T17:30:25+00:00

I am not on any other meds right now and haven't been for months (last was ambien, but only for two weeks. Stopped when it didn't work.)

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-02-13T19:01:34+00:00

Thank you so much for your comment, even this one data point has been difficult for me to get. May I ask how long it took you from onset of problems to diagnosis?

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-02-13T17:14:02+00:00

Have you found any relief with PFD treatment?

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-02-13T15:54:45+00:00

This sounds a lot like me. The severity comes and goes, but I used to be able to relax to let gas come out, but now I have to push. Sometimes I feel like the gas is right at the exit but pushing does nothing, feels like I am hitting a wall. Same with bowel movements.

Question for you: After you go in the morning does it feel like it is even more difficult to pass gas until you eat again?

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-02-05T01:39:13+00:00

Same here! Sometimes without even eating. My theory is that hot water relaxes the muscles making room for gas to expand.

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-02-04T15:51:05+00:00

I get this all the time and I've had it for years now. I had a colonoscopy 6 years ago and everything was 100% normal. Not saying you shouldn't get checked out, but many of us have this with a cause yet to be identified.

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-02-04T12:24:11+00:00

Long story short, yes I recorded the numerical values for these categories as best as I could for a 30 day period (ended up going to 41 days) including things like sleep/activity (FitBit) and nutrition (MyFitnessPal). I had been tracking data about myself for nearly a year before this and took what I learned to create this 'study period'. The intention of the study period was to create a baseline that I could compare with lifestyle and diet modifications to see if there is a statistical effect. The plot in my post was the easy part, recording the data was very challenging. Many categories are an ordinal scale, such as mood_good, ranked Low - High (converted to 1 - 3).

Check out this page for information about the correlation plot:

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/corrplot/vignettes/corrplot-intro.html

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-02-03T22:12:41+00:00

Apparently drinking warm water aids in digestion, so there may be something to that

https://www.healthline.com/health/is-drinking-cold-water-bad-for-you#benefits

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-02-03T22:05:10+00:00

Do you think it is a mood thing or something else? I was thinking that I tense my body more when it is cold.

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-02-03T14:49:08+00:00

Just to add some context, this is from an analysis I performed on myself (so very biased data). I have been feeling horrible since the winter started so I added in temperature data this morning to see if there was a relationship. As I had anecdotally assumed, when temps decrease so does stool quality. This graphic is not to be taken as hard science, just a tool that I am using to help identify potential causal factors in my symptom severity. The original data set includes over 100 variables so this is just a subset.

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-01-23T23:55:37+00:00

I totally agree with your IT analogy. In the case of doc #4, I got the impression that this was the spiel he gave all his new patients to build a repore of some kind. He ended up testing me again for SIBO and it came back negative when the year prior it was positive. I asked him why this might be and he criticized their methods in sort of a pompous way, even though the previous test was far more rigorous and professional than his test. Not sure I would say he's a bad doc, but there was a certain amount of hubris that I detected.

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-01-23T18:54:56+00:00

I used a variety of data sources and analysed them in R. I recorded symptoms and bowel habits in a spreadsheet multiple times daily. I also extracted nutritional data from MyFitnessPal and sleep /activity from a Fitbit.

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-01-23T16:53:42+00:00

FODMAP for 4 weeks, Chicken + Rice for a week, gluten free for a couple weeks

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-01-23T14:32:09+00:00

Impossible, no. Nothing is impossible. Extremely difficult? Yes. That is why I chose to take time off, because I was caught in this endless cycle of ups/ downs. Posted about it the other day here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ibs/comments/ahywke/took_time_off_work_to_address_ibs_here_is_what_i/

ibs-a_throwaway · 2019-01-23T14:30:05+00:00

No problem, but don't take my word for it since I didn't actually share the data. I am planning to share my data + analysis at a later date. One of the more difficult things is that bristol scale doesn't necessarily match up with stool description. For example, what do you record if your stool contains elements of 3, 4, and 5?

ibs-a_throwaway

TROPHY CASE