Living

Having an invisible illness will make you good at hiding what’s real. Many times, I’ve had to put on a front to not show how miserable I was feeling inside...

The first year after I was diagnosed with IBS and still in college, I was desperate to find a better way to manage and control my symptoms. Sometimes this led...

When I was first diagnosed with IBS in 2011, the most helpful member of my healthcare team was my nutritionist. She listened when physicians didn’t; she gave me concrete steps...

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a panic attack, but I have. I’m not going to go into the differences between a severe anxiety attack and a panic attack...

IBS often makes us feel that we need to accommodate others while we suffer through the bloating, pain, diarrhea, and discomfort. Why are we always so ready to change ourselves...

Stress and anxiety, as well as depression, can all play contributing roles to IBS or even at times be directly responsible for a flare. As such, I find it very...

OK, so what the HELL? What’s with the bloat all of a sudden? I used to be able to say that I had most of the IBS symptoms, but I...

Being an introvert with IBS can be difficult. Especially around extroverts whose opinions are so much louder than mine - even if they are opinions about what I can and...

I went on a weekend trip to the beach the other day with some friends. There was one couple that I’d only met the woman and had never met her...

Oh, how I don’t miss the days when IBS began making my life a living hell. I started dealing with IBS when I was a sophomore in college, and it...

Early on in my IBS journey, I learned to quickly find those few foods that never really triggered me and for the most part, was relatively benign. Even before I...

In my late teens, when I first began visiting a gynecologist; receiving pelvic exams and pap smears, I was informed of an interesting little tidbit about my body: I have...

I have run across somewhat of a trend among some of the doctors that I have seen for various issues. Before continuing, I would like to put out the disclaimer...

I have been having a really bad month with my stomach. All of my various stomach issues seem to be ganging up on me and have really sucked the life...

Lately, I have been experiencing some pretty intense abdominal cramps that have been waking me up in the middle of the night. This is not a complete anomaly for me:...

My IBS and anxiety go hand in hand. They’re best friends if you will, egging each other on to perform. Especially if I’m out in public and haven’t noted where...

I really don’t like using other people’s bathrooms, especially because I have IBS. I don’t care if you’re family or friend – I just can’t ever feel, or better yet...

I am a city girl, having been born and bred in Brooklyn, New York. I never laid eyes on a tent the first two decades of my life much less...

Digestive issues can complicate your life in many ways, one of which can be your sex life. With IBS, there’s a lot of unpredictability. There’s the pain, the diarrhea, the...

As IBS sufferers, we tend to talk a lot about our own experience with the illness. But for this article, I wanted to take a slightly different approach. After all...