Curing (What I Thought was) IBS: Part 3

If you're coming to this post in the middle, go here for Part 1 or here for Part 2. 

The (Final) Solution

My goal for the next few "IBS" attacks was to pay close attention to the sensations in my body during an attack to divine just what was going on and when. This wasn't terribly difficult as I'd been practicing mindfulness and meditation for years, I'd just never applied it in this particular way before. 

I did quickly ascertain that anxiety was indeed a pretty big element, but the techniques I used to deal with it only lessened the symptoms, it didn't dissolve them completely. Apart from simple breathing exercises and assuring myself that I was safe, I also adopted a concept called "embracing the suck". This basically means instead of resisting the present situation, one simple acknowledges that it's pretty darned unpleasant and just accepting it. It doesn't mean rolling over and dying - anything you can do to improve the situation, by all means do it; but do it with an attitude of "it is what it is". It means being okay if you throw up or have to dash off to the bathroom for a possibly painful evacuation of the bowels; just don't fear those potentials. Accept that they may happen and plan accordingly. 

At this juncture I vaguely recalled that I had tried to deal with the anxiety aspect of these attacks in the past as well; obviously it hadn't really worked then either (maybe that's why I had stopped calling it "Travel Anxiety"). There was clearly something else going on here, so what was it?

The answer was tension. My guts were tightening up in knots; and it just so happened that I had stumbled on a way to deal with it just a few years earlier. I felt like a pretty dense idiot that it had never occurred to me to use the technique here!

But let me backtrack a moment as this realization came in two, very different parts. The first was a statement made by my Karate instructor a while back in regards to self-defense techniques. His comment was that the population is split fairly evenly into two groups: one group tenses up when they feel pain and the other relaxes/collapses. Unfortunately there's no way to know who's in what group while they have a hand around your throat, so the first part of any self-defense technique that inflicts pain on your attacker is to first protect anything on yourself that's delicate (like your throat).

The second half of my "aha moment" was a simple relaxation technique that I'd been playing with for the previous five or so years. When I first started messing with it, I thought I'd stumbled on something new, amazing and different. I later realized that it's something every yoga instructor worth their salt teaches (have I mentioned I can be a bit dense sometimes?)

The "new" technique built off of exercises I'd been doing for close to fifteen years: While sitting or laying in a relaxed position, be mindful of any muscle tension anywhere in the body. It's best to focus on small sections at a time, so it's generally recommended to start either with your toes and work upward or your head and go downwards. It really doesn't matter though; you can start with your belly button if you want to; just find the tension in your body and consciously relax it. Do it again and again because it's very likely that once you've made it through the whole body, something near the beginning has tensed up again. It can feel like an exercise in futility until you've been doing it awhile. And I'd been doing it for quite a long while.

Nursing school opened up another aspect of this time-honored technique for me. There's lots of muscles in the body and thanks to anatomy and physiology class, I was learning them all. I could now imagine all the different muscle groups with all their varied layers. I'd start with the big, outer muscles and work my way "inward" to the deeper muscles. There were also different levels of tension to be found. So after going through and relaxing the "gross" tension, I'd go through and relax finer and finer levels of tension. (Who knew so much "hidden" tension could hide in one's feet?)

Now here's the thing (also thanks to nursing school), there's three types of muscles in the body: there's skeletal muscles - these are the ones we use to move about and create facial expressions. We have conscious control over skeletal muscles (for the most part); and these are the ones we typically focus on when doing these types of relaxation techniques. But there's two other types: smooth muscle - which lines the digestive system, lungs and some blood vessels; and cardiac muscles (that surprise, surprise make up your heart and do their own thing). Though these two other types of muscles are not subject to our conscious whim, they do response to our emotional state, and so with some clever mind games you actually can consciously control them to a certain degree. And this is the technique I had stumbled upon.

In fact I'd already been using this technique to stop menstrual cramps for a while already. It's pretty easy really: menstrual cramps are typically caused by the uterus tightening up as it expels all that nice, bloody lining it no longer needs. You can just as easily "tell" it to not tighten up so hard. Just imagine the sensation of a tightened fist and then relaxing that fist. You can apply that sensation to a grumpy uterus too. Works like a charm, but you have to be awake to do it (so night-time cramps unfortunately need a Tylenol to be gone away with, sadly). Also, the cramps can come back pretty quickly as soon as you lose focus, so some persistent crampies need near-constant attention; but it is doable.

