How I've been curing my IBS-C

Apologies for the long read and backstory, but I feel like it's helpful showing how the pieces work together to begin recovery. Also I am not a doctor and while I believe non of this can be detrimental, I feel obligated to recommend checking with a professional if you have health risks.

For 6 years I used to have debilitating constipation, bloating, gas, and tightness on my left side to the point I couldn't breathe, would have high blood pressure, would sometimes be blood when I coughed up flem and horrible anxiety. All my symptoms were always isolated to my left side. I saw countless specialists and tried all the over the counter/prescription medications and nothing worked. It wasn't until I approached it from a bio-mechanical (how your body works to move) perspective that I saw improvement and things began making sense.

I identified the tight/painful areas. For me I had restricted mobility in my left hip. A tight psoas, tight quadratus lumborum, weak left oblique, shoulder blade pain, tight left neck/trapezius and a rotator cuff injury I ignored.

All those areas progressively got worse and more painful over time. I was always very athletic and stronger/favored my left side so I thought it was weird I had become so weak on that side until I began to piece the past 6 years together.

I fell out of working out, spent all my time at a computer/video games and was working jobs where I was standing all the time and having to bend over. I began having bad anxiety. Then one winter, fell down a flight of stairs and hyper extended my left arm and fairly certain I torn my rotator cuff and never got full range of motion back. THIS was right around when my IBS-C began getting in the way of me living life.

I saw a chiropractor and my symptoms would be much better for like a day but they would come back. I saw an osteopath which helped a tiny bit. Then went to Physical Therapy for 6 weeks and did absolutely nothing. So I put in over 100 hours of my own research into bio-mechanics (learning how the body works to move), breathing techniques, fascial release, stress relief, meditation, decompression exercises ect.

After a while of experimenting and practicing all these techniques, things began to click for me and pieces began falling into place. One day I realized I hadn't had debilitating IBS-C symptoms for over a month. I would have pain free no symptoms of anything for a few days then I would feel my anxiety creep up for a day or two until I was having severe pain/aches/compression in my neck/shoulder/shoulder blade, difficultly breathing and high blood pressure. Then one day when I was having really bad pain in my shoulder area I approached it with the goal to lengthen my entire spine that a key piece fell into place. I found that my left glute was completely knotted up and the flexibility was half that of my right side. So I sat my left leg on a foam roller with the roller as high up the back of my thigh as close to my butt cheek without actually sitting on my butt cheek, with the right leg off and all that area was completely knotted up. I then stretch that left leg forward as much as possible while sitting up as straight as possible and that's when magic began to happen. All my nagging pain in my shoulder went away, my left oblique began to relax and my discomfort/pain went from an 8 to a 2.

-------------The cause of my IBS-----------
From my research on human bio-mechanics this is what my understanding is for what had been happening:

My posture sitting at a computer/video gaming and working jobs requiring me to bend over had put me into a rounded shoulder position. A rounded shoulder position leads to mouth breathing and the rib cage being restricted limiting the ribs pump-handle to expand upwards on an inhale and causing less space for the back of the ribs to expand. Air will always travel in the path of least resistance so if the ribcage is restricted in it's mobility then breathing becomes irregular and air can go into your stomach. This restriction can also cause one or both sides of the diaphragm to get stuck and not descend properly. When experiencing anxiety one can find difficultly getting a full breathe, but it's actually the opposite of what's happening. There is difficultly fully exhaling because one or both sides of the diaphragm haven't descended before an inhale is attempted. But for me simply exhaling/dropping that diaphragm fully wasn't enough. I had a rotator cuff injury that I subconsciously carried in an upward and forward position, as a way to protect it. This had caused me to twist my torso to the right leading me to put most of my weight into my right heel resulting in my left hip being in a constant state of extension. This state of constant left hip flexion resulted in me not activation my left glute muscles properly when walking (those muscles are actived my planting the heel into the ground). This inactivity results in a shortening and compression of muscles which then compensates by slightly lifting your hip up when walking, which will force your Quadratus Lumborum and psoas to be the primary muscles used which aren't strong enough to be used for that purpose. The Quadratus Lumborum and psoas are designed for hip flexion but also play a role in how the diaphragm raises and drops when breathing! When they get overworked they will get tight which will lead to added breathing difficultly as well as back pain making it hard to maintain an upright posture leading to slouching which puts more strain on the upper back, trapezius and neck and the entire cycle continues and will get worse and worse and if nothing is done you get so compressed and tight that you can then burst the disks in your spine. All of this compression, knots, and tights in the muscles can cause tightness in your intestines. The intestines naturally contract and release rhythmically and ingesting certain foods can stimulate the intestines. If the muscles in the body are super compressed, tight, and knotted up when the intestines are stimulated they can cause the intestines to contract and not release or spasm or completely release.

Like I said before I am not a doctor and all of this is purely assumptions based off of 100+ hours of my own research and experience. All I know is that I didn't think life was worth living and now I can live my life again with very little to no IBS pain/discomfort. Still working on fixing my structural issues but things are getting better. I'll post an update after seeing a new ports medicine professional.

These are some things that would have saved me so much time:

1: Hips are the most important structure when it comes to posture. Make sure your hips are working properly before spending time on other parts

2. Don't fight tension. The body creates tension and pain as a way to protect itself. Forcing something to stretch or release can make it 10x worse

3. When stretching/releasing muscles use silent breathing technique (breathe silently in and a soft exhale that is roughly twice the length of the inhale. When exhaling you shouldn't engage your ab muscles to exhale)

4. Learn to identify when you're in a posture that is putting strain of your body and how/when to stretch/relax/rest those muscles before something becomes overworked and knotted.

5. A really good Doctors/specialist is rare to find. Most will only treat one symptom at a time when you can have referred pain which can have them attempting to treat something that is never going to get better from that approach.