OK, so that title's not gonna win me any headline-writing competitions, but those of you who have read my Top 10 Stupid Things Said to IBS Sufferers may have got the reference.
This post is about the one stupid thing that we as IBS sufferers say to each other. I could only think of one as opposed to 10 because we IBS people are obviously more intelligent than that other lot. So - onto the stupid. And the stupid goes something like this...
"I have been taking this pill for three weeks now and it has cured me completely, you should all run out and try it right this second!"
Or this:
"I have been taking this pill for three weeks now and it has made my symptoms 300 times worse, you must never ever take this pill on any account ever even if it's the last pill on Earth."
Why are those things so stupid, and what do they have in common? Because drugs, and any other treatment, affect people differently. That's it.
I receive lots of IBS stories and treatment reviews in my webmaster capacity, whole truckloads of the things, and the vast majority are very useful and well-written and I am proud to display them on my sites in the hope that they might help people find out about different treatments and gain some hope that there really are treatments that work.
However, I do find that I sometimes need to edit out the odd comment, the ones where people tell me and other sufferers, with absolute certainty, that I must never ever ever take Lotronex, say, or Imodium, despite the fact that there are already 12 glowing reviews of Lotronex or Imodium on the site, and despite the clinical trials that show the drugs work for many people.
You see this on all kinds of health forums across the net - people who have had a good or bad experience with a drug or product and then proceed to either tell everyone that they must take it immediately or else, or not touch it with a bargepole. And it's just daft.
If you've been to a restaurant and they took two hours to serve you then fine, tell everyone you know that it's rubbish. But if you just tried a treatment and it didn't work for your particular symptoms, in your particular body, then just say "It didn't work for me" and leave it be. Because otherwise you might be warning someone away from the one treatment that could actually change their life.
This post is about the one stupid thing that we as IBS sufferers say to each other. I could only think of one as opposed to 10 because we IBS people are obviously more intelligent than that other lot. So - onto the stupid. And the stupid goes something like this...
"I have been taking this pill for three weeks now and it has cured me completely, you should all run out and try it right this second!"
Or this:
"I have been taking this pill for three weeks now and it has made my symptoms 300 times worse, you must never ever take this pill on any account ever even if it's the last pill on Earth."
Why are those things so stupid, and what do they have in common? Because drugs, and any other treatment, affect people differently. That's it.
I receive lots of IBS stories and treatment reviews in my webmaster capacity, whole truckloads of the things, and the vast majority are very useful and well-written and I am proud to display them on my sites in the hope that they might help people find out about different treatments and gain some hope that there really are treatments that work.
However, I do find that I sometimes need to edit out the odd comment, the ones where people tell me and other sufferers, with absolute certainty, that I must never ever ever take Lotronex, say, or Imodium, despite the fact that there are already 12 glowing reviews of Lotronex or Imodium on the site, and despite the clinical trials that show the drugs work for many people.
You see this on all kinds of health forums across the net - people who have had a good or bad experience with a drug or product and then proceed to either tell everyone that they must take it immediately or else, or not touch it with a bargepole. And it's just daft.
If you've been to a restaurant and they took two hours to serve you then fine, tell everyone you know that it's rubbish. But if you just tried a treatment and it didn't work for your particular symptoms, in your particular body, then just say "It didn't work for me" and leave it be. Because otherwise you might be warning someone away from the one treatment that could actually change their life.
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