Now lets go back to those two types of people: the "tensers" and the "relaxers". Image if you will two people who just ate a big meal. One leans back in their chair, unbuttons their pants and with a big sigh says, "Aaah, I ate too much!" The other person clutches their belly, arching forward and moans, "Oooh, I ate too much!" I'm sure you can imagine who's the tenser and who's the relaxer. The tenser likely feels nauseous because he's tensing up; there's nowhere for the food to go. Our relaxer might have some heartburn from an over-stuffed tummy, but otherwise he just feels really full. Tension inhibits the digestive process. Makes sense.

It was not difficult at all to marry these two concepts together and I have no idea why it didn't occur to me sooner (did I mention I can be a bit daft at times?) I now had a pretty solid hypothesis that tension was the source of my woes and that conscious relaxation was the solution. On my next IBS attack I was mindful of any tension in my gut and I consciously relaxed it while making sure my anxiety didn't get out of hand, and you know what? It worked like a charm. I could literally relax away my "IBS" symptoms. Stop it right in its tracks. That was it?

Apparently it was. After only a handful of attacks handled in this way, it really no longer became a problem. No matter what I ate at whatever time, I could deftly stop it before it started. Oddly enough I did end up having a "symptom-less IBS attack" a few months back. I don't remember the exact situation, but I do remember the sensations. IBS (or whatever the heck was plaguing me) has a unique sensation in the body, even sans the tension. I can't even explain it; it's just "IBS-y". So I felt "IBS-y" with a tender belly, but with the anxiety and tension removed, it never escalated. I remember clearly the thrill of being able to go to bed that night and lay down comfortably with the light off. No shakes, no ragged breathing. No chills, sweats or drooling. It was incredible! I was free.

Here's the thing though: Because I've been meditating for nearly half my life, I have no idea if this technique is one of those things where once you understand the concept, you're good to go; or if it's like learning to swim or ride a bike where you can "understand" it all you want, but you won't be able to do it until you find your own way. Try it and see.

I think this technique would work for any tension-based ailment, not just digestive issues. I feel there's many medical problems that have tension as a root cause, even if it's not initially obvious (like high blood pressure or inflammation issues that aren't allergy-related, etc); but of course I have no way of proving/testing that as yet.

Resolution
So what changes have I noticed since finding my cure? Well, I'm happy to report that I gained ten pounds in the span of just a few months. Believe me, in my case this is a good thing. I had always considered myself underweight and always had a hard time putting on and keeping pounds no matter what I tried. Now that I can relax my gut and let all those nice nutrients in, I've achieved a weight that's perfect for me. Your results may vary.

Travel has become far less an exercise in strategic planning around meal times, sleeping accommodations and locations of toilets. It truly doesn't matter now. It's a level of freedom I had never before thought possible.

Note that meds never came into play here. Though I'd been to a fair amount of therapy (which I highly recommend by the way), as mentioned at the beginning of all this, I was never diagnosed with anxiety. I'm not in the least advocating to handle anxiety issues (or any other mental health issues) without meds. I had never realized just how debilitating my anxiety was until I started writing up this whole series.  

"It's all in your head"
I used to hate that phrase, and I've heard it a lot in life. It implies, "you're making it up," "it isn't real," "you're just looking for attention". It was so demoralizing because my symptoms were absolutely real and problematic; but because there was no detectable medical cause, it was "obviously fake".

Part of my healing involved "flipping the script": if it's "all in your head" then the power to getting better was completely within my control. No external source was going to fix this. No tests, prescriptions, weird treatments, special diets or rituals. It was all on me. 

Claiming this inner power can be difficult for some, especially if you have a passive temperament (like me in my younger years) and just expect the answer to be in doctors, medicine or some external source. As odd as it sounds, another hurdle can be that some people identify with their illness/condition, it's a part of who they are. If it goes away, they'll lose a piece of themselves and that can be scary. This of course is usually unconscious, and requires a good long, honest look within. It is possible that whatever the problem is is serving some purpose in your life. Certainly there's nothing wrong with that, but know that if the problem is "yours" (not caused by an external problem), the solution is yours too.

And so that's my story. I hope it helps, or at the very least provided some interesting reading.

Speaking of reading, here's a short-ish list of books that have been helpful for me and may be for you also (if you haven't read them already):

"The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself", by Michael Alan Singer (2007)
I'm a late-comer to this book, but it's a wonderful read and very insightful. It does touch on tension and its role in the body.

"The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment", by Eckhart Tolle (1997)
This is a great book, and really lays out the concept of how to "embrace the suck".

"Energy Anatomy: The Science of Personal Power, Spirituality, and Health", by Caroline Myss (1996)
I can't recommend this and her other books and audio offerings enough. Myss presents her information in a no-nonsense way that invites the reader to take a good long, honest look at their own thought patterns and habits.

"Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma", by Peter A. Levine (1997)
This one actually deals with healing trauma, but it does hint at tension being the source of many other problems. It also mentions that trauma can be "trapped" in the body in the form of tension and that releasing that tension may bring up buried, traumatic memories. It's something to keep in mind if consciously releasing tension is new to you. 

"Autobiography of a Yogi", by Paramahansa Yogananda (1946)
Okay, I'm recommending this one more because it's just an awesome book (I've read it through twice); but I was reading the part about him gaining weight right when I started putting weight on, so there's that.

Curing (What I Thought was) IBS: Part 2

If you're coming to this post in the middle, go here for Part 1.

(Failed) Attempt at a Solution

I saw no point in seeking out a medical doctor. I might have mentioned my problems in the past to one doctor or another and just gotten shrugs. Certainly the trip to the ER in my senior year had stuck with me when they found "nothing wrong with me". Since I now believed that this was a food issue, I went to a nutritionist. The person I chose though practiced some form a quackery that relied heavily on herbal supplements that could only be procured through his office (of course); but I was desperate by that point and did whatever he prescribed. His treatment plan (which included numerous capsules taken multiple times of day to bolster my immune, digestive and nervous systems) included giving up all sugar and wheat-based products. Meats, fruits and veggies were fine and (despite the fact that I knew even by then that I was lactose intolerant and told him as much) he insisted that dairy products could stay.

So I cut pasta from my life and switched to spelt flour and sprouted breads. I made other dietary changes and took the prescribed pills that even then I felt were next to useless, but if there was even a chance that they'd make me better, I'd take them. And you know what? It actually helped! Over the course of a year my symptoms improved greatly and I could again eat without getting sick so frequently. Travel still caused problems, but it wasn't as bad, especially if I was mindful of what I ate, and at what time of day.

After a year of faithfully following the plan he had laid out, I slowly distanced myself from the nutritionist's practice, which wasn't easy since I was still very passive and had issues with offending others. The practitioner and his staff were not at all supportive of my leaving, and laid on the guilt pretty heavy when I started buying fewer pills and coming less frequently. "It must be nice being healthy," one secretary said in a snit when I confessed I was feeling better and so didn't need all these pills (lol wut?!). I finally had to cut ties completely in a fit of anger at their snide comments and manipulation (I was young and naïve, be kind). I should note that I have no issue with herbal supplements or vitamins, they have their place and serve their purpose, I just felt in this particular instance they weren't all they were cracked up to be.

Considering myself to be as better as I was going to get, I slowly started reintroducing previously forbidden foods. I'd reached a point where I could eat pretty much anything, to a point. Had to go easy on the dairy products, no matter what, but the richer and creamier it was, the more likely it was to cause problems. I was also bound by the sun when it came to my digestive system: I couldn't eat pretty much anything past 7:30, 8:00 at night (except maybe toast with a little butter) lest I be up late feeling miserable. Dinners and meals while traveling and at friend's houses needed to be handled with care. Strenuous exercise was also problematic (see previous posts about Karate rank tests). But this was my life now and I just accepted it.

It was my late 20's, early 30's that I dropped the "Travel Anxiety" label, somehow forgetting that anxiety had anything to do with my issues, and redubbed my affliction "IBS", as by now I had it firmly in my head that my problem was strictly food-related. Again, no doctor was involved in this decision as there continued to be "nothing wrong with me" medically. And I will admit, by this point I could link each and every instance of illness to something I had eaten earlier in the day as the trigger; but then we can make anything make sense under the right conditions. 

Gradually, as the years wore on, my condition slowly worsened again. Then two things happened that gave me a new outlook on my tummy troubles and clued me in as to how I might be able to fix it. The first thing was about seven-ish years ago when I starting to get dry heaves as part of my attacks. It wasn't with every attack, but it was new, most unpleasant and slowly increasing in frequency with no apparent rhyme or reason. A bulb started to go off: if food was the cause of my problems, then shouldn't I be bringing something up with these dry heaves? Hmmmm.

Event number two was Thanksgiving of 2017 or 2018. I'd gone to my brother and sister-in-law's with my mother for dinner. They had chosen a late dinner time, which I knew was an almost guarantee for disaster, but I ate lightly and hoped for the best. Alas, the inevitable sour stomach started to rear it's ugly head and I parked myself on the floor off to the side in the living room after dinner (there were other people in the chairs and on the couch); and I tried to distract myself by playing with their young son on the floor (my spot was also closer to the bathroom; work smarter, not harder). Despite my best efforts, I was feeling steadily worse and I asked my mother if we could head out.

