You may start to notice in the recipes section that there are options, or maybe even that the entire recipe calls for non-dairy items. I am a plus-sized woman in my mid 40’s with diabetes and IBS. After many years of struggling with abdominal/digestive issues, we (my team of doctors and I) are starting to figure out the culprits.
Nevertheless, let’s go back to the beginning.
As a child, I suffered from stomach aches: debilitating stomach aches. The nurses office knew me very well, no matter which school I went to. I would have horrible pain, and I would have to go to the nurses station and lay down until the pain could pass. Sometimes, it was 10 minutes, sometimes it was half an hour, however, the pain was so bad that it hurt to even sit upright. This was in the early 80’s, keep that in mind. The doctors never found anything wrong with me until I was 14: I was diagnosed with an ulcer. Well, let me rephrase that, the doctor said it was either an ulcer, or my gallbladder, but we would start with some medicine for an ulcer and see if that helped. The ulcer medication did help.
But, you must take into consideration the fact that I was a teenager, and as badly as I hate taking pills now, I really hated him back then. Sometimes I would forget to take my pill for weeks at a time...until I got to the point where I just quit taking them all together. There would be points in my life where I would go longer in between bouts. I guess I should refer to these as attacks. When I got pregnant, the pain stopped all together, and I did not have any issues for the first several years after my son (2nd child) was born.
I started getting the attacks again around 3 years later, and they were worse. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I was laying on the bathroom floor at work in so much pain that I couldn’t even begin to explain to someone that came into the restroom WHY I was laying on the floor. The attack would pass. That's the thing, It was not necessary to go home, I just needed to rest for a minute.
I went to an urgent clinic next. They sent me for imaging, because they thought it was my appendix⎯I knew it was not. They came back with a different verdict: they immediately scheduled me to have my gallbladder removed, a cholecystectomy, stating that it looked “like a bunch of grapes.” After my gallbladder surgery, I did not have that pain ever again. So, I have come to understand that those pains were gallbladder attacks.
I was told by my doctor that I would probably not be able to eat greasy or fatty foods, yet wouldn’t you know it, greasy food did not bother me! After the gallbladder removal, the main food that I now have difficulty digesting is corn. What I had to find out the hard way is that I no longer had as much control over my bowel movements as I did before. When I had to go, I had to go... and sometimes that meant pulling over to the side of the road and running into a public restroom to avoid an accident. After the surgery, my digestion and metabolism changed more and more over time. I gained about 40 pounds that first year.
Then a few years later, I quit smoking. ‘Fantastic!’, you might say. However, what actually happened was that I replaced smoking...with snacking. I gained another 100 pounds in about 6 months. Now, I was obese and developed diabetes. My diet had to change, which meant more changes to my digestion / metabolism. Although I was no longer having the gallbladder attacks, I was having crazy intestinal pain, hemorrhoids, and colon spasms.
I met with a nutritionist, but she only wanted to focus on my diabetes requirements. This was less carbs, more fiber. But more fiber, meant more trips to the bathroom. If I ate for my diabetes, my IBS was out of control. If I ate for my IBS, my sugar/A1C was out of control. At this point, I discovered that my body cannot tolerate spinach or broccoli (basically any leafy green vegetable). I began having bloody stool and ridiculous pain and discomfort.
Next up, the gastroenterologist, and a fun little procedure called a colonoscopy. TBH, prepping for the colonoscopy was worse than the procedure itself. That prep drink made me…(there’s no kind way to say this) projectile vomit… it was a mess!
The doctor found pre-cancerous polyps on my colon and removed those. Although he did not present me with the diagnosis I had jumped to during one of my constant-crazed-google-searches at 3 am (Chrohns), he did provide me with one: Irritable Bowel Syndrom (aka IBS, aka, spastic colon). The symptoms of this condition are diarrhea, constipation, gas, bloating, belly pain, cramps, retention of weight around the belly, heartburn, indigestion, urgent bowel movements and extreme stool (hard or loose).
After the procedure and the removal of the polyps, I developed a new symptom. I could feel everything I ate moving through my colon. It felt like a baby moving in my abdomen! The doctor said this was my colon spasming. And guess what I discovered? Certain foods made it happen more than others. I did get medicine for this, and they did make the spasms slow, but that in turn, made me constipated. Now I have another medication... to soften the stool.
As you might imagine, over the course of this journey, I missed a lot of work. I would have days where I was in so much pain, I could not focus. Other days where my trips to the bathroom were so frequent, I was useless at the office. But not only that, the urgency of my trips to the restroom made it hard for me to be more than a few feet from the bathroom at all times. Which in turn, led to stress and anxiety… and you guessed it, stress and anxiety only makes the symptoms worse.
After freaking out to my primary doctor about my fear of losing my job, she suggested a very detailed food sensitivity journal and some blood work to look further into what foods exactly caused which symptoms, because some days were worse than others. She did the blood work and sent me to an allergist for the fun ‘poke of a thousand needles to the back’ test.
I learned alot from this test. I am allergic to pollen, mold, and cat dander. But the only food related item I reacted to at all was, you guessed it - Dairy. It seems dairy is the culprit of most of the issues. If you know me at all, this was the worst news ever. Literally my favorite food is cheese.
This leads us to today.
I have a spastic colon, which causes diarehia. I take meds to fix that, but they cause constipation. I take a stool softener for that. I have to take fiber supplements due to the fact that the foods that provide fiber, cause my colon to spasm.
I struggle with food. I love to eat, and I have little self control. But the list of things I know I cannot eat due to my condition include: Corn, Spinach, Broccoli, Tomatoes, and all dairy. Now, I do not need an epi pen, I do not go into anaphylactic shock from eating these foods, and you cannot see on the outside the reaction my body is having to them.
If you find yourself struggling with any of these symptoms, start a food journal and see your doctor! This has been a life-long, exhausting journey. But, I am starting to find some relief. If you are suffering from a food allergy or other digestion related condition, just know you are not alone.
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