How to Persevere with Finding a Solution

I now understand that there are so many factors that make my IBS symptoms better or worse, but in the beginning I believed that there was one perfect thing that would make it all better.

For a long time, I wrestled with fact that there was no single cure for this condition. I was sure that if I could just make one change to my life or diet, my symptoms would magically disappear! No more bloating, no more pain, no more flatulence, no more constipation, no more diarrhea! Goodbye, see you later, I’m cured! But when I couldn’t find that thing, I just wanted to give up and put up with the symptoms.

However, the digestive system is a complex living organism all of its own. It’s affected by what you eat, what you drink, how much sleep you get, what medication, drugs or alcohol you take, how stressed you are, how much exercise you do. Everything affects it because what goes into our digestive system to be broken down and absorbed is used to create the cells that make up our body and there is no easy fix.

The frustration of feeling better one day, but worse the next brought me to tears on many occasions. I would eat something one week and be fine, then eat the same thing the next week and feel awful. I found myself going from one practitioner to another, trying different natural health therapies, avoiding different foods, trying new supplements, trying new activities, the list continued but the issues were never resolved.

Eventually after many months and years of work and experimentation I reached a point where my digestive system was in good shape and I could manage my trigger foods and trigger situations.

But how did I get there when I wanted to give up? There were a number of things that really helped, including:

I learnt that even though I just wanted to give up, I couldn’t, because every time I experienced digestive symptoms it was reminder that I hadn’t figured out the puzzle just yet. Along the way I was reminded about how incredible the human body is and how it changes all the time. You may feel like giving up and just living with it, but remember gut health is one of the hottest topics in the health world and there are new discoveries all the time.

So hang in there, you’ve got this.