Naturally Gutsy

This week sure has been interesting.  I’ve been ramping up all those supplements as you can see in my last post.  Trying to time them all around meals and life is a significant challenge but I’m figuring it out.

One of the best changes I’ve noticed is how much clearer my thinking is and how I’m able to focus! I feel so much less ADHD than usual, which is AWESOME! The mental changes that are happening have been wonderful. I feel less anxious than I can ever remember feeling before; I feel content and genuinely happy, mindful in each moment of where I am and that I’m enjoying being in the moment. A friend of mine suggested, “Your body has been so on-edge with all the gut problems for so long that your mind is probably just now recognizing that it can relax because your gut isn’t going to explode.”

From a cognitive perspective, the Candida Diet (started January 2011) helped decrease the depression and especially the hallucinations. It didn’t wipe either of those issues off the map, however, and I was still as ditsy and unfocused as ever. Finding out that potatoes were affecting my mind in very unhealthy ways was a helpful discovery as well, around the same time that I started the Candida Diet.

SCD is the second time that I’ve had cognitive improvement due to a diet that I was starting solely for the purpose of improving my gut and general physical health. I never in a million years expected either the Candida Diet nor the SCD to improve my mental health. But the Candida Diet improved my mental health more than it seemed to improve my physical health. My GI Psychologist told me that the gut and brain are very connected and that if the gut improves, the brain will follow, and that my brain was recognizing positive changes in my gut even if my guts didn’t feel better. I sure wish that in early 2011 I had known about SCD and had realized that the progress I was seeing with the Candida Diet was mainly because the Candida Diet was low-carb.

I really feel like I’m a bit more “myself” this past week. It’s cool but odd to “see myself” feel like myself because I think I’ve just forgotten who I really am underneath. I wrote an email to a friend a few days ago: “You know, this is kinda weird… not a bad weird, just something I’m noticing that I never would have expected. In the last few days, I’ve been much more patient with people, less angry, more patient with myself even, and I’m in a “life is good and I love you” mood. I have to say, this is not my norm, or at least it hasn’t been for quite a long time. I don’t know how it’s changed, but of course I’m glad it has. I just feel happier and more patient and I feel what I think is just this loving care and concern for others which I don’t think I’ve genuinely felt down deep for a long time. Is it because I’m not as dead-beat exhausted? Is it because of the supplements and the diet working positively on my mind? Certainly I’ve also done so much better with the ADHD in the last few days (except this afternoon when I was totally wiped out and having some trouble…but that was because I was totally wiped out; I’m doing better since I ate before work). I’m grateful to God for His kindness in this area to be sure. Yet still curious how the change came about and hopeful that it will stick around! Extra hugs to you.”

My energy levels are now higher than they were before my flare, and I feel like I’m making steady progress. I couldn’t be more excited, and I spent too much time telling a few close friends how excited I was about my progress – they were probably bored, but after hearing me complain for several years about how my health was declining all the time, I guess they were willing to hear the opposite for a change! I’m taking less naps because I don’t NEED them, and I’m sleeping pretty well at night and feeling rested in the morning. I noticed this week that when I was working around the house doing chores, I didn’t always look at simple chores (washing three dishes?) and feel overwhelmed both mentally and physically; I felt like I could tackle it and I did!

Probably because of the combination of actually having more physical energy with having more mental energy and mental clarity, I honestly feel more confident than I’ve felt….uhm….EVER! I feel like I can handle “adult responsibilities” and not spaz about it. I feel confident because God has given me the fortitude and determination to manage my illnesses as best as possible, even when that requires significant sacrifices – He gives me the grace and strength I need. I’m proud of the work I’ve done to help my body and mind heal, and its nice to be able to honestly say that I’m pleased by something I’ve done rather than feeling stupid, incompetent, or like a failure to myself and the rest of humanity. With God’s Almighty Help, I’ve changed my entire lifestyle around 180 degrees in 2.75 years and I’ve learned to be very disciplined in many areas of my life.

Since I started the higher levels of supplements, my bloating has come down a lot – its still there, but much less than my “norm” and things have been pretty quiet on the gut-front all in all. Still having some visceral hypersensitivity in the low left area (sigmoid colon) when there is stool hanging around right there, but its generally transient pain. I’ve had just a little stomach pain, but that too has been fleeting and I haven’t used any enemas since my March flair-up ended. Yay for progress!

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Unfortunately, I’m still really sensitive to STRESS. …REALLY sensitive. Today I went with two friends, Geo and JR, to a doctor’s appointment. The appointment was for JR, not for me, but Geo and I were asked to go along to support him and make sure we asked the right questions of his doctor. I was a passenger in the van we took, and we were running late but the Geo is a good driver so I felt safe. But my guts started feeling twitchy because we were running late, and then that carsick feeling started hitting me, and I knew once the guts start acting up even a little bit it’s usually downhill from there.

