February 2007 Archives

OK, so this entry is annoying me before I've even written it, but I think I have to write it anyway. And it's not going to be a rant about some moron IBS product or some idiot IBS doctor, just for a change. It's actually going to be a lovely, positive, fluffy bunnies dancing in the bright clean morning light happy entry. (You can see why it's gonna be annoying.)

The topic is this: I think that we should all keep IBS in perspective. It's not the worst thing in the world that could happen to us. We should all try to remember this fact.

Now, even as I am typing this, several of my brasher brain cells are firing up their little lungs and screaming at me. "Are you completely off your rocker," they are exclaiming, "you seriously want me to have a sense of perspective about something that has had me in agony for years and ruined my social life and messed up my diet and basically been unbelievably pants?"

Well, yes, in fact, I do. Because I think it helps, and because I think that most of us fall into a trap of self-pity sometimes that we can't get out of, and sometimes that's fine for a while, but othertimes it's just plan daft and stops us from enjoying as much of our lives as we can. I personally have something called my "IBS pit of despair" which I leap into whenever I have a particularly bad time with the bowels, and one route out of the IBS pit of despair is through a sense of perspective.

So hear it is.

Firstly, IBS is not fatal. It isn't going to kill me today, it isn't going to kill me tomorrow. I'm already doing better than someone who's just had a heart attack, or a stroke, or got hit by a truck, or got stuck under something heavy when the fire alarm went off and oh no, it wasn't a drill.

IBS is not progressive. I'm not going to have to go through a humiliating and depressing slow loss of all my faculties. I'm not going to watch myself die. I'm not going to gradually fade away like someone with ALS, I'm not going to choke to death like someone with cystic fibrosis. IBS does absolutely no damage to my body - whatever I feed it, however bad the symptoms are, my intestines are still perfectly intact.

IBS does not rob my of my independence. I don't need a wheelchair, or a carer, or someone to wipe my nose. I don't need benefits or money from the government, I don't need anyone else but me.

IBS waxes and wanes. I have terrible times with it, but I also have good times, and I actually have times when I feel perfectly, absolutely well in every way. There are people with chronic pain who would give anything for a few seconds break from their agony, people with tinnitus who would give anything for a few blissful seconds of silence. Whereas I can pretend that I'm healthy for days and sometimes weeks and weeks on end.

IBS is gaining more and more acceptance as a genuine medical disorder, and the sufferers are gaining more respect. Any doctor who still tells you that IBS is not real or is just a bit of stress is about as credible as Milli Vanilli. And we do get treated poorly by our doctors from time to time, but I'd rather have IBS and get told that it's caused by stress than have clinical depression and get told to get off my lazy backside, or have schizophrenia and get treated like a psychopath.

I'm not thankful that I have IBS, but I do take a mental note every time I see a show with someone with another health disorder, and more often than not I wouldn't swap it. IBS is very painful, very depressing, and can be very difficult to deal with, but the fact remains that I'm better off than a lot of other people, and it might do me good to remember that now and then when I'm sat at home eating my gluten-free cake and feeling sorry for myself.

So, what do you think? Do you think we should all keep a sense of perspective, or would you rather have any other health problem than IBS?

(Just to say, in case there are any non-sufferers reading this, it's probably not a bright idea to run off and tell your friend or loved one that there are worse things in life than IBS. A non-sufferer said that to me once and my spleen immediately ate itself.)

For those of you who live outside the UK, or who just don't like watching programs where people have their own poo analysed, let me tell you that Ms Gillian McKeith is a nutritionist who has a successful TV program, and subsequent book/magazine/ health product range. Her program basically takes someone who lives on chips and pizza and chocolate and tells them to start eating vegetables, and everyone is better for it at the end.

Sometimes the people on the show have digestive problems (funny that, seeing as though they live on chips and pizza and chocolate), and they always get to have their poo analysed, where apparently it can show up nutritional deficiencies or forecast the weather or something, I don't know. I try not to watch those parts.

Now, I'm telling you all this as a warning, and the warning is this - make sure your doctor is a real one. Because Ms Gillian McKeith likes to call herself Dr Gillian McKeith in her program titles and indeed in all her marketing, but from now on she won't be able to, because...well, she isn't a proper doctor.

Ms McKeith does have a PhD, but she obtained it via correspondence course from a non-accredited American university. And so the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that she can't call herself doctor anymore in the marketing for her products.

Now, I don't know about you, but I would never have thought to doubt that someone appearing on a mainstream telly channel and credited as a doctor wasn't an actual doctor. But it does show that we really need to be sceptical about everyone, everything, and always ask questions before we trust someone with our health.

If you want to visit a nutritionist or a complementary therapist or someone who heals you by rubbing frogs' ears up your spine then for goodness' sake ask about their qualifications, and make sure that they're a member of the Royal College of People Who Rub Frog's Ears Up Your Spine.

It seems to me that we're far too happy to accept medical advice from people who have no business giving it. And any kosher therapist will be happy to tell you where they went to college and what they studied and all the rest of it, and they will be happy to explain to you what research their info is based on.

Indeed, one of the giveaway signs that something was not quite right where Ms McKeith was concerned was the fact that she's so happy to sue anyone who even remotely implies that she's wrong, rather than just arguing back with convincing logic and research.

(And on that note, I'd better stop before I get sued. I mean it - if you want proof of her litigiousness just go to Google.com and type in "Gillian McKeith", and look at the bottom of the first page of results. She even sued Google!!!)