What is the secret to not having flare ups of your IBS?

I had a patient ask me what is my secret for being able to maintain my IBS and not have so many flare ups.
For years I was using anti gas medication, activated charcoal, and Imodium. Then one day my body would start having withdrawals from the Imodium. I knew when the Imodium was wearing off because I would start having cold sweats and then my body would shake and I would feel like I wanted to vomit. This would last for hours. I thought I was going to die.

I didn't know what else to do now that I couldn't take Imodium any more. The activated charcoal only worked so well as I was also taking about 6 capsules every 4 hours or so of the anti-gas medications.

I was a wreck. I couldn't go anywhere without having a game plan on knowing where the bathrooms were and I couldn't go to the park with my daughter without having to turn around and head back home or go to the bathroom every 5 minutes. I was letting my medical condition control me. Not the other way around.

I finally decided to start working on myself. When I mean working on myself and I mean the whole thing. Spiritual, Emotional, and Physical. The easy part was the physical. That is all exercise and diet. The hard part was the emotional/spiritual part. I had to dig deep. Go where I didn't want to go. I thought I knew how to deal with life, but I was wrong.

I was seeing myself as a person who was more then half empty instead of seeing myself as someone who was whole and complete.  I started with reading books which lead me to go to support groups and to finally knowing what I was doing and how I have a choice everyday on how I'm going to handle and look at a situation.

It was a hard road looking at how I made my own drama and how I was contributing to other people's drama.  I still have times where I fall flat on my face, but learning to have a more positive outlook of myself and life has helped with keeping the flare ups down with my IBS.

Yes I still have IBS, but I don't let it control me anymore because I know that I am a whole and complete person even with having IBS.

Respect of Self and IBS

It has been a while since I posted. The clinic is getting busy.

While that has been going on I started to notice about respect. Do you have respect for ourselves to tell the truth to us about our health?

I noticed that when I stopped having respect for myself and not slowing down that my IBS was getting worse. When I put in the time to exercise, get plenty of sleep, and eating healthy I can maintain my IBS better.

What is respecting one's self? I think it's a lot of things.

Here are a few examples:

Not telling yourself you are fat or ugly or any other negative comment.

Not saying "yes" to everything.

Knowing your bodies limits each day and not going beyond it.

Not being around people who don't respect you.

Not undervaluing yourself.

Being true to you. Not changing yourself to fit someone else's image of who they think you should be.

I can't jog!!!

School is back in full swing I thought I would go outside and see if I could pick up jogging again.
With in seconds I realized why I don't jog.  I have 2 cysts on my liver that are 2 inches each rubbing against my ribs if I try any jogging, jump roping, and etc. I get nauseous rather quickly if I try to jog. 

I will stay with the bike riding, speed walking and weights to get a good workout. Yoga works too.

Jogging isn't for everybody.

Is remission of IBS permenant?

The answer to that question is very complicated because there are a lot of variables involved.

I think that a lot of people can be in remission from flare ups with their IBS for years.
Flare ups can still occur if there is stress or if one eats the wrong foods again or the body decides it's going to be allergic to something different then what was already on your food allergy list.

Other factors like hormone imbalance can sometimes bring on flare ups as well.

The point is to learn to enjoy where you are at in the moment that you have it. Whether it's a good day or a bad day. Even if the flare ups are bad it will still help to see it as a blessing to make it through the day.

On my bad days I forgive myself for not being able to do everything and just know that I it alright.
Because it is alright to rest and recoup.

Going in Circles

Yesterday on my radio show "Here's to your Heath with Dr. Burns" I talked with Dr. Allan Hunter.
In his book Gratitude and Beyond he talks about how we go in circles and continue to think about things that aren't good for us for our energy and bring us down.

Then I started thinking about this with health and with gut issues. If we have anxiety about our gut issues, then it spurs inflammation in the gut and then we get even more anxious about it having the gut issue. We end up in this vicious until we finally had it and start thinking differently.

Dr Hunter stated we all seem to change when we have a type of near death experience. This experience could be literal, emotional,  mental, and etc.

There was a research project that was done and it seems by the conclusion of this research that we inherently go in circles. If we don't have a focal point for us to stay in a straight line we go in circles and end up in the same place that we were before.

How do we get out of these inherent circles when it comes to our health?

Start setting goals a little at a time, maybe the goal is to seek a second or third opinion about your health condition. Maybe the goal is to focus on what you can do instead of what you can't do.

Get your own personal board of directors to help you get our of your circles if that is what it takes.
If you are saying the same things over and over again to your board then maybe there is a change in you that needs to happen.

Lets all start going straight instead of going in circles. Start looking for the landmarks we need in life to get to where we need to go. 

Is it Hollywood or Human nature?

There has been this never ending pursuit for perfection. Due to internet and media outlets and photo editing we can now finally have what we want, to be flawless.  Yet people still aren't happy. Why is this? You can photo crop as much as we want, but reality is that we are flawed. We are fighting against the thing that makes us who we are that gives us our personality.

We make ourselves stressed out because we are not perfect.  We don't embrace that which makes us different from everyone else.  I use to fight my flaws so hard that I was making things worse instead of better. I wasn't centered, I was creating chaos and I was miserable.  I was doing the total opposite of what I should've been doing.....

Embracing my flaws....

This sounds crazy, but it works. Only after embracing the fact that we all have flaws and that we are not perfect can we move forward and over come our weaknesses.  We need to celebrate being human and that we are not robots.  I look at my daughter and my dog and they live fully in the moment and it doesn't matter what is going on around them and if they make a mistake.  They know who they are and embrace it. I love that about them. It makes them who they are.

At first I use to get upset because I always forget where I park my car because I have other things going through my mind that I forget to stop and see where I am. When I learned to live in the moment I can stop and see around me landmarks that help me find my car again. If I don't remember I can laugh and make a game out of  it and say "Where is my car" instead of "Where is Waldo" LOL.

It takes time and hard work to learn how to enjoy being human again.  It is totally worth it.

I love the Monkees song "I said laugh"  this is so true.

Lesson I learned from a cockroach.

This morning I am walking my dog and see this dead cockroach being eaten by a group of ants. It is going to take a while for these ants to pull that cockroach apart.

I looked at the cockroach as obstacles or weaknesses we have in our lives.  How many times do we let the cockroach win?  How many times do we fall back to old habits instead of being patient with ourselves when we start to change? 

The ants are like the changes we make in our lives just chipping away at the old habits and making way for the new ones. It takes time to replace one thing with another.  Just like it takes time for ants to pull apart a cockroach.

I think it's time we all start looking at our successes no matter how small they may be.