Bowel issues maybe tmi

[picklepot22]

Not a poo troll. MN can verify.

I've had bowel issues for what feels like forever. Lots of red flag symptoms like bleeding from the bottom that I've seen the GP for many many times. Always given a cream and sent on my way with piles as the explanation (I do have visible piles so I'm not disputing they are the cause).

But lately I'm tired. My stomach is always gurgling and I'm bloated. I have diarrhoea a lot, not constant but regularly. I keep seeing the GP and have had two colonoscopies in the last 8 years but nothing ever shows up. I can't shake the feeling something else is going on.

I don't have the best diet and lifestyle (little exercise) and I'm thinking that now I'm approaching 40 maybe it is just my body reacting badly to certain foods. But can ibs reallt make you feel this bad?

It definitely sounds like it needs more investigation and not just a pot of cream.

As someone with IBS, yes, it can definitely be terrible and change your daily life. However, if your gut is telling you something is wrong, trust it. Tell your doctor to work with you to figure out a cause (and keep making a stink until they do).

You have got to remove diary and gluten for a time period to see if that helps improve things.

You could even follow an elimination diet where you carefully add in foods back in every few days to see how your body reacts. I followed The Plan by Lyn-Genet Recitas.

You do need to see the doctor but you also need to do the things you can for yourself.

If you've had all the investigations then yes, it is likely it is IBS being this bad. If you had crohns or colitis, one of the colonosopies would have picked it up. It is possible the blood tests didn't pick up a more minor level intollerance of dairy or gluten, they aren't the most sensitive and you can get false negatives when you do actually react to dairy or gluten. Have you tried all the elimination diets? You could cut all lactose and switch to lactose free or non dairy versions of things like milk, yogurt and cheese for 6 weeks and see if you have any improvement, likewise you could eliminate gluten for a 6 week trial priod and see how that goes. Have you tried taking a good quality pro biotic on a regular basis? Reduced the ammount of fat and sugar in your diet and increased fibre and protein? High fat diets in particular can cause loose greasy stools. Do you take any medication/supplement like peppermint oil capsules or buscopan that help with spasms in the gut and ease bloating, gas etc?

I sympathise, i have IBS (due to OCD about germs and toilets can't do the stool sample or cope with the cleansing out phase for a colonoscopy so crohns/colitis not ruled out) and i am often sore and have blood from the skin being so dry and splitting from how much wiping is necessary from the frequent loose/soft stools. It is also alarming to be fine one minute then get the churning and sudden need to go NOW with no warning.

If you have tried all the above, then i'm not sure what else a doctor could realistically do, other than possibly another round of blood tests and a potential re referral, but with 2 negative colonoscopies already i think it unlikely they would offer a third.

Is there any food that gives you any kind of allergy type symptoms at all, like numbness, tingling, burning or itching of the lips, in the mouth or throat? Any kind of facial itch or rash or flushing? Could you try an antihistamine incase its actually a food you're having a mild allergic reaction to and your body is trying to clear it out?

It's not like I've buried my head and refused to see the GP. I've been many times. I've mentioned the C word to them and always get 'you're too young'.

About 3 years ago I had bloods and a stool test which showed markers for blood in my poo so that's when I had my last colonoscopy. I think at the time they here thinking it could be inflammatory bowel disease. But the colposcopy showed everything was clear. Since then the bleeding and piles have gotten worse and over the past few months I've had so many incidents of pain, churning and urgency. Stools are loose and greasy so I'm wondering if it's a reaction to a high fat diet. I think I definitely need to try some of the elimination diets mentioned.

It's just such a worry. We constantly hear about cancer on the tv and in the news, how you shouldn't ignore signs and always see your GP. But what can you do when different GPs have fobbed you off?

