it may be a little bit descriptive in places. So if you are squeamish in the slightest or not really interested in such medical conditions then please turn away
How it started.. About two years ago I started with was slightly upset stomach. It was so slight I was half wondering if I was just imagining it or not. This went on for a few months.
Later I seemed to always have a slightly worse upset stomach when I was at my girlfriends. Eventually I wondered if it was because I was drinking more cups of tea at hers and I would ordinarily do when I was at home. this went on for I think a couple of weeks until I decided to have a milkshake to finish off the rest of the milk. So it was a rather big glass! a few hours later my gut was in extreme agony. It felt like my whole insides was going to explode. The pain was indescribable to the point I was considering ringing for a ambulance, a decision I definitely do not take lightly believe me! but I battled it out and I was ending up with extremely bad trapped wind very loud rumbles from my gut which was extremely painful but a few seconds later the majority of the pain lessened. Over the next few hours the pain got less and less. It did not really take long to figure out I was lactose intolerant all of a sudden. Even a slight bit of regular milk in a cup of tea was enough to cause me upset. So I cut out drinking milk and having cups of tea for the time being. But I was still having that slight gut ache still.indeed a lot of foodstuffs have milk in them. So I had to rule all that out as well which took a lot of time. And is still actually ongoing.
I think it was the summer time where the pain was worse but I could not understand why. The only thing I possibly linked it to was that I was undoubtedly drinking a lot more because of the hot weather but I could not really understand how that would be a factor. I was intermittently getting gut pain in the mix of all this as well.
It was not until about a year ago that I purchased two tins of sweets from the local petrol station. I picked up two different flavours. Unknowingly one was a sugar-free 10 and the other one was normal sugar. The normal sugar one I quite happily munch through without seemingly any side-effects. However the sugar-free one, the first one I was sucking seem to make my stomach churn and grumble which I never really thought much of it. Could have just be " one of those things" this does happen anyway. So I sucked the second one and then the rumbling and stomach pain started getting worse. I then started sucking a third one and thought this is not right there must be something in these sweets which is upsetting me. Looking on the tin it was just basically contain sucralose sweetener.
After much looking around the Internet it seems to be a common problem as a evident for people with IBS. though that particular sweetener did not seem to be actually listed in any of the sites, or at least the majority of them which I could find. so I started looking through all the foodstuffs I was consuming to see if anything had this sweetener in them. To my amazement the dilute squash drinks all have it in! so finally the link was made from previously why I suspected drinking a lot more cause the problems to be worse in the summertime. while all these sites generally say sweet there is safe, a lot of sites also say it is a irritant. clearly it is, at least for me! I remember reading a study saying they was giving sweetener to rats and it cause them to become lactose intolerant if I remember rightly. When I think back to how long I had been drinking squash, basically way back into my school life and drinking it daily. I really do wonder about the "safety" of long-term consumption of sweetener. Considering it now has been linked to killing the gut bacteria which is responsible for breaking down the lactose sugars in milk etc.
Aspartame sweetener does not seem to affect me. I have not really consumed a great deal of that yet. I do drink Pepsi Max which has that sweetener in it. But I generally only drink one or two a week if that anyway. But in any case effect or not, it is not giving me masses of agony like sucralose sweetener does. Apparently Aspartame is actually a very old chemical concoction which has had the most testing done with it over the years. I assume all the other sweeteners are basically just cheaper knock offs of it. I have not really researched this by any great amount. I am somewhat reluctant to consume any products with sweetener in them now. Which is rather difficult when you start reading the ingredients of drinks etc!
During all this time I was doing the " elimination diet". it is a lot harder to do than you think when you consume multiple different items daily. The general consensus is that people who are lactose intolerant can " stomach" it in small amounts. I may be able to consume a small piece of shortbread a week but I definitely cannot eat it everyday because the stomach pains start coming back. It is a very long ordeal which I think has been ongoing near enough daily for the past couple of years. That time I've had a poorly gut but at least I found two things which definitely upset me and I can avoid them like the plague.
Fast forward to basically these past few weeks and I have noticed while I do not really have much gut problems now. my bladder seems to be getting upset for no apparent reason. After much googling it then becomes clear that it is overactive bladder (OAB). annoyingly like many things nobody really knows what causes this condition all really how to solve it. However at the time I thought it was just another symptom of lactose intolerance or sweetener intolerance. But this was something different. Ironically I was linking this back to drinking tea again even though I had been drinking lactose-free milk for over a year now without issue.
For those who do not know what overactive bladder is. it is basically a condition where you need to go for a wee, but it suddenly comes on like someone flicking a switch and it is like the worst possible feeling you have ever had that you need to go wee. Only the problem is, he cannot actually go half the time
you get this feeling where you really really want to go and you feel like you are going to literally wee yourself, only nothing happens and that feeling intensifies as literally the minutes pass. if you do actually managed to wee, the feeling does generally subsides but only for a short time. Basically within a hour that feeling comes back again. As people know I have difficulty sleeping a lot of the time as it is. So getting up every half an hour to go to the toilet because of this really takes its toll on you after a while. Because I have been eliminating food and drink items for a while now. I was pretty much living on water and toast for the past few weeks because I just wanted to "reset" my gut before I started trialling other foods.I was basically okay for the past few weeks without much trouble. Until Christmas Day that is..
