Stomach/IBS/Constipation interfering with my life

So almost three months ago I developed stomach issues after taking some medicine that didn’t agree with me. I have had anxiety/mental trauma/OCD/sensitive personality my whole life. I have interstitial cystitis and sometimes insomnia. I got the TMS personality to a t. Anyway I got test at the dr done and he said I look fine. Problem is I’m always constipated now. I never had stomach issues before. The constipation is not that bad but some days I have to go about 5-6 times and only a little comes out. I haven’t tried any diets and I really don’t want to. The dr says I have an option to get motility testing but it would be out of state and really expensive. I don’t know what to do. I don’t believe it’s TMS but i want to.

 

Have you tried taking magnesium supplements?

 

I have it kind of helps but causes upset stomach and diarrhea. So I tried lowering the dose and it still does this. I’m hoping it’s TMS, but I don’t think. I don’t think anything is structurally wrong but I think I messed up my gut micro biome or something.

 

Of course, TMS is one possibility.

Try this option if you can:

Start you say with 16 Oz of water and eat only fruits and vegetables until noon for a few days.

You can eat as much apples, berries, carrots, cucumbers, bananas as you need and see if it helps.

For example have some berries and an apple. If you get hungry in an hour or so, have a carrot. So do not go hungry and feed your body the nutrients in fruits and vegetables that can calm the GI system and see if that helps.

Have you ever tried this?

 

Yes I’ve tried something like this. It helped a little bit but not much.

 

Internally, magnesium is lovely and relaxing for a little bit, but then on comes the intestinal distress for me -- like you've also found, there never seemed to be a safe dosage. A safer way is to use a magnesium oil spray on your skin on your abdomen. I guess there's some debate on whether or not anything is absorbed, but you at least can't overdose on it. Diets could just bring on the obsessive qualities, so I think you have a good instinct to not get into that too deeply. Unless that medication was an antibiotic, your gut balance should be fine. Just some things I've learned from personal experience. On the TMS front, it sounds like the symptom imperative, and the medication triggered a new distractive symptom.

 

Reluctant IBS expert here. Stress is the biggest trigger. Much more than food. And in 25 years I've not found and meds or diet help. Hypnosis helped me. Because I'm crap at relaxation. Plenty of water. Avoid veggies. But eat whatever gently eases constipation for you. Thats the main cause of D. It's an awful condition. And try keeping a diary of what exacerbates. There's no quick fix. And no cure. But it has long flares. I've been in one since christmas. Family Stress. don't try to hard with TMS stuff. But try to avoid stress. And find relaxation if you can. The more you try to fight it. The worst it gets. Gut brain. Good luck. X

 

thanks for the response. Do you think IBS is TMS?

 

No I am sorry I don't. I think it is very stress related. And calming the gut brain can help. But personally I don't think certainly Sarno helps. So much pressure. And that exacerbates. I have chronic migraines too. And that's not yielding. But I do use mind body. And think it's very good for many things. IBS responded to hypnotherapy for me. And I've treated many on the past. Tms I found is stress in itself where gut is concerned. I do hope you find a way through. I have a daughter suffers too. It's horrible. Good luck. Try not to focus on it. I know that's very hard. But a bit of journaling can externalise the stress. Xx

 

thank you. I hope it gets better. It’s very hard right now.

 

Twocups88, it can get a lot better with TMS oriented approaches. I would never say anything is a cure but I've been able to reduce my IBS to long periods of non existence and of course shorter lived flares. If you have TMS you really have to approach it with a wide gamut. Meaning that stress reduction in all facets of your life should be something you do. For me avoiding foods just reinforced the fear, that those foods would hurt me. It's hard to overcome fear but you can learn to overcome it incrementally. What you're working on as you know is changing your reaction to the symptoms. Currently you have fear and preoccupation which is why you're seeking answers. I've done this also. This will continue to happen over and over as it changes symptoms until you can change your response. It's not easy. The last thing I learned is the intensity or energy in which you apply these TMS approaches can keep you in a state of fight flight or freeze if you're putting so much pressure on yourself to solve this problem and get rid of what it happening. It took me a long while to stop doing this. I think you can learn also. Be good internally to yourself. Know deep down you're ok. Being overly internally focused will keep this going longer than it needs to.

Be well.

 

Thanks so much for the response. I’m sick of worrying about this. It just came out the blue a few months ago. Where would you start if you were me?

 

If you've been reassured by dr. Stop stressing about it. It feeds on that. I note down better days. Because it can feel constant otherwise. But it isn't. Distraction is good. Exercise. Relaxation. Try to get your gut out of your head. It's difficult. And not quick. But embrace every positive moment. To look back on when it's not a good day

 

Well when it happened to me I first scheduled an endoscopy to rule anything out. I stopped using the meds unless it had a relaxing/reassuring effect and my intention was to do the work necessary so that relaxation and reassurance was coming from me. The amazing thing about pills is that they have this ability to let us forget. If we have a headache we take an aspirin and we believe the pill will take care of it. Maybe it does maybe it doesn't but what we do it redirect our focus almost immediately with full belief that this pill was design for this thing and we move on and wait for it to kick in. If we could only apply that same thing to our other TMS.