I'm also panicking as we are due to go on holiday tomorrow and right now my stomach is churning and I have so much gas (sorry tmi!) it's one of those occasions where you can't tell if it's wind or poop so I've been dashing back and forth to the loo and also had some diarrhoea. I'm a little nauseous but haven't been sick. Probably my own fault for eating like a pig all weekend but if anyone has any tips to reduce the bloating and upset before tomorrow morning it would be lovely. I don't fancy a four hour car journey feeling like this!

Imodium is my go to but it doesn't always stop the churning.

I had similar to you for a while but luckily my (private) doctor took me seriously and after tests to rule out cancer she referred me on to an allergy and intolerance specialist. They very quickly identified three foods I was intolerant to which I hadn’t even realised I’d been eating. After a couple of months of avoiding them I was right as rain again.

Definitely worth looking into.

If you’re really concerned you could also try improving your diet first. You mention a high fat diet. That’s unlikely to be helpful in avoiding loose stools.

@picklepot22 don't have the best diet and lifestyle

This is where you need to start. There’s so much evidence that ultra processed foods are causing a huge number of issues. Please read up on this and illuminate them from your diet. Even most supermarket bread is full of emulsifiers and nasty chemicals which can cause stomach issues!

Todays Guardian has this research on its front page today.

I'm not trying to be nasty OP, but you admit that your diet is poor and you don't exercise enough. Before jumping to exclusion diets and cutting out whole food groups, I think it's worth trying to just generally eat better (more whole foods, less processed junk, more water, less alcohol, more exercise) for a month and seeing what effect that has.

I have IBS and it 100% can be as bad as you're describing, and is also 100% at its worse when I've either been stuffing my face (more often than I should!) or when stressed. The reality is one leads to the other - eat too much fatty/processed stuff because on holiday, then start feeling ropey, then worry over how bad I feel makes it 10 x worse!

I'm certainly no paragon of virtue when it comes to clean earing, but it does seem like jumping from rubbish diet and limited exercise to exclusion diet, is missing a rather obvious step! And if that makes no difference, go back to the GP - they should be able to efer you to a dietician who could help make sure any exclusion trial is properly managed.

Mint tea is brilliant for helping with wind.

Today eat plain, not fatty food. Before you eat anything look at the ingredients in it. If it’s a long list of stuff you don’t know what the heck it is, don’t eat it.

I know I can't continue eating shit and not exercising then complain that I'm feeling rubbish. I have always been this way and it's only in the past year or so that I've noticed things getting worse. It feels like we I'm ageing my body is struggling to cope with the lifestyle. I do need to make changes but I'm stuck in a rut and it's hard to change who you've always been. I probably need some sort of guidance. But I agree in the meantime I need to just eat sensibly.

With young kids a lot of my 'treats' come in the form of food or booze as I simply don't get the chance to go out and do stuff. So a bottle of wine and a takeaway on a Saturday night is something to look forward to. But then I have to pay for it for days afterwards so I guess I need to reevaluate what my idea of a reward actually is.

Have you had blood tests or an endoscopy for coeliac disease? You need to be eating gluten for the tests to be accurate so don't cut it out of your diet.

I had bad IBS for nearly 20 years and it was really miserable at times. It really can cause awful symptoms.

Have a look at trying a Low FODMAP diet to see if any foods are a trigger. Buscopan tablets for when the discomfort is really bad.

I have discovered that when I cut out refined carbs (for weight loss) like bread, rice, pasta, anything in a packet ie cakes/biscuits etc the welcome side effect was much more normal poo/no grumbling bowels/urgency etc. If I eat toast/sandwich/pasta now it goes right through me within the hour.

I would look to clean up your diet, address the piles issue, and if you are still bleeding then insist on further tests.

It could be SIBO.

As a bowel cancer survivor my first thought was to push for a colonoscopy but I see that you’ve had two already.

Unfortunately(?!) there are many things that can go wrong with the intestines that are (fortunately) not cancer. If there were polyps in your large intestine then one or both of the colonoscopies would have spotted them, let alone cancer (I know what it looks like!). So even if something had gone wrong in one colonoscopy- which is almost impossible- then the other would have picked it up.

