Probiotics, vitamins, and anxiety.

If you take large doses of probiotics from the start, you may indeed suffer from some gas or diarrhea. Just go slow and ease into it. Some people are more sensitive than others and if you are tending toward having irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) they might temporarily aggravate it.

Never heard of iodoral but it looks to be an iodine supplement. Not sure why you would need that.

Is your obgyn prescribing the supplements for GI issues and diagnosing the eitiology of your anxiety? If so that seem a little outside her specialist scope.

Desifreckle wrote: »

CMNVA wrote: »

If you take large doses of probiotics from the start, you may indeed suffer from some gas or diarrhea. Just go slow and ease into it. Some people are more sensitive than others and if you are tending toward having irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) they might temporarily aggravate it.

Never heard of iodoral but it looks to be an iodine supplement. Not sure why you would need that.

Oh jeez I already have a lot of gas and acid

Just go slow. Don't take mega-doses. Honestly, I'm sensitive to things also and I often start with children's doses. You can find them formulated for children.

Here's my "two cents" based on my own experience with GI issues and medical "stuff":

Probiotics have never caused a problem for me. I do think, after trying several kinds, that my body has responded best to one that has prebiotics built in as well (the one I've settled on has a dual capsule for effective delivery).

Something I strongly recommend based on your food poisoning situation, though, is to also consider getting a good digestive enzyme in your regimen, at least with every major meal. My husband had a horrid experience with staph food poisoning from a local restaurant and continued to have issues after he was "better". Only once I did a bunch of internet searching did I find someone who had a similar set of issues who presented a good solution. Based on what I read, my husband was on the digestive enzymes with every meal for about a month, and since then we've reduced to twice a day, then to once a day, and now he takes them a few times a week as a precautionary measure. I take them every day myself. I've had my gallbladder out, and in discussions with a nutritionist, my nutrient uptake was in question, so that was the route I've needed to take.

It's always a good idea to check any supplements you are considering for their quality and consistency with labeling. If nothing else, reading negative reviews on any product should shed light on anything major (so long as there is a decent-sized review set on a third-party source), but there is a lot of variance out there. If you are into detail, you might consider consulting a resource such as consumerlab.com. They have a wealth of information, but there is a subscription cost. I'm not sure if there is another quality resource like them "out there," but it'd probably be worth it to check.

I wish you the best on your journey to health!

MFP can help narrow down which foods trigger your worst gas. Enter your foods every day and keep a diary of your bloating/gas issues.

My daughter was surprised to find that some "healthy" foods triggered gas for her; especially beans. She just couldn't understand how a seemingly healthy food was the cause of her problems. Ditched the beans, digestive issues resolved themselves.

I think adding probiotics like yogurt and Greek Yogurt could be very good for you. And eating them instead of taking a pill could help with your anxiety.

OT but curious and have a microbiome question for @bellaesprita. I have had a proctocolectomy so don't have a colon or rectum. I've heard conflicting reports about probiotics use in those without a colon. Some say it's useless because of no colon, some say it can lead to SIBO and same say it's beneficial. Are you familiar with probiotics use in the colonless?

Edited to add I have crohn's if that makes a difference.

bellaesprita wrote: »

Hello @singingflutelady. I'm not familiar with the literature on the microbiome and people wo/ colons. Just be aware that most of the gut bacteria reside in your large intestine. Also most strains in probiotics are replenishing bacteria that should reside there.

For folks with Crohn's, YES! There's a huge push for more research in that field. In fact, it's one of the few conditions in which fecal pills/transplants (Google it!) has shown to be incredibly effective.

The issue with microbiome research is it is in its infancy and so we are still trying to get a census of who's there, what they're doing, and what are their health effects.

Thanks for answering.
That's what I thought re microbiome. I have read/know people who have had fecal transplants but it was mostly for c diff. It wouldn't have saved my colon as I lost it because of multiple nasty fistulas but I have seen it help others. The IBD research going on at the moment is very promising.

I took antibiotics that messed with my gut bacteria. Drinking acidophilus and eating some active culture yogurt helped immensely. I didn't have any bad reaction from using those.

So sorry you are having pain. Have you ever been tested for Celiac disease, by any chance? (in the last couple months, specifically) Some of what you say really does seem like you'd be a good candidate to check for this. It can trigger at any time, so if you were tested more than 6 months ago and were negative, it still might be worth checking.

Most doctors are, well, abysmally ignorant about this disease, so they won't even think to test for it, sadly.

Many think that you have to be underweight to have it, but it turns out that over 1/3 of people with it have problems with being overweight. Anxiety and/or depression can be symptoms of it, cause by inflammation and nutritional deficiencies that the disease causes. It can also be triggered sometimes by viruses or bacterial infections, they believe...like a stomach virus or food poisoning.

The fact that you've had food poisoning, and that your anxiety is being helped a lot with nutritional supplements, truly makes it seem like testing for this disease might be a good idea. Your GP can order the test; a GI is not required for the initial blood panel for this disease (although you need to be eating gluten regularly for the test to be valid).

Also, if your GP says that you obviously don't have celiac disease, without doing any testing, that's a good sign of how ignorant they are. Because there is no overt physical signs of celiac disease, at all (and the last time the medical community thought that was over 15 years ago). I only mention this because if your GP is not that concerned about your gut and physical state, that's not a good sign that they are really listening to you, paying attention, or that they are pretty ignorant, unfortunately. And with that in mind - if you get tested, I would go look online for what the test results mean.

Testing for this disease is still crude, so there is a panel of tests used, because having false negatives is still at about 20%, I believe. So one negative test out of the panel doesn't mean a person doesn't have celiac disease. but again...you wouldn't believe how many doctors don't actually know this and assume that if you have a negative result on any of them, then you are fine. :-/


Oh, and re: the weight related thing related to gut issues. There has been some correlation between weight gain and gut problems. But the thing is...that's NOT causation. And honestly, much of the most recent research suggests that the issue is often the other way around: whatever is causing the gut issues is causing the weight gain, too.

Like celiac disease, where the folks get treated and their weight drops. Or leaky gut issues, where folks who get this taken care of seem to lose weight, too. Or how researchers have found that you can swap out gut bacteria from overweight and underweight individuals in animals and the skinny ones gain weight and the overweight ones lose it. While eating the same diet.

Unfortunately, the medical community seems like it has become so used to seeing 'being overweight' as bad, that whenever they find a correlation between weight and a health condition, you'll start seeing weight causation articles popping up almost immediately.

There was an article a few years back about a connection between food allergies and overweight children. And literally, within a couple weeks, all you saw were articles on how being overweight caused allergies. Except that wasn't what the study said at all - it just said you find the two together. And in fact, most of the parents I knew of kids with allergies found that their kids lost weight when they went off the food allergies, and kept it off. Speculation was that the kids were eating more because their guts were so damaged by the allergens that they weren't absorbing all the nutrients the body needed, so the kids ate more to try and compensate, essentially.

So i would honestly take that 'weight causes gut issues' with a grain of salt, personally.

And lastly, probiotics. Is it the pills that freak you out? They have liquid ones, if that's the case. Would making a fermented product yourself make it better? You can make fermented foods, like homemade pickles and such (if fermented) that will give you probiotics as well, but you have more control over them, so that might be better?