I applied my DBT skills – using Reason Mind (“we are going to be late, but I’ve now called the doctor’s office and they are okay with that; we now have directions that are correct and I’m with friends – everything is going to be fine; just enjoy the time you have with your friends and focus on the task at hand”), self-calming by using my phone to work on planning my meals for the next day and reviewing my calendar, singing in the car with friends, etc. But the gut action had already reached a level that I was no longer in control of my visceral organs, to say the least. As we got out of the van, I was thinking, “Oh dear…I can’t go yet but the pain is tearing through my sigmoid colon – HELP!”. We made it through the appointment, but my pain escalated to the place where I had to ask Geo to hold the papers and manage the rest of the questions I had written down because I couldn’t focus or deal with anything beyond pain management at that moment. Finally, the appointment (which went well for my friend who was there to see the doctor) was over and I tore through the building looking for the nearest bathroom as Geo tried to hold doors open for me – I was so frantic to find a restroom that I was going in the wrong direction and in circles – I just HAD TO GO NOW!

There it was! If ever there was a white plastic toilet seat that should have been gold-plated with a heavenly light shining upon it…it was THAT one! (…or at least it was that one for Today.)

And then the diarrhea came. 10 minutes later, I felt better, but I was frustrated. I had not gone to see one of MY doctors; it wasn’t a big deal that we were late even; and I was generally having a good time with my friends. Why does my body respond so STRONGLY to situations that I don’t necessarily feel are especially emotionally stressful? A little stressful perhaps, but nowhere near earth-shattering. I’ll be 28 this month, and I’d LIKE to have control of my bowels as my Birthday present, please!

My body seems unable to distinguish a “little stressor” from a “BIG stressor”. For example, when a close friend of mine has low blood sugars while we’re talking on the phone and I can’t help her, that’s a BIG stressor and it’s somewhat understandable that perhaps I’d have diarrhea after that. When I have to call the ambulance because a neighbor has fallen and is bleeding from the head and unconscious and I’ve just been providing first aid, it’s also reasonable that I may have a strong gut response to a big stressor like that. But though my mind understands that these types of emergency situations are different from the little everyday situations of life, my gut isn’t that smart. The little situations such as being late for an appointment, saying something embarrassing on occasion, trying to fix a computer when I’m not 100% confident I know what I’m doing, or someone cutting me off in traffic so that I have to press the brakes hard to avoid sitting in their front seat with them (which I avoid successfully) are minimal stressors in the long-run, but they can make me have to run for the loo just as much as the BIG stressors do.

Because my mind isn’t necessarily overly stressed about these things, the first place I notice the stress for the small stressors is actually IN MY GUT. I can use DBT skills all day long and oftentimes I’m still unable to control my gut’s over-exaggerated responses to the mundane daily challenges, in part because by the time I have my first twinge of discomfort, my ability to pull my body back into submission is almost entirely gone. It really happens that fast.

That leaves me with two hypothesis, neither of which I know how to prove.

A) Hormones that are released immediately upon mental recognition of a stressful event are at the root of my gut’s over-exaggerated responses (whether it be diarrhea – more likely – or pelvic floor dysfunction and constipation – less likely but it’s happened), and while I may be able to handle things in a reasonable manner in my mind, the gut itself cannot differentiate between a little stress and a lot of stress because it reacts to hormones in a “primal” way and doesn’t possess a “reason mind”. Therefore, I may first notice the stress in my gut and may have to wait out the course of the symptoms I’m experiencing as the hormones released due to the stressful event/thought are finished acting upon my body systems.

B) Because I’ve had so many years of gutsy issues, it’s possible that when I start to feel that twinge of discomfort, I just assume (even subconsciously?) that my ability to control my body’s responses is no longer available. Therefore, I may feel even more stressed in anticipation of a GI “event” (D or C or just unbearable gut pain) which I’ve assumed is unavoidable and tied to any level of stressor upon my body/mind.

Although I find hypothesis B to be less likely, I’m trying to remain open-minded to all possibilities. I want help, and if that means admitting I may have a problem upstairs, then okay, I’m willing to do that (I wasn’t willing to do that for many years). The reason I think B is less likely is because when I feel very happy and excited, I can get diarrhea too. The over-exaggerated gut responses aren’t limited to just negative stressors. Positive and enjoyable “stressors” can have the same effects (talk about ruining your happy excited mood in a jiffy, eh?!).

Because both negative as well as positive stressors can cause GI “events,” I’ve tried to blunt my emotional highs, lows, and spikes. If you know me, then you can guess how hard that would be – I’m a fairly emotional person and I feel emotions deeply. I’m having D and C events much less frequently than I did in college, high school, middle school, or elementary school, or even while working at different jobs during and after college. D was my life until I went Gluten Free in the summer of 2009. Stress and D have been linked like Siamese twins since I was a child. Now, however, I feel like my life is more stable than it’s ever been and I wonder how much of my progress in having less frequent “events” is due to having a more stable lifestyle, an easy job with little stress (I work from home by phone and don’t have to worry about commission to get paid!), having safe and healthy friendships, and not worrying about my grades or taking care of children or paying off debt (I avoid debt for my health’s sake) and the common stressors that most people have in their lives. I’ve created this sheltered little bubble from all of that. So, if I had the stressors in my life that the average person deals with in a day, would I be a gutsy mess and living in the bathroom again? I don’t know, but I’m beginning to expect my fate would follow its historic “eventful” path until I figure out WHY my gut responds in these violent ways and WHAT I can do about it.

Anyone else suffering with unplanned GI “events” from the small stressors in life? I’d love to hear from you. I don’t know who I can talk to about this. I feel alone and frustrated that at 28, I’m still struggling to control my bowels.

Gutsy Girl