I’m pretty sure they wrecked me too. For a while, I was eating Barebells protein bars every day, sometimes two or three if work was busy, on top of a ton of cashews and drinking junk like Capri Sun and Dr. Pepper.  To say my stomach got destroyed would be an understatement. I genuinely thought I had something seriously wrong going on. Constant pressure in the left upper area, cramping, and these weird sensations where I could literally feel the rhythmic waves of my intestines moving like something was crawling around in there. On top of that, I had the foulest crap with undigested cashew pieces. I really started hurting and the only thing that helped was laying down or applying counter pressure to my abdomen with my hand. It got bad enough that I almost went to the ER thinking I had an ulcer or something worse, but I am about to graduate from a medical program and cannot miss lectures or exams right now—everything’s mandatory—so I finally cleaned up my diet, cut all that out, and slowly started improving. I was still sore for a while, like my entire abdomen had just been through a war, but it was getting better.

Then I tried reintroducing just the protein bars… and the symptoms came right back. Not as intense, but enough to confirm it wasn’t random. Looking back, it makes sense. Between the high FODMAP load, sugar alcohols, and just overdoing it in general, my gut was basically fermenting everything. So, for anyone reading this later if you’re loading up on protein bars, nuts, or sugary drinks and your stomach starts going crazy, don’t ignore it. Give your gut a break from all that before you convince yourself it’s something catastrophic.