I think these forums and Alan Gordon's method is where I would start if you haven't besides doing a medical check up. The check ups can be reassuring that more things point to TMS.

As for it coming out of the blue, nothing really comes out of the blue. Our lives are too psychological and emotionally connected to what we do and think for these to be out of the blue. I'm assuming this is TMS. This is where people find writing aka Journaling helpful because they start to see the connections between emotional/fear triggers ans TMS occurrences. The other thing is if you have ever had TMS or anxiety prior to this if the answer is yes than it's not out of the question that one could develop IBS.

In my experience I had always been an anxious almost fearful person and I never had stomach issues until I was 33 when IBS showed up. What I didn't realized it the way I was thinking and worrying about non health related things was priming my brain. Eventually the scales tipped and I started having pains and twinge and in a short amount of time I had IBS. Mine felt like it was out of the blue also but I can see very clearly how it was not now.

Read some IBS stories on here and put some of Alan's Methods to practice. Read the success stories. Remove an internal time-line of when this has to be gone. Instead focus on making life changes aimed and giving yourself more feelings of safety and love and dissolve your fear and preoccupation over time.

Be well.

 

thanks again. The thing that keeps me from believing it’s TMS is the constipation. I have never been constipated in my life. Now I have these weird changes in bowel habit. If it was just the pain and the bloating I would feel better about it. The damn constipation keeps me worried.

 

It's very common. And seldom anything to worry about. But it's very uncomfortable. If your dr has reassured you then take steps to ease the constipation. Fluid. Exercise. Diet. Meds if necessary. But don't stress. Stress alone can cause the constipation. The gut brain is very sensitive to stress and tension.

 

Are you familiar with The Polyvagal theory? Being in a state of Stress/Fight/Flight/Freeze can cause constipation. It's usually the freeze response specifically that causes constipation. Anxiety/Fight/Flight causes diarrhea or increased motility. So when people deal with alternating anxiety and depression they can often have alternation diarrhea and constipation depending on which state they are in.

Worrying about it is only going to prolong it. Work on acceptance, drink fluids, go for a walk or exercise like Saffron mentioned and lower your stress. Do some grounding exercises.

 

Thank you both so much for the kind words and advice. The thing is I just think there is something physically wrong with my gut. The dr ran the basic tests but I have been reading about the micro biome and how people with IBS can’t handle carbs and sugars. Maybe that’s my problem. I don’t want to try any more restrictive diets but I don’t know what to do. The pain and gas is just too much sometimes. But I want to enjoy food. Anyway thanks again yall.

 

I think there's a lot of information about diet out there. I'm not going to tell you it won't help but what will you do if it happens while have a clean diet? Essentially with TMSers it seems people don't think it's TMS because they can't really fathom that the brain could be behind this or stress or anxiety. It took me a long while before I could believe it also. I Also did diets, whole thirty, Fodmaps etc. Nothing changed for me at all except I now had to deal with the notion that I inadvertently created ideas of bad and good foods. There are good and bad foods already but I created an association that they would hurt me.

Let's look at what non structural IBS is. It is either moving the bowels too quickly or too slowly. Muscles of any kind, including those in your Intestines, have the same basic function. They can either relax or constrict- that's it! There are no other special functions. The name TMS is tension (constriction) Myo (muscle) itis (recurring) so it seems apt to call it TMS. The difficult thing is that we have less direct control over how muscles in our gut respond to our messages of safety.

The limbic system, the emotional part of the brain is linked to thr amygdala. They work together to create emotions and responses to threats and or emotions and create associations. The limbic system does not respond to language. It speaks the language of sensation, emotions, images. All of the TMS approaches cover these things to show our brain that we are safe.

How one can get stuck: when we respond to stress with an emotion say fear, it can affect many things and have a physiological response knots in stomach or tightening muscles. The problem occurs when we respond to this response with fear. Now you have created a fear of a fear response and that creates more physical symptoms and you react with more fear and it reacts with more symptoms. This is the cycle.

I see no harm in having a multi-faceted approach to IBS. But Believe your doctor, he went to med school, we didn't. Anxiety or health anxiety is really sneaky and says to us what if he missed something? Or there's no way this is just tense muscles. TMS can get weird.

Be well, I hope you get relief soon.

 

Thanks so much for the scientific explanation. I will try to keep this in mind when I start to panic about it. I think it is a mental thing it will just take time for me. Thanks again.