Mom was having none of it, she was socializing with her daughter-in-law in the kitchen and helping with dishes. I'd have to wait. Which I did, but I wasn't terribly happy about it. I returned to my spot on the floor and attempted to chat with the other guests, but I really wanted to go home! After another half hour or so, I had to give an ultimatum: I'd either go outside and pace in the driveway (fresh air and walking tend to be helpful) or we head out now. My frustrated mother decided it'd be far less embarrassing if we just went home (she could also see by this point that I was not holding it together very well). 

Of course on the drive home she wanted to wax poetic about the meal while I begged her not to. Just the thought of food made me want to hurl. This only raised her ire further; what else was there to talk about after a lovely Thanksgiving dinner? Once we got home, I propped myself up against a stack of pillows on the couch (I lacked the ambition to open the hide-a-bed, plus there'd be no point as I'd be unable to lay down comfortably) and attempted to settle in to endure the next couple hours of suffering I knew I had ahead of me.

Mom just stood over me annoyed, and said the words that turned my life around. "This isn't IBS, this is a panic attack."

Not terribly helpful at the time, but it did strike a cord. Since I'd already started suspecting food wasn't truly the source of my troubles, it got me wondering just what could this be then?

Find out what the final resolution was here.

Curing (What I Thought was) IBS: Part 1

I had to split this up into three pieces just because it ended up being so long. There'll be links to take you to the other parts at the end of this post.

Disclaimer: this post is not meant to diagnose or treat any medical conditions. Though a Registered Nurse, I am not a doctor and cannot diagnose. This post is merely anecdotal with the intent that my personal experiences may resonate with others who experience similar symptoms. Also note that I've never been formally diagnosed with IBS, panic attacks or even anxiety. 

I should also preface here that this post isn't going to portray my parents in a positive light. Know that there were plenty of aspects in mine and my brothers' lives in which our parents were perfectly involved with and supportive of; this was not one of them and I don't in the least hold that against them. My condition (because it had no apparent physical/medical origin) was only a source of annoyance for all involved because it couldn't be "fixed" via "regular" means. It meant that I was left to my own devices to deal with it.

The Problem
So to start: IBS is short for "Irritable Bowel Syndrome". The Mayo Clinic defines it as: "a common disorder that affects the large intestine. Signs and symptoms include cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, and diarrhea or constipation, or both." Its root causes aren't wholly known, making treatment difficult. 

You can read more about panic attacks here if you're interested, but I'm running on the assumption that most people know what they are. Here's also some interesting information from VeryWellMind.com about the connection between the two conditions.

So, if I've never been diagnoses with either IBS or panic attacks, why do I think I have one, the other or both? Well, I can say that I've always had a "nervous stomach" going back for as far as I could remember. I never dealt with new or stressful situations well and that nervousness/anxiety almost always manifested as an upset stomach. I rarely threw up during these episodes, but it was most definitely uncomfortable. I wanted nothing more than to huddle in a quiet place, clutching my stomach. My parents suffered my nervous fits with nary a comment. It was simply an inconvenience when I'd beg to go home from school as a small child for an upset stomach that never amounted to anything; and half the time my requests to go home were denied. These nervous attacks only got worse as I got older.

A couple notable events that particularly stand out from my youth: One time in late elementary school, a spring storm blew in from the west. The approaching leading edge of the storm cloud was pitch black. I've never seen a cloud so thoroughly dark before or since. This instantly threw me into a panic even though I intellectually knew it was "just a thunderstorm". Still, thunderstorms can harbor tornadoes and that threat was a recurring source of worry in my younger years despite my parents always assuring us kids that we had a plan to go to the basement in the event of such an emergency. (A tornado has never touched down anywhere near my parents' house by the way, though I've seen scars from past ones near where friends of the family lived.)

With this fear, I hid up in my room, in bed; trembling, breathing heavy and trying my best to deal with awful nausea as I listened to the storm approach and break overhead. Wind and rain pelted our drafty farm house for hardly more than fifteen minutes; and then it passed with no harm done. The power didn't even go out.

Another time, likely in middle school, I was staying overnight at a friend's house (a friend I'd stayed with many times before and after with no problems) and out of the blue I had a sudden sense that something terrible was going to happen; perhaps the furnace would explode or the house was going to blow up for no good reason. Either way, I couldn't shake this awful sense of dread and laid in bed for well over an hour (maybe two), trembling and fighting back waves of nausea while my heart pounded in my ears. At last I couldn't take it anymore and I asked her parents if they could take me home (her parents seemed to never sleep and they were still awake when I wandered into the kitchen to make my plaintive plea). Just an fyi: the house never did blow up and still stands to this day.  

