I had quite a lot of stomach problems about 7 years ago, before having children. I’d had them all my life but it wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I realized that most people do NOT feel sick all day long. Going vegetarian helped some, as meat seems to be the #1 way to make my stomach upset. But I was still living with cramping, bloating, nausea, and what I call “churniness”, every day, regardless of diet. For years my MD had told me that I probably just had stress ulcers, but didn’t offer anything except “be less stressed” or go onto OTC meds (which did NOTHING). Then I went to a GI doctor who put me on several food elimination trials and did an endoscopy . He found no signs of me ever having ulcers or reflux There was no scarring on my stomach wall or esophagus as there would have been from either of those. Despite the fact that there was no sign of anything wrong, he diagnosed me with GERD (gastroesophagal reflux disease) and put me on a prescription medication. I think I was on these for 2-3 years. When I became pregnant with my first child, I went off the medication cold turkey….and found that I didn’t need it! When I had reflux during my pregnancies, which didn’t occur often, I would just take papaya enzyme for my GERD. Or whatever it was.

Since I was pregnant and breastfeeding back-to-back for around 3 years, I didn’t really have to worry much about the GERD coming back. The hormones seemed to keep everything in fine working order! But now that my youngest is 2.5…it’s baaaack. Good times. Oh, cramping, bloating, nausea, and churniness — I did not miss you.

Only now I am not interested in prescription medications. I am not interested in masking the symptoms. My body is trying to tell me something and I want to know what it is.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources right now to do electrodermal screening, which I think would probably provide a lot of answers. Side rant: why the heck won’t my insurance pay for EDS? It will pay for unlimited years of $40/month prescription meds with side effects that would cause me to go on MORE meds, but it won’t pay for $800 in treatment that would take care of everything at once? Health care in the U.S. is stupid.

Anyway.

The only thing I can do is wait for an appointment with a slightly holistic doctor in our area who takes our insurance and doesn’t have a new patient appointment until the end of November. I get to feel this way until after Thanksgiving. HOORAY.

Meanwhile, I am taking several supplements (future post? perhaps.), going to the chiropractor every two weeks, and experimenting with a higher calorie and higher fat diet. I am starting to suspect that the amount of calories I burn doing and teaching Megaformer classes 5 times a week is exceeding the amount of calories I am taking in. In essence, my body might be attempting to burn muscle and other needed resources for fuel when it doesn’t have enough. All I know is that my stomach feels better when it’s full (just like it does in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, for me).

Obviously, this is just a theory, but I have been really trying to consciously eat enough to keep myself from severe hunger symptoms. Yesterday, I took a picture of every item of food I ate. You might notice that there is some absolute crap in here because I ran out of the house in a hurry several times and did not pack snacks. Hey, I’m just being honest!

Related notes:

After drinking the kefir smoothie at 8:30am, I felt horrible all morning. REALLY BAD. All the nausea, cramping, churniness.

I became rabidly hungry by 10am (as usual) but we were at a children’s consignment sale and I had given all the snacks in my purse to my kids and not brought anything for myself. Hence the bad-for-me drive-thru smoothie at 11:30am

I felt a little better after lunch, had to lie down while the kids napped because the cramping was so bad. It makes me very tired also.

I was at a friend’s house after dinner and all she had was cookies. Since I get ravenous every 2-3 hours, I had to eat 2 cookies while I was there.

Obviously I made poor choices after 8pm. I went to bed feeling bloated.

And yes, I have been tested for celiac and it came up negative. I have also done gluten elimination and it made me feel WORSE. Any time I take carbs out of my diet, the churiness part of the problem becomes overwhelming. REALLY BAD. I cannot express to you. Seriously. I cannot live with it. So do not leave me comments about being gluten intolerant. I cannot handle the amount of churniness. My son is gluten sensitive so we have plenty of gluten-free options around the house but they make me feel horrible. Weighing my stomach down seems to be the best treatment for the churniness portion. Has no effect on the cramping, though.

So there we are. Still on the journey, no end in sight yet. This post isn’t informative or helpful, as far as most of my posts often go, but I wanted to bring all my readers in on this journey with me (haha, you had no choice! You didn’t know I would be doing this!), because I think you are all very wise.

I’d love to hear your experiences, suggestions, and ideas!