I'm complicated. When I don't reduce FODMAP foods in my diet, I'm IBS-D with a capital D the size of Montana.
But with FODMAP restriction, my IBS leans more towards the C variety.
One of the problems with IBS treatment is the need to identify all of the reasons your gut is dysbiotic. For many of us, it isn't just dealing with sheer numbers of good bugs and bad bugs, their ratios, etc. It also has to do with the mechanics of how the gut is functioning. That's physiological, usually neurological, and not the professional purview of most functional medicine doctors.
If you have neurological problems with how your gut performs, you're going to have one helluva time keeping the dysbiosis in check. Now pile on other complications like genetic tissue alterations as with Ehlers-Danlos, genetic inability to clear toxins, chronic infections from messed up immune systems, and physiological alterations to the pelvic/abdominal landscape because of surgery, and voila! Gut problems from hell!
That's what I'm dealing with. All of the above. And as my gut tissue ages, these problems become more and more increasingly difficult to manage.
Based on my own health issues and what I've read online from other patients, I am more convinced with each passing year that this is where the rubber meets the road. That the vast majority of everyone's health issues begin and end in their guts.
Until every single aspect of gut functionality is addressed and dealt with, including issues like motility and physiology, we will never heal our ME/CFS and/or whatever crap that disables us. And any ME/CFS/FMS/CIRS/MCSS doctor or medical specialist who isn't completely up to speed on the latest and greatest research regarding these gut issues, needs to catch a clue and become a gut expert if they ever have any hope of healing their patients.
My own specialist of the past 14 years is woefully lacking in understanding this stuff. He gets the basics about the bugs but doesn't appreciate the importance of the neurological functioning and physiological complications that so many of us are saddled with. And therein lies the problem.
I've been chasing bug issues and not paying enough attention to the other layers of complications which keep the bug issues problematic. All issues need to be adressed simultaneously. But good luck finding doctors who truly get that.