So I had Christmas dinner on Christmas Day of course. I was not really eating anything out of the ordinary. Just the usual stuffs. So I decided to trial a cup of tea. A couple hours later I went to my girlfriends and a couple hours later I went home. Only the urgency to wee came back with avengeance. I was only a few miles away from home so I (hypothetically) floored it on the way home going as fast as possible. Only to get home to wee and nothing happens. I really can't emphasise how urgent you feel you want to go and you just literally cannot go. So I was basically going to and from the bathroom for the next several hours until finally I did go a little bit now and then then the pains slowly faded away. So WTF now I thought ?
Again more looking on the Internet and there was various theories of why cups of tea can upset people. One was the acidity level in the tea can affect people with sensitive bladders. Though this did not really seem to be the case because I basically have a small orange every day with no ill consequences and even drink fruit juices more often with no consequences. It is also then you realise that tea actually has caffeine in it which I never knew! so few days have now passed and I have got some caffeine free tea which I have had 2 cups of tea so far today without consequence.
so after two years I have finally figured this out :
1) lactose intolerance - milk related items.
2) IBS - sucralose sweetener.
3) OAB - Caffeine.
Unfortunately a lot of foodstuffs have one of those things in general
it is why it has taken such a incredible long time of trial and error over the past two years. And having these issue for such a long time is certainly not pleasant.In terms of lactose intolerance, I do seem to be able to stomach the occasional pizza. But indeed no more than one per week. It seems the high the fat cheese in items are less lactose it has in it. A few weeks back I was eating normal grated cheddar cheese with some crackers without issue. But there was a span of having cheese and pizza and cookies and basically various items which would contain milk (lactose) and I ended up with a bit of gut problems again. The only reason I was really trialling this was because lactose-free cheese is more expensive. But indeed I will have to stick with this and lactose-free milk. I did manage to stomach some rice pudding for a few weeks. But all of a sudden those upset me again. So I don't know if I was just having too much lactose related stuff for their change the supplier of the rice pudding. I have got a tin of Ambrosia rice pudding in the cupboard because it is basically the highest fat content which I may be able to eat. Certainly not looking forward to trying that one out.
one last thing I have found a bit of a coincidence relating to OAB. Is some study I was reading claimed that people with OAB had a zinc deficiency. Ironically I was taking zinc tablets because I thought they were good for IBS. though I suspected they were causing me upset as well so had not taken any for a long time. so I took a zinc tablet last week and coincidentally the days after I did not have any bladder troubles. They did seem to trigger off my IBS symptoms. But apparently zinc can be a irritant to the gut. so I make sure I always take them after I have had something to eat and a good drink (of water) and seem to be okay doing that. While tablets are generally said to take weeks or months to "kick in" I don't really think that is the case unless it is extreme coincidence. But I don't think it is..
Because going back probably 10+ years ago I was having shooting pains down my left leg which were rather painful. This progressed into my feet and even my hands. Though I cannot remember exactly what vitamin it was, I think it was vitamin E. but literally the day after taking them the pains went away and I have never had them since. After having these pains for months on end for all the sudden just to suddenly stop I don't believe is just a coincidence when I started taking vitamin E. Again vitamin E is from memory. but the vitamin deficiency had been linked to such pains as I described so the link is there. But this was also a bit of trial and error because I basically went through all the vitamins one by one to start with. While A,B vitamins could have been a factor I had not really been taking them that long anyway. And vitamin E being linked exactly to my symptoms as well..
It is also rather problematic that I take antihistamine tablets and other tablets which all seem to have the bulking agent made out of.. you guessed it.. lactose! so indeed I have stopped taking the majority of tablets for the time being. I generally look for the paracetamol and Ibroprofen in capsules. they are a lot more expensive than the tablets but needs must as they say..
But on the subject of vitamins I don't profoundly subscribe to them either. But what I did find interesting, is that while I could have a zinc deficiency, the reverse of that is having too much copper in your blood. Which can give the appearance of zinc deficiency. I also now think taking multivitamins is basically pointless. Because if you have too much copper in your blood, and you take a multivitamin to counteract the apparent zinc deficiency, then you just up the levels of all vitamins and accomplish basically nothing. The imbalance between the zinc and copper would still be there.
Also ironically folic acid seems to be in the mix along with zinc. The irony being the majority of the items with those vitamins in them we stopped actually having a while ago. Things like red kidney beans and chickpeas. It seems we stopped having them because we could never eat the full tin, so we ended up chucking away a lot of them. also similar related foodstuffs we stopped having because of similar wastages. Indeed am trying to reintroduce these into my diet has a more regular thing again.
Of course this vitamin stuff is a highly debatable subject and it is just my opinions based on my own personal experiences. I personally would not recommend anyone taking multivitamins unless you have a specific need to. If anything, if you have any sort of health issues then just literally go through them one at a time A-Z. or battle it out with your doctor to get a blood test.
As a side note of OAB. I did buy the test strips which test multiple things to do with your your urine. Things like infections and PH levels , blood mass etc etc. Basically I had a clean bill of health across the board quite literally. I don't expect them to be 100% reliable. But as a quick indication it was good enough.
So at this point in time I think I have concluded all my gut related problems. Hopefully I will not jinx it! also hopefully I don't end up with any other related problems as diagnosing foodstuffs one at a time takes a incredible long time to do.
Now if I could only solve my sinus related issues......
I hope this will be of useful to someone else who is suffering out there. There does not really seem to be many personal people's accounts of experiences and diagnosing these issues. so indeed if you are a sufferer, you're not alone and maybe my trials and tribulations will help some other poor soul one day.
