September 2006 Archives

I've realised over the last couple of years that I've become a fairly major hypochondriac.

Now, this is not the kind of traditional hypochondria where you find a small bump on your left ear and decide you've got a brain tumour. In fact, I've never suffered from anything like this kind of health hysteria, and if anything it has been the opposite, in that I've fantasised about doctors finding something quite majorly wrong with me which would explain why I felt so ill (although they'd then fix it by whipping out my spleen and I'd live happily ever after).

No, my hypochondria is a new kind of suffering. It basically consists of me finding some minor piffling symptom and then worrying that the new symptom is not a sinister indication of a murderous cancer, but a far more terrifying prospect: a new syndrome or disorder, like the IBS, that goes on for years, is difficult to treat, and is belittled by the world at large.

Robin Williams says in One Hour Photo that "The things you are most afraid of have already happened to you". The thing I am most afraid of is developing another condition like the IBS that stays with me for years, grinds me down continually, and does me absolutely no good at all.

I suppose I can cope with the IBS itself. I mean, the evidence would suggest that I can, even if sometimes it feels like I can't. I live on my own, I shop for myself and heat things up and eat them, I hoover my floor and earn my own money and still have one or two friends somewhere out there.

But I really don't think I could cope with IBS and another health problem. I really don't think I could.

It's been pointed out to me that I haven't really given a proper update about the results of my food intolerance/CDSA treatment plan - sorry about that, and I shall now rectify that situation...

For those who are new to the blog, back in the Spring I had some testing done, which involved a CDSA (Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis) test and a food intolerance ELISA blood test. The CDSA didn't show up anything much, apart from a slight lack of some good bug bacteria, but the ELISA test showed a pretty major reaction to cow's milk, and a more minor reaction to other foods such as wheat.

So I embarked on a dairy-free diet (I was already using a gluten-free diet) and also started taking some supplements, including probiotics and some herbal stuff recommended by my nutritionist. I felt very well for six weeks, but then I had to come off a couple of the supplements, and things unfortunately returned to normality - which for me is IBS normality, not the unbelievably wonderful normality that other people have without even appreciating it.

My conclusion, I'm afraid, has to be that the gluten/dairy-free combination is not the key to future happiness, and that my six weeks of freedom were probably down to the supplements of berberine and grapefruit seed and black walnut I was taking. It might be possible to go back on these, but I need to do some research first into how suitable they are for long-term use. I also worry that something that works for six weeks may not necessarily work for six months.

So there we are - a valiant attempt, but not as successful as I was hoping (and a gluten and dairy-free diet is basically a food-free diet with a fancy title). The problem I'm having at the moment is that even my default diet - which is a simple gluten-free diet with no alcohol, caffeine, sweeteners etc - doesn't seem to be working. I normally get a week or two of good health at a time, but right now I can only seem to manage a couple of days before everything dies a death again, so I'm really not sure what to do about that.

One of the things that really does drive me crazy about this whole business is the total lack of logic in it all. In most other areas of your life, things work in a fairly logical way. I work harder, I earn more money; I do more exercise, I get fitter; I eat more food I get fat.

Not with IBS. I eat gluten I get ill; I don't eat gluten I get ill. Sometimes I think that maybe gluten has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my symptoms, and I've been on a gluten-free diet for the past five years for absolutely no reason at all, and the real cause of my symptoms is some incredibly intricate combination of chemistry and tiny little atoms that I am never, ever gonna be able to control, so I might as well say to hell with the diet and eat all the rubbish I feel like.

Not sure what the plan is now really. Maybe I'll really go back to basics and just eat pomegranates and lard for a week. That should do it.

IBS Tales has been mentioned in a good article printed in "Best" magazine, a woman's weekly over here in the UK, and I just wanted to write a few words about the article (for those of you who'd like to see it, get this week's issue, dated 12 September, and look on pages 24/25).

The journalist basically just describes a bit about IBS and then lets two sufferers tell their stories, which I always like to see - much better to let the actual experts describe how IBS really feels than have a journalist imagine it. Having said that, I always like to find one or two things in media articles to complain about, so my issues for today are as follows...

Firstly, one of the IBS sufferers says this:

"I was relieved when the consultant eventually put it down to IBS, but she also said that there was nothing she could do."

Now, I'm certainly not going to quibble with the sufferer who says she is "relieved" it was IBS - if you read the rest of the story this is because she had had to wait six months for a specialist referral and had been told that she needed tests to rule out Crohn's and cancer and other nasty things, so of course she's gonna be relieved.

No, what irritated me about this quote was the lovely little consultant saying that there was nothing she could do. I don't know how many years of training gastroenterologists have to go through these days - what do you reckon, six? Eight? Ten? And in all that time, she wasn't taught about a single treatment for IBS? Nothing on all the clinical studies that show the effectiveness of hypnotherapy, nothing on the research into diet and food intolerance? Nothing, in fact, whatsoever?

The fact that people in the year 2006 are still getting told that IBS is an entirely untreatable disorder is just ridiculous. And what I find even more ridiculous is the situation of the consultant herself.

I mean, let's look at it from her point of view. There are stats to show that GI doctors spend around half of their time treating IBS patients. Half. So every day, Dr Not-Got-a-Clue goes into work, sees 10 patients, and tells five of them that she can't possibly do anything to help them. And then again the next day. And then the next day.

You'd think that after a while that might get a little depressing. That after watching your 1,000th patient break down into tears describing the agony of IBS, you might actually try looking for a solution. But maybe that's just me.

And the second thing that I would like to complain about wasn't in the article itself, it was a full-page advert on page 29. It's an advert for a product called "Dida", which allegedly treats candida albicans infestations.

Now I'm not gonna open the whole "Candida - myth or reality" debate, and most of the marketing blurb in the advert is the kind of thing that you might hear if you visited a number of alternative medicine practitioners, ie: that candida can cause gut symptoms, that it's a yeast overgrowth, and so on.

But there was once sentence that particularly caught my eye (partly because it is printed in huge letters across half of the page), and I really have to record it for posterity. It says this:

"I felt the yeast growing in my stomach."

Yes. Well. I see. I often feel communities of wildebeest in my intestines, but then later I realise it's just gas.

Honestly. On the one hand I do think it's important to try to protect people from misleading advertising messages and over-inflated claims. On the other hand, if there is actually anyone out there who really believes that you can feel something growing in your stomach, they may just be beyond help.