The worst was when I was a senior in high school, I had taken on a babysitting gig for a couple I hadn't met before, but whom were family of a classmate of mine. I had put out an ad in the local paper hoping to raise extra funds for college. I felt nervous and queasy the whole day of school leading up to my first time babysitting for perfect strangers . I'd met with the parents just a few days prior so they could get to know me before leaving their infant daughter and preschool-aged son in my care. I had seemed dependable enough and I tried my best to put on a brave front when showing up that evening to watch their kids. I was given thoroughly detailed instructions on what to do in various situations and then the parents headed out for a childless evening. I loved kids (still do) and my original plan had been to play with the boy and watch TV with him until bedtime while keeping a loose eye on the baby, who I'd been assured would sleep the whole evening - which she did. Instead my stomach just became increasingly sour and the shaking wouldn't stop. I rushed to the bathroom twice to throw up, which rather distressed the little boy (and myself! I was now convinced I had a stomach bug and I was going to get the kids sick). When I wasn't puking, I had diarrhea to contend with too.

I ended up calling the children's' grandparents to take my place in watching the kids and the grandfather was perfectly fine driving me the half mile home. There I parked myself on the couch with the "barf bucket" (a cleaning bucket that served double-duty for the gastrically challenged) and trembled from head to toe while breathing heavy, and was utterly unable to doze off despite feeling exhausted.

This was the first time my parents expressed any concern (that I noticed anyway) about one of these fits as it was so much more severe than anything previous. And I was convinced that it was utterly different from my other nervous episodes; certain that I was physically ill. When I expressed that I was dizzy, had a hard time forming complete sentences and my hands were starting to seize up and form claw shapes (in hindsight, that was all from hyperventilation), they decided it was time to take me to the emergency room where I got my first ride in a wheelchair because by then I was having a real hard time walking straight. 

The staff ran some tests and hooked me up to a bag of fluids, but they couldn't find anything wrong with me. After being there for an hour or so I was suddenly feeling better and so was sent home. No one even mentioned the possibility that this was actually "just" a panic attack. It never crossed anyone's mind until much later. 

I tried babysitting for that family one more time after that, and though I did make it through the whole time they'd hired me for, I was utterly miserable. My stomach just did flip-flops and my body shook so much that I couldn't play with the boy and he was sent to bed early while I watched TV to try to calm my nerves. I had to give up on my babysitting aspirations after that. I just couldn't handle it.

By the time I went to college, I had been around enough between trips through school and Girl Scouts  to know that my first night sleeping in a strange place wasn't going to be pleasant (as symptoms typically only arose after dark). Those symptoms included: intense nausea (with no vomiting); uncontrollable shaking; heavy breathing; pounding heart; tender belly; and usually diarrhea/loose stools (though pooping sometimes made me feel worse, so I'd often try not to go to the bathroom). Sometimes my mouth would water and I'd have to spit into a tissue, or (gross!) just let myself drool because swallowing would only sour my stomach more. Laying down would make me feel far worse, so I'd have to sit up or walk around. I could typically doze lightly in this state (while sitting up of course), but I'd have weird dreams and wake often. Having the lights out would exacerbate symptoms, so lights needed to stay on for the duration. Stomach remedies like Pepto Bismol didn't really help, but they typically didn't make it worse either. Obviously I had no interest in food during these attacks and the smell, sometimes even just the thought of food was a big no-no; though I found nibbling of something very bland and simple, like lettuce wasn't a bad thing. I usually had no interest in drinking anything other than light sips of water. Symptoms tended to come on suddenly and leave just as quickly; the whole ordeal lasting several hours. Once it passed though, I'd feel perfectly fine. I could lay down again and sleep soundly. The dark posed absolutely no problem.

This pattern continued through college and then into living on my own. Around that time that I started calling my affliction "Travel Anxiety" because it seemed to only happen when traveling. This of course didn't stop me from taking trips, it just meant I had to plan for these inevitable inconveniences. The real problem arose when I starting having troubles eating at restaurants or at friend's houses. This is where my anxiety issues started getting linked to food in my head. If at a restaurant, I'd have to pay attention to where the bathrooms were in case I had an attack and have to rush off with a bout of diarrhea (which was becoming more frequent). I'd have to warn friends that my stomach may take a turn for the worse and I may need to go home early or just live in the bathroom for a half hour.

This affliction became more than just irritating or annoying, I was starting to lose weight (which was a bit of a problem as I've always been on the skinnier side). I was also starting to become afraid to eat because by this point in my life (early to mid-20's) it seemed that I was getting sick about every-other time I ate. This was becoming a real issue.

Click here for Part 2, or if you want to skip to the end, here's Part 3.