Get thee to a dietitian and/or other specialist and follow their advice to the letter 😊

It's not easy OP, it's bloody hard. Certainly as we age our bodies can have less of a tolerance to poor diet and limited exercise. Plus, in many cases, life is more stressful as an adult than as a child/teen! And you also can develop intolerance/allergies at any point too, so that might also be a factor. But it will probably be easier to figure that out if you're basically eating better, especially if you remove/significantly reduce processed foods. Processed food has so many bonkers ingredients it can be hard to tell what it is you're actually reacting to!

One suggestion is to ask yourself, “Would my ancestors recognise this as food?”

I’m not suggesting for a moment that this will solve OP’s issues, but for healthier eating it can be a good start.

I think you need to do a proper 6 week period of time, of having fresh cooked foods, at least 5 portions of veg a day and some fruit on top, try to reduce your reliance on wheaty products like bread or pasta, cut out anything with sweetners in it or unnecessarily high in sugar

At the same time I would start taking some good probiotics like bio kult tablets, I take 4 of these a day and I would really recommend them

Then you can take stock at the end of that period to see what things are like fo ryour digestion

I would prepare properly, make sure your fridge and freezer is full of the things you need, dont have stuff hanging around that you're 'going to use up' and ruin the experiment.

google SIBO can be resolved by certain antibiotic and diet

I found colon irrigation helpful to clear rubbish out after was diagnosed with ceoliacs.

I know how you feel about ageing. I don't have IBS as such but am prone to constipation due to genetic condition and find the older I am the less mucking about my diet can take.
I also have young children and love wine/beer and a takeaway as a treat. But I definitely have a much lower tolerance to alcohol as it makes me feel hot and itchy if I have more than one glass now.

I would hope this is the case. However my first one was over 10 years ago, my most recent one was during covid so it would have been 2020 time? I'm hoping that's recent enough that nothing can have altered since.

I think it's a combination of all of the things together. Bleeding - I can put down to piles. The GP has confirmed as much. Bad belly - can put down to having a greedy weekend. Pain and bloating - same. Tiredness - I work and have young kids. But when you put all of these things together it's literally all of the red flag symptoms for bowel cancer and it just terrifies me.

I know I'm thinking worse case scenario here but I just want to feel normal. I will try and eat better to see if I notice any improvements. It will be hard because most of my diet is centred around bread and pasta! Even when I'm being 'good'. So I really will have to change things up.

Windeze is great for getting rid of gas.

There's several other products as well.

If you can manage to get a mint tea into your everyday routine that will also help.

Fellow IBS sufferer.

But think about it OP, you’ve had the symptoms for a long time. And the colonoscopies were to see what might be causing the symptoms. So your fear isn’t really logical: you’re worried that earlier the symptoms might not have been related to cancer but now they are? It really doesn’t make sense.

Bowel cancer is relatively slow to develop so if you had cancer now you would have had a visible polyp in 2020.

It’s true that you are not “ too young “ for bowel cancer but also if you have had these symptoms for years and nothing has been spotted in colonoscopies then it’s almost magical thinking to believe you could actually have cancer and yet nobody has been able to see it. It just doesn’t work like that in this situation.

Sorry to sound harsh but yes, IBS, too much stress, bad diet, too much responsibility, can cause all these symptoms. You’re honestly being a bit silly worrying about cancer when the answer is staring you in the face. Also, if you don’t want to get cancer (of any sort) you should address all these factors to reduce your chance of getting it in the first place!

Again I’m sorry to be harsh but I think you need to take a fresh look at this.

Thank you for that kick up the bum @LucyWarlowsRightHand unfortunately I am a very anxious person (also not good for my bowels!) and I tend to think of the worst case scenario.

I really need to get a grip of my life and start treating my body with a bit more respect.