How It All Started
I'm wondering if anyone else distinctly remembers an illness that started a lifelong spiral of IBS. When I was about 25, I remember suddenly feeling nauseous at work which came and went for a few days. I figured it was a tummy virus and stayed home, ate rice, soup, etc. I never really felt "normal" again after that! Just like all of you, I've struggled with issues now for decades. At this point I don't have many flares except when traveling or under a lot of stress.
I also have chronic migraine which, curiously, also started in my early 20's. It was a stressful time, I wasn't eating right, wasn't sleeping just like many young adults. I'm now in my 50's, and have figured out many ways to keep IBS and migraine at bay, but even with the best possible effort on my part, they could both attack. Hopefully not at the same time.
Just wondering if anyone else remembers a virus or other illness that started it all. I have been tested for everything - h.pylori, bacterial imbalances, parasites, the works. All negative.
Thank you - wishing everyone a pain-free, easy day!
Thank you for sharing and reaching out. I hope others in our community share their personal experiences with you. I know many here have stories similar to yours. In addition to feeback you receive here, this article may be helpful: https://irritablebowelsyndrome.net/living/did-food-poison-cause-my-ibs. Wishing you the best, Kelly, Irritablebowelsyndrome.net Team Member I was watching YouTube and came across Dr Pimentel at Cedar Sinai Hospital. Look him up on YouTube. There is now evidence that much of SIBO is caused by food poisoning originally. I was hospitalized for ecoli many years ago and most likely have IBS because of it.
Thank you so much for sharing! We actually have an article talking about exactly this: https://irritablebowelsyndrome.net/living/did-food-poison-cause-my-ibs
I hope you're feeling well today!
Karina (team member)
Yes, I remember a sudden onset of something strange which happened on 27th March 2018. Before that, my gut had been fine all my life. My diet was very healthy and I had plenty of outside good exercise in lovely coutryside. I also slept well. I was physically well.
Then suddenly about 2pm that afternoon while putting logs through the splitter I got a slight head twinge on one side above my eye, shakiness, tearfulness, slight dizziness, heart palpitations, slight nausea, and a weird weak feeling generally.
I also got a strange 'nervous tic' effect, where it seemed my chin kept wanting to rise in the air and move slightly to the left!! I had no control over it. That came and went.
No fever. No obvious clinical things happening.
But the white of one eye became red.
My sleep started to break up a bit.
My gut was still okay. I thought I might have a peculiar kind of flu after it lasted for more than a week. I hardly ever got time off from those feelings. I became exhausted. In the third week I went to the doctor and he couldn't find anything wrong. Blood tests were OK too. My gut was still fine.
4th week, I got IBS symptoms. They went away after a week or 9 days.
The other symptoms remained on and off, and gradually over the next 2 years started to let up quite a bit. I wondered if I'd had some odd virus that left me with something like post viral syndrome.
Then March 2020 though feeling a lot better from the weird symptoms, IBS hit again, and never really went away for long after that. Tests my doctor ran discovered no clinical red flags or infammatory conditions etc. So I got an IBS diagnosis.
I do get sometimes a few weeks of pretty good normality now however. I am lucky. But IBS doesn't really just disappear for me yet.Wow, that sounds very strange and unpleasant indeed! Did the other symptoms at least disappear over time?
I hope you're feeling well today.
Karina (team member)
Wow
that is really interesting (and not in a good way). I'm sorry this happened to you. Very mysterious -- could be some sort of long-lasting post viral thing like you said. But all doctors can do are run your labs and start the detective work from there, and if there is nothing abnormal, they have nothing to go on. Very frustrating. I hope your "normal" stretches get longer as time goes by.
