Stomach issues for a over a month, utterly fedup!

Digestive health
1

Hi everyone, I have been having pretty constant stomach issues for over a month now & I’ll try to be as detailed as possible with my symptoms (apologies if they get a bit gross). So a little about me, im 35, female, smoker, IBS sufferer (stress related) slightly milk intlorerant.

Just over a month ago, the quality of my stool started to decrease & frequency started to increase. The best way to describe the stool consistency is as if I have eaten something bad that my stomach didn’t agree with and wants it out of my gut! It is not full blown diarrhea consistency (I have only had that once through this whole time) consistency is sticky, not formed – would say a type 6 on the Bristol stool chart. As this bad stool started to have an impact on my day to day life I went to the doctors, they did blood test and stool sample & all came back clear (good news, but doesn’t solve my problem) so the doctors have put this down to stress related, however the symptoms are completely different to my normal stress related IBS. I have been put on Mebeverine x3 daily & Omeprazole x1 daily. I have found that they do slow down the sense of urgency to go to the bathroom but the stool quality and frequency has not improved.

Diet – I have cut diary out on my diet & have been careful with what I am eating – diary free bread, freefrom ranges, more fibre etc & eating more fibre did help for a couple days with the stool quality but that was short lived. This week for a couple days I ate nothing but beige foods – toast for breakfast, porridge oats for lunch & potatoes or rice based dinner & I found this improved my stool quality a lot, so yesterday I thought I would try eating normally again to see the impact and low and behold I have had a bad stomach again today with the stool quality being back at type 6 & frequency is up. To me this rules out my stomach issues being related to stress. But to probably sound contradictory it rules out food intolerances as how can I now be that intolerant to food that isn’t beige (bread, oats & bread?) is it possible for a stomach bug not to show up on stool sample? I’m not due back at the doctors for another week but I’m reaching out to see if anyone has any thoughts of experience themselves of this kinda of thing? I am utterly fedup, it is having an impact now on my daily life & I just want a normal stool (lol)    

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These are very normal patterns for iBS.  What is fine for your stomach one week, may well irritate the following week.  Stick with the beige foods if they help your stools. Try a food diary and the Fodmap diet.  You can get IBS symptoms without being stressed particularly if you have food intolerances.  IBS can feel like a stomach bug.  When my IBS started, it felt like an infection.

With IBS, you will have to accept that you may never get a normal stool.  The stress of these symptoms will make your IBS worse. Mebeverine is not a good treatment for IBS, it is a stomach irritant for many people.  I had to stop them within a few days and threw them out because they made me 50% worse. 

 

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Hi Pippa, 

Thanks for your thoughts on this, it might be worth me getting a food intolerance test done to see what foods arent agreeing with me & i will start the food diary (i should have started it sooner!)

The only things im clinging to that make me think this isnt IBS is its not my usual IBS symptoms (stool is vey mucusy when i get IBS) which i have had occiasionaly during this time, but i also do not get any IBS cramping or no major bloating. all in all i'm not getting any pain with this & its come up very out of the blue & the concern is this has happened 80% of the time in the last 6 weeks! it usually in the mornings like my body didnt agree with something the day before and it needs to get it out, once its out my stomach usually settles for the rest of the day until the next morning & it starts all over again! smile

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IBS symptoms can change over time.  Mucus in stools is very common with IBS. It is very common to worry when you suddenly get symptoms you are unfamilar with,  Stressing about this will make your IBS worse.  You don't have to get bloating to have IBS.  I don't get this symptom either and I don't get IBS related food intolerance. My appetite is very good.  Sometimes, I only get nausea with my IBS and no pain.

When my IBS started, my pain and bowel habit change was constant and I panicked because I read that you only get come and go spasmodic pain and my brother's IBS was different from mine and he had worse stomach pain than me.  I quickly learned thst everyone is different.

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can i prescribe you some medicines ??