Probiotics, vitamins, and anxiety.

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  • Desifreckle
    Desifreckle Posts: 110 Member
    edited September 2017
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    MichelleSilverleaf wrote: »
    It's pretty much impossible to cut out all sugar, that would mean cutting out a lot of fruits and veggies as well. IBS and anxiety can and often do go hand-in-hand, but for advice on treating anxiety get it from a mental health professional. Your obgyn may mean well, but anxiety disorders are way out of her scope. The only way you'll ever figure out what's triggered your anxiety and panic attacks is to see someone who specializes in that area. Not from your obgyn.

    Just curious, what prompted her to prescribe you all these pills? Was there a blood test?

    She didn't prescribe me anything. She suggested I take some vitamins and minirals which have actually made my daily anxiety go down quite severely, and lose weight. I've done plenty of research, my gp prescribed the pills, and yes I've had plenty of blood work done. Several times.


    As for sugar I kind of assumed everyone knew I meant outside of fruit and mostly just the added sugars. My bad. I eat fruit all the time.
  • Desifreckle
    Desifreckle Posts: 110 Member
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    bellaesprita wrote: »
    As someone who researches the microbiome, I would ask two things specifically...

    1) What dosage? There's a huge difference between a couple million and 25, 50, and 75 million I see in stores. Taking too much can drastically change your gut flora causing the issues you describe.

    2) Which strains? There's single strains like L. acidophilius and any kind of Bifidobacterium. There's also multi-strain options and brands that cater to women specifically.

    Other pointers:

    The initial effect you feel may be the purging of "bad" or pathogenic bacteria and the colonization of the "good" or commensal bacteria. Ask the doc for more details.

    Also make sure you feed the bacteria in your gut with lots of fiber. These are also called prebiotics. Some supplements have these, most don't. If you don't feed these bacteria, they die. If they die, the "good" bacteria can be outcompeted by the bad ones. That's when bad things happen.

    As @aeloine said, consider adding any of those foods to your diet. They don't have as much as you would get in a supplement, but they're good enough for most people wo/ GI issues.

    Also to ensure that the desired amount of bacteria survive the stomach and reach your gut, consider refrigerated options. Some labels tell you how much bacteria will survive this transit, but again most don't.

    Thank you. I'll ask my gp when I see her. I'm considering just asking to be referred to a gi though, she seems very unconcerned about it, but it litterly causes me pain.
  • Desifreckle
    Desifreckle Posts: 110 Member
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    singingflutelady wrote: »
    Just fyi, if you have digestive issues increasing your vegetable intake, especially raw veggies, can cause more issues. Fiber definitely can be a trigger.

    Yeah, found out broccoli is not good. Which makes me sad because I love broccoli. I may try fresh broccoli steamed without the rice I had with it to make sure though.
  • Desifreckle
    Desifreckle Posts: 110 Member
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    blomsj wrote: »
    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!

    Thank you, I'll look into that!
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,287 Member
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    You may want to drink Lifeway Keifer ... it has at least 12 probiotics in it.. you can get flavored varieties..Trader Joe's. . i drink the plain It is like liquid yogurt..but has 12 strains of probiotics. Also.. your brain is connected to your digestive system...and your anxieity will get better if you eat cultured foods that contain probiotics..or take the pills. But take ones with multifupul strains.
  • shaumom
    shaumom Posts: 1,003 Member
